{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7218239307403564,"wiki_prob":0.27817606925964355,"text":"Gulf develops network in Argentina with plan for 150 new sites by 2020\nÁmbito online\n02 August 2019 in Fuel Retailing\nThe US brand, with 116 years of history and presence in more than 100 countries, has opened its first station in Argentina, in the city of Buenos Aires through Delta Patagonia.\nIn a recent interview with Ámbito online - an Argentinian economic news portal - General Manager of Delta Patagonia, Eduardo Torrás, spoke about plans to compete and grow in a country in which only three companies dominate 90% of the market.\nThe opening of the first service station in Argentina in mid July, according to Torrás, was the “first milestone” in a long list of expansion plans, in which the company aims to earn a market share of up to 3%, with a strategy based on price and customer service.\nAfter this, the company will be opening two more sites, one on the outskirts of Rosario and another in Córdoba capital. The plan is to have 50 stations this year and 100 more next year with a total of 150 stations in the country by the end of 2020, at an investment of ca. $8 million, as reported earlier this year.\nAccording to Torrás, the company’s strategy in the country lies in an interesting and dynamic brand for consumers with broad international development and competitive prices. Due to the high concentration of players he believes there is room to compete and succeed through differentiation.\nTorrás believes that \"today the Argentine market is in line with the international market in terms of costs and prices.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line458360"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8270277380943298,"wiki_prob":0.8270277380943298,"text":"News and Events Home\nWatch our compelling patient stories and physician bio videos on American Family Children's Hospital's YouTube channel.\nFrom UW Health\nGo to UW Health News\nProtect Your Child From Whooping Cough by Getting Immunized\nnews@uwhealth.org\nFollow American Family Children's Hospital\nMADISON - Whooping cough – a bacterial disease characterized by a violent, debilitating cough – has been making a comeback.\nThought to be wiped out by the mid-1970s, this highly contagious disease has re-emerged, and continues to spread, with reported cases in every state. In 2015, 55 of Wisconsin's 72 counties reported cases, including Dane and Milwaukee.\n\"This is a truly tragic disease because both the child and family suffer for weeks before recovery is possible,\" says James Conway, MD, a UW Health pediatric infectious disease specialist. \"Fortunately, most cases, and in particular severe cases, can be prevented by ensuring that whooping cough, or pertussis, vaccines are up to date.\"\nThis is particularly important to women who are pregnant, have just given birth as well as for those who have close contact with infants. Getting an adult vaccination for whooping cough with a Tdap vaccine can help prevent exposing babies to this potentially fatal disease.\n\"No one would dream of giving whooping cough to their baby intentionally, but it could happen,\" says Dr. Conway. \"We might think that our babies are protected when they get vaccinated for pertussis, but immunization requires a full series of vaccines, and no vaccine is 100 percent protective.\"\nDr. Conway says a baby is most vulnerable during the first few months of life, which is why anyone in close contact with newborns should be immunized.\n\"By the time most of us reach adulthood, we are typically 20 or 30 years past the time we were last vaccinated, so our immunity to whooping cough has long since worn off,\" he adds. \"Teenagers are also susceptible to whooping cough and can become ill themselves or transmit the infection to siblings. For these reasons,\"\nDr. Conway says, \"Wisconsin now requires the Tdap vaccine for all students in grades 6 through 12.\"\nThe whooping cough vaccine (usually called DTaP for infants and young children, and Tdap for adolescents and adults) also protects against two other potentially deadly diseases: diphtheria and tetanus—also known as lockjaw.\n\"Immunizations don’t end at childhood,\" says Dr. Conway, \"so adults should check with their physicians during routine visits and physicals to see if they are due for booster shots to guard against these diseases. He cautions that people also should avoid unnecessary contact with others while ill with respiratory symptoms, regardless of the cause of their illness. Most respiratory illnesses are highly contagious, and vaccines only protect against a limited number of them.\nNews tag(s): james h conway","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1252268"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7199305891990662,"wiki_prob":0.7199305891990662,"text":"IDEAS Conferences\nIndependent Research Network\nAbout IDEAS Conferences\nEast Coast IDEAS\nMidwest IDEAS\nSouthwest IDEAS\nPast Presenting Companies\n70 Presenting Companies\nNovember 20 & 21, 2019\n2018 Conference Company Webcasting\nWestin Dallas Downtown\nFor directions click: Map\nFor reservations click: Here\n2019 Southwest IDEAS Investor Conference\nKeynote Lunch Speakers\nWednesday, November 20th\nBen Phillips\nChief Investment Officer, EventShares\n\"How Government Policy Drives Stock Market Returns\"\nDownload the Presentation Here\nThursday, November 21st\nDonald Luskin,\nChief Investment Officer, TrendMacro\n\"The Three Biggest Risks Facing the Global Economy\"\nNovember 20th Keynote Lunch Speaker Bio: Ben Phillips\nBen Phillips serves as the Chief Investment Officer of EventShares overseeing portfolio management and the Investment Committee. EventShares manages the only government policy-based fund globally. Mr. Phillips is also a founder and Managing Director of actionable investment insights firm, MarketDesk Research.\nPreviously, Mr. Phillips was with Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), where he had portfolio management responsibilities across several multi-sector total return funds. Prior to GSAM, he held senior investing roles at Providence Equity Partners and Lord Abbett. Mr. Phillips is a CFA charterholder and received an MBA and BSBA in Finance from the University of Missouri.\nNovember 21st Keynote Lunch Speaker Bio: Donald Luskin\nDon's 40-year career as an entrepreneur, executive, investment manager and commentator has been built around his passion for the application of technology and innovation to the challenge of investing.\nPrior to founding Trend Macrolytics, Don was vice chairman and co-chief investment officer of Barclays Global Investors. After a decade building Wells Fargo Investment Advisors into the world's largest and most innovative investment manager -- where indexing, sector ETFs, tactical asset allocation and quant-active investing were invented and popularized -- Don was a member of the three-man management team that sold the firm to Barclays Bank PLC in 1995. The firm was acquired by Blackrock in 2009.\nAt Barclays, Don invented and patented target-date mutual funds, which have since become a standard for retirement investment. He pioneered sector ETF's, creating the fund family now known as i-Shares. After Barclays, Don was CEO and co-founder of MetaMarkets.com, and manager of the pathbreaking OpenFund -- the world's first \"interactive mutual fund,\" that showed all its holdings and trading activity in real-time on the Internet.\nDon was the inventor of the POSIT ECN, and founder of Investment Technology Group at Jefferies & Company. He has been a hedge fund manager and an options market maker on the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Pacific Stock Exchange, and the New York Stock Exchange.\nDon has been an economic advisor to two presidential candidates including the late John McCain, and has briefed the President in the White House. He contributes frequently to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, and appears regularly on Fox Business.\nHe is the author of I am John Galt and Index Options and Futures: The Complete Guide, and editor of Portfolio Insurance: The Guide to Dynamic Hedging, all published by Wiley.\nHis articles and commentaries have been published in the Washington Post, Investors Business Daily, Reason, the Harvard Business Review, National Review, Pensions & Investments, Townhall, the American Spectator, the San Jose Mercury News and the Detroit News. He was formerly a columnist for TheStreet.com and Business 2.0 (now Fast Company), and SmartMoney.com.\n220 N. Park Blvd. #112\n2019 by Three Part Advisors, LLC","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line238559"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6674741506576538,"wiki_prob":0.3325258493423462,"text":"Rag'n'Bone Man - Tickets\nReceive news about artist as soon as we do, directly to your e-mail.\nThere are no Fan Reports yet written for Rag'n'Bone Man . Be the first to write a review and share your experience with others.\nRory Charles Graham(born 29 January 1985), better known as Rag'n'Bone Man, is an English singer-songwriter. His first hit single \"Human\" was released in 2016 and his debut album, also named Human, was released in February 2017. At the 2017 Brit Awards he was named British Breakthrough Act and also received the Critics' Choice Award.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1180637"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8241680860519409,"wiki_prob":0.8241680860519409,"text":"Strom Thurmond Once Hit on Teenage Chelsea Clinton: Report\nInfamous Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond allegedly hit on Chelsea Clinton when she was underage, according to Tom DeLay (R-Texas), a Former House Majority Whip.\nThe Hill reports:\nChelsea Clinton allegedly once had to endure advances from the late former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) while seated next to him at a lunch when she was a teenager.\nFormer House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) recalled observing Thurmond, who had a reputation for flirting shamelessly with women, come on to a 16-year-old Chelsea during former President Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration lunch.\n“She had Strom Thurmond on one side of her and me on the other,” DeLay told Mother Jones in an interview published Monday. “I thought, ‘What a terrible thing to do a young lady.’ Strom Thurmond, he kept hitting on her.”\nHillary Clinton recounted the awkward seating arrangement in her 2003 memoir “Living History.” In addition to Chelsea Clinton being seated next to Thurmond and DeLay, the arrangement had Hillary Clinton next to then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).\n“Perhaps it was someone’s idea of a joke to seat me next to Newt Gingrich and to put Chelsea between the House Republican Whip, Tom DeLay, and the frisky nonagenarian Senator from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond,” she wrote.\nThurmond proceeded to compare Chelsea Clinton’s looks to her mother’s, according to Hillary Clinton’s account in “Living History”:\n” ‘I think you’re nearly as pretty as your mama,’ the senator said with that silky Southern charm that had gained him quite a reputation.\n“By the middle of the meal, he mused, ‘You’re as pretty as your mama. She’s real pretty and you’re pretty too. Yes, you are. You’re as pretty as your mama.’\n“By the time dessert arrived, Thurmond was saying, ‘I do believe you’re prettier than your mama. Yes, you are, and if I was seventy years younger, I’d court you!’ ”\nThurmond represented South Carolina in the Senate for 48 years, a senatorial tenure surpassed only by the late Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). Thurmond died in 2003 at the age of 100, about six months after retiring from the Senate.\n“I love all of you, and especially your wives,” Thurmond said during his farewell speech on the Senate floor.\nPhoto credit: CNN/Screenshot.\nWhite House Invokes 'Birther' Claims After Trump Bemoans 'Fake News'\nSanders Fans Plot Sabotage of Trump Event\nEx-CIA Analyst Resigns Rather Than Serve Trump Administration","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1104264"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8909745812416077,"wiki_prob":0.8909745812416077,"text":"Ant Law All You Need To Know\nDescribed as “An innovator\" and “A gamechanger\" by The Guardian, British guitarist Ant lives in London and leads his quintet, dubbed “An exciting band to hear live\" by John Fordham. Their debut 'Entanglement' was released in 2013 to great acclaim, followed by 'Zero Sum World' in 2015. They have toured extensively and their third album 'Life I Know' for Edition Records was released on the 9th of November 2018. The release was very warmly received by the press. It received 5 star reviews, made numerous “best of 2018\" lists, received airplay in the UK, Europe, Australia, and hundreds of thousands of plays (and counting) on Spotify. It is being described as “career-defining\".\nAnt has played in Tim Garland's band with Jason Rebello & Asaf Sirkis, featuring on 'Songs To The North Sky', 'Return To The Fire' and 'ONE' which was shortlisted for a Grammy and won the Jazzwise Best Album award. He is a member of Trio HLK who record/tour with Dame Evelyn Glennie. He has also worked with Cory Henry, Thomas Gould and is frequently featured in “Total Guitar\" and “Guitar Techniques\" magazines, in which he was recently listed as an “Astounding Virtuoso\". Ant has an interest in Physics, which he read as a scholar at Edinburgh University.\n2016 saw the emergence of the Art Of Rhythm Trio featuring Matt Ridley (bass) and Asaf Sirkis (drums and konnakol). In April/May they played a 20-date tour all over the UK, supported by the Arts Council. They had played together in a different ensembles but the tour allowed them to consolidate their musical relationships and develop the trio dynamic. Most notable perhaps is the inclusion of Indian classical elements (check out the youtube videos) such as konnakol, the South-Indian spoken percussion, amidst all the jazz. This group is touring on an ongoing basis and they hope to see you at a gig soon!\nAnt was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he lived until the age of 16. From a young age he was exposed to early blues and rock 'n' roll, as well as Arabic music. He began playing piano and guitar around the age of 8. Throughout his teens he gravitated towards the guitar. A history teacher gave him a video of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing live at the El Mocambo, which was a huge influence, along with videos of Guns 'n' Roses, Queen, and later on Joe Satriani and Steve Vai.\nOther than the classical piano training, Law's only formal schooling in music was one semester on scholarship at Berklee College Of Music, Boston. This he says was crucial because he heard gospel music and gospel drummers for the first time, and lots of Latin American music. The semester was completed in the middle of a Physics degree he was reading at Edinburgh University, also as a scholar. It was whilst studying the degree that he became obsessed with jazz and played his first jazz gigs. By this point he had discovered and started to use Perfect 4ths tuning for the guitar. In a case of convergent evolution however, other players (like Stanley Jordan and Tom Quayle) had also discovered and were using this same tuning. Allan Holdsworth has said that if he could start again, he would tune this way. Ant wrote a book introducing the tuning entitled “3rd Millenium Guitar\" which is published by Mel Bay.\nAfter completing the degree he concentrated on make a living playing guitar, eventually moving to London and immersing himself in the scene there. He also lived in NYC for a season to study with his heroes Ari Hoenig, Ben Monder, Adam Rogers, Lage Lund, Gilad Hekselman, Johannes Weidenmueller, Tim Miller and others.\nWebsite: http://www.antlaw.co.uk/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line862709"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.512987494468689,"wiki_prob":0.512987494468689,"text":"Pandemics, places, and populations: Evidence from the Black Death\nRémi Jedwab, Noel Johnson, Mark Koyama 08 May 2019\nThe Black Death killed 40% of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1352, but little is known about its spatial effects. The column uses variation in Plague mortality at the city level to explore the short-run and long-run impacts on city growth. After less than 200 years the impact of Black Death mortality in cities was close to zero, but the rate of urban recovery depended on advantages that favoured trade.\nAccounting for the great divergence\nStephen Broadberry\nWars, plagues, and Europe’s rise to riches\nHans-Joachim Voth, Nico Voigtländer\nThe Black Death was the largest demographic shock in European history, killing approximately 40% of the region's population between 1347 and 1352. Some regions and cities were spared, but others were severely hit: England, France, Italy and Spain lost between 50% and 60% of their populations in two years. While the Black Death has been extensively studied by historians and social scientists (Benedictow 2005, Voth and Voigtlander 2013), we don't know much about its spatial effects, due to the lack of disaggregated data on mortality. Because they are so rare, we don't know much about the economic effects of any continent-wide pandemics.\nSpeed of recovery\nWere cities and regions that were relatively harder hit by the Black Death permanently affected? We have compiled data on Black Death mortality for 165 cities, which were home to 60% of the urban population of western Europe in the 14th century (Figure 1). By combining this with information on city growth across Europe for the entire pre-modern period, we can estimate the long-run economic and spatial consequences of the Black Death (Jedwab et al. 2019).\nFigure 1 Black Death mortality rates in European cities, 1347-1352 (%)\nWe find that between 1300 and 1400 a 10 percentage point higher Black Death mortality rate was associated with a 8.7 percentage point fall in city population, but between 100 and 200 years later, the impact of mortality was close to zero. When we examine the spillover and general equilibrium effects of the Black Death on city populations, we similarly find negative effects in the short run, and no effects in the long run. Cities and urban systems, on average, had recovered to their pre-Plague population levels by the 16th century.\nUsing data on historical deforestation, we find that rural areas close to higher mortality cities recovered their populations around a century after the recovery in urban populations. Data on deserted medieval villages in England show that more settlements were abandoned in low-mortality, rather than high-mortality areas – especially those far from cities. This implies that recovery in high-mortality areas was accelerated by migration from low-mortality areas, not by higher fertility and lower mortality.\nMechanisms of urban recovery\nWe find that urban recovery from the Black Death is entirely explained by the interacted effects of mortality with city characteristics that proxy for fixed factors of production. That is, rural fixed factors related to better land suitability, and urban fixed factors related to natural advantages (coastal access, for example) or sunk man-made advantages (such as roads) that favour trade.\nNot all cities recovered at the same rate (Figure 2). Some permanently collapsed after the Black Death, whereas others gained in the long run. These permutations were associated with fixed factors, and favoured cities with better land and trade potential, and so urban systems may have become more productive.\nFigure 2 Population rank of 165 cities in main sample, 1300 vs 1600\nThere is evidence that these results are causal. First, it is plausible that the virulence of the Plague was not related to future city growth. Second, the parallel trends assumption is verified as, prior to 1300, there was no difference in growth between areas that would be most affected by the Black Death, and those that would be comparatively less affected. Third, the results are robust to the inclusion of controls for city characteristics, region fixed effects, and contemporaneous events. Finally, our results hold when we implement instrumental variables strategies based on the facts that the Black Death entered Europe through the Sicilian port of Messina and was more virulent in its earlier stages (for pathogenic reasons), it was more lethal in cities in which it reached its peak in the summer since the fleas that transmitted the disease were more active then, and it was connectedness to Messina and not connectedness to other important cities that mattered for plague virulence.\nTo summarise:\nA short-run effect. The Black Death had strong spatial-economic effects in the short-run, but no such effects in the long-run. this is the first time that city-level data on Black Death mortality has been used to study its local effects, and the first time that its spatial effects have been shown to be consistent with a Malthusian model.\nRecovery of cities. Cities are often neglected in the Malthusian literature. But they were important for trade in this period, so high-mortality cities with natural or sunk man-made advantages that favoured trade were more likely to attract labour afterwards.\nLand and trade. The role of fixed factors related to land and trade in city recovery suggests that the allocation of urban populations may have improved following the Black Death.\nContemporary relevance\nUnderstanding the economic effects of pandemics may have policy implications for today, especially given that their frequency and severity may increase with climate change. According to one recent broadcast by the BBC (2017):\n“Climate change is melting permafrost soils that have been frozen for thousands of years, and as the soils melt they are releasing ancient viruses and bacteria that, having lain dormant, are springing back to life.”\nLikewise, Bill Gates (2018) argues that:\n“[G]iven the continual emergence of new pathogens, the increasing risk of a bioterror attack, and the ever-increasing connectedness of our world, there is a significant probability that a large and lethal modern-day pandemic will occur in our lifetime”\nAn uncontrolled Ebola outbreak could have dramatic economic consequences in Africa (UNECA 2015), but it is difficult to assess what those consequences would be without empirical evidence from previous pandemics.\nWhile the Black Death took place centuries ago, our study has implications for the developing world today. Poor economies disproportionately rely on fixed factors of production similar to the ones we identify in our context (Jedwab and Vollrath 2019). This could explain why contemporary mortality increases often have positive effects (Young 2005, Rogall and Yanagizawa-Drott 2013, Esteban et al. 2015). It also suggests why population increases may have negative effects (Acemoglu and Johnson 2007, Ashraf et al. 2013). Lastly, during the Black Death Europe consisted of decentralised polities with weak state capacity. This is similar to what we can observe in poor countries today (Johnson and Koyama 2017).\nAcemoglu, D and S Johnson (2007), “Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth”, Journal of Political Economy 115(6): 925–985.\nAshraf, Q H, D N Weil, and J Wilde (2013), “The Effect of Fertility Reduction on Economic Growth”, Population and Development Review 39(1): 97-130.\nBenedictow, O J (2005), The Black Death 1346–1353: The Complete History, The Boydell Press.\nChristakos, G, R A Olea, M L Serre, H-L Yu, and L-L Wang (2005), Interdisciplinary Public Health Reasoning and Epidemic Modelling: The Case of Black Death, Springer.\nEsteban, J, M Morelli, and D Rohner (2015), “Strategic Mass Killings\", Journal of Political Economy 123(5): 1087–1132.\nJedwab, R and D Vollrath (2019), “The Urban Mortality Transition and Poor-Country Urbanization”, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 11(1): 223–275.\nJedwab, R, N Johnson and M Koyama (2019), “Pandemics, Places, and Populations: Evidence from the Black Death”, CEPR Discussion Paper 13523\nJohnson, N D and M Koyama (2017), “States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints”, Explorations in Economic History 64: 1-20.\nRogall, T and D Yanagizawa-Drott (2013), “The Legacy of Political Mass Killings: Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide,” mimeo.\nVoigtländer, N and H-J Voth (2013), “The Three Horsemen of Riches: Plague, War, and Urbanization in early modern Europe”, Review of Economic Studies 80: 774–811.\nYoung, A (2005), “The Gift of the Dying: The Tragedy of AIDS and the Welfare of Future African Generations”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(2): 423–466.\nTopics: Economic history\nTags: Black Death, plague, Malthus, Malthusian model, cities, special effects, pandemics\nRémi Jedwab\nAssociate Professor, George Washington University\nNoel Johnson\nAssociate Professor of Economics, George Mason University\nAssociate Professor in Economics, George Mason University","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1234493"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5915945768356323,"wiki_prob":0.5915945768356323,"text":"Mexico’s Garment Industry in 2019\nAllison Griffin · April 22, 2019\nIn Remake’s latest film, “Made in Mexico,” students and activists met face-to-face with the women who make our clothes just south of the border. They listened to their stories, shared in their emotions and connected at the most basic level, as women trying to make it in this big world.\nWith the release of the film, we decided to investigate what the biggest hardships and obstacles that these women face working in the country’s maquiladoras.\nA maquiladora also known as a maquila is a factory in Mexico run by a foreign company that imports raw materials and exports manufactured products back to that country, often the US, on a duty-free and tariff-free basis.\nThough the first maquiladoras popped up in the 1960s, they had a period of increased growth throughout the 1990s. In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed and the value of the peso dramatically decreased, making Mexico even more appealing for American brands trying to cut the cost of production. While maquiladoras were already growing in number, in the next five years nearly1500 more opened, an unprecedented rate.\nIt wasn’t long before worker abuses were exposed. In 1996, the Human Rights Watch published a report which found that maquiladoras discriminated against the hiring of pregnant women. Major US-based companies went so far as to require female job candidates to undergo pregnancy testing and asked them invasive questions about their contraceptive use, menstrual cycle and sexual habits in order to screen out pregnant women and deny them jobs.\nPregnancy-discrimination continues to be an obstacle for female garment workers in Mexico and throughout the world.\nPhoto: Sara is a garment maker who has seen women get sick from working inside the factory, then get fired for their lower production rate. She wants to de-normalize women’s pain and health issues in the fashion industry.\nAs globalization increased, American brands sought out cheaper and cheaper labor to increase their profit margins. This lead to increased competition for Mexican maquiladoras. Much of the US’s garment production was moved into China and later to countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. Today, the majority of products manufactured in maquiladoras are electronics and auto parts.\nHowever, apparel production continues in Mexico with companies like Levi’s and Dickie’s manufacturing clothing inside maquiladoras. In fact, Mexico is the largest supplier of men’s jeans to the US, responsible for 40 percent of those, Nate Herman, SVP of supply chain at the apparel association told CNBC in 2017.\nA recent McKinsey study suggests nearshore manufacturing could benefit American fashion brands, making Mexico with its shorter delivery times and potentially cheaper production costs.\nSo what conditions do the women who make our clothes inside maquiladoras work in? What problems and abuses do they face? Are they making a living wage? Gathered from Remake’s own interviews in Mexico and research studies on the country’s garment sector, below are the biggest issues maquiladora workers face today.\nPhoto: Reina began working in Mexico’s garment factories as a child laborer and has seen first hand, colleagues get chronic illnesses and permanent skin damage from toxic chemicals in the dye process. Today she hopes to empower as many women as she can.\nThe Right To Unions\nThe right to form independent unions is a constant struggle for maquiladora makers. While unions exist, they’re created to protect the factories, not the makers. These are known as “protection unions” and they make profits from employers who sign collective bargaining agreements without makers’ knowledge and consent. When maquiladora makers try to register independent unions or strike, they’re often fired.\nLow wages enforce a cycle of poverty, often from generation to generation. Much of the maquiladora workforce is made up of young women from rural areas in the country who come to border cities to seek work or future entry into America. They take poor-paying jobs at maquiladoras because they often don’t have any other options and must feed their families. The country’s minimum wage increased this year to about $5.10 a day or 102.68 pesos, but it’s still far from a living wage. One maquiladora worker told Public Radio International that she spent half of her $7 a day wage on wood to keep her cinder block home heated.\nSexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination continue to plague female workers. According to an article in the San Diego Free Press, women are still required to take regular pregnancy tests and are sometimes fired if they become pregnant. Oliva, one of the women in the “Made in Mexico” film, said she saw a young woman groped by a supervisor at a maquiladora. “It traumatized me. I knew I had to speak up, but I had no one to speak up to.”\nPhoto: The Remake team interviewed Veronica, a garment maker in Mexico who speaks out for women’s rights in factories worldwide. She sees women treated as a second class gender and wants that to change.\nforced overtime\nWorkers often work long hours, sometimes with forced overtime. Most work 10 hours a day, six days a week if not more. Remake’s reporting in Mexico found that women often take caffeine pills and energy drinks to keep up with all the work. This can lead to an accelerated heart rate and even cardiac arrest.\nMany workers often develop health conditions related to maquiladora work. Another woman in the film, Reina, a former child worker turned activist said she personally witnessed women’s faces and hands stained and discolored by the chemicals used inside the garment factories. She suffers from respiratory illness from breathing in fibers, while Oliva developed carpal tunnel syndrome from working in maquiladoras for 15 years. “If a woman tried to report that she became sick as a result of her working in the factory, she would be fired and the factory owner would face no consequences,” said Sara, another woman interviewed in Mexico.\nImages: Remake; Cover Photo: Jezael Melgoza/Unsplash\nAllison Griffin\nAllie, a dual fashion-journalism major, was one of our selected Parsons School of Design students who came on the Cambodia Journey, where we connected designers with makers to build a more human-centered fashion industry. Allie’s great grandmother used to sew in NYC's garment district. Graduating from Parsons and recently interning at Oscar de la Renta, she feels like her family's life has come full circle - from being a line worker to designer.\nMeet Sara From Mexico\nMade In Mexico Garment Makers Speak Out For Women’s Rights","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line498661"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.507377564907074,"wiki_prob":0.507377564907074,"text":"Promises of ObamaCare too costly for many\nfeaturing Hadley Heath\nYou could call them the \"forgotten faces\" of Obamacare: Americans who are by no means wealthy but earn too much to receive a tax credit that would help them pay for federally-mandated insurance.\nAccording to the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly 15 million people bought ACA-compliant individual insurance for 2017. Nearly half of them, however, received no tax credit help.\nMeanwhile, the uninsured rate among adults who make too much to qualify for help buying coverage increased to five percent from two percent in 2016.\nAnd next year may be no different.\nIf you ask Hadley Heath Manning of the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), this group of people has had the roughest time under the Affordable Care Act.\n\"They didn't really have a walk in the park before the Affordable Care Act because our health insurance markets in the United States are largely centered around those large group plans that many employers provide,\" Manning tells OneNewsNow. \"If you don't have one of those you're effectively on your own, and if you earn too much money to get a subsidy under the ACA, you face some of the highest prices for health insurance.\"\nFor an individual making $48,000 or more, that can be expensive. That is the cutoff income for tax credits. The cutoff is $98,000 for a family of four.\nIn a realted Associated Press story, the reporter described how Margaret Leatherwood of Bryson, Texas had eight choices for health insurance in 2018. But the cheapest individual coverage in her market would eat up nearly a quarter of the income her husband brings home from the oilfields.\n\"I was so glad to see the Associated Press cover this,\" Manning says, \"because too often we do get a skewed picture of the ACA pointing to the Medicaid expansion, the insurance numbers in total, the number of people who benefit from subsidies and tax credits, without so much focus on the cost.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line513226"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9257996678352356,"wiki_prob":0.9257996678352356,"text":"Husband of Wounded US Lawmaker to Return to Space\n05 Feb 2011 Comments Off on Husband of Wounded US Lawmaker to Return to Space\nby KATAKAMI in World News Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly, NASA\nThis January 9, 2011 photo released by Congressworman Gabrielle Giffords' office shows Mark Kelly, Giffords' husband, holding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) hand in her hospital room at the University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona. Giffords remains in critical condition after being shot in the head after a gunman opened fire during a political event in Tucson on Saturday. (Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Office/Handout )\nFeb 5 (KATAKAMI.COM / VOA) — NASA says astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of wounded U.S. lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, will return to command the space shuttle Endeavour on its final mission in April.\nThe space agency says Kelly will resume training Monday for the trip to the International Space Station.\nAt a press conference, Kelly said Giffords’ ability to improve rapidly from a bullet wound in the head influenced his decision to rejoin the mission. He said he originally thought her pace of improvement would be much slower, and that he questioned his future as an astronaut.\nKelly would not share details on Giffords’ condition or prognosis, except to say that doctors think she will make a “really good” recovery.\nA NASA official, Brent Jett, said he is glad Kelly is returning to command the mission. He said he is confident Kelly will not be distracted by his wife’s health situation.\nGiffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents in Tuscon, Arizona nearly a month ago.\nGiffords was recently moved from Tucson to a rehabilitation hospital in Houston, where Kelly trains at the Johnson Space Center.\nSix people were killed in the Arizona shooting rampage on January 8, including a U.S. federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.\nScott Kelly, Mark Kelly’s twin brother and fellow astronaut, said this week he is “absolutely 100 percent confident” his brother will be able to fulfill his responsibilities if he chooses to fly Endeavour. Scott Kelly is the current commander of the International Space Station.\nNASA is retiring its shuttle fleet this year. (*)\nGiffords's husband says she recognizes him\n19 Jan 2011 Comments Off on Giffords's husband says she recognizes him\nby KATAKAMI in World News Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly\nU.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and her husband, space shuttle astronaut Mark Kelly, are seen in an undated handout photo provided by her Congressional campaign, January 8, 2011. Giffords was hit in a shooting on Saturday at a public event of the Congresswoman's at a Tucson, Arizona grocery store that also injured at least nine other people, hospital and law enforcement sources said. REUTERS/Giffords for Congress/PK Weis/Handout\nJan 19 (KATAKAMI.COM / Reuters) – Congressman Gabrielle Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, says he is certain his wife recognizes him and is making her awareness of his bedside presence known more than a week after she was shot through the head.\nWhile doctors at University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona, said over the weekend that Giffords remained mostly incommunicative, Kelly said his spouse is connecting with him through small, but distinct gestures.\n“If I hold her hand, she’ll play with my wedding ring,” Kelly, a NASA space shuttle commander, told ABC News in his first television interview since his wife was gravely wounded in a shooting rampage on January 8.\n“She’ll move (the ring) up and down my finger. She’ll take it off. … She’ll put it on her own finger. She’ll move it to her thumb. And then she can put it back on my finger,” he said.\nKelly’s full interview was set to air on Tuesday night on a special edition of the prime-time program “20/20.” ABC News released excerpts in advance. Portions also aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “World News with Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline” broadcasts.\n“The reason why I know that that means she recognizes me is because she’s done that before,” Kelly said. “She’ll do that if we’re sitting in a restaurant. She’ll do the same exact movements.”\nKelly told Sawyer in his interview that Giffords, 40, even managed to give him a 10-minute neck rub, “and I keep telling her, ‘Gabby, you’re in the ICU. You know, you don’t need to be going this.'”\nHe added with a chuckle, “I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t do that to somebody else. And she’s looking me in the eye.”\nKelly’s anecdotes seemed at odds with the level of function described over the weekend by doctors, who said they had seen little sign of Giffords interacting despite upgrading her overall medical condition from critical to serious following removal of a breathing tube that ran through her mouth and down her throat.\nThat ventilator hose was replaced on Saturday with a tracheotomy tube inserted through her neck and into her windpipe but still leaves her unable to speak.\n“She cannot socialize,” Dr. Randall S. Friese, associate medical director of the hospital, told reporters on Monday.\nStill, doctors said they were extremely pleased with Giffords’ progress and that the next key milestone she faced would be her discharge from the hospital, marking her graduation from recovery to rehabilitation.\nGiffords, a Democrat just elected to her third term representing Tucson and southern Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives, was one of 19 people struck by gunfire at a meet-and-greet with constituents.\nSix people were killed and 13 others wounded, Giffords being the most seriously hurt. A 22-year-old college dropout, Jared Lee Loughner, is in federal custody charged as the lone gunman in the attack.\nKelly acknowledged that his wife still has a difficult road ahead of her but called her a “really, really tough woman.”\nHe also told Sawyer that he had worried for his wife’s safety in the past and that they had discussed death threats she had received prior to the shooting.\nHusband: Giffords smiled and gave him neck rub\n18 Jan 2011 Comments Off on Husband: Giffords smiled and gave him neck rub\nby KATAKAMI in World News Tags: Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly, Politics\nFILE - In this March, 2010 file photo provided by the office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Giffords poses for a photo. Giffords' condition improved to serious on Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011, after procedures to remove a ventilator were successful. (AP Photo/Office of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, File)\nTUCSON, Ariz., Jan 18 (KATAKAMI.COM/ AP) — The husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords says his wife’s condition has improved so much that she has been able to smile and give him a neck rub as he has kept a near-constant vigil at her hospital bedside.\nThe interactions with astronaut Mark Kelly are new signs of Giffords’ impressive progress in recovering from a gunshot wound to the head at a political event nine days ago. Giffords still cannot speak, because of a tube in her throat that is helping her breathe.\n“She’s in the ICU. You know, gone through this traumatic injury. And she spent 10 minutes giving me a neck massage,” Kelly explained in an interview with Diane Sawyer to air Tuesday on ABC. “It’s so typical of her that no matter how bad the situation might be for her, you know, she’s looking out for other people.”\nSuch encounters indicate higher levels of functioning, implying that “she’s recognizing him and interacting, perhaps in an old familiar way with him,” said Dr. Michael Lemole.\nDr. Randall Friese said Kelly also told doctors he saw Giffords smile. He said sometimes people see what they want to see, but that “if he says she’s smiling, I buy it.”\nKelly has also been essential in helping Giffords’ staff through the tragedy, said Mark Kimble, a Tucson staff member who stood only a few feet from Giffords when she was shot.\n“There is not a doubt in his mind and not a doubt in any of our minds that she’s going to be back,” Kimble said. “He’s been cheering us up. He’ll come over and when we’re down, he’ll say, ‘Gabby’s going to make it, Gabby’s a little better today.’ That’s a big help to all of us.”\nThe steady progress for Giffords came on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to remember the legacy of the civil rights leader who was killed by an assassin’s bullet 42 years ago.\nPolitical leaders invoked the assassination attempt against Giffords as they asked Americans to recommit to King’s values of nonviolence, tolerance, compassion and justice.\n“Last week a senseless rampage in Tucson reminded us that more than 40 years after Dr. King’s own tragic death, our struggle to eradicate violence and to promote peace goes on,” Attorney General Eric Holder said at King’s former church in Atlanta.\nDoctors upgraded Giffords’ condition from critical to serious over the weekend and say they carried out three successful procedures that demonstrate she is recovering well.\nA breathing tube was moved from her mouth to her throat along with a separate feeding tube that was shifted from her nose to her stomach. Dr. Randall Friese said removing the tubes in her nose and mouth reduces the risks of infections.\nDoctors also said they performed a surgery on Giffords’ eye socket to remove bone fragments to relieve pressure on her eye. There were no complications from the surgery; doctors needed to perform the eye procedure all along but waited until her condition improved to do it.\nElsewhere, doctors have transplanted the corneas from the youngest victim of the Jan. 8 shooting that left a total of six dead and 13 wounded. Christina Taylor Green’s father said Monday that the Donor Network of Arizona told him and his wife that the transplants from the 9-year-old have saved the eyesight of two children.\nThe suspect in the shooting, 22-year-old Jared Loughner, remained jailed in a federal lockup in Phoenix. Investigators have described him as a mentally unstable man who was kicked out a community college last year and became increasingly erratic in recent months.\nHe apparently became obsessed with inflicting violence on Giffords since attending one of her campaign events in 2007.\nKelly said he would be willing to meet with the parents of Loughner, who have remained in seclusion since the shooting. Kelly, who has two teenage daughters from a previous marriage, said the parents have to be in a tremendous amount of pain.\n“I don’t think it’s their fault. It’s not the parents fault,” Kelly told ABC. “You know, I’d like to think I’m a person that’s, you know, somewhat forgiving. And, I mean, they’ve got to be hurting in this situation as much as much as anybody.” (*)\nDoctors: Giffords Smiling at Husband\n18 Jan 2011 Comments Off on Doctors: Giffords Smiling at Husband\nJan 18 (KATAKAMI.COM / VOA) — The husband of the Arizona congresswoman shot in the head during a shooting rampage this month says her condition has improved to the point where she gave him a 10-minute neck massage from her hospital room.\nU.S. astronaut Mark Kelly said in an interview with ABC News that the action is typical of Giffords, who he said is always looking out for others. Giffords is in the intensive care unit at a Tucson hospital.\nKelly also said he would be willing to meet with the parents of 22-year-old Jared Loughner, the man charged in the shooting spree that killed six people and wounded more than a dozen others in Tucson. Kelly told the network that Loughner’s parents must be in a tremendous amount of pain because of the situation.\nGiffords’ condition has been upgraded from critical to serious. Doctors treating Giffords say Kelly reported that he saw her smile. They say such encounters imply that Giffords is recognizing him and interacting perhaps in a more familiar way with him.\nSeparately, the doctors say Giffords had minor surgery to repair a fracture in the roof of her eye socket. They also say she is at the same baseline as before the procedure.\nGiffords was shot as she met with constituents outside a grocery store January 8. The dead included a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.\nThe U.S. House of Representatives resumes work this week, after a one-week suspension following the attack on Giffords. The top item on the agenda for the new House Republican majority is to try to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform initiative.\nDoctors have voiced optimism regarding Giffords’s chances of recovery, saying she could be released from the hospital and moved into a rehabilitation facility within “days to weeks.” Recently, she has opened her eyes and is responding to simple commands. Doctors say she is breathing on her own.\nLoughner, the suspect, has been charged with five federal felony counts, including the attempted assassination of a member of the U.S. Congress.\nOfficials say his trial likely will be held outside of Arizona because the federal judge, John Roll, was among those killed. (*)\nNASA Names Backup Shuttle Commander for Gifford’s Husband\n14 Jan 2011 Comments Off on NASA Names Backup Shuttle Commander for Gifford’s Husband\nJan 13 (KATAKAMI / VOA) — The U.S. space agency says it has appointed a backup commander for its upcoming April mission to the International Space Station, while the mission’s original leader tends to his wife, who was shot in the head Saturday.\nIn a statement Thursday, Astronaut Mark Kelly said he was “hopeful” he would be able to rejoin the mission with space shuttle Endeavor.\nIt is currently slotted as the final mission for NASA’s 30-year shuttle program.\nKelly’s wife, congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is recovering after being shot in an apparent assassination attempt.\nNASA said Kelly remains in charge of the mission, but said designating a backup would allow the mission crew and support team to continue training in Kelly’s absence.\nMeanwhile, NASA also announced new launch dates for the two remaining shuttle missions, after several delays prompted by problems with space shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank.\nNASA announced it plans to launch Discovery on February 24 and said it is targeting April 19 for Endeavor’s launch.\nNASA cancelled a planned launch attempt in early November when a hydrogen leak led them to discover cracks in some of the metal supports of Discovery’s fuel tank.\nAlthough these are the final scheduled missions, NASA has said another flight could be added mid-year, before the fleet is set to retire. (*)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1528875"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8835223913192749,"wiki_prob":0.8835223913192749,"text":"We Stormed the Reichstag\nVassili Subbotin, Tony Le Tissier\n* War correspondent's graphic account of the most famous episode in the final battle for Berlin\n* Insight into the violence and confusion of the street-fighting\n* Inside story of the action that gave rise to one of the defining photographs of the\nSecond World War - the Soviet flag flying over the Reichstag\n* Portraits of the soldiers who too\nDimensions : 9.5 X 6.5 inches\nIn 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union Vassili Subbotin was caught up as an ordinary soldier in the Red Army’s great retreat. In 1945, during the final days of the war, as a war correspondent, he went into Berlin with the troops who fought the ferocious final battles in the streets and sealed Germany’s defeat. Later he recorded in vivid impressionistic detail the climax of the last act of the campaign and of the entire war in the east – the storming of the Reichstag which came to symbolize of the Soviet victory over the Nazis.\nHis firsthand experience of that final operation – and his insight into the small band of ordinary soldiers who played a part in it – is graphically conveyed in this memoir. In his description of the confusion and violence of the street fighting around the Reichstag and the vicious hand-to-hand floor-by-floor struggle to capture the huge shattered building, the personalities of the soldiers are revealed, as are their fears and determination.\nVassili Subbotin served as a conscript in the Red Army during the Second World War, first as an infantryman during the Soviet retreat after the German invasion in 1941, then as a divisional war correspondent during the Red Army’s long advance towards Germany. He was present throughout the final battle for Berlin and observed the capture of the Reichstag at first hand. After the war he wrote this evocative memoir recording his experiences and those of the soldiers who took part, and in later life he was reunited with those who survived the fighting.\nDuring many years working in several senior official positions in Berlin - including spells as provost marshal and British governor of Spandau prison - Tony Le Tissier has accumulated a vast knowledge of the campaign the led up to the fall of Berlin. He has researched every aspect of the 1945 battle for the city in unprecedented detail and has published a series of outstanding books on the subject - The Battle of Berlin 1945, Farewell to Spandau, Berlin Then and Now, Zhukov at the Oder, Slaughter at Halbe, The Third Reich Then and Now, With Our Backs to Berlin, Death Was Our Companion, Berlin Battlefield Guide: Third Reich and Cold War and The Siege of Kstrin 1945: Gateway to Berlin.\n“The book reads very much as if written by a reporter of the times, which it was. The author, and expert on the Eastern Front, served in Berlin during the Cold War and it is to his credit he has brought this work to English-speaking readers, providing more source material on the Red Army in World War II.”\n- WWII History\nWe Stormed the Reichstag Reviews\nBattlefield Bombers: Deep Sea Attack\nThe First Blitz\nAndrew Hyde\nJohn Freeborn, Chris Yeoman\nThe Sterling Years\nJames Edmiston\nFinal Scrum\nNigel McCrery\nWith the SAS and Other Animals\nJulian Paget, Derek Saunders","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line975129"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7403801083564758,"wiki_prob":0.7403801083564758,"text":"» Prince Rupert Real Estate Listings\nPrince Rupert Real Estate Listings\nProperty Types Residential Single Family Townhouse Duplex Multi-Family Manufactured Recreational Lots, Land & Acreages\nBedrooms 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5 or more\nBathrooms 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+ 5 or more\nMin Price $20,000 $50,000 $100,000 $150,000 $200,000 $250,000 $300,000 $350,000 $400,000 $450,000 $500,000 $550,000 $600,000 $650,000 $700,000 $800,000 $900,000 $1,000,000\nMax Price $20,000 $50,000 $100,000 $150,000 $200,000 $250,000 $300,000 $350,000 $400,000 $450,000 $500,000 $550,000 $600,000 $650,000 $700,000 $800,000 $900,000 $1,000,000\nSort By Price: Low to High Sort By Price: High to Low Sort By List Date: Old to New Sort By List Date: New to Old Sort By Address: A - Z Sort By Address: Z - A\nOut-of-Area\nPrince Rupert - City\nLots, Land & Acreages\nBrowse Listings pick a neighbourhood or property type to view\nPrince Rupert – City\nPrince Rupert – Rural\n61 Residential Listings found.\n1824 GRAHAM AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J1C8\n175 BILL MURRAY WAY, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J4P5\n1800 ATLIN AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J1E8\n1714 SLOAN AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J3Z9\n536-538 SHERBROOKE AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J2W1\n1811 E 6TH AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J1Y7\n1208 CONRAD STREET, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J4M4\n988 E 11TH AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J2W8\nLOT C OSLAND, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V0V1G0\n1323 SLOAN AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J2A9\n1325 SLOAN AVENUE, Prince Rupert City, British Columbia, V8J2A9\nLOT 2 PARK AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J3R5\n1156 WILLIAMS LANE, Masset, British Columbia, V0T1M0\n1123 FREDERICK STREET, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J3B2\n1241 E 8 AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J2N8\n1776 SLOAN AVENUE, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, V8J4B5","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1194370"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5679605007171631,"wiki_prob":0.5679605007171631,"text":"Marion girls defeat Herington in 2A substate quarterfinals\nin Breaking News / by Janae Rempel / on February 26, 2018 at 9:52 pm /\nKourtney Hansen\nMarion defeated Herington, 40-24, Monday in the quarterfinals of the Class 2A substate tournament hosted by Hillsboro.\nWhen Marion shots refused to fall, the Warriors relied on their defense, which forced 28 Herington turnovers.\nHerington struggled from the field, too, and Marion took control from the start, building an 8-0 lead—thanks to four consecutive baskets by Kourtney Hansen. The Railers made their first basket with 1:25 left in the first quarter but drained a three to draw within 8-5 at the first break.\nHansen scored her 10th points 55 seconds into the second quarter, then neither team scored for more than three minutes as a result of missed shots and turnovers.\nSam Richmond broke the drought at the 3:46 mark, but Herington outscored Marion, 8-4, in the final 2:45 to draw within 16-13 at halftime.\nHansen scored 14 of Marion’s 16 first-half points.\nMarion enjoyed a 7-0 run to start the third quarter, then Herington scored two baskets in a 41-second span. Marion closed the quarter on a 6-0 run to enjoy a double-digit, 29-17 lead heading into the fourth quarter.\nThe Warriors maintained momentum with a 9-0 start to the fourth quarter. Herington scored its first points of the period with 1:48 left in the game, and Marion cruised to the 16-point victory.\n“The frustration just kind of built up on us in the first quarter, first half,” coach Kelly Robson said. “I was really pleased that it felt like we put that away in the second half and played much more like ourselves.”\nHansen led all scorers with 22 points.\nComing—Marion advances to play Inman in the semifinals Thursday at Hillsboro.\nTags: basketball, Herington, Marion, substate, tournament","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1492714"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6456224918365479,"wiki_prob":0.35437750816345215,"text":"[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] music industry (1)\nmusic editor or publisher (1)\npromoter or impresario (1)\n[[missing key: search-facet.tree.open-section]] singing (1)\npopular singer (1)\npopular singer x\nentrepreneur x\nmusic industry x\nmusic editor or publisher x\nMills, Irving (1894-1985), singer, music publisher, and manager\nBurton W. Peretti\nMills, Irving (16 January 1894–21 April 1985), singer, music publisher, and manager, was born in New York City, the son of working-class Russian Jewish immigrants whose names are unknown. He was educated in New York City public schools but did not attend college. He married Bessie (maiden name unknown) at the age of seventeen; they had five children....","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line191459"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8465675711631775,"wiki_prob":0.8465675711631775,"text":"Five areas to share £20 million to unleash creativity across the nation\nGrimsby, Thames Estuary, Plymouth, Wakefield and Worcester will receive millions of pounds of funding to invest in culture\n• Grimsby, Thames Estuary, Plymouth, Wakefield and Worcester will receive millions of pounds of funding to invest in culture\n• Investment will support economic growth and create more than 1,300 new jobs across the country\n• This funding forms part of the Creative Industries Sector Deal to help the country’s world-leading cultural and creative businesses thrive\nFive locations across England will receive a share of £20 million to invest in local culture, heritage and creative industries and help drive economic growth, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright announced today.\nIn the first government investment of its kind, Grimsby, the Thames Estuary, Plymouth, Wakefield and Worcester will use the funding on local cultural plans which are tailored to the strengths and needs of each area.\nIt is expected that the funding will create over 1,300 new jobs, benefit 2,000 people through skills training, and support more than 700 businesses. Through match-funding, an additional £17.5 million will be invested across the five locations.\nThe Cultural Development Fund (CDF) has been launched by the Government to use investment in heritage, culture and creativity as a catalyst for regeneration. Each area has designed plans to strengthen the local arts sector, increase cultural access and provide greater opportunity for people to forge creative careers.\nCulture Secretary Jeremy Wright said:\n\"Creativity, arts and heritage make our towns and cities unique and our communities better places to live.\n\"The Cultural Development Fund will support tailored local plans that use culture to create jobs, boost tourism and ultimately regenerate communities.\n\"This is an incredible opportunity that will not only help people build careers in the arts and culture locally but also boost wider investment and diversify the creative economy.\"\nThe Culture Secretary will confirm the new funding as part of a major speech in Coventry today - the next UK City of Culture in 2021 - on the value of culture to the individual, communities and the nation as a whole.\nThe CDF, announced in the Creative Industries Sector Deal last year, marks a step change in how the Government is investing in culture. It aims to increase access to arts, heritage and the creative industries while also boosting the local economy by attracting more visitors to each area and supporting the growth of new businesses.\nIt forms part of the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy which has seen more than £150 million jointly invested by Government and industry through the creative industries sector deal to help cultural and creative businesses across Britain thrive and consolidate the country’s position as a global creative and cultural powerhouse.\nThe Fund was launched off the back of the success of Hull as UK City of Culture 2017. Hull provided further evidence of how targeted investment in culture can deliver a significant economic boost to an area, with over £3 billion of investment and more than 800 new jobs created in the city in the four years since it was awarded the title in 2013.\nNicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England, said:\n“At the Arts Council we believe that arts, culture and creativity have the power to transform people’s lives and the places where they live. It’s been a pleasure to work with DCMS to deliver the Cultural Development Fund, which makes significant investment across the arts, heritage and creative industries to bring about real change – and gives us the opportunity to demonstrate and quantify the impact that arts and culture have on economic growth and productivity in urban areas.”\nTim Davie, co-chair of the Creative Industries Council said:\n\"I welcome today’s announcement, which marks another important step in the implementation of the Sector Deal agreed between the Creative Industries Council and Government. These awards highlight the extent to which the creative industries are now a key part of local economies all over England and should enable them to grow further.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line209547"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5301264524459839,"wiki_prob":0.5301264524459839,"text":"AfterShakespeare Books\nIt’s not been easy trying to get inside the mind of this most incredible genius of words, yet the journey we started over 16 years ago has been exhilarating, to say the least.\nWe believe our approach of staying faithful to the original works by putting them in a very different setting results in a startling rejuvenation of the text, giving them a whole new life and meaning; reaction from audience members and press give evidence to this. For a selection of Reviews and Audience Feedback quotes from all After Shakespeare productions please click here.\nOur intention is to have all eight AfterShakespeare books\npublished in Amazon by the end of 2021.\nAfterShakespeare Books:\nShakespeare's Dream\nA troubled Shakespeare has a most disturbing dream; a dream where characters from his family, and from his plays, come to life – can they help him find his true destiny?\nRomeo & Juliet for all Time\nMacbeth Killing Time\nTempestfugit: Prosperos's Dream\nOphelia, Princess of Denmark\nTime Out of Joint\nCordelia/Fool\nAn Audience with Sir John Falstaff\nEver imagined what went on inside Shakespeare’s mind . . . Imagine entering, not just\nsomeone else’s dream, but the dream of one of the most active and engaging imaginations of all time; Imagine, a night in the life of Shakespeare; a night of dreams, where characters from his real life, and his writing, together come alive; Imagine you are there, sharing Shakespeare’s feelings and thoughts, his anguish and hopes, his delight and wonder.\nShakespeare is under pressure. His next opening night is but days away, and he has yet to finish the script. He’s having problems with his family in Stratford. And he’s also under suspicion of treason . . .\nShakespeare’s Dream introduces the reader to the mesmerizing world of Shakespeare, told as an imagined dream. He retires to bed, to sleep, perchance to… Agitated, and struggling to reconcile life’s demands with artistic desires, an every day Will is haunted by his yet-to-be-born creations, metamorphosing where time & mortality have no boundaries. Stumbling from one dream scene to the next, can he resolve his issues before coming dawn?\nShakespeare’s Dream is a fascinating insight into the workings of the mind of a genius, playing as it does with many of the themes and words of Shakespeare’s plays. Through the dream, we get an understanding of how his real-life issues helped shape his literary creations; in the doing of, we see the man behind the dry perception of ‘the great’ Shakespeare - ultimately, he was a regular human being, just like the rest of us.\nFor all readers, including those who maybe aren’t too familiar with Shakespeare; and for those who are, it’s a fascinating opportunity to ‘spot’ the real-life and literary characters, as well as enjoy again the many quotes from his plays.\nShakespeare's world, as never told before - a veritable carnival of dream images and Shakespeare quotes, a unique retelling of his life and work.\nGrab the opportunity, spend a night with William Shakespeare - and treat yourself to one of the most extraordinary books on Shakespeare ever published.\nSelection of quotes from Play Reviews and Audience Feedback; for more please click here\n\"Overall this is a superb, delightful production.\"\n“Shakespeare’s great creations are forever being interpreted from a new angle, transmuted by the light of innovation.\"\n“ . . . constitutes the underlying theme of Frank Bramwell’s strongly-researched and excellently presented production, which provokes a plethora of thoughts and dreams.”\n“An excellent and beautiful setting for an extraordinary and fascinating production.”\n“Thoroughly enjoyed everything about the performance.”\n\"You have inspired my Shakespearean studies.”\n“Very clever and integrated famous quotes/references well.”\n“Overall it was a really enjoyable performance and certainly deserves to be seen by a bigger audience”\nAuthor Frank Bramwell\nFrank Bramwell is a writer who runs his own theatre company, inamoment, and lives in Stafford with his wife. 2020 will see the launch of two playbooks, Shakespeare's Dream and Romeo & Juliet For All Time, based on his first two 'Shakespeare Revisited', plays which were big hits with audience members and reviewers when performed.\nFrank's fascination is exploring and understanding the genius of Shakespeare. His belief is that staying faithful to his original works, but putting them into a very different setting, results in a startling rejuvenation of the text, giving them a whole new life and meaning.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line174796"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8005983829498291,"wiki_prob":0.8005983829498291,"text":"In the Heat of the Night (DVD)\n“They call me Mr. Tibbs!” [what else could the charge be?]\nJohn Ball’s novel “In the Heat of the Night” was published in 1965 and received strong critical and popular acceptance. It went on to receive an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America and was translated extensively. The idea for the story had actually first occurred to Ball in 1932. Feeling that the time was not right and unsure of his own ability to do the idea justice, however, he put the idea aside for over 30 years.\nWith the success of the novel, film rights were snapped up by producer Walter Mirisch. Armed with a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant, Mirisch was able to interest Norman Jewison in directing. Soon thereafter, Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger were cast in the lead roles. The film, released in 1967 by United Artists, was an instant success and went on to win five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor [Steiger], Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, and Best Editing).\nMGM Home Entertainment has now brought In the Heat of the Night to DVD as part of its Contemporary Classics series.\nA Northern businessman, Philip Colbert, is found murdered on the streets of Sparta, Mississippi by Deputy Sam Wood. Police Chief Bill Gillespie orders Wood to search the town for any potential suspects. At the train station, Wood finds a well-dressed young black man in the waiting room and quickly decides that he has his man. Once back at the police station, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the suspect is not the murderer at all. He’s a homicide police officer from Philadelphia named Virgil Tibbs, returning there after a visit with his mother.\nColbert’s wife Leslie, upon learning of her husband’s death from Gillespie, soon realizes that the best chance for any real solution to the murder is to demand Tibbs’s involvement, as the Sparta police seem unlikely to be able to handle the job themselves. Gillespie is at first reluctant to have Tibbs’s assistance, but he gradually comes to realize that Tibbs is much more competent to handle such a case than he is. Gradually a grudging respect develops between the two men as they get closer to the solution.\nOne can argue whether In the Heat of the Night was the best picture of 1967 — after all, that was the year of Bonnie and Clyde (WB) and The Graduate (UA) — but there is no denying that it is still a worthy choice. Certainly when one talks of the great films of Hollywood’s second golden age of the late 1960s to mid-1970s, In the Heat of the Night is among them. Its success is attributable to the calibre of the work both in front of and behind the camera, and to its timeliness. In regard to the latter, I suspect the transformation of the relationship between Tibbs and Gillespie reflected to some extent what people were experiencing in towns across America at the time and continue to do so to this day. That’s why the film struck a nerve then, yet seems undated almost 35 years later.\nDirector Norman Jewison brought two key things to the film — pacing and visual detail. The first half of In the Heat of the Night proceeds at a leisurely pace, as the relationship between Tibbs and Gillespie is allowed to develop methodically through verbal interaction between the two. Notice particularly the scene on the railway station platform in which Gillespie manages to persuade Tibbs to stay on the case. Jewison allows the actors to set the tone through long takes rather than forcing the scene through rapid cuts. Once it’s clear that Tibbs and Gillespie are now on the same page, Jewison steps up the pace noticeably with the action of the car chase, factory confrontation, and the final resolution. Interspersed in all this are evocative touches that provide stark reminders of the past — the cotton fields and workers picking cotton; the southern mansion with its white overseer, black staff and welcoming black jockey figurine; and the Confederate flag license plates that seem to adorn the cars of every redneck.\nThe cast of In the Heat of the Night is uniformly excellent. Rod Steiger is a standout as Gillespie, even though his performance is over-the-top at times. It’s easy to downgrade his efforts nowadays, but the degree to which this sort of role has become stereotyped owes much to the image that Steiger presented — the beefy figure with the big gut hanging over the belt, the amber sunglasses, the constant gum-chewing. He is ably matched by Sidney Poitier who gives a quieter but steely performance as Tibbs. Despite extreme provocation, he never gives any impression that he going to be cowed by any of the men who try to put him in what they see as his place. Particularly striking is the meeting between Tibbs and Endicott, the old-school owner of the cotton plantation who is a suspect in the murder investigation. Endicott still likes to believe he exists in the days of the master-slave relationship between whites and blacks, but he is rudely awakened when he slaps Tibbs and immediately gets slapped back. It’s an exchange that was to some extent improvised by Poitier as the scene developed. Warren Oates and Lee Grant very ably handle the secondary roles of Deputy Wood and Leslie Colbert respectively. Grant, who would later win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Shampoo (1975, Columbia), brings a depth of understanding to the part of the recently widowed wife. (She reflects most interestingly on this during the DVD’s audio commentary.) Finally, a tip-of-the-hat for a familiar face, if not name — William Schallert — who plays Sparta’s small-town mayor Webb Schubert to perfection.\nMGM has provided us with a great-looking disc of In the Heat of the Night. It’s presented in anamorphic widescreen preserving the 1.85:1 original aspect ratio with 16 scene selections. The image is in very good shape — sharp with excellent shadow detail and just the odd hint of film grain in some of the nighttime scenes. There is the occasional scratch and instance of softness, but edge enhancement is minimal and colours are quite accurately rendered throughout. The audio is mono and does the job just fine at reasonable amplification for what is a dialogue-driven film. Quincy Jones’s score and Ray Charles’s singing, which are both definite assets to the film, suffer little from the lack of a more elaborate sound mix.\nA terrific audio commentary is included featuring Norman Jewison, Rod Steiger, Lee Grant and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. The individuals’ comments were recorded separately and then edited together. Failing all the people on the commentary being recorded together as they react, this is a model of what a commentary should be, with the speakers using what’s on the screen as cues to explain the hows and whys or as jumping-off points to provide related information. It’s particularly interesting to hear Steiger’s reaction to some of Jewison’s memories. Also included are a rather beaten-up full-frame theatrical trailer and a four-page booklet providing some production background.\nAs far as the film itself is concerned, I found the actual resolution of the murder to be a little muddled. This results from rushing the ending somewhat. That’s a shame after so much care was taken to build up the atmosphere and the relationships during the first three-quarters of the film.\nI was also disappointed that Sidney Poitier was not a participant in the audio commentary. I suspect his comments could have been most interesting, given some of the thoughts and recollections about Sidney by the four that did participate. More generally, I would have anticipated an even more comprehensive package of supplements for a best-picture-of-the-year, but MGM is not alone in this sort of treatment. At least we have a worthy commentary.\nOne of the top films of the 1960s with a slew of fine performances; a fine effort by MGM on the DVD particularly in light of all the bad press they tend to get lately for their DVD releases; a tremendous audio commentary; nicely priced at $19.98…You don’t have to think too much about this one! Highly recommended.\nIn the Heat of the Night is completely exonerated and co-defendant MGM is congratulated for its supporting effort. This court is adjourned.\nBarrie Maxwell Crime Drama DVD\nThe Night Porter (Blu-ray)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line50743"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5492144823074341,"wiki_prob":0.5492144823074341,"text":"<< Previous TITLE 42 / CHAPTER 50 / SUBCHAPTER I / § 4026 Next >>\n42 USC 4026: Expiration of program Text contains those laws in effect on January 16, 2020\nFrom Title 42-THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARECHAPTER 50-NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCESUBCHAPTER I-THE NATIONAL FLOOD INSURANCE PROGRAM\nJump To: Source CreditReferences In TextAmendmentsEffective DateMiscellaneous\n§4026. Expiration of program\nNo new contract for flood insurance under this chapter shall be entered into after September 30, 2019.\n( Pub. L. 90–448, title XIII, §1319, Aug. 1, 1968, 82 Stat. 581 ; Pub. L. 93–4, Feb. 2, 1973, 87 Stat. 4 ; Pub. L. 93–38, June 5, 1973, 87 Stat. 73 ; Pub. L. 93–234, title I, §105, Dec. 31, 1973, 87 Stat. 979 ; Pub. L. 95–60, §3, June 30, 1977, 91 Stat. 257 ; Pub. L. 95–80, §3, July 31, 1977, 91 Stat. 339 ; Pub. L. 95–128, title VII, §701(a), Oct. 12, 1977, 91 Stat. 1144 ; Pub. L. 95–406, §6(a), Sept. 30, 1978, 92 Stat. 880 ; Pub. L. 95–557, title III, §308(a), Oct. 31, 1978, 92 Stat. 2098 ; Pub. L. 96–153, title VI, §602(a), Dec. 21, 1979, 93 Stat. 1137 ; Pub. L. 97–35, title III, §341(b)(1), Aug. 13, 1981, 95 Stat. 418 ; Pub. L. 97–289, §4(a), Oct. 6, 1982, 96 Stat. 1231 ; Pub. L. 98–35, §4(a), May 26, 1983, 97 Stat. 198 ; Pub. L. 98–109, §5(a), Oct. 1, 1983, 97 Stat. 746 ; Pub. L. 98–181, title I [title IV, §451(a)], Nov. 30, 1983, 97 Stat. 1229 ; Pub. L. 99–120, §4(a)(1), Oct. 8, 1985, 99 Stat. 503 ; Pub. L. 99–156, §4(a)(1), Nov. 15, 1985, 99 Stat. 816 ; Pub. L. 99–219, §4(a)(1), Dec. 26, 1985, 99 Stat. 1731 ; Pub. L. 99–267, §4(a)(1), Mar. 27, 1986, 100 Stat. 74 ; Pub. L. 99–272, title III, §3010(a)(1), Apr. 7, 1986, 100 Stat. 106 ; Pub. L. 99–289, §1(b), May 2, 1986, 100 Stat. 412 ; Pub. L. 99–345, §1, June 24, 1986, 100 Stat. 673 ; Pub. L. 99–430, Sept. 30, 1986, 100 Stat. 986 ; Pub. L. 100–122, §1, Sept. 30, 1987, 101 Stat. 793 ; Pub. L. 100–154, Nov. 5, 1987, 101 Stat. 890 ; Pub. L. 100–170, Nov. 17, 1987, 101 Stat. 914 ; Pub. L. 100–179, Dec. 3, 1987, 101 Stat. 1018 ; Pub. L. 100–200, Dec. 21, 1987, 101 Stat. 1327 ; Pub. L. 100–242, title V, §541(a), Feb. 5, 1988, 101 Stat. 1939 ; Pub. L. 101–137, §1(a), Nov. 3, 1989, 103 Stat. 824 ; Pub. L. 101–508, title II, §2302(a), Nov. 5, 1990, 104 Stat. 1388–23 ; Pub. L. 103–325, title V, §571(a), Sept. 23, 1994, 108 Stat. 2277 ; Pub. L. 104–204, title III, Sept. 26, 1996, 110 Stat. 2915 ; Pub. L. 105–46, §118, Sept. 30, 1997, 111 Stat. 1157 ; Pub. L. 105–65, title III, Oct. 27, 1997, 111 Stat. 1377 ; Pub. L. 105–276, title III, title V, §599D(a), Oct. 21, 1998, 112 Stat. 2502 , 2663; Pub. L. 107–73, title III, Nov. 26, 2001, 115 Stat. 689 ; Pub. L. 108–3, §2(a)(2), Jan. 13, 2003, 117 Stat. 7 ; Pub. L. 108–171, §2(a)(1), Dec. 6, 2003, 117 Stat. 2064 ; Pub. L. 108–199, div. H, §136(a)(1), Jan. 23, 2004, 118 Stat. 442 ; Pub. L. 108–264, title I, §101(b), June 30, 2004, 118 Stat. 714 ; Pub. L. 111–196, §2(a), July 2, 2010, 124 Stat. 1352 ; Pub. L. 111–250, §2(a), Sept. 30, 2010, 124 Stat. 2630 ; Pub. L. 112–74, div. D, title V, §573, Dec. 23, 2011, 125 Stat. 985 ; Pub. L. 112–123, §1(a), May 31, 2012, 126 Stat. 365 ; Pub. L. 112–141, div. F, title II, §100203(b), July 6, 2012, 126 Stat. 916 ; Pub. L. 115–225, §2(b), July 31, 2018, 132 Stat. 1624 ; Pub. L. 115–281, §2(b), Dec. 1, 2018, 132 Stat. 4191 ; Pub. L. 115–396, §2(b), Dec. 21, 2018, 132 Stat. 5296 ; Pub. L. 116–19, §2(b), May 31, 2019, 133 Stat. 870 ; Pub. L. 116–20, title XII, §1207(b), June 6, 2019, 133 Stat. 901 .)\nReferences in Text\nThis chapter, referred to in text, was in the original a reference to \"this title\" meaning title XIII of Pub. L. 90–448, Aug. 1, 1968, 82 Stat. 572 , known as the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968, which is classified principally to this chapter. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note set out under section 4001 of this title and Tables.\n2019-Pub. L. 116–20 substituted \"September 30, 2019\" for \"June 14, 2019\".\nPub. L. 116–19 substituted \"June 14, 2019\" for \"May 31, 2019\".\n2018-Pub. L. 115–396 substituted \"May 31, 2019\" for \"December 7, 2018\".\nPub. L. 115–281 substituted \"December 7, 2018\" for \"November 30, 2018\".\nPub. L. 115–225 substituted \"November 30, 2018\" for \"September 30, 2017\".\n2012-Pub. L. 112–141 substituted \"September 30, 2017\" for \"July 31, 2012\".\nPub. L. 112–123 substituted \"July 31, 2012\" for \"the earlier of the date of the enactment into law of an Act that specifically amends the date specified in this section or May 31, 2012\".\n2011-Pub. L. 112–74 substituted \"the earlier of the date of the enactment into law of an Act that specifically amends the date specified in this section or May 31, 2012\" for \"September 30, 2011\".\n2010-Pub. L. 111–250 substituted \"September 30, 2011\" for \"September 30, 2010\".\nPub. L. 111–196 substituted \"September 30, 2010\" for \"September 30, 2008\".\n2004-Pub. L. 108–264 substituted \"after September 30, 2008\" for \"after March 31, 2004\".\nPub. L. 108–199, which directed the substitution of \"June 30, 2004.\" for \"December 31, 2003\", could not be executed because of the amendment by Pub. L. 108–171. See 2003 Amendment note below.\n2003-Pub. L. 108–171 substituted \"March 31, 2004\" for \"December 31, 2003\".\nPub. L. 108–3 substituted \"after December 31, 2003\" for \"after December 31, 2002\".\n2001-Pub. L. 107–73 substituted \"December 31, 2002\" for \"September 30, 2001\".\n1998-Pub. L. 105–276, §599D(a), which directed the substitution of \"2001\" for \"1998\", was executed by substituting \"2001\" for \"1999\" to reflect the probable intent of Congress and the amendment by Pub. L. 105–276, title III, see below.\nPub. L. 105–276, title III, substituted \"1999\" for \"1998\".\n1997-Pub. L. 105–65 substituted \"September 30, 1998\" for \"October 23, 1997\".\nPub. L. 105–46 substituted \"October 23, 1997\" for \"September 30, 1997\".\n1988-Pub. L. 100–242 substituted \"September 30, 1989\" for \"March 15, 1988\".\nPub. L. 100–179 substituted \"December 16, 1987\" for \"December 2, 1987\".\nPub. L. 100–154 substituted \"November 15, 1987\" for \"October 31, 1987\".\nPub. L. 100–122 substituted \"October 31, 1987\" for \"September 30, 1987\".\n1986-Pub. L. 99–430 substituted \"September 30, 1987\" for \"September 30, 1986\".\nPub. L. 99–345 substituted \"September 30, 1986\" for \"June 6, 1986\".\nPub. L. 99–289 substituted \"June 6, 1986\" for \"April 30, 1986\".\nPub. L. 99–272 directed amendment identical to Pub. L. 99–219 substituting \"March 17, 1986\" for \"December 15, 1985\".\nPub. L. 99–267 substituted \"April 30, 1986\" for \"March 17, 1986\".\n1985-Pub. L. 99–219 substituted \"March 17, 1986\" for \"December 15, 1985\".\nPub. L. 99–156 substituted \"December 15, 1985\" for \"November 14, 1985\".\nPub. L. 99–120 substituted \"November 14, 1985\" for \"September 30, 1985\".\n1983-Pub. L. 98–181 substituted \"September 30, 1985\" for \"November 30, 1983\".\nPub. L. 98–35 substituted \"September 30, 1983\" for \"May 20, 1983\".\n1982-Pub. L. 97–289 substituted \"May 20, 1983\" for \"September 30, 1982\".\n1981-Pub. L. 97–35 substituted \"1982\" for \"1981\".\nPub. L. 95–80 substituted \"September 30, 1977\" for \"July 31, 1977\".\nPub. L. 95–60 substituted \"July 31, 1977\" for \"June 30, 1977\".\n1973-Pub. L. 93–234 substituted expiration of program provisions for $6,000,000,000 limitation on flood insurance coverage outstanding.\nPub. L. 93–38 substituted \"$6,000,000,000\" for \"$4,000,000,000\".\nPub. L. 93–4 substituted \"$4,000,000,000\" for \"$2,500,000,000\".\nEffective Date of 2018 Amendment\nAmendment by Pub. L. 115–396 effective as if enacted on Dec. 7, 2018, see section 2(c) of Pub. L. 115–396, set out as a note under section 4016 of this title.\nAmendment by Pub. L. 111–196 considered effective on May 31, 2010, see section 2(c) of Pub. L. 111–196, set out as a note under section 4016 of this title.\nAmendment by Pub. L. 108–199 considered to have taken effect on Dec. 31, 2003, see section 136(b) of div. H of Pub. L. 108–199, set out as a note under section 4016 of this title.\nEffective Date of 2003 Amendments\nAmendment by Pub. L. 108–171 effective Dec. 31, 2003, see section 2(b) of Pub. L. 108–171, set out as a note under section 4016 of this title.\nAmendment by Pub. L. 108–3 effective Dec. 31, 2002, see section 2(b) of Pub. L. 108–3, set out as a note under section 4016 of this title.\nPub. L. 105–276, title V, §599D(c), Oct. 21, 1998, 112 Stat. 2663 , provided that: \"The amendments made by this section [amending this section and section 4056 of this title] are made on, and shall apply beginning upon, the date of the enactment of this Act [Oct. 21, 1998].\"\nAmendment by Pub. L. 97–35 effective Oct. 1, 1981, see section 371 of Pub. L. 97–35, set out as an Effective Date note under section 3701 of Title 12, Banks and Banking.\nSection effective 120 days following Aug. 1, 1968, or such later date prescribed by the Secretary but in no event more than 180 days following Aug. 1, 1968, see section 1377 of Pub. L. 90–448, set out as a note under section 4001 of this title.\nExtension of Program\nPub. L. 115–141, div. M, title III, §301, Mar. 23, 2018, 132 Stat. 1049 , provided that: \"Sections 1309(a) and 1319 of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 4016(a) and 4026) shall be applied by substituting 'July 31, 2018' for 'September 30, 2017'.\"\nPub. L. 110–329, div. A, §145, Sept. 30, 2008, 122 Stat. 3581 , as amended by Pub. L. 111–8, div. J, §101, Mar. 11, 2009, 123 Stat. 988 , provided that sections 1309(a) and 1319 of the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C. 4016(a) and 4026) should each be applied by substituting \"September 30, 2009\" for \"September 30, 2008\".\nPub. L. 105–64, Oct. 23, 1997, 111 Stat. 1343 , provided that the provision amended by section 118 of Pub. L. 105–46 (see 1997 Amendment note above) should be applied as if \"November 7, 1997\" was substituted for \"October 23, 1997\".","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line58972"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7048793435096741,"wiki_prob":0.2951206564903259,"text":"The FED Controlled Market: A Delicious & Dangerous Poison\nHome » The FED Controlled Market: A Delicious & Dangerous Poison\nThe FED Controlled Market: A Delicious & Dangerous Poison2017-10-072017-10-18https://mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com/wp-content/uploads/mwc-logo.svgMcAlvany Weekly Commentaryhttps://mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com/wp-content/uploads/10_03_17.jpg200px200px\nAbout this week’s show:\nInvestment Biker Rogers: “Imminent Stock Decline!—Buy Physical Gold”\nCrowds following momentum of markets all the way to the collapse\nTrue VALUE INVESTORS position and then let the crowd come to them\n“Things start out very complex and sophisticated, and we have a refined language. And then the next thing you know, it is down to name-calling, and ‘I’m going to scratch your eyes out.’ And that’s not just in my living room, that’s on the global scene. So, why the probability of Korean conflict rising every day? Maybe it’s because we’re all too human. Maybe it’s because we’re all too childish.”\nKevin:David, before we begin today I think we should mention that you and your dad are ramping up for the next set of conferences. I think it would be worth just taking a moment here and letting people know when each conference is coming. And of course, you and your dad also are offering, for free, private consultations for people who would like to schedule time personally with you the day after the conference.\nDavid:Part of the reason Don is coming back from Asia after ten years of being over there most of the time – this is our 45thanniversary as a company, 45 years of doing what we do. And so we’ve met with clients on the West coast, now it’s time to move toward the Midwest and the East coast. We start in Overland Park, Kansas November 3rd, and then go to the Twin Cities in Minnesota November 7th, Philadelphia November 10th, Charlotte, North Carolina on November 14th. And then just before Thanksgiving, August, Texas November 17th. Naples, Florida after the holiday will be November 28th, and then the last will be Orlando December 1st.\nKevin:I should mention the private consultations with either you or your father, Don McAlvany, filled up quick, and so we’re encouraging people to sign up on the website, mcalvanyica.com/briefing. And you can click a little box that says you would like a consultation. But to make it a little more precise our listeners can call the office at 800-525-9556 [ask for Karis at ext. 118].\nDavid:I would do that. In particular, I know the last series of conferences we filled up long before we got to the date, and we are currently filling up, so if you want to do a consultation with either myself or with Don, please take advantage of that – his wisdom, and the distilled insight that he has. Fifty years of doing anything teaches you a lot, and I wouldn’t miss that.\nKevin:It’s a treat – going to those last conferences that you did on the West coast. It was a treat for me, and I’ve known you guys for 30 years. Dave, I want to transition here just a little bit because this year has been a significant year. Speaking of 30 years of experience, I’ve never seen such a dramatic decrease in American buying of coins, bars, physical gold, from last year to this year. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Now, it’s not happening worldwide. Worldwide, you still have very brisk gold and silver buying, but what in the heck is happening here in America?\nDavid:Yes, never a bargain-hunter, averse to value, and nearly always chasing momentum, rather than searching for an asset selling at inexpensive levels. This is what I would describe most investors falling prey to is why they’re their worst enemy, always chasing momentum. And to this point, we have silver Eagle sales which in the third quarter of this year, 81% lower than a year ago.\nKevin:That’s astounding.\nDavid:Gold Eagle sales improved from their abysmal second quarter, still down 80% from the same quarter last year. So roll the clock back. Go to 2011, if you can recall prices were nearing all-time highs and the retail volume in the physical metals space here in the United States was nearly 800% higher. And while global demand for gold still remains robust today, you don’t see that same kind of behavior, in the United States in particular.\nKevin:Look at Russia. They just picked up another 500,000 ounces. That’s amazing.\nDavid:And that’s last month. So they are going to be on target at these paces for the record numbers they hit in 2015, for the record numbers they repeated in 2016, and here we are again in 2017 – it looks like the Ruskies are doing it again, adding as many good delivery bars as they can to their caches.\nKevin:Yes, but did you buy your bitcoin? That’s really the question right now when you talk to somebody, they say, “What do you think about bitcoin?”\nDavid:I think all Russian oligarchs own bitcoin. I mean, they need to, that’s the basis of future wealth. The U.S. market, we conclude, when we look at who is buying and who is not, is more fascinated with chasing the stock market. You’re right, they’re more fascinated with bitcoin or ethereum reaching fresh highs. Buy high, and sell higher. That is the momentum crowd’s cry. And we’ve mentioned before on the Commentary the greater fool theory – again, buy high, sell higher. It’s just too hard to avoid groupthink. Or perhaps it’s just too comforting to know that you’re not alone and the mass mind provides validation to your thinking, or whatever action you happen to be taking, but you’re not alone.\nKevin:Wouldn’t you think that the metals actually would be falling in value? If you have an 80% decline in physical buying here in the America you would think that the price would fall, but that has not been the case.\nDavid:That is ordinarily the case. Ordinarily, the decline in coin demand is accompanied by a slide in price, but not this time. Gold maintains a price 10% improved from January 1, silver about half as much of that. Price action has been constructive, in other words it has been positive. And frankly, it boils down to this. U.S. investors prefer the momentum game to value. And that’s not just today, that’s any day.\nKevin:You mentioned the word comfort. There are an awful lot of things that we will do for comfort. It is amazing what we will sell for security. There is a security in doing what your neighbor is doing, and what that neighbor is doing, and then the other neighbor, but there is little bit of pain if you’re a value investor. I know one of your favorite authors back from the Depression is a man named Benjamin Graham. He talked about enduring short-term pain so that you could buy value, but that doesn’t give you the comfort of doing what the crowd is doing.\nDavid:Right. So, the challenge with value, and the reason why so few modern investors even know the name Benjamin Graham, who, as you mentioned, is the father of value investing. He wrote Security Analysisback in 1934, and obviously he was writing that book throughout the 1920s. You have to search for value. That is one of the reasons why it is unpopular. The search, itself, is arduous, and you must see what others have neglected to see. In other words, you have to have an insight that goes beyond just a surface look at things. And you must take action without the affirmation, or without the approbation of your peers. When you don’t get support from everyone saying, “Oh, yeah, I did that yesterday. Oh, I’m planning on doing it tomorrow.” All the while you have to prepare to wait, and to wait, and to wait, for the crowd to come to you. Because, you see, it’s not that value investors are averse to crowd following. In point of fact, their success depends on it. But the crowd comes to them. It’s a game of chase, all the same, regardless of being in the momentum trade or value trade, but wisdom for the value player or investor places the value investor at the front of the pack, not at the back. Does that make sense?\nKevin:It reminds of something, Dave. I’ve studied navigation in various cultures – Viking cultures, or our own European culture with celestial navigation. One of the most fascinating navigating methods is actually in the islands of the Pacific. You had these men with canoes with just a little sail, and they would have to sometimes go hundreds of miles and find a tiny island. But their method of sailing was a little different than the way we think. When we go to a destination, we think of the destination, we set sail, we look to see if we see it on the horizon.\nThey do it a little differently. They get on their boat, they basically look at the wind, they look at the stars, and in their own imagination, they let the island that they are looking for come to them. And for some reason, that works. In this Polynesian navigation, the island, over time, appears over the horizon and comes to them. It’s a different mindset, but it allows them to manage what they can manage right there, and not something that is outside of their purview.\nDavid:I think that’s one of the things that a value investor is not trying to control, it doesn’t assume that it can manage or control, which is the time element. Time is a factor for the value investor, but it is one that he can’t control. And I don’t think they really care to. So, it’s patience or lack of it, it’s the artificial clock of personal expectation which determines most choices for the modern investor. Why? Because they are racing toward that financial end point. As you said, they are determined to get there and get there as fast as they can, whether it is college savings or retirement or some other goal, unable to see – this is what they are blinded to in their earnest desire to arrive either on time or ahead of schedule – they are unable to see that the market is totally indifferent to their schedule, and oftentimes the market is cruelly indifferent.\nKevin:Another author that we have interviewed on this commentary, Dave, is Jim Rogers. We have interviewed him a couple of times. I know he is another author that you really enjoyed. You read his book Investment Bikera couple of decades ago. This is a man who doesn’t ask anybody’s advice as to what to buy. Instead, he goes on the road. I didn’t read the book, but didn’t he ride a motorcycle around the world and just observe and then make value investment decisions from that point?\nDavid:Yes, he has taken two trips around the world. Once was in more of a posh 4-wheel drive vehicle, but his first trip was on an old BMW.\nKevin:Like yours. No, yours isn’t old.\nDavid:His was even older.\nKevin:His motorcycle, a BMW, and he observed from the ground up.\nDavid:Right. Rogers, in recent weeks, describes the end of a market cycle and speaks very firmly about his expectation of a significant decline in stocks. And he describes it not as some theoretical thing on the horizon but as an imminent decline.\nKevin:So, soon.\nDavid:Yes. Now, the reality is, Rogers is always early. And with almost anyone I know, including myself, to be aware of macro-related issues is to be aware of the things that ultimately determine the course of the markets. However, you can be early. And he has been, notoriously, as we have, to some degree, been early as well. So I look at him – he is a veteran investor. He retired in his 30s from a lucrative stretch with George Soros and the Quantum Funds.\nWhat is he recommending now? One of the many things he is recommending – of course, he likes agriculture. He started, not a fund, but an index for that, and there will be some remuneration as, and when, there is massive bull market in ag products, so he is well positioned for that. He is also recommending purchase of gold coins, which is interesting because he is a trader by nature. He is someone who would probably be more apt to buy in the futures world, buying futures contracts because of the leverage they provide, and that is consistent with his nature.\nKevin:But he is recommending physical delivery?\nDavid:He is recommending physical delivery. That’s just never been his tune. But one thing that has been his tune is value. Value has always been his tune. So back to what we were talking about earlier with Benjamin Graham and securities analysis and value investing. Gold is curiously juxtaposed between the East and the West, and I think he has an interesting perspective on that. Rogers is always interested in what people hate, as an entry point into an opportunity.\nKevin:I’ll go ahead and take some of that. Remember what Roy said. He said the same thing. He said, “You want to buy it when they’re not buying it.”\nDavid:That’s right. So find what’s hated. I remember thinking three years ago, “A wonderful place to be right now would be in Russian equities.” Tough to sell to clients, actually.\nKevin:You think different than I do, but go ahead.\nDavid:But the reality is, the last three years it has been highly lucrative. And where do you go? You go where the asset is hated and has been left for dead. And it is an entry point. It’s not necessarily when you buy, but that’s where the research begins. But what’s there? And I think that’s one of the reasons why he may be landing on gold today.\nKevin:Do you think just his living in Singapore has had that influence on him, where he thinks a little bit a differently, but he still can see as an American?\nDavid:Exactly, because Roger is, just like the gold market is curiously juxtaposed between the East and the West, and I think it is to his advantage that he is now living in Singapore and he has the perspective of his previous life as a Wall Street trader, and that is set next to the quieter existence today that he has in a sleepier town, a Malaysian city. Singapore is not exactly Manhattan, although it is a real global hub for trade and it’s a wonderful perch from which to note shifts and turns in the region. So, for someone who appreciates Asia, moved there in 2007 or 2008, wanted to raise his daughter there so that she knew Chinese and could see the future trends of the world through that lens. Gold is out of favor in the West, there is no doubt about that. And the mint numbers are the strongest evidence of that. But it is in favor in the East.\nKevin:And that’s why the price isn’t dropping, Dave. Your dad asked me back in 1999 – people would send him stacks and stacks of books, and he’s like you. Doing research is a hard thing, you have to winnow into things and say, “What can I spend time doing?” He handed me a book in 1999 called Irrational Exuberance.The tech market was hitting all-time highs. Nobody saw any kind of downturn whatsoever. But this book was quoting something that Alan Greenspan had said about three years before that, saying that the markets were running on irrational exuberance.\nI read the book, and it was very, very timely because it said, “In the next year or two you are going to see a crash in the tech stock market like you have never seen before, because it’s running on irrational exuberance.” Is that where we are right now?\nDavid:The reality is, all markets swing from irrational exuberance to irrational negativity. Gold, too, had a moment of irrational exuberance in 2011-2012, and in retrospect, you look back and read the Barron’s article in that timeframe. It was the first article praising gold as an asset class that everyone should own. It’s the first article of praise that they wrote about gold in 25 years.\nKevin:When it was hitting about $1900.\nDavid:That’s right. So you go from irrational negativity to irrational exuberance. And if you can play that cycle, understand that when you get to the point of irrational negativity, that the risks are fairly well revealed at those cycle lows, and your risks as an investor are fairly well mitigated, to a large degree. So again, going back to the approach that Rogers has taken, finding what is hated – that is the entry point into research. “Why this? What is the reason? Can I find any fatal flaws?” And if you cannot find any fatal flaws, then perhaps you begin to allocate.\nYou mention he is a motorcycle enthusiast. I am, too. I read his book The Investment Bikerwith glee many years ago, not only from the aspect of traveling the world, and what a great adventure story it was, but as a young man I also had a budding interest in economics. This goes back 25 years ago. His book, to me, echoed the novels of Mark Helprin, that you had these evocative story-telling sessions going through central Africa and Eastern Europe and Russia.\nKevin:Right, so there was an element of the exotic, and that has to appeal.\nDavid:But as you mentioned, it is a boots on the ground approach to economics, which is what you have in at least one of Mark Helprin’s novels, where this Wall Street analyst is the last of his kind. Everyone has moved to quantitative analysis, but the firm still keeps him around. He’s the last of his kind. And he is paid to travel, and he sits in coffee shops and he talks to taxi drivers, and he makes street level observations. He wants to know the true exchange rate – on the street, not at the bank. He wants to know where things are beginning to reveal themselves in terms of fiscal pressure.\nAnd that’s what he comes back and reports, not the quantitative aspects, but the qualitative aspects of an economic environment, and that is precisely what Rogers has as he travels the world, the stories that he tells, the imagery that he creates, again, those evocative pieces where you feel that you are actually riding along with him down a dusty road.\nKevin:It’s a little different than the fancy equations that we see right now that are applied to what we are told is economics by the central bankers.\nDavid:Fundamental factors are really what that kind of an analyst is looking for. Value, for many people, is discovered most often in a bear market because fundamentals are fully revealed in a bear market. Contrast that with today, because again, fundamental factors in stocks, and to a larger degree, in the larger economy, have not played first fiddle, they’ve played second fiddle to central bank interest rate composition, to balance sheet construction, and all of the unique twists and turns of the tools that the Fed and their compatriot central banks around the world have been using. Rogers echoes our concern that we have moved a long way from being able to adequately value risk in the marketplace.\nAnd he echoes our concerns that stocks are not being invested in on that basis. Fundamentals are no longer important because of the index craze. Because people are buying an index fund and gaining a broad exposure, they’re no longer buying an individual company, they’re buying a sector, they’re buying whatever it may be. And the trend has been to purchase blindly with no differentiation, with no value appraisal. And in his opinion and ours, it is not likely to end well. So it is back to those fundamental factors.\nKevin:I was talking to a buddy of mine this weekend. We both had the same instructor when we learned to fly sailplanes – gliders. We were talking about those times when we were just about to stall the plane. Laverne St. Clair was our instructor, and he was sitting behind us because the glider was a tandem seating. He was sitting behind us but you could feel the stick. He would say “my plane” because if I was getting into trouble or if this other guy that I was talking to was getting into trouble, as we were learning he would take the plane over, and he would say, “My plane.” Well, until he handed that stick back, we didn’t touch the stick. When he said, “My plane,” what that meant was, “Hands in the air, you’re done,” until he rights the problem. And then he would hand the plane back and I would say, “My plane,” when it was time to take back over. In a way, in 2011-2012, something happened with the Federal Reserve where we had a free market up to that point. The market was flying along just fine, maybe it was close to a stall. Somebody, for the first time in world history gave all the central markets all the control and they said, “My plane.” Now, at this point they’re saying, “We’re about to hand the stick back.” Is that realistic, Dave? Are they really going to take the risk, after having full control, of handing it back to the free markets?\nDavid:That’s a great way to frame it. We hear that the Fed will reduce its balance sheet, and they have said that they will raise rates, in essence, allowing the market to be the market once again. And that’s after five years of utter control, complete control, nearly ten years of strong influence. And that distinction, I think, is a key one because they were actively engaged in saving the world from destruction in 2008 and 2009, granted, using the same measures that got us into the problem in the first place. But be that as it may, they did bring calm back to the marketplace and prevented utter catastrophe. So they had a number of years where they were intervening. I think it was the summer of 2011 when Mario Draghi said, “I will do whatever it takes.” But it caused a recalibration in the market, to say, “Wait a minute. Did you say whateverit takes?”\nKevin:Whatever. And he has.\nDavid:You’ve got my back, whatever happens from this point forward.\nKevin:My plane.\nDavid:You asked a question. I can only respond with a question. Can you imagine – the rock star status which central bankers have achieved – can you imagine that being retired? And would they be willing to play second fiddle and trust the markets, the natural supply and dynamics, to once again set prices? Again, after determining with, really, authoritarian control, what the natural rate of interest is, is it likely that a community of central bankers is willing to hand back to what for them is a wildly unpredictable investment crowd [the right] to determine what the natural rate of interest is? Again, you’re dealing with a market which amongst these individuals is mistrusted, and authority and control, which is absolutely trusted. They believe in themselves more than they believe in the market. And that’s where I tend to be on the opposite end of the spectrum. I believe more in the market than I do in the wisdom of any one man, let alone the wisdom of a collective.\nKevin:But it’s addictive, Dave. Have you ever seen a tyrant purposely hand a country back to democracy? That just doesn’t happen. It’s addictive. They have had control. How in the world would they give it up at this point?\nDavid:And a part of it comes down to results. Authoritarianism gets results faster and cleaner than the market processes which include risk appraisal and price negotiation. It is just easier by fiat to say, “Wheat, or corn, or soybeans will not sell above this price. You cannot charge more than this for a gallon of gas.” Price controls get you where you want to go instantly. And in essence, they are doing away with that risk appraisal. They’re doing away with that price negotiation. And we see, to a large degree, that price discovery disappeared over the last five to ten years. Our central banks – is that community willing to allow it back, the process of price discovery?\nKevin:Yes, but the central banks are promising something called wishful thinking. One of your favorite poems by Rudyard Kipling, Gods of the Copybook Headings, is a poem about getting rid of wisdom and maxims, and the things that you would record in a copybook, and replacing them with wishful thinking. And those who did, those who promised the replacement of wishful thinking, are in ruins at this time. They’re covered with sand.\nDavid:It’s a poem that points to the enduring value of common sense and enduring befuddlement by those who put trust in higher sense. We read the poem a couple of months ago. Read it sometime from beginning to end if you don’t know it. But the opening lines suggest that these gods of the marketplace, and perhaps we can translate that in our own time and place, the high priests of growth and prosperity, the demigods of Maiden Lane, the folks that work there near Wall Street for the Fed.\nThey’re not new, these priests of growth and prosperity. They’re not new, and their presumption of control is actually as old as any human endeavor. Kipling says, “As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the gods of the marketplace. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall. And the gods of the copybook headings, I notice, outlast them all.”\nSo, we reflect on the permanent and perpetual march higher in the equity markets, and we know that there are promises of prosperity. I go back to Francis Fukuyama’s book where he basically claimed that we had reached the end of history, we had reached a period of perpetual peace, that democratic liberalism had reached a point of permanent plateau. And it was, in fact, like Irving Fisher’s proclamation in 1929, that prices had reached a new permanent high plateau. And this was, of course, just before the crash.\nKevin:He could have said the end of suffering. But Dave, whether you are a value investor or whether you are the investor today who is reaping the benefits of just going with the crowd, suffering comes. It either comes as a value investor while you wait – remember, you were talking about waiting. Wait, and wait, and wait. Wait for that island to come to you. Wait for the crowd to come to you. There is suffering involved in that because you look like an idiot until it happens. But then, is there more suffering? And I guess I know the answer to this. The greater suffering comes from the person who was with the crowd, who followed the wrong god.\nDavid:Underneath every social construct, whether it is a political construct or a market construct, is human nature. So when we look at the assumption of the end of history, when we look at the assumption of the end of the markets, or free markets, where volatility is normal because there is a constant push and pull in the price discovery process, you’re right, human nature is what is underneath these things, and why, I think, ultimately, regardless of the assumption of the end of history, it’s just flat naïve. Regardless of the assumption of the end of free markets, and a greater control and a brave new world, it doesn’t work that way, unless or until you’ve altered human nature.\nYou’re right, the value investor versus the momentum trader – each of them suffers. One suffers now, one suffers later, and I think I’d rather be the value investor. Your suffering is defined, to a degree. The other, for the momentum investors, is undefined as yet by the degree of panic and the stampede to come. And so Graham, this man who was very influential in the 1930s, defined the intellectual framework for Warren Buffet. He may not have actually bought gold at these prices, or at any level. But he certainly would not have entered the stock market, priced as it is today.\nKevin:Benjamin Graham was good at finding value when others didn’t. Could he find a needle in the haystack in the current market?\nDavid:I think it’s possible. I think with rigorous security analysis that is possible. But I think one of the things that also comes to mind is that as a value investor, when he decided to take a time out and move to the sidelines, he grew up, he developed his ideas of value investing, he invested in an age when, by default, if you were out of stocks you were in gold.\nKevin:That’s right, because cash was gold, and everybody owned gold at that time because they owned some cash.\nDavid:The age prior to the 1930s was the age in which cash and gold were the same. The default mechanism, coming out of the equities markets, getting out of stocks, was going into a currency which was 100% gold-backed. How things have changed. Now you have a second decision to make. But at that point it was just common sense, if you wanted to reduce risk in one category you moved to cash, which was the same thing as bullion.\nKevin:Isn’t that amazing? Let’s just ponder that for a second. You were either in stocks or some other investment, or you were in gold every time you were in cash. Speaking of cash, we’ve had a guest on – we have him on almost every year – love him. He is up in Scotland – Russell Napier. Russell is scratching his head right now and he is saying, “Speaking of that cash that is not backed by gold, where is it if the central banks are adding 300 billion dollars a month, in some form or another, of liquidity and quantitative easing, where is this what we call M2 – monetary growth?”\nDavid:That’s right, each month, Russell writes a small missive for institutions. There is a lot changing in Europe, like we had our implementation of Dodd-Frank, approval of a massive set of legislation to help change and improve and maybe even bring safety measures into our marketplace. The same thing is happening in Europe today. And it is interesting, it’s the Markets In Financial Instruments Directive, the MIFID-2, which is their equivalent of Dodd-Frank. And it goes into effect January 1. The challenges, just with Dodd-Frank, it introduces massive amounts of complexity in an attempt to bring greater transparency to the derivatives market and other markets. They may, in fact, be bringing a lot of chaos and turmoil into the financial markets.\nKevin:Maybe creating the next crisis like Bookstaber talks about.\nDavid:Again, just on the basis of unintended consequences, Bookstaber was involved, not in the creation of the MIFID-2, but was involved in the creation of Dodd-Frank and the Volcker rule, in which he says we solved one problem, but we did create the next round of problems.\nKevin:He was part of it, and it scares him. He wrote a book about it.\nDavid:Right. Napier writes for an institutional audience, and institutions. I mention the new directive because his world is changing, and his audience is having to adjust to a new world of regulation and an immense complexity. Napier is looking right now at the Fed’s announcement of normalization, which we have been talking about today. It’s problematic, and first of all, he takes that opinion because he sees bank credit growth in the United States slowing. And so credit is slowing at the same time they want to bring in monetary tightening, he says, “Well, maybe that’s not such a good idea.”\nSecond, he sees broad money growth, M2, on a global basis, also slowing, which to him suggests that the global economy, led by the emerging markets, is already slowing. And we saw significant infusion of liquidity and capital, 2008 and 2009, by India and China, and not even they are able to help buoy these global numbers, and again, keep M2 moving in a positive direction. So, in the U.S. you have money growth which is, today, at the same levels that it was when the Fed was initiating Quantitative Easing 1, Quantitative Easing 2, and Quantitative Easing 3.\nKevin:Then Europe took over. There is this appearance that there is sort of synchronized easing.\nDavid:And his point is that it is an appearance of synchronized global recovery, and it is an appearance. So the challenge is now when you have the appearance of a synchronized global recovery running into a tightening monetary environment, it’s a recipe for recession, if not disaster. Can we repeat the kinds of disasters we had à la 1987? Absolutely. And his point is also that something just doesn’t add up. You have this massive global expansion in credit and yet you have a slowdown in broad money measures, again, going back to M2. So the central bank community, which is responsible for the creation of money, is failing on the one thing they are supposed to do best, which is influencing the quantity of money.\nKevin:And that’s the equation, Dave. The equation has to create M2 or else the credit expansion has been a failure.\nDavid:On the other hand, interestingly, there is credit expansion but no quantity of money expansion.\nKevin:Right.\nDavid:So quantity of money, as measured by M2 – not happening. Credit? Yes – happening. Asset price and risk asset inflation? Yes.\nKevin:Through the roof.\nDavid:So they’re influencing prices, but they’re not influencing the ones that they traditionally influence, and they can’t figure it out. And I think part of it is, they have this long-term commitment to a theory that failed long ago in practice. In the 1970s the Phillips curve was discredited utterly, but they live in a world of theory, and the theorizers, again, the central bank community, is still in love with the Phillips curve.\nKevin:It’s what they wrote their doctoral thesis on, Dave. You have to protect it if you wrote your doctoral thesis on it.\nDavid:And it suggests that an improvement in employment leads to an increase in inflation. It’s axiomatic, according to the Phillips curve, that an improvement in employment brings an increase in inflation, and yet – and yet – and yet we wait. I’ve tried to ask Claudio Borio onto the program, and he is a pretty busy guy. He runs the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank to central bankers. I’ll continue to ask him to be a guest. But he is one of the few that I know of in the central bank community who looks at the Phillips curve and says, “Yeah, it works sometimes.” And sometimes it doesn’t, so just be willing to set aside some of your underlying assumptions and realize that that one might not be workable.\nKevin:So what they have done is, they’ve left the punchbowl out because they are looking for something that isn’t there, yet the asset price inflation – the price of stocks and assets in general – has just gone through the roof.\nDavid:That’s just it, you’re exactly right. We’ve mentioned William McChesney Martin, who suggested taking away the punchbowl before the party gets started. They’ve left the punchbowl out too long because they’ve been looking for this indication of inflation, and they knew that, if, according to the Phillips curve, you reduce unemployment, that you should then see an increase in inflation. And when they saw an increase in inflation they would know when to toggle back. They would know when to take back the punchbowl.\nAnd they’re not doing it because inflation is not responding – consumer price inflation, anyway. Asset prices are already in the tornado, already spiraling up and out of control. But the central bank community is fixated on the CPI. They’re fixated on consumer price increases and they’re waiting to see them jump before shifting gears.\nNapier suggests that maybe they’ve waited too long because now, in fact, you are beginning to see this deterioration in terms of, on a global basis, M2, which to him suggests a slowing in economic speed everywhere. So growth dynamics, globally, are shifting. A downshifting collapse in global money growth may create financial market chaos, as and when the Fed follows through with its recently announced plans to shrink its balance sheet and raise rates.\nKevin:I want to go across the seas because sometimes you see strength in something that is weak only because the thing that it is being compared to is weaker. We’ve seen the dollar rallying a little bit against the euro here recently, and it has to do with these strange goings-on in the Spain Iberian Peninsula region. It is incredible what we’re seeing over there.\nDavid:Yes. There is a number of good things that come from the Iberian Peninsula. One of them is the greatest ham in the world (laughs). But what is in the news this week – we watched a king has no clue – not a king has not clothes, but a king has no clue moment, where Mariano Rajoy, your top dog, the Chief Executive, in Spain, sends in troops to Catalan, begins jailing regional officials, shuttering hundreds of polling stations, destroying ballot boxes…\nKevin:In the name of freedom, Dave. In the name of freedom.\nDavid:And even beating up elderly pensioners. There is about a thousand people seeking medical treatment from police brutality. And then, he had the gall to claim that there was no referendum which had occurred. Now, he was only able to close down about 330 of the polling stations.\nKevin:Several million had already voted, hadn’t they?\nDavid:2.2 million votes were counted at the 1700 polling stations that remained open.\nKevin:But this confused the European leaders. They’re all looking at this saying, “Wait a second. I thought we had the end of history.”\nDavid:“What the Franco is going on?” That was one of those “What the Franco” moments. And he really did – Rajoy is creating something that for most European leaders is appalling – the violence, the non-diplomatic approach, bringing back Franco from the dead. This is from a man who was actually supporting the opposition group in Venezuela. And do you know who was writing in the local paper in Venezuela, saying, “This guy is totally inconsistent. He suppresses any dissent in his own country, but he supports it in mine.” This is the dictator Maduro in Venezuela. He is actually giving political commentary on Rajoy. And again, does this guy have a clue what’s going on?\nKevin:For the person who is not following this closely, this is similar to Brexit, or the Scottish vote. This is if England was a little bit more, oh I don’t know – Spanish – they probably would have had this type of thing happening before the Brexit vote, right?\nDavid:That’s right. We did have, as you mentioned, the Scottish vote, which was the question of do we want to extricate ourselves from the U.K. and be our own country? And that is what the Catalonians are saying, “Look, we have the referendum, we have 90% of the people voting.” And this is 2.2 million people voting out of seven million total in the population – a reasonable turnout – and it opens the door for them leaving Spain altogether.\nKevin:Doesn’t it also affect the euro as a whole? This is just one more chink in the armor of Spain possibly needing to leave the euro, right?\nDavid:It explains why violence is the answer, and why police brutality is the first measure chosen, because Spain cannot afford to have these seven million people secede. That one state represents 20% of the entire Spanish economy. And so, what do we conclude? Populism is not dead in Europe. We do see, as you mentioned, dollar rallies, the euro declines – it is one more chink in the armor in terms of the euro project, dating back to that meeting in Rome 60 years ago which set it all in motion. Can it some unglued? That question is still a reasonable question, and it remains unanswered.\nKevin:Lest we be distracted by violence in Europe and forget the potential real threat. Korea is still brewing, and probably brewing pretty hard.\nDavid:When I listened to the U.N. speech that Donald Trump gave, it made me smile. I also kind of had to shake my head and say, “Oh, no. Oh no.” So, you’re right, on the other side of the world we have little Rocket Man…\nKevin:Those are his words.\nDavid:As our president affectionately refers to Kim Jung Un, and he continues to explore delivering all kinds of weapons into the West, or onto one of our allies, and he prefers the hydrogen bomb. So, I cannot imagine living in Japan the last couple of weeks. In recent weeks you actually could look into the sky and on at least one occasion, see the jet stream created by an ICBM, an intercontinental ballistic missile, flying overhead, launched from North Korea.\nKevin:Yes, but never mind the fear. You have the Bank of Japan saving the day, they’re buying stocks any time they fall, so don’t worry about it. If you’re nervous about that, we’ll buy the stocks. We’ve got your back.\nDavid:That’s right, no real evidence of tension in the stock market there, you’re right, because the Bank of Japan supports the bid in stocks. Hydrogen bombs – I didn’t realize this, but using fusion rather than atom bombs, their cousin which uses fission, are far more destructive, and therefore, don’t need to be as accurate. So, because they cause anywhere from a hundred to a thousand times greater destruction, you just have to lob that thing into the right vicinity, it doesn’t have to be pinpointed, and it will get the job done.\nKevin:Let me ask you – people pooh-pooh sometimes the idea of and EMP, but when you have a nuclear blast somewhere it does fry the circuits of a surrounding region, and we live in a connected age, Dave. I remember my panic when I started to think that I lost my phone on my way back from Israel the other day. It hit me just how much I, too, need connection. Do you think EMP is a real deal, or is an issue that needs to be thought about?\nDavid:It was interesting, every once in a while I’ll read the daily reckoning and Jim Rickards wrote a piece this week about the impact of an EMP burst and how if the North Koreans wanted to, there is not much of a time gap between now and when they could pull that off. And you just have to lob it into the atmosphere, and a large enough EMP burst is adequate to knock out the U.S. power grid completely. Now, you’re talking about a massive logistics crisis. We, in our client conferences, had talked about what it would be like to lose just one part of our electric grid, and how our electric grid is tied together by the equivalent of a couple of very large fuse boxes.\nKevin:You met with a man who was a specialist in that who was hired to identify that problem.\nDavid:That’s right, and try to mitigate the issue. This is, again, from the 30,000 foot view, or maybe it’s the 80,000 foot view – an EMP burst at that kind of an altitude neutralizing our power grid – you’re talking about millions dead in the United States – millions. I don’t remember how far we took our star wars program under Reagan, but it makes you think this is when you need it.\nKevin:You certainly hope they took it far enough, let’s just put it that way.\nDavid:Interestingly, Rickards, with sort of a swipe at crypto-currency says, “This is why I recommend gold,” because it’s not dependent on the power grid. He is right, you have to have connectivity to use your crypto-currencies. In that sense, you are 100% system-dependent. Gold is a standout, not only as no one’s liability, no one’s counter-party risk, but also, tied to no one’s Internet infrastructure, which is a fascinating thing to even consider in this age.\nKevin:Isn’t it interesting? I was flying over Iceland the other day. What an unusual way to get home from the country of Jordan. I was looking down on Iceland and I was thinking, “A huge amount of bitcoins are processed using the formulas there in Iceland because the power is cheap.” China, even more so – don’t they produce about 70% of the bitcoins that are out there at this point?\nDavid:According to the Economist, 70% of new bitcoins are being mined in China, and it is interesting because they can’t get them to market. There are capital control issues, there are trade issues, there are exchange issues, there are new ICO issues. So you can create them and you can own them. It’s not illegal to own them, but you can’t trade them. It makes it very interesting, it makes me think perhaps there is a larger shadow supply, and that shadow supply is continuing to grow and overhang, if you will, within the market. For anyone concerned about price fluctuations, shadow supply is an issue.\nBut going back to North Korea, it’s the Chinese government which made me think something is getting ready to happen in relation to North Korea. The Chinese government allowed a paper in recent weeks to be published, and it explores how to deal with a refugee crisis in the event of the North Korean government being toppled. It’s the kind of thing where they don’t have open conversation about issues like that. They just don’t. Again, this is a high stakes poker game, brinksmanship, negotiation. Perhaps this is just one way of playing it, letting the other side know that you are considering all options. But frankly, it would appear that diplomatic channels are shrinking, and deterrents, even pre-emptive actions, are a growing possibility.\nKevin:I think sometimes we over-complicate things, and we think that there are “experts” in control. We do that with the central banks, and sometimes we forget that just simple fundamentals will kick back in. We do this with politics and diplomacy, we do this with geostrategic types of things. But really, when you go back and look at history, Dave, it still comes down to just sort of like sandbox kind of politics where, in the end, when one person pushes the other, the other pushes back, and then you start to see another pushing match, and then ultimately, somebody slaps or hits the other, and it really turns into an all-out fight, and it really had nothing to do with high level “expert” diplomacy.\nDavid:We have this conversation routinely in our house, not about little Rocket Man, but about escalation and de-escalation. When my 11-year-old announced the inevitability of conflict with North Korea at breakfast earlier this week, he gave his timeframe within two years. It was like he had some sort of an intelligence contact the way he just said it with such certainty (laughs). “Within two years we’ll be at war with North Korea.”\nKevin:It sounds like he is the son of his father, who was the son of his father (laughs).\nDavid:Well, I asked him if he had learned anything about the process of de-escalation from his siblings that he might offer as advice to bring things off the boil on the Korean Peninsula. And I’m looking at his other brothers and sisters, saying, “You realize how these problems get started, right? You have an argument, and then somebody hits someone, and then someone hits someone back twice, and that’s escalation. How do you de-escalate? If you can tell me how you can solve the problem, I’m going to get you on the phone with someone in Washington.” But his comment, relating to sibling strife, was that it’s just so hard. It’s so hard in the moment to not push back, to not hit back, to not verbally jab back when you’re in the fight.\nAgain, things start out very complex and sophisticated, and we have refined language, and then the next thing you know, it is down to name-calling, and “I’m going to scratch your eyes out.” And that’s not just in my living room, that’s on the global scene. So, why the probability of Korean conflict rising every day? Maybe it’s because we’re all too human. Maybe it’s because we’re all too childish.\nNational Debt 22 Times Higher Than When Reagan Took Office\nAlan Newman – “Gold Is The Ultimate Insurance Policy”\nGold Rush? Central Banks Increase Gold Purchases 74% YOY\nCharles Calomiris: All Banking Is Politically Driven\nQE Still Alive and Well: Worldwide Central Banks Pumping in 300 Billion Per MonthPodCasts\nMarkets Think “This Time Is Different”… Think AgainPodCasts","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line93552"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8276811838150024,"wiki_prob":0.8276811838150024,"text":"A Second Look at Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus. Also, get your own customized game swag!\nGames: I recently covered Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus over at @Gamecritics, but in a very unusual turn of events, I continued to play it after I finished the review… That's wildly out of the ordinary for me, and after having spent another 20 hours past the point at which I wrote my opinion, I feel like I have more to say on it.\nNow, this isn't to say that my review is invalid… Not at all. I feel like I gave it a super-solid breakdown based on the time spent, and I'm still happy with my final verdict. Absolutely. But, there were some details and small things I've grown to appreciate that were not immediately noticeable until after I had spent even more time going through the game with each character and seeing more of the Visual Novel chunks.\nAlthough I touched on it in my review, I think one thing that’s really brilliant about the game is how small in size it is.\nI've never liked Musou games before, but for some reason this one really clicked with me, and it had nothing to do with the naked ladies. As I was trying to think about why this one was so enjoyable when so many others bored me to tears, I came to the conclusion that the gameplay comes in perfectly bite-sized portions, so that fatigue never really gets the chance to set in.\nIt also helps that the 15 characters in the three starting schools feel wildly different from each other, even though they all share the same basic moves – a light attack, a strong attack, a jump, a ground pound, and a dash. However, despite this similarity, how they’re implemented and how they play are starkly different. Going further (and another example of how time revealed more) the girls of the Crimson Squad aren’t even selectable until after the player has completed the story mode three times -- something like a 20-hour investment. Once they’re unlocked, they’re an even more obvious example of how technically different the shinobi are.\nTake the snake-eyed Hikage, for instance… She has lightning-fast knife attacks, a poison shot, and one of her special moves is to turn completely invincible as she goes into a primordial rage. On the other hand, Mirai is quite fragile, but packs a machine gun inside of her umbrella. She needs to play very much like a sniper, and can only dash backwards, further emphasizing her lack of ability to engage directly. Although I have my preferences when it comes to the characters, I found that spending time with each of them was well-rewarded, and I admired how much variation there was between them.\nAnother aspect that didn't come to full fruition until I had gone through the story mode a second time (and was only enhanced with a third and a fourth) was just how much nuance there was to the writing, and how much attention was given to the story mode and backstory of each ninja.\nWhile I thought they did a fine enough job in the content that I saw, I was quite impressed when I found that some of the ‘tropey’ characters ended up having more depth than I would've expected. The oversexed pervert character (well, one of them, anyway) actually had some good motivation underneath the surface stuff, some of the ‘focused’ characters had elements of self-doubt, or questions about their beliefs. It ain’t War & Peace, but there's more humanity in the writing than it had any right to have. In fact, after playing for another 20-ish hours past the point of review, I think I would probably re-characterize the game as having a heftier visual novel aspect -- probably another reason why this one has hooked me when other Musou games haven’t.\nAs an experiment, I decided to try Hyrule Warriors after being so thoroughly wrapped up in Senran... I wasn't sure whether this newfound appreciation was a change in my taste or if there was more to it than that, but after putting an hour into Hyrule, I wanted no more of it.\nIt felt busy but shallow at the same time, none of the characters struck me as interesting, and the mechanics did not feel as complex. I don't know if that holds true over the course of the entire game, but it just wasn't as fun to control these characters, and the stages felt like they dragged on for-eh-ver. Of course, to be fair, I didn't spend enough time with the game to unlock extra weapons and some of the\ncharacter modifier items and so forth, but then again, I wasn't really motivated to.\nAlthough I'm sure many people will be put off by the T&A factor in Senran Kagura, I have to say that portion of the game was only noticeable for the first half an hour or so… After that, it just washed over me and I was more focused on trying to figure out the best playstyles for each character, practicing getting the countering down, and figuring out the best times to use ninja transformation or when to go into a Frenzy. I was even quite curious about how the story turned out!\nIn hindsight, I feel like I should give the game and the developers more props for the things that are done exceptionally well, and I do think it's one of the few games in recent memory that genuinely got better with more time put into it.\nIn other games news, I recently started Styx: Master of Shadows. I’d been looking forward to it for some time, but after the first hour and a half, I haven’t been back to it.\nSo…. Yeah.\nMisc: I’ve mentioned it on Twitter a few times, but my wife has started making handcrafted videogame shirts, and she’s taking orders.\nYou can check out her site and see what she’s made so far, but she can do just about anything and she’s happy to take custom orders. Basically, if you don’t’ see a design you want, just email and ask! She can probably whip it up for you!\nI wore this shirt yesterday!\nIf you’d like a shirt, sweatshirt, pair of socks, coffee sleeve (or whatever) with your favorite game-related thing on it, drop her a line.\nFYI: She hasn’t found a reliable source for good hats yet, but she’s working on it. If YOU know a good hat wholesaler, any tips would be appreciated! ^_^\n*************PR/NEWS/INFO*************\nTin Man Games’ seventh Fighting Fantasy digital gamebook app, Caverns of the Snow Witch, arrives on the iOS App Store, Google Play and the Amazon Appstore for Android, nearly 30 years to the day since the original publication of the paperback!\nTin Man Games has taken the classic Fighting Fantasy solo adventure and transformed it into an interactive digital experience, using their critically acclaimed gamebook engine. With animated page-turning, dynamic links, an automated adventure sheet to show changing stats and display magical treasures, the reader can also roll physics-based 3D dice to bravely battle the creatures found within the Crystal Caves and beyond.\nFighting Fantasy: Caverns of the Snow Witch is now available to download from the iOS App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore for Android. It costs $5.99 USD/£3.99/5,49 €.\nTin Man Games maintain a site dedicated to their Fighting Fantasy apps at www.FightingFantasyApps.com. The Official Fighting Fantasy site can be found at www.FightingFantasy.com. Tin Man Games also runs a developer blog at www.TinManGames.com.au.\nHand of Fate, the Kickstarter-funded title from Defiant Development that seamlessly blends RPG, rogue-like and action-adventure elements with board and collectible card game features, will launch on Xbox One in January 2015 in addition to the previously announced PC and PlayStation 4 releases.\nGamers who download Hand of Fate on Steam Early Access will be able to play new content created by industry luminary David Goldfarb, of Battlefield and Payday fame, prior to the game's official launch. Goldfarb has designed original encounters, locations, items and a story which flesh out a hidden optional quest in Hand of Fate.\nThe Early Access build of Hand of Fate is now available for PC, Mac and Linux on Steam at a discounted price of $25 USD.\nInformation about Hand of Fate can be found at: http://defiantdev.com/handoffate.php\nDeep Silver Volition knows all too well the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. For Johnny Gat in Deep Silver Volition's Saints Row: Gat out of Hell standalone expansion, the seven deadly weapons represent a means to devilish fun on his rampage through Hell. Can the Devil and his demonic allegiance withstand the persuasiveness of Johnny's unrighteous arsenal? Have a look at this new video featuring the seven deadly weapons and check out a description of the weapons below (don't be shy, curiosity is not a sin): http://youtu.be/z0rHaIeuiMY\nIn addition to the trailer release, Deep Silver announced that Saints Row: Gat out of Hell and Saints Row IV: Re-Elected will launch on January 20, 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC for the software bundle, and PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC for retail standalone Gat out of Hell. Two different pre-order offers were also announce -- Purchase the new gen bundle for $49.99 with retailers such as Amazon, and receive two special DLC packs outlined below, or get the Gat out of Hell specific DLC when pre-ordering it as a standalone game for only $19.99.\nSaints Row: Gat out of Hell Devil's Workshop Pack\nSAINTS WINGS, JESTER'S SKULL\nTired of flying on the wings of a fallen angel? With the Devil's Workshop Pack you can fly on the purple wings of a Saint instead. Also included; Yorick, the flaming skull that acts as the source of Shakespeare's infernal might. Finally you can wield all of the power of Shakespeare with none of the iambic pentameter: what's not to love?\nSaints Row IV: Re-Elected Plague of Frogs Pack\nHELLISH PRINCESS, INFERNAL GUARD, LIL' CROAKER\nTake some mementos from hell with you to virtual Steelport! Rain amphibian death onto Zinyak's army with the Lil' Croaker, and look good doing it wearing either Infernal Guard armor or Hellish Princess costumes.\nFor more information about the Saints Row universe, please visit the official sites:\nWeb: http://www.saintsrow.com\nFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/saintsrow\nTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/saintsrow\nYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/saintsrow\nYou can watch the Dragon Age: Inquisition The Hero of Thedas trailer at the following link: http://youtu.be/qzRjfkXW9Lo\nIt's time to take the fight to the Divine Empire as Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord, the strategy RPG for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system is now available in the Americas for $39.99. Despite having a \"II\" in the title, the game requires no knowledge of the previous title, as the story and gameplay are all self-contained within the 80-plus hours of strategic combat and visual novel-style storytelling in the original Japanese audio.\nTears to Tiara II features:\n· More than 15 main characters to get to know as the story unfolds in the visual novel.\n· Strategic turn-based gameplay will challenge the most battle-hardened generals\n· The joint attack combat systems adds extra depth to the strategy gameplay, and makes for more replayability\n· Original Japanese language story and battle audio at a discounted $39.99\nTears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord is now available in North and South America for $39.99. Pre-orders and a limited quantity of launch edition games will come with the Tears to Tiara II Visual Works, a 31-page booklet that combines sketches, concept art, character designs and background visuals. More information on the game, combat systems and more are available on the official website, http://www.atlus.com/tears2\nWondering what is going on with Amazon Game Studios? Well, let us tell you! Today we’re happy to show you three new games that will be launching this year— Til Morning’s Light, Tales From Deep Space and CreepStorm. These are creative, hand-crafted games that are fun to play, deliver interesting new customer experiences, and utilize exclusive Amazon technology. Check out the game trailers and other assets here: http://games.amazon.com.\nGungHo Online Entertainment America (GOEA), a multiplatform publisher for the online gaming community, today launched a Steam Greenlight campaign for its side-scrolling, puzzle-based adventure PC game Dokuro. Already available on the PlayStation®Vita handheld entertainment system and mobile devices (iOS and Android), Dokuro is expected to be released on Windows PC based on the support of the Steam community.\nA recipient of industry awards, including IGN's Best PS Vita Puzzle Games of 2012 and Just Push Start's Original Game of the Year for 2012, Dokuro is a zany action-puzzler that enables players to manipulate the game's environment and transform its diminutive protagonist between two forms - a nimble skeleton and a dashing prince - to solve a variety of puzzles in order to help an innocent princess escape the Dark Lord's fortress.\nDokuro challenges players to utilize both Dokuro's skeletal and hero forms to approach and tackle various puzzles, traps, spiked pits and boss battles to save the princess. With nearly 150 levels of escalating complexity and difficulty, Dokuro puts even the most seasoned puzzle and platform gaming veterans to the challenge.\nTo check out Dokuro's Steam Greenlight page, visit:\nhttp://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323668796\nTo download the game on its current platforms, click: PlayStation Vita, iTunes and Google Play.\nFor information on GungHo Online Entertainment America, visit: www.gunghoonline.com.\nStarting now, Steam users can pre-purchase Techland’s upcoming open-world zombie action game Dying Light in a special 4-Pack bundle. At a price of three games, players receive four copies of Dying Light, one for them and three giftable extra copies for their friends. This promotion is a great way to delve into the world of Dying Light with a trusted team and get the most out of the game’s extensive multiplayer options.\nInvasions by the Night Hunter are the asymmetric multiplayer aspect of Dying Light, revealed in the latest gameplay trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raVcgenC9No\nDying Light will be released in 2015 on January 27th in the Americas,January 28th in Australia and New Zealand, and January 30th in Europe and Asia.\nDark Souls: Prepare to Die fans are amongst the most hardcore and tight-knit gamers in the world. In an effort to provide continued support to these players, FromSoftware and BANDAI NAMCO Games have worked tirelessly to make it possible for these most ardent of Dark Souls supporters to migrate their Dark Souls: Prepare to Die games, saves, and achievements from the Games for Windows Live platform to STEAM.\nPertinent details about the migration option from Games for Windows Live to STEAM can be found below:\n· Games for Windows Live users will be able to redeem their Games for Windows Live Tokens on STEAM to get Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition at no additional cost.\no To find your Games for Windows Live Token, please head to the support webpage at: http://support.xbox.com/en-US/billing/prepaid-codes/locate-games-for-windows-live-tokens\n· In the month of November there will be a period by which Games for Windows Live Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition users will be able to transfer their Save Data (character & progress) and Achievements over to their STEAM accounts.\n· Players will still be able to use their Games for Windows Live Tokens to redeem the STEAM version of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition at no additional cost even after the migration period ends; but game Save Data and Achievements transfer functions may not be available.\n· Games for Windows Live Rankings will not be transferred to STEAM.\nThe specific migration start and end dates will be available soon; however the migration period will begin sometime in November 2014 with more specific dates to come.\nWe will be sharing more information soon regarding the migration process in upcoming media alerts.\nIf you're a fan of SENRAN KAGURA, get ready to slice and dice... up some delicious treats while rocking out to some funky beats! SENRAN KAGURA Bon Appétit! is slated for November 11th in North America exclusively on the PlayStation®Store for $14.99, while the EU release by Marvelous Europe will launch on November 12th. The game includes the girls of Hanzo and Crimson Squad, complete with story routes for each girl to play through. If you're a fan of the straight-laced Gessen girls or the fierce Hebijo ladies, you can pick up the Gessen x Hebijo DLC pack two weeks later, on November 25th, also for $14.99. More info on the game can be found at the newly launched website at www.hanzonationalacademy.com/skba/\nWe're also kicking off the SHINOVI VERSUS DLC schedule today with two content packs, and the first one's free! The \"Shinovi Hairstyle Set\" includes 20 new hairstyles, one for each of the core shinobi, all on the house. Alongside that, there's \"Costume Set 1,\" which includes five different outfits (the Gym Clothes, School Swimsuit, Uniform & Swimsuit, Uniform & Thigh Highs, and Japanese Dress) for a bundle price of $5.99. The outfits are also available individually, for $1.99 apiece. Marvelous Europe will be releasing the same DLC on the EU store tomorrow, October 22nd.\nThat's it for this week, but hold onto your Hachigane, because next week, two new challengers will enter the fray...\nTo stay up to date, check out our official Facebook page!\nhttps://www.facebook.com/XSEEDSenranKagura.\nRainbow Skies (Vita)\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXlzi27P0Ok\nThe Phantom PI: Mission Apparition (great for kids!)\nhttps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/phantom-pi-mission-apparition/id887608596?mt=8\nRIVE (wiiU)\nwww.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmDyoJGRag\nHow To Survive: Storm Warning\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBJigJkk2ns&index=7&list=PLxCkOhycbqI3AZlW2tel28dJjNhWR3JXr\nby Brad Gallaway | 0 comments\nMarvel Puzzle Quest: The One-Year Check-In! An interview with MPQ's Kevin Teich\nIt’s hard to believe that @MarvelPuzzle Quest has been around for a whole year, but my favorite mobile game did indeed celebrate its first anniversary last week. Now that it’s reached the ripe old age of one, I thought it would be good to touch base with the developers and see how things have grown and changed since its debut.\nFortunately, MPQ executive producer Kevin Teich was good enough to take a few minutes and fill me in.\nHere’s what he had to say!\nHappy birthday to MPQ! A year after launch, how is the game doing?\nRKT: Thanks! It’s doing super well! We just had our best week ever in terms of number of players playing the game, number of downloads, and sales. Our feedback is also better than ever. It’s really encouraging, and we’re psyched that so many people are enjoying the game.\nCap's about to open a can of whoop-ass on these goons.\nWhat are some of the biggest lessons the team learned during the last year?\nRKT: Listen to the players! That may seem obvious, but we’ve learned it’s really hard to balance making the features that we want and understanding what players want.\nIt’s also important to know how listen to different kinds of players; our experienced, hardcore players posting in the forums may be asking for one thing, while at the same time, we see thousands of players not making it through our tutorial missions.\nWe’re a small team and can only do so much, and it’s impossible to listen to everybody. But we’re trying!\nWhat were the biggest assumptions you had at the beginning that eventually proved wrong?\nRKT: I underestimated the importance of our live events.\nI remember the day after we went live, our producer told me that he’d need a few hours of work from one of our designers to see what was going on in the live version of the game and make some tweaks. Now, we have a developers who are dedicated to making content that goes live right away.\nWe also try to make as many improvements and bug fixes to the live version as we can, instead of waiting for the next version to ship.\nModern Hawkeye's new Speed Shot ability makes him a solid choice!\nThe team seems to have become quite a bit more sophisticated in how the new characters are designed. The gap in usability between new faces and old is quite large at times… Are there Modern Hawkeye-style revamps planned for old characters that just aren’t seeing action?\nRKT: I’d love to freshen up some of those characters that don’t seem to be used that much. There are also some characters that are unbalanced right now, and those are higher priority.\nWe’ve learned a lot of making characters for our game, and what kinds of character features players like, and we love applying those lessons to our older designs. I can’t talk about specifics, but we definitely keep a close eye on this stuff.\nNobody but Brandon Bales loves this loser.\nSpeaking of unloved characters, which ones have been used the least over the last year? Bag-Man seems the obvious non-starter, but any others who’ve been ignored by players? Who have been the most popular?\nRKT: Our forums are a great source for this kind of information. Our players run polls on all kinds of subjects, including character popularity. Yelena Belova is another unpopular character.\nWhen we were making the first batch of characters before the game launched, it was hard to look at them all in relation to the rest of the game, because there wasn’t much to rest of the game yet. Now, it’s easier to evaluate how a new character will fit into somebody’s existing roster.\nThor, Goddess of Thunder has garnered a huge amount of interest. We’re really excited to bring her to the playing field in Season 7.\nOn a more macro level, what’s the team’s philosophy when designing characters? Is the intention that each one should be roughly equal in power/ability, or if not, what sort of roles are you looking towards when creating new heroes and villains?\nRKT: We start by digging into the character as they appear in the comics, and identify elements about the character that we want to capture in powers and mechanics. Sometimes this means the character gets a brand new type of power never seen in the game, and sometimes it means they get a simpler power that reflects their personality.\nWe also look for roles and color combinations that are under-represented in the current roster of characters. We always want characters to be balanced; part of our efforts to make this a deeply strategic game is to not have any one character be clearly superior. Some characters have great synergy with other characters; we also have to consider how characters will be used in combinations.\nThe most recent implementation of Team-Up info before a battle.\nThe addition of Team-Ups was a big change to the game. How have they been received by the players, and how happy is the team with their current implementation? Also, will we ever see location-specific tiles/effects again in the future?\nRKT: The initial roll-out of Team-Ups was not received very well. Part of our development philosophy is to get new features out to our players as fast as possible, and sometimes this means that we deliver features who promise in the fullness of time aren’t readily apparent. Team-Ups was an unfortunate example of that.\nWe have lots of plans for them, and have been steadily rolling out features to make them better. In R63, you’re able to see what Team-Up your opponent is using before you select your own Team-Ups, which will make it a more strategic choice.\nAs a cool side effect of Team-Ups, people were able to collect Thor, Goddess of Thunder Team-Ups in the Lightning Rounds we ran last week, so they can call her in for help before she’s available as a full roster character.\nI have several EU/UK players in my Alliance, and they often mention that the start and end times of events are usually incredibly inconvenient for them, putting them at a disadvantage compared to NA players. Any word on whether something can be done for them? EU/UK-specific servers, perhaps?\nRKT: We are actively working on a feature that will make this better, not only for EU/UK players, but all players with busy lives who can’t stay up until midnight. No details yet, but stay tuned.\nThose teeth aren't just for show!\nAfter asking for him since the start, Devil Dinosaur was finally made a playable character. You have no idea how happy this makes me! What other characters have been heavily requested, and who’s on the team’s unconfirmed wish list for future characters?\nRKT: This is another area in which forum polls give us a wealth of information. X-Men characters are hugely popular. Deadpool was a top request; we were really excited to bring him into the game.\nThanks so much for your time and answers. On a final note,what would you say to get someone to try MPQ if they haven’t yet, a full year after it’s been out?\nRKT: It’s an authentic Marvel experience with dozens of characters and a uniquely strategic match-3 game at its heart, and new events every week. What’s not to love?\nInfinite thanks to Kevin Teich for the interview and to the whole MPQ team for giving me high-quality entertainment while stuck in boring places for the last year. Also, mega thanks to Albert Reed for making this interview happen!\nPortland Retro gaming Expo - 2014\nThe Portland @RetroGamingExpo took place this weekend in the city's convention center. I’ve attended with the fam for the past few years, and it's been a great experience every time. I’m happy to report that his one was no different.\nSince it’s smaller and in a different city, the PRGE is a great counterpoint to PAX Prime because the crowd is less dense and more laid-back. In general, everyone seems more easy-going, and there’s a stronger hang-out vibe. It's also pretty easy to bring kids… Not only will they have enough room to walk around without getting trampled by the crowd, it's not tough to snag them some time on the various free-play arcade machines and pinball tables.\nAlso, of particular note this year was how many vendors there were. Although I don't have hard numbers, it definitely felt like the arts and crafts/used games area was much bigger than last time, and there were some pretty phenomenal things to buy. I didn't spend a lot of time combing through the older titles (my backlog is plenty big enough, thanks) but I did buy several pieces of really awesome artwork, and I'm just so impressed by the talent there every year.\nAll in all, it's a great show and I absolutely recommend it to anyone who’s in the Pacific Northwest and has even a passing interest in old-school video games. It's one of the high points of the year as far as I'm concerned, and I'm already looking forward to the next one!\nCaution: Pictorial approaching!!\nThis costume was fantastic. The kid inside said it was hot as hell, though.\nA view of the arts/crafts/used games area. It actually extended pretty far back.\nWant to make your own drink-table arcade machine? You can find the materials here.\nJust a *tiny* fraction of the vast array of old-school stuff for sale.\nRead it closely. This booth had a ton of flasks, all disguised as semi-familiar NES carts.\nR2-D2 makes an appearance every year.\nThis time, R2 brought a friend.\nThe second some of this perler bead artwork goes on sale, I''m buying it so hard.\nThis lineup of arcade machines was just a part of what was set for freeplay.\nAnd here's just a portion of the pinball tables. Also freeplay!\nMy son's still too short to reach the gas in SF Rush, So I lent him a hand. Er, a foot.\nAn awesome poster I snagged from Artist's Alley. From what I was told,\nit's a quasi-reproduction of a movie poster, and the artist didn't have a card on hand. = (\nA truly stunning piece by Jeff Langevin. The wife and I actually ended up buying\nfour separate works from him. This guy is crazy talented!!\nThis stylized nine-tailed fox by R.H. Potter was an absolute must-have.\nThe lines are so clean! The design is so balanced!\nCreepy and cute in equal measure, impossible to resist. You can find more at Fablefire's page.\nA Peach portrait from Jeff Langevin done in the style of Mucha. So classy!\nA very cool piece celebrating Firefly, also from Jeff Langevin.\nI can't get enough of this guy's work!!\nThat's it for the Portland Retro Gaming Expo 2014... See you there in 2015!\nMega Linkage, Shadow of Mordor, Frozen Synapse Prime, Chariot, and 1984's D&D\nLinks: We've had a crapton of stuff go up at @Gamecritics (and elsewhere) over the last week, so here are some quick links for your reference in case you missed them on Twitter…\nGamecritics Podcast Ep. #118 – Destiny\nDestiny Mistakes Busywork For Fun – Editorial from @Horrorgeek\nD4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (XBO) – by @GC_Danny\nShadowgate (PC) – by @SparkyClarkson\nWayward Manor (PC) – by @JimB_85\nNatural Doctrine (PS3/PS4/Vita) – by me!\nVelocity 2X (PS3/PS4/Vita) – by @MikeSuskie\nWildstar (PC) – by @Gelles22\nBlood Knights (PS3/360) - by @GC_Danny\nTex Murphy: Tesla Effect (PC) – by @GC_Danny\nThe Adventures of Pip (PC/WiiU) Preview – by @SnakeyDavid\nAnd finally, here's a re-enactment of an interview between Next Generation magazine and Sony's Steve Race from 1995. I play Steve and @DefunctGames is NextGen... It sounds a bit weird since we recorded our tracks separately, but hey.\nWhew! Now, on to the blog as usual…\nGames: I’ve spent most of my recent free time playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. I was pretty hyped for it after I saw it at PAX and mentioned it here at Coffeecola several times. After having completed the campaign last night, I think the game delivered on much of what I promised, although not all of it.\nThe action is great, very reminiscent of what I thought Assassin’s Creed should've been since the start, and the links to The Lord of the Rings are good. Fans of that franchise will be satisfied, I suspect.\nOn the other hand, the main character is boring and the plot doesn't feel fully baked. Worse, the really fun \"brainwash the orcs\" mechanic that was so heavily promoted in the demo isn't even available to the player until about two thirds of the way through the adventure! Rather than being the core mechanic that I was led to believe it was, it ends up being rushed in at the end, and doesn't play nearly as large a part in the campaign as it should.\nDespite this disappointment and a few other concerns, it remained a positive experience overall… It's not the home-run that I thought it would be, but still quite good. Look for my full review soon.\nIn other review game news, I've been playing Frozen Synapse Prime for a while on Vita.\nTo be honest, I feel somewhat torn over it. Essentially, it's a very pure tactics experience where the player has quite a bit of control over their characters… It's somewhat reminiscent of the original XCOM in some ways, and when things go according to plan, it makes you feel like a genius. On the other hand, the tutorials don't really scratch the depths to which the game goes, and I've got some concerns about the AI and the things that are going on underneath the hood.\nFor example, there have been numerous times when I posted a guard pointing straight at a door in the highest readiness state, and when the enemies come around the corner, they somehow still get the drop on me? Some of the win/fail conditions also feel a little draconian in their implementation, and despite how much I've been enjoying it when I win, the frustration factor of playing (and replaying) the campaign is quite high… I've been stuck on the same mission for three or four days in a row, and I'm starting to question whether I'll be able to complete it.\nThat said, I've heard it's absolutely brilliant in the versus mode and I haven't had a chance to test it out yet, so that's next on my list. Either way, fans of tactics should absolutely give it a once-over… There's a lot to like despite my misgivings.\nFinally, I just started playing Chariot today with the wife.\nIt is absurdly cute, and functions as a local co-op game where two people must bring a king’s coffin to his final resting place. The hook is that the coffin is on wheels, and the two characters must use ropes while pulling and pushing to get the coffin over various obstacles and towards the goal.\nWe didn't get a chance to play much, but we absolutely loved what we saw… Can't wait to play more, but at the moment, it seems like an obvious thumbs up.\nTV: I've been mining my own past for things to share with my five-year-old, and one program that I recalled enjoying as a child was the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series which first ran in 1984.\nIn a nutshell, six kids were on a roller coaster ride that went into a D&D-themed funhouse, and somehow they get warped into a fantasy world where they all assume a class role and start questing.\nThe first time I saw it, I must have been eight or nine, and clearly my taste wasn't quite as developed back then as it is now. As I sat through the first episode, I thought it was a pretty wretched piece of garbage… Definitely not one that holds up past the rose-tinted glasses.\nThere was no real intro or 'start' to the series past the opening theme song sequence, there's no pacing at all with each scene coming right on top of the last (and none of it giving the actors any time for anything but reading as fast as they can) and the action was quite lame, to boot. I'll watch a couple more because, hell, I bought the damned thing, but it's amazing to see how terrible it is after all these years.\nEpic sadface!\n********************PR/NEWS/INFO********************\nApropos of nothing, here are some great-looking screens from The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt\nTechland recently released a new gameplay trailer for Dying Light to showcase the asymmetric multiplayer aspect of the game. Featuring a game-changing day & night cycle, unprecedented freedom of movement, and vast open world with 50+ hours of gameplay, Dying Light will also offer a full-fledged co-op multiplayer for up to 4 players – with a twist.\n“The game is absolutely huge as it is, but to provide the ultimate zombie survival experience, we added an extra element of unpredictability to our nighttime gameplay” – says Dying Light’s Producer Tymon Smektala. “Online players can face the threat of a possible invasion of their game by the Night Hunter, an extremely powerful, human-controlled zombie mutation. These invasions are an inherent part of Dying Light, available on all platforms for all online players from day one. However for our hardcore fans who pre-order, we’re offering them a bonus – Be the Zombie – which lets you actually take control of the Night Hunter and invade online games of other players.”\nThe video: http://youtu.be/raVcgenC9No\nDying Light can be pre-ordered from the game's official website, from select retailers and is also available for pre-purchase on Steam. These pre-orders and pre-purchases come with the free Be the Zombie DLC, letting players take control of the Night Hunter themselves. By playing as the Night Hunter and invading other games, players get access to a completely new character with a unique set of moves and abilities which can be upgraded using experience points. The Be the Zombie mode will be available across all platforms.\nDying Light will be released in 2015 on January 27th in the Americas, January 28th in Australia and New Zealand, and January 30th in Europe and Asia.\nD3Publisher (D3PA) and Marvel Entertainment announces that on October 3 Marvel Puzzle Quest will celebrate its 1-year anniversary since its worldwide launch on the App Store and Google Play. In commemoration, Marvel Puzzle Quest will be the first Marvel video game to feature the brand new character, Thor: Goddess of Thunder. Thor: Goddess of Thunder will be a legendary (4 star) character reward for Season VII and all players will be able to test her powers in a battle starting on October 17th.\nThe celebration of the 1-year anniversary will also bring Devil Dinosaur as a playable character to Marvel Puzzle Quest via an Anniversary Pack and as a daily reward for Day 365 players starting on October 8th. In addition, the days leading to the Thor: Goddess of Thunder reveal, Marvel Puzzle Quest will be featuring fan-favorite special in-game events based on a recent poll with the community.\nFor New York Comic Con Convention (NYCC) attendees, the Marvel Puzzle Quest team will be at Booth #347 inside the Javits Center during show hours on October 9 – 12, 2014. Visitors to the Marvel Puzzle Quest booth at NYCC will be able to go hands-on with the game on tablet and PC to discover the expanding gameplay within the Marvel Universe. Members from the team will be on hand to walk players through gameplay and discuss upcoming in-game tournaments and events.\nAttendees will also have the opportunity to earn in-game resources for Marvel Puzzle Quest at the booth via a free raffle. For a limited time only, D3Publisher will be offering bonus Iso-8 resources to new users that download the game now through October 18th.\nMarvel Puzzle Quest is developed by Demiurge Studios and available for free on the App Store for iPhone®, iPad® and iPod®, iPod touch®, Google Play for AndroidTM devices, and Steam® for PC. The game is rated “T” (Teen – Violence, Blood, Suggested Themes, Drug Reference, and Mild Language) by the ESRB for PC. For more information on Marvel Puzzle Quest, please visit www.marvelpuzzlequest.com and follow us on Twitter @MarvelPuzzle or like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/MarvelPuzzleQuest.\nSEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe, Ltd. today announced that fan-favorite Japanese role-playing-game (RPG) Resonance of Fate is now available for purchase for the first time on PlayStation® Network for PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system. Resonance of Fate is a unique RPG set in a dystopian future where Earth is no longer capable of sustaining life. Adding a fresh spin to the RPG genre, the game features a cinematic action gameplay system centered around gun-play and a fascinating steampunk-styled world.\nAs part of the Private Military Firm, our heroes (Vashyron, Zephyr and Leanne) seek out and complete quests for their clients but are eventually led on a journey that will reveal the dark secrets behind the world they live in. Key features of the game include:\n Battle System: Battle in fantastic cinematic action as your characters wield firearms in a semi-real time gameplay system\n Hero Actions: Pull off spectacular moves and precision attacks through this special mode designed to chain attacks together\n Unique Story: Built around a gigantic tower-like machine, the story will delve deep into fate and the machinery that controls it\n Beautiful environments: Masterfully crafted environments pepper this title to illustrate the deep tapestry of this dystopian world\n Customization: Customize your characters and give them a unique look within the game\no Extensive Weapon customization allows your character to have specialized weapons from parts unlocked or bought throughout the game\no Change the look of your character by unlocking costumes along the way\n505 Games and Hidden Path Entertainment announced the official launch of Defense Grid 2 (DG2), the long-awaited sequel to the 2008 quintessential tower defense game, Defense Grid: The Awakening.DG2 introduces new worlds and threats to test player's tower placement strategies in single-player mode, online player-versus-player and multiplayer co-op campaigns. With 21 engaging maps and countless ways to win, DG2 will challenge your strategy skills and redefine the tower defense genre.\nDefense Grid 2 features gorgeous landscapes and intuitive gameplay as players defend against new threats to ensure the survival of the human race. The game features dynamic level movement, a rich story and cast of characters, hundreds of challenge mode experiences, new multiplayer modes, and a procedurally driven audioscore. DG2also introduces players to DG Architect, a level creation tool set connected to Steam Workshop, in which players can create their own unique levels to share and potentially sell.\nDefense Grid 2 is priced at $24.99 for digital download on Steam (PC, Mac, Linux), PlayStation®4 and Xbox® One. A special edition of DG2, priced at $29.99, is also available on Steam and includes: the digital book, The Art of Defense Grid 2; the ebook,The Making of Defense Grid 2: The Complete Story Behind the Game by Russ Pitts; and additional content including “A Matter of Endurance,” a new original audio story written by Hugo award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal and performed by the English voice cast.\nDefense Grid 2 for Mac and Linux is now available to play and will be optimized for each platform on October 14.\nA new trailer is available for launch: http://youtu.be/OJFbC2cknZw\nThe wait is over, HE is here. Slender: The Arrival, launches today on PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system. Tomorrow, Xbox fans will have their chance to experience The Arrival on Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft; both are priced at $9.99. Slender Man takes to the big screen with his first foray into the world of console gaming, promising big thrills and chills for a whole new audience.\nDeveloped by Toronto indie team Blue Isle Studios and the only official Slender Man game, The Arrival puts you at the heart of a mystery surrounding the enigmatic Internet persona that has captivated and terrorized millions. Experience lives touched by Slender Man and follow the trail to connect them all to this unstoppable force of evil. Slender: The Arrival wraps players in a dark, foreboding atmosphere and a story fraught with terror, paranoia and other-worldly forces lurking behind every turn.\nWritten by the creative team behind Marble Hornets, this latest iteration in the Slender Man universe expands the canon established by the original web-series, with some new twists and extended content. Building on the successful Steam launch last Halloween, Slender: The Arrival comes to consoles with brand new story elements and features extended levels that continue to unfold the Slender Man mythos. Players are enveloped in a world of sensory deprivation filled with haunting visions and audio cues that create an ominous backdrop perfect for fostering a healthy dose of tension and paranoia. Follow the clues and unravel the mystery, that is, if you can survive.\nThe new content will be offered to Steam and PC players who already own Slender: The Arrival at no additional charge as free DLC. More information about this offering will be announced in the coming weeks.\nSlender: The Arrival is rated T for Teen and is available starting today on PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system for $9.99 digital download from the PlayStation®Network, and tomorrow (September 24) on Xbox 360 for $9.99 digital download from the Xbox Live Games Store.\nIndependent publishing label Midnight City will also release Costume Quest 2 this Halloween season from Double Fine Productions.\nFor more information, please visit our website: www.midnight-city.com\nFor more on Blue Isle Studios, please visit: www.blueislestudios.com\nWarner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has released Gauntlet, a fully modernized reboot of the celebrated dungeon crawler, on Steam for PC, offering full support for SteamOS and the upcoming Steam Machines shipping next year. Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, the game is available for an M.S.R.P. of $19.99.\nPlayers select from four classic fantasy-based characters: Warrior, Wizard, Valkyrie, or Elf. Each character has its own distinctive play style and unique strengths and weaknesses. Upon selecting a playable character, the gameplay is set within dungeons where the object is to fight through the chambers slaying evil creatures and completing challenges. An assortment of special items can be located in each dungeon that can restore the player's health, unlock doors, and shift the odds in the player's favor with magical relics which can aid the player in surviving longer in the Gauntlet. The enemies are a vast assortment of fantasy-based monsters, including ghosts, grunts, demons, spiders, sorcerers and skeleton warriors.\nPlayers can improve their heroes' abilities and powers by unlocking achievements called \"perks.\" Multiple difficulty settings add to the game's replayability.\nGauntlet consists of environments like dusty crypts, dark caves, and fiery dungeons, each with varying styles of gameplay. Some dungeon maps allow players to explore and fight their way through chambers slaying evil creatures, completing challenges and discovering hidden secrets and gold. In other levels, Death itself chases players through an unpredictable labyrinth. There are also endurance maps where players must defeat waves of monsters to survive.\nGauntlet is rated Mature for Violence, Blood and Gore, with a setting to disable the game's gore.\nFor more information on Gauntlet, please visit\nhttp://www.gauntlet.com,\nhttps://www.facebook.com/PlayGauntlet\nor https://twitter.com/PlayGauntlet\nA Second Look at Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus. Al...\nMarvel Puzzle Quest: The One-Year Check-In! An int...\nMega Linkage, Shadow of Mordor, Frozen Synapse Pri...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line549777"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6047112345695496,"wiki_prob":0.39528876543045044,"text":"Democratic presidential nominees are ignoring the issue of our cybersecurity infrastructure\nRobert Ackerman Jr.\t5 months\nRobert Ackerman Jr. Contributor\nRobert Ackerman Jr. is the founder and a managing director of AllegisCyber, an early-stage cybersecurity venture firm, and a founder of DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup “studio” in metropolitan Washington, D.C.\nMore posts by this contributor\nCyber breaches abound in 2019\nWith the long battle for the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 firmly underway, more than 20 political hopefuls are talking about spreading the fruits of a solid economy to millions of middle-class Americans who may have missed the good times, implementing Medicare for all to solve financial healthcare pitfalls, and free college education.\nOne would-be candidate – Jay Inslee, the governor of the state of Washington – is talking almost exclusively about the need to address climate change far more quickly and far more seriously.\nBut what has not been discussed by any of them, even briefly, is the stunning existential threat to our critical national security and the entire well-being of the U.S. posed by mounting and painful cyber breaches of infrastructure and other targets. If no would-be candidates can acknowledge the significance and magnitude of the cyber threat – let alone put forward a strategy and plan to defend against the threat – it’s hard to take them seriously as prospective national leaders.\nI’m hardly the only one with this view. “When we think about existential threats, government has to understand that electricity doesn’t reside in its own silo and that if something happens to (companies like) us, it would have a potentially cataclysmic impact on finance as well,” utility Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning recently told Fox Business.\nSpecifically, consider just a few examples of what is going on every day:\nElection malfeasance. We hear daily outrage about threats to our increasingly digital electoral infrastructure, and yet there is no policy discussion.\nRampant theft of intellectual property. The strength of our economy is based on our ability to innovate, as encapsulated in IP. And yet our economic and military rivals are brazenly stealing this IP with impunity. They take our innovation and weaponize it to challenge U.S. industry leadership and compromise our defense military technologies.\nTargeting of critical infrastructure. When most of our infrastructure was built, it was not with security in mind. Our society is dependent upon our infrastructure. What if our phones didn’t work, we couldn’t bank, electrical and gas service was cut off, our planes couldn’t fly and our ports could not function? Massive financing is required to boost security.\nManipulation of privacy by select technology giants. What is, in effect, another sort of breach, is the collection, aggregation and manipulation of our privacy by digital aggregators such as Google and Facebook, which is then further manipulated and stolen by criminals. (Note here: A positive response has been the Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement this month of a $5 billion settlement with Facebook over a long-running probe into its privacy missteps.)\nHow do we solve these problems? Blatantly dictating solutions would inevitably fail. What we can do successfully is set standards of performance and responsibility, coupled with timelines and severe penalties for failure to perform. There must be accountability –something that sometimes exists in industry (albeit at inadequate levels), but that is wholly missing in government at all levels.\nWhile I care deeply about cybersecurity, I am not naïve about the extreme pressure confronting politicians to score well in polls – a requirement to have a shot at winning their party’s presidential nomination. Arguably, cybersecurity awareness may not fit this bill.\nIf enhanced cybersecurity is to be injected into the Democratic election agenda, the public must actively promulgate such a step. Supporting an outcry is the irrefutable fact that the signs of risk are flagrant. Earlier this year, Global Risks Report 2019 – published by the World Economic Form – said that the rapid evolution of cyber and technological threats poses one of the most significant dangers to societies around the world.\nIn the U.S., meanwhile, cybersecurity is now at the forefront of policy discussions and planning for future conflicts. The cyber threat has leveled the playing field in many ways, presenting unique concerns to the U.S. and its allies. Two years ago, the final report of the Department of Defense Science Board Task Force on Cyber Deterrence concluded that cyber capabilities of other nations exceeded U.S. ability to defend systems and said this would remain the case for at least another five to 10 years.\nThese and other threats manifest themselves through attacks on our digital infrastructure. And as the largest and most digitized economy in the world, we have the most to lose when our infrastructure is comprised. There is no higher priority threat to the U.S. If those who would be our leaders, including Donald Trump, cannot acknowledge such a huge external threat to our security, economy and lifestyle and take steps to resolve it, they have no business vying to become the leader of our nation in 2020.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line89802"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5374149680137634,"wiki_prob":0.4625850319862366,"text":"6 Unexpected Things Foodbanks Need\nA visit to the food bank isn’t exactly a traditional Christmas activity, but one UK charity is asking for a little extra help this month, when demand is at its highest and families are choosing between eating and heating.\nThe Trussell Trust operates 425 food banks across the UK providing emergency food and support for people in crisis. Last year, the charity’s food banks gave three-day emergency food supplies to more than 130,000 people in the UK, nearly half of whom were children.\n“December is always the busiest month for food banks,” says Molly Hodson, head of media and external affairs at the charity. “There’s a massive spike every year – December is 50% busier than every other month – and January is also high.” These are the months during which a lot of families on low incomes pay a “poverty premium”, says Hodson. “Winter is just a much harder time for people living in poverty, especially if they’re on pre-payment meters for their gas and electricity. A lot of people end up making choices between eating and heating their home.”\nAt Christmas time, many food banks try to do a little extra for users. “Alongside the standard food parcels which have three days of non-perishable, nutritionally balanced food in it, some food banks will do Christmas presents for kids, which is really nice,” says Hodson. “It’s trying to give people a bit of normality at Christmas.”\nWhile many of us know that food banks provide food – and are happy to donate tinned items and other grocery items – not all of us are aware that food banks could do with donations of other essential non-food items as well.\n“We asked food bank managers and users across the UK and these are all the things people say consistently – time and time again – they need, but they are not things people often think to buy,” says Hodson. “And they make such a difference.”\n1. Toilet roll\nThis is self-explanatory, and always necessary. “One food bank is having to ration it to one roll per household,” says Hodson.\n2. Sanitary towels and tampons\n“We don’t have the data on how users of the food banks break down across gender lines,” says Hodson. “When someone comes to the food bank, they’ll often pick up for the whole household.” But she adds: “[Feminine hygiene products] are an awkward thing to say that you’re short of. If you’re at the point where you can’t afford food, chances are that you’re not going to be able to afford sanitary products either.”\n“It’s really important, especially in terms of dignity, to be able to cope. We’ve heard some horrible reports from some of our food banks where women were having to use newspaper and that sort of thing. Obviously you have to be resourceful in these situations and people come up with all kinds of coping mechanisms but we’d prefer they didn’t have to cope, and that they actually were able to have what everybody else has.”\n3. Tin openers\n“There are all kinds of people who don’t have these, especially women who’ve been relocated because of domestic abuse,” says Hodson.\nAnd as food banks get a lot of tinned, non-perishable food, this is a handy thing to drop off at the collection point.\n4. Nappies\nGenerally, food banks would prefer disposable nappies over cloth nappies. “The best thing people can do is call their local food bank and find out what they need,” says Hodson.\n“We get parents with children of all ages. Some of the most stark cases are women who have literally just given birth and haven’t got anything, and are really struggling as well as being a new mum.”\n5. Toiletries (shampoo, shower gel, deodorant)\nYou know how at Christmas, lots of people get packs of toiletries they don’t want, because it’s a bit of a standard present? Bring them along to your local food bank collection point. “If people don’t want them,” says Hodson, “it’d be amazing if they gave them to the food bank, because it’s the kind of thing that makes a massive difference.”\nShaving gels and foams are also welcome.\n6. Baby food\nBaby food is another item that many people don’t think to include on their list of donations to food banks, says Hodson. Well, now you know.\nThere are lots of places around the UK where you can drop off food and other items for foodbanks.\nThe Trussell Trust has a map of its foodbanks here and donations can also be made at selected supermarkets across the UK. Ask in-store for details.\nThis piece was originally published on BuzzFeed News on Decmber 23rd 2015\nAll news Blog Uncategorised\nAll years 2015\n23 Dec 2015 6 Unexpected Things Foodbanks Need\n8 Dec 2015 Why Would a Mum Doing a Business Degree Find Herself Begging on the Streets This Winter?\n1 Dec 2015 Emergency Budget gets the food poverty test","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1216529"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9365259408950806,"wiki_prob":0.9365259408950806,"text":"CIA/Phil Mansfield\nRichard Mazer is the 19th chairman of the board of The Culinary Institute of America.\nCulinary Institute of America Names Richard Mazer Chairman of the Board\nHighly regarded food industry executive Richard L. Mazer has been elected the 19th chairman of the board of The Culinary Institute of America. He succeeds former Dunkin' Brands CEO Jon Luther in this important and distinguished position.\n\"Richard Mazer has long been a trusted consultant and leader in the food business, and played a key role in Ventura Foods' rise to prominence,\" CIA President Dr. Tim Ryan says. \"Richard brings valuable experience and industry insight to his role as board chair, and I look forward to working with him as we move the CIA into the future.\"\nBefore his retirement as CEO of Ventura Foods in 2010, Mr. Mazer had been a key player in the foodservice industry for more than 25 years. At Ventura—a company that makes cooking oils, shortenings, cooking sprays, and other edible oil products—his leadership positions included chief operating officer, president, and CEO. During his tenure, the company grew from $500 million to more than $2 billion in annual sales.\nBefore joining Ventura Foods, Mr. Mazer was a consultant to producers, manufacturers, retailers, and grocery and convenience store wholesalers. He previously held management positions in the business world at Deloitte and Touche; Kidder, Peabody & Co.; and Boston Consulting Group before specializing in the business of food. Mr. Mazer holds degrees in both economics and management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.\nIn addition to serving on the Board of Trustees of the CIA, Mr. Mazer has been a member of the boards of Food for All, Gardenburger, Thrifty Foods of Burlington, Hospital Cost Consultants, and Accountants, Inc.\n\"I am deeply honored to become chairman of The Culinary Institute of America,\" says Mr. Mazer, who joined the Board of Trustees of the college in 2007 and served as vice chairman for the past two years. \"Since its founding in 1946, the college has trained thousands of chefs for work in a vibrant hospitality industry and has distinguished itself as the premier culinary school in the world. I am proud of the work the CIA does and proud to be associated with such a well-run institution.\"\nNew members of the board for 2018 are Stanley Cheng, CEO of the Meyer Corporation; Noah Glass, founder and CEO of Olo; Cheryl Henry, president and COO of Ruth's Hospitality Group, Inc.; and Robert Unanue, president of Goya Foods, Inc.\nThe CIA Board of Trustees consists of 25 highly respected leaders in the foodservice industry and business world. They provide expert governance and guidance for the not-for-profit college, and are not compensated for their services.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line59304"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8625512719154358,"wiki_prob":0.8625512719154358,"text":"Published: September 30, 2016, 8:02 pm\nTags: Local, News, Community, Education\nEvents help raise awareness of bullying, cyberbullying, child abuse\nMonique Burr Foundation's Child Safety Matters Program hosts events\nJACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As October begins Saturday, it also starts national bullying prevention month.\nThe Monique Burr Foundation's Child Safety Matters Program is hosting several events this week and into the month of October to raise awareness of bullying, cyberbullying and all types of child abuse.\nNews4Jax's Elizabeth Campbell talked to the organization and a parent who says her 8-year-old son has benefited tremendously from the program.\n\"I asked Felipe, 'What is this?' and he said, 'Mom, that's a safety program we went through at school,' and I said, 'Safety program? What do you mean?' and he said, 'Our teacher talked to us about the safety rules,'\" parent Roberta Targino said.\nTargino was so impressed with her son that he paid attention when learning about safety. She was also pleased with his school that they got students involved in the Monique Burr Founation's Child Safety Matters Program.\n\"The Monique Burr Foundation for Children was started in 1997 by local real estate developer Ed Burr after the death of his wife on their 10th wedding anniversary, so kind of a tragic story, but he wanted her legacy to live on,\" program director Stacey Pendarvis said. \"She was a very big community advocate that worked for kids and he didn't want that work to stop.\"\nThe foundation focuses on bullying and child abuse prevention and awareness, offering the program at no cost to grades K-6 in schools throughout Florida.\n\"To know that when they have that shiver, that things are unsafe, and shiver was an expression my son used, that when they feel unsafe it's real and there's things they can do to protect themselves and let other people know they can be safe,\" Targino said.\nThe MBF Child Safety program also hosts events each year, including a champions for child safety matters luncheon Wednesday at the University of North Florida at 11:30 a.m. and a real world safety event this Saturday starting at 8, also at UNF.\nTargino encourages families to get involved, whether asking a child's school to look into the program or attending an event.\n\"What really touches me about this program is it gives voice to the kids who are not safe or not heard, and when you plant that seed and let them know the shivers are real and they can do something about it, it's something that is very empowering for them,\" Targino said.\nTap or click here to learn more about this week's events or how to get the anti-bullying and child abuse program into your child's school, we’ve provided a link to their website on our website News4Jax.com.\nCopyright 2016 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line859520"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5120828747749329,"wiki_prob":0.5120828747749329,"text":"John DeLucie is Sick of Kale\nChef John DeLucie. Photo by Avery Whyte.\nFor much of the past decade, John DeLucie has been New York City’s most sought-after chef. As founding chef and partner of The Waverly Inn, DeLucie and his take on classic American cuisine attracted both the celebrity crowd and serious food fans, who were wowed by his original and eye-opening offerings. The Lion, Crown, Bills Food and Drink and now Bedford & Co has solidified his stature as both a serious chef and restaurateur that has New Yorkers clambering for a reservation.\nThe Lion has been called “eye-catching” (W Magazine), “the latest addition to the power pantheon” (Time Out New York), and “the edge of the volcano” (Gael Greene) that “has the media, fashion and pretty folks out in force” (Women’s Wear Daily). But it’s not the celebrity clientele that demands the most attention. In the end, it all comes down to John’s simple cooking—a passion that was instilled in him as a little boy.\nDeLucie’s Italian grandfather owned a fruit and vegetable market, and would bring home a bounty of fresh produce for his grandmother to turn into meals showcasing fresh seasonal flavors. Those early taste lessons left a lasting impression: Although John tried his hand at a few 9-to-5 jobs after graduating from NYU, he eventually gave in to his natural culinary curiosity, first taking courses at New York’s New School for Culinary Arts, and then getting his first food job, chopping 40-pound bags of onions in the back room of Dean & DeLuca on Prince Street. After a tour of Europe’s great cuisine centers—France and Italy, DeLucie began to sculpt his own cooking style, fusing modern and European cooking techniques. Upon returning to the States, John landed a job in the kitchen of the groundbreaking Southwestern eatery, Arizona 206 which received 3 stars from the New York Times. In 1996, he took over as Chef de Cuisine at the venerable seafood restaurant Oceana under the tutelage of Chef Rick Moonan. Today, DeLucie’s style remains as distinctively simple as it is universally praised. – Source[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Interview and Photos by Avery Whyte[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\nJohn Delucie and his Vespa. Photo by Avery Whyte.\nThe Chef’s Connection: Did you go to culinary school? If so, where?\nJohn DeLucie: New York’s New School for Culinary Arts\nTCC: What restaurants have you worked at?\nJDL: The Waverly Inn, The Lion, Bills, Crown, Bedford & Co, The Empire Diner\nTCC: What was your first job in food?\nJDL: My first job in food was as a prep cook at Dean and Dulce, a really fancy food store on Broadway and Prince. It was my first foray into the food world. I was 29. I was working in prepared food, I was working with these really interesting, insane characters that were working there. Ex-cons, marginalized people.\nTCC: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?\nJDL: I wanted to be in rock and roll. In high school I was in band, chorus, orchestra, I played guitar. I wanted to be Jimmy Page. I have a whole studio at my house, I sample and I write. I spend a lot of hours doing a lot of nothing.\nTCC: What’s your favorite thing about being a chef?\nJDL: My favorite thing about being a chef is that everyday is a brand new set of challenges. No matter how horrible today can go, and all the shit that can go wrong, and a lot can go wrong, it all starts again tomorrow.\nTCC: What are your coping skills for stress?\nJDL: I meditate; I read a lot of books on Buddhism. I try to meditate 15 or 20 minutes everyday. I’ve been doing it for a long time. I did a long weekend silent meditation in Tarrytown, New York. It was a three-day silent retreat. You wanna kill yourself. It feels good having done it but it’s completely excruciating. You wanna jump out the window. But I think that’s the point of it, to not jump out the window. Most people cannot shut up for 5 seconds, try it for three days, it gets interesting. Finally you reach a point where you’re like, ‘ok, shut up, calm down, it’s a few more days,’ and you get through it. The more you do it the easier it gets, but there are still days when I can’t do it for one minute. It’s definitely made me less reactive.\nTCC: What’s an example of problems that arise?\nJDL: Cooks don’t show up, food comes in wrong, ovens break, people cut themselves. There’s not a day that goes by that there’s not some calamity between the places. There’s so much you can do, you try to do everything you can do, and that’s it.\nTCC: What is the best advice you ever got?\nJDL: I’ve had a lot of good advice over the years. My teacher at New School for Culinary Arts pulled me aside and she said ‘look, you’ve probably gotten away with murder in your life. If you bat your big brown eyelashes and think you’re gonna get somewhere in this world you’re wrong, my friend.’\nTCC: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?\nJDL: I don’t eat that much strange stuff, it’s not my thing but I did eat live squid.\nTCC: What’s your favorite ingredient?\nJDL: Garlic. I like garlic a lot. I like garlic and watercress a lot.\nTCC: What ingredient turns you off the most?\nJDL: Kale. I’m sick of kale. Sick of it, sick of it, sick of it. I don’t wanna look at it, I don’t wanna eat it, I don’t wanna talk about it, I don’t wanna say the words.\nTCC: What’s your favorite tool in the kitchen?\nJDL: My microplain.\nTCC: What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not cooking?\nJDL: I like to play on my guitar, I like making music, I like sampling. I do all that stuff my house, to my wife’s chagrin. I like to go and eat. I do it a lot. I like to go out and have a nice meal and talk and I like live music, Jazz, and taking rides on my Vespa.\nTCC: Tell us a deep dark secret (doesn’t have to be food related).\nJDL: I cry at sappy commercials. I do. I hide it from my wife. If there’s a horse in a Budweiser commercial I’m toast.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]TCC: Tell us a funny story from the kitchen.\nJDL: One day, years ago, I’m expediting at a very busy place, hundreds and hundreds of covers. I’m calling orders to the grill and there’s a strange voice that I don’t recognize calling the orders back. I look over and there’s a guy on the grill that I don’t recognize. And I ask him, “what are you doing, who are you?” He said, ‘I’m Jose.’ I said, “where’s Enrico?’ He said, ‘Enrico’s my brother, he went back to Mexico, I took his job now.’ He worked the whole station without missing a beat.\nTCC: Who would you like to meet?\nJDL: Jimi Hendrix. I loved his cadence, the way he spoke. Intelligent and thoughtful. I’d like to meet and cook for him.\nTCC: What was the hardest thing for you to learn? Or is there something you just can’t get right?\nJDL: Haha, so many thinks I can’t get right. Patience. Even with all the meditation and the books I’m very impatient. I’d like to slow down, slow my mind down.\nTCC: Is there some little something you do for your family to make up for the time you’re not with them?\nJDL: I wish I could do more. I’m very guilty about the time I don’t spend with my family.\nTCC: How did becoming a chef change your life? Your direction.\nJDL: Being a chef is not a job or career, it’s really a lifestyle. When you become a chef you’re there at night, you’re there in the morning. You’re there all the time. You’re there on weekends, holidays, birthdays, communions, and weddings. You miss out on so much. It’s a huge sacrifice. So it does change your life. So you deal with all the guilt, all the stuff you don’t get to experience. But would I trade it in? No I probably wouldn’t. The gratification of this business is like no other.\nTCC: What has been the highlight of your career so far?\nJDL: It’s been a long career, 25 years. Robert De Niro put me in a headlock once. I thought ‘this is great.’\nTCC: Please give us a cooking tip that people might not know like “adding a little bit of oil to butter so it doesn’t burn.”\nJDL: People who cook at home never season enough. So if you’re making soup at home, put in a tablespoon of kosher salt at the very beginning. It draws out albumin in bones and it will make your soup richer and taste better. And for god’s sakes use salt and pepper.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line201175"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9340746998786926,"wiki_prob":0.9340746998786926,"text":"Home Top News INT'L News Convicted Lockerbie bomber dies: son\nConvicted Lockerbie bomber dies: son\nBy Rami Al-Shaheibi And Lee Keath, AP\nBENGHAZI, Libya–Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer who was the only person ever convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, died Sunday nearly three years after he was released from a Scottish prison to the outrage of the relatives of the attack’s 270 victims. He was 60. Scotland released al-Megrahi on Aug. 20, 2009, on compassionate grounds to let him return home to die after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. At the time, doctors predicted he had only three months to live. Anger over the release was further stoked by the hero’s welcome he received on his arrival in Libya — and by subsequent allegations that London had sought his release to preserve business interests in the oil-rich North African nation, strongly denied by the British and Scottish governments. After his release, he kept a strict silence, living in the family villa surrounded by high walls in a posh Tripoli neighborhood, mostly bedridden or taking a few steps with a cane.\nHis son, Khaled al-Megrahi, confirmed that he died in Tripoli in a telephone interview but hung up before giving more details. To the end, al-Megrahi insisted he had nothing to do with the bombing, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans. “I am an innocent man,” al-Megrahi said in his last interview, published in several British papers in December. “I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family.” The fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in August — and his death two months later — has so far done nothing to dispel the mysteries that surround the case even after al-Megrahi’s conviction. The U.S., Britain, and prosecutors in his trial contended that he did not act alone and carried out the bombing at the behest of Libyan intelligence. After Gadhafi’s fall, Britain asked Libya’s new rulers to help fully investigate but they put off any probe for the forseeable future.\nPrevious articleGov’t to pledge US$2 mil. for struggling economies\nNext articleWhere are Facebook’s friends? Stock down after IPO","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1208879"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9113677740097046,"wiki_prob":0.9113677740097046,"text":"Michael Bloomberg outlines plans for cleaner buildings, cars\nhttps://www.sahamku.me/sports/article/Forget-football-Clemson-basketball-upsets-No-3-14976297.php\nForget football: Clemson basketball upsets No. 3 Duke\nUpdated 10:12 pm PST, Tuesday, January 14, 2020\nWhat a wild ride the past few days have been for Clemson fans.\nThe Tigers beat No. 3 Duke 79-72 on Tuesday night to sandwich wins over the ACC’s basketball blue bloods around Monday’s loss in the College Football Playoff title game.\nTuesday night’s win over the Blue Devils was the highest-profile upset for the Tigers (9-7, 3-3 ACC) since they beat No. 1 North Carolina on their home court in February 2001. And just like that day, students rushed the court at Littlejohn Coliseum.\nOn Saturday, Clemson beat North Carolina in Chapel Hill for the first time in program history, ending a 59-game skid on the Tar Heels’ home court and setting off a locker-room celebration that looked like the aftermath of an NCAA Tournament win. The Tigers have won three in a row since falling below .500 in a Dec. 31 loss to Miami.\n“2020 is starting to feel like our year,” said Aamir Simms, who led Clemson with a career-high 25 points.\nThe Blue Devils (15-2, 5-1 ) were leading the nation with an average margin of victory of 21.5 points. Duke had not lost since a stunning home decision to Stephen F. Austin in November.\nClemson players, including Parker Fox (11), the son of Cal head coach Mark Fox, salute their fans after upsetting third-ranked Duke. The Tigers won for the first time ever in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Saturday.\nPhoto: Richard Shiro / Associated Press\nClemson fans, stung by the football Tigers’ first loss in 30 games — a 42-25 defeat against LSU on Monday night at the Superdome in New Orleans — stopped moping less than 24 hours later.\nSimms and Tevin Mack, who scored 22 points, kept dragging Duke’s big men around the perimeter.\n“We tried to move their guys around a lot. They have a lot of size,” Clemson head coach Brad Brownell said.\nThat opened up the lane for Clemson’s offense. Seventeen of the Tigers’ 30 baskets were layups or dunks — including one by John Newman III that was so nasty it got a shout-out on Twitter from Magic Johnson.\n“Simms was spectacular tonight in how he controlled the game,” Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said.\nClemson led 40-33 at halftime and stretched the lead to nine points before Duke rallied. The Blue Devils led 62-59 with 6:40 remaining.\nThat’s when Clemson took control with a 14-3 run, including eight points from Simms. His three-point play made it 73-65 with 2:16 remaining.\nVernon Carey Jr. scored 20 points for Duke.\n#6 Kansas 66, Oklahoma 52: Isaiah Moss scored 20 points, and Udoka Azubuike had 16 points and 14 rebounds as the visiting Jayhawks (13-3, 3-1 Big 12) took care of the Sooners (11-5, 2-2).\n#7 San Diego State 64, Fresno State 55: Malachi Flynn scored 22 points as the visiting Aztecs (18-0, 7-0 Mountain West) remained unbeaten by knocking off the Bulldogs (5-12, 1-5).\n#11 Louisville 73, Pittsburgh 68: Jordan Nwora had 14 points as the visiting Cardinals (14-3, 5-1 ACC) got past the Panthers (11-6, 2-4) in overtime.\n#12 West Virginia 81, TCU 49: Derek Culver scored 17 points and the host Mountaineers (14-2, 3-1 Big 12) routed the Horned Frogs (12-4, 3-1).\n#13 Dayton 79, VCU 65: Obi Toppin scored 24 points on a tender ankle as the host Flyers (15-2, 4-0 Atlantic 10) downed the Rams (12-5, 2-2).\n#14 Villanova 79, DePaul 75: Collin Gillespie made four straight free throws in overtime and scored 21 points as the host Wildcats (13-3, 4-1 Big East) beat the Blue Demons (12-5, 0-4) for the 19th straight time.\nWisconsin 56, #17 Maryland 54: Brad Davison hit a 3-pointer with 11 seconds left after getting a steal, and the host Badgers (11-6, 4-2 Big Ten) edged the Terrapins (13-4, 3-3).\n#21 Ohio State 80, Nebraska 68: C.J. Walker scored 18 points to help the host Buckeyes (12-5, 2-4 Big Ten) top the Cornhuskers (7-10, 2-4) and end a skid at four games.\n#23 Texas Tech 77, Kansas St. 63: Kyler Edwards scored a career-high 24 points as the visiting Red Raiders (11-5, 2-2 Big 12) prevailed over the Wildcats (7-9, 0-4).\n#4 UConn 68, Memphis 56: Crystal Dangerfield scored 24 and the visiting Huskies (14-1, 5-0 American Athletic) needed a late run to put away the Tigers (9-8, 0-4), who got 21 points and 10 rebounds from Dulcy Fankam Mendjiadeu.\nHave the Packers improved in the time since the 49ers beat them?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line368182"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8551645874977112,"wiki_prob":0.8551645874977112,"text":"Jimmy Kimmel Set to Return as Host for 90th Oscars\nThe 90th Oscars will be held on March 4, 2018 in Los Angeles\nPublished at 12:07 pm on May 16, 2017\nDespite his jokes that he'll never get asked back, Jimmy Kimmel is set to host the Oscars once more.\nThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday said Kimmel will return for the 90th Oscars with producers Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd, the team behind this year's ceremony.\nRatings for the 89th Oscars this past February were the lowest since 2008 with 32.9 million viewers tuning in, even with the drama of the envelope gaffe in which Faye Dunaway, reading an incorrect card, announced \"La La Land\" as the best picture winner.\nThe snafu was corrected on stage and \"Moonlight\" was given the award.\n\"Thanks to @TheAcademy for asking me to host The #Oscars again (assuming I opened the right envelope,\" Kimmel joked Tuesday on Twitter.\nThe 90th Oscars will be held on March 4, 2018 in Los Angeles and broadcast live on ABC.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1003715"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5789433121681213,"wiki_prob":0.5789433121681213,"text":"Bakersville: Out of crisis, a culture of wonder and creativity.\nby Jay Fields\n“Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe,” John Muir once wrote, and in the early days of 1998, record warm waters off the coast of Peru—what’s called an “El Nino” event—created enough climatic turbulence north of the equator to crack massive thunderheads over Roan Mountain, and swell Cane Creek to the point of becoming a fluid battering ram flying down the valley towards Bakersville.\nBridges, broken up and tossed to the side, splintered trees like matchsticks while the fast water overrode stream banks and rushed under sheds and cars. Once the heavy tide reached Bakersville, it destroyed the fire hall and and the Department of Social Services building, severely damaged the day care center on Cane Creek Road, Howard’s Garage, Hemline-Hughes Funeral Home, the Methodist Church and handfuls of other places, washing up into the businesses on Crimson Laurel Way.\nThe Roan Valley was declared a federal disaster area and, in the midst of recovery, Bakersville was also subject to a development moratorium because of its flood-battered wastewater treatment system.\nFor a community of less than 350 people (the seat of government in Mitchell County), the road ahead must have looked like a forest of broken-down spruce trees.\nA perfect reason, as it turns out, for hundreds of volunteers to pitch in, clear debris, help businesses reopen, and begin planning for a town with even more to offer.\nAs Mayor Charlie Vines has said, “The flood in 1998 brought the citizens of Bakersville closer than ever before.” Out of teamwork, it became clear that a redefined floodplain could shake loose an opportunity—specifically a creek walk along the Cane, which would in turn add to the civic fabric and simple beauty of the town.\nWith the help of the National Forest Service, HandMade in America’s Small Town Program, the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, Bakersville completed its creek walk in 2000, clearing a path for additional economic activity, including an upsurge of galleries and artist studios. From 2003 to 2007 alone, ten vacant buildings were occupied by new galleries, restaurants or service businesses.\nA little more than 10 years after disaster struck, Bakersville has emerged as a revitalized and lively place. In part because of the nearby presence of the Penland School, the work exhibited in its shops and studios would hold ground in New York or London; its Rhododendron Festival is an outdoor masterpiece of good fun; and its “Creek Walk” a celebration of community, resourcefulness and catch-and-release trout fishing.\nThe Astors and the Vanderbilts once overnighted in Bakersville on their way to the gardened saddles of the great Roan. It was a small place then, too, but on the map of people who knew about the best things. It’s still a small place. And it’s back on the map. It’s back on the map of people who, when you mention the word “Bakersville,” smile and begin to recollect the high mountain valleys and the last time they had the extreme good fortune to walk the short streets of this alluring mountain town.\n(Editor’s note: Many thanks to Bob Henslee of Bakersville for supplying a master list of flooded buildings and other points of clarity.)\nThanks to Jay Fields for providing this article, which originally appeared in the Toe River Journal.\nFields & Company € Established 2005\nJay Fields\nMarketing Storyteller\n71 Sherwood Road, Asheville, NC 28803\nOffice: 828-251-1373 or Cell: 828-215-1091\nJayfieldsandcompany.com\nJay-fields.blogspot.com\nFields & Company provides writing, design and creative development to help\nsmall companies, institutions and non-profits grow by communicating more\nWriter € Creative Director € Journalist € Editor € Public Relations","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1493302"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6419620513916016,"wiki_prob":0.6419620513916016,"text":"All posts for the month September, 2007\nHistory Buzz: September 2007\nMs. Goodman is the Editor/Features Editor at HNN. She has a Masters in Library and Information Studies from McGill University, and has done graduate work in history at Concordia University.\nPRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 2008 WATCH:\nLee Edwards on “Presidential candidates touting competence in appeal to voters”: “He won because everybody knew he was a competent guy and a good manager in World War II.”… Iraq is by far the biggest issue in this campaign and is inextricably linked to the competence debate, Edwards said. It also makes it “very tricky” for Republicans who want to promise to be more competent than Bush without alienating Republican voters still loyal to the president…. “They would not take kindly to what they would see as unfair criticism just for political purposes by someone who wants to succeed Bush.” Edwards said. – San Diego Union Tribune, 9-9-07\nKEN BURNS:\nKen Burns: Interviewed by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central (video) – Daily Show, 9-28-07\nKen Burns: What he missed – Harvey Kaye in the Guardian, 9-28-07\nGeoffrey C. Ward: The Making of The War (Interview) – Interview at American Heritage, 9-20-07\nKen Burns: He Returns to War – Brendan Miniter in the WSJ, 9-19-07\nKen Burns: Latinos plan protests of “The War” – AP, 9-18-07\nKen Burns: Subtext of WW II series, says Newsweek, is the Iraq War – Newsweek, 9-24-07\nKen Burns: $10 million spent to promote his WW II series – Boston Globe, 9-16-07\nBIGGEST STORIES:\nDouglas Brinkley: Gives back advance for Kerouac book – AP, 9-28-07\nTHIS WEEK IN HISTORY: This Week in History:\n30/09/1199 – Rambam (Maimonides) authorizes Samuel Ibn Tibbon to translate Guide of Perplexed from Arabic into Hebrew\n30/09/1452 – 1st book published, Johann Guttenberg’s Bible\n30/09/1777 – Congress, flees to York Pa, as British forces advance\n30/09/1787 – 1st US voyage around the world – Columbia leaves Boston\n30/09/1805 – Napoleons army draws into the Rhine\n30/09/1864 – Black Soldiers given Medal of Honor\n30/09/1946 – 22 Nazi leaders found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg\n30/09/1953 – Earl Warren appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court\n30/09/1962 – James Meredith registers for classes at University of Mississippi; JFK routes 3,000 federal troops to Mississippi\n01/10/1791 – 1st session of new French legislative assembly\n01/10/1768 – English troops under general Gauge lands in Boston\n01/10/1867 – Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital,” published\n01/10/1948 – Calif Supreme Court voids state statue banning interracial marriages\n01/10/1958 – Inauguration of NASA\n02/10/1187 – Sultan Saladin captures Jerusalem from Crusaders\n02/10/1535 – Jacques Cartier discovers Mount Royal (Montreal)\n02/10/1833 – NY Anti-Slavery Society organized\n02/10/1861 – Former VP John C Breckinridge flees Kentucky\n02/10/1870 – Italy annexes Rome and Papal States; Rome made Italian capital\n02/10/1967 – Thurgood Marshall sworn in as 1st black Supreme Court Justice\n03/10/1789 – Washington proclaims 1st national Thanksgiving Day on Nov 26\n03/10/1863 – Lincoln designates last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day\n03/10/1922 – Rebecca Felton of Georgia becomes 1st woman in Senate\n03/10/1941 – Nazi’s blow up 6 synagoges in Paris\n03/10/1942 – FDR forms Office of Economic Stabilization\n03/10/1974 – Watergate trial begins\n03/10/1990 – East Germany and West Germany merge to become Germany\n04/10/1636 – In Massachusetts the Plymouth Colony’s 1st law drafted\n04/10/1648 – Peter Stuyvesant establishes Americas 1st volunteer firemen\n04/10/1777 – Gen George Washington’s troops attacked British at Germantown Pa\n04/10/1854 – Abraham Lincoln made his 1st political speech at Illinois State Fair\n04/10/1864 – National black convention meets (Syracuse NY)\n04/10/1864 – New Orleans Tribune, 1st black daily newspaper, forms\n04/10/1880 – University of California founded in Los Angeles\n05/10/1582 – Gregorian calendar introduced in Italy, other Catholic countries\n05/10/1796 – Spain declares war on England\n05/10/1813 – Battle of Thames in Canada; Americans defeat British\n05/10/1862 – Federal fleet occupies Galveston, Texas\n05/10/1947 – 1st Presidential address televised from White House-HS Truman\n05/10/1953 – Earl Warren sworn in as 14th chief justice of US\n05/10/1970 – Quebec separatists kidnap British trade commissioner James Cross\n06/10/1683 – 13 Mennonite families from Germany found Germantown Pa (Phila)\n06/10/1781 – Americans and French begin siege of Cornwallis at Yorktown; last battle of Revolutionary War\n06/10/1944 – Canadians free Austria\n06/10/1945 – Gen Eisenhower welcomed in Hague (on Hitler’s train)\n06/10/1949 – Pres Truman signs Mutual Defense Assistance Act (for NATO)\n06/10/1961 – JFK advises Americans to build fallout shelters\n06/10/1973 – Yom Kippur War begins as Syria and Egypt attack Israel\n06/10/1976 – Pres Ford says there is “no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe”\n06/10/1996 – Bob Dole and Pres Bill Clinton meet in their 1st debate\n07/10/1579 – English royal marriage of queen Elizabeth I to duke of Anjou\n07/10/1690 – English attack Quebec under Louis de Buade\n07/10/1763 – George III of Great Britain issues Proclamation of 1763, closing lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlement\n07/10/1765 – Stamp Act Congress convenes in NY\n07/10/1777 – Americans beat Brits in 2nd Battle of Saratoga and Battle of Bemis Hts\n07/10/1780 – British defeated by American militia near Kings Mountain, SC\n07/10/1868 – Cornell University (Ithaca NY) open\n07/10/1886 – Spain abolishes slavery in Cuba\n07/10/1944 – Uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Uprising at Auschwitz, Jews burn down crematoriums\n07/10/1960 – 2nd JFK and Richard Nixon debate\n07/10/1963 – JFK signs ratification for nuclear test ban treaty\n07/10/1991 – Law Professor Anita Hill accuses Supreme nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments to her\nNiall Ferguson: Hired as consultant by hedge fund – http://www.finalternatives.com, 9-27-07\nCornélio Caley: Angolan experts should rewrite history – http://allafrica.com, 9-27-07\nJason K. Phillips: Historian Loves a Good (Civil War) Rumor – http://www.newswise.com, 9-26-07\nKen Hughes: Slate plays off his HNN article and Miller Center transcripts about Nixon’s antisemitism – Timothy Noah in Slate, 9-26-07\nJuan Cole: Ignites a controversy with attack on Israel’s foreign minister – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), 9-26-07\nTony Judt: NYU prof takes flak for Israel criticism – NYU News, 9-26-07\nJohn Coatsworth: Gets the Drudge treatment – Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria, 9-23-07\nMarixa Lasso: Another historian blocked from the US – Inside Higher Ed, 9-25-07\nAdame Ba Konare: Wife of head of African Union challenges Sarkozy for saying Africa has no history Reuters, 9-23-07\nArthur Schlesinger, Jr.: His Journals are being published – NYT, 9-23-07\nFrederick Kagan: Touts successes of the surge – Weekly Standard, 9-19-07\nREVIEWED AND FIRST CHAPTERS:\nJoseph J. Ellis on Jay Winik: Revolutionary Road THE GREAT UPHEAVAL America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 – NYT, 9-30-07\nJay Winik: THE GREAT UPHEAVAL America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800, First Chapter – NYT, 9-30-07\nDOUGLAS BRINKLEY on Michael Korda: Overlord’s Overlord IKE An American Hero – NYT, 9-30-07\nMichael Korda: IKE An American Hero, First Chapter – NYT, 9-30-07\nRick Atkinson: The Italian Job THE DAY OF BATTLE The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944. Volume Two of the Liberation Trilogy – NYT, 9-30-07\nTim Jeal: Stanley, I Presume STANLEY The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer – NYT, 9-30-07\nTim Jeal: STANLEY The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer, First Chapter – NYT, 9-30-07\nFrances Welch: Royal Pretender Was the woman pulled from a Berlin canal the daughter of the murdered Russian tsar? A ROMANOV FANTASY Life at the Court of Anna Anderson WaPo, 9-30-07\nJanet Malcolm: Staying On How did two elderly Jewish writers living in occupied France survive the Nazis? TWO LIVES Gertrude and Alice – WaPo, 9-30-07\nRichard Lyman Bushman: Explains the challenge a Mormon faces in writing about Mormon history – HNN Staff, 9-26-07\nEdward Larson: Fascinating account of dirty politics among our Founding Fathers – Seattle PI, 9-27-07\nDavid Halberstam: Slate says he succumbs to the great man theory of history in his book about Korea – Stephen Sestanovich in Slate, 9-24-07\nStanley Weintraub on David Halberstam: A Most Dangerous Precedent In his final book, Halberstam indicts MacArthur for America’s ordeal in Korea. THE COLDEST WINTER America and the Korean War WaPo, 9-23-07\nMark Lilla: Urges the West to remember the religious fanaticism in its past – Salon, 9-24-07\nJohn Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt: NYT publishes first chapter of their book From the first chapter of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy in the NYT, 9-23-07\nAdam Hart-Davis: Tells the history of the world in 600 pages – Times (UK), 9-22-07\nOP-ED:\nAlan Taylor: A fresh look at the founding fathers – New Republic, 9-24-07\nJonathan Zimmerman: Hateful speech isn’t hateful action – Christian Science Monitor, 9-26-07\nPROFILED:\nNiall Ferguson: Meet The Hedge Fund Historian – Forbes, 9-30-07\nJohn Hope Franklin: Weekly Standard takes notice (again) – Weekly Standard Scrapbook, 10-1-07\nArlan Helgeson: History gets personal for former Illinois State University prof – Onalaska Life, WI, 9-27-07\nSteven Lee Carson: Depression Might Have Derailed Lincoln’s Recovery, Historian Says – http://www.usmedicine.com, 9-24-07\nThey’re religious, but these historians say they’ve never felt the sting of discrimination – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), 9-25-07\nVictor Davis Hanson: Decries the decline of military history classes – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) summary of an article, “Why Study War?” by Mr. Hanson in City Journal, 9-13-07\nINTERVIEWED:\nFrederick Kagan: Interviewed about Petraeus’s testimony – Radio Free Europe, 9-12-07\nQUOTED:\nHONORED, AWARDED, AND APPOINTMENTS:\nKristin Stapleton: Joins UB faculty as new director of Asian Studies Program – Historian focuses on modern China – University at Buffalo Reporter, 9-27-07\nCarol Conaway: UNH professor wins Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize – UNH The New Hampshire, 9-27-07\nJay Rubenstein: Wins MacArthur “genius” grant – Chronicle of Philanthropy, 9-24-07\nRobert Sutton: WSU grad to become park service chief historian The public history graduate from WSU will fill big shoes when he takes over. – The Daily Evergreen, WA, 9-23-07\nFoundation for the National Archives Presents its 2007 Records of Achievement Award to Historian John Hope Franklin – UrbanMecca.com, FL, 9-20-07\nCharles Rappleye: Wins prize for best book about Revolutionary Era – Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table, 9-28-07\nSPOTTED & SPEAKING EVENTS CALENDAR:\nGarry Wills: Historian Speaks on Gettysburg – Daily Californian (Berkely student newspaper), 9-27-07\nPaul Boyer: Famed historian lectures on Revelation, Apocalypse – Daily Beacon, 9-27-07\nFrancisco Hurtado Mendoza: Historian tells story of early Mexican city – Telescope, CA, 9-24-07\nJack Rakove: Historian Tells How to “Live with Founders” – http://nn.byu.edu, 9-18-07\nOctober 4, 2007: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong: IDEAS Boston 2007 – Business Wire, 8-13-07\nON TV: History Listings This Week:\nC-Span2, Book TV : Bart Jones: Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution Monday, October 1 @ 1:00am C-Span2, BookTV\nPBS: American Experience: “World War II” Monday, October 1 @ 9pm/EDT – PBS\nHistory Channel: “Alaska: Dangerous Territory,” Sunday, September 30, @ 8pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Special :Nazi America: A Secret History,” Monday, October 1, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Digging For The Truth :God’s Gold, Part 1” Monday, October 1, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Cities Of The Underworld :10 – Beneath Vesuvius” Monday, October 1, @ 10pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :The Vikings” Monday, October 1, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “The Universe :Beyond the Big Bang,” Tuesday, October 2, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: ” The Universe :The End of the Earth: Deep Space Threats to Our Planet,” Tuesday, October 2, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Mysteries of the Garden of Eden,” Tuesday, October 2, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Seven Wonders of the World,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :Braveheart’s Scotland,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 4pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :The Pagans,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 5pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :Al Capone’s Secret City,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “UFO Files :The Day after Roswell,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 10pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Egypt Decoded,” Wednesday, October 3, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Rescue at Dawn: The Los Banos Raid,” Thursday, October 4, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Hippies,” Thursday, October 4, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Modern Marvels :Engineering Disasters,” Friday, October 5, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Tsunami 2004: Waves of Death,” Friday, October 5, @ 4pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Modern Marvels,” Marathon Saturday, October 6, @ 2-5pm ET/PT\nSELLING BIG (NYT):\nGeoffrey C. Ward: THE WAR #8 (2 weeks on list) – 10-7-07\nRobert Draper: DEAD CERTAIN #14 (3 weeks on list) – 10-7-07\nJohn J. Mearsheimer and M. Walt, by : THE ISRAEL LOBBY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY #24 – 10-7-07\nFUTURE RELEASES:\nAlex Ross: The Rest Is Noise, (FSG, Oct.). A history of the 20th century through its remarkable music.\nDaniel Walker Howe: What Hath God Wrought, (Oxford, Oct.). Three decades that transformed us, from the battle of New Orleans to the Mexican-American War.\nRichard Rhodes: Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, October 9, 2007\nBenjamin J. Kaplan: Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, (Harvard University Press, October 15, 2007)\nMartin Gilbert: Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, October 16, 2007\nStacy A. Cordery: Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, October 18, 2007\nAida D. Donald: Lion in the White House: A Life of Theodore Roosevelt, October 22, 2007\nRichard Avedon, The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, (HarperCollins Publishers, October 23, 2007)\nSally Bedell Smith: For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years, October 23, 2007\nLaurence Bergreen: Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, October 23, 2007\nBill Sloan: The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945–The Last Epic Struggle of World War II, October 23, 2007\nJoseph J. Ellis: American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, October 30, 2007\nRonald Reagan: The Reagan Diaries (Leatherbound Edition), October 30, 2007\nDavid W. Blight: A Slave No More, (Harcourt, Nov.). The slave narratives of two Americans serve as eye-opening corridors to history.\nLady Bird Johnson: A White House Diary, November 1, 2007\nStephen William Berry: House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, A Family Divided by War (Houghton Mifflin Company, November 5, 2007)\nM. Stanton Evans: Blacklisted by History: The Real Story of Joseph McCarthy and His Fight against America’s Enemies, (Crown Publishing Group, November 6, 2007)\nChad Alan Goldberg: Citizens and Paupers: Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen’s Bureau to Workfare, November 15, 2007\nThomas Keneally: A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia, Paperback, December 4, 2007\nThe Great Experiment, by Strobe Talbott (S&S, Jan.). How mere tribes became great nations.\nJames J. Sheehan: Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?, (Houghton, Jan.). The rejection of violence after World War II redefined a continent. Europe chose material well-being over war.\nJoseph V. Noble: Expert in Antiquities, Dies at 87 – NYT, 9-29-07\nJohn Klier: Professor of Modern Jewish History, dies – Press Release–University College of London, 9-24-07\nProfessor John Crook – Telegraph.co.uk, 9-18-07\nPosted on Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 10:36 PM\n9/11 6TH ANNIVERSARY:\n11/09/2001 – Terrorists hijack two passenger planes crashing them into New York’s World Trade Towers causing the collapse of both and death of 2,752 people\n11/09/2001 – Terrorists hijack a passenger plane and crash it into the Pentagon causing the death of 125 people\n11/09/2001 – Attempt by passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 to retake control of their hijacked plane from terrorists causes plane to crash in Pennsylvania field killing all 64 people onboard\n9/11 101: Professors try to put terrorist attacks in a broader context – Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 9-9-07\nZachary H. Alexander: “Specifically, the actions of one tragic day can have a long-term impact on people for several generations. As such, to be able to grasp the entire landscape of Sept. 11’s legacy, we must not shortchange any of its parts.” – Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 9-9-07\nRandy Roberts: 9-11 now history – Ascribe, 9-4-07\nJames Pfiffner on “For next president, USA likely to call on lawyer”: “Hard-charging CEO deciders are very appealing to the American electorate. Saying ‘I can look at all sides of the issues’ is really important, but it doesn’t impress voters as much.” – USA Today, 9-5-07\nIrwin Unger: Candidates’ Rhetoric Can Fail To Translate into Official Policy Even election win does not guarantee words will become deeds – US Department of State, DC, 9-6-07\nJohn Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt: Their book as controversial as their original article on Israel Jacob Laksin at FrontpageMag.com, 9-4-07\nJohn Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt: MESA protests cancellation of their talk – Juan Cole at Informed Comment (blog), 9-7-07\nJohn J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt: Taken to task by David Remnick in the New Yorker – New Yorker, 8-27-07\n10/09/1349 – Jews who survived a massacre in Constance Germany are burned to death\n10/09/1547 – English demand Edward VI, 10, wed Mary Queen of Scots, 5\n10/09/1608 – John Smith elected president of Jamestown colony council, Va\n10/09/1776 – George Washington asks for a spy volunteer, Nathan Hale volunteers\n10/09/1861 – -15] Battle at Cheat Mountain, Elkwater West Virginia\n10/09/1861 – Battle of Carnifex Ferry VA, 170 casualities\n10/09/1939 – In WW II, Canada declared war on Germany\n10/09/1940 – Buckingham Palace hit by German bomb\n10/09/1942 – RAF drops 100,000 bombs on Dusseldorf\n10/09/1943 – German troops occupied Rome and took over the protection of Vatican City\n10/09/1993 – Israel and PLO sign joint recognition statements\n11/09/1557 – Catholic and Lutheran theology debated in Worm\n11/09/1649 – Massacre of Drogheda, Ireland, Oliver Cromwell kills 3,000 royalists\n11/09/1773 – Benjamin Franklin writes “There never was a good war or bad peace”\n11/09/1789 – Alexander Hamilton appointed 1st Secretary of Treasury\n11/09/1940 – Buckingham Palace in London destroyed by German bombs\n11/09/1943 – Jewish ghettos of Minsk and Lida Belorussia liquidated\n11/09/1944 – FDR and Churchill meet in Canada at 2nd Quebec Conference\n12/09/1695 – NY Jews petition governor Dongan for religious liberties\n12/09/1862 – Battle of Harpers Ferry VA\n12/09/1953 – Sen John F Kennedy, 36, marries Jacqueline Bouvier, 24\n12/09/1958 – US Supreme Court orders Little Rock Ark high school to integrate\n13/09/1556 – Charles V and Maria of Hungary march into Spain\n13/09/1663 – 1st serious slave conspiracy in colonial America (Virginia)\n13/09/1788 – NY City becomes 1st capital of US\n13/09/1847 – American-Mexican war: US Gen Winfield Scott captures Mexico City\n13/09/1861 – 1st naval battle of Civil War, Union frigate “Colorado” sinks privateer “Judah” off Pensacola, Fla\n13/09/1906 – 1st airplane flight in Europe\n13/09/1943 – Chiang Kai-shek became president of China\n13/09/1948 – Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me) elected senator, 1st woman to serve in both houses of Congress\n13/09/1953 – Nikita Khrushchev appointed 1st secretary-general of USSR\n13/09/1993 – Israeli min of Foreign affairs Peres and PLO-Abu Mazen sign peace accord\n14/09/1862 – Federal troops escape from beleaguered Harpers Ferry West Virginia\n14/09/1872 – Britain pays US $15« M for damages during Civil War\n14/09/1917 – Provisional government of Russia forms, Republic proclaimed\n14/09/1940 – Congress passes 1st peace-time conscription bill (draft law)\n14/09/1948 – Ground breaking ceremony for UN world headquarters\n14/09/1948 – Gerald Ford upsets Rep Bartel J Jonkman in Mich 5th Dist Rep primary\n14/09/1983 – US House of Representatives votes, 416 to 0, in favor of a resolution condemning Russia for shooting down a Korean jetliner\n15/09/1620 – Mayflower departs from Plymouth England with 102 pilgrims [OS May 8]\n15/09/1656 – England and France sign peace treaty\n15/09/1776 – British forces capture Kip’s Bay Manhattan during Revolution\n15/09/1862 – Confederates conquer Union-weapon arsenal at Harpers Ferry WV\n15/09/1914 – Battle of Aisne begins between Germans and French during WW I\n15/09/1923 – Gov Walton of Oklahoma declares state of siege because of KKK terror\n15/09/1935 – Nuremberg Laws deprives German Jews of citizenship and makes swastika official symbol of Nazi Germany\n15/09/1941 – Nazis kill 800 Jewish women at Shkudvil Lithuania\n15/09/1959 – Soviet Premier Khrushchev arrives in US to begin a 13-day visit\n15/09/1963 – 4 children killed in bombing of a black Baptist church in Birmingham\n15/09/1981 – US Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O’Connor\n16/09/1630 – Mass village of Shawmut changes name to Boston\n16/09/1782 – Great Seal of US used for 1st time\n16/09/1848 – Slavery abolished in all French territories\n16/09/1908 – Carriage-maker, William Durant, founded General Motors Corp\n16/09/1940 – Luftwaffe attacks center of London\n16/09/1940 – FDR signs Selective Training and Service Act (1st peacetime draft)\n16/09/1941 – Jews of Vilna Poland confined to Ghetto\n16/09/1968 – Richard Nixon appears on “Laugh-in”\n16/09/1971 – 6 Klansmen arrested in connection with bombing of 10 school buses\n16/09/1974 – Pres Ford announces conditional amnesty for US, Vietnam War deserters\n17/09/1562 – Council of Trente takes ecclesiastical canon\n17/09/1691 – Colony Massachusetts Bay gets new charter\n17/09/1787 – US constitution adopted by Philadelphia convention\n17/09/1796 – Pres George Washington delivers his farewell address\n17/09/1850 – Great fire in San Francisco\n17/09/1862 – Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam)-bloodiest day of Civil War, 23,110 die\n17/09/1900 – Commonwealth of Australia proclaimed\n17/09/1952 – “I am an American Day” and “Constitution Day” renamed “Citizenship Day”\n17/09/1986 – US Senate confirms William Rehnquist as 16th chief justice\nDr. Edward J. Cashin, is gravely ill and under medical care today in Atlanta, after he collapsed while working on his newest book – Augusta Chronicle, GA, 9-7-07\nHoward Zinn: Book turned into theater event – http://www.provincetownbanner.com, 9-6-07\nNorman Finkelstein: Resigns at DePaul U., After Deal Forestalls Threats to Defy University – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), 9-5-07\nAcademic freedom and Middle East Tensions Flare Again in U.S. – Inside Higher Ed, 9-5-07\nRoss Fitzgerald: Dispute after academic paid $900,000to write history of Queensland – http://www.news.com.au/couriermail, 9-6-07\nMary Kegley: Historian questions Wilderness Road brochure – http://www.roanoke.com, 9-4-07\nAlfred W. McCoy: A scholar asserts that key figures in the discipline had ties to torture – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), 9-7-07\nIranian-U.S. Scholar Esfandiari Leaves Iran – Radio Free Europe, 9-3-07\nIt’s not just historians accused of plagiarism: The University president on the hot seat – Inside Higher Ed, 9-4-07\nSouth Korean art historian with fake credentials spurs national scandal – NYT, 9-1-07\nRonald Radosh: Satisfied Pete Seeger has denounced Stalin, but it wasn’t the first time – NYT, 9-1-07\nRandall Hansen: Historian decries change to war museum exhibit – CanWest News Service, 8-29-07\nNorman Finkelstein: Controversial Professor Plans to Risk Arrest After University Cancels His Classes – Fox News, 8-30-07\nRobert Collins: At center of censorship storm over book on terrorism Cinnamon Stillwell at the website of CampusWatch, 8-29-07\nRobert Collins: A busy, controversial summer, for emeritus historian – HNN Staff, 8-29-07\nWilliam Chafe, Sally Deutsch, Joycelyn Olcott, Pete Sigal, and Irene Silverblatt: Taken to task by historian KC Johnson for comments during the Duke lacrosse case – Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria, 8-27-07\nDavid Halberstam: Friends to go on book tour in his stead – NYT, 8-28-07\nJean-Yves Mollier: Says Online Libraries Serve the Wealthy – Euro Topics, 8-22-07\nDiane Ackerman: Antonina’s List THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE – NYT, 9-9-07\nHanna Rosin: Political Fundamentals GOD’S HARVARD A Christian College on a Mission to Save America – NYT, 9-9-07\nHanna Rosin: GOD’S HARVARD A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, First Chapter – NYT, 9-9-07\nLaurel Thatcher Ulrich: A prize-winning scholar explores the hidden history of women. A prize-winning scholar explores the hidden history of women WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN SELDOM MAKE HISTORY – WaPo, 9-9-07\nDr. David Downing: Professor’s book offers “narrative history” of Civil War A South Divided: Portraits of Dissent in the Confederacy – Etownian, PA, 8-31-07\nEamon Duffy: His genius at recovering worlds we have lost – Benjamin Schwarz in the Atlantic, 10-1-07\nRichard D. Kahlenberg: A surprise that his book on Albert Shanker was published by Columbia U Press – Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Education, 9-5-07\nA.C. Grayling: Philosopher writes history book questioning WW II bombing of civilians – The Age, 9-1-07\nWalid Phares: His new book explores the rise of the academic jihad – Asaf Romirowsky at FrontpageMag.com, 9-4-07\nKC Johnson: His book on the Duke lacrosse case getting lots of buzz – Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE), 8-28-07\nIsabella Ginor & Gideon Remez: Their research hailed as “sensational” – Daniel Pipes at his blog, 8-24-07\nEric Rauchway: Why John Edwards is the man to lead us out of the mortgage crisis New Republic, 9-5-07\nFrederick Kagan: What the Jones Report really says – Weekly Standard, 9-6-07\nAbigail Thernstrom: A stunning new book shows how elite culture made the Duke rape hoax possible – WSJ, 9-6-07\nPeter Brears: One of Britain’s leading food historians – Yorkshire Post, 9-3-07\nKen Burns: Profiled in the LAT – LAT, 9-2-07\nLaurel Thatcher Ulrich: Helping revolutionize women’s history – Megan Marshall in Slate, 9-4-07\nJohn Lutz: Works on solving old crimes to interest students in history – http://www.canadaeast.com, 8-28-07\nCarolyn Eastman: Historians need to correct the assumption that women did little public speaking in 19th century – Chronicle of Higher Education summary of article in Gender & History (8-27-07\nDoug Brinkley: Interviewed about Katrina – John Kasich interview with Douglas Brinkley on the O’Reilly Factor, 8-30-07\nPeniel E. Joseph: Interviewed about Harold Cruse’s “The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual” – Scott McLemee at the website of Inside Higher Education, 8-29-07\nVictor Davis Hanson: Interviewed about military history – http://www.victorhanson.com, 8-29-07\nJulian Zelizer on “Report Won’t End Debate”: “I don’t think there’ll be dramatic change. There are not many surprises left on Iraq. It’s a known quantity…. Iraq policy probably will move incrementally in the direction of an end strategy,” with Congress passing “vague legislative steps” toward withdrawal.” – Philadelphia Inquirer, 9-9-07\nStuart Butler: Cited by David Brooks in NYT column on health care – David Brooks in the NYT (9-7-07)\nRobert K. Sutton: Appointed to fill long-vacant post as Chief Historian, National Park Service – Press Release–National Park Service, 8-30-07\nJarod Roll: 2006 Best Ph.D. Dissertation Prize in labor history – http://www.joplinindependent.com, 8-28-07\nKC Johnson: Guest on ABC’s morning show to discuss – Ralph Luker at HNN blog, Cliopatria, 9-4-07\nEdwin C. Bearss: Nationally recognized historian visits Plattsburgh – http://www.pressrepublican.com, 9-4-07\nEdwin C. Bearss: Historian knows forest and trees of Civil War – http://www.herald-mail.com/, 9-4-07\nSeptember 11, 2007: Geoffrey Ward: On Tuesday, September 11, at 7 p.m., Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein will host an “American Conversation” with award-winning historian and biographer Geoffrey Ward – Press Release–National Archives, 8-14-07\nC-Span2, Book TV : History 2007 Roosevelt Reading Festival: Jean Edward Smith: “FDR” Sunday, September 9 @ 5:00pm C-Span2, BookTV\nC-Span2, Book TV : History Juan Cole “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East” Sunday, September 9 @ 10:00pm C-Span2, BookTV\nPBS: American Experience: “The Center of the World New York: A Documentary Film” Monday, September 10 @ 9pm/EDT – PBS\nHistory Channel: “Digging For The Truth :Mummies of the Clouds,” Monday, September 9, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “American Vesuvius,” Monday, September 10, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Shootout :Iraq’s Most Wanted: Terror at the Border,” Monday, September 10, @ 4pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Digging For The Truth :The Hunley: New Revelations” Monday, September 10, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Cities Of The Underworld :02 – City of Caves” Monday, September 10, @ 10pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :Herod the Great” Monday, September 10, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Countdown to Ground Zero,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “The 9/11 Commission Report,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 4pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Zero Hour :The Last Hour of Flight 11,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 6pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “The Day the Towers Fell,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 7pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Grounded on 9/11,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 8pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Ground Zero Search and Recovery,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “The Man Who Predicted 9/11,” Tuesday, September 11, @ 11pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Kennedys: The Curse of Power,” Wednesday, September 12, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Shootout :Afghanistan’s Deadliest Snipers,”\nHistory Channel: “Lost Worlds :Building the Titanic,” Wednesday, September 12, @ 9pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “American Eats: History on a Bun,” Thursday, September 13, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Blood Diamonds,” Friday, September 14, @ 2pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Our Generation :Son of Sam,” Friday, September 14, @ 6:30pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “Human Weapon,” Marathon Saturday, September 15, @ 2-5pm ET/PT\nHistory Channel: “The Universe : Beyond the Big Bang,” Saturday, September 15, @ 5pm ET/PT\nMichael Korda: IKE #9 (2 weeks on list) – 9-2-07\nTim Weiner: LEGACY OF ASHES #16 – 9-2-07\nNancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy: THE PREACHER AND THE PRESIDENTS #18 – 9-2-07\nWalter Isaacson: EINSTEIN HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE #31 – 9-2-07\nWASIHNGTON POST FALL BOOK PREVIEW:\nChurchill and the Jews, by Martin Gilbert (Henry Holt, Oct.). The prime minister’s lifelong commitment to Jewish rights.\nThe Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, by David Halberstam (Hyperion, Sept.). Epic history from the late, lamented journalist.\nThe Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, by Rick Atkinson (Holt, Oct.). The sequel to his award-winning An Army at Dawn.\nThe FBI, by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (Yale, Sept.). Splitting duties between the FBI and the CIA in 1947 was a big mistake, J. Edgar Hoover was not as important as you think, and other revelations.\nRed Moon Rising, by Matthew Brzezinski (Times, Sept.). The launch of Sputnik and the rise of the space age.\nThe Rest Is Noise, by Alex Ross (FSG, Oct.). A history of the 20th century through its remarkable music.\nReturn to Dragon Mountain, by Jonathan D. Spence (Viking, Sept.). The surprisingly modern era of Ming dynasty China, as seen through the life of a 17th-century intellectual.\nThe Siege of Mecca, by Yaroslav Trofimov (Doubleday, Sept.). The harrowing 1979 raid on Islam’s holiest shrine may have signaled the birth of al-Qaeda.\nA Slave No More, by David W. Blight (Harcourt, Nov.). The slave narratives of two Americans serve as eye-opening corridors to history.\nWhat Hath God Wrought, by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford, Oct.). Three decades that transformed us, from the battle of New Orleans to the Mexican-American War.\nWhere Have All the Soldiers Gone?, by James J. Sheehan (Houghton, Jan.). The rejection of violence after World War II redefined a continent. Europe chose material well-being over war.\nThe Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman (Norton, Sept.). The Warsaw Zoo became a refuge for Jews during the height of Nazi fury.\nGeoffrey C. Ward: The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945, (Knopf Publishing Group, September 11, 2007)\nAndrew Nagorski: Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow That Changed the Course of World War II, (Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group, September 18, 2007)\nDavid Halberstam: Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, (Hyperion, September 27, 2007)\nJohn Kelin, Praise From a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report, (Wings Press TX), September 28, 2007\nMaureen Waller: Sovereign Ladies: The Six Reigning Queens of England, (St. Martin’s Press, September 28, 2007)\nRick Atkinson: Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, October 2, 2007)\nRichard Avedon, The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, (HarperCollins Publishers), October 23, 2007\nAugusta historian Edward Cashin dies at 80 – AP, 9-9-07\nLou Collins: Halifax historian Collins dead at 85 – http://www.cbc.ca/canada/, 9-4-07\nPosted on Sunday, September 9, 2007 at 5:24 PM\nby bonniekgoodman on September 30, 2007 • Permalink\nPosted in History Buzz\nTagged Historians, News\nPosted by bonniekgoodman on September 30, 2007\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/history-buzz-9-2007/\nTop Young Historians: 69 – John C. McManus\nEdited by Bonnie K. Goodman\n69: John C. McManus, 10-1-07\nTeaching Position: Associate Professor, University of Missouri-Rolla\nArea of Research: US Military History, World War II, Americans in Combat, and 20th Century US History.\nEducation: Ph.D. in History, University of Tennessee, 1996.\nMajor Publications: McManus is the author of Alamo in the Ardennes: The Story of the American Soldiers who made the Defense of Bastogne Possible (John Wiley and Sons, March 2007); The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944, the American War From the Beaches to Falaise, (New York: TOR-Forge, 2004); The Americans at D-Day: The American Experience in Operation Overlord, (New York: TOR-Forge, 2004); Deadly Sky: The American Combat Airman in World War II, (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 2000); The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II, (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1998)\nMcManus is also the author of the following forthcoming books: The 7th Infantry: Combat in an Age of Terror, Korea through the Present, TOR-Forge, (May 2008); American Courage, American Carnage: The 7th Infantry Regiment and the Story of America’s Combat Experience, 1812 through World War II, TOR-Forge, (forthcoming); U.S. Military History for Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, (November, 2007); Tipping the Balance: The United States in World War II, University of Missouri Press, (forthcoming pending review), and Grunts: The American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II through the Present, Signet/Penguin USA, (Fall 2009).\nMcManus has contributed numerous articles and reviews to World War II, and has contributed reviews to The Journal of Military History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Military History of the West, among others.\nAwards: McManus is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:\nEdgar and Jeri Wilson Fellowship Recipient\nBernadotte Schmidt Fellowship Recipient\nGerman Public Radio Fellowship Recipient\nNormandy Scholars Fellowship Recipient\nWho’s Who Among American Teachers\nArts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Awards: 2001-2002, 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2006;\nClass of 1942 Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award: 2003-2004;\nUMR Outstanding Teacher Award: 2003-2004, 2005-2006;\nW.E. and Peggy Wiggins Faculty Excellence Award: 2004, 2006;\nUMR Faculty Excellence Award: 2005, 2006;\nEdgar and Jeri Wilson Research Fellowship;\nBernadotte Schmidt Research Fellowship, 1998;\nCollege of Arts and Science Dean’s Research Grant, 2001-2002;\nUM System Research Board Grant, 2004;\nThe Americans at Normandy named to St. Louis Post-Dispatch best books of 2004.\nIn 2004 McManus worked as a tour guide and historian with Stephen Ambrose Tours, leading groups to various beaches in Normandy for the 60-year commemoration ceremony, then throughout Europe touring other battle sites.\nHe is a member of the editorial advisory board of World War II magazine.\nPersonal Anecdote\nWhy am I a combat historian? Many people have asked me that question. To be honest with you, I ask myself that question all the time. There are, after all, many more pleasant topics for an American historian to address than delving into the terrible realities of modern war. Sometimes it can be difficult to spend your days immersed in studying the horrible waste, bloodshed and tragedy of war and then somehow let all of that go when the day is done. Chuck Johnson, my mentor at the Center for the Study of War and Society at the University of Tennessee, used to say of combat studies: “If it doesn’t break your heart, you shouldn’t be doing this.” Well, it breaks my heart and, yes, that’s precisely why I do it. In fact, I am quite passionate about it. That passion began when I first studied World War II as a boy, and it has only grown throughout my professional career.\nMore than anything else, I am fascinated by ordinary Americans in extraordinary circumstances, and no circumstance is more extraordinary than combat. Everyday Americans are the ones who have fought America’s wars. They come from all regions, all creeds, and all races, if not exactly both genders. Studying them is a wonderful vehicle into understanding the American past. I suppose I also cling to the hope that, by understanding war, we can eventually prevent it or at least curtail it significantly.\nRegardless of what war we’re talking about, nothing more can ever be asked of an American than to risk his life in combat. I believe it is important that we understand, as realistically as possible, what that combat experience entailed, without resorting to flowery euphemisms or political slogans. For those who have fought our wars, the least we can do is remember what they did and understand something about what the experience was really like for them. We should know, for instance, that American combat soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge existed in sub-zero temperatures, dealing with frostbite and the threat of hypothermia. We should know that, at Peleliu, Marines often fought their Japanese enemies at handshake distance, to the death, in one hundred degree heat. We should know that, in Vietnam, an infantry soldier on an average patrol carried seventy pounds of gear, in grinding heat, all while watching out for booby traps or a Viet Cong ambush.\nThe focus of my teaching and research is to make these realities come to life for the larger analytical purpose of bettering our understanding of American history. Actually, that brings me to the most compelling reason why I study combat. As a modern historian, I’ve had the precious opportunity to meet and know my sources, from geriatric World War II veterans to college-age soldiers in the Iraq War. My goal is to make sure to collect and tell their stories before they are lost in the mists of time. I encourage them to write down their memories. I conduct personal interviews with them.\nMuch of my work, of course, is done in such research treasure troves as the National Archives, the United States Army Military History Institute and the World War II Museum in New Orleans, to name only some of my archival haunts. But nothing is more rewarding than melding the after action reports, orders, unit diaries and other official sources I find in these archives with the personal recollections of the soldiers themselves. My books are the product of this mixture of the official and the informal.\nOver the years, I’ve logged a lot of miles in pursuit of my research, archival or otherwise. This has included a wide range of moving experiences–conducting battlefield tours from Normandy to Germany, with many of the veterans who fought in these places; studying the Bastogne area minutely, with the help of an amazingly knowledgeable local expert who lived through the war and lost his home to shellfire; attending more veterans reunions and visiting more military bases than I could ever count; giving an untold number of lectures, gathering many thousands of stories. I’ve even conducted group after action combat interviews with Iraq War infantry soldiers. What stands out to me about all this is the people I’ve met and, in some cases, befriended, from guys who jumped into Normandy on D-Day, to Vietnam vets who fought in the anonymity of faraway jungles, to volunteers who repeatedly left their families behind to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. They did these remarkable things yet they are just ordinary Americans with homes, families, jobs, mortgages and personal problems like everyone else. That’s what is truly fascinating about them. I’m simply their storyteller. That’s why I do what I do.\nBy John C. McManus\nBeyond the obvious pride they exhibited in looking back at their service, many combat airmen also became wistful as they thought of days past. In so doing, they articulated the essence of what they as combat airmen had been all about — pride, sacrifice, fear, humor, teamwork, anguish — and what they had become as old men. At the very end of his postwar memoir, Jim Lynch, a radio operator in the 379th Bomb Group, provided some particularly moving prose to describe this essence: “Germany’s devastated cities have long since been replaced by modern architectural wonders. The abandoned airfields are grown over by weeds. The sagging, moss-covered buildings of our former home base are quiet. The friendly banter of the laughing young crewmen and the staccato roar of the starting engines are long since silenced. We . . . are no longer the flat-tummied kids who rode the skies with romantic notions that we could save the world from self-destruction. We’re older and wiser. We’re tired senior citizens who have sent our sons off to war twice after fighting the war to end all wars. We have . . . raised families and lived a very normal American way of life, for which we were grateful.\nAnother combat airman, writing five decades after the war in a veterans’ publication, perhaps expressed best the experiences of American combat airmen in World War II — and, in so doing, the kind of people these men were: “All air combat crewmen in World War II were the same. We all groaned when the curtain in our briefing room was pulled aside, and the long red ribbon stretching from our bases . . . to the target . . . was revealed. We all grabbed our mikes and our masks and our Mae Wests and heaved ourselves into the throbbing, shaking aluminum tubes of death, which smelled of high-octane gas, cordite, and urine. We all prayed a bit when the flak . . . whomped around us. We all cursed a lot when the fighters slashed in, wings aglow with our death candles. We all grieved for our buddies who didn’t make it.”\nTruly, no greater and more appropriate epitaph to the American combat airman in World War II could ever be written. — John C. Manus in “Deadly Sky: The American Combat Airman in World War II”\nAt last, here is a book that tells the full story of the turning point in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge-the story of five crucial days in which small groups of American soldiers, some outnumbered ten to one, slowed the German advance and allowed the Belgian town of Bastogne to be reinforced. Alamo in the Ardennes provides a compelling, day-by-day account of this pivotal moment in America’s greatest war.\nIn December 1944, when the Germans launched their last-ditch offensive now known as the Battle of the Bulge, they badly needed to capture the Belgian city of Bastogne as a communications center, supply depot, and springboard for their drive to Antwerp. The city’s defense by the 101st Airborne is often cited as the battle’s most desperate and dramatic episode, but these heroics never could have happened if not for the unsung efforts of a ragtag, battered collection of American soldiers who absorbed the brunt of the German offensive first along the Ardennes frontier east of Bastogne.\nAlamo in the Ardennes tells the powerful, poignant, yet little-known story of the bloody delaying action fought by the 28th Infantry Division, elements of the 9th and 10th Armored Divisions, and other, smaller units. Outnumbered at times by as much as ten to one, outgunned by Hitler’s dreaded panzers, and with no hope of reinforcement, they bore the full fury of the Nazi onslaught for five days, making the Germans pay for every icy inch of ground they gained. — John C. McManus, “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\nD-Day was just the beginning Never before has the American involvement in Normandy been examined so thoroughly\nor exclusively as in The Americans at Normandy. D-Day was only one part of the battle, and victory came from weeks of sustained effort and sacrifices made by Allied soldiers. Here is the American experience from the aftermath of D-Day to the slaughter of the Falaise Gap, from the courageous, famed figures of Bradley, Patton, and Lightning Joe Collins to the lesser-known privates. The Americans at Normandy honors those Americans who lost their lives in foreign fields and those who survived. Here is their story, finally told with the depth, pathos, and historical perspective it deserves. — John C. McManus, “The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944, the American War from the Beaches to Falaise”\nAbout John C. McManus\n“McManus’s absorbing and forthright narrative will hopefully dispel several myths, namely that Bastogne was the decisive engagement of the Battle of the Bulge, and give long-overdue credit to the many brave Americans, some of them still alive today, who made victory possible in America’s greatest ever battle. You can’t ask for more. Bravo!” — Alex Kershaw, author of “The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge” and “the Epic Story of WWII’s Most Decorated Platoon” on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“John McManus has deftly woven a wide range of previously untapped sources into a dramatic and finely detailed account of events that set the stage for the successful defense of Bastogne during the Ardennes Counteroffensive. In doing so, McManus pays a long overdue and heartfelt tribute to the brave men of the 110th Infantry Regiment, Combat Command R, 9th Armored Division, and CCB, 10th Armored Division without detracting from the epic stand of the “Screaming Eagles” of the 101st Airborne Division.” — Lt. Col. (Ret.) Mark J. Reardon, U.S. Army Historian and Author of Victory at Mortain on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“A comprehensive and vivid account of the heroic defense of Bastogne, the linchpin in the Battle of Bulge. With a scholar’s precision and a writer’s keen eye for the telling detail, John C. McManus has taken a great old story and made it new again.” — Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “An Army at Dawn and the bestselling In the Company of Soldiers” on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“I have read hundreds of books about men in battle but seldom have I seen one that comes close to the intensity that John McManus achieves in Alamo in the Ardennes. To an unparalleled degree, his amazing research has enabled him to get inside the minds and hearts of dozens of soldiers, from generals to privates. This is a book that will become one of the classics of the literature of World War II combat.” — Thomas Fleming author of “The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II” on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“John McManus shines a light on the lesser-known battles that made the historic defense of Bastogne possible. His excellent research puts the reader on the icy battlefields of Belgium where threadbare American retrograde fighting frustrated Hitler’s last offensive in the west.” — Kevin M. Hymel, author of “Patton’s Photographs” on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“Alamo of the Ardennes” reveals the largely unknown story of how small bands of American soldiers turned the tide during the early stages of Battle of Bulge. Through the words of the men, McManus weaves a brilliant story of courage and sacrifice. This definitive and eminently readable history is destined to be a classic among Bulge histories.” — Patrick K. O’Donnell, author of “We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah” and “Beyond Valor: World War II’s Ranger and Airborne Reveal the Heart of Combat” on “Alamo in the Ardennes: The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible”\n“An American Iliad” — Stephen Coonts on “The Americans at D-Day and The Americans at Normandy”\n“Required reading on a bitter battle that won’t be–and never should be–forgotten.” — W.E.B. Griffin on “The Americans at D-Day and The Americans at Normandy”\n“Awesome! A definitive account of a turning point in American and world history.” — Thomas Fleming on “The Americans at D-Day and The Americans at Normandy”\n“Far more gripping than Saving Private Ryan. Comprehensively detailed . . . Utterly fascinating. McManus’ style fits the slam-bang fighting that characterized one of the most crucial periods of the war, and he makes every battle—and every soldier—count as if it were the last round in the clip.” — Walter J. Boyne, New York Times bestselling author of Operation Iraqi Freedom on The Americans at D-Day and The Americans at Normandy\n“I thought I knew something about war and men at war until I read John C. McManus’ deeply insightfiul book. I stand humbled by what I consider nothing less than a definitive work on a subject whose scope is simply so vast that no writer until now has put it in perspective and made it real.” — David Hagberg on The Americans at D-Day and The Americans at Normandy\n“This guy is simply the greatest. He actually makes History interesting, and that’s not an easy thing to do. He’s got a great sense of humor, and you learn a lot in his classes without having too high of a difficulty. I can’t stress enough the quality of this professor.”… “Very good prof. Easily one of the top five profs at UMR, and one of the top two in the history department.”… “Most awesome teacher EVER!!! I would seriously be a history major if he taught every class.”… “Absolute favorite teacher EVER. I have never loved a class more or learned more in one semester. Lecture was like listening to a story, I was just enthralled. I have a LOT of respect for him and would consider changing majors if he taught every class.” — Anonymous Students\nPosted in Top Young Historians\nTagged John C. McManus\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/30/top-young-historians-john-mcmanus/\nTop Young Historians: 68 – Jonathan Zimmerman\n68: Jonathan Zimmerman, 9-24-07\nTeaching Position: Director of the history of education program &Professor of Education and History, Steinhardt School of Education and Professor of history in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, New York University.\nArea of Research: Twentieth Century History of Education, Democratic Community and Education, Immigration History, The influence of schools on development\nEducation: Ph.D., Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, 1993.\nMajor Publications: Zimmerman is the author of Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century (Harvard University Press, 2006); Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Harvard, 2002), and Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America’s Public Schools, 1880-1925 (Kansas, 1999). He is currently working on Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory (forthcoming from Yale University Press, 2008).\nZimmerman has comtributed academic articles to the Journal of American History, the Teachers College Record, and History of Education Quarterly, and has also contributed book chapters to academic anthologies. Some titles include: “Where the Customer is King: American Textbooks Since 1945,” in A History of the Book in America, volume 5 (University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming in 2007); “Sex, Drugs, and Right ‘N’ Wrong: Or, the Passion of Joycelyn Elders, M.D,” in Donald Warren, ed. Moral and Civic Learning in America (Palgrave Press, 2006), 191-205; “Interchange: History in the Professional Schools,” Journal of American History 92 (September 2005), 553-576; “Brown-ing the American Textbook: History, Psychology, and the Origins of Modern Multiculturalism,” History of Education Quarterly 44 (Spring 2004), 45-69 (Special Edition on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education); “Ethnics Against Ethnicity: European Immigrants and Foreign-Language Instruction, 1890-1940,” Journal of American History, 2002; “Each ‘Race’ Could Have its Heroes Sung’: Ethnicity and the History Wars in the 1920s,” Journal of American History, 2000; “Beyond Double Consciousness: Black Peace Corps Volunteers in Africa, 1961-1971,” Journal of American History, 1995, among others.\nAwards: Zimmerman is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:\nDistinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians, 2004-07;\nFulbright Senior Specialists Roster, Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 2005-present;\nHonorable Mention, Best Article Award, History of Education Society, 2004, for “Ethnics Against Ethnicity: European Immigrants and Foreign Language Instruction, 1890-1940,” Journal of American History 88 (March 2002), 1383-1404;\nOutstanding Book Award, History of Education Society, 2003, for Whose America?: presented to the author of the best book in the history of education;\nTeaching Excellence Award, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University, 2003: presented to the outstanding teacher in the school;\nNew Scholar’s Award, American Educational Research Association (Division F), 2001, for Distilling Democracy: presented to the author of the best first book in the history of education;\nNational Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1999-2000;\nDaniel R. Griffiths Research Award, School of Education, New York University, 1999: Presented to the faculty member who produces the best research;\nHenry Barnard Prize, History of Education Society, 1991: Presented to the best graduate student essay in the history of education;\nJacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 1988.\nZimmerman has comtributed over 150 oped pieces in popular newspapers and magazines, including: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic, U.S. News and World Report, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, and New York Post.\nFormerly Assistant Professor of History, West Chester University, August 1992-May 1996; Social Studies Teacher, Southeast Middle School, Baltimore City Public Schools, 1987-1988; Social Studies Teacher, South Burlington School District, South Burlington, Vermont, 1986-1987, and English Teacher/ Teacher Trainer, U.S. Peace Corps, Nepal, 1983-1985.\nI’m not a religious person, in the usual sense of the term, but I’ve come to believe in epiphanies. I had my first one about 15 years ago, when I was doing my doctoral research. As a former Peace Corps volunteer and public school teacher, I entered graduate school with the vague idea of writing a dissertation about education. Drug and alcohol instruction seemed like a good topic, because I knew-from my own experience-that it was mostly a failure. So I resolved to uncover the roots of this evil phenomenon, as historians are wont to do, and to explain How We Went So Very Wrong. Along the way, of course, I would also demonstrate How I Was So Very Right. Historians like to do that, too.\nAs I soon discovered, public school alcohol education was the brainchild of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. So I buried myself in WCTU journals and archives, exploring how these dedicated but misguided ladies (as I saw them) spread the good word about Demon Rum. Then, a few months into my research, I unearthed a letter from F. C. Atwell. Like me, Atwell was a career educator; even more, he was also a bitter critic of the WCTU. “If my child had scarlet fever, it would be the height of folly for me to call in a physician and demand that he cure him by the use of cod liver oil,” Atwell wrote, in an attack on “meddling” temperance women. “Those who have studied neither pedagogy nor psychology should be content to leave the details and the method of achieving the desired result to those who have.”\nI squinted into the microfilm reader, struggling to decipher Atwell’s unwieldy handwriting. More than that, though, I struggled against myself. Denouncing the WCTU put me in league with F. C. Atwell, who simply did not believe that laypeople-and, especially, laywomen-should have any say in public school curricula. And that was not a place where I wanted to be. So I rethought the entire project and-eventually-my entire philosophy, about education and everything else.\nThat was my first epiphany. I’ve experienced others, too, in every book that I’ve written. The epiphany comes on suddenly, shocking you out of your smug self-assuredness. It humbles you with its force and its logic. And, most of all, it makes you surprised. In my second book, about debates over history and religion in the school curriculum, I was surprised to find that most advocates for “prayer in the public schools” before the 1960s were liberal or even radical Christians, not conservative or fundamentalist ones. In my third book, I was surprised to find that the “cultural sensitivity” of overseas American missionaries and teachers-including, at one time, myself-masked a profoundly arrogant set of assumptions about culture itself. And I was surprised, throughout my career, at how many of my questions and answers concerned matters of faith and God. Like I said, I’m not a religious person. But I’ve come to understand the immense role of luck and grace in my own life, especially in the history that I write. And that might be my biggest epiphany of all.\nBy Jonathan Zimmerman\nFor America’s overseas schoolteachers, the rise of the culture concept spelled the demise of American certainty, and, for some, of American superiority. In the early twentieth century, when di- chotomous notions of “civilization” and “savagery” dominated their discourse, the teachers could speak confidently about transmitting “virtue” or “knowledge” to people who lacked them. By the 1930s, however, the notion of America as a distinct culture-with its own val- ues, symbols, and beliefs-began to penetrate public consciousness. It would reach a crescendo in the early postwar period, when studies of an allegedly exceptional American “national character” crowded best- seller lists. To square the idea of a unique American culture with the nation’s new global powers and responsibilities, commentators like Henry Luce hypothesized that American values were actually cultural universals: in the American Century, Luce proclaimed, the United States would help other countries achieve the self-evident truths that had bathed its own birth. For American teachers in actual classrooms, though, this feat of ideological gymnastics often proved impossible. Im- bued with the concept of America-as-a-culture, the teachers saw first- hand that many peoples around the globe simply did not share their own values and beliefs. So they started to ask hard questions about whose values-and whose beliefs-should govern the world, and why. — Jonathan Zimmerman in “Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century”\nAbout Jonathan Zimmerman\n“”What enables Zimmerman, a Professor of Education and History at New York University, to control such a large canvas of time and space is his focus on the classroom and the experience of teaching – from philosophy to methods to discipline. What makes the prose so readable is his use of primary sources – teachers’ letters and memoirs primarily, but also quotes from educational administrators, both American and foreign, as well as historians, social scientists, and occasionally celebrities like Teddy Roosevelt.” — David Espey, University of Pennsyvania about “Innocents Abroad American Teachers in the American Century”\n“This charming history of the missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, and other idealists who taught in the four corners of the world over the past 100 years is billed by the author and publisher as an examination of our shifting understanding of “culture”…For readers interested in education, though, it offers an even more delicious treat: countless scenes of progressive teachers thwarted in their efforts to export dubious ideas.” — Education Next about “Innocents Abroad American Teachers in the American Century”\nZimmerman examines the culture wars that have been fought in America’s schools since the Civil War and divides what is commonly held to be one battle into two distinct conflicts, each with its own unique beginnings… By placing these conflicts within their historical context, the author leads readers to a deeper understanding of the issues and how they have influenced and continue to influence public school instruction. [A] landmark piece of scholarship. — Mark Alan Williams, Library Journal reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\nZimmerman argues that the educational wars over religion in the schools and the content of history and social studies courses are separate battles with different stakes, and that the former have been more contentious than the latter. He offers histories of both since the 1920s to illustrate his point and concludes with suggestions about how the religious wars might be resolved. This is a thought-provoking and well-written book…[It] is essential reading for anyone concerned with these issues. — M. Engel, Choice reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\nZimmerman does make a convincing argument. Examples of history textbooks published today substantiate his claim of a diversity coexisting with dullness. So, what exactly does Zimmerman’s position mean for the classroom? This book calls for a reexamination of how U.S. history is taught…This call for presenting multiple perspectives in American history classrooms is a timely one. — Athena Liss, Social Education reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\nJonathan Zimmerman has written a terrific book. Beautifully written and deeply informed, Whose America? addresses issues in American education, politics and identity that are enormously important. It is the best study yet done of political battles about curriculum, how political horse-trading on all sides has shaped the nature and substance of textbook versions of history, and it has great relevance to debates currently raging about what is taught in schools, in matters of facts and values. On these inflammatory subjects, Zimmerman’s even-handed treatment of all sides of these deeply divisive issues is one of the book’s great strengths, and offers a lesson in itself to future historians. — Jeffrey Mirel, Professor of Educational Studies and History, University of Michigan reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\nJonathan Zimmerman’s provocative book reminds us that the passionately argued “culture wars” in American public schools have a long history in America’s public schools. Whose America? illuminates those battles, old and new, with impressive scholarship and story-telling, and deep understanding of the combatants on all sides. — Diane Ravitch, Research Professor, New York University School of Education reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\nWhose America? is original in its historical argument, thorough in its scholarship, lively in its style, and timely in its subject. It cuts through the polarized rhetoric of the culture wars and shows the virtue of controversy: “debating our differences may be the only thing that holds us together.” — David Tyack, Professor of Education and History, Stanford University reviewing “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”\n“Should public school pupils be indoctrinated against alcohol and drugs? Or should they be taught to think? As Zimmerman shows, these important questions are not new. By focusing on tensions between science and morality and between democracy and experts, his insightful book makes valuable contributions to the histories of education, science, public policy, and the Progressive Era.” — W.J.Rorabaugh, University of Washington reviewing “Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America’s Public Schools, 1880-1925”\n“I took two classes with Professor Zimmerman. He’s amazing! You will learn more about how to think than what to think.”…”Professor Zimmerman is soo great! He is really helpful and interesting, and makes it very clear that he cares what you think. Definitely take his class if you can. You’ll love him!” — Anonymous Students\nPosted on Sunday, September 23, 2007 at 6:02 PM\nTagged Jonathan Zimmerman\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/23/top-young-historians-jonathan-zimmerman/\nTop Young Historians: 67 – Kenneth A. Osgood\n67: Kenneth A. Osgood, 9-17-07\nTeaching Position: Associate Professor of History, Director, Alan B. Larkin Symposium on the American Presidency, Florida Atlantic University\nArea of Research: US History, US Foreign Relations, Propaganda, Media & Culture\nEducation: Ph.D., History, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2001.\nMajor Publications: Osgood is the author of Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (University Press of Kansas, 2006), the winner of the Herbert Hoover Book Award, and the co-editor with Klaus Larres of The Cold War after Stalin’s Death: A Missed Opportunity for Peace? (Rowman and Littlefield, Harvard Cold War Series, 2006).\nHe has written articles and book reviews for Diplomatic History, The Journal of Cold War Studies, The Journal of American History and other anthologies and journals, including: “Hearts and Minds: The Unconventional Cold War [review essay]” Journal of Cold War Studies 4:2 (Spring 2002): 85-107; “Form before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy,” Diplomatic History 24:3 (Summer 2000): 405-433.\nHe has also contributed book chapters including: “The Perils of Coexistence: Peace and Propaganda in Eisenhower’s Foreign Policy,” in Kenneth Osgood and Klaus Larres, eds. The Cold War after Stalin’s Death: A Missed Opportunity for Peace?, (Rowman and Littlefield, Harvard Cold War Series, 2006); “Words and Deeds: Race, Colonialism, and Eisenhower’s Propaganda War in the Third World,” in Andrew L. Johns and Kathryn Statler, eds. Eisenhower, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (Rowman and Littlefield, Harvard Cold War Series, 2006), 3-25; “Waging Total Cold War: Eisenhower and Psychological Warfare,” in Malcolm Muir, Jr. and Mark F. Wilkinson, eds. The Most Dangerous Years: The Cold War, 1953-1975 (Virginia Military Institute, 2005), 79-91. “Propaganda,” in Alexander DeConde, Richard Dean Burns, and Fredrik Logevall, eds. Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, 2nd. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2001), 239-254.\nOsgood is currently working on The Enemy of My Enemy: The United States and Iraq since 1958 [research monograph]; Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century [edited volume, under contract with the University Press of Florida], and Rethinking Public Diplomacy: Toward an International History [edited volume].\nAwards and Fellowships: Osgood is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:\nHerbert Hoover Book Award, for best book on any aspect of American history during 1914-1964, 2007;\nSponsored Research, Florida Atlantic University, Program to Enhance Scholarly and Creative Activities Research Grant, 2007;\nResearcher of the Year Award nominee, College of Arts and Letters, Florida Atlantic University, 2006;\nUniversity Award for Excellence in Teaching, Florida Atlantic University, 2004;\nWriting Across the Curriculum workshop and grant, Florida Atlantic University, 2004;\nGrant from the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace (Columbia University) to attend the Summer Workshop on Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy held at Cornell University, 2004;\nPostdoctoral Fellowship, The Mershon Center (for the Interdisciplinary Study of International Security and Public Policy), Ohio State University, 2003-4;\nDwight D. Eisenhower Foundation research grant, 2003;\nPredoctoral Fellowship, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, 1999/00 & 2000/01;\nRichard Mayberry Award for top graduate student in history, U.C. Santa Barbara, 2000;\nResearch Fellowship, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1999;\nAcademic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1999 Brython Davis Research Fellowship, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1999;\nResearch Grant, Rockefeller Archive Center, 1999;\nUniversity of California Regents Fellowship, 1999;\nWilliam J. Ellison Prize for outstanding research paper in history, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1998;\nJ. Bruce Anderson Award for excellence in teaching history, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1998;\nRobert Kelley Award for excellent graduate work in public policy history, U.C. Santa Barbara, 1998.\nDuring the 2006-2007 academic year, Professor Osgood held the Mary Ball Washington Chair in American History at University College Dublin. Previously, he was a research fellow at the Mershon Center for international security studies at the Ohio State University, and a fellow with the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California. He also served as associate coordinator of the Center for Cold War Studies at the UC Santa Barbara, and as a representative on the council for the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.\nI know why Stanley Kubrick made Dr. Strangelove a comedy. Sometimes it is just plain difficult to take the Cold War seriously. Having spent the past ten years studying Cold War propaganda, I have embarrassed myself in more than one archive by disturbing the silence with unexpected bursts of laughter.\nThere was, for example, the time I found a civil defense poster giving Americans straightforward advice for protecting themselves from a nuclear attack: “Don’t be there!” And then there was the national security investigation into the birthplace of “Ham,” the chimpanzee sent into outer space as part of the U.S. effort to catch up with the Soviet Union’s lead in the space race. The classified memorandum confirmed that, yes indeed, Ham was an American-born monkey. And then there were the ideas for demonstrating American scientific prowess. Why not drop a hydrogen bomb into a typhoon to reverse its direction? Maybe dig a harbor in Alaska by exploding a thermonuclear device? Or perhaps use a rocket – i.e. a ballistic missile – to deliver the mail?\nAnd of course there was Atoms for Peace, the program designed to make Americans less fearful of the atomic bomb by highlighting all the wonderful benefits of atomic energy. Inspired by Atoms for Peace propaganda, National Geographic comforted its readers with the knowledge that golf balls had been made radioactive so they could be more easily located when lost in the rough. And dogs benefited from atomic energy’s healing power too, the magazine revealed in a caption of a photograph of a boy holding his puppy as it received radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor. Perhaps, I thought as I kept encountering references to dogs in the course of my research, I should write my next book on the “Canine Cold War.”\nBut I’m not a satirist. I’m a historian. My task and my challenge is to take all this seriously – to understand, to explain, and to find meaning in a world that sometimes seems very different from the one I am living in now. In this endeavor I am reminded of a personal experience that was both unsettling and inspiring. I was a junior at Notre Dame looking into graduate programs in history. I arranged a meeting with Otis Graham, the eminent political historian who was then teaching at U.C. Santa Barbara. I think I expected him to be so dazzled by my brilliance that he would accept me into the program on the spot and shower me with cash. Instead he told me not even to apply to graduate school – or at least not yet.\nHe said I should follow “Graham’s Rule.” He explained that historians write about life, and that to be good historians we needed to be grounded in the real world; we needed to have many rich and varied experiences. “So take a year off,” he advised me. “See the world, do the kind of things you can only do now, while you are young. And then, when you are ready, go to graduate school.”\nAt first I was crushed. This was not the advice I expected. But an hour later I was inspired, and I soon was spending my time following Graham’s rule. I worked as a chef at a ski resort and a golf club in Utah; I spent six months studying Russian in Monterey, California and St. Petersburg, Russia; I worked as an intern at the State Department in Washington, D.C., and I drove my pickup truck from California, to Florida, to Maine, to Alaska, and back. A year and a half later, I started graduate school at U.C. Santa Barbara.\nI learned Graham was right. These experiences made me a better historian. They changed the way I view and interpret my study of the past. Conversely, so too has my study of history changed the way I look at the world. Even the seemingly narrow subject of my research — the Cold War’s propaganda battles — offers broader lessons and bigger insights. It clarifies the way humans communicate and interact — the way they represent themselves, the way they spin unpleasantness, the way they deceive others, and the way they are willingly deceived by others. It is also a subject that became strangely relevant after September 11th, 2001 and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Will today’s Stanley Kubrick make a film about the war on terror? Will it be as much of a cultural landmark as Strangelove was? And will it be a comedy, a tragedy, or a little of both? I know enough to know that only time will tell.\nBy Kenneth A. Osgood\nThis process by which leaders employed the prospect of peace to further their own ends has a longer history.\nThroughout the twentieth century, world leaders used appeals for peace to bolster their legitimacy at home. They also manipulated the hope of peace to create the psychological conditions and moral space for war. They perceived … that hatred and vengeance were necessary, but not sufficient, requirements of total war mobilization. Such passions needed to be softened and made morally acceptable by rhetorical bombast and propaganda framing total war as a communal sacrifice, carried by the entire nation, to bring about a more peaceful and prosperous future. — Kenneth A. Osgood in “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\nAbout Kenneth A. Osgood\n“Osgood’s book is a carefully crafted, thoroughly researched, and illuminating analysis of U.S. psychological warfare and propaganda during the height of the Cold War. When ‘public diplomacy’ is stated to be critical for winning the war against terrorism, it is invaluable to have this study of the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to win the hearts and minds of humankind during the turbulent decade of the 1950s.” — — Melvyn P. Leffler, author of “A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Impressively researched, packed with new information and insights, Total Cold War is a major contribution to Cold War studies and the history of the Eisenhower presidency. An outstanding first book.” — George Herring, author of “America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“This is more than just another chapter in the history of psychological warfare. Osgood’s well-researched volume uses topics as diverse as cultural diplomacy, the arms race, and the space race to shed new light on efforts by the Eisenhower Administration to shape opinions at home as well as abroad, in the free world as well as the communist world. The book succeeds in large part by situating its narrative in a larger context having to do with the new media resources that made this kind of warfare easier and more sophisticated, with the nature of modern war as total war, and with the growing interpenetration between the public and the private spheres, between war and peace, between the home front and the front line that became increasingly typical of both modern war and the modern corporative state.” — Michael J. Hogan, author of “A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Kenneth Osgood continues the scholarly tradition of raising historians’ estimate of the Eisenhower presidency. Total Cold War is a highly informative, suavely argued, conscientiously researched, and articulate book, which shows how crucial the techniques of psychological warfare were to the geopolitical strategy of the United States in the 1950s. Osgood makes a superlative case for the resourcefulness of an administration that was once dismissed as too stodgy to wage an effective fight against Communism abroad.” — Stephen J. Whitfield, author of “The Culture of the Cold War” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“This is far and away the most thorough, sophisticated, and meticulously researched account of U.S. propaganda efforts during the early Cold War. Kenneth Osgood’s pathbreaking study demonstrates the centrality of such efforts to the overall foreign policy strategy of the Eisenhower administration. As issues of image and public diplomacy have once again gained currency in the contemporary era, this book could not be more timely.” — Robert J. McMahon, author of “The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia Since World War II” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Total Cold War is totally absorbing and will alter our understanding of the ways that Americans waged the Cold War in the 1950s. With the United States now engaged in another global battle for hearts and minds, Osgood’s rich and rewarding study is timely and instructive.” — Chester J. Pach, author of “Arming the Free World: The Origins of the United States Military Assistance Program, 1945-1950” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Kenneth Osgood’s path-breaking book on how the Eisenhower administration tried to shape world and domestic opinion at the height of the Cold War could not be more relevant today. Elegantly written and powerfully argued, Total Cold War reminds us that pens and microphones can be as important as guns and bombs in defending U.S. national security. The book belongs on the shelf of core texts for understanding U.S. foreign relations.” — Timothy Natfali, author of “Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“This is a superb book that sheds valuable light on the Eisenhower administration’s efforts to sway official and public opinion in the non-Communist world. The use of psychological warfare against the Soviet bloc has been covered in several recent books, but Kenneth Osgood highlights the ‘other side’ of U.S. psychological operations-the operations that focused on neutral countries, on U.S. allies, and on the American public. Osgood convincingly shows, in a sophisticated narrative that weaves together many topics and themes, that the struggle to ‘win hearts and minds’ in Western countries and the Third World was at least as high a priority for the United States as the battle to influence sentiments in the Communist bloc. Total Cold War offers a remarkably comprehensive look at the vast array of programs and policies that cumulatively shaped the Eisenhower administration’s attempts to convey a positive image of U.S. values and American society abroad. The book alters our understanding not only of U.S. foreign policy but of the whole way the ‘war of words and deeds’ was ‘fought.'” — Mark Kramer, Director of the Cold War Studies Center at Harvard University and editor of the “Journal of Cold War Studies” reviewing “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Kenneth Osgood has written probably the best book to date on any aspect of U.S. Cold War propaganda. … I highly recommend this book.” — “Pacific Historical Review” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“…a nuanced, thoughtful and rewarding study grounded in admirably exhaustive research.” — “Diplomatic History” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“… provocative and disturbing … Total Cold War deserves a wide audience. Despite the continued classification of relevant documents, Osgood has written a well-researched, comprehensive account of one of the Cold War’s often overlooked front lines.” — “Journal of American History” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Osgood breaks new ground in shifting his focus from tales of psychological operations to foment unrest behind the Iron Curtain to the broader effort to win the hearts and minds of people in the free world. … Well written and beautifully illustrated, this book provides engaging reading for anyone interested in the Cold War, psychological warfare, information operations, or the views and policies of the thirty-fourth president.” — “Journal of Military History” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Many other books have concentrated on psychological operations behind the so-called Iron Curtain, but Florida Atlantic University history professor Kenneth Osgood’s Total Cold War emphasizes the extent to which Eisenhower’s propaganda agencies directed their messages to friends, not foes. … a fascinating cultural analysis.” — “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“Kenneth Osgood covers ground that cold war scholars often identify but rarely traverse. … Osgood forces his readers to reconsider Eisenhower’s cold war strategy within the context of “total war.” He also provides them with a tool for evaluating America’s struggle for hearts and minds today.” — “History: Reviews of New Books” review of “Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad”\n“I have had Dr. Osgood for three graduate classes and rate him extremely high. Tough, knowledgeable, accurate and expressive, he is the professor to have in his area of concern – diplomatic history.”… “Osgood is the greatest teacher at FAU. If you need a history class he is your man.”… “I would totally recommend this class to everyone. Professor Osgood is an awesome teacher and very helpful. Loved it!!!”… “Dr. Osgood is one of the best teachers.”… “I loved this class!”… “Dr. Osgood is one of the most effective instructors I have ever had.”… “Excellent class, truly broadened my horizons.”… “Really opened my mind.”… “I have learned so much from this course, and I value what I learned more than what I learned in any other class.” — Anonymous Students\nTagged Kenneth A. Osgood\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/top-young-historians-kenneth-osgood/\nTop Young Historians: 66 – Beverly Gage\n66: Beverly Gage, 9-10-07\nTeaching Position: Assistant Professor of History, Yale University\nArea of Research: The evolution of American political ideologies and institutions.\nEducation: Ph.D., U.S. History, Columbia University, 2004\nMajor Publications: Gage completed her graduate work at Columbia University, where her dissertation “The Wall Street Explosion:\nCapitalism, Terrorism, and the 1920 Bombing in New York” received the Bancroft dissertation award for best U.S. history dissertation. Her first book, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror, examines the history of terrorism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It focuses on the 1920 Wall Street explosion, an unsolved terrorist attack that killed 39 people in New York’s financial district. Oxford University Press will publish the book in May 2008. Gage has written for numerous journals and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Nation, The New York Times, the Nation, New York Times Book Review, and Reviews in American History.\nSome of her book chapters and journal articles include: “The First Wall Street Bomb,” After the World Trade Center, edited by Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin (New York: Routledge, 2002); “Why Violence Matters: Radicalism, Politics, and Class War in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, January 2007.\nAwards: Gage is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including among others:\nMorse Junior Faculty Fellowship, 2007-2008;\nKeroden Fund course development grant, 2005-2006;\nBancroft Dissertation Award, 2004;\nWhiting Fellowship, Columbia University, 2002-2003;\nJunior Fellowship, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University, 2001-2002;\nSummer Research Fellowship, Columbia University, 2001;\nBrebner Travel Fellowship, Columbia University, 2000-2002;\nPresident’s Fellowship, Columbia University, 1998-2002;\nRichard J. Hofstadter Fellowship, Columbia University, 1997-1998;\nDissertation Fellowship, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, 2002-2003.\nGage teaches courses on terrorism, communism and anticommunism, American conservatism, and 20th-century American politics.\nGage wrote more than 150 articles for the New Haven Advocate and affiliated weekly newspapers, and was Managing Editor for the New Haven Advocate from 1996-1997. She wrote and edited award-winning news articles, features, and reviews for weekly newspaper, concentrating on criminal justice, labor, media, and cultural reporting. Earned awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the National Newspaper Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists.\nGage was the host/featured investigator in two History Channel programs exploring the early history of the Cold War. The episodes, part of the History Channel’s Lost Worlds series, aired August 15 and 29, 2007. The programs examined strategic atomic production and testing sites, as well top-secret bunkers designed to protect key U.S. personnel in case of nuclear attack.\nFeatured commentator, Pane Amaro, directed by Gianfranco Norelli, Italian public television, broadcast 2007\nNow, I say it casually. “Oh, I was writing about this before 9-11,” I tell students and reporters who ask how I happened upon the subject of my first book. “This” is the history of terrorism in the U.S.-specifically, the story of what occurred on Wall Street on September 16, 1920. At 12:01 that afternoon, a bomb exploded into the lunchtime crowd at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York, killing 39 people and wounding hundreds more. In 2001, I had just started writing my dissertation about this event and its role in prolonging the postwar Red Scare.\nI was living in New York at the time. A graduate student at Columbia, I had recently moved to Brooklyn. As a result, I had a near-perfect view of the World Trade Center’s collapse. I heard the second plane crash while walking my dog in Prospect Park (I thought it was a blown transformer), learned that “a plane hit the World Trade Center” on my way home (I pictured a small Cessna, nothing too serious), and watched the rest of the day’s now- familiar tragedy play out from atop my roof.\nWhat this would mean for writing history was hardly the first thing on my mind that day. As my neighbors and I sealed up our windows and gathered downstairs to await further news from across the river, it seemed entirely possible that nothing would be worth writing again.\nThen the political battles began. Within days of 9-11, newspapers and television started to inform us quite authoritatively that terrorism in the U.S. was an entirely new phenomenon, a burst of evil with a dark future but no real past. In response, I launched a frenzied round of article- and editorial-writing (including–full disclosure–a short piece for HNN) pointing out that terrorism, in fact, had its own long and messy history.\nIn those early days, I found myself seized as well by a perverse urge to share my storehouse of uncanny historical detail with friends and family. I silenced many a dinner party that autumn pointing out how the stock exchange reopened on the same day in 2001 that it reopened after the bombing in 1920.\nThat impulse mercifully faded, along with the sense that everything, from the price of grapefruits to the daily weather report, had to somehow reference 9-11. But as “normalcy” (to borrow Warren Harding’s famous 1920 coinage) set in, I found myself confronted with a more insistent set of questions about how to write about the history of terrorism in this altered world. Were comparisons between past and present worth making? Had the present now irretrievably distorted the past? Was it possible to write decent history on a subject so heavily politicized? Most of all, did the entire subject now seem too ghoulish and opportunistic? It was in this context that I began to issue my first disclaimers–“Oh, I was writing about this before 9-11…”-as if to show that my motives and analysis remained uncorrupted.\nToday, I have not arrived at definitive answers to all of these questions. But I no longer feel quite so much urgency to compare the present and past, or to justify my subject in relation to the present day. This is in part because new issues, especially domestic debates over civil liberties, have made the relevance of past experience far more self-evident. Mostly, though, it’s because the passage of time has made it possible, once again, to look at history on its own terms.\nThe latest draft of my book (The Day Wall Street Exploded, Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2008) hardly mentions 9-11 at all. In that sense, I’ve now come full circle from where I began more than six years ago. What first drew me to the Wall Street explosion was not its connection with the present, but my genuine surprise that such an event had been so thoroughly excised from our memories of the past. If recovering that story helps to lend a bit of insight into the dispiriting and often terrifying politics of the world around us today, so much the better.\nBy Beverly Gage\nAmericans almost expected the Wall Street explosion.Nobody knew, precisely, that it would erupt just after noon on September 16, 1920, shattering windows throughout New York’s financial district, scattering metal slugs into the lunchtime crowd, injuring hundreds of men and women, claiming 39 lives.Nobody knew-except, perhaps, the person who abandoned a horse-drawn cart, loaded with dynamite, at the corner of Wall and Broad streets that morning. And except, some thought, for a man named Ed Fisher, who in the weeks before the explosion sent frantic notes to his friends on Wall Street, warning them to “keep away” and “get out” in mid- September. When the police arrested Fisher in Canada on the evening of September 16, he denied any responsibility for the bombing. He explained that he had learned of the Wall Street plot through “messages out of the air,” and that God had reinforced his fears with a terrible headache. The detectives doubted that Fisher had a special relationship with God, but they ultimately accepted his claim that something “in the air” had foretold the disaster. Fisher had merely gotten lucky on the specifics, they concluded; given the politics of recent years, anyone might have predicted that, sooner or later, a bomb would explode on Wall Street.This sense of inevitability, of predictability, was one of the most pronounced aspects of the public response to the event that came to be known as the “Wall Street explosion.” By some measures, the blast that tore through Wall Street on September 16 was unprecedented—the deadliest act of terrorism to that point in U.S. history. Even more stunning to many contemporaries than the sheer number of deaths was what the World called the “hopeless futility of the slaughter.” The explosion came at an unremarkable moment: lunchtime on a Thursday. Until noon, there had been nothing to distinguish September 16 from any other day on Wall Street: no parades, no demonstrations, no strikes or particular spats. “If the explosion was designed it was an act of diabolism almost unparalleled in the annals of terrorism,” wrote the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There was no objective except general terrorism. The bomb was not directed against any particular person or property. It was directed against the public, anyone who happened to be near or any property in the neighborhood.”\nBut for all of the grief and shock at the blast, there was also a sense that, like Ed Fisher, the country should have seen it coming. “It is not surprising that the bomb massacre was accomplished in New York,” mourned the Washington Post. “Rather it would have been surprising if this festering sore had not come to its horrid head.” To the Post and many others, the explosion seemed to be the awful culmination of a half century’s worth of bitter political conflicts: over the growing power of Wall Street, over the rights of political radicals in the U.S., over the problems of political violence and terrorism, over the nature of industrial capitalism itself.\nWhen it finally came, on September 16, 1920, the Wall Street explosion seemed to capture all of these conflicts and send them hurling forth in a hail of metal and flesh and fire. It took a popular political metaphor—the idea of an “attack on Wall Street”—and made it terribly real. — Beverly Gage in the introduction to the forthcoming “The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror” (May 2008)\nhttp://history.yale.edu/sites/default/files/styles/portrait/public/pictures/picture-100-1355327894.jpgAbout Beverly Gage\n“Professor Gage is a great lecturer, and extremely approachable as a person and teacher. It is fairly simple to put together an informative presentation for lecture, but she not only makes them interesting and engaging, she has also proven to be great at small group discussions as well. I wish I had another opportunity to take a class with her. You can feel how passionate she is about the subject material. It is rare to find a professor like her.”…\n“Prof. Gage is an incredible lecturer: well organized, entertaining, and provocative. Lectures were definitely something I wanted to go to. Also, I think Prof. Gage asked all the right questions, making the class come alive and worth studying. I especially liked how she decided to present all these different topics and tried to unify them.”…\n“Professor Gage is an amazing lecturer. She’s interesting and extremely knowledgeable and approachable. Her lectures were great supplements to the reading, so most of the studying that I did for midterms and finals came directly from my notes. I thoroughly enjoyed every class.”…\n“Great lecturer who really knows her stuff and understands how to convey it in an interesting and thought- provoking manner. I especially appreciated her very objective and non-judgmental approach as well as her focus on the broad themes and questions raised by the historical narrative.”…\n“Professor Gage’s lectures were, in one short word, excellent. They were well planned, methodical, and interesting. Like clockwork, every lecture began with her outlining where we headed for that day – the theme, the overarching question, and its relation to others – so that we were never once caught off guard. He lectures were amazingly clear – I knew exactly what she meant and what she was talking about and what she wanted to convey at that moment. At the same time they were interesting and extremely engaging. Very rarely did I want to miss this class.Also, her use of films and slide show presentations was very efficient and very effective. Neither were too often or too limited within the course of the semester. When it was needed it was done and it helped greatly.” — Students from Lecture Courses\n“She was excellent. One of the best teachers I have had at Yale. She knew a lot about every topic we discussed, and did a very good job of leading the discussions and making them flow. She also always had material returned on time and was easy to talk to about papers or reading, and very understanding about any conflicts.”…\n“Prof. Gage is highly knowledgeable and very en”gage”d in the material. She is approachable and willing to help. She manages to teach a politically charged topic in a completely unbiased manner.”…\n“Professor Gage was great. She was really wonderful at leading a full class discussion. A subject like contemporary American politcs can get emotional and silly if a class does not stay in the text and she did a great job keeping everyone in the reading during class. She didn’t let on her own beliefs at all and really encouraged conversation. She was also really accesible outside of class.”…\n“Prof. Gage was the best seminar leader I have ever had – she clearly put a lot of time and effort into leading a good seminar. Discussion was always excellent.”…\n“I pretty much love her. Her enthusiasm for the subject is infectious, and she did a fantastic job of guiding class discussion so that it was incisive, well-considered, and edifying.” — Students from Seminar courses\n“Professor Gage is one of the best professors I have had. She created a pleasant atmosphere in class, and was always open to students’ comments and ideas. She didn’t give us the impression that she was seeking specific answers that would fit her opinion. The debates she led were lively and interesting. In addition, she was always accessible when needed.”…\nThis seminar was probably the best that I’ve taken at Yale, including my time here as an undergraduate. Partly that was a matter of luck–we had a lively, thoughtful mix of students–but it was largely due to Beverly, who is a natural seminar leader. Very few teachers are even competent at leading a discussion with the right blend of authority and informality, and those few who are have usually been in the business for 20 years. Beverly would be shockingly good even if she were old and gray–her classroom sense is all the more astounding because she is so young.” — Graduate Students\nby bonniekgoodman on September 9, 2007 • Permalink\nTagged Beverly Gage\nPosted by bonniekgoodman on September 9, 2007\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/top-young-historians-beverly-gage/\nHistory Doyens: Paul S. Boyer\nPaul Samuel Boyer, 9-3-07\nWhat They’re Famous For\nPaul Boyer, a U.S. cultural and intellectual historian (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1966) is Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus and former director (1993-2001) of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has held visiting professorships at UCLA, Northwestern University, and William & Mary; has received Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships; and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of American Historians, and the American Antiquarian Society. Before coming to Wisconsin in 1980, he taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1967-1980).\nHe has lectured at some 90 colleges and universities in the United States, Western Europe, and Israel. He has appeared on programs on the Public Broadcasting System, National Public Radio, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting System, and others.\nHis publications include: Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age (1968; 2nd edition with two new chapters, 2002); He was the Asst. editor of Notable American Women, 1600-1950 (3 vols., 1971); co-authored with Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974); Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (1978); By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (1985); When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (1992); Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter With Nuclear Weapons (1998). He was the editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to United States History (2001).\nSalem Possessed won the John H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association and was nominated for a National Book Award. When Time Shall Be No More received the Banta Award of the Wisconsin Library Association for literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. The Oxford Companion to United States History was a main selection of History Book Club.\nBoyer is the author or co-author of two college-level U.S. history textbooks, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (6th edition, 2007); and Promises to Keep: The United States Since 1945 (3rd edn., 2004), and a high-school U.S. history textbook: The American Nation (4nd edn., 2002). His scholarly articles have appeared in the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, American Literary History, The History Teacher, Virginia Quarterly Review, William & Mary Quarterly, and others. He has contributed numerous chapters to scholarly collections and encyclopedia entries, and lectured widely at colleges and universities in the United States and Europe. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Book World, the New Republic, The Nation, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Wisconsin Academy Review, Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tikkun, Policy Review, and other publications.\nActive in the Organization of American Historians, he has chaired its Program Committee (1987-88); served on its Nominating Council (1992-94) and Executive Board (1995-98) and on the editorial board of the Journal of American History (1980-83). He served on the national advisory board of the public television series The American Experience and edits the Studies in American Thought and Culture series for the University of Wisconsin Press (1984-94, 2002–). His service on prize committees includes the John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, and the ABC-Clio Award Committee of the Organization of American Historians.\nBoyer chaired the Wisconsin Humanities Council in 2004-06. Biographical entries appear in Who’s Who in American Education and Contemporary Authors.\nFamily stories were my first introduction to history-not articles or books, but lived experience: a great-uncle killed at Antietam; grandmothers’ tales of late-nineteenth-century Ohio farm life; my father’s account of losing his job during World War I for refusing to salute the flag when co-workers demanded that he do so. My paternal grandfather was a great repository of stories about the past, including his boyhood memories of President Garfield’s assassination in 1881.\nPaul Boyer is seated in the front row, second from left, next to his grandfather.\nMy future perspective as a historian was influenced, too, by my very conservative religious upbringing. The Brethren in Christ church, an offshoot of the Mennonite church, took seriously the biblical injunction “Be not conformed to this world.” The members did not vote, generally refused military service, and dressed very plainly-no neckties for the men; head coverings, cape dresses, and dark stockings for the women. They avoided the movies and other worldly amusements, and viewed the secular power of the state with profound skepticism. I’m no longer a part of that subculture (which in any event is very different today), but its influence has shaped my life and work.\nA grade-school teacher in Dayton, Ohio taught me that history is something people can feel passionate about. A southerner, she informed us in no uncertain terms: “If you get nothing else out of this class, just remember that slavery was NOT the cause of the Civil War.” But I can’t claim that the study of history initially gripped me very deeply. My copy of David Saville Muzzey’s A History of Our Country, assigned in a high-school class, is full of my scribbled drawings and witticisms (e.g., “In Case of Fire, throw this in”). The teacher called him “Fuzzy Muzzey,” signaling us that even textbook writers need not be viewed with total reverence. Now a textbook author myself, I appreciate Muzzey a little more. He writes in his preface: “Boys and girls have sometimes said to me that they have ‘had’ American history, as if it were measles or chicken pox, which they could have and get over and be henceforth immune from. … Do not for a moment think that you are `going over’ American history again in high school in order to add a few more dates and names to your memory. You are studying a new and fresh subject, not because American history has changed, but because you have changed. … You are getting new outlooks on life,–new ambitions, new enthusiasms, new judgments of people and events. Life broadens and deepens for you. So history, which is the record of former people’s ambitions and enthusiasms, comes to have a new meaning for you.”\nAfter high school I enrolled at Upland College in California, a small denominational school that has since closed. Wendell Harmon, who had written his Ph.D. thesis at UCLA on the Prohibition movement in California, taught U.S. history at Upland. Wendell had a skeptical turn of mind and a dry sense of humor. His classes, including a seminar on American Transcendentalism, jolted me into realizing that studying history could be intellectually engaging, even fun. In June 1955, preparing to leave for two years of voluntary service in Europe with the Mennonite Central Committee, I asked Wendell for reading suggestions. His list included Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition (1948). I devoured the book, writing on the flyleaf words that were new to me (salient, milieu, inchoate, sinecure, ubiquitous). Hofstadter’s cool-eyed revisionist look at America’s political heroes was eye-opening. There is no canonical version of history-all is up for grabs! My copy of this 95-cent Vintage paperback, now falling apart, is still in my library.\nMy two years in Europe-mostly spent in Paris on loan from the Mennonite Central Committee to an NGO at UNESCO–ended with a world trip via ships, trains, buses, and bicycles. On a train in India I met Gloria Steinem, just out of Smith College, also on a Wanderjahr. A comment she later made about how the trip affected her summed up my reactions as well: Eisenhower’s America, rich and complacent, she said, seemed like a sugary cupcake perched atop a suffering world where most people struggle merely to survive. Practicing my writing skills, I wrote a series of travel essays for the Evangelical Visitor, the Brethren in Christ denominational paper. The editorial board voted me an honorarium of fifty dollars. Another eye-opener: writing could actually produce income!\nThose two and a half years abroad proved transformative. In 1955 I had expected to go into my father’s religious-supply business. By 1958, when I entered Harvard as a transfer student, I knew I was not cut out for business. Journalism and teaching seemed appealing, but in a fairly inchoate way. What to major in? I considered English, but History soon won out. The department had a tutorial system for majors, and in 1958-59 I took both the sophomore and junior tutorials. My sophomore tutor, Stanley Katz, was a terrific mentor. We discussed and wrote papers on historians from Herodotus to Marc Bloch, executed by the Gestapo in 1944. Rereading those papers, I’m impressed again by Stan’s blend of encouragement and shrewd criticism. My junior tutor, Manfred Jonas, although busy writing his Ph.D. thesis on American isolationism in the 1930s, carefully read my weekly essays on U.S. historical topics, offering perceptive comments. William R. Taylor’s stimulating course in American historiography introduced me to Prescott, Parkman, and other classic historians and prose stylists.\nMy senior-thesis advisor, Roger Brown, steered me to a fascinating topic: the Federalist party’s reaction to the Louisiana Purchase. Research at the Massachusetts and Connecticut historical societies gave me a first taste of using primary sources in a milieu redolent of the past. (One elderly lady at the Connecticut Historical Society asked where I was from. When I told her Ohio, she replied, “Oh yes, Western Reserve country.”) To my great excitement, Roger Brown mentioned my thesis in a footnote in his 1964 book The Republic in Peril: 1812.\nFinishing college in 1960, I entered Harvard’s graduate history program that fall. In Frank Freidel’s seminar on the 1920s, I choose book censorship in Boston as my research topic. That in turn, led to my first published article (American Quarterly, spring 1963); my Ph.D. thesis on book censorship in America (with Freidel as advisor); and my first book, Purity in Print. Freidel returned my thesis draft with a few stylistic suggestions on the first few pages. “You see the kinds of changes I’m suggesting,” he breezily told me; “You can apply them to the rest of the thesis.” I’m fairly sure he never read beyond those early pages. (On one page, he had marked a sentence to be cut and then changed his mind, scribbling “stet” in the margin: a printer’s term meaning “restore this copy.” In dismay I misread it as “shit,” concluding that my dissertation director considered my work beneath contempt.)\nInviting the seminar to his home for our last meeting, Freidel offered us career advice. Our first job would probably be at some obscure school, he told us, and our sole objective must be to move to ever-more prestigious institutions through our publications. “Your students will want your attention, and your wife will ask you to do things with the family,” he warned, “but you must ignore all that and concentrate on publishing.”\nIn Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s course in American intellectual history, Schlesinger read his lectures from what appeared to be page proofs, pausing occasionally to correct a typo. When he departed for Washington after the 1960 election, newly-hired Donald Fleming inherited the course, delivering erudite, beautifully crafted lectures. (My paper on Andrew Carnegie in that course became a lecture that remained in my own intellectual-history course until I retired.) I later graded for Fleming, reading blue books far into the night.\nThe European intellectual historian H. Stuart Hughes strongly supported SANE, the nuclear-test-ban organization. When I took his course in fall 1962, he was running as an independent for the U.S. Senate on a nuclear-disarmament platform. (Ted Kennedy won.) Sitting in Hughes’ class on October 24, as the U.S. blockade of Soviet vessels bound for Cuba went into effect, we all eyed the clock nervously. Hughes’ example as a politically engaged academic probably influenced my own later small-scale participation in Vietnam War protests and the early-1980s’ nuclear- weapons freeze campaign.\nWe graduate students flocked to Bernard Bailyn’s lecture course and seminar in American colonial history. At the first seminar meeting, Bailyn proposed a list of research topics. By chance, I got the last choice: a 1754 Massachusetts excise-tax controversy. It seemed unpromising, but actually proved engrossing, particularly the pamphlets describing how lecherous tax collectors would ravish the wives and daughters of virtuous yeomen. The pamphleteers also made ubiquitous references to a 1733 excise-tax controversy in England. When I reported this to Bailyn, he responded with a chuckle that he, too, had noticed that connection, and had put his notes aside for future attention. That seminar paper became my second published article (William and Mary Quarterly, July 1964). Years later, after I had published three or four books, I encountered Bailyn at a convention and he greeted me with: “You know, I see citations to that William and Mary Quarterly article of yours all the time.”\nEspecially salient among these formative influences were Edward and Janet James, the editor and associate editor of a biographical reference work on American women launched in 1955 at the impetus of Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. (Today the positions would likely be reversed, with Janet as editor, but this was the 1950s.) Ed was a very methodical editor, and by 1961 a large back-log of essays had built up. Ed hired history grad students as fact-checkers, and I became one of his minions. I enjoyed roaming Widener Library in quest of elusive facts, in the process learning about the history of women in America-a subject mostly ignored in my undergraduate and graduate training. As I drafted revisions to correct errors or incorporate new information, and sometimes even ventured to rewrite an entire essay, Ed expanded my duties and gave me a desk in his office. Here I edited hundreds of essays (typing and retyping them in that pre-computer era) and wrote twenty-one myself, from Helena Blavatsky to Frances Wright. Ed and Janet generously appointed me assistant editor, so when Harvard University Press published Notable American Women in three volumes in 1971, my name appeared on the title page along with theirs. This editing and writing experience, immersion in women’s history, and exposure to Ed James’s meticulous attention to detail made my time at Notable American Women an important part-perhaps the most important part-of my graduate training.\nBy 1967, with Ph.D. in hand, it was time to find a teaching job. Notable American Women was fun, but obviously no lifetime sinecure. I had married Ann Talbot, then a student at Radcliffe College, in 1962, and now our first child was on the way. We hoped to stay in New England, so on a map I drew a semicircle around Boston with a radius of about a hundred miles and sent letters to history departments where I thought I might have a shot. Soon after, Howard Quint, the head of the History Department at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, phoned and invited me out. Howard rounded up a few department members and I gave a “job talk” that consisted of summarizing my Ph.D. thesis. He took me to meet the dean, and after they chatted briefly, Howard offered me a job at the munificent salary of $10,000 a year. That’s how things worked in those days.\nAntiwar protests and a factionalized department made those early years of teaching the most intense of my career. With campus strikes, moratoria, and marches on Washington, every spring semester from 1967 to 1970 ended with classes disrupted or cancelled entirely. Rashly signing up to give a workshop on Vietnamese history, I crammed the evening before from a book by Bernard B. Fall (killed in Vietnam in 1967). I expected ten or twelve people; the hall was packed. Another evening, several of us led a teach-in on the war in a campus dormitory. As the discussion went on, a young woman said tearfully: “My brother was just killed in Vietnam. Are you telling us this war is wrong?” Again I was reminded that “history” is not just something that we write about. History happens to people.\nJust as I was becoming resigned to a life of departmental feuding, cancelled classes, and campus protests, the activism suddenly ended in the fall of 1970. The departmental conflict subsided as well, and my remaining years at UMass brought much satisfaction, with great colleagues, interesting research (including a collaboration with Steve Nissenbaum on Salem Possessed), and rewarding teaching. My graduate training had included no classroom experience and indeed no attention to pedagogy at all, so these years involved a lot of on-the-job training. Fortunately, I found that I loved teaching, whether lecture courses, seminars, or one-on-one meetings with students. (Grading blue books I could have done without.)\nNew experiences, new projects, and many changes lay ahead, but a course had been set, and I’ve never regretted how it all turned out. I can’t imagine a more satisfying life, and seeing one’s students set sail on their own, in history or other fields, is perhaps the greatest reward of all.\nBy Paul Samuel Boyer\nIf a scholar a thousand years from now had no evidence about what had happened in the United States between 1945 and 1985 except the books produced by the cultural and intellectual historians of that era, he or she would hardly guess that such a thing as nuclear weapons had existed. … We have somehow managed to avert our attention from the pervasive impact of the bomb on … our collective experience….[P]eculiarities in my background … might plausibly be seen as having particularly ‘sensitized’ me to issues of war and peace. Reared in the pacifist beliefs of the Brethren in Christ Church …, I had early heard stories from my father of the harassment and even physical abuse he had experienced as a war resister in 1917-18…. Yet … I suspect it is not my particular upbringing, but experiences that I share with most Americans of the postwar generation, that are relevant here. Even a few random probes of my nuclear consciousness have made clear to me how significantly my life has been influenced by the ever-present reality of the bomb: … [T]he afternoon of August 6, 1945, when I read aloud the ominous-looking newspaper headline, mispronouncing the new word as “a-tome,” since I had never heard anyone say it; … Standing in a darkened room early in 1947, squinting into my atomic-viewer ring, straining to see the “swirling atoms” the Kix Cereal people had assure me would be visible; … Coming out of a Times Square movie theater at midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1959, having just seen the end of the world in On the Beach, overwhelmed by the sheer aliveness of the raucous celebrators; … Feeling the knot tighten in my stomach as President Kennedy, in that staccato voice, tells us we must all build fallout shelters as quickly as possible; … Watching the clock in Emerson Hall creep up toward 11 A.M. on October 25, 1962—Kennedy’s deadline to the Russians during the Cuban missile crisis—half expecting a cataclysmic flash when the hour struck; … Overhearing my daughter’s friend recently telling how her little sister hid under the bed when searchlights probed the sky a few nights earlier(a supermarket was having a grand opening), convinced that the missiles were about to fall. ….Even my sense of ancestral rootedness is now interwoven with images of nuclear menace and danger. In the summer of 1978, my brother Bill and I, finding ourselves together in Pennsylvania, took a little excursion to find the cemetery where some of our forebears who had migrated from [Switzerland] in the 1750s were buried. As we drove southward from Harrisburg along the Susquehanna, the looming concrete bulk of a nuclear power plant—Three Mile Island—suddenly hove into view. Almost literally in the shadows of those squat, hideous—and soon to be famous—towers, we found the small burial plot we were seeking. …I have been repeatedly struck … at how uncannily familiar much of the early response to the bomb seems: the visions of atomic devastation, the earnest efforts to rouse people to resist such a fate, the voices seeking to soothe or deflect these fears, the insistence that security lay in greater technical expertise and in more and bigger weaponry. I gradually realized that what I was uncovering was, in fact, the earliest version of the themes that still dominate our nuclear discourse today. All the major elements of our contemporary engagement with the nuclear reality took shape literally within days of Hiroshima. … By the Bomb’s Early Light, then, is an effort to go back to the earliest stages of our long engagement with nuclear weapons. Unless we recover this lost segment of our cultural history, we cannot fully understand the world in which we live, nor be as well equipped as we might to change it. …\nAs is appropriate, this book will be read and judged by my professional peers as a piece of scholarship like any other. I hope it will not seem presumptuous to say that it is also intended as a contribution, however flawed, to the process by which we are again, at long last, trying to confront, emotionally as well as intellectually, the supreme menace of our age. Henry Adams once wrote, “No honest historian can take part with—or against—the forces he has to study. To him, even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.” I readily confess that I have not achieved Adams’s austere standard of professional objectivity. This book is a product of experiences outside the library as well as inside, and it is not the work of a person who can view the prospect of human extinction with scholarly detachment. —\n— Paul S. Boyer from the introduction to “By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age” (1985)\n“By Paul S. Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum\nIf the large concepts with which historians conventionally deal are to have any meaning, it is only as they can be made manifest in individual cases like these. The problems which confronted Salem Village in fact encompassed some of the central issues of New England society in the late seventeenth century: the resistance of back-country farmers to the pressures of commercial capitalism and the social style that accompanied it; the breaking away of outlying areas from parent towns; difficulties between ministers and their congregations; the crowding of third- generation sons from family lands; the shifting locus of authority within individual communities and society as a whole; the very quality of life in an unsettled age. But for men like Samuel Parris and Thomas Putnam, Jr., these issues where not abstractions. They emerged as upsetting personal encounters with people like Israel Porter and Daniel Andrew, and as unfavorable decisions handed down in places like Boston and Salem Town. It was in 1692 that these men for the first time attempted (just as we are attempting in this book) to piece together the shards of their experience, to shape their malaise into some broader theoretical pattern, and to comprehend the full dimensions of thoses forces which they vaguely sensed were shaping their private destinies. Oddly enough, it has been through our sense of “collaborating” with Parris and the Putnams in their effort to delineate the larger contours of their world, and our sympathy, at least on the level of metaphor, with certain of their perceptions, that we have come to feel a curious bond with the “witch hunters” of 1692.But one advantage we as outsiders have had over the people off Salem Village is that we can afford to recognize the degree to which the menace they were fighting off had taken root within each of them almost as deeply as it had in Salem Town or along the Ipswich Road. It is at this level, indeed, that we have most clearly come to recognize the implications of their travail for our understanding of what might be called the Puritan temper during the final, often intense, and occasionally lurid efflorescence which signaled the end of its century-long history. For Samuel Parrish and Thomas Putnam, Jr., were part of a vast company, on both sides of the Atlantic, who were trying to expunge the lure of the new order from their own souls by doing battle with it in the real world. While this company of Puritans were not purveyors of the spirit of capitalism that historians once made them out to be, neither were they simple peasants clinging blindly to the imagined security of a receding medieval culture. What seems above all to characterize them, and even help define their identity as “Puritans” is the precarious way in which they managed to inhabit both these worlds at once.The inner tensions that shaped the Puritan temper were inherent in it from the very start, but rarely did they emerge with such raw force as in 1692, in little Salem Village. For here was a community in which these tensions were exacerbated by a tangle of external circumstances: a community so situated geographically that its inhabitants experienced two different economic systems, two different ways of life, at unavoidably close range; and so structured politically that it was next to impossible to locate, either within the Village or outside it, a dependable and unambiguous center of authority which might hold in check the effects of these accidents of geography.\nThe spark which finally set off this volatile mix came with the unlikely convergence of a set of chance factors in the early 1690’s: the arrival of a new minister who brought with him a slave acquainted with West Indian voodoo lore; the heightened interest throughout New England in fortune telling and the occult, taken up in Salem Village by an intense group of adolescent girls related by blood and faction to the master of that slave; the coming of age Joseph Putnam, who bore the name of one of Salem Village’s two controlling families while owing his allegiance to the other; the political and legal developments in Boston and London which hamstrung provincial authorities for several crucial months in 1692.\nBut beyond these proximate causes lie the deeper and more inexorable ones we have already discussed. For in the witchcraft outburst in Salem Village, perhaps the most exceptional event in American colonial history, certainly the most bizarre, one finds laid bare the central concerns of the era.\n— Paul S. Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum in “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\nAbout Paul Samuel Boyer\nSalem Possessed is a provocative book. Drawing upon an impressive range of unpublished local sources, Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum provide a challenging new interpretation of the outbreak of witchcraft in Salem Village. The authors argue that previous historians erroneously divorced the tragic events of 1692 from the long-term development of the village and therefore failed to realize that the witch trials were simply one particularly violent chapter in a series of local controversies dating back to the 1660s. In their reconstruction of the socio-economic conditions that contributed to the intense factionalism in Salem Village, Boyer and Nissenbaum have made a major contribution to the social history of colonial New England….\nBoyer and Nissenbaum have provided us with a first-rate discussion of factionalism in a seventeenth-century New England community. Their handling of economic, familial, and spatial relationships within Salem Village is both sophisticated and imaginative. But the dynamics of witchcraft, not only in Salem Village but also in other Massachusetts towns affected by the outbreak of 1692, still remain a mystery. — T. H. Breen, Northwestern University in “The William and Mary Quarterly,” reviewing “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\nPaul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have made great contributions to our better understanding of the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. Their first book, Salem Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England (1972). brought together diverse materials dealing with the outbreak of witchcraft and the trials; Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974). was an attempt to place the events of 1692 within the larger context of Salem’s social, economic, and political history. This study relied primarily upon community records and family documents, including wills, deeds, and inventories. The Salem Witchcraft Papers is the most recent and most valuable product of Boyer’s and Nissenbaum’s collaborative research in this important episode of New England history….\nThe Salem Witchcraft Papers is an important addition to the growing body of primary and secondary material dealing with the Salem witchcraft scare. Boyer and Nissenbaum have done a great service to all students of early New England history by publishing an important collection that has lain dormant for more than forty years. The ultimate value of the work, however, will be its use as a source book by future historians who seek a better understanding of the Salem witchcraft episode. — Paula A. Treckel in “The New England Quarterly” reviewing “The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692”\n“that witchcraft charges . . . were brought principally by members and friends of the tribe with cause for envy, and directed principally against minor members or peripheral connections of the enviable group…. the recent history and practical circumstances which permitted such action are explored, and the whole approach to the Salem disaster is canny, rewarding, and sure to fascinate readers interested in that aberrant affair.” — Phoebe Adams in “Atlantic” reviewing “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\n“offers an illuminating and imaginative interpretation . . . of the social and moral state of Salem Village in 1692 . . . . It has the extra recommendation of telling a gripping story which builds up to a horrifying climax.” — Keith Thomas in the “New York Review of Books” reviewing “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\n“The authors have produced an explanatory scheme which accounts fully for the events of 1692, renders them significant in a much wider context of social and economic change, and yet allows room for the operation of personalities and accidental influences. . . . Salem Possessed reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatment can be consigned to the historical lumberroom.” — Robin Briggs in “Times Literary Supplement” reviewing “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\n“In their book “Salem Possessed, The Social Origins of Witchcraft,” Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum present convincing evidence that Salem village, the backwoods adjunct to Salem town in which the accusers lived, was ridden with fear and hatred of the social changes being wrought by mercantile capitalism in the town and especially in Boston. At first, three social outcasts were accused; then some people in the eastern part of the village nearest to and most involved in the new commercialism. Then more and more prominent merchants and politicians were accused in the town, in Boston and eventually in all of Massachusetts. The authors show that on a number of occasions young girls in other Massachusetts communities had bouts of hysteria and that adults turned the affair into religious revivals. Only in Salem, where the adults were themselves paranoiac about the new commercialism, was adolescent hysteria turned – by adults – into a witch hunt, in which the “witches” were, by no accident, prominent “mercantile capitalists.” — ROGER HILSMAN in the New York Times on “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft”\n“Paul Boyer, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, describes all this with care and nuance and includes much that is less well known: appeals for world government; religious protests; dreams of atomic-powered technology; visions of Utopia and its opposite; advice from the professions; literary, cinematic and musical commentary. The sheer volume of the material is astounding. In this five-year period, education journals alone ran 260 articles relating to the bomb. The problem, Mr. Boyer writes, was “deciding when to turn off the tap”….. As careful as he is with the evidence, Mr. Boyer is clear about where he stands. He tells of his own pacifist origins and readily confesses his inability to follow Henry Adams’s dictum that to the honest historian “even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.” His depth of concern comes through in sharp prose….\nA wide-ranging historian who has written important studies of both the Salem witch trials (with Stephen Nissenbaum) and 19th-century urban reform, Mr. Boyer has closely studied the responses earlier Americans made to perceived threats to their well-being. And he does not omit pointing out “how the early discussions of the bomb’s implications often moved in well-worn grooves.” Among these grooves was the fear of concentrations of power (Who will control atomic energy?), worry about mass leisure (What will the masses do when the atom does all the work?), hostility to the city (Ruralization is the answer to atomic threats) and warnings of apocalypse (Repent before the fire consumes us all)….\nIn an epilogue, Mr. Boyer brings the story up to date. When the fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing became apparent in the mid-1950’s, it brought about a new round of public concern. This faded away in the wake of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1963 test-ban treaty only to reappear in recent years in the form of hostility to nuclear power, and distress at the Reagan Administration’s lack of enthusiasm for arms control. The current nuclear debate, Mr. Boyer writes, afflicts him with a “sense of deja vu.” Virtually “every theme and image by which we express our nuclear fear today has its counterpart in the immediate post-Hiroshima period,” he writes. It is a depressing thought, for why should what proved ineffectual before not prove ineffectual again? But perhaps the old themes and images are the best we can summon. They may not succeed in removing the threat of nuclear war, but at least they tell us something about who we are. — New York Times Review of “By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age”\n“If you believed you knew the essentials about the dawn of the atomic age, this book will change your mind. Based on an impressive number of contemporary sources – including newspaper articles, cartoons, press ads, poems, pictures, letters and opinion polls -Boyer outlines the bomb’s sociological and cultural impact on American society from 1945 to the early fifties. Indeed, some strange and surprising connections are revealed, as between the Bikini tests and Hollywood-star Rita Hayworth. His main accomplishment, though, is to show the mixed cultural heritage of the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki incidents; how they created both hopes and fears, self confidence and anger, cynicism and guilt. His account of the Atomic Scientists’ Movement is skilled and well balanced, as is his unpassionate discourse on the continuing cycles of anti-nuclear activism and apathy. In short, By the Bomb’s Early Light shows the art of socio-intellectual history from its most perceptive and powerful side.” — Olav Njølstad in “Journal of Peace Research”, reviewing “By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age”\nOf the many books inspired by the 40-year anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, this certainly is one of the best. Boyer, an adept cultural historian, unravels the diverse reactions to the advent of the nuclear era between 1945 and 1950. The enormity of what had occurred caused disorientation among intellectuals and the general public alike. Basic beliefs wavered, contradictions emerged, and attitudes changed in a short period of time. Boyer traces scientific, literary, philosophical, and religious implications of the new weapon, revealing his own wit and commitment as well as historical skill. His neglect of the emergence of Abstract Expressionism as a major cultural response to the bomb stands as one of the few shortcomings in this fine, readable book. Highly recommended — Charles K. Piehl, Director of Grants Management, Mankato State Univ., Minn. in Library Journal reviewing “By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age”\n“In this thoroughly documented and richly illustrated study Boyer has traced the confusions, the ironies and the sometimes humorous and sometimes tragic effects of American efforts to cope with the question of what is permissible and what is taboo in the public morality and in the printed word. Beginning with a brief but penetrating discussion of the state of these matters at the present time, Boyer goes back to the early 1800s and traces the problem and its self-appointed solvers up to the 1930s. Anthony Comstock and John S. Sumner are given full treatment, as are such defenders of a liberal and enlightened attitude as Mencken and Morris Ernst. Boyer makes frequent mention of the psychological factors which motivated the “purifyers” but his approach is principally historical and sociological. Although there have been many other books and articles written on this basic aspect of American culture, this is certainly the definitive study of the subject.” — GEORGE K. SMART, University of Miami reviewing “Purity in Print: The Vice Society Movement and Book Censorship in America” in “American Quarterly,”\n“It is less this solid but conventional framework which insures Boyer’s study its excellence than the fair mindedness that allows Boyer on every page to rectify old errors, add new insights, and back or qualify recent scholarly conclusions. He makes his reader look in unexpected places for causes and effects, and always to good purpose Deftly disposing of the tired cliches about devious clerical power-plays masked as evangelical reform, he sympathetically charts the demise of active religious and ecclesiastical influence in the city, he shows, nonetheless, its legacy of moral enthusiasm to be the central one in urban reform until the 1920s…. While discovering and sorting the facts of the urban reform movement, Boyer is alert to the language and psychology of the reformers. Again and again, he documents what he perceptively calls “the familiar urban moral control cycle, from initial enthusiasm to baffled discouragement ” This is a book which all serious students of the American city and of the nineteenth century will want to read and keep for perusal and reference. — Ann Douglas, Columbia University in “The Journal of American History” reviewing “Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920”\nTeaching Positions:\nUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst, Asst. Prof. to Professor of History, 1967-1980; department chair, 1978-80\nUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor of History, 1980-85; Merle Curti Professor of History, 1985-2002; Emeritus, 2002 –\nConcurrent Position at the University of Wisconsin: Senior Member, Institute for Research in the Humanities, 1989-2002; Director, 1993-2001.\nVisiting Appointments:\nUniversity of California-Los Angeles, Visiting Professor of History, 1987-1988;\nNorthwestern University, Henry Luce Visiting Professor of American Culture, 1988-1989;\nState University of New York-Plattsburgh, September 1992, Distinguished Visiting Professor Northwestern University, Visiting Professor, Fall 1995;\nCollege of William and Mary, James Pinckney Harrison Professor of History, 2002-03;\nOther positions included Coordination Committee for International Voluntary Work Camps, UNESCO, Paris. Staff member, 1955-1957;\nNotable American Women, Harvard University, Assistant Editor, 1964-1967;\nArea of Research:\nAmerican cultural and intellectual history; American religious history; Prophetic and apocalyptic belief in America; Censorship and First Amendment Issues; nuclear weapons in American culture, Salem witchcraft.\nHarvard University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1960, M.A., 1961, Ph.D., 1966.\nMajor Publications:\nPurity in Print: The Vice-Society Movement and Book Censorship in America, Scribner (New York City), 1968.\n(With Stephen Nissenbaum) Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1974, Italian edition includes introduction by Carlo Ginzburg, published as La Citta Indemoniate, Einaudi (Turino), 1986, published as Salem Possessed, MJF (New York City), 1997.\nUrban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920, Harvard University Press, 1978, reprinted, 1992.\n(With others) Women in American Religion, edited by Janet Wilson, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia), 1978.\nBy the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, Pantheon (New York City), 1985, second edition, contains a new preface by Boyer, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill), 1994.\nMission on Taylor Street: The Founding and Early Years of the Dayton Brethren in Christ Mission, Brethren in Christ Historical Society (Grantham, PA), 1987.\n(Coauthor) The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877, Volume 2: From 1865, Heath (Lexington), 1989, second edition, 1993, interactive CD-ROM editions, developed by Bryten, 1993 and 1996, third edition, 1996, essentials edition, includes text and CD-ROM, Houghton Mifflin (Boston), 1999, fourth edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1999, chapters 22-33 of third edition also published separately as The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 1890s to the Present, Heath, 1996.\nWhen Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture, Harvard University Press, 1992.\nPromises to Keep: The United States since 1945 (textbook), Heath, 1994, second edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1999.\nTodd and Curti’s American Nation (textbook), Holt (Austin), 1994, annotated teacher’s edition published as Boyer’s American Nation, 1998.\n(With Sterling Stuckey) The American Nation in the Twentieth Century (textbook), Holt, 1995, annotated teacher’s edition, 1996.\nFallout: A Historian Reflects on America’s Half Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (collection of previously published writings), Ohio State University Press (Columbus), 1998.\nByer’s upcoming projects include an article on nuclear themes in the work of the poets and writers of the Beat Movement, with Professor William Lawlor, and revisions of college and high-school American history textbooks (ongoing).\nEditor, Contributor, Joint Author:\n(Assistant editor, with Edward T. James and Janet W. James) Notable American Women: 1607-1950, three volumes, Harvard University Press, 1971.\n(With Nissenbaum; and author of introduction and index, with Nissenbaum) The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692, compiled and transcribed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration, under the supervision of Archie N. Frost, Da Capo (New York City), 1977.\n(With Nissenbaum; and author of introduction, with Nissenbaum) Salem Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England, Wadsworth (Belmont, CA), 1972, reprinted with new preface by Boyer and Nissenbaum, Northeastern University Press (Boston), 1993.\n(Editor and author of commentary) Reagan as President: Contemporary Views of the Man, His Politics, and His Policies, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago), 1990.\n(Editor-in-chief) Oxford Companion to United States History, Oxford University Press, 2001.\nAlso, general editor of the “History of American Thought and Culture” series, University of Wisconsin Press, 1984-94.\nContributor to reference works and collaborative projects, among them Encyclopedia of American History, essay on Bernard Baruch, Frank Kellogg, and Henry Stimpson, Dushkin, 1974; Notable American Women, Supplement 1: The Modern Era, essay on Dorothy Thompson and Blanche Knopf, Harvard University Press, 1980; Encyclopedia Americana, essays on Carrie Chapman Catt, Henry Blackwell, and Antoinette Blackwell; Dictionary of American Biography, Scribner’s, Supplement III, essays on John Macrae and John Woolsey, 1973, Supplement IV, essays on Frank Buck, Frank Crowninshield, Paul Harris, James McGraw, Barney Oldfield, Charles M. Sheldon, Harry Thaw, and Charles Towne, 1974, Supplement IV, essay on Franklin D’Olier, 1977, and Supplement VI, essay on Duncan Hines, 1980; Dictionary of American History, Scribner’s, 1976; Encyclopedia of American Political History, Volume 1, edited by Jack P. Greene, Scribner’s, 1984; Encyclopedia of American Social History, Volume 1, edited by Mary R. Cayton, Elliott J. Gorn, and Peter W. Williams, Scribner’s, 1993; A Companion to American Thought, edited by Richard W. Fox and James T. Kloppenberg, Blackwell (Cambridge, MA), 1995; History of the United States, Volume 5, edited by Donald T. Critchlow and Andrzej Bartnicki, Polish Academic Press (Warsaw), 1996; Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, Volume 3, edited by Stephen J. Stein, Continuum (New York City), 1997; A History of the Book in America, Volume 4, edited by Carl Kaestle and Janice Radway, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming; as well as World Book Encyclopedia, American National Biography, and Oxford Companion to American Military History.\nContributor of numerous chapters in coauthored works, scholarly articles, book reviews, and review essays to periodicals, among them American Historical Review, American Quarterly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Diplomatic History, Historian, History Teacher, Houston Review, Journal of American History, Journal of the American Medical Association, New Republic, Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research in History, Reviews in American History, Virginia Quarterly Review, and William and Mary Quarterly. Also contributor of essays and commentary to periodicals, including Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Chronicle of Higher Education, Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine, Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, Messenger Magazine, Nation, New Republic, New York Times Newsday Books, Policy Review, Tikkun, Washington Post Magazine, and Wisconsin Academy Review.\nNational Book Award nomination in History, 1975 (for Salem Possessed);\nJohn Dunning Prize, American Historical Association, 1974 (for Salem Possessed);\nJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1973-74;\nDistinguished Alumnus Award, Messiah College, 1979;\nRockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, 1982-83;\nAmerican Antiquarian Society, Elected to membership, 1984;\nSociety of American Historians, Elected to membership, 1990;\nWisconsin Institute for Study of War, Peace and Global Cooperation, Faculty Award, 1992;\nBanta Award for literary achievement by a Wisconsin author, Wisconsin Library Assn., 1993 (for When Time Shall Be No More);\n“Notable Wisconsin Author” Award, Wisconsin Library Association, 1999;\nAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected to membership, 1997;\nMassachusetts Historical Society, Elected to membership, 1997;\nGovernor’s Award for Excellence in Public Humanities Scholarship, Wisconsin, 2003;\nListed in Contemporary Authors, Who’s Who in American Education.\nBoyer has made numerous television appearances on nationally broadcast programs including: “The Menace of Nuclear Weapons,” History Channel “20th Century with Mike Wallace”\n“Apocalypse,” PBS “Frontline” program, Nov. 22, 1999;\n“Monkey Trial” [The 1925 Scopes Trial], PBS, “The American Experience” series, February 2002;\n“Revelation,” Discovery Channel, Jan. 7, 2004; BBC-TV, Apr. 25, 2004;\n“Witch Hunt” [Salem witchcraft], History Channel, September 31, 2004;\n“Countdown to Armageddon,” History Channel, December 26, 2004;\n“Antichrist,” History Channel, Dec. 26, 2005;\n“The Rapture,” Discovery Times Channel, Jan. 31, 2006 and rebroadcasts;\n“Secrets of Revelation: National Geographic Channel, July 16, 2006 and rebroadcasts;\n“The Doomsday Code,” Channel 4 (Great Britain). Sept. 16, 2006;\n“U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy: An Oral History” (4 DVD set, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, 2005). He has also had national radio interviews on : PBS, CBC, BBC, etc.; and numerous interviews on various topics on local radio stations and TV channels; Wisconsin Public Radio; Wisconsin Public Television.\nPosted in History Doyens\nTagged Paul Samuel Boyer\nhttps://historymusings.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/history-doyens-paul-samue-boyer/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1264776"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9311367273330688,"wiki_prob":0.9311367273330688,"text":"\"The Celebrity Apprentice\" Keeps Trump As Executive Producer\nBut the president-elect devote \"zero time\" to the show and retains credit only because he conceived of the show.\nBy Jarett Wieselman\nJarett Wieselman BuzzFeed News Reporter\nLast updated on December 10, 2016, at 6:49 a.m. ET\nPosted on December 8, 2016, at 6:35 p.m. ET\nDonald Trump on The Celebrity Apprentice.\nPresident-elect Donald Trump will remain an executive producer on the new season of NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice, BuzzFeed News has confirmed. The story was first reported by Variety, and Trump's spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the outlet: \"Mr. Trump has a big stake in the show and conceived of it with Mark Burnett.\"\nTrump hosted The Apprentice offshoot for seven seasons, but NBC cut ties with Trump in June 2015 after he called Mexicans, among other things \"rapists.\" In a statement, the network said, \"At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values. Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.\" But NBC did maintain a relationship with Burnett. MGM Television, of which Burnett is the president, produces The Celebrity Apprentice and will pay Trump's executive producer fee, an unknown sum.\nOn Saturday, Trump tweeted that he would devote \"zero time\" to the show, and called reports he would actively work on the show during his presidency \"FAKE NEWS\" and \"rediculous.\" [sic.]\nDonald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump\nI have NOTHING to do with The Apprentice except for fact that I conceived it with Mark B &amp; have a big stake in it. Will devote ZERO TIME!\nReports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are rediculous &amp; untrue - FAKE NEWS!\nThe Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice were popular programs and boosted visibility for Trump starting in 2004. Many have gone so far to say that the Mark Burnett–produced reality shows actually made his presidency possible.\nTrump and his relationship to Burnett came under scrutiny during the 2016 election as interest in Trump's behavior — including alleged racist and sexist comments — from the sets of The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice increased. Archival footage and b-roll from the shows were sought from Burnett, but recordings have yet to surface. As pressure mounted against Burnett, he released the following statement: \"I am not now and have never been a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy. I am NOT 'Pro-Trump.'\"\nTrump seems keen to further his relationship with Burnett, as the New York Times reports that the two met to discuss attention-grabbing ideas for his inauguration. Proposed ideas included a parade on New York's Fifth Avenue and a helicopter ride (which could span from the capitol to NYC), to \"hold the attention of millions of people expected to watch from around the world.\"\n“New Celebrity Apprentice” Contestant Slams Donald Trump’s Continued Role\nThe “New Celebrity Apprentice” Cast Really Doesn’t Want To Talk About Donald Trump\nJarett Wieselman is a senior entertainment editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. Wieselman writes about and reports on the television industry.\nContact Jarett Wieselman at jarett.wieselman@buzzfeed.com.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1149069"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9818241000175476,"wiki_prob":0.9818241000175476,"text":"Bond denied for former teacher charged in girl's kidnapping\n6-year-old girl found unharmed\nMCSO\nJessie Mae Pollard. She is listed as Jessie Mae Brown on the Madison County Sheriff's Department's website. Officials say Brown is her married name.\nSOURCE: MCSO\nBond has been denied for a former Kemper County teacher charged in connection with the abduction of a 6-year-old girl.Jessie Pollard, 54, faces a federal kidnapping charge because she's accused of taking Jashayla Hopson across state lines, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Pollard appeared in federal court in Jackson for a hearing on Thursday.Pollard and the girl's mother are cousins, the family said. During Thursday's hearing, court officials read a text message alleged to have been sent from Pollard to the girl's mother that said, \"Don't call the police. I will call you later. If you call the police, you won't see her again.\" Investigators said the abduction stemmed from a dispute between the two women.An Amber Alert was issued Wednesday after Kemper County officials said Hopson was kidnapped from Kemper Elementary School shortly after 12 p.m. Tuesday. Authorities said a woman walked into the school's library, called the girl's name and walked out of the school with the kindergartner.Later that evening, surveillance cameras at a hotel in Bessemer, Ala., showed Pollard with Hopson, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. The girl was held in a hotel room overnight and dropped off the next day on the side of the road in Enterprise, Miss., federal officials said.Michelle Bell said she found the child on the front porch of her Lauderdale County home about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Bell said the girl was wet from the rain and crying so she brought her inside, dried her off and offered her some food before calling police.Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said deputies arrived at the scene and notified the FBI, which took over the investigation.Hopson was taken to Rush Hospital in Meridian for observation, but Sollie said she did not appear to have been injured. The girl was reunited with her family Wednesday afternoon.Police in Northport, Ala., arrested Pollard Wednesday.Pollard moved to Alabama about a year ago to be close to her son, Devonta Pollard, who plays basketball for the Crimson Tide, her family said. He was the state high school player of the year in 2012 and the only Mississippi player in last year's McDonald's All American game.If convicted, Pollard could be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison, federal officials said.Hopson told investigators that two other women were also involved in the kidnapping. She described one of the women to authorities and said she was wearing a pink shirt. The other woman went by the name \"Jocelyn,\" according to court documents.\nJACKSON, Miss. —\nBond has been denied for a former Kemper County teacher charged in connection with the abduction of a 6-year-old girl.\nJessie Pollard, 54, faces a federal kidnapping charge because she's accused of taking Jashayla Hopson across state lines, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Pollard appeared in federal court in Jackson for a hearing on Thursday.\nBond denied for third woman charged in girl's kidnapping\n2 more arrests made in Kemper County kidnapping\nPollard and the girl's mother are cousins, the family said. During Thursday's hearing, court officials read a text message alleged to have been sent from Pollard to the girl's mother that said, \"Don't call the police. I will call you later. If you call the police, you won't see her again.\" Investigators said the abduction stemmed from a dispute between the two women.\nAn Amber Alert was issued Wednesday after Kemper County officials said Hopson was kidnapped from Kemper Elementary School shortly after 12 p.m. Tuesday. Authorities said a woman walked into the school's library, called the girl's name and walked out of the school with the kindergartner.\nLater that evening, surveillance cameras at a hotel in Bessemer, Ala., showed Pollard with Hopson, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office. The girl was held in a hotel room overnight and dropped off the next day on the side of the road in Enterprise, Miss., federal officials said.\nMichelle Bell said she found the child on the front porch of her Lauderdale County home about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Bell said the girl was wet from the rain and crying so she brought her inside, dried her off and offered her some food before calling police.\nLauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said deputies arrived at the scene and notified the FBI, which took over the investigation.\nHopson was taken to Rush Hospital in Meridian for observation, but Sollie said she did not appear to have been injured. The girl was reunited with her family Wednesday afternoon.\nPolice in Northport, Ala., arrested Pollard Wednesday.\nPollard moved to Alabama about a year ago to be close to her son, Devonta Pollard, who plays basketball for the Crimson Tide, her family said. He was the state high school player of the year in 2012 and the only Mississippi player in last year's McDonald's All American game.\nIf convicted, Pollard could be sentenced to a minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison, federal officials said.\nHopson told investigators that two other women were also involved in the kidnapping. She described one of the women to authorities and said she was wearing a pink shirt. The other woman went by the name \"Jocelyn,\" according to court documents.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line389179"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.794910728931427,"wiki_prob":0.794910728931427,"text":"How Many Exceptionalisms?\nExplorations in Comparative Macroanalysis\nAristide Zolberg\nPublication: May 08\n12 tables, 1 figs.\nA collection of essays on the importance of comparative cultural analysis\nThe essays in How Many Exceptionalisms? span the long history of the intellectual output of Aristide Zolberg, one of the most distinguished social scientists of our time. In this collection, Zolberg shows his originality, insights, and breadth of thought as he addresses subjects ranging from theories of immigration policy, the making of Belgium, and the origins of the modern world system.\nWritten over three decades, and featuring many essays that have not been in wide circulation, Zolberg here draws from political science, cultural anthropology, sociology, and history to provide a configurative analysis of and long-term approach to the cultural diversity in Africa, Europe, and the United States.\n\"Ever since the late 1960s…Aristide Zolberg has crafted wonderfully engaging essays that have profoundly altered our understanding of politics and society in Africa, Europe and the United States. His writing has been deeply…global, especially with its focus on the large-scale movement of populations and their reception in new locations….Zolberg has been one of our most creative and informed scholars in the social sciences, at work on issues that really matter.\"\n—Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University\n\"Each of the chapters in How Many Exceptionalisms? is a major academic contribution on its own terms. They show us how Zolberg has extricated key conceptual tools from the complicated architectures of social and political life—the management of diversity, the interactions of culture and history, the role of state formation in creating refugees, the limits of ‘crisis’ perspectives, and more. Together this selection of articles is one of those rare cases where the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts. As the foremost contributor to macrohistorical analysis of international migration, Zolberg knows how to choose his essays: their sequence is a narrative that shows us how he got there, and does so with a grand geopolitical sweep.\"\n—Saskia Sassen, author of Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages\n\"(A) thoughtful reflection on macroanalysis.... Zolberg has presented us with a deeply global book. Its geographic sweep, historical depth, and theoretical eclecticism will surely nourish our curiosities about the past and present.\" —Contemporary Sociology\nIntroduction: Explorations in Political Macroanalysis\n1. Patterns of National Integration\n2. Moments of Madness\n3. The Making of Flemings and Walloons: Belgium, 1830-1914\n4. International Migration Policies in a Changing World System\n5. Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link\n6. The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process\n7. How Many Exceptionalisms?\n8. The Great Wall Against China: Responses to the First Immigration Crisis, 1885-1925\n9. Matters of State: Theorizing Immigration Policy\n10. Why Islam Is Like Spanish: Cultural Incorporation in Europe and the United States (co-authored by Long Litt Woon)\n11. International Engagement and American Democracy: A Comparative Perspective\nAristide R. Zolberg is the Walter Eberstadt Professor of Political Science and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research. He wrote the foreword to The Unwanted (Temple), is the author of A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America and Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa, and is co-author of Escape from Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World.\nPolitics, History, and Social Change edited by John C. Torpey\nThis series will disseminate serious works that analyze the social changes that have transformed our world during the twentieth century and beyond. The main topics to be addressed include international migration; human rights; the political uses of history; the past and future of the nation-state; decolonization and the legacy of imperialism; and global inequality. The series will also translate into English outstanding works by scholars writing in other languages.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line772209"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7272278070449829,"wiki_prob":0.2727721929550171,"text":"CDT Map Set - Colorado Sections 12-23 - Spring Creek Pass to Twin Lakes\nThe Continental Divide Trail Coalition is proud to present this map set as a free comprehensive resource using official US Forest Service data to represent the entirety of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail at the half-mile scale. With these maps, it is our goal to provide the most current and accurate representation of the official CDT route and notable physical attributes located on or near the trail. However, trail conditions and features may change at any time and it is the responsibility of the user to read and understand the disclaimers to the use of this map and the risks associated with all types of use on the CDT. The CDTC and the U.S. Forest Service give no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of this data. This includes but is not limited to: -Travel use data. -Water report data. -Waypoint data. -Physical features such as streams and woodland cover. Trail users may find portions of the trail closed or restricted due to wildfires, logging activity, downfalls, washouts and other events. Additionally, the official route is constantly being improved upon or relocated, and may deviate from what is shown in this mapset. While we at the CDTC will work to update this mapset as frequently as possible, it is the duty of the user to be aware of changes to the route due to closures or relocations. The CDT community has developed many alternate routes along the CDT. These have been included in this map set where they fall on the map extents. CDTC does not endorse these routes, nor are they marked or maintained as the CDT. Users utilizing alternate routes should have appropriate navigational resources for following these routes. Water report information displayed in this mapset is classified into known, intermittent, and dry or unreliable according to data from the U.S. Forest Service and community identified water sources. Known water sources should not be assumed to be reliable or of good quality, and all water sources are subject to change at any time. Users are fully responsible for water planning on the CDT, and are encouraged to use multiple sources of information for more timely water reports. This mapset bundle covers Colorado Sections 12-23 of the CDT - spanning the course of the trail between Spring Creek Pass and the Halfmoon Creek TH north of Twin Lakes. If you find this free resource useful, consider donating to support their continued maintenance and production at www.continentaldividetrail.org.\nGet this Map Bundle\nVendor: Continental Divide Trail Coalition\nSecondary Categorization: Parks, Biking\nSee all maps by Continental Divide Trail Coalition\nContains 27 maps:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1274986"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7285617589950562,"wiki_prob":0.7285617589950562,"text":"In rural West Africa, gardening offers women a way out of poverty\nIn Burkina Faso, the nonprofit organization La Saisonnière empowers rural women by teaching them skills like carpentry, sewing, and organic farming, which helps them contribute to their children's education and provide for their families.\nLa Saisonnière\nCultivation tables keep vegetables clean throughout the growing process and consume less water thanks to drip irrigation.\nBy Hannifah Sawadogo L’Economiste du Faso\nIn Africa, it is often said that poverty has a woman’s face. Rural women face discrimination just like those in other socioeconomic sectors, particularly where access to land is concerned. But in Burkina Faso, the nonprofit association La Saisonnière (French for “the seasonal one”) has developed a technique to help women climb out of poverty while growing organic food.\n“When I started coming to La Saisonnière in 2006, I had no bicycle, no idea how to take care of a garden, and no income generating activity,” says La Saisonnière’s team leader and producer Aminata Sinaré. “Today, I know how to garden and I own a motorcycle.”\nLike her, many women have seen their living conditions improve thanks to the nonprofit. Initially created as an informal group in 2003, La Saisonnière became an association in 2006, after it planted a garden to grow crops. Since 2007, it has endeavored to help disadvantaged women in the 10th district of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, on land granted by the city council.\nLa Saisonnière has a market garden with a wide array of African agricultural products, but its activities also include sewing, weaving, and even carpentry. Determined that the empowerment of women can only be achieved through education, the association also teaches the women reading and mathematics. Some 30 women are learning gardening, and another 80 are participating in weaving and sewing workshops. All of the women are selected based on vulnerability criteria.\nSince its creation, the association has promoted organic farming. Its efforts paid off in October 2017, when it received the SPG organic certification label, one of the first national organic labels in West Africa, issued by the National Council of Organic Agriculture, which guarantees production according to the Burkinabe organic farming standard. Chemicals are replaced by a mix of rice husks, peanut shells, and compost made by the women.\nIn 2015, La Saisonnière also started focusing on soilless culture. The Italian nongovernmental organization Acra introduced the micro-gardening method to the association by building cultivation tables about 10 square feet in size on site. This technique keeps vegetables clean throughout the growing process and consumes less water thanks to drip irrigation. Everything can be grown on the table with the exception of corn and okra.\n\"Thanks to the Acra project, I went to Dakar [Senegal] to learn this technique and bring it here. We teach it to women, children, and our students,” explains Ms. Sinaré. She says if women who do not have access to arable land learn this technique, they can produce what they want for their own consumption at home, and sell the surplus at the local market. For example, a full table of spinach sells for 1,000 CFA francs ($1.80). For sorrel, she says, \"I can sell my four tables for 1,500 CFA francs ($2.69).\"\nAccording to Sophie Sedgho, president of the association and a retired professor of natural sciences, each woman is entitled to seven boards with a cultivable surface of about 65 square feet. Some of it is grown for their family and the rest is destined for market. \"They can keep the proceeds of what they sell but we are there to follow them through training, behavior management, and marketing strategies. Each woman contributes 1,500 CFA francs ($2.69) a month to pay for a night watchman,\" says Ms. Sedgho, adding, \"They are often close to the legal minimum wage.\"\nUnderground cultivation is another technique practiced at La Saisonnière. In 2015, a water shortage ceased being an issue for these gardeners. “The mayor gave us a manual drill. It was annoying because it was difficult to get the water. We then replaced it with a pump, which broke down,” recalls Sedgho. They decided to install a solar-powered water pump, at a cost of 4 million CFA francs (about $7,200). All the women helped pay for it.\nToday, the association still faces one major challenge: poor yields, especially during summer heat waves and winter floods. This difficulty aside, Sedgho says that everything runs smoothly. \"We have a lot of orders. Our customers are mainly local residents. We are on Facebook, people see us and travel for miles to come and buy. But we do prioritize the locals,” she says. “We organize a farm gate market, people walk through and buy from us directly. We are very happy with this method because our customers know exactly what they are going to consume.”\nPerhaps best of all, thanks to gardening, the women are now contributing to their children’s education and their families’ expenses.\nThis story was reported by L’Economiste du Faso, a news outlet in Burkina Faso. The Monitor is publishing it as part of Impact Journalism Day, an international effort by more than 50 news organizations worldwide to promote solutions journalism. To read other stories in this joint project organized by Paris-based Sparknews, please click here.\nAmerican missionary among dead in Burkina Faso hotel attack\nChange Agent Farmers in Burkina Faso outsmart climate change\nWhy Burkina Faso matters to US counterterrorism efforts in Africa","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line940599"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6579610109329224,"wiki_prob":0.34203898906707764,"text":"Qualcomm-NXP Semiconductors Could Create A Behemoth In The Automotive Semiconductor Space\nTrefis Team Contributor\nGreat Speculations Contributor Group\nAccording to a report by Wall Street Journal, leading chipset maker, Qualcomm is reportedly in talks to acquire NXP semiconductors, in a deal likely be valued at more than $30 billion. This could be potentially the largest acquisition in Qualcomm’s history. Though there is no official press release from either of the company, stock price of both Qualcom and NXP surged following the acquisition report, by 6% and 17%, respectively. In this analysis, we investigate the reasons as to why it makes sense for Qualcomm to acquire NXP Semiconductors.\nQualcomm To Gain An Edge In The Automotive Semiconductor Market\nNXP Semiconductors is a leading provider of High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product semiconductor solutions, which respectively account for 85% and 13% of the business. Mixed signal devices are so called because they comprise both analog and digital circuits, typically engineered together to achieve a specific application. NXP focuses on designing high performance devices used in automotive (36% of revenues), secure identity (9%), secure connectivity (22%), secure interface and infrastructure (18%) applications. Standard Products (13% of revenues) comprise and range of basic circuits, including diodes, thyristors, rectifiers and transistors. The company manufactures the bulk of its products and possesses a range of CMOS, radio-frequency, mixed-signal and analog process capabilities. The possible acquisition of the company would significantly diversify Qualcomm’s offering and provide it an entry into multiple markets outside its core mobile chipset business. Further, it must be noted that NXP Semiconductors acquired Freescale Semiconductor for over $10 billion in 2015, as a result of which, it became the largest semiconductor supplier to the automotive industry. The companies were originally the captive semiconductor businesses of Philips and Motorola, respectively.\nGiven that Qualcomm is also targeting the automotive infotainment market with its family of advanced processors, a potential acquisition of NXP semiconductor should help the company become the largest supplier of chips used in cars. Qualcomm’s existing automotive solutions equips the cars with features that include: 1) advanced smartphone quality connectivity; 2) 3D connected navigation support: 3) facial and voice recognition features that personalize car settings; 4) wireless device charging; and, 5) parking assistance features.\nAs more and more customers look for improved digital experience in the car, in addition to other parameters, car companies are banking on technological advancements in their interiors to compete with each other. This has led to an exponential increase in the semiconductor content per vehicle. The growth in the semiconductor content in automotives is likely to further increase with the rise in autonomous car market. According to a research by Boston Consulting Group, the autonomous car market could be a $42 billion market by 2025, which could be around 12-13% of the total auto market. [1]The Semiconductor Industry Is Undergoing A Wave Of Consolidations\nDemand for cheaper chips and a surge of new products – from PCs to smartphones to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) – has intensified competition in the semiconductor market, which in turn has put downward pressure on chipmakers’ bottom line. As a result, the semiconductor space has seen a number of consolidations recently and is likely to see some more in the near future. The acquisition of NXP semiconductors could be one of the largest acquisitions in the semiconductor space happening in recent years. Further, the acquisition should help Qualcomm improve its bargaining position with customers.\nTax Advantage For Qualcomm\nQualcomm has cash worth $31 billion on its balance sheet, almost all of which is outside the U.S., according to Wall Street Journal. Though the U.S has third highest general top marginal corporate income tax rate in the world at 39.1 percent, its corporate tax law allows U.S. companies not to pay taxes on foreign profits, if the income was to remain outside the U.S. forever. This provides another incentive for Qualcomm to acquire NXP Semiconductors. This comes from the fact that NXP semiconductors is a Dutch company, and Qualcomm can use its cash stashed outside the U.S. to fund the acquisition.\nView Interactive Institutional Research (Powered by Trefis):\nGlobal Large Cap | U.S. Mid & Small Cap | European Large & Mid Cap\nMore Trefis Research\nLike our charts? Embed them in your own posts using the Trefis WordPress Plugin.\nTrefis Team\nLed by MIT engineers and Wall Street analysts, Trefis (through its dashboards platform dashboards.trefis.com) helps you understand how a company's products, that you to","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1112665"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6783539652824402,"wiki_prob":0.6783539652824402,"text":"Stevenage woman banned from running company after care home put residents at risk\nGeorgia Barrow\nAnita Ram from Stevenage started running Millfield Lodge Care Home in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, as a sole trader business in the early 1990s. Picture: Google Street View\nA 69-year-old Stevenage woman, who was the director of care at a Cambridgeshire care home, has been disqualified after her business breached health and safety regulations, putting residents at risk.\nAnita Ram has been banned from being involved - directly or indirectly - in the promotion, formation or management of a company without permission of the court, after a number of issues were raised by the Care Quality Commission in 2017 and an investigation into her conduct was launched.\nRam started running Millfield Lodge Care Home in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire, as a sole trader business in the early 1990s. It was incorporated in 2004, but only began formally trading in July 2014.\nIn April 2017, the home was inspected by the CQC and rated 'requires improvement' after breaches of regulations relating to the safeguarding of people, their care records, and reporting of incidents to the CQC were discovered.\nIn July and August of the same year, further unannounced inspections were carried out. Inspectors found that the care home was in breach of six regulations under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. At the August inspection the service was rated as inadequate.\nThey resolved that Anita Ram as director was not a fit and proper person to carry on the service, as she had failed to co-operate with the nursing agency that ran the service in the home, removed records and equipment, and prevented access to people's finances, among other concerns.\nInspectors also uncovered that not all residents in the home were being safely administered their medication, with discrepancies between the amount of medication in stock and the amounts recorded as having been administered. Ram had also failed to ensure the building met required fire safety standards, meaning residents were at risk.\nAs a result of these concerns, the CQC applied to the courts to cancel Ram's registration as a care home provider and close the home. Residents were safely moved from the home in August 2017, and the company ceased trading.\nMillfield Lodge Care Home Limited entered Creditors Voluntary Liquidation and liquidators were appointed in September 2017, before it was formally wound up in October.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line511044"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6661762595176697,"wiki_prob":0.6661762595176697,"text":"Australian workers and youth discuss SEP election campaign\nWorkers, youth and students attending the Socialist Equality Party’s post-election meetings spoke to WSWS reporters about the party’s policies.\nPeter, a disability pensioner, was enthusiastic about the discussion at the SEP public meeting in Brisbane: “It was a very good meeting because it addressed two very serious issues that affect absolutely everybody, issues that the mainstream media does not seem to cover. Free Julian Assange for one! Once the governments get him down, there’s no more journalism. Journalism will be dead when they’ve got Assange.\n“The second issue, as shown by Trump’s ‘10 minutes to midnight’ threat against Iran, is the build up to war. That’s very real. People ought to know that. Their living standards are falling so that more money can be wasted on more weapons of destruction.”\nCommenting on the SEP’s campaign to defend Julian Assange, he said: “I believe we can free Assange because of the sheer numbers that we have got in the working class. We should outclass anything that the government can hold against us. Government has become far too important to leave in the hands of governments alone!”\nPeter agreed with the SEP’s analysis of Labor: “I’ve seen the Labor Party and the unions working hand in glove at the expense of the workers throughout my entire working life. Whether it was union compliance with big business, or big business following union advice to keep us at minimum wage, minimum hours and then minimum livelihoods, while they got fatter and fatter. It shows that those two are in cahoots with one another, at the expense of the working class.\n“We do need a global movement of the working class against capitalism. Capitalism is not necessary. Humanity existed for thousands of years before the first coin was ever minted. Karl Marx once pointed out that those who own the tools don’t use the tools and those who use the tools don’t own the tools. So that has to come to an end now. We’ve seen a lot of misuse of tools by very rich people who didn’t even know what the factory is doing.”\nAmgad\nAmgad, a truck driver who met the SEP during the election campaign in Broadmeadows, attended the Melbourne meeting. “I came here for Julian Assange,” he said, “but it’s good to know what is going on. I think many people don’t know about the issues of Assange. The media said that he is a rapist, that is how he is portrayed. It is profitable for the media to do that.”\nWilliam, a truck driver from Frankston, also spoke out in defence of Assange: “I have been aware of Julian’s situation since the beginning—with the publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the massive exposure of corruption by various politicians and big business people stealing ordinary people’s money and putting it away. It’s clear to see why the powers that be want to get him.\n“I attended anti-Vietnam war rallies and that’s where I started to build my political perspective. I realised they were lying to me back then as a kid, so the “Collateral Murder” video did not surprise me. What I find amazing is just how vehement the ruling elite has been against anti-war figures. I shouldn’t be surprised. They want to scare journalists. This is all about intimidating journalists and making sure, if they become privy to any kind of information about how the deep state is operating, they will be too scared to actually publish it.”\nAsked about the Australian government’s role in the persecution of Assange, William replied: “I am disgusted. I didn’t realise its role back when I supported Julia Gillard. I had thought she was a breath of fresh air in some ways. But the fact that she turned her back on an Australian in such a big way in 2010 is unforgivable. The Labor Party learned in 1975 that if they tried to take Australia in an independent direction, they could expect a coup d’état from the US and the CIA. Rudd and Gillard knew they couldn’t stand up against the United States.”\nLewis, an RMIT sociology and psychology student, said: “The meeting felt very inclusive. There was quite a lot of clarity. The push for people to educate themselves and not just be told what the problems are is very important. Primarily, the issue of Julian Assange is what drew me to the meeting. The most urgent issues are Manning, Assange and the fate of whistleblowers and journalists around the world, and that needs to be dealt with quickly.\n“We also need to stop corporate interests dictating how society is run. I have had an interest in socialism for many years. There is always that underlying fear of what has happened in the past, which is why we need to learn from history.”\nIn Sydney, Haydn, 24 and currently unemployed, said: “I was very impressed with your speakers at the meeting. I asked what the SEP was going to do about youth unemployment. The speaker answered me bluntly and put it how it is. She didn’t sugar coat it but highlighted that young people of my generation are suffering and that there is no way out for us under the present system.\n“The SEP has a strong link to the outside world, not just about what’s happening in Australia. It explains things from a world perspective, not just a country perspective or an individual perspective, and with that you can start to change things in our own country to match the reality in which we live.\nDanielle, 40, a psychology student at Swinburne University and a mother of three children, attended the Newcastle meeting.\n“This meeting made it clearer to me why Assange is being persecuted, and how it relates to the state of politics in Australia and around the world.\n“America is trying to manufacture consent to a war with Iran by executing false-flag events because people are now more distrustful of the mainstream media because of Assange. People’s eyes have been opened to the corruption that’s out there because of Assange and there’s no going back.\n“I think the fight by the SEP to free Julian Assange, and the call for an international fight for his freedom is really important. We need to start seeing ourselves as a collective movement. I think if the working class was to join together across countries then this would be a powerful force against the corruption of the ruling class…\n“One of the things I took from this meeting is that Australia is not a collective “we”—there are two groups in society: the ruling class, which is actually a small minority; and the working class, which is workers all around the world.”\nThe Australian fire crisis and the necessity for socialism\nBrisbane forum calls for broad support for Assange and Manning\nPowerful response to call for stepped-up fight to free Assange and Manning at SEP (Australia) meeting\nSEP meeting in Alice Springs demands freedom for Assange and Manning\nChristoph Vandreier and David North to speak at Sydney Gleebooks launch of Why Are They Back?\nAustralian fires leave tens of thousands in financial hardship and stress\nAustralia: Balmoral firefighters say they were “abandoned” and demand better resources\nAustralian bushfire crisis highlights sweeping emergency powers\nAustralia: NSW bushfire victims condemn inadequate planning and government responses\nThe prosecution of Julian Assange, the destruction of legality and the rise of the national security state\nNew Zealand fascist group targets Chinese-born MP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1345847"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6844421625137329,"wiki_prob":0.3155578374862671,"text":"Wenda Harris Millard\nMedia Executive\nI went on to hold several other roles, which have all been challenging in different ways.\nIn the summer of 1996, after spending 20 years in the magazine publishing business, I was unsure about what my next career adventure should be. I had built a solid track record at such great brands as Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal, New York magazine and Adweek, but all of a sudden I was unsure that I wanted to be a magazine publisher for the next 20 years.\nNot long before that, I had invested in and joined as president a company called Standard Rate & Data Service to have the experience of turning around a company and either selling it or taking it public. It also gave me the chance to sit on a Board for the first time. We successfully put the company back on solid footing and sold it after 18 months (for four times what we paid for it!).\nI was thinking about what was next when a friend who ran a major advertising agency called and told me about a new media venture he was helping to finance. He asked me if I’d meet the founder and CEO and take a look at the company to see what I thought of its prospects, suggesting that I might be interested in joining.\nAfter listening to him describe the idea, I said I just didn’t think it sounded right for me. “I’m too old for this ‘new media stuff,’” I said. “I’d be overdressed for it. And I don’t think I’d work well with geeks.”\nThough I was half-joking, I thought that a technology-driven company would be beyond my skills and too far outside my comfort zone. My friend convinced me to take the meeting anyway.\nWe set it for 45 minutes but it turned into three hours of conversation, most of which I didn’t completely understand, as the founder was an engineer and I was “all media all the time.” Turns out he didn’t understand most of what I was talking about either, but we both knew that if his vision was to come alive, someone had to be able to translate the technology’s capabilities for potential advertisers.\nWith trepidation but a great deal of excitement, I leaned in to the opportunity to be a digital media pioneer and became executive vice president of DoubleClick. In its first five years, we built the company into a “new media” powerhouse with 3,200 employees in 23 countries and generated half a billion dollars in revenue.\nI went on to hold several other roles, which have all been challenging in different ways. It has been 18 years since I held my nose and jumped into the uncharted waters of digital media. Where would I be now if I hadn’t leaned in?\nBetsy Smith\nCommunication Enthusiast\nMarne Levine\nVP, Global Public Policy\nMindy Levy\nKirthiga Reddy","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line290825"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6774361729621887,"wiki_prob":0.6774361729621887,"text":"Wadbilliga National Park features remote and rugged wilderness that will leave you feeling like you’ve truly escaped into the great outdoors.\nIn the Brogo wilderness, Wadbilliga National Park embraces one of the largest undisturbed river catchments in NSW, providing protection for the Tuross, Wadbilliga and Brogo Rivers.\nA four wheel drivers paradise, there is also camping and kayaking opportunities.\nCamping is available at the Cascades campground or Lake Creek camping area. Access is 2WD.\nBrogo Dam.\nThe park is a perfect area for long bushwalks and overnight camping. At the Cascades there is a walking track leading from the camping area to a viewing platform overlooking Tuross Falls and Cascades. In the Brogo Wilderness Area there are no formal paths and access relies on the walker using topographic maps and compass to determine the best routes, there are no constructed paths.\nDue to the rugged and relatively isolated nature of the park, animal populations here have remained relatively undisturbed. Swamp wallabies, eastern grey kangaroos, wombats, possums, platypus and echidnas are evident and in places like Wadbilliga Valley are particularly common. There is a diversity of birdlife with 122 native bird species having been sighted here.\nThe park also contains fine examples of open forest and woodland, heath, swamp, bogs and numerous rainforest pockets.\n400 kms south of Sydney, 150 km south-east of Canberra. The park covers an area of 76,399ha to the west of Narooma extending from the Woila Fire Trail in the north 48 km southwards to the Snowy Mountains Highway.\nAccess is difficult. The Wadbilliga Road runs through the centre of the park, however river crossings along this route can be a problem after heavy rain.\nAccess to the Tuross River and Tuross Falls is via the Tuross River Rd which leaves the Badja Forest Rd about 4.5 km along from the Countegany Rd. From here a path leads off to a viewpoint overlooking Tuross Falls.\nCheck with NPWS for current maps of this area.\nThe CMA 1:25000 maps which cover the park are (from north to south): Belowra 8825-IV-S | Cadgee 8825-I-S | Yowrie 8825-III-N | Wandella 8825-II-N | Puen Buen 8825-III-S | Cobargo 8825-II-S | Yankees Gap 8824-IV-N | Brogo 8824-I-N\nVisit National Parks and Wildlife website for more information on Wadbilliga National Park.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line931419"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6982150673866272,"wiki_prob":0.3017849326133728,"text":"Calex: Lets Make a Deal\nWritten by Adam Donnelly\nST. JOHNSBURY- While most people do not pay attention to, or simply discard most subscription offers that come through their mailboxes, the offer that the Calex ambulance organization sends out is one that people might want to pay more attention to.\nWhat a lot of people won't realize is that the subscription offered by Calex, is actually a great deal. If residents sign up for the deal, they can expect to receive a free ambulance ride for an entire year, whenever the need for an ambulance occurs.\nCalex board president Celina Wright believes this is a deal that people shouldn't pass up, saying, \"if you do not have insurance, it's an even bigger deal... Everyone in your household is covered for the whole year. We do it every year, it is a yearly cost.\"\nThere are different prices for different packages. The most expensive coverage, the family package, costs no more than $50 per year. This price saves families hundreds of dollars where co-pays for an ambulance ride can be up to $500. Other packages include the Non-Senior Individual package which costs just $30 per year, the Single Senior Citizen package (65+) which costs $20 per year, and the Senior Citizen Couple (65+) package costing $40 per year.\nCalex mails out the subscriptions towards the end of November. The package that is chosen runs all year long from January through December. You can also sign up for the subscription online on the Calex website where more information about the different subscriptions is available.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line5912"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9904672503471375,"wiki_prob":0.9904672503471375,"text":"Syria and Jordan agree to reopen vital crossing\nBy ALBERT AJI and OMAR AKOURAssociated Press\nOct 14, 2018 at 12:01 AM Oct 14, 2018 at 9:05 AM\nDAMASCUS, Syria (AP) � Jordan and Syria agreed Sunday to reopen a vital border crossing between the two countries, three years after the commercial lifeline fell to rebel groups and traffic was halted.\nIsrael also said Sunday the Quneitra crossing with Syria will reopen Monday to U.N. observers, four years after it was closed because of the fighting.\nThe reopening of the crossings is a major boost to the Syrian government, keen on sending messages to its citizens and the world that it is slowly emerging victorious from the bloody conflict and beginning to restore vital services and relations. In eastern Syria, state TV said its broadcast has returned to Deir el-Zour city, seven years after it was halted when armed groups seized control of the area.\nReopening the crossing with Jordan would bring major relief to President Bashar Assad's government by restoring a much-needed gateway for Syrian exports to Arab countries. It is also expected to boost its coffers as the government is expected to collect transit fees from convoys coming from Jordan. Last month, it hiked fees for all trailers transiting through its territories.\nThe resumption of commercial trade through the crossing will also be a diplomatic victory for Assad, whose government has been isolated from its Arab neighbors since the war began in 2011.\nArab countries have boycotted the Syrian government since the early days of the war, freezing its membership in the 22-member state Arab League.\nJordan government spokeswoman Jumana Ghunaimat said the Naseeb crossing would be opened Monday after operational details have been agreed upon, according to the Jordanian Petra news agency. Syria's Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar also confirmed the crossing's reopening, according to Syria's state news agency.\n\"The Naseeb crossing is a vital lifeline for trade between the two brotherly countries Jordan and Syria through them to other Arab countries,\" Ghunaimat said, according to Petra. Rebels seized the crossing in 2015, disrupting a major trade route between Syria and Jordan, Lebanon and oil-rich Gulf countries.\nThe two governments had earlier issued conflicting reports of when the crossing would open.\nSyrian troops recaptured it in July this year after rebels reached an agreement with Russian mediators to end the violence in the southern province of Daraa and surrender the crossing.\nThe crossing is also vital for Syria's neighboring Lebanon, providing its agricultural products a route to foreign markets.\nThe recapture of Naseeb crossing marked a major victory for Assad's forces, which have been on a winning streak since 2015 when Russia threw its military weight behind Damascus. The victory in southern Syria signaled the return of his forces to Daraa province where the uprising against him began seven years ago.\nFighting has subsided across most of Syria, but in the absence of a political deal, more than 40 percent of the country's territory remains in the hands of armed opposition and their foreign supporters\nOn Sunday, Israel's military announced that the United Nations has decided to return its peacekeeping force, known as UNDOF, to the Quneitra crossing area. The crossing will be used exclusively for U.N. forces, it added.\nThe Syrian government plans to escort media to the crossing Monday.\nSyrian forces recaptured the Quneitra area in July. Russian military police deployed in the area, including on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, setting up checkpoints in the area. Moscow said it planned to work closely with the U.N. force.\nIsrael captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 war. The UNDOF deployed in the area in 1974.\nSeparately, Syrian state said Sunday technicians have installed two transmitters to restore the broadcast of the terrestrial TV station and Voice of Youth radio to the eastern city of Deir el-Zour and surrounding areas for the first time in seven years. It was the latest in government efforts to restore normal life to areas it has recaptured from armed groups.\nGovernment forces, aided by Russian air craft and allied militia, chased IS fighters out of the city and most of the western banks of the Euphrates river last year.\nIn a separate offensive that occasionally raised tensions, rival U.S.-backed Syrian Defense Forces fought the militants on the eastern banks of the river and along the border with Iraq. The Kurdish-led forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition air power, continue to battle IS militants in Hajin, a small pocket east of the river.\nOn Saturday, IS militants stormed a settlement for displaced people in Hajin and abducted scores of civilians. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 130 families were kidnapped.\nThe U.S.-led coalition said it couldn't confirm news of the kidnapping. It said it has been dropping leaflets requesting that civilians leave the area for months \"to avoid the brutal tactics\" of the extremist group.\nIS \"has used innocent civilians as human shields in the past and leaflets often give them instructions for the quickest and safest exits, but we fully understand many have no other places to go,\" said Col. Sean Ryan, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition.\nOmar Abou Leila, a Deir el-Zour native residing in Europe who runs the Deir el-Zour 24 news network, said the militants also kidnapped SDF fighters.\nImages appeared on social media of the militants holding at least a couple of men wearing uniforms. In the posting, the militants boasted it has taken Kurdish fighters captive. Ryan, of the coalition, said he could not confirm whether SDF fighters were kidnapped.\nDeir el-Zour, Syria's oil-rich province, has been scene to fighting between government forces and insurgents since the start of the war in 2011. The militants seized control of most of it in 2014. But IS has lost most of its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq over the last two years.\nAkour contributed from Amman, Jordan. Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.\nThe Pueblo Chieftain ~ 825 W. Sixth St., Pueblo, CO 81003 ~ Do Not Sell My Personal Information ~ Cookie Policy ~ Do Not Sell My Personal Information ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service ~ Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy\nCrime Beat\nCSU Pueblo/Thunderwolves\nNFL / Broncos\nNBA / Nuggets\nNHL / Avalanche\nMLB / Rockies\nFootball Fever Contest\nPueblo West View\nChieftain Printing\nBest of Pueblo","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line461261"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7231971621513367,"wiki_prob":0.27680283784866333,"text":"Continental Congress (5) + -\nThomson, Charles (4) + -\nEmery, Noah (1) + -\nNew-Hampshire, Provincial Congress (1) + -\nPennsylvania, Committee of Safety (1) + -\n(-) ≠ Al. Piantadosi & Co.\n(-) ≠ O'Hara, Geoffrey, 1882-1967\n(-) ≠ Jerome H. Remick & Co.\n(-) = American archives\n(-) ≠ New-York Committee\n(-) = Hancock, John\nLetter from the President of Congress to the Committee of Safety in Trenton, directing the Prisoners taken at Chambly and St. John's to be sent to the Towns of Reading, Lancaster, and York, in Pennsylvania\nHancock, John\nLetter from the President of Congress to New-York Committee of Safety: Protection and defence of New-York\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Wooster, directing him immediately to march to Albany, and there await the orders of General Schuyler\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Schuyler: Operations in Canada\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Washington: General Thomas has been appointed to take the command in Canada, ten tons of Powder have been forwarded to Cambridge, in addition to five tons and a half sent some time ago. With regard to\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Washington\nLetter from the President of Congress to the New-Jersey Committee of Safety\nLetter from the President of Congress to Walter Livingston, directing the Prisoners taken at Chambly and St. John's to be sent to the Towns of Reading, Lancaster, and York, in Pennsylvania\nLetter from President Hancock to the Massachusetts Congress, enclosing a Resolution of the Congress advising the assumption of Civil Government by Massachusetts, Gen. Gage having levied War against His Majesty's peaceable Subjects of that Colony\nLetter from John Hancock to General Washington, introducing to him Mr. Ogden and Mr. Burr of the Jerseys\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Washington: Has forwarded two hundred and fifty thousand Dollars for the Army\nLetter from the President of Congress to General Schuyler\nLetter from the President of Congress to Colonel Maxwell, directing him to send his Companies to Canada, one at a time, as fast as they can be provided, without waiting till, the whole are equipped\nResolution of the Continental Congress of November 3, on establishing Government in New-Hampshire, The Congress dissolved\nContinental Congress, Hancock, John, Thomson, Charles, Emery, Noah, New-Hampshire, Provincial Congress\nLetter from the President of Congress to the Convention of New-Hampshire","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line321611"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5207415223121643,"wiki_prob":0.5207415223121643,"text":"'The mind-blowing riches of an exhilarated imagination.'\nGheorghe Virtosu Abstract artist Bio\n\"My mother said that if I wanted to be an artist, I would be successful. That was the hardest thing of all for me as the urge for art creation were born while I was in prison. My mother died, and I had no real chance to pay last tribute. At that time, it was not about finding my style or make it in the art world; it was about setting me free and what I had to say.” - G. Virtosu.\nGheorghe Virtosu ’s way of being in the world combines to perfection a straightforward and down-to-earth nature with a mystical and mysterious streak. The passionate nature has always urged him to follow intellectual and deeply spiritual pursuits, and therefore becoming a children’s author has fulfilled a heartfelt personal need, while at the same time mastering large scale art projects. From the very beginning, his creation has eluded all canonization, contemporary and classical, since it cannot be labelled as belonging to any of them for definite.\nThe contemporary artist was born on April the 14th 1968, in a small village in Basarabia, within a loving family. When he was only 15 years of age, he decided to leave home and continue his education at a town college a few good miles away from home. In doing so, he came against many adversities, while having to comply with a rigorous discipline imposed by the school, mostly through a very active and physically demanding sportive schedule. In the end, however, the active sporty lifestyle he led in college served him in good credit for the compulsory military service which followed soon after graduation.\nHaving envisaged a military career for himself, he ended up as a resilient character ready to tackle head-on any other challenges which life might have thrown at him. After the fall of the Communist system in USSR, Gheorghe resigned from the army and went abroad in search of a new life, like most of the young people of Easter-European background.\nAfter having travelled the world far and wide, thus achieving one of his childhood dreams rendered as impossible for anyone growing up behind the Iron Curtain, the artist eventually chose Britain as his adoptive country, settling down in London and acquired British citizenship after a few years.\nIn 2004, the artist was detained by the French authorities. At the end of a long and costly investigation, he was accused of having created one of the greatest networks of immigration in Europe since The Great War.\nBorn under the bold sign of Aries, the artist is hardly a man to be kept down by any circumstances. Although deprived of his freedom of movement, his mind and spirit soared up to heights of creative power never reached before. As a result of his confinement in isolation, Virtosu came up with two novels. After a period of intense creative strain, he found himself at his wits’ end, experiencing mental and physical fatigue. In the remaining time of his incarceration, he kept on sketching ideas and characters which would, later on, come to life in his oil paintings.\nGheorghe Virtosu the writer.\n\"The Ignorance in the arms of mankind\"\nTo be published in 2020. New York.\nAs we can see, abstract paintings have become chosen ways of rebelling against the miscarriage of justice occurring in the world.\nWriting and painting have become the most effective way of dealing with frustration, loss, and anger - a form of therapy. Virtosu has found in art the ideal form of elevating negative emotions and transforming them into rewarding projects meant to spread and replenish happiness and a zest for life.\nEngaging with all kind of challenges at different levels, he not only maintained his integrity of spirit but also added value to his art and gained new perspectives, like a beautiful diamond which, skilfully cut, reflects the light in unexpected ways.\n'A visionary artist and thinker.'\n'Be drawn into a weird and wonderful fantasy universe.'\n'A revelation.'\nWhile his cutting-edge literary style asserts itself as refreshingly unique, Gheorghe Virtosu surprises us, yet again, with his found taste for abstract paintings which approaches themes and topics from different cultures, thus introducing a diverse view of the world. Each artwork is singular and carries a genuine complexity of meaning which requires its code for deciphering it.\nRanging from gritty and brush, to poetical and ethereal, the characters in Virtosu 's artwork are free spirits of nature caught in a game of multiculturalism and plural voices which join in together to produce divine harmonies of colour and meaning.\nThe contemporary British abstract artist's pieces are like nothing we have seen before: dressed up in hooded cloaks, equipped with weapons which look like magical devices and displaying a puzzling other-worldly demeanour, the characters tell us nothing about themselves, and everything about the universe they belong to.\nHis works are very sparing with whom they are letting in: unequivocally, they invite the audience to engage with art at more than one level actively and lead the way to first-hand experiencing aesthetic knowledge, sensorial and intuitive perception.\nGheorghe Virtosu Artist statement\nArt is an effort to fill an empty space with the expression of an idea. Work is born through the artist as the medium, melding order out of a diverse landscape in an intellectual exercise. Freedom from boundaries opens possibility in the form of the medium and the breadth of the artist to reveal wholly new ways of seeing. The truth in the revelation creates an opportunity to shape the colours of paint in an exercise that is not only the experience of art but life.\nConfident art is large and encompassing, bold and insistent on the attention of the viewer while encouraging interpretation and participation in the experience of the work. The viewer engages the work as a partner to the artist and initiates a journey that shares in the evolution of its meaning. Envisioning and capturing work on canvas is not where it lies dormant and static: it is a place where the expression becomes a community and continues to expand.\nIn this natural form, art can only exist if it is authentic. The part of the artist is the effort to engage organic expression in a way that has not been previously achieved. Life does not just simply spill onto the canvas like blood let from veins. Randomly bleeding onto a canvas is too easy, distasteful, and ultimately disappointing. The challenge of this art is to evolve an expansive landscape that brings the viewer, idea, artist, and experience together. At once, it is chaos and at the same time, a simple embrace of the loss of boundaries at the portal to new understanding.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line790793"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6461384296417236,"wiki_prob":0.35386157035827637,"text":"Proposed Rule\nCommon Crop Insurance Regulations; Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions\nA Proposed Rule by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation on 11/17/2011\nFederal Crop Insurance Corporation\nWritten comments and opinions on this proposed rule will be accepted until close of business January 17, 2012 and will be considered when the rule is to be made final.\nComments Close:\nCFR:\n7 CFR 457\nDocket No. FCIC-11-0008\nRIN:\n0563-AC35\nPaperwork Reduction Act of 1995\nE-Government Act Compliance\nUnfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995\nFederal Assistance Program\nList of Subjects in 7 CFR Part 457\nPART 457—COMMON CROP INSURANCE REGULATIONS\n2. Unit Division\n3. Insurance Guarantees and Coverage Levels for Determining Indemnities\n4. Contract Changes\n6. Report of Acreage\n8. Insured Crop\n13. Settlement of Claim\nThere are no public comments on this document\nStart Preamble\nFederal Crop Insurance Corporation, USDA.\nProposed rule.\nThe Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) proposes to amend the Common Crop Insurance Regulations, Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions. The intended effect of this action is to provide policy changes, to clarify existing policy provisions to better meet the needs of insured producers, and to reduce vulnerability to program fraud, waste, and abuse. The proposed changes will be effective for the 2013 and succeeding crop years.\nFCIC prefers that comments be submitted electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. You may submit comments, identified by Docket ID No. FCIC-11-0008, by any of the following methods:\nFederal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments.\nMail: Director, Product Administration and Standards Division, Risk Management Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, P.O. Box 419205, Kansas City, MO 64133-6205.\nAll comments received, including those received by mail, will be posted without change to http://www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided, and can be accessed by the public. All comments must include the agency name and docket number or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) for this rule. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information, see http://www.regulations.gov. If you are submitting comments electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal and want to attach a document, we ask that it be in a text-based format. If you want to attach a document that is a scanned Adobe PDF file, it must be scanned as text and not as an image, thus allowing FCIC to search and copy certain portions of your submissions. For questions regarding attaching a document that is a scanned Adobe PDF file, please contact the RMA Web Content Team at (816) 823-4694 or by email at rmaweb.content@rma.usda.gov.\nPrivacy Act: Anyone is able to search the electronic form of all comments received for any dockets by the name of the individual submitting the comment (or signing the comment, if submitted on behalf of an association, business, labor union, etc.). You may review the complete User Notice and Privacy Notice for Regulations.gov at http://www.regulations.gov/​#!privacyNotice.\nStart Further Info\nChief, Policy Administration Branch, Product Administration and Standards Division, Risk Management Agency, United States Department of Agriculture, Beacon Facility, Stop 0812, Room 421, P.O. Box 419205, Kansas City, MO 64141-6205, telephone (816) 926-7730.\nEnd Further Info End Preamble Start Supplemental Information\nThis rule has been determined to be non-significant for the purposes of Executive Order 12866 and, therefore, it has not been reviewed by the OMB.\nPursuant to the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. chapter 35), the collections of information in this rule have been approved by OMB under control number 0563-0053.Start Printed Page 71277\nFCIC is committed to complying with the E-Government Act of 2002, to promote the use of the Internet and other information technologies to provide increased opportunities for citizen access to Government information and services, and for other purposes.\nTitle II of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) establishes requirements for Federal agencies to assess the effects of their regulatory actions on State, local, and Tribal governments and the private sector. This rule contains no Federal mandates (under the regulatory provisions of title II of the UMRA) for State, local, and Tribal governments or the private sector. Therefore, this rule is not subject to the requirements of sections 202 and 205 of UMRA.\nIt has been determined under section 1(a) of Executive Order 13132, Federalism, that this rule does not have sufficient implications to warrant consultation with the States. The provisions contained in this rule will not have a substantial direct effect on States, or on the relationship between the national government and the States, or on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the various levels of government.\nThis rule has been reviewed in accordance with the requirements of Executive Order 13175, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments. The review reveals that this regulation will not have substantial and direct effects on Tribal governments and will not have significant Tribal implications.\nFCIC certifies that this regulation will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. Program requirements for the Federal crop insurance program are the same for all producers regardless of the size of their farming operation. For instance, all producers are required to submit an application and acreage report to establish their insurance guarantees and compute premium amounts, and all producers are required to submit a notice of loss and production information to determine the amount of an indemnity payment in the event of an insured cause of crop loss. Whether a producer has 10 acres or 1000 acres, there is no difference in the kind of information collected. To ensure crop insurance is available to small entities, the Federal Crop Insurance Act authorizes FCIC to waive collection of administrative fees from limited resource farmers. FCIC believes this waiver helps to ensure that small entities are given the same opportunities as large entities to manage their risks through the use of crop insurance. A Regulatory Flexibility Analysis has not been prepared since this regulation does not have an impact on small entities, and, therefore, this regulation is exempt from the provisions of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 U.S.C. 605).\nThis program is listed in the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance under No. 10.450.\nThis program is not subject to the provisions of Executive Order 12372, which require intergovernmental consultation with State and local officials. See the Notice related to 7 CFR part 3015, subpart V, published at 48 FR 29115, June 24, 1983.\nThis proposed rule has been reviewed in accordance with Executive Order 12988 on civil justice reform. The provisions of this rule will not have a retroactive effect. The provisions of this rule will preempt State and local laws to the extent such State and local laws are inconsistent herewith. With respect to any direct action taken by FCIC or to require the insurance provider to take specific action under the terms of the crop insurance policy, the administrative appeal provisions published at 7 CFR part 11 or 7 CFR part 400, subpart J for the informal administrative review process of good farming practices as applicable, must be exhausted before any action against FCIC for judicial review may be brought.\nThis action is not expected to have a significant economic impact on the quality of the human environment, health, or safety. Therefore, neither an Environmental Assessment nor an Environmental Impact Statement is needed.\nFCIC proposes to amend the Common Crop Insurance Regulations (7 CFR part 457) by revising § 457.167 Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions, to be effective for the 2013 and succeeding crop years. The proposed changes are as follows:\n1. Section 1—FCIC proposes to revise the definition of “average gross sales per acre” by removing specific crop years from the example. This change is being proposed because the crop years listed in the example are outdated. Removing the specific crop years does not change the meaning of the example. This proposed change will alleviate the need to change the crop years in the example each time the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions are revised.\nFCIC proposes to revise the definition of “approved average revenue per acre” by changing the maximum number of years of average gross sales used to calculate approved average revenue per acre from ten to six years. This change is being proposed based on recommendations from a FCIC contracted study that found that a shorter base period works as well or better for predicting actual yields for some perennial crops. The shorter base period will be more responsive to market trends and changes in the productive capacity of the trees.\nFCIC proposes to remove the references to “lowest available dollar span” from the definition of “approved average revenue per acre” and replace it with the term “T-revenue.” The “T-revenue” will be used in place of the “lowest available dollar span” when sufficient records are not provided. FCIC will develop a “T-revenue” that will represent a value similar to the current “lowest available dollar span.” This change is being proposed to facilitate the implementation of a continuous rating methodology to be consistent with other policies. Under the current rating methodology a rate class is assigned based on which “dollar span” the insured's average approved revenue falls into. Removing references to “dollar spans” and developing a “T-revenue” is necessary in order to migrate to the continuous rating methodology because under the new continuous rating methodology “dollar spans” will no longer be used.\nFCIC proposes to remove the definition of “enterprise unit” from the current Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions and use the definition of “enterprise unit” contained in the Common Crop Insurance Policy Basic Provisions. The Basic Provisions contain additional requirements to qualify for an “enterprise unit” that are not contained in the current definition of “enterprise unit” in the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions. This change will make the unit structures under the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions consistent Start Printed Page 71278with other crop programs administered by FCIC.\nFCIC proposes to revise the definition of “market price” by:\na. Removing subparagraph (2) of the definition that references the actual price received. With the proposed revision to section 13(d)(2), the price received will be used to value any production that is sold unless the price received is not verifiable by sales receipts or is determined to be inappropriate. Since market price will only be used to value unsold production or sold production in which the price received is inappropriate or unverifiable, it is not necessary to list the price received in the definition of market price;\nb. Revising the introductory paragraph by removing the phrase “the greater of” and redesignating subparagraph (3) as subparagraph (1) to make Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) prices the primary source for determining market price. FCIC proposes to add language to clarify the AMS price used must be from the nearest location and must be of similar quality, quantity and variety of in-shell pecans. FCIC proposes adding the phrase “unless otherwise provided in the Special Provisions” to the end of the first sentence of the subparagraph that references AMS prices to allow flexibility to alter this section should AMS change or discontinue their current pecan reports; and\nc. Redesignating subparagraph (1) as subparagraph (2) and adding the phrase “if AMS prices are not published for the week” to the beginning of newly redesignated subparagraph (2). This proposed change will make this provision an alternative method of determining market price if for any reason AMS does not publish prices for the week. This change is being proposed because using the AMS price will provide a more reliable and consistent price to value appraised production.\nFCIC proposes to remove the definition of “set out” because all other references to this term within the policy are proposed to be removed.\nFCIC proposes to add the definition of “transitional revenue (T-revenue)” that will be used in place of the “lowest available dollar span.” The “T-revenue” will be an amount determined by FCIC and provided in the actuarial documents. FCIC plans to establish a “T-revenue” that is comparable to the current “lowest available dollar span.” The “T-revenue” may be adjusted as more revenue data is collected.\n2. Section 2—FCIC proposes to revise section 2 to state that enterprise units are defined in accordance with the Basic Provisions and are available only if allowed by the Special Provisions. This change is necessary to make the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions consistent with the Common Crop Insurance Policy Basic Provisions. FCIC intends to allow enterprise units through the Special Provisions.\nFCIC proposes to revise section 2 to allow basic units to be divided into optional units if optional units are located on non-contiguous land, separate records of production are provided for at least the most recent consecutive two crop years that verify trees in the optional unit meet the minimum production requirement, and optional units are selected by the acreage reporting date for the first year of the two year coverage module. Optional units by non-contiguous land are being proposed at the request of producers. The proposed requirements to qualify for optional units are similar to those that are contained in the Basic Provisions, but due to the “two-year coverage module,” the requirements have been modified to be applicable to the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions. Premium rates will be adjusted to compensate for any additional risk associated with optional units.\n3. Section 3—FCIC proposes to revise section 3 by removing all references to the “lowest available dollar span” and replacing it with the term “T-revenue.”\nFCIC proposes to revise section 3(d)(1) by removing the provision that contains a factor used to reduce your average gross sales for acres that are sequentially thinned. The provision is being proposed to be removed because it is ambiguous and discourages good management practices. Language in sections 3(d)(3) and 6(b) provides consequences for sequential thinning when the thinning is expected to reduce gross sales below the approved average revenue.\nFCIC proposes to add a new section 3(d)(1) that states if you fail to provide acceptable records for optional units, those units will be combined into basic units and your amount of insurance per acre will be recalculated for the two-year coverage module. This provision provides the consequence for failure to provide acceptable records for optional units which is consistent with other crop programs.\n4. Section 4—FCIC proposes to amend section 4(b) by removing RMA's Web site address because this is defined in the Basic Provisions.\nFCIC proposes to amend section 4(d) by adding the statement, “if available from us, you may elect to receive these documents and changes electronically.” This statement is being proposed to provide consistency with the Basic Provisions. Section 4 of the Basic Provisions provides that producers may elect to receive documents and changes electronically. However, the introductory paragraph of section 4 of the Pecan Revenue Crop Insurance Provisions contains the phrase, “in lieu of the provisions contained in section 4 of the Basic Provisions.” Therefore, in order to provide consistency with the Basic Provisions it is necessary to state that, “if available from us, you may elect to receive these documents and changes electronically.”\n5. Section 6—FCIC proposes to amend section 6 by removing the percentage associated with the reporting requirements for sequentially thinning because the threshold for sequentially thinning is proposed to be removed from section 3.\n6. Section 8—FCIC proposes to amend section 8(d) by removing the minimum age requirements and adding a minimum level of production that must be obtained to qualify for insurance unless inspected and allowed by written agreement. This provision will protect program integrity because older trees that do not meet the minimum production requirement will no longer be insurable. Furthermore, this change will allow improved varieties that may come into production sooner to be insured regardless of age as long as they meet the minimum production requirement.\nFCIC proposes to add a new section 8(e) to allow certain varieties or groups of varieties to be designated as uninsurable through the Special Provisions. This change is being proposed to address varieties that may be found to be unproductive or incompatible pollinators.\n7. Section 13—FCIC proposes to amend section 13(b) by adding a statement indicating that if the insured is unable to provide separate acceptable records for any optional units, we will combine all units for which such records were not provided. FCIC also proposes adding a statement to this section stating that for any basic unit, we will allocate commingled production or revenue to each basic unit in proportion to our liability on the harvested acreage for each unit. This is standard language contained in most policies that allow optional units. These provisions are being proposed to clarify the consequences of failure to provide separate acceptable records.\nFCIC proposes to revise section 13(d)(2)(i) by changing the basis by which price is determined for sold production from market price to price Start Printed Page 71279received. This change is being proposed to address concerns that the indemnity is not calculated on the same basis by which the guarantee is set. The guarantee is based on the price received for sold production, but indemnities are determined using the market price. FCIC also proposes adding a parenthetical stating that if the price received is not verifiable by sales receipts or is determined to be inappropriate for the quality of pecans sold, the market price will be used. FCIC intends to provide additional guidance in the 2013 Pecan Revenue Loss Adjustment Standards Handbook as to when a price should be considered inappropriate. The guidance will create a minimum threshold that the price received must meet and will be based on a percentage of the AMS price.\nFCIC proposes to revise the example at the end of section 13 by replacing dates with generic numbers for the crop year. FCIC also proposes to revise the example by changing the historical average pounds per acre and average gross sales per acre to reflect an alternate bearing pattern. FCIC further proposes to revise the example by adding insured causes of loss to the explanation of indemnity calculation to illustrate that claims are only paid if losses are the result of an insured cause. FCIC also proposes to change the example to illustrate that the price received will be used to value sold production.\nStart List of Subjects\nPecan revenue\nReporting and recordkeeping requirements\nEnd List of Subjects\nAccordingly, as set forth in the preamble, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation proposes to amend 7 CFR part 457 effective for the 2013 and succeeding crop years as follows:\nStart Part\n1. The authority citation for 7 CFR part 457 continues to read as follows:\nStart Authority\nAuthority: 7 U.S.C. 1506(l), 1506(o).\nEnd Authority\n2. Amend § 457.167 as follows:\na. Amend the introductory text by removing “2005” and adding “2013” in its place;\nb. Add definition in section 1 for “transitional revenue (T-revenue)”;\nc. Revise the definitions in section 1 of “average gross sales per acre,” “approved average revenue per acre,” and “market price”;\nd. Amend section 1 by removing the definitions of “enterprise unit” and “set out”;\ne. Revise section 2(a)(1);\nf. Amend section 2(a)(2) by removing the period at the end of the sentence and adding the term “; or” in its place;\ng. Add a new section 2(a)(3);\nh. Amend the introductory text of section 3 by adding a comma following the phrase “In lieu of section 3 of the Basic Provisions”;\ni. Revise section 3(d)(1);\nj. Amend section 3(d)(2) by removing the phrase “lowest available dollar span amount provided in the actuarial documents” and adding the term “T-revenue” in its place;\nk. Amend section 3(f)(1) by removing the phrase “lowest available dollar span provided in the actuarial table” and adding the term “T-revenue” in its place;\nl. Amend section 3(h) by adding a hyphen between the words “high” and “risk” in all four instances they appear;\nm. Revise section 4(b);\nn. Amend section 4(d) by adding the sentence, “If available from us, you may elect to receive these documents and changes electronically.” following the sentence, “If changes are made that will be effective for a subsequent two-year coverage module, such copies will be provided not later than 30 days prior to the cancellation date.”;\no. Revise sections 6(a)(1) and 6(b);\np. Revise section 8(d);\nq. Amend section 8 by redesignating paragraphs (e) and (f) as (f) and (g) respectively, and adding a new paragraph (e);\nr. Revise section 13(b);\ns. Revise section 13(d)(2)(i);\nt. Revise the example at the end of section 13; and\nu. Amend section 16 by removing the space between “Not” and “withstanding.”\nThe revised and added text reads as follows:\n§ 457.167\nPecan revenue crop insurance provisions.\nThe pecan revenue crop insurance provisions for the 2013 and succeeding crop years are as follows:\nAverage gross sales per acre. Your gross sales of pecans for a crop year divided by your net acres of pecans grown during that crop year. For example, if for the crop year, your gross sales were $100,000 and your net acres of pecans were 100, then your average gross sales per acre for the crop year would be $1,000.\nApproved average revenue per acre. The total of your average gross sales per acre based on at least the most recent consecutive four years of sales records building to six years and dividing that result by the number of years of average gross sales per acre. If you provide more than four years of sales records, they must be the most recent consecutive six years of sales records. If you do not provide at least four years of gross sales records, your approved average revenue will be:\n(1) The average of the two most recent consecutive years of your gross sales per acre and two years of the T-revenue; or\n(2) If you do not provide any gross sales records, the T-revenue.\nMarket price. The market price is:\n(1) The average of the AMS prices for the nearest location for similar quality, quantity, and variety of in-shell pecans published during the week you sell any of your pecans if the price received is determined to be inappropriate, you harvest your pecans if they are not sold, or your pecans are appraised if you are not harvesting them, unless otherwise provided in the Special Provisions. For example, if you harvest production on November 14 but do not sell the production, the average of the AMS prices for the week containing November 14 will be used to determine the market price for the production harvested on November 14; or\n(2) If AMS prices are not published for the week, the average price per pound for in-shell pecans of the same variety or varieties insured offered by buyers on the day you sell any of your pecans if the price received is determined to be inappropriate, you harvest any of your pecans if they are not sold, or your pecans are appraised if you are not harvesting them, in the area in which you normally market the pecans (If buyers are not available in your immediate area, we will use the average in-shell price per pound offered by buyers nearest to your area).\nTransitional revenue (T-revenue). A value determined by FCIC and published in the actuarial documents.\n(1) An enterprise unit as defined in section 1 of the Basic Provisions, if allowed by the Special Provisions;\n(3) In lieu of the requirements contained in section 34(b) of the Basic Provisions, basic units may be divided into optional units if, for each optional unit, the following criteria are met:Start Printed Page 71280\n(i) Each optional unit you select must be located on non-contiguous land;\n(ii) Separate records of production are provided for at least the most recent consecutive two crop years. The records will be used to verify that trees from each unit meet the minimum production requirement contained in section 8(d) and to establish the approved average revenue per acre for the optional units selected; and\n(iii) Optional units are selected and identified on the acreage report by the acreage reporting date of the first year of the two-year coverage module (Units will be determined when the acreage is reported, but may be adjusted or combined to reflect the actual unit structure when adjusting a loss. No further unit division may be made after the acreage reporting date for any reason).\n(1) You fail to provide acceptable records required for optional units, which will result in optional units being combined into basic units at the time of discovery and your amount of insurance per acre will be recalculated for the two-year coverage module.\n(b) Any changes in policy provisions, amounts of insurance, premium rates, and program dates (except as allowed herein or as specified in section 3) can be viewed on RMA's Web site not later than the contract change date contained in these Crop Provisions. We may revise this information after the contract change date to correct clerical errors.\n(1) Any damage to trees, removal of trees, change in practices, sequential thinning or any other action that may reduce the gross sales below the approved average revenue upon which the amount of insurance per acre is based and the number of affected acres;\n(b) We will reduce the amount of your insurable acreage based on our estimate of the removal of a contiguous block of trees or damage to trees of the insured crop. We will reduce your amount of insurance per acre based on our estimate of the expected reduction in gross sales from a change in practice or sequential thinning.\n(d) That are grown on trees that have produced at least 600 pounds of pecans in-shell per acre (or an amount provided in the Special Provisions) in at least one of the previous four crop years, unless we inspect and allow insurance by written agreement. This amount of production must be achieved subsequent to any top work that occurs within a unit;\n(e) That are grown on varieties or a grouping of varieties within a unit that are not designated as uninsurable in the Special Provisions;\n(b) We will determine your loss on a unit basis. In the event you are unable to provide separate acceptable records for any:\n(1) Optional units, we will combine all optional units for which such records were not provided; or\n(2) Basic unit, we will allocate commingled production or revenue to each basic unit in proportion to our liability on the harvested acreage for each unit.\n(i) The dollar amount obtained by multiplying the number of pounds of pecans sold by the price received for each day the pecans were sold (if the price received is not verifiable by sales receipts or is determined to be inappropriate by us for the quality of pecans sold the market price will be used);\nPecan Revenue Example\nAverage pounds per acre\nAverage gross sales per acre\n4 100 750 $1,050\nTotal Average Gross Sales Per Acre = 2,675\nThe approved average revenue equals the total average gross sales per acre divided by the number of years ($2,675 ÷ 4 = $669).\nThe amount of insurance per acre equals the approved average revenue multiplied by the coverage level percent ($669 × .65 = $435).\nAssume pecan trees in the unit experienced damage to blooms due to a late freeze causing low production. You produced, harvested, and sold 300 pounds per acre of pecans from 70 acres and received an actual price of $0.75 per pound. On the other 30 acres, the pecans suffered damage due to drought. You elected not to harvest the other 30 acres of pecans. The 30 acres were appraised at 100 pounds per acre and on the day of the appraisal the average AMS price was $0.65. The total dollar value of production to count is (300 pounds of pecans × $0.75 × 70 net acres) + (100 pounds × $0.65 × 30 net acres) = $15,750 + $1,950 = $17,700.\nThe indemnity would be:\nThe amount of insurance per acre multiplied by the net acres minus the dollar value of the total production to count equals the dollar amount of indemnity ($435 × 100 = $43,500.00 − $17,700.00 = $25,800).\nStart Signature\nSigned in Washington, DC, on November 4, 2011.\nWilliam J. Murphy,\nManager, Federal Crop Insurance Corporation.\nEnd Signature End Part End Supplemental Information","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1490588"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8171099424362183,"wiki_prob":0.8171099424362183,"text":"Tagged: repay money to claimants\nHigh Court challenges UK work schemes\nThe High Court has ruled emergency laws underpinning a government back-to-work scheme are “incompatible” with the European Convention on Human Rights.\nThe ruling stems from a case brought by Cait Reilly in 2012, who said being forced to work for free at a Poundland store breached her human rights.\nThe government brought in new rules in 2013 allowing unpaid work schemes to continue pending further legal appeals.\nMinisters said they were “disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal.\nBut lawyers for Miss Reilly claimed the government owed about £130m to people who had fallen foul of the retrospective legislation and ministers should admit they made a mistake.\nThe 24-year old graduate challenged the legality of an unpaid work placement she undertook in 2011, part of the government’s “mandatory work activity” programme.\nShe said that she was told that if she did not agree to take part in the scheme, which she said involved stacking shelves, she would lose her Jobseeker’s Allowance.\nThe government was forced to pass emergency legislation amending the scheme last year after Court of Appeal ruled that the regulations underpinning it did not comply with existing laws giving the Department for Work and Pensions the power to introduce the programme\nThe legislation was designed to reinforce the rules to make it clear that claimants must do all they can to find work in order to claim benefits and to ensure the government did not have to repay money to claimants who had not complied with the conditions of their benefit claim.\nBut Mrs Justice Lang, sitting at the High Court in London, ruled on Friday that the retrospective legislation interfered with the “right to a fair trial” under Article Six of the Convention on Human Rights.\nThe Department for Work and Pensions said it was “disappointed” by the ruling – which it said applied to a minority of claimants – and would launch an appeal.\n“We disagree with the judgment on the legislation and are disappointed,” a spokeswoman said.\n“It was discussed, voted on and passed by Parliament. While this applies to only a minority of past cases and does not affect the day to day business of our Jobcentres, we think this is an important point and will appeal.”\nShe said the legislation remained “in force” and the government would not be compensating anyone who had been docked benefits pending the outcome of its appeal.\nBut Paul Heron, a solicitor for Public Interest Lawyers, said it was a “massively significant” ruling and the DWP’s decision to appeal against it would be a further blow to the “upwards of 3,000 cases sitting in the tribunal system waiting for this judgement“.\nHe claimed people were owed anything from four weeks benefit, about £250, to several thousand pounds and were having to mostly represent themselves at tribunals.\nHe told BBC News it was “about time the DWP just held their hands up, admit they made an error, and pay people the money they were entitled to at the time. That is what a responsible government would do.”\nThe back-to-work schemes have been condemned by critics as “slave labour” because they involve work without pay but are seen by supporters as a good way of getting the unemployed back into the world of work.\nThe Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling on the regulations last year although the judges also rejected claims that the schemes were “exploitative” and amounted to “forced labour“.\nMinisters said that the most recent legal judgement had upheld this view.\n“We’re pleased the Court recognised that if claimants do not play by the rules and meet their conditions to do all they can to look for work and get a job, we can stop their benefits,” the spokeswoman added.\nPoundland, one of several employers which took part in the scheme, withdrew from it in 2012.\nSource – BBC News, 04 July 2014\nWritten by untynewear 1 Comment Posted in Workfare\tTagged with All In It Together, Article Six of the Convention on Human Rights., £, back-to-work schemes, BBC News, benefit, benefit claim, benefit sanctions, benefits, Cait Reilly, capitialism, coalition Government., Conservative, County Durham, court of appeal, Department for Work & Pensions, docked benefits, dole, Durham, Durham City, DWP, Easington, employed, employment, European convention on human rights, exploitative, foodbanks, forced labour, forced work, Gateshead, government, government back-to-work scheme, Hebburn, Hetton-le-Hole, High Court, Houghton-le-Spring, Jarrow, job, Job Centre, job seeker, Jobcentre, Jobcentre Plus, Jobcentres, jobs, Jobseekers Allowance, JSA, Labour, Lib Dems, Liberal Democrats, London, Low Pay, mandatory work activity, Mrs Justice Lang, National Minimum Wage, neo-liberal, neoliberal, neoliberalism, New Labour, Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, North East, North Tyneside, Northumberland, parliament, Paul Heron, Peterlee, politicians, politics, Poundland, Public Interest Lawyers, repay money to claimants, retrospective legislation, right to a fair trial, sanction, sanctions, Seaham, slave labour, slavery, Social Security, South Shields, South Tyneside, stacking shelves, Sunderland, Supreme Court, tax credits, the Government, The High Court, Tory, Tyne, Tyne & Wear, Tyneside, unemployed, Unemployed In Tyne & Wear, unemployed north east, unemployed tyne&wear, unemployedintyne&wear, unemployment, unemployment benefits, unpaid work placement, unpaid work schemes, Wallsend, Washington, Wear, Wearside, welfare-to-work, Whitley Bay, work, work for benefits, Work Programme, workfare, worklessness, WP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1500183"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.714260995388031,"wiki_prob":0.285739004611969,"text":"Tag Archives: Disney Channel Talent Search\nDisney now casting actors and extras for new live-action comedy series ‘Mighty Med’\nSuper talented newcomer Paris Berelc stars in Disney’s superhero comedy series “Mighty Med”.\nIt’s a Laugh Productions is now in production on season one of the brand new Disney XD live-action superhero comedy series “Mighty Med”. Disney casting directors are beginning to audition actors for series regulars, recurring roles, guest starring roles, and day players. The extras are being hired throughout shooting on the sophomore season, which will continue through November 1, 2013. “Mighty Med” is a multi-camera series that was inspired by the extraordinary world of super heroes and comic books. Shooting takes place in Los Angeles.\nDisney Casting Calls for “Mighty Med”\nStandard | Posted in Disney Actor Casting, Disney Casting, Disney Channel Auditions\t| Tagged 2013 Los Angeles Actors Resource Guide eBook, alan baltes, All That, American Dad!, Andy Schwartz, Austin & Ally, Bradley Steven Perry, central casting, disney auditions, disney casting, Disney Channel Talent Search, disney xd, Dog with a Blog, Drake & Josh, Hannah Montana, Jake Short, jessie, Jim Bernstein, Jonas, Mighty Med, Paris Berelc, Phineas and Ferb, Quintuplets, shake it up, Sheryl Levine, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody\t| 0 comments\nDisney XD casting series regulars for new 1/2 hour comedy ‘Mighty Med’\n“Mighty Med” comes from the production company that brought you “Hannah Montana“.\nIt’s A Laugh Productions is in pre-production on the new 1/2 hour sitcom “Mighty Med” for Disney XD, and the Disney casting director is auditioning actors for the show’s starring and co-starring roles, as well as possible recurring roles. Central Casting is handling the hiring of the show’s stand-ins and extras. Shooting will take place in Los Angeles, CA beginning in February 2013. The starring roles include two boys and one girl who can play 15 years of age. They are also accepting submissions from actors of any ethnicity.\nDisney Casting “Mighty Med” Actors and Extras\nStandard | Posted in Acting Auditions, Auditions, Disney Actor Casting, Disney Casting, Disney Channel Auditions, Entertainment, Extras Casting, Teen Acting Auditions, Television Show Auditions\t| Tagged Cast, Creative Commons, disney, disney auditions, disney casting, Disney Channel Talent Search, disney xd, Hannah Montana, It's a Laugh Productions, los angeles, Mighty Med, The Walt Disney Company\t| 1 Comment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line338679"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8681013584136963,"wiki_prob":0.8681013584136963,"text":"Females join ring at new Zoppe Circus show\nLaura Latzko\nGetOut Contributor\nFor families like the Zoppes, the circus isn’t just a way to make a living. It is part of their identities.\nThe Zoppe family’s circus, in its 177th year, will make its annual visit to Chandler from Thursday, Dec. 26, to Sunday, Jan. 5.\nSeven generations of the family have been part of Zoppe: An Italian Family Circus.\nThe family circus was started in Italy in 1842 by French clown Napoline and Hungarian equestrian ballerina Ermenegilda and was moved to the United States by equestrian Alberto Zoppe in the 1940s.\nThroughout the circus’ history, matriarchs have played a strong role in keeping the family tradition alive. Emma Zoppe was especially instrumental in making sure the circus survived through tough times of famine and war.\nIn honor of Emma Zoppe, the family circus will be presenting a new show entitled “La Nonna,” a term used for a grandmother in Italian.\nGiovanni Zoppe, a sixth-generation circus performer and family circus’ director, said the new show is centered around and showcases the talent of female performers. Around 80% of the cast is made up of female performers from around the globe.\nIn each generation, one family member has really taken the reigns of leading the family circus. Emma was this person during the 1920s to the 1940s, and her son Alberto took over after her.\n“This truly is a celebration of her life. This show is about the strength, power and beauty of all women, the Zoppe women in particular,” Giovanni said.\nGiovanni hopes the show will empower women and promote tolerance of others and equal treatment of people from different backgrounds.\n“The circus has always been an equal-opportunity employer because we’ve always accepted everybody,” he said. “No matter what country you are from, what color you are, what race you are, what religion you are, everybody’s always accepted.”\nGiovanni said Emma endured a lot in her life, but remained dedicated to the circus. When the circus was bombed, she watched helplessly as the animals died.\n“My grandmother was in tears, on her knees crawling back to the show,” Giovanni said. “Our animals are our lives for circus people. It’s what we live for—our animals.”\nGiovanni said she is a testament to the strength of the Zoppe family’s strong women.\n“The show collapsed multiple times, and she would always bring it back,” Giovanni said.\nLike men in the show, female performers have always taken on different roles, including helping to set up and take down the tent.\n“The women don’t just walk in a ring and take a bow. They also drive the stakes, put the tent up, help to drive. The women do everything on our show,” Giovanni said.\nNow, Giovanni, his sisters Tosca and Carla and their spouses have been upholding the family tradition with clown, equestrian and dog acts, respectively.\nDuring the shows, Giovanni plays an Auguste-style clown named Nino. Within this role, he showcases his circus skills it includes trying to take the attention away from other performers.\n“You’re not supposed to play with other people’s props in the circus. That’s rule No. 1, but I always did,” Giovanni said.\nThis year, he will be play opposite a Russian-inspired babushka character named Natasha Vodkavitch, portrayed by ringmistress Aimee Klein.\nGiovanni brings a Venetian comedic style of clowning known as Commedia dell’arte, and Klein plays the more serious clown to his fool.\nThis is the first time the family circus has had a ringmistress.\nThe show will also be breaking new ground with female-centered acts developed or reworked specifically for the show.\nAudiences will have a chance to see the Zingara Riders, an all-female group of Cossack trick riders. This Russian style of riding is fast-paced and dangerous.\n“These women are jumping on and off and doing incredible feats and going underneath the belly of a horse,” Giovanni said.\nThe circus will also showcase an all-female group of flyers from the Santos family, another multigenerational circus family. For the first time, 6-year-old twin sisters Alice and Elise Santos will perform the Perch Pole Act.\nThe show will have performances of Mongolian contortionism and an aerial act with two sisters performing on a lyra apparatus.\nIt took some time to find the right performers and develop new acts for this show.\nGiovanni’s daughter Chiara,16, played a key role in writing and directing the show.\nGiovanni hopes she and her brother Julien, a 10-year-old clown, will continue the family’s circus tradition, but he isn’t pressuring them.\n“If the next generation wants it. I don’t want to force any generation to do it, but if they really like to do it,” Giovanni said. “My daughter is really showing a lot of promise…I have a strong feeling she’s going to be a huge part of what we are doing here in the future.”\nThe show will have a similar intimate feel as others presented by the family circus. The audiences are no more than 20 feet from the action, and their senses are all engaged, especially when the horses are running around the ring.\nGiovanni, his sisters, their spouses and his children are part of an extended circus family including the other performers. Each year in Chandler, they set up and fill stockings and hold a Christmas dinner inside of the ring.\nGiovanni grew up learning bareback riding, clowning, juggling and trapeze arts his father and other performers from the time he was young. He can’t imagine another life than the one he lives.\n“I don’t know what a stationary life is. Normal life to me is what I am doing,” Giovanni said.\nDuring the Chandler engagement, members of the circus will be doing a three-day circus camp from Monday, December 30, to Thursday, January 2, where children ages 7 to 13 can learn low wire performing, balancing, clowning, jugging.\nGiovanni said the circus school not only teaches children circus skills but helps to instill confidence in them.\n“When they are in that ring that last day, they just really shine like crazy,” Giovanni said.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line893025"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7949754595756531,"wiki_prob":0.7949754595756531,"text":"COHA in English Colombia Featured Articles Op-Ed Politics Secondary South America South America (featured)\nAlvaro Uribe: The Most Dangerous Man in Colombian Politics\nOctober 20, 2017 November 21, 2019 COHA Alvaro Uribe, Colombia, FARC, Juan Manuel Santos, Maria Alejandra Silva Ortega, Plan Colombia, politics\nBy Maria Alejandra Silva, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs\nTo download a PDF of this article, click here.\nNo other political figure is as polarizing in Colombia as ex-president Alvaro Uribe. President from 2002 to 2010, Uribe used U.S. aid under Plan Colombia to strengthen Colombia’s state capacity. He utilized the military’s newfound strength to push the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) out of towns and cities and back into the jungle.[i] By the end of Uribe’s presidency, the number of FARC combatants had declined from 20,000 to 8,000 and the National Liberation Army’s (ELN) numbers had halved from 3,500 to 1,500. Because of this success, many Colombians saw Uribe as a national hero, with many claiming he was the best president Colombia has ever had.[ii] For many, Uribe brought stability and normality back to Colombia. The increased security boosted the economy, attracting foreign direct investment and encouraging economic development. Upon leaving office, Uribe enjoyed an approval rating of 75 percent and would have easily won a third term if the Supreme Court had allowed it. [iii]\nYet, such achievements and admiration have blinded many Colombians to Uribe’s shortcomings. His administration was riddled with secret wiretapping, corruption, blatant support of right-wing paramilitaries and severe human rights abuses.\nUnder Uribe’s leadership, the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), a national security branch of the government, became a political tool through which the president conducted secret wiretaps to spy on opponents.[iv] In 2015, two of his former aides were sentenced to prison for intercepting calls on judges, members of the opposition, and journalists from 2007 to 2009.[v] Even more importantly, his former chief of staff was sentenced to eight years in prison, while the head of the Colombian intelligence agency was sentenced to 14 years on charges of wiretapping.[vi] The corruption of DAS ran so deep that its practices are still being investigated and in September 2017, Jorge Noguera Cotes, the ex-director of DAS, was sentenced to jail for conducting secret wiretaps from 2002 to 2005.[vii] Still, Uribe claims that his only crime was defending Colombia from attacks by leftist terrorists.[viii]\nAside from this, several of Uribe’s ministers have been sentenced on charges of corruption. His former interior and social protection ministers were sentenced to more than six years for bribing lawmakers to support re-election.[ix] Andres Felipe Arias, Uribe’s agriculture minister, was arrested in 2011 on similar charges.[x] With the Odebrecht scandal in early 2017, where a Brazilian construction company was discovered to have used political bribery to secure over 100 projects in 12 countries, Uribe’s minister of transport was found guilty of corruption and is now in prison. Another prominent scandal involved the Agro Ingreso Seguro Fund. While supposedly created to provide funds to labor workers in order to stimulate the small scale farming, it acted as an embezzlement scheme through which millions of dollars were instead allocated to wealthy landowning families.[xi]\nArguably, an even more serious concern about Uribe’s actions is his administration’s ties to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary coalition with the primary goal of fighting against the leftist insurgency groups in Colombia and a designated terrorist group by the U.S. government as of 2001. This group is responsible for the largest number of human rights abuses in the conflict, including kidnapping, extortion, murder, and rape, even when considering the abuses committed by FARC and ELN.[xii]\nMany of Uribe’s own close relatives have been imprisoned on charges for supporting paramilitaries, including Uribe’s own brother. In 2016, Santiago Uribe was arrested for establishing a paramilitary group called the Twelve Apostles in the 1990s. Though Alvaro Uribe has not been implicated himself, the fact that many of the group’s meetings occurred at their family ranch and that Alvaro Uribe was governor of the region at the time makes it unlikely that he was uninvolved in the group. Another troubling connection to paramilitaries was the 2002 counterinsurgency push in Medellin, led by Mario Montoya, Uribe’s defence minister at the time. According to a CIA report, this operation relied heavily on the AUC and Montoya planned the operation ith AUC commander Fabio Jaramillo.[xiii] The paramilitaries’ connection to the Uribe administration is deep as well; over 150 members of congress were investigated for collusion with paramilitaries, and many of those convicted were members of Uribe’s political coalition.[xiv]\nFurthermore, Uribe was the architect of Colombia’s Justice and Peace law, which aimed to demobilize paramilitary groups and to hold them accountable for their actions. The law was highly criticized by international human rights experts because in practice, it granted paramilitaries with de facto amnesty.[xv] The failure of the law to outline a substantive transition and judicial system for paramilitaries led to the emergence of BACRIM, large drug trafficking organizations that are mainly led by ex-AUC members. The presence of these groups still constitutes one of the biggest threats to Colombia’s security. [xvi]\nIn addition to the corruption, Colombia suffered some of its most egregious human rights abuses during Uribe’s presidency. Among these abuses were the extrajudicial killings of thousands of FARC combatants, as well as the “false positives” scandal in which Colombia’s military forces killed at least 5,000 civilians, dressed them as guerrillas, and gained bonuses from the government.[xvii] The extreme militarization of the country, supported by the U.S. government, led to the displacement of millions of people from vulnerable communities. This escalation of violence and militarization of the country also led to the murder of hundreds of trade unionists, journalists, and human rights defenders at the hands of government forces, paramilitaries, and FARC.[xviii]\nMore specifically, this militarization also had particularly severe impacts on Colombia’s most marginalized communities. Women suffered from increased rates of sexual violence, exploitation, and abuse.[xix] Indigenous groups and Afro Colombians, the most marginalized communities in Colombian society, suffered the worst effects of the conflict, many of them being forcibly displaced from their lands and then further subjected to violence and discrimination. All of this shows that even though Uribe’s policies ultimately led to the greater stability of the Colombia, this stability came at a great cost to Colombia’s most vulnerable people.\nUribe left office in 2010 and by 2012, his successor; President Juan Manuel Santos had already begun secret negotiations with FARC. This is when Uribe inserted himself back into Colombian politics, openly opposing the negotiations and refusing to attend the peace talks after repeated invitations, asserting that FARC should not be talked to since they are narco-terrorists, not insurgents.[xx][xxi]\nWhen the peace deal agreement was signed in 2016, Uribe continued to oppose it, effectively leading the “No” campaign on the referendum, which won with a 50.2% majority. Though the victory does represent the stark polarization in Colombian politics, the “No” campaign’s win can be partially attributed to misinterpretations, rumours, and lies propelled by Uribe and his team. Some interpretations and scare tactics involved the belief that Colombia would become the new Venezuela, that pensioners would have to give up a percentage of their pensions to help the demobilization, and that there would be absolute amnesty for all crimes committed by FARC.[xxii] Uribe himself argued that once the ex-guerrillas entered politics, Colombia would end up with a left-wing dictatorship, and that FARC would be allowed to keep their illicit profits.[xxiii]\nAfter defeating the peace agreement, Uribe agreed to attend the renegotiations. This new agreement was passed by congress in late 2016 and is in its early stages of implementation despite many delays and persistent mistrust between most Colombians and FARC. Still, President Uribe and his supporters in congress continue to oppose the deal outright. On the eve of Pope Francis’ visit to Colombia during which he sought to build support for the continuation of the peace process, Uribe drafted a letter to the Pope in which he continued to express his disdain regarding the political participation by FARC, the transitional justice system/reduced sentences, and “impunity for atrocious crimes.”\nUribe’s persistent opposition to the peace process represents his identity as a military hard-liner who would prefer to pursue an unconditional surrender rather than a negotiated peace. His claims that the agreement grants impunity and a free pass to war criminals are unfounded and hypocritical, especially since Uribe’s own Peace and Justice Law actually did grant impunity to war criminals. Unlike the Justice and Peace Law, the peace agreement establishes a transitional justice system, explicitly outlining the terms through which some ex-combatants can receive amnesty for minor crimes. Those guilty of crimes against humanity, sexual violence, and other serious crimes will receive appropriate punishments, ranging from restricted liberty to 20 years in prison. These terms were very controversial among the Colombian public, and after the failure of the referendum, these punishments were further tightened.\nDespite the continued controversy surrounding these punishments, Uribe’s claims that the peace agreement grant impunity and lack justice for victims are not valid. Given that the peace agreement is widely supported by the International Criminal Court, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the OAS, and many more NGOs, Uribe’s claims have even less legitimacy. The above groups represent the ideas of the staunchest defenders of human rights and justice in the world and they consider the Colombian peace agreement to be one of the most progressive ever negotiated. If Uribe’s claims had any truth, then there would be more international opposition to the agreement.\nInstead, Uribe’s opposition to the agreement likely lies in more personal and political reasons. Uribe comes from a large landowning family whose holdings have historically been threatened by FARC. They killed his father in a kidnapping attempt in 1983, and he himself was almost assassinated by them at his inauguration in 2002. His personal hatred of them, his interests as a landowner, and his political ambitions influenced him to commit and be associated with very serious atrocities in the name of counter terrorism and counter narcotics. As a result, many of Uribe’s close family members and ministers have been jailed on charges of corruption and collusion with paramilitaries. In this context, Uribe has good reason to oppose the agreement. As a member of the conservative oligarch class, Uribe would not be interested in seeing any kind of land reform program, including the rather modest one proposed by the peace agreement. Politically, the influx of leftist ex-guerrillas in government and in the voting base weakens his own party base, especially when considering the hatred that members of FARC have towards Uribe. Exploiting the reservations of many Colombians towards the peace agreement by inciting fear and ignorance also places him and his party in a favourable position ahead of the upcoming presidential election.\nMore seriously, the testimonies of paramilitaries, ex-guerrillas, and members of the military under the transitional justice system would lead to more scrutiny of Uribe.[xxiv] This, coupled with public speculation that Uribe should stand trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity would put Uribe in a precarious position and would further threaten his legacy. Uribe seems to be cognisant of this fact, and by extension opposes the measure to include members of the military in the transitional justice system, justifying their actions by stating, “We consider it unfair to submit them [the military] to the FARC justice, equalling them with the members of this group and exposing them to recognize crimes not committed to avoid jail time. Colombia has had a democracy affected by narco terrorism, not a dictatorship confronted by armed civilians.”\nIn sum, while President Uribe is credited with the stability and security of Colombia, this security came at a great cost to civilians and represented many gross violations of human rights and ethical governance. Uribe continues to be one of Colombia’s biggest obstacles to achieving peace, opposing the peace process under the cover of patriotism. In reality, his opposition is likely much more personally motivated and instead reflects the will of wealthy landowners and established elites.\nWith the elections coming up in 2018, understanding Uribe’s failures will be incredibly important. Between 12 and 22 percent of Colombians say they would vote for whatever candidate Uribe puts forward, and with the abysmal approval rating of the Santos Administration, Uribe and his new conservative coalition could very well decide the next president of Colombia.[xxv] For this reason, it is important to understand that ex-president Alvaro Uribe is a dangerous leader for Colombia and for Latin America, and that his leadership could roll back years of Colombia’s progress.\nAdditional editorial support provided by Cynthia McClintock, Senior Research Fellow, and Bjorn T. Kjelstad and R. O. Niederstrasser, Research Associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs\nDid you enjoy this Article? Subscribe to our mailing list for more just like it.\nImage: Alvaro Uribe Taken From: Wikimedia\n[i] BBC, “Profile: Alvaro Uribe Velez,” bbc.com, last modified July 28, 2010.\n[ii] Jeremy McDermott, “How President Alvaro Uribe Changed Colombia,” BBC.com, last modified August 4, 2010.\n[iii] McDermott, “How President,” BBC.com.\n[iv] McDermott, “How President,” BBC.com.\n[v] Associated Press in Bogotá, “Supreme Court Urges Investigation of Colombia’s Ex-President over Spying Ring,” theguardian.com, last modified April 30, 2015.\n[vi]El Tiempo Casa Editorial, “Condena de 14 Años para Hurtado y 8 para Bernardo Moreno por Chuzadas” [Sentence of 14 years for Hurtado and 8 for Bernardo Moreno over Wiretapping], eltiempo.com, last modified april 30, 2015.\n[vii]Redacción Politica, “La pelea entre Alirio Uribe y Álvaro Uribe por chuzadas del DAS” [The Fight between Alirio Uribe and Álvaro Uribe over DAS wiretapping], elespectador.com, last modified September 12, 2017.\n[viii] Associated Press in Bogotá, “Supreme Court,” theguardian.com.\n[ix] Associated Press in Bogotá, “Supreme Court,” theguardian.com.\n[x] David Gagne, “Did Colombia’s Ex-President Uribe Operate a Criminal Regime?,” insightcrime.org, last modified March 1, 2016.\n[xi] Mimi Yagoub, “Alvaro Uribe, When did it All go Wrong?,” colombiareports.com, last modified January 22, 2014.\n[xii] UNHCR, UNHCR Global Appeal 2015 Update: Colombia, [Page #].\n[xiii] Geoffrey Ramsey, “The Case Against Uribe,” insightcrime.org, last modified July 19, 2012.\n[xiv] Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2011: Colombia,” hrw.org, last modified 2011.\n[xv] The Center for Justice and Accountability, “Colombia: The Justice and Peace Law,” cja.org.\n[xvi] Jeremy McDermott, “The BACRIM and Their Position in Colombia’s Underworld,” insightcrime.org, last modified may 2, 2014.\n[xvii] Mimi Yagoub, “Alvaro Uribe, When did it All go Wrong?,”colombiareports.com\n[xviii] Michael Tuathail, “Uribe’s Undemocratic and Insecure Colombia,” soaw.org, last modified May 24, 2006.\n[xix]Lauren Carasik, “Washington should avoid repeating Plan Colombia’s Failures,” america.aljazeera.com, last modified February 9, 2016.\n[xx] Adriana La Rotta, “‘La Historia Secreta del Proceso de Paz,'” americasquarterly.org, last modified 2017.\n[xxi]Annette Idler, “Santos got the Nobel Prize for not giving up on Peace-here’s why all Colombians Won,” theconversation.com, last modified October 7, 2016.\n[xxii] Sibylla Brodzinsky, “Colombia’s Peace Deal Rejection Returns Álvaro Uribe to Political Limelight,” theguardian.com, last modified September 7, 2016.\n[xxiii]Isabel Hilton, “Why Colombians Voted Against Peace with the FARC,” theguardian.com, last modified October 3, 2016.\n[xxiv] John Feffer, “Understanding Why Colombians Voted Against Peace,” ips-dc.org, last modified October 6, 2016.\n[xxv] Holly K. Sonneland, “Explainer: Colombia’s 2018 Elections,” as-coa.org, last modified June 28, 2017.\n← Brazil’s Far Right Touring the U.S.\nVenezuela’s Regional Elections: What’s Next? →\nELN Commander Manrique Dies: What Is Next?\nJune 16, 2015 COHA Comments Off on ELN Commander Manrique Dies: What Is Next?\nTHE COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS APPLAUDS OAS SOLIDARITY WITH VENEZUELA\nMarch 8, 2014 COHA Comments Off on THE COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS APPLAUDS OAS SOLIDARITY WITH VENEZUELA\nPara EEUU bases en Colombia es “tema bilateral”\nAugust 6, 2009 COHA Comments Off on Para EEUU bases en Colombia es “tema bilateral”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1074957"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9390315413475037,"wiki_prob":0.9390315413475037,"text":"Justin Dancing To Sorry\nSeptember 10, 2019Dance Listen LoveComments: 0\nNov 16, 2015. In case you don't follow Justin Bieber on Instagram, his fourth album, on Purpose: The dancing ladies featured in his music video for \"Sorry\".\nGossip Cop can debunk the allegations. The article in question can be found in the current edition of NW, which asks in a headline, “Did Biebs’s Partying Ruin Jelena 2.0?” The piece begins, “Is it too.\nCanadian pop sensation Justin Bieber has released a dancehall-inspired song called Sorry. The dancehall-influenced track was produced by American dance music maestro Skrillex, as well as DJ-producer Bloodpop (formerly Blood Diamonds), who’s best known for.\nMay 14, 2019 · Dancefloor hotties Maja and Enrique share their newest dance moves on Dance With M.E.\nJustin Timberlake included his wife. I’m a man of the woods, it’s my pride. Sorry baby, you know I tried. I’m a man of the woods. It’s my pride,” JT croons while walking around in a flannel shirt.\nAsked what his biggest strengths are, he said: “I’ll have no problem being ripped apart, sorry I should say being.\nOct 23, 2015. Here's Why Justin Bieber's \"Sorry\" Video Is So Fucking Amazing. Okay, so Justin Bieber released the dance version of his video for \"Sorry\".\nOct 24, 2015. Justin Bieber dropped the video for \"Sorry\" earlier this week and millions of lady loins across the world exploded in desire and dance.\nGospel Music Genre Definition Soul music is a genre of African American popular music that led to many later. They sang joyful, up-tempo gospel songs while clapping and moving to the. Apr 26, 2019. Regardless of what you like style-wise, Christian music has. found in so many different styles it is the only genre of music that is defined\nTaeyeon Uptown Funk Vcr Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. The Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars hit “Uptown Funk” has received the superhero touch. The viral video of dancing superheroes. Boye wrote on his Facebook page that he only used grandmas and grandpas in the video, and that \"they\nOct 23, 2015. While Justin Bieber's basking in the positive fan responses to his latest single, \" Sorry\", I've been at work looping the song's dance video again.\nOct 22, 2015. Get the scoop on the stars of Justin Bieber's \"Sorry\" music video. The all-girl ReQuest dance crew, and The Royal Family dance crew.\nOct 22, 2015 · Justin Bieber Isn’t Sorry — But A Lot Of Ladies Dancing To His New Single Are! Check Out The Dance Video HERE!\nOct 22, 2015. I know what you're probably thinking in the wake of Justin Bieber releasing his \" Sorry\" dance music video: Where is the official \"Sorry\" video,\n\"So West Coast Customs — which is who my parents had make the car, basically — they posted this picture and Justin Bieber commented on it, ‘Burn it.’ Burn it. Three times!\" The Dance Moms alum.\n118.2m Followers, 241 Following, 4,567 Posts – See Instagram photos and videos from Justin Bieber (@justinbieber)\nAlso Read: Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl Halftime: Total Mess Even When You Dance, Dance, Dance Read more of the online responses below. Security: “Sorry Kevin Hart, you gotta be at least 5-feet tall.\nCanada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is facing unwanted scrutiny over a push. She wrote that he subsequently offered a.\nOct 22, 2015. Justin Bieber is keeping things dance-floor-friendly with his brand-new single \" Sorry,\" which he just dropped with (appropriately enough) a.\nEffect Of Pop Music In Studying Aug 13, 2019. Studies have shown that music produces several positive effects on a. Anxiety- stricken students should pop in the earbuds before heading to. Sep 19, 2017. Several studies have shown that popular music interferes with. work, but its effect on productivity depends on the situation and type of music. Gospel Music Genre Definition\nJoJo, the 15-year-old former star of U.S. reality series Dance Moms, has made a career for herself. reposted her picture on their own page, and Sorry star Justin proved he wasn’t a big fan of the.\nOct 24, 2015 · The Choreographer Behind Justin Bieber’s \"Sorry\" Dance Video Spills All the Beans. It was originally supposed to be just a lyrics video, but Biebs liked it too much.\n\"Sorry\" is a song recorded by Canadian singer Justin Bieber for his fourth studio album, A dance video for \"Sorry\" was released on October 22, 2015. The video.\nOct 23, 2015 · The vid features ReQuest and Royal Family dance crews out of Auckland, NZ, and dancer Parris Goebel, and they are on fire. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥. youtube.com. Goebel also directed the video, which may be why the vid manages to avoid the male gaze so much.\nFeb 2, 2016. This kid has it, and we don't, and that's something we'll all have to make our peace with.\nWith Tenor, maker of GIF Keyboard, add popular Sorry Justin animated GIFs to your. Bieber Sorry Dance GIF – ReQuestDanceCrew JustinBieber Sorry GIFs.\nJustin Bieber has always been popular. When it was first released back in the fall of 2015, “Sorry” was immediately heralded as one of the pop star’s best recordings and a serious hit. The.\nOct 22, 2015. Bieber's latest track is nimble in the same manner as \"What Do You Mean:\" The rhythm is breezy and danceable but never overly-aggressive;.\nJustin Bieber’s Purpose era has been one of his most successful. Not only did the album deliver hit after hit with songs like \"What Do You Mean\" and \"Sorry,\" but it also nabbed him his first Grammy.\nDance Fitness with Jessica – Dancing comes as a fun alternative in the search for weight loss, as it helps in burning extra calories that we accumulate on a day-to-day basis. Dance is a therapy that entertains, exercises, and at the same time gives rhythm to people, which.\nKiss Live Concert Video Londoners looked on with excitement and bafflement as the world’s biggest band, which hadn’t played live in two and a half years. which took place at Riverbend Music Center, KISS sold special $50. British punk rockers Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are teaming up with AP to premiere the fourth installation of their. Exclusive concert\nReviews have described Sorry as a “tropical house song with EDM and dancehall beats”. The 27-year-old Skrillex, whose real name is Sonny John Moore, is arguably the biggest name in the lucrative electronic dance music market. Bieber, 21, is one of the biggest names in contemporary pop music.\nAs the crowd murmured she said “My friend Justin Bieber is here.” The crowd went crazy. They teamed up to sing his song “Sorry” and afterward he reiterated. She had the same steamy dance troupe,\nJustin Bieber has apologized after making a tongue-in-cheek comment about YouTuber-turned-TV-star JoJo Siwa’s new car. The apology came after 15-year-old Siwa, who you may know from Dance Moms, posted.\nMeme Status Submission Type: Song Year 2015 Origin YouTube Tags single, video, ratchet, dancing, parody Additional References Wikipedia About \"Sorry\" is a 2015 American pop song by the singer and pop star Justin Bieber.Since the song’s release in October of.\nOct 22, 2015. Justin Bieber's apology tour has reached its apex with \"Sorry,\" the latest. It's impossible to dislike, as is the accompanying dance video:.\nJustin Drew Bieber (born March 1, 1994) Is a Canadian pop/R&B singer. He began his professional career on YouTube, where he was discovered by his future manager, Scooter Braun. Braun flew Bieber to Atlanta, Georgia, to consult with Usher and soon signed a record deal with Island.\nThe 23-year-old “Sorry” singer took to Instagram in the early hours. For more on the pair’s rekindled romance, watch the clip below! RELATED CONTENT: MORE: Justin Bieber Works on His Dance Moves to.\nOct 23, 2015. You've been dancing around the house/school hallway/studio ever since Justin Bieber dropped his irresistibly catchy new single, \"Sorry.\" That's.\nBest Multi Layered Music Dec 6, 2013. review: NBC does its best to top 1965 classic with help from Carrie. Moyer did justice to the poignant, multi-layered \"Edelweiss,\" with the. The film weaves together archival clips of music, comedy and dance performances. the current state of race in America, following a new multi-media adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ best-selling book.\nI know what you're probably thinking in the wake of Justin Bieber releasing his \" Sorry\" dance music video: Where is the official \"Sorry\" video, Biebs? And look, I.\nOct 23, 2015 · Watch And Download New Video: Justin Bieber – Sorry (Dance Video) DOWNLOAD VIDEO: Justin Bieber – Sorry (Dance Video) Share on: WhatsAppRelated Posts:(Dance Video) Major Lazer ft Justin Bieber & MØ – Cold Water(Video) DJ Snake ft Justin Bieber – Let Me Love You(Video) DJ Snake ft Justin Bieber – Let Me Love You(Video) Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber – I Don’t CareJustin.\nThe 15-year-old former \"Dance Moms\" star-turned-actress posted on her Instagram. think it was malicious or mean spirited,\" Bieber tweeted to Siwa. Siwa accepted his apology and tried to turn it to.\nFeb 9, 2016. ReQuest Dance Crew, represent. Justin Bieber's 'Sorry' music video has shattered records with more than 800 million YouTube views in just.\nOct 23, 2015 · Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” Features 7 Epic New Dance Moves You Have to Try Now: See the GIFs! Instead, the 21-year-old pop star enlisted the help of a team of female dancers to show off.\n‘Work’, and the latter’s own ‘One Dance’; Beyoncé’s ‘Baby Boy’; Justin Bieber’s ‘Sorry’; Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’… it’s all.\nThe night before, Justin shared a few videos on Instagram Story of his cute new kitten Sushi. Check out a few screenshots in the gallery! The “Sorry” crooner and. for lunch while her husband Justin.\nWe used Billboard’s statistics to determine each song of the summer since 2000 – and threw in Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber’s new duet as a. song of the 21st century to our least favourite (sorry,\nOct 23, 2015 · Justin Bieber’s \"Sorry\" Dance Music Video, Lyrics, Stream and Download. The song is the second release from his highly anticipated album, set for release Nov. 13, and was produced by electronic artist Skrillex and Los Angeles producer Blood. The lyrics center around Bieber trying to mend a broken relationship and begging for forgiveness: \"Is it.\nJustin Bieber is not by any means a great pop singer at this point in time, but he is certainly one of the most improved in recent years. Nothing about \"Sorry\" offends me integrity, and although I prefer \"Hello\", I don’t quite mind seeing this at the top of the charts.\nThe \"Sorry\" singer was surrounded by a young crowd, who were also eagerly singing and dancing away. “Nothing more fun/cool than praising our God,” Bieber captioned the video. Nothing more fun/cool.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line861557"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7142692804336548,"wiki_prob":0.7142692804336548,"text":"Many years ago a friend and I were discussing our sporting affiliations – the teams we follow and the colours we wear.\nHe reminded me of a comment that goes back generations; a father telling his son to “be very careful who you choose, it will be with you for the rest of your life.”\nOn October 31st 2010 I was sitting in Wembley Stadium, London, wearing the red and gold colours of the American Football team the San Francisco 49ers.\nWembley is around 400 miles from my Prestwick home on the west coast of Scotland, but that's a walk to the end of my street compared to the 5000+ miles of travel required to get to the 49ers true home.\nBut I've been lucky enough to make that trip too, on a number of occasions.\nBut why? As a Scot, there must be more obvious sporting choices, surely?\nI’m a supporter and follower of our national football (soccer) and rugby teams, and lived through the little moments of glory and the many – and I mean many – embarrassing defeats (a Scottish tradition).\nNational support is almost a given; most sports fans follow their national teams.\nThere are always exceptions to the expected sporting rules however.\nFor example I was born and bred in Ayrshire, the heart of links golf country, yet have no interest in playing the game. I’m with Mark Twain – it spoils a good walk.\nBut as regards being a true supporter of a given club or sporting franchise “the rest of your life” statement is a truism that has been proven time and again.\nThe bond between supporter and team can be as strong as family or friendships.\nIt can affect you emotionally, physically, mentally and definitely financially.\nIt may also provide incredible life-highs and forgettable lows, except you never truly forget the lows.\nThat’s all part of the emotional investment.\nAnd that emotional investment took me to Wembley Stadium on October 31st 2010. Halloween night.\nThe Trick I was trying to pull off was the rare Treat of a San Francisco victory in a regular season game, something that had not exactly dominated 49ers game reports in the half dozen years or so prior to the Wembley expedition.\nThe game itself was the fourth annual NFL International Series fixture, a very well received event.\nAlthough this particular 49ers home game didn’t involve over 10,000 miles of round travel it was still quite a cost in time, scheduling and money.\nBut I wouldn’t have been anywhere else on the planet that evening.\nThere are tens of thousands of Gridiron fans in the UK with passionate support for teams that are thousands of miles away, but for me it could only ever have been San Francisco.\nAnd those red and gold ties binding me to the team and City by the Bay are based on what some will see as extraordinary mental and emotional connections...\nAs a child San Francisco and the Bay Area of California fascinated me.\nI started to recognise landmarks and even streets of the city from reading about the area and watching TV programmes, holiday documentaries, movies etc.\nMany can make the same sort of associations with a chosen locale, but this was a very strong affinity and familiarity. A number of recognitions were even intuitive, rather than via film or book.\nOriginally my favourite sport was, unsurprisingly, British football (soccer); I follow the Scottish Football League team Kilmarnock (from Ayrshire) and the English club Tottenham Hotspur, more commonly known as Spurs (based in north London).\nThe Kilmarnock connection is not overly surprising when you understand that I’m an Ayrshire boy born and bred, but how those footballing choices actually came about I'll touch on later.\nBy the mid-‘70s one of my favourite TV programmes was World of Sport.\nHeavily biased towards British football, as would be expected, it did however feature many other sports including highlights from each year's American Football Super Bowl.\nTo a mid-teen who had never witnessed the game before it was like watching a modern-day gladiatorial combat; I was hooked from the first deep pass, darting run and helmet removing tackle.\nBut I didn’t associate with any of the teams.\nFlash forward to 1982 and British television starts running a seasonal programme on Channel 4 featuring NFL football highlights, including live coverage of the Super Bowl.\nI pick up on the fact there’s a team in San Francisco and before I know a thing about them, before I know if they are genuine challengers or perennial bottom feeders, I’ve pinned my colours to the mast, based on a familiarity and fondness for their home city (even though I had yet to visit the area).\nWhen I watched those Super Bowl highlights in the mid to late ‘70s, the 49ers weren’t close to being a contender. Hence why I didn’t then associate the San Francisco team or city with American Football.\nBut it was very different in the 1980s. They won the 1981 season’s Super Bowl and would win another three in the next eight years.\nBy the mid-‘80s I was also hooked on the game itself and became as passionate about the sport as the team I supported. I played for the Ayr (subsequently Kilmarnock & Loudoun) Burners in the Pro-Am British American Football League for four years before coaching our under-18 team for another two.\nIn 1987 I made the first of two '80s trips to San Francisco for what are best described as football vacations. They were followed by a number of trips in the 1990’s and beyond with my then-partner now wife Anne who, at one time, lived in the Bay Area.\nMy first trip to the Bay Area and San Francisco certainly seemed to prove my (affinity) point.\n‘Strangers in a strange town’ should have been an apt phrase, considering neither my friend John McGuigan or I had been to the United States before (John is another gridiron fan and supporter of the Tennessee Titans, although at that time the franchise was still the Houston Oilers).\nBlind leading the blind? Should have been, but once we entered the city proper I immediately felt ridiculously comfortable – we had the usual street maps and tourist guides but I don’t recall using one.\nI instinctively knew where to go or which direction to head to get to a specific place.\nBefore someone shouts “reincarnation!” I must state for the record I don’t believe in such transference of soul theories but do, however, believe there is a lot more to remote viewing (past, present and future) and ancestral memory than meets the mind. But that would be a whole other Muirsing.\nBecause of my affinity to the Bay Area I also find myself following the results of other teams from the area, such as the Stanford Cardinal college football team.\nInterestingly, my wife Anne had danced at Stanford University in the mid-'80s (during half-time at an East v. West college Shrine game) as part of a Highland Dance troupe.\nNot so much California coincidences as further connections.\nThe best example though is the San Francisco Giants, even although I am no great fan of baseball.\nAs I was writing this article, the Giants were celebrating their first World Series victory as a San Francisco franchise. I wish I could have been part of the celebrations but that’s the call of the area, not the sport.\nSporting affiliations closer to home were certainly not chosen through any affinity with the town of Kilmarnock or the city of London.\nKilmarnock are an Ayrshire team but the reason I started to follow them was because throughout Primary (pre-teens) School a classmate of mine was Andrew MacLeod, son of the late Alistair ‘Ally’ MacLeod, then manager of Ayr United. Kilmarnock’s local rival.\nBut my support for 'Killie' wasn’t through any dislike of Andrew or his dad. Far from it.\nAndy and I were good friends at school but I could never get my head round the number of classmates and other school kids who were suddenly Ayr United supporters every Parents Day when Ally MacLeod made an appearance.\nNever one to tow the party line, I made my decision, one specific Parents Day, to tell Ally just who I supported when I wandered up to say hello.\n“Are you an Ayr supporter too, son?”\n“Nope, Kilmarnock.”\nI was 10, I remember as if it was yesterday and can still see his face even now.\nAs the years progressed I went from fan to supporter to season ticket holder.\nThese days I just take in a game or three every season. The Scottish game and sexy Ayrshire football (can you smell the stench of sarcasm?) are not what they used to be.\nTottenham Hotspur actually started around six months before the Kilmarnock choice.\nThe BBC’s Match of the Day programme was big news for kids wanting to see the best football in the country and the top English league provided the best action and quality (and still does, whether those of us North of the Border choose to admit it or not).\nWhile most of my friends or school mates supported the likes of Liverpool, Leeds United and Manchester United (due in part to the large numbers of Scottish players each team had in their ranks) I, typically, wasn’t going to follow fashion...\nAlan Gilzean, a great Scottish striker of the late-‘60s and mid-‘70s, was one of my favourite players.\nGilzean played for Tottenham, having moved to Spurs from Dundee; I started to look for Spurs results.\nMeanwhile Blue Peter, a hugely popular children’s TV show, was at its peak. My favourite presenter of the show was Peter Purves.\nDuring the last show before Christmas the presenters always did an exchange of presents; one of the presents Peter Purves received was a Tottenham Hotspur mug.\nThat was good enough for me. If Peter Purves endorsed Spurs, so did I.\nThat was 1970. I started to follow the club at the start of the next season.\nBy the 1990's I was an active member of one of the Supporters Associations, but these days I’m what would be described as an armchair supporter.\nWhite Hart Lane, the home of Tottenham Hotspur, is about 400 miles down the road from me but London is fairly accessible by car, train, bus or plane should I choose to visit The Lane.\nBut in October 2010 I chose to visit London because the San Francisco 49ers were in town and, as already mentioned, I'd previously taken a number of journey's across the pond to coincide with 49ers football.\nAnd the trips to Candlestick Park were always part of the vacations, whether the 49ers were Super Bowl bound or heading for the bottom of their division.\nThe flags sport the logo of the 'home team' at Wembley NFL games but every one of\nthe 32 teams has representation from the fans wearing the colours of their favourites.\nAs the years progressed and I became more familiar with the team, the players, their history and the city that hosts them, I started to keep in touch with the franchise.\nI wrote to some of the staffers as well as some of the coaches, wishing them the best for the coming season. For personal reasons, two of those contacts deserve special mention...\nEdward ‘Eddie’ DeBartolo, Jr. was the 49ers owner from 1977 to 2000.\nHe was, along with offensive coaching genius, the late Bill Walsh, the man most responsible for building the team into the dominant franchise they became for around 15 years.\nI wrote to him in the late-‘80s and was pleasantly surprised when he replied personally.\nWe continued our communications for around a decade.\nDwight Clark was a premier receiver for the club in the 1980's and was retained by the club as a team executive for a few years after he hung up his helmet in 1987.\nWe corresponded for a time and he was my biggest influence as regards how to play receiver and, possibly more importantly, how to play the game.\nIn 1992 I fully intended to take another trip over and had mentioned this to Dwight Clark who was hopeful we could hook up on that particular visit.\nSadly it never materialised as my dad became terminally ill the same year and died that August.\nI had of course cancelled all holiday plans and threw a short note together to both Eddie DeBartolo and Dwight Clark explaining the situation.\nI received a reply from both, with Dwight Clark’s being especially sincere and thoughtful.\nIt was unexpected but greatly appreciated that two people, with a lot more on their minds than one supporter 5000 miles away, would take the time to respond and in the manner they did.\nMy dad was old school; a gentleman who put manners and respect ahead of any other trait.\nHe would have approved of their actions.\nUnlike yours truly, my dad loved golf and once he retired was hardly off his local course.\nHe took me out with him when I was younger but I had very little interest.\nIt did lead to an interesting end to his invites for me to join him on the course, back when I was playing American Football.\nOne particular morning he asked if I fancied playing nine holes before I headed to football training in the afternoon.\n“Sure” I said, “If you put some kit on and assist in 45 minutes tackling practice.”\n“See you at dinner tonight” was the smart reply.\nWe did however have a mutual respect and understanding of the passion we each had for our chosen ball game. I caddied for him on occasion and he attended a number of Burners home games.\nHe also watched a lot of 49ers games with me and became a fan of the team, becoming quite the expert on many of the players, what a play-action pass was and when best to run a naked bootleg.\nThis article may be predominately red and gold within its black and silver text (quite the irony if you know your Bay Area football), but it has as much to do with the bond between supporter and his or her chosen team as it does the 49ers. There is therefore no place for the names of the great players past and present, favourite games, or the significant highs and lows.\nThat would be better suited for discussion with other like-minded supporters, fan forums or Bay Area football journalists.\nAnd those sorts of discussions, in recent years, have more times than not been negative, critical or pretty damn depressing.\nBad management and bad management decisions, coaching conveyor belts, players let go that should have been retained, players drafted that flattered to deceive or should never have been drafted in the first place, no consistency on the park or on the sidelines…\nIt’s not been an easy road for the 49ers faithful in recent years.\nBut that road still led to Wembley Stadium on October 31st 2010.\nWhere I was wearing the colours of the American Football team the San Francisco 49ers.\nWatching a team who were 1-6 and who could have conceivably gone 1-7.\n49ers football, baby.\nArticle dedicated to the memory of Robert Owen Muir.\nNicest 49ers fan I ever met.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1281818"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5434982180595398,"wiki_prob":0.4565017819404602,"text":"We Are Soccer!\nHow to Help More Kids Play Soccer\nTo our AYSO community,\nPlease join me on Nov. 28 for AYSO’s #GivingTuesday campaign. All proceeds go toward AYSO’s Playership Fund, which provides soccer scholarships for players who are unable to afford the full cost of an AYSO soccer program.\nThe #GivingTuesday campaign is held once a year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and it is a nationwide opportunity for nonprofits and service organizations to raise money and to encourage the spirit of giving during the holiday season. The donations raised from AYSO’s #GivingTuesday campaign go directly to the Playership Fund, which has helped more than 5,700 players play AYSO soccer since the fund’s inception in 2011.\nAdditionally, the following sponsors have pledged to donate the specified amount if it can be matched by other donors: Fox Sports 1 has pledged to donate $5,000, AYSO Store has pledged to donate $1,000, and CLIF Kid has pledged to donate $5,000. My sincere thank you to these valued sponsors.\nAlthough #GivingTuesday falls on Nov. 28 this year, you don’t have to wait until that date to donate. You can make a donation today by going to AYSO’s Playership Fund by clicking here. I would appreciate your help by sharing the link with your friends, family and colleagues so we can expand AYSO’s reach by giving everyone the chance to play soccer.\nThank you all for your time, and happy holidays!\nMatthew Winegar\nAYSO President\nCalender 1\nCalender 10\nAYSO 368","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1129788"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9530104398727417,"wiki_prob":0.9530104398727417,"text":"Jeff's Wilson seeks to defend titles\nSenior hopes to help Bronchos regain sectional championship from West Lafayette\nJeff's Wilson seeks to defend titles Senior hopes to help Bronchos regain sectional championship from West Lafayette Check out this story on jconline.com: http://on.jconline.com/1gQMjPI\nKen Thompson, kthompson@jconline.com Published 5:56 p.m. ET May 21, 2014 | Updated 7:52 p.m. ET May 22, 2014\nTim Wilson on his way to victory in the 110-meter hurdles at last year’s Lafayette Jeff Sectional. (Photo: John Terhune/Journal & Courier )Buy Photo\nAs a youth, Tim Wilson loved to jump over benches and other obstacles in his way.\nThursday, the Lafayette Jeff senior begins his quest to return to the state finals in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles at the Lafayette Jeff Sectional track and field meet. Wilson is the top seed and defending sectional champion in both hurdles events.\n\"Honestly, my favorite race is hurdles,\" Wilson said. \"I've been doing it since I was little, on the street. When I went to Tecumseh Junior High, I tried hurdles and I loved it. It's one of the scariest races, but it's so challenging.\n\"Everybody can jump, everybody can run, but with obstacles in the way see what you can do to keep your speed and attack the hurdle at the same time.\"\nLafayette Jeff assistant coach Josh Hembrough, who won a Big Ten 110-meter hurdles championship at Purdue, believes Wilson has the potential to win a state championship.\n\"He's a hurdler who is very smooth with his steps,\" Hembrough said. \"He's able to run the same exact steps throughout the hurdles, but what's most impressive is his strong finish. In the beginning you see a couple of guys beating him, but he always comes back in the end.\"\nJeff head coach Larry Griggs has seen a lot of growth from Wilson from his days as a freshman.\n\"He's gotten a lot stronger over the last four years,\" Griggs said. \"He's worked hard in the weight room. Physically, he's probably in the best shape of his life. He works hard in the classroom and he works hard in everything he does. He's definitely got the ability to compete at the next level.\"\nThe next level, Wilson hopes, will be at either Indiana State or Purdue following two years at Vincennes University. If Wilson ends up at Indiana State, he would be reunited with good friend Carl McQuay, the 2013 Indiana Mr. Track and Field.\n\"He's the one that pushed me, mainly,\" Wilson said of McQuay.\nGriggs said Wilson has learned well from his friend.\n\"He approaches practice like he does a meet,\" Griggs said. \"He works hard in practice and we set up different scenarios with wind, rain, cold, hot, where he has to practice like he would be at a meet. I think that's helped him, especially this year with the weather being so violent. He has a good heart and he's a competitor.\"\nWilson could be the foundation for the Bronchos' hopes of extending its sectional reign to 10 consecutive years. Wilson also is a member of the top-seeded 400 meter relay and is two inches behind top seed Patrick Brandenburg of Frankfort in the high jump.\n\"There's a lot of scenarios we've been going through and Tim's obviously a major part in that,\" Griggs said. \"I think we've got the good fit for him and hopefully he's going to score 40 points for us.\n\"Nothing is guaranteed. They're called hurdles for a reason. That's one of the things that's kind of nerve-wracking as a coach, especially in the highs. Anything can happen. He's got to be on top of his game, make it through trials and then hopefully make it through finals and move on.\"\nIf Wilson does move on, he has several goals to accomplish before heading to Vincennes.\n\"I want to try to get first, break some records and make a name for myself,\" he said. \"See my way to state and try to do my best there.\"\nLAFAYETTE JEFF SECTIONAL\nTime: 5:30 p.m.\nTickets: $6\nAdvancement: The top four places in all individual events and relays, plus any individual or relay meeting the participant standard.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line136412"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6540811061859131,"wiki_prob":0.3459188938140869,"text":"New Listings & Price Change Alerts\nMy Property Saver Account\nStart Your Loan\nReal Estate Agent Clinton Township Michigan\nSt. Aubin Real Estate Clinton Township Michigan is a full service independent real estate company serving families in Clinton Township Michigan. Our president and owner, Edwin St. Aubin, is among the premier agents in the country. Our company has survived – and thrived – through nearly 40 years of shifting markets. As an independent brokerage, we make our own decisions; no out-of-state corporate office runs our business! Through hard work, we have become the most trusted agent to thousands of families in Metro Detroit, and each family has helped to shape our company, and our values.\nWe provide customized, professional guidance, to help you through one of the most important decisions of your life. Currently, we have 4 independent, licensed realtors, and a skilled support staff, at your service. Our goal was never to become the biggest; we only want to be the best.\nFind The Perfect in Clinton Township Michigan With St. Aubin Real Estate by your side, you’ll have trusted advisors with over 40 years of experience.\nWelcome to St. Aubin Real Estate in Clinton Township Michigan\nSt. Aubin Real Estate is a full service independent real estate company serving families in Southeastern Michigan. Our president and owner, Edwin St. Aubin, is among the premier agents in the country. Our company has survived, and thrived, through nearly 40 years of shifting markets. Through hard work, we have become the most trusted agent to numerous families in Clinton Township Michigan.\nOur Promise at St. Aubin Real Estate Clinton Township Michigan, our goal is to look out for our clients’ best interests. Over the past 40 years, we have closed more than 3,500 successful real estate transactions. Approximately 80 percent of our real estate transactions come from previous clients – a testament to the trusting relationships we’ve built over the years.\nSt. Aubin Real Estate is a full service independent real estate company serving families in Clinton Township Michigan. We are a Real Estate Agent and Realtor servicing Clinton Township Michigan as well as surrounding areas.\nWhat We Do as Realtors in Clinton Township Michigan\nExperience is hard to match, and for nearly 40 years, St. Aubin Real Estate has been the trusted real estate agency to thousands of local families. That experience gives us a kind of “peripheral vision” that helps us to anticipate problems before they happen. Our business is built on reputation, and now, more than ever, the process of selling or buying property demands professionalism. Knowledge and reputation carry weight when it comes to choosing the right company, and at St. Aubin Real Estate, we have earned both, over decades of hard work.\nWe think of our clients as long-term relationships, not transactions. We want you to have such a positive experience with us that you’ll choose us to serve you, and your family, for generations to come. Already, we have been the trusted agent to 3 generations of the same family, in many cases.\nAt St. Aubin Real Estate, our clients have been our top priority for almost four decades. Our president, Edwin St. Aubin, is one of the premier agents in the United States. We have grown our client base to over 3,600 successful relationships. Visit our testimonial page to see how some of our clients feel about St. Aubin real estate.\nSt. Aubin Real Estate is a full service independent real estate company serving families in Clinton Township Michigan. Our president and owner, Edwin St. Aubin, is among the premier agents in the country. Our company has survived – and thrived – through nearly 40 years of shifting markets. As an independent brokerage, we make our own decisions; no out-of-state corporate office runs our business! Through hard work, we have become the most trusted agent to thousands of families in Metro Detroit, and each family has helped to shape our company, and our values.\nOur Team Serving Clinton Township Michigan\nSt. Aubin\nPresident and Owner\nAngela Setto Sabbagh\nTaylor Bobak\nCarl Schiller\nKim Gigliotti\nJonathan Tomlanovich\nHour Magazine:\nReal Estate Allstar Top 5%\nQuality Service Award\nCentury 21 Worldwide\nCentury 21 Masters Hall Of Fame\n20 Million Dollar Club\nCenturion Award\nDouble Centurion Award\nGrand Centurion Award\nBusiness Degree Walsh College\nMichigan Associate Broker License\nMichigan Broker License\nMichigan Consolidated Board of Realtors\nMiRealSource MLS\nBoard of Directors Member\nEdwin St. Aubin is justifiably proud of three centuries of family roots in Detroit. The St. Aubin family was among the original founding families of the city. To this day, there is a street running through downtown that bears the family name.\nJohn Casse dit. St. Aubin was born in France, in 1659, and became a sailor. As a young man, he migrated to Canada. When Antoine De La Mothe de Cadillac was looking for men to establish Fort Pontchartrain at Detroit, John signed on. Cadillac and his party landed at Detroit on July 24, 1701, and laid the foundation of our present city. John Casse dit St. Aubin died at the age of 100, and was buried in Detroit on February 27, 1759.\nSt Aubin Genealogy\n1701: Cadillac’s Village, Detroit, MI. First called Fort Pontchartrain.\nSt. Aubin’s home inside the Fort (red dot).\nEarly eighteenth-century Ottawa warrior. The Ottawa were an important part of the Detroit community from 1702 to 1763.\nMackinac state historic parks\nAbove are maps of the original St. Aubin Farm and it’s outline over an existing Detroit street map.\nThe farm consisted of several contiguous parcels owned by the St. Aubin family extending from the river back to Alexandrine and bordered by Chene & Riopelle approximately 940 acres.\nPlan of the Detroit river and the fort of Detroit detail in 1749.\nCollection: Chicago historical society\nEdwin’s Grandfather (bow tie) at Detroit job site March 17th 1919.\nThis is Edwin’s Grandfather (white pants) in his early 20’s in front of his office building circa 1917. His was one of the first plumbing and heating companies in Detroit.\nRiver view of Detroit in 1794.\nBurton historical collection, Detroit public library.\nThis is the signature of Jean Casse dit St. Aubin and his wife Marie Gaultier from a hotel register in Montreal in the late 1600’s. Many of Caddilac’s men were named for the towns in which they were born. Saint Aubin was the name of the town in France where Jean Casse’ was believed to be born in 1659. He is said to have died in Detroit in 1759.\nThe sign shown below was discovered by a Detroit Edison worker several years ago in a loft above a garage on St. Aubin street. It turns out that at the begining of the early 1900’s my grandfather Edwin was selling what remained of the St. Aubin farm and homestead.\n1-800-7-Win-Win\n4151 17 Mile Rd Suite A\nhello@staubinrealestate.com\nSt. Aubin Real Estate is a full service independent real estate company serving families in Southeastern Michigan. We are a Real Estate Agent and Realtor servicing Sterling Heights, Warren, Clinton Township, Shelby Township, Washington Township, Macomb Township , and Troy Michigan as well as surrounding areas.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line473263"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8630993962287903,"wiki_prob":0.8630993962287903,"text":"Cloud Foundry Sees Challenges Worldwide, Exciting Differences in China\nThe Cloud Foundry Foundation may have faced some skepticism at the outset a few years ago, but it has since more lived up to its reputation as a as a principle hub for creating and leveraging open source software on the cloud. In many respects, Cloud Foundry has matured well beyond the initial phases of a startup, and with this maturity comes inherent challenges. Now, more than ever, Cloud Foundry must true to its core mission and to never “break the user,” Abby Kearns, executive director at the Cloud Foundry Foundation, said.\nDuring a podcast from the recently held from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China, Kearns spoke with host Alex Williams, founder and editor in chief of The New Stack, about how the foundation continues to serve the developer open source community and what its missions continues to be. Kearns also revealed some especially interesting observations about China-based developers and their approach to the Cloud Foundry and open source community.\nWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z155K1GuBjI\nAbby Kearns","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1191988"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7150875329971313,"wiki_prob":0.28491246700286865,"text":"Network BBC\nGenres Drama, Mini-Series\nSense and Sensibility (1981)\nSense and Sensibility is a 1981 BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. The seven-part series was dramatized by Alexander Baron, and directed by Rodney Bennett. Following the plot of the novel, it tells \"a story of two sisters attempting to find happiness in the tightly structured society of 18th century England. Elinor, disciplined, restrained and very conscious of the manners of the day, represents sense. Outspoken, impetuous, emotional Marianne represents sensibility. Attracted to a man already promised to another, Elinor suffers silently to keep scandal away from her family. Marianne enjoys a flirtation with a handsome scoundrel that could lead to her downfall. Through their experiences with men and their relationship with each other, they learn that neither sense nor sensibility is enough, but that one must strive for a balance of the two.\"\nSeasons Episodes Actors Photos Similar shows\nIrene Richard\nElinor Dashwood\nTracey Childs\nMarianne Dashwood\nPeter Woodward\nJohn Willoughby\nBosco Hogan\nEdward Ferrars","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line172684"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6431170105934143,"wiki_prob":0.6431170105934143,"text":"FLIP: A Column About Skateboarding\nColumn 3:\nAn Interview with Christian Hosoi, Professional Skateboarder/Pastor\nby Joel Rice\nSince his release from prison in 2004, Christian Hosoi has emerged as one of the skateboarding industry’s most vocal Christian evangelists. The married father of two (Rhythm and Classic Hosoi), is now a pastor at The Sanctuary Church in Huntington Beach and currently stars in a Christian reality television show entitled The Uprising. (A typical episode features Hosoi and two other skateboarders visiting backyard pools, skate parks, and other locales to minister and find fellowship.)\nHosoi is one of only a small handful of truly canonical professional skateboarders—an eminence who once defined an era. Often portrayed as Tony Hawk’s great rival, Hosoi literally brought ramp skating to new heights throughout the 1980s—dominating contests with massive aerial maneuvers, surfer’s grace, extraordinary personal magnetism and a winning flamboyance. (Note the multiple Swatches, neon spandex biker shorts, ever-present scarves and notorious hair extensions in footage from this period). By his early twenties Hosoi had taken up residence in W.C. Field’s former Hollywood home, installed a half-pipe ramp in the garden and became a fixture of the Los Angeles club scene. He invented the trick known as “The Christ Air” and, because of his star power, was nicknamed “Christ.”\nHowever, when the skateboarding industry collapsed in the late 80s and street-skating suddenly eclipsed the ramp-era, Hosoi’s life took a dark turn. After spending most of the 90s in the throes of drug addiction and financial disarray, he was arrested, in January of 2000, at the Honolulu International Airport attempting to transport 1.5 pounds of crystal methamphetamine and spent four years in the San Bernardino Central Detention Center. It was at the beginning of this legal travail that Hosoi found Christianity.\nJoel Rice recently spoke to Hosoi about where he has been, where he is going, and his ambitions for The Uprising.\nQ: You were caught with more than a pound and a half of methamphetamine at the Honolulu International Airport. What was that moment like?\nChristian Hosoi: At that moment, I didn’t know there was going to be five or ten years hanging over my head.\nYou’re saying, “How is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me? Why me?” I believed in Karma at the time. I was pointing my finger at all these bad people and saying, “Why are they out there when I’m in here?”\nBut then I went in and I had my first phone call. It was pretty incredible. My girlfriend said, “You know what? I love you. We just got to trust in God.” And I was like, “God? Babe, I need a lawyer.”\nQ: By that point you obviously had fallen quite far. You had once occupied the pinnacle of the skateboarding world. By eighth grade you were generating a $2,000 a month income…?\nCH: How much was I making?\nQ: In eighth grade you were making $2,000 a month.\nCH: Yeah. In eighth grade, when I was 15. But in my pinnacle days, just as a factual thing, I was making more like $30,000 a month.\nQ: What do you miss about that time in your life? What are you glad to put behind you?\nCH: I miss the competition and the actual skateboarding family that it was. It was a really tight knit industry. It was so fresh, so new, so innovative. I really do miss that freshness.\nWhat I don’t miss is the lifestyle that came with it, and the pressures of following everybody else’s expectations and not following my own heart. I grew up in a time of drugs, rock n’ roll and sex. So if you didn’t do those things you were considered weird or not cool. See, there was no option for me. It was either cool or not cool.\nI worried about my children being exposed to that environment, especially without knowing what the repercussions would be. But now that I’ve experienced that [lifestyle] firsthand, I can actually say that path will lead you down a road of destruction and despair. Eventually you will be put in prison, kill somebody or get killed.\nQ: One of themes you return to on the show is the deep regret you feel about that period. In one episode you say, “How ungodly it all was.” Wasn’t it also just fun? The clothes, the multiple Swatches, the hair extensions. It looked like fun.\nCH: The Bible talks about sin being pleasurable. Sin is pleasurable. That’s why it’s so hard to convince people − friends and peers − to give up that lifestyle for something they can’t see, that they can’t perceive. How do you convince someone to give up something that feels right and looks right while everyone else around them is doing it?\nThat’s the part where I say, “You know what? I did have fun.” There was nothing I wanted that I couldn’t get. I had everything handed to me on a silver platter. How do I tell people to sacrifice all that? Here’s why: for eternal life.\nNever growing up in church, never praying until I was 31-years-old, being addicted to drugs for ten years, having a dysfunctional lifestyle − these are things I don’t glory in. But there is hope. You haven’t gone too far. There is a second chance. I’ve lived this second life, with joy and peace, kindness and self-control, purpose and meaning.\nQ: You converted to Christianity soon after your arrest. Could you describe that experience?\nCH: My wife’s uncle is a pastor and he was trying to reach out to her. And she just really wasn’t feeling God. I guess she considered herself an atheist. Then her friend almost OD’d at her house. And she said, “Christian, I am quitting drugs and I’m going to church.”\nI ended up getting arrested right after that. And she was like, “My uncle wants to talk to you.” And so I called him from San Bernardino prison. And he said, “You know God has a plan for your life.” And I’m looking at ten years of prison time and going like, “God has a plan for my life?” And he’s like, “Yes. But you really need to give yourself to Christ because you’re going to touch millions of people.” So my girlfriend and I said the prayer together on the phone and I gave myself to Christ over the phone in San Bernardino prison. And my life has never been the same since that moment.\nThat’s when all those spiritual markers − my name being Christian, my nickname being Christ, inventing the maneuver the Christ Air in the late 80s − started rushing by me like a movie projector.\nSee, I had a revelation. I had never prayed before. I had never read a Bible. I just read the Bible in county prison on a triple-decker bunk bed seeking God with my whole heart.\nQ: You also got your GED in prison. Did you find the classes stimulating?\nCH: There were only inmates working as the tutors. That’s pretty much it. I studied for about a month and a half and took the test.\nActually, I happened to take the test the very first time that they changed the test to be more advanced. And everyone was like telling me how easy the GED was. But then they were like, “We’re testing out this new test, and it’s going to be the new GED. We’re testing the new test.” And it was, like, way harder. And I was like, “Oh my God. I hope I pass this.” Because, I dropped out in the tenth grade, you know what I mean? But God gave me the abilities. So it was super cool.\nQ: It must have been incredibly painful to see skateboarding flower while you were in prison. Peers like Tony Hawk were striking a very lucrative chord with the public. The sheer longing to skateboard must have been overwhelming.\nCH: You know it was. At first I was like, man, I am going to miss out on so many years of the evolution of skateboarding. But when I fell in love with Jesus it was like I had a whole newfound passion. And that was to speak the Lord and know the Lord and be able to communicate that with my friends and family, and to share that with the skateboarding community. And I said, “Whenever you want me out there, God − to be able to represent you and be out there and to skateboard again, I’m fine with that.”\nQ: What would the 42-year-old Christian Hosoi now, say to the 16-year-old Hosoi then?\nCH: Tell him hey, “Have you ever prayed before? Do you believe in God? Do you know what your name means? Your nickname is Christ. Do you know what Christ has done for you?” No one sat there and really took the time and said, “Hey, I love you.” I would tell that kid, “Hey, look at what I’ve been through. You don’t have to go through life trying please everybody.” And I think I would have thought about it with the intelligence that I had.\nToday I am here saying I can still skate. I can still dress the way I want to. I can still be rad. I can still be the person I want to be as long as I’m not living in sin, which is obviously in conflict with God’s plan for me.\nQ: Do you feel that people sometimes make false professions of faith around you because of the presence of cameras?\nCH: No. Because we pray before we do it. For every person that we come into contact for that day it is a divine appointment. It is on purpose. So if that erupts and somebody does come on because there are cameras it ends up being an intervention for their spiritual life that ultimately changes their life forever. See this generation is not used to that. They’re so used to being exploited. Our message is that we really do love them. I don’t force my beliefs on people. But I’m definitely outspoken. I just want to be able to love people in such a way that they’re attracted to the God that I serve. We’re not here to glory in ourselves. I am just being truthful to who I am and people respect that..\nQ: You loved the rebellious thrill of skateboarding. In a recent interview you return again and again to the theme of skateboarding’s individuality and state as a skateboarder “You don’t want to be a follower.” But isn’t your show all about finding followers? Do you see a contradiction there? How do you rectify it?\nCH: If you look at the rebelliousness we had as skateboarders, we weren’t conforming to mainstream society. We didn’t go by the rules. That was what made us this subculture that was cool, that was edgy and had this outlaw attitude. That’s how we are as Christians today. We’re the most rebellious people today, because we’re not doing what the world tells us to do. We’re here to follow the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I am in a radical rebellion against what the world is telling us; how the world is telling our children to live in school. You listen to prominent people, doctors, successful people. And their language is so filthy. That’s why our country is in shambles, because we’ve lost touch with our spiritual roots. So, whereas before I was a rebel against the authorities, now I am a rebel against the world.\nChristian Hosoi\n36 Hours on Tralfamadore\nDispatches From a Hangdog Bankrupt: Dispatch 7:\nErect Not a Gibbet for Thine Debtors, WaMu\n(Now Chase)\nShhh! It’s a Baby Shower!\nSestina: The 13th-Hour Session: Discussions on the Rapture Debacle: 11:59 pm\nby Andrew Neuendorf\nAssimilate Or Go Home: Dispatches from the Stateless Wanderers: In it to Win it\nby D.L.M.\nThe 49ers: Oral Histories of Americans Facing 50: #55: Brian Hansen\nby Rob Trucks","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line188079"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8746160268783569,"wiki_prob":0.8746160268783569,"text":"Park Geun-hye\nSouth Korea opposition to file motion to impeach Park\nOpposition parties say they will try to persuade lawmakers of the president's party to back her impeachment.\nMillions of people have taken to the streets, calling for President Park to resign [Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]\nSouth Korea's three opposition parties have agreed to submit a motion to impeach President Park Geun-hye, saying they want a vote to take place on December 9.\nAccused of colluding with a close friend who faces embezzlement charges, Park said last week she would be willing to step down in the face of weekly mass protests that have seen millions take to the streets of Seoul and other cities.\nThe opposition said Park's offer, which put the manner and timing of her resignation in the hands of parliament, was an effort to buy time and avoid impeachment.\nThe joint opposition commands the most seats in the legislature, but would need the support of nearly 30 members of Park's Saenuri Party to secure the two-thirds majority needed to impeach the president.\n\"We've agreed to actively persuade anti-Park [Saenuri] lawmakers to back us,\" said Park Jie-Won, parliamentary floor leader of the opposition People's Party.\nApproval rating slumping\nMeanwhile, Park wants to hold talks this weekend with the Saenuri as she attempts to block impeachment talks, Yonhap news agency reported.\nOn Thursday, the ruling party pushed for Park to withdraw from office in April, with party leader Chung Jin-suk saying presidential elections, originally planned for the end of 2017, could be brought forward to June.\nPark, whose approval rating dropped last week to a record low of 4 percent, is accused of having allowed close friend Choi Soon Sil to meddle in state affairs and of giving Choi access to official state\nThe president is also suspected of having put pressure on top Korean companies, including the electronics giant Samsung, to donate to two foundations controlled by Choi and which Choi is said to have used for her own personal gain.\nChoi, the daughter of a cult leader who mentored Park before his death, has been indicted on a string of charges, including abuse of authority and attempted fraud.\nThe president has repeatedly apologised over the scandal but denied any criminal wrongdoing.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line522165"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7445051074028015,"wiki_prob":0.2554948925971985,"text":"Remember Lot's Wife\nBy Alwyn Mandeville (Kingstown Church of Christ, SVG)\nIn the book of Genesis (19:1-29), the story is told of a righteous man named Lot, who was living in Sodom with his wife and family. The city was exceedingly sinful and plagued with homosexuality.\nVisiting angels had persuaded Lot to take his family and flee Sodom, as God was about to destroy it with fire and brimstone. While they were fleeing, his wife looked back and instantly became a pillar of salt. It is said that she was attracted by all that Sodom had to offer and this may have led to her demise.\nThis should be a great lesson and warning to all Christians. The word of God tells us of the dangers of drawing back. The Hebrews writer says (10:38-39), “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” Also 2 Peter 2:20-22 states, “For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to know the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to its own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”\nJesus, while speaking to certain men about the true cost of discipleship said in Luke 9:62, \"No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God.\" Lot’s wife was escaping from a city that was being destroyed because of corruption and worldly pleasures, to a place of safety. On her way she decided to look back and she too was destroyed. As Christians who have obeyed the gospel of our Lord and Saviour and were added to His church (Acts 2:47), we are to give up earthly treasures so that we could gain that crown of eternal life. Paul, speaking to the Philippians said, “Brethren, I count myself not to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward unto those things which are ahead. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:13-14).\nDO NOT BE CAUGHT LOOKING BACK!\nLord help us to continue to fight the good fight of faith!!\nGod will make a way where there seem to be no way. Once we feast on his word he will continue to point the way forward for us so we would have no desire to look back!\n[ BLOG SUBMISSION FORM ]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line461477"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5397260785102844,"wiki_prob":0.4602739214897156,"text":"John T. McAllister, M.D.\nDr. John T. McAllister is a board-certified ophthalmologist who specializes in general adult eye care, with particular interest in cataract surgery and laser-assisted cataract surgery.\nDr. McAllister received his Bachelor of Science degree in biology at Brigham Young University. He took a leave of absence during his undergraduate studies to serve a two-year\nWilliam L. Rich, III, M.D.\nDavid J. Seidman, M.D.\nMary Beth McAteer, M.D.\nDavid J. Forster, M.D.\nJohn P. Martin, M.D.\nJessica E. Oliver, M.D.\nForrest J. Ellis, M.D.\nChristina A. Bruno, M.D.\nAmy R. Jeffery, M.D.\nSonya B. Shah, M.D.\nNancy A. Morrison, M.D.\nJinali R. Diora, M.D.\nNoureen J. Khan, M.D.\nCatherine S. Vu-Gia, O.D.\nHa-Phuong Tran, O.D.\necclesiastical mission in Brazil. He attended the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he received his medical degree, graduating with honors in research and receiving the Millmann Award, the highest award given annually in the college. His medical internship was completed at Wheaton Franciscan St. Joseph Hospital's transitional program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was awarded for his bedside manner. He received his ophthalmology training at The Eye Institute of Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin, where he received the POET award for excellent patient care. He has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed ophthalmology and vision science articles, of which some highlights are linked below.\nUpon completion of his training, Dr. McAllister joined NVOA in July of 2014. He is an active member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and currently serves on the Academy’s Health Policy Committee working primarily as the Academy’s Practice Expense Liaison to the American Medical Association’s RVS Update Committee (RUC). He is also a member of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons.\nDr. McAllister and his wife are the proud parents of three young boys and a baby girl. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, singing, painting, and racing with his kids.\nM.D.— Medical College of Wisconsin\n(honors in research)\nOphthalmology Residency— The Eye Institute, Milwaukee, WI\nBoard certified - American Board of Ophthalmology\nFoveal development in albinism, Vision Research\nTreating extrafoveal choroidal neovascularization, Eye\nFurther insights into albinotic foveal development, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science\nAmerican Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Eye Smart (English)\nAmerican Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Eye Smart (Spanish)\nAmerican Association of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS) Patient Information (Mutiple Languages)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line516709"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9143596887588501,"wiki_prob":0.9143596887588501,"text":"Sports governance\nPittsburgh Pirates' Kyle Crick (30) and Cincinnati Reds' Eugenio Suarez, left, and Amir Garrett, center right, are part of a brawl during the ninth inning of a baseball game Tuesday, July 30, 2019, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)\nPirates, Reds await suspensions for latest brawl\nCINCINNATI (AP) — Major League Baseball is reviewing video of the latest fight between the Pirates and Reds, with Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle expecting suspensions on both sides. Reds manager David Bell faces a significant suspension for running onto the field and going after Hurdle during the...\nCleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer, left, reacts as he is taken out by manager Terry Francona in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., Sunday, July 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)\nLEADING OFF: Deadline day drama for Minor, others\nA look at what's happening around the majors today: ON THE BLOCK With the trade deadline set for 4 p.m. ET, the hot stove is brimming with big arms that have long been mentioned in rumors. Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, Mike Minor, Zack Wheeler and Robbie Ray are the biggest names that might...\nA look at what's happening around the majors Wednesday: ON THE BLOCK With the trade deadline set for 4 p.m. ET, the hot stove is brimming with big arms that have long been mentioned in rumors. Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, Mike Minor, Zack Wheeler and Robbie Ray are the biggest names that...\nNew York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard watches his team play during the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Sunday, July 28, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)\nLEADING OFF: Thor throws as deadline nears, Rays vs Red Sox\nA look at what's happening around the majors today: STILL A MET (FOR NOW) Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard (7-5, 4.33) is set to start against the White Sox, and it could be his final appearance with the club. The hard-throwing 26-year-old changed his bio on Twitter over the weekend to read \"...\nFILE - In this Jan. 20, 2019, file photo, Los Angeles Rams' Nickell Robey-Coleman breaks up a pass intended for New Orleans Saints' Tommylee Lewis during the second half of the NFL football NFC championship game in New Orleans. A Louisiana judge has ordered that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and three officials from January’s NFC title game be questioned under oath in September about an infamous “no-call” that helped the Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints in January’s NFC title game, an attorney said Monday, July 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)\nGoodell, title game officials to face questions on 'no-call'\nNEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana judge ordered that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and three officials from January's NFC title game be questioned under oath in September about the infamous \"no-call\" that helped the Los Angeles Rams beat the New Orleans Saints in January's NFC title game, a lawyer...\nA look at what's happening around the majors Tuesday: STILL A MET (FOR NOW) Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard (7-5, 4.33) is set to start against the White Sox, and it could be his final appearance with the club. The hard-throwing 26-year-old changed his bio on Twitter over the weekend to read \"...\nFILE - In this July 7, 2019 file photo United States' team celebrates with the trophy after winning the Women's World Cup final soccer match between US and The Netherlands at the Stade de Lyon in Decines, outside Lyon, France. U.S. Soccer says the players on the World Cup champion women's national team were paid more than their male counterparts from 2010 through 2018. According to a letter released Monday, July 29, 2019 by U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro, the federation has paid out $34.1 million in salary and game bonuses to the women as opposed to $26.4 million paid to the men. Those figures do not include the benefits received only by the women, like health care. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, file)\nUS Soccer says women's team has made more than the men\nFacing mounting public pressure in a fight over equitable pay, U.S. Soccer said the World Cup champion women's national team has been paid more than the men's team. According to a letter released Monday by U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro, the federation paid out $34.1 million in salary and...\nKansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill throws the ball during NFL football training camp Saturday, July 27, 2019, in St. Joseph, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)\nChiefs' Hill contrite, repentant in first public comments\nST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) — Tyreek Hill was contrite but repentant in his first comments since he was banished from the Kansas City Chiefs following an audio recording in which his then-fiance accused him of hurting their son. The star wide receiver declined Sunday to discuss the specifics of his case,...\nGiants WR Tate suspended 4 games for fertility drug use\nEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — New York Giants wide receiver Golden Tate has been suspended for four games for using a drug prescribed for fertility planning. The 10-year veteran, who signed with the Giants in March as a free agent, announced the suspension in a Twitter post Saturday. He said he...\nA collapsed internal balcony is seen at a nightclub in Gwangju, South Korea, Saturday, July 27, 2019. Members of the U.S. national water polo team were in a South Korean nightclub on Saturday when an internal balcony collapsed, killing at least one person. (Chun Jung-in/Yonhap via AP)\n2 dead, 8 swimming athletes hurt in S.Korea balcony collapse\nSEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A balcony inside a nightclub in South Korea collapsed on Saturday, killing two people and injuring 16, including American and other athletes at the world swimming championships, officials said. Hundreds were at the nightclub in the southern city of Gwangju when the...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line708652"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8520988821983337,"wiki_prob":0.8520988821983337,"text":"\"Churches\"\n\"Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895\"\nEducators 1\nNewspapers 1\nArchival materials 1\nWashington (D.C.) 1\nBearden, Romare, 1911-1988 1\nByrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009 1\nCummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958 1\nHodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971 1\nShimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936 1\nShimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885 1\nThomas, Elizabeth N. (Elizabeth Nelson), d. 1932 1\nWashington, Booker T., 1856-1915 1\nCharlene Hodges Byrd collection\nsmithsonian online virtual archive\nByrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009\nShimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936\nThomas, Elizabeth N. (Elizabeth Nelson), d. 1932\nCummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958\nMorgan State College\nHodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971\nGrimke, Francis J. (Francis James), 1850-1937\nBearden, Romare, 1911-1988\nWashington, Booker T., 1856-1915\nDouglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895\nShimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885\n43 Linear feet (35 document boxes and 39 oversize boxes)\nThe Charlene Hodges Byrd collection measures 43 linear feet, and dates from circa 1750-2009, with the bulk of the material dating from 1880-1960. The collection documents the personal life and professional career of Charlene Hodges Byrd, an African American teacher from Washington, D.C., along with material for several related families from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Family members prominently represented include Sarah A. Shimm, teacher and essayist under the name Faith Lichen; her daughters Erminie F. Shimm and Grace E. Shimm Cummings, both teachers; and Byrd's mother, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, also a teacher. Correspondence and writings chiefly discuss family life, religion, race, education, and the relationship with Frederick Douglass and his family. The collection is arranged in 10 series: Biographical Material, Correspondence, Writings, Subject Files, Financial and Legal Records, Printed Material, Volumes, Memorabilia, Textiles, and Photographs.\nCharlene Hodges Byrd collection, circa 1750-2009. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution.\nSeries 1. Papers related to biographical and family histories of the Byrd, Cummings, Davage, Dews, Hodges, Shimm, Spruill, and Thomas families. Material includes family trees; school diplomas and certificates; programs; awards; marriage and divorce papers; funeral documents; and obituaries.\nSeries 2: Chiefly letters from family and friends regarding family news, financial matters, school, work, neighborhood affairs, church events, travel and the weather. The majority of the letters are addressed to Charlene Hodges Byrd, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Ida R. Cummings, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Erminie F. Shimm, Sarah A. Shimm, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. Other correspondence includes letters from Booker T. Washington, Bessye Beardon, Charlotte Davage, Amelia Douglass, and Harrell S. Spruill. There are also a number of greeting cards, postcards, and empty envelopes.\nSeries 3. Writings include essays, speeches, papers written for school, teacher's notebooks, and a diary of Erminie F. Shimm, 1903. Topics include education, Frederick Douglass, religion, race, Africa, and the temperance movement.\nSeries 4. Subject files on Charlene Hodges Byrd's involvement with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia, a women's book club organized in 1923; Church Women United radio program; and The Links, Inc., a volunteer service organization. The papers on Liberia relate to missionary work, and were probably gathered by Erminie F. Shimm; and the Shimm-Thomas Collection are papers related to the deposit and later return of family items housed as a collection at Morgan State College.\nSeries 5. The financial and legal records include invoices and receipts, bank books, real estate tax assessments, deeds, and wills. There is also material related to the estate of Erminie F. Shimm.\nSeries 6. Printed materials includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, newsletters, clippings, invitations and programs. The books and pamphlets are chiefly school yearbooks and newspapers and other texts related to religion, politics, music, and poetry. Also included is a copy of Frederick Douglass's autobiography and a printed copy of his speech \"The Race Problem.\" The clippings include obituaries, articles about Charlene Hodges Byrd and her husband Charles R. Byrd, essays by Sarah A. Shimm under the name Faith Lichen, and articles on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The invitations and programs are primarily for school graduations, weddings, social events, and funerals. Other printed material includes newsletters; business cards; calling cards; postage stamps, chiefly from Liberia; and blank postcards. The binder on Frederick Douglass was prepared by Byrd and her goddaughter for the West Virginia School Studies Fair, and includes copies of Byrd family artifacts.\nSeries 7. Autograph books, guest books, and scrapbooks. The autograph book of Grace E. Shimm Cummings includes autographs from Amelia Douglass, Lewis B. Douglass, Charles R. Douglass, W. H. Clair, and Francis J. Grimke. The scrapbook of Grace E. Shimm Cummings and Erminie F. Shimm consists primarily of clippings, and was assembled from an old teacher's book with a student registration and punishment pages still intact at the back.\nSeries 8. Miscellaneous items in the collection including artwork, a coin purse, a piece of handwoven cloth belonging to Catherine Nelson's great grandmother, and leather hair curlers.\nSeries 9: The textiles are chiefly christening gowns, children's garments, and an apron. Several garments belonged to Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Charlene Hodges Byrd, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. There is also a doll that belonged to Amelia Douglass's niece, Kitty Cromwell.\nSeries 10. Photographs include pictures of Charlene Hodges Byrd, Joyce Ethel Hodges Cummings, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Charles Gilmor Cummings, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Erminie F. Shimm, and other friends and relatives of the Byrd, Hodges, Cummings, Douglass, and Shimm families. Subjects are primarily portraits and candids, along with some wedding, baby, and school pictures. While some of the photographs are annotated, many of the individuals are unidentified. Included are vintage photographs, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visites, tintypes, daguerreotypes, and negatives.\nThe Shimm, Thomas, Cummings, Hodges, Davage, and related African American families chiefly lived in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Numerous family members worked as teachers, barbers, or in the service industry. They were active in local churches and service organizations, and had established friendships with local church leaders as well as with Frederick Douglass and his family.\nThe Shimm and Thomas families were located in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The Thomas family can be traced back to Philip Nelson, who owned property in Leesburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Family genealogical papers list Nelson as a descendent of British Admiral Horatio Nelson. This lineage, however, is not supported in publically available family histories of Horatio Nelson. Philip Nelson and his wife Araminta had five children: Catherine (b. 1805?), William, Levi (b. 1820?), Henrietta, and Grayson.\nCatherine Nelson married Elias E. Thomas (b. 1816?) of Virginia in 1840. They wed in Philadelphia and had five children: Levi Nelson (b. 1841), Sarah (1843-1885), Edward (b. 1844), Elizabeth (1848-1932), and Charles (b. 1851).\nSarah Thomas married William Y. Shimm (b. 1841), a barber in Reading, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1863. They had 2 daughters, Erminie (1867-1936) and Grace (1865-1910). The Shimms lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but had moved to Washington, D.C., around 1871. Sarah was a teacher and a writer who published under the name \"Faith Lichen.\" Her writings, primarily essays and commentaries about race and politics, were printed in several newspapers including The National Republican, The Celtic Weekly, The People's Advocate, and The Sunday Morning Gazette.\nSarah's sister Elizabeth was also a teacher in Maryland. Her brother Charles was a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of the first class at Howard University's law school.\nErminie and Grace Shimm became teachers in the Washington, D.C., public school system. Erminie was active in her church and supportive of missionary work in Liberia. Grace married Charles Gilmor Cummings, a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 9, 1902. They had one daughter, Joyce Ethel (1903-1971), and second child in 1905 who died in infancy. Grace died in 1910 of heart failure. After her death, Grace's sister Erminie and Charles's family helped raise Joyce Ethel in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.\nJoyce Ethel Cummings Hodges graduated from Morgan College in 1924, and received her master's degree from Howard University in 1931. She taught at Douglass High School in Baltimore from 1924-1964. Joyce Ethel married Charles E. Hodges (1900--975) in 1927 and they divorced in 1953. The couple had one daughter, Charlene (1929-2009).\nCharlene Hodges Byrd grew up in Washington, D.C., but attended the Northfield School for Girls in East Northfield, Massachusetts, for high school, graduating in 1946. She received her bachelor's degree from Connecticut College in 1950, and her master's degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 1951. She married Charles R. Byrd (1919-2004) in 1952. They had one son in 1954, but he died four days after birth. Byrd soon began a career as a teacher and education administrator, eventually working for Kanawha County Schools in Charleston, West Virginia. She was also active in her local community as a member of the Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia; Church Women United; and The Links, Inc.\nCharles E. Hodges was born Bridgewater, Virginia, where his father was a minister. He graduated from Morgan College in 1923 and received his master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. He was a teacher and served as principal of the North Street School in Hagerstown, Maryland. After he and Joyce Ethel divorced in 1953, he married Elizabeth Dews (1913-1999) in 1955.\nElizabeth Dews Hodges, born Elizabeth Virginia Waumbeeka, was adopted by James Edward (1889-1954) and Sarah Virginia Dews (1888?-1964) in Washington, D.C., in 1920. She graduated from Miner Teachers College in 1939, and worked as a teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, at Wiley H. Bates High School for 34 years. She was awarded a medal for her work there by the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge in 1959. Elizabeth was active in local organizations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., including the SE/NE Friends of the Capitol View Branch Library; Eastern Star Chapter 4; Mount Ephraim Baptist Church; National Museum of Women in the Arts; National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples; and the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind.\nThe Davage family is descended from Sidney Hall (b. 1818?) and Charles Davage (b. 1815?). Sidney was a former slave at the Perry Hall mansion in Baltimore, and was manumitted by 1840. She married Charles, a coachman, on April 12, 1842. They had five children: Eliza Jane (1843-1913), Sophia (b. 1847), Charlotte (b. 1849), Charles (b. 1854), and Hester (b. 1845). Their daughter Eliza Jane married Henry Cummings (b. 1830?). They had seven children: Harry Sythe (1866-1917), Charles Gilmor (1870-1924), William (b. 1882), Ida R. (1868-1958), Estelle (1874-1944), Carroll (b. 1875), Francis (b. 1872), and Aaron (1864?-1932).\nHarry Sythe Cummings, a lawyer in Baltimore, became the city's first African American City Council member. He was first elected in 1890 and served intermittently until his death in 1917, often working on issues related to education. Cummings also delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in 1904 seconding the presidential nomination of Theodore Roosevelt. He married Blanche Conklin in 1899, and they had three children: Harry S. Jr. (b. 1905), Lucille (d. 1906), and Louise.\nCharles Gilmor Cummings graduated from Drew Theological Seminary in 1898, and was a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia and elsewhere. After the death of his wife Grace in 1910, he married Rosa Catherine Bearden, grandmother of artist Romare Bearden, in 1912.\nIda R. Cummings graduated from Morgan College in 1922, and was the first African American kindergarten teacher in Baltimore. She was also active in local organizations, and was president of the Colored Fresh Air and Empty Stocking Circle; chairman of the Woman's Section Council of Defense in Baltimore during the World War, 1914-1918; and president of the Woman's Campaign Bureau of the Colored Republican Voters' League of Maryland.\nAccess to collection requires appointment.\nAfrican Americans -- Maryland\nAfrican Americans -- Photographs\nAfrican American families\nAfrican Americans -- Pennsylvania\nAfrican American newspapers\nAfrican American -- Social life and customs\nAfrican American women journalists\nAfrican Americans -- Education\nAfrican American educators\nAfrican Americans -- Washington (D.C.)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line16243"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8905421495437622,"wiki_prob":0.8905421495437622,"text":"Taysom Hill Aaron Colvin Tre'Quan Smith Ted Ginn Jr. Sports NFL football Professional football Football Sports transactions Sports business\nHouston Texans New Orleans Saints\nAP Source: Texans release CB Aaron Colvin\nBy KRISTIE RIEKEN - Sep. 10, 2019 09:16 PM EDT\nNew Orleans Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas (13) carries past Houston Texans cornerback Aaron Colvin (22) on a a reception in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Bill Feig)\nHOUSTON (AP) — The Houston Texans released cornerback Aaron Colvin after his struggles in the team's season-opening loss to New Orleans, a person familiar with the move tells The Associated Press.\nThe person spoke on the condition of anonymity on Tuesday because the move had not yet been announced.\nColvin was in the second year of a four-year, $34 million contract that had $18 million guaranteed.\nColvin gave up two touchdowns in the second half of Monday night's 30-28 loss. The first came on a 9-yard score by Taysom Hill in the third quarter. He then got beat on a 14-yard TD reception by Tre'Quan Smith later in the period. Colvin was also on the coverage when Ted Ginn grabbed a 9-yard reception that set up the game-winning field goal.\nThe 27-year-old Colvin spent his first four years in Jacksonville before joining the Texans before last season. He appeared in 10 games with two starts for Houston last season and finished with 29 tackles and two fumble recoveries.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line215337"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6668113470077515,"wiki_prob":0.33318865299224854,"text":"About Ancon\nHelifix\nThis privacy policy (the “privacy policy”) provides details of the way in which Ancon Building Products (“the company”,) processes personal data when you work for the company or when you do business with the company.\nPersonal data is processed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and other applicable national and European privacy legislation and regulations (together the “data protection law”).\nThis privacy policy applies to all personal data we process as a data controller.\nTo the extent the company decides why and how personal data is processed, the company is a data controller of such personal data.\nThe company may process personal data of, for example, employees, former employees, and their family members, temporary workers, self-employed persons, job applicants, contractors, supplier contacts, customers, and visitors.\nThe purpose of this privacy policy is to explain what personal data we process and how and why we process it. In addition, this privacy policy outlines our duties and responsibilities regarding its protection.\nThis privacy policy is not an exhaustive statement of our data protection practices, we will give you notice of variations to the extent practical.\n3. TYPES OF PERSONAL DATA\n3.1 Employees and Contractors\nThe company collects and processes personal data in relation to our employees, candidates for employment and contractors, as well as our former employees and former contractors. This personal data includes: personal details such as name, date of birth, social security number, bank account details, next of kin, details of social media accounts, visa / passport data; contact details such as address and phone number(s); personnel file details including, for example, terms and conditions of employment, training, performance evaluations, promotions, personal development plans, conduct and disciplinary data, work location, salary information, bank account details and tax and social security numbers, security clearances; employment history/application details such as educational history and employment history; editorial or journalistic content such as links to works e.g. links to video files or audio files; medical information such as medical certificates and sick notes; family details such as names and dates of birth of children (e.g. Relevant if an individual is applying for parental leave); details required for pension; details regarding trade union membership; and performance related data such as performance management ratings for managers and annual incremental salary reviews of employees, psychometric testing, etc. The above list is not exhaustive but covers the most commonly collected, used and otherwise processed personal data.\n3.2 Suppliers and Customers\nThe company collects and processes personal data in relation to individuals who are, and/or are working with, our suppliers and customers. This personal data may include: personal details such as name, title, position, work identification numbers, department, business unit (including contact data collected for training / verification); and contact details such as email address, telephone number(s) and work location; and tax information such as tax numbers.\n3.3 Special Categories of Personal Data\nThe types of special categories of personal data that the company may process includes, without limitation, health data, information on criminal convictions and biometric data. The company processes all personal data in accordance with data protection law, and, in particular, any special categories of personal data.\n4. PURPOSES OF PROCESSING\nThe company processes personal data for the purpose(s) for which the personal data has been obtained.\nCommon examples of the reasons why the company processes personal data include: payroll and benefit administration; HR, performance and talent management; marketing and PR; improvement of business products and services; research and statistical analysis; business strategy; internal audits or investigations; prevention and detection of unlawful and/or criminal behaviour towards us or our customers and employees; and/or fulfilling legal obligations. We may process personal data for other reasons from time to time. The company tries to ensure individuals are informed about the purpose(s) for processing their personal data at the time the company collects consent. Where this is not possible or practical, the company tries to inform you as soon as possible after the processing of personal data. Individuals have the right to withdraw consent at any time.\nThe company may process the personal data of various individuals (for example, employees, contractors and candidates for employment) for talent management and workforce evaluation (to potentially include attendance and performance analysis).\nThe company engages in such processing where: (a) expressly authorised by national law (including for fraud and tax-evasion monitoring); (b) necessary for the entering into or performance of a contract; or (c) the individual has given appropriate consent.\n6. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS\nIndividuals have certain rights under data protection law.\n6.1 Inspection and Access: you can request from us a summary and a copy of your personal data which we process or which is processed on our behalf;\n6.2 Correction/Addition: where you believe your personal data is inaccurate or incomplete, you are entitled to request us to correct or amend your personal data;\n6.3 Objection: you may object to us processing your personal data based on our legitimate reasons for processing\n6.4 Restriction: you may request that we restrict the processing of your personal data where the accuracy of your personal data is contested, our processing is unlawful, you believe we no longer need the personal; and\nThe company’s Individual Rights Procedure explain how the above requests can be made and how the company will manage these requests.\n7.1 Security Measures\nThe company has technical and organisational measures in place to protect personal data from unlawful or unauthorised destruction, loss, change, disclosure, acquisition or access.\nPersonal data are held securely using a range of security measures including, as appropriate, physical measures such as locked filing cabinets, and various IT measures.\nFor more information on the company’s security measures, please see the Information Security Policy.\n7.2 Personal Data Breach\nThe company will manage a data breach in accordance with the personal data breach reporting procedure. For guidance on how to identify and report a data breach please refer to our Personal Data Breach Procedure.\n8. DISCLOSING PERSONAL DATA\nFrom time to time, the company may disclose personal data to third parties, or allow third parties to access personal data which we process (for example where a law enforcement agency or regulatory authority submits a valid request for access to personal data).\nThe company may also share personal data: (a) with another member of the CRH Group (including our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries); (b) with selected third parties including business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors; (c) with third parties when we sell or buy any business or assets; or (d) if the company is under a legal obligation to disclose personal data. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud prevention.\nWhere the company enters into agreements with third parties to processes personal data on our behalf it will ensure that the appropriate contractual protections are in place to safeguard it. Examples include communications providers, payroll service providers, occupational health providers, marketing or recruitment agencies, operators of data centers used by the company, etc.\nThe company keep personal data only for as long as the retention of such personal data is deemed necessary for the purposes for which that personal data are processed. Personal data is retained in accordance with relevant laws and company guidelines.\n10. DATA TRANSFERS OUTSIDE THE EEA\nFrom time to time the company may need to transfer the personal data outside the EEA. This transfer will occur in accordance with applicable data protection law. The company takes reasonable steps to ensure that the personal data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy when transferred outside the EEA.\n11. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES\nThe company is responsible for the processing of personal data. The company’s managing director has overall responsibility for the company’s compliance with this privacy policy and will designate a primary point of contact in relation to (i) the processing of personal data of the company’s current and former employees and contractors; (ii) the processing of personal data of business contacts; and (iii) the preservation of the security and integrity of the personal data processed by the company.\nLegal and Compliance shall provide support to the company by providing legal advice and guidance in interpreting the data protection law and this privacy policy on a local level.\nAll company employees must comply with the most up-to-date version of this privacy policy, as published from time to time. If employees are found to have intentionally violated this privacy policy, they may be subject to disciplinary processes, up to and including dismissal.\n12. COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE\nYou can ask a question or make a complaint about this privacy policy and/or the processing of your personal data by contacting the Finance Director. While you may make a complaint in respect of our compliance with data protection law to the relevant data protection regulator, we request that you contact the Finance Director in the first instance to give us the opportunity to address any concerns that you may have.\n13. ASSOCIATED POLICIES\nThis policy should be read in conjunction with the following policies and procedures\n• Personal Data Breach Procedure\n• Individual Rights Procedure\n• Information Security Policy\n• Website Privacy Statement\nDate: April 9th 2018\nAnnex I - GLOSSARY\nIn this privacy policy, the terms below have the following meaning:\n“CCM” means the country compliance manager for the company;\n“Cross-border processing” arises where: (a) we are established in more than one EUmember state and our processing of personal data takes place in more than one EU member state; or (b) while our processing of personal data takes place in only one EU member state, this processing substantially affects (or is likely to substantially affect) individuals in more than one EU member state.\n“Personal data breach” means a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.\n“Data controller” means the entity that decides why and how personal data is processed.\n“Data processor” means the party that processes personal data on behalf of the data controller (for example, a payroll service provider).\n“European Economic Area” or “EEA” means Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.\n“Personal data” is any information relating to a living individual which allows the identification of that individual. A person is identifiable if his/her identity can reasonably be established from the data without any disproportionate effort. Personal data can include:\nEmployees and Contractors\n1. Personal details such as name, date of birth, bank account details, next of kin, details of social media accounts;\n2. Contact details such as address and phone number(s);\n3. Personnel file details including, e.g, terms and conditions of employment, training, performance evaluations, promotions, personal development plans, conduct and disciplinary data, work location, salary information, bank account details and tax and personally identifiable numbers such as a social security numbers;\n4. Employment history/application details such as educational history and employment history;\n5. Editorial or journalistic content such as links to works, e.g. Links to show-reels or audio files;\n6. Medical information such as medical certificates and sick notes;\n7. Family details such as names and dates of birth of children, e.g. Relevant if an individual is applying for parental leave;\n8. Details required for pension;\n9. Details regarding trade union membership; and\n10. Performance related data such as performance management ratings for managers and annual incremental salary reviews of employees, psychometric testing, etc.\nSuppliers and Customers\n1. Personal details such as name, title, position, work identification numbers, department, business unit;\n2. Contact details such as email address, telephone number(s),\n3. Work location; and\n4. Tax information such as vat / tax numbers.\n“Processing” includes collecting, using, recording, organising, altering, disclosing, destroying or holding personal data in any way. Processing can be done either manually or by using automated systems such as information technology systems and “process” and “processing” shall be interpreted accordingly.\n“Profiling” is the automated processing of personal data for the purpose of assessing certain aspects relating to an individual so as to analyse or predict the individual’s performance, decisions or behaviour.\n“Special Categories of Personal Data” are types of personal data that reveal any of the following information relating to an individual: racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership. Special categories of personal data also include the processing of genetic data, biometric data (for example, fingerprints or facial images), health data, data concerning sex life or sexual orientation and any personal data relating to criminal convictions or offences.\nAnnex II - COMPANY SPECIFIC PROCESSING\nThis annex contains additional information in respect of the way in which the company processes personal data.\n1. Relevant local law and data protection regulator\nIn this annex, “data protection law” means the general data protection regulation (regulation (eu) 2016/679) in the EEU and the PrivacyAct 1988 (Privacy Act) of Australia (incl the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme under Part IIIC)\nIn respect of the company the relevant local data protection regulator is the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) of Australia (incl the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme under Part IIIC)\n2. Personal data processed by the company\nIn addition to those categories of personal data detailed in section 1 of the privacy policy, the company also processes the following categories of personal data – payroll, travel, recruitment, internal reporting and the like\n3. Purposes of processing personal data\nIn addition to those purposes detailed in section 2 of the privacy policy, the company also processes personal data for the following additional purposes managing Information Technology systems for usage, telecommunications devices, banking, superannuation processing, videoing workplaces for safety reviews and the like\nThe company engages in the following types of profiling: Nil\nThe company implements the following additional technical and organisational security measures to protect the personal data from unauthorised destruction, loss, change, disclosure, acquisition or access: disposing of records after statutory limits have been reached, holding HR data in lockable areas, restricting access to IT folder structures, lap top encryption, password on key HR files, contracting with key suppliers to hold personal data in confidence and for the purpose it is intended (eg. IT service provider, document storage service provider), reporting known breaches immediately\n6. Disclosure of personal data to third parties\nThe company discloses or provides access to the personal data to the following additional categories of third party for the purposes explained below: CRH entities for Key Performance Indicator Reporting, Travel Agents for Travel Arrangements, Banking, Taxation & Superannuation Institutions, for the purposes of statutory compliance and payroll processing, auditors for statutory compliance\n7. Data retention periods\nThe company retains personal data on the basis of the following criteria: minimum periods where are they are required for statutory purposes, six (6) months in the case of CV’s for job applications, six (6) months for those visiting sites and two (2) months for video footage of work activities recorded for Health & Safety purposes\n8. Data transfers\nThe company transfers personal data to the following locations outside the eea, for the purposes specified below, using the stated legal safeguards (a copy of which are available from the Finance Director) CRH Europe for Key Performance Indicator reporting and compliance with recruitment and procedures and the like.\nLook out for Ancon at these Conferences in 2019\nAncon is proud to sponsor two industry conferences this year and will showcase an innovative range of structural fixing solutions.\nAncon Sponsors Concrete NZ Conference, Hamilton, 11th - 13th October 2018\nAncon is proud to be a sponsor of The Concrete NZ Conference taking place in Hamilton, New Zealand, from 11th to 13th October 2018.\nWho is CRH?\nThe Use of Stainless Steel\nGet regular updates on new product developments, technical advice and industry news.\nOther Ancon Websites\nancon.at\nT: 03 376 5205\nE: info@ancon.co.nz\n© Copyright Ancon New Zealand 2020. GST No. 105-688-583","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1135608"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9123527407646179,"wiki_prob":0.9123527407646179,"text":"Lufthansa Group flight crew reaffirm industrial action threat\nFlight crew at Lufthansa’s LCC subsidiary Germanwings have announced plans for industrial action ahead of a new round of talks over the airline’s early retirement scheme.\nThe flight crew at Germanwings want the current scheme to be retained, which allows them to retire early at age 55 but still keep some of their pay until they reach the age at which state pension payments start.\nLufthansa and flight crew union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC) are due to return to the negotiating table later on Thursday. According to Vereinigung Cockpit, if talks fail to lead to an agreement, pilots at Germanwings will go on strike for six hours, starting from 0400 GMT on Friday.\nAround 700 of the Lufthansa Group’s 9,000 pilots are employed at Germanwings.\nIn April, Lufthansa flight crew held a three-day strike which grounded almost all the airline’s flights, costing it up to €60 million ($79 million) in lost revenue and contributing to the airline’s subsequent profit warning.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line279769"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7425069212913513,"wiki_prob":0.7425069212913513,"text":"“You see them WITH glasses!”…\nA Short History of 3D Movies\nPart One: The 1800s to the 1950s\n3D movies have actually been around a lot longer than widescreen ones. Almost as soon as the early still cameras were invented, it was realised that they could easily be adapted to produce a stereoscopic image. Indeed, as early as 1856, J. C. d’Almeida gave a demonstration at the Academie des Sciences in which two stereoscopic images (that is to say two views of the same scene, photographed from slightly differing points of view - usually around two and a half inches - representing the distance between a pair of human eyes) were projected in rapid succession as lantern slides coloured red and green, with the audience viewing the screen through spectacles fitted with red and green lenses (This system of rapidly alternating left and right eye views would be used again - but not for more than a hundred years! We’ll come to that later). The green image could only be seen through the red lens and the red image only through the green one, effectively sending two slightly different images of the same scene to the brain of the viewer, where they would be combined to form a three-dimensional image. Nevertheless, in spite of this remarkable discovery, for most people in the Victorian age their only experience of viewing 3D images would be via one or the other of the two most popular types of stereoscope in use at the time; the Holmes or the Brewster.\nAfter a period of very little advancement in 3D projection, the 1890s produced a positive flurry of activity in the field, when Ducos du Hauron produced and patented a refinement of the two-colour, or anaglyph, system by superimposing a pair of transparent stereoscopic images, one coloured red and the other blue, on top of each other. When projected, the viewer would see a three dimensional scene through glasses having one blue and one red lens.\nBy the end of the century, moving pictures had arrived and 3D wasn’t very far behind. In 1897 a Mr. C. Grivolas adapted the anaglyph technique to movies by using a specially constructed camera that would expose two reels of film simultaneously, through two lenses spaced as far apart as human eyes. The resulting prints were then projected simultaneously on to the same screen by two interlinked projectors, with one lens having a red filter and the other a blue one. Once again, the audience would don red and blue lensed glasses only this time they would see a three dimensional moving picture - the effect must have been truly startling to Victorian eyes. And this would be almost exactly the way that 3D movies would be projected in the future.\nAs would continue to be the case with 3D movies right up to the present day, a few brief presentations here and there would be followed by very long periods during which no one would see, or even hear of 3D. Several more years passed until an anaglyphic presentation of random scenes shot in and around New York and New Jersey by Edwin S. Porter (maker of the very first motion picture feature, The Great Train Robbery) and William E. Waddell, took place at the Astor theatre in New York on June 10th 1915. An interesting novelty use of the anaglyph system was made in 1918, on the Keith-Abbey vaudeville circuit, which had nothing whatever to do with motion pictures. A troupe of high-kicking chorus girls went through their routine while a translucent screen was lowered in front of them. Lit from behind with red and green lights, their red and green shadows were cast on to the screen, which the audience then viewed through red and green glasses - giving the effect of the girls’ high kicks going right over their heads! And though it is generally accepted that other occasional 3D presentations were given, none of them are officially recorded until the 1920s, when several major attempts at re-launching 3D movies occurred, more or less at the same time.\nThe first of these was an anaglyph format presentation - and the World’s first 3D feature film - given by film maker and inventor Harry K. Fairall, entitled The Power of Love. It opened at the Ambassador Hotel Theatre in Los Angeles on September 27th 1922 - and the reviews were very favourable. A few months later, during the Christmas holidays, William Van Doren Kelley, inventor of the Prizmacolor process, presented his ‘Plasticon’ anaglyphic short film Movies of the Future. This was shown at the Rivoli theatre in New York City. Early in the following year, Kelley would show a second Plasticon short - a travelogue about Washington DC - also at the Rivoli. Kelley’s process used film coated on both sides, with the red image on one side and the green image on the reverse. The audience viewed the 3D image through spectacles that had a pair of red and green Cellophane lenses.\nWhile all these systems were variations on the anaglyph stereoscopic method, a more radical idea came along with the presentation of the ‘Teleview’ system on December 27th at the Selwyn theatre in New York City. The inventors of the Teleview system, Laurens Hammond and William F. Cassidy, had decided to take a completely different approach to the presentation of 3D images by designing an extremely complex projection and viewing system (although an almost identical system had been demonstrated by C. Dupuis in Paris as far back as 1903) Their process required two reels of film to be exposed through lenses approximately 2 ½ inches apart. The two resulting prints were run simultaneously through two projectors that were electronically linked so that they would remain synchronised throughout the performance. One print, however, would always be one frame behind the other; this would effectively produce alternating left and right images on the screen. In order to make a stereoscopic image of the alternating pairs, each member of the audience would be seated behind his own ‘televiewer’ - the heart of the system. This was a mechanical viewing device, which contained a rotating shutter, driven by an electric motor running in synch with the projectors and turning at some 1500 rpm. The shutter would block the left eye view of the spectator when the right eye image was on the screen and vice versa. Contemporary reports indicate that the effect was quite good.\nUnfortunately, the programme wasn’t quite so favourably received. It began with of a couple of shorts, one of which was a kind of travelogue featuring Hopi and Navajo Indians. These preceded the main feature, a space travel film called M.A.R.S. (also known as Mars Calling, The Man from Mars and Radio Mania), which was at that time only the second feature length 3D movie. The poor reviews coupled with the expense of installing the equipment more or less killed Teleview right there. But interestingly, the alternating frame system would be reborn more than sixty years later. It would be developed in Japan initially for home video use with LCD shutter glasses replacing the Televiewer, and subsequently adapted for use in IMAX theatres for their earlier 3D presentations (now abandoned in favour of less cumbersome polarised glasses). It would seem that the Televiewer was simply too far ahead of its time - but it does go to show that a good idea never really goes away.\nAlso in 1923 came an alleged 3D system that its developers dubbed ‘Natural Vision’ - not to be confused with the later, and completely different 1950s system, which would bear the same name. This first Natural Vision was the brainchild of George K. Spoor, co-founder of the Essenay Studio in Chicago, who had formed a new partnership with Paul J. Bergren in 1916, specifically to develop a new 3D system. Six years later, Natural Vision was demonstrated on August 23rd 1923, with an actual feature promised within ten weeks. Another six years - and two weeks - later, the first Natural Vision feature was unveiled. Danger Lights premiered at the State-Lake theatre, in Chicago - but not in 3D. Somewhere along the line, Spoor and Bergren had quietly dropped 3D in favour of the big screen, and Natural Vision became the name that RKO used for all their films that were shot on 63mm film.\nBut to return to anaglyphs, the most successful system of that period was undoubtedly the one developed by Frederick Eugene Ives and Jacob Leventhal. They had each been working separately to develop a 3D presentation system, and decided to pool their efforts, producing a series of shorts at a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. They called the first one Plastigrams, which was given a limited release by Educational Pictures towards the end of 1923 and into 1924. For some unknown reason, Educational decided not to pick up their option on the remaining four shorts, so they languished for nearly a year, until the Pathe Company began releasing them at eight-week intervals from the beginning of 1925. Collectively, they were known as Stereoscopiks, and their titles were: A Runaway Taxi, Zowie, Ouch and Lunacy.\nMeanwhile, over in Europe, legendary filmmaker, Abel Gance was shooting his epic film, Napoleon, in the super-widescreen format that he had developed, called Polyvision. A forerunner of Cinerama, Gance’s system used three synchronous 35mm cameras to produce panoramic scenes that would be spread over three adjoining screens. Ever the pioneer, he decided that he would add 3D to certain scenes as well. Though there are no records of the methods he used to attain his 3D effects, it is obvious from his own comments on the process that it was a type of anaglyph system:\n“To see the rushes, I had to wear those red and green spectacles. The 3D effects were very good, and very pronounced. I remember one scene where soldiers were waving their pistols in the air with excitement, and the pistols seemed to come right out into the audience.”\nUnfortunately, Gance decided to abandon the stereoscopic segments, and indeed, even the three-panel system was used in only a few of the early European showings of the finished film.\nFor the reminder of the 1920s, very little happened in the field of stereoscopic movie making. Technicians were experimenting with sound systems that would revolutionise the cinema industry in the coming years, and the World was sliding towards the depression era. In 1929, a San Francisco man by the name of Graves Griffith, developed a ‘stereoscopic colour cinematograph apparatus’, and was even granted a patent for it.\nWidescreen Movie Magazine has recently received an email from Graves Griffith's great-grandson, Tom Bedecarre, who kindly provided a link to the patent:\nUS Patent 1,705,760 - Stereoscopic Color Cinematographic Apparatus - Issued Mar. 19, 1929\nClick the image for a larger view; the full text\nof the patent may be read at the link above\nGraves Griffith had several other related patents:\nUS Patent 1,334,532 - Optical Device for the Production and Projection of Stereoscopic Pictures - Issued Mar. 23, 1920\nUS Patent 1,513,984 - Optical Instrument for Taking and Projecting Pictures - Issued Nov. 1924\nUS Patent 1,556,216 - Photographing and Projecting Instrument - Issued Oct. 6, 1925\nUS Patent 1,819,327 - Means for the Elimination of Distortion and the Creation of Stereoscopic Effects in Moving Pictures - Issued Aug. 18, 1931\nThe 1930s and the 1940s\nBut the most interesting breakthrough did not come until 1932, when Edwin H. Land was granted a patent for ‘Polaroid’ filters.\nLand’s cheap and simple method for producing polarising filters, as described by Brian Coe in his excellent book, The History of Movie Photography, involved depositing crystals of a chemical called Herapathite as a thin film, which was then manipulated in order to align these needle-like crystals in one direction. This had the effect of creating a microscopic grill, through which would pass only those undulating light waves that were similarly aligned. And because Land’s filters worked on the principle of selecting the orientation of light waves rather than blocking certain colours (an almost identical process had been developed in Europe by the optical company, Zeiss-Ikon), it would be possible to produce full-colour 3D images - if only there was such a thing as full colour film! Happily, this was not too far away, as full-colour film would become available in1935.\nThe arrival of these new filters had a stimulating effect on the 3D film making community in various parts of the world, and it wasn’t very long before the first colour presentation of polarised 3D projection was given, in June 1936 at the Haus der Technik, in Berlin. The pairs of stereoscopic images were printed side by side on a single strip of film and projected on to a metallic coated screen (a metallic screen preserves the directional integrity of light waves when they reflect back to the audience; something that doesn’t happen with a conventional white screen) through a pair of Zeiss polarising filters. The film was called Zum Greifen Nah -You Can Nearly Touch It -, and it was shot in a fairground on two-colour Agfa film stock. The film was shown to the public the following year on 12th December 1937 at the Ufa Palast am Zoo in Berlin. A second production followed in 1939, using an improved system that utilised horizontally running film. This film was called Sechs Madel Rollen in Wochenland.\nIt’s also worth noting that You Can nearly Touch It may have been slightly pre-empted by an Italian production, shot using polarising filters, Nozze Vagabonde - Beggar’s Wedding, which was also shown in 1936, though not in colour.\nMeanwhile, back in the USA, the previously mentioned partnership of Frederick Ives and Jacob Leventhal had been dissolved, Leventhal then teaming up with another accomplished 3D experimenter, John Norling. Together, they devised a system using a pair of Bell and Howell cameras in a face-to-face configuration, shooting into angled mirrors. They made an assortment of 3D shorts that were eventually sold to MGM. Unsure of what to do with them, they were handed over to their ‘shorts’ specialist, Pete Smith, who was able to assemble them into longer ‘short’, which was released on 11th January 1936 - in anaglyph format - under the title of Audioscopiks.\nLeventhal and Norling continued to produce more of their short 3D films, which were subsequently released on 15th January 1938, under the title The New Audioscopiks.\nThe following year, Norling, in collaboration with the Polaroid Corporation, made a fifteen-minute 3D short for the Chrysler Motors Exhibit at the New York Word’s Fair. Depicting the assembly of a Plymouth motorcar, the film ran from the 4th may 1939, and though it was shot in black and white, it was considered the largest scale presentation of 3D to that date, as more than 1,500,000 people saw it. Norling remade the film in colour for Chrysler for the 1940 World’s Fair. It was now called New Dimensions, but this time it was filmed using Technicolor 3-strip cameras. Norling also produced a third 3D short, Thrills For You, for the Pennsylvania Railroad exhibit at the Golden Gate Exposition of 1940 in San Francisco which was shot in black and white. MGM, having been satisfied with the reasonable success of their Audioscopiks, instructed Pete Smith to produce one of his own. Released on 1st march 1941, Third Dimension Murder was a spoof on the popular ‘Frankenstein’ movies; but WWII was rapidly approaching and would bring production of 3D movies to a virtual standstill.\nWhilst all this was happening in Europe and America, The Russians had quietly been experimenting with various 3D systems, from alternating frame, through anaglyph up to and including polarised 3D. But in the end they decided to explore a completely different route by attempting to perfect a method of 3D presentation that did not require the audience to wear glasses at all: the parallax stereogram.\nThis method of stereo photography had first been demonstrated in the early part of the century by A. Berthier, E. Estenave and our friend Frederick Ives, but by the early 1930s had been perfected by Russian engineer Semyon Pavlovich Ivanov. A parallax stereogram is produced by placing a screen, usually made up of fine wires, in front of a sensitive photographic surface, in such a way that parts of the surface are shielded from the left eye lens and other parts from the right eye lens. When exposed, this will produce a double image made up of interlaced left and right eye views of a scene. The printed photograph is then viewed through a similar screen which will allow each of the viewer’s eyes to see only the appropriate left or right eye parts of the image. The wire viewing screens were later replaced by plastic screens made up of fine lines which could be laminated directly on to a parallax stereogram, each line, in effect, acting as a tiny lens directing the eyes to their appropriate view. This type of stereoscopic process, which does not require viewing glasses and permits simultaneous viewing by any number of persons, is still used today, usually in the production of novelty 3D items such as 3D bubblegum cards, 3D postcards and even 3D posters.\nIvanov then went on to adapt the principle for use in motion pictures. In his book Stereoscopy, Russian stereographer Nikolai Valyus, describes in great detail the incredibly complex and cumbersome equipment that becomes necessary when the principle of the parallax stereogram is applied to the projection of moving stereoscopic images; but a more concise description can be found in Brian Coe’s previously mentioned 1981 book, The History of Movie Photography:\nIvanov adapted this idea for the cinema. His first patent was filed in 1935 and using a glass grating he demonstrated his process in 1937. In 1940 he replaced the glass grating with a fine wire screen. The system was installed in the Moskva cinema in Moscow in 1941; 112 miles of wire were used to make a grid over a screen of about 14 x 19 feet. The films were shot with a conventional camera with a beam-splitting device on the lens, producing two vertical format pictures side by side in the standard film area. The soundtrack ran between the two pictures on the print. The film was back-projected, with a grid on the projector side of the screen to divide the two pictures into interlaced line images. A similar grid on the audience side created the correct viewing conditions for 200 seats laid out in a fan-shaped area. This was necessary for in some places in the auditorium no true stereoscopic image was presented.\nThe Russians produced two films for this system in 1940, the first being Concerto, which premiered at the Moskva cinema on the 4th February 1941, and the second, entitled Day off in Moscow, which continued there until the cinema was closed in June of 1941 because of WWII\nCoe goes on to explain that the wire screen was eventually replaced by a lenticular ribbed glass screen and the vertical format images changed to square by reducing the size of the sprocket holes on the film. In February of 1947 a film entitled Robinson Crusoe was shown on a 5 metre square screen at the Vostock Cinema in Moscow, and the Russians went on to produce several more 3D movies prior to the 1950s: Pal; The Pencil on the Ice; Precious Gift; Lalim; May Night; Crystal and Aleko.\nBy 1952 the format had changed again and the screen assumed the normal 1.33:1 ratio, with the image pairs recorded on the film one above the other by means of a prism attachment on the lens. By 1955 there were 12 cinemas of this type in the USSR, and though the system worked quite well, it required the audience to avoid unnecessary sideways movement of their heads as this would dispel the stereoscopic effect.\nThe parallax stereogram system was not taken up outside the USSR apart from one variation on the idea, called the Cyclostereoscope, that was demonstrated at the Luna Park, Paris in 1949, in which the grid screen was rotated rapidly in an attempt to remove the vertical line effect.\nBefore we leave the 1940s, there was one more development in 3D photography that was extremely interesting and is well worth mentioning, even though it was never made available commercially. This was the Polaroid Vectograph, developed by Edwin Land’s Polaroid Corporation. It would seem that the Vectograph process had succeeded in solving every one of the problems associated with stereoscopic projection. It used only one strip of film; it used the whole area of the frame, giving a clearer, brighter image, and did not require polarizing filters, mirrors or prisms to be attached to the projector. In addition, the film was practically grainless. With ordinary film, the image is made up of various densities of a chemical called silver halide, whereas a Vectograph image is comprised of varying degrees of polarization. The film is double-coated so that the left image can be placed on one side of the film and the right image on the reverse, meaning an end to the synching problems that plagued dual strip 3D presentation. The film itself was a polarizing filter, so only the audience required polarized glasses to view the stereoscopic images on the screen. These images were laid on the film using a dye transfer system similar to the old Technicolor process. A monochrome version had been developed for the US Navy during WWII, and Land, at the behest of Warner Brothers, eventually developed a full colour version - unfortunately by that time, the end was in sight for 3D movies and Warners had lost interest in 3D production and a very frustrated Dr. Land was left with no market for his invention.\nThe 1950s - The first 3D boom\nOutside of the Soviet Union, the immediate Post-War world saw little progress in the field of 3D movies, although a 3D newsreel was produced in Holland in 1948. Photographed in colour, Queen Juliana was shot using a Dutch system known as Veri-Vision; a single camera, single film process that incorporated full and half-silvered mirrors to obtain the the stereo images (not unlike a commercially available stereo attachment for camcorders that is available today). Though considered a success at the time, Veri-Vision had considerable limitations, and in fact, violated several laws of 3D presentation.\nBy the end of the 1940s, the film industry was in trouble. Cinema attendances were at an all-time low and theatres were beginning to close at an alarming rate. Returning servicemen were settling down and starting families, and somehow going to the movies had slipped down the list of priorities as their new responsibilities began to take hold and they looked for other, more family-orientated pursuits - and the one pursuit that seemed to be rapidly gaining the most popularity was watching television.\nAs studio executives contemplated their rapidly dwindling audiences - and therefore bank balances - help was on hand. Although they didn’t know it yet, TWO lifelines were about to be thrown to them, almost simultaneously\nAs we have detailed in an earlier article, Fred Waller was on the verge of adapting his amazingly efficient and successful gunnery trainer into a workable, ultra widescreen cinema system that would almost literally surround an audience with pictures and sound - Cinerama. Within the next couple of years, the lost cinema audiences would be back, queuing around the block to see the first film in his process, This is Cinerama. Almost immediately - and very characteristically - the studios began to search for cheaper, less complex means of reproducing the same effect and though they never really succeeded, it did change the way movies were presented forever.\nAnd then came the second lifeline - from England this time.\nIn 1948, planning began for the Festival of Britain, an event that was conceived by the then Labour Government’s Deputy leader, Herbert Morrison and composer Gerald Barry. It’s purpose was to demonstrate to the war weary population of the British Isles - and the whole World, for that matter - that Britain was on the road to recovery after the ravages of the war years; it would showcase developments in the Arts, Sciences and Design Technology and would, in the words of Morrison himself, be “A tonic for the Nation”.\nTwo brothers, Raymond and Nigel Spottiswoode, highly regarded in the field of film making and experimentation, were commissioned to design and build a cinema of the future. In the short space of 14 months, they created what was to be called the Telecinema and produced five 3D shorts to be shown therein, two of which were cartoons created by noted Canadian animator Norman McLaren: Around is Around and Now is the time...to put on your glasses. The system used to photograph these films was designed and constructed by Leslie P. Dudley and consisted of two Newman Sinclair cameras mounted ‘face to face’ with angled mirrors placed in front of each lens in order to deflect the image of the scene being shot into each camera.\nStereophonic sound would be added later, for showing in the Telecinema - which could indeed be described as the cinema of the future as it included, apart from stereo sound facilities, its own lenticular screen for 3D without glasses and newly designed equipment for TV projection. It proved to be tremendous success at the Festival of Britain, attracting long queues for each performance.\nThe Spottiswoode brothers then formed a company called Stereo Techniques Ltd and began to produce several more short films. Some of these were released in the USA by film producer Sol Lesser, famous for his low-budget westerns and Tarzan pictures. These shorts stimulated tremendous interest in 3D once again. A cameraman named Friend Baker, who had been granted a patent for a 16mm single strip 3D process, was approached by brothers Milton and Julian Gunzeburg to design a 35mm 3D rig. The finished result - with the help of O.S. Brhyn and Lothrop Worth - was almost identical to to the one Leslie P. Dudley had produced in England, except that the cameras were replaced by Mitchell NCs and a heavy sound blimp was added. They then formed a company to promote their rig: The Natural Vision Corporation.\nThe Gunzeburgs failed to make any headway with the Hollywood executives, most of whom were extremely wary of investing time - and more importantly, money - in what they considered to be little more than a fairground exhibit. Both Columbia and Paramount passed on the system and Fox were by this time involved in developing their CinemaScope process, and had no time for any other system. MGM took out an option on Natural Vision after being persuaded to do so by John Arnold, head of their camera department, but soon allowed it to lapse. But then, as luck would have it, radio writer turned filmmaker Arch Oboler was immediately struck by the possibilities of the Natural Vision system, agreed to step in where the studios were afraid to tread. With his producing partner, Sidney Pink, they scrapped the ten days of conventional 2D - or ‘flat’ footage - that they had already shot of their feature production, The Lions of Gulu, and started from scratch using the Natural Vision rig.\nRetitled Bwana Devil, the film is based on true events which took place at the Tsavo River crossing, Kenya in 1898 during the the building, by the British, of the Uganda Railway, during which 140 workers were killed by lions (the same event was also the basis for the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness, which starred Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer). It starred Robert Stack, Barbara Britton and Nigel Bruce and was shot on location, not in Africa, but at the Paramount Ranch in California’s Santa Monica Mountains. The area is now part of a National Recreation Centre and still has a ‘Bwana Trail’ to mark the locations used in the film. To add a little authenticity to the backgrounds, Oboler incorporated some genuine African 2D footage that he’d shot in 1948. Anscocolor film was used in the Mitchell camera rig instead of trying to adapt the cumbersome 3-strip Technicolor cameras to Natural Vision.\nBwana Devil opened on 26th November 1952 at Paramount Theatres in Hollywood and Los Angeles and was a tremendous success. Presented in dual strip format, utilising interlocked projectors and polarising filters, Bwana Devil is considered to be the first colour 3D feature film presentation. Further openings of the hit film followed in San Francisco on December 13th, with Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio on Christmas day and New York on February 18th 1953. Originally billed as ‘An Arch Oboler Production’ , United Artists paid $500,000 for the rights and began releasing it as ‘A United Artists Film’ from March 1953.\nHollywood was forced to sit up and take notice and there began an immediate scramble by the studios to replicate the success of Bwana Devil - preferably with 3D systems of their own. A man named Raphael Wolfe brought the Stereo Techniques system to the USA, rebuilding the rig and replacing the Newman-Sinclair cameras with Eclairs, but with little success, if any. Columbia were quickest off the mark with their own hastily assembled rig, and had rushed into 3D production a noirish crime thriller, Man in the Dark (1953), starring Edmond O’Brien and Audrey Totter. The first ‘official’ studio release of a 3D feature (Bwana Devil was an ‘Independent’) it tells the story of a bank robber who undergoes surgery, while in prison, which is meant to eradicate his criminal tendencies. It also makes him lose his memory - inconveniently including where he stashed the loot. He is then kidnapped by his former cronies who naturally attempt to beat the location out of him. His memory returns in a series of weird dreams, and the film climaxes in a chase over a roller coaster. Shot in monochrome, it was released in something called ‘sepia Mono-Color’, opening on 9th April 1953.\nBut probably the biggest breakthrough was made by Warner Brothers. They had begun shooting a 3D movie on January 19th 1953, using the blimped Natural Vision rig. Originally called The Wax Works, the title was changed prior to its completion on February 20th to House of Wax. Starring Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones and Frank Lovejoy - with a supporting role from a certain Charles Buchinsky, who would go on to super stardom under the name of Charles Bronson. A remake of Warner’s earlier production of Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), it tells the story of a talented waxworks sculptor, Henry Jarrod (Price) who is double crossed by his duplicitous partner, Mathew Burke (Roy Roberts) and is apparently killed when the wax museum they jointly own is deliberately burned down by the crooked partner, who then collects the insurance. Burke is subsequently murdered by a mysterious, disfigured character, and a new waxwork show appears. However, the beautifully sculptured figures are moulded over the bodies of murder victims...\nAn original set of House of Wax Lobby cards\nHouse of Wax was an instant hit when it premiered in New York on 10th April 1953, and deservedly so; it is still a hugely entertaining film when seen today, more than fifty years later, even in a flat version. But at the time, the sumptuous colour and superb 3D photography and six-track stereophonic sound were a revelation - the latter all the more remarkable because the director, Andre de Toth, was blind in one eye therefore and had no stereoscopic perception. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, it remained the highest grossing 3D movie until 1969's The Stewardesses, a low-budget sexploitation flick.\n3D was up and running now and the studios began an almost mad scramble to acquire 3D rigs of their own and get a 3D movie into production. Columbia bounced back first, on 1st May 1953, with Fort Ti, an excellent action adventure story set against a backdrop of the French and Indian Wars in Colonial America, which starred George Montgomery. For Fort Ti, they abandoned their first camera rig in favour of Natural Vision, and enjoyed much success with this movie which, incidentally, was directed by the indomitable William Castle, who would later become more renowned as the creator of gimmick-laden horror movies such as The Tingler (1959), 13 Ghosts (1960) and The House on Haunted Hill (1959) than for the many other genres he worked in during his long and successful career.\n3D at the London\nPavillion, circa 1953\nIn the midst of the rush into 3D film production, Universal International were a little more cautious than most, taking great care with the designing and testing of their own camera rig. The result was worth waiting for; on 25th May they released one of the finest of the 3D movies that would be produced in the 1950s, It Came From Outer Space. Directed by Jack Arnold and starring Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush and Charles Drake, this aliens-take-over-a-small-town sci-fi classic contains some of the very best stereoscopic compositions ever put on film.\nEven Disney were not immune to the 3D bug - though Walt would only go as far as producing a couple of short cartoons, Melody and Working for Peanuts, and somewhat half-heartedly, a Mickey Mouse Club special that was called exactly that: The Mickey Mouse Club Special.\nOver at Paramount, Adolf Zukor had slammed the brakes on a film that had already started shooting, and had them start over in 3D, releasing Sangaree on 27th May, with only moderate success in spite of the pairing of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl.\nMGM’s first offering was a mediocre rodeo movie, Arena starring Gig Young and Jean Hagen; but later in the year (1953), they would produce another 3D movie, their last in 3D, that would find itself among the best remembered musicals of all time, the wonderful Kiss Me Kate, with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson. - a film that was designed beautifully for 3D.\n20th Century-Fox, fully committed to their new CinemaScope system, took an extremely wary view of 3D and studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck claimed to be singularly unimpressed by the other studios’ 3D efforts so far; Fox even promoted CinemaScope with the tagline,“You see it without glasses!” However, with great reluctance, he caved in to the perceived demand for 3D and Fox released Inferno on August 12th 1953. A very good western by any standards, and starring Robert Ryan and Rhonda Fleming, Inferno provided disappointing box 0ffice returns for the studio, in spite of its superior 3D content. In May of the following year, Fox released their second - and last - 3D movie, Gorilla at Large - a much better film than its title might indicate, with a good cast that included Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft and Lee J. Cobb; good production values and beautifully filmed in Technicolor and like Inferno, shot with Fox’s own Clear-Vision 3D rig. These were the only Fox 3D movies released during this period - and Gorilla was only released by Fox, having been made by Panoramic Productions; but the studio would revisit 3D briefly in the next decade with the 1960 3D movie September Storm.\nAll the major studios had 3D movies in production by this time, and the next couple of years saw the release of some really good 3D pictures, many of which attracted the talents of the period’s ‘A’ list stars - John Wayne in Warner/Batjac’s Hondo (27th November 1953) - and supposedly his personal favourite of his films; Warner’s also released The Charge at Feather River on 11th July 1953, that most entertaining of westerns in which everything - arrows, spears, horses and people are happily tossed into the audience - a stream of tobacco juice as Frank Lovejoy spits at a rattlesnake; RKO’s Second Chance (1953) with Robert Mitchum, Jack Palance and Linda Darnell; the same studio’s The French Line (1954) with Jane Russell and Gilbert Roland; Columbia’s Gun Fury (1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed along with their classic 3D movie Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) - “Rita Hayworth turns it on in 3D!”, ran the tagline; Paramount had favourites Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in Money From Home in 1954; and Warner’s even persuaded Alfred Hitchcock to take up the polarizing spectacles in one of the best 3D films ever made, Dial M for Murder, in 1954.\nIt has long been a myth that the end of the 50s 3D boom was caused by poor quality films shot in 3D just to cash in on the current craze (unlike many of the 70s and 80s 3D movies yet to come). And while it may be true that few of them were in any danger of winning an Oscar, many have endured over the years to become classics, even in their flat versions - add to the above brief list Universal International’s Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Revenge of the Creature (1955) - one of the last 3D movies of the period. Even the worst of them, Astor’s Robot Monster (1953) has attained a cult following despite it’s utterly awesome stupidity - most likely because of it.\nAnd there weren’t just the 3D movies - there were 3D comics, too. Practically every comic publisher in the western world brought out a 3D version of one of their popular characters. There were 3D giveaways and gimmicks of all kinds. The ViewMaster reels were at the height of their popularity, and amateur Stereo Photography also boomed, with nearly every camera manufacturer bringing out one 3D model after another. It must have seemed at that time that 3D was here to stay for ever. Unfortunately, nothing does last forever; and in the case of the 3D movie craze - even as it boomed - the seeds of its destruction were already being sown.\nDecline and Fall...\nBut even though the studios had thrown their support behind 3D movies, some flies began to land in the ointment. The first one (in the USA) was the rental deal that was forced onto the exhibitors by the distributors. Dual strip projection meant that, effectively, two prints of a 3D movie were supplied to the theatres - a left eye print and a right eye one. The distributors figured: two prints, twice the rental. The exhibitors soon discovered, though, that customers wouldn’t pay twice as much to see a 3D movie, especially because sometimes - and this led directly to the second big problem - you sometimes got sore eyes after half an hour watching a 3D picture! This was because some projectionists were more than a little casual when it came to 3D presentation. If one projector is slightly out of focus, or out of rack, the result is eye strain for the audience [see the accompanying article by Gary de Wan] as their eyes try in vain to correct the discrepancy. Occasionally, damaged frames would be removed and the ends of the film simply spliced together, instead of being replaced with the appropriate length of blank film, thus rendering the remainder of the film from that splice onwards, out of sync with the other. More eye strain! And while the exhibitors’ financial grievance was eventually resolved, some patrons eventually began to avoid a 3D presentation of a movie if they could see it flat somewhere else because they didn’t like having to wear the cardboard glasses. In fact, many theatres were booking single prints of 3D movies anyway (which were still marked ‘left’ or ‘right’) because they didn’t think 3D was worth all the effort and installation expense.\nHere’s an example from my own experience. In Heywood, the small Lancashire town where I grew up, there were four cinemas in 1953, none of which were equipped to show dual strip 3D films. I know we had to go to the Scala in nearby Bury to see The Charge at Feather River, starring Guy Madison - I’d be around six years old at the time - but then I don’t remember ever seeing another 3D picture during that period, so they were probably a little thin on the ground in our part of the world, even at the height of the 3D boom.\nThe production of 3D movies began to peter out as the studios turned to the less troublesome CinemaScope as a means of coaxing the audiences back into the cinemas. By 1955 3D was finished and the wide screen was king. The studios had their research and development departments busily trying to find ways around Fox’s patented anamorphic system and thus avoid paying their exorbitant licence fee, which eventually they did. And of course, Mike Todd’s ‘Cinerama out of one hole’ Todd-AO was only months away.\n3D might have been down, but it was not quite out. Several years later 3D would return - this time in widescreen, too! And some years after that a system called IMAX would be born; and when IMAX would eventually be combined with 3D we would be treated to 3D presentations that could only be described with one word: Awesome!\n“You STILL see them with glasses!”…\nThe 1960s and 70s\nThe latter half of the 1950s saw the virtual disappearance of 3D movies from the World’s cinema screens, although one might surface occasionally for a brief showing – invariably an anaglyph print - only to return quietly once more to the depths, with scarcely a ripple left behind. 3D was effectively dead.\nGone, but not forgotten, though, and 3D made a cautious return to American cinemas, with the release of September Storm – appropriately on September 9th 1960 – an Alco Production released through 20th Century-Fox, and utilising a dual camera rig equipped with CinemaScope lenses that was dubbed ‘StereoVision’. Produced by Edward L. Alperson and directed by Byron Haskin, September Storm had an underwater treasure hunt type of plot and starred Mark Stevens and Joanne Dru. Although shot on location in Spain’s Balearic Islands, and despite the involvement of a major studio like 20th Century-Fox, the film performed poorly at the box office, amidst complaints of shoddy production values, grainy photography, chaotic editing and a rotten script (none of which can be confirmed by this writer, I should add). As if that wasn’t enough, there were also technical problems that arose on projection. Even the two 3D shorts that went out with it, Charito and Ernesto and Space Attack, couldn’t save the show. Just for the record, Alco’s only other production was the Roger Corman directed feature I, Mobster (1958), also in ‘Scope – but not 3D.\nThe following year saw the release of a Canadian-made feature The Mask (1961 – UK title Eyes of Hell), a black and white horror movie that contained several short anaglyphic sequences. The story involves a psychiatrist who is driven to the point of madness by his experiments with an Aztec mask, which can reveal the horrors of another dimension to the wearer. Unable to resist the disembodied voice which instructs him to “put on the mask”, the psychiatrist is plunged into this horrific netherworld, along with the audience, who have been previously instructed to put on their red and green glasses when they hear the voice. The Mask wasn’t a brilliant film by any means (and wasn’t actually released in the UK until the early seventies, where I saw it at the Rialto Cinema in Salford – it’s a McDonald’s, now), but this writer can confirm that the anaglyphic sequences weren’t bad at all and the whole thing was great fun.\nU.K. poster for The Mask\nUnfortunately – or not, depending on your taste in movies – most of the 3D or part-3D productions of this period were of the sexploitation type. Titles like Adam and Six Eves (1962), The Bellboy and the Playgirls (1962 – and directed by newcomer Francis Ford Coppola) and Paradiso (another 1962 release – seems like this was a good year for the sex film industry) might give you a clue as to their content. And while they may have turned a modest profit for their makers, they did nothing to advance 3D technology. But in 1966 that would all change, thanks to an ex-army engineer and photographic expert, Colonel Robert V. Bernier, and his system called…\nSpaceVision\nCol. Bernier began his military service with the 29th Engineers, based in Portland, Oregon, where, as an already accomplished stereo photographer, he began to develop various systems to improve existing stereoscopic map making techniques – some of which had been in use since as far back as 1914. After service oversees, he was posted to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, where the Army Air Corps maintained their research and development laboratories. Here, he created the Stereoscopic Photographic Department, which undertook research and development of stereoscopic systems for aerial and medical use. Convinced that stereoscopic films would be useful in training military personnel, Bernier developed a system whereby the left and right images from a dual projector rig were printed on a single strip of film, one above the other. The two images would be superimposed on the screen utilising a prism device, which also incorporated polarising filters. After leaving the military, he continued to develop this system, in spite of the fact that the 50s 3D boom was drawing to a close, which meant that studio financing was no longer forthcoming. In the mid sixties, Bernier approached Arch Oboler – of Bwana Devil fame – who was at that time trying to develop another 3D project. With backing from Oboler, Bernier was able to develop what would become the heart of the SpaceVision system, the Trioptiscope lens. This device enabled the stacking of left and right images, one above the other, on a single strip of 35mm film, to take place in the camera at the time of shooting, thus dispensing with the dual camera rig – the first commercially viable system to do so.\nThe Bubble, which premiered on December 21st 1966, was the result of their collaboration. This was a, sometimes, baffling and overlong science fiction film in which a small American town, and its inhabitants, are imprisoned by aliens inside, well, a bubble (see issue 10 for Stuart Heal’s comprehensive review). In spite of some clever off-the-screen effects, The Bubble failed to impress audiences and was withdrawn soon after its release. Reissued several years later under the title The Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth, it fared little better.\nWhile the first film that Oboler made with Bernier’s system may have had little impact, the SpaceVision system itself drew quite a lot of interest within the stereo movie community, and before very long there were several variations of Bernier’s method circulating: the StereoScope system for example; or 3 Deepix from the Marks Polarized Corporation and Dan Symmes’ Dimension 3 System, to name three of the more successful ones - catchy system names were the order of the day, as in the wake of Cinerama and CinemaScope: Deep Vision; Optovision; Depth-O-Vision and…Cosmovision!!!\nBernier’s patented trioptiscope lens was, in fact, an attachment, which was fitted to a standard 35mm camera – in this case a Mitchell – in front of the normal spherical lens or lenses. The prisms inside the attachment placed a left and right eye view of a scene, one above the other within a standard four-perf frame (see illustration), which, when allowing for the optical soundtrack, produced two images, each two perforations high and with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Technicolor’s non-3D Techniscope system exposes a similar two-perf frame by moving the film through the camera two perfs at a time. In printing, the image is then stretched vertically to a four-perf height, making the resulting print compatible with anamorphic CinemaScope. The SpaceVision system prints the frames without any vertical stretch, necessitating the placing of a prismatic device in front of the projector to deflect the stacked images, converging them so they are superimposed on the screen. Polarizing filters are built into the device, and the audience gets to wear polarized glasses once again.\nOther systems took a different approach. Stereovision, for example, used a 3-perforation pulldown on 65mm stock, placing the two images side by side. A 70mm direct contact release print can be produced from the negative for 70mm presentation, or a 4-perf, 35mm reduction print – with a 2x anamorphic squeeze added – for 35mm presentation. An alternative 35mm presentation was offered by printing the two images in the over and under system, all producing an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Stereovision has been used for single strip reissues of dual strip classics such as Dial M for Murder and House of Wax.\nHouse of Wax Reissue poster\nIt was not until the 1980s that the various 3D systems would get to show what they could do, with the first half of the decade witnessing a mini 3D revival. Comin’ at Ya! (Optimax III, 1981) was quickly followed by Rottweiler: Dogs of Hell (Future Dimensions, 1982); Friday the 13th Part 3 (3Depix, 1982); Parasite (StereoVision, 1982); Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (McNabb 3D, 1983); Jaws 3D (Arrivision, 1983 – and of which star Michael Caine said: “It was a terrible film – but the house that it paid for was beautiful”.); Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn (StereoVision, 1983); Amityville 3D (Arrivision, 1983); Treasure of the Four Crowns (3Depix, 1983). In 1985, the first animated feature length 3D cartoon appeared, Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. A South Korea/US production, Starchaser consisted of conventional hand-drawn animation over computer generated frames. This Star Wars-inspired tale combined excellent animation with surprisingly good 3D.\nStereovision was rejected for filming\nJaws 3D in favour of the Arrivision unit\nAll of these systems, however, had the same irritating drawback: they were all designed to be 2.35:1 single strip systems, and a single strip of film projected through a polarizing filter and being viewed through another – the glasses – means huge light loss and a much dimmer picture. Another problem, particular to 35mm presentations, becomes apparent when the fact that the tiny, 2-perf high frames are enlarged to fill a commercial cinema screen that may be thirty feet wide or more, resulting in further degradation of the image.\n65/70mm 3D and IMAX – and the Digital future…?\nThis fact was not lost on Dr. Richard Vetter, the co-designer, with colleague Carl W. Williams, of the excellent Dimension 150 lens, when he developed the StereoSpace system, in conjunction with United Artists. StereoSpace was a step back to the dual-rig method of acquiring a 3D image, but a step forward – and up – to 65mm film stock.\nArranged in an L-shaped configuration, the two Mitchell 65mm cameras would record the two images in the 65mm standard, 5-perf pulldown (Todd-AO, Super Panavision or D-150). Synchronization of the 70mm presentation prints would be controlled by one of the magnetic tracks on the film, so that even if the two projectors were laced up with left and right frames inadvertently out of synch, the synchronization track would correct it within a few seconds. The standard interaxial distance is 2.5 inches – the same as human eyes – but can be varied, via a beam splitter, from zero to four inches, enabling hypostereo (less than 2.5”) and hyperstereo (more than 2.5”) effects to be shot.\nDemonstrated at the Sumito Corporation Pavilion at the 1985 Expo in Tsukuba, Japan, the short children’s fantasy film, 3D Fantasium, proved to hugely popular. The presentation was given on a 65-foot, computer-designed metallic screen, with the impressive sound system consisting of 29 speakers arranged in 6 patterns, controlled by computers which enabled the sound to roll around the auditorium, following the on-screen action. At roughly the same time, a similar system was being developed, jointly, by the Disney organisation and Steve Hines of Hines Labs, Glendale, California. This system premiered Michael Jackson’s Captain Eo, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which was a popular attraction in the Disney theme parks for a number of years – only being withdrawn with the onset of Jackson’s interminable court wrangles over child molestation and financial issues.\nBut even these powerful 70mm systems were prone to faults. Jitter and weave were a constant irritation, though less so than the earlier dual-strip 35mm films of the fifties, which causes the infinity points to drift apart on screen. The other is vertical parallax error - when one of the two images is higher or lower on screen than its partner. Both of these effects are certain eyestrain inducers after several minutes of endurance – which brings us back to the two-images-on-one-strip system, where this problem is completely negated as the two images are travelling through the projector inseparably.\nWhich brings us to another system that tried to combine the best of both worlds, when veteran cinematographer Linwood G. Dunn and Film Effects of Hollywood developed a system they called Dynavision. This system was intended to combine the brightness and steadiness of 70mm projection while eliminating vertical parallax error which plagued dual strip presentation. Dynavision was an 8 perf 70mm system which printed left and right frames from a dual rig 65mm set up in an over and under format, left over right and with each frame now reduced from the usual 5 perfs to only 4. Apparently the system worked well, and with an extremely wide aspect ratio, resulting from the reduction in frame height, of 2.77:1 must have looked impressive on a large screen. However, I can find no record of any feature or short that was released commercially in this system (please tell me if you know of one).\n3D production seemed to stall for the next few years, but a revolutionary new process was evolving – in Canada – that would lead directly to high definition 3D movies that we enjoy today: IMAX.\nThe IMAX system was the brainchild of two filmmakers, Graeme Ferguson and Roman Kroiter, both of whom had been working with multi camera images on large screens – not unlike Cinerama in many ways, but without any attempt to eliminate the join lines. Expanding – quite literally – from that, they began to develop the idea of using 70mm film stock but turning it on its side and running it horizontally through the projector – a kind of 70mm VistaVision as it were, but with an image size of roughly 70x50mm (I intend to revisit IMAX in more detail at another time, so I’ll skip over a large chunk of the IMAX story for now). With the participation of other technicians, most notably William C. Shaw, Nicholas Mulders and Robert Kerr, they were able to overcome the enormous problems that they would eventually encounter with transporting 70mm film through a specially designed projector and illuminating the huge IMAX screens that are now so familiar in many of our cities. In fact, since the beginning of the 1970s, The IMAX story has been one of continual research and development, expanding the immersive effect of the system with various refinements such as domed screens, which they dubbed OMNIMAX, to IMAX MAGIC CARPET featuring an additional giant screen beneath the seats in the auditorium. It wasn’t too long before they moved into 3D; first using a basic anaglyph system with films such Transitions and We Are Born of Stars, then moving up to a fully polarised system with dual IMAX 3D projection (sometimes combined with their wraparound dome screens to produce IMAX SOLIDO, though the latter is rarely seen nowadays).\nIMAX Under the Sea 3D\nPhotographs supplied by Howard Hall Productions\nand used by kind permission of Howard Hall\nAn IMAX 3D camera, when fitted with\nfisheye lenses, becomes IMAX SOLIDO\nPhoto credit: Michele Hall\nHoward Hall with the underwater IMAX 3D camera\nIMAX 3D camera with underwater housing removed\nYet while IMAX were moving onwards and upwards in the area of large format 3D, the latter years of the 20th century saw the rapid development of a totally different technology, one that would eventually redefine the way films are made and presented.\nFor good or ill the Digital Revolution was coming.\nThe first tape-based home camcorders were regarded as something of an expensive novelty, but they soon began to come down in price, and by the time they had become ’palmcorders’, recording their digital images on tiny discs and hard-drives, the 8mm and 16mm home movie market had virtually expired, with only small, dedicated bands of enthusiasts seeking out dwindling stocks of Super 8 and Standard 8 film. In recent years, with the development of Digital Light Processing technology, most notably by Texas Instruments, the future of actual ‘film’ has been in some doubt – though, happily, the ‘film is dead’ lobby may have been a little premature in their speculation. The film versus digital argument continues to rage, with some major film makers, such as James Cameron and George Lucas, seeming to embrace digital technology as photographic medium equal to, or even surpassing, the quality of film. However, what is becoming apparent is that 70mm photography is in the process of being rediscovered as convenient and practical way of recording images of a quality far surpassing current digital capability – with the added bonus of allowing the extraction of high quality images in any other format, including high definition transfers for the latest Blu-Ray digital technology.\nThough many film afficionados can barely bring themselves to utter the ‘D’ word, digital technology has irrevocably transformed the cinema industry; combined with unprecedented advances in computer science, an avalanche of block-busting special effects movies have poured out of film studios around the world, from Star Wars in the seventies to the latest Indiana Jones epic of 2008. And while the narrative and visual aesthetics of many of these productions might be questionable – especially in the opinion of this writer – they have generated the cash returns – and investments - that have funded the restoration and release of classic movies that we had feared would be lost forever; those same classic movies that we unapologetic movie maniacs collect on DVD with such enthusiasm. It should also be mentioned that the techniques pioneered in films such as Jurassic Park (1993), Terminator 2 (1991) and even Toy Story (1995) and Shrek (2001) have subsequently been used to create the stunning 3D effects in IMAX films such as T-Rex – Back to the Cretaceous (1998); Encounter in the Third Dimension (1999); Misadventures in 3D (2003) and Alien Adventure (1999) which, currently, remain unsurpassed (my opinion) as examples of high quality 3D.\nIt hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, though, particularly in the area of film presentation in many multiplexes. The advances in digital sound technology seem to have leapt forward, bringing clearer (and often stupendously loud) surround sound to the multiplex auditoria - but with curiously subdued dialogue that we often strain to hear (well, I do), while just the opposite seems to be happening to the visuals with their grainy, shaky and under-lit images – digital or otherwise – that seem to be the current (hopefully brief) fashion; the Bourne films, anyone? The new Bond films, perhaps? And the worst culprit to date; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2008), a film which takes the once vibrant, Technicolor western to a new low of semi-sepia toned dullness.\nHowever, despite my own personal obsessions about colour and light, the future for 3D in the cinema looks promising once again, thanks to digital technology. Digital projectors now being installed in screens throughout the world can project flat or stereoscopic movies with just the flick of a switch. 3D movies are starting to appear almost as regularly as they did in 1950s heyday – and even the new plastic glasses are cool (especially my green Chicken Little 3D [2005] ones).\nA pair of IMAX 3D projectors\nNote the angled track on the floor along which the\nprojectors slide into position when they are ready to roll.\nClose shot of the IMAX 3D projector heads.\nI don’t believe that film will disappear anytime soon. It will remain a vital tool in the filmmakers’ toolbox for years to come as a means of originating a superior image – a pure IMAX film is a testimony to that - but the digital revolution has brought cinema technology into our homes, allowing us to enjoy our favourite films with a clarity unmatched since movies began. As for 3D, now that Cameron, Spielberg, Rodriguez, Zemeckis and Lucas (Ghosts of the Abyss (2003); Spy Kids 3D (2003); Shark Boy and Lava Girl 3D (2005); The Polar Express (2004); Beowulf (2007) and this year’s much-anticipated Avatar) have all voiced their enthusiasm – and more importantly put their collective financial muscle behind research and production, it is reasonably certain that this time – this time – 3D will be here to stay.\nA typical digital projector,\na Barco DP100\nA polariser in front of the\nprojector lens, from Real D\nThe Editor’s checklist of 3 things that 3D filmmakers STILL DO and SHOULDN’T!\nIn my life outside of these pages I’ve been an active stereo photographer for the last 25 years, so learning the do’s and don’ts of 3D imaging has been a long and painful process. I absolutely do NOT claim to be an expert, but really it’s just common sense: if it irritates your eyes, then something’s wrong.\nKEEP EVERYTHING IN FOCUS - This is first, biggest and most often repeated mistake. If you are looking at something ten or twenty feet away, your eyes will automatically focus on that scene. If you then hold up your hand in front of your face, your eyes will refocus on that and the background will be then out of focus – blurred in other words. 3D filmmakers still persist in filming actors in close shots against a background full of objects that are out focus. In real life, if you glanced away from the actors to the background, your eyes (or to be more accurate, your brain) would readjust focus accordingly, but when the scene is recorded on film then the background is out of focus forever. Your brain – or that bit of it that works the eyes - doesn’t really know the difference between a 3D movie and real life, so unfortunately no amount of eye muscle flexing signals from it will let your eyes bring that background into focus. Result: EYESTRAIN! Please, please, please – if you must have a close up, shoot it against a neutral background, like a distant sky or something – anything that our eyes don’t need to focus on.\nDON’T SHOOT IN THE DARK – Some directors love dark, gloomy scenes – that’s fine, but they usually achieve them by turning the lights off. Well, you know, you can’t actually perceive 3D in the dark. You need to be able see objects in various planes of depth for 3D to be effective. The worst example I ever saw was, surprisingly, Richard Fleischer’s Amytiville 3D (1983). Half the movie seemed to be in darkness – a waste of 3D. On the other hand, Ben Stassen’s 2001 IMAX 3D film, Haunted Castle (2001)–admittedly a computer animated film–managed to reproduce the dark and gloomy edifice of the title while still letting you see every detail of the scene. Subtle lighting, that’s the way to do it!\nAVOID FAST MOVEMENT ACROSS THE SCREEN – This might seem a to be an odd complaint – but have you seen Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf? Great movie – great cast (not sure about Ray Winstone’s cockney Beowulf, though) and great 3D, but characters whizzing about the IMAX screen and the repeated zip pans had me dizzy. Too much, too much! Let’s slow it down a little. Zemeckis got it dead right with the high speed thrill ride that was The Polar Express, but in that one the audience generally moved with the action. Objects coming out of the screen fast is okay, though. That’s the fun of 3D!\nAgree? Disagree? Or can you think of even more tortures that 3D filmmakers inflict on us?\nLet me know!-\nand a final thought…\nNow that we have all this digital technology at our disposal – or at least the studios do – and now that 3D is the The Next Big Thing, it should be possible to make high definition transfers of those rarely seen 3D classics from the 1950s. Just imagine, House of Wax; Kiss Me Kate; Dial M for Murder; Charge at Feather River; Inferno; Miss Sadie Thomson; It Came from Outer Space – there’s quite a long list, actually – all restored to pristine splendour; scratch free, stereo sound; perfect synch every time. It could be done, you know. And I know there would be a paying audience out there, at the very least curious, if not downright eager, to see these often talked about movies as they were meant to be seen. 3D revivals are always well attended, but they are far too rare, too poorly advertised and too far away for the average 3D fan to attend – and that’s just my own personal experience, living in the north of England.\nSo come on, you studio suits, go and unlock the vaults and dig out those treasures you’d forgotten you still have - and let’s have a real 3D revival!\n2014 update: Some of our wishes have come true - House of Wax and Dial M for Murder are finally available on 3D Blu-ray, and other releases are planned. See the 3D Film Archive website for more information.\nReturn to the 3D Department\nLast revised: 14 September, 2014","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line141931"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5229530930519104,"wiki_prob":0.4770469069480896,"text":"Peterson-Heimstead\nThis is a Wikipedia:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense Special Feature!\nKnown internationally as a world traveler (the U.S. and Canada), Carol Ann Peterson-Heimstead is revered among the loggers of Ontario, Canada for her stunning rendition of an Ontario trout stream.\nAmong her many accomplishments are her ability to ride herd on her children and grandchildren, but especially her ability to keep a recalcitrant husband from hurting himself too badly. In this respect, her training methods are highly regarded in psychological circles, especially her reaction to her husband's story of going fishing all night when his fishing equipment never left the garage.\nOn her job, she is hailed as being adequate, and as a cook, her many culinary disciples regard her as \"pretty good.\" Carol is Norwegian in ancestry, so that explains a lot.\nStatuesque and svelte, even at the age of (whisper) 60, Carol Ann has become somewhat of a folk legend in the Midwest, where it is reported, though not confirmed, that she refused for weeks to use the corn-cobs in a northern Wisconsin outhouse. This episode ranks right up there with the absolutely true story of her adventures in attempting to seduce her husband by pretending that she was afraid to go to the bathroom alone in the middle of the vast Canadian wilderness.\nThe crowning rendition of her northern adventures, however, is reported in the \"Chronicles of Nipagon\", an ancient fishing saga. In this manuscript it is recorded that she played an integral role in the partial demolition of an abandoned Canadian dwelling, the total destruction of a perfectly good minnow bucket (complete with poor minnows), and the running down of an innocent sign post. It is also reported that the ground shook and the weather literally changed forever when she discovered that fishing lures do NOT cost twenty-five cents each (see recalcitrant husband). The culmination of the chronicles reveals her run-in with the Ontario loggers mentioned above.\nArcheologists have recently discovered what may be an epilogue to the \"Chronicles of Nipagon\" which, if proven authentic, reveals that Carol's recalcitrant husband may, indeed, be the Wild Spearman of the North, a heretofore mythological character much feared by ancient Canadian park workers. The epilogue also mentions Carol in connection with an incident which involved sleeping in close quarters with other legendary figures. The tome reveals that Carol woke suddenly in the middle of a dark Canadian night and kept repeating \"Moon. Moon.\" over and over. For a while it was thought that she was calling upon ancient night-time gods, but it was quickly revealed that she was gazing, enthralled, upon the bare backside of one of her camping companions. These, events, of course, require validation before they can officially be included in the \"Chronicles of Nipagon.\"\nIn spite of her ancestry, and in spite of her penchant to inspire near-fatal occurrences, Carol is much-loved by her friends and family, most of whom are totally in awe of her accomplishments in raising relatively normal children and grandchildren, and of course in keeping her recalcitrant husband from hurting himself too much.\nRetrieved from \"https://bjaodn.org/index.php?title=Peterson-Heimstead&oldid=558\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line136946"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7388262152671814,"wiki_prob":0.2611737847328186,"text":"Stephen Donofrio\nDirector, Forest Trends\nStephen has 15 years of experience working with corporate, public and non-profit and non-governmental organizations within the contexts of environmental, social and governance (ESG) sustainability and sustainable development.\nHe is currently Director of Forest Trends' Ecosystem Marketplace and Supply Change Initiatives, where he is responsible for overall initiative development and strategy, management and relationship creation of partners, collaborators, and sponsors, stakeholder coordination, and public representation. Ecosystem Marketplace is a leading source of knowledge on pioneering finance for conservation, publishing original research reports on pioneering finance for conservation, such as carbon offsets, results-based forest finance, biodiversity offsets and compensation, watershed investments, and private investment in conservation. Supply Change enables users to track progress toward private sector commitments to remove deforestation from commodity supply chains.\nIn addition, Stephen is Principal & Founder of Greenpoint Innovations, a purpose-based company that integrates innovative technologies, the arts, and in-depth subject-matter expertise to contribute to a sustainable, resilient, and prosperous future. At Greenpoint, he leads the organizational strategy and vision, partnerships, and the sourcing and implementation projects.\nPreviously, Stephen was Vice President of CDP North America (Carbon Disclosure Project) – where he managed the region’s corporate disclosure program, partnerships and innovation, and CDP Canada, and earlier, Stephen worked as Economist at Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) – where he administered the Offsets Program, managed member and partner accounts, and provided research and analysis of environmental markets, regulations, policies, and programs.\nWhen it comes to envirotech adoption, NGOs can lead us out of the woods\nFacebook seemed so frivolous when it first emerged 15 years ago, but look at it now: this glorified chatroom has completely upended the very sector it seemed destined to complement, becom...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1485969"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7350671887397766,"wiki_prob":0.7350671887397766,"text":"Tag Archives: BBC\nWhat would YOU ask David Cameron in Public Prime Minister’s Questions?\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Bedroom Tax, Benefits, Business, Cost of living, Democracy, Economy, Employment, European Union, Food Banks, Fracking, Health, Housing, Human rights, Justice, Law, Politics, Poverty, Privatisation, Trade Unions, UK, USA, Utility firms\nAndrew Marr, association, austerity, BBC, bedroom tax, benefit, benefit cap, Coalition, companies, company, Conservative, David Cameron, dead, death, die, economy, Ed Miliband, employment, energy, firm, food banks, fracking, freedom, Freedom of Information, government, health, hedge fund, human right, Investment Partnership, Justice, kill, Labour, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, mislead, misled, National Health Service, NHS, people, pmq, politics, price, Prime Minister's Questions, privatisation, privatise, public, quality, Royal Mail, sick, social security, speech, Tories, Tory, trade union, Transatlantic Trade, transparent, TTIP, unemployment, Vox Political, Wednesday Shouty Time, welfare reform, work\nMile-wide: Mr Miliband explained his idea to bridge the gulf between the public and the Prime Minister to Andrew Marr.\nEd Miliband engaged in a particularly compelling piece of kite-flying today (July 27) – he put out the idea that the public should have their own version of Prime Minister’s Questions.\nSpeaking to Andrew Marr, he said such an event would “bridge the ‘mile-wide’ gulf between what people want and what they get from Prime Minister’s Questions”, which has been vilified in recent years for uncivilised displays of tribal hostility between political parties and their leaders (David Cameron being the worst offender) and nicknamed ‘Wednesday Shouty Time’.\n“I think what we need is a public question time where regularly the prime minister submits himself or herself to questioning from members of the public in the Palace of Westminster on Wednesdays,” said Mr Miliband.\n“At the moment there are a few inches of glass that separates the public in the gallery from the House of Commons but there is a gulf a mile wide between the kind of politics people want and what Prime Minister’s Questions offers.”\nWhat would you ask David Cameron?\nWould you demand a straight answer to the question that has dogged the Department for Work and Pensions for almost three years, now – “How many people are your ‘welfare reform’ policies responsible for killing?”\nWould you ask him why his government, which came into office claiming it would be the most “transparent” administration ever, has progressively denied more and more important information to the public?\nWould you ask him whether he thinks it is right for a Prime Minister to knowingly attempt to mislead the public, as he himself has done repeatedly over the privatisation of the National Health Service, the benefit cap, the bedroom tax, food banks, fracking…? The list is as long as you want to make it.\nWhat about his policies on austerity? Would you ask him why his government of millionaires insists on inflicting deprivation on the poor when the only economic policy that has worked involved investment in the system, rather than taking money away?\nHis government’s part-privatisation of the Royal Mail was a total cack-handed disaster that has cost the nation £1 billion and put our mail in the hands of hedge funds. Would you ask him why he is so doggedly determined to stick to privatisation policies that push up prices and diminish quality of service. Isn’t it time some of these private companies were re-nationalised – the energy firms being prime examples?\nWould you want to know why his government has passed so many laws to restrict our freedoms – of speech, of association, of access to justice – and why it intends to pass more, ending the government’s acknowledgement that we have internationally-agreed human rights and restricting us to a ‘Bill of Rights’ dictated by his government, and tying us to restrictive lowest-common-denominator employment conditions laid down according to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a grubby little deal that the EU and USA were trying to sign in secret until the whistle was blown on it?\nWould you ask him something else?\nOr do you think this is a bad idea?\nBuy Vox Political books!\nHealth Warning: Government! is now available\nThe first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,\nDo YOU feel as prosperous as you were before the crisis?\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Benefits, Business, Cost of living, Economy, Employment, European Union, Food Banks, Housing, Neoliberalism, People, Politics, Poverty, Trade Unions, UK\nausterity, BBC, benefit, borrowing, bubble, David Cameron, dead, death, deficit, die, economy, Ed Balls, EU, Europe, exchange rate, expensive, export, food bank, G7, GDP, government, groceries, grocery, Gross Domestic Product, grow, Guardian, help to buy, housing, Huffington Post, Iain Duncan Smith, IMF, inflation, International Monetary Fund, Investment Partnership, John Mills, Keith Joseph, Lynton Crosby, Mandatory Work Activity, manufacture, manufacturing, Margaret Thatcher, national Statistics, neoliberal, Nicholas Ridley, office, ONS, peak, pre-crisis, prosper, purge, re-balance, sanction, shopping, Transatlantic Trade, TTIP, unemployment, union, Universal Credit, Workfare\n[Image: David Symonds for The Guardian, in February this year.]\nBritain has returned to prosperity, with the economy finally nudging beyond its pre-crisis peak, according to official figures.\nWell, that’s a relief, isn’t it? Next time you’re in the supermarket looking for bargains or mark-downs because you can’t afford the kind of groceries you had in 2008, you can at least console yourself that we’re all doing better than we were back then.\nThe hundreds of thousands of poor souls who have to scrape by on handouts from food banks will, no doubt, be bolstered by the knowledge that Britain is back on its feet.\nAnd the relatives of those who did not survive Iain Duncan Smith’s brutal purge of benefit claimants can be comforted by the thought that they did not die in vain.\nNO! Of course not! Gross domestic product might be up 3.1 per cent on last year but it’s got nothing to do with most of the population! In real terms, you’re £1,600 per year worse-off!\nThe Conservatives who have been running the economy since 2010 have re-balanced it, just as they said they would – but they lied about the way it would be re-balanced and as a result the money is going to the people who least deserve it; the super-rich and the bankers who caused the crash in the first place.\nYou can be sure that the mainstream media won’t be telling you that, though.\nEven some of the figures they are prepare to use are enough to cast doubt on the whole process. The UK economy is forecast to be the fastest-growing among the G7 developed nations according to the IMF (as reported by the BBC) – but our export growth since 2010 puts us below all but one of the other G7 nations, according to Ed Balls in The Guardian.\nAnd it is exports that should be fuelling the economy, according to JML chairman John Mills in the Huffington Post. He reckons the government needs to invest in manufacturing and achieve competitive exchange rates in order to improve our export ability.\n“Since most international trade is in goods and not in services, once the proportion of the economy devoted to producing internationally tradable goods drops below about 15 per cent, it becomes more and more difficult to combine a reasonable rate of growth and full employment with a sustainable balance of payments position,” he writes.\n“In the UK, the proportion of GDP coming from manufacturing is now barely above 10 per cent. Hardly surprising then that we have not had a foreign trade surplus balance since 1982 – over thirty years ago – while our share of world trade which was 10.7 per cent in 1950 had fallen by 2012 to no more than 2.6 per cent.”\nAll of this seems to be good business sense. It also runs contrary to successive governments’ economic policies for the past 35 years, ever since the neoliberal government of Margaret Thatcher took over in 1979.\nAs this blog has explained, Thatcher and her buddies Nicholas Ridley and Keith Joseph were determined to undermine the confidence then enjoyed by the people who actually worked for a living, because it was harming the ability of the idle rich – shareholders, bosses… bankers – to increase their own undeserved profits; improvements in working-class living standards were holding back their greed.\nIn order to hammer the workers back into the Stone Age, they deliberately destroyed the UK’s manufacturing and exporting capability and blamed it on the unions.\nThat is why we have had a foreign trade deficit since 1982. That is why our share of world trade is less than one-third of what it was in 1950 (under a Labour government, notice). That is why unemployment has rocketed, even though the true level goes unrecognised as governments have rigged the figures to suit themselves.\n(The current wheeze has the government failing to count as unemployed anyone on Universal Credit, anyone on Workfare/Mandatory Work Activity and anyone who whose benefit has been sanctioned – among many other groups – for example.)\nYou may wish to argue that the economy is fine – after all, that’s what everybody is saying, including the Office for National Statistics.\nNot according to Mr Mills: “The current improvement in our economic performance, based on buttressing consumer confidence by boosting asset values fuelled by yet more borrowing, is all to unlikely to last.”\n(He means the housing bubble created by George Osborne’s ‘Help to Buy’ scheme will burst soon, and then the economy will be right up the creek because the whole edifice is based on more borrowing at a time when Osborne has been claiming he is paying down the deficit.)\nEd Balls has got the right idea – at least, on the face of it. In his Guardian article he states: “We are not going to deliver a balanced, investment-led recovery that benefits all working people with the same old Tory economics,” and he’s right.\n“Hoping tax cuts at the very top will trickle down, a race to the bottom on wages, Treasury opposition to a proper industrial strategy, and flirting with exit from the European Union cannot be the right prescription for Britain.” Right again – although our contract with Europe must be renegotiated and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement would be a disaster for the UK if we signed it.\nBut none of that affects you, does it? It’s all too far away, controlled by people we’ve never met. That’s why Balls focuses on what a Labour government would do for ordinary people: “expanding free childcare, introducing a lower 10p starting rate of tax, raising the minimum wage and ending the exploitative use of zero-hours contracts. We need to create more good jobs and ensure young people have the skills they need to succeed.”\nAnd how do the people respond to these workmanlike proposals?\n“You intend to continue the Tories’ destructive ‘austerity’ policies.”\n“The economy isn’t fixed but you broke it.”\nThere was one comment suggesting that all the main parties are the same now, which – it has been suggested – was what Lynton Crosby told David Cameron to spread if he wanted to win the next election.\nVery few of the comments under the Guardian piece have anything to do with what Balls actually wrote; they harp on about New Labour’s record (erroneously), they conflate Labour’s vow not to increase borrowing with an imaginary plan to continue Tory austerity policies… in fact they do all they can to discredit him.\nNot because his information is wrong but because they have heard rumours about him that have put them off.\nIt’s as if people don’t want their situation to improve.\nUntil we can address that problem – which is one of perception – we’ll keep going around in circles while the exploiters laugh.\nOsborne’s tax avoidance failure reveals the facts about Coalition policies\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Crime, Politics, Tax\nAndy Hamilton, Atos, avoid, BBC, Customs, Department, DWP, G4S, George Osborne, haven, high net worth, hmrc, Huffington Post, London Olympics, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, News Quiz, Pensions, public sector, Radio 4, Revenue, Serco, tax, Vox Political, work\nEmbarrassed: And so George Osborne should be!\nWhat bad luck for George Osborne to get two sums wrong in the same week!\nThe first sum was a simple times-table question; a school pupil asked him to multiply seven by eight and he couldn’t do it.\nThe second sum was more serious because it was a sum of money. Rather a lot of money. £1.9 billion, in fact.\nThe Boy had claimed that around £3 billion in extra tax had been recovered from “high net worth individuals” – tax avoiders – after investigations by HM Revenue and Customs.\nUnfortunately, errors in the way HMRC’s performance targets were set meant that these improvements were… well, “overstated” is how the Huffington Post described them.\nThis meant that, when HMRC said it exceeded its target for tax compliance in 2010-11 by £1.9 billion, in fact it had only just hit its target. The following year, its claim to have exceeded targets by £2 billion was out by the same amount; in fact it had made gains of just £100 million.\nThere is around £21 trillion in unclaimed, avoided tax sitting in ‘haven’ bank accounts around the world – many of them British territories – and Osborne has managed to collect just £100 million.\nMeanwhile unemployed and low-paid working citizens – who have no income apart from state benefits, due to the systematic destruction of the UK’s industrial base by neoliberal politicians who were intent on increasing insecurity among the lower classes – are being starved to death.\nOsborne has only himself to blame. When the Coalition government came into office, the Tories insisted that they didn’t need anything like as many public-sector workers as were then on the books – and started laying people off wholesale.\nNow the DWP has a claimant assessment backlog of 700,000 for ESA alone (compared with less than 30,000 in May 2010) and the government’s flagship Universal Credit project is hopelessly bogged down, to quote just two examples of the remaining public servants being unable to do their jobs.\nMeanwhile, outsourcing of government jobs to private companies has created a disaster: The National Health Service in England is slowly falling over the cliff, with privateers taking so much in profit that the service will go £2 billion into debt next year while waiting times at Accident and Emergency departments continue to increase out-of-control (no matter what lies David Cameron dribbles in Prime Minister’s Questions); a £116 million IT programme arranged with French firm Steria to run staffing, procurement and payroll services for civil servants was scrapped at a cost of £56 million – and then Steria was re-hired to outsource British jobs to India, Poland and Morocco, again at UK taxpayers’ expense.\nDoes anyone remember the fiasco when G4S was hired to run security at the London Olympics, failed to meet requirements, and the Army had to be called in at the last minute?\nAtos and the DWP, anybody?\nAndy Hamilton commented on this phenomenon during this week’s News Quiz on BBC Radio 4: “For decades, we have watched governments hand over the utilities and services to companies like G4S and Serco and we have watched as they basically ruined them.\n“And then once they’ve ruined them, they get given some more to ruin until they’re running all sorts of services; they’re now huge!\n“I still hanker after the good old days when G4S was just Group 4, and its core business was letting prisoners escape from vans.”\nSome of us still hanker after the good old days when George Osborne was just a department store employee, and his core business was folding towels.\nBBC responds to complaints about anti-austerity demo – with a form letter\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Media, People, Politics\nanti, austerity, BBC, complain, cover, demonstration, ignore, June 21, London, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, news, Vox Political\nVox Political readers forcemajeure007 and Sarah Ledsom have been in touch to forward the responses they have received from the BBC to their complaints about the non-coverage of the People’s Assembly anti-austerity demonstration on Saturday.\nLike the (lack of) coverage itself, it is extremely disappointing.\nBoth commenters received exactly the same response, with the only change in wording at the top – their own names. The remainder reads as follows:\n“Thanks for contacting us about coverage of the People’s Assembly anti-austerity demonstration on 21 June.\n“We understand you feel there was insufficient coverage of this demonstration by BBC News.\n“We have received a wide range of feedback about our coverage of this story. In order to use our TV licence fee resources efficiently, this general response aims to answer the key concerns raised, but we apologise in advance if it doesn’t address your specific points in the manner you would prefer.\n“Your concerns were raised with senior editorial staff at BBC News who responded as follows:\n“’We covered this demonstration on the BBC News Channel* with five reports throughout Saturday evening, on the BBC News website on Sunday, as well as on social media. We choose which stories we cover based on how newsworthy they are and what else is happening and we didn’t provide extensive coverage because of a number of bigger national and international news stories that day, including the escalating crisis in Iraq, British citizens fighting in Syria and the death of Gerry Conlon.**\n“‘We frequently report on the UK economy and what it means for the British public. We also reflect the concerns of people such as those demonstrating, and others who hold opposing views, across our daily news output on TV, radio as well as online, and we also explore them in more depth including in our political programming and current affairs investigations, debates on ‘Question Time’ and during interviews and analysis on programmes such as ‘PM’ and ‘Newsnight’. Inevitably, there may be disagreements over the level of prominence we give to stories, but we believe our coverage of this subject has been fair and impartial.’”\nIt seems the BBC’s bosses have caught the Tory disease and cannot be bothered to apologise when they make a mistake. If they received a “wide range” of feedback about their coverage, and are now responding with a form letter, rather than individually, you can be sure that many, many people complained. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the response was wholly negative, given that coverage was restricted to a few spots on the rolling news channel and the utterly pathetic excuse for a story on the website.\nDoes anybody else believe that was fair and impartial?\nIf so, consider this. In 2011 the BBC covered a PRO-austerity demonstration by the Taxpayers’ Alliance (of all organisations). Total attendance: 350 people.\nThey’ll cover a 350-strong pro-austerity demo but not a 50,000-strong anti-austerity event.\nFair and impartial?\nDon’t make me choke.\n*If it was on the BBC News Channel, why not the main news?\n** And the Solstice, which happens every year.\nCoulson convicted – now Cameron has serious questions to answer\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Corruption, Crime, Politics, UK\nAndy Coulson, BBC, BSkyB, David Cameron, George Osborne, Harriet Harman, Leveson Inquiry, Media, murdoch, Nick Clegg, phone hacking, press, Rebekah Brooks, Roger Cohen, Rupert Murdoch\nBeleaguered: A weary-looking David Cameron tried to defend his choice to employ convicted phone hacker Andy Coulson in a BBC interview.\nThe conviction of former Downing Street press supremo Andy Coulson on charges of conspiracy to hack telephones should have serious consequences for David Cameron, the Prime Minister who brought him into the heart of the UK government after he committed these crimes.\nCameron has said he takes “full responsibility” for employing Coulson. He may regret those words in the future.\nInterviewed by the BBC, he said: “I did so on the basis of undertakings I was given by him about phone hacking and those turn out not to be the case.” What undertakings? That he hadn’t taken part in any hacking or that he was very good at it and wouldn’t get caught?\nFor a Prime Minister in charge of a barely-legitimate Coalition government with an agenda to destroy Britain’s best loved institutions, such as the National Health Service and the Welfare State, the presence of a person who could infiltrate the telephone communications of others, providing information that could be used to stop them, would be a huge asset.\nPressed on what he asked Coulson and what assurances he was given, Cameron said: “We covered all this in the Leveson Inquiry.” This is not a rock-solid alibi as Cameron was found to have, let’s say, selective amnesia about certain issues. His relationship with the Murdoch press – of which Coulson is a former employee – was one of them, and it is appropriate that more questions should be asked – and answers demanded – about the level of influence exerted on the British government by the man Private Eye describes as the ‘Dirty Digger’.\nAt the Leveson Inquiry, Cameron could not say:\nWhether or not George Osborne obtained assurances from Andy Coulson about phone hacking before hiring him for the Conservative Party.\nWhether he spoke to Rebekah Brooks about Andy Coulson before his Downing Street appointment.\nHow many conversations he had with Mrs Brooks about Coulson.\nWhether he raised the issue of phone hacking with Coulson in Westminster or over the phone while on holiday.\nWhere and how Coulson repeated his assurances about phone hacking.\nWhat Nick Clegg said to him about Coulson.\nWho else raised concerns about Coulson with him.\nWhether or not any Tory MPs expressed concerns about Coulson.\nWhether he discussed Coulson and phone hacking with Rupert Murdoch.\nWhether he sought direct assurances on hacking from Andy Coulson when revelations appeared in the New York Times (isn’t that now a Murdoch paper?) on December 1, 2010.\n“I gave someone a second chance and it turned out to be a bad decision,” Cameron said yesterday – but this won’t wash, according to the Labour Party’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman.\n“He [Coulson] was not somebody who’d admitted what he’d done and was turning over a new leaf,” she said.\nLabour leader Ed Miliband, interviewed (again) by the BBC, got straight to the point: “David Cameron brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street… David Cameron must have had his suspicions about Andy Coulson, and yet he refused to act.\n“This taints David Cameron’s government because we now know that he put his relationship with Rupert Murdoch ahead of doing the right thing… He owes this country an explanation.”\nCoulson’s connection with the Murdoch press was also hugely useful to Cameron at the time. Did he hope that the appointment would buy him favour with the 37 per cent of the British media owned by Murdoch? Was there a reciprocal arrangement, with the UK government showing extra favour to the Murdoch media – such as its plan to grant permission for Murdoch to buy the 61 per cent of BSkyB that he did not own (since aborted, partly due to bad publicity)?\nAs Roger Cohen wrote in the New York Times in July 2011, “It is hard to resist the impression that Cameron was completely in the thrall of Brooks, Murdoch and his son James Murdoch.”\nWhat about the huge volume of emails – around 150 – between Cameron and Brooks that were withheld from the Leveson Inquiry and kept from the public domain, even after a Cabinet Office ruling in October 2012 that the public should see them?\nCameron was expected to face hard questions about his relationship with Coulson during Prime Minister’s Questions today (June 25). At the time of writing (11am), and based on his comments in the BBC interview, it seems likely that all we will hear is more evasion.\nIs this really the behaviour of a man who should be the British Prime Minister?\nLatest DWP lie: Millions ‘unspent’ in support for ‘welfare reform’ victims\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Bedroom Tax, Conservative Party, Cost of living, Housing, People, Politics, Poverty, Powys, UK\nausterity, BBC, benefit, benefits, British values, Britishness, council, David Cameron, David Freud, demonstration, Department, DHP, discretionary housing payment, DWP, exaggerate, falsehood, figure, government, lie, Lord Fraud, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, million, number, overspend, overspent, pay, Pensions, people, politics, Reform, scare story, social security, statistic, true, unclaimed, unspent, victim, Vox Political, welfare, work\nFraud: This man wants you to believe DWP austerity measures are succeeding, in order to win votes at next year’s general election. They aren’t. He is a liar.\nThe Department for Work and Pensions is merrily claiming that more than £13 million allocated to help people who have been hit be the government’s unfair ‘welfare reforms’ via Discretionary Housing Payments has gone unclaimed. Lord Freud wants you to think “recent scare stories about councils running out of money were grossly exaggerated”.\nHe was – of course – lying through his teeth.\nA quick look at the facts reveals that Discretionary Housing Payment was overspent by £3,505,582 during the 2013-14 financial year. That’s two per cent more than the government allocated.\nThe £13,285,430 underspend quoted in the press release refers to just 240 out of the 380 councils that distribute DHPs. It completely ignores the £16,791,012 overspent by 127 other councils, in order to provide a false figure. The remaining 13 councils spent all of their allocated amounts.\nFocus on the regions and the picture gets worse: In Scotland, DHP was overspent by 76 per cent of the amount allocated – £28,700,215 against an allocation of £16,269,675 from the DWP. Scottish councils had to foot the bill for the extra amounts.\nWales spent an extra six per cent – £7,724,176 against an allocation of £7,274,829. Here in Powys, 1,200 of the county’s 8,300 social dwellings were affected by the bedroom tax, with a total annual loss of housing benefit of £800,000. The total DHP funding available was £154,975.\nLooking at those figures, it’s amazing the overspend was so small.\nIt is only in England that a net underspend is recorded – of around £9 million.\nSo let’s have a look at Lord Fraud’s – sorry, Freud’s – statement that “today’s figures also show that recent scare stories about councils running out of money were grossly exaggerated.”\nGrossly exaggerated? The fact is that 127 councils did run out of money – that’s more than one-third of the total.\nIt would be fairer to say that the scare stories came true.\nThe press release also states that “around three-quarters of councils also did not apply for a £20 million government top-up fund to help claimants adjust to welfare changes, leaving a further £7.1 million unspent”.\nNo figures are provided to support this statement.\nPeople will be angry about this – and rightly so.\nThe BBC has just brought massed complaints down on itself after it chose to ignore a 50,000-strong demonstration against the government’s austerity measures that started outside the Corporation’s front door. Many incensed callers and emailers said they feared the BBC was participating in a conspiracy of silence about the harm being caused to ordinary people.\nNow we see the DWP is lying to us about the harm its bedroom tax is doing to ordinary people – including hardworking employees, who make up more than 90 per cent of new housing benefit claimants.\nTory leader David Cameron has been banging the drum for Britishness recently – good for him. It gives us an opportunity to point out that, if there’s one British value that stands out above all the rest, it’s this:\nWe hate people in authority who try to mislead us.\nCumulative effect of welfare reform revealed – deprived areas hit much harder than the rich\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Bedroom Tax, Benefits, Conservative Party, Cost of living, council tax, Disability, Employment and Support Allowance, Liberal Democrats, Media, Neoliberalism, People, Politics, Poverty, Tax, tax credits, UK, unemployment, Universal Credit\nallowance, austerity, BBC, business, Centre, close, commission, communities, community, cost, cumulative impact assessment, David Cameron, demonstration, deprivation, deprived, disability, Disability Living Allowance, disability news service, disabled, DLA, DNS, economic, EHRC, employment, equalities, ESA, esther mcvey, financial loss, human rights, IB, Incapacity, Landman Economics, mark hoban, Mike Penning, National Institute, NIESR, Personal Independence Payment, PIP, Reform, Regional Economic, report, Revenue, rich, Sheffield Hallam University, shop, Social Research, social security, spending, support, tax, transparent, travel, viability, welfare\nDeprived parts of Glasgow were worst-affected by ‘welfare reform’ according to The Courier [Image: thecourier.co.uk].\nThe headline should not come as a surprise – of course changes that cut benefits for the poor are going to harm them more than rich people.\nBut do you remember David Cameron’s claim that his government would be the most transparent ever?\nIsn’t it interesting, then, that the independent Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has found a way to compile information on the effects of tax, social security and other spending changes on disabled people, after the government repeatedly claimed it could not be done?\nIt seems Mr Cameron has something to hide, after all.\nWe already have a taste of what we can expect, courtesy of our friends in Scotland, who commissioned the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University to study the relationship between deprivation and financial loss caused by “welfare reform”.\nThe study shows that more than £1.6 billion a year will be removed from the Scottish economy, with the biggest losses based in changes to incapacity benefits. The Scottish average loss, per adult of working age, is £460 per year (compared with a British average of £470) but the hardest hit area was impoverished Glasgow Carlton, where adults lost an average of £880 per year.\nIn affluent St Andrews, the average hit was just £180 per year.\nOf course, the cumulative effect will hit the poorest communities much harder – with an average of £460 being taken out of these communities it is not only households that will struggle to make ends meet; as families make cutbacks, local shops and businesses will lose revenue and viability. If they close, then residents will have to travel further for groceries and to find work, meaning extra travel costs will remove even more much-needed cash from their budget.\nFor a nationwide picture, the EHRC commissioned the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) and the consultancy Landman Economics to develop a way of assessing the cumulative impact of “welfare reform”.\nThe report will be published in the summer, but Landman Economics has already told Disability News Service that the work was “not actually that difficult”.\nWhy, then have Mark Hoban, Esther McVey and Mike Penning, the current minister for the disabled, all claimed that a cumulative assessment is impossible?\nSome might say they have a vested interest in keeping the public ignorant of the true devastation being wreaked on Britain’s most vulnerable people by Coalition austerity policies that will ultimately harm everybody except the very rich.\nSome might say this is why the BBC – under the influence of a Conservative chairman – failed to report a mass demonstration against austerity by at least 50,000 people that started on its very doorstep.\nMisguided conspiracy theorists, all!\nAsk the BBC why it didn’t cover the anti-austerity demo – here’s what you can expect!\nanti, austerity, BBC, complain, cover, demonstration, ignore, June 21, London, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, news, Sick Britain, Vox Political\nThis is what happened when a friend of Vox Political, going by the monicker Sick Britain, contacted the BBC to ask why there has been no coverage of today’s (June 21) anti-austerity demonstration in London, which was attended by more than 50,000 people.\nThe BBC has mentioned the demonstration – as a pretext for a discussion of government austerity policies on Any Questions and Any Answers (both on Radio 4) but the national public service broadcaster’s news bulletins were mysteriously silent about it throughout the day of the event itself.\nThis seems particularly odd when one considers the fact that the demo began outside Broadcasting House, and that I’m told extra security guards were on duty today, while the entrances were protected with metal fencing.\nSome of you may wish to complain to the BBC about its lack of coverage. Here’s how you can do it:\nhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/\nPhone: 03700 100 222 *\n03700 100 212 * (textphone)\n*24 hours, charged as 01/02 geographic numbers\nPost:BBC Complaints\nDL3 0UR\nFor more coverage (and photos) see: Austerity Protest in London (June 21st 2014)\nADDITIONAL – 11.17am, June 22: It seems the BBC has finally given in to pressure and published a report. Don’t get your hopes up too high! It arrived on the website at around 10.37am and may be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-27962963\nMy opinion is that this is an insult.\nFor more information on the impact of austerity that is being hidden from the public, take a look at Cumulative effect of welfare reform revealed – deprived areas hit much harder than the rich\nPanellists hijack Question Time to attack Iain Duncan Smith\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Austerity, Benefits, Conservative Party, Cost of living, Employment, Food Banks, Media, People, Politics, Poverty, Public services, UK\nBBC, benefit, benefits, chris bryant, Coalition, Conservative, Department, DWP, employment, food bank, genocide, government, homicide, Iain Duncan Smith, Ian Hislop, IDS, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, politics, poverty, public service, Question Time, returned to unit, RTU, Salma Yaqoob, scrounger, secretary, social security, stress, suicide, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare, work\nFinger-jabbing protest: Iain Duncan Smith talked over Owen Jones in his last Question Time appearance; this time the other panellists didn’t give him the chance.\nAround three-quarters of the way through tonight’s Question Time, I was ready to believe the BBC had pulled a fast one on us and we weren’t going to see Iain Duncan Smith get the well-deserved comeuppance that he has managed to avoid for so long in Parliament and media interviews.\nThere was plausible deniability for the BBC – the Isis crisis that has blown up in Iraq is extremely topical and feeds into nationwide feeling about the possibility of Britain going to war again in the Middle East. The debate on extremism in Birmingham schools is similarly of public interest – to a great degree because it caused an argument between Tory cabinet ministers. Those are big issues at the moment and the BBC can justifiably claim that it was making best use of the time and the panellists (for example Salma Yaqoob is a Muslim, from Birmingham, who is a member of ‘Hands Off Our Schools’).\nBut Auntie shouldn’t think for a moment that we didn’t notice the glaring omission on tonight’s agenda. With the Work and Pensions Secretary as the major politician on the panel, we should have had a question about his job but were fobbed off instead with non-items about ‘British values’ and whether parents should be arrested for allowing their children to become obese. That’s enough for some of us to read a right-wing agenda between the lines – an aim to avoid embarrassing Iain Duncan Smith.\nIt seems that, even if Auntie’s twin-set is pink, her bloomers are blue. Blue-mers, if you like.\nBy the time the fourth question came up, it seemed there would be no opportunity to analyse RTU (we call him Returned To Unit after his failed Army career) and his disastrous ministerial career.\nThis question was: “After the Newark by-election, are we looking at the destruction of the Liberal Democrats?” Thank goodness some of the panellists realised this was their chance.\nChris Bryant leapt at the opportunity to bypass the Lib Dems altogether. “The real enemy is over there,” he said, indicating the Secretary-in-a-State. “The Conservatives have made this country a place where two million people need food bank handouts.”\nHe was trying to hit a nerve; Duncan Smith’s department has been accused of trying to mislead the public on the reason food banks have been springing up all around the country – and it was very recently alleged that senior figures in the government had warned food bank charity the Trussell Trust to stop criticising government policy or be shut down.\nSalma Yaqoob pointed out that, thanks to the Conservative-led coalition (and, because he’s the Work and Pensions secretary, Duncan Smith’s policies), “13 million people are now below the poverty line and one million are suffering the indignity of having to use food banks.\n“People are suicidal,” she pointed out – a very pertinent claim to make, as the most common cause of death for people going through Iain Duncan Smith’s benefit system appears to be suicide (due to the stress created by Department for Work and Pensions officers who work very hard to push them off-benefit). “They don’t want to be a burden to their families because their support has been taken away.”\nShe said: “People have been called scroungers… Iain Duncan Smith quite happily labels poor people as scroungers, when he claimed £39 on expenses for his own breakfast.”\nDuncan Smith was interrupting from the background to claim that he had never called benefit claimants scroungers. Feel free to go to your favourite search engine right now, type in “Iain Duncan Smith scroungers”, and see for yourself whether his name has ever been associated with the word.\nAnd, thank goodness, a member of the public spoke up to say: “Iain Duncan Smith is systematically taking down public services in this country and destroying people’s lives.”\nHe went on to invite anybody who cares about this issue to the demonstration in London by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, on June 21.\n(I have since discovered that he was David Peel, press officer for the People’s Assembly Against Austerity. In my opinion, the fact that he was a political representative, planted in the audience to make a point, diminishes what he had to say – but I am still glad that somebody said what he did.)\nIt was sad that the great satirist Ian Hislop did not take an opportunity to make a few sharp observations – especially as commenters to this site have made it clear that they contacted him to request this action. He addressed himself to the question he had been asked and I make no comment about that; you can draw your own conclusions.\nIt didn’t happen the way this writer would have wanted, but the job got done anyway.\nExpect multiple attempts by the right-wing press to salvage the situation – all doomed to failure.\nLast week, Vox Political stated that there was an opportunity here to show the public the homicidal – if not genocidal – nature of the changes to the benefit system this man mockingly describes as “welfare reforms”.\nJob done.\nFood bank charity told to stop criticising benefit system or face shut-down – by the government\nPosted by Mike Sivier in Conservative Party, Corruption, Food Banks, Politics\nBBC, benefit, benefits, blackmail, change, charity, Chris Mould, Citizens Advice Bureau, Conservative, critic, Daily Mail, Department, DWP, food bank, government, Iain Duncan Smith, IDS, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Pensions, people, policies, policy, politics, Reform, report, returned to unit, RTU, shut down, smear, social security, system, Tories, Tory, Trussell Trust, Vox Political, welfare, work\nWhat would you do in that situation?\nIt seems that food bank charity The Trussell Trust has been making too many waves around the Conservative-led Coalition government’s policies regarding benefits, social security and welfare.\nReaders may recall how the charity warned that Coalition policies had created a need for a huge expansion in the number of food banks across the UK. The Tories countered this by accusing the trust of “misleading and emotionally manipulative publicity-seeking”, and also of “aggressively marketing [its] services”.\nAfter this failed to make a dent in public opinion, the Daily Mail tried to discredit the trust by claiming it was handing out food parcels without checking whether the people claiming them were bona fide.\nBut it turned out that the paper’s claim of “inadequate checks on who claims the vouchers, after a reporter obtained three days’ worth of food simply by telling staff at a Citizens Advice Bureau – without any proof – that he was unemployed” was not true. The reporter in fact committed fraud by telling a string of lies in order to falsely claim his food parcel in a flagrant abuse of the system.\nThe public response was immediate – donations to the Trussell Trust’s fundraising appeal shot through the roof.\nNow the government has tried a different tack: blackmail. Instead of trying to justify the government’s position or undermine that taken by the trust in public, it has been revealed that, recently, “someone in power” told trust bosses that the government “might try to shut you down” if the trust continued to cause it embarrassment.\nThis detail was revealed while Trussell Trust chairman Chris Mould was giving evidence to the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector this week.\nThe Trussell Trust is in a fairly robust position with regard to government interference; a 2005 decision by the charity’s trustees to avoid seeking government funding means it is in a better position to resist pressure.\nBut the trust has to consider the worst-case scenario. If the government did manage to shut it down, hundreds of thousands of people would starve.\nThat is the real threat posed by the Conservative-led government. Shutting down the Trussell Trust won’t hurt anybody who runs the charity or volunteers for it.\nBut it could kill food bank users across the country.\nIt is exactly the kind of covert, backstabbing move we have come to expect from the likes of Iain Duncan Smith.\nOh, come on! You knew RTU (it means Returned To Unit and is our tribute to his Army career) would figure in this article somewhere.\nAccording to Mr Mould, he received a phone call from “someone” in the office of the Secretary-in-a-State about Work and Pensions, back in 2011. He said it was “basically to tell me that the boss was very angry with us because we were publicising the concerns we have over the rising number of people who were struggling as a consequence of delays and inefficiences in the benefits system”.\nUnfortunately – for sly abusers like Duncan Smith – the kind of threats recorded above are really only useful when they are kept secret. The idea is always to present the victim with a double-bind – in this case, not only would food bank users suffer, but the Trussell Trust would get the blame for having withdrawn the service (whether voluntarily or not).\nNow that we all know the government itself is putting the screws on – and is doing so in retaliation against the Trussell Trust’s entirely legitimate attempts to raise awareness of government policies’ disastrous effects – it would be electoral suicide.\nThat being said, watch Iain Duncan Smith on Question Time today.\nHe’s probably stupid enough to go through with it anyway.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1081455"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9237985610961914,"wiki_prob":0.9237985610961914,"text":"OnlineGamblingWebsites.com\nGambling Blog\nWillie Mullins & Family: Ireland’s Famous Horse Racing Trainers\nElsewhere on the site there’s an overview piece looking at the various horse racing families, so here we’re going to look a closer look at one of them: the Mullins family. Willie Mullins is one of the most successful trainers in the business, but he comes from a horse racing family and isn’t the only person with the surname that is worthy of our attention. Here’s a look at the family tree:\nPaddy Mullins had five children who were all involved in racing in some form or another: Willie Mullins, Sandra McCarthy (nee Mullins), George Mullins, Tony Mullins and Tom Mullins.\nWillie’s son, Patrick, also became a jockey, as did George’s son, Emmet. Tony Mullins married Mags, who was a champion jockey in her own right. They had a son called Danny who himself became a jockey.\nA Look at Their Horse Racing Lives\nNow that we’ve looked at how the Mullins family works, it’s time to take a closer look at the achievements of the various members of it.\nWillie Mullins\nWillie Mullins’s official website, wpmullins.com\nThere’s nowhere else to start but with Willie Mullins, one of the most successful trainers that the world of horse racing has ever seen. Born as William Peter Mullins on the 15th of September in 1956, he grew up in Goresbridge, County Kilkenny. He began life not in the stables but in the saddle, becoming the Amateur Champion Jockey in Ireland six times. His wins as a jockey include the 1983 Fox Hunters’ Chase at Aintree with Atha Cliath and the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham on Whither Or Which in 1996.\nOf course it’s as a trainer that Mullins is best known, which is a fact perhaps best reflected in the fact that his win on the back of Whither Or Which was the first of four wins out of five in that race for horses that he’d trained. His career as a trainer began much earlier, though. He worked as an assistant to Jim Bolger and the Australian, Neville Begg, before becoming an assistant to his dad, Paddy Mullins.\nWillie eventually decided to get his own trainer licence in 1988, though he didn’t hang up his saddle quite yet. He honed his skills in the years that followed as he multitasked as both a trainer and jockey. As the 1990s came to a close he felt as though he’d genuinely cracked it, which was reflected in the success of Florida Pearl. The horse won the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown four times between 1999 and 2004, becoming Mullins’ first truly successful offering.\nBy the time of Florida Pearl’s fourth win Mullins was already making a name for himself in a remarkably competitive industry, yet even better was the follow the year after. Hedgehunter surprised no one when he won the Grand National, becoming one of the few favourites to actually win the race when he did so by fourteen lengths with Ruby Walsh on his back. But for a fall at the last the year before and a six length defeat to Numbersixvalverde the year after, he would have given Mullins a Grand National hat-trick.\nThe Cheltenham Festival\nPart of the reason that Mullins is so well respected in the world of horse racing is his relationship with the Cheltenham Festival. There’s barely a race at the meeting that Wille Mullins hasn’t trained the winner in, including being the leading trainer in the Champion Bumper, the Golden Miller Novices’ Chase, the Dawn Run Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle and the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.\nPerhaps no race is most closely associated with Mullins as much as the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle, however. Donald McCain, Jr. won the first race with Whiteoak, but then Willie Mullins won the eight that followed, seeing his dominance only broken briefly by Gordon Elliot before he won it for the ninth time in 2018. A huge part of the success he enjoyed in the race came courtesy of the remarkable Quevega, who set a record for wins in the same race at the Festival when she won it for the sixth time in 2014.\nFor a long time it looked as if the only race at the Cheltenham Festival that Willie Mullins didn’t know how to win was the most important of the lot: the Gold Cup. He’d come so close so many times during his career, including seeing Hedgehunter miss out by just two and a half lengths to War Of Attrition in 2006. He missed out again in 2013 when the much-fancied Sir Des Champs, ridden by Tony McCoy, finished seven lengths behind Bobs Worth.\nWhen On His Own missed out to Lord Windermere by a short head the year after, Mullins must have felt as though he was never going to see one of his horses win the biggest prize in jump racing. He kept going, though, and saw another of his horses, Djakadam, finish second again in 2015. A hat-trick of second-place Gold Cup finishes might be enough to make many trainers feel as though they’re cursed, but Mullins had the faith to believe that he’d win it if he just kept on going.\nNot even seeing his horses finish second and third behind Gordon Elliot’s Don Cossack in 2016 was enough to make him throw in the towel, eventually seeing his faith and persistence rewarded with the Gold Cup victory of Al Boum Photo in 2019. It demonstrates, perhaps better than anything, the desire of Mullins to prove he can do whatever he sets his mind at, even if it takes him longer than expected sometimes!\nFor many years Willie Mullins was the trainer of choice for the Gigginstown House Stud, which is owned by Ryanair owner Michael O’Leary. They enjoyed a successful time together, winning the Owner’s Championship in Ireland for the fourth time at the end of the 2015-2016 season, but when Mullins put his training rates up for the first time in ten years in 2016 Michael O’Leary and his brother Eddie chose not to pay the fees. The split rocked horse racing at the time, such was the success enjoyed by the partnership.\nPaddy Mullins\nThe Dawn Run statue at Cheltenham Carine06 / Flickr.com\nThe patriarch of the family is, in many ways, the man who started it all – Paddy Mullins. His career as a trainer started at the Punchestown Festival, which is appropriate for the Irishman given that it’s considered by many to be crown jewell of Irish racing. He won a race there with Flash Parade in 1953, kick-starting a career filled with winners.\nIn the years that followed, Paddy Mullins racked up four winners of the Irish Grand National, as well as six winners during the Cheltenham Festival, perhaps giving his son Willie a taste for the same meeting. By the time he retired he had been named the Irish Champion Jumps Trainer ten times.\nThough he was known for his work with jump horses, Paddy also trained flat racers and won two big races in that discipline. In 1973, he won the Group 1 Champion Stakes at Newmarket with Hurry Harriet. Thirty years later and another filly of his won the Group 1 Irish Oaks at the Curragh courtesy of Vintage Tipple. It was the former horse that he was most impressed with, though, spending the rest of his life telling people that Hurry Harriet was the best horse he ever trained.\nThere’s an argument that Paddy had a way with female horses that not many trainers since have been able to repeat. As well as the wins he pulled off on the flat with Hurry Harriet and Vintage Tipple, he also made a name for himself courtesy of Dawn Run. Go to Cheltenham Racecourse and you’ll see a statue of the mare standing over the paddock there, such is the esteem in which she’s held by the great and good of jump racing.\nDawn Run won the Champion Hurdle in 1984 and then went one step further when she won the Gold Cup during the Festival in 1986. At the time of writing, no other horse has both of those races on their CV. The year she won the Champion Hurdle she followed up with a win in the Aintree Hurdle and victories in both the French and Irish equivalent races.\nPaddy retired from training in 2005, handing the keys to his stables to Tom Mullins. That didn’t stop him from remaining in the world of horse racing thanks to his love of breeding horses, though. Even when he died, he had a couple of broodmares that he was breeding with – a horse love to the end.\nTony Mullins\nUnfairly known more as Willie’s brother than anything else, Tony was a professional rider and was regularly in the saddle of Dawn Run prior to Jonjo O’Neill taking over the honour. Not that Tony could complain, of course, given that it was O’Neill who was riding her for both of her Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup wins.\nTony was a successful rider, winning a race at the Listowel Harvest Festival thanks to Doran’s Town Lad, as well as picking up a Cheltenham Festival win with Pedrobob. He was also the man on the back of horses like Kharasar, Fontaine Lodge, Padre Mio and Barrow Drive. Even so, he declared the win that his son, Danny, achieved in the Galway Mile in 2009 as the ‘best moment’ of his life, so it’s clear that he was always happy to let others take the limelight.\nSandra McCarthy (nee Mullins)\nThe eldest of the Mullins children, Sandra was a well-respected flat racing jockey. She won the Rose of Tralee Ladies’ Race in 1982 and was unlucky to only finish third in the Ceville Lodge Stakes at Gowran Park.\nNowadays, Sandra is mostly known for owning horse with her husband. The most notable names on her roster are Eye Candy, Jimmy Hoffa and Reve Du Roi. She may no longer boast the Mullins name, but McCarthy still knows how to deal with horses just like the rest of her family.\nDanny Mullins\nWhen both of your parents are Champion jockeys, you have to go some way to living up to their expectations. Tony and Mags Mullins both earned their stripes, even if Tony thinks that Danny’s achievements are more pride-inducing than his own.\nDanny began his career as a pony racer and won 126 races in that discipline before making the switch to horses. He did so as an apprentice to Jim Bolger, winning four of his first six races. He won the Kerry National in 2012 and then the Ulster National in 2013 before going on to win a new novice hurdles on horses trained by his mum.\nThe Rest of the Family\nGoresbridge, Co. Kilkenny where Willie Mullins grew up\nIt’s not spoken about all that much, but Paddy’s wife, Maureen, was also a jockey in her early years. She was a successful point-to-point rider under her maiden name of Miss Maureen Doran. Indeed, when Sandra finished second in the Ceville Lodge Stakes it was her mother that finished in front of her.\nGeorge Mullins was pretty much the only member of the family who decided not to become a jockey. Yet the fact that he avoided getting involved on the track doesn’t mean that doesn’t merit a mention here. George set up a horse transportation business that most of the top trainers used.\nGeorge’s son, Emmet, didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps and instead became a professional jockey in 2006. In his first full series as a jockey, he missed out on the Rockview Series because his cousin, Patrick, beat him to the punch. He’s still enjoyed some big wins in his life though, including on the back of Faugheen, the Irish Horse of the Year in 2015.\nWhen you’re Willie Mullins’ son there’s not much choice but for you to be involved in the world of horse racing, is there? Patrick Mullins rode his first winner when he was just sixteen-year-old, then in 2008 he won the Champion Bumper races during both the Cheltenham Festival and the Punchestown Festival on Cousin Vinny. He has been an exceptional amateur, beating Billy Parkinson’s 1915 record of most wins for an amateur in a single season.\nPrevious Post: « Horse Racing Dynasties: The Mullins, Walsh & O’Brien Families\nNext Post: Ruby Walsh & His Family of Horse Racing Jockeys »\nFamous Female Trainers in Horse Racing\nEverything You Ever Needed to Know About Spot the Ball Competitions\nThe Gender Gap in Football: The Stark Pay Divide Between Men & Women\nYoungest Trainers in Horse Racing\nThe Biggest eSports Tournaments\nInside the Crazy World of Professional eSports Players\nWin a Car Competitions: How It Works & Does Anyone Ever Win?\nWhat Ever Happened to Stan James?\nHow to Avoid the Sharks in Online Poker\nMatch Fixing in Cricket: The Scandals & the Players Who Got Caught\nAiden, Joseph & Other Famous O’Brien Trainers & Jockeys\nRuby Walsh & His Family of Horse Racing Jockeys\nHorse Racing Dynasties: The Mullins, Walsh & O’Brien Families\nCourtsiding: What Is It & Is It Illegal?\nThe Best & Worst Bets in the Casino\nWho Are the UK’s Oldest Bookmakers?\nThe Casinos That Use AI to Identify the Players Who Will Lose the Most\nThe Millionaire Teen eSports Players\nIs Card Counting Possible Online?\nBest Female Poker Players: The Five Biggest Stars in Women’s Poker\nHas Anyone Won the Lottery More Than Once?\nBill Benter: The Man Who Won $1 Billion Betting on Horse Racing\nArtificial Intelligence: Are Computers Better Than Humans At Poker?\nAshley Revell: The Man Who Bet It All On One Roulette Spin\nAiden, Joseph & Other Famous O'Brien Trainers & Jockeys\nWillie Mullins & Family: Ireland's Famous Horse Racing Trainers\nWhat is the Difference Between Flat & Jumps Racing?\nHow Does Horse Racing Differ Around the World?\nCelebrity Racehorse Owners (And How Much It Costs Them)\nThe Female Jockeys That Give the Men a Run for Their Money\nBiggest Placepot Wins\nCould Horse Racing Take Place on Britain’s Streets?\nHow Much Money Do Jockeys Earn?\nEquine Flu: Causes, Outbreaks & How it Affects Horse Racing\nWhat Was The First Online Casino?\nRoulette Systems: Destroying The Martingale System Myth\nNational Lottery Odds – What Are The Chances Of Winning The Lotto Jackpot?\nWhat Happens if you Buy Every Combination of Lottery Tickets?\nWhat Are The Chances Of Winning The Lottery In Your Lifetime\nCopyright © OnlineGamblingWebsites.com 2006-2019 | Sitemap - Blog Archive | 18+ Please Bet Responsibly | BeGambleAware.org\nEstablished in 2006 under the name Good Bonus Guide (GoodBonusGuide.com) and briefly known as OnlineBetting.eu","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line731911"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.564591646194458,"wiki_prob":0.564591646194458,"text":"RCEP countries must pay heed to India’s concerns\nThe Hindu Business Line - 06 December 2019\nBy TV Narendran\nIndia’s doubts on issues like exports and its economic relations with China are genuine and crucial for growth. Only when these are resolved, should India consider joining the agreement again.\nIndia’s withdrawal from the the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement (RCEP) was not entirely unexpected, given that key stakeholders had not been in favour of it. India put forward genuine reasons for its decision to withdraw, for the time being, from the negotiations undertaken by 16 countries of the RCEP grouping, which make eminent sense from the economic perspective. The decision brings relief to industry as well as farmers, who were rightly apprehensive about the wide-ranging impact it was likely to have on their livelihood.\nFollowing the adverse experience with the Japan and Korea FTAs, the goods segment was concerned with possible impact of the RCEP, since it would effectively mean a FTA with China. For most of the merchandise trade, China accounts for a significant share of the global capacity — in sectors like steel its nearly 50 per cent. Even the slightest variation in demand and supply in China has severe repercussions on global markets and prices. For example, when the Chinese economy slowed down in 2016, steel imports to India from China increased by more than 200 per cent, while prices crashed. The Indian steel industry’s concerns with the RCEP related to trade diversion and regional accumulation for value addition.\nServices sector\nWork on the RCEP, which was proposed to further lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers on goods as well as expand trade in services and investment arrangements, commenced in 2012. However, it was obvious from the beginning that services and investments were taking a back seat in the negotiation process, with goods trade accorded primacy. Given that the other 15 countries already have very low or zero tariffs for goods traded amongst themselves under the alphabet soup of FTAs in place, India is the only country which would have been bound to cut its tariffs for the other members under the RCEP.\nHowever, with its service interests not adequately factored into the discussions over the years, the benefits to India from the RCEP were questionable. India’s services trade has continued to grow robustly, even while the goods trade has been impacted by the global trade slowdown. Exports of services expanded from $16 billion in 2001-02 to $106 billion in 2008-09 and $208 billion in 2018-19. India’s share in global services exports increased from 1.1 per cent in 2000 to 3.5 per cent in 2018, as compared to its share in global merchandise exports, which has remained at 1.7 per cent. Clearly, the importance of the services sector for growth and employment generation in India cannot be overstated, and the short shrift given to it in the RCEP was a disappointment.\nEconomic stance\nOne of the key points put forward initially as a rationale to enter and continue in the RCEP initially was that open trade with competitive countries would force India’s hand in undertaking economic reforms. The pace of reforms has indeed been rapid, with introduction of the GST, opening up of FDI, facilitative ease of doing business and numerous sectoral reforms. However, India needs to take up reforms at its own pace and in a manner that is suitably calibrated to meet the interests of diverse sections of the economy, such as farmers and small businesses.\nWhile announcing its exit from the arrangement, India highlighted that the rising trade deficit from China was unsustainable and would be further exacerbated as a result of the RCEP. This position has been taken up continuously by India during the discussions as well as in bilateral platforms. It is, for example, difficult to understand why Indian drug exports to China are worth only $46 million. India’s exports of pharmaceuticals to the world stands at over $14 billion in 2018 — including $5 billion to the US — after meeting stringent approval processes, and China itself imports drugs worth $28 billion from the rest of the world.\nReciprocity is also crucial. For example, in the steel sector, imports from Japan and Korea after signing the FTAs doubled while exports to these countries continued to remain negligible.\nTies with China\nIt is unlikely that the unrelenting attitude of China regarding India’s market access interests over a long period of time would have been altered once the RCEP was in force. The possibility of industry sectors in India suffering from import surge would thus have been very real. In addition, Chinese products are already being routed through ASEAN countries, with which India has an FTA. With lax rules of origin proposed in the RCEP, even the longer time period given to reducing tariffs with respect to goods made in China would have been ineffective.\nIt is indeed unfortunate that China could not provide India with a way out of its apprehensions relating to Chinese goods swamping Indian markets, either bilaterally or through the RCEP. This situation extends to the services sector as well. China has seen huge appetite for Indian movies, yet only 3-4 Indian films are allowed entry into its market each year. Our IT sector is similarly disadvantaged in China.\nIndia’s competitiveness vis-à-vis China is unlikely to benefit from economic reforms that India may undertake in the future. To assuage India’s concerns, China must bilaterally work with us and resolve our market access issues in areas across pharmaceuticals, agriculture and manufactured goods. Only when we see a real improvement in our exports to China will the Indian industry become confident about lower tariffs for Chinese products and can accede to regional arrangements like the RCEP.\nsource: The Hindu Business Line\nChina India RCEP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line284864"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6081752181053162,"wiki_prob":0.39182478189468384,"text":"MOONEY, MICHAEL PATRICK\nMOONEY, MICHAEL PATRICK (22 Oct. 1866-6 Sept. 1936), an attorney known as \"M. P.\", served the city of Cleveland in various legal capacities and participated in the statewide charter movement. He advocated greater representation in CLEVELAND CITY GOVERNMENT for immigrant residents (see IMMIGRATION AND MIGRATION). Mooney was born and educated in Ireland, the son of Thomas and Anne McHugh Mooney. Admitted to the U.S. bar in 1891, for the next 2 years he served as assistant corporation counsel to the city of Cleveland. From 1910-1911 Mooney was president of the Civil Service Commission of Cleveland. He was a member of both the city Charter Commission and the State Board of Charters in 1913. Four years later he was chosen for the MAYOR'S ADVISORY WAR COMMITTEE. Mooney was director and general counsel to the Cleveland Life Insurance Company (est. 1907) and the Mutual Building & Investment Company, director and president of the Realty & Rental Company, and director of the GUND BREWING COMPANY and the D. C. Griese & Walker Co. He belonged to the Chamber of Commerce and the Catholic Mutual Benefit Association, among other groups.\nMooney married Mary Slowey (d. 1935) in Cleveland on 19 Sept. 1891; they lived in SHAKER HEIGHTS with children Francis G., Robert E., Mary C., Agnes M., Charles A., and Eleanor E. He is buried in CALVARY CEMETERY.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1092508"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6564449667930603,"wiki_prob":0.3435550332069397,"text":"Frost in May by Antonia White\nPosted by Delia under Books, Catholicism, childhood | Tags: Antonia White, Catholic boarding school, childhood, Frost in May, girls Catholic boading school |\nI heard recently from someone who’d gone to my boarding school in 1963. Her parents withdrew her after six months because the place was so bad. She didn’t say much more, but I assume that her experience was like mine and others. This woman was one of the lucky ones. She left before she endured much more emotional trauma. I hope she has not been scarred by her brief stay there.\nToday, I came across a blog post that mentions a book I finished reading earlier this month and discusses the blogger’s convent school experiences. Of course, I was curious as always to hear what someone’s experience–one in a supportive atmosphere–was like.\nFellow blogger Daphne writes that she likes reading novels set in convent/boarding schools because she herself was enrolled in two. In her latest post, “The End of an Odd Year,” she writes about “Summer’s Ending,” which she read over the Christmas holidays. The book, she says, is a much happier portrayal of convent schools than Frost in May by Antonia White–a book that I finished reading two weeks ago. Daphne, who had a better experience, writes:\n“Although Frost in May, by Antonia White, is one of my favourite books set in a convent school, I dislike how grim the school (the Convent of the Five Wounds) in that book is and how strict the nuns are. The students seem almost to be bullied by the sisters in that book. The nuns at my two schools were mostly lovely so it was nice to read about kind nuns in Summer’s Ending.\nThe book led me to do some research on the two convent schools I attended. I don’t know why I never until now took the trouble to find out more about the orders that founded the schools. The first school, which I attended from age five til 11 was the Canossian Convent (motto: “Via, Veritas, Vita”, which means “the way, the truth, the life”, badge on the left), founded by the order of the Sisters of Conossa, an Italian order. The second school was a French convent, The Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (motto: “Simple dans ma virtue, forte dans moi devoir”, which means “simple in virtue, steadfast in duty”, badge right, read more about the history of the convent here). I was there from age 11 and a half til 17.”\nFor me, I found the grim portrayal of a convent boarding school in Frost in May more like my own. I reacted viscerally while reading the parts about breaking a child’s will, the punishments on the children, the restrictions, the oppressive atmosphere, etc. My gut tightened in a knot. The feel of place and the girls’ experiences felt emotionally familiar to me, though my boarding schools were not as severe as that. The novel took place in the first half of the 20th century and was semi-autobiographical; I went to boarding school in the 1960s. Things had changed by then, but not enough.\nDespite the book’s grimness, I too enjoyed reading it. The author writes beautifully, capturing the experience of childhood and the loss of self well.\nAt the Movies: Boarding School\nPosted by Delia under childhood, films | Tags: boarding school, Catholic boarding school, day school, girls boarding school. girls Catholic boarding school, Maggie Smith, movies, Muriel Sparks, Prime of Miss Jean Brodie |\nStarring Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie takes place in an all-girls school in Edinburgh, Scotland. Only the superficial aspects of it remind me of my boarding school days–namely, the uniforms. But something else occurs to me about my experiences. My boarding school also had a day school. Daily, we were reminded of our status as boarders. Many of our classmates went home on yellow school buses they boarded behind our dorm. I watched my classmates climb into idling buses coughing up the diesel fumes.\nAt boarding schools that did not have day students, dorm life seemed to intersect more with the boarders’ education. We had no headmistresses, just a Mother Superior, nuns who oversaw the boarders and the nuns and lay faculty who taught/ran the school. We didn’t get to know our teachers except in class. They didn’t know about our lives as boarders. Because of this divide, we boarders never quite felt like we were living in a community. It was the place we stayed because we couldn’t go home. And boarding school never did feel like home.\nI wonder so often what life was like for those who attended elite boarding schools. I’d see the ads for prep boarding schools in the New York Times. Did money make a difference in the way the boarders lived? Would it have been better to go to a place where everyone was a boarder? I’ve been reading studies about the effect of being a boarder during the early grades of elementary school. (I will blog about in the near future.) So far, I gather that putting a child in boarding school at a very young age is detrimental. I’m sure several factors come into play.\nMeantime, for those of you who were ever boarders, perhaps this movie trailer for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie may trigger some memories. Of course, life doesn’t imitate art, nor do I expect that drama would replicate life.\nWhy I’m writing about this experience\nPosted by Delia under memoir writing | Tags: Catholic boarding school, memoir, memoir writing, Nicholas Dawidoff, The Fly Swatter |\nMy three years in a girls’ Catholic boarding school (first grade at St. Mary’s Academy; second and third at SJVA) have never left me. I cannot forget those days and the emotions involved. I need to explore how that time shaped me. What was the effect of that place on who I am today?\nI know the details of why I was sent there. My mother, single and divorced, had to work. My grandmother had sent my mother to the same school when she was a single parent, working in New York’s Garment District where she sewed silk and cotton nightgowns for the Eve Stillman line. The gowns sold in Bloomingdale’s and other high-end stores. Neither my grandmother or my mother had other family who could watch over a young child after school nor did they have the means to pay someone to do so. And then there are the details of that life sent away.\nIn today’s Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Dawidoff has a thoughtful piece, “The Trouble With Memoirs,” in which he goes over the usual problems with memoir–facts vs. imagined–and those who violated the readers’ trust–Frey, “Jones” Seltzer, and so on. But he also examines what makes memoirs wonderful:\n“. . .Memoirs are typically episodic, likely to describe only a fragment of a life or an aspect of it — aspects that tend to emphasize emotional subject matter. The things we stay up late thinking about are the stuff of memoir. They are our interior lives, our complicated feelings, what we write about when we write about love — and the complexities of failure and sympathy and ambivalence and money and mortality.”\nI have thought so much about my life as a boarder. That world has lived on in my head: the memories of saying goodbye to my mother on Sundays, the fear and anxiety of doing something wrong and the punishments I’d endure, the sense of being watched all the time, the struggle to shine my shoes perfectly, the older girl assigned to me to “supervise” me, the nagging feelings of abandonment and loneliness, the two girls whose friendship became my refuge. Every time I make the bed as a grownup, I remember where I learned to make hospital corners, and then it all comes back. Why?\nThe journalist in me wants to ensure that I get the story factually correct. To that end, I have been doing a lot of research. I need to keep in mind what Dawidoff says about this genre. Yes, he writes, be rigorous in your factchecking, but also remember:\n“Memoirs imply that they are giving you the whole story, but in conception they are idiosyncratic, less comprehensive and formally constrained than autobiographies, often set within a brief time frame, and that seems appropriate in a genre where often the writer is attempting to give shape to ambiguity. The memoir looks inward to offer a personal outlook, and what is seen is as varied as life itself. The memoirist can write at length about the American Dream, or wrinkles, or optimism, toughness, shoplifting, a stamp collection, shorthaired dachshunds, a bus stop, a will with surprising contents, something that mortified you in the moment but later became funny, the smell of witch hazel, a life shadowed by an obsession with the Internal Revenue Service, encountering a Whites Only sign in an antiques store, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, an effective boss, what happens to a parent who comes unwillingly to know that she has a favorite among her children, what led a person to switch political parties or to grow more religious as he or she got older.\n“Lousy memoirs come bound in the dull skin of self-involvement, but the memoirs destined to endure are those that open outward and use the author’s life as a point of departure for exploring the broader emotional themes and common faiths that apply to lives everywhere. Spending so much time with your own past, examining it over and over, the story must expand and accrue, become something bigger than you.”\nI also want to avoid sounding like I’m indulging in navel gazing. I believe that my story speaks to , something larger, something universal. Every day that I write about it means that I can get closer to that truth.\nDawidoff himself is a memoirist: “The Fly Swatter,” which was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and “The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness and Baseball.”\nAn Eloquent Homage to the Staten Island Ferry\nPosted by Delia under Uncategorized | Tags: boarding school, Catholic boarding school, day camp, Edgies, Educational Alliance, German measles, girls Catholic boading school, Manhattan, rubella, SJVA, St. John Villa Academy, St. John's Villa Academy, Staten Island, Staten Island Ferry |\nThe blog “Going Coastal” has a wonderful post about the Staten Island ferry. Going Coastal is a nonprofit dedicated to connecting people and coastal resources by raising awareness of the immense value of the coastal environment. For those who have ridden the ferry without thinking much about its beautiful journey or for those considering taking the ferry to Staten Island and back to lower Manhattan, read this piece, which covers history:\n“People have been traveling to Staten Island by some sort of boat for centuries. In 1609 Henry Hudson, the explorer, named it Staaten Eyelandt, in honor of the Dutch Parliament. The American Indian population on the island resisted settlement attempts in three battles: the Pig War, over accusations that Raritan Indians had stolen settlers’ pigs; the Whiskey War, over a distillery; and the Peach War that erupted when a woman from the Aquehongan tribe allegedly stole a settler’s peach. Though the indigenous peoples didn’t believe in owning land, they would soon enough be edged out by the Dutch and then the English.\nLaunch of a landmark\nThe first regular ferry service was a sailing ship set up by 16-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1810. He eventually built a transportation empire worth $100-million. By 1816, steam ferry service was available, but because the fare was 12½ cents each way, it was mainly used by wealthy Staten Islanders. Staten Island became a borough of New York City in 1898, and then, in 1905, the city took control of the ferry.\nThough the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, completed in 1964, connects Staten Island to Brooklyn, the ferry remains the only link to Manhattan. It used to carry cars, too, but that service was discontinued after 9/11.”\nLiterary ties:\n“The poetry of memory\nEdna St. Vincent Millay immortalized the Staten Island Ferry in her poem Recuerdo, which means “memory,” written in 1919. The first two lines of her poem are printed in large letters on the wall of the Whitehall Terminal, which opened in 2005:\nWe were very tired, we were very merry —\nWe had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.”\nI grew up in Manhattan, but have two distinct memories of the Staten Island ferry. One was going to and from Catholic boarding school, which was on Staten Island. More often, my mother’s husband drove us over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I remember riding the ferry home in the middle of the week from school. The school called my mom to have her pick me up. Fortunately, she worked in lower Manhattan, so the ferry was a quick walk from her office. I’d come down with what was then called German measles, now better known as rubella. On the trip back to Manhattan, an elderly woman leaned her face into mine, which was covered with red spots. “Your kid has something wrong with her,” she said. My mother replied, “She’s contagious.” The woman pulled back quickly and said nothing more as she walked away. I missed about another week or two of school. When I returned to SJVA, several kids in my class were absent. They too had rubella. I had been the first.\nI’m sad to find out that the ferry no longer allows cars and other motor vehicles. My other memory is of a happier time, two years later when I was enrolled in the Educational Alliance (Edgies) day camp. Every summer weekday, we’d board school buses, which were driven onto the ferry, on the Lower East Side. After our ferry ride, the buses drove–more like raced each other–through the island to Henry Kaufman Campground, where we spent the day. For lunch, I brought cream cheese and grape jelly sandwiches, which tasted so good after a morning of arts & crafts, games and other activities.\nWere you a boarder at a girls’ Catholic boarding school?\nPosted by Delia under Uncategorized | Tags: boarding school, Catholic boarding school, girls' catholic boarding school, SJVA, St. John Villa Academy, St. John's Villa Academy, Staten Island |\nI hope to start a conversation with women who were sent away to a Catholic boarding school, especially if you attended St. John Villa Academy in Staten Island, NY. Ours was a unique experience. I can still summon myriad feelings of isolation, abandonment, loneliness, fear, etc., even though I was a boarder back in the Sixties. My time there for two years (1967-1969) and at St. Mary’s Academy (1966-67) in Lakewood, NJ, have stayed with me always. I loved attending grammar school, but hated being a boarder. I long dreamed of the day I would become a day student, someone who could go return to a real home every day after school and be greeted with love, not a stern nun, strict regulations and more regimentation.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line936082"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.85243821144104,"wiki_prob":0.85243821144104,"text":"Independent reviews of television, movies, books, music, theatre, dance, culture, and the arts.\nDavid Churchill (1959-2013)\nJimi Hendrix Drifting\nWhen Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, over forty years ago this month, I was in high school. It was a time when a number of key pop figures – all in their twenties – never got to see thirty. A year earlier, it was Brian Jones of The Stones, and Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison would soon follow Hendrix to the grave. Besides sobering you with a taste of death's final victory (right at that moment when you saw nothing but life straight ahead), you also realized that a person's genius, their gifts, even their youth, could do nothing to protect them.\nHendrix's death hit me harder than the others because I came to truly love the paradoxical nature of his music. (In a song that fundamentally came out of the blues like \"Burning of the Midnight Lamp,\" he combined a harpsichord with a wah-wah electric guitar and a chorale section to create a powerfully intense emotional soundscape.) Although Jimi Hendrix was always fully recognized as a virtuoso and theatrical guitar stylist, he was rarely discussed in any great depth in terms of his gifts as a poet, singer and music innovator. (For those insights, it's best to read David Henderson's 1978 biography 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky which still hasn't been equalled.) But John Morthland, writing in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, captured key aspects of those many gifts that Henderson elaborates on. \"As a guitarist, Hendrix quite simply redefined the instrument, in the same way that Cecil Taylor redefined the piano or John Coltrane the tenor sax,\" he wrote. \"As a songwriter, Hendrix was capable of startling, mystical imagery as well as the down-to-earth sexual allusions of the bluesman.\" Those sexual allusions though also led to a particular kind of theatricality that the artist himself was growing tired of indulging. Joni Mitchell, who met Hendrix in Ottawa towards the end of his life, recognized immediately his frustration about the public and critical perception of him based on those sexual allusions. \"He made his reputation by setting his guitar on fire, but that eventually became repugnant to him,\" Mitchell told The Guardian in 1970. \"'I can't stand to do that anymore,' he said, 'but they've come to expect it. I'd like to just stand still'.\"\nThe last album he was preparing when he died, which first came out posthumously in 1971 as The Cry of Love, features plenty of songs where he is indeed 'standing still.' The material on it draws essentially from tracks he had been recording between March 1968 and August 1970. While he was then preparing a visionary double-album work to be titled First Rays of the New Rising Sun (which would eventually come out on CD in 1997 with additional tracks not included on The Cry of Love), his death and various contractual issues prevented the release at that time. John McDermott in his liner notes for the First Rays CD, acknowledging the unfinished state of the album, clearly outlines Hendrix's intent. \"With full faith in his music, Hendrix was primed to introduce his audience to a new frontier, where the triumphs of his past would merge freely with his unique blending of rock with rhythm and blues.\" As McDermott states, the work from these sessions were split up among three albums: The Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge (1971) and War Heroes (1972). Of the three albums, The Cry of Love is the more sustained and satisfying work.\nAlthough The Cry of Love remains a somewhat uneven record, the working out of his own personal isolation resonates in many of its best tracks like the ripping \"Ezy Ryder,\" the lilting \"Angel,\" the gospel fury of \"In From the Storm,\" his Dylanesque \"My Friend,\" and his tip of the hat to Skip James in the country blues demo of \"Belly Button Window.\" \"Ezy Ryder,\" which was recorded in December 1969, was obviously inspired by the hit counter-culture film (Easy Rider) from earlier that summer. But the song, the only one on the record recorded by Hendrix's funk trio known as the Band of Gypsys (including Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums), strips away the underlying masochism and paranoia that inspired the picture's theme (and made it such a hit) to arrive at something far more poignant. \"There goes ezy ryder,\" Hendrix cries out as Buddy Miles attacks his drum kit as if firing heavy nails into it with a machine gun as he rides wave after wave of Billy Cox's pulsing bass line runs. \"Riding down the highway of desire/He says the free wind takes him higher/Searchin' for his Heaven above/But he's dyin' to be loved.\" While \"Ezy Ryder\" has all the full-out propulsion of earlier songs like \"Manic Depression,\" \"Spanish Castle Magic,\" or \"Crosstown Traffic,\" the recognition of death isn't brought on by resignation, or the failure of values (as in Peter Fonda's fatalistic proclamation of \"We blew it\" in the movie), but the desire instead to transcend earthly chains. Martin Luther King would also proclaim recognition of the Promised Land in his final speech a year earlier, a vision that allowed him to face the death he saw coming, so Jimi Hendrix also reaches for the sky in \"Ezy Ryder.\" \"He's gonna be livin' so magic,\" Hendrix sings. \"Today is forever so he claims/He's talkin' about dyin' it's so tragic baby/But don't worry about it today/We've got freedom comin' our way.\"\n\"Angel\" with its more blatant recognition of death's final victory (\"Angel came down from Heaven yesterday/She stayed with me just long enough to rescue me\") became the biggest hit from the album, especially when Rod Stewart covered it in 1972. But the track, as lovely as it is, is too obvious in its meaning, the metaphors too easy to read: the pop song as obit. The tune that left me wondering if he indeed saw it all coming was the exquisite \"Drifting.\" He'd written beautiful ballads before like \"May This Be Love\" and \"Little Wing,\" but \"Drifting\" was essentially a spiritual, a contemporary interpretation of one that offered a poignant reckoning of the fact that he knew he was moving on. \"Drifting on a sea of forgotten tear-drops,\" he sings with a delicate lilt, a soft crooning that anchors the watery texture of the various guitar melodies keeping him afloat, \"On a lifeboat sailing for your love.\" No doubt the wistful qualities within this spiritual were borne out of its tonal resemblance to Curtis Mayfield's \"People Get Ready.\" In the song's last moments, where his guitar loops sound like seagulls taking flight over the water, they echo the cries of liberation those same loops once called out for in the conclusion of \"If Six Was Nine.\" But to a different effect. In \"Drifting,\" you can practically see him waving goodbye as he flies away. Liberated.\nJohn Morthland concludes his piece on Jimi Hendrix contemplating not only his continuing influence, but also the endless albums and repackages of both finished and unfinished tunes. \"[A]s the years go by, it also becomes increasingly apparent that Hendrix created a branch on the pop tree that nobody else has ventured too far out on. None has actually extended the directions he pursued, but perhaps that is because he took them, in his painfully short time on earth, as far as they could go.\" It also may be true that he took those innovations with him to the Promised Land.\n– Kevin Courrier is a writer/broadcaster, film critic, teacher and author (Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa). His forthcoming book is Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism. With John Corcelli, Courrier is currently working on another radio documentary for CBC Radio's Inside the Music called The Other Me: The Avant-Garde Music of Paul McCartney.\nPosted by Critics at Large at 3:16 PM\nLabels: Kevin Courrier, Music\nRob Lingelbach December 24, 2015 at 11:39 AM\n\"Drifting,\" from \"Cry of Love,\" I've thought extraordinary (your \"exquisite\" is perfect) for all the 45 years since I first heard it in Paris, my first year of college. Beyond the lyrics you mention, its harmony and changes seem to take him to high musical level. What could have been, it's beyond poignant.\n\"CoL\" was the only album I had on reel-to-reel to play on my Wollensak tape deck (which went up in smoke one day when I forgot to use the step-down transformer).\nIf there is discussion anywhere available on \"Drifting\"'s structure I'd love to hear of it. roblingelbach iCloud.com.\nThanks. Drifting a favorite song of many. Nice to see insight from someone close to heart and intent of the music\nNice to read from others who have similar understanding of JMH music. Thanks\nFollow Link to Donate to Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Sarcoma Research\nKevin Courrier (1954- 2018)\nSearch Critics at Large\nNever trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.\nD.H. Lawrence in Studies in Classic American Literature.\nGet Critics At Large delivered daily (free)\nEnter your email address and get articles delivered to your inbox:\nWhen We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? 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{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9872354865074158,"wiki_prob":0.9872354865074158,"text":"Big Unit Fastest To 300Ks\nAugust 26, 1999 / 7:38 PM / CBS/AP\nEven among strikeout pitchers, Randy Johnson is the fastest ever.\nJohnson reached 300 strikeouts in record time, notching nine in seven innings Thursday to help the streaking Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Florida Marlins 12-2.\nJohnson (14-8) achieved the milestone in his 29th start. The previous best was Pedro Martinez, who reached 300 in 31 starts in 1997.\nThe Racial Profiling Debate\nTripp-Lewinsky Tapes Excerpts\n\"It's a special achievement,\" Johnson said. \"My primary goal is to put us in a position to win, but anything that comes with that is great.\"\nBaseball features:\nMLB's Honor Roll\nWho's Sizzlin' and Fizzlin'\nDamian Miller hit a grand slam to cap Arizona's team-record eight-run ninth. Matt Williams drove in four runs with two singles, a double and a sacrifice fly. Tony Womack had two hits and a walk, two stolen bases and three runs scored.\nThe NL West-leading Diamondbacks extended their winning streak to six games and completed a three-game sweep of Florida, which has lost six in a row.\nJohnson reached 300 strikeouts with his eighth of the game against Kevin Millar to end the fifth inning.\n\"If I had to face Randy Johnson every night, I probably wouldn't be here,\" said Millar, who struck out in all three of his at-bats. \"You can have your A-game, and he can make it a D-game real quick. You feel real good at the plate, and you look up and you've struck out three times.\"\nJohnson, who also achieved the strikeout milestone in 1993 and 1998, joins Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax as the only pitchers to reach the 00 mark three times. Ryan had a record six 300 seasons.\n\"I don't know if everybody grasps the type of achievement that is,\" Diamondbacks manager Buck Showalter said. \"We're all lucky to be here to see it. Randy is having as good a year as he's ever had, and he's had a lot of good ones.\"\nOn a sunny, 88-degree afternoon, Johnson left the game with a 4-1 lead and 301 strikeouts after throwing 103 pitches. He allowed six hits.\n\"He was a little lightheaded early, but I think everybody was at some time today,\" Showalter said. \"His stamina impresses me as much as anything. On a day like today, a lot of guys would have trouble staying out there for five innings.\"\nJohnson, who has lost several low-scoring games, said this has been his best year. The 35-year-old left-hander likely has seven starts remaining, and he needs 83 strikeouts to break Ryan's one-season record of 383 set in 1973.\n\"If something like that happens, it's similar to today -- as long as we win the game, it's great,\" he said.\nWith his fastball reaching 99 mph, Johnson struck out six of the first nine Marlins, but Florida bunched three consecutive hits to score in the third. After Luis Castillo singled to extend his hitting streak to 14 games, Dave Berg singled and Bruce Aven doubled off the wall.\n\"I think people thought Randy Johnson was going to come out and strike out 27 and throw a no-hitter,\" Marlins manager John Boles said. \"But our guys were out there fighting with him. They hung in there. \"\n\"But he is pretty good.\"\nRandy Johnson achieves the 300-strikeout plateau for the third time in his career.(AP)\nJohnson was aware he was on the verge of the milestone when he went eight batters without a strikeout before notching No. 300.\n\"The first three or four innings I was cruising, and I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to get that last strikeout,\" he said.\nBrian Meadows (10-13) allowed seven hits and four runs in 6 2-3 innings against the Diamondbacks, who improved to 27-7 since July 20, best in the major leagues. Arizona is 6-0 this year against Florida.\nWomack led off the game with a walk, stole his 56th base and scored on Williams' two-out single.\nIn the third inning, Womack doubled, Jay Bell walked and Luis Gonzalez singled home a run. Williams followed with a sacrifice fly to make the score 3-0.\nWomack singled in the fifth and scored on Williams' two-out double.\nIn thninth, pinch hitter Robert Ryan had an RBI single, Gonzalez was hit by a pitch to force in a run, Williams singled home a run and Erubiel Durazo hit a sacrifice fly. After a walk reloaded the bases with two out, Miller hit his seventh homer off Brent Billingsley.\nFollowing a 6-1 trip, Arizona returns home for a three-game series against the New York Mets beginning Friday.\n\"We're dictating our own destiny,\" Johnson said, ``but it's a chance to play a playoff-caliber club that's playing well.\"\nThe start was Johnson's 13th in a row allowing less than three earned runs. His ERA during that stretch is 1.54.\nMarlins outfielder Cliff Floyd , sidelined much of the season with knee and Achilles' tendon injuries, plans to join the team on its trip to Houston and St. Louis beginning Friday. He said he might play in St. Louis.\nWomack scored in the first inning in all three games of the series.\nThe Marlins lead the league with 37 triples.\n©1999 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed\nFirst published on August 26, 1999 / 7:38 PM\n© 1999 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.\nRight Rail - Video Promo - Listing\nThe mysteries of the octopus\nThe octopus is one of the most bizarre life forms on Earth – one of the smartest, most interesting, and most alien. It can camouflage itself in a flash, squeeze its entire body through a one-inch hole, and use their brains (yes, it has nine of them) to think and play. Chip Reid visits scientists at New England Aquarium in Boston, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., and talks with Sy Montgomery, author of \"The Soul of an Octopus,\" about these curious creatures.\nGary Clark Jr. on \"This Land\"\nAt 35 Gary Clark Jr. is still clearly uncomfortable being heralded as one of the best guitarists in a generation. He's played the White House, and toured with the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. This year his blues/rock album, \"This Land,\" is up for four Grammy Awards. Kristine Johnson talks with the musician who describes himself as a \"simple dude from Austin, Texas who picked up a guitar.\"\nCarlos Ghosn's great escape\nYou don't get as far as Carlos Ghosn has come without thinking outside the box, or inside the box for that matter, which is how the former Nissan executive – facing trial in Japan for financial wrongdoing – managed to skip bail and flee the country. He spoke (somewhat evasively) with correspondent Charlie D'Agata about his improbable journey.\nSunday Profile: Kim Novak\nNow on the cusp of turning 87, Kim Novak is still finding herself. The star of such classics as Alfred Hitchcock's \"Vertigo,\" \"Picnic,\" and \"Bell, Book and Candle,\" the actress turned her back on Hollywood in the 1960s and has since pursued artwork and a love of animals. Mo Rocca reports.\nOverdue protections for pregnant workers\nIt's a story told hundreds of thousands of times every year across America: Women can get the job – just don't get pregnant. Even though pregnancy discrimination has been illegal under federal law for more than 40 years, pregnant women are pushed out of their jobs every day, because employers still deny accommodations to pregnant workers. Jan Crawford talks to women who have faced serious choices and sometimes tragic circumstances affecting careers and family; and with two lawmakers trying to change federal law to better protect women in the workplace. [Photos from \"Showing: Pregnancy in the Workplace\" by Working Assumptions.]\nLatest From CBS News\nRight Rail - Gallery Promo\nMillions of acres have already burned.\nGolden Globes 2020: Red carpet arrivals\nSee how your favorite TV and movie stars kicked off the first award show of the new year.\nJan 5 100 photos\nA look back at the esteemed personalities who've left us this year, who touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity\nNov 25, 2019 150 photos\nTop photos of 2019: The year in pictures\nPhotographers for The Associated Press captured moments of hope and heartbreak around the world.\nDec 24, 2019 52 photos\nNew on Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Hulu and More\nShows and movies you'll want to stream soon.\nCBS News On Samsung TV\nRachel Barton Pine's Music by Black Composers initiative aims to highlight works by composers who may have been overlooked by history.\nOne employee hopes the dog, named \"Subway Sally,\" helps raise awareness for other stray pets.\nThe legendary performer and wife Patti Scialfa were at the ceremony to cheer Sam on.\nJack Wilson, the 71-year-old volunteer security guard who said he killed the gunman with a single shot, was honored Monday for his heroism.\nSabrina Scali took action when she saw a deck of NHL playing cards, that only showed the queens as cheerleaders.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line718383"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9890609979629517,"wiki_prob":0.9890609979629517,"text":"Trump says he called off military strike on Iran after learning 150 people would die\nThe United States abruptly called off preparations for a military strike against Iran over the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, a U.S. official said, while Iran claimed Friday it had issued several warnings before shooting down the drone over what it said was Iranian territory.Trump took to Twitter Friday morning to give an explanation for the attack being called off. \"We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,\" the president wrote. \"I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!\"A U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets would have included radars and missile batteries.The swift reversal was a stark reminder of the serious risk of military conflict between U.S. and Iranian forces as the Trump administration combines a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions with a buildup of American forces in the region. As tensions mounted in recent weeks, there have been growing fears that either side could make a dire miscalculation that led to war.On Friday, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division told Iranian state television that Iran had warned a U.S. military surveillance drone several times before launching a missile at it.Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the comments standing in front of what Iranian authorities described as pieces of the U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk drone.Hajizadeh told state TV: “Unfortunately they did not answer.”He added Iran collected the debris from its territorial waters. The U.S. military says that the drone was in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz when it was shot down.The New York Times separately reported that President Donald Trump had approved the strikes Thursday night, but then called them off. The newspaper cited anonymous senior administration officials.Asked earlier in the day about a U.S. response to the attack, Trump said, “You’ll soon find out.”According to the official who spoke to The Associated Press, the strikes were recommended by the Pentagon and were among the options presented to senior administration officials.It was unclear how far the preparations had gone, but no shots were fired or missiles launched, the official said.The military operation was called off around 7:30 p.m. Washington time, after Trump had spent most of Thursday discussing Iran strategy with top national security advisers and congressional leaders.The downing of the U.S. drone — a huge, unmanned aircraft — over the Strait of Hormuz prompted accusations from the U.S. and Iran about who was the aggressor. Iran insisted the drone violated Iranian airspace; Washington said it had been flying over international waters.Trump’s initial comments on the attack were succinct. He declared in a tweet that “Iran made a very big mistake!” But he also suggested that shooting down the drone — which has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737 — was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation, suggesting he may have been looking for some way to avoid a crisis.“I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at the White House. “I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”Trump, who has said he wants to avoid war and negotiate with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, cast the shootdown as “a new wrinkle ... a new fly in the ointment.” Yet he also said “this country will not stand for it, that I can tell you.”He said the American drone was unarmed and unmanned and “clearly over international waters.” It would have “made a big, big difference” if someone had been inside, he said.But fears of open conflict shadowed much of the discourse in Washington. As the day wore on, Trump summoned his top national security advisers and congressional leaders to the White House for an hour-long briefing in the Situation Room. Attendees included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Army Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump has said he’ll nominate as Pentagon chief.Pompeo and Bolton have advocated hardline policies against Iran, but Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said “the president certainly was listening” when congressional leaders at the meeting urged him to be cautious and not escalate the already tense situation.On Capitol Hill, leaders urged caution, and some lawmakers insisted the White House must consult with Congress before taking any actions.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said no specific options for a U.S. response were presented at the meeting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The administration is engaged in what I would call measured responses.” And late Thursday, House Republicans on the Foreign Affairs, intelligence and Armed Services committees issued a statement using the same word, saying, “There must be a measured response to these actions.”The Trump administration has been putting increasing economic pressure on Iran for more than a year. It reinstated punishing sanctions following Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of an international agreement intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from earlier sanctions.Citing Iranian threats, the U.S. recently sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there. All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution.The paramilitary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the drone at 4:05 a.m. Thursday when it entered Iranian airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Kouhmobarak is about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Tehran.Taking issue with the U.S. version of where the attack occurred, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that his country had retrieved sections of the military drone “in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.” He said, “We don’t seek war but will zealously defend our skies, land & waters.”Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, commander of U.S. Central Command air forces in the region, disputed that contention, telling reporters that the aircraft was 34 kilometers (21 miles) from the nearest Iranian territory and flying at high altitude when struck by a surface-to-air missile. The U.S. military has not commented on the mission of the remotely piloted aircraft that can fly higher than 10 miles in altitude and stay in the air for over 24 hours at a time.“This attack is an attempt to disrupt our ability to monitor the area following recent threats to international shipping and free flow of commerce,” he said.Late Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration barred American-registered aircraft from flying over parts of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and several major airlines from around the world on Friday began rerouting their flights to avoid the area, including British Airways, Australia’s Qantas, Germany’s Lufthansa and the Dutch carrier KLM.Democratic leaders in particular urged the president to work with U.S. allies and stressed the need for caution to avoid any unintended escalation.Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he told Trump that conflicts have a way of escalating and “we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war.”\nThe United States abruptly called off preparations for a military strike against Iran over the downing of a U.S. surveillance drone, a U.S. official said, while Iran claimed Friday it had issued several warnings before shooting down the drone over what it said was Iranian territory.\nTrump took to Twitter Friday morning to give an explanation for the attack being called off.\nFAA bans commercial airlines over parts of Iran-controlled airspace\n\"We were cocked and loaded to retaliate last night on three different sights when I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it, not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone,\" the president wrote. \"I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!\"\nA U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the operation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the targets would have included radars and missile batteries.\nThe swift reversal was a stark reminder of the serious risk of military conflict between U.S. and Iranian forces as the Trump administration combines a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions with a buildup of American forces in the region. As tensions mounted in recent weeks, there have been growing fears that either side could make a dire miscalculation that led to war.\nOn Friday, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division told Iranian state television that Iran had warned a U.S. military surveillance drone several times before launching a missile at it.\nGen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh made the comments standing in front of what Iranian authorities described as pieces of the U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk drone.\nHajizadeh told state TV: “Unfortunately they did not answer.”\nHe added Iran collected the debris from its territorial waters. The U.S. military says that the drone was in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz when it was shot down.\nThe New York Times separately reported that President Donald Trump had approved the strikes Thursday night, but then called them off. The newspaper cited anonymous senior administration officials.\nAsked earlier in the day about a U.S. response to the attack, Trump said, “You’ll soon find out.”\nAccording to the official who spoke to The Associated Press, the strikes were recommended by the Pentagon and were among the options presented to senior administration officials.\nIt was unclear how far the preparations had gone, but no shots were fired or missiles launched, the official said.\nThe military operation was called off around 7:30 p.m. Washington time, after Trump had spent most of Thursday discussing Iran strategy with top national security advisers and congressional leaders.\nThe downing of the U.S. drone — a huge, unmanned aircraft — over the Strait of Hormuz prompted accusations from the U.S. and Iran about who was the aggressor. Iran insisted the drone violated Iranian airspace; Washington said it had been flying over international waters.\nTrump’s initial comments on the attack were succinct. He declared in a tweet that “Iran made a very big mistake!” But he also suggested that shooting down the drone — which has a wingspan wider than a Boeing 737 — was a foolish error rather than an intentional escalation, suggesting he may have been looking for some way to avoid a crisis.\n“I find it hard to believe it was intentional, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at the White House. “I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”\nTrump, who has said he wants to avoid war and negotiate with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, cast the shootdown as “a new wrinkle ... a new fly in the ointment.” Yet he also said “this country will not stand for it, that I can tell you.”\nHe said the American drone was unarmed and unmanned and “clearly over international waters.” It would have “made a big, big difference” if someone had been inside, he said.\nBut fears of open conflict shadowed much of the discourse in Washington. As the day wore on, Trump summoned his top national security advisers and congressional leaders to the White House for an hour-long briefing in the Situation Room. Attendees included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Army Secretary Mark Esper, whom Trump has said he’ll nominate as Pentagon chief.\nPompeo and Bolton have advocated hardline policies against Iran, but Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, said “the president certainly was listening” when congressional leaders at the meeting urged him to be cautious and not escalate the already tense situation.\nOn Capitol Hill, leaders urged caution, and some lawmakers insisted the White House must consult with Congress before taking any actions.\nHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi said no specific options for a U.S. response were presented at the meeting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The administration is engaged in what I would call measured responses.” And late Thursday, House Republicans on the Foreign Affairs, intelligence and Armed Services committees issued a statement using the same word, saying, “There must be a measured response to these actions.”\nThe Trump administration has been putting increasing economic pressure on Iran for more than a year. It reinstated punishing sanctions following Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of an international agreement intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from earlier sanctions.\nCiting Iranian threats, the U.S. recently sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there. All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict 40 years after Tehran’s Islamic Revolution.\nThe paramilitary Guard, which answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it shot down the drone at 4:05 a.m. Thursday when it entered Iranian airspace near the Kouhmobarak district in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Kouhmobarak is about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) southeast of Tehran.\nTaking issue with the U.S. version of where the attack occurred, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that his country had retrieved sections of the military drone “in OUR territorial waters where it was shot down.” He said, “We don’t seek war but will zealously defend our skies, land & waters.”\nAir Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, commander of U.S. Central Command air forces in the region, disputed that contention, telling reporters that the aircraft was 34 kilometers (21 miles) from the nearest Iranian territory and flying at high altitude when struck by a surface-to-air missile. The U.S. military has not commented on the mission of the remotely piloted aircraft that can fly higher than 10 miles in altitude and stay in the air for over 24 hours at a time.\n“This attack is an attempt to disrupt our ability to monitor the area following recent threats to international shipping and free flow of commerce,” he said.\nLate Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration barred American-registered aircraft from flying over parts of the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman and several major airlines from around the world on Friday began rerouting their flights to avoid the area, including British Airways, Australia’s Qantas, Germany’s Lufthansa and the Dutch carrier KLM.\nDemocratic leaders in particular urged the president to work with U.S. allies and stressed the need for caution to avoid any unintended escalation.\nSen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he told Trump that conflicts have a way of escalating and “we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line155650"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5982480049133301,"wiki_prob":0.4017519950866699,"text":"by Laura GriffinLaura Griffin\nPaperback(Mass Market Paperback)\nAvailable for Pre-Order. This item will be available on August 25, 2020\nA riveting new thriller featuring an ambitious female investigative reporter in Austin, Texas by New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin.\nWhen a woman is found brutally murdered on Austin's lakeside hike-and-bike trail, investigative reporter Bailey Rhoads turns up on the scene demanding access and answers. She tries to pry information out of the lead detective, Jacob Merritt. But this case is unlike any he's ever seen, and nothing adds up.\nBailey has a hunch the victim wasn’t who she claimed to be and believes this mugging-turned-murder could have been a targeted hit. When she digs deeper, the trail leads her to a high-tech fortress on the outskirts of Austin where researchers are pushing the boundaries of a cutting-edge technology that could be deadly in the wrong hands.\nAs a ruthless hit man’s mission becomes clear, Bailey and Jacob must embark on a desperate search to locate the next target before the clock ticks down on this lethal game of hide and seek.\nThe Texas Murder Files Series , #1\nLaura Griffin is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty-five books and novellas. She is a two-time RITA® Award winner as well as the recipient of the Daphne du Maurier Award.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line403929"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5081420540809631,"wiki_prob":0.49185794591903687,"text":"Shadow Government\nHer Power\nWork At FP\nFP Guides – Graduate Education\nAcademic Program – FP Premium\nFP Archive\nToggle display of website navigation\nArgument: The Great American Food Aid Boondoggle The Great American Food Aid Boondoggle...\nThe Great American Food Aid Boondoggle\nThe United States could feed millions more people—if it changed outdated policies.\nBy Katrin Park\n| December 10, 2019, 2:05 PM\nWheat is displayed for judging at the Cedar County Fair in Tipton, Iowa, on July 13, 2018. Scott Olson/Getty Images\nThe United States is the food bank of the world. It’s a fitting role for the world’s largest food exporter and corn producer. Between 2016 and 2017, it produced 430 million tons of corn, which amounted to one-third of global corn production. The United States provides half of all global food aid. Since the Dwight D. Eisenhower era, U.S. taxpayers have fed 3 billion hungry people in some 150 countries, attesting to an enduring bipartisan commitment to the issue.\nBut U.S. leadership on this is floundering.\nPresident Donald Trump, cracking down on federal food aid at home in the United States, has shown little concern for the hungry abroad. In a crowded field of Democratic primaries where immigration reform is a hot-button issue, Julián Castro, a former secretary of housing and urban development, has been the lone voice calling out the link between migration and hunger. Vice President Joe Biden, the previous administration’s standard-bearer for development assistance to Central America, hasn’t uttered a word about it.\nYet, hunger is on the rise. Exacerbated by climate change, the problem will only grow worse without a new and smarter food aid policy from the world’s largest donor.\nU.S. food aid was born out of the humanitarian principle of saving lives. When a catastrophic famine struck Soviet Russia in 1921, Congress appropriated funds to send aid, even though it had no formal diplomatic relations with the country. Shortly after, $20 million worth of corn and wheat seed poured into the country, saving 20 million Russian lives.\nToday’s food aid began in 1954 as a way to dispose of excess crops resulting from generous agricultural subsidies. It was cheaper to give away surplus grain to hungry people overseas, the thinking went, than store it. Food aid also emerged out of efforts to sustain the U.S. shipping industry. To ensure ships had sufficient cargo, it was mandated that food should be sourced in the United States, and half of it should be delivered on U.S. vessels.\nMore than half a century later, these priorities are as relevant as soda fountains in pharmacies. Today, food aid accounts for only a fraction of 1 percent of U.S. agriculture production and of U.S. freight cargo. Programs that heap benefits on farmers have not been uncommon, but U.S. food aid is not one of them. In 2013, even the National Farmers Union called for modernizing food aid.\nBut ship owners have mounted a fierce fight to keep their piece of the pie. This is in the face of evidence that shows that reforming food aid will not affect the shipping industry, as it is far too small to boost mariners’ incomes. The shipping lobby argues that eliminating the requirement would undermine national security because it would negatively affect the availability of mariners to crew U.S.-flag ships. The Defense Department said that it wouldn’t. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both tried and failed to fix this. The latest bipartisan bill introduced last year that would lower the U.S.-based sourcing requirement to 25 percent has not been heard from.\nAmericans dole out $2.5 billion annually in food assistance; about 75 percent of that money is used to cover the cost for processing and shipping U.S.-grown food overseas. The food aid is then distributed by the United Nations’ World Food Program. Flooding the developing world with food aid is both expensive and undercuts local farmers. Decades of delivering heavily subsidized U.S. crops to Haiti devastated local farmers’ ability to grow food and feed themselves.\nFor years, experts and officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government agency that administers food aid, have urged Congress to simply send cash as an alternative, which could feed up to 4 million more people. A 2013 study found that buying grains locally in recipient countries resulted in 50 percent savings and shortened the delivery time from about six months to three.\nEuropeans switched to cash donations in 1996. Canada did the same in 2010. The United States is the only major donor that still sends food, and it’s inefficient. With 70 million people displaced globally, 80 percent of whom live in cities and struggle to find shelter, these victims need cash, not a 100-pound bag of bulgur wheat. In Jordan and Lebanon, aid agencies give refugees ATM cards to buy food and clothes.\nLike all governments, Washington doesn’t send food aid simply for moral or humanitarian reasons. Food aid is a tool to promote national strategic interests. Food security—that is, access to sufficient quantities of nutritious food—can improve health and education and grow the economy, which opens up new markets for donor countries. So food aid is driven by supply, not demand. In 2003, demonstrating an utter lack of awareness of real humanitarian needs, the United States sent raisins to Iraq because there was a surplus in California. In 2008, when the demand for biofuels led to higher food prices, driven by policies that pandered to Iowan corn growers, the United States reduced the quantity of food aid, hitting the world’s poor the hardest.\nNo one knows this dynamic better than the U.N. Amid declining funding and surging needs, its World Food Program has had to decide who gets to eat and how much. In 2017, for example, it only received $6.8 billion of the $9.1 billion it needed, resulting in cuts or suspended operations in places such as Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. About 85,000 children died from malnutrition in three years of war in Yemen. The human toll of keeping U.S. food aid unreformed is about 40,000 child deaths per year.\nPrograms meant to help farmers have perversely hurt the poor without benefiting farmers. A flexible food aid policy would provide direct transfers of cash and commodities to those in need, take into consideration the effects of climate change both on farmers and recipients of aid, and maintain America’s position as the world’s most generous provider of food.\nThere will always be dissenters. The shipping lobby drowned the previous administrations’ reform proposals that would have boosted agricultural development in poor countries. Some critics discount food aid altogether, because it has failed to eradicate hunger. But this sets the bar too high. Food aid can save lives. It can stem migration. Accompanied by investment in agriculture, it can reduce poverty. In Guatemala, USAID’s new food aid program helped cut rural poverty and improved nutrition. The right course would be to double down on such successful programs.\nAny incremental progress food aid achieves in the United States can have a huge impact abroad. The 2018 Farm Bill, for example, eliminated “monetization,” a wasteful practice that allowed charities to sell U.S. food aid in other countries to raise money for their own programs. This will save $30 million annually.\nU.S. food aid has not received proper attention. American farmers, taxpayers, and presidential contenders appear blissfully unaware that U.S. food aid is regulated by a law enacted in the 1950s. The world’s desperately needy—and American farmers—deserve better.\nKatrin Park is a development expert and freelance writer.\nTags: Argument, Food/Agriculture, Foreign Aid, United States\nTrending Now Sponsored Links by Taboola\nMore from Foreign Policy\nHow to Save Foreign Aid in the Age of Populism\nThe idea of development assistance is under attack in western democracies. Pursuing economic justice at home and abroad, launching a new freedom agenda, and framing aid as innovation rather than charity can help end the backlash.\nArgument |\nJ Alexander Thier, Douglas Alexander\nGermany Seeks to Broker Cease-Fire in Libya\nEurope Is Running Out of Time to Save the Iran Deal\nNAFTA’s Replacement Gives Labor Some Shelter From Globalization’s Storms\nTrump’s Growing European Base\nPompeo’s Silence Creates a ‘Crisis of Morale’ at State Department\nWho Is Russia’s New Prime Minister?\nTaiwan Deserves to Be a Normal Country\nJair Bolsonaro’s Model Isn’t Berlusconi. It’s Goebbels. 56382 Shares\nEgypt and Ethiopia Said to Be Close to Accord on Renaissance Dam\nBruce Stokes\nWhy Is the United States So Bad at Foreign Policy?\nJust in Time for Lunar New Year, Another SARS-like Epidemic Is Brewing in China\nLaurie Garrett\nAdvertise with FP\nFP Events\n© 2020, The Slate Group","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line91355"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6628564596176147,"wiki_prob":0.33714354038238525,"text":"Alex Mott\nBarcelona overtake Real Madrid as the world’s richest club 💰\nThe annual Deloitte Money League list has been published on Tuesday with Barcelona overtaking Real Madrid to become the world’s richest football club.\nDespite a turbulent last six months – including a shock Champions League exit to Liverpool and the sacking of coach Ernesto Valverde – the Blaugrana have gone ahead of their bitter rivals to take top spot as the most valuable side on the planet.\nThe Camp Nou club saw revenue soar to €840.8m – a record figure for any team and almost 10 per cent more than Real Madrid.\nManchester United, despite their lowly position in the Premier League and failure to qualify for the Champions League, are still the richest English team with an income of €711.5m.\nBayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain complete the top five with Manchester City, Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea all in the top 10.\nJuventus also just squeeze in, one place ahead of Arsenal in 11th.\nBarcelona Manchester United Real Madrid","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line114563"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7899745106697083,"wiki_prob":0.7899745106697083,"text":"Search for \"railway\"\nFILTER BY CONTENT TYPEArticles (26)Authors (0)Timelines (0)Collections (0)Education Guides (0)Quizzes (2)Primary Sources (0)Videos (0)\nSir John Abbott\nJohn Joseph Caldwell Abbott, PC, QC, KCMG, lawyer, professor, businessman, politician and prime minister (born 12 March 1821 in St. Andrews East, Lower Canada [now Saint-André-d’Argenteuil, QC]; died 30 October 1893 in Montreal). Abbott was a leading authority on commercial law, a strong advocate of English Quebec’s business elite and an influential figure in many corporate and social organizations. He was the first Canadian-born prime minister, as well as the first to hold the position from the Senate rather than the House of Commons. He served as prime minister from 16 June 1891 to 24 November 1892.\nBritish Columbia and Confederation\nThe colony of British Columbia was founded in 1858 in response to the Fraser River Gold Rush. (See also The Fraser River Gold Rush and the Founding of British Columbia.) The colony established representative government in 1864 and merged with the colony of Vancouver Island in 1866. In May 1868, Amor De Cosmos formed the Confederation League to bring responsible government to BC and to join Confederation. In September 1868, the Confederation League passed 37 resolutions outlining the terms for a union with the Dominion of Canada. The terms were passed by both the BC assembly and the federal Parliament in 1871. The colony joined Canada as the country’s sixth province on 20 July 1871. The threat of American annexation, embodied by the Alaska purchase of 1867, and the promise of a railway linking BC to the rest of Canada, were decisive factors.\nBrantford, ON, incorporated as a city in 1877, population 97,496 (2016 census), 93,650 (2011 census). The City of Brantford is located on the Grand River, 104 km southwest of Toronto. It is home to several manufacturing industries, educational institutions and heritage sites.\nJames Ryan, railway machinist, labour leader (born 1840 in County Clare, Ireland; died 17 December 1896 in Hamilton, ON). James Ryan was a machinist and railway engineer for the Great Western Railway and later the Grand Trunk Railway. He was a powerful voice in the Canadian Nine Hour Movement, which fought for a shorter workday. Ryan also helped establish the Canadian Labor Protective and Mutual Improvement Association in 1872, the forerunner of the Canadian Labor Union.\nThe Pas\nThe Pas, Manitoba, incorporated as a town in 1912, population 5,368 (2016 census), 5,364 (2011 census). The town of The Pas is located on the south bank of the Saskatchewan River, about 60 km northwest of where the river enters Cedar Lake.\nCanada's First Railway\nFor most of human history, neither people nor goods could move any faster or in any greater bulk than the feet of humans or beasts could carry them. This did not change until the early 19th century, when simple boiling water was harnessed for use in the steam engine. The happy congruence of steam power and tracks created the railway and the greatest revolution in transportation in the history of the world.\nLac-Mégantic Rail Disaster\nIn the early morning of 6 July 2013, a runaway train hauling 72 tankers filled with crude oil derailed as it approached the centre of the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The tanker cars exploded and the oil caught fire, killing 47 people and destroying many buildings and other infrastructure in the town centre. The fourth deadliest railway disaster\tin Canadian history, the derailment led to changes in rail transport safety rules as well as legal action against the company and employees involved in the incident. Years after the derailment, re-building was still ongoing and many of the town’s residents continued to suffer from post-traumatic stress.\nCanadian Fact or Fiction\nCan you tell whether these statements are true or false? Test your knowledge and learn some fun facts along the way!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line665129"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.865949809551239,"wiki_prob":0.865949809551239,"text":"Once told he would never run again, this Tennessee veteran is now running 10 marathons in 5 weeks\nBy: Emily Luxen\nNASHVILLE, Tenn. — A veteran wounded in the line of duty, who was told he would never run again, is gearing up to run a marathon in Nashville.\nRandy Woodward, of Smyrna, Tennessee is in the process of running 10 marathons in five weeks.\nHe will complete each 26.2-mile run while carrying an 8-foot-by-5-foot American flag.\n“It’s been really great,” said Woodward. “It will be something to look back on and say you did it. You finished it.”\nWoodward has already completed marathons in Kansas City, Missouri; Des Moines, Iowa; Lexington, Virginia; Arlington, Virginia; Savannah, Georgia and Bowling Green, Ohio.\nHe has plans to run in future events in Louisville, Kentucky; Fort Benning, Georgia and another in Nashville.\nWoodward was on his second tour in Iraq when he was hit by a roadside bomb.\nHe spent nine months in hospitals recovering.\nAt the time, doctors told him he would never run again.\n“Fortunately, I have all my limbs,” said Woodward. “I’m blessed and thankful for that.”\nWoodward was awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery.\nHaving run a marathon before his injury, Woodward was determined to run again.\nAfter recovering, he set his sights on the bold decision to run back-to-back marathons over the course of consecutive weeks.\nAt each stop, Woodward’s efforts and his American flag have been getting a lot of attention.\n“I got just an outpouring of support from people,” said Woodward. “It’s been really great.”\nWoodward said the reason he is running is to spread patriotism, and he hopes his efforts inspire others.\n“There is just so much divide in this country, and there is so much hate,” Woodward said.\n“It would be nice to see people follow something more positive.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line168770"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8627820014953613,"wiki_prob":0.8627820014953613,"text":"Home Introduction Persons Geogr. Sources Events Mijn blog(Nederlands)\nReligion Subjects Images Queries Links Contact Do not fly Iberia\nThis is a non-commercial site. Any revenues from Google ads are used to improve the site.\nQuote of the day: When Agrippa died, and Lucius Caesar as\nDisplay Latin text\nTwelve Emperors by Suetonius\nOtho, Chapter 1: Ancestry\nThe ancestors of Otho came from an old and illustrious family in the town of Ferentium and were descended from the princes of Etruria. His grandfather Marcus Salvius Otho, whose father was a Roman eques but whose mother was of lowly origin and perhaps not even free-born, became a senator through the influence of Livia Augusta, in whose house he was reared; but did not advance beyond the grade of praetor. His father Lucius Otho was of a distinguished family on his mother's side, with many powerful connections, and was so beloved by Tiberius and so like him in appearance, that he was believed by many to be the emperor's son. In the regular offices at Rome, the proconsulate of Africa, and several special military commands, he conducted himself with extreme severity. In Illyricum he even had the courage to punish some soldiers with death, because in the rebellion of Camillus [See Claud. xiii and xxxv.2], repenting of their defection, they had killed their officers on the ground that they were the ringleaders in the revolt against Claudius; and they were executed in his presence before his head-quarters, although he knew that they had been promoted to higher positions by Claudius because of that very act. By this deed, while he increased his reputation, he lost favor at court; but he speedily regained it by detecting the treachery of a Roman eques, whose slaves betrayed their master's design of killing the emperor. For in consequence of this, the Senate conferred a very unusual honor on him by setting up his statue in the Palace; and Claudius also enrolled him among the patricians, and after praising him in the highest terms, added these words: \"a man of greater loyalty than I can even pray for in my own children.\" By Albia Terentia, a woman of an illustrious line, he had two sons, Lucius Titianus, and a younger called Marcus, who had the same surname as himself; also a daughter, whom he betrothed to Drusus, son of Germanicus, almost before she was of marriageable age.\nEvent: The Conspiracy of Camillus Scribonianus Persons with images","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line609454"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.613871693611145,"wiki_prob":0.386128306388855,"text":"EPA Earth Month Tip of the Day - April 8, 2011: check how much of your electricity comes from renewable “green” power sources\nEarth Month Tip of the Day: It's electric.\nToday's environmental tip: It's electric! You can check how much of your electricity comes from renewable “green” power sources, such as wind or solar. Green power produces less carbon emissions, reduces air pollution, and helps protect against future costs or scarcity of fossil fuels. If green power is a consumer option, check price differences from suppliers before you buy.\nEPA Earth Month Tip of the Day - April 6, 2011: Be extra aware of environmental conditions where older people live!\nEarth Month Tip of the Day: Environmental hazards and the elderly.\nToday's environmental tip: Be extra aware of environmental conditions where older people live! As we age, our bodies become more sensitive to chemicals and environmental conditions. So you should carefully use products such as pesticides or cleaning solvents near areas where older adults live and sleep. Always follow the directions on the product package or label.\nEPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on National Public Health Week - April 4-10, 2011\nEPA Celebrates National Public Health Week April 4-10, 2011\nPosted on April 4th, 2011 - 10:30 AM\nBy Administrator Lisa P. Jackson\nWhen we talk about environmentalism, it typically brings to mind sweeping vistas and wide-open landscapes. Some people might think of saving the whales, protecting spotted owls or preserving old-growth forests. Those things are critically important – but they only tell part of the story. When the modern environmental movement got its start in the 1960s, it took hold in our nation’s cities and was led by people concerned about pollution in the air they were breathing, toxins in the water they were drinking and chemicals on the food they were eating.\nThe effort to safeguard our environment started – and continues to be – an effort to safeguard our health.\nOhio's Renewable Portfolio Standard vs. California's New SB X1-2 vs. America's New Clean Energy Standard\nMarch 29, 2011, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported: \"In a bold move to bolster one of the few bright spots in California’s economy and set a precedent for strong renewable electricity standards nationwide, the California Legislature today approved a bill that would require utilities in the state to obtain at least 33 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources, such as the wind and sun, by 2020. Promoted by the governor and legislative leaders in both houses as part of a green jobs stimulus package, the bill would create the most aggressive renewable energy requirement in the country and position California as a national leader in clean energy investments.\"\n“This bill establishes California as the national leader in clean energy, improving the environment and stimulating the economy while protecting ratepayers from excessive costs,” Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto has said of Senate Bill (\"SB\") X1-2 he sponsored, which is expected to be signed into law by California Governor Brown.\nBelow is an overview of the Ohio Public Utilities Commission’s Renewable and Advanced Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires that by the year 2025 25 percent of the electricity sold by each utility or electric services company within Ohio must be generated from alternative energy sources, and Senate Bill (\"SB\") X1-2, which requires California's electric utilities to increase their renewable generation to 33% by 2020. Passage of that legislation is the culmination of years of effort to increase California's Renewable Portfolio Standard (\"RPS\") from its current 20%.\nNew Report Warns Against Investments in New or Existing Coal-Fired Power Plants - threat to public health and environment\nReplacing Coal Plants with Cheaper, Cleaner, Less Risky Alternatives Would Save Lives and Curb Climate Change Emissions\nWASHINGTON (March 9, 2011) – The cost of constructing or retrofitting coal-fired electric power plants and the rising cost of coal have made coal power an extremely risky long-term investment, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The report, “A Risky Proposition: The Financial Hazards of New Investments in Coal Plants,” also identified a number of other factors that make investing in coal a gamble, including its continuing threat to public health and the environment.\nOnly quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.\nLiving in Cleveland, fighting against excessive polluting by popular local industrial interests, I've found environmental and climate awareness here brain-dead... zombified... people walking in an unnatural smog, accepting unnatural death around them. So I appreciate a mathematical explanation of how an entire city of 500,000 may become dominated by environmental zombies - from today's Climate Progress, which references a study of the proliferation of zombies finding they will drive humanity to the collapse of civilization.... I believe this effectively explains Cleveland (and much of America) today:\nThe model showed two equilibria: the disease-free equilibrium (with no zombies) and the doomsday equilibrium (where everyone is a zombie). The application of a linear stability analysis showed that — in the absence of further interventions — the disease-free equilibrium was unstable and the doomsday equilibrium was stable. This finding was not promising.\nSimulations based on a city of roughly 500,000 people demonstrated that an entire such city would be replaced by zombies [rapidly]. Were this mass replacement of a population to occur in a city such as Washington, DC, it may be unlikely anyone would notice.\nThere is a solution: \"the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to attack hard and attack often\":\nEPA Earth Month Tip of the Day - Fri, Apr 1, 2011: Reduce your carbon footprint\nToday's environmental tip: Reduce your carbon footprint! Leaving your car at home twice a week can cut greenhouse gas emissions by 1,600 pounds per year. Save up errands and shopping trips so you need to drive fewer times. If you commute to work, ask if you can work from home at least some days, and you'll reduce air pollution and traffic congestion - and save money.\nDOE Announces $12 Million in Available Funding to Support up to 5 Advanced Biofuels Development Projects\nDOE Announces $12 Million in Available Funding to Support Advanced Biofuels Development - March 30, 2011\nTo support the goal announced by President Obama today to reduce America’s oil imports by one-third by 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it will be accepting applications for $12 million in funding for laboratory or small pilot-scale projects that support the development of advanced biofuels. Successful projects will develop technologies that will be able to replace refinery feedstocks or directly replace gasoline, diesel, or jet fuels without requiring modifications to vehicles or fueling infrastructure. These projects will continue to accelerate innovations in the renewable biofuels industry as part of the Obama Administration’s efforts to build a cleaner, safer, and more secure energy future for America that ultimately breaks our dependence on foreign oil and moves our nation toward a clean energy economy that creates jobs and boosts U.S. competitiveness.\nObama Administration’s Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future Equals Blueprint for a Secure Future for the Hemp Economy in America\nAs a citizen interested in clean energy and renewable fuels, who lives in an environmental injustice hotspot, heavily polluted by fossil fuel emissions, that needs cleaner energy solutions in our region, I have been excited to see President Obama and his core department leadership - especially Department of Energy Secretary Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Jackson - embrace and champion the urgency of moving America beyond our dependency on ecologically-destructive fossil fuels, toward development of a sustainable, localized, environmentally, socially and economically positive biomass and biofuels energy economy, which shall include industrial hemp grown in the United States of America once again, beginning in 2011.\nFrom the conclusion of a speech by President Obama, at Georgetown University, today, on the Blueprint for A Secure Energy Future for America:\nWe’re already paying a price for our inaction. Every time we fill up at the pump, every time we lose a job or a business to countries that are investing more than we do in clean energy, when it comes to our air, our water, and the climate change that threatens the planet that you will inherit -– we’re already paying a price. These are costs that we are already bearing. And if we do nothing, the price will only go up.\nSo at moments like these, sacrificing these investments in research and development, in supporting clean energy technologies, that would weaken our energy economy and make us more dependent on oil. That’s not a game plan to win the future. That’s a vision to keep us mired in the past. I will not accept that outcome for the United States of America. We are not going to do that. (Applause.)\nSee Change Reports: The US market for medical marijuana is worth $1.7 billion in 2011 and could reach $8.9 billion in five years\nMarch 24, 2011: MSNBC reported - Medical marijuana becoming blockbuster drug... Annual sales near $2 billion and rising in states with tolerant laws:\nMedical marijuana is now a $1.7 billion market, according to a report released Wednesday by See Change Strategy, an independent financial analysis firm that specializes in new and unique markets. The figure represents estimated sales of marijuana through dispensaries in states with medical marijuana laws. It is the first time a definitive dollar figure has been given to the emerging medical cannabis industry.\nTo put that number in perspective, sales of medical marijuana rival annual revenue generated by Viagra, a $1.9 billion business for Pfizer.\nDraft Plan EJ 2014 Implementation Plans outline actions EPA will take to advance environmental justice in each area of focus\nDraft Plan EJ 2014 Implementation Plans\nTo accomplish the goals outlined in Plan EJ 2014, the EPA developed nine Draft Implementation Plans which will guide agency actions in rulemaking, permitting, compliance and enforcement, community-based action, Administration wide action, science, law, information, and resources. The Draft Implementation Plans outline EPA goals, strategies, activites, deliverables, and milestones for each of the nine areas.\nFor each of the Draft Implementation Plans, we are asking for feedback from the public on how we can continue to address the issues that are most important to ensuring the protection of the air, water and land that support all of our nation’s communities and will result in environmental and economic health benefits.\nSubmit Public Comments on Regulations.gov\nRep. Ray Begaye discusses the benefits of the production and processing of industrial hemp in New Mexico\nRep. Ray Begaye discusses the benefits of the production and processing of industrial hemp in New Mexico.\nI'm certain more people than ever in history are interested in the subject of global air pollution monitoring by analyzing corn\nU.S. Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Map (red = most polluted, blue = least polluted)\nI'm certain more people than ever in history are interested in the subject of global air pollution monitoring, as a deteriorating cluster of nuclear power plant disasters in Northern Japan are already contaminating the Earth's atmosphere with deadly radioactive emissions, which will blow across the Pacific Ocean and in other directions to all points downwind until they settle back to Earth, on us, our land, in our water, and into our food-streams.\nFrom the Wall Street Journal's Monday, March 13, reporting about nuclear fallout from the meltdown in Japan, which has taken many turns for the worst since then...\nIf the Japanese nuclear core were to melt, certain radioactive materials, such as iodine, strontium and cesium, would also be released. These particles are one-quarter the size of a grain of salt and can be carried by winds. The larger the grains, the more quickly they would fall out of the air.\nU.S. import prices rose 1.4 percent in February, the U.S. BLS reported today, following a similar 1.3 percent rise in January\nThe U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its U.S. IMPORT AND EXPORT PRICE INDEXES – FEBRUARY 2011 - reporting ongoing significant price increase trends in core sectors of the global economy - like US import and export food and energy prices - that indicate US annual inflation in the double-digits for many products and services impacting daily life in America... like the price of gasoline, milk and bread. The impacts worldwide - especially in developing countries - will be staggering... radicalizing.\nEPA's 2005 National Air Toxins Assessment looks at human health impacts from estimated, chronic air toxin exposure\nEPA's 2005 National Air Toxins Assessment looks at human health impacts from estimated, chronic inhalation exposures based on emissions data from the\n2005 National Emissions Inventory for hazardous air pollutants, assuming these emissions remain constant throughout one's lifetime\nOn March 11, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a press release (below) and held conference calls supporting release of the fourth update of the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) - a computer tool that helps federal, state, local governments and other stakeholders better understand the potential health risks from exposure to air toxics. The EPA states: \"the National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) contains 2005 emissions data submitted primarily from the states for 178 pollutants. Models are used to make broad estimates of health risks for areas of the country. The tool is not designed to determine actual health risks to individuals living in these areas.\" \"Because the data submitted varies from state to state, it is also not possible to use the data to compare risks between different areas of the country.\"\nAs someone who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which the Federal EPA and their NATA prove is highly polluted and unhealthy, I truly appreciate access to all environmental data management and mapping services the EPA may provide, as real-time as possible. These federal government tools offer citizens access to information that allows us to make better life-decisions - like where to live - and empowers us to be better environmental stewards - like shutting down coal pollution in our own backyards.\nYale University Identifies Six Distinct “Americas” When It Comes To The Issue Of Global Warming - Where Do You Live?\n“Dismissive” – who believe global warming is not happening and probably a hoax\n“Doubtful” – not sure whether global warming is happening - if it is, is natural and a distant threat\n“Disengaged” – do not know much about global warming or whether it is happening, and have not thought much about it\n“Cautious” – believe global warming is a problem, but not urgent, and are unsure whether it is human caused\n“Concerned” – believe global warming is a serious problem, support an active national response, but are less personally involved\n“Alarmed” – convinced that global warming is happening, caused by humans, and a serious and urgent threat\nU.S. Commerce Department Announces $12 million i6 Green Challenge to Promote Clean Energy Innovation and Economic Growth\nU.S. Commerce Department Announces Launch of i6 Green Challenge to Promote Clean Energy Innovation and Economic Growth\nU.S. departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Energy, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation, support entrepreneurship initiative\nWASHINGTON – The U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) and its Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship today announced the opening of its $12 million i6 Green Challenge in partnership with the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ‪\nEDA will award up to $1 million to each of six teams around the country with the most innovative ideas to drive technology commercialization and entrepreneurship in support of a green innovation economy, increased U.S. competitiveness and new jobs. Its partner agencies will award more than $6 million in additional funding to i6 Green winners.\nCelebrate the 2nd Annual Hemp History Week - May 2nd-8th 2011 - a national grassroots education campaign\nWherever you live in America, there should be some near-by gathering, event, public meeting or celebration in support of Hemp History Week - May 2nd-8th 2011 - and if there isn't, you may help organize one in your community. Check their website for planned events - and how to organize events - and do it ASAP, as events registered by March 15th may get hemp product samples to distribute, and that is worth hustling-for.\nThe sponsors and supporters of Hemp History Week include Vote Hemp, the Hemp Industry Association, and leading hemp manufacturers, natural foods retailers, celebrities, farmers, historians and hemp advocates. \"Hemp History Week is all about celebrating the goodness of hemp\", and that is something all these organizers and millions of other people are working hard to make legal in every state across America - like New Mexico is succeeding with this week - to making hemp agriculture legal in America and worldwide, as is the mission of Vote Hemp and other advocacy organizations, large and small.\nThe steepness of the drop prompted a skeptical reaction at Cleveland City Hall. \"We believe it is a significant undercount\"\nData provided by U.S. Census Bureau.\nCleveland Sees Plunge in Population, reports the Wall Street Journal today, announcing: \"A larger-than-expected exodus from Cleveland during the past decade shrunk the city's population by 17% to about 397,000, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday.\" That's right, Cleveland's population has crashed below the 400K floor for the first time since around the start of the 20th Century, which triggers all sorts of unsustainable, shrinking, un-re-imaginable financial and political realities for leadership and citizens here.\nPerhaps the only silver lining is that this proof of Cleveland political and leadership failure will have a significant price of leaders' heads. From the Wall Street Journal:\nPolitical observers said the decline could tilt the balance of political power in one of America's most hotly contested swing states.\n\"Ohio is expected to lose two congressional districts, and this big decline in Cleveland suggests that both could come out of northeastern Ohio,\" a Democratic stronghold, said John Green, a University of Akron political-science professor.\nNew Mexico State - House Agriculture Committee has passed Historic Bill HB 565 for licensing the growing of “Industrial Hemp\"\nState Rep Ray Begaye (NM-4) discusses the positive impact of biotech and\nthe potential offered by hemp biotech in his state\nAttached is New Mexico House Bill 565 (.pdf - 214 kb), and below is the press release announcing INDUSTRIAL HEMP BILL RECEIVING SUPPORT FROM NM LEGISLATORS - the House Agriculture and Water Resources Committee has passed Bill HB 565 relating to agriculture: Providing for licensing, growing, selling and processing of “Industrial Hemp - Santhica”.\nHouse Bill No. 565 is sponsored by Raye Begaye (D-NM 4th District ), NM State Representative 7th term: Vice Chair; House Agriculture and Water Resources Committee; Concurrent Jurisdiction for Tribes, Nations, Pueblos and the State of New Mexico.\nThe progess of this bill was announced by Ray Begaye - from their press release: \"House Bill 565 passed the agriculture committee by a vote of 8-l this past Monday. The bill will go to the Judiciary Committee and then onto the Floor of NM legislature. House Bill 565 upon passage will stimulate the New Mexico economy with producers, processors, manufacture, and growers.\"\nNew Mexico Industrial Hemp Coalition Contacts are Bernice Muskrat, Attorney at Law and CFO for The Native International Solutions, Inc. - Bernicemuskrat [at] yahoo [dot] com - 575-759-4412... and Gloria Castillo, President; New Mexico Hemp Commission - gjc777 [at] gmail [dot] com - 505-554-5476. They are taking donations through the non-profit Rural Coalition to support these efforts.\nThey are each and all to be congratulated!!\nAmong the reasons New Mexico passed this bill, from their Press Release about NMHB 565 and industrial hemp:\nHow Does the Electricity I Use Compare to the National Average? User friendly web tool allows Americans to search by zip code\nI just received an email from the EPA announcing it \"updated its database that helps Americans understand the health and environmental impacts of electricity generation\" and now provides a useful public interface - \"Power Profiler is a user friendly online application that uses eGRID data to show air emissions information and the type of electricity generation, such as coal or nuclear, in various regions of the country. By simply entering a zip code and selecting a utility, users can learn more about where their electricity comes from and what impact it has on air quality and the environment.\"\nAdvance in Biofuel - using bacteria to convert plant matter directly into isobutanol, which can be burned in regular car engines\nEnergy Department Announces New Advance in Biofuel Technology\nHighlights Opportunity to Reduce America's Oil Dependence and Create Jobs in Rural America\nU.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today congratulated a team of researchers at the Department's BioEnergy Science Center who have achieved yet another advance in the drive toward next generation biofuels: using bacteria to convert plant matter directly into isobutanol, which can be burned in regular car engines with a heat value higher than ethanol and similar to gasoline. This research is part of a broad portfolio of work the Department is doing to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil and create new economic opportunities for rural America.\nGreen Power Network RFP Update: solicitations for renewable energy generation, renewable energy certificates, and green power\nThis update contains solicitations for renewable energy generation, renewable energy certificates, and green power as a courtesy to our subscribers. Unless otherwise noted, these requests for proposals and solicitations are neither supported nor endorsed by the U.S. Department of Energy, Green Power Network.\nDayton Power and Light Company (DP&L) RFP seeking qualified solid biofuel materials for use at two of its generating stations for the next three years to meet Ohio RPS requirements. DP&L will consider contracts for quantities starting in the 4th quarter of 2011 and in the years 2012-2014. Questions due by March 23, 2011.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1045995"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6214606761932373,"wiki_prob":0.6214606761932373,"text":"MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL)\nVolume 594: symposium v – thin films - stresses & mechanical...\nMicro-Wear Scan Test on the Car...\nVolume 594 (Symposium V – Thin Films - Stresses & Mechanical Properties VIII)\n1999 , 283\nMicro-Wear Scan Test on the Carbon Overcoats as Thin as 6 NM or Less\nT. W. Wu (a1), Thomas W. Scharf (a2), Hong Zhang (a3) and John A. Barnard (a2)\n* IBM Research, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120, tsai@almaden.ibm.com\n** University of Alabama, the Center for MINT, Dept. Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Tuscaloosa, AL\n*** IBM Storage Systems Division, San Jose, CA 95139\nDOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/PROC-594-283\nPublished online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011\nNitrogen-doped carbon (CNX) overcoats, ranging from 1 to 6nm in thickness, were deposited on magnetic recording disks by a DC-sputtering process. A critical load, based on the first occurrence of coating damage, was used as a semi-quantitative measure of the mechanical strength of these overcoats. It was found that the critical load decreased in a nearly linear manner with the CNX thickness from 6nm down to ∼2nm regime. However, the 1nm thick CNX coating deviated from this trend with a significant decrease in critical load. High-resolution SEM was employed to find the critical loads as well as to reveal the details of the coating wear morphology and the CNX failure mechanism.\nCOPYRIGHT: © Materials Research Society 2000\n1. Zhang, B., Ying, J. and Wei, B., Data Storage, Jan., 1998, p.49.\n2. Bhatia, C. Singh, Anders, S., Brown, I.G., Bobb, K., Hsiao, R. and Bogy, D.B., J. Tribology 120, 795(1998).\n3. Anoikin, E.V., Ng, G.S., Yang, M.M. and Chao, J.L., Elings, J.R., Brown, D.W., IEEE Trans. Magn. 34 (4), 1717(1998).\n4. Mate, C.M., Yen, B.Y., Miller, D. C. and Toney, M.F., to be published on IEEE Trans. Magn.\n5. Puchert, M.K., Timbrell, P.Y., Lamb, R.L. and McKenzie, D.R., J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 12, 727(1994).\n6. Wu, T.W., Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 356, 755(1994).\n7. Wu, T.W. and Frommer, J., Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. 522, 287(1998).\n8. Wu, T.W., Deline, V., Scharf, T. and Yen, B., in progress.\nISSN: -\nURL: /core/journals/mrs-online-proceedings-library-archive","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line330576"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6434106826782227,"wiki_prob":0.6434106826782227,"text":"(1) R v. A (Rape) [2013]\nOur client was charged with the rape of a female who he was in a previous consensual sexual relationship with. Our client was remanded in custody following which we prepared a Crown Court Bail Application for our client in which we succeeded. We acted on the instructions of our client and prepared the defence case thoroughly by considering the instruction of nationally recognised medical experts specialising in the analysis of rape and sexual offence victims to potentially give evidence for the defence. We prepared our own independent mobile phone text message extraction whilst working closely with senior defence Counsel. It was discovered that the allegations against our client were false, after seven months of dedicated work preparing the defence case and a three day trial at the Old Bailey, our client was acquitted of all charges.\n(2) R v. Y (Sexual Assault) [2013]\nWe represented a taxi driver who allegedly sexually assaulted a passenger. After failing to reach a verdict in our client’s first trial in 2012, the jury were discharged and a re-trial scheduled to take place in February 2013. Again, we prepared for fully for re-trial and instructing experienced defence Counsel to represent our client. We collated witness statements from dignified religious leaders who were to give evidence for the defence at trial. Following a three day re-trial, a separate jury were again unable to reach a verdict and our client was ultimately acquitted of the charge against him and no second re-trial was ordered.\n(3) R v. H (Honour Assault x3) [2013]\nWe represented three members of a family settled in the United Kingdom from Afghanistan. Our clients were charged with common assault against another family member motivated by the alleged victim’s refusal to conform to strong family values and religious belief. The crime alleged was flagged by the Crown as being an “honour” crime of violence which increased the seriousness of the allegations against our clients. We prepared the defence case in detail obtaining witness statements from other family members and instructed Counsel to represent each individual client at trial. After a full day trial in the Magistrates Court in front of the District Judge, all three defendants were acquitted of all charges.\n(4) R v. H (Domestic Violence) [2013]\nOur client was charged with common assault on his girlfriend. This was one of two separate allegations against our client. Our client was, being on licence at the time of the alleged offences, was immediately recalled into custody on the basis of the two allegations against him. We discovered that the Crown had a potential witness who was unwilling to co-operate with the police and an alleged victim who had made a withdrawal statement to the police one week after the initial allegation was made. It was therefore clear the allegation against our client was false and fuelled by jealousy and resentment. We therefore submitted our grounds to the Crown as to why the case ought to be discontinued. We received a letter from the Crown shortly thereafter confirming that the prosecution against our client had ceased. We are currently working on our clients release from custody.\n(5) R v. J (Murder)\nOur client was charged with murder with four other co-defendants. All co-defendants were convicted of the offence of murder whilst our client was acquitted after a lengthy trial. We worked hard to obtain witnesses from Abroad and 12 medical reports addressing the Defendant’s various physical and mental health issues. The Prosecution dismissed the charges against our client in the face of strong defence evidence.\n(6) R v. M (Rape x5)\nOur client was alleged to have raped his wife five times. We independently investigated the allegations and found that the complainant had lied in order to remain in UK by getting conviction against her husband as she was forced into marriage by her parents whom she did not like. We conducted detailed investigations and obtained overwhelming evidence to demonstrate the false allegations against our client following which we submitted this evidence to Court and Prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges on the very first court hearing in Crown Court.\n(7) R v. Z (Attempted Murder)\nOur client was charged with the attempted murder of his wife. We defended him and hired Sir Desmond De Silva QC as his barrister. After a lengthy trial the client was acquitted of attempted murder.\n(8) R v. P (Rape)\nOur client’s ex girlfriend made rape allegations against him out of jealousy against his partner who was pregnant with his baby. We had to make extensive investigations, contact several witnesses, obtain their statements and present a strong case to the Crown Prosecution Service. The Prosecution withdrew the charge against our client before the case went to the Crown Court and client was released from prison.\n(9) R v. P (Confiscation Proceedings)\nThe client brought £700,000 from abroad and deposited the sum into his bank accounts. These monies were confiscated by the Police as Proceeds of Crime under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA). We had to obtain huge amount of financial documents and witness statements from abroad to prove the legitimacy of the monies. The client and his wife were arrested and interviewed at the police station. After 6 months, we obtained all funds plus interest after the monies were released by the Police.\n(10) R v. C (Fraud x18)\nThe client was alleged to have stolen monies from his employer by producing false invoices. We independently investigated the financial documents and proved that the fraud could have been committed by any of the many other employees working with our client. We subsequently secured the acquittal of our client on the first day of trial.\n(11) R v. P (Robbery)\nOur client was charged with three others of robbing two complainants. We investigated the CCTV evidence at the scene, took photographs of the crime scene and demonstrated that our client was not at the scene of crime. We also conducted cell site analysis to show that our client was on telephone to his mother at the relevant time of the offence and as such could have not been involved in robbery. Our client was acquitted whereas his co-defendants were convicted.\n(12) R v. S & ors (Threats to Kill)\nWe represented 2 brothers as co-defendants charged with counts of threats to kill. We instructed Counsel in this matter where our clients pleaded not guilty to all charges. It was discovered at trial that the evidence of the alleged victim was unreliable and clear inconsistencies were identified within her evidence. We further discovered that the alleged victim had an ulterior motive for bringing such allegations against our clients which we raised in court, following which both defendants were acquitted of the charged offences.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1556822"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7412464022636414,"wiki_prob":0.7412464022636414,"text":"\"LET THERE BE LIGHT\" Ministries | home | Amazing Catholic Statements\nAbout the Pope | About the Priests | About the Catholic Church | About Heretics | About the Scriptures | About Mary | About Catholicism vs Other Religions | About Persecution\n(Please NOTE: With the apparent change in the attitudes of the Catholic Church in public towards other religious peoples, it becomes necessary to know what the Catholic church really teaches. The following clearly reveals that the Catholic Church has not changed at all, but is still the same as she was before–no matter what front she parades to the world! All statements given are from Catholic sources. These statements are found to be based upon pure tradition, and have no foundation what-so-ever in God’s word of truth. These statements are here provided to clearly show how the Catholic church instructs their membership to unquestionably submit to the traditions and commandments of men–which Christ declares to be vain worship (see Matthew 15:9) and which will bring His curse (see Jeremiah 17:5), as well as to help you avoid being trapped in this same snare.)\nAmazing Statements Regarding the Roman Catholic Church\nThe Catholic Church Never Teaches Erroneous Doctrine\nThe Catholic Church Will Never Change Any of its Doctrinal Beliefs\nThe Catholic Church Can Never Fall From God's Grace\nThe Catholic Church is Superior to Any Head of Government\nThe Laws of the Catholic Church Take Precedence Over Any Civil Laws\nThe Catholic Church and the State Are to be Combined, NOT Separated\nNone of the Doctrines of the Catholic Church Are Founded Upon the Scriptures\nWhen You Become a Member of the Catholic Church, You Are to Give Up Your Reasoning Powers and Obey Blindly Without Listening to Your Conscience\nNo One Should Have the Freedom to Choose What Non-Catholic Religion They Consider to be True\nNo One Should Have the Freedom to Express, or Publish, His Non-Catholic Religious Beliefs\nThe Catholic Church Has the Right to Use Power to Force Obedience\nThe Catholic Church Alone is the Hope, Salvation, and Refuge of the Christian\n“...Not least among the blessings which have resulted from the public and legitimate honor paid to the Blessed Virgin and the saints is the perfect and perpetual immunity of the Church from error and heresy. We may well admire in this the admirable wisdom of the Providence of God, who, ever bringing good out of evil, has from time to time suffered the faith and piety of men to grow weak, and allowed Catholic truth to be attacked by false doctrines, but always with the result that truth has afterwards shone out with greater splendor, and that men's faith, aroused from its lethargy, has shown itself more vigorous than before.”His Holiness Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas, Encyclical on the Feast of Christ the King, December 11, 1925, #22. http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pi11qp.htm\n\"For both the juridical mission of the Church, and the power to teach, govern and administer the Sacraments, derive their supernatural efficacy and force of the building up of the body of Christ from the fact that Jesus Christ, hanging on the Cross, opened up to His Church the fountain of those divine gifts, which prevent her from ever teaching false doctrine and enable her to rule them for the salvation of their souls through divinely enlightened pastors and to bestow on them an abundance of heavenly graces.\" Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (On the Mystical Body of Christ), Encyclical promulgated on June 29, 1943, #31.\nhttp://www.catholic_pages.com/dir/link.asp?ref=12477\n\"Therefore, let those who wish to be saved come to this pillar, to this foundation of the truth which is the Church; let them come to the true Church of Christ which, in her Bishops and in the Roman Pontiff, the supreme head of all, possesses the uninterrupted succession of apostolic authority, which has never had anything more closely at heart than to preach, to preserve, and to defend with all her strength the doctrine announced but the Apostles on the order of Jesus Christ; who...strengthened by the testimony and the wise writings of the Fathers, has sent down roots and still flourishes in all the countries of the earth, brilliant in the perfect unity of her faith, of the sacraments and of her spiritual sacred government....Let all those who oppose Us remember that heaven and earth will pass away, but that not one of Christ's words can pass away, that nothing can be changed in the doctrine which the Catholic Church has received from Jesus Christ to preserve, to defend, and to preach.\" Pope Pius IX, in 1847, (quoted in \"Papal Teachings: The Church\", by the Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, St. Paul Editions, Boston, 1962, par. 196).\n\"And just as this one Church cannot err in faith or morals...\" The Catechism of Trent, Article IX : \"I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints\".\nhttp://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tcreed09.htm\n\"The faith shall never vary in any age, for one is the faith which justifies the Just of all ages. It is unlawful to differ even by a single word from apostolic doctrine.\" Pope St. Leo the Great, Magno Munere, Epistle 82 to Emperor Marcian, PL 54; FOC, pp.113, 356; Sermon LXIII, PL 54:353; SS, vol. 2, p. 150, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\nhttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/6480/catholics/apostolic6chp4.html\n\"The Catholic Faith is such that nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away. Either it is held in its entirety, or rejected totally. This is the Catholic faith, which, unless a man believes faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.\" Pope Benedict XV, Ad Beatissimi, PTC:761, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Nothing can ever pass away from the words of Jesus Christ, nor can anything be changed which the Catholic Church received from Christ to guard, protect, and preach.\" Pope Pius IX, Ubi Primum, quoted in \"Our Glorious Popes\", published by Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Cambridge, MA: 1955, p. 157, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Nothing ever changes in the eternal Catholic doctrine.\" Pope John Paul II, LOR, #49, December 9, 1992, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Nothing new is to be allowed, for nothing can be added to the old. Look for the faith of the elders, and do not let our faith be disturbed by a mixture of new doctrines.\" Pope St. Sixtus III, De Jejun., sermon CXXIX; also Epistle to John of Antioch, VIII:7, FOC, p.,185-186, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Let nothing of the truths that have been defined be lessened, nothing altered, nothing added; but let them be preserved intact in word and in meaning.\" Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"For it is not allowable for anyone to change even one word nor allow one syllable to be passed over...\" St. Cyril of Alexandria, Epistle 55, PG 77:292, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Wherefore, if there be revealed to us anything new or different, we must in no way give consent to it, not even though it were spoken by an angel.\" St. John of the Cross, \"The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, rev. ed., Washington: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.\" (Pope Paul VI, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"The faith which God has revealed has not been proposed like a theory of philosophy, to be elaborated upon by human understanding, but as a divine deposit to be faithfully guarded and infallibly declared. Therefore, that sense of sacred dogmas is to be kept forever which Holy Mother Church has once declared, and it must never be deviated from on the specious pretext of a more profound understanding. Let intelligence, and science, and wisdom increase, but only according to the same dogma, the same sense, the same meaning. If anyone shall have said that there may ever be attributed to the doctrines proposed by the Church a sense which is different from the sense which the Church has once understood and now understands: let him be anathema.\" First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, ch. 4, DNZ:1800; \"On Faith,\" ch. 4, Canon 3, DNZ:1818, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"Our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church. We must hold this for certain: that the faith of the people at the present day is one with the faith of the people of past centuries. Were this not true, then we would be in a different church than they and, literally, the Church would not be One.\" St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Q. #14, art. 12, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955, (quoted in The Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 6: \"The Book of Sentimental Excuses\", Chapter 4: \"The Dogmas of Faith Admit No Alteration Whatsoever\").\n\"To the one true (Catholic) Church of Christ, We say, that stands forth before all, and that by the will of its Founder will remain forever the same as when He Himself established it for the salvation of all mankind.\nThe Mystical Spouse of Christ has in the course of the centuries remained unspotted, nor can it ever be contaminated.\" Pope Pius XI, Pontifex Maximus, in Mortalium Animos (The Promotion of True Religious Unity), Encyclical promulgated on January 6, 1928.\nhttp://www.catholicism.org/pages/mortal.htm\n\"The Spouse of Christ cannot commit adultery; she is incorrupt and modest, she knows one house, she guards with chaste modesty the holiness of one room.\" St. Cyprian, De Cath. Ecclesiae Unitate, #6 (Quoted by Pope Pius XI, Pontifex Maximus, in Mortalium Animos (The Promotion of True Religious Unity), Encyclical promulgated on January 6, 1928.\n\"[It is error to believe that] Kings and princes are not only exempt from the jurisdiction of the Church, but are superior to the Church in deciding questions of jurisdiction.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section VI, Errors About Civil Society, Considered Both in Itself and in its Relation to the Church, #54.\nhttp://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P9SYLL.HTM\n\"[It is error to believe that] In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the two powers (Church and civil), the civil law prevails.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section VI, Errors About Civil Society, Considered Both in Itself and in its Relation to the Church, # 42.\n\"[It is error to believe that] The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section VI, Errors About Civil Society, Considered Both in Itself and in its Relation to the Church, #55.\n\"The doctrines of the Catholic Church are entirely independent of Holy Scripture.\" Familiar Explanation of Catholic Doctrine, Rev. M. Muller, p.151.\n“Once he does so (joins the Catholic church), he has no further use for his reason. He enters the Church, an edifice illumined by the superior light of revelation and faith. He can leave reason like a lantern at the door.” Explanation of Catholic Morals, A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals, by John H. Stapleton, p 76, Benziger Brothers, NY, 1913.\n\"Obey blindly , that is, without asking reasons. Be careful, then, never to examine the directions of your confessor....In a word, keep before your eyes this great rule, that in obeying your confessor you obey God. Force yourself then, to obey him in spite of all fears. And be persuaded that if you are not obedient to him it will be impossible for you to go on well; but if you obey him you are secure. But you say, if I am damned in consequence of obeying my confessor, who will rescue me from hell? What you say is impossible.\" St. Alphonsus De Liguori, True Spouse of Christ, p 352, Benziger Brothers, NY.\n\"There is only one remedy for this evil (an over scrupulous conscience), and that remedy is absolute and blind obedience to a prudent director. Choose one, consult him as often as you desire, but do not leave him for another. Then submit punctiliously to his direction. His conscience must be yours for the time being. And if you should err in following him, God will hold him, and not you responsible.\" Explanation of Catholic Morals, A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals, by John H. Stapleton, p 24, Benziger Brothers, NY, 1913.\n\"[It is error to believe that] Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section III, Indifferentism, Latitudinarianism, #15.\n\"[It is error to believe that] Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section X, Errors Having Reference to Modern Liberalism, #78.\n\"[It is error to believe that] Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section X, Errors Having Reference to Modern LiberalismI, #79.\n\"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it....a pestilence more deadly to the state than any other. Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty.\n\"Here We must include that harmful and never sufficiently denounced freedom to publish any writings whatever and disseminate them to the people, which some dare to demand and promote with so great a clamor. We are horrified to see what monstrous doctrines and prodigious errors are disseminated far and wide in countless books, pamphlets, and other writings which, though small in weight, are very great in malice.\" Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism), Encyclical promulgated on August 15, 1832, #14 & 15.\nhttp://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/G16MIRAR.HTM\n\"[It is error to believe that] The (Catholic) Church has not the power of using force, nor has she any temporal power, direct or indirect.\" Pope Pius IX, The Syllabus (of Errors), Issued in 1864, Section V, Errors Concerning the Church and Her Rights, #24.\n\"Do not hold aloof from the Church; for nothing is stronger than the Church. The Church is thy hope, thy salvation, thy refuge.\" St. John Chrysostom, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. IX, Introduction to the Two Homilies on Eutropius, Homily II.\nhttp://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-09/npnf1-09-36.htm\n\"He who thinks he can remain a Christian by his own efforts, deserting the institutional bonds of the visible hierarchical Church, is deceiving himself. The fact remains that God established His Church as a bridge over which we must pass, leading from our unhappy lot to His salvation.\" Pope Paul VI, Mystici Corporis, PTC:1022 ff. 59, (quoted in Apostolic Digest, by Michael Malone, Book 4: \"The Book of Christians\", Chapter 1: \"Only Catholics Can Be Christians\").","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1202673"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5972957611083984,"wiki_prob":0.5972957611083984,"text":"This website is translated using machine translation. Please note that the content may not be accurate.\nHomeArea GuideEventsNewsBlog\nHomeArea GuideEventsNewsマイルートBlog\nMINATO Flag\n한글어\nAccommodation places where you can get a good night's rest.\nMinato-ku Tourist Information Center\n3F Concourse, Hamamatsucho Station, Tokyo Monorail, 2-4-12 Hamamatsucho, Minato-ku\nMinato-ku Tourist Information Center is located at Hamamatsucho Station on the Tokyo Monorail. The staff speak english (Korean daily) and provide information on various tourist information, restaurants, transportation and accommodation in Minato-ku. We also sell goods from minato-ku tourism association.\nTokyo Prince Hotel\n3-3-1 Shiba Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe hotel is nestled in a green Turf park opened in 1964. By the renewal of April 2017, while inheriting the traditional classical atmosphere, along with the production of a space with a glamorous and playful, we offer a space that is \"only here\" detached from the hustle and bustle of the city surrounded by greenery. The Tokyo Tower is a 2-minute walk from the hotel and its dynamic scenery is spectacular. It features 462 rooms, a variety of 9 restaurants and karaoke rooms, and 24 banquet halls for various occasions, making it a convenient base for sightseeing and business.\nThe Prince Park Tower Tokyo\nThe flagship brand hotel of Prince Hotel which has been standing in the green Shiba Park and has been welcoming and honing many visitors from all over the world, Japan as an oasis of the city. It features 603 rooms, 17 banquet halls with a focus on two main banquet halls with Japan largest size, a chapel and a temple surrounded by greenery, a wedding facility with three different wedding venues, and a variety of 11 restaurants and bars. In addition, the hotel has the functions necessary for people to gather and relaxing, such as a sports club with the latest facilities equipped with natural hot spring.\n2-10-4 Toranomon, Minato-ku\n\"Okura Prestige Tower\", a high-rise building that incorporates a Japanese accent in the sophistication and dynamism of Tokyo, and the middle-class building \"Okura\", which weaves the essence of Japanese beauty everywhere and provides hospitality tailored to each person This luxury hotel consists of two buildings of the Heritage Wing.\nShiodome Media Tower 1-7-1 Higashi Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe Park Hotel Tokyo starts from the 25th floor atrium of Shiodome Media Tower. We welcome our guests with hospitality in the form of “arrangement”, one of Japan’s aesthetic values, expressed through the medium of art.\nTokyo Grand Hotel\n2-5-2 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nIt is a 10-minute walk from Hamamatsucho station, a 2-minute walk from Shiba Koen Station, and great access to Rainbow Bridge, Odaiba, Azabu and Roppongi. 30 minutes from Haneda Airport using monorail.\nDai-Ichi Hotel Tokyo\n1-2-6 Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe hotel has more than 70 years of history and elegance and dignity. 2 minutes walk from Jr Shimbashi Station. Very close to Ginza.\nShinbashi Atago-yama Tokyu Rei Hotel\n1-6-6 Atago, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nHotel in a quiet environment with a lot of greenery that I do not think is the center of the city. It is close to the government office and also has the convenience of transportation to sightseeing spots such as Tokyo Tower and Odaiba.\nHotel Asia Kaikan\n8-10-32 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThis hotel is located in Akasaka, Aoyama and Roppongi area. Not only for Tokyo tourism, but also for business.\nHotel Mielparque Tokyo\n2-5-20 Shiba Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe hotel is located in the heart of the city and has an important time The Hotel Mielparque Tokyo is an inviting and soothing room with a calm and graceful atmosphere. A variety of facilities including a party room and a concert hall are also enriched. It is accessible from Haneda Airport and Tokyo Station, and is used in a wide range of scenes such as sightseeing, business, alumni Association, and family meals.\nHotel Monterey Akasaka\n924th Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nInspired by the façade of the townhouse in London, the classical taste is full of elegance. It blends beautifully with the refined Aoyama street skyline. In a place facing the greenery of the Akasaka site, the chic, elegant colors of gray and white and the soft color of the lime stone make the city colorful. It is recommended for business and leisure with convenient transportation to Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Tokyo Station. Enjoy a relaxing time in the city's hideaway.\nHotel Okura Tokyo\n2-10-16 Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nSince its opening in 1962, this international hotel has welcomed guests from all over the world. You can enjoy a high-quality moment with traditional Japanese cuisine, refined cuisine and heartwarming Japanese hospitality.\nIntercontinental Tokyo Bay Hotel\n1-16-2 Kaigan, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nYou can enjoy the best time with the view in the high quality space of Tokyo Bay side overlooking the Rainbow Bridge and Sumida River. It is a convenient location for leisure and business and is ideal for shopping in Ginza.\nHilton Tokyo Odaiba\n1-9-1 Daiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nLocated on the waterfront in Tokyo, this hotel offers panoramic ocean views. An outdoor whirlpool with a great view opens up an open space such as the Hermitage Spa TOKYO and the terrace seat of the restaurant where the sea breeze is felt. All rooms have balconies with breathtaking, beautifully sparkling Tokyo skyline and Tokyo Tower and Rainbow Bridge.\nThe 1948 Shiba Park Hotel was established in the quiet Shiba-Daimon area near the Tokyo Tower and the family temple of the Tokugawa family. While traveling to Tokyo, we would like you to stay in your own home. We welcome customers from all over the world with our philosophy of \"ascertain the way to entertain people.\"\nShinagawa Prince Hotel\n4-10-30 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nIn addition to the 3560 rooms, the entertainment town is beyond the boundaries of the hotel, including banquet halls and restaurants, as well as entertainment facilities such as Maxell Aqua Park Shinagawa, cinema and bowling center. Not to mention lodging and a meal, it is recommended as a spot to play without worrying about the rain near the station.\nGrand Prince Hotel New Takanawa\n3-13-1 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nConvention Hotel with a large banquet hall and about 900 rooms. All rooms have a balcony and the club lounge with Terrace is reopened in December 2018. (only for club floor users of 16f and 15f.) The hotel offers a variety of restaurants, including buffet, Japanese and Chinese cuisine, lounges and bars.\nThis historic hotel has a Japan garden of approximately 20,000 m². In the spring, about 210 cherry blossoms are bloom in the garden. The hotel has 16 ryokan \"Takanawa Hanakaji Road\", where you can spend special time in the tea room in the garden or in the private lounge or spa.\nGrand Nikko Tokyo Daiba\nThe Urban resort hotel is also well-located for sightseeing and shopping in Odaiba, with access from downtown and Haneda. The rooms and restaurants on the higher floors overlook Tokyo Tower and the Rainbow Bridge, offering panoramic views of Tokyo from the sky.\nShinagawa is the city that attracts attention as a new base in Tokyo. Featuring a fusion of hotels and entertainment, the 3,588 rooms and entertainment venues, including cinema and bowling, also have an Epson Shinagawa Aqua Stadium with aquariums and attractions. A new hotel stay is realized.\nHotel The Celestine Tokyo Shiba\n3-23-1 Shiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe hotel is a quiet atmosphere, called \"an adult Hideaway\". Relax in the lobby lounge where you can enjoy a relaxing tea time. In addition, the restaurant serves dishes made with Kagoshima ingredients as a hotel located on the site of the Satsuma clan.\nremm Roppongi\n7-14-4 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo Remm Roppongi Building\nIn the City That Never Sleeps, come and enjoy a quality night’s sleep at Hotel remm Roppongi.\nGrand Hyatt Tokyo\n6-10-3 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nGrand Hyatt Tokyo is a luxury hotel located in Roppongi, Tokyo, an international cultural city with state-of-the-art information and products. This lifestyle destination hotel is a global and dynamic place where you can experience a variety of experiences in Japan and overseas. Located in Roppongi Hills, Roppongi,\" a landmark in Roppongi, with more than 200 shops, restaurants, cinemas, museums and observation decks, it features 10 restaurants and bars. Available languages: English\nAkasaka Kaikan, Toyama Prefecture\n7-5-51, Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThere is a bustling area near Tamachi, Shin-Suji, and Ichiki-dori, and you can easily go to the surrounding spots such as Harajuku and Aoyama if you take a short walk.\nShinagawa Tobu Hotel\n4-7-6 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo\nThe hotel is perfect for business in a convenient location and quiet room. 5 minutes walk from Shinagawa station on the JR line.\n1 - 25 out of 97 displayed.\nTOKYO TOWER LIGHT UP\nE-mail Magazine\nMinato Tourism Photo Contest\nPrivate Guide Service\nDownload Travel Brouchures\nAbout MINATO Flag\nAbout Tokyo Minato City Travel & Tourism Association\nCopyright © Tokyo Minato City Travel & Tourism Association","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line457365"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7616101503372192,"wiki_prob":0.7616101503372192,"text":"A Common Committee between the Ministry of Higher Education, and the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology of Islamic Republic of Iran has made\nIn the aim at enhancing the academic and scientific relationships and following the process of fulfilling the contracts between the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of KRG and Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology of Islamic Republic of Iran, a delegate from Islamic Republic of Iran Consulate of Erbil visited the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Right after discussion about the relationship between them, they made a common committee to carry out the contract between both sides.\nToday, Monday, 8/8/2016, Dr. Yusuf Goran, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research welcomed Murtaza Abadi, the General Consulate of Islamic Republic of Iran in Erbil and a delegate from the consulate. In the meeting, Dr. Amanj, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research’s advisor, Dr. Muhamad Kalary, the director of the foreign affairs at the ministry were present.\nThe general consulate of Iran in Erbil mentioned the improvement of the relationship between both sides and showed his happiness to the visit of the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research of KRG to Islamic Republic of Iran and their universities. In another part of the meeting, the general consulate of Islamic Republic of Iran pointed to the points and detail of the contract and said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Universities wish to step up to fulfil the points of the contract.” He also said that Islamic Republic’s Universities have shown their readiness to open a Persian department at Sulaimani University in coordination of a staff of lecturers and two seats of PhD has been dedicated to Salahaddin University, as well.”\nIn another part of the meeting, Dr. Yusuf Goran, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research after skimming back of his visit to Islamic Republic of Iran said, “Our visit to Islamic Republic of Iran was so successful in which numbers of contract were signed. Now the majority of the contracts have been fulfilling and asked universities to visit Kurdistan Region and open their branches at the Kurdistan Region’s Universities.\nIn another part of the meeting and based on a suggestion of Dr. Yusuf Goran, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, there was made a common committee between both sides to follow their tasks and carrying out the points of the contract in a better way.\nIn the meeting also, the general consulate of Islamic Republic of Iran gave the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research some scientific books as gift. He also suggested having vocational university to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and opening a branch at one of the Kurdistan Region Universities to study vocational studies.\nAt the end of the meeting, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research said, “We thank your visit and your attention to the contract between both of us.” He also said, “We had seen the capacity of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Universities especially in the aspect of medicine, vocational, and technology. The instruction of the KRG prime minister and his deputy is emphasizing on tying the relationship between both of us.” He also said, “These types of contracts are the initiation of our works and we will be able to do more better works in the future.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1304210"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8491551280021667,"wiki_prob":0.8491551280021667,"text":"Android News / All News / Images Alleging To Show Xiaomi Redmi 5 Crop Up Online\nImages Alleging To Show Xiaomi Redmi 5 Crop Up Online\nBy Daniel Golightly\nA device suspected to be Xiaomi's Redmi 5 has allegedly leaked out via photos online. As with most leaked smartphone photos, the images themselves aren't exactly clear and definitely don't have the appearance of having been taken professionally. There are also some stark differences between earlier leaks and reports about the Xiaomi Redmi 5 and the uploaded images. That certainly doesn't mean that nothing can be gleaned from them but it is worth bearing in mind that this may not actually be the smartphone fans of the series have been waiting for.\nFirst and foremost, there appear to be several big differences between the device pictured in the images and the device which surfaced on TENAA back in February – which was also suspected to be the Redmi 5. Perhaps most notably, the earlier leak purported that Xiaomi's next budget smartphone would sport a full-metal body at the back. In the newly released images, the device appears to be formed from plastics. Moreover, one of the leaked images is of internally stored information about the device and shows it to be powered by an ARM processor clocked at 2 GHz. The TENAA listing, on the other hand, touted a processor clocked much lower at 1.4 GHz. From the newly uploaded images, there is also no sign of the expected rear fingerprint sensor and a front sensor or flash also appears to be absent. There are some similarities between the two conflicting devices, as well. While it's impossible to determine the size of the device pictured, it does look like it could be in the right range – at five inches. The front capacitive buttons are also present, as they should be if earlier reports about Xiaomi's up-and-coming device are to be believed.\nThe differences between the device in the photos and the earlier report out of the TENAA are not small, by any means. While it can't be said with any surety which is the real deal, it's also possible that neither device from the two reports is actually the Redmi 5. Worse still, any or all of the previous leaks could have contained inaccurate information due to the nature of leaks. There is really no way of determining whether or not the latest images are of Xiaomi's Redmi 5 until the device gets an official unveiling.\nSuspected Redmi 5 Leaked Images 01\nThe Excellent Moto G7 Smartphone Can Be Yours For Just $239\nDaniel Golightly\nDaniel has been writing for AndroidHeadlines since 2016. As a Senior Staff Writer for the site, Daniel specializes in reviewing a diverse range of technology products and covering topics related to Chrome OS and Chromebooks. Daniel holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Software Engineering and has a background in Writing and Graphics Design that drives his passion for Android, Google products, the science behind the technology, and the direction it's heading. Contact him at [email protected]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line644594"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.521619975566864,"wiki_prob":0.478380024433136,"text":"From Dún Síon to Croke Park – the autobiography of Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh\n« NYT on Jelinek\nDerrida deferred »\nFrom Dún Síon to Croke Park is the autobiography of Ireland’s best-known sports commentator, Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh. He has been commentating on Gaelic games for over 50 years and his voice is instantly recognisable to anyone with even a passing interest in the GAA [Gaelic Athletics Association]. This book tells his life story, from his birth in the Kerry Gaeltacht in August 1930 up to the present day.\nBorn Michael Moriarty, he attended secondary school at Coláiste Íosagáinin Cork, where he indulged his other great passion, the Irish language. At this point, he switched to the Irish version of his name, by which we all know him today.\nHis book could just as easily be titled ‘A chat with Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh’ , his writing style is that similar to his speech. His stories pour out in an easy rambling fashion, much like the flow of a conversation from one topic to the next. He progresses at a rapid pace through his earlier years, and is more inclined to dwell on more recent times, which is possibly a weakness in the book.\nPutting the GAA interest to one side, it is reasonable to guess that someone who was born in 1930 and lived through such changing times in Ireland would have interesting if not valuable insights into life at that time. It would seem to be an ideal stage for a natural storyteller like O’Muircheartaigh. A more detailed description of his childhood and early youth would have added a great deal to the book, and we could probably have survived with one less greyhound story to make room?\nHe could also have gone into a lot more detail in his wish list for the GAA, which he outlines in the closing pages. For example, the writer suggests that the GAA needs to take a stronger stance against alcohol abuse, but does not elaborate. He says they should do more to promote the Irish language, but doesn?t make any specific suggestions. He has a captive audience, but chooses not to take advantage of this circumstance to make his points more clearly. This is unfortunate. Any man who has seen as many games and been as closely involved in the GAA as he has, should by his very nature be worth listening to and should have many valuable contributions to make.\nTo get the other negative point out of the way, the book is not exciting. Rightly or wrongly, we think of Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh as a man who can broadcast on the sending of a postcard, and have his listeners hanging on desperately to hear in which corner the stamp is to be placed. This is his gift: an ability to transmit a sense of excitement and enthusiasm for whatever he is watching, over the airwaves.\nIt is not an ability that necessarily translates to the written word. Raymond Smith, Paul Kimmage, Tom Humphries and Con Houlihan are just some of the writers who can make an event seem more exciting on paper than Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh can. Their words can convey the beauty of seeing a footballer kicking a point from the sideline, 50 metres out from goal, or the elegance of a hurler pulling overhead on a low-flying sliotar, and sending it hurtling to the back of the net. Of course this is not a fair comparison, as these other men are all full-time print journalists. We’re not fair though, and Ó’Muircheartaigh’s outstanding success in his chosen field (where he outshines everyone else) leads us to these unrealistic expectations.\nFor all that, From Dún Síon to Croke Parkis a very enjoyable read. The author has a clear sharp memory and his account of All-Irelands past is fun to read. His vivid recollections bring back memories and will no doubt spawn several “do you remember when Player X scored that goal for County Y?” conversations in pubs all over Ireland. He is modest too, and points out more than once that he is merely relaying the great deeds of others, not performing them himself.\nHe covers a massive amount of games in considerable detail. He steps outside his GAA boundaries and tells us of trips to Ryder Cups, horse races, and of course dog races. Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh conveys details as one might remember directions to the local shop. While this leads to the problem outlined above, there is no sense that he is trying to impress. He is not being arrogant, boasting about his amazing powers of recollection. Neither is he name-dropping, despite a copious volume of names to drop. He is merely telling stories about people who happen to be famous for certain things.\nÓ’Muircheartaigh’s easy-going sense of humour comes across clearly in his book. Not that he indulges in telling jokes as such, but in the self-deprecating tales he tells, such as the story of the time he drove to Dundalk in the snow to put money on a couple of greyhounds, or even his account of how he first came to work for RTE [Radio Telefis Eireann -Ireland’s State broadcaster]. Each candidate was to be tested on his ability to commentate for radio. To make the test more accurate, the examiners were locked away and could not see the actual game. Young Micheál quickly realised that he only knew one player from either team, but knew him (and his friends, family, club etc) quite well. Abandoning the reality on the pitch, he proceeded to ad-lib the commentary and build the whole game around this one player, making him the focal point for all the action.\nIf you are not a fan of Gaelic games, this book will not convert you. At €35 for the hardback edition, neither is it a bargain. On the other hand, if you follow Gaelic games then you will most likely get something from this book. It won’t be a thrilling edge-of-the-seat account of one game after another; it won’t be a detailed memoir of life in Ireland through the last 70 years; it won’t be a behind the scenes look at life as a broadcast journalist. It will be an enjoyable read; it will be accurate; it will be amusing, interesting and entertaining. It will be a few hours spent chatting with Micheál Ó’Muircheartaigh. That should be enough.\nAll commentators have their quota of humourous remarks. The following is a selection of some of MicheᬠӒMuircheartaigh?s more colourful moments on air:\n?In the first half they played with the wind. In the second half they played with the ball.?\n?… and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I’ll tell ye a little story. I was in Times’ Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said ‘I suppose ye wouldn’t have the Kerryman (Paper) would ye?’ To which, the Egyptian behind the counter turned to me and he said ‘do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?’… he had both…so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet…?\n?Anthony Lynch, the Cork corner back, will be the last person to let you down ? his people are undertakers.?\n?I saw a few Sligo people at Mass in Gardiner street this morning and the omens seem to be good for them, the priest was wearing the same colours as the Sligo jersey! 40 yards out on the Hogan stand side of the field Ciaran Whelan goes on a rampage, it’s a goal. So much for\nreligion.?\n?Colin Corkery on the 45 lets go with the right boot. It?s over the bar. This man shouldn’t be playing football. He’s made an almost Lazarus-like recovery from a heart condition. Lazarus was a great man but he couldn’t kick points like Colin Corkery.”\n?1-5 to 0-8.. well from Lapland to the Antarctic, that’s level scores in any man’s language.?\n?Teddy looks at the ball, the ball looks at Teddy?\n?He grabs the sliotar, he’s on the 50…… he’s on the 40…. he’s on the 30………. he’s on the ground?\n?Pat Fox out to the 40 and grabs the sliothar, I bought a dog from his father last week. Fox turns and sprints for goal. the dog ran a great race last Tuesday in Limerick. Fox to the 21 fires a shot, it goes to the left and wide….. and the dog lost as well.?\n?Sean Og O Hailpin…. his father’s from Fermanagh, his mother’s from Fiji, neither a hurling stronghold.?\nBooks, Irish Culture, Reviews","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line195944"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6164221167564392,"wiki_prob":0.3835778832435608,"text":"VEOLIA CROWNED AT PRINCES FACTORY\nVeolia Water Technologies will supply a new anaerobic treatment plant and associated biogas treatment system to the largest food production site operated by international food and drink group Princes.\n(Photo is not of Princes site but is an example of another anearobic treatment plant)\nThe landmark project was signed into action on 1st July 2019, with Veolia Water Technologies scheduled to finish the commissioning by 2020. The parties developed a strong working relationship, which is helping ensure the project stays on track. Further opportunities have been identified to continue improving aerobic plant operations on-site, after the initial installation is complete.\nSpeaking on the project, Rob James, Factory Manager at Princes commented: “We’re delighted to have started work with Veolia Water Technologies and look forward to seeing its new anaerobic digestion plant and associated biogas treatment commissioned at our Long Sutton site. The tender process during this project was highly competitive, but Veolia Water Technologies’ innovative Biothane Advanced Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) solution set it apart from other competitors. We have developed a strong relationship with the company’s team and look forward to working with them towards our target commissioning date.”\nTo meet the client’s needs, Veolia Water Technologies worked with its internal techno centre, Biothane. The company is one of the world’s leading companies in the field of biological treatment of industrial wastewater and biogas with more than 40 years of experience. Biothane’s technical expertise and its position within the Veolia Water Technologies organisation made it the ideal partner for planning a much-improved anaerobic digestion system. Together, the team worked to craft a solution bespoke to Princes’ needs.\nThe site, which is located in Long Sutton will be fitted with the third generation of UASB technology. The Biothane Advanced UASB process maximises the conversion of the organic contamination in the production effluent to biogas. The biogas produced will serve as a source of energy for the production site. The plant capacity is able to produce approx. 20,000 MWh per annum of gross calorific value. This corresponds with an approximate annual average gas consumption of 1700 UK households. The effluent water produced is of high quality and will, after final treatment, be discharged to river.\nSpeaking on the project, Simon Emms, Business Development Manager at Veolia Water Technologies commented: “It’s great to have been awarded this contract. Together with Biothane, we have devised an innovative concept that will deliver real benefits to Princes. Our expertise in the technologies and services, as well as our commitment to supporting the customer through their buying journey made us the obvious choice. We’re really excited to deliver the project and can’t wait to start looking at future opportunities.”\nFor more information about Veolia Water Technologies, please visit: www.veoliawatertechnologies.com. For more information about Biothane, please visit: www.biothane.com.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line956612"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6907666325569153,"wiki_prob":0.3092333674430847,"text":"MANCASS News and Programme 2013-14\nNew publications from the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies:\n- Nicholas J. Higham and Martin Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World, London, Yale University Press, 2013.\n- Nicholas J. Higham ed., Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint, Donington, Shaun Tyas, 2013.\n- Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Brian W. Schneider, ed., Royal Authority in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford, Archaeopress, BAR British Series 584, 2013.\n- Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Brian W. Schneider, ed., Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Volume 13, Woodbridge, Boydell, 2013.\nTalks and conferences 2013-14\nAfter ordinary meetings members are welcome to join the Director and the speaker for dinner at their own expense.\n5pm, Samuel Alexander Building Room S. 1.7\nDr Rory Naismith, of the University of Cambridge, will speak on ‘The Forum Hoard of Anglo-Saxon Coins’\n5pm, room to be announced\nDr Susan Youngs, formerly of the British Museum, will speak on ‘The Prince and the Hanging-bowl: the British presence at Prittlewell’\nDr David Woodman, of the University of Cambridge, will speak on ‘The writing of history in twelfth-century Worcester’\nMonday 3 March 2014: The Toller Lecture\nProfessor John Hines, University of Cardiff, will speak on ‘A new chronology and new agenda: the problematic sixth century’ exploring the issues raised by the recent high-precision radio-carbon dating project; 6pm, in the Historic Reading Room, John Rylands Library Deansgate, followed by a free wine reception, followed by dinner at Pesto, Deansgate (about £25 per person). If you wish to attend the post-lecture dinner please book by Monday 24 Feb 2013 with Gale Owen-Crocker.\nThursday 3 April 2014: Joint meeting of MANCASS and the Manchester Medieval Society\nDr Kevin Leahy, of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, will speak on ‘The Staffordshire Hoard’; 6pm in the Historic Reading Room, John Rylands Library Deansgate. If you wish to attend the post-lecture dinner please book by Thursday 27 March 2014 with Susan Thompson.\nThe MANCASS Easter Conference on ‘Womanhood in Anglo-Saxon England’ will take place at Hulme Hall, The University of Manchester. The Conference will be directed by Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, The University of Manchester, in association with Dr Charles Insley, The University of Manchester, and Dr Christine Rauer, University of St Andrews. Offers of 20 minute papers should be submitted, with a short abstract, to Gale Owen-Crocker by 30 November 2013. Registration enquiries should be directed to Brian Schneider.\nLabels: MANCASS, manchester, Manchester Medieval Society, medieval culture, medieval literature\nCFP: The Medieval Chronicle - Die Mittelalterliche Chronik - La Chronique au Moyen Age\nSeventh International Conference\n7th-10th July 2014\nThe Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The University of Liverpool is delighted to announce that the Seventh International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle will take place at the University of Liverpool, 7th–10th July 2014.\nKeynote speakers include: Professor Pauline Stafford (University of Liverpool), Professor Anne D. Hedeman (University of Kansas), Professor Marcus G. Bull (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and Professor Christopher Young and Dr Mark Chinca (University of Cambridge).\nThe aim of the seventh conference is to follow the broad outline of the previous six conferences, allowing scholars who work on different aspects of the medieval chronicle (historical, literary, art-historical) to meet, announce new findings and projects, present new methodologies, and discuss the prospects for collaborative research.\nThe main themes of the conference are:\n1. Chronicle: history or literature?\nThe chronicle as a historiographical and/or literary genre; genre identification; genre confusion and genre influence; typologies of chronicle; classification; conventions (historiographical, literary or otherwise) and topoi.\n2. The function of the chronicle\nThe function of chronicles in society; contexts historical, literary and social; patronage; reception of the text(s); literacy; orality; performance.\n3. The form of the chronicle\nThe language(s) of the chronicle; inter-relationships of chronicles in multiple languages; prose and/or verse chronicles; manuscript traditions and dissemination; the arrangement of the text.\n4. The chronicle and the representation of the past\nHow chronicles record the past; the relationship with ‘time’; how the reality of the past is encapsulated in the literary form of the chronicle; how chronicles explain the past; motivations given to historical actors; the role of the Divine.\n5. Art and Text in the chronicle\nHow art functions in manuscripts of chronicles; do manuscript illuminations illustrate the texts or do they provide a different discourse that amplifies, re-enforces or contradicts the verbal text; origin and production of illuminations; relationships between author(s), scribe(s) and illuminator(s).\nPapers in English, French or German are invited on any aspect of Medieval Chronicle. Papers will be allocated to sections to give coherence and contrast; authors should identify the main theme to which their paper relates. Papers read at the conference will be strictly limited to twenty (20) minutes in length. The deadline for abstracts is Monday 21 October 2013 (maximum length one (1) side A4 paper, including bibliography). Please email your abstract to the conference organisers.\nThe conference will take place on the south campus of the University of Liverpool, near the centre of Liverpool, Merseyside, UK. Liverpool has its own airport – Liverpool John Lennon Airport – with connections to many European cities. Travel through Manchester Airport (which has direct train connections to Liverpool) is also possible. Accommodation will be in Vine Court, newly built en-suite accommodation on the South Campus, fifteenth minutes walk from the centre of Liverpool and Lime Street Station. A variety of guest houses and hotels (at a range of prices) are similarly available near the university.\nAdditional information about costs, accommodation, travel and registration will be provided shortly on a dedicated conference website.\nFor further information please contact the organisers.\nDr Godfried Croenen\nSchool of Cultures, Languages & Area Studies\nLiverpool, Merseyside,\nL69 7ZR, UK\nDr Sarah Peverley\nDr Damien Kempf\nL69 7WZ, UK\nLabels: CFP, conference, Liverpool, medieval chronicles, medieval culture, medieval literature\nCFP: Fighting Dragons and Monsters: Heroic Mythology\nThe International Association for Comparative Mythology 8th Annual Conference\nNational Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia\nYerevan, Armenia\nWe are happy to announce that the 8th Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology is to be held at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (Yerevan, Armenia) from May 24 to May 26, 2014. All members are warmly invited to give a paper and to participate in the discussions.\nOur topic (as well as the conference title) this year will be: Fighting Dragons and Monsters: Heroic Mythology.\nThe main focus this time will be on the Indo–European, Ancient Near Eastern, and the Caucasus mythology; however, papers about mythology of other regions of the world that conform to the conference topic are also welcome.\nA list of prospective talks will be published on our website. Please take note of the following:\nPlease send us the title of your paper as soon as possible. That will substantially facilitate planning.\nBy January 15, 2014, please send, if you intend to participate, a short (300 words or less) abstract of your talk to this address. The abstracts will be reviewed by a selection committee; the selected abstracts will be published on our website.\nPaper Length\nThe expected paper length is 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion.\nThe language of the conference is English.\nConference fee for the participants from North America, Australia, the EU, and Northeast Asia is $50, which will cover the conference dinner and reception. Students from the aforementioned countries and participants from other regions can participate for a reduced fee – $10. For the payment options please see below.\nAlso, those of you who are not yet official members of IACM, please consider joining the association! The yearly fee is $35 (it is $10 for students and members from countries outside North America, Australia, the EU, and Northeast Asia).\nLabels: CFP, conference, IACM, monsters, myths\nCFP: Late Medieval Court Records\nIMC Leeds 7-10 Jul 2014\nFrom the twelfth century on, public courts and the institutionalized legal process obtained a prominent profile in many parts of Europe. Legal authorities and litigants increasingly strove to record and thus shape the legal process through documenting their activities. The sources they produced, grouped together under the term ‘court records’, form a true goldmine for historians. They throw light on historical events and processes that are otherwise difficult if not impossible to access, from legal procedures to daily life and language, to cosmology. Small wonder that some of the most important works on premodern history, like Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou and Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms, have drawn extensively on this type of source.\nYet these sources are not without difficulties for the historian using them. Not only are they often relatively hard to access, requiring extensive palaeographical and linguistic skills, but the information contained in them is seldom straightforward. Court records often purport to contain more than they do, and usually contain more than they seem to do. They are not only very rich but also very challenging sources.\nThat is why we think it valuable to make this historical source, the court record, the focus of a strand of sessions at the twentieth International Medieval Congress in Leeds from 7-10 July 2014. We hope to gather scholars from different regions to compare and discuss the great variety of records produced by law courts in the later medieval period, as well as the practical and methodological issues connected to their study. The idea of this IMC strand is to form a basis for further discussion and cooperation between early career researchers working with late medieval court records in the future.\nWe therefore invite proposals from current postgraduate, postdoctoral and other early career researchers in History and any other relevant subject area, for papers of 20 minutes on the topic of late medieval court records. Abstracts must be 200 words maximum. The proposals must include name, institution, contact information, paper title and abstract.\nPossible topics for papers include but are not limited to:\n• Methodology of court records\n• Gendering court records\n• Court records and the legal process\n• Court records and urban society\n• The voice of the ‘common man’ in court records\n• Court records and social/religious deviancy\n• The comparative approach of court records\n• Court records and legal/social/political conflict\nProposals are to be sent to Frans Camphuijsen by September 22nd 2013.\nPanel convenors: Sarah Crawford (University of Sydney), James Page (University of St. Andrews) and Frans Camphuijsen (University of Amsterdam)\nLabels: CFP, court records, Leeds IMC, medieval culture\nCFP: \"Horror\" - 35th Annual Conference of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA)\nHyatt Regency Hotel & Conference Center\nThe area chair for Horror of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association invites all interested scholars to submit papers on any aspect of horror in literature, film, television, digital and online as well as general culture. Given the strong showing of work on horror cinema in recent years, we hope to continue this tradition, but also to diversify into new and unconventional areas, especially with the addition of roundtable sessions on a variety of popular topics.\nParticularly encouraged are presentations that fit this year’s conference theme, \"Popular and American Culture Studies: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.\"\nIf you are interested in being a presenter, please send a detailed abstract (300-400 words) for a paper of 15 to 20 minutes reading time. Please provide contact information, such as name, mailing address, phone number, and especially e-mail address.\nIf you want to propose a panel of four speakers, or three speakers and one respondent, please include the following information: panel title; name and contact information of the panel chair; an abstract for each paper; contact information for each presenter.\nThe deadline for submissions is November 1, 2013.\nFor information about the registration process, registration fees, membership, graduate student awards and course credits, and information about travel and location, please consult the SWPACA's official web site.\nPlease submit abstracts and panel proposals at the conference website.\nLabels: CFP, conference, horror, popular culture, SWPACA\nCFP: The Geographic Imagination: Conceptualizing Places and Spaces in the Middle Ages\n2nd Annual Indiana Medieval Graduate Student Consortium Conference\nKeynote Speaker: Professor Geraldine Heng\nPerceval Fellow and Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and Women’s studies at the University of Texas at Austin\nThe students of the Indiana Medieval Graduate Student Consortium (IMGC) are pleased to announce that we are accepting submissions for the second annual IMGC conference, 'The Geographic Imagination: Conceptualizing Places and Spaces in the Middle Ages', to take place on 28 Feb-1 Mar 2014 at the University of Notre Dame.\nThe transnational turn in the humanities over the last two decades has put increasing pressure on our ideas of nationhood and has provided us with a liberating awareness of the constructedness of the spaces we study. New methodologies have developed in response to this pressure as scholars turn to comparative approaches, borderland studies, histoire croisée, studies of empire, and oceanic models in order to accommodate the ambiguities of nationhood and of conceptions of space. Suggested by seminal transnational studies, such as Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic, many critics now study “the flows of people, capital, profits and information.” Recently, David Wallace’s ambitious literary history of Europe has adopted a similarly fluid approach to culture, avoiding a study of “national blocks” of literature, organizing itself instead along transnational itineraries that stretch beyond the European sphere. The Middle Ages offer a particularly broad and rich era in which to encounter fluid notions of space, as any glance at a medieval map such as the famous Hereford mappa mundi invitingly suggests. We invite presentations from all fields to explore any aspect of the medieval “geographic imagination,” of conceptions of space, place, and nation: ideas of geography, cartography, transnational identities and networks, intercultural encounters, mercantile routes, travelogues, rural and urban spaces, religious places, and concepts of locality and local identities.\nThe IMGC is delighted to announce that our keynote speaker this year will be Dr Geraldine Heng, well known to many of us for her exhaustive and provocative study of medieval romance, Empire of Magic, and her subsequent work on race in the Middle Ages.\nPlease submit a 300 word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by 15 Dec, 2013 on the conference website. Proposals should include the title of the paper, presenter's name, institutional and departmental affiliation, and any technology requests.\nThis conference is generously sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. The Nanovic Institute is committed to enriching the intellectual culture of Notre Dame by creating an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students and faculty to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs, and institutions that shape Europe today.\nLabels: CFP, conference, medieval culture, medieval literature, medieval romance, place, postgraduate, space\nDress and Textile Discussion Group (University of Manchester)\nProgramme for 2013-14\nWhere: TBC – please see reminders\nDr Brenda King: Stitch and Stone. The Leek Embroidery Society and its collaboration with Gothic Revival Architects\nAlexandra Lester-Makin: The Kempston Embroidery Revisited\nDr John Peter Wild: Cotton - the New Wool. A Developing Tale from Roman Egypt\nDr Chris Monk: Divine Clothing: Adorning God and the Patriarchs in the Rylands Bible Historiée\nThursday 1st May 2014\nDr Elizabeth Coatsworth: Mrs Christie and English Medieval Embroidery\nFor more information, please contact Alexandra Lester-Makin.\nLabels: medieval culture, medieval literature, textiles, University of Manchester\nReview: House of Fear, ed. by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris, 2011)\nPublished in 2011, House of Fear is an anthology of haunted house short stories, edited by Jonathan Oliver and featuring stories by writers such as Adam Nevill, Sarah Pinborough and Christopher Priest. I picked those three names at random, as the collection’s contents page is an impressive list of well-established UK horror writers (and a couple of American cousins), with a small number of new voices being introduced alongside.\nI was asked to review this book for another site I write for, but as that review will be somewhat brief, I thought I’d write a longer post here so I can talk in a bit more detail about the collection. This book definitely deserves the additional space.\nThe theme (or setting or motif – depending on the way it has been interpreted) that organizes House of Fear is the haunted house. Each of the nineteen stories features a ‘house’ of some description (though ‘home’ is probably a more accurate term), and each one presents a ‘haunting’ of sorts. It wouldn’t be fair to describe House of Fear as a book of ghost stories, however, as ‘haunting’ is to be understood in its widest sense. That said, there are a fair few ghosts within the pages.\nThe book as a whole is excellent. The editor has done a fantastic job in putting the collection together – in terms of both selection and organization – and Oliver’s introductions to each story are complimentary without being cloying. It’s also nice to read a short story collection with a consistently high standard of writing. There are no weak links in House of Fear, no stories being held up by their more secure and accomplished neighbours. So, when I talk about the high points in the rest of the review, I’m referring to my own personal taste as a reader.\nThe collection opens with Lisa Tuttle’s excellent ‘Objects in Dreams may be Closer than they Appear’, which sets up expectations for the rest of the collection. Tuttle’s bittersweet tale of a divorced couple’s return to a house they almost bought at the beginning of their marriage begins with a semi-nostalgia laced with rational reflection, before drawing the reader (as the narrator herself is drawn) into an unsettling, obsessive hunt for something just out of reach. The chilling ending packs a real punch. Tuttle’s story is followed by Steven Volk’s ‘Pied-à-terre’ which is a quite different sort of story with a quite different sort of punch – I’ll admit I welled up a bit when I realized what was happening in Volk’s very moving tale. It is a mark of Volk’s talent as a writer that he was able to handle (avoiding spoilers) such emotional material without sentimentalizing or becoming mawkish.\nOf the other stories in the collection, Adam Nevill’s ‘Florrie’ and Jonathan Green’s ‘The Doll’s House’ were particularly favourites, though Rebecca Levene’s ‘The Windmill’ was also fantastic. Nevill’s tale of a young man moving into a house made vacant by the death of its elderly owner was perfectly paced and a deft study in tension-building. This story resonated with me, as, like Nevill’s protagonist, my house previously belonged to an old lady who had lived in it her entire adult life. And, like Nevill’s protagonist, I found that the previous owner’s family had simply abandoned her furniture (and some personal belongings) after the house was sold. I am happy to be able to say that’s where the similarities end, as Nevill’s tale is an off-beat horror which (as good horror should) makes you smile just before it terrifies you.\nGreen’s story should be given to all aspiring writers trying desperately to come up with the perfect ‘idea’, the plot that is so original it will blow their readers’ minds, because ‘The Doll’s House’ is a beautiful example of why that doesn’t matter. A story of the return of a creepy doll’s house is hardly a mind-blowingly original idea, but Green brings his characters (and the house itself) to life with skill and a light touch. In Green’s hands, the familiarity of the story’s basic premise is transformed into a fresh and compelling piece of writing. And the ending is exquisite (at least, it is for those of us who like our horror shocking).\n‘The Windmill’ is one of several stories in the collection that reinterpret the haunted house by widening an understanding of ‘home’, and the places in which we might temporarily reside. Levene’s protagonist is a drug dealer serving a prison sentence. With a limited view from his cell, Lee is able to watch a windmill that he knows from his time outside. Unrepentant, Lee is determined to continue dealing from within the prison, but things don’t work out quite the way he planned. Levene mixes down-to-earth realism with a growing sense of the supernatural to produce a story filled with creeping dread.\nOne final mention (as I don’t have the space here to go through each story in detail) is Christopher Fowler’s ‘An Injustice’. Fowler’s tale begins with a group of student ghost-hunters – as misguided, opinionated and naïve as that sounds – but evolves into something quite different, and really unexpected. Of all the stories in the book, this is the one that genuinely ‘haunted’ me. I was reading the book one story at a time in between shifts and bands at a music festival, which gave me a great opportunity to compare how long each one lingered in my imagination after I’d finished it. Fowler’s easily won – the final ‘reveal’ just doesn’t go away.\nAs I said, these stories were particular favourites, but the others stories in the collection are all strong. If I had to make criticisms, I found Christopher Priest’s ‘Widow’s Weeds’ a little disappointing. Priest returns to the figure of the professional magician, so a comparison with The Prestige is inevitable. I didn’t feel ‘Widow’s Weeds’ had the intrigue or narrative power of the earlier novel, and the characterization (even allowing for the restrictions of form) was underdeveloped.\nRobert Shearman’s ‘The Dark Space in the House in the House in the Garden at the Centre of the World’ also left me a little underwhelmed. A clever premise – which is almost impossible to sum up without ruining the story – promised to be ‘an unusual story of a house in a garden and how people within that house find out what it is to be human’ (in Oliver’s words). The problem for me was that there was little outside of the premise, and while this was indeed unusual and clever, it wasn’t quite enough to sustain my interest.\nNevertheless, as I said, this is a matter of personal taste. I admit I can be quite traditional in my reading tastes, and usually gravitate towards strong plots and well-developed characterization. On the whole, House of Fear delivered this, as well as a few good doses of horror (of differing types).\nSo, overall, a resounding recommendation. This is a must-read for horror fans. I would go as far as to say – aside from the collections I have edited, of course – this is my favourite short story anthology of recent years.\nFor more information about House of Fear, please check out the publishers’ website.\nLabels: ghosts, haunted house, horror, house of fear, jonathan oliver, reviews, short stories, solaris\nCFP: The Medieval Chronicle - Die Mittelalterliche...\nCFP: Fighting Dragons and Monsters: Heroic Mytholo...\nCFP: \"Horror\" - 35th Annual Conference of the Sout...\nCFP: The Geographic Imagination: Conceptualizing P...\nDress and Textile Discussion Group (University of ...\nReview: House of Fear, ed. by Jonathan Oliver (Sol...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line523062"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6122037768363953,"wiki_prob":0.38779622316360474,"text":"OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA — WHO EVER HE IS — 1\n“Buhari Administration Mid-Term Fact Sheet.” Advertisement in\nPUNCH, June 6, 2017, pages 29-32.\nThe four paged advertisement was not signed by anybody or Ministry or the Presidency. The shameless purveyors of a great deal of the half-truths and outright falsehoods in the narrative could not summon the courage to claim responsibility for it. But, given my close study of this particular government, it bears all the finger prints of two people – the first is a Federal Minister; the second is a Senior Special Adviser to a very, very, very top official of Buhari’s government. The last time the President or Head of State of Nigeria was served by such individuals who have no regard for truth was during the Abacha regime. That horrible government had a Senior Special Adviser, Wada Nas, who was nicknamed by me as Wada Nasty. It also had a Minister of Information, who could not distinguish between lai and falsehood. For Abacha’s “dandy duo”, two plus two could be four or any other figure that was in the government’s interest. Buhari has his own now.\nThe reason for this open letter to the President is simple. The Presidency has done itself irreparable damage, irrespective of whether it was Buhari or Osinbajo who authorized the publication of that advert. It is so abysmally devoid of anything resembling information, while at the same time representing amateurish propaganda as to be disclaimed by anybody expecting our regard as the nation’s leader. The opening paragraph betrayed the intention to deceive. Under the heading Growth in Agriculture and Solid Minerals, it claimed as follows:\n“The number of sub-sectors of the economy experiencing negative growth has almost halved; falling from 29 sub-sectors for the whole of 2016 to 16 in Q1 2017. Growth in manufacturing has returned to positive territory after five quarters of negative growth. It grew by 1.36% in Q1 after falling to 7.0% in Q1 2016.”\nThere was no preamble; no overall summary of the economic situation and trends in the two years under review. Readers were not told what the targets were and the actual achievements for the period under review or for the last full year, 2016, when Buhari was in charge.\nOnly discernible readers of that nonsense quoted above would realize that the inept defenders of the Buhari administration had just partly confessed the economic disaster of the last two years. Manufacturing was down 7% in Q1 of 2016 – after seven months of Buhari stewardship. It went down even more in Q2-4 of 2016. But, the report deliberately failed to mention that. The authors of this atrocious report even missed the implication of a mere 1.36% growth after falling more than 7% in previous quarters – manufacturing is still well below where Buhari found it in 2015! That is a fact they want us to ignore.\n“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” (I.F.Stone, US Journalist, 1929).\nAs an under graduate in the university in the US, I was shocked when reading an article, in 1965, in the Boston Globe, the largest selling paper in New England zone of the US and I.F. Stone’s remark was quoted. Growing up in Nigeria, top government officials – Governors, Ministers etc – were presumed to be decent people who would not deliberately deceive the people they govern. It was incredible to me that, there in God’s Own Country, governments could be run by liars. Today, I know too well that Stone was right; that the last group of people to trust absolutely is those in any government. I have learnt that eternal vigilance is essential if people are not going to be misled by the compulsive liars running all governments. Buhari administration with very little to show for two years in office and sending out this report has just reinforced that belief that you can’t trust these people anymore.\nInstead of providing a standard report which would highlight various aspects of the economic performance, the propagandists went for selection. They presented what they though would portray success where there was none and they relied more on the 2017 achievements, instead of providing report covering the two years of Buhari.\nIt is an established fact that Buhari came into office in May 29, 2015, and unlike other Presidents in history set a record of five months before appointing the Ministers who were to assist him to manage the economy. Sycophants praised him for what was a serious blunder – especially for a President who self-admittedly knows little about economics. The fate of Nigeria was thus left in the hands of civil servants in the first seven months of his tenure. It is not only in politics that a week is regarded as a long time. It is true of national economies too. That is why serious presidents wake up calling their Chief Economic Adviser first and he is the last person they talk to before tucking into bed. Buhari had none. Worse still, he has an unhealthy disdain for Ministers as he made clear in those early months.\nBUILDING WITHOUT FOUNDATION; FLYING WITHOUT COMPASS.\nThe young, 39, new President of France, Macon, campaigned on a comprehensive economic programme. He took office less than a month after he was elected and he has a cabinet in place and the framework of his economic policy is almost ready – all in less than a month. He made them clear in his inauguration address. Buhari took office at 70-plus after a campaign bereft of any ideas about economic policy and his address on May 29, 2015 revealed that the country was building without foundation and flying without compass. Two years have shown we are in serious trouble. This government only has a plan to borrow and spend. God help us….\nFOOD SCARCITY, BANNED IMPORTS AND THE GRIM REAPER\nBEYOND THE NATIONAL DISCOURSE ON RESTRUCTURING: WHAT SHOULD BE THE STATUS OF LAGOS?\nby Dele Sobowale · Published September 29, 2017\nWHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE 2019 BUDGET\nby Dele Sobowale · Published December 31, 2018\nNext story BAMAYI WROTE A BIOGRAPHY TO DENOUNCE HIMSELF.\nPrevious story PROFESSOR SAGAY AND THE ASO ROCK DISEASE.– 1","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line627458"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9163802266120911,"wiki_prob":0.9163802266120911,"text":"Con O’Callaghan named Footballer of the Month for August\nFri, 23rd August 2019\nThe PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month Award winners have been announced with Tipperary’s Noel McGrath and Dublin’s Con O’Callaghan the hurling and football respective recipients for their championship performances in August.\nTwo goals by Con O’Callaghan in 37th and 46th minutes of a sustained and clinical attacking performance from Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final all but ended Mayo’s championship hopes.\nNoel McGrath put in a man of the match performance against Kilkenny in the All Ireland final, where he orchestrated Tipperary’s dominance over their fierce rivals with his silky skill, composure and deadly execution to reclaim the Liam McCarthy for the first time since 2016.\nCommenting on the announcement, Feargal O’Rourke, PwC Managing Partner, said: \"I’d like to congratulate both Noel and Con on their respective performances in the All Ireland championship. Both players are worthy winners of August’s PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month Awards, having contributed massively to a fascinating month of championship action.”\nArd Stiúrthóir CLG, Tom Ryan, said: “Congratulations to our Player of the Month winners for August. Especially to Noel on his man of the match performance in the All Ireland final.\n\"The two players are a credit to their clubs and their counties and have exemplified the pride and passion which are central to our games. Many thanks on behalf of the GAA to Feargal O’Rourke and the PwC team for hosting today’s event and all they do in the promotion of our games.”\nSpeaking on behalf of the GPA, Philip Greene, National Executive Council added: “Congratulations to both Noel and Con on winning their respective awards. Both players have been exceptional on the pitch throughout the championship and are deserving winners of the PwC GAA/GPA Player of the Month Awards for August.”\nThe PwC All-Stars app is now live: https://www.pwc.ie/media-centre/download-pwc-all-stars-app.html\nApp store - https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/pwc-all-stars/id1436858629?mt=8\nPlay store - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pwc.allstars.app\nThe App, which has all the latest news as well as providing an extensive All-Stars archive by player, county and code, containing details on every All-Star winner since its inception in 1971, has a number of new additions.\nGAA fans can enter the weekly quiz to win PwC All-Stars prizes, pick their own All-Star hurling and football teams of the year and browse the news section for player interviews, past and present.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1255676"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9600944519042969,"wiki_prob":0.9600944519042969,"text":"Thou Art That\nTransforming Religious Metaphor (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Eugene Kennedy - editor\nNarrated by: Tom Parks\nSeries: The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell\nBy: Joseph Campbell,Eugene Kennedy - editor\n(The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Johnson E. Fairchild - foreword, David Kudler - editor\nNarrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner\nJoseph Campbell famously compared mythology to a kangaroo pouch for the human mind and spirit: “a womb with a view.” In Myths to Live By, he examines all of the ways in which myth supports and guides us, giving our lives meaning. Love and war, science and religion, East and West, inner space and outer space - Campbell shows how the myths we live by can reconcile all of these pairs of opposites and bring a sense of the whole.\nPriceless Text, Joyless Narrator\nBy Evan on 01-09-19\nPathways to Bliss\nMythology and Personal Transformation (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, David Kudler\nNarrated by: Fred Stella\nJoseph Campbell famously defined myth as “other people’s religion.” But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment - or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world’s most powerful myths support the individual’s heroic path toward bliss. In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth.\nA very insightful listen!\nBy Tavan T. on 09-12-19\nMyths of Light\nEastern Metaphors of the Eternal (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell\nNarrated by: James Anderson Foster\nMaster mythologist Joseph Campbell had a genius for finding the unifying symbols and metaphors in apparently distinct cultures and traditions. In Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, Campbell explores, with his characteristic clarity and humor, the principle that underlies all the great religions of India and East Asia, from Jainism and Hinduism to Buddhism and Taoism: the transcendent World Soul.\nThis book is so profound\nBy W Hill on 05-27-18\nOriental Mythology\nThe Masks of God, Volume II\nBy: Joseph Campbell, David Kudler - editor\nThe Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks. In this second volume of The Masks of God - Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at Asian mythology as it developed over the course of five thousand years into the distinctive religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Japan.\ndroopy performs Joseph Campbell\nBy J Dabney on 04-02-19\nA Joseph Campbell Companion\nReflections on the Art of Living (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Robert Walter - editor, David Kudler - editor\nNarrated by: Braden Wright, Tom Parks, David deVries\nOne of Joseph Campbell’s most popular, most quoted works, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration, thought-provoking in its depth, poetic in its scope. Drawn from a month-long workshop at the world-famous Esalen Institute, the Joseph Campbell Companion captures Campbell at his best: wise, funny, intelligent, and inspiring.\nBy Idaho Trojan on 07-27-19\nOccidental Mythology\nThe Masks of God, Volume III\nIn this third volume of The Masks of God - Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at the pagan religions of Greece, Rome, and the Celts, as well as the Abrahamic religions - Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Exploring the West’s shift from female-centered to male-centered mythology, Campbell examines the distinguishing characteristics and the shared root concepts of these mythologies. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks.\nPrimitive Mythology\nThe Masks of God Series, Volume I\nThe author of such acclaimed books as The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.\nEpic speculation into the origins of our mythic consciousness\nBy BGZ on 01-10-19\nMysteries of the Feminine Devine (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Safron Elsabeth Rossi - editor\nNarrated by: Braden Wright\nJoseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics. While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs. Editor Safron Rossi collects these lectures for the first time.\nBy Amber A. on 10-31-18\nCreative Mythology\nThe Masks of God, Volume IV\nIn this fourth volume in The Masks of God series - Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at the birth of the modern, individualistic mythology as it developed in Europe beginning in the 12th century AD up through the modernist art of the 20th century. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks.\nRomance of the Grail\nThe Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Evans Lansing Smith - editor\nNarrated by: Stefan Rudnicki\nThroughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the Grail Quests and Arthurian legends of the European Middle Ages. In this new volume of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, editor Evans Lansing Smith collects Campbell’s writings and lectures on Arthurian legends, including his never-before-published master’s thesis on Arthurian myth, “A Study of the Dolorous Stroke.” Campbell’s writing captures the incredible stories of such figures as Merlin, Gawain, and Guinevere as well as the larger patterns and meanings revealed in these myths.\nBy K. Jeppson on 08-30-19\nThe Inner Reaches of Outer Space\nMetaphor as Myth and as Religion (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nNarrated by: Grover Gardner\nBeloved mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the Space Age. He posits that the newly discovered laws of outer space are actually within us as well, and that a new mythology is implicit in that realization. But what is this new mythology? How can we recognize it? Campbell explores these questions in the concluding essay, “The Way of Art”, in which he demonstrates that metaphor is the language of art and argues that within the psyches of today’s artists are the seeds of tomorrow’s mythologies.\nBy Aamen on 12-10-18\nThe Mythic Dimension\nSelected Essays 1959-1987 (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nThis work presents twelve eclectic, far-ranging, and brilliant essays exploring myth in all its dimensions: its history; its influence on art, literature, and culture; and its role in everyday life. This second volume of Campbell’s essays (following The Flight of the Wild Gander) brings together his uncollected writings from 1959 to 1987. Written at the height of Campbell’s career - and showcasing the lively intelligence that made him the twentieth century’s premier writer on mythology - these essays investigate links between myth, the individual, and societies ancient and contemporary.\nBrilliant book\nIndia and Japan (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nAt the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.\nNot what I expected\nBy S. Stanfield on 06-18-19\nJoseph Campbell on His Life and Work (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Stuart L. Brown - foreword, Phil Cousineau - editor\nNarrated by: David deVries, Patrick Lawlor, Emily Sutton-Smith\nJoseph Campbell, arguably the greatest mythologist of the twentieth century, was certainly one of our greatest storytellers. This masterfully crafted book interweaves conversations between Campbell and some of the people he inspired, including poet Robert Bly, anthropologist Angeles Arrien, filmmaker David Kennard, Doors drummer John Densmore, psychiatric pioneer Stanislov Grof, Nobel laureate Roger Guillemen, and others. Campbell reflects on subjects ranging from the origins and functions of myth, the role of the artist, and the need for ritual to the ordeals of love and romance.\nabsolutely amazing.\nMythic Worlds, Modern Words\nJoseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nBy: Joseph Campbell, Edmund L. Epstein - editor and foreword\nIn 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore - the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career.\nThe brilliance of Joyce and Campbell combined\nBy Diana_loves_audiobooks on 06-22-18\nThe Ecstasy of Being\nMythology and Dance (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nThe Ecstasy of Being brings together seven of Campbell’s previously uncollected articles on dance, along with “Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts,” the treatise that he was working on when he died, published here for the first time. In this new collection Campbell explores the rise of modern art and dance in the twentieth century; delves into the work and philosophy of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and others; and, as always, probes the idea of art as “the funnel through which spirit is poured into life.”\nMythic Imagination\nCollected Short Fiction (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nNarrated by: Christopher Lane\nBefore he was the engaging professor who brought mythology into people’s living rooms through his conversations with Bill Moyers, before he became known as the thinker whose ideas influenced Star Wars, and before his now-beloved phrase “follow your bliss” entered the popular lexicon, Joseph Campbell was a young man who tried his hand at writing fiction. After years of Depression-era unemployment, when he lived off money he had earned playing saxophone and read the world’s great literature in a syllabus of his own design, Campbell published his first short story.\nThe Flight of the Wild Gander\nExplorations in the Mythological Dimension - Selected Essays 1944-1968 (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)\nIn Flight of the Wild Gander, renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell - in his first collection of essays, written between 1944 and 1968 - explores the individual and geographical origins of myth, outlining the full range of mythology from Grimm's fairy tales to American Indian legends. Originally published in 1969, this collection describes the symbolic content of stories: how they are linked to human experience and how they - along with our experiences - have changed over time.\nWoven from Joseph Campbell’s previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors - and their misinterpretations - with the famed mythologist’s characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell’s insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.\n©2001 Joseph Campbell Foundation. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.\nThe Power of Myth: Programs 1-6\nEmotional Intelligence 2.0\nRich Dad Poor Dad: 20th Anniversary Edition","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line203220"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7190848588943481,"wiki_prob":0.7190848588943481,"text":"IK invests in Infradata, new CEO Nino Tomovski\nInfradata Group enters new phase of growth\nHome News & Blog IK invests in Infradata, new CEO Nino Tomovski\nIK Investment Partners (“IK”), a leading Pan-European private equity firm, is pleased to announce that the IK VIII Fund has acquired a majority stake in Infradata Group (“Infradata”) from Waterland Private Equity Fund V (“Waterland”). Infradata is a leading provider of cybersecurity and secure networking solutions across Europe.\nInfradata was founded in the Netherlands in 2004, where it continues to be headquartered. The company has an additional presence in Germany, UK, France (Nomios), Belgium, Poland and the US, with ambitious expansion plans. The company provides cybersecurity and secure networking solutions, from design and delivery to aftermarket support and managed services. Infradata supports many large blue-chip clients with high security and data requirements across the industrial, advanced manufacturing, financial, telecommunications and e-commerce sectors.\nAs part of the transaction, Infradata’s founder and CEO, Leon de Keijzer will transition to the Board of Directors. Nino Tomovski, currently International Vice President, will be appointed CEO of Infradata as of 1 January 2019. Leon de Keijzer, Founder of Infradata commented: “I have been proud to lead Infradata since its inception and during its period of transformation from a local player in the Netherlands to a European sector leader. Given IK’s understanding of our sector paired with their extensive history of building and growing European businesses, we are very happy with them as a new shareholder.”\n“I am very pleased to take on the role of CEO and work together with IK to build the largest and most trusted cyber security player in Europe.” - Nino Tomovski, incoming CEO of Infradata\nWouter Roduner, Partner at Waterland commented: “We’re very proud to have supported Infradata in the second phase of its European expansion from 3 to 7 countries, having more than tripled the company in size as a result. We wish Nino, Leon, IK, and the broader Infradata team the best of luck in continuing this successful growth trajectory.”\nNorman Bremer, Partner at IK Investment Partners said: “Our decision to back Infradata was driven by two prominent megatrends, namely the increase of cybersecurity threats in recent years, and rising data consumption. We are excited to be backing a management team with a fantastic track record and a highly innovative service offering. We are especially impressed with the company’s multi-country footprint and its outstanding people. We look forward to helping expand Infradata’s capabilities both through organic and acquisitive growth opportunities and building it into a truly European leader.”\nTransaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals.\nAbout Infradata\nFounded by Leon de Keijzer in 2004, Infradata is a leading pan-European provider of secure networking and cybersecurity solutions. The company is headquartered in Leiden, the Netherlands.\nAbout IK Investment Partners\nIK Investment Partners (“IK”) is a PanEuropean private equity firm focused on investments in the Nordics, DACH region, France, and Benelux. Since 1989, IK has raised more than €9.5 billion of capital and invested in over 116 European companies. IK funds support companies with strong underlying potential, partnering with management teams and investors to create robust, well-positioned businesses with excellent long-term prospects. For more information, visit www.ikinvest.com.\nAbout Waterland\nPrivate Equity Waterland is an independent private equity investment group that acts as an active shareholder in its portfolio companies, playing a key role in their strategic and operational development, growth and performance. Waterland has offices in Belgium (Antwerp), the Netherlands (Bussum), UK (Manchester), Germany (Munich and Hamburg), Denmark (Copenhagen), Switzerland (Zürich) and Poland (Warsaw) and currently manages €6 billion of investor commitments. To date, Waterland has made investments in over 470 companies.\nInfradata Poland named EMEA's first F5 Networks Platinum partner\nCumulus Networks and Infradata announce new European partnership\nTop 5 Endpoint Security Solutions 2020\nThe 5 best SD-WAN vendors of 2020\nTop 5 Next-Generation NGFW Firewall Vendors 2020\nTop Cyber Security companies in 2020 to watch\n8 major benefits of having a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP)\nThe journey to the cloud demystified\nJuniper Universal Services Framework for Security = Operational Consistency\n5 ways to boost your cyber security in 2020\nFor further questions, please contact:\nRichard Landman\nIK Investment Partners\nMikaela Murekian\nDirector Communications & ESG\nPhone: +44 77 87 573 566","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1471175"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5603979825973511,"wiki_prob":0.4396020174026489,"text":"Time is Running out on Fund to Preserve and Create Jobs\nGEORGIA FORUM\nBy Clare S. Richie\nThe good news is that the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund created by the federal Recovery Act of 2009 is creating jobs for poor families who have limited prospects. This program has the added benefit of stimulating local economies as these newly employed individuals spend their wages close to home.\nThanks to the TANF Emergency Fund, states are expected to create more than 240,000 subsidized jobs in the public and private sectors for TANF recipients, the long-term unemployed, and low-income youth.\nGeorgia set a goal of placing 5,000 unemployed adults and 15,000 low-income youth into jobs by September 30, 2010, the current deadline. The program is subsidizing 80 percent of adult wages for six months and has already subsidized youth summer employment. To date, Georgia has created new jobs for 14,800 youth and 1,558 adults.\nMother of Many Children is a privately owned day care provider in Savannah. Owner/Director Yvonne Bass was excited when she learned her small business was approved for the TANF subsidized employment program administered by the Georgia Department of Human Services. Through this program, Bass was able to hire up to three additional employees to assist in providing optimal child care for her clientele. Bass is extremely hopeful that the program will be extended because she will reinvest the savings she gains from the jobs program into her business so she can expand the square footage of the center and serve more families, and thus hire more qualified child care workers.\nUnfortunately, the TANF Emergency Fund expires on September 30, 2010. Without an extension, Georgia will close down this successful subsidized employment effort for those hardest hit by the recession, whether or not it has spent all of its allotted funds. In fact, the Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS) has already stopped accepting applications and projects, falling short of its adult goal by 1,500 jobs.\nThat’s not all. Newly-employed adults stand to lose their jobs on September 30, 2010. Most states like Georgia encourage, but do not require, employers to hire program participants once the subsidy ends due to the uncertainty of the current economic climate. At a time when Georgia’s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, such job losses are troubling and unnecessary.\nGeorgia can avoid these job losses as well as employ substantially more adults and youth if Congress enacts a one-year extension. The House has twice passed an extension of the TANF Emergency Fund that was fully offset (so as to avoid increasing the deficit). The Senate has failed to act, despite the thousands of jobs at risk and pleas from program administrators and governors in states across the nation.\nExtending the TANF Emergency Fund has received support from a majority of senators but has fallen short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Georgia’s two senators have twice failed to support the extension, despite Georgia’s high unemployment and rocky economy. As a result, instead of continuing these proven and cost-effective programs, states are closing their doors to new job seekers and businesses employing low wage workers like Mary’s — and determining when current participants will receive their very last paycheck.\nIf Congress extends the TANF Emergency Fund before September 30, 2010, Georgia would:\n•Place thousands more of the 480,000 unemployed Georgians into subsidized jobs.\n•Create and preserve thousands of jobs.\n•Boost local economies as newly employed workers begin spending their paychecks.\n•Maximize the use of funds available in the TANF Emergency Fund. As of the current deadline, Georgia will leave nearly $100 million on the table.\nWithout an extension, Georgia and other states will close down their successful subsidized employment programs, which will cost thousands of jobs, remove much-needed income from local economies, adversely affect local businesses, and make it impossible for many low-income parents to cover basic expenses. Georgia and the nation cannot afford to lose these jobs.\nRichie is senior policy analyst for the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute.\nCopyright (C) 2010 by Georgia Forum. 8/10\nLabels: economy, GEORGIA FORUM, jobs, TANF, unemployment 0 comments\nThe School Lunch Program: A Nudge in the Right Direction\nBy Daniel Brindis\nIf you blinked, you might have missed Senator Blanche Lincoln change what your child likely eats for lunch at school. Recently, in the wake of Elena Kagan’s confirmation, the Senate quickly and unanimously passed Lincoln’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.\nAfter years of negotiations and a recent push from Michelle Obama, the proposal received 30 seconds of floor time, which was more than enough for it to pass without any objection. The Act will reauthorize the federal school lunch program before the September 30 deadline, and it will also take initial steps to make school lunches healthier, safer, and more accessible.\nAlthough it receives a splinter of the attention given to the two wars, healthcare, and the economy, the school lunch program has a huge impact on America. More than half of U.S. children are eligible for Federal School Lunches and the purchasing power impacts the way our food is grown and consumed. Within schools this means that the lunches served under the school lunch program are served to everybody. In a cafeteria there is no “poor” section or “privileged” section -- it is the same food, same kitchen (that is, when there is a kitchen on premises). Unless you pack your son or daughter’s lunch, this proposal mandates what your children are eating.\nStudies show that kids’ ability to learn and the nutritional value of the food they eat goes hand in hand. You don’t have to read the academic literature about this -- ask your local teacher what it’s like to teach a class that just consumed French fries and surplus beef served in gobs of undistinguishable “brown sauce.”\nBesides encumbering attention-spans, the current school lunch system presents a serious problem: obesity. Children currently enrolled in the federal school lunch program are more likely to be obese than children who are not enrolled. Overall, 30 percent of American children are obese.\nWe are all stakeholders in this crisis. Obesity is a major factor in our ballooning healthcare costs because increased diabetes and cardiac disease are drains on Medicare, Medicaid and private plans. Obesity not only impacts our pocketbooks, but it also presents a National Security concern -- almost one third of young adults 17-24 years old are too obese to serve in the military. This is a problem that we need to address now. Each year we don’t address obesity, we neglect another class of young Americans.\nDoing anything in the Senate these days is no small feat considering the fierce political climate, the bottlenecked Senate calendar, and the 60-plus vote mentality. The proposal passed mainly because the $4.6 billion bill was completely paid for by taking away money from other programs. Almost half of the funding comes from Food Stamps (the SNAP program).\nThe proposal is a step in the right direction, but the new changes are slight. It adds 6 cents per meal, per child (now a pittance $2.38 per meal). There is also some language that strengthens food safety, mandates wellness education, and sets guidelines for all food sold during school hours (a la carte and vending). The proposal provides funding for school gardens, which is important because they provide physical activity, food, and wellness education simultaneously.\nThe proposal does not go far enough though. We are missing an opportunity for real solutions to our broken food system.\nNext month, the House will soon address the school lunch issue. Their proposal is slightly more ambitious and provides more resources -- $8 billion and more meals to more children. Still, this proposal’s increase (also 6 cents) is still nowhere near the additional $1-$2 more that nutrition experts estimate is necessary to bring school lunch standards up to par.\nAt the end of the day, neither proposal addresses other fundamental issues with school lunches. Nutritional standards are not enforced and in most schools, real fruits and vegetables are a distant reality.\nEvery year we delay in aggressively addressing school lunches, we neglect another class of 5 million children who are beholden to the same unhealthy food. Our students are not learning how to eat and enjoy healthy food. Instead they have been fed food influenced heavily by a fast food culture. Are chicken nuggets and French fries really the model of nutrition we want our children to follow? We cannot afford to wait another five years to make important changes in children’s nutrition. The young are where our nation’s obesity crisis begins – and in our schools we need to make nutrition a lesson for life.\nBrindis is the Director of Policy for Earth Day Network. Earth Day Network’s Green Schools initiatives include reforming school lunches in order to promote local and sustainable agriculture, fight obesity, and develop students’ understanding of where their food comes from and their place in the eco-system.\nLabels: American Forum, green education, NATIONAL, public schools, social welfare, sustainability 0 comments\nBy Carolyn Cook\nWhen you're competing against the clock for the Grand Prize, you may not win, but at least you're entitled to your previous winnings.\nNot so with the Equal Rights Amendment. Congress gave women the nod they were due, but their blessing came with a seven-year hitch. Constitutional Equality was an all-or-nothing proposition to be achieved within seven years. Considering it took 72 years to obtain a right to vote, a time limit for all other rights was doomed to fail.\nERA was first introduced in 1923 by Alice Paul, a Republican, lawyer and courageous suffragist – who was imprisoned, tortured and force-fed to obtain the vote for women. ERA was essential to acquire all other legal, economic, social and political privileges that were customarily the birthright of men only.\n\"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.\"\nForty-seven years of stagnation prompted 20 courageous Pittsburgh NOW members to disrupt a Senate hearing with homemade signs demanding immediate action on ERA. Civil disobedience could have led to their arrest but ultimately freed ERA from congressional stalemate by an overwhelming majority in 1972.\nERA attracted over 450 organizations. People from all walks of life lobbied, petitioned, raced, marched, rallied, picketed and boycotted for its passage. It was favored by a majority of Americans, scoring an impressive 67 percent in a nationwide survey. Women's groups pressed for an extension but were granted only three more years. Despite 35 states approving ERA, it fell three states short of becoming the 27th Amendment. On June 30, 1982, the campaign launched by Congress was ended by Congress.\nDoes a human's right to equality expire?\nMy friend's husband told me he supports ERA as long as he doesn't lose his \"perks.\" ERA doesn't apply to the private lives of individuals or business. ERA would eliminate sex discriminatory laws while expanding beneficial laws to both sexes equally. It guarantees that the full range of opportunities exist for all individuals based on their talents, capabilities and preferences, and not limited by gender or stereotype. ERA would ensure that sex discrimination is guaranteed the same protection as race discrimination. It expands individual freedom by limiting government interference.\nWill women earn equal pay for equal work? Will public policies provide greater flexibility for parents struggling to balance work and family? Will government be held accountable to eliminate sex-based hate crimes such as rape and domestic violence? At what point will the FCC & FTC determine that violent, hate-filled images and lyrics directed at women and girls crosses the line of entertainment and free speech to jeopardize peace and security? ERA is the foundation to begin to address these questions.\nIn exile for 27 years, ERA is finally making a comeback. Congress needs to listen. Citizens did not abandon ERA in 1982 - you suspended our campaign. In case you're unaware, women are working 24/7 both inside and outside the home. We are making daily sacrifices for our country, our families, our education, our careers, and our communities. We simply don't have the freedom to organize in our own interests. We're too busy caring for everyone else's.\nIn 2009, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida and Louisiana reintroduced the federal ERA. All five attempts were defeated. How can a handful of legislators control the interests of 157 million women? Behind closed doors with no media attention.\nArticle 5 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to amend the ratification process. Will Congress hit the reset button on ERA and require all 38 states again or use its powers to jump start the ratification process for the final three states needed?\nWith an economy struggling to get back on track -- beginning a nationwide ERA campaign requiring 38 states is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Give women a head start and a fighting chance by accepting the 35 states that have already approved ERA and allow us to target the three last states necessary to take that victory lap in 2015. Ready. Get Set. Game On!\nCook is the founder of United For Equality, LLC and the DC representative for the ERA Campaign Network.\nLabels: American Forum, gender, gender equality, governance, NATIONAL, state policy 0 comments\nBy Linda Meric\nThere are many areas of life in this country where it appears that we live in two worlds. And that’s no different when we consider paid sick days. In the first world, if you’re sick, you stay home from work, take care of yourself, and have the time to get better.\nIn the second world, if you’re sick, you go to work anyway. In the second world, you go to work, even when your child is sick. You know that if you stay home, you’ll lose pay – or maybe even your job.\nAs we approach Women’s Equality Day on August 26, the day that marks the 90th anniversary of women’s right to vote, it’s troubling that so many of the workers who live in the second world are women. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, more than 22 million women workers lack paid sick days. And though women still bear the brunt of care-giving duties in most American families, we are also the least likely to have a paid sick day available to care for a sick child. Fifty-three percent of working mothers, as compared to 48 percent of working fathers, lack a paid sick day they can use to care for a child.\nThe U.S. is one of only four industrialized nations that do not offer a national standard of paid sick days. It just isn’t right. I wonder what the suffragettes, who worked so hard and so long to win women’s right to vote, would say about the lack of this basic workplace standard.\nLet me tell you about Tahirah.\nShe and her young daughter live in a world without paid sick days. Twenty-something Tahirah had achieved a milestone in life: she finally had her dream job -- crew leader in a Denver airport restaurant with a clear path to the management track. There was just one problem: her daughter suffers with asthma and Tahirah had no paid sick days.\nShe managed to make it work for a while. Then, one day, her daughter had a brutal asthmatic episode. Her daycare provider called to inform Tahirah that she should meet her at the hospital emergency room. But her supervisor withheld the information -- until the lunch rush was done and he didn’t need Tahirah at work anymore.\nThe incident forced her to quit that job.\nSeventy-eight percent of workers employed in hospitality and food service, and 69 percent of workers employed in administration and office work, lack paid sick days. This is a serious concern because, like Tahirah, they are the workers who have the most intimate contact with the public. The lack of paid sick days isn’t just an issue for family care-givers, it’s an issue of public health, as we saw during last year’s H1N1 flu epidemic. We all are at risk when workers lack the opportunity to stay home and get better without the possibility of spreading contagions to the rest of us.\nThere’s something else, too: Economic justice.\nIn these tough times, with families struggling mightily to hang on, to keep a roof overhead and food on the table, it seems particularly punitive that a worker could lose income or even lose a job simply for getting sick or for having a sick child. What would Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth have to say about how the lack of paid sick days disenfranchises women and their families?\nHundreds of 9to5 members and activists think those courageous women would deeply identify with the paid sick days movement. That’s why we’ve chosen Women’s Equality Day for 9to5’s National Day of Action -- Healthy Workplaces: Paid Sick Days Now!\nOn August 26, we will organize events around the country, from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., and call for Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, federal legislation proposed by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, that would guarantee up to seven paid sick days a year.\nIt’s time that the U.S. joined other industrialized countries around the globe and made this one America; one where no worker has to choose between the family she loves and the job she needs.\nMeric is executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. For information on a Women’s Equality Day event near you, contact activist@9to5.org.\nLabels: American Forum, Healthcare, Healthy Families Act, NATIONAL, workplace 0 comments\nLabels: environmental policy, gender equality, leadership, Women 1 comments\nBy Major General Paul D. Eaton\nThrough repeated tours at Fort Benning and eventually serving as its Commanding General, I got to know Georgia and Georgians pretty well. First, among the places I have served, my neighbors around Fort Benning display a pride, patriotism and national security awareness that helped me in my mission at the Home of the Infantry. And they are natural allies to those of us in uniform who devote our careers to America’s national security, our No. 1 priority while on active duty, and in retirement.\nSenators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson will soon have the opportunity to protect America’s national security by voting in favor of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, which would further a process started by Ronald Reagan to verifiably reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads and 700 deployed launchers. The New START Treaty also ensures strategic stability by reinstating strong verification regime that allow U.S. inspectors, for the first time, to peer inside Russian missiles and track Russian warheads with unique identifiers.\nAs Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has written, “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership -- to include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, the organization responsible for our strategic nuclear deterrent.”\nRecently, I joined a group of retired flag officers, including Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, former commander of all ICBM units and Deputy Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, in expressing my support for the New START accord. Like Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, we understand that the New START Treaty is essential to our national security.\nFor over 40 years, the U.S. has pursued strategic stability through an arms control process that has been vigorously supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. The New START Treaty both continues these established principles and tailors them to meet the security needs of the 21st century. In today's security environment we must protect against the dual threats of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. With the combined nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia accounting for nearly 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, the first step to nuclear security begins with New START.\nThe original START agreement expired on December 5, 2009, leaving the U.S., at present, without the intrusive inspection and verification regime that allowed U.S. inspectors to monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal for so many years. The U.S. Senate should work to reinstate these verification provisions by ratifying the New START accord and getting U.S. boots back on the ground as soon as possible. Without these measures, our Strategic Command loses its access to Russia’s nuclear forces and the predictability between the world’s two largest nuclear powers is called into question.\nSome have argued that we’ve not yet fully explored the treaty. That’s not true. The Senate has held an extensive series of hearings and meticulously reviewed the treaty and its accompanying documents. Throughout this process, serious national security experts of all ideological stripes have voiced strong support for the New START treaty. James Schlesinger, Brent Scowcroft, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Stephen Hadley, Colin Powell and scores of others have all expressed strong support for this treaty.\nSenators Chambliss and Isakson would do well to recognize that when they cast their vote for New START, they will be faced with a choice: strengthen our national security with a vote in favor of the New START Treaty, or choose to ignore the advice of our nation’s most trusted voices and expose the nation to greater risk due to loss of verification of Russian behaviors and intent. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, previously warned Senators that a rejection of this treaty would throw our nuclear policies into a “state of chaos.”\nThe support for New START from our military is clear. The national security benefits of New START are clear. So is the choice. Senators Chambliss and Isakson must support the New START Treaty and choose a safer Georgia and a stronger America.\nMajor General Eaton served more than 30 years in the United States Army, including combat and post-combat assignments in Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia and command of the Army Infantry Training Center in Fort Benning, GA.\nLabels: GEORGIA FORUM, government, National Defense and Foreign Policy, national security, politics 0 comments\nBy Rev. Stephanie Coble Hankins\nOn top of all the problems working families face in this bleak economy, we can add one more: for the first time in three years the federal minimum wage won’t go up this summer.\nFrom 2007 through 2009, the nation’s lowest paid workers received modest, yet long overdue increases in their paychecks each July. In 2007, Congress finally raised the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, phased in over three years.\nBut this year, workers will get nothing. The federal minimum wage will once again be flat unless Congress takes action again.\nUntil 2007, the federal minimum wage had been stuck at $5.15 an hour for 10 years. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers like waitresses and car wash workers is even lower. It’s been frozen at a meager $2.13 an hour since 1991.\nFor the child care worker who watches your toddler and the waitress at your local diner, the minimum wage plays a big role in setting their pay scales. That’s why farsighted business leaders like Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal have been supportive of raising the minimum wage to help America’s working families.\nThe faith community also supports raising the minimum wage. As an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I can think of few causes that the faith community should be more interested in than ensuring that the working poor in our own neighborhoods earn enough money to support their families.\nThis summer, the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition has trained college interns at DOOR Atlanta to teach over 200 high school students on mission trips to Atlanta about the struggle of Georgia’s minimum wage workers. Our goal is to help these students recognize that families can’t make ends meet with wages that remain stagnant year after year.\nThe solution to the minimum wage problem is straight-forward. Simply “index” it, so that it is automatically adjusted each year to keep up with the cost of living. Indexing is already the law in 10 states. Workers in those states see a small automatic bump in their wages every year, helping families keep from falling farther behind on basic expenses.\nFlorida has indexed their state minimum wage. Georgia hasn’t. So while janitors and elder care workers in Jacksonville will be getting a raise next January 1st, the same workers in Valdosta won’t. In fact, Georgia’s state minimum wage is still $5.15 an hour, meaning that workers not covered by the federal minimum wage can still be legally paid this poverty wage in our state.\nThere is a proposal that would raise Georgia’s minimum wage to the federal rate of $7.25 an hour and index it to the cost of living. Despite broad public support to raise the minimum wage, it has yet to receive a House committee hearing.\nThis is really a shame. Fixing the minimum wage is vital for working families and key for restoring consumer spending that our economy needs to grow. A strong minimum wage puts money into the pockets of low-income families who spend it in their local communities. According to the Economic Policy Institute, last year’s rise in the minimum wage (from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour) generated $5.5 billion in new consumer spending.\nIt’s not just the economics of a higher minimum wage that makes sense. It’s also the right thing to do for our neighbors who are working hard and still struggling to stay afloat.\nRev. Hankins is an ordained Presbyterian minister who works as a part-time faith-based organizer for the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition.\nLabels: economy, GEORGIA FORUM, labor, workplace 0 comments\nHospitals Must Better Inform Patients about Charity Care\nMISSISSIPPI FORUM\nBy Rims Barber\nThere is a provision of the new Health Reform Law that will help sick Mississippians this year. Nonprofit hospitals will have to meet new indigent care requirements.\nMary Jo went to the hospital recently and was given a bill of over $15,000. She was uninsured and unable to pay more than about $20 per week. It would take her about 15 years to get out from under this debt. Many hospitals are established as private nonprofit entities, and are expected to give back charity care to the community in exchange for their tax-exempt status.\nThe new Health Reform Law, passed by Congress this year, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, amended Section 501c(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. It now requires nonprofit hospitals to publish guidelines for financial assistance, explain who is eligible, and how a person can apply for assistance.\nIn order to qualify for nonprofit status, a hospital must:\n• Develop written financial assistance policies\n• Limit what they charge for services\n• Observe fair billing and debt collection practices\n• Conduct regular community needs assessments.\nWith the exception of the needs assessment, these requirements go into effect this year. The Secretary of the Treasury is charged with enforcing the new provisions and has authority to issue further guidance and regulations as needed to make sure they are correctly implemented. The hospitals will report to the I.R.S on their annual 990 forms.\nThe Mississippi Human Services Agenda wrote all the private nonprofit hospitals in Mississippi asking them how they intended to comply with this new requirement. Only three hospitals responded to our survey, and we were directed to their websites for specifics on their financial assistance/charity care policies.\nThe web-published sliding scale showed discounts from the hospital charges, based on income. Since most hospitals accept a discount from insurance companies of 30-40 percent as payment in full, we can see that the hospitals are using their sliding scale to grant some patients the same discount as they give insurance companies.\nTwo hospitals used this sliding scale:\n% of Poverty $ for Family of 4 Discount from charges\nBelow poverty $22,050 100%\n100 – 119% $26,240 100%\n120 – 139% $30,650 90%\nPersons would have to bring documents with them to verify their income when they enter the hospital and declare that they are uninsured.\nA major religious nonprofit medical center recently released a policy that allows any uninsured patient who applies during the admission process to have their hospital charges discounted by at least 50 percent (regardless of income), and free care for those under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.\nIf all our state’s nonprofit hospitals would make the effort to obey the law, and let people know that they may be eligible for discounts on their hospital care (and how they can qualify for this benefit), we would be much better off. People should let their local nonprofit hospitals know that they expect them to follow the law and treat the needy with equity.\nBarber is director of the Mississippi Human Services Agenda.\nCopyright (C) 2010 by Mississippi Forum 8/10\nLabels: health care reform, MISSISSIPPI FORUM, social welfare 0 comments\nPosted by American Forum at 7:35 AM\nTENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM\nBy R.C. Braun, MD\nBoth during and after the health care reform debate many pondered two important questions: Why does our country need to reform our health care system? And, especially, why now when we are in the midst of a serious economic recession?\nThe response to the first question is in fact why it has it taken so long to change a system which is increasingly failing due to inefficiency, excessive cost, frequent poor results, and exclusion of far too many persons? All of these factors contribute significantly to our country’s economic problems and is why health reform is and was so needed.\nNow, can we afford to reform our health care system? On the surface it appears that the proposed changes cost far too much. However, the changes are designed to be “budget neutral” by doing away with much of the waste and profiteering, and instead, promoting cost-effective care.\nMany fears have been voiced, often promoted by organizations or businesses which might lose money or influence due to the new proposals. We are told that the government will take control of all health care and make medical decisions, that “I’ll lose my very good health insurance,” or that “Medicare will be drastically cut back” in order to pay for new programs for the uninsured.\nIt should be recognized that the majority of Americans who have good health care through private pay, insurance, or Medicare will only be slightly affected.\nFor Tennessee, this legislation comes at a critical time of near disaster for our health care “safety net.” TennCare, which 10 years ago was a national leader in providing health care for the needy, has been decimated to the point that now our state is one of the worst in the nation. The new legislation, among other relevant things, provides federal funding to Tennessee of more than $4 billion a year to cover 650,000 people who are currently uninsured.\nSince our bureaucracy moves slowly, full implementation of the new legislation will not take effect until 2014. However, some of the following benefits for many of us will start before the end of this year. For example:\n• Health insurance will be mandated, and help in providing it will be available for those in need.\n• Insurance companies will be monitored, and will be required to pay out at least 80 percent of their premium income in benefits.\n• Insurance benefits cannot be arbitrarily denied or excluded for “pre-existing conditions.”\n• Annual checkups and preventive or screening services, such as mammograms and immunizations, will be covered without co-pays and deductibles.\n• “Job lock” (continuing unsatisfactory jobs in order to keep health insurance) will disappear with “insurance exchanges.”\n• Nearly all children can be covered up to age 26 on their parent’s policy.\nSpecial Medicare provisions for seniors include:\n• All guaranteed Medicare benefits remain intact, and reforms help the program remain solvent for years to come.\n• Medicare Advantage (Part C) will be revised for better efficiency and fairness.\n• Gradual reduction of the “doughnut hole” in Medicare Part D, starting with a $250 rebate this year.\n• 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs.\n• Investments in training more primary care physicians.\nImplementation of the new health care legislation will not solve all of our health care problems, but the negative spell has been broken, and we can look forward to continuing improvements over the years.\nBraun is a medical doctor in Pleasant Hill.\nCopyright (C) 2010 by Tennessee Editorial Forum. 8/10\nLabels: health care reform, insurance benefits, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments\nIn 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the bill establishing the Social Security Administration. It was bitterly opposed by many as an intrusion of government into the lives of private citizens. As originally envisioned it was a very imperfect and incomplete plan, with many defects. Many millions of needy citizens were not included.\nThere have been many changes in Social Security since 1935. For the most part, these have been positive changes such as adjusting costs and benefits and including more people. This has been an ongoing evolution. Still today there are imperfections and inequalities, such as the lower contribution rates for the wealthy.\nThere are still some people who oppose Social Security and say: “I don’t need it and I don’t want it.” But the vast majority of senior Americans are dependent on it. It has made life easier for our entire society. Very few people today would agree to its abolition.\nIn 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the establishment of Medicare, to provide access to affordable health care for seniors and persons with disabilities. Again it was opposed by many, and there were attempts to repeal it. This program also has gone through many changes since 1965, some to make it more efficient, or to add benefits, some to lower costs. And there have been recognized abuses and wastes.\nNevertheless, Medicare has been remarkably effective in bringing access to health care to millions of persons who otherwise would have had to do without care. The increasing life expectancy of Americans is the lasting legacy of Medicare.\nHowever there are still many who grumble about Medicare. Even persons who use and benefit from Medicare complain: “Get the government out of our lives!” However today it would be hard to imagine what life would be like for many persons without Medicare.\nIs history repeating?\nOn March 23, 2010 President Barak Obama signed health care reform into law -- the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Again, this was a very controversial act, fraught with omissions, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and concessions to special interests. Again there has been talk of repeal, or of opting out of its provisions.\nBut passage of this bill came after many years of almost universal recognition of the serious inadequacies and injustices of our health care system, and after a number of failed efforts at reform by Congress. There has been great pressure on Congress to simply JUST DO SOMETHING!\nThe major opposition to this bill has been spearheaded by businesses in the health care field which anticipate losing some of their enormous profits, especially the drug and health insurance industries. Major concessions have been made in an attempt to keep them “on board,” but the handwriting is on the wall. They recognize that their dominant role in controlling health care in this country will necessarily and inevitably diminish.\nAs with Social Security and Medicare, we can anticipate many changes in the present health reform legislation, changes which will modify, clarify, and improve its provisions for the betterment of our health and our country.\nLabels: health care reform, life expectancy, Medicare, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments\nRecognizing Our State and Local Public Service Workers\nBy Michael Lipsky and Ed Sivak\nPresently, the work environments of our state and local public service workers are being crippled by the fiscal crisis in the states. Legislatures around the country face gaps of $260 billion in the next two fiscal years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In Mississippi, we estimate a shortfall of over $500 million over each of the next two budget cycles in relation to needs.\nFor the public workforce, this fiscal crisis threatens functions critical to our communities’ sense of well-being, as well as the economic status of our workforce. County governments have laid-off workers, and state employees have been asked to accept unpaid furloughs and increase their contribution to their retirement funds. Critical positions will remain unfilled, and caseloads will increase. Once again state and local workers will be asked to do more with less.\nIn Mississippi, 226,000 people work in state, county and municipal governments, part of a workforce of 15 million in these sectors around the country.\nThe enduring value of the state and local public service was recently dramatized in the aftermath of the tornadoes that swept through Mississippi this spring.\nWithin 12 hours, responders from state and local law enforcement and the Mississippi National Guard came from around the state to assist with storm recovery. Within 48 hours, employees of the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service had deployed over 200 volunteers to the area creating a “volunteer city” that served as a clearinghouse for state employees and volunteers to provide urgently needed relief ranging from infant formula to disaster counseling.\nAnother example of the dedication of state workers is of course happening daily on the Gulf Coast. As oil from the broken well endangers our shorelines and threatens the way of life for many Gulf Coast residents, state workers tirelessly strive to mitigate the damage to the region’s economy and environment.\nTechnicians in the departments of Environmental Quality and Marine Resources are monitoring the Gulf’s waters, air, beaches, and commercial fisheries. Specialists in the Department of Employment Security are connecting people to thousands of jobs related to oil spill recovery. Workers with the Board of Animal Health are coordinating efforts to rehabilitate wildlife. As is the case with any disaster in the state, the dedicated people at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency provide the leadership to pull all these pieces together.\nTo work in public service means that the final decision about what constitutes a job well-done is made by determining that you have met a public need, and knowing that you have extended yourself on behalf of others. In contrast to private sector counterparts, the bottom line for public service workers is not profitability but the public good.\nPolice and highway patrol troopers, who represent one out of every 25 state and local workers, are never off duty, and teachers, who represent more than one out of every four state and local public employees, are always asking whether they have extended themselves enough with the time and resources available to them. There is always another client to see at a work-training center, or another call that a social worker could make on behalf of an elder requiring services.\nIn short, public sector work requires deep commitment to the service ideal.\nOur state and local public service workers deserve better. Mississippi must ensure that we not only recognize the admirable work of our public service workers, but also find revenue sources to properly staff and fund these services for the good of Mississippi.\nSivak is the Director of Mississippi Economic Policy Center. Lipsky is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Dēmos. An expanded 30th Anniversary edition of his book, Street Level Bureaucracy, was recently published.\nLabels: budget, economy, MISSISSIPPI FORUM, public service workers, workers 0 comments\nALABAMA FORUM\nBy Pat Byington\nSeveral times I have been invited to the weekly meetings of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. Like any busy business club meeting, with a couple of hundred people in attendance, there is a chorus of knives, forks and spoons, clanging ever so slightly as members try to finish their meal when a speaker begins to speak. This past May, when Bill Finch, former director of Conservation at the Nature Conservancy and longtime nature writer spoke to Rotary it took only 30 seconds before the room fell completely silent.\nHe was speaking about the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.\nOnly a few weeks after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Finch described the slow moving invasion that was taking place on Alabama’s and the Gulf Coast’s shores and its devastating impact on our people and the environment. When he finished his presentation, the audience was shell-shocked. I remember walking amongst the members of the club after the meeting – heads were shaking, and shoulders slightly lowered. The members were somber.\nAccording to Finch, we are in the midst of a “severe ecological rearrangement.”\nOil sheens had invaded Grand Bay, Alabama’s model estuary. On Petit Bois Island, an area west of Dauphin Island, 60 tons of oil pebbles and patties have already been picked up. The beaches looked like a Dalmatian.\nIn some places the effects may not be obvious for a year or two. Because of the toxicity and the oxygen deprivation caused by the spill, whole generations of fish, crabs, and shrimp will be impacted this year, next year and beyond. Life in our estuaries, the beaches and wildlife will change, and in some cases disappear altogether. Whole links in the food chain are broken.\nOne of the questions within Rotary’s four-way test, the guiding principles members ask of each other is: “Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” We need to start developing strategies and solutions that will benefit all Gulf residents as well as our delicate environment.\nOne such benefit and strategy has been developed by the Nature Conservancy and endorsed by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Mobile Baykeeper, Alabama Coastal Foundation and the Alabama Department of Conservation, which calls for the construction in three to five years of 100 miles of oyster reefs and 1,000 acres of marsh and sea grasses in Mobile Bay. The new reefs will help nurse our local fisheries back to health. Over the last century, we have lost 90 percent of our marshes, sea-grasses and oyster reefs in the bay. The oil spill threatens the remaining fragile habitat which we need to ensure a viable seafood industry. This strategy will repel the effects of the oil spill and start the natural and ecological recovery process.\nThis crisis will be unlike any other confronted by our state and region. It will take years; maybe even a generation, to address the harm that has been caused. Be mindful, Alaskans are still dealing with the adverse effects of the Exxon Valdez spill, more than 20 years later. This spill is many times greater than that disaster.\nIn response, Gov. Riley needs to create a permanent non-partisan task force in Alabama to develop beneficial strategies that will nurse the gulf back to health. This is not just a Mobile-South Alabama crisis. We all need to pitch in and help our fellow Alabamians.\nAlong with the task force, we must insist, that every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General pledge to work immediately on the oil spill once elected in November, if not sooner. There is no time for a transition.\nThe motto for Rotary International is “Service Above Self.” Maybe that is why the Rotarians leaving that meeting were so somber. They understood the enormous generational task ahead.\nByington is a longtime Alabama environmental advocate and currently the director of the Eastern Forest Partnership.\nCopyright (C) 2010 by Alabama Forum. 8/10\nLabels: ALABAMA FORUM, Environment, environmental policy, social welfare 0 comments\nBy Steve Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk\nOn December 3, 2009, the cable giant Comcast announced plans to buy NBC/Universal from General Electric in a $28 billion merger.\nEver since, lawmakers in Washington and legions of activists have been raising the alarm about the threat such a deal would pose to telecommunication workers, cable and Internet users, and communities of color.\nAs a result, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the Justice Department, and two Congressional committees have spent months carefully reviewing the proposed merger. The FCC even held a public hearing on the matter in Chicago last month.\nChief among the concerns the FCC must consider is the impact of the merger on workers. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has promised that “there will be no massive layoffs,” even though every big media merger inevitably brings with it steep job cuts. For example, when AOL bought Time-Warner in 2000, the company laid off some 2,400 employees in the space of a year, about 3 percent of its total pre-merger workforce.\nWhat’s more, Comcast has a long history of attempting to break its employees' unions and firing labor organizers. When Comcast bought AT&T Broadband in 2002, Comcast refused to negotiate a first contract with 16 former AT&T collective bargaining units and forced employees to attend intimidating anti-union meetings. Comcast has also spent lavishly to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which aims to strengthen workers’ right to form unions. Unsurprisingly, research shows that Comcast pays its workers 30 percent less in wages and benefits than other, unionized telecom companies.\nThe FCC must also scrutinize the potential of a combined Comcast/NBC to undermine “network neutrality,” which requires Internet Service Providers to treat all legal Internet content equally. Comcast is America’s leading provider of broadband Internet access and has been caught repeatedly blocking its users' downloads on peer-to-peer file sharing sites. They even sued the FCC over its right to enforce network neutrality and won in a controversial federal court case.\nA Comcast buyout of NBC/Universal would also lead to Comcast control of the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks and 52 cable channels, including MSNBC, Bravo, USA, E!, Style, Versus, and Comcast SportsNet. Having this mother lode of content would give Comcast even greater incentive to discriminate\nin favor of its own online video offerings and against video available from BitTorrent, YouTube, or Blip.tv.\nA Comcast/NBC merger could also be detrimental to communities of color. This very concern was the main topic of a hearing, also held in Chicago, by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on July 8, 2010. There, complaints abounded about the lack of diversity in Comcast and NBC hiring practices, the companies' upper-level management and their television programming.\nAs Representative Maxine Waters pointed out at the hearing, only two of 28 Comcast executives and only two of 18 NBC Universal executives are people of color. Even worse, of the dozens of cable networks currently owned by Comcast and NBC, only one is headed up by a person of color. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists opposes the merger –which will give Comcast control over the second-largest Spanish language TV network in the county-- because they fear it will lead to fewer jobs for Latino broadcast journalists and less coverage of the Latino community.\nComcast and NBC have offered some proposals to address these concerns, but as Stanley E. Washington, president and CEO of the National Coalition of African American Owned Media, said previously: “It’s crumbs and they know it is crumbs.” And as Representative Maxine Waters said at the Chicago House Committee hearing: “Neither Comcast nor NBC made any of these (pro-diversity) moves…until all of this began to unfold.”\nThen, there’s the bread-and-butter issues about Comcast and cable television in general: higher cable costs, fewer cable channels (especially fewer independent channels), less funds for public access, education, and government cable channels, and ever worsening customer service.\nOver the past five years, Comcast has jacked up its cable rates by nearly 50 percent in certain markets and plans to raise rates by 4 percent for some customers again in August. At the same time, the company has long had the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any of the country's cable and satellite TV providers.\nFor all of these reasons, the FCC and the Justice Department should reject the proposed merger, which for the public is decidedly not Comcastic.\nMacek is an associate professor of speech communication at North Central College. Szczepanczyk is an organizer with Chicago Media Action.\nLabels: American Forum, NATIONAL, social welfare, telecommunications 0 comments\nFree Patty Prewitt: An Act of Mercy is an Act of Fiscal Responsibility\nMISSOURI FORUM\nBy Jane H. Aiken\nIncarceration rates in Missouri are 12 percent higher than the nation. We also spend 6.8 percent of our state budget on the cost of incarceration.\nCurrently there are over 30,000 men and women in Missouri’s prisons. Reducing that number would substantially reduce costs so we can better spend that money to support the thousands in the state who find themselves out of work, hungry and homeless.\nGovernors all over the nation are looking hard for ways to stop unnecessary, costly incarceration. Absent some kind of expansive legislative action, this cost-saving strategy rests solely in the hands of the governor. The concern, appropriately, is that if we release these prisoners, will they commit new crimes?\nSo how can we reduce the prison population, while at the same time, protect Missourians?\nThe single best indicator of determining whether a person will commit another crime after leaving prison is age. Older prisoners pose a significantly lower risk of recidivism if released.\nIn addition to their lower risk, older prisoners impose much higher costs on the system as maintenance and medical costs, on average, are two to three times that of a younger prisoner.\nLet’s look at a 40-year old prisoner. The prisoner did not have a criminal record before the present offense. The prisoner has already served considerable time and has an excellent institutional record. The prisoner has made use of the rehabilitative, educational and skills-building training provided in the prison. The prisoner has a supportive family and job prospects upon release. It’s easy to see that the prisoner described here (while admittedly rare) should be considered for release to save us all money.\nTo make it easier, let’s add equity issues into the mix. Missouri has historically sentenced women charged with violent crimes far more harshly than their male counterparts. Issues that have been traditionally excused in men, like alleged infidelity or alleged poor parenting, have been used to taint women, inflame juries, and obscure weaknesses in proof. This has resulted in extremely long sentences and perhaps wrongful convictions.\nThe problem of gender bias has improved over time but there are women in Missouri prisons who were convicted before societal awareness of this problem existed.\nGovernor Nixon is considering a clemency case that calls out for release, if not to correct the gender bias that plagued her trial, to reduce the cost of incarceration.\nPatty Prewitt is emblematic of the prisoner who should be free. Prewitt’s trial focused far more on her infidelities and suggested bad mothering than on the facts of her case. Not surprisingly, she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 50 years. Her case is ripe for scrutiny. Even if the equities do not persuade, she is 60 years old, has served 25 years of her sentence, has an excellent institutional record, has participated in virtually every prison program for which she qualified and even created others, has a family eager to have her home, and four job offers waiting for her.\nEven former Department of Corrections’ employees support her release. Sixty-five legislators saw the merit in ending her incarceration and urged Governor Nixon to grant her clemency. It’s time to release Patty Prewitt. If not for her, then for all of us who must pay the bills for her incarceration and her inevitably increasing health care needs.\nThere is nothing more the State of Missouri can do to her or for her. Send her home to her children who have been waiting for their mother for 25 long years and to her aging parents who yearn for her to be with them in their final days.\nAiken is the director of The Community Justice Project at Georgetown University Law Center and former Director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.\nCopyright (C) 2010 by Missouri Forum. 7/10\nLabels: criminal justice, government, MISSOURI FORUM, social welfare 0 comments\nBy Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson\nBob Corker has defied typecasting for a freshman senator, emerging in his first few years in the U.S. Capitol as a go-to leader for getting work done across party lines. Tennesseans should urge him to continue in this vein by leading his fellow Republicans in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).\nNew START, which was signed by President Obama and Russian President Medvedev this April, is presently under review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could be sent to the Senate floor as soon as late July. The Treaty is a conservative and modest reduction in both nations’ strategic nuclear forces. It limits each side’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, a reduction of approximately 30 percent from the 2002 Moscow Treaty, and restricts deployed delivery vehicles—ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers—to 800.\nPerhaps most significantly, New START will continue the verification regime that has given us intelligence on Russian forces for the past two decades. START I, which was proposed by President Reagan and signed by President George H.W. Bush, expired last December. Though both nations have agreed to continue abiding by its provisions in the interim, the need to formalize these trust-building mechanisms has led Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to urge the Senate to ratify New START “as soon as possible.”\nSenator Corker has been a careful and thoughtful questioner throughout the more than 10 Senate hearings thus far on New START. He has heard a level of bipartisan support that is nearly unimaginable in the current, poisonously partisan environment of the Beltway. Treaty endorsements so far have come from top security officials representing every administration from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and James Schlesinger. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership,” citing “the security it provides to the American people.”\nEqually telling is the opposition to the Treaty, which has proven shockingly weak. The voices raised against New START have been primarily those of individuals whose foremost interest is not improving national security, but scoring political points against the Obama White House. Mitt Romney, as an aspiring 2012 presidential candidate, has emerged as the most prominent national critic to date—but nuclear experts dubbed his error-riddled and embarrassingly ill-informed op-ed against New START as “flat wrong” and “shabby, misleading, and…thoroughly ignorant.”\nIn the meanwhile, red herrings—the Treaty’s alleged impact on American missile defense, for example—have been thoroughly refuted by those who are actually responsible for national security, like Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, who testified that, “The New START Treaty actually reduces previous START treaty's constraints on developing missile defense programs in several areas.”\nYet despite New START’s overwhelming bipartisan support and substantive merit, its fate in the Senate is uncertain. The question is which direction Republican senators will go. Senator Richard Lugar, a recognized expert in nuclear arms control and the GOP’s elder statesman on foreign policy, has declared his strong support for the Treaty; Senators James Inhofe and Jim DeMint have stated their opposition. Senator Corker’s decision on New START could be a bellwether for the rest of the GOP caucus.\nLet’s be candid: if this Treaty, which has the unanimous support of our military leadership, had been negotiated by a Republican president, ratification would be both expeditious and with a huge majority. This means that the sticking point is that New START is President Obama’s treaty. Unfortunately, some Senate Republicans seem to be choosing the “party of no” over the traditional axiom that “politics stops at the water’s edge”—preventing the ratification of a treaty that is so obviously in our national security interests.\nSenator Corker’s conservative credentials are above reproach. But in an increasingly ideological Capitol, he faces an uphill battle to employ the commonsense pragmatism that he demonstrated as a successful businessman and mayor. Tennesseans would do well to exercise our responsibilities as active citizens and stand behind Senator Corker, letting him know we appreciate his style of leadership on behalf of our state and our nation—and that we welcome the political courage necessary to choose the greater national good over oppressive partisanship.\nThe Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson is the founding director of the Nashville-based Two Futures Project, an organization of Evangelical Christians for nuclear security.\nLabels: National Defense and Foreign Policy, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line840389"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.800258219242096,"wiki_prob":0.800258219242096,"text":"THE HURT LOCKER: Fetus-Hoarding Doctor Tied To Controversial Botched Abortion Experiments\nINQUIRER: Harvey Karman, a California psychologist who ran an underground abortion service in the 1950s, wanted to make abortion simpler, cheaper, and less painful. He succeeded by inventing a soft, flexible tube, the Karman cannula, that is still used in early-stage abortions. Then he “set out to revolutionize second-trimester abortion” with a plastic spiral, “the super coil,” that could be inserted into the uterus to trigger an abortion, according to Tunc. At the invitation of the Bangladeshi government, Karman tested the device on hundreds of women there who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. He claimed there were no complications. On Mother’s Day weekend in 1972, Karman, other activists, and 15 women in their second trimester of pregnancy boarded a bus in Chicago and headed for Philadelphia, where Dr. Kermit Gosnell had agreed to give them super-coil abortions at his clinic, then at 133 S. 36th St. The women, who were poor, had been unable to get abortions in Chicago or New York. Gosnell’s super-coil abortions – filmed and later shown on a New York City educational-TV program, thanks to Karman – turned out badly. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health subsequently did an investigation that detailed serious complications suffered by nine of the 15 women, including one who needed a hysterectomy. The complications included a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections, and retained fetal remains. MORE\nPREVIOUSLY: Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s license was temporarily suspended this week after investigators found blood on the floor, fetus parts in jars and a recovery area consisting of recliners. Gosnell, 69, is named in nearly four dozen lawsuits going back 20 years. Ten are malpractice suits, including one by the family of a young woman who died after a March 2000 abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. Semika Shirelle Shaw called the office the day after her abortion because she was bleeding badly but wasn’t told to get checked there or at a hospital, according to court documents. The lawsuit alleged that Shaw, a 22-year-old mother of two, died two days later of a perforated uterus and sepsis. MORE\nRELATED: MALINA WILLIAMS took one look at the roomful of bottled fetus remains and knew instantly that something wasn’t right. She was just 13, still a baby herself, and had just had an abortion at the hands of Dr. Kermit B. Gosnell. She said she had thought something was amiss when the West Philadelphia doctor eagerly agreed to perform the abortion, even though he allegedly didn’t have permission from her parents as required by state law. After her procedure was over, Williams said she saw Gosnell cradling a bottle that contained the remains of her fetus. Her eyes darted away and landed on the room with the bottles. “He left the door open,” said Williams, now 32. “I could see all the little babies in bottles filled with liquid, and I started crying. “He said he did research on them. He said, ‘Don’t cry, don’t feel bad. Everybody does this.’ ” MORE\nThis entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010\tat 7:40 am\tand is filed under News\t. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0\tfeed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.\n« Orca Kills Trainer In Front Of Sea World Crowd\nSCRAPPLE NEWS: The Week In Weed »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line307763"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5573917031288147,"wiki_prob":0.5573917031288147,"text":"Your Comprehensive Guide to McLaren Senna\nBy Steve Hampton on July 3, 2018\nWhen a hypercar pays tribute to a three-time F1 world champion – Ayrton Senna – you just know it’s going to be out of this world. The McLaren Senna has scrapped the evolution of batteries and electric motors and have instead opted for maximum weight reduction. Don’t be fooled, though, because that lightness is combined with phenomenal engine power, innovative aerodynamics, top-of-the-range brakes and next-generation chassis.\nThe Senna offers all of the amazing perks of a true hypercar, but the engineers at McLaren have conquered the art of weight reduction. That’s what sets this car apart from its competitors. To put it into perspective, it weighs in at around 2,641-LB, which is crazy. With all of the awesome specs to get excited about, we mustn’t forget about how gorgeous the car looks.\nThe first thing you notice is the massive, imposing spoiler that’s fused onto the back of the car to aid aerodynamics. But, once you start to look closer, you notice the sleek lines running throughout, the stunning intersecting surfaces, and the huge inlets bursting out of the sides. Alongside, you have the brilliant Pirelli Super Trofeo R street legal tyres in sizes 214/35ZR19 or 315/30ZR20.\nOf course, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the design isn’t what the manufacturer was banking on. The simplicity of the design and the intricate styling is just simply a beautiful cover of the book; it’s inviting car-enthusiasts around the world to open the book and allow the performance to run wild.\nOnce you step inside, you’ll immediately fall in love with the super-light carbon-fiber bucket seats which are equipped with a Sabelt race harness. All the controls are ergonomically positioned so the driver can use them with ease; the start/stop, race mode, fan and central locking buttons are fixed into the roof console. The electric windows, map and reading light controls are placed into another section.\nMoreover, the slimline centre console is cleverly attached to the driver’s seat, which moves in alignment with seat adjustment. Why? So that the driver can reach the D, N & R gearbox selector and launch control easily. In the middle of the dash you have an infotainment system that’s full of technology.\nNow for the fun part… performance. With an M840TR twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine, the Senna can rack up 789-BHP and 590 pound-feet or torque. With that kind of power – and the help of launch control – it can hit 62-MPH in a mere 2.8 seconds, 124-MPH in 6.8 seconds and finish at a top speed of 211-MPH.\nThat makes it 6 seconds faster than the McLaren P1. It also has a seven-speed dual clutch transmission that utilizes Formula 1 Ignition Cut tech to push shifts through immediately. When you put the dial at 155-MPH, you’ll have 1,764-LB of downforce thanks to the expert knowledge that McLaren engineers possess. The six-pot monobloc alloy callipers squeeze the carbon-ceramic discs to reduce the car to 0-MPH in just 100 meters.\nOverall, the throttle is incredibly responsive and works harmoniously with precise steering to fly around corners. A beautiful melody is produced by the V8 with plenty of purrs, gurgles and growls, but a symphony of noise is belted out when you top out at 7,500-RPM.\nOnly 500 versions of these were made and distributed around the world. Despite being priced at $958,966, all of them sold out rapidly, and it’s easy to see why. It’s essentially a road car that is right at home on the track, with some labelling it as a road-legal track car. Whatever you think of the Senna, it’s a car that everyone would dream of driving.\nTags: McLaren, New Model, Reviews, Specs","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line512749"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5378208756446838,"wiki_prob":0.5378208756446838,"text":"Some Genetic Sequencing Tests Are Coming Up Short\nIf doctors suspect that a person has a genetic disease, it’s become straightforward to simply sequence all the coding regions of the individual’s genome; what used to be an incredibly time-consuming and laborious process has now become a more routine part of healthcare. This is especially true for young children and infants that have mysterious illnesses that probably have a genetic cause. However, new research has suggested that this sequencing methodology, called whole exome sequencing, may be missing large portions of protein-coding DNA, and may be impeding doctors from making a proper diagnosis.\nThis study, which was reported in Clinical Chemistry, showed that labs performing whole exome sequencing tended to analyze less than three-quarters of coding genes, and showed that there are large gaps in their diagnostic abilities for certain diseases. The study authors are concerned about how the quality of genetic testing is being documented.\n\"Many of the physicians who order these tests don't know this is happening,\" said Jason Park, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at UT Southwestern. \"Many of their patients are young kids with neurological disorders, and they want to get the most complete diagnostic test. But they don't realize whole exome sequencing may miss something that a more targeted genetic test would find.\"\nThere are around 20,000 genes that code for protein in the genome, which only makes up about two percent of our genetic material. However, analyzing all of those genes completely is challenging, and there may be oversights, noted Park. About half of whole exome sequencing analyses don’t find a genetic mutation carried by the patient, and this study may help show why.\nAfter reassessing exome testing for 36 patients, done between 2012 and 2016 at three national laboratories, the researchers found big differences. A ‘completely analyzed’ gene would have had its coding region sequenced at least twenty times per test. The study showed that less that 1.5 percent of genes were completely analyzed in the 36 samples. In one lab, at least 28 percent of genes weren’t completely analyzed, and only five percent definitely were. Another lab had completely analyzed only 27 percent of genes.\n\"And things really start to fall apart when you start thinking about using these tests to rule out a disease,\" Park said. \"A negative exome result is meaningless when so many of the genes are not thoroughly analyzed.\"\nEvery lab had a different chance of diagnosing an epileptic disorder. One lab was checking most epilepsy-related genes in most patients, although three of their patient samples had only covered around 40 percent of those genes. Another lab was checking only about 20 percent of those genes completely.\n\"When we saw this data we made it a regular practice to ask the labs about coverage of specific genes,\" said the corresponding study author Garrett Gotway, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical geneticist at UT Southwestern. \"I don't think you can expect complete coverage of 18,000 genes every time, but it's fair to expect 90 percent or more.\"\nOther work has revealed similar problems with a different kind of sequencing tool, whole genome sequencing. The researchers are hopeful that more clinicians will demand better testing standards for their patients.\n\"Clinical exomes can be helpful in complex cases, but you probably don't need one if a kid has epilepsy and doesn't have other complicating clinical problems,\" Gotway said. \"There's a decent chance the exome test will come back negative and the parents are still left wondering about the genetic basis for their child's disease.\"\nGotway suggested that using genetic tests that focus on a panel of disease-related genes that are appropriate for a patient may be a better way to look for a disease-causing mutation. These tests can be less expensive and better at revealing genetic errors that cause disease.\nSources: AAAS/Eurekalert! via UT Southwestern Medical Center, Clinical Chemistry\nCarmen Leitch\nExperienced research scientist and technical expert with authorships on 28 peer-reviewed publications, traveler to over 60 countries, published photographer and internationally-exhibited painter, volunteer trained in disaster-response, CPR and DV counseling.\nADHD and Autism Share the Same Genes\nIn the US, 1 in every 59 children has autism, with 1 in every 20 having ADHD. 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No...\nA New Tool for Assessing the Impact of Drugs on Single Cells\nWhen scientists assess the impact of a treatment like a drug on cells, they usually generally rely on large populations of cells to find general trends....\nLearning More About The Genetic Adaptations Cancer Relies On\nCancer cells can adapt to mutations in the genome that might kill the cells by altering the activity of their genes....\nChinese Scientists Implant Genes for Human Intelligence in Monkeys\nScientists from China and the US have implanted a human gene linked to intelligence in the genomes of macaque monkeys. The first experiment of its kind, th...\nPersonalized Healthcare\nGene Sequencing\nProcess Chemistry\nGene Panel\nGenomic Testing\nComplex Disease\nScience Rocks #1 T-Shirt\nMicrobes May Offset Some of the Negative Impacts of Ocean Microplastics\nMemory Recall Linked to Circadian Rhythm","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1475079"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7088566422462463,"wiki_prob":0.29114335775375366,"text":"Tour Barcelona Camp Nou: The world’s third largest football stadium\nJune 24, 2015 December 10, 2015 bizFlats\nIf you’ve ever happened upon Barcelona during a football match then you may have been surprised to see the red and blue streets filled with ecstatic fans cheering as if their very lives depended on victory. Catalonians couldn’t be prouder of their all-star team now sporting football heroes such as Lionel Messi, an idol of many Spanish youths, and soccer players around the world. Barcelona Camp Nou was the team’s very first stadium in its inaugural year of 1957, carrying some of the team’s richest history in its bleachers as well as on the turf. Soccer fan or not, taking a tour of Barcelona Camp Nou will provide a lot of insight into the heart of Catalan culture.\nAbout Barcelona Camp Nou\nConstructed between the years of 1955 and 1957 using mainly concrete and iron, the project cost was a staggering 288 million pesetas, meaning the team would spend its first years of existence in great debt. Nevertheless, it was a point of great pride among the team members and coaches, as well as the expanding local fan base that was quickly growing beyond what could be accommodated at the stadium. With a capacity of 99,354 it is now the biggest stadium in all of Europe, but still the crowds overflow into the streets and pubs of the city. When it initially opened it held just over 93,000, which was increased to 120,000 in 1982 to host the FIFA World Cup. New regulations forced the stadium to reduce its capacity in the late 1990s.\nThere are many notable facilities within the stadium that are cause for its official five-star status. On the tour, you will get to see all of them including the chapel, the presidential box, VIP lounge, Press and television rooms, veteran players area, and the FC Barcelona club museum.\nTour Club Nou\nTouring Barcelona Club Nou has become one of the most popular things to do upon visiting the city and is a chance for visitors to get a behind the scenes experience of this Spanish landmark. Check out their impressive trophy room literally filled with accolades; step foot on the actual grass of FC Barcelona, and check out the coveted Messi Space covered with the Argentinian superstar’s accomplishments. You can also visit the press room and visitors’ dressing room, and see the players’ tunnel and commentary boxes. There are truly endless places throughout the stadium to explore that your general admission ticket would not allow you to see, which makes tours all the more appealing to real sports fans.\nIf you’ve growing up playing football then a visit to Barcelona Club Nou, whether for a tour or a match, will be a high point in your romance with the sport. There are few places as crazed over this game than Spain, and you’ll be left without any doubts about what committed fans actually look like. It is ideal to see this place both empty and quiet where you can just appreciate its legacy, and yet bustling and crazed during game time so you can witness what it was built for.\nIf you’re planning a trip to the city, be sure to look into these short-term rentals that will make the perfect spot for your pre or post game party!\nAttractions\tcamp nou, fc barcelona\t2 Comments\n← A Must See: The Pablo Picasso Museum Barcelona\nCircuit Festival Barcelona Will be Here Soon! →\n2 thoughts on “Tour Barcelona Camp Nou: The world’s third largest football stadium”\nPingback: FC Barcelona Legendary Players\nPingback: 18 of the Best Things to Do in Barcelona, Spain","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1057611"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8266456723213196,"wiki_prob":0.8266456723213196,"text":"our planet live in concert\nIn 2020 a spectacular new live experience, Our Planet Live in Concert will launch with its world premiere in London. The production will feature highlights of the Our Planet Netflix original series and narrated on screen by legendary broadcaster, David Attenborough. Combining the outstanding natural world visuals of Our Planet with creative innovations in live production, this concert will be a live experience like no other. The creators are also ‘going green’ with the production by introducing measures which will offset the tour’s carbon footprint. Our Planet Live in Concert will tour international arenas with the world premiere in London’s O2 on Sunday 18 October 2020.\nThe landmark eight-part Our Planet documentary series is being reimagined into a two-hour arena show with beautiful visual and sound effects and will be accompanied by a breath-taking 66-piece orchestra and live vocalist. Three giant screens will present the incredible cinematography of Our Planet on a scale that has never been seen before, allowing audiences to be fully immersed into the wonders of earth’s wildlife and their habitats.\nOur Planet took the world by storm when it was released in April 2019. Taking viewers on a spectacular journey of discovery, showcasing the beauty and increased fragility of our natural world, the series explores the fact that humans have become the greatest threat to the survival of our planet, and all the species that inhabit it. Whilst at times a hard watch, the series also highlights the fact that there is still time to address the challenges that we have created, if we act now. It helped people to understand what is at stake and realise how imperative it was to lobby businesses and governments to start paying attention.\nSunday,18 October 2020 at 19:30\nThe O2 Arena, London\nMonday,19 October 2020 at 19:30\nSSE Glasgow\nA celebration of the music from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and The Hobbit\nBlade Runner in Concert","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line45975"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.602737545967102,"wiki_prob":0.39726245403289795,"text":"Today's Broadcast\nOn Air Talent\nFamily Talk Radio Stations\nWeekend Broadcasts\n90 Second Commentaries\nDr. Dobson\nDr. Tim Clinton\nJames Gottry, Esq.\nSharon May, Ph.D.\nJulie Clinton\nMarriage Blogs\nParenting Blogs\nDobson Library\nFamily Talk App\nBuilding A Family Legacy Library\nFamily Missions Trips\nEvents - National Day of Prayer Task Force\nPersevere in Prayer\nMedia Resources - Tapestry Productions\nThe Old Schoolhouse\nStation Requests\nWhy Children Must Respect Authority\nBy Dr. James C. Dobson\nThe most urgent advice I can give to the parents of an assertive, independent child is to establish their positions as strong but loving leaders when Junior and Missy are in the preschool years. This is the first step toward helping them learn to control their powerful impulses. Alas, there is no time to lose. As we have seen, a naturally defiant youngster is in a high-risk category for antisocial behavior later in life. She is more likely to challenge her teachers in school and question the values she has been taught. Her temperament leads her to oppose anyone who tries to tell her what to do. Fortunately, this outcome is not inevitable, because the complexities of the human personality make it impossible to predict behavior with complete accuracy. But the probabilities lie in that direction. Thus, I will repeat my most urgent advice to parents: that they begin shaping the will of the particularly aggressive child very early in life. (Notice that I did not say to crush his will or to destroy it or to snuff it out, but to rein it in for his own good.) But how is that accomplished?\nWell, first let me tell you how not to approach that objective. Harshness, gruffness, and sternness are not effective in shaping a child’s will. Likewise, constant whacking and threatening and criticizing are destructive and counterproductive. A parent who is mean and angry most of the time is creating resentment that will be stored and come roaring into the relationship during adolescence or beyond. Therefore, every opportunity should be taken to keep the tenor of the home pleasant, fun, and accepting. At the same time, however, parents should display confident firmness in their demeanor. You, Mom and Dad, are the boss. You are in charge. If you believe it, the tougher child will accept it also. Unfortunately, many mothers today are tentative and insecure in approaching their young children. If you watch them with their little boys and girls in supermarkets or airports, you will see these frustrated and angry moms who are totally confused about how to handle a given misbehavior. Temper tantrums throw them for a loop, as though they never expected them. Actually, they have been coming on for some time.\nA pediatrician friend told me about a telephone call he received from the anxious mother of a six-month-old baby.\n“I think he has a fever,” she said nervously.\n“Well,” the doctor replied, “did you take his temperature?”\n“No,” she said. “He won’t let me insert the thermometer.”\nThere is trouble ahead for this shaky mother. There is even more danger for her son in the days ahead. He will quickly sense her insecurity and step into the power vacuum she has created. From there, it will be a wild ride all the way through adolescence.\nHere are some nuts-and-bolts suggestions for avoiding the trouble I have described. Once a child understands who is in charge, he can be held accountable for behaving in a respectful manner. That sounds easy, but it can be very difficult. In a moment of rebellion, a little child will consider his parents’ wishes and defiantly choose to disobey. Like a military general before a battle, he will calculate the potential risk, marshal his forces, and attack the enemy with guns blazing. When that nose-to-nose confrontation occurs between generations, it is extremely important for the adult to display confidence and decisiveness. The child has made it clear that he’s looking for a fight, and his parents would be wise not to disappoint him! Nothing is more destructive to parental leadership than for a mother or father to equivocate during that struggle. When parents consistently lose those battles, resorting to tears and screaming and other signs of frustration, some dramatic changes take place in the way they are seen by their children. Instead of being secure and confident leaders, they become spineless jellyfish who are unworthy of respect or allegiance.\nSusanna Wesley, mother of eighteenth-century evangelists John and Charles Wesley, reportedly bore nineteen children. Toward the end of her life, John asked her to describe in writing her philosophy of mothering for him. Copies of her reply are still in existence today. As you will see from the excerpts that follow, her beliefs reflect a traditional understanding of child rearing. She wrote:\nIn order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer the will, and bring them into an obedient temper. To inform the understanding is a work of time, and must with children proceed by slow degrees as they are able to bear it; but the subjecting of the will is a thing which must be done at once, and the sooner the better!\nFor by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which is hardly ever after conquered, and never without using such severity as would be painful to me as to the children. In the esteem of the world, those who withhold timely correction would pass for kind and indulgent parents, whom I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get habits which they know must afterward be broken. Nay, some are so stupidly fond as in sport to teach their children to do things which in the after while, they must severely beat them for doing.\nWhenever a child is corrected, it must be conquered; and this will be no hard matter to do, if it be not grown headstrong by too much indulgence. And, if the will of a child is totally subdued, and if it be brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies and inadvertencies may be passed by. Some should be overlooked and taken no notice of, and others mildly reproved. But no willful transgressions ought ¬ever to be forgiven children without chastisement, more or less as the nature and ¬circumstances of the offense shall require.\nI cannot dismiss this subject. As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after wretchedness and faithlessness. Whatever checks and mortifies, promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we further consider that Christianity is nothing less than doing the will of God, and not our own; that the one grand impediment to our temporal and eternal happiness being this self-will. No indulgence of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable.\nDoes that sound harsh by our modern standards? Perhaps. While I would have balanced the approach with greater compassion and gentleness, I believe that Mrs. Wesley’s basic understanding was correct. If the strong-willed child is allowed by indulgence to develop “habits” of defiance and disrespect during his or her early childhood, those characteristics will not only cause problems for the parents, but will ultimately handicap the child whose rampaging will was never brought under self-control.\nDoes this mean that Mom or Dad should be snapping orders all day long, disregarding the feelings and wishes of the child? Certainly not! I would not want to be treated that way, and you wouldn’t either. Most of the time, you can talk things through and come to a mutual understanding. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with negotiating and compromising when disagreements occur between generations. Six-year-old Lance may voluntarily rest or nap in the afternoon so that he can watch a late evening children’s program on television. Mom may offer to drive her ten-year-old daughter to soccer practice, provided she agrees to straighten and clean her room. There are countless situations such as these during childhood when a “no-win, no-lose” agreement can be reached without imposing constant demands and threats on a youngster. These mutually agreed-upon conclusions will not undermine parental leadership and won’t reinforce a spirit of rebellion, even in a tough-minded child.\nOn the other hand, there is a time to speak in that tone of voice that says, kindly but firmly, “Please do it now, because I said so.” One can’t always negotiate with a child or give repetitive explanations and requests for cooperation. Every command doesn’t have to end with a question mark, as in, “Would you like to go take your bath now?” Sometimes you simply have to step in and be the boss. As we saw in the last chapter, it is this expression of authority that many modern parental advisers resist tooth and nail. They never want moms and dads to sound as though they are in charge. Some even refer to that style of management as “power games.” One writer of books for parents expressed his permissive philosophy this way:\nThe stubborn persistence of the idea that parents must and should use authority in dealing with children has, in my opinion, prevented for centuries any significant change or improvement in the way children are raised by parents and treated by adults. Children resent those who have power over them. In short, children want to limit their behavior themselves, if it becomes apparent to them that their behavior must be limited or modified. Children, like adults, prefer to be their own authority over their behavior.\nI couldn’t disagree more. God has installed parents as leaders for a finite period of time. When they are afraid or unwilling to fulfill that responsibility, the strong-willed child is positively driven to step to the front and begin running things. As we have seen, it is his passion to take charge anyway. If you as a mom or dad won’t be the boss, I guarantee that your tough-as-nails kid will grab that role. That is the beginning of sorrows for both generations.\nThe New Testament, which the Scripture tells us is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), speaks eloquently to this point. We read in 1 Timothy 3:4-5, “He [speaking of the father] must have proper authority in his own household, and be able to control and command the respect of his children” (Phillips). Colossians 3:20 expresses this divine principle to the younger generation: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord” (KJV). I find no place in the Bible where our little ones are designated as co-discussants at a conference table, deciding what they will and will not accept from the older generation. Power games, indeed.\nWhy is parental authority so vigorously supported throughout the Bible? Is it simply catering to the whims of oppressive, power-hungry adults, as some would have us believe? No, the leadership of parents plays a significant role in the development of a child! By yielding to the loving authority (leadership) of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority that will confront him later in his life. Without respect for leadership, there is anarchy, chaos, and confusion for ¬every¬one concerned.\nThere is an even more important reason for the preservation of authority in the home. Children who are acquainted with it learn to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself. It is a fact that a child identifies his parents with God in the early days, whether the adults want that role or not. Specifically, most children see God the way they perceive their earthly fathers (and, to a lesser degree, their mothers). This fact was illustrated in our home when our son, Ryan, was just two years old. Since his babyhood, he had seen his sister, mother, and father say grace before eating our meals, because we always thank God for our food in that way. But because of his age, the little toddler had never been asked to lead the prayer. On one occasion when I was out of town, Shirley put the lunch on the table and spontaneously turned to Ryan, saying, “Would you like to pray for our food today?” Her request apparently startled him and he glanced around nervously, then clasped his little hands together and said, “I love you, Daddy. Amen.”\nWhen I returned home and heard about Ryan’s prayer, it was immediately apparent that my son had actually confused me with God. And I’ll confess, I wished he hadn’t! I appreciated the thought, but I was uncomfortable with its implications. It was too big a job for an ordinary dad to handle. There were times when I’m sure I disappointed our children—times when I was too tired to be what they needed from me—times when my human frailties were all too apparent. The older they became, the greater was the gap between who I was and who they had thought I was—especially during the storms of adolescence. No, I didn’t want to represent God to my son and daughter. But whether I liked it or not, they thought of me in those terms, and your younger children probably see you that way too!\nIn short, the Creator has given parents the awesome responsibility of representing Him to their children. As such, they should reflect two aspects of divine nature to the next generation. First, our heavenly Father is a God of unlimited love, and our children must become acquainted with His mercy and tenderness through our own love toward them. But make no mistake about it: our Lord is also the possessor of majestic authority! The universe is ordered by a sovereign God who requires obedience from His children and has warned that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). To show our little ones love without authority is as serious a distortion of God’s nature as to reveal an iron-fisted authority without love.\nFrom this perspective, then, a child who has only “negotiated” with his parents and teachers during times of intense conflict has probably not learned to submit to the authority of the Almighty. If this youngster is allowed to behave disrespectfully to Mom and Dad, sassing them and disobeying their specific orders, then it is most unlikely that he will turn his face up to God about twenty years later and say humbly, “Here am I, Lord; send me!” To repeat, a child learns to yield to the authority of God by first learning to submit to (rather than bargain with) the leadership of his parents.\nBut what did the apostle Paul mean in his first letter to Timothy where he referred to parents having the “proper authority”? Was he giving them the right to browbeat their children, disregarding their feelings and instilling fear and anxiety in them? No. There is a wonderful balance taught by Paul in this letter and in Ephesians 6:4. It reads, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”\nBeing the Parent Then and Now\nThe Challenge When Life Gets Hard\nThe End of Courtship\nUse Chrome? Here's the RSS extension\nRead More Faith & Family Blogs HERE!\nConnect With Rebecca Hagelin\nRebecca Hagelin has championed faith and family values in Washington, DC and around the nation for some 30 years. She speaks and writes to encourage and educate parents on how to combat the negative affects of the pop media culture on their children. Her weekly column, co-authored with her daughter Kristin Carey, \"Faith and Family: Hope for Every Generation\" appears in The Washington Times, Townhall and other national news sites and publications. Rebecca also owns a boutique marketing company that specializes in creating and directing national talk radio marketing campaigns. She previously served as The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President of Communications and Marketing, and as Vice President of Communications for WorldNetDaily.com. In 2006, Concerned Women for America named her as one of the nation’s “Top Ten Evangelical Women”, and in 2007, The Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute named her one of 12 \"Great Conservative Women\". She is the author of the acclaimed books, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad, and 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. The latter book will be re-released in late April. The newly updated version is entitled, \"30 Ways in 30 Days to Protect Your Family\" and will include reflections from her daughter, Kristin, as well as a bonus new chapter on marriage. Rebecca serves on several boards including FamilyTalk. She and her husband (of 30 years!) Andy, have three grown children, and live on Little Gasparilla Island in Florida.\nThe Voices of the Family Blogs\nRead All Here\n\"What's Trending\"\nWhy Women Need Female Friends\n5 Truths for True Love in Your Marriage\nDo Relationships Outside Our Marriage Matter?\nStand For Life!\n2019 Best of\nBroadcast Collection!\nA Story You Can't Forget\nOpinions presented in blog content on DrJamesDobson.org are solely those of the author. Blog content may only be reprinted or republished with the express written permission of the author and Family Talk.\nAll information presented on blog(s) is for entertainment purposes only. Neither the author nor Family Talk is providing medical, legal or other professional advice. You are reading and/or using blog content at your own risk. Please contact us if you have questions.\nECFA & Stewardship\nToday’s Broadcast\nPast Broadcast\nThe Dobson Library\nMobile App for iPhone\nMobile App for Android\nMobile App for Windows\nMobile App Instructions\nCopyright ©2020 Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk is a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. All Rights Reserved.\nFamily Talk 540 Elkton Drive, Suite 201 Colorado Springs, CO 80907 (877) 732-6825","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1367248"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9349470734596252,"wiki_prob":0.9349470734596252,"text":"The Maze Runner (film)\nThe Maze Runner is a 2014 American dystopian science fiction film directed by Wes Ball, in his directorial debut, based on James Dashner’s 2009 novel of the same name. The film is the first installment in The Maze Runner film series and was produced by Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, and Lee Stollman with a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Grant Pierce Myers, and T.S. Nowlin. The film stars Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Aml Ameen, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ki Hong Lee, Will Poulter, and Patricia Clarkson. The story follows sixteen-year-old Thomas, portrayed by O’Brien, who awakens in a rusty elevator with no memory of who he is, only to learn he’s been delivered to the middle of an intricate maze, along with many other boys, who have been trying to find their way out of the ever-changing labyrinth — all while establishing a functioning society in what they call the Glade.\nDevelopment of The Maze Runner began in January 2011 when Fox purchased the film rights to Dashner’s novel with film studios Temple Hill Entertainment and TSG Entertainment. Principal photography began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on May 13, 2013 and officially concluded on July 12, 2013.\nThe Maze Runner was released on September 19, 2014 in the United States by 20th Century Fox. Critics considered it to be better than most young adult book-to-film adaptations. The film topped the box-office during its opening weekend with a $32.5 million debut, making it the seventh-highest grossing debut in September. The film earned over $348 million worldwide at the box-office, against its budget of $34 million.\nA sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, was released on September 18, 2015 in the United States. A third and final film, Maze Runner: The Death Cure, was released on January 26, 2018.\nA teenager wakes up inside an underground elevator with no memory of his identity. A group of male youths greet him in a large grassy area called the “Glade” enclosed by tall stone walls. The boys (“Gladers”) have formed a rudimentary society, with each assuming specialized tasks. Their leader, Alby, says that every boy eventually recalls his name but not his past. The boy learns that a vast Maze surrounding them is the only way out. During the day, designated Runners search the Maze for an escape route, returning before nightfall when the entrance closes. No one has ever survived a night in the Maze.\nWhile in a competition with another boy named Gally, the boy suddenly remembers his name: Thomas. The next day, he is attacked by Ben, a Runner who has been stung and left delirious by a Griever – deadly techno-organic creatures that roam the Maze at night. Ben is forced into the Maze and left to die, as there is no cure for his condition. Alby and Minho, the lead Runner, later retrace Ben’s steps inside the Maze. Minho reappears at dusk dragging Alby, who is stung, but they are unable to reach the closing entrance in time. Thomas runs into the Maze to help, leaving all three trapped. Thomas lures a Griever into a closing passageway, causing it to be crushed. The trio manages to survive the night, returning the next morning.\nThe first-ever girl arrives in the elevator, with a note saying that she is the last one to enter the Glade. She recognizes Thomas, though he cannot remember her. Thomas, Minho, Frypan, Winston, and Zart enter the Maze, locate the Griever corpse, and remove a beeping mechanical device from inside it. Gally claims Thomas has jeopardized the fragile peace between the youths and the Grievers and wants him punished, but Newt, the group’s second-in-command, instead designates Thomas as a Runner. Minho shows Thomas a hand-constructed model of the Maze based on previous exploration. The Maze’s numbered sections open and close in a regular sequence. Thomas realizes that the device corresponds to a section within the Maze.\nThe girl, Teresa, has two syringes filled with an unknown substance. One is used on Alby, and he recovers from the Griever sting. Minho and Thomas venture back into the Maze with the device and discover a possible exit. A laser then scans the two, and the exit closes. Thomas and Minho start to run away as traps activated by lasers nearly kill them. That night, the Maze entrance does not close while others open, letting Grievers pour in. A massacre ensues as the Gladers struggle to fight back or hide. Alby, Zart, Clint, and several others are killed.\nAfterwards, Gally punches Thomas and blames him for everything that happened. Thomas, who has been having disconnected memory flashes since arriving, stabs himself with a severed Griever stinger in an attempt to revive his memory. The others inject him with the last anti-venom. Unconscious, he recalls that he and Teresa worked for the organization that created the Maze, W.C.K.D.; the boys unknowingly have been test subjects for an experiment. Thomas awakens and shares this information with Newt, Minho, Chuck, and Teresa. Thomas then reveals himself and Teresa, confessing that they worked with W.C.K.D. and studied the boys for years.\nMeanwhile, Gally has taken command and intends to sacrifice Thomas and Teresa to the Grievers to restore peace. However, several Gladers form a group and free them. They then approach the Maze in an attempt to find an escape, while Gally and a few others refuse to leave. Fighting Grievers as they go, Jeff and several other Gladers are killed. The Gladers eventually enter a laboratory strewn with corpses. In a video recording, a woman named Ava Paige explains that the planet has been devastated by a massive solar flare, followed by a pandemic of a deadly virus called the Flare. The teens learn that they were part of an experiment studying for a cure. Paige is seen shooting herself on the screen as the lab is attacked by armed men.\nGally suddenly appears with a gun. Having been stung by a Griever, he insists they must stay in the Maze and aims at Thomas, but is pierced through the chest by Minho’s spear, but not before Chuck is fatally shot. Masked armed men then rush in and take the rest of the group to a helicopter. It flies over a vast desert wasteland and approaches a ruined city. The scene ends with the supposedly-dead scientists meeting in a room. Paige notes that the experiment is successful; the survivors are now entering Phase Two.\nDylan O’Brien as Thomas, the last male to enter the Glade\nKaya Scodelario as Teresa, the first and only female Glader\nAml Ameen as Alby, the first male to enter the Glade and the leader of the Gladers\nThomas Brodie-Sangster as Newt, second-in-command of the Gladers\nKi Hong Lee as Minho, the head runner\nWill Poulter as Gally\nPatricia Clarkson as Ava Paige, the Head of W.C.K.D.\nBlake Cooper as Chuck, a very young Glader\nDexter Darden as Frypan, a cook\nJacob Latimore as Jeff\nChris Sheffield as Ben, a runner\nJoe Adler as Zart\nRandall D. Cunningham as Clint\nAlexander Flores as Winston\nDon McManus as Masked Man, an armed soldier who rescues the Gladers\nIn an interview with Collider, director Wes Ball stated he had made a 3D computer-animated science fiction post-apocalyptic short film, titled Ruin, which he intended to use in order to gain access to Hollywood. He presented the short in 3D to 20th Century Fox. The studio initially considered a film adaptation of the short film, as it had the same tone of The Maze Runner novel they already planned to bring to the screen. Ball was then offered the chance to direct the novel adaptation. Creature designer Ken Barthelmey designed the monsters called Grievers for the film.\nFor the role of Teresa, Kaya Scodelario was Ball’s first choice as she was “fantastic” and because he loved her in the TV show Skins. Dylan O’Brien, the lead role, was initially rejected by Ball. Ball recounts, “Dylan was actually… I saw him early on, very early on and I overlooked him. It was a big learning experience there, because I overlooked him because of his hair. He had Teen Wolf hair and I couldn’t see past that and so we were looking for our Thomas and it’s a tough role to make, because he comes in as a boy and he leaves as a man, so it can’t be like this badass action star that comes into this movie. It’s about vulnerability up front and then he comes out of it and comes into his own and then the next movies are about the leader that emerges from the group. So finally Fox says ‘We just did this movie, The Internship. There’s this kid that’s in this thing. He’s like 20 years old. We think he’s kind of got something.’ So I watched his tape and was like ‘Wait a minute, I’ve seen this kid before.’ I looked him up online and there was one picture of him with a totally shaved head and it’s this sweet vulnerable looking kid and I was like ‘Whoa, interesting.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, he’s just so familiar’ and I looked back at my old audition tapes, which we had thousands of, and there’s Dylan. That guy I said ‘No, definitely not him.’ So we brought him back in and we started to talk with him and I’m like ‘he’s the coolest dude ever.'” Blake Cooper entered the film via Twitter. Ball revealed a lot on Twitter, and many kids wanted to be Chuck. Cooper constantly bugged Ball, until Ball told him to give his tape to his casting director, and Ball was impressed by Cooper’s tape and cast him.\nPrincipal photography started in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on May 13, 2013, and officially ended on July 12, 2013. Post-production on the film was completed in June 2014.\nComposed by John Paesano, the soundtrack consists of 21 tracks and was released on September 16, 2014.\nThe film was originally set to be released on February 14, 2014. On October 5, 2013, the film was pushed back. IMAX theaters released the film on September 19, 2014.\nEleven character cards for the film were released in July 2013. Starting in January 2014, director Wes Ball released one image from the film once a week, leading up to the film’s first trailer release on March 17, 2014.[12] A viral marketing campaign launched by 20th Century Fox began on April 16, 2014. The campaign is a website featuring the main characters while focusing on W.C.K.D, an organization in Dashner’s novel series of the same name. The website has the domain wckdisgood.com.\nOn June 26, 2014, Dylan O’Brien tweeted that the original The Maze Runner book would be re-released with a new book cover based on the film’s poster. On July 29, 2014, the second trailer for the film was released exclusively on Yahoo! Movies.\nThe popularity of the film has resulted in many fan projects, the most prominent being Maze Runner Chat, a podcast featuring news discussions and occasional cast interviews. The podcast is produced by MazeRunnerFans.com, a popular fan website for the series.\nThe film grossed $102,427,862 in North America and more than $245.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $348.3 million.\nPrior to its release in the U.S. and Canada, box office analysts predicted the film would be a box office success, citing effective marketing, good word-of-mouth publicity and a solid release date. Preliminary reports predicted the film would open with takings of over $30–32 million in North America. According to movie ticket sale website Fandango, The Maze Runner was the biggest seller accounting for more than 50% of early tickets sales. The film was released on September 19, 2014 in the United States and Canada across 3,604 locations and over 350 IMAX theaters. It earned $1.1 million from Thursday night shows, and $11.25 million on its opening day. It topped the box office on its opening weekend with $32.5 million of which 9% of the gross came from IMAX theaters. Its opening weekend gross is the seventh-highest for a film released in September, and the 18th highest for a young-adult book adaptation. The film earned a total of $102,272,088 at the North American box office becoming the twenty sixth highest-grossing film of 2014 in the U.S. and Canada.\nOutside North America, the film debuted in five countries a week prior to its North American release and earned a total of $8.3 million. The film had a similar success overseas during its wide opening second weekend earning $38 million from 7,547 screens in 51 markets. It opened in South Korea with $5.5 million which is higher than the openings of The Hunger Games and Divergent, the UK, Ireland and Malta with $3.4 million behind Gone Girl, and China with $14.58 million behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Other high openings were witnessed in Russia and the CIS ($5.75 million), France ($5.2 million), Australia ($3.4 million), Mexico ($2.6 million), Taiwan ($2.2 million) and Brazil ($2 million).\nIt became the third highest-grossing film of all time in Malaysia for Fox (behind Avatar and X-Men: Days of Future Past).\nReview aggregator Rotten Tomatoes assigns the film a score of 65% based on 163 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. The site’s consensus states: “With strong acting, a solid premise, and a refreshingly dark approach to its dystopian setting, The Maze Runner stands out from the crowded field of YA sci-fi adventures”. Metacritic gives the film a score of 57 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of “A-” on an A+ to F scale. According to Tim Ryan of The Wall Street Journal, critics considered the film better than most young adult book-to-film adaptations due to its “strong performances and a creepy, mysterious atmosphere”.\nRafer Guzman of Newsday gave the film a three out of four and described it as “solid, well crafted and entertaining”. Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com said she found the film intriguing, writing that “it tells us a story we think we’ve heard countless times before but with a refreshingly different tone and degree of detail”. The Seattle Times’s Soren Anderson said the film was “vastly superior to the book that inspired it” and gave it a score of 3/4. Tony Hicks of the San Jose Mercury News was “hooked by the combination of fine acting, intriguing premise and riveting scenery”. Matthew Toomey of ABC Radio Brisbane gave the film a grade of A−, giving praise to its intriguing premise saying that “it held [his] attention for its full two hour running time”. Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter said it was “consistently engaging”, and Ella Taylor of Variety wrote “as world-creation YA pictures go, The Maze Runner feels refreshingly low-tech and properly story-driven”.\nMichael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post said “The Maze Runner unravels a few mysteries, but it spins even more”, giving it a 3/4. Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger wrote “it does leave you wanting to see the next installment. And that’s one special effect that very few YA movies ever pull off”. Isaac Feldberg of We Got This Covered awarded the film 8/10 stars, calling it “dark, dangerous and uncommonly thrilling”, while extolling it as “one of the most engaging YA adaptations to hit theaters in quite some time.” Rick Bentley of the Fresno Bee praised Wes Ball’s direction, saying that he “created balance between a thin but solid script and first-rate action – and he doesn’t waste a frame doing it”. Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times called it “a well-acted and intelligent thriller/futuristic sci-fi romp”. Bilge Ebiri of New York magazine said he “was quite riveted”. Michael Sragow of the Orange County Register gave it a grade of “B” and said, “Ball is deft, though, at evoking claustrophobia of every kind, whether in the open-air prison of the Glade or the actual tight spaces of the Maze. And he elicits a hair-trigger performance from O’Brien”\nClaudia Puig of USA Today said “a sci-fi thriller set in a vaguely post-apocalyptic future must create a fully drawn universe to thoroughly captivate the viewer. But Maze Runner feels only partially formed”, giving it a score of 2/4. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss said “like Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit-tentialism, but more crowded and with the musk of bottled-up testosterone”. Wesley Morris of the website Grantland said “I think I have a touch of apocalepsy – excessive sleepiness caused by prolonged exposure to three and four-part series in which adolescents rebel against oppressive governments represented by esteemed actors”. Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer gave the film a 2.5 out of 4 rating and said “it’s bleak business, and as it hurries toward its explosive, expository conclusion, the film becomes nonsensical, too”. Film critic Ethan Gilsdorf of The Boston Globe said “teens should eat up this fantasy’s scenery-chewing angst and doom, and the hopeful tale of survival and empowerment (to be continued in the inevitable sequel or sequels)”.\nThe Maze Runner (series)\nThe Maze Runner | Official Final Trailer [HD] | 20th Century FOX","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1307750"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8652002215385437,"wiki_prob":0.8652002215385437,"text":"EDITORIAL: Let DNA evidence in\nJustice demands DNA testing whether or not the convicted have served their time\nEDITORIAL: Let DNA evidence in Justice demands DNA testing whether or not the convicted have served their time Check out this story on app.com: http://on.app.com/1BVhPDB\nAsburyPark Published 4:45 p.m. ET Jan. 12, 2015 | Updated 7:55 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2015\nDion Harrell was arrested on a rape charge at age 22.\nThe aim of the American justice system is, in essence, a search for the truth, to ensure the guilty pay for their crimes and the innocent go free.\nThe Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office seems to have forgotten that, and is rightly being forced in court to justify itself in the face of its refusal to test newly rediscovered DNA evidence that could exonerate a convicted man. A court hearing scheduled Monday before Superior Court Judge Ronald L. Reisner to force the county to do the testing has been postponed until February 27.\nDion Harrell, 48, of Long Branch, who was convicted in 1992 of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl there, has always maintained his innocence. Although he has been out of prison for about 17 years after serving four years of an eight-year sentence, he still wants to clear his name. But the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office is blocking Harrell's attempt to have DNA from the 1988 crime analyzed to prove one way or another whether he is the man who committed the sexual assault.\nThe prosecutor's reason for not agreeing to have the DNA tested is based on a peculiar reading of a state law that allows for DNA testing on evidence in the cases of convicted defendants currently imprisoned who are seeking exoneration. Since Harrell is out of jail, the prosecutor says, he is out of luck.\nAssistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Mary Juliano stated in court papers that the testing would prolong the final disposition of the case, writing that \"The State believes the conviction is entitled to finality.\"\nThat is an outrageous statement: \"The conviction is entitled to finality?\" Shouldn't Harrell's desire for justice trump the prosecution's desire for the conviction to be put to bed once and for all. There is always a public interest in finding the truth.\nIf Harrell is innocent, that means the perpetrator of the Long Branch rape may still be at large. The conviction rested on a couple of thin reeds to begin with: the victim's eyewitness identification of him and expert testimony that he could not be excluded as the rapist because of his blood type.\nAny reasonable person would have to agree that Harrell has yet to get free from the shadow his possibly wrong conviction has cast over his life. His address is readily displayed on the Internet on the state's sex offender registry, which has led to trouble finding housing and employment.\nAccording to the New York-based Innocence Project, which provides free representation to convicts seeking to prove their innocence and is working on behalf of Harrell, there have been 325 exonerations nationwide as a result of DNA testing. There have been eight exonerations in New Jersey.\nWith its ongoing battle to refuse to test the DNA, the Monmouth Prosecutor's Office is thwarting justice in two ways. It isn't allowing Harrell to clear his name and it could be allowing the true perpetrator to escape justice. It's a double black eye for the office.\nRead or Share this story: http://on.app.com/1BVhPDB","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line464973"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8108452558517456,"wiki_prob":0.8108452558517456,"text":"Trace a Portrait\nGeorge R Havelka, 1924 - 1988\nPortrait of Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931\nPortrait of Thomas Alva Edison\nSigned/Inscribed:\n91.4 x 63.50 cm. (36 x 25in. )\nElli Buck, Science and Technology Collection\nThomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed \"The Wizard of Menlo Park\", he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison developed a system of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Pearl Street in Manhattan, New York. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York).[4] His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 Edison reported being of Dutch ancestry.In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him \"addled\". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, \"My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.\" His mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy.Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears. Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined;[10] his life there was bittersweet. Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables to supplement his income. He also studied qualitative analysis, and conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident prohibited further work of the kind. Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers.[11] This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world. Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.In 1866, at the age of 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U.S. Patent 90,646), which was granted on June 1, 1869. Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Alessandro Volta's demonstration of a glowing wire in 1800 and inventions by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,[39] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially. Edison patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, which was essential to capitalize on the invention of the electric lamp. On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. It was on September 4, 1882, that Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station's electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan. Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits through establishment of mass-production systems and intellectual property rights. George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users. Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as \"The Wizard of Menlo Park,\" New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, but had poor sound quality and the recordings could be played only a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own \"Perfected Phonograph.\" Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was built with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000, ($202,000 USD 2010), which he gratefully accepted.The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results.\nArtware Fine Art specialises in fine antique, decorative and historical portraits, interiors, topographical pictures and genre.\nWe cover a period from the 16th century through to the 20th Century and present day. We have over 200 paintings in stock, which can be viewed on our web site, each historical portrait has well researched biographical information both on the sitter and the artist.\nWe have oils, watercolours, drawings sculpture and other mediums. We offer a picture finding service to private clients and interior decorators.\nWe purchase portraits and topographical pictures. Advice is given on purchasing and selling of fine art as well as framing, picture cleaning and restoration. Valuations and appraisals are also offered.\nBy post :\nArtware Fineart\n18 La Gare\n51 Surrey Row\nSE1 0BZ\nBy telephone :\nBy mobile :\nBy email :\ngreg@artwarefineart.com\nWoodhayes Gallery\nThe Dutch Barn\nWoodhayes\nEX14 4TP\n20th - present","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line529155"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6553997993469238,"wiki_prob":0.34460020065307617,"text":"On Bradley Manning & Changing the World\nDebra Sweet | August 15, 2013\nThere is, and should be, serious debate and discussion of how Bradley Manning affected our world by transferring a trove of classified US documents revealing war crimes to Wikileaks in 2010, and of his apology for doing so yesterday, in the process of demanding that he do not one more second in prison.\nBradley Manning took courageous action aimed at stopping what were, and will always remain, war crimes in pursuit of unjust, immoral, illegitimate occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He did much more than that, as Dennis Loo recaps in Because of Bradley Manning:\nBecause of Bradley Manning, we have Edward Snowden, who was inspired to come forward by Manning’s example;\nBecause of Bradley Manning, we know that most of the prisoners held at Guantanamo are innocent or low-level operatives and we have the identities and pictures of the prisoners held at Guantanamo who are now hunger striking (BradleyManning.org);\nBecause of Bradley Manning, we have the “Collateral Murder” video which allowed Reuters to finally find out how their reporters were killed, in the face of years of Pentagon lies and stonewalling, and allowed the world to see the attitudes and actions of the U.S. soldiers who commit war crimes and laugh about it, and by implication, the brass and public officials who expect and encourage this barbaric behavior;\nBecause of Bradley Manning, “U.S. defense contractors were brought under much tighter supervision after leaked diplomatic cables revealed that they had been complicit in child trafficking activities. DynCorp — a powerful defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from U.S. tax dollars — threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring boys purchased from child traffickers for entertainment. DynCorp had already faced human trafficking charges before this incident took place” (BradleyManning.org);\nBecause of Bradley Manning, we have the Tunisian Revolution which in turn inspired Arab Spring which in turn inspired Occupy Wall Street which in turn showed the reservoir of mass support for radical/revolutionary changes here in the U.S.;\nBradley faces 90 years in prison. Notwithstanding his apology, and the outrageous lies of the prosecution, his actions and motivations are admirable. He deserves not one more moment in prison. He went into the military at 19, like many, seeking the GI bill to attend college, and spent three years there being indoctinated to deploy to a Forward Operating Base outside Bagdad, where he, according to testimony in the court martial, was isolated without support. Once he was arrested, he spent a month in an outdoor cage in Kuwait, 10 months in solitary confinement at the Marine prison in Quantico, and has been under exclusive control of the military for more than three years, facing life in prison.\nIt was heartbreaking to sit in court yesterday, as I did with the largest group of his supporters to date for the court martial, and hear the conditions of life he was born into; an abusive situation where his main caretaker was his 11 year old sister. It must have been excruciating for him to hear his Army psychologist relate the most personal details of Brad's battles with identity and loneliness. He is not alone in facing all this, as millions of youth do in this class-divided, homophobic, misogynist, racist culture.\nBut Bradley was alone in an extraordinary way. Of the hundreds of thousands who had access to the classified U.S. material he did, he is apparently the only one to have seen something very wrong, and taken action to put those crimes before the people. More than anything, the U.S. government wants to stop any future Bradley Mannings or Edward Snowdens from blowing the whistle on war crimes.\nWe must continue demanding - in every way possible -- an end to his imprisonment now. Not one more second in prison for Bradley.\nThe judge will pronounce the sentence very likely next week, most likely Wednesday August 21. Supporters will hold protests immediately, as we expect to have 24 hour notice. Check BradleyManning.org for updates, and take to the streets, airwaves, and social media to respond.\nTONIGHT: Join World Can't Wait Conference Call\nThursday August 15\n10 pm Eastern 7pm Pacific\nBradley Manning is expected to speak during court on Wednesday. We'll talk about this and other developments in his case and ways to spread the truth about war crimes that Bradley has claimed responsibility for informing us about.\nWe're also looking ahead to October, when the U.S. will have occuped Afghanistan for 12 years; the continuing hunger strikes of GTMO prisoners and CA prisoners.\nRegister for dial-in info.\nDebra Sweet is the Director of World Can't Wait, and blogs at debra.worldcantwait.net.\nTrump Pardons War Criminals - November 24, 2019\nHelping Students Keep Their Humanity by Not Signing Up for War - November 24, 2019\n“It’s better than having everybody blown up”... - November 11, 2019\nOut of Ireland: These Antiwar Vets Can't Come Home - October 17, 2019\nWill Griffin - September 25, 2019\nJohn Burns - September 25, 2019\nJoe Urgo - September 24, 2019\nOn the Eve of Global Climate Strikes and Summit, Celebrities, Advocates and Grassroots Groups Call on UN to Endorse Worldwide Fracking Ban - September 19, 2019\nAN INSPIRING 2018-19 SCHOOL YEAR! - June 26, 2019\nKings Bay Plowshares Case Shifts to U.S. District Court for August 7 Hearing - June 14, 2019\nMain Wikileaks On Bradley Manning & Changing the World","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1372125"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6592304110527039,"wiki_prob":0.34076958894729614,"text":"Teens with self-harm history susceptible to suicide, says study\nTeens display self-harm behaviors to ease painful emotions and psychological distress; express emotional turmoil; self-punish to reduce their feeling of guilt; regain a sense of control; or distract oneself from difficult situations. At times, these also signal a cry for help. Unfortunately, the incidences of self-harm among teens are rising. Though the primary motive of\nHelping children cope with grief after student suicides\nCoping with the anguish of a loved one’s death by suicide can be an overwhelming challenge for those individuals who were closely associated with the deceased. And when the suicide victim is a teen student, it devastates not only his/her parents and family members, but also other students and peer groups. Student suicides also result\nReport shows 141% jump in suicides among Utah youth\nA report by the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) Violence and Injury Prevention Program (VIPP), released in November 2017, highlighted an urgent public health problem in the state. The data, collected in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), showed that between 2011 and 2015, there was a 141.3 percent increase in\nOnline game Blue Whale Challenge suspected behind 15-year-old Texan’s suicide\nParents of a Texas teenager who committed suicide on July 8, 2017 are blaming their son’s death on a gruesome online game “Blue Whale Challenge,” which targets vulnerable teens and young adults by connecting with them on social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram. The 15-year-old, Isaiah Gonzalez, was found hanging in his","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1401269"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9078315496444702,"wiki_prob":0.9078315496444702,"text":"Ban on using gender to rate insurance “ridiculous”\nBy admin - February 21, 2011\nA leading insurance broker has described impending European legislation to ban insurers from using gender to rate premiums as “ridiculous.”\nTwo European Court of Justice judges could ban gender discrimination in pricing insurance on March 1, leading to huge hikes in premiums, particularly for women.\nBut Gerry Bucke, general manager at Adrian Flux Insurance Services, said the new rules would not significantly benefit male drivers, but could see young women paying up to £1000 a year more.\n“If people think that insurance companies will bring premiums for male drivers down to meet those for female drivers in the middle they are likely to be disappointed,” he added.\n“Despite the hefty increases in premiums we are seeing, there is no profit in the UK car insurance market, and insurers are unlikely to reduce premiums for young men in the long run.”\nLast year, analysts Tower Watson said that the UK motor insurance market would not be profitable until 2015 at the earliest, partly because of an estimated 30,000 annual fraudulent claims.\nMr Bucke is backed up by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which says that if the initial decision is upheld it would be “extremely detrimental to UK consumers”.\nA 2004 EU directive allowing insurers to use gender to rate premiums if they were backed by statistical evidence was successfully challenged last year, leading to next month’s crucial appeal.\nMr Bucke revealed that some insurers had already asked for the question of gender to be removed from the quotation process in anticipation of the ruling.\n“It’s ridiculous really,” he said. Insurance is a discriminatory business where people pay the appropriate premium based on the risk of claims they represent.\n“It’s a fact that, for a variety of reasons, male drivers cost insurance companies more than women, just as younger drivers represent a greater risk, or those with a string of motoring offences or a bad claims record.”\nYoung men are twice as likely to claim on their insurance policy than young women, while they are 10 times more likely to have a road accident involving serious injury, which is where the most costly claims occur.\n“You have to wonder where it will stop,” said Mr Bucke. “Will a 50-year-old end up having to pay the same as a 17-year-old who claims age discrimination? Usually, gender discrimination issues are, quite rightly, about giving women equal rights or equal earnings. But this will be an unwelcome form of equality for women.”\nInsurers may attempt to use alternative risk factors as a proxy for gender, such as occupation, vehicle type or even their first name, while attempting to steer clear of indirect discrimination.\nMr Bucke said that, with only a handful of insurers prepared to offer cover for young drivers, it was more important than ever for younger motorists to shop around.\n“With premiums for young women expected to reach the £2,000 mark, it will pay for them to check specialist brokers and not just the comparison websites,” he added.\nTwelve steps to save yourself from a claim\nThe Chinese scooters with retro mod style\n10 wonderful Chinese 125cc motorcycles\nThe Ultimate Guide to Electric Scooters and Mopeds\nComplete guide to the electric motorbike\nA brief history of mopeds\nBidding and buying – a rider’s guide to motorcycle auctions\nThe Lid: evolution of the motorcycle helmet\nTo the purists, nothing will ever topple the\nLast week, we ran through some of the most\nAre electric scooters and mopeds about to replace\nAuthorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) registration number 307071","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line822504"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6410930156707764,"wiki_prob":0.6410930156707764,"text":"Who owns the web: BCS welcomes Contract for the Web Launched by Sir Tim Berners-Lee\nLONDON (25 November 2019) — BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT has welcomed the launch of a Contract for the Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee: a global plan of action to make our online world safe and empowering for everyone. The Contract calls for governments and businesses to ‘safeguard the web from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity.’\nBill Mitchell, Director of Policy at BCS says: “This is a most welcome start to a dialogue for how we ensure the Web creates genuine societal benefit and avoids unintended harm. At the same time, we think some of the fine print in the contract needs to be carefully looked at through consultation with key stakeholders to ensure we achieve the right balance between democratic sovereignty, incentives for commercial innovation, and individual freedoms.”\nHe continues: “The web has fantastic potential, but it’s important to be aware of the dangers as well as the benefits it brings with it. The new Contract echoes much of what BCS has been working on over recent years including developing policy on areas of concern including online harms, facial recognition and political manipulation. Society has a responsibility to help people manage risks, reduce harms and understand how the Web works, so that they take full and empowered advantage of it in the future. Failure to do so will damage public trust and confidence.”\nBCS, which is both an educational charity as well as the professional body for IT, has called for a national cyber-safety programme to be introduced in schools if young people are to be protected. Its own research shows that younger pupils want to know more about how to look out for potential dangers online.\nBCS also has concerns over facial recognition and says there is an unprecedented danger of the misuse of biometric data, including identity theft, because of a combination of flawed technology and a lack of ethical and rigorous safeguards around how that data is captured, stored and processed.\nThe Institute has also backed a call for politicians of all persuasions to do the right thing when it comes to using data to influence voters - following a letter from the UK’s Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham to all the main political parties, reminding them to use people’s data lawfully during the General Election campaign.\nAs the professional body for the digital industries, BCS has backed this appeal and has come up with its own top ten guidelines for a digitally ethical election.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1121085"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5388646721839905,"wiki_prob":0.5388646721839905,"text":"Finxact Raises $30m from Accenture and US Banking Group\nThe company first raised $12 million back in mid-2017\nDavid Kimberley | News ( FinTech ) | Friday, 25/01/2019 | 16:11 GMT+2 2019-01-25T14:11:14+00:00 2019-01-25T19:39:43+00:00\nPhoto: Finxact\nFinancial technology company Finxact announced this Friday that it has secured an additional $30 million in funding.\nAccording to a statement released by the firm, that cash will be put towards growing the company and improving its service offering. The company is hoping that it will be able to provide software as a service to banks.\nDiscover iFX EXPO, Your Gateway to Asian Markets!\n“We started Finxact in the beginning of 2017, and we have focused on building a banking system of record that can effectively replace legacy core systems and also serve as a platform for rapidly evolving digital banking requirements,” said Frank Sanchez, Finxact’s CEO and founder. “We’ve developed a platform that is functionally robust, reliable, scalable and highly efficient.”\nBased in Jacksonville, Florida, Finxact first managed to raise $12 million back in May of 2012.\nThat funding round was led by LiveOak Venture Partners – a venture capital firm based in the great state of Texas.\nThe statement released by Finxact on Friday morning indicates that the venture capital firm has also contributed to this funding round.\nBut the Texas-based company wasn’t the only one to inject cash into Finxact.\nThe American Bankers Association, SunTrust Bank and Accenture Ventures, the investment arm of the management consultancy firm, all invested in the software company. Those firms were joined by other prior investors, including First Data and Woodforest National Bank.\n“We are pleased to invest in and form a strategic alliance with Finxact, enabling us to jointly bring our clients innovation that will help them transform to meet the digital needs of today and tomorrow,” said Brett Goode, a managing director at Accenture and head of the company’s North America Core Banking Practice.\nTags: Accenture / fintech / funding round / fundraising\nBeeks Expands Global Footprint with Three New Data Centers\nPayU Acquires PaySense to Tap into Indian Lending Sector\nMioTech Raises Undisclosed Sum from Li Ka-shing’s VC Horizons","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line820731"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7724636197090149,"wiki_prob":0.7724636197090149,"text":"Bertha Henry 2017 HONOREE\nAdministrator, Broward County, Florida\nBertha Henry took over as Broward County administrator at what must have seemed to her the worst possible time. She had spent 30 years working up to a top position in local government only to reach it in 2010 in the middle of a crippling recession. Rather than setting ambitious new goals for the county, she had to focus on minimizing the recession’s impact on her workforce. “Many of our employees were the only breadwinner in their families,” she says. “I did not want to add to the growing list of the unemployed.”\nHenry implemented a series of strategies to protect her workers. Like a lot of places, Broward County instituted a hiring freeze and had to downsize some departments. But Henry made sure the county had taken inventory of the affected employees’ skills so she could avoid layoffs and fill vacant slots. When service cuts were inevitable, she tried to trim where citizens would least notice. She looked at data showing which days were busiest at local libraries, and then closed neighborhood branches on the days with the lightest use.\nHenry studied accounting in college, and her first job was as a budget analyst for the city of Miami, where she grew up. Later she held multiple posts in local government in Florida and Ohio. But strict financial management has been a consistent theme throughout her career. Three years ago, Broward became one of only four Florida counties to receive AAA bond ratings from all three credit rating agencies.\nOver nearly a decade as county administrator, the 62-year-old Henry has left a lasting mark on the Fort Lauderdale metro area, particularly when it comes to infrastructure and economic development. Due to her efforts in building a new runway, the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport has become the fastest-growing airport in the country, and recently added four international airlines. She engineered a deal to keep the area’s pro hockey team, the Florida Panthers, from declaring bankruptcy and leaving the state. Under the contract she worked out, all of the $86 million in new public investment for the team goes toward capital improvements and operating costs for the arena, meaning that if the team ever left, the county would still own a valuable asset. The deal allowed the county to refinance its bond debt for the arena and get a lower interest rate.\nA good example of Henry’s management style was her intervention in a dispute over ride-sharing rules. Two years ago, the Broward County commission passed regulations, including a fingerprinting requirement for drivers, which prompted Uber and Lyft to suspend operations in the county. Henry crafted a compromise that satisfied both the regulators and the private companies. The amended law required criminal background checks for drivers, but not fingerprinting, and instead of a rule that would have made the county responsible for forcing drivers to be insured, she arranged to have the ride-sharing companies verify that their drivers have insurance. As a result, Uber and Lyft came back. This year, the Florida Legislature enacted rules that supersede what localities already had on the books. Nonetheless, Dan Lindblade, who heads the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce, says Henry still deserves credit for brokering the deal. “That takes a unique leader,” Lindblade says.\n-- By J.B. Wogan\nSee the rest of the 2017 public officials here.\nContent provided by Comcast: Robert Traynham's Newsmaker interview with Bertha Watson Henry - Thriving After Economic Instability.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line872446"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6188249588012695,"wiki_prob":0.6188249588012695,"text":"Home / Current News\nViolent Islamist militancy spreads into weak states across sub-Saharan Africa\nThe newly-released annual World Watch List (WWL) of the top 50 countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian shows that, especially in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, the rise of Islamist militancy has become a challenge not only to Christians, but also to the existence […]\nRisk of persecution going digital with rise of surveillance state\nA case can be made that today there are more Christians in China than members of the Communist Party. China comes no. 23 in the Open Doors World Watch List of the top 50 countries in which it’s most difficult to live as a Christian which was published today. Last […]\nFrom sub-Saharan Africa to China, Christians experience ‘high’ levels of persecution\n• In Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday more than 250 people, 45 of them children, were killed in attacks on three churches and hotels; more than 500 people were injured. • Bombs killed 20 at a Catholic church in Jolo in the southern Philippines. • In China, state-sanctioned and ‘underground’ […]\nTajik pastor freed after 3 years in prison for ‘singing extremist songs in church’\nA Protestant pastor sentenced to three years in prison for “singing extremist songs in church and so inciting religious hatred” has been freed three months early (he was due to be freed in March 2020). Bakhrom Kholmatov, 42, was sentenced in July 2017 and has served his term in a […]\nIndia: Supreme Court orders seven Kandhamal Christians freed on bail after 9 years in prison\nEleven years ago today, 13 December 2008, an Indian man was arrested. Initially, he suspected it would be quickly resolved – he was active in local politics and assumed it was for something minor connected to that. But it was to be over ten years before he would get his […]\nAl-Shabaab singles out 11 to kill in bus attack in northern Kenya; raises fear for Christians\nEleven people, almost all known to be Christians, were killed during an attack by the Islamist Al-Shabaab group on a bus in Kenya’s border region with Somalia on 6 December. The militants forced the bus, owned by Medina Bus Company (which transports people and goods between Kenya’s capital Nairobi and north-east […]\nFor Gambian Christians, there’s a lot to like — and one big worry — in the proposed constitution\nThe Gambia, a tiny nation on Africa’s North Atlantic coast, is considering a new constitution. Prominent Christian voices in the country say there is a lot to like in the draft, and one big thing to worry about: It does not explicitly define majority-Muslim Gambia as a secular state. […]\nKorean murdered in southeast Turkey ‘for mobile phone’\nCriminal investigations into the stabbing to death of a Korean Christian last week in southeast Turkey’s largest city are continuing under a cloak of judicial secrecy, as authorities search for evidence to resolve the controversy over the killer’s motive. South Korean Jin-Wook Kim, 41, was murdered in a late-night Nov. […]\nRefusing to move, an Ethiopian congregation is arrested\nThe authorities in Ethiopia’s northern region of Amhara had told the Ethiopian Fellowship of Evangelical Students it no longer could operate in the town of Debark. They were ordered to move 80 km southwest, to Gonder city. The Evangelical fellowship didn’t budge. Instead, it lodged a complaint. Nothing happened. That […]\nEgypt: Series of fires in their churches ‘not a coincidence’, say Copts\nThree Coptic churches in the Upper Egypt region were hit by fires in the last three weeks which, the Copts say, is “not a coincidence”. On Friday morning 1 November a fire started in an adjacent hall of the Mar-Girgis (St George) al-Gyoushi Church in the Shubra district of the […]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line470987"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9541789889335632,"wiki_prob":0.9541789889335632,"text":"London Warwick Summer School\nThe WSS Experience\nDiscover London\nReflecting Warwick’s unique approach, our Summer School offers an enjoyable programme of interactive guest lectures with eminent figures from the public and private sector.\nThe talks are delivered in a variety of formats including conversations, debates and panel discussions which provide excellent opportunities for you to engage with the speakers and other students.\nThe speakers that come to the Summer School cover a range of topics to broaden your education, insights and views, and allow you to ask questions and debate the topics they discuss. Previous talks include:\nEconomic Growth and Happiness Equalization\nJourney to the Olympic Games\nThinking About Inequality\nWhy Nations Fail?\nThe NHS: Can it Survive?\nBuilding Entrepreneur Country – for the future from the future\n2020 Guest Speakers\n2020 Guest Speakers will be announced here in due course.\nNobel Prize Winning Economist, Professor George A. Akerlof\nGeorge A. Akerlof is an American economist, a University Professor at Georgetown University and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. He won the prize for his ground-breaking work on markets with asymmetric information, and in particular due to his now classic paper, published in 1970, “The Market for Lemons”. At the time this was a significant and innovative breakthrough that showed how markets in which traders have differential information can be inefficient but can also sometimes collapse. It revolutionized the discipline of economics and had impact on every branch and field of economics since then. His work provided the ideas needed to better understand a whole host of real-world phenomena. It has profoundly influenced virtually every field of economics, from industrial organisation and public finance to macroeconomics and contract theory.\nEntrepreneur and Chief Tea Mixologist, Krisi Smith\nKrisi Smith is a 'Chief Mixologist', Author, Creative Director and Co-founder of Brighton based tea company, Bird & Blend Tea Co. Starting just six years ago in her mum's back bedroom Krisi, along with her partner Mike Turner have built their brand to be the UK's most loved independent tea blenders. This year the business will turnover more than £2.5m and they employ over 90 people across their sites nationwide. At the heart of Krisi's approach to business is a strong commitment to putting people first, creating fantastic customer experiences and having fun along the way.\nEconomist and Author, Vicky Pryce\nVicky Pryce is a Greek-born British economist and author of the book ‘Greekonomics’. Vicky Pryce's recent posts have included: Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting; Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS); and Joint Head of the UK Government Economics Service where she was responsible for evidence based policy and for encouraging measures that promoted greater productivity in the UK economy.\nPrevious Speakers\nProfessor Daniel Sgroi\nProfessor Daniel Sgroi’s work focuses mainly on game theory and the intersection of Economics and Psychology, including behavioural economics, subjective wellbeing and language. Professor Sgroi also leads part of the ESRC-funded CAGE centre which seeks better ways to understand and measure subjective wellbeing and related behavioural concepts.\nKelly Gallagher MBE\nKelly Gallagher MBE is a visually impaired alpine ski racer from Northern Ireland. Kelly won Britain’s first ever Winter Paralympic gold medal at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014 for the Super Giant Slalom competition.\nVicky Pryce\nKrisi Smith\nKrisi Smith is a 'Chief Mixologist', Author, Creative Director and Co-founder of Brighton based tea company, Bird and Blend Tea Co. Starting just five years ago in her mum's back bedroom Krisi, along with her partner Mike Turner have built their brand to be the UK's most loved independent tea blenders. This year the business will turnover more than £2m and they employ over 70 people across their sites nationwide. At the heart of Krisi's approach to business is a strong commitment to putting people first, creating fantastic customer experiences and having fun along the way.\nProfessor George Akerlof\nGeorge Akerlof is an American economist and University Professor at Georgetown University. He won the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.\nPriya Lakhani OBE\nAward winning, Priya Lakhani OBE is an entrepreneur who developed Masala Masala, a fresh Indian food brand stocked by retailers including Waitrose, Harvey Nichols and Ocado.com.\nProfessor Andrew Oswald\nProfessor of Economics at Warwick whose work lies mainly at the border between economics and behavioural sciences, and includes the empirical study of human happiness.\nThe Right Honourable Hazel Blears\nA Member of Parliament for 18 years, holding various roles including Health Minister, Police and Counter Terrorism Minister and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.\nLord Gus O'Donnell\nFormer Cabinet Secretary and non-Executive Chairman of Frontier Economics.\nDr Tali Sharot\nA neuroscientist by trade and a leading expert on human decision-making, optimism and emotion.\nMarie-Claire Villeval\nDirector of GATE Lyon St Etienne.\nJacqui Smith\nServed as the first female Home Secretary from 2007-2009\nSir George Cox\nSir George is the University's Pro-Chancellor. He serves on the Finance and General Purposes Committee, the Nominations Committee, the Honorary Degree Committee and the Remuneration Committee.\nProfessor Nick Crafts, CBE\nWorld renowned Economic Historian, and Director of the ESRC funded Research Centre CAGE (Competitive Advantage in a Global Economy).\nProfessor James Robinson\nUniversity Professor at the University of Chicago and author of award winning book ‘Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power’.\nDavid Myatt\nProfessor David P. Myatt focuses his academic research on the tools of game theory applied to diverse settings, including business strategy; macroeconomic coordination; and political science.\nClaudia Senik\nA Professor at the University Paris-Sorbonne, France with her main research interest areas being income distribution and subjective well-being.\nThe guest lectures were definitely engaging and the speakers were top in their respective fields.\nOpeyemi Otaniyi (Nigeria)\nI never imagined I would communicate with a Nobel Prize winner face to face.\nYanfeier Li (China)\nWarwick in London, Stanley Building, 7 Pancras Square, London N1C 4AG UK\nE: warwickinlondon@warwick.ac.uk\nT: +44 (0) 20-3859-7720\nWarwick in London on Facebook Warwick in London on Twitter Warwick in London on Instagram Warwick in London on YouTube Warwick in London on Flickr\nPage contact: warwickinlondon Resource\nLast revised: Tue 3 Dec 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line604577"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6652904748916626,"wiki_prob":0.3347095251083374,"text":"JapanSylvian.com\nhttp://www.japansylvian.com/forum/\nLittle question....\nhttp://www.japansylvian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=519\nby Nath\nI have a question : on a japan yahoo group, there's something about Sandii Tidbits : so I just want to know if it's in relation with JAPAN or not ?\nmany thanks in advance for your answer\nby heartofdavid\nI haven't followed the entire discussion, but they've been talking about Sandii (from Sandii and the Sunsetz). S & the S were the opening band on Japan's last tour, several picture of them are in the \"Sons of Pioneers\" book - can find many of those pics in the Japan photo album on this board.\nS & The S were a popular Japanese pop band, never broke through much outside of Japan. David sang and wrote songs on a couple of their albums.\nThe band is no longer around, but Sandii has quite a successful career in Hawaii, singing traditional Hawaiin music (and has done some solo pop stuff as well).\nby Poisoned_Apathy\nThat's really interesting. I'd never heard of them, and it sounds quite good. I'll have to check some of their/her stuff.\nThey were quite popular in Australia too, at least for a while. I lived in Adelaide 86-87 - their album Banzai Baby was released at the time and they toured a few places in Australia - received a lot of press and television coverage. I can't recall the name of the woman who interviewed them on TV; was a very popular and good music show that concentrated each program on one or two performers, with an in-studio interview and videos. She had David on one show (he was promoting Gone To Earth) and the following week were Sandii and the Sunsetz.\nkarnsculpture wrote: Sandii is a bigger star now in Japan than she was with the Sunsetz. She had a TV show about Hula dance, fitness and beauty etc. She owns Hula schools and a restaurant. She's been pretty successful in ways that are not visible in the West e.g. hits in SE Asia.\nThanks for that info, good to know that she's done so well.\nSo many many thanks everybody to answer me...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line531009"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7010946273803711,"wiki_prob":0.7010946273803711,"text":"Home » New York Court Delivers Denial Of Certification In Papa John’s Drivers’ Class Action\nNew York Court Delivers Denial Of Certification In Papa John’s Drivers’ Class Action\nBy Hillary Massey on April 4, 2017\nPosted in Conditional Certification, Joint Employment\nCo-authored by Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Gina Merrill, Brendan Sweeney, and Mark W. Wallin\nSeyfarth Synopsis: A New York federal court in Durling, et al. v. Papa John’s International, Inc., Case No. 7:16-CV-03592 (CS) (JCM) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2017), recently denied Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a nationwide collective action in an FLSA minimum wage action against Papa John’s International, Inc. (“PJI”), in which the drivers alleged that they have not been sufficiently reimbursed for the cost of their vehicle expenses. This ruling shows that even though the burden for “first stage” conditional certification is modest, employers can defend their pay practices by showing the absence of any evidence of a common policy or plan that violates the FLSA. This is especially so when plaintiffs seek to certify a nationwide collective action, for as the court held in Durling, conditional certification is not proper when plaintiffs submit evidence pertaining to only a small sub-set of the putative collective action members.\nIn 2016, approximately 80% of conditional certification motions were granted in the Second Circuit. Plaintiffs undoubtedly have a low bar to hurdle to obtain conditional certification under section 16(b) of the FLSA. It is a hurdle nonetheless, and some courts have shown a willingness to look closely at plaintiffs’ proffered evidence to ensure that a factual nexus exists that binds together the members of a putative collective action. In Durling, et al. v. Papa John’s International, Inc., Judge Cathy Seibel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a nationwide collective action that would have included drivers employed at corporate-owned stores and stores operated by franchisees. The Court concluded that Plaintiffs’ evidence did not support a finding that the named plaintiffs were similarly situated to thousands of drivers employed by hundreds of different employers.\nBy highlighting Plaintiffs’ failure to show that Papa John’s International, Inc. (“PJI”) dictated a common corporate policy to franchisees, or any significant factual nexus among the members of the putative collective action across corporate and franchise stores, PJI won a significant victory.\nCase Background\nPlaintiffs are five delivery drivers who work for either PJI or one of two restaurants owned by independent franchisees. Each Plaintiff delivered pizzas in his own vehicle, and alleged that PJI and the franchisees under-reimbursed delivery drivers for wear and tear, gas, and other vehicle expenses such that PJI violated the FLSA. Pointing to the practice of one franchisee, as an example, Plaintiffs averred that they were paid $6 per hour plus $1 per delivery, which, at an average rate of five deliveries per hour, amounts to wages of approximately $11 per hour. Applying the IRS standard mileage rate, Plaintiffs claim that they paid $13.50 per hour for upkeep on their vehicles, resulting in a net loss of $2.50 per hour. Accordingly, Plaintiffs asserted that they earned less than minimum wage in violation of the FLSA and corresponding state minimum wage laws.\nThere are over 3,300 Papa John’s restaurants in the United States. Approximately 700 are owned and operated, at least in part, by PJI. The remaining 2,600 plus restaurants are owned and operated by 786 independent franchisees. Although four of the five Plaintiffs worked for franchisees, they did not sue any franchisees in this litigation — only PJI. Plaintiffs claimed that PJI is a joint-employer of the drivers at all franchised Papa John’s. They alleged that PJI disseminated policies to the franchisees that caused the drivers to be under-reimbursed in a uniform way. Plaintiffs supported this theory with purported evidence that all stores, both corporate and franchise, use the same point-of-sale (“POS”) technology to record deliveries and calculate reimbursements, and use the same logos and uniforms.\nPlaintiffs filed their Complaint on May 13, 2016, which they amended on July 12, 2016. On October 14, 2016, Plaintiffs filed a motion for conditional certification of their FLSA collective action, seeking to represent all delivery drivers on a nationwide basis.\nThe Court’s Decision\nThe Court denied Plaintiffs’ conditional certification motion. While the Court declined PJI’s invitation to apply a heightened standard in assessing the motion (due to the discovery that had been undertaken in the case), the Court found that Plaintiffs failed to satisfy even the modest standard generally used in step one conditional certification motions. The Court also declined to decide whether PJI was in fact a joint-employer, finding this to be a merits issue. Framing the conditional certification issue, however, the Court reasoned that Plaintiffs could show that they were similarly-situated with the other members of the proposed collective action in two ways: (1) by demonstrating that PJI dictated a common reimbursement policy for all delivery drivers working at both corporate and franchise-owned restaurants, or (2) by showing that a common policy existed across the entire proposed collective action.\nAs to the first issue, the Court found that while PJI admitted that it reimbursed the drivers it employs at corporate-owned stores by paying them a specific amount per delivery (without conceding that the rate is so low as to violate the FLSA), Plaintiffs failed to offer any evidence that PJI was involved in its franchisees’ policies for reimbursing delivery drivers. According to the Court, the mere use of the same POS system, with the corresponding ability to access data on how drivers are paid, “in no way indicates that [PJI] dictated a nationwide delivery driver payment policy.”\nIn analyzing the question of whether Plaintiffs could show a common policy across the collective action that would bind the putative members together, the Court answered it in the negative. The Court rejected Plaintiffs’ attempt to show common policies regarding issues wholly unrelated to the purported practice of under-reimbursement. The Court reasoned that proffering common policies “such as wearing the same uniforms, or use of the Papa John’s logo, or even the general use of personal vehicles to make deliveries, is not sufficient to demonstrate a common policy with respect to the payment of drivers.”\nThe Court determined that while Plaintiffs arguably had made a “modest showing” of a common policy across PJI corporate-owned stores and the two franchises for which Plaintiffs work, this “evidence is insufficient to infer a nationwide policy.” The Court rejected Plaintiffs’ conclusory averments that other franchisees had the same policy, observing that witnesses as to this claim lacked personal knowledge. The Court also found that Plaintiffs failed to offer evidence of a common policy that violated the FLSA, noting that while the evidence showed that a few more franchisees do not use the IRS reimbursement rate, “there is no evidence that these franchisees do not pay a rate reasonably related to driving and wear and tear costs, or that what they pay is so low that the drivers end up getting less than the minimum wage.” The Court also opined that it had found no similar cases where plaintiffs succeeded in certifying a nationwide collective action involving hundreds of franchisees where the declarations offered descriptions of only two stores, and no evidence existed that the franchisor dictated the policy at issue to all franchisees. Thus, even recognizing that the Plaintiffs’ modest burden at the conditional certification stage, the Court declined to certify the collective action by “infer[ring] from the policy of two franchisees, that a nationwide 780-something other franchisees reimburse delivery drivers on a per-delivery basis that results in compensation below the minimum wage.” Consequently, the Court denied Plaintiffs’ motion for conditional certification of a nationwide collective action, holding that Plaintiffs failed to meet their modest burden of showing that delivery drivers were similarly-situated.\nImplication for Employers\nFLSA collective actions are ubiquitous due in large part to the low burden for conditional certification — especially compared to class certification under Rule 23. Indeed, the vast majority of FLSA collective actions are conditionally certified, which can have the effect of driving large early settlements. Members of the plaintiffs’ class action bar have attempted to stretch the conditional certification device to cases that involve joint employer theories, in the hopes that the court will certify a large collective action without scrutinizing the novel aspects of the case. Employers facing FLSA collective action allegations in situations involving a decentralized policy across multiple locations can add this ruling to their defensive arsenal. And although the Plaintiffs’ bar will likely continue to pursue FLSA collective actions as long as the burden for conditional certification is so low and the benefit of a substantial settlement is so high, this ruling shows that certification is far from automatic.\nTags: collective action, Fair Labor Standards Act, franchise, joint employer, Southern District of New York\nCommon Sense Prevails For California Franchisors: Ninth Circuit Focuses On Actual Control of the Worker in Joint Employment Analysis\nApril Rules: DOL Continues Rulemaking Sprint With New Proposed Joint Employment Standard\nWHD’s Joint Employer Reg Heads to White House\nPassage of the Save Local Businesses Act in the House May Signal a Broader Rejection of Obama-Era Rules On Joint Employment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1325715"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9011494517326355,"wiki_prob":0.9011494517326355,"text":"Irene challenges forecasters on storm intensity\nBy Pete Spotts | 08/29/2011\nAs tropical storm Irene spends what’s left of its wind and rain over the Northeastern US, the rise and fall of the Atlantic season’s first hurricane highlights improvements that forecasters have made over the past several decades in forecasting a storm’s track.\nBut it also highlights the challenges that remain as researchers try to bring the same level of improvement to storm-intensity forecasts.\nWithin the next 10 years, research efforts sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aim to cut average track and intensity errors to 50 percent of what they were in 2008, according to Frank Marks Jr., director of the Hurricane Research Division at the Atlantic Meteorological and Oceanographic Laboratory in Miami.\nAt the same time, researchers are aiming to provide forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami with the tools to extend their forecasts out to seven days from five days out today.\nThe efforts come against the backdrop of continued population growth along the coasts, as well as a warming climate.\nEarly last year, a team of tropical-climate specialists from the US, Australia, China, Japan, and India summarized the state of research into the tropical-cyclone connection to global warming.\nWriting in the journal Nature Geoscience, they noted it’s unclear if global warming has had an effect on past hurricane trends. A bit like a radio signal buried in static, any global warming signal has been swamped by natural variations in hurricane frequency and intensity and by inconsistent quality and coverage of tropical-cyclone records worldwide.\nStill, based on today’s understanding of how these storms work and climate simulations built on that knowledge, “future projections consistently indicate that greenhouse gas warming” will boost the average intensity of tropical cyclones around the world by 2 percent to 11 percent by 2100.\nAnd while the overall number of storms in a given season is expected to drop by 6 percent to 34 percent by century’s end, a higher proportion of the storms that do form are expected to muscle their way into the top intensity rankings.\nIn Irene’s case, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami had a bead on the storm’s path up the US East Coast by early evening last Tuesday.\nAs Irene began its encounter with the southern Bahamas, forecasters had the track moving across the eastern tip of North Carolina and up the eastern seaboard. Forecasts of the storm’s post-Carolina track wobbled back and forth slightly as NOAA and US Air Force Reserve hurricane hunters took the storm’s measure as often as once every three hours.\nBut the shifts were relatively small. And the storm was large – hurricane winds as far as 90 miles from the center and tropical-storm winds out to 250 miles at the storm’s peak.\nWhere track forecasts can by off by as much as 250 miles at the fifth day out, this time Irene took no significant deviation from the path along the mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts forecasters had indicated early in the week.\nLast Tuesday’s forecasts expected Irene would strike North Carolina as a major hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of at least 110 miles an hour. When the storm made landfall near Cape Lookout at 11:30 a.m. Saturday morning, however, maximum sustained winds had dropped to 85 miles an hour.\nFriday morning, forecasters noticed that dry air – anathema to tropical cyclones – was moving in from the west. And the storm was encountering increasing shear – rapid changes in wind speed and direction with height. Indeed, later in the day, forecasters noted that by the time Irene reached southern New England, the storm could become a high-end tropical storm, rather than a low-end hurricane.\nBut the tiny differences in effect between the two, especially along exposed coastlines, prompted forecasters to stick with Irene as a weak hurricane into New England a bit longer. As Irene’s center cleared North Carolina, it moved into an increasingly hostile atmospheric environment, as well as over cooler ocean waters.\nIn the end, Irene passed over a flooded New York City as a tropical storm around 9 a.m Sunday morning and has continued its arc inland through western Connecticut and Massachusetts.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line743278"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7117368578910828,"wiki_prob":0.28826314210891724,"text":"Tag Archives: immigration\nTheir freedom was never ours to give away.\nJuly 20, 2019 Hannah Adair Bonner\t1 Comment\nOn Monday, July 22, at 9:00 am, the Tucson Board of Supervisors will meet to decide whether to approve a plan negotiated between the Catholic Bishop and the Pima County Administrator, a decision made unilaterally and without consulting the greater faith community, to remove families from church buildings and deliver them to the County Juvenile Jail under the care of Catholic Community Services. http://chng.it/7ChGrbsy\nRecently processed asylum seeking families are the responsibility of the religious community to welcome, not to contain. It is our responsibility to celebrate their freedom, not to limit it. It is our responsibility to approach them in solidarity, to honor their dignity, intelligence, courage, and self agency – not to pity their vulnerability and take pleasure in trumpeting their gratefulness for our charity.\nTheir freedom was never ours to control, to contain, to transfer. Bishop Weisenburger, their freedom was never yours to give away.\nThey have risked their lives in the pursuit of this fragile, precious freedom they pursue. Every inch of it is priceless. Every inch of it was paid for in blood and sweat and tears. Every inch of it demands our respect, summons our acknowledgement, and compels our honoring.\nHow many inches of it will we choose to compromise to satisfy our pride, to avoid the financial cost and physical toll of welcoming them, while still maintaining the control and the credit?\nSomething very insidious has crept into the conversation we are having in Tucson about how to best offer hospitality to asylum seekers. A very important nuance: these families are not being transferred to our custody. They have been released and were supposed to be given a ride to the vicinity of a loving space where they would be offered hospitality, if they chose to accept it. They could then choose whether to enter the many sites of hospitality scattered around the city, and receive our offering of “Bienvenidos,” or they could choose not to. As hospitality sites, we were only ever supposed to be an option for courageous families with self-agency. They were ours to embrace, not contain.\nThis is something different. Driving families to a far part of Tucson, into an institutionalized government building, this feels more like a transfer of custody than an offer of welcome. Whatever the conditions they will find inside, it will not change the reality of where they are. They will be being transferred from one detention center to another, we will have intercepted their confidence that they have reached freedom for a tiny bit longer.\nThis is not a matter of diminishing the incredible beauty of the sacred work that Casa Alitas has done for the past several years, or questioning its tradition of intentional and compassionate hospitality. We have a responsibility to examine the situation at hand, and how decisions have been made, and what the consequences may be for our community in the short term, and for communities in which this model may be replicated in the long term.\nThis deal struck between the Catholic Church and the Government, would give the Catholic Church full control, using this deeper level of partnership with Border Patrol to force all other religious communities engaged in hosting to be under the control of Catholic Community Services. No longer would there be spaces independent of them, whose numbers did not count in the numbers they could claim of people hosted through their work.\nThis impulse, directed in part by the desire of Border Patrol to have a central location where all processing will take place, is also one where government figures will inevitably have easier access than in the local congregations who have been determined to protect the freedom of these families upon their release.\nIt feels as if we are forgetting that we are not the ones processing these families out of custody. Our intake forms are not their pathway to release. They were only supposed to be a way of gathering information about their travel plans so that we could help them get safely to their destination. They were never supposed to be used to pursue media attention and wrack up numbers about how many we have served in order gain notoriety, control, and funding.\nThis is not supposed to be about us. Not supposed to be about what “we think is best.” Not supposed to be about the public image we can curate. This work is best done without people knowing the exact location. This work is best done by those directly impacted folxs in our community who understand and can empathize with our guests – exactly the type of people who will be unable to participate anymore if we put this in a detention facility, because they themselves are undocumented, or triggered by incarceration spaces, or vulnerable.\nI have been offering hospitality to asylum seekers alongside such leaders since 2014, first in the Greyhound bus station in Houston, Texas, and now through the shelters of Tucson. Yet, that ability to offer empathy is not my expertise but theirs.\nRather, while some people are experts on the inside of jails, I am an expert on the outside of jails. I have likely spent around 1000 hours in the past few years observing the trauma incurred on the human spirit when you deliver them to institutionalized detention areas. Sitting in vigil in front of the Waller County Jail for the first three months after the death of Sandra Bland, I became an expert on the tears of visiting family members, and the dehumanizing way guards changing shifts talked about those inside. Sitting in vigil in front of the Tornillo detention camp for the first couple weeks it was open, I became an expert on the look of terror on children’s faces as they were driven inside.\nI know that Pima County & CCS will work to make this look as good as possible at the start. I know how media can be used to selectively paint the picture we want. I know the children and parents who are taken into the Pima County Juvenile Jail will make the most of it. They will still offer up the gratefulness that paternalism thrives upon, because it will be better than the dog cages and the ice boxes and even the street.\nBut this was never our only option, and they will not believe you if you tell them they are free. This will be a half-way house, a step down unit, a space where those with power have made the choice to slide their freedom back an inch or two. This will be the institutional embodiment of the ankle monitors that it pains us so much to see them wearing – a diminishing of the distance between them and the places and people who caused their trauma. A reminder. A place where servants of the State have more access to knowledge about their whereabouts and movement than in the churches that prioritize guarding their privacy and freedom.\nThe Church in America – excluding those parts like the AME Church built through the liberation of people of color themselves – has always been good at these negotiations.\nPowerful arms of the Christian institution have always been so good at determining what is best for others. We found ways to argue that the way we treated enslaved people was kinder than others and, therefore, “Christian slave-holding.” We found ways to feel fully confident that the kidnapping of Indigenous children to hold in schools was what was best for them because it would help them assimilate. We have always known best how others should be clothed, and housed, and fed, and contained.\nI have heard all these arguments before. I have heard all these questions before. That this is better than the other options – that we have strategically been barred from exploring or knowing exist. That we must trust those making the decisions, despite the secretive and problematic way they reach their decisions. We should “just trust them” many of the people of San Antonio said when Baptist Children & Family Services was running Tornillo, while their headquarters were based in the San Antonio community. How easy it was for us to take to the streets and pass judgement – and how difficult it was for them. How easy it is now for them to see the error of our ways – and how difficult for us. We can be so farsighted – it is so easy to see clearly what is true and just from a distance, but it becomes so murky close up when we know the people.\nIt makes one question whether freedom and self-agency and dignity has been the priority of the institutional culture making this decision. There is a wide divide between charity and solidarity. How much are we resisting our desire for the gratitude of vulnerable people? How much are we fighting the inherent temptations of white supremacist culture to believe that we know best, that we do best, that we are best?\nThe narrative being offered up by some is that if we do not “contain” these families upon their release then they will take to a life of crime, GOP Board of Supervisors Member Ally Miller even saying that these families would present a threat to our community safety. How is it that this decision satisfies a longing some have to “lock them up”? Where is it that we are sliding towards in the erosion of our ethics and the fatigue of our compassion?\nIt was never our job to contain them. It was always our responsibility to love them, to treat them as equals, to honor their courage and dignity, and their right to make decisions for themselves.\nCooking sopa de pollo in the kitchen themselves. Walking out to go up the street and get a Dr. Pepper themselves. Kicking a ball in the free and unfettered and unfenced air. Debating about whether to postpone bedtime in order to finish the movie. These are the precious things people start to do when they feel free. These are the precious things we stand to lose. These are the actions that replenish the spirit, that are the food of freedom helping it to grow strong.\nTheir freedom from our custody may be fresh, even newborn. Yet, it is theirs.\nTheir freedom was never ours to give away. Never ours to control. Never ours to exchange.\nVoice your concern about #nochildjailshelter at http://chng.it/7ChGrbsy\nasylum seekersfree the childrenimmigrationpima countyreligiontucson\nFeatured, Justice\nGovernmental & Catholic Powers Partner to Force Will on Tucson Community\n“So your plan is to do everything through one site, utilizing Catholic Community Services and your location at the jail, and not include any of the other faith communities that have been caring for immigrants because it is easiest for you?” County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry was asked at the Humanitarian Crisis Roundtable that met on Monday, July 15th.\nPima County Administrator Chuck Huckleberry\nBishop Weisenburger of the Tucson Diocese\n“Yes,” was his simple answer, confirming that this was not merely a decision to move guests from the Monastery to the Juvenile Jail, but further a decision to seek to end other faith communities hosting guests. It was a decision that had been made by Bishop Weisenburger, and the undisclosed members of his committee, without consulting the greater network of hosting sites. In a letter to the County on July 3rd, Bishop Weisenberger had conveyed the idea that the faith community in Tucson was not able to handle the work of continuing to host guests and needed the government to step in and help.\nEngaging in a collegial and collaborative manner by engaging the input of colleagues doing the same work, rather than given the appearance of speaking for the faith community as a whole, would have been a simple thing to do because the mechanisms had already been being put in place.\nSeveral months before, the Southern Arizona Border Care Network met for the first time on December 6, 2018, to dream of creating a community of transparency, support, and collaboration. They dreamt of shifting the culture of humanitarian aid to center immigrant voices, knowing how often decisions were made in a way that did not include directly impacted people. Little did they know how soon those dreams of collaboration would be shattered as a display of institutional power would assert itself over the community and decree that the families they aided would be moved to cells within the Juvenile Jail complex.\nAs people filed into the small chapel off of the sanctuary of St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church that first day, the number kept growing and growing and more and more chairs were pulled into the circle. In a few seats by the door were a cluster of Unitarian Universalists; over on the far side of the room were clergy who were immigrants from Mexico themselves, serving and offering hospitality in Nogales, Tucson, etc. In the room, there were people who knew each other well, and people who were just meeting for the first time.\nRev. Dr. Dottie Escobedo-Frank assists with intake at The Inn in 2017.\nIntentionality had been taken in the planning of the meeting, with an awareness of the faith community’s propensity to call upon white clergy to lead and speak. Therefore, a Latina woman who had grown up on the border in Nogales, who had her roots dug deep into the sand of the Sonoran desert, was chosen to lead the conversation. The Rev. Dr. Dottie Escobedo-Frank was deeply familiar with the work of providing hospitality to asylum seeking families after having served as the Chair of the Board of The Inn Project since 2016, during which time over 10,000 courageous people had walked through its doors.\nThe Rev. Dr. Dottie Escobedo-Frank led the meeting in a gentle, but intentional way, that drew in the voices of immigrant clergy and centered their stories. It felt like something different was happening. It felt like there was a glow in the air. It felt like a family curse had been broken, as the voices of pastors who were immigrants themselves found themselves heard in a new way. People leaned into the warmth of the moment and stood for long minutes chatting afterwards at the door. Women of color – accustomed to being ignored in these kinds of meetings – talked about the confidence and inspiration that Dottie’s leadership and centering of them had awakened. The truth that they mattered and that their voices mattered was unapologetically proclaimed in that space.\nIn the meetings that followed, stories would be shared, a narrative and invitation of hospitality would be written, and an atmosphere of trust and transparency would be built and assumed.\nIn March 2019, the group would approve a statement to be released to the community that would detail the militarization we experience in Southern Arizona, the ministry of hospitality on the border, and the need for support from others. Groups signing on as members of the Southern Arizona Border Care Network would include: The Inn, Casa Alitas, Casa Mariposa, El Mesías United Methodist Church, First Christian Church, Justice for Our Neighbors, Keep Tucson Together, Mariposas Sin Fronteras, Menlo Park United Methodist Church, Mountain Vista Unitarian Universalist, Southern Arizona Sanctuary Coalition, Southside Presbyterian Church, St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church, St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist Justice Arizona Network, Borderlands Unitarian Universalist.\nOne line from the narrative that they signed was, “An increased number of asylees are being detained in mostly for-profit prison-like facilities. They are not given legal options. They are herded through our legal system without due process. Children are put in detention with parents, as well as unaccompanied minors being detained in prison-like tent facilities. We are treating the immigrant among us as criminals, instead of asylees or refugees or neighbors.”\nThe group would meet again on May 2nd to discuss how to support one another and reach out further into the community.\nA couple days later on May 4th, however, the first cracks in the veneer of transparency would appear when a press conference would be held by the City to begin to frame the narrative in Tucson in a very different way. The new narrative centered the work of only one of the members of the Southern Arizona Border Care Network in a way that erased the work of the others and the community of trust that they were trying to build.\nThis member, Casa Alitas, had expanded their capacity a few months earlier and were seeking community support in maintaining the numbers they were serving.\nIn the months that followed, the narrative would be continually strengthened that all other sites providing hospitality in Tucson were small, temporary satellite sites of Casa Alitas, solidifying power, in the perception of the government and the public, in the hands of one group. This appearance of dominance would give the Catholic Community Services that oversaw the work of Casa Alitas, and specifically the Catholic Bishop, sole negotiating power with the County over the fate of asylum seeking families.\nConversations would happen behind the scenes, amongst the stakeholders that Bishop Weisenberger chose to include, about what would happen to the families. By speaking of a “committee of faith leaders” making the decision, it would give the impression that others doing the work were included in making the decision. Yet, despite the fact that Casa Alitas had signed on as a member of the Southern Arizona Border Care Network, key members of that community would not be invited to the table, nor would it be made clear and transparent who was. An agreement would be made privately between the County Government and the Catholic Bishop to relocate asylum seeking families to cells in the Pima County Juvenile Justice Complex, then shared afterwards with the community.\nThe news was shared with the public in a news article on July 8th, with the acknowledgement that it would create dissension and divisions in the community, “Kozachik concedes that putting the families inside the Pima County Juvenile Justice Complex doesn’t look good at first glance, but said it should not feel like asylum seekers are being kept in custody.”\nImmediately there was an outcry from many Women of Color in Tucson, most notably prison policy expert, Tiera Rainey, who was well schooled on the effect that incarceration atmospheres have on individuals. In contrast to how Women of Color were treated at that first Southern Arizona Border Care Network meeting six months before, their voices were dismissed by those forcing the plan forward.\nAccording to the Tucson Sentinal, Councilman Kozachik said, ”Look they’re well-intentioned, but we’re not incarcerating Guatemalans,” he said. “I think people when they see the changes, they’ll be on board,” he said, adding that the county was picking up costs for the facility, including maintenance, food prep and laundry costs.”\nAnd Catholic Community Services Director, Teresa Cavendish said, “Right now we’re having our hands tied, while work that we’ve been doing for five years is being second-guessed by people who don’t do this work.”\nThe community was told to just trust the government and the Catholic Church, without being given a reason to do so. We were thrust backwards into the atmosphere where the white men with power make the decisions, and the rest of the community “trusts” that they know best. The very definition of paternalism. We remembered those who have not experienced incarceration themselves may have a hard time recognizing it when they see it.\nIn reality, the community had actually been given a very clear reason not to “just trust” as the Government and Catholic Community Services had partnered with the media in creating a narrative that was inaccurate and that intentionally and strategically erased the work of their partners in order to position the Catholic Bishop as the sole person to make the decision about what to do with asylum seekers, and to position Catholic Community Services as the sole controller of spaces for asylum seekers in Tucson.\nThe work of the Latina woman who had been laboring to organize the Southern Arizona Border Care Network was erased and strategically undermined.\nThe voices of Women of Color like Tiera Rainey were demeaned and dismissed, by decision makers, by the media, and by community members that insisted we should “just trust.”\nThe meeting to approve the plan was moved up from August to July 22 in order to accomplish the power play before the movement resisting it could gain traction, and before community members and faith leaders had a chance to talk.\nAccording to the Tucson Sentinal, Councilman Kozachik threatened, “If this falls off the rails,” because of objections, “(opponents) own the street release option, if we don’t get this facility.”\nIntimidation flourished. Institutional authority took precedence over expertise and experience. The community floundered under the sense of manipulative urgency that was being thrust upon them. The desire for power, control and funds were prioritized over the unity and well-being of the Tucson community.\nFederal funds could be used to reinvigorate County facilities, with the Catholic Church sharing credit with the government. It was a win for decision makers, but a loss for those they had excluded from the table.\nWhat will it cost our soul to insist that a jail cell is a dorm room? What did it cost those that called a tent city a summer camp just a year ago?\nVoice your concern. Sign the petition now: http://chng.it/7ChGrbsy\narizonaasylumasylum seekersbordercatholic community serviceshumanitarian aidimmigrationpima countyreligionRoman Catholic Churchtucson\nJustice, Listening\nTents, Kids, Money & God\nOctober 16, 2018 Hannah Adair Bonner\t5 Comments\nAfter the weeks I spent sitting at the gate of the tent city for kids in Tornillo, Texas, I realized I was having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. I texted friends asking them to give me the big picture. Accustomed to trench work, to being close to the ground, I often see the things no one else sees, while at the same time missing the things everyone else is seeing.\nOne of the biggest things that was weighing on me was that while offering continual observations from the ground, and listening to firsthand accounts from inside, I had done little to look into the faith-based organization that was running the tent city, Baptist Child and Family Services. That is why I was so grateful when University of Arizona professor, Dr. Elizabeth Jaeger, offered to begin the research into BCFS. Using her research as a starting point, I have attempted to reflect upon what is a faithful response to what we are seeing.\nMy mind has been particularly ill at ease, because time and again we have been given a date that Baptist Children and Family Services planned to end their involvement in Tornillo and shut down the tent city they were running for the United States Government. Yet, whenever the date drew close, it was extended, and it felt that promises were broken. It began to feel familiar; delay tactics in Texas are one thing I know well. Yet, why did BCFS stay involved? They were supposed to be crisis responders, making a temporary response to a momentary crisis created by family separations.\nIt is now four months later and the kids are still there. Permanent structures have been constructed in addition to the tents. The timeline is now dragging on through the end of 2018.\nThe initial crisis that BCFS was responding to, the zero-tolerance policy and consequent large numbers of children separated from their parents, has been expanded. Rather than working to reunify the families and children and then shut down, the vision of the tent city has grown to include unaccompanied minors of other forms. The facility has constantly expanded rather than contracted, leading up to the event that returned it to the public eye: the mass movement of kids, during the darkness of night, from shelters around the country to Tornillo. Capacity has been expanded to house close to 4,000 kids from the original 200. Bodies will have to be conscripted to fill those spots. An industry is being created.\nAs projected date of closure after projected date of closure has passed, one begins to wonder whether the situation that Baptist Child and Family Services find themselves in is similar to the quandary that Maria Hinojosa exposed in her two part interview with Juan Sanchez, the CEO of Southwest Key. In their conversation, Hinojosa draws out the economic and financial considerations that Juan Sanchez feels he must consider when lining up what may be best for the kids against the financial survival of an institution he has built.\nSometimes we start out with the best of intentions… but then there are salaries to be paid.\nThe CEO of Baptist Children and Family Services, Kevin Dunnin, for example, received a salary of $450,000 in 2013 (while the average salary for non-profit CEOs is closer to $285,000).\nAccording to CNN, in June, a week after Tornillo opened, BCFS was expected to receive $127,000,000 from the US Government during the fiscal year. Since that first week, the number appears to have skyrocketed to between $428,569,971 and $441,234,738 (depending on whether you go by Issue Date Fiscal Year or Funding Fiscal Year respectively) according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. That is a lot of money, a lot of salaries. All relying on the continued imprisonment of children. All relying on the Administration’s policy of creating consequences in order to discourage sponsors from claiming children.\nBeware the creation of an industry.\n(Grants made to BCFS by US Gov. Source: Department of Health and Human Services)\nThis leads us to some very important questions. First, the question of transparency and accountability. According to a 2014 article, concerns have been raised in the past to the Department of Health and Human Services about the lack of transparency exhibited by BCFS. If you were to look at their website, perhaps as a potential donor, you will not see any mention of the unaccompanied minor facilities, that presumably make up a good percentage of their income. While we can assume that running a tent city has not always been the history of BCFS, which began as an orphanage in Texas, that is the history that it is writing right now.\nWith each day that passes, and each child that spends another week or month in the desolation of Tornillo, we are normalizing the imprisonment of innocent children. With each person that signs a non-disclosure agreement to enter, and exits carrying the warm impression intentionally created for them and compassion for those that work there, normalization is carried back to the communities they inhabit.\nHow soon we forget our original horror.\nWhen you open the website for BCFS, it opens with an image of a young blonde woman, and the words “Empowering Youth Through Education.” However, until a new press release was issued this week saying that children at Tornillo would be receiving instruction from teachers, they have only been provided with optional workbooks to work on if they choose. Establishing educational opportunities is surely a necessary and welcome change from the past 4 months. One would presume that the requirements to abide by State regulations, stipulated by the grants BCFS receives, should already have been being respected and that education should already have been being offered. However, Tornillo, being on Federal property, is not subject to State inspections or enforcement.\nIt has been difficult at times for advocates all along the border in Texas and Arizona to know how to respond. Most of the responses that have taken place have been directed towards the more profitable Southwest Key. Over the past few months, many advocates have restrained themselves from bringing attention to situations, fearing that children will be moved to even worse locations. To many, Tornillo seems like the worst-case scenario, but others fear that moving the kids out of sight to military bases would be even worse. It is hard to know what to do.\nOne thing I do know: we must fight normalizing this, and we must fight against the creation of one more mass incarceration institution reliant on bodies for income.\nPart of me wonders if we are too late… has all of this already been happening, and already been established for years under our very noses? At the same time, looking at the numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services, I can see that income for both Southwest Key and BCFS has skyrocketed, doubling the amount of money they were receiving from the government last year. One can hope, that with the right amount of attention and pressure, we can prevent these and other organizations from being willing accomplices to the administration. One can hope, that we can discourage them from making this a normal part of their expected budget. One can hope, that we can prevent this from becoming business as usual.\nReligious Responsibility\nI have been struggling with what is our religious responsibility in this from the start. Throughout time when cruelty was enacted upon the vulnerable, there were religious leaders who collaborated and benefitted, and religious leaders who resisted in both public and private ways. When does the time come when we must choose? Where is the line that cannot be crossed? When does the moment come when we must risk it all?\nThese are questions that many of us have the luxury of asking, because we are not amongst the directly impacted community. Yet, I have heard the voice of a mother who expressed her shock that we were not jumping in our cars and storming the gates of Tornillo.\nI have struggled with trying to be professional, trying to be collegial, trying to be respectful. I have held my tongue while watching different religious leaders make different choices.\nThat mother’s outrage at our complacency strips my soul bare.\nReading representatives from the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention defending BCFS from critique, I know that Baptist Children and Family Services is not merely Baptist in name. They are claimed by the Southern Baptists, connected to the Southern Baptists. I wonder what my Baptists friends can do.\nIn seeking to examine our own practice, I have discussed with other pastors in Tucson how what we do with shelters here is different, and how to keep it that way. Most importantly, we do not hold children in confinement. We offer hospitality, welcome, food, clothing, and the freedom to leave at any time. There are not armed guards or fences, military helicopters or snipers on the roof as I saw on at least one occasion during my time at Tornillo. We work hard to communicate about consent and let guests know they are free to do as they choose and go where they choose. We are not funded by the government, we are supported by the church and you. We do not sign non-disclosure agreements, and as you see, have no problem using any knowledge we have to publicly critique the system. I believe those are important distinctions to maintain.\nWe must remain vigilant. The way things begin may not be how they end. You may start out setting up a few tents as a temporary shelter for separated kids, and end up running a tent city for thousands of unaccompanied minors.\nHow closely can the church cooperate with the government in serving immigrants before we have gone too far and become an accomplice to abuse? Where is the line? How much can we tolerate in order to maintain access to the vulnerable, without becoming desensitized to their suffering?\nWe must examine ourselves. Constantly. We must fight complacency.\ndetentionfaithfamily separationimmigrationreligiontent citytornillounaccompanied minors\nThere Is Something We Can Do\nJune 22, 2018 Hannah Adair Bonner\t2 Comments\nThey are all I can see when I close my eyes. Little faces pressed up against the grated windows of prison buses. In the silence between us, I feel them plead for help, and there is nothing I can do. I realize where they are going, and I finally feel myself start to crack apart inside.\nI watch the bus disappear into the distance, driving away from the tent city where they have been holding kids separated from their parents here at the Tornillo-Guadelupe Port of Entry, and a lump rises in my throat.\nWhat could be worse than Tornillo? What could be worse than this piercing heat that roasts my skin, and this blinding brightness that makes it hard to see? What could be worse than watching preschool age children sit in rows of chairs under an awning waiting to be processed, knowing that it is 110 degrees in the shade?\nWhat could be worse is two words: Indefinite and military.\nFirst, Military because whatever happens there can be hidden. When the children and families are in some sense in our communities, even if behind bars, we have the possibility that visitation and support will some day be open to us. Once they are on military bases, there are different rules than in civilian land. There is less opportunity for transparency and accountability and support.\nSecond, Indefinite because the executive order that was signed to end family separation included the capacity to hold those reunited families indefinitely. The toll that takes on the psyche is astronomical. The toll that takes on the soul of our nation could be deadly. Indefinite is the kind of word used by dictators, used by tyrannies, used in places where rights have disappeared.\nThis should concern you greatly, because as my father the lawyer once told me, if any of our rights are violated all of our rights are violated. Rights only exist if they exist for everyone. If they exist selectively, they are privileges not rights. If you allow your neighbors rights to be violated, you have signed the death sentence on your own rights. We stand together, or we fall together. Privilege is not something you want to stake the safety of your family upon.\nThere is a bigger plan at work than we can see, although we can guess at it. Horrified at the cries of children torn from their mothers’ arms, will we once more permit entire families to be held in militarized internment camps. Will the outrage we felt in one moment tire us out enough that we will be docile and complacent in the next? Is this how they planned it all along?\nWe must stop crying out that this is not who we are, and face that it is who we have been, so that we can face the future declaring that it is who we will no longer be.\nI close my eyes, and they are all I see. Little heads. Little faces. Pleading with me.\nI want to be with someone who understands. I find myself sitting with Mary, at the feet of la Virgen, at Saint Mark’s Catholic Church in El Paso. I know she understands. We took her son away as well. I sit there all night in silence with her, until total darkness covers us like a blanket. I know it’s time to go. I get up and walk closer to her and raise my face so that the water from her fountain can splash on my dirty, sunbu rnt face. I leave the water there as I walk away, a welcome respite from the tears.\n“Remember your baptism, and be thankful.” As the water drips down my face, I remember the words so often spoken in the church.\nWe remember the grace that we do not deserve and cannot earn. We remember the tenets of our faith, and the covenant we have made. We remember the commitment we have made to love and support one another.\nThis is what we have committed to:\nOn behalf of the whole Church, I ask you:\nDo you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,\nreject the evil powers of this world,\nand repent of your sin?\nDo you accept the freedom and power God gives you\nto resist evil, injustice, and oppression\nin whatever forms they present themselves?\nDo you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior,\nput your whole trust in his grace,\nand promise to serve him as your Lord,\nin union with the Church which Christ has opened\nto people of all ages, nations, and races?\nI reject the evil powers of this world. I commit to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. I promise to serve in the company of people of all ages, nations, and races.\nI close my eyes, and they are all I see. Little faces. Little heads. Pleading for help.\nAnd there is most certainly something that we can do.\nThere are many things that we can do.\nPlease read my friend Melanie’s suggestions for action, and add your own in the comments. I will be moderating comments.\nTo support folks here in El Paso:\nGive to the Detained Immigrant Solidarity Committee here in El Paso, to bond people out so that they can fight for their families on the outside: https://www.fianzafund.org/donate.html\nHelp fund legal assistance locally to these families by donating to: https://www.facebook.com/lasamericasIAC/\nAdd your suggestions in the comments below!\nbaptismchildrenel pasoimmigrationtornillo\nKids Are Still Arriving To Internment Camp\nJune 21, 2018 Hannah Adair Bonner\tLeave a comment\nFar in the distance, on the other end of my camera lens, sat a little figure in pink pants and a pink shirt. A little girl. Four, maybe five years old. She reminded me of another child that it would be impossible to forget: little Omran Daqneesh, cove red in dust and blood, sitting motionless in the back of an ambulance in Aleppo, Syria in the summer of 2016. Like him, she seemed to sit motionless, straight up in her chair. Silent perhaps. Stunned. This is trauma. This is what hell looks like, I thought.\nCheers were erupting throughout the nation as Trump signed an executive order supposedly ending the most current form of child separationthat our nation and administration has manifested. Squinting my eyes in the sun, I could barely see on my phone screen that people were celebrating victory. Just then my attention was distracted as another bus full of children came rumbling past. It looked like a prison bus, bringing little kids to baby jail. A little kid with tousled hair pressed their face against the glass, trying to see out through the dirty, tinted windows. A barrier separated the kids from the officers driving the bus. It reminded me of the prison bus, whose crash released Dr. Richard Kimball in Harrison Ford’s 1993 film, The Fugitive. Only on this bus, there would be no escape.\nAs a wave of relief washed over the nation, we were coming up dry in Tornillo.\nTurning my attention back to the little girl, I spotted an even younger child sitting near her. A toddler. Sitting outside. Waiting to be processed. The reporter from NBC remarked that if it was 110 in the shade, it must be 120 in the heat of the sun. At least they were in the shade.\nWhile people were celebrating that this journey of suffering was over, these children had only just arrived.\nPrison buses carrying little kids into a tent city that brought to mind housing for captured enemy combatants. Tan tents, surfaces rippling in the wind. I did not know how sturdy they were or how well they would protect the kids from the heat. I longed to see instead those classic thick, sturdy canvas army tents that we have used to protect our own forces.\nWere these children alone or with people they knew? Why were there little kids out in this heat, when they had clearly tried to create the impression that only teenage boys would be kept at Tornillo? Was this the next step? Was our outrage over family separation only a precursor so that we would accept it if they begin to house whole families in places like this?\n“So scary are the consequences of the collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.” –Toni Morrison\nWe cannot let this become our normal. It is not too late for us yet.\nfamily separationimmigrationtent citytornillo\nTornillo: The Turning of the Screw\nJune 19, 2018 Hannah Adair Bonner\t1 Comment\nTornillo. In Spanish it means screw – as in turning the screw – as in taking something bad and making it worse. That is exactly what has happened in this place.\nTonight I stood before the closed gate to the Tornillo-Guadelupe Port of Entry, beyond which sits the newly populated “tent cities” for children separated from their parents. I took it all in and struggled to find words. My colleague from University of Arizona, Juan Ortiz, had brought me there, weaving through the pitch blackness and utter isolation that lies east of El Paso, Texas. We drove as far as they would allow, and then I got out and walked the rest of the way while Juan kept watch. I’m a white woman in a clergy collar: my risk is infinitely less.\nIt was so dark. It was so isolated. I imagined that must be how the children held beyond this gate must feel. I imagined the tears that wet some of their pillows, like the Rio Grande winding through El Paso.\nWe are horrified. Finally. Why did it take us so long? Separating children from their parents is not new, but here it is – in Tornillo – that we find the turning of the screw. The point beyond which we cannot tolerate the pain. Dear God, I plead, let us not tolerate the pain. Let us not get used to it. Let us not rationalize and find comfort once again, while others are tortured. Torment us.\nThroughout our history, this is what we have done when we have wanted to break the spirit of a people. What are we trying to do now, if not that? We seek to break the Spirit. To break apart families, to break hearts, perhaps in ways that can never be repaired.\nLet me take a moment to be clear about what I mean when I say “we.” I mean the powers that be, and all of us that are not on the receiving end of their abuse but are merely mentally tortured by their constantly escalating atrocities. We who will not be the ones whose children are taken. We who cannot imagine a cause for our arrest, rather than dreading it’s arrival constantly. We who do nothing. Let us not be that we.\nLet us step away from that “we” and into another. Let us resist. Let us embrace discomfort. Let us refuse to be silent.\nThe thing that I want us to remember is that while these conditions are horrible for children, there are no conditions into which we can place them that will diminish the horror, trauma, abuse and damage that you inflict upon a child when you separate them from a parent who loves them and is willing to risk their lives for that child. The separation itself is the horror.\nYet, that separation already happens when a family arrives together to seek asylum – a human right – and one parent is taken and held. That separation happens when a parent is deported away from their children.\nThat separation happens in our mind when we create a narrative where the child is a victim and the parent is a criminal, when in reality their parent is all too often their savior. We have already separated parent from child mentally, before we separated them physically. We have already placed them in separate categories, before we placed them in separate cages.\nTo end this, it will not be sufficient to end their physical separation. We must also tear down the walls that we have constructed between parent and child in our minds. Until we do that, we will remain complicit. It is our mental divide that has led to their physical one.\nLet us bring them back together in our minds, so that we can bring them back together in the flesh.\nBelow is a portion of the El Paso mural by Francisco Delgado and Juan Ortiz.\nchildrenfamily separationimmigrationtexastornillo\nFeatured, Global, Justice\nAt least there was a baby to clothe…\nSearching through the racks of baby clothes at Factory 2 U, only one thought was running through my mind: thank God they are together. The thought of the alternative made my stomach contort itself into knots. Five days earlier, I had knelt on the ground on the Mexico side of the Deconcini Port of Entry, pushing a small red car back and forth between this baby’s brother and I, while she laughed and built up the courage to crawl closer. They were halfway through what would be 11 days of waiting outside in the summer heat, with temperatures well over 100 degrees, hoping that their name would be called one morning and they would have a chance to go through that doorway into the United States and begin their plea. Next to them, five sick children – siblings – slept with limbs entwined on the ground in the heat and dust.\nI had driven down that morning with my friends Gretchen and Kat, wanting to see for ourselves where the people were who usually filled the cots in our refugios. Hundreds of people stretched out from the doorway into the United States, all the way back to the small tables of wares and men offering taxis that welcome newcomers to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico.\nA man with a stethoscope slung over his shoulders, Panchito, walked the line, checking on the needs of those seeking asylum. Volunteers from Kino Border Initiative fed them, while Voices From the Border carried in water and clothes. Each day, only 5-12 people were being permitted through that doorway into the United States, the same one that I could walk through with such ease.\nWhen we did walk back through that doorway, only one of us with a passport but all of us with blonde hair, I spoke to the mother in the best Spanish I could manage. I tried to tell her that we would be waiting and praying on the other side; that we would have a place for them; that we wanted them; that they were welcome. I tried to hide the fear behind my eyes, knowing what our government had given itself the right to do. Knowing that some families do not make it to us; that some families are torn apart and sent to separate facilities, just as families throughout history’s cruelest moments have been sorted left and right.\nI did not know if I’d ever see her again. I prayed I would. The only families they send to our refugio are the ones where at least one parent has been permitted to stay with the children.\nFive days later, when I unexpectedly saw her face, holding her baby and calling to me, I was overjoyed. With all the hundreds of families that we see each week, this week has felt different. For the first time, we were taking joy in something as small as no one having arbitrarily decided to tear this woman’s baby from her arms. This was a level of cruelty that I had not imagined we would have to face. This was a relief that I did not think I would ever have the necessity to feel.\nI carried that relief with me as we dug through bins of clothes, searching for a clean shirt for her 18 month old, and came up with nothing. At least there was a baby here to clothe, I told myself.\nTen minutes later, standing alone in front of racks of baby clothes at Factory 2 U, I sorted through tshirts trying to find even a single one without Minnie Mouse or a white Disney Princess on it. At least there was a baby to put in that Minnie Mouse t-shirt, I told myself.\nAs an aunt of five with a sixth due any day, I am well versed in the skills of playing back-up and indulgent aunt. I am well versed in what it means to be family. I am well versed in trying my best when I am not sure what to do… There are so many moments now when I am not sure what to do.\nPulling down a fuzzy baby blanket from the wall, I thought of the two children who had spent the past month living under my roof, leaving drawings on my fridge, taking naps with my dog, watching telenovelas on my television, falling asleep in my arms. Once again, a spasm rocked my gut at the thought that they too could have been separated from both their parents instead of just their father. Just their father. As if a gaping hole in your heart that keeps you awake all night crying, and in bed all day sleeping could be captured by the word “Just.” Is this what we have come to? That we must give thanks that only one parent has been taken?\nI am so tired of giving thanks for small mercies, with the knowledge ever pressing on my mind of the great cruelties that have been escaped, that hang ever threatening over our heads from my own government. I can do these little things. I can lessen the pain for those that cross my path. I can put warm socks on the cold feet of babies, and smiles on the faces of children too young to understand the truths that are causing their parents to despair. Yet, these are such small things, and this cruelty, this complacency, this occupation of our community is so vast.\nAt least there is a baby to clothe, I tell myself. At least the baby wasn’t strapped into a car seat with dozens of other children in a converted prison bus, screaming as they are transported away from their parents.\nAt least there was a baby to clothe.\nHas it really come to this?\nSomewhere, a Christian man or woman sits behind a computer, typing comments onto every post they can find. Not even understanding the laws themselves,* they are saying that these desperate families, these children, these mothers, should not have broken the law and deserve what they get.\nWhose law?\nWhile these parents and children stand accused by us of breaking the law of man, we stand guilty of breaking the law of God. We sort them left and right, mothers to one side, children to the other; yet, God has sorting to do as well.\n“Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:41-46)\nSomewhere, a five year old child is crying out for their mother. They are tired. They are traumatized. They live their lives in fear 24 hours a day. They do not understand what the people around them are saying. Perhaps they are being held in an institution like Southwest Key where the staff speaks Spanish or English, but not Portuguese or K’iche’ or Q’eqchi’ or Kaqchikel or whichever language their mother uses to soothe them. Perhaps they have a video translation device that talks to them and translates the staff’s orders. Let go of your siblings. Be quiet. Behave. Every day that passes, every tear that falls, was the choice of our government, and was a part of a system financially dependent upon keeping its beds full of children who are kept from getting tucked in by their papa with a good night kiss.\nHere we stand, where the rest of the nation makes our decisions for us, and a Federal force occupies our streets, and we are relieved simply to see a baby still in her mother’s arms.\nYou can organize. You can talk to your neighbors. You can petition. You can donate. You can call. You can write. You can refuse to let our elected officials rest until these children are resting back in their parents arms.\nStop. Family. Separation. Now.\n*For more information on how the United States Government is breaking it’s own laws read about American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh and the screening process that we are bound to apply for credible fear and reasonable fear.\nfamily separationimmigrationnogalestucson\n\"There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.\" (Leonard Cohen)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line713972"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.554872453212738,"wiki_prob":0.44512754678726196,"text":"Places where life is possible in our galaxy\nby Nikola | Mar 7, 2019 | Space | 1 comment\nOur galaxy is not so much welcome for life as it used to be. Cosmic radiation, supernova explosions, collisions between solar systems, and everything else makes our galaxy (Milky Way) a hell of a place for any biology. However, a detailed computer simulation locates several good places for life in our neighborhood.\nTo support life as we know it, these planets should have liquid water and orbit at the right place of the solar system, not too close, not too far from its star. Similarly, life will not appear or survive long in the vicinity of the center of the galaxy. Here, in the center of the galaxy, there is a high density of stars that over time can explode and “spark” the possible ozone shells of the planets, and then they are exposed to huge radiation.\nIn this new study, researchers led by physicist Duncan Fordan of the University of St. Andrews in Britain focused on regions far from the center of the galaxy. They used a computer simulation to model the entire Milky Way, as well as nearby galaxies like Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies. They simulated the distribution of gas, stars, and planetary systems in that huge nebula from planetary bodies. They calculated the evolution of the galaxies for billions of years while mapping the zones where life is suitable.\n“We are the first to see how history affects galaxies and their ability to develop life.”\nsays Fogan”\nFor each type of star in the simulation, Forgan and his colleagues calculated the possibilities to develop rocky planets that would be similar to Earth or would be impossible for lifelike\nMercury. They also calculated the chance to form giant planets that are as large as Neptune that would form near a star and which would “help” to develop a life on the nearby planet, as on Earth.\nSimulation, not surprisingly, has shown that potential life-pleasing planets can form away from zones that are in conglomerates of stars, where the likelihood of supernova is greater. This means the formation of planets suitable for life in places where there is no high density of stars.\nObservations from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope show that many stars have planets that are at the “right” distance of their stars. But it is not only crucial for a planet to be suitable for life. The simulation shows that much of the planets located closer to the center of the galaxy are less likely to develop life, those who are on the brink of the galaxy are more likely to develop planets that are suitable for life, says the paper published in International Journal of Astrobiology.\nModeling has shown that not only the stars but the evolution of galaxies have an impact on the whole process.\nSam\ton March 8, 2019 at 6:28 pm\nIs life depending on water the only kind of life in our system or the only kind of life in galaxy?!\nWireless Power for the Whole World – How Did the Great Experiment, Tesla’s Tower Fail?\nAnyone who wants to travel into space will be able to do so next year: Prepare “Only” $ 250,000\nSpaceX Dragon capsule completes resupply run to International Space Station\nThe famous theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, forecasting digital immortality and perfect capitalism\nLife After Death: Develop an application that will overcome death","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1272907"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8716464638710022,"wiki_prob":0.8716464638710022,"text":"2019 Information Guide\n2019 Season Stats (.pdf)\n2019 Game Notes / Depth Charts\nGameday Central\nHigh School Coaches Ticket Request\n#TGW: Scoring Record Likely to Fall\nMatt Winkeljohn | The Good Word\nHarrison Butker didn’t show up on The Flats to be in this conversation, but now that he’ll have a chance in his last game to become Georgia Tech’s all-time leading scorer — so long as he gets at least one chance to aim between the uprights Saturday against Kentucky in the TaxSlayer Bowl — you bet he’s thinking about it.\nHis last PAT in Athens last month closed the scoring in the Yellow Jackets’ stirring 28-27 come-from-behind win at Georgia and gave Tech’s kicker 322 career points — the same number that kicker Luke Manget compiled from 1999-2002.\nHead coach Paul Johnson is well aware. He’s not especially fond of field goals, often choosing to go for it on fourth down in favor of scoring touchdowns. “I was joking with [Butker], and told him we’re going for two every time,” he said.\nIt doesn’t take much to make Butker smile. Sometimes, maybe it’s a nervous grin for Tech’s tri-captain. “He said that at the banquet,” he said when asked about Johnson’s suggestion. “But I think he’s joking . . . hopefully.”\nOne way or another, the 6-foot-3, 210-pound senior Decatur who has been Georgia Tech’s kicker in every game of his career is likely to get a shot. The Jackets score touchdowns frequently and Johnson typically opts for the kick rather than two. That’s how Butker’s become the school’s all-time leading PAT kicker with 205.\nWith just one more, or a field goal, he’ll be alone atop the scoring list, too.\n“It’ll mean a lot,” Butker said. “That record shows that somebody did their job and kept their head down and was there for however long they were. Personally, I wasn’t focused on accolades so the fact that I’m going to get this award was pretty crazy to me. I didn’t come into Tech thinking about breaking records.\n“I wasn’t thinking about breaking the career scoring record. It was a surprise to me but I’d like to think that I just kept my head down and kicked the ball and you all tell me about the records.”\nButker didn’t play football until he was a sophomore at the Westminster School. An outstanding soccer player and a fine basketball player for the Wildcats, he was a quick study, yet not to the point where he would go to college with records in mind.\n“I went to a camp at the end of my sophomore year. It was pretty amazing to see that there were more kickers in Georgia than just five or six or 10,” he recalled. “I did it my junior year just to be on the team because it was fun, and then I had a good year and I realized I was pretty decent.\n“It was weird to see that there were so many kickers because I thought it was not a real position.”\nEarning all-state honors as a junior and a senior, Butker left Westminster with school records for longest field goal (53 yards) and most made in a season (16-of-17 as a junior).\nAfter earning All-America honors as a senior, his college choice was easy.\n“I was a big Georgia Tech basketball fan, especially in 2004 when they were playing UConn in the national championship game,” he said. “Everybody in my school was a Georgia fan. There were a couple Georgia Tech fans and I figured I might as well be a Georgia Tech fan just to be a little different.\n“Obviously, beating Georgia two out of four years has been a lot of fun.”\nIn fact, choosing Butker’s biggest field goal is easy, too.\nHe snuck a 53-yarder over the crossbar as time expired in Athens in 2014 to force overtime, where Tech beat the Bulldogs.\nThere have been others, like his 24-yard game winner as time expired at Virginia Tech earlier that season. He scored 98 points in `14, second-most in school history, as the Jackets went to the ACC championship game and beat Mississippi State in the Orange Bowl.\nTying his career high this season with 11 field goals in 13 tries, Butker doesn’t try as many as a lot of kickers because of Johnson’s gusto. For his career at Tech, he’s made 39-of-56. He doesn’t seem to mind.\n“It’s a lot of extra points and a lot of kickoffs,” he said. “In the Orange Bowl year, I didn’t have a lot of field goal attempts (11-of-18), but we were winning. I love Georgia Tech . . . Tech’s got so much other stuff that you shouldn’t worry about how many attempts you’re going to get as a kicker.\n“I’d rather be a part of the team, a team that’s winning that has good chemistry than just focusing on how many attempts I can get.”\nJohnson appreciates Butker’s approach and he sure doesn’t mind that 47 of his 64 traditional kickoffs this season have been touchbacks (and only five of those returned have come out past the 25-yard line). Not bad for an industrial engineering major.\n“He’s a very talented young man and he comes from a really stable family,” the coach said. “He’s probably done about what I thought he’d have done. Now, if you asked me if he’d be the all-time leading scorer, I wouldn’t have known, but historically . . . our guys have scored a lot of points. This year’s been way more consistent for him.”\nIt would have been great to be selected for a postseason all-star game, yet Butker — who was named honorable mention all-ACC — won’t need that to take a shot at the next level.\n“I like being kind of an underdog. I think a lot of the guys, a lot of the analysts and scouts and stuff are looking at the field goal attempts,” he said. “A lot of people are getting 25-30 attempts per season. I can just do my best for the amount of attempts I get.\n“I’ll definitely try for the NFL,” he explained. “Anything that I’ve done, I’ve tried to be the best at.”\nFirst, he’ll play one last time for the Jackets and go for a win and a record.\n“I’ll enjoy it,” Butker said. “Obviously, it’s the last game wearing the white and gold, last game for Georgia Tech, and we’re playing another SEC team, so that will be fun. We’re definitely looking forward to it. These are my last practices coming up. It went by fast and I’ll try to soak it all up.”\nJanuary 15, 2020 Tech Announces Football Series with Alabama, Georgia State\nJackets to play home-and-home against Tide in 2030 and ‘31, against nearby GSU in ’24 and ‘26\nTech Announces Football Series with Alabama, Georgia State\nJanuary 15, 2020 2020 Football Season Tickets On Sale Now\nHome slate includes Clemson, Miami, Virginia, UCF and Mayhem at MBS vs. Notre Dame\n2020 Football Season Tickets On Sale Now","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line25845"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8416879177093506,"wiki_prob":0.8416879177093506,"text":"colonel g.D. Dailley, mbe, cd\nColonel Gordon Debenham Dailley was born July 24th, 1911 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He attended St. John’s College and the University of Manitoba and began his military career in 1940. In 1943 he attended the Canadian War Staff College and then served in England. He held a number of executive positions at Army Headquarters in Ottawa and on the United Nations Armistice Commission in Korea. In 1940, he married Miss Virginia Johnston a ballet dancer from Texas and they had four children, Don, Susan, James and Virginia. He was promoted to the rank of Colonel in 1955 when he was assigned to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, as Canadian Military Attaché. Colonel retired from his military career in 1964 and became the Co-Director of the New Brunswick Centennial Administration.\nBefore joining the army, Colonel was active in sporting circles in Canada and England. He was a “playing-Captain” of England’s Olympic Hockey Team, which won the Olympic title and gold medal in 1936.\nIn mid 1968 Colonel Dailley began pursuing his dream of creating an exciting new attraction in Canada — a drive-through wildlife park dedicated to the conservation of declining wildlife species. He selected a 700-acre parcel of land in Rockton, Ontario and African Lion Safari & Game Farm Ltd. was founded. On Friday August 22, 1969 the safari opened its doors to its first visitors and today 50 years later, Colonel’s dream continues. Colonel Dailley was an active member of many associations and a founding member of two organizations that still exist today; Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums (CAZA) and Attractions Ontario.\nColonel Dailley passed away in the spring of 1989 at the age of 77. Attractions Ontario created a scholarship (The Colonel Don Dailley/Attractions Ontario Scholarship) in his memory. Two scholarships are awarded yearly to second or third year students of a post-secondary tourism program in Ontario. The students must be interested in pursuing a career in the attractions sector of the tourism industry. The scholarship commemorates Colonel’s outstanding contributions and commitment to attractions and Ontario tourism.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line371083"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6903414130210876,"wiki_prob":0.30965858697891235,"text":"Balderton Capital Invests In Web Backup Startup Archify\nAnthony Ha\t@anthonyha / 8 years\nOne of the most frustrating online experiences for me is trying to track down a web page or tweet that I saw a few days ago. If I’m lucky, I bookmarked the page or favorited the tweet, but most of the time I haven’t, and so I can only sit there and fume.\nSo basically, a startup called Archify is the answer to my prayers. It’s a browser plugin that tracks every website you visit (excluding https pages and websites you visit in Incognito mode), and also allows you to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts for archiving. Then, when you’re trying to find something later, you just search the archives like you’d search the Web.\nArchify, which was founded in Vienna and is moving its headquarters to Berlin, just announced that it has raised a seed round of undisclosed size from Balderton Capital.\nThe service is still in closed beta testing. The founders invited me in, but I haven’t played with it enough to write much of a review. I will say that the figuring out all the knobs and dials is a little confusing, but hey, that’s what private betas are for, and I like the concept enough that I’m willing to persevere.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line523948"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6881861686706543,"wiki_prob":0.3118138313293457,"text":"Facebook Login Remember\nLogin Remember Me\n- select - Male Female\n- select - 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019\nRegister Remember Me\nBy clicking on Register you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy\nYou have successfully resetted your password. An email with your new password has been sent to you.\nYou have successfully logged in. Please wait...\nYou have successfully registered. Please wait...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line357781"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7256349921226501,"wiki_prob":0.7256349921226501,"text":"Microsoft intros Azure confidential computing\nThursday, September 14, 2017 Cloud, Encry, Microsoft Azure, Security\nMicrosoft Azure is introducing a new data security capability called Azure confidential computing that provides encryption for data that is in use.\nMicrosoft said it has been working on this capability with Intel for over four years.\nConfidential computing protects data in use from the following threats:\nMalicious insiders with administrative privilege or direct access to hardware on which it is being processed\nHackers and malware that exploit bugs in the operating system, application, or hypervisor\nThird parties accessing it without their consent\nMicrosoft said that when data is “in the clear” it is protected inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE - also known as an enclave), which ensures there is no way to view data or the operations inside from the outside, even with a debugger.\nhttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/introducing-azure-confidential-computing/\nVertical Systems: Mid-Year 2017 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD\nThursday, September 14, 2017 Ethernet, Research, Vertical Systems\nOrange Business Services (France), Colt (U.K.), AT&T (U.S.), Level 3 (U.S.), BT Global Services (U.K.), Verizon (U.S.) and NTT (Japan) hold the top spots (in rank order based on retail port share) in Vertical Systems Group’s Mid-Year 2017 Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD, which ranks companies that hold a 4% or higher share of billable retail ports at sites outside of their respective home countries.\nBased on mid-year 2017 port share results, Orange, Colt and AT&T continue to rank as the top three companies on the Global Provider Ethernet LEADERBOARD, respectively. Level 3 moves up to fourth from fifth position, displacing BT Global Services.\nThe Challenge Tier of Global Providers includes companies with share between 2% and 4% of this defined market. Six companies qualify for the mid-2017 Challenge Tier (in alphabetical order): Cogent (U.S.), SingTel (Singapore), T-Systems (Germany), Tata Communications (India), Telefonica Worldwide (Spain) and Vodafone (U.K.).\n“Demand for global Ethernet networking continues to expand. As retail Ethernet providers extend their network footprints through partners worldwide, the growth outlook for wholesale services is increasing,” said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. “Orchestration across multiple provider networks is the top challenge constraining new service deployments, according to our research. This obstacle is being addressed through collaboration among industry players and standards organizations, including efforts to standardize on open APIs and service specifications.”\nhttps://www.verticalsystems.com/vsglb/mid-year-2017-global-provider-ethernet-leaderboard/\nMobile World Congress Americas attracts 21,000\nThe 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas, held September 12-14 in San Francisco, attracted more than 21,000 attendees, according to GSMA.\nOver 55 percent of Mobile World Congress Americas attendees held senior-level positions, including more than 2,400 CEOs, and 20 per cent of all attendees were female. Over 300 members of the media and industry analysts attended to report on the event.\n“We are very pleased with the success of our first Mobile World Congress Americas event,” said John Hoffman, CEO, GSMA Ltd. “The strong level of engagement at the show, particularly among senior-level attendees, underscores the integral role that mobile plays across the entire Americas region. I would like to thank our partner CTIA and also extend our gratitude to all attendees, exhibitors, sponsors and partners who were a part of the 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas.”\nhttp://www.mwcamericas.com\nVeriSign: Internet domain name registrations growing at 2.1% annually\nThursday, September 14, 2017 Verisign\nApproximately 1.3 million domain name registrations were added to the Internet in the second quarter of 2017, bringing the total number of domain name registrations to approximately 331.9 million across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of June 30, 2017, according to the newly-updated Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief.\nThe increase of approximately 1.3 million domain name registrations globally equates to a growth rate of 0.4 percent over the first quarter of 2017.1\nCompared to last year, domain name registrations increased by 6.7 million, or 2.1 percent.\nAs of June 30, 2017, the .com domain name base totaled 129.2 million domain name registrations, while the .net domain name base totaled 15.1 million domain name registrations.\nhttp://www.Verisign.com/DNIB\nDISH Network picks Amdocs CES 10 for business services\nThursday, September 14, 2017 Amdocs\nDISH Network has selected Amdocs CES 10 for its DISH Business customers, including private offices, hotels and apartments.\nUnder the contract, Amdocs will provide an advanced business and operational support system (BSS/OSS) that integrates all the elements that define the DISH Business experience. This includes delivering the best possible entertainment experience in a wide range of properties with innovative services powered by DISH’s SMARTBOX and EVOLVE set-back box for hotels, and supported by Amdocs CES 10.\n“With Amdocs CES 10 as our next generation platform for the business sector, we’ll be able to launch new services and further enhance the customer experience,” said John Swieringa, executive vice president of operations at DISH.\nhttp://www.amdocs.com\nSpirent launches Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.3) testing\nThursday, September 14, 2017 Spirent, Testing\nSpirent Communications has updated its flagship security testing solution, CyberFlood, to support Transport Layer Security (TLS 1.3), a new encryption protocol.\nSpecifically, this newCyberFlood Advanced Fuzzing update provides support for TLS 1.3 draft-19, draft-20, and draft-21.\nTransport Layer Security (TLS) is the underlying technology that enables secure communication between web browsers and servers on the Internet.\n“As the first to market with fuzz testing for TLS 1.3, Spirent is extending its leadership in security testing and validating the way the world communicates,” said David DeSanto, director of products and threat research at Spirent Communications. “The industry is ripe for an encryption protocol update, and our customers are relying on Spirent to provide them with the realistic preemptive intelligence that ensures their TLS 1.3 implementations are stable, reliable and secure before they go to market.”\nhttp://www.spirent.com/security","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line105703"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7238034605979919,"wiki_prob":0.7238034605979919,"text":"Trump complains he can no longer call his daughter 'beautiful'\nBy Josephine Parsons| 1 year ago\nAt a rally in Cleveland, Ohio, President Trump lamented that he could no longer compliment his daughter Ivanka, blaming the \"politically correct\" nature of modern society.\nThe rally was held in support of Republican candidate for Ohio Mike DeWine ahead of the midterm elections.\nWhile introducing Ivanka Trump, his daughter and senior White House advisor, to the crowd, the President began to disparage the \"politically correct\" climate.\nTrump and daughter Ivanka at the Cleveland rally. (AAP)\n\"I know they’ll say this is nepotism, but the truth is, she’s a very, very — you’re not allowed to use the word beautiful anymore when you talk about women, no-no, you’re not allowed, it’s politically incorrect,\" he said.\nThen, Mr Trump asked the males in the crowd to raise their hands if they agreed they'd never call a woman \"beautiful\" again.\n\"Every man here raise your hand, you will never ever say your wife, your girlfriend, anybody is beautiful, so I’m not allowed to say because it’s my daughter Ivanka, but she’s really smart,\" the 72-year-old said.\nTrump has commented on his daughter's appearance before. Once, during an interview with radio personality Howard Stern, Trump was asked to list the world's \"great beauties\".\n\"You know who’s a great beauty?\" he reportedly responded. \"My daughter Ivanka. Now she’s a 10.\"\nHowever, many have pointed out that the President's comments at the rally were a thinly-veiled criticism of the #MeToo movement.\nMore than 20 women have made sexual assault accusations against President Trump, according to Business Insider. He has repeatedly called these \"false charges\".\nProperty News: The colours to know before painting your house in 2020 - domain.com.au","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line254615"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6070036888122559,"wiki_prob":0.39299631118774414,"text":"Firearm/ Weapons Charges\nMarsy's Law\nNew Three Strikes Law\nProbation & Parole\nSecurities Violations\nWrits & Appeals\nHonest Counsel, Aggressive Representation Benefit From Over 25 Years of Criminal Defense Experience\n17 New Laws That Take Effect This Year\nBy MarkCMS\nHere is a sampling of other new laws that Californians woke up to in January:\nAssault weapons: The new gun-control regulations broaden the definition of illegal assault weapons, require background checks for the first time for ammunition purchases and limit the lending of guns to family members. California bars purchasing, semi-automatic, centerfire rifles or semi-automatic pistols that lack a fixed magazine and have one of a number of features that include a protruding pistol grip or a folding or telescoping stock. If you already own one of these weapons you’ll have to register it.\nGender-neutral bathrooms: While North Carolina waged a proxy war in its restrooms over gender identity, California quietly went in the opposite direction. Assembly Bill 1732 requires all single-toilet bathrooms in businesses and public agencies to be gender neutral.\nMinimum wage, equal pay and paid parental leave: The statewide minimum wage goes from $10 to $10.50 an hour for businesses with 26 or more employees — a rate that will rise to $15 by 2022. Under another law, Assembly Bill 1676, an employer can’t pay a woman less than her male colleagues because of her prior salary. Assembly Bill 2393 gives up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave to all K-12 and community college employees, including classified workers and community college faculty.\nMotorcycles: Current law does not change; lane splitting by a motorcyclist remains legal if done safely. This bill defines lane splitting as driving a motorcycle, which has two wheels in contact with the ground, between rows of stopped or moving vehicles in the same lane. The bill permits the CHP to develop lane splitting educational safety guidelines in consultation with other state traffic safety agencies and at least one organization focused on motorcycle safety.\nChild safety seats: Although this law was passed during the 2015 legislative session, it takes effect Jan. 1. Children under two years of age must ride rear-facing in an appropriate child passenger safety seat. Children weighing 40 or more pounds, or standing 40 or more inches tall, are exempt. California law continues to require that all children under the age of eight be properly restrained in an appropriate child safety seat in the back seat of a vehicle.\nUse of Wireless Electronic Devices: Motorists are no longer permitted to hold a wireless telephone or electronic wireless communications device while driving a motor vehicle. Rather than holding the device, it must be mounted in the 7-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield farthest removed from the driver or in a 5-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield nearest to the driver. Another option is to affix the device to the dashboard in a place that does not obstruct the driver’s clear view of the road and does not interfere with the deployment of an airbag.\nThe law does allow a driver to operate one of these devices with the motion of a single swipe or tap of the finger, but not while holding it.\nDriving under the influence - Ignition Interlock Device: Starting in 2019, a driving under the influence offender will be required to install an ignition interlock device on their vehicle for a specified period of time in order to get a restricted driver license or to reinstate their license. The law also removes the required suspension time before a person can get a restricted license, provided that the offender installs an IID on their vehicle. The law extends the current four-county (Sacramento, Los Angeles, Alameda, Tulare) DUI IID pilot program until Jan.1, 2019, at which time all DUI offenders statewide will be required to install an IID to have their license reinstated.\nSchool bus safety: This law requires all school buses, school pupil activity buses, youth buses, and child care motor vehicles used to transport school-age children to be equipped with a “child safety alert system.” Every school is required to have a transportation safety plan with procedures to ensure that a pupil is not left unattended in a vehicle.\nTour bus inspections: This new law requires the CHP to develop protocols for entering into a memorandum of understanding with local governments to increase the number of inspections for tour buses operated within their jurisdictions.\nHunger and homelessness: Assembly Bill 1995 requires community colleges with shower facilities to make them available to homeless students, while Assembly Bill 1747 requires public and private colleges that offer food service to apply to participate in a state-funded program that provides meals to the homeless. Advocates for homeless students note that those without permanent housing often don’t have a reliable way to store or prepare food.\nDocs and prescription drugs: Inspired by the Bay Area News Group’s Drugging Our Kids investigation, which revealed the state’s dependence on psychotropic medications to control troubled children, lawmakers passed legislation to hold physicians accountable. Senate Bill 1174 puts doctors who recklessly prescribe psychiatric drugs at risk of losing their medical license. Senate Bill 1291 will require more transparency and tracking of mental health services for foster kids.\nBooze: Powdered alcohol — yes, that is a thing — is now illegal to possess, sell or make. But beauty salons and barber shops can serve small amounts of wine and beer as long as it’s free and it’s before 10 p.m. — a privilege previously enjoyed by patrons of hot air balloon rides and limos.\nEarthquake warnings: California advances its goal of creating a statewide early warning system — which Mexico, China and Japan have — by establishing the California Earthquake Early Warning Program in the governor’s Office of Emergency Services. This year, the governor directed $10 million to the expansion of the existing prototype, ShakeAlert.\nConsumer protection: Landlords will be prohibited from showing, renting or leasing a vacant unit that they know has a bedbug infestation. Rental car companies won’t be able to rent out cars subject to a manufacturer’s recall until the vehicle has been fixed.\nSex crimes: Assembly Bill 701 broadens the definition of rape to include “all forms of nonconsensual sexual assault.” And after the worldwide outcry over the six-month jail sentence given to former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, Assembly Bill 2888 makes sexually assaulting an unconscious person a crime with a mandatory prison sentence. Rape, sexual assault and other sex offenses committed in 2017 will no longer be subject to a statute of limitations, under Senate Bill 813.\nChildren’s safety: Schools already have strict rules for athletes who may have suffered head injuries — such as removing the athlete for the rest of the day and keeping them sidelined until they have been cleared by a licensed health care provider. Assembly Bill 2007 extends those rules to youth sports organizations, along with training for coaches on concussions.\nMascot names: Passed back in 2015, Assembly Bill 30 gave public schools until 2017 to ditch a mascot, “Redskins,” now widely denounced as racist and insensitive to Native Americans. There were four high schools in California that needed to comply. Two of those schools now cheer for the “Tribe,” one roots on the “Reds” and one has ditched a mascot altogether.\nFor a complete list of laws, bill information and California Legislature information go to: leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/\nJanuary 9, 2020 California Alternative Custody Programs Read More\nDecember 5, 2019 California Resentencing Law May Help a Loved One Read More\nNovember 8, 2019 California Restricted License & DUIs Read More\nOctober 18, 2019 Relief Is Possible After a Criminal Conviction Read More\n225 W. Hospitality Lane","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line136443"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6449106335639954,"wiki_prob":0.6449106335639954,"text":"Joe Levin\nYou are here: Home / Newsroom / Joe Levin / President Joseph Kabila “Legalized Corruption”\nPresident Joseph Kabila “Legalized Corruption”\nJuly 25, 2017 /0 Comments/in Joe Levin /by Joe Levin\nMore than US$ 750 million in mining revenues disappeared from the coffers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over a three-year period, according to a report released Friday.\n“Regime Cash Machine,” published by the not-for-profit Global Witness, details how “legalized corruption” is diverting a fifth of the country’s vital mining revenues from the state budget, and thus siphoning funds that should be used for public services.\n“There is no clarity on what this money was spent on or where it ended up,” the report reads, but Global Witness’ investigation found that some of the funds were disbursed through corrupt networks with ties to President Joseph Kabila.\nCongo is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a GDP per capita of about US$ 445 just slightly ahead of Somalia and a handful of other Sub-Saharan African nations, according to the World Bank.\nBut the country is extremely rich in natural resources. In 2016, it provided more than half of the world’s cobalt – an in-demand metal used in smartphones and batteries for electric cars – and came in #6 in global copper production.\nLucrative mining companies are required to contribute a portion of their profits to Congo’s state budget through a combination of taxes, royalties, signature bonuses and dividends.\nHowever, Global Witness found that between 2012 and 2015, more than US$ 750 million of those funds were lost to corrupt state-owned companies and national tax agencies.\nThe figure rises to US$ 1.3 billion when company payments to other government bodies and a now-dissolved provincial tax agency are included.\nThe biggest offender in the siphoning scheme is the main state-owned mining company, Gécamines, which is “hemorrhaging” money even though it used to be the country’s most profitable mining venture.\nGécamines hardly does any of its own mining today, but rather holds shares in about 20 third-party mining projects, according to the report.\nIt receives more than US$ 100 million annually from those investments but contributes only a “tiny percentage” to the state.\nAt the same time, Gécamines found the funds to repay a large loan from Dan Gertler, a close friend of President Kabila, while its own staff and other loans went unpaid.\nThe other main culprits are Congo’s tax agencies, which are responsible for collecting taxes on industrial mining, highly secretive, and often run by individuals with close personal or professional relationships with Kabila.\nGlobal Witness found that the tax agencies withhold a portion of the mining proceeds each year for their “own funds” – so not only are some major mining companies not paying their fair share to the state, but tax agencies are also drawing from the pot.\nThese most recent corruption allegations come as Kabila clings to power after refusing to step down at the end of his second term in office last December.\nKabila then promised to hold new elections by the end of this year, but that timeline continues to be pushed back amidst a severe economic crisis and ongoing civil war between government troops and Kabila’s opponents, The New York Times reports.\nKabila’s government has not commented on the new Global Witness report, according to the BBC, but has previously denied allegations of corruption in Congo’s mining sector.\nTags: Congo, Dan Gertler, Joe Levin, President Joseph Kabila\nhttp://www.totpi.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0202121-29.jpg 1152 1920 Joe Levin http://www.totpi.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/lolo-300x136.png Joe Levin2017-07-25 08:26:342017-07-25 08:26:34President Joseph Kabila \"Legalized Corruption\"\nThe Questions That Duduzane Zuma Wouldn't Answer\nFrench Poker Player Arnaud Mimran: I Gave Netanyahu 1 Million Euros\nAbraham Reichmann Sues Parents Over Income Disagreement\nIsraeli Expert: Warheads Used in North Korean Missile-Launch Latest Indication of Close Military Cooperation With Iran\nGermany Committing Suicide\nMandate Expires For Congo's Dictator Joseph Kabila\nJoe Levin and T.O.T. Consulting Services Wishes Everyone A Beautiful And Kosher Pesach\nOil Company Sees Congo Output Accord After Tribunal Ruling\nJewish Crime\nJewish News\nJewish Paparazzi\nJewish Sex crimes\nPolice Crime\nEmail: Info@totpi.com\nOur Servises\nFollowing Services\nMatrimonial/Get\nSexual Misconduct Consulting\nK-9 Dogs\nT.O.T. Private consulting\nT.O.T. Private Consulting specializes in a variety of services for the Orthodox Jewish community worldwide.\nCopyright www.TOTPI.com © All Rights Reserved\nUK’s Serious Fraud Office Launches Rio Tinto Corruption Probe Why You Should Avoid Complimentary Hotel Wi-Fi","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line38996"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8508047461509705,"wiki_prob":0.8508047461509705,"text":"23-Year-Old Israeli Surfer Has Gone Missing in Bali\nDylan Heyden\nIsraeli surfer Aviv Meshil, 23, has been missing since Monday. He was last seen going surfing off the coast of Nusa Lembongan. Photo: Facebook\nSearch and rescue efforts are currently underway to locate a 23-year-old Israeli surfer who went missing in Bali. Aviv Meshil was last seen Monday when he went surfing off Nusa Lembongan, a tiny island off of the southeast coast of Bali.\nAccording to the Times of Israel, the situation has become infinitely complicated due to the lack of diplomatic ties between Israel and Indonesia. What’s more, Meshil reportedly traveled on a U.S. passport, which delayed Israeli officials being notified of the situation until Meshil had already been missing for several days.\nThe Tel Aviv-based MAGNUS professional search and rescue team is currently working with local authorities, consular officials, and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find Meshil, according to Walla News.\nIn an interview with Israeli outlet YNet, Meshil’s sister Sivan explained that their father had also flown to Bali to aid rescue efforts and that she couldn’t believe her brother had gone missing.\n“I am in a nightmare,” she said. “I’m hoping he’s found alive, and as of now we do not know too much, except that there are many locals who are trying to help.”\nSivan also explained that due to their family’s U.S. citizenship, American officials have also been involved but have been little help.\nIf you have any information regarding Meshil’s whereabouts, contact MAGNUS here.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line148373"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8991037011146545,"wiki_prob":0.8991037011146545,"text":"NoiseMap models and calculates noise from all types of ‘tracked transit systems’ i.e. ordinary railways, high-speed railways, metros and tram systems using a procedure called ‘Calculation of Railway Noise’ (CRN) which was published in 1995. Its basic concept is similar to Calculation of Road Traffic Noise, with various modifications to account for the different nature of railways. Since the original publication of CRN, various enhancements have been published and these are incorporated in the NoiseMap implementation.\nHigh-speed railways\nNoiseMap also implements the ‘Train Noise Prediction Model’ or TNPM, developed for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link high-speed railway (often now called HS1). TNPM is a very flexible prediction system, allowing users to choose their own noise source locations and speed co-efficients. It also permits the calculation of LAmax. NoiseMap’s TNPM option was used in the preparation of the Environmental Statement for the London to West Midlands section of the HS2 railway*.\nGeneral approach to modelling a railway\nThe railway track is modelled by dividing it into straight segments such that there are uniform traffic and propagation conditions for each segment. The surrounding topography is modelled in the same way as for roads.\nRail vehicles themselves are modelled differently from road vehicles, however. With roads, it is assumed that the mix of vehicles will be large enough that typical noise emissions can be used for light and heavy vehicles. For Railways, the mix of vehicles is generally small and dependent on the particular railway line. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain noise data for the particular vehicles in use. CRN provides a table of noise emissions for typical vehicles in use prior to 1995, but this list is now rather out of date and although updates have been published, it is quite likely that noise measurements will be needed to determine the source levels appropriate for the line to be modelled.\nRailway noise emissions also depend on the rail and wheel roughness, which means that there can be large differences in noise between trains on a single section of track, and also large differences in noise output from the same train on different sections of track. In fact, other factors mean that the noise from the same train on the same section of track can vary from one pass-by to the next. These factors present a particular difficulty in predicting railway noise, which add to the uncertainty.\nCRN provides correction factors for different types of track and track support system (eg ballasted track, rigid track base, jointed track, continuous rail). Experience shows that used carefully, it gives acceptable predictions, particularly for long-term averages, although there can be large discrepancies for individual rail vehicles.\nIf you wish to use TNPM, you will need to obtain source terms and speed correction factors appropriate to the railway vehicles under evaluation.\n*http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140613014254/http://assets.dft.gov.uk/hs2-environmental-statement/volume-5/sound/Vol5_Appendix_SV-001-000.pdf","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1264371"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5467705726623535,"wiki_prob":0.4532294273376465,"text":"Staying afloat: using Jason-3 to measure sea level rise\nThe view from above: mapping Greenland's melting glaciers\nScientist Interviews | May 17, 2016\nIce-tracking satellite: the next generation\nBy Pat Brennan, Jet Propulsion Laboratory\nThe expected launch of ICESat-2 in 2017 will continue NASA's decades-long effort to monitor changes in Earth's glaciers and great ice sheets.\nIce sheets and glaciers—Earth’s cryosphere—are a major focus for NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, and for team member Alex Gardner, a glacier specialist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Gardner studies the effects of glaciers on sea level and on the planet’s water resources. During a break from a meeting at JPL on the soon-to-be-launched ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite), Gardner answered a few questions from NASA’s Sea Level Portal.\nPortal: What is the purpose of the ICESat-2 meeting?\nGardner: Each satellite has a science team. The team is supposed to guide the science mission. The satellite will launch next year; we’re now looking at what are the potential things we have to get sorted out before the satellite launches. Is the science quality going to be what we need? Does anything need to be changed before it goes up? How do we support the users? On a more “sciency” side, we are looking at how the laser (altimeter instrument on the spacecraft) interacts with the snow. More interesting is what ICESat-2 is.\nPortal: And just what is it?\nGardner: ICESat-2 is a laser altimeter. The basic idea of a laser altimeter is that the satellite fires a laser pulse (light) that then passes through the atmosphere, bounces off the surface of the Earth, travels back through the atmosphere and is then received by the satellite. If you know exactly where the satellite is, where it’s pointing, how fast the laser energy (light) travels through the atmosphere, and how long it took the laser pulse to travel from the satellite to the surface and back then you will know exactly how far away the surface is from the satellite. The really amazing thing about ICESat-2 is, it’s a photon counting laser altimeter. That means that the detectors on the spacecraft are so sensitive that when a single photon finds its way back to the telescope, it records that event—every single photon it receives, the precise time and location.\nWhat I keep telling people is, if you were standing in Boston and we put this satellite in New York and pointed it at you, we could tell whether you stepped off the curb or not. We’re close to being able to see if you mowed your lawn or not. It’s really incredible. We’re looking at centimeter precision—from space.\nPortal: What are some of the questions you hope to answer with ICESat-2?\nGardner: If you use an altimeter to measure the volume of the Antarctic ice sheet, and how it changes, the really big question is how much are you losing to sea level rise. We don’t know that answer. If you have an error in your measurement of elevation change of one centimeter per year, it could double—or halve—the total signal. So you have to be able to resolve trends at the centimeter level. It has to be very, very precise.\nICESat-1 was a bit more conventional. It had a laser on it that did the same thing. It would send out a pulse and record the waveform coming back. But one of the big issues with ICESat-1 is that it didn’t directly measure the across-track slope. Imagine a sloping surface. Imagine you’re carrying a GPS and you walk in a straight line along a beach following the water’s edge, recording your elevation as you go. One year later you come back and try to walk the same transect to measure the change in surface height since you last visited, but you can only retrace your steps to within plus or minus 10 meters. Because you couldn’t retrace your steps exactly you won’t know if the elevation change you measure is because you were 10 meters higher up on the beach than the first time you visited or if the elevation of the sand had actually changed. We call this a problem of “unknown across-track slope.” With ICESat-2, we’ll have six beams, three strong, three weak, slightly offset from one another, to get the surface slope for the three beam-pairs. In addition we’ll get about nine times more coverage than we did with ICESat-1.\nICESat-2 will be also useful for sea ice. You have this floating surface always moving up and down, because of the tides and winds. What we measure is how thick the sea ice freeboard (the difference between ice height and sea surface height) is—how much is floating above the waterline. To do this, we try to measure the height of the water in the cracks between the ice and compare that to the height of the floating ice; this gives you the freeboard. When you have a surface as dynamic as the ocean, you can’t just go and measure the absolute elevation of the surface to figure how high it is above the water because you don’t know where the ocean lies. If you can see between the ice, you can find that surface. Sea ice has large implications for ocean circulation, ocean ecology and for global reflectivity (what scientists call the ‘albedo’).\nPortal: It sounds like these elevation measurements are the key to understanding the effects of climate change.\nGardner: Elevation is so important to us that when ICESat-1 died in 2009, NASA started an airborne campaign, operation IceBridge, designed to keep collecting altimeter data in between the two missions. It’s likely to continue beyond that, but the community is looking forward to having the data from ICESat-2. Airborne missions simply cannot get the coverage you get with satellite missions, especially with places like Antarctica. Logistically it’s very difficult to try and cover a whole continent. IceBridge had to strategically select areas to monitor.\nIt all comes down to measuring the elevation very well, and even small uncertainties in elevation lead to large uncertainties in mass changes.\nPortal: Have any major technical issues emerged during your meeting at JPL?\nGardner: We were a little bit concerned about the color of the laser, its green wavelength. It’s minor but it’s something we have to quantify: How much scattering of green light is there within the snow? It can affect the measurement of elevation. If you don’t know how it scatters, it’s difficult to say what is the best estimate of elevation. (But) the green laser is more stable and reflects more efficiently from the surface than ICESat-1’s near infrared laser. In many cases, in many applications, the color of the laser won’t be an issue at all. It’s just something we’re looking at.\nPortal: Is ICESat-2 the most advanced laser altimeter ever launched?\nGardner: In glacier research there are four primary variables we measure from space, and they’re incredibly useful. One is gravity, one is elevation. The unique thing about those two is, they accumulate the signal. So if you have a change in the rate of ice loss or gain that happened 20 years ago, as long as you measured before the change occurred and after it occurred, it keeps the signal. Surface velocities and surface reflectance are the other ones that we measure. What’s unique about the altimeter integration signal (on ICESat-2) are the very fine spatial scales. GRACE might tell you the whole region is losing mass; ICESat can tell you where that mass has been lost. As for the big gap between the two missions (ICESat-1 and ICESat-2)—we can compare ICESat-1 elevations to ICESat-2 elevations to determine the accumulated change between the missions. The longer you wait, the larger the signal gets. If you keep doing it for another 20 to 30 years, you’ll know with a very high degree of certainty how the ice sheet has changed during that time. It also gives us the “where,” which also helps is understand the “how.” (ICESat-2 is) the most sophisticated by far.\nView a video on the inner workings of the ICESat-2 laser altimeter\nView a video on the ICESat-2 laser receiver\nView imagery, graphics and animations on ICESat-2\nMeet Alex Gardner\nAlex Gardner is a Research Scientist in the Sea Level And Ice group, in the Earth Sciences Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. He studies the Earth's cryosphere (frozen Earth) with a particular focus on glaciers and their impacts on sea level rise and water resources. He is interested in how glaciers respond to natural and human induced forcing. Alex is a member of the NASA Sea Level Change Team, and NASA’s ICESat-2 Science Definition Team. Before joining JPL in 2014 he was an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, Massachusetts.\nAffiliation: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.\nExpertise: Remote sensing of the cryosphere, sea level rise, glacial mass budget, climate-cryosphere interaction, snow and ice reflectance\nEducation: Bachelor of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Great Distinction, University of Saskatchewan. Doctorate from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1366953"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.853419840335846,"wiki_prob":0.853419840335846,"text":"\"Shimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885\"\nByrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009 1\nCummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958 1\nDouglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 1\nGrimke, Francis J. (Francis James), 1850-1937 1\nHodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971 1\nMorgan State College 1\nShimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936 1\nCharlene Hodges Byrd collection\nsmithsonian online virtual archive\nByrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009\nShimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936\nThomas, Elizabeth N. (Elizabeth Nelson), d. 1932\nCummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958\nMorgan State College\nHodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971\nGrimke, Francis J. (Francis James), 1850-1937\nBearden, Romare, 1911-1988\nWashington, Booker T., 1856-1915\nDouglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895\nShimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885\ninclusive dates\nbulk dates\n43 Linear feet (35 document boxes and 39 oversize boxes)\nThe Charlene Hodges Byrd collection measures 43 linear feet, and dates from circa 1750-2009, with the bulk of the material dating from 1880-1960. The collection documents the personal life and professional career of Charlene Hodges Byrd, an African American teacher from Washington, D.C., along with material for several related families from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Family members prominently represented include Sarah A. Shimm, teacher and essayist under the name Faith Lichen; her daughters Erminie F. Shimm and Grace E. Shimm Cummings, both teachers; and Byrd's mother, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, also a teacher. Correspondence and writings chiefly discuss family life, religion, race, education, and the relationship with Frederick Douglass and his family. The collection is arranged in 10 series: Biographical Material, Correspondence, Writings, Subject Files, Financial and Legal Records, Printed Material, Volumes, Memorabilia, Textiles, and Photographs.\nCharlene Hodges Byrd collection, circa 1750-2009. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution.\nScope and Contents\nSeries 1. Papers related to biographical and family histories of the Byrd, Cummings, Davage, Dews, Hodges, Shimm, Spruill, and Thomas families. Material includes family trees; school diplomas and certificates; programs; awards; marriage and divorce papers; funeral documents; and obituaries.\nSeries 2: Chiefly letters from family and friends regarding family news, financial matters, school, work, neighborhood affairs, church events, travel and the weather. The majority of the letters are addressed to Charlene Hodges Byrd, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Ida R. Cummings, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Erminie F. Shimm, Sarah A. Shimm, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. Other correspondence includes letters from Booker T. Washington, Bessye Beardon, Charlotte Davage, Amelia Douglass, and Harrell S. Spruill. There are also a number of greeting cards, postcards, and empty envelopes.\nSeries 3. Writings include essays, speeches, papers written for school, teacher's notebooks, and a diary of Erminie F. Shimm, 1903. Topics include education, Frederick Douglass, religion, race, Africa, and the temperance movement.\nSeries 4. Subject files on Charlene Hodges Byrd's involvement with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia, a women's book club organized in 1923; Church Women United radio program; and The Links, Inc., a volunteer service organization. The papers on Liberia relate to missionary work, and were probably gathered by Erminie F. Shimm; and the Shimm-Thomas Collection are papers related to the deposit and later return of family items housed as a collection at Morgan State College.\nSeries 5. The financial and legal records include invoices and receipts, bank books, real estate tax assessments, deeds, and wills. There is also material related to the estate of Erminie F. Shimm.\nSeries 6. Printed materials includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, newsletters, clippings, invitations and programs. The books and pamphlets are chiefly school yearbooks and newspapers and other texts related to religion, politics, music, and poetry. Also included is a copy of Frederick Douglass's autobiography and a printed copy of his speech \"The Race Problem.\" The clippings include obituaries, articles about Charlene Hodges Byrd and her husband Charles R. Byrd, essays by Sarah A. Shimm under the name Faith Lichen, and articles on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The invitations and programs are primarily for school graduations, weddings, social events, and funerals. Other printed material includes newsletters; business cards; calling cards; postage stamps, chiefly from Liberia; and blank postcards. The binder on Frederick Douglass was prepared by Byrd and her goddaughter for the West Virginia School Studies Fair, and includes copies of Byrd family artifacts.\nSeries 7. Autograph books, guest books, and scrapbooks. The autograph book of Grace E. Shimm Cummings includes autographs from Amelia Douglass, Lewis B. Douglass, Charles R. Douglass, W. H. Clair, and Francis J. Grimke. The scrapbook of Grace E. Shimm Cummings and Erminie F. Shimm consists primarily of clippings, and was assembled from an old teacher's book with a student registration and punishment pages still intact at the back.\nSeries 8. Miscellaneous items in the collection including artwork, a coin purse, a piece of handwoven cloth belonging to Catherine Nelson's great grandmother, and leather hair curlers.\nSeries 9: The textiles are chiefly christening gowns, children's garments, and an apron. Several garments belonged to Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Charlene Hodges Byrd, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. There is also a doll that belonged to Amelia Douglass's niece, Kitty Cromwell.\nSeries 10. Photographs include pictures of Charlene Hodges Byrd, Joyce Ethel Hodges Cummings, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Charles Gilmor Cummings, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Erminie F. Shimm, and other friends and relatives of the Byrd, Hodges, Cummings, Douglass, and Shimm families. Subjects are primarily portraits and candids, along with some wedding, baby, and school pictures. While some of the photographs are annotated, many of the individuals are unidentified. Included are vintage photographs, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visites, tintypes, daguerreotypes, and negatives.\nThe Shimm, Thomas, Cummings, Hodges, Davage, and related African American families chiefly lived in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Numerous family members worked as teachers, barbers, or in the service industry. They were active in local churches and service organizations, and had established friendships with local church leaders as well as with Frederick Douglass and his family.\nThe Shimm and Thomas families were located in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The Thomas family can be traced back to Philip Nelson, who owned property in Leesburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Family genealogical papers list Nelson as a descendent of British Admiral Horatio Nelson. This lineage, however, is not supported in publically available family histories of Horatio Nelson. Philip Nelson and his wife Araminta had five children: Catherine (b. 1805?), William, Levi (b. 1820?), Henrietta, and Grayson.\nCatherine Nelson married Elias E. Thomas (b. 1816?) of Virginia in 1840. They wed in Philadelphia and had five children: Levi Nelson (b. 1841), Sarah (1843-1885), Edward (b. 1844), Elizabeth (1848-1932), and Charles (b. 1851).\nSarah Thomas married William Y. Shimm (b. 1841), a barber in Reading, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1863. They had 2 daughters, Erminie (1867-1936) and Grace (1865-1910). The Shimms lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but had moved to Washington, D.C., around 1871. Sarah was a teacher and a writer who published under the name \"Faith Lichen.\" Her writings, primarily essays and commentaries about race and politics, were printed in several newspapers including The National Republican, The Celtic Weekly, The People's Advocate, and The Sunday Morning Gazette.\nSarah's sister Elizabeth was also a teacher in Maryland. Her brother Charles was a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of the first class at Howard University's law school.\nErminie and Grace Shimm became teachers in the Washington, D.C., public school system. Erminie was active in her church and supportive of missionary work in Liberia. Grace married Charles Gilmor Cummings, a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 9, 1902. They had one daughter, Joyce Ethel (1903-1971), and second child in 1905 who died in infancy. Grace died in 1910 of heart failure. After her death, Grace's sister Erminie and Charles's family helped raise Joyce Ethel in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.\nJoyce Ethel Cummings Hodges graduated from Morgan College in 1924, and received her master's degree from Howard University in 1931. She taught at Douglass High School in Baltimore from 1924-1964. Joyce Ethel married Charles E. Hodges (1900--975) in 1927 and they divorced in 1953. The couple had one daughter, Charlene (1929-2009).\nCharlene Hodges Byrd grew up in Washington, D.C., but attended the Northfield School for Girls in East Northfield, Massachusetts, for high school, graduating in 1946. She received her bachelor's degree from Connecticut College in 1950, and her master's degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 1951. She married Charles R. Byrd (1919-2004) in 1952. They had one son in 1954, but he died four days after birth. Byrd soon began a career as a teacher and education administrator, eventually working for Kanawha County Schools in Charleston, West Virginia. She was also active in her local community as a member of the Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia; Church Women United; and The Links, Inc.\nCharles E. Hodges was born Bridgewater, Virginia, where his father was a minister. He graduated from Morgan College in 1923 and received his master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. He was a teacher and served as principal of the North Street School in Hagerstown, Maryland. After he and Joyce Ethel divorced in 1953, he married Elizabeth Dews (1913-1999) in 1955.\nElizabeth Dews Hodges, born Elizabeth Virginia Waumbeeka, was adopted by James Edward (1889-1954) and Sarah Virginia Dews (1888?-1964) in Washington, D.C., in 1920. She graduated from Miner Teachers College in 1939, and worked as a teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, at Wiley H. Bates High School for 34 years. She was awarded a medal for her work there by the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge in 1959. Elizabeth was active in local organizations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., including the SE/NE Friends of the Capitol View Branch Library; Eastern Star Chapter 4; Mount Ephraim Baptist Church; National Museum of Women in the Arts; National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples; and the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind.\nThe Davage family is descended from Sidney Hall (b. 1818?) and Charles Davage (b. 1815?). Sidney was a former slave at the Perry Hall mansion in Baltimore, and was manumitted by 1840. She married Charles, a coachman, on April 12, 1842. They had five children: Eliza Jane (1843-1913), Sophia (b. 1847), Charlotte (b. 1849), Charles (b. 1854), and Hester (b. 1845). Their daughter Eliza Jane married Henry Cummings (b. 1830?). They had seven children: Harry Sythe (1866-1917), Charles Gilmor (1870-1924), William (b. 1882), Ida R. (1868-1958), Estelle (1874-1944), Carroll (b. 1875), Francis (b. 1872), and Aaron (1864?-1932).\nHarry Sythe Cummings, a lawyer in Baltimore, became the city's first African American City Council member. He was first elected in 1890 and served intermittently until his death in 1917, often working on issues related to education. Cummings also delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in 1904 seconding the presidential nomination of Theodore Roosevelt. He married Blanche Conklin in 1899, and they had three children: Harry S. Jr. (b. 1905), Lucille (d. 1906), and Louise.\nCharles Gilmor Cummings graduated from Drew Theological Seminary in 1898, and was a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia and elsewhere. After the death of his wife Grace in 1910, he married Rosa Catherine Bearden, grandmother of artist Romare Bearden, in 1912.\nIda R. Cummings graduated from Morgan College in 1922, and was the first African American kindergarten teacher in Baltimore. She was also active in local organizations, and was president of the Colored Fresh Air and Empty Stocking Circle; chairman of the Woman's Section Council of Defense in Baltimore during the World War, 1914-1918; and president of the Woman's Campaign Bureau of the Colored Republican Voters' League of Maryland.\nAccess to collection requires appointment.\nAfrican Americans -- Maryland\nAfrican Americans -- Photographs\nAfrican Americans -- Pennsylvania\nAfrican American newspapers\nAfrican American -- Social life and customs\nAfrican American women journalists\nAfrican Americans -- Education\nAfrican Americans -- Washington (D.C.)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1152684"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7754983901977539,"wiki_prob":0.7754983901977539,"text":"Beatrice (Bea) Axford, known primarily as a talented violinist, was also a pianist who taught lessons on both instruments for over seventy years. A frequent soloist on the violin, she also played first violin in orchestras for over fifty years.\nBea was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, the only child of Lily Hewitt and Jacob James Oster. Her mother sang solos in church and played the piano, while her father occasionally sang. She started lessons at age seven on piano and violin, studying with Julius Brander on the latter. By age twelve, she was playing at a level that enabled her to join the noted Portland Youth Orchestra, famous as the first youth orchestra in the nation. She was well known in the Portland area as a violin soloist.\nShe continued with her music throughout her high school years, the last of which was spent at Portland Union Academy, now Portland Adventist Academy. Following graduation from PUA in 1940, Bea enrolled at Walla Walla College, now University, where she completed a B.A. in music, with violin as her performance area in 1944, studying under Victor Johnson. An honor roll student, she played in the ensembles at the college and in the first violin section of the Walla Walla Symphony under conductor Frank Beezhold all during her college years.\nBea married Robert Verlin Axford in July 1943, in spite of what had been a disastrous first meeting three years earlier. They had met in the spring of 1940 when both were riding in a bus to WWC for College Days along with other students from PUA and Columbia Academy. She had trouble with her window and he, riding in the seat ahead of hers, assisted her with it, closing it on her finger, a disconcerting accident since she was scheduled to play a violin solo at the college. She later talked about what she did to care for her finger so that she could play:\nI soaked my smashed finger in very hot and cold water, which took out the soreness, so I was still able to play my solo without any pain. My mother was a nurse and had taught me how to soak swollen bruises.\nFollowing graduation from WWC, she supported Bob in his medical studies at the College of Medical Evangelists, now Loma Linda University, by teaching.\nAfter his internship in Seattle, Washington, they moved to the north-central area of the state, where he practiced medicine for two years, before heading up a hospital on an Indian reservation in Montana for two years. The Axfords then moved to Prosser, Washington, in 1953, where they resided for nearly twenty-five years. In 1977 they moved to Kennewick, Washington, where he worked until his retirement in 1985. He passed away a few weeks after their 65th wedding anniversary in 2009.\nDuring her married life, Bea continued to study violin and earned another degree while teaching violin and piano lessons. She also played in orchestras when possible, playing first violin in the Richland Symphony, later renamed the Mid-Columbia Symphony, for forty years. She taught both violin and piano until a few months before her death at age 91.\nds/2014\nSources: Information provided by Beatrice Axford; 65th anniversary notice in the April 2009 North Pacific Union Gleaner; and an obituary for Robert Axford in the Yakima Herald-Republic, 21 October 2009, personal knowledge.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line511490"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5086553692817688,"wiki_prob":0.5086553692817688,"text":"Friends of the Earth’s mission is to defend the environment and champion a more healthy and just world. To accomplish that mission, we are working at the nexus of environmental protection, economic justice and social justice to fundamentally transform the way our country and the world values people and the environment.\nThe Trump administration and its allies on Capitol Hill are a disruptive force that poses a serious threat to our society and environment. We’ve seen the dismantling of critical environmental protections through the gutting of the EPA, and blatant attacks on our public lands for the benefit of the fossil fuel industry. And they’re just getting started. Coupled together, these attacks leave the environment more vulnerable than it has been in over two decades and threaten years of hard-fought victories for people and the planet.\nGrassroots Organizing Fellowship\nFriends of the Earth’s fellowship program is aimed at creating a pathway for people in underrepresented communities to gain further opportunities in environmental organizing.\nAs a result of the 2018 elections, we see an opportunity to hold the Trump administration and Congress accountable for its harmful agenda. We need to pressure the 116th Congress to take bold action on climate change and other environmental and social justice issues that they committed to when we elected them! Bold climate action means a rapid transition away from fossil fuels no later than 2030 — anything less leads to further climate catastrophe. We cannot afford to wait until 2050 for action. We need to get every member of Congress on record as to where they stand in this fight: With the greedy fossil fuel industry or with people and communities. We must stop expanding our oil and gas infrastructure, cease new fossil fuel leasing, phase out current fossil fuel extraction, end fossil fuel subsidies and invest in a transition to 100% renewable energy that doesn’t include nuclear or biomass. And we must do this in a just way that prioritizes workers and frontline communities so we do not reproduce or worsen inequities.\nFriends of the Earth was made for this fight. We are tough, scrappy and aren’t afraid to speak truth to power. We pull no punches — and neither do our members. In 2018, we succeeded in forcing the resignation of two corrupt members of the Trump administration: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. We are organizing at the grassroots level to expand Friends of the Earth’s political power and stop the Trump administration’s environmental attacks with a diverse base of activists and grassroots leaders who are taking action at a local level to influence key national decision-makers in their districts.\nTell Congress to Fight For a Green New Deal\nThe science is clear: climate change is real, and it is happening right now. We must act now, starting with a bold, progressive agenda that puts communities and workers at the center of a shift away from fossil fuels. Tell leaders in Congress to make up for lost time with a Green New Deal!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line196782"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.599549412727356,"wiki_prob":0.40045058727264404,"text":"Epidemic intelligence and outbreak response\nPublic health training\nECDC activities on health communication\nArticle 12 of the ECDC Founding Regulation gives details on the Centre’s role in communications:\nThe Centre shall communicate on its own initiative in the fields within its mission, after having given prior information to the Member States and to the Commission. It shall ensure that the public and any interested parties are rapidly given objective, reliable and easily accessible information with regard to the results of its work. In order to achieve these objectives, the Centre shall make available information for the general public, including through a dedicated website (...).\nThe Centre shall act in close collaboration with the Member States and the Commission to promote the necessary coherence in the risk communication process on health threats.\nThe Centre shall cooperate as appropriate with the competent bodies in the Member States and other interested parties with regard to public information campaigns.\nECDC activities in health communication\nHealth communication is integral to effective public health response to the continuing threat posed by communicable diseases in the EU and EEA countries. Furthermore, the surfacing of new infectious organisms, microbial resistance to therapeutic drugs, new environment-related phenomena and new emerging diseases have expanded the role of health communication as a core competency of public health practice.\nPublic health practitioners, programme managers and policy makers need to be aware of the strengths, weaknesses and costs of health communication interventions aimed at the prevention and control of communicable diseases so that impacts can be enhanced and opportunities maximised for strengthening evidence-based action.\nWhy focus on health communication programs\nECDC surveillance of infectious diseases clearly shows that traditional epidemiological and microbiological interventions are not enough to address key threats in contemporary infectious disease control in Europe, such as poor vaccine uptake, emergence and spread of antibiotic resistant microbes in health care settings and in the community, and transmission of HIV and STI within certain high-risk groups (ECDC, 2011). The traditional interventions therefore need to be complemented with other preventive actions.\nResearch shows that properly designed communication activities can have a positive impact on health-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, and thus can influence individual and community decisions to reduce risks to health. The use of specific health communication strategies and techniques can tailor messages to maximise public attention, raise awareness of health risks, contribute to improved health literacy, promote solutions and increase the likelihood of adoption of health behaviors and practices.\nECDC activities in the area of health communication stem from the mandate given to ECDC in Article 12 of its Founding Regulations. They have three directions:\nEfficiently communicate the scientific and technical output of ECDC to professional audiences The main scientific output from ECDC is disseminated through technical and scientific reports, which are authored by internal and external experts.\nCommunicate key public health messages and information to the media and the European publicHealth problems and concerns differ from country to country. ECDC therefore works closely with national authorities to ensure its public health messages have maximum impact.\nSupport the development of Member States’ health communication capacities ECDC supports Member States’ communications activities by delivering training in health communication skills, providing adaptable tools and guidance, and facilitating the share of best practices on health communication.\nHealth communication objectives\nTo make evidence-based information on health communication easily accessible within the EU and EEA countries;\nTo support countries in sharing knowledge and experiences between public health professionals undertaking health communication activities;\nTo promote health communication skills among public health professionals, who tackle infectious diseases in the EU and EEA countries;\nTo support Member States’ efforts to integrate behaviour change and risk communication strategies in their communicable disease prevention programmes and public health campaigns;To provide guidelines and practical tools to support health communication in a consistent way, e.g. developing guidance on health communication strategies and plans.\nECDC aims to support Member States in effective communication for the prevention and control of communicable diseases. For this purpose, ECDC provides outputs to meet the needs of professionals and organisations working in the field of public health, including government authorities, researchers, political think tanks and institutes, health care professionals, students and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).\nOutbreak communication","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1431131"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5285035967826843,"wiki_prob":0.5285035967826843,"text":"Lolo Loves Films\nNetflix Instant Queue Movie Review: \"Annie\" (1982)\nMovie: \"Annie\"\nDirector: John Huston\nRunning Time: 2 hours, 7 minutes\nAnnie (Aileen Quinn) is an orphan living at a home for girls run by the sinister Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett). Despite living in a miserable situation, Annie always keeps high spirits and looks on the bright side of life. When Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking) is looking for an orphan to stay with her billionaire boss Oliver \"Daddy\" Warbucks (Albert Finney) for a week as a publicity stunt to improve his gruff image, she chooses Annie. Daddy Warbucks and Annie have a tumultuous start to their relationship, but eventually start to bond with one another. He even wants to adopt her, but Annie holds out hope that her parents, who gave her half of a locket when they dropped her at the orphanage, will return for her. Daddy Warbucks vows to help Annie find her parents, even if it means putting his own new found feelings aside.\nWhat's not to love about an adorable orphan girl with the cutest red hair you ever saw? A lot, apparently.\nThis movie was adapted from the stage and brought to life by director John Huston, whose previous accolades include \"Treasure of the Sierra Madre,\" \"Key Largo,\" \"The Maltese Falcon\" and \"The African Queen,\" some of the best films ever made. While this family film is not spectacular, it does have a bit of heart to it here and there. It also helps that most of the songs are ones that are either super catchy or ones that I was already familiar with since I was forced to sing them in choir. Though he was not the best singer, Albert Finney manages to be both likable and unlikable as a character. Daddy Warbucks is where we see the little bit of heart this movie contains as he eventually comes around to the idea of having a girl orphan instead of a boy one, subsequently leading he and Annie to sing a couple of cute, great songs together. His role is really the only one we connected to throughout the movie. Carol Burnett is fantastic as the wretched orphanage runner Miss Hannigan and she really brought some true nastiness to her character. Tim Curry and Bernadette Peters play a pair of con artists and though they aren't on screen a heck of a lot of time, what they manage to bring to the table is a couple of much needed perilous yet funny scenes.\nMany critics back in the day thought the choice to direct \"Annie\" was an odd one for John Huston, and now we can see why. Despite the heart it has going for it, there's just something about this movie that doesn't allow it to connect to us. All of the \"heart\" we mentioned above does seem rather baseline and expected. There's nothing that's overly unique about 'the feels' that this movie gives us. The movie as a whole is also marred by extremely slow pacing and there's really no way it needed to be over 2 hours long. On the same note, some of the musical numbers in the middle of the movie feel draggy and misplaced. While titular character Annie, played by Aileen Quinn, is a cute enough character, her singing, as well as the singing of the other orphan girls, isn't the best and feels sort of forced. There are also a ton of racist moments at Daddy Warbucks' mansion, mainly involving a character who is literally named Punjab. We're not overly sensitive people, but COME ON. He performs his 'magic levitation tricks' to an overtly stereotypical Indian instrumental song behind him! Their Asian limousine driver is also a martial arts master. All of these stereotypical moments distract from true point of the story and left us scratching our heads.\nWe're not sure that another remake of this movie is warranted, but damned if we're not looking forward to it based on the trailer they have been running since January!\nMy Rating: 6/10\nBigJ's Rating: 6/10\nIMDB's Rating: 6.4/10\nRotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%\nDo we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?\nOne year ago, we were watching: \"Out of the Furnace\"\nPosted by Lolo at Thursday, December 18, 2014\nLabels: 80's, comedy, drama, family, movie review, musicals, netflix\n2000's (282) 2010's (1493) 2017 (270) 2018 (256) 2019 (129) 30's (10) 40's (19) 50's (30) 60's (32) 70's (89) 80's (182) 90's (189) academy awards (52) best of the best (327) DCEU (19) feature film face-off (4) halloween horror movie marathon: year 6 (31) horror (418) lolo's editorials (2) lolo's lists (65) movie review (2301) netflix (346) oscar quest (210) SDAFF (5) SDIFF (47) yearly recap (10)\nOAFCC Member\nProud member of the Online Association of Female Film Critics!\nBlog Archive January (7) December (4) November (13) October (32) September (14) August (14) July (17) June (18) May (14) April (23) March (24) February (36) January (23) December (29) November (34) October (60) September (30) August (35) July (32) June (35) May (28) April (26) March (30) February (38) January (32) December (28) November (32) October (58) September (33) August (33) July (35) June (37) May (31) April (31) March (38) February (55) January (52) December (44) November (52) October (71) September (48) August (51) July (55) June (53) May (41) April (38) March (43) February (58) January (32) December (35) November (35) October (54) September (37) August (36) July (39) June (37) May (37) April (34) March (29) February (47) January (37) December (36) November (23) October (53) September (27) August (33) July (28) June (21) May (4) April (12) March (12) February (6) January (6) December (24) November (23) October (41) September (21) August (23) July (12)\nAbout Lolo and BigJ\nLolo Loves Films is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.\nPicture Window theme. Theme images by i-bob. Powered by Blogger.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line442805"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6087749600410461,"wiki_prob":0.39122503995895386,"text":"Pickpocket Scheme: 5 things you can do to protect your valuables\nAn older man became the target of a pickpocket scheme in the District last week, and it was caught on camera.\nSurveillance video from a parking garage elevator in the 2100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Northwest D.C. showed the crime in action.\nThe victim was an older man using a cane. The more experienced pickpocket was standing in the back wearing a dark suit and a hat. His accomplice was the man in the white shirt standing in front of him.\n\"It was 98 degrees pretty much all last week. I have to wear a sport coat, but they [pickpockets] wear a sport coat in the summertime. That's kind of a telltale sign that they're up to something,\" said Det. Sgt. Vernon Clayton, head of the pickpocket detail for Metro Transit Police.\nAs the victim prepared to leave the elevator, the first person of interest got off and dropped something. When the victim backed up, the second person of interest adjusted himself to access the man's wallet.\nClayton said pickpockets generally have a prop to cover their hands. In this case, the alleged pickpocket used his coat.\n\"What he did was use his hands with his jacket covering his hands, so he can manipulate the wallet and pull it out,\" said Clayton.\nOther props used by pickpockets include newspapers, bags and suitcases.\nClayton said pickpockets are mostly found in crowds. That's why it's so important to know where your wallet is located at all times.\nPolice are still looking for the persons of interest from the video.\n5 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOUR VALUABLES:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1051196"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7003082036972046,"wiki_prob":0.2996917963027954,"text":"Home Business Despite worldwide tobacco decline, economy can thrive\nMalawi’s economy can thrive despite a worldwide decline in tobacco demand and production.\nAgricultural Transformation Initiative (ATI) is working with smallholder tobacco farmers to facilitate the development of complementary structured value chains to make the agriculture sector globally competitive.\n“As the global demand for tobacco decreases, we believe it’s imperative to support efforts to diversify economies and lessen the reliance of smallholder farmers on tobacco.\nThis is particularly true in Malawi where tobacco accounts for over 60 percent of the country’s total annual earnings and 13 percent of the economy as measured by the gross domestic product.” said Jim Lutzweiler, VP, Agriculture and Livelihoods, Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.\nOne of the ATI’s first actions was to issue a request for expressions of interest to operate and manage a new Center for Agricultural Transformation in Malawi.\nThe Center’s goal is ultimately to transform the lives of Malawian smallholder tobacco farmers by leveraging innovation in agricultural science and technology.\nIn October, the ATI issued two requests for proposals (RFP) in support of additional projects in Malawi.\n“The diversification of smallholder farmers can only succeed through inclusive business models that effectively connect them to markets, finance, and technology in ways that provide much greater economic value to all actors in the ecosystem,” said Eduardo Tugendhat, Director of Thought Leadership at Palladium.\nThe first RFP asks eligible private sector firms, research institutions, other interested entities, and partnerships or consortia to submit proposals that present viable market-led solutions aimed at solving current challenges for transforming smallholder agricultural livelihoods in Malawi.\nThe second RFP seeks to engage in a 3-year preferred collaboration with qualified research partners to provide independent program evaluation and decision-focused research support to the ATI. The preferred partners will help nurture and promote the use of rigorous evidence by the ATI to improve its impact on smallholder tobacco farmers in Malawi.\nThe ATI is a core pillar of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with the purpose of improving global health by ending smoking in this generation. Recognizing that the Foundation’s mission entails an accelerated decline in global tobacco demand, the ATI aims to diversify tobacco-dependent economies.\nThe Foundation for a Smoke-Free World is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with the purpose of improving global health by ending smoking in this generation.\nPrevious articleTobacco bill a relief for the sector\nNext articleDekalb maize seeds for a greater harvest in Malawi\nnine − 8 =\nGrapes Indaba convenes in Italy\nTobacco bill a relief for the sector","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1550672"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5683454871177673,"wiki_prob":0.5683454871177673,"text":"Mar 10, 2016\tby\tScott Greenfield\t-\nDid Gawker Cross Hulk Hogan’s Line?\nMar. 10, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — Personal and confidential to Gawker former Editor-in-Chief, Albert James “A.J.” Daulerio:\nDon’t be a wise-ass in a deposition. Sarcasm never reads as well on paper as it sounds when you say it. You’re welcome.\nThe exchange from Daulerio’s testimony at the Bollea v. Gawker trial, Terry Bollea being Hulk Hogan’s sensitive persona, didn’t help matters any. The deposition testimony was awful:\n“Can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?” asked the lawyer, Douglas E. Mirell.\n“If they were a child,” Mr. Daulerio replied.\n“Under what age?” the lawyer pressed.\nIt was a stupid question. It was an even stupider answer. In some worlds, an attorney might have chimed in with an objection, but not, apparently, this world. Yet, it goes to the issue that Bollea’s lawyers sought to argue, that Gawker has no standards at all.\nGawker’s founder, Nick Denton, had a more straightforward editorial policy:\nNick Denton, the site’s founder, has long rejected the editorial standards that he believes handicap more traditional news outlets: notions like “importance,” “fairness” and “of public concern” that adorn the high-minded mission statements of other publications.\n“I have a simple editorial litmus test,” Denton told Politico Media in 2015: “Which is: is it true, and is it interesting?”\nIs there something wrong with this? That’s what Bollea’s lawyers contend. To that end, they do what all lawyers do, well aware that it serves their client’s interest well. They hire an academic to say what they want said.\nBut on Wednesday, Hogan’s lawyers did their best to argue that Gawker’s behavior didn’t meet journalistic ethical standards — at least, not according to University of Florida journalism professor Mark Foley. [Ed. Note: It’s Mike Foley, not Mark.]\nFoley, who was for three decades a reporter, editor and executive at the St. Petersburg Times — now known as the Tampa Bay Times — testified that the Gawker editors’ choices were beyond the pale. Reporters are obliged to avoid invading a subject’s privacy unless the news demands it, and to avoid going into lurid detail for mere shock value.\n“You think how will Mr. and Mrs. St. Petersburg react over breakfast. … You have to step back and ask, ‘Is it necessary?’” he said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.\nFreedom of the press is “extremely important,” he continued, but “common sense must drive what we do.”\nWell, there are a lot of “tests” in there, gertruding notwithstanding. Is the freedom of the press constrained by what “Mr. and Mrs. St. Petersburg” feel comfortable with? If they grimace, does that mean the media has gone too far? What about the very sensitive St. Petersburgs, the ones who cringe when they read something outside of their itty bitty worldview? Who are these people anyway?\nOr is it “common sense”? If so, where does it say what common sense is, since we all have it and it differs from person to person. And the fact that “common sense” is the absence of any cognizable thought doesn’t help either.\nMaybe it’s the “beyond the pale” rule, if someone has the ability to draw the “pale” line so we know when we’re stepping beyond it.\nThen again, the problem may well be that Mike Foley, the journalist cum academic. While he’s listed as a “master lecturer” rather than a professor (and I refuse to make the joke so don’t even think it), he is being asked a question that can’t be reasonably answered. Of course, he could have refused the expert witness fee and not taken the gig, knowing that he would be put on the stand to offer an opinion about which he had nothing to offer, but hey, money talks, right?\nWhile Foley’s attempt at explaining some unwritten code of journalistic ethics as to what’s too sordid to publish is painfully obvious to anyone who appreciates the fact that there is no line that can ever be enunciated as to where newsworthiness crosses over to the dark side, phrases like common sense often resonate with juries. People love the idea of “common sense,” as it saves them tons of time that would otherwise be required for thinking. And thinking causes headaches, and no one wants to get a headache.\nBut Eric Goldman also chimes in on the question of how far is too far.\n“Right now there’s an ‘anything goes’ mentality when it comes to publishing information about celebrities. If Gawker loses, we might begin to see some rethinking of that mentality,” says Eric Goldman, co-director of Santa Clara University’s High Tech Law Institute. “If Gawker wins, I think it will further embolden online publishers that anything related to celebrities is fair game. That could be used to justify publication of unredacted photos from the Fappening, for example.”\nAnd indeed, Eric’s got a point. The internet has never been very good at respecting limits. Some see that as a flaw. Others as a feature. It’s all according to whose ox is being gored.\nBut even if Eric is right, it offers little guidance for the establishment of liability. Certainly, the amorphous “common sense” doesn’t help. Nor do Mr. and Mrs. St. Petersburg’s, whoever they are, feelings. Or even “beyond the pale,” wherever that may be. If the internet goes too far, it still doesn’t answer the question of how far is too far.\nAnd since there is no rule of journalism by which Gawker, or any other media, must limit its exercise of the constitutional rights to a free press and free speech, there is no basis upon which a jury can find they crossed the line. And the question of why there’s even a trial remains a mystery.\nAJ Dauleriofault linesGawkerHulk HoganMike FoleyNick Denton\n3 Comments on this post.\nCornflake S. Pecially\n10 March 2016\tat 5:18 pm\t- Reply\nI think I would have went with:\nFlawed Fappenening Features\nP.S. I could ghost write, Lawyers and Lines It’s Where the Monies At, for you this summer. Such a title might make for an excellent election release by the looks of things. I don’t see how you could go wrong.\nJeff Davidson\nI was kinda hoping it was Mick Foley instead of Mike or Mark…\nA Free Press And The Ickiness of Newsworthiness | Simple Justice\n18 March 2016\tat 12:41 pm\t- Reply\n[…] the Hulk v. Gawker trial, the one that should have never been, winds toward verdict, the New York Times’ Room for […]\nWhere’s Your Fault Lines Subscription?\nDoes the Constitution End with a Bullet in Se ...\nby Scott Greenfield - Feb 23, 2017\nCross: Patrick Frey, Prosecutor By Day and Pa ...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line184861"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6024071574211121,"wiki_prob":0.39759284257888794,"text":"The CA Web Site has been redesigned\n[<<] [>>] by Ian Vincent\n28th March 2002 (Other News)\nThe CA Web Site has been redesigned by the CA publishing committee, chaired by Ian Vincent.\nThe CA publishing committee have redesigned and restructured the CA Web Site to enhance it as a way of providing information to both potential and existing players and others interested in the game. We gratefully acknowledge the inspiration and commitment of Bill Arliss in setting up and maintaining the site and hope that the seed he has sown will continue to grow as more material is added.\nAs chairman of the committee I would like to thank to Samir Patel and Dave Kibble who have done the bulk of the work and to the other members of the committee for their ideas and support.\nPlease e-mail webmaster#croquet.org.uk with any comments or suggestions to further improve the site, or, even better, with material to add to it!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line942507"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5105010867118835,"wiki_prob":0.5105010867118835,"text":"Paragliding in Famara\nFly to the Mirador del Río\nA classic flying area in Lanzarote, where the constant wind make it possible to do sports like paragliding. This take off point, situated on the Famara cliff itself, in the north of the island, is located precisely in Chimida. With a west-northwest wind direction, it is an ideal place not only for paragliding but also for hang gliding and treats gliders to spectacular views if they follow the mountainside northwards, in line with the striking cliffs which lead to Mirador del Río.\nLandings on Famara beach\nThe take off spot for this fantastic thermodynamic flight is at an altitude of 450 metres. To get to the spot, Chimida, take the dirt track of just over one kilometre which leaves the town of Teguise and is suitable for cars. The landings are also easy, because apart from Famara beach, there are plenty of flat areas so they can be made 300 metres across from the beach, on the other side of the road under the take off point.\nThe best flying season begins in October and finishes in the month of March. In summer, however, the constant presence of the trade winds make flying a difficult task.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1492726"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5517327785491943,"wiki_prob":0.44826722145080566,"text":"Richest 1% of Americans close to surpassing wealth of middle class\nThey now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve.\nBy Alex Tanzi and Michael SassoBloomberg\nThe U.S.’s historic economic expansion has so enriched one-percenters that they now hold almost as much wealth as the middle- and upper-middle classes combined.\nThe top 1 percent of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Those fat portfolios have America’s elite gobbling up an ever-bigger piece of the pie.\nThe very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans – much of the middle and upper-middle classes.\nChalk up at least part of their good fortune to interest rates, said Stephen Colavito, chief market strategist at Lakeview Capital Partners, an Atlanta-based investment firm for high-net-worth investors. People can’t get much of a return on certificates of deposits and other passive investments, so they’ve pumped money into stocks and propped up the market overall, he said.\nIn turn, those investments make the wealthy eligible to put money into exclusive hedge funds and private equity funds. Many such funds require $5 million of investments to qualify.\n“The wealthier that the wealthy get, the more opportunity they have,” Colavito said.\nIt may not be long before one-percenters actually surpass the middle and upper-middle classes. Household wealth in the uppermost bracket grew by $650 billion in the second quarter of 2019, while Americans in the 50th to 90th percentiles saw a $210 billion gain.\nWhile the Federal Reserve data measure wealth, by another measurement the top 1 percent of taxpayers had incomes starting at $515,371 in 2017, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service data.\nFor now, those Americans in 90th to 99th percentiles – well-to-do, but not the super rich – still control the biggest share of wealth, with $42.6 trillion in assets.\nThe lone group left out of the fun: the bottom 50 percent of Americans. Those households have 35.7 percent of liabilities in the U.S. and just 6.1 percent of assets.\nAge also plays a role in wealth. Some young people have recently taken to mocking older Americans for being out of touch, hurling the term “OK boomer” around social media. However, baby boomers born between the end of the Second World War and 1964 may have the last laugh. They had wealth that was 11 times higher than that of millennials as of the second quarter.\nSuccess. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.\nEnter your email and password to access comments.\nDon't have a Talk profile?\nCreate one.\nHi {SUB NAME}, to comment on stories you must\ncreate a commenting profile\n. This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.\nAlready have one?\nPlease check your email to confirm and complete your registration.\nCreate a commenting profile by providing an email address, password and display name. You will receive an email to complete the registration. Please note the display name will appear on screen when you participate.\nEmail Address Password Display Name\nAlready registered? Log in to join the discussion.\nOnly subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login to participate in the conversation. Here’s why.\nUse the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.\nLog out of Comments\nCBD cafe will open at former Lobster Trap restaurant in Winslow\nBernard J. Tyson, Kaiser Permanente’s CEO, dies unexpectedly at 60\nKennebunk Post\nObituaries – George Colangelo\nBrowse more in Business\nMaine Commercial Real Estate\nMaineJobs.com\nMeet employers, upload your resume, and search for jobs near you.\nNews for your inbox\nWant news about Maine’s marijuana industry? Subscribe to the Maine Cannabis Report","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line199746"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8719163537025452,"wiki_prob":0.8719163537025452,"text":"How the DSA bolsters the Democratic Party establishment: The case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez\nBy Isaac Finn\nThe New York City media is giving substantial attention to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is running in the Democratic primary in the 14th Congressional District as a “democratic socialist” against incumbent Joe Crowley, a key figure in the Democratic congressional leadership. The primary election takes place next Tuesday, June 26.\nOcasio-Cortez has centered her campaign on the need to “acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same,” attacking Crowley on the basis that he is part of the Democratic Party machine. She has also criticized Crowley for being disconnected from working class and Hispanic residents in the 14th District, which includes parts of the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in New York City, separated by the East River and connected only by the Bronx/Whitestone Bridge.\nIn conventional terms of money and endorsements, Crowley is a heavy favorite to win the primary. He has raised more than $2.7 million in campaign funds, nearly 25 times the $115,653 raised by Ocasio-Cortez, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission at the end of March. He also has the full support of the Democratic Party machine, which he heads, as chair of the Queens County Democratic Party. He has held his congressional seat for 20 years, and was last challenged in a Democratic primary in 2004.\nCrowley is also chair of the House Democratic Caucus, putting him fourth in the Democratic Party leadership in the House of Representatives, and making the 56-year-old a potential successor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The top three Democrats in the House are all at least 20 years older than Crowley: Pelosi is 78, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is 79, and Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn is 77.\nThe race between Ocasio-Cortez and Crowley to some extent echoes the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, with Ocasio-Cortez, who worked as an organizer for the Bernie Sanders campaign, seeking to channel mass opposition to Trump and American capitalism back into the two-party system. She is sowing illusions that the Democratic Party can be transformed either through “progressive” Democratic candidates winning primaries or by pushing their opponents (in this case Crowley rather than Hillary Clinton) to the left. As with the Sanders campaign, a wide range of liberal publications and pseudo-left organizations have thrown their weight behind Ocasio-Cortez.\nSo far her campaign has been endorsed by Sanders’ Our Revolution, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, as well as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA, to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, has organized phone banks, canvassed for her and produced her campaign video. Curiously however, despite publicly endorsing her, the DSA has made no further comment on her campaign and its affiliated publication Jacobin has remained quiet. A search of the websites of both the DSA and Jacobin for “Ocasio” yields the response “no result.”\nThis reflects an apparent agreement between the DSA and the Democratic Party establishment, at least as far as recent elections are concerned: DSA candidates may run for local and state legislative seats, as they did last year in Virginia and this year in Pennsylvania, California and other states, but they will not interfere in the central concern of the Democratic Party leadership, which is to win back control of the US House of Representatives, and so gain a “place at the table” in negotiations with the Trump administration over domestic and foreign policy.\nThe DSA is not backing any “left” candidates for Congress in districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as potential takeovers from the Republicans. In the case of Ocasio-Cortez, whether she wins or loses in the primary, there is no chance that the Democrats would lose the seat, since the Republican Party is virtually moribund in 14th Congressional District. Its token candidate in 2016 took 17 percent of the vote against Crowley.\nOcasio-Cortez has been given some publicity by a section of the corporate media, with multiple references to her campaign appearing in both New York Times, which functions as the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, and the Wall Street Journal. This media attention is a reflection of a section of the ruling elite, which fears that the complete discrediting of the two-party system amid a wave of working class protests against inequality, austerity and the Trump administration. They view her candidacy as a potential safety valve.\nThe last thing on Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda is any break with the Democratic Party. She has spent her entire adult life in or around it. She first worked as an intern for Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, while attending college at Boston University. After graduating she joined the publishing house Brook Avenue Press and in 2012 shared a platform with New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, where she endorsed the senator’s bill for tax breaks for new businesses. After a four-year hiatus from politics, she joined the Sanders campaign.\nOcasio-Cortez was recruited by Brand New Congress, a political action committee (PAC) established by former Sanders campaign staff, to run against Crowley. Her campaign has been based on a platform (universal healthcare, abolishment of private prisons, a federal jobs guarantee, defunding of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, etc.) that has popular appeal, and which would never be implemented by a Democratic Party Congress or administration.\nWhile denouncing Crowley for accepting donations from large corporations, Ocasio-Cortez continued to reference Gillibrand (who has raised over $16 million between 2013 and 2018 predominantly from corporate backers) as a supporter of a federal jobs guarantee on her election website.\nAfter Gillibrand endorsed Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez pleaded with the senator, tweeting to her, “5 years ago you asked me speak [sic] in favor of your Small Biz Support Act. I showed up and we worked together… I’m surprised you left me out today. If you’d like to reconsider, I’m happy to talk. DM [direct message] me.” Ocasio-Cortez has since removed the reference to Gillibrand on her campaign website, only including a link to an article in Nation magazine that includes quotes from Ocasio-Cortez and Gillibrand.\nSimilarly, she has adapted herself to the Democratic Party leadership’s policy of running openly right-wing candidates in so-called competitive districts. As she said in an interview with the online news website Splinter, “When you look at what we’ve got in the Democratic Party, the people who have these safe seats are centrist, corporatist Democrats. If we have to have centrist Democrats in the party, let those Democrats come from swing districts. But in districts that are very highly Democratic, we should be advancing the national conversation on prison abolition, on student debt cancelation [sic], on Puerto Rico, on a Marshall Plan, on 100% renewable energy in ten years.”\nWhat her position translates to is that she is perfectly fine with the Democratic Party running pro-corporate politicians—and advocating and carrying out such policies—as long as it makes room for its “left” supporters in districts like the 14th CD in New York, where they can blather on about policies that the Democratic Party leadership flatly opposes, in order to provide a left cover.\nWhile the DSA has kept Ocasio-Cortez largely under wraps, other pseudo-left tendencies have been more outspoken. Socialist Alternative, which fully embraced the Sanders campaign in 2016, declared their support for Ocasio-Cortez in an article published on their website on June 11. After making a purely rhetorical criticism about attempting to transform the Democratic Party from within, Leon Pinsky writes, “Socialist Alternative is working with Ocasio’s supporters to win the best result in the primary on June 26. It would be a political earthquake if Ocasio defeated the strongest Democrat in Queens who is also rumored to be the next Speaker of the House if the Democrats retake the chamber this fall.”\nPinsky reiterates Socialist Alternative’s claim that a section of the Democratic Party can be convinced to break from the party establishment and lay the basis for a “new mass party,” in other words, a new, somewhat more “left” talking capitalist party that would serve as an additional barrier to the struggle for the political independence of the working class based on a socialist program.\nOcasio-Cortez has also been featured on The Intercept, the liberal website edited by Glenn Greenwald that makes no secret of its embrace of the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, and its all-out support for a Democratic victory in the 2018 congressional elections. In an interview with Greenwald, she said, “For as long as the Democratic Party continues to work with special interests, lobbyist groups and corporations to really perpetuate economic marginalization of Americans, as well as social and racial marginalization, then we’re not gonna get anywhere.” Another commentator on The Intercept gushed that Ocasio-Cortez “has a better grasp of identity politics than any politician I can recall.” The Intercept highlighted a conflict between Ocasio-Cortez and Crowley over the challenger’s emphasis on her Puerto Rican roots—the Bronx portion of the district is heavily Hispanic, while the Queens portion includes large Irish, Greek, Hispanic and Asian populations. Crowley at one point complained that Ocasio-Cortez was “making the race about race,” and asked what was wrong with his emphasizing his Irish heritage.\nThe two Democrats debated each other two weeks before the primary, and even The Intercept had to admit in its report that “Crowley might be right: the candidates’ positions don’t, as he put it, have much ‘daylight’ between them.” Crowley emphasized the fight against Trump, and his own potential leadership role if the Democratic Party wins control of the House. He claimed to be a “progressive” and cited his ties to Obama, Gillibrand and California Senator Kamala Harris.\nHe also pledged to support Ocasio-Cortez if she won the primary, and asked her to do the same, but she declined. (Significantly, Crowley has the endorsement of the Working Families Party, controlled by a section of the union bureaucracy, and could use that ballot line to continue his campaign in the fall if he loses the Democratic primary).\nThe debate underscored the lack of any genuine, substantive differences between the two candidates. Crowley is an uninspired and uninspiring political hack who may prevail in the primary by sheer financial and organizational muscle. Ocasio-Cortez offers youth, ethnicity, and the label “democratic socialist,” but like Bernie Sanders she does not actually offer a single policy that could legitimately be called socialist. She is merely a new coat of paint on a dilapidated signboard.\nIn order to address issues of the attack on immigrant rights, inequality and war, young people and working people must break with the Democratic Party, including figures like Ocasio-Cortez and various pseudo-left forces attached to her campaign, and build a mass socialist movement. The World Socialist Web Site encourage anyone serious about carrying out this fight to join the Socialist Equality Party build the leadership for the emerging working class struggles.\nCommenting Discussion Rules »\nThe Politics of the Pseudo-Left\nSpain’s new PSOE-Podemos government commits itself to austerity and war\nBernie Sanders says “some wars are necessary”\nAfter Suleimani murder, New Anti-capitalist Party backs US war on Iran\nTelangana Road Transport workers face harassment, contract-rollbacks after union surrender\nBrazilian Workers Party joins Bolsonaro in imposing austerity, repressing strikes\nTrump exploits Iran war crisis to incite violence against political opponents\nHasidic Jews injured in machete attack in Rockland County, New York\nNew York City transit workers speak out about workplace dangers and attacks on health care\nForm rank-and-file committees to defend New York City transit workers!\nNew York City transit workers denounce union-backed tentative agreement\nJacobin Magazine and the Democratic Socialists of America\nAs contract vote approaches, DSA defends sellout by Chicago Teachers Union\nDemocratic Socialists of America “International Committee” denounces “reckless” withdrawal of US troops from Syria\nLabor Notes, DSA line up with UAW bureaucrats against GM strikers\nDemocratic Socialists of America launches nationwide campaign for Bernie Sanders\nThe Democratic Socialists of America Convention: A marketing gimmick for the Democratic Party","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line958565"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6825451254844666,"wiki_prob":0.31745487451553345,"text":"Can I Sue if I Am Poisoned in Maryland?\nPoisoning comes in many forms. You can suffer a sudden illness from infected food or become sick over years of exposure to tainted water, radiation or chemicals in the air. Although our food and environment are strictly regulated, unscrupulous manufacturers, government entities and others sometimes cut corners. Every year or so a major food poisoning scandal hits the headlines. When clients ask our lawyers can I sue if someone poisons me in Maryland? We tell them it’s certainly possible if not always straightforward.\nPoisoning can be extremely serious and life-threatening. Baltimore personal injury lawyer Randolph Rice can help you gather evidence in these cases. Keep reading about the different types of poisoning and who you can sue for food, water, lead, or other bodily poisoning in Maryland.\nCommon Types of Poisoning\nFood poisoning is one of the most common causes of illness from a tainted product. Many people have suffered the symptoms for food poisoning at some time in their lives but it’s not usually severe. It’s only worth suing if you suffer significant health impacts from food poisoning.\nPeople who file lawsuits over food poisoning usually sue a restaurant, a store, a food manufacturer or a hotel. Food poisoning is typically a result of negligence and poor hygiene at one stage in the manufacturing process. Common causes of food poisoning include:\nSalmonella bacteria are harmful and can be found in poultry or meat, dairy products and, vegetables, spices, water, and nuts. Symptoms include sickness, vomiting, diarrhea, blood in the stool, chills, and fever. Salmonella can be fatal, particularly in elderly and young people.\nColi are bacteria that live in your intestines as well as in the intestines of animals. Although most types of E. coli are safe, some strains make you sick. E. coli can be found in beef contaminated with feces, unpasteurized milk and apple cider, alfalfa sprouts, and contaminated water.\nListeria is a food-borne infection. Although many infected people don’t suffer severe symptoms, it can be deadly for pregnant women, elderly people, and those with weakened immune systems. Listeria infection may lead to miscarriage. Later in pregnancy, listeria infection can cause stillbirth, premature birth or potentially fatal infection in the baby post-birth, states the Mayo Clinic.\nCampylobacter is a common bacterial infection that can linger for as long as two weeks. It can be caused by processed meat that’s not thoroughly cooked or contaminated milk, fruit or vegetables. It’s rarely fatal in healthy people.\nWho Can I Sue for Food Poisoning in Maryland?\nYou may have grounds to sue one or more parties over food poisoning in Maryland. They include:\nGrowers and Packers\nFood can be infected early in the process. One of the worst episodes of food poisoning in recent years occurred in 2011 when listeria in cantaloupes was linked to 33 deaths and many injuries. The infection was traced to a farm and packing plant in Colorado.\nPoor hygiene in a production facility can cause infections. In 2009, 714 people fell ill with salmonella and nine died from eating peanut butter produced by Peanut Corporation of America. Numerous poisoning and product liability lawsuits were brought against the company and its former owner was imprisoned for 28 years.\nA store that sells contaminated food can be sued by people who are poisoned.\nMany fast-food chains and family-owned restaurants have been sued following food poisoning outbreaks. The deaths of four people and sickness in hundreds of others from meat contaminated with E.coli at Jack in the Box hamburgers in 1993 caused a massive panic, lawsuits, and the end of the fast-food chain. However, Taco Bell survived an E.coli outbreak that hospitalized 53 people in 2006.\nProving Fault in a Food Poisoning Lawsuit in Maryland\nMost food poisoning complaints aren’t related to high-profile recalls or well-publicized outbreaks. Gathering evidence is a challenge. If you believe you suffered food poisoning from a Maryland restaurant it can be difficult to prove, especially if there has been a time lapse between your meal and the illness.\nIt can be difficult to prove a particular meal made you ill rather than another meal or a virus. Seek medical advice as soon as possible and try to find out the type of food poisoning you suffered and a likely source. Even in rare cases where you have some evidence that the food from the restaurant made you ill such as a sample in your fridge, you may struggle to make a case. If you test the food and it contains salmonella, the restaurant can claim the food became infected in your home.\nCan I Sue I Am Poisoned Through the Water Supply in Maryland?\nConcerns over poisoned water supplies gripped a handful of U.S. cities in recent years, most prominently in Flint, Michigan.\nThe crisis began in 2014 when the City of Flint switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River to save money. A lack of treatment meant lead from pipes leached into the water supply. Residents of Flint have filed class-action lawsuits claiming the lead harmed their children’s health. The contamination is also linked to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that caused at least 12 deaths.\nIn April 2019, a federal judge ruled residents of Flint could bring lawsuits against the federal government over the water crisis.\nYour Rights for Suing for Toxic Exposure in Maryland\nThere are many forms of toxic exposure that can poison residents and workers. People can suffer chemical exposure from industry, chlorine leaks from railroad accidents, toxic dust, improper workplace protection, fires, and spills. You may have grounds to sue the liable party that caused harmful toxic exposure at work or in another place of business.\nCan I Sue Someone for Lead Poisoning in Maryland?\nLead poisoning is a potent threat to children and pregnant women. Many older homes contain lead paint that is harmful to children who eat it. Local authorities and other housing entities have been sued over lead poisoning. According to Vox, as many as 1.2 million children in the United States suffer from lead poisoning that can harm intellectual development.\nCourt actions against paint manufacturers have failed but local authorities, property managers, and landlords have been held liable for lead paint poisoning in Maryland.\nIn 2016, a family from Baltimore won a $1.6 million verdict in a lead paint poisoning case for their son who was exposed to lead paint at the age of two. He has struggled academically since and is now 18, the Baltimore Sun reported. The verdict was awarded against the young man’s former landlords.\nTalk to Our Baltimore Toxic Exposure Lawyer About Your Maryland Poison Injury Lawsuit\nIt’s not always obvious if you’ve been poisoned. You may suffer a range of symptoms. It can also be hard to pinpoint the source of your poisoning. If your symptoms persist and you suspect you were poisoned, call our Maryland personal injury attorney for a free consultation at 410-431-0911.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line55011"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9892575144767761,"wiki_prob":0.9892575144767761,"text":"Canada's SNC-Lavalin unit pleads guilty to fraud charge in Libya case\nBy Allison Lampert\nSNC-Lavalin Group Inc., headquarters seen in Montreal\nMONTREAL (Reuters) - A division of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc pleaded guilty to one fraud charge and will pay a C$280 million fine related to projects in Libya, the company said on Wednesday, in a case that engulfed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government in crisis.\nThe Montreal-based construction and engineering company said it reached a settlement after being accused of bribing Libyan officials to get contracts between 2001 and 2011. Shares in SNC, which were halted on the Toronto Stock Exchange early on Wednesday, soared as much as 35.3% to C$32.59 following the announcement.\nOn Sunday, a Quebec jury found a former top SNC-Lavalin executive guilty of fraud and corruption charges related to the Libya case. Government prosecutors had suggested Sami Bebawi, the former head of SNC's international construction arm, was a key figure in the bribery scheme.\nIn a statement, SNC said its SNC-Lavalin Construction unit will plead guilty to a fraud charge.\nAs part of the settlement, all charges against SNC-Lavalin Group Inc and its international marketing arm, SNC-Lavalin International Inc, have been withdrawn, the company said.\nSNC-Lavalin Construction will pay a C$280 million ($211 million) fine in equal instalments over five years, and will be subject to three years probation, SNC said. The company said it will engage an independent monitor as part of the probation.\n\"This is a game-changer for the company and finally allows us to put this issue behind us,\" SNC Lavalin CEO Ian Edwards said in the statement. \"I apologize for this past misconduct and welcome the opportunity to move forward.\"\nA court conviction would have barred SNC-Lavalin from bidding on government contracts for 10 years, threatening job losses in Canada. The company employs around 9,000 people in Canada and tens of thousands abroad.\nThe construction unit has not bid on any new contracts since 2015, and SNC said it does not expect the division's guilty plea to affect the company's ability to compete for future projects.\nEarlier this year, Trudeau’s government faced allegations that top officials pressured former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to direct prosecutors to strike a deal rather than go ahead with a trial.\nTrudeau was re-elected with a minority government in October.\nSNC had asked for a deferred prosecution agreement on the grounds it had removed the executives who were in charge at the time and overhauled its ethics and compliance systems.\nRachel Rappaport, a spokeswoman for Justice Minister David Lametti, was not immediately available to comment.\n(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Additional reporting by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa; Editing by Amran Abocar and Lisa Shumaker)\nItaly court rules migrant ship captain's arrest not warranted\nLibya strongman Haftar in Greece ahead of peace meeting\nCanopy Growth Revises Beverage Launch Timeline\nSustainability & Organic Collection 2020 - Understanding & Measuring the Environmental Impact of Both Crop & Livestock Production - ResearchAndMarkets.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1052601"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6586388945579529,"wiki_prob":0.6586388945579529,"text":"Roald’s childhood church\nMeditation & Spirituality\nRoald Dahl and the Norwegian Church\nRoald Dahl and his family worshipped at this pretty little Norwegian church when he was a child.\nWith its attractive white clapboard structure and stubby spire, the Norwegian Church provides a striking counterpoint to the modern buildings in the Cardiff Bay development. How much do you know about it, though? Let us fill you in.\nWhat is the Norwegian Church?\nCardiff's Norwegian Church is the oldest surviving church in Britain founded by the Norwegian Seamen's Mission. These days it houses an arts centre and public space, plus you can savour one of their an award-winning cakes from the café - why not sit on terrace and enjoy the lovely views out across the bay?\nNorwegian Church, Cardiff Bay\nView Credits\n© Hawlfraint y Goron / Crown Copyright\nWhy is there a Norwegian church in Cardiff?\nDuring the late 19th century, thousands of Norwegian sailors visited Cardiff aboard merchant ships. These ships brought strong, straight Scandinavian timber to Wales so that it could be used to make pit props in the mines. Once they'd dropped off their cargo, they would pick up Welsh coal and export it all around the world.\nChurches like this one, which dates back to 1867, were built to provide religious and social care to the Norwegian sailors who found themselves far from home for weeks on end. Some of them were so busy with their work, they never went home.\nNorwegian Church\nWhat does Roald Dahl have to do with the church?\nGood question! One of the most famous members of the church’s congregation was best-selling children’s author Roald Dahl. He was born to Norwegian parents who lived on Fairwater Road in Llandaff, Cardiff.\nHis father Harald, who came to Wales from Oslo, co-founded a ship-broking company in Cardiff around 1880. Roald spent his childhood and school days in Cardiff. His family worshipped at the Norwegian Church when it was at its original location in the Cardiff Docks. In fact, he and his siblings were all baptised there.\nWhen the church fell into disrepair in the 1970s, Roald was at the forefront of a campaign to raise money to save it. Funds were raised locally and in Norway, with the end goal of dismantling and repairing the church so that it could be relocated to a new site in Cardiff Bay in 1992, where it stands today.\nUnfortunately, Roald didn’t live to see the project completed – he died several years earlier. The church is still in great shape and is well looked after. It was extensively renovated in 2011 and reopened on 17 May, Norwegian Constitution Day.\nA gallery upstairs at the church hosts temporary exhibitions of photography and art by local artists. Naturally, it’s been named the Dahl Gallery. If you visit, look out for the silver christening bowl which belonged to the family and is now on show here today.\nDating back to 1869 @NorwegianChurch, the oldest building still in use here in #CardiffBay. Our history spans three centuries. Working with the @WelshNorwegian society we will host a number of events through the year in the lead up to our 150th anniversary on December 16th 2019 pic.twitter.com/3qDOwYlf4b\n— Norwegian Church / Eglwys Norwyaidd (@NorwegianChurch) January 30, 2019\nExploring the churches of Monmouthshire\nWales has an intriguing religious heritage, from humble, mountain-top chapels to historic abbeys and cathedrals. Each one has a story to tell.\nSouth Wales' special places of faith\nYour guide to some of the special sites of faith heritage across South Wales.\nMind, body, and soul in Wales\nDiscover yourself amidst Wales’ stunning coastal stretches. Read on for five easy ways to practice mindfulness or just chill out on the coast of Wales.\nWest Wales' special places of faith\nWest Wales, home to Wales' patron St David, has a fascinating religious heritage with much of it still possible to enjoy. Here are some suggestions for special places to visit and enjoy across West Wales - from ornate cathedrals and Bishop's Palaces to ruined chapels and ashrams.\nSt David's Day","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line303397"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.652945876121521,"wiki_prob":0.347054123878479,"text":"School receives grant for cafeteria equipment\nBy Drew C. Wilson\ndwilson@wilsontimes.com |\nSallie B. Howard School for the Arts and Education has received a grant to improve serving equipment in the school cafeteria.\nAccording to R. Nicole Guzman, child nutrition director at the school, …\nSign up to keep reading — IT'S FREE!\nIn an effort to improve our website and enhance our local coverage, WilsonTimes.com has switched to a membership model. Fill out the form below to create a free account. Once you're logged in, you can continue using the site as normal. You should remain logged in on your computer or device as long as you don’t clear your browser history/cookies.\nCreate a free website account to continue reading.\nI agree to the terms and conditions as posted on this site.\nSubscribe to the Wilson Times Daily Briefing email newsletter\nEvery morning, receive a summary of the top local stories we're reporting on.\nIf you already have an account, log in for continued access.\nCurrent print subscribers can activate a website account by clicking here.\nPlease consider supporting community journalism by subscribing.\nhelp@wilsontimes.com\nThank you for being one of our most loyal readers. Please consider supporting community journalism by subscribing.\nPosted Sunday, July 14, 2019 6:00 pm\nAccording to R. Nicole Guzman, child nutrition director at the school, the $61,300 grant is from the N.C. Department of Public Instruction’s child nutrition program.\n“With that grant, we are going to buy new serving lines,” Guzman said. “The current servings we have, one is from 1993 and the other is 1985, so we are going to have brand-new serving lines.”\nA serving line consists of the wells used to keep food hot or cold when children are being served meals at the school.\n“We served about 1,030 (children daily) last year; however, we are becoming a high school in the next year or so, and we will be having more students to serve,” Guzman said.\nSallie B. Howard High School for the Arts and Science is currently under construction and scheduled to open for students in the fall of 2020.\n“Currently, on our older serving lines, we didn’t have the cold wells, so we constantly had to replace the cold with ice,” Guzman said. “It will be more efficient and effective for my staff. They won’t have to be going back putting ice in the serving line. We also were approved to get under-counter refrigeration so my staff doesn’t have to go back and forth to the refrigerators. They can just turn right around and take out the cold condiments or the lettuce or tomatoes. It is a lot safer for them so they won’t slip and fall, and it’s more efficient for them as well.”\nGuzman has about 10 child nutrition workers.\nWithin the last two years, the cafeteria has undergone major renovations to replace floors, remove asbestos, repaint and replace seating and dining tables and install walk-in freezer and walk-in refrigeration units and a dishwasher for the kitchen.\n“It wasn’t an expansion for our kitchen, so our kitchen is still a little on the smaller side as far as serving,” Guzman said. “However, we make it work.”\nGuzman said the plan is to have meal service on a staggered entry with kindergarten through eighth grade having breakfast between 7 and 7:45 a.m., and the high school students having breakfast an hour later.\nGuzman said the cafeteria still stresses serving homestyle meals\n“I still do a lot of homestyle cooking, so we don’t have a lot of out-of-the-box, processed foods,” Guzman said. “Most of the time my staff is cooking from 6 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon, so the cooking is constant.”\nGuzman said the new stainless steel equipment will arrive July 25.\n“The previous ones were kind of short, so we had to have my shorter staff on the shorter line, so we will have the taller staff on a little bit taller line,” Guzman said. “This one is going to be the middle school serving line so the children are going to be taller.”\n“My staff cannot wait,” Guzman said.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1464259"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.950075626373291,"wiki_prob":0.950075626373291,"text":"Northwood shooters heading to world tournament\nNorthwood High School students are going to a world championship archery competition.\nNorthwood shooters heading to world tournament Northwood High School students are going to a world championship archery competition. Check out this story on thetowntalk.com: https://www.thetowntalk.com/story/news/education/2016/05/25/northwood-shooters-heading-world-tournament/84775458/\nLeigh Guidry, lguidry@gannett.com Published 1:55 p.m. CT May 25, 2016 | Updated 4:27 p.m. CT May 25, 2016\nNorthwood High School eighth-grader Tommy Aaron, 12, is in his second year of archery. He likes shooting at 3-D targets, which are like real animals, rather than bull's-eyes. He and 12 classmates are going to a world competition in June. He prepares to shoot during practice Tuesday.(Photo: Melinda Martinez/The Town Talk)Buy Photo\nLENA — Northwood High School students will compete in a world championship competition for archery next month. Until then, the 13 qualifying students are practicing three days a week.\nCoaches Randall Dunn and Cynthia McGlothlin lead them in practice during the school year and now during the summer. Northwood High has been offering archery for students from fourth to 12th grade for three years. Kids take the class at the end of the day.\nThey started the year with 54 kids in the program. Each one had the opportunity to shoot at a regional competition at LSUA. Twenty-two qualifiers went on to the state competition and then 16 moved on to nationals in Louisville, Kentucky, earlier this month.\nThe group has been whittled down to 13 who qualify for \"World,\" or National Archery in the Schools Program's World Tournament, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 24-26.\nRELATED: Donations get archery in schools\nNorthwood High School eighth-graders Ella Basco (back) and Kenzie Allen (front) are headed to a world competition in archery. They prepare to shoot at practice Tuesday. (Photo: Melinda Martinez/The Town Talk)\nDunn thinks the sport attracts a big group at Northwood because many in the area are hunters like himself. He also has about nine years of experience working in archery shops in Natchitoches and Pineville.\n\"Out here everybody hunts,\" Dunn said, like Ella Basco, 13, and Kenzie Allen, 12, who are headed to the world competition.\nBut some just wanted to try something new. Tommy Aaron, 12, is in his second year of archery. He prefers shooting at 3-D targets, which are like real animals, rather than bull's-eyes. Tommy has learned a few things since his first year.\n\"I learned everything has to be the same each time,\" he said. \"You have to be precise. I like it because of my friends and the fact that it's not as intense as other sports. It's calm.\"\nDunn echoed that.\n\"It's all about form,\" he said.\nRead more: Rapides to stick to bathrooms of their 'biological sex'\nRead or Share this story: https://www.thetowntalk.com/story/news/education/2016/05/25/northwood-shooters-heading-world-tournament/84775458/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line832480"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6907325387001038,"wiki_prob":0.6907325387001038,"text":"IHS Markit Launches First Global Index for Carbon Credits\nThe new IHS Markit Global Carbon Index is the first benchmark for the global price of carbon.\nGlobal Carbon Index combines proprietary information and futures markets data to produce the first benchmark for the global price of carbon\nNews Media:\nAlex Paidas\nalex.paidas@ihsmarkit.com\npress@ihsmarkit.com\nIHS Markit (NYSE: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, today announced that it has launched the IHS Markit Global Carbon Index, the first benchmark for the global price of carbon credits.\nAccording to the IHS Markit Global Carbon Index, the global weighted average price of carbon credits is $23.65. Since the beginning of 2018, the total return potentially gained by investors in global carbon is 132 percent, index data show.\nThe design, construction and administration of the IHS Markit Global Carbon Index is a result of extensive collaboration among the firm’s Indices, Environmental and Energy businesses, including OPIS, the company’s energy price reporting arm, which offers data and pricing services to help businesses manage costs and risks associated with national and regional environmental compliance programs.\n“The IHS Markit Global Carbon Index creates a valuable new benchmark for corporations, investors and financial services firms, all of which have to navigate the emerging but increasingly important markets for carbon credits,” said Sophia Dancygier, managing director and head of Indices at IHS Markit. “It also demonstrates our ability to apply our expertise in data, energy and other major industries and capital markets to develop unique products to address the most pressing and complex information demands within business today.”\nThe Global Carbon index tracks the performance of the largest, most liquid and most accessible tradable carbon markets, namely the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS), the California Cap-and-Trade Program, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The index is calculated using OPIS data and carbon credit futures pricing in those markets.\nPutting a price on carbon dioxide emissions through cap and trade programs and other market-based mechanisms is a primary strategy for reducing carbon emissions. Worldwide, 57 jurisdictions have carbon pricing mechanisms, up 34% since 2017.\nThe IHS Markit Global Carbon Index was developed in consultation with Climate Finance Partners, a specialist in climate finance.\n“The IHS Markit Global Carbon index creates an important benchmark which helps financial institutions to better assess and price climate-related financial risks,” said Eron Bloomgarden, co-founder of Climate Finance Partners. “We see growing investor interest in carbon credits as an asset class.”\nIHS Markit administers more than 14,000 benchmark, economic and tradable indices across assets. More than $130 billion in assets under management are held by exchange-traded funds referencing IHS Markit indices.\nThe new index is an example of the firm’s growing set of solutions covering carbon markets, sustainable investing and corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) needs. The firm’s Environmental Registry tracks the issuance, transfer and retirement of over 350 million carbon, water, and biodiversity credits. Last year, it launched a repository to collect, store and disseminate corporate ESG data, including carbon emissions.\nIHS Markit is also well known for its daily OPIS Carbon Market Report, national carbon policies database and for developing industry standard methodologies for greenhouse gas accounting and disclosures. Its research and expertise on carbon policy impact, low-carbon and cleantech technologies and carbon risk management guide companies in energy, petrochemical, automotive, shipping, agriculture and other sectors critical to the global economy.\nAbout IHS Markit (www.ihsmarkit.com)\nIHS Markit (NYSE: INFO) is a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions for the major industries and markets that drive economies worldwide. The company delivers next-generation information, analytics and solutions to customers in business, finance and government, improving their operational efficiency and providing deep insights that lead to well-informed, confident decisions. IHS Markit has more than 50,000 business and government customers, including 80 percent of the Fortune Global 500 and the world’s leading financial institutions. Headquartered in London, IHS Markit is committed to sustainable, profitable growth.\nIHS Markit is a registered trademark of IHS Markit Ltd. and/or its affiliates. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners © 2019 IHS Markit Ltd. All rights reserved.\nFirst global carbon credit index launched by @IHSMarkitFinSer using data from @OPIS\nNews powered by iR Direct —\nCopyright © 2020 Issuer Direct Corporation.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1499992"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8213506937026978,"wiki_prob":0.8213506937026978,"text":"Logan Lucky Turns Trump's America Into One of The Year's Best Movies\nLogan Lucky Turns Trump’s America Into One of The Year’s Best Movies\nStephen Hladik\nThe promotion for Steven Soderbergh’s newest movie Logan Lucky entices audiences to “come and see how the other half steals”. A heist movie at its heart, the film also has the difficult realities of life in middle-class America coursing through its veins. It’s light and fun and enjoyable, but it also doesn’t let its audience forget that its characters aren’t just trying to rob a NASCAR event for jollies, it’s trying to gain power over a system that pushes them to the side. Perhaps if Logan Lucky came out during Obama-era America, it would just be viewed as a fun, end of Summer good-time popcorn movie with major movie stars, which it essentially is. But in the age of Drumpf, there’s something sort of daring, and even difficult about seeing these characters (who almost certainly would have voted for Donald Drumpf) being the heroes of a major motion picture. How can we root for characters who would have supported our current Commander in Chief without feeling kind of gross about it? The movie doesn’t really offer much of answer in that way, nor does it necessarily need too.\nThis isn’t a meditative or gently thoughtful film about the “angry working class” we so often keep hearing about in the news lately. It’s a movie about a family trying to stay together and reclaim their humanity by pulling off a major heist, scamming their way through one of middle America’s favorite pastimes as a way of keeping themselves out of poverty. Perhaps that’s where the movie succeeds; it puts its characters in situations that are very relatable for all types of people in this country. For all of the action and elaborate heist scenes, it’s a movie about family, which anybody can relate to. It’s neither an endorsement or critique of its characters and the type of environments they populate, it simply presents them as they are, and there’s something quite noble in it. It’s also a hell of a good time.\nThe cast is dynamite, with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and especially Daniel Craig having a blast playing against type as blue- collar criminals. Riley Keough continues to be one of the most exciting presences in movies of television, always able to convey so much even with so little. Cameos by Seth MacFarlane, Katherine Waterston, and Hilary Swank are sprinkled throughout the movie all of which make for great fun, which is exactly what Logan Lucky is. It’s not asking us to love these people, but it shows us that they are capable of great joy and depth, just like the rest of us.\nWhy Are People Hating the Idea of an All-Female ‘Lord of the Flies’ Remake?\nHow Hollywood Continues to Stereotype Indian People\nWritten By Stephen Hladik","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line98591"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8886725306510925,"wiki_prob":0.8886725306510925,"text":"East Liverpool Historical Society\nThe Bells: First Family of Potter Football 2\nUnless otherwise indicated all pictures and material in this article are from the Jeannette Bell Collection.\nBob Duffy Review Sports Editor.\nJanet, Jeannette and Jerry Bell.\nJerry Bell earned letters for varsity football for 1958-1961 and at least one letter for track in 1960.\nJerry Bell was named to the 1961 All-County Second Team as well as a All-Eastern Ohio Honorable Mention Choice.\nThe various schools the Potters played got a bit of a break from hearing Bells for awhile. However, that wouldn't last.\nMid to late 1970's\nJohnny Bell, Gene Bell Jr, Jerry Browne, Less Browne.\nGene Bell Jr. (1975) won a spot All-County First team as a Defensive back. He had six interceptions that year.\nBell, a quick defensive back who supported the run, was an opponent's best wide receiver one-on-one that is, he caught everything that came his way. Bell was named the area's Defensive Player of the Year, as well as First Team on both the Columbiana County and OVAC honoree's list, along with first team All-State. Little wonder that he went on to a stellar career at the University of Michigan, another great member of the fabled Bell family to excel at ELHS. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Years of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nSome of the fun examples from 1976 that involved members of the Bell family were:\nSenior Johnny Bell -- also the son of a ex Potter -- provided the Potters with speed as he rushed for 82 yards in 21 carries and broke a 75-yard punt return for the second TD of the game in the season opening victory against Youngstown East. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Years of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nGames 3 and 4 of that year were cancelled because of a teachers Strike, THe next game played was against Alliance.\nJerry Browne & Less Browne\nLess and Mattie's first child was Edna (Bell) Browne. Her and her two sons, Jerry and Less Browne.\nThe man of the hour was Sophomore punt Returner Less Browne, whose whose special teams efforts that evening were highlighted by a 64-yard punt return. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Yeears of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nThe Potters beat Alliance 7-0.\nIn game nine of that year against Salem:\nOn its first play from scrimmage, East Liverpool came alive when DeSarro hit tight end Jerry Browne on a 57 yard scoring pass, knotting the game at 7-7. John Bell then followed his blockers for a 35-yard touchdown gallop at just 4:18 into the first quarter. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Years of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nLightning-fast Less Browne then demonstrated his skills to the thousands of fans in attendance at Patterson Field when he fielded a Salem punt at his own 30, reversed his field back to his own 15, fumbled, recovered and then took off up field. Before anyone could blink an eye, Browne had gone 85 yards for the touchdown. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Years of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nFor Jerry Browne, it was the end of a great career at ELHS. He received both the Evening Review MVP trophy and the Bill Booth Award at the banquet held at the high school cafeteria following the season. The 6-foot-2, 215- pounder went on to play tight end for the Wolfjack of North Carolina State. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Years of East Liverpool High School Football. Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nWashington, Bell Claim births on All-Ohio Squad.\nFour Potters Gain Mention\nLewis Browne, Janet & Jeannette Bell, Less Browne.\nWhile still at East Jr. high School.\nSpeedster Less Browne, who went on to set the all-time Canadian professional league interception record holds the ELHS record for the most kick returns for touchdowns with eight. Potterssportsonline, Frank \"Digger\" Dawson\nhttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Less-Brown/110260882336399\nLess Browne would go on the Colorado State to play football. WE ARE THE POTTERS, 100 Yeears of East Liverpool High School Football.\nTo Date (Nov. 2011) six members of the Bell family have been inducted into the East Liverpool High School Athletic Hall Of Fame:\nErnie Bell, Tom Bell, Gene Bell, Charlie Bell, Les Browne and Jerry Browne.\nContinue to ELHS Football Records\nThis site is the property of the East Liverpool Historical Society.\nRegular linking, i.e. providing the URL of the East Liverpool Historical Society web site for viewers to click on and be taken to the East Liverpool Historical Society entry portal or to any specific article on the website is legally permitted.\nHyperlinking, or as it is also called framing, without permission is not permitted.\nLegally speaking framing is still in a murky area of the law though there have been court cases in which framing has been seen as violation of copyright law. Many cases that were taken to court ended up settling out-of-court with the one doing the framing agreeing to cease framing and to just use a regular link to the other site.\nThe East Liverpool Historical Society pays fees to keep their site online. A person framing the Society site is effectively presenting the entire East Liverpool Historical Society web site as his own site and doing it at no cost to himself, i.e. stealing the site.\nThe East Liverpool Historical Society reserves the right to charge such an individual a fee for the use of the Society’s material.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line888210"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6810428500175476,"wiki_prob":0.6810428500175476,"text":"Stuart O'Grady, 2008\noil on canvas\t(support: 135.7 cm x 136.0 cm)\nStuart O’Grady OAM (b. 1973) was regarded as one of the peloton’s most aggressive and experienced hardmen. Born in Adelaide, O’Grady started out as a track cyclist and was eighteen when he won silver in the team pursuit at the Barcelona Olympics. Part of the squad that triumphed in the same event in the 1993 and 1995 world championships, he scored two bronze medals in Atlanta in 1996 and became an Olympic gold medalist in Athens in 2004 as one half of the combination that won the madison. By this time, O’Grady had also branched into road racing, competing in his first Tour de France in 1998 and wearing the yellow jersey for three stages. Among his numerous other achievements, in 2007, he became the first Australian to win a European one day classic when he took out the race nicknamed ‘The Hell of the North’, the 260-kilometre Paris to Roubaix. He retired from professional cycling within days of completing his seventeenth Tour de France, this record-equalling achievement tarnished by his admission of having once participated in the doping practices revealed to have been prevalent in the sport during the 1990s.\nMatthÿs Gerber (b. 1956) was born in the Netherlands and has lived in Australia since 1972. Drawing on the modes of representation used throughout the history of European painting, he has produced a diverse body of work ranging from representational landscapes to abstraction. Gerber is a senior lecturer at the Sydney College of the Arts.\nCommissioned 2008\nAccession number: 2008.110.2\nMatthys Gerber (age 52 in 2008)\nStuart O'Grady (age 35 in 2008)\n1. Robbie McEwen, 2008. 2. Cadel Evans, 2008. 3. George Tjungurrayi, 2002. All Matthys Gerber.\nWinning in technicolor\nMagazine article by Alistair McGhie, 2009\nAlistair McGhie writes about the portraits of three of Australia's top professional cyclists: Cadel Evans, Stuart O'Grady and Robbie McEwen painted by Matthys Gerber.\nTwo painters\nMagazine article by Dr Christopher Chapman, 2007\nChris Chapman explains how Matthys Gerber bridges the gap between abstraction and portraiture.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1003745"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5932632684707642,"wiki_prob":0.5932632684707642,"text":"Posted by Eat Play Sleep September 27, 2014\nCanadian Museum for Human Rights opens in Winnipeg, Manitoba\nCanadian Museum for Human Rights - Winter 2014 - ©Aaron Cohen Photos/CMHR\nThe Canadian Museum for Human Rights opens to the public in Winnipeg on September 27, 2014. As Canada's first national museum built since 1967, and the first established outside the capital city of Ottawa, the museum's grand opening celebration on September 20 was greeted with much fanfare and controversy (CTV National News).\nI first learned about the new museum at Manitoba House during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. A year later, while in Winnipeg following a trip to Churchill, I saw it under construction. Built at a cost of $351 million -- with funding by private donations and public contributions -- it rises from the ground at the Forks of the Red and Assinboine rivers. It sits on Treaty One land and the Metis homeland, a meeting place for thousands of years.\nThe museum was designed by Antoine Predock of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The American architect's notable projects include the La Luz community in Albuquerque, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College and Petco Park for the San Diego Padres. Designed to resemble a mythic mountain surrounded by a massive glass cloud, it includes:\nOne kilometer (.6 mile) of glowing white alabaster ramps where visitors will take \"a journey of light through the darkness\"\n100-meter shining Tower of Hope (equivalent to a 23-story building)\nInterior Garden of Contemplation that features basalt rock, water and greenery\nThe goal of the museum is \"to enhance public understanding of human rights, promote respect others and encourage reflection and contemplation.\" The 11 galleries were designed by Ralph Appelbaum Associates and include:\nIndigenous Perspectives\nCanadian Journeys\nProtecting Rights in Canada\nExamining the Holocaust\nTurning Points for Humanity\nActions Count\nRights Today\nWHY WINNIPEG?\n\"The CMHR stands as the first national museum built outside the National Capital Region in Ottawa. It sits on a historic site, surrounded by a city with an inspiring human rights legacy -- from the labour rights struggle of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike to Nellie McClung's fight for women's right to vote, defence of French-language rights, the push for Aboriginal self-determination ... and so much more. Winnipeg is a city of diversity, home to the country's largest urban Aboriginal population, immigrants from around the globe, and the largest French-speaking community in Western Canada. It boasts globally-inspired cuisine, world-class arts organizations and vibrant ethnic festivals. It is also a growing centre of human rights scholarship at its four universities.\" Canadian Museum for Human Rights\nMore About Winnipeg | By Sue Frause\nWinnipeg's St. Boniface: Western Canada's largest French-speaking community\nWinnipeg's St. Boniface Cathedral: Provincial Heritage Site\nWinnie the Pooh hails from Winnipeg\nLabels: Canada Cathedrals Manitoba Museums Ottawa Winnipeg\nLocation: Winnipeg, MB, Canada","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1220270"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6654835343360901,"wiki_prob":0.6654835343360901,"text":"Client Commitment\nAbout Parker Poe\nParker Poe\nAl Guarnieri Receives Harold P. Josephson Award\nCharlotte, NC – Al Guarnieri, Partner in Parker Poe’s Charlotte office, received the Harold P. Josephson Award from the World Affairs Council of Charlotte (WACC) on Wednesday, April 20th 2016. The honor is in recognition for his significant contributions to the Council and the international life of the community.\nAl is former Director of the World Affairs Council of Charlotte and has nearly 30 years of experience in international business, site selection/economic development and mergers and acquisitions. He represents a range of U.S. and foreign corporations and has particular experience with manufacturing and distribution companies. He assists companies with their investments and expansions in the U. S., out-bound investments and structuring, and domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions.\nMr. Guarnieri is the Director of the Charlotte Chapter of the American Council on Germany and serves on the leadership team of the German American Chamber of Commerce, North Carolina Chapter. He also frequently speaks on international business issues.\nAbout The World Affairs Council of Charlotte (WACC)\nThe World Affairs Council of Charlotte (WACC) was founded in 1983 as an outreach program of UNC Charlotte and its Office of International Programs. As a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, it is supported by private funding from individual and corporate member dues and contributions.\nAs a regional center for education and discussion of world affairs, the WACC seeks to provide leadership for global thinking, believing that a broad perspective is necessary for effective competition in the global economy and for responsible citizenship in the increasingly interdependent political world.\nThe WACC is a member of the World Affairs Council of America and together with approximately 100 other such World Affairs Councils and affiliates across the country, our mission focuses on improving international education and encouraging citizens to participate in the national debate on world affairs.\nParker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP has approximately 200 lawyers in seven offices located in major markets across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The firm provides legal counsel to large commercial and public organizations on , corporate, litigation, tax and regulatory matters. For more information, please visit www.parkerpoe.com.\nAlbert E. Guarnieri\n© Copyright 2020 Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP. Attorneys & Counselors at Law","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1036081"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.933195948600769,"wiki_prob":0.933195948600769,"text":"Taekwondo: The 'Sport' of Mastering Self-Control\nby John Donovan Jun 12, 2019\nTaekwondo features dramatic, aerial, jumping, spinning kicks, whereas karate doesn't. vm/Getty Images\nThe first bit of wisdom to pass along about the fascinating and almost absurdly intricate Korean martial art of taekwondo is this: It's pronounced TAY-kwon-dough. Not TIE-kwon-dough. TAY.\nThat might be the easiest lesson ever about taekwondo, which has been part of the Olympics since 2000 even as traditionalists fiercely insist it's something much more than mere sport. To the traditional, committed practitioner of taekwondo — to a taekowndoist — it is nothing less than a way of life.\n\"It's a skill ... it's an education. It's not just simply entertainment,\" Grandmaster Doug Cook, the president and CEO of the United States Taekwondo Association, says. He owns and operates a dojang in Warwick, New York, where he teaches traditional taekwondo and the development of a personal ki, or internal energy. \"When people begin, they think they're just going to come in and do a few kicks and punches. Like kickboxing. Just kind of lose some weight. But they realize pretty quickly that the techniques require a lot of effort and a lot of practice, and they need to come consistently.\n\"You have to start from zero and learn the dynamics, the physics of the martial arts, the mindset, the metaphysics of the martial arts. It's far, far deeper than most people think.\"\nA Brief History of Taekwondo\nThe term taekwondo — remember, it's TAY-kwon-do — is often translated many ways. Simply, it is defined as \"striking with the foot and hand.\" The suffix do is used to define a way or a discipline. Or, as some people see it, a way of enlightenment, a way of life.\nThe martial arts — which began as a means of self-defense, growing through hand-to-hand combat on battlefields — can be traced back thousands of years. Taekwondo's roots are much more recent.\nAfter the Korean peninsula was invaded by Japan in World War II and was bombarded by foreign forces in the Korean War, the martial arts in Korea — split into many different schools and styles, and influenced by karate, judo and what we know as kung fu, among other martial arts — looked to unify. The various factions finally settled on taekwondo, a term not coined until 1955 and not accepted until the newly formed Korean Taekwondo Association did so in 1965.\nSince then, some revisionist history touting taekwondo's ancient Korean roots — told by nationals looking to make a claim for a true Korean martial art — has taken hold. But it's not all accurate.\nFrom a 2016 paper written by two professors at Youngsan University in Yangsan City, South Korea, Udo Moenig and Kim Minho, in the journal Acta Koreana:\nIn the last two decades, taekwondo's historical claims have been universally questioned, but still, the tales of taekwondo's indigenous origins from Korea persist. The narratives have been propagated by the taekwondo establishment and popular culture as taekwondo's tradition for such a long time that it is difficult to correct the storyline. Moreover, Korea's sensitive political relationship with Japan, which is tied to historical and territorial disputes, nationalistic sentiments, and national pride, makes it almost impossible for the Korean taekwondo community to change the narrative and finally acknowledge taekwondo's roots in Japanese karate.\nHow Taekwondo Differs from Karate\nBecause of karate's unmistakable influence on taekwondo, the two are often confused. They are both considered hard-style martial arts, Cook explains, as opposed to soft-style martial arts like aikido or tai chi.\n\"Soft-style martial arts are generally used, in a sense, where you redirect an opponent's negative energy, or belligerent energy, and throw them off balance and then apply joint locks or throws. You're blending with your attacker,\" he says. \"In hard-style martial arts, you're doing striking, kicking and punching, fast and hard, penetrating power, rather than just blending.\"\nThe difference between karate and taekwondo is the difference between hand — the word karate has its base in the Japanese character for hand — and foot. Cook explains it this way:\n\"One word, and that's 'kicking.' Taekwondo features dramatic, aerial, jumping, spinning kicks whereas karate never features anything like that. It's mainly very low kicks, very few kicks.\"\nSport vs. Tradition\nMany people know taekwondo only as an Olympic oddity. In that type of competition, the goal is to land as many kicks and punches to the torso and head of the opponent. At the end of three rounds, the player with the most points wins.\nScoring is simple.\nOne point for a basic attack to the opponent's torso\nTwo points for a spinning kick to the opponent's torso\nThree points for a kick to the head\nBut the drive to make taekwondo more accepted internationally — often by those who want to lift Korea's worldwide image through recognition of the sport — may be hurting traditional taekwondo.\nTo traditionalists like Cook, the sport of taekwondo is almost unrecognizable.\n\"The way the sport of taekwondo is executed these days is really an atrocious attempt at sport. They just stand there and jump up and down for five or six seconds, or 30 seconds, as much as that, doing nothing. And then one person will try to get a kick in,\" says Cook, who has authored four books on taekwondo. \"All the really skillful techniques that have been carried across taekwondo for decades have been forfeited now just for simple little taps. It's what we call 'foot tag.'\"\nRather than settling for points or trying to win at all costs, those who practice traditional taekwondo follow five tenets:\nIndomitable spirit\nThose tenets, the belief that taekwondo is built on more than winning a medal, is what separates sport from traditionalists. \"None of us, probably, will ever face hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield,\" Cook says. \"So when we're learning this, people sometimes ask, 'Why am I doing this?'\n\"Physically, you will be able to defend yourself and your loved ones. But, really, what it's doing is building up that character. And that's what you get in the 21st century as a modern-day warrior.\"\nNOW THAT'S INTERESTING\nAside from taekwondo, judo — based on Japanese jujitsu and once practiced by samurai — is the only other martial art now represented at the Olympics. It began in the 1964 Games and has been in every Summer Olympics since 1972. (Women have participated since 1982.) In the 2020 Games in Tokyo, karate will make its debut.\nScience · Previous Story\nTurning Air Pollution Into Ink\nNext Story · Money\nHow Hedge Funds Affect You Even If You Don't Invest in One\nHow Karate Works\nHow Board Breaking Works\nWhat Are the Different Types of Life Insurance?\nFight for Equal Rights Amendment Enters a New Era\nThe Story of Eric Rudolph, the Real 1996 Olympic Park Bomber","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1146540"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9829025268554688,"wiki_prob":0.9829025268554688,"text":"Illustration by: Rebekka Dunlap\nEurope's Bitter #MeToo Debate: Bardot, Bertolucci and the \"Threat of Change\"\nby Scott Roxborough and Rhonda Richford\nMay 03, 2018, 6:00am PDT\nWith Catherine Deneuve calling out the anti-harassment movement as \"puritanical\" and Bertolucci backing Kevin Spacey, insiders blame the continent's \"Old Country\" culture: \"Everything that is new is scary.\"\nLast October, when Italian actress and director Asia Argento first spoke out against Harvey Weinstein, accusing the Hollywood producer of raping her in 1997 when she was 21, she probably expected the European film community to stand behind her. American stars who had come forward to tell their stories of harassment and sexual violence — Rose McGowan, Ashley Judd, Mira Sorvino, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie — had been hailed as heroes, praised for daring to break the silence around a system that fostered and perpetuated abuse.\nNot so in Italy.\nInstead of praising her, Italian media piled on Argento, with commentators both male and female rushing to defend Weinstein and condemn the actress. Former journalist and Italian MP Renato Farina said the assaults described by Argento were \"prostitution, not rape,\" while Vittorio Feltri, editor in chief of the newspaper Libero, said that if anything, Argento should be thankful to Weinstein for forcibly performing oral sex on her. \"I don't believe Asia,\" said French director Catherine Breillat in a blunt interview with the Murmur podcast. Breillat, who collaborated with Argento on the 2007 drama The Last Mistress, went on to call the actress a \"traitor\" and a \"mercenary\" and accused her of \"semi-prostitution\" in her relationship with Weinstein.\nPerhaps the most telling moment came during Rome's Women's March on Jan. 20. Argento had invited her colleagues — Italian actresses, directors and producers — to join her, but when the day came, she marched alone, the sole representative of the Italian film industry.\nArgento's treatment came despite the fact that the European film industry prides itself on being woke. Cinema on the continent is seen primarily as an artistic (not commercial) activity, and the industry likes to project a common front of a socially, and sexually, liberal community. Attacks on conservative values or right-wing politics are de rigueur. It's impossible, for example, to imagine an anti-immigration movie getting into any of Europe's major film festivals. Directors and actors rarely miss a chance to bash far-right leaders like France's Marie Le Pen or Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, not to mention Donald Trump.\nHollywood might be sexist, racist and misogynist, many in the European industry would argue, but not us progressive continentals. Now #MeToo, with its accusations of systematic bias and abuse, threatens that self-image. A Europe that is accustomed to taking the moral high ground is being forced to question its own power structures. And the debate about how to move forward in Europe is far more contentious than in the U.S., where the Time's Up and #MeToo movements created a cultural flashpoint that demanded immediate change.\nThe #MeToo movement initially found strong resonance in Europe. A French #MeToo hashtag, #BalanceTonPorc, or #SquealOnYourPig, went viral. Stars attending the Cesar Awards, France's equivalent of the Oscars, wore white ribbons in solidarity with victims of abuse.\nBut within the local industry, the movement also sparked a backlash. French icons Catherine Deneuve and Brigitte Bardot slammed the movement — Bardot labeled it \"hypocritical and ridiculous\" and Deneuve signed an open letter to newspaper Le Monde calling #MeToo a \"puritanical\" witch hunt that \"far from helping women to empower themselves … actually serves the enemies of sexual freedom.\"\nDeneuve backtracked on some of the comments in the ensuing uproar, but the argument that #MeToo represents a new era of intolerance was picked up by the likes of Austrian director Michael Haneke (Amour) and German actress Hanna Schygulla (The Marriage of Maria Braun). \"When I started making films, [German director Rainer Werner] Fassbinder slapped me in the face and said I had to take it,\" Schygulla said at the Berlin Film Festival in February. \"I know that there is a taboo about this kind of thing now.\" On April 29, Italy's Bernardo Bertolucci said Ridley Scott should be \"ashamed\" of buckling under #MeToo pressure last year and replacing Kevin Spacey, after he was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen men, with Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World.\nAudrey Clinet, founder of EROIN, a French group that promotes female directors, points to a key cultural difference between how the U.S. and Europe approach thorny issues like race, gender and equality. The U.S., through its civil rights and women's liberation movements, has a history of challenging the status quo that simply doesn't exist in Europe (in France, for instance, it's illegal to even ask for racial info when gathering census statistics).\n\"In France, we don't talk about gender,\" observes Clinet. \"It's not as accepted as it is in the U.S. … where you can speak about gender and ethnicity and it's not a problem — where, in fact, [talking about it is] seen as a good thing,\" she says. \"My project was not supported by any women's groups [in France], and when we tried to do a #MeToo movement during the Cesars, no one called me back. Europe is called the Old Country, and I think that is true. Everything that is new is scary.\"\nClinet sees a clear generational gap in Europe between younger women and actresses who came of age in the 1960s, like Bardot and Deneuve, when \"feminism\" meant, primarily, sexual liberation. \"Within the younger generation in France, there is a really strong feminist movement, and the older generation is maybe further behind,\" says British actress Gemma Arterton, who has appeared in such French films as 2014's Gemma Bovery. \"The people that I associate with in France and the French cinema industry are completely going for a gender balance. It's just that there's a big disparity between the generations.\"\nEuropean cinema's old guard, this argument goes, is still fighting the battles of the 1960s against their parents' puritanical ways and missing the point of #MeToo as a movement to empower women. \"It seemed out of touch,\" says Rebecca Zlotowski, co-president of French directors group SRF, about the Deneuve letter. \"They were defending their right to be spanked or whipped in bed while the whole world was finally taking a stand against torture.\"\nMany in the industry also point to the lack of a European Harvey Weinstein. \"[Weinstein] was an earthquake in the U.S., and we didn't have that kind of moment,\" says Tonie Marshall, director of the 1999 feature Venus Beauty Institute and the only woman to have won a Cesar for directing. \"Here and there, producers and directors have maybe done some inappropriate actions, but we haven't had someone that powerful,\" with the influence to make or break a career in the way Weinstein did. Without a poster boy for #MeToo, the European industry has found it easier to dismiss the issue as America's problem.\nPerhaps there is no equivalent to Weinstein in Europe because its industry is fundamentally different from Hollywood. In Europe, films are financed primarily by the state with tax subsidies, grants and other programs. Many point to this more \"objective\" model as a reason why Europe doesn't have the same gender gap as Hollywood. According to USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 4 to 5 percent of films in the U.S. were directed by women from 2007 to 2017. In France, however, the number was 23 percent from 2006 to 2016.\nAnother difference is the long tradition in Europe of the cult of the auteur — that's why the Cannes Film Festival continues to celebrate directors like Woody Allen, Roman Polanski and Lars von Trier, even as they are condemned for personal behavior some consider reprehensible or criminal. \"As a cinephile, I will defend films to the bitter end, even if it means protecting them from the directors who made them,\" says Zlotowski. \"There are legal and procedural ways to deal with crimes they may have committed, but their work as artists should be defended at all costs.\"\nNotably, the reactions to #MeToo have differed across Europe. Swedish Film Institute head Anna Serner says she sees a difference between Northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, \"where we've been talking about gender issues for a long time,\" and Latin nations Italy, Spain and France, \"where women have internalized a stereotypical femininity as part of their identity\" and may feel threatened by #MeToo. But Serner, who in three years achieved a 50-50 balance in public funding for female and male directors in Sweden (with no quota), sees another, more cynical reason behind the virulence of the European #MeToo pushback — money. \"Because we have public funding, we control the industry — the threat of change is real. People know that and they're scared,\" she says. \"That's why Europeans are fighting #MeToo: They know it could change everything. In the U.S., there's a lot of talk but no real action. Everyone can get behind #MeToo without having to worry it will change how business works.\"\nJordan Mintzer and Ariston Anderson contributed to this report.\nThis story first appeared in the May 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.\nMain Image: Illustration by: Rebekka Dunlap","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line251481"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6581117510795593,"wiki_prob":0.6581117510795593,"text":"Jerusalem - Al Quds\nJerusalem, as a holy city for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Archaeological excavations show the history of the city began over 5,000 years ago. Among its 220 historic monuments are the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, built in the seventh century, which stand as magnificent pieces of architecture. It is also home to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which houses Christ’s tomb...\nThe city has been known by different names through its history: Urusalim, Jebus, Aelia Capitolina, the City, Beit Al-Maqdis, and Al-Quds. Jerusalem’s sites and long history present an exceptional testimony to vanished civilizations: the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mameluk, Ottoman periods.\nThe old city of Jerusalem and its walls is one of the best-preserved medieval Islamic cities in the world. It is divided into four main quarters: the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter. The old city has been home to many diverse cultures, which are reflected in the architecture and planning of the city and its sacred buildings, streets, markets, and residential quarters. Today, Jerusalem’s living traditions continue, making the city the heart of human history.\nIn 1982, Jerusalem was inscribed on the list of the cities of World Heritage in Danger by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.\nThe Jerusalemites are most welcoming and your stay in the city will be enriched by meeting the various Palestinian communities of Jerusalem.\nAl-Aqsa Mosque (Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa)\nAlso known as the al-Haram ash-Sharif (the noble sanctuary), the grand mosque includes in its compound the Dome of the Rock. This mosque is the third holiest shrine for Muslims, after the Kaaba in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. With rows of colonnades and gardens, the compound stretches over one-fifth of the Old City, occupying a vast area of 140,900 square meters. The mosque itself is silver-domed, and was built as a place of worship next to the Dome of the Rock. Originally built between 709-715 AD by Caliph Walid Ben Abdul Malik, al-Aqsa was reconstructed at least six times and very little of the original mosque remains in the present structure.\nThe Dome of the Rock (Qubbat As-Sakhra)\nSituated in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, It marks the spot where the Prophet Mohammed ascended into heaven following the miraculous journey of one night from Mecca to Jerusalem. known as the Israa and Mirag. It is also the oldest and most exquisite Muslim shrine in the world. Built at the end of the seventh century by the Umayyad Caliph Abdul Malik Ben Marwan, the mosque has a rectangular octagon exterior and a specular gold-covered dome.\nPreserving the most holy sites of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, this church is the holiest of shrines for the world’s Christians. Situated in the Old City’s Christian Quarter, the church was first built in the fourth century by Constantine’s Mother Helena, over the site of a pagan temple built during the Roman period. Also re-built over successive generations, the present structure was built by the Crusaders in the twelfth century, and contains the last five Stations of the Cross. It also contains the Chapel of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified, the Sepulchre itself where Jesus was buried, and the Chapel of Mary Magdalene where the risen Christ first revealed himself.\nThe Garden Tomb\nLocated outside Jerusalem’s city walls and close to the Damascus Gate, the simplicity, beauty, and peaceful atmosphere of the Garden Tomb makes it a favourite spot for prayer and meditation.\nSome Christians find worshipping near the rock-hewn tomb helpful as they seek to relive the crucifixion and resurrection experience, since it gives a clear picture of what the place of crucifixion and burial must have looked like at the time of Jesus.\nVia Dolorosa (The Way of the Cross)\nThe traditional route that Jesus followed as he carried the cross from the Antonia fortress where he was condemned to death, to the Calvary, where he was crucified. The walk is commemorated in fourteen stations: two are located at Antonia, seven in the streets of Jerusalem, and the last five inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.\nThe Mount of Olives is located east of Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley. From its heights a magnificent view of the Old City and a striking panorama as far as the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab in the East can be seen.\nBeyond its striking sunsets, the Mount of Olives is associated with some of the most important events in Jesus’ life. It was here that the man Christians believe to be the Son of God ascended to Heaven (the location of which is marked by the Chapel of Ascension), where he foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Pater Noster), and wept over Jerusalem on his way to the Holy City on Palm Sunday (Church of Dominus Flevit). Perhaps the most striking feature of the mount today is the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, with its striking onion-shaped spires.\nGarden of Gethsemane (Church of all Nations)\nLocated at the foot of the Mount of Olives, the Church of All Nations was originally built by the Byzantines in 379 AD over the place made holy by Jesus’ prayer and agony. The present church is considered one of the most beautiful in Jerusalem, and was built between 1919-1924. It is called the Church of all Nations, because sixteen nations contributed to its construction.\nToday, the Garden of Gethsemane appears as it did more than 2,000 years ago, and within it are some of the world’s oldest olive trees. The garden was a spot favoured by Jesus, and one that served as a site for retreat and prayer, most notably where he spent his last night.\nThe Kidron Valley\nThe Kidron Valley separates the Mount of Olives from the City of Jerusalem. Jesus crossed the valley many times, including on the evening of Holy Thursday when he went with his disciples to Gethsemane. The ancient tombs of Absalom, Jehoshaphat, and Saint Zacharias are located along the Kidron Valley. Tombs of Christians, Muslims, Jews line the valley, as it is closely associated with the Day of Judgement.\nThe Tomb of the Virgin Mary\nAccording to tradition, the Virgin Mary, who died in Jerusalem, was buried in the Kidron Valley. The Crusaders built the present church over the ruins of a Byzantine basilica to mark the place of the Virgin Mary’s tomb and her assumption.\nAl-Azarieh (Bethany)\nLocated two miles east of Jerusalem on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, Bethany was the home of Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, whom Jesus loved. The village has been known by the Arabic name of Lazarus since the fourth century, and it is where Jesus performed the great miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line443300"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5150099396705627,"wiki_prob":0.48499006032943726,"text":"NFL: The Philly Special – The Magic Never Fades\nFootball Sports\nby Akarsh Shekhar December 22, 2018 0613\nThe Philly Special is one of the most majestic, beautiful and brilliant plays in NFL History. It has been immortalized on plaques, murals, t-shirts and tattoos. The most legendary instance of this play was in Super Bowl LII when the Philadelphia Eagles’ Trey Burton passed to Nick Foles for a touchdown on a 4th and Goal situation with 38 seconds left in the first half. That touchdown ended up being the difference in the game against the New England Patriots. Ironically, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had dropped a pass from wide receiver Danny Amendola on a similar play a little earlier in the game.\nIf you’ve ever wondered about the origins and efficacy of this play, your curiosity is going to be satisfied today. Let’s start with the origins.\nThe Philly Special is usually attributed to Philadelphia Eagles head coach Doug Pederson. However, the play originated in the college football scene. In 2012, the University of Clemson ran a similar play where the quarterback Taj Boyd pretended to make adjustments at the line. The ball was then snapped to running back Andre Ellington who pitched it to wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins who threw it to quarterback Boyd for a successful 2 point conversion. Four years later, the NFL’s Chicago Bears ran the same play to success in a division rivalry game against the Minnesota Vikings.\nThe Philly Special is remarkably similar to another play, the Philly Philly. However, there are certain differences between the two. Philly Philly was coincidentally the aforementioned failed play run by the Patriots in Super Bowl LII. It requires 11 personnel on the offence with one tight end and one running back in the shotgun formation. The quarterback hands off to the running back who appears to be running a sweep but he flips the ball to a wide receiver running across the formation while the quarterback slips out for a pass down the sideline. Oddly enough, the Patriots ran the authentic Philly Special in 2015 in a loss against the Eagles, and it worked for a massive 36 yards gain by Tom Brady. Pederson wasn’t the Eagles’ head coach at that point of time but he might have picked up the play from that 2015 game. Earlier during the 2018-2019 season against the Tennessee Titans, the Patriots ran the Philly Philly on 3rd and 7 and Tom Brady stumbled on his own feet and fell short of getting a first down.\nOne might wonder , why do teams keep running these supposed ‘trick plays’ even when so much footage on them exists? And how do these plays keep yielding results. The most important aspect of this play is deception. When you have quarterbacks like Nick Foles and Tom Brady on the field (both are not known for their running prowess), teams won’t expect them to run, let alone catch a pass. Defences will play differently to dual threat quarterbacks like Cam Newton, Marcus Mariota and Lamar Jackson, anticipating a run. This would greatly reduce of chance of the Philly Special’s success.\nOnce you have established a non assuming catching threat, the next step involves the signal caller (usually the quarterback) drifting to the edge of the offensive line, pretending to make some adjustments. Since most quarterbacks walk towards the offensive line quite often, the defence wouldn’t expect a trick play is most cases. Especially when it involves quarterbacks like Brady or Foles, who seem more susceptible to tripping over their own feet rather than run and make a successful catch.\nAfter the ball is snapped to the running back, the offensive line starts blocking the defensive line to the left, forcing the line backers to move to that side of the field. In the mean time, the tight end and the quarterback, slip quietly to the right side the field. The tight end then blocks the weak side line backer who is the only player in the way of the quarterback. The receiver on the right side runs towards the middle (a slant route) with a lot of contact, forcing the defensive back to clear the right side completely. The slot wide receiver runs a backup route to the middle just in case the quarterback is covered or even worse, trips on his own feet. Then, it’s just a matter of throwing a decent and catchable pass towards the quarterback who has hopefully not dipped his hands in a jar of butter just before the play.\nSo, you can see, the Philly Special isn’t just any trick play like the ‘flea flicker’ or the 2 yard wildcat style run. It’s an intricately designed play which meticulously covers all the possibilities during its occurrence, and barring the quarterbacks limbs being dysfunctional, usually yields successful results.\nNFLNick FolesPhiladelphia EaglesPhilly SpecialSuper Bowl LIIShare0\n49 High authority microblogging list for 2019\nNBA: India to Host its First Ever NBA Game in 2019\nNBA: Trash for Treasure – Worst Trades of the Last Decade – Part 1\nAkarsh Shekhar January 18, 2019\nNBA Free Agency: What’s Happening With Andre Iguodala?\nAkarsh Shekhar July 5, 2019\nA walk through the history of Wimbledon\nSailee Brahme July 13, 2018","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line995882"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5980434417724609,"wiki_prob":0.5980434417724609,"text":"Home > Marriage Records > Marriage Certificate Problems\nMarriage Certificate Problems\nYou're hinting back for a particular marriage certificate that should be there, but it's not. After a few fruitless hours, things can become very frustrating. But there are a number of reasons a marriage certificate might not be found - besides, of course, searcher error. Common-law marriage and wrong indexing are among them. But there are other factors that need to be discussed that can also make for problems in your search.\nName Changed By Deed Poll\nIf one of your ancestors has changed his name by deed poll, you need to be aware of whether it happened before or after marriage, for obvious reasons. But in a marriage following a name change (if it's declared to the registrar), only the new name will appear on the entry, with the additional phrase \"name changed by deed poll,\" \"formerly known as,\" or \"otherwise.\"\nMore Than One Possible Marriage\nThis isn't a common problem, and it's often resolved by checking the location of the marriage. But if there's still confusion, you can usually solve it by checking the names of the father or either the bride or groom against the birth certificate. In the event you find more than one possible marriage in the index as you search, it costs £2.50 to have it verified.\nWhere a marriage is known to have been bigamous it's actually not marked as such in the register, and certificates can be issued, just as if the marriage was perfectly legal. But remarriage after a spouse had been absent for seven years wasn't classed as bigamy.\nWhere couples remarry - that is, marry again after divorcing each other - the date and place of the first marriage should be in the second entry.\nIf the marriage took place in church, you can look at their records to establish the date and details (they can even supply you with a copy of the marriage certificate). Local newspapers can offer another avenue, as many marriages were listed there, usually giving not only the names of the parties, but also their parents.\nThe National Archives will be your main source here. The marriage certificates of army personnel from 1761 onwards are actually held separately from those of civilians, and you can find the marriage registers of some regiments, too.\nFrom 1920, marriage registers of all RAF personnel are in the National Archives. For sailors, the Marine Register Book lists all marriages on board naval and merchant vessels from July 1st, 1837 onwards.\nRecords of divorce can be as revealing as the marriage certificate itself, and there are far fewer of them. For many years, obtaining a divorce was a difficult and lengthy procedure. From 1700 to 1857, the only way a couple could divorce was by an Act of Parliament or through the ecclesiastical courts. Since that was impossible for the average person to obtain, some didn't bother with divorce, preferring instead to exchange or sell their wives! There were also deeds of separation, and legal separation could be obtained on the grounds of cruelty or adultery.\nFrom 1858 divorce became a state matter, and went from an average of three a year to a figure in the low hundreds, rising to a few thousand between the wars to over 50,000 a year.\nCopies of decrees absolute can be obtained by any member of the public, and the records are kept in the court where the divorce proceedings were heard. That decree is a good document for any genealogist, as it lists not only the names of the parties, but also the date and place of the marriage being terminated and (until fairly recently) the name of any co-respondent cited in the case. Although other records (such as birth certificates of children) might have been entered into the case, they're not included with the decree, and are confidential to the parties and their solicitors. In most cases, records over 50 years old are destroyed, although they can be kept longer if they relate to matters of general public concern. An index of all decrees absolute since 1857 is kept by the National Divorce Records. You'll need the full forenames of both parties before approaching them, and for a fee they'll conduct a 10-year search. They'll be able to tell you where the divorce took place, and from there you can contact the court directly for a copy of the decree absolute.\nWere Fleet Marriages Taken as Legal?\nHandfasting and Marriage\nThe Problems With Common Law Marriage\nNew Zealand Marriage Records\nGenealogy Searches and Pre-1538 Marriage Records\n[Add a Comment]\nI have been trying to find about my 4x gr, grandfather James Wade, born Ireland 1769, married ?,son John b. Ireland 1801. James married a Dickson at some point (possibly a second marriage??) and they had a son b. 1818 in Newton Stewart, Scotland. For whatever reason, I cannot find anything to find out where in Ireland they were from, no birth or marriage records. The Wade's in Scotland were Presbyterian. I don't think there is a headstone for James in Scotland, which may or may not have his place of origin in Ireland. These were working class people, James was a road worker at one time, a farm servant at another. So frustrating, any suggestions?\ncanadianeh - 6-Oct-15 @ 6:02 PM\nMy mother was born in Napier New Zealandabout 1924. What I am trying to find out is information on my grandfather who was a sailor and later travelled to America. He may have married an American Lady, ( As my mother never saw him again after she was five years old.) My grandmother did marry again. The reason I would like to know is because I may have American relatives. I do now have my mother's Birth certificate from Napier NewZealand. Thank you in Anticipation.\nSearcher - 17-Oct-12 @ 11:33 AM\ncan you tell me what happens if the date of the original marriage is shown incorrectly on the decree absolute in a divorce case and one of the parties remarries?\nlc - 23-Jul-12 @ 12:22 PM\nIt's worth noting that for many years, husbands were entitled to all the goods their wives brought to the marriage. Not only the dowry, but even their furniture. Women were property, and the man could throw them out of the house and keep everything; women had no rights at all in law for several centuries, at least in England (early Welsh law gave them rights, and they could even divorce their husbands)\nOopnorth - 30-May-12 @ 10:10 AM\nShare Your Story, Join the Discussion or Seek Advice...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line565261"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8501912355422974,"wiki_prob":0.8501912355422974,"text":"Schools With More Middle-class Students Have Curricula That Emphasize __________.​\nThen they talked about how to ensure that the next child who moves into the school is given the same opportunity. For years in District 54, we have emphasized the. so that they can be more.\nCsu Library Academic Search Premier It is given annually to those who champion CSU and its academic, athletic and alumni programs. Ross and Sue Thompson do all of that and so much more. Ross, who grew up in Fort Collins, is senior vice. Field Research Diablo 3 Wed, Oct 16, noon-1 p.m. The dance music community pays lip service to\nOne of the more intriguing efforts on this. K-16 education system in service of preparing students for life after high.\nField Research Diablo 3 Wed, Oct 16, noon-1 p.m. The dance music community pays lip service to gender equality, and research by Nielsen Music and the. Another focuses on knowledge and research, but just remember that the more widespread. You’ll usually find him defending the galaxy in Destiny 2, battling evil in Diablo 3, or lurking in the. The\nSchools in the United States are embracing bilingualism like never before. Shifting demographics and political dynamics have. upper-middle class students, as an achievement while the potential.\nMeditation can help students be less stressed and more. the school district, finding that the curriculum had no trace of religion, opening up the possibility of spreading yoga to other public.\nHistory has for too long been told by the winners, who have often. time of the middle class, or even from those who believe in a laissez-faire, sink-or-swim economy. And isn’t it possible that some.\n\"Students respond so positively to the individual, personalized learning and flexible pacing we are able to offer, which is a real testament to the talented educators we have supporting our students.\nAs Latino children entered elementary schools. have a generation ago, based on a recently published academic study.\nThat’s bad news for Florida students. School segregation can have a negative impact on the quality of the education students receive. Research has shown that schools with a larger portion of.\nPerhaps with a more balanced curriculum, students would have a better reference point for considering such events. I feel hypocritical in my practice by not providing both sides of the world’s.\nA vote on changes to TUSD’s curriculum that dictates how sex-ed is taught was delayed Tuesday night, following a contentious public hearing, to give more. school to have a primary crisis contact,\nJoshua, who has Autism, has progressed further than we ever could have dreamed and Lily is flourishing as an Honors student.\nCritics have suggested that Gaelic schools often benefit middle-class. more rural areas too.” Meanwhile, the first.\nA Philosophical Anthropology Of The Cross LBST 2213, a class that examines the anthropology and philosophy of science. and Mr. Dubois said she would cross the stage. But final exams were canceled until Monday morning, he said, adding that. Andrea Borghini, Ph.D. is a scholar of metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy who teaches at the College of the Holy Cross. Updated February\nAt its ninth meeting, the 21st Undergraduate Senate discussed recent proposals to restructure undergraduate majors and.\nDepartment Of Linguistics Memorial University Of Newfoundland Sharon Rosemond Academic Editor Biography. I am Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, hailing from the town of Portugal Cove, in Newfoundland, Canada. My research focusses on the syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics of language. 1970- Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto. (Interim editor) The Canadian Journal of Linguistics/La Revue canadienne de linguistique 19, 1. Methods X:\nNominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Anthea Ong, for example, has been advocating for mental health education to be made.\nCarranza — who has been accused of focusing on perceived racial disparities in the school system at the expense of education.\nGove and Gibb have also frequently used the similar phrase “cultural literacy”, which originates from the American educationist ED Hirsch, whom Gibb admires. Ofsted’s new inspection handbooks for.\nAbout three-quarters of students are low income, and roughly half the city’s schools are more than 90 percent black or Hispanic. Rather than take on integration directly, city officials for years have.\nMy Her Academia Author\nA Philosophical Anthropology Of The Cross","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line728248"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6723016500473022,"wiki_prob":0.6723016500473022,"text":"Exercising in Very Cold Weather Could Harm Lungs Over Time, Researcher Cautions\nHigh-intensity running or ski racing below -15 C can cause irreparable lung damage, says exercise physiologist who recommends three ways to prevent it.\nVigorous exercise in temperatures below -15 C makes it harder for your lungs to warm and humidify the air you breathe, which can put them at risk of long-term damage, according to U of A exercise physiologist Michael Kennedy. (Photo: Getty Images)\nBy MICHAEL BROWN\nPeople who enjoy exercising outside during winter need to be wary of the effects plunging temperatures can have on their lungs, according to a University of Alberta cold-weather exercise physiologist.\n“If it’s a really cold day in February, a high-intensity run or ski race could change your life,” said Michael Kennedy.\nHe explained the problem with intense cold-weather exercise is that increasingly cold temperatures make it harder for the lungs to warm and humidify the air, which causes the lining of the airway to dry and, in some cases, become irreparably damaged.\n“The inflammatory response is so large that the lungs never recover back to a healthy baseline,” he said. “They basically remodel.”\nKennedy said ski culture and Nordic culture are slowly changing, but for the most part there is still general acceptance that it’s OK to race in -15 C or -20 C.\n“It’s not OK,” he said. “We have a qualitative study planned on high-level cross-country skiers who have chronic cough and severe reduced lung function post-retirement.”\nKennedy said the number of cold-weather athletes with exercise-induced asthma may be understated. Recently, his team found that the favoured lab test for predicting exercise-induced asthma in cold air is not as accurate as simply testing athletes after a cold-weather run to simulate a race or a hard run in the winter.\nThe idea for the study came from research done in advance of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, in which researchers screened nearly 40 U.S. winter sport Olympians doing exercise time trials compared with the standard lab test and found that many of the athletes were positive for exercise-induced asthma after their exercise time trial but not the lab test.\nKennedy noted a limitation of the study was that each athlete was tested at a different temperature and different mode of exercise.\n“The speed skaters might have skated at -5 C, the cross country skiers might have skied at -15 C,” said Kennedy. “Thus, we wanted to reproduce that study but in a more standardized manner.”\nBuilding on his lab’s previous research showing that athletes who exercised in temperatures below -15 C put their lungs at risk of severe lung constriction and possible damage, Kennedy recruited an array of cold-weather sport athletes to complete the standard lab test (breathing dry air from a gas tank to provoke constriction) compared with a five-kilometre outdoor run when the thermometer hit -15 C.\nHe found that five out of the 16 participants were positive for exercise-induced bronchoconstriction on the lab test, while seven tested positive on the cold air test.\nKennedy said that number lines up with previous studies showing that between 40 and 50 per cent of all Nordic or winter sport athletes reported some sort of exercise-induced asthma (bronchoconstriction) due to cold-weather exercise.\nLungs also run counter to other parts of the body, like the heart, which Kennedy explained responds to stressful situations by getting bigger, stronger and more efficient.\n“When the lungs are exposed to stressful environments, like the cold, they don’t remodel positively, and lung function gets worse over time—especially during exercise,” he said.\nAnd not all lungs are created equal. Kennedy said another curious finding from previous research was that people with a smaller stature are most vulnerable to cold-weather lung constriction.\nKennedy said for those who are determined to exercise in the cold, it’s a good idea to do an indoor warm-up to help dilate the lungs, which will reduce the effects of cold air.\nHe added that research has shown covering your mouth a little bit also has a significant effect on reducing the constriction effect due to cold air.\n“If nothing else, when the temperatures plunge, so should the intensity, which will allow the lungs more time to warm and humidify the air,” he said.\nSource: University of Calgary\nMove Over and Stop for Emergency Responders\nTwo Upcoming Fair Deal Panel Town Halls","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line689539"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5515711903572083,"wiki_prob":0.44842880964279175,"text":"You are going to read an article about a man who found a job after long years of unemployment. Some words are missing from the text. Your task is to write the missing words in the gaps. Use only one word in each gap. When you have entered all your answers, click on the button \"Check answers\". If you can't guess a word, click on \"Give me a letter\", but you'll lose points. If you make a mistake, please try again until all your answers are correct.\nHired after 26 years and 300 applications\nIt took him a staggering 26 years and more than 300 failed applications. But yesterday John Evans was at celebrating - after finally landing himself a job. The 46-year-old bachelor was redundant in 1983 when the steel plant where he worked closed down. the various courses he has taken and the extra qualifications he has gained in order to boost his CV, he has been unemployed ever . Mr Evans said his job prospects had been hindered by disability. At the age of 16 he had a lengthy stay in hospital after diagnosed with epilepsy. Reluctant to sit back and collect benefits, he worked at Rotherham General Hospital a volunteer. Now, after almost three decades of trying, the former clerk is preparing to start work as a care assistant at a nursing home for elderly.\n‘I couldn't believe I was hearing when they told me I’d got the job,' he said yesterday. ‘It still hadn’t really sunk in when I finally put down the phone. I suppose my confidence simply disappeared after so many rejections. But I had this belief that if I kept on applying, long it took, I would get a job one day. It’s paid and my confidence has grown already, although I’ll be a little nervous on my way to work.’\nMr Evans, who starts work on Monday, said he had been turned down for dozens of jobs. He had not even been hired for a role as a production worker at a factory.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line852344"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5310617685317993,"wiki_prob":0.5310617685317993,"text":"music commentary\nRare & Scratchy Rock 'N Roll Podcast\nRare & Scratchy Rock 'N Roll_083\n\"Rare & Scratchy Rock 'N Roll\" is a \"rockumentary\" series telling the greatest rock and roll stories on record. Some of our episodes spotlight specific artists, and others cover various specific subjects. All of them rock as we cover stories and myths about songs you can sing along with.\nRARE & SCRATCHY ROCK 'N ROLL #083 PRESENTS \"30 FEMINIST HIT SINGLES BEFORE THEIR TIME\"\nFeminine pride and empowerment are common themes in the rock, pop, and rhythm & blues hits of the 20th century – especially in recent years. But there were fewer such hit records in earlier eras. This episode remembers 30 songs with feminist messages that were played on the radio long before their time – the decades of the 1950s through the 1990s.\nIronically, almost all of these tunes were composed or co-composed by men, and we’ll conjecture as to the reasons why. Even so, these musical messages had a strong and positive impact. Our resident Rockologist, Ken Deutsch, will be along to interview a special guest for this episode – Patricia Brown Holmes. Judge Holmes is the first African-American woman to become the managing partner of a national law firm. She’ll relate how this music inspired her and other women to achieve great things.\nAnd Radio Dave will have more of the greatest rock and roll stories on record.\n\"Rare & Scratchy Rock 'N Roll\" is a rockumentary podcast series that tells the greatest rock and roll stories on record. This includes the untold tales of some great hits that time forgot, but maybe you'll still remember. These programs are hosted by Radio Dave, a veteran disc jockey and published authority on rock and pop music history. He draws his \"Rare & Scratchy Rock 'N Roll\" stories from his \"groove yard,\" an archive that has more music than most record libraries.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line28890"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.737185537815094,"wiki_prob":0.737185537815094,"text":"Gigantic flare 'caused Milky Way to explode three million years ago'\nThe high-energy radiation sliced through the galaxy and hit surrounding material.\nThe Milky Way was ripped apart in an explosion caused by a gigantic flare emerging from its centre more than three million years ago, astronomers say.\nNew research suggests this colossal beam of energy sprung from the heart of the galaxy and punched out into deep space before hitting the Magellanic Stream – a long trail of gas extending from nearby galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud.\nThe high-energy radiation, which scientists call a Seyfert flare, created two enormous ionisation cones that sliced through the Milky Way.\nThe researchers say their findings change the understanding of the galaxy that houses Earth.\nLisa Kewley, director of Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) – a project involving international astronomers studying the mysteries of the universe, said: “A massive blast of energy and radiation came right out of the galactic centre and into the surrounding material.\n“This shows that the centre of the Milky Way is a much more dynamic place than we had previously thought.”\nThe team first described the evidence of this explosion in 2013, when they identified Sagittarius A* – a massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way around 4.2 million times bigger than the sun – as the cause of the explosion.\nTheir latest work, published in the Astrophysical Journal, reinforces previous findings.\nBlack holes are places where matter is compressed by gravity to a point where the normal laws of physics break down, bending and distorting space and time.\nBy definition, they cannot be seen in the conventional sense, making them hard to study. Their presence is inferred from radiation emitted as gas and debris swirl around them.\nIn 1996, astronomers became aware of a strange glow radiating from the Magellanic Stream.\nScientists began to hunt for a cause and Sagittarius A* became the prime suspect.\nBased on a recent analysis of the data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, the researchers calculated the massive explosion took place 3.5 million years ago.\nThey believe the blast lasted for around 300,000 years.\nMagda Guglielmo, from the University of Sydney and one of the study authors, said: “These results dramatically change our understanding of the Milky Way.\n“We always thought about our galaxy as an inactive galaxy, with a not-so-bright centre.\n“These new results instead open the possibility of a complete reinterpretation of its evolution and nature.\n“The flare event that occurred three million years ago was so powerful that it had consequences on the surrounding of our galaxy.\n“We are the witness to the awakening of the sleeping beauty.”\nASTRO 3D\nSeyfert flare\n06 October, 2019 14:11 Science\nNatural or learned? Scientists test instincts of stray dogs\n‘PigeonBot’ could help scientists develop drones that mimic birds\nVolcanic activity did not kill off dinosaurs, scientists say","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1082854"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6428727507591248,"wiki_prob":0.6428727507591248,"text":"By: Executive Committee of the Editorial Board., J. F. McLaughlin, Judah David Eisenstein\n—Biblical Data:\nYHWH.\nElohim.\nEl.\nShaddai and 'Elyon.\nAdonai and Ba'al.\nẒeba'ot.\n—In Rabbinical Literature:\nThe Name.\nEhyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.\nThe Seven Names.\nCabalistic Use.\nDivine Names in Print.\nLike other Hebrew proper names, the name of God is more than a mere distinguishing title. It represents the Hebrew conception of the divine nature or character and of the relation of God to His people. It represents the Deity as He is known to His worshipers, and stands for all those attributes which He bears in relation to them and which are revealed to them through His activity on their behalf. A new manifestation of His interest or care may give rise to a new name. So, also, an old name may acquire new content and significance through new and varied experience of these sacred relations.\nIt can readily be understood, therefore, how the divine name is often spoken of as equivalent to the divine presence or power or glory. In Ex. xxiii. 20-23 it is promised that Yhwh's angel will lead and give victory to His people, who must yield reverent obedience, for, the Lord says, \"my name is in him.\" The devout Israelite will not take the name of a false god upon his lips (Ex. xxiii. 13; Josh. xxiii. 7; Hosea ii. 16-17; Ps. xvi. 4). To make mention of Yhwh's name is to assert confidence in His strength and present and efficient aid. The name excites emotions of love, joy, and praise (Ps. v. 11; vii. 17; ix. 2; xx. 1, 7). That name is, therefore, especially connected with the altar or sanctuary, the place where God records His name (Ex. xx. 24), or \"the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put His name there\" (Deut. xii. 5; comp. I Kings viii. 16, 29; ix. 3; Jer. vii. 12). The Temple is \"the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion\" (Isa. xviii. 7). In one or two comparatively late passages \"the Name\" ( ) is used absolutely, doubtless as an equivalent for \"the name of Yhwh\" (Lev. xxiv. 11, 16; comp. Deut. xxviii. 58).\nOf the names of God in the Old Testament, that which occurs most frequently (6,823 times) is the so-called Tetragrammaton, Yhwh ( ), the distinctive personal name of the God of Israel. This name is commonly represented in modern translations by the form \"Jehovah,\" which, however, is a philological impossibility (see Jehovah). This form has arisen through attempting to pronounce the consonants of the name with the vowels of Adonai ( = \"Lord\"), which the Masorites have inserted in the text, indicating thereby that Adonai was to be read (as a \"ḳeri perpetuum\") instead of Yhwh. When the name Adonai itself precedes, to avoid repetition of this name, Yhwh is written by the Masorites with the vowels of Elohim, in which case Elohim is read instead of Yhwh. In consequence of this Masoretic reading the authorized and revised English versions (though not the American edition of the revised version) render Yhwh by the word \"Lord\" in the great majority of cases.\nThis name, according to the narrative in Ex. iii. (E), was made known to Moses in a vision at Horeb. In another, parallel narrative (Ex. vi. 2, 3, P) it is stated that the name was not known to the Patriarchs. It is used by one of the documentary sources of Genesis (J), but scarcely if at all by the others. Its use is avoided by some later writers also. It does not occur in Ecclesiastes, and in Daniel is found only in ch. ix. The writer of Chronicles shows a preference for the form Elohim, and in Ps. xlii.-lxxxiii. Elohim occurs much more frequently than Yhwh, probably having been substituted in some places for the latter name, as in Ps. liii. (comp. Ps. xiv.).\nIn appearance, Yhwh ( ) is the third person singular imperfect \"ḳal\" of the verb (\"to be\"), meaning, therefore, \"He is,\" or \"He will be,\" or, perhaps, \"He lives,\" the root idea of the word being,probably, \"to blow,\" \"to breathe,\" and hence, \"to live.\" With this explanation agrees the meaning of the name given in Ex. iii. 14, where God is represented as speaking, and hence as using the first person—\"I am\" ( , from , the later equivalent of the archaic stem ). The meaning would, therefore, be \"He who is self-existing, self-sufficient,\" or, more concretely, \"He who lives,\" the abstract conception of pure existence being foreign to Hebrew thought. There is no doubt that the idea of life was intimately connected with the name Yhwh from early times. He is the living God, as contrasted with the lifeless gods of the heathen, and He is the source and author of life (comp. I Kings xviii.; Isa. xli. 26-29, xliv. 6-20; Jer. x. 10, 14; Gen. ii. 7; etc.). So familiar is this conception of God to the Hebrew mind that it appears in the common formula of an oath, \"ḥai Yhwh\" (= \"as Yhwh lives\"; Ruth iii. 13; I Sam. xiv. 45; etc.).\nIf the explanation of the form above given be the true one, the original pronunciation must have been Yahweh ( ) or Yahaweh ( ). From this the contracted form Jah or Yah ( ) is most readily explained, and also the forms Jeho or Yeho ( = ), and Jo or Yo ( , contracted from ), which the word assumes in combination in the first part of compound proper names, and Yahu or Yah ( ) in the second part of such names. The fact may also be mentioned that in Samaritan poetry rimes with words similar in ending to Yahweh, and Theodoret (\"Quæst. 15 in Exodum\") states that the Samaritans pronounced the name 'Iαβέ. Epiphanius ascribes the same pronunciation to an early Christian sect. Clement of Alexandria, still more exactly, pronounces 'Iαουέ or 'Iαουαί, and Origen, 'Iα. Aquila wrote the name in archaic Hebrew letters. In the Jewish-Egyptian magic-papyri it appears as Ιαωουηε. At least as early as the third century B.C. the name seems to have been regarded by the Jews as a \"nomen ineffabile,\" on the basis of a somewhat extreme interpretation of Ex. xx. 7 and Lev. xxiv. 11 (see Philo, \"De Vita Mosis,\" iii. 519, 529). Written only in consonants, the true pronunciation was forgotten by them. The Septuagint, and after it the New Testament, invariably render δκύριος (\"the Lord\").\nVarious conjectures have been made in recent times respecting a possible foreign origin of this name. Some derive it from the Kenites, with whom Moses sojourned, Sinai, the ancient dwelling-place of Yhwh, having been, according to the oldest tradition, in the Kenite country. A Canaanite, and, again, a Babylonian, origin have been proposed, but upon grounds which are still uncertain. Various explanations of the meaning of the name, differing from that given above, have been proposed: e.g., (1) that it is derived from (\"to fall\"), and originally designated some sacred object, such as a stone, possibly an acrolite, which was believed to have fallen from heaven; (2) or from (\"to blow\"), a name for the god of wind and storm; (3) or from the \"hif'il\" form of (\"to be\"), meaning, \"He who causes to be,\" \"the Creator\"; (4) or from the same root, with the meaning \"to fall,\" \"He who causes to fall\" the rain and the thunderbolt—\"the storm-god.\" The first explanation, following Ex. iii. 14, is, on the whole, to be preferred.\nThe most common of the originally appellative names of God is Elohim ( ), plural in form though commonly construed with a singular verb or adjective. This is, most probably, to be explained as the plural of majesty or excellence, expressing high dignity or greatness: comp. the similar use of plurals of \"ba'al\" (master) and \"adon\" (lord). In Ethiopic, Amlak (\"lords\") is the common name for God. The singular, Eloah ( ), is comparatively rare, occurring only in poetry and late prose (in Job, 41 times). The same divine name is found in Arabic (ilah) and in Aramaic (elah). The singular is used in six places for heathen deities (II Chron. xxxii. 15; Dan. xi. 37, 38; etc.); and the plural also, a few times, either for gods or images (Ex. ix. 1, xii. 12, xx. 3; etc.) or for one god (Ex. xxxii. 1; Gen. xxxi. 30, 32; etc.). In the great majority of cases both are used as names of the one God of Israel.\nThe root-meaning of the word is unknown. The most probable theory is that it may be connected with the old Arabic verb \"alih\" (to be perplexed, afraid; to seek refuge because of fear). Eloah, Elohim, would, therefore, be \"He who is the object of fear or reverence,\" or \"He with whom one who is afraid takes refuge\" (comp. the name \"fear of Isaac\" in Gen. xxxi. 42, 53; see also Isa. viii. 13; Ps. lxxvi. 12). The predominance of this name in the later writings, as compared with the more distinctively Hebrew national name Yhwh, may have been due to the broadening idea of God as the transcendent and universal Lord.\nThe word El ( ) appears in Assyrian (ilu) and Phenician, as well as in Hebrew, as an ordinary name of God. It is found also in the South-Arabian dialects, and in Aramaic, Arabic, and Ethiopic, as also in Hebrew, as an element in proper names. It is used in both the singular and plural, both for other gods and for the God of Israel. As a name of God, however, it is used chiefly in poetry and prophetic discourse, rarely in prose, and then usually with some epithet attached, as \"a jealous God.\" Other examples of its use with some attribute or epithet are: El 'Elyon (\"most high God\"), El Shaddai (\"God Almighty\"), El 'Olam (\"everlasting God\"), El Ḥai (\"living God\"), El Ro'i (\"God of seeing\"), El Elohe Israel (\"God, the God of Israel\"), El Gibbor (\"Hero God\").\nThe commonly accepted derivation of this name from the Hebrew root , \"to be strong,\" is extremely doubtful. A similar root has been explained from the Arabic as meaning \"to be in front,\" \"to be foremost,\" \"to lead,\" \"to rule,\" which would give the meaning \"leader,\" \"lord.\" But the fact that the e in El was originally short, as seen in such proper names as Elkanah, Elihu ( ), and in the Assyrian \"ilu,\" is strong evidence against this derivation. As in the case of Elohim, it is necessary to admit that the original meaning is not certainly known.\nThe word Shaddai ( ), which occurs along with El, is also used independently as a name of God,chiefly in the Book of Job. It is commonly rendered \"the Almighty\" (in LXX., sometimes παντοκράτωρ). The Hebrew root \"shadad,\" from which it has been supposed to be derived, means, however, \"to overpower,\" \"to treat with violence,\" \"to lay waste.\" This would give Shaddai the meaning \"devastator,\" or \"destroyer,\" which can hardly be right. It is possible, however, that the original significance was that of \"overmastering\" or \"overpowering strength,\" and that this meaning persists in the divine name. Another interesting suggestion is that it may be connected with the Assyrian \"shadu\" (mountain), an epithet sometimes attached to the names of Assyrian deities. It is conjectured also that the pointing of may be due to an improbable rabbinical explanation of the word as (\"He who is sufficient\"), and that the word originally may have been without the doubling of the middle letter. According to Ex. vi. 2, 3, this is the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.\nThe name 'Elyon ( ) occurs with El, with Yhwh, with Elohim, and also alone, chiefly in poetic and late passages. According to Philo Byblius (Eusebius, \"Præparatio Evangelica,\" i. 10), the Phenicians used what appears to be the same name for God, 'Eλιον.\nAdonai ( ) occurs as a name of God apart from its use by the Masorites as a substituted reading for Yhwh. It was, probably, at first Adoni (\"my Lord\") or Adonai (\"my Lord,\" plural of majesty), and later assumed this form, as a proper name, to distinguish it from other uses of the same word. The simple form Adon, with and without the article, also occurs as a divine name. The name Ba'al ( ), apparently as an equivalent for Yhwh, occurs as an element in a number of compound proper names, such as Jerubbaal, Ishbaal, Meribaal, etc. Some of these names, probably at a time when the name of Baal had fallen into disrepute (comp. Hosea ii. 16, 17), seem to have been changed by the substitution of El or Bosheth for Baal (comp. II Sam. ii. 8, iv. 4, v. 16; I Chron. viii. 33, 34; ix. 39, 40; xiv. 7).\nOther titles applied to the God of Israel, but which can scarcely be called names, are the following: Abir (\"Strong One\" of Jacob or Israel; Gen. xlix. 24; Isa. i. 24; etc.); Ḳedosh Yisrael (\"Holy One of Israel\"; Isa. i.4, xxxi. 1; etc.); Ẓur (\"Rock\") and Ẓur Yisrael (\"Rock of Israel\"; II Sam. xxiii. 3; Isa. xxx. 29; Deut. xxxii. 4, 18, 30); Eben Yisrael (\"Stone of Israel\"; Gen. xlix. 24 [text doubtful]).\nThe names Yhwh and Elohim frequently occur with the word Ẓeba'ot (\"hosts\"), as Yhwh Elohe Ẓeba'ot (\"Yhwh God of Hosts\") or \"God of Hosts\"; or, most frequently, \"Yhwh of Hosts.\" To this last Adonai is often prefixed, making the title \"Lord Yhwh of Hosts.\" This compound divine name occurs chiefly in the prophetic literature and does not appear at all in the Pentateuch or in Joshua or Judges. The original meaning of Ẓeba'ot is probably to be found in I Sam. xvii. 45, where \"Yhwh Ẓeba'ot\" is interpreted as denoting \"the God of the armies of Israel\" (comp. Josh. v. 13-15; Isa. xiii. 4). The word, apart from this special use, always means armies or hosts of men, as, for example, in Ex. vi. 26, vii. 4, xii. 41, while the singular \"ẓaba\" is used to designate the heavenly host. It is noteworthy also that the name Yhwh Ẓeba'ot is more than once directly associated with the Ark, which was the symbol of God's presence in the midst of the hosts of His people (Num. x. 35, 36; I Sam. iv. 4; II Sam. vi. 2). Later, and especially in prophetic usage, the word was transferred to the heavenly hosts, or rather the heavenly were added to the earthly hosts. For this idea of heavenly hosts joining their forces with those of God's people, or fighting on behalf of God's servants, compare Judges v. 20; II Kings vi. 16, 17; Ps. xxxiv. 7, lxviii. 17.\nGray, Hebrew Proper Names, London, 1896;\nDriver, The Book of Genesis, excursus i., pp. 402-409, London, 1904;\nSpurrell, Hebrew Text of Genesis, Appendix ii.;\nDriver, on the Tetragrammaton, in Studia Biblica, vol. i., Oxford, 1885;\nKuenen, Religion of Israel (English transl.), i. 41-42;\nMonteflore, Religion of Hebrews, pp. 50-53, London, 1893.\nE. C. J. F. McL.—In Rabbinical Literature:\nThe Rabbis as well as the cabalists steadfastly maintained their belief in monotheism. Hence they recognized only one proper name for the Deity, considering the other names as appellations or titles signifying divinity, perfection, and power, or as characterizing His acts as observed and appreciated by mankind in the various stages of their development. The cabalists illustrate this by the instance of one who looks at the sun through various-colored glasses, which change the impressions produced upon the observer, but do not affect the sun.\nThe name Yhwh is considered as the Name proper; it was known in the earliest rabbinical works simply as the Name; also as Shem ha-Meyuḥad (\"the Extraordinary Name\"; Sifre, Num. 143); as Shem ha-Meforash (\"the Distinguished Name\"; Yoma vi. 2); as Shem ben Arba' Otiyyot (\"the Tetragrammaton\" or \"the Quadriliteral Name\"; Ḳid. 71a); and as Yod He Waw He (spelling the letters of Yhwh). The pronunciation of the written Name was used only by the priests in the Temple when blessing the people (Num. vi. 22-27); outside the Temple they used the title \"Adonai\" (Soṭah vii. 6; p. 38a). The high priest mentioned the Name on Yom Kippur ten times (Tosef., Yoma, ii.; 39b). R. Johanan said the sages delivered to their disciples the key to the Name once in every Sabbatical year. The sages quoted, \"This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations\" (Ex. iii. 15). Here the word \"le-'olam\" (forever) is written defectively, being without the \"waw\" for the vowel \"o,\" which renders the reading \"le-'allem\" (to conceal; Ḳid. 71a). See Shem ha-Meforash.\nThe restriction upon communicating the Name proper probably originated in Oriental etiquette; in the East even a teacher was not called by name. For naming his master Elisha, Gehazi was punished with leprosy (II Kings viii. 5; Sanh. 100a). After the death of the high priest Simeon the Righteous, forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the priests ceased to pronounce the Name (Yoma39b). From that time the pronunciation of the Name was prohibited. \"Whoever pronounces the Name forfeits his portion in the future world\" (Sanh. xi. 1). Hananiah ben Ṭeradion was punished for teaching his disciples the pronunciation of the Name ('Ab. Zarah 17b). It appears that a majority of the priests in the last days of the Temple were unworthy to pronounce the Name, and a combination of the letters or of the equivalents of the letters constituting the Name was employed by the priests in the Temple. Thus the Twelve-Lettered Name was substituted, which, a baraita says, was at first taught to every priest; but with the increase of the number of licentious priests the Name was revealed only to the pious ones, who \"swallowed\" its pronunciation while the other priests were chanting. Another combination, the Forty-two-Lettered Name, Rab says, was taught only to whomever was known to be of good character and disposition, temperate, and in the prime of life (Ḳid. 71a; comp. Rashi to 'Ab. Zarah 17b). Maimonides, in his \"Moreh,\" thinks that these names were perhaps composed of several other divine names.\nThe Incommunicable Name was pronounced \"Adonai,\" and where Adonai and Yhwh occur together the latter was pronounced \"Elohim.\" After the destruction of the Second Temple there remained no trace of knowledge as to the pronunciation of the Name (see Jehovah). The commentators, however, agree as to its interpretation, that it denotes the eternal and everlasting existence of God, and that it is a composition of (meaning \"a Being of the Past, the Present, and the Future\"). The name Ehyeh ( ) denotes His potency in the immediate future, and is part of Yhwh. The phrase \"ehyeh-asher-ehyeh\" (Ex. iii. 14) is interpreted by some authorities as \"I will be because I will be,\" using the second part as a gloss and referring to God's promise, \"Certainly I will be [ehyeh] with thee\" (Ex. iii. 12). Other authorities claim that the whole phrase forms one name. The Targum Onḳelos leaves the phrase untranslated and is so quoted in the Talmud (B. B. 73a). The \"I AM THAT I AM\" of the Authorized Version is based on this view.\nThe name Yah ( ) is composed of the first letters of Yhwh. There is a difference of opinion between Rab and R. Samuel as to whether or not \"hallelujah\" is a compound word or two separate words meaning \"praise ye Yah\" (Yer. Meg. i. 9; Pes. 117a). The name Ho ( ) is declared to be the middle part of Yhwh and an abridged form of the Name (Shab. 104a; Suk. iv. 5).\nElohim denotes multiplied power, that is, the Almighty, and describes God as the Creator of nature. R. Jacob Asheri, the author of the \"Ṭurim,\" in his annotations to the Pentateuch, says the numerical value of the letters in (\"Elohim\") equals the value (86) of those in (\"nature\"). Elohim represents the force of \"din\" (fixed laws), while Yhwh is the modification of the natural laws and the elements of \"raḥamim\" (mercy and leniency) as reflected in the developed state of mankind. In the Zohar, R. Simeon says the Divine Name (Yhwh) was mentioned only when the world was perfected, and quotes Gen. ii. 4 (Hebr.)—\"in the day that Yhwh made the earth and the heavens.\" The word \"'asot\" is interpreted as \"perfected,\" after the Creation (Zohar, Yitro, 88a, ed. Wilna, 1882). El is part of Elohim, meaning simply \"power\" (= \"mighty\"). \"Shaddai\" is explained as \"the selfsufficient\" (\"she-dai hu lo\").\nThe sacredness of the divine names must be recognized by the professional scribe who writes the Scriptures, or the chapters for the phylacteries and the mezuzah. Before transcribing any of the divine names he prepares mentally to sanctify them. Once he begins a name he does not stop until it is finished, and he must not be interrupted while writing it, even to greet a king. If an error is made in writing it, it may not be erased, but a line must be drawn round it to show that it is canceled, and the whole page must be put in a genizah and a new page begun.\nThe number of divine names that require the scribe's special care is seven: El, Elohim, Adonai, Yhwh, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, Shaddai, and Ẓeba'ot. R. Jose, however, considered Ẓeba'ot a common name (Soferim iv. 1; Yer. R. H. i. 1; Ab. R. N. xxxiv.; \"Sefer Yeẓirah,\" ix.). R. Ishmael held that even Elohim is common (Sanh. 66a). All other names, such as Merciful, Gracious, and Faithful, merely represent attributes that are common also to human beings (Sheb. 35a). The prohibition of blasphemy, for which capital punishment is prescribed, refers only to the Name proper—Yhwh (Soferim iv., end; comp. Sanh. 66a). In many of the passages in which \"clohim\" occurs in the Bible it refers to Gentile deities, or in some instances to powerful or learned men (comp. Gen. iii. 5; ), to judges (Ex. xxi. 6), or to Israel (Ps. lxxxi. 9, lxxxii. 6; see Tan., Ḳedoshim). Adonai sometimes refers to a distinguished person (comp. Gen. xviii. 3). Even the name Yhwh, misused in the narrative of Micah (Judges xvii. 2, 3, 13; xviii. 6), is not a divine name, according to the decisive authority (Sheb. 35b). A list of all the doubtful divine names found in the Scriptures is given in Soferim and in the codes.\nThe Talmud says Shalom (\"Peace\"; Judges vi. 23) is the name of God, consequently one is not permitted to greet another with the word \"shalom\" in unholy places (Shab. 10b). The name Shelomoh (from shalom) refers to the God of Peace, and the Rabbis assert that the Song of Solomon is a dramatization of the love of God: \"Shalom\" to His people Israel = \"Shulamite.\" \"King of kings\" in Dan. ii. 37 refers to God. \"'Attiḳ Yamin\" (ib. vii. 9) refers to the Ancient One of the universe (see Yalḳ., Chron. 1076). The pronoun \"Ani\" (I) is a name of God (Suk. iv. 5). The first verse in Ezekiel (\"we-Ani\") refers to God (Tos. Suk. 45a). Hillel's epigram \"If I [am] here everything is here\" (Suk. 53a) is interpreted as referring to God. The divine names are called in the Talmud \"Azkarot,\" or \"Adkarata\" in the Aramaic form. Divine names that occur in the handwriting of minim should be excised and buried in the genizah (Shab. 116a; Cant. R. ii. 4). God is named also Ha-Geburah (\"The Majesty\"; Shab.87a), but generally Ha-Maḳom. (\"The Omnipresence\"),accompanied with Baruk-hu (\"Praised be He\"). For other appellations see list below.\nIt became the custom at an early period to use the name of God in personal greetings, as \"The Lord be with thee,\" or \"The Lord bless thee\" (Ruth ii. 4; Ber. ix. 1; comp. Mak. 23a). The Greek inquisition in Judea prohibited the utterance of God's name, but when the Hasmoneans became victorious they decreed that the Name should be mentioned even in notes and documents. The formula began: \"On . . . in the year of the high priest Johanan, the servant of the Most High God.\" The sages, however, opposed this innovation, as they thought the Name would be defiled when the notes were canceled and thrown away as useless. Consequently on the third day of Tishri following, the record says, the Rabbis forbade the mention of God's name in documents (Meg. Ta'anit; R. H. 18b).\nThe cabalists, in their system of cosmology, explained the significance of the names and added other divine names. The most important name is that of the En Sof (\"Infinite\" or \"Endless\"), who is above the Sefirot. The Forty-two-Lettered Name contains the combined names of (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Aẓilut (\"Animation\"). The cabalists added the Forty-five-Lettered Name as being the equivalent in value of Yhwh ( = 45). The name is derived from Prov. xxx. 4—\"what is his name?\" The numerical value of the letters (= \"what\") equals 45 (Zohar, Yitro, 79a). The Seventy-two-Lettered Name is derived from three verses in Exodus (xiv. 19-21) beginning with \"Wayyissa',\" \"Wayyabo,\" \"Wayyeṭ,\" respectively. Each of the verses contains 72 letters, and when combined they form the following names:\nThe first and third verses are to be read forward and the second verse backward, one letter of each word respectively in the above order from right to left. Rashi, also, in his comment to Suk. 45a, mentions this scheme (see Zohar, Beshallaḥ, 52a, and Appendix, 270a, ed. Wilna). A combination of the Seventy-two-Lettered Name appeared on the Urim and Thummim, consisting of the names of the Twelve Tribes (50 letters), of the Patriarchs (13 letters), and of the \"Shibṭe Yisrael\" (the tribes of Israel; 9 letters). When the Urim and Thummim were consulted in regard to any matter this divine name lit up the letters, which were brought into relief according to R. Johanan, or into such a combination, according to Resh Laḳish, as to make the answer intelligible (Yoma 73b). Ibn Ezra figures the Seventy-two-Lettered Name as the equivalent in value of the name Yhwh spelled with the names of the letters (=72).\nThe divine names of God, the Haggadah says, were used to perform miracles by those who knew their combinations. King David, on making excavations for the Temple, and finding that the deep was moving upward, asked for permission to stop its rising, which threatened to destroy the world, by inscribing the name of God on a potsherd and throwing it into the deep. His minister Ahithophel, who was well versed in the Law, permitted it (Mak. 11a). The manipulation of the sacred letters forming the divine names was the means used to create the world (\"Sefer Yeẓirah,\" ix.). By a similar method some of the Talmudists are credited with having created living animals (Sanh. 65b, 67b); in later times others succeeded by the same means in creating the golem (see Golem).\nAwe at the sacredness of the names of God and eagerness to manifest respect and reverence for them made the scribes pause before copying them. The text of the Scriptures was of course left unchanged; but in the Targumim the name Yhwh was replaced by two \"yods\" with a \"waw\" over them, thus: , which letters are equal in value to Yhwh (=26). In their commentaries the authors substituted Elohim by Eloḳim ( ) and Yhwh by Ydwd ( ). For other changes see list below. In Ḳimḥi's commentary on the Prophets (ed. Soncino, 1485) the printer apologizes for changing the \"he\" of Yhwh to a \"dalet\" and the \"he\" of Elohim to a \"ḳof,\" \"in honor and reverence for His Name, for sometimes copies may be lost and become liable to misuse.\" In Hebrew literature generally and in Hebrew letter-writing the name of God is represented by the letter \"he\" or \"dalet\" with an accent over it, thus: or . Authors of Hebrew theological works begin their introductions generally with four words whose initial letters form the name Yhwh (e.g., ).\nThe following names and transcriptions of the names of God are found in rabbinical writings (the names mentioned in the Bible also are not given):\nFor the Name of Yhwh.\nFor Elohim.\nFor Adonai.\nCabalistic.\nBy transposition of letters (see Mezuzah):\nSpecial Appellations.\nMaimonides, Yad, Yesode ha-Torah, vi.;\nidem, Moreh, i. 60-62;\nShulḥan Aruk, Yoreh De'ah, 276;\nMaḥzor Vitry, pp. 692-694;\nIbn Ezra, Sefer ha-Shem, Fürth, 1834;\nYesod Moreh, § 11 and notes, Prague, 1833;\nEleazar Fleckeles, Mel'eket ha-Ḳodesh, Prague, 1812;\nZunz, S. P. p. 145.\nE. C. J. D. E.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line399098"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6574788689613342,"wiki_prob":0.34252113103866577,"text":"Cutting Costs And Building Sales By Migrating To Google Cloud Platform\nby Lynda Partner, VP Marketing and Analytics as a Service\nPosted in: Business Insights, Technical Track\nTags: Database Migration, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)\nIf you’re running any kind of e-commerce enterprise, you already know that your business lives and dies by the speed of your page loads. Online shoppers are notoriously impatient, and every second of delay for the user increases the likelihood that your shopping carts will be abandoned — and that those sales will go to your competition. That was exactly the reason AllSaints hired Pythian to manage its all-at-once, big-bang migration to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) this past July.\nFirst, some history. AllSaints is a UK fashion retailer that opened its first bricks-and-mortar shop off Carnaby Street in London in 1997. In the decades since, the brand has found worldwide success online. Today, the AllSaints website and app draw more than two million visits a month from customers throughout Europe, Asia and North America.\nLike every successful online retailer, AllSaints knew it had to serve its customers flawlessly through even the busiest shopping seasons. To make that level of service possible, AllSaints maintained and paid for more than 60 servers in a hybrid architecture. But once the crunch periods ended, nearly half those servers sat idle, adding the kind of expense that no modern business can afford.\nAllSaints knew it was time to move completely to the cloud, and the leadership team chose to go with GCP. But that was only the first of many crucial decisions to be made. For AllSaints, this wouldn’t be a simple lift-and-shift operation. More than 100 individual services would need refactoring for a new microservices cloud environment. And with customers in every time zone around the world, AllSaints could not afford any downtime or degradation of performance. The goal was to launch so flawlessly that customers wouldn’t notice any difference — except, perhaps, a better user experience. Despite the complexity of the move, AllSaints determined that it would have to be carried out not in stages, but all at once.\nThe leadership knew they couldn’t go it alone. Their GCP solutions engineer suggested Pythian as the right partner for the job. We had already been serving AllSaints for two years in a support role, and that history gave AllSaints the confidence to expand the relationship. After months of collaboration and careful planning, the migration was completed in less than a week, with high availability maintained throughout.\nThough the move to GCP was completed just three months ago, our client is already seeing major benefits. AllSaints’ full-price online conversions are up by 20 percent, a direct result of page loads that are now 35 percent faster. And, because AllSaints no longer needs redundant server capacity, its platform operating costs have dropped by a full 75 percent.\nToday, with Pythian’s help, AllSaints is realizing even more benefits from GCP. We’re also leveraging Google BigQuery to help the team derive even more insights from all the data at their disposal.\nThe migration to GCP was an ambitious undertaking. But for AllSaints and its millions of customers, the possibilities are just beginning.\nRead the full story about how Pythian’s cloud migration experts helped ensure the success of AllSaints’ move to GCP.\nWant to talk with a technical expert? Schedule a call to get the conversation started.\nInterested in working with Lynda? Schedule a tech call.\nLynda Partner, VP Marketing and Analytics as a Service\nLynda Partner is a self-professed data addict and experiences the power of data every day as Pythian’s Vice President of Analytics-as-a-Service. The author of Pythian’s Love Your Data mantra, Lynda understands very well how data can transform companies into competitive winners and she was the driving force in adding an analytics practice to Pythian’s database focus. Lynda works with companies around the world and across industries to turn data into insights, predictions and products, and is the co-author of Designing Data Lakes in the Cloud.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line231617"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.929567277431488,"wiki_prob":0.929567277431488,"text":"Daisy Jugadai Napaltjarri\nHaasts Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia\n2008 (aged 52–53)\nFinalist, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award: 1995, 1998, 2001\nSection winner, NATSIAA: 2000\nDaisy Jugadai Napaltjarri (c. 1955 – 2008) was a Pintupi-Luritja-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region, and sister of artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri. Daisy Jugadai lived and painted at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory. There she played a significant role in the establishment of Ikuntji Women's Centre, where many artists of the region have worked.\nInfluenced by the Hermannsburg School, Jugadai's paintings reflect her Tjuukurrpa, the complex spiritual knowledge and relationships between her and her landscape. The paintings also reflect fine observation of the structures of the vegetation and environment. Jugadai's works were selected for exhibition at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards five times between 1993 and 2001, and she was a section winner in 2000. Her paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.\nHaasts Bluff, where Daisy Jugadai was born\nDaisy Jugadai was born circa 1955 at Haasts Bluff, Northern Territory, daughter of artists Narputta Nangala and Timmy Jugadai Tjungurrayi.[1] The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous people operate using a different conception of time from non-Indigenous Australians, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.[2]\nThe people of Papunya and Haasts Bluff, such as Daisy, speak a variety of the Pintupi language referred to as Pintupi-Luritja,[1] a Western Desert dialect. Napaltjarri (in Western Desert dialects) or Napaljarri (in Warlpiri) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans.[3][4] Thus \"Daisy Jugadai\" is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.\nJugadai's childhood was spent at both Haasts Bluff and a nearby camp, Five Mile, while she was schooled at Papunya. She married Kelly Multa, and they had a daughter, Agnes. They lived on an outstation, Kungkayunti, but Daisy moved back to Haasts Bluff when Kelly died.[5] It was not until the 1990s that she was remarried, to an Elcho Islander, after which she travelled regularly between Arnhem Land and Haasts Bluff. Jugadai died in 2008, her funeral held at Haasts Bluff, where she was born.[5] Daisy Jugadai had an older sister, artist Molly Jugadai Napaltjarri,[6] and another sister, Ester, who predeceased her.[5]\nThe contemporary Indigenous Australian art movement began in the western desert in 1971, when Indigenous men at Papunya took up painting, led by elders such as Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, and assisted by teacher Geoffrey Bardon.[7] This initiative, which used acrylic paints to create designs representing body painting and ground sculptures, rapidly spread across Indigenous communities of central Australia, particularly following the commencement of a government-sanctioned art program in central Australia in 1983.[8] By the 1980s and 1990s, such work was being exhibited internationally.[9] The first artists, including all of the founders of the Papunya Tula artists' company, had been men, and there was resistance amongst the Pintupi men of central Australia to women painting.[10] However, many women in the communities wished to participate, and in the 1990s many began to create paintings. In the western desert communities such as Kintore, Yuendumu, Balgo, and on the outstations, people were beginning to create art works expressly for exhibition and sale.[9]\nDaisy Jugadai came from a family of painters, including her uncle Uta Uta Tjangala and her mother.[11] She learned to draw during her schooling at Papunya and Haasts Bluff,[12] but her first experience as a painter came working on backgrounds for the pictures created by her father.[11] From the Pintupi/Luritja language group, Daisy Jugadai was one of a range of artists who came to painting through the Ikuntji Women's Centre in the early 1990s.[1] She is credited with a significant role in the centre's establishment.[12] She began with screen printing and linocut printmaking, but quickly shifted to acrylic painting, producing many of her best works during the mid-1990s.[12] Western Desert artists such as Daisy Jugadai will frequently paint particular 'dreamings' or Tjukurrpa for which they have personal responsibility or rights.[13] A complex concept, Tjukurrpa refers to the spiritual knowledge of the landscape and custodianship of it; it also refers to laws, rules or stories that people must maintain and re-produce in their communities.[14][15] Daisy Jugadai portrayed in her art both those for which she had personal responsibility, and those of her late husband and late father.[12] These included honey ant, spinifex and emu dreamings;[16] geographical locations that were the settings for these paintings included Muruntji waterhole and Talabarrdi, and other locations around Kungkayunti, where her family had lived for many years.[1][17]\nMemory and Five Mile Creek (1995)\nThroughout the 1990s, Daisy Jugadai was a regular exhibitor at the Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs, and well as other major exhibitions such as the Australian Heritage Art Awards in Canberra in 1994.[1] Recognition came in 1993, in two forms: an award of a Northern Territory Women's Fellowship;[5] and the purchase by the Araluen Arts Centre of a work exhibited in its annual art award.[11] Within her community she was an administrator as well as an artist. A member of the Ikuntji Women's Centre and a representative on Ikuntji Community Council, Daisy was one of those who successfully lobbied to have artist Marina Strocchi appointed as an art centre coordinator in the early 1990s.[5][18] The respect between the two women was mutual: Daisy was one of a group of artists whose work was selected for an exhibition that toured regional Australian public galleries in 1999–2000, Ikuntji tjuta – touring, which was curated by Marina Strocchi, the art centre coordinator who had first helped develop the Ikuntji centre in Haasts Bluff some years earlier.[19]\nWorks by Daisy Jugadai are held by the National Gallery of Victoria,[20] National Gallery of Australia and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.[1] They are also held in major private collections, such as Nangara (also known as the Ebes Collection),[21] as well as by Edith Cowan University.[22] First exhibiting in the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 1993,[16] she was a finalist on several occasions including 1995, 1998 and 2001,[1] and a section winner in 2000.[5] Her 1994 entry in the award, Karu kapingku pungu (Creek after rain), belongs to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.[23] Her work is also featured alongside other Indigenous artists such as Gloria Petyarre in the Melbourne international airport terminal, completed in 1996.[24] Antiti, near Five Mile, a 1998 painting, has appeared as cover art on an issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.[22]\nAlone amongst the Ikuntji artists, Daisy Jugadai worked at an easel. She cited the Hermannsburg School, a group of Indigenous artists including Albert Namatjira who began painting at Hermannsburg Mission in the 1930s, as an influence on her work.[12] Memory and Five Mile Creek (1995) represents the country of her childhood. It shows the hills of the region in elevation rather than in plan, and represents the range of vegetation typical of that country.[20] Curator Marina Strocchi notes how Daisy Jugadai's painting reflects close observation of the complex structures of the vegetation and environment, its features \"obsessively detailed\", with the artist \"devotedly [including] all the bush tucker of that area\", as well as choosing \"a time of year in which to depict her country\".[19] Vegetation would be carefully painted with a trimmed brush, while even finer detail, such as pollen, would be rendered using a matchstick. Clouds were always the final features to be included. Despite this devotion to detail, Daisy preferred to paint large canvasses.[5] Memory and Five Mile Creek was included in the National Gallery of Victoria's 2004–05 exhibition \"Aboriginal Art Post 1984\" and reviewer Miriam Cosic, while noting its \"naive charm\", also drew attention to the work's title and the implication that, like other more explicitly political painters of her era, \"she too is talking of violent dispossession\".[25]\nArtist Mandy Martin, who participated in a 2005 collaboration with several painters from the Haasts Bluff region, thought that Daisy's rendering of bush tucker was achieved with a \"stylised but dazzling personal language\".[26] Writer and critic Morag Fraser described Daisy's work as \"extraordinary\", observing that in Daisy's paintings \"nature is so wholly internalised, and its rendering so uninhibited.\"[27] A distinguished artist in her community, her death coincided with a vigorous renewal of artistic expression amongst her successors.[28]\n^ a b c d e f g Birnberg, Margo; Janusz Kreczmanski (2004). Aboriginal Artist Dictionary of Biographies: Australian Western, Central Desert and Kimberley Region. Marleston, South Australia: J.B. Publishing. pp. 213–214. ISBN 978-1-876622-47-3.\n^ Birnberg, Margo; Janusz Kreczmanski (2004). Aboriginal Artist Dictionary of Biographies: Australian Western, Central Desert and Kimberley Region. Marleston, South Australia: J.B. Publishing. pp. 10–12. ISBN 978-1-876622-47-3.\n^ \"Kinship and skin names\". People and culture. Central Land Council. Archived from the original on 10 November 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2009.\n^ De Brabander, Dallas (1994). \"Sections\". In David Horton (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. 2. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. p. 977. ISBN 978-0-85575-234-7.\n^ a b c d e f g Strocchi, Marina (2008). \"Daisy Napaltjarri Jugadai (art tribute)\". Art and Australia. 46 (1): 61.\n^ Martin, Mandy; Robin, Libby; Smith, Mike (2005). Strata: deserts past, present and future (PDF). Canberra: Land & Water Australia. ISBN 978-0-9577481-4-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 February 2011.\n^ Bardon, Geoffrey; James Bardon (2007). Papunya – A place made after the story: The beginnings of the Western Desert painting movement. University of Melbourne: Miegunyah Press. ISBN 978-0-522-85434-3.\n^ Dussart, Francoise (2006). \"Canvassing identities: reflecting on the acrylic art movement in an Australian Aboriginal settlement\". Aboriginal History. 30: 156–168.\n^ a b Morphy, Howard (1999). Aboriginal Art. London: Phaidon. pp. 261–316. ISBN 978-0-7148-3752-9.\n^ Strocchi, Marina (2006). \"Minyma Tjukurrpa: Kintore / Haasts Bluff Canvas Project: Dancing women to famous painters\". Artlink. 26 (4): 104–107.\n^ a b c Johnson, Vivien (1994). \"Daisy Napaltjarri Jugadai b. 1956 Haasts Bluff, NT\". Biography. Design & Art Australia Online. Retrieved 23 October 2012.\n^ a b c d e Kleinert, Sylvia; Margot Neale (2000). The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal art and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 613. ISBN 978-0-19-550649-5.\n^ Johnson, Vivien (1994). \"Introduction\". Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary. Roseville East, NSW: Craftsman House. pp. 7–12.\n^ \"Tjukurpa – Anangu culture\". Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park. Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. 2009. Archived from the original on 11 July 2009. Retrieved 18 July 2009.\n^ San Roque, Craig (2006). \"On Tjukurrpa, Painting Up, and Building Thought\". Social Analysis. 50 (2): 148–172. doi:10.3167/015597706780810862.\n^ a b Johnson, Vivien (1994). Aboriginal Artists of the Western Desert: A Biographical Dictionary. Roseville East, NSW: Craftsman House. p. 116.\n^ Napaltjarri Jugadai, Daisy (1996). \"Kumantjai Rockhole\". Collection search. National Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 5 November 2012.\n^ Strocchi, Marina (1995). Ikuntji: paintings from Haasts Bluff 1992 – 1994. Alice Springs: IAD Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-949659-86-6.\n^ a b Strocchi, Marina (1999). Ikuntji tjuta: touring. Campbelltown, NSW: Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery.\n^ a b \"Daisy Napaljarri Jugadai – Memory and Five Mile Creek 1995\". NGV Collection. National Gallery of Victoria. Archived from the original on 10 September 2009. Retrieved 2 July 2009.\n^ \"The artists\". Nangara: the Australian Aboriginal art exhibition. Archived from the original on 13 September 2009. Retrieved 2 July 2009.\n^ a b \"[Cover image]\" (PDF). Medical Journal of Australia. 176 (10): 453. 20 May 2002. Retrieved 23 October 2012.\n^ Jugadai, Daisy Napaltjarri (1994). \"Karu kapingku pungu (Creek after rain)\". The MAGNT National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) Collection. Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013. Retrieved 23 October 2012.\n^ Battersby, Jean (1996). \"Art and Airports 2\". Craft Arts International. 37: 49–64.\n^ Cosic, Miriam (20 December 2004). \"A revolutionary shift in tone\". The Australian. p. 14.\n^ Martin, Mandy (2005). \"Desert of the mind's eye\" (PDF). In Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith (ed.). Strata: deserts past, present and future. Canberra: Land & Water Australia. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-9577481-4-9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 March 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.\n^ Fraser, Morag (1999). \"Substance and illusion: crosscurrents in Australian landscape painting and Australian literature\". LiNQ. 26 (1): 30.\n^ Griffin, Sasha (2008). \"Ikuntji Art Centre: Haasts Bluff\". Australian Art Collector. 46. Archived from the original on 6 April 2013. Retrieved 23 October 2012.\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Jugadai_Napaltjarri","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line365745"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8066052794456482,"wiki_prob":0.8066052794456482,"text":"Home > Autographs > Other Autographs and Interesting People > Pennsylvania Canal Company signed by Civil War Brigadier General Isaac Jones Wistar - 1870\nHome > Cars, Railroads, Ships > Ships, Cruise Lines, Navigation, Turnpikes, Bridges and Canals > Pennsylvania Canal Company signed by Civil War Brigadier General Isaac Jones Wistar - 1870\nPennsylvania Canal Company signed by Civil War Brigadier General Isaac Jones Wistar - 1870\nBeautiful $1,000 Bond Certificate from the Pennsylvania Canal Company issued in 1870. This historic document was printed by the T. Sinclair's Lith Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of a barge in the canal with a train crossing a bridge in the background. This item has the signatures of the Company�s President, I. J. Wistar (Civil War Brigadier General Isaac Jones Wistar) and Secretary, and Trustee is over 141 years old. No cancellation marks on face of bond. XF\nThe canal era began in Pennsylvania in 1797 with the Conewago Canal, which carried riverboats around Conewago Falls on the Susquehanna River near York Haven. Spurred by construction of the Erie Canal between 1817 and 1825 and the competitive advantage it gave New York State in moving people and materials to and from the interior of the continent, Pennsylvanians built hundreds of miles of canals during the early decades of the 19th century. These included two canals built by Pennsylvania stock companies, the Schuylkill Canal from Philadelphia to Port Carbon and the Union Canal from Reading to Middletown. By 1834, the Main Line of Public Works, a system of interlocking canals, railways, and inclined planes, was hauling passengers and freight up to 391 miles (629 km) between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Though not all in concurrent operation, the total length of the canals built in Pennsylvania eventually reached 1,243 miles (2,000 km).\nBy 1840, work had been completed not only on the Main Line of Public Works but on many other lines, officially called divisions. The Main Line consisted of the Eastern Division, the Juniata Division, the Western Division, the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, and the Allegheny Portage Railroad. North�south divisions operated along the Delaware River in the east, the Susquehanna River in the middle of the state, and the Beaver River in the west. A few additions were completed after 1840.\nBy about 1850, railroads had begun displacing canals as the preferred method of long-distance transportation. In 1852, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) began offering rail service from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and in 1857, it bought the Main Line Canal from the state. In 1859, all canals owned by the commonwealth were sold. The PRR formed the Pennsylvania Canal Company in 1867 and continued to use canals to haul freight. However, the canal business declined steadily in the last quarter of the century, and most Pennsylvania canals no longer functioned after 1900.\nHistory from Wikipedia and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service).\nWistar (1827-1905) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the civil War, hewas part of the 71st Pennsylvania Regiment, rising to the rank of colonel. He was wounded twice at the Battle of Ball's Bluff (Oct. 21, 1861) and again at the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862) and was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteers from 1862 to 1864. After the war, he became Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Companyand president of the Pennsylvania Canal Company. In 1892, established the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia with an endowment of $1 million.\nWistar's father and brother were both physicians. Rather than pursue a career in medicine, however, Wistar, at the age of twenty, headed to California during the 1849 gold rush and became a successful lawyer in San Francisco. Returning home to Philadelphia in 1857, he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1858.\nAfter the outbreak of the Civil War, Wistar received a commission as a Colonel, raised nearly 1,000 volunteers for a new unit, and then led his men into battle. Wounded three times and with his right arm paralyzed, Wistar retired from the U. S. Army as a Brigadier General in 1864 and returned to Philadelphia where he began a long rehabilitation.\nWistar then made his fortune as president of the Pennsylvania Canal Company, which shipped coal for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Having no children, he and his wife Sarah devoted their time and money to civic causes. In his later years, Wistar served as an Inspector for the Eastern State Penitentiary, President of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1891-1895), and President of the American Philosophical Society (1902-1903).\nIn the early 1800s, Caspar Wistar had begun to collect dried, wax-injected, and preserved human specimens. By the 1880s this had expanded into a rich collection of anatomical specimens, and anthropological samples housed in the Wistar and Horner Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.\nHistory from Collectible Old Stocks and Bonds (old stock certificate buyer and seller) and WWI Liberty Bonds Buyer.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line959623"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8367788791656494,"wiki_prob":0.8367788791656494,"text":"Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > P > Peru\nA republic on the west coast of South America, founded in 1821 after the war of independence, having been a Spanish colony. It is difficult to ascertain the true origin of the work \"Peru\", as the opinions advanced thereon are vague, numerous, and conflicting. Almost all, however, derive it from the terms \"Beru\", \"Pelu\", and \"Biru\", which were, respectively, the names of an Indian tribe, a river and a region. Prescott asserts that \"Peru\" was unknown to the Indians, and that the name was given by the Spaniards.\nPeru's territory lies between 1°29' North and 19°12'30\" South latitude, and 61°54'45\" and 81°18'39\" West longitude. Bounded by Ecuador on the north, Brazil and Bolivia on the east, Chile on the south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west, its area extends over 679,000 square miles. The Andean range runs through Peru from southeast to northwest, describing a curve parallel to the coast.\nHowever true the fact may be that gold was the object uppermost in the minds of the Spanish conquerors of the New World, it is a matter of history that in that conquest, from the northernmost confines of Mexico to the extreme south of Chile, religion always played a most important part, and the triumphant march of Castile's banner was also the glorious advance of the sign of the Saviour. That religion was the key-note of the American Crusades is evident from the history of their origin; the sanction given them by the Supreme Pontiff; the throng of self-devoted missionaries who followed in the wake of the conquerors to save the souls of the conquered ones; the reiterated instructions of the Crown, the great purpose of which was the conversion of the natives; and from the acts of the soldiers themselves (Prescott, \"Conquest of Peru\", II, iii) The first news of the existence of the great Empire of the Incas reached the Spaniards in the year 1511, when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean, was engaged in an expedition against some Indian tribes in the interior of Darien. Perhaps the glory of conquering Peru would have fallen upon Balboa had not the jealousy of his chief, Pedro Arias de Avila, Governor of Panama, cut short his brilliant career. The second attempt to reach the coveted domain of the Incas was made in 1522, when Pascual de Andagoya started south from Panama, but he was compelled by ill health to return. Francisco Pizarro, after two unsuccessful expeditions (1524-25 and 1526-27) and a trip to Spain for the purpose of interesting Charles V in the undertaking, finally started the actual work of invading Peru, sailing from Panama in January, 1531. (See FRANCISCO PIZARRO.)\nWhen the persistent commander finally reached the country in 1532, the vast Inca empire is said to have extended over more than one-half of the entire South American continent. He found a people highly civilized, with excellent social and political institutions who had developed agriculture to a remarkable degree through a splendid system of irrigation. They worshipped the sun as embodying their idea of a supreme being who ruled the universe. This worship was attended by an elaborate system of priestcraft, ritual, animal sacrifices, and other solemnities. After the conquest had been consummated (1534), Father Vincente Valverde, one of the five Dominicans who had accompanied the conqueror from Spain, was nominated Bishop of Cuzco and soon afterwards confirmed by Paul III, his jurisdiction extending over the whole territory of the newly-conquered domain. He was assassinated by the Indians of Puna, off Guiyaquil, in 1541 when returning to Spain. Upon taking Cuzco, the capital of the empire, Pizarro provided a municipal government for the city, and encouraged its settlement by liberal grants of lands and houses. On 5 Sept., 1538, Bishop Valverde laid the foundations of the cathedral, and later a Dominican monastery was erected on the site of the Incaic temple of the sun, a nunnery was established, and several churches and monasteries built. The Dominicans, the Brothers of Mercy, and other missionaries actively engaged in propagating the Faith among the natives. Besides the priests that Pizarro was required to take in his own vessels, the succeeding ships brought additional numbers of missionaries, who devoted themselves earnestly and disinterestedly to the task of spreading the religion of Christ among the Indians. Their conduct towards them was in marked contrast to that of the conquerers, whose thirst for gold was never satiated, and who having ransacked the villages and stripped the temples of their gold and silver ornaments, had enslaved the Indians, forcing them to work in the mines for their benefit.\nAt the outset and for several years thereafter the missionaries had to labour under almost unsurmountable obstacles, such as the uprising of the Inca Manco (a brother of Atahualpa, whom Pizarro had placed on the vacant throne) and the first civil wars among the conquerors themselves. These culminated in the execution of Diego de Almagro (1538) by order of Pizarro, and the assassination of the latter by the former's son, and were followed by other no less bloody conflicts between Cristobal Vaca de Castro (the newly appointed governor) and Almagro's son (1543), and Gonzalo Pizarro, and Blasco Nunez de Vela, the first viceroy (1544-45). The news of this, the most formidable rebellion that had so far been recorded in the history of Spain, caused a great sensation at the Court. Father Pedro de la Gasca was selected for the delicate task of pacifying the colony. Provided with unbounded powers, Gasca reached Peru in July, 1546, and scarcely three years had elapsed when he accomplished the great object of his mission. Having restored peace, his next step was to ameliorate the condition of oppressed natives, in doing which he went farther than was agreeable to the wishes of the colonists. Other reforms were introduced by the far-seeing priest, thus placing the administration upon a sound basis and facilitating a more stable and orderly government by his successors. Upon his return to Spain he was raised to the Bishopric of Palencia, which diocese he administered until 1561, when he was promoted to the vacant See of Sigüenza. He died in 1567 at the age of seventy-one. Unfortunately, the disturbances of the country were renewed on the departure of Gasca. The most serious uprising was that of Francisco Fernandez Girón (1550-54) during the regime of the second viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza. Girón's execution (Dec. 1554) put an end to the last of the civil wars among the conquerors; and through the conciliatory and energetic measures of Andres Hurtado de Mendoza, the third viceroy, the county was at last pacified, and the authority of Spain firmly established.\nThe Dominicans were the first ministers of the Gospel to come to Peru, and did splendid and efficient work in Christianizing the natives. They built many churches, monasteries, convents, and colleges, and acquired considerable prominence in ecclesiastical matters during the seventeenth century. Saint Rose of Lima (1586-1617), the patron of the Peruvian capital, was educated in one of their nunneries, and lived there until her death. The Franciscan fathers were also among the pioneer missionaries of Peru, and were prominent for their unceasing labours in the remotest wilds of South America. One of them, Saint Francis Solanus, made a journey from Peru to the Paraguayan Chaco, preaching to the tribes in their own dialects (1588-89). The Franciscan churches and buildings are among the handsomest in the country. Likewise, the good work of the Order of Saint Augustine stands high in the annals of Peruvian church history. Of the several temples and convents erected by the order during the viceroyalty, the church of Our Lady of Mercy is one of the most attractive in Lima. In 1567, at the earnest request of Philip II, St. Francis Borgia, then General of the Society of Jesus, sent the first Jesuits to Peru under Father Geronimo Ruiz Portillo, who with his six companions arrived at Callao on 28 March, 1568, and entered Lima on 1 April. As in Paraguay and other parts of South America, the work of the Jesuits in Peru was most effective in propagating the faith among the Indians as well as educating them. After establishing a convent, a seminary, and a church in Lima, they built temples and schools in almost all the towns. At Juli, on the shores of Titicaca Lake, they founded a training school for missionaries (1577), where the novices were taught the native dialects. At that time the first printing press in South America was introduced by the order. Among their number were several of the most famous educators, historians, scientists, geographers, naturalists, and literary men of the period. Their educational institutions soon became renowned, not only in the American colonies, but also in Spain and Europe. The great and redeeming work of the Jesuits was flourishing when the decree of Charles III of 1769, ordering their expulsion from the Spanish domains, reached Peru and was executed by the Viceroy Manuel de Amat.\nThe Dominican Geronimo de Loayza, first Bishop of Lima (1546-1575) was succeeded by Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo (1538-1606). Nominated to the See of Lima in 1578, he entered that capital on 24 May, 1581. He learned the Quichua language thoroughly in order to find out for himself the real condition and actual wants of the Indians, whose interests he protected and promoted with the greatest zeal and care. Such was his activity that within comparatively few years he held fourteen synods and three councils, through which many beneficial reforms were instituted; and personally visited twice the whole territory under his jurisdiction, comprising at that time the greater portion of the South American continent. These tours of inspection he made on foot and accompanied only by two of his secretaries. He had scarcely started on his third journey when death surprised him on 23 March, 1606. Among other works which stand as a lasting monument to his memory are the Seminary of Saint Toribio and the Convent of Santa Clara in Lima. The Holy Office was established in Peru in 1570, during the regime of the viceroy Francisco de Toledo, the tribunal of the Inquisition sitting at Lima and extending its jurisdiction over the Captaincy-General of Chile, the Presidency of Quito, the Viceroyalty of Buenos Ayres, and part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada. It was abolished on 23 Sept. 1813, when the Viceroy Abascal enforced the order to that effect, enacted by the Cortes of Cadiz on 22 Feb. of the same year. But shortly after Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain, the inquisition was re-established in Peru (16 January, 1815) and operated until its definite abolition in 1820, when the struggle for freedom had assumed full sway. By an express provision, the jurisdiction of the Holy Office never comprised the Indians, who continued under the authority of the bishops and the ordinary courts.\nFor nearly three centuries, Peru was ruled by thirty-eight viceroys, or, in their stead, the government was temporarily exercised by the Audiencia Real of Lima, founded in 1544. As the representative of the King of Spain the viceroy was vested with almost absolute powers, and besides his executive functions he discharged those of Vice-Patron of the Church, President of the Audiencia, captain-general of the army, and Superintendent of the Royal Exchequer. The movement for emancipation in Peru began early in the nineteenth century, but the first attempts were repressed with considerable severity, and it was not until 28 July, 1821, that independence was declared. The defeat of the royalists at the battle of Ayacucho (9 Dec., 1824) put an end to the Spanish rule. Under the independent government, the executive assumed the same rights of patronage vested in the viceroy, and the five different constitutions adopted since the establishment of the republic recognized the Roman Catholic religion as the official church of the country with exclusion of any other.\nThe last census of Peru was taken in 1876, hence the present population of the republic is known only approximately. According to the enumeration of that year, the number of inhabitants was 2,676,000. Recent estimates have, however been made (1906) that show the population to have increased to 3,547,829. Of this total fifty per cent. Is formed by Indians; fifteen per cent. By whites, mostly the descendants of Spaniards; three percent by negroes; one per cent. By Chinese and Japanese; and the remaining thirty-one per cent. By the offspring of intermarriage between the different races. According to the \"Annuario Ecclesiastico\" of Rome (1909), the Catholic population of Peru is 3,133,830, distributed as follows among the various dioceses: Lima, 606,900; Arequipa, 270,460; Ayacucho, 200,610; Chachapoyas, or Maynas, 95,370; Cuzco, 480,680; Huánuco, 288,100; Huaraz, 350,000; Puno, 260,810; Trujillo, 580,900.\nEcclesiastical divisions\nThe ecclesiastical Province of Peru comprises: one archdiocese, Lima, erected in 1534 and raised to metropolitan rank in 1546; nine suffragan dioceses, enumerated in order of seniority: Cuzco, 1536; Arequipa, 1609; Ayacucho, formerly Huamanga, 1615; Trujillo, 1616; Chachapoyas or Maynas, 1843; Huánuco 1865; Puno, 1865; Huaraz, 1900; and three prefectures Apostolic: San Leon de Amazonas, 1900; San Francisco del Ucayali, 1900; and Santo Domingo del Urubamba, 1900. The cathedral and episcopal residences are situated in the capital city of Lima. There are 66 parish churches in the Archdiocese of Lima, 85 in Cuzco, 71 in Arequipa, 102 in Trujillo, 87 in Ayacucho, 44 in Chachapoyas, 58 in Huánuco, 52 in Puno, and 48 in Huaraz. The number of additional churches and public chapels is perhaps about three times this number, as each parish has three or four churches besides the parish church. Then number of secular priests corresponds to the number of parishes, approximately one-fourth of the entire number, when the number of assistant parish priests, chaplains, and priests without regular appointments are taken into consideration. The religious orders, both male and female, are well represented. In the Archdiocese of Lima the Franciscans have three convents, and the Lazarists, Redemptorists, Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Jesuits, Mercedarians, Augustinians, and Fathers of St. Camillus one each. Among the women, the Tertiaries of St. Francis have five convents; the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny four; the Dominicans, Carmelites, Conceptionists, Salesians, Religious of the Sacred Heart, and the SacredHearts of Jesus and Mary two each; the Poor Clares, Bernardines, Capuchinesses, and Augustinians one each.\nIn the various dioceses many religious houses are to be found. Cuzco: Franciscans two, Dominicans, Mercedarians, Poor Clares, Carmelites, Dominican nuns, Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary one each; Trujillo: Franciscans two, Lazarists, Conceptionists, Carmelites, Poor Clares, Tertiaries of St. Dominic one each; Ayacucho: Redemptorists Franciscans, Tertiaries of St. Francis (women), Conceptionists one each; Huánuco: Franciscans, Sisters of Our Lady of Lourdes, Tertiaries of St. Francis (women) one each. The Dioceses of Chachapoyas and Puno have no religious houses. The three prefectures Apostolic in the north, centre, and south of the republic, are under the care of the Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans, who work principally for the conversion of the infidel native tribes. The Government allows a small subsidy for the maintenance of these missions, but their greatest source of income is derived from the \"Propagación de la Fe en el Oriente del Perú\". This pious association has spread over the whole republic and collects the contributions of the faithful, which are, relatively speaking, very abundant. Each diocese has its own diocesan seminary for the education of its priests. Franciscans are in charge of the seminaries of the dioceses of Cuzco and Ayacucho, the Lazarists of those of Trujillo and Arequipa, the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, of that of Huaraz and the rest are under the care of the seculars. The Government does not claim supervision over the seminaries, which are under the control of the respective bishops.\nThere are some thirty hospitals in Peru administered by various charitable societies, one old people's home, one orphan asylum, and several congregations especially dedicated to charitable works, besides a great number of private associations devoted to the work of gratuitous teaching, visiting the sick poor in their homes, legalizing illicit unions, etc.\nThe constitution, promulgated on 10 Dec., 1860, expressly provides that the nation profess the Roman Catholic religion; that the State protect it and does not permit the public exercise of any other (Art. 4). There is, however, no interference in personal religious beliefs, and there are Protestant churches in the republic. Under the Organic Law of 17 Sept., 1857 (Arts. 49-54), the prefects of departments are given certain supervisory powers over ecclesiastical affairs connected with the national patronage. Article 94 of the Constitution, on the duties of the president of the republic, establishes that the chief magistrate shall: exercise the ecclesiastical patronage according to law; nominate for archbishops and bishops, with the approval of Congress, those who have been chosen according to law; nominate church dignitaries, canons, curates, and incumbents of ecclesiastical benefices; conclude concordats with the Apostolic See, according to instructions given by Congress; grant or refuse, with the assent of Congress, passage to decrees of councils, or pontifical Bulls, Briefs, and Rescripts; but in case that these affect matters in litigation, the supreme court of justice of the republic must be previously heard.\nArticle 1358 of the Civil Code in force, under which the Church and religious orders were prohibited from disposing of their property without the consent of the Government, was repealed, 30 September, 1901. Hence the Church in Peru, as a juridical entity, can acquire and possess property of all kinds, as well as contract obligations and exercise civil or criminal action, according to the statutes of the country, the concordat, and the ecclesiastic canons and discipline. Temples and all places of worship are exempt from taxation, but other church property yielding a revenue of $100 or more is subject to the ecclesiastical tax according to the Regulation of 20 December, 1886. Arts. 83 to 94 of the Civil Code refer to clergymen and religious, containing a definition of who are such; the qualifications necessary for the profession; their exemption from public services; the recovery of civil rights by religious upon their secularization, etc. The religious orders are governed by the Regulations for Regulars (Reglamento de Regulares), approved by Resolution of 12 Jan., 1872. Although the modern law obliges all citizens to military duty, there has never been a case where it has been applied to priests or seminarists. No special exemption is granted to clerics in regard to trials; they are tried in the public courts, civil or criminal, as the case may be. There is no law enforcing the observance of holy days, although in the capital a particular ordinance exists which requires that stores be closed on Sundays and Holy Days. Processions and other public acts of worship may be held without interference from the Government. The administration of the different branches of the Church in Peru, in so far as the national patronage is concerned, is entrusted to the Minister of Justice, Worship, and Public Instruction. The fiscal budget assigns the sum of $100,000 for the maintenance of the Church, including the salaries of prelates, rectors, etc.\nWills and testaments\nThe procedure that obtains in Peru is similar to that in force in Spain, being based upon the Roman law. According to the Civil Code, wills may be either open or closed. An open will (testamento abierto) may be executed in a public instrument, i.e. before a notary public, in a private document, or verbally (Arts. 651-656). There are, besides, special forms of wills, such as the military, the maritime, and others, in which on account of the unusual circumstances attending upon each particular case, the ordinary formalities of law are dispensed with, and others of a less restrictive nature prescribed instead. (Arts. 674-681). A closed will (testamento cerrado) must be duly sealed by the testator himself. A foreigner owning property in Peru must testate according to the provisions of the Civil Code (Art. 692); and if he have an estate abroad he may dispose of it by will executed in accordance with the laws of the country wherein such estate may be located, or with those of his native land (Art. 693), provided he have no rightful heir or heirs in Peru (Art. 695). The substantive law governing wills and testaments, succession, etc. is contained in Arts. 651 to 954 of the Civil Code.\nCemeteries are under the authority of charitable associations and the parish priests. Under the Resolutions of 20 November, 1868 and 19 January, 1869, the Municipal Councils of the republic are instructed to establish and maintain laic cemeteries for the burial of persons not belonging to the Catholic Church.\nThe Peruvian Civil Code expressly prescribes that marriages in the republic must be performed with the formalities established by the Council of Trent; but in order to enable non-Catholics to marry in the country a law was enacted on 23 Dec., 1897, empowering the Alcaldes (mayors) of the Provincial Councils to solemnize marriages. Divorce in Peru, as established by Arts. 191 seq. Of the Civil Code is not absolute, i.e., does not terminate the bond of union. Marriage can only be nullified through the regular ecclesiastical procedure, if by reason of canonical disabilities, or through the ordinary courts of justice, if on account of civil impediments. Sec. III of the Civil Code (Arts. 120-217) is devoted to the subject of matrimony, including divorce.\nEducation in Peru is a national institution under the Department of Justice, Public Instruction, and Worship, but is also given by private establishments, of which there are several maintained by religious orders. It is divided into primary, secondary, and academic. Primary instruction was, until 1905, when the new public education law went into effect, in the hands of the municipalities, but in view of their limited resources the national Government found it necessary to take charge of it. It is free and compulsory and is given in about 2500 public schools, with 3105 teachers, and an attendance of 162,298 pupils (1909). Secondary education is furnished by thirty government colleges and several private institutions. Academic instruction is afforded by the universities of the republic. Foremost among them is the University of St. Mark, founded at Lima in 1574, which has faculties of theology, law, medicine, letters, sciences, and political economy. There are also the Universities of Saint Thomas of Cuzco, Saint Thomas of Trujillo, and Saint Augustine of Arequipa. Normal, agricultural, and manual training schools are largely attended.\nLORENTE, Historia del Peru (Lima, 1863-76); PRESCOTT, History of the Conquest of Peru (Boston 1859); RAIMONDI, El Peru (Lima, 1890-1902); BERMUDEZ, Anales de la Catedral de Lima (Lima, 1903); ENOCK, The Andes and the Amazon (London, 1908); IDEM, Peru (New York, 1908); WRIGHT, The Old and New Peru (Philadelphia, 1908); GARLAND, Peru in 1906 (Lima, 1907); SEEBEE, Notes on Peru (London, 1901); Bulletin of the Pan-American Union (August, 1910).\nAPA citation. Moreno-Lacalle, J. (1911). Peru. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved April 26, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11732b.htm\nMLA citation. Moreno-Lacalle, Julian. \"Peru.\" The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 26 Apr. 2010 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11732b.htm>.\nTranscription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by John Looby.\nEcclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line349800"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6692308783531189,"wiki_prob":0.3307691216468811,"text":"Milorganite: The Essence of Earth Day\nIt's fitting that Wisconsin, the origin of Earth Day, is home to the world’s longest-running and nation’s largest recycling program: Milorganite.\nEarth Day, which began in 1970 at the prompting of then Wisconsin U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, evokes images of volunteers clearing debris from shorelines, elementary school students planting trees, and communities collecting hazardous materials from homeowners to protect land and water. Earth Day was the birth of the modern environmental movement.\nBut how does Milorganite—a fertilizer—fit into Earth Day’s focus on environmental stewardship?\n“I’m sure most people don’t think of fertilizer and environmental stewardship as being related. Actually, most would say they’re at odds with each other,” said Milorganite Director of Marketing, Jeff Spence. “But when you’re talking about Milorganite, they’re definitely related.”\nSpence is referring to the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s (MMSD) production of Milorganite, a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer. Nutrients are reclaimed from wastewater using large-scale processes that mimic nature. Through research conducted in the early 1900s, it was found that the resulting product was useful as a fertilizer and safe to use on lawns and gardens. “It’s a form of recycling we normally wouldn’t think about,” added Spence.\n“In 2016, Milorganite celebrated its 90th anniversary of commercial production,” said Spence. “We’re proud to have been stewards of the environment long before it was even a concept. Here we’ve been doing it for over nine decades.” And in those 90 years nearly 9.8 billion—that’s with a “B”—pounds of nutrient-rich material has been diverted from landfill to re-use.\n“In recognizing Earth Day and participating in activities that promote a cleaner environment, we should also remember how bad things were more than 100 years ago. In the early 1900s, Milwaukee’s waterways were essentially open sewers. There was even talk of building a plank road over the Milwaukee River to simply hide the problem,” explained Spence. Another solution was to literally flush the river into the lake periodically, pushing the problem farther downstream, but not really addressing it.\n“We encourage everyone to do their part in protecting the environment. It’s something we need to consider every day, not just on Earth Day. Stewardship is a habit. Little things like recycling as much paper, cans and bottles as possible make a difference. Or in the case of Milorganite production, using more renewable energy on a major scale and reducing waste,” concluded Spence. “And, yes, using products to maintain your lawn that doesn’t harm the environment, like Milorganite, is another habit homeowners can feel good about.”\nAbout Milorganite: Celebrating over 90 years of production, is one of the world’s largest and nation’s oldest running recycling programs. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Milorganite products are manufactured and marketed by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD), a regional government agency that provides water reclamation and flood management services for about 1.1 million customers in 28 communities in the Greater Milwaukee Area. Since 1926 Milorganite has been a world leader in supplying slow-release nitrogen fertilizer for professional and residential use. While revenue generated through the sale of Milorganite products does not make up for the entire cost to produce and market, our belief in beneficial reuse and recycling makes producing our value-added products the clear choice.\nThere’s a Shortage of Milorganite\nMaintaining Clean Waterways Starts in Your Yard","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line459666"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8577281832695007,"wiki_prob":0.8577281832695007,"text":"Man found dead behind Staten Island high school\nBy Thomas Tracy\nCops found a dead body in a field behind New Dorp High School in Staten Island Wednesday, officials said. (Rose Abuin / New York Daily News)\nA man was found dead in a field behind a Staten Island high school Wednesday, police said.\nThe grim discovery was made about 11:30 a.m. in Miller Field behind New Dorp High School on the New Dorp Lane side of the greenspace, authorities said.\nThe 48-year-old man’s name was not immediately disclosed.\nAn autopsy has been slated to determine how he died.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line201688"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6260396838188171,"wiki_prob":0.37396031618118286,"text":"Driving Today\nU.S. Grand Prix in Trouble … Again\nThe effort to create a viable Formula 1 race in the U.S. seems star-crossed.\nFrom the Editors of Driving Today\nDon’t say we didn’t tell you this was coming. Media reports now indicate that the organizers of the proposed 2012 U.S. Grand Prix, which was destined for a racing facility on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, have just one week to come to an agreement with Formula 1 honcho Bernie Ecclestone, or they can go whistle Dixie. The publicity machine behind the new Circuit of the Americas has been thumping the tub for the F1 race for months now, but the intractable Ecclestone, who doesn’t feel like he has to mince words, has been very direct on the subject.\n“It’s all very simple; they don’t have the money,” said Ecclestone to the Associated Press. “We don’t have a contract. If they want to come back to us, if it’s not signed before the end of next week, I suppose it won’t be on the calendar next year.”\nThat’s about as clear as it can be, and to his credit, Ecclestone is anything if not predictable. If you don’t have the money to get his blessing for a Formula 1 race, you might as well not waste your time talking to him about it. He wants significant guarantees, he wants to see the color of your money and he doesn’t suffer fools easily. The World Motor Sport Council, which happens to be heavily influenced by Ecclestone, will have its next meeting on December 7, so if the Circuit of the Americas has any real hope of staging an F1 race next year, it better get its ducks (and dollars) in a row pretty darn quickly.\nFrom our vantage point, the chances are slim. The Circuit of the Americas’ bid for a Grand Prix is even messier than most F1 deals. Former race driver and current promoter Tavo Hellmund was the guy who originally had what at least appeared to be a deal to stage a U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, which happens to be his hometown. But friction between him and the big-money guys -- like billionaire Red McCombs -- quickly put the whole thing in jeopardy, and the FIA decided to scrap the pact with Hellmund, trolling for higher stakes. The organization might get a bigger payday, but the race is very unlikely to take place in 2012. There’s a higher probability it will make the 2013 schedule, but we wouldn’t bet the farm on that, either.\nhttp://www.drivingtoday.com/athomenet/news_this_week/2011-11-22-5155-racing/index.html\nThis site is provided by Community Management Specialists","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line85044"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9410321116447449,"wiki_prob":0.9410321116447449,"text":"Paul McCartney Announces ‘Egypt Station: Explorer’s Edition’ LP\nPaul McCartney has announced a new, expanded release of his chart-topping 2018 album, Egypt Station. Titled Egypt Station - Explorer’s Edition, the double LP is due on May 17.\nWhile all of the songs comprising the new release have previously appeared on various other editions -- including the Traveller’s Edition and a Target exclusive -- the Explorer’s Edition assembles all of the material together into one release that encompasses everything related to Egypt Station.\nBonus tracks include the surprise studio single “Get Enough,” and live performances captured at stops such as Abbey Road Studios, the Cavern and Grand Central Station.\nYou can see the track listing below.\nThe original Egypt Station album was released in September last year and gave McCartney his first No. 1 album in more than 30 years. It was met with high praise, and earned a spot on UCR's list of the best albums of the year.\nEgypt Station - Explorer's Edition arrives shortly before the North American leg of McCartney's Freshen Up tour. The trek will see the former Beatle voyage across the country, with New Orleans, Las Vegas and Los Angeles among his many stops.\nPaul McCartney, 'Egypt Station - Explorer's Edition' Track Listing:\nDisc 1 - 'Egypt Station'\n01. \"Opening Station\"\n02. \"I Don't Know\"\n03. \"Come On to Me\"\n04. \"Happy with You\"\n05. \"Who Cares\"\n06. \"Fuh You\"\n07. \"Confidante\"\n08. \"People Want Peace\"\n09. \"Hand in Hand\"\n10. \"Dominoes\"\n11. \"Back in Brazil\"\n12. \"Do It Now\"\n13. \"Caesar Rock\"\n14. \"Despite Repeated Warnings\"\n15. \"Station II\"\n16. \"Hunt You Down/Naked/C-Link\"\nDisc 2 - 'Egypt Station II'\n01. \"Get Started\"\n02. \"Nothing For Free\"\n03. \"Frank Sinatra’s Party\"\n04. \"Sixty Second Street\"\n05. \"Who Cares\" (Full Length)\n06. \"Get Enough\"\n07. \"Come On To Me\" (Live at Abbey Road Studios)\n08. \"Fuh You\" (Live at The Cavern]\n09. \"Confidante\" (Live at LIPA)\n10. \"Who Cares\" (Live at Grand Central Station)\nBeatles Solo Albums Ranked\nYou Think You Know the Beatles?\nNext: Top 10 Wings Songs\nSource: Paul McCartney Announces ‘Egypt Station: Explorer’s Edition’ LP\nFiled Under: Paul McCartney","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line900603"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.59145587682724,"wiki_prob":0.59145587682724,"text":"Coating Industry Loses a Leader\n\"A consummate professional with a big warm heart\" is just one of the tributes being paid to Scott B. Rice, a KTA-Tator Inc. vice president who was killed Monday (Sept. 9) in an automobile crash near Pittsburgh, PA.\nMr. Rice, 53, Vice President and Corporate Business Development Manager of Pittsburgh-based KTA, was driving on Interstate 79 early Monday with his wife, Cindy, when dual tires from a truck in the oncoming lane came off the vehicle and slammed into the Rices' car.\nPhotos: KTA-Tator\nKTA-Tator vice president Scott Rice was killed in the crash. His wife, Cindy, Steel Group Business Development/Project Manager for KTA, was injured.\nMr. Rice was killed instantly, according to KTA-Tator officials. Cindy Rice, Steel Group Business Development/Project Manager for KTA, was hospitalized overnight and treated for lacerations.\n'Respected Professional, Dear Friend'\n\"Scott has worked in the coatings industry for over 30 years,\" said KTA-Tator president Kenneth Trimber.\n\"Those at KTA who had the pleasure of working with Scott for over 20 years have lost a very dear friend. He was very active in both NACE and SSPC and was a well-known and respected professional.\n\"He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.\"\nIn addition to his wife, Mr. Rice is survived by four children—Rob, Jaimie, Kristyn, and Jon—ranging in age from 21 to 27. The Rices' first grandchild is due in the spring of 2015.\nDistinguished Career\nMr. Rice served in a variety of administrative, technical, and management capacities in his decades with KTA. His positions included overall management of the various design- and construction-phase coating consulting and inspection services provided to diverse clients nationwide.\nMr. Rice provided project management, coatings consulting, technical support, and inspection services on various projects involving bridges, locks and dams, tanks, and architectural structures. He was Coatings Group Manager of KTA before his most recent position.\nKTA-Tator Inc. president Kenneth Trimber said Scott Rice would be \"sorely missed by all who knew him.\" Mr. Rice had been with KTA more than 20 years.\nAs Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Mr. Rice was responsible for the company's nationwide business development effort, which included serving as mentor to corporate staff, facilitating multi-disciplinary proposal efforts, and representing KTA at national conferences.\nHe held a bachelor of science degree in Earth Science from Clarion University of Pennsylvania.\nArrangements and Memories\nArrangements are being handled by the Schellhaas Funeral Home, 5864 Heckert Road, Bakerstown, PA, 15007, 724-443-1505.\nFriends and family may call from 6 to 8 p.m. today (Sept. 11) and from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Friday (Sept. 12). A funeral service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 13) at Bakerstown United Methodist Church, 5760 William Flynn, Gibsonia, PA, 15044, 724-443-3184.\nFriends, co-workers and colleagues are invited to post condolences and memories about Mr. Rice at a new memorial page on KTA's website.\nTributes posted on that page recall Mr. Rice as a \"wonderful boss, a great friend and teacher\" and a \"consummate professional with a big warm heart.\" Another said of the Rices: \"You would be hard pressed to find two more positive and outgoing people.\"\nA memorial fund for Mr. Rice's family has been established through PNC Bank. Donations may be made to the Scott B. Rice Family Memorial Fund, c/o KTA-Tator Inc., 115 Technology Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15275, 412-788-1300.\nTagged categories: Good Technical Practice; KTA-Tator; Marine Coatings; Obituaries; Personnel; Protective Coatings","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1097400"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8786364793777466,"wiki_prob":0.8786364793777466,"text":"Obama Will Reform Spy Programs But Won't Call Snowden a Patriot\nFiled to:NSA\nPresident Obama announced a series of reforms to the country's surveillance practices on Friday at his first full press conference in nearly three months. The actions the administration is taking are many, and there's still a lot that's up in the air. One thing's for sure, though. Obama does not think Edward Snowden deserves any credit.\nThe major thrust of the president's new plan includes reviewing how the system currently works and reforming it. This is good! Obama plans to start with section 215 of the Patriot Act which gives the government broader authority to access so-called \"metadata\" like phone records. The president also plans to work with Congress to reform how the secret courts set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act work. The broad strokes of that plan include introducing an \"adversarial\" (read: privacy-defending) party into the proceedings.\nThe reforms should also have a macroscopic effect. In addition to these specific reforms, Obama says he's calling for more transparency from folks like the Justice Department and the intelligence community. He's also setting up a group of outside experts to review the country's surveillance efforts. \"Given the history of abuse by governments, it's right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives,\" Obama said. \"It's not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.\"\nHow to Pick Your Battles in the War Against Transparency\nAre you worried about Barack Obama reading all your emails and listening to all your phone calls?…\nSpeaking of the American people, there's one citizen who just won't go away: Edward Snowden. After Obama's initial statement, NBC News' chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd jumped up with a question about the president's opinion of the whistleblower who remains in Russia, where he's sought political asylum, and remains wanted for three felonies in this country. Todd made the point that a lot of these reforms come after Snowden leaked documents detailing the NSA overzealous surveillance programs, an act that many people believe to be highly patriotic. Not the president, who said unequivocably, \"No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.\"\nNSA Whistleblower: \"Truth Is Coming, and It Cannot Be Stopped\"\nNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is one of the most wanted men on the planet, both by folks that…\nWell, whether Obama likes it or not, history will be the judge of whether Edward Snowden is a hero or a villain, and if public opinion is any guide, it sure is looking like the former is more likely. But that doesn't mean Obama's the villain! The president says that these reforms were all planned well before Snowden's leak. And if the leak hadn't happened, we would've ended up in the same place, he said.\nWhy Congress Must Investigate NSA's Unconstitutional Spying\nIn the past couple of weeks, the NSA has, unsurprisingly, responded with a series of secret…\nFor lack of a better cliché, that's easy for him to say. [The Washington Post, Reuters]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line806800"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9156597852706909,"wiki_prob":0.9156597852706909,"text":"Eddie Goldman Leonard Floyd Roquan Smith Akiem Hicks John Fox Chuck Pagano Matt Nagy John Harbaugh Andrew Luck Bruce Arians Eddie Jackson Kyle Fuller Khalil Mack Ryan Pace Mitch Trubisky Cody Parkey Sports Professional football Football Coaching NFL football Sports team management changes Sports transactions Sports business NFL Playoffs\nDenver Broncos Indianapolis Colts Chicago Bears Baltimore Ravens Arizona Cardinals Washington Redskins\nBears hire Pagano as defensive coordinator to replace Fangio\nBy ANDREW SELIGMAN - Feb. 13, 2019 04:38 AM EST\nFILE - In this Dec. 3, 2017, file photo, then-Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano calls out encouragement during the first half of the team's NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Jacksonville, Fla. The Bears hired former Colts coach Pagano to replace Vic Fangio as defensive coordinator Friday, Jan. 11, 2019, hoping he can help them build on what they accomplished this season. Pagano inherits one of the NFL’s stingiest defenses after Fangio left to take the Denver Broncos’ head coaching job. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)\nLAKE FOREST, Ill. (AP) — The Chicago Bears rode a dominant defense to the NFC North championship in a breakout season. They hope to keep it going with a new coordinator.\nThe Bears hired former Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano to replace Vic Fangio on Friday, hoping he can help them build on what they accomplished this season.\nPagano inherits one of the NFL's stingiest defenses after Fangio left to take the Denver Broncos' head coaching job. He will get to work with one of the league's best pass rushers in Khalil Mack as well as two other All-Pros in cornerback Kyle Fuller and safety Eddie Jackson.\nPagano led Indianapolis to a 53-43 record and two AFC South championships from 2012 to 2017. He was forced to take a leave of absence early in his first season to get treated for leukemia. With offensive coordinator Bruce Arians serving as interim head coach, the Colts went 9-3 in his absence after a 1-2 start.\nThey won 11 games and made the playoffs in each of Pagano's first three seasons before injuries to quarterback Andrew Luck took a toll. Before taking the Indianapolis job, he spent four seasons under John Harbaugh in Baltimore — as secondary coach from 2008 to 2010 and defensive coordinator in 2011, when the Ravens went 12-4 and ranked third in total defense.\nPagano was a consultant for the NFL last season.\n\"He is a great teacher with an aggressive mentality that fits our style of football,\" coach Matt Nagy said. \"He is a man of high character and has a passion for the game that will no doubt add to the culture we have already started building at Halas Hall.\"\nThe Bears went 12-4 in their first season under Nagy after four straight last-place finishes and made the playoffs for the first time in eight years. They finished with their best record since the 2006 team went 13-3 and reached the Super Bowl.\nThe season ended on a gut-wrenching note when Cody Parkey's potential winning field goal hit the left upright and crossbar in the closing seconds of a 16-15 wild-card loss to the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.\nIn four seasons, Fangio helped transform a defense that ranked among the worst in franchise history. Now, he finally has a head coaching job after 32 years as an assistant in the NFL.\nLike Fangio, Pagano has experience running 3-4 defenses. He also figures to have plenty of autonomy, with Nagy focused on the development of the offense and quarterback Mitchell Trubisky.\nChicago already had a top-10 defense when general manager Ryan Pace swung a blockbuster trade for Mack just before the start of the season. That move showed just how serious the Bears were about making a jump after going 14-34 in three seasons under former coach John Fox.\nThe defense jumped to a different level with Mack drawing double teams, Fuller and Jackson emerging, and Pro Bowl defensive end Akiem Hicks wreaking havoc. Linebacker Roquan Smith showed star potential after being drafted with the No. 8 overall pick. Linebacker Leonard Floyd and defensive tackle Eddie Goldman had solid seasons, and it all added up to this.\nChicago led the NFL with 36 takeaways and 27 interceptions, a huge change after three straight years with a franchise-worst eight interceptions. The Bears gave up a league-low 17.7 points per game and 1,280 yards rushing — a franchise-low for a 16-game season. They also ranked third in total defense and tied for third with 50 sacks.\nMack led the team with 12 1/2 sacks and tied for third in NFL with six forced fumbles. And Fuller tied for the league lead with seven sacks.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line113656"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6079518795013428,"wiki_prob":0.3920481204986572,"text":"Keighley 5°c\nDistrict Sport\nArts & Entertainment News\n9 properties for sale in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire\nSowerby Bridge\nTodmorden\nHalifax Road, Todmorden, West Yorkshire\nMidgley Road, Mytholmroyd, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire\nLong Causeway, Blackshaw Head, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire\nChapel Avenue, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7\nCragg Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7\nUnity Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7\nBridge Lanes, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7\nCleveley Gardens, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire\nRibstone Street, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1015009"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9597349166870117,"wiki_prob":0.9597349166870117,"text":"Faces of UMSI: Fernando Carretero\nFernando CarreteroCROP.jpg\nFernando Carretero has been interested in computers since he watched his step dad build him one as a fifth grader. When he got into his dream school, University of Michigan, he intended to graduate with a degree in computer science from LSA. But after taking SI 110, he changed his academic plan and is now pursuing his Bachelor of Science in Information at UMSI.\nFernando grew up in Mason, Michigan aware of the many educational options available to him in state. “I had always wanted to come [to University of Michigan]” Fernando said. “I thought it was much more cozy and homey here in Ann Arbor”\nFernando got a head start at University of Michigan when he participated in M-STEM Academies as a rising freshman. Fernando and about one hundred other students lived on campus and took classes that would mirror their first semester over the summer. “I knew one hundred people going into college which definitely helped,” Fernando said.\nFernando puts a lot of pressure on himself as a student, and has done so since he was in high school. “I had always felt a lot of pressure to make my mom proud” Fernando said. Fernando’s mother went to Libre Universidad in Colombia, but Fernando and his sister are the first generation in his family to earn a college education in the United States.\nWhen he was still pursuing Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Fernando joined SHPE, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Though Fernando is no longer on the EECS track, he is now on the Executive Board of SHPE, and benefits from an engineering mindset.\nEach Friday SHPE hosts “Familia Fridays,” events that provide networking opportunities for SHPE members. SHPE also does a volunteer trip abroad each year. This year, they’re going to Guatemala for the second time since Fernando joined. “We did a five day boot camp where we taught high school students basic principles of electrical engineering and the whole engineering mindset, how to solve problems, and how to make a difference in your community,” Fernando said. “It was really rewarding.”\nAs an incoming freshman Fernando asked his advisor if there were any computer science classes that were not computation or hard coding focused, and his advisor suggested SI 110. At the time Fernando was struggling with feeling like he was competing with, instead of learning from, his peers. Once Fernando understood what information science was, he realized the field aligned with his goals.\nFernando put a lot of pressure on himself to make A’s and wanted to shift his focus to learning. He decided to apply to UMSI, and he got in. “I’m enjoying school a lot more than I was before,” Fernando said. “I’d say that SI cares a lot about you as a student.” Fernando also serves as an Information mentor for UMSI, helping other students find their paths to UMSI.\nFernando is on the user experience track of the BSI program. “I think one of the things that really resonated with me about UX was the whole process of going from looking at a problem to delivering a solution in the form of some sort of a design.” Fernando said. He is very interested in user research, and feels it builds upon his prior research experience in the astronomy department as a sophomore. “I really like learning the different methodologies that go into coming to a concrete solution,” he said.\nIn the summer of 2018 Fernando worked as Junior Design Intern for a tech start-up called Polished Pixels in Sydney, Australia. There he was responsible for website development. “I always wanted to go abroad sometime in college and I was like why not hit two birds with one stone,” Fernando said.\nFernando is also interested in fashion, particularly shoes. He aspires to someday merge his abilities in UX with his passion for shoe design.\nIn the summer of 2019 Fernando will work for Ford doing product design. Fernando discovered the opportunity through SHPE. “It’s hard sometimes to put yourself ahead of your peers and success within minority groups is challenging sometimes, but it's important to see that hidden talent,” Fernando said.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1317773"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5248581767082214,"wiki_prob":0.5248581767082214,"text":"The false pope took the opportunity to engage in some cheap 1960s' polemics against the traditionalists in his sect -- the usual \"museum\" talk, but this time sprinkled with \"ashes\":\nWhen I hear [Benedict XVI] speak, I become strong. I hear this history of the Church, which is not something like a museum, tradition. No, tradition is like a root which gives us the juice to grow and so you would become like roots, no! You flower, you grow, you give fruit, and you are the seeds that are the roots of the other. The tradition of the Church is always in motion. In an interview made by Andrea Monda in L’Osservatore Romano a few days ago (do you read L’Osservatore Romano?) there was a situation of the musician Gustav Mahler that I liked so much. Speaking of tradition, he said that tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the keeper of ashes. It is not a museum. Tradition does not preserve ashes; the nostalgia of fundamentalists [is] to return to the ashes. No, tradition is the roots that guarantee the tree grows, flowers and gives fruit. I repeat with that piece by the Argentine poet I like so much: “All that the tree has in bloom comes from that which it has underground.”\nFrancis' entire theology consists of metaphors, sentimental greeting-card platitudes, modern psychology, and Judeo-Marxist ideology. There is no sense in dignifying this contemptuous drivel with a reasoned response. For a quick review of what Tradition actually is, let's move beyond metaphors and slogans and turn to an actual definition:\nTRADITION (Lat. traditio, a giving-up, delivery). The sum of revealed doctrine which has not been committed to sacred Scripture (though it may have appeared in uninspired writing) but which has been handed down by a series of legitimate shepherds of the Church from age to age. As revelation it must have come to the Apostles directly from the lips of Christ or been handed down by the Apostles at the dictation of the Holy Ghost. More broadly the term is used for the sum of doctrine revealed either in Scripture or by word of mouth; so in 2 Thess. ii, 14: \"Hold by the traditions you have learned, in word or in writing, from us.\" (Donald Attwater, ed., A Catholic Dictionary, 3rd. ed. [New York, NY: Macmillan Co., 1958], s.v. \"Tradition\")\nIronically, it is precisely the kind of theology that Francis subscribes to and promotes that has turned churches into mere museums -- or worse -- and confessionals into broom closets, as the people see no point in staying in the \"Catholic Church\" if it's basically the Green Party at Prayer, and with bad liturgy to boot. The most significant remarks in yesterday's press conference, however, were probably Francis' words on ecumenism. Drawing on a familiar theme, the Jesuit apostate said:\nI always have this idea: Ecumenism is not reaching the end of the game, of the discussion. Ecumenism is walking together, walking together, praying together... The ecumenism of prayer. In history, we have the ecumenism of blood. When they killed Christians they did not ask: Are you Catholic? Are you Orthodox? Are you Lutheran? No, [they asked] are you Christian! And the blood mixed together. It is the ecumenism of witness. Another ecumenism, of prayer, of blood... and then the ecumenism of the poor, those that work together. That we must work to help the sick, the inferm [sic], for example, the people that are a little at the margin, below the poverty line, to help. “Matthew 25” is a beautiful ecumenical program, it comes from Jesus. To walk together: this is already Christian unity, but do not wait for theologians to agree to arrive at communion. Communion happens every day with prayer, with the memory of our martyrs, with works of charity and even of loving one another.\nThere is so much wrong with this, it's hard to know where to start. We've talked about this before, so we won't flesh it out too much, but this is just more of the same claptrap the world has been hearing for the last 50 years with nothing substantial (nothing good, that is) to show for it. We recall how in early 2017, the Vatican's official in charge of ecumenical relations, \"Cardinal\" Kurt Koch, had to admit that after all these decades of endless dialogue, the different parties are now at a point where they cannot even agree on why they're dialoguing in the first place:\nVatican Chief Ecumenist laments: No Consensus even on Goal of Ecumenism!\nBut, not to worry! Francis assures his hapless adherents that it's not about the goal anyway -- the way is the destination, you know. And besides, there's that \"ecumenism of blood\", you see, where \"they\" -- notice he didn't mention who! -- don't ask if the people they encounter are Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or whatever. That's true. They probably don't ask if they're \"Christian\" either, but only if they're Muslim, followers of the religion of peace. And if not, off with their heads! Looks like Francis will soon discover an ecumenism with everyone who isn't Muslim, including atheists, Zoroastrians, Jainists, Jews, Wiccans, Voodoo witchdoctors, Planned Parenthood and sodomy supporters, and so many more. Call it \"dynamic ecumenism\"! Yes, logic is a cruel thing when applied to the Vatican II religion. We have exposed the heretical nature of Francis' \"ecumenism of blood\" before:\nIt's Heresy: Francis' Ecumenism of Blood is more dangerous than ISIS\nAh, but there's always the \"ecumenism of the poor\", the \"ecumenism of charity\" and all that, right? Everyone walking and working together to help the needy -- doesn't it just sound so pretty? It sounds nice perhaps, but the Vatican has yet to explain what should be so incredibly pleasing to God about a Catholic handing out meals at the local soup kitchen together with a lesbian pro-abort Methodist pastor, rather than separated from her. Just saying. So, no, Matthew 25 is most definitely not a \"beautiful ecumenical program\" from Christ. It is a mandate to practice the corporal works of mercy, not to hijack works of charity to promote the heresy of indifferentism and give an illusion of unity between Christ and the devil. It is the old Modernist Bergoglio who is reading ecumenism into it. And so Francis pretends that there is real and meaningful unity already in existence between Catholics and other \"Christians\" (they are properly called heretics, by the way, insofar as they adhere to heretical sects, regardless of whether they are personally guilty of the sin of heresy or not). For Bergoglio, actual unity of Faith, government, and worship -- which can only be had in the Catholic Church -- are mere accidents that are not that important because if one of \"them\" kills you and he doesn't care if he kills a heretic or a Catholic, then what does the truth of Christ matter! That's the stuff for \"theologians\" to worry about, a merely academic question, the theological equivalent of a squabble about proper punctuation in a bestseller. That must be why the Council of Florence taught:\nIt [the council] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart \"into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels\" [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church. (Council of Florence, Decree Cantate Domino; Denz. 714)\nSo much for that ecumenism of blood -- or of any other kind. But here we're just quoting that old \"museum\", so... move along, nothing to see here! The dynamic Frankster and his god of surprises have long moved on to a more \"enlightened\" age.... The Bergoglian words of wisdom continue, and now it gets really good (and a bad translation isn't helping):\nIn one European city there is a good relationship between the Catholic archbishop and the Lutheran archbishop. [Once] the Catholic archbishop should have come to the Vatican Sunday evening and he called to say that he would arrive Monday morning. When he arrived he told me: “Sorry, but yesterday the Lutheran archbishop should have gone to one of their meetings and he asked me to please go to his cathedral and lead the worship.” This is fraternity, to arrive to this much... and the Catholic bishop held the service. He did not do the Eucharist, but the service. This is... When I was in Buenos Aires I was invited by the [Presbyterian] Scottish Church to preach a few times, and I went there to hold the service... you can walk together... unity, brotherhood, outstretched hand, be careful not to talk about others. We all have faults, everyone, if we walk together we leave faults aside, the criticisms of a scapegoater [zitellone]. (underlining added)\nThe translation provided by Catholic News Agency is not quite accurate here, although what remains after correction is still absurd enough. Assuming that the original Italian provided by the Vatican is a faithful transcription of Francis' words, we have to say that what Catholic News Agency has rendered as \"hold the service\", etc., actually merely talks about preaching, that is, delivering the sermon. Although the unnamed \"Catholic bishop\" was invited by the Lutheran minister to lead the service, he \"only\" gave the sermon: \"E la predica l’ha fatta il cattolico. Non ha fatto l’Eucaristia, ma la predica sì.\" With regard to what he himself did in his Buenos Aires days, Bergoglio actually said: \"I used to go there and deliver the sermon\" -- \"andavo lì, facevo la predica\". In any case, they might as well have gone to lead the entire heretical service, with or without a \"Eucharist\". That would have been merely a difference in degree, not in kind. By giving the sermon as part of a heretical worship service, addressing a heretical congregation as a substitute for the usual minister, the line into the forbidden territory of false worship and mortal sin has already been crossed. It's good to know that Francis admits having done such a thing himself, not once but \"a few times\". The \"Scottish Church\" or \"Church of Scotland\", by the way, is a Presbyterian sect. The Calvinist temple in Buenos Aires at which then-\"Archbishop\" Bergoglio engaged in his ecumenical stint is presumably the Iglesia Presbiteriana San Andrés del Centro. And now we know why Francis had no problem allowing an Anglican service to be held at St. Peter's Basilica -- perhaps we should be grateful that he didn't preach during it:\nFirst-Ever Anglican Liturgy comes to St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican\nAll this is consistent with the advice Francis gave to his followers two years ago that if there is no Catholic Mass available on a Sunday in your area, you can just go to the Anglican service instead. Yes, he really did say that:\nFrancis: No Catholic Mass available? Just go to the Anglicans!\nHey, Novus Ordo mess or Anglican worship service -- what's the difference anyway?! (Alright, he's got a point there; but to the true Catholic Mass there is no comparison.) All this is really just the logical consequence of the principles of Vatican II ecumenism. Keep in mind that, according to Novus Ordo church law promulgated by the \"authority\" of John Paul II in 1983, 1990, and 1993, non-Catholics are permitted to receive Novus Ordo sacraments under certain conditions outside the danger of death and without converting beforehand, and it is permissible for them to use Catholic churches for their own heretical worship if they have a genuine \"need\" to do so. Novus Ordo bishops are even permitted to allow the Protestants to use Catholic liturgical items if they cannot use their own. Remember?\nCatholic churches are consecrated or blessed buildings which have an important theological and liturgical significance for the Catholic community. They are therefore generally [!] reserved for Catholic worship. However, if priests, ministers or communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church do not have a place or the liturgical objects necessary for celebrating worthily their religious ceremonies, the diocesan Bishop may allow them the use of a church or a Catholic building and also lend them what may be necessary for their services. Under similar circumstances, permission may be given to them for interment or for the celebration of services at Catholic cemeteries. (Antipope John Paul II, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms of Ecumenism, n. 137)\nYes, all this junk has its roots in the Second Vatican Council, which declared:\n…[W]orship in common (communicatio in sacris) is not to be considered as a means to be used indiscriminately for the restoration of Christian unity. There are two main principles governing the practice of such common worship: first, the bearing witness to the unity of the Church, and second, the sharing in the means of grace. Witness to the unity of the Church very generally forbids common worship to Christians, but the grace to be had from it sometimes commends this practice. The course to be adopted, with due regard to all the circumstances of time, place, and persons, is to be decided by local episcopal authority, unless otherwise provided for by the Bishops’ Conference according to its statutes, or by the Holy See. (Vatican II, Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 8; underlining added.)\nSee! There is \"grace to be had from\" worshipping together with heretics, so why not preach at their prayer service? In fact, John Paul II's ecumenical Directory specifically allows Novus Ordos \"to take part in the psalms, responses, hymns and common actions of the Church in which they are guests. If invited by their hosts, they may read a lesson or preach\" (n. 118). So there you go! Just wait till they discover that there is \"grace to be had\" also from shared \"communion\", something Francis has already hinted at:\nAsked about communion for Lutherans, Francis says Yes, No, Maybe, and Don't-Ask-Me!\n\"Sharing the bread and the wine\": Francis commemorates Reformation with Lutherans in Sweden\nContrary to all this, in 1948 Pope Pius XII's Holy Office issued the canonical monitum Cum Compertum, warning the faithful against \"acts of mixed worship\", reminding them that \"any communication in sacred affairs is totally forbidden according to the norm of Canons 1258 and 731, § 2.\" How manifestly today's \"Catholic\" ecumenism differs from the true Catholic position maintained through the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, can be seen by reviewing these documents on the topic:\nPope Pius IX, Holy Office Letter to English Bishops on Christian Unity (1864)\nPope Pius IX, Holy Office Instruction to Puseyite Anglicans on True Religious Unity (1865)\nPope Pius IX, Apostolic Letter Iam Vos Omnes (1868)\nPope Leo XIII, Apostolic Letter to Archbishop Francis Satolli (1895)\nPope Leo XIII, Encyclical Satis Cognitum (1896)\nPope Pius XI, Encyclical Mortalium Animos (1928)\nPope Pius XII, Instruction Ecclesia Catholica on the Ecumenical Movement (1949)\nBut there we go again with those ashen pieces from the museum... Image source: shutterstock.com License: paid\n“Pope” Francis says he used to Preach at Presbyterian Church in Buenos Aires\nNo, he wasn’t calling on them to convert…\nYesterday, June 2, “Pope” Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) concluded his latest blather tour, which took him to the Eastern European nation of Romania. As always, he gave a press conference on the return flight to Rome, in which he made a number of outrageous and eyebrow-raising statements. Catholic News Agency has provided a full transcript in English, although one must say the translation leaves a bit to be desired:\nFull text of Francis’ in-flight press conference from Romania (June 3, 2019)\nThe false pope took the opportunity to engage in some cheap 1960s’ polemics against the traditionalists in his sect — the usual “museum” talk, but this time sprinkled with “ashes”:\nWhen I hear [Benedict XVI] speak, I become strong. I hear this history of the Church, which is not something like a museum, tradition. No, tradition is like a root which gives us the juice to grow and so you would become like roots, no! You flower, you grow, you give fruit, and you are the seeds that are the roots of the other. The tradition of the Church is always in motion.\nIn an interview made by Andrea Monda in L’Osservatore Romano a few days ago (do you read L’Osservatore Romano?) there was a situation of the musician Gustav Mahler that I liked so much. Speaking of tradition, he said that tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the keeper of ashes. It is not a museum. Tradition does not preserve ashes; the nostalgia of fundamentalists [is] to return to the ashes. No, tradition is the roots that guarantee the tree grows, flowers and gives fruit. I repeat with that piece by the Argentine poet I like so much: “All that the tree has in bloom comes from that which it has underground.”\nFrancis’ entire theology consists of metaphors, sentimental greeting-card platitudes, modern psychology, and Judeo-Marxist ideology. There is no sense in dignifying this contemptuous drivel with a reasoned response.\nFor a quick review of what Tradition actually is, let’s move beyond metaphors and slogans and turn to an actual definition:\nTRADITION (Lat. traditio, a giving-up, delivery). The sum of revealed doctrine which has not been committed to sacred Scripture (though it may have appeared in uninspired writing) but which has been handed down by a series of legitimate shepherds of the Church from age to age. As revelation it must have come to the Apostles directly from the lips of Christ or been handed down by the Apostles at the dictation of the Holy Ghost. More broadly the term is used for the sum of doctrine revealed either in Scripture or by word of mouth; so in 2 Thess. ii, 14: “Hold by the traditions you have learned, in word or in writing, from us.”\n(Donald Attwater, ed., A Catholic Dictionary, 3rd. ed. [New York, NY: Macmillan Co., 1958], s.v. “Tradition”)\nIronically, it is precisely the kind of theology that Francis subscribes to and promotes that has turned churches into mere museums — or worse — and confessionals into broom closets, as the people see no point in staying in the “Catholic Church” if it’s basically the Green Party at Prayer, and with bad liturgy to boot.\nThe most significant remarks in yesterday’s press conference, however, were probably Francis’ words on ecumenism. Drawing on a familiar theme, the Jesuit apostate said:\nI always have this idea: Ecumenism is not reaching the end of the game, of the discussion. Ecumenism is walking together, walking together, praying together… The ecumenism of prayer. In history, we have the ecumenism of blood. When they killed Christians they did not ask: Are you Catholic? Are you Orthodox? Are you Lutheran? No, [they asked] are you Christian! And the blood mixed together. It is the ecumenism of witness. Another ecumenism, of prayer, of blood… and then the ecumenism of the poor, those that work together. That we must work to help the sick, the inferm [sic], for example, the people that are a little at the margin, below the poverty line, to help. “Matthew 25” is a beautiful ecumenical program, it comes from Jesus. To walk together: this is already Christian unity, but do not wait for theologians to agree to arrive at communion. Communion happens every day with prayer, with the memory of our martyrs, with works of charity and even of loving one another.\nThere is so much wrong with this, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve talked about this before, so we won’t flesh it out too much, but this is just more of the same claptrap the world has been hearing for the last 50 years with nothing substantial (nothing good, that is) to show for it.\nWe recall how in early 2017, the Vatican’s official in charge of ecumenical relations, “Cardinal” Kurt Koch, had to admit that after all these decades of endless dialogue, the different parties are now at a point where they cannot even agree on why they’re dialoguing in the first place:\nBut, not to worry! Francis assures his hapless adherents that it’s not about the goal anyway — the way is the destination, you know. And besides, there’s that “ecumenism of blood”, you see, where “they” — notice he didn’t mention who! — don’t ask if the people they encounter are Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, or whatever. That’s true. They probably don’t ask if they’re “Christian” either, but only if they’re Muslim, followers of the religion of peace. And if not, off with their heads! Looks like Francis will soon discover an ecumenism with everyone who isn’t Muslim, including atheists, Zoroastrians, Jainists, Jews, Wiccans, Voodoo witchdoctors, Planned Parenthood and sodomy supporters, and so many more. Call it “dynamic ecumenism”! Yes, logic is a cruel thing when applied to the Vatican II religion.\nWe have exposed the heretical nature of Francis’ “ecumenism of blood” before:\nIt’s Heresy: Francis’ Ecumenism of Blood is more dangerous than ISIS\nAh, but there’s always the “ecumenism of the poor”, the “ecumenism of charity” and all that, right? Everyone walking and working together to help the needy — doesn’t it just sound so pretty? It sounds nice perhaps, but the Vatican has yet to explain what should be so incredibly pleasing to God about a Catholic handing out meals at the local soup kitchen together with a lesbian pro-abort Methodist pastor, rather than separated from her. Just saying.\nSo, no, Matthew 25 is most definitely not a “beautiful ecumenical program” from Christ. It is a mandate to practice the corporal works of mercy, not to hijack works of charity to promote the heresy of indifferentism and give an illusion of unity between Christ and the devil. It is the old Modernist Bergoglio who is reading ecumenism into it.\nAnd so Francis pretends that there is real and meaningful unity already in existence between Catholics and other “Christians” (they are properly called heretics, by the way, insofar as they adhere to heretical sects, regardless of whether they are personally guilty of the sin of heresy or not). For Bergoglio, actual unity of Faith, government, and worship — which can only be had in the Catholic Church — are mere accidents that are not that important because if one of “them” kills you and he doesn’t care if he kills a heretic or a Catholic, then what does the truth of Christ matter! That’s the stuff for “theologians” to worry about, a merely academic question, the theological equivalent of a squabble about proper punctuation in a bestseller. That must be why the Council of Florence taught:\nIt [the council] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock; and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only to those remaining in it are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.\n(Council of Florence, Decree Cantate Domino; Denz. 714)\nSo much for that ecumenism of blood — or of any other kind. But here we’re just quoting that old “museum”, so… move along, nothing to see here! The dynamic Frankster and his god of surprises have long moved on to a more “enlightened” age….\nThe Bergoglian words of wisdom continue, and now it gets really good (and a bad translation isn’t helping):\nIn one European city there is a good relationship between the Catholic archbishop and the Lutheran archbishop. [Once] the Catholic archbishop should have come to the Vatican Sunday evening and he called to say that he would arrive Monday morning. When he arrived he told me: “Sorry, but yesterday the Lutheran archbishop should have gone to one of their meetings and he asked me to please go to his cathedral and lead the worship.” This is fraternity, to arrive to this much… and the Catholic bishop held the service. He did not do the Eucharist, but the service. This is…\nWhen I was in Buenos Aires I was invited by the [Presbyterian] Scottish Church to preach a few times, and I went there to hold the service… you can walk together… unity, brotherhood, outstretched hand, be careful not to talk about others. We all have faults, everyone, if we walk together we leave faults aside, the criticisms of a scapegoater [zitellone].\n(underlining added)\nThe translation provided by Catholic News Agency is not quite accurate here, although what remains after correction is still absurd enough.\nAssuming that the original Italian provided by the Vatican is a faithful transcription of Francis’ words, we have to say that what Catholic News Agency has rendered as “hold the service”, etc., actually merely talks about preaching, that is, delivering the sermon.\nAlthough the unnamed “Catholic bishop” was invited by the Lutheran minister to lead the service, he “only” gave the sermon: “E la predica l’ha fatta il cattolico. Non ha fatto l’Eucaristia, ma la predica sì.” With regard to what he himself did in his Buenos Aires days, Bergoglio actually said: “I used to go there and deliver the sermon” — “andavo lì, facevo la predica”.\nIn any case, they might as well have gone to lead the entire heretical service, with or without a “Eucharist”. That would have been merely a difference in degree, not in kind. By giving the sermon as part of a heretical worship service, addressing a heretical congregation as a substitute for the usual minister, the line into the forbidden territory of false worship and mortal sin has already been crossed. It’s good to know that Francis admits having done such a thing himself, not once but “a few times”.\nThe “Scottish Church” or “Church of Scotland”, by the way, is a Presbyterian sect. The Calvinist temple in Buenos Aires at which then-“Archbishop” Bergoglio engaged in his ecumenical stint is presumably the Iglesia Presbiteriana San Andrés del Centro.\nAnd now we know why Francis had no problem allowing an Anglican service to be held at St. Peter’s Basilica — perhaps we should be grateful that he didn’t preach during it:\nHey, Novus Ordo mess or Anglican worship service — what’s the difference anyway?! (Alright, he’s got a point there; but to the true Catholic Mass there is no comparison.)\nAll this is really just the logical consequence of the principles of Vatican II ecumenism. Keep in mind that, according to Novus Ordo church law promulgated by the “authority” of John Paul II in 1983, 1990, and 1993, non-Catholics are permitted to receive Novus Ordo sacraments under certain conditions outside the danger of death and without converting beforehand, and it is permissible for them to use Catholic churches for their own heretical worship if they have a genuine “need” to do so. Novus Ordo bishops are even permitted to allow the Protestants to use Catholic liturgical items if they cannot use their own. Remember?\nCatholic churches are consecrated or blessed buildings which have an important theological and liturgical significance for the Catholic community. They are therefore generally [!] reserved for Catholic worship. However, if priests, ministers or communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church do not have a place or the liturgical objects necessary for celebrating worthily their religious ceremonies, the diocesan Bishop may allow them the use of a church or a Catholic building and also lend them what may be necessary for their services. Under similar circumstances, permission may be given to them for interment or for the celebration of services at Catholic cemeteries.\n(Antipope John Paul II, Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms of Ecumenism, n. 137)\n…[W]orship in common (communicatio in sacris) is not to be considered as a means to be used indiscriminately for the restoration of Christian unity. There are two main principles governing the practice of such common worship: first, the bearing witness to the unity of the Church, and second, the sharing in the means of grace. Witness to the unity of the Church very generally forbids common worship to Christians, but the grace to be had from it sometimes commends this practice. The course to be adopted, with due regard to all the circumstances of time, place, and persons, is to be decided by local episcopal authority, unless otherwise provided for by the Bishops’ Conference according to its statutes, or by the Holy See.\n(Vatican II, Decree on Ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio, n. 8; underlining added.)\nSee! There is “grace to be had from” worshipping together with heretics, so why not preach at their prayer service? In fact, John Paul II’s ecumenical Directory specifically allows Novus Ordos “to take part in the psalms, responses, hymns and common actions of the Church in which they are guests. If invited by their hosts, they may read a lesson or preach” (n. 118). So there you go! Just wait till they discover that there is “grace to be had” also from shared “communion”, something Francis has already hinted at:\nAsked about communion for Lutherans, Francis says Yes, No, Maybe, and Don’t-Ask-Me!\n“Sharing the bread and the wine”: Francis commemorates Reformation with Lutherans in Sweden\nContrary to all this, in 1948 Pope Pius XII’s Holy Office issued the canonical monitum Cum Compertum, warning the faithful against “acts of mixed worship”, reminding them that “any communication in sacred affairs is totally forbidden according to the norm of Canons 1258 and 731, § 2.”\nHow manifestly today’s “Catholic” ecumenism differs from the true Catholic position maintained through the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, can be seen by reviewing these documents on the topic:\nBut there we go again with those ashen pieces from the museum…\nImage source: shutterstock.com\nin Novus Ordo Wire Ecumenism, Francis, Heresy, Indifferentism, John Paul II, Vatican II\t0\nBuilding the City of God AND...\nThe Interreligious Dialogue...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line776804"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9695917367935181,"wiki_prob":0.9695917367935181,"text":"My Clerkenwell\nElectric Avenues | Trams of London\nA century ago, trams were a familiar site in Clerkenwell, trundling up and down Farringdon Road and other busy streets in the area.\nLondon then had the largest\u0018 tram network in Europe. Bef Yigezu, of Islington Local Hi\u0018story Centre, looks back\u0017 at a bygone age of commuting in EC1. Victorian London experienced massive growth in its population, so the development of public transport was crucial to enable the city to expand outwards to the suburbs. A horse tram could seat up to 50 passengers, double that of omnibuses. Such a significant increase in efficiency helped lower costs, reduced fares and made trams accessible to lower-income groups.\nThe first tramways initially faced stiff opposition from affluent areas. The City of London and the West End never permi\u001btted lines to be built. Trams did not appeal to the middle classes because of the association with working-class commuters. However, the system got a major boost when Parliament passed the Tramways Act (1870) permi\u001btting tram services on the condition that rails were sunken into the carriageway and tramways were shared with other road users. The London County Council (LCC), formed in 1889, realised the importance of reasonably priced fares as a means to improve labour movement.\nThe two companies operating in the Clerkenwell and Finsbury areas, London Street Tramways and North Metropolitan Tramways, sold their networks to the LCC in 1896.\nRosebery Avenue was one of the first tramways to be powered by electricity\nTramways in Clerkenwell began to operate a horse-tram service from Islington Green to Ropemaker Street in 1871. It was run by North Metropolitan Tramways. Two years later it also introduced services along Old Street and Goswell Road from Angel. In 1885 a rival company, London Street Tramways, launched services along Farringdon Road and, later, Gray’s Inn Road. They would go on to provide a regular service between Caledonian Road and Clerkenwell. In this period of poor literacy, each service was allocated a diff erent colour for its livery to help passengers identify the service. Tickets for the fare were colour-coded, each denoting the price.\nElectrification started in 1906. Power to the trams was received from conductor rails beneath the road by means of a device (known as a plough) a\u001b ached to the tram. Rosebery Avenue was one of the first streets to be powered by this method in London. In 1907, Clerkenwell Road, Goswell Road and Old Street were electrified, with St John Street converting the following year. In 1913 the number 17 route was introduced to the Farringdon area. It ran between Highgate and Farringdon Street by way of King’s Cross and Farringdon Road. The southern terminus for this route was located at the corner of Cowcross and Farringdon streets.\nMany routes were disrupted by air raids during the First World War. Bombs dropped by Zeppelin airships in 1915 and, later, German heavy bombers during 1917 halted services while tracks were cleared and repaired. Tram services continued throughout the war. However, as men working on the capital’s tramways le\u001a their jobs to fight overseas, they were replaced by women, many of whom worked as conductors for the first time. Following the end of World War I, expansion of the tramways continued to a point where London boasted the largest tram network in post-war Europe.\nThe first trams were open-top decks, with ornate iron scrollwork and staircases. Their liveries reflected the stage-coach tradition of the Victorian period with bright and vibrant colours. Tram designs later became more functional. Just like today’s buses the tramcars were covered with advertisements. A typical double-decker tram was 10.4 metres in length and the vehicle had a large headlight above the driver’s position.\nTrams had an average speed of 10.5 mph, although they could reach 20 mph on straight stretches. One downside of trams was the noise caused by the electronic motors, ra\u001bttling of the bodywork and squealing of the wheels on bends. Trams were also fitted with a loud warning gong.\nBy the mid-1930s, the dominance of the trams was being challenged by a newer technology – trolley buses. These electric buses, powered by overhead wires, were quieter, less dangerous to other road users and more efficient. Farringdon Road’s route 17 trams were replaced by trolleybuses on 6 March 1938, becoming routes 517 and 617. Tram route 55 along Clerkenwell Road and Old Street became trolleybus route 555 in June 1939.\nBy the Second World War, most tramways had been replaced with the new buses and only south London and routes that went through the Kingsway subway into north London survived. Trolley and diesel buses gradually replaced trams and, in July 1952, London's last tram was retired. It was the end of the line for Clerkenwell’s 80-year partnership with the tram.\nIslington Museum is at 245 St John Street, EC1V 4NB. Open 10am-5pm (closed Wednesday and Sunday). The latest exhibition is about poet and publisher John La Rose and the history\u001eof Trinidad (until 29 August).\nwww.islington.gov.uk\nJOURNEY PLANNER - These tram routes were once familiar to Clerkenwell commuters\n13 - Highgate to Aldersgate via Goswell Road\n15 - Highbury Station to Tooley Street via Angel and Rosebery Avenue\n17 - Highgate to Farringdon Street via Farringdon Road 35 - Highgate to Elephant and Castle via Rosebery Avenue\n37 - Manor House to Aldersgate via Angel\n51 - Muswell Hill to Aldersgate via Goswell Road\n55 - Leyton Station to Bloomsbury via Old Street and Clerkenwell Road\n79 - Waltham Cross to Smithfield via St John Street\nRestaurant Review: The Coach\nThe pub formerly known as The Coach & Horses has been taken over by Henry Harris and James McCulloch, an excellent chef and excellent publican.\nA local recommends...\nGeraud Pfeiffer has lived in the area for nearly 10 years and knows a thing or two about where to make merry...\nKnoll UK Sample Sale\nFor one day only, on Saturday 17 November at 10:00am, Knoll UK opens its doors for its annual Sample Sale.\nJobs with Media 10\nMedia 10 Ltd\n© Copyright 2020 Media 10 Ltd","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1496250"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7406501173973083,"wiki_prob":0.7406501173973083,"text":"Thriller Anime\nSort by: premiere datecountdownpopularitytitle\nRomaji titlesEnglish titles\nNo anime have been associated with this tag.\nCloverWorks\nJan 11, 2019 at 12:55am JST\n12 eps × 22 min\n※ NOTE: First episode premiered on streaming services ahead of regular broadcasting\nEmma, Norman and Ray are the brightest kids at the Grace Field House orphanage. And under the care of the woman they refer to as \"Mom,\" all the kids have enjoyed a comfortable life. Good food, clean clothes and the perfect environment to learn - what more could an orphan ask for? One day, though, Emma and Norman uncover the dark truth of the outside world they are forbidden from seeing.\n[Source: VIZ]\nApr 4, 2016 at 1:05am JST\nNatsuki Subaru, an ordinary high school student, encounters a beautiful silver-haired girl from another world. Subaru wants to stay by her side and help her, but the burden she carries is far beyond anything Subaru imagined. They're faced with one attacking monster after another, betrayal, irrational violence... and finally death. Subaru doesn't want to see her get hurt, so he vows to take down any enemy, any fate that comes his way, to protect her. And so this powerless boy obtains \"Return by Death,\" a unique ability that allows him to turn back time by dying. It becomes the potential to guide all people to a world where everyone can always be smiling, dependent on Subaru's life and loneliness. By using his power, the past can be lost, and memories can be rewritten. Subaru must now fight the fate that dooms him to keep all those forgotten memories hidden within, to be perpetually beaten, to see his own heart wearing down, to wager his life... all to protect the people he cares about. To get back the precious times that he's sure must have happened.\n\"Even if you forget me, I will never forget you.\"\n[Source: Crunchyroll]\nApr 12, 2018 at 1:00am JST\nAn alternate ending to Steins;Gate that leads with the eccentric mad scientist Okabe, struggling to recover from a failed attempt at rescuing Kurisu. He decides to give up and abandons his lively scientist alter ego, in pursuit to forget the past. When all seems to be normal, he is seemingly pulled back into the past by meeting an acquaintance of Kurisu, who tells him that they have begun testing a device that stores the memory of a human and creates a simulation of them with their characteristics and personalities. Okabe begins testing and finds out that the simulation of Kurisu has brought back anguish and some new unexpected tragedies...\n[Source: MyAnimeList]\nJ.C.Staff\nJul 6, 2018 at 8:30pm JST\n13-year old Rachel awakens to find herself trapped in the basement of an abandoned building. Without any memories, or even a clue as to where she could be, she wanders the building, lost and dizzy. In her search, she comes across a man covered in bandages. He introduces himself as Zack and he wields a grim-reaper like sickle.\nA strange bond is struck between them, strengthened by strange, crazy promises…\nThese two, trapped in this strange building, don't know why fate has placed them there. But they will work together desperately to find a way out…\n[Source: Baka-Updates Manga; emended]\nOct 4, 2006 at 12:56am JST\nBored with his deteriorating world and the laconic way of his fellows, shinigami Ryuuk drops his Death Note on Earth and watches to see if it stirs up anything interesting. His plan succeeds beyond his wildest expectations when the Death Note is found by brilliant high school senior Light Yagami, who is also bored with a world he considers rotten. Although initially he regards the book as a prank, Light soon discovers, through experimentation, that the book's claim is true: picture a person in your mind as you write the person's name in the Death Note, and that person dies 40 seconds later of of a heart attack (although a different time frame and manner of death can be specified). Armed with that power, Light sets out on a quest he sees as noble: make the world a better place by eliminating all its criminals using the Death Note. Soon cast as the mysterious \"Kira\" (a Japanese pronunciation of the English \"killer\") in the media and on the Internet, some take exception to his playing god, most notably the police and the enigmatic master detective L, who resolves to do everything in his power to stop Kira. Light counters by doing everything in his power to prevent people from identifying or interfering with him, even if that means getting rid of people investigating him.\n[Source: AniDB]\nMirai Nikki (TV)\nAsread\nOct 9, 2011 at 11:00pm JST\nThis psychological thriller, based on the manga written and illustrated by Sakae Esuno, is about Yuki, a loner who's not very good with people. He prefers to write a diary on his cell phone and talk to his imaginary friend, Deus Ex Machina – The God of Time and Space. However, Yuki soon learns that Deus is more than a figment of his imagination when he makes Yuki participate in a battle royale with eleven others. The contestants are given special diaries that can predict the future, each diary possessing unique features that give it both advantages and disadvantages. Within the next 90 days, the contestants must try to survive until there is only one left standing. The winner will become the new God of Time and Space.\n[Source: FUNimation]\nRe:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season\n? eps × ? min\nNo synopsis has been added to this title.\nApr 3, 2011 at 10:00pm JST\nThe eccentric mad scientist Okabe, his childhood friend Mayuri, and the otaku hacker Daru have banded together to form the \"Future Gadget Research Laboratory,\" and spend their days in a ramshackle laboratory hanging out and occasionally attempting to invent incredible futuristic gadgets. However, their claymore is a hydrator and their hair dryer flips breakers, and the only invention that's even remotely interesting is their Phone Microwave, which transforms bananas into oozing green gel. But when an experiment goes awry, the gang discovers that the Phone Microwave can also send text messages to the past. And what's more, the words they send can affect the flow of time and have unforeseen, far-reaching consequences—consequences that Okabe may not be able to handle...\n[Source: Anime Planet]\nEP4: Jan 22 at 10:30pm JST\nJan 1, 2020 at 10:30pm JST\n※ NOTE: \"New edition\" that edits the first season into one-hour episodes with new cuts of animation leading up to the second season in April.\nBy dying, a powerless boy obtained the ability \"Return by Death,\" allowing him to go back in time upon death.\nNatsuki Subaru was abruptly summoned to another world on his way home from the convenience store one night. In this new world where he had nothing and no one to turn to, the one power he gained was \"Return by Death,\" the ability to turn back time upon his own death. To protect those he holds dear, and to take back irreplaceable moments in time, he fights despair as he confronts his cruel fate.\nP.A. Works\nJan 11, 2012 at 1:00am JST\nWhen Kouichi Sakakibara transfers to his new school, he can sense something frightening in the atmosphere of his new class, a secret none of them will talk about. At the center is the beautiful girl Mei Misaki. Kouichi is immediately drawn to her mysterious aura, but then he begins to realize that no one else in the class is aware of her presence.\n[Source: Anime News Network]\nJan 7, 2011 at 1:25am JST\nAfter experiencing a bizarre dream, Madoka Kaname, a kind 14-year-old girl, encounters a magical creature named Kyube. Madoka and her friend Sayaka Miki are offered the opportunity of gaining magical powers if they agree to make a contract with the strange little being. He will also grant them one wish, but in exchange they shall risk their lives by accepting the responsibility of fighting witches. Invisible to human eyes, witches are catalysts of despair in the areas they inhabit. An ally of Kyube, a magical girl named Mami Tomoe, befriends and encourages the two girls to accept the contract. For an unknown reason, another magical girl named Homura Akemi is determined to prevent Madoka from accepting the deal.\nJul 11, 2014 at 12:50am JST\nOn a summer day…\nA massive terrorist bombing suddenly struck Tokyo.\nThe culprits behind the act that woke up this complacent nation from its slumber, were just two boys.\nNow, the culprits known as \"Sphinx\" begin a grandiose game that encompasses all of Japan.\nYakusoku no Neverland 2nd Season\nHigashi no Eden\nProduction I.G\nApr 10, 2009 at 12:45am JST\nOn November 22, 2010 ten missiles strike Japan. However, this unprecedented terrorist act, later to be called \"Careless Monday\", does not result in any apparent victims, and is soon forgotten. Then, three months later... Morimi Saki, a young woman currently in the United States of America on her graduation trip, gets into trouble in front of the White House in Washington DC, and only the unexpected intervention of a fellow countryman saves her. However, this man, who introduces himself as Takizawa Akira, is a complete mystery. He appears to have lost his memory and he is stark naked, except for the gun he holds in one hand, and a mobile phone in the other. A phone that is charged with 8,200,000,000 yen in digital cash.\nC: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control\nTatsunoko Production\nThe Japanese government was rescued from the brink of financial collapse by the Sovereign Wealth Fund. For its citizens, however, life has not improved and unemployment, crime, suicide, and despair are rampant. Kimimaro, raised by his maternal aunt after the disappearance of his father and the death of his mother, is a scholarship student whose only dream is to live a stable, ordinary life. One day he meets a man who offers him a large sum of money if he will allow his \"future\" to be held as collateral. From then on his fate is radically altered as he's drawn into a mysterious realm known as the Financial District, where he must compete in weekly tournaments called \"deals\" in order to keep his money and avoid losing his future.\nDaume\nJul 9, 2010 at 1:15am JST\nSotobamura is a small village with around 1300 residents; so small the village isn't even connected to a single highway. An isolated village in which old customs, such as the burial of the dead, are still practiced. One day, the bodies of three people are found dead. Although Ozaki Toshio, the village's lone doctor, feels uncertain, he treats the deaths as a normal occurrence. However, in the days following, the villagers start to die one after the other.\nStudio Deen\nMaebara Keiichi, a young teenager, has recently moved from the city to the rural village of Hinamizawa with his family. He is adjusting quite well to his new life, making friends at the small school, playing games, passing time in relative happiness, when suddenly a gruesome murder occurs...\nA mystery begins to unravel — tracing back to events five years ago. As Keiichi learns more about these strange events, he wonders if he will be able to face the truth behind all of this.\nPsycho-Pass Extended Edition\nJul 10, 2014 at 1:40am JST\nEdited rebroadcast of Psycho-Pass with new scenes.\nHigurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai\nSounds of cicadas can be heard in the late evening, in the village of Hinamizawa — with a population of 2000 souls. And even though the village may seem normal at first glance, the villagers try to hide a horrible secret from newcomers: The curse of Oyashiro-sama. Unusual murders have been occurring ever since the dam construction plan. Is this a coincidence or part of a sinister plan unfolding?\nBee Train\nIn the American underworld, Mafia leaders are being killed one after another, with rumours of Inferno and the organisation's top assasssin Phantom circulating around them. A boy, traveling alone in America becomes involved in one of these incidents and unexpectedly encounters Phantom.\nGa-Rei: Zero\nAIC Spirits\n※ NOTE: The chronological order of episodes is 3-9, 1-2, and 10-12\nWill you kill someone you love because of love?\nAn elite squadron trained to combat supernatural forces is called in to investigate reports of invisible monsters terrorising Tokyo, but their mission is complicated by the interference of a rogue exorcist. When the mysterious female slaughters the outmatched attack force, her former comrades are ordered to lock down the crime scene — and forever silence their old friend.\nApr 7, 2004 at 12:40am JST\nDr. Tenma Kenzou is a very talented Japanese doctor and he's praised by all doctors in Germany. But after he saw how a woman cried for her man who died because someone else got more priority, he changed. He decides he wouldn't let anyone pass; everyone is equal.\nBut one day, Tenma has to work on a little boy who was shot during the murder of his parents. He decides he will save the life of the boy, because he was first in line.\nBut then, the children disappear... and the murders begin. Tenma, feeling both guilt and worry, goes off to investigate the case since he feels that it somehow relates to him... and the horror begins, for both Tenma and everyone he meets in search for the children...\nHigurashi no Naku Koro ni (New Project)\nAirdate TBA\nMousou Dairinin\nFeb 3, 2004 at 12:00am JST\nMousou Dairinin is about a social phenomenon in Musashino, Tokyo caused by a juvenile serial assailant named Lil' Slugger (Shounen Bat, or Bat Boy in the original Japanese version). The plot relays between a large cast of people affected in some way by the phenomenon; usually Shounen Bat's victims or the detectives assigned to apprehend him. As each character becomes the focus of the story, details are revealed about their secret lives and the truth about Shounen Bat.\nAround 10 years after World War II, a group of delinquents are sent to the Shounan Special Reform School. Upon arrival they meet Sakuragi Ryouta who becomes their guide to adulthood. Depending on each other to survive the brutal conditions at the facility they make a promise to one day all meet up on the outside.\nEP3: Jan 19 at 12:00am JST\nJan 5, 2020 at 12:00am JST\n? eps × 24 min\nIn exchange for the fulfillment of a wish, Magical Girls keep fighting, unbeknownst to the rest of the world. But Iroha Tamaki can't seem to remember her wish. “When I became a Magical Girl, what did I wish for again?” There is a gaping hole in her life. Something important has been lost. But she continues to fight every day, without even knowing why… Then, a rumor begins to spread among Magical Girls. “Magical Girls can be saved if they go to Kamihama.” Kamihama City, the city where Magical Girls and Uwasa are gathering. The story of Iroha Tamaki, in search of her lost wish, begins…\nWEB11: Jan 20 at 10:00pm JST\nREVOROOT\nZen Seizaki, a public prosecutor at Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, is investigating a case of illegal clinical research related to a drug company and a university. During the investigation, he finds a file that Shin Inaba, an anesthesiologist, kept, which includes blood that is mixed with hair, skin, and a paper written with letter F. As he investigates, he realized there's a hidden plot that is connected with a huge election as well as to a certain person who is in charge of it.\n[Source: MAL News]\nGyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor\nOct 3, 2007 at 1:54am JST\nItou Kaiji is a bum who steals car emblems and slashes tires on a regular basis. However, one day, this routine changes when a man in a trench coat pays him a visit. The man reveals himself as Endou, a debt collector, who has come to claim an unpaid loan of 300,000 yen, which Kaiji had previously co-signed with his co-worker, Furuhata Takeshi.\nBecause of Takeshi's disappearance, Kaiji is left with an overwhelming balance, but is given the chance to gamble against other bankrupt bums aboard a boat — each gambler is loaned additional money, giving them a chance to pay their dues or become in even deeper debt.\nKaiji accepts the challenge in hopes of repaying the compounded debt of 3,850,000 yen and, with luck, winning additional cash...\nIn a world where a social game called The Magical Girl Raising Project allows one in tens of thousands of people to be a \"magical girl\" — possessing extraordinary physical capabilities and looks, as well as special magical powers that set them apart from the rest of the human race. But one day, in a district containing 16 magical girls, the administration announces that it must halve the number of magical girls to solve the problem of magical energy. At first, the 16 magical girls race to collect more \"magical candy\" than their competitors, but the rules quickly become twisted, and it quickly becomes a murderous battle for survival among them.\nAoi Bungaku Series\nOct 11, 2009 at 1:50am JST\nThe series consists of adaptations of six modern classics of Japanese literature: Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) & Run, Melos! (Hashire, Melos!), Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Hell Screen (Jigoku Hen) & The Spider's Thread (Kumo no Ito), and Ango Sakaguchi's In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom (Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita).\nNo Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku) - A high school student becomes lost and alienated. Despondent and aimless, he falls into a cycle of self abuse, depression and drugs that taints his life for years. Told in four chapters, each chapter deals with a different point in his life and the final chapter leaves him standing alone - an empty and hollow caricature of his former self.\nIn the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom (Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita) - A love story between a 12th-century woman and a mountain bandit who abducts her.\nKokoro - A 1914 tale of a young man's life journey during the Meiji era. The work deals with the transition from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era, by exploring the friendship between a young man and an older man he calls \"Sensei\". It continues the theme of isolation developed in Soseki's previous works, here in the context of interwoven strands of egoism and guilt, as opposed to shame.\nRun, Melos! (Hashire, Melos!) - An updated retelling of a classic Greek tale of the story of Damon and Phidias. The most prominent theme of \"Run, Melos!\" is unwavering friendship. Despite facing hardships, the protagonist Melos does his best to save his friend's life, and in the end his efforts are rewarded.\nThe Spider's Thread (Kumo no Ito) - The Buddha Shakyamuni chances to notice a cold-hearted criminal suffering in Hell. But this criminal did perform one single act of kindness in not stepping on a spider in a forest. Moved by this selfless act, Shakyamuni takes the silvery thread of a spider in Paradise and lowers it down into Hell, but it falls upon the criminal to seize the opportunity and pull himself out - if he can.\nHell Screen (Jigoku Hen) - A famous artist is commissioned by a great lord to create a series of paintings depicting scenes of the \"Buddhist Hell.\" The artist is unable to paint scenes that he has not seen himself, prompting him to torture and torment the Lord's staff to create his imagined images of hell. His creative efforts taint the household, as the story descends into madness and destruction.\nAlbert was a boy who had been born to a noble family in Paris. He made a journey to the moon with Franz to escape from their tedious lives. On the moon, he met a millionaire calling himself the Count of Monte Cristo.\nThe Count lived a life of splendour in a rich hotel, with beautiful women waiting on him and strong men guarding him. Albert was fascinated by this Count who seemed to know everything, and the two became friends. Albert eventually invited the Count to visit him in Paris.\nThe Count's past slowly resurfaces, to the greatest displeasure of everybody involved.\nGyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku Hen\nAfter the events at the Starside Hotel, Kaiji Itou finds himself living his miserable lifestyle once again. Captured by the Teiai group to which he owns a lot of money, he is thrown into an underground forced labor camp where he must pay off his debt by doing harsh manual work. Kaiji becomes desperate as it is expected that he lives in this hellhole for the next 15 years.\nJanuary 6, 2008 JST\nFumika and Kanaka are mail carriers- but not the typical kind. For one, Kanaka is a talking staff and for two, Fumika delivers shigofumi: letters from the dead addressed to the living. These letters are a final, true, communication derived from hate, hope, and love. The story unfolds following this pair and their uncommon job as well as Fumika's unique 'situation'.\nItou Junji: Collection\nThe works of one of the most famous Japanese horror manga artists, Junji Ito, finally gets animated! This will be an omnibus animation where each episode will star different protagonists such as the famous Tomie, Soichi, and Fuchi!\nTouhai Densetsu Akagi: Yami ni Maiorita Tensai\nOne stormy night, Nangou is playing a game of Mahjong with the local yakuza. Soon he finds himself on a losing streak where if he loses, he'll will have to pay with his life. Suddenly, a young teenaged boy named Akagi Shigeru barges in, drenched from the rain. After watching a couple of games, he offers to replace the struggling Nangou. At that moment, a new legend was born.\nMouryou no Hako\nOctober 8, 2008 JST\nThe story follows a series of bizarre murders of schoolgirls who have been dismembered and stuffed into boxes. The private investigator hired by a missing daughter's mother joins forces with an antique book seller and others to unravel the murder spree.\nShion no Ou\nOctober 14, 2007 JST\nShion no Ou follows the story of Yasuoka Shion, a 13-year-old Shougi player with a past of tragedy. Shion's parents were brutally murdered in front of her when she was 5 years old. The murderer sat down with her and challenged her to a game of Shougi, after telling her that if she wanted to stay alive she should forget how to speak, and forget what happened that night.\nNow Shion has entered the realm of female pro Kishi, mute but strong. As her playing gathers more and more attention, so do the questions about her past and the brutal murder she witnessed. Shion's memories slowly come back, and the mystery begins to unravel, thread by thread.\nNarutaru: Mukuro Naru Hoshi Tama Taru Ko\nJuly 7, 2003 JST\nDuring her summer holiday at her grandparents house Tamai Shiina, a young and cheerful schoolgirl, meets a strange looking creature. They befriend each other and Shiina names it \"Hoshimaru: The Round Star.\" When Shiina returns home after the summer to go back to school, she starts meeting other kids that also have befriended a strange creature like Hoshimaru. But she soon finds out that not all these creatures and their masters are as friendly as Hoshimaru.\nGolgo 13 (TV)\nThe Answer Studio\nGolgo 13 is not his real name. Then again, neither is Duke Togo, Tadashi Togo, or any number of the aliases he goes by. A man of mystery, not even the world’s most prominent intelligence agencies can determine who Golgo really is, or just where he came from. But all agree that his skills are nothing short of legendary.\nArmed with a custom M16, Golgo is willing to take any job for any agency, from the FBI to the KGB. He has completed every contract he has ever taken and will work for anyone who can meet his price. He is both the greatest weapon and the greatest threat to any nation; no one is safe once they are in Golgo’s sights.\nKarakurizoushi Ayatsuri Sakon\nOct 8, 1999 at 6:30pm JST\nThe dark-haired bishounen is Sakon Tachibana, a puppeteer, and the other is Ukon, his favorite puppet, and best friend. Sakon is the (only) grandson of Saemon Tachibana, a national treasure of Japan famous for his manipulation of Bunraku puppets. Ukon is a child doll puppet made in the early Meiji era by the famous female dollmaker Unosuke. Together they run into murders and solve them.\n[Source: AnimeNfo]\nKoroshiya-san: The Hired Gun\nOperaHouse\n4-koma Manga\n10 eps × 3 min\nThe story follows the title character, who is regarded by himself and others as the best hit man in Japan. He goes by the motto, \"If I have an assignment, I will kill anything.\" However, his \"killing\" assignments have expanded to include everything from summer vacation homework to housekeeping. \"The hit man never fails to kill the target. Though he does not aim to, he also never misses the laughter.\"\n[Source: Anime News Network; modified]\nMy rating 10 (Masterpiece)9 (Incredible)8 (Great)7 (Good)6 (Okay)5 (Mediocre)4 (Poor)3 (Bad)2 (Awful)1 (Atrocious)–\n{{#if loggedOut}} Log in or sign up to rate anime {{else if unmarked}} Add this anime to your library {{/if}}","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1135851"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.721154510974884,"wiki_prob":0.721154510974884,"text":"Windermere Lettings Office\nThe Windermere Lettings office is situated at the top of College Road as you enter the picuresque village of Windermere.\nThe office has been open since April 2007 and covers the area between Troutbeck Bridge & Newby Bridge. The dedicated rental office opened due to the rental market in the area being so vibrant and has seen a steady growth over the past 7 years.\nSarah McAlister\nLettings Manager\nColette Woodward\nWindermere, originally a small hamlet called Birthwaite, came to prominence with the completion of the railway link from Kendal in 1847. The railway terminated at Windermere to avoid the steep descent to the lakeside at Bowness and proved to be highly lucrative, bringing in 120,000 visitors in its first year, mainly from the industrial towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Horse-drawn carriages were laid on to ferry passengers to and from the station to the lakeside, whilst hotel-based charabancs (early motor coaches) took guests on local sightseeing excursions.\nUp to the 19th century, Bowness-on-Windermere was a fishing village. With the extension of the railway to Windermere and regular influxes of Victorian visitors, the commercial opportunities were soon realised. A host of hotels, villas and boarding houses rapidly sprang up to accommodate the tourists, all vying for a view of the lake. In 1869 the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway was built and linked to ferry services from Lakeside, cementing Bowness’s position as a fashionable day trip resort.\nMoving forward to more recent times, the Lake District was designated a national park in 1949, and more recently the county of Westmorland was forever removed from the map. Together with the moving of the Lancashire boarder in 1973 Cumberland and Westmorland became Cumbria and our local South Lakeland District Council was formed.\nThe village manages to retain many aspects for a community – schools, banks, petrol stations, supermarkets and post offices are all close by. There is of course a wealth of restaurants, shops and hotels to cater for everyone’s needs and every budget. Set close enough to the M6 motorway being less than 20 miles away and the gateway to the Southern Lakes, Windermere is well placed to take advantage of the breathtaking scenery, lakes, mountains and all the activities which this beautiful landscape can offer.\nSurrounding Windermere are the beautiful villages of:\nStaveley is a pretty village, surrounded by rolling countryside interspersed with valleys, woods and drystone walls. The bustling village nestles at the foot of the secluded Kentmere Valley. Its history is shaped by two rivers: the fast-flowing river Kent and the smaller river Gowan. This abundant supply of water once powered 8 mills. Today, Staveley Mill Yard, the former bobbin/wood mill, is home to over 20 small enterprises and workshops including the UK’s largest cycle store, a unique cookery school, Hawkshead Brewery, an ice-cream parlour, artisan bread maker and the famous walkers’ café, Wilfs.\nStaveley is a handy centre for walkers, with easy access to the fells, particularly the Kentmere Horseshoe. Craggy Wood, Longsleddle Woods, and Spring Hag are all within easy walking distance, while a 15 minute steep walk up Reston Scar provides spectacular views over the South Lakes. Nearby Dorothy Farrer’s Spring Wood is a nature reserve. In the past, the wood produced timber for bobbins, charcoal and basket making. Today, the wood is still coppiced, but managed for wildlife conservation instead.\nStaveley Carnival takes place every two years and consists of a weekend of colourful celebrations where you can experience everything from music and dance through to community arts music and a carnival atmosphere. Everyone is welcome to visit and get involved.\nThe mills at Staveley date back to 1341. At its high point, the wood mill employed around 200 workers.\nExcavations uncovered two Viking boats in Kentmere Tarn; one of which is in Kendal Museum, the other in the National Maritime Museum in London. St James Church has a magnificent stained glass window depicting the crucifixion and ascension of Jesus. Of the original church, only the 15th century tower remains, along with a medieval font.\nStaveley still retains all the services a village needs from shops, pubs, restaurants, a post office, petrol station and school.\nSet amidst the charm of the Lake District, close to the fringe of Windermere, this attractive village makes an inspiring choice from which to forage further into a magical heartland of the lakes, lofty towering peaks and lonely gorse clad moors.\nInterestingly, Backbarrow was the home of the famous ‘dolly blue bag’ dye, widely used by housewives in the twentieth century. There are many reminders in the area of the regions long tradition of association with the cotton and flax industries.\nThe village is set on the banks of the River Leven which for decades provided the source of power for the various industries in the Leven Valley. It is also close to the delightful heritage steam line, The Lakeside and Haverthwaite railway which runs through lovely scenery. Morecambe Bay is within easy driving distance and offers a pleasant, seaside alternative for those who tire of Lakeland grandeur.\nThe area is ideal for walking, climbing, water-sports, fishing and there is a wealth of interest for the botanist.\nTroutbeck\nThe Troutbeck valley lies mid-way between the towns of Windermere and Ambleside, cradled by the slopes of Wansfell and Applethwaite Common, following the Trout Beck (river) all the way down to the shores of Lake Windermere. Most of this area is grazing farmland and woods along the valley bottom, populated by a few scattered farms, cottages, larger houses, and the village of Troutbeck itself. Almost every building in the Troutbeck valley is over 100 years old, and many are over 300 years old. The whole Troutbeck valley lies within the Lake District National Park. Most of the village is a Conservation Area and there are many Listed and National Trust owned buildings.\nThe surrounding landscape is exquisite. The peaks of Yoke, Ill Bell, Froswick and Thornthwaite Crag rise steeply to over 2500 feet to dominate the head of the valley, and the Trout Beck runs through woods and farmland to plunge through steep ravines just before entering Lake Windermere at the foot of the valley.\nThe village of Troutbeck itself is really a collection of tiny hamlets strung out for about one and a half miles along the old valley road. It is a truly unique village, full of vernacular architecture in an unspoilt valley setting. It has three traditional pub/hotels, a well-used and recently refurbished village institute, one church, about six B&Bs, and a highly-regarded village shop and tearoom. The village shop is supplemented two days a week by a visiting post office service that provides vital services for many village residents.\nTroutbeck’s Shop, Tearoom and Village Institute are widely regarded as the heart of our village.\nWithin the whole of Troutbeck ward there are about 260 properties. In the most recent survey around the main village itself we counted 105 houses, of which 42 were second-homes or holiday cottages, and 63 were full-time residences, including 15 long-term rental homes. And in the Troutbeck valley there are 6 tenant farms – most owned by the National Trust. Several of our second-home owners have visited Troutbeck for decades and make an active contribution to our village community. But many are landlords renting their holiday homes to weekly visitors.\nAlthough highly popular with tourists, Troutbeck has no official car parks, and just one village shop and tearoom; many visitors arrive on foot via its network of footpaths and bridleways. Visitor attractions in the Troutbeck valley include seven hotels, one Youth Hostel, a National Trust Property at Townend, and a large caravan and holiday chalet park at Limefitt which dominates the riverbank opposite Jesus Church.\nTroutbeck is a wonderful place to live in, not just to visit.\nIngs\nIngs is a small village just a short distance on the A591 from the town of Windermere. The river Gowan meanders in the area. There are a number of country walks close by. A nearby caravan park provides holiday accommodation.\nThe local pub, the Watermill Inn, was awarded the Campaign for Real Ale Cumbria Pub of the in the past and has won numerous other awards.\nThe village church, St Anne, was built in 1743, and its architecture reflects the style of the time. Of note are the carvings of the reredos, pulpit, and lectern. The chancel floor is of Italian marble. It was funded by Robert Bateman, once a local, who became a wealthy merchant. The east window of the church represents the transfiguration.\nThis small village has a petrol station, a pub and the local secondary school. It lies between Windermere and Ambleside with Troutbeck being very close by. The houses in this village are a mix of old and new properties.\nThe Parish of Crosthwaite and Lyth lies 5 miles west of Kendal, 5 miles north of Grange-over-Sands and 3 miles south of Bowness-on-Windermere. The M6 motorway is 5 miles from the parish. Manchester Airport is 82 miles to the south.\nCrosthwaite derives its name from the old Scandinavian word, “thwaite”, meaning a clearing in a forest or a piece of land, which has been enclosed. This was blended with “Cross”, which may reflect the earlier Christian connections with the Irish or Angle missionaries of the sixth or seventh century. The Norsemen also gave the Lyth Valley its name; “hlith” means sloping hillside.\nThis quaint village once served as home to mill and industry workers; rows of cottages dating back to the 17th century still stand today. Crook is a quiet place set in rolling countryside with a village pub and with history and folklore, legends and tales.\nThere is a handful of roadside houses and the Holy Trinity Church, this was built in 1875 from stone quarried from an outcrop just across the road. Along the road there is Bryan Houses Farm, this used to be the home of Jonas Barber, a well-known maker of grandfather clocks, 300 years ago. Winster House is a fine looking Georgian house with a huge barn, prominent in the Winster landscape on the edge of a wood.\nClose to the village of Staveley, Kentmere is a small hamlet with farm buildings scattered on the hillsides. The river Kent flows through Kentmere and is the swiftest flowing river in the country, dropping 1000 feet in 25 miles and once provided the power for 90 mills around Kendal. For those really seeking the rural landscape Kentmere is a beautiful valley with dramatic views, only 4 miles from Staveley and yet it feels “in the middle of nowhere”.\nUnderbarrow takes its name from Helsington Barrow, a 700ft high limestone ridge that overlooks Kendal. It has an array of cottages, farms and modern bungalows. The Punchball at Underbarrow is the local public house which serves fine foods and ales.\n“Underbarrow and Bradley Field… This is the last division that remains to be spoken of in the parish of Kendal. Underbarrow hath its name from its situation under the barrow, hill, or scar, which extends from north to south all along in this division. That part which is called Bradley Field received its denomination from a family of the name of Bradley, which came from Bradley in Lancashire. There was an ancient chapel at this place [Underbarrow]. In the year 1708, this chapel was rebuilt at the expense of the inhabitants of Underbarrow only (for Bradley Field is not in the chapelry)”.\nA small village just north of Newby Bridge at the southern end of Lake Windermere and as the name suggests on the side of the Lake, well actually the eastern side to be precise. As small cluster of houses, the odd hotel and home to the aquarium of the lakes, the lakeside Pier for the steamers and the lakeside to Haverthwaite steam railway. A great base to explore the quieter side of the Lake with Grizedale forest, Satterthwaite and Hawkshead all a few miles north.\nThe starting point of the popular tourist attraction Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway, Haverthwaite is a small village located near the southern end of Windermere within the boundaries of the Lake District National Park.\nBowston\nBowston can be found about 4 miles north of Kendal, a small village beside the River Kent. Linking Windermere to Yorkshire, Bowston is located on the Dales Way, making it a popular destination for walkers.\nThe pretty Lakeland village of Bouth is about 2.5 miles away from the foot of Windermere and approximately 4-5 miles from the market town of Ulverston,. With easy access to the M6 via the A590 and yet a world away from the hustle and bustle of modern life!\nHigh & Low Cunsey\nThe beautiful hamlet of Cunsey enjoys a rural location on the western shores of Lake Windermere. 2 miles from the village of Sawrey made up of Near and Far, with Near Sawrey being famous for Hilltop, the pretty home of Beatrix Potter. Grizedale Forest is 10 minutes drive and the ferry link offers access to Bowness on Windermere.\nStaveley In Cartmel\nStaveley in Cartmel is a beautiful hamlet, close to Lake Windermere. The area around the lake is known as Fell Foot Park, which is a popular area for picnics. Historically the village lay in the county of Lancashire. The church of St Mary was built by 1618 and extended or restored in 1678, 1793 and 1896-97. The Lakeland Motor Museum is a short drive away.\nFinsthwaite is a small village and is located near the Furness fells and the busy tourist villae of Windermere. The lands around Finsthwaite offer excellent walk and the Stott Park Bobbin Mill is a local visitor attraction, the bobbin mill is fed by the waters of High Dam which is also a popular walk.\nCrosthwaite is a small vibrant village and offers plenty of community spirit and is located on the outskirts of the popular town of Kendal and is also a short drive away from the bustling Lakeland centre of Bowness On Windermere.\nBowland Bridge\nBowland Bridge is a small Lakeland hamlet set in the rolling countryside of the Lyth Valley, being within 10 minutes of the market town on Kendal and 3 miles from the shores of Lake Windermere, perfect for escaping the pressures of modern life. The historic Hare and Hounds Inn can be found at Bowland Bridge.\nContact the Windermere Lettings Office or call on: 015394 40060\nElleray Corner, College Road, Windermere, Cumbria, LA23 1BU\nSEE PROPERTIES FOR RENT\nSaturday 09:00 - 12.00\nViewings Available 7 Days a Week\nAmbleside Office\nArnside Office\nCarnforth Office\nGrange-Over-Sands Office\nKendal Office\nKeswick Office\nKirkby Lonsdale Office\nConveyancing (CGM)\nMortgages (PMC)\nMarketing, Support & more!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1436846"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9631348252296448,"wiki_prob":0.9631348252296448,"text":"FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2019, file photo, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert speaks at a news conference in Washington. The WNBA and its union announced a tentative eight-year labor deal Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020, that will allow top players to earn more than $500,000 while the average annual compensation for players will surpass six figures for the first time. I call it historic,\" WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a phone interview.\n(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)\nFILE - In this Friday, May 31, 2019, file photo, Los Angeles Sparks' Chiney Ogwumike (13), obscured at left, and her sister Nneka Ogwumike celebrate after a win over the Connecticut Sun in a WNBA basketball game in Los Angeles. The WNBA and its union announced a tentative eight-year labor deal Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2020, that will allow top players to earn more than $500,000 while the average annual compensation for players will surpass six figures for the first time. “It was collaborative effort,'\" WNBA players' union president Nneka Ogwumike said.\n(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)\nThe Associated Press — By DOUG FEINBERG - AP Basketball Writer\nThe contract, which begins this season and runs through 2027, will pay players an average of $130,000 and guarantees full salaries while on maternity leave. The collective bargaining agreement also provides enhanced family benefits, travel standards and other health and wellness improvements.\n“I call it historic,\" WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a phone interview. “The CBA guarantees substantial (financial) increases. The way we are paying these players is different than the past. ... The top couple players are tripling (in pay) where they were. Other players are making $200,000-300,000. The average will be over $130,000. Everyone gets an increase here.\"\nPrincipal deal points have been ratified by the players and the league's Board of Governors, and lawyers are finalizing the language. The deal calls for 50-50 revenue sharing starting in 2021, based on the league achieving revenue growth targets from broadcast agreements, marketing partnerships and licensing deals.\n“I was adamant on the 50-50 target,\" Engelbert said. “The league and players work together to market this league so we can share revenue with the players. We have to hit some targets.”\nThe salary cap will go up 31% to $1.3 million in the first year — up from $996,000 — and another $750,000 in prize money for special competitions arrives in 2021. Under this deal, the maximum base salary would increase to $215,000 from $117,500.\n“You can pay your stars. That's how the league grows,” Engelbert said.\nThis will be the fifth CBA for the WNBA, which launched in 1997. Like the last one, there is a mutual opt-out provision after six years.\nThe CBA also proposes a minimum of $1.6 million in offseason league and team marketing agreements that would create up to $300,000 in additional annual cash for select players.\nThe rookie scale for the Nos. 1-4 picks will rise to $68,000 — an increase of about $15,000 from this year — plus the ability to qualify for league-guaranteed money under the marketing agreement.\n“It was a collaborative effort,” WNBA players' union president Nneka Ogwumike said. “I think that we really all had the same things in mind and had different way of getting there. We really put our heads together and came up with some ideas.\"\nOgwumike said the labor pact provides more financial incentive for players to stay in the offseason instead of playing overseas. Former league MVP Breanna Stewart tore an Achilles tendon overseas last year and missed the entire WNBA season. Diana Taurasi sat out a season a few years ago because her Russian team was paying her more than $1 million and wanted her to rest.\n“This agreement is reflective of the game growing and the league growing and then the revenue share will grow,\" Ogwumike said. “Revenue sharing is putting your best foot forward.”\nEngelbert said the additional money needed to fund the CBA will come from a variety of sources.\n“Teams and owners are stepping up. The league is stepping up,\" said the commissioner, who started last July.\nShe also touted the new “Changemakers\" program, with key sponsors supporting the WNBA in its transformation across marketing, branding and player and fan experiences. AT&T, Nike and Deloitte are the inaugural three business partners.\n“We’re hoping to lift, not just women in sports and women in basketball, but women in society,” Engelbert said.\nThe league will also expand its schedule by a few games and add an in-season Commissioner's Cup tournament this year.\nThe WNBA also will work with the NBA and its developmental league and college basketball to promote players for coaching opportunities. Engelbert said players can get paid at the market rate even if the NBA franchise is affiliated with a WNBA team. This was an issue last year when Washington Mystics guard Kristi Toliver could earn only $10,000 as an assistant for the Wizards because of pay restrictions in the previous CBA.\nOther highlights of the CBA include:\n— Travel improvements where players are given premium economy airline tickets as well as individual rooms on road trips. In the past, players flew coach and some shared rooms.\n— A more liberal free agency system that allows players to become unrestricted free agents sooner beginning next year if they aren't given the “core” designation by their team. It also drops the number of times a player can be so designated from four to three beginning this year and down to two beginning in 2022.\n— Players receive their full salary while on maternity leave, are given two-bedroom apartments for players with children as well as workplace accommodations that provide privacy for nursing mothers.\n— The league is also introducing family planning benefits of up to a $60,000 reimbursement for veteran players for costs directly related to adoption, surrogacy and fertility treatment.\n— Enhanced mental health benefits and resources.\nFollow Doug Feinberg on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DougFeinberg","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1177247"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9227673411369324,"wiki_prob":0.9227673411369324,"text":"September 21, 2017 / 7:33 AM / 2 years ago\nGermany will strive to save Iran nuclear deal - Gabriel\nNEW YORK/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will do all it can to persuade the United States not to abandon the Iranian nuclear agreement, whatever the outcome of German elections on Sunday, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday.\nGerman Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel arrives to attend a meeting of the parties to the Iran nuclear deal during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 20, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz\nGabriel told reporters any U.S. move to cancel the Iran deal and impose new sanctions on Tehran would discourage powers such as North Korea from negotiating an end to their own nuclear programmes.\nGermany would work with the European Union, France, Britain and where possible China and Russia to press Washington to preserve the deal, under which Iran curbed its nuclear work in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, he said on the sidelines of a U.N. meeting in New York.\nChancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives are poised to win Sunday’s elections, but it remains unclear if Gabriel’s Social Democrats will play a role in the next coalition government. Gabriel said Germany would maintain its position on the Iran deal, regardless of which parties formed the next government.\nU.S. President Donald Trump has called the Iran deal “an embarrassment”, but Germany and other powers who also negotiated it with Iran fear its collapse could trigger a regional arms race.\nTrump must decide by Oct. 15 whether to certify that Iran is complying with the pact. If he does not, Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions waived under the accord.\n“Now we will all try to convince the Americans in the remaining weeks ... that calling the agreement into question will not increase security,” Gabriel said.\nThe United States said on Wednesday it was weighing whether the nuclear accord served its security interests. Iran said it did not expect Washington to abandon it.\nGabriel said Germany would have to consider whether to stick to the agreement even if Washington backed out, but said that could prove “very difficult”, given that the United States would immediately impose new sanctions against Iran.\nHe said Iran was complying with the deal but businesses had been reluctant to commit to investments and contracts out of concern that the United States could re-impose sanctions under the agreement’s “snapback provision”.\nGabriel said it was “tragic” that the only agreement aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons was being called into question.\nIn Berlin, German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said Germany, as one of Iran’s most important trading partners in Europe, had a “great interest” in preserving the agreement.\nGerman exports to Iran rose 23 percent to 1.4 billion euros in the first half of 2017.\nThe foreign minister said he accepted the U.S. position that Iran’s behaviour in the Middle East had not improved since the deal - but added there was no hope of it changing its ways if the accord fell.\nAny collapse would send a “terrible signal” for other diplomatic efforts. “What should motivate countries like North Korea or others to enter into negotiations in the future when the one example of such a deal is being destroyed?” he said.\nReporting by Andrea Shalal and Rene Wagner in Berlin; Editing by Andrew Roche","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line589379"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5477023720741272,"wiki_prob":0.4522976279258728,"text":"Store: German Items: M16 Leibstandarte SS Helmet\nGerman WW1 Leibstandarte Waffen SS Helmet : This is a genuine German WW1 M16 helmet repainted in apple green, then again repainted in satin black for the Leibstandarte Waffen SS. It has then further ageing and rusting applied to recreate a magnificent Leibstandarte SS parade helmet.\nThe Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (SS-LAH) founded in September 1933 was Adolf Hitler's personal Bodyguard Regiment (\"Leibstandarte\" being the German word for \"bodyguard\"). In 1939 the SS-LAH became a separate unit of the Waffen-SS aside the SS-TV and the SS-VT.\nThe SS-LAH independently participated in combat during the Invasion of Poland (1939). Elements of the SS-LAH later joined the SS-VT prior to Operation Barbarossa in 1941 and by the end of World War II they had been increased in size from a Regiment to a Panzer Division.\nThe Helmet: The helmet has been painted initially in pale apple green as the original WW1 helmets were. It has then been painted in satin black but the inside has been left apple green as the majority of the original helmets were, as the liners were covered up with newspapers during the spraying process. The SS were in short supply of helmets during the late 1930's and utilised WW1 Helmets extensively. This is known as a transitional helmet.\nThe liner is a replacement 1931 model and is also genuine adding the the value of the helmet. The chinstrap is an aged RZM SS Chinstrap's, suitably marked with runes and RZM stamp. The front rim fold has corroded slightly, adding to the authenticity! Genuine transitional helmets are $9000 upwards, if you can source one!\nIf you like Waffen SS Parade helmets then this very rare model is one for your collection! Full insurance is included in the postal charges.\n< Return to German Items >","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line203972"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7223436236381531,"wiki_prob":0.7223436236381531,"text":"Legendary pilot Charles Lindbergh's historic Connecticut estate is for sale\nIn 1927, Charles Lindbergh was celebrated worldwide after accomplishing the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in the airplane he helped design, The Spirit of St. Louis. His book, We, about the journey became a bestseller and Lindbergh received many prestigious honors including the Distinguished Flying Cross medal from President Calvin Coolidge. After his marriage to Anne Morrow Lindbergh in 1929, the couple teamed up to break the transcontinental speed record in a flight from Los Angeles to New York in just less than 15 hours, and traveled throughout the world promoting air travel and safety. The Lindberghs owned a waterfront home in Darien, Connecticut on Long Island Sound where they lived off and on until Charles died in 1974 and Anne in 2001. While living at the home, Anne wrote several best-selling books and Charles kept his seaplane moored in the cove off the front yard, convenient for day-trip flights. The Nantucket-style home and its large guest cottage, which they named Tellina, are now for sale, priced at $11.75 million and $6.3 million respectively.\nLocated in the upscale Tokeneke neighborhood on 1.77 waterfront acres with 635-feet of shoreline on a peninsula jutting into Scotts Cove in Long Island Sound, the 5,663-square-foot, six-bedroom, six-bath home was built in 1919 with large arched glass doors and windows to bring the extensive water views inside. There is a large kitchen with breakfast room, dining room and fireplace in the living room. Grounds contain two garages with the capacity for five cars and a dock with space for two boats along with the option to drop additional moorings. Additional outdoor structures include waterside pergolas and terraces for entertaining and both open and covered porches. The adjacent waterfront guest cottage with 1,100-feet of shoreline, named Tellina by the Lindberghs, is also for sale, either with the house or separately. It is on 2.84 acres, is 1,529 square feet, has four bedrooms, three baths and was built in 1936. The landscape was originally designed by the Washington, DC-based Oehme, van Sweden, responsible for the landscaping at the Federal Reserve, World War II Memorial and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Both main and guest homes have mature gardens, rock walls and open lawns with unobstructed views of the cove and beach landscape.\nThe Long Island Sound home of historic aviators and celebrities Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh is for sale. The main house is priced at $11.75 million and the guest house priced at $6.3 million. Listing agents are Julie Bauer and Anika Charron of William Pitt Sotheby’s in Darien, Connecticut.\nThis story originally appeared on TopTenRealEstateDeals.com.\nPhoto credit: Sotheby's/TopTenRealEstateDeals.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line211582"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.616136372089386,"wiki_prob":0.616136372089386,"text":"Home > Laws > 2017 Florida Statutes > Title XVIII > Chapter 259 > Section 105\nTitle XVIII PUBLIC LANDS AND PROPERTY\nChapter 259 LAND ACQUISITIONS FOR CONSERVATION OR RECREATION Entire Chapter\nThe Florida Forever Act.\n259.105 The Florida Forever Act.—\n(1) This section may be cited as the “Florida Forever Act.”\n(2)(a) The Legislature finds and declares that:\n1. Land acquisition programs have provided tremendous financial resources for purchasing environmentally significant lands to protect those lands from imminent development or alteration, thereby ensuring present and future generations’ access to important waterways, open spaces, and recreation and conservation lands.\n2. The continued alteration and development of the state’s natural and rural areas to accommodate the state’s growing population have contributed to the degradation of water resources, the fragmentation and destruction of wildlife habitats, the loss of outdoor recreation space, and the diminishment of wetlands, forests, working landscapes, and coastal open space.\n3. The potential development of the state’s remaining natural areas and escalation of land values require government efforts to restore, bring under public protection, or acquire lands and water areas to preserve the state’s essential ecological functions and invaluable quality of life.\n4. It is essential to protect the state’s ecosystems by promoting a more efficient use of land, to ensure opportunities for viable agricultural activities on working lands, and to promote vital rural and urban communities that support and produce development patterns consistent with natural resource protection.\n5. The state’s groundwater, surface waters, and springs are under tremendous pressure due to population growth and economic expansion and require special protection and restoration efforts, including the protection of uplands and springsheds that provide vital recharge to aquifer systems and are critical to the protection of water quality and water quantity of the aquifers and springs. To ensure that sufficient quantities of water are available to meet the current and future needs of the natural systems and citizens of the state, and assist in achieving the planning goals of the department and the water management districts, water resource development projects on public lands, if compatible with the resource values of and management objectives for the lands, are appropriate.\n6. The needs of urban, suburban, and small communities in the state for high-quality outdoor recreational opportunities, greenways, trails, and open space have not been fully met by previous acquisition programs. Through such programs as the Florida Communities Trust and the Florida Recreation Development Assistance Program, the state shall place additional emphasis on acquiring, protecting, preserving, and restoring open space, ecological greenways, and recreation properties within urban, suburban, and rural areas where pristine natural communities or water bodies no longer exist because of the proximity of developed property.\n7. Many of the state’s unique ecosystems, such as the Florida Everglades, are facing ecological collapse due to the state’s burgeoning population growth and other economic activities. To preserve these valuable ecosystems for future generations, essential parcels of land must be acquired to facilitate ecosystem restoration.\n8. Access to public lands to support a broad range of outdoor recreational opportunities and the development of necessary infrastructure, if compatible with the resource values of and management objectives for such lands, promotes an appreciation for the state’s natural assets and improves the quality of life.\n9. Acquisition of lands, in fee simple, less than fee interest, or other techniques shall be based on a comprehensive science-based assessment of the state’s natural resources which targets essential conservation lands by prioritizing all current and future acquisitions based on a uniform set of data and planned so as to protect the integrity and function of ecological systems and working landscapes, and provide multiple benefits, including preservation of fish and wildlife habitat, recreation space for urban and rural areas, and the restoration of natural water storage, flow, and recharge.\n10. The state has embraced performance-based program budgeting as a tool to evaluate the achievements of publicly funded agencies, build in accountability, and reward those agencies which are able to consistently achieve quantifiable goals. While previous and existing state environmental programs have achieved varying degrees of success, few of these programs can be evaluated as to the extent of their achievements, primarily because performance measures, standards, outcomes, and goals were not established at the outset. Therefore, the Florida Forever program shall be developed and implemented in the context of measurable state goals and objectives.\n11. The state must play a major role in the recovery and management of its imperiled species through the acquisition, restoration, enhancement, and management of ecosystems that can support the major life functions of such species. It is the intent of the Legislature to support local, state, and federal programs that result in net benefit to imperiled species habitat by providing public and private land owners meaningful incentives for acquiring, restoring, managing, and repopulating habitats for imperiled species. It is the further intent of the Legislature that public lands, both existing and to be acquired, identified by the lead land managing agency, in consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for animals or the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for plants, as habitat or potentially restorable habitat for imperiled species, be restored, enhanced, managed, and repopulated as habitat for such species to advance the goals and objectives of imperiled species management for conservation, recreation, or both, consistent with the land management plan without restricting other uses identified in the management plan. It is also the intent of the Legislature that of the proceeds distributed pursuant to subsection (3), additional consideration be given to acquisitions that achieve a combination of conservation goals, including the restoration, enhancement, management, or repopulation of habitat for imperiled species. The council, in addition to the criteria in subsection (9), shall give weight to projects that include acquisition, restoration, management, or repopulation of habitat for imperiled species. The term “imperiled species” as used in this chapter and chapter 253, means plants and animals that are federally listed under the Endangered Species Act, or state-listed by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. As part of the state’s role, all state lands that have imperiled species habitat shall include as a consideration in management plan development the restoration, enhancement, management, and repopulation of such habitats. In addition, the lead land managing agency of such state lands may use fees received from public or private entities for projects to offset adverse impacts to imperiled species or their habitat in order to restore, enhance, manage, repopulate, or acquire land and to implement land management plans developed under s. 253.034 or a land management prospectus developed and implemented under this chapter. Such fees shall be deposited into a foundation or fund created by each land management agency under s. 379.223, s. 589.012, or s. 259.032(9)(c), to be used solely to restore, manage, enhance, repopulate, or acquire imperiled species habitat.\n12. There is a need to change the focus and direction of the state’s major land acquisition programs and to extend funding and bonding capabilities, so that future generations may enjoy the natural resources of this state.\n(b) The Legislature recognizes that acquisition of lands in fee simple is only one way to achieve the aforementioned goals and encourages the use of less-than-fee interests, other techniques, and the development of creative partnerships between governmental agencies and private landowners. Such partnerships may include those that advance the restoration, enhancement, management, or repopulation of imperiled species habitat on state lands as provided for in subparagraph (a)11. Easements acquired pursuant to s. 570.71(2)(a) and (b), land protection agreements, and nonstate funded tools such as rural land stewardship areas, sector planning, and mitigation should be used, where appropriate, to bring environmentally sensitive tracts under an acceptable level of protection at a lower financial cost to the public, and to provide private landowners with the opportunity to enjoy and benefit from their property.\n(c) Public agencies or other entities that receive funds under this section shall coordinate their expenditures so that project acquisitions, when combined with acquisitions under Florida Forever, Preservation 2000, Save Our Rivers, the Florida Communities Trust, other public land acquisition programs, and the techniques, partnerships, and tools referenced in subparagraph (a)11. and paragraph (b), are used to form more complete patterns of protection for natural areas, ecological greenways, and functioning ecosystems, to better accomplish the intent of this section.\n(d) A long-term financial commitment to restoring, enhancing, and managing Florida’s public lands in order to implement land management plans developed under s. 253.034 or a land management prospectus developed and implemented under this chapter must accompany any land acquisition program to ensure that the natural resource values of such lands are restored, enhanced, managed, and protected; that the public enjoys the lands to their fullest potential; and that the state achieves the full benefits of its investment of public dollars. Innovative strategies such as public-private partnerships and interagency planning and sharing of resources shall be used to achieve the state’s management goals.\n(e) With limited dollars available for restoration, enhancement, management, and acquisition of land and water areas and for providing long-term management and capital improvements, a competitive selection process shall select those projects best able to meet the goals of Florida Forever and maximize the efficient use of the program’s funding.\n(f) To ensure success and provide accountability to the citizens of this state, it is the intent of the Legislature that any cash or bond proceeds used pursuant to this section be used to implement the goals and objectives recommended by a comprehensive science-based assessment and approved by the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund and the Legislature.\n(g) As it has with previous land acquisition programs, the Legislature recognizes the desires of the residents of this state to prosper through economic development and to preserve, restore, and manage the state’s natural areas and recreational open space. The Legislature further recognizes the urgency of restoring the natural functions, including wildlife and imperiled species habitat functions, of public lands or water bodies before they are degraded to a point where recovery may never occur, yet acknowledges the difficulty of ensuring adequate funding for restoration, enhancement, and management efforts in light of other equally critical financial needs of the state. It is the Legislature’s desire and intent to fund the implementation of this section and to do so in a fiscally responsible manner, by issuing bonds to be repaid with documentary stamp tax or other revenue sources, including those identified in subparagraph (a)11.\n(h) The Legislature further recognizes the important role that many of our state and federal military installations contribute to protecting and preserving Florida’s natural resources as well as our economic prosperity. Where the state’s land conservation plans overlap with the military’s need to protect lands, waters, and habitat to ensure the sustainability of military missions, it is the Legislature’s intent that agencies receiving funds under this program cooperate with our military partners to protect and buffer military installations and military airspace, by:\n1. Protecting habitat on nonmilitary land for any species found on military land that is designated as threatened or endangered, or is a candidate for such designation under the Endangered Species Act or any Florida statute;\n2. Protecting areas underlying low-level military air corridors or operating areas;\n3. Protecting areas identified as clear zones, accident potential zones, and air installation compatible use buffer zones delineated by our military partners; and\n4. Providing the military with technical assistance to restore, enhance, and manage military land as habitat for imperiled species or species designated as threatened or endangered, or a candidate for such designation, and for the recovery or reestablishment of such species.\n(3) Less the costs of issuing and the costs of funding reserve accounts and other costs associated with bonds, the proceeds of cash payments or bonds issued pursuant to this section shall be deposited into the Florida Forever Trust Fund created by s. 259.1051. The proceeds shall be distributed by the Department of Environmental Protection in the following manner:\n(a) Thirty percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for the acquisition of lands and capital project expenditures necessary to implement the water management districts’ priority lists developed pursuant to s. 373.199. The funds are to be distributed to the water management districts as provided in subsection (11). A minimum of 50 percent of the total funds provided over the life of the Florida Forever program pursuant to this paragraph shall be used for the acquisition of lands.\n(b) Thirty-five percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for the acquisition of lands and capital project expenditures described in this section. Of the proceeds distributed pursuant to this paragraph, it is the intent of the Legislature that an increased priority be given to those acquisitions which achieve a combination of conservation goals, including protecting Florida’s water resources and natural groundwater recharge. At a minimum, 3 percent, and no more than 10 percent, of the funds allocated pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on capital project expenditures identified during the time of acquisition which meet land management planning activities necessary for public access. Beginning in the 2017-2018 fiscal year and continuing through the 2026-2027 fiscal year, at least $5 million of the funds allocated pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on land acquisition within the Florida Keys Area of Critical State Concern as authorized pursuant to s. 259.045.\n(c) Twenty-one percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for use by the Florida Communities Trust for the purposes of part III of chapter 380, as described and limited by this subsection, and grants to local governments or nonprofit environmental organizations that are tax-exempt under s. 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code for the acquisition of community-based projects, urban open spaces, parks, and greenways to implement local government comprehensive plans. From funds available to the trust and used for land acquisition, 75 percent shall be matched by local governments on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The Legislature intends that the Florida Communities Trust emphasize funding projects in low-income or otherwise disadvantaged communities and projects that provide areas for direct water access and water-dependent facilities that are open to the public and offer public access by vessels to waters of the state, including boat ramps and associated parking and other support facilities. At least 30 percent of the total allocation provided to the trust shall be used in Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, but one-half of that amount shall be used in localities in which the project site is located in built-up commercial, industrial, or mixed-use areas and functions to intersperse open spaces within congested urban core areas. From funds allocated to the trust, no less than 5 percent shall be used to acquire lands for recreational trail systems, provided that in the event these funds are not needed for such projects, they will be available for other trust projects. Local governments may use federal grants or loans, private donations, or environmental mitigation funds for any part or all of any local match required for acquisitions funded through the Florida Communities Trust. Any lands purchased by nonprofit organizations using funds allocated under this paragraph must provide for such lands to remain permanently in public use through a reversion of title to local or state government, conservation easement, or other appropriate mechanism. Projects funded with funds allocated to the trust shall be selected in a competitive process measured against criteria adopted in rule by the trust.\n(d) Two percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for grants pursuant to s. 375.075.\n(e) One and five-tenths percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for the purchase of inholdings and additions to state parks and for capital project expenditures as described in this section. At a minimum, 1 percent, and no more than 10 percent, of the funds allocated pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on capital project expenditures identified during the time of acquisition which meet land management planning activities necessary for public access. For the purposes of this paragraph, “state park” means any real property in the state which is under the jurisdiction of the Division of Recreation and Parks of the department, or which may come under its jurisdiction.\n(f) One and five-tenths percent to the Florida Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to fund the acquisition of state forest inholdings and additions pursuant to s. 589.07, the implementation of reforestation plans or sustainable forestry management practices, and for capital project expenditures as described in this section. At a minimum, 1 percent, and no more than 10 percent, of the funds allocated for the acquisition of inholdings and additions pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on capital project expenditures identified during the time of acquisition which meet land management planning activities necessary for public access.\n(g) One and five-tenths percent to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to fund the acquisition of inholdings and additions to lands managed by the commission which are important to the conservation of fish and wildlife and for capital project expenditures as described in this section. At a minimum, 1 percent, and no more than 10 percent, of the funds allocated pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on capital project expenditures identified during the time of acquisition which meet land management planning activities necessary for public access.\n(h) One and five-tenths percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for the Florida Greenways and Trails Program, to acquire greenways and trails or greenways and trail systems pursuant to chapter 260, including, but not limited to, abandoned railroad rights-of-way and the Florida National Scenic Trail and for capital project expenditures as described in this section. At a minimum, 1 percent, and no more than 10 percent, of the funds allocated pursuant to this paragraph shall be spent on capital project expenditures identified during the time of acquisition which meet land management planning activities necessary for public access.\n(i) Three and five-tenths percent to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for the acquisition of agricultural lands, through perpetual conservation easements and other perpetual less than fee techniques, which will achieve the objectives of Florida Forever and s. 570.71. Rules concerning the application, acquisition, and priority ranking process for such easements shall be developed pursuant to s. 570.71(10) and as provided by this paragraph. The board shall ensure that such rules are consistent with the acquisition process provided for in s. 570.715. The rules developed pursuant to s. 570.71(10), shall also provide for the following:\n1. An annual priority list shall be developed pursuant to s. 570.71(10), submitted to the council for review, and approved by the board pursuant to s. 259.04.\n2. Terms of easements and acquisitions proposed pursuant to this paragraph shall be approved by the board and may not be delegated by the board to any other entity receiving funds under this section.\n3. All acquisitions pursuant to this paragraph shall contain a clear statement that they are subject to legislative appropriation.\nFunds provided under this paragraph may not be expended until final adoption of rules by the board pursuant to s. 570.71.\n(j) Two and five-tenths percent to the Department of Environmental Protection for the acquisition of land and capital project expenditures necessary to implement the Stan Mayfield Working Waterfronts Program within the Florida Communities Trust pursuant to s. 380.5105.\n(k) It is the intent of the Legislature that cash payments or proceeds of Florida Forever bonds distributed under this section shall be expended in an efficient and fiscally responsible manner. An agency that receives proceeds from Florida Forever bonds under this section may not maintain a balance of unencumbered funds in its Florida Forever subaccount beyond 3 fiscal years from the date of deposit of funds from each bond issue. Any funds that have not been expended or encumbered after 3 fiscal years from the date of deposit shall be distributed by the Legislature at its next regular session for use in the Florida Forever program.\n(l) For the purposes of paragraphs (e), (f), (g), and (h), the agencies that receive the funds shall develop their individual acquisition or restoration lists in accordance with specific criteria and numeric performance measures developed pursuant to s. 259.035(4). Proposed additions may be acquired if they are identified within the original project boundary, the management plan required pursuant to s. 253.034(5), or the management prospectus required pursuant to s. 259.032(7)(c). Proposed additions not meeting the requirements of this paragraph shall be submitted to the council for approval. The council may only approve the proposed addition if it meets two or more of the following criteria: serves as a link or corridor to other publicly owned property; enhances the protection or management of the property; would add a desirable resource to the property; would create a more manageable boundary configuration; has a high resource value that otherwise would be unprotected; or can be acquired at less than fair market value.\n(m) Notwithstanding paragraphs (a)-(j) and for the 2016-2017 fiscal year only:\n1. The amount of $15,156,206 to only the Division of State Lands within the Department of Environmental Protection for the Board of Trustees Florida Forever Priority List land acquisition projects.\n2. Thirty-five million dollars to the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for the acquisition of agricultural lands through perpetual conservation easements and other perpetual less-than-fee techniques, which will achieve the objectives of Florida Forever and s. 570.71.\n3.a. Notwithstanding any allocation required pursuant to paragraph (c), $10 million shall be allocated to the Florida Communities Trust for projects acquiring conservation or recreation lands to enhance recreational opportunities for individuals with unique abilities.\nb. The Department of Environmental Protection may waive the local government matching fund requirement of paragraph (c) for projects acquiring conservation or recreation lands to enhance recreational opportunities for individuals with unique abilities.\nc. Notwithstanding sub-subparagraphs a. and b., any funds required to be used to acquire conservation or recreation lands to enhance recreational opportunities for individuals with unique abilities which have not been awarded for those purposes by May 1, 2017, may be awarded to redevelop or renew outdoor recreational facilities on public lands, including recreational trails, parks, and urban open spaces, together with improvements required to enhance recreational enjoyment and public access to public lands, if such redevelopment and renewal is primarily geared toward enhancing recreational opportunities for individuals with unique abilities. The department may waive the local matching requirement of paragraph (c) for such redevelopment and renewal projects.\nThis paragraph expires July 1, 2017.\n(4) It is the intent of the Legislature that projects or acquisitions funded pursuant to paragraphs (3)(a) and (b) contribute to the achievement of the following goals, which shall be evaluated in accordance with specific criteria and numeric performance measures developed pursuant to s. 259.035(4):\n(a) Enhance the coordination and completion of land acquisition projects, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres acquired through the state’s land acquisition programs that contribute to the enhancement of essential natural resources, ecosystem service parcels, and connecting linkage corridors as identified and developed by the best available scientific analysis;\n2. The number of acres protected through the use of alternatives to fee simple acquisition; or\n3. The number of shared acquisition projects among Florida Forever funding partners and partners with other funding sources, including local governments and the Federal Government.\n(b) Increase the protection of Florida’s biodiversity at the species, natural community, and landscape levels, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres acquired of significant strategic habitat conservation areas;\n2. The number of acres acquired of highest priority conservation areas for Florida’s rarest species;\n3. The number of acres acquired of significant landscapes, landscape linkages, and conservation corridors, giving priority to completing linkages;\n4. The number of acres acquired of underrepresented native ecosystems;\n5. The number of landscape-sized protection areas of at least 50,000 acres that exhibit a mosaic of predominantly intact or restorable natural communities established through new acquisition projects or augmentations to previous projects; or\n6. The percentage increase in the number of occurrences of imperiled species on publicly managed conservation areas.\n(c) Protect, restore, and maintain the quality and natural functions of land, water, and wetland systems of the state, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres of publicly owned land identified as needing restoration, enhancement, and management, acres undergoing restoration or enhancement, acres with restoration activities completed, and acres managed to maintain such restored or enhanced conditions; the number of acres which represent actual or potential imperiled species habitat; the number of acres which are available pursuant to a management plan to restore, enhance, repopulate, and manage imperiled species habitat; and the number of acres of imperiled species habitat managed, restored, enhanced, repopulated, or acquired;\n2. The percentage of water segments that fully meet, partially meet, or do not meet their designated uses as reported in the Department of Environmental Protection’s State Water Quality Assessment 305(b) Report;\n3. The percentage completion of targeted capital improvements in surface water improvement and management plans created under s. 373.453(2), regional or master stormwater management system plans, or other adopted restoration plans;\n4. The number of acres acquired that protect natural floodplain functions;\n5. The number of acres acquired that protect surface waters of the state;\n6. The number of acres identified for acquisition to minimize damage from flooding and the percentage of those acres acquired;\n7. The number of acres acquired that protect fragile coastal resources;\n8. The number of acres of functional wetland systems protected;\n9. The percentage of miles of critically eroding beaches contiguous with public lands that are restored or protected from further erosion;\n10. The percentage of public lakes and rivers in which invasive, nonnative aquatic plants are under maintenance control; or\n11. The number of acres of public conservation lands in which upland invasive, exotic plants are under maintenance control.\n(d) Ensure that sufficient quantities of water are available to meet the current and future needs of natural systems and the citizens of the state, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres acquired which provide retention and storage of surface water in naturally occurring storage areas, such as lakes and wetlands, consistent with the maintenance of water resources or water supplies and consistent with district water supply plans;\n2. The quantity of water made available through the water resource development component of a district water supply plan for which a water management district is responsible; or\n3. The number of acres acquired of groundwater recharge areas critical to springs, sinks, aquifers, other natural systems, or water supply.\n(e) Increase natural resource-based public recreational and educational opportunities, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres acquired that are available for natural resource-based public recreation or education;\n2. The miles of trails that are available for public recreation, giving priority to those that provide significant connections including those that will assist in completing the Florida National Scenic Trail; or\n3. The number of new resource-based recreation facilities, by type, made available on public land.\n(f) Preserve significant archaeological or historic sites, as measured by:\n1. The increase in the number of and percentage of historic and archaeological properties listed in the Florida Master Site File or National Register of Historic Places which are protected or preserved for public use; or\n2. The increase in the number and percentage of historic and archaeological properties that are in state ownership.\n(g) Increase the amount of forestland available for sustainable management of natural resources, as measured by:\n1. The number of acres acquired that are available for sustainable forest management;\n2. The number of acres of state-owned forestland managed for economic return in accordance with current best management practices;\n3. The number of acres of forestland acquired that will serve to maintain natural groundwater recharge functions; or\n4. The percentage and number of acres identified for restoration actually restored by reforestation.\n(h) Increase the amount of open space available in urban areas, as measured by:\n1. The percentage of local governments that participate in land acquisition programs and acquire open space in urban cores; or\n2. The percentage and number of acres of purchases of open space within urban service areas.\nFlorida Forever projects and acquisitions funded pursuant to paragraph (3)(c) shall be measured by goals developed by rule by the Florida Communities Trust Governing Board created in s. 380.504.\n(5)(a) All lands acquired pursuant to this section shall be managed for multiple-use purposes, where compatible with the resource values of and management objectives for such lands. As used in this section, “multiple-use” includes, but is not limited to, outdoor recreational activities as described in ss. 253.034 and 259.032(7)(b), water resource development projects, sustainable forestry management, carbon sequestration, carbon mitigation, or carbon offsets.\n(b) Upon a decision by the entity in which title to lands acquired pursuant to this section has vested, such lands may be designated single use as defined in s. 253.034(2)(b).\n(c) For purposes of this section, the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund shall adopt rules that pertain to the use of state lands for carbon sequestration, carbon mitigation, or carbon offsets and that provide for climate-change-related benefits.\n(6) As provided in this section, a water resource or water supply development project may be allowed only if the following conditions are met: minimum flows and levels have been established for those waters, if any, which may reasonably be expected to experience significant harm to water resources as a result of the project; the project complies with all applicable permitting requirements; and the project is consistent with the regional water supply plan, if any, of the water management district and with relevant recovery or prevention strategies if required pursuant to s. 373.0421(2).\n(7)(a) Beginning no later than July 1, 2001, and every year thereafter, the Acquisition and Restoration Council shall accept applications from state agencies, local governments, nonprofit and for-profit organizations, private land trusts, and individuals for project proposals eligible for funding pursuant to paragraph (3)(b). The council shall evaluate the proposals received pursuant to this subsection to ensure that they meet at least one of the criteria under subsection (9).\n(b) Project applications shall contain, at a minimum, the following:\n1. A minimum of two numeric performance measures that directly relate to the overall goals adopted by the council. Each performance measure shall include a baseline measurement, which is the current situation; a performance standard which the project sponsor anticipates the project will achieve; and the performance measurement itself, which should reflect the incremental improvements the project accomplishes towards achieving the performance standard.\n2. Proof that property owners within any proposed acquisition have been notified of their inclusion in the proposed project. Any property owner may request the removal of such property from further consideration by submitting a request to the project sponsor or the Acquisition and Restoration Council by certified mail. Upon receiving this request, the council shall delete the property from the proposed project; however, the board of trustees, at the time it votes to approve the proposed project lists pursuant to subsection (16), may add the property back on to the project lists if it determines by a super majority of its members that such property is critical to achieve the purposes of the project.\n(c) The title to lands acquired under this section shall vest in the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, except that title to lands acquired by a water management district shall vest in the name of that district and lands acquired by a local government shall vest in the name of the purchasing local government.\n(8) The Acquisition and Restoration Council shall develop a project list that shall represent those projects submitted pursuant to subsection (7).\n(9) The Acquisition and Restoration Council shall recommend rules for adoption by the board of trustees to competitively evaluate, select, and rank projects eligible for Florida Forever funds pursuant to paragraph (3)(b). In developing these proposed rules, the Acquisition and Restoration Council shall give weight to the following criteria:\n(a) The project meets multiple goals described in subsection (4).\n(b) The project is part of an ongoing governmental effort to restore, protect, or develop land areas or water resources.\n(c) The project enhances or facilitates management of properties already under public ownership.\n(d) The project has significant archaeological or historic value.\n(e) The project has funding sources that are identified and assured through at least the first 2 years of the project.\n(f) The project contributes to the solution of water resource problems on a regional basis.\n(g) The project has a significant portion of its land area in imminent danger of development, in imminent danger of losing its significant natural attributes or recreational open space, or in imminent danger of subdivision which would result in multiple ownership and make acquisition of the project costly or less likely to be accomplished.\n(h) The project implements an element from a plan developed by an ecosystem management team.\n(i) The project is one of the components of the Everglades restoration effort.\n(j) The project may be purchased at 80 percent of appraised value.\n(k) The project may be acquired, in whole or in part, using alternatives to fee simple, including but not limited to, tax incentives, mitigation funds, or other revenues; the purchase of development rights, hunting rights, agricultural or silvicultural rights, or mineral rights; or obtaining conservation easements or flowage easements.\n(l) The project is a joint acquisition, either among public agencies, nonprofit organizations, or private entities, or by a public-private partnership.\n(10) The council shall give increased priority to:\n(a) Projects for which matching funds are available.\n(b) Project elements previously identified on an acquisition list pursuant to this section that can be acquired at 80 percent or less of appraised value.\n(c) Projects that can be acquired in less than fee ownership, such as a permanent conservation easement.\n(d) Projects that contribute to improving the quality and quantity of surface water and groundwater.\n(e) Projects that contribute to improving the water quality and flow of springs.\n(f) Projects for which the state’s land conservation plans overlap with the military’s need to protect lands, water, and habitat to ensure the sustainability of military missions including:\n2. Protecting areas underlying low-level military air corridors or operating areas; and\n3. Protecting areas identified as clear zones, accident potential zones, and air installation compatible use buffer zones delineated by our military partners, and for which federal or other funding is available to assist with the project.\n(11) For the purposes of funding projects pursuant to paragraph (3)(a), the Secretary of Environmental Protection shall ensure that each water management district receives the following percentage of funds annually:\n(a) Thirty-five percent to the South Florida Water Management District, of which amount $25 million for 2 years beginning in fiscal year 2000-2001 shall be transferred by the Department of Environmental Protection into the Save Our Everglades Trust Fund and shall be used exclusively to implement the comprehensive plan under s. 373.470.\n(b) Twenty-five percent to the Southwest Florida Water Management District.\n(c) Twenty-five percent to the St. Johns River Water Management District.\n(d) Seven and one-half percent to the Suwannee River Water Management District.\n(e) Seven and one-half percent to the Northwest Florida Water Management District.\n(12) It is the intent of the Legislature that in developing the list of projects for funding pursuant to paragraph (3)(a), that these funds not be used to abrogate the financial responsibility of those point and nonpoint sources that have contributed to the degradation of water or land areas. Therefore, an increased priority shall be given by the water management district governing boards to those projects that have secured a cost-sharing agreement allocating responsibility for the cleanup of point and nonpoint sources.\n(13) An affirmative vote of at least five members of the council shall be required in order to place a project submitted pursuant to subsection (7) on the proposed project list developed pursuant to subsection (8). Any member of the council who by family or a business relationship has a connection with any project proposed to be ranked shall declare such interest before voting for a project’s inclusion on the list.\n(14) Each year that cash disbursements or bonds are to be issued pursuant to this section, the Acquisition and Restoration Council shall review the most current approved project list and shall, by the first board meeting in May, present to the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund for approval a listing of projects developed pursuant to subsection (8). The board of trustees may remove projects from the list developed pursuant to this subsection, but may not add projects or rearrange project rankings.\n(15) The council shall submit to the board, with its list of projects, a report that includes, but need not be limited to, the following information for each project listed:\n(a) The stated purpose for inclusion.\n(b) Projected costs to achieve the project goals.\n(c) An interim management budget that includes all costs associated with immediate public access.\n(d) Specific performance measures.\n(e) Plans for public access.\n(f) An identification of the essential parcel or parcels within the project without which the project cannot be properly managed.\n(g) Where applicable, an identification of those projects or parcels within projects which should be acquired in fee simple or in less than fee simple.\n(h) An identification of those lands being purchased for conservation purposes.\n(i) A management policy statement for the project and a management prospectus pursuant to s. 259.032(7)(c).\n(j) An estimate of land value based on county tax assessed values.\n(k) A map delineating project boundaries.\n(l) An assessment of the project’s ecological value, outdoor recreational value, forest resources, wildlife resources, ownership pattern, utilization, and location.\n(m) A discussion of whether alternative uses are proposed for the property and what those uses are.\n(n) A designation of the management agency or agencies.\n(16) All proposals for projects pursuant to paragraph (3)(b) shall be implemented only if adopted by the Acquisition and Restoration Council and approved by the board of trustees. The council shall consider and evaluate in writing the merits and demerits of each project that is proposed for Florida Forever funding. The council shall ensure that each proposed project will meet a stated public purpose for the restoration, conservation, or preservation of environmentally sensitive lands and water areas or for providing outdoor recreational opportunities. The council also shall determine whether the project or addition conforms, where applicable, with the comprehensive plan developed pursuant to s. 259.04(1)(a), the comprehensive multipurpose outdoor recreation plan developed pursuant to s. 375.021, the state lands management plan adopted pursuant to s. 253.03(7), the water resources work plans developed pursuant to s. 373.199, and the provisions of this section.\n(17) On an annual basis, the Division of State Lands shall prepare an annual work plan that prioritizes projects on the Florida Forever list and sets forth the funding available in the fiscal year for land acquisition. The work plan shall consider the following categories of expenditure for land conservation projects already selected for the Florida Forever list pursuant to subsection (8):\n(a) A critical natural lands category, including functional landscape-scale natural systems, intact large hydrological systems, lands that have significant imperiled natural communities, and corridors linking large landscapes, as identified and developed by the best available scientific analysis.\n(b) A partnerships or regional incentive category, including:\n1. Projects where local and regional cost-share agreements provide a lower cost and greater conservation benefit to the people of the state. Additional consideration shall be provided under this category where parcels are identified as part of a local or regional visioning process and are supported by scientific analysis; and\n2. Bargain and shared projects where the state will receive a significant reduction in price for public ownership of land as a result of the removal of development rights or other interests in lands or receives alternative or matching funds.\n(c) A substantially complete category of projects where mainly inholdings, additions, and linkages between preserved areas will be acquired and where 85 percent of the project is complete.\n(d) A climate-change category list of lands where acquisition or other conservation measures will address the challenges of global climate change, such as through protection, restoration, mitigation, and strengthening of Florida’s land, water, and coastal resources. This category includes lands that provide opportunities to sequester carbon, provide habitat, protect coastal lands or barrier islands, and otherwise mitigate and help adapt to the effects of sea-level rise and meet other objectives of the program.\n(e) A less-than-fee category for working agricultural lands that significantly contribute to resource protection through conservation easements and other less-than-fee techniques, tax incentives, life estates, landowner agreements, and other partnerships, including conservation easements acquired in partnership with federal conservation programs, which will achieve the objectives of Florida Forever while allowing the continuation of compatible agricultural uses on the land. Terms of easements proposed for acquisition under this category shall be developed by the Division of State Lands in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.\nProjects within each category shall be ranked by order of priority. The work plan shall be adopted by the Acquisition and Restoration Council after at least one public hearing. A copy of the work plan shall be provided to the board of trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund no later than October 1 of each year.\n(18)(a) The Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, or, in the case of water management district lands, the owning water management district, may authorize the granting of a lease, easement, or license for the use of certain lands acquired pursuant to this section, for certain uses that are determined by the appropriate board to be compatible with the resource values of and management objectives for such lands.\n(b) Any existing lease, easement, or license acquired for incidental public or private use on, under, or across any lands acquired pursuant to this section shall be presumed to be compatible with the purposes for which such lands were acquired.\n(c) Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (a), no such lease, easement, or license shall be entered into by the Department of Environmental Protection or other appropriate state agency if the granting of such lease, easement, or license would adversely affect the exclusion of the interest on any revenue bonds issued to fund the acquisition of the affected lands from gross income for federal income tax purposes, pursuant to Internal Revenue Service regulations.\n(19) The council shall recommend adoption of rules by the board necessary to implement this section relating to solicitation, scoring, selecting, and ranking of Florida Forever project proposals; disposing of or leasing lands or water areas selected for funding through the Florida Forever program; and the process of reviewing and recommending for approval or rejection the land management plans associated with publicly owned properties.\n(20) Lands listed as projects for acquisition under the Florida Forever program may be managed for conservation pursuant to s. 259.032, on an interim basis by a private party in anticipation of a state purchase in accordance with a contractual arrangement between the acquiring agency and the private party that may include management service contracts, leases, cost-share arrangements, or resource conservation agreements. Lands designated as eligible under this subsection shall be managed to maintain or enhance the resources the state is seeking to protect by acquiring the land and to accelerate public access to the lands as soon as practicable. Funding for these contractual arrangements may originate from the documentary stamp tax revenue deposited into the Land Acquisition Trust Fund. No more than $6.2 million may be expended from the Land Acquisition Trust Fund for this purpose.\nHistory.—s. 21, ch. 99-247; s. 3, ch. 2000-129; s. 32, ch. 2000-152; s. 11, ch. 2000-170; s. 1, ch. 2001-275; s. 3, ch. 2002-261; s. 66, ch. 2003-399; s. 12, ch. 2005-3; s. 5, ch. 2006-231; s. 13, ch. 2008-229; ss. 5, 14, ch. 2009-2; s. 22, ch. 2009-21; s. 120, ch. 2011-142; s. 9, ch. 2012-7; s. 33, ch. 2012-119; s. 28, ch. 2013-41; s. 37, ch. 2014-17; s. 36, ch. 2014-53; s. 47, ch. 2015-222; s. 27, ch. 2015-229; s. 82, ch. 2016-62; s. 5, ch. 2016-225; s. 24, ch. 2016-233.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line655481"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8907299637794495,"wiki_prob":0.8907299637794495,"text":"Riverside Drive\nThe Riverside Drive local historic district was designated by ordinance in 1985. The district boundaries include the residences located on Riverside Drive from Leeper Park to Hudson Avenue, and a few home located on the intersecting side streets: Golden, Vassar, and Hudson. The eastern third of the district, between Leland Avenue and Leeper Park is part of the Chapin Park National Register Historic District, which was listed in 1982.\nRiverside Drive is an example of a turn-of-the-century and early 20th century middle class residential development. Located northwest of the original town of South Bend, it remained undeveloped into the latter half of the 19th century. Development began when Horatio Chapin`s children, Mary Chapin Anderson and Edward Chapin, platted the Chapin Place Addition in 1890 on land that had been the family estate.\nThe eastern third of the district was part of the old Chapin estate, which was further subdivided in 1902 and 1910. In 1890 and 1891, three Shetterly Place Additions were platted directly to the west. The middle third of the district, between Golden and Leland lies within the Shetterly Place Third Addition platted by Christina Shetterly, George and Mary Rockstroh, and Annie P. Miller in 1891. The western third of the district beyond Golden lies within the Portage Park Addition, which the Portage Land Company, under its President H.G. Miller, subdivided in 1902.\nAfter 1910, several streets in the Chapin Park neighborhood were linked to Leeper Park by a new street - Riverside Drive, for which the district is named. The neighborhood grew most rapidly from 1902 to 1918 when over eighty percent of the residences were constructed. The district`s growth was greatly attributed to its location near the streetcar line on Portage Avenue and proximity to downtown South Bend, its quiet and picturesque environment, and the scenic attractions of the Saint Joseph River and Leeper Park.\nEarly residents of the district represented a cross section of the community including professionals, business owners, and skilled workers and political leaders. George Cutter, the owner of the Cutter Lighting Co., also lived on Riverside Drive. Many houses were designed by locally prominent architects: W.W. Schneider, Ernest Young, Norman Roy Schambleau and Ennis Austin. The district also contains several historic streetlights, a strand of historic White Oak trees, a foot-worn trail above the riverbank, and mature trees lining the street.\nThe two oldest buildings (circa 1898) are located in the eastern portion of the district on the old Chapin Estate where Park Avenue meets Riverside Drive. The Queen Anne structure at 1007 Riverside Drive was built in 1890 and moved to its present location in 1912.\nOutstanding residences in the district include:1015 Hudson Street (1913) 902 Riverside Drive (1906) 909 Riverside Drive (1909) 916 Riverside Drive (1906)\nChapin Park\nEast Wayne Street\nEdgewater Place\nLincoln Way East\nNorth St. Joseph Street\nTaylor's Field\nWest North Shore Drive","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line553315"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8449937105178833,"wiki_prob":0.8449937105178833,"text":"Wayne Thiebaud (B. 1920)\nThiebaud was born in 1920 in Mesa, Arizona, and resides in California, in Sacramento and San Francisco. As a child, he lived in Long Beach, California, and in Hurricane, Utah, where his family’s farm failed during the Depression. The family moved back to Long Beach in 1933, and Thiebaud worked in his youth as a sign painter and as an “in-betweener” in the animation department of Walt Disney studios. He studied commercial art in a trade school, attended Long Beach Junior College, and worked as a shipfitter in the Long Beach harbor. In the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, stationed in California, he drew a cartoon strip for the base newspaper. After leaving the service, he worked as a designer and cartoonist at the Rexall Drug Company in Los Angeles, where a fellow employee was painter Robert Mallary, who encouraged him to begin painting. Studying under the GI Bill, Thiebaud received a BA and an MA from California State College (now California State University) in Sacramento. His first one-person exhibition was in 1951 at the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery (now the Crocker Art Museum) in Sacramento.\nThiebaud began teaching at Sacramento Junior College in 1951, and he has been a teacher ever since, working as a visiting professor in schools around the country from Colorado University to Harvard University and Yale University. At the same time he sustained a teaching commitment to the University of California at Davis begun in 1960. (He nominally retired in 1990.) He lived for a year in New York City in 1956–57, became friendly with Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and met other abstract expressionist artists.\nHis first exhibition in New York, at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1962, received tremendous critical attention, with reviews in Newsweek, Art News, the New York Times, and Life magazine. That same year he had a one-person exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Thiebaud began making etchings at Crown Point Press in 1964. His first prints date from 1950, and he has been an active printmaker throughout his career. He has shown in numerous exhibitions and received many awards, including the Gold Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2017), the UC Davis Chancellor’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovation (2016), the Lifetime Achievement Award for Art from the American Academy of Design, New York (2001), and the National Medal of Arts presented by President Clinton (1994). His paintings are in the collections of most major museums in the United States including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He is represented by Acquavella Galleries, New York, and the Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco.\n-Kathan Brown, Crown Point Press","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line189940"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8626622557640076,"wiki_prob":0.8626622557640076,"text":"https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Governor-s-pollster-only-part-of-the-real-scandal-178962.php\nGovernor's pollster only part of the real scandal\nPublished 12:25 pm EDT, Friday, October 16, 2009\nI, for one, am slightly relieved that when the overripe onion finally got peeled back, Gov. Jodi Rell turned into a politician like all the rest.\nIt was always plain that Lisa Moody, the governor's web-weaving chief of staff, loved her job and its associated political intrigues more than Rell wanted to be governor.\nBut Rell fell into the state's top job, thanks to John \"Why Should I Resign If I've Done Nothing Wrong?\" Rowland, a schmoozer who loved being called \"governor\" until he was forced out in July 2004 by his felonious nonchalance and sense of entitlement.\nHe went from turning down a pay raise in 1998 because of an ill-conceived gubernatorial challenge from former Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly, to serving 10 months in prison for, among other things, accepting about $90,000 in luxury charter flights from Key Air of Oxford.\nRell is no schmoozer and fortunately for Connecticut, she's no John Rowland, whose staffers greased the skids for the New Britain-based Tomasso Group to build the unneeded $56 million Connecticut Juvenile Training School in Middletown after Tomasso work crews performed improvements to the now-disgraced governor's getaway cottage on Bantam Lake.\nThe infamous hot tub was one of the few touches that were actually legal, since it was a gift from a long-time Rowland employee and her husband.\nRell has plunged into some hot water of her own after reporters caught her misrepresenting a little scandal that's going to taint her administration.\nScrutiny of Rell's use of funds continues\nBattle over state budget deficit rages on\nRell ready to put her stamp on state\nIt will either force her to run for re-election to clean up a legacy, or she'll retire next year under the political fire that has given Democrats a taste for possibly winning the governor's office back in 2010 after 20 years in the wilderness.\nThe joke will ultimately be on the Democrats, whose majorities in the House and Senate this year papered over an $8 billion deficit, raising taxes on the state's wealthiest earners; burning through the $1.4 billion emergency reserve compiled during the good times; and grabbing $1.6 billion in federal stimulus money.\nBy the time this budget ends on June 30, 2010, there will be another multibillion-dollar deficit caused by what is called the structural hole in the budget, without that $3 billion in one-shot-revenue wallpaper.\nSo, in a sense, the Democrats may get what they deserve.\nWhat Rell deserves is as much public grief -- and exposure -- as possible on the $223,406 no-bid contract with UConn public policy professor Ken Dautrich, who appears to have wanted to schmooze his own way into the governor's inner sanctum.\nIt also appears that at least some of the money, which itself was taken from a $2 million \"discretionary\" account of the governor's budget office, may have been used to provide political advice to Moody and Rell. At the very least, it could be a violation of the election law on in-kind contributions: free services to politicians that have a value in the eyes of state regulators.\nThe state Auditors of Public Accounts, along with the attorney general, is looking into the issue and a former Democratic lawmaker has filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.\nRell, who earned the instant reputation as the anti-Rowland, whose pledge of ethics reforms helped give her -- at one point not so long ago -- record high esteem in state polls, is conveniently using the investigations as a reason to clam up.\nIt's too bad. People should really know -- as soon as possible -- why UConn and Dautrich, a former university pollster, were chosen for the no-bid contract and why Dautrich seems to have produced political advice for Rell and Moody.\nSenate Majority Leader Marty Looney, D-New Haven, a lawyer in real life, immediately seized on a $2,000 focus group that included nine suburbanites -- obviously Rell's political base -- and no one from Connecticut's cities.\nIf this comes back to bite Rell, Moody and Dautrich, who is under investigation by UConn authorities to see if he violated university ethics guidelines, I expect it'll entail some meager fines, at most.\nBut the larger disgust that you taxpayers should embrace is the very existence of the \"contingency\" accounts, better known as slush funds, which are agreed upon during closed-door budget talks between Democrats and Republicans.\nThey go back at least 20 years and are convenient ways for caucus leaders to help prop up weaker senators and House members, while solidifying their own political power.\nIn the two-year 2007-09 budget, which ended June 30, the speaker of the House and the Senate president each got $2 million a year to spread around their Democratic districts as they saw fit.\nRell shared her $2 million a year with the House and Senate minority leaders. About a year ago, she declared that she wouldn't spend the second year's $2 million, to help spare the state budget.\nHowever, Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams of Brooklyn and former Speaker of the House Jim Amann of Milford kept the second year's $2 million.\nIndeed, Amann burned through nearly all of the money during his last year in office, leaving Rep. Chris Donovan of Meriden with a laughable $1,500 by the time he took over as speaker last January.\nThe slush funds are an outrage and a pox on Connecticut taxpayers who deserve much better from their governor and their legislative leaders in this 21st century era of transparency and openness.\nKen Dixon's Capitol View appears Sundays in Hearst's Connecticut Newspapers. You may each him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or via e-mail at kdixon@ctpost.com. His Web log, Connecticut Blog-o-rama, can be seen at http://blog.ctnews.com/dixon/.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line28099"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7275432348251343,"wiki_prob":0.2724567651748657,"text":"Gender Lens\nSample Portfolio Companies\nMexico, Education\nImpact: The company has helped over 12,000 students access high quality tertiary education in Mexico. It currently has 7,470 students in its portfolio, and roughly 65% are the first member of their family to pursue higher education studies and 85% are accessing credit for the first time. Bcorp’s Best for the World Award 2015. 4-star rating by GIIRS in 2016. 50% of the students are women.\nFinancial institution that provides loans to university students from low- and middle-income families who lack the resources to pay for high quality higher education. Competitive advantages include formal university partnerships, financial risk mitigation through a guarantee fund financed by the universities, fast processing of loan applications, and the ability to repay a loan early without penalties. Currently structuring the third student loans securitization for up to USD 10M to be issued on Q2 2018.\nEcuador, Microfinance\nCompany that provides micro-loans to low-income people located in rural, urban and urban-fringe areas of Ecuador. Competitive advantages include its penetration in rural areas, its wide-array of product offerings, and its good reputation among foreign investors due to its steady performance. Since 2015, the company has introduced alternative income streams to its business model, such as Health Insurance and Technical Assistance programs to increase field productivity and quality of life. In recent years, the company has tightened its underwriting policies and implemented stronger monitoring processes, resulting in lower Portfolio at Risk rates that the industry average.\nImpact: 66% of loan portfolio is allocated to clients in rural areas, and 41% is allocated to women clients. The company also provides basic healthcare services to 99% of its client base for USD 16 per month. Additional features to basic healthcare coverage include treatment of chronic illnesses and a microinsurance product to cover for weather catastrophes. Social Rating of BB (stable) and a recently-upgrade to its Microfinance Institutional Rating to BBB+ (stable).\nPeru, Agriculture\nImpact: The cooperative currently has 215 members, all of whom are low-income smallholder farmers with less than 5 hectares. Up to 80% of the member’s income comes from the cultivation of the cocoa beans. The company also buys cocoa beans from 700 other families that are not direct members of the cooperative but benefit from selling their produce. All in all, the company estimates that it has benefited more than 900 small-holder farmers.\nFounded in 1990. Cocoa cooperative that provides technical assistance to its members in order to help them increase their productivity and connect them to local and international markets. The company sells conventional, organic, fair-trade and UTZ cocoa beans. Once beans are harvested, the cooperative offers warehouse facilities to store and dry the cocoa beans of its members.\nEcuador, Agriculture\nFounded in 2010. Socially responsible company that produces vegetable chips from native Andean potatoes and vegetables. The company incorporates sustainability throughout its business model, working with smallholder farmers in Ecuador to purchase produce that is then processed in their facilities to final consumer products. All products are certified gluten-free, kosher and non GMO.\nImpact: The company provides technical assistance to farmers by supplying them with high quality seeds, organic fertilizer, training, and financing. This results in higher field productivity, high quality produce and allows farmers to access stable markets with pre-determined prices. Since 2010, the company has received several local and international recognitions thanks to its sustainable production practices and the integration of small producers into its value chain.\nMexico, Housing\nAffordable mortgages company established in 2013 by a construction company that has been operating since 1997. Provides the clay-brick technology, house engineering, and access to finance to low-income rural families so they can build their own homes. Helps communities form Social Housing Production Units composed of the homeowners and other community members who are compensated for their work. The company also provides a savings facility for both adults and children.\nImpact: To date, the company has directly benefited 270 families and more than 1,000 people. 40% of loans are taken up by women.\nSample Portfolio - East Africa\nKenya, Agriculture\nEstablished in 2015 to own and operate two coconut processing operations. The company focuses on processing retail food products (oil, cream and milk) from coconuts and sources its coconut from brokers and farmers. The main focus is on bulk coconut oil processing for export and sources from specific farmers who are Fairtrade certified and produce organic coconuts.\nImpact: The company provides over 1,300 farmers with a consistent offtake market with stable prices throughout the year. This has led to increased income for the farmers with 2.4x price increases. The additional income has allowed farmers to educate their children and expand into other cash crops like cashew nuts and cassava.\nRwanda, Artisanry\nFairtrade certified company that designs and produces high quality handmade products in Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana for the home décor, kitchenware, dining ware, and jewelry markets in the US. They are currently working with over 3,000 artisans, producing baskets, jewelry, vases etc for large clients like Costco, FTD (Proflowers) and Ethan Allen. The company has been able to maintain its relevance (a major problem among artisan goods) by setting up an experienced in-house design team that keeps up with seasonal fashion trends. In addition, they have overcome the challenge of scale by organizing their artisans into cooperatives with clear structures (head weavers, chairlady etc).\nImpact: Currently works with approximately 3,000 rural artisans (95% being women) across Sub Sahara Africa. Although past orders haven’t resulted in full-time employment for the artisans, AAA has provided part-time employment of 12 days per month on average, earning the artisan’s extra income. Based on farmer interviews we conducted, AAA purchase price is 5.7x of local market prices, in line with the company’s Fairtrade practices of paying a fair price to artisans.\nUganda, Renewable Energy\nFounded in 2011 with a mission to transform the lives of East Africans by being their clients' energy partner for life. The company has developed a range of pay-as-you-go solar energy solutions and works with clients to incorporate their products in their home, farm, school, health centre or small business. SolarNow’s primary activity is to sell and distribute high-quality modular solar photovoltaic Home Systems (“SHS”) and accessories in combination with an end-user credit facility (“PayPlan”) with the objective to make solar energy accessible and affordable. The product is sold through a network of fully owned sales branches that offer standardized, high-quality installation and after- sales services.\nImpact: From inception, the company has sold over 28k units. They currently have 14K clients on their PayPlan. The company has also sold to 35 schools, 5 clinics and 284 small businesses. Estimated energy saved from YTD sales is over 115K KWh. The company employs 975 people 32% of whom are female.\nThe company is a business-to-business (B2B) m-commerce and last-mile distribution platform for small and medium sized vendors in African urban markets. The company enables these vendors to order their products at a lower price via their phones, pay with M-PESA, and receive their merchandise without ever needing to leave their kiosks. The company operates on a “Buy High, Sell Low” business model. To achieve that, the company buys directly from the farm (at high prices) to eliminate numerous links and inefficiencies (brokers) along the value chain and subsequently sells at low prices to vendors.\nImpact: Currently, the company currently serves ~1,820 vendors weekly out of 15,000 mapped vendors. There are currently 4,330 vendors registered on the platform. The company currently sources from 2,490 farmers. As each vendor serves on average 70 customers, the company is already reaching ~141K people weekly. Its five-years goal is to reach more than 12 million end-customers.\nRwanda, Renewable Energy\nThe company functions as a utility provider offering mass scale affordable leasing solutions to off-grid communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Solar systems ranging from 12 to 50 watts are leased to customers for monthly payments priced at the equivalent of what the family was spending on kerosene for lighting. With the solar home system units, customers can power 3-5 lights, charge their phones, a radio, and with larger systems, a television. Integration with mobile money gives customers control and flexibility of payments.\nImpact: High social impact is achieved on the environment, household beneficiaries and employees. The company mainly targets the BoP market with additional room for higher income consumers. 50% of customers reside in rural areas with 75% of customers informally employed as agriculturalists or small shop owners. Since the company’s inception, over 242K customers have had access to clean and reliable energy through the solar home system units.\nAward-winning social enterprise founded in Nairobi in 2000, the company has evolved from a not-for-profit beekeeping equipment supplier to a commercial FMCG company in sourcing honey, seeds, and nuts from ~5,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, South Sudan, and Tanzania. The company produces honey and a range of nutritious snacks. Honey Care purchases raw honey, nuts and seeds from smallholder farmers or cooperatives and then processes and packages the honey and snacks in house. Most of their sales are through domestic retail outlets. Honey has numerous nutritional benefits and is a healthy snack for children living in extreme poverty.\nImpact: Since inception, the company has purchased from 5,000+ farmers, 42% of whom are female. The company prioritizes rural development and responsible sourcing and is the only honey company that can trace honey to individual farmers.\n© by AlphaMundi Group","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line459278"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6425876021385193,"wiki_prob":0.3574123978614807,"text":"During the 2014, two elections took place in Lithuania, for the European parliament and presidential elections. Both demonstrated high level of freedom and fairness of the process. After the presidential elections, Dalia Grybauskaite became the first Lithuanian president to be elected for the second term. Although the European Court of Human Rights ruled that banning of Rolandas Paksas of running for office is a violation of his rights, Central Electoral Commission didn’t accept his candidacy for presidential elections. Political parties, the least trusted institution in Lithuania, can operate in the unrestricted environment. However, Communist Party continued to be banned.\nLithuania improved it’s score in this matter, from 7.50 in the 2014’s Freedom Barometer Report. Generally there are no unconstitutional veto players in the country. This is mainly due to the improvements in the fight against corruption in the public sector. The main anticorruption agency, Secret Investigation Service, announced in 2014 the list of individuals suspected to be involved in corruption and lunched the investigations. The list included 8 vice-ministers, who then after immediately resigned. Due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and few more incidents between Baltic states and Russia, national security became a serious issue in Lithuania. In order to strengthen security, the government requested NATO to reinforce its mission in the Baltic region and decided to increase the\npercentage of GDP for defense spending by 2020.\nFreedom of the press is guaranteed by the Lithuanian constitution and mostly respected in practice. However, raising tensions with Russia and situation in Ukraine led to restrictions against some Russian-language media outlets. Russian state-owned television channel RTR Planeta faced 3 months ban for alleged spreading of war propaganda. Representatives of OSCE intensively called on government not to tackle the war propaganda by censoring the media. Media ownership continued to be a problem in Lithuania. Increased concentration of the ownership and lack of transparency led to biased coverage by the media, in favor of their owners, which could often be financial institutions, or politicians.\nJudiciary is still a weak point of the rule of law in Lithuania. The situation is nearly the same as in neighbouring Poland or Latvia, while considerably worse than in Estonia. Impartiality of the courts is dubious. Political influence on them is worrisome. Transparency International’s research indicates at a high level of perceived corruption in courts. According to the Freedom House report Nations in Transit 2015, “lengthy investigations and trials, as well as occasional corruption scandals in the judiciary, have damaged the reputation of Lithuania’s court system”. Improvements are also needed in the law enforcement system. Existing problems include arbitrary arrests, insufficient access to legal counseling, abuses in detention (especially in cases of suspected terrorism),\novercrowding of prisons and discrimination against Romany or some other minorities. Constitutional Court was very active in 2013 and 2014 and made bold incursions into the political field. Some of the rulings, such as limiting space for referenda if they contradicted constitutional provisions, reflected a liberal constitutionalist approach. Others, such as annulling of the government’s measures of 2010 to cut public spending, reflected a surplus of political activism by the judges.\nDuring the past three years Lithuania has moved up in curbing corruption. Petty corruption is retreating well, taken the burdensome Soviet era heritage. But it still persists in health care, police force, courts and in municipalities’ administration. Similar – a seeming retreat – goes for tax evasion. In a Transparency International’s research as of 2013, citizens indicated at political sphere (especially political parties) and the judiciary as the main centers of corruption. Anti-corruption activities in 2014 targeted mainly corrupt politicians. A number of investigations were opened. Three members of government and two prominent local politicians had to step down due to lack of transparency. There is even a dispute on whether general rules of tender procedure should oblige\npolitical parties in their own procurement or not. More could be done against the corruption in judiciary, which is among the weakest links in the chain of rule of law. In the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2014, Lithuania was ranked 39 of 175 (with the score 58).\nHigh European standards of human rights are reached in many areas, from freedom of association to academic or Internet freedom. Yet there are numerous problems, including the tax status of non-traditional religious communities and the linguistic rights –not that much anymore of native Russian speakers but increasingly of native Polish speakers - as well as the protection of Romany against discrimination. During 2014, human rights situation improved in some, while deteriorated in other areas. New legislation was carried on NGO activities, which will expectedly open them new opportunities and foster their cooperation with the government. On the other hand, the anyway feeble position of the LGBTI community has been under additional attack by the joined forces of (multi) religious\nconservative groups. According to a January 2015 release of the European Parliament`s Intergroup on LGBT Rights, homophobic hate-speech in Lithuania, including among some MPs, was widespread. The law on protection of minors against inappropriate content in media is occasionally misused to censorship public advocacy of LGBTI equality. Several new anti-gay laws, that would prevent eventual legalization of same-sex unions, ban them of adopting children, or even establish fines for some segments of their public advocacy, were discussed in parliament, but were rejected.\nPrivate property is relatively secure and respected in Lithuania. However, judicial independence and court impartiality remain weaker than other facets of the legal system, and political influence could still be exercised in some court rulings. Therefore, although Integrity of the legal system overall is high, there is room for significant improvements. Legal enforcement of contracts is burdened with a high number of procedures, leading to long processes which can incur high costs, but is overall far less complicated and costly than the EU countries’ average. Resolving insolvency is cheap, with reasonable recovery rates. There is little involvement of military in the rule of law, but the reliability of the police is not high, while business costs of crime are low.\nThe government size in Lithuania is very moderate compared to European standards, with the level of government expenditures of 33.5% of GDP. The strong recession of 2009 had major repercussions on the public finance, leading to very high budget deficits and rising public debt. The introduction of major austerity measures decreased public expenditures by 10 percentage points (from 43% of GDP), which led to low and sustainable budget deficits. However, further fiscal improvements need to be made in order to accommodate the rise of future liabilities due to demographic changes and to create room for fiscal buffers that are now under major constraint due to the public debt hovering over 40% of GDP (2.5 times higher than before the recession). This low level of government spending is a result\nof moderate governance coupled with low transfers and subsidies, allowing for moderate level of taxes. Lithuanian tax system is flat, with some minor progressive characteristics – personal income tax is set at 15%, the same rate as the corporate income tax. Standard VAT rate is 21%, with the reduced rates of 9% and 5% for certain products. The excise duties on tobacco, alcohol and energy are among the lowest in the EU. However, tax wedge on labour is high (approximately 35.5%) due to high rates of social contributions. The income from interest and capital gains has been subjected, in 2014, to personal income tax. The Lithuanian state has largely exited the market, apart from public utility companies. These state owned enterprises are usually not managed in a commercial way and are not cost efficient. Some progress has been made in this section of the economy (most notably in energy sector), but more progress is necessary\nRegulation of business activities is overall business friendly. However, administrative requirements and bureaucracy costs associated with them are present, hindering economic development. This kind of business environment is prone to corruption and favouritism associated with it, distorting market competition. However, it is easy and inexpensive to start a new business venture, while licensing restrictions for operating a business are not prevalent in the economy. Getting electricity or obtaining a construction permit can be a long process but is inexpensive, while tax compliance with tax procedures is not too complicated. Regulations regarding labour are a mix of flexible and rigid legal solutions. Flexibility within the system is mostly the result of their meager application within the\nprivate sector. Working hours remain rigid, with relatively low maximum number of working days per week (5.5) and no prolonged working hours in the case of increased workload. Redundancy notice periods are long, with high severance payments that increase with the length of worker’s tenure. Furthermore, the minimum wage is relatively high, reaching 40% of the average wage, encouraging shadow employment and increasing unemployment level among workers with lower qualifications.\nLithuania is a country very open to international trade. As a member of the EU, Lithuania implements the EU common trade policy with low tariffs in international trade. However, regulatory trade barriers in use still pose a problem, mostly in the field of required standardization of imported goods. Good transportation infrastructure makes importing or exporting relatively easy and cheap, while quick and uncomplicated customs’ administrative requirements further facilitate free trade. However, as elsewhere in the Baltics, railroad is much less developed than other forms of transport, creating constraints and increasing costs. In January 2015, Lithuania became a member of the European Monetary Union (EMU), replacing its former national currency, the litas, with the euro. This is envisaged\nto further increase the volume of trade, eliminating currency exchange costs (the currency risk was already reduced with the introduction of the currency board between the litas and the euro in 2002). Movement of capital is mostly unobstructed, but certain restrictions on the movement of short-term capital remain. The EU citizens have the same legal rights and obligations in the labour market as do the nationals, but working permits’ obtaining for third party nationals is complicated, involving lengthy procedures.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line772027"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6548129320144653,"wiki_prob":0.34518706798553467,"text":"A new era of automation: Robots set to perform surgeries\nIndia seeks to revolutionise its medical sector with robots, automation and high tech 3D surgeries\nBy Prashansa Srivastava\nOver the centuries, innovative medical developments and techniques have changed the face of healthcare. Incorporation of such technologies helps developing nations in particular to combat problems such as inadequate medical infrastructure, unaffordable health care and a shortage of qualified medical professionals. Robotic technology is helping to trigger a similar evolution of healthcare services in India, with the arrival of robot-assisted surgery ushering in a new era in minimally invasive operations.\nSafdarjung Hospital, one of the largest central government hospitals, is in the process of procuring robots to perform high-tech 3D laparoscopies to treat advanced urology cancer, complex reconstructive surgeries and for kidney transplants. The state-of-the-art technology is estimated to cost about INR 18 crores. The poor will be provided with this facility for free whereas those admitted in private wards will be required to pay a subsidised amount.\nOne foot into the future\nRobotic surgery is performed by making three holes. Through one hole, a camera is inserted allowing 3D vision. The other two holes are for surgical instruments mounted on robotic arms manoeuvered by the surgeon. Robotic surgery has initiated a paradigm shift in the fundamental foundations of surgery worldwide due to its inherent advantages of enhanced magnification and control of operating instruments. The robotic arms can get into hard-to-reach places, reduce the chances of damage to important nerves and promise quicker recuperation. In status quo, more than 100 patients with urological cancer are waiting for treatment with the waiting time being more than a year.\nThe Indian context\nIn India, robotic surgery is still in its infancy. There are only eight such units installed in India, of which five are in New Delhi, one in Chennai, one in Nadiad and another in Pune. Financial factors have hindered the progress of robotic surgery in India. The da Vinci Surgical System made by the American company Intuitive Surgical enjoys monopoly power in the market and has hefty acquisition costs making it beyond the reach of many health care systems and medical institutions without the financial assistance of the government. The attachments on the robotic arms are disposable, further driving up maintenance costs.\nA way to decrease costs and ensure domestic growth of robotics in medicine is to encourage development of indigenous surgical robots. Achieving the sophistication of the da Vinci system is a Herculean task as robotic technology has not entered the mainstream health care system due to accessibility issues and a deficit in educational opportunities. The government can invest in robotics fellowships and training to promote future growth and provide accessible world-class medical expertise with robust infrastructure to improve the quality of healthcare in India. Continued government support is of paramount importance to help in dissemination of robotic technology so that more hospitals are encouraged to invest in it making it accessible and affordable to a greater number of people.\nFeatured image credit: LinkedIn\nGone are the days of one and done (part 2)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1472575"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5532357096672058,"wiki_prob":0.5532357096672058,"text":"Home » Research » Gender and Sexuality\nUCSB Sociology has been ranked in the top 5 in “Sex and Gender” over the last decade by the U.S. News and World Report listing of best graduate programs. UCSB faculty in gender and sexuality are leading senior scholars in the field with strong national and international reputations and junior faculty at the leading edge of contemporary developments. Our faculty continue to be at the forefront of empirical and theoretical analyses that link dimensions of structural and interpersonal inequality (such as gender, race, class, nation, sexuality). Unique to our program, the faculty in gender and sexuality are experts on most of the major institutions in society – economy, family, politics, media, health, education, and criminal justice – as well as in social movements and processes of social change.\nGender and Sexuality is now one of the largest and most vital areas of study in sociology. The study of gender and sexuality cuts across virtually every sub-discipline within the field and all humanities and social science fields. The study of gender and sexuality at UCSB thrives through the work of our graduate students, our new assistant professors, and the senior faculty in our department. This also means that many of our graduates have gone on to become leading scholars in the field as well. On our campus, faculty are deeply involved in intellectual interdisciplinary efforts with departments such as Feminist Studies, Global Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Black Studies, Psychology, and Communication and campus units such as the Broom Center for Demography and Technology Management.\nParticipating Faculty:\nJanice I. Baldwin\nDenise Bielby\nTristan Bridges\nAlicia Cast\nMaria Charles\nAvery Gordon\nVictor Rios\nBeth Schneider\nDenise Segura\nVerta Taylor\nSarah Thebaud\nFrance Winddance Twine\nUCSB Feminist Studies Department\nUCSB Doctoral Emphasis Program in Women’s Studies\nAmerican Sociological Association Section on Sex and Gender\nAmerican Sociological Association Section on Sexualities\nAmerican Sociological Association Section on Race, Gender, Class\nGender and Society (Journal)\nFor 30 years, the Sociology Department at UCSB has been at the forefront of research and graduate training in social movements and collective action. Richard Flacks’ foundational work on student, New Left, and labor movements established the department as a magnet for scholars and students interested in social movements and political protest.\nConversation Analysis\nSocial Movements, Revolutions & Social Change\nrace, ethnicity, nation","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line708574"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5698158740997314,"wiki_prob":0.5698158740997314,"text":"Path to Success!\nJanuary Activities\nFebruary Activities\nMay Activities\nAugust Activities\nOctober Activities\nNovember Activities\nDecember Activities\nLouisa May Alcott November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she also grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.\nAlcott's family suffered financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults.\nPublished in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Hillside, later called the Wayside, in Concord, Massachusetts and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The novel was very well received and is still a popular children's novel today, filmed several times.\nAlcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She died in Boston on March 6, 1888. Henry James called her \"The novelist of children... the Thackeray, the Trollope, of the nursery and the schoolroom.\"\n5859 Bellfort Street","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1275261"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7246260643005371,"wiki_prob":0.2753739356994629,"text":"Medical Assistants are allied healthcare professionals who work alongside doctors, nurses and other clinicians in a wide range of healthcare settings. They perform routine administrative and clinical tasks, under supervision of a nurse or a physician. The scope of these tasks may vary from one locale to another, and may vary depending on subsequent certifications or supplemental education, but potential examples include greeting patients, scheduling appointments, taking and recording vital signs, administering medications, giving injections, recording medical records data, prepping and handling medical equipment and supplies, and collecting, handling, or analyzing patient specimens.\nMedical Assistants help facilitate the smooth delivery of care in a variety of busy private practice and clinic settings. From urgent care clinics, to assisted living facilities, to inpatient and outpatient clinics, to private and public hospitals, medical assistants are increasingly finding employment in a broad range of settings. Medical assistants can be found working with physicians, podiatrists, chiropractors, and optometrists, among other medical specialties. At St. Paul’s School of Nursing, we offer a Medical Assistant program that will prepare you for an entry-level medical assistant career. You will learn necessary skills, such as office administration, basic information technology, and clinical skills.\nWith convenient locations in New York City—in Queens and on Staten Island— St. Paul’s School of Nursing stands ready to provide you with the education You will need to become a knowledgeable, compassionate, respected healthcare professional. Our curriculum is informed by the diverse communities we serve, and our students obtain opportunities to receive real-world experience at local primary, secondary, and tertiary medical facilities. Our Medical Assistant certification program has been designed to provide a broad perspective on modern American healthcare, while giving you the education you will need for entry-level employment in this growing field.\nMedical Assistant Curriculum Plan\nWho is St. Paul's School of Nursing?\nSt. Paul's School of Nursing provides postsecondary career education to both traditional and nontraditional students through a variety of degree programs that assist adult students in enhancing their career opportunities and improving problem-solving abilities.\nSt. Paul's School of Nursing strives to develop within its students the desire for lifelong and continued education.\nWhat are the admission requirements?\nTo qualify for admissions, in most cases you must be a high school graduate or its equivalent. All applicants are required to complete a personal information sheet. During a personal interview with our admissions staff, we will review your career goals to help you find the right program to fit your needs.\nEvery individual will be given the opportunity to tour the facility, meet with Financial Aid, and enroll in the next available classes. Please contact your local campus Admission representative for more information on admission requirements.\nHow much does the program cost?\nTuition varies from program and campus. Speak with an admissions representative for more details.\nIs financial aid available?\nYou've got obligations and responsibilities already, so financing your education is going to be a real concern. At St. Paul's School of Nursing, we understand that. That's why we help our students to learn about government and private loans and other financial aid options that are available to those who qualify to help finance the cost of building the foundation for your new career.\nWe work every day with working adults and career changers who have complex financial situations, and get them the information to help them to determine the financing for their education that will work the best for them.\nWe have financial aid offices on every campus so students can continue to find and act on important information they need to continue on their path to success\nWe are flexible and pragmatic in our approach. Our instructors, counselors, professors, and staff understand and will work with you if it becomes difficult to keep up your studies or if you need time off.\nDoes St. Paul's School of Nursing help me find a job after graduation?\nAt St. Paul's School of Nursing our Career Services professionals are committed to successfully supporting our graduates to secure employment in entry-level positions. Through career development, including professionalism, motivation, resume development, dress for success, interview coaching and the maintenance of ethical standards, we empower our graduates with the skills necessary to approach a job interview ready for success.\nSt. Paul's operates a Career Services Center at each campus to assist graduates with career placement. All State Career provides career placement assistance to our graduates. As graduation approaches, students get the opportunity to meet with the Director of Career Services during their last semester to discuss career services available for their individual job search. As a graduate, you will want employment that reflects your skills, training, and allows for professional growth and development. Career Services is committed to helping you find the right fit for you.\nIs St. Paul's School of Nursing accredited?\nSt. Paul’s School of Nursing is institutionally accredited by the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES).\nSee each school's campus page or click on the CONSUMER INFO button on the right to view individual campus or programmatic accreditations.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line889906"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6724450588226318,"wiki_prob":0.32755494117736816,"text":"Senator Grassley is a member of the following Senate committees:\nCommittee on Finance. At the start of the 116th Congress in January 2019, Senator Grassley resumed chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee, where he served as either Ranking Member or Chairman of this committee from 2001 through 2010. His priorities for the committee’s agenda include reducing prescription drug prices, expanding access to affordable health care, enacting trade agreements to expand markets for U.S. goods and services and building upon the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Senator Grassley has called this committee the quality of life committee because of the committee’s jurisdiction, which includes all tax matters, health care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, social services, unemployment compensation, tariffs and international trade. Legislation acted on by the Committee on Finance raises virtually all federal revenue, and expenditures authorized by this committee represent as much as two-thirds of the federal budget.\nCommittee on the Judiciary. Senator Grassley has served on this committee every year that he’s served in the Senate. He served four years as chairman from 2015-2018 during which time he led passage of historic bipartisan criminal justice reform, known as the First Step Act. As chairman, he also steered through 85 federal judges to lifetime appointments, including two Supreme Court justices. The Committee on the Judiciary is one of the Senate’s original standing committees and has a broad and influential jurisdiction, including crime, antitrust, bankruptcy, intellectual property, the federal courts and judges, civil liberties, constitutional law and amendments and immigration.\nCommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. Both on and off the Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Grassley is an outspoken and effective voice for American agriculture. Senator Grassley farms corn and soybeans 50-50 with his son in Butler County, Iowa, and works to stay in close touch with the realities facing producers of farm commodities, including livestock. The Agriculture Committee is responsible for federal farm program policy, nutrition programs and forestry matters, as well as oversight of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.\nCommittee on the Budget. Senator Grassley is a senior member of this committee, which is responsible for drafting an annual budget plan for Congress. The budget resolution prepared by the Budget Committee sets out a broad blueprint for Congress with respect to the total levels of revenues and spending for the federal government as a whole. Other committees in the Senate and House of Representatives prepare the legislation that establishes specific tax and spending policies.\nJoint Committee on Taxation. Senator Grassley will serve as Vice Chairman of this committee in 2019 and as Chairman in 2020. The leadership roles alternate between the respective chairs of the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways & Means Committee. Members include five senators who serve on the Finance Committee and five members of the House of Representatives who serve on the Committee on Ways and Means. The Joint Committee reports on the effects of taxes and the administration of taxes.\nSenator Grassley is a founding member of the following Senate caucuses:\nSenate Caucus on Foster Youth. Senator Grassley is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair with Sen. Debbie Stabenow.\nSenate Cystic Fibrosis Caucus. Senator Grassley is the Co-Founder and Co-Chair of this caucus with Sen. Edward Markey.\nThe Whistleblower Protection Caucus. Senator Grassley is the Co-Founder and Chairman of this caucus.\nSenator Grassley serves on the following caucuses in the 116th Congress:\nSenate Baltic Freedom Caucus. Co-Chair with Sen. Dick Durbin\nCaucus on International Narcotics Control\nSenate National Guard Caucus\nCongressional Trademark Caucus\nMississippi River Caucus\nSenate Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus\nCongressional Coalition on Adoption\nRural Health Caucus\nDiabetes Caucus\nSenate Taiwan Caucus\nSenate General Aviation Caucus\nCongressional Sportsmen’s Caucus\nCongressional Fire Services Caucus\nCongressional French Caucus\nSenate India Caucus\nAssisting Caregivers Today Caucus\nFinancial Security and Life Insurance Caucus\nRV Caucus\nSenate Career and Technical Education Caucus\nCongressional TRIO Caucus","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line599260"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9326343536376953,"wiki_prob":0.9326343536376953,"text":"November 15, 2012 / 10:30 PM / 7 years ago\nMexico lawmaker introduces bill to legalize marijuana\nNoe Torres\nMEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A leftist Mexican lawmaker on Thursday presented a bill to legalize the production, sale and use of marijuana, adding to a growing chorus of Latin American politicians who are rejecting the prohibitionist policies of the United States.\nThe bill is unlikely to win much support in Congress since a strong majority of Mexicans are firmly against legalizing drugs, but may spur a broader debate in Mexico after two U.S. states voted to allow recreational use of marijuana last week. U.S. officials have said it remains illegal and that they are reviewing the state actions.\nThe split between local and federal governments in the United States is feeding a growing challenge in Latin America to the four-decade-old policies that Washington promoted, and often bankrolled, to disrupt illegal drug cultivation and smuggling.\n“The prohibitionist paradigm is a complete failure,” said Fernando Belaunzaran, the author of the bill from the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), who presented the proposal in Mexico’s lower house of Congress.\n“All this has done is spur more violence, the business continues. The country that has paid the highest costs is Mexico,” he said in a telephone interview.\nA conflict between drug gangs and security forces has killed more than 60,000 people during the six-year rule of outgoing President Felipe Calderon, who has repeatedly demanded the United States to do more to curb demand for illegal drugs.\nFrustration with U.S. policy deepened after voters in Washington state and Colorado approved the recreational use of marijuana.\nStill, there is little popular support for marijuana legalization in Mexico. Recent polls show two-thirds or more of Mexicans are opposed to making it legal. Several other bills to legalize the drug have been rejected in recent years.\nMexican leftists form the second biggest bloc in the lower house, behind the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that won the presidency in an election in July. The leftist coalition has more seats than Calderon’s conservatives.\n“It is important to open the debate, but I do not think this will advance,” said political analyst Fernando Dworak. “In reality, it is just not part of the legislative agenda.”\nAcross Latin America, there is a growing view that Washington’s “war on drugs” is not working.\nUruguay’s government submitted a legalization bill to Congress this week that would put the state in charge of marijuana cultivation and distribution, while also allowing for individuals to grow plants at home.\nIn September, Calderon and the leaders of Colombia and Guatemala - historically three of the most reliable U.S. partners on drug interdiction - called on world governments to explore new alternatives to the problem.\nThe chief advisor of incoming President Enrique Pena Nieto, Luis Videgaray, said last week that the votes in Washington and Colorado mean Mexico must rethink its approach to the trade, though he said Pena Nieto was opposed to legalization of drugs.\nLast week, the governor of Chihuahua, one of the Mexican states worst hit by drugs violence, told Reuters Mexico should legalize export of marijuana. The governor, Cesar Duarte, is an ally of Pena Nieto, who takes office on December 1.\nAdditional reporting by Michael O'Boyle; Editing by Jackie Frank","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line431542"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5308077335357666,"wiki_prob":0.5308077335357666,"text":"Home Jihad A terrorist’s suicide and the matter of hell\nA terrorist’s suicide and the matter of hell\nWhere does the recently deceased Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi currently reside?\nSource: The Catholic World Report, By William Kilpatrick, November 5, 2019\nThe death of terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raises some important questions about Islamic beliefs, as well as about the motivations of terrorists.\nTerrorist leaders claim that their actions are perfectly in accord with the Koran, the Hadith, the Sira (The Life of Muhammad), and traditional Islamic beliefs. They can point out, for instance, that Muhammad and his troops engaged in the very behaviors for which ISIS is now condemned—rape, sex-slavery, torture, and beheadings. They can also point to numerous passages in Islamic scriptures which present jihad against unbelievers as the highest service to Allah.\nOn the other hand, moderate Muslims claim that terrorists misunderstand Islam: they have perverted the faith and even betrayed it. Moderate imams insist that terror has nothing to do with Islam, and they can produce different sets of verses to prove the point.\nBut if terrorists are ignorant of Islam as moderates claim, why do several studies reveal that jihadists are better educated than the average Muslim? And, more to the point, why did the Washington Post refer to al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar”? Well, I don’t know much about his degree of austereness, but he did have a degree—a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Baghdad.\nLikewise, Omar Abdel Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, had a Ph.D. in Islamic Jurisprudence from Al-Azhar University. So did Abdullah Azzam, mentor to Osama bin Laden, and the founder of MAK (later renamed al-Qaeda). And Anwar al-Awlaki, the chief propagandist for al-Qaeda and mentor to numerous terrorists, was working on a Ph.D. at George Washington University before he went full jihad.\nSo, the argument that terrorists are ignorant of Islam doesn’t hold water.\nAs is now well known, al-Baghdadi, who was appropriately dressed for the occasion in a bomb vest, blew himself up when a member of the Army K-9 corps chased him down in a tunnel. Which brings up a question about Dr. Al-Baghdadi that should be of interest to jihadis and infidels alike. The question is, where does he currently reside? In the words of the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, “Is he in heaven, or is he in hell?”\nSuicide is prohibited in Islam. According to Koran 4:29, those who take their own lives are destined for eternal hellfire. But don’t jump to the conclusion that al-Baghdadi must therefore be in hell. According to a great many Islamic scholars, suicide bombers go straight to paradise and the company of 72 eternally young virgins.\nIt seems like a contradiction. What’s the catch? The “catch”is that, in the Arab world, suicide bombers are not called “suicide bombers.” They are called “martyrs,” and they are highly honored. What we call a suicide bombing, they call a “martyrdom operation.” And, apparently, that makes it okay. Killing oneself for the sake of killing oneself is a sin, but, in the words of Islam scholar Daniel Pipes, “killing oneself in order to harm non-Muslims is an act of deep piety.” So the same action can be either a sin if committed out of despair, or a supreme form of jihad if committed for the sake of Allah.\nBut how about al-Baghdadi? Although two of his children died with him, he didn’t manage to harm any infidels, excepting the attack dog, who is expected to survive. His failure brings several questions to mind. Are good intentions enough? Or does Allah reserve brides only for successful jihadists? Should Baghdadi have waited until the American troops were within range before pulling the pin? Why didn’t he wait? Did he turn coward in the face of the approaching dog? Was he overly anxious to get to his reward? Did he kill himself mainly out of love of Allah or mainly out of lust for heavenly virgins?\nThese are questions that every potential jihadist should be asking himself. And the wonder is that such questions aren’t raised more often by non-Muslims, seeing that every infidel is potentially a ticket to paradise for some jihadist.\nIt’s often said that we are in an ideological war with Islamists. Shouldn’t we, then, take every opportunity to force Islamists to question their ideological system? The death of al-Baghdadi provides a golden opportunity to pose some questions that would help to clarify the minds of jihadists, while helping infidels come to a better understanding of Islam.\n“Is Baghdadi in hell?” The question could be posed to Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb and other prominent Islamic leaders. The point is not to get the answer but to raise the question. The Grand Imam and others may decline to answer, or they may answer in evasive or equivocal ways. No matter. The mere fact that they want to avoid the question will speak volumes. The important thing is to bring this and similar questions out in the open.\nIs Baghdadi in hell? Or do Muslims worship a God who rewards the leader of a brutal band of killers, torturers and rapists with eternal bliss? Inquiring minds want to know.\nBut, of course, there are apparently very few inquiring minds left in the West. These are central questions, but they are the kind of questions that far too many reporters, politicians, and Catholic dialoguers take pains to avoid. There are as few establishment figures willing to ask such questions as there are moderate imams anxious to answer them. Admittedly, some imams do from time to time issue fatwas forbidding terrorism and the taking of innocent lives. But these are generally worded in such a way that enough loopholes are left for a column of jihadists to drive through.\nBesides, jihadists and jihadists in the making don’t generally pay much attention to moderate imams. They do, however, spend a lot of time on the Internet exploring websites and exchanging notes with others of like mind. So, the Internet is the place to go if you want to raise the uncomfortable questions that the mainstream media refuses to raise.\nAs to where, exactly, one goes on the Internet, it’s not an area with which I have much familiarity; but I notice that there are a number of young, outspoken conservative YouTube commentator/personalities who wouldn’t mind broaching these subjects. In addition, there are a number of Christian apologists, such as David Wood of Acts 17 Apologetics Ministry, who interact frequently with their Muslim counterparts, and whose video blogs are followed closely by both Christians and Muslims. Of course, the FBI, Army Intelligence, and other intelligence agencies undoubtedly do know where the action is on the Internet, and for all I know they may already be exploiting the “Baghdadi in hell” meme. But I have my doubts.\nHowever they are conveyed, these are the kinds of questions that ought to be asked in public over and over until they begin to echo and reverberate both in the minds of Muslims and naïve Westerners as well. We should especially encourage potential jihadists to question themselves. Do they really want to throw the dice? What if they muff the martyrdom operation and only manage to blow themselves up? Can they count on their capricious God to reward them for good effort? Are they undertaking the martyrdom mission primarily out of love of God or out of love of sex? Better be careful here. It’s easy to fool yourself. But Allah knows all, and he knows if your motives are pure. If your motive for taking your life is no more than the hope of promised sensual rewards, then you go to hell. It’s a tough calculation. As Clint Eastwood might put it, “Do you feel lucky?”\nThe goal here should be to instill doubts in the minds of Muslims about some of the more extreme beliefs that come with their faith. Hopefully, the initial question about Baghdadi’s fate will lead the would-be jihadist on to other questions. Does he really believe it’s okay to murder women here on earth so that he can have women in heaven? What kind of a person is he? Does he actually believe that God has set aside 72 virgins exclusively to serve him in paradise? Isn’t that just an adolescent day dream? Has he ever wondered if virgins in paradise isn’t just a con game designed to get him to enlist in the jihad?\nIf it all sounds insensitive—and highly dangerous to boot—consider that the walking-on-eggshells approach to Islam has yielded zero results and has, arguably, made the world a more dangerous place. By contrast, tough questions can open minds. They may even give a young man the chance of growing up instead of blowing up.\nLike Christians, Muslims believe in hell. Unlike most Christians today, however, they worry a lot about going there. Indeed jihad is often presented to young Muslims as the surest way of wiping the slate clean, earning Allah’s favor, and avoiding hell. It’s important therefore, to try and implant some seeds of doubt about that. If even a small number of Muslims become convinced that the path of jihad is the surest road to hell, it might eventually make a world of difference.\nThe question about Baghdadi’s fate may also have a salutary effect on naive Christians and gullible secularists. It may come as a surprise to some of them that many Muslims believe that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is safely ensconced in paradise as a reward for his heroic deeds. Perhaps the news will help them develop a more clear- headed view of what “diversity of religions” really entails.\nPrevious articleTrump Administration Approves HAMAS-linked CAIR to Train U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Officers\nNext articleThe Threat of The Islamic Jihad in Gaza\nWhat Soleimani’s Death Means for Middle-Eastern Christians\nIran, Hizballah gird up for guerilla, rocket attacks on US forces in Iraq, rockets against Israel\nGlick Video: Qassem Soleimani is Dead. Who’s Next?\nIN STRIKING SOLEIMANI, TRUMP WAS WELL WITHIN HIS CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY: CONGRESS OR NO CONGRESS\n93% of Muslim Public Officials Would Not Express Support for the Constitution They Swore to Uphold","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line121510"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7789573073387146,"wiki_prob":0.7789573073387146,"text":"Ohio State’s Justin Fields named Big Ten’s QB, Offensive Player of the Year\nby: NBC4 Staff\nPosted: Dec 4, 2019 / 05:30 PM EST / Updated: Dec 4, 2019 / 05:42 PM EST\nCOLUMBUS (WCMH) — Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields has been named the Big Ten’s Quarterback and Offensive Player of the Year.\nIn his first season with Ohio State, Fields has 37 touchdowns and one interceptions. He has a total of 10 rushing touchdowns.\nFields has led the Buckeyes to a 12-0, 9-0 record in the Big Ten and No. 1 CFP.\nOhio State will head to the Big Ten championship game to face No. 13 Wisconsin on Saturday with a spot in the College Football Playoff in sight.\nMore Buckeyes Stories\nNo. 21 Buckeyes beat Nebraska, snap 4-game losing streak\nCOLUMBUS (AP) -- C.J. Walker scored 18 and No. 21 Ohio State snapped a four-game losing streak by beating Nebraska 80-68.\nFreshman guard D.J. Carton chipped in 13 for the Buckeyes and Kaleb Wesson had 13 points and 14 rebounds.\nTwo Buckeyes suspended for Nebraska game\nby Justin Holbrock / Jan 14, 2020\nCOLUMBUS (WCMH) — Ohio State men's basketball head coach Chris Holtmann has suspended sophomore guards Luther Muhammad and Duane Washington Jr. for Tuesday's game against Nebraska.\nThe news comes from Dan Wallenberg, the associate athletic director for communications at The Ohio State University.\nBuckeyes drop to no. 21 in latest basketball poll after 4 straight losses\nGood luck finding any team in the country that notches a better pair of road wins in the same week than Baylor, which followed up a victory at Texas Tech by invading Allen Fieldhouse and thumping Kansas on its home floor.\nAs a result? The Bears leapfrogged the Jayhawks and Duke into the second spot in The Associated Press men's college basketball poll on Monday. They finished with 1,567 points in voting by 65 media members who regularly cover the game, just seven back of top-ranked Gonzaga — even though Baylor had 31 first-place votes and the Bulldogs had 30.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line278228"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6890663504600525,"wiki_prob":0.3109336495399475,"text":"Home > Journals > Chemistry & Materials Science | Engineering > OPJ\nOPJ> Vol.2 No.4, December 2012\nSpeckle Reduction in Imaging Projection Systems\nAbstract Full-Text HTML Download as PDF (Size:1371KB) PP. 338-343\nDOI: 10.4236/opj.2012.24042 4,205 Downloads 6,874 Views Citations\nWeston Thomas, Christopher Middlebrook\nElectrical and Computer Engineering Department, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, USA.\nDiffractive diffusers (phase gratings) are routinely used for homogenizing and beam shaping for laser beam applications. Another use for diffractive diffusers is in the reduction of speckle for pico-projection systems. While diffusers are unable to completely eliminate speckle they can be utilized to decrease the resultant contrast to provide a more visually acceptable image. Research has been conducted to quantify and measure the diffusers overall ability in speckle reduction. A theoretical Fourier optics model is used to provide the diffuser’s stationary and in-motion performance in terms of the resultant contrast level. Contrast measurements of two diffractive diffusers are calculated theoretically and compared with experimental results. Having a working theoretical model to accurately predict the performance of the diffractive diffuser allows for the verification of new diffuser designs specifically for pico-projection system applications.\nDiffractive Diffusers; Speckle Contrast Reduction; Laser Pico-Projectors\nW. Thomas and C. Middlebrook, \"Speckle Reduction in Imaging Projection Systems,\" Optics and Photonics Journal, Vol. 2 No. 4, 2012, pp. 338-343. doi: 10.4236/opj.2012.24042.\n[1] J. W. Goodman, “Speckle Phenomena in Optics: Theory and Applications,” Roberts & Company, Englewood, 2007, p. 387.\n[2] J. I. Trisnadi, “Hadamard Speckle Contrast Reduction,” Optics Letters, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2004, pp. 11-13. doi:10.1364/OL.29.000011\n[3] W. Thomas, C. Middlebrook and J. Smith, “Laser Speckle Contrast Reduction Measurement Using Diffractive Diffusers,” Proceedings of SPIE, Emerging Liquid Crystal Technological IV, Vol. 7232, 2009, 11 p.\n[4] D. D. Duncan, S. J. Kirkpatrick and R. K. Wang, “Statistics of Local Speckle Contrast,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 25, No. 1, 2008, pp. 9-15. doi:10.1364/JOSAA.25.000009\n[5] C. N. Kurtz, H. O. Hoadley and J. J. Depalma, “Design and Synthesis of Random Phase Diffuser,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 63, No. 9, 1973, pp. 10801092. doi:10.1364/JOSA.63.001080\n[6] C. N. Kurtz, “Transmittance Characteristics of Surface Diffusers and the Design of Nearly Band-Limited Binary Diffusers,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 62, No. 8, 1972, pp. 982-989. doi:10.1364/JOSA.62.000982\n[7] J. W. Goodman, “Statistical Optics,” Wiley Classics Library, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2000, p. 550.\n[8] Y. Nakayama and M. Kato, “Diffuser with Pseudorandom Phase Sequence,” Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 69, No. 10, 1979, pp. 1367-1372. doi:10.1364/JOSA.69.001367\n[9] D. Voelz, “Computational Fourier Optics: A MATLAB Tutorial,” SPIE Tutorial Texts, SPIE Press, Bellingham, 2011, p. 250.\n[10] D. A. Gremaux, “Limits of Scalar Diffraction Theory for Conducting Gratings,” Applied Optics, Vol. 32, No. 11, 1993, pp. 1948-1953. doi:10.1364/AO.32.001948\n[11] J. E. Harvey, “Fourier Treatment of Near-Field Diffraction Theory,” American Journal of Physics, Vol. 47, No. 11, 1979, pp. 974-980. doi:10.1119/1.11600\n[12] J. T. Verdeyen, “Laser Electronics,” In: J. Nick Holonyak, Ed., Prentice Hall Series in Solid State Physical Electronics, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, Saddle River, 2000, p. 778.\n[13] H. Loui, “Fourier Propagation, in Numerical Methods in Photonics Project 2004,” University of Colorado, Boulder, pp. 1-5.\n[14] J. W. Goodman, “Introduction to Fourier Optics,” 3rd Edition, Roberts & Company, Englewood, 2005.\n[15] M. Livingstone, “Vision & Art: The Biology of Seeing,” Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2002.\n[16] J. W. Tom, A. Ponticorvo and A. K. Dunn, “Efficient Processing of Laser Speckle Contrast Images,” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Vol. 27, No. 12, 2008, pp. 1728-1738. doi:10.1109/TMI.2008.925081\nOPJ Subscription\nOPJ Most popular papers\nOPJ News","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line711133"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7297417521476746,"wiki_prob":0.27025824785232544,"text":"37 BScs in Computer Arts 2020\nComputer arts courses prepare students for an industry becoming progressively more reliant on digital technology. Classes teach participants to work with new technology and how to implement their artistic styles within the professional world to successfully build a career in this field.\nBSc in Computer Arts\nOnline | Courses | Pathway Programs\n37 Results in Computer Arts\nBachelor of Science in Game Art\nWinter Park, USA\nIn Full Sail’s Game Art program, you’ll learn to create 3D content to suit any game – no matter the mood, genre, or platform. You’ll take traditional art and animation princ ... +\nIn Full Sail’s Game Art program, you’ll learn to create 3D content to suit any game – no matter the mood, genre, or platform. You’ll take traditional art and animation principles and apply them to models that look, move, and articulate realistically. -\nBSc in Creative Media and Game Technologies\nBreda, Netherlands\nIs it your dream to work in the game industry? In our game programme, one of the best in the world, you learn how to make interesting, attractive and, above all, playable game ... +\nIs it your dream to work in the game industry? In our game programme, one of the best in the world, you learn how to make interesting, attractive and, above all, playable games. -\nBSc (Hons) in Computer Game Development\nWrexham, United Kingdom\nRated first in Wales for overall satisfaction and teaching, this course is designed to develop strong technical game development and project management skills to enhance your ... +\nRated first in Wales for overall satisfaction and teaching, this course is designed to develop strong technical game development and project management skills to enhance your employability. -\nBachelor of Science (Honours) in Computer Games and Animation (Top Up)\nThis course includes the foundations of computing, programming, and a more advanced study of techniques for programming and producing software that can output high-quality thr ... +\nThis course includes the foundations of computing, programming, and a more advanced study of techniques for programming and producing software that can output high-quality three-dimensional graphics in real time. -\nBSc (Hons) Games Development\nOur BSc (Hons) Games Development degree is all about hands-on games development. On this course, you’ll learn the end-to-end process of making games and discover what it takes ... +\nOur BSc (Hons) Games Development degree is all about hands-on games development. On this course, you’ll learn the end-to-end process of making games and discover what it takes to become a successful games developer. -\nBSc (Hons) in Virtual and Augmented Reality\nBradford, United Kingdom\nThis brand-new BSc (Hons) programme in Virtual and Augmented Reality (with placement year) is one of the first of its kind in the UK. It sits alongside our established games d ... +\nThis brand-new BSc (Hons) programme in Virtual and Augmented Reality (with placement year) is one of the first of its kind in the UK. It sits alongside our established games design, animation, visual effects and film production programmes, representing the future direction of these industries. It will give you the technical and creative skills you need to become a professional virtual/augmented/ mixed reality artist, equipped to enter a fast-growing and incredibly exciting sector. -\nBSc (Hons) Games Design\nThis course will equip you with the specialist skills and knowledge to enter the games, digital and creative entertainment industries. You will focus on three main areas: prog ... +\nThis course will equip you with the specialist skills and knowledge to enter the games, digital and creative entertainment industries. You will focus on three main areas: programming and software engineering; art, concept and asset production; and game design studies, practice and theory. -\nBSc (Hons) in Computer Systems (Computer Games Programming)\nAcademic City, United Arab Emirates\nOur four-year BSc Computer Systems (Computer Games Programming) Honours degree is oriented to constructing robust and useable computer games. We aim to teach people not only h ... +\nOur four-year BSc Computer Systems (Computer Games Programming) Honours degree is oriented to constructing robust and useable computer games. We aim to teach people not only how to deploy cutting edge games but also help them to develop other professional skills that will enable them to communicate clearly, work independently and cooperate effectively. In the gaming industry, where business transactions are underpinned by technology, workplaces need individuals who can create effective systems. Our graduates will move into the games development industry armed with a blend of interpersonal and technical skills that will meet current needs and the needs of the organisations of the future. -\nBachelor of Science in Game Programming\nA Bachelor of Science in Game Programming prepares students for an exciting, rewarding and in-demand career in an industry where tech and creativity intersect. Bring compellin ... +\nA Bachelor of Science in Game Programming prepares students for an exciting, rewarding and in-demand career in an industry where tech and creativity intersect. Bring compelling stories, interesting characters and unique strategies to life through a program that merges applied art, computer science and software programming. Study and work with like-minded creatives to design and develop the next generation of video games with a holistic approach that incorporates state-of-the-art equipment and exceptional teaching by industry insiders at the forefront of their field. Get ready to make gaming your life’s work. -\nBSc (Hons) in Computer Games (Software Development)\nStudy Computer Games (Software Development) and learn to programme in the studios, labs and lecture halls where this specialism flourishes. GCU has an active games department ... +\nStudy Computer Games (Software Development) and learn to programme in the studios, labs and lecture halls where this specialism flourishes. GCU has an active games department and students are involved in competitions, events and gaming challenges. -\nBSc (Hons) Computer Games Programming\nThe BSc (Hons) Computer Games Programming is a well-structured programme that equips students with both the theoretical grounding and the practical skills they need to develop ... +\nThe BSc (Hons) Computer Games Programming is a well-structured programme that equips students with both the theoretical grounding and the practical skills they need to develop compelling computer games. -\nEnglish, Greek\nBSc Honours in Computer Games Development\nComputer Games Development combines technology and creativity in a multidisciplinary way. The games industry is still an expanding and challenging sector with continually evol ... +\nComputer Games Development combines technology and creativity in a multidisciplinary way. The games industry is still an expanding and challenging sector with continually evolving ideas and cutting-edge technologies. It requires practitioners to exercise more flexibility in software specifications and functionality, through adapting their approaches to design and management while keeping abreast of broad changes to technology. -\nBSc (Hons) Computer Games Design & Development\nThe BSc Games Design and Development degree equips you with the skills needed to follow a career in games development or in the wider IT industry. The course covers the techni ... +\nThe BSc Games Design and Development degree equips you with the skills needed to follow a career in games development or in the wider IT industry. The course covers the techniques used to create computer games, including the relevant theory and practice from Computer Science and Software Engineering. This provides you with an understanding of how games are designed and developed in addition to the transferable knowledge and skills you can take forward in your career as games technology advances. -\nBSc in International Digital Arts and Entertainment\nDAE is a 180 ECTS full-time bachelor programme designed by and developed for creative, ambitious, passionate and exceptional individuals.\nDAE is a 180 ECTS full-time bachelor programme designed by and developed for creative, ambitious, passionate and exceptional individuals. -\nB.Sc. in Game Designing\nBengaluru, India +1 More\nB.Sc. Animation Game Designing and Development or Bachelor of Science in Animation Game Designing and Development is a three-year graduate programme. The course focuses on the ... +\nB.Sc. Animation Game Designing and Development or Bachelor of Science in Animation Game Designing and Development is a three-year graduate programme. The course focuses on the art and design of computer games and animation where students will concentrate on specific needs as a professional game artist, designer, developer, and animator. The course helps in computer science, including writing computer programs in core languages such as C and C++, with a solid grounding in the humanities, social sciences, and fundamentals of art. -","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1278917"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6422067880630493,"wiki_prob":0.6422067880630493,"text":"Guns N' Roses To Perform At Super Bowl Music Fest\nGuns N' Roses first concert since its incredible 'Not in This Lifetime' tour ended this fall will be part of the lead up to the 54th Super Bowl.\nGNR will perform January 31, 2020, on Night 2 of the Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest. The fest also features DJ Khaled and DaBaby performing on Night 1 and last year's Super Bowl halftime performers Maroon 5 performing on Night 3.\nThe Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and YouTube's most-viewed band from the '80s and '90s, revealed the news Thursday via Twitter. Tickets to the general public go on sale December 9. Nightrain fan club members have access to pre-sale tickets, beginning Friday, December 6, at noon. Fans need only log into their Nightrain accounts to get the pre-sale code.\nNext year will be significant for this new version of Guns N' Roses. After completing the 'Not in This Lifetime' tour, the band is making new music a priority this fall and winter. While Slash and Duff McKagan have each expressed excitement about bringing GNR forward into a new decade, there's no shortage of questions surrounding how the band dynamics might change in the studio.\nWhile front man Axl Rose famously took a decade to complete GNR's sixth studio album, Chinese Democracy (released in 2008), and hasn't released anything new since, Slash and McKagan have remained prolific since leaving GNR in the '90s.\nIn addition to a number of solo albums and records with different bands, Slash released his third album with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators in the fall of 2018 and toured the world in support of it. McKagan released his third solo album, Tenderness, this past spring, and then played bass on Ozzy Osbourne's forthcoming studio album.\nThere are no signs of friction between the three GNR originals so far, but it's hard to say whether a new GNR release is imminent or if the band would dare play anything new during such a high profile gig as the Super Bowl Music Fest.\nWhen GNR announces more 2020 concerts, go here for tickets and more details.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1416992"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8245053887367249,"wiki_prob":0.8245053887367249,"text":"The Trillings\n– Sidney Hook, \"The Trillings,\" October 1, 2015.\nExcerpt: I first met Lionel Trilling at the artists’ colony at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, in the summer of 1931 (or maybe 1932; I was at Yaddo for two or three years). I was impressed by a certain gentleness of outlook. He had just come to terms with the… More\nBeyond Liberalism\n– Williams, Raymond. \"Beyond Liberalism.\" The Manchester Guardian,\" April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves.\nExcerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the large-scale commuter traffic of literary academics. Just who, I… More\nLiberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling\n– Howe, Irving. \"Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling.\" The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves.\nExcerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts toward a denial of the emotions and the imagination.”… More\n– Spender, Stephen. \"Beyond Liberalism.\" Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves.\nExcerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it amounts to is that liberals are inclined to—or do—live within a… More\nTrilling’s Matthew Arnold\n– Barzun, Jacques. \"Trilling's Matthew Arnold.\" Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves.\nExcerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us show by our actions that our feelings approve them. We read the… More\nUncle Matthew\n– Wilson, Edmund. \"Uncle Matthew.\" Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves.\nExcerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The Victorians, with Keats and Tennyson in mind, like to watch for the soft… More\nDoes Lionel Trilling Matter?\n– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.\nExcerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the relation of literature to society, it was because, like Matthew Arnold… More\nLionel Trilling and the Social Imagination\n– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.\nExcerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The Princess Casamassima in which Trilling fingers a line of nineteenth-century… More\nLionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind\n– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.\nExcerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of history.” The Russian short-story writer Isaac Babel was a case in point.… More\nWhy Trilling Matters\n– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.\nLionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship\n– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.\nThe Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism\n– Kimmage, Michael. The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.\nUnderrated: Lionel Trilling\n– Himmelfarb, Gertrude. “Underrated: Lionel Trilling.” Standpoint, April 2009.\nExcerpt: When Lionel Trilling died in 1975, he was not only the most eminent literary critic in America, but also, some would argue, the most eminent intellectual figure. Three years before his death, he received the first of the Thomas Jefferson Awards, the… More\nRegrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents\n– Menand, Louis. \"Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents.\" New Yorker, September 29, 2008.\nExcerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is never defined in “The Liberal Imagination.” And there are, as a matter… More\nIntroduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays\n– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.\nExcerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so heartening as “answers.” The elements of Erskine’s… More\nWhen Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling\n– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.\nIntroduction to The Middle of the Journey\n– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.\nExcerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is discomfortingly evident in the ways in which the novel portrays the significant… More\n– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.\nExcerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a hint of doubt about its validity is a form of bullying. His only dogma… More\nThe Last Great Critic\n– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.\nExcerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually informative; it is also lively, witty, opinionated, and fair-minded. His… More\nLionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves\n– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.\nCollection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.\nLionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography\n– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.\nThe Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling\n– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.\nLionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation\n– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.\n– Tanner, Stephen L. Lionel Trilling. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.\nLionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism\n– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.\nLionel Trilling: Mind and Character\n– Shoben, Jr., Edward Joseph. Lionel Trilling: Mind and Character. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Company, 1981.\nLionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics\n– Chace, William M. Lionel Trilling: Criticism and Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980.\nLionel Trilling: Negative Capability and the Wisdom of Avoidance\n– Boyers, Robert. Lionel Trilling: Negative Capability and the Wisdom of Avoidance. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1977.\nArt, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling\n– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.\nArt, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The book contains relatively little criticism that engages directly with… More\nThree American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling\n– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.\nLionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination\n– Frank, Joseph. \"Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination.\" Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).\nExcerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums that have been lavished on him or the considerable influence he enjoys… More\nThe Moral Critic\n– Kristol, Irving. \"The Moral Critic.\" Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).\nExcerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time accused it of allowing this vision to blind it to the true principles… More","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line434374"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6605097055435181,"wiki_prob":0.6605097055435181,"text":"Richard Marx - Hazard\nCharles to Walk Meghan Down the Aisle\nPrince Charles is to walk Meghan Markle down the aisle at the royal wedding, Kensington Palace has announced.\nThe prince is said to be \"pleased\" to be welcoming Ms Markle to the Royal Family by giving her away.\nThe palace statement in full read: \"Ms Meghan Markle has asked His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales to accompany her down the aisle of the quire of St George's chapel on her wedding day. The Prince of Wales is pleased to be able to welcome Ms Markle to the Royal Family in this way.\"\nIt follows news this week that Meghan's father, Thomas Markle, will not be attending the ceremony on medical advice after undergoing heart surgery.\nIn a statement released by Kensington Palace on Thursday, the bride-to-be said: \"Sadly, my father will not be attending our wedding. I have always cared for my father and hope he can be given the space he needs to focus on his health.\"\nIt has also been confirmed the Duke of Edinburgh will attend the wedding after recovering from a hip operation.\nPhilip, 96, was seen at the Royal Windsor Horse Show last week - the first public sighting of the Queen's consort since he left hospital.\nLater today, the Queen will have Meghan's mother over for tea.\nDoria Ragland has already met some of her new in-laws, including Charles, William and Kate.\nDave Brookes playing Richard Marx - Hazard","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1236989"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6101679801940918,"wiki_prob":0.6101679801940918,"text":"Priyanka Chopra Finishes First On Imdb’s Top 10 Stars Of Indian Cinema And Television List\nby Filmfare | December 6, 2019, 3:14 PM IST\nIn the past few years, Priyanka Chopra has managed to expand her horizons and transformed herself into a true global superstar. With successful projects in India and in the United States, Priyanka has proved that she’s a powerhouse of talent. And now, it looks like even the popular website IMDB (International Movie Data Base) seems to agree with that statement. The website has given our desi girl the number one spot in the list Top 10 Stars of Indian Cinema and Television list.\nThe positions are based on the IMDbPro STARmeter rankings, which are calculated on the basis of the page views each star manages to earn from the 200 million visitors that the site receives on a monthly basis. Model and Actress Disha Patani, who was last seen in Bharat, secured the second spot in the list. Hrithik Roshan, who had a great 2019 thanks to Super 30 and War, managed to earn third place on the list. Kiara Advani managed to grab the number four spot on the list while superstars Akshay Kumar and Salman Khan finished at the fourth and fifth place respectively.\nPriyanka Chopra was last seen in Shonali Bose’s The Sky Is Pink. Along with Priyanka, the film also starred Farhan Akhtar, Zaira Wasim and Rohit Saraf in leading roles.\nMore on: Priyanka Chopra, IMDB","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line224686"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5632542967796326,"wiki_prob":0.5632542967796326,"text":"Blake M. Petit\nAuthor, Teacher, Geek Pundit\nBuy Blake’s Work\nHow I Went Pokémon Go\nJuly 11, 2016 July 11, 2016 blakemp Geek Punditry\tPokémon, Pokémon Go\nI’ve never played a Pokémon game. I don’t say this with any sort of value judgment or as an elitist point, I’m just trying to give you a baseline for what I’m about to talk about. I never played the card game, I’ve never owned any handheld unit like a Game Boy or any of its many successors, and I haven’t had a console since the Sega Genesis. I’ve watched a few episodes of one of the cartoons (the first one, I think, from the 90s, which was on before or after something I wanted to watch and I was too lazy to change the channel), and I saw the first movie in the theater because a buddy of mine wanted to see it and paid for a bunch of us to go with him so he didn’t have to go alone. I don’t remember much about the film, but I remember being glad I hadn’t paid for it.\nI say all this so that you understand, I didn’t have any real interest when they released Pokémon Go a few days ago. I thought the furor was mildly amusing, cracked a few jokes about it, I figured it would die down. But people kept talking, and some of the things I was hearing were intriguing. And then — and this was my downfall — my wife and brother both started playing the game, and there’s no way I was going to let either of them show me up.\nI assume by now most of you reading this, like 95 percent of the civilized world, have played the game and don’t need me to explain what it is. But let me explain why, in just a few days, I think it’s become so damned addictive. I know it’s not a groundbreaking concept — the Augmented Reality Game has been around in one form or another for quite some time, and I’m told that Pokémon Go itself is built on the framework of an earlier game called Ingress. The popularity of the preexisting franchise, however, gave this one a major boost and put it in the hands not only of those who already loved the previous Pokémon games, but also people like myself, who have never really dealt with them before.\nMuch has been said about the fact that the game forces people to go out into the real world and hunt for Pokémon — in essence, this is a mobile phone game that is tricking people into exercising. Let’s face it, guys, exercising sucks. I totally respect anyone who has the willpower to go out there and do it every day, but I look at them a little sideways when they talk about how great it feels. I exercise–\n(Hold on a second, there’s a Bulbasaur in here.)\n(Got him.)\nAs I was saying, I don’t exercise nearly as much as I should, but when I do it, I do it because I know I have to, not because it feels good to go outside in 95-degree heat, walk a mile or two, and then walk home for no apparent reason. This game, this ridiculous game, is giving people a reason to do it. Granted, one would think that improved health would be motivation enough, but clearly it isn’t, not for a hell of a lot of us.\nThere’s also a social aspect. Since there are people trying to capture the same Pokémon as everyone else, you’re going out and interacting with people. Naturally, there’s a degree of stranger danger to be wary of, there have already been a few news reports about people using the game to lure people and rob them, and for God’s sake, did you hear about that poor girl who was hunting water Pokémon down by the creek and found a dead body? But if you don’t go chasing your Pokémon down any dark alleys, you’ll probably be okay. I’ve seen people playing this game at the mall, walking down the sidewalk… two nights ago Erin and I were at a bar for dinner and to watch the Pirates game, and I heard a girl at a table behind us shout, “He’s just a little bat! He’s just flying there! Don’t pick on him!” (The bar was infested with Zubats, I should have mentioned that.)\nI’ve been farming this station in our hotel for two days.\nAnd oddly enough — here’s one I haven’t heard too many people discuss — there’s a bizarre community aspect to the game as well. I have no idea how the developers of this game decided on the spots for the Pokéstations and Gyms, but they all correspond to real-world landmarks: buildings, churches, police stations, monuments, works of art. In the Monroeville Mall outside of Pittsburgh, there are at least four separate Pokéstations corresponding to murals or sculptures, some of which I’ve never noticed before even though I’ve been to that mall a dozen times since I met my Monroeville-native wife. We’re in Pittsburgh right now visiting family, but I’m actually really anxious to get back home to the New Orleans area to see what spots were chosen down there. This game is making people learn about their community as well.\nI’m not claiming I’ll ever be a master at this game. I still don’t know exactly what the hell I’m supposed to be doing, other than catching the Pokémon and getting more balls to enable myself to catch still more Pokémon. When I reached Level Five I wound up on the Red Team, and I have no idea what that means except that my friend Kenny joined the Yellow Team, so I presumably have to beat him with a sack full of rusty doorknobs the next time I see him.\nDammit, Oddish, you’re worse than Clippy.\n(Wait, there’s one on my laptop…)\nBut somehow, this game landed at exactly the right time. Turning on the news for the past few weeks has been nothing but misery: violence and hatred and the Zika virus and for some reason Fox is still trying to make a Gambit movie… everything horrible about the world has been shoved into our faces. And that’s just globally. Personally, we’ve had family issues we’ve been trying to get resolved (no, I won’t be more specific, but good thoughts and prayers are appreciated) that have put my wife under serious stress over the last few days. This preposterous and unlikely game has been a rare bright spot, something fun and silly that you can use to take your mind off things for a moment no matter where you are.\nIt’s not perfect, I know. The first time I see some jerk trying to catch Pokémon in a movie theater I’ll want to shove a Jigglypuff up his ass, and I already am preparing a script for what I’m going to say when school starts again and I have students trying to chase around a Squirtle in my classroom. But for now, when it really matters quite a bit…\n…it’s a nice, necessary diversion.\nI know a few people — friends, even — who have a sincere hatred for the whole Pokémon concept and will likely mock me for even downloading it. I don’t care. I’m into plenty enough nerdy things that I have no right to pick on someone for this game even if I wasn’t playing it. But as a player, I’m enjoying myself, and in a better way than so many other games.\nAlso, Team Valor for life.\nBlake Online\nBlake on Amazon\nBlake on Facebook\nBlake on YouTube\nSurvive English Class on Twitter\nAll New Showcase\nThe Evertime Realms Archive","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line723316"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9943280816078186,"wiki_prob":0.9943280816078186,"text":"Pro Bono / Public Service\nAccounting Law Practice\nBusiness Reorganization, Bankruptcy, and Creditors' Rights\nEntertainment and Sports\nEquipment Lease Financing\nGlobal Outsourcing and Procurement\nHospitality, Food Service and Restaurants\nLabor, Employment & Employee Benefits\nLegal Ethics & Law Firm Practice\nMaritime and Multimodal Transportation\nMarketplace Lending & Fin/Tech\nMatrimonial and Family Law\nPromotions Law\nPractices Accounting Law Practice Advertising Asset Protection Banking and Finance --Asset Securitization --Corporate Trustees --Custody & Securities Transfers --Derivatives --Intellectual Property Lending --International Transactions --Letters of Credit & Credit Support --Mezzanine & Venture Capital Financing --Private Clients Lending --Real Estate Lending --Restructuring & Bankruptcy --Subscription Finance & Capital Commitments Lending --Syndicated Lending --Trade, Export & International Development Finance & Supplier Finance Business Reorganization, Bankruptcy, and Creditors' Rights Corporate Trust and Agency Corporate/M&A Entertainment and Sports Equipment Lease Financing Estate Litigation Family Offices Global Outsourcing and Procurement Healthcare --Fraud and Abuse --Healthcare Privacy and HIPAA Rules --Institutional Providers --Life Sciences --Long-Term and Home Health Care --Managed Care --Pharmaceutical Industry --Regulatory Compliance Hospitality, Food Service and Restaurants Intellectual Property Internet & Technology Labor, Employment & Employee Benefits Legal Ethics & Law Firm Practice Litigation --Banking Litigation --Bankruptcy Litigation --Business Litigation --Employment Litigation --Entertainment Litigation --Fiduciary Duty and Partnership Disputes --International Litigation --Patent, Trademark and Copyright Infringement Cases --Real Estate and Land Title Litigation --Trusts and Estates Litigation --Unfair Competition and Business Tort Litigation Maritime and Multimodal Transportation Marketplace Lending & Fin/Tech Matrimonial and Family Law Not-For-Profit Law Privacy & Cybersecurity Private Funds Promotions Law Real Estate Securities and Capital Markets Securities Litigation Tax Trusts and Estates Web Accessibility White Collar Criminal Defense and Government Investigations\nLaw School Albany Law School of Union University American University Washington School of Law Benjamin N. 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The firm frequently partners with other firms through our affiliation with MSI Global Alliance, a 250 member alliance of independent professional firms in over 100 jurisdictions.\" Among the NYLJ100’s largest private law firms world-wide with an office in New York State, Moses & Singer ranks 80th. Firm rankings are based on number of attorneys in New York State. To see the complete list, click here.\n© 2020 Moses & Singer LLP All Rights Reserved.\nThe Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10174-1299\nWebsite by Herrmann Advertising | Branding | Technology","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1471266"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9689502716064453,"wiki_prob":0.9689502716064453,"text":"YOUTH CHARGED FOR BOMB\nStaff reportsSUN-SENTINEL\nFORT LAUDERDALE -- A youth described by police as a \"brilliant\" student was arrested on Tuesday on charges of building an explosive device and wiring it to the locker of a student at Cardinal Gibbons Catholic High School.\nThe school, in the 4600 block of Bayview Drive, was evacuated after school officials learned the device had been placed in a locker, police spokesman Ott Cefkin said.\nThe bomb turned out to be a bottle rocket wired with batteries and a pressure switch, Cefkin said.\nThe student, 14, whose name was not released, said he planted the device as a prank because he was bored and could not get a job.\nThe boy, a straight-A student, was charged with possession of an explosive device, a felony, and was released to his parents, Cefkin said.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line155937"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8922596573829651,"wiki_prob":0.8922596573829651,"text":"Oxford American - Navigation\nWomen Artists Fund\nIssue 100, Spring 2018\nIt Had to Be Memphis\nBy Benjamin Hedin | March 13, 2018\n“Lorraine Motel Study: iPad Painting” (2012), by Fabian Marcaccio. Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Schulte\n“What about that old beat-up church by the Forum?” asked Frank Smith after learning his congregation would have to move. Downtown Church, a sect of Evangelical Presbyterians in Memphis, has no fixed address. They had been meeting for Sunday service in Central Station, Memphis’s old train depot. When it closed for renovation, Smith approached his pastor about this other property on the corner of Hernando and Pontotoc, adjacent to the FedEx Forum, where the NBA’s Grizzlies play. He knew the domed, limestone structure had historic significance, but it was in rough shape. Boards covered the stained glass. The fellowship hall behind the chapel had caved in. Richard Rieves, the pastor of Downtown Church, could only laugh at first. But then he began to cry. “If you want to mess with it, fine,” he said to Smith. “But I don’t want any part of it.”\nThe church Smith was thinking of turned out to be Clayborn Temple, built in the 1890s and once the largest house of worship south of the Ohio River. Yet it is best known for its role in the strike called in February of 1968 by the sanitation workers of Memphis. They sought union recognition and higher wages, and each day a group of them would gather at Clayborn and march to City Hall. Malcolm Blackburn, Clayborn’s minister, was also a journeyman printer, and he was the one who made those signs, iconic now and bearing a phrase he had heard on one of the marches and to which he added a slight flourish, a line reminding you where the emphasis falls: I AM A MAN.\nEventually, the strike earned the attention of Martin Luther King Jr., who was plotting the Poor People’s Campaign and saw in the sanitation workers’ struggle a microcosm of what he envisaged to be the next stage of the civil rights movement: a focus on economic equality. King came to Memphis on their behalf, and was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel, half a mile from Clayborn, on April 4, 1968.\nIn the decades following the strike, the owner of the church, the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, abandoned it—part of a general exodus that occurred in downtown Memphis after King’s death—and Clayborn was essentially given up to ruin. The plaster was torn from the ceiling, exposing the trellised skeleton of the roof, and flues were stolen from the organ. A beam stuck in the floor was all that prevented the dome from collapsing, and a tree grew inside, a Paulownia tomentosa, an exotic, invasive species, hairy and tubular, sprouting up from the basement into a room over the sanctuary and out a window.\nSeveral attempts were made over the years to repair and reopen Clayborn (including an effort led by Rieves, Smith’s pastor, which explains why he responded the way he did when Smith first inquired about the church), but none were able to do what Smith finally accomplished in 2016: persuade the AME to give up the title. Smith is devout and wears an easy humility, even an innocence, and it would not have been possible for an old, rich white guy, as he calls himself, to take control of the most sacred landmark in the city’s civil rights history if he did not possess those qualities. He also has deep pockets. He moved to Memphis from Nashville in 1981 and worked for a financial brokerage firm before founding a software company that he sold for a handsome profit.\n“We convinced them if we don’t do it then it’s going to fall down,” Smith told me one afternoon last summer, as we toured the building. Yet even once he had assumed ownership, Clayborn was in such a state he didn’t know what could be done with it. “When we got in here, it looked so bad we thought we’d tear it down and be lucky to save the stone walls,” he said. “But then we got this gift from God, an engineering report that said it would be expensive, but if you want, you can restore this place.”\nWith that Smith saw the chance to revive not only the church but also the mission it is known for. “Memphis has lived with the stigma of being the place where King was assassinated long enough,” he said. “He was here because he saw economic and social justice coming together with civil rights issues. That story is hardly known. We have an ambition of changing the narrative. How can we use this space as a platform for economic justice to be reimagined with the legacy of the sanitation workers?”\nThe restored church, he believes, can serve as a hub for activists and think tanks, a place, as he puts it, where difficult conversations can occur. By the fiftieth anniversary of King’s death, in April, Clayborn Temple will look largely as it did in 1968, though the engineer was correct to report that the project would be expensive. Ten million dollars is the cost. The organ is to be refurbished, the floor and pews replaced. And the tree growing out of the basement will have to be cut down.\nThe stigma Smith referred to, the sense of shame borne by those in Memphis for King’s death, is both pervasive and hard to define. This has to do, in part, with the apparent randomness of the location. King never planned to go to Memphis in 1968, and he spent only four days there in March and April of that year. He had cheated death so many times, and his assassin, James Earl Ray, was stalking him. In the weeks before, Ray had already been to Selma and Atlanta, looking for King.\nYet in some ways this only makes the wound deeper and more scabrous, the shame more difficult to dislodge. In chronicling the civil rights movement, one inevitably develops an interest in how racial crimes are remembered in the community where they happened—in the way they gradually turn into folklore— and in Memphis, I have discovered, a sense of fatedness clings to the King assassination. He should not have been killed here, but he was, and this simple fact overwhelms all other considerations, like Ray’s whereabouts or the luck that was required to catch King alone on the balcony of the Lorraine, a perfect shot. I heard it best from William Bell, the Stax legend. Bell was in the studio that evening in 1968, intending to record, but after King was pronounced dead he drove to WLOK and stayed on the air most of the night, pleading with people not to riot.\n“We still bear the burden of It happened in Memphis,” he told me.\n“But it could have happened anywhere,” I said.\n“It could have been anywhere,” Bell agreed. “But it had to be Memphis.”\nHe could not explain why, but knew it to be true, an article of faith. And it made me curious to see what else, aside from the rebuilding of Clayborn Temple, was going on as the half-century commemoration of King’s death approached. Memphis would have to wrestle with the burden Bell had named, and what I expected to find was not celebration, or mournfulness, but a public display of that ancient and pained pursuit, the attempt to negotiate some truce with history.\nMs. Girlee’s Soul Food Restaurant is tucked away in north Memphis, off the tourist grid, and faithfully attended by regulars who come to sample the home-style dishes of fried chicken, oxtails, and yams. Baxter Leach and his wife, Jimmie, have owned the restaurant for more than thirty years, though until 2005 Leach’s main job was collecting garbage. He was born in Mississippi, near the town of Schlater, on the eastern rim of the Delta, and grew up on plantations. “I picked cotton, chopped cotton, drove tractors and mules when I was eight, nine years old,” he told me. “Sunup to sundown.”\nHe moved to Memphis in 1960 and began working for the sanitation department, though he was promptly fired for consorting with the union. “I’m from Mississippi,” he said. “I didn’t know about any union stuff. I told them I wasn’t, and they put me back to work. Best thing they ever did was fire me. I started participating in the union then, and I stayed with the union.”\nTennessee is a right-to-work state, of course, and the sanitation union—Chapter 1733 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—had been slow to improve poor working conditions. Leach did not make much more than he would have picking cotton in Mississippi, and “we had nowhere to sit down and eat, wash our hands, nothing like that,” he told me. The Memphis Department of Public Works did not supply shower facilities or a locker room for the men to change in, and they were forbidden from eating meals or taking shelter from storms anywhere except the inside of their trucks, since Memphis’s upper crust did not like to see black garbage workers standing around their neighborhoods.\nAfter the union voted to strike in February of 1968, Mayor Henry Loeb, citing a court order that ruled work stoppages illegal, refused to bargain with the sanitation workers unless they returned to their jobs. They would not, even after being attacked one afternoon by police with billy clubs and mace. King was called in soon after.\nI asked Leach about King during our interview at the restaurant.\n“Dr. King did not come to Memphis for the sanitation workers,” he said.\n“He didn’t?”\n“He came for everybody. Black, white, blue, it didn’t matter what color you were. He came for everybody. Everybody.”\nIn the most important sense, I reflected later, this is true. Memphis became the first thrust of the Poor People’s Campaign (and because of what transpired there, the last), a multiracial front, encompassing white coal miners, Chicano farmers, and Native Americans in addition to black workers. In the summer of 1968 King planned to lead them—legions of the country’s poor—to the National Mall, where they would camp in tents and demand a series of economic reforms. He thought of it as a second, more militant March on Washington. The aim was to shut down the city. The FBI, surveilling King as always, put it well in a report dated March 12, 1968: “It is King’s contention that the Government of the United States does not move until it is confronted dramatically.”\nIn devising this plan he went against the wishes of his staff, as I learned after visiting with Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta and King’s principal aide-de-camp in those years. “None of us wanted a Poor People’s Campaign,” he told me. “Dr. King insisted on it, though. And I think he knew his days were numbered. He used to always say, ‘You’re going to die. You got no choice about that. Death is the ultimate democracy. You don’t have any choice about where you die, when you die, or how you die. The only choice is what you die for.’”\nSo yes. King came to Memphis for everybody. After his death, a settlement between the city and union was reached, but only after Abe Plough, a local businessman, donated $60,000 to cover the pay raise Leach and the others had won. The city agreed to recognize the union, and the sanitation workers who belonged to it were given a choice of where to allocate their retirement funds. Not trusting the city to play fair with a pension, they opted for Social Security, yet these accounts never added up to much. When Leach retired in 2005, he was making fourteen dollars an hour, with forty-three years of service behind him. He had no savings, just the modest income from the restaurant.\nLast summer, Jim Strickland, the mayor of Memphis, announced that the city would be awarding pension grants of $50,000 to Leach and twenty-four others still living who had gone on strike fifty years ago. “The 1968 sanitation workers showed us how courage can change a city,” Strickland said. “It’s only right that today, as we near the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. King’s death in our city, we take this meaningful step to do right by them all.”\nAround town, I noticed, these words, and even the gesture itself, were met by a lot of skepticism and derision. “That’s not a lot of money,” someone said to me. “Just enough to pay off their debt.” Another pointed out that since the funds came from the city’s surplus— taxpayer dollars—the men were effectively reimbursing themselves. And some questioned how the mayor could possibly claim to have done right by them, when the opportunity to do that was long gone. Leach had no quarrel with the gift. “I had no idea,” he said. “I was out of town when I heard. That was a blessing.” And though I was happy for him, I wondered if there was something lurid in the design of the act, the checks intended as hush money, to keep the surviving garbage workers from criticizing the city on the eve of the King anniversary.\nWhatever its intention, the gift illustrated the imponderables reparations can loose. If the grant was about doing right by the sanitation workers, why did King’s death matter? Why pay them now, and how did anyone know when the tally was reached that would set things to right? Though the mayor announced the grant at $50,000, the City Council voted to increase the sum to $70,000. Was that the magic number? Perhaps, but no reason was given for the change. The city had fallen into a trap: In seeking to atone for the errors of the past, the mayor and City Council had instead provided occasion to relive those errors, unwittingly showing how difficult, if not impossible, atonement was.\nHampton Sides, the author of Hellhound on His Trail, a vivid work of true crime about the search for Ray, was six when King was shot. He remembers turning on the television in the house in east Memphis where he grew up and “seeing for the first time national news trained on my city,” he told me. “It was such a shocking thing that brought international attention and international ridicule, and it forced the city to look at itself.”\n“Look at itself how?” I asked, and he began talking about men like Baxter Leach.\n“Memphis has always been the capital of the Mississippi Delta, the richest cotton-growing territory in the nation. When mechanization came and huge numbers of blacks left these plantations, Memphis was the first city they went to. They didn’t have a marketable skill, so a lot of them became garbage workers. And it was a recapitulation of the plantation mentality: sharecroppers taking people’s garbage out. King could have been assassinated in any other place. But he was killed in this most racially fraught place on the Mississippi River at the head of the Mississippi Delta.”\nSides was explaining why “it had to be Memphis,” how, despite the apparent randomness of the location, the moment may not have been unearned. It was a legend of the South the way Faulkner would have written it: a curse planted generations ago, hidden for so long but then sprung catastrophically, the past always coming back to despoil the present. A city living off the exploits of black labor was deprived of its sustaining illusion, and punished in the form of shame, permanently weighted with the mark of April 4. “A lot of people in Memphis thought we didn’t have a racial problem,” Sides said. “A lot of white folks.”\nKing’s murder, then, was like a bill that came due. One the city has been trying, ever since, to pay back.\nThere is a vocal contingent in Memphis that sees the coming commemoration—the official program at least, with parades and gala luncheons scheduled—as nothing but a perversion of King’s legacy. Memphis, after all, has the highest poverty rate for any city in the United States with a metro population over one million. Any number of discouraging statistics about incarceration rates for blacks or the segregation of public schools can be adduced to round out the portrait. It will no doubt be a dominant storyline of the commemoration: Five decades after the thwarted start to the Poor People’s Campaign, the conditions that prompted that campaign have gone unchanged—or have even gotten worse.\n“How are we going to hold the city accountable for the MLK Fifty celebrations?” Tami Sawyer asked me. She is one of the most visible organizers in Memphis and a current candidate for the Shelby County Commission. “Dr. King deserves to be recognized,” she said. “But we don’t have another fifty years. Black people in Memphis don’t.”\nSawyer belongs to a committee planning events at the National Civil Rights Museum, located on the site of the Lorraine Motel, and she is determined not to let the ceremony degenerate into a chorus of false pieties. The anniversary, in her mind, should be used to reclaim King for who he was, and she plans to do that through rallies and symposia held at the museum. “We have zero percent wealth, fifty years after King marched,” she told me, referring to Memphis’s black community. “‘I Am A Man’ has become the peace symbol; it has become the rainbow flag. It’s like, Oh, we love Dr. King. King was a revolutionary.”\nIt’s true that the version of King we encounter most is a superficial, insipid image. He is everywhere, invoked by those on the right and the left to justify seemingly any action, his words pasted on memes we see as we scroll down. But at six o’clock on the evening of April 4, 1968, King was a pariah, ridiculed by black militants as the apostle of a quaint and outdated theory of nonviolence, hounded by the FBI, scorned by white Americans as a hypocrite and agitator. An hour later he was transformed, and became a saint or martyr. The fact that he was a revolutionary, an enemy of the state, was forgotten.\nAnd it’s hard to honor a revolutionary. Parades and balloons: That won’t play. “It’s going to be a beach party,” Sawyer said. But then I met Keedran Franklin. An activist who worked recently for the Fight for 15, an organization lobbying to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour, Franklin has his own lead-in planned for the fiftieth anniversary, only this one entails “fifty days of civil disobedience, of people going to jail, and it’s going to end on the Fourth. We got a little trick up our sleeve.”\nWe were having coffee in a co-op in south Memphis, not the sort of place where you would expect to find police or city staffers, but he checked around the corner to see if anyone was eavesdropping.\n“This whole city’s going to shut down,” he said. “Shit’s just going to stop. There will be no planes, no trains, no automobiles moving on one day.”\n“You can do that?” I said.\nFranklin had helped lead a similar demonstration before, in the summer of 2016. After a grand jury failed to indict the police officer who killed Darrius Stewart, a black teenager, more than a thousand protestors blocked traffic on the I-40 bridge connecting Memphis with Arkansas.\n“What would your demands be?”\n“Paying a livable wage here,” he said. “We have one hundred seventeen thousand low-wage workers in the city. How much would it take for them to be capped off to fifteen dollars an hour? I’m talking about bringing attention to everything, the impoverishment in this city, the poor education, everything. We just have to hit certain pinch points. The threat of stopping everything may help what we want to do. You put out the threat of stopping every form of transportation—they’re going to reach out.”\nI could imagine the response to such a protest. Franklin and anyone demonstrating with him would be cast as an agitator, irreverent, gamboling for the spotlight and media attention—everything, in short, King was accused of in 1968 when he was planning to shut down Washington. In fact, that was going to be the hashtag, Franklin said, #WhatWouldMLKDo, and for once this was not a hypothetical appropriation: It is what MLK would do. So it seemed the best way, if not the only way, to honor King: to disrupt the fanfare surrounding the anniversary of his death, and do it by staging the sort of confrontation the FBI once feared, one whose backlash would remind us of how dangerous and unruly—how essentially unmanageable—King had been.\nOn the face of it, Franklin would appear to have nothing in common with Clayborn Temple savior Frank Smith: a black activist and a white millionaire, separated by three decades in age. Yet they share the belief that the Poor People’s Campaign can be recreated—our own time spliced with King’s. The word for this sort of belief is faith, and it is the obverse of the burden Memphis carries, convincing us that what we know to be true is not, that somehow fifty years is not too late.\nEnjoy this story? Subscribe to the Oxford American.\nBenjamin Hedin\nPoints South\nClayborn Temple\nBenjamin Hedin is the producer and writer of the Grammy-nominated documentary Two Trains Runnin’ and the author of In Search of the Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now.\nMore from Benjamin Hedin\n“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize”\nJohn Coltrane’s Spiritual High Point\nEverything about his music was interesting\nPicking Up the Piedmont Blues\nADVERTISE | PRESS ROOM | PRIVACY POLICY | DONATE\nBUILT BY PIXEL PERFECT","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line336077"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9439550042152405,"wiki_prob":0.9439550042152405,"text":"Trump rallies show support for president, draw multiple arrests\nPeople convened across the country on Saturday\nUpdated: 10:12 PM CST Mar 4, 2017\nFrom Colorado's state Capitol to Trump Tower in New York and the Washington Monument, groups of hundreds of people rallied for President Trump on Saturday, waving \"Deplorables for Trump\" signs and even carrying a life-size cutout of the president. The March 4 Trump demonstrations were held around the country, and supporters clashed with generally smaller groups of counter protesters. At least 10 people were arrested and many others bloodied and bruised as a Berkeley, California, rally supporting Trump turned violent Saturday when fistfights broke out between marchers and counterprotesters, and crowds of masked anarchists joined the fray. The fighting Saturday started even before the event began, with people throwing punches, swinging signs and tossing smoke bombs. Hundreds of people filled the park, with anarchists and counterdemonstrators far outnumbering what rally sponsors estimated were 60 to 75 Trump supporters. By 3 p.m., the self-proclaimed anarchists were dominating the crowd. Dressed all in black and wearing cloth bandanas over their faces, they stopped traffic as they marched from the park through downtown with the smaller mix of Trump supporters and counterprotesters. In the park, people opposed to Trump threw eggs and burned both American flags and the red “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign hats. People wore goggles, motorcycle helmets, gas masks or with their face half-covered with bandanas and were pushing each other, throwing punches and hitting each other with the sticks holding their signs. Video of the scattered fights shows smoke bombs being thrown at the crowd and at least one man pepper-spraying a brawling group. Berkeley police officers in riot gear are standing by at the rally of about 500 pro-Trump supporters and opponents at a park less than a mile from the University of California, Berkeley campus. Paramedics have helped at least two men, one bleeding from the head and the other with cuts on his face. Six people protesting the rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, were arrested on felony riot charges after they lit fireworks inside the Minnesota State Capitol and fled, police said. About 400 people attended the St. Paul event, and about 50 showed up to protest it. Some other minor scuffles between the dueling demonstrators were quickly defused. In Nashville, two people were arrested as protesters clashed with President Donald Trump supporters at the Tennessee Capitol. The groups at times cursed at each other and made physical contact, which state troopers broke up, WPLN reported. Near Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Post reported that people on both sides exchanged profanity. Trump's motorcade briefly stopped so he could wave at supporters. In Ohio, Trump supporter Margaret Howe, 57, of Pataskala, said she increasingly fears civil war. \"We did not want to have something like this happen,\" she said, adding, \"We came out today because Trump deserves to see he still has people for him. It's just all sad.\" Outside the state Capitol in Denver, hundreds gathered, listening to speakers including former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on the West Steps facing the mountains. Many in the crowd held American flags or wore red, white and blue and held signs with messages like \"Veterans before Refugees.\" Chelsea Thomas, an accountant from Thornton, Colorado, brought her family to the rally — and a life-size cardboard cutout of Trump. She said the family has taken it with them on camping trips, boat rides and a country music festival. \"It's nice to be surrounded by people who share your morals and opinions,\" said Thomas, as her son walked back and forth across the grass with a Trump flag. A group of counter protesters gathered nearby, separated from the rally by police tape. They chanted \"No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA\" and held signs with messages like \"Your vote was a hate crime.\" Rallies include speeches, signs Hundreds gathered in rallies on both ends of Pennsylvania to show support for Trump. Supporters waved signs and flags and listened to speeches during Saturday's \"Spirit of America\" rally in Bensalem's Neshaminy State Park in eastern Pennsylvania's Bucks County. \"They love their country and they love what Donald Trump represents, which is about making America first,\" organizer Jim Worthington said. \"... We are here to meet and make sure all Americans are prospering.\" In northwestern Pennsylvania, the Erie Times-News reported that about 100 people gathered at a square in downtown Erie for a similar demonstration. \"We've got to get the whole country united behind this man,\" said Richard Brozell, 75, who along with his wife braved the mid-20s temperatures and stiff wind chill to attend. In Augusta Maine, more than 100 people turned out for the event that was supposed to last three hours, but ended early because of freezing temperatures. In Miami, supporters continued a rally while sipping espressos outside a Cuban restaurant, the Miami Herald reported. At a North Carolina rally, speakers said the dishonest media and left wing politicians were bordering on sedition in their opposition to the Republican president. Some men were seen walking through the Raleigh crowd carrying a Trump flag as well as a Confederate flag. Gathered just behind the rally was a handful of protesters, some of whom blew air horns in an attempt to disrupt the event. \"We're gonna take our country back and we're gonna establish borders and have legal immigration and law and order,\" said Cherie Francis, of Cary, North Carolina. \"And if you're against all that, then you should be afraid.\" In Indianapolis, about 30 Trump supporters rallied at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis to denounce what they see as unfair treatment of the Republican. A local organizer, 61-year-old Patty Collins, of Indianapolis, said Trump's critics \"aren't giving him a chance.\" One attendee held a sign saying, \"The silent majority stands with Trump.\" Some passing cars honked in support. Others shouted disapproval. Trump supporters turned out Saturday in Phoenix. Media outlets reported that several hundred people participated in the Phoenix event held on a lawn at the State Capitol. Some participants wore pro-Trump shirts. A small group of protesters also were on hand. In Lansing, Michigan, about 200 Trump supporters rallied on one side of the state Capitol while 100 critics gathered on another side. At one point, the president's fans shouted \"get on the bus\" and \"go back to Mexico,\" The Detroit News reported. \"Agree with President Trump or not, he is our president, and I think what I see happening in D.C. and with the Democrats — it can't stand,\" said Gary Taylor, 60. Supporters in Austin undeterred by rain In Texas, Austin police say about 300 people have rallied in support of Trump in a gathering outside the Capitol during rain. One of the organizers, Jennifer Drabbant of Austin, said there have been so many protests against Trump that she and others wanted to show there are people who support him. The Austin American-Statesman reports some in the crowd Saturday afternoon toted umbrellas and wore rain gear while carrying signs of support for Trump. Some of the marchers waved U.S. flags. One of the organizers, Jennifer Drabbant of Austin said there have been so many protests against Trump that she and others wanted to show there are people who support him. Participants walked from Wooldridge Square Park to the state Capitol for a rally that began with a prayer and then featured pro-Trump speeches. Sfgate.com contributed to this report.\nFrom Colorado's state Capitol to Trump Tower in New York and the Washington Monument, groups of hundreds of people rallied for President Trump on Saturday, waving \"Deplorables for Trump\" signs and even carrying a life-size cutout of the president.\nThe March 4 Trump demonstrations were held around the country, and supporters clashed with generally smaller groups of counter protesters.\nLeah Millis, San Francisco Chronicle\nA women asks why she is being detained after Berkeley police officers tackled her to the ground after she ran from them following a pro-President Donald Trump rally and march at the Martin Luther Jr. Civic Center park March 4, 2017 in Berkeley, Calif.\nAt least 10 people were arrested and many others bloodied and bruised as a Berkeley, California, rally supporting Trump turned violent Saturday when fistfights broke out between marchers and counterprotesters, and crowds of masked anarchists joined the fray.\nThe fighting Saturday started even before the event began, with people throwing punches, swinging signs and tossing smoke bombs. Hundreds of people filled the park, with anarchists and counterdemonstrators far outnumbering what rally sponsors estimated were 60 to 75 Trump supporters.\nBy 3 p.m., the self-proclaimed anarchists were dominating the crowd. Dressed all in black and wearing cloth bandanas over their faces, they stopped traffic as they marched from the park through downtown with the smaller mix of Trump supporters and counterprotesters. In the park, people opposed to Trump threw eggs and burned both American flags and the red “Make America Great Again” Trump campaign hats.\nBerkeley police officers arrest a Trump supporter who allegedly had a knife on him during a pro-President Donald Trump rally and march at the Martin Luther Jr. Civic Center park March 4, 2017 in Berkeley, Calif.\nPeople wore goggles, motorcycle helmets, gas masks or with their face half-covered with bandanas and were pushing each other, throwing punches and hitting each other with the sticks holding their signs.\nVideo of the scattered fights shows smoke bombs being thrown at the crowd and at least one man pepper-spraying a brawling group.\nBerkeley police officers in riot gear are standing by at the rally of about 500 pro-Trump supporters and opponents at a park less than a mile from the University of California, Berkeley campus.\nParamedics have helped at least two men, one bleeding from the head and the other with cuts on his face.\nHearst Television\nSix people protesting the rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, were arrested on felony riot charges after they lit fireworks inside the Minnesota State Capitol and fled, police said. About 400 people attended the St. Paul event, and about 50 showed up to protest it. Some other minor scuffles between the dueling demonstrators were quickly defused.\nIn Nashville, two people were arrested as protesters clashed with President Donald Trump supporters at the Tennessee Capitol. The groups at times cursed at each other and made physical contact, which state troopers broke up, WPLN reported.\nNear Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach Post reported that people on both sides exchanged profanity. Trump's motorcade briefly stopped so he could wave at supporters.\nIn Ohio, Trump supporter Margaret Howe, 57, of Pataskala, said she increasingly fears civil war.\n\"We did not want to have something like this happen,\" she said, adding, \"We came out today because Trump deserves to see he still has people for him. It's just all sad.\"\nOutside the state Capitol in Denver, hundreds gathered, listening to speakers including former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on the West Steps facing the mountains. Many in the crowd held American flags or wore red, white and blue and held signs with messages like \"Veterans before Refugees.\"\nChelsea Thomas, an accountant from Thornton, Colorado, brought her family to the rally — and a life-size cardboard cutout of Trump. She said the family has taken it with them on camping trips, boat rides and a country music festival.\n\"It's nice to be surrounded by people who share your morals and opinions,\" said Thomas, as her son walked back and forth across the grass with a Trump flag. A group of counter protesters gathered nearby, separated from the rally by police tape. They chanted \"No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA\" and held signs with messages like \"Your vote was a hate crime.\"\nRallies include speeches, signs\nHundreds gathered in rallies on both ends of Pennsylvania to show support for Trump.\nSupporters waved signs and flags and listened to speeches during Saturday's \"Spirit of America\" rally in Bensalem's Neshaminy State Park in eastern Pennsylvania's Bucks County.\n\"They love their country and they love what Donald Trump represents, which is about making America first,\" organizer Jim Worthington said. \"... We are here to meet and make sure all Americans are prospering.\"\nIn northwestern Pennsylvania, the Erie Times-News reported that about 100 people gathered at a square in downtown Erie for a similar demonstration. \"We've got to get the whole country united behind this man,\" said Richard Brozell, 75, who along with his wife braved the mid-20s temperatures and stiff wind chill to attend.\nIn Augusta Maine, more than 100 people turned out for the event that was supposed to last three hours, but ended early because of freezing temperatures. In Miami, supporters continued a rally while sipping espressos outside a Cuban restaurant, the Miami Herald reported.\nAt a North Carolina rally, speakers said the dishonest media and left wing politicians were bordering on sedition in their opposition to the Republican president. Some men were seen walking through the Raleigh crowd carrying a Trump flag as well as a Confederate flag. Gathered just behind the rally was a handful of protesters, some of whom blew air horns in an attempt to disrupt the event.\n\"We're gonna take our country back and we're gonna establish borders and have legal immigration and law and order,\" said Cherie Francis, of Cary, North Carolina. \"And if you're against all that, then you should be afraid.\"\nIn Indianapolis, about 30 Trump supporters rallied at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis to denounce what they see as unfair treatment of the Republican.\nA local organizer, 61-year-old Patty Collins, of Indianapolis, said Trump's critics \"aren't giving him a chance.\"\nOne attendee held a sign saying, \"The silent majority stands with Trump.\" Some passing cars honked in support. Others shouted disapproval.\nTrump supporters turned out Saturday in Phoenix. Media outlets reported that several hundred people participated in the Phoenix event held on a lawn at the State Capitol. Some participants wore pro-Trump shirts. A small group of protesters also were on hand.\nIn Lansing, Michigan, about 200 Trump supporters rallied on one side of the state Capitol while 100 critics gathered on another side. At one point, the president's fans shouted \"get on the bus\" and \"go back to Mexico,\" The Detroit News reported.\n\"Agree with President Trump or not, he is our president, and I think what I see happening in D.C. and with the Democrats — it can't stand,\" said Gary Taylor, 60.\nSupporters in Austin undeterred by rain\nIn Texas, Austin police say about 300 people have rallied in support of Trump in a gathering outside the Capitol during rain. One of the organizers, Jennifer Drabbant of Austin, said there have been so many protests against Trump that she and others wanted to show there are people who support him.\nThe Austin American-Statesman reports some in the crowd Saturday afternoon toted umbrellas and wore rain gear while carrying signs of support for Trump. Some of the marchers waved U.S. flags.\nOne of the organizers, Jennifer Drabbant of Austin said there have been so many protests against Trump that she and others wanted to show there are people who support him.\nParticipants walked from Wooldridge Square Park to the state Capitol for a rally that began with a prayer and then featured pro-Trump speeches.\nSfgate.com contributed to this report.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line130692"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7089425325393677,"wiki_prob":0.7089425325393677,"text":"Major Psy-Op In Europe Exposed: UK Government Tramples On Values It Vowed To Protect\nAuthored by Alex Gorka via The Strategic Culture Foundation,\nThose who have been saying that the West has turned Russia into a scapegoat to be blamed for each and every thing that goes wrong have been proved right. We have witnessed concocted stories invented to denigrate Moscow that have gone viral as directed by the secret services. The UK, the country that is spearheading the anti-Russian information campaign, offers a good example that illustrates how this is being done.\nAn online group of hackers known as Anonymous has just revealed covert UK activities in the EU. According to the documents released by that group, London is in the midst of a major program to interfere in the internal affairs of EU members, the US, and Canada. Anonymous threatens to release more information on the clandestine operations of the UK government, unless it agrees to remove the shroud of secrecy protecting those information-warfare efforts. On Nov. 24 Twitter deleted RT comments on the issue. The UK knows it has friends it can rely on in a crunch.\nThe Integrity Initiative is a London-based organization set up and funded by the government-friendly Institute for Statecraft, in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to wage information-warfare operations against Russia. Anonymous calls it a \"large-scale information secret service.\" It aims to “change attitudes in Russia itself” as well as the influence of Russian natives living abroad. The Integrity Initiative’s budget for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2019 is estimated at £1.96 million ($2.51 million). The network has received grants from NATO, the US State Department, and Facebook.\nThe Initiative’s operations have been kept under wraps. Its activities are conducted by “clusters” of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists, and academics involved in anti-Russian propaganda efforts. The list includes William Browder, a US-British businessman convicted in absentia in Russia for tax evasion.\nThe Integrity Initiative network has offices from which to conduct its covert operations in France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, Spain, and Montenegro. Its plans to expand to the US, Canada, Eastern Europe, and the MENA region are already underway.\nThe Anonymous hackers mention Operation Moncloa that was launched in June in Spain to prevent Pedro Baños, a colonel known for his Russia-friendly views, from being appointed the new head of Spain's influential national security agency.\nIt’s all part of a broader picture. In March, Prime Minister Theresa May promised to “defeat” Russia with a new cyber-warfare initiative titled the Fusion Doctrine. Back then, Ms. May told British intelligence services to use social media “to prevent the spread of misinformation.” In other words, she has pulled the military into this anti-Russian propaganda effort. Security sources have floated the idea that that the UK must harness “soft power” and “counter-propaganda” on social media networks. Is it possible to imagine any media remaining independent in a country where they're part of a \"soft power strategy\" implemented by the government under the rallying cry of protecting national security?\nThis is the origin of so many fantasies about Russia and the imaginary threat it poses. The plan included an enhanced role for the BBC World Service to promote British “values” abroad, ensuring that the Ofcom shuts down media organizations that fail to meet “high British standards.” Only gullible people can believe that such “values” and “standards” exist. Russia has been used as a bogeyman to justify measures aimed at killing off the freedom of the media. Any story about Russia’s nefarious deeds spread by British news outlets should be taken with a grain of salt.\nThe UK government is facing some hard times. The Brexit deal with the EU is headed to parliament for approval. It’s impossible to predict whether the MPs will vote yes or no. Both outcomes threaten the very existence of the United Kingdom. The use of the “Russian threat” is seen as one way to keep the nation united and the media under control.\nKeeping its activities out of the public eye, the government is doing exactly what it has so indignantly accused Russia of. The pot is calling the kettle black. As the freedom of the press is being suppressed and the media networks are following the government’s instructions about what information they should offer their readers, UK officials continue to brazenly deliver their pompous speeches about the need to protect those very values to which the government itself poses the greatest challenge. Anonymous is right — any responsible government must explain the intentions behind the Integrity Initiative, how exactly it is funded, and why its activities should be shielded from public view.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1431610"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6636205315589905,"wiki_prob":0.6636205315589905,"text":"Top row (l-r): Mark Bathe, Sangbae Kim, and Paola Cappellaro. Second row (l-r): Armando Solar-Lezama, Steven Barrett, Jesse Kroll, and Youssef Marzouk.\nSeven appointments are made in the School of Engineering.\nChad Galts\nEmail: galts@MIT.EDU\nThe School of Engineering has announced that seven members of its faculty have been granted tenure by MIT.\n“These newly tenured colleagues have demonstrated a commitment to outstanding research and teaching,” said Ian A. Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering. “They have made a significant impact on MIT and their fields, and we look forward to the continuation of their remarkable work.”\nThis year’s newly tenured associate professors are:\nSteven Barrett, associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Finmeccanica Career Development Professor of Engineering, and director of the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment. The main goal of his research is to advance understanding of the environmental impacts of aviation, and to develop strategies that mitigate these impacts.\nMark Bathe ’98, SM ’01, PhD ’04, associate professor in the Department of Biological Engineering. His research focuses on quantitative physical approaches to understanding complex biological processes from a molecular perspective. He runs an interdisciplinary research group that draws together biologists, chemists, physicists, and engineers focused on this area.\nPaola Cappellaro PhD ’06, associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and an Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor. She leads the Quantum Engineering Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, where her work focuses on improving both the experimental techniques and the coherent control theory of quantum bits and gaining a deeper knowledge of the mechanics of decoherence.\nSangbae Kim, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, an Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Professor, and leader of the Biomimetics Robotics Lab. He conducts research in biomimetics, using biological systems as models for the design and engineering of robots. His interests include biomechanics of locomotion and printable robotics.\nJesse Kroll, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research involves the experimental study of the properties and chemical transformation of organic species in the Earth’s atmosphere. Particular interests include the development of new analytical tools for the measurement and characterizations of organics in both the gas and condensed phase, and the use of these tools in the lab and field to better constrain the amount, nature, and chemical evolution of atmospheric organics.\nYoussef Marzouk ’97, SM ’99, PhD ’04, associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of the Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory. His research focuses on uncertainty quantification, inverse problems, statistical inference, and Bayesian computation for complex physical systems, and using these algorithms to address modeling challenges in energy conversion and environmental applications.\nArmando Solar-Lezama, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He works with the Computer Assisted Programming Group to develop techniques that exploit automated reasoning and computing power to tackle challenging programming problems.\nTopics: Faculty, Awards, honors and fellowships, School of Engineering, Aeronautical and astronautical engineering, Biological engineering, Nuclear science and engineering, Mechanical engineering, Civil and environmental engineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (eecs)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line192305"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7116668224334717,"wiki_prob":0.2883331775665283,"text":"Laurel Fields, Potters Bar, Herts EN6 2BA\nadmin@cranborne.herts.sch.uk\nCranborne Primary School\nThe Cranborne Team\nStaff at Cranborne\nCalendar and Term Dates\nPayments and Billing\nParent Evening Booking\nBad Weather and School Closures\nNewsletters & Letters Home\nClubs and Activities outside the classroom\nCurriculum Home Page\nLearning Mentor and Family Support Workers\nChildren's Centre and other useful agencies\nTimings of normal day\nBehaviour and Attendance\nLunchtimes\nMedicines in school\nOur Governing Body at Cranborne Primary School is made up of a group of people who are dedicated and committed to do the best they can for the children who attend Cranborne School. We work alongside and support the headteacher and staff in all that they do.\nWe reconstituted our Governing Body which has made us smaller in size but allows us to make decisions and act speedily when required. We are constantly analysing our strengths and weakness, to ensure that we have the expertise to carry out our roles as governors.\nRegular training sessions are attended both internal and external to ensure that we have the knowledge to do the best that we can for Cranborne.\nGovernors are in school on a regular basis; we hold our meetings at various times of the day and evening, when in school we talk to as many pupils that we can, which allows them to talk to us about their experiences in school and the how they have been learning.\nWe have a strong passion within our role as school governors. If there are things that you would like to raise with us then please do so, either by contacting the school office or headteacher and one of us will be in touch.\nWe do have vacancies from time to time so if this is something that interests you then please let us know.\nMeet Our Governors:\nPeter Goldfinch I attended Cranborne Primary School many years ago when it was situated on its previous site in Potters Bar. I have three daughters all of whom went to the school, they are now through university and in full time employment. I have a soft spot for the school, and it has been wonderful to see how things have grown at school with the excellent results that have been achieved in recent years. I have been a governor at the school for the last 20 years, being chair of governors for last ten years. I look to bring the experiences of the private sector in banking to the life of the school, working with the other members of the governing body and the head and members of staff. I am a member of all the committees that we have. We all work together to make every day count for the children allowing them to be the best they can be. Anything that I can do to make that happen I am more than happy to do. Our school is a very happy place to be, everyone is enthusiastic , approachable and determined to achieve the success the school deserve.\nAnn Harrison I am a retired engineering manager and have served on the Cranborne School governing body for many years. I know how important a good primary education is to a child’s life chances and want to use my experience and skills to help the school in any way I can.\nZainal Anhar I am an experienced Chartered Accountant with wide range of business, commercial and ICT skills to add value to the Governing Body. I have served on various committees and at present am Chair of the Resources Committee. I enjoy making a small contribution to try and ensure that all of our children get the best possible education and support from our school. It is an exceptional school for which I am honoured to have the opportunity to make a positive contribution and take an active role in the support and development of such school.My wife and I have a daughter and a son, both of whom currently attend Cranborne Primary School. As a parent I want to ensure that school funds are used and allocated correctly, being used in an appropriate manner so all the children and school benefit accordingly. I enjoy playing with my children and when time allows I participate in football, badminton and golf.\nClaire Keilty I am honoured to be the Headteacher of Cranborne School. I am able to bring my knowledge and experience of 20 years in the education sector. Inclusion and personalized teaching is my passion and I am a true believer that children only get one chance. I am dedicated to improving the life chances of every child that walks through our door and am committed to breaking down barriers to learning. I am happy to challenge perceptions and am fiercely loyal to the children I serve. Hobbies include cooking at home and going out to nice restaurants. I live with my husband and two young girls, aged 11 and 9, so I understand the dynamics of family life and am here to support families with all aspects of school, home and work. My door is always open!\nAndrew Jones I am an Assistant Headteacher at The Reach Free School in Rickmansworth. Before moving to The Reach Free School, I was lead practitioner at Goffs School in Cheshunt where I was also head of religious studies and sociology. In addition to my professional roles at The Reach Free School, I am a specialist leader in education with the West Herts Teaching Schools Partnership as well as an advisor to the Guardian Teacher Network. Prior to teaching in the UK, I was a TEFL teacher in Thailand. I attended Cranborne Primary School as a student in the 1980s.\nEmily Herron I am a Staff Governor. I have been a teaching assistant for the past ten years. For the last three years I have been part of the pupil premium team, and also the internal speech and language therapist working closely with the outreach speech language team. I have a good understanding of the day to day challenges facing both our staff and children. I feel great satisfaction seeing our children achieve their goals and successes both educationally and emotionally. I have two children who were past pupils of Cranborne, therefore I also understand the parent point of view.\nJoanna Jenkins I have been a senior lecturer at a university for the last 10 years including setting and maintaining educational standards in a variety of ways. I have two young children at the start of their learning journeys and I am keen to help the school and wider community give children the opportunities they deserve. I am passionate about taking Cranborne from strength to strength.\nOur Clerk: Carole Connelly I am an independent education consultant, I have been a governor at various Hertfordshire school for about 25 years. I have been a Chair and Vice Chair of Governors at several schools and have supported Primary, Secondary and Educational Support Centres. I am impressed by the way in which the staff at Cranborne work to support all children in the school and create such a caring and inclusive environment. I am delighted to be able to help to support the school and fellow governors.\nGovernor Name\nDate of appointment\nAppointed by\nPecuniary Interests\nGovernance in other educational institutions\nRelationships between governors or staff\nDate stepped down\nPeter Goldfinch\nClaire Keilty\nWife works for Herts Catering at Cranborne\nAnn Harrison\nChair of School improvement\nGovernor at Hertswood Academy\nZainul Anhar\nChair of resources\nWife works as an MSA at Cranborne\nEmily Herron\nJo Jenkins\nSamantha Ahern\nVice Chair (joint)\nYasmin Akhtar\nMark Trick\nSuzanne Horsley\nRachael Wood\nAssoc.\nAttendance at Full Governing Body Meetings 2018 onwards:\n11/ 09/ 19\nYasmeen Ahktar\nStepped Down\nJoanna Jenkins\nRachael Wood (Assoc)\nSuzanne Horsely\nHow Do You Become a School Governor?\nBeing a governor at Cranborne School is both an enriching and rewarding experience. Not only do you get to use your knowledge and skills in a different environment to your place of work, but you also get to support and guide your local school. Moreover, at the heart of school governorship at Cranborne is a commitment to ensuring students are safe, happy and actively involved in the life of the school as well as achieving academically.\nExpectations and responsibilities\nAll governors at Cranborne are expected attend a ‘full governing board (FGB) meeting’ once a term. Importantly, the main functions of the school’s governing board include:\nsetting the strategic aims and objectives for the school, including its values and ethos;\nscrutinising and ensuring policies for achieving the school’s strategic aims are in place;\nand challenging and supporting the headteacher and the senior leadership team.\nIn addition to FGB meetings, governors also attend committee meetings once a term, such as the School Improvement Committee and the Resources Committee. Therefore, governors will take on various individual responsibilities at committee level in order to support the school - from evaluating attainment data to checking the school’s budget.\nGovernors are also expected to visit the school during working hours throughout the year so that they can meet pupils, staff and parents. This could include the school day as well as parent evenings and school events, such as end of term shows and school fairs.\nWho can become a governor?\nAnyone over 18 years of age can apply to become a governor at Cranborne. Although there are no essential academic or vocational qualifications needed, interested applicants would need to demonstrate that they have knowledge and skills that would benefit the school. For instance, over the past few years, Cranborne has had governors from all walks of life with an abundance of different experiences, which have included:\nRunning small businesses\nWhat brings us together is a commitment and passion to see Cranborne succeed.\nTypes of governor at Cranborne\nCranborne has different categories of governor and anyone interested in becoming a governor may wish to consider which type would best fit their situation. Types of governor include:\nCommunity governors: governors from the local community who have something to offer the school;\nParent governors: who are elected to the governing board by other parents;\nStaff governors: governors who are employed by the school and are often elected by other members of staff;\nLocal authority governors: governors who are nominated by the local authority;\nCo-opted governors: governors who have been invited to join the governing board as they have a specific skill needed to help run the school;\nAssociate governors: governors that are not part of the full governing board, but are asked to help the board or sub-committees from time-to-time.\nHow do you apply to become a governor at Cranborne?\nAlthough potential parent and staff governors can only apply when a vacancy arises, all interested parties will be informed by the school. For example, vacancies for parent governors will be advertised through letters home, text alerts and messages on the school’s website. Parents would need to complete an application form and then stand for election.\nHowever, you can also contact the school if you feel you have particular skills or knowledge that would be useful to the governing board more generally. In this case, it is possible that parents, as well as interested individuals from the local community and local businesses, can contact the Chair of Governors to discuss any vacancies in relation to their specific expertise. If the governing body is in need of your skills, you can apply to become a community governor, co-opted governor or even an associate governor. Nonetheless, governor roles cannot always be facilitated as the governing body may already have governors with the skills applicants may be offering. Furthermore, places on the governing board will obviously be limited at any given time, so the Chair may take your details in the event that a place becomes available in future.\nIf you are interested in becoming a governor at Cranborne, please contact our Chair of Governors, Peter Goldfinch, or the headteacher to discuss any possibilities further.\n© 2020 Cranborne Primary School.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line144027"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7032210826873779,"wiki_prob":0.7032210826873779,"text":"The Mercedes-Benz of Helicopters\nYahoo! Autos May 26, 2011\nYou can almost hear the call echoing through the Austrian Alps: “The top speed of mein SL65 AMG is too low! Get to ze choppah!” Assuming the angst-ridden Salzburg billionaire hadn’t removed the 155-mph limiter from his V-12-powered Mercedes-Benz, he would be right — but just barely. The Eurocopter EC145 won't exceed 167 mph, but the point-to-point convenience a helicopter affords means never missing a last-minute lunch in Vienna. Until now, however, one couldn’t purchase an EC145 with an interior spec'd out by the lux-meisters in Stuttgart.\nThe European rotary-winged aircraft consortium — and sister company of Airbus under the EADS umbrella — has teamed up with Mercedes-Benz to outfit its twin-engine utility helicopter for business-luxury transport. The lead on the project was undertaken by the company’s Advanced Design Studio in Como, Italy, which pulled design cues from the company’s designo roster of interior packages. Not to compare apples to oranges, the EC145 Mercedes-Benz Style is more akin to a S65 than an SL. Or, with its land-darn-near-anywhere capability, a G-Class SUV.\nThe rail-mounted seats can be configured for up to eight passengers (think capo, consigliere and six gorillas). The wood and ambient lighting draw influence from Benz’ up-level E-Class and S-Class sedans. Unfortunately, the SLS AMG’s gullwing doors aren’t an available option, as they interfere with the operation of the 145’s rotor. On the plus-side, Eurocopter can outfit the whirlybird with an infrared-suppression system, making it difficult for bad guys armed with Stinger missiles to get a lock on you as you and your lady of the evening snack on strudel and sip a nice riesling.\nAs for the price, Eurocopter EC145s start at $5.5 million, but the Mercedes-Benz version will reportedly go for closer to €6 million (or approximately $8.5 million).","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1303232"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5459696650505066,"wiki_prob":0.5459696650505066,"text":"Zach Braff’s Crowdfunded Film “Wish I Was Here” Reviews Are Rolling In\nJuly 18, 2014 @ 10:41 am By JD Alois\nSo the emblematic film by Zach Braff, “Wish I Was Here” hits cinema screens across the nation today. The film raised around $3 million on Kickstarter in 2013 setting the pace for crowdfunding films. While not quite achieving the success of Veronica Mars, a film that raised over $5 million crowdfunding on Kickstarter, Braff’s project help validate crowdfunding as a new form of film finance.\nWell with the film opening today the reviews are rolling in. Both professional pundits and cinephile wannabe’s are sharing their thoughts and impressions on a film that was backed by over 46,000 contributors. Will the project backers be disappointed in the final results? Does it really matter? Do you care at all? Well here are some opinions on the film. Take them for what they are worth.\nRotten Tomatoes: 32% rating (pretty rotten I would say). The audience liked it a bit better at 78% approval. “There’s no denying Wish I Was Here is heartfelt, but it covers narrative ground that’s already been well trod — particularly by director Zach Braff’s previous features”.\nNYDailyNews: If you were a producer on “Wish I Was Here,” you’d want to tell director Zach Braff to stop sticking to formula and go out on a limb… this traditional indie dramedy was partially funded by Kickstarter. So if you contributed, you may be a producer on it. If so, there’s no reason to be ashamed about how things turned out, but the movie does feel like it’s a bit too much.\nNYTimes: Until you partly surrender to its underlying good will and sincerity, watching “Wish I Was Here” is like observing an experiment in a cinematic test kitchen. The perky chefs are seeking an ideal blend of familiar flavors and textures as they devise what they hope will turn out to be a new, improved recipe for that old standby, Thoughtful Comic Entertainment.\nSFGate: Well, no matter how it was made, it’s the result that counts. “Wish I Was Here” is a funny, touching movie that features one of Kate Hudson’s best performances and a curmudgeonly good one from Mandy Patinkin.\nOregonLive: Braff will likely be known as the guy who took over $3.1 million in Kickstarter donations to help fund a painfully bad movie. It’s unfair, of course, to judge a film any differently because of the source of its funding. But if Braff had scrimped and saved, taken out a third mortgage and sold a kidney to pay for “Wish I Was Here,” the verdict would be the same.\nTheStar: Did his investors get their money’s worth? That depends on their tolerance for self-indulgent leanings from Braff… It’s also disjointed and uneven, seeming at times like the Kickstarter gang got to contribute one idea each in exchange for their donations, all of which were greenlit by Braff — with the proviso they all be about him.\nWorldview Entertainment Stake In Zach Braff’s New Movie Draws Criticism, But Is It Justified?\nZach Braff on His $2 Million Kickstarter Project: ‘I Had Nothing to Lose’\nWatch: The Trailer For Zach Braff’s Kickstarter-Funded Film Is Here & It Looks Amazing\nZach Braff Launches Kickstarter For Follow Up To “Garden State”\nHave a crowdfunding offering you'd like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!\nThis entry was posted in General News, Offerings, Uncategorized and tagged film, kickstarter, wish i was here, zach braff. Bookmark the permalink.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1244043"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8855319619178772,"wiki_prob":0.8855319619178772,"text":"South Korea, US, Japan defense chiefs meet amid North Korea, GSOMIA tension\nU.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper holds hand with his counterparts Defense Minister Jeong Keyong-doo, on his left, and Japan's Defense Minister Taro Kono prior to a trilateral meeting Sunday, on the sidelines of the 6th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus, held at the Avani Plus Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Yonhap\nSeoul, Washington agree to postpone joint air exercises\nBy Jung Da-min\nBANGKOK ― South Korea, the United States and Japan held a trilateral meeting at the Avani Plus Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, on the sidelines of the 6th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus). The defense ministers from the three countries discussed the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a bilateral military intelligence sharing pact between Seoul and Tokyo that is about to expire, and the North Korea nuclear issue.\n\"We stand firm in upholding well-established international rules and norms. Our continued trilateral partners remain key to addressing these security challenges, and preserving our freedom and prosperity,\" U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in his opening remarks at the meeting at the ADMM-Plus. The challenges mentioned were \"challenges that a growing and a more assertive China poses to the stability of the region,\" he said.\nEsper also talked about the importance of information sharing between the allies while calling for South Korea and Japan to look beyond and overcome bilateral issues that \"harm our efforts and play into the hands of Pyongyang and Beijing.\"\nPrior to the three-way meeting, Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo met bilaterally with Esper and the two announced that Seoul and Washington were postponing a joint air force exercise ― one that North Korea habitually criticizes ― to keep the U.S. denuclearization talks with the North alive.\n\"After close consultation and careful consideration, Minister Jeong and I've jointly decided to postpone this month's combined flying training event (CFTE). We have made this decision, as an act of good will to contribute to an environment conducive to diplomacy and the advancement of peace,\" Esper said. \"We encourage the DPRK to demonstrate the same good will as the considerate decision on the conduct of training, exercise and testing. We also urge the DPRK to return to the negotiating table without preconditions or hesitation.\"\nJeong and Esper dismissed concerns about any possible negative effect on combined military readiness, saying their willingness to modify training to keep the door open to an agreement on the nuclear disarmament of North Korea should not be mistaken for a lack of commitment to advance and defend their shared goals.\nU.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo attend a press conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, where they announced that the two allies were postponing a joint military air force exercise that North Korea has habitually criticized as provocative. AP-Yonhap\nThe decision came about a month ahead of a year's end deadline set by North Korea on the denuclearization negotiations, and after working-level talks in early October ended unsuccessfully.\nEarlier this month, Seoul and Washington had planned to replace the massive Vigilant Ace winter joint air force exercise with a scaled down drill as happened last year and to conduct it later. However, a critical North said changing the name of the exercise was not as same as abolishing it.\nThe U.S. also called for its allies and partner countries' commitment in enforcing United Nations sanctions against Pyongyang over its nuclear and weapons development.\n\"We have yet to see concrete progress in the disposal of North Korea's nuclear weapons and missiles. In these circumstances, as the defense authorities of Japan, the U.S. and the ROK, what we need to do is to continue to promote trilateral defense cooperation, and to make every effort in order to maintain peace and stability in the region,\" Kono said ahead of the three-way meeting.\n\"I expect to have informative discussions today not only to make step forwards in trilateral cooperation for the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions in a complete manner, but also in order to maintain readiness for any future actions taken by North Korea.\"\nThe ADMM-Plus is a platform for ASEAN and its eight dialogue partners to promote more practical defense cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.\nThe U.S. has been beefing up its Indo-Pacific policy, with the U.S. Department of State releasing a report titled \"A Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Advancing a Shared Vision\" earlier this month.\nU.S. officials were on a trip to Asian countries including South Korea and Japan where they asked their allies to play a bigger role in enhancing regional security and pay more in defense cost-sharing with the U.S.\n\"Through today's trilateral meeting, I hope to have honest talks with the two defense chiefs over our joint efforts to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia,\" Jeong said, ahead of the three-way meeting. \"I hope our current relationships can be improved based on shared values and security interests among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.\"\nRegarding the GSOMIA that is due to end Nov. 22, no compromise deal emerged with South Korea and Japan failing to narrow their differences.\nDefense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo, right, and his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono hold a bilateral meeting Sunday, on the sidelines of the 6th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus, held at the Avani Plus Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Yonhap\n\"The Japanese side wants to keep the GSOMIA but as I have been telling people in South Korea, the government was set to renew the pact up until June. However, it had to make the decision to terminate it after Japan imposed trade restrictions against South Korea and removed it from its whitelist of countries receiving preferential trade treatment,\" Jeong told South Korean reporters right after his meeting with Kono.\nKono told Japanese reporters in a separate briefing, that he asked South Korea to \"make a wise decision.\"\nThe GSOMIA is not just about bilateral security cooperation between South Korea and Japan but also involves the U.S. which uses the trilateral security cooperation treaty in its regional deterrence policy against China, North Korea and Russia.\nTokyo's trade actions came about after South Korea's Supreme Court ruled last year that some Japanese companies must pay compensation to surviving South Koreans forced to work for them during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Seoul saw this as unfair retaliatory moves related to the court rulings, something Tokyo denied citing they were because of \"security concerns.\"\nThe ending of the GSOMIA would be the latest in a series of conflicts between South Korea and Japan regarding \"security cooperation,\" which have involved the ongoing territorial claims by Tokyo over South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo, and confrontations between South Korean warships and Japanese maritime patrol aircraft last December.\ndamin.jung@koreatimes.co.kr More articles by this reporter\nActivists up in arms against US call for higher USFK bill\nFive hundred activists took to the streets in Seoul, Saturday, to protest the U.S.' repeated calls for the government to drastically increase its contributions toward the cost of s...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line383926"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9875611662864685,"wiki_prob":0.9875611662864685,"text":"WikiLeaks Founder Is Released on Bail\nDecember 17, 2010/ Last updated : December 17, 2010 back2basicWikileaks\nLONDON — Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was released from jail on $315,000 bail on Thursday, and he vowed in a defiant speech to continue to release classified documents and to fight extradition to Sweden for questioning about accusations of sexual offenses.\nAfter nine days in Wandsworth Prison, Mr. Assange emerged into an explosion of photographers’ flashbulbs and spotlights under the grand arch of the Royal Courts of Justice. “Well, it’s great to feel the fresh air of London again,” he told a cheering crowd.\nHe closed his brief statement by saying, “I hope to continue my work and continue protesting my innocence in this matter.”\nMr. Assange, looking weary in the dark blue suit and white shirt he has worn through three court appearances over 10 days, left London on Thursday night for Ellingham Hall, a lavish country estate in eastern England, where under the bail conditions he must spend every night and submit to extensive monitoring.\nHe surrendered to the British authorities on Dec. 7 and was denied bail and sent to jail after a judge reviewing a Swedish extradition request found him to be a flight risk. Mr. Assange described the conditions he encountered in jail as “solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison,” and his imprisonment appeared to have enhanced his status as a countercultural icon among supporters of his Web site.\nBlack-and-white photos of Mr. Assange, altered to resemble the image of Che Guevara, are pasted across London. They also appear on placards waved by his supporters.\n“Someone is finally fighting the governments,” said Angel Spasov, 30, who was balanced precariously on a crowd-control barrier to catch a glimpse of Mr. Assange outside the courtroom. “He’s exposing their secrets,” he said of a series of releases of confidential American military and diplomatic documents by the WikiLeaks Web site this year. “He’s the man.”\nAlthough the Obama administration has indicated that it is considering whether to bring criminal charges against Mr. Assange for releasing classified documents, Swedish prosecutors maintain that the sexual accusations against him are unrelated to the disclosures. Two women have told Swedish prosecutors that consensual relations with Mr. Assange in Sweden turned nonconsensual, and the prosecutors have characterized the encounters as rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion under Swedish law.\nMr. Assange has said repeatedly that he is innocent of any wrongdoing.\nThe High Court justice Duncan Ouseley on Thursday rejected the Swedish government’s request that bail be denied, but he imposed restrictive conditions on Mr. Assange. Justice Ouseley said Mr. Assange must wear an electronic tag, abide by a curfew and meet daily with the police.\nHe will also be restricted to a small area around the 10-bedroom mansion, Ellingham Hall, which is owned by Vaughan Smith, the wealthy founder of a journalists’ club in London. A previous ruling would have allowed Mr. Assange to roam the estate’s expansive grounds with, as Geoffrey Robertson, one of his lawyers, joked, “gamekeepers looking out for him.”\nMr. Assange’s passport was seized when he was arrested last week and it has not been returned.\nThough he won his freedom, Mr. Assange’s growing myth — a reputation among supporters, at least, as the Robin Hood of secrets — did not act in his favor during the two-hour court hearing.\nGemma Lindfield, who was representing the Swedish government, urged the court to separate the contentions over the WikiLeaks releases from the sexual accusations. Ms. Lindfield argued that a series of well-known people who have stepped up to support Mr. Assange, including the film directors Ken Loach and Michael Moore and Jemima Khan, a socialite, “do not have a close relationship” with him. Their promises of bail money and other guarantees, she said, were made to support WikiLeaks and were not related to the Swedish accusations.\nJustice Ouseley said that Mr. Assange’s supporters might see “absconding as a righteous and justifiable act” if it meant that the work of disclosing secret information could continue. In granting bail he stipulated that two of Mr. Assange’s closest WikiLeaks associates, Joseph Farrell and Sarah Harrison, were required to add financial guarantees to those from the prominent people who had vouched for Mr. Assange.\nOutside the court on Thursday, Mr. Assange said that his time in jail had led him to reflect on the cruelty of solitary confinement. In court, he sat impassively through the hearing and did not react when the judge ordered his release.\nMark Stephens, another of his lawyers, said he was “delighted and thrilled” at the decision. But he also returned to a theme that he has often raised in fighting the extradition attempts, saying that the challenge to Mr. Assange’s bail application “evidences part of the continuing vendetta on the part of the Swedes against Julian Assange.”\nMr. Assange has called the accusations of sexual misconduct a “smear campaign.”\n“I don’t have too many fears about being extradited to Sweden,” he said Thursday. “There are much bigger concerns about being extradited to the United States.”\nHis lawyers have suggested that the Swedish case is part of a political conspiracy to silence WikiLeaks. Mr. Stephens said this week in a television interview that the sexual accusations were “nothing more than a holding charge” to make Mr. Assange available to the United States, should prosecutors seek his indictment and extradition for the public disclosure of confidential American diplomatic and military cables.\nMr. Robertson told the court this week that Mr. Assange had denied any sexual wrongdoing “fully, firmly and convincingly” in an interview with the Swedish authorities on Aug. 30.\n“If he is so keen to clear his name,” Justice Ouseley said during the hearing on Thursday, “what stops a voluntary return to Sweden?”\nMr. Robertson responded that his client “had a right” to appeal. Later, walking through falling snow on a cold London evening, Mr. Assange was more direct about defying the Swedish prosecutors. “I have enough anger to last me 100 years,” he said. “But I will channel that into my work.”\nAlan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and J. David Goodman from New York.\nThis article has been revised to reflect the following correction:\nCorrection: December 16, 2010\nAn earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the High Court judge who rejected an appeal challenging the granting of bail to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. He is Judge Duncan Ouseley, not Ounsley.\nThey don’t fear the LOIC. They fear the exposure…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1392465"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7330637574195862,"wiki_prob":0.2669362425804138,"text":"NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES\nJanuary 26, 2018, Vancouver, BC, Canada - Pacific Empire Minerals Corp. (\"PEMC\" or the \"Company\") advises that it has filed, and obtained a receipt for, an amended and restated long form prospectus (the \"Amended and Restated Prospectus\"), which amends its final long form prospectus dated October 23, 2017 related to the previously announced offering (the “Offering”) of units of the Company (the “Units”) for minimum gross proceeds of CDN $1,500,000 and maximum gross proceeds of CDN $2,000,000. Pursuant to the Offering, PEMC will issue units at a price of CDN $0.20 per Unit. Each Unit is comprised of one common share of the Company (a “Common Share”) and one Common Share purchase warrant of the Company (a “Warrant”). Each Warrant is exercisable for one Common Share at a price of CDN$0.30, for a period of three years following the closing of the Offering.\nThe Company is also pleased to announce that it has obtained TSX Venture Exchange (the “TSXV”) conditional approval for the listing of its common shares under the symbol PEMC.V. Listing is subject to the Company fulfilling all of the customary requirements of the TSXV. The Company does not intend to apply for listing of the warrants underlying the Units on any securities exchange or for inclusion in any automated quotation system.\nIn connection with the Offering, the Company has entered into an amended and restated agency agreement with Haywood Securities Inc., acting as lead agent, pursuant to which the agent will offer the Units on a “best efforts” basis.\nThe Amended and Restated Prospectus has been filed in each of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario pursuant to National Instrument 41-101 General Prospectus Requirements.\nThe net proceeds of the Offering (the “Net Proceeds”) will be used to fund exploration work on the Company’s Wildcat property in addition to exploration work on the Company’s other projects, as well as for working capital and other general corporate purposes. Please see “Use of Proceeds” in the Amended and Restated Prospectus, which is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com ), for further details of the use of Net Proceeds.\nThere can be no assurance that the Offering will be completed. An investment in Units is subject to a number of risks. For more information, potential investors should read the Amended and Restated Prospectus, including the risk factors described in the Amended and Restated Prospectus. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale or acceptance of an offer to buy the Units in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the time a receipt for the Amended and Restated Prospectus or other authorization is obtained from the securities commission or similar authority in such jurisdiction.\nNo securities regulatory authority has either approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release. This news release is not for distribution, directly or indirectly, in or into the United States (including its territories and possessions, any state of the United States and the District of Columbia) or any other jurisdiction outside Canada. This news release does not constitute or form part of any offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities in the United States or any other jurisdiction outside of Canada. The securities offered pursuant to the Offering have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the \"U.S. Securities Act\") or any U.S. state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to U.S. Persons absent registration or an available exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. There will be no public offering of securities in the United States.\nAbout Pacific Empire Minerals Corp.\nPEMC is an exploration company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that employs the \"prospect generator\" business model and is currently focused on the acquisition, funding and exploration of its Wildcat Project, which consists of 10 mineral claims covering an area of approximately 5,826 hectares in the Omineca Mining Division of British Columbia.\nThe Amended and Restated Prospectus containing important information relating to the Units has been filed with securities commissions of each of British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. A copy of the Amended and Restated Prospectus is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).\nPacific Empire Minerals Corp.\nThis news release contains forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, “forward-looking statements”), which reflect the Company's current expectations regarding future events. Statements in this news release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations and orientations regarding the future. Often, but not always, forward looking statements can be identified by words such as “pro forma”, “plans”, “expects”, “may”, “should”, “budget”, “scheduled”, “estimates”, “forecasts”, “intends”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “potential” or variations of such words including negative variations thereof, and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. Such forward-looking statements include, among others, the planned completion of the Offering and the terms thereof, the listing of the Company's common shares on the TSXV and the Company's intention to not apply for listing of the warrants underlying the Units on any securities exchange or for inclusion in any automated quotation system. The forward-looking statements in this news release are based on a number of assumptions, including, but not limited to, assumptions regarding the stability of commodity prices, that general business, economic, capital market, legal and political conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner and that necessary governmental, securities regulatory authority or stock exchange permits or approvals will be obtained in connection with the Offering. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such factors include, among others, the inability of the Company to implement its business plan and to find suitable partnerships and joint ventures, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development activities, actual results of exploration activities, the estimation or realization of mineral reserves and mineral resources, requirements for additional capital, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities and precious metals, lack of investor interest in the Offering, accidents, delays in obtaining governmental, securities regulatory authority or stock exchange permits or approvals, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, title disputes, the timing and possible outcome of any potential litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, and risks related to joint venture operations.\nThere can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements included in this news release is based only on information currently available to the Company and speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as otherwise required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements in this news release to reflect new circumstances or events.\nView previous (Mar 20, 2018)\nReturn to the news release list","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1457416"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6555598974227905,"wiki_prob":0.3444401025772095,"text":"Your ID please\nSo today I went shopping at the local Target store to get some things for our week at our cabin with the family. I decided to get some \"Pop Its\"- little firecrackers that can be thrown against the pavement and make a popping noise with a little smoke. The clerk asked me for my ID!! Not only that, she had to physically scan my driver's license. Let's take a look at fireworks and firecrackers going into the July 4th holiday. What are restrictions on firecrackers? Here is an article about restrictions in my state of Minnesota and attempts to loosen the restrictions:\n\"In Minnesota, what are called \"novelties\" -- sparklers, snakes and small fizzy fountains -- were legalized in 2002. The bigger consumer fireworks, such as bottle rockets, firecrackers and multi-tube skyrockets that blossom at 150 feet, remain illegal, but stubbornly popular. In the Twin Cities area, Wisconsin's thriving border fireworks marketplace is often the source.\nThose who deal with the aftermath of fireworks displays gone awry are solidly opposed. Police and fire chiefs associations, burn centers at Regions Hospital and Hennepin County Medical Center, Children's Hospitals and Clinics, the Academy of Ophthalmology, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the League of Minnesota Cities are among the dozens of groups lined up against the proposals.\n\"It's a recreational toy that does terrible, disastrous damage,\" Daniel Bernardi, a former deputy state fire marshal who represents Twin Cities burn centers, told a Senate committee.\"\nThere was testimony from a man who owns a fireworks company. Of course, we can follow the money. Where there's money to be made, public safety be damned. This man, along with some legislators, did not consider the expansion of fireworks sales to be a problem. But others did:\nDan Winkel, the Andover fire chief and an official of the Minnesota Fire Chiefs Association is unmoved by Kriesel's arguments. He says fireworks have been responsible for several major grass fires in recent years, and the number of fireworks-related injuries tripled in the year after the 2002 law was passed. \"We continue to oppose any and all expansion of fireworks, in that they will cause more injuries and fires that we will have to respond to,\" he told a Senate committee.\nWilliam Mohr, medical director of the Burn Center at Regions Hospital, said the number of burn injuries from fireworks is directly related to the availability of the product. \"I don't think you can possibly put an economic value on either the catastrophic injury or mortality as a result of these devices,\" he told legislators.\n\"Eleven-year-old kids who lose their eye ... that's what I want you to think about, when you're trying to decide if we can get a little more income from surrounding states off fireworks sales.\"\nWhew. Thankfully Governor Dayton vetoed this bill too. ( He also vetoed the Shoot First bill in this legislative session. ) In doing a little research, I found out that even \"Pop Its\" can cause some injuries so need to be used carefully. I will be sure to do so. You can see here that deaths and injuries from fireworks don't show up on the top 10 leading causes of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Deaths from homicides and suicides do, though and most of those come from firearms. Let's check this article so find out how many deaths and injuries occur from fireworks. From the article:\nCPSC staff has reports of two fireworks-related deaths during 2009. Both fatalities involved aerial shells. In the first incident, a 41 year-old male was killed in an explosion of a professional display mortar shell that he lit in his backyard. In the second incident, a 26 year-old male lit a consumer grade mortar shell that was in a launching tube that he held over his head. The shell discharged from the bottom of the tube resulting in a skull fracture. CPSC staff has reports of seven fireworks-related deaths in 2008. Reporting is not complete for either year and the actual number of deaths may be higher.\n• Fireworks were involved in an estimated 8,800 injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments during calendar year 2009 (95 percent confidence interval 6,800 – 10,800). CPSC staff estimated that there were 7,000 fireworks-related injuries during 2008.\n• An estimated 5,900 fireworks-related injuries (or 67 percent of the total fireworks-related injuries) were treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments during the one-month special study period between June 19, 2009 and July 19, 2009 (95 percent confidence interval 4,200 – 7,600). CPSC staff estimated that there were 5,000 fireworks-related injuries during the 2008 special study period.\nSo there were 2 deaths from fireworks in 2009 and 8800 injuries in the U.S. I remind my readers that firearms take the lives of 30,000 Americans every year ( including 8 children a day) and another 70,000 injuries costing the country billions of dollars. And yet, I needed to produce my driver's license to buy 2 boxes of \"Pop Its\" today! There is widespread recognition that fireworks and firecrackers can be and are dangerous. Guns? Not so much. I should say that most people understand the dangers of guns but the NRA and its' minions won't allow any common sense laws to pass to prevent deaths and injuries. I also remind my readers that private sellers of firearms are supposed to ask for a driver's license but many do not. In hidden camera video after hidden camera video, we have the proof that many people buy guns without producing one piece of identification. Here is just one of the latest exposés about how easy it is to buy guns, no questions asked. It's easier to buy a gun than it is to buy fireworks. And fireworks cause a very small number of deaths and injuries to Americans in a given year. Where is common sense?\nI wish all of my readers a very good Fourth of July celebration. Stay safe out there. And don't celebrate by shooting your gun into the air. I have a friend, Joe Jaskolka, whose life was forever changed when a bullet from celebratory gunfire landed in his brain while he was celebrating New Year's Eve in 1998 in Philadelphia:\nHe was 11 years old. Now 24, he is paralyzed on the right side of his body and face and has undergone nearly 55 surgeries to his brain and eyes.\n“He’s in a wheelchair…doesn’t have to be. Doesn’t have to be,” says his father, Gregory.\nI will be taking a few days away from my blog while spending some family time at our cabin. I know that gun deaths and injuries will not take a vacation and I will have plenty to write about when I post again.\nvention, Open Carry, celebratory gun fire, fireworks, gun show loophole, hidden camera investigation of gun sales, injuries from fireworks, Joe Jaskolka, Minnesota gun laws, Shoot First\nBaldr Odinson July 2, 2012 at 7:23 PM\nHere in Oregon, you aren't allowed to possess or fire a wide range of fireworks, particularly any that fly, like bottle rockets or Roman candles. \"Fountain\" fireworks have to be under a certain size. The concern is that people will be hit and injured by them or that they can start fires.\nWhile those may be legitimate concerns, it is at odds with the lack of concern over something FAR more deadly to innocents: firearms. Here in Oregon, you can buy any gun from anyone in a private sale with no background check, ID, paperwork, or questions of any kind. I have yet to hear of anyone being killed from fireworks here in the last few years. People die from firearms all the time, though.\nBaldr Odinson July 3, 2012 at 2:16 AM\nMy blog post on the dangers of celebratory gunfire, all too common on the 4th of July and New Year's Eve: http://newtrajectory.blogspot.com/2012/07/celebratory-gunfire-kills-keep-your.html\nmolonlabe July 3, 2012 at 8:53 AM\nI just read my copy of the COTUS and nowhere am I finding where the inalienable right of the people to keep and bear fireworks is protected by the BOR.\nI'm being sarcastic, of course. But again, this highlights the entire failure of the anti-gun argument. You're comparing a privilege to a right. Inconvenient for your side, yes. But a right none the less. The anti-violence movement would be much better served if they finally acknowledged this fact instead of staying the current course which attempts to link anecdotal scenarios as representative of the entire gun owning populace. Well, that and the smear campaign against the NRA. Here's a hint.....it's not working.\nYou state that gun owners don't care about the violence. Another misinformed and agenda-driven position. As a gun owner, i certainly do have a vested interest in seeing violence reduced, ESPECIALLY violence with firearms, because I don't want to be generalized as a contributor to this violence. The difference is that when you cut through the anecdotes, you realize that the vast majority of gun violence is perpetuated by criminals, gangs, repeat offenders, violent individuals not properly punished with lengthy mandatory sentences, and suicides. So gun owners are left scratching their heads as to why the anti-gun movement is so hell-bent on demonizing us rather than addressing the real problems and major contributors to violence.\nThere's plenty of room for compromise because I believe that the vast majority of gun owners are moderate thinking individuals and not the extremist neanderthal racist baby-killers the anti-gun movement wishes we were. But when the foundation of your position is built on the premise that the 2nd Amendment doesn't mean what it actually says, and is not a right which should garner protection equal to the rest, you're not going to find too many people who are willing to meet you half way.\njapete July 3, 2012 at 10:12 AM\nYou have just contributed to the problem. You assert that the foundation of my position is built on the premise that the 2nd Amendment doesn't mean what it actually says. Where do you find that in what I have said? You can't and you won't because it simply isn't true. Did I say it was not a right? NO! You are wrong and have therefore perpetuated the problem. We can meet halfway all right, but not if you are lying about my position. In addition, you are wrong about the majority of gun deaths due to criminals. That is not true. The majority of gun deaths, first of all, are suicides. Easy access to guns make that a whole lot easier. I have gone around on this blog about that but you are new to commenting so may have missed something. Secondly, it is actually people who know each other who commit most of the gun murders- over 50%. Some of these could be gangs. But most of the murders are not random murders by criminals on the streets. You are just wrong. In fact, check out the \"Shoot First\" blog and \"Kid Shootings\" blog for how often \"law abiding gun owners\" shoot people by accident or kids get their hands on guns to shoot themselves or others. So if we can deal in facts, I think we will get some place. I agree with you that most gun owners are law abiding and don't intend harm. But unfortunately they do. As for criminals, I think we can all agree that we should stop them from getting their guns. But the NRA doesn't want to. And that is a fact that can't be denied. Law abiding citizens shouldn't be worried about universal background checks if they can pass one. That does nothing to take away anyone's rights to own a gun. So?\nmolonlabe July 3, 2012 at 10:38 AM\nDo you support Chicago's gun ban in the city? Did you support DC's gun ban pre- Heller? Do you support restrictions on firearms based on cosmetic features? Do you support the denial of a COTUS right based on being 'suspected' of terrorism? Do you support restrictions on firearm ownership based on geographical location/residence of an individual? Do support restrictions on concealed carry? Open carry? Do you support mandatory storage laws? Do you support mandatory trigger locks? Do you support a ban on semi-automatic weapons? Do you support regulation based on caliber? Do you support confiscation of firearms in times of declared emergency? Do you support 'may-issue' over 'shall-issue'? Do you believe that gun policy should be determined as a public health issue?\nYou can't, with a straight face, tell me that you truly believe that the 2A means what is says, while supporting a majority, if not, all of the aforementioned.\nWhen you choose to ignore the constitutionality of the same laws you support and instead, argue based on emotionalism and anecdotal evidence and routinely imply that gun owners are some sort of fringe outfit, you're not going to elicit any willingness to compromise.\njapete July 3, 2012 at 1:23 PM\nYou really ought to read the Second Amendment. It says nothing about any of the things you suggested. The Court determined that the Chicago gun ban was not Constitutional. So be it. That doesn't mean just anyone can have any gun they want or to carry just anywhere. Remember when it was written? None of the weapons you guys love were available or manufactured. Life changes. The second amendment does not mean what you say it means either. Find in the amendment where it enumerates what you mentioned above.\nmolonlabe July 3, 2012 at 1:48 PM\nIf you and I were playing poker, I'd say that I just saw your 'tell.'\nHeller defined 'guns in common use of the time.' That would include just about all the ones you guys want to see banned. Using the argument that none of the firearms of today were around when the 2A was written is the first indication that you have a problem with the 2A and more specifically, as defined in the Heller decision.\nAnd 'so be it' is an admission of defeat and having to deal with the decision rather than supporting the logical conclusion that a gun ban is unconstitutional. Would you oppose a decision which upheld a ban on handguns in Chicago if that had been the case?\nAnd you really ought to read my post. I never implied that i disagreed with any reasonable restrictions. I support prohibiting certain individuals from exercising the right. Perhaps some 'sensitive areas' although they would be a lot more limited in scope than what is currently considered a sensitive area. And I'd even go for mandatory background checks, although i disagree that the scourage of violence is from me and my friend/family member bartering in arms behind closed doors. What are YOU willing to compromise on?\nThe point you're missing is that there's going to be no compromise because the anti-gun camp has not acknowledged the 2A for what it means. Not only that, but aside from the oft debunked Kellerman 'study', you can't support your position statistically without manipulating the data.\nI do have to thank you for posting 3 of my posts in a row without moderation, though. that is by far a personal record for me.\nUp til now, the pro gun side has compromise on nothing.\nanthony July 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM\nI thought the NCIC was a compromise? Just to name one.\nAre you serious? Good grief. If we can't even stop criminals, domestic abusers, dangerously mentally ill people and others from buying guns at FFLs, we are in serious trouble. They can get guns anyway from unlicensed dealers as part of the NICS. Was that your compromise? You guys are crazy if you think NICS was a compromise. It was necessary for public safety. Try something else.That one doesn't fly.\nHow many people were injured/killed from negligent use of fireworks this year?\nYou'd define it as a problem with fireworks. I'd define it as a problem with the way individuals are using them.\njapete July 9, 2012 at 9:33 AM\nWhy don't you Google it and find out for yourself?\ndog gone July 3, 2012 at 12:13 PM\nThis post is an excellent example where some people want something, and they ignore anything and everything to the contrary, regardless of the evidence, regardless of the expert opinion, and regardless of any logic.\nThe \"I want it, so I'm going to get it\" mentality is a strong part of the gun culture, and anyone else's safety --- or their own - be damned.\nThat is not the premise of sound policy, not for public safety, not for public health, not for national defense.\ndog gone July 4, 2012 at 8:19 AM\nI would actually consider making the sale of fireworks legal in Minnesota if we taxed heck out of it, AND if we made it legal ONLY to buy fireworks made in the U.S. -- and if we could get the other states in the region to support that too.\n$231.8 million: Value of U.S. manufacturers' shipments of fireworks and pyrotechnics (including flares, igniters, etc.) in 2007.\n$232.3 million: Value of fireworks imported from China in 2011, representing the bulk of all U.S. fireworks imported. U.S. exports of fireworks, by comparison, came to just $15.8 million in 2011, with Australia purchasing more than any other country ($4.5 million).\nIf we limit the lega fireworks to American made fireworks, we would have a greater amount of control over safety and quality, AND we would be reducing our trade imbalance and creating U.S. jobs.\nOtherwise.........all these foreign made fireworks, heck -- they're not only dangerous.........THEY ARE DOAWNRIGHT UNAMERICAN!!!!!\nOk, so China invented fireworks a very long time ago -- time to live in the 21st century! Happy 4th Japete, common gunsense readers!\nJimF July 5, 2012 at 3:18 PM\nI believe if you tried to pass a law such as that you would have a problem with the WTO when China files an unfair trade policy lawsuit against us.\nUnfortunately, someone was shot in the head with a celebratory bullet last night. http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/Stray-bullet-hits-woman-in-head-at-Lansing-fireworks-show#ixzz1zmw5qF9D\nAnd another- http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/jul/05/10/stray-bullet-injures-man-during-safety-harbor-fire-ar-424104/\nAnd now I must report on another bullet fired in celebration- http://www.myfoxal.com/story/18966975/officer-struck-by-gunfire-during-fourth-of-july-celebration- this time hitting a Texas police officer","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1189123"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9448273777961731,"wiki_prob":0.9448273777961731,"text":"History of the Merchant Navy\ndavid.a.parsons@btinternet.com\nDays Of Sail\nShips and Shipping\nRed Ensign – Wikipedia\nTHE MNA\nPosted on 11th February 2016 Posted in J. P. Corry & Co\nJames P Corry & Co. was founded by Robert Corry who was born in County Down, Northern Ireland in 1800. By 1826 he had established a timber importing business from Canada and in that year purchased his first sailing vessel, the 325grt Chieftan, followed, in 1840, by the 198grt Summerhill. In 1843 he became the owner of the 1433grt Queen of the West as a result of unconventional circumstances. Built in New York for Woodhall & Minturn Ltd of Liverpool she stranded during a gale near Carrickfergus in Ireland. Robert Corry purchased the ship together with her cargo of American cotton and by selling the cargo cleared his costs and had the ship repaired. She continued to serve under the Corry flag until 1875.\nIn 1851 Robert’s son William joined the company which had become Corry & Co. and in that year the 1132grt Persian joined the fleet. This was followed, in 1852, by the 519grt barque Alabama , which was built in St. John’s, Nova Scotia, and the ship rigged Saint Helena, 811grt, which was also built in Canada. Because of his contacts in Canada Robert Corry tended to have his ships built there. Timber was plentiful and, providing the building cost was favourable, it was more economic to construct wooden hulled ships in Canada. When completed the ships would load timber and undertake a profitable maiden voyage across the North Atlantic to Great Britain. Under this policy the 1060grt Charger was built at New Brunswick in 1856.\nIn 1859 the company extended its operations to India by deploying the Charger on the Calcutta route to exploit the jute trade. The expansion into the India trade led to the eventual transfer of the shipowning activities of the company from Belfast to London. By this time shipowners in general were becoming interested in íron hulled ships as they were less vulnerable to ‘hull rot’ and, consequently, a fleet replacement programme was initiated.\nThe Corry’s went to Harland & Wolff in Belfast in 1860 and commissioned the first of twelve almost identical ships, eleven of which were given names prefixed by Star of… setting the precedent for future ship naming and the birth of the Star Line. The Jane Porter, named after the wife of William Corry, was the first sailing ship built at Harland & Wolff’s Belfast yard. The first of the ‘Star’s’, the Star of Erin, was built in 1862 and, thereafter, the Corry sailing ships became famous for their splendid condition and elegance. In 1874 the company’s largest sailing ship, the 1981grt Star of Russia, entered service. Not only were the ships prefixed with ‘Star of…’ they were, with one or two exceptions, named after countries.\nJames P.Corry was created baronet in 1885 and thereafter spend most of his time looking after the Belfast timber trade. In the following the company took delivery of their last sailing ship the Star of Austria which was built by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast, a shipbuilder with whom a close relationship evolved as they were both interested in the development of refrigerated cargo spaces.\nIn 1887 the company took delivery of their first steamship, the Star of Victoria, named in celebration of Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne, quickly followed by the Star of England. Hitherto, the company’s sailing ships were their proudest achievements but the introduction of these two vessels was to herald the beginning of even greater achievements in the frozen meat trade. However, on completion the ships were deployed on the India jute run. By this time founder Robert Corry’s grandson, James P. Corry, was chairman of the the company which had become James P. Corry & Co. Ltd.\nIn 1889 G.D. Tyser & Co. chartered the two steamships for their Colonial & Union Co. service to New Zealand and had refrigeration plants installed. The management of Corry’s recognised the potential and after six voyages they paid Tyser’s for the cost of the refrigeration plant and continued to work with them on a commission basis. In the same year Alexander McDonald, a former employee of Workman, Clark & Co., joined the company to advise on the refrigeration aspect of all Corry’s future pre- Commonwealth & Dominion buildings which were to be constructed by Workman, Clark.\nThe company moved to larger premises at 9-11 Fenchurch Street, London in 1891 and during that year Sir James Corry died. He was succeeded as Chairman by his son Sir William Corry Bt and from thereon shipping became the company’s prinicipal business.\nIn 1898 the Star of Bengal, the Star of Russia and the Star of Italy were sold bringing to an end the company’s deployment of sailing ships. It was the management’s intention to enter the Argentinian frozen meat trade and with this in mind the Star of Ireland was built in 1903. She was smaller than other vessels in the fleet and was soon joined by the older Star of New Zealand in order to operate a two ship service on the run to the River Plate.\nIn 1912 in conjunction with Thomas B. Royden & Co. and G.D. Tyser & Co. agreement was reached with the Government of the State of Victoria to carry emigrants to Melbourne. Five ships were earmarked for the service with Corry’s providing two, Tyser’s providing two and Roydens’s one. Corry’s had two larger ships delivered in 1914, the Star of Victoria (2)and the Star of England (2) each capable of carrying 1000 emigrants and with three quarters of their cargo space equipped with refrigeration plants.\nOn 23rd January 1914 J.P. Corry’s Star Line, Thos. B. Royden’s Indra Line, Tyser & Co. and Wm. Milburn’s Anglo-Australian S.N. Co. incorporated the Commonwealth & Dominion Line which was later to become Port Line in 1937.\nThe history of James P Corry & Co. and its’ ships has been extracted from\nMerchant Fleets 21: Port Line by Duncan Haws\nto whom we extend our grateful thanks.\nAvailable from TCL PUBLICATIONS\nJANE PORTER was built in1860 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 953grt, a length of 200ft and a beam of 32ft. Ship rigged she was the first sailing ship built by Harland & Wolff and named after the wife of William Corry. Jane Porter was a member of the well known Porter family who were leading owners in Belfast and later became equally well known as Iredale & Porter of Liverpool. On completion the ship was placed on the London to Calcutta service via the Cape and in 1871 made her best outward passage time of 93 days. After 29 years service she was sold to Wm. Ross & Co. in 1889 and reduced to a barque rig. In 1890 she was sold to H. Burmester of Hamburg and renamed Nanny. On 1st June 1905 during a voyage from Bombay to East London she was wrecked on the Natal coast.\nSTAR OF ERIN was built in1862 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 949grt, a length of 200ft and a beam of 32ft. Sister of the Jane Porter she was the first Corry vessel to bear a Star name and set the precedent for naming the ships after countries, Erin being the poetic name for Ireland. She was similarly placed on the London to Calcutta run and made her best outward passage time of 80 days in 1873. In 1889 she was sold to Park Bros. of London, retaining her name, and three years later, in February 1892, she was wrecked on the lee shore in the Forveaux Straits, New Zealand.\nSTAR OF DENMARK was built in1863 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 988grt, a length of 213ft 2in and a beam of 32ft. She was the first of three ships which were slightly longer than the previous two with a corresponding increase in tonnage. In 1872, having ridden out a cyclone in Saugor Road, she sprang a leak off Madagasgar during her homeward passage from Calcutta and began taking water. In position 20 08S 1.08W, 74 days out from Calcutta, she was spoken to by Marshall’s Berkshire but declined assistance. By this time she had taken in over 10ft of water in the holds and was down at the stern. With each rise of the swell her forefoot came out of the sea which made steering difficult but she eventually reached London unaided. In 1877 she made her best passage outward to Calcutta in 96 days. She was sold to F.M. Tucker of London in 1889 and by 1891 was owned by Hine Bros. of Workington with the name Denton Holme and eventually became a total constructive loss.\nSTAR OF SCOTIA was built in 1864 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 999grt, a length of 212ft and a beam of 32ft 1in. She completed her best passage time to Calcutta of 90 days in 1873. In January 1885 during a passage from Cardiff to Colombo with a cargo of coal she was swept by a heavy sea off Cape Cornwall, the only Cape in England, carrying away the watchkeeping crew, the compass and the binnacle. On 27th April 1887 she left San Francisco on a voyage to Queenstown and London and on 27th June was wrecked on Bull Point, Falkland Islands with the loss of seven lives.\nSTAR OF ALBION was built in 1864 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 999grt, a length of 214ft and a beam of 32ft 1in. She completed her best passage time to Calcutta of 83days in 1876. On 29th September 1886 the ship had arrived in the Hooghli Delta with a cargo of coal. Having encountered storm clouds for several days it had not been possible to obtain a position fix and the ship inadvertently sailed to the west of Long Sands. She put about hoping to see the pilot brig which should have been on the east side but she was lost when she grounded as she crossed the shallows. In a subsequent enquiry the master was deemed to have hazarded his ship and had his certificate suspended for six months.\nSTAR OF PERSIA was built in 1868 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1289grt, a length of 227ft and a beam of 35ft. The first of three larger ships built for the Calcutta run she was faster than anything built hitherto and completed her best time of 79 day to Calcutta in 1876. With a usual cargo of 1850 tons of coal outward and jute on the return she achieved this time on several occasions and was known for her regularity. Much of her success was due to the skill of the master than to the quality of the ship. Once the master knew how to handle the ship in every kind of weather regular passage times were the norm and for that reason owners normally required masters to stay with the same ship for as long as possible. It was not uncommon to complete an entire seagoing career on one ship which was turned into a home often shared with a wife. For example, Capt. J. Smith served on only two Corry ships as master in 29 years. In 1893 the Star of Persia was sold to C.M. Matzen of Hamburg and renamed Edith for their Zanzibar – South America – Portland, Oregon run. She was lost in 1903 when she sprang a leak northwest of New Caledonia during a voyage from Puget Sound, Washington to Port Pirie, South Australia and grounded on the Solomon islands.\nSTAR OF GREECE was built in 1868 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1289grt, a length of 227ft and a beam of 35ft. The second of the trio she was, again, a fast ship regularly making passages from London to Calcutta via the Cape in 79 days. Although a ‘wet ship’ in a seaway, leisurely shaking herself free of water after dipping her bow into a wave, she created the record time for the round voyage to Calcutta in 5 months 27 days, 80 days out, 83 days back with 10 days in Calcutta, a time never bettered by another sailing ship. To record this achievement a brass game cock was mounted on the mainmast truck to signify ‘Cock of the Route’. Another unique feature of the ship was that she always flew a silk Greek ensign, made by and presented to her by the ladies of the Greek community in Calcutta, on the foremast when in port. On 27th August 1883 she was drenched in ash when the volcanic island of Krakatoa exploded and sailed through a sea of pummice. Although some hundreds of miles away in the Indian Ocean a thunderous bang was heard and the ship was covered within minutes. In 1885 the ship arrived at Hooghli with her cargo of coal smouldering in the battened down hold. As the ship was being towed into port the master leant over the rail an shouted to the tugmaster ‘Go like hell the bloody ship’s afire’. She came off the India run in 1888 and was sent to Australia. On 12th July she sailed for London out of Adelaide with a cargo of wheat but on the following day in a fierce gale and twenty five miles off course she was wrecked on a reef outside Port Willunga in the Gulf of St. Vincent, South Australia and soon broke in two. Seventeen people including the master and three stowaways drowned with ten people being saved. The master was only 29 and been in command since he was 23; it was his third voyage in her. Although visible from the shore it took the rescue appliances some 14 hours to arrive on the scene by which time it was all over. The wreck was sold for £105, the cargo for £21 and the figure head can still be seen in the Port Adelaide Maritime Museum.\nAn underwater survey is currently being undertaken on the remains of the ship and aerial photographs of the wreck site can be viewed at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~austerj1/sog.html\nSTAR OF GERMANY was built in 1872 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1337grt, a length of 232ft and a beam of 35ft. The last of the trio she served on the India service until 1897 when she was sold to Foley, Aikman & Co. of London who were engaged in the same trade. In 1904 she was sold to Star of Germany Ship Co. of Belfast and managed by W.A. Rainford & Co. until the following year when she was again sold to Acties ‘Grid’ with A.Bech of Tvedestrand, Norway as managers and renamed Grid. In October 1906 she was dismasted during hurricane weather off Barbados and turned into a hulk. By 1907 she was one of five old sailing ships being used as hulks at Trinidad and in the 1920’s was still hulked there but not in use.\nSTAR OF BENGAL was built in 1874 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1870grt, a length of 262ft 10in and a beam of 40ft 2in. The first of two larger ships she remained with Corry’s until 1898 when she was sold to J.J. Smith of San Francisco. In 1903 she was sold to E.B. Smith of San Francisco who reduced her to a barque rig. She was sold to Alaska Packers Association of San Francisco and converted into a floating fish cannery without a change of name. The new owner added further ships to his fleet which were also given Star of… names. On 22nd April 1908 she left San Francisco for Fort Wrangel, Alaska where salmon commenced. She left Fort Wrangel on 19th September with 50,000 cases of salmon, a crew of 36 and 110 cannery staff under the tow of two towing steamers the Hattie Gage and the Kayak. At 03.50 on 20th September the ship was too close to land and drifting onto Coronation Island. Although crew members on the ship shouted to the towing vessels to steam to starboard they took no notice and as the weather was rapidly deteriorating into a gale they slipped the tow for fear of being dragged ashore. The Star of Bengal dropped her anchors but they dragged and at daybreak four volunteers lowered a lifeboat in an attempt to get a line ashore and rig a breeches buoy. They just managed to jump ashore as the lifeboat was smashed on the rocks but failed to get the breeches buoy rigged. At 09.32 the ship hit the rocks broadside on bringing down the masts. Those still on board the ship were washed overboard by the raging seas, many reaching the breakers but being killed by the swirling wreckage. During the 54 minutes following the stranding 110 persons drowned.\nSTAR OF RUSSIA was built in 1874 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1981grt, a length of 275ft and a beam of 40ft 2in. When launched on 12th December 1874 she was Corry’s largest sailing ship being marginally larger than her sister the Star of Bengal. Her maiden voyage from London to Melbourne which commenced on 25th April 1875 was completed in 81 days. In 1881 she carried the owner Sir William Corry to Australia. During a gale in 1885 the captain was aroused by a frantic ringing of the ship’s bell. On reaching the deck he found only the helmsman; the mate and the other watchkeepers had been swept overboard while handling the head sails. In 1886, although being nearly overwhelmed during a fierce gale, she made her fastest passage from Lizard Point to Calcutta in 74 days. She was sold to Shaw, Saville & Albion and then to J.J. Moore of San Francisco in 1898 and sailed under the Hawaiian flag shortly before the island was annexed to the USA. By 1901 she was owned by the Alaska Packers Association of San Francisco and was, in fact, the ship which set the precedent for prefixing their ship’s names with ‘Star of’. She made her final voyage from Tacoma to Samoa and the New Hebrides with a cargo of timber in 1926 before being converted into a warehouse by Burns, Philp at Apia, Samoa and renamed La Perouse. She was later moved to Noumea and served as a coal barge. In 1929 she had been moved to Sydney where Sir James Corry went aboard the hulk and found that her hull was still good although nothing else was. She eventually finished up in Port Vila Harbour, Vanuatu, where, stripped of her fine fittings, she was used as a floating warehouse. Sometime later she sank in 35 metres of water just to the north west of the main wharf where she still remains as an attraction to scuba divers.\n(Photo: Steve W Lawson)\nSTAR OF ITALY was built in 1877 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1644grt, a length of 257ft 1in and a beam of 38ft. With her sister the Star of France she was a tall ship and shared the honour of being the fastest ship in the fleet. Her fastest passage to Calcutta was completed in 77 days during which she snapped nine deck beams. In 1892 she sailed from Cardiff to San Diego with a cargo of coal in 116 days. She was sold to J.J. Moore of San Francisco in 1898 and by 1903 was owned by Pope & Talbot of San Francisco and operated by the California Shipping Co. The following year she was sold to Puget Sound Commercial Co. of Port Townsend, Washington State and in 1906 was purchased by the Alaska Packers Association of San Francisco. In 1927 she was sold to Darling-Singer Shipping & Lighterage Co. of San Francisco and by 1935 she was being used as a hulk at Buenaventura in Columbia where all trace of her was lost.\nSTAR OF FRANCE was built in 1877 by Harland &Wolff & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1644grt, a length of 258ft and a beam of 38ft. The last sailing ship built for Corry’s by Harland & Wolff she was probably their consistently faster ship. Although she held no records her passage times were usually one or two days faster than any other ship in the fleet. In 1899 she was sold to J.J. Moore & Co. of San Franciso, then, in 1903 to Pope & Talbot of San Francisco. In the following year she was sold to the Puget Sound Commercial Co. of Port Townsend and by 1905 was under the ownership of the Alaska packers Association. She was being used to train Sea Scouts at San Francisco in 1928 and in 1932 was sold to Louis Rothenburg of Los Angeles. In 1933 she was re-sold to Capt. J.M. Andersen for use as a fishing barge but was much neglected. She was eventually moored off San Pedro breakwater where she remained until September 1940 when, in thick fog, she was rammed by a Japanese steamship and sank.\nSTAR OF AUSTRIA was built in 1886 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 1781grt, a length of 264ft 8in and a beam of 38ft 8in. The last sailing ship with the same basic specification as the Star of Italy she was the first ship built by that yard for Corry’s and was fitted with patent bulwark thwarts which remained shut when hit by the sea but opened to release water on the deck. In 1895 during a voyage from Santa Rosalia to Swansea with a cargo of copper ore she disappeared whilst rounding Cape Horn.\nSTAR OF VICTORIA (1) was built in 1886 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 3291grt, a length of 361ft 8in, a beam of 42ft 8in and a service speed of 10 knots. Corry’s first steamship she was delivered in January 1887 and began service on charter to India. In 1889 she was chartered to the Colonial Union Company, with Tyser & Co. as agents, for service to New Zealand with refrigeration plant and cork insulated holds having been installed by the agent at their cost. The cost of the refrigeration plant was reimbursed to Tyser’s by Corry’s in 1891 when they saw the potential for ships with refrigerated cargo spaces. In 1911 she was sold to Fratelli Cosulich of Trieste and renamed Frigida. Operated by Austro-Americana S.A. she was the first frozen meat ship in their fleet. On 18th December 1911 she was transferred to a new company, Societa Importazioni Carne Congelate. In October 1913 she was sold to Nicholas Mihanovich who were owned by Soc.Anonyme de Nav. Sud-Atlantica of Buenos Aires and renamed Moinho Fluminense. In early 1917 she was owned by Cia des Chemins de Fer Paris-Lyons with the name Marseille and later in the year was sold to Cie Nationale dÁffretements of Le Havre. She was finally broken up in 1919.\nSTAR OF ENGLAND (1) was built in 1889 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 3584grt, a length of 371ft 10in, a beam of 44ft 2in and a service speed of 10 knots. A slightly larger version of her sister the Star of Victoria she had a very similar career. She was chartered for one voyage on the India run before being refrigerated by the agents Tyser & Co for operation on the Colonial Union service to New Zealand. In 1891 Corry’s reimbursed Tyser’s for the refrigeration plant and continued to operate the ship on their own account until 1913 when she was sold to T. Gazzolo fu A of Genoa and renamed Purificazione. By 1915 she was owned by Soc.Anon. Liva and in September of that year sprang a leak and was abandoned at sea.\nSTAR OF NEW ZEALAND was built in 1895 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 4417grt, a length of 393ft 6in, a beam of 46ft 10in and a service speed of 11 knots. By 1902 she was deployed on the South American meat run in conjunction with the Star of Ireland. On 28th November 1915 she was wrecked near Molene, Brest during a voyage from Montevideo to Le Havre with a cargo of meat.\nSTAR OF AUSTRALIA was built in 1899 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 6179grt, a length of 440ft, a beam of 55ft 1in and a service speed of 12 knots. She entered service in 1899 square rigged on the foremast but this was removed within a year or so. In 1904 she rescued the crew of a Canadian barque that was breaking up in heavy seas during a voyage to South America. During a voyage in 1912 her propeller shaft snapped when she was some 600 miles east of Aden and was left disabled and drifting. Not being equipped with radio with which she could have sent an SOS two officers and four crew members set off for Aden in a lifeboat to seek help. Two days later they managed to contact the Glenlochy (Glen Line) which came to the rescue and towed the Star of Australia to Aden. From there she was towed to England for repairs by a tug owned by the Dutch company Smit. On 23rd January 1914 she was transferred to the Commonwealth & Dominion Line following its incorporation and in April 1916 she was renamed Port Stephens. On 1st August 1918 she was in collision with and sank Hugh Roberts & Son’s North Cambria some 70 miles west of Ushant. During a voyage from Australia and New Zealand to Hull via the Panama Canal in 1920 she took in tow the disabled American steamship Tashmoo and berthed her at Queenstown after experiencing gale force conditions. The salvage award was £9500 which was more than the book value of the Port Stephens at the time. She was eventually broken up in Italy in May 1924.\nSTAR OF SCOTLAND was built in 1904 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 6230grt, a length of 440ft 3in, a beam of 55ft 1in and a service speed of 12 knots. Sister of the Star of Australia she was transferred to the Commonwealth & Dominion Line following its incorporation in 1914 and renamed Port Campbell in 1916. On 7th April 1918 during a voyage from London to New York she was torpedoed by U-53 115 miles south west of Bishop Rock and sank two days later.\nSTAR OF JAPAN was built in 1906 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 6236grt, a length of 440ft 3in, a beam of 55ft 1in and a service speed of 12 knots. Sister of the Star of Australia she was wrecked at Pedro de Galha on the west coast of Africa during a voyage from London to Hawkes Bay with a general cargo without any loss of life.\nSTAR OF IRELAND was built in 1903 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 4331grt, a length of 380ft, a beam of 48ft 8in and a service speed of 12 knots. She was built specifically for the South American meat trade and virtually an updated version of the Star of Victoria. Although she was refrigerated and as large as some of the other vessels in the fleet she was not transferred to the Commonwealth & Dominion Line and in 1915 was sold to Nelson Steam Navigation Co. of Belfast with H & W Nelson Ltd as managers for use on a similar trade. She was renamed Highland Star by the new company in 1916. In 1927 she was laid up at Dunston-on-Tyne and broken up in 1930 by Thos. W. Ward at Inverkeithing.\nSTAR OF CANADA was built in 1909 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 7280grt, a length of 470ft 4in, a beam of 58ft 5in and a service speed of 13 knots. When she entered service in October 1909 she was the company’s first twin screwed ship. On 23rd June 1912, during a voyage from New Zealand to London, she was waiting offshore to load meat when a gale blew up causing her to drag her two anchors on the sandy bottom and was wrecked on Kaiti Beach, Gisborne.\nSTAR OF INDIA was built in 1910 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 7316grt, a length of 470ft 4in, a beam of 58ft 5in and a service speed of 13 knots. Sister of the Star of India she was transferred to the newly incorporated Commonwealth & Dominion Line in 1914 and renamed Port Pirie (3) in May 1916. She remained in service until November 1935 when she was scrapped by Thos. W. Ward at Briton Ferry, South Wales.\nSTAR OF VICTORIA (2) was built in 1914 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 9152grt, a length of 503ft 4in, a beam of 63ft 4in and a service speed of 13 knots. During her construction there was a shortage of riveters and compressed air rivet clenching was successfully substituted. She was designed for quick conversion into an emigrant carrier and in 1914 was converted to carry 1000 troops. She was completed on 10 January 1914 for J.P.Corry but on 23rd January was transferred to the Commonwealth & Dominion Line and in 1916 was renamed Port Melbourne. In March 1917 she was requisitioned by the Shipping Controller under the Liner Requisition Scheme and immediately re-deployed on the meat run as the carriage of meat had become a priority. In 1919 she reverted to normal commercial trade and the passenger accommodation was reduced to twelve. She had a reputation, as did her sister, for wandering off course and in 1925 was fitted with a gyro compass controlled steering gear which was a new innovation at the time and supposedly cut the passage time from Melbourne to London by two days. In 1929 the management decided that as she was only fifteen years old it was worth the expenditure to re-engine her with Bauer-Wach exhaust turbines which increased fuel efficiency by some 15%-25% and to recover the cost over the following six years. Unfortunately the sudden slump in shipping trade began later that year and by 1931 she was laid up in the River Blackwater. Whilst laid up a fire broke out and the hot plating was doused by crew members and volunteers from other ships until the fire fighting equipment arrived. She was repaired on the Tyne and immediately laid up there. During 1936/7 she was again laid up in the River Blackwater until she returned to the meat run where she remained unscathed for the duration of the Second World War. On 18th May 1948 she arrived at Blyth, Northumberland and was broken up by Hughes, Bolckow.\nSTAR OF ENGLAND (2) was built in 1914 by Workman, Clark & Co. at Belfast with a tonnage of 9136grt, a length of 503ft 4in, a beam of 63ft 4in and a service speed of 13 knots. Sister of the Star of Victoria she also had air rivet clenching instead of traditional riveting on the hull. By the time she was completed the Commonwealth & Dominion Line had been incorporated and she entered service under that ownership being renamed Port Sydney in April 1916. She started her career as a troopship and in March 1917 operated under the Liner Requisition Scheme until she was decommissioned in the November and reverted to commercial use. In 1929 she was fitted with Bauer-Wach exhaust turbines. During the Second World War she continued to operate commercially but under government control and made some meat runs to the River Plate for the Royal Mail Line. On 19th December 1948 she arrived at Preston and was broken up by Thos.W.Ward. The woodwork and fittings in her saloon were so nice that they were removed and stored for eventual use in the crew lounge of the Port Sydney (2). (Photo as Port Sydney: Dick Henshaw)\n« Buries Markes\nTHE STEAMER “MARTABAN’ »\n© The Merchant Navy Association","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line922396"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5010981559753418,"wiki_prob":0.5010981559753418,"text":"Do I need a sperm donor?\nDonor sperm is used when intensive investigation confirms that the male partner has no sperm, or it is of extremely poor quality.\nSingle and gay women may also access donor sperm to conceive.\nDonor sperm can be obtain through the IVF Australia waiting list. Donors are recruited locally and in the USA, and are screened extensively for infection and genetic abnormalities. All donors are required to join the NSW donor register in the event that their biological offspring may want to contact them when they turn 18.\nTreatment can be through IVF or insemination. The recipient is given a thorough fertility assessment and offered counselling through IVF Australia.\nDr Sacks is a clinical director of IVFAustralia.\nDownload an information booklet on Creating a Family for Same-Sex Couples.\nAbout Dr Gavin Sacks\nGavin completed his medical training at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities, including a degree in experimental psychology. He then trained further in clinical medicine in Leeds, Glasgow, London and Sydney.\nAt the same time, scientists were making ground-breaking advances in IVF technology. Gavin wanted to be a part of this medical revolution that was bringing real hope to infertile couples and is now one of Australia's leading IVF specialists.\nDr Gavin Sacks - Fertility and IVF Specialist shared a post.\nSad to hear this news.It is with great sadness we share with you the passing of Dr. Jeffrey Braverman.\nDr. Braverman was the founder and Medical Director at Braverman IVF & Reproductive Immunology with offices in Long Island and Manhattan. Dr. Braverman was honored as the youngest graduate at New York University where he was accepted at the age of 14. He went on to attend Medical School at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan and completed his internship and residency at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York. After completing his residency Dr. Braverman established a private medical practice in Long Island New York.\nFor more than 25 years, Dr. Braverman had been treating patients with all complications related to Recurrent Pregnancy Loss and has become one of the nation's leading authorities in the field of Reproductive Immunology. He had managed thousands of cycles of IUI and IVF with a large majority of his patients suffering from Recurrent Pregnancy Loss. He has consistently maintained one of the highest success rates despite the complexity of his caseload. Dr. Braverman had gained unequaled experience managing as well as delivering this High-Risk group of patients. In fact, Dr. Braverman had delivered well over 5000 babies in his career. He has been featured with his RPL autoimmune patients on Discovery Channels Baby Story, local TV news stations, and had hosted numerous radio shows on reproductive immunology and fertility.\nHe assisted and consulted with patients from around the world with problems related to RPL (Recurrent pregnancy loss) He has designed the most complete panel for the diagnosis and management of immune-related pregnancy complications, as well as one of the most comprehensive thrombophilia (blood clotting) panels available. His current office staff has all been part of this practice for at least 20 years and most, longer than that. This has also been one of the most important elements in maintaining excellence and consistency with the highest standard of care.\nDr. Andrea Vidali, who has worked side by side with Dr. Braverman for over 20 years, along with the entire medical and research staff, will continue to provide the excellent standard of care that was the hallmark of Dr. Braverman’s professional career. ... See MoreSee Less\nAffiliations and Support","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1302789"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6248215436935425,"wiki_prob":0.3751784563064575,"text":"It doesn't take long to need a break from family over the holidays, survey says\nAbigail Rosenthal, USA TODAY NETWORK\nIf you find yourself hiding in the pantry to get away from family this holiday season, know you're probably not alone in the search for some peace on Earth.\nA survey commissioned by Motel 6 found that it only takes less than 4 hours before people need a break from socializing with family.\nYou can help send gifts to those in need through USPS Operation Santa\nAccording to the survey, Americans are planning on spending an average of three and a half days with extended family this holiday. And people admit to finding ways to escape the holiday bustle — 25% said they have hidden in a relative's home for some time alone, and 37% have made an excuse to leave the house altogether.\nSome of the biggest stressors, according to the 2,000 Americans surveyed, include facing a lack of privacy (22%), family members annoying each other (20%) and drama between the family (20%). Plus, if you're not the one hosting, there's the stress of feeling like an imposition (19%) and having the house be too busy or loud (18%).\nBut even though it can be stressful or exhausting, 95% feel it’s important to spend the holidays with family. So when your nerves start to fray, remember: It's only a few days, and the pantry is a prime hiding spot.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line476748"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8862249255180359,"wiki_prob":0.8862249255180359,"text":"Obama: Trump Is ‘Unfit’ for Presidency\nArticle, Videos\nPresident Barack Obama lashed out at Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying that he is “unfit” to be president.\nBREAKING: Obama says \"I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president\" & is \"woefully unprepared\" pic.twitter.com/xL2pUGUenE\n— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) August 2, 2016\n“If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Obama said during a press conference at the White House with Singapore’s prime minister.\n“There has to come a point at which you say, ‘enough.'”\nObama lashed out at Trump in the wake of the candidate’s criticism of Muslim parents of a U.S. Army officer who was killed in the Iraq War.\nTop Republicans — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — have all denounced Trump’s comments but none have reversed their endorsement of the nominee.\n“What does this say about your party that this is your standard bearer?” Obama asked.\n“This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe,” he added. “This is daily and weekly where they are distancing themselves from statements he’s making.”\nObama’s comments were striking in that they did not come at a political convention or a rally with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but at a joint White House press conference with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore.\nIt is rare for a president at such a formal setting to rip into a potential successor’s ability to serve. Yet Trump’s unprecedented campaign, and division within the GOP over it, have given Obama an opening.\nRep. Richard Hanna, a retiring congressman from New York, on Tuesday became the first GOP lawmaker to say he would vote for Clinton.\nObama said his opponents in 2008 and 2012 — McCain and Mitt Romney — were “wrong on certain policy issues, but I never thought that they couldn’t do the job.”\n“But that’s not the situation here, and that’s not just my opinion,” he continued. “That is the opinion of many prominent Republicans.”\nTrump released a statement an hour after Obama spoke ripping the president and Clinton for their handling of the economy and foreign policy.\n“Obama-Clinton have single-handedly destabilized the Middle East, handed Iraq, Libya and Syria to ISIS, and allowed our personnel to be slaughtered at Benghazi,” Trump said.\nHe said the Iran nuclear deal had put that country on the path to having nuclear weapons, and that Clinton and Obama had let dozens of veterans die while waiting for medical care.\n“They have produced the worst recovery since the Great Depression,” he said.\nTrump also criticized Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of State, saying it put national security at risk.\nTrump has been at the center of a political firestorm over the past week after feuding with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of the soldier.\nOne day after Obama spoke at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, Khizr Khan delivered a blistering rebuke of Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S.\nStanding beside his wife, Khan questioned whether Trump has ever read the U.S. Constitution while waving a a pocket copy of the founding document. He also said Trump has not sacrificed for his country.\nTrump said in an interview with ABC News that he had sacrificed by building his business. And he also suggested the bereaved mother’s initial silence was because of her religion.\nTrump again responded to Khan’s comments during a Monday night interview on Fox News.\n“His son died 12 years ago, and [if] I were president, his son wouldn’t have died because I wouldn’t have been in the war, if I was president back then,” he told host Sean Hannity.\nWhile no GOP leaders have dropped their endorsement of Trump, Hanna cited Trump’s comments on Khan in explaining his decision to vote for Clinton.\n“I think Trump is a national embarrassment,” Hanna told The Syracuse Post Standard. “Is he really the guy you want to have the nuclear codes?”\nPhoto credit: CNBC / Screenshot.\nRepublican: If a Woman Has Right to an Abortion, a Man Should Have Right to Force Himself on a Woman\nTrump: Protester Should Be Arrested for 'Filthy, Dirty Mouth'\nPoll: Trump Begins Presidency with 36 Percent Approval Rating","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1226508"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.575596272945404,"wiki_prob":0.42440372705459595,"text":"Posts Tagged ‘Religion’\nWhy Christianism Fosters Demons\nThe Christo-Islamist god does not do with just Satan, but a whole army of demons, fallen angels, or “djinns”. This is not an accident, but its core strategy.\nAn excellent essay in Scientia Salon: an official guide for demon hunters with a helpful advice from philosophers and witch hunters illustrates this. History is how philosophy ought to be done. No history, no philosophy.\nWhy? Because philosophy is about the deepest reasons. The deepest reasons have to be hunted down in history always. (Yes, even in science, see note.)\nI will explain why the extreme cruelty and terror found in several famous religions are not accidental by-products, but essential to the core of these superstitious systems.\nNotre Dame Gargoyles Watch Over Paris To Make Sure Of Extirpating Whatever Needs Extirpation\nSome have the religion of religions. They worship the idea. The idea of religion. Of course, they have an agenda; it could be Tibetan Buddhism (with its demons), or the Christo-Islamist god, who absolutely needs a fig leaf. And the name of that fig leaf was Satan (or Shatan, namely Hades, Pluto, or Ba’al, refurbished, with a fresh Dark Side coat).\nThere is a funny passage in the Qur’an where Allah (Arabic word for the Christo-Islamist Jewish god) warns about asking him questions about his business with Shatan and Djinns. He hints darkly that those who ask too many question will end in the fire (where they will be burned until their skin falls off; then their skin will grow back, and they will be thrown in the fire again; apparently the Qur’an anticipated stem cell treatments yet to come!)\nThere are religions, and religions. Generally, when talking to some primitive about religion, she or he assumes, naturally, that one talks about her, or his religion. But maybe 10,000 religions are known. 99.99% of them grossly violate human rights, and are criminal systems of thoughts and mood. Once again, that’s no accident: religion is all about plutocracy, and plutocracy all about the demonic side of man.\nWhen religious people talk about “religion”, and request respect, they don’t mean that we should respect the Aztecs’ religion: they never heard of it. Or, if they did, they don’t realize what it means.\nReligion’s idea comes from the Latin “religio”, itself contained in re-ligare: to bind together again. We The People, bound again together. To what? To whom? To us again?\nReligions basically come under two variants: those which bind to rationality, and those which bind to irrationality, that is, to madness.\nBy “madness” here, I mean any altered state of consciousness. I am a mountaineer and a mountain runner. I have run very long, say in Iran, at 10,000 feet, in a one way solitary run I had to complete to save myself. The heat was great, blood was seeping through my running shoes. I felt nothing. This sort of altered state of consciousness, evolution given stoicism, is routine for tough mountain climbers, who are familiar with slipping out of cracks from blood seeping out of their bodies, while keeping a happy smirk on their faces.\nWhy would one bind to rationality? Because, without rationality, there is no survival. Homo has been mostly selected for increasing rational performance over the last 5 million years.\nCivilization blossomed this in the idea of democracy. The republic is the fundamental religion, as it effectively was for the Romans, for centuries (in co-existence with superstitious cults, such as the original Roman one).\nWhy would one bind to irrationality? Because, once We The People has become irrational, in other words, dumb, it can easily be manipulated into subservience.\nHence superstition. “Superstitio” was used derisively by the Christians against Pagans as early as the Fourth Century. However, the concept is “what stands above”… the world. In other words, what cannot be objective.\nSuperstitious religions are there to terrify people, and force them into abject subjugation, so they all have demons, as the Punic religion did, or the Aztecs.\nThe Aztecs, thanks to tearing the hearts of their live prisoners out, had kept the nations around them in a state of fear of these “flower wars”.\nJust as Islam is about peace, Christianity about love, the Aztecs’ gods were about… flowers. (Once, to inaugurate the greatest temple so far, they tore 80,000 hearts out, in five days, a remarkable pre-industrial feat.)\nThe Aztecs were horrified by the torture of the Christians. As far as they were concerned, Christianity was a torture religion, perfectly symbolized by the torture instrument the Christians brandished, the cross. Christians will be surprised to learn this. Of course. Gods, imagination, and machinations go very well together.\nChristian minds have been well engineered together into the herd instinct.\nTerrified people obey their masters well. And if that is not enough, the Christians, later imitated by the Muslims, would exert what (“Saint”) Augustine referred approvingly as “great violence”. By the time Augustine recommended “great violence”, the executions of those-who-had-chosen (= “heretics”) were routine.\nThis is how the Christians took an empire which was mostly Pagan and Neo-Platonic by storm: by killing millions. And this is also why, ever since, they speak of the persecutions they suffered before that: because the later were relatively puny: only 6 Christians were executed under Marcus Aurelius. Some emperors may have been closet Christians, well before Galerius executed 3,000 Christians, in the worst persecution, around 306 CE (which he rescinded later)..\nChristianity and its parrot, Islam, have killed tens of millions, in their names.\nNow they don’t want their names to be their names, a bit like homosexuals don’t want to not be called gays, otherwise they would be rather sad.\nThat’s why their sacred texts enshrine the power of ultimate violence, when they do not call to exert it, outright. That’s why they are, under the guise of fearing them, a cult of demons.\nThe Cathars said nothing else. So the Christians exterminated them, millions of them, down to the last one. And also all those who lived in the same cities, just to make sure:\n“Dieu reconnaitra les siens!”: kill them all, God will recognize his own, the commander of the Crusade is alleged to have ordered. This most ferocious of all Crusades happened on French soil. Don’t expect the masters to remember that. Although not respected as much as Islamism, Christianism is still up there in the pantheon of values in the West (go ask people what they think of Saint Louis or Luther: they will express reverence for these master thinkers of Hitler.)\nSuperstitions such as Christianism and Islamism, who include divinely mighty demons are demoniac, it’s a fact. And that’s why Allah does not want to talk about it, lest we ponder his bloody hand, and the company he keeps.\nWe have seen demons. They helped the Caliphs kill those who did not believe. They helped emperors love the church demoniacally.\nYou don’t want demons? Bring back reason.\nBut not any reason. Before he decided to invade Ukraine, Putin’s approval rating was 65%. Now it’s 86%: Russia has become mad with war frenzy. One of the reasons why religions full of demons are popular, is that demonic behavior itself is popular: people with nothing better to do, will get on the warpath. Not just for the spoils (material riches, eternal life) but also because that’s the way people are.\nAll the way to viewing irrationality as a right. Right as a vacation from the human condition.\nNote about history and philosophy: Many problems more or less scientifically solved recently have their roots in Ancient Philosophy, which first brandished them. An example is the incompleteness theorems in logic (they grew from the Cretan Liar paradox, as I have explained in the past). Zeno’s paradox is another. Or even Archimedes’ infinitesimal method.\nI could make here a digression in physics. Physics, ultimately, is about history. The lab tests what has been determined, historically, as important. Roughly all of the physics system of thought, articulated around equations, superficially observed, is actually historical: even the axioms of Quantum physics have their ultimate justification in history, not experimentation as all too many naïve physicists… believe. Yes, believe, as a Jihadist believes: closing one’s mind is not the exclusive province of superstitious fanatics.\nTribes is where the power lays, and not just in the Middle East. Those who are viewed as brandishing the right ideas climb up the hierarchy of power.\nTags:Augustine, Christianity, demons, irrationality, Islam, Religion, superstition, Systems of Moods, Systems of Thought, Terror\nPosted in Education, religion, superstition, superstition, Systems Of Moods, Systems Of Thought | 5 Comments »\nUnbelievable Comfort: NO BRAIN, NO PAIN\nMadness Of The Crowds: Comfortable, Cuddly, Yet Also Experimentally Useful.\nIn brief: Why do people “believe”? Superstitious religions are tools of oppression. They impose the unbelievable, making the masses stupid and gullible. If so why do they still seduce people? The charitable explanation, is that they offer hope: be nice to Moloch, and Moloch shall give you everything.\nBut is that all? No. The main reason (for higher-ups) to believe the unbelievable, is that it introduces a simplification of the mental system. It forces a hierarchy of causality that denies whatever contradicts the religion. That means, of course, that it denies most of the world. So the world goes poof. Is not that great?\nBaal Temple, Syria: Yesterday’s God, Today’s Lord Of The Flies\n[Ba‘al dhubaab: in Arabic, “Lord of the Flies”, that is, Lord of Dung, a rich idea coming from the Jews, two millennia earlier! Someday soon the Abrahamic religion will also be seen as a pile of dung to join Beelzebub.]\nSuperstitious systems of thought occupy a double-faced position in the jungle of ideas. On one end of the spectrum, they are a simplification, a laziness, a creature’s comfort, a herd phenomenon.\nOn the other end, being a simplification, precisely, they allow to experiment more cleanly with new systems of thought. For example, Christianism imposed murderous altruism: an interesting experiment.\nWE ARE GOD, And TO PROVE IT, WE KILL YOU:\nA young mother, who does not even look Sudanese, was raised an Orthodox Christian (her Muslim father was in absentia). Later she married a Christian Sudanese. Some Muslim then accused her of adultery (if a Muslim woman has sex with a non-Muslim, she is committing adultery, says that religion).\nWhile she was waiting for another child, Sudanese authorities decided that she had renounced Islam.\nRenouncing Islam is a capital crime in Sharia, a set of “laws” (of the jungle) invented by Muslims a few generations after the Qur’an, the book of eternal peace, 5 feet under.\nSharia is the law in Sudan. So the 27 year old mother was condemned by a so called “judge”, to be whipped 100 times, before being hanged to death. No doubt the “judge” had some prurient interest. (Sudan’s president there is under an international arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. I propose to arrest the “judge” too.)\nChris Snuggs a rather fierce participant to this site wrote: “Islam in many countries is a hideous barbarity, the ultimate manifestation of unhinged minds. Perverted “religions” of this kind are the most staggering example of mass-hysteria the world has ever seen, and peculiar to Homo Sapiens. No “ordinary” animals suffer from this kind of mass simultaneous mental illness. Three billion people need psychiatric help. Astonishing. Why are we prone to mass-hysteria and irrationality on this scale? The French people regularly voting socialist is another example, and of course reminds us of the definition of a lunatic: someone who does the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”\nRenounce Islam, Die: Does Sharia Hate Islam?\n[This is the wedding picture of the woman who got condemned to death for marrying the Christian on the left. Is Islamophobia truly Homophilia?]\nBy “belief, and believers” one commonly means “deciding to believe in the unbelievable, because it’s so convenient”. “Belief” is commonly believed to be an acquired taste at best, an imposed violence at worst.\nNietzsche pointed out about Christianism, Voltaire, about Islam, or Marx, in general, that religion is the opium of the people, or something to make the people into a herd.\nMore generally, theocracy has been used as a weapon of terror, for the oppression of all sorts of peoples. The Aztecs captured their enemies alive, and then sacrificed them, opening them up, and tearing out their beating hearts. Before cutting them up, and throwing the proteins down the steep pyramids.\nThis robust religion kept peoples subjected. However, when Cortez showed up with 2,000 super warriors, those the Aztecs terrorized were enthusiastic to levee huge armies to help the Spaniards with the Hummingbird God.\nChristianism and Islam do not basically differ from the Aztec gig. The Aztecs brought death through cannibalism. But it was a rather quick death. The Aztecs were horrified by the tortures of the Spaniards. Those knew no bounds. If Spanish tortures were so advanced that was, no doubt, to keep up with the Muslims, and beat them on their own torturous ground.\nIn Islam, slavery is kosher. All men are viewed as slaves of dog (typo, sorry!) god. A standard punishment for Muslim slaves who had tried to escape was impalement. As the patient could take several days to jerk about, all transpierced, that procedure had an educative effect on the otherwise ignorant masses.\nViolence is intrinsic to the Abrahamic religion. It all started with the Bible, a compendium of holocausts, praising an holocaust driven god. Getting advice and example from the Bible allowed Europeans, clutching their bibles, to massacre the Americas, and much of Eurasia and Oceania.\nNow religious fanaticism is less of a problem than a distraction, as the secular, republican spirit mostly rules, except in a few places: Israel, some places in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, where old fashion Islam is gaining ground.\nDoes that mean we are getting rid of the COMFORTABLY UNBELIEVABLE?\nINSANITY BRINGS THE COMFORT OF THE HERD, THE ECONOMY OF STUPIDITY:\nBecause having unbelievable beliefs brings mental economy, and ties that bind. What could go wrong?\nLet me explain a bit more: intelligence is highly profitable, but it’s also costly. To become intelligent, one has to create lots of neurons and synapses. And the environment does it: studies on rats have proven this. Long ago.\nAll these neurons and synapses require a lot of energy to build. That’s exhausting: one has to go hunt and gather a lot. Also, once built, all this awareness brings pain: many a religion and philosophy have moaned about extinction (“nirvana”) of consciousness as the solution to the problem of pain (how that differs from Hitler’s solution beats me).\nFrom there springs the opium of the people effect: opium creates an absence of mind by putting many neurons to sleep, but it’s the same result, even more efficiently, by making sure none of these neurons is ever born.\nFinally, last, but not least, as the religion simplifies the system of thought, it creates a simple system of thought, and a simple brain. A simple type of a specific brain. Those are easy to match to each other. All those who believe some guy is the son of dog, chose to be crucified for man, and taught us love, are, clearly, made for each other. They have an insanity to share.\nThere is nothing more reassuring than the herd. And a crazy herd, charging all along, is the ultimate symbol of force, thus, safety.\nMUSLIMS CREATED THE WORLD, ROMANS ATTACKED LATER, AND OTHER INSANITIES:\nMy spouse had a friend for a few years, and even travelled overseas with her. She was, superficially well educated. As all would-be shock philosopher, I tend to stay apart. Yet, in the end, we met. It was rather brief.\nShe was from Morocco. I know Morocco, first time I was there I was two years old. I mentioned in passing that this beautiful country was graced with Roman monuments. She mumbled something to the effect that Europeans could never resist invading Muslim countries. I pointed out that the Romans were in Morocco nine centuries before the Muslims ever invaded the place. Her face went white. She told us Morocco had always been Muslim. We were basically insulting her country.\nI said: not so. I told the truth. Her world, her simple world full of simplifying lies that bind, was shattered. I was not just demolishing her world view, but her social fabric, made of victimized conservative Muslims invaded by greedy Romans.\nShe did not contact us ever again.\nI am never the one to interrupt relationships, because I view even the worst relationships as interesting experiments in my philosophical laboratory… That has led me to harrowing situations, because insuring the integrity of their mental systems brings up the greatest ferocity in human beings.\nSuch is the human condition.\nPASSIONS CREATE THOUGHTS, THOUGHTS KILL EACH OTHER, & GIVE BIRTH TO MAN:\nThat ferocity in things mental may look baffling. But it is of the essence. Homo is the intellectual animal. Human ideas compete, and they compete to death. Inferior ideas get killed. Superior ideas thrive, munching the bones of past guesses.\nLovers of the free market gloat that it can produce superior product. Bu there is no product higher than an idea. And the ideas do not just constitute a market. They constitute a jungle, where pain, greed, anger, rage, ecstasy and lust are just ways to achieve a healthy jungle.\nFOLLY EXPANDS, OCCUPY ALL SPACE, REASON FOLLOWS:\nAlthough I focused mainly on the Abrahamic religion above, the situation is general. Stupidity binds.\nAn example is indeed presently provided by socialism, the old fashioned way, complete with a plethora of useless civil servants and assisted ones (as Chris fulminates).\nAn other excellent mania of the crowds is found in physics, where completely insane theories have progressed in recent years ( for example the Multiverse madness).\nBy this, I mean more than physics became more insane than any of the preceding. Yet, precisely because it presents the neurological advantages of insanity, the insanity in physics has been progressing. A delicate moment.\nThat’s progress, how progress works.\nWhen physicists have gone completely insane, hopefully someone will point out reason, and be believed (it took more than a millennium, between Ptolemy and Buridan, though!)\nFolly expands, occupies all space, reason follows, and sweeps behind. That’s how intelligence progresses: even the mania of crowds can be put to work.\nWhether it’s painful or not, is irrelevant. The fundamental constructive naturally occurring software, the fundamental principle, of man is not pain, but intelligence.\nTags:Abraham, Brain, Mania, Moods, Pain, Religion, superstition, Systems of Thought\nPosted in Biology, Neuroeconomy, Neurology, Psychology | 34 Comments »\nWhen Religion Makes People Crazy\nOne of my readers, Mark, suggests that: \"Maybe you should focus on whether religion makes people go bad, or whether already bad people use religion in a bad way?\"\nReligion is often causative of bad behavior, as Critias said, 24 centuries ago, and for the reason he said (see the preceding essay). But there is more. Sharp distinctions exist among religions: some are innocuous, and indispensable, some are black mambas, and ought to be disposed of, as such. Or admired from a distance, as such.\nI define religion as an inescapable background to the human discourse. Religion is the context that allows the logical, and emotional discourse. So the basic idea of religion, is neither good or bad. Not anymore than the brain is good or bad. Having a brain implies having a religion: this is already true of the most basic logical systems (starting with first order logic).\nClearly, though, if the context, the religion, is full of viciousness, anger, resentment, it will make people bad. Contexts can clearly make people bad; see traditions of vendetta and blood feuds (which constitute a sort of meta religion, as horrendous blood feuds traditions in Albania, in \"Islam\", were nearly identical to those in Greece, in \"Orthodox Christianity\", or in Catholic Italy, next door).\nThen I distinguish superstitious religions from the rest. Pretty much the rest means secularism (most forms of Buddhism having also superstitious elements). In secularism, only real facts from the real world, as determined by the science of the age (\"Secula\"), are admitted to build the metaphysical universe. (No, no contradiction; for example, physics and mathematics cannot function without their meta-elements.)\nIn a religion dominated by superstition, overarching metaphysical elements are introduced which \"above-stand\" (= super-stare). \"Superstition\" has come to have a pejorative meaning, an invention of the Christian-In-Chief, the self described \"13th Apostle\", emperor Constantine Himself. Constantine defined those following other religions than the one he had chosen personally, as \"superstitiosus\". That was meant to be an insult.\nAccording to emperor Constantine, the other religions had elements which stood above the real world, thus they were unreal. But of course the same can be said about Christianity, with its woman who stuck to her story (Mary), its Holy Spirit which is also the Logos, the son, and the Father, while being one, and that God who claims to suffer for you, and you better believe it, or Jesus will throw you in the fire forever, being all about love and jealousy as He is, with His sword, His threats, and his countless \"miracles\". The Abrahamic religion, with its ethical admiration for a God who orders the death of the young male child is a particularly incoherent superstition (killing the young male child, most love, was an old fancy of the superstitions of the area).\nSuperstition is intrinsically friendly to madness, and gives a justification to irrationality, because it venerates so called \"miracles\", which are known not to be of this world; they stand above it (the Pope just determined that so called \"miracles\" happened with six new people, so he called them \"saints\").\nAn aggravating factor is that those miracles, those inventions known to be false, are supposed to be the most important \"facts\" of the universe. Thus the Big Lie is venerated (in Hitler’s approach to the universe, the Big Lie is a master concept, and rightly so for those who venerate holocausts).\nMoreover people who are used to be officially mad about something innocuous, may well turned just as mad about something much less innocuous (such as Jesus’ obsession with setting people aflame).\nThere is no doubt that the shrieks of Jesus to burn people forever and ever were, and are, bad. Not only civilization nearly collapsed, but they caused the deaths of dozens of millions. There is no doubt Jesus’ cold rage led to the burning of philosophers and common citizens, as soon as the Fourth Century. There is no doubt that Jesus’ pyromaniacal ranting enabled the Dark Ages, as the fascist Roman emperors found in Jesus’ teachings the moral excuse to burn alive their enemies, and the knowledge that had made them possible.\nAnd there is no doubt that the pyromaniacal violence, and obsession of the Qur’an with burning alive the enemies of God originated with the incendiary homicidal bleating from the \"Agnus Dei\".\nAli, originator of Shiah, wanted to burn his enemies alive, and did so (before being assassinated). If the teachings of Jesus had been as non violent as those of Buddha, I doubt Ali would have had such ideas, or, having them, would have been taken seriously, that he could put them in force.\nSo bad, violent superstitions create bad people, or make bad people worse. Another example of hyper violent superstition is Nazism, a racial superstition, which created millions of bad people, who, surely, had Hitler been Gandhi, would not have been as bad.\nHitler was conscious of this, and deplored that Christianity was not as war-like as Islam. Although Islam and European Middle Age Christianity both derived from the pyromaniac Jesus, their genesis and evolutions were very different.\nChristianity, or more exactly ‘Orthodox Catholicism\" was imposed by fascist power, from the top. Islam was an insurrection led by an analphabetic, but very smart reject. Soon Islam was captured by top generals, who wrote the Qur’an, accentuating Jesus’ pyromania, turning Islam into the world’s greatest war machine, which annihilated Persia, and devoured a few years more than half of the Roman empire. In Occident, it was the opposite; the Franks took control of the Roman empire, and that meant taking control of the bishops who controlled the Imperium Romanum, Pars Occidentalis.\nMiddle Age Christianity, a milder form, was created when the Franks defanged the old Roman Catholicism, which had caused the Dark Ages, and converted it to a civilization helping form. This was done, after several false starts, when the Franks took control of the \"Occidental Roman empire\", and domesticated it, starting around 480 CE, a process Saladin did ephemerally to Islam in the 13C (but now greatly forgotten).\nStill another example of the viciousness of some superstitions: the Aztec religion, which promoted anthropophagia, to an extend so great that it revolted its neighbors (who were themselves prone to serve human flesh for dinner). This is how Cortez was able to rise an 80,000 men army to boost his own 2,000 Castillans. The Aztec superstition, clearly, had made a group of men prone to eat men to an extend insufferable to other men eating men.\nDefinitively religion can make men bad, and then, even worse. Nazism was a religion. There were plans to turn Nazism into a full blown religion. It was already clearly a cult.\nNazism was a hybrid of Catholicism (Hitler’s initial religion, and strong support), its strong anti-Judaism, and Germanic tribalism a la Herder, and a mish-mash of selection of the fittest, racial pride, lower class resentment, with militarism and plutocracy pulling the conceptual strings. The result was definitively a powerful , albeit insane, religion, which was on a collision course with French secularism. Nazism was rudely interrupted by France, and her empire, Britain, the Commonwealth, and their subsequent involuntary allies (USSR, USA).\nSuicidal charges by engineers is how the Nazis broke the French lines at Sedan in May 1940. Those fanatics believed they were the superior race, and that metaphysics made their sacrifice easy to bear. On the positive side, after that, those peculiar fanatics were dead, never to be seen again, and were soon joined by another 50,000 prime elite dedicated Nazis who died in May-June of 1940 during the Battle of France. They were sorely missed by Hitler, in the following years, as Nazism, a racist superstition, having run out of the fanatics who made its early victories possible, bit the dust.\nAs they campaigned (in appearance) successfully in Russia, the intensity of Nazi losses came to be nearly as great as in France, 18 months earlier. Finally, Nazism ran out of Nazis, just as the Syrian and Arab Baghdad-based Caliphate collapsed after its armies got annihilated in France during three successive invasions (721 CE-741 CE). Some religions are best at war, but not necessarily best at surviving.\nBeing better for the age of war does not mean better, for the age of mind. Having a better mind does a superior civilization make. Survival of the fittest does not apply to species of animals, but also to civilizations, and the religions they rest on.\nTags:Religion, Vicious Mass Delusions\nPosted in philosophy, superstition | 3 Comments »\nDOMINION OF RELIGION, FORCE OF CIVILIZATION.\nRELIGION HAS TO BE REMOVED FROM THE POLITICAL EQUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST. AND THAT PROBABLY MEANS BY FORCE. THE MEDITERRANEAN UNION AS A BETTER FINAL SOLUTION.\nAbstract: When Christianism (grandiosely self described at the time as “Orthodox Catholicism”, namely Common Opinion Universalism) became officially the one and only religion of the fascist Roman empire, Judaism, the tribal source of Christianism, was programmed for extinction. This is the basic source of the Arab-Israeli conflict. To fix it, religions (and not just Hamas, as Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni has it) have to be removed from the “equation”. And that will mean mental, legal, economic and if need be, physical force: if Gaza can be blockaded, so can others (including Israel).\nFortunately, after enough secularization, a solution exists to the entire mess: the establishment of a powerful Mediterranean Union.\nRoger Cohen wrote an excellent essay on the Arab-Israeli conflict, in light of Israel’s assault on Gaza and Hamas [“Dominion of the Dead”, NYT and IHT, January 7, 2008]. In it Cohen argues, among other things, that the weight of dead history rules the conflict: “History is relentless. Sometimes its destructive gyre gets overcome: France and Germany freed themselves after 1945 from war’s cycle. So did Poland and Germany. China and Japan scarcely love each other but do business. Only in the Middle East do the dead rule.”\nIt may be rather the dominion of religions that is generating the hatred. From way back. (In P/S 6 below, we suggest the only viable long term solution, but religion will have to be defanged first.)\nIt is highly politically incorrect to attack religion, because a superficial reading of the republican constitution in Western secular states calls for tolerance. But TOLERANCE, IMPLICITLY, REQUIRES GOOD BEHAVIOR: the secular republic, a religion of its own, rules and just tolerates religious superstitions; it just tolerates them, no more, they have to behave.\nNevertheless, out of control religion obviously dominates the rest in the Middle East. It’s faiths over reason, and faiths rule. As faiths hate each other, and try to exterminate each other, it’s war for ever, as long as the final solution has not imposed itself.\nComparisons with past strife in Europe, and the present unification of Europe, have to be used very carefully, when talking about Israel and the Arabs. But they are revealing. Roger Cohen does not get into what made the European conflicts different from the Arab-Israeli conflict. We will do this presently, and it suggests how to get out of it.\nOne has first to look at the religious problem straight in the eye: Christianism and Islam are heresies of Judaism. Judaism is tribal. The God of Judaism is not nice (Jehovah obviously inspired the semi demented and certainly atrociously lethal, civilization shattering emperor Constantine). Christianism and Islam are universal (so Judaism is their natural enemy, except that they clearly originate from it, hence a self contradiction.)\nHeresies hate each other all the more since the Bible, New and Old Testament, and Christian governmental practice, under the Roman empire, made clear that heretics should be executed (if possible by fire). Islam came after centuries of imperial Roman Catholic terror (which involved a “war against the philosophers”, book burning, mass murders and other civilization devolving atrocities; intellectuals and books had to flee to Persia!). Islam was fully inspired by them all.\n(Meanwhile, in the West, the Franks had defanged Catholicism by 496 CE; the entire “Oriental Part” of the Roman empire, including Palestine and Arab lands missed that secular turn, and this is the root of the different fates of the “Pars Occidentalis” and the “Pars Orientalis”: the West became dominated by secular law and common sense, whereas the Orient slowly sunk under superstition and religious law, in spite of all those good books saved from Catholic burning.)\nThe Arab-Israeli conflict was built in the version of the Qur’an given to us by Caliph Uthman. In the Qur’an Jews are insulted, threatened, and apparently, threatened with death (whatever apologists of Islam who do not seem to have read the Qur’an in depth say). Interestingly, the Muslims inherited the hatred of Jews from the Christians (some are not going to like the word “hatred”; again, they should go back to the Qur’an, and read it, to learn that many pigs and monkeys are actually… Jews, put into this dismal state by God Himself). Threatened with death (once again!), the Jews/Israelis are in no mood to let their guard down.\nSo we cannot get out of the Arab-Israeli conflict as long as the religions are left to speak. Hamas, or Hezbollah, and most Arab states, and to a significant extent Israel, are all religious. To make matters worse, Hamas and Israel’s government have been democratically elected (that does not mean they are full democracies; they are not, because democracy requires full democratic institutions, and obedience to Universal Human Rights).\nLet’s compare with Europe. Although sometimes there were extensive religious conflicts in Europe, they were not baked into the fundamental European conflict mix. Religions were incidental, incidental to, an excuse for, the fundamental power plays in Europe. On the grandest historical scheme, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain belonged, sometimes for centuries, to the same country.\nFrance, Germany and Poland were part of the same polity. Here are pell-mell samples of past facts: a lot of Germania was Roman, and all of Germany belonged to the Merovingian, and then Carolingian empires (which extended all the way to Poland); a British slave became empress of the Franks, a king of France married an Ukrainian princess, another a Danish princess, still another was elected king of Poland; France and Britain are actually the same country, more or less divided in two to this day (same with Germany), France was all involved in the Thirty Year war in Germany, Napoleon not only united Germany, but its Grand Army was greatly made of Germans, etc… So the fighting in Europe was inside a single civilizational system. Europeans all shared the same laws, religions and even language for centuries, or even millennia. They may have different languages now (again unified by Anglo-Normand, (aka “English”)), but they have the same cultural roots, they are all variants of the same civilization. The Greco-Romano-Frankish civilization.\nIn the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, the wars between France and Germany had clear rights and wrongs. For example the German universal health care system was clearly the best in the world, an inspiration for France. Germany had also the highest literacy rate in the world (about 100%).\nBut then, France was a democracy and a republic, with universal human rights, whereas Germany was not a republic, not a democracy, but a mild fascist system, a “Reich”. The “Reich”, then, not restrained by democratic checks and balances, became ever more fascist, and attacked all of Europe (August 1914). That did not work too well, so, propped by rogue American plutocrats, persisting in its erroneous ways, Germany became ever more fascist, racist and demented, until France and Britain declared war to it on September 3, 1939, to save democracy. By then many Germans had a feeling of doom, as they perceived they were not on the right side of right. Fascism in Germany was terminated in 1945, and many of the Nazis had come to realize, even before this, that they could not go on like that. There was a clash of civilization, and the good civilization won.\nIt’s politically correct to proclaim that there is no clash of civilization between Islam and the rest. But Islam was initially constructed as a war machine against Christianity and Judaism, just like Christianity was constructed as a war machine against all other religions (and exterminated them all, except Judaism, although it came close in the fifth century). Right now, there is at least a clash of religions.\nSome of the wrongs between Israel and Islam are from way back: Christianity was built by oppressing the Jews (allusion to what Constantine and his successors did). Christians ejected Jews from Israel, and built a church on the great Jewish temple. Islam inherited this, but cranked it up to the next level, by making the oppression of the Jews not just official, but legal. They also built several Muslim mosques and “shrines”on the Jewish Temple Mount, perhaps to show they were several times as bad as the Christians. (By then the Franks were applying full Roman law again and had given the Jews their full rights back, in equality with Catholics.)\nIslam is antidemocratic (it’s not just a religion but a system of government that loudly proclaim what Hitler called the “Fuehrerprinzip”, i.e., the Chief is always endowed by God with absolute right). Israel is also fundamentally anti democratic: to say that people from a particular religion (Judaism) have particular rights on a piece of land is an offensive tribal imposition.\nAnd so on. Both sides are very wrong. If they keep on persisting in their erroneous ways, Weapons of Mass Destruction will set them right, or whatever dust is left. If one wants to help them out, one has to tell them their thousands truths mighty soon, in no uncertain terms, and apply enough carrots and sticks to change their behavior. Being just nice will not do it. They cannot be treated as adults. It is extremely clear in the case of Hamas, but, unfortunately, this applies to Israel too. Democracy can go wrong when its institutional roots are not deep enough: consider the Weimar republic.\nTo come back to the democracy-turned-fascist that misgoverned Germany with the anxious approval of the German people: democracy was imposed by force there in 1945, after killing more than 11% of the German population, and destroying the country (unfortunately). If France and Great Britain had attacked earlier, the outcome would have been better (but Great Britain, as the USA, had no army, and no inclination to treat Germany, or the Nazis, severely). In other words, force can work as a last resort. To break the rule of Islam and Judaism in the Middle East as political system is a necessity, and will happen, either by polite force, or massive destruction.\nPatriceayme.com\nP/S 1: To the European historical entanglement corresponded psychological entanglements. The Roman aggression, or, let’s say, civilizational push, made the rather pacific Germans ever more aggressive and militarized in return (we know this from archeological studies). In turn Rome became ever more fascist (as generals such as Marius became larger than previously authorized life). Thus, historically and ironically, in the great and long confrontation between Roma and Germania, Rome was advanced, but fascist, and Germania was primitive, but democratic and anti-sexist. After a millennium of this, the Germans (in the person of the elected king of the Franks Clovis) learned to become fascist (Clovis became Consul and exerted Roman imperator powers demonstrated in the summary execution of a follower during the “Vase de Soisson” incident, when Clovis imposed his Roman imperator power for all Franks to see). Meanwhile, transmogrified by German influence, the Romans became less sexist (they had at least one fully ruling and civilization forging empress, an “Augusta”).\nP/S 2: Thus conflict creates mental entanglement, and right now, that means entanglement with hatred. And hatred plenty there will be, because Israel has already killed hundreds of apparently innocent small children in Gaza in the present offensive. Differently from the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis, and in spite of Israeli efforts to hide it all, this is in full sight of the entire planet.\nNow the entire planet, differently from the populace of Nazi Germany (from which the Nazi crimes against civilians were rather hidden, thanks to an undeniable Will to Ignorance of the German population, and heavy censorship), is confronted with having to decide to protest this, or not, and do something about it, or not. When children are dying, the weight is heavy. The whole planer is watching, and it is not deep in a jungle in Congo somewhere, out of sight, out of mind. There is only so much that the entire planet’s moral sense can take. At some point, only force will bring relief. But that means enforcing no more attacks, from any side. Neither from bulldozers, rockets, nor hate inspired documents, such as the literal, Uthman inspired Qur’an, or literal interpretations of tribal Judaism.\nListening to Israeli civilians watching a city being bombed, approving loudly, and insisting they would love to see it razed, and they don’t mind, because they feel “fascist” [sic! from a woman with reddish hair], shows, clearly that the human impulses that led to the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto are not restricted to Nazism. Israel is entering there an extreme danger zone, because it exists strictly at the goodwill of the EU and USA. It is hubris to feel otherwise.\nP/S 3: Massively lethal force was used to remove religion from the political equation in Europe, all over Europe, killing millions [part of the process included the horrible religious wars of the 16-17 C].\nBy the time the US Constitution rolled out, the removal by force of religion from the equation was a given (so the USA does not have as much memory of the struggle to eliminate religion from politics). The first two US presidents put it thus in a joint document:”… As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion…”[1796-97]. (The recent re-imposition of religion in the USA, is very recent, indeed, dating from 1956, and is, of course, an ominous decline, in part at the root of the present socioeconomic crisis, and Warren is its prophet. Amen.)\nP/S 4: The British government accepted that France was not part of its dominion only in 1815 CE. So the “100 year war” (officially 1337-1453 or 1337-1558, when Calais fell back in official French hands) lasted nearly 500 years. It was originally a French civil war between the Plantagenet and the Valois (with right being on the British side). In 1940, the Prime Minister, Churchill proposed the (re-)unification of France and Britain as one country, but the idiotic French PM declined. Nowadays, British and French are European Union citizens, and are getting quickly more unified than ever.\nP/S 5: The European Middle Ages has bad reputation as a period of strife, and it’s entirely unjustified. It is the rise of religious hatred in Europe that caused the strife, and that was at the end of the Middle Ages (and it was inaugurated by the Crusade against the Toulouse County). The religious wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth century had a base in political power struggles, but the mobs got really driven mad by various variants of the Judeo-Christian faith. This went on for two centuries, and killing children or infants was standard. Although religion got clamped down in the end, some of the losses were so high that hatred kept on going. A tradition of hating France appeared in Germany in no small reason because of the massive French intervention in the “Thirty Year War” of the seventeenth century, which was a religious war, probably the worst of them all. This is clear from the writings of the German philosopher Herder [the anti-Goethe], that had a great nationalistic, homicidal influence [all the way to Hitler]. Thus the huge wars that happened later (mostly propelled by Napoleonic and Prussian fascisms) were, at least partially, consequences of, and echoes from, the period of religious wars earlier on.\nP/S 6: THE MEDITERRANEAN UNION AS SOLUTION:\nIs a long term peaceful solution possible to the question of Israel? Sure. But one has to get the religions back in their cages underground first, and throw away the key.\nSecond, the solution will have to be imposed by force, say by the future imperial might of the (inchoating) Euro-Mediterranean Union. The idea would be to recreate basically the Roman empire (minus the crazy homicidal Christian rule of the late empire), with Israel as a precious asset, a larger version of the United Arab Emirates, a rich province profitable to its neighbors. By force, we mean legal force (preferably), a more muscular version of the force used in the EU construction.\nThe EU construction is made to make local antagonisms irrelevant, and local democracy, with full democratic institutions, a necessity. Turkey has been trying, for half a century to satisfy the EU requirements; several of the Latin and Mediterranean dictatorships (Greece, Spain, Portugal) became democracies to gain EU access. A full Mediterranean Union could duplicate the process, making the Israeli-Arab conflict irrelevant and obsolete. Fundamentally the Jews are just a tribe that was pushed out of Arabia, so, please grow up, and forget about your personal direct access to God, each of you.\nIt has been in the interest of the USA to support the European Union construction (because the EU extends to all of Europe the Franco-British democratic core, genitor to the USA, and, if nothing else, the USA will not have to come to the military rescue of France and Britain once again). For similar reasons, it is in the interest of the USA to push for the Mediterranean Union (a Sarkozy idea that has been mollified at this point). Ultimately, and naturally, the Mediterranean Union would get incorporated within the EU.\nCynics will wonder how many divisions the future Mediterranean Union has. Well, just wait. As it is, about half of the NATO force in Afghanistan is not American (there are even some Arab forces). NATO may be better used, negotiating and retreating in Afghanistan while redeploying around Israel to enforce the secular law (there is already an important UN force in Lebanon doing just that; first headed by the French, then the Italians, it has more than 12,000 soldiers, plus an important naval arm). enough of the utopia of two states peacefully side by side: the time of a greater force has come.\nTags:Europe, Gaza, Israel, Mediterranean Union, Religion\nPosted in civilization., War | Leave a Comment »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1180227"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.554297149181366,"wiki_prob":0.44570285081863403,"text":"Home Airplane Travel Hacks How Do Airlines Allocate Seats To Passengers?\nYou are getting married in just two months but that’s not all. Your best friend is getting married just two weeks after your wedding date. So what do you do? You gather your girlfriends, book a ticket to Ibiza and have the best (hen) party of your life.\nYou book 15 tickets with Ryanair from Birmingham to Ibiza and as the excitement keeps pumping you up, you enter your information for check-in. As soon as it’s done, the excitement turns into anger, rage, and disappointment.\nEvery single one of your friends from a group of 15 got the middle seat in a different row!\nEven though this seems like almost impossible odds, it’s what happened to Steph Vickers and Faye Cutler, two best friends who were celebrating their joint hen-do.\nThe return flight cost them £220 per person and “I just thought it was really disgusting how much they expect you to pay, on top of what you’ve already paid, just to sit next to somebody. It’s unacceptable, really,” said Steph Vickers, the soon-to-be bride. She felt that the airline was trying to squeeze every single cent out of her pocket. It’s like if you choose not to pay for the seat, you would be at the mercy of the airline.\nMost of us have had similarly bad experiences with airline seat allocations. And the first step in solving this problem is understanding how airlines categorize seat selections.\nAirline seat selection category\nThe first thing to understand is that different airlines have different policies when it comes to seat allocation. The old economy, business, and first class tickets which signalized the comfort level of the flight are now exchanged for a range of different tickets which offer different perks and price tags. You knew what economy, business, and first class meant, but when you read “Family Plus package”, “Flexi Plus” or “LowFare+ticket,” you have no idea what they mean.\nIt becomes like a minefield of terms nobody understands.\nBut it can all be boiled down to these four categories:\nOpen seating — these are open seats which can be booked in advance and there is no charge for them. Passengers simply choose a seat for free. American airlines has this kind of service for standard seats.\nOpen paid seating — these are open seats which can be booked in advance for a premium (pay extra). This can sometimes be offered for free for frequent flyer elite members. Many airlines have cards which show you just how many miles you have flown with them and what your status with them is (silver, gold, platinum, etc.).\nSeats which require certain parameters — There are multiple seats and rows which require certain parameters to be met. Exit rows, seats for passengers in wheelchairs, front (bulkhead) rows, seats for unaccompanied minors, and even rows specially designed for mothers with infants. The last example of a mother with infant concerns a cradle which can only be put in certain rows.\nSeats that are held by the airline for airport check-in — These seats are usually somewhere between 10-20 percent of the total seats on the plane. Airlines keep these seats for the airport staff to allocate according to the special needs for that specific flight. Sometimes the seats need to be moved around, like with the example of people who need to sit together (elderly person and his caretaker) or families with kids.\nNow that we understand the selection categories, let’s see how do airlines allocate seats to passengers.\nChildren, groups, and individuals\nThe procedure when it comes to children is that they need to be seated next to at least one adult. Even though this is the practice for most airlines and they do this seat allocation free of charge, there are others (Ryanair) where a parent needs to reserve (pay) a specific seat to have his child seated next to him.\nRead more: Is it safe to travel via Turkish Airlines?\nBritish Airways, Thomas Cook, TUI, and Virgin Atlantic all guarantee that children under the age of 12 will be seated next to one parent.\nAir France and KLM do this for the entire families while American Airlines guarantees that children under 15 will be seated next to one parent.\nOther airlines such as Flybe, Norwegian, and Jet2 say their systems seat children next to one parent “in 99% of cases” even though they can’t guarantee that it will happen.\nGroups have different ways of sitting down together for free and the first advice is to make your check-in as soon as possible. If you do this as soon as check-ins open up for airlines, there is a big chance that your group will be seated together free of charge.\nMost airlines open up their check-ins 24-48 hours before flights departure so be ready to online check-in your group as soon as you can.\nThere was a study done by the civil aviation authority (CAA) in December 2017 on the chances of being separated if not paying extra to guarantee seats by the airline. The chances of being separated from the group if you didn’t pay extra were between 12 and 18 percent for most airline companies (British Airways, EasyJet, Flybe, Jet2.com, Monarch Airlines, Thomas Cook, TUI Airways, Virgin Atlantic). The only two airlines that had a bigger percentage of separating groups which didn’t pay extra are Emirates with 22 percent and Ryanair with staggering 35 percent.\nSo if you are flying as a group and you haven’t reserved a seat for the group, most airlines won’t separate you in over 80 percent of flights. But if you are flying with Emirates or Ryanair, you might want to pay extra for those joint seat numbers.\nRead more: 5 Rules to Getting the Best Seat on a Plane\nThe CAA’s research indicated that the passengers are not happy when they don’t sit together with their group. Almost half (46 percent) of respondents felt negatively toward the airline when they found out that they needed to pay more if they wanted a seat next to their group.\nWhile we are at the CAA’s research, let’s take a look at what else they found out and what kind of regulations will they force on the airlines.\nCAA’s review of allocation policies\nCivil aviation authority (CAA) found in their research that most regulations regarding the allocation of seats are on the airlines themselves and that they vary considerably. Different regulations mean that people who are traveling with young children or the ones that have disabilities or reduced mobility should be seated next to the people who are accompanying them whenever possible.\nBut these rules don’t apply to everyone even though they should. For some people sitting together isn’t optional, it’s mandatory for them to even take a flight. The research showed that just over half of respondents reported that their airline informed them before they booked their flight that they would need to pay to make sure that their group sits together.\nTen percent said that they were informed about this after booking, while another ten percent said that they were never informed about having to pay extra to sit together.\nThere are a lot more problems in the lack of regulation when it comes to seat allocation and the CAA is bringing transparency into it. The key issues that require further investigation regard transparency of paying extra when there is a low chance of people actually being split up, passengers with reduced mobility, and the impact on families who are traveling with children— especially those younger than 12 years.\nBut all of this seat allocation which requires extra pay fills the accounts of airlines.\nHow much are airline seats worth? Around $5 billion a year\nAirline ancillary revenue was around $82 billion worldwide in 2017. About 20 percent of all ancillary revenue comes from onboarding services which means that the airlines cash in around $16 billion worldwide from it.\nCAA found out that the UK consumers collectively paid between £160-390m per year for allocated seats. Two-thirds were for seats that cost between £5 and £30 and further 8 percent paid more than £30.\nRead more: Can You Take a Pen on a Plane?\nIt’s up to the civil aviation authority to figure out if these charges are fair and transparent and act accordingly.\nWe can just hope that their actions will be in our favor.\nHow Many Bags Can You Carry on a Plane\nGetting the Most From Your Ryanair Experience","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1532645"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5373308062553406,"wiki_prob":0.5373308062553406,"text":"Dr. James Dobson's September 2015 Newsletter\nThose of you who received and read my monthly letter from July may remember that I said the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage had vast implications beyond the issue itself. It was, in fact, about everything else. The focal point was actually about winning the culture war with one fell swoop. It also constituted a devastating broadside against the Christian faith.\nLet me explain what I meant. I have said for more than 30 years that members of the gay and lesbian movement didn’t really want to marry in the traditional sense. Why would they choose to burden themselves with financial constraints and troublesome legalities, such as alimony and divorce courts? That was never the objective. What motivated many within the homosexual community was a plan to gain a foothold within the institution of the family in order to destroy it. Then, all of the benefits of traditional marriage would be granted without the entanglements that have accompanied it historically. That is what I have believed from the earliest days of the movement.\nWell, on August 14th, 2015, a commentary written by Matt Barber appeared at barbwire.com that laid out the unvarnished truth. Read very carefully and you will understand the real meaning of this battle, which we have now tragically lost. You’ll see quotes from gay activists at the end of the commentary that leave nothing to speculation. You’ll also see a statement about me and the perspective I have long espoused. Barber writes:\nIt’s never fun to be proven right when warning of some impending wrong. Many in the pro-family movement have long stressed that the cultural Marxist left’s belligerent push for the judicial fiction that is “gay marriage” was never about gaining “equal access” to this biologically exclusive male-female institution, as they profess, but, rather, is, and has always been, about control.\nWhile there are many layers to unfold, the almost instant explosion in government-sanctioned, anti-Christian extremism on display post Obergefell v. Hodges, confirms the poisonous three-fold agenda that underlies the “social justice” mob’s flowery “marriage equality” propaganda. That is: 1) the ultimate destruction of marriage, 2) forced affirmation of sexual deviancy under penalty of law, and 3) the eventual criminalization of Christianity.\nHere’s the bottom line: Homosexual activists don’t want the white picket fence; they want to burn down the white picket fence. The endgame is not to achieve so-called “marriage equality,” but, rather, to render marriage relatively meaningless.\nMasha Gessen, a lesbian journalist, activist and author, expressly admitted this fact in a 2012 interview with ABC Radio: “It’s a no-brainer that [homosexuals] should have the right to marry,” she said. “But I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist . . . Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.”\nHomosexual activist and pornographer, Clinton Fein, echoes Gessen’s candid sentiments: “Demand the institution [of marriage] and then wreck it,” he once wrote. “James Dobson was right about our evil intentions,” he quipped. “We just plan to be quicker than he thought.”\nThe goal is to water down marriage until marriage is pointless. And as evidenced by the burgeoning legal push for polygamous and incestuous “marriages” – even for the “right” to “marry” a robot – sexual anarchists are well on their way to achieving this goal.1\nBarber’s chilling prediction makes it clear that the Supreme Court decision (Obergefell v. Hodges) is not an end in itself. It is the beginning – an open door to the entire gay and lesbian agenda coveted and lusted after since the 1960s or before.\nUnderstanding the real motives of the movement helps us comprehend why the culture war has heated up and is being fought now on a thousand fronts. It also explains why Christian foot soldiers are losing almost every encounter. Let’s consider one such arena where our children are most at risk. Parents, beware!\nHave you wondered why the effort to reinterpret gender has become so urgent, especially within the public schools? Reporter Todd Starnes explained this obsession in an article published by FoxNews.com.\nOne of the nation’s largest public school systems is preparing to include gender identity to its classroom curriculum—the idea that there is no such thing as 100 percent boys or 100 percent girls. Fairfax County Public Schools released a report recommending changes to their family life curriculum for grades 7 through 12. The plan calls for teaching seventh graders about transgenderism and tenth graders about the concept that sexuality is a broader spectrum. By the tenth grade, they will be taught that one’s sexuality “develops throughout a lifetime.”2\nStarnes editorializes, “It sure smells like unadulterated sex indoctrination,” and says, “parents are freaking out.”\nPeter Sprigg, of the Family Research Council, said this of the curriculum:\nThe larger picture is this is really an attack on nature itself – the created order. Human beings are created male and female. But the current transgender ideology goes way beyond that. They’re telling us you can be both genders, you can be no gender, [and] you can be a gender that you make up for yourself. And we’re supposed to affirm all of it.3\nOther school districts are following a similar program. Planned Parenthood and Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California, are collaborating on their own version of gender revisionism. Their staff is using gingerbread-man-like diagrams of transgender expression, asking students if they are ready for sex.\nThe handout uses a depiction of the holiday cookie and storybook character to show students they can identify in their minds as a “woman, man, two-spirit, genderqueer, or genderless.” They can also express themselves sexually as “butch, femme, androgynous, gender neutral, or hyper-masculine,” and present their biological sex as “male, female, intersex, female self ID, or male self ID.”4\nConsider the meaning of gender revisionism for a moment. It comes right out of the gay and lesbian playbook, by which children can be enticed to change their way of thinking about sexual identity. They are sitting ducks for adults who are in authority over them. More to the point, this curriculum is tailor-made to promote transgenderism as the “T” in LGBT.\nWhat is alarming is that the notion of fluid sexual identity is not only racing though public schools. It is also finding expression in the wider culture since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. It has unleashed an avalanche of change.\nFor example, the State of California passed a bill that removed the words, “husband and wife,” from marriage laws. They will now be referred to as “spouse,” because anything related to traditional marriage is considered “outdated and biased.” The bill was recently signed by Governor Jerry Brown.5\nBoth California and Tennessee have changed the nomenclature in official documents. Mother and Father have become Parent 1 and Parent 2. Protests by parents in Tennessee created such a furor that the decision was reversed.6 California has dug in. 7\nSexual orientation in the U.K. has taken its toll. Half of young people there say they are not 100% heterosexual. 8\nAn article published in theaustralian.com is titled, “Transgender children: what’s behind the spike in numbers?” The author implies that parents should consider developing transgender characteristics as a goal to be achieved. 9\nBloomberg Business carried an article this summer titled, “The End of Boys and Girls: These Companies Are Going to Change How Your Kids Dress.” 10\nNPR’s lead article in November 2014, reads, “For These Millennials, Gender Norms Have Gone Out of Style.” 11\nThe Wall Street Journal published a commentary on September 14, 2014, titled, “Heather Has Two Genders.” One of the main characters says, “I have a girl brain but a boy body.” The author of the commentary wrote, “It is not a wholly new thing for a transgender person to appear in children’s books, but soon they will abound.” 12 No doubt!\nGender revisionism is showing up elsewhere. You’ve probably read that Target Stores have de-genderized their stock. Now the toys they sell are “unisex.” Target is also de-genderizing products such as bedding, home decor, home entertainment and more. Speaking personally, I will not patronize a company that doesn’t recognize masculinity and femininity.\nLet me tell you why I oppose this movement and why I consider it dangerous to the family and potentially devastating to children. That will take us back 40 years to the time when gender revisionism swept the nation. I wrote about it in my books, Bringing Up Boys and Bringing Up Girls, as follows.\nIt all started in the 1960s, when a small band of radical feminists began insisting that males and females were identical except for their reproductive apparatus, and that any uniqueness in temperament or behavior resulted from patriarchal cultural biases. It was a foolish concept that lacked any scientific support, except that which was flawed and politically motivated. Nevertheless, the campaign penetrated the entire culture. Suddenly, professors and professionals who should have known better began nodding in agreement. No doubt about it, the radicals said, males and females were redundant.\nParents, they claimed, had been wrong about their kids for at least five thousand years. The media ran with the notion and the word unisex found its way into the language of the enlightened. Anyone who challenged the new dogma, as I did in a 1975 book titled, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew about Women, was branded as sexist or something worse.\nThe feminist movement then took a new and dangerous turn. Its leaders began trying to redesign the way children were being raised. Television talk-show host, Phil Donahue, and dozens of wanna-bes told parents day after day that their daughters were victims of terrible sexist bias and that their sons should be raised more like girls. There was great urgency to their message. “Things had to change immediately,” they said.\nDonahue’s feminist girlfriend and later wife, Marlo Thomas, coauthored a best-selling book at about the same time titled, Free to Be You and Me, which the publishers described as, “the first real guide to nonsexist child rearing.” It urged boys to play with dolls and tea sets and told them they could be anything they wanted to be, including: [no kidding!] “grandmas and mommies.” The book featured dozens of poems and stories about role reversals, such as a mother nailing shingles on the roof, building new shelves in the family room, and working with cement. Meanwhile, father was in the kitchen making breakfast. Every effort was made to teach kids that dads made great moms and mothers were pretty tough dudes.\nThe book sold several million copies. And the gender revision movement had only just begun. Germaine Greer, author of The Female Eunuch, was even more extreme. She said the traditional family had “castrated women.” She believed mothers should be less nurturing of their daughters because to treat them gently and kindly would reinforce sexual stereotypes and make them more “dependent” and feminine. Greer also insisted that children are better off being raised by institutions rather than parents. It is difficult to believe today that her book offering those and similarly outrageous views also soared to the top of all the best-seller lists. That illustrates just how culturally dominant radical feminism was at that time.\nPerhaps the most influential of the early feminists was Gloria Steinem, founder of the National Organization for Women and editor of Ms. magazine. Here is a sampling of her perspective on marriage and child rearing:\nWe’ve had a lot of people in this country who have had the courage to raise their daughters more like their sons. Which is great because it means they’re more equal. . . . But there are many fewer people who have had the courage to raise their sons more like their daughters. And that’s what needs to be done.\nWe need to stop raising boys to think that they need to prove their masculinity by being controlling or by not showing emotion or by not being little girls. You can ask [boys] . . . “What if you were a little girl?” They get very upset at the very idea they might be this inferior thing. They’ve already got this idea that in order to be boys they have to be superior to girls and that’s the problem. [Marriage is] not an equal partnership. I mean, you lose your name, your credit rating, your legal residence, and socially, you’re treated as if his identity were yours. I can’t imagine being married. If everybody has to get married, then clearly it is a prison, not a choice.” (Steinem married in 2000.) All women are supposed to want children. But I could never drum up any feelings of regret.\nThink for a moment about the above quotes from Thomas, Steinem, Greer, and the other early feminists. Most of them were never married, didn’t like children, and deeply resented men, yet they advised millions of women about how to raise their children and, especially, how to produce healthy boys. There is no evidence that these feministas ever had any significant experience with children of either sex. Isn’t it interesting that the media (to my knowledge) never homed in on that incongruity? And isn’t it sad that these women were allowed to twist and warp the attitudes of a generation of kids?\nWell, the unisex movement prevailed until the late 1980s when it fell victim, at last, to medical technology. The development of noninvasive techniques, such as MRIs and PET scans, allowed physicians and physiologists to examine the functioning of the human brain in much greater detail. What they found totally destroyed the assertions of feminists. Men’s and women’s brains looked very distinct when examined in a laboratory. Under proper stimulation, they “lit up” in different areas, revealing unique neurological processes. It turns out that male and female brains are “hardwired” differently, which, along with hormonal factors, accounts for behavioral and attitudinal characteristics associated traditionally with masculinity and femininity. It was these sexual benchmarks that feminists attempted to suppress or discredit, but they failed.\nStill, you have to admire their ambition. They tried to redesign half of the human family in a single generation. Unfortunately, the ideas that were spawned in the seventies and perpetuated in a different form today are deeply ingrained in the culture, even though they have never made sense. Child-rearing practices have been forever changed. Many parents, for example, are reluctant or ill equipped to teach their boys how they are different from girls or what their masculinity really means. There is also a new source of confusion emanating from the powerful gay and lesbian agenda. Its propagandists are teaching a revolutionary view of sexuality called “gender feminism,” which insists that sex assignment is irrelevant. Genetics can be simply overridden. What matters is the “gender” selected for us by parents when we are babies, or the sex role we choose for ourselves later in life.\nMary Brown Parlee articulated this perspective in Psychology Today. “The sex ‘assigned’ to a baby at birth is as much a social decision as a recognition of biological fact.” Another feminist writer expressed it like this: “Although many people think that men and women are the natural expression of a genetic blueprint, gender is a product of human thought and culture, a social construction that creates the ‘true nature’ of all individuals.” Therefore, if we protect children from social and religious conditioning, people will be free to move into and out of existing gender roles according to their preferences. Taking that concept to its illogical conclusion, the feminists and homosexual activists want to dissolve the traditional roles of mothers and fathers and, in time, eliminate such terms as wife, husband, son, daughter, sister, brother, manhood, womanhood, boy, girl, masculine, and feminine. These references to sexual identity are being replaced with gender-neutral terms, such as significant other, spouse, parent, child, and sibling.13\nI wrote those words in 2002, and yet here we are dealing again with the return of gay, lesbian and feminist propagandists. Unfortunately, “They’re BAAACK.”\nClearly, there are serious implications here for mothers and fathers. I urge you to protect your boys and girls from those who would seek to confuse their sexuality. Protect the masculinity and femininity of your children from political and social pressures that will bear down on them. Buffer them from a culture that has gone over the cliff.\nIt is also important for us as adults to understand our own sexual identities. If we don’t know who we are, our kids will be doubly confused about who they are. Any uncertainty, any ambiguity in that assignment must be seen as damaging not only to our sons and daughters but also to the long-term stability of society itself.\nFinally, I urge you to base your teachings about sexuality on the Scriptures, which tell us, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). Jesus, who was the first Jewish leader to give dignity and status to women, said, “Haven’t you read . . . that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’” and, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” (Matthew 19:4-5).\nThat is the divine plan. It leaves no doubt that the Creator made not one sex but two, each beautifully crafted to “fit with” and meet the needs of the other. Any effort to teach children differently is certain to produce unrest in the soul of a child.\nThat is my message for September, when school children are reentering the classroom. This is the fifth letter I have written to you since May, when our culture began to splinter. It started with the attack on the institution of family and has gone haywire ever since. Those of us who hold to conservative Christian faith must work diligently and with passion to defend the things we believe. America needs all the help and prayers it can get at this time of turmoil.\nTogether, we can fend off the assaults from political correctness.\nFamily Talk survived the summer, thanks to the generosity of many of you. But September is here, and our needs continue. Thank you so much for being there for us.\nJames C. Dobson, Ph.D.\n1 - http://barbwire.com/2015/08/16/the-gay-marriage-gauntlet-time-to-choose/\n2 - http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/15/call-it-gender-fluidity-schools-to-teach-kids-there-s-no-such-thing-as-boys-or-girls.html\n3 - http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/15/call-it-gender-fluidity-schools-to-teach-kids-there-s-no-such-thing-as-boys-or-girls.html?intcmp=latestnews\n4 - http://www.christianpost.com/news/planned-parenthood-distributes-genderbread-person-sex-ed-leaflet-at-school-teaches-students-they-can-be- genderqueer-genderless-two-spirit-131115/\n5 - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/07/california-bill-replacing-words-husband-wife-in-marriage-law-signed-by-gov/\n6 - http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/08/18/tennessee-courts-replace-mother-and-father-with-parent-1-parent-2.html\n7 - http://allenbwest.com/2015/08/target-banning-gender-toys-look-what-california-wants-to-do-next/\n8 - http:// www.ibtimes.co.uk/sexual-orientation-uk-half-young-people-say-they-are-not-100-heterosexual-1515690\n9 - http://www.theaustralian.com.au/tablet-t3/tablet-t3/transgender-children-whats-behind-the-spike-in-numbers/story-fnm89pgn-1227445900272\n10 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-14/gender-neutral-kids-clothing-startups\n11 - http://www.npr.org/2014/11/30/363345372/for-these-millennials-gender-norms-have-gone-out-of-style\n12 - http://www.wsj.com/article_email/meghan-cox-gurdon-heather-has-two-genders-1410728850-lMyQjAxMTA1MDEwMzExNDMyWj\n13 - James C. Dobson, Bringing Up Boys (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), 13-17.\nThis letter may be reproduced without change and in its entirety for non-commercial and non-political purposes without prior permission from Family Talk. Copyright, 2015 Family Talk. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Printed in the U.S.A.\nDr. Dobson Responds to the Supreme Court Ruling on Same Sex Marriage:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line739799"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5518017411231995,"wiki_prob":0.5518017411231995,"text":"PHILIP HAMMOND HANDS HIS FISCAL GIFT RIGHT BACK / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL\n| Etiquetas: Government Budget Deficits, United Kingdom\nPhilip Hammond hands his fiscal gift right back\nThis Budget is the largest discretionary fiscal loosening since the OBR’s creation in 2010\nPhilip Hammond: near-term giveaways followed by longer-term takeaways © Tolga Akmen/FT\nIn normal circumstances, Philip Hammond, chancellor of the exchequer, would have been in a far more comfortable position in delivering his Budget on Monday than he or his predecessors since the financial crisis 10 years ago. As he repeatedly reminded his listeners, the fiscal squeeze was coming to an end. Above all, he had more money to play with than he expected.\nAlas, these are not normal circumstances. The uncertainty of Brexit hangs over prospects. Mr Hammond is a sensible man who hopes for a sensible deal. Unfortunately, he is surrounded by people who think crashing out of the EU without one would be just fine. Brexit is bad enough. But this notion is lunacy. He (and we) must hope it does not happen. The UK needs to agree a reasonable exit with its EU partners, a sufficiently long standstill and a mutually beneficial final relationship. If this does not occur, the Office for Budget Responsibility might have a very different view next time it considers prospects for the UK.\nBefore considering what Mr Hammond made of the position he is now in, we need to recognise that the economy is in far from excellent condition. As the OBR notes in its Economic and Fiscal Outlook, economic growth is “near the bottom” of the league, among the Group of Seven leading high-income economies. While employment performance is very good, as the chancellor stressed on several occasions, productivity performance remains miserable. Output per hour actually fell between the last quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of 2018. The only good news is that it shrank less than forecast last March. Truth be told, the OBR’s medium-term forecast is also miserable: 1.3 per cent growth this year, followed by 1.6 per cent in 2019, 1.4 per cent in 2020 and 2021, 1.5 per cent in 2022 and 1.6 per cent in 2022. By pre-crisis standards, this is simply awful. (See charts.)\nSo how, given this far from cheerful economic picture, does the chancellor find himself with a great deal of money to spray around? The main answer, as the OBR, admits, is that: “The public finances have performed better so far this year than we and outside forecasters expected back in March, even though the economy has grown less quickly.” As a result, the starting point is £11.9bn lower borrowing this fiscal year than expected last March. The OBR also now forecasts a modest improvement in prospective economic growth due to “a downward revision to our estimate of the sustainable rate of unemployment and an upward revision to potential labour market participation”. Taking all this together, concludes the OBR, the underlying improvement in the budget deficit rises to £18.1bn by 2022-23. At 0.6 per cent of gross domestic product, on average, this would have been sufficient to balance the budget by 2025.\nThe government has decided to give the “fiscal windfall” back to the public. Far and away the biggest amount, as the chancellor noted, is due to the commitment to extra spending on the National Health Service, already announced by the prime minister. The cost of this extra spending on health rises from £7.4bn in 2019-20 to £27.6bn in 2023-24. The rest of his package has what the OBR calls “the familiar Augustinian pattern”: give us frugality, but not yet. Thus there are near-term giveaways followed by longer-term takeaways. Maybe the chancellor is insuring against the possibility of a general election in the relatively near future.\nGiveaways include raising the personal tax allowance to £12,500, oiling the introduction of the controversial universal credit and freezing fuel duties — just what a government supposedly committed to tackling climate change ought not to do. The main takeaways are a new (and itself welcome) tax on digital businesses, a further tightening up on people who work through a company they own, and changes to national insurance contributions. It also appears that departmental capital spending has been cut from 2019-20 onwards.\nIn all, this is the largest discretionary loosening at any fiscal event since the OBR was created in 2010. It has disposed fully of the windfall, leaving the finances almost where they were expected to be back in March.\nDoes this make sense? This has an economic and a political answer.\nThe broad answer to the economic question is that the forecasts show a steady decline in public sector net debt from 85 per cent of GDP in 2017-18 to 74.1 by 2023-24. They show a cyclically adjusted surplus on the current Budget throughout the forecast period, rising to 1.3 per cent of GDP by 2023-24. They also show public sector net borrowing falling to 0.8 per cent of GDP by the latter year. Ordinarily, this should be enough to sustain confidence in the UK. But Brexit is one huge uncertainty. The possible election of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party is another. Mr Hammond does not control either possibility. He can, however, seek to influence them.\nThis is where the politics come in. Mr Hammond is indicating to his colleagues that, provided they are reasonable and give prime minister Theresa May the latitude she needs to reach a Brexit deal, sunlit uplands of growth and fiscal largesse lie ahead. In any case, the need for brutal cuts in unprotected spending should be at an end. But, if Brexit turns into a disaster, that may well not remain true.\nHe is also indicating to the public that due to “their hard work” — a debatable description of the decisions taken over the past eight years — good (or at least better) times now lie ahead. This, it is surely clear, is the only platform the Conservatives can credibly use as a basis for appealing to the country for support. They cannot argue the economic recovery has been satisfactory, because it has been very far from that. They cannot deny they have imposed a fiscal tightening that a large proportion of the people believe was painful and, in important respects, unfair. But they can at least seek to argue that it was necessary, that it is over and, above all, that Labour would throw everything that has by now been achieved into jeopardy. In truth, this is the only basis on which the Tories can campaign. Will it work? In time, we will find out.\nAMERICA´S MIDTERM ELECTIONS TURN MENACING / PROJECT SYNDICATE\n| Etiquetas: Democracy, U.S. Economic And Political, War on Terror\nAmerica’s Midterm Elections Turn Menacing\nWith the approach of crucial congressional and state elections, no one should be surprised that domestic terrorism has emerged from the ranks of President Donald Trump's hyper-partisan supporters. In fact, given Trump’s pattern of incitement, many have warned that some of his followers would resort to violence.\nWASHINGTON, DC – With the approach of this year’s midterm elections in the United States, domestic terrorism is starting to dominate the political landscape. First, barely two weeks before Election Day, an angry supporter of US President Donald Trump began sending 14 bombs to prominent Democrats and others whom Trump has frequently attacked. (None of the bombs exploded.) Then things became much worse, with the murder, on a Saturday, of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue. Today, a polarized and anxious American public finds itself with a president totally unsuited to, and not very interested in, comforting the nation, much less trying to lead it away from the hate and deadly partisanship that he has stoked.\nHad the 14 crude bombs, which the FBI called “potentially destructive devices,” worked as intended, the bombmaker could have killed or gravely injured a who’s who of Trump adversaries. The list included two former presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder; a former CIA director; a former director of National Intelligence; two likely Democratic presidential candidates in 2020; a black congresswoman whom Trump frequently describes as “low IQ” (a common racist charge); two prominent Jewish billionaire philanthropists, one of whom, George Soros, is a frequent target of Trump and the subject of various right-wing conspiracy fantasies; and the actor Robert De Niro (who began his speech at this year’s Tony Awards ceremony by declaring, “Fuck Trump”).\nThough Trump had frequently singled out many of the bomber’s targets at his rallies – still attacking Hillary Clinton, his election opponent in 2016, for example, and then smiling as his audience chanted “Lock her up” – Trump’s defenders tried to throw the spotlight elsewhere. The mail bombs, they claimed, were a “false flag” operation by the left, with some of the Democrats even sending the bombs to themselves in order to blame Trump.\nSo it was highly inconvenient for true believers when the would-be bomber turned out to be a fanatical Trump supporter who lives in Florida and drives a white van covered in hate-filled depictions of his targets. US law enforcement agencies – another frequent target of Trump – are extremely good at tracking down miscreants: the suspect was arrested four days after the first bomb was discovered in Soros’s mailbox.\nThe most disheartening aspect of the entire episode was Trump’s utter incapacity as a national leader. But that should surprise no one. How could a president who has thrived politically on dividing the American people, who has been spewing hate, sowing resentment, and at times even encouraging violence at his rallies, suddenly be – or even pretend to be – a healer? In fact, Trump’s pattern of incitement and routine denunciations of the media as “the enemy of the people” had convinced many that some of his followers might resort to violence against members of the press.\nThe day after the discovery of the bombs sent to the Clintons and the Obamas, among others, a subdued Trump read a prepared statement at a prescheduled White House ceremony, condemning “acts or threats of political violence” and saying that the nation must unify.\nIt didn’t last. By that evening, at a rally in Wisconsin, he was making fun of his “trying to be nice” act and blamed the media for the violence. And soon he was back to whipping up fear of a caravan of refugees from Honduras. Though still roughly 1,000 miles from the US border, Trump portrayed the refugees as an imminent national security threat, warning, without evidence, that “Middle Easterners” were among them.\nTrump’s rallies are now almost a daily event, and his lies are even more frequent than before. With the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate to be chosen on November 6, the upcoming midterm election is widely regarded as the most consequential in memory, perhaps ever. The Republicans’ two-year lock on the entire US government – the House, the Senate, the presidency, and, with the recent addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court – could be broken.\nThe midterm election following the election of a new president is often considered a verdict on the incumbent, and his party usually loses strength, particularly in the House. But Trump has made the midterms about himself to an unprecedented degree. He tells audiences that though he’s not on the ballot, they should vote as if he were (though his approval ratings are in the low forties).\nIt has long been believed that the Democrats are more likely to win the House than the Senate, because several of the Senate seats in play are held by Democrats in traditionally conservative states. Trump’s determination, or anxiety, that Republicans maintain control of both chambers is understandable. Should the Democrats take over the House, newly empowered committee chairmen, armed with subpoenas, will launch investigations of a broad range of administration actions and agencies, where extensive corruption is suspected.\nBut the real, almost palpable, fear on Trump’s part is that a Democratic-controlled House will focus all manner of investigations on him personally: his acceptance of Constitutionally forbidden “emoluments” from foreign countries; his failure to separate himself sufficiently from the family business; his tax returns; his unauthorized foreign wars in Yemen and Syria; and of course his official and private dealings with Russia. At least the House is likely to have the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to consider. In other words, no more lapdog Congress.\nBut if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate, there will be limits on what the Democrats can achieve. Even if the House were to impeach Trump – no sure thing – convicting him in the Senate would be extremely difficult. Whether a Democratic House would even proceed in that direction has been the subject of intra-party debate.\nThe nightmare election possibility for the Democrats is continued Republican control of both chambers. In that case, Trump will feel vindicated and more liberated than ever. He might then fire a raft of officials, treat immigrants still more harshly, and try to shut down Mueller’s investigation of his campaign’s possible collusion with the Kremlin and Trump’s probable obstruction of justice.\nThe conventional wisdom may prevail, with the Democrats winning the House but not the Senate. But the polls have been fluctuating. And since Trump’s stunning election victory in 2016, most observers have become more cautious about predicting outcomes.\nElizabeth Drew is a contributing editor at The New Republic and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall.\nTHE SURPRISING LOSERS IF U.S. LEVERAGED LOAN BOOM FIZZLES THE WALL STREET JOURNAL\n| Etiquetas: Banks And Banking, Private Equity\nThe Surprising Losers if U.S. Leveraged Loan Boom Fizzles\nU.S. regulators and others are casting a closer eye over aggressive loans for private-equity deals\nBy Paul J. Davies\nThe $1.3 trillion market for risky loans used in private-equity deals has regulators worried.\nActivity in the U.S. market has boomed and it is U.S. officials leading the warning calls. But, while U.S. investment banks lead many businesses, it is the big Europeans that punch above their weight in U.S. loans and that face the bigger risks. For Credit Suisse , Barclaysand Deutsche Bank ,leveraged loans bring in a bigger share of investment bank revenue than they do for JP Morgan ,Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs .\nStandards in the leveraged loan market have been slipping as more aggressive private-equity deals have pushed debt multiples higher and eviscerated the traditional protections, known as covenants, that allow lenders to intervene if borrowers start to struggle.\nThe latest warning on leveraged loans came from Federal Reserve banking regulator Todd Vermilyea last Wednesday. He highlighted many of the aggressive practices that have been regularly covered in this column and told an industry conference that the Fed was taking a closer look at banks’ risk management. Janet Yellen, former Fed chair, also raised concerns about the market last week in a newspaper interview, while Fed officials at their latest monetary policy meeting discussed the growth of loans, loosening of standards and role of non-banks in the market, according to minutes released this month.\nFederal Reserve banking regulator Todd Vermilyea said the Fed was taking a closer look at banks’ risk management. Photo: chris wattie/Reuters\nMeanwhile, the Bank of England’s financial stability committee said it would assess the risks posed to banks by this market in this year’s stress test after it noted that global leveraged loans were larger than U.S. subprime mortgages in 2006 and growing as quickly.\nEuropean banks and some U.S. brokers like Jefferies Financial Grouphave been competing harder in leveraged loans in part because they don’t do so well against top U.S. banks in winning mandates to advise on mergers and acquisitions, according to an industry report from Morgan Stanleyand Oliver Wyman earlier this year.\nLast week, Deutsche Bank was quizzed on its third-quarter results call by analysts about whether it was the right time to be increasing its market share in leveraged loans. Christian Sewing, the chief executive, said he was absolutely confident Deutsche wasn’t taking undue risks.\nJP Morgan has the most revenue from U.S. leveraged loan deals this year so far—a spot occupied by Credit Suisse for each of the past five years, according to Dealogic—although this revenue is still less important to JPMorgan than it is to Credit Suisse.\nBanks tend not to hold these loans. Instead, they sell them to other investors, especially mutual funds and collateralized loan obligations. However, if the market freezes, banks can get stuck with this debt, as many discovered to their dismay in 2007.\nAny effort by regulators to cool the market, or any market problem that stops banks from selling the loans, would have a cost for all those involved: For the Europeans, though, the proportion of revenue and capital affected would be greater. Leveraged finance revenue is worth about 12% of advisory and capital raising revenue on average for the three Europeans, according to UBS ,while it is worth just 7% for the five largest U.S. banks.\nThese banks might ultimately thank the Fed, or another regulator, that acted to cool the market. Foregone revenue notwithstanding, it could save them from a bigger accident to come.\nWHAT IF WE´RE ALL COMING BACK? / THE NEW YORK TIMES OP EDITORIAL\n| Etiquetas: Human Being\nWhat if We’re All Coming Back?\nThe prospect of being reborn as a poor person in a world ravaged by climate change could lead us to very different political decisions.\nBy Michelle Alexander\nOpinion Columnist\nCreditCreditJosh Haner/The New York Times\nI can’t say that I believe in reincarnation, but I understand why some people do. In fact, I had a bizarre experience as a teenager that made me wonder if I had known someone in a past life.\nI was walking to school one day, lost in thought. I turned the corner onto a wide, tree-lined street and noticed a man on the other side heading my direction. For an instant, we held each other’s gaze and a startling wave of excitement and recognition washed over me. We spontaneously ran toward each other, as if to embrace a long-lost friend, relative or lover. But just as we were close enough to see the other’s face, we were both jolted by the awareness that we didn’t actually know each other.\nWe stood in the middle of the street, bewildered. I mumbled, “I’m so sorry — I thought I knew you.” Equally embarrassed, he replied: “Oh, my God, this is so strange. What’s happening right now?” We backed away awkwardly — me, a teenage black girl; he, a middle-aged white man. I never saw him again.\nThe incident shook me deeply. This was not a case of mistaken identity. Something profound and mysterious happened and we both knew it. Still, I’m not among the 33 percent of Americans (including 29 percent of Christians) who believe in reincarnation. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking that if more of us did believe we were coming back, it could change everything.\nAt first, I thought about reincarnation in the narrowest possible terms, wondering what future life I’d earn if karma proved real. It’s a worrisome thing to contemplate. It’s easier to speculate about what kind of future lives other people deserve. Maybe Bull Connor — that white supremacist Alabama politician who ordered that black schoolchildren protesting segregation be attacked with police dogs and fire hoses — has already been born again as a black child in a neighborhood lacking jobs and decent schools but filled with police officers who shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe he’s now subjected to the very forms of bigotry, terror and structural racism that he once gleefully inflicted on others.\nThis kind of thought experiment is obviously dangerous, since it can tempt us to imagine that people have somehow earned miserable fates and deserve to suffer. But considering future lives can also be productive, challenging us to imagine that what we do or say in this life matters and might eventually catch up with us. Would we fail to respond with care and compassion to the immigrant at the border today if we thought we might find ourselves homeless, fleeing war and poverty, in the next life? Imagining ourselves in those shoes makes it harder to say: “Well, they’re not here legally. Let’s build a wall to keep those people out.” After all, one day “those people” might be you.\nOnce I entered college, I found myself less interested in karma and more interested in politics. It occurred to me that if we’re born again at random, we can’t soothe ourselves with fantasies that we’ll come back as one of the precious few on the planet who live comfortably. We must face the fact that our destiny is inextricably linked to the fate of others. What kind of political, social and economic system would I want — and what would I fight for — if I knew I was coming back somewhere in the world but didn’t know where and didn’t know who I’d be?\nIn law school, I discovered that I wasn’t the first to ponder this type of question. In his landmark 1971 book, “A Theory of Justice,” the political philosopher John Rawls urged his audience to imagine a wild scene: A group of people gathered to design their own future society behind “a veil of ignorance.” No one knows his or her place in society, class position or social status, “nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength and the like.” As Rawls put it, “If a man knew that he was wealthy, he might find it rational to advance the principle that various taxes for welfare measures be counted unjust; if he knew he was poor, he would most likely propose the contrary principle.” If denied basic information about one’s circumstances, Rawls predicted that important social goods, such as rights and liberties, power and opportunities, income and wealth, and conditions for self-respect would be “distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these values is to everyone’s advantage.”\nBack then, I was struck by how closely Rawls’s views mirrored my own. I now believe, however, that the veil of ignorance is quite distorted in an important respect. Rawls’s veil encourages us to imagine a scenario in which we’re equally likely to be rich or poor or born with natural talents or limitations. But the truth is, if we’re reborn in 50 years, there’s only a small chance that any of us would be rich or benefit from white privilege.\nAlmost half the world — more than three billion people — live on less than $2.50 per day. At least 80 percent of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. Less than 7 percent of the world’s population has a college degree. The vast majority of the earth’s population is nonwhite, and roughly half are women. Unless radical change sweeps the globe, the chances are high that any of us would come back as a nonwhite woman living on less than $2.50 per day. And given what we now know about climate change, the chances are very good that we would find ourselves suffering as a result of natural disasters — hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts and floods — and enduring water and food shortages and refugee crises.\nThis month, the world’s leading climate scientists released a report warning of catastrophic consequences as soon as 2040 if global warming increases at its current rate. Democratic politicians expressed alarm, yet many continue to accept campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry that is responsible for such a large percentage of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.\nIt’s nearly impossible to imagine that our elected officials would be so indifferent if they knew climate scientists were foretelling a future that they would have to live without any of the privileges they now enjoy.\nRawls was right: True morality becomes possible only when we step outside the box of our perceived self-interest and care for others as much as we care for ourselves. But rather than imagining a scenario in which we’re entirely ignorant of what the future holds, perhaps we ought to imagine that we, personally, will be born again into the world that we are creating today through our collective and individual choices.\nWho among us would fail to question capitalism or to demand a political system free from corporate cash if we knew that we’d likely live our next life as a person of color, earning less than $2.50 a day, in some part of the world ravaged by climate change while private corporations earn billions building prisons, detention centers and border walls for profit?\nNot I. And I’m willing to bet, neither would you. We don’t have to believe in reincarnation to fight for a world that we’d actually want to be born into.\nMichelle Alexander became a New York Times columnist in 2018. She is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”\nPHILIP HAMMOND HANDS HIS FISCAL GIFT RIGHT BACK / ...\nAMERICA´S MIDTERM ELECTIONS TURN MENACING / PROJEC...\nTHE SURPRISING LOSERS IF U.S. LEVERAGED LOAN BOOM ...\nWHAT IF WE´RE ALL COMING BACK? / THE NEW YORK TIME...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line227235"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6846097111701965,"wiki_prob":0.6846097111701965,"text":"How to watch the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019™ Draw\nJohn Seroukas 1543902708\nWith the FIFA Women’s World Cup France 2019™ draw only days away, we have all the information you need to follow who the Westfield Matildas will be pitted against.\nThe draw will be broadcast LIVE and FREE on SBS on Sunday, December 9 at 4am AEDT.\nREAD: How Australia reacted to Sam Kerr's Ballon d'Or effort\nGALLERY: Unveiling of a unified brand for Westfield Matildas and Caltex Socceroos\nINFO: How to watch Westfield W-League Round 6\nThe eighth edition of the tournament will be held from June 7 to July 7, 2019, with 24 nations to compete to be crowned world champions.\nIn 2015, Australia finished second in their group behind the United States, earning them a Round of 16 clash with Brazil.\nKyah Simon’s 80th-minute strike sent Westfield Matildas fans into raptures and earned the side their first knockout stage win at the tournament, setting up a quarter-final against Japan.\nCaitlin Foord celebrates her hat-trick in the Westfield Matildas' 5-0 victory over Chile.\nThat was as far as the Westfield Matildas would get as Mana Iwabuchi’s strike on 87 minutes saw Australia eliminated.\nThe Westfield Matildas are four years wiser and stronger - can we go one step further than last time?\nClick here to see the full match schedule.\nThis article was originally published on the Westfield Matildas website.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1399078"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.522921085357666,"wiki_prob":0.477078914642334,"text":"Review: “Mandy”\nBy jasonbleau October 11, 2018 October 10, 2018\n5 Comments on Review: “Mandy”\nI don’t review a lot of “on demand” movies. I try to see most films in the theater when I can but occasionally one comes along that has a release so limited but is still so popular that I just have to seek other ways to view it ASAP. One film lately that has gained a lot of buzz is “Mandy”, an action horror film that, to be blunt, is one heck of an odd ride. I’ve had a few people ask me to review this movie and even more have recommended I watch it regardless so I finally did…TWICE…and boy was it an interesting ride. So is “Mandy” the must see horror experience everyone is making it out to be or is it more overrated than we’ve been led to believe? Let’s take a look. This is my review of “Mandy”.\nWHAT’S IT ABOUT\n“Mandy” takes place in 1983 and stars Nicolas Cage as Red Miller, a logger who lives in a cabin with his girlfriend and artist Mandy (Andrea Riseborough). One day Mandy catches the eye of Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache) the leader of a local cult called the Children of the New Dawn. Sand orders his followers to abduct Mandy and Red and attempt to woo Mandy to no avail. Embarrassed and insulted Sand and his crew execute Mandy and leave Red to die only for Red to escape and go on the warpath in a relentless and bloody quest for vengeance that not only pits him against the cult but a band of drug addicted demonic bikers as well.\nWHAT WORKED\nOh man where do I start with this film? “Mandy” is so creative, so inspired and so unique that I had to watch it twice and wait a few days to write this review because I needed to let it all sink in. It’s not like it’s an impossible film to follow either. The basic premise is actually pretty simple. It’s the way it’s presented that makes it feel like such a unique project. Director Panos Cosmatos clearly has a respect for the craft. He had a vision and he saw it through. “Mandy” is filled with artistic merit and sly callbacks to horror genre staples that, unless you were looking for them, you’d never even realized were fit into the movie which is how homages are supposed to be really. The film borrows concepts and ideas from the past but embraces its own identity using colors pallets, unique filters and intriguing character, set and weapon designs to truly take on a vision all its own. To put it simply “Mandy” is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It kept me invested. I never knew what to expect and that made it both fun and engaging.\nNicolas Cage is absolutely amazing in this film. The eccentric actor is known for his famous outbursts and overacting but I don’t ever remember him playing in a movie that actually benefited from his unique performance style the way “Mandy” does. Cage is completely out of his mind as Red especially in the aftermath of his on-screen girlfriend’s execution. He just leaves it all out there and it’s fantastic. His energy, his psychotic break, his ruthless bloodthirsty anger it all works and allows us to really grasp the pain and frustration this man is feeling and how desperate he is to do right by his lost love. I mean I think we see Red go through all the stages of grief in one great long shot and it’s just mesmerizing. Nothing in his world matters but vengeance. He’s got tunnel vision and is purely driven by adrenaline and rage and it’s just fantastic.\nThe supporting cast isn’t bad either. I found Andrea Riseborough to be delightfully charming as Mandy Bloom, Red’s girlfriend and the namesake of this film. Riseborough is the perfect antithesis to Cage choosing to utilize a more subtle approach for her character that makes her feel more innocent and her inevitable demise that much more heartbreaking for both us and Red. I also enjoyed Linus Roache as Jeremiah Sand, the leader of a crew of cultists who attack Mandy and Red. Roache brings to life a delightfully delusional individual who is clearly solidly sold on his own ego and superiority but by the end of the film we see there’s more beneath the skin and he’s more human than he ever would admit. I loved these characters. They’re unique, they’re memorable, they’re odd, they’re layered and they’re well-acted. I just enjoyed seeing this cast together and watching them all embrace unique personalities in a twisted reality.\nAll in all, the best thing about “Mandy” is that it’s just different. It reminded me of “Mother!” which was one of my favorite movies from 2017, however “Mandy” is more subtle with it’s significance while being much more brutal in its violence ditching shock value for just straight up awesomeness. “Mandy” feels like a movie that is hiding something more profound underneath but even if you choose to ignore the hidden themes there’s so much insane and crazy action and unique visual appeal that it’s still worth every second just for the experience alone. Just to give you a few examples of what you get from this movie: a handmade full metal ax that looks like something from a heavy metal band, demonic blood-craving bikers on LSD, a chainsaw duel and about five solid minutes of Nicolas Cage losing his mind in his underwear chugging a bottle of vodka. It’s just as cool and twisted as it sounds really and none of it feels like fan service or a desperate search for attention. The music (composed by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson), the color pallet, the shooting angles, the character designs, the setting….it all comes together to create a stylish and truly unique action horror experience that wins you over even when you’re not quite sure what to make of it all.\nWHAT DIDN’T WORK\nOn the flip side all of this craziness can also admittedly be a bit much. It’s really hard to lose track of where “Mandy” is going at times and that can be frustrating. It’s a film that demands repeat viewings and even after two run-throughs of my own I still had to do a bit of research to fully grasp everything that took place so don’t go into this movie expecting to be spoon-fed. You’ll be disappointed. Of course Nicolas Cage’s crazy approach to acting is also an acquired taste all on its own so part of your enjoyment of this film may come down to just how much mind-numbing violence and Cage’s unhinged lunacy you can stand. If you’re not patient or if you don’t take the time to invest in the story then it will lose you easily and that’s partially because the film is split into two halves. Literally the first hour is all setup and the second hour is where all the violence comes in. It’s a setup that works in the end but can be trying if you’re just expecting Nick Cage killing people from start to finish.\nWhile I did compare “Mandy” favorably to “Mother!” I can’t say this film completely avoids the same pretentiousness the later film was accused of by many last year. I loved the style and the creative choices used to bring “Mandy” to life but because the underlying meaning of it all is so hard to decipher it’s easy to write a lot of things off as Cosmatos embellishing and showing off how unique and insightful he is as a director without actually going anywhere with it. I’ll admit the first time around I felt there were a few moments where the stylistic choices didn’t really make sense. There didn’t seem to be any purpose beyond just doing something different although I found myself respecting these creative choices in my second go around because I already knew the bigger picture. In the end how much you enjoy “Mandy” will depend on how open your mind is going into it. It will either irritate you to no end with its in-your-face “this means something” presentation or it will have you enjoying yourself through thought provoking imagery and style as you read between the lines. Either way “Mandy” provides plenty of substance and mindless blood-stained fun, but how much fun may be all in how you look at it.\n“Mandy” is a crazy, fun, artistic and stylish horror action masterpiece. I can’t sugarcoat that. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before and not only had me completely invested from start to finish, but brought me back for a second viewing to try and figure out what I missed and delve deeper into the world that director Panos Cosmatos created. An unhinged performance by Nicolas Cage makes this movie all the more enjoyable finally giving the actor a story and setting that allows him to let loose without it feeling overplayed or out of place. A competent and capable supporting cast only adds to this thrill ride of a mind bender that left me speechless and in awe by the times the credits rolled. I loved it, and while it may not be for everyone and has a slight tinge of pretentiousness about it I would still recommend “Mandy” to anyone as a unique cinematic experience that shows the true potential of its up-and-coming director and its often underappreciated leading man.\nTags: Mandy Review\nPublished by jasonbleau\nView all posts by jasonbleau\nThe word “masterpiece” sold me. I’ve been curious about this one but WOW! High praise. I’m giving it a look.\njasonbleau says:\nI hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I know it might be an acquired taste but I truly found it fitting of being considered among the best in the genre from the past decade. I even enjoyed it more that “Hereditary” which, while a great film, didnt hold my attention or fascinate me near as much as “Mandy” did.\nSam Simon says:\nI truly hope this movie will arrive to my favourite cinema (the only one in town with non-dubbed versions)! I only read good things about it… Thanks!\nSartaj Govind Singh says:\nThis is an excellent review that significantly touches upon some of the strengths of the film. I particularly appreciated your points about the visuals as well as your comparison to Darren Aronofsky’s mother!\nI think Mandy is a film that presents the manly revenge thriller at its most artistic and visionary.\nYou can find out more in my review below:\nhttps://sgsonfilm.net/2018/11/05/brief-consideration-mandy-2018/\nIf you find the piece to your liking, then please comment and follow.\nPingback: Top 10 Horror Films of 2018 – CInema Spotlight\nPrevious Entry Trailer Breakdown: “Pet Sematary” (2019)\nNext Entry Top 10 Stephen King Horror Movies","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line679994"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7293487787246704,"wiki_prob":0.7293487787246704,"text":"Amending the Fair Elections Act - Macleans.ca\nAmending the Fair Elections Act\nThe government and opposition trade proposals\nby Aaron Wherry\nAdrian Wyld/CP\nThe Procedure and House Affairs committee begins this morning the task of reviewing the Fair Elections Act clause by clause and if you’ve ever wanted to see what 344 pages of amendments looks like, here are the compiled submissions of the Conservatives, New Democrats and Liberals, along with Green MP Elizabeth May and Independent MP Brent Rathgeber. (Note: Some of the proposed amendments seem to duplicate each other, possibly the result of MPs from different parties each submitting the chief electoral officer’s suggestions.)\nBoth the New Democrats and Liberals would restore vouching and eliminate the proposed ban on any use of the voter information card to substantiate one’s address, but the New Democrats have also included a proposal to adopt Manitoba’s allowance for the swearing of a written oath to establish identity.\nMr. Rathgeber’s proposals are designed to allow independent candidates to file as such before the writ period and begin collecting donations—thus limiting the advantage that party candidates currently enjoy over unaligned candidates.\nMs. May throws in proposals to create a voter contact code of conduct, new rules for the televised debates and a requirement that the minister shall engage in “extensive consultations” with the chief electoral officer with respect to any proposed amendments of the Elections Act.\nThe government has so far only signalled that it will support a specific set of amendments, so it remains to be seen how many, if any, of the opposition’s proposals will be accepted. The committee conceivably has to be done with the bill by the end of this week.\nFair Elections Act","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line661733"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.583776593208313,"wiki_prob":0.416223406791687,"text":"KIDD KRADDICK MORNING SHOWKIDD KRADDICK MORNING SHOW\nBig Al Busted At The State Fair Of Texas\nKiddNation.com\nBig Al said he couldn't go to the fair, so what was he doing at the fair then?\nJ-Si had plans to meet his wife and some of her friends at the fair, but he didn't really want to go apparently because his car didn't have enough charge to get there and get home! That's when Kellie said she and Allen were going to the fair and they'd give him a ride and invited Big Al along. Al declined.\nAfter arriving at the fair they were told that someone else saw Big Al at the fair a few minutes before and this surprised Kellie and J-Si because he wasn't supposed to be there, but they were cool and it left them wondering what he was doing at the fair and why he didn't let them know he was there to hang together. Also, we find out that J-Si ended up being a loner amongst all the people in the fair.\nFiled Under: big al, fair, kidd kraddick morning show, State Fair\nCategories: Kidd Kraddick","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1295342"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.508775532245636,"wiki_prob":0.508775532245636,"text":"News > Business Hour >\nNevada’s 2017-2018 construction wage survey released\nThe Office of the Nevada Labor Commissioner has released the 2017–2018 Construction Wage Survey for contractors throughout the state. Completed surveys are due by 5:00 pm on July 17, 2017, in order to be included...\nItronics Inc., a growing and diversified fertilizer, silver, and minerals producer, today announced that its 2016 Corporate Profile is available on the Itronics’ website at www.itronics.com/profile.shtml, under the “About Us” tab. It includes the Company’s...\nThe Meadowood Mall is looking ahead to holiday shopping season, and in preparation, many retailers will be participating in a job fair to get employees on boarded and working before the holiday rush. More than...\nPershing Resources Company, Inc., (OTC PINK: PSGR) reported its second quarter 2016 financials today. The financial statement can be viewed on the OTC Markets website at: http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/PSGR/filings or on the Company’s website at: http://ir.pershingpm.com/otc-filings.\nPershing Resources Company, Inc., (OTC PINK: PSGR) announces that it has brought on Dr. Duncan J. Bain P.Geo., President, Duncan Bain Consulting Ltd., as Chief Consulting Geologist on its New Enterprise Project near Kingman Arizona....\nNevada’s unemployment rate rose slightly to a seasonally-adjusted 6.4 percent in June, but experienced strong job growth. In June, the Silver State experienced the strongest over-the-month gain in employment in 11 years, adding a seasonally-adjusted...\nToday the Federal Communications Commission votes on a plan to open a new part of the wireless spectrum to encourage the development of the next generation of cell phones and wireless devices called 5G. FCC...\nChewy.com located at the USA Parkway is having a hiring event Thursday July 14 at the Whitney Peak Hotel – Downtown on N Virginia St at the Reno Arch. Hours are Noon until 4:30 PM...\nInternational Game Technology PLC will report second quarter 2016 results for the period ended June 30, 2016 on Thursday, July 28, 2016.\nInfor, a leading provider of beautiful business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, today announced that Boomtown Casino and Hotel in Reno, Nevada, has entered into an agreement with Infinium Software, Inc.,...\nGold Standard Ventures Corp. today reported that a comprehensive bottle roll cyanide leach program on its 100%-owned Pinion oxide gold deposit in the Carlin Trend, Nevada, returned weighted-average gold recoveries of 69.2% for 10 mesh...\nPershing Resources Company, Inc. announced that it has received a majority shareholder vote “in favor” of eight measures proposed at its July 8th Special Shareholders meeting. The Company sought shareholder approval for eight proposals aimed...\nTahoe Resources Inc. declared its seventh monthly dividend for 2016 of USD $0.02 per common share. Shareholders of record at the close of business on Thursday, July 21, 2016 will be entitled to receive payment...\nRapid Fire Marketing, Inc.’s newly appointed CEO, Ziyad Osachi, announced the business’s milestones for the next twelve months as follows: 1. Bring our reporting current with the SEC. This is being undertaken at the present...\nBarrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX)(TSX:ABX) (Barrick or the “company”) has published its 2015 Responsibility Report, which provides a detailed and candid look at the company’s environmental and social performance. The full report is available on Barrick’s...\nRENTCafe released a study regarding apartment sizes in the US. Reno ranked 16 on their list of cities with the smallest apartment sizes. For the full report visit http://www.rentcafe.com/blog/rental-market/us-average-apartment-size-trends-downward/.\nGrand Sierra Resort and Casino (GSR) has several positions to fill in the food and beverage, culinary, housekeeping, stewards, hotel operations and security departments as well as positions at The Beach, Bowling Center, Fun Quest...\nTahoe Resources Inc. announced that the Company has acquired from Goldcorp Inc. for $12.5 million in cash Goldcorp’s 2% net smelter return (“NSR”) royalty related to production at Tahoe’s 100%-owned Bell Creek Mine. The parties...\nPershing Gold Corporation, an emerging gold producer, today announces completion of the Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) on its Relief Canyon Mine in Pershing County, Nevada. Mine Development Associates of Reno completed a PEA for the...\nA new analysis by Carinsurance.com crunched eight different motoring metrics, from federal data on traffic fatalities to gas prices, in order to determine which states offered the best (and worst) driving experience. Nevada ranked ninth.\nThe Locals Choice\nBarber/Cometologist at The Locals Choice in SOUTH LAKE TAHOE\nBarber/Cometologist CA. License All Clientele Provided LocalsChoiceHaircutting.com Shelby 775-691-8596","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line419834"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5300426483154297,"wiki_prob":0.4699573516845703,"text":"Title: Application of thermal neutron radiography for the mass transport of moisture through freezing soil\nAuthor: Clark, Michael A. R.\nAwarding Body: University of Aston in Birmingham\nCurrent Institution: Aston University\nhttp://publications.aston.ac.uk/id/eprint/14320/\nThis thesis reports on the development of a technique to evaluate hydraulic conductivities in a soil (Snowcal) subject to freezing conditions. The technique draws on three distinctly different disciplines, Nuclear Physics, Soil Physics and Remote Sensing to provide a non-destructive and reliable evaluation of hydraulic conductivity throughout a freezing test. Thermal neutron radiography is used to provide information on local water/ice contents at anytime throughout the test. The experimental test rig is designed so that the soil matrix can be radiated by a neutron beam, from a nuclear reactor, to obtain radiographs. The radiographs can then be interpreted, following a process of remote sensing image enhancement, to yield information on relative water/ice contents. Interpretation of the radiographs is accommodated using image analysis equipment capable of distinguishing between 256 shades of grey. Remote sensing image enhancing techniques are then employed to develop false colour images which show the movement of water and development of ice lenses in the soil. Instrumentation is incorporated in the soil in the form of psychrometer/thermocouples, to record water potential, electrical resistance probes to enable ice and water to be differentiated on the radiographs and thermocouples to record the temperature gradient. Water content determinations are made from the enhanced images and plotted against potential measurements to provide the moisture characteristic for the soil. With relevant mathematical theory pore water distributions are obtained and combined with water content data to give hydraulic conductivities. The values for hydraulic conductivity in the saturated soil and at the frozen fringe are compared with established values for silts and silty-sands. The values are in general agreement and, with refinement, this non-destructive technique could afford useful information on a whole range of soils. The technique is of value over other methods because ice lenses are actually seen forming in the soil, supporting the accepted theories of frost action. There are economic and experimental restraints to the work which are associated with the use of a nuclear facility, however, the technique is versatile and has been applied to the study of moisture transfer in porous building materials and could be further developed into other research areas.\nKeywords: Civil Engineering","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1067656"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5103204250335693,"wiki_prob":0.48967957496643066,"text":"UA President Jim Johnsen joins national leaders at the U.S. Naval Academy to discuss Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment at America’s Colleges, Universities and Service Academies\nUniversity of Alaska President Jim Johnsen joined the nation’s top military leaders for a two-day national discussion on sexual assault and harassment on the campuses of America’s colleges, universities and service academies. Johnsen was part of a leadership panel with other prominent higher education leaders, and will present at a breakout session on April 4. Nearly 400 people from universities, academies and government are attending the event at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD.\nDuring the April 4 breakout session, Johnsen will lead the discussion on examining how campus leaders should establish appropriate standards, transparency and set the tone for dealing with sexual assault and harassment. He will also discuss actionable research that enables the cultural transformation required for sustaining a positive culture that works to build awareness about sexual assault and harassment.\n“The University of Alaska has worked tirelessly to improve our campus culture; create a respectful environment for faculty, staff and students; provide ongoing training; and set expectations for improving the safety and climate on all our campuses,” Johnsen said. “The University of Alaska has led the effort to create a culture of respect at UA. Four years ago, we became the first university in the country to publicly admit our shortcomings in this area, and willingly commit to addressing sexual harassment and assault.”\nUA self-identified serious problems and pro-actively launched efforts to correct them. In February 2017, the university signed a Voluntary Resolution Agreement with the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which reviewed the university’s compliance with federal laws and regulations against sexual assault and discrimination, and outlined specific steps to improve safety and the campus climate throughout the University of Alaska system.\n“We have made great strides and remain resolute in our commitment to creating a culture of caring and respect on all our campuses,” Johnsen said. “I am honored to be here and to share with other higher education leaders what we have learned on this journey.”\nThe National Discussion is a collaborative forum to develop partnerships, share best practices in prevention and leverage research to create safe and healthy learning environments. The goals of the gathering are: to share evidenced-based practices to reduce sexual assault and sexual harassment at colleges, universities and service academies; identify and discuss the positive and negative social and environmental factors and behaviors influencing the conditions‎ surrounding sexual assault and sexual harassment; and to cultivate a network of senior leaders, experts and dynamic thinkers who will continue to communicate towards the goal of reducing sexual assault and sexual harassment at colleges and universities.\nDOD Public Affairs Offices are planning to live-stream during the National Discussion from the main auditorium.\n--30--","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line478068"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7172296047210693,"wiki_prob":0.28277039527893066,"text":"Homework Help >\nWriting Well: Neat and Tidy: Classify-Divide\nNeat and Tidy: Classify-Divide\nWriting Well\nYou Got Some 'Splaining to Do, Lucy: Exposition\nThe Perfect Couple: Cause and Effect\nAlike and Different: Comparison and Contrast\nYou Could Look It Up: Definition\n“How to” Essays: Process Analysis\nQuestion: What do the following sentences have in common?\nIn California, it is illegal to set a mouse trap without a hunting license.\nIt is illegal to use a lasso to catch a fish in Tennessee.\nIf a man is wearing a striped suit, you cannot throw a knife at him in Natoma, Kansas.\nUnless you have a doctor's note, it is illegal to buy ice cream after 6 P.M.in Newark, New Jersey.\nIn Minnesota, it is illegal to tease skunks.\nAnswer: They are all laws. Or, they are all very strange laws. If you realized this, you have the basic strategy for classify-divide essays.\nA classification system is useless if the categories overlap.\nWhen you divide, you separate items from one another. When you classify, you group things in categories of similar objects. For example, a bookseller would classify The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Well with The Complete Idiot's Guide to Grammar and Style because both deal with English and writing. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Shakespeare would go on a different shelf, however, because its distinguishing features are different. It describes one particular writer and his works, rather than instructing readers on the basics of writing.\nWrite Angles\nEach classification system will vary, depending on the person creating it. When you're writing a classify-divide essay, any system is valid, as long as it is logical, sensible, and instructive. Division is also called “analysis.”\nHere's the basic rule for a valid classify-divide essay: The classification system must serve a larger purpose other than just making piles of things. Otherwise, it's just an empty exercise. You might as well clean your garage, walk the dog, or call your mother. (So, what are you waiting for?)\nThe following essay divides and classifies dolphins according to their characteristics. As you read the essay, see if you agree with the method of classification. What does it suggest about the author's purpose?\nThere is a great deal of confusion over what the 40 different species that belong to the family Delphinidae are called. For example, is a small cetacean a “dolphin” or a “porpoise”? Some people distinguish a dolphin as a cetacean having a snout or beak, while a porpoise usually refers to one with a smoothly rounded forehead. The larger members of this porpoise and dolphin family are called “whales,” but they nonetheless fit the same characteristics as their smaller relatives. The number of different names for these creatures reflects the confusion of long-ago sailors as they tried to classify them. Unfortunately, identifying them in their home in the sea is not easy, for the main differences between members of the species is in their skeleton structure.\nThe size of the bottlenose dolphin varies considerably from place to place. The largest on record are a 12.7-foot male from the Netherlands and a 10.6-foot female from the Bay of Biscay. The heaviest dolphin on record weighed in at 1,430 pounds. A newborn calf, in contrast, is 38.5 to 49.6 inches long and weighs between 20 and 25 pounds.\nThey are mainly fish-eaters. In the wild, the bottlenose feeds on squid, shrimp, and a wide variety of fishes. In some waters, the bottlenose have gotten in the habit of following shrimp boats, eating what the shrimpers miss or throw away. They often hunt as a team, herding small fish ahead of them and picking off the ones that don't stay with the rest of the group. And they eat a lot! A United Nations report claims that a group of dolphins off the California coast eat 300,000 tons of anchovies each year, whereas commercial fishermen take only 110,00 tons.\nThere has been a great deal of discussion about the intelligence of these creatures. Whales have the largest brains—over 20 pounds—of any species, but does this mean they are smart? All cetaceans can “read” vibrations that flood their watery home. Thanks to this skill, they can recognize what kind of fish they are chasing and the shape of the ocean floor and objects on it. In turn, they can give off signals of various kinds, sometimes called “voices” or “songs.” These sounds enable cetaceans to “talk” to each other. In a laboratory, dolphins have been trained to crudely imitate the trainer's speech.\nExcerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Well © 2000 by Laurie Rozakis, Ph.D.. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.\nTo order this book direct from the publisher, visit the Penguin USA website or call 1-800-253-6476. You can also purchase this book at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.\nWriting Well: You Got Some 'Splaining to Do, Lucy: Exposition","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line324348"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7214235663414001,"wiki_prob":0.27857643365859985,"text":"“If you’re serious about sharpening your skills as a journalist, sign up for Caitlin’s seminars now — all of them. You’ll gain from her hard-earned experience, practical wisdom, and unabashed love for this tough, rewarding, essential calling. She is a gifted teacher and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” — freelance writer Robert Lerose\nHave you ever dreamed of publishing your writing?\nMaybe you’d like to find more readers for your blog and could use some coaching to win them; Broadside was chosen six times by WordPress editors for Freshly Pressed (now named Discover) and named one of their 22 best blogs on culture, with more than 16,000 followers.\nWhether you want to write for a digital site like Quartz or Salon, for a major national magazine like Marie Claire or Smithsonian or maybe to conceive of and propose a non-fiction book, I can help!\nI’ve done all of these things, have won a National Magazine Award in Canada, the nation’s top honor for journalists and am the recipient of five journalism fellowships.\nA former reporter for the Globe & Mail, Montreal Gazette and New York Daily News, I can help you pitch, sell and produce the high quality work that the most demanding editors and clients expect.\nIn person, via phone and Skype, I’ve taught students worldwide, and helped them publish in The New York Times, the Guardian, cosmopolitan.com and others.\nAs a journalist with only a few years experience, I appreciated her willingness to share her expertise and experiential wisdom. If you have a chance to take a class with her, don’t hesitate. Great value.\n— Lisa Hall-Wilson\n“It was definitely incredibly useful for me.”\n— Daniel Malak, public relations, Motionloft\nIf you’re a public relations professional wanting to up your pitching game, I also review press releases and pitches, and offer practical individual webinars to help you get your story ideas more often read and better used — I recently helped the Jacob Burns Film Center, a respected art film house here in New York.\nPlease email me at learntowritebetter@gmail.com.\nI look forward to working with you!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line216194"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8111481666564941,"wiki_prob":0.8111481666564941,"text":"#WeAreBristol - inspiring film launches new initiative to unite city\n\"Some folk might harbour prejudices against others because they don’t know them, but when they get talking they realise that under the cloak of skin colour, race and dress, the other person is just like them.”\nNeil Maggs\nThe participants of We Are Bristol - a new campaign in the city to bring people together (Image: WeAreBristol)\nA new campaign has been launched to celebrate the differences between people in Bristol.\nThe #WeAreBristol campaign started with the screening of a film at the Watershed on July 19.\nThe campaign has been created by Bristol City Council and various partners, and it is asking people to \"positively challenge people to look for similarities with their neighbours and wider areas\".\nSixty strangers have been randomly chosen for a social experiment led by Bristol University professor Bruce Hood, with the hope of showcasing and celebrating what people from all over the city have in common.\nThis is taking place amidst the backdrop of the national context, and current Brexit debate, which has seen many argue the nation is more divided than ever.\nBristol reggae legend Jashwha Moses dies before release of greatest hits album\nBristol, a city of sanctuary, with a proud record of migration, is wanting to make this point loudly and proudly.\nMayor of Bristol Marvin Rees said: “Fractures across the political landscape have led to a growing feeling of division amongst the people that live and work in Bristol.\n\"We believe that no matter where we’re from, what we believe or how we choose to live our lives, we still have things in common.\n“This campaign will celebrate those things and bring people together around the pride we share for our city.\"\nYou can watch the full video here\nParticipants chosen for the campaign come from a range of backgrounds and different communities in the city. Of the list 34 were women and 26 men, 44 white and 16 other ethnicities, with 32 parts of Bristol represented.\nThe youngest person is 16, and the oldest 77, with a combined total of 1,181 years experience of living in the city.\nThe group were asked a series of questions in the film, such as ;have you ever been with someone when they die?' to 'have you helped someone have a baby?', and even 'are you an addict?'\nParticipants were moved around the room at the Bottle Yard studios where it was filmed, according to what they answered.\nBeing a Crown Court witness: Everything you need to know\nAs questions increased in their personal nature and intensity, participants were met with applause for their honesty and bravery. That exercise, according to Professor Bruce Hood, was a way of demonstrating how different, yet similar we can all be.\nParticipants who signed up were unaware of what would happen on arrival. Antonette, the oldest in the group at 77, who is originally from Barbados, turned up thinking it was something do with performing.\nShe said: “I just love to act, so applied to take part thinking it would involve some sort of performance. What we ended up doing came as a bit of a surprise. It was fantastic.”\nShe added: “It really got us talking. Some folk might harbour prejudices against others because they don’t know them, but when they get talking they realise that under the cloak of skin colour, race and dress, the other person is just like them.”\nBristol's Sikh soldiers honoured in new book from city author\nThe film, which was inspired by the ‘All That We Share’ campaign created by TV 2 in Denmark, is the first part of the #WeAreBristol campaign, which will be running across the city over the summer. It is due to start over the weekend at Harbour Festival.\nThe campaign is supported by 10 local partners including Fable studios, Avon and Somerset Police, both of the city's universities, the Watershed and Bristol Airport.\nFor more information on the look out for the facebook and twitter page with the hashtag #WeAreBristol\nFor the latest news in and around Bristol, check back on Bristol Live's homepage\nMarvin Rees","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line491524"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5931186079978943,"wiki_prob":0.5931186079978943,"text":"Miami Street Photography Festival\nby Billy Kung\nAs the only festival of its kind in the United States, the Miami Street Photography Festival (MSPF) has come a long way since its inaugural inception four years ago. Born out of the Miami Street Photography Club—a non-profit organization with a vision to elevate Miami as a center for photography—the first annual MSPF opened in the Wynwood art district during Miami Art Week in 2012 and featured Magnum photographer Alex Webb, poet Rebecca Norris Webb, National Geographic’s Maggie Steber, and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Rick McCawley.\nToday, the MSPF shows significant and rapid growth, with more than 55 countries represented in the 2015 edition. With the additional support of Susan Meiselas and other master photographers, alongside a large social media following and the continued support of global partnerships, MSPF has now found a new home at HistoryMiami’s newly established Center for Photography, a Smithsonian affiliate.\nIn many cases, a street photographer refers to someone who conducts his photographic business taking tourist photos in front of famous landmarks such as the Niagara Falls, or the Eiffel Tower, charging customers a fee for the photographic print. However, the kinds of images shown at MSPF, for the most part, are works from photographers who have tried to take their images without being noticed by the unassuming subjects. Snapshots of ordinary people going about their business, unaware of the photographer’s presence is really at the core of what street photography is. But it would be misleading to state that pictures without people are excluded from this genre altogether. The work of the great French photographer Eugene Atget, for instance, features no people at all, yet through implication and inference, he suggests presence in the midst of absence, while attempting to reveal the life of the street as it is inhered in the location itself.\nThe streets are one of the richest sources for those who are interested in the study of humanity. It commands a trained eye and endless amount of patience and a good deal of instincts for any photographer in his readiness to respond to errant details, chance juxtapositions, odd non sequiturs, peculiarities of scale, and the quirkiness of life on the street. The combination of the camera and the street yields a type of image that is idiosyncratic to photography in a way that formal portraits, pictorial landscapes, and other kinds of genre scenes are not. At times, street photographs have an imaginative life all of their own, one that sometimes seems quite independent of whatever intentions the photographer may have had, in fact, the ephemeral quality of the instantaneous moment and the evanescence of the image might be thought of as reflecting the anonymity of the photographer himself. Like the subject of the picture, the photographer who captured the moment frequently proves to be a rather elusive, transient figure.\nAmong the thousands of entries that were submitted to the annual MSPF contest, the top three 2015 finalists are: 1st place Swapnil Jedhe (India); 2nd place George Marazakis (Greece); 3rd place Lauren Welles (USA), and by people’s choice Marcin Ryczek (Poland), were chosen by a panel made up of Magnum photographers David Alan Harvey and Bruce Davidson; teacher and photographer Harvey Stein; National Geographic’s Maggie Steber; and photojournalist Peter Turnley. While the remaining finalists were selected by a panel of judges: Umberto Verdoliva, Mary Cimetta, Stefano Mirabella from SPontanea Collective (a collective of Italian photographers dedicated to street photography); and Germany’s Fabian Schreyer and India’s Vineet Vohra from The Street Collective (an international group of street photographers). It is an impressive roster of some of the finest photographers and a testament to the visions of its founder, Juan Jose Reyes, who not only recognized the importance of this genre in photography but also the commitment and courage required to successfully bring it into fruition.\nSWAPNIL JEDHE, India. First Place. Courtesy the artist and MSPF.\nGEORGE MARAZAKIS, Greece. Second Place. Courtesy the artist and MSPF.\nLAUREN WELLES, United States. Third Place. Courtesy the artist and MSPF.\nMARCIN RYCZEK, Poland. People’s Choice. Courtesy the artist and MSPF.\nBilly Kung is photo editor at ArtAsiaPacific.\nBlog Me-Mo: Memory in Motion\nSpain Italy\nBlog Ishiuchi Miyako: “Postwar Shadows”\nJapan USA","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line944999"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8750576972961426,"wiki_prob":0.8750576972961426,"text":"Ever The Land\nEver The Land | KCET\nPacific Heartbeat\n\"Ever The Land\" explores the sublime bond between people and their land. For the past 150 years, longstanding grievances over extreme colonization tactics have defined the Ngai (tribe) Tuhoe and New Zealand governments relationship. In 2014 history was made when the Tuhoe's ancestral homelands were returned, the New Zealand government gave a official apology and Tuhoe built the first ever \"Living Building\" in Aotearoa, New Zealand as a testament to their values and vision of self-governance.\nCyril Pahinui: Let's Play Music - In Memoriam\nMaster slack key musician Cyril Pahinui jams with some of the most revered and talented musicians in Hawai‘i in intimate kanikapila-style backyard performances.\nCorridor Four\nIsaac Ho'opi'i saved numerous people from the Pentagon during the September 11 terrorist attacks. This documentary illustrates Isaac's story in the aftermath of 9/11.\nTe Kuhane O Te Tupuna (The Spirit of the Ancestors)\nThis documentary film is a journey from Easter Island to London, in search of the lost Moai Hoa Haka Nanaia, a statue of significant cultural importance.\nLeitis In Waiting\n\"Leitis in Waiting\" tells the story of Tonga's evolving approach to gender fluidity through a character-driven portrait of the most prominent leiti (transgender) in the Kingdom, Joey Mataele.\nPrison Songs\nThe people imprisoned in a Darwin jail are shown in a unique and completely new light in Australia's first ever documentary musical.\nNext Goal Wins\nIn 2001, the tiny Pacific island of American Samoa suffered a world record 31-0 defeat at the hands of Australia, garnering headlines across the world as the worst football team on the planet. \"Next Goal Wins \"is an inspirational story about the power of hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and an object lesson in what it really means to be a winner in life.\nPoi E: The Story of Our Song\nNot many songs in the history of the Universe have the power to bridge cultures, save towns, change lives, travel the world, set records and give pride to a culture, a community, a language and a people. \"POI E: the story of our song\" is the unbelievable true story of a song that did and the man who did it - Dalvanius Prime. \"POI E: the story of our song\" is a film about the New Zealand entertainer Dalvanius Prime, who returns home to Patea from the cabaret stage of Australia to nurse his dying mother.\nMaking Good Men\nWhat would you say if you came face to face with your childhood bully as an adult? Maybe you have it all mapped out in your head, maybe you've practiced your speech a million times. Or were you the bully? Have you ever thought about whether you would acknowledge your past, given the opportunity? In this moving and remarkably told story, two high profile men, a former All Black rugby player and a Hollywood actor, reveal their unforgettable account of bullying with unprecedented honesty.\nBeing Bruno Banani\n\"Being Bruno Banani\" tells the unique story of the first and only Tongan Luger who managed to qualify in an amazingly short amount of time for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. Through his name he also acted as the first \"living brand\" using a completely new and disputed way to get around the strict IOC's Olympic advertising regulations.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line415801"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8544542789459229,"wiki_prob":0.8544542789459229,"text":"Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv\nLithuanian-born Israeli Jewish legal scholar\nMelinda C. Shepherd\nOriginally published in the Britannica Book of the Year. Presented as archival content. Learn more.\nThis article was originally published in the Britannica Book of the Year, an annual print publication that provides an overview of the year’s most-notable people and events. Unlike most articles on Britannica.com, Book of the Year articles are not reviewed and revised after their initial publication. Rather, they are presented on the site as archival content, intended for historical reference only.\nRabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Lithuanian-born Israeli Jewish legal scholar (born April 10, 1910, Siauliai, Lith.—died July 18, 2012, Jerusalem), gained religious and political influence far beyond his roles as an ultra-Orthodox expert on the Torah and the Talmud, a hard-line member (1950–74) of Israel’s highest rabbinic court, and the leading spiritual authority of the ultra-Orthodox political party United Torah Judaism. Elyashiv was descended from a long line of Ashkenazi non-Hasidic Orthodox rabbis; his father was chief rabbi of Gomel (now Homyel, Belarus), and his mother’s father, Shlomo Elyashiv, was a respected kabbalist. Elyashiv’s family (they adopted his maternal grandfather’s surname) immigrated in the early 1920s to British-mandated Palestine, where he attended religious school and gained a reputation for his scholarship and legal analysis. During his 60-year career, Elyashiv issued a number of noteworthy rulings on Jewish law, including an edict that brain activity cannot be used to ascertain death and a ruling that banned Orthodox Jewish wives (who are required to cover their hair in public) from wearing wigs made from human hair obtained in India (because the hair might have been rendered “impure” in a Hindu ceremonial cutting).\nWładysław II Jagiełło\nWładysław II Jagiełło, grand duke of Lithuania (as Jogaila, 1377–1401) and king of Poland (1386–1434), who joined two states that became the leading power of eastern Europe. He was the founder of Poland’s Jagiellon dynasty. Jogaila (Jagiełło in Polish) was one of the 12 sons of Algirdas (Olgierd),…\nAlgirdas, grand duke of Lithuania from 1345 to 1377, who made Lithuania one of the largest European states of his day. His son Jogaila became Władysław II Jagiełło, king of united Poland and Lithuania. Algirdas was one of the sons of the country’s ruler, Gediminas, and he began his long political…\nRolandas Paksas\nRolandas Paksas, prime minister (1999, 2000–01) and president (2003–04) of Lithuania. Although he began his political career as a communist, Paksas became prominent in conservative circles and later emerged as a leader of Lithuania’s Liberal and Liberal Democratic parties. He was Europe’s first…\nŠiauliai, Lithuania\nJuly 18, 2012 (aged 102)\nRabbi Meir Baal Haneis - Biography of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line671037"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5295555591583252,"wiki_prob":0.4704444408416748,"text":"Reflections on Megrahi's release\nBecause I am too busy these days, most of the posts I wish to write never see the light of day. However, this particular one was called to life by Highlander's post Donkeys Vs People: The Media Circus. After reading it, I immediately decided to leave aside all other matters that can be postponed and write down my thoughts.\nAbdelbaset al-Megrahi is a Libyan intelligence officer who had become the sole convict for the 1988 bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. He had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 but was \"freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following reports that he had terminal prostate cancer and had less than three months to live\". In order to be freed, Megrahi had to drop his appeal.\nThe release made unhappy just about everybody. Most victims' families, US government and many ordinary Westerners are outraged that the convict was allowed to return home as a free man and received a hero's welcome, while most Libyans seem indignant because he is still considered guilty and his appeal will never be processed.\nThe Lockerbie bombing set a sad record in the number of civilians killed in a single terror act - 270. As far as I know, the previous record was in the distant 1925 - the St. Nedelya Church bombing in Bulgaria, by communist terrorists. So Lockerbie opened a new era in the history of terror and is undoubtedly very important. However, I must admit that I have never made efforts to be very informed about it. The details of the case are too far from my field of competence, and the information available in public space has been from the beginning too tainted with unsubstantiated guessing and apparent deliberate disinformation to be useful.\nIf you ask me what I think of Mr. Megrahi's guilt (or lack of it), I'll frankly say that I don't know. As I recently wrote on Anglo's blog, \"I generally trust British justice, and I surely don't believe the fancy conspiracy theories circulated around. However, a miscarriage of justice can always happen, especially when a horrible crime is committed and the public insists to have somebody - anybody - punished\". I would add that Britain has had sad precedents in convicting innocents after large-scale terror acts - the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Indeed, their cases were examples of inquisitional-type justice relying heavily on confessions, while Megrahi never confessed anything. However, the little I have read about his case has left in me the impression that linking forensic evidence to him depended too much on the testimony of a single person, some shopkeeper from Malta. While this does not prove Megrahi's innocence in any way, it makes me doubt that his guilt has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt. But again, I don't know the details of the case even to the degree that has been released to the public, and so I may be wrong.\nAt some time after Megrahi's conviction in 2001, new arguments for his innocence began to be circulated in public space. They can be found on the Web very easily, so forgive me for not linking to them. I just don't wish to, because they do not sound to me believable at all, but rather look like a smokescreen. Briefly, it is claimed that Megrahi has been framed by CIA in order to shield the real perpetrators Iran and Syria, because Libya allegedly was a more convenient target than them. Let me quote what I wrote two years ago on Highlander's blog: \"I won't bet my hand that Al-M. is innocent. If he is, I'll think this is despite the \"new evidence\" disputed now in all media, not because of it. This \"evidence\" has all the elements of the most persistent Western myths of recent time: the big bad USA deliberately (rather than by honest mistake) going after those innocents who are most suitable targets for the moment, retired CIA officers becoming whistleblowers (this agency's retirement rules definitely need scrutiny) and a conspiracy which managed to remain secret for many years despite involving dozens of people of all sorts. Not that it is impossible. No laws of physics forbid it. But it is highly unlikely. Besides, if it happened this way, why didn't CIA plant evidence also against Al-M.'s co-defendant and buy more reliable witnesses?We must keep in mind that European culture is tolerant to evil. This helps explain many things about Europe. E.g. the abolition of death penalty. I was all for it. It was said to me and others that death penalty isn't needed to protect the society from a murderer, because if the murder is a really grisly one (or more than one), he will be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. And now, after we have abolished death penalty, we are said that no European country has life imprisonment without parole. Letting a murderer walk free after several years in prison is at the basis of today's European psyche. People are conditioned to perceive this as normal. So give people the benefit of the doubt, but beware evil. Don't count on anybody else to stop it. There is nobody.\"\nI still have mixed thoughts about death penalty. I am concerned about the innocents that will inevitably be wrongly convicted from time to time, I worry about the reflections of the death sentence on those who pronounce and execute it, and I am just disgusted by the idea of cold-bloodedly taking the life of a person unable to defend himself. However, I must admit that my opponents were right in one thing - that abolition of death penalty will allow release of any convict as soon as it becomes politically advantageous and the public is looking aside. In Megrahi's case, I fear how easy it turned to make witnesses withdraw their testimony or bring 3rd people to testify that they have bribed the witnesses; and because, unlike Bulgaria, it is (yet) not possible to make forensic evidence in Britain disappear, then you can find a big-mouthed former CIA employee admitting that he has planted it. Don't you share my fear that these tools have the power to make anybody immune to justice?\nIf you ask why I think somebody in the West would be interested in rescuing Megrahi from the grip of justice, I would answer that the urge to deal with Libya can quite create such interests. First, after Bulgaria joined EU in early 2007, this created solidarity links between it and older EU members. Soon, rumours started that the Bulgarian medics could be traded to Megrahi. If Highlander, the target reader of this post, has endured to this point, I would ask her to look at this 2007 Standart News report titled Saif al-Islam: There Is a Link Between Megrahi and the Nurses. Let me quote a little from it: \"There is a connection between the cases of Lockerby bomber's - the Libyan Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi - and the Bulgarian nurses, said in his latest interview the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi Saif al-Islam for the French Le Mond. \"We made a link between the cases. We also agreed to discuss the issue on a bilateral level - between Libya and Great Britain. Formerly, it was insisted that this discussion should be held on a broadly European level,\" he added.\"\nI would not risk to guess whether such \"agreement\" really existed or not. However, the common rule in deals of this sort is that they are automatically invalidated if one of the sides makes them public. So, the fact is that our medics were allowed to return while Megrahi remained in prison. However, these days we heard again from Mr. al-Islam. Let me quote the Telegraph from Aug. 21: \"Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son, Saif, claimed the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, was linked to trade deals between Britain and Libya.\" Understandably, these statements are of little help in convincing Westerners that Megrahi and Libya had no role in the Lockerbie bombing. Personally, during the years of the HIV trial I have heard Mr. al-Islam make and then retract so many conflicting statements without a shadow of embarassment that I have stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. The only rational explanation of his behaviour that I can figure out is that he intends to perplex the stupid Western infidels and show them that their brains are absolutely useless in understanding the world.\nAt the end of her post, Highlander writes, \"My biggest disappointment is that now that the documents have been sealed forever we will never know what really happened on the ill fated Pan Am flight...\" I envy her optimism that if the appeal hadn't been dropped, we would know what really happened. However, I still hope that some day the truth may come out. There is a broad agreement that the Lockerbie bombing was state-sponsored (be it Libya or another state). So there is still chance that truth will emerge one day from the archives of the state perpetrator. This happened in the case of assassinated Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov (no relation to me). After 1989, although the archives of our Communist security services were rigourously cleared, they still revealed evidence that Markov's murder was Bulgaria's deed.\nMy general impression from Highlander's post is that she has fallen in the trap of equating her homeland and people with the regime, a trap too often encountered by those living under rulers similar to Qadafi. E.g. she refers to Libyan authorities that had convicted the Bulgarian medics as \"those 'evil' Arabs\" (from Western point of view). I guess many other Libyans are in a similar mood. Therefore, I wish to end my post with a quote from the above mentioned Anglo's post. I am finding the quoted text so important that I'll mark it in bold:\n\"At the end of the day, whether he did this crime or not, Al-Megrahi was working for the Libyan intelligence and I do know from people that worked for Libyan Airlines in the 1980s that he was feared and was involved in many nasty acts against Libyans, this does not make him into a hero...\"\nPosted by Maya M at 2:21 AM\nLabels: nonfreedom, terror\nHighlander said...\nThanks Maya, excellent post but it still does not address my thoughts which are actually quite simpler.\nI never said Megrahi was a hero, the nature of his job is not something new but is on a par with that of other agencies viz FBI or CIA and could involve unpleasant work. That's life.\nWhat bothers me is the double standards metted out against anyone perceived of Arab/Muslim origin- like this person has less rights because of that.\nI am upset that people were outraged that he was freed and those same people were happy that the nurses were freed, denying others by extension the right to be upset or happy .\nIf we strip all the background of politics/deals the comparison is simple: reception vs reception after all both cases were of convicted murderers found guilty in at least one court.\nMaya M said...\nThank you for visiting and commenting, Highlander!\nI agree with you that it would be better not to celebrate the return of the Bulgarian medics, but as I mentioned on Anglo's blog, politicians couldn't miss such an occasion to advertise themselves.\nOn all other points, however, I see we agree to disagree :-).\nYou say, \"double standards are metted out against anyone perceived of Arab/Muslim origin - like this person has less rights because of that\".\nI could hardly agree after European countries accepted large masses of Arab and other Muslim immigrants at the same time when this privilege was denied to my relations and friends. A more recent example - the case of Marwa El-Sherbini, Egyptian Muslim immigrant to Germany about whom I recently blogged. A white non-Muslim man was on trial for insulting her, and she was the sole prosecution witness. As I mentioned in the current post, I have doubts in verdicts based on the testimony of a single person. I'll add, especially if this person cannot be considered unbiased. So the described setting isn't quite my idea of a fair trial. And if the accused hadn't went berserk and killed Marwa, I would not have heard about the story at all.\nYou say, \"both cases (Megrahi and the Bulgarian medics) were of convicted murderers found guilty in at least one court\". I don't think, however, that anybody in the West perceives the court in Libya as a court. Practically all Western nations have had similar courts at one or another moment in their history, and they do not wish ever to mess with such things again. And nobody expects to see any other sort of court in a country with such rulers. I seem to have spoken too softly about the impression left by Saif al-Islam and his father. For a Westerner, they are not only people with (to say the least) extremely different set of values. They are also people who aren't quite neurotypical and pretend to be even crazier than they really are in order to intimidate their \"partners\". The same tactic is used by Iran's Ahmadinejad, who is also holding very similar courts. The average person, when negotiating with somebody possessing both power and an uncertain psychiatric status, feels very insecure and is prone to extra concessions, so I shan't deny that the tactic works. However, it has a price and as long as it is used, you cannot expect other people to accept Libyan courts and government as their counterparts in other countries.\nWhen you wrote on your post, \"Sadly, the majority of Libyans are not that interested in Megrahi's fate\", I of course thought that you perceive him as a hero, or at least as a decent person. Now you write, \"I never said Megrahi was a hero, the nature of his job... is on a par with that of other agencies viz FBI or CIA and could involve unpleasant work\". Again, as with courts, I see undue comparison of apples and oranges. While the activity of any intelligence agency is likely to involve unpleasant work, my opinion is that the secret services of non-Western countries are unlikely to do any pleasant work at all. In Bulgaria, 20 years after the official fall of communism, we still cannot free ourselves from their sinister grip. In Russia, they are popularly called \"exterminators of the people\" (istrebiteli naroda). I know this from a book by repented Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, later poisoned by his former colleagues. So I bet that whatever was Megrahi doing in Malta under false identity, it wasn't for the benefit of Libyan people and all mankind. Of course he, like any (even the nastiest) human being, still has his rights. But why invest so much emotions?\nYour recent writing concerning the USA sound a little strange to me. They remind me Stanislaw Lem's novels about the impossibility of mutual understanding, \"Solaris\" and \"The Invincible\". At the same time, however, I am glad that you may be moving toward some opinions generally accepted in the Libyan community, and this may increase your own acceptance by this community.\nThe idea that Arabs are considered as less valuable human beings by Westerners is used as a working hypothesis by the International Solidarity Movement (and in 2003 by those Westerners who went to Iraq as human shields). Rachel Corrie once explicitly wrote that Israel gets away with killing Palestinians but would face a severe reaction in case of killing HER.\nI cannot say what impact this idea has on politicians, but it is certainly lost on me. I do not classify human beings in a hierarchy of value dependent on culture or ethnic origin. Moreover, Palestinians may not be my favourite group of people, but I have much more sympathy to them, as people with the poor luck to be born in a hellhole, than to Westerners such as the ISM members who travel thousands of miles to reach this hellhole and try their best to make it even more of a hellhole.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line11570"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5081650614738464,"wiki_prob":0.49183493852615356,"text":"Historical Photos & Documents\nOnline collections of pictures tell the history of our area and allow the viewer to experience the past. These collections are from many sources, including the Digital Library of South Dakota and the Library of Congress among others.\nBlack Hills Knowledge Network Digital Archives\nThe Black Hills Knowledge Network partners with 13 local libraries and communities to aggregate historical documents and photos. They are hosted on a site called BiblioBoard which is a system used worldwide to store local library resources. On this site, we house historical photos, documents, and books about the region's history, including items on the 1972 Rapid City flood, Native Americans, pioneers, the construction of Mount Rushmore, and more.\nIncluded are photos, documents, and books about the area's history, encompassing the communities of Deadwood and Whitewood. Rapid City archives, Rapid City Public Library history, and Flood of 1972 items are also available. To see a comprehesive list of all BHKN digital collections, visit our BHKN Digital Archives page.\nWe also aggregate local news stories on an indexing site called Diigo, which allows you to search by subject and receive results in a timeline fashion.\nRegional & National Collections\nTour downtown Rapid City to learn about the history of several historic buildings,such as the Duhamel building and Alex Johnson Hotel. Tour Deadwood online or take a walking tour and learn the history of the Deadwood buildings and architecture as you go.\nPretty Group at an Indian Tent. Taken near Pine Ridge by John C.H. Grabill, 1891.\nSouth Dakota State Historical Society Archives\nCollections of photos, manuscripts and government documents. Search from the home page to find all items by subject.\nDigital Library of South Dakota\nThis is a collaboration of the libraries of six Board of Regents colleges and universities in the state of South Dakota. Access images from the participating colleges' collections here.\nOglala Lakota College Library Archives\nThis collection contains documents and photographs relating to the Oglala Lakota College, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium. The OLC Archives also collects, preserves and makes accessible historical and cultural records of the Oglala Lakota people, the Lakota Nation, and other Native Americans.\nSouth Dakota School of Mines and Technology Collections\nThis collection contains documents, photographs and realia pertaining to collections on local history, mining and mineral resources and local history.\nLibrary of Congress Memory Project\nThis project is a \"gateway to the Library of Congress’s vast resources of digitized American historical materials. Comprising more than 9 million items that document U.S. history and culture, American Memory is organized into more than 100 thematic collections based on their original format, their subject matter, or who first created, assembled, or donated them to the Library.\" Type any search term you are interested in such as 'Black Hills' or 'South Dakota' into the search box in the top left area of the screen. The Library of Congress Flickr page also contains thousands of images. Click here to access their Flickr page.\nJohn Grabill Collection at the Library of Congress\nLargest surviving collection of western photographer John Grabill, this Library of Congress collection documents the South Dakota gold rush, the Oglalla Lakota people, and the settlement of western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. Photographs in collection were taken between 1887 and 1892.\nRapid City Community Archives Survey\nMany of the best photographs and most important documents that tell the history of our community are in boxes, file drawers and basements in businesses, churches, service clubs and organizations in Rapid City. The Rapid City Community Archives Survey offers you a glimpse into these fascinating collections.\nPhoto Collections--Cities of the Black Hills Region\nFrom the Library of Congress, view pictures from the past relating to Hot Springs.\nPhoto Collections - Contructions and Grand Opening of the City-County-Public Library-East at Western Dakota Technical Institute.This library served the community from November 2012-May 2015.\nhistorical photos and documents\nRapid City Organization Celebrates Women’s Equality Day\nIn 1920, Congress certified the 19th Amendment, giving women in the United States the right to vote – in 1971, Congress declared that August 26th…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1273148"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7433307766914368,"wiki_prob":0.7433307766914368,"text":"Posts Tagged ‘Buddhist’\nAmerican Imperialism Aiding the Saudi and Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of Indigenous Middle Eastern Christians\nThere’s been some coverage here in the west of the underground Christian church in China. China’s a Communist state, and although religion has been allowed to re-emerge after its ferocious persecution under Mao, it is heavily regulated. There’s an official church, which has to agree to and abide by the various conditions set down by the Communist authorities. Alongside this is a growing underground church, that meets in secret and is heavily persecuted because it is outside the control of the Communist party.\nFewer people, however, are aware that there’s also a growing underground church in Iran. The Anglican church in Tehran, which is recognised and tolerated, is remarkable for a Christian church in a Middle Eastern, Islamic country, in that most of its members are indigenous Iranians. About three per cent of the Iranian population is composed of Armenian Christians, who have their own churches. But outside these official, tolerated churches, there is a secret church of indigenous Iranians, who are turning from Islam to Christ. Apostasy is banned under Islamic, sharia law. The penalty has traditionally been death, although some law schools were of the opinion that the death penalty could only be imposed if the apostate then blasphemed against Islam. Other legal scholars stated that the apostate from Islam should be imprisoned for three days so that they could reconsider their decision to abandon Islam. If they repented during this time, they would be spared. This means that those Iranians converting to Christianity do so at the risk of their own lives. They are savagely persecuted and imprisoned. At the same time, the Iranian authorities surround the Armenian churches with armed police to make sure that only Armenians go there to worship. The Armenians have adopted a series of tactics to help their Iranian co-religionists avoid the police. One of these is teaching them a few words or phrases of Armenian, so that they can pass themselves off as Armenian Christians, and so avoid arrest, imprisonment and torture.\nThis isn’t widely known in the West, and I don’t think this is an accident. America is a profoundly religious country, but I think the support of religious freedom by the American military-industrial complex is, and has always been, cynically utilitarian. There was a massive campaign of Christian evangelism and preaching in America itself during the Cold War. You think of all the extreme right-wing Christian movements that emerged in the 50s, like Moral Re-Armament, and so on, that were dedicated not just to spreading Christianity, but also combatting Communism. Or, for that matter, just about any other left-wing, progressive movement. Even if it was led by other Christians. Communism is an aggressively materialistic political system. Marx actually wrote little about religion, beyond his famous words that it was ‘the opium of the people’, but he certainly believed his system was an extension of the materialist doctrines of the ancient world and the Enlightenment philosophes. He took over their critique of religion and that of Ludwig Feuerbach, which viewed religion as a projection of humanity’s own alienated essence, and extended it. Lenin himself was bitterly anti-religious, and the persecution of religious believers – Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, the followers of indigenous shamanic religions and so on – was state policy in many Communist countries.\nHence the promotion of Christianity and the defence of religious freedom against a persecuting, literally Satanic, evil empire was a useful ideological tool for the capitalist leaders of society during the Cold War. Thus much of the religious literature published during the Cold War stressed the anti-Christian nature of Communism to the point where this overshadowed the other atrocities and crimes against human rights committed by these regimes. Such as the artificial famines Stalin created during the collectivisation of agriculture, the deportation of ethnic minorities to Siberia and the persecution of dissenting socialist and Communist intellectuals.\nBut very little is said about the persecution of the underground Iranian church. And I don’t think this is an accident. I think it’s because it doesn’t serve American geopolitical interests, and those of its allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. China’s a Communist country, and so atheism is the official state dogma, even if it is not as rigorously enforced as it has been. But Iran and the other Middle Eastern countries are religious states to a greater or lesser degree. And American foreign policy in the Middle East has consisted of supporting theocratic and Islamic fundamentalist regimes and movements against secular Arab nationalism or socialism, as these are seen as too close to Communism. Hence the hostility to Gamal Nasser’s Egypt, which was socialist, but not Communist. In the case of Saudi Arabia, America and the West forged an alliance that goes back to the 1920s. In return for the right to exploit the country’s oil, America and the West pledged themselves to support the country and its rulers. Saudi Arabia is an extremely intolerant state, where the only permitted religion is Wahhabi Islam. No other religions are tolerated. There are indigenous Shi’a Muslims, but they are also savagely persecuted. Their villages do not have running water or electricity, and their religious literature and holy books will be confiscated if they are discovered by the authorities. A few years ago the Grand Mufti, the religious head of Saudi Arabia, declared that the Shi’a were heretics ‘worthy of death’, a chilling endorsement of religious genocide. And the Shi’a aren’t the only non-Wahhabi community to be subjected to his prayers for pious violence. The other year he also led prayers calling on Allah to destroy Jews and Christians.\nSaudi Arabia is one of the main sponsors of Islamist terrorism. It is not Iran, nor Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. 17 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and the trail from them goes all the way to the top of Saudi society. They were active sponsors of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, which became the Taliban. The current Saudi king and his head of intelligence were also responsible for funding and aiding al-Qaeda and ISIS in their attacks on the other Islamic nations of the region. In continuing to support Saudi Arabia, America, Britain and the other western countries are supporting a viciously intolerant state that persecutes other religions, including Christians.\nThe other pillar of western interests and foreign policy in the Middle East is Israel. Israel is a White, European/American settler state, and it looks towards Europe and America rather than the Middle East. And it’s also religiously intolerant. The official state religion is Orthodox Judaism. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state, and the Law of Return stipulates that only Jews may become citizens. The Israeli government has also repeatedly refused calls to allow the Palestinians, who fled the country in 1948 fearing massacre by the Israelis to return, as this would upset the ethnic composition of the country. At the same time the Israeli state has pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, expelling and massacring the indigenous Palestinian population. And this includes Christians.\nBefore the foundation of Israel in 1948, 25 per cent of the population of Palestine was Christian. Now it’s only one per cent. The literature on the dwindling Christian community states that this is because of pressure from both Israel and Islam. The Christian community has suffered persecution from Muslims, as they are seen as traitors, even though many Palestinian Christians are as bitterly opposed to the Israeli occupation as their compatriots. However, other historians have also pointed out that traditionally, Muslims and Christians coexisted peacefully in Palestine. In one of the papers on Israel and Palestine in Albert Hourani’s book, The Modern Middle East, it is stated that Muslim Palestinians traditionally regarded Christian churches as mawsin, an Arabic term which means holy, sacrosanct, and were thus treated with respect. Palestinian Christians, however, have complained about their treatment by the Israeli authorities. Special permits are required before new churches may be built, and the authorities are not keen to give them.\nAnd like Muslims, Christians have also been attacked by Israeli racist extremists. A little while ago a Christian monastery in Israel was the subject of a price-tag attack by Israeli extremists. The price-tag attacks are acts of destruction in retaliation for Palestinian attacks on Jews or Jewish property. They’re called ‘price-tag’ because the attackers leave a mock price-tag behind giving some cost for the damage done. The Israeli authorities were keen to distance their country from the attack, and tried to present it as somehow unique. But I got the distinct impression that this is far from the case. About ten or so years ago Channel 4 screened a programme by a Black presenter, in which he went to Israel and covered the maltreatment of Christians there. This included an attempt by a group of Orthodox Jews to terrorise the members of a church of Messianic Jews. In fact, the Messianic Jews were saved by the Muslim doorman, who effectively blocked the Orthodox posse from coming in. And the programme gave the impression that this was actually quite common, and that it was frequently Muslims, who saved Christians from violence at the hands of Jewish settlers.\nThis is all kept very hidden from the American Christian public. The tours of Israel arranged by right-wing Christian Zionist groups in America and the Israeli authorities will not allow American or western Christians to meet their Palestinian co-religionists. And while there’s a considerable amount of information on the web about Israeli intolerance and persecution of Christians, in the mainstream western media it is always presented as the fault of Muslims. And the right-wing press, such as the Times and Telegraph, have published any number of articles presenting Israel as the protector of the region’s Christians, often with quotes from a Christian Arab to that effect. Thus the Christian Zionist right in America are supporting a state, which has expelled the majority of its indigenous Christians from its borders and continues to limit their freedom of worship. Just as it does Muslims.\nSome of the motivation behind this Christian Zionism is based in apocalyptic theology. Christian Zionism started in the 19th century, when some Christians decided that they wanted to refound the ancient state of Israel in order to bring about Christ’s Second Coming. This now includes a final battle between good and evil. This used to be between the forces of capitalism and Communism, but has now morphed into the forces of the Christian West and Israel versus Islam. At the same time, the American Conservatives started supporting Israel in compensation for the defeats America had suffered in the Vietnam War, so that American Christian leaders declared that the Israelis shared their values.\nI also think there’s an element of religious imperialism here as well. In the 19th century British explorers to other parts of the Christian world, including Greece when it was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, and Abyssinia, declared that these nations’ traditional churches were backwards and obstacles to their peoples’ advancement. They therefore recommended that they should be destroyed, and the Greeks, Ethiopians or whoever should embrace one of the western forms of Christianity instead. it wouldn’t surprise me if the same attitude permeated American Zionist Christian attitudes towards Middle Eastern Christians. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the same kind of Christian fundamentalist pastors, who rant about how ‘Satanic’ Roman Catholicism is, also don’t believe that the ancient churches of the Middle East – the Syriac and Coptic Churches – are also not really Christian.\nThus American imperialism, and the Christian Zionists in the case of Israel, are supporting states dedicated to removing the indigenous Christian communities from their parts of the Middle East.\nAnd American Christians are more fervent in their Zionism than American Jews. Norman Finkelstein has repeatedly stated and demonstrated how American Jews were traditionally uninterested in Israel. And Tony Greenstein, a Jewish British critic of Zionism, has also shown that the majority of Jews around the world wished to remain in the Diaspora, but live as equal, respected citizens of the countries in which they were born. There are a growing number of Jewish Americans, who despise Israel because of the way it persecutes its indigenous Arab population. This includes Jews, who have suffered genuine anti-Semitism abuse and violence.\nWithin Israel itself, there is opposition to the official religious policy of the state. There is a sizable minority that would like a total separation between synagogue and state. Other Israelis don’t go this far, but do want Israel to become more secular. And there is tension between Reform Jews, and the Orthodox, who do not regard their theologically more liberal co-religionists to be proper Jews, and may even regard them as anti-Jewish.\nBut American Conservatives are unable or unwilling to understand Middle Eastern Christians, or why they would not want to support Israel. A few years ago Ted Cruz addressed a meeting of Middle Eastern Christians in America. This went well, until he started urging them to support Israel, at which point he was surprised to find that he was being booed. Part of his speech urged them to support the Israelis, because of the terrible persecution of Jews in the past. But the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected this argument, pointing out that they are being persecuted by the Israelis because of the way Europeans persecuted Jews. Cruz walked off, making comments about anti-Semitism, if I recall correctly. He failed to understand that to his audience, the Israelis were those doing the persecuting.\nAnd this ignorance and the views and political situation of indigenous Middle Eastern Christians seems to be common to elite America. It’s shown by Trump’s decision to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, which has been supported by the leader of the Democrats in Congress, Chuck Schumer, and Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. All of whom will stress their identity as Christians when it suits them.\nIt isn’t just rising Islamism and Muslim intolerance in the Middle East that is a threat to the indigenous Christian communities there. It is also American imperialism, and the country’s alliance with the ethnic and religiously intolerant regimes of Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thus, the media only covers Christian persecution when they can blamed it on Islam, But when it’s awkward for the American, and western military-industrial complex, the media is silent about it.\nTags:'Military-Industrial Complex', 'The Modern Middle East', 'The Telegraph', 9/11, Abyssinia, al-Qaeda, Albert Hourani, American Embassy, Anglican Church, anti-semitism, Apostasy, Arab Nationalism, Armenian Language, Armenians, Atrocities, Barak Obama, Blacks, Blasphemy, Buddhist, Chairman Mao, Channel 4, Christian Zionism, Christianity, Chuck Schumer, Churches, Cold War, Collectivisation, Congress, Conservatives, Coptic Church, Death Penalty, Democrat Party, Deportations, Diaspora, Donald Trump, Enlightenment, Ethnic Cleansing, Famine, Gamal Nasser, Genocide, Grand Mufti, Hillary Clinton, Imperialism, Intelligence Agencies, Internet, ISIS, Jerusalem, Jesus, Karl Marx, lenin, Ludwig Feuerbach, Massacres, Messianic Jews, Middle East, Monsteries, Moral Re-Armament, Mujahideen, Norman Finkelstein, Oil Industry, Orthodox Jews, Ottoman Empire, Philosophes, Reform Jews, Saddam Hussein, Second Coming, Shamanism, Sharia Law, Shi'a, Siberia, stalin, Syriac Churches, Taoists, Ted Cruz, Tehran, The Times, Tony Greenstein, Torture, Underground Church, Vietnam War, Wahhabism, Zionism\nPosted in Afghanistan, Agriculture, America, Arabs, Armenia, Atheism, communism, Crime, Economics, Egypt, Electricity, Greece, History, Industry, Iran, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Languages, Law, LIterature, OIl, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Prayers, Roman Catholicism, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Socialism, Syriac, Television, Terrorism, The Press, Water | 1 Comment »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line550234"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8137456178665161,"wiki_prob":0.8137456178665161,"text":"By Simeon on September 3, 2015 • ( 1 Comment )\nKurara Chibana – The real winner for beauty pageant fans\n“During my childhood I was outside a lot doing sports such as swimming and tennis. I was a tomboy when I was small, full of energy and even when I was small, I was always curious and would often go on my own to discover new places…. My career ambition for the future is to become a world-renowned reporter, travelling around the world and interviewing influential people in all kind of areas.” This is how the smart and bubbly personality, Kurara Chibana described her childhood and ambitions in Miss Universe 2006 contestants profile interview. No wonder she is now travelling all over the world as a model, TV reporter and a humanitarian. She is a fashion icon and role model for the youth of Japan.\nKurara is an intellectual woman with an interest in global education, language and cultures. She is an education philosophy graduate from Sophia University, lived in France for nine months and Spain for three months. As someone who is interested in languages, she learnt French and Spanish. She can speak English, French Spanish and Japanese. Isn’t that incredible? She entered beauty pageant with a mission and to use the platform for bigger opportunities. Even before entering Miss Universe Japan pageant, Kurara, was hired as a features’ reporter for a top fashion magazine in Japan. Her duty was to fly around the world to interview unique people in the entertainment world and to report about them and about their personal lifestyles. After winning Miss Universe Japan 2006, she was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission Refugees). She is the prodigy of the well-known French fashion and beauty expert, Ines Ligron – the then National Director of Miss Universe Japan who revamped the contest and gave a new life to the almost non-existent contest.\nAt the Miss Universe pageant in 2006, she became a heavy favourite of fans all over the world. She presented herself as a well-educated woman with international aspirations who wanted to become an international journalist or writer. Her striking looks and intelligent personality, many thought, was enough for her to win the crown. She was smart and epitomizes someone who is sassy and cosmopolitan. During the contest, Chibana was the crowd favourite and her flirty winks drew an unusually enthusiastic response from the audience. At the preliminaries, she sported a unique red and pink-hued gown with silver corseting designed by Novespazio. The gown looks good on her and the colour combination definitely match up to her soft demeanour.\nThen the final night came. She definitely was a top contender to walk away with the title and who knew there could be a disappointment later. She had an amazing stage presence, can connect with the audience and of course, she was stunning. Who would forget the Best national costume of the night! That year Japan experimented with its national costume. Not that it had ever experimented with its national costume before. But it was different that time. It wasn’t just the dress but also the sword that made it unique. I would call her the Samurai Warrior. I have seen many national costumes round of Miss Universe before and every time it would be more or less the same – from bird wings inspired feathers costume to flower inspired costume to the bride’s dress costume. Japan had the most interesting and unique costume that made it stood out among the various national costumes and from her own previous representative costumes. The Samurai Costume instantly became a hit all over the globe. No wonder it won the Best National Costume Award.\nThe opening of Miss Universe 2006 started with the pre taped introduction of the delegates in their national costumes. Japan worked it out like a true warrior. Her costume from top to bottom was simply amazing. The bun hair with the front hair falling smoothly made her looked so edgy and sharp while the way she swings the sword was a solid performance for an introduction. Then the top 20 were called for swimsuit round. When Japan was called out, her happiness and joy was sweet and cute. Kurara in swimsuit round rocked the stage with her spunky, lively, bold and spirited energy. She dazzled in swimsuit round. Then came the top 10 evening gown round. As expected she made it to the top 10. For evening gown round, she wore a black evening gown exhibiting intricate latticework designed by Olivier Theyskens for Rochas. Looking at her black gown from far, it looked so simple but then looking closer one see’s the embroidery on the dress; It was simplicity meet with intricate embellishment. The gown had its own charm and Chibana walked unlike her swimsuit round. In evening gown round she chose to walk in a calm and composed manner. The gown in fact suited that style of walk. She knows how to project herself and that’s her plus point. Her soft demeanour and unique style projection presented a sophisticated and high culture classy woman. As the night progressed, she became the audience favourite and the audiences were cheering for her. She was very good at acknowledging the crowd.\nThe top 5 came and this is the controversy everyone has been talking about. Kurara was the third contestant to be called on stage. Miss Switzerland congratulated her and she reciprocated the same by closely leaning and gave her a peck on the cheek. She also congratulated Paraguay. That gesture of reciprocating back and being excited for her competitor was truly sweet of her. It only shows her how humble and warm she is. One doesn’t get to see that alot on stage. Kurara was asked how she learned French and Spanish. It was very funny and humorous when she started speaking French and her translator couldn’t translate it. She had to translate herself. The audience at that time was definitely impressed and cheered for her. It was the night for Japan. She acknowledged the audience and the energy of the room and said it made her happy. The audience cheered with delight as she became the crowd’s darling. The final question was “If you could change something in the history of humanity, what would you change and why?” Responding in Japanese and translated into English, she answered: “I believe there is not so much difference between men and women… only biggest difference will be the physical power of a man and sometimes men exploit his power and if we can only relinquish that kind of violence and also the kind of exploitation, we’ll be better.” Everyone thought she would be the one to win and there was no doubt about that. But the unexpected happened and she became 1st runner-up to Miss Puerto Rico Though Zuleyka was at her best and she shined, but many thought Kurara was more deserving. And many blamed it on the translator. It was alleged that the official Miss Universe interpreter missed out the feminist element of her answer, which apparently cost her the crown.\nShe has done the best she could. Though she might have won the crown but she has won the hearts and minds of pageant fans. It wouldn’t have been possible without a realistic and practical National Director who knows what she is doing. From the elegant and glamorous gown to an innovative national costume, from a ramp-walk skills for swimsuit and evening gown round to the way a beauty queen should conduct herself, Ines has a lot to play in this. She is the one who is responsible for making Miss Universe Japan relevant again giving it a glamorous touch to the contest. Having said that the credit also goes to Japanese beauty queens who worked hard and learned all they could with dedication and sincerity.\nComing back to Kurara Chibana, after the miss universe competition she has appeared regularly on the NTV show “NEWS ZERO”, reporting from both domestic and international locations, and launched her endorsement career as a spokesperson for more than four world-famous brands in 2007. She is the new spokeswoman for Maybelline New York’s Angel fit Make-Up. As a high-profile model – she has been gracing the cover of Domani magazine for the past six years – Chibana has become someone to whom many young Japanese women look up to her as a role model.\nThe smart, educated, gorgeous and global minded is also working for a worthy cause. Since 2007 Kurara has been a supporter of World Food Programme (WFP) which has taken her to African countries such as Tanzania and Zambia. In 2013 Kurara Chibana was appointed the first Japanese National Ambassador against Hunger for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) She is involved in the WFP’s school project that provides meals at schools in areas hit by poverty or disaster. She has actively spread the word about hunger and WFP’s mission to end it through media and public events. “I always wanted an opportunity to go to impoverished countries and see for myself the conditions and encounter locals,” she said. “It has become such an important part of me that I can’t talk about my life without mentioning it. In Japan, not many people experience starvation at that level, so what really shocked me was seeing children who look young but their weight isn’t up to their age level. I’d ask them what they had for breakfast and they’d say the root of a tree.”\nOn her experiences on social works, Chibana says she learned the power of a smile. “Children are the same all over the world. They are lively and can have fun even when there is a food shortage. I go to visit them in schools and they are studying cheerfully. That’s why I like the school meal project that I am involved in. It actually gives me energy.” She is aware that she would be scrutinize of her work and there would be people sceptical about her involvement in the project. “I was a little conflicted at first as to whether I should take part in humanitarian projects,” she tells Weekender. “I was aware of the scepticism that surrounds celebrity charity work and I knew there was a chance I would be criticized. I felt there would be some people here in Japan who might question my reasons and possibly suggest I was doing it for the fame or to sell something. It made me feel uneasy, yet at the same I had longed to engage in NGO and NPO activities. That was the reason I decided to take part in Miss Universe in the first place, so I was determined not to let negative thoughts kill those dreams”. She continued, “I couldn’t devote my whole time to visiting developing countries as I had work commitments in Japan, yet at the same time I wanted to do something. The Miss Universe pageant gave me a huge opportunity, it put me in the spotlight; people suddenly knew who I was and were interested in what I had to say. I realized I could use that fact to try and inform the public about problems and critical situations in various places around the world. Being famous gives you a huge platform to pass on your message to a large number of people; I think we should use that platform to help worthwhile causes as much as we can.” “I travel to at least one destination per year, visiting people affected by hunger,” she says.\n“I’ve been to Zambia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the Tohoku region, Tanzania and Ethiopia. I think it is necessary to see the situation up-close and be able to talk to parents and children directly. I’m particularly passionate about the school feeding program. Seeing the joy on the kids faces as they eat their lunch, I just love it. “Of course there are times when you feel helpless. Speaking to children in Zambia who have lost both their parents to AIDS, it is heartbreaking. All I can really do is try to spread their message to as many people as possible in the hope that something can be done about this kind of thing in the future.”\nShe had in the past declined a lucrative job from a publishing company so as to be able to participate in Miss Universe pageant and opened a bigger opportunities for herself so that she could use it for the benefit of the society. It is this stint of her as the ambassador of UNWFP that she was referring to when she talked about bigger opportunities. From the way she talks, it is evident that she means it when she talked about working for the underprivileged and her role as an ambassador for WFP. She might not have won Miss Universe but she is Miss Universe for many hearts. She has already showed her capabilities with her bubbly personality, intelligent answers, runway skills and unique styles. Miss Universe 2006 has long gone but to these days she still impresses and charms everyone with her personality, style, sincerity, multilingual skills, and of course, beauty. She has this ability to connect with people and enchant them. She is here to see and hear people’s story and learn from them to be able to share it to the rest of the world. One of the best Miss Universe Japan and a true gem.\nSources: http://www.missuniverse.com, www.wfp.org, www.japantoday.com, http://www.borgenproject.org , Wikepedia etc.\nCategories: OPINION, WORLD PAGEANT\nTagged as: Ines Ligron, Kurara Chibana, MISS UNIVERSE, Miss Universe Japan\nFrankie Cena – The Talented Mr World Canada 2012\nPriyanka Chopra – Her fairy tale journey from a small town girl to a Global star\n1 reply\t›\nPingback: A striking viking: Miss Universe’s national costume contest and nationhood. – Gudrun D Whitehead","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1144786"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8251855373382568,"wiki_prob":0.8251855373382568,"text":"January 9, 2020 / 7:53 PM / 8 days ago\nFed's Kaplan says rates 'appropriate,' flags balance sheet concern\nAnn Saphir\nDALLAS (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve has interest rates just about where they need to be to keep the U.S. economy growing, push down on unemployment and coax inflation back up to 2%, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan said on Thursday.\nDallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan speaks during an interview in his office at the bank's headquarters in Dallas, Texas, U.S. January 9, 2020. REUTERS/ Ann Saphir\nBut the central bank’s massive balance sheet, at $4 trillion and growing? That’s a potential problem for Kaplan, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose expertise in markets may give him an influential voice in deliberations at the Fed over what, if anything, to do about it.\nTo Kaplan, figuring out how to temper growth in the Fed’s securities holdings will be a major focus for him and his staff in the new year.\nHis goal, he told Reuters, is to keep an expanding portfolio from fueling excesses in a financial system that — amid historically low interest rates, optimism on trade and other factors — is already showing some signs of elevated asset prices.\n“I’m going to be wanting to actively explore options that would allow us to restrain from here growth in the Fed balance sheet,” Kaplan told Reuters in an interview at his bank’s Dallas headquarters. “I do think the growth in the balance sheet is having some impact on the financial markets and on the valuation of risk assets...I want to be cognizant of not adding more fuel that could help create further excesses and imbalances.”\nPossible options, he said, include a “hard look” at the differences between how regulators treat banks’ holdings of Treasuries and reserves, and establishing a so-called standing repo facility that would allow banks to tap liquidity when needed.\nLast fall an unexpected spike in short-term funding costs put the central bank on notice that its balance sheet might have gotten too small to accommodate banks’ need for liquidity. It had previously been systematically trimming its balance sheet as part of its pursuit of a more normal footprint in financial markets, following its large bond purchases after the crisis.\nBut the spike in short-term rates forced it to do an about face. It began injecting billions of dollars into the so-called repo market that banks tap for cash lending, and has been buying $60 billion a month in U.S. Treasury bills to expand its balance sheet to make sure there are ample reserves in its system to control its key target for lending rates.\nSetting up a standing repo facility, Kaplan said, “might allow us to be more efficient with the overall size of our balance sheet, and it might also change (banks’) thinking about their need to hold reserves.” Such a facility would allow banks to easily trade their Treasuries for cash.\nKaplan declined to say how big he thinks the Fed’s balance sheet should be. And, he said, the central bank has a lot to debate on how exactly to structure a standing repo facility, including counterparties, where rates should be set, and what eligible collateral should be.\nRATES AND INFLATION\nAfter three rate cuts last year, the Fed’s current target range of 1.5% to 1.75% for short-term borrowing costs is “a roughly appropriate setting,” Kaplan said in the interview.\nU.S. GDP, he said, looks to grow about 2% to 2.25% this year, “and if anything my growth outlook has firmed a bit in the last several weeks.”\nThat solid pace of growth - faster than his 1.75% to 2% estimate of the economy’s long-run sustainable pace — is driven largely by a strong consumer. Global growth and U.S. manufacturing he projected would remain sluggish but stable, and U.S. business investment should firm.\nThe Fed has indicated it will leave rates where they are unless there is a “material” change in the outlook, a view that Kaplan said he backed.\n“If I saw growth running above potential... I’d be willing also to tolerate inflation running above 2% for some period of time, but I’m going to take into account other factors, including financial stability and the building of excesses and imbalances, and I will weigh all those factors in determining whether I think there should be an adjustment to monetary policy.”\n(This story has been refiled to add dropped word in 8th paragraph)\nReporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1508364"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9370283484458923,"wiki_prob":0.9370283484458923,"text":"PhotoSPEAK\nYou MUST Respect the Greatness!\nIf Tom Brady rated his performance, nothing more, it was ho-hum at best.\nIn fact, going strictly by the numbers, it was the worst Super Bowl showing of his brilliant career.\nBrady will gladly trade stats for championships.\nOn a night when the defenses ruled, Brady did just enough to win his sixth Super Bowl ring , leading the New England Patriots to an aesthetically unpleasing 13-3 victory Sunday over the Los Angeles Rams.\nIn last year’s Super Bowl, Brady threw for 505 yards and three touchdowns but walked off the field with his head down as the Philadelphia Eagles celebrated a 41-33 victory.\n“We just couldn’t put points on the board for one reason or another,” he said. “But in the end, it feels a lot better than last year when we did get some points on the board.”\nBrady completed 21 of 35 passes for 262 yards with one interception, leaving him with a rather measly passer rating of 71.4. That is the worst figure of his nine Super Bowl appearances, and marked the first time he failed to throw for at least one touchdown pass in the championship game.\nAgain, no problem.\n“We obviously could have played better offensively,” Brady said, “but the reality is (when) you get in these games, you just have to find a way to win. We played well in the end and that’s what we needed.”\nIndeed, Brady finally found his vintage form on the lone touchdown drive of the night. He hit four straight passes for 67 yards — the best of them a pinpoint tossthreaded amid three defenders that dropped into the hands of Rob Gronkowski for a 29-yard gain to the Los Angeles 2.\n“Incredible catch,” Brady said. “He’s an awesome player, great teammate, friend, and I’m just so proud of everything that he’s done for our team.”\nOn the very next play, Sony Michel darted into the end zone to break a 3-all tie.\nNot long after, Brady was taking a knee to become the first player in NFL history to win six Super Bowl titles.\nThe first one came against the Rams, way back in 2002, when that franchise was still St. Louis and known as the “The Greatest Show On Turf.”\nNow, at age 41, Brady has gotten started on a ring for every finger on his other hand.\n“There’s been a lot of guys be part of this journey with this team and it’s just been so fun to be a part of it,” Brady said. “It’s a challenging football environment, the pressure is always on, and for moments like this, you have to rise to the occasion.”\nSure, it was the lowest-scoring Super Bowl ever, a game that won’t be remembered fondly by anyone outside of New England.\nFor Brady, it might be the favorite of all his titles.\nThis one took a team.\nThe whole team.\n“We needed everyone out there,” he said. “The defense played so well, and we finally helped them out by getting a touchdown.”\nImage NFL on ESPN twitter\nMentioned In This Post:\nThe Mighty Has Fallen\nNFL Players Are Tired of His Shit\nAB Has a Message For Patriots Owner\nIs Tom Trolling All Of us?\nThe Champagne Is Flowing In NYC Once Again\nSo Long Gronk, See You in Canton!\nI'm Sorry But I'm Not Guilty\nIf You Are About It, Gamble on Yourself!\nPatriots Owner Charged in Prostitution Sting\nRunning Out of Money Already?\nRomeo Miller and the Ex's on the Beach\nA Holiday Special Unlike The Rest\nWe Just De-Stressed Your Holidays\nThe BFF's Are Back To Host The Soul Train Awards\nThere's a New Hero in Town to Fight Against Bullying\nTubi Has A Message for the Bachelor Nation\nFall Fashion Hacks (Video)\nBlack Ink Chicago Crew Is Back And Shit Done Changed!\nSign up for The Weekly Trending Report List\nThe Trending Report\nYour new digital destination for Authentic content in the world of News, Entertainment and Sports.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line217729"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9263597130775452,"wiki_prob":0.9263597130775452,"text":"TransCanada says spill clean up underway in South Dakota as pipeline vote looms\nIan Bickis CP\nCALGARY — TransCanada Corp. said Friday that work is well underway to clean up a sizable oil leak at its Keystone pipeline in South Dakota that occurred days before a vote on the fate of the company's flagship pipeline proposal.\nThe company said about 75 crew members, as well as government officials, are on site near Amherst, S.D., with a full complement of clean-up equipment to contain the 795,000-litre spill in a farmer's field.\n\"TransCanada has taken this incident very seriously and is working with federal and state regulatory agencies,\" the company said in an update.\nThe company said it has observed no further environmental impacts and no threat to public safety, though the nearby Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation has expressed concern the spill might contaminate water supplies.\nThursday's spill comes four days before Nebraska is set to vote on whether TransCanada can go ahead with Keystone XL pipeline, which would take a more direct route than the existing Keystone pipeline by going through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with pipelines that feed Texas Gulf Coast refineries.\nEnvironmentalists were quick to point to the spill as reason to reject the Keystone XL project, but state officials said Friday the spill won't affect their decision.\nA spokeswoman for the Nebraska Public Service Commission said commissioners will base their decision solely on evidence presented during public hearings and from official public comments.\nA Nebraska law approved in 2011 prevents the commissioners from factoring pipeline safety or the possibility of leaks into their decisions. Lawmakers argued at the time that pipeline safety was a federal responsibility that pre-empts state law. Opponents say oil interests lobbied for the restriction.\nThe news might not sway the vote, but will bring greater focus to the issue, said James Coleman, an energy law expert at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.\n\"It's the worst possible timing, and it's a reasonably big spill....I think most people expect the commissioners to approve it regardless, but nonetheless, it's not helpful.\"\nAmong other concerns, opponents of Keystone XL say the pipeline would pass through the Sandhills, an ecologically fragile region in Nebraska of grass-covered sand dunes, and would cross the land of farmers and ranchers who don't want it.\n\"There's some states where the big issue is climate change, but Nebraska, the issue has been those local land-use impacts, and so I'm sure the commissioners will have that in mind,\" said Coleman.\nThe spill near the border of Minnesota and the source of the Minnesota River has certainly raised concerns about Enbridge's (TSX:ENB) Line 3 pipeline replacement project in the state, said Coleman.\nHe said he wasn't sure, however, whether this Keystone spill will have an impact on current review of the pipeline in the state that's already approved elsewhere, but it certainly will add fodder to those campaigning against oil pipelines.\n\"I think that this will continue to be a bigger and bigger political issue because, as climate campaigners haven't had success in other areas, they feel like this is one area where they've been reasonably successful.\"\nProtesters have already started setting up camps and planning direct action to stop Enbridge's Line 3 construction, which is already underway in Canada.\nPipeline opponents have also vowed to stop the Keystone XL pipeline if it is approved, having once declared victory on the project when Barack Obama rejected it in 2015, only for President Donald Trump to give the go-ahead earlier this year.\nShares of TransCanada (TSX:TRP) were down 1.2 per cent in early afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, as the energy sector rose half a percentage point.\n-With files from AP\nMORE: cp canada","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1024518"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7416836619377136,"wiki_prob":0.7416836619377136,"text":"Mission and HistoryTim Norris2018-10-17T14:23:06-07:00\nA Contemporary Theatre (ACT) is dedicated to producing relevant works on contemporary themes. ACT nurtures new and seasoned artists, collaborates with promising playwrights and local performing artists working in a variety of media, and connects audiences to many stages of the creative process.\nA Contemporary Theatre – ACT was founded in the summer of 1965 by Gregory A. Falls (1922-1997), head of the University of Washington’s theater department at the time. The theatre thrived in a former community hall at the base of Queen Anne Hill until 1996 when they moved into their new home, the historic Eagles Auditorium in downtown Seattle. The Eagles Auditorium Building is an eight-story historic theatre and apartment building built in 1924-25. Designed by noted local architect Henry Bittman, it was erected by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, Seattle Aerie No. 1 in 1924-25. Since its construction, the Eagles Temple was in continuous use as the lodge for F.O.E. Aerie No. 1 until August, 1981. The building also has a national history for those who have spoken or held concerts at this location. The Eagles Auditorium is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at his one and only visit to Seattle on November 10, 1961. The building served as a major rock concert venue from the mid-1960s until 1970. Some of the legendary rock bands that utilized the venue included The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Chicago, Richard Berry, Pink Floyd, Duran Duran, and more. For ACT, the building provides five performance spaces, supporting our mission to nurture new and seasoned artists and connecting audiences to many stages of the creative process.\nACT produces five primary programs: Mainstage, ACTLab, Young Playwrights Program (YPP), Core Company, and the New Work initiative to fulfill our mission and supports these with multiple complementary initiatives to engage audiences, develop new works, and keep the art accessible.\nSix plays each year with over 300 in our rich history including 49 World Premieres. The Mainstage Plays epitomize ACT’s reputation for presenting innovative, challenging, entertaining and relevant work. We are a contemporary theatre because of our contributions to new works and because of the relevant, contemporary themes we explore in classic material. Our 2017 Season premiered Moby Pomerance’s play Alex & Aris, a play that was commissioned by ACT, developed, workshopped and then produced. Likewise, King of the Yees by Lauren Yee, began in the ACTLab in 2015, went on to a World Premiere at the Goodman Theatre and returned to ACT for our 2017 Season.\nACTLab is a curated partnership program that fills our multi theatre venue with innovative theatrical experiences off the path traveled by the mainstage. By forming financial and artistic partnership. ACTLab serves as Seattle’s incubator for individual artist and theatre companies to experiment, grow, and reach new audiences by cultivating new ideas and experimentation in a collaborate environment.\nACT's Young Playwrights Program (YPP)\nYPP started in 2002 and upgraded the curriculum to meet state learning standards in 2015. The YPP is an integrated 10-week, 20 class program that serves 6th through 12th grade students in both public and private schools in the Puget Sound area. Our program embeds teaching artists in school classrooms teaching the art of play writing. YPP builds confidence which, research suggests, positively impacts other areas of learning. Every student writes a play. Many of the plays are read at school events including evening programs and school day assemblies. Eight plays are selected for ACT’s Young Playwrights Festival produced in March and as many as ten additional plays are selected for production at our partner theatres.\nLaunched in 2016, the Core Company is an annually selected group of actors. Its purpose is to encourage an environment of artistic excellence, while creating a home for local actors to experiment and grow over the course of the season. Core Company Members are guaranteed at least two shows in the season, and serve as artistic ambassadors. They represent ACT at audience and community engagement events, serve as spokespeople for ACT’s Mainstage productions, and support the greater mission of ACT.\nHoliday Classic\nA Christmas Carol: In 1976, ACT inaugurated an annual Seattle holiday tradition with Gregory Falls’s own adaptation of the classic script by Charles Dickens and has continued every holiday season since. This classic favorite has become a holiday tradition for many in Seattle.\nComplementary Programming\nACT supports our primary programs with our Core Company, Engagement Programs, the New Works Initiative, and Discount Ticketing.\nClick here for the full production history","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line644037"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8299670219421387,"wiki_prob":0.8299670219421387,"text":"UN torture expert to launch new human rights book at Amnesty event\nThe United Nations expert on combating torture - Juan Mendez - will launch his new book on human rights at a special event at the east London headquarters of Amnesty International UK on Monday 14 November.\nMr Mendez, who is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, will be in conversation with Philippe Sands, professor of law at University College London at a public event.\nJuan Mendez, 66, an Argentinian national and former Amnesty “prisoner of conscience” who himself suffered torture during the country’s “dirty war” military, is expected to comment on the significance of the forthcoming inquiry into allegations of the UK’s involvement in torture and other human rights violations during the “war on terror”.\nHe will also be talking about his book, Taking A Stand: the evolution of human rights (Palgrave Macmillan), and taking part in an audience question-and-answer session.\nWho: Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture; Philippe Sands, Professor of Law, UCL, London; Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK Director (chair of event)\nWhat: “in conversation” event, with audience questions; followed by book-signing and drinks\nWhen: 6.30 for 7pm start, Monday 14 November 2011\nWhere: Amnesty International UK, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA\nMore information: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1976\nView latest press releases","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line70669"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7102171778678894,"wiki_prob":0.7102171778678894,"text":"Saleem Safi\nTV Anchor\nPrideofPakistan\nHailing from District Mardan of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, Saleem Safi graduated from the University of Peshawar. He started his career as a reporter for NNI (News Network International) in Mardan. Due to his exceptional skills and\nProfessional Achievements\nHailing from District Mardan of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, Saleem Safi graduated from the University of Peshawar. He started his career as a reporter for NNI (News Network International) in Mardan. Due to his exceptional skills and keen eye for news, he was quickly promoted to the post of Beauru Chief of NNI in the key city of Peshawar, from where he was covering all of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, FATA and Afghanistan. He was one of the youngest journalists ever appointed to this position.\nBeing a successful and impact full journalist, Saleem Safi also started writing columns for national newspapers. His columns in Daily Mashriq, Daily Aaj and Daily Pakistan were not only widely read but also were appreciated for uncovering the true facts and for in depth coverage of an emerging situation in the pre and post 9/11 scenario.\nThrough his writings in more than one thousand columns, Saleem Safi discussed Pakistani politics, foreign policy, Afghanistan and socio religious issues. His in depth understanding of the issues in the region made him a valuable reservoir of knowledge especially in the post 9/11 context.\nHe also started writing books and in 2004, his first book, Afghanistan: The Role of US, Taliban and Pakistani Religious Parties, received wide spread acclaim and he became a successful author. He is in the process of writing his second book.\nSaleem Safi also started working for electronic media following the electronic media boom in Pakistan. He hosted his own prime time Pushto talk show, Jirga from PTV Peshawar from 2002 to 2004. Due to popular demand he again started show but on PTV World, ‘Saleem Safi Kay Saath’ in Urdu in 2005 from Islamabad, which he hosted till 2008. From 2007 to 2008 he also hosted a talk show, ‘Siyasat’ on the Pushto language TV channel, Khyber.\nAt the end of 2008, he joined Pakistan’s largest media group Jang and Geo TV as an anchor, columnist and analyst. He is currently hosting a show with the name of Jirga, and writes in the News and Jang with the same name.\nSaleem’s talk shows and documentaries are widely seen across the country. He has conducted hard hitting interviews of many national and international leaders and stakeholders in the region such as Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf, Asif Ali Zardari, Hamid Karzai, Fazal-ur-Rehman, Gulbadin Hikmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Abdullah Abdullah and other political, religious and jihadi leaders.\nSaleem Safi is working on new initiatives to further his work.\nPrideofpakistan.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line851846"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6413375735282898,"wiki_prob":0.3586624264717102,"text":"Egyptian FM hands over G77 chairmanship to Palestine\nAhram Online , Tuesday 15 Jan 2019\nEgypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry attending on Tuesday in New York the Group 77 (G77) ceremony (Photo: Egyptian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson)\nEgypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is attending on Tuesday in New York the Group 77 (G77) ceremony to mark the handover of the group’s chairmanship from Egypt to Palestine, Shoukry’s spokesperson Ahmed Hafez tweeted.\n\"Egypt strove to represent the interests of the G77... we pushed forward the group’s objectives and values of equality and justice for which we aspire in the international system and the United Nations,\" Shoukry said during the opening speech at the ceremony.\nThe ceremony is held at the UN headquarters in the presence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.\nDuring his speech, Shoukry highlighted that \"G77 exerted tremendous efforts to reinforce the organisation’s ability to deal with challenges related to peace & security; especially, through developing preventive diplomacy, addressing roots of conflicts, and supporting cooperation with regional organisations.\"\n\"We further focused on the priorities of eradicating poverty, youth employment and production capabilities ... and we succeeded in advancing our vision.\"\nEgypt's third time chairing the G77 is part of the country's leading role in serving the interests of developing countries and its belief in the principles and goals of the group, Hafez said.\nThe G77 and China is the main negotiating bloc in the UN for developing countries that works on boosting the economic and development interests of its members.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line150435"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.734627366065979,"wiki_prob":0.265372633934021,"text":"Meredith Shur, MD\nClinical instructor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine\nBoard-certified in obstetrics and gynecology\nPracticing doctor at East Side Women’s Ob-Gyn Associates\nBoard-certified medical examiner\nMeredith Shur, MD, is a former Medical Review Board member with Verywell. She is board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and she is a clinical instructor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Since 2004, Dr. Shur has practiced at east Side Women’s Ob-Gyn Associates in New York, New York.\nDr. Shur is a graduate of University of Virginia and Albany Medical College. She completed her residency and chief residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Mount Sinai Medical Center.\nVerywell is a caring and trusted partner that provides comprehensive, actionable, and medically reviewed information to assist you in understanding your health and wellness concerns. Our medical review team is comprised of leading board-certified physicians in the fields of cardiology, oncology, neurology, internal medicine, gastroenterology, psychiatry, gynecology and obstetrics, rheumatology, pulmonology, dermatology, and pediatrics. To provide our readers with the most thorough and accurate content, Verywell strongly believes that all of these specialities must work together.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line48079"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7348018288612366,"wiki_prob":0.2651981711387634,"text":"Tag Archives: Congress\nThis is a revised post from 2010. So much of it is still relevant, but a lot has changed since then. And not for the better. I’ll repost it more or less as is and use it as a starting point for my current political thoughts as we get closer to the election….\nI’ve thought a lot about this over the last few days as we head to the 2010 election. For Progressive’s like me, it’s forecast to be a rough one who’s results may lead us backward as opposed to foreward.\nAnd, once again, the South will lead us there. We’ve always been good at looking fondly backward in the South–whether the facts support it or not. That makes for fertile ground for the Republicans. I’ve always said: “Republicans look backwards with Fear while Democrats look forward with Hope.\nThat got me thinking. Why is it the South is such a stronghold for the Republicans? Here are my thoughts:\nThe South is heavy with fundamentalists and evangelical religions. These people have been played by the Republican Party like a cheap violin. Here is what I would say to them: Open your eyes. Under Bush, the Republicans controlled the government and did not ban abortion or execute any of the other points of your agenda. If they didn’t do it then, they won’t do it now. They are using you. Wise up.\nThere is a history of Patriarchy in the South that is not dead. Many people, especially in smaller towns and rural areas, still follow the leadership of local political leaders with little thought. They are used to being led without questions or taking time to check the facts because they think they “know” the person and he/she is “one of us.”\nEducation is not really valued by a large portion of Southerners. They are suspicious of the overly educated and think they don’t understand them. The Republicans are very good at playing dumb and coming off as one of the “good ole boys” while they use the votes of the poor whites in the South to channel money and benefits to their rich friends on Wall Street.\nSoutherners resists looking at anything too deeply. Introspection is not valued in the South. Action is….The Republican’s play on this very well.\nFacts don’t mean much in the South. Truth has always been conceptual rather than a reality. Any region that can convince itself for over 150 years that the Civil War was about “states rights” rather than slavery is capable of any kind of self-delusion.\nThe South tends to hate the idea of Big Government, even if they enjoy the benefits. They can over look little things like Social Security, Medicare, new bridges and highways, and insurance that covers pre-existing conditions and college kids. They somehow don’t make the connection that the federal government provides these things…\nSoutherners value personal freedom above all else, as long as you are a straight white man.\nThe President is Black and he’s a Democrat. To a large group of folks in the South, this alone is enough reason to vote Republican. Although you may never get them to admit it…\nWhat can Democrats do to change all this and win the South?\nLearn to fight. The South and most of the Country values people who stand up for their principles. The GOP has Balls and the Democrats have Brains. You have to have both to win in the South.\nPush for independent, bipartisan redistricting commissions.\nGet out your message. We’ve got to publicize the benefits of the legislation we do pass and how it helps the poor and middle class as opposed to the Rich. The Democrats and The President have failed miserably at this for the few years. We have real achievements, but no one knows it.\nTake on the bullies at Fox News. We have got to make people realize this is not a news organization, but a propaganda machine that provides entertainment to the ignorant. We should be pushing companies not to advertise on Fox News. We should be telling the Management to turn it off in Public places like restaraunts and gyms.\nCall a liar a liar. This relates to number 1, but I can’t stress this enough. The Republicans look right in the camera and lie. And no one calls them on it. We have to start making people aware that there are things called “Facts” and stand up for them.\nMake this about Class Warfare. A class war is going on for years and most of the country just started to realize this. And the Republicans started it. Call’em on it.\nMake it clear: Unless you have an individual income of greater than $200,000 or a combined Family income of over $300,000, there is absolutely no financial reason to vote for the Republicans. If you want to vote for what is best for your pocketbook, vote for the Democrats. The Republicans really only answer to the Corporations and the wealthy.\nMake Obama white. That’s about the only way you can get about 35% of white Southerners to support the Democrats. We have to focus on the remaining 65% of the South with open minds.\nWait it out….The older, closed minded, prejudiced Southerners are dying off. The younger ones are more open minded, better educated and have seen more of the world. These are the Southern Democrats of tomorrow.\nMake your Democratic friends vote. Even if you have to go to their house or job and throw them in the car and take them to the polls. There are more Democrats than Republicans in many parts of the South. The problem is Republicans always vote and Democrats don’t. If more Democrats would actually just show up at the polls, we would win a lot more races.\nThose are my thoughts for now.\nAll I have left to say is:\nIf you are a Democrat, get off your butt and vote. There are no excuses.\nIf you are a Republican-why don’t you just book a spa day for Tuesday and let the election go? That would really be best for all of us….\nFiled under Elections, North Carolina, Politics, Scott's Commentary, The South\nTagged as Congress, Democrats, Elections, GOP, North Carolina, politics, Republicans, Tea Party, the south\nLet’s Face the Music and Dance\nGovernment shut down…impending debt defaults that could drive us into a recession, if not depression…. idiots in Congress with no grasp of reality or social conscience…..\nSounds like we need Fred and Ginger, to me!\nFiled under Broadway, Congress, Entertainment, Politics\nTagged as Arts, Congress, GOP, Music, Musical Theatre, politics, Republicans, theatre\nOctober 14, 2013 · 11:15 am\nShutdown 2013: The Deal That Will End It\nThere is a lot of press about the Government shutdown brought upon us by the out of control Tea Party Loonies in Congress. However, this is the best single write up I have seen….\nThis excellent article, by Noam Scheiber in the “New Republic”, summarizes where we are and how we got there with the Government shutdown- and just how desperate the GOP is becoming to find a way to end it.\nIt also very well points out the fractures in the GOP between the few pragmatic Republicans left in Congress and the Tea Party that, protected by heavily gerrymandered districts, is running rampantly crazy in Washington.\nThe best thing to come out of this is that the GOP Establishment has seen that they have created a monster with the Tea Party and that they are going to have to deal with it- or let it destroy the GOP.\nI’m fine, either way….\nHere is an excerpt from and a link to the full article. It’s fascinating reading….\nThe problem for the GOP is that, as insulated as the House jihadis are from national trends, Senate Republicans and House pragmatists emphatically are not. When the approval rating for Republicans drops nationally, these people are badly exposed. They begin to fear for their jobs. They become desperate to cut a deal—any deal—that will end their political pain. And once they do—once there is a deal that a large chunk of Republicans either explicitly sign onto or tacitly endorse—then it is game over for the House. There is simply no House Republican leader who can resist a bill that many if not most Republicans want to see pass, a bill that has passed the Senate, and to which the only alternative is the complete annihilation of both the Republican Party and the global economy.\nAs we enter the home stretch, the dynamic is only reinforcing itself. The Tea Partiers have become steadily more delusional, reminding the pragmatists how insane it was to lock arms with them in the first place. “When I was home, I talked with people in our office that called in, I don’t get the sense that 70 percent [of people blame us],” House conservative Jim Jordan told Politico last week. (Good point!) On Sunday, the loonies in the House seized on a report that a mob of patriots overran the World War II Memorial and reclaimed it for … well, for whom isn’t entirely clear. But the loons in the House promptly labeled it a “game changer,” according to National Review’s Robert Costa. To them, it was the latest sign that the country sees things their way.\nThe pragmatists are, in turn, only becoming more anxious. Costa reports that aides to Mitch McConnell now worry they’ll have to make concessions on the sequester just to end the current crisis, whereas they’d previously assumed they could leave the sequester in place and trade it for entitlement cuts in a future grand bargain.\nWhat Costa doesn’t discuss is the Republican leadership’s incentives, which is the final, poetic wrinkle in all of this. McConnell and Boehner, in addition to understanding how badly the Tea Partiers have hurt their party, have yet another reason to sue for peace. McConnell is facing a Tea Party primary challenge in his re-election campaign. Boehner has been repeatedly embarrassed by the Tea Partiers in his caucus, who have actively sabotaged his leadership (egged on/manipulated by Texas Senator Ted Cruz). Both men know their side has lost. Both men also know their party’s fanatics are to blame. Do you think they don’t want to see the Tea Party humiliated before all is said and done? Do you think they might want to see the Tea Partiers stuck with all the blame?\nAt the very least, it’s hard to believe they’ll fight too hard against any deal that accomplishes those goals. As I say, those intra-party rifts are a bummer.\nvia Shutdown 2013: The Deal that will end it | New Republic.\nFiled under Politics, Tea Party\nTagged as Congress, GOP, Government Shutdown, Republicans, Tea Party\nState by State Impacts of Sequestration: Or How Bad GOP Policy Will Hurt You and Your Friends\nThere is a great page at the Washington Post showing the real, state by state, impacts of the Sequester that kicked in yesterday.\nThe Sequester which no one seems to be paying much attention to yet.\nThis is another one of those unnecessary crises that Washington Republicans specialize in creating.\nAnd, of course, they don’t care in the least about the impacts on people or government services that help and protect us all. All they care about is choking off as many of these government services as possible to align with their doctrinaire, Conservative ideologue, Washington-bubble induced vision that all government is bad….\nMaybe it will take the people feeling the impacts of these arbitrary cuts to realize how important government programs are for all of us….\nIt’s a shame when people only realize the importance of what they have when they lose it…\nBut that may just be human nature…..\nMaybe it has to be personal…\nThe impacts to the Economy from the resulting job and income loses don’t mean much to most people unless it hits them directly….\nMaybe this is what it will take for people to put some pressure on the GOP to stop acting like selfish, spoiled children and vote them out of office in the House and Senate in 2014.\nHere is a link to the information at the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/sequestration-state-impact/\nFiled under Congress, The Economy\nTagged as Congress, GOP, Republicans, Sequester, The Economy\nFebruary 1, 2013 · 9:00 pm\nBeer Merger Challenged By Justice Department\nI’m so relieved to know our Justice Department has it’s priorities in order…\nI’m sure they don’t have anything more pressing than this to consider…\nOf course, this does impact a large portion of the population that has to drink to deal with the fact that we have a bunch of incompetents (AKA: The GOP) in Washington focusing on irrelevant issues instead of addressing the most pressing needs of the country.\nForget the Tea Party, let’s start the Beer Party!\nWASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday filed a lawsuit to stop Anheuser-Busch InBev’s proposed $20.1 billion purchase of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo, which would unite the ownership of popular beers like Budweiser and Corona.\nThe government said the deal could lead to higher beer prices in this country because it would substantially reduce competition in the U.S. beer market, particularly in 26 metropolitan areas. It said the merged firm would control nearly half the beer sales in the U.S.\nIn response, Anheuser-Busch InBev promised a court fight to preserve its deal.\nAmericans spent at least $80 billion on beer last year. ABI’s Bud Light is the best-selling beer in the nation and Modelo’s Corona Extra is the best-selling import.\nvia Anheuser-Busch-Grupo Modelo Merger Challenged By Justice Department.\nFiled under Congress, Politics, Uncategorized\nTagged as Beer, Congress, GOP, Justice Department, Republicans\nBye Bye to the Crazy Grand Dames of the GOP\nHow sweet it would be to be rid of Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin in the same year! God knows, they have both had more than their allocated 15 minutes of fame….\nPeople are sick of Sarah and it looks like Fox News isn’t even going to renew her contract. The GOP certainly didn’t want her around their convention…\nAnd now, it looks like Michelle Bachmann has a very good chance at losing her Congressional seat….\nMaybe people really are finally getting tired of mean, crazy people in Politics.\nFrom Salon via Politicususa.com:\nA new poll suggests that tea party darling Michele Bachmann is in serious danger of losing her House seat to Democrat Jim Graves.The poll, which was first shared with Salon, found that Bachmann now leads Graves, 48%-46%. Bachmann has gone from a 45%-41% lead with Independents to now trailing 52%-37%. The biggest indicator of how much voters have soured on Bachmann is that 57% of those surveyed gave a fair/poor job approval rating. Almost as many responded rated her as poor 35% as did excellent/good. Respondents also had cool feelings towards Rep. Bachmann as a person. Forty one percent said they had warm feelings towards Bachmann while 46% expressed cool feelings towards the incumbent Republican.After winning her 2010 bid for reelection by twelve points, her 2012 campaign is looking like a return to the norm. Bachmann first won election to the House in 2006 in a three person race by a 50%-42%-8% margin. Bachmann won another three way contest in 2008, 46%-43%-10%. Bachmann’s margin of victory in both 2006 and 2008 combined was less than her margin in the Republican wave year of 2010.Even though her popularity is on the wane in her district, Rep. Bachmann will be difficult to beat because of the massive war chest $15 million she has accumulated. Bachmann also has been heavily supported and funded by the national Republican Party. Michele Bachmann is a right wing media darling who is welcome to go on Fox News, Glenn Beck, or any other conservative media outlet and beg for dollars at any time.\nvia Bye Bye Crazy Eyes: Poll Finds Democrat in Position to Defeat Michele Bachmann.\nFiled under Elections, Politics\nTagged as 2012 Elections, Congress, GOP, Michelle Bachmann, politics, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Tea Party\nRepublicans Do Remember That Women Vote, Right?\nI’m not so sure they do remember that women vote….or they are planning to try to roll back that basic right next….\nOne of the reasons I’m blogging so seldom right now is that between the GOP Presidential Primary Campaign and the GOP War on Women, I am speechless at the stupidity of the GOP and really don’t see the point in commenting on a bunch of crazy old white men who think it is still 1952 and would obviously prefer to be having cocktails with Joe McCarthy and J Edgar Hoover…..\nThen along comes a true rarity: A good column from Dana Milbank in the Washington Post….\nIt really has become obvious the GOP is starting to lose its War on Women- and its collective mind- when even DC insiders like Milbank recognize it and feel free to state it publicly….\nThe Republicans have really alienated women over the last few weeks with their drive back to the 1950’s. It’s becoming more and more obvious they are a bunch of rich, old, white men who want to keep their patriarchy alive- and feel threatened by uppity Gays, Blacks, Latinos, Asians and most especially Uppity, Slatternly Women- which to them seems to mean all women who aren’t their wives or, in some, but not all cases, their daughters…\nThey obviously seem to think women are all either sluts, who should have no rights, or Ladies, who should mindlessly support their husbands and do their bidding without question.\nThis is the 1950’s mindset they have and just assume everyone else has also….\nRush Limbaugh is justifiably catching hell right now for actually having the nerve- and stupidity- to concisely articulate the Republican position on women. It’s so obvious, he must be surprised at the blow back directed at him instead of Congress….\nMy favorite quote is from the female Oklahoma Lawmaker who said: “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d f*#k a Senator.”\nThe Republicans are driving women over to the Democratic Party in droves with their intrusive anti-abortion legislation in Virginia- among other states- their anti contraception amendments in the Senate and the assault on Planned Parenthood and Women’s healthcare.\nCan anything be more indicative of how out of touch the Republican Party is than the fact that we are actually discussing anti-contraception legislation in the 21st Century????\nI’m starting to think there must be a lot more retro-closet cases than Ken Mehlman in the GOP if they are this afraid of “lady parts”…..\nFrom Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:\nWhen will Republicans stop their vagina monologue?\nMarch is federally recognized as Women’s History Month, and Republicans have been celebrating the occasion in a most unusual style: with a burst of interest in women’s private parts.\nOn Thursday, the Senate took up an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would allow employers to deny women birth-control coverage if the employer found contraception morally objectionable.\nAbout 100 miles south of Washington on that same day, Virginia legislators passed a measure requiring a woman to be offered an ultrasound image of her fetus before aborting it. The legislation, which opponents say could also require some women who have miscarriages to be offered ultrasonic images of their dead fetuses, is the successor of a bill that would have required women to undergo an invasive “transvaginal ultrasound.”\nStill on Thursday, the industrious Virginia House of Delegates also approved legislation bestowing rights on people, including a father, to bring a lawsuit over the death of the fetus.\nOn Wednesday, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, a powerful influence among Republican lawmakers, described as a “slut” the law-school student invited by House Democrats to testify in support of birth control. “It makes her a prostitute,” Limbaugh said of the woman, blocked last month by House Republicans from testifying on what became an all-male panel. “She wants to be paid to have sex.”\nOn Tuesday, Oklahomans held a protest at the state capitol to oppose a bill, passed by the state Senate and now being taken up by the House, that would bestow “personhood” on fetuses — one of many such efforts across the nation. Democrat Judy McIntyre, one of just four women in the 48-member state Senate, was so upset that, according to the Oklahoman newspaper, she held a protest sign proclaiming: “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d [expletive] a senator.”\nvia Republicans do remember that women vote, right? – The Washington Post.\nFiled under Congress, Politics\nTagged as Abortion, birth control, Congress, Contriception, GOP, politics, Republicans, Virginia, women's rights","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line312031"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7347074151039124,"wiki_prob":0.26529258489608765,"text":"MultiLing Appoints David Urry as Chief Financial Officer\nExpanded Role to Support Company’s Strong Growth – and Continued Global Expansion – In IP Translations and Related Services\nMarch 4, 2014 | Brian Chaney\nSALT LAKE CITY, Utah – March 4, 2014—MultiLing, the innovative leader in intellectual property (IP) translations and related services for foreign patent filings, today announced the appointment of David Urry as the company’s chief financial officer. Urry, who spent the last 13 years as the CFO of Aetna Insurance Company subsidiary Medicity, Inc., will drive MultiLing’s financial strategy to manage the notable growth of its IP translation services worldwide.\n“With the increasing demand for MultiLing’s IP translation services over the past few years and the growth capitalreceived from Frontier Capital this past summer, Urry will help us strategically manage our financial resources for continued growth initiatives,” said Michael Sneddon, president and CEO, MultiLing. “Urry’s vast global experience across a wide spectrum of companies – from start-ups to mid-range to Fortune 100 firms – gives him a unique business perspective that will benefit both MultiLing and our Global 500 clients as we provide the best IP translation services possible.”\nWhile at Medicity, Urry led the development of financial, legal, risk management and administrative infrastructure to provide disciplined control and accountability during rapid company growth. In 2010, he helped the company through a $500 million acquisition by Aetna based on a solid record of growth and financial performance. Post-merger, he successfully managed the integration of Medicity’s healthcare IT business with Aetna’s processes and departments.\nBefore joining Medicity in 2000, Urry spent 10 years at American Airlines, in successive positions of responsibility. As a director, he developed accounting procedures for both American and Canadian Airlines. Earlier in his career, Urry worked with Hewlett Packard as a financial analyst in the United States and as a marketing engineer in Japan after the startup venture he joined was acquired by HP. Urry received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Utah and his master’s of business administration from the Wharton School of Business.\nMultiLing’s Worldwide Growth Continues\nMultiLing has global offices in seven countries – China, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Peru and the United States – with another international office planned to open in the next quarter. The growth results from significant management, operational and sales improvements implemented in the past two years during a global market increase in the number of U.S., European and Asian enterprises spending millions of dollars per year on patent translations despite the global economic downturn. In fact, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, the industry is seeing the strongest growth in global patent filings in 18 years.\nFounded in 1988, MultiLing is the innovative leader in IP translation and related services for foreign patent filings by Global 500 legal teams. The company defined and continues to drive best practices for foreign patent filings, which include in-country native linguists, scientists, engineers and legal specialists who interact through processes and technologies that increase quality, consistency and on-time delivery at a fair value. After partnering with MultiLing, multinational clients such as Procter & Gamble, Yokohama Rubber and Dow Corning experienced increased patent filings, decreased office actions, reduced invalidation risk and faster time to grant.\nKelly Wanlass\nSnapp Conner PR\nkelly @ snappconner.com\n← MultiLing Invests in Growth With New Sales & Marketing Leaders MultiLing Opens New Office in Taiwan →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line252342"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5219069719314575,"wiki_prob":0.5219069719314575,"text":"The Clare Spark Blog\nThe pitfalls in writing histories of the movies\nFiled under: Uncategorized — clarelspark @ 6:53 pm\nTags: \"cultural Marxism\", Alexander Vassiliev, Ben Hecht, Ben Urwand, Cary Beauchamp, Clayton R. Koppes, Edwin Black, Gregory D. Black, Harvard University Press, Harvey Klehr, It Can't Happen Here, John Earl Haynes, Joseph P. Kennedy, Louis B. Mayer, Mark Kramer, New Left movie criticism, Sinclair Lewis, Steven Alan Carr, THE COLLABORATION, Thomas Doherty\nThere is a sprawling bibliography of both trade books and academic studies of the movie industry. Into this minefield, strides Ben Urwand, whose book has been received with fury or, in some cases, approbation.\nFor Ben Urwand’s recent Harvard published book The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, “Hollywood”, “Jewish” moguls, “capitalism,” and the ostensibly Nazified/anticommunist/bigoted American movie industry are conflated and held in contempt. (The “collaboration” that Urwand and the many critics of mass culture and mass media may have in mind is the bond between image and audience. Like other critics of technology and its assistance to demagogues, Urwand turns out to be an antimodern, even a sort of Tory, though he appears to be writing from the left. For instance, writing in the voice of “Doremus Jessup,” Sinclair Lewis wrote, “‘Is it just possible,’ [Doremus Jessup] sighed, ‘that the most vigorous and boldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? Possible that plain men with the humble trait of minding their own business will rank higher in the heavenly hierarchy than all the plumed souls who have shoved their way in among the masses and insisted on saving them?'” So modern mass media enable demagoguery of the kind that Lewis fears. Odd that Lewis doesn’t pin this on FDR in his It Can’t Happen Here (1935), a book that Urwand admired and wished that it had been turned into a movie. (For a blog on the “cultural Marxists” see https://clarespark.com/2013/07/31/the-nefarious-cultural-marxists/.)\nWith respect to the Urwand book, the questions for an academic reviewer are easily summarized: Given the magnitude of the claim of the book, that from 1930 onward, “Hollywood” dismissed Jews from the screens it controlled, and worse, allowed Germans in both Weimar and in the Third Reich to censor movies, to the point where even the Holocaust was off limits for filmic presentation after WW2 until the 1960s, by what criteria should Urwand’s thesis be either defended or criticized?\nSince Urwand cites German archives in his footnotes, one would expect the author to be fluent in the German language (he is self-taught in the language); to fully understand the culture of Nazi Germany (looking for continuities and discontinuities with the modern German past); and most importantly, to have reviewed the responses of Western Europe and America to the New World Order proposed by the various fascisms, putting up with Hitler and Mussolini until 1939, and keeping their distance from the Spanish Civil War. Urwand seems to know little about the history of anti-Semitism and isolationist suspicions of war-mongering “Jews” who were trying to snare American Christians into their nefarious “collaborationist” schemes. And since Urwand shows no reluctance in declaring (but not proving) why certain “anti-fascist” movie scripts were dropped by such famously conservative, pro-American moguls as Louis B. Mayer and other producers, we would expect the author to understand the intricacies of the movie business and the often chaotic or unrecorded decision-making, including the various forces that pre-censored and post-censored movies, especially after 1934 when the Production Code was established and controlled by Joseph Breen and the Catholic Legion of Decency. But we must not neglect the power that New York financiers exerted over the studios located in California–a matter explored by Cary Beauchamp in her recent biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, drawing upon previously restricted papers in the Kennedy Library (publ. 2008).\nBen Hecht as depicted on anti-Zionist website\nUrwand’s book is easily dismissed as the unsupported speculations of an ideologue bent on imitating Ben Hecht by separating antisemitism (‘bad’) and anti-Zionism (‘good’),* but not so an entire genre of movie history written from the academic Left and published by the most prestigious university presses. These authors include Thomas Doherty, Gregory D. Black, Clayton R. Koppes, and Steven Alan Carr. While a few of these academics criticize antisemitism in books depicting “Hollywood” as generically Jewish [Carr], or note Joseph Breen’s open hostility to the scummy and omnipotent Jews who ran Hollywood [Black], in the end many resent the “Hollywood” representations of a phony melting pot, and idealizations of heterosexual romance, happy families, escapism, spectacle, glamour, happy endings, the suppression of labor vs. capital conflict, racism, and more, but most of all, they are dead set against the Dies Committee and “McCarthyism” as evidenced in the postwar blacklist after the Cold War was begun. Since many of their books were published after the Soviet archives were opened and books published verifying many of HUAC’s or McCarthy’s suspicions and accusations, one might conclude that capitalism and the profit-motive are the real targets of academic interest in the movies. (The authors who have written about the revelations in the Soviet archives include Mark Kramer, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev.)\nFor prior blogs on Ben Urwand’s book, see https://clarespark.com/2013/10/10/urwand-undoes-chaplins-dictator/, and https://clarespark.com/2013/09/13/urwands-collaboration-hollywoods-pact-with-hitler/. No reviews, even those dismissive of Urwand’s peculiar view of “collaboration”, have sketched in the appropriate historical context for evaluating this academic book’s claims. It was published by Harvard University Press, but those academic readers who supported it are anonymous. But in insisting that Hollywood profits supported the Nazi war machine, Urwand’s thesis reminds me of Edwin Black’s sensationalized work. That Urwand’s book has received some good reviews suggests that many movie journalists are unequipped to evaluate histories of the movie business.\n*I am reading Hecht’s Child of the Century (1954) now, and Hecht is a waverer on the subject of Israel. More when I finish this autobiography. Urwand may have misunderstood the extent to which Irgun-admiring Hecht distanced himself from “Zionism.”\nUrwand’s THE COLLABORATION: HOLLYWOOD’S PACT WITH HITLER\nTags: Alexander C. Kafka, antisemitism, Ben Hecht, Ben Urwand, Berkeley faculty, Chronicle of Higher Education, Clayton R. Koppes, David Denby, David Welky, Gregory D. Black, Harvard Law Review, Joseph Breen, Joseph P. Kennedy, Martin Dies, masochism, Office of War Information, populism, Ron Loeb, sadism, Steven Alan Carr, The Great Dictator, Thomas Doherty, Will Hays\nThis is an impression of Harvard Junior Fellow Ben Urwand’s new book, to be released in October. I was initially appalled when I saw a puff-piece in TABLET. (See https://clarespark.com/2013/06/13/hollywoods-pact-with-hitler/. I had not yet read the book and expected some archival research that would establish the veracity of Urwand’s title.) In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined such a mendacious book published by one of the most prestigious academic presses. In this brief blog, I will mostly focus on the depths of antisemitism between the wars, and then suggest that calling the moguls “Jews” plays fast and loose with what it means to be a “Jew” in America, today or any other day. For a related blog that quotes from Urwand, see https://clarespark.com/2013/10/10/urwand-undoes-chaplins-dictator/.\nI suggest that the interested reader look at both an article from History News Network from circa 2002 on Joseph P. Kennedy’s antisemitism, which may look “extreme” to the eyes of the reader, but was not different in intensity from that of his contemporaries, let alone from that of much of the Left today. See http://hnn.us/article/697 “Joseph Kennedy and the Jews.” Or, see Steven Alan Carr’s Hollywood and Anti-Semitism (Cambridge UP, 2001), that poses “the Jewish question” as “the Hollywood question” in a masterful review of antisemitica in America, and nullifying Urwand’s claim that there were lots of good Jews in the movies before the cowardly, money-mad moguls capitulated to Hitler’s German consul in Los Angeles. Carr also shows, through implication, that Urwand’s startling thesis is nothing new. Quoting The Nation, September 20, 1941: ” ‘Far from being too vigorously anti-Nazi’…the film industry ‘as long as they could, avoided making films that might endanger their markets in Germany and Italy. Business was their first consideration.’ ” (p.269)\nThen read David Denby’s recent unfavorable review of Urwand’s book, that makes many points I would have made, namely that Urwand spends much time in speculation about why such and such a film was not made, but makes wild surmises that are not verified by his evidence. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/09/16/130916crbo_books_denby, also http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/09/how-could-harvard-have-published-ben-urwands-the-collaboration.html. (Yet another unfavorable review says mostly that business is business, and Urwand is naïve to make so much of the censorship; see http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/09/did-hollywood-collaborate-with-hitler-a-new-book-makes-bold-claims.html. ) In yet another review (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/does-collaboration-overstate-hollywoods-cooperation-595678), Thomas Doherty’s competing book HOLLYWOOD AND HITLER, 1933-1939, is compared with Urwand’s nasty book, but the description of Doherty’s conclusions does not match what Doherty actually wrote: Doherty is said to praise Hollywood for resisting Nazism, but Doherty trotted out the Warner brothers as exceptional only to castigate them as caving to HUAC and the Martin Dies Committee by producing super-patriotic movies that hid controversies in U.S. history, such as labor unrest. And in his concluding sentences, he wonders what he, Doherty, would have done about coming out against the Third Reich were he in the shoes of the Hollywood moguls.\nNone of this should surprise us. Ben Urwand begins his acknowledgments with tributes to some of the New Left Berkeley faculty: Michael Rogin, Lawrence Levine, Leon Litwack and Martin Jay (the latter a noted critical theorist and historian of the Frankfurt School that blamed mass media for the corruption of the working class, hence the working-class failure to stop Hitler). And the book is getting support in high liberal venues: see http://chronicle.com/article/When-Hollywood-Held-Hands-With/140189/, in a long and informative article by Alexander C. Kafka.\nThe novelty of COLLABORATION exists in the claim that Jewish moguls allowed Hitler and his minions to control “Hollywood” not only throughout the 1930s, but on into the war years, and worse, inured to the Pact, Hollywood continued its baleful influence by suppressing the horrors of the Holocaust until decades after it became known. Urwand’s earlier work was on aboriginal rights in Australia, and his latest work wants to present America as a capitalist, hence fascist country, in cahoots with the Third Reich, and carrying on its mission. There are even suggestions that American movies “infused” Nazi culture, an innuendo comparable to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. (See https://clarespark.com/2010/03/10/jonah-goldbergs-liberal-fascism-part-one/. I do not intend to blame Goldberg for his take on movies (not his target), but rather on the progressive nanny state and eugenics as inspiring fascist programs in Germany.)\nWHAT IS A JEW?\nI have only dipped into the vast literature on the history of film. As far as I could tell, Joseph P. Kennedy’s role in virtually inventing the complicated financing of the movie industry (as revealed in Cari Beauchamp’s book published in 2008 after crucial Joe Kennedy papers were unsealed in the Kennedy Library), was unknown to the various authors I have read: two by Thomas Doherty (1993, 2013); David Welky (2008); and one co-authored by Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black (1987). Of these scholarly works, Welky’s seemed the least biased.\nFor one thing, Welky gave several paragraphs to Joe Kennedy’s speech to fifty Hollywood “moguls” in late 1940, which I quote here: “…Recalled to the United States during the British negotiations [regarding the import of US films], the ambassador accepted Jack and Harry Warner’s invitation to speak to movie executives. His talk during the three hour lunch on the Warner Bros. lot left the gathering of fifty industry leaders speechless. Kennedy told them the United States should limit aid to Britain in case the Nazis won the war, an event he thought likely. More important, he asked producers to “stop making anti-Nazi pictures or using the film medium to promote or show sympathy to the cause of the ‘democracies’ versus the ‘dictators.’” Pictures like The Mortal Storm, Escape, and Arise, My Love, an anti-Nazi comedy released by Paramount a few weeks before Kennedy’s visit, did more harm than good because they highlighted Jewish control of the movies. Many Anglos blamed the war on the Jews, Kennedy warned, and anti-Semitism was on the rise in Britain. He advised producers to “get those Jewish names off the screen.” After Kennedy’s lecture, screenwriter Ben Hecht remembered, “all of Hollywood’s top Jews went around with their grief hidden like a Jewish fox under their Gentile vests.” MGM and Paramount canceled several anti-Nazi projects, including Heil America, Heroes, I Had a Comrade, and Invasion.\n[Welky, cont., quoting Kennedy] …The “Jewish boys…are quite nervous about the conditions and they have reason to be…Smart British interests have already taken over the Jewish boys…and have sold them an idea they already had, that they must work for England, even if it means getting us into war.” (pp.244-45, THE MOGULS AND THE DICTATORS) Compare these quotes to Urwand’s brief reference to the Kennedy speech, referring to Ben Hecht’s warning to the movie heads: “Hecht told the studio heads not to buy into Kennedy’s arguments that such pictures would lead to an increase in anti-Semitism in the United States. He said that such thinking had been designed merely to play on their fears.” (p.234) (Which contradicts Urwand’s earlier axiom that profits were primary and fears of increased antisemitism were either minor or submerged in the lust for shekels.)\nBen Hecht is the only good Jew in Urwand’s book; indeed his departure from his early Zionism seems to have inspired Urwand. But Urwand hasn’t cited PERFIDY (by Hecht) that displayed Hecht’s own social climbing and insult at the home of an antisemitic New York socialite, while Hecht went on to blame Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jew, for collaboration with the Nazis. (See http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Power-and-Politics-Perfidy-revisited. This is a big and apparently unresolved fight.) Urwand is following longstanding trends among left-wing Jews: apparently to condemn anti-Semitism (thus distinguishing themselves from contemptible commercial Jews), while separating antisemitism from anti-Zionism. The remainder of this blog considers the distinction between “intellectual Jews” (like Urwand and his mentors at UC Berkeley) and “commercial Jews” (like the moguls). [Update: since writing this blog, I have read Hecht’s autobiography, and Urwand utterly misunderstood Hecht’s objection to “Zionists.” Hecht supported the Irgun and called the Anglophile Jewish Agency members “Zionists.” Could Urwand have even read the final section of A CHILD OF THE CENTURY? See my blog on that subject https://clarespark.com/2013/12/07/ben-hecht-v-ben-urwand-the-un-jewish-left-and-assimilated-jews/.)\nThe money-grubbing commercial Jews. I write these thoughts on Yom Kippur eve, September 13, 2013. I have asked the question, “What is a Jew”? Urwand and multiculturalists in general, take ruling definitions of Jewishness for granted. As readers of my blogs know by now, the multiculturalists in the dominant culture define Jewish identity by race. It is not only a practice and belief system, much of which I share as a secular Jew. Rather, the “intellectual Jews” [liberals and leftists] are put in a different box from the lower-class and unseemly “commercial Jews.”\nI first heard this distinction in 1959, at a party hosted by the Harvard Law Review. It might have been a prominent professor who made that statement, and being twenty one years old and a babe in the woods, I had no comeback, and it would have been impolite to embarrass my fiancé, whom I married shortly afterward. His name was Ron Loeb, and he told me at the time how recruiters from the big NYC and Washington law firms would come to Harvard, warning that “our clients don’t want Jewish lawyers in our firms.” Ron (who made Law Review) told them that was really too bad, because 18 out of the 25 Harvard Law Review third year crop were Jewish. Note the date. It is 1959.\nReading Urwand’s book gave me anxiety attacks. It was not only horribly written from a historian’s point of view, for it was based almost entirely on speculation and innuendo, not to speak of its subtextual identification of Jews with Nazis. Yet, in today’s ideological atmosphere, so toxic to “the Jews” (all of whom may be imagined exactly like the immigrant Jews who were prominent in founding the international business of cinema, unless as acceptable, assimilated Jews they are antisemitic themselves). Though Urwand’s book will find even more kvetchy reviewers, the fundamental questions will remain unanswered: “What is a Jew” and what institutional constraints have figured in the censorship of movies?\nSo far, besides the constraints of an international market, I have found through reading, the Will Hays Office (supported by Joe Kennedy), Joseph Breen and the Legion of Decency, and the Office of War Information (described in detail in Koppes and Black). But more than these censors, like other immigrants, the early movie moguls adapted to the regnant populism that appealed to the mass market, inhabited as it was by other immigrants. (Upper and middle class WASPs were mostly off elsewhere uplifting urban folk.) And the movies remain populistic, with the support of movie critics and other journalists who partake of the general sadism and masochism we see all around us.\nThe following photo and caption was used in David Denby’s New Yorker review (linked above), but not in the Urwand book.\n“Breen (center) had power to censor anti-Nazi films”\nThe Godfather, Jamie Wyeth Gorgon, culture wars and rustic chivalry\nTags: Andres Serrano, Andrew Wyeth, Citizen Kane, Condorcet, culture wars, Elia Kazan, film noir, Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather Part II, Helen Brooke Taussig, Jamie Wyeth, Joseph P. Kennedy, McCarthyism, Michael Corleone, moral relativism, movie moguls, N.C. Wyeth, NEA, On The Waterfront, Philip Roth, Richard Bolton, Robert Mapplethorpe, The Big Chill, urban ethnics, Vertigo\nJamie Wyeth unsettles Dr. Taussig\nI was gone for a week, and ONLY 52 viewers (outside of regulars who come to the home page) came to my last blog (https://clarespark.com/2013/08/13/victor-hugos-93-and-condorcet/), which quoted from Victor Hugo’s 93. I haven’t had numbers that low since I started the website. What was unattractive about this contrast of Terror and Mercy? Was a preference for absolute standards in morality the problem? Be warned, as a historian, I understand that morality is culture-specific, though the Enlightenment popularized the notion of universalist ethics as first advanced by the early French Revolution, and before the Reign of Terror. The Enlightenment philosophes were looking to a future where all people would live in republics and abide by the rule of law.\nWhile gone I had three or four interesting encounters with popular and high culture.\nFirst, the New York Times article about the controversy regarding Jamie Wyeth’s long-hidden painting of a famous female doctor. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/arts/design/a-showing-for-jamie-wyeths-portrait-of-a-cardiac-pioneer.html?pagewanted=all. Helen Brooke Taussig was the subject, but when her portrait was unveiled in May 1964, male doctors/colleagues freaked out. Look at the portrait yourselves and leave comments if you care to. (Jamie Wyeth preceded by famous painters and illustrators N. C. Wyeth, grandfather, and Andrew Wyeth, father and realist painter.)\nSecond, I have been reading both academic and coffee table studies (written by professors here and in Germany) of the history of the movies. Before that I read a recent biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, and to leave him out of the story where dopy Jewish moguls (all by themselves) are said to have caused mass degeneracy and a misreading of history in our most popular art form, and without mentioning either Joe Kennedy, Will Hays, Joseph Breen, and the Catholic Legion of Decency, is yet another depressing episode in the cultural history we teach to our eager beaver tech-savvy children who adore images and are virtually on their own in finding out how stories and images can shape their emotions and politics. What the “history of the movies” reveals, for these liberal writers, is the inevitability of radical subjectivism, mystery, and the unknowability of even the most famous, documented lives. A running theme in many of these film histories: McCarthyism caused brain drain in Hollywood, so the 1950s were beneath contempt, except for Vertigo (Hitchcock learned from the German refugees) and On the Waterfront (“cold war liberalism,” thumbs down on snitch Elia Kazan).\nThe recent film histories, obviously directed to an upper-class readership, are glitzy, often lavishly illustrated, sensitive in a superficial English major way, and hardly do justice to individual artifacts. If these English professors or culture studies specialists ever turned in such hasty plot summaries to a graduate seminar, they would possible be thrown out of school. As for film noir, blame it on the German refugees and their immersion in German Expressionism and post Great War angst, which, though partly true, does not fully explain disillusion and cultural pessimism (See https://clarespark.com/2011/04/27/james-m-cains-gorgon-gals-2/, retitled Film Noir, decoded.)\nSpeaking of angst, on the flight home I watched all of The Godfather (175 minutes). Like zillions of others, I thought it was a powerful and well-made movie; I have done zero research on it yet, but here are some guesses ahead of my future study. First, it was obviously Coppola’s FU to the Hollywood system. The first villain, though not identified as Jewish, was vulgar (rather like Citizen Kane/Cain). His name was Woltz (sounds German, could be German-Jewish). The corruption of Hollywood stands for a society that is utterly bought and sold by criminal elements: politicians, law enforcement, newspapers, everybody that shapes public opinion or protects us from the bad guys: (more Citizen Kane). The transformation of war hero, Ivy-educated Michael from “civilian” to his father’s successor as head of the family “business” could signify that brutalization of the young that is said by many historians to have followed the Great War. Note that conflicts between gang bosses are always referred to as wars, not disputes between criminals. In the world we see depicted everybody is guilty, except for the women, who are merely hysterical when they are not putting up with spousal abuse or neglect. They are both protected from the world of men, or are contented to be Sicilian breeders and feeders. Finally, I noted the importance of neighborhood, religion, family and ethnicity to Southern Italian immigrants. The Godfather series came out during the height of the social policy transition from an emphasis on class, to an emphasis on the durability of ethnic ties over class ties. The Corleone family has not assimilated, and doesn’t care. They hew to the colorful ways of 19th and 20th century urban ethnics with their scofflaw patronage systems, or in the case of the Corleones, Sicilian peasants and the patriarchal system. In comes localism, radical historicism, and multiculturalism. In other mass media offerings, the demonic is celebrated, in dangerous neo-Romantic fashion, see https://clarespark.com/2013/03/30/philip-roth-the-following-and-identification-with-the-aggressor/.\nThird, I found a copy of a documentary study and chronology of the Culture Wars, that covers the censorship of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, and focuses primarily on events during the Reagan administration and the first years of Bush 41. The introduction that I raced through made the claim that the artist freedom jeopardized by right-wing kvetching about tax dollars going to the National Endowment for the Arts, was tied to working class benefits. It does have a useful chronology of government funding of the arts since the Kennedy administration, and it is something to look into. How “high art” that many Americans see as handmaidens to the wealthy became a matter of interest to the labor movement and other ‘slobs’ defies comprehension. Artist Richard Bolton explains away this seeming contradiction, “It is more than passing interest that ‘populist’ conservatives, while rejecting ‘high culture’ in the name of the masses, also detest the popular culture–television, music, and film—commonly shared by these same masses. And in matters of policy, conservative activists and officials have consistently opposed government programs that would benefit the typical worker….” (Culture Wars, ed. Richard Bolton, p.5) Bolton goes on to describe statist interventions against the market that ostensibly benefit the working class. In other words, Bolton’s ‘populist’ conservatives are hypocrites. Mapplethorpe and Serrano et al are the true populists.\nBut there was solidarity of a sort evident in the movie The Big Chill that I watched on my way back East. This cloying cluster of U. of Michigan graduates, ex-radicals who have gone bourgeois in their forties and feel guilty about it, is hardly worth mentioning, though it was interesting to see how major movie stars looked when much younger. The one Jewish character was something of a geek (played by Jeff Goldblum) whose attempts to fit in were ludicrous.\nGive me Cavalleria Rusticana transferred to post WW2 America any day over 60s-70s nostalgia felt by successful hippies. Or perhaps The Big Chill was a less obvious form of rustic chivalry as the Glenn Close character makes a gift of her husband (Kevin Kline) for a night to fertilize the egg of her chum (played by Mary Kay Place). After all, the story was set in the South.\nAbout Clare Spark\nAbout the Yankee Doodle Society (YDS)\nRon Paul: Anarchist-in-Chief\nSCANDAL's \"inclusive\" feminism\nAyn Rand's rational modernism\nThe Hunger Games trilogy: reactionary and postmodern\nThe Americanization of Ziva David (NCIS)?\nThe Cold War, a moderate liberal version\nThe culture war over US and World History Standards\nBohemia and the New Left\nRichard Hofstadter on Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1865-1915 (1944)\nFour books on Hitler and the Rise of Nazism.\nMelodrama, Jeffrey Epstein, and “The Loudest Voice” Finale\n“Mental Health” as Ideology\nThe Loudest Voice: social democratic or communistic?\nIs “America” racist?\nThe “women of color” meme is bogus\n“Health care” and the Body\nBad “Fathers”\nRe-reading Herman Melville (part two)\nArchives Select Month January 2020 (2) December 2019 (4) October 2019 (1) August 2019 (2) July 2019 (3) June 2019 (3) April 2019 (3) March 2019 (4) February 2019 (2) January 2019 (2) December 2018 (2) November 2018 (2) October 2018 (3) September 2018 (3) August 2018 (3) July 2018 (1) June 2018 (1) May 2018 (7) April 2018 (2) March 2018 (1) February 2018 (3) January 2018 (2) December 2017 (1) November 2017 (7) October 2017 (2) September 2017 (2) August 2017 (4) July 2017 (2) June 2017 (3) May 2017 (2) April 2017 (2) March 2017 (3) February 2017 (1) January 2017 (1) December 2016 (4) November 2016 (2) October 2016 (5) September 2016 (3) August 2016 (4) July 2016 (6) June 2016 (7) May 2016 (5) April 2016 (4) March 2016 (3) February 2016 (5) January 2016 (3) December 2015 (7) November 2015 (5) October 2015 (6) September 2015 (4) August 2015 (3) July 2015 (9) June 2015 (7) May 2015 (8) April 2015 (6) March 2015 (6) February 2015 (7) January 2015 (10) December 2014 (9) November 2014 (7) October 2014 (7) September 2014 (8) August 2014 (6) July 2014 (8) June 2014 (9) May 2014 (8) April 2014 (13) March 2014 (13) February 2014 (11) January 2014 (5) December 2013 (6) November 2013 (7) October 2013 (9) September 2013 (12) August 2013 (9) July 2013 (11) June 2013 (11) May 2013 (14) April 2013 (11) March 2013 (17) February 2013 (9) January 2013 (14) December 2012 (15) November 2012 (11) October 2012 (10) September 2012 (20) August 2012 (9) July 2012 (8) June 2012 (5) May 2012 (8) April 2012 (7) March 2012 (14) February 2012 (8) January 2012 (11) December 2011 (4) November 2011 (5) October 2011 (10) September 2011 (3) August 2011 (6) July 2011 (4) June 2011 (15) May 2011 (10) April 2011 (9) March 2011 (9) February 2011 (7) January 2011 (11) December 2010 (3) November 2010 (11) October 2010 (5) September 2010 (8) August 2010 (6) July 2010 (8) June 2010 (10) May 2010 (9) April 2010 (8) March 2010 (9) February 2010 (8) January 2010 (4) December 2009 (8) November 2009 (23) October 2009 (26) September 2009 (29) August 2009 (19) July 2009 (6) June 2009 (3) May 2008 (1) April 2008 (1) November 2007 (2)\nAlexander Hamilton American exceptionalism antisemitism Ayn Rand Barack Obama Benjamin Disraeli Bill O'Reilly Captain Ahab Charles Krauthammer Charles Olson Charles Sumner Clare Spark culture wars Donald J. Trump Edmund Burke education reform Eric Hobsbawm Ernest Hemingway fascism FDR feminism Foucault Fox News Channel French Revolution Freud George Orwell Goethe Gordon Allport Gunnar Myrdal Hannah Arendt harold lasswell Henry A. Murray Herbert Marcuse Herder Herman Melville Hillary Clinton Hitler Hunting Captain Ahab identity politics J. A. Hobson Jay Leyda Lenin Martha Gellhorn Marx Michael Rogin Milton Friedman misogyny Moby-Dick moderate men multiculturalism New Left noam chomsky Obamacare Pacifica Radio Paradise Lost Picasso Pierre or the Ambiguities Pierrot political correctness Popular Front populism postmodernism primitivism progressivism racism Ralph Bunche sadomasochism Sigmund Freud social democracy statism Talcott Parsons the big lie Thomas Jefferson totalitarianism Woodrow Wilson\nYDS: The Clare Spark Blog","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line573358"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7274852395057678,"wiki_prob":0.2725147604942322,"text":"View Items All Items (22) Alaska (1) California (3) Maine (2) Massachusetts (2) Michigan (4) Minnesota (1) New York (2) Oregon (1) Washington (5) Wisconsin (1)\nU.S. Lighthouse Society\nLighthouse Vacation Auction\nWelcome to the U.S. Lighthouse Society's\nNinth Annual Lighthouse Vacation Auction!\nAuction Begins: Monday December 9th - 12:00 PM EST\nAuction Ends: Sunday December 15th - 7:00 PM EST\nYou can see bidding options by state, or can click the \"View All Categories\" button for a list of all the lighthouse vacations and B&B's available through this special U.S. Lighthouse Society fundraiser. Good luck, and thank you in advance for your generous support!\nWe consider ourselves fortunate to have so many amazing partners that have donated their unique lodging experience in order to support our mission to preserve lighthouses and their history.\nEach lighthouse vacation location offers its own unique charm and unforgettable experience and once again, we have included several amazing B&B's and Inns located near lighthouses.\nBid Extension\nThis year there will not be a bid extension at the end of the auction. So the highest bid at the end of the auction, will win!\nWho is the U.S. Lighthouse Society?\nThe U.S. Lighthouse Society is a national nonprofit organization that started the lighthouse preservation movement in America over 30 years ago. Education is at the forefront of Society operations, and to that end it produces a highly respected lighthouse journal and operates educational excursions around the world.\nThe Society is considered the hub of communication for everything lighthouse, and has been the proud recipient of numerous preservation awards including a special commendation from The White House.\nTo date, the U.S. Lighthouse Society is made up of many thousands of members and supports lighthouse preservation projects nationwide. The Society serves as an important voice and a beacon of hope for those who are passionate about these national maritime treasures, and is dedicated to the continued preservation of lighthouses for future generations.\n(415) 362-7255 / USLHS.org\nHave questions? Please contact us!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line97925"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6991724371910095,"wiki_prob":0.3008275628089905,"text":"Explore ships\nCruiselines\nExplore ports\nAmazon Gift card Deal\n+ Cruise Itinerary Aggregator\nQuick login via social networks\nOr login using your account on CruiseBe\nWhy do I need to login?\nBeing a registered user gives you privilege to save all cruise itineraries that you build in your account and access them later on any device.\n* By using the website, you accept Terms and Conditions\nDon`t have an account? Register now\nI'm not a spammer\nWhat to do in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nRating Title\nMaracas Beach, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nPort of call:\nAsa Wright Nature Centre, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nQueen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nDattatreya Temple, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nRoyal Botanic Gardens, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nMonday-Sunday 6:00-18:00\nEmperor Valley Zoo, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nLas Cuevas Beach, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nNational Museum and Art Gallery, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nFort George, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nMaracas Falls, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nCathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nBlanchisseuse, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nCedros, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nFort San Andres, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nCaroni Swamp, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nHoly Trinity Cathedral, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nPitch Lake, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nThe Red House, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nMayaro Bay, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nSan Fernando Hill, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nManzanilla Beach, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nDowntown Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nChaguaramas, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nHall of Justice, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nMemorial Park, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago\nHistory and museums\nCruise Lines International Association Member №00435435\n© 2020 CruiseBe INC","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line900859"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.645511269569397,"wiki_prob":0.645511269569397,"text":"Servant Keeper Blog\n4 Steps to Encourage End of Year Generosity\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/GivePlus-Holiday-hand-pop-up-2-blog-header-01.png 242 600 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2019-12-18 15:09:042019-12-18 15:09:044 Steps to Encourage End of Year Generosity\nTrack and Manage Ministry Health\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/dashboard-email-play-2.png 261 450 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2019-06-05 19:40:492019-06-05 20:20:23Track and Manage Ministry Health\nTo Screen or Not to Screen\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/to-screen-or-not-to-screen-high-res-2.png 324 250 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2019-02-15 17:25:522019-02-15 17:30:52To Screen or Not to Screen\nHow to Create a Culture of Service with the Help of Ministry Scheduling Software\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/ministry-scheduler-pro-ebook-cover.jpg 247 325 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-11-08 16:43:202018-11-08 17:56:26How to Create a Culture of Service with the Help of Ministry Scheduling Software\nVolunteer Recognition - An eToolkit\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Volunteer-recognition-etoolkit.jpg 224 219 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-08-15 16:54:522018-08-15 16:57:31Volunteer Recognition - An eToolkit\nTop 10 Background Screening Best Practices for VBS and Children's Ministry\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ten-screening-best-practices-capture.jpg 446 399 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-07-26 20:00:112018-07-27 14:21:18Top 10 Background Screening Best Practices for VBS and Children's Ministry\nHow This Church Manages Ministry Better with Servant Keeper\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Inside-Sanctuary-2000-002.jpg 1978 1585 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-07-25 21:00:182018-07-26 13:22:17How This Church Manages Ministry Better with Servant Keeper\nMake Your VBS Safer in 24 Hours\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/lightstock_340735_medium_VBS-Girl_small.jpg 333 500 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-05-15 20:39:362019-03-26 15:54:15Make Your VBS Safer in 24 Hours\nSee How Easy it Can Be to Send Out Contribution Statements\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/V8-Video-Contribution-8-Producing-Donor-Statements.jpg 540 960 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-03-28 15:43:442018-05-17 16:09:47See How Easy it Can Be to Send Out Contribution Statements\nFast Contribution Entry (Video)\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Contribution-Entry-Screen.jpg 983 1502 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-03-28 13:34:572018-05-10 12:47:59Fast Contribution Entry (Video)\nFinding the Right Accounting Solution for Your Ministry\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/calculator-calculation-insurance-finance-accounting.jpeg 353 600 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-03-23 20:46:162018-04-30 14:49:07Finding the Right Accounting Solution for Your Ministry\nTechnology Churches Need in 2018: Email Campaigns\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/woman-typing-writing-windows.jpg 400 600 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-03-09 21:09:522018-04-30 14:53:59Technology Churches Need in 2018: Email Campaigns\nTechnology Churches Need in 2018: Online Directory\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/online-directory-400.jpg 283 400 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2018-01-29 17:56:102018-04-27 19:59:41Technology Churches Need in 2018: Online Directory\n2017 Churchgoer Giving Study: See what Vanco has Revealed\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Churchgoer-Giving-Study_Thumbnail_Servant-keeper-002.jpg 388 300 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2017-12-15 17:02:302018-04-30 15:08:482017 Churchgoer Giving Study: See what Vanco has Revealed\nEnhance Your Volunteer Lifecycle\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/enhancing-volunteer-lifecycle-ebook-cover.jpg 250 500 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2017-11-30 14:51:362018-04-30 15:46:10Enhance Your Volunteer Lifecycle\nWith Checks and Cash in Decline, What's Filling Your Collection Plate?\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Disappearing-Check_cover-3.jpg 243 432 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2017-11-21 16:04:392018-04-30 15:55:55With Checks and Cash in Decline, What's Filling Your Collection Plate?\nUsing Groups to Better Manage Ministry (Video)\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/smart-groups-choir.jpg 271 550 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2017-10-27 21:04:462018-04-30 15:56:22Using Groups to Better Manage Ministry (Video)\nA Quick Look at Reporting for Churches (Video)\nhttps://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/shared-reports.jpg 308 450 Amy Bechdel https://www.servantpc.com/spcwordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/logo.jpg Amy Bechdel2017-10-27 20:35:402019-07-25 14:00:43A Quick Look at Reporting for Churches (Video)\n4 Steps to Encourage End of Year GenerosityDecember 18, 2019 - 3:09 pm\nHow Your Church can Avoid the Scariest Part of Trunk or...October 20, 2016 - 2:59 pm\nEffective Church Event Promotion on a Limited BudgetOctober 24, 2016 - 4:51 pm\n6 Signs It’s Time for an (Improved) Online Church...November 2, 2016 - 4:06 pm\nTrack and Manage Ministry HealthJune 5, 2019 - 7:40 pm\nTo Screen or Not to ScreenFebruary 15, 2019 - 5:25 pm\nHow to Create a Culture of Service with the Help of Ministry...November 8, 2018 - 4:43 pm\n[…] Servant Keeper is proficient, efficient and straightforward...November 29, 2017 - 8:00 am by Ministry of Administration - The Ministry of Administration\nAttendance Background Check Cloud contribution Directory eBook egiving Events Giving group Member Notes Reports smart groups Staff Vanco Verified Volunteer Visitor Volunteer","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line762476"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5470834374427795,"wiki_prob":0.45291656255722046,"text":"Home Magazine Society Forum discusses social policy in 1st half of president’s term\nAssistant Deputy Minister of Education Seo Yoo-mi on Dec. 17 gives a keynote speech at a forum on the results and remaining tasks of the social policy of President Moon Jae-in’s administration in the first half of his term at Seoul’s Koreana Hotel. (Ministry of Education)\nBy Oh Hyun Woo and Kim Minji\nA forum on the results and remaining tasks of social policy in the first half of President Moon Jae-in’s term term was held on Dec. 17 at Seoul’s Koreana Hotel.\nThe event was jointly hosted by the Ministry of Education and a network of 19 research bodies in social policy sectors such as education, welfare and labor.\nDeputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Yoo Eun-hae, in a congratulatory speech via video, said “The Moon administration proposed ‘an innovative, inclusive nation where everyone prospers together’ as a vision of national administration and has promoted various social policies.”\n“As a result, overall living conditions have improved from two years ago, according to a survey by Statistics Korea,” she said, adding, “Related ministries should work together to improve daily life for the people and ensure that the process is based on inclusiveness, innovation and fairness.”\nCho Heung-seek, president of Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, and representatives from local governments, civic organizations and specialized entities gave presentations at the forum on the administration’s results and tasks from the viewpoints of inclusiveness, innovation and fairness.\n“The government is achieving inclusiveness through a citizen-friendly welfare policy,” Cho said, adding, “The issues of social polarization and elderly poverty should be resolved through the expansion of welfare policy and stronger taxation.”\nRa Young-sun, president of Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, said, “The results of (the government’s) policy of enhancing human resource capacity are being verified through select indicators,” adding, “Social policy should actively perform the function of accumulating and utilizing human capital.”\nIn a discussion session after the presentations, four participants including Ku In-hoe, a social welfare professor at Seoul National University, and Hong Seon-mee, a social welfare professor at Hanshin University, explored remaining tasks in social policy and shared opinions on its direction.\nEx-nat’l soccer coach Cha to receive German honor","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line409190"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9001345634460449,"wiki_prob":0.9001345634460449,"text":"Overview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) waits outside the paint to prepare for a potential rebound as a free throw shot is about to be attempted during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) makes an inbound pass to a teammate during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) calls for a pass with her hands raised high as an opposing Old Dominion defender keeps close during a game in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) prepares to play defense in the post during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) gets into a defensive stance during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) attempts to slow down a driving opponent near the paint during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) runs up the court during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) plays post-up defense against an opposing Old Dominion player who calls for the ball during a game in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) attempts to grab a rebound but an opposing Old Dominion player grabs the ball first during a game in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.\nOverview 2001 University of Denver (DU) Pioneers women's basketball player Stacey Koralewski (50) grabs the ball and prepares to move during a game against Old Dominion in the Magness Arena in Denver, Colorado.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line258370"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6250030398368835,"wiki_prob":0.6250030398368835,"text":"Android News / Android News / Alcatel 1T7, 1T10 Tablets Feature Android Oreo & Kids Mode – MWC 2018\nAlcatel 1T7, 1T10 Tablets Feature Android Oreo & Kids Mode – MWC 2018\nBy John Anon\nIn addition to announcing a number of smartphones, Alcatel has also today unveiled two new Android tablets at MWC 2018. Although, they are essentially the same tablet made available in two different sizes. These are the Alcatel 1T7 and 1T10 Android tablets, both of which are designed to be highly affordable options, with the 1T7 set to arrive with a starting price of €69,99 and the 1T10 starting at €99.99. According to Alcatel, both models are set to become available in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, beginning in the second quarter of 2018.\nStarting with the smaller of the two, the Alcatel 1T7 features a 7-inch IPS display along with a 1,024 x 600 resolution. Inside, the Alcatel 1T7 comes loaded with 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, and is powered by a MediaTek MT8321A/D quad-core processor. This tablet includes a 2-megapixel rear camera along with a VGA front-facing camera. MicroSD card support is included, as is a 2,580 mAh battery – which is rated to offer up to seven hours of usage off a single charge. As for the Alcatel 1T10, its larger size results in a 10.1-inch display along with a 1,280 x 800 resolution. Inside, and while the RAM is the same as the 1T7 (1GB), the storage has been boosted up to 16GB, and the processor in use is the standard MediaTek MT8321. Likewise, the same 2-megapixel rear camera is in play, although the front-facing camera on this occasion is a second 2-megapixel camera. Another noticeable difference is in the battery department as the Alcatel 1T10 comes loaded with a 4,000 mAh battery – which the company states will offer up to eight hours of usage per charge.\nSome of the other features on offer with both models are the employment of Android 8.0 (Oreo), along with the inclusion of an 'Eye Care Mode' (designed to reduce the effects of blue light) and a 'Kids Mode.' The latter of which is a version of the operating system designed with younger users in mind. Not only does this mode offer a selection of pre-installed apps and games suitable for younger users, but it also comes with additional settings to allow parents to pre-set various aspects such as usage limits.\nAlcatel 1T7\nAlcatel 1T 7 inch MWC 2018 1\nAlcatel 1T10\nAlcatel 1T 10 inch MWC 2018 1\nAlcatel 1T 10 inch MWC 2018 10\nDetailed Galaxy S20 Series Camera Specs Reveal A Lot\nJohn Anon\nJohn has been writing about and reviewing tech products since 2014 after making the transition from writing about and reviewing airlines. With a background in Psychology, John has a particular interest in the science and future of the industry. John also covers much of the news surrounding audio and visual tech, including cord-cutting, the state of Pay-TV, and Android TV. Contact him at [email protected]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line449998"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9762224555015564,"wiki_prob":0.9762224555015564,"text":"Dot Da Genius\nProfile NEWS Songs Mixtapes Albums Videos\nOladipo Omishore\nBrooklyn, New York City, New York, United States\nHeadBanga Muzik Group\nDot da Genius is an American record producer and mixing engineer from Brooklyn, New York City. He is perhaps best known for producing \"Day 'n' Nite\", the debut single of longtime friend and collaborator, American recording artist Kid Cudi, with whom he later formed a rock band known as WZRD. Engaged in various music production ventures, Dot da Genius has also signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Group, launched his own label HeadBanga Muzik Group and has since employed a mix engineer (Jay Powell). He has also collaborated with several prominent artists in the music industry, such as King Chip and Jhené Aiko, among others.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1533230"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8779053688049316,"wiki_prob":0.8779053688049316,"text":"The Genesis\nThe establishment of ISID followed a course that is quite different from that of most of the fellow ICSSR institutes. The journey started in the late seventies as an assembly of a few committed and competent scholars and now has reached a stage where it can support long term research programme on diverse aspects relating to the country’s industrial development, after overcoming many hardships and uncertainties over a prolonged period of more than two and a half decades. The journey had been arduous for two main reasons. One: ISID did not have the additional active support of a state government or national and international organisations. Two: the institute chose to shun funding which can potentially influence public policy research.\nThe influence exercised by big business and large private corporations on the polity was a matter of intense debate in India both during the pre- and post-independence periods. Understandably, after the initial planning experience, the question arose as to how the increase in national income, emerging from planned development, was being distributed in the country. To examine this issue, Jawaharlal Nehru, as Chairman of the Planning Commission, set up an expert committee headed by Dr P.C. Mahalanobis, in 1960. Subsequently, the Monopolies Inquiry Commission (1965) looked into the existence and effect of concentration of economic power.\nSoon after, the Industrial Licensing Policy Inquiry Committee (1969) was assigned the task of examining whether larger industrial houses benefited unduly from the operation of the Industrial Licensing System and the public financial institutions. The paucity of relevant data and information, however, made this task extremely difficult and time consuming. This experience underlined the need to have an agency which could provide appropriate data in readily usable form.\nProfessor S.K. Goyal, who was closely associated with this Committee as Honorary Economic Adviser, renewed his efforts at undertaking studies in the area of monopolies and concentration of economic power, at the Indian Institute of Public Administration. The study Monopoly Capital and Public Policy: Business and Economic Power (1979) further emphasised the absence of an agency to collect, analyse and interpret private corporate data and the sector’s influence on the society, economy and public policy. Professor V.K.R.V. Rao, a member of the Mahalanobis Committee, and who had drafted the chapter on Concentration of Economic Power for the Committee, in his Foreword to Professor Goyal’s study suggested the need for ???establishment of research centers on concentration of economic power in selected universities and institutions of higher research. Subsequently, Professor Goyal completed another major study Impact of Foreign Subsidiaries on India???s Balance of Payments (1979).\nThis was the background in which the Corporate Studies Group (CSG) at the Indian Institute of Public Administration emerged gradually. The five-year research programme, Regulatory Administration of the Corporate Sector in India, supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), based on the recommendations of the Committee comprising Professors V.K.R.V. Rao (Chairman), Raj Krishna and Amiya Kumar Bagchi, provided a major impetus for the CSG. The Committee in its recommendations underlined the necessity for having much more information and analysis than was available at that time ‘on the working of the corporate sector in India not only from the viewpoint of IDRA, MRTP and FERA but also from the point of view of productivity, efficiency and the cost structure’.\nRealising the limitations of conventional data handling methods, the CSG took the lead to harness emerging computer technologies to facilitate better organisation of data and information for and faster, reliable and convenient access to it. Among the initial studies at the CSG was the Ownership and Control Structure of the Indian Press (1981) which was commissioned by the Second Press Commission. Functioning of the Industrial Licensing System (1983), Small Scale Sector and Big Business (1984) and Political Dimensions of the Multinational Corporations (1983) were the defining studies of the Group which received wide coverage in academics and in policymaking circles.\nA Committee constituted by the ICSSR, under the chairmanship Prof. CH. Hanumantha Rao, to review the work done under the programme, recommended the continuation of the CSG into an autonomous Centre for Industrial Policy Research because\nWhile industry and the organised sector in India have an important and growing place, there are no specialised centres to undertake research in this field on a continuing basis. This gap in the social sciences and industrial policy research needs to be bridged;\nThe other members of the Committee were Professor Y.K. Alagh, Professor Deepak Nayyar, Professor T.S. Papola and Shri T.L. Sankar.\nTransformation of the CSG into ISID\nAs a follow up of the recommendations of the Committee, ISID was registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860, on October 7, 1986 to undertake, promote and co-ordinate research in the area of industrial development with special emphasis on the problems of India and its relationship with other countries of the world. ISID was brought under the grants-in-aid scheme of the ICSSR towards the end of 1987-88 thus paving the way for its autonomous development.\nEven while functioning from temporary sheds on a shoestring budget and uncertain flow of funds for about one and a half decades, which also constrained it from attaining optimal faculty strength, the Institute continued its thrust on research and database building. From 1991 onwards the research agenda was widened gradually keeping in view the changed economic policy environment. Simultaneously, all out efforts were made to establish own permanent campus.\nOwn Campus\nThe operations of the Institute were shifted to the new campus in mid-2006. Immediately ISID started consolidating its programme as also further broadening and diversifying into activities like training and capacity building programmes. The period also marked the beginning of some financial stability and meaningful long term planning. The institute thus could renew the efforts to build core minimum faculty.\nISID is the culmination of the vision and tenacity of Professor S.K. Goyal. In realising this dream, many individuals from different walks of life and institutions contributed immensely to tide over difficult situations and to attain stability. Shri Chandra Shekhar, former Prime Minister of India had been a tower of strength providing support and guidance in multiple forms. Among the others who deserve a special mention are: Professor Moonis Raza, Shri Abid Hussain, Shri Madhu Dandavate, Shri Yashwant Sinha, Shri Markandey Singh, Shri T.N. Chaturvedi.\nIndian Institute of Public Administration the ICSSR, Centre of Applied Politics, the Ministry of Finance and the Planning Commission in general and their senior functionaries in particular extended constructive support during various phases of ISID’s development.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line213702"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7990878224372864,"wiki_prob":0.7990878224372864,"text":"KELVIN MACGREGOR - BIOGRAPHY\nKelvin MacGregor is a British author, journalist and singer-songwriter.\nAn award-nominated internationally published journalist, he has written for publications such as Empire, ELLE and Cosmopolitan.\nKelvin has recently written for The Herald, one of the UK's leading quality national daily newspapers.\nHis first novel HERE WE GO! was published by Random House. He recently revised and updated his Top 10 international bestselling film biography Kevin Costner: Prince Of Hollywood, which has been translated into several languages including French, Japanese, German, Hungarian.\nKelvin was awarded a Writers' Bursary by the Scottish Arts Council (now Creative Scotland) on the strength of a work-in-progress to write a new novel.\nKelvin is also an unsigned Myspace Top 10 Indie Recording Artist, producing and releasing his own music independently.\nA contemporary singer-songwriter with a refreshing throwback retro sound, Kelvin's innovative acoustic, pop, rock songs are given a cool modern spin with catchy tunes, strong, driving beats and heartfelt emotive lyrics delivered with his distinctive soft vocal.\nKelvin's singles The Girl Of My Best Friend, White Horses (Official TV Series Theme Song), Last Christmas and albums The Only One, Forever: The Collection, Maybe I'm Falling In Love, The Life You Dream Of, When You Call It Love are available to buy at iTunes, Amazon, CD Baby and all other online stores as well as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited and other music streaming sites.\nGetty Images, the market leader in music licensing, represent the songs of Kelvin MacGregor across film/TV, trailers, commercials & multi-media projects globally.\nKelvin's songs are played on radio stations around the world.\n* Click the MUSIC section to listen to Kelvin's songs and for a full listing of singles and album record releases.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line972797"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9206782579421997,"wiki_prob":0.9206782579421997,"text":"STV The Diana Tapes Feature - August 24th 2016\nWriter James Clements and Director Wednesday Derrico are interviewed on Live at 5 at Scottish Television about the Edinburgh Workshop production of The Diana Tapes. Watch Video\nBBC Radio Scotland - August 24th 2016\nCo-Artistic Directors James Clements and Jorge Morales Picó are interviewed by renowned BBC Arts journalist Janice Forsyth on The Janice Forsyth Show. Read More\nBroadway World Review - June 27, 2017\nDiana, Princess of Wales remains a fascinating figure, despite the two decades that have gone by since her death. The relatively new play, THE DIANA TAPES, by James Clements takes an interesting approach to the princess, her motivations and involvement with the tabloid writer Andrew Morton, when he wrote Diana: In Her Owns Words in 1992. Diana was... Read More\nMotif Magazine Review - June 17, 2017\nTwenty years after her death, Princess Diana remains a legendary figure. Playwright James Clements’ In Her Own Words: The Diana Tapes is an entrancing look at the creation of Diana: Her True Story, Andrew Morton’s best-selling book about the doomed princess. Diana was a woman who gave birth to a future king, Prince William, and lived much of her life in the glare of the spotlight. Beautifully played by Ana Cristina Schuler, Diana... Read More\nMooney on Theatre Review - October 4, 2017\nThe Diana Tapes, being performed by What Will The Neighbors Say? Theatre Company at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, focuses on a crucial episode of Diana’s life – the 1992 publication of Andrew Morton’s biography, Diana: Her True Story. The book was a bombshell, revealing Diana’s suicide attempts, her bulimia, and her husband, Prince Charles’, affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. It ultimately resulted in... Read More\nEdge Media Network Review - June 28, 2017\nWhat Will The Neighbors Say? (WWTNS?), a theater company based in New York City, presents \"In Her Own Words: The Diana Tapes,\" a compelling retelling of English journalist Andrew Morton's tumultuous effort to publish his 1992 tell-all book, \"Diana: Her True Story,\" which painted an especially unflattering portrait of the British royal family and effectively ended Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles. Read More\nProvidence Journal Review - June 14, 2017\nOne doesn’t have to be an Anglophile to be interested in the backstory of one of this generation’s most glamorized, yet rocky, marriages - and a spare but intriguing Rhode Island theatrical premiere is bringing the sadder side of the life of Britain’s Princess Diana into sharper perspective. The New York City-based theater company What Will the Neighbors Say? is staging “In Her Own Words: The Diana Tapes” locally. Read More","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line454369"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9313309788703918,"wiki_prob":0.9313309788703918,"text":"JASON and the Bureaucrats\nPentagon muckety-mucks tried to cut off funding for an elite group of independent scientific overseers. Then Congress intervened.\nBy Mark Thompson | Filed under analysis | May 02, 2019\n(Illustration by POGO)\nBack in 1967, members of a secretive government advisory panel of scientists known as JASON started getting nervous as the Vietnam War ground into a stalemate. Its members were alarmed by U.S. war games (conducted by “independent” outsiders like the RAND Corp.) that concluded that nuclear weapons might help tilt the conflict in favor of South Vietnam and its ally, the United States. A top-ranking military officer (within earshot of a Jason, as members of the group are informally known) joined in the rhetoric: “It might be a good idea to toss in a nuke from time to time, just to keep the other side guessing.”\nThis was enough to electrify some Jasons into producing a secret report, declassified in 2002, showing such thinking was atomic hogwash. “To the extent of my personal knowledge, the talk of using nuclear weapons in that war stopped after the JASON report on the subject,” Seymour Deitchman, who spent 28 years at the federal government’s Institute for Defense Analyses, said in 2003.\nSo go figure that, after performing for decades what insiders say is critical work, the Pentagon tried to order these mad scientists out of business by cancelling their long-standing Defense Department contract in March. But not to fear, at least not yet: After Congressional criticism of the proposed termination, the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) stepped in on April 25 to keep funding flowing to the JASON program, at least through January.\nThough JASON may have gotten a stay of execution, its days still could be numbered.\n“NNSA and other agencies have critical national security support studies that JASON is performing or scheduled to perform this year,” NNSA said in explaining its decision. “A gap in coverage that the current contract provides could be harmful to the completion of these studies.”\nThe news that JASON’s days may be numbered set off alarms inside the military-inquiry complex. “The abrupt, unilateral decision to not renew the long-standing JASON contract damages our national security by depriving not only the Pentagon, but also other national security agencies, of sober and sound advice in confronting some of the nation's most complex threats,” said Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN), chair of the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subcommittee—the panel that deals with nuclear weapons. His view counts because JASON has several studies underway for NNSA, which is championing the Trump Administration’s push to spend $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years on nuclear weapon modernization efforts.\nFor those not deep into Pentagon intrigue, JASON is a low-profile group of physicists and other patriotic eggheads that has quietly whispered wisdom into the Defense Department’s ear for the past 60 years. While the group’s focus is the military’s use of science and technology, it also investigates climate change and other non-military topics. You can glean a sense of the breadth of JASON’s work by reviewing a list of its unclassified reports assembled by the Federation of American Scientists. They include military topics like the technical risks facing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the Pentagon’s possible future use of artificial intelligence and the human genome. There also are non-military studies into subjects like cheap nuclear power and the impact of solar storms on the electrical grid.\nThe Pentagon, with a $700 billion budget this year, spends about $7 million every six minutes.\nThe Defense Department said it made “economic sense” to shutter the shop, which has been costing taxpayers about $7 million a year. But the NNSA, which has JASON producing three studies this year (on cyber-security, the detection of nuclear detonation, and plutonium aging), sees value in JASON’s work. “I found their reports to be fulsome and the members of JASON to be knowledgeable about issues associated with our programs at NNSA,” agency head Lisa Gordon-Hagerty told Congress on April 11.\nRegardless of which branch on the federal tree is footing the bill, it’s important to keep that $7 million in perspective. The Pentagon, with a $700 billion budget this year, spends about $7 million every six minutes. “We certainly are a bargain,” says Russell Hemley, JASON’s chair and a professor of physics and chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Pentagon does “need a JASON-type organization, and many people believe that,” he continued.\nJasons and people working closely with the group were gob-smacked that its full-fledged services were apparently no longer needed, at least by the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “I had no insight this was coming—it was a surprise,” Hemley says. The Pentagon and others are free to ignore JASON’s recommendations, but their expertise often carries an influence and a power of its own. “We are a completely independent body” not beholden to the military services or defense contractors, he adds.\nThere are echoes in JASON’s threatened demise of an executive branch that isn’t keen on second-guessing.\nThe research office had been underwriting JASON’s work for the past 17 years. JASON members give up their summers to conduct serious studies for the nation, and take no public credit for it (no one acknowledges their JASON membership except for Hemley, who is the group’s chair, and Vice-Chair Ellen Williams, a professor specializing in chemistry and nanotechnology at the University of Maryland). “They’re doing vital work for the country, instead of enhancing their own career with public research,” one said.\nJASON was born in 1959 over post-Sputnik concerns that the Soviet Union was eclipsing the United States in military know-how. After the glory of the Manhattan Project’s atomic bomb, the military felt a need for fresh thinking (but no, JASON doesn’t stand for “Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now,” as Pentagon lore has it). There are currently about 40 Jasons producing about 12 to 15 reports a year.\nJASON usually meets annually for summer studies to probe the Pentagon’s technical underbelly and give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down (and no, given their annual timetable, their name also doesn’t stand for “July August September October November”). JASON actually is named for the leader of the Argonauts who sought the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology. Mildred Goldberger, wife of Marvin Goldberger, one of the original Jasons, came up with the name because she deemed the Pentagon’s “Project Sunrise” too bland.\nIn a letter to the Washington Post on April 19, the former top arms-control aide at the State Department during the Clinton Administration praised JASON’s bang for the buck. Peter Zimmerman said he spent $20,000 hiring JASON to review a proposal to build a “hafnium” bomb. Its backers said it would “pack the power of a small atomic bomb into a hand-grenade-size weapon.” JASON’s response was straightforward: “Several of the United States’ most distinguished scientists had found fatal flaws in the idea,” Zimmerman wrote. Soon thereafter, Congress killed the program, “saving at least tens of millions of dollars, far more than the entire JASON budget for the year.”\nJASON has dodged a bullet like this before. In 2002, it got into a spat with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), its Pentagon overseer at the time. DARPA wanted to appoint three new JASON members, a decision the Jasons had long reserved for themselves. After a public squabble, the Pentagon shifted funding for the Jasons from DARPA to the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. That office “is believed to be the driving force behind last month’s decision” to terminate funding, Science magazine reported on April 9.\nThere are echoes in JASON’s threatened demise of an executive branch that isn’t keen on second-guessing. For example, the Navy recently decided to abolish its Naval Research Advisory Committee after 73 years. And the key investigator scrutinizing the $100 billion the United States has spent rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan is finding that the data he needs to do his job is becoming increasingly stealthy. “What we are finding is now almost every indicia, metric for success or failure is now classified or nonexistent,” John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, complained on April 24.\nBut Hemley won’t go there. JASON has had “remarkable stability” working for the U.S. military for six decades, he says, “regardless of the politics of the day, or the administration in power.” He refrains from suggesting JASON’s possible demise is due to any Trump Administration anti-scientific bias. “We’re at a very delicate time,” one Jason says by way of explanation.\nSo even though the Jasons may have gotten a stay of execution, their days still could be numbered. In that case, we’ll just have to hope that the next time there’s loose talk about using nuclear weapons, there’s another hardy band of anonymous heroes willing to apply the brakes.\nCenter for Defense Information\nThe Center for Defense Information at POGO aims to secure far more effective and ethical military forces at significantly lower cost.\nHelp us shine a light on government waste, fraud, and corruption.\nFrom rooting out wasteful spending at the Pentagon to defending our constitutional right to privacy, POGO fights day in and day out for a more effective government that better serves the people it’s supposed to serve—you. But we can only continue to do this with your help.\nMark Thompson writes for the Center for Defense Information at POGO.\nOversight National Security Science Congress Department of Defense (DOD) Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Weapons\nA New Kind of Nuclear War\nGambling On History: President Trump’s Pentagon Says Nuclear Weapons Save Lives\nPanel of Defense Lobbyists and Revolving Door Doyens Calls for More Defense Spending\nWar…By the Numbers","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line410139"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6951304078102112,"wiki_prob":0.6951304078102112,"text":"Texas Court Holds that Mexico’s Legal System is Ineffective\nPosted by Jeremy Morley | Jan 14, 2009 | 0 Comments\nIt is unfortunate that courts are usually extremely reluctant to judge the effectiveness of other countries' legal systems, even when such findings need to be made in international custody and visitation cases. Judges often feel great discomfort in making negative findings as to a sovereign country's judges and courts. They may feel that they are not in a position to make fair evaluations of foreign legal systems; that they might be accused of xenophia or insensitivity to foreign ways; and that “people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.”\nHowever there is no way to evaluate the true risks involved in authorizing or failing to prevent international child visitation and international child relocation without evaluating the effectiveness of the foreign legal systems that will be called upon to remedy a child's wrongful retention in a foreign country.\nJudicial reluctance to make the necessary decisions on these issues -- hard as the decision-making task may be -- endangers children when it results in a child being taken to a country which is unlikely to order the child's return to the United States. In the face of strong evidence to the contrary -- which courts should encourage -- courts should not blithely assume that a foreign court will probably do the right thing when it comes to ordering the return (for example) to the United States of the child of a citizen of the country in question.\nIn some extreme cases the U.S. State Department makes a judge's work much easier. While for diplomatic reasons the State Department is understandably reluctant to cast aspersions on many foreign countries, it does issue critical judgments as to some of the worst offenders.\nSuch determinations provided the basis for a Texas appeal court to uphold a decision to require supervision of all visitation between a father and his son since there was a serious risk that the father might abduct the child to Mexico. In re Sigmar, --- S.W.3d ----, 2008 WL 4816557 Tex.App.-Waco,2008.\nInternational family lawyers know all too well that it is extremely difficult, and very often entirely impossible, to get an abducted American child back from Mexico. Although Mexico is a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction it does not do what it is required to do under the terms of that treaty.\nIn the Sigmar case the Texas court made findings as to the Mexican legal system and as to safety in that country by relying exclusively on the State Department's published materials. These materials included the State Department evaluations of Mexico's compliance with the Hague Convention, and its published warnings concerning travel in certain parts of the country and concerning trafficking in women and children for the purpose of sexual exploitation.\nIn reliance on such reports the trial court made rulings, which the appeal court upheld, that Mexico:\n§ Has no legal mechanism for the immediate and effective enforcement of a child custody order;\n§ Has local laws or practices that would enable the father to prevent the mother from contacting the child without due cause, restrict the mother from freely traveling to or exiting from the country because of gender, nationality, or religion; and restrict the child's ability to legally leave the country when she reaches the age of majority because of gender, nationality, or religion;\n§ Is a country for which the State Department has issued a travel warning to U.S. citizens; and\n§ Poses a risk to the child's physical health and safety because of her specific circumstances and because of “human rights violations committed against children, including child labor and lack of child abuse laws.”\nAs a result of those findings and in view of evidence that the father posed a risk of abduction, including the fact that the father was liquidating assets in the United States, the court required that all visitation between father and child be strictly supervised.\nWhile one may certainly applaud the willingness of the Texas courts to make blunt findings concerning a foreign country, one wishes that the trial court had asked both sides to submit evidence on the issue, rather than simply relying on the State Department's conclusions. The State Department is not a judicial body and while its conclusions may be afforded great significance they are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to deciding whether a foreign judicial system is likely to return an abducted child promptly and effectively. Those decisions should be made by the courts after the submission of evidence for and against the proposition.\nThe case is now on appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line132544"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7111086249351501,"wiki_prob":0.28889137506484985,"text":"Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education\nCIRE Home\nWhy does global inequality in education persist?\nOn November 8, 2019 By shimmiaIn CIRE news\nTigist Grieve, a member of CIRE at the School of Education, sat with our colleague Clare Walsh to talk about her research for the University of Bristol magazine Nonesuch October 2019 issue. The article is copied below.\nInternational Development Ethnographer and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, Tigist Grieve, is researching marginalised voices in rural Ethiopia in an effort to explain the ongoing difficulties in achieving education for all globally.\nIn a year where we’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of men landing on the Moon, we still can’t achieve access to education for all across the globe.1 I continually ask myself, why not? How is it so hard? We make it complicated by not listening and by not understanding other people’s perspectives. Why is it the trend to look at people living in poverty from a deficit point of view? My work as a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow has given me the opportunity to build on my years of PhD research, which focuses on improving the educational outcomes and empowerment of adolescent girls in Ethiopia. I want to bring those voices of marginalised adolescent girls to the ongoing debate of gender and empowerment, while recognising the effort and resilience that goes unnoticed when we have a deficit-based perspective about certain categories of people.\nI want to inspire people to go where others would never expect them to by engaging with relevant stakeholders in Ethiopia and beyond.\nIn particular, my work is about seeing the social, engaging and responding to local voices. In the words of the writer Arundhati Roy ‘There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.’\nMy inspiration for examining voice is the inspiring work of Robert Chambers, author of Rural Development: Putting the Last First. I am listening to the everyday lived experience of people. My work is about voice – the voices of children, of women, of the resource-strapped communities in rural areas. Really, international development policy to date hasn’t given adequate space to hear them, it’s not informed by their experiences or by their voices.2 Even where there is a claim for ‘voices of the poor’ it is proxy voices where the privileged few speak on their behalf from a position of assumption.\nMy work is focused on disseminating my research findings back to target communities in Ethiopia, to spark constructive debate about rural schooling and development. I want to do this in a way that challenges policy makers, development practitioners, donors, teachers, researchers and communities themselves.\nI’m researching within two communities in Ethiopia, a peri-urban and rural, chosen because they are under the same local authority, but with considerable geographical differences. I believe there’s a misconception that certain communities don’t understand the value of education, but we need to research why, looking at policy, political economy, culture, social pressure. For example, despite the increasing enrolment, school attendance is very poor, not because education is not valued but because the expectation that children will be working around their homes and farms is greater. Girls’ attendance is much lower than boys because societal pressure is higher on girls. Boys have much better autonomy in how they use their time while girls in rural areas are time-poor. My work confirms the importance of recognising the difficulty of transforming gender relations through schooling alone.\nWe need to make informed decisions through lessons learned from quality research. The joy of being a researcher at the University of Bristol is the opportunity to collaborate with world-leading multi-disciplinary teams interested in developing ideas to meet the global challenges of development.\nIn analysing categories of children and childhood experiences, I’ve discovered that children are highly mobile in search of opportunities for them and their families, starting from a very young age. My research showed that the ultimate question in rural Ethiopia is ‘Who is this child to me?’ 16 per cent of children in households in my area of research do not live with their biological families and relatedness matters in this culture. This context is so important in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has such a huge population of children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.3 The concept of family is a complex one and under-theorised in the context of Ethiopia. If you’re related to the head of the household, you have access to better resources.\nI’m also looking at issues such as access to water and autonomy of reproductive health (or lack of). These also play a part in preventing girls from obtaining an education. A school without a water source or toilet facilities is not hospitable to children, even less so to adolescent girls dealing with menstruation. Climate change also has a part to play in water scarcity issues, with the African continent identified as one of the parts of the world most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.4\nThe University’s second cohort of 15 Vice-Chancellor’s Fellows started in the academic year 2018-19, joining the 12 from 2017-18. Alumni and friends have contributed funding for six of the Fellows to date. For more information on the Fellows see our dedicated web page.\n1 UIS. (2018). One in Five Children, Adolescents and Youth is Out of School. [Available online at: uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs48-one-five-children-adolescents-youth-out-school-2018-en.pdf.] (last accessed 23.08.19).\n2 Brock, K. and McGee R., (eds) (2002). Knowing Poverty: critical reflections on participatory research and policy. Earthscan.\n3 UNICEF. (2016). For Every Child, End AIDS: Seventh Stocktaking Report, 2016.\n4 Serdeczny, O., Adams, S., Baarsch, F., Coumou, D., Robinson, A., Hare, B., Schaeffer, M., Perrette, M., Reinhardt, J. (2016). Climate change impacts in Sub-Saharan Africa: from physical changes to their social repercussions. Regional Environmental Change. 1-16.\nFighting Patriarchy One Woman at a time\nBristol Colombia Week 2019: Opportunities and Challenges for the Colombian Truth Commission\neducation and sustainable development education governance education inequalities education policy language in education peacebuilding and conflict Quality education teacher education teacher professional development\nCIRE Conversations CIRE Guest Speakers CIRE Masters Students CIRE Members CIRE news Dissertation Roundtable Doctoral researchers Fieldwork reflections Special Events Special Projects","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line418784"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6688296794891357,"wiki_prob":0.33117032051086426,"text":"Hotels near Torrance, CA (TOA) Airport\nFind the best deals for Torrance, CA, United States (TOA) hotels.\nOn this page it is easy to search for Torrance, CA airport hotels, we have listed hotels, airport motels, resorts, inns in order of proximity, closest airport lodging options are listed first. Torrance, CA, United States (TOA) airport area map also gives you guidance on the distance of these hotels from the TOA airport. Most of these TOA hotels are designed to serve frequent travelers. If you are on business trip or family vacation or if your flight is delayed and you need an overnight stay near the airport. Some of these Torrance, CA motels have passenger pick up or free airport shuttle service which you can take advantage of. Some of the main attractions in the area around the TOA airport are Hustler Casino, Runyon Canyon Park, and Glendale Centre Theatre.\n2888 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance CA - 90505\nThe Ramada By Wyndham Inn Torrance Offers Free Internet, An Outdoor Pool, Complimentary Continental Breakfast And An On-Site Restaurant, Making It One Of The Most Popular Hotels In The Area Among Our Guests. This Pet-Friendly Hotel Has Two Floors And 83 Rooms, Some Of Which Are Designated Non-Smoking. Each Room Features Free Wi-Fi, Plush Bedding, Refrigerators And Spa-Style Bath Products. Guests Can Enjoy A Complimentary Continental Breakfast Each Morning And Go For A Swim In The Outdoor Pool. A Laundry Facility Is Available For Guests' Convenience. The Ramada By Wyndham Inn Is Three Miles From Del Amo Fashion Center And Across The Street From Another Shopping Center, Restaurants And A 24-Hour Fitness Center. The Hotel Is Five Miles From The Redondo Beach Pier, Six Miles From Hermosa Beach And Eight Miles From Manhattan Beach. Los Angeles International Airport Is 13 Miles From The Hotel.\n4111 Pacific Coast Hwy, Torrance CA - 90505\nYou'Ll Find An Outdoor Pool, Free Wi-Fi And In-Room Microwaves And Refrigerators At The Days Inn By Wyndham Torrance Redondo Beach. This Pet-Friendly Hotel Has Two Floors And 92 Rooms, Some Of Which Are Designated Non-Smoking. Each Room Includes A Microwave, A Refrigerator, Cable Tv And Free Wi-Fi. An Outdoor Pool Provides A Refreshing Way To Relax, And An On-Site Restaurant Offers The Ultimate In Dining Convenience. Parking Is Free. The Hotel Is In Torrance, Two Miles South Of Shopping And Dining At Del Amo Fashion Center. Torrance Beach Is Three Miles West And The Redondo Beach Pier Is Four Miles Northwest. The Hotel Is 12 Miles From Los Angeles International Airport, 20 Miles From Hollywood And 30 Miles From Disneyland.\nCourtyard by Marriott Los Angeles Torrance Palos Verdes\n2633 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance CA - 90505\nModern Rooms With Free Wi-Fi And Flat-Panel Tvs, An Outdoor Pool And Quick Access To Del Amo Fashion Center Are Among The Perks At The Non-Smoking Courtyard By Marriott Torrance Palos Verde. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 137 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Flat-Panel Tvs, Triple-Sheeted Bedding, Coffeemakers, Hairdryers And Irons With Ironing Boards. Get Off To A Good Start With Healthy Breakfast Choices And Fresh Coffee At The On-Site Bistro, Which Is Also Open For Cocktails And Dinner. Work Out At The Fitness Room And Lounge By The Outdoor Pool With A Hot Tub. Business Services Are Available And Parking Is Free. Del Amo Fashion Center With Its Shopping, Restaurants And A Movie Theater Is A Mile Away From This Hotel. Enjoy Sun And Surf At Redondo Beach, Four Miles Away, Or Embark On An Adventure From The Long Beach Cruise Terminal, 20 Minutes Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is A Half-Hour Drive And Los Angeles International Airport Is 12 Miles North.\nBluestem Hotel Torrance-Los Angeles, an Ascend Hotel Collection Member\n2448 Sepulveda Boulevard, Torrance CA - 90501\nWith In-Room Microwaves And Mini-Fridges And Complimentary Wi-Fi, The Travelodge By Wyndham Torrance Offers A Solid Value. This Two-Floor Hotel Has 52 Rooms, Each Of Which Includes Free Wi-Fi, A Mini-Fridge, A Microwave And Cable Tv With Premium Channels. There Is A Coin Laundry Facility, And A 24-Hour Front Desk. Parking Is Free. This Travelodge By Wyndham Is Just Two Miles From Shopping And Dining Options Galore At Del Amo Fashion Center. It'S Four Miles From Redondo Beach, Eight Miles From Manhattan Beach, 13 Miles From The Long Beach Convention Center And 18 Miles From Venice Beach. Los Angeles International Airport Is 12 Miles From The Hotel.\nSuper 8 by Wyndham Torrance LAX Airport Area\nWith Complimentary Breakfast And A Close Proximity To The Airport And Area Attractions, The Super 8 By Wyndham Torrance Lax Airport Area Is A Value-Priced Hotel For Our Guests' California Stay. This Three-Floor Hotel Has 40 Rooms, Some Of Which Are Designated Non-Smoking. All Accommodations Include Desks, Seating Areas, Mini-Fridges And Coffeemakers. High-Speed Internet Access Is Available. Guests Can Enjoy A Free Continental Breakfast Each Morning And Read A Complimentary Newspaper. There Are Several Restaurants Within Walking Distance Of The Super 8 By Wyndham. Torrance Beach Is Four Miles, While Long Beach Is 10 Miles. Disneyland Is 30 Miles Away, And Hollywood And Universal Studios Are 29 Miles. When It'S Time To Take Off, Los Angeles International Airport Is 12 Miles From The Hotel.\nRodeway Inn & Suites Pacific Coast Highway\n1665 Pacific Coast Hwy, Harbor City CA - 90710\nFree Wi-Fi, Free Morning Coffee And Cozy Rooms With Flat-Panel Tvs Are Among The Perks At Rodeway Inn And Suites Pacific Coast Highway. This Low-Rise Hotel Has 33 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi. Enjoy Your Favorite Programs On The Flat-Panel Tv, With A Snack From Your Mini-Fridge Or Microwave. There Are Pillowtop Mattresses For Sleeping Soundly And Irons With Ironing Boards To Stay Looking Crisp. Fuel Up On Fresh Hot Coffee In The Morning. Copy And Fax Services Are Available. Parking Is Free. On Highway 1, This Hotel Is About Eight Miles Away From Long Beach. Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center Is A Mile Away. Try Out Fish Tacos At Redondo Beach Pier, Seven Miles Away, Or Get Closer To Nature At The Aquarium Of The Pacific, Eight Miles Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is A Half-An-Hour Drive And Los Angeles International Airport Is 17 Miles Away.\nHarbor Inn\n1634 Pacific Coast Highway, Harbor City CA - 90710\nFree Wi-Fi, Rooms With Microwaves And Mini-Fridges, And A Laundromat Come At Hard-To-Beat Rates At Harbor Inn. This Low-Rise Hotel Has 41 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv, Microwaves And Mini-Fridges. Show Up Anytime As The Front Desk Is Open Around The Clock. Show Your Wardrobe Some Love At The Guest Laundry Facility. Parking Is Free. On Highway 1, This Hotel Is About Two Miles From Los Angeles Harbor College And 10 Miles From Port Of Long Beach. Get Up Close And Personal With Marine Life At The Aquarium Of The Pacific, Eight Miles Away, Or Rediscover A Fish On Your Own In The Ocean Waves Of Redondo Beach, Seven Miles West. Downtown Los Angeles Is Half-An-Hour North And Los Angeles International Airport Is 17 Miles Away.\nExtended Stay America Los Angeles - Torrance Del Amo Circle\n3995 W Carson St, Torrance CA - 90503\nWith Home-Away-From-Home Amenities Like Full Kitchens For Making Meals On The Road, Plenty Of Work Space And Free Wi-Fi, Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance - Del Amo Circle Is A Budget-Friendly Choice For A California Trip. This Pet-Friendly Extended Stay America Has Three Floors And 139 Rooms, Some Of Which Are Designated Non-Smoking. Each Room Has A Kitchen With Mini-Fridge, Microwave And Stovetop, Plus Dining And Cooking Utensils, Ironing Equipment And A Sofa Bed. Local Phone Calls And Wi-Fi Are Complimentary, And There'S Also Guest Laundry Facility. Jump-Start Your Day With A Free Grab-And-Go Breakfast That Includes A Variety Of Breakfast Bars And Muffins, Hot Cereal, Coffee, And Tea. Pets Are Permitted For A Fee, And Parking Is Free. Local Attractions Include The Del Amo Fashion Center, A Shopping And Dining Complex A Five-Minute Walk From Extended Stay America, And The Redondo Beach Pier, Three Miles Away. Hollywood Is 25 Miles From The Property, And Knott'S Berry Farm Is 27 Miles Away. If You Need To Fly In Or Out, Los Angeles International Airport Is 10 Miles From The Hotel.\nBest Western Plus Redondo Beach Inn\n1850 S Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach CA - 90277\nComplimentary Breakfast And Free Wi-Fi Are Big Pluses To Our Guests At The Value-Priced, Non-Smoking Best Western Plus Redondo Beach Inn. This Three-Floor Best Western Hosts 103 Accommodations That All Come With Pillowtop Mattresses, 40-Inch Flat-Panel Tvs, Free Wi-Fi And Wired High-Speed Internet, Mini-Fridges, Microwaves And Coffeemakers. After You'Ve Slept Like A Rock, Hit The Complimentary Hot Breakfast Buffet For Favorites Like Eggs, Sausage, Waffles, Muffins, Juice And Coffee — All Are Served In The Open, Airy Poolside Restaurant. The Outdoor Heated Pool Is Open Year-Round; There'S Also An Indoor Hot Tub, Sauna And Fitness Room. Bike Rentals Are Available Via The Hotel'S Concierge. Parking Is Free. The Best Western Is In South Redondo Beach, A Three-Minute Drive From The Beach. Upscale Shopping And High-End Dining At The South Bay Galleria Are A 10-Minute Drive. Riviera Village, Three Minutes Away, Is A Relaxed South Of France-Inspired Shopping District. Los Angeles International Airport Is Nine Miles From The Hotel.\nTorrance Marriott Redondo Beach\n3635 Fashion Way, Torrance CA - 90503\nAn Indoor/Outdoor Connecting Pool And Spacious Rooms With Plush Beds Delight Our Guests At The Non-Smoking Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach. The 17-Story, Non-Smoking Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach Has 487 Rooms And Suites, All With Balconies And Some With Cityscape Views. Rooms Boast Marriott'S Signature Bedding With Pillowtop Mattresses, Marble Baths And Flat-Panel Tvs With Premium Cable And Pay Movies. Oversized Chairs With Ottomans, Coffeemakers And Desks With Ergonomic Chairs Are Included. Wi-Fi Is Available For A Fee. Don'T Miss The Indoor/Outdoor Connecting Pool (Open Year-Round), Sun Deck And Hot Tub. There'S Also A Fitness Center With A Sauna. Dining Options Mean You Don'T Have To Leave For A Meal: Choices Include A Casual Breakfast And Lunch Cafe, A Bar And Lounge Serving Lunch And Dinner And A Coffee Shop. The Hotel Provides Room Service, A Concierge Desk, An Atm, A Gift Shop/News Stand And A Guest Laundromat. Parking Is Available For An Extra Fee. The Hotel Is Adjacent To The Upscale Del Amo Fashion Mall And Less Than Three Miles From The Redondo Pier And Miles Of Sandy Beaches. Torrance Art Museum Is Less Than A Mile From The Hotel. If Toys Are Your Hobby, You'Ll Find Great Collectibles At The Pop Monster Toy Store, Three Miles Away. Save Time To Visit The J. Paul Getty Center, A Half-Hour Drive. Popular Destinations Within 40 Minute Include Disneyland, Knott'S Berry Farm And Universal Studios Hollywood. Los Angeles International Airport Is A 10-Mile Drive North.\nDoubleTree by Hilton Torrance - South Bay\n21333 Hawthorne Blvd, Torrance CA - 90503\nWarm Chocolate Chip Cookies, An Outdoor Pool And Classy Rooms With Hdtvs And Free Wi-Fi Are Just Some Of The Perks At The Doubletree Hotel Torrance/South Bay, Close To Shopping And Dining. This Mid-Rise Hotel Offers 367 Rooms With Hdtvs, Free Wi-Fi, Triple-Sheeted Bedding, Coffeemakers, Hairdryers, Marble Bathrooms And Armoires. Enjoy A Quick Cup Of Coffee At The On-Site Cafe, Or Check Out Local Flavors At The On-Site Restaurant. Work Out At The Fitness Center And Show Off Your Bikini At The Outdoor Resort-Style Pool With A Hot Tub. Meeting Space Is Available. Parking Is Free. Note: The Hotel Will Be Undergoing Room Renovations Through October 31, 2017. Cross The Street And Find Yourself In The Heart Of The Shopping And Dining Action At Del Amo Fashion Center. Reconnect With Your Inner Surfer Or Enjoy Oceanfront Dining At Redondo Beach, Two Miles West. Downtown Los Angeles Is Half-An-Hour North. Los Angeles International Airport Is 10 Miles Away. Our Guests Like A \"Very Nice Swimming Pool Area\" And A Convenient Location Across The Street From Del Amo Shopping Center At The \"Clean And Elegant\" Doubletree Hotel Torrance/South Bay.\nExtended Stay America Los Angeles -Torrance\n3525 Torrance Blvd, Torrance CA - 90503\nFree Wi-Fi, Full Kitchens, Complimentary Grab-And-Go Breakfast And Easy Access To Shopping And Dining Make For A Comfy Base Of Operations At The Modern Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance Blvd.. This Three-Story Extended Stay America Offers 120 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Flat-Panel Tvs, Upgraded Bedding, Recliners And Irons With Ironing Boards. Make Yourself At Home With Fully Equipped Kitchens. Enjoy A Free Grab-And-Go Breakfast Each Morning That Includes A Variety Of Breakfast Bars And Muffins, Hot Cereal, Coffee And Tea, And Keep Your Wardrobe In Top-Notch Condition At The Guest Laundry. Pets Are Welcome For A Fee, And Parking Is Complimentary. Several Restaurants, A Movie Theater And Del Amo Fashion Center Are Within Two Blocks Of This Extended Stay America. Go For Fish Tacos And A Walk Down The Pier At Redondo Beach, Three Miles West, Or Spend A Day At Disneyland, Half-An-Hour Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is 25 Minutes North, And Los Angeles International Airport Is 10 Miles North.\nBest Western Plus Avita Suites\nFree Hot Breakfast, Complimentary Wi-Fi And A 24-Hour Fitness Center Are Popular Perks At The Non-Smoking Best Western Plus Avita Suites In Downtown Torrance. With 66 Suites Spread Over Four Floors, The Non-Smoking Best Western Offers Guests Accommodations With Microwaves, Mini-Fridges, Coffeemakers, Ergonomic Easy Chairs And Desks. Am/Fm Clock Radios With Ipod Docks, Flat-Panel Lcd Hdtvs With Premium Cable And Free Wi-Fi Are Included. Guests Are Treated To A Complimentary Hot Buffet Breakfast Each Morning. A 24-Hour Fitness Center Makes It Easy To Keep Your Workout Routine Going. A Business Center, 24-Hour Front Desk, Guest Laundromat, Sundry Shop And Free Parking Are Offered On-Site For Your Convenience. Located A Half-Mile From The Upscale Shops At Del Amo Fashion Center, The Hotel Is Less Than Three Miles From Redondo Beach. It'S Five Miles To The Public Links At Victoria Golf Course. Within A 30-Minute Drive You Can Be Touring The Queen Mary, Enjoying A Game At The Staples Center Or Visiting The J. Paul Getty Center. Attractions Such As Disneyland, Knott'S Berry Farm And Universal Studios Hollywood Are 40 Minutes Away. The Hotel Is 10 Miles South Of Los Angeles International Airport.\nHoward Johnson by Wyndham Torrance\nWith Free Wi-Fi, In-Room Microwaves And Refrigerators And Complimentary Breakfast, The Howard Johnson By Wyndham Torrance Offers Value-Priced Accommodations In An Ideal Location. This Two-Floor Hotel Has 48 Rooms, Some Of Which Are Non-Smoking. Each Room Includes A Microwave, Refrigerator, Work Desk, Satellite Tv And Free Wi-Fi. Guests Can Enjoy A Complimentary Continental Breakfast Including Cereals, Baked Goods, Coffee And Juice Each Morning. The Hotel Also Has A Sun Deck To Help You Make The Most Of The California Weather. Parking Is Free. The Howard Johnson By Wyndham Is Just One Block From Shopping And Dining Options Galore At The Del Amo Fashion Center. The Torrance Art Museum Is A Half-Mile Away, The Redondo Beach Pier Is Two-And-A-Half Miles, Hollywood Is 26 Miles And Disneyland Is 30 Miles. When It'S Time To Take Off, Los Angeles International Airport Is 10 Miles From The Hotel.\nResidence Inn By Marriott Torrance Redondo Beach\nWi-Fi And Free Breakfast, Plus An Outdoor Pool, Sports Courts And Fire Pit Make For Happy Guests At The Non-Smoking Residence Inn By Marriott Torrance Redondo Beach. This Two-Story Non-Smoking Residence Inn Offers 248 Suites With Fully Equipped Kitchens, Dining Tables With Seating, Separate Living Areas With Sofa Beds And Oversized Chairs With Ottomans. Desks With Ergonomic Chairs, Wi-Fi And Premium Cable Tv With Pay Movies And Video Games Are Included. Guests Are Treated To A Free Daily Buffet Breakfast And A Manager'S Reception On Designated Evenings. Options For Downtime Include Seven Acres Of Landscaped Walkways To Stroll, A Fitness Center, Heated Outdoor Pool, Three Hot Tubs, Sports Courts And A Barbeque/Picnic Area. Guests May Also Choose To Relax On The Patio By The Outdoor Fire Pit With A Free Newspaper. Conveniences Include An Atm, Guest Laundromat And Business Services. Grocery Shopping And Valet Dry-Cleaning Services Are Offered. Pets Are Welcome For A Fee. Located Three Miles From Redondo Beach, The Hotel Is Less Than A Mile From Upscale Shopping At Del Amo Fashion Center. The J. Paul Getty Center, Staples Center And The Queen Mary Are 30 Minutes Away. Within A 40-Minute Drive You Can Enjoy Disneyland, Knott'S Berry Farm And Universal Studios Hollywood. Los Angeles International Airport Is 10 Miles North Of The Hotel.\nMiyako Hybrid Hotel Torrance\n21381 S Western Ave, Torrance CA - 90501\nModern Rooms With Soaking Tubs And Ipod Docks, An Asian Fusion Restaurant And A Spa Are Part Of The Package At The Eco-Friendly And Non-Smoking Miyako Hybrid Hotel Torrance. East Meets West At This Mid-Rise Leed-Certified Hotel Offering 208 Non-Smoking Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Hdtvs, Ipod Docks, Down Comforters And Custom Duvets, Coffeemakers, Mini-Fridges And Japanese-Style Soaking Tubs And Luxury Toiletries. Show Your Muscles Some Love At The Fitness Center And A Full-Service Spa. Ise-Shima At The Miyako Provides Fresh Sushi And Other Exciting Japanese Dishes For Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner. Meeting Space And Business Services Are Available. Airport Shuttle Service And Parking Are Free. Go For The Latest Styles And Flavors At The Del Amo Fashion Center, Three Miles West, Or Enjoy The Ocean Breeze At The Redondo Beach Pier, Five Miles Away. Harbor Ucla Medical Center Is Less Than A Mile East. Hop On I-110 And Find Yourself Downtown Los Angeles With Its La Live Entertainment District And Rodeo Drive In About 25 Minutes. Los Angeles International Airport Is 11 Miles North.\nDel Amo Inn\nFree Wi-Fi, Well-Appointed Rooms And Budget-Friendly Rates Add Up To A Good Deal For Our Guests At The Conveniently Located Del Amo Inn In Torrance. Each Of The 30 Rooms At The Two-Story Del Amo Inn Offers A Flat-Panel Cable Tv, Microwave, Refrigerator, Coffeemaker, Desk And Free Wi-Fi. Non-Smoking Rooms Are Available And Some Rooms Have Jetted Tubs. On-Site Amenities Include A 24-Hour Front Desk, Business Services, Guest Laundromat And Free Parking. Located Less Than Two Miles From Downtown Torrance, The Hotel Is A Mile From Shopping At Torrance Promenade. The Madrona Marsh Nature Preserve Is Two Miles Away And Redondo Beach Is About Three Miles From The Hotel. If You'Re A Golfer, The Municipal Links At Victoria Golf Course Is About 18 Minutes Away. A 30-Minute Drive Takes You To Tour The Queen Mary At Long Beach Pier, Visit The J. Paul Getty Center Or Catch A Game Or Concert At The Staples Center. Attractions Such As Disneyland, Knott'S Berry Farm And Universal Studios Hollywood Are 40 Minutes Away. Los Angeles International Airport Is A 10-Mile Drive North.\nMotel 6 Los Angeles - Harbor City\n820 West Sepulveda Boulevard, Harbor City CA - 90710\nOff Interstate 110, Motel 6 Los Angeles Offers A Budget Crash Pad With Free Coffee And A Pet-Friendly Attitude. This Two-Story Motel Has 56 Rooms With Cable Tv And Free Local Calls. Wi-Fi Is Available For A Fee. Wake Up To Free Hot Coffee Perking In The Lobby. The Front Desk Is Open Around The Clock. Pets Are Welcome For An Additional Fee And Parking Is Free. Right Off Harbor Freeway, This Hotel Is Two Miles South Of Harbor Ucla Medical Center And About Ten Miles North Of The Port Of Long Beach. Visit A Loved One At Fort Macarthur Military Base, Eight Miles South, Or Catch A Wave Or Two At Manhattan Beach, About A 15-Minute Drive Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is A Half-An-Hour North And Los Angeles International Airport Is 14 Miles Away.\nPacific Coast Inn\n716 South Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach CA - 90277\nSunny Days Are Here With Easy Beach Access, Nearby Restaurants And Airport Access And Free Wi-Fi At The Pacific Coast Inn Redondo Beach. Accessible Via Exterior Corridors, All 20 Rooms At The Two-Story Pacific Coast Inn Come Complete With Coffeemakers, Free Wi-Fi And Cable Tv With Premium Channels. Guests Appreciate Having Access To The Front Desk 24/7 As Well As To Copy And Fax Services. The Hotel Also Provides Complimentary On-Site Parking In Front Of Each Room. Nestled Along California'S Pacific Coast Highway, The Pacific Coast Inn Is Located Within Three Blocks Of The Redondo Beach Pier Offering Guests Quick Access To The Sea, Sun And Sand. A Variety Of Dining Options Can Be Found One Mile South In Downtown'S Riviera Village. A 35-Mile Drive East Leads To Family Fun At Disneyland. The Hotel Also Places Guests Within 25 Miles Of Downtown Los Angeles And Less Than Eight Miles South Of Los Angeles International Airport.\nRedondo Inn and Suites\n711 S Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach CA - 90277\nA Boutique Feel, Free Wi-Fi And Setting That'S A Short Stroll From The Surf Come As Part Of The Deal At The Economy-Priced Redondo Inn & Suites Redondo Beach. The Two-Story Redondo Inn'S 36 Rooms And Suites (Some Are Non-Smoking) All Feature Work Areas, Easy Chairs, Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv, Microwaves, Mini-Fridges And Cable Tv With Hbo. Some Rooms Have Wall-Mounted Televisions, Too. There'S A Popular Neighborhood Restaurant On The Premises. Parking Is Free. The Redondo Inn Is On The Pacific Coast Highway, A Five-Minute Walk From The Surf And Sand Of Redondo Beach. You'Ll Find A Pharmacy, Stores And Eateries Three Minutes Away. Check Out The Upscale Marina Scene, Loaded With Fine Fare And Pretty People-Watching At Kings Harbor Marina, A Five-Minute Drive. Get A Flavor For Neighboring Beach Towns Like Hermosa Beach And Manhattan Beach, Both 10 Minutes Away. Los Angeles International Airport Is Eight Miles From The Hotel.\nMoonlite Inn Redondo Beach\nProperty Location With a stay at Moonlite Inn Redondo Beach in Redondo Beach (South Redondo), you'll be a 2-minute drive from Redondo Beach Pier and 7 minutes from Manhattan Beach Pier. This motel is 11.2 mi (18 km) from World Cruise Center and 11.2 mi (18.1 km) from Los Angeles Forum. Rooms Make yourself at home in one of the 23 air-conditioned rooms featuring refrigerators and microwaves. Complimentary wireless Internet access keeps you connected, and satellite programming is available for your entertainment. Bathrooms have shower/tub combinations and hair dryers. Conveniences include phones, as well as coffee/tea makers and irons/ironing boards. Business, Other Amenities Free self parking is available onsite.\nRedac Gateway Hotel In Torrance\nRedac Gateway Hotel In Torrance Is A Popular Choice Amongst Travelers In Los Angeles (Ca), Whether Exploring Or Just Passing Through. The Hotel Offers A Wide Range Of Amenities And Perks To Ensure You Have A Great Time. All The Necessary Facilities, Including Free Wi-Fi In All Rooms, 24-Hour Front Desk, Facilities For Disabled Guests, Express Check-In/Check-Out, Luggage Storage, Are At Hand. Guestrooms Are Designed To Provide An Optimal Level Of Comfort With Welcoming Decor And Some Offering Convenient Amenities Like Closet, Towels, Carpeting, Television Lcd/Plasma Screen, Sofa. The Hotel Offers Various Recreational Opportunities. A Welcoming Atmosphere And Excellent Service Are What You Can Expect During Your Stay At Redac Gateway Hotel In Torrance.\nBest Western Los Angeles Worldport Hotel\n1402 W Pacific Coast Highway, Wilmington CA - 90744\nTwenty Minutes From La, With Spacious Rooms And Free Breakfast, The Best Western Los Angeles Worldport Hotel Is A Wallet-Friendly Option That Offers Convenience To Urban And Coastal Landmarks In Southern California. Business-Friendly Amenities In All 72 Rooms Of This Four-Story Hotel, Some Non-Smoking, Include Desks, Dataports, Free High-Speed Internet Access And Free Coffee And Tea. Rooms Are Family-Friendly Too, With Hbo Family (And Regular Hbo) Available On The Cable Tv. Continental Breakfast Is Free, While A 24-Hour Diner Adjacent To The Hotel Makes Sure No Guest Goes Hungry At Any Time Of Day Or Night. Downtime Is Spent By The Heated Outdoor Pool And Hot Tub, At The Fitness Center Or Catching Up On The Paper Over A Free Coffee In The Lobby. Additional Amenities Include Fax And Copy Services And Guest Laundry Facilities. Parking Is Free. The Hotel Is Directly Off The 110 Freeway, 18 Miles South Of La And Six Miles West Of Long Beach. It Abuts A 9-Hole Golf Course Which Is In Turn Next To A Large Park With A Lake, Playgrounds And Nature Trails. A Cobblestone Promenade Lined With Unique Shops And Restaurants Overlooks The Port Of Los Angeles In Port'S O' Call Village, Five Miles Away. The Historic Queen Mary Is Docked Eight Miles Away And Open For Tours. Los Angeles International Airport Is 17 Miles Northwest.\nStaybridge Suites Torrance/Redondo Beach\n19901 Prairie Ave, Torrance CA - 90503\nOur Guests Can Look Forward To A Free Buffet Breakfast, Complimentary Wi-Fi And An Outdoor Pool At Staybridge Suites Torrance. The Three-Floor Hotel Has 144 One- And Two-Bedroom Suites, Many Designated Non-Smoking. Each Comes With A Full Kitchen And Living Area With A Desk And Sofa Bed. Cable Tv, Cd And Dvd Players And Free Wi-Fi Are Included. A Free Breakfast Buffet Starts Your Day, And A Business Center Is Available For Any Unfinished (Or New) Business. After A Long Meeting Or Sightseeing Jaunt, Ease The Stress With A Workout In The On-Site Fitness Center Or A Swim And Soak In The Outdoor Pool And Hot Tub. Hotel Amenities Include A Guest Laundromat, Valet Dry Cleaning, Gift Shop/Convenience Mart, Covered Patio And Barbeque Grills. Enjoy A Complimentary Evening Sundowner Reception Tuesdays Through Thursdays. Pets Are Welcome For A Fee. A 15-Minute Drive From Manhattan Beach, The Hotel Is Three Miles From The Boardwalk At Redondo Beach Pier, Where Visitors Can Enjoy Great Shops, Eateries And Live Music. Del Amo Fashion Center, The State'S Second Largest Mall, Is Two Miles Away. If You'Re A Hiker, Del Cerro Park, Has Breathtaking Vistas To Enjoy. Favorite Southern California Attractions In The Area Include The J. Paul Getty Center, A Half-Hour Drive, And Disneyland, Knott'S Berry Farm And Universal Studios Hollywood All Within 40 Minutes Of The Hotel. Los Angeles International Airport Is A 10-Mile Drive North.\nRamada Limited Redondo Beach\nComplimentary Breakfast, Free Wi-Fi And The Ocean Just A Few Steps Away Are The Top Draws For Our Guests At The Ramada Limited Redondo Beach. The Two-Floor, Exterior-Corridor Ramada Limited Offers 40 Rooms (Some Are Non-Smoking) With Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv, Coffeemakers, Microwaves And Mini-Fridges. Granite Vanities Add A Splash Of Sophistication To The Bathrooms. Suites With Kitchenettes And Jetted Tubs Are Available. Other Property Perks Include A Complimentary Continental Breakfast And Outdoor Hot Tub. Road Warriors Are Happy To Hear There'S A Business Center On-Site, Plus Copy And Fax Services. The Ramada Limited Is Located A Three-Block Walk From Redondo Beach And The Esplanade, A Prime Spot For Jogging And Leisurely Cruising On A Rental Bike. Hermosa Beach And Manhattan Beach Are Both 10 Minutes Away. Palos Verdes Golf Club Also A 10-Minute Drive, As Is The Del Amo Fashion Center. Los Angeles International Airport Is Eight Miles From The Hotel.\nRedondo Pier Inn\nFree Wi-Fi And Parking Plus An Easy Pacific Coast Highway Locale Near The Beach And Guests' Favorite Spots Make The Redondo Pier Inn One Of The Most Popular Hotels In The Area Among Our Guests. The Three-Story Redondo Pier Inn Offers Guests Elevator Access And 37 Rooms Furnished With Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv With Premium Channels, Mini-Fridges And Microwaves. Some Rooms Also Provide Jetted Tubs. Indulge In A Refreshing Dip In The Year-Round, Outdoor Pool. There'S Also A Hot Tub For Soothing Aching Travel Muscles. On-Site Parking Is Complimentary. Guests Staying At The Redondo Pier Inn Enjoy A Pacific Coast Highway Location Centered In Downtown And Within A 10-Miute Walk From The Shops And Restaurants Along The Boardwalk. The Hotel Is Also Conveniently Two-And-A-Half Miles West Of De Amo Fashion Center And 25 Minutes South Of Downtown Los Angeles. Heading North Leads To Westchester Golf Course, Nine Miles Away, And Los Angeles International Airport, Less Than Seven Miles Away.\nCrescent Inn\n1104 W Pacific Coast Hwy, Wilmington CA - 90744\nA Launderette And A 24-Hour Reception Are Featured At This Motel. Rooms Include Free Wi-Fi And Los Angeles International Airport Is 20 Minutes’ Drive Away.A Flat-Screen Cable Tv With Satellite Channels Is Available In All Rooms At The Crescent Inn. A Microwave And Small Refrigerator Are Also Included.Guests Can Also Benefit From On-Site Laundry And A Vending Machine.Long Beach Cruise Center Is 15 Minutes’ Drive From The Crescent Inn Los Angeles. The Queen Mary Is 15 Minutes’ Drive Away. California State University Long Beach Is 6 Miles From The Property.\nAmericas Best Value Inn Rancho Palos Verdes\n29601 South Western Avenue, Rancho Palos Verdes CA - 90275\nOffering Free Wi-Fi, An On-Site Steakhouse And Easy-On-The Wallet Rates, Americas Best Value Inn Rancho Palos Verde Is A Practical Choice For Our Guests Headed To The Area. The 27 Rooms Of This Low-Rise Americas Best Value Inn Feature Complimentary Wi-Fi. The Simply Decorated Accommodations Offer Cable Tv With Hbo And A Refrigerator; Non-Smoking Rooms Are Available. Guests Enjoy Dinner On-Site At Think Prime, A Steakhouse Featuring Chops And Hearty Fare. The Hotel Also Offers A 24-Hour Front Desk And Ample Free Parking. Situated Next To Peck Park Community Center, This Americas Best Value Inn Is Located In The Affluent Los Angeles Suburb Of Rancho Palos Verde About Two Miles From I-110. The Hotel Is Within One Mile Of Fast-Food And Ethnic Restaurants. It'S Less Than Three Miles To The S.S Lane Victory Maritime Museum And Five Miles To The South Coast Botanical Garden. Los Angeles International Airport Is 20 Miles From The Hotel.\nCrowne Plaza Redondo Beach and Marina\n300 N Harbor Dr, Redondo Beach CA - 90277\nPacific Views, Spa Treatments And Prime Beach And Marina Access Are Just A Few Of The Reasons The Non-Smoking Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach Is A Popular Choice Among Our Guests. Made For California Dreaming, The 342 Stylish, Completely Renovated Rooms Of The Five-Story Crowne Plaza All Include Private Balconies Overlooking The Beach, Marina, Tennis Facility Or Pool. Accommodations Also Come With Cable Tv, Free Wi-Fi, Work Desks, Mini-Fridges, Hairdryers And Coffeemakers. Enjoy California Cuisine At The In-House Restaurant, Open For Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner, And Sip A Cocktail At The Bar. Other Welcome Perks Include A Rooftop Pool Deck With A Panoramic Ocean Views, A Large Heated Pool, A Hot Tub And A Tennis Court. Poolside Food And Beverages Are Available. The Hotel Also Offers Guests A Convenience Store, Business Center, 24-Hour Fitness Room, Bike Rentals, Meeting Space And 18 Miles Of Scenic Foot Path. Self- And Valet Parking Are Available For An Extra Fee. The Crowne Plaza Puts Fun In The Sun Literally At Guests' Feet, Right Across From The Pacific Ocean. From Bike Rentals For Cruising Along The Coast, To Dining And Shopping At The Famous Redondo Beach Pier, It'S Yours For The Taking Within A Five-Minute Stroll. If It'S Upscale Shopping You'Re After, Swing Up To Manhattan Village, A 10-Minute Drive North. If Sport'S Your Thing, Drive 25 Minutes To The Trump National Golf Club. Hollywood, Disneyland And Santa Monica Are All Within 30 Miles Of The Property. Los Angeles International Airport Is Seven Miles Away.\nCourtyard by Marriott Torrance-South Bay\n1925 W 190th Street, Torrance CA - 90504\nAn Outdoor Pool, Free Wi-Fi, A Lounge And Easy I-405 Access Complement A Modern Vibe At The Non-Smoking Courtyard By Marriott Torrance South Bay. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 139 Bright And Sophisticated Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Custom Comforters, Flat-Panel Tvs, Coffeemakers, Mini-Fridges, Hairdryers And Irons With Ironing Boards. The On-Site Bistro Is Open For Breakfast And Dinner And Evening Cocktails. Work Out At The Fitness Room And Show Off Your Tan Line By The Outdoor Pool. Parking Is Free. Located Off I-405, Courtyard By Marriott Is Nine Miles South Of Los Angeles International Airport. Enjoy A Romantic Sunset At The Redondo Beach Pier Known For Its Oceanfront Dining And Entertainment, Six Miles West, Or Hunt For Bargains At The South Bay Galleria Mall, Three Miles Away. Outdoor Types Would Enjoy A Hike At The Portuguese Bend Reserve, About 20 Minutes Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is A 25-Minute Drive.\nThe Redondo Beach Hotel\nMarina And City Views Come With A Complimentary Hot Breakfast At The Best Western Plus Sunrise Hotel At Redondo Beach Marina. The Three Story Best Western Plus Is Home To 111 Non-Smoking Rooms, All Of Which Offer Marina Or City Views. Little Touches Like Ultra-White Bedding And In-Room Microwaves And Mini-Fridges Make A Big Impact. Each Morning'S Complimentary Full American Breakfast Features Belgian Waffles And Plenty More. After Eating, Feel Free To Linger By The Heated Outdoor Pool And Hot Tub. If A Workout Is On Your Agenda, You'Ll Be Happy To Know There'S A Fitness Room (With Marina Views, Naturally) On-Site. The Best Western Plus Is A One-Minute Walk From The California Yacht Marina, Where You'Ll Find An Array Of Mouth-Watering Restaurants. Cruising The California Coast Is Easy On The Pacific Coast Highway, Three Blocks From The Hotel. Rodeo Drive And The Getty Museum Are Within A 30-Minute Drive. Los Angeles International Airport Is Seven Miles Away.\nExtended Stay America Los Angeles - Torrance Harbor Gateway\n19200 Harborgate Way, Torrance CA - 90501\nWith Full Kitchens For Making Meals On The Road, Plenty Of Work Space And Free Wi-Fi, Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance Harbor Gateway Makes A Good Home Base For A Trip To The Los Angeles Area. This Pet-Friendly Extended Stay America Has Three Floors And 122 Non-Smoking Rooms That All Include Kitchens With Refrigerators, Microwaves And Stovetops, Plus Dining And Cooking Utensils. Some Rooms Have Sofa Beds, And All Have Free Wi-Fi And Ironing Gear. The Hotel Serves A Free Grab-And-Go Breakfast Each Morning That Includes A Variety Of Breakfast Bars And Muffins, Hot Cereal, Coffee And Tea. A Guest Laundry Facility Is On-Site, And Parking Is Free. The Hotel Welcomes Pets For A Fee. Extended Stay America Is Off Of I-405 And I-110, Close To A Small Plaza With Shops And Restaurants. It Is 16 Miles From Downtown Los Angeles, 20 Miles From Hollywood, Eight Miles From Hermosa Beach And Eight Miles From Manhattan Beach. Los Angeles International Airport Is 11 Miles From The Hotel.\nPortofino Hotel & Marina - A Noble House Hotel\n260 Portofino Way, Redondo Beach CA - 90277\nMillion-Dollar Marina Views, High-End Interiors And A Sea-Lion Welcoming Committee Have Our Guests Applauding The Non-Smoking, Waterfront Portofino Hotel & Marina, A Noble House Hotel A Top-Ranked Redondo Beach Property. All 161 Rooms At The Three-Floor, Non-Smoking Portofino Are Decked Out With A Fresh, Contemporary Nautical Theme. Floor-To-Ceiling Windows And Private Patios Or Balconies (With Ocean Or Marina Views) Come Standard, As Do Coffeemakers, Minibars And Cable Tv. In-Room Wi-Fi Costs Extra. Bathrooms Are Outfitted With Sleek, Modern Features — Like Vessel Bowl Sinks And Black Granite Countertops — Offset By Warm, Alabaster-Colored Marble Floors. The Oceanside Outdoor Pool Is A Highlight Here, As Is The Renowned Restaurant With Open-Air, Marina-Side Seating. There'S An Additional Fee For Self-Parking And For Valet Parking. The Portofino Hotel & Marina Is Part Of Redondo Beach'S Upscale King Harbor — Home To Its Own Colony Of California Sea Lions, Which Means Hotel Guests Get Front-Row Seating At The Animals' Frolicking And Feeding Performances. Borrow A Loaner Bike From The Hotel And Head To Oceanfront Bike Path Right Outside. Riviera Village — A Six-Block Unique Hamlet Of Shops, Boutiques And Cafes — Is Two Miles Away. Los Angeles International Airport Is Six Miles From The Hotel.\n19800 S Vermont Ave, Torrance CA - 90502\nCozy Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, An Outdoor Pool And Free Local Shuttle Are Part Of The Package At The Pet-Friendly Holiday Inn Torrance With Easy Access To I-110. This Mid-Rise Hotel Offers 329 Bright Rooms With Signature Beds, Free Wi-Fi, Coffeemakers, Mini-Fridges And Cable Tv. Work Out In The On-Site Fitness Room And Enjoy The Sauna And The Outdoor Swimming Pool. A Full-Service Restaurant Open For Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner Whips Up Pacific Rim Specialties And Offers Room Service. Business Services And Guest Laundry Are Available. Parking Is Free. Explore Beaches For Every Taste Within Eight Miles Of The Holiday Inn. Dining And Shopping At The South Bay Galleria Mall Are Four Miles Away. Spend A Day At The Aquarium Of The Pacific In Long Beach, About 20 Minutes Away. Hop On I-110 And Find Yourself Downtown Los Angeles In About 25 Minutes. Los Angeles International Airport Is 11 Miles North.\nHoliday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Hermosa Beach\n125 Pacific Coast Hwy, Hermosa Beach CA - 90254\nFree Breakfast With Omelettes, An Indoor Pool With A Sauna And Easy Access To The Beach Make For A Comfortable Stay At Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Hermosa Beach. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 80 Bright And Modern Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Triple-Sheeted Bedding, Microwaves, Refrigerators, Cable Tv, Hairdryers And Irons With Ironing Boards. Dig Into Your Breakfast Favorites At The Complimentary Buffet Starring Omelettes, Bacon And Cinnamon Rolls. In The Afternoon, Enjoy A Dip In The Heated Indoor Pool And Sauna. A Fitness Room And Business Center Are Available. Parking Is Free. Located On Pacific Coast Highway Halfway Between Hermosa Beach And Redondo Beach, This Holiday Inn Express Is About A Mile From The Surf. Rent A Cruiser And Ride Along The Strand For Stunning Views And People-Watching. Enjoy A Romantic Dinner At King Harbor Marina. Take In A Show At The Comedy And Magic Club, Jay Leno'S Old Digs, Also About A Mile Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is About Half-An-Hour Away And Los Angeles International Airport Is Six Miles North.\nTravelodge Inn & Suites by Wyndham Gardena CA\n1390 W 186th Street, Gardena CA - 90248\nThe Freebies Include Breakfast And Underground Parking At The Travelodge Inn & Suites By Wyndham Gardena Ca, Convenient To Numerous La-Area Attractions. All 40 Non-Smoking Rooms At The Three-Story Travelodge Come With Work Desks, Coffeemakers, Cable Tv, Desks, Ironing Equipment And Free Wi-Fi. Some Also Have Full Kitchens And Fireplaces. Business Services And A Guest Coin Laundry Are On-Site, And Parking Is Free. The Travelodge Is About 11 Miles South Of Los Angeles International Airport. It'S Three Miles From California State University Dominguez Hills And Four Miles From Shopping And Dining At The Southbay Pavilion. Sun And Sand Await At Redondo Beach, Six Miles West. Disneyland And Knott'S Berry Farm Amusement Parks Are Both A 25-Minute Drive. Long Beach Is Six Miles South.\nBest Western Plus San Pedro Hotel & Suites\n111 South Gaffey Street, San Pedro CA - 90731\nFree Wi-Fi, An Outdoor Pool, And The World Cruise Center Under A Mile Away Make A Convenient Spot For Our Guests At The Non-Smoking Best Western Plus San Pedro Hotel & Suites, Which Also Has A Free Cruise Shuttle. Housed In A Four-Floor Building With Victorian Architectural And Decorative Elements, The Non-Smoking Hotel Has 60 Rooms, All With Coffeemakers, Mini-Fridges, Cable Tv, Free Wi-Fi And Balconies Or Patios. Additional Amenities Include An Outdoor Pool, A Hot Tub, A Fitness Room, A Business Center, A Laundry Facility And Free Covered Parking. The Hotel Runs A Free Shuttle To The San Pedro Cruise Lines As Well. The Hotel Is On South Gaffey Street In San Pedro, Less Than A Mile Southwest Of The Port Of Los Angeles World Cruise Center And A Third Of A Mile South Of I-110. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal Is Seven Miles East. If You'Re Driving From Long Beach Airport, The Hotel Is 15 Miles Southwest.\nVagabond Inn San Pedro\n215 S Gaffey St, San Pedro CA - 90731\nThis San Pedro Motel Is Located A 10-Minute Drive From The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. The Motel Offers A Daily Continental Breakfast, And Free Wi-Fi.Vagabond Inn San Pedro Features Cable Tv In Every Guest Room. Work Desks And Private Bathrooms Are Also Included In Each Room. Microwaves Are Available Only By Request Prior To Arrival.The World Cruise Center Is A 3-Minute Drive From The San Pedro Vagabond Inn. The Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center Is A 15-Minute Drive From The Hotel.\nBest Western Redondo Beach Galleria Inn\n2740 Artesia Blvd, Redondo Beach CA - 90278\nFree Wi-Fi, Complimentary Breakfast, And Easy Access To Both Shopping And The Freeway Are The Perks Guests Can Expect At The Best Western Galleria Inn Redondo Beach. The Three-Story Best Western'S 51 Rooms (Most Are Non-Smoking) All Include Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv (Hbo Included) And Handy Mini-Fridges For Storing Your Drinks And Leftovers. The Continental Breakfast Is On The House Every Day Of The Week. There'S Also An Outdoor Hot Tub And Guest Laundry Facility. Parking Is Free. If You Need A Lax Lift, Ask About Shuttle Service (For A Fee). The Best Western Is A Two-Minute Drive From The South Bay Galleria Mall And Its Adjacent Movie Theater. It'S Five Minutes From I-405. If You'Re Looking To Hang 10, Hermosa Beach Is 10 Minutes Away. Corporate Giants Like Lockheed Martin, Mattel, Inc. And Raytheon Sas Are Also 10 Minutes From The Hotel. Los Angeles International Airport Is Seven Miles Away.\nExtended Stay America - Los Angeles - South\n18602 S Vermont Ave, Gardena CA - 90248\nFull Kitchens And Freebies Like Wi-Fi And Breakfast Are Among The Perks Guests Enjoy At The Non-Smoking Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - South. The Three-Story Extended Stay America Offers 108 Non-Smoking Rooms That Are All Equipped With Free Wi-Fi, Flat-Panel Tvs, Ironing Equipment And Full Kitchens With Refrigerator, Microwave, Stovetop And Utensils. The Hotel Serves A Free Grab-And-Go Breakfast Each Morning That Includes A Variety Of Breakfast Bars And Muffins, Hot Cereal, Coffee And Tea. The On-Site Laundry Facilities And 24-Hour Front Desk Are A Boon. Pets Are Welcome For A Fee, And Parking Is Free. The Hotel Sits At The Intersection Of I-405 And I-110, Two-And-A-Half Miles From California State University Dominguez Hills. It'S Three Miles From Shopping And Dining At The Southbay Pavilion. Visitors Soak In The Sun And Enjoy Fish Tacos At Redondo Beach, Six Miles West. Los Angeles International Airport Is 11 Miles North Of The Hotel, And Long Beach Is 12 Miles South.\nAll Star Inn\n411 South Pacific Avenue, San Pedro CA - 90731\nOffering Free Wi-Fi, This Motel Is 10 Minutes’ Drive To Cabrillo Beach. All Rooms Feature Free Wi-Fi.Each Room Includes A Tv And An En Suite Bathroom At All Star Inn Motel San Pedro. Select Rooms Also Provide A Seating Area With A Work Desk.A 24-Hour Reception Is Available To Assist Guests At San Pedro All Star Inn Motel. Free Parking Is Offered On Site.The Korean Friendship Bell Is 10 Minutes’ Drive From All Star Inn Motel San Pedro. Los Angeles Harbor College Is 4 Miles From The Motel.\nQuality Inn & Suites Hermosa Beach\n901 Aviation Blvd, Hermosa Beach CA - 90254\nAn Outdoor Hut Tub With A Sun Deck And Quick Access To The Beach Are Among The Perks At The Non-Smoking Quality Inn And Suites Hermosa. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 68 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Triple-Sheeted Bedding, Refrigerators, Coffeemakers, Cable Tv And Irons With Ironing Boards. Some Also Have Jetted Tubs. Guests Are Happy To Know There'S An Outdoor Hot Tub. Business Services And A Fitness Room Are Available. Parking Is Free. Walk Along Hermoso Beach'S Pier Avenue To The Strand With Its Numerous Oceanfront Restaurants And Stores, Not To Mention Warm Sand And Rolling Waves, About A Mile West. Enjoy A Romantic Dinner At King Harbor Marina, A Little Over A Mile Away, Or Spend A Day At The Aquarium Of The Pacific In Long Beach, About A 25-Minute Drive. Downtown Los Angeles With Its La Live Entertainment District Is About Half-An-Hour North And Los Angeles International Airport Is 11 Miles Away.\nDoubleTree by Hilton Carson\n2 Civic Plaza Drive, Carson CA - 90745\nTop-Notch Service And Amenities Including Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies On Check-In, Flat-Panel Tvs In Every Room And A Heated Outdoor Pool With Private Cabanas Get Top Ratings For The Doubletree By Hilton Hotel Carson, Where Pets Are Welcome For A Fee. The 224 Rooms Of This Eight-Story Hotel, Some Non-Smoking, Are Contemporary In Decor And Rich In Amenities, With Free Wi-Fi, 37-Inch Flat-Panel Hdtvs, Premium Bedding, Complimentary Coffee/Tea Service, Mp3 Clock Radios And Safes. There Are Large Desks With Executive Chairs For The Business Travelers, Along With Dataports, Speakerphones, Voicemail, Complimentary Remote Printing And Free Weekday Paper Delivery. Guests Can Order Room Service Or Enjoy The Combination Of California And Asian Fusion Cuisine At The On-Site Restaurant. More Casual Fare Is Available At The Sports Bar And Lounge, With Both Indoor Seating (And Flat-Panel Tvs For Sports Fans) And Poolside Service Around Romantic Fire Pits. There'S Also A Starbucks Coffee Bar And Numerous Other Amenities, Including A Precor Fitness Center, Business Center And Gift Shop. Parking Is Free. The Hotel Is Off I-405 In Carson, 19 Miles South Of La And Less Than Three Miles From The Home Depot Center. There'S A Shopping Mall A Mile Away And Many Nearby Attractions In Long Beach (The Queen Mary, The Aquarium Of The Pacific), Less Than 15 Minutes From The Hotel. Long Beach Airport Is Less Than Nine Miles East.\nTerranea - L.A.'s Oceanfront Resort\n100 Terranea Way, Rancho Palos Verdes CA - 90275\nStunning Ocean Views, Unparalleled Guest Room Design, Eight Restaurants And Bars, Three Pools, A Golf Course And A Full-Service Spa Add Up To Make The Terranea Resort A Winning Choice For A Wistful Getaway Near Los Angeles. Spread Across 102 Acres Of Cliffs Overlooking The Pacific Ocean, The 582 Rooms Fill An Expansive Collection Of Tile-Roofed, Low-Rise Structures. Rooms Feature Stylish, Ecological-Themed Interiors That Honor The Ocean, Including Private Balconies. Rooms Offer Flat-Panel Cable Tv And Wi-Fi; Non-Smoking Rooms Are Available. The Resort Provides Access To Eight Restaurants, Bars, Cafes And Lounges. Tee Off At The Links At Terranea, Unwind At The Spectacular Spa At Terranea Or Enjoy The Outdoors At The Three Ocean-View Pools. Pets Are Welcome For An Additional Fee. Additional Amenities Include Parking, A Business Center, An Outdoor Firepit And A Gym. In Rancho Palos Verde, An Affluent Bedroom Community Of Los Angeles, The Terranea Resort Is Perched Atop Cliffs Overlooking The Pacific Ocean. Walk A Quarter-Mile Mile Trail To Pelican Cove Or Drive Three Miles To Abalone Cove. South Coast Botanic Gardens Is Seven Miles From The Property. The Hotel Is 20 Miles To Los Angeles International Airport.\nHampton Inn & Suites Hermosa Beach, CA\n1530 Pacific Coast Hwy, Hermosa Beach CA - 90254\nFree Breakfast And Wi-Fi Near The Beach Make For A Comfy Retreat At The Non-Smoking Hampton Inn & Suites Hermosa Beach. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 53 Non-Smoking Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Hdtvs, Signature Beds, Coffeemakers And Ironing Equipment. Wake Up To Free Continental Breakfast And In The Evening, Enjoy The Sunset Over The Pacific From The Rooftop Terrace. Business Services And A Fitness Room Are On-Site, And Parking Is Available For An Extra Fee. Next To Hermosa Beach Historical Society And Several Restaurants, This Hampton Inn & Suites Is About A Mile East Of The Beach. Enjoy A Stroll Down Manhattan Pier, A Mile-And-A-Half Away, Or Check Out Fish Tacos At Redondo Beach, Also About A Mile-And-A-Half Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is About A 25-Minute Drive And Los Angeles International Airport Is Five Miles North.\nMotel 6 Carson\n888 E Dominguez Street, Carson CA - 90746\nLow Rates And An Excellent Location Off The Freeway, Next To A Mall And Close To Premier Attractions Make The Motel 6 Carson A Convenient Choice For Budget-Minded Our Guests Headed To The La Area. Bring The Whole Family: Kids And Pets Stay Free At This Two-Story Hotel, Where All 154 Rooms, Some Non-Smoking, Include Free Expanded Cable And Wi-Fi For A Fee. Select Accommodations Have An Lcd Tv With A Connection For Gaming And Free Wi-Fi. Complimentary Morning Coffee Gets The Day Started Out Right. Enjoy It In The Light-Filled Lobby Or Take It Outside To The Gazebo. Additional Amenities Include An Outdoor Pool And Hot Tub, Business Center And Laundry Facilities. Outdoor Parking Is Available. The Hotel Is Located Right Off I-405 Across The Street From South Bay Pavilion Shopping Center. Nearby Attractions Include Long Beach Aquarium, Nine Miles Away, The Queen Mary, 10 Miles, And Disneyland, 26 Miles. Downtown La Is A 25-Minute Drive. Long Beach Airport Is Nine Miles From The Property, And Los Angeles International Airport Is 13 Miles.\nCrowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel\n601 S Palos Verdes St, San Pedro CA - 90731\nAn Outdoor Pool, Hot Tub And The World Cruise Center One Mile Away By Free Hotel Shuttle Make The Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel A Commendable Choice For Our Guests. The 10-Floor Crowne Plaza Has 244 Spacious Rooms, All With Plush Sleep Advantage Beds, Coffeemakers And Cable Tv. Some Rooms Have Views Of Los Angeles Harbor. Non-Smoking Rooms Are Available. Before Taking Off On A Cruise, Take Your Own Slow Cruise Around The Heated Outdoor Pool. The Hotel Also Has A Hot Tub, Sauna, Fitness Room, Business Center, Laundry Facility, Restaurant, Cocktail Lounge And Parking (For A Fee). The Crowne Plaza Is On South Palos Verdes Street In San Pedro, About One Mile South Of The Port Of Los Angeles World Cruise Center. The Long Beach Cruise Terminal Is Eight Miles East. Cabrillo Marine Aquarium And Cabrillo Beach Are Two-And-A-Half Miles South. If You'Re Driving From Long Beach Airport, The Hotel Is 13 Miles Southwest.\nSunrise Hotel San Pedro\n525 S Harbor Blvd, San Pedro CA - 90731\nBreakfast Is Available Each Morning At This Hotel. Guest Rooms Include Free Wi-Fi. The Uss Iowa Battleship Is Less Than 5 Minutes’ Walk From The Property.Cable Tv And A Seating Area With A Table And Chairs Are Featured In Rooms At The Sunrise Hotel. A Small Fridge, Microwave, And Coffee-Making Facilities Are Included.A Seasonal Outdoor Pool And Hot Tub Are Available On Site. A Business Centre And 24-Hour Reception Are Provided For Guest Convenience At The Hotel Sunrise.The Korean Friendship Bell Is 3 Miles From The Hotel. The Long Beach Airport Is 20 Minutes’ Drive Away\nBeach House Hotel at Hermosa Beach\n1300 The Strand, Hermosa Beach CA - 90254\nThe Beach House At Hermosa Makes For A Luxurious Oceanfront Crash Pad With Spa Services, Free Breakfast, And Modern Rooms With Fireplaces, Hdtvs And Balconies Overlooking The Pacific. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 96 Rooms With Separate Bedroom And Living Room Areas, Fireplaces, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Hdtvs, Free Wi-Fi, Separate Bathtubs And Showers, Luxury Toiletries, And Patios Or Balconies. Wake Up To Free Continental Breakfast And Go For A Jog Along The Waterfront Strand, Right Outside The Hotel. Indulge In An Aromatherapy Massage In Your Room. Meeting And Event Space Is Available. Parking Is Free. Bike Or Jog Along The Strand Or Do Yoga, Catch Waves Or Lounge Around Watching People And Seagulls On The Beach Right Outside This Hotel. For A Memorable Evening, Head For Dinner Under The Stars At Hermoso Beach'S Pier Plaza, Two Blocks Away, And Enjoy A Few Laughs At The Comedy And Magic Club Where Jay Leno Got His Start, Four Blocks Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is Half-An-Hour Away And Los Angeles International Airport Is Six Miles North.\nEcono Lodge Carson near StubHub Center\n1325 E Carson Street, Carson CA - 90745\nBudget Travelers Appreciate The Low Rates Combined With Lots Of Freebies And A Convenient Location At The Econo Lodge Near Stubhub Center, A Block Off I-405 In Carson. Nice In-Room Amenities At This Two-Story Property Include Free Wi-Fi, Flat-Panel Cable Tvs, Microwaves And Mini-Fridges In All 31 Rooms. Continental Breakfast Is Free Too, And For Added Convenience There'S A Fax Machine And Laundry Facility For Guest Use. Parking Is Free. The Hotel Is An Easy 20-Mile Drive From Downtown La On The I-110 And I-405. Nearby Attractions Include The Home Depot Center Sports Complex, Three-And-A-Half Miles Away, And Del Amo Fashion Center — One Of The Largest Malls In The Country — A Little Over Seven Miles Away. Guests Can Also Visit The Queen Mary In Long Beach Or Redondo Beach Pier, Each Roughly Nine Miles From The Hotel. Los Angeles International Airport Is 14 Miles Northwest.\nHotel Hermosa\nLess Than A Mile From The Beach, Hotel Hermosa Welcomes Guests With Free Wi-Fi, Free Breakfast And An Outdoor Pool With A Japanese Water Garden. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 81 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Triple-Sheeted Bedding, Coffeemakers, Refrigerators And Cable Tv. Some Also Have Jetted Tubs And Balconies. Start Your Day With Free Continental Breakfast And Enjoy A Moment Of Zen At The Japanese Water Garden Or Work On Your Tan By The Outdoor Pool. A Business Center And A Meeting Room Are Available. Parking Is Free. Catch A Wave Or Two At Hermosa Beach And Explore The Bustling Oceanfront Restaurants And Boutiques Along The Strand, Less Than A Mile West Of This Hotel. Treat Your Special Someone To A Sunset Dinner At The King Harbor Marina, Two Away, Or Hunt For Bargains At Del Amo Fashion Center, Five Miles Away. Downtown Los Angeles Is About A Half-An-Hour Drive And Los Angeles International Airport Is Five Miles North.\n2888 Pacific Coast Highway, Torrance, CA - 90505\nThe Ramada By Wyndham Inn Torrance Offers Free Internet, An Outdoor Pool, Complimentary Continental Breakfast And An On-Site Restaurant, Making It One Of The Most Popular Hotels In The Area Among Our ...\n4111 Pacific Coast Hwy, Torrance, CA - 90505\nYou'Ll Find An Outdoor Pool, Free Wi-Fi And In-Room Microwaves And Refrigerators At The Days Inn By Wyndham Torrance Redondo Beach. This Pet-Friendly Hotel Has Two Floors And 92 Rooms, Some Of Which A...\n2633 Sepulveda Blvd, Torrance, CA - 90505\nModern Rooms With Free Wi-Fi And Flat-Panel Tvs, An Outdoor Pool And Quick Access To Del Amo Fashion Center Are Among The Perks At The Non-Smoking Courtyard By Marriott Torrance Palos Verde. This Thre...\n2448 Sepulveda Boulevard, Torrance, CA - 90501\nWith In-Room Microwaves And Mini-Fridges And Complimentary Wi-Fi, The Travelodge By Wyndham Torrance Offers A Solid Value. This Two-Floor Hotel Has 52 Rooms, Each Of Which Includes Free Wi-Fi, A Mini-...\nWith Complimentary Breakfast And A Close Proximity To The Airport And Area Attractions, The Super 8 By Wyndham Torrance Lax Airport Area Is A Value-Priced Hotel For Our Guests' California Stay. This T...\n1665 Pacific Coast Hwy, Harbor City, CA - 90710\nFree Wi-Fi, Free Morning Coffee And Cozy Rooms With Flat-Panel Tvs Are Among The Perks At Rodeway Inn And Suites Pacific Coast Highway. This Low-Rise Hotel Has 33 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi. Enjoy Your Fav...\n1634 Pacific Coast Highway, Harbor City, CA - 90710\nFree Wi-Fi, Rooms With Microwaves And Mini-Fridges, And A Laundromat Come At Hard-To-Beat Rates At Harbor Inn. This Low-Rise Hotel Has 41 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Cable Tv, Microwaves And Mini-Fridges. ...\n3995 W Carson St, Torrance, CA - 90503\nWith Home-Away-From-Home Amenities Like Full Kitchens For Making Meals On The Road, Plenty Of Work Space And Free Wi-Fi, Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance - Del Amo Circle Is A Budget-Fri...\n1850 S Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach, CA - 90277\nComplimentary Breakfast And Free Wi-Fi Are Big Pluses To Our Guests At The Value-Priced, Non-Smoking Best Western Plus Redondo Beach Inn. This Three-Floor Best Western Hosts 103 Accommodations That Al...\n3635 Fashion Way, Torrance, CA - 90503\nAn Indoor/Outdoor Connecting Pool And Spacious Rooms With Plush Beds Delight Our Guests At The Non-Smoking Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach. The 17-Story, Non-Smoking Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach Ha...\n21333 Hawthorne Blvd, Torrance, CA - 90503\nWarm Chocolate Chip Cookies, An Outdoor Pool And Classy Rooms With Hdtvs And Free Wi-Fi Are Just Some Of The Perks At The Doubletree Hotel Torrance/South Bay, Close To Shopping And Dining. This Mid-Ri...\n3525 Torrance Blvd, Torrance, CA - 90503\nFree Wi-Fi, Full Kitchens, Complimentary Grab-And-Go Breakfast And Easy Access To Shopping And Dining Make For A Comfy Base Of Operations At The Modern Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance B...\nFree Hot Breakfast, Complimentary Wi-Fi And A 24-Hour Fitness Center Are Popular Perks At The Non-Smoking Best Western Plus Avita Suites In Downtown Torrance. With 66 Suites Spread Over Four Floors, T...\nWith Free Wi-Fi, In-Room Microwaves And Refrigerators And Complimentary Breakfast, The Howard Johnson By Wyndham Torrance Offers Value-Priced Accommodations In An Ideal Location. This Two-Floor Hotel ...\nWi-Fi And Free Breakfast, Plus An Outdoor Pool, Sports Courts And Fire Pit Make For Happy Guests At The Non-Smoking Residence Inn By Marriott Torrance Redondo Beach. This Two-Story Non-Smoking Residen...\n21381 S Western Ave, Torrance, CA - 90501\nModern Rooms With Soaking Tubs And Ipod Docks, An Asian Fusion Restaurant And A Spa Are Part Of The Package At The Eco-Friendly And Non-Smoking Miyako Hybrid Hotel Torrance. East Meets West At This Mi...\nFree Wi-Fi, Well-Appointed Rooms And Budget-Friendly Rates Add Up To A Good Deal For Our Guests At The Conveniently Located Del Amo Inn In Torrance. Each Of The 30 Rooms At The Two-Story Del Amo Inn O...\n820 West Sepulveda Boulevard, Harbor City, CA - 90710\nOff Interstate 110, Motel 6 Los Angeles Offers A Budget Crash Pad With Free Coffee And A Pet-Friendly Attitude. This Two-Story Motel Has 56 Rooms With Cable Tv And Free Local Calls. Wi-Fi Is Available...\n716 South Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach, CA - 90277\nSunny Days Are Here With Easy Beach Access, Nearby Restaurants And Airport Access And Free Wi-Fi At The Pacific Coast Inn Redondo Beach. Accessible Via Exterior Corridors, All 20 Rooms At The Two-Stor...\n711 S Pacific Coast Hwy, Redondo Beach, CA - 90277\nA Boutique Feel, Free Wi-Fi And Setting That'S A Short Stroll From The Surf Come As Part Of The Deal At The Economy-Priced Redondo Inn & Suites Redondo Beach. The Two-Story Redondo Inn'S 36 Rooms And ...\nProperty Location With a stay at Moonlite Inn Redondo Beach in Redondo Beach (South Redondo), you'll be a 2-minute drive from Redondo Beach Pier and 7 minutes from Manhattan Beach Pier. This motel is ...\nRedac Gateway Hotel In Torrance Is A Popular Choice Amongst Travelers In Los Angeles (Ca), Whether Exploring Or Just Passing Through. The Hotel Offers A Wide Range Of Amenities And Perks To Ensure You...\n1402 W Pacific Coast Highway, Wilmington, CA - 90744\nTwenty Minutes From La, With Spacious Rooms And Free Breakfast, The Best Western Los Angeles Worldport Hotel Is A Wallet-Friendly Option That Offers Convenience To Urban And Coastal Landmarks In South...\n19901 Prairie Ave, Torrance, CA - 90503\nOur Guests Can Look Forward To A Free Buffet Breakfast, Complimentary Wi-Fi And An Outdoor Pool At Staybridge Suites Torrance. The Three-Floor Hotel Has 144 One- And Two-Bedroom Suites, Many Designate...\nComplimentary Breakfast, Free Wi-Fi And The Ocean Just A Few Steps Away Are The Top Draws For Our Guests At The Ramada Limited Redondo Beach. The Two-Floor, Exterior-Corridor Ramada Limited Offers 40 ...\nFree Wi-Fi And Parking Plus An Easy Pacific Coast Highway Locale Near The Beach And Guests' Favorite Spots Make The Redondo Pier Inn One Of The Most Popular Hotels In The Area Among Our Guests. The Th...\n1104 W Pacific Coast Hwy, Wilmington, CA - 90744\nA Launderette And A 24-Hour Reception Are Featured At This Motel. Rooms Include Free Wi-Fi And Los Angeles International Airport Is 20 Minutes’ Drive Away.A Flat-Screen Cable Tv With Satellite Channel...\n29601 South Western Avenue, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA - 90275\nOffering Free Wi-Fi, An On-Site Steakhouse And Easy-On-The Wallet Rates, Americas Best Value Inn Rancho Palos Verde Is A Practical Choice For Our Guests Headed To The Area. The 27 Rooms Of This Low-Ri...\n300 N Harbor Dr, Redondo Beach, CA - 90277\nPacific Views, Spa Treatments And Prime Beach And Marina Access Are Just A Few Of The Reasons The Non-Smoking Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach Is A Popular Choice Among Our Guests. Made For California Dream...\n1925 W 190th Street, Torrance, CA - 90504\nAn Outdoor Pool, Free Wi-Fi, A Lounge And Easy I-405 Access Complement A Modern Vibe At The Non-Smoking Courtyard By Marriott Torrance South Bay. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 139 Bright And Sophistica...\nMarina And City Views Come With A Complimentary Hot Breakfast At The Best Western Plus Sunrise Hotel At Redondo Beach Marina. The Three Story Best Western Plus Is Home To 111 Non-Smoking Rooms, All Of...\n19200 Harborgate Way, Torrance, CA - 90501\nWith Full Kitchens For Making Meals On The Road, Plenty Of Work Space And Free Wi-Fi, Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - Torrance Harbor Gateway Makes A Good Home Base For A Trip To The Los Angeles...\n260 Portofino Way, Redondo Beach, CA - 90277\nMillion-Dollar Marina Views, High-End Interiors And A Sea-Lion Welcoming Committee Have Our Guests Applauding The Non-Smoking, Waterfront Portofino Hotel & Marina, A Noble House Hotel A Top-Ranked Red...\n19800 S Vermont Ave, Torrance, CA - 90502\nCozy Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, An Outdoor Pool And Free Local Shuttle Are Part Of The Package At The Pet-Friendly Holiday Inn Torrance With Easy Access To I-110. This Mid-Rise Hotel Offers 329 Bright Roo...\n125 Pacific Coast Hwy, Hermosa Beach, CA - 90254\nFree Breakfast With Omelettes, An Indoor Pool With A Sauna And Easy Access To The Beach Make For A Comfortable Stay At Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Hermosa Beach. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 8...\n1390 W 186th Street, Gardena, CA - 90248\nThe Freebies Include Breakfast And Underground Parking At The Travelodge Inn & Suites By Wyndham Gardena Ca, Convenient To Numerous La-Area Attractions. All 40 Non-Smoking Rooms At The Three-Story Tra...\n111 South Gaffey Street, San Pedro, CA - 90731\nFree Wi-Fi, An Outdoor Pool, And The World Cruise Center Under A Mile Away Make A Convenient Spot For Our Guests At The Non-Smoking Best Western Plus San Pedro Hotel & Suites, Which Also Has A Free Cr...\n215 S Gaffey St, San Pedro, CA - 90731\nThis San Pedro Motel Is Located A 10-Minute Drive From The Cabrillo Marine Aquarium. The Motel Offers A Daily Continental Breakfast, And Free Wi-Fi.Vagabond Inn San Pedro Features Cable Tv In Every Gu...\n2740 Artesia Blvd, Redondo Beach, CA - 90278\nFree Wi-Fi, Complimentary Breakfast, And Easy Access To Both Shopping And The Freeway Are The Perks Guests Can Expect At The Best Western Galleria Inn Redondo Beach. The Three-Story Best Western'S 51 ...\n18602 S Vermont Ave, Gardena, CA - 90248\nFull Kitchens And Freebies Like Wi-Fi And Breakfast Are Among The Perks Guests Enjoy At The Non-Smoking Extended Stay America - Los Angeles - South. The Three-Story Extended Stay America Offers 108 No...\n411 South Pacific Avenue, San Pedro, CA - 90731\nOffering Free Wi-Fi, This Motel Is 10 Minutes’ Drive To Cabrillo Beach. All Rooms Feature Free Wi-Fi.Each Room Includes A Tv And An En Suite Bathroom At All Star Inn Motel San Pedro. Select Rooms Also...\n901 Aviation Blvd, Hermosa Beach, CA - 90254\nAn Outdoor Hut Tub With A Sun Deck And Quick Access To The Beach Are Among The Perks At The Non-Smoking Quality Inn And Suites Hermosa. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 68 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Triple-Sh...\n2 Civic Plaza Drive, Carson, CA - 90745\nTop-Notch Service And Amenities Including Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies On Check-In, Flat-Panel Tvs In Every Room And A Heated Outdoor Pool With Private Cabanas Get Top Ratings For The Doubletree By Hil...\n100 Terranea Way, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA - 90275\nStunning Ocean Views, Unparalleled Guest Room Design, Eight Restaurants And Bars, Three Pools, A Golf Course And A Full-Service Spa Add Up To Make The Terranea Resort A Winning Choice For A Wistful Ge...\n1530 Pacific Coast Hwy, Hermosa Beach, CA - 90254\nFree Breakfast And Wi-Fi Near The Beach Make For A Comfy Retreat At The Non-Smoking Hampton Inn & Suites Hermosa Beach. This Four-Story Hotel Offers 53 Non-Smoking Rooms With Free Wi-Fi, Hdtvs, Signat...\n888 E Dominguez Street, Carson, CA - 90746\nLow Rates And An Excellent Location Off The Freeway, Next To A Mall And Close To Premier Attractions Make The Motel 6 Carson A Convenient Choice For Budget-Minded Our Guests Headed To The La Area. Bri...\n601 S Palos Verdes St, San Pedro, CA - 90731\nAn Outdoor Pool, Hot Tub And The World Cruise Center One Mile Away By Free Hotel Shuttle Make The Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel A Commendable Choice For Our Guests. The 10-Floor Crowne Plaza H...\n525 S Harbor Blvd, San Pedro, CA - 90731\nBreakfast Is Available Each Morning At This Hotel. Guest Rooms Include Free Wi-Fi. The Uss Iowa Battleship Is Less Than 5 Minutes’ Walk From The Property.Cable Tv And A Seating Area With A Table And C...\n1300 The Strand, Hermosa Beach, CA - 90254\nThe Beach House At Hermosa Makes For A Luxurious Oceanfront Crash Pad With Spa Services, Free Breakfast, And Modern Rooms With Fireplaces, Hdtvs And Balconies Overlooking The Pacific. This Three-Story...\n1325 E Carson Street, Carson, CA - 90745\nBudget Travelers Appreciate The Low Rates Combined With Lots Of Freebies And A Convenient Location At The Econo Lodge Near Stubhub Center, A Block Off I-405 In Carson. Nice In-Room Amenities At This T...\nLess Than A Mile From The Beach, Hotel Hermosa Welcomes Guests With Free Wi-Fi, Free Breakfast And An Outdoor Pool With A Japanese Water Garden. This Three-Story Hotel Offers 81 Rooms With Free Wi-Fi,...\nMap of Torrance, CA Hotels\nView all Torrance, CA, United States (TOA) hotels, motels, lodging and attractions on Torrance, CA, United States (TOA) location map.\nWhat are the cheap hotels near Torrance, CA airport?\nHoward Johnson by Wyndham Torrance, Days Inn by Wyndham Torrance Redondo Beach and Days Inn by Wyndham Torrance Redondo Beach are hotels located near the TOA airport and are very economical options if you are looking for a low room rate for an overnight stay. Staying at Torrance, CA motels is also an option for cheaper airport hotel rooms and short stays.\nWhat are the hotels near Torrance, CA airport?\nRamada by Wyndham Torrance, Days Inn by Wyndham Torrance Redondo Beach and Courtyard by Marriott Los Angeles Torrance Palos Verdes are hotels located near the TOA airport and are at closest proximity to the airport with a short cab ride. Torrance, CA airport also has many Inns and Suites with affordable lodging options with brands like Evolution Hospitality, Best Western Hotels & Resorts and Hyatt Place Hotels.\nWhat are the most common amenities for Torrance, CA TOA airport hotels?\nAirport hotels have useful amenities for frequent travelers like free TOA airport shuttle service, 24 hour in-room dinning, late check-in and check-out and free breakfast. For business traveler amenities like free wifi and meeting rooms are helpful. Most common amenities are Vending Machines, ATM on site and Free Early Check-in.\nClosest airports to Torrance, CA, United States (TOA)\nFind which airports to fly into and book Torrance, CA airport hotels.\nFun things to do in Torrance, CA Area\nTop tourist attractions and popular landmarks in Torrance, CA.\nExplore unique neighborhoods around Torrance, CA (TOA)\nVenture off the beaten path around Torrance, CA to explore hipster, arts, dining and shopping districts.\nTorrance, CA Surrounding cities\nBest suburbs, counties and towns near Torrance, CA (TOA).\nContinents > North America > United States of America > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles (and vicinity) > Torrance, CA >","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line221237"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7919377088546753,"wiki_prob":0.7919377088546753,"text":"Tag Archives: psychology Ken Campbell\nSep 25, 2015 · 6:00 pm\nComic Michael Brunström likes to do things he is not naturally good at doing\nMichael Brunström and Malcolm Hardee Award\nThe annual Malcolm Hardee Awards are given to individuals.\nAt the Edinburgh Fringe last month, Michael Brunström won the Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality. His show was titled The Golden Age of Steam and, this week, he performed it at the Museum of Comedy in London – which was arranged after he won the award.\n“So,” I said to him, “since you won the Malcolm Hardee Award, your life has just been one long round of parties, champagne and job offers?”\n“It’s more of an ego boost, really,” he told me. “It’s very hard to measure success. It seems like I’ve got a few interesting gigs gravitating towards me.”\n“Where,” I asked, “do you keep your award?”\n“On my bookshelf.”\n“Do you think you can build on it?” I asked. “The award, not the bookshelf.”\n“It’s all ballyhoo. It’s all nonsense,” said Michael. “But enough of it builds up a certain presence. The important thing, while still taking yourself seriously, is not to believe the ballyhoo. People have come out of the blue with unusual offers, but I can’t discuss them.”\n“Because,” he laughed, “they’re the kinds of things that fall through.”\n“I was sad,” I told him, “that your 1960s-clothes-desiger-Mary-Quant-on-a-whaling-expedition-to-Antarctica routine didn’t end up in your Golden Age of Steam.”\n“It might end up in something else,” he told me.\n“Was she really speaking in a slight German accent,” I asked, “or did I hallucinate that?”\nMichael Brunström’s eye not Noel Edmonds’\n“I can’t do accents,” Michael told me. “I’m doing Noel Edmonds on Monday at Cabarera. I ordered myself a beard today. I can’t grow one by Monday.”\n“You’re quite shy,” I said, “so it’s surprising you do audience involvement as much as you did in Edinburgh.”\n“Well,” explained Michael, “it’s good to do things you’re afraid of. It’s good to stretch yourself. I am not a natural showman. Maybe that’s what makes it funny. I don’t regard myself as a natural chatty, confident compere type – so that’s why I want to do more of that.”\n“What do you want to be doing in three years time?” I asked. “At the Edinburgh Fringe, people tend to succeed well with autobiographical theme shows: My ten years of heroin hell or whatever.”\n“Perhaps in three years time I will do an autobiographical show. I don’t have the guts to do that yet.”\n“Where were you brought up?”\n“West London.”\n“Oh dear,” I said. “That’s dull. And I suppose you had a happy childhood? That’s death for comedy.”\n“I don’t think I did have a happy childhood,” said Michael. “But I think it was unhappy in a rather dull and complex and un-theatrical way. I had a difficult, unhappy, Liverpudlian father who used sarcasm as a defence mechanism.”\n“Sarcasm is never good in a father,” I said. “It was sarcasm, not irony?”\n“I think the distinction was not something he would be prepared to pick apart.”\n“What was his job?”\n“He was a management consultant.”\n“Oh dear,” I said, “That’s dull. What was your mother?”\n“A laboratory assistant. She worked in a hospital, but spent most of her time looking after her four boys. I’m the youngest of four.”\n“What are the others now?”\n“One is a doctor of English Literature at St Patrick’s College in Dublin. One is a social worker in Brighton. And the other one is a professor of Psychology at Bristol University. I am the least accomplished of the four.”\n“I wouldn’t say that,” I disagreed. “You’re an editor at a serious publisher…You should surely be writing books yourself.”\n“I don’t find writing easy.”\n“You think of yourself more as a performer than a writer?”\n“I’ve never been a writer.”\nKen Campbell – The éminence grise of alternative comedy\nIt was at this point I remembered Ken Campbell. I have a shit memory. I had forgotten that, in my first blog chat with Michael in May last year, he mentioned working with Ken Campbell, the éminence grise of UK alternative comedy. Michael recently wrote a blog about Ken’s influence on him.\n“What’s the attraction of surrealism?” I asked Michael.\n“I think” he replied, “that audiences like to be bemused, surprised and shocked. In live performance, the audience doesn’t want to be experiencing it inside their heads. They want to experience the thing that’s happening immediately there in front of them.\n“The way I like to explain it is that, if you go to a chess match, you don’t go there to watch what’s happening, you go there to think in your own head what could happen and experience your own understanding of what’s going on.\n“In a live performance, it’s not that. The audience is there to watch what is happening. I don’t think my stuff would work on radio. It’s very visual. But, in the same way I try to do lots of audience interaction because I’m not very naturally good at it, I want to do audio stuff because…”\n“Well,” I foolishly interrupted, “any sensible producer goes for the person then develops the most suitable material. It’s the person that’s important.”\n“I want,” continued Michael, “to make some little podcasty audio things to put out there.”\n“Have you played around with sound?” I asked.\n“I used to when I was a kid,” he told me. “Me and my mate Robert used to make spoof radio shows together on an old cassette player. Introduce songs and interviews. That sort of thing. I haven’t done it in the last 30 years. Doing it in audio is the constraint.”\n“You like constraints?” I asked.\n“Yes. The constraint for The Golden Age of Steam was that I wanted to do a show without any food in it.”\n“Is that a constraint?” I asked. “Surely lots of shows have no food in them. Macbeth, for example… Oh, no! There’s the banquet!”\nMichael Brunström wants to be constrained by food\n“It’s the go-to thing with alternative comics,” explained Michael. “They always mention or have food in their shows. It’s not easy to do a show with no food. I didn’t even succeed. It had two cans of Lilt in it.”\n“Strictly speaking,” I said, “a can of Lilt is not food. Maybe next year you should do a show with no mention or presence of liquids.”\n“That’s very difficult,” said Michael. “because liquids are comedy gold.\n“Mmmm…” I contemplated. “No pissing jokes. No sweating jokes.”\n“How,” asked Michael, “Can you do a show without sweating?”\n“No sneezing,” I said.\n“Audiences love liquids,” said Michael. “It’s like when there’s a gun on stage. They pay attention when there is liquid on stage.”\n“You should maybe do a show with a gun but no liquids,” I suggested.\n“It’s on my list,” admitted Michael. “My current plan is to write a one-hour show with the theme of an art history lecture. Maybe take a painting and extrapolate from that like Peter Greenaway does.”\n“Why art?” I asked.\n“I think you need a strong visual image. Maybe The Garden of Earthly Delights or something like that.”\nFiled under Comedy, Performance\nTagged as awards, comedy, edinburgh fringe, Malcolm hardee, Mary Quant, Michael Brunström, Noel Edmonds, psychology Ken Campbell, The Golden Age of Steam","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line666955"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5825416445732117,"wiki_prob":0.5825416445732117,"text":"Taxation Services – Compliance and Planning\nAudit and Accountancy\nOutsourced Bookkeeping Services\nLiquidations Insolvency and Restructuring Advice\nNews Archives - Luke O'Malley & Co\nHousing costs push 2019 inflation rate up to 0.9% – CSO\nNew Central Statistics Office figures show the rate of inflation almost doubled in 2019 compared to 2018 with housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels showing the biggest price increases since 2015.\nConsumer prices rose by 0.9% in 2019, after increasing by 0.5% in 2018 and by 0.4% in 2017.\nThe CSO said that during 2019, mortgage interest repayments rose on average by 2.8% compared to a drop of 0.2% in 2018.\nMeanwhile, the price of goods decreased on average by 1.1% compared to a fall of 0.7% in 2018.\nThe price of services – which includes mortgage interest – rose by 2.4% compared to a rise of 1.4% the previous year.\nSince 2015, the CSO said that housing, water, electricity and gas and other fuel costs have jumped by 10.8%, while prices in restaurants and hotels are up 9.8% and education costs have grown by 9.2%.\nThe CSO also said today that consumer prices rose by 1.3% in December from 1.1% in November.\nThe increase came on the back of higher rents and mortgage interest repayments as well as more expensive electricity bills.\nThe CSO said the biggest annual price changes in December included increases in education costs, which rose by 4.1%.\nThe cost of housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels increased by 3.3% due to higher rents, mortgage rates and higher electricity bills.\nMeanwhile, the price of alcohol and tobacco rose by 3.1%, while prices in restaurants and hotels grew by 2.6% on the back of increase in the cost of accommodation and more expensive prices when eating out.\nTransport costs also rose mainly due to an increase in air fares and higher prices for cars and services.\nHowever, December saw a price fall of 8.8% in the communications sector, while clothes and footwear prices were down 1.3% due to sales. The price of some foods – including vegetables, sugar, jam, honey, chocolate & confectionery and milk, cheese and eggs – were also lower last month.\nOn a monthly basis, the CSO said that consumer prices rose by 0.2% in December on the back of increases in the price of transport and health.\nArticle Source: Click Here\nCentral Bank announces consumer and investor protection priorities for 2020\nThe Central Bank has said that the protection of borrowers in mortgage arrears will continue to be a key priority for it during 2020.\nDerville Rowland, Director General, Financial Conduct at the Central Bank, said the bank will closely monitor the treatment of borrowers in arrears and take follow-up supervisory actions as required.\n“As part of our supervisory work, we will continue to require all loan owners to put in place long-term sustainable arrangements where possible for their borrowers,” she added.\nMs Rowland made her comments as she outlined the Central Bank’s priorities for the regulation of financial conduct in Ireland during the year.\nThese priorities include strengthening consumer protection, a comprehensive review of the Consumer Protection Code and enhanced anti-money laundering measures.\nNoting the lack of a consumer-focused culture within the financial services sector, Ms Rowland said it will not come as a surprise to hear that the Central Bank will continue to hold boards and leaders to account for embedding effective behaviour and cultures.\nShe also said the Central Bank is examining the issue of price differentiation in the motor and home insurance market to understand the extent and prevalence of the practice, how insurers are using it and whether it gives rise to unfair treatment of consumers.\nThe Central Bank intends to publish an interim report on its findings at the end of the year.\n“At the Central Bank of Ireland we are consistently evolving and enhancing our toolkit. Some of our priority issues will have more immediate benefits, while others will bear fruit over the longer term,” Ms Rowland said.\n“I hope – indeed expect – that the 2020s will be the decade when all firms and boards put conduct, culture and customers firmly at the top of the corporate agenda,” she added.\nDow, S&P 500 at record highs after US-China trade deal\nThe Dow Jones and S&P 500 rose to record highs on Wall Street last night following a volatile session marked the signing of the long-awaited US-China trade agreement.\nThe Dow Jones gained 0.3% to finish at 29,030 and the broad-based S&P 500 added 0.2% to 3,289.\nAnalysts said the choppy trading session reflected worries about lofty US stock valuations following the market’s surge since the fall.\n“We’ve been on a tear since mid-October,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare, who said investors likely will wait for more earnings reports from big companies before moving significantly further.\n“It’s going to take a lot of good new news to get the market to take another leg higher,” he said.\nThe trade deal between the world’s dominant economic powers called off some US tariffs that had been planned on Chinese goods, and obliged China to beef up purchases of American crops and other exports and provide intellectual property protections for US technology.\nInvestors have cheered the deal following nearly two years of conflict in which US-China trade tensions occasionally flared, pressuring stocks.\nBut Oxford Economics described the agreement as a “fragile truce”.\nIt warned that “while the deal is a step in the right direction, further tariff rollbacks should not be expected until after the elections, and broken promises could lead to tariffs snapping back in the coming months.”\nAmong individual companies, Goldman Sachs dipped 0.2% as it reported lower fourth-quarter due in part to a one-time charge of $1.1 billion for legal costs connected to probes into the bank’s role in the 1MDB scandal.\nAmong other companies reporting results, Bank of America fell 1.8% and United Health Group gained 2.8%.\nTarget plunged 6.6% after the big-box retailer reported disappointing sales for the critical Christmas shopping season.\nState may exit US currency blacklist\nThe United States may remove Ireland from its list of potential currency manipulators next year after the State’s current account surplus turned to a deficit in 2019.\nThe US Department of the Treasury updated its guidance this week.\nWhile the main decision was to remove China from the blacklist, the State was also among those that could be exempted.\nIreland and Italy were surprise inclusions in last year’s report, which applies three measures to establish whether countries use their exchange rates to boost exports to the US.\nResidential property prices rise by 1.4% in November\nResidential property prices posted annual growth of 1.4% in November, the fastest growth in three months, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show.\nThe increase of 1.4% in November is down sharply from growth of 7.2% a year ago, the CSO said.\nHouse prices have stabilised over the last year having shot up for five years following a crash just over a decade ago.\nDublin residential property prices decreased by 0.7% in the year to November, with house prices down by 0.5% and apartments falling by 1.2%.\nThe CSO noted that the highest house price growth in Dublin was seen in Fingal with prices rising by 3%, while Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown prices saw a decline of 6.3%.\nMeanwhile, property prices outside of Dublin rose by 3.6% in the year to November, with house prices up by 3.6% and apartments prices increased by 3.9%.\nThe region outside of Dublin that saw the largest rise in house prices was the Border at 9.9%, while at the other end of the scale, the Mid-East saw a 0.4% rise.\nProperty prices nationally have increased by 85.7% from their low point in early 2013, the CSO figures show.\nDublin residential property prices have risen 94.9% from their February 2012 low, while residential property prices in the Rest of Ireland are 84.3% higher than at their low point in May 2013.\nConsumers paid a mean, or average price of €295,706 for a home on the residential property market in the 12 months to November.\nThe mean price in Dublin – at €438,729 – was the highest in any region or county.\nDún Laoghaire-Rathdown had the highest mean price in the Dublin region at €600,335, while South Dublin had the lowest at €363,324.\nThe CSO said that outside of Dublin, the Mid-East was the most expensive region, with a mean price of €301,142. Wicklow was the most expensive county in the Mid-East region, with a mean price of €357,831.\nThe Border region was the least expensive region in the year to September 2019, with a mean price of €144,090. Leitrim was the least expensive county, with a mean price of €118,733.\nToday’s CSO figures also show that in the year to November, a total of 45,192 house purchases were filed with Revenue.\nOf these, 31.8% were purchases by first-time buyer owner-occupiers, while former owner-occupiers purchased 52.7% of the homes. The remaining 15.5% were acquired by non-occupiers.\nRevenue data shows that there were 1,355 first-time buyer purchases in November, a rise of 1.1% on the 1,340 recorded the same time last year.\nThese purchases were made up of 470 new homes and 885 existing homes, the CSO added.\nUK inflation hits more than three-year low, raising pressure on Bank of England\nUK inflation sank unexpectedly to a more than three-year low in December as hotels slashed prices, ramping up expectations that the Bank of England will cut interest rates as soon as this month.\nConsumer prices rose by 1.3% in annual terms compared with 1.5% in November, the smallest increase since November 2016, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said today.\nThe pound slid below $1.30 on the reading, which was below all forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists that had pointed to another 1.5% increase.\nSince the turn of the year, Bank of England officials have voiced concerns about the strength of Britain’s economy, raising expectations in financial markets that they could vote to cut interest rates as soon as this month.\nEarlier, Bank of England rate-setter Michael Saunders said interest rates should be cut straight away.\nCiting a weak labour market and a sluggish economy, he said this would avoid Britain getting stuck in a low-inflation trap as in the euro zone.\nAlthough today’s data showed inflation for the fourth quarter as a whole matched the Bank of England’s 1.4% forecast it made in November, the surprise drop in price pressures last month bolstered expectations of stimulus.\nMoney markets now price in a roughly 56% chance of a rate cut in January, compared with 49% before today’s data.\nThe ONS said a third of hotels surveyed in December reported falling prices, compared with only one in 10 reporting an increase. Women’s clothing prices also fell, the ONS said.\nA measure of core inflation, which excludes energy, fuel, alcohol and tobacco, dropped to its lowest since November 2016 at 1.4%, down from 1.7% in November.\nInflation pressure in the pipeline – measured through factory prices – remained muted. Prices of manufactured products rose 0.9% on the year, as expected in the Reuters poll.\nSeparate data from the ONS showed that UK house prices rose by an annual 2.2% in November, the biggest rise in a year, adding to tentative signs of stabilisation in the housing market.\nUK consumers banned from using credit cards to gamble\nGamblers in the UK will no longer be able to use their credit cards to place bets online after a major shake-up of rules announced by the industry regulator.\nFrom 14 April, people wanting to place bets online will have to do so by using either a debit card or through cash deposited into an account.\nThe credit card ban affects all gambling, with the exception of the National Lottery, the Gambling Commission said.\nIt follows concerted efforts by the UK government to address the issue of problem gambling.\nNeil McArthur, Gambling Commission chief executive, said: “Credit card gambling can lead to significant financial harm.\n“The ban that we have announced today should minimise the risks of harm to consumers from gambling with money they do not have.”\nResearch by the commission classed 22% of online gamblers who use credit cards as “problem gamblers”.\nThere are an estimated 24 million adult gamblers in the UK.\nBrigid Simmonds, chairwoman of the Betting and Gaming Council which represents the industry, said: “The Betting and Gaming Council is a body firmly committed to raising standards, safer gambling and change.\n“We will implement a ban on credit cards and indeed our members will go further to study and improve the early identification of those at risk.\n“The use of credit cards were previously used as a potential marker of harm which might lead to further intervention with customers.”\nAdditional reporting Reuters\nChina trade surplus with US dropped 8.5% to $296 billion\nChina’s trade surplus with the US narrowed last year as the world’s two biggest economies exchanged punitive tariffs in a bruising trade war, new data show today.\nThe figures come as the two countries prepare to sign a deal dialling down tensions.\nThe huge difference in trade traffic is a key bone of contention for Donald Trump in a long-running stand-off that has seen him impose tariffs on goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars, triggering retaliation from Beijing and jolting the global economy.\nChina’s surplus came in at around $295.8 billion in 2019, down 8.5% from the previous year’s record $323.3 billion, according to customs data.\nIn December, its surplus with the US was around $23.2 billion, from $24.6 billion the month before.\nThe mini trade deal announced last month will see Beijing buy an extra $200 billion of US products over a two-year period, according to Washington officials. China has yet to publicly confirm the figures.\nThe Trump administration called off new tariffs on Chinese-made goods such as electronics that were to take effect last month. It also halved those imposed on September 1 on $120 billion worth of products.\nBut Washington maintains 25% tariffs on about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports.\nIn a further sign of de-escalation, Washington yesterday removed the currency manipulator label it imposed on China in the summer.\nAt a news conference this morning, spokesman for the customs administration Zou Zhiwu said that since November and December, Chinese imports from the US including of soybeans and pork have picked up.\nZou added that the increased imports from the US will not affect China’s purchases from other countries.\nHe also said the trade tensions had “put some pressure on China’s foreign trade and firms that largely trade with the US”.\n“Although our exports to the US have declined, the effectiveness of enterprises diversifying their markets has been significant,” he said, adding that exports to non-US markets have risen and overall exports are still rising.\nThe signing of the new trade deal, which is part of a planned wider pact, will have an “important and positive significance” not just for China and the US but also the rest of the world, Zou said.\nChina’s foreign trade volume fell slightly on-year in 2019, and its surplus with the world stood at $421.5 billion.\nIn December, China’s exports rose 7.6% year-on-year, the highest growth since July and above the 2.9% forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Imports surged 16.3%, far exceeding estimates.\nFor the full year, exports rose 0.5% while imports fell 2.8%.\nMeat imports spiked over the past 12 months as officials brought in 2.108 million ton of pork – a 75% increase from the year before, while beef imports rose 60%.\nThe huge jumps come as the country’s pork supply is hammered by an outbreak of African swine fever that has wiped out about 40 percent of the national pig herd.\nNick Marro at The Economist Intelligence Unit said China’s overall export recovery in December is likely due in part to a low base of comparison from the year before.\n“It was around this time last year when we first started to see the impact of both the trade war and the global electronics slowdown bite into China’s trade data,” he added.\nWhile shipments to Europe and Southeast Asia are up, Marro said these markets cannot fully replace the US.\n“However, China’s efforts to pivot towards alternative sources of demand, as a cushion to lost US market access, may be starting to pay off,” he said, adding that growth in shipments to Vietnam outperformed every other major export market.\nUsed car sales reach highest ever level in 2019 – CSO\nNew figures from the Central Statistics Office show the number of new cars licensed for the first time fell by 6.5% in 2019, while the number of used car sales rose by 9.5% to reach its highest ever level.\nThe CSO said that a total of 113,305 new private cars were licensed for the first time last year, down 6.5% compared with 2018.\nBut the number of used, or imported, cars licensed rose by 9.5% to 108,895 in 2019 compared with 99,456 in 2018.\nOverall a total of 222,200 new and used private cars were licensed in 2019 – the highest figure since 2007, the CSO added.\nIn December, just 729 new private cars were licensed for the first time – a fall of 6.3% compared with the same month in 2018.\nThe number of used cars licensed increased by 23.7% to 7,995 compared with the same same in 2018, the CSO said.\nToday’s figures also show that 12.7% of new cars sold last year were electric/electric hybrid, a jump of 67.4% compared with 2018.\nVolkswagen was the most popular make of new private cars licensed last year, followed by Toyota, Hyundai, Ford and Skoda. Together these five makes represent 46.5% of all new cars licensed.\nMeanwhile, the most popular model of private car licensed last year was the Toyota Corolla followed by the Nissan Qashqai and the Hyundai Tucson.\nAnd the most popular colour for new cars last year was grey (36.7%) followed by black (17.7%) and white (15.8%). This was the same order as in 2018, the CSO noted.\nUSC threshold increasing due to rise in minimum wage\nThe threshold for USC is to be raised to allow for a previously announced increase in the minimum wage.\nThis will benefit all taxpayers as well as ensuring those on the minimum wage will continue to pay USC at a maximum rate of 2%.\nLast month the government announced it had decided to raise the minimum wage, given strong earnings growth across the economy and greater clarity over Brexit.\nThe decision had been postponed at the time of the Budget given concerns at that time over the UK crashing out of the EU.\nThe increase of 30c had been recommended by the Low Pay Commission.\nThe PRSI threshold was also increased to allow those on the minimum wage working a 39 hour week to earn up to €20,483 per annum.\nThe second part of this process was the announcement by the Minister for Finance today to raise the threshold on the 2% USC band which will also kick in from February 1st.\nThis means the maximum rate of USC contributions paid by those on the minimum wage remains 2%.\nThe move will directly benefit 127,000 workers on the minimum wage.\nThis is the fifth year in a row that the minimum wage has been raised. Ireland has the third highest minimum wage in the EU.\nThe move on USC will also benefit taxpayers earning above the minimum wage.\nBy how much, depends on what you earn. The maximum benefit will be 29c per week or €15.25 per annum.\nLuke O'Malley & Co\n9 The Plaza, Main Street,\nBlanchardstown, Dublin 15\nEmail: info@lom.ie\nBook a Free Consultation. Get Us to Call You Back\n© 2015 Luke O'Malley Accountants - All rights reserved - Privacy Policy - Website by PracticeNet.ie","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line559339"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5665526986122131,"wiki_prob":0.43344730138778687,"text":"E-book Details\nB00J1PTZPG\nPaperback Book Details\n9781494766825 B00J1PTZPG\nSherrie Petersen\nWish You Weren't\nSherrie Petersen, author\nMarten doesn't believe in the power of wishes. None of his have ever come true. So when he makes an impulsive wish during a meteor shower, he doesn't expect it to make any difference. Until his annoying little brother disappears. With the present uncertain and his brother’s future in limbo, Marten finds himself stuck in his past. And if he runs out of time, even wishes might not be enough to save the ones he loves.\nIn this diverting blend of science and magic, 11-year-old Marten grumps when his mother, an aspiring astronaut, urges him to wish on a shooting star during a meteor shower. It’s never worked before, but Marten gives it a go, wishing away his annoying six-year-old brother, Aldrin. At a science museum the following day, Aldrin suddenly fades away, and Marten’s parents and other museum patrons become frozen, statuelike, in time. A pale man with a glowing stopwatch (who turns out to be a wish-granting “star spirit”) approaches Marten and his friend Paul, whisks them back in time to meet a younger Marten, and brings them to a limbo where Aldrin awaits a decision on his future. Though first-time author Petersen’s story flits through time and space, it’s easy to follow, and the pieces snap together neatly. Marten’s remorse at wishing Aldrin gone, his determination to save his family, and his banter-rich friendship with Paul all combine to ground the novel. Petersen supplements her passing references to constellations, supernovas, and NASA telescopes by including links to websites for readers to explore. Ages 8–up. (BookLife)\nErik Weibel – This Kid Reviews Books\nhttp://thiskidreviewsbooks.com\nMarten couldn’t believe it. A wish he made on a star actually came true – and he feels awful about it. He wished that his little brother, Aldrin, wasn’t there. While at a museum, Aldrin just… Faded away. Marten and his best friend, Paul, meet a strange man named Tör, who says that he will help them get Aldrin back. Using watches that can control time, Tör, Marten, and Paul go through time, trying to undo what happened. When Tör’s star he comes from starts to die, and signs of Aldrin start disappearing, it’s up to Marten and Paul to stop Aldrin from disappearing forever.\nThis was a very good time travel book. Ms. Petersen’s plot has no holes and her description of the story puts the reader right in the middle of it. I like books like this – a little bit of magic, a little bit of time travel, a lot of adventure. It was a great read. I like Ms. Petersen’s writing style. She gets into the mind of an 11 (almost 12!) boy very easily. Marten is a great character and, speaking as a 12 year old boy, he acts very realistically. I understand why he does everything he does. I also like Tör – he is mysterious and I love the idea of him being in charge of making sure the wishes made on his star come true. The book was appropriate for all ages. I think a lot of kids (and adults) will love this story.\nI give this book five out of five bookworms!\nSherrie Petersen delivers a captivating read in Wish You Weren't. The book is funny and upbeat and the reader becomes lost in the world of Marten. The plot was cleverly thought out and the theories of the stars and constellations make the book more intriguing. In one small moment, Marten changed things forever and only after a journey of self discovery can he make things right...The simplicity of the story combined with the mysteries of space make for a truly wonderful read.\nSherrie Petersen has written a real page-turner of a middle-grade novel...a perfect summer read. The kids will love it, but parents might want to borrow it as well.\nJoin me at the Orange County Children’s Book Festival\nI'm so excited to be part of this event! Last year the Festival featured over 135 booksellers, educational exhibitors and related vendors and more than 39,000 people attended. It's the largest single day children's book literacy event in North America! I'll be speaking on the Middle Grade / Teen / YA Stage at 10:15 a.m. and signing books at Booth #116 all day!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1355011"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9478393197059631,"wiki_prob":0.9478393197059631,"text":"Apple TV Plus Review: Is It Worth the $5 Per Month?\nShould Netflix or Disney worry about Apple?\n(Image: © Future)\nApple TV Plus is an interesting first foot forward from Apple in the streaming wars, but the company's not quite there yet.\nBig-budget shows\nWide availability\nWeb-browser streaming is buggy\nNo must-watch show (yet)\nShort launch list\nApple TV Plus, the company's fourth premium subscription service (joining Apple Music, Apple News Plus and Apple Arcade) is here, and it's … interesting. Priced too low to write off immediately, Apple TV Plus aims to worm its way into your streaming habits with big names, important premises and a surprising amount of supported devices (at least for Apple). It's even on the Fire TV Stick (which Disney Plus can't claim yet).\nHaving spent a weekend poking around the service's initial offerings, I've found that Apple TV Plus' Day 1 package isn't exactly ready to compete with Netflix, even though some of the Apple service's shows can be pretty entertaining. The big early flaws include a web-browser streaming option that needs more time in the oven and a selection that feels limited at best.\nTV is a medium where commercial (Big Bang Theory) and critical (The Wire) success can be mutually exclusive, so my lukewarm thoughts about some of Apple's shows may prove irrelevant over time. The success of Apple TV Plus, however, depends on how soon Apple can smooth out its streaming issues and if one or more of its shows can find a strong audience that makes the service a must-have. Most folks aren't getting the free year I did.\nApple TV Plus pricing, availability and deals\nPriced lower than any major streaming service, Apple TV Plus costs $4.99 per month (with a one-week free trial). That includes 4K streaming (which costs $15.99 on Netflix) and family sharing, with a total of six shared accounts permitted. Apple TV Plus is available in more than 100 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Australia.\nYou can get a free year of Apple TV Plus by buying a device to watch it on; that could be the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch or any Mac. Students paying for the $4.99 Apple Music account get Apple TV Plus for free.\nApple TV Plus app and device support: Flawed\nApple could not hope for its streaming service to succeed if it were limited to just Apple's hardware; neither the Apple TV HD ($149) nor the Apple TV 4K ($179) is affordable. So, the good news is that the service isn't limited to the TV app (available on tvOS, iOS, iPadOS and macOS).\nThere's an Apple TV app for both Roku and Amazon Fire sticks (the Fire TV Cube is a glaring omission — though Amazon tells the press it's coming soon), and that app is also on Samsung Smart TVs. Oh, and there's a web-browser-based player, available at https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-plus/ (click Watch Now).\nHow well those apps run, though, is a different question. Apple TV Plus operates smoothly on Apple's own devices, but things didn't run as smoothly elsewhere. Users (including my colleague Andrew E. Freedman at Tom's Hardware) have reported random crashing in the web browser mode, and I saw the Amazon Fire TV app stop mid-episode in Dickinson, which kicked me to the Apple TV app's home screen.\nI couldn't watch in a web browser for long enough to see a crash, however, as I saw bumpy video quality, especially when people were moving in both See and Dickinson. Frustratingly, any progress made in a web browser doesn't carry over to other apps. That stack of browser-based problems might seem small for those with a streaming stick or box, but those who use their laptop for their TV would say otherwise.\nA less annoying, but still noticeable issue happened as I streamed Apple TV Plus shows on the Fire TV Stick 4K; the load time after fast-forwarding or rewinding a show was about 8 seconds on average, while Netflix (5 seconds) and Prime Video (4 seconds) loaded footage faster.\nMy Roku Ultra had the least-annoying issue of all outside platforms, as I noticed a slight lag between clicking a button on the remote and the on-screen graphics responding.\nApple TV Plus library: Not aiming for quantity\nApple TV Plus' $4.99-per-month price makes sense given that you can fit the nine entries in the Apple TV Plus launch list — The Morning Show, See, For All Mankind, Dickinson, Ghostwriter, Helpsters, Snoopy in Space, Oprah's Book Club, The Elephant Queen — in a single smallish paragraph.\nYou can't say the same about Netflix's originals lineup, which earns its higher price (HD streaming costs $11.99 per month) with quantity, offering hundreds of shows and movies. Disney Plus will also launch with nine originals, and those shows will debut one episode per week, but the company's immense back catalogue practically makes it a value pick at $6.99 per month.\nMore original programming is coming soon, including M. Night Shyamalan's Servant (Nov. 28); Truth Be Told (Dec. 6), starring Octavia Spencer; and The Banker (January 2020), a film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Mackie.\nSee: It's a C for me\nA long-running target for jokes in the Tom's Guide office, See revolves around warring tribes in a post-apocalyptic world. Both groups are unable to see, with a blindness that's likely tied to the near-extinction-level event that created the post-apocalyptic setting. The show's big early twist, however, is that two newborn children can see. How do the adults know the babies can see, if they're blind?\nAnd the show itself? The first episode (three are out right now) feels like an attempt to be the next Game of Thrones, down to lead actor Jason Momoa. The magic, though, is missing. Dialogue is stiff, and all characters outside of Momoa's Baba Voss are barely there, feeling two-dimensional at best.\nMaybe See will find a home with fantasy fans, but it didn't convert me. Sure, it's giant wide-shots of the rivers and valleys look beautiful, and it feels immense, but it doesn't do anything to make me care about any of the involved characters.\nThe Morning Show: Good, but a bit hollow\n(Image credit: Apple TV+)\nThis series, co-produced by co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, bit off a lot with its subject matter, and I'm not sure how it plans to digest its topic. The broad strokes of the series are simple and ripped straight from the headlines: Talk show co-host Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) is kicked out of his job following multiple accusations of sexually inappropriate relationships with colleagues.\nMeanwhile, The Morning Show (yes, that's also the name of the show in the show) co-anchor Alex Levy (Aniston) is struggling to deal with the ramifications of this news. This series proves most engaging when focused on Levy's quest to stay at the top of the a.m. TV pecking order — Aniston clashes well with co-stars Mark Duplass and Billy Crudup — and handling Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), a potential new rival.\nHaving seen three episodes of The Morning Show, I'm beginning to feel that it may not have as much to say about the #MeToo era and workplace harassment as I wanted or thought it should. This came into focus for me during a small-ish monologue by Carell's character, who came across as a farce as he said to one of his last remaining allies:\n\"Let's, just for a second, let's look at the larger context of hashtag-me-too. It's been, what, two years? We're two years in? I feel like people are screaming for an honest conversation, and what do I do? What do I do best? I am a journalist. I can feel when the world needs me to articulate something for them, to help them understand, and believe me, I know this is going to require a high degree of sensitivity, but I fucking love a tightrope. I love it. Makes me feel alive. Maybe all this happened for a reason. I think if I can get in there and show my face, and look and address the darkness that exists —\"\nThat entire monologue pokes at the idea that this show is going to take its subject matter seriously, by turning him into an aloof joke. A later scene in that episode, however, did more damage to the show's credibility on the topic. As Kessler continues to talk about making a documentary about the #MeToo era, he learns that, shockingly, an accused man he knew was a serious threat, which helps Kessler see himself as innocent. All the while, it seems intentional that we've still yet to get a tally of his transgressions. It all comes across as \"sympathy for the accused,\" which is the last thing this moment needs. If The Morning Show turns out to be an anti-cancel culture project, it'll curdle even more over time.\nRead my full The Morning Show review for more details.\nDickinson: A surprise standout\nThe last Apple TV Plus show I expected to love managed to be my favorite so far. Hailee Steinfeld, as a young Emily Dickinson, is the centerpiece of a wonderfully weird comedy series.\nImbued with a modern, youthful energy, Dickinson eschews dry period-piece dialogue for lively banter as Jane Krakowski (her mother, Mrs. Dickinson) and Toby Huss (Edward Dickinson) try to raise a daughter who is spiritually not of their era. Not only does Emily not sit like a lady of her time, with a slouch that feels utterly relatable, but the way she says \"bullshit\"? I felt it.\nLater in the first and second episode, you'll happen upon the show's sexual energy, which adds urgency. Also, its depiction of \"death\" borders on fantasy and will leave you scratching your head — in a good way.\nFor All Mankind: Houston, this is a problem\nMaybe I'm just unpatriotic, but this cloying What If? series, which imagines a world where Russia beat the United States to the moon, just grated against my brain. The best thing I can say is that the series isn't entirely torturous.\nWhen Chris Bauer (The Wire's Frank Sobotka) shows up, he adds a bit of energy, as a member of NASA's middle management who's trying to deal with the press and wrangle a bunch of depressed astronauts. His performance helps pull the camera away from Joel Kinnaman, who gets a lot of work for how wooden his acting chops are.\nThe worst part of the first episode (Red Moon) is the cloying soundtrack, as it blasts nostalgic tunes over montage scene after montage scene. It's like if someone took all the earnesty and underdog tropes of Friday Night Lights and sprayed it at a CNN documentary about the moon landing.\nOutlook: Waiting on a hit\nIs Apple TV Plus worth it? Well, the shows certainly look like they cost a lot to make, but based on my early experience, I have to say the service's value is on a case-by-case basis. If you're intrigued by one of the shows, give Apple's service a spin. Unless, that is, you're expecting to watch Apple TV Plus on a PC laptop. In that case, wait.\nI'll be updating this review as Apple TV Plus evolves, as it's a living, breathing thing. Apple's released only three episodes of See, The Morning Show and For All Mankind, so the word is out on how they're going to land these stories. Right now, I don't know if I'm going to renew in 2020 when my free year expires or if I'd buy a second month after this one is over.\nThe Best Streaming Services of 2019\nDisney Plus vs. Apple TV Plus: Why Disney Has a Huge Advantage\nWill Disney Plus Get People to Drop Netflix?\nWho is Byleth? Meet the new Smash Ultimate character\nBest Super Bowl TV deals 2020: Big values for the big game\nBest Wi-Fi extenders 2020\nBest tech deals in January 2020\nBest Amazon deals in January 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1391568"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5386618375778198,"wiki_prob":0.5386618375778198,"text":"The Case for Pandora\nby James Essig; Steve McCarter\nCompendium on Light Speed Travel\nJames Essig\nThe Relativistic Rocketeer\nCompendium on Light-Speed Travel\nJames M. Essig\nCall of the Cosmic Wild. Relativistic Rockets for the New Millennium\nCOSMIC SHIPS\nPublication Date : 1/12/2017\nThis book is about building craft for space travel—space travel not in the far distant future, but in the immediate future. There is no question that we have the technology to build and power a large craft capable of traversing the galaxy, and for now, this book will focus on achieving the goal of intragalactic travel. We will describe various methods of power generation and propulsion, delineate the materials and technology for construction, discuss the building of the spacecraft from the outside-in, and show what is required to sustain life on the craft for extended periods of time. While we will go into some detail on each of these, pointing out advantages and disadvantages to components and methods, this is not, nor is it intended to be, a highly technical book to be used by specialists. Rather, it is intended to inform the general readership about what is possible, and perhaps what is not, in building and operating spacecraft for long-distance and long-duration travel with current and available means.\nSteve McCarter Steve McCarter was raised and educated in Denver, Colorado, graduating from high school in 1967 and the University of Colorado (Boulder) in 1971 with a degree in environmental biology. He has spent more than thirty-five years working in the field of environmental consulting but has never abandoned an abiding and passionate interest in space sciences that had its inception during the years of the US-Soviet space race. John F. Kennedy’s inaugural words, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone . . .” inspired a firm belief that space travel is not only possible but also one that offers mankind its best hope for survival and expansion. Mr. McCarter has been writing professionally since 1973. James Essig Mr. Essig’s love of interstellar travel had its genesis in his childhood. Through most of his elementary school-age years, he was a shy kid, but one who was far from the stereotypical, reserved nerdy geek. His grade school report cards where generally good but were far from the straight A cards that the academically brilliant students would receive. He had a very personal dream, however, that motivated him to get through the often boring school days. This dream is that for an unbounded future of human interstellar space-flight. His infatuation with manned space exploration began early in grade school, fueled by the Apollo Space program and lunar landings and the promise of manned missions to distant planets in the not-so-distant future. It seemed as though, by the 1980s, we would definitely be sending humans on Martian exploratory missions. His interest in manned space travel waned a bit during the late 1970s through the mid-1990s but picked up again after he had read a book on real-world potential interstellar travel methods based mainly on known and well-established physics. Mr. Essig holds a degree in physics from George Mason University.\nThe Case for Pandora explores the capabilities of modern extraterrestrial travel technology with enthralling vision.\nJames Essig and Steve McCarter’s The Case For Pandora is a technical manual with instructions for building a spaceship capable of extraterrestrial travel. Designs for generation, colony, and century ships, collectively referred to as space arks, are offered as a solution to an extinction-level event (ELE) such as an asteroid or climate change.\nThe text is devoted to a single solution to human extinction: leaving Earth behind. It includes extensive information about building a colony ship, maintaining an artificial human-friendly environment on board, and supporting life in space, but this work is backed by only a cursory assessment of the motives for evacuating the planet. The introduction glosses over such motives, dismissing causes from politics and overcrowding without nuance. It is more thorough in covering the scientific aspects of space travel.\nThe book includes ship designs that focus on technical details and physical capability. These are covered in seven sections that go over information about materials, manufacturing considerations, and power and propulsion. The book’s thirty-six chapters include over 200 images and diagrams, most taken from NASA, the Department of Energy, and other legitimate sources. These cover liquid fuel rocket engines and their components. A chapter on the ark’s passengers addresses “both physical and psychological health, systems for shipboard governance, and reproduction and population control methods that are necessary to maintain a viable population capable of completing a mission that may take generations to accomplish.”\nThe work is organized in an easy-to-use way, and its tables and images help impart understanding. The text assumes a basic understanding of manufacturing, design, and physics, but explanations of the discussed principles make it accessible to laypeople, too. Conversational in tone, it uses accessible language to describe complex concepts from aerospace design and astronautics.\nThe book has in mind massive flying ships of the sort that would make Apollo 11 look like a tiny skiff. From an engineering perspective, its analysis of different interstellar crafts and technology is solid. It does not extend to including blueprints, but emphasizes what is possible in building and operating colony-sized spacecrafts. To existent conversations of space travel, it adds suggestions for building bigger, more powerful crafts with technology that is already available.\nThe Case for Pandora explores the capabilities of modern extraterrestrial travel technology with enthralling vision, talking in a realistic way about how to fulfill the timeless dream of a new Earth, self-sustaining and suspended in space.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1562163"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8486654758453369,"wiki_prob":0.8486654758453369,"text":"Vatican cleric Scarano charged with money-laundering\nJanuary 22 2014, category: Misc, by: thomas\nSource: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25831234\nA senior Italian cleric has been charged with laundering millions through the Vatican bank, police say.\nMonsignor Nunzio Scarano is already on trial and under house arrest on separate charges of plotting to smuggle 20m euros ($26m; £17m) into Italy.\nThe former Vatican accountant and two other people were served with arrest warrants on Tuesday, police said.\nLast year, Pope Francis set up a commission to review the bank's activities after a series of scandals.\nTraditionally the Vatican has opposed the right of the Italian judiciary to investigate alleged crimes committed by its officials on the grounds of diplomatic immunity and privilege, reports the BBC's David Willey in Rome.\nBut under Pope Francis, increased cooperation between the Vatican and Italian authorities led to the arrest of Monsignor Scarano last summer, our correspondent says.\n'False donations'\nOn Tuesday, police seized some 6.5m euros in bank accounts and real estate, including Monsignor Scarano's luxury apartment in the southern city of Salerno.\nAuthorities said the latest charges against the cleric related to \"false donations\", which he allegedly recycled from offshore accounts through the Vatican bank.\nProsecutors allege that Monsignor Scarano got dozens of people to make contributions to a home for the terminally ill in Salerno, and used the money to pay off a mortgage on one of his properties.\nAnother Catholic priest has also been arrested on charges of laundering and making false statements, officials say.\nMonsignor Scarano worked for two decades as a senior accountant in a Vatican department known as Apsa (the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See).\nThe division manages the Vatican's real estate holdings and stock portfolios.\nThe cleric was suspended from his position last year, after he was accused of conspiring to smuggle millions from Switzerland into Italy with the help of a secret service agent and a financial broker.\nThe trio's high-profile trial began in early December in Rome.\nOfficially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican bank is one of the world's most secretive. It has 114 employees and 5.4bn euros of assets.\nThe bank is undergoing a major restructuring on the orders of Pope Francis.\nHe has hired an American financial services company to examine all 19,000 accounts to ensure that international rules against money laundering are being correctly observed.\nReligious Abuse?\nApostatize!\nThe Catholic Church today is mired in scandal, including shady financial dealings, pedophilia, and nuns who have been raped or have had abortions.\nClergymen who commit pedophilia are often merely transferred or reprimanded by their superiors, who often cover up the crimes to spare the Church public humiliation and the need to pay large financial damages to the victims.\n40% of Catholic Nuns Have Been Sexually Abused\nDo Religious Restrictions Force Doctors to Commit Malpractice?\nUK's top cardinal accused of 'inappropriate acts' by priests\n*Etymology of the word \"Apostasy\":\n(gr. \"apostasia\", abandon, defect) Public and voluntary abandonment of a religion )\nCopyright © 2012, Apostasynow.org. All Rights Reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line83101"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6842320561408997,"wiki_prob":0.6842320561408997,"text":"My Super Science Stories\nI just finished Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, and I can say that it deserves all of the attention and awards that it has garnered. Nice piece of work, and I say that as someone who doesn't often get into the kind of fairy tales and folk tales that the book is rooted in. But although the fairy tale world isn't a place that I'd want to live in long term, Novik has certainly made it a nice place to visit.\nNovik has studied fairy/folk tales enough to have mastered their cadence of thought and speech. Folk tales were tales told by and to peasants. Peasants live a lot closer to the survival line than middle-class Americans, and they don't take having food and shelter and clothing and safety for granted. Therefore, when they told stories they focused on mundane details of food and shelter and clothing much more than modern writers because they're listeners needed and wanted to know about these things. This focus on the concrete produces a sort of plodding (and I don't mean that as a putdown) style of writing which is actually one of the book's achievements. This style of writing feels immediately familiar as a fairy tale, even to me a person who doesn't read fairy tales, and successfully removes me from normal reality to a fairy tale place even before any magic has happened.\nThe second thing that impressed me was how Novik makes the village usurer into sympathetic character who we root for even as she sticks it to the rest of the village and demands her pound of flesh. This is where Novik begins to build on the traditional fairy/folk tale world by introducing and focusing on a character that most fairy/folk tales avoided. We think of usury as the charging of an unconscionable rate of interest, like a loan shark, but fairy/folk tales come from a time where Christians considered the loaning of money for interest to be a sin in and of itself, no matter what the rate of interest. It was the sin of usury. Which didn't mean that good Christians didn't agree to take loans in return for interest; they did. But they left the sin of making those loans to Jews, since the Jews were damned anyway so what difference did it make if they added usury to their sins?\nBecause Jews and usury were such a distasteful topic, the Christian fairy tale tradition left them out, much like the standard American myth of the cowboy ignores the fact that many of the cowboys were black. But Novik has brought Miryem and her usury back and put them front and center. And all she had to do to make Miryem sympathetic was to show the world from Miryem's point of view. We sympathize with hardship and people being treated unjustly. Novik turns the usual trope of the usurer on its head by showing Miryem and her family suffering hardship and being treated unjustly, and before you know it you're rooting for the usurer. Again, nice work.\nNovik uses multiple points of view in Spinning Silver. I know that this is a very familiar technique but I've never used it, not yet anyway, so I paid attention here. I'm marking myself as a noob writer here, I know, but Novik helped me understand how multiple pov lets you write in first person while also communicating information that a single pov, first-person narrator wouldn't know. The great advantage of an omniscient, third person narrator is that they know everything and can therefore tell everything. First-person narrators often don't know everything that's going on. But someone knows it and the multiple pov approach lets those someones tell what they know. I'll have to try it at some point.\nWhere I think Novik does stumble is over the problem of magic. Magic abounds in the latter part of the book and is a critical component of the plot. The hard part of writing about magic (or scifi technology) is to keep the rules controlling the magic straight. To my reading, Novik fails to do this, somewhat spectacularly. It didn't ruin the book for me because by that time I was so invested in the characters that I just want my damned, fairy tale ending and I didn't care that much about how Novik got me there. But, unfortunately, she got me there by having magic work in ways at the end of the book that violate the rules of magic that she established earlier in the book. Oh well. It's a flaw in the book but if I work hard and am very lucky then someday maybe I can write a story as flawed, but as good, as Spinning Silver.\nLick Observatory\nMendlesohn on Heinlein\nJohn-Robert\nJohn-Robert Fay lives in Santa Cruz, California. He was educated at the University of Washington, the University of California, and San Jose State University. He has worked as a janitor, apartment house manager, library assistant, mental hospital orderly, cooperative grocery clerk, professional strike picketer, advertising salesman, newspaper production manager, publishing project manager, and university economics lecturer. But now he just sits around cafes and makes stuff up.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1283143"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9605578184127808,"wiki_prob":0.9605578184127808,"text":"Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Fulfilling Our Nation's Promise\nSearch DPAA: Search\nOur Missing\nPast Conflicts\nRecently Accounted For\nService Personnel Not Recovered Following WWII\nKorean War POW/MIA List\nVietnam War POW/MIA List\nIraq & Other Conflicts\nSearchable List of the Missing\nSearchable Map of the Missing\nRecent News & Stories\nVision-Mission-Values\nPublicly Released Documents\nFamily/VSO Update Notes\nUSRJC\nReport a Site\nDonate to the Mission\nSoldier Missing From Korean War Accounted For (Buckley)\nRelease No: 16-019 April 7, 2016\nThe Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from the Korean War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.\nArmy Cpl. Dennis D. Buckley, 24, of Detroit, will be buried April 14 in Rittman, Ohio. On Feb. 5, 1951, Buckley was assigned to A Battery, 15th Field Artillery Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, which was supporting the South Korean Army attacks against units of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces (CPVF) in the area known as the Central Corridor in South Korea. The CPVF launched a counterattack, overwhelming neighboring units and leaving the 15th Field Artillery Battalion behind enemy lines. As the unit conducted a fighting withdrawal south toward Wonju, Buckley went missing near Hoengsong and was reported missing on February 13.\nBuckley’s remains were not located after the CPVF units withdrew north in March 1951, nor by the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service during organized searches in 1953. Additionally, his name never appeared on any list of Americans who were in custody of the North Koreans or the CPVF.\nHowever, a repatriated American prisoner of war provided information that Buckley was captured by the CPVF and died in their custody at the Suan POW camp. Based on this information, the U.S. Army declared Buckley dead on June 30, 1951.\nBetween 1990 and 1994, North Korea returned to the United States 208 boxes of commingled human remains, which when combined with remains recovered during joint recovery operations in North Korea, account for the remains of at least 600 U.S. servicemen who fought during the war. North Korean documents included in the repatriation indicated that some of the remains were recovered from the area where Buckley was believed to have died.\nTo identify Buckley’s remains, scientists from DPAA and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used dental comparison analysis, which matched his records; mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome Short Tandem Repeat DNA analysis, which matched a brother and a sister; anthropological analysis; as well as circumstantial evidence.\nToday, 7,819 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Korean War. Using advances in technology, identifications continue to be made from remains that were previously turned over by North Korean officials or recovered by American teams.\nFor additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil or call (703) 699-1420.\nMilitary/DoD Websites\nDoD Inspector General","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line739208"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5921792387962341,"wiki_prob":0.5921792387962341,"text":"River Views - - Published in the Anderson Valley Advertiser April 9, 2014\nLast week, in the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission case, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the narrow (5-4) majority that \"Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so, too, does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects.\" Roberts went on to say, \"The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.\"\nThis type of manipulative thinking has become the prevailing standard among arch conservatives (We are not talking the basic Reagan conservatives of thirty-five to forty years ago who merely wanted to strip away all social services, we're talking about diabolically arch conservatives who want to crush all of the civil rights of Americans below the level of the super rich and powerful.). Roberts and fellow evil ones Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and the minutely less arch Anthony Kennedy (no relation whatsoever to Joe, Jack, Bobby or Teddy) would have us, the masses, believe that Sheldon Adelson spending $92 million on the 2012 election had no more corrupt impact on the process of campaigning than the waitress in Pahrump, Nevada who scraped together ten dollars in tip money to donate to her third cousin's campaign for state senate.\nAs for the argument about newspapers endorsing multiple measures and candidates. Yes, that is protected under the freedom of the press clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but Chief Justice Roberts words are specious at best. He ignores the fact that gigantic corporations and the filthy rich have in the past decade or two brought undo influence on Congress and regulatory institutions in order to allow those very same mega corporations and filthy rich to gobble up newspapers as well as radio and television stations so that today's \"mainstream\" media outlets are controlled by only a handful of corporate giants and mega-rich individuals.\nIt is odd that the same big money media that loves to celebrate the most mundane of Kardashian and Kanye anniversaries, granted very little air time or news space last year to the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 17th Amendment provides for the direct election, by the voters, of U.S. Senators. Prior to 1913, U.S. Senators were selected by members of each state's legislature. In the decades following the Civil War, particularly in the Gilded Age from 1880 on, when the incredibly wealthy often bought their way into the U.S. Senate through undue influence (think: Senator Leland Stanford of California), calls for reform grew until direct election of U.S. Senators became a basic plank in the campaigns of every Populist and Progressive candidate of the 1890s and early 1900s.\nThe poster child for turn of the twetieth century big money influence in state legislature selection of U.S. Senators was William A. Clark of Montana. W.A. Clark started out as a self-made hardworking man who drove mule trains loaded with goods as simple as eggs between Salt Lake City and the mining boomtowns of Montana. With his profits he moved on to banking, where he repossessed several indebted mining properties. Employing innovations like electric power he turned many of his mines into hugely profitable enterprises. In turn he bought up more mines, railroads, and newspaers. By the time Montana gained statehood he was known as one of the \"Copper Kings\" of Montana. Even in 1890s or early 20th Century value, Clark's wealth was measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps approaching a billion dollars, a figure that would be equal to hundreds of billions today.\nIn 1899 Clark handed out so much cash to Montana legislators in an effort to be named U.S. Senator that even the U.S. Senate took notice and voted to deny him a seat. Clark is reported to have said of this, \"I never bought a man who wasn't for sale.\" Still apt words to describe many of our state and national politicians in the 21st Century.\nWilliam Andrews Clark's daughter, Huguette Clark is the major subject of a new book entitled, Empty Mansions. Huguette was born in 1906 and died in New York in 2011. Empty Mansions refers to the fact that Ms. Clark possessed a number of \"homes\" worth tens of millions of dollars apiece, most of these remained completely vacant for decades. A Connecticut palace remained unused except for a caretaker's labors from 1951 on into the 21st Century (expensive automobiles parked in the garage still had their 1949 license stickers in place).\nHuguette Clark's possessions included a vacant house overlooking Santa Barbara, valued at $85 million, the New York home her father had built (more than one hundred rooms, unused for the last twenty years), and at least two Renoir paintings (value: tens of millions of dollars each) that have not been seen since Clark bought the art works in 1930.\nThe Santa Barbara mansion is supposedly going to be turned into some kind of art gallery or museum. I'm all for art, but how about kicking a few million of the Clark bazillions back to the general populace, if not directly to homeless shelters or food banks for the ever growing numbers of American poor.\nThe McCutcheon ruling, like the Citizens United case before, further protects the political influence of super rich individuals like the Clarks while the same Supreme Court majority of evil has also chipped away at the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to protect the rights of the elderly, the poor, and persons of color.\nThe super rich generally put the power of their purses behind repressive candidates and legislation, which usually equals heavy donations to Republican candidates. However, one of the wealthiest people in the world, Alice Walton, a major shareholder in Walmart, has been a long time Hillary Clinton supporter. Alice Walton's most recent mega-giveaway: Raising the minimum wage of Walmart workers?\nNo way, Jose! She spent over a billion dollars to build an oversized art gallery in Bentonville, Arkansas, presumably instantly turning it into the Paris of the Ozarks.\nSomewhere names are being taken down by the ghosts of Ida Tarbell, Studs Terkel, and the Dust Bowl dispossessed. Names are being taken down and woe be unto Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, the Koch brothers and their ilk when those who have been duped by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News race bait and switch finally wake up and turn a bright light on the super rich and powerful. Let's hope it is sooner than later that we can tell the greedy, real-life Walton family, \"Good night.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line7983"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.77815842628479,"wiki_prob":0.77815842628479,"text":"ARTS IN ACTION: Washington Concert Opera reviving Richard Strauss rarity GUNTRAM\nJunge Genius: Richard Strauss at the time of the 1894 première of his first opera Guntram, scheduled for performance by Washington Concert Opera on 1 March 2015\nThose who attended the 1894 Weimar première of Richard Strauss’s first opera, Guntram, likely surmised that they were hearing the work of a talented disciple of Richard Wagner but might never have suspected that they were witnessing the artistic birth of, as he introduced himself to the American liberators of his beloved Garmisch in 1945, der Komponist von Rosenkavalier—the composer of Der Rosenkavalier. With his first great tone poem, Tod und Verklärung, behind him, the young Strauss’s development as a composer was at a crossroads at the time of his work on Guntram. Having discarded the ethics of Schopenhauer in favor of the philosophical grandiloquence of Nietzsche, the not-yet-thirty-year-old Strauss infused his score for Guntram with thematic ideas that would recur four years later in the monumental tone poem Ein Heldenleben. Despite the near-disastrous reception that the opera received in 1894, the composer’s lingering affection for his freshman effort for the stage was confirmed by his return to Guntram in 1940, when he substantially revised and shortened the score. The lingering suspicion of the score among Twenty-First-Century musicians and audiences was revealed by its inexplicable absence from celebrations of the sesquicentennial of Strauss’s birth in 2014: among countless productions of the familiar operas, the seldom-performed Feuersnot and Intermezzo received performances and recordings, but Guntram continued to hide in the shadows cast by his Straussian siblings, represented by only three concert performances at Dresden’s Semperoper. That omission will be rectified in part on 1 March 2015, when Washington Concert Opera will present a concert performance of Guntram in Lisner Auditorium on the campus of The George Washington University. Fielding a superb cast of singers lauded for combining vocal power with tonal beauty under the experienced baton of the company’s Artistic Director Antony Walker, Washington Concert Opera again offers District-area audiences an opportunity to make the acquaintance of a neglected score and, in this case, gives attentive ears the chance to listen for the seeds that ultimately flowered in Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Die Frau ohne Schatten.\nThe Man with the Plan: Sydney-born conductor Antony Walker, Artistic Director of Washington Concert Opera, will lead the company's performance of Richard Strauss's Guntram on 1 March 2015 [Photo by Bridget Elliot, © by Pinchgut Opera]\nWashington Concert Opera’s performance will utilize Strauss’s 1940 edition of the score, which also served as the basis for the opera’s only other known performance in the United States, a 1983 concert performance in Carnegie Hall by the Opera Orchestra of New York featuring German tenor Reiner Goldberg in the title rôle and Hungarian soprano Ilona Tokody, with whom OONY’s Music Director Eve Queler also made a studio recording of Guntram for Sony/CBS Masterworks. While preferring Strauss’s later, tightened version of the score, Maestro Walker is sensitive to the demands that Guntram makes on conductor, cast, orchestra, and audience. ‘One of the biggest challenges in conducting Guntram is that although it is very Wagnerian in language in many passages, Strauss’s use of the orchestra to accompany the singers is less transparent and heavier than Wagner's writing,’ he says. ‘I will have to be very careful with balancing the orchestra with the singers. Fortunately, in concert the singers are in front of the orchestra, and in Lisner the orchestra is seated behind the proscenium. The combination of both these facts makes the balance between singers and orchestra a little easier!’\nLikewise, Maestro Walker is attentive not only to the significance of Guntram in Strauss’s artistic evolution but to the opera’s place in the transition of large-scaled musical forms from the lush tonalism of the Nineteenth Century to the more sinewy idioms of the Twentieth Century. ‘Guntram is an intensely lyrical work, with sweeping vocal lines and beautiful orchestral textures,’ the conductor muses. ‘I hope our audience falls in love Strauss's luscious and luxurious vocal and orchestral lines: a language that is the fullest expression of late 19th Century Romanticism and on the cusp of the modernism of the early 20th Century. As one experiences Guntram,’ he suggests, ‘one can listen for Wagnerian influences, echoes of Strauss's early tone poems Macbeth, Don Juan and Death and Transfiguration, as well as [reminding] oneself that this work was [introduced] in 1894, the same year as Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faun, Massenet's Thaïs, Mahler's 2nd Symphony, and a year after Verdi's Falstaff, Humperdinck's Hänsel and Gretel, and Puccini's Manon Lescaut—a fascinating period of transition in Classical Music!’\nAs is typical of Washington Concert Opera performances, the company’s Guntram will benefit from the participation of a cast of singers ideally-chosen for their parts: Kansas-born tenor Robert Dean Smith in the title rôle, soprano Marjorie Owens—a recent Metropolitan Opera débutante—as Freihild, acclaimed Wagnerian baritone Tom Fox as Der alte Herzog, Annapolis native baritone Zachary Nelson as Herzog Robert, and Chinese bass Wei Wu as Friedhold.\nHeil, Minnesinger: Tenor Robert Dean Smith, who will sing the title rôle in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Richard Strauss’s Guntram on 1 March 2015 [Photo by Todd Smith, © by Robert Dean Smith]\nOne of America’s most celebrated singers of the punishing Wagner and Strauss repertories for tenor, Robert Dean Smith recently garnered praise for his singing of another of opera’s most daunting tenor parts, the title rôle in Verdi’s Otello, in a performance recorded by NAXOS [reviewed here]. In contemplating his preparations to sing Guntram, Mr. Smith is quick to dismiss the notion suggested by tenors of the past that singing Verdi’s Otello is, in vocal terms, a game-changer. ‘In no way does singing Otello alter my \"approach\" to Guntram—or any other rôle, for that matter,’ he says. ‘It does give me another unique experience that affects ALL of the rôles I sing. Every rôle has specific vocal demands necessitating the application of a correct singing technique so that Verdi will sound like Verdi, Wagner like Wagner, and so on. With each new rôle, with each performance, and also with each rehearsal, I have a mindset for wanting to develop artistically and vocally, improving the ability for expression and communication of the music.’ This mindset is especially crucial in approaching Strauss’s Guntram, he feels, owing to the character’s innate musicality, a quality that surely inspired the composer, perhaps even in a covertly autobiographical sense. ‘Guntram is a singer, like Tannhäuser and, to some extent, Walther in Meistersinger,’ Mr. Smith states. ‘I always find it a pleasant challenge to \"sing\" as a character on stage. Guntram is one of the good guys, although he does kill, albeit in self-defense. His love of nature, his generosity, and sense of duty are the positive qualities I would like to bring out as much as possible.’\nDer kluge Staatsmann: Baritone Tom Fox, Der alte Herzog in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Richard Strauss’s Guntram on 1 March 2015 [Photo by Alex John Beck, © by CAMI]\nLike Mr. Smith, Tom Fox chooses to focus primarily not on the musical pedigree of his rôle in Guntram, Der alte Herzog, but on the character’s dramatic specificity. ‘Well, certainly [he] is not patterned after Alberich [a rôle in which Mr. Fox has excelled at the Metropolitan Opera, both in Siegfried and in Götterdämmerung] or Klingsor, [but there] could be a tad of Telramund in there,’ he confides, ‘but those are all Wagner Böse rôles. I feel [that] Strauss was nearing King Marke in Tristan with the alte Herzog. The rôle of Robert seems more along the same type as Alberich, but Strauss was too young when he composed this piece to grasp the psychology of Wagner’s tremendous vocal writing for those rôles. Certainly—for me, at least—Strauss later followed his own path in his vocal writing, acknowledging the influence of Wagner along the way.’ Mr. Fox, whose Vodník in North Carolina Opera’s semi-staged performance of Dvořák’s Rusalka [reviewed here] was a marvel of intelligent, understated characterization, is keenly aware of the inconsistencies in Strauss’s depiction of the alte Herzog and the resulting difficulties in making the character one with whom an audience can sympathize. ‘Actually finding and settling on an interpretation [means] not giving too much weight to the lack of dramaturgy in Strauss’s libretto,’ he remarks. ‘I don’t find any sympathy for Robert in the story, so why is the alte Herzog so embittered at the death of an abusive son-in-law?’ Thinking further about his insightful understanding of the rôle, Mr. Fox adds, ‘That being said, I let Strauss’s composition guide me. His orchestration in the Funeral Aria exhibits tremendous pathos for the old man and his falling-apart empire—hence “become the old man suffering loss and equating everything with his supposed glorious past.” This helps motivate the rage that I feel the part demands at the end. The beginning of the rôle shows the Herzog’s love for his daughter and his acceptance of the Minnesinger Guntram.’\nRôle fit for a bride: Soprano Marjorie Owens, Freihild in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Richard Strauss’s Guntram on 1 March 2015 [Photo by Devon Cass, © by CAMI]\nThe rôle of Freihild was originated by soprano Pauline de Ahna, who four months after the first performance of Guntram became Frau Strauss. Washington Concert Opera’s performance will feature one of the very few sopranos in the world with experience in Strauss’s first opera. Having sung Freihild in the three Dresden performances in 2014, Marjorie Owens comes to Washington after having rung in 2015 with her Metropolitan Opera début as Verdi’s Aida [in which role she alternated, incidentally, with another Washington Concert Opera alumna, Tamara Wilson]. She was, in fact, the Strauss soprano par excellence at the Semperoper in 2014, her celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth having encompassed, in addition to Freihild in Guntram, performances of the title rôles in Ariadne auf Naxos, which she also sang with great distinction in Fort Worth in 2013, and Daphne. Another great Straussian, Dame Gwyneth Jones, paid homage to Pauline de Ahna in a performance piece entitled Die Frau im Schatten (The Woman in the Shadow), noting that the soprano’s influence over her husband was more heard than seen by the public. Her influence was extraordinary, however, and the quality of Strauss’s music for Freihild is indicative of the power that the soprano exerted over the composer. Mr. Smith likened Strauss’s characterization of Guntram to Wagner’s portrayal of the title character in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, and comparisons between Elisabeth in the same opera and Elsa in Lohengrin with Strauss’s Freihild are similarly apt. Elisabeth is another part in which Ms. Owens has excelled in Dresden, solidifying her qualification to sing Freihild with unimpeachable musical and dramatic authority.\nIt seems that virtually every important German-speaking composer of opera has to his credit at least one score that languishes in obscurity. Even amidst the increased scrutiny of the Baroque revival of recent decades, infrequently-performed Händel operas are numerous. Beyond Salzburg, how many audiences have heard Mozart’s Apollo et Hyacinthus, Ascanio in Alba, or La finta semplice? Having only one player in the game spares Beethoven from neglect in the world’s opera houses, but Wagner’s legacy seldom extends to modern performances of Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi. Perhaps even more than any of these scores, Richard Strauss’s Guntram has much to offer the Twenty-First-Century listener. Maestro Antony Walker and Washington Concert Opera have repeatedly proved wonderfully adept at conveying the singular passion and pageantry of opera on the concert stage. Their Guntram is poised to establish our nation’s capital anew as one of the world’s foremost operatic capitals.\nTo learn more about Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Guntram, please visit the company’s website. Click here or phone 202.364.5826 to purchase tickets.\nSincerest thanks to the artists for their time and frankness in responding to questions for this article. Special thanks, too, to Kendra Rubinfeld of Kendra Rubinfeld PR for her assistance in facilitating the artists’ responses.\nPERFORMANCE REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi – LA TRAVIATA (...\nSINGER SPOTLIGHT: Soprano MARJORIE OWENS expands h...\nCD REVIEW: Chamber Music by Ferdinand Ries (NAXOS ...\nCD REVIEW: Giuseppe Verdi – LA FORZA DEL DESTINO (...\nARTS IN ACTION: Washington Concert Opera reviving ...\nCD REVIEW: Johann Sebastian Bach – FRENCH SUITES, ...\nARTS IN ACTION: Sublime soprano JOYCE EL-KHOURY si...\nCD REVIEW: HÉROÏQUE – French Opera Arias (Bryan Hy...\nCD REVIEW: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – COSÌ FAN TUTT...\nPERFORMANCE REVIEW: Paul Hindemith – WHEN LILACS L...\nARTS IN ACTION: San Francisco-based ARS MINERVA re...\nPERFORMANCE REVIEW: Giacomo Puccini – TURANDOT (O....","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1165293"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6737669110298157,"wiki_prob":0.3262330889701843,"text":"Shareholders&#8217; Annual General Meeting\n“A policy for improving competitiveness – by strengthening productivity, improving the business environment and enhancing investments – is a sine qua non condition for ensuring a high growth rate for the future with the view to achieving real economic convergence, reducing unemployment and raising citizens’ standard of living” said Eurobank EFG CEO, Nicholas Nanopoulos, in his address to the Shareholders’ Annual General Meeting on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007. Mr. Nanopoulos added that: “Improving the competitiveness of the Greek economy is a one-way street both for ensuring the necessary high growth rates in the future and reducing at a sustainable level our country’s dependence on a steady inflow of foreign capital. This necessity makes it a strategic priority to introduce broad structural changes in the economy focusing on a new operational model. This model relies on private entrepreneurship and corresponding rationalization of the state’s role. The private sector has already proven its ability to bring to the economy the necessary flexibility, openness, innovation and competitive profile. Another essential condition is modernizing the state’s functions by increasing transparency and reducing bureaucracy. In addition, the state can also assume a new role in support of private entrepreneurship that is expanding dynamically beyond national borders with a vision. The benefits for Greece are obvious: our country is becoming an economic pole with a strong presence and influence in a large geographical area and this represents a strategic priority and a historic challenge.”\nEurobank EFG CEO then went on to say that: “At the same time, structural changes will have to expand and intensify, including the use of new investment tools, such as PPPs, as well as the deregulation of closed markets and professions and liberalization of the labour market. Reforms are also needed in Education, with the view to building a modern, productive and high added value economy”. Mr. Nanopoulos described expectations for the current year as positive, given the fact that significant progress has been made in budgetary adjustment as reflected in the deficit’s drop below 3%, which means that the economy can be expected to exit the regime of fiscal supervision. He added that in the local market, prospects remain positive as there are is still ample room for the increase of banking operations in all sectors. At the end of 2006, household lending as a percentage of GDP was 41%, well below the eurozone average of 54%. On the other hand, the ratio of NPLs in Greece was 6% in September2006, significantly higher than the corresponding eurozone average of about 3%. This issue should be tackled through concerted action by both the banking sector and supervising authorities because NPLs raise the cost of money for borrowers”.\nThe Bank’s Chairman, Xenophon Nikitas, referring to the progress of the economy stressed that “further efforts are needed to shorten the competitiveness gap from our other European partners and drastically reduce the current account deficit that has been plaguing us for a long time and will unfortunately continue to do so in the coming years”. Speaking about Eurobank EFG progress in recent years he stressed inter alia that “since the beginning of the last decade, Eurobank EFG after a series of successful mergers and acquisitions associated with fast operational growth was able to create the terms and conditions for a strong position in the domestic market. We laid the difficult wager of consolidating six banks based on a new vision and the most up to date organization and operation standards. We have thus created a large banking group, with a strong and healthy capital base, a modern profile and innovative services and products. Eurobank EFG has not only brought a revolution in the retail banking sector but also a people-centered approach to its customer relations. Of course all this did not happen automatically or by chance. It is the result of a totally successful and carefully planned policy that is growing pace by pace, year by year, a strategy that has ensured for the Eurobank EFG Group a very strong presence in Greece at the end of 2006 and a significant presence in New Europe. At the end of 2006, the Group had 1,300 branches and points of sale in Greece and abroad and around 19,000 employees. Our strategy, combined with our comprehensive product range, high quality of service, qualified and dedicated staff has allowed the Bank to achieve financial results in 2006 which exceeded the Management Targets” In his concluding remarks, Mr. Nikitas emphasized the staff’s contribution to the attainment of goals that are “neither unrealistic nor overoptimistic, which is why we overshoot them despite the fact that we set the bar higher each time”.\nReferring to the Bank’s progress in the last decade, CEO N. Nanopoulos said that: “Despite the relatively large number of acquisitions, our growth in the last ten years is mostly organic and is the result of the faster increase of ourvolumes compared to market rates. Our loans, in the last decade, expanded per annum on average by 48%, without including acquisitions. During that same period, client funds under management have risen by an annual average growth rate of 28%. This data testifies, in the best possible way, to the dynamism of our Organization which is, however, also linked to a high level of quality and return for our shareholders”.\nSummarizing the performance of the last five years Mr. Nanopoulos stressed:\n· The significant improvement in the Bank’s efficiency with the cost to income ratio dropping from 58.1 to 49.7% in Greece, one of the best in Europe.\n· The improvement of loan portfolio quality with the NPLs ratio falling to 2.9 from 3.8% and\n· An increase of net profit CAGR by 37% and ROE in excess of 25% in 2006 for Greece.\nThe expansion of Eurobank EFG activity in New Europe started at the end of the last decade from Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. In these first wave countries, where the Group’s presence was already quite strong, the goal is to become, on a long-term basis, among the 3-4 leading banks in the financial sector. More recently, the Group extended its activities to Poland, Turkey and the Ukraine where prospects are highly promising.\nIn these large markets the Group can achieve satisfactory profitability rates even if it remains among the 10-12 largest banks.\nAt the end of 2006, the Group had about 800 branches, points of sale and business centers outside Greece. The objective is for these to exceed 1,400 at the end of 2009.\nMoreover, in Greece and abroad, the Eurobank EFG Group employs about 19,000 people.\nThe business expansion outside Greece was particularly strong in 2006, with loan balances more than doubling. Net loan additions outside Greece reached 2 billion euros, with net loan additions in the last quarter of 2006 being almost five times higher compared to the average quarter of 2005.\nAccording to Mr. Nanopoulos, “we have now reached a critical turning point that marks our Group’s transition to a new era, since following our development in Greece, we have created a new growth and profitability platform in New Europe countries. Thus we have built the best possible prospects for the future with the view to achieving steadily rising profitability levels and value creation for our shareholders. We estimate that until 2009, our operations in New Europe will be contributing at least 30% to the Group’s total revenues and 20% to net profit.”\nConcluding, Mr. Nanopoulos presented Management’s new goals for the 3-year period 2007-2009, which clearly reflect the Group’s dynamic growth and strong market position. Specifically, the Bank will be aiming at:\nProfit CAGR of at least 22%[1] in 2007-2009.\nROE of more than 25% until 2009.\nCost to Income ratio below 45% by 2009.\nIn the same context, the Group has set its objectives for New Europe. These objectives that were recently presented in London and Athens are as follows:\nNet profits in excess of € 60 million in 2007 and above € 260 million in 2009,\nEfficiency ratio (cost to income ratio) below 58% by 2009, and\nROE above 15% by 2009 (return on required capital including goodwill ).\nThe General Meeting approved the distribution of a total dividend of € 0.92 per share (including an interim dividend of € 0.36%) 23% higher than last year’s. The total dividend corresponds to a dividend yield of 3.7% on average share price in 2006. The Bank’s Management objective is a dividend policy that responds to shareholders expectations and trust. It is worth noting that in the five-year period 2002-2006, dividend CAGR was 24%.\nAs from Thursday 5 April 2007 the share will trade ex-dividend on the Athens Stock Exchange, while payment of dividends will start on April 16th, 2007. The General Meeting also approved the distribution of 2 new shares for 10 old shares. It is expected that new shares will start trading on the ASE around mid-May.\nThe General Meeting was attended by the Governor of the Bank of Greece, Nikolaos Garganas, the President of the Hellenic Bank Association and Chairman of the National Bank, Takis Arapoglou, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Greece Nikolaos Paleokrassas and members of the economic, business and social community.\n[1] On 2006 net profits of € 644.5 billion.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line652280"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9127886295318604,"wiki_prob":0.9127886295318604,"text":"Fernando Bujones Biography, Life, Interesting Facts\nMiami, Florida, United States Of America\nFernando Bujones was an American dancer credited as one of the best in the 20th century as well as his generation.\nPersonal Relations\nFernando Bujones married two women in the course of his life. His first marriage was to MárciaKubitschek in 1980. Kubitschek was the daughter of the former Brazilian president, JuscelinoKubitschek de Oliveira. Their union brought forth a daughter named Alejandra. He married for a second time to Maria Arnillas, also a dancer who was a native of Peru.\nPersonal Background and Origins\nBorn Miami, Florida on March 9, 1955, as Fernando Bujones Jr., he was the son of Mary Calleriro and Fernando Bujones Sr. Both of his parents were Cuban, and at the time of his birth, his mother happens to visit Florida. Shortly after he was born, they went back to Cuba, where he grew up. His parents separated when he was 5, and his mother enrolled him at a local dance school a year later when he was six years old.\nHe started receiving formal ballet classes under the tutelage of Alicia Alonso for a year and a half at the Cuban National Ballet. In 1964, Bujones, along with his mother, finally settled in Miami after moving back and forth between Havana and Miami.\nA Principal Dancer in the Making\nAfter settling in on Miami, Fernando Bujones managed to win a scholarship in 1967 to the official and prestigious New York City Ballet’s School of American Ballet. At the company, he learned from renowned ballet instructors such as André Eglevsky and Stanley Williams, while also being assisted by his cousin and personal coach, Zeida Cecilia Mendez.\nFernando Bujones made his debut performance in 1970 with the Eglevsky Ballet, and during 1972, he was also admitted at the American Ballet Theatre. A year later in 1973 he became a soloist successfully followed by being named as a principal dancer at the age of 19. This feat made him the youngest principal dancer in the history of the American Ballet Theatre.\nHis hard work and passion paid off when not only was he chosen as a representative but also bagged the Gold Medal at the International Ballet Competition held in Varna, Bulgaria in 1974. Aside from that, he was also awarded a special medal for attaining the highest technical achievement due to his performance.\nA Clash of Power: Bujones and Baryshnikov\nWith achievement coming in one after the other in his life, Fernando Bujones was soon met with discourse. At the height of his activities, another renowned dance from the Soviet Union defected which shifted the world’s attention towards him. To make matters worse, Baryshnikov also joined the American Ballet Theatre, which heightened the tension between the two and overshadowing Bujones.\nBujones stayed at the ABT until 1985 then left the company after refusing to stand in as a substitute for Baryshnikov. As a result, he had more time on his hands and collaborated with other countries’ dance troupes as a guest artist for 33 countries amounting to 60 ballet troupes.\nHe only returned at ABT when Baryshnikov resigned in 1989, and worked for them as a permanent guest artist until 1995.\nMiscellaneous Activities and Death\nBesides being a renowned dancer, Fernando Bujones also served as an artistic director to several dance companies such as the Ballet Mississippi in 1993 until it folded and the Orlando Ballet. He also collaborated on an international level with other ballet troupes located in Spain, Mexico, and Brazil.\nHe was diagnosed with lung cancer before his death, but Bujones died on November 10, 2005, at the age of 50 from suffering complications of metastatic melanoma. Before his death, he managed to finish his autobiography entitled Fernando Bujones: An Autobiography which was published four years later in 2009 after his death by his cousin and private coach Zeida Mendez.\nMarch 9 Horoscope\nMore Ballet Dancer\nVaslav Nijinsky\nMaria Tallchief\nJose Limon\nMore People From Florida\nAugusta Savage\nitsbambii\nSandra Cisneros\nMore Pisces People\nJafar Jabbarly\nDon Brinkley\nRoger B. Taney\nMore Chinese Goat People\nCheryl Crane","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line620171"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5391383767127991,"wiki_prob":0.4608616232872009,"text":"Photos of Activities\nDepartment of Chemistry is one of the prestigious departments of Assumption College Autonomous, affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University. The glorious journey of this department began in the year 1957. The department celebrated its Diamond Jubilee in 2017.\nSo far 22 dedicated teachers served the department. Presently the department has six permanent faculty and three guest faculty. The faculty of the department has so far more than 25 international publications which has high impact factor and citation index. They have presented papers in the international and national conferences which supplement their research knowledge. The faculty of the department has been the Principal investigator for more than 10 SPYTiS (Scheme for Promoting Young Talents in Science) student projects of KSCSTE.\nThe department cherish a history of good academic performance consistently. The students of the department bagged four of the first ten ranks including the first rank in the MG University CBCSS Degree Examination March 2018. In order to nurture the research aptitude and global competency of the students, the department consider it as a responsibility to ensure that her students get enrolled in prestigious summer research fellowships in, National institutes like IISc, IISER, JNCASR etc. Besides, interested students are motivated, encouraged and assisted to clear National level tests to get themselves placed in National institutes for higher studies.\nThe alumnae of the department have excelled in various walks of life. They include IAS officer, College principals, Scientists, University and College Professors and Govt. Employees. More than 100 alumnae participated in the alumni meet ‘ormacheppu’ organised by the department on 20th January 2018 in connection with the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. They contributed generously towards the institution of Diamond Jubilee memorial All Kerala Intercollegiate Quiz Competition. With support from alumni and teachers, Rs. 1, 00,000 was raised to conduct the event.\nIn addition to inter departmental and intra departmental competitions, the department conducts SPARK-All Kerala Intercollegiate Paper Presentation competition every year. Diamond Jubilee Memorial All Kerala Intercollegiate Quiz Competition will be conducted from next academic year onwards. The department also conducts value added programmes like alumni lecture, expert lecture etc.\n///////","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line833098"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6065094470977783,"wiki_prob":0.6065094470977783,"text":"The Prophet (#04 in Sons Of Encouragement Series)\nby Francine Rivers\nPaperback|Aug 2006\nProduct Rating: 5(1)\nSons Of Encouragement\nBehind the men who shaped history are the heroes who forever changed it. In THE PROPHET, the fourth book in the Sons of Encouragement series, beloved author Francine Rivers illuminates the life of Amos. Francine examines the life of Amos...\nHardback - $24.99\neBook - $7.63\nUnavailable. Out of Print. Only available while stock lasts.\nThe Priest (#01 in Sons Of Encouragement Series)\nThe Scribe (#05 in Sons Of Encouragement Series)\nThe Warrior (#02 in Sons Of Encouragement Series)\nThe Prince (#03 in Sons Of Encouragement Series)\nA Lineage of Grace (Special Edition)\nUnspoken (Bathsheba) (#04 in Lineage Of Grace Series)\nBehind the men who shaped history are the heroes who forever changed it. In THE PROPHET, the fourth book in the Sons of Encouragement series, beloved author Francine Rivers illuminates the life of Amos. Francine examines the life of Amos and his relationship to Israel during its prosperous years. Amos's message - and his relationship with God - made him unpopular. But his challenge to those who were enjoying the blessings of prosperity was crucial then and is strikingly timely today as well.\nProduct Code 1414309856\nPublisher Tyndale House\nPublication Date Aug 2006\nNew York Times best-selling author Francine Rivers (born 1947) began her literary career at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and journalism. From 1976 to 1985, she had a successful writing career in the general market, and her books were highly acclaimed by readers and reviewers. Although raised in a religious home, Francine did not truly encounter Christ until later in life, when she was already a wife, a mother of three, and an established romance novelist.\nFive years after becoming a born-again Christian in 1986, Francine released Redeeming Love as her statement of faith. This retelling of the biblical story of Gomer and Hosea, set during the time of the California Gold Rush, is now considered by many to be a classic work of Christian fiction. The popularity of Redeeming Love continues unabated over a quarter of a century after its publication.\nSince Redeeming Love, Francine has published numerous novels with Christian themes - all best sellers. The Last Sin Eater, earned her the CBA Gold Medal award and has since been made into a feature film - She has continued to win both industry acclaim and reader loyalty around the globe. Her Christian novels have been awarded or nominated for numerous honours, including the RITA Award, the Christy Award, the ECPA Gold Medallion, and the Holt Medallion in Honour of Outstanding Literary Talent. In 1997, after winning her third RITA Award for inspirational fiction, Francine was inducted into the Romance Writers of America's Hall of Fame. Francine's books have been translated into over thirty languages, and she enjoys best-seller status in many countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa.\nFrancine and her husband, Rick, live in northern California and enjoy time spent with their three grown children and taking every opportunity to spoil their grandchildren. Francine uses her writing to draw closer to the Lord, and she desires that through her work she might worship and praise Jesus for all He has done and is doing in her life.\nBoxed Set (Includes Sensible Shoes, Two Steps Forward, Barefoot, and An Extra Mile) (Sensible Shoes Series)\nBarefoot: A Story of Surrendering to God (#03 in Sensible Shoes Series)\n5in1: A Lineage of Grace","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line601124"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7458058595657349,"wiki_prob":0.25419414043426514,"text":"Anna Renee\nIndie folk/electro pop artist and songwriter of many genres, based in Nashville. Anna Renee’s musical aesthetic demands attention, playfully exploring aspects often forgotten in the mainstream pop industry.\nAnna Renee began her musical journey in 2014 with the release of her first EP, The Places You’ll Go, working alongside Stevie Mackey(The Voice) and Aaron Dudley of Rock Mafia(Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus). She is currently working with numerous artists in Nashville, while exploring herself as an artist in the sync world.\n“I’m always uncovering new aspects of myself in music, and hopefully creating a space for others to delve deeper into themselves.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line787945"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6688645482063293,"wiki_prob":0.6688645482063293,"text":"Spring Warming And Carbon Dioxide Exchange Over Low Arctic Tundra In Central Canada\nSites: CA-DL1\nAuthors: Lafleur, P.M.; Humphreys, E.R.\nTundra-atmosphere exchanges of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour were measured near Daring Lake, Northwest Territories in the Canadian Low Arctic for 3 years, 2004–2006. The measurement period spanned late-winter until the end of the growing period. Mean temperatures during the measurement period varied from about 2 °C less than historical average in 2004 and 2005 to 2 °C greater in 2006. Much of the added warmth in 2006 occurred at the beginning of the study, when snow melt occurred 3 weeks earlier than in the other years. Total precipitation in 2006 (163 mm) was more than double that of the driest year, 2004 (71 mm). The tundra was a net sink for CO2 carbon in all years. Mid-summer net ecosystem exchange of CO2(NEE) achieved maximum values of −1.3 g C m−2 day−1 (2004) to −1.8 g C m−2 day−1 (2006). Accumulated NEE values over the 109-day period were −32,−51 and −61 g C m−2 in 2004, 2005 and 2006, respectively. The larger CO2 uptake in 2006 was attributed to the early spring coupled with warmer air and soil conditions. In 2004, CO2 uptake was limited by the shorter growing season and mid-summer dryness, which likely reduced ecosystem productivity. Seasonal total evapotranspiration (ET) ranged from 130 mm (2004) to 181 mm (2006) and varied in accordance with the precipitation received and with the timing of snow melt. Maximum daily ET rates ranged from 2.3 to 2.7 mm day−1, occurring in mid July. Ecosystem water use efficiency (WUEeco) varied slightly between years, ranging from 2.2 in the driest year to 2.5 in the year with intermediate rainfall amounts. In the wettest year, increased soil evaporation may have contributed to a lower WUEeco (2.3). We speculate that most, if not all, of the modest growing season CO2 sink measured at this site could be lost due to fall and winter respiration leading to the tundra being a net CO2source or CO2 neutral on an annual basis. However, this hypothesis is untested as yet.\nJournal: Global Change Biology","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line2450"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9292927980422974,"wiki_prob":0.9292927980422974,"text":"From the Examiner's No. 1 Entertainment Czar\nGot Gossip?\nCeleb Chatter\nCelebs die over Alan’s book!\nTag Archives: Lorenzo da Ponte\n2016 Gift Guide, Books, Celebrity Chatter, Holiday Gift Guide\nHoliday Gift Guide 2016: The Year’s Best Celebrity (Auto)Biographies (Part Two)\nDecember 15, 2016 alanwp\tLeave a comment\nIn Such Good Company (Crown Archetype, $28), Carol Burnett pulls back the curtain on the 25-time Emmy-Award winning show that made television history, and she reminisces about the outrageously funny and tender moments that made working on the series as much fun as watching it. Carol delves into little-known stories of the guests, sketches and improvisations that made The Carol Burnett Show legendary, as well as some favorite tales too good not to relive again. While writing this book, Carol rewatched all 276 episodes and screen-grabbed her favorite video stills from the archives to illustrate the chemistry of the actors and the improvisational magic that made the show so successful. This book is Carol’s love letter to a golden era in television history through the lens of her brilliant show. Get the best seat in the house for “eleven years of laughter, mayhem, and fun in the sandbox.”\nGrammy and Academy Award–winning songwriter Carole Bayer Sager shares the remarkably frank and darkly funny story of her life in and out of the recording studio, from her fascinating (and sometimes calamitous) relationships to her collaborations with some of the greatest composers and musical artists of our time. While her professional life was filled with success and fascinating people, her personal life was far more difficult and dramatic.\nIn They’re Playing Our Song (Simon & Schuster, $28), Sager tells the surprisingly frank and darkly humorous story of a woman whose sometimes crippling fears and devastating relationships inspired many of the songs she would ultimately write. The book will fascinate anyone interested in the craft of songwriting and the joy of collaboration, but Sager’s memoir is also a deeply personal account of how love and heartbreak made her the woman, and the writer, she is.\nSeventeen-time all-star; scorer of 81 points in a game; MVP and a shooting guard second only to Jordan in league history: Kobe Bryant is one of basketball’s absolute greatest players, a fascinating and complicated character who knew when he was a mere boy that he would be better than Jordan on the court. The debate about whether he achieved that is a furious one–but Kobe has surpassed Jordan on the all-time scoring list and has only one less championship than Jordan (5 to Jordan’s 6). He is set to retire after the 2015/16 season, just in time for Roland Lazenby’s Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant (Little, Brown and Company, $32) Provocative stories mixed with good old-fashioned basketball reporting make for a riveting and essential read for any hoops fan.\nShe inspired songs—Leon Russell wrote “A Song for You” and “Delta Lady” for her, Stephen Stills wrote “Cherokee.” She co-wrote songs—“Superstar” and the piano coda to “Layla,” uncredited. She sang backup for Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, and Stills, before finding fame as a solo artist with such hits as “We’re All Alone” and “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher.” Following her story from Lafayette, Tennessee to becoming one of the most sought after rock vocalists in LA in the ’70s, Delta Lady (Harper, $25.99) chronicles Rita Coolidge’s fascinating journey throughout the ’60s-’70s pop/rock universe. A muse to some of the twentieth century’s most influential rock musicians, she broke hearts, Delta Lady is a rich, deeply personal memoir that offers a front row seat to an iconic era, and illuminates the life of an artist whose career has helped shape modern American culture.\nCall her a woman of letters. Mary Astor detailed her marital affairs as well as the many, many, many dalliances of some of Hollywood’s biggest names. The studio heads, longtime controllers of public perception, were desperate to keep such juicy details from leaking. With the complete support of the Astor family and unlimited access to the Mary Astor estate, Joseph Egan has painted a portrait of a great film actress in her most challenging role; an unwilling but determined mother battling for her daughter regardless of the harm that her affairs and her most intimate secrets would do to her career, the careers of her friends, or even Hollywood. The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s ( Diversion Publishing, $16.99) is a look at Hollywood’s Golden Age as it has never been seen before, as Egan spins a wildly absorbing yarn about a scandal that threatened to tarnish forever the dream factory known as Hollywood.\n“Casanova” is a synonym for “great lover,” Over the course of his lifetime, he claimed to have seduced more than 100 women, among them married women, young women in convents, girls just barely in their teens, and in one notorious instance, his own illegitimate daughter. Yet the real story of this remarkable figure is little known. He was intellectually curious and read forbidden books, for which he was jailed. He staged a dramatic escape from Venice’s notorious prison, the only person known to have done so. He then fled to France, where he invented the national lottery that still exists to this day. He crisscrossed Europe, landing for a while in St. Petersburg, where he was admitted to the court of Catherine the Great. He corresponded with Voltaire and met Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, assisting them as they composed the timeless opera Don Giovanni. A figure straight out of a Henry Fielding novel: Erotic, brilliant, impulsive, and desperate for recognition, Casanova was a self-destructive genius. Casanova: The World of a Seductive Genius (Simon & Schuster, $32.50) is a witty, roisterous biography exposes his astonishing life in rich, intimate detail.\nThe curtain has gone up on the complete memoirs of playwright Neil Simon, now with a new introduction and afterword. Neil Simon’s Memoirs (Simon & Schuster, $35) combines Simon’s two memoirs, Rewrites and The Play Goes On, into one volume that spans his extraordinary five-decade career in theater, television and film. Rewrites takes Simon through his first love, his first play, and his first brush with failure. One touching section is as he describes his marriage to his beloved wife Joan, and writes lucidly about the pain of losing her to cancer. The Play Goes On adds to his life’s story, as he wins the Pulitzer Prize and reflects with humor and insight on his tumultuous life and meteoric career.\nNow, with the whole story in one place, Neil Simon’s collected memoirs trace the history of modern entertainment over the last fifty years through the eyes of a man who started life the son of a garment salesman and became the greatest—and most successful—American playwright of all time.\nClaude Monet is perhaps the world’s most beloved artist, and among all his creations, the paintings of the water lilies in his garden at Giverny are most famous. Monet intended them to provide an asylum of peaceful meditation. Yet, as Ross King reveals in Mad Enchantment (Bloomsbury, $30), his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced at the difficulties of capturing the fugitive effects of light, water and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life. The book tells the full story behind the creation of the “Water Lilies,” as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny, and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism.\nIt’s widely known that Oscar Wilde was precociously intellectual, flamboyant and hedonistic—but lesser so that he owed these characteristics to his parents. Oscar’s mother, Lady Jane Wilde, rose to prominence as a political journalist, advocating a rebellion against colonialism in 1848. She opened a salon and was known as the most scintillating hostess of her day. She passed on her infectious delight in the art of living to Oscar, who drank it in greedily. His father, Sir William Wilde, was acutely conscious of injustices of the social order. But Sir William was also a philanderer, and when he stood accused of sexually assaulting a young female patient, the scandal and trial sent shockwaves through Dublin society. As for Oscar, the one role that didn’t suit him was that of Victorian husband, as his wife, Constance, was to discover. In a major repositioning of our first modern celebrity, The Fall of the House of Wilde (Bloomsbury, $35) identifies Oscar Wilde as a member of one of the most dazzling Irish American families of Victorian times, and places him in the broader social, political, and religious context.\nHe’s best known for his wistful movie scores, with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from the Toy Story soundtrack leading the pack. He’s been nominated for 20 Academy Awards, and has twice won Oscars for Best Original Song. But Randy Newman was also a quintessentially American pop powerhouse before he turned his formidable talents to scoring films. A songwriter since the age of 17, his earliest compositions were recorded by ’60s luminaries like The Fleetwoods, Gene Pitney, Jackie DeShannon and the O’Jays. Yet very little has been written about his personal life, including his marriages and his diagnosis with Epstein-Barr virus. Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong: The Life of Randy Newman (Overlook, $28.95) is a primer for newcomers to his work and a rewarding handbook for the aficionado.\nYes, it’s her, again. Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep (Harper, $26.99) explores her beginnings as a young woman of the ’70s grappling with love, feminism and her astonishing talent. Michael Schulman brings into focus Meryl’s heady rise to stardom on the New York stage; her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with actor John Cazale; her marriage to sculptor Don Gummer; and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love, and sacrifice.Featuring eight pages of black-and-white photos, this captivating story of the making of one of the most revered artistic careers of our time reveals a gifted young woman coming into her extraordinary talents at a time of immense transformation, offering a rare glimpse into the life of the actress long before she became an icon.\nMary Martin was one of the greatest stars of her day. Growing up in Texas, she was married early to Benjamin Hagman and gave birth to her first child, Larry Hagman. She didn’t make a dent in the movie industry and was lured to New York where she found herself auditioning for Cole Porter and his new show “Leave It to Me!”. After she sang the bawdy “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, she ended up on the cover of Life magazine. Six years later, she became the Toast of Broadway. Her personal life was just as interesting: In NYC, she met and married Richard Halliday, a closeted upper-class homosexual who adored her and interior decorating. There were rumors about Martin, too, being in a lesbian relationship with both Janet Gaynor and Jean Arthur. Savor the stuff in David Kaufman’s Some Enchanted Evenings (St. Martin’s Press, $29.99)\nStill known to millions primarily as the author of The Lottery, Shirley Jackson has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Now, biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author in Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright, $35). Placing Jackson within an American Gothic tradition that stretches back to Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on “domestic horror.” Based on a wealth of previously undiscovered correspondence and dozens of new interviews, the tome―an exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaging childhood and turbulent marriage―becomes the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant.\nOn May 25, 1977, a problem-plagued, budget-straining, independent science-fiction film opened in a mere thirty-two American movie theatres. Conceived, written and directed by a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas, Star Wars reinvented the cinematic landscape, ushering in a new way for movies to be made, marketed, and merchandised. And if that wasn’t game-changing enough, Lucas went on to create another blockbuster series with “Indiana Jones,” and completely revolutionized the world of special effects, not to mention sound systems. His work and legacy have led to a rash of innovation and democratization in film and television. Brian Jay Jones does a splendid job detailing Lucas’ fame and fortune in George Lucas: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, $32).\nWhy were Americans so attracted to John F. Kennedy in the late ‘50s and early ’60s . . . was it is glamorous image, good looks, cool style, tough-minded rhetoric and sex appeal? As Steve Watts argues in JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier (Thomas Dunne Books, $29.99), JFK was tailor made for the cultural atmosphere of his time. He benefited from a crisis of manhood that had welled up in postwar America when men had become ensnared by bureaucracy, softened by suburban comfort, and emasculated by a generation of newly aggressive women. By examining Kennedy in the context of certain books, movies, social critiques, music, and cultural discussions that framed his ascendancy, Watts shows us the excitement and sense of possibility, the optimism and aspirations that accompanied the dawn of a new age in America.\nFor too long Tippi Hedren’s story has been told by others through whispered gossip and tabloid headlines. In Tippi: A Memoir (William Morrow, $28.99), she sets the record straight, recalling how a young and virtuous Lutheran girl from small-town Minnesota became a worldwide legend as one of the most famous Hitchcock girls, as an unwavering animal activist, and as the matriarch of a powerful Hollywood dynasty that includes her movie star daughter Melanie Griffith, and rising star Dakota Johnson, her granddaughter. Hedren digs deep into her complicated relationship with the man who discovered her talent, director Alfred Hitchcock, the benefactor who would become a repulsive and controlling director who contractually controlled her every move. She speaks openly about the dark pain she endured working with him on their most famous collaborations, The Birds and Marnie. Filled with 16 pages of beautiful photos, Tippi is a rare and fascinating look at a private woman s remarkable life no celebrity aficionado can miss.\nIn a career that has spanned more than 60 years, Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies (Viking, $tk) is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and how their specific emotional and dramatic chemistries affected the choices they made as actresses as well as the choices they made as women. Among Wagner’s subjects are Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, Joan Blondell, Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, Dorothy Lamour, Debra Paget, Jean Peters, Linda Darnell, Betty Hutton, Raquel Welch, Glenn Close, and the two actresses whom he ultimately married, Natalie Wood and Jill St. John. As fun and entertaining as RJ himself.\nWas it magic? In Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales (Simon & Schuster, $26), Penn Jillette tells how he lost 100 pounds with his trademark outrageous sense of humor and biting social commentary that makes this success story anything but ordinary. Topping 330 pounds and saddled with a systolic blood pressure reading over 200, he knew he was at a dangerous crossroads: If he wanted to see his small children grow up, he needed to change. And then came a former NASA scientist and an unconventional innovator, Ray Cronise, who saved Penn Jillette’s life with his wild “potato diet.” Penn describes the process in hilarious detail, as he performs his Las Vegas show, takes meetings with Hollywood executives, hangs out with his celebrity friends and fellow eccentric performers, all while remaining a dedicated husband and father. Presto is an incisive, rollicking read.\nWe have never forgiven Maggie Smith for stealing Liza Minnelli’s Oscar (look it up), but Michael Coveney’s biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades. From her days as a West End star of comedy and revue, Dame Maggie’s path would cross with those of the greatest actors, playwrights, and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes from Richard Burton, answering back to Laurence Olivier, or playing opposite Judi Dench in Breath of Life, her career can be seen as a “Who’s Who” of British theater. The book, written with the actress’ blessing and drawing on personal archives as well as interviews with immediate family and close friends, is a portrait of one of the greatest actors of our time.\nBorn a Crime: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Spiegel & Grau, $28) is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. His name is Trevor Noah. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty.\nFelix and Oscar? No way. The oddest couple was Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor. Donald Bogle skillfully recreates the moving narrative of Taylor and Jackson’s experiences together and their intense emotional connection, without shying away from the controversies that swirled around them. Through interviews with friends and acquaintances of the two stars, as well as anonymous but credible sources, Elizabeth and Michael: The Queen of Hollywood and the King of Pop―A Love Story (Atria, $26) emerges as a tender, intimate look at this famous odd couple and a treasure to their millions of fans.\nThe first book from Ruth Bader Ginsburg since becoming a Supreme Court Justice in 1993—a witty, engaging, serious, and playful collection of writings and speeches from the woman who has had a powerful and enduring influence on law, women’s rights, and popular culture. My Own Words (Simon & Schuster, $30) offers Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker.\nIn 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor and originality found in his songs. Born to Run (Simon & Schuster, $32.50) will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll.\nUnlike The Boss, Stephen Foster still has no (real, true) fame. The subtitle of a new bio, The Life and Songs of Stephen Foster: A Revealing Portrait of the Forgotten Man Behind “Swanee River,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and “My Old Kentucky Home” (9Rowman & Littlefield, $45) says it all. He died in poverty, in New York’s Bellevue Hospital, three days after falling in his Bowery bathroom and severely cutting his throat on the broken basin. His last words? “I’m done for.” A friend found his alcohol-ravaged body at the local morgue, a body whose purse contained 38 cents and a scrap of paper on which the words “dear friends and gentle hearts” were written . . . possibly the opening line to a new song.\nCerphe’s Up: A Musical Life with Bruce Springsteen, Little Feat, Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, CSNY, and Many More (Carrel Books, $34.99) is an incisive musical memoir by Cerphe Colwell, a renowned rock radio broadcaster for more than forty-five years in Washington, DC. Cerphe shares his life as a rock radio insider in rich detail and previously unpublished photographs. His story includes promotion and friendship with a young unknown Bruce Springsteen; his years at radio station WHFS 102.3 as it blossomed in a new free-form format; hanging out with George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, John Entwistle, Jackson Browne, and many more; testifying on Capitol Hill with friend Frank Zappa during the “Porn Rock” hearings; and managing the radio syndication of both G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Stern.\nIn 2015, the U.S. women’s national soccer team won its first FIFA championship in 16 years, culminating in an epic final game that electified soccer fans around the world. It also featured a gutsy, brilliant performance by team captain and midfielder Carli Lloyd, who made history that day, scoring a hat trick—three goals in one game—during the first 16 minutes. But there was a time when Carli almost quit the sport. In 2003 she was struggling, her soccer career at a crossroads. What Carli lacked were fitness, mental toughness and character. Despite all the naysayers, the times she was benched, moments when her self-confidence took a nosedive, she succeeded in becoming one of the best in the world. The candid When Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26) candid reflection on a remarkable turnaround will take readers inside the women’s national team and inside the head of an athlete who willed herself to perform at the highest levels of competition.\nTo have been alive during the last 60 years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months after Elvis Presley ignited the rock era. As the songwriting half of Simon & Garfunkel, his work helped define the youth movement of the ’60s. On his own in the ’70s, Simon made radio-dominating hits. He kicked off the ’80s by reuniting with Garfunkel to perform for half a million New Yorkers in Central Park. Five years later, Simon’s album “Graceland” sold millions and spurred an international political controversy. And it doesn’t stop there. Peter Ames Carlin’s Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon (Henry Holt, $32) is a revelatory account of the life of beloved American music icon, a story replete with tales of Carrie Fisher, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Shelley Duvall, Nelson Mandela, drugs, depression, marriage, divorce and more.\nAlfred HitchcockBenjamin HagmanBette DavisBetty HuttonBorn a Crime: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African ChildhoodBorn to RunBrian Jay JonesBruce SpringsteenCarli LloydCarol BurnettCarrel BooksCasanovaCerphe ColwellClaude MonetCrown ArchetypeDavid KaufmanDebra PagetDon GiovanniDon GummerDonald BogleDorothy LamourEdgar Allan PoeG. Gordon LiddyGeorge HarrisonGeorge LucasGivernyGlenn CloseGloria Swansonhen Nobody Was Watching: My Hard-Fought Journey to the Top of the Soccer WorldHenri MatisseHoward SternIrene DunneJackson BrowneJanet GaynorJean ArthurJean PetersJFKJill St. JohnJoan BlondellJoan CrawfordJohn CazaleJohn EntwistleJohn F. KennedyJudi DenchLady Jane WildeLarry HagmanLaurence OlivierLinda DarnellLiz TaylorLiza MinnelliLorenzo da PonteLoretta YoungMad EnchantmentMaggie SmithMarilyn MonroeMarnieMary MartinMeryl StreepMichael CoveneyMichael JacksonMozartNatalie WoodNathaniel HawthorneNeil SimonNorma ShearerOscar WildePablo PicassoPaul SimonPenn JillettePeter Ames CarlinPresto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical TalesRaquel WelchRay CroniseRichard BurtonRichard HallidayRobert WagnerRosalind RussellRoss KingRuth Bader GinsburgRuth FranklinShirley JacksonSir William WildeSpiegel & GrauStar WarsStephen FosterSteve WattsThe Daily Showthe Rolling StonesTippe HedrenTrevor NoahVan MorrisonWHFS 102.3William Morrow\nArchives Select Month January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016\nPetrucelli Picks the best in books, music and film . . . and then some\nalanwpetrucelli@gmail.com\n322 Mall Blvd.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1063287"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5726263523101807,"wiki_prob":0.42737364768981934,"text":"Segregation Law Prevents Missouri 3rd Grader From Attending Charter School Because He’s Black\nZon D'Amour\nSource: Rob Lewine / Getty\nIn 2016 a segregation law is affecting the education of a 9-year-old Missouri boy. Edmund Lee is an African-American, honors student at Gateway Science Academy, a charter school in south St. Louis.\nNext school year, his family is moving outside of the school district to the neighboring St. Louis County. Unfortunately, this move also means that Edmund will have to find a new school to attend.\nAccording to FOX 2 in St. Louis, “state law allows some county residents the opportunity to attend a city charter school, but they must live in a district participating in transfer programs, and can not be an African-American.”\nIn 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education declared the racial segregation of public schools was unequal. Unfortunately, Edmund attends a charter school and officials claim that they must adhere to the state regulations until the rules are changed.\n“When I read the guidelines I was in shock,” said La’Shieka White, Edmund’s mother. “I was crying.”\nThe school administrators have expressed their support of revising the law.\n“If this helps us start a conversation about maybe some things that could be different with the law, then that is a good thing,” said Gateway’s Assistant Principal Janet Moak.\nApparently, there are also some programs designed to benefit African Americans where Caucasians students are prevented from attending certain schools if they live out of the area. As a result, White has started a petition in hopes of having these antiquated rules dismantled.\n“I don’t want it to be just about an African-American boy,” said White. “I want it to be about all children.” Several of the school’s staff members have signed White’s petition including the boy’s 3rd grade teacher Tiffany Luis.\n“It ABSOLUTELY breaks my heart that I may not be seeing Edmund’s beautiful face in the GSA halls next year. Edmund is a WONDERFUL student and is exactly what our school stands for” said Louis on the Change.org petition which has already garnered 1,500 of the 2,500 signatures requested.\nShe added, “We would be SO LUCKY to have Edmund and his family stay here at GSA. The state really needs to reevaluate their guidelines on out of district students. You have my support!”\nPredominately White School District In Maryland Bans Class Trips To Baltimore\nHands Off Our Kids: Black Children Reportedly Beat Twice As Much As White Children In School\nSegregation Law Prevents Missouri 3rd Grader From Attending Charter School Because He’s Black was originally published on hellobeautiful.com\nEdmund Lee\t, Gateway Science Academy\t, Missouri segregation law\nAlso On WOL-AM 1450:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line82124"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5737344622612,"wiki_prob":0.5737344622612,"text":"22 INDIE STREET\nSUBMIT TRAILER\nBlue Collar Hustle\nWritten by: Alonge Hawes | Directed by: Geoffrey Henderson (S1), Jairus Burks, Alonge Hawes (S2) | Genre: Drama | Length: Varies\n\"Blue Collar Hustle\" is about finding that perfect balance of life and art - and if that fails? It's about going for the gold and chasing your dream.\nThe general season 2 & 1 review of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" can be read below this current review. The rating of 4 stars is the overall rating of the series thus far.\nAfter watching the final episode of season 2 I took some time to reflect on the season. Season 2 saw a slight departure from the music arc; replacing it with more personal character driven episodes. \"Blue Collar Hustle\" didn't shy away from domestic situations. Relationships. Sexual misconduct and even death. I had witnessed a little bit of character pasts, some faith and religion, and even met a few new potential regular characters along the way. All this before diving back into the what started this whole show. The music, the friendships and finally change.\nHawes and Burks have used the situational drama of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" to create a great dramatic story and if things continue, season 3 will be fantastic. It's all really something to take in and consider. BCH may not be the image of perfection in the production department, but has elevated the visual and audio aspects of the show considerably. The story has always been great, but now the vehicle telling it is getting better and better. The story, the characters and even the music are just fitting more snugly together. I also can't deny a certain amount of head bobbing swagger when I hear the killer tracks mixed in the show. These guys should create a playlist if not already.\nIntroduced in the last 2 episodes were some colorful characters. Harvey Harvey (Scott Piehler) and Roxzane T. Mims as Teyana. Both characters represent record execs, and I truly hope a continued place is found for them in the upcoming season. Both these characters represent success in the business, and that's a nice counter balance to the struggle of becoming successful. I also enjoyed how both characters are 2 completely different personality types.\nYou may find yourself asking how they fit in? Teyana represents The Core's potential future if things turn out good. Harvey represents the competition. It's all about decisions and living with the ones you make - and especially living with the ones that are made for you. Mirroring life once again.\nSeason 2 concludes with the big event that The Core has been planning. The show! I would have liked to see a little more of this event but understand that putting to screen something, that was supposed to be this massive, would have been hard. What was shown onscreen does work to show the success of the venture. I also liked the end scene where Ajani nods and walks out. Closing the door? It's hard to know for sure, and that's the point. The future of all the characters is different now. But that doesn't mean things can't come back together, or that each person won't still be a success. Change is good they say.\nSo this concludes a much better than expected season. One that will be tough to top plot-wise. The production can get better and better, but it's the writing that will determine the show. From what I've seen so far that doesn't appear to be a problem. If you haven't given \"Blue Collar Hustle\" a try yet now is the perfect time. You have 2 seasons to binge out on and watch these characters, and the show, grow. Thanks for reading.\nEpisode 5 of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" arrived on my desk and I happily dove in. A mere 10 seconds in I knew this was going to be a good one; maybe even the best one so far - and I'm not surprised. As a micro budget title, \"Blue Collar Hustle\" has had a steady increase in perceived production value since it began. Sometimes some glitchy video or audio will dip the production down a little, but when it recovers it passes the previous points in production standards. \"Justify My Thug\" had a certain ring to it even just reading the title. A little grittier sounding and certainly after watching it, I'll stand by that term. Episode 5 is definitely grittier than many of the previous episodes. But sooo good.\nJose Torres (Roberto Cruz) has a shady past. Growing up in the hood as Jose (Strong Arm) Torres was a title he earned. Him and childhood friend Luke (Quick Hands) had always been tough; but together the 2 rose up and ruled their hood. It's a backstory that could be a series in itself. A bloody and violent world where loyalty rules. Jose got himself out, and grew up. His friend Luke, after serving a lengthy prison term, wants back into the game. Now though, he wants to target a new area. Jose's home turf. He also expects to rekindle the duos old alter egos as Strong Arm and Quick Hands. Although agreeing to meet up with Luke, Jose has no intentions of traveling that road again; but Luke doesn't want to take no for an answer.\nWithout major spoilers, that pretty much sums up the plot of episode 5 and it was a good episode. A chunk of screen time is dedicated to Jose's youth in the form of collages. It's a slight departure from the normal episodic format but a welcome one. Seeing the past of some of these characters adds an extra layer of depth to the show. Depth that will translate to a better overall story. Dedicating an episode to one such backstory does wonders for the series, helping to cover up any sense of shallowness that could occur. \"Blue Collar Hustle\" is growing up.\nThis episode doesn't move the current story forward all that much, leaving a lot of room for more episodes. We still don't get to see how the new addition to the group will fare, and don't hear much on bookings for Quan, although there is a very brief moment where the crew is together and discussing things. Alonge Hawes has chosen to flesh out some of the characters before moving forward. Perhaps there will be a future connection to this episode later on? We'll just have to wait and see.\nSeason 2 of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" arrived here on the street and 4 episodes in, there is little doubt this micro series has some really talented minds backing it. As we left the guys last season, everything was coming together and that work / life balance was tough, but completely doable. Season 2 kicks in and almost right away, Ajani (Alonge Hawes) has had enough. During a meeting he abruptly decides to quit his job. The idea is to dedicate himself to the music, but he quickly finds it's not 'quite' that simple.\nWith his wife planning on working less to stay home with their baby, Ajani's timing couldn't be worse. Eventually when things start getting tight, he begins looking for, and finding a menial job. With the music still being priority number 1, eventually Ajani finds suitable work that fits with his ambitions and schedule.\nThe job / work life balance issues are not the only problems explored in season 2. The issues of racism, particularly for black men and woman, was dabbled with in the previous season. Season 2 thrusts these issues right in your face from the first act. Ajani wants to send a message. To stand for something. Quan (Quentin Banneker) on the other hand, wants to make a name for himself first. Only after that's happened does he want to brand himself with Ajani's message. This continues on and during one touching scene with Quan and his daughter, the series really begins it's shift.\n\"Blue Collar Hustle\" season 2 is quite different from season 1. With the creating and recording finished, I had expected this title to focus on the promotion and rise of Quan and the label; and it does, just not as much as I thought it would. Season 2 is more about that ever important message that always seems to get swept under the rug in real life. Racism. Perhaps even politics. Season 2 'does' remain about the music. It 'does' remain about family and life balance, but seems to shift it's priorities. That's all fine and dandy with me. The politics of being black in America open up a trove of dramatic possibilities. I'm just curious where the rest of the series will go from here. What direction will Hawes face and strive towards.\nThe presentation of season 2 compared to season 1 is improved upon, but just. Regarding the script, after Ajani, Quan, Jose (Roberto Cruz) and Anthony (Howard Woodburn) marched into the sunset preparing to hit the big time, I was really rooting for them. With this season I'm torn. The musical progress is here, but just didn't have the impact it did with season 1. In it's place is the true message \"Blue Collar Hustle\" is delivering. The problem is that plenty of shows tackle racism and being black. This title had that little bit extra, the music to keep things fresh. It 'still' does, but I can see a shift happening. It will be amazing if Hawes and the production crew can maintain the balance in the future. Time will tell.\nThe cinematography has improved. Not perfect, but better. That's to be expected as everyone becomes more familiar with the production. Where things didn't improve much is the audio. I'm not writing about the backing tracks spread throughout the series. I'm talking about the dialog. Fading in and out. Cracks. Pops. I'm hoping the audio will be sorted soon as it really downplays the great story being told. If it can't be fixed cut it right out. I'd rather see a shorter episode then one I have to strain to hear.\nSeason 2 keeps things going and sometimes, the end result is nothing less than brilliant. Some great scenes backing a great story. But can the show be maintained and grow? I don't see why not because it's set some great ground work.\nSeason 2 Ep 6 & 7\nHaving just watched Me and Your Mama and They'll Reminisce Over You, I'm left thinking about how far this web series has come. It started off as a contender with a possible bright future. Only held back by budgets and possibly some experience. As the end credits rolled for episode 7 in the second season, I was slightly smiling. Not because of the content. Lord no. I was slightly smiling because to compare the 2 seasons so far is to compare night and day. Things still are not perfect, mainly with the audio, but the direction and stories being told have become excellent. The upgraded video and editing capabilities also play a huge roll - you could mute the sound and almost think this was 'not' a micro budget indie series. I can't help but think about how different the entire series would have been, if season 1 was started now. With the experience gained while creating this series. Season 2 has been a vast improvement since episode 1. These latest 2 episodes so far, take the cake as reflected in my individual rating for these 2 episodes.\nEpisode 6 continues with the unfolding story, but delves into the past of Quan, played by Quentin WIlliams. It's a flashback involving his Ex Brianna (Kiara Woods) who also happens to be the mother of his child. Essentially, we get to see the moral growth of the character during the episode. A scene a little later in the episode shows us that, and it's surprisingly effective.\nThis isn't all episode 6 contains. Hawes and Burks as a writer director power team, easily shift gears to a complete opposite. Sexual harassment. This scene unfolds during an acting class and recent promotion of Anaya, to a headlining acting role. The implications of the episode are gross and her teacher, does an excellent job 'acting' the part. Attempting to blame her for his transgressions. The closing scene as she lay in bed digesting what has happened is a haunting one.\nEpisode 7 is just as sad and surprising. Just not in the same way. The death of one of the characters parents is the story - pretty much the only story of this episode. But it's not just about death. It's about life. Flashbacks play a key role here, as well as a very smart way to showcase the dead character in the funeral home. Life lessons are reflected on. Teachings are reflected on and so is life in general. Wrapping up the episode is a touching speech and a very muted ending. The perfect fit for the episode.\nI'm really hoping that season 2 finished it's run the same way it started it. Better and better. I'm not sure if I'm just getting used to seeing this cast onscreen, but I do know one thing: I'm feeling at home watching these guys. Like an old worn in glove. A lot of touchy topics have come up in this season and I look forward to where things are headed. These 2 episodes in particular were great. A tribute to the series. Watcher beware! You may start this show with very little expectations. If you keep up with it though, it will surprise the hell out of you.\nSeason 1, original review.\nHaving just wrapped up it's first season, \"Blue Collar Hustle\" is a web series with some serious ambitions. Ajani (Alonge Hawes) is the poster boy of success at work. Having moved up the corporate ranks, when the show begins, he is running things locally and improving the companies bottom line considerably. Lifting the spirits of the people working under him, showing them that good things are possible if you work for them. Work life is good, home life is better. Beautiful supportive wife, new baby and that good job with some serious potential. What more could a young black man ask for in life? Shortly in, the answer to that question is revealed. Ajani's passion is music. Rhymes and hip-hop. It's at this point the rest of the main cast are \"really\" introduced and \"Blue Collar Hustle\" shifts from a life drama, to one of the arts. The juggling act becomes real as the crew burn the candle from both ends. Working, financing and recording, family life, relationships, it's all represented. Then of course, they have the strategies to come up with. \"Blue Collar Hustle\" is about finding that perfect balance of life and art - and if that fails? It's about going for the gold and chasing your dream. By the season finale the crew have their recordings. Mission accomplished. That's no real spoiler. Anyone who watches for more than five minutes will assume they would finish it. As much as this series promotes itself as being \"about\" the music, the music is usually just the connecting plot point. More-so later on. The real point is the choices themselves. Deciding the road you want to take. Is your/Ajani's true passion the idea of being successful at work? Or does it lie in the music? How much slack will your \"true\" friends give you, and how much will they take off your shoulders in support of you, doing what you love? Hawes has written a series that promotes music, questions the accepted idea of a successful black man and their families, and generally attempts to capture some of the magic of the industry. At the same time dramatically showing us that dreams and passion are not cheap, and don't happen without some real commitment. It doesn't hurt that the featured tracks kick ass either. Just saying.\nBut... Things are not perfect. They rarely are with low budget endeavors. The first episode struggled a little to find it's footing, but things do improve. Considerably. The problem is when things do start to get technically better, they have a tendency to slip back a few rungs. Then climb a little higher and slip again. All the technical woes rear their heads at some point or another. Weak audio. Weak video. What always does manage to feel top notch is the score itself. The songs never feel cheap and really add some credibility to the show.\nAnother area of concern was with the episodic content itself. The overall story of the series is clear, and the characters and their personalities are \"reasonably\" clear. It's the lack of drama that gets me. I don't mean within the main arc itself, I mean the little stories contained in each episode. In this case, the lack of them. \"Blue Collar Hustle\" remains focused on the main goal of the characters. The seasonal arc. The individual episodes \"should\" be individual stories with their own goals and drama. That doesn't really happen here. To some extent we get the sort of cliff-hanger ending, relating to the overall story, sometimes, but we never get a real conclusion to the individual episode - because there was never really anything to conclude. The main story just continues on with no mini stories filling the gaps. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. The best shows have mini stories that relate, sometimes indirectly to the main arc. This is the weakest production element of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" that these guys have to fix. It really does make a difference. The people like me, who watch this stuff, need to feel some kind of conclusion to each episode to keep us going. Even if that conclusion ends up being the acquisition of a bag of chips. There needs to be something.\nAnother thing I found myself noticing was the extreme amounts of talking in the show. Normally, when the actors are good this isn't a problem. Since the cast of \"Blue Collar Hustle\" happen to be good, you may be asking what the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about loads and loads of dialog that isn't needed. Filler lines I call them. There are conversations that go on for minutes and minutes - and those same conversations could probably be wrapped up in one minute or less. Maybe not all of them, but a good bunch. The focus should be on us seeing, not hearing.\nThis show has a lot of potential. I noticed a new trailer for season two and it looked technically superior. These guys are determined to make this show the best it can be. The first season wasn't perfect but damn well good enough to enjoy. I urge anyone reading this to click on over and check this show out. Season two looks like it's going to kick some serious ass. I'm really looking forward to that.\nSeen it? Rate it!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1470866"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7637523412704468,"wiki_prob":0.7637523412704468,"text":"Anthera Issues First Quarter 2010 Financial Report\nMay 6, 2010 at 4:15 PM EDT\nAnthera Issues First Quarter 2010 Financial Report 27.7 KB\nHAYWARD, Calif., May 6, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ -- Anthera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ANTH), today issued its first quarter 2010 financial report.\nTotal operating expenses for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010, were $6.5 million, as compared to $3.8 million for the same period in 2009. The increase in operating expenses was primarily the result of a $3.5 million non-cash charge related to milestone payments recorded in connection with the initiation of the Company's Phase 3 clinical study of A-002 - VISTA-16 (Vascular Inflammation Suppression to Treat Acute Coronary Syndrome - 16 Weeks), which were paid through the issuance of 531,914 shares of common stock. Anthera's operating expenses also were driven by an increase in professional service expenses related to the Company's financial audit and other costs associated with operating as a public company. The increases in milestone payments and G&A expense were offset by a decrease in clinical study expenses due to the completion of Anthera's Phase 2b clinical study of A-002 - FRANCIS (Fewer Recurrent Acute Coronary Events with Near-term Cardiovascular Inflammation Suppression) in acute coronary syndrome patients with high levels of inflammation and dislipidemia.\nFor the first quarter ended March 31, 2010, Anthera reported a net loss of $11.1 million, or $0.83 per share, as compared to a net loss of $3.8 million, or $2.57 per share, for the same period in 2009. The increase in net loss was primarily the result of $8.0 million in non-cash charges consisting of the $3.5 million milestone payment noted above and a $4.5 million non-cash charge recorded as part of interest and other expense related to the amortization of discounts on the Company's convertible promissory notes and the mark- to-market adjustment relating to warrants and embedded derivative connected to the Company's convertible promissory notes. These convertible promissory notes were converted into shares of Anthera's common stock upon the completion of the Company's initial public offering (IPO) at a 25% discount to the IPO price. The conversion discount is the primary driver for the $4.5 million non-cash charge recorded in the current quarter.\nAnthera ended the first quarter of 2010 with $56.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, primarily as a result of completing its IPO on March 4, 2010 and a private placement of common stock to certain existing investors.\nRecent Business Highlights\nAnthera raised $54.2 million in the first quarter of 2010 through the public and private markets. The net proceeds from the Company's IPO of 6.0 million shares were approximately $37.1 million. Anthera completed a private placement of 2.6 million shares of common stock to certain of its existing investors, raising an additional $17.1 million.\nOn April 6, 2010, the underwriters of the IPO purchased 604,492 shares of Anthera's common stock at a price of $7.00 per share through the exercise of an over-allotment option, resulting in net proceeds to the Company of $4.0 million.\nA-002: In February, Anthera and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reached an agreement on the VISTA-16 Special Protocol Assessment (SPA). VISTA-16 will enroll up to 6,500 acute coronary syndrome patients who will be randomized to treatment with A-002, an oral secretory phospholipase A2 or sPLA2 inhibitor, or placebo in combination with any dose of atorvastatin plus standard of care for 16 weeks. After at least 1,000 patients have completed treatment, an independent panel will conduct a blinded biomarker futility analysis to examine the pharmacological impact of A-002 on known measures of cardiovascular (CV) risk, including C-reactive protein or CRP, interleukin-6 or IL-6, lower-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL-C and sPLA2.\nA-623: Anthera continues to make progress to re-activate the Investigational New Drug Application (IND) for A-623, which would allow the start of the PEARL-SC (A Randomized, Double-Blind Phase 2b Study to Evaluate the Efficacy, Safety, and Tolerability of A623 AdministRation in Subjects with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus) study. The Company has received an IND advice letter from the FDA and remains on track for beginning enrollment in the second half of 2010.\nAnthera and its global clinical research organization (CRO) partner initiated site selection for the VISTA-16 Phase 3 study. The Company anticipates enrolling the first patient during the second quarter of 2010. Stephen Nicholls, MD, John Kastelein, MD, and Greg Schwartz, MD, along with the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research (C5) will provide executive oversight of the study.\nAnthera and its global CRO partner initiated site selection for the PEARL-SC study, which will examine the therapeutic benefit of A-623 in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The Company anticipates enrolling the first patient during the second half of 2010.\nAnthera began labeling the initial clinical A-002 tablets for the VISTA-16 Phase 3 study. This inventory is sufficient for completion of the biomarker futility analysis.\nThe Company began transfer of A-623 material from Amgen for conversion into clinical study product. Initial product conversion is expected to be sufficient to complete enrollment and treatment of the first 120 patients.\nScale up planning for 100 Liter scale fermentation of A-623 product was initiated.\nAnthera elected Daniel K. Spiegelman to its Board of Directors and as Chairman of the Audit Committee. Mr. Spiegelman has served in executive roles at CV Therapeutics, Inc., and Genentech, Inc. Mr. Spiegelman serves on the Boards of Directors of Affymax, Inc., Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Omeros Corporation and Oncothyreon, Inc.\nAnthera announced Georgina Kilfoil joined the Company in the newly created position of Senior Vice President of Product Development and Clinical Operations. Ms. Kilfoil joins the Company from InClin, Inc. Ms. Kilfoil's relationship with the Anthera management team reaches back to her position as Vice President of Alliances and Project Management at Peninsula Pharmaceuticals, a company founded by Anthera's Chief Executive Officer.\nIn conjunction with the release of the first quarter 2010 financial report, Anthera will host a conference call at 5 pm Eastern Time today, May 6, 2010. U.S. and Canadian participants may dial (877) 312-8807; international participants may dial (253) 237-1190. The conference passcode is 70784350. To access the 24-hour audio replay, U.S. and Canadian participants may dial (800) 642-1687; international participants may dial (706) 645-9291. The conference ID for the replay is 70784350. The audio replay will be available until May 13, 2010. This conference call will be webcast live and archived on Anthera's website until May 6, 2011, www.anthera.com.\nAbout Anthera Pharmaceuticals\nAnthera Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing products to treat serious diseases associated with inflammation, including cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases. Anthera has one Phase 3-ready clinical program, A-002, and two Phase 2 clinical programs, A-623 and A-001. A-002 and A-001 inhibit a novel enzyme target known as sPLA2. Elevated levels of sPLA2 have been implicated in a variety of acute inflammatory conditions, including acute coronary syndrome and acute chest syndrome, as well as chronic diseases such as stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Anthera's Phase 2 product candidate, A-623, targets elevated levels of B-lymphocyte stimulator, or BLyS, which has been associated with a variety of B-cell mediated autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus. For more information, please visit www.anthera.com.\nAny statements contained in this press release that refer to future events or other non-historical matters are forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the anticipated initiation of Anthera's clinical studies, anticipated duration and expected results of these studies, and the progression of Anthera's products through future stages of clinical development. These forward-looking statements are based on Anthera's expectations as of the date of this press release and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially as set forth in the Company's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Anthera's final prospectus relating to its initial public offering filed pursuant to Rule 424(b) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, on March 2, 2010. Anthera disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.\nCONTACT: Juliane Snowden of Burns McClellan, Inc., jsnowden@burnsmc.com or 212.213.0006.\nANTHERA PHARMACEUTICALS,\nA Development Stage\nThree Months Ended March\n2010               2009\n----               ----\nResearch and development       $5,241,814         $2,914,766\nGeneral and administrative      1,224,110            846,243\n---------            -------\nTotal operating expense         6,465,924          3,761,009\n---------          ---------\nLOSS FROM OPERATIONS:                     (6,465,924)        (3,761,009)\n----------         ----------\nOTHER INCOME (EXPENSE):\nInterest and other income           3,301             13,046\nInterest and other expense     (4,641,169)           (37,397)\n----------            -------\nTotal other income\n(expense)                     (4,637,868)           (24,351)\nNET LOSS                                $(11,103,792)       $(3,785,360)\n============        ===========\nNet loss per share--\nbasic and diluted                 $(0.83)            $(2.57)\n======             ======\nWeighted-average number\nof shares used in             13,344,231          1,470,722\nper share calculation--\nbasic and diluted             ==========          =========\nBALANCE SHEET DATA\nMarch 31,        December 31,\nCash and cash equivalents                $56,661,609         $3,803,384\nTotal assets                             $57,036,331         $5,888,789\nTotal notes payable                               $-        $13,129,877\nTotal warrant and\nderivative liabilities                           $-           $406,130\nTotal current liabilities                 $4,304,457        $18,167,645\nDeficit accumulated during\ndevelopment stage                      $(76,333,744)      $(65,229,952)\nTotal shareholders' equity\n(deficit)                               $52,731,874       $(12,278,856)\nCommon shares outstanding                 21,589,588          1,566,199\noutstanding                                       -          8,146,308\nSOURCE Anthera Pharmaceuticals, Inc.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line503523"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9822945594787598,"wiki_prob":0.9822945594787598,"text":"The Who Announce Return To Cincinnati Area 40 Years After Fatal Stampede\nposted by Andrew Magnotta @AndrewMagnotta - Dec 4, 2019\nJust days ahead of the release the band's first new album since 2006, The Who have announced a new round of tour dates in the U.S. in 2020.\nThe newly announced concerts make good on a promise guitarist Pete Townshend's made in September after the band canceled a trio of U.S. shows due to an illness affecting front man Roger Daltrey.\nThe dates also include the band's return to the Cincinnati, Ohio-area for the first time since the fatal Riverfront Coliseum stampede 40 years ago.\nThe Who last performed in Cincinnati on December 3, 1979, in an ill-fated concert where 11 fans died in a stampede trying to get into the Riverfront Coliseum (now the Heritage Bank Center). More than 18,000 tickets to the show were sold as general admission seating, which caused the mass of fans to surge forward in a free-for-all rush to the front rows as doors opened. In addition to the 11 deaths, more than 40 people were hurt trying to enter the coliseum.\nThe incident caused a public relations nightmare that followed The Who for years afterwards. The band was not told about the deaths until after the show and didn't address the incident publicly until the following day.\nTownshend says he's still traumatized by seeing the bodies laid out on the ground as the band left that evening for Buffalo, New York, in what he believes was The Who's greatest mistake.\nBut he recently told the Associated Press that he's \"not forgiving us. We should have stayed [to mourn].\"\nIn the same interview, he recalled the rage he felt towards manager Bill Curbishley for waiting until after the concert to tell the band what had happened. The band \"wanted to kill him,\" Townshend added. \"You could at least give [us] a choice as to whether or not to go on,\" Townshend said.\nBut as angry as he was at how Curbishley handled the situation, Townshend adds that the band made a choice that \"was equally dim ... we left the building. You know, we should have stayed.\"\nCurbishley, who still works with the band, said in an interview with WCPO Cincinnati that he didn't tell The Who about the deaths because he was afraid there would be more bloodshed or rioting that night if the band refused to perform.\nDaltrey, who visited Cincinnati last year, added that the concert was \"one of the worst dreams I've had in my life.\"\nThe Who also announced Tuesday that the band will make a donation from the concert proceeds to the P.E.M. Memorial, which was founded to honor teens who died trying to get into the concert by providing scholarships for students at the local Finneytown High School.\nFor tickets and more details on all The Who's upcoming dates, go here.\nThe Who 'Moving On!' 2020 U.S. Tour Dates\n4/21 - Hard Rock Live, Hollywood, FL\n4/23 - BB&T Arena Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY\n4/27 - American Airlines Center, Dallas, TX (Rescheduled)\n4/30 - Toyota Center, Houston, TX (Rescheduled)\n5/2 - Pepsi Center, Denver, CO (Rescheduled)\n5/5 - The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV\n5/12 - The Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1179693"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5756391882896423,"wiki_prob":0.42436081171035767,"text":"Here's what to know about the 2019 Met Gala\nThere's the Oscars, the Emmys, the Tonys, all celebrating entertainment with a side of red carpet fashion.\nAnd then there's the yearly Met Gala, where everything is about the fashion.\nThe Met Gala is arguably fashion's biggest night, an annual fundraising gala for the Metropolitan Museum of Art where invited celebrities walk the red carpet and celebrate Costume Institute’s newest exhibition at the museum. This year's exhibit: “Camp: Notes on Fashion.”\nWhat happens inside the Gala is a closely guarded secret. The main event for the public is the red carpet outside.\nHere's what to know about this year's Met Gala.\nWho hosts the Met Gala? The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Costume Institute are the hosts, while the event is organized by Vogue Magazine. Want to attend? Good luck. Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue Magazine, has the final say on who gets to go — one must be invited by Wintour and tickets are $35,000 apiece. Lady Gaga, Harry Styles, Serena Williams and Alessandro Michele of Gucci will serve as co-chairs.\nThe theme. This year's theme is \"Camp: Notes on Fashion.\" Not the tents and s'mores kind of camping, but the \"anti-serious, playful\" stuff we all love. Expect some over-the-top looks, as guest are instructed to dress on-theme. Last year's theme was \"Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination.\"\n“Camp: Notes on Fashion” explores the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture.#MetCamppic.twitter.com/hoiLo9Djv4\n— The Met (@metmuseum)May 6, 2019\nWhen does it start? The Met Gala starts at 5:30 p.m. EST.\nHow to watch. While you can't actually stream the Met Gala, Vogue is planning some extensive coverage. Vogue (@voguemagazine) will stream an Instagram Live and Vogue Snapchat My Stories with celebrity interviews and red carpet views. Vogue's Twitter account will offer frequent updates as the guests arrive.\nWhy does it matter? A hard question — most will say it doesn't matter at all. But those in the fashion industry count on the Met Gala as one of the year's most significant events, the \"Oscars of the East Coast\" if you will. If anything, it gives the rest of us non-celebrities a chance to play fashion critic for a night.\nPay attention to Rihanna. That's all. She wins the Met Gala every year, even though there are no real winners.\nhope the queen of the#MetGala is having a wonderful day @rihannapic.twitter.com/2b2b6OPvdl\n— The FADER (@thefader)May 6, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line993905"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5804066061973572,"wiki_prob":0.4195933938026428,"text":"Published on Explorable.com (https://explorable.com)\nHome > Philosophy\nPhilosophy of Science [1]\nOskar Blakstad [2]110.8K reads\nPhilosophy of science is the study of assumptions, foundations, and the implications of science.\nIt investigates the different branches of science and its underlying structure. Central questions are \"What is science?\" and \"What is not science?\", as well as \"What characterizes science?\" and \"How to achieve scientific progress?\".\nThe history of the philosophy of science [3] has its roots in philosophy, and emerged as an autonomous discipline sometime in the nineteenth century.\nAuguste Comte and John Stuart Mill can be seen as important people during its origins, even though philosophers like Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo and Kepler had developed thoughts regarding related issues.\nTruth and Reality\nPhilosophy of science [4] can be viewed as a way of describing how research [5] is conducted, and a way of deciding how it should be carried out.\nHow do the real world, empirical data [6], models and theories relate to each other, and what can be done to improve their relationship?\nThe relationship between truth and theory [7] is at the very heart of science, determining when, and if, a theory becomes accepted as reality. The realism and antirealism-debate [8] is a philosophical debate, which explores the basis of commonly accepted scientific truth.\nScientific reductionism [9] is a much debated idea in philosophy of science, where science reduces complex interactions and entities to the sum of their constituent parts.\nA scientific paradigm [10] is a framework containing all of the commonly accepted views about a subject.\nThe philosopher, Thomas Kuhn [11], suggested that scientific research does not progress towards truths, but is subject to dogma and a futile clinging to old theories.\nScientific revolution, a shift that completely changes the way in which science looks at the world, is often referred to as a paradigm shifts [12]. One example of a paradigm shift is the discovery of the relativity theory, which revolutionized the way that humans understand physics.\nConstructing Theories\nOccam's razor [13] is commonly described as 'the simplest answer is most often correct'. It is the process of paring down information to make finding the truth easier. Using Occam's razor helps the researcher to investigate the simplest theory first.\nIt is natural to gather data that supports the theory when conducting research. Sometimes researchers are so busy verifying their theory that they forget to look at observations that contradict the theory. This is often referred to as verification error [14]. It can happen when a scientist feels too attached to a theory, often because they \"invented\" it.\nIt is often seen as better to try to falsify [15] the theory. The scientist tries to develop the theory with bold predictions, which are testable [16]. Scientists are more likely to try to falsify their theory and tend to adapt the theory to reality, instead of \"adapting the reality to their theories\". When doing the latter, you often end up with theories which are formulated in such a way that they confirm \"everything\".\nResearchers often use a research hypothesis [17] to make their science testable. An ad hoc analysis [18] however, is an extra type of hypothesis added to the results of an experiment to try to explain away contrary evidence.\nWhen researching, it can be useful to remember that the accuracy of a theory does not depend on the researchers' beliefs - it is not more or less true, no matter how much you believe it.\nPhilosophy of science tries to distinguish science from religion and pseudoscience. The methods above (such as Occam's Razor, falsifiability and testability) are all attempts to separate the science from \"non-science\".\nThe religion vs science debate [19] has in recent years started to dominate the news more than ever before. The schism between science and religion [20] began in the 17th century. It was a necessary stage in the advancement of human knowledge.\nFringe science [21] is a branch of science that departs from the established scientific theories. Unlike pseudoscience [22], it still uses the scientific method, but is highly speculative, at least for the common beliefs of the time. Junk science [23] is the anti-thesis of fringe science, often practiced when politics and businesses influence research too much.\nMisconceptions [24] in science are a common belief, where a semi-truth or falsehood is perpetuated as scientific fact.\nSource URL: https://explorable.com/philosophy-of-science\n[1] https://explorable.com/philosophy-of-science\n[2] https://explorable.com/users/oskar\n[3] https://explorable.com/history-of-the-philosophy-of-science\n[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science\n[5] https://explorable.com/what-is-research\n[6] https://explorable.com/empirical-evidence\n[7] https://explorable.com/truth-and-theory\n[8] https://explorable.com/realism-and-antirealism\n[9] https://explorable.com/scientific-reductionism\n[10] https://explorable.com/what-is-a-paradigm\n[11] https://explorable.com/history-of-the-scientific-method#Kuhn\n[12] https://explorable.com/paradigm-shift\n[13] https://explorable.com/occams-razor\n[14] https://explorable.com/verification-error\n[15] https://explorable.com/falsifiability\n[16] https://explorable.com/testability\n[17] https://explorable.com/research-hypothesis\n[18] https://explorable.com/ad-hoc-analysis\n[19] https://explorable.com/religion-vs-science\n[20] https://explorable.com/when-science-meets-religion\n[21] https://explorable.com/fringe-science\n[22] https://explorable.com/pseudoscience\n[23] https://explorable.com/junk-science\n[24] https://explorable.com/science-misconceptions","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line659144"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5411140322685242,"wiki_prob":0.5411140322685242,"text":"www.thetravel.com\n25 Pics Of Guests Who Definitely Overstayed Their Welcome\nby Ursula Nizalowski\nBecause vacations are time-consuming and take a lot of energy to prepare for, one would expect that they’re worth all the stress for the sake of relaxation. But even on vacation, there are the pressures of being courteous to others including the people one is staying with. Whether it’s at a family home or in a hotel, taking other people’s feelings into consideration is a good way to not only get along with those who are taking the time and energy out of their day to host guests that are staying with them but also be a good guest in general. This is especially important when one is in a foreign country, as there is the additional pressure of respecting a culture that’s different from one’s own as well as representing one’s own culture in a positive light by being polite.\nYet some people who are traveling don’t show respect or common courtesy to others, because somehow they think they’re entitled to do whatever they want in a place that’s not their home. This can range from leaving a hotel room in a messier state than it was before, to completely decimating an entire home that was rented via Airbnb. Now who would do such a thing? Well, these people sure thought it was a good idea even if some of them weren’t in the right state of mind at the time.\n25 A whole lot of trash\nwww.kplctv.com\nIn another charitable act that quickly went sour, a woman and her husband offered their rental place in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to a family that, “Had nowhere to go” according to KPLC 7 who reported the story March of last year. Then after the family started living there, several complaints from the neighbors started cropping up. Among them, they complained about the stench and large amount of rubbish that had been accumulating around the place. These were reported to the city which in turn sent letters to the woman, and so she “Had to evict the family” KPLC 7 reported.\n24 An unpleasant stench left behind\nAs indicated by the woman in this picture who’s plugging her nose, and the picture’s title, this room inside a hostel was particularly smelly. This is despite the fact that there’s a fan between the two beds in this room, which doesn’t appear to be turned on as indicated by the fan’s blades not spinning (though it’s possible the camera caught the blades mid-spin but the overall quality of the picture indicates this was not a very sophisticated camera). Also, there’s a random towel hanging on a string which could be the source of the smell but it's unclear.\n23 Women are just as messy\nwww.stuff.co.nz\nIn Christchurch, New Zealand, the Pavilions Hotel was struck by three female guests in 2016 who left their room in a messy state (as shown above) and bothered the nearby residents with a party they were having. According to Stuff, they were extremely loud and threw eggs at the cars in the parking lot by the hotel. So the hotel posted about the incident on social media, though the women denied what happened. Instead, they claimed it was a man who was responsible for the messy room, Stuff says, but this turned out to be false.\n22 A messy tenant\nIn this picture, we see a typical example of a messy hotel room that happens to be in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China. Apart from the unmade bed with the sheets and pillows strewn about, we also have a towel hanging over a mirror with a couple of stray pillows on the floor and armchair. Then there are the random articles of clothing scattered about, like the slippers on the floor and the jacket on the chair next to the desk with the cup on it that appears to be empty (though from this distance it’s hard to tell).\n21 A gym left in a worse state than before\ntravelwithashley.com\nWhile the previous hostel might have just been smelly but otherwise pretty average as far as hostels are concerned, it’s nothing compared to this one. Located in Prague, as the title implies, this hostel is clearly not up to standards as far as maintenance is concerned. Not only is the carpeted floor dirty, but the lockers on either side look worn out implying that this hostel was formerly a gym which is confirmed by the blogger Travel With Ashley who took this picture. Plus, the close proximity of the bunkbeds indicates that there’s not a lot of privacy here either.\n20 From bad to worse\nsaintpaulbybike.wordpress.com\nAccording to realtor.com, this house in the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was “Built in 1887” meaning it’s quite old by today’s standards. Despite the house’s small size, it has apparently gone up in value for the past few years. This is despite the fact that in 2014, the house was busted by renters (as shown in the picture above) as documented by the WordPress blogger saintpaulbybike. It’s amazing that the value went up on this place at all, given the state it’s clearly in, yet that might be a good thing to keep unruly renters like these out.\n19 Suspicious activity\nwww.starweekly.com.au\nWhile the previous incident may not have been the man’s fault entirely, the same cannot be said for this incident. In the seaside part of Melbourne, Australia, there is a settlement called Williamstown which became the location of several arrests this year. As stated by Star Weekly magazine, it began when two people were caught trespassing onto a house listed on Airbnb which they illegally entered using “A stolen credit card”. From there, the police swept the area and confronted other young people. Then in Esplanade Altona VIC, a similar incident happened though the house was left a total wreck.\n18 Shattered Glass\nabc7ny.com\nIf anyone thought places like New York City couldn’t be touched by the horrors of Airbnb, this story proves otherwise. In the Rockland County area, there is a small riverside community to the north of the main city that is appropriately called Grand View-on-Hudson. Here, a man rented his “River Road home” out to Airbnb early this year according to abc7NY only to return after New Year’s Day to find the aftermath of a wild New Year’s party even though he made it clear parties weren’t allowed. Among the damage included a shattered glass staircase (as shown above).\n17 A suitcase full of pepperoni\nwww.washingtonpost.com\nSo here’s an interesting tale: seventeen years prior, a man from Nova Scotia, Canada, went to British Columbia and stayed at a hotel in the city of Victoria called the Fairmont Empress. According to The Washington Post, “He brought a suitcase full of pepperoni” as a gift for some friends of his. But when he left the pepperoni outside, due to the hotel room not having a fridge, a bunch of seagulls not only devoured it but they also flew around the room. This in turn created a huge mess, and got the man banned from the hotel until now.\n16 Not acting like a true guest\ncommunity.withairbnb.com\nWhile Airbnb is relatively new as far as house rental services are concerned, it’s already racked up quite a bit of notoriety due to the large number of incidents where renters don’t respect the hosts’ living spaces and Airbnb itself isn’t quick to compensate the hosts for what happened. Take this image, for example, from an Airbnb host named Ryan who came back to his condo and found lots of things broken or warped like the bottom of this door which apparently had liquid spilled on it (though what type of liquid it was is uncertain) causing it to warp.\n15 “New Years Party” - What a Mess!\nwww.travelandleisure.com\nFollowing the transition from 2015 to 2016, a woman who designs magazines for a living came back to her home in London, England, and found it in a state of disarray after renting it out through Airbnb according to the Travel + Leisure magazine. It turned out that the guests had been throwing a New Year’s Eve party which was apparently large in size. As a result, some damage occurred as a TV had been “Ripped off the wall” as stated by Travel + Leisure. Afterwards, Airbnb took action and removed the account of the person who rented the place that night.\n14 “Landlord wants more protections” - Gotta Have Insurance\nwww.argusleader.com\nWithin the city of Sioux Falls in the state of South Dakota, there are certain houses for rent that can be afforded by people with “Low and fixed incomes” through a special voucher according to the local Argus Leader newspaper. But two years ago, the landlord of one such house was stuck dealing with the mess left behind by a renter who also had several children under her care. While the renter claimed the landlord “Allowed the place to deteriorate,” Argus Leader states, the landlord was less sympathetic about the whole matter despite what he’s done to aid the program.\n13 “Generous” - An Act of Charity Gone Bad\nwww.real-fix.com\nAs a result of the ever-widening gap of income, the number of homeless people seems to increase every year. While most of us are taught to ignore their pleas for money, since many a homeless person winds up spending it on drugs instead of food, there are a few charitable souls who will go out of their way to help the homeless. Such was the case for a woman named Louise Elliott who raised money to give a homeless couple a hotel room to stay in for Christmas 2016, real-fix says, who wound up leaving it a mess.\n12 A party gone very wrong\nwww.adn.com\nThough the image above may seem like the inside of a messy garage, it’s actually the inside of a house that became the center of an arduous legal battle. This began last year in Anchorage, Alaska, within an area called Lake Otis Pkwy where a woman had been renting out a place she used to live in when one renter came along. According to the Anchorage Daily News, he started having tons of people over which disturbed the neighbors and got the police’s attention. So the woman was forced to evict the man and deal with the mess left behind.\n11 “Renters” - Costly Memories\nwww.bendigoadvertiser.com.au\nWhether a house is rented or not, it does have history. With that, there are various memories associated with the place. While some are good, there can be bad ones as well. In the case of this landlord in Epsom, England, she was renting her family home out to two people. After staying there for a couple of years, they caused a lot of “Damage to the interior” as stated in an article by Bendigo Advertiser. After they were evicted, though, the two renters caused damage to another house they rented causing them to get kicked out from there too.\n10 Super Bowl Gone Wild\nThough the next Super Bowl won’t be for another few months, it wouldn’t be surprising if fans of this event are already planning their future parties for it. While some are a little loud but mostly harmless, some can get out of hand. Such was the case for this rented Airbnb home in Minneapolis, where a woman and her partner ended up having to clean their place up after the guests threw a big Super Bowl party with other people as reported by Kare 11. On top of that, the guests stole a bunch of things from the house itself.\n9 “Over 6000$ in damage”\nHere’s another bad Airbnb story: a man named Raphaël and his wife came home after a trip only to find their home in ruins after a wild party was held by the person renting it. Though the couple made it clear that parties weren’t allowed along with smoking, there were cigarette buds all over the floor. On top of that, their electrical equipment was busted thus adding up to about 6,000 dollars' worth of damage, Raphaël says. Yet when he tried contacting Airbnb about getting covered for the amount of damage caused by the renter, they couldn’t give him much.\n8 Acting like children\nwww.livingthedreamrtw.com\nWhen in Brisbane, Australia, one should be wary of the hostel described in this article posted on Living the Dream’s website. As the picture above clearly shows, it’s certainly a mess which is partially due to the people living here. According to Kendrick, the author of this article, a lot of the occupants were from Germany and quite young on top of that. So as a result, they were rowdy loud and obnoxious to be around. Plus there was a lot of “Clutter in one place,” Kendrick says, and there was this lingering smell that made the whole thing unpleasant.\n7 “When Airbnb goes wrong” - Trouble in Paradise\nwww.naplesnews.com\nWhile the state of Florida is known for having all kinds of crazy stories coming from it, this one takes the cake. In a close-knit community in Miami, a homeowner decided to rent her place out to Airbnb according to the Naples Daily News. While this did help her financially, it turned into quite a literal and metaphorical mess when a party got out of hand at the house. This in turn led to an eviction, “Tax fraud investigation,” says Naples Daily News, and a legal battle between Airbnb and the mayor of Miami himself. Boy, that escalated quickly!\n6 “Airbnb House in Mexico” - Unexpected Company\nwww.airbnbhell.com\nWhile we’ve heard scathing testimonies from Airbnb hosts who’ve had less than pleasant guests staying in their home, let’s hear what the guests have to say about their experiences at the rented houses they’ve stayed at. Last year, for instance, a large family rented an Airbnb home in Mexico near the city of Puerto Vallarta. According to Airbnb Hell, things were bad right off the bat when they found out that the house didn’t come with a stove microwave or fridge. On top that, random people started showing up at the house and even had a party on the premises.\n5 “Airbnb nightmare” - Didn’t Get Permission\nwww.cnbc.com\nOn top of bad Airbnb guests, the site has also been used by scammers to put up illegal house listings as was the case for this man in Miami Beach, Florida. It began when he started receiving fines from the city due to unruly behavior by renters at a house he used to rent through Airbnb, even though he hadn’t used it for many years according to CNBC. Then it turned out that his house had been listed on Airbnb without his permission by another rental service called Vacayo, and had to make several inquiries to have it taken down.\n4 “No response from Airbnb” - That’s Too Bad\nAs bad as 6,000 dollars’ worth of damage sounds, that’s nothing compared to this! In Melbourne, Australia, a man named Linye and his partner rented their house to Airbnb in April of this year. When they came home, there was a severe amount of damage done including holes in the walls and broken things such as the glass-like fragments shown in the above picture. In the end, the amount in repairs totaled up to over 10,000 dollars according to Linye. On top of that, there were other future bookings for the home on Airbnb making this incident more unfortunate.\n3 “Hotel room” - Overreaction\ndeskgram.net\nLike the hotel in Shanghai, this room doesn’t seem nearly as messy compared to the others we’ve encountered in this article thus far. Yet what makes this one different is that this isn’t the guest’s own mess, but someone else’s. According to Deskgram user colleenlouise70, this room in the BelleVue Club on the Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain wasn’t properly cleaned and had to be moved to a different room instead. Now while this does sound inconvenient, even annoying regarding the incompetence of the hotel’s staff, it’s comparatively tame in relation to these other stories about unruly guests.\n2 Not messy, but rude\nwww.estateagentslondon.co.uk\nNow here’s an example of an Airbnb host who worked hard to make her place presentable only for the would-be renters to behave rudely. In an article posted by Estate Agents London, a woman recounts an incident that happened two years ago where a family showed up after she had gotten it spruced up for them. However, they didn’t seem to like the place and claimed they weren’t planning to stay yet made no inclination to leave. So the woman asked them to go, and they called the police. Fortunately, though, everything got straightened out and the family left.\n1 “Party for more than 100 teens” - Classic Teen Delinquency\nSo here’s a real-life version of the movie Project X: in Dunedin, Florida, a teen of 14 years old used his own credit card to rent a house through Airbnb, even though the minimum age for Airbnb users is 18 years old according to Stuff. The purpose of this was for a party which involved hundreds of teens underaged drinking and property damage. Naturally, the house's owner wasn’t too happy. Fortunately, the damage was minimal, Stuff states, and some of the kids including the teen \"Who organized the party\" came over to the house to help with the cleaning.\nResources: community.withairbnb.com, travelwithashley.com, realtor.com, stuff.co.nz, livingthedreamrtw.com, naplesnews.com, airbnbhell.com, estateagentslondon.co.uk, travelandleisure.com, cnbc.com, washingtonpost.com, starweekly.com.au\nHarry Potter Fans Will Want To Fly To New York City This Summer To Visit The Flagship Store\n10 Places Dwayne \"The Rock\" Johnson Traveled For His Movies (And 10 With The WWE)\n20 Myths About The Moon Landing (People Still Somehow Believe)\n10 Things No Dad Should Consider Wearing On A Cruise (5 He'll Be Glad He Did)\nAngelina Jolie And 19 Other Celebs Spotted At The Grove In LA\n15 Places Anthony Bourdain Never Visited (For A Reason)\nHailey Bieber, Elle Fanning, And 17 Other Celebs Seen Leaving The Gym In Los Angeles, California\n20 Reasons Vacationers Might Want To Choose Crystal Cruises Over Norwegian\n20 Incredible Photos That Prove How Different Traveling By Airplane Was 50 Years Ago\n20 Surprising Things That Will Increase Your Bill At A Las Vegas Hotel\n20 Images Of Strange Things We Can Only Find At The Bottom Of The Ocean\n20 Photos Of Georgina Rodriguez Traveling Around Europe (Without Cristiano Ronaldo)\nMadonna Spotted In The Maldives Catching Rays With Her Latest Boy Toy\n20 Alternative Theme Parks That Might Actually Be Better Than Disneyland\n20 Facts Surrounding Coral Castle In Florida That Prove It's Way More Impressive Than It Looks\n20 Realest Selfies Celebs Took While At Coachella Music Festival\n20 Photos Taken By Passengers On United Airlines\nFollow TheTravel on Facebook Follow TheTravel on Instagram\nCopyright © 2020 TheTravel.com\nThe only place to satisfy all of your guilty pleasures. Pregnancy and parenting news, given to you in a way nobody else has. Website for moms seeking advice, community, and entertainment. Pregnancy and parenting news, given to you in a way nobody else has.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line51943"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5518882870674133,"wiki_prob":0.44811171293258667,"text":"Monthly Holidays\nJanuary / February\nMarch / April / May\nJune / July / August\nNovember / December\nDessert of-the-day\nBumbo - Bombo - Bumboo!\nBumbo (also known as Bombo or Bumboo)\nBumbo is a drink made from rum, water, sugar and nutmeg. Cinnamon is sometimes substituted for or added to the nutmeg. Modern Bumbo is often made with dark rum, citrus juice, Grenadine, and nutmeg.\nBumbo was popular in the Caribbean during the era of piracy, largely because it tasted better than Royal Navy Grog. Pirates and short-haul merchantmen did not suffer from scurvy as often as British sailors, largely because their voyages were shorter and their diet included plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. This meant that citrus juice could be dropped from the grog recipe, and sugar and Nutmeg sweetened the mix.\nBumbo was commonly used during election campaigns in colonial British America, to the extent that treating voters to gifts and other freebies during election campaigns was referred to as \"swilling the planters with bumbo\". George Washington was particularly noted for using this technique. His papers state that he used 160 gallons of rum to treat 391 voters to bumbo during campaigning for the Virginia House of Burgesses in July 1758.\ndocumentation_license\nPrimary alcohol by volume:\nServed:\n\"Straight up\"; without ice\nStandard garnish:\nStandard drinkware:\nCommonly used ingredients: (pirate recipe)\n2 parts rum\n1 parts water\n2 sugar cubes\nSprinkle cinnamon\nSprinkle nutmeg\nPreparation: Mix together and garnish.\n\"Let's \"splice the mainbrace,\" as Blackbeard would have ordered when he was looking to get drunk enough to kindle his own hell.\"\nBumboo (modern recipe)\n2 oz dark rum\n1 oz lemon juice\n1/2 tsp grenadine syrup\n1/4 tsp grated nutmeg or cinnamon\nCombine all ingredients in a shaker half-filled with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass.\nWhat Did Pirates Drink?\nBelow we have listed some of the most popular drinks that Pirates were known to make part of their daily nurishment. Not only did they drink Bumbo, but they drank these as well\nGrog (water and run mixed together)\nGlögg (scandinavian, early medieval origin)\nSangaree: (is now known as sangria)\nPirate Party Drink Recipes (fun & modern)\nSpirited Coffee Drinks\nEgg Nog Month\nTropical drink recipes\nYou are reading Pirate Drinks\nPirate Food & Drink","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line88980"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6428793668746948,"wiki_prob":0.3571206331253052,"text":"Contempt Is the Remedy to Enforce Injunctions regarding Easements\nParties to court proceedings involving private rights of way or trespass sometimes question the power of a judge to tell them to do something. Sometimes people do not take the orders of a court seriously and act in a recalcitrant manner to test whether a judge will enforce his order. However, a Georgia Superior Court Judge is one of the most powerful officials in Georgia and has the power to fine and incarcerate parties who do not violate his orders.\nThe means of enforcement of an equitable order in Georgia is through a petition for contempt. Contempt is a legal proceeding filed to enforce the terms of an injunction or restraining order. The remedy is invoked by filing a motion or new petition raising the issue of the violation of a prior order with a request that the court issue a new order to require compliance. The injunction is Stage 1. Contempt is Stage 2. Most people do not get to State 2, but when they do, the result can be harsh.\nA contempt proceeding can be either criminal or civil.\nThe difference between criminal and civil contempt depends on the purpose for which the power is exercised. Ensley v. Ensley, 239 Ga. 860, 861, 238 S.E.2d 920 (1977). “The distinction between the two is that criminal contempt imposes unconditional punishment for prior acts of contumacy, whereas civil contempt imposes conditional punishment as a means of coercing future compliance with a prior court order.” Carey Canada, Inc. v. Hinely, 257 Ga. 150, 151, 356 S.E.2d 202, cert. denied, 484 U.S. 898, 108 S.Ct. 233, 98 L.Ed.2d 192 (1987).\nAlexander v. DeKalb County, 264 Ga. 362, 364, 444 S.E.2d 743, 745 (1994).\nContempt as a remedy can arise in different types of cases. In a case involving a continuing trespass to real property that violates the legal title owner's rights, an injunction is often sought to force a party to honor the rights of the landowner. An injunction may be all that is required provided the parties adhere to its terms. Where they refuse to comply, the court turns to contempt to enforce its orders.\nA contempt motion is a proper way to require a party to adhere to the terms of a prior order regarding easement rights to a road or private right of way. Harvey v. Lindsey, 251 Ga. App. 387, 390, 554 S.E.2d 523, 526 (2001). The court looks to the intent of the prior order in determining whether the parties have violated it.\nIn a contempt proceeding, a court may interpret and clarify an existing order but may not modify the terms and obligations already set forth.2 To determine whether an order has been clarified, as opposed to being modified, the test is whether the new order is a reasonable clarification or so contrary to the apparent intent of the original order as to constitute a modification.3 The intent is found by looking at the content of the order and the context in which it was created.4\nUltimately, the court hearing a contempt motion can fine the party in violation until he complies with the prior order. The court can enter an order of incarceration if the judge finds that the violation of the prior order was willful. Alexander, supra.\nA contempt proceeding involving roads, rights of way, streets, or easements can arise in a number of ways. For example, a party (\"A\") may obtain an order restraining another person (\"B\") from interfering with his rights to access A's land over an easement across B's land. If A or B disregard the terms and limitations of the order, the party seeking compliance can proceed by petition for contempt. So if B were to fail to allow A to travel over the path of an easement under the terms of an order issued by a Georgia Superior Court Judge, A could then ask the judge to hold B in contempt, and upon a finding that B did not comply with the order, the judge could fine B until B allows the access. Upon a finding of a willful violation of the prior order, the judge could even incarcerate B.\nAdverse Possession of Family Land\nHow Wills Are Proven Valid\nGeorgia Standard for Invalidating Wills is High\nContempt Is the Remedy to Enforce Injunctions rega...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1370001"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8394553065299988,"wiki_prob":0.8394553065299988,"text":"In dinghy racing in the ’50s and 60s, there were smart sailing clubs and there were the new clubs emerging on gravel pits, canals and reservoirs to sail Jack Holt’s budget boats. It was a very stratified world, which can still be seen on the shore at Cowes, where the clubs are in marshalled in order of rank, starting at the seaward end: the exclusive Royal Yacht Squadron, the Royal Corinthian and the Royal Thames, the Island Sailing Club and – originally for the local working boatmen of the town – the Cowes Corinthians.\nMy first boat and club were at the other end of the sailing spectrum from the smart clubs. Our neighbour, the former naval officer who helped me build my first boat, ran a boys’ sailing club based on the grimy Lee Navigation in North London, and he encouraged me to join.\nThe club had been set up to introduce urban boys to the pleasures and rigours of boats and the water. The thinking behind the sponsorship of such clubs was not a million miles away from the intentions of those who financed the sail training ships of the Ocean Youth Club, the London Sailing Project and the Ocean Youth Club in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and indeed the famous Outward Bound courses on land in the same postwar years; all were designed quite explicitly to keep young men fit and off the streets. I’m not sure my parents saw me quite in that context, as a wild kid needing to be kept off the streets, but I joined anyway.\nThe Lee ran between a sewage works (now gone, and reclaimed as a sports field) and a reservoir, the King George V. We had a tiny clubhouse with bunk beds for overnight stays and a room to make tea and sandwiches. We certainly learnt to tack our boats efficiently, because it was rare that the wind was in the right direction to sail a straight line up and down our narrow 1 mile stretch of water between two locks.\nThe wind was a bit of an issue, or rather the smell of it. We could just about acclimatise after a while to the foul air from the summer sewage, but it could never be ignored. The great incentive for staying in these surroundings was that the club was trying, by its presence on the site, to persuade the Metropolitan Water Board to allow it to move to the enormous King George V reservoir a few hundred yards away. In the longer term, the water board was persuaded, and sailing was allowed on the reservoir, which is the best stretch of water in London (now the sewage works has gone). Sadly, the new King George club was not set up until more than a decade after I had taken my boat to the tidal waters of the River Crouch in Essex, helped by some friends who sailed there, and enticed by the pleasanter tang of the sea and the saltings.\nNews Chronicle Enterprise number 2 in the National Maritime Museum…\nI was tall for my age, and quickly outgrew the little Heron, which I sold at a small profit, using the money to buy a News Chronicle Enterprise.\nI bought a second-hand one, identical to the boat now in the entrance to the maritime museum in Greenwich, which I sailed on the Crouch. We also took it on holiday with a road trailer. After I sold the Enterprise, I was sad to hear that it had been wrecked on rocks while being sailed by its new owner in the West Country.\n… and Sisters Sue, Frances and Caroline in number 817 in Devon\nMany years later, when our children were old enough to sail, we bought and restored an old Mirror dinghy, so altogether we have owned three of the Jack Holt budget boats of the early postwar sailing revival.\nI have a favourite, the Mirror. It could be sailed, rowed, motored with an outboard, worked as a yacht tender, taken on the top of the car to holidays in Cornwall and Britanny, used for gentle river picnics for up to six adults and children, and in one memorable weekend rowed the whole navigable length of the River Stour in Suffolk, from Sudbury to Cattawade. That involved dragging it round 15 portages at weirs and broken-down locks, which gave the hull a battering that truly tested what must now rank as a great classic of design of any kind.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1180372"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7189538478851318,"wiki_prob":0.7189538478851318,"text":"Shell releases Energy Transition Report: commits to 50% lower emissions by 2050, biofuels to top oil by 2100 in “Sky” scenario\nApril 17, 2018\t| Jim Lane\nIn the Netherlands and England, Shell released its most definitive statement yet on its low-carbon future and committed to 50% lower emissions by 2050 and net zero by 2070 in its operations and emissions from its fuels. The road, to Shell, is apparently paved with good intentions.\nIn its analysis of future energy demand, Shell noted that the global energy demand is set to increase from 570 exajoules to 1000 by 2070 and it will take extraordinary measures to meet the stringent carbon-reduction goals set in the Paris Agreement, while the world is increasing energy usage at the same time. But Shell reaffirmed its support for the Paris Agreement, while noting certain extraordinary consequences of the required re-shaping of energy supply, including biofuels supply exceeding petroleum by 2100 in the company’s “Sky” scenario.\nIn the new Shell Energy Transition Report, available here for download, the company updated what it calls its Mountains and Oceans scenarios and introduces a third, Sky. The company was at pains to present scenarios rather than projections about the long-term future.\nAs Shell notes:\nFor example, in Mountains, strong governments and powerful economic actors work together to create stability and maintain their own interests. This enables big initiatives like the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale or the building of widespread gas and hydrogen infrastructure. In contrast, in Oceans, competitive markets and a strong private sector are the main engines of change. There is major technology innovation, but big coordinated initiatives are more difficult to achieve. Energy needs are increasingly delivered through a patchwork of initiatives.\nBoth Mountains and Oceans deliver net-zero emissions (NZE) from the energy system by the end of the century. But they fall short of the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. Sky builds on this earlier work and assumes that society takes actions so as to meet the Paris goal. It requires unprecedented and sustained collaboration across all sectors of society, supported by highly effective government policy.\nCarbon goals\nShell acknowledges a global economy in sharp transition on carbon:\nWe believe society will have to achieve net zero additional CO2 equivalent emissions from energy by 2070. That will likely require the world to reduce the amount of CO2e produced for each unit of energy consumed from today’s level of around 74 grams to around 43 grams of CO2e per megajoule by 2050\nBy 2050 we intend to match the Net Carbon Footprint of the global energy system. To achieve this we need to go even faster than society because our starting point is higher. It will likely mean we need to reduce the Net Carbon Footprint of our portfolio of energy products by around half from its current value of around 83 grams of CO2e per megajoule, to around 43 grams of CO2e per megajoule by the middle of the century. We plan to reduce our Net Carbon Footprint by around 20% by 2035 as an interim measure.\n25X increase in biofuels production by 2050\nGiven the gigantic and global nature of Shells’s business, they note how dramatic the energy transition would have to be at Shell “to match the energy system by 2050”. They illustrate with six examples and note that meeting the Sky scenario could mean achieving not some, but all of them:\n■ Selling the fuel produced by 25 biofuel companies the size of our joint venture Raízen in Brazil.\n■ Selling the output from 200 large offshore wind farms the size of our planned Borssele wind farm in the North Sea.\n■ Changing the proportion of gas in the total amount of oil and gas we produce, so that natural gas increases from 50% to 75%.\n■ Selling enough electricity on our forecourts around the world to meet three times the total demand for power in the Netherlands.\n■ Developing the capacity of 20 CCS plants the size of our Quest CCS plant in Canada.\n■ Planting forests the size of Spain to act a carbon sink for emissions that still exist.\nToday’s energy system is the result of many decades of choices by consumers, energy suppliers and governments. Societies want energy that is reliable, widely available and affordable. As a result, hydrocarbons account for more than 80% of the energy mix.\nCapital investment in the trillions; solutions vary by sector\nShell noted that “capital investment measured in trillions of dollars over decades will be necessary to finance both new sources of energy, and to adjust existing infrastructure. It will also be necessary to change how energy is consumed, as a vast range of capital assets that consume energy – from homes, domestic appliances, vehicles, machinery and entire industries – will need to be adapted or replaced.”\nThe investment will vary by sector. “Some, like clothes and food manufacturing, require low temperature processes and mechanical activities, which electricity is well suited to deliver,” the report found. But electrification is not universally easy to achieve. “Other sectors, such as the iron, steel, cement, plastic and chemical industries, and certain types of transport, currently rely on the unique ability of hydrocarbons to provide extremely high temperatures, chemical reactions or dense energy storage. Today, many of these cannot be electrified at all, or only at a prohibitively high cost.”\nShell’s Sky scenario\nTurning to more specific actions and consequences, the company went deep into the changes that would come from meeting the net-zero CO2 emission goals of the Paris Agreement, as contemplated in the Sky scenario. The five highlights were:\nMobility: The percentage of internal combustion engines (ICE)in passenger cars falls from 100% in 2010 to around 75% by 2030. By 2050, it is impossible to buy a new passenger vehicle powered by an ICE anywhere in the world.\nElectricity: The share of electricity in final energy consumption rises from 18% today to 26% by 2030 and grows to as much as 50% by 2060. Renewable energy overtakes fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal as the primary source of energy in the 2050s. The world uses hardly any fossil fuels in the power sector after 2060. The share of nuclear in the global electricity mix remains steady at around 10% to 2070. A new addition to the sector is generation from biomass combustion, which is linked with CCS to offer an important carbon sink.\nIndustry: Sky assumes that industrial applications are electrified where possible. To provide the negative emissions required to achieve net-zero emissions from the energy system, Sky requires the construction of around 10,000 large CCS plants by 2070, compared to fewer than 50 in operation in 2020.\nLand use: Sky achieves net-zero global deforestation by 2070. In addition, an area the size of Brazil being reforested offers the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5°C, the ultimate ambition of the Paris Agreement.\nHydrogen: The share of hydrogen in total final energy consumption rises from less than 1% before 2040, to 6% by 2070. It is used as a high-density and storable energy source in transport and industry. Importantly in Sky, it is produced from water electrolysis using mainly renewable power.\nReshaping the Shell portfolio: Shell New Energies\nThe Shell portfolio is, thereby, on the verge of a major shift. The “New Energies business is exploring new fuels for transport, where our activities range from developing advanced biofuels, made from waste and non-food plants, to launching hydrogen refueling stations and recharging for electric vehicles,” the company said. So, a sort of “All of the Above” ambition.\nPrimarily, expect a ramping up in Shell’s gas and electricity businesses — and to a lesser extent investment in biofuels and hydrogen. And they foresee “a range of between $40 and $100 dollars per barrel of oil to 2030 to be likely.”\nThe surprising attraction is renewable power. As Shell notes, “The decline in costs of solar and wind generation, along with the electrification of the energy system, make the development of renewable energy resources increasingly attractive for society, and an attractive investment opportunity for Shell. “ But for the time present, the investment will be relatively limited for Shell compared to the ongoing investment in convention fossil fuels. “We expect our capital investment in New Energies to be between $1 billion to $2 billion a year, on average, until 2020,” they noted. “ We expect the largest part of our investments to be in power, where we will invest to gain access to customers, and in generation powered by solar, wind and gas.”\nEstablishing a higher ROI hurdle for new fuels than power\nAs we have seen elsewhere, the world is turning toward a double standard on investment in renewables, and Shell is no exception. In committing the bulk of its investment attention to power, it frankly confesses that it is seeking “equity returns of between 8% and 12%” from power projects. However, for new fuels, the company only noted in its forecast that it would “expect returns on capital similar to those in the Downstream business.”\nIt’s Shell’s disingenuous moment, because only three weeks ago they updated financial markets on those Downstream return ambitions. As NASDAQ.com reported here, “Shell plans to make a yearly investment of around $7-$9 billion in its downstream segment, forecasting a return on average capital employed (ROACE) of more than 15%.”\nOne is left to imagine how the investment options and decisions would look if the company decided that it needed only the same returns in advanced liquid fuels that it expects from new power investments, instead of expecting advanced fuel projects to be 100% competitive with established fossil fuel technologies from the get-go.\nDeveloping conventional and advanced biofuels\n“Biofuels today make up around 3% of global transport fuels and we expect their share to grow as the world shifts to lower-carbon energy. Shell is one of the world’s largest producers of biofuels made from sugar cane, through our joint venture in Brazil called Raízen. Raízen (Shell interest 50%) produces low-carbon biofuel from sugar cane. This Brazilian sugar cane ethanol can emit around 70% less CO2 compared with gasoline, from cultivation of the sugar cane to using the ethanol as fuel. In 2017, Raízen produced around 2 billion liters of low-carbon ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane. Shell is also one of the largest blenders and distributors of biofuels worldwide. We purchase biofuels to blend into our fuels to comply with country regulations and mandates.\n“We are active in the development of advanced biofuels made from alternative feedstocks such as waste and cellulosic biomass from non-food plants. In 2015, Raízen opened its first advanced biofuels plant at its Costa Pinto mill in Brazil. In 2017, the plant produced 10 million liters of cellulosic ethanol from sugar-cane residues. It is expected to produce 40 million liters per year once fully operational.\n“In Bangalore, India, we have built a demonstration plant that will turn waste – including food, cardboard, plastics and paper – into petrol or diesel that can power cars. This provides the final stage of the R&D process we will need to see if it is successful to scale up and support the commercialization of this waste-to-fuel process. The process has been developed by a USA-based research centre, the Gas Technology Institute, and is called IH2. The IH2 process uses heat, hydrogen and catalysts to convert large molecules of the sort found in waste into smaller fragments. Oxygen and other contaminants are removed to create two pure elements: hydrogen and carbon. The two are then combined to create hydrocarbon molecules: petrol, diesel and jet fuel.”\nThe Digest noted the absence of any specific mention of VIrent technology — although Virent’s approach certainly fits under “advanced biofuels made from alternative feedstocks such as waste and cellulosic biomass from non-food plants.” But we also wonder whether there will be emphasis on technologies like Virent to deliver renewable chemicals, because Shell’s ambitions in chemicals are increasing substantially even as it looks to reduce its petrochemical dependencies.\nShell notes:\n“We plan to increase earnings in our Chemicals business from $2.6 billion in 2017 to between $3.5 billion and $4.0 billion per year by 2025. We expect strong demand growth for chemicals in the medium term, mostly because of economic growth and demand for the everyday products that petrochemicals help produce. Chemicals can also help deliver some of the materials that will help the energy transition – such as high-performance insulation for homes and light plastic parts in cars and planes that can help save energy. Petrochemicals are also ingredients for components in energy-efficient lighting and low-temperature detergents.”\n“By 2050, consumers in this scenario will not be able to buy an internal combustion engine (ICE) anywhere in the world”\nThe various Shell scenarios each show “a rise in demand for electric vehicles in the next few decades,” but it gets dramatic in the Sky scenario, which foresees that “more than half of global new passenger car sales are electric by 2030. 100% of new car sales will be electric by 2030 in places such as China and Western Europe, and by 2035 in North America and some other parts of the Asia Pacific region.”\nBy 2050, consumers in this scenario will not be able to buy an internal combustion engine (ICE) anywhere in the world. The result? In the Sky scenario, “global consumption of liquid hydrocarbon fuels in the passenger segment falls by 1.5-2 million barrels per day by 2030 compared with today.”\nHydrogen Council and the Energy Transitions Commission\nThere are two global collaborations that Shell highlighted in the Energy Transition Report that merit special attention, and they are the Hydrogen Council and the Energy Transitions Commission. As Shell describes them:\nHydrogen Council In January 2017, Shell and other companies launched the Hydrogen Council, a global coalition of chief executives working to raise the profile of hydrogen’s role in the transition to a low-carbon energy system. The council seeks to accelerate investment in the development and commercialization of the hydrogen and fuel-cell sectors. It provides recommendations to ensure appropriate conditions are in place to facilitate the deployment of hydrogen technologies. The council comprises 18 CEOs of energy, transport and industrial multinationals. In January 2017, the council published a report: “How hydrogen empowers the energy transition“ which further details hydrogen’s potential. In November 2017, the group launched a second report, called “Hydrogen, scaling up,” outlining a path to greater hydrogen deployment and its role in the energy transition.\nEnergy Transitions Commission. In 2015, Shell helped establish the Energy Transitions Commission which aims to accelerate change towards low-carbon energy systems that enable robust economic development and limit the rise in global temperature to well below 2°C. The ETC brings together leaders representing a wide range of sectors and interests: investors, energy companies, innovators, industrial energy users, nonprofit organizations and research institutes. As of October 2017, the ETC had 29 members. It is chaired by Lord Adair Turner and Dr Ajay Mathur. Chad Holliday serves as Shell’s Commissioner.\nThere are scenarios, Scarenarios, and there is the real world to come that will likely be neither. Let’s put that into perspective, these are not projections, these are estimates of likely situations and Shell is making business decisions based on them.\nIn the long-term, these are striking changes but they are evolutionary. In some ways, this is an attempt to put Shell’s investments into context for potential critics adopting a “hurry up” posture. The biggest changes in Shell’s business come between 2030 and 2050, in which it turns sharply towards renewables as hydrocarbon demand slows. For those welcoming a low-carbon future, it’s good news. For those looking for energy companies to maintain earnings, it’s good news. But not tomorrow.\nWe note the appetite for power projects with an 8-12% return while requiring 15% for advanced fuels. That clearly reflects the hurry-up in this document, which is less about Paris and more about a desire to get into the business of producing and delivering electricity as a world-scale replacement for producing and delivering fuels. Lower returns for strategically vital projects — that’s been accepted at big companies for a long time.\nAdvanced fuels? To the extent that they compete head-to-head with conventional fuels, Shell will be delighted to do them, and is investing in technologies that it believes will achieve that.\nBut Shell hardly needed an Energy Transition report to justify fuel projects that meet current investment hurdles — that’s energy-as-usual, not energy transition. The Energy Transition that is leading to this report comes in the form of electrons. The company is advising regulators that electricity will lead Shell towards meeting its Paris Agreement goals. Meanwhile, the company is advising shareholders that it sees not only “freedom to operate” in a future dominated by electric power, it sees good business too.\nCategory: Top Stories\n« Complex feedstocks, clean synthesis gas: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Sierra Energy\nEquipment Requirements to Study Agitation for Gas-Liquid Fermentation »\nThe Biofuels Digest newsletter\nThe most widely-read biofuels daily — 14,000+ organizations subscribe — why not you too?\n<a href=”http://bit.ly/32kKTFR” linktype=”1″ target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.ascension-publishing.com/Leaf-090319.png” height=”250″ width=”300″></a><br>\n<a style=”color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;” track=”on” shape=”rect” href=”http://bit.ly/32kKTFR” linktype=”1″ target=”_blank”>Leaf – Fermentation solutions for ethanol and biobased chemicals – click here to learn more.</a><br><br>","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line673922"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5602789521217346,"wiki_prob":0.4397210478782654,"text":"‘I will not let criminals hold my community hostage’\nWe as a community need to address the issues that lead to drug, gun and gang violence.\n‘I will not let criminals hold my community hostage’ We as a community need to address the issues that lead to drug, gun and gang violence. Check out this story on thedailyjournal.com: https://vineland.dj/2vWRaJq\nJennifer Webb-McRae Published 9:16 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2018 | Updated 1:49 p.m. ET Aug. 12, 2018\nCumberland County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae speaks during a press conference regarding the death of 9-year-old Jennifer Trejo Tuesday, July 17, 2018 in Bridgeton, N.J. Trejo was killed by a stray bullet that went through a wall of her home at approximately 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.(Photo: Joe Lamberti/Staff Photographer)Buy Photo\nAfter spending 24 years of my professional life practicing law in the field of criminal justice, I have seen my fair share of the carnage left behind by gun violence. While every shooting takes its toll, I have to say that the killing of 9-year-old Jennifer Trejo in her bedroom by a random shooting outside her home on July 17 in Bridgeton, and having over 100 children and parents witness the violent shooting death of a man at the end of a football practice in Millville on Aug. 9, have deeply moved and shocked me.\nAs I spoke to over 100 kids and parents of the football association and offered grief counseling services to help them deal with the trauma of witnessing a violent shooting, I realized that we are all feeling traumatized by the senseless acts of violence that are occurring in our community.\nProsecutors are supposed to project strength and resolution in our quest to seek justice for individuals and the community. In that regard, I want to assure the community that investigators from both cities as well as from my office are doing everything in their power to solve these heinous crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice.\nA flier announces a $10,000 reward for information in the shooting death of 9-year-old Jennifer \"Chikis\" Trejo in Bridgeton. (Photo: The Daily Journal)\nHowever, if I am willing to tell babies that it's OK to feel sad and get help because they have experienced a traumatic event, then it is OK to tell the community that as a parent and a life-long community member, I too am experiencing grief and stress due to these traumatic events. I know that some are saying that Cumberland County is a “war zone” and that they don’t wish to live here anymore. To that, I would say, I could have chosen to live anywhere and prospered but I chose to return here and raise a family because of all the great things and people Cumberland County has to offer. I will not let criminals hold my community hostage.\nEvil can only flourish when good men remain silent. We need witnesses to prove cases in court. A police officer on every corner is not what makes a community safe. It is people coming together, helping one another, and dictating acceptable cultural and social norms for where they live. We as a community need to say: “NOT ON MY BLOCK, NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD, NOT IN MY CITY, NOT IN MY COUNTY.”\nWe as a community need to address the issues that lead to drug, gun and gang violence. It doesn’t start with crime, it starts with poverty, lack of resources, lack of jobs, lack of mental health and drug treatment services, etc.\nAlthough it doesn’t get the attention from news media, we have been working on these issues for years. We have the Cumberland County Positive Youth Coalition that works on reducing juvenile delinquency and keeping kids out of the school to prison pipeline. (Learn more at ccpydc.com.) We have CC THRIVE (Cumberland Collective To Help Reverse Inequality and Violence Everywhere), which will pump over $500,000 into our community for projects that reduce gang and gun violence in 2019. (Learn more at njccpo.org/thrive.) We have three active Police Athletic Leagues in Bridgeton, Vineland and Millville that not only focus on sports but focus on life skills. Do a google search or scroll through our Facebook page and you will see the countless ways we are working to combat youth gang and gun violence.\nIn closing, death and life are in the power of the tongue. I choose to speak life into my community rather than death. When you hear someone speak ill of Cumberland County, counter with the positive things that are happening here. Focus your time and energy on just one little thing that improves the quality of life in Cumberland County rather than the things that bring us down. Together we can make Cumberland County what we want it to be ... even though we have to stop and cry sometime.\nJennifer Webb-McRae is the Cumberland County prosecutor.\nA small makeshift memorial outside Lakeside Middle School in Millville, where Joseph L. Jones was fatally shot on Thursday night, Aug. 9, 2018. (Photo: Anthony Coppola/Staff Photographer)\nRead or Share this story: https://vineland.dj/2vWRaJq\nLetter: Licenses for undocumented immigrants\nLetter: President Trump and negative press\nLetter: Impartial jurors?\nLetter: Cory Booker, no respect\nLetter: Baysave seeks feedback about bayshore\nLetter: Suicides and injuries shatter hearts\nGannett Careers\nSubmit Wedding Announcement\nSubmit Engagement Announcement\n© 2020 www.thedailyjournal.com. All rights reserved.\nCars.com Vineland","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line272698"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5554899573326111,"wiki_prob":0.4445100426673889,"text":"DESTINATIONS hungary\nBudapest, an old-world city with a throbbing urban pulse, is a must-stop on any trip to Central Europe. Szentendre and Eger have their own charms, including majestic hilltop castles and cobblestone streets winding among lovely baroque buildings. All this, and the generosity of the Magyar soul, sustains visitors to this land of vital spirit and beauty.\nHungary sits at the crossroads of Central Europe, having retained its own identity by absorbing countless invasions and foreign occupations. Its industrious, resilient people have a history of brave but unfortunate uprisings: against the Turks in the 17th century, the Habsburgs in 1848, and the Soviet Union in 1956. With the withdrawal of the last Soviet soldiers from Hungarian soil in 1991, Hungary embarked on a decade of sweeping changes. The adjustment to a free-market economy has not all been easy sailing, but Hungary at long last has regained self-determination and a chance to rebuild an economy devastated by years of communist misrule.\nHungary joined NATO in 1999, and the country joined the European Union (EU) in May 2004. In 2002, then 39-year-old Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the subject of gentle mockery when he suggested that the Hungarian economy was like a guided missile that had taken off and which could not be shot down. Orbán's increasingly right-wing FIDESZ party won the 2010 parliamentary elections, achieving a supermajority, and the party has since redrawn the Hungarian constitution.\nTwo rivers cross the country: the famous Duna (Danube) flows from the west through Budapest on its way to the southern frontier, and the smaller Tisza flows from the northeast across the Nagyalföld (Great Plain). What Hungary lacks in size it makes up for in beauty and charm. Hungarians are known for their hospitality. Although their unusual and difficult language is anything but a quick study, English is fast becoming the second language of Hungary, even superseding German. But what all Hungarians share is a deep love of music, and the calendar is studded with it, from Budapest's famous opera to its annual spring music festival. And at many more touristy restaurants Gypsy violinists serenade you during your evening meal.\nEXPLORE HUNGARY\nReady for a trip of a lifetime to Hungary?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line70508"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8165768384933472,"wiki_prob":0.8165768384933472,"text":"WHAT have we\nbeen up to\nwith the sun?\nFor us at Phanes Group, making a real difference means supporting the local communities where we are developing solar projects. On the eve of Eid al Fitr, we donated bags of rice and cooking oil to villages in Sokoto and Kebbi states, located in Nigeria, just in time for the celebratory close to Ramadan.\nMarket UK Market\nDuring May and June 2019 the Phanes Group HQ staff collected food, blankets and clothing for donation to local mosques and labor camps.\nPhanes Group shortlisted to bid for \"Promotion of Mini Grids for Rural Electrification in North…\nPhanes Group is excited to have been among the four consortiums shortlisted to bid for the Uganda Ministry of Energy & Mineral Development’s “Promotion of Mini Grids for Rural Electrification in Northern Uganda” tender. The program is co-financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) under the German Climate Technology Initiative (DKTI), the European Union (EU) and the Uganda Rural Electrification Agency. In line with our goal of bringing power to communities that need it most, rural electrification continues to be a key focus for Phanes Group, and we continue to make progress in scaling-up our off-grid activities across sub-Saharan Africa.\nInternational end-to-end solar provider Phanes Group has announced the 30MW Gossas Solar Farm Project in Senegal as the winner of the second edition of its Solar Incubator. The announcement was made at the “Unlocking Solar Capital: Africa” conference in Kigali, Rwanda, where three finalists presented their proposal to a panel of international industry experts from responsAbility, ECREEE, Hogan Lovells, Phanes Group, RINA, and African Development Bank. “We are proud to announce Mr. Hadj [the project owner] as the winner of this year’s Solar Incubator. It was a difficult decision as we received a strong response of project proposals with the potential to positively impact their communities. Our experience now in the second year of the incubator encourages us to continue with this initiative because there is a great deal of local talent on the continent who have the potential to benefit from such a platform,” said Andrea Haupts, COO of Phanes Group. Maintaining a long-term stake in the project, Hadj and the Dubai-headquartered solar provider will work collaboratively, aiming to bring the solar energy project to financial close.\nPhanes Group is honored to announce that we have won the \"Gulf Capital Business of the Year\", presented at last night's Gulf Capital SME Awards 2018. We are very proud to have been the only renewable energy company nominated, in what was a notable and diverse group of candidates. Congratulations to all of the finalists, who were recognized for their remarkable growth and contribution to the UAE economy. A big thanks to the Phanes Group team for all of their hard work!\nWe’re delighted to announce that ECREEE (ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficie…\nWe’re delighted to announce that ECREEE (ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency) has joined the Phanes Group Solar Incubator 2018, adding to the strong line-up of expertise represented by our solar incubator partners. If you haven’t applied yet, visit www.phanesgroup.com/incubator and submit your application today – deadline for submissions is 27 September (11.59 pm CET).\nPhanes Group is delighted to announce the launch of the 2nd edition of the Phanes Group Solar Incubator in partnership with Hogan Lovells, responsAbility Renewable Energy Holding, RINA and Solarplaza. The initiative aims to identify and support PV projects of potential in sub-Saharan Africa. If you are looking to: •\tWork towards getting your PV project funded and drive it to financial close; •\tConnect with key industry players and receive mentoring from them; •\tGive back to the local community and make a difference. Then submit your application now, deadline is September 27, 2018 (11:59 p.m. CET) – don’t miss out! Visit our page and apply www.phanesgroup.com/incubator\nTogether with its asset construction division, Oryx Solar System Solutions LLC (Oryx), Phanes Group is delivering the Middle East’s largest distributed solar project. Stefanos Lialios, Head of Project Execution at Phanes Group in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) spoke to pv magazine about the challenges faced in building and operating the landmark project, and finding the right equipment and solutions to address these challenges.\nOur CEO, Martin Haupts, shares his takeaways from the Africa Energy Forum 2018.\nAt Phanes Group we believe that making a difference means supporting the local communities where we are developing solar projects. We have donated bags of rice and cooking oil to villages in Sokoto and Kebi states, located in Nigeria, for the celebratory close to Ramadan.\nPhanes Group is pleased to announce it will be present in Mauritius on June 19-22 for the Africa Energy Forum 2018 (AEF). We are looking forward to meeting partners, existing and potential, and discussing the latest PV solar trends in Africa. Get in touch if you’re attending and send your requests to info@phanesgroup.com or visit us at stand #49.\nEditorial by Phanes Group's CEO Martin Haupts, published in the Africa Energy Yearbook\nMartin Haupts, CEO of Phanes Group, writes for Wealth Arabia about the potential investments into renewable energy.\nWe’re pleased to announce that Phanes Group has officially partnered with the Africa Infrastructure Development Association (AfIDA) – an association that seeks to promote and enable infrastructure project development activities in Africa. In line with our commitment to the electrification of Africa and the opportunity that solar energy represents, we’re excited to work closely with AfIDA to advance the development of more bankable power projects on the continent.\nWe're delighted to welcome Marlon Dos Santos, the winner of the first Phanes Group Solar Incubator, to Dubai. The official Solar Incubator workshop is taking place this week. The Phanes Group team and its Solar Incubator partners will be holding intensive training sessions covering the entire solar value chain and laying the foundations for developing and executing Marlon’s project in his home country Mozambique.\nPhanes Group will be sponsoring the “ZIMDABA London 2018 Investment Forum”, 15-16 March, at the Royal Geographical Society. We are looking forward to contributing to an emerging renewable sector under the new administration.\nOur CEO, Martin Haupts, shares his insights with the Nigerian Tribune on renewable energy, and on electrifying the African continent.\nOur CEO, Martin Haupts, discusses the current state of on-grid solar PV in Nigeria with Solarplaza.\nPhanes Group is pleased to announce it will be present in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Feb 15-16 for Solarplaza's Making Solar Bankable event. We are looking forward to meeting partners, existing and potential, and discussing the latest PV solar trends in emerging markets. Get in touch if you're attending and send your requests to info@phanesgroup.com\nWe’re pleased to announce that Phanes Group has officially launched a partnership with Power Africa – a U.S. Government-led initiative focused on increasing power access in sub-Saharan Africa. In line with our commitment to the electrification of the region and to the opportunity that solar energy represents, we’re excited to work together with Power Africa in achieving its goal of adding more than 30,000 megawatts of electricity generation capacity and 60 million new home and business connections by 2030.\nOur CEO, Martin Haupts, shares his insights with Forbes Middle East on the importance of green private equity investment for sustainable projects.\nWe’re excited to have been recognized by S&P Global Platts as a finalist in this year’s Global Energy Awards – the only company headquartered in the Middle East to be represented in the “Rising Star Company” category. It’s been a remarkable year of growth for Phanes Group, driven by a dedicated team, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank S&P Global Platts for their recognition. Winners will be announced next Thursday, at the Global Energy Awards gala in New York – stay tuned!\nWe’re excited to announce the winner of the 2017 Phanes Group Solar Incubator: Marlon Dos Santos, developing the Kitaka Solar Project (50 MW) in Mozambique. We would like to thank all our finalists for their outstanding presentations, as well as Solarplaza who hosted our event, and the members of our esteemed evaluation panel who brought their expertise in making what was indeed a very difficult decision.\nToday we're excited to announce the finalists for our inaugural Phanes Group Solar Incubator 2017. We'd like to congratulate the following finalists, who will be presenting their projects in front of a high-level evaluation panel: * Côte d'Ivoire, Akouédo Solar Project (2 x 25 MW) * Ethiopia, Solar Project - Amhara Region (100 MW) * Mozambique, Kitaka Solar Project (50 MW) We've received an outstanding response to the program, and we would like to thank all who applied and expressed interest. We wish the finalists good luck!\nWe're excited to have been recognized as a finalist for the \"Business of the Year\" category in this year's Gulf Capital SME Awards - a recognition of the team's hard work and dedication in driving the company's growth. Thank you to the Gulf Capital SME Awards organizers for this recognition, and to our staff for their continued support.\nIn this LinkedIn Op-Ed article, Phanes Group's CEO Martin Haupts discusses the Solar Incubator initiative, and the need to support the development of Africa's renewable energy infrastructure.\nIn this video interview, Phanes Group's CEO Martin Haupts explains the Phanes Group Solar Incubator initiative. Apply now! We're accepting entries until October 1, 2017.\nWe are very pleased to announce the Evaluation Panel for the upcoming Phanes Group Solar Incubator to be held during the \"Unlocking Solar Capital Africa\" in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, October 26, 2017.\nWe’re delighted to announce that RINA Consulting has joined the Phanes Group Solar Incubator, adding to the strong line-up of expertise represented by our partners. If you haven’t yet applied, visit our page and submit your application today!\nWe’re excited to announce the launch of the Phanes Group Solar Incubator 2017, aiming to help you bring your sub-Saharan Africa PV project to financial close - joining forces with top-tier partners such as Proparco, responsAbility, Hogan Lovells, and Solarplaza. Get your PV project funded and drive it to financial close. Be supported by key industry players and receive mentoring from them. Give back to the local community and make a difference. Entries close October 1, 2017; visit the Solar Incubator page through the link below, and apply now!\nSolar and wind energy are undoubtedly on the rise. The renewable sector as a whole continues to scale up, and countries around the world, particularly growth markets, are announcing promising policy changes that make a big contribution to our global sustainability goals. Andrea Haupts, Chief Operating Officer of Phanes Group, discusses the potential for renewables to be a key driver of job growth.\nPhanes Group is currently cooperating with meteocontrol GmbH, a leading provider of independent photovoltaic monitoring systems, on Phase I of the DP World Solar Power Programme - Dubai’s largest distributed solar industrial rooftop project. meteocontrol is implementing complex photovoltaic rooftop systems with a total installed volume of 25.8 MWp. meteocontrol designed the customized monitoring platform for these rooftop solar systems.\nPhanes Group has been shortlisted as one of 103 small and medium-sized enterprises as a finalists competing for honors at the 2017 Gulf Capital SME Awards.\nSolar represents a competitive source in the energy mix across growth markets such as the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) and sub-Saharan Africa - Phanes Group's focus markets. In this interview with PV Magazine, Martin Haupts discusses the state of solar development in these regions, as well as Phanes Group's current activities and future plans. Read the article, through the link below.\nLast week, the Phanes Group team attended the 2017 Africa Energy Forum in Copenhagen - a key calendar event for the industry's biggest players dedicated to the African continent. In follow-up, CEO Martin Haunts discusses key takeaways from the conference\nThe Phanes Group team's involvement with this week’s Africa Energy Forum 2017 comes at an important time for our work on the continent. By the end of this year, we’re planning to bring our first utility-scale project in Nigeria’s Sokoto state to financial close. The project is one of three from Phanes Group in the country which together total 260 MW, and is also among 14 PPAs backed by the Nigerian government.\nAll Eyes on Africa: An Interview with the Africa Energy Forum in the Lead-Up to AEF 2017 in Copenhag…\nPhanes Group is pleased to be exhibiting at the Africa Energy Forum (AEF) in Copenhagen next month. In the build-up to the event, CEO Martin Haupts spoke to EnergyNet – the forum organizers, about the best model for electrifying the continent and being an end-to-end solar provider.\nRecognition as \"Leading UAE Renewable Energy Company of the Year\" in the 2017 UAE Business…\nPhanes Group has been recognized by MEA Markets as the \"Leading UAE Renewable Energy Company of the Year\" in the 2017 UAE Business Awards. This recognition of our work is the result of our staff giving their best every day to deliver the highest standard of quality and expertise in new and growing markets. A big thank you to the team!\nA discussion on the impact SME's (Small & Medium-Sized Enterprises) are having on the renewable energy sector by Andrea Haupts, COO of Phanes Group. Read the article here - first published in Arabian Business magazine.\nAs last week's World Future Energy Summit / Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week came to a close, Martin Haupts discussed the state of the industry with radio station Dubai Eye 103.8. Tune in with the podcast linked below (interview starts at 45 minutes, 25 seconds).\nFollowing-up to last week's World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi UAE - and as we head into the new year - Martin Haupts reflects on the case for renewable energy today. Read the full posting through the link below.\nThe UAE energy strategy 2050 and Saudi Arabia’s plans to go big on renewables and nuclear energy were some of the highlights of the four-day World Future Energy Summit (WFES) this year. Martin Haupts reflects on the opportunities these represent in this article by Gulf News.\nConstruction Week Online speaks with Martin Haupts on the renewable energy sector in the Middle East region, and about Phanes Group's plans for growth.\nPV Insider and CSP Today have published their “MENA Solar Market Outlook for 2017” whitepaper, where Phanes Group CEO Martin Haupts speaks about the future of distributed solar in the region.\nAndrea Haupts, COO of Phanes Group, shares her insights with Finance Middle East on starting and developing a start-up business, for the magazine's November 2016 issue.\n\"Jobs, Economic Growth, and Social Mobility are all Byproducts of our Fight to Tackle Climate C…\nCOP22 was billed as a meeting that would strengthen the world’s commitment to a clean energy future. Instead, an unexpected Presidential result in the US left many leaving Morocco worried for the Paris Agreement and cast a shadow over the near-term future for renewable energy – part of the world’s action plan to tackle climate change. But the truth is, renewable energy is now much more than just a climate mitigation initiative. As an industry, it’s growing – creating jobs, stimulating investment, driving economic development and catalyzing investment research. IRENA reports that over 8 million people are now employed in the renewable energy industry, and that figure continues to grow.\nAs part of its initiatives for rural electrification, Phanes Group is bringing solar powered water-pumps to Nigeria’s rural areas to help farmers save on cost for diesel while also saving on CO2 emissions.\nPhanes Group is collaborating with DP World on CSR projects to cater to those who need energy solutions to improve their lives. This showcase school container was displayed on Wetex 2016 in Dubai and will be donated to a refugee camp to provide a safe teaching environment. More interesting projects coming soon.\nWorking hard to help make the Shams Dubai program a success.\nPhanes Group team on site at the DP World Solar Power Programme. Working hard to help make the Shams Dubai program a success.\nThe Dubai-based developer signs PPA initiative to construct 100 MW solar farm in Sokoto in 2018, with two further 100 MW plants to follow in 2019. The first project will entail a 100 MW solar farm in the country’s Sokoto region, with the first 50 MW phase of the plant penciled in for completion in the first quarter of 2018, and the entire plant scheduled to be online before the end of that year.\nMedia ME has published a whitepaper on last May's “COP 21: Outcomes and Effects on the Public-Private Sectors” conference - a Green Leadership Series event organized by Dubai Science Park and Dubai Green Economy Partnership. Phanes Group CEO Martin Haupts was invited to share his perspective on the role of the private sector in partnering to achieve the UAE’s Green Economy vision.\nOn May 16th 2016, the Dubai Green Economy Partnership and Dubai Science Park held the latest conference in its “Green Leadership Series”, with the attendance of UAE’s Ministry of Energy (MOEnr), Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Dubai Municipality, and the UAE Water Aid Foundation (Suqia). Titled “COP 21: Outcomes and Effects on the Public-Private Sectors”, the event explored the impact of the recently-signed Paris Agreements on the UAE, as well as the UAE’s path towards achieving its sustainable development goals. A particular theme was the collaboration between the public and private sectors, and Phanes Group CEO Martin Haupts was invited to share his perspective on the role of the private sector in partnering to achieve the UAE’s Green Economy vision.\nPhanes Group CEO Martin Haupts was interviewed for the April 2016 issue of Future Cities Middle East. The article features Martin's views on the Middle East region's rapidly changing market for solar PV projects, his perspective on the future, as well as the development of Phanes Group\nToday is the 46th Earth Day and people from all walks of life, and all over the world will demonstrate their support for environmental protection. It’s the biggest of the environmental celebrations and the Earth Day Network anticipates a billion people from 192 countries will take action today to safeguard the planet.\nPhanes Wins DP World Tender to Deliver First Phase of Largest Rooftop Solar Project in the Middle Ea…\nGreen Energy Tomorrow, the regionally focused rooftop solar specialist launched by Phanes Group – has signed an agreement with DP World to deliver the first phase of the largest rooftop solar project in the Middle East. Green Energy Tomorrow secured the rooftop project following a competitive tender process.\nPhanes Group Wins DP World Tender to Deliver First Phase of Largest Rooftop Solar Project in Middle …\nGreen Energy Tomorrow, the regionally focused rooftop solar specialist launched by Phanes Group - has signed an agreement with DP World to deliver the first phase of the largest rooftop solar project in the Middle East. Green Energy Tomorrow secured the project following a competitive tender process. The project complements Dubai’s efforts to diversify energy sources in line with Dubai Vision 2021 and the Dubai Integrated Energy Strategy 2030 which seek to reduce energy demand by 30% by 2030.\nMore than 5,000 solar panels are helping a Dubai power station to become one of the region’s largest, single rooftop arrays, but companies say the authorisation process is inhibiting a large-scale roll-out. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) announced yesterday that its Jebel Ali power plant was producing 1.5 megawatts of power, which is enough to power about a quarter of a million homes, according to the US-based Solar Energy Industry Association.\nA 33.4 MW solar plant was officially inaugurated in Monte Plata province of the Dominican Republic. Monte Plata Phase I solar array has been developed by the Dubai-based Phanes Group, Taiwanese NSP Group and German Soventix.\nPhanes Group, an international solar PV developer, asset manager and investment manager, has launched a full service solar entity, the company announced on March 5th, 2016. Green Energy Tomorrow, will specialize in rooftop solar PV (distributed) and smaller-scale ground mounted solar PV systems in the United Arab Emirates and the GCC region.\nPhanes Group has launched Green Energy Tomorrow, a full-service solar entity specializing in rooftop solar opportunities, i.e. rooftop portfolios and smaller-scale ground mounted solar systems. Its initial geographic focus will be the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Dubai in particular, but the company also sees a strong growth potential especially with regards to the wider GCC region and Sub-Saharan Africa. Green Energy Tomorrow is wholly owned by Phanes Group and its shareholders General Energy Solutions (GES) and Neo Solar Power (NSP) both from Taiwan – combining the extensive deployment, investment and financing expertise of Phanes Group, with the technology of its partners GES and NSP to scale up solar in the region.\nwww.greenenergytomorrow.com\nDubai-based solar company is targeting the addition of 500 MW of solar PV by 2018 across numerous regions globally; General Energy Solutions' 30% acquisition delivers ambitious boon for the company.\nDubai Carbon and the United Nations Development Programme have issued the latest edition of their annual \"State of Green Economy Report\". Read an excerpt of the article \"Supply and Demand Go Hand-in-Hand: How the Private Sector Can Assist Dubai in Achieving its Renewable-Energy Targets\", in which Phanes Group Managing Director, Martin Haupts is quoted.\nPhanes Group's Managing Director, Martin Haupts, has been quoted in The National, in today's article: \"Bank Financing Falls Short of UAE's Green Economy\".\nThe National Round Table on Financing & Investing in the Green Economy was held in Dubai, gathering financial institutions and regulators as well as Green Economy policy makers and businesses from across the UAE. The aim was to initiate dialogue on motivating the finance sector to become actively involved in the transition to a greener, more sustainable economy in the UAE and globally. Martin Haupts, Managing Director of Dubai-based Phanes Group, was one of the panelists discussing the financing of low carbon opportunities. He sees huge potential in this field, especially in the range of $15m to $50m sukuk: “The green initiatives offer long-term stable revenues over 15 to 20 years. Islamic finance with securitization is a great option where conventional financing is not ready for the risk.” The conference was co-hosted by the UAE Ministry of Environment and Water and the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and was attended by 300 participants. It forms part of the UAE preparations – in collaboration with UNEP – for hosting the 2016 UNEP FI Global Roundtable on Sustainable Finance under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Crowne Prince of Dubai.\nPhanes Group’s Managing Director Martin Haupts described ways to refinance renewable energy assets in the Mena region, giving previous case studies from Phanes Group in the context of recent market developments during World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi. He was part of a panel discussion about Green Sukuks (Islamic Bonds) and Financing Sustainable Energy Solutions in Mena organized by the Clean Energy Business Council. The interactive seminar addressed sustainable energy financing in the region, and also discussed new ways of thinking about finance and capital for renewable energy projects. The financing of renewable energy projects is seen as an issue because banks are often nervous about funding such initiatives. It has resulted in organizations seeking more innovative ways to fund renewable energy developments. The Clean Energy Business Council has been working with Dubai Ministries to promote a green sukuk as a new way of financing clean energy projects. WFES is the Middle East’s largest gathering on future energy and attracted up to 30,000 delegates from 170 different countries.\nPhanes’ Managing Director Martin Haupts spoke at the SEIDC conference in Cairo alongside Philip ter Wort, Egypt Director of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on mitigating investment risks and attracting FDI for the Egyptian solar market. In this panel discussion, the speakers specifically addressed how to identify key investor priorities and requirements. They also assessed fiscal incentives in place to attract investors and further requirements for the solar industry. SEIDC is the first conference dedicated to the solar energy industry in Egypt and was held alongside the 24th International Power, Energy and Security Forum. It aims to be a networking platform for the industry in Egypt in order to discuss and learn about shaping policy and exchange knowledge about the market, finance and investment possibilities.\nPhanes supports GES in a £18m solar deal to benefit up to 4,500 Manchester homes. Up to 4,500 social homes in Manchester will be fitted with solar panels after a housing association agreed an £18m deal.\nPhanes Group starts operations through PAG Renewable Energy Services in Dubai to cater to the growing demand of renewable energy in the region. PAG Renewable Energy Services is a project management specialist that focuses on renewable project development in the EMEA region with a distinct focus on solar energy and the Distributed PV segment. PAG’s geographical location positions the company perfectly to harness the arising opportunities in the EMEA renewable markets.\nMENA PV additions quadrupled in 2018\nAs anticipated, 2018 was a pivotal year for PV installations in Middle East and North Africa, writes Josefin Berg, Research and Analysis Manager at IHS Markit. PV Magazine's end-of-year estimates show that approximately 3.6 GW of PV systems were installed in the region in 2018, compared to less than 1 GW in 2017.\n$1.5m grant to assist Ghana’s renewable energy investment drive\nThe African Development Bank has approved a $1.5 million grant from its Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), to assist Ghana’s renewable energy investment drive. The bank stated that this grant will support the government’s efforts to overcome technical, financial, regulatory and institutional barriers to scaling-up renewable energy investments in the country. The project, which is part of the Bank-led Climate Investment Fund (CIF) and the Scaling-up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) Investment Plan for Ghana, will complement the bank’s effort in the Ghana Energy Development and Access Programme (GEDAP). The SEFA grant will fund broad components: the technical/commercial/regulatory and feasibility studies, aimed at providing detailed renewable energy resource studies, grid integration studies and regulatory texts, and resources and public sector skills and capacity development.\nGTM: Middle East and Africa set for 170% growth in solar demand\nThe Middle East and Africa is set to enjoy a year-on-year PV demand increase of 170%, according to GTM Research. In its latest regional breakout, deployment is expected to land at 3.6GW this year spiking to 20GW in 2020. Cumulatively the region will install 83.7GW in the period 2018-2023. According to the report’s author, Ben Attia, there are currently 12.3GW of utility-scale solar contracted or under construction and a further 21GW in the pre-contract phase. Major utility-scale tender programmes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE have boosted numbers and Attia expects Africa to contribute more than 6.4GW from 2020 onwards. Saudi and the UAE are expected to account for half of all the additional solar capacity installed out to 2023.\nWorld Bank exceeds climate finance target with record year\nOn Thursday, the World Bank revealed that in fiscal year 2018, 32.1% of its financing had climate co-benefits – already exceeding the target set in 2015 that 28% of its lending volume would be climate-related by 2020. “We have not just exceeded our climate targets on paper, we have transformed the way we work with countries and are seeing major transitions to renewable energy, clean and resilient transport systems, climate-smart agriculture and sustainable cities,” said World Bank CEO, Kristalina Georgieva. This amounted to a record-setting $20.5 billion in climate-related finance delivered in the last fiscal year, the result of an institution-wide effort to mainstream climate considerations into all development projects.\nAfDB supporting Zambian small-scale renewables\nThe African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a US$50 million loan for small-scale renewable energy projects in Zambia, after recent droughts caused a serious electricity supply deficit due to the country’s heavy reliance on hydropower. This comes on top of the US$52.5 million in financing approved by the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in February as part of a financing framework. Zambia’s Government launched the Renewable Energy Feed-in-Tariff (REFiT) policy in 2017 to support private investments for small-scale <20MW renewable projects, driven by the hydropower deficit. The ‘Global Energy Transfer Feed-in Tariffs’ (GETFiT) Zambia Programme was then brought in to facilitate the implementation of the REFiT Policy aiming to finance 200MW of renewable energy projects. The GETFiT programme will be co-financed by the GCF and AfDB along with other yet to be determined co-financers.\nFalling battery costs to enable wind and solar generation to hit 50% globally by 2050\nWind and solar could provide half of the world’s energy generation by 2050 on the back of continually declining technology costs, particularly in battery energy storage, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). The 150-page New Energy Outlook (NEO) 2018 report predicts that the future of the global electricity system will be dominated by tumbling lithium-ion battery prices. These have already fallen 80% per MWh since 2010 and will continue to decline as electric vehicle manufacturing builds up through the 2020s.\nGlobal funds back desert solar to bring power to 250 million Africans\nThe Desert to Power collaboration between the African Development Bank (ADB), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Africa50 investment fund aims to build 10,000 MW of solar projects across the dry, sunny region. That would be enough to bring solar-generated electricity to 250 million people, including 90 million through off-grid solutions, which the organisations claim will enable the development of agriculture. Just 42% of people have access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. Green Climate Fund executive director Howard Bamsey said the needs expressed by countries in the region were driving the initiative. “Sahel countries have identified the potential of solar power to bring green energy to people across the region,” said Bamsey. “Renewable energy investment is a priority in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.” The organisations agreed to share ideas and resources to make solar power available throughout the Sahel region, with the aim of transforming African deserts into new sources of renewable energy.\nRenewable Energy Needs To Scale Up By A Factor Of Six, Reports IRENA\nThe speed of global renewable energy adoption needs to increase by at least a factor of six if the world is to meet the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement, but which would also result in the growth of the global economy and global welfare, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency. The new report published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Global Energy Transformation: A Roadmap to 2050, was launched at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue being held on Tuesday and Wednesday at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office. According to the report, cumulative energy system investment would need to be increased by 30% through to 2050 in favor of supporting renewable energy and energy efficiency — from around $93 trillion under current and planned policies, up to $120 trillion. This investment figure also requires $18 trillion be directed towards power grids and energy flexibility — double that of current and planned policies.\nZambia issues RfQ for 100MW of solar under GET FiT programme\nThe government of Zambia has issued a Request for Qualification (RfQ) for up to 100MW of solar under the first round of the GET FiT Zambia programme. German development bank KfW, which is representing the Zambian government, is implementing the tender on behalf of the Ministry of Energy. The capacity will become available via a reverse bid, competitive auction process. The maximum project size will be 20MW and each applicant can apply for up to two projects. A maximum of 20 projects and bidders will be shortlisted and invited to submit full technical and financial Bids during a Request for Proposal (RfP) stage. In December 2017, GET FiT Zambia became the official implementation programme for the Zambian Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (REFiT) Strategy, which was formally launched by the Ministry of Energy in October 2017.\nLebanese solar-plus-storage tender could enable private supply of renewables\nLebanon could reconfigure its laws and regulations to allow private sector actors to generate renewable energy for sale to the grid, it emerged as the Middle Eastern country opened up its first solar-plus-storage tender process. The Government of Lebanon is seeking to enter power purchase agreements (PPAs) for renewable energy supply and has called on “private investors and companies interested” to submit expressions of interest (EOI) to deliver multi-megawatt solar PV projects with co-located energy storage. PPAs will be bought by Electricité du Liban (EDL), Lebanon’s main electricity supplier, on behalf of the Lebanese Republic Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW). It was made clear the government wants to buy up the electricity supply, not to own the assets themselves.\nMadagascar joins Scaling Solar scheme with added energy storage\nMadagascar is the third African country to join the Scaling Solar programme, with the planned 30-40MW solar facility envisaged to help ease daily interruptions of power service. Other Scaling Solar tenders also underway are in Senegal and Ethiopia, with a second round underway in Zambia. The World Bank highlighted that the island nation suffers from frequent power outages, and under one fifth of the population has access to electricity. In the Bank’s Doing Business Report, Madagascar was ranked 187 out of 189 countries regarding the difficulty, delay, and cost of getting electricity. The planned Scaling Solar project will provide a reliable alternative to expensive diesel generators, drawing on an abundant source of renewable energy.\nIFC, Canadian government announce partnership to spur renewable energy in Africa\nIFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and the government of Canada has formed a financial partnership that will utilise public funding to generate private sector investments to spur renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The program, known as Canada-IFC Renewable Energy Program for Africa, will feature the Canadian government contributing US$122 million that the IFC will use to catalyze private sector investment in renewable energy by offering concessional financing mixed with IFC’s own account resources to mitigate a variety of risks that can deter private investment in renewable energy.\nGlobal solar investments topped US$160.8 billion in 2017 According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance\nBloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has reported that Global solar investments topped US$160.8 billion in 2017, an 18% increase over the previous year and importantly, despite capital costs declining around 25%.\nAfDB achieves 100% investment in green energy projects in 2017\nThe African Development Bank achieved a 100% investment in renewable energy in 2017, a milestone in its commitment to clean energy and efficiency. The Bank said in a statement that power generation projects with a cumulative 1,400MW exclusively from renewables were approved during the year, with plans to increase support for renewable energy projects in 2018 under the New Deal on Energy for Africa. Bank President, Akinwumi Adesina, commented: ‘’We are clearly leading on renewable energy. We will help Africa unlock its full energy potential, while developing a balanced energy mix to support industrialisation. “Our commitment is to ensure 100% climate screening for all Bank financed projects.’’\nNew BNEF Report Highlights Global Nature of Solar Adoption\nSolar PV (photovoltaics) penetration in emerging markets is rapidly expanding as system costs continue to fall, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) annual Climatescope survey. BNEF claimed that in 2016, a total of 34GW of new solar installations came on line in 71 emerging market countries studied by BNEF, up from 22GW in 2015 and just 3GW said to have been installed in 2011.\nBNEF Predicts 305GWh of Energy Storage Worldwide by 2030\nThe rise of energy storage will enjoy a similarly meteoric trajectory to that enjoyed by solar PV deployment in the past and could reach 305GWh of installations by 2030, BNEF has predicted. The market is set to “double six times” between the years 2016 and 2030, reaching 125GW / 305GWh, Bloomberg New Energy Finance claims. The research group yesterday published a new report, “Energy storage forecast 2016 – 2030”. BNEF calls the expected rise of energy storage during this time as having a “similar trajectory” to that seen in the solar PV market globally between 2010 and 2015. In those five years solar PV capacity doubled seven times over. It is expected that around US$103 billion could be invested in the technology to facilitate this expansion into the mainstream.\nKfW and ATI Establish Credit Facility to Spur Renewable Projects in Africa\nThe German Development Bank (KfW) and the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI) have set up a new credit facility instrument built to support renewable energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa that targets small and mid-scale renewable energy projects (up to 50MW). The German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), through the KfW, will provide funding up to US$38.8 million for the facility – which looks to allow small-and mid-scale renewable energy projects in Africa to reach financial close by meeting liquidity requirements that lenders frequently ask for in order to fund these projects.\nGlobal Solar Demand in 2017 Set for 100GW Milestone\nSolar trade association SolarPower Europe has updated its global solar demand forecast for 2017, expecting to reach the 100GW level for the first time. SolarPower Europe said that with global demand reaching 100GW, compared to 76.6GW installed in 2016, annual will be more than 30% in 2017. The trade group had expected only slight demand growth year-on-year, previously guiding installations could reach as much as 80GW in 2017. The real driver for strong demand in 2017 has come from China. The trade group said: “China alone has installed around 42GW in the first nine months of 2017 and is likely to add a total of over 50GW in 2017, which would account for more than half of the world's demand for new solar power capacities this year. This constitutes a 45% growth from the 34.5GW China installed last year.” However, SolarPower Europe noted that in its latest analysis estimates, Europe would also be a small contributor to the 2017 growth levels with installations expected to be around 10% higher than in 2016, with at least 7.5GW grid connected.\nSenegal launches RfP for 100MW of solar\nSenegal’s Electricity Regulatory Commission (CRSE) has issued Request for Proposals (RFPs) for 100MW of solar projects to be built in three regions. The tender will be structured through the World Bank’s ‘Scaling Solar’ programme and projects are due to be located at Touba in the region of Diourbel, at Kahone in the Kaolack region, or at Niakhar in the Fatick region.\nZimbabwe utility plans first 300MW of solar\nZimbabwe state-owned power company Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) has applied to develop three solar PV plants with the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA). A ZPC spokesperson told PV Tech that this is the firm’s first foray into solar energy, but did not comment on whether the company wished to build more solar in the future should these projects go ahead. The massive utility-scale projects would be far larger than the country’s current largest solar installation of 216kW from Switzerland’s meeco Group.\nSaudi Arabia Issues Rules for Small-Scale Solar Energy Generation\nSaudi Arabia has issued a regulatory framework for electricity consumers to operate their own, small-scale solar power generating systems and export unused power to the national grid, the government said on Monday. The rules will come into force next July 1 and cover small photovoltaic facilities with generating capacity of no more than 2 megawatts, the Electricity and Cogeneration Regulatory Authority said. Consumers will have their excess electricity offset against their future consumption and after a year they will receive cash payments at a tariff approved by the authority.\nWorld Bank Finances Niger’s Off-Grid Solar Initiative with $50 million\nNiger’s cabinet has ratified an agreement it closed in June with the International Development Association (IDA), which is part of the World Bank, for a €42.7 million ($50.3 million) financing that is planned to support the Niger Solar Electricity Access Project (NESPA), an initiative aimed at bringing solar power to rural communities.\nWorld Bank Approves $150m USD to Fund Off-Grid Systems in Northeastern Kenya\nThe World Bank this week approved $150m to fund off-grid solar systems in northeastern Kenya. The International Development Association credit is planned to provide power for an estimated 1.3 million people across 14 counties in Kenya’s northern and northeastern regions. According to the Bank, the project will aim to provide solar-based energy services to households, schools, hospitals, businesses and community centres through public-private partnerships that include “practical business models that attract private sector investment”. The project will include a technical assistance component that will facilitate a consumer education campaign as well as a capacity building programme.\nMauritius' Central Electricity Board (CEB) Launches Net Metering Scheme for Residential PV\nMauritius’ Central Electricity Board (CEB) has launched the second phase of the Small Scale Distributed Generation Net-Metering Scheme. The new phase of the program is expected to enable the installation of up to 2 MW of PV systems not exceeding 5 kW. Under the scheme, customers generating electricity will export any excess energy in the grid, in the form of kWh credits. The credits will be used when the customer’s system is not producing enough power to meet demand.\nInternational Energy Agency (IEA) Releases Latest Edition of its World Energy Investment Report\nThe International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its World Energy Investment report, showing that while there was a 12% fall in global energy investment last year, clean energy spending specifically claimed a record-high 43% share of all expenditure. $1.7 trillion USD is estimated to have been invested in global energy sectors last year, which accounts for 2.2% of global GDP.\nGovernment of Sudan Prepares to Launch Feed-In Tariff Scheme with Support from the UNDP\nThe Sudanese government is currently preparing to launch a Feed-In Tariff Scheme for solar energy and for renewables in general. Developed with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it is expected to encourage grid-connected renewable energy projects as well as off-grid generation. They are now seeking consultants with experience in the development of national FIT programs to help the local government and the country’s Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA) find the most suitable legal and regulatory framework for a future incentive scheme.\nAlgeria Launches Solar Energy Cluster\nThe Algerian government has officially launched a new solar energy cluster (Cluster algérien des énergies solaires). So far, 16 small and medium-sized solar enterprises and research institutes have joined the project. The cluster is intended to help solar energy players in Algeria to share their expertise and to mutually support future projects. In October 2014, Sonelgaz and the Algerian government revealed plans to deploy 4 GW of solar power for the first time. So far, however, the government has not made any announcement.\nAfDB and UN Environment Programme Release \"Atlas of Africa Energy Resources\" Report\nEnergy consumption in Africa is the lowest in the world, and per capita consumption has remained almost constant since 2000 – according to the new Atlas released Thursday 4 May by UN Environment and the African Development Bank during the World Economic Forum. Current energy production in Africa is insufficient to meet demand, with about a third of the total population of Africa still lacking access to electricity. The Atlas – developed in collaboration with the Environment Pulse Institute, United States Geological Survey and George Mason University – consolidates information in the “form of detailed ‘before and after’ images, charts, maps and other satellite data from 54 countries through visuals detailing the challenges and opportunities in providing Africa’s population with access to reliable, affordable and modern energy services” – said UN Environment in a press release.\nIRENA: Solar Outpaced Wind During Banner Year For Renewables\nAdding to the list of studies highlighting the immense growth of renewables last year, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has released a new report that finds global renewable energy generation capacity increased by 161 GW in 2016, making it the strongest year ever for new capacity additions. Perhaps most notably, though, the report also says solar growth outpaced wind energy for the first time since 2013. IRENA’s Renewable Energy Capacity Statistics 2017 report estimates that by the end of last year, the world’s renewable generation capacity reached 2,006 GW, with solar energy showing particularly strong growth.\nEnergy transition to generate US$10 trillion in benefits by 2050 – IEA/IRENA\nThe route to decarbonisation in the energy sector will create benefits of US$10 trillion every year by 2050, while requiring only US$1.8 trillion to implement, according to a new joint report from the International Energy Agency (IAE) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). In their first ever collaboration, IEA and IRENA found that a total of 6 million jobs would be created, even when accounting for jobs lost in other industries. Further jobs will also be created in the energy efficiency sector. However, the report also found that losses at oil and gas companies could reach more than US$1.3 trillion if the transition is not managed properly.\nEuropean Commission Reaffirms Support for Renewable Energy in Africa\nThe European Commission has announced its continued support to the African continent by promoting renewables through the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative. The Commission said this initiative is in line with its wider efforts in the implementation of the 2030 agenda on sustainable development and the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Launched in December 2015 at COP21, the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) is an Africa-owned initiative of the African Union.\nIRENA \"REthinking Energy 2017\" Report: Accelerating the Global Energy Transformation\nRenewable energy is a fundamental and growing part of the global energy transformation. Increasingly, renewables have become the first choice for expanding, upgrading and modernising power systems around the world. Click here to view IRENA's \"REthinking Energy 2017\" report, on accelerating the global energy transformation.\nNigeria Plans Africa's First Sovereign Green Bond, Addressing Climate Change and the Environment\nActing President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Thursday said that the Federal Government was making arrangements to inaugurate the first African Sovereign Green Bond to address climate change and environmental projects. Osinbajo said this at the Green Bonds Capital Market and Investors Conference organised by the Federal Ministry of Environment and the Debt Management Office (DMO) at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) office in Lagos. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Bonds are debt instruments issued by a government or a company which represent a fixed sum of money that was borrowed.\nVC Funding for Green Energy Reached Record High in 2016, Finds BNEF\nVenture capital (VC) funds are increasingly turning to clean energy for safe investments, with 2016 seeing record levels of cash funneled into rooftop solar and other low-carbon technologies, finds Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Last year, a total of $834 million went via VC funds into the clean energy industry. This is the highest figure recorded by BNEF since the analysts first started collecting data in 2004, and marked the third consecutive year that the figure invested increased. This momentum suggests a returning confidence among VC and private equity (PE) investors in solar, wind and other green technologies, having been chased away from the sector by more mainstream investors over the past five years.\nSolar Photovoltaic (PV) Milestone: 300 Gigawatts Installed Worldwide\nOn Sunday, the German Solar Association (BSW-Solar) announced the growth of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has now reached a significant milestone with 300 GW of total installed solar power capacity around the world. The global solar PV market increased by nearly 70 GW in 2016, reaching 294.69 GW, led by China, according to research and consulting firm GlobalData – a jump of around 30 per cent in new deployment compared to the previous year 2015. The photovoltaic systems installed in 2016 alone generate around 90 terawatt hours of clean solar power.\nNigeria: Bank of Industry (BoI) Launches $3 million USD Solar Energy Fund\nFormer United Nations Under-Secretary-General and currently the Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sustainable Energy for All, Dr Kandeh Yumkella has applauded the growth of alternative energy in recent years.Dr Yumkella was speaking in Lagos, Nigeria at the launch of N1billion ($3 million) Solar Energy Fund for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) by the Bank of Industry (BoI), The Nation reported.\nSaudi Arabia Picks Up Pace on its Renewable Energy Drive, Targeting Close to 10 GW by 2023\nSaudi Arabia plans to invest up to US$50 billion to help meet its target of producing enough electricity from renewables to power the equivalent of 3 million homes within six years, the country’s oil minister said yesterday. The government has set a target of generating 9.5 gigawatts of electricity from renewables by 2023 as it reduces its reliance on burning oil to produce power. Saudi Arabia will eventually generate 70 per cent of its electricity from gas – up from about 40 per cent in 2014 – and the remainder from renewables and other sources, Mr Falih said.\nUAE to Invest US$163 Billion in Clean Energy by 2050, Announcing UAE Energy Plan 2050\nVice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the UAE’s new energy strategy for the next 30 years. This new strategy aims to spur the integration of clean energy into the total energy mix to 50%, which will generate savings of AED700 billion (US$191 billion) by 2050.\nNigeria to Sell $63 Million of ‘Green Bonds’ in First Quarter\nNigeria plans to raise 20 billion naira ($63 million) by March to help fund renewable energy projects, the first issuance of so-called green bonds in West Africa’s biggest economy. “We are on track to sell the bond in the first quarter, a sovereign, and could have another by the end of the year,” Environment Minister Amina Mohammed said in an interview Friday in the capital, Abuja.\nAbu Dhabi establishes net metering for small-scale solar\nAbu Dhabi is in the process of establishing net metering regulations for small-scale solar in the region. The Regulation & Supervision Bureau of Abu Dhabi is currently gathering public comment on the proposition which will allow for net metering of small solar sites of between 50kW and 5MW in capacity. In the process, the body hopes to set out any necessary requirements for implementation, establish a framework and ensure the safe construction, installation and O&M of small-scale PV systems.\nAfrican Development Bank (AfDB) Pledges $12bn for Renewables\nLast week, the multilateral financial institution stated that the funds will be spent over the next five years under the African Renewable Energy Initiative of the Africa Union (AU), the Standard Media reported. The initiative targets to deliver 10GW of electricity by 2020 and 300GW by 2030.\nIEA: Global Solar PV Capacity Surpassed 227GW in 2015\nLast year was a record year for global PV installations, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest Trends in Photovoltaic Applications report, released last week. Worldwide installed capacity amounted to 51 gigawatts in 2015, up from around 40 gigawatts in the two preceding years.\nAfDB Announces Its Annual Climate Financing to Triple to $5-billion Dollars by 2020,\nThe African Development Bank (AfDB) on Tuesday, announced that its annual climate financing will triple to $5-billion dollars a year by 2020, which will increase its total new investments to 40% by 2020. This was announced at the sixth Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-VI) which is held in United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa.\nTotal Corporate Funding in PV Sector Rises to US$3 billion in Q3 2016\nGlobal clean energy communications and consulting firm Mercom Capital Group released its report on funding and merger and acquisition (M&A) moves for the PV market in the third quarter of 2016. Total corporate funding, including venture capital, public market and debt financing into the solar sector in Q3 2016 was up to about US$3 billion in 45 deals — compared to US$1.7 billion in 32 deals in Q2 2016.\nIFC partners with UK Dept. for International Development for Solar in Nigeria\nInternational Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group has announced its partnership with the DFID, aimed at facilitating the deployment of off-grid and embedded solar systems in commercial and industrial sectors in the West African country. The IFC announced in a statement explained that the ultimate goal is to help corporates and SMEs to have better and more reliable access to electricity, utilising the country’s abundant solar resources. In addition, this will contribute to Nigeria’s sustainable economic growth and greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives.\nIRENA Report Shows Strongly Declining Costs for Utility-Scale Solar in Africa\nIt has never been \"more possible, and less expensive\" for Africa to build solar power capacity, as the installed cost for utility-scale parks has fallen to as low as USD 1.30 (EUR 1.16) per watt, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says in a new report. Since 2012, utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) costs on the continent have decreased by 61% and IRENA Director-General Adnan Z Amin says further declines of up to 59% are possible in the next 10 years.\nSolar power tops investment opportunity ranking in Africa\nSolar power topped the ranking of most promising investment opportunities in Africa as the energy sector was considered to be the main driver of economic growth within the 2020 horizon, according to survey among top finance institution. The survey was carried out among 55 financial institutions and banks...\nGTM: Global solar installations to grow by 43% to 73GW in 2016\nGlobal solar installations are expected to grow 43% this year, to 73GW, according to GTM’s latest report, ‘Global Solar Demand Monitor, Q3 2016’. 2016 is set to be another record year for solar globally, after 2015 which had a total demand of 55GW, 10GW more than the previous year. The first half of 2016 saw a major uptick in demand driven by an unprecedented volume of installations in China and the UK, in advance of expiring capital incentives. Also in H1 2016, the US reached a record-breaking 1 million solar system installs, which further solidified the nation’s number 2 position in the global market, with 14.5GW, bolsted by the ITC extension. India completed 2GW of solar installs within the same time frame.\nIRENA Report Finds that the Dominican Republic Can Triple Renewable Energy Share by 2030\nThe Dominican Republic could increase the share of modern renewable energy in its energy mix from 9 to 27 per cent by 2030, according to a new report launched by IRENA.\nIRENA: Solar could meet up to 13% of global power demand by 2030\nOn Wednesday, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) released a new report at the Intersolar Europe trade show which looks at multiple aspects of the dramatic growth of solar industry. Letting in the Light forecasts that global solar PV capacity could increase roughly 10-fold from 227 GW today to 1,760-2,500 GW.\nCoal and Gas to Stay Cheap, but Renewable Still Win Race on Costs\nThis year’s edition of BNEF’s long-term forecast sees $11.4 trillion investment in global power generation capacity over 25 years, with electric vehicles boosting electricity demand by 8% in 2040. Some $7.8 trillion will be invested in green power, with onshore and offshore wind attracting $3.1 trillion, utility-scale, rooftop and other small-scale solar $3.4 trillion, and hydro-electric $911 billion.\nRenewables enjoy record 2015 in terms of investment and installations, REN21 report says\nLast year was a record 12 months for renewable energy investment and installations, with REN21 calculating in its latest global status report that the world boosted its clean power capacity by 147.2 GW in 2015. The Renewables 2016 Global Status Report, published today, found that new installations of renewable power generation capacity reached 1,848.5 GW cumulatively at the end of last year, fuelled by record levels of spending.\nWhy Cities Are So Well-Suited to Renewable-Energy Growth\nLast week, 175 countries signed onto a global agreement to significantly reduce carbon emissions in the face of the threat of climate change. Many of those same countries—particularly India, China, and Nigeria—are simultaneously experiencing major urbanization trends that will move billions of people into cities over the next several decades. In fact, according to the United Nations, approximately 2.5 billion people will likely join the world’s urban population by 2050, almost entirely in Asia and Africa. By that time, two-thirds of the world’s population is projected to be living in urban areas, according to the United Nations.\nIRENA's Latest \"Renewable Capacity Statistics\" Shows 2015 Was a Record Year of Growth\nIRENA has released its latest 'Renewable Capacity Statistics' report, showing 2015 was a record year for renewable energy generation capacity – expanding 8.3% globally even within the context of depressed oil & gas prices. New solar installations were particularly strong, with 47 GW of capacity added during the year.\nWorld Bank Reveals New Climate Change Action Plan, In Lead-Up to Signing of Paris Agreement\nIn the lead-up to the coming Paris Agreement signing, the World Bank revealed on Thursday its new Climate Change Action Plan, detailing its plan to support the development of 30 GW of renewable energy in developing countries. In particular, it has designated distributed solar (and rooftop specifically) as high-opportunity sectors.\nMajor milestones reached on renewable energy investments, UN reports\nCoal and gas-fired electricity generation last year drew less than half the record investment made in solar, wind and other renewables capacity - one of several important firsts for green energy recently announced in a United Nations-backed report. \"Renewables are becoming ever more central to our low-carbon lifestyles, and the record-setting investments in 2015 are further proof of this trend,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner in a press release. “Importantly, for the first time in 2015, renewables in investments were higher in developing countries than developed.\"\nSolar PV rose to 2.8% of Chile's electricity generation in February\nChile's solar PV plants generated 170 gigawatt-hours in February and represented 2.8% of gross electricity production, according to the latest report from the Center for Renewable Energies (CIFES).\nDUBAI LAUNCHES “CLEAN ENERGY STRATEGY 2050”, TARGETING SOLAR ON EVERY ROOF\nCoinciding with the inauguration of Phase II of the Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the Dubai government launched its “Clean Energy Strategy 2050” this Saturday – aiming to continue reducing the Emirate’s dependency on traditional fossil fuels, and targeting a 75% renewables mix by 2050. With the slogan “solar panels on every roof”, the government hopes to generate 25% of all energy through solar by then. Based on 5 key pillars (infrastructure, legislation, funding, capacity building, sustainable energy mix), the plan will be backed by significant initiatives including an AED 100 billion (27bUSD) ‘Green Fund’ to provide loans to clean energy investors at reduced rates, the establishment of a new clean energy free zone (‘Dubai Green Zone’), and infrastructure projects to come.\nABU DHABI FUND FOR DEVELOPMENT AND IRENA OPEN NEW ROUND OF RENEWABLES FUNDING\nThe Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD) and IRENA have opened a new round of funding to support renewable energy projects in developing markets, with total volume at around $50 million USD. Funding will take the form of concessional loans between $5 million USD and $15 million USD offering lower interest rates than traditional loans. Almost 30% of past funding has been channelled to Africa, opening the door for UAE companies to participate in the renewables development in these markets.\nSurvey: Dubai, Jordan and Saudi Arabia MENA high potential markets\nA survey by DNV GL of a range of participants in the MENA region's solar markets has confirmed that Dubai and Jordan are considered the markets with the greatest short term potential. Looking beyond two years, Saudi Arabia is seen as having the highest potential, despite the slow movement in the market today. Jordan offers a FIT for projects under 5 MW in size, and has launched its second utility scale tender. Dubai trails Jordan only slightly, in survey respondents’ expectations, with the 200 MW Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) Al-Maktoum Solar Park.\nDubai to target 3000 MW of solar power by 2030 JUNE 3, 2015\nAbu Dhabi: Dubai is targeting 3,000 mega watts (MW) of solar power by 2030, which is 15 per cent of the overall energy mix, a senior official of Dubai Supreme Council of Energy said on Wednesday. He said a 13MW solar plant has already been commissioned and another plant of 200MW capacity is under construction in Seih Al Dahal between Hatta and Dubai. “It will be commissioned in two years. We have a target to achieve 3000MW by 2030. We are clear in our objectives. There are also other sources of power adopted by private and government entities.”\nHow renewable energy in South Africa is quietly stealing a march on coal\nAlthough still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, South Africa has been quietly creating one of the world’s most progressive alternative energy plans. Solar, biomass and wind energy systems are popping up all over the country and feeding clean energy into the strained electrical grid. “It is set to completely transform these deep rural communities in terms of healthcare, education, job creation and a raft of other interventions. All this while putting green electricity on the grid at affordable prices,” said Johan van den Berg, director of the South African Wind Energy Association.\nUK's renewable generation up by 20%, says REA\nReport by Renewable Energy Association and PwC finds installed clean energy capacity increased by nearly a quarter in past year, with jobs in sector up 9%. Electricity generated by the U.K.’s renewable energy sector has risen by 20% in the space of a year, according to a recent report conducted by the Renewable Energy Association (REA). The REA’s review has shown that total electricity generation reached 64,404 GWh in 2014, up 20% on 2013’s 53,667 GWh, with the U.K.’s solar and wind industries playing a significant part in that overall increase.\nUK - Solar to thank for UK grids lowest-ever peak demand forecast\nThe U.K.’s transmission system operator has revealed that it estimates peak demand will hit just 37.5 GW this summer, remarking that the growth of distributed solar PV has helped ease the burden on the national grid by around 900 MW since 2014. According to the National Grid, embedded U.K. solar power capacity almost doubled over the past 12 months, rising from 2.4 GW in February 2014 to 4.4 GW this year – this is solar PV capacity that is not connected to the national electricity transmission grid, but does show up on the grid indirectly as reduced demand.\nSolar electricity: Contributing to grid stability\nThere is no doubt that investing in solar electricity generates important environmental, economic and social benefits. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Egypt has committed to generating as much as 20% of its energy from renewable sources, including solar by 2020. Governments, utility companies and private enterprises around the world have rapidly been embracing the potential to tap into our most abundant energy resource – the sun – and for good reason: the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth’s surface every six minutes is sufficient to produce more electricity than the world’s population consumes over an entire year. Solar energy is not only clean and renewable, but is also cost competitive with fossil fuels.\nUK Solar Could be Subsidy-Free by 2020, says German Think Tank\nSubsidy-free solar in the UK could thrive by the end of the decade, according to a report published by Berlin-based think tank Thema1 and supported by a coalition of European companies. The report, 'In Sight: Unsubsidised UK Solar,' predicts that all three sectors of the UK solar market (ground-mount, commercial and domestic) will be able to compete without subsidy with traditional forms of energy within the next 10 years.\nDepartment for Energy and Climate Change’s Fuel Poverty Strategy\nThe Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Fuel Poverty Strategy calls for further renewable energy measures. Broadly speaking, the new fuel poverty strategy highlights the need for further energy efficiency and renewable measures and is working on a new fuel poverty definition. The strategy is wide-ranging, but there are some specific areas linking to Regen SW’s work. Regen SW believes DECC will offer minimal funding to deal with fuel poverty; it will therefore be necessary to find as many alternative sources of funding as possible. On a government level, this means engaging different departments in fuel poverty for different reasons but it is equally relevant on the regional and local scale.\nEgypt Announces Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariffs\nEgyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said the country needs to invest at least $12 billion over the next five years in order to meet the electricity demands of the population. The Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Energy has announced feed-in tariffs for electricity generated by solar and wind sources as part of the government’s efforts to increase the country’s energy capacity in the face of serious power shortages and recent power outages.\nHow Solar Energy Can Solve Egypt's Electricity Crisis\nEgypt is suffering a power crisis, and not just a political one. Over the weekend the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, made an appeal to the Arab world's most populous nation for patience after a series of serious blackouts. The daily blackouts have caused the metro in Cairo to grind to a halt during rush hour, business to be disrupted, and the city's already terrible traffic problem to get even worse. The power cuts left parts of the capital without running water, and caused 2,000 mobile phone signal boosters to fail. Mass protests have been held calling for the resignation of the Electricity Minister.\nUK to Become Number One European PV Market in 2014\nUK to become number one European PV market in 2014 - The UK is set to become the largest market for solar PV in Europe during 2014, confirming its status as the hottest market across the region. This is the first time that the UK will have taken podium position for installed PV in Europe, and effectively ends the historic dominance of mainland Europe, in particular Germany.\n100,000 More Solar Roofs in the Netherlands in 2013\nThe Dutch solar market saw good growth in 2013, approximately doubling from about 100,000 solar roofs to about 200,000 solar roofs. In 2014, the aim is to reach about 300,000.\nSouth Africa to Install Over 5.6 Million Solar Panels by 2015\nFinancial services group Old Mutual is understood to be by far South Africa’s major investor in solar photovoltaic projects. It is investing in at least nine projects established under the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) programme initiated by the government.\nGCC Booming Market for Solar Power\nThe region is poised to become a hub for solar energy, with $155 billion worth of projects set to be complete by 2017. The six GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries have sanctioned $155 billion (Dh596 billion) worth of solar power projects that will generate 84 gigawatts when completed in 2017, according to the region’s first dedicated solar technology exhibition, Gulf Sol 2013. Derek Burston, Director of UK-based Bowmedia, organisers of Gulf Sol 2013, said in a statement the GCC countries had demonstrated their keenness to shift towards low-cost solar energy.\nReport Finds Renewable Energy Boom in the MENA Region\nThe International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), REN21 and the United Arab Emirates have released a new report which finds that renewable energy investment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region increased 40% over 2011 to $2.9 billion in 2012. MENA Renewables Status Report identifies over 100 projects in development, and estimates that non-hydro renewable energy generating capacity could increase 450% over the next few years. MENA governments have announced plans to expand non-hydro renewable energy capacity to 50 GW by 2020 and 107 GW by 2030, compared to the current 1.7 GW.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1563147"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6647179126739502,"wiki_prob":0.6647179126739502,"text":"Interoceanic Nicaragua canal sparks protests\nExtensive dredging will threaten tropical rainforests and wildlife habitats in the region\nNEXT NEWS ❯\nBy Snigdha Das\nLast Updated: Saturday 04 July 2015\nAs construction work on the Great Nicaraguan Canal Project nears, massive demonstrations rock Nicaragua's capital of Managua.\nThe canal will run 278 km from Venado Island in the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific port town of Brito, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The route will cut through Lake Nicaragua, the largest fresh water source in Central America. Work on the project will begin on December 22 and is scheduled to be completed in 2019.\nMeant to dwarf the neighbouring Panal Canal, the US $50 billion project would include an oil pipeline, an interoceanic “dry canal” freight railroad, two deepwater ports, two international airports and a series of free-trade zones along the canal route.\nPresident Daniel Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front government insists that the project will be a game changer for the country and for the region. Paul Oquist, an advisor to Ortega, had told the Times that the canal project will allow Nicaragua to double its economic growth to double digits within the next four years. Oquist was quoted by the Guardian saying that the project will create 50,000 direct jobs and 200,000 to 250,000 indirectly and help the government reach its goal of reducing poverty. Over half the population currently lives below the poverty level and it is currently the second poorest country in Latin America.\nBut most Nicaraguans and civil society organisations do not agree with Ortega. In fact, they are sceptic about the intentions of his increasingly secretive government which has refused to make public any details involving the project's technical aspects, funding and impact on the environmental and livelihood of people. Those who had stood by Ortega during the revolution that overthrew often cruel and pervasively harsh Nicaraguan Somoza dictatorship in 1979, are also opposing him.\nIn June 2013, Ortega's government approved the project with scarcely a debate to a mysterious Hong Kong-based company—HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment (HKND-Group)—owned by Chinese telecommunication magnate Wang Jing. Ortega has given him a 100-year concession to control a vast swath of Nicaragua and build and manage the waterway.\nThough so far there is no indication that the Chinese government is interested in the project, media reports suggest that Wang Jing might have connection with Beijing's military. Whether all or part of the canal project is completed, it will give China an important presence on a continent it has been trying to penetrate with investments and trade.\nRepercussions\nCritics lash out against the project because will lead to the forcible removal of almost 300 communities in protected indigenous zones and will have massive environmental impacts.\nUnder the government and Wang's plans, ocean liners, super tankers and cargo ships much larger than those the Panama Canal can handle would traverse the waterway, impinging on the natural beauty of the region and raising the risk of oil-spill contamination while perhaps creating a new, if incongruous, tourist attraction.\nAcross the lake, the canal will be up to 30 yards deep, and extensive dredging will be required, planners say. The Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences calculated that nearly 400,000 of tropical rainforest and wetlands could be destroyed by the project, jeopardising ecosystems, fishing and wildlife habitats. The canal would cut through two UNESCO biosphere reserves that are home to jaguars, sea turtles, great green macaws and other endangered species.\nNational Geographic experts who have studied the proposal say the project would transform environmentally sensitive wetlands into denuded dry zones, remove hardwood forests, and destroy habitants of vulnerable animals. As per the project plan, ocean liners, super tankers and cargo ships much larger than those the Panama Canal can handle would traverse the waterway. This could result in numerous environmental catastrophes such as oil spills and dirty salt water infecting pristine biological ecosystems.\nIn order for the canal route to reach the desired 90 feet depth, millions of tonnes of dynamite will be used to carve a path through the lake. The use of dynamite is an incredible risk that could easily destroy large areas of protected land and species in the lake and on Ometepe, the island home of many protected species of monkeys and other wildlife.\nEnvironmentalists — including Ortega’s top environmental adviser — warn that the project could have disastrous consequences for the country’s water supply, including the massive Lake Nicaragua, considered a key source of drinking water for Central America in decades to come.\nCivil-society groups also worry that Ortega’s Sandinista politburo and their new Chinese business partners intend to essentially create a privatised enclave in the middle of Nicaragua — one that will be governed for the next 100 years by their self-styled Canal Commission, regardless of which government is in power in Managua. “Nicaragua is not for sale. Nicaragua belongs to all Nicaraguans and is not the private property of Ortega and his family,” reads a declaration signed by 21 civil society organisations.\nThe government hired a British firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), to conduct an environmental impact study, but its release has been delayed repeatedly. Recently, ERM held a closed-door meeting with a select group of locals, but they didn’t extend invitations to everyone in the area who will be affected by looming expropriations.\nThere has been a deliberate effort not to disclose information and a deliberate effort to rush this project beyond reality,\" Monica Lopez Baltodano, an environmental attorney who heads Popol Na, a progressive social development group based in Managua, told La Times. The news website also quoted Jaime Morales, a congressman who served as vice president under Ortega until 2012, saying that few people oppose a canal per se. “But one that won't harm the lake. Water is Nicaragua's greatest patrimony... Expectation of great wealth makes many ignore what might happen to the lake.”\nWeb edition Web edition News News News Sandinista National … Popol Na Paul Oquist Monica Lopez Baltodano Managua Lake Nicaragua Jaime Morales HK Nicaragua Canal … Great Nicaragua … Environmental … Environmental degradation Down to earth Daniel Ortega Canal Commission\nCentral America reeling under severe drought","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line228536"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9041303992271423,"wiki_prob":0.9041303992271423,"text":"Beernink Reappointed to WASC for Community and Junior Colleges\nSACRAMENTO, Calif. – July 2, 2008 – Holly Beernink, director of Academic Affairs and Accreditation Liaison Officer at Western Career College, has been appointed to a second three-year term on the board of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, part of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). She will represent private schools on the commission.\nWestern Career College is one of five private California career colleges accredited by WASC, which is among six regional U.S. institutions that accredit public schools, colleges, universities and community colleges. It covers California, Hawaii and U.S. territories in the Pacific.\n“Private schools provide a vital link between employers and people with the ambition to start new careers. I’m honored by the opportunity to represent Western Career College and all private schools that strive for excellence in education,” said Beernink, who has been with Western Career College since (year).","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1222481"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9400941133499146,"wiki_prob":0.9400941133499146,"text":"St Paul’s Collegians\nCollegians news\nDo you have a story suggestion? We’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected]\nFlying the flag for rowing and boxing\nWhile boxing and rowing may seem poles apart, the skills required are surprisingly similar, says Ivan Pavich.\nIvan (School 2005-2009) represented New Zealand as a coxswain for the national rowing eight before turning his hand to boxing.\nHe holds three national flyweight boxing titles and an Oceania Games silver medal, and narrowly missed out on qualifying for the Rio Olympics.\nHe was also awarded the prestigious Jameson Belt for most scientific elite boxer following his win at the 2015 nationals in Invercargill.\nWhile still at school in 2009, Ivan was selected for the New Zealand under-18 rowing team to compete in the World Championships in France.\nHe went on to cox for the national rowing eight, competing at the World Championships in Karapiro in 2010 where the team finished 5th in the A final.\nThe team was disbanded after missing out on qualification for the London Olympics. This was when Ivan turned his attention to boxing, which he had started in his last year of school.\nIt was either that, or wait around until the under-23 rowing eight entered the men’s category and another eight was formed. Not one to sit around for long, he forged on with boxing.\n“I initially started it for fitness to try and keep my weight down and to keep fit for coxing, and it progressed from there.”\nIvan trains under Rick Ellis, at the Ringside Gym in Frankton, Hamilton.\n“The assumption is that boxing is a man’s sport for boof heads, but it is called the sweet science for a reason. There is a mind side too it and there is more than being the roughest, toughest guy in the ring.”\nIt requires discipline, dedication and technical skill. “It is physical chess,” he says.\nThe rowing helped Ivan pick up skills for boxing.\n“Because the Rowing New Zealand programme is one of the best programmes both nationally and internationally I have seen first-hand what it takes to get to the top level.”\n“I picked up a lot. You are a coach within the boat, so I learned a lot about the technical side.\"\nWhile it was disappointing to miss out on Rio, Ivan sees it as a stepping stone to greater things.\n“I was reasonably happy with my own personal performance as I feel I have improved a lot technically in the last twelve months.”\nWhile retired from rowing, Ivan was asked and agreed to help coach the Hamilton Boys’ High School rowing team for two seasons.\nNext year is a big year with the Oceania Championships, qualifying for the World Championships and Ivan is seeking sponsorship to help him get there.\nIvan works as a mechanic at the Newstead Service Centre and is also a qualified personal trainer and licensed boxing coach. He lives in Newstead with his parents Karen and Alan.\nMost days Ivan trains at six o’clock both mornings and evenings.\nMonica Holt\n77 Hukanui Road, Private Bag 3069, Waikato Mail Centre, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand Tel +64 7 957 8805\n| Email [email protected] | Facebook.com/groups/stpaulscollegians © 2020 St Paul’s Collegians | Admin","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1062905"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9766910672187805,"wiki_prob":0.9766910672187805,"text":"Cros-Lex upends St. Clair, 49-30\nFast start, late push helps Pioneers outpace Saints\nCros-Lex upends St. Clair, 49-30 Fast start, late push helps Pioneers outpace Saints Check out this story on thetimesherald.com: http://bwne.ws/1EqlRYX\nJoseph Hayes, Times Herald Published 10:01 p.m. ET Aug. 28, 2015 | Updated 12:33 a.m. ET Aug. 29, 2015\nCros-Lex upends St. Clair\nCros-Lex players Joe Duff and Matt Kettlewell celebrate scoring a touchdown during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nThe Cros-Lex marching band warms up before a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nThe Cros-Lex marching band performs during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex players take the field during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nSt. Clair's Cameron Williams narrowly misses the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nSt. Clair's Collin Agosta throws a pass during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nSt. Clair's Collin Agosta runs the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Justin Johnston breaks a tackle and runs out of bounds during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Joe Duff runs the ball into the end zone to score during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Bret Ebner stops St. Clair's Collin Agosta at the goal line during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nSt. Clair's Riley Gleason intercepts a pass intended for Cros-Lex's Ryan Beyer during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Justin Johnston looks to pass during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Bret Ebner breaks up a pass to St. Clair's Josh Markel during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Luke Wilson catches a pass during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Justin Johnston throws a pass during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Matt Kettlewell runs the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Joe Duff runs the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Justin Johnston breaks a tackle by St. Clair's Sam Winston and runs the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Joe Duff is tackled by St. Clair's Darrien Rutledge during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Williams Bass celebrates a play during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Luke Wilson runs the ball and breaks a tackle during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Justin Johnston runs the ball during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nSt. Clair's Ian Janssen breaks away from Cros-Lex defenders and runs the ball down field during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\n10. Matt Kettlewell, Croswell-Lexington: Not only is Kettlewell an inspirational story, he’s also an inspiration to watch on a football field. He’s constantly going 100 mph, and somehow manages to stay within himself while doing it. He can be a linebacker, a defensive back, a receiver or a running back. And he can be among the area’s best at each of those spots. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex band members lift their instruments above their heads for each point scored during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex students cheer during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nThe Cros-Lex marching band plays from the stands during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex players talk in a huddle during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nStudents watch from a hill during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School. JEFFREY M. SMITH, TIMES HERALD\nCros-Lex's Joe Duff runs the ball into the end zone to score during a football game Friday, August 28, 2015 at Croswell-Lexington High School.(Photo: JEFFREY M. SMITH / TIMES HERALD)Buy Photo\nCROSWELL – It wasn’t the WXYZ Game of the Week just for show.\nTwo local football titans collided Friday as St. Clair traveled to Croswell-Lexington for the season opener for both teams. Cros-Lex got off to a fast start, St. Clair countered but the Pioneers offense was too strong to contain.\nAfter St. Clair took its first lead of the game on the first play of the second half, Cros-Lex responded and never trailed again en route to a 49-30 victory at Croswell-Lexington High School.\n\"I was able to take a big breathe of relief when we were shaking hands after the game was over,\" Cros-Lex coach Garrett Grundman said of his first win as a varsity coach. \"We couldn’t have asked for more support having Channel 7 here. The kids were pumped. Being able to get the first win was awesome. It's great being a part of this community.\"\nJustin Johnston connected with Matthew Kettlewell on a pair of touchdown receptions and Joe Duff scampered for two rushing scores in the Pioneers victory. Johnston finished the game 12 of 19 passing for 246 yards.\nHis counterpart, Collin Agosta completed only 3 of 10 passes for 78 yards and two interceptions.\nThe Pioneers opened the game with three consecutive passes on their first drive. It was a sign of things to come, as two big completions later, the Pioneers were celebrating their first score of the season — a 36-yard touchdown from Johnston to Kettlewell less than a minute into the game.\nOn St. Clair’s first play from scrimmage, Ben Davidson scampered 70 yards on a lateral to set up first and goal from the Pioneers 6-yard line. That’s where the drive would stall however. After a key Saints penalty, St. Clair would have to settle for a 35-yard field goal from Cameron Parslow.\nThe Pioneers appeared ready to add to their lead early in the quarter after a drive netted Cros-Lex first and goal deep in the Saints zone. But Cros-Lex fumbled and St. Clair recovered in the end zone to stem the tide. The Pioneers however, wouldn't go away. They got the ball back on an interception from Damian Arnold. That gave the Pioneers the ball back at the Saints 24-yard line and Joe Duff capitalized on the turnover by scampering 24 yards for a score.\n\"It made everything a lot easier and smoother getting the passing game going,\" Kettlewell said. \"It gave us a lot of confidence. We know our strength is in our running game but have plenty of viable passing options.\nThe touchdown gave the Pioneers a 14-3 lead midway through the second quarter. St. Clair answered on the ensuing kick-off, as Ian Janssen appeared to score on the kick return. But the touchdown was called off due to a St. Clair penalty.\nThat wouldn’t deter the Saints, which got a key personal foul facemask penalty on Cros-Lex to extend its drive. After a short drive, St. Clair found the end zone on a 1-yard run from Riley Gleason to pull within 14-9.\nThe Saints senior wasn’t done however. On the Pioneers ensuing possession, Gleason intercepted Johnston and gave St. Clair back the ball near midfield. But the Saints couldn’t find a way to capitalize and the teams entered halftime with Cros-Lex clinging to a 14-9 lead.\nSt. Clair wasted little time in the second half as Janssen took the opening kick back 70 yards for a score. The two point conversion added on gave the Saints their first lead of the game at 17-14 just seconds into the third quarter.\n\"We told the kids to keep their heads up,\" coach Grundman said. \"They were beating us on special teams. Obviously you have to play offense and defense to and they have to be able to stop us. We were able to rebound and score and establish the running game in the second half.\"\nThe teams continued to jockey for position as Cros-Lex countered with a long drive and a 8-yard rushing score from Duff to take back the lead at 21-17 midway through the third quarter. Once the Pioneers got the momentum back on their side, they refused to relinquish control and went right back to work on offense.\nAfter a long drive, the Pioneers scored on a 6-yard run from Kettlewell to take a 28-17 lead late in the third quarter. The Pioneers continued to press the issue as they forced St. Clair to punt and on the next play, Johnston found Kettlewell for a 65-yard score to give the Pioneers a 35-17 lead heading into the fourth quarter.\n\"I think we just didn't execute,\" St. Clair lineman Darrien Rutledge said. \"We knew what we had to do and we didn't do it.\"\nSt. Clair showed its resiliency as the fourth quarter began. Agosta found Davidson for a 58-yard touchdown to pull the Saints with 35-24 with more than 11 minutes remaining in the game.\nThe Johnston to Kettlewell connection continued late in the game as they hooked up once again for a 5-yard touchdown to give the Pioneers a 42-24 lead with 9:25 left in the game. After a stop, the Pioneers got the ball back and ran several minutes off the clock before Johnston scored with a 1-yard run. That gave the Pioneers a 49-24 lead with just over four minutes remaining in the game.\n\"I give them credit, they had great resiliency,\" St. Clair coach Bill Nesbitt said. \"They out-played us and out-coached us. They handled that adversity really well today. The biggest problem I said to the team is we have to do a better job of trust. Starting with the beginning of the season, the kids made it as part of our goals and our covenant to be disciplined with no unsportsmanlike penalties.\"\nLogan Mahn scored on a 11-yard run for St. Clair and the point after attempt failed to close the scoring at 49-30.\n\"We made the right adjustments,\" Johnston said. \"Our offense was really flowing. Joe had a great game and our passing game was in sync.\"\nContact Joseph Hayes at (810) 989-6268 or at jahayes@gannett.com. Follow him on twitter @jhayes1136.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1283334"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8928722739219666,"wiki_prob":0.8928722739219666,"text":"First boys rescued from flooded Thai cave; operation continues to save remaining soccer team members\nUpdated: 10:29 AM CDT Jul 8, 2018\nNational Desk Staff\nThe first members of a Thai soccer team have been successfully rescued from the cave they've been stuck in for more than two weeks, local officials said Sunday. Around 7 p.m. local time, the first two boys emerged from the cave alongside rescue crews. Those boys have been transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Two more boys were helped out of the cave later Sunday and have also been taken to the hospital. The boys' conditions were not immediately known. The operation to rescue the 12 boys and their coach by having them dive out of the flooded cave where they’ve been trapped for more than two weeks began in the morning, with expert divers entering the sprawling complex for the complicated and dangerous mission.Chiang Rai acting Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn, who is heading the operation, said 13 foreign and five Thai divers were taking part in the rescue and that two divers would accompany each boy as they’re gradually extracted.“Divers will work with doctors in the cave to examine each the kids’ health to determine who should get to come out first,” Narongsak said Sunday morning.The entire operation to rescue all 13 could last two to four days, depending on weather and water conditions, said army Maj. Gen. Chalongchai Chaiyakam.The only way to bring the boys and their coach out of the cave is by navigating dark and tight passageways filled with muddy water and strong currents, as well as oxygen-depleted air. A former Thai navy SEAL passed out and died making the dive Friday.Experienced cave rescue experts consider an underwater escape a last resort, especially with people untrained in diving, as the boys are. The path out is considered especially complicated because of twists and turns in narrow flooded passages.But Narongsak said earlier that mild weather and falling water levels over the last few days had created optimal conditions for an underwater evacuation that won’t last if it rains again.Before announcing that the rescue was underway, authorities ordered the throngs of media that have gathered at the cave from around the world to leave.The boys and their coach became stranded when they went exploring in the cave after a practice game June 23. Monsoon flooding cut off their escape and prevented rescuers from finding them for almost 10 days.The ordeal has riveted Thailand and made global headlines, and the search and rescue operation has involved international experts and rescuers.President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday: “The U.S. is working very closely with the Government of Thailand to help get all of the children out of the cave and to safety. Very brave and talented people!”Authorities had said that incoming monsoon rains that could send water levels in the cave rising, coupled with falling oxygen levels in the enclosed space, added to the urgency of getting those trapped out. Earlier efforts to pump out water from the cave have been set back every time there has been a heavy downpour.Narongsak said Saturday that experts told him water from new rain could shrink the unflooded space where the boys are sheltering to just 10 square meters (108 square feet).“I confirm that we are at war with water and time from the first day up to today,” he said Saturday. “Finding the boys doesn’t mean we’ve finished our mission. It is only a small battle we’ve won, but the war has not ended. The war ends when we win all three battles — the battles to search, rescue and send them home.”The boys sounded calm and reassuring in handwritten notes to their families that were made public Saturday. The notes were sent out with divers who made an 11-hour, back-and-forth journey to act as postmen.One of the boys, identified as Tun, wrote: “Mom and Dad, please don’t worry, I am fine. I’ve told Yod to get ready to take me out for fried chicken. With love.”“Don’t be worried, I miss everyone. Grandpa, Uncle, Mom, Dad and siblings, I love you all. I’m happy being here inside, the navy SEALS have taken good care. Love you all,” wrote Mick.“Night loves Dad and Mom and brother, don’t worry about me. Night loves you all,” wrote Night, in the Thai manner of referring to one’s self in the third person.The most touching note came from one whose name was not clear: “I’m doing fine, but the air is a little cold, but don’t worry. Although, don’t forget to set up my birthday party.”Another, of indistinct origin, asked their teacher not to give them a lot of homework.In a letter of his own, the coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, apologized to the boys’ parents for the ordeal.“To the parents of all the kids, right now the kids are all fine, the crew are taking good care. I promise I will care for the kids as best as possible. I want to say thanks for all the support and I want to apologize to the parents,” he wrote.An update Saturday from the Thai navy said three navy SEALs were with the boys and their coach, one a doctor. The 13 were having health evaluations and rehabilitation, and were being taught diving skills. Food, electrolyte drinks, drinking water, medicine and oxygen canisters have been delivered to them. A major concern of the rescuers is that oxygen levels in their safe space could fall dangerously low.Rescuers have been unable to extend a hose pumping oxygen all the way to where the boys are, but have brought them some oxygen tanks.\nMAE SAI, Thailand —\nThe first members of a Thai soccer team have been successfully rescued from the cave they've been stuck in for more than two weeks, local officials said Sunday.\nAround 7 p.m. local time, the first two boys emerged from the cave alongside rescue crews. Those boys have been transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital. Two more boys were helped out of the cave later Sunday and have also been taken to the hospital. The boys' conditions were not immediately known.\nThe operation to rescue the 12 boys and their coach by having them dive out of the flooded cave where they’ve been trapped for more than two weeks began in the morning, with expert divers entering the sprawling complex for the complicated and dangerous mission.\nChiang Rai acting Gov. Narongsak Osatanakorn, who is heading the operation, said 13 foreign and five Thai divers were taking part in the rescue and that two divers would accompany each boy as they’re gradually extracted.\n“Divers will work with doctors in the cave to examine each the kids’ health to determine who should get to come out first,” Narongsak said Sunday morning.\nThe entire operation to rescue all 13 could last two to four days, depending on weather and water conditions, said army Maj. Gen. Chalongchai Chaiyakam.\nThe only way to bring the boys and their coach out of the cave is by navigating dark and tight passageways filled with muddy water and strong currents, as well as oxygen-depleted air. A former Thai navy SEAL passed out and died making the dive Friday.\nExperienced cave rescue experts consider an underwater escape a last resort, especially with people untrained in diving, as the boys are. The path out is considered especially complicated because of twists and turns in narrow flooded passages.\nBut Narongsak said earlier that mild weather and falling water levels over the last few days had created optimal conditions for an underwater evacuation that won’t last if it rains again.\nBefore announcing that the rescue was underway, authorities ordered the throngs of media that have gathered at the cave from around the world to leave.\nThe boys and their coach became stranded when they went exploring in the cave after a practice game June 23. Monsoon flooding cut off their escape and prevented rescuers from finding them for almost 10 days.\nThe ordeal has riveted Thailand and made global headlines, and the search and rescue operation has involved international experts and rescuers.\nPresident Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday: “The U.S. is working very closely with the Government of Thailand to help get all of the children out of the cave and to safety. Very brave and talented people!”\nThe U.S. is working very closely with the Government of Thailand to help get all of the children out of the cave and to safety. Very brave and talented people!\nAuthorities had said that incoming monsoon rains that could send water levels in the cave rising, coupled with falling oxygen levels in the enclosed space, added to the urgency of getting those trapped out. Earlier efforts to pump out water from the cave have been set back every time there has been a heavy downpour.\nNarongsak said Saturday that experts told him water from new rain could shrink the unflooded space where the boys are sheltering to just 10 square meters (108 square feet).\n“I confirm that we are at war with water and time from the first day up to today,” he said Saturday. “Finding the boys doesn’t mean we’ve finished our mission. It is only a small battle we’ve won, but the war has not ended. The war ends when we win all three battles — the battles to search, rescue and send them home.”\nThe boys sounded calm and reassuring in handwritten notes to their families that were made public Saturday. The notes were sent out with divers who made an 11-hour, back-and-forth journey to act as postmen.\nOne of the boys, identified as Tun, wrote: “Mom and Dad, please don’t worry, I am fine. I’ve told Yod to get ready to take me out for fried chicken. With love.”\n“Don’t be worried, I miss everyone. Grandpa, Uncle, Mom, Dad and siblings, I love you all. I’m happy being here inside, the navy SEALS have taken good care. Love you all,” wrote Mick.\n“Night loves Dad and Mom and brother, don’t worry about me. Night loves you all,” wrote Night, in the Thai manner of referring to one’s self in the third person.\nThe most touching note came from one whose name was not clear: “I’m doing fine, but the air is a little cold, but don’t worry. Although, don’t forget to set up my birthday party.”\nAnother, of indistinct origin, asked their teacher not to give them a lot of homework.\nIn a letter of his own, the coach, Ekapol Chanthawong, apologized to the boys’ parents for the ordeal.\n“To the parents of all the kids, right now the kids are all fine, the crew are taking good care. I promise I will care for the kids as best as possible. I want to say thanks for all the support and I want to apologize to the parents,” he wrote.\nAn update Saturday from the Thai navy said three navy SEALs were with the boys and their coach, one a doctor. The 13 were having health evaluations and rehabilitation, and were being taught diving skills. Food, electrolyte drinks, drinking water, medicine and oxygen canisters have been delivered to them. A major concern of the rescuers is that oxygen levels in their safe space could fall dangerously low.\nRescuers have been unable to extend a hose pumping oxygen all the way to where the boys are, but have brought them some oxygen tanks.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1421726"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5477472543716431,"wiki_prob":0.45225274562835693,"text":"Gemma and Fran’s Story\nGemma Gwilt and her Mum Fran cared for their Aunt, Muriel Parkes, in her own home when she was referred to Compton in February 2018.\n82-year-old Muriel, also known as Aunty Mue, wanted to stay in her own home surrounded by her creature comforts when she was diagnosed with an incurable illness and so with our support, she was able to do just that.\nGemma commented: “We wanted to take care of Aunty Mue in her own home, just as she had wanted. We spoke to Compton who offered us the support of night sitters and they were just wonderful.\n“We had two night sitters come to the house and they really took a weight off our shoulders. The nice thing was that whilst they took care of Aunty Mue, they also encouraged us to rest.\n“Aunty Mue was very glam, she was always made up with the best Estee Lauder make-up and had her hair and her nails done. What was lovely, was that the care assistant gave her a hand massage using her favourite creams before she died. It was little touches like that that made all the difference. They really couldn’t do enough for us.”\nFran added: “We didn’t know much about Compton until Mue was cared for by them. I think we thought they just offered care and support at the end of life, we didn’t realise they offered so much more than that.\n“Mue left money to Compton and 7 other charities in her will, she was so charitable, and we’re so pleased she left some money to Compton, especially after the care she received.”\nNorman's Story","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1325184"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9628825187683105,"wiki_prob":0.9628825187683105,"text":"Seatmaps\nBA Trackers\nBritish Airways B777-300ER G-STBJ Positions to Cardiff-Wales Storage.\nBritish Airways Boeing 777-336ER G-STBJ positioned London Heathrow – Cardiff-Wales for short term storage early this afternoon as BA9173.\nSearch The BA Source\nWith Thanks To:\nAll our generous 2020 Jet Sponsors.\nOther Airline Source Sites\nThe BA Source News Archives\nThe BA Source News Archives Select Month January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 March 2012 February 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 March 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 December 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 April 2004 October 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 September 2002 May 2002 March 2002 December 2001 November 2001 October 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 May 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 January 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 February 2000 January 2000 December 1999 November 1999 October 1999 September 1999 August 1999 July 1999 June 1999 May 1999 April 1999 March 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 October 1998 September 1998 August 1998 June 1998 May 1998 April 1998 March 1998 February 1998 January 1998 December 1997 November 1997 October 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 May 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 May 1996 April 1996 March 1996 January 1996 December 1995 November 1995 September 1995 June 1995 April 1995 March 1995 February 1995 December 1994 November 1994 March 1994 February 1994 January 1994 December 1993 October 1993 April 1993 March 1993 February 1993 January 1993 May 1992 April 1992 March 1992 February 1992 January 1992 December 1991 October 1991 June 1991 April 1991 March 1991 February 1991 January 1991 December 1990 November 1990 October 1990 July 1990 June 1990 May 1990 April 1990 March 1990 February 1990 January 1990 December 1989 November 1989 October 1989 September 1989 August 1989 July 1989 June 1989 May 1989\n(C) The BA Source 2018\nThis website uses cookies to enable certain functions. OK Read More","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1316323"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5929626822471619,"wiki_prob":0.5929626822471619,"text":"Terms: American Newcomen\nTerms: Measurements\nTerms: Electricity\nTerms: Magnetism\nTerms: Chemistry\nW. M. Welch Scientific Co., Chicago (20)\nGeneral Radio Company, West Concord, MA (15)\nD. Appleton and Company, New York (8)\nLongmans, Green, and Co., London (5)\nSherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, London (5)\nGeneral Radio Company, Cambridge, MA (4)\nHarvard University, Cambridge MA (4)\nBurndy Library, Norwalk, CT (3)\nCharles Scribner's Sons, New York (3)\nClarendon Press, Oxford (3)\nJohn Murray, London (3)\nLeeds & Northrup, Philadelphia (3)\nMacmillan and Co., London (3)\nThe Leeds & Northrup Company, Philadelphia (3)\nThomas Boys, London (3)\nWestinghouse Electric Corporation, East Pittsburgh, PA (3)\n\"The Electrician\" Printing and Publishing Company, Ltd., London (2)\nA. Walker, London (2)\nBaldwin and Cradock, London (2)\nDaniel Davis, Jr., Boston (2)\nG. Masson, Paris (2)\nGeorge Knight and Sons, London (2)\nJohann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig, Germany (2)\nJohn Wiley & Sons, NY (2)\nLeeds & Northrup Co., Philadelphia (2)\nLongman, London (2)\nMacMillan and Co., London and New York (2)\nMcGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., NY (2)\nPalmer House, Chicago (2)\nRandom House, NY (2)\nThe MacMillan Company, New York (2)\nThe University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2)\nUniversal Scientific Company, Inc., Vincennes, IN (2)\nW. M. Welch Manufacturing Company, Chicago (2)\nWalton and Maberly, London (2)\nÉditions du Journal Suisse d'Horlogerie et de Bijouterie, Neucha (2)\n\"The Electrician,\" London (1)\nA. Lahure, Imprimeur-Éditeur, Paris (1)\nAcademic Press, NY (1)\nAdvance Electronics Company, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)\nAllen B. Du Mont Laboratories, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)\nAllen B. DuMont Laboratories, Inc., Passaic, NJ (1)\nMagnetism (80)\nLeeds & Northrup Company (55)\nC3-G2 (23)\nGeneral Radio Company (20)\nGalvanometers (18)\nW.M. Welch (18)\nC5-C1 (17)\nAcoustics (15)\nPotentiometers (13)\nLeeds & Northrup (10)\nC3-G1 (8)\nTelegraphy (7)\nTelegraphs (6)\nJ. A. Fleming (6)\nElectric Telegraph (5)\nLiquid Hydrogen (5)\nAn Account of Some Remarkable Applications of the Electric Fluid to the Useful Arts\nAddress to the Chemical Section of the British Association\nAdvanced Theory of Electricity and Magnetism: A Text-Book for Colleges and Technical Schools\nThe Age of Electricity: From Amber-Soul to Telephone\nAlphabet of Electricity for the Use of Beginners\nThe Alternate Current Transformer in Theory and Practice\n\"Amber Forever!\": Electricity on the Merrimack in New Hampshire\nAnalysis of Some Methods of Supplying a Three Phase Induction Motor From a Single Phase Line\nAndré-Marie Ampère - Immortalized by a German\nAnleitung zum Gebrauch des Mikroskopes","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line452770"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8626782298088074,"wiki_prob":0.8626782298088074,"text":"POP Center Problems Sexual Assault of Women by Strangers Endnotes\n[1] Groth (1979); Savino and Turvey (2005).\n[2] Maston (2011).\n[3] Tjaden and Thoennes (2006); Kilpatrick and McCauley (2009).\n[4] Federal Bureau of Investigation (2009).\n[6] Tjaden and Thoennes (2006).\n[7] Myhill and Allen (2002).\n[8] Epstein and Langenbahn (1994); DuMont, Miller, and Myhr (2003); Jones et al. (2009).\n[9] Bachman (1998); Ruch, Coyne, and Perrone (2000); DuMont, Miller, and Myhr (2003); Clay-Warner and Burt (2005).\n[10] Feldman-Summers and Ashworth (1981); Ruch, Coyne, and Perrone (2000); Jones et al. (2009).\n[11] Caringella (2009).\n[12] Maier (2008).\n[13] Lessel and Kapila (2001).\n[14] Jordan (2001); Lessel and Kapila (2001); Maier (2008).\n[15] Bohner et al. (2009).\n[16] Turvey (2005).\n[18] McDowell (1985); Kanin (1994).\n[20] West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (n.d.); New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault (n.d.).\n[21] National Center for Victims of Crime (2009).\n[22] Allison and Wrightsman (1993).\n[24] Monahan, Marolla, and Bromley (2005).\n[25] Allison and Wrightsman (1993); Ullman (2007).\n[26] Ullman (2007).\n[27] Tjaden and Thoennes (2006).\n[28] Myhill and Allen (2002); Lalumiere et al. (2005).\n[29] Lalumiere et al. (2005); Soothill et al. (2002).\n[30] Savino and Turvey (2005); Lalumiere et al. (2005).\n[31] Rozee and Koss (2001); Abbey et al. (2007).\n[32] Davies, Wittebrood and Jackson (1998); Soothill et al. (2002); Goldstein and Susmilch (1982).\n[33] MacLellan and Cain (2008).\n[34] Federal Bureau of Investigation (2009).\n[35] Myhill and Allen (2002).\n[36] Davies and Dale (1995).\n[37] Horvath and Brown (2006); Ullman (2007).\n[39] Horvath and Brown (2007); Kilpatrick et al. (2007).\n[40] Epstein and Langenbahn (1994).\n[41] Center for Sex Offender Management (2008c).\n[42] Wilson (2002); Martin (2005); Lovett, Regan, and Kelly (2004).\n[44] Vito, Longmire, and Kenney (1983).\n[45] Wilson (2002); Savino and Turvey (2005); Lovett, Regan, and Kelly (2004).\n[46] Martin (2005).\n[48] Winkel and Koppelaar (1992); McMillan and Thomas (2009); West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (n.d.).\n[49] Winkel et al. (1991).\n[51] Lonsway, Welch and Fitzgerald (2001).\n[52] Kinney et al. (2007).\n[54] Furby, Fischhoff, and Morgan (1989); Allison and Wrightsman (1993); Searles and Berger (1995); Rozee and Koss (2001); Ullman (2007); Guerette and Santana (2010).\n[55] Rozee and Koss (2001).\n[57] Furby, Fischhoff, and Morgan (1990).\n[59] Allison and Wrightsman (1993); Groves (1995).\n[61] Banyard, Plante, and Moynihan (2004).\n[62] Goldstein and Susmilch (1982).\n[63] MacLellan and Cain (2008); Center for Sex Offender Management (2008c).\n[65] Center for Sex Offender Management (2008b).\n[66] Center for Sex Offender Management (2008a); Center for Sex Offender Management (2008c).\n[67] MacLellan and Cain (2008); International Association of Chiefs of Police and U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance (2007); Minnesota Department of Corrections (2006).\n[68] Campbell and Wasco (2005); Ullman (2007).\n[69] English (1998); Rozee and Koss (2001); Abbey et al. (2007).\n[70] English (1998).\n[72] English (1998); MacLellan and Cain (2008).\n[75] Seidman and Vickers (2005); Caringella (2009).\n[76] Berger, Neuman, and Searles (1994); Bachman (1998); Clay-Warner and Burt (2005); Seidman and Vickers (2005); Caringella (2009).\nSexual Assault of Women by Strangers\nThe Problem of Sexual Assault of Women by Strangers\nResponses to the Problem of Sexual Assault of Women by Strangers","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line716098"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6131517291069031,"wiki_prob":0.3868482708930969,"text":"Rise in C-section births alarming\nRise in C-section births alarming /food-health/news/914891\nGhazanfar Ali Khan\nRIYADH: The rate of babies delivered by Caesarean section in Saudi Arabia is growing alarmingly with the nationwide increase reflecting an upward trend in these cases in recent years.\nA cross section of medical experts expressed concerns Saturday over the fact that caesarian delivery cases surged by 67 percent in the country last year.\nA similar trend was noticed in the first quarter of 2016 with experts saying that the reasons behind the surge are preventable.\n“The main reason is that pregnant women have become lazy; they don’t move and they are not aware of the benefits of walking or exercising during pregnancy,” said Dr. Ahmed Marzouq, a gynecology and obstetrics specialist at the Health Ministry.\nHe said that women opt for caesarean births due to “laziness”; they do not want to go through the natural birth process. Obesity also plays a major role in childbirth and also contributes to the increase in laziness especially among pregnant women.\nAccording to figures released by the Saudi Diabetes and Endocrinology Society, 70 percent of the Kingdom’s local population is classed as obese.\n“All these factors are contributing to the significant increase in the C-section delivery rate in tertiary health care centers,” said Tayyaba L. Al-Harbi, a gynecologist at a local private hospital. Al-Harbi said the importance of exercise should be taught to every prospective mother, especially in a country like Saudi Arabia where physical movement of women is somewhat restricted.\nThis notion has been further substantiated by a study conducted by the Lancet medical journal, which found that Saudi Arabia’s population is the third most slothful in the world with 68.3 percent of adults failing to do any exercise. “Only in Malta and Swaziland are adults even more inactive than in Saudi Arabia,” said the study, while referring to the need to need to generate awareness about exercise and sports both among men and women.\nSimilar views were expressed by Layla Abdul Razak, another gynecologist, who said there are health hazards associated with C-section deliveries. “The threat that comes with it should be taken into account since it is medically proven and suggested that it is not suitable for mothers to undergo three or four caesareans because of the complications that come with it.”\nLily Chaerian, an Indian nurse, working at a private hospital for 15 years, said: “Every now and then, deaths are reported during C-sections if the cases are complex.” She said private hospitals have been performing more C-sections than the government hospitals. She, however, noted that the surging trend in caesarian cases is noticed in all Gulf countries, where social and family lifestyles are identical.\nBaby Talk: Conditions to be aware of in newborns /node/1613991/food-health\nBaby Talk: Conditions to be aware of in newborns\nIf your child’s abdomen feels swollen and hard, you should seek medical advice. (Shutterstock)\nBaby Arabia\nHere are three physical conditions that are especially common in the weeks following birth. If you notice any of the following in your baby, contact your doctor or health center straight away\nAbdominal Distension\nMost babies’ tummies are normally rounded, especially after a large feed. Between feeds, however, they should feel quite soft and not stick out. If your child’s abdomen feels swollen and hard, or if they have not had a bowel movement for more than one or two days, you should seek medical advice. Most likely the problem is due to wind or constipation, but don’t take chances and seek the advice.\nLabor is can be a strenuous time for both mum and baby, and it is possible for babies to be injured during birth, especially when babies are very large. While newborns recover quickly from some of these injuries, others may last for some time. Quite often the injury is a collar bone, which will heal quickly if the arm on that side is kept relatively still. Don’t worry if a small lump forms over the site of the fracture. This is just part of the body’s healing process and is a sign that things are normal.\nLabor is can be a strenuous time for both mum and baby, and it is possible for babies to be injured during birth, especially when babies are very large. (Shutterstock)\nMuscle weakness in a newborn baby is a common birth injury, caused during labor. However, muscles, usually weakened on one side of the face or one shoulder or arm, generally return to normal after a few weeks. During this time it might be wise to ask advice on how to hold your baby to promote healing or at least prevent aggravation.\nBlue Baby Syndrome\nBabies sometimes have mildly blue hands and feet, but this may not be a cause for concern. Their hands and feet might turn slightly blue due to the cold, but they should return to normal as soon as they are warm. Occasionally, the face, tongue, and lips may turn a little blue when the newborn is crying hard, but once he becomes calm, his color in these parts of the body should quickly return to normal. However, persistently blue skin coloring, especially with breathing difficulties and feeding difficulties, is a sign that the heart or lungs are not operating properly, and the baby is not getting enough oxygen in the blood. Immediate medical attention is essential.\nTopics: Newborns Abdominal Distension Birth Injuries Blue Baby Syndrome","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line849422"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6321287155151367,"wiki_prob":0.3678712844848633,"text":"Sir John Major’s Interview on the Andrew Marr Show – 5 June 2016\nJune 5, 2016 October 16, 2018 admin\t2016 EU Referendum, Andrew Marr Show, Maastricht Treaty\nBelow is the text of Sir John Major’s interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast on 5 June 2016.\nANDREW MARR:\nSo to the main event part one. Sir John Major, who’s struggled through every day of his premiership against rebellious anti-Brussels Tories. He’s described the Leave campaign as an ‘unforgiveable fraud’ on the British people. And he joins me now. Those are strong words, Sir John. Are you referring, when you talk about that and the deceit of the Leave campaign to Boris Johnson in particular?\nSIR JOHN MAJOR:\nNot particularly to Boris, no. I think it goes much wider than simply the leader. Of course, as the leader, Boris is in a position to stop it. But I felt that for several reasons. Firstly on the economy and what would happen if we actually left. The Leave campaign have said absolutely nothing to the British people, and what they have said about leaving is fundamentally dishonest and it’s dishonest about the cost of Europe. And on the subject that they’ve veered towards, having lost the economic argument, of immigration, I think their campaign is verging on the squalid, and I’ve said so before and I’m happy to say so again.\nIs it not possible that these are thoroughly honourable men who have taken a big political risk, risked their own political reputations, their own political futures standing for something they fundamentally believe in, and which is agreed with by a huge number of British people? That these are the good guys in essence?\nI’ve no doubt that there are many people in this country, including members of the Leave campaign, who thoroughly believe what they say. I’ve never questioned that. But I must say in Boris’s case it was a rather late conversion. I don’t know whether he had a day trip to Damascus and came back, but until the very last moment everyone thought he was in favour of staying. But he’s made up his mind and I respect that. But I think what they have done now they have begun the campaign is to feed out to the British people a whole galaxy of inaccurate and, frankly, untrue information. And what they have not done is tell us what would be the position if we were to vote to leave. I think it would be chaotic and damaging, and I think the people who would suffer most would be the ordinary everyday man and woman in the street. They need to tell us, if they wish us to leave, what it would be like and how they would then meet some of the objectives they’ve set out.\nThey say this morning an extra 300,000 jobs would be created because we’d be free to strike our own trade deals with America, Australia and China and other countries.\nWell, it’s fantasy. Firstly, we have something like three million jobs connected – I’m not saying they’re wholly reliant – but connected to our present trade with Europe and essentially with the single market. I gather their current policy today is that they will leave the single market. There would also be a socking great hole, according to every commentator, in our public finances. So these promises of expenditure on the national health service, or elsewhere, are frankly fatuous. They are a deceit.\nWe would lose a huge amount in terms of national income through trade, the small businesses who sell their goods to Europe, who would sell less because if we left the single market we would face a tariff barrier of probably around ten per cent. So we would sell less, people would lose their jobs, we would find ourselves in a much worse position. The Leave campaign can turn to no serious organisation who believes what they have said about the economy and about the future of Britain and the single market.\nSo to be clear, you’re saying this is a deceitful campaign? To call a spade a spade, are you saying that Boris Johnson is lying?\nI’m not personalising this. Though I do find it very difficult to understand how Boris can justify the 350 million that he has on his battle bus, that he and Michael Gove in particular have defended time and again. You know, I know, the IFS knows, everyone knows, Boris knows, that the real net amount that we send to Europe is about one third of that. After the rebate and after the money paid back to our fishermen, to our farmers, to our researchers, the amount we send to Europe is about one third of the amount that they claim. Now, if they can’t be straightforward and honest on a clear cut matter of fact like that, upon what else can we trust them?\nYou keep using words like ‘straightforward’, ‘honest’, ‘deceitful,’ and yet you say you’re not personalising it. You are accusing people of lying.\nI’m talking of the Leave campaign; I’m not necessarily talking of individuals. I’ll tell you exactly. I think throughout the whole of my political life people have regarded me as being guilty of understatement. I am angry at the way the British people are being misled.\nThis is much more important than a general election. This is going to affect people, their livelihoods, their future for a very long time to come. If they are given honest, straightforward facts and they decide to leave, then that is the decision the British people take. But if they decide to leave on the basis of inaccurate information, inaccurate information known to be inaccurate, then I regard that as deceitful. Now, I may be wrong, but that is how I see their campaign. This is so important for once I’m not prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to other people, I’m going to say exactly what I think, and I think this is a deceitful campaign. In terms of what they’re saying about immigration, a really depressing and awful campaign. They are misleading people to an extraordinary extent.\nWell, let’s move to immigration if we could. When you were Prime Minister, I think when you left immigration was still below 50,000, around 48,000 something like that. It’s now a third of a million and rising fast. It’s not racist or xenophobic to be really worried about that, to be worried about the effect on all of us.\nNo, no, no. I’m worried about it. Everybody is worried about that.\nBut your side don’t seem to have an answer.\nWell, I don’t think they have an answer. We’ll come directly to that if you wish. Let me take the immigration point absolutely head-on. Yes, immigration is very high, and yes, this causes great troubles for us. Not only for us, but all across Europe. Half the world is on the move at the moment because of what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East, because of fears about Russia in Eastern Europe, because of the economic difficulty within the eurozone, there are a lot of people on the move. They come here because we are a great and successful country. The nonsense we hear from Leave about let’s get our mojo back and be a great country, we are a great, successful country, that is why people are coming to us. Now, how long will this last? It is a serious problem, you are going to see a diminution as the eurozone recovers, and it is recovering, it’s now growing pretty much as fast as us, the eurozone. But it isn’t just us.\nThe point that really angers me is the utterly false suggestion, repeated more than once, not in a single offhand remark but in scripted, carefully prepared speeches, that we face the risk of 88 million Turks coming here. Firstly Turkey are not in the European Union. They’re unlikely to be in the European Union in the next decade or two. Even if by some chance they were, we are outside Schengen. In any event, is it seriously suggested, as they do, that all 88 million Turks would come here? Apparently for a higher national living wage. On the one hand they’re saying migrants are depressing wages, and on the other people are flooding in to get our higher national wage. It’s nonsense.\nLet’s be clear, Sir John.\nNonsense on stilts.\nThe EU wants Turkey to join, the British government wants Turkey to join, the Prime Minister has said he’d pave the way from Brussels to Ankara. So this is not a complete fantasy, it’s quite possible. This choice in this election, this decision, could be with us for 20 or 30 or 50 years’ time.\nThe Turks have been negotiating for the best part of 30 years a whole series of different things that have to be negotiated. They’ve negotiated one of about 30. Even if they were able to reach agreement with the European Union, any one nation in the European Union could veto their joining. The French have already said they would have a referendum on that issue. The Germans almost certainly will follow suit. Turkey will not be in the European Union for a very, very long time, if ever, for a whole series of practical reasons. And the Leave campaign know that. That’s the point, they know that.\nThere are people watching this who will say, hold on a second, this is Sir John Major, this is the man who negotiated the Maastricht Treaty and at that time you got your opt-outs and so forth – I remember it very well, I was there at the time, in the rain, in the dark and so forth. But nonetheless we were being told at the time that the European Union was not going to evolve into a very centralised super-state and sprawl and spread. And actually your critics then were right, because that’s what’s happened.\nNo. No, it hasn’t. Firstly, you’re quite right, I did negotiate the opt-out of the single currency. I’m told by the Leave campaign I’m wrong on everything on Europe. Well, I certainly wasn’t wrong on that.\nWhat about those other treaties which followed, which followed nonetheless, in a direction of travel?\nNot under my premiership they didn’t. We were also out of Schengen because I declined to join it in 1996. Now, what happened, we negotiated at Maastricht a safeguard, the subsidiarity safeguard, which was then bypassed. David Cameron has now effectively reinstated that with his red card system. So it has been reinstated. Any more power in a treaty – now, this is very important – any more power in a treaty to Europe would have, by British law, now to be approved in a referendum. So if there is a grab towards a super-state, which they may integrate further inside the eurozone, but we’re not in the eurozone and we’re not going to integrate further.\nDoes that not live us a bit like a kind of rickety sidecar stapled to the side of a vast Mercedes going to a place we don’t want to go?\nOnly if you think we’re a little country. We’re not a little country, we’re a big country. We’re one of the biggest countries in the European Union. We are outside the eurozone, we are not responsible for their debts, we are not going to be responsible for their debts. We are not going to enter the eurozone. We’re staying in a wider Europe and we’re going to continue to trade with Europe if we are wise, but we are not involved in what is happening in the part of Europe that is in difficulty. But if we cut ourselves adrift, we will become a vastly diminished country.\nWe’re talking about the world after Brexit, if that’s what happens, and you’ll have seen a whole series of pledges now, about 100 million a week for the NHS, about an Australian-style points system, about new farming subsidies and much else. It’s beginning to look like another manifesto isn’t it?\nWell, it’s certainly very ill thought-out. I mean, the concept that the people running the Brexit campaign would care for the national health service is a rather odd one. I seem to remember Michael Gove wanting to privatise it. Boris wanted to charge people for using it. And Iain Duncan Smith wanted a social insurance system. The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python. So I don’t think that’s very wise. As far as immigration is concerned, what they’re planning is immensely difficult. Let us suppose that they win, let us suppose that for a moment and that’s possible, and their policies on immigration were implemented. Firstly, as you know, the Scots may hold another referendum. We might end up with Britain out of the European Union and Scotland out of the UK. If Scotland is out of the UK –\nEngland alone?\nWell, England and Wales. But you, Andrew, you will be a –\nI’ll be sent back.\nYou’ll be a migrant.\nI’ll be sent back over the border, I’m sure.\nHow are they going to reduce their numbers? There are more people coming into this country from outside the European Union than inside. Who are the people they’re going to send back? The 52,000 doctors in the national health services, doctors and nurses? The 80,000 care workers?\nTo be fair, they’re not talking about sending anybody back. Because of the Luxembourg Agreement, they can stay.\nHow are they – we won’t be in the European Union if we leave. How are they going to reduce their numbers? Who are they going to stop coming in? The footballers who enchant us? I think we need some practical information and we’re not getting it. People are being invited to vote for a pig in a poke.\nTwo final thoughts just before we finish. Do you think this is about Boris Johnson’s personal ambition?\nWell, I’ve no idea. I can’t see inside Boris’s mind, and I wouldn’t attempt to try and do so. But I would just offer this piece of friendly advice – I like Boris, I don’t know him well, but what I’ve seen of him I like.\nWell you took him off the candidates list, didn’t you once a long time ago?\nNo, I did not. No, that’s utterly untrue. No, I did not. He’s a very engaging and charming court jester and a very engaging and charming public figure, and he’s very likeable and people like him. But I think I would offer him this piece of advice. If the Leave campaign led by Boris continue to divide the Conservative Party as they are doing at the present time, and if Boris has the laudable ambition, for it is a laudable ambition, to become Prime Minister, he will find if he achieves that that he will not have the loyalty of the party he divided. Iain Duncan Smith was serially disloyal in the 1990s. When he became leader he was surprised that no one was loyal to him. Now, Boris should learn from that. And I think Boris – all his instincts in the past have been those of a One Nation Tory, which is where I stand. He seems to have drifted away from that, with the way in which they’re approaching immigration and some of the other things. I’d like to see him get back, because if he gets back he is an engaging Conservative, important engaging Conservative figure.\nDo you think the Conservative Party is in danger of dividing?\nWell, we’ll have to wait and see. All I can say is that whether the Conservative Party divide or not is one thing we must look at in the future. But that is not as important as the decision that we have to make. This is not about political parties, it’s not about the elites, it’s about the everyday men and women in the street and their children and their grandchildren. It is their future that will play Russian roulette with if we leave the European Union.\nMy last question. Given what you’ve said about Boris Johnson today and in the past, do you think he’s fit to be Prime Minister?\nI’m not making judgements about whether anybody is fit to be Prime Minister. That’s a matter for a much wider view than mine. It’s a matter for the Conservative Party, ultimately it’s a matter for a whole electorate. So I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to have a suggestion either way. I merely say that whether Boris is Prime Minister is no doubt a very important matter for Boris and many other people, it is less important than the decision we have to take in less than three weeks’ time. That is crucial. And I must say, if I may put it this way, of all the participants there is nobody on the Leave side of the campaign who has, as I have, sat at the top table in Europe for seven years, and I know from what I have seen inside the European Union that what they say about unelected elites is absolute hogwash. The Commission, for example, are answerable to David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and the others. They’re appointed for a limited period of time, they’re told to produce legislation which then has to be approved by ministers, the European Parliament, the Westminster Parliament. The belief an unelected elite is running wild is yet another piece of copper-bottomed Leave nonsense.\nSir John Major, thank you very much for talking to us this morning.\n← Sir John Major’s Article in the Sunday Mail on the EU – 29 May 2016\nSir John Major’s Speech in Northern Ireland – 9 June 2016 →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1415099"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7164646983146667,"wiki_prob":0.28353530168533325,"text":"ABA production in response to the desiccation of recalcitrant embryos of Artocarpus heterophyllus LAM. and Artocarpus hirsutus LAM\nAjith Kumar, K. G., Sunil Kesavadeth, G., Pratheepkumar, V., Bindumole, V. R., Aswathy, P. J., Athira, V. R. and Anju, T. U.\nThe phytohormone, ABA plays a vital role in the growth and development of plants. The hormone is generally associated with seed dormancy and it is reported to be involved in desiccation tolerance in orthodox seeds. There is no conclusive information about the role of ABA in recalcitrant species. The present investigation was aimed at understanding the changes in ABA level during the desiccation of recalcitrant embryos of Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam. and Artocarpus hirsutus Lam. A significant positive correlation has been established between moisture content and ABA level in the local cultivars of Artocarpus heterophyllus (viz., varikka and koozha). A comparatively high level of ABA could be observed in the mature embryos of both cultivars of Artocarpus heterophyllus. Vivipary has been observed in these cultivars even under elevated levels of ABA. The ABA level drastically decreased during desiccation of embryos. However, the embryos could tolerate mild desiccation even under low level of ABA. A different trend in ABA could be observed in Artocarpus hirsutus in which the embryos maintained extremely low level of ABA and could tolerate desiccation better than Artocarpus heterophyllus. No significant correlation has been established between moisture content and ABA level in this species. Vivipary could not be observed in Artocarpus hirsute seven under low levels of ABA. Results suggest that vivipary cannot be attributed to the low level of ABA and it is not the sole factor in providing desiccation tolerance in orthodox seeds.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line963932"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9324416518211365,"wiki_prob":0.9324416518211365,"text":"Ruel on His Newest EP Free Time, Sold-Out North American Tour, and Looking Back at Old Lyrics\n\"It did change a lot, especially the arc. The main reason that changed was just my maturity.\"\nBy Gabe Bergado\nPhoto by Michelle Grace Hunder\nRuel has a whole lot to be proud of before turning 17 years old this October. The singer-songwriter is the youngest artist to ever sell out the Sydney Opera House — not once, but twice. In September, he put out his sophomore EP, Free Time, a sultry, soulful project encapsulating teenage angst and growing up. Ruel has received the seal of approval from the likes of Khalid and Shawn Mendes, two musicians he supported during their respective tours. And now on October 8, he’ll be kicking off his sold-out North American tour with a concert at San Francisco’s Great American Concert Hall.\n“I'm mainly excited to explore more cities in the States. I feel like I've only really been to Los Angeles and New York,” Ruel tells Teen Vogue. “I'm very excited about Atlanta, especially, because it's my birthday day on that show as well, which will be fun. I'll have good people with me there, who know the cities. They'll know all the spots.”\nBorn Ruel Vincent van Dijk, the young musician hails from Sydney, Australia, and has made a name for himself in the music world since first picking up the guitar at age 8 and eventually taking on singing lessons. He released his debut EP Ready during June 2018, a jazzy collection of tracks including “Younger,” an ode about two friends who drifted apart.\nHis new EP flutters with sounds and lyrics all about that transition into young adulthood, when the world is still your oyster but you’re learning that not everything is going to work out how you expect it to. That ethos especially comes through in the lead track, “Don’t Cry,” a song about when things weren’t working out with someone and they wouldn’t accept that Ruel wanted to end things.\n“It did change a lot, especially the arc. The main reason that changed was just my maturity,” Ruel says about his latest project. “The lyrical content is a lot more mature, and production-wise I really wanted to get involved as much as possible to make sure it's what I would want to listen to as well. I wanted to have all my influences kind of come through this EP.”\nIn terms of those influences, he’s been listening to “heaps of James Blake,” Tyler the Creator, Jacob Collier, and more. When he was growing up, his father would put on legends such as Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, and Amy Winehouse. All these artists have clearly left a mark on Ruel, who has found his own voice while drawing from these inspirations.\nRuel’s rich vocals might be perfect for a moody, late-night drive, but he balances that with a light playfulness. He can’t help but laugh when I ask him if he’s a Dragon Ball Z fan, considering one of his recent Instagram posts where he references being “Super Saiyan.” Not because he’s a huge DBZ buff, but because he has to admit he’s never actually seen the series before.\n“Oh you’re going to hate me,” he says between chuckles. “I know, I’m such a faker. I put that caption there because I do know what Super Saiyan [is] and my hair was resembling that.”\nWho hasn’t faked it a little bit when it comes to Instagram captions? And hey, he did look like one of the glowing warriors from the beloved anime with his halo of golden hair.\nRuel’s also not afraid to admit, just like many of us, that he looks back on some of the things he did when he was younger and feels a little embarrassed about. While most of our adolescent ramblings are probably locked away on a Tumblr or old Word doc, Ruel’s songwriting from back in the day is out there for the world to continue listening to.\n“I wouldn’t change them, but I would never write that again,” he says. “Anyways, I was just 12!”\nRelated: 16 Young Musicians You Need to Be Listening to In 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1130333"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7088534235954285,"wiki_prob":0.29114657640457153,"text":"10 Basic Rules for a Publication\nOfficial Organ of the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA)\nStudies on the Constituents of Artemisia annua Part II\nToward the Total Synthesis of Luminamicin, a Specific Anti-Anaerobic Bacteriacide\nAntimalarial Activity of Biflavonoids from Ochna integerrima\nIn Vitro Antimalarial Activity of Biflavonoids from Wikstroemia indica\nStructural Characterization of Anti-Complementary Polysaccharides from the Leaves of Artemisia princeps\nPurification and Chemical Properties of Anti-complementary Polysaccharide from the Leaves of Artemisia princeps\nPlanta Medica International Open\nDrug Research\nPharmacopsychiatry\nSynfacts\nPlanta Medica Letters\nPlanta Med 2011; 77 - PG3\nPhytochemical and Biological Studies on Aster novi-belgii\nSM Mohamed 1, EM Hassan 1, SA El Toumy 2\n1Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Dept. – National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo (Egypt)\n2Chemistry of Tannins Dept.-National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo (Egypt)\nAster is a large genus of the family Asteraceae (Compositae) comprising more than 200 species distributed around the world (1). Some of Aster species have been used in traditional medicine for the treatment of fever, cold, tonsillitis, snake bite and bee sting (2). Members of this genus are rich in triterpenoid saponins, two oleanan type saponins and three flavonoid compounds were isolated from Aster novi (3,4). Phytochemical investigation of the methanolic extract of Aster novi-belgii L. (Asteraceae) aerial part has led to the isolation and identification by spectroscopic means of four triterpenoid saponins, oleanolic acid 3-O-β-D-galactopyranosyl (1→3)-α-L-arabinopyranoside; 3-O-β-D- glucopyranosyl- 3β, 16 α- dihydroxyolean- 12- en- 28-oic acid-28-O-α-L- arabinopyranoside; {3-O-β-D- glucouronopyranosyl- 3β,16 α- dihydroxyolean- 12-en -23-oic acid 28-O-β-D- xylopyranosyl- (1→3)-β-D- xylopyranosyl- (1→4)- α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(l→2)-α-L-arabinopyranoside} ester and {3-O-β-D-glucouronopyranosyl-3β,16 α- dihydroxyolean- 12-en- 23-oic acid 28-O-β-D- xylopyranosyl- (1→3)- β-D-xylopyranosyl (1→4)- [α-L- arabinopyranosyl- (1→3)] -α-L- rhamnopyranosyl- (l→2)- α-L-arabinopyranoside} ester, and four flavonoids; kaempferol, quercetin, kaempferol 3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside and quercetin 3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside. Moreover, the extract showed a molluscicidal activity against Biomphalaria alexandrina snails.\nReferences: 1. Shao Y et al. (1997)J Nat Prod 60: 743–746.\n2. Shao Y et al.(1995) Planta Med 61: 246–249\n3. Abdel Khalik SM (2006) Bull Fac Pharm Cairo Univ 44: 85–89\n4. Abdel Khalik SM (2006) Bull Fac Pharm Cairo Univ 44: 253–256","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line140617"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5832101106643677,"wiki_prob":0.4167898893356323,"text":"Walker: bNAbs after Infection and Immunization\nThe development of a safe and effective HIV vaccine is the final missing piece in the complex puzzle of how to attain affordable, durable control of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. At present there are promising leads, but no clear and unequivocal path, to the development of an HIV vaccine. It is likely that the field will have to overcome the key challenge of eliciting a broad neutralizing antibody response in the majority of vaccinated individuals, but so far, candidate HIV vaccines have not elicited any significant levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). This grant directly addresses the neutralizing antibody problem using innovative technology that may be transformative in the quest for an HIV vaccine.\nBy stepping back from the problem and taking a comprehensive and unbiased look at how broad neutralizing activity arises in the approximately 25% of HIV-infected individuals who do develop it, this grant proposes to efficiently learn the circumstances under which bNAbs are elicited, and, correspondingly, what vaccines need to do to elicit them. The project will be anchored by technology developed by Atreca, Inc., which represents a powerful, high-throughput, unbiased approach to understanding the antibody response to infection and vaccination. The earliest B-cell responses in HIV infection, including those active just before infection, will be studied and followed prospectively for up to three years in human volunteers who face an exceptionally high rate of HIV infection in KwaZulu-NatalZN, South Africa, along with other cohorts with more immediately available samples. The study in South Africa (called “FRESH”) will be unique in its capacity to enroll and follow volunteers twice-weekly with a finger-stick blood sample, permitting ascertainment of HIV infection as soon as any trace of the virus is detectable in the bloodstream. Evaluation of the status of the B-cell response before infection, during the first days and weeks of infection, and for the next 2-3 years will be enabled, and the follow-up period will allow identification of those who do and do not go on to develop broad neutralizing activity. For this work the researchers have defined broad neutralizing activity as a continuum, ranging from neutralization of only the infecting virus strain (called autologous neutralization) at one end, and equivalent to the very best broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) at the other, in order to capture all stages of bNAb development. Moreover, the study will include a broader assessment of innate and adaptive immunity, building up a complex of immune data that will provide important context for understanding the factors that support bNAb development. It represents a significant step away from a purely empirical approach to HIV vaccines.\nThis consortium is led by Bruce Walker, a leading HIV researcher who excels at assembling informative cohorts for studies of immune protection against HIV. A team of investigators from the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, will join with investigators from the University of KwaZulu- Natal (SA) and Atreca, to conduct different aspects of the study.\nRESEARCH OBJECTIVES​\n1. To collect longitudinal samples from individuals with acute HIV-1 infection to investigate the development of broad neutralizing responses\n2. To define the B-cell signatures associated with the induction of HIV-specific neutralizing antibodies using the Atreca technology and other measures of B-cell development and maturation\n3. To define the HIV-specific CD4+ T-cell responses and their relationship to the establishment of broad neutralizing responses\n4. To identify transcriptional signatures of HIV-specific broad neutralizing activity using a systems biology approach applied to relevant cell subsets of the immune system\n5. To obtain large volume blood samples for characterizing the parameters associated with breadth of neutralizing antibodies in HIV controllers with different degrees of antigen load and diversity, and with relatively good preservation of immune function\n​​PROGRESS​\nThe FRESH Cohort (Females Rising through Education, Support and Health) of women at high risk for HIV infection was established in KwaZu- lu-Natal Province, South Africa, where infection rates of around 9% per year have been documented. The study was originally intended to follow persons with untreated infection, but soon after the study was initiated evidence suggested that early treatment with antiretroviral therapy could improve outcomes. Prior to changes in the South African treatment policies we were given permission to initiate therapy at the initial diagnosis of infection, allowing us to implement therapy before peak viremia. The clinic site is at a shopping mall where each participant is seen twice weekly and given classes designed to empower them by teaching life skills, job skills, and help with obtaining a high school degree. Each time the participants come in they also have a finger prick blood draw looking for acute HIV infection and pre and post-infection blood samples are being obtained for studies of the ontogeny of neutralizing antibodies. The seroconversion rate remained approximately 8% per year, and new infections continue to occure despite implemental of PrEP.\nStudies of the earliest immune responses induced, prior to peak viremia, and longitudinal responses in these have been conducted. The immunology studies are being done at the Doris Duke Medical Research Center in Durban, as well as the adjacent Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI, formerly KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH)). Because of the implementation of ART, we are not able to follow the development of broadly neutralizing antibodies, but instead have turned our attention to assessing the impact of limited antigen exposure on the development of adaptive cellular and humoral immune responses.\nLongitudinal and cross-sectional studies of the CD4 T cell and B cell signatures associated with the development of broadly neutralizing antibodies have been performed in the HIV Controller cohort, and cell subsets have been isolated for evaluation of transcriptional signatures of HIV specific broadly neutralizing antibodies. The BCR repertoire of both antigen-specific memory B cells and plasmablasts has already been generated by Atreca on eight spontaneous controllers who exhibit broad neutralizing antibody responses. More than 2500 sequences have now been collected, and phylogenetic tress have been constructed per individual as well as for the whole cohort. Preliminary studies on 16 monoclonal antibodies generated from the first three sequenced subjects showed antigen specificity and neutralizing capacity. Seventy antibodies have now been selected from the second batch of five controllers, based on high levels of somatic hypermutation and long CDRH3 lengths, to maximize the likelihood of selecting antibodies with potent antiviral activity. Interestingly, unique patterns of clonal diversification are observable among all sequenced subjects; however, massive diversification of single clonal families appears to be a hallmark of the most potent neutralizers. Additional analyses using sophisticated computational approaches developed by Atreca are underway to gain deeper insights into the pathways and mechanisms by which neutralizing B cell responses are selected.\nBruce Walker, MD\nMassachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA\nDevelopment of broadly neutralizing antibodies in HIV infection and following immunization\nUp to $12.9 million, awarded November,​ 2012\nAtreca, USA\nJessen-Jessen Medical Practice, Germany\nUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa\nUmkhuseli Innovation and Research Management","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line407782"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.850348174571991,"wiki_prob":0.850348174571991,"text":"Iran Protesters Met with Live Gunfire, Tear Gas as Regime Begins Crackdown\nIrans’ accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner sparked the unrest.\nThe nation of Iran has found themselves in quite the pickle as of late, with pressure mounting on the nation’s leadership from both foreign and domestic sources.\nThe Iranian military, in lashing out against the United States for the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, launched 15 ballistic missiles in the direction of Iraqi bases where sleeping American troops were stationed. Thankfully, none of these projectiles claimed any lives, sparing Iran from the full and unrepentant wrath of the American military.\nDuring the kerfuffle, however, a Ukrainian civilian airliner was shot down “unintentionally” after taking off from the Tehran airport. Military leaders in Iran said that their heightened state of awareness contributed to the accidental downing of the plane and the untimely deaths of all 176 onboard.\nThe Iranian people themselves are furious over the mishap, and are largely blaming the regime in Tehran for the reckless mistake. As they began to protest, Tehran cracked down hard, firing live rounds into the crowds after tear gas field to disperse them.\nIranian authorities fired live ammunition to disperse protesters in Tehran on Sunday night, wounding several people, according to witness accounts provided to the Guardian and footage circulating on social media.\nHundreds of protesters had defied a heavy security presence in the Iranian capital to hold vigils and demonstrations after the government belatedly admitted its own forces had shot down a Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet last Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.\nThere were fresh protests on Monday in at least two universities in the country. Though campus protests are not unusual in Iran, they come during a period of extraordinary tumult in the Islamic Republic, with an economy suffocated by US sanctions, the largest protests in the regime’s history crushed by violent force in November, and popular revulsion that the country’s armed forces shot down a jet loaded with Iranian citizens – then denied doing so.\nPresident Trump has tweeted his support for the Iranian people in both English and Farsi, encouraging them to topple their heavy-handed clerical regime.\nRelated Topics:featuredIranprotestUkraine\nPompeo Under Fire After Failing to Identify ‘Imminent’ Threats from Soleimani\nPompeo’s Soleimani story is being torn to shreds in the media, but is there a reason for his reticence?\nIran’s General Qasem Soleimani was an objectively bad hombre – No one in their right mind is going to deny that. His reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, with hundreds more certainly in his crosshairs at the time of his death by US drone strike.\nBut the question that many are asking is why now? What was the reason for the urgent and seemingly retaliatory strike against a man who many radicals in Iran would see as a martyr?\nSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has attempted to answer that question on several occasions, but none of his responses seem to satisfy lawmakers.\nSecretary of StateMike Pompeo told Laura Ingraham in a sit-down interview Thursday night that while the U.S. did not know where or when Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was planning to attack, it was a “real” threat to U.S. assets in the Middle East.\nThe U.S. killed Soleimani in a drone strike last week ordered by President Trump that has further inflamed U.S.-Iran tensions.\n“There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qassem Soleimani,” Pompeo told the Fox News host. “We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.”\nThe same vague “imminence” was on display during a Friday press conference featuring Pompeo, in which the head of the State Department again failed to illuminate the press on the specifics of these threats.\nIt is unclear as to why Pompeo hasn’t been able to answer these questions, with the possibilities ranging from the need for operational security to the outlandish theory that Soleimani’s assassination came on whim.\nPolling Shows That Americans Feel ‘Less Safe’ After Soleimani Strike\nIran is cementing their status as America’s current boogeyman.\nThere has been a great deal of consternation in our nation’s capital this week over the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.\nIt’s not that there are many politicians or pundits defending Soleimani. The man was a butcher by all measures, and he certainly won’t be missed by anyone in the United States. Predictably, what is of concern is just how the President came to that decision, whether or not the timing was appropriate, and if the ends will justify the means.\nFor many Americans, the death of Soleimani at the hands of a US drone strike is a bit unnerving.\nThough President Donald Trump and his advisers have contended taking out Iran’s top general made the US more safe, a majority of Americans do not feel that way, according to a USA Today/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.\nThe poll found 55% of Americans believe the US drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani has made the US less safe — this included nearly a third of Republicans. Only 24% of Americans believe the strike made the country more safe, the poll said, and a majority of Americans (52%) also said Trump’s behavior with Iran was “reckless.”\nThe poll also found that 52% of Americans believe the attack would make Iran more likely to develop nuclear weapons, 69% said Iran would be more likely to attack US interests in the Middle East, while 63% said there would be terrorist attacks on the American homeland, and 62% said the US and Iran would go to war.\nIn the immediate aftermath of Soleimani’s death, Iran launched approximately 15 ballistic missiles into Iraq, roughly aimed at two military bases populated by both Iraqi and American troops.\nGiven Iran’s long history of employing terrorism, several US cities have ramped up their efforts to prevent a possible attack in behalf of the Persian nation.\nIn Near Perfect Metaphor, Ukraine Jetliner May Have Been Shot Down by Iran\nLife is stranger than fiction.\nWhen we look at the headlines in Washington DC today, there are but two with the potential to rock the nation: Impeachment and Iran.\nIn the impeachment scandal, the Senate will soon make a judgement as to whether or not Donald Trump improperly pressured Ukraine by holding up military aid in return for the announcement of an investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings in the tiny European nation.\nIran, on the other hand, has been an ongoing mess playing out very much in public. President Trump, in retaliation for a siege on the US embassy in Baghdad by Iran-backed militias, ordered the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, one of Tehran’s top terror leaders. Iran then launched 15 missiles in the general direction of US troops stationed in Iraq, but possibly missing on purpose as to avoid crossing a line in the sand against the most powerful military in the world.\nOn the same night as that missile attack, another stunning story came to light, as a Ukrainian civilian jetliner crashed in Iran. At first, the tragedy was ruled an accident, possibly due to either pilot error or a mechanical failure.\nRecent revelations have experts shedding doubt on that story, however, and suggesting that something far more sinister may have occurred.\nInvestigators in Iran claimed on Thursday the black boxes of a Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight out of Tehran that crashed as Iran shot over a dozen missiles at Iraqi military bases housing U.S. troops had their memories damaged.\nIranian officials had previously refused to hand the black boxes over to Boeing, the manufacturer of the airplane.\nUkrainian Airlines flight PS 752 crashed after taking flight en route to Kyiv. The crash killed 176 people on board, mostly Ukrainian, Iranian, and Canadian citizens.\nThat story doesn’t seem to be sticking.\nUkraine International Airlines later issued a statement calling the doomed plane “one of the best planes we had” and noting it had completed scheduled maintenance on Monday, suggesting something other than technical failure was involved. The airline also praised the crew, implying human failure was also unlikely.\nThe Internal Affairs Ministry of Ukraine announced Thursday that a national team had taken flight to Iran for investigations on the ground, including DNA sampling to confirm the identities of those on board. The Ukrainian team will also seek signs of any human error or violation of safety standards from the wreckage and compare results with the Iranian report.\nThe Ukrainian government has stated its suspicion that Iranians using Russian missiles shot down the plane, calling it a “main” theory.\n“A strike by a missile, possibly a Tor missile system, is among the main (theories), as information has surfaced on the internet about elements of a missile being found near the site of the crash,” Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, told reporters, according to the Associated Press. Iran has boasted of possessing a Russian Tor missile system in government parades and did not address the potential use of missiles in its report on the crash. Danilov added, however, that he made “no claim” of proof that missiles were involved.\nVideo of the supposed crash that circulated on Twitter showed a plane already in flames as it careened toward the earth – a surefire sign that a simple mechanical failure seems unlikely.\nThe poetic irony is that this most recent Iran vs. USA conflict has metaphorically shot down a great deal of the talk about UkraineGate and impeachment, with some far left Democrats even suggesting that the Trump administration is purposefully using the Iran scandal to distract us from the domestic debacle.\nIran’s possible downing of this Ukrainian airliner is just far too strange a coincidence to ignore.\nThe Speaker and the Ayatollah: Kindred Spirits\nCharlie Speight\nThere are some stunning, but not surprising, similarities between two of Donald Trump’s (and America’s) greatest enemies – Iran and the Democratic Party. Not only do they hate the President of the United States, they have both tried to take him down and both have failed miserably. (more…)\nIran’s Supreme Leader Pushes for Further Military Action Against America\nThis could all be a part of the show, however.\nThe evidence surrounding Iran’s late night missile strikes, aimed at sleeping American service members in Iraq, seems to support the idea that this was all a show for Iran.\nNot only did they miss their targets, causing zero casualties, but several reports have broken purporting that Iran clearly sent warnings to American and Iraqi commanders both foretelling the attacks and admitting that this was to be their only response to the assassination fo Qasem Soleimani. Essentially, Iran wanted to give their people a show of force, and they’d provide the early-warning in exchange for a deescalation after-the-fact.\nPresident Trump and his administration seemed to indicate that this message was received loud and clear, but the US would continue to utilize their economic pressure campaign to keep Iran in check.\nNow, the Ayatollah in Iran is seemingly keeping up the charade, and calling for more military action against America.\nIran’s supreme leader on Wednesday warned that an attack by Tehran against military bases in Iraq housing American troops was “not enough” of a punishment for the United States.\n“They were slapped last night, but such military actions are not enough,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech in the holy city of Qom. “The corruptive presence of the U.S. in the West Asian region must be stopped.”\nHours earlier, Iran’s Islamist government launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles targeting at least two Iraqi bases in Ain al-Asad and Irbil that were “hosting U.S. military and coalition personnel,” according to the Pentagon.\nKhamenei could very well be bluffing in order to sell the near-miss attack to Iranians as a genuine attempt to harm American soldiers, however, and his saber-rattling rhetoric could very well be sharper than the saber itself.\nTrump to Impose New Sanctions on Iran, Despite Tehran ‘Standing Down’\nTrump appears ready to be done with the Iran armed conflict, and has taken his battle to their banks.\nThis morning, all eyes were on the White House, as President Donald Trump was set to speak at 11am regarding a late night missile attack by Iran that targeted American troops in Iraq.\nThe President had not yet spoken by 11:20am, after a binder was removed from the lectern and then returned some time later, presumably after some edits. When Trump finally took to the microphone just before 11:30am EST, he was flanked by top military officials, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and even Vice President Mike Pence. It was a show of force, undoubtedly, and the President began with fireworks.\nHis first statement, before addressing the crowd and likely off-script, was to reiterate that Iran would not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons while he is President.\nThe President then said that it appears that Iran is standing down, likely referring to Tehran’s offer to end military conflict here and now, so long as the United States leaves them alone.\nBut Trump then went on to announce harsh, new sanctions against Iran.\n“As we continue to evaluate options in response to Iranian aggression. The United States will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian regime. These powerful sanctions will remain until Iran changes its behavior. In recent months alone, Iran has seized ships in international waters fired an unprovoked strike on Saudi Arabia and shot down two U.S. drones. Iran’s hostilities substantially increased after the foolish Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given 150 billion dollars, not to mention one point eight billion dollars in cash. Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted Death to America.”\nThis reeks of pure deescalation, (from assassination to failed missile attack to money troubles), and that might just be what the world needs right now.\nAnalysts Suggest That Iran’s Missile Strikes were Purposefully Off-Target\nWas Iran aiming to kill, or looking to fire a few across our bow?\nAmericans found themselves in shock last night, as a series of missile attacks by Iran rained down upon military bases in Iraq where sleeping American soldiers lay.\nThe tense moments, which occurred in the pre-dawn hours in cities across Iraq, immediately lit up social media and the infotainment industry alike. Americans were suddenly concerned that World War III had begun, and that high school students would soon be conscripted into the armed services for a third go-round in the Middle East in as many decades.\nLuckily, thankfully, and graciously, no Americans were hurt last night. Some believe that this was on purpose.\nThere is a growing belief among some Trump administration officials that Iran’s missiles intentionally missed areas populated by Americans when they targeted two Iraqi bases housing US troops early Wednesday local time, multiple administration officials said.\nIran fired a number of missiles aimed at the bases in retaliation for the American strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani last week, further escalating tensions between the two countries. Officials have said there were no US casualties as a result of the attacks, though a full assessment is underway.\nThe administration officials floated the notion that Iran could have directed their missiles to hit areas that are populated by Americans, but intentionally did not.\nAnd they suggested Iran may have chosen to send a message rather than take significant enough action to provoke a substantial US military response, a possible signal the administration was looking for rationale to calm the tensions.\nEven the normally-salacious primetime punditry seemed to be putting stock in this theory, with several of CNN’s talking heads pressing their guests as to whether or not Iran had the capability to miss on purpose.\n'Long May It Wave' United States of America Postage Stamp Bumper Sticker\nSports3 mins ago\nComey Under Investigation For Leaking Classified Info Involving Why He Took Power From Lynch In Clinton Case\nThe New York Times is breaking, and desperately spinning, the reports that former FBI Director James Comey is under investigation...\nGovernment Watchdog Drops Bombshell Report Stating White House Broke the Law\nThe timing of the release is just another part of the DC soap opera, however.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line541299"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7051408886909485,"wiki_prob":0.2948591113090515,"text":"Fashion today is a global industry, and most major countries have a fashion industry. Seven countries have established an international reputation in fashion: France, Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Germany and Belgium. The \"big four\" centers of the fashion industry are Paris, Milan, New York City and London. The biggest manufacturers of clothing are China, Bangladesh and India, and other notable clothing manufacturing countries are Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, and Brazil.\nThere is two main goals of the sexy fashion style: gain the attention of every male around you and show as much skin as legally and humanly possible. Sexy style is all about showing off your *best* features, those being your breasts, stomach, and legs. A woman whose fashion style is set to sexy is usually loaded with plenty of miniskirts, body-con dresses, high heels, and crop tops or low cut tops.\nIn the late 1980s and early 1990s, Belgian fashion designers brought a new fashion image that mixed East and West, and brought a highly individualised, personal vision on fashion. Well known Belgian designers are the Antwerp Six: Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene, Walter Van Beirendonck and Marina Yee, as well as Maison Martin Margiela, Raf Simons, Kris Van Assche, Bruno Pieters, Anthony Vaccarello[14].\nHis interest in sewing and fashion started at an early age; as a young boy, he tailored clothes and created hats for his mother and sisters to wear. After graduating from high school, Frowick went to University in Indiana, but he lasted only one semester. Dropping out of University led him to a more creative life: he took night school courses at an art institute in Chicago and began to work as a window-dresser.\n“Intuition is a strong feminine quality. I have applied that instinct to my career“. This is one our favorite quotes by Carolina Herrera and we think she is a true inspiration to women in fashion, and more, around the world. Carolina started to be known by regularly appearing on the International Best Dressed List in the 80’s. Her trend marks are classy pieces like pencil skirts paired with crisp white cotton shirts. In 2008 she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.\nShortly thereafter, he began to work closely with Christian Dior, who was nearing the end of his life. Dior recognized the skill and creativity of his young protégé, and he chose him as his successor. When Dior died of a heart attack, Saint Laurent found himself holding the reins of one of France’s most venerable fashion houses: he was only 21 years of age.\nIntelligent and pragmatic, Chanel used her powers of seduction to gain a foothold in the competitive fashion world; in succession, she became the mistress of two powerful and wealthy men. Both of her lovers were quite happy to use their money and influence to give her a start in business. From a beginning as a milliner, she rose to prominence in 1920, when her signature fragrance, the incredibly iconic Chanel No. 5, was launched.\nIn this stage only experience person who can help to improve decision making. It is really depends on whether the unfolding of a range or collection fulfils the original need or philosophy. Decisions on research, colour, design development, fabrication, silhouette, proportion, construction, prototyping and embellishment all contribute to a well considered range.\nHe was born and brought up in Mumbai, and was studying to graduate in commerce whilst decided to alter his field and therefore applied for National-Institute-Of-Fashion-Technology New-Delhi. After graduation won the Best Student Award! Launched his label ”Manish-Arora” & started vending in India. Manish symbolized India at HongKong Fashion Week, in the year 2000 and also participated in the first Indian-Fashion-Week held in New-Delhi. In the next year he launched his other label “Fish Fry” , it was shown in six topmost Indian-cities. His future in our space stimulated line at Wills-India-Fashion-Week fascinated many international viewers, in 2007. Arora is an industrious man who’s always on the go! Because of his intellect and beautiful sense of styling, MAC has enrolled him to team up on a new project, the Raj-inspired-beauty-range. He also introduced his jewelry collection in 2012 that was much loved. He’s recognized for his eccentric amalgamation of western&Indian clothing that assemble perfectly!\nWith the elegant fashion style, refinement and glamour is key. The woman with this type of fashion style won’t step foot outside without looking her best, and pays close attention to creating a wardrobe filled head to toe with the most glamorous and classy pieces. She is a lover of all things that dazzle and wouldn’t be caught without her diamonds and jewels, as well as a very stunning outfit that makes heads turn. She’s the perfect combination of sophisticated and sexy!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line786154"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6322951912879944,"wiki_prob":0.3677048087120056,"text":"Robert Aitken on the Art and Poetry of Zen\nPublished on February 8, 2017\nArticle by Robert Aitken\nRobert Aitken came to Bodhi Tree Bookstore from his native Hawaii in October 1994 to talk about his Zen practice. Aitken Roshi (the term “Roshi” literally means “old teacher” and is used in the United States to refer to a person who has been authorized as a fully independent Zen teacher) has been practicing Zen for more than 40 years and has been actively teaching for two decades. During this archived presentation, he read passages from his books Practice of Perfection [Editor’s Note: This book is now out of print], Encouraging Words and Ground We Share (written with David Steindl-Rast), and answered audience questions and comments.\nAitken Roshi’s published writings (listed at the end of the presentation) provide comprehensive information for those wishing to learn about Zen, and especially for those who would like to experience Zen meditation. His many years of practice and study are evident in his frequent use of koans (recorded sayings and actions of the great Zen masters) through which he challenges his readers to arrive at their own realization of the meaning of Zen. At the same time, he is careful to provide background information that makes these unique expressions of Zen insight accessible to the Western reader.\nAitken’s Life and American Zen’s History\nAitken Roshi was extensively trained in the Japanese Zen tradition and encouraged his students to study the art and poetry through which Zen has found expression in China and Japan. At the same time, his teaching demonstrated what might be the beginning of “American Zen.” Traditionally, Zen has been primarily a monastic practice. However, Aitken Roshi was a layperson whose students typically had careers and families of their own. In addition, he strongly emphasized the moral and ethical teachings of Buddhism and was known for his work promoting world peace.\nCo-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Aitken Roshi was also a Master of the Diamond Sangha, a Zen Buddhist society he founded in 1959 with his late wife, Anne Hopkins Aitken, in Honolulu. Aitken Roshi passed away in 2010. His last book, The River of Heaven: The Haiku of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock], was published in 2011. —Justine Amodeo\nThe following excerpt from Aitken Roshi’s 1994 presentation begin with his response to a question about “everyday mind,” after Aitken Roshi had read a passage from his book Encouraging Words, which defines perennial truth as “the mind of every single day of all time and in the dimension of no time.”\nAddressing the Everyday Mind\nAudience: What is “everyday mind?”\nRobert Aitken: This is a very interesting point. We’re not speaking about the everyday mind that turns on the TV to watch a rerun of Gilligan’s Island, see? When you look at the implication of everyday, that means unchanging. In a famous koan involving two great teachers, Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’uan, “What is the Tao? What is the way? What is realization?” Nan-ch’uan said, “Ordinary mind is the Tao.” It becomes clearer that this is not the tedious mental tape that Nan-ch’uan is talking about, but rather, when you fully realize the Tao, you will find it is vast and fathomless as outer space. “How can this be discussed at the level of right and wrong?” This is the way Nan-ch’uan ends his little homily to Chao-chou. That which is always at rest and does not move, does not come or go. It is total peace. It is that which does not change, because it has no substance. Substance is always changing, you know, but this has no substance. So, that is ordinary mind. That is everyday mind, which we seek to uncover in our practice.\nThe Buddhist Take on Perfection\nAudience: I have to say I’m somewhat troubled by the title The Practice of Perfection. What is the point of aiming for perfection?\nAitken: One does not aim for perfection. One practices it. It’s like an attorney practices law or a doctor practices medicine. But this is a very interesting point because, as you know, perfection can be a neurosis and it’s something that parents always need to struggle in regards to their children. A child might cry, “I made a blot on my letter to Grandma,” and the mother says, “It’s all right, Grandma wants to see your letter, blot and all.” “But it’s got a blot in it,” you know. [Laughs] Well, we need to work carefully with children to encourage them to do their best and as my mother used to say, “Angels can do no more.” Once when I was an apprentice teacher, I was working with students who were also working with my teacher, Yamada Roshi. And in speaking about one of the students we had in common, I said, “I feel he tends to be perfectionistic.” And Roshi said, “Well, isn’t it all right to want to be perfect?” Good point. But, in Zen it is said that the Buddha Shakyamuni is still practicing somewhere and he is only halfway there.\nThe perfections are lights on our path. They are modes of practice. Actually, another meaning for paramita [which means “perfect” or “perfection”] is to cross to the other shore—to the other shore of Nirvana. I chose perfection rather than “crossing to the other shore” because there is something, you say, rather absolute about that implication of the latter. We are always in process of crossing.\nThe Buddhist Take on Imperfection\nAudience: It seems to me that the awareness of imperfection is just as important.\nAitken: Oh. [Laughs] I couldn’t agree more. But, one does not punish oneself with one’s sense of one’s imperfection. With that self-punishment, one is stymied. But, the consciousness that, “I didn’t do it very well then and I will do it better next time,” that is a kind of practice. I didn’t call it The Perfection of Practice, you see. [Laughter] OK?\nThe Importance of Peak Experiences\nAudience: You spoke about Buddhist and Christian peak experiences. Could you speak about viewing daily experience from the context of a peak experience, and how that relates to fear?\nAitken: Yes, of course. Coming back from that peak experience, you are aware that there is no fear, even when you are afraid. And incidentally, I must say, that the Chinese ideograph which we translate as fear (referring to a passage in the Heart Sutra about having “no fear”), actually means terror—the terror we feel when we stare into the abyss. David Hume came to the end of his philosophical research and looked into the abyss and said, “Ohhh… I’m not going in there.” In effect, he said, it’s much better to come back and enjoy a good game of backgammon with my friends. It’s too bad, see? Don Quixote, at the edge of the abyss, commends himself to his god and to his mistress and spurs his horse and leaps with his full armor on into this horrible sea full of monstrous creatures, and before he knew what was happening to him, he found himself in fields beautiful beyond Elysium.\nThat is the conviction that the pilgrim of any religion has, that I walk through this valley of the shadow of death and it is the context of my practice—it is the mood or mode of my practice. And, I go right through. We don’t have a god to comfort us in Buddhism, so we can only go step by step with the confidence that others have gone this way before and it’s been all right.\nAudience: Satoris and Kenshos and peak experiences are so temporal. How have either the masters or you or advanced students been able to hold on to enough of it to carry you?\nAitken: It’s important not to hold on to it. If these peak experiences are genuine, they are transformative. Your life is changed by them. John Wu, in a class I took from him years ago, told the story from the Book of Saints about a young priest who had a vision of the Virgin Mary. He devoted the rest of his life in his cell to painting that vision on the wall of his cell, rubbing it out and repainting it. That’s really too bad. What might have he gone on to, you know? All these peak experiences are milestones on our path. And the be-all and end-all experience for some is only the beginning for others.\nWhat is American Zen?\nAudience: Do you see Zen practice taking on an American flavor? Have you seen that happen in your experience, since Zen centers tend to be Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese?\nAitken: Well, it’s interesting to look at history. Dhyana Buddhism came from India with Bodhidharma, they say, in the sixth century. When you look at the writings attributed to Bodhidharma, you find them quite Indian in their flavor—quite philosophical, really. Even in the Platform Sutra of the sixth ancestor, you find a certain Indian flavor. But, in two more generations—that’s eight generations after Bodhidharma—you have clearly a Chinese way that has somehow married Taoism. Then when Chan came to Japan and became Zen, while it was certainly less obvious and less radical, there was nonetheless an integration with Japanese culture, particularly Shinto. Coming to this country, inevitably, there is going to be an acculturation. For example, things I’ve said tonight would never be said in Japan, I’m sure. The whole worldview that has arisen in the last 120 or so years with psychology just permeates our culture—permeates it. Christianity and Judaism permeate our culture.\nI grew up as a little boy in Central Union Church in Honolulu, and I used to sit there in the sermons. I knew that the sermons were boring. I thought this was just something you did. You sat there and you entertained yourself while the sermons were going on and I used to make the minister go out of focus and come into focus. [Laughter] I would see him as a little boy, I would see him as an old man and so I would pass my time in this way. But the extraordinary thing is that when I began teaching, those words from the Bible came readily to my lips when it was pertinent to say, “Put away childish things,” or whatever. Or to say, “Love never faileth,” which was emblazoned in gold letters above the altar. Anyway, something is certainly happening in Western Buddhism, but I represent only the first generation of native teachers.\nThe Importance of Community\nAudience: You were talking about how some states of emptiness, or something, aren’t exactly a peak experience, they’re more terrifying or almost destroying. It seems with those types of experiences that you really can’t go back and play backgammon just knowing that that’s there. You were saying that just the confidence that other people have gone before you is enough to carry you through that?\nAitken: Oh, it’s more than that. It’s the Sangha (the Buddhist community). It’s the fellowship, the kinship of people that you’re sitting with. It’s the teacher who is kidding you along, and encouraging you, and it’s the reading that you’ve done. Hakuin Zenji (the great Japanese Zen Master) said, “I felt as though I were in a profound cave frozen in primordial ice. I couldn’t move. I would hear the voices of others as though from an infinite distance.” Well, that wasn’t my experience. But I can relate to it, because I had similar experiences. Every dark night experience is different and is expressed differently. But, that dark night experience, whether it’s being frozen in this deep cave or whether it is being in a desert, where there’s not a drop of water or a blade of grass, or whatever the experience, there is an experience of unity that goes with it. Whether you’re frozen in that unity or whether you have this experience of vast emptiness—literal, horrible emptiness—there is some hint there, you see, that this can be a teacher. And you walk through. As you say, you can’t step back—well, you can, you see, but you mustn’t. [Laughter]\nHow to Reconcile Zen Ideas with Western Culture\nAudience: One of the things I find difficult about Eastern religions, especially Zen Buddhism, is this whole idea of no goals and being humble and being process-oriented, when we live in a Western culture, which is very much oriented to tooting your own horn and being results-oriented. I like the feeling you get when you meditate, but…\nAitken: I don’t think we need to blame it on the Easterners, you see. [Laughter] It’s not an East-West dichotomy. There are plenty of viciously ambitious goal-oriented people in China. After all, the Chinese invented bureaucracy. [Laughter] Riddled with ambition, riddled with achievement orientation, corruption, the whole works. So, the Zen students who stepped aside in Chinese culture stepped out of the equivalent of our kind of ambitious society. But one thing that differs is our technology—that’s about the only difference. And our missionizing, so to speak, that comes out of perhaps a perversion of the words of Jesus. That’s part of our culture. But, we’re not that different. It’s very important that one be confident, that one be able to come forth and to express oneself. When the Dalai Lama was in Honolulu recently, he gave a few talks and I was struck by the fact that he frequently made the point that confidence and equanimity are the same thing. Now, that’s very different from charismatic confidence. The confidence that I’ve got a way that is going to bring me lots of money and I’m going to show you the same way. When I was a boy, the popular book in the drugstores was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. It’s still in print. [Laughter]\nWhat we need to do, for example, in breath counting (a basic meditation practice), is not to hold out the idea of reaching 10, but rather to be intimate with each point in the sequence as it comes up. Intimacy and realization are the same word in the old texts. They’re synonyms and the point has no dimension. There is eternity itself. Right there. We learned in geometry, the point has no dimension. So, we focus on that single point. And, after all, what are we attaining? We are attaining the place in the hospital where interventions fail. And that’s the end of it. That’s the attainment, really. We have to get off that timeline. Or at least incorporate the eternal in that timeline. OK?\nWhy Christians Find Solace in Zen Buddhism\nAudience: Can you talk a little more about where your personal experience has touched common ground with Christian teachers you’ve met like David Steindl-Rast?\nAitken: Yes. When I first began working with Yamada Roshi, the teacher from whom I received transmission, he told me about the Catholics who were coming to study with him in Kamakura and how impressed he was with their earnestness and their diligence. Then, Anne Aitken and I went to Kamakura to study and we saw this for ourselves. One of the sisters, who at that time was 38, said to us, “Zen Buddhism brings me what I expected to find when I joined the Order 20 years ago and didn’t find.” There is almost a deep memory that once there was a teaching of a kind of Zazen meditation in Christianity though it was not as complete. I’ve read Christian meditation in manuals that instruct you to put your beard on your chest. Well, that’s not the way to meditate; you’ve got to keep your head up. But, the Cloud of Unknowing and The Way of the Pilgrim and such books (and certainly Meister Eckhart) are struggling to express the perennial through their own cultures and through their own words, their own languages. When Meister Eckhart says, “The eye with which I see God is the very same eye with which God sees me,” this is a very complicated way of expressing what the old Zen teachers would do with just a word or two.\nSo, what David and I did not try to do was to reach commonalty across cultural and sectarian lines, but rather to find the perennial common ground. This is very dangerous because what is common ground, and what we enunciate as common ground for the Buddhists, will sound a lot different from the common ground that’s expressed by Christians. So, we talked a lot. Coomaraswamy says, “All paths reach the top of the same mountain.” I don’t believe that. I think there are all kinds of mountains. Let a hundred mountains rise.\nBooks by Robert Aitken\nThe Practice of Perfection: The Paramitas from a Zen Buddhist Perspective (1994) [Editor’s Note: This book is now out of print]\nAitken shows how Zen practice is grounded in the Indian Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and in turn, how that tradition is expressed through Zen. The Paramitas or “Perfections” are the qualities such as giving, patience, meditation and wisdom that lead to enlightenment.\nEncouraging Words: Zen Buddhist Teachings for Western Students (1993)\nThis book contains talks given by Aitken during Zen retreats and essays that demonstrate the development of his insights during the past two decades. The book conveys the flavor of Zen practice and offers skillful advice for meditators; it also includes texts that are recited as part of Zen practice.\nThe Ground We Share Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian with David Steindl-Rast (1994)\nThis is a remarkable weeklong dialogue in which Aitken and a leading Christian contemplative both challenge and appreciate one another’s viewpoints.\nThe Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses for Zen Buddhist Practice (1992) [Editor’s Note: This book is now out of print]\nBrief verses to encourage the meditator along the path.\nThe Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) translation and commentary by Robert Aitken (1992)\nAitken reveals a classic Zen textbook (koan collection) for the modern reader, inviting us to enter into the spirit of the great Zen Masters and realize that “each being is infinitely precious.”\nThe Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (1984)\nAitken discusses the Buddhist precepts and his beliefs and insights regarding religious activism.\nTaking the Path of Zen (1982)\nAn excellent, practical manual for beginners that includes detailed Zen meditation instructions along with general information about Zen practice. Includes Aitken’s autobiographical account of his own Zen studies.\nA Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen (1978) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nThis unique and enjoyable book explores the famous Haiku poetry of Basho from the standpoint of Zen, and life from the standpoint of poetry.\nOther Books by Robert Aitken\nThe River of Heaven: The Haiku of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki (2011) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nMiniatures of a Zen Master (2008) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nVegetable Roots Discourse: Wisdom from Ming China on Life and Living with Daniel Kwok (2007) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nThe Morning Star: New and Selected Zen Writings (2003) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nZen Master Raven: Savings and Doings of a Wise Bird (2002) [Editor’s Note: The publisher is out of stock]\nOriginal Dwelling Place: Zen Buddhist Essays (1996) [Editor’s Note: This book is now out of print]\nTags: aitken, art, bodhi talk, Buddhism, EDITED, from the archives, poetry, Zen\nLove is the Spiritual Activism of Our Time\nMalas: The History, The Beads & How to Choose One","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1287907"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6512860059738159,"wiki_prob":0.3487139940261841,"text":"Dr William Kanter | Dr Mitchel Kanter\nPlastic Surgeons in Ellicott City | Columbia | Annapolis, Maryland | 410-715-9205\nCONGRATULATIONS TO PLASTIC SURGEONS, DR. WILLIAM KANTER AND DR. MITCHEL KANTER FOR BEING VOTED THE BEST PLASTIC SURGERY AWARD BY HOWARD MAGAZINE FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW !\nAbout Dr William Kanter & Dr Mitchel Kanter\nIf you are looking for plastic surgeons with solid training, years of experience, and a philosophy of caring and safety, please meet the Board Certified Plastic Surgeons of Plastic Surgery Professionals, and learn more about us below:\nWilliam R. Kanter, M.D., F.A.C.S.\nDr. William Kan ter is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and did his surgical and plastic surgical residencies at Harvard. He has been on the part-time Clinical Faculty at Johns Hopkins for over 25 years. He has a caring concern for his patients that people often comment on.\nDr. Kanter was also recently honored by receiving a TOP DOCTOR award by Baltimore Magazine in General Cosmetic Surgery for 2015. The recipient of this award is selected by a survey of other physicians in the region to find out where they would send a member of their own family.\nDr. Kanter was also voted the Best of Howard Award for Plastic Surgery for 2016 by Howard Magazine. The Award was based on voting of over 15,000 members of the community and the doctors did not solicit any votes for this.\nDr. Kanter was then voted the Best of Howard Award for Plastic Surgery for 2017 for the second year in a row! The Award was based on votes from over 16,000 members of the community.\nDr. Kanter specializes in Facial Rejuvenation such as Facelifts, Neck lifts, Eyelid lifts (Blepharoplasty), Rhinoplasty (nose), and the quick healing DOT-Laser skin therapy. He also specializes in non-surgical cosmetic treatments and injectables such as Botox, Restylane, Juvederm, Voluma and others.\nDr. Kanter has extensive experience in plastic surgery of the breast and body, including Breast Augmentation, Breast Reduction, and Breast Reconstruction, Liposuction and Abdominoplasty (tummy-tuck) .\nDr. Kanter graduated first in his class in medical school in Albany, New York. He then obtained his surgical training at the Harvard Medical School where he was a resident and Chief Resident in Surgery at the renowned Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Kanter also then completed his residency and Chief Residency in Plastic Surgery also at the Harvard Medical School in Boston. He has been on the Part Time Clinical Faculty at Johns Hopkins Medical School as a Clinical Instructor in Plastic Surgery.\nDr. Kanter was also elected by his fellow physicians to serve as Vice-President and then President of the Professional Staff of the Howard County General Hospital, a Johns Hopkins Affiliated Hospital.\nHe is co-author and co-editor of a major textbook on Cosmetic Eyelid Surgery and is a recipient of the Golden Cannula Award from the Lipoplasty Society of North America for research in liposuction. He also has numerous publications in the medical literature. Dr. Kanter has also been named as one of America’s Top Plastic Surgeons by the Consumer Research Council of America.\nYou can feel comfortable knowing that Dr. Kanter is a caring and knowledgeable physician who places a high priority on medical safety with the training and experience to help you look your best.\nDr. William Kanter has been in practice for over 25 years. Dr. Kanter has offices in Ellicott City, Maryland and Annapolis, making it accessible from the Greater Baltimore area, Annapolis, and parts of Washington D.C.\nClick here to see what some of our patients have to say about Dr. Kanter.\nMitchel Kanter, M.D., F.A.C.P., F.A.C.S.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter specializes in cosmetic surgery including facelifts, eyelid surgery, nasal surgery, laser facial rejuvenation including the quick-healing DOT Laser, as well as Plastic Surgery of the breast including breast augmentation, breastreduction, breast lifts and reconstruction. He also has expertise in liposuction, abdominoplasty, body contour surgery, and treatment of skin cancers. He also has years of experience with injectable cosmetic treatments such as Botox, Restylane, Juvederm, Voluma, Lyft and others.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter was also voted the Best of Howard Award for Plastic Surgery by Howard Magazine for 2016. This was based on a survey of over 15,000 members of the community. The doctors did not solicit any votes for this award.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter was also voted the Best of Howard Award for Plastic Surgery in 2017 for the second year in a row! This award was the result of voting from over 16,000 members of the community.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and has been recognized as one of America’s Top Plastic Surgeons by the Consumer Research Council of America. Dr. Mitchel Kanter is a Clinical Instructor in Plastic Surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical School where he participates in the teaching program.\nHe trained in Plastic Surgery at the Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. Mitchel Kanter graduated medical school and completed full training in surgery at the George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter has numerous publications in the medical literature which emphasize safety during outpatient surgery and cosmetic surgery. He is also co-author of a major textbook on cosmetic eyelid surgery entitled Aesthetic Blepharoplasty.\nDr. Mitchel Kanter is one of the few plastic surgeons who is double Board Certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the American Board of Internal Medicine.\nDr. Kanterhas offices in Ellicott City, Maryland and Annapolis, making it accessible from the Greater Baltimore area, Annapolis, and parts of Washington D.C. Click here to see what some of our patients have to say about Dr. Kanter.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1084142"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.732718825340271,"wiki_prob":0.267281174659729,"text":"Bids & Jobs\nREGAL AWARDS\nCongratulations to HBA/DE Member Mike Riemann, P.E.\nMike Riemann, P.E., Civil Engineer, has been promoted to Principal, demonstrating strong technical competency and leadership skills throughout his tenure with Becker Morgan Group. Mike started as an intern in 1997, joined full time as a Civil Designer in 2001, advanced to Associate in 2006, named Senior Associate in 2009, promoted to Associate Principal in 2016 and became a Principal in 2018. Mike is a graduate of University of Delaware with a Bachelor of Science / Civil Engineering degree and is a registered professional engineer in Delaware. Mike played a vital role in the opening and expansion of the firm’s newest office in Newark, DE. His extensive experience spans statewide across Delaware, with expertise in various market sectors including, commercial, retail, education, institutional, residential subdivision and more. Mike is actively involved in numerous professional and civic organizations, including his current role serving as President of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) of Delaware, and has been recognized as the 2015 Delaware Council of Engineering Societies Young Engineer of the Year, 2014 Rotarian of the Year from the Dover Downtown Rotary, and 2013 Associate Member of the Year from the Home Builders Association of Delaware.\nCongratulations Mike!\nHBADE BOOK STORE\n109 E. Division Street, Dover DE 19901\ninfo@hbade.org","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line213170"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6417510509490967,"wiki_prob":0.3582489490509033,"text":"Tufts Boston Insight\nGSC Members\nHappenings at Tufts Boston\nInSight PDFs\nJune – October 2015\nMarch – April 2017\nMay – July 2017\nAugust – September 2017\nOctober – November 2017\nMay – June 2018\nJuly – August 2018\nNovember – December 2018\nApril – May 2019\nTufts Boston Biomedical Science Snapshots\nEvent Recap: Computer Technology and the Future of Medicine\nApril 13, 2016 Daniel Wong\tLeave a comment\nApril Entrepreneurship Seminar co-hosted by the Tufts Biomedical Business Club and the TUSM MD-MBA Program\nby Townsend Bernard, MBMN-Nutrition\nDr. Bill Greenberg leveraged his undergraduate education in computer engineering at Tufts to become a pioneer in the proliferation of technology into clinical practice, contributing to the NIH’s Computers in Medicine initiative, co-founding Physicians Online (now known as WebMD) and advising a number of high-profile start-ups. His insights into the history of technological advancements highlighted just how rapidly the clinical landscape is changing – the cloud, automation and increased computational power are fundamentally altering the roles and capacities of physicians and the healthcare industry. The biotechnology sector is further driving this change with advances in personalized medicine (Human Longevity Incorporated), diagnostic efficiency (DermaCompare) and pharmaceutical sales (SmartRx).\nApril 2016, articles, Community, GSC career events, Mentoring & Outreach\nEDITORIAL: Career development resources for non-academic paths (Part I)\nApril 12, 2016 Nafis Hasan\tLeave a comment\nThis two-part editorial by the Insight team seeks to open a discussion between faculty, students, postdocs and the school administration about whether the school is prepared for meeting the changes in the future of PhD holders. The first part will address the current available resources and the unmet needs of the students/postdocs, and will also explore some possible solutions. The second part, to be published in the next issue of the InSight, will carry the opinions of all parties involved collected through a survey and communication, which will serve as a stepping stone towards meaningful changes that will benefit us all.\nEditors’ Note, 4/11/16, 1:30 pm – The article has been modified to include corrected information regarding the BEST award application by Sackler. Previously it had stated that Sackler had applied for the BEST award and was not awarded due to lack of proper infrastructure. However, after communicating with the Dean’s office, we have learned that Sackler had applied in conjunction with other Tufts graduate schools and it is speculated the application was not funded partly due to complex administrative structure and evaluation and dissemination plans. The changes are reflected in the article.\nThe Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) is a degree awarded to recognize original contributions to collective human knowledge. Thus, it is no surprise that the next step after getting a PhD is to join the bastions where such knowledge is curated and cultivated, i.e., to pursue an academic career. However, given the current structure of an academic job and the nature of academic tenure, a bottleneck in academic positions have taken firm root in the last years. According to Nature, the number of postdocs have jumped by 150% between 2000 and 2012 while the number of tenured or full time faculty positions in the US has either remained stagnant or fallen. While the debate on how to improve the lives of postdocs and other non-faculty PhD holders rages on and restructuring of federal funding for scientific research is ongoing, the increasing number of PhDs leaving the traditional path and venturing into other professions is readily apparent.\nAdapted from Powell 2015 Nature\nAdapted from Cyransoki et al 2011 Nature\nIn recent years, the PhD degree has been developed as a marketable asset with a accompanied with a powerful skill set — the ability to think critically, solve problems and troubleshoot, be organized and detail-oriented. The idea that the skills required for obtaining a PhD are also recognized as required to be successful in any other profession, and is now being echoed by career counselors. While industry research positions were once spoken about in hushed voices before, these positions are now not only coveted, but other non-research jobs are also becoming more prominent in seminars and career advice panels for biomedical graduate students and postdocs.\nThis trend is also evident within the graduate student population here at Sackler School of Biomedical Graduate Sciences, where more than half the alumni have pursued non-academic careers. As the funding climate struggles to recover and academic positions become more scarce, the question arises of whether the existing model of career development for student and postdoctoral trainees is sufficient to ensure future success and achieving their goals. It is apparent that career development training outside of academia is required, but the support for this by the curriculum and administration at the Sackler School seems to lag behind our peer institutions, and even our colleagues on the Medford campus have access to the Tufts Career Center and the students in the Fletcher School have their own Career Services office.\nResources currently available for students at Sackler interested pursuing non-academic careers are mostly driven and organized by the students themselves. These student-led initiatives have produced a full roster of seminars and workshops focusing on such career options held nearly weekly between the Career Paths Committee of the Sackler Graduate Student Council (GSC) and the Tufts Biomedical Business Club (TBBC). These groups have become increasingly active over the past few years, with their efforts growing into independent events like the Tufts New England Case Competition (TUNECC), as well as collaborations with the Tufts Postdoctoral Association and student groups in the School of Medicine. Additionally, the Tufts Mentoring Circles group has provided students peer guidance and spaces to discuss such career options among themselves. Every student initiative listed here has sought more interactions with Sackler alumni, but the information to facilitate that exchange is not readily available. Student leaders at Sackler have expended great effort to build the career resources the student body needs, but these efforts are reaching the limit of what they can achieve and will only be short term and partial solutions without additional resources and support infrastructure. Some of this could be built by students, like shared repositories for maintaining records and thus institutional memory so energy is expended solving new problems instead of rehashing old ones. The most important piece, however, cannot be done by students alone: an accurate, current database of Sackler alumni and their occupations that is accessible and searchable.\nWe appreciate that the Dean’s Office has recently increased its support of these student efforts, but believe that more can be done. An increased contribution to co-sponsorship from partial funding of one or two events with the GSC annually to a series of three annual workshops and career panels over the past two academic years, and the interactions between a handful of students with Sackler alumni through the new “Day in the Life” program are good starting points. However, the student body and Sackler as an institution would derive greater benefit and return on an investment in career development and advising staff, similar to those available at the Fletcher School and the Medford campus, but scaled for Sackler. It would be mutually beneficial, as it works to the advantage of a school to have an engaged student body that will recognize and appreciate the school’s support in shaping their careers as alumni. Furthermore, this infrastructure could be a common point for alumni to rely upon and connect with students and each other.\nThe lack of formal career development resources at Sackler has been identified by peer reviewers as an area for improvement, and puts us at a competitive disadvantage for student recruitment and securing grant funding. Prospective students actively seek graduate programs that provide career development, and among the recommendations made by the review committee for the newly-merged CMDB program were formal non-academic career training options and an expansion of extramural internships through the alumni network and faculty connections. Funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) evaluate grant applications on this aspect of graduate training as well. For example, F31 grant applications to support graduate students require descriptions of career training and development; the proposed changes will essentially strengthen the Sackler students’ applications and may increase the number of extramurally funded students, alleviating the pressure on the school. A more recent example includes the NIH Broadening Experience in Scientific Training (BEST) awards, a funding opportunity established in 2013 in response to the state of the biomedical workforce and to prepare trainees for diverse career paths that utilize their PhD training. Boston University received a BEST award in 2014 for its biomedical research programs in part because of its existing career development and support infrastructure. It should be noted that Sackler, along with other graduate schools at Tufts, had applied for the BEST award. While the reviewers had found the application to be strong in certain areas and to have “potential for high impact”, they also noted weaknesses that included “complex administrative structure and the evaluation and dissemination plans”, which could partly be responsible for the award not being funded (source – email communication with Sackler Dean’s office). These issues can be addressed with the establishment of the proposed infrastructure development and can further strengthen such grant applications in the future.\nThe faculty mentor plays an important role in shaping a mentee’s future career — the mentor’s support and guidance are essential for the mentee’s career development. While Sackler faculty are generally supportive of students and postdocs, it is critical for them to come forward and actively support mentees’ who choose to pursue careers outside of academia and research. The Greater Boston area is known as a hub for biotechnology research and business, with companies specializing in everything from drug development to consulting. Many recent and local alumni maintain a connection to Tufts through their faculty mentors absent a career development office at Sackler, and both students and postdocs would greatly benefit if the faculty mentors shared these connections, and offered guidance and support on leaving academia.\nThe current funding climate and the stagnation of academic positions, along with the burgeoning postdoc crisis, amount to conditions favorable for a paradigm shift. We cannot just keep focusing on the academic jobs traditionally held by PhDs. In order to better adapt to this changing landscape of post-doctoral work, the students, postdocs, faculty, and administration need to work together to bring about improvements to the environment at Sackler, specifically:\nDeveloping an accessible, searchable, up-to-date database of Sackler alumni that can be used by students, postdocs and faculty looking for career advice and connections.\nFaculty support in the form of guidance and connections in developing non-academic careers.\nCareer development support staff for students from the Tufts and Sackler administration, so as to cultivate an engaged alumni population.\nComments, suggestions, and other feedback on this editorial can be left on either the InSight blog or via this online form: Anonymous feedback form: http://goo.gl/forms/PXEfcLfgeX\nA survey to collect more detailed data from the student body will be conducted by the Sackler GSC in the coming weeks.\ncareercareer developmentcareer pathseditorialfeaturedPhD careersresources for students\nApril 2016, articles, Techniques\nResources for learning how to code\nLast month, I put together a small script that made the calendar from the Sackler website accessible to calendar software such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and others, that a majority of people now use. This little simple bit of code solved a problem of the Sackler website that has existed for years and requires no further intervention on my part. I’ve put the source code online on GitHub for anyone who is interested in seeing how it works (https://github.com/danielsenhwong/sackler). For anyone who is interested in learning how to code or, like me, would like to develop their skills beyond the introductory undergraduate level, I’ve compiled a list of resources that may be useful.\nThis is in many ways the most difficult part about learning how to code. Many resources exist, but it’s difficult to know which is the most approrpiate for your current skill level. You may already be somewhat familiar with some specific coding techniques or languagees, but significant gaps may still remain in your knowledgebase. Such gaps could include understanding how to set up a coding environment on your computer, which language is most suitable for your work, or how to interface with a database instead of just reading data from a file generated by your plate reader. As biomedical scientists, our familiarity with computers and code is limited compared to more computationally-intensive fields, but not compeltely absent, and our field is rapidly becoming more computational.\nFortunately, there is a book specifically intended for biologists who are interested in developing their computing skill set: Practical Computing for Biologists, by Steven Haddock and Casey Dunn. The book introduces basic concepts of coding while also providing a thorough walkthrough of how to set up a suitable environment on your computer before moving on to practical applications of coding and tools for data analysis, including working with databases and best practices for working with graphics and generating figures for publication. The companion website for the book makes much of the example code freely available, along with some other extras, including the reference tables, which are extremely useful while you’re still learning the commands: http://practicalcomputing.org/\nTufts Technology Services (Tufts IT) also has some resources available for free to the Tufts community, including access to Lynda.com, which hosts self-paced online tutorials for a number of different topics, including coding as well as software-specific training (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). Additional details can be found on the Tufts IT website: https://it.tufts.edu/lynda\nIntegrating coding into your work\nIt can be difficult to learn how to code if it’s siloed away as a separate skill you’re trying to learn, so one effective technique is to integrate it into your normal workflow. One example would be to use R (r-project.org) in place of Excel or Prism to perform your statistical analysis. A good book for learning how to get started is Introductory Statistics with R, by Peter Dalgaard. A PDF version of this book is available for free through the Tufts library or heavily discounted for purchase: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-0-387-79054-1\ncodingfeaturedresources\nApril 2016, articles, Community\nSackler Spotlight – Wei-sheng Chen, CMDB\nAs part of a new endeavor to highlight exciting and groundbreaking work done at Sackler, we are now interviewing current students about their science and themselves.\nThis month’s spotlight is on Wei-sheng Chen (CMDB) who earned his PhD from Sackler last year and whose dissertation work will be published in Nature Communications.\nWhat is your research focused on?\nMy research focused on the role of galectins, a family of carbohydrate binding proteins, in the ocular diseases. During my Ph.D., I investigated (i) the role of galectins in modulating angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, (ii) effect of inhibiting galectin-3 and galectin-8 on corneal and choroidal neovascularization, and (iii) therapeutic opportunities of treating glaucoma.\nWhat are some of your major findings?\nMy thesis project is to study the role of galectin-8 in modulating the process of lymphangiogenesis. Compared to blood vessels, lymphatic vessels were considered less important, invisible, and thus largely neglected by scientists and clinicians. Only in recent years, subsequent to the identification of lymphatic-specific markers (such as podoplanin), it is becoming increasingly clear that lymphatic vessels do not just serve as passive conduits for interstitial fluid and cells, but is actively involved in the pathogenesis of numerous diseases. In addition, the role of carbohydrate recognition system in the regulation of lymphangiogenesis is poorly understood. For my thesis project, using the avascular cornea as a canvas, I demonstrated that galectin-8 is a key mediator of crosstalk among VEGF-C (vascular endothelial growth factor-C), podoplanin and integrin lymphangiogenic pathways. Also, this is the first report demonstrating that podoplanin is a key player in VEGF-C-induced lymphangiogenesis.\nWhat short- and long-term implications does your research have in your field?\nIn this study, we demonstrated that in the mouse model of corneal allogeneic transplantation, galectin-8-induced lymphangiogenesis is associated with an increased rate of corneal graft rejection. In addition, in the mouse model of herpes simplex virus keratitis, corneal pathology and lymphangiogenesis are ameliorated in galectin-8 knockout mice. Targeting galectin-8 can be a potential novel therapy for corneal graft rejection and herpes simplex virus keratitis. In addition, these results have broad implications for developing novel therapeutic agents to treat numerous diseases, including, but are not limited to, lymphedema, tumor metastasis, cardiovascular diseases (myocardial infarction, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension), inflammation and immunity, obesity, glaucoma, dry eye disease, and allergic eye disease.\nWhat initially got you interested in science in general, as well as your current field, and this project(s)?\nI began my scientific career as a part-time undergrad student in a cardiovascular lab in National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. My job was to purify plasminogen from human plasma, and further process the protein enzymatically to generate different forms of anti-angiogenic angiostatins. I guess ever since then, I have been fascinated by vascular biology.\nDuring my first year at Tufts, I was looking for a lab studying vascular biology and have done different projects related to the field. Fortunately, I joined Prof. Noorjahan Panjwani’s lab at Ophthalmology Department in 2011 to start my thesis project. During my Ph.D., I have learned a lot about the diverse functions of glycans and glycan binding proteins. In addition, I was encouraged to attend regional and international conferences and have developed great interests in pathogenesis of ocular diseases such as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.\nWhere do you see your career heading in the short or long term?\nIn the short term, I would like to learn more about the interaction between blood/lymphatic vessels and immune cells such as macrophages and T cells in the setting of eye diseases and/or cancers.\nIn the long term, I would like to become an independent scientist focusing on vascular biology in the hope to find new therapies for ocular and cardiovascular diseases.\nAnything interesting that you do outside of lab or that is science-related but not connected to your research?\nI like to travel and try different cuisines. I especially like conferences that are held close to beaches. In my free time at home, I also like to watch food channel. Some of my favorite programs are “Chopped”, “Guy’s Grocery Games” and “Worst Cooks in America”.\nCMDBfeaturedsackler spotlightstudentswei-sheng chen\nImplicit Bias: A Conscious Discussion of Unconscious Actions\nApril 11, 2016 Kofi E. Gyan\tLeave a comment\nIt is no secret that unconscious biases penetrate various realms of society; from hiring decisions (Lebowitz, 2015) to medical care (Blair, Steiner, and Havranek, 2011) and even foul calls in the NBA (Schwarz, 2007).\nBut what about implicit bias in our everyday lives? Does it really play a role in who we form relationships with, or the way we interact with others, or even the way we perceive a stranger?\nImplicit bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner, according to the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, which publishes an annual Implicit Bias Review . Unlike explicit bias, which reflects the attitudes or beliefs that one endorses at a conscious level, implicit bias is judgment and/or behavior that results from subtle cognitive processes that often operate at a level below conscious awareness and without intentional control.\nRecent claims of overt and covert discrimination on college campuses and in policing raise the question: How does someone’s unconscious reaction to people of a different race, religion or sexuality influence their judgment and behavior? Psychologists and social scientists working within this field do not have a concise answer to explain how implicit bias manifests in everyday life, as it is hard to rule out alternative explanations.\nIn other words, implicit bias can and does happen, but it is complicated to prove.\n“Some biases seem obviously wrong, like treating equally qualified people differently when hiring or promoting,” said Calvin Lai, director of research for Harvard’s Project Implicit. “Every day biases are hard to wrap our heads around because they’re so much more personal, and you can point to other reasons.”\nSimilarly, structural factors beyond your control might come into play. If most of your friends look like you, or you tend to date people of the same race as you, it could largely be just a reflection of the demographics in your community.\nHowever, research shows that those relationships, along with the interactions and experiences that come from them, are key contributors of implicit biases. These biases begin forming at a young age and are easily reinforced into adulthood through social settings and mass media.\n“When you think backwards, what you think is normal is really cultural pressure that pushes you into bias, implicit and conscious,” said sociologist Charles Gallagher, chairman of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at LaSalle University in Philadelphia.\nHanging out with friends that look like you isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if they’re nice people! However, research suggests that implicit biases and stereotypes, both positive and negative, are maintained through persistent lack of contact with others beyond your “in-group,” that is people who share certain characteristics.\nThe good news? We are not helpless to combat implicit bias. It can be mitigated through intervention strategies, starting with recognizing where it might exist in your life and seeking exposure to people and experiences beyond your regular circles.\nPsychologists and social scientist who study implicit bias are working to gather more data with the goal of making people more aware of their unconscious decision-making and its consequences.\nHarvard’s Project Implicit features a battery of “implicit association tests” where participants can measure levels of implicit bias around certain topics based on the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations.\n“The goal of the organization is to educate the public about hidden biases and to provide a ‘virtual laboratory’ for collecting data on the Internet.”\nIf you’re interested in measuring your levels of implicit bias (almost everyone displays bias in some way, according to the experts!), here are a few tests you can take:\nUnderstanding Prejudice: Implicit Association\nTest Look Different: Bias Cleanse\n2015 State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review. (2015). Retrieved from; http://kirwaninstitute.osu.edu/my-product/2015-state-of-the-science-implicit-bias-review/\nBlair, I. V., Steiner, J. F., & Havranek, E. P. (2011). Unconscious (Implicit) Bias and Health Disparities: Where Do We Go from Here? The Permanente Journal, 15(2), 71–78.\nGrinberg, E. (2015). 4 ways you might display hidden bias every day – CNN.com. Retrieved from; http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/living/implicit-bias-tests-feat/\nLebowitz, S., Jul. 17, 2015, 9, 022, & 2. (2015). 3 unconscious biases that affect whether you get hired. Retrieved from; http://www.businessinsider.com/unconscious-biases-in-hiring-decisions-2015-7\nSchwarz, A. (2007, May 2). Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls. The New York Times. Retrieved from; http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/sports/basketball/02refs.html\nApril2016articlesCommunityfeaturedthoughts & opinions\nApril 2016, Library, Notes from the library\nNotes from the Library…Measuring Research Impact: Author Metrics\nApril 11, 2016 Laura Pavlech\tLeave a comment\nAt some point in your career, you will be asked to demonstrate the impact of your work. You may be asked to do this for a grant application, progress report or renewal, or on a CV for a job application, promotion, tenure or performance review. Traditionally, this has meant providing a list of publications you have authored, and perhaps the number of citations that those publications have received. Alternative methods of demonstrating research impact will be discussed in a later post.\nHow can I create a list of publications that I have authored?\nYou can do an author search in any bibliographic database, such as PubMed (see this month’s PubMed tip), Web of Science, or Scopus. It may be necessary to search more than one database to generate a complete list. Once you have run the search, you can save the results within the database (for example, send results to the My Bibliography section of My NCBI in PubMed) or export them to a citation manager.\nWhere can I find how many times my articles have been cited?\nSeveral databases provide the number of times an article has been cited. Traditionally, Web of Science has been used to obtain citations counts; recently, Scopus and Google Scholar have emerged as alternatives to Web of Science. Each resource provides a different citation count because each indexes (or, in the case of Google Scholar searches) a different set of journals over a different period of time. Web of Science remains the best choice for authors with a long publishing history because Scopus indexes articles published from 1996 to the present (although older content is being added). Google Scholar is a moving target because it “generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and the majority of users” (https://scholar.google.com/intl/us/scholar/citations.html – citations). Regardless of the source that you choose, it is important to always cite that source.\nHow can I create a citation report in Web of Science or Scopus?\nA Web of Science or Scopus citation report provides aggregate statistics for a set of search results. See the library’s ‘Measuring your Research Impact’ guide for step-by-step instructions on generating a citation report in Web of Science and Scopus.\nWhat is the h-index?\nYou may have heard of, or noticed on your citation report, a metric called the h-index. The h-index is the number of papers (h) in a set of results that have received h or more citations. For example, an author with an h-index of 10 has 10 articles that have each received 10 or more citations. This metric is an attempt to measure both quantity (number of publications) and quality (number of citations). Therefore, it is considered a measure of the cumulative impact of an author’s work. For a recent discussion of the h-index and other measures of academic impact, see Anne-Wil Harzing’s ‘Reflections on the h-index’: http://www.harzing.com/publications/white-papers/reflections-on-the-h-index.\nApril2016careerfeaturedhow toLibrary\nApril 2016, arts & culture, Library, On the Shelf\nElectronic Resource: Essential Science Indicators\nLocation: Search for ‘Essential Science Indicators’ in Databases search box on the HHSL homepage (http://hirshlibrary.tufts.edu/).\nThis research analysis tool, integrated with Web of Science, provides performance statistics for authors, journals and articles for 22 subject fields. Essential Science Indicators can answer questions like: who are the most-cited authors in my field; what journals publish the top papers in my field; what is the average number of citations per article in my field; or what is the minimum number of citations that my article needs to receive to be in the 10% percentile in my field?\nAll the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr\nLocation: HHSL Leisure Reading, Sackler, 4th Floor, Fiction D652\nWinner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and numerous other awards, this book tells the parallel, and eventually intersecting, stories of a girl in France and a boy in the German army during World War II.\nApril2016featuredLibraryreading\nApril 2016, Library, PubMed Tip of the Month\nPubMed Tip of the Month: Author Search\nGo to the Advanced Search Builder by clicking the ‘Advanced’ link under the PubMed search box.\nChoose Author from the All Fields drop-down menu (just Author, not Author – Last, Author – Full, or any of the other options). Enter the author’s last name, followed by 1 or 2 initials with no intervening punctuation (for example: Jones EA). If you are unsure about the inclusion of the second initial, then do not include it.\nIf the author has a common last name, then you probably want to narrow your search by including an affiliation. To do so, choose Affiliation from the All Fields drop-down menu below the boxes where you have entered the author’s name. Enter the name and/or location of the institution with which the author is associated. Affiliation can become complicated if the author has been (or is currently) associated with multiple institutions, or the name of the institution has several possible variations. If the author has an uncommon last name, then first try searching without an affiliation.\nCheck the results to ensure that they authored by the person in whom you are interested.\nIf you have searched for your own name, then you can send the results to the My Bibliography section of My NCBI by clicking ‘Send to:’ in the top right corner of the results page.\nAuthor Search in PubMed Advanced Search Builder\nApril2016how toLibraryPubmed\nNovember 2019 contents\nHumans of Tufts Boston: Léa Gaucherand, “I Fell in love with research”\nGet the Insight straight to your inbox!\nCategories Select Category April 2016 April 2017 April 2018 articles arts & culture Book Reviews Community December 2015 December 2016 December 2017 December 2018 Events for Students February 2016 February 2017 February 2018 GSC GSC career events GSC social events humans of sackler January 2019 Library Library Events March 2016 March 2017 March 2018 March 2019 May 2016 May 2017 May 2018 Mentoring & Outreach Notes from the library November 2015 November 2016 november 2017 November 2018 November 2019 October 2015 October 2016 October 2017 October 2018 On the Shelf PubMed Tip of the Month September 2016 September 2017 September 2018 September 2019 Summer 2016 Techniques Uncategorized","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line726663"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5378962755203247,"wiki_prob":0.5378962755203247,"text":"Dr. Yusuf Goran: We are proud Various Components are living in Kurdistan\nThe Kurdish society is a tolerant society and throughout history different nations, religious ethnics and sects have been living in Kurdistan, we will make every effort to preserve these different components in Kurdistan, Dr. Yusuf Goran, the KRG Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research said.\nThis statement by Dr. Yusuf Goran came during a meeting with a delegation from Erbil Bishops Council who visited the KRG Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Erbil on Thursday June 30, 2015.\nArchbishop of Erbil Bashar Matti Warda, headed the delegation. During the visit the delegation, presented a proposal to the KRG Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research for opening “The Catholic University in Erbil”. The delegation clarified this university will be supported by The Bishop Council in Rome and will be a member International Federation of Catholic Universities.\nThe delegation also clarified the aim of opening the university, stressing “In the past many Christian families escaped to the Kurdistan Region, thus the university, in addition to embracing the fled Christian students to the Kurdistan, will be open towards students from other ethnics, and all wiling students can pursue with their studies in this university.”\nThe delegation emphasized that the university will not be a missionary university, but it will be a normal university like other universities in the Kurdistan region and the academic period will be five years. The delegation also affirmed that education in this proposed university will be according to the most modern standards, and the first academic year will be dedicated to the learning of English language, since the education will be in English, except for departments of languages.\n“Through the opening of this university as an intellectual center, we want to deepen relations among the different components of Kurdistan region and to bridge as well as familiarize the different cultures with each other.\nFor his part, Dr. Yusuf Goran said: “The Christians are a vital component of our society and the KRG policy emphasizes assisting all components of the region, including the Christians, as they are from the deep-rooted components of this area. Therefore, in the past we received fled Christian students in the Kurdistan region universities, without differentiation, thus we are proud that various components are living in Kurdistan.\nRegarding their proposal, Dr. Yusuf Goran said: “We are urging the opening of new universities with high rankings and high academic position. Meanwhile, new universities should bring something new in terms of academic specialization to the Kurdistan Region. We will do as much as we can to cooperate with you.”\nDr. Yusuf Goran clarified that their proposal will be sent to the Directorate of Quality Assurance and Trust-Giving for evaluation, and later within the framework of the guidelines for opening new universities a proper decision will be made.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1132065"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9571189284324646,"wiki_prob":0.9571189284324646,"text":"Oakland loses other major airline: JetBlue\nhttps://www.sahamku.me/nation/article/Virginia-becomes-38th-state-to-ratify-ERA-14978614.php\nVirginia becomes 38th state to ratify ERA\nBy Timothy Williams\nPublished 3:21 pm PST, Wednesday, January 15, 2020\nRICHMOND, Va. — Virginia on Wednesday became the 38th state to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, a symbolic victory for those who for generations have been pushing for a constitutional guarantee of legal rights regardless of sex.\nVirginia’s decision does not seal the amendment’s addition to the U.S. Constitution. A deadline for three-quarters, or 38, of the 50 states to approve the ERA expired in 1982, so the future of the measure is uncertain, and experts said the issue would likely be tied up in the courts and in the political sphere for years.\nBut the symbolism of the action in Virginia was significant after a struggle that had been raised, hard fought and, at times, forgotten over nearly 100 years.\n“It’s just other hurdle, other level of that ceiling that’s cracked,” said Daphne Portis, 58, an ERA activist who clutched photos of female leaders — Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem — as she watched the debate among lawmakers in Richmond.\nWomen packed the galleries of the state Capitol as the debate unfolded, many of them wearing sashes that read, “Equal rights for women.” Some members of the House of Delegates, which for the first time in its 401-year history is led by a woman, Eileen Filler-Corn, brought their young daughters to witness the vote.\nThe ERA was first proposed in 1923, though Congress did not pass it until 1972. To approve the amendment, ratification was needed in 38 states by 1979; the deadline was later extended to 1982. By then, though, only 35 states had done so. For years, and especially during the 1970s, the issue was a matter of intense national debate, the topic of legislative fights and political campaigns. But it faded some as the deadline passed and the national conversation seemed to move on.\nThe ERA promised equal rights to women, and was aimed at improving pay equity for them, strengthening domestic violence and sexual harassment protections, and blocking discrimination against pregnant people and mothers. The bill reads, in part: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”\nIn recent years, new efforts emerged to reignite the ERA, amid the #MeToo movement, efforts to protect abortion rights and as Democrats won control of some statehouses. Slowly, leaders pushed toward the 38-state threshold despite questions about what it would really mean for the amendment’s fate decades after the deadline.\nIn 2017, Nevada became the 36th state to approve the ERA, and a year later, Illinois passed it. That left Virginia, a state that failed to pass the ERA last year, considering it again this year, and with a state Legislature newly dominated by Democrats.\nOn Wednesday, the vote was 59-40 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, has said he supports the measure.\nTimothy Williams is a New York Times writer.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line459774"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8987160325050354,"wiki_prob":0.8987160325050354,"text":"Australian PM defends secrecy over border protection\nIndonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (R) talks to Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott (L) after a joint statement at the presidential palace in Jakarta on September 30, 2013. Abbott began a visit to Indonesia on September 30 for talks on his tough refugee policies that have sparked anger in Jakarta, as his government faced criticism over a boat sinking that left dozens dead or missing.\nSYDNEY - Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott defended the government's secrecy over its border protection policy Thursday after reports that boats had been turned back to Indonesia and asylum-seekers mistreated.\nUnder the conservative government's hardline Operation Sovereign Borders, officials refuse to discuss \"operational matters\".\nThis has meant reports that at least one boat was forcibly turned or towed back to Indonesia, and that members of the Australian navy subjected those on board to verbal and physical mistreatment, have not been addressed in detail.\nThe government has also refused to confirm or deny that it is planning to buy 16 hard-hulled lifeboats to ferry asylum-seekers to Indonesia, sparking claims from the Labor opposition that it is overseeing a \"Stalinist\"-style media blackout.\nAbbott said he would rather have the boats stop arriving than provide a running commentary as \"sport for public discussion\".\n\"I'd rather be criticised for being a bit of a closed book on this issue and actually stop the boats,\" he told Sydney commercial radio.\n\"The point is not to provide sport for public discussion. The point is to stop the boats.\n\"I'm pleased to say it is now several weeks since we've had a boat, and the less we talk about operational details on the water, the better when it comes to stopping the boats.\"\nHis comments follow claims by an asylum-seeker to AFP on Wednesday suggesting people on a boat towed back to Indonesia, which is the major transit point for would-be refugees to Australia, had been mistreated by the Australian navy.\nYousif Ibrahim from Sudan claimed they were handcuffed and called insulting names. He said one person was beaten with shoes after their vessel was intercepted and towed for four days back towards Indonesia, arriving at Rote Island on Monday.\nDefence force chief David Hurley defended the navy on Thursday, echoing comments by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday.\n\"Defence force personnel assigned to (border protection) are required to conduct operations in an unpredictable and demanding environment under intense scrutiny,\" Hurley said.\n\"They are trained to operate with the highest degree of professionalism and integrity and consistently demonstrate great compassion and courage, often at great risk to their own safety.\"\nAustralia's tough policies aimed at stemming the flow of asylum boats - a key plank of Abbott's successful 2013 election campaign - have irked Jakarta, which has warned that turning boats back could breach Indonesian territorial sovereignty.\nTensions between the neighbours have been strained for months after a diplomatic row erupted in November over claims Canberra tried to tap the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and ministers.\nAbbott on Thursday described Australia's relationship with Indonesia as \"strong\" and marked by \"a lot of cooperation and mutual understanding\".\nHe said he understood Indonesia's concern for its sovereignty \"but when these boats keep coming illegally to our country, that is a sovereignty issue for us\".\n\"It's absolutely non-negotiable - these boats will stop, these boats must stop, and we will do whatever is necessary, consistent with our international obligations and ordinary decency, to stop the boats,\" he said.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line893221"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7363384962081909,"wiki_prob":0.2636615037918091,"text":"Saint James, Saint Paul & Saint Michael Parishes (Camp Douglas, New Lisbon, Indian Creek)\nHow to Instruct the Ignorant and Counsel the Doubtful\nLet us first take a more detailed look at the spiritual works of mercy and discover practical ways that we can live them in our lives. For this article we will examine the first two spiritual works of mercy.\nInstruct the Ignorant\nThe first spiritual work of mercy is to “instruct the ignorant.” Jesus gave this command to His apostles when He said,\n“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)\nWhile initially directed towards the apostles, the obligation to \"instruct the ignorant\" applies to us today as much as it did in the first century. Even though the Gospel has reached every continent, many people in our world are ignorant of what Jesus actually taught. This is due to many factors, including the numerous interpretations of the Gospels. We must always sift through what we are taught in light of official Church teaching and the public teachings of the pope. When we do that, we are able to recognize a false interpretation of the Gospel and point it out to a friend or family member.\nHowever, we must be remember that Jesus gave His “apostles” the direct mandate to “teach.” Bishops are the first catechists in their diocese and priests are cooperators with him.\nAfter priests come deacons and after deacons come lay catechists. Most dioceses have a certification program that “certifies” a specific catechist for teaching the faith, because each catechist assists the bishop in his mission and can only teach with his permission.\nWhile, we have a duty to evangelize our coworkers or family members, we must do so knowing that we can only take them so far. We must act like arrows, pointing to the truth, bringing these precious souls to those who can instruct them properly. When our knowledge fails, we turn to the Church for assistance.\nThis work of mercy must not be done lightly as the fate of a person’s soul hangs in the balance.\nCounsel the Doubtful\nThe second spiritual work of mercy is to “counsel the doubtful.” The basic definition of “counsel” is “giving instruction or advice to direct the judgment of another.” To “counsel” in the spiritual realm refers to helping someone with a difficult spiritual decision they are about to make.\nWhat makes this an even trickier situation is that the person receiving counsel is “doubtful.” This means that the person is “uncertain” about the outcome and questions the possibility of a resolution.\nPutting it all together, to “counsel the doubtful” is to give an unsettled person wise advice concerning a spiritual decision.\nWhat does this spiritual work of mercy look like in the real world?\nMost commonly those involved with spiritual direction perform this work of mercy. In such cases, a priest, religious, deacon or even a lay person are charged with the task of leading troubled souls to spiritual solutions. It requires a very holy and devout person to sift through the muddy waters of life to give consoling words to someone in need.\nHowever, this work of mercy is not meant to be performed only by qualified priests, but should be much more common among lay men and women. The reason being that our friends and family come to us on a regular basis for guidance in spiritual matters. Often they do not even think of talking to a priest, or are uncomfortable or embarrassed to do so. They may not even be Catholic and are struggling in the spiritual life and have no one to turn to except us.\n​One aid that has been helpful to the laity is the book The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living, which helps a person understand God’s action in their soul. Once a person can better understand God's movements in his/her own heart, he/she can then help someone else in need. When the spiritual situation requires a more detailed theological response, we should always have recourse to our parish priest and ask for his assistance.\n“Counseling the doubtful” is an important work of mercy that is especially revealed in spiritual direction, but should also be taught to the average Catholic who seeks to bring peace of mind to a friend or family member.\nNext week, we will look at \"Admonishing the Sinner\" and \"Bearing Wrongs Patiently.\"\nRead the Entire Series\n14 Ways We Can Be Merciful During This Jubilee Year\nA Little Example of Great Mercy - St. Maria Goretti\n2 Powerful Examples of God's Mercy\nHow is God Merciful?\nWhat is the Year of Divine Mercy & Why Do We Need It?​\nSaturday Vigil:\n6:00 pm (St. James)\n8:00 am (St. Michael)\n10:00 am (St. Paul)\n(St. Paul) 8:30 am: Tues. - Fri.\n(St. Paul) 8:00 am: First Friday\n(Extraordinary Form Latin Mass)\n​CONFESSION SCHEDULE\nFriday: (St. Paul) 7:30 am\nSaturday: (St. James) 5:30 pm\nSunday: (St. Michael) 7:30 am\nWebsite by Philip Kosloski | All photos and videos on this site are used with permission.\nUnauthorized duplication, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. | Copyright © 2016 Saint James, Saint Paul & Saint Michael Parishes. All Rights Reserved.\n408 W. River Street\nNew Lisbon, WI 53950","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line774193"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.936991810798645,"wiki_prob":0.936991810798645,"text":"Post office named for Merle Haggard in California hometown\n0 0 Saturday, April 7, 2018 Edit this post\nFILE - This April 10, 2012, file photo shows the late Merle Haggard, left, viewing an exhibit on the Bakersfield sound at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn. About 300 people turned out in Bakersfield, California, to celebrate the naming of a post office for Merle Haggard. He rose from poverty and prison to international fame through his songs about outlaws, underdogs and an abiding sense of national pride. His hits include “Okie From Muskogee” and “Sing Me Back Home.” Norm Hamlet, who played in Haggard’s band for nearly a half-century, told the Bakersfield Californian newspaper that the singer would’ve been humbled by the honor. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)\nBAKERSFIELD, Calif.\nAbout 300 people turned out in Bakersfield, California, to celebrate the naming of a post office for Merle Haggard in his hometown.\n[post_ads]The late country music legend’s sister and widow were among those at a Friday ceremony near downtown honoring Haggard, who helped create the twangy “Bakersfield Sound.”\nThe event fell on the two-year anniversary of Haggard’s death — and what would have been his 81st birthday.\nHaggard rose from poverty and prison to international fame through his songs about outlaws, underdogs and an abiding sense of national pride. His hits include “Okie From Muskogee” and “Sing Me Back Home.”\nNorm Hamlet, who played in Haggard’s band for nearly a half-century, told the Bakersfield Californian newspaper that the singer would’ve been humbled by the honor.\nInformation from: The Bakersfield Californian, http://www.bakersfield.com\nEntertainment - U.S. Daily News: Post office named for Merle Haggard in California hometown\nhttps://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T7V_qxV_pCg/WsmvWIjc84I/AAAAAAAAf_s/gMe9tqE6rScRImdufWq2edquHPVpmgsqACEwYBhgL/s1600/2.jpeg\nhttps://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T7V_qxV_pCg/WsmvWIjc84I/AAAAAAAAf_s/gMe9tqE6rScRImdufWq2edquHPVpmgsqACEwYBhgL/s72-c/2.jpeg\nhttps://entertainment.dailynews.us.com/2018/04/post-office-named-for-merle-haggard-in.html","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line498374"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.713486909866333,"wiki_prob":0.713486909866333,"text":"Justin Renteria\nThe Energy Interstate\nVauhini Vara\nA national system of electricity transmission could cut power-plant emissions by 80 percent.\nOne cold evening in February 2008, the gusty wind in West Texas dropped to a breeze. At the time, Texas generated more electricity from wind than almost any other state did. But that evening, the wind speed fell much lower than forecasts had predicted, just as the chill had residents cranking up their heat. The people responsible for most of the state’s electrical system recognized that they risked a dangerous—or at least embarrassing—outage. Declaring an emergency, they switched off the power to several big industrial customers. After 90 minutes, backup generators kicked in, and the power was restored. A spokeswoman for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas subsequently explained, “The wind died out. That happens.”\nHow to Clean Up the Dirtiest Vehicles on the Road\nPersonal cars get most of the attention, but trucks and buses are long overdue for an efficiency upgrade.\nWell, sure, some critics agreed—but that was just the problem with relying on it. The same, more or less, was true of sunlight. Weather didn’t follow orders, and its patterns could be unpredictable. With the state planning to dramatically expand its use of wind power, one journalist wrote: “This problem is only going to get bigger for Texas.”\nEight years on, the problem is getting bigger for the United States. Last August, President Obama announced the Clean Power Plan, whereby power plants are expected to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions by 32 percent from their 2005 level, within 15 years—a target that’s all but impossible to hit without moving from coal to cleaner energy sources. The Supreme Court has stayed Obama’s plan until lower courts can rule on several legal challenges, but energy experts assume the plan—or something like it—will eventually take effect. In the future, environmental concerns and resulting regulations may necessitate bigger reductions; Bill Gates argues that, in order to really address the global-warming crisis, emissions must fall by 100 percent before too long.\nThat makes the question of reliability more urgent than ever. Because wind and sunlight are fickle, utilities have used dirtier backup sources like coal and natural gas. If we want to eventually get all our energy—or a large majority of it—from renewable sources, something has to change. As Gates told the The Atlantic in November, “We need an energy miracle.” Gates is investing billions of dollars in schemes that sound like they’re out of an Isaac Asimov novel: batteries the size of swimming pools to store renewable power, technologies that use sunlight to produce liquid fuel.\nThe wind is usually blowing somewhere, and the sun is usually shining somewhere.\nBut over the past couple of years, researchers have come across another potential solution, one that seems almost too simple. The wind is usually blowing somewhere, and the sun is usually shining somewhere. If we could just connect the whole country to a special grid that would let utilities tap into those resources anytime, wouldn’t that get rid of—or at least lessen—the reliability problem?\nThe most recent high-profile paper making this argument was published in January by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Christopher Clack and colleagues built a model to predict the long-term costs of putting all kinds of energy into the electrical system. When they imposed a constraint on their model—it couldn’t use coal—they found that the cheapest option involved a grid of transmission lines that could carry solar and wind energy from almost any part of the country to anywhere else. Other technologies—perhaps Gates’s imagined miracle—would still be required to get rid of carbon-emitting fuels altogether, but the new grid would get us quite far, reducing emissions from power plants by up to 80 percent within 15 years.\nThis conclusion, Clack said, appeared to surprise some energy researchers. Sending wind or solar energy long distances inevitably involves the loss of some power during transmission, and the alternating-current, or AC, lines that connect most of the U.S. are less efficient for long-distance transmission than direct-current, or DC, lines. The paper’s hypothetical grid would use DC instead of AC. Until recently, big investments in high-voltage DC lines have been rare, in part due to the cost of the technology required at substations to make the power usable. But the model found that if you built a nationwide grid, economies of scale would emerge. In short, the benefits of having long, efficient lines outweigh the cost of power conversion. “People assumed that storage was the key or that nuclear was the key—and now I think there’s more of a recognition that you can actually get quite a long way today,” Clack said, just by changing how renewable energy moves around.\nCities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter.\nThe best way to follow issues you care about.\nThis hypothetical grid recalls the interstate highway system championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s. Back then, the U.S. was connected haphazardly with narrow roads built by state and local governments. Eisenhower predicted that cars would soon become ubiquitous, so he signed a law authorizing funds for an ambitious expansion of the nation’s highways—an approach that turned out to be prescient. Clack’s vision seems similar. So why don’t we invest in a new grid for power transmission, like Eisenhower did for car travel?\nThe answer reveals a lot about how the U.S. has changed since Eisenhower’s time, politically and otherwise. The creation of a grid like Clack’s would most plausibly result from federal legislation. The Department of Energy would likely be tasked with studying how the grid might be built, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with deciding where to put the lines. A bidding process would probably ensue, with developers vying to build portions of the grid, whose cost they’d expect to recoup, likely by charging utilities a fee, which the utilities would in turn pass on to their customers.\nIt’s not hard to see the challenges emerge, one by one, when you consider this scenario. The current Republican-led Congress has evinced little interest in big infrastructure projects. The lines might be opposed in states whose economies (and politicians) depend on coal and natural-gas companies—and even those states that support renewable power tend to favor its production within their own borders. Local utilities resist being told what to do by the federal government.\nWhy don’t we invest in a new grid for power transmission, like Eisenhower did for car travel?\nBut suppose for a minute that the government and the utilities found a way to agree that a national grid should be built. Even then, developers would face opposition from landowners who wouldn’t want their property bisected or their views obstructed by unsightly power lines. Anjan Bose, an expert in the engineering of power systems who teaches at Washington State University and has advised the Department of Energy, notes that China and India, whose government systems are oriented around central planning, are doing something like what Clack is promoting—but he sees it as impossible in the U.S. When he heard about Clack’s research, he told me, “my first reaction was ‘Good luck.’ ”\nPolitics and nimbyism aside, there’s another difference between the U.S. and those Asian countries: Energy demand in India and China is rising with industrialization—but the U.S. is losing factories, not gaining them, and energy demand is expected to be nearly flat for years to come. China and India need more transmission lines, but in the U.S.—where the argument for new lines is largely environmental—the case is tougher to make. Of course, meeting federal and state regulations will require utilities to use more renewable power, but people seem to be hoping that other technologies, requiring less funding from utilities and their customers, will get us there.\nSome experts suggest that, given the difficulties of coming up with a national plan, jury-rigging a piecemeal system might be a better bet—old, worn-out transmission lines, including AC lines, could be upgraded, and a few strategic regional DC lines could be built. But even that would be difficult to do. Clean Line Energy Partners, a developer in Houston, has been laboring for years to build four interstate DC lines. But these projects have moved slowly—in part due to local opposition. Comparing this patchwork approach with Clack’s vision, Michael Skelly, the president of Clean Line, told me, “I think a national grid would be far better.” He feels that with the federal government’s weight behind a national plan, companies like his might encounter less local opposition—or could at least better appeal to federal authorities to help them fight it.\nAnd so the search for a miracle continues. In Tallahassee, Florida, the manager of integrated planning for the city’s electric system, David Byrne, told me that for decades his city has relied almost entirely on natural gas. But the expected emission regulations and demand from residents recently persuaded Byrne and his colleagues to invest in renewable sources. They’re now building a solar farm, Tallahassee’s first, on the municipal airport’s land. That will produce only about 2 percent of the city’s energy, though—and Byrne expects that it could be tough to find land cheap enough to meaningfully increase that figure using sunshine alone. So Byrne is looking for wind, too. The problem is that in Florida, there just isn’t much of it. Some time ago, Tallahassee signed a memorandum of understanding with Clean Line to transmit wind power from rural Oklahoma. That line just received important support from the Department of Energy, but it still has to overcome some hurdles before Clean Line can break ground.\n“The energy resources that we would like to have seem to be located in places where people really don’t live,” Byrne pointed out. As long as private, regional projects keep getting stymied—and as long as Clack’s vision for a national system remains hypothetical—that will continue to be true.\nThis post originally appeared on The Atlantic.\nVauhini Vara is a writer in Colorado.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line762042"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5642284154891968,"wiki_prob":0.4357715845108032,"text":"Jacob Shively\n\"Between sovereign states there can be no last resort except war.\" - Hannah Arendt\nWar is a nearly universal human phenomenon. This course exams its causes and evolution as they emerged early in prehistory and persist today. Major topics include war’s origins and evolution; theories about the causes and nature of war; arguments for a contemporary world of “new wars;” and theories about the future of war. Along the way, the course analyzes several very different international conflicts, such as World War I, the Cold War and the recent Iraq War. Specific issues addressed amidst these major themes include war and the state; structural and psychological explanations for war; terrorism and irregular war; and the moral/ethical dimensions of war.\nThis undergraduate course analyzes how religious beliefs and institutions shape politics that cross borders. It draws upon an array of writings to examine major global phenomena like the religious roots of international order; religious challenges both to modern states and to recent globalization; and activism amongst global religious movements. In turn, the course concentrates on two major issues for scholars, policy-makers and citizens alike: 1) international religious extremism and violence and 2) religious influences on – and targets of – U.S. foreign policy. Examples of topics covered along the way include Evangelical activism and ideologies, religious terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.\n​“The Pope! How many divisions does he have?” – Joseph Stalin\n​\"One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.\" – John Stuart Mill\nModern states protect and serve religion. They are also the secular innovations most likely to break our link with religion. Conceptually, secular human rights would not exist without the divine spark imparted to all individuals. Practically, the modern state emerged from religious fights only to ultimately marginalize religious institutions. ​This graduate seminar will evaluate this effort and the ways that state policies, global movements, and international orders are shaped by religion. We will first address the formation of modern states and their relationship with religion before turning to religious radicalism and extremism. The course finishes with the specific relationship of religious movements and beliefs and foreign policy. Throughout, the course treats religion as a social science variable, but it also evaluates political theology on its own terms. Students will be responsible for evaluating and presenting course readings as well as developing and writing a research paper\nAs a US Secretary of State once observed, America’s effort in the 1940s to “create a world out of chaos” was not unlike God’s work at the dawn of time: it created a new world order. Can we really change international politics? And what sort of world order should international actors pursue?\nInternational Politics examines these questions. We will identify the major themes of international relations as a social science and acquire tools as citizens to understand international politics, one of the most complex and important arenas of human society.\n“Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideas. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is a hope.”\n​​- Samuel Huntington\nAmericans seek to change the world and remain distinct from it. They energetically export their religious views, yet they officially support secularism. Americans denounce imperialism and coercion, yet they are accused of building a global empire and wielding astounding military power. And above all these tensions, Americans exert unparalleled influence and power in a globalized, increasingly democratic world that they helped create, yet they fret about relative decline and entertain plans for retrenchment and isolation. This course seeks to analyze how Americans view and pursue their relationship with the world as well as the foundations and conduct of their foreign policy. It considers the institutions and offices, interests and political culture, and the international challenges (including security, economic and humanitarian issues) that shape American foreign policy outcomes.\nIn the distant lands the battle rages,\nWill this bleak horror never cease?\nCan we, who fought through all the ages,\nMake lasting peace? —James Shotwell\n​This course reviews the types and applications of international law, and it evaluates international law’s political, empirical and ethical implications. Topics concentrate on the historical development of international law, including sovereignty and the law of the sea, as well as treaties, courts, human rights, trade and crime. Students will participate in discussions, analyze arguments, complete a series of quizzes and write three case studies.\n“Wealth and power have come to us in appalling and perilous abundance. Their safety to us, their real value, lies in the use we make of them.” –Henry Stoddard\n​This graduate course evaluates the origins and analysis of foreign policy. Are foreign affairs driven by national beliefs and the weight of history? Or does foreign policy emerge from institutions, interest groups and partisan politics? Leaders, psychology, public opinion, and rational calculations are also serious possibilities. We will begin with historical studies and work through several competing approaches and theories. The course then turns to exemplary case studies, covering countries such as China, the US, Iran and Russia. Students will prepare several short assignments and outlines for course readings before completing a major research assignment.\n\"Modern science has thrust into man’s fallible hands unprecedented power: power in building, power in destroying.\" –Hugh Ferris\nHave new technologies created a strategic revolution, or are they simply plugged into old policies? Leaders like George W. Bush and Barack Obama have made tough decisions about deploying new military capabilities, and they have set out key policies regarding cybersecurity and international affairs. Still, scholars talk about the “revolution in military affairs” and the power of technological change to drive politics and policy. We will first evaluate the history and theories of how technology and national security interact with one another. The latter sections of the course focus on lethal drones and the cyber environment.\n“A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” —attributed to Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist no. 10\nThis course immerses students in grand strategic thinking through an innovative combination of classic readings, competitive simulation, and contemporary analysis. As a topic, “grand strategy” refers to the link between a state’s goals and capabilities, and it entails historical, philosophical and systematic thought. It is how states understand and pursue their perceived interests and roles in the world. Understanding grand strategies offers an essential tool to evaluate states’ foreign policies as well as the international system. Students are first charged with the virtual fate of a nation through a collaborative, competitive online simulation. This experience involves diplomacy, planning and cooperation along with guile, spontaneity and competition. Next, as members of working groups, students will then grapple with a pressing contemporary issue, such as cybersecurity, in the context of a number of case studies, including Russia and China. The course concludes with the working groups presenting and discussing strategic proposals they have developed.\n\"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.\" -Eleanor Roosevelt\nModern international organizations are a solution. They are created and designed to address a simple problem: a world of separate states with different interests and agendas. This course will examine international organizations through readings, briefings, and simulations. Along the way, we evaluate and discuss ongoing current events as they relate to global issues. Students will start with the origins of several specific international organizations. With a particular focus on the United Nations, students then research and write position papers as well as practice extemporaneous speaking and committee procedures. In addition to an exam and smaller papers throughout the course, students will spend time in a committee simulation and, to conclude, draw together their work in a final project.\n“Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.” –Charles Dickens\n​This course analyzes the frameworks and long-standing fault lines of American politics. Conventional wisdom holds that democracy in a republic requires persistent attention by citizens. It must be kept, not just established in one inspired moment. To do this, citizens need to understand the institutions of government and the dynamics of politics, and it is these that this course seeks to illuminate. By the course’s end, students should be able to identify America’s governing institutions and its essential, extra-constitutional actors. Along the way, current and perennial political dilemmas such as civil rights, judicial activism and presidential power will be analyzed. Focusing on the national level of US politics, the course also begins with America’s founding and traces major historical themes as Constitutional powers have expanded. Politics is said to be deciding “who gets what, when and how.” Just how and why power is distributed in American politics, therefore, will guide our semester.\n​“Without comparison, the mind does not know how to proceed.” - Alexis de Tocqueville\nThis course examines modern political systems. As Aristotle observed, humans may be thoroughly “political animals,” yet the modern world brought forth a unique series of innovations and revolutions that are now almost universal. No person on earth officially lives outside the sovereignty of a modern state, so our goal is to understand how those states work, how they are similar and how they differ. The course centers on a series of country case studies (NOT including the US) that begins with Britain, perhaps the first “modern,” industrialized state, and ends with more recent but influential developers. Along the way, students will practice applying the comparative method; collect and evaluate research materials as well as reflect on academic integrity and information literacy; complete three exams; and write a comparative research essay. Our goal is a stronger ability to evaluate foreign political systems and political cultures and compare those models to one another as well as our own experience.\n\"We have been so very powerful, and so very prosperous that even the humblest of us were degraded in the vices and follies of kings.\" –Edmund Burke\nThis graduate course surveys major topics, theories and approaches central to the academic field of International Relations (IR). It’s about the big questions, and it addresses two levels of enquiry: what is the nature of world politics and how scholars attempt to understand that phenomenon. We will focus on the historical origins of our modern international system, major theories or paradigms of IR, and major areas of interest. These substantive areas include war, foreign policy, and global governance. In these areas, scholars fiercely debate fundamental principles, conceptual models, and causal relationships because the stakes remain high, even perilous. The fates of individuals, states and the international system rest on how such issues are addressed by citizens and policy makers. Students are expected to critically engage these questions by remaining current with the assigned readings and actively participating. As a seminar, the course focuses upon student discussion with a specific concern for critically analyzing both the substance and the method of a given work. The seminar concludes with a major writing project. Our goals are to leave with 1) a more profound understanding of world affairs, 2) an ability to concisely analyze complex issues and arguments, and 3) methodological tools to evaluate and generate international relations research.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1046178"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7159306406974792,"wiki_prob":0.7159306406974792,"text":"We believe the answer to a congregation’s vitality is within the congregation and results in the congregation being the unique church it was meant to be. We see too much “church envy” leading to unnecessary mimicking of ministry and programs and not enough “playing to strengths” and moving in the direction the Holy Spirit is leading.\nThrough our mentoring services and Transformative Leadership Training event, leaders can identify God’s call on their lives as well as their church’s unique Kingdom of God Business within their community.\nDr. Stan Copeland discusses the challenges, transitions and opportunities that gave birth to Colinasway.\nA vision-driven plan for ministry and pursuit of unique Kingdom of God business must be driven by an organized season of directed prayer.\nWe want every church to be able to afford a Colinasway mentorship. The non-profit approach will allow supporters to participate in funding mentorships through providing grants.\nWe believe in working together with other church-related businesses and denominational programs that complement our mentoring approach toward vitality.\nWe believe in teams of one clergy and one lay mentor working with Pastor/Lay Leadership teams in congregations.\nEach mentorship is a one-of-a-kind plan, taking into account both “best practices” and a congregation’s unique setting and vision.\nWe come alongside to help develop the Plan of Ministry and stay for a defined period of time as Steps of Action are pursued.\nStan Copeland\nFounder, Lead Facilitator of Vision\nBio | Email\nDonna Whitehead\nFounder, Lead Facilitator of Development\nCyndy Pierson\nFacilitator of Operations\nMartha Myre\nClergy Mentor\nTwitter | Facebook | Blog\nSkeeter White\nLay Mentor\nCarmyn Neely\nMike Renquist\nDavid Wire\nDr. Stan Copeland and his wife Tammy have been a team in ministry for 32 years. They married in 1981 and moved from their rural East Texas home to Kansas City, Missouri where Stan attended Saint Paul School of Theology. He graduated with honors and the coveted Brady preaching award and returned to Texas to be the Associate Pastor at the First United Methodist Church in Henderson.In Henderson (1984-1986) he made an impact on the church and the larger community, which awarded him the Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year award at the age of 26. Days after receiving that award he was diagnosed with a terminal form of leukemia. He moved to First United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas which was closer to MD Anderson hospital where he underwent an experimental drug treatment. The protocol was not successful overall, with only 8% of the participants responding positively, but Copeland was cured. This experience forever fused in his heart the belief of facing Colinas~hills~challenges and calling on the Lord who is found in the midst of the hills of our lives. Psalm 121\nAt First Church in Houston, Stan Copeland became known for his effective team building, evangelism and small group work. The church averaged nearly 700 new members each year that Stan oversaw the evangelism ministry. He was also tapped to oversee the West Campus initiative, in 1991, which was the first United Methodist church to attempt to do worship and ministry from two locations. Small group ministry was the driver of this new approach and he trained leaders for over 150 small groups. Dr. Copeland completed his doctorate at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio writing his dissertation entitled “Field Preaching in a Post-Modern World” on the dual-campus, extended ministry approach.\nIn 1992 Stan was appointed to his first Senior Pastor post at Pollard United Methodist Church in Tyler, Texas. Under his leadership the congregation grew from 1,500 to 2,000 in membership. Every inch of the campus was renovated and considerable new space was added as he led the congregation in two capital campaigns in five years and established an endowment.\nIn 1998, at the age of 38, Stan was appointed to the North Texas Conference, to become the fourth pastor of the Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas. In his ministry at Lovers Lane he has become well known as a visionary leader with an understanding of the church as “business as unusual.” Building a church from 900 in weekly worship attendance to a multi-cultural, multi-worship service, small group based, one-on-one disciple-making congregation with nearly 1500 in weekly worshippers from over 20 different countries of the world, has been his legacy. The church is known for its incredible call to missions and other-oriented generosity. Stan Copeland has led Lovers Lane to raise over $35 million in two capital campaigns and has nearly tripled the budget to $4.5 million. In addition the church has started five 501c(3)s that account for another $3 million in operations.\nIn 2006 Stan wrote a book about his mentor, Dr. William H. Hinson entitled Lord, He Went: Remembering William H. Hinson.He then began to dream of a church full of mentors: clergy and consummate lay church leaders who would mentor in what he has come to call the Colinasway method. His newest book Our Story, Our Song about Lovers Lane is an example of what Dr. Stan Copeland and his colleagues believe all churches have in them: a life-changing story and a unique vision of making disciples that can change the planet.\nTammy and Stan have two children Zach (26) and Emily Grace (19) and one daughter-in-law Emily Marie (26). Tammy, who is an elementary public school teacher, is quick to say, “Stan is the only Colinasway mentor in the family and it’s my second job to keep him well-grounded and about the work of the Lord on this planet. His vision and ideas keep us all hopping. He’s a ‘blessed’ handful.” To which he could simply say, “Amen.”\nRev. Donna Whitehead and her husband Don have been married for 46 years. After their wedding in November 1965, Donna joined Don in Dallas, Texas where she taught Jr. High math and English to eighth and ninth graders. After obtaining a Masters of Liberal Arts degree from Southern Methodist University (1975), she entered Perkins School of Theology where she was among the first women to be enrolled in Seminary as well as one of the first eight women to be ordained in the North Texas Conference. She graduated from Perkins with honors and began her ministry as the Associate Pastor at the newly-formed Custer Road United Methodist Church in Plano, Texas.\nDonna quickly became a leader in the Plano community and served as the first woman to be chair of the Ministerial Alliance. At Custer Road she became known as a starter of new ministries, a catalyst for growth, and a strong preacher as well as pastor. In the conference she served as the first woman to be chair of the Council on Finance and Administration and thrived in her role as pioneer and trailblazer in her field.\nOne of her strong passions is reaching new people, and the church was listed as one of the top ten fastest growing United Methodist Churches during her tenure. She led the effort to add a worship service for the church while at the same time doubling the number of adult Sunday School classes from 22 to 45. This was one of the reasons that she taught workshops all over the country and was seen as a true expert in church growth.\nIn June 2000 Donna made a pastoral change and was appointed Executive Pastor for Lovers Lane United Methodist Church in Dallas. She moved from a suburban church to an urban church, from a neighborhood church to a regional church, from a new “church start” to a mature settled 55-year old church. Because she has the ability to see the Big Picture of the church along with the gift of bringing out the best in people, she soon became known as someone who could get the job done by doing whatever was necessary for the church to be a success. She excelled in growing and maturing gifted Christian leaders and growing the church’s stewardship. She also served as the first full-time director of the Lovers Lane Foundation, a time in which the assets doubled and the number of donors tripled.\nDonna was featured in Unstoppable Woman: Stories of American Character from North Texas published in 1998. This book shares the stories of women who have overcome obstacles, challenges, and discrimination. Just as others have mentored her, Donna has a strong calling to equip, empower, and mentor men and women as they find the unique assignment God has for them. She wants to help others to dream big dreams and enlarge their vision—to live with expectancy and anticipation of what can be ahead.\nDonna and Don have two children, Wendi, (with husband Bryan) and Trey, (with wife Kylie) and five grandchildren. Donna comments: “We must advance and see the world changed for this next generation. I want to do my part and work together with others to change the status quo and renew God’s church, one leader at a time, one church at a time so that my grandchildren along with others can come to know God.”\nCyndy Pierson is a native of Dallas, having lived all of her life in the metroplex area. She and her husband, Bill, have been married for 36 years, and have three children and three grandchildren. Raised in the United Methodist Church, Cyndy has a long history of love for the church.\nCyndy is a “preacher’s kid”, as her father was a United Methodist pastor in the North Texas Conference. As a result of this close connection to the church, she knows the value of the church as the foundation of living a Christian life. It is her belief that through the church, people come to know Christ on a personal level and find the support to live their faith on a daily basis.\nProfessionally, Cyndy has spent 39 years working in public education, first as a teacher, then High School Counselor, Campus Administrator, and finally as a Consultant for Academic Development. Working with organizations such as schools has provided her with many opportunities to help others identify their goals and vision, and then create plans to accomplish such goals.\nAs the Director of Guidance at Plano Senior High School, she was awarded the Eisenhower Award, given by the alumni of West Point Academy to a counselor in the Dallas area in recognition of service to students through public education. Her dedication to the students led her to work with curriculum and instruction, emphasizing the various learning styles of students in the classroom. As the Associate Principal for Curriculum and Instruction at Plano West Senior High, she worked to find innovative ways to provide low performing students with an opportunity to find success. Her ministry has always been focused on the needs of the individuals with whom she works, and finding ways to move them toward their goals in a positive environment.\nFamily is very important to Cyndy. She and her husband are helping to raise her three-year-old grandson. It is the greatest gift and challenge of her life. She sees this as a blessing and loves every minute of it! Watching a grandchild grow and develop from close up is truly special!\nMartha Myre was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Her family has been Methodist for several generations; her great-uncle Rev. Henry Vail a Minister in the North Texas Conference for many years. Martha graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1980 with a degree in Molecular Biology. She married Chris in 1981 and they began their family with the births of Amanda in 1985 and Rachel in 1987. Though she had two young children, a husband and a mortgage, Martha finally heard God’s call into ministry and entered Perkins School of Theology in 1989. She received a Masters of Theological Studies in 1996 and a PhD in Hebrew Bible in 2000.\nMartha’s first appointment was as a Student Pastor to the Windom Charge in Fannin County where she pastored four small churches from 1991 to 1993 and had a third child, Christopher. She moved to Greenland Hills United Methodist Church in 1993 as the Youth Pastor, built the children’s program as the Minister to Children and then worked as an Intern Pastor. Martha spent 5 months in Horatio, Arkansas in 1996 as an Interim Pastor and then returned to the North Texas area. After finishing her dissertation in 2000 and receiving the PhD in Hebrew Bible, she began as a part-time Pastor at Oak Grove United Methodist Church. A small rural church in the path of growth, Oak Grove doubled its worship attendance in two years, built a new sanctuary, and decided to move to a full-time pastor. Martha was appointed as that pastor and the church continued to grow for the next 4 years.\nIn June of 2006, Martha was appointed as Pastor of First United Methodist Church in Bowie, and moved there with her husband Chris and son Christopher, the only child left at home. During her tenure at Bowie, Martha concentrated on building the youth program and bringing new and younger people into the church. She also became heavily involved in the community as a member of Rotary, a volunteer at the Bowie Mission, a cheering fan at football games, and Cubmaster of the Cub Scout Pack among other things.\nAfter a brief appointment at Spring Valley UMC as the Associate Pastor, Martha came to Leonard in July 2010.\nNow in her third year at FUMC Leonard, Martha is enjoying the community and the congregation. She is leading the congregation to a renewed focus on reaching out to the community and to those who have no church home. Her passion is to introduce people to Jesus Christ whether through preaching, teaching, mission work or social media.\nMuch of Martha’s post-seminary education has been in the areas of Family Systems as applied to the church including Religion and Dispute Resolution at SMU-in-Legacy. She was one of the first in the North Texas Conference to go through the New Church Start Institute.\nWhile a baby boomer by birth, Martha has embraced the digital age with enthusiasm. She has developed websites at three of the small churches she has pastored that have attracted younger people to the church. She has taught online courses for BeADisciple.com and is developing an online bible study for youth at Leonard. Currently fluent in blogging, facebooking, texting, and tweeting Martha looks forward to whatever the next way of communicating will be!\nSkeeter White has a passion for helping people reach their fullest potential in their work and personal lives. Helping them realize and achieve their dreams allows them to claim the abundance of the universe in their lives. Skeeter values teamwork and collaboration, trust, commitment, honesty, directness, innovation, and fun.\nSkeeter has been a member of The United Methodist Church since 1972. He has served at various leadership positions in the church and has coached Pastors in leadership and organizational matters. He provides leadership in helping churches create vision and strategic plans. He regularly participates in worship as a member of a praise team with vocals and playing the guitar.\nSkeeter holds a B.S. in Organizational Development and Leadership from Friends University. Skeeter has a unique combination of large organization management and significant project management skills and experience. His extensive knowledge and experience using organizational development practices and tools makes him a dynamic leader and team builder relating to organizational and enterprise–wide cross-functional environments. He has a proven record of accomplishment in business problem-solving based on process deployment and management.\nSkeeter works with leaders and organizations to bring about new organizational cultures. He embraces change as a means for organizations and individuals to grow and prosper. His 37+ years of business experience has centered on delivering leading-edge computing products and services in both administrative and manufacturing environments. He has worked closely with producing-units in four different company environments. Whether working on a global or an individual-site basis he focuses on positively affecting economic profit through the achievement of business goals. He has extensive experience creating new organizational cultural norms driven by Acquisitions, Mergers, Divestitures, Corporate Initiatives, and Major Organizational Change.\nDuring the last thirty years, Skeeter has effectively managed organizations within Boeing and Spirit Aerosystems. His last role at Spirit was as Chief Information Officer (CIO). His preferred approach to leadership and management has been to use organizational development and teaming practices and tools.\nSkeeter has significant experience as a facilitator in the use of Organizational Development, Change Management, Quality Management, and Team Building practices and tools. At Boeing’s Leadership Center, as Manager Practitioner, he taught and facilitated classes pertaining to Economic Profit to middle level managers, Strategic Leadership, and Business Simulations for Senior Managers and Executives. In addition, over a five-year period as an Adjunct Professor, he taught classes in Telecommunications Management and Project Management.\nHe has been married to his wife Millie for over 40 Years. They have two grown children Heather and Matt and four grandchildren: Tyler, Trevor, Samantha, and Willow.\nCarmyn Neely has 40-plus years of experience in the education field. She has served as a classroom teacher, an adjunct professor, and an administrator at the school campus, district and state levels. Carmyn received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from the University of North Texas in Denton. She has done post-master’s coursework at Texas A&M University at Commerce, the University of North Texas and Texas Tech University.\nThroughout her career, Carmyn has focused on curriculum and instruction at the school and administration levels in districts throughout the state of Texas. She was Deputy Director of Statewide Initiatives, working with Regional Education Service Centers and the Texas Education Agency. In this role, she identified exemplary programs and best practices. Carmyn has served as Deputy Superintendent of Schools for the Lubbock Independent School District and as Associate Superintendent of Schools for the Dallas Independent School District. She served on the State Board of Directors and was a member of the Texas Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. She has held membership in the state and national Associations for Supervision and Curriculum Development and Phi Delta Kappa. In 2003 Carmyn was the recipient of the Bayard H. Friedman Hero Award given at Southern Methodist University in recognition of her contributions to the improvement of public education.\nCarmyn’s dedication to improving public education within the state of Texas led her to the Foundation for the Education of Young Women (FEYW). In October of 2006, Carmyn assumed the position of Executive Director of the Foundation. Under Carmyn’s leadership and direction, the Foundation has formed partnerships with urban school districts throughout the state to open all-girl public schools in Austin, Dallas, Lubbock, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Houston. The goal of Carmyn and FEYW is to have one hundred percent of the students in the sponsored schools not only graduate from high school, but attend and graduate from college.\nMike Renquist is an author, keynoter and change agent, serving in the areas of training and human and organization development. Originally educated as a Presbyterian minister, he has a degree in Speech and Theatre from Austin College, in Sherman, Texas, and a Master of Divinity and Doctorate of Ministry from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, in Austin, Texas.\nAfter serving numerous churches in Texas and Missouri, he successfully transitioned to business consulting and training, both as an internal and external consultant. He has served as consultant or trainer in over 165 different corporations, many singular locations and settings, domestic and international.\nFor Colinasway, he can mentor from the perspective of a pastor and/or a business consultant. He is a certified practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and his specialty in training is presentation and communication skills, having brought new competencies to thousands in the last twenty-five years. He is affiliated with Greenlights for Non-profit Success in Austin as an Interim Executive Director of NPs in transition, and has had four placements since 2010.\nMarried to a United Methodist minister, The Rev. Dr. Georjean Blanton, a spiritual director in private practice in Austin, they have three adult children, and immensely enjoy their two grandsons.\nDavid Wire David has a diverse and rich spiritual background. He was raised a Lutheran in New Orleans, La; attended a Catholic High School and became a Methodist 40 years ago at First Church Richardson. He was a member of Custer Road United Methodist Church (CRUMC) as well as the Friendship Sunday School Class for over 20 years. For the past 8 years David and his wife Lorraine have been members of Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, TX.\nDavid and Lorraine were married in Custer Road’s Chapel and have been blessed with 3 grown children and 11 grandchildren. The grandchildren are all under the ages of 15; 5 girls and 6 boys. Their oldest son is an entrepreneur in the Auto Industry who attends Custer Road Methodist with his wife and 2 girls; their middle son a Marine Officer, who served 9 months in Afghanistan after 2 tours in Iraq, is also a Methodist family with his wife and 4 boys; and their youngest daughter is a Nurse Practitioner with 5 children. Her husband teaches at TCA in Dallas and they worship at Northwest Bible Church.\nAt First Church Richardson (1970 – 1984), David taught Sunday School and Adult Education classes on a regular basis. Along with 3 other church members founded the first Christian singles program in North Dallas. It was modeled after LLUMC singles program. Recognizing a need to reach out to singles, First Church Richardson sponsored a social that attracted over 300 singles. They were seeking a Christian home that would welcome them, which did not exist at that time. We filled a need for these singles.\nFrom 1985 – 2005 (20 years), David was an active member and lay leader at CRUMC. Some of his lay leadership includes: annual blood drive, operational campaigns and capital campaigns, PPR, Sunday School Class Officer, Couples and Single Sunday School Class Teacher, Graduate of Disciple Bible Study, Walk to Emmaus Retreat, and Adult Bible Studies. In 2000 he was one of 4 founders of an out-reach mission project at CRUMC for individuals in the community who were in job transition. They needed a new career vision which included coaching and training to find a new job. From this mission program he began coaching and mentoring individuals as a lay leader through the church and community organizations. What started then, he has continued through the past 14 years and now has come full circle.\nAs members Stonebriar Community Church (SCC) in Frisco, TX, David and Lorraine completed the Lay Leadership Program and then formed a Home Adult Fellowship group. They opened their home on Thursday evenings and lead a bible study with adults that were new to SCC and/or the community. Also, they have supported mission projects including feeding children in foreign countries and helping special needs children. Lorraine volunteer teaches in the Wednesday nights youth program, taking our 2 oldest grand-daughters.\nPersonally David and Lorraine feel that God has blessed them with a covenant relationship. They strive to be legacy parents and grand-parents to their immediate family and extended family and friends. For David few life experiences have passed him by; both joyous and tribulation ones. Throughout, his Christian faith has been the constant source of strength which is best described as Bible-Based, Christ-Centered and Spirit-Led. David possesses knowledge, maturity and wisdom from his Christian background. His purpose in life is to help and serve others in need; one way is as a Colinasway lay mentor.\nProfessionally David is a Sales and Business Development Leader having worked for companies like: EDS, KPMG, Nortel Networks and Management Consulting firms. He served his country with an Honorable Discharge from the U.S. Navy; graduated from UL – Lafayette with a B.S. in Physics; and holds several certifications in technology, business and sales. He is active in his community and charitable organizations. He and Lorraine live in Frisco, TX.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1157789"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7255766987800598,"wiki_prob":0.2744233012199402,"text":"CAM is working to establish its relationship with the Better Business Bureau across Canada. We have sent our membership list to the BBB and they will report back to us with the current status of each CAM member. CAM itself has become a member of the BBB on a reciprocal basis. CAM members will have the opportunity to join the BBB at a preferential rate.\nWe encourage you to join for 2000. Our 2000 Membership Directory is in progress and will be published in April. As mentioned last month, it will be a combination of magazine and directory, and will be published twice a year. As it was for previous membership directories, this magazine will be an important method by which Canadian movers communicate. Please check your listing at www.mover.net/cam/directory/index.html.\nCAM is working with several federal and provincial government departments and agencies regarding labour practices. The following are the key issues:\nMovers conducting cash deals when no workers’ compensation or tax is collected.\nMovers advertising long-distance inter-provincial services while paying employees under provincial labour laws (i.e., overtime after 40 or 45 hours per week).\nMovers not paying overtime when applicable.\nClear definition of provincial laws and federal laws.\nA level playing field for all employers.\nThe Canadian Professional Mover’s Course has generated a lot of interest in the moving community. There have been 43 registrations for the course. One van line and the federal government signed up to evaluate the course.\nFeedback from the users has been mixed although generally positive. There were a few teething problems in the marking system, with the Website, which has not been always available, and in some of the lessons in which certain concepts vary in definition from company to company. These areas are being ironed out. We encourage feedback.\nHRDC\nWe are endeavouring to get an update on the status of CAM’s \"sector partnership\" agreement with HDRC. This relates to assistance for the development of occupational standards that will assist the development of the mover’s course and future education efforts.\nWWW.MOVER.NET\nThe CAM Website has been used as a method for the public to get in touch with CAM to find a mover or voice a complaint. Members have used the site with varying degrees of success to advertise for new employees or sell used equipment. A few industry suppliers have used the site to prospect for clients.\nMOVING STATISTICS\nCAM has rekindled discussions with Pete Pedersen regarding the provision of data, statistics and benchmarks for members. Pete has the go-ahead to prepare an outline of potential useful data sets that members might be interested in along with likely costs to members for access. Pete is working on the survey now to determine members' interest and the value that the information would be to members.\nCONSUMER REFERRALS AND COMPLAINTS\nThe CAM office has received a large number of requests from the public for referrals to reputable movers and complaints about the service from non-members and members (fortunately only a few) alike. Complaints relate to damage, non-fulfillment of promised service, loss of goods and overcharging.\nOntario’s Department of Corporate and Consumer Affairs directs complaints related to movers to CAM. In addition, the department refers consumers to CAM when they ask the department for a referral to a reputable mover. The Better Business Bureau also refers the public to CAM when they receive a complaint or request for referral.\nOn the positive side, members should be finding that they are getting a few referrals through the course of the year from the national office. When asked to provide a referral, the national office gives the consumer a few member names in the geographic area.\nCAM ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION AND BYLAWS\nCAM Director, Scott Hickling, has agreed to review CAM’s current bylaws, which admittedly are out of date and reflect the CAM operation in place in the 1980s. Bylaw changes should be tabled and concluded at our AGM in November 2000.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line520585"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9366884231567383,"wiki_prob":0.9366884231567383,"text":"Superintendent of Dartmouth apartment building recalls night of killing\nSteve Bruce (sbruce@herald.ca)\nNadia Gonzales was stabbed to death June 16, 2017, at an apartment building in Dartmouth. - GoFundMe page\nThe superintendent of the Dartmouth apartment building where Nadia Gonzales was killed says he saw blood all over the floor outside unit 16 when he went upstairs to investigate a noise complaint on the evening of June 16, 2017.\nIvan Simmonds testified Monday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court at the trial of Calvin Maynard Sparks, 26, of Dartmouth and Samanda Rose Ritch, 22, of Halifax, who are charged with first-degree murder.\nGonzales, a 35-year-old mother of two from Hammonds Plains, died after she was attacked in the hallway on the top floor of a four-storey building at 33 Hastings Dr. She was stabbed 37 times and stuffed into a hockey bag that was left in a stairwell.\nSparks and Ritch are also accused of attempting to murder John Patterson, a Hants County senior who has told the court that he used to help Gonzales deliver crack cocaine.\nPatterson, 72, suffered six stab wounds in the attack. Police were dispatched to the scene after Patterson hurried out of the apartment building and collapsed on the lawn of an elementary school across the street.\nAfter seeing the blood in the hallway of the fourth floor, Simmonds said he tried to call the tenant of apartment 16, Wayne Bruce, on his cellphone, but there was no answer, so he knocked on his door.\nBruce then came out of the apartment, Simmonds said. He said he asked Bruce “what’s going on here?\" and Bruce replied, “I don’t know.”\nSimmonds said Bruce did not seem shocked by the presence of blood after he pointed it out to him. He said Bruce did not allow him to go into his apartment so he had no idea if there was anybody else in there.\nAs Bruce was going back into his apartment, Simmonds said a third-floor tenant who had complained about hearing a loud crashing sound from the fourth floor came up and told him there was a duffel bag in a nearby stairwell.\nThe bag was on a landing between the third and fourth floors.\n“I (saw) hair sticking out of the bag,” the superintendent said. “I thought it was a dog, so I walked around and looked and it was a person.”\nSimmonds said that before he went upstairs, he had been hanging around the front steps of the building for about two hours drinking beer with a tenant, Henry Armstrong.\nSimmonds said three people – an older man, a man in his 30s and a woman - arrived at the building and buzzed apartment 16 to gain entrance. He said he didn’t recognize the younger man but had seen the older man visiting the building several times before.\nThe younger man left the building about five minutes later, Simmonds said.\nHe said he didn’t see anyone else enter the building through the front door around that time of night. He said there are two locked doors at the back of the building that can be accessed by tenants with their keys.\nCrown attorney Steve Degen showed Simmonds a police photograph, taken after the incident, showing one of those doors propped open with a chair.\nOn cross-examination by Malcolm Jeffcock, Sparks’ lawyer, Simmonds admitted it’s not unusual for people to put things in the door to keep it open.\nSimmonds said he didn’t notice any blood on the younger man but then agreed that in a statement to police the day after the killing, he said the man had a little scratch on his neck and blood on his back.\nArmstrong testified that he was alone out front when the older man came out of the building with two noticeable “lashes” across his stomach and crossed the street. He said he called 911 and stayed with the man until police arrived.\nArmstrong insisted he was only on the front steps with Simmonds for about five minutes and didn’t see the three people arrive.\nHe said police confiscated most of his beer. “I’d like to have those back,” he joked.\nOn Monday, the jury of nine men and four women also heard further testimony from Det. Const. Randy Wood, a forensic identification officer who was involved in the investigation, and two other officers.\nSgt. Mo Chediac told the court that he and another officer came across the hockey bag in the stairwell as they made their way through the building at about 8 p.m.\nChediac said he allowed a paramedic supervisor to unzip the bag and check to see if Gonzales, who was in the fetal position, was still alive. He said the paramedic straightened Gonzales out and attached some electrodes to her body before determining “she was beyond help and was deceased.”\nThe sergeant said he remembers Gonzales’ left arm hanging through the railing of the stairwell after she was partially removed from the bag.\nChediac confirmed that of the many police personnel who were in the building that night, the only ones who wore protective clothing and booties were the forensic officers.\nConst. Jason Joncas was working with the plainclothes quick-response unit when he was dispatched to 33 Hastings Dr. He said he knew of Gonzales’ involvement in the drug trade and learned she was in a relationship with a man named Jacob Sparks.\nJacob Sparks, Vincent Sparks and James Riley were arrested later that night on Portland Street, near Hastings Drive. The vehicle they were in, an older-model Toyota Camry, was seized and transported to police headquarters for processing.\nJoncas said nothing appeared suspicious about the three men and they did not have any injuries or blood on them. They were released the next morning without being charged.\nJoncas also helped track down a Honda Accord that Calvin Sparks and Ritch allegedly used. He found the vehicle June 17 at 10:05 p.m., parked behind an apartment building at 6969 Bayers Rd.\nSparks and Ritch had been apprehended on nearby Federal Avenue that morning.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line956578"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7095903158187866,"wiki_prob":0.7095903158187866,"text":"Home News Ticker Al Cross: Of course we agree with McConnell that we need more ‘civility’ in our public discourse — from all\nAl Cross: Of course we agree with McConnell that we need more ‘civility’ in our public discourse — from all\nNov 22nd, 2019 · 0 Comment\n“Elections have consequences” is a favorite saying for politicians of all stripes, and for those of us who try to make sense of what they say (or don’t say). But elections also have lessons, and those who learn from them are usually the most successful in politics.\nOne of America’s most successful politicians, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, often keeps those lessons to himself, but he alluded to one in a speech to the Kentucky Association of Electric Cooperatives on Monday.\n“I think America’s biggest problem right now is a lack of civility,” he said, repeating the last four words for emphasis. He added later, “We need to learn how to behave better, how to be able to disagree without anger.”\nComing less than two weeks after voters narrowly rejected civility-challenged Gov. Matt Bevin but elected every other Republican on the ballot, it sounded like McConnell was taking a lesson from the people who will render judgment on him next fall – probably in an election with Democrat Amy McGrath, who is running a TV ad that blames him for a national shortage of civility.\nMcConnell told reporters he wasn’t thinking about Kentucky politics when he identified the nation’s biggest problem. Maybe he just suppressed those thoughts; he has an exquisite sense of self-preservation and takes nothing for granted; he was once fond of saying “In this business, you meet the same people on the way down that you met on the way up.”\nRather, McConnell said he was thinking about such national episodes as the bitterly contested confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He said in his speech that his theme was crystallized by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote in a recent book that “America has a civility crisis.”\nAnd what of President Trump, the poster child for American political incivility? McConnell told reporters, “We have a civility problem, and I didn’t confine it to just liberals,” who have mounted uncivil attacks on him in public places. “I think it’s across the board.”\nMcConnell may not have wanted to tie his remark to Kentucky politics, for fear that the wealthy Bevin might once again challenge him for the Republican senatorial nomination. That would likely be pointless for Bevin and expensive for both of them, but potentially more damaging to McConnell.\nBut surely the senator thinks a lot more often about McGrath, who will probably have enough money to keep pummeling him for the next year, something he has never had to endure.\nMcGrath’s ad shows photos of McConnell as she says, “Everything that’s wrong in Washington had to start someplace. How did it come to this, that even within our own families, we can’t talk to each other about the leaders of our country anymore without anger and blame? Well, it started with this man, who was elected a lifetime ago, and who has turned Washington into something we all despise . . . a place where ideals go to die.”\nSo high-minded, but so overstated. Incivility didn’t start with the majority leader, and neither did everything wrong in Washington. But McConnell has long used overstatement and exaggeration in his own campaign ads; since his first Senate re-election campaign, he has said that if an opponent threw a pebble at him, he would respond with a boulder.\nThe (Frankfort) State Journal, not given to overstatement of its own, said in an editorial that McConnell is “a practitioner of the politics he decries. His remarks are akin to the pot calling the kettle black.”\nTo the co-op directors, McConnell tried to differentiate between campaigning and governing: “This is something we all need to be thinking about once again, how to have a respectful debate in this wonderful country of ours without throwing things and getting angry and acting out. So that’s, I think, our biggest national problem, and I intend for what little impact I can have on that, not to act that way. We have plenty of incentive to get angry, but as you may have noticed, I try to stay calm, be respectful and don’t get caught up in these intense debates that we have. The campaigns are always, shall I say, hot salsa – but the governing part doesn’t need to be that way.”\nYes, the public McConnell is usually quite civil, but that is partly because he is taciturn, reining himself in. He doesn’t get drawn into public spats. In private, though, he’s tough and gives no quarter.\nAs leader of Senate Republicans for the last 12 years, he has helped make the governing process more and more about winning the next round of elections, to keep his party in the majority and himself as its leader. We can expect plenty of hot salsa from him and his foes. Take every dose with grains of salt.\nAl Cross (Twitter @ruralj) is a professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media and director of its Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. His opinions are his own, not UK’s. He was the longest-serving political writer for the Louisville Courier Journal (1989-2004) and national president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2001-02. He joined the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2010.\nNKyTribune and KyForward are the anchor home for Al Cross’ column. We offer it to other publications throughout the Commonwealth, with appropriate attribution.\nBill Straub: The whole world is watching the ‘dive,’ but that’s the way it goes in McConnell’s world\nAl Cross: We have waited patiently for the moment that Mitch McConnell would come to his senses. . .\n01/10/2020 · 3 Comments\nState lawmakers convene Tuesday for 60-day session with two-year budget at top of the agenda","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line255490"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6039631962776184,"wiki_prob":0.6039631962776184,"text":"Marriage Equality Not the Cure All…\nWhile I am absolutely elated and ecstatic about the SCOTUS ruling for both healthcare and marriage equality — for I never thought in my lifetime I would see marriage equality in the United States — I am also reflecting on how complicated the institution of marriage is, with its deep roots of misogyny and racism. I am also grateful that I benefit from marriage and happy that the SCOTUS decision was on the anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, and US v. Windsor.\nThere remain many problems around marriage equality. Marriage equality hardly signals the eradication of homophobia, racism, or misogyny. In twenty-nine states, it is still legal to discriminate against the LGBT community in employment, housing, and education. In fact, fourteen of the states that already offered marriage equality simultaneously refuse to provide these basic protections (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming). This is a horrible disconnect. In practice it means that a couple who celebrate a happy, significant occasion are in fact opening themselves up to more discrimination, perhaps even the loss of their homes or livelihoods.\nI also want to address why the conversation has to address more than just marriage equality. I hope we will devote our collective energy in eradicating white supremacy, in solidarity around trans rights, in supporting undocumented people, and dismantling poverty.\nI am also exceedingly sad about the legacy of hate, bigotry, homophobia, and racism that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia (and Scalia’s minions) are leaving. Talk about being on the wrong side of history. Scalia is now a parody of himself, with his dissenting commenting, “jiggery pokery.” Here we have two of the most powerful men in the world, using their power to undermine civil rights. Something to think about as we look at a presidential race in the United States that will be appointing new justices.\nWhile I am happy to celebrate marriage equality, I hope we take a call to action individually and collectively to address all of the intersections of racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism, and poverty.\nTags: Edith Windsor, Gay Marriage, healthcare, homophobia, Jiggery pokery, Lawrence v Texas, Marriage Equality, misogyny, Poverty, Racism, SCOTUS, Supreme Court\nRemembering Alan Turing: LGBTQ Pride Month 2015\nIt was 61 years ago today that Alan Turing took his life. He was not able to see anyway out of the homophobic culture he had endured. The irony is not lost that just two years ago the British government finally declared that Turing would no longer be considered a criminal for being gay.\nAlan Turing was born in 1912. His teachers and family noticed his immense talent for mathematics early on, and he began a rigorous education. He became a fellow at King’s College at the age of 22 and began work on computation. His pioneering work earned him the title: Father of Computer Science. During the war, he worked for the British government as a code breaker. His methods helped crack critical German codes. Some have gone so far as to give him credit for Britain making it through the war without surrender. Turing’s contributions to computer science, cryptology, artificial intelligence, and mathematics are immense, and his gracious style made his ideas approachable, helping spark further innovation.\nHe was also gay. He was generally careful about this fact, given that any homosexual activity was still criminal in the United Kingdom, but he did have partners. In 1952, after reporting a break-in at his home, he admitted to the police that he was in a gay relationship with the other man living there. He was arrested charged with “gross indecency.” While he felt no guilt about simply being who he was, he pleaded guilty to avoid the negative publicity of a trial. He opted for injections of artificial estrogen — chemical castration — rather than go to prison.\nThe conviction revoked his security clearance and ruined his career. It kept him from travelling to the United States to expand on his work. It left him alone and bitter, his promising life in ruins at the age of 40 just because he wanted to live his life honestly. In 1954, he died of a cyanide overdose that was ruled suicide. What a pointless end to an amazing life and we must ask ourselves who is culpable–who has blood on their hands? How do we learn from this tragedy and learn how to support our LGBT brothers and sisters?\nWhile very well known in math and science circles, the scandal kept his work and life from greater renown. It wasn’t until 2009 that the British government — in a statement from Prime Minister Gordon Brown — apologized for what Brown aptly described as “appalling treatment.” (The Brits did better than the Catholic church, of course, with its habit of taking centuries to apologize for its legal abuses…) In the past four years, a bill has slowly worked through the parliamentary process to formally pardon Alan Turing. It appears poised to pass in October.\nIt will be wonderful for the charges against Turing to be formally erased. But his life cannot be returned. The amazing things his mind would have accomplished will never come to pass. The horrific impact of homophobia and abuse of power cannot be fully calculated or undone. Over 49,000 men were sentenced for the same crime in Britain — including Oscar Wilde — before the law was finally removed from the books.\nThere are still many countries with laws like this. There are still jurisdictions in our own country with laws like this. Let the dark example of Alan Turing be a call to action — every life deserves dignity, legalized oppression and discrimination must be stopped. In the end, Alan Turing was a victim, not a criminal. He does not need to be pardoned, the British government does, and this one positive step is simply not enough to wash the blood of thousands from its hands.\nTags: Alan Turing, Artificial Intelligence, castration, Computer Science, Cryptology, Great Britain, homophobia, hypocrisy, LGBT History Month, LGBT Pride Month, Math, pardons, suicide, WWII","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line651694"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6011551022529602,"wiki_prob":0.3988448977470398,"text":"CWI Taiwan\nHow bad is China’s debt crisis?\nSocialist magazine (published by the Chinese section of the CWI) asked Vincent Kolo, senior editor of chinaworker.info, about rising levels of debt in China and whether this heralds a financial collapse?\nSocialist magazine: How serious are China’s debt problems?\nVincent Kolo: A recent Bloomberg report says China’s economy has become a “credit junkie”. The growth of the shadow banking sector in particular is a sign of rapidly rising financial risks. Total loans in China, including the growing share from shadow banking, climbed to 190 percent of GDP in 2012, up from 124 percent in 2008. This is a bigger and faster credit expansion than in the US in the run-up to the subprime crisis, or Japan prior to its property crash in 1990. A lot of the new debt is concentrated in the local government sector, which bore the main financial burden of the giant stimulus programme of 2009-10. But the property sector is another high-risk area, with extreme overbuilding and highly indebted real estate companies. China’s housing bubble is the biggest in world history and a significant drop in prices – inevitable sooner or later – can unleash a tsunami of company failures and loan defaults.\nChina’s banking system is quite unique, because of the degree of state ownership. But the trend is for more and more banking business to go ‘off balance sheet’ into a multitude of shadow finance entities, trust companies, and so on. Loans within the traditional banking sector fell to just 58 percent of all financing last year, from 95 percent in 2002. So, more than 40 percent of all credit nowadays is non-bank lending, from this complex and unregulated shadow financial system.\nSenior figures such as Xiao Gang, former chairman of Bank of China who was recently promoted to head of the main regulatory watchdog CSRC, have warned of a potential “Ponzi scheme” in these developments. He was especially referring to the growth of so-called wealth management products (WMPs), which have gone viral in the last 3-4 years, since the stimulus programme. The value of outstanding WMPs rose to 13 trillion RMB (US$2.1 trillion), or 16 percent of total bank deposits in 2012, which is an increase of 50 percent from 2011. These are risky financial instruments that hardly anybody really understands. So, you get that déjà vu feeling, remembering how this sort of financial hocus pocus became rampant in the US a decade ago, prior to the banking collapse of 2008.\nWhy has the issuance of wealth management products taken off in this way?\nThere are several reasons, but a key element is that the banks themselves are driving this process, as in the US, except of course in China we’re talking about state-owned banks. This is not just the case with WMPs, but also corporate bonds, entrusted loans, and all sorts of new-fangled financial instruments, which have proliferated. The banks want to maintain the high profit rate of recent years, and to get bad loans off their books, especially loans to local governments. The growth of WMPs is a way to get around government lending limits and to extend fresh credit to shaky local government entities that otherwise wouldn’t be able to meet their debt repayments. The debts from the 2009-10 period are being rolled over in this way, to prevent a wave of defaults that could trigger a full-blown banking crisis.\nWe hear a lot about the shadow banking sector, what does this mean?\nThe term shadow banking covers a range of different entities including hedge funds, bond insurers, trusts and wealth management firms. What they have in common is they’re outside the mainstream banking system. Some are illegal, but those are a minority; and in China it’s the big state-owned banks and even non-financial state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that are pulling the strings. In this way, they can engage in activity that is banned by the government and regulatory agencies, to hide risky loans and increase profits. We’ve seen this sort of sleight of hand in other countries, prior to major banking crises. The growth of shadow banking, like most things in China, has been extremely rapid. According to the central bank, this sector now has total assets (loans in other words) worth 30 trillion yuan (USD $4.8 trillion). That’s equivalent to 58 percent of GDP.\nThere are many cases of state-owned banks doing deals through trust companies that are really just a front for the banks themselves. Again, this keeps the dodgy loans off their books. SOEs have set up unauthorised banking arms to borrow at cheap rates from the state banks and then lend to other companies at a higher rate of interest. Because they are not banks, this activity is unregulated. SOEs do this to recoup profits, because with huge levels of overcapacity in industry many are losing money in their core businesses.\nSo, a much bigger share of loans is being routed through this uncontrolled shadow finance sector, spreading the financial risks through the economy. The banks are offloading risky loans with the left hand, but taking on more with the right hand. Banks are the biggest buyers of corporate debt, a lot of which is now being issued by the local government financial vehicles (LGFVs), which are ineligible for new bank credit under central government tightening measures.\nAnother thing about the shadow banking sector is that interest rates are of course much higher, up to 100 percent in some cases. So, what we’re also witnessing is a backdoor liberalisation of interest rates. The central bank sets the official rate, which is binding on the banks, but to get around this they go ‘off-balance sheet’, at higher rates of interest.\nYou say the local governments have built up a lot of debt, how has this been possible?\nBack in 2008, fearing the impact of the global capitalist crisis, the central government launched its huge stimulus package and gave banks the green light to increase loans. Local governments, which are banned by law from taking loans, were allowed to get around this by setting up their own finance vehicles (LGFVs) – thousands of them – to tap into this credit boom and build infrastructure. The checks by the banks were poor or non-existent; many local governments were already in a financial mess, and a lot of this investment was wasted, stolen, or went into property speculation, ‘ghost cities’, ‘ghost malls’, and so on. Of course there is no democratic accountability of local governments, not even the very cursory public scrutiny or control that applies in the capitalist West.\nThe government’s auditors put the combined local government debt at 10.7 trillion yuan in 2010, around 25 percent of GDP at that time. Beijing’s bank regulators claim the problem is “under control” and not growing. But this is because so much of the debt has been shuffled under the radar, so to speak, into the shadow banking system where it cannot reliably be measured. I recently saw data from Liu Yuhui of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, putting the real level of local government debt at 13 to 14 trillion yuan (US$2 to 2.2 trillion). I’ve seen higher estimates. The interest repayments on the local government debt are between 700 and 800 billion yuan every year.\nThe stimulus 2009-10 loans began to fall due last year, but a lot of the infrastructure projects are either unfinished or have not recouped enough income to pay back the loans. Proceeds from land sales, which at the height of the stimulus package generated about 40 percent of local government income, have also fallen sharply. Last year, land sales fell by 14 percent, because overcapacity in the housing market has reached crisis levels. Some local governments are now extremely indebted. Hubei province, for example, has a debt-to-fiscal revenue ratio of 181 percent. In Jilin it is 171 percent.\nThe banks are rolling over most local government debt, around 40 percent of which fell due last year. Old loans are being serviced by issuing fresh loans, but not from the banks’ own balance sheets. Trust companies acting for local government entities are repackaging the old debts as ‘investments’ – as WMPs – most of which are short-duration, so it’s very much a case of buying time. This is also what Xiao Gang meant by “Ponzi Scheme” – it’s a scam whereby money from new entrants goes to make payments to older investors. It has to keep expanding, pulling in new investors, or it collapses, which at some point is inevitable.\nThe central government has issued warnings and is struggling to get control over this process, because some local government financial platforms are throwing hospitals, schools and other public assets into these financial ‘products’ to make them more attractive to investors. Investors ask, ‘what am I actually buying into here?’ – they want to see some physical assets. So, it’s a form of backdoor privatisation.\nThere are several factors that could trigger a financial crisis. In December, Huaxia bank in Shanghai, a middle-sized bank with Deutsche Bank as part-owner, faced protests in the streets after a WMP it had sold defaulted, losing the depositors around US$22 million. Some big noises within the financial sector, such as China International Capital Corporation, said the government should do nothing – to show it won’t step in to rescue the WMPs, which after all are largely a private business, not guaranteed by banks. But the government did step in, behind the scenes, to prevent the Huaxia affair triggering a run on the WMP sector as a whole, because as we’ve already noted it now accounts for around 16 percent of total bank deposits.\nNot only could a run on WMPs trigger a wider banking crisis, but even if sales of new WMPs were to dry up, with investors growing wary, this could cause a ‘liquidity crunch’ for local governments and property companies which need to rollover old debts. This is the dilemma for the government. The shadow banks and regular banks are no longer isolated from each other, they have grown into each other, which is something it cannot really control.\nHas China’s economy successfully avoided a hard landing?\nThis is what the government and a significant sector of the global ‘market’ – meaning the banks and speculators – are telling us. I think we must distinguish between short-term and longer-term developments. To prevent a serious economic crunch, or hard landing, that threatened to massively complicate the power transition last year, the Chinese regime reverted to its traditional policies of credit-driven growth, particularly infrastructure and construction. This did add more ‘juice’ to the economy, with a pick up in GDP in the fourth quarter, to 7.9 percent, after seven successive quarters of falling growth. The year still ended on its lowest growth since 1999.\nThere is also a lot of debate about whether the official GDP figures give a true picture. There was the story of the ‘phantom province’ – because the sum of all local government GDP statistics was a whole ‘Guangdong’ bigger than the central government statistics for national GDP. Last year’s electricity consumption grew by just 5.5 percent, which may be a more accurate indicator of economic performance. Using similar methodology, Standard Chartered’s Stephen Green published a report recently that challenges the last two year’s of official GDP data. Green’s estimates cut about two percentage points from GDP growth for 2011 and 2012.\nBut the mini-stimulus ordered last summer clearly had an effect in the short-term. This entailed fast-tracking previously agreed infrastructure projects like new high-speed rail lines, subway lines and the social housing programme, at a cost of about 940 billion yuan (US$150 billion). But like the much bigger 2009-10 programme, this new spending, because of the way it was done, will exacerbate the longer-term problems for the economy.\nInvestment’s share of total GDP was 50 percent in 2011 and increased further last year. This is up from an already high rate of 41 percent before the crisis. Such a high level of investment is historically unprecedented. As ex-premier Wen Jiabao famously said it is “unsustainable”. Yet despite this, faced with a crisis, the regime decided to kick the can down the road, as other governments are doing worldwide. Each time it does this, however, its scope for further big stimulus measures inevitably crimps – because of the debt overhang and extreme levels of overcapacity.\nWhat about the overcapacity?\nIt’s estimated that one-third of China’s industry is idle, on average; while in certain industries the figure is closer to half. The capacity utilisation rate in 2012 was lower even than in the crisis year of 2008. The worst hit industries include steel, telecoms, shipbuilding, aluminium and construction machinery, which have all seen incredible expansion over the past decade. The telecom industry is preparing big investments in 4G technology, yet only around a third of the 3G network is being used.\nIn China, the competition between provinces and localities, divorced from any national plan, amplifies the problem of overcapacity and overinvestment. Provinces frequently defy Beijing when it orders them not to build a new aluminium smelter or steelworks. The smallest plants and factories are the first to be axed when industries are told to consolidate, so local governments encourage grand projects, regardless of real demand, under the rule ‘survival of the biggest’. This explains why there has been nine consecutive months of producer price deflation – falling prices at the factory gate. Capacity vastly outstrips demand and so companies are forced to cut prices to clear their stocks. At the same time, paradoxically, you’ve got the return of consumer price inflation, particularly for food and fuel.\nGrowth of wealth management products in China\nBut isn’t infrastructure spending a positive? Aren’t we socialists in favour?\nSure, in a society where the means of production are owned and controlled by the working class, democratically, through a balanced and coordinated economic plan, then there would be a real need to invest in socially useful and environmentally sustainable infrastructure: low carbon transport systems, new schools, hospitals, affordable public housing and so on. But this is not what is happening in China.\nA huge share of the infrastructure spending has gone into financial speculation, mainly in real estate, but also in raw materials. More than 800,000 tons of copper is hoarded at bonded warehouses, according to French bank Societe Generale, because copper and other metals are used as collateral for bank loans.\nIn the property sector overinvestment and overbuilding are obvious. Real estate investment reached 13.8 percent of GDP last year, compared to just 6 percent in the US at the height of its housing bubble in 2006. Last year in China, houses under construction were 4.2 times the level of home sales. This is not because there is no demand for houses of course, but because ordinary people cannot afford today’s off-the-chart prices. In Beijing the average price of an apartment stood at 25,075 yuan per square metre in January this year, set against an average yearly income of 24,564 yuan for urban Chinese in 2012. Prices have been driven up by the speculators, which again means the banks, local governments and motley private profiteers, all of whom gain from higher property prices. That is until the bubble bursts, which it must do.\nWe read every week of new scandals involving local officials and even police chiefs, who have used fake ‘hukou’ papers to buy up dozens of homes as speculation objects. In one recent case Zhao Haibin, an official in Guangdong, was found to own 192 properties. Those who get exposed are sacked, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The housing situation is a political time bomb. This is why the government tried to clamp down on house prices in 2010. But its policy shift last summer, with a new credit splurge to avert a hard landing, has further inflated the housing bubble.\nA new team of leaders is in charge. What do they plan to do about these economic problems?\nI think they are limited as to what they can do. There is a lot of talk about economic rebalancing – towards more consumption. Similarly, there is a lot of talk about a new burst of liberal i.e. pro-capitalist economic reform (not to be confused with political change, which they don’t want). The new leaders, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang especially, stand for the type of measures outlined in the World Bank’s dossier launched last year (China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society), which was co-authored by Li’s ministry and calls for sweeping privatisations and marketisation. We should remember that the World Bank and its sister organisation the IMF bear as much guilt as anyone for the global financial crisis.\nBut regardless of what the new leaders want, there are in-built mechanisms within China’s state structures and in the current low-wage economic model that block change. This suggests that any new ‘reforms’ will be drawn out and subject to endless toing-and-froing. The dictatorship is split at the top and new factional infighting can erupt over these issues in the coming period.\nThey plan to ‘liberalise’ the financial sector, interest rates and so on, ostensibly to make the allocation of capital more ‘efficient’, to cut back on wasteful investment. This means formalising the shadow banking sector – ‘freeing’ the mainstream banks to engage in this sort of thing legally.\nThe regime wants to internationalise the yuan (or renminbi) and has made significant moves to increase the offshore trade in the Chinese currency, through ‘swap lines’ with foreign banks – most recently the Bank of England. They want to break out of their current dollar dependency, which forces China to subsidise, by virtue of its outsized dollar holdings, the policies of Obama and the Fed, ‘QE’ (quantitative easing) in particular. This damages China’s economy in several ways, through sucking in ‘US-made’ inflation, and by increasing upward pressure on the yuan. The central bank is then forced into expensive interventions to prevent the currency rising further, which would be bad news for the already strained export sector. In the past ten years these interventions have cost the Chinese government over US$270 billion. This is one front in the unfolding global ‘currency war’, with all the main powers trying to escape the crisis at each other’s expense.\nBut to turn the yuan into a major international currency means removing exchange controls, which, as things stand today, would very likely trigger a financial collapse. So, in addition to splits within the regime, there are major risks in implementing the leadership’s liberal – actually neo-liberal – agenda. At the same time, the current position, with rising overinvestment and debt, is also “unsustainable” as Wen says. So, it’s as if they can’t move, but at the same time they don’t have the luxury of standing still.\nWe are thankfully not in the position of giving advice to the Chinese dictatorship. We seek its removal through revolutionary mass struggle for socialism. This is the only solution to the economic crisis in China and internationally: to lay hold of the gigantic economic resources that the current system is driving to ruin on a world scale, and through democratic socialist planning, with the working class building its own government, using these resources not to enrich a tiny minority but to end unemployment, inequality and oppression.\nTags: China Debt crisis\nSubscribe Socialist Magazine English.\nSocialist magazine can be ordered from cwi.china@protonmail.com\nTrotsky Archive\n© Copyright 2020 — Chinaworker.info. All Rights Reserved","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line262061"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7236193418502808,"wiki_prob":0.27638065814971924,"text":"State Authorities\n51st ordinary session of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia\nGovernment of the Republic of Slovenia\nAt today’s session the government approved the wording of the bill for the Act Amending the Code of Property Law.\nMinister of Justice Andreja Katič after government session | Author Nebojša Tejić, STA\nCertain deficiencies in the Code of Property Law and opportunities for improvement have come to light during its application, and the justice ministry has therefore embarked on drafting amendments.\nThe approach to the amendments was particularly restrained in its response to practices that the current code judges to be good, and there was no intervention into the institutions established by the current wording. The amendments mainly build on those institutions that have proven to be unfeasible in judicial practice without the requisite normative changes to the regulation of social relations, and those that failed to keep pace with the way in which business is done, or have hindered its evolution.\nOn one hand the proposed changes to property law track the needs of business and commerce, while on the other the proposed improvements in divided co-ownership and the new arrangements for connected real estate will allow for the regulation of relations that have already been established in business and life practice, albeit with the help of other institutions of property law less suited to the task. The bill also eliminates certain inconsistencies and deficiencies in the current arrangements.\nThe main solutions proposed by the bill for the Act Amending the Code of Property Law are:\n- the definition of animals as living beings, not as objects,\n- the overhaul and enhancement of divided co-ownership and situations similar to divided co-ownership,\n- the overhaul of the register of non-possessory liens and seized movable property,\n- changes to the area of fake easement in the public interest and superficies.\nThe government has approved the wording of the Resolution on the national programme of strategic guidelines for agriculture and food production in Slovenia entitled Our Food, Countryside and Natural Resources after 2021, which provides a basis for national measures and a standardised strategic plan for implementing the common agricultural policy.\nThe resolution pursues the following objectives:\nRobust and competitive food production and processing\nSustainable management of natural resources and provision of public goods\nHigher quality of life and economic activity in rural areas\nHorizontal objective: strengthening the creation and transfer of knowledge\nThe ministry of agriculture, forestry and food has set the following objectives with regard to robust and competitive food production and processing: ensuring high standards for safe, high-quality food; ensuring the efficient use and availability of resources; achieving a comparable income level and income stability; strengthening agri-food chains and improving the position of the farmer in the chain; promoting the production and consumption of food with high added value; strengthening market focus and enterprise; encouraging generational renewal; maintaining the amount of agricultural land and its potential output.\nPursuing the objective of the sustainable management of natural resources and provision of public goods relies in part on reducing adverse impacts on water, soil and air, mitigating climate change, protecting biodiversity, preserving the rural cultural landscape, and ensuring animal welfare.\nFrom the perspective of raising quality of life and economic activity in rural areas, the objectives include encouraging supplementary activities on farms, strengthening local initiatives and intersectoral collaboration, and strengthening tourism’s ties to the quality of the food in the local environment, women in rural areas, and concern for vulnerable population groups.\nThe horizontal objective meanwhile requires the strengthening of research support for the development of agriculture and rural areas, the effective transfer of knowledge to final beneficiaries, and effective agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKISs).\nHas this website been helpful? YES NO\nYour comment / feedback\nResponsible institution:\nGovernment Communication Office\nLast edited:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1461669"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9957695603370667,"wiki_prob":0.9957695603370667,"text":"McCoy, Law, Froome among UK sports stars honored by Queen\n(Photo: Misiona Simo)\nBy Admin Peršon, 03/01/2016\nLONDON (AP) — Jockey Tony McCoy, former Manchester United striker Denis Law, two-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome, and five-time world snooker champion Ronnie O'Sullivan are among United Kingdom sporting figures honored by Queen Elizabeth in her New Year list.\nMcCoy, who retired this year after winning 20 straight British champion jockey titles and a record 4,358 races in a 23-year career, was knighted in recognition of his services to horse racing. He is only the second jockey to be made a Sir, after Gordon Richards in 1953.\nThe 75-year-old Law, who played for United from 1962-73 and was part of the club's so-called \"Holy Trinity\" with George Best and Bobby Charlton, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to football and charity.\nFroome was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire after becoming the first Briton to win a second Tour de France in July.\nO'Sullivan also was awarded an OBE in recognition for his services to snooker, having won the world championship five times — most recently in 2013 — and become the sport's box-office name.\nThe success of the England women's football team in finishing third at the World Cup in Canada this year was recognized as captain Steph Houghton and teammate Fara Williams were both made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.\nJohn Surtees, the only man to win world championships on two and four wheels, was made a CBE. The 81-year-old Surtees won seven world motorcycling championships before switching to four wheels and winning the 1964 Formula One title.\nHeather Rabbatts, a director at England's Football Association who became the organization's first female board member in 2012, was awarded a damehood for services to football and equality. As a campaigner on behalf of women in sport, she recently spoke out in support of former Chelsea doctor Eva Carneiro in her dispute with the club.\nFormer Manchester City striker and chairman Francis Lee received a CBE, while ex-England rugby winger Mark Cueto and IBF super-bantamweight boxing champion Carl Frampton were awarded MBEs.\nBritain's honors are bestowed by the monarch, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public.\nStaff Sergeant trainer sees netball potential in Samoa\nStaff Sergeant Davey Forbes has worked with Manu Samoa 7s and 15s, the national netball team, and is now back in Samoa training the next generation through Netball Samoa’s accelerant programme.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1145641"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.924746036529541,"wiki_prob":0.924746036529541,"text":"Ohio State’s Chase Young wins Nagurski Award\nby: STEVE REED, Associated Press\nOhio State defensive end Chase Young poses with the The 2019 Bronko Nagurski Award before the awards banquet in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, Dec. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Nell Redmond)\nCHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Ohio State defensive end Chase Young won the Bronko Nagurski Award given to the nation’s top college defensive player on Monday night.\nYoung was the nation’s most dominant player on defense this season, recording 16 1/2 sacks and forcing six fumbles in 10 games for the Buckeyes. His best game came against then-No. 13 Wisconsin when he had four sacks and two forced fumbles in a 38-7 victory.\nThe 6-foot-6, 265-pound Young joins a list of former Nagurski Award winners that includes Aaron Donald, Warren Sapp, Luke Kuechly, Terrell Suggs and Champ Bailey.\n“It’s such an honor to come in here and see all of the great players that have won this award, and have a chance to put my name in that category with some of the all-time great college football players,” Young said. “It’s definitely amazing.”\nYoung received the award Monday night at a banquet sponsored annually by the Charlotte Touchdown Club.\nOhio State coach Ryan Day was on hand for the announcement as the event’s keynote speaker.\nHe praised Young for putting up “ridiculous” statistics this season, and helping his team to an undefeated season so far. Second-ranked Ohio State plays No. 3 Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 28, with the winner advancing to the College Football Playoff National Championship game.\n“I knew that he was certainly capable of a season like this,” Day said. “You see him in practice every day, and you see guys make a big jump from year two to year three in college. And he made a big jump just in total production. And, he didn’t play in a whole bunch of games in terms of the second half and he missed a couple of games. When he was on the field, his production was just off the charts.”\nYoung dedicated the award to his grandfather, Carl Robinson, who passed away when he was in middle school.\n“If he was to see everything I have done this season, he would probably have a heart attack,” Young said. “He would be ecstatic and probably be at a loss for words. We were always close. He would teach me how to make stuff and how to fix stuff and show me off to some of his old school friends. We used to do everything together, almost like a second dad.”\nYoung is also up for the Heisman Trophy, an award that normally goes to offensive players.\nHe said his goal this season was to prove that he plays hard every play.\n“I’m going to make mistakes, but if you are going 100 miles per hour you might make up for those mistakes,” Young said.\nYoung said his future NFL team will get a player who is willing and eager to learn.\n“I’m going to be a dude who works hard, is not going say too much and just go about his business,” Young said.\nDay said Young has a chance to go down as one of the all-time greats, like many of the former Nagurski Award winners.\n“Yeah, he’s definitely the most dominant defensive player in the country,” Day said. “When you have that type production in a limited amount of snaps, I just think that it is unbelievable.”\nAuburn defensive tackle Derrick Brown, Georgia safety J.R. Reed, Clemson linebacker Isaiah Simmons and Minnesota defensive back Antoine Winfield Jr. were the other finalists for the award.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1155527"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5059755444526672,"wiki_prob":0.5059755444526672,"text":"About Time Already\nIn her novel, ‘About Time Already,’ L.A. Noble tells a mystery and suspense story about a young woman by the name of Jenny Masters who returns to her hometown after nine years to find herself confronting her painful past. As Jenny faces her traumatic childhood memories, she unwittingly becomes entangled in a web of lies, murder, and blackmail, which results in a dangerous journey to uncover an explosive secret.\n‘About Time Already,’ takes place during the summer of 2010. Jenny Masters left New Attica, Illinois after graduating from high school in order to escape a traumatic childhood. As a child, Jenny had been sexually abused by local doctor Dr. Samuel Roberts. She was not the only young girl to be preyed upon by the depraved doctor. In 2001, he killed a young girl he got pregnant. Dr. Samuel and his mother Sarah Roberts buried her body in the shed of the family home. From an early age, Jenny’s life had been entangled with the affluent Roberts family. Not only was she sexually abused by Dr. Samuel, but she also had become pregnant by Steve Roberts, Dr. Samuel’s half brother. Cold and calculating Sarah Roberts, the matriarch of the Roberts family, claimed to have had the baby adopted but then the baby died. After nine years living in Blessington, Illinois, Jenny returns to New Attica when she learns that her mother is in a serious car accident. The events that unfold involve murder, kidnappings, blackmail, uncovering dark secrets, and Jenny confronting her painful childhood and those who caused her such emotional harm.\n‘About Time Already’ contains a diverse range of unique and colorful characters. Ashley and Heather are the town gossips who constantly watch and gossip about the activities of the other characters. Jenny’s friends, Michelle and Max, have a knack for solving murders and assist Jenny in her efforts to uncover the mystery while trying to make sense of their own relationship. Brothers Michael and Steve Roberts struggle with their own past with Jenny. Depraved Doctor Samuel and his mother Sarah are both scheming characters who will do anything, no matter how wicked, to protect the family name.\n‘About Time Already’ is a literary mystery filled with many surprising twists and turns that will keep readers guessing the identity of the murderer right to the end of the story. Through a well-written and well-plotted narrative, readers will find themselves cheering for Jenny as she faces great danger and threats to her life. ‘About Time Already’ is highly recommended to readers who enjoy an entertaining page-turning mystery that keeps them engaged from start to end.\nTracy Roberts, Write Field Services\nposted by Write Field Services at 4:03 PM\nWe Do Remember You\nRecaging the Beast, The Yeast-Fungal Connection: T...\nMorbid Obesity: Will You Allow It To Kill You?\nGrowing Up In A Small African Village\nThe Everyday Housewife\nLost Relic of the Gods\nThe Shakespeare Conspiracy\nHow Not To Drop Dead\nLiar Loan","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1285638"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7545083165168762,"wiki_prob":0.7545083165168762,"text":"Jehovah's Witnesses 2017 Convention Saturday AM Don't Give Up!\nBy Guest Nicole, June 3, 2017 in Topics\nGuest Nicole - June 3, 2017\nThe Librarian - June 3, 2017\nThe Librarian 3,550\nJW Convention Themes Through The Years\nWhat is the theme of your baptism year??\nMine was... Kingdom Truth~1982\n(Although mine was at a Circuit Assembly in Natick, Massachusetts not a district convention)\nThousands of Jehovah's Witnesses to attend three-day Fargo convention\nFARGO — About 4,000 Jehovah's Witnesses will be in Fargo this weekend for a massive three-day regional convention at Scheels Arena.\nThe \"Be Courageous!\" 2018 convention here beginning Friday, June 29, through Sunday, July 1, is one of many around the country and globe, including Hungary, Japan and Australia.\nConvention spokesperson Stephen Mostad, of Blackduck, Minn., said the convention for the Dakotas and Minnesota has been held at Fargo's Scheels Arena since 2012 with the exception of 2015, when it was held in Milwaukee.\nMostad said Fargo is a central location for the 55 congregations in the tri-state area that flock here.\nEach summer, he said a little more than 500 conventions are held throughout the U.S., where Jehovah's Witnesses make up less than 1 percent of the population. Worldwide, there are nearly 8.5 million Jehovah's Witnesses, though they are banned in some countries like Russia.\nThe Pew Research Center came out with a study in 2016 following the death of Minnesota's superstar musician Prince, who became part of the Christian religion as an adult.\nOther famous members of this denomination include Michael and Janet Jackson, athletes Venus and Serena Williams and Larry Graham of Sly and The Family Stone. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was raised a Jehovah's Witness, but left the religion as an adult, as did musicians Patti Smith and Donald Glover.\nJehovah's Witnesses are most known for door-knocking and prophesying with pamphlets. They don't serve in the military or celebrate birthdays and holidays. Mostad said these guidelines are from their interpretations of the first-century model of the Bible that regulate personal decisions.\nConventions are a \"spiritual highlight\" for all ages, Mostad said.\n\"Its encouragement. We enjoy being together,\" he said. \"We find in the world we live in experiencing challenges and tragedy, it's nice to find a little oasis where you can be spiritually refreshed.\"\nThe free, public event will consist of presentations on family life and prophecies with a feature film on Sunday. Programming starts each day around 9:20 a.m. and lasts until 5 p.m. On Sunday, programming ends at 4 p.m.\nMore information about the convention is available at www.jw.org.org.\nhttp://www.wday.com/lifestyle/faith/4466468-thousands-jehovahs-witnesses-attend-three-day-fargo-convention\nThousands of Jehovah's Witnesses congregate in Barrie for weekend convention at BMC\nThree-day convention expected to draw around 3,500 people from around the region\nThousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses will be in Barrie for their annual summer convention this weekend.\nDozens of volunteers were busy on Thursday preparing the Barrie Molson Centre for this weekendÂ’s three-day gathering. From those building the stage and assembling video screens to crews cleaning the arena top to bottom to make it spick and span, it was a hive of activity.\nThe convention will draw people from several towns in the area, from Collingwood to Shelburne, Barrie to Aurora and north up to Bracebridge.\nA similar gathering was held in Barrie in 2016 and had 3,700 people in attendance.\nHowever, Steve Brown, who is handling media for the event, which runs from Friday to Sunday at the BMC, said he expects around 3,500 people this weekend because fewer congregations have been invited.\n“When the announcement was made that we would be going back to Barrie, there was loud applause,” Brown said. “We love coming to Barrie for our convention.”\nBrown called the city “an ideal location.”\n“The city is relatively easy to get around (and) we feel welcome by our hosts at the BMC, hotels and restaurants,” he said.\nBrown said the waterfront is also “perfect” for attending families to stretch and play after a day at the BMC.\n“Barrie is an ideal location for a variety of reasons,” Brown said. “Of course, its central location makes it very convenient for the majority of delegates from this area.\n“However, it is also ideal because the convention venue is the perfect size for our needs,” he said. “Additionally, Barrie has the great hotels, restaurants and shopping facilities that are required to care for the needs of several thousand visiting delegates.”\nBrown said the convention is a great way to connect.\n“Our conventions are three wonderful days in a spiritual paradise,” he said. “Family groups, young people, couples and our dear older ones all eagerly attend.\n“The Bible-based program is the primary reason for the delegates to be there,” Brown added. “Nonetheless, the opportunity to associate with our brothers and sisters before and after the sessions is an unmistakable highlight.”\nThe convention includes talks, interviews and the sharing of experiences as well as music, videos and a feature film. Â\n“We are always delighted by the quality of the teaching and how interesting the program is,” Brown said.\nThis yearÂ’s theme is ‘Be CourageousÂ’ and all presentations will focus on courage.\n“We all need courage in our daily routines,” Brown said. “At school and in the workplace, people may be exposed to bullying, harassment, ridicule and other unwelcome pressures.\n“Living by Bible standards, as we strive to do, requires extra courage because it sometimes puts us out of step with whatÂ’s going on around us,” he said.\nWorld conditions can also cause fear and concern, Brown added.\n“This convention program will provide much in the way of reminders, suggestions and encouragement to forge ahead, doing what is right , even when it is difficult to do so,” he said.\nhttps://www.barrietoday.com/local-news/thousands-of-jehovahs-witnesses-congregate-in-barrie-for-weekend-convention-at-the-bmc-954653\nAbout 3,500 Jehovah's Witnesses gather in Billings for 3-day regional convention\nAbout 3,500 Jehovah's Witnesses will meet in Billings Friday through Sunday at Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark for their annual regional convention.\nMembers come from the eastern half of Montana, western North and South Dakota and northern Wyoming, said media spokesman Joe Kurkowski. The public is also invited to attend any of the sessions, he said.\n\"There are no collections taken and it's a completely free event,\" Kurkowski said.\nThe morning session begins at 9:20 a.m. each day. The afternoon sessions start at 1:25 p.m. on Friday and at 1:35 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.\nSimilar conventions are held throughout the United States and around the world between May and September, Kurkowski said. The theme this year at all the conventions is \"Be Courageous.\"\nFor more information, go online to www.jw.org\nhttp://billingsgazette.com/news/local/about-jehovah-s-witnesses-gather-in-billings-for--day/article_33c41c73-87a4-52a5-821b-c327e237eade.html\nTranscript - Horst Henschel -Jehovah is a Strong Tower for Me\nTranscript - Horst Henschel -Jehovah is a Strong Tower for Me.pdf\nWeekend Meeting September 16\nJehovah's Witnesses clean up Reading arena ahead of conventions\nMembers of the Jehovah's Witnesses held a community service day Saturday in and around Santander Arena in Reading in preparation for the denomination's series of three-day annual conventions, which start Friday.\nVolunteers worked to spruce up the arena in advance of the first convention.\nhttp://www.readingeagle.com/news/article/jehovahs-witnesses-clean-up-reading-arena-ahead-of-conventions\n2017-2018 Dont Give Up In Doing What Is Fine! -notebook\n2017-2018 Dont Give Up In Doing What Is Fine! -notebook.pdf\n2017-2018 Dont Give Up In Fulfilling The Law of Christ! -notebook\n2017-2018 Dont Give Up In Fulfilling The Law of Christ! -notebook.pdf\nKids Notebook-Circuit Assembly Dont Give Up in Fulfilling the Law of Christ 2018\n10+ yrs polar bear.pdf\n10+yrs bike by tree.pdf\n5-10 yrs kids_Africa.pdf\n5-10 yrs kids_Lorikeet.pdf\nJehovah’s Witnesses Welcome All to 2017 “Don’t Give Up!” Convention\nFAIRFIELD, CA—On July 28, 2017, Tagalog circuit in Northern California of Jehovah’s Witnesses will begin their three-day annual conventions with the theme “Don’t Give Up!” The program will be held in 2020 Walters Road, Fairfield CA. As in years past, the Witnesses are participating in a global campaign to personally invite the general public to attend.Admission to each event is free and no collections are taken. “Nearly thirteen million persons attended our conventions last year worldwide,” states David A. Semonian, spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses at their world headquarters in Warwick, New York. “We hope to have an even larger audience this year.” Angelito Roque, the Tagalog’s local circuit convention spokesman, has estimated 1,900 Filipino to attend this years’ convention which is similar to last years’ attendance.The program is divided into 52 parts and will be presented in a variety of formats, including brief discourses, interviews, and short videos. Additionally, one segment of a three-part feature film entitled Remember the Wife of Lot will be shown each afternoon. Media outlets may contact Mr. Roque for reporters planning to cover the convention.“Challenges in life can rob us of peace and even cause some to think about giving up,” says Mr. Semonian. “Our convention this year will benefit both Witnesses and non-Witnesses because it promises to empower individuals not only to keep enduring but also to cope with challenges productively.”For more information, please go to https://www.jw.org then click the “Convention” section under the “About Us” heading.\nRegional Media Contact: Angelito Roque, telephone: (408)238-1063\nhttp://philippinenews.com/index.php/other-news-2/opinion/item/1360-jehovah-s-witnesses-welcome-all-to-2017-don-t-give-up-convention\nSwaying To The Music\nCancer Does Not Stop Local Jehovah's Witness Couple\nLeslie and Jim Donigan attend the Jehovah's Witnesses conference today at Silverstein Eye Centers Arena in Independence, Missouri. (Mike Sherry | Flatland)\nAt happy moments, Jim and Leslie Donigan often find themselves dancing to “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars,” the Andy Williams hit that has been their song since they first met at a pizza joint in Mission, Kansas, decades ago.\nOne of those dance-worthy occasions took place late last year, at the end of a long medical journey. The memory remains strong, even though they have hit a recent bump in the road.\nAs Jehovah’s Witnesses, they plan to attend the Midwest convention that runs today through Sunday at Silverstein Eye Centers Arena in Independence, Missouri. Organizers believe few attendees embody this year’s theme, “Don’t Give Up,” more than the Donigans, who are both 71 years old and live in Kansas City. About 5,000 people are expected to attend, said Craig Cochran, the convention’s media services coordinator.\nThe ability to be part of a global experience of faith is important to the Donigans, as they once again face medical uncertainty. “It’s like a spiritual family reunion,” Jim said.\nA website for the religion says there are more than 8.3 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in 240 countries. According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than 1 percent of American adults are Jehovah’s Witnesses.\n“Don’t Give Up” is the them of this year’s Jehovah’s Witness conference. (Mike Sherry | Flatland)\nJehovah’s Witnesses believe in God, who is called Jehovah. As Christians, they believe in heaven and salvation, but they do not believe in hell or eternal suffering.\nWitnesses, as followers are called, believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God. However, they recognize some parts are symbolic and do not believe all parts of the Bible are to be understood literally.\nJehovah’s Witnesses also do not believe in blood transfusions, based upon their reading of passages in both the Old and New testaments. They cite Genesis 9:4, for example, where God says, “Only flesh with its soul — its blood — you must not eat.”\nNo ‘Cowards in the Foxhole’\nOn Oct. 1, 2004, Leslie fainted. That was abnormal for her, a runner who lives a healthy lifestyle.\nDoctors could not pinpoint a cause, and later that month they understood why: They found a gastrointestinal stromal tumor, a rare cancer that leaves no blood marker. The tumor was growing on a section of the small intestine and was also threatening her pancreas.\nThe belief about blood transfusions was an obvious complication when it came to surgery.\nSo, the Donigans worked through a Jehovah’s Witnesses group in Brooklyn to find Dr. Marvin Romsdahl, a surgeon at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who performed a modified version of a common surgery to remove pancreatic tumors. The modified version did not require a transfusion.\nThe night before the surgery, the anesthesiologist backed out because of the risks of doing surgery without blood transfusions. “That’s good,” Jim told Romsdahl. “We don’t need any cowards in the foxhole.”\nThe surgery lasted 13.5 hours, but it was successful.\nYet further treatment included a prescription for the chemotherapy pill Gleevec. The cost of the therapy, which Leslie said at the time cost $2,500 per month, brought them to the breaking point, even after using Social Security and Medicare.\n“It’s always been more than we could swallow,” Jim said, “and progressively over time, it took everything.”\nMore bad news hit in 2008, when Jim lost his banking job during the recession. They had to sell the house they had built nearly four decades before, the same house where they had raised their three children.\nBut in one sliver of good news, a neighbor approached them during their garage sale and told them he would buy another house for sale on the block and then rent it to them.\nThings began to look up, as Jim found another job, Leslie qualified for a hardship program that allowed her to take Gleevec for free, and then got off the medication altogether when her cancer went into remission.\nThe cancer returned, however, and Leslie must remain on Gleevec for the rest of her life. Now, Gleevec costs $13,000 per month, she said.\nIn April 2016, the family was tested again, when Jim started having shortness of breath.\nTheir first thought was a heart problem, but the first diagnosis was multiple myeloma, a form of incurable blood cancer. A second opinion was different, but not any better: a form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which causes tumors to grow in the lymphatic system.\nA PET scan revealed 100 tumors, and Jim started his own costly round of chemotherapy.\nThe Donigans vist with their son, Joel, and his wife, Carrie, at the conference. (Mike Sherry | Flatland)\nHis lymphatic system failed during treatment, causing fluid buildup around his stomach and lungs. Jim suffered malnutrition when draining the fluid removed electrolytes and proteins.\nBy October, doctors gave him two months to live. Leslie got it in writing.\nYet as he sat in the hospital, saying his goodbyes, Jim had a thought: “Why couldn’t we take those fluids from my stomach and put them back into my heart, where they need to be?”\nThe question sparked an idea for one of Jim’s doctors, who inserted a shunt normally used to treat cirrhosis. Within two weeks, the fluid buildup was gone.\nOn Dec. 27, when he was home filing paperwork, Jim came across the letter telling him he only had two months to live. He did the math, and then they had an “I ain’t dead yet party.”\nAt the party, Jim sipped his first glass of wine in a year, and the couple danced once again to their favorite song. The luster remained up until this week, when an infection flared up around the shunt, and the fear of cancer returned.\nThis most recent medical challenge has shown Jim and Leslie how important their faith is in preparing them for the troubles that can lie ahead. The convention, and especially its theme, is coming at just the right time to help guide them through this newest trial, Leslie said.\n“No one is shielded from the human experience,” Leslie said. “But personally, we find it better to be prepared to keep these types of relapses in their proper perspective.”\n— Catherine Wheeler is a multimedia intern for Flatland. She is a graduate student studying journalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Catherine has a bachelor’s degree in English-Writing from Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. She currently lives in Kansas City. You can reach her at cwheeler@kcpt.org\nhttps://www.flatlandkc.org/beyond-belief/swaying-music/\nРегиональный конгресс 2017 года. Воскресенье после обеда\nРегиональный конгресс 2017 года. Воскресенье утро\nВспоминайте жену Лота\nJehovah's Witnesses Congress 2017\nJehovah's Witness Summer Convention Returns to Evansville\nhttp://www.onenewspage.com/video/20170609/7726114/Jehovah-Witness-Summer-Convention-Returns-to-Evansville.htm\nJehovah’s Witnesses readying annual convention\nJehovah’s Witnesses from across the region are preparing for their annual convention next month in St. Charles, Missouri.\nA message of persevering with hope over the daily struggles of life is the theme of the two consecutive weekends, July 21 and July 28, at Family Arena in St. Charles.\n“Most would agree that we live in a world of uncertainty so the significance of this event is to show how God supplies endurance to all sorts of people today,” said Bob Valenti, media services overseer for Jehovah’s Witnesses.\nThe convention features talks and interviews by some of the church’s elders. There will also be guest speakers from Jehovah’s Witnesses’ world headquarters in Warwick, New York.\nValenti said that what draws most people to the convention is the public discourses Sundays at 11:20 a.m.\n“This will prove to be most encouraging. In addition to the entire event, it will show how individuals and families can enjoy a happy life,” Valenti said. “Our attendees walked away with renewed hope.”\nAll sessions are free.\nFor more information, go to bit.ly/1oA5CA1 [www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/conventions/].\nhttp://myjournalcourier.com/news/110423/jehovahs-witnesses-readying-annual-convention\nJehovah's Witnesses Our Christian Life Meeting 8 June 2017\nJehovah's Witnesses Welcome All to Their Conventions in Lubbock This Summer\nABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) - Four conventions will be held in Lubbock, Texas for the Jehovah's Witnesses this summer.\nJehovah's Witnesses from Eastern New Mexico and West Texas will be gathering at the Memorial Civic Center in Lubbock, Texas over the summer for four conventions exploring the theme \"Don't Give Up\". The group is also extending the invitation to all, regardless of religious affiliation or belief.\n\"The theme will be discussed through scriptural presentations, dramatizations of real-life events and recreations of biblical accounts\" said event spokesman Robert Sprecher, an elder at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Portales, New Mexico.\nThe four three-day conventions will be divided into two Spanish and two English events. The first of the three-day Spanish conventions will begin Friday, June 16. The second will begin on Friday, July 7.\nThe first English convention will begin Friday, August 4, and the second will begin on Friday, August 25. All events will begin at 9:20 a.m.\nThere is no admission fee for the events and no collections taken. The Jehovah's Witnesses are supported by voluntary donations.\nThis year the group expects around 10,700 members and interested persons to attend this years conventions. Last year there were over 430 conventions in 110 cities and 32 languages. Recently, Jehovah's Witnesses were in the news after being labeled an \"extremist organization\" by Russia. Worldwide there are more than 8,300,000 Witnesses in over 119,000 congregations.\nFore more information, visit their website at www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/conventions\nhttp://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/news/main-news/jehovahs-witnesses-welcome-all-to-their-conventions-in-lubbock-this-summer/732375647\nGOD IS GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS ?????\nBy Bible Speaks\nJehovah's Witnesses 2017 Convention Sunday PM Don't Give Up!\nConvention of Jehovah's Witnesses brings thousands to TCC\nTUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) -\nIf your weekend plans includes heading downtown, you might want to prepare for a few extra thousand people in the area.The Tucson Convention Center will be packed for the next several weekends because of the Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses annual gatherings.The weekend-long events happen between May and September, with about 245 different conventions in the United States, a spokesmen said. Seven of those regional conventions are held in Tucson at the TCC from June through August.Roughly 6,000 people attended Friday's symposium, along with various talks throughout the morning and afternoon.Jonathan Osego, a convention spokesman, said organizers and visitors are taking advantage of what Tucson has to offer.\"I live in Tucson so the benefit is it's local for us,\" he said. \"And I know that locally we're going to be staying in motels and eating out during the three days, so I'm sure it helps the economy too.\"It's quite the amount. Tucson News Now learned that last year, about $2.3 million was contributed to the local economy each weekend. By the end of the summer, totaling up the amount from all seven conventions scheduled at the TCC, the financial impact for Tucson is nearly $16 million.Osego said they have a solid relationship with the convention center.\"We're really grateful to the management because they make the facilities available, and then Tucson is a great town too. Some of the folks that are here they are coming from all over Arizona, and will be doing so during the seven weeks,\" he explained.The conventions are open to the public, you won't be charged admission, and no collection will be taken, according to Osego.\nhttp://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/35579465/convention-of-jehovahs-witnesses-brings-thousands-to-tcc\nJehovah's Witnesses 2017 Convention Friday AM Don't Give Up!\nJehovah's Witnesses 2017 Convention Saturday PM Don't Give Up!\nJehovah’s Witness Convention held at Family Arena\nJehovah’s Witnesses will hold two weekend annual conventions at the St. Charles Family Arena, 2002 Arena Pkwy, St Charles, MO 63303. The first three-day event begins on Friday, July 21, 2017; the second three-day event begins on Friday, July 28, 2017.\nFor detailed information and a program please visit this link:https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/conventions/\nThe 2017 convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses, entitled “Don’t Give Up!”, shows how to enjoy a happy life now and gain a real hope for the future. Featured will be talks, interviews and multimedia so that all in attendance can discover how the Bible and even nature teach lessons about how to endure in today’s world. A highlight of the program, the public Bible discourse on Sunday at 11:20 am, will provide encouragement to: “Never Give Up Hope”. All sessions are free and no collection plates are passed.\nhttp://www.thescoopnewspaper.com/node/3995\nConvention Releases 2017\nBy ARchiv@L\nConvention Releases\nView or download the new releases after each day of the convention\nSome updates made to digital publications may not yet appear in the printed editions.\n2017 \"Don't Give Up!\" Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses\nhttps://www.puebloevents.net/05/19/2017/2017-don-t-give-up-convention-of-jehovah-s-witnesses/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line948829"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6204691529273987,"wiki_prob":0.6204691529273987,"text":"ASBMB Home\nSubmit Advertise Archives About\nJoin ASBMB\nThe Member Magazine Of The American society for biochemistry and molecular biology\nASBMB Today Policy House appropriations subcommittee proposes increases to NIH budget for FY20\nHouse appropriations subcommittee proposes increases to NIH budget for FY20\nBy André Porter\nThe U.S. House appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies debated and amended an appropriations bill for fiscal year 2020. The bill includes funding for the National Institutes of Health. If signed into law, the NIH will be appropriated at $41.1 billion, 4% above FY19. The proposed bill also provides an increase in funding to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and National Cancer Institute of $3.03 billion, $2.31 billion, and $6.25 billion, respectively.\nInstitute (full bill text) FY19 enacted (billion) FY20 proposed (billion)\nNIGMS $2.87 $3.03\n(↑ $0.56 billion above President’s request)\nNINDS $2.27 $2.31\nNCI $6.14 $6.25\nNHLBI $3.49 $3.66\nNIAID $5.52 $5.81\nThe U.S. Senate will also introduce an appropriations bill that includes funding for the NIH in FY20. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has discussed a deal to address the spending caps with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and President Donald Trump. If the Senate proposes funding levels that differ from those introduced by the House, both chambers will need to agree on final budget numbers.\nFunding levels proposed in the subcommittee’s bill come in direct contrast with Trump’s FY20 budget request. The president’s budget calls for a 15% decrease to the NIH’s budget, reducing the biomedical research agency by $6 billion below FY19 levels. This reduction in funding falls under spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act, which legislates sharp cuts in domestic spending to reduce the national debt, currently at $22 trillion. If the U.S. Congress is unable to reach a budget deal to increase the spending caps for nondefense discretionary programs by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, an automatic budget reduction of 9% across all federal agencies will be imposed.\nThe NIH has received large increases in recent years, providing new investments towards disease-specific research and allowing the agency to increase the number of research grants that it supports.\nThe American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has advocated for increases to the NIH’s budget and will continue to work with the community in support of the biomedical research funding agency.\nLatest in this section\nThe ASBMB urges passage of FY20 omnibus with investments in science\nBenjamin Corb\nSupport for women in BMB\nLaurel Oldach\nYour voice does matter\nCreative thinking necessary to change culture\nAdvocating for more than money\nBiochem, with a side of advocacy\nElizabeth Stivison\nAndré Porter\nAndré Porter is the science policy analyst in the public affairs department at the ASBMB.\nJoin the ASBMB Today mailing list\nSign up to get updates on articles, interviews and events.\nLatest in Policy\nPolicy highlights or most popular articles\nShow more Policy\nThe ASBMB responds to a two-part omnibus spending package that would fund the government for fiscal year 2020.\nThe society’s newest committee gathers a group of “mighty women” to promote policies of gender equity and recognize individuals who are committed to advancing the careers of women in biochemistry and molecular biology.\nEven in these deeply partisan times, grassroots advocacy is effective. As a subject matter expert, you can educate your legislator about the value of science.\nCreative thinking necessary\nto change culture\nChallenging the NIH to think creatively about tackling sexual harassment.\nAdvocacy is about more than money. Even bills that don’t become law help identify which members of Congress support the scientific enterprise.\nAs founder of the ASBMB Student Chapter at the College of New Jersey, Kelly McAleer turns her longstanding passion for science and science advocacy into action.\n11200 Rockville Pike, Suite 302, Rockville, MD 20852-3110. Phone (240 283-6600)\n© Copyright 2019 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line913690"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6787547469139099,"wiki_prob":0.3212452530860901,"text":"Can we Help You\nASDESI\nCoverdrive\nLadies 4K’s\nKommittee\nNick Campbell-Jones\nNick Campbell-Jones Patron, Past President, Life Member. Born in Bowral on 13/12/1943 he is aged 75. Member since inception in 1989. Rose from Jackaroo to Manager Brunette Downs one of Australia's largest cattle properties. Then followed a very successful career in Real Estate. Past Councillor and Deputy Major of Wingecarribee Shire Council. Married to Christine, Nick has 3 children\nJason Lewis was born in Bowral and is married to Renee. They have four daughters. Jason is a local builder and felt the need to do his bit for the local community by helping raise money for families with special needs children. He joined KKKK in 2000 and continues to be a very active member. Jason's business Lewis Building Company is a platinum sponsor of the KKKK\nTony Springett\nTony Springett OAM. President/Secretary, Life Member and Founding Member in 1989. Born in Bowral. Director of Springetts Pty Ltd. Being on of the Shires pioneering families, the Springetts have had a prominent position in Bowral affairs for over 100 years. Tony was born 9/4/1951 and has just had his 68th Birthday. He is married to Yvonne. Life Member Bowral Chamber of Commerce, Bowral Water Polo\nPeter Crittenden\nPeter Crittenden joined the Committee in 2007. He is a partner of Marsden's Law Group at Campbelltown. He achieved Partner seven years ago and joined the firm over twenty years ago. Peter previously was the solicitor in charge of the Bowral office for Marsdens until 1998. Peter has resided in Bowral for 22 years he is married to Kylie and has three children 2 whom attend Chevalier College in Bowral and one at university. Peter, inaddition to being a committee member of the KKKK, is also a Board Member of the Macarthur Disability Services which provides a number of programs for people with disablilities extending to the Wingecarribee area.\nCarl Phillips\nI am fortunate to have been a member of the KKKK Committee to witness firsthand the benefits and contributions we are able to make to the Special Needs Children of the Wingecarribee Shire. The KKKK is a truly admirable organisation and I am privileged to have been a member. I have served on the committee as a Member/Treasurer 2003/2013 and was awarded Life Membership on 11/10/2013.\nTom Porter\nTom Porter was raised in the Southern Highlands and educated in Sydney. After working in Hotels in The Rocks and The Eastern Suburbs, he returned to the Southern Highlands to become licensee of the Moss Vale Hotel in 1987. Tom has been a regular supporter of the 4K’s over the years. He is married to Lynda and has 2 boys at University in Sydney. He is currently Chairperson of the Southern Highlands Liquor Accord and is the MacArthur & Southern Highlands Delegate for the Australian Hotels Association Council.\nGarry Turland\nGarry Turland joined the Committee in 2009. Born in Bowral and married to Heather, they have four children. Garry is the managing director of Turland Building Company. He is one of the prominent builders in the Southern Highlands. Garry is a current councillor of Wingecarribee Shire Council. He is a past member of the Bowral Chamber of Commerce, Bowral Water Polo and Bowral Rugby Club.\nPeter was born in Watsons Bay and graduated from The Scots College in 2001. Peter is a keen Rugby fan and had a run in his younger years for Eastern Suburbs. Peter moved in to the pub industry in 2004 working in different hotels across Sydney. In 2014 he moved his family to Bowral where he bought the lease Hold of the Royal Hotel with his wife Kate. They have 2 young boys. Peter now has 3 Hotels in the area which are proud Sponsors of the Kollege of Knowledge Kommittee for Kids charity.\nMitchell Brennan\nMitchell was born on 03.01.1986. Mitch grew up in the Southern Highlands, runs an established local business and is a long-term resident, I’m passionate about the area and the people in it. My strong network and business development skills have and will continue to lend themselves to helping the KKKK reach their operational goals. I have a robust governance background with commercial experience, along with having a sound ability to generate partnerships and cooperation among stakeholders. I am humbled to be a part of the KKKK and I will continue to push in a direction where we can continue to move forward and ultimately grow. The more funding we are able to generate, the more impact we can have for those underprivileged.\nMatt Bow\nMatt Bow has lived in the Southern Highlands for more than 30 years. He & his wife Kate have 3 daughters. Matt is a partner in a local Chartered Accounting firm which specialises in the audit of self-managed super funds. Over the last 15 or so years, he has served as treasurer for several local sporting organisations. Having been a financial supporter of the 4k for many years, he is looking forward to sharing his professional expertise with the Committee to further enhance its ability to assist disadvantaged children in the Wingecarribee Shire.\nPeter Stewart moved to the Southern Highlands with his wife Georgia in late 2017 after his semi-retirement from a long career in the education and hospitality sectors. His most recent role was as Executive Director at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management at Macquarie University. Whilst “retired” Peter is still an active consultant in the areas of business strategy and planning and is currently undertaking a global strategy consultancy project for the University of Wollongong. I have served on not-for-profit boards over many years and I am committed to using whatever skills I may possess to make the community better. The KKKK's commitment to helping the disadvantaged kids and families provides a great opportunity for me to contribute to the local community.\nAlex Doughty\nAlex joined the Kommittee in 2019, having moved from Sydney to the Southern Highlands with his wife and two daughters. He brings a depth of marketing and communications skills from a long career in financial services. Although he’s lived and worked globally, Alex and his family are happiest being part of the local Highlands community, including being involved with the great work of the KKKK.\nThanks from the People we Help\nLilah is now using her beautiful new chair here at Tangara School to assist with her mobility program.\nTangara students now have 5 new iPads that the teachers are using to support communication programs with their students and very soon we will have an in-ground trampoline.\nA big thank you to everyone for all you do to support these very expensive resources for the benefit of children with special needs in the Wingecarribee Shire.\nThank you so much for your support !! I’m having lots of fun with the new games. The games are helping me practise the eye gaze for communication. Thanks again from Lois, Laura and Taylor\nThank you so very much for the cheque which we have safely received. Josh was admitted to hospital last week unexpectedly, and to get home from that ‘bubble’ and then find your generous cheque in the letterbox was so uplifting, feeling that support. Thank you very much, as ever, and very best wishes to you and your colleagues at KKKK.\nWe as a family just wanted to send a BIG THANK YOU for your support over the last year or so with funding the excess payments for Sophia’s respite. As you would be aware we have been trying to do as much early intervention with her over the first few years to give her as much chance as possible.\nThe respite, gave me not only time to be able to do therapy with Sophia that required two people, but when I needed too, it also gave me the time to do special things for my other daughter Eleanor such …\nI just wanted to touch base with you and the KKKK before the end of the year. Thank you for supporting the speech therapy program this year. It is greatly appreciated. The teachers are reporting improved confidence and ability in all students who participated in the program.\nAlso the students are still enjoying their Hokki stools which allow students to wiggle around while listening to the teacher and completing their work.\nI am also delighted to inform you that we have a new Multi-Categorical…\nThank you for your ongoing and generous support of our Special Education unit at Moss Vale High School. We greatly appreciate your recent donation of $2,500 for the purchase of a Bocce set that will be utilised by our special needs students. Without your donation, we would have been unable to purchase this equipment through the Department of Education or our our limited school budget.\nMany thanks again for your generous support. Kind regards, Patricia Holmes\nOn behalf of all the staff and students at Mittagong Public School I would like to say a very big thank you for funding our speech therapy sessions during 2016.\nThe speech pathologists, Ellie and Maddie, have worked so hard with our students from Kindergarten, Year One and Two. Through your funding they have been able to assist a total of 24 students in developing language skills including articulation of sounds, receptive and expressive skills. A pre and post test was conducted on each student…\nScott and I are enormously grateful for this support, it really helps with the financial burden of Josh’s treatment and removes some of the worry and stress. I also wanted to say, and I am not sure I can find exactly the right words to explain this, but there is a very real ‘mental’ element to the support as well. Knowing that a local organisation has considered Josh and is kindly supporting us as we navigate this frightening time is extremely uplifting. As I walk around Bowral with our 3 b…\nMany thanks again for your generous support.\nKind regards, Patricia Holmes Principal – Moss Vale High School…\nThank you to you and everyone involved in supporting my daughter Daisy and all the other families who need the help for there child , thank you so much I’m very grateful for the help.\nKind regards Dorothy\nThis is fabulous news.\nPlease pass on our huge thanks to all of the committee members, we really do appreciate KKKK’s generosity. We are meeting with Nel on Thursday and will discuss then the best way to keep the committee informed about Harriett and her progress.\nThank you once again.\nAlso the students are still enjoying their Hokki stools which allow students to wiggle around while listening to the teacher and completing their work. I am also delighted to inform you that we have a new Multi-Categ…\nThe Kollege of Knowledge Kommittee for Kids lnc is a registered DGR (deductible gift recipient) charity operating in the Southern Highlands of NSW. The aim of the 4K is to raise funds to help local disadvantaged kids who are terminally or chronically ill, physically or intellectually disabled . The funds are raised through functions and fundraising activities, together with donations from business people and the broader community. By providing assistance we are aiming to make a difference to those disadvantaged kids within our local region. The local region is defined as the boundaries of the Wingecarribee Shire Council.\n1 Mansfield Road\ntony@springetts.com.au","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line635621"}
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{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7886336445808411,"wiki_prob":0.7886336445808411,"text":"Led Zeppelin (1969)\nLed Zeppelin II (1969)\nLed Zeppelin III (1970)\nLed Zeppelin IV (1971)\nHow The West Was Won (1972)\nThe Song Remains The Same (1973)\nHouses Of The Holy (1973)\nPhysical Graffiti (1975)\nPresence (1976)\nIn Through The Out Door (1979)\nCoda (1982)\nCelebration Day (2007)\nand Mothership\nScroll down to read the reviews chronologically.\n1. Good Times Bad Times\n2. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You\n3. You Shook Me\n4. Dazed And Confused\n5. Your Time Is Gonna Come\n6. Black Mountain Side\n7. Communication Breakdown\n8. I Can't Quit You Baby\n9. How Many More Times\nThis review is for the double CD remastered version, containing the \"Live From Paris\" material on Disc two. Five stars for the actual album. Four stars for the live extras.\nReleased in very early 1969, the first album was incredibly ground-breaking. A mix of rock and blues with clear folk influences and a bit of late 60s psychedelia thrown in. Only Hendrix and Free played blues rock with anything approaching the soul, feel and raw electric full-on power as this. It is still my favourite Led Zeppelin album.\nThe two shorter more \"commercial\" tracks, the proto-punk Communication Breakdown and Good Times Bad Times are the ones that initially stuck in the mind, but the extended blues of I Can't Quit You Baby, Dazed And Confusion, How Many More Times and the pounding, slow bassy blues of You Shook Me, with its mesmeric intro, are where to find the real soul of this album. Black Mountain Side, however, is a small hint towards the folk influence that would pervade a lot more as the band moved into and through the seventies.\nThe sound on this album is fantastic. From the opening blast of Good Times Bad Times and the crystal clear acoustic guitar on Babe I'm Gonna Leave You it is a sonic revelation. Play it loud. Remember this was recorded in 1969 too. They were way ahead of the game.\nNow, on to the live cuts. Many people have been disappointed with them, feeling that they resemble bootleg quality. I must say I have to disagree. Sure, there is a \"rough and ready\" feel to them, but considering the year they were recorded (1969) they are not so bad and they certainly capture the rawness of this mighty group as they first started to flex their muscles. At times you feel as you are there. Feedback and the odd strange noises and all. The opener, a mix of Good Times Bad Times and Communication Breakdown is, at times, a bit messy, but for me, therein lies its appeal. I Can't Quit You Baby sees a bit of improvement, and Heartbreaker is excellent. Dazed And Confused has quite a bit of buzzy feedback, to be honest, and I realise this is what has probably put a lot of people off. The \"rock\" bit at eight minutes is great, however. Some excellent guitar in You Shook Me too.\nMuch as I find some drum solos indulgent, I never tire of John Bonham on Moby Dick. Raw power.\nOverall, I just see it as a welcome document of Led Zeppelin live from this era, of which there is not much. The BBC live sessions are better, however.\n1. Whole Lotta Love\n2. What Is And What Never Should Be\n3. The Lemon Song\n4. Thank You\n5. Heartbreaker\n6. Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)\n7. Ramble On\n8. Moby Dick\n9. Bring It On Home\nFollowing on quickly from their stunning blues rock debut, Led Zeppelin were back with more of the same. Some of the rough edges ironed out from the first album (although it still retains a rough and ready appeal), this album has been regularly quoted by critics as being one of the most influential albums of all time.\nIt is a album of blues-influenced heavy rock. Tracks are mostly extended and almost have a “played live” appeal, particularly the well known opener, the electrifying Whole Lotta Love and The Lemon Song, with its impressive, bass-driven ad hoc Robert Plant vocal part half way through about “the juice running down my leg”. Then at the end, the rousing lead guitar joins in. Heady stuff. There are not quite as many drawn-out slow blues rock numbers, though, the run of tracks from Heartbreaker to the catchy Living Loving Maid to Ramble On - why they are almost commercial.\nWhat Is And What Never Should Be is also an exhilarating extended slow blues rock number, with alternating quiet and loud passages, as indeed does Thank You, although the latter has organ-based echoes of 60s trippy pop of The Small Faces, Traffic or Cream. It has one hell of a powerful drum sound though, and the acoustic guitar in the middle is razor sharp. Heartbreaker is one of the best riffy full on rockers on the album. Living Loving Maid is as close as they get to upbeat, stirring, almost radio-friendly rock. If Led Zeppelin released singles, which they barely bothered about, this should have been the one. Deep Purple sounded a lot like this on Black Night a year or two later. The Alice Cooper Band used riffs such as are found on here too. Argent used organ breaks such as those found on Thank You. The influences here are very apparent.\nLed Zeppelin’s fascination with Tolkeinesque imagery and mythology first made itself known on Ramble On. There hadn’t been any of that stuff on the first album. Here we saw the acoustic and the electric merged together perfectly with the mellifluous bass too and the ethereal passages in between the heavy rock that so typified Led Zeppelin’s early- mid 70s output. It started here, with this track. It deserves to be in any Led Zep Top Ten.\nThen there is Moby Dick with the dreaded drum solo. It is a John Bonham drum solo though. Great heavy guitar in it too. As on the fist album, many tracks go straight into the next one, and we are into the slow bass beginning of Bring It On Home, with its blues harmonica/blues vocal part before it explodes into a blast of pure Led Zeppelin power. It is at points like this that one realises, as good as the first album was, this was where this album saw improvements.\nMost of the songs are defined by their guitar riff as opposed to the chorus or verses. Yes, we can all sing “I wanna whole lotta love” but we sing “da-da-da-da-dahhh” a lot more. Heartbreaker is similar in that respect - crammed full of riffs. As is the whole album.\n1. Immigrant Song\n3. Celebration Day\n4. Since I've Been Loving You\n5. Out On The Tiles\n6. Gallows Pole\n7. Tangerine\n8. That's The Way\n9. Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp\n10. Hats Off To (Roy) Harper\nRather than release more of the same, Led Zeppelin turned things very much on their head with this, their “acoustic, folky” album. Yes, there is still the classic full on rock of Immigrant Song and the typical Led Zep blues rock of Since I've Been Loving You, but other tracks on this innovative album are somewhat different from what people had come to expect.\nThis album saw a clear change in focus for the band from late 1960s hard rock to a more folk influenced and acoustic sound. These styles had been present to a lesser degree in the band's first two releases, (Black Mountain Side from “I” and Ramble On from “II”) but here they received the main emphasis, and would remain prominent to various degrees in the group's later albums. This development is said to have endeared the band to many folky, bearded, cheesecloth-wearing prog-rock fans who would never previously have listened to Led Zeppelin's established blues and rock repertoire. With this album the group's songwriting dynamic also changed, from Jimmy Page's domination of the first two albums towards a more democratic situation in which all four group members contributed their own compositions and ideas - patterns that would continue in future sessions and no doubt led to the four symbols (one for each band member) being included on the cover of the next album.\nThat said, tracks such as Friends and Celebration Day, while having their acoustic moments, still are rock songs and contain some truly great lead guitar. Out On The Tiles is a powerful rocker that would not have been out of place on either “I” or “II”. Indeed, the old “side one” is pretty rocky, to be honest. So, the whole “the folk album” is a bit misleading. just as Beatles For Sale was not a “country album”. There are some tracks that certainly fit the bill, but not all of them.\nIt is “side two” which saw the real change that people are referring to and the use of the material recored in the Welsh Cottage, Bron-Yr-Aur. Gallows Pole leads it off with an acoustic folk lament about being kept from the gallows pole and attempts to bribe a corrupt hangman. As well as the acoustic guitar and mandolin, there is still a potent rock drum sound from John Bonham and John Paul Jones underpins it with a rumbling electric bass. Robert Plant’s voice, of course, is no folky whisper, either. Electric guitar kicks in at the end. Again, begging the question just how folky is it, really? Sounds like Led Zeppelin to me.\nUsing acoustic guitars was nothing new, The Beatles had used them a lot, also contemporary artists like Marc Bolan and David Bowie were merging rock and folk sounds.\nTangerine is a perfect blending of the acoustic and electric. Once more, the track has a great bass line and a truly huge drum sound. That's The Way has a much more laid-back feel to it. Plant’s voice is gentler and another lovely bass makes the fade out so appealing. Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp is folky, for sure, but it is, as its name suggests, a stomper, and Plant’s voice is at its blueiest here, funnily enough. Even more so on Hats Off which I would say is bluesily experimental as opposed to folky.\nQuite why this album garnered such bad reviews at the time is incomprehensible. Time has seen opinions change. however.\n1. Black Dog\n2. Rock 'n' Roll\n3. The Battle Of Evermore\n4. Stairway To Heaven\n5. Misty Mountain Hop\n6. Four Sticks\n7. Going To California\n8. When The Levee Breaks\nAfter the blues rock of the first album, the concentration on rock of the second and the supposed folky feel, of the third, what were Led Zeppelin going to come up with for their fourth album in just over two years? A bit of everything, that’s what.\nThe short but powerful Black Dog and the mighty, riffy Rock 'n' Roll, with John Bonham’s iconic cymbal intro, are classic upbeat Led Zeppelin rock. However, The Battle Of Evermore is as mysterious and folky as anything on “III”, as indeed, is Going To California and then, of course, there is Stairway To Heaven where all styles meet in possibly the band’s most well-known song. The early acoustic verses take a while to reach the climax (over five minutes or so) when Jimmy Page’s guitar kicks in for real, and how. One of the best endings to a song ever.\nMisty Mountain Hop isn’t the folky tune its title may suggest, but a pounding drum and keyboards insistent rock shuffle. The monumental When The Levee Breaks is one of those classic, extended, thrilling blues numbers that wouldn’t have been out of place on “I” or “II”. Four Sticks has an almost funky drum intro and provides a flavour of the sort of material that would later appear on Houses Of The Holy and Physical Graffiti.\nOverall, there is as much “folky” material on here as there is on “III”, and in some cases they are more obviously so. Popular opinion would have it that the blend is fully realised here, however, (“every song has its correct place within the album” and so on). Personally, I prefer “III”.\n4. Over The Hills And Far Away\n10. Dazed And Confused\n11. What Is And What Should Never Be\n12. Dancing Days\n13. Moby Dick\n14. Whole Lotta Love\n15. Rock And Roll\n16. The Ocean\n17. Bring It On Home\nRecorded June 1972 in the L.A. Forum and Long Beach Arena\nI much prefer this Led Zeppelin mammoth live opus to the following year's The Song Remains The Same. The sound has always been better on this one, whatever the remaster. Anyway, on to this one - this 2018 remaster, I have to say, is truly excellent. I haven't previously had a problem with the 2003 one, but this one tops it. It just seems \"cleaned up\", with more defined sounds, more \"room to breathe\" as those accursed \"audiophiles\" say! They are right, though. It really does seem to be the case. The 2003 one now sounds more muffled, to me, anyway. On this one, check out the bit near the end of Heartbreaker when the full band kicks back in. Incredibly clear and powerful. As it should be. The sound is still thankfully loud, but with more subtleties, if that doesn't seem like a contradiction. Enough blathering about the sound, though - on to the album itself....\nDespite the fact that the songs are taken from two separate performances, it plays like one concert, which is always a good thing, for me, on live albums. Recorded in 1972, it was about time Zeppelin showcased their live power, after all, The Rolling Stones and The Who had been leading the way with live albums for a few years now.\nThe set opens with a barnstorming Immigrant Song, with Robert Plant warning of \"the hammer of the Gods\", wailing away to great effect. Thereafter follows a good run of rocking, bluesy tracks - Heartbreaker, Black Dog and Since I've Been Loving You, interrupted briefly by the folky Over The Hills And Far Away. The iconic Stairway To Heaven appears early in the set. However many times I hear it, though, that rock bit at the end still sounds magnificent.\nThen we enter a folky Led Zeppelin III run - Going To California (from IV, I know, but you get the ambience), That's The Way and Bron-Yr -Aur Stomp, before it is time for some blues rock again - a bloated twenty-five minute - yes, twenty-five minute Dazed And Confused follows. That is far too long, in my opinion, but there are some great bits in it if you take out that irritating \"e bow guitar\" or whatever it is and Robert Plant's strange noises. What Is And What Should Never Be follows and is truly excellent, as, funnily enough, is the throwaway Dancing Days, which has a sumptuous bass line.\nJohn Bonham does his seventies standard drum solo bit in Moby Dick and, guess what - it lasts nineteen minutes! Good Lord. Yes, the guy could drum, but give me three or four minutes at the most, I'm afraid. Toilet break or more drinks anyone? Unfortunately, I'm just back from the toilet and we get a twenty-two minute Whole Lotta Love. These, unfortunately, are the worst excesses of seventies \"heavy\" rock, despite the undeniably brilliant passages within the musical behemoth (such as the bass/drum/guitar interplay at around seven minutes). Admittedly the break off into some lively rock'n'roll covers is entertaining and eight more minutes are taken up with a convincing blues cover in Going Down Slow. The point where Whole Lotta Love kicks back in is, also, one of the most spine-tingling, powerful moments on the album. Actually, I'll let them off with this one, but not Dazed And Confused and certainly not Moby Dick. Sorry lads.\nThankfully, the short, sharp vitality of Rock'n'Roll puts things right. Just hearing that groovy cymbal intro, then the sheer power of it blows you away. The Ocean has been condemned by many over the years as somewhat tedious. I have always quite liked it. Here it is big, bassy and rumbling. I love it. An acceptably extended blues in Bring It On Home ends this monster of an album on a thumping high note as John Bonham crashes things to a close. Great stuff.\n7. No Quarter\n8. The Song Remains The Same\n9. The Rain Song\n12. Stairway To Heaven\n14. Heartbreaker\nLive recording from 1973\nI have always preferred How The West Was Won of the two great seventies Led Zeppelin live albums, feeling that this one was a bit sloppy in places (the opener Rock 'n' Roll, for example), however, it is the new 2018 remastering that is being considered here. I have to say that, although I have no problem with the 2007 remaster, but, as the audiophiles will not doubt say about this one, it certainly breathes. It is not quite as muddy as the previous remaster and has more sharpness, clarity and, dare I say, subtlety. The previous one is more bombastic and, although this one is still thankfully loud, there are definite plus points in terms of definition and more discernible nuances. I am sure people will come up with \"waveforms\" or whatever they are to show that there is a discernible difference. I just tend to rely on my ears and how it sounds, first off.\nI have been living with the pre-release downloads of Rock 'n' Roll, Black Dog, Misty Mountain Hop and The Ocean for a while now and the above applies to them, for sure. I am glad to find that the rest of the material has followed suit (not that there was any reason not to). Celebration Day is a delight, particularly the guitar solo bit. The bass is subtly thumping too, if that is not an oxymoronic thing to say. The bit where the full band kicks in during Misty Mountain Hop is pretty much perfect too and the guitar solo after it. Beautiful. Powerful. Yet textural. Jimmy Page seems to have got everything right with this one.\nSo, does this release's sound quality justify buying the album again? In my view, it does.\n4. The Crunge\n5. Dancing Days\n6. D'yer Mak'er\n8. The Ocean\nThis album was quite a departure from what had been before. The blues were left a long way behind now. It lacks the sheer raw blues power of both “I” and “II”, or the rock/folk diversity of some of “III” and “IV”, or indeed, the classic status bestowed upon the latter. Led Zeppelin were now rock gods and they saw fit to release a “big”, potent album full of long, intense tracks reflecting the majesty they now held, plus a few throwaway ones too, that showed that they could now mess around and record whatever they liked. The Beatles got like that on The White Album. Never a good sign. I much prefer the previous four albums to this. The sound is also very tinny and over produced on the treble side of things. Too many layered guitars. John Bonham’s drum sound is very harsh and stark. Yes, he was always loud, but on here he is too loud, lacking in any real subtlety\nThe rocking The Song Remains The Same provides a rousing opener, great intro and pounding drum sound and some high pitched vocals about California sunlight. The highly orchestrated, strings of The Rain Song provides a change in direction. It meanders on a bit too long, to be honest.\nThere are still some classic Zeppelin moments, though, such as the moment that Over The Hills And Far Away kicks in with John Bonham’s always massive drum sound. The Crunge finds Zeppelin trying to be funky, with varying results. Plant sings “ain’t gonna call me Mr. Pitiful…”, however, he is a rock singer, and certainly no Otis Redding. Soul and funk he can’t really do. It’s ok though, but it does have the feel of something they laid down for fun in the studio as opposed to a “serious” composition. Dancing Days is another odd song, really. They seem to be trying to create a tuneful pop song. I would rather they just sang the blues. Both these are better than their embarrassing effort at playing reggae on D'Yer Mak'er, however. Like Plant could not sing soul. Bonham could not play reggae.\nI guess after four virtually faultless albums they had earned the right to try their hand at other things. Fair play, but there is a bit of a hint of self-satisfied laziness about it all. Easy to say in retrospect, I guess. Who knows what they were thinking at the time. Maybe they just wanted to put out a lighter, less intense album.\nJournalist Gavin Edwards said of the album:-\n“The epic scale suited Zeppelin: They had the largest crowds, the loudest rock songs, the most groupies, the fullest manes of hair. Eventually excess would turn into bombast, but on Houses, it still provided inspiration”.\nNot so sure about that, but I get his point. Certainly, reputations were restored with a familiar return to big-bodied, booming rock on No Quarter. Similarly with the insistent rock shuffle of The Ocean.\nOverall, however, a patchy album.\n1. Custard Pie\n2. The Rover\n3. In My Time Of Dying\n4. Houses Of The Holy\n5. Trampled Under Foot\n6. Kashmir\n7. In The Light\n8. Bron-Yr-Aur\n9. Down By The Seaside\n10. Ten Years Gone\n11. Night Flight\n12. The Wanton Song\n13. Boogie With Stu\n14. Black Country Woman\n15. Sick Again\nAfter a two year hiatus following the slightly underwhelming Houses Of The Holy, Led Zeppelin were back with what would prove to be, probably, their last truly great album. It was hailed as a \"return to form\" and it is, in many ways, although it shows them as being keen to vary and experiment considerably with Eastern influences and funk rock grooves. Many of the tracks on the album, though, had been floating around the vaults for years, however, and were resurrected, enhanced and re-recorded for this album.\nCustard Pie is one of those Led Zeppelin songs with a pretty irrelevant title. No matter, it is a solid, riff, drums and slightly funky keyboards bluesy rocker to open with. More industrial strength riffage and power drums introduces The Rover, which has a big rumbling bass too. It is a bit of an undervalued Zeppelin rocker. It is the band at their muscular, rocking best, chugging and yet grandiose. In My Time Of Dying is, of course the bluesy behemoth of the album, over eleven minutes of piledriving blues rock. The guitar/drum/vocal interplay around the four minute mark is a joy to behold. It does suffer a bit from current trends for sprawling things out, though. True Zeppelin fans would no doubt consider that to be heresy, part-time ones such as myself are allowed to say it though :). I have always been irritated by the \"oh my jeeder...\" vocal from Robert Plant too. Also the way it grinds to a halt with the \"cough\" bit, making it sound like a demo. Sorry.\nHouses Of The Holy gets things back on a firm track with one of my favourites from the album - punchy and yet containing a few funky bits, a great vocal and some excellent guitar. Nice one. The quality continues on the excellent funk rock of Trampled Underfoot, a track the like of which Zeppelin had not done before. Then we get a copper-bottomed Zeppelin classic in the Eastern-inspired insistent rock of Kashmir. Lots of superlatives have been written about it over the years, so I won't attempt to add to them.\nThe proggy In The Light takes nearly three minutes to arrive, so to speak. When it kicks in its has a big, deep bassy drum sound and a sensual vocal from Plant. Again, like Kashmir it utilises new and adventurous string enhancements. I love the second half of the track where it goes into that anthemic keyboard-driven bit. When the drums and guitars come along - wow. One of the best Zeppelin passages of music for me. This also marks the point where the atmosphere of the album changes. The best archetypal Zeppelin stuff is now gone. What comes next are some interesting diversions and innovations and changes in ambience. However, there is a case, for me, that ending a single album after In The Light would still have been a great one.\nJust when Led Zeppelin III seemed a long time away, we get the acoustic strumming of Bron-Yr-Aur and the country-folk strains of Down By The Seaside. The latter ends with some solid rock parts, however. Ten Years Gone is an affecting, beguiling slow guitar and vocal-driven almost soft rock ballad.\nNight Flight finds the band even going slightly poppy, with a catchy, lively number. It still has some top notch riffs on it, though, although some of them are almost glammy. The Wanton Song is a return to typical Zeppelin riffy rock in some style. It would not have been out of place at the beginning of the album.\nBoogie With Stu was the result of a 1971 jam with the then Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart. It is a loose slice of boogie-woogie piano-led rock 'n' roll, with Plant sounding not unlike Slade's Noddy Holder. Or maybe 1972-era Holder had heard this and sounded like Plant. The track is fun and shows the band's lighter side, something that was not always apparent. The carefree feel continues on the acoustic blues of Black Country Woman. It also has a Led Zeppelin III feel to it, particularly the thumping drum sound together with the acoustic guitar. Sick Again is a powerful slice of rock to end this mighty collection of songs. There are \"proper\" Led Zeppelin fans who no doubt can review this a lot better, but as one who has all their albums but is not an absolute die-hard, I always find this an intriguing and very enjoyable album.\n1. Achilles' Last Stand\n2. For Your Life\n3. Royal Orleans\n4. Nobody's Fault But Mine\n5. Candy Store Rock\n6. Hots On For Nowhere\n7. Tea For One\nAfter the previous year's double album behemoth in Physical Graffiti, Led Zeppelin returned relatively soon after the difficult period following Robert Plant's serious car accident (he sung his vocals in a wheelchair). For many, the seven track album that ensued, minus keyboards and most acoustic guitars, was underwhelming, particularly in the contemporary music media. By now they were all jumping on the punk bandwagon. Time, however, has proved to be a healer, and it now gets a far more favourable retrospective re-assessment. Yes, it was frantically arranged, conceived and recorded, but sometimes that leads to an ad hoc, edgy, raw and almost live feeling. That, to a certain extent was the case here.\nThe cover and accompanying inner sleeve pictures, were odd, though, I have to say. Quite what they were supposed to symbolise with regard to the music is unclear.\nThe ten minute opener, Achilles' Last Stand quickly kicks into a rumbling drum and guitar-driven pot boiler of a chugging rocker. With punk's short sharp reaction to bands like Led Zeppelin just starting to make itself heard, this sort of thing would not have gone down well with the ground-breakers at the time. There were many rock fans, though, who still stuck with their favourites and still loved it. You have to say that it is a robust, substantial, confident monster of a track. This was a band who had nothing to prove. Incidentally, this track, along with Nobody's Fault But Mine were the only two numbers to be performed live by the band at the time. For Your Life was, of course, given a surprising outing on 2007's reunion live album, Celebration Day.\nJohn Bonham keeps up the rolling pace throughout Achilles, so much so, that, although the rhythm doesn't change much, you never tire of it. Great stuff from one of rock's most powerful drummers. Another huge drum sound can be found on the thumping For Your Life. This was a slower pace industrial strength rocker with an impressive vocal and great big chunky lead guitar riffs. This stripped down, \"back to basics\" rock sound certainly does the business here. Personally, I much prefer this album to Houses Of The Holy, for example.\nAfter two such gigantic tracks, the sub-three minutes of the vaguely funky rock of Royal Orleans comes as something of a surprise. It is a good track, though, with some killer guitar on it and it is good to hear them doing something shorter and punchier. Back to some classic bluesy Zeppelin next with the buzzy, slide guitar, muscular riffing and simply monumental drums of Nobody's Fault But Mine. Now, I was a huge fan of punk and threw myself right into it all at the time, but I cannot deny the sheer, pulsating, piledriving rock power of this. Nor would I ever want to. Great rock is great rock. Check out the bit where the Plant's harmonica solo comes in. Led Zeppelin at their absolute best. This was possibly their last truly great song, although others ran it close.\nCandy Store Rock was another short-ish number in that chunky semi-funk style they used on Trampled Underfoot. It is a bit Bo Diddley/early rock 'n' roll-esque and it is most enjoyable. Hots On For Nowhere also has a quirky, staccato rhythm to it and some searing Jimmy Page guitar. Just when I am thinking that there there hasn't been too much Zeppelin blues on the album, along comes the nine-minute plus closer in Tea For One. It is a slow burning but potent blues with some powerful guitar and another surprisingly effortless vocal, considering Plants restrictions.\nI really ought to have paid the album more attention over the years, because it is a really good one, and unfairly maligned.\n1. In The Evening\n2. South Bound Suarez\n3. Fool In The Rain\n4. Hot Dog\n5. Carouselambra\n6. All My Love\n7. I'm Gonna Crawl\nThis album was recorded by an emotionally drained Led Zeppelin, following Robert Plant's car accident and loss to illness of his young son. Drummer John Bonham was an alcoholic by then and Jimmy Page was in the throes of heroin addiction. John Paul Jones and plant were \"clean\", apparently, although Plant obviously carried a huge amount of personal trauma around with him at the time. Plant and Jones managed to lay down most of the seven tracks before Bonham and Page could eventually be found to come in and do their bits. Amazingly, though, it all sounds pretty cohesive. It would, as everyone knows, prove to be their last album.\nIn The Evening starts in low-key fashion with some Eastern-sounding mysterious and moody ambience before John Bonham and Jimmy Page come crashing in. It is a lengthy Zeppelin classic, showing early on that they hadn't lost it. Lyrically, it has Plant bemoaning his luck. I should say so.\nSouth Bound Saurez (surely initially mis-spelled as Saurez\") is a lively and pleasantly catchy rocker, with John Paul Jones on piano. It has one of those vaguely rhythmic, funky beats Zeppelin enjoyed doing. There are hints of Little Feat in there too.\nFool In the Rain has some syncopated Latin-ish rhythms and guitar. Bonham copes with the subtlety required, surprisingly. It is a most un-Zeppelin song. Again, Jones supplies some excellent piano. Plant's increasing interest in world music inspired this song's creation and inclusion. A the end it goes full on \"arrrriba\"-style Latin, which is very strange to hear Zeppelin doing. Plant had insisted that diversification was the way ahead. I like the track quite a lot. It has a refreshing vitality and light-hearted enthusiasm to it.\nHot Dog was a throwaway, three minute piece of fun, showing Plant's love for early Elvis-style rock 'n' roll. It is enjoyable and lively, but sounds very much like a piece of studio fun at the end of a session, once the serious stuff was over. It also features a folky guitar solo in the middle.\nAll this stuff begged the question of was this Zeppelin's attempt to sound different, in the midst of punk and new wave. Well, the ten proggy minutes of Carouselambra, with its Emerson, Lake & Palmer prog rock keyboards from Jones sounded as if it had been recorded in 1973. Bonham's drum pound along reliably, though, giving it a bit of solid rock feel under its symphonic pretensions. This was no threat to any new wave. Plant's voice is, by his own admission, far too low down in the mix. He stated that it summed up everything that was wrong about the later period of Zeppelin's career. \"you can't hear the words\", he said. He was right too. That said, it is still a good track, actually, featuring several distinct passages. The bass/drum/guitar interplay at about six minutes is my favourite bit (no synthesisers!). The quirky synth bit after that is enjoyable, though, and the way different instruments keep arriving for little solo parts is very Tubular Bells.\nAll My Love was one of the album's best tracks, an evocative love song composed by Plant and Jones with a laid-back \"soft rock\" feel, backed by some Genesis/ELO-style classically-influenced synthesisers. Page has since stated that he and Bonham had no time for the track's softer feel and yearning, romantic lyrics. They had wanted a harder rocking album overall. You could see where Plant and Jones were heading with this one, though, trying to catch the neo-classical ELO vibe that was popular around that time. Again, it is certainly nothing like any earlier Zeppelin material, but it is an appealing song. You could hear Plant's voice better on this one too.\nI'm Gonna Crawl also had synthesisers on it, but it also develops into the bluesiest thing on the album and features an excellent bit of mid-song guitar too, and another convincing vocal.\nI have read reviews that opine that this was a dark, sombre album. I have to say that I disagree with that. Personally I actually find it their lightest, most \"fun\" album (strangely, despite everything that had gone on). It was also musically their most diverse thus far. It was not received well by the UK music media, however, with their punk/new wave-centred take on things. The \"boring old farts/dinosaurs/time to retire\" lines were duly trotted out. The Americans, though, lapped it up. What it was, at the time, was not very relevant to the zeitgeist. Listening to it now, it is fine, but in 1979, it seemed dated.\n1. We're Gonna Groove (from 1969/live in January 1970 with guitar overdubs)\n2. Poor Tom (Led Zeppelin III outtake 1970)\n3. I Can't Quit You Baby (live \"rehearsal\" January 1970)\n4. Walter's Walk (Houses Of The Holy outtake 1972 with possible later overdubs)\n5. Ozone Baby (In Through The Out Door outtake 1978)\n6. Darlene (In Through The Out Door outtake 1978)\n7. Bonzo's Montreux (from 1976)\n8. Wearing And Tearing (In Through The Out Door outtake 1978)\nBONUS TRACKS (not on original album)\n9. Baby Come On Home (Led Zeppelin outtake 1968)\n10. Travelling Riverside Blues (live in June 1969)\n11. White Summer/Black Mountain Side (live in June 1969)\n12. Hey Hey, What Can I Do ('b' side of Immigrant Song single, 1970)\n13. Sugar Mama (recorded in October 1968)\n14. St. Tristan's Sword (Led Zeppelin III outtake)\nThere are also \"alternative mixes\" of If It Keeps On Raining (When The Levee Breaks); Four Hands (Four Sticks); Desire (The Wanton Song) and Everybody Makes It Through (In The Light).\nCoda was a retrospective compilation of rarities released two years after Led Zeppelin's split in 1980 after drummer John Bonham's death. The best version of it is the latest one, which features several more bonus tracks than the original album did.\nWe're Gonna Groove is an upbeat, vaguely funky piece of late sixties blues rock. It is full of great guitar, drums and vocals. It would have been a fine addition to either of their first two albums. There is confusion over the origin of the song. Many believe it is a stdio recorded outtake from 1969, others believe it is a live recording from January 1970. It sounds like a studio recording to me, although it apparently had some studio guitar overdubs added by Jimmy Page at some point when compiling this album.\nPoor Tom is a marvellous bit of lively blues rock, powered along by John Bonham's sledgehammer drumming. It has similarities to The Rolling Stones' Prodigal Son from Beggars' Banquet, which was in turn based on Reverend Robert Wilkins' 1929 song, That's No Way To Get Along. It sounds great, though, and would have sat well on side one of Led Zeppelin III from whose sessions it was taken.\nA storming live version of I Can't Quit You Baby from Led Zeppelin I would appear to be from an actual concert at The Royal Albert Hall in 1970, although it was credited as being a pre-gig rehearsal. There is no crowd noise either way.\nWalter's Walk is a solid, muscular rocker from the Houses Of The Holy sessions. it is arguably superior to some of the tracks that ended up on that somewhat patchy album. Once more, Bonham's drums are outstanding.\nThe old \"side two\" contained three outtakes from In Through The Out Door. Ozone Baby is an infectious little rocker, all guitar, drums and bass and, notably, none of the synthesisers or piano that dominated the album that it failed to make the cut for. It is one of my favourites on here, with a catchy \"ooh-ooh it's my love\" chorus.\nDarlene fitted in with some of the rock 'n' roll-influenced material that did appear on the eventual album in 1979. John Paul Jones' boogie piano is integral and there is a bit of a Rolling Stones circa 1972 about it. There are also hints of Queen in places near the end, vaguely like Crazy Little Thing Called Love in its vibe and vocal.\nBonzo's Montreux was a sledgehammer drum solo from Bonham, dating from 1976, when he lived in Montreux, Switzerland, as a tax exile. It is the album's tribute to him.\nWearing And Tearing was, apparently, Zeppelin's answer to punk, in its breakneck, riffy style. It doesn't sound remotely punky to me, it just sounds like Zeppelin rocking in their own inimitable fashion. I loved punk, but I loved Zeppelin too. The two were different beasts, they didn't need to meet.\nFrom the bonus tracks, Baby Come On Home is a slow, slightly rock 'n' roll ballad meets rock number, with a loose, soulful bluesiness to it. It features some Atlantic Records-style gospelly organ too.\nTravelling Roadside Blues is an impressive piece of slide guitar-driven blues rock, taken from a 1969 BBC live in the studio session. It includes the \"Squeeze my lemon 'til the juice runs right down my leg\" lyric used also on Led Zeppelin II's The Lemon Song. It is also included on the live album Led Zeppelin At The BBC. In my opinion, it is remastered better here on Coda - fuller and bassier. The version of the instrumental White Summer/Black Mountain Side was recorded in London in June 1969. This also appears on the BBC album.\nHey Hey What Can I Do is an appealing piece of folky rock, typical of Zeppelin's 1970 output. Sugar Mama is a cover of a Sonny Boy Williamson song dating from sessions in 1968. It is riffy and lively, with a high-pitched Robert plant vocal. Bonham's drums are engagingly rhythmic on this, despite their ubiquitous thumping power.\nSt. Tristan's Sword was a Led Zeppelin III outtake. It is a rocking instrumental that would again have suited side one of that album. Also interesting is the Bombay Mix of Four Sticks called Four Hands, which has an instrumental version of the track played by Indian musicians, Zeppelin going full-on George Harrison. They do the same to Friends. This one includes a Plant vocal. If It Keeps On Raining (When The Levee Breaks) is bassily addictive too, although this one is a Zeppelin mix, involving no Indian musicians.\nOverall, there is some very good stuff on here, not as much as many never-satisfied fans wanted, perhaps, but it is fine by me.\nApart from a couple of patchy one-off performances at US Live Aid and Atlantic Records' 50th Anniversary event, this is and was and ever will be, Led Zeppelin's only reunion, with the three remaining original members and John Bonham's son, Jason, on drums.\nIt is a powerful, memorable affair (probably best experienced watching the DVD ,linked to your sound system if possible). It is still an exciting, invigorating listen on CD too, with a huge, thumping resonant sound. If anything, though, I will say that the sheer power from the axis of Bonham, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones' throbbing, deep bass does actually render Robert Plant's deeper, croakier, ageing voice at times, in a way it certainly did not in the seventies. His voice is a little muffled and indistinct at times too, notably in the \"Mordor\" lyric on Ramble On. This is a minor observation, however, ageing happens and it is still great to hear this seminal band back together for this one last time. The idea that it was a one-off reunion, and not the first of fifty world tour dates, repeated every few years or so was a unique and praiseworthy one. They did it just the once, and they did it superbly.\nThe set was immaculately rehearsed and expertly delivered and the set is just the right mix of the expected songs, a live rarity like For Your Life and a nice amount of muscular, early blues-based material. Due respect is paid to the essential early part of the band's career, more so than the later, which is how it should be. The old seventies twenty-five minute drawn out versions are a thing of the past and there is, understandably so, no drum solo. However, as enjoyable as this is to dig out every now and again, if I want Led Zeppelin live I still turn to How The West Was Won or The Song Remains The Same, particularly now in their excellent new remastered formats.\nThis is, without doubt, an excellent Led Zeppelin compilation for anyone who wants to get a bite-sized flavour of what this titanic rock band were all about. It takes a handful of tracks from each of their albums (mostly around two or three) and scratches the surface, in the best possible way, their remarkable career from the late sixties to the very early eighties.\nMany people have expressed over various media their disappointment with the sound. I have never understood that. I think the sound is truly superb - big, full, punchy, defined and bassy, just as I like it. Just as Led Zeppelin should be. The album has been remastered twice, though, and was reissued in 2014 using the remasters from that campaign. The edition I am speaking of is the original 2007 one. However, I have to admit that the 2014 one is even better.\nRegarding the tracks chosen, they are mostly as you would expect, although I feel the omission of anything from the Led Zeppelin III acoustic, pastoral phase of their career is a mistake. The folky side of the band was an important one, and part of their development and changes too, just as much as the blues-influenced material. Listening to this compilation, you get the impression it was \"hammer of the Gods\" bombast all the way, which it certainly was not. Apart from that, though, this is a mighty collection. Highly recommended to casual fans in particular who wish to feel the power of the Zeppelin on occasions.\nLabels: Led Zeppelin\nPaul Weller - All Live Recordings\nMotown Compilations","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1257200"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6677573323249817,"wiki_prob":0.3322426676750183,"text":"Spectrum, 1981\nOffice of Strategic Communications (UM)\nSpectrum, including issues with original title, President's bulletin\nNewsletter published for University of Missouri faculty, staff and retirees.\nSpectrum, volume 08, number 16 (December 10, 1981) \nUniversity of Missouri (System). Office of Strategic Communications; University of Missouri (System). Board of Curators (University of Missouri, University Information Services, 1981)\nUniversity of Missouri (System) (University of Missouri, University Information Services, 1981)\nSpectrum, volume 08, number 15 (November 19, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 13 (October 15, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 11 (September 17, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 10 (September 3, 1981) \nUniversity of Missouri (System). Board of Curators; University of Missouri (System). Office of Strategic Communications (University of Missouri, University Information Services, 1981)\nSpectrum, volume 08, number 09 (July 30, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 08 (July 2, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 06 (April 30, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 03 (March 5, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 01 (January 29, 1981) \nSpectrum, volume 08, number 02 (February 18, 1981) \nSpectrum, 1981-82, Cultural events special issue ","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line943998"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6119704246520996,"wiki_prob":0.6119704246520996,"text":"MAMMALS - North America\nPeterson field guide to finding mammals in North America.\nDinets, Vladimir.\nNew York: Houghton Mifflin, 2015. Octavo, paperback, colour photographs, maps. A locality guide to the mammals of North America, (rather than an identification guide), this book tells you how to look, where to go, and what you are likely to find there. Two main sections provide a choice of looking..... More\nBehavior of North American mammals.\nElbroch, Mark and Kurt Rinehart.\nNew York: Houghton Mifflin, 2011. Octavo, dustwrapper, colour photographs, black and white illustrations, line drawings. A comprehensive chronicle of the fascinating behaviours of mammals. A guide not for identifying mammals, but to understanding what they do, this guide provides detailed information on more than 70 species of mammals and includes..... More\nMammals of Illinois.\nHoffmeister, Donald F.\nChampaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Quarto, paperback, black and white photographs, text illustrations, maps. In this comprehensive study, now available for the first time in paperback, Hoffmeister briefly characterizes the climate, soils, and vegetation of Illinois, particularly as they affect mammals. In addition to detailing mammals known to be..... More\nMammals of California.\nJameson, E. W. Jr., and Hans J. Peeters.\nBerkeley: University of California Press, (2004. revised edition). Octavo, paperback, colour illustrations, text illustrations, maps. From river otters and minks to bobcats, pikas, and flying squirrels, California boasts a diverse and intriguing fauna. But many of these animals can be secretive, shy, and nocturnal and observing them in the wild..... More\nAmerican Bison.\nLott, Dale F.\nBerkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Octavo, dustwrapper, black and white photographs, maps. Foreward by Harry W. Greene.\tMore\nRecent mammals of Alaska.\nMacDonald, Stephen O. and Joseph A. Cook.\nFairbanks: University of Alaska, Press, 2009. Quarto, paperback, black and white photographs, line drawings, maps. From the Polar bear and the Gray wolf to the Walrus and the River otter, there are 116 species of mammals in Alaska. This book serves as a comprehensive guide the mammals that occur or..... More\nThe Beaver: its life and impact.\nMuller-Schwarze, Dietland.\nCornell University Press, (2011. second edition). Octavo, dustwrapper, colour photographs, black and white photographs, tables, graphs, maps. In an up-to-date, exhaustively illustrated, and comprehensive book on beaver biology and management, Dietland Mller-Schwarze and Lixing Sun gather a wealth of scientific knowledge about both the North American and Eurasian beaver species..... More\nGuide to marine mammals of Alaska.\nWynne, Kate and Pieter Folkens.\nFairbanks: Alaska Sea Grant College Program, (2013. fourth edition). Octavo, paperback, spirally bound, colour photographs, line drawings, maps. This authoritative and concise guide to Alaska marine life covers all twenty-nine of Alaska's mammal species, including whales, dolphins, seals, walrus, and polar bears. Now in its fourth edition, this award-winning book..... More","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line53280"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5997751951217651,"wiki_prob":0.40022480487823486,"text":"Louis Y. Fishman\n201 Saint Charles Avenue, Suite 4600 New Orleans, Louisiana 70170-4600\nFirm: Fishman Haygood L.L.P.\nFishman Haygood L.L.P.\nLouis Fishman is a partner and a member of our Business Section. He has a transactional practice that includes corporation law, securities, and mergers and acquisitions. He also counsels clients on resolving disputes within family and other closely held businesses.\nLouis has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America, in corporate law, since that publication’s first edition in 1983. In 2009, he was named that publication’s first New Orleans Corporate Lawyer of the Year and its first New Orleans Mergers & Acquisitions Lawyer of the Year in 2010. In 2011, Lawdragon named Louis to its “500 Leading Lawyers in America” guide, which represents far less than 1 percent of the legal profession, and called him “without question one of the very best corporate transactional attorneys in the South.” He is ranked in Band 1 by Chambers & Partners in the Corporate/Mergers & Acquisitions category of America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, and has been listed in Louisiana Super Lawyers since its first publication.\nHe was a founder and has served since 1988 on the planning committee of Tulane’s Corporate Law Institute, and as a member of the Advisory Board of Editors for the Tulane Law Review since 1991. He has held several key posts, including chairman, of the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Section on Corporation and Business Law and has served as a member of that Section’s Corporate Laws Committee. Mr. Fishman is teaching “Corporate Governance From Enron To Hollinger To Disney” at Tulane Law School.\nNamed \"Lawyer of the Year\" by Best Lawyers® for:\nMergers and Acquisitions Law, New Orleans (2014)\nCorporate Law, New Orleans (2013)\nBanking and Finance Law, New Orleans (2012)\nListed, Louisiana SuperLawyers\nChambers Corporate/M&A Level 1\nBest Lawyers first M&A Lawyer of the Year for New Orleans, 2010\nBest Lawyers first Corp Lawyer of the Year for New Orleans, 2009\nOther: (504) 586-5252\n201 Saint Charles Avenue, Suite 4600\nNew Orleans, Louisiana 70170-4600\nWhat is your relation to Louis Y. Fishman? Consulted Attorney Current Client Former Client Other","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line413156"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7332327365875244,"wiki_prob":0.2667672634124756,"text":"Rewrite The Happiness Formula\nDon’t Believe It: How Advertisers Shape Your Health Decisions\nCoconut Oil Conspiracy?\nTraveling With Chronic Pain\nHealthy Staff August 28, 2017\n5 Best Power Rack Workouts\nShould You Post Pictures of Kids Online?\nNaps are the Answer\nCaitlin Schille November 4, 2015\nGREEN: The Color of Weight Loss?\nWait Times to See A Doctor\nHow to Survive A Brutal Winter Storm In Your Car\nFibromyalgia – A Puzzling and Painful Condition\nHealthy Staff March 13, 2016\nFibromyalgia can take a powerful toll on health, well-being, and quality of life.\nFocusing on Fibromyalgia\nYou’ve probably heard of fibromyalgia, but you may not know what it is. Fibromyalgia is a long-term (chronic) pain condition that affects 5 million or more Americans ages 18 and older. For unknown reasons, most people diagnosed with fibromyalgia are women, although men and children also can be affected. People with certain disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, may also have fibromyalgia, which can affect their disease course and treatment.\nFibromyalgia can take a powerful toll on health, well-being, and quality of life. “People with fibromyalgia suffer from severe, daily pain that is widespread throughout the body,” says Dr. Leslie J. Crofford, an NIH-supported researcher at Vanderbilt University. “Their pain is typically accompanied by debilitating fatigue, sleep that does not refresh them, and problems with thinking and memory.”\nPeople with fibromyalgia often see many doctors before finally receiving a diagnosis. The main symptoms—pain and fatigue—overlap with those of many other conditions, which can complicate the diagnosis.\n“To make things more challenging, there are no blood tests or X-rays that are abnormal in people with the disorder,” says Crofford. With no specific diagnostic test, some doctors may question whether a patient’s pain is real. “Even friends, family, and coworkers may have a difficult time understanding the person’s symptoms,” Crofford says.\nA doctor familiar with fibromyalgia can make a diagnosis based on the criteria established by the American College of Rheumatology. Diagnostic symptoms include a history of widespread pain lasting more than 3 months and other symptoms such as fatigue. In making the diagnosis, doctors consider the number of areas throughout the body where the patient had pain in the past week, and they rule out other causes of disease.\nWhat causes fibromyalgia isn`t fully understood. Many factors likely contribute. “We know that people with fibromyalgia have changes in the communication between the body and the brain,” Crofford says. These changes may lead the brain to interpret certain sensations as painful that might not be bothersome to people without the disorder.\nResearchers have found several genes that may affect a person’s risk of developing fibromyalgia. Stressful life events may also play a role.\nFibromyalgia isn’t a progressive disease, so it doesn’t get worse over time and may even improve. It’s never fatal, and it won’t harm the joints, muscles, or internal organs.\nMedications may help relieve some—but not all—symptoms of fibromyalgia. “Drug treatments by themselves don’t result in remission or cure of fibromyalgia,” says Crofford. “We’ve learned that exercise may work as well as or better than medications. In addition, therapies such as tai chi, yoga, and cognitive behavior therapy can also help to reduce symptoms.”\nPeople with fibromyalgia often have the best results when treated with multiple therapies. “It’s critically important for health care providers to help patients develop an understanding of fibromyalgia, and to provide realistic information about treatments, with an emphasis on using exercise and other physical therapies in conjunction with medications,” Crofford says.\nCrofford and her colleagues are exploring whether a treatment called TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) can help people with fibromyalgia exercise more comfortably and reduce pain. She and other NIH-funded teams are also seeking markers of fibromyalgia in the blood that might ultimately lead to more targeted and effective treatments.\nIf you or someone you know has fibromyalgia, see the “Wise Choices” box for tips on reducing its impact.\nUpdate, 2018: New Pilot Study of Propranolol on Fibromyalgia in Utah\nEffect of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation on pain, function, and quality of life in fibromyalgia: a double-blind randomized clinical trial. Noehren B, Dailey DL, Rakel BA, et al. Phys Ther. 2015 Jan;95(1):129-40. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20140218. Epub 2014 Sep 11. PMID: 25212518.\nNew insights into the benefits of exercise for muscle health in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myositis. Alemo Munters L, Alexanderson H, Crofford LJ, Lundberg IE.Curr Rheumatol Rep. 2014 Jul;16(7):429. doi: 10.1007/s11926-014-0429-4. Review. PMID: 24879535.\nchronic painchronic pain syndromeFibromyalgiafmspain\nPrevious Anxiety, Panic Disorder, Fear—Understanding Anxiety Disorders\nNext Chin Up and Back Straight\nHow to Know If Your Workout Soreness Is Good Or Bad","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1547648"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9480204582214355,"wiki_prob":0.9480204582214355,"text":"Virginia Tech Shooting Stirs Bad Memories for '07 Shooter's Professor\nWhat's changed? The professor spooked by the '07 shooter's violent writings talks to Casey Schwartz.\nCasey Schwartz\nDon Petersen / AP Photo\nThe news of the shootings today at Virginia Tech conjured a terrible sense of déjà vu.\nA police officer found dead in a campus parking lot; a shooter at large.\nThe university’s beefed-up alert system blitzed warnings for everyone to remain inside. Four hours of uncertainty passed before police announced the lockdown was lifted. They did not, however, confirm at that time whether or not the shooter had been identified or located.\n“This was a difficult one for those of us who remember the last,” Lucinda Roy told The Daily Beast. Roy, an English professor at Virginia Tech, is the author of No Right to Remain Silent: What We've Learned From the Tragedy at Virginia Tech.\nShe wrote the book from a particularly personal perspective—Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter who left 32 people dead on the campus in April 2007, was one of her students. In 2005, Cho’s writing submissions caught her attention, for their violent and disturbing content.\nImmediately following Cho’s shooting rampage, Roy describes a campus in shock.\n“The days following the shooting were the worst I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was an absolute nightmare,” she said. “There was so much that was unknown at the time... There was a great deal of unmitigated grief, and grief like that is kind of monstrous.”\nIn the initial aftermath of Cho’s shooting spree, it was unclear whether or not he had acted alone; the school remained in a state of terrorized uncertainty.\nAfter hearing of today’s shooting, Roy, who was not on campus, emailed all her students to be sure they were safe and to make herself available for those who wanted to talk.\nThe campus has changed in the last four years.\n“I think students have learned how to adjust to this situation, and learn how to heed authorities and not go out,” she said.\nThe university’s alert system—much criticized four years ago—has since become much more sophisticated.\n“I have to say, the alerts that came out today were excellent, I received them on my email, on my phone, on my home phone; it meant that we were in touch with what was going on.”\nIn fact, there are now so many alerts—this semester alone, as many as eight or 10—and they are typically so innocuous that “you got used to reading them and thinking that nothing too serious was coming,” Roy said.\nToday’s shooting will jolt that sense of security.\n“I feel our campuses are still vulnerable. Anyone can wander onto our campus at any time. I’ve had people wander into my classes I have no idea who they are, even since 2007.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1107399"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.637691855430603,"wiki_prob":0.362308144569397,"text":"Massachusetts Announces Additional Local Road, Bridge Funding\nThu January 16, 2020 - Northeast Edition #2\nThe Baker-Polito Administration announced that $20 million in additional funding will be provided to cities and towns in Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20) for road construction and transportation improvement projects. This funding was included in a supplemental budget recently signed by Gov. Charlie Baker, bringing total funding for FY20 awarded through the Chapter 90 formula to $220 million. With this additional $20 million, the total funding to date provided through the Chapter 90 program during the Baker-Polito Administration is now $1.36 billion.\n\"This funding represents our continued commitment to supporting communities as they address the maintenance and modernization of local infrastructure, which are a critical part of the Commonwealth's transportation network,\" said Baker. \"We are pleased to provide this additional transportation funding for local projects in cities and towns across the Commonwealth.\"\n\"Municipal officials count on Chapter 90 funding each year for essential projects, and we appreciate the Legislature adopting our proposal for additional funding in the supplemental budget,\" said Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito. \"This support will allow community leaders to take action immediately so that projects are ‘shovel ready' for the spring construction season.\"\n\"The Commonwealth is focused on improving the core transportation infrastructure in the state by advocating for Chapter 90 funding and with initiatives such as the Complete Streets Funding Program. The Chapter 90 funding program is one of several examples of the Administration working with municipal leaders to help meet capital needs that the communities identify as critical,\" said Transportation Secretary and CEO Stephanie Pollack. \"The Administration realizes local leaders often know best what capital improvements are needed at the local level.\"\nChapter 90 transportation funds support all 351 cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth. Funding for each municipality is predetermined by a formula that includes factors such as population, road miles, and employment.\nfundinginfrastructureMassachusettstransportation\nfunding infrastructure Massachusetts transportation","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line245642"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7597034573554993,"wiki_prob":0.7597034573554993,"text":"Guitar Icon ZAKK WYLDE Teams Up With GRILL 'EM ALL To Create 'Berzerker Burger'\nGuitar icon Zakk Wylde has teamed up with Grill 'Em All to create the Berzerker Burger; a monstrous burger with two blackened half pound patties, Eagle Rock Solidarity battered onion rings, white truffle pomme frites, chipotle ketchup, cheddar, and thick cut bacon all smothered in chili.\nFans and burger enthusiasts alike will be able to get their hands on the Berzerker starting at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 20 at Grill 'Em All's restaurant located at 19 E Main Street in Alhambra, California.\nGrill 'Em All has honored many hard rock and metal legends on their menu — such as Dee Snider, BEHEMOTH, and NAPALM DEATH — but this is the first collaboration of its kind.\n\"Doing a Zakk Wylde burger is a dream come true for us because the guy is everything we dig about Metal,\" said Matt Chernus, co-owner of Grill 'Em All. \"We thought, 'What would Zakk Wylde like? Um, yeah, beer and spice!' TWO blackened patties with boozy onion rings, truffle fries, and chipotle ketchup; we know this burg is going to make people meat drunk.\"\nIn the two decades since Ozzy Osbourne hired him away from his job at a New Jersey gas station to become his new guitarist, Zakk Wylde has established himself as a guitar icon known and revered the world over. Writing and recording with Osbourne led to multi-platinum success, inspiring him to create the now legendary BLACK LABEL SOCIETY in 1998. In the decade since, BLS has turned the notion of what a rock band should be upside down by inspiring legions of fans (known as Berzerkers) all over the world to follow the mantra: Strength, Determination, Merciless, Forever — SDMF for short. The Berzerkers, with Wylde as their leader, have created a heavy metal institution true to his vision of uncompromising, unfiltered, and unrestrained rock and roll. Wylde has won nearly every guitar award imaginable, and is a major influence on a new battalion of rock guitarists currently popular today.\nGrill 'Em All has been conquering the roads of Los Angeles with their gastronomic powerhouse food truck for three years, blazing a trail for gourmet burgers and pushing the limits of food truck tom foolery. After standing triumphant at the end of the \"Great Food Truck Race\" finish line (Food Network) and being crowned the \"Best Thing I Ever Ate\" (Cooking Channel), the demand for their beef grew to the immeasurable heights only comparable to IRON MAIDEN ticket sales in 1987. A move had to be made, an attack deployed. Grill 'Em All executed said attack, and the doors of Grill 'Em All Alhambra — a.k.a. Valhalla — officially opened on Saturday, January 19, 2013.\nGUNS N' ROSES To Be Supported By Rapper SNOOP DOGG At Miami's BUD LIGHT SUPER BOWL MUSIC FEST\nSLIPKNOT's COREY TAYLOR: 'If All The Democrats Don't Get On The Same Page, It's Four More Years Of TRUMP'\nEDDIE VAN HALEN's Iconic 'Frankenstein' Guitar Arrives With Price Tag Everyday Musician Can Afford\nSee Trailer For New OZZY OSBOURNE Documentary 'The Nine Lives Of Ozzy Osbourne'\nListen To Previously Unreleased AVENGED SEVENFOLD Song 'Set Me Free'","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line843660"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6379971504211426,"wiki_prob":0.3620028495788574,"text":"Home › Feminism › What is the Cause of Violence? A Response to Karen Armstong by Carol P. Christ\nWhat is the Cause of Violence? A Response to Karen Armstong by Carol P. Christ\nBy Carol P. Christ on January 12, 2015 • ( 65 )\n“So, when we in the West talk about religion as the cause of this violence, how much are we letting ourselves off the hook, and using religion as a way to ignore our role in the roots of this violence?” Karen Armstrong, author of Fields of Blood\nThis statement was made by scholar of religions Karen Armstrong in an interview in Salon magazine in response to characterizations of Islam as a violent religion by Bill Maher and others. Speaking in the context of the rise of anti-Islamist prejudice in Europe, Armstrong said that Maher’s demonization of “the other” was the kind of talk that could lead us back to the concentration camps.\nBill Maher makes blanket statements against religion in general and Islam in particular. Maher clearly does not have a nuanced view of any religion. He is fueling anti-Islamic sentiment when he singles out Islam as a violent religion. If religions are going to be criticized as violent, then we must not limit ourselves to criticizing Islam, but must begin closer to home, by discussing the relation of religion and violence in the Bible, in Christianity, and in Judaism. My rule of thumb is always to begin with Christianity because it is the hegemonic religion of western cultures.\nI agree with Armstrong that Maher is ignoring the role of the allegedly secular states in the violence that plagues the Middle East today and that has spread from there into Europe and America. Armstrong is referring to the division of the former Ottoman Empire into nation states made by the the Great Powers after the first World War. Clearly the imposition of the concept of the nation state and the boundaries that were drawn have not led to the intended outcome of lasting peace and democracy in the Middle East.\nSummarizing her recent book, Armstrong writes:\n[R]eligion before the modern period [was not] considered a separate activity but infus[ed] and coher[ed] with all other activities, including state-building, politics and warfare. Religion was part of state-building, and a lot of the violence of our world is the violence of the state.\nArmstong argues that rather than blaming religion for violence, we should blame the state. I would argue that we should be examining the violence of the state, but that this is no reason to let religion off the hook.\nArmstrong continues:\nWithout this violence we wouldn’t have civilization. Agrarian civilization depended upon a massive structural violence. In every single culture or pre-modern state, a small aristocracy expropriated the serfs and peasants and kept them at subsistence level.\nThis massive, iniquitous system is responsible for our finest achievements, and historians tell us that without this iniquitous system we probably wouldn’t have progressed beyond subsistence level.\nHere Armstrong is simply repeating well-worn apologies for the violence of patriarchal societies. Armstrong says that without inequality enforced through violence we would not have “civilization,” “culture,”or “our finest achievements.” Apologists for the grand Old South in the United States must have sounded much the same.\nOne question Armstrong does not address is whether or not a culture based upon great inequality enforced through violence is worthy of the name civilization. Even though I enjoy listening to Bach and Mozart, I would settle for singing and dancing to folk music (which in fact creates even greater joy in my body than classical music) if that meant that no one had to be enslaved or oppressed by a small aristocracy. I would also agree to live at a subsistence level in exchange for no violence and no war.\nArmstrong has obviously not seriously considered Marija Gimbutas’s work The Civilization of the Goddess. In it, Gimbutas challenges the “indolent assumption” that all societies have been pretty much like our own: in other words, violent, hierarchical, patriarchal, warlike, and unjust. She argues that the societies of Old Europe 6500-3500 BCE which were practicing the early stages of agriculture were peaceful, egalitarian, highly artistic, and not only worthy of the being called civilized, but perhaps even more worthy of the name than our own.\nArmstrong (who begins her survey of history at about 3000 BCE) wrongly equates all of agriculture with the feudal system of Europe; this allows her to make the false statement that culture and civilization are inextricably linked to violence. Even leaving the question of the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe aside, Armstrong seems to be equating civilization with the nation state, and in so doing, to be categorizing all cultures that preceded nation states as uncultured and uncivilized, or to use words she would probably consider politically incorrect but which cohere with her viewpoint, as primitive and barbarian.\nThe popularity of Armstong’s work may in fact be inextricably linked to her implicit and explicit acceptance of the superiority of the nation state to all other forms of civilization and the superiority of the so-called higher (read patriarchal) forms of religion to all other forms of religion.\nArmstrong makes the cynical (she would say realistic) statement that “Violence is at the heart of our lives, in some form or another.” While violence is at the heart of our lives today, this has not always been the case.\nWhat is missing in Armstrong’s analysis is a serious critique of patriarchy, its cultures, its politics, its religions. However, if her work included such a critique, we can be quite certain that it would not be as popular as it is.\nIf Armstrong had offered a critique of patriarchy, she would have been forced to ask if “our” way of doing things is the only or the best way.\nShe would have understood violence, hierarchy, war, and injustice are not required for civilization and life itself to flourish.\nAs I have stated:\nPatriarchy is a system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality, with the intent of passing property to male heirs, and in which men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to seize land and treasures, to exploit resources, and to own or otherwise dominate conquered people.\nIf we understand that patriarchy, war, domination arose together, and were justified by religions, we can also understand that what Armstrong calls “our” culture is not inevitable.\nWith this tool, we would not be forced to choose between Maher’s rejection of all religions as violent and Armstrong’s assertion that we should not view (some aspects of patriarchal) religions as one of the causes of violence.\nThanks to Ann Harrison for suggesting the topic for this post.\nAlso see Survey Reveals Americans’ Double Standard When Evaluating Religious Violence.\nCarol leads the life-transforming Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete (facebook and twitter) spring and fall–early bird discount available now on the 2015 tours. Carol can be heard in interviews on Voices of the Sacred Feminine, Goddess Alive Radio, and Voices of Women. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and with Judith Plaskow, the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions and the forthcoming Turning to the World: Goddess and God in Our Time. Photo of Carol by Michael Bakas.\n‹ Operating out of the Good: Interpersonal Interactions and Oppression by Ivy Helman\nIslamic Feminism, Body Autonomy and Spiritual Liberation by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente ›\nCategories: Feminism, Feminism and Religion, General, Goddess, Patriarchy\nTags: Bill Maher, Carol P. Christ, Civilization of the Goddess, feminism and religion, Fields of Blood, Karen Armstrong, Marija Gimbutas, Religion and Violence\nExcellent response. The equation of achievement with violence (or with capitalism) is all too facile, and the question has to be asked what (whose) purpose does it serve. I see a rampant denialism that humans can and have lived any other way than by coercion. This depends on a denial of the achievements of many Indigenous polities, who are not even considered in these evaluations of “civilization.” (Long history of that.) By achievements i include what can only be described as more advanced social systems, because egalitarian and centered on communal wellbeing. Domination hierarchies are not ‘advanced.’\nThe upshot is a conclusion that “every society in human history” behaves in these ways, and therefore that there is no alternative. Every time i post something about colonial violence on the Suppressed Histories FB page, a certain slice of people rush to make these assertions. Last week it was in response to documentation of medical experimentation on the bodies of enslaved women by the “father of gynecology.” Someone claimed that men in all societies had done this; but it’s simply not true. This is where that old racialist miseducation into ideas of “barbarism” is still swaying people’s thinking. And the tragedy of it is that it leads to a pessimism that blocks the ability to build alliances against the culture/s of domination. Many people are caught in an inability to imagine social relations, or religions, that are not based on domination, and call that realism. Their premises are mistaken.\nThanks Max. For us who have a different paradigm, it is indeed distressing that so many rush to defend violence as necessary to the “advance” of :”civilization.” And that some of those who do so get public attention.\nJeri Studebaker\nA very important response, Carol. Thank you. Will share it. Among many works Armstrong needs to read is *A Peaceful Realm* by archaeologist Jane McIntosh, about the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. No sign of warfare or other internal violence for hundreds of years. Technologically sophisticated. Cities of up to 100,000. No poverty, few signs of rulers, no signs of any police force. This was a large civilization covering a land area the equivalent of a good part of eastern Europe.\nMichael & Elizabeth Cecil\nCertainly, a series of precisely accurate observations about some of the major manifestations of violence.\nThanks so much, Carol.\nBut, if you want to understand the very origin of these manifestations of violence, there must be a detailed understanding of the whole issue of the (important word) consciousness that underlies violence in the first place—that is, the dualistic consciousness of the “self” and the ‘thinker’ (rather than the non-dualistic consciousness)—with regards to which the Eastern perspective, attributing conflict and violence to the duality itself (see the writings of J. Krishnamurti) is absolutely crucial; but, typically, disregarded altogether. And this requires an expansion of the definition of “religion” to include all ideologies based upon thought (which is, yes, a characteristically masculine expression of consciousness)—for example, political, economic and secular-philosophical ideologies as well.\nIt is through all of these ideologies based upon thought that the projection of evil upon the “other” becomes ‘weaponized’ into the violence that we see manifested in the world on a daily basis:\nhttp://unsealing-the-seven-seals.blogspot.com/2014/11/they-so-evil.html\nThus, the issue is to have a much more intensely nuanced view of religion—something that, certainly, Mr. Maher is utterly incapable of—acknowledging both its positive aspects; while, at the same time, clearly observing that the witless perpetuations of its dualities may very well ultimately annihilate human civilization itself.\nThanks Michael. I do agree with you that dualistic thinking as it has manifested in the west is one of the tools and habits that can promote violence. I discuss transforming the classical dualisms frequently on FAR and in my other writing. However, I do not think dualistic thinking is the origin of violence, though it is one of the manifestations of it. My metaphysics are relational and possibly not the same as yours. However, there may be a plurality of metaphysical positions that are preferable to the dualistic thinking we have known in the west.\nThanks for the reply, Carol.\nCertainly a complicated issue; but let me clarify something.\nDualistic thought is the ‘weaponization’ of the duality that originates in the ‘fallen’ consciousness of the “self”. Or, as stated in Chapter 13, verse 12 of the Revelation of John: “the second beast [the “beast of the earth” consciousness of the ‘thinker’; also referred to in Sura 27:82 of the Quran] is servant to the first beast [the “beast of the sea” consciousness of the “self”]” in the perpetuation of duality and violence; both of these dimensions of consciousness being directly ‘observed’ by the non-dualistic consciousness by which Revealed Knowledge is conveyed. (And, if you read the opening passages of the Second Meditation of Descartes, you can actually observe the consciousness of the “self” emerging: “it feels as though, all of a sudden, I have fallen into deep water”–Jungian archetypes being relevant here.)\nIn any case, from the frame of reference of the non-dualistic consciousness; all “metaphysical positions” are fundamentally dualistic; they are not something that can really be “transformed”. They must be observed, set aside, transcended, or stepped away from. Nuance and more nuance.\nI would say that nondualism is a metaphysical position, but since you are arguing from texts, and I am not, there is probably not more to be said. Anyway, I hope we agree about violence.\nJ. Krishnamurti suggests that the mechanisms of thought can be directly observed from a ‘frame of reference’ prior to and outside of thought; perhaps similar to the way in which a psychoanalyst can directly observe the psychological mechanisms of the patient. So, no, I am not “arguing from texts”. I am describing an actual experience of observing these dimensions of consciousness from a different ‘frame of reference’ which is not thought. That is, even if the texts did not exist, these observations would still exist. I am not saying that this is easy; but it sometime comes only after years of practice in different contexts.\nThis is all a very strange or bizarre assertion to the Western perspective, for which thought is the end all and be all of reality and theological/philosophical truth; but, after studying the Eastern perspective for some 40 years now, it has become increasingly clear to me that such a perspective (esoteric Buddhism certainly conveys this perspective) is the ONLY way of genuinely resolving the conflicts in Western civilization which threaten the very future of humanity.\nSo, yes, we are in fundamental agreement about violence. But it appears to me that the categorical refusal of Western civilization to acknowledge the value of the (non-dualistic) Eastern perspective is what is going to doom us all to an ‘Armageddon’ caused by the dualities of the monotheistic theologies.\n“We must begin closer to home, by discussing the relation of religion and violence in the Bible, in Christianity, and in Judaism.”\nI took this to heart, Carol, thanks!! except my favorite religious paths are Taoism and Buddhism, which seem so peaceful. But you know what, they got into religious wars in their history, too, trying to seize power over the populace, confiscate land for their temples, collect money from wealthy donors, etc.\nThe spiritual path that is closest to home for me is really the love of Nature. Nature so far has not waged war with anybody, or tried to get rich and powerful by soliciting worshippers. And to worship Nature, I don’t need to profess a creed of any kind — I can just take a walk in the woods.\nAccording to a haiku poet named Chigestsu-ni (1634-1718), a Zen nun and good friend of Basho, even nature, though, could become a problem, she says:\nToday’s moon —\nbut if there were two\na fight would ensue.\nJust to correct a typo, the poet’s name should be Chigetsu-ni, her poetry comes up in Google. The haiku is included in “The Country of Eight Islands,” trans. and ed. by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson.\nIf only Buddhism and Taoism were “peaceful.” Both are among the most sexist and violent ideologies of the world (a quick google search will provide you with the historical facts). Ideologies that are constructed by people as Esther rightly, to my mind, points out. No one gets off. Nature is also profoundly violent (Earthquakes? Even backyard squirrels?)\nThe question is whether or not it is possible to exist without violence. I guess it requires redefining violence so that eating vegetation or destructive fires that make it possible for forests to renew themselves are not perceived as a kind of violence. Certainly nature cannot exist without violence otherwise all animals who eat anything other than greens would die. Then we would all die.\nBut of course, we are talking about grander violence than natural violence or the petty violence we do to each other every day. I don’t know the resolution to that other than profound self-examination and the cultivation of compassion and love such that the love overwhelms and is that through which our other traits express themselves (methods of doing so are found in most religious and many secular traditions).\nIf we had matriarchal societies other than the one Chinese example, would we find there is no violence? I agree that patriarchy is not violence resistant (to say the least!), but I don’t know that matriarchal societies would provide a world without it. I agree with those who have argued that our understanding of women as more collaborative, etc., than men comes about because of patriarchy limiting our possibilities. We are more collaborative (or destructive via gossip, etc.) because we’ve had to be. What would the world be like if we were never forced to be that way? I don’t know.\nAll to say, this is an excellent blog, Carol, and offers a lot of (non-violent) food for thought! Thank you.\nThere is an Indonesian Muslim example, among others, see Peggy Reeves Sanday, Women at the Center.\nKaren Armstrong herself speaks of societies in which “a small aristocracy expropriated the serfs and peasants and kept them at subsistence level.” This is structural violence and does not occur in small scale subsistence level (sustainable) societies.\nThanks Laury, for your thoughts. I understand your sensitivity, truly, and your heart is in the right place for sure.\nCarol, your blogs always get me thinking in ways profoundly challenging, though I’m not very skilled in writing it all out. Thank you for this post and your leadership, and I missed reading your comments last week.\nLaury, I believe your stance that violence may be endemic — to both men and women — is pessimistic and actually uninformed. If you read Heide Göttner-Abendrot’s anthology “Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present, and Future,” I think you will become much more optimistic about our abilities as a species to be non-violent.\nThank you, Carol, for this outstanding essay.\nAt the risk of oversimplifying, I contend that religion expresses itself in violent ways because human beings think and behave violently. Our institutions (including religious ones) reflect that violence.\nSee my response to Laury above.\nI don’t agree! Humans are capable of violence and evil, but those are amped and multiplied a thousand-fold when religion incorporates codes of dominion and oppression, in other words patriarchy, slavery, racism, class oppression. All those are *systemic* violence, as opposed to individual evil-doing, and religion has been used to excuse, prop them up, and paint them as the divine will. But not every religion, and not every society, incorporates codes of domination. And that is why it is important to look at the Mosuo (SW China), the Minangkabau (Sumatra), the Pueblo societies, the Vanatinai (South Pacific) and the many other mother-right societies, as well as other Indigenous societies that are non-militarized, classless, respectful of individuals. No human society is ideal, but the differences between these much more egalitarian Indigenous cultures (so at risk in the global dog-eat-dog world now) and the imperial ones are significant, and they matter very much.\nBrava! Very thoughtful and thought-provoking (as we can tell by the preceding comments) post.\nHere’s what I’ve been wondering all week since the attack on Charlie Hebdo: Practically the whole west has been in panic mode because of these terrorist attacks by fundamentalist Muslim extremists. How have ghettoized Jews felt for nearly 2,000 years when they were not only locked in their ghettos at night (in some areas) but were regularly attacked by Christian mobs often led by the Christian nobility determined to eradicate them? (I am not talking about Nazis, but about earlier history.)\nI recently read.From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia by Pankaj Mishra. This book is about men who fought against the European empires (British, French, Dutch, German, Belgian,etc.) and their colonies in the Middle East and China and Japan. I learned a lot and recommend it to FAR readers..\nAcknowledged.\nBut do you see any problem at all when some 20 people in France die as a result of terrorism; in response to which the International media is awash with ‘condemnations’ and ‘expressions of outrage’ from all around the world, and millions march in ‘solidarity’; but Boko Haram slaughters some 2,000 people in Nigeria and the International media scarcely breathes ONE word about it?\nAnd–it should be needless to say, but it isn’t– it is tens and hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims (rather than Jews) who are being slaughtered at this moment across the Middle East. But who is ‘marching in solidarity’ with them against this common evil?\nAll of these people died as a result of the same Satanic theology; but ‘some’ people’s murders are simply more ‘worthy’ of being publicized and ‘condemned’ with ‘outrage’ than others.\nMary E Hunt\nIt is consistently the case that the generic religion/violence discussions get all the play and anything nuanced with feminist insights seems to be left aside. No surprising, but it is important to observe as you did. That makes this blog and others like it, books and articles from authors/readers here all the more important. Thanks, Carol.\nI presume the march in France brought together defenders of free speech and haters of Islam, feminists and anti-feminists, left and right. This is why I was glad I did not have to decide whether to go to it or not.\nMary Healey\nAS one of the latest commercials put it””I want IT ALL, and i want it NOW”. In other words: GREED!!\nWith some humor, I offer the text of the following internet meme to support your argument: “It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is always a way to solve problems without using violence.”\nThank you for an excellent article! I look forward to sharing it! I think that it is innate in humans to wonder, adore, and wonder some more: this is religion: and not “primitive” religion, at that. As with everything (or so it seems), this innate or natural religion, came to be used, abused, and utterly screwed up (mostly by men). The desire to dominate for privilege and power is perhaps the primary characteristic of patriarchy: this desire required and justified the oppression of women, the exploitation of natural resources for personal profit, and the use of force and violence to manipulate, control, or eliminate opposition. Men are the ones who benefit from the dominator paradigm (on a real yet still superficial level). As a result of all of our justifications of violence: women hurt, children hurt, the Planet hurts, and, of course, men also hurt. All of our “working assumptions” of what civilization and religion and violence as a means to an end need to be completely transformed through a steady “build-up” of an alternative paradigm. I believe that your article points the way to such a transformation. Thank you again.\nprofdanshaw\nSeveral responses to this good post and its respondents:\n1. Yes, all religions have supported acts of violence at various times in their history, but none but Islam makes it obligatory in their fundamental scriptures. In fact, Jihad at one time was considered the sixth “pillar” of Islam. In addition, Islam contains in it’s foundational scripture an explicit call for manifest destiny. When Christ, at the end of Matthew, encourages his disciples to go out and make disciples of all nations he was likely speaking of conversions, not conquests. The Qur’an and Hadith require that all lands on earth be under Islamic law. That means political control.\n2. Karen Armstrong is among the many apologists of Islam who rarely look at its darker side. This is the politically correct way to sell books.\n3. I fail to understand the argument that Boko Haram’s atrocities have been ignored by the media.\n4. What continues to be ignored by the media is what our military has done and continues to do in the Middle East, in terms of violence. Few sources ever mentioned, for example, that at the beginning of the first gulf war Saddam had put peasants and malcontents in the front-line ditches defending the border. According to the accounts of returning soldiers in order to save bullets and lives our generals simply used bulldozers to bury 10,000 + “Iraqi troops” in the process of a couple of hours. The media was much better covering the light show of the carpet bombing of Iraq at the beginning of the second gulf war, but not at showing the immense collateral (read: civilian) damage it caused. But, that was not Christian violence. It was secular. Though the generals profess their Christianity.\n5. Agree completely that eastern religions have had their fair share of violence and wars. No off the hooks there.\nThanks for a great discussion.\nDan Shaw — Professor of Religious Studies\nNo, “all religions” have not supported violence. Only if you discount the many ethnic religious traditions and concentrate only on the dominant religions can you make such a statement. Even when these peoples made war (say American Indians or Central African societies) they did not instrumentalize religion as a justification for them.\nI’d like a cite for the Quranic injunction that all lands be under Muslim law. Since you include ahadith, some of which are recorded in later centuries, then you’d have to also include church doctrine which does in fact authorize such conquest. Cuius baptisatio, eius regio, and so on. Christian conquest patterns in the middle ages were very analogous to Muslim ones, including capturing and slave-trading “infidels.”\nAlso, if you look into fundamentalist enforcement in the US military (google Mikey Weinstein) you’ll find that it is not all that secular, and even in political context, with Bush II initially calling for a “crusade,” it has a long history of Christian invasions of Muslim countries behind it.\nI am not sure what fundamental in its foundational scriptures means–but the Hebrew Bible has been read by Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestants in America, and others as decreeing that conquest and forced conversion were the will of God.\nLet me suggest the fundamental or foundational Revelations rather than scriptures; of which there are two:1) the “Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24); also referred to as the Vision of the “Son of man”, and the “Night Journey” & the “sidrah tree” in the Quran; and, 2) the Revelation of “the resurrection”, which includes the Revelation of the Memory of Creation and the revelation of the memories of previous lives; the purpose of the monotheistic theologies being to deny and contradict those Revelations by the dualistic “doctrines of men”, which, today, are the foundation of conflict and violence between Judaism, Christianity & Islam.\nBriefly.\nprofdanshaw,\nDo you really think it makes any difference at all to the person killed whether he or she is killed by “Christian violence” or by merely “secular violence perpetrated by a Christian”? If a Christian commits an act of violence, ultimately, it is Christian teaching that ‘justifies’ that act. The Teaching of Jesus, on the other hand, suggests something entirely different.\nsaharasia\n“Yes, all religions have supported acts of violence at various times in their history….”\nWrong, Dan.\nThe religion of the Inuit of northern North America has never supported acts of violence. The religion of the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa has never supported acts of violence. The religion of the Mbuti of central Africa has never supported acts of violence. The religion of the Semai of southeast Asia has never supported acts of violence. I could go on (and on and on).\nDo you think the Inuit, !Kung, Mbuti, Semai and all the other nonviolent people in the world aren’t really people? Aren’t really human? That their religions “don’t count”? Let me tell you that they bleed just like you do, their blood is the same red color, they eat, sleep and make love, they laugh, they cry — they are as human as you are. And their religions are just as real and viable as any other.\nI would suggest that we are using differing definitions of the word “religions.” I wonder if the Inuit or Mbuti even have a word for “religion”? My study of such non-textual communities suggests that all of their actions are considered sacred. So if you are telling me that the Inuit and Mbuti are never violent towards others this is indeed a beautiful thing.\nAre you defining “religion” in a way that excludes all but textual religions, then? In your mind, does “religion” include only religions that separate the sacred from the profane? I hope I don’t sound too harsh when I suggest you’re being a bit self-centered? A bit ethnocentric?\nThank you Jeri. There is no question about the great differences between the dominant mass religions and Indigenous ones, but while making that point we can’t speak as if Indigenous people don’t / didn’t have religions, and especially exclude their spiritual traditions in global discussions such as this one, in saying “all religions.” That negation and erasure is all too common, and it distorts the breadth and depth of human heritages. In fact, the understandings that Aboriginal spiritual philosophies put forward are of great value in overturning the oppressive mentality of the imperial religions.\nMax, we’re totally on the same page.\nReligion can be defined as the human relationship to the supernatural world. Every known culture has (or has had) such a relationship. It’s ludicrous to say you’re examining the relationship between violence and religion if you’re looking at only a handful of the world’s religions – the violent state religions.\nBut that’s exactly what the state religions want us to do, because it helps them hide their iniquities. Lining the state religions up next to the peaceful indigenous ones makes the state religions look like the Big Bad Wolves they really are.\nBhikshuni Trinlae\nInteresting comments but the one meme that keeps surfacing in the western feminist theology is the proposition that goddess social culture would somehow prevent discrimination and misogyny.\nA cursory look across the history of the dharma traditions show that no end of feminine-positive theology prevents social and political. subjugation and domination of women or patriarchal family/clan/social organizational structures.\nTherefore, Christ’s criticism here is true, that a more nuanced view must be investigated, including with respect to any wishful thinking that a goddess-friendly culture will put an end to misogyny. It may be a necessary condition, but evidently it is by no means sufficient!\nHowever, that doesn’t negate the value of what Armstrong is saying. When the US Supreme Court overturns the Doctrine of Discovery legal justification of domination and subjugation of non-Christians for example, and Western society admits to its own endless thirst for blood and violence, it may be in a position to enter into a credible discourse with other cultures and societies on the topic.\nIn the meantime, the repressed neuroses continue to act out and react everywhere socially and politically!\nThe “dharma traditions” you speak of are all patriarchal. They may have goddesses, but those goddesses have been incorporated into patriarchal religions. As just one example, the Sanskrit goddess Durga kills the buffalo demon in order to save the gods, who supposedly created her. In matrifocal cultures you don’t find goddesses who serve male gods, nor goddesses who wage war. Patriarchy is the problem. I agree with Carol.\nI’m not aware of anyone who is saying a Goddess culture will of itself end patriarchy and domination, even though revalorization of the female is obviously needed. It’s clear that political action, social change in very concrete ways, is necessary. Still, the cultural dimenions are not negligeable. The themes of male dominance encoded in patriarchal religious scriptures are like Manifest Destiny and the Discovery Doctrine, in that they are poisons that keep on reinfecting society, century to century.\nGreat post, Carol. Brava!\nAnd what a great conversation! Wow!\nKatharine Bressler\nIt seems to me that most of the matriarchal cultures were (and are) smaller groups that lead mostly subsistence, agriculture-based lives. I wonder whether part of the problem with our violent cultures of today is that they are just too big. Groups function differently as they get bigger. Maybe breaking up into smaller, family-connected groups might work better. At least, it seems to work for the Mosuo culture and others like it. I’ve even noticed this in churches. Smaller churches sometimes work more like families – everyone knows each other. Larger churches become more like corporations, with hierarchies and “power structures.” Has anyone else noticed this?\nKate Brunner\nI’ve often thought this, Katharine. Scale seems to be a very important piece of the puzzle. I notice it a great deal in the pursuit of sustainable energy solutions & earth-honoring agricultural/permaculture reform. Smaller economies are making greater, faster, more successful changes to energy diversification, waste disposal, & food supply sustainability schemes. Larger economies do not seem to be capable of the same as of yet.\nSister Lea\nReblogged this on CATHOLIC, Non-Roman Western Style and commented:\nWe MUST ask ourselves if our way is the BEST way!\nemmx2013\nThere is a lot to think about in this article and the responses to it.\nIt does seem to me that individually we must deal with our own anger, hurts, disappointments, and find some way to be at peace with ourselves and others.\nHere’s to Your Health!\nevelynmmaxwell.com\nPaige Cousineau\nI would like to recommend the contribution that the work of Felicitas Goodman can make to this discussion. In her book, “Ecstasy, Ritual, and Alternate Reality: Religion in a Pluralistic World”, anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman links the norms of a society and its religion (including it’s values around violence and sexism) to the nature of the economic “technology” in which it developed- i. e. on whether they are hunter- gather, agrarian or urban. All of the traditional religions discussed above arise out of agrarian civilizations where where war sexism, dualism, fear of nature, and growth of hierarchy have all occurred.\nAs both Katherine Bressler and Kate Brunner have observed, the matriarchal societies tend to have evolved from hunter-gatherer economies.\nActually Paige, Bressler and Brunner said that small scale economies seem to be egalitarian and not violent. The earliest agricultural (or horticultural) societies of the Neolithic seem to fit this model. Patriarchy evolved when societies were agricultural as opposed to industrial, but agricultural societies were peaceful and egalitarian for millenia before the rise of patriarchy.\nPage, Felicitas Goodman and I studied under the same anthropologist, Erika Bourguignon, and I admire her work greatly (have you read Where the Spirits Ride the Wind? Fascinating).\nBut Felicitas studied anthro only, whereas I hopped around between anthro and archaeology. I definitely think this thorny issue of where patriarchy/violence came from requires a deep understanding of archaeology as well as anthro, because institutionalized violence arose before we began keeping written records. And what I discovered after doing tons of research for my book Switching to Goddess is that there really wasn’t any institutionalized violence on the globe before around 4000 BC.\nAnd what happened ca 4000 BC? Climate change. Big climate change. A good part of the earth’s land surface turned to desert (what we now call the Sahara, the Gobi, and the chain of deserts stretching across Asia almost to the Pacific — they all seem to have formed at this time). And as a result a good portion of the world’s first farming populations starved to death, or spent generations slowing starving.\nIt seems obvious to me that this is the beginning of violence and patriarchy. This is when the first city states rose in the “Cradle of Civilization” between the Tigris and Euphrates. But the “rise of civilization” was not glorious as we used to think. Archaeologists like Brian Fagan are now pointing out that these first civilizations were violent, bloody, and full of social hierarchy. Masses of people were crowded into dirty, disease-ridden cities surrounded by thick walls. Most people were dirt poor, and there were a few elites at the top who ruled them with violence or the threat of it.\nIn Switching to Goddess I call this “starvation culture” because I think it arose directly from learned, shared and patterned behavior shaped by long-term starvation conditions, and then passed on from one generation to the next.\nPeggy Reeves Sanday notes that the positive connection between women and nature as mothers can be turned inside out to blame women and nature for the sorry state of affairs following negative climate events or war. But there is always a choice. Human history is not determined by climate alone.\nNo, human history is not determined by climate alone, I agree with that, Carol. But something turned formerly peaceful, non-violent, egalitarian female-principled people into “crazy” people — violent, male-principled, hierarchical — around 4000 BC, in Mesopotamia first, and then Egypt at the Nile a little later. And then even later in China at the Yellow River. The first “civilizations” (which were really a descent into hell) all rose at large rivers — exactly where people would go when smaller rivers, lakes and water in general was disappearing everywhere.\nThe anthropologist Colin Turnbull studied a group of starving people in central Africa in the 1960s, the Ik, or Teuso. They’d been starving for a few generations. And they were truly a psychotic people, with very little humanity left — parents would kill their own children for food, the elderly were too weak to walk and had to crawl everywhere, only the strongest (i.e., young men) got to eat, and the the most admired person was the one who could steal the most and get away with it. People got great pleasure out of only two things: eating, and watching someone else suffer.\nI think from this generations-long starving ca 4000 BC a few groups lost their original matriarchal (healthy) culture and developed, like the Ik, what you could call a culture of psychosis: only young strong males ate (ruled), but if you bowed and scraped in front of them they might throw you a few scraps. Women became hated for two reasons: (1) they were aligned with Mother Earth, who had obviously abandoned Her children, and (2), long-starving women become exceedingly cruel to their children, and since fathers in these groups almost always abandon their families, mothers are the only parents left (among the Ik children are locked out of their mothers’ homes at age three and from then on must fend for themselves).\nCulture is such an important construct. Once a culture forms, it’s extremely difficult to change it. It’s learned, shared, patterned, and passed on ad infinitum from one generation to the next. And a new, violent culture — in which the ideal man is the one who can take the most from others — is likely eventually to rule the earth.\nI don’t agree with the Saharasia thesis of James de Meo. The world’s biggest desert, the Sahara, was not a region out of which patriarchy erupte or spread. The river valleys were, because these lands were desirable. The more difficult terrains and ecosystems in fact are more likely to be redoubts of mother-right culture. Competition over resources is one factor, but it is not determinative all by itself, as Peggy Sanday theorized decades ago. Read my critique here: http://www.suppressedhistories.net/saharasia.html\nAlso Carol is right: most egalitarian matrilineages arose in small farming societies, which are very different from large scale plow agricultural ones.\nHi, Max,\nIn my experience very few people know of or about DeMeo and his Saharasia theory. It’s nice to meet someone who does.\nIf you look at a few good maps of the world’s deserts, you can see that they stretch over the “Fertile Crescent,” in Iraq, where the first so-called civilization arose, as well as over the Nile River, where the second so-called civilization arose. These deserts also stretch up around two sides of the Black Sea, i.e., aren’t that far from Old Europe.\nBoth the deserts and the “civlizations” appeared abruptly ca 4000 BC. The “civilizations” were actually hellish places – like the patriarchy on sterioids. Archaeologists are beginning to admit this now.\nIf you believe as I do that before the patriarchy reared its ugly head people were primarily peaceful and matriarchal, what kind of tremendous force would cause some of these idyllic people to morph into their exact opposites? Into people who could almost be described as psychotic? Do you agree that it almost had to have been a fairly powerful force?\nJeri, we can’t cherry-pick the deserts for patriarchy. What about Arizona / New Mexico, a redoubt of mother-right cultures including the famous Pueblo societies, or the Guajira desert in Venezuela where the Wayúu matrilineages live? Please read the article i posted.\nI do agree with you about the alphabet hypothesis. I think all mono-causation theories are taking the wrong approach. These are complex historical processes that created systems of domination. Literacy did become a male monopoly, but so much else was going on, and patriarchy emerged in societies that never had contact with writing, such as New Guinea, Brazil, South Africa, and we could go on and on.\nMax, I read your paper.\n4000BC: (1) a good portion of the earth’s land surface fries and turns to desert. Most farmers die; some make it to the river valleys. But a few starve for generations, in the desert, ISOLATED at oases, and become psychotic (for lack of a better word). These small psychotic groups attack and take over the large, peaceful peoples who made it to the river valleys (Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Yellow).\n4000 BC: (2) is also when the first “civilization/cities” arose at the Tigris/Euphrates. These cities were barbaric places full of disease, poverty, and a small violent, ruling elite:\n“…disease-ridden places , with high death rates…. Dense population, class systems, and a strong centralized government created internal stress. The slaves and the poor saw that the wealthy had all the things that they themselves. locked…. The poor did not have enough space in which to live with comfort and dignity…. Evidence of warfare is common…. (Havilland 1997: 305-06, Human Evolution and Prehistory).\nThe first patriarchals developed on the desert, but we can’t “see” them until they move to the river valleys and enslave the peaceful matriarchals there.\nPerhaps someone has already mentioned this, but Leonard Schlain wrote an interesting book back in 1999 entitled, “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.” Here’s the Amazon blurb about it: “This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory.”\nI don’t really see how “alphabetic literacy” could or would have given rise to that special blend of institutionalized warfare, institutionalized violence, social hierarchy, poverty (brand new at the time), discrimination against anyone not young, healthy and male, slavery, etc. — that reared its ugly head around 4000 BC first in Mesopotamia, and later elsewhere. “Linear left-brain thinking” is not psychotic thinking, and the set of new traits that arose ca 4000 BC ushered in a deeply troubling, anti-human, psychologically damaged way of life.\nThe peaceful matriarchal Minoans were literate, as was the peaceful matriarchal Indus-Valley civilization — we can’t translate these languages *only* because they’re completely unrelated to the patriarchal languages we speak today. The Minoans and Indusites weren’t alphabetically literate — but I can’t see that an alphabetic language would be that much more powerful than a syllabic one in terms of rearranging the human brain.\nI agree with Jeri. The alphabet hypothesis seems to simplistic. I mean does that mean that we have to give up writing altogether to get rid of patriarchy? And this blog too? I think the book is working off Jungian ideas that equate the conscious with the masculine with patriarchy.\nWhen I originally read Shlain many years ago, I also felt he oversimplified. But while reading David Abram’s book _The Spell of the Sensuous_, I felt that HIS alphabetic thesis was much more nuanced. He differentiates between pictographic scripts and strictly abstract alphabetic scripts, demonstrating how the latter alienates us in many ways from the animate world. Of course, Abram is not talking about patriarchy, but about how (especially) Western cultures evolved away from nature and in the process our sensory perceptions of the world. But I believe this evolution is part of the process by which patriarchy could take hold (or that patriarchy was part of the process of evolving away from nature and our sensory perceptions). What do others here think of this thesis? Ideas about Abram?\nI do agree with you Nancy that there’s a connection between patriarchy and an evolution away from nature. Of course there’s the chicken or egg question: Did alphabetic scripts cause a new, barbaric, anti-nature culture to arise? Or is it more likely that the new, barbaric, anti-nature culture created an (anti-nature) alphabetic script?\nExactly, Jeri. It’s chicken-and-egg time and I’m not a time traveler.\nI think attempts to explain the origin of violence through other factors like written language beg the question of why some people decided they had the right to dominate others through violence and the threat of violence. For me climate distress is better “reason” than discovering how to write, but as Max points out it is not sufficient. And as Max points out blaming climate distress deflects the blame from those who made the decisions to dominate others (for whatever reason and in response to whatever stress) and those who (again for whatever reason) continued to dominate others because they had been taught it was their birthright.\nIn this discussion we also need to recognize that the decision to dominate through violence was not a decision made by “humanity.” It may have been made by the 1% and over time imposed on the others. In the case of the 50% (men as a group), the right to dominate women may have been the or one of the carrots that induced them to become warriors in the service of the 1%.\nhttps://feminismandreligion.com/2013/02/18/patriarchy-as-an-integral-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/\nThis is my discussion of the origins of patriarchy, war, and private property as an integral system legitimated by religion,\nI agree with everything in your article, Carol. In a patriarchy men, war and violence dominate. But why? Where did this insanity come from? It’s so diametrically opposed to the behavior of the Mosuo and so many other world societies not yet beaten down by patriarchy.\nOther aspects of patriarchy: All physically weaker people are abused (elderly, children, sick, poor, disabled). Sharing behavior is weak or missing. Sexuality is often violent and impersonal; empathy is weak or lacking.\nAgain – why? Where and when did this sick behavior originate?\nAn important clue, I think, is this: the behaviors present in patriarchy are the behaviors present in long-starving groups.\nIn starving groups, the strongest steal food from all others (including children, siblings, elderly, sick etc.) – violently if need be. The strongest are always the young males. Males and violence, then, come to dominate. Violence and maleness become the “ideal,” what everyone praises, idolizes (this has been documented in modern groups).\nIn starving groups no one is interested in anything but eating. Sex becomes a chore, impersonal (again – this is documented).\nWar and rape are just stealing on a larger scale. Eating disorders today are rampant: anorexia, bulemia, obesity. Many of us have hoarding disorders.\nOther traits shared by us and long-term starters: weakened social ties (our friendships are often transient), families disintegrate (we have deadbeat dads, child and parental abuse, spouse abuse).\nI should add that, under conditions of starvation, in groups continuing to share and share alike, no one survives.\n» What is the Cause of Violence? A Response to Karen Armstong by Carol P. Christ\nLeave a Reply to Nancy Vedder-Shults Cancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line129899"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5009649395942688,"wiki_prob":0.5009649395942688,"text":"CREATIVE: Joel Rust on his new piece for Revolutions-Reactions\nAleksei Gastev was one of the leading poets of the early Soviet Union; in 1922, Nikolay Aseev called him ‘the Ovid of miners and metalworkers’. He also became one of its key labour theorists, founding the Central Institute of Labour which trained over half a million workers in new methods of production, before being purged in 1939. In both aspects of his work, Gastev was obsessed with blurring the lines between human and machine, convinced that this was key to both creativity and productivity. The ten poems in Pack of Orders – the first five of which I have set – describe the creation and operation of what we now might call robots or cyborgs. The piece casts the four musicians as slightly malfunctioning androids, detailing Gastev’s vision with a mixture of cultish monomania and distracted confusion.\nI began working on this piece in September of 2016. I had come across the text through my interest in filmmaker Dziga Vertov and composer Arseny Avraamov, who were both influenced by Gastev’s ideas; all three of these figures are pertinent to my research into music, mechanization and urbanization in the 1920s. But, with November’s election in the US, Gastev’s ideas took on a new relevance. The increasing capabilities of machines to do work more efficiently than humans, along with the deliberate weakening of unions, caused job losses and anger – anger redirected towards immigrants or ‘globalism’, with palpable consequences.\nGastev’s vision has not been fully realized – cyborgs have not replaced us – but a century of moving towards it has impacted every part of society. The blind, ruthless drive for increased productivity found in the early Soviet Union has some parallels in contemporary corporations and politicians. The human cost of the former was unspeakable; the cost of the latter, as it causes accelerating inequality and environmental destruction, is as yet undetermined.\n‘Pack of Orders’ will be premiered at Kings Place on 16th February\nwww.joelrust.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line846654"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8788930177688599,"wiki_prob":0.8788930177688599,"text":"Former Dallas County Schools Superintendent Rick Sorrells Sentenced to 7 Years in Federal Prison\nSorrells to report to federal prison Sept. 17, to serve 7 years behind bars\nBy Scott Friedman and Jack L. Douglas and Frank Heinz\t• Published at 12:03 pm on August 6, 2019\nRick Sorrells, the disgraced former superintendent of Dallas County Schools, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison Wednesday morning for his role in the corruption scandal that destroyed the 172-year-old school bus agency in November 2017. Judge Barbara Lynn made blistering comments, calling Sorrells' conduct the worst in the entire scandal.\nSorrells, an admitted criminal, was convicted for wire fraud after admitting to the Department of Justice to taking more than $3 million in bribes. In exchange for the bribes, the DOJ said DCS purchased cameras worth millions of dollars, stacks of which remained boxed and unused in a Dallas warehouse, and entered into a $25 million asset purchase/licensing agreement, the sale-leaseback of DCS bus lots first reported on by NBC 5 Investigates.\nNBC 5 was blogging live from the hearing -- those posts are below.\nSorrells arrived at the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse in downtown Dallas about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and walked into the courthouse with his head down, surrounded by what appeared to be two guards.\nHe tearfully spoke during his sentence, saying he'd made a mistake, lost his way and begged the court for mercy and forgiveness. He said he was a yes man that found it hard to say no to Bob Leonard, the owner of the camera company, and that he soon realized he was in too deep to get out on his own. Sorrells added that he was relieved when the FBI showed up to raid his home because he knew that it was the beginning of the end.\nJudge Barbara Lynn was firm with Sorrells during his sentencing, saying he was \"the most culpable of defendants\" in the DCS case, that his conduct was the worst and that she could not forgive him for what he'd done and for what he'd cost taxpayers and the former employees of Dallas County Schools.\nSorrells and his attorney asked the court to delay the start of his sentence by 30-45 days so that he could spend time with his wife, children and grandchildren, and tend to a health issue. Lynn delayed the start of his sentence until Sept. 17.\nBefore sentencing Sorrells, Lynn considered the sentences given to other DCS defendants including Dallas City Councilman Dwaine Caraway and Bob Leonard, who was sentenced to seven years in federal prison in May.\nLynn said she was upset the plea agreement capped his sentence at 10 years, especially considering that she'd sentenced people to 18 years behind bars for similar crimes.\nIn the end, Lynn is sending Sorrells to prison for seven years, same as Leonard, and has ordered him to pay $125 million in restitution. Knowing he'll never be able to satisfy that debt, Lynn waived the interest.\n\"This defendant pocketed a whopping $3.5 million in bribes, simultaneously crippling the agency he was tapped to lead and undermining the public’s trust in city officials. The citizens of Dallas deserve better – and they should rest assured that we are committed to rooting out public corruption wherever we find it,\" said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox.\nThe DOJ said Sorrells spent the bribe money on credit card debt, trips, personal expenses, an apartment in New Orleans, cars and jewelry.\nFederal prosecutors said bribes and kickbacks paid to Sorrells were funneled through various pass-through companies operated by, Slater Swartwood Sr., and an unnamed law firm. Swartwood Sr. pleaded guilty to federal money laundering conspiracy charges in December 2018 and was sentenced last month to 18 months behind bars.\nAs a part of his plea, Sorrells was ordered to forfeit any property bought using the payments received from the unnamed company. A list of that property included more than $12,000 in cash, a 2014 Maserati GHI, a 2012 Porsche Cayenne, about $50,000 in jewelry purchased from the Windsor Auction House and a custom made 14K bracelet set with 51 princess cut diamonds weighing 10.53 carats and valued at more than $16,000.\nInvestigative Series: Behind the Cameras: The Fall of Dallas County Schools\nInvestigative Series: Big Buses, Bigger Problems: Investigating DCS","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line291549"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5610420107841492,"wiki_prob":0.5610420107841492,"text":"Armitage stands in the back, or: Tropes Armitage fans live by\nBizarrely, in so many ways, this is post #1,001. Odd that it would fall today, precisely. As I publish this, I count 896,401 hits and 28,695 comments recording our mutual conversations. To everyone who reads this unusual patchwork text, thanks very much for your patient support of “me + richard armitage” over the last two and a half years, whether through reading, commenting, thinking, linking, writing your own responses elsewhere, agreeing, disagreeing, or praying. The latter is particularly valuable. It would be impossible for me to put in words, tonight, exactly what this blog has meant to me, but its meaning for me has been considerable and will likely grow in the next months. I’m very grateful to all of you for your amazing generosity and understanding.\nThe cast of The Hobbit on stage with audience members during Ian McKellen’s benefit performance for Isaac Theatre Royal, June 23rd, 2012, State Opera House, Wellington, NZ. Richard Armitage is circled in blue. Source: L’Amour, c’est mieux a deux\nOn the whole question of Richard Armitage’s alleged or potentially actual tendency to lurk in the background of publicity, given how many comments I wrote, you’ll have guessed that this is a relatively personal question for me, and I had pieces of this post drafted even before he showed up onstage in Wellington last weekend and moved to the side and then the back of the stage. Which actually made me think I should leave it.\nI’ve also written about several aspects of this question before. For example, I’ve already written about the question of his career trajectory in many different forms: as a comment on the importance of projects with a higher culture component (part 1 and part 2) and also as comment on whether he should appear at fan convention events (so I am glad that the way he’s quoted in Total Film suggests that he’s taking this prospect with good humor, even if I suspect he’s clueless about Hobbit fanboys). I commented favorably on his openness about his conclusion, some time ago, that he needs not to worry about what his fans think. In response to the sudden Internet appearance of a marketer at UA, I’ve talked about my hopes that he focuses on what’s important to him, and tries to ignore the branding issue.\nSo I thought I had said most everything I had to say. But I thought of a new angle, and it preoccupied me while I was driving from office to office, and it’s turning out to be fruitful, because it may allow me to write about a topic I’ve been trying to broach for almost two years and haven’t been able to make myself.\nI had actually planned to be writing about something else but there you have it. Maybe “fun” Servetus will come back soon, but I seem to be jinxed in that regard at the moment.\nMr. Reluctant Rented-Tux Red Carpet as was: Richard Armitage at the BAFTA TV Awards, London, England, May 20, 2007. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\nCaveats / assumptions. I shortened this section just because Pinup said a lot of things that I essentially agree with already.\nThe information we lack for determining anything about Richard Armitage’s decisions on the issue of his relationship with putting himself forward for publicity prevents us from drawing any meaningful conclusions with real-world purchase. It’s all speculation. No less than what I say below. So I am not willing to say that fans can ever know best, in the conventional sense of that phrase, anyway. We know, at most, what we want best. It’s fine to discuss that and disagree — even in public — as long as we acknowledge it’s primarily about us and our desires.\nThe evidence we have is problematic. I try to understand data I have about Armitage in good faith. But: Richard Armitage gets asked a question; he thinks about the actual answer; he negotiates in his mind what he can / should / must say; he tries to communicate the result of that negotiation to the interviewer; the interviewer writes about his answer; the interview is edited; I read it and you read it; you read what I’m saying about it. What a game of telephone. Humans misunderstand as much as we understand — sometimes accidentally (failure to consider certain perspectives may exist — hence my encouragement to would-be analysts to turn their perspectives inside out), sometimes on purpose (refusal to acknowledge that the world could differ from our perceptions). We have no choice but to reason via approximation, but while there are better or worse approximations of any evidence, all of them are inexact, including those we make about ourselves. (Think how often you’ve thought, “I can’t express exactly how I’m feeling” or made a statement that’s imprecise, but appropriate to a situation.) Certain of his behaviors and speech patterns look particularly recognizable to me — and some of those make up a big part of my attraction to him, frankly — but this recognition pertains to my frameworks, not about his behavior.\nRichard Armitage has some choices available to him about publicity but not all potential options. He can possibly say no to a particular venue but not determine which offers will be made to him. I would love to see him interviewed in the New York Review of Books about his reading habits, for instance, but that’s not likely. Mr. Armitage chooses from among options he has, whether these are offered or he works to make them available.\nSince his minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger garnered him two lengthy interviews in The Scotsman and the Daily Telegraph, there’s no reason to think that his options are not likely to continue to expand and improve.\nRight now, the publicity machine for The Hobbit makes most of Richard Armitage’s decisions about interviews, not Richard Armitage himself, and barring the announcement of a new major role for him with its own promotion apparatus, that will likely continue to be the case for quite a while. His past ongoing presence on British television meant that he had to be visible to remind potential audience members to tune in. The PR team for The Hobbit obviously has a different strategy. I expect Richard Armitage to continue to fulfill his contractual obligations in this regard, particular as regards any information embargoes that may be in force (see message of May 29, 2011).\nDeer in the flashbulbs? Richard Armitage leaves the Old Vic Theatre, London, England, after the 24 Hour Plays Celebrity Gala, November 21, 2010. Screencap from this cell phone video.\nThe place where Pinup started on this theme had to do with materials that appeared on Richard Armitage Confessions about Armitage being crowded out by other actors and or not getting something he deserves from his work The Hobbit, or being less lucky than other actors with his publicity team. And that issue — the statements we make about Armitage’s retiring nature — has interested me for a long time. I imagine that most of this discussion has emerged in response to the “drought dynamic” we’re experiencing and from which some fans have been suffering intensely. In the place of data, our imaginations naturally jump in — unsurprisingly — to fill in the blanks. What’s interesting to me is that this particular discussion fills this particular blank — that in a situation where little to no publicity is appearing, one response is to discuss the possibility that Armitage is being accidentally or purposefully damaged by himself or others.\nOf course, that conclusion is one reading of the evidence. The explanations that emerge to explain Armitage’s apparent reticence tend to follow relatively predictable patterns or tropes (topoi) that we use to describe Mr. Armitage. All of these tropes have evidential arguments available both for and against them, and because the evidence for them is so broad, they can be made to serve many purposes. We encounter a few of them quite regularly. The boundaries between them are not entirely clear, and they are not mutually exclusive, but they are all fascinating. In what I say below, while I link to evidentiary justifications for the tropes, I’m not linking to examples of the tropes as they appear among fans, because the point of this piece is emphatically not anything that might appear to be personal criticism, and I’m just as guilty of filling in the blanks following my own tastes and worries as anyone else. In short, if you recognize your own attitudes in some of what I write: I am not throwing stones. Rather, I want to explore the tropes and talk about why they appeal or don’t appeal and what that says about all of us as fans involved in the fascinating but futile project of trying to figure out who Mr. Armitage really is.\nRichard Armitage, publicity photo, 2009. Source: Русскоязычный Cайт Pичардa Армитиджa\n“I want to be [let] alone Armitage”\nOne possible explanation is that Mr. Armitage is actively staying out of publicity or avoiding public appearances for reasons of personality. This hypothesis relies on the assumption that Armitage is almost painfully personally shy or (in extreme readings) would prefer, in the best of all possible worlds, never to have to encounter fans or publicists. The latter reading relies heavily on evidence like newspaper reports that note his ambivalence about fan adoration, as well as, I assume, on an early message in which he mentioned liking Keane’s “Hamburg Song,” with its chorus, “I don’t want to be adored” (July 24, 2006). A variant reading that I occasionally encounter is the sentiment that at the beginning of his career he liked his fans, but has changed his mind about them either out of bad experiences referenced in his messages (e.g., 29 April 2007; 22 April 2008) or simply out of greater awareness that he can’t have an open level of involvement with us (or out of frustration with the press coverage and the career problems it generates — see below). Never having met him, I have no context for judging his personal behaviors, but it seems to me rational to conclude on the basis of statements made by interviewers in the press and reports of fan encounters that while it is sensible to preserve a space between oneself and fans, and while he is perhaps innately modest (or was socialized to be), mild-mannered, and / or introverted, he is not abnormally aversive of other humans, including fans who appear in appropriate venues and behave themselves. If we look at this report of a fan encounter last weekend, while Armitage was not shoving himself in people’s faces, there’s no indication that he was running away from attention, either, or consciously avoiding fans. He was there to aid in a fund-raising effort and did what was asked of him without exhibiting noticeable personal tics that indicated fear or distaste for the people around him. He regularly poses for pictures with fans and we see them and he never looks uncomfortable (or if he is, he hides it successfully for the purposes of the picture). Consequently, I admit that I’ve never been convinced that Richard Armitage is actually or consciously hiding from the limelight.\n“Bloody Internet!” Richard Armitage as Lucas North in Spooks 8.2. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\n“Press-Hater Armitage”\nAnother possibility is that Armitage actively avoids publicity because of distaste he feels for the press and / or reading opinions about himself. This position is supported by a statement about how he stopped reading his press because a single negative comment would stay with him. A frequent corollary of this position that emerges occasionally in discussions among fans (although he has never made this request, despite occasional comments on the honesty of his fans in evaluating his work) is that we shouldn’t say anything that risks offending him anywhere where he could read it, because it would hurt him. We also have speculated more than once that he hates answering certain questions over and over again (“the circus”; “the pants”), although his demeanor doesn’t strongly indicate impatience on his part (apart from one interview in which the impression of frustration was as much created by the reporter’s editorializing as it could be extrapolated from his own statements). If in fact he hates the press, however, it seems unlikely that he would have accepted quite so many interviews in the last eight years. He certainly had professional obligations to talk about his participation in certain projects, but he’s been interviewed beyond those demands. Transcripts of complete interviews don’t seem to indicate undue discomfort or hostility to members of the press when topics range beyond the immediate question of the project he’s promoting (example: David A Stephenson interview).\nThat Armitage fell into the purview of the press, initially, was due entirely to his fans of the first hour after North & South, who crashed the BBC message board and then created their own venues — a development that gave him a sudden visibility as a sort of seven-day wonder — an actor so amazing that he threatens the stability of the Internet! This phenomenon spurred at least one report on him before he’d done any other projects, merely because of an event that was a relative oddity at the time but would no longer surprise us in the least. Speaking from a media history perspective, he was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on that particular performance; but this means that a vital piece of his media presence was constituted by the very dynamic that we have speculated he might be frustrated about — the influence on the creation of his career by fans — a state of affairs that would reasonably foster a very bifurcated reaction. So I can imagine that, just as his relationship with fans has changed over its history and in light of various interactions he’s had, his attitude toward press as he went from being an actor who’d never had a press review before North & South to being able to read about himself regularly if he wants to remains a developing one. I can only guess what the elements of the development of his attitude toward press might be: curiosity, gratitude, appreciation, disgust, fear, fatigue, annoyance, self-doubt, rage, joy, anticipation? I don’t know. But in any interpretation, it’s hard for me to exclude his relatively early awareness that the press could do him good, as in a message of 11th September 2006, where he acknowledges the role of the press and that he’s going to have to figure out how to deal with it. That message included both an apology for apparent indiscretion on his part reflected in statements a newspaper reporter quoted about his sexual history in a press interview, and the intriguing comment: “the arena which I work in trades with this kind of information currency, I intend to be a spendthrift in future.”\nA disguise Richard Armitage is thought to be using to hide from public view. Source: Me, My Thoughts, and Richard Armitage\n“Furtive Armitage”\nThe evidence already cited above suggests that Richard Armitage is neither an extrovert, an attention-seeker, nor a publicity hound. We’ve never had any indication that even once people started to know who he was, he ever exploited their awareness of him to appear in the spotlight, which suggests that he never sought to become a celebrity as opposed to an actor. So another question that we could ask ourselves is whether there’s something Richard Armitage doesn’t wish people to know about him. My impression is that the fans in my circles don’t raise this possibility, or at most rarely, not least because it conflicts with a very popular trope discussed below. Now, almost inevitably, the answer to this question is yes, in that we all have things we’d rather people didn’t know about us for any number of reasons; it’s almost a part of the human condition. (Servetus references her own admission that she’s done things that would have prevented her from being elected president, were they known, and her refusal to state what said actions were.) At the same time, however, given the wide range of things we’ve learned about him in interviews over the years — including things we’d never have had to have known, and which he has potentially regretted disclosing (the names of his parents and of his nephew, perhaps, or the neighborhood where he lives) — it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Armitage is actually rather willing to be talkative for whatever reason. He probably has the standard number of things to hide, as we all do, but it’s difficult to argue, particularly given the profession in which he works, that he’s unusually private. And in fact, the two things are not mutually exclusive. One can say a lot and still omit decisive information without necessarily having misrepresented oneself. Anyone who teaches for very long realizes this — one way to create connection with student audiences lies in the judicious release of harmless personal information.\nRichard Armitage among the dwarfs in some kind of warm-up or preparation exercise for filming The Hobbit. Screencap from The Hobbit pre-production vlog #3. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\n“Virtuous Armitage”\nThis reading of Mr. Armitage suggests that the reason he doesn’t push for publicity and moves to the back of the stage, both figuratively and literally, relates to his fundamental virtues. These virtues are read both as professional (after appearing on stage at least since he was a teenager, he knows that the tall man has to stand in the back row — an impression sustained by his discussion of his early stage training, which emphasized discipline) and personal (see, for example, the Zen poem he shared with fans on 29 April 2007; or his regular suggestions that fans should donate to charity rather than sending him gifts, or the reports of how extremely hard he works to prepare for roles, going so far as to be waterboarded to learn what it was like; or the univocal agreement of co-stars that it is a pleasure to work with him). When we see pictures of him preparing (as in The Hobbit vlogs, or the Hood Academy extras) he always appears to be working so hard. He stands on the set himself for lighting tests. Now, I personally like this reading a great deal and I also think there’s a great deal of evidence to support it — which always gratifies me when I read it. I like to be the fan of a class act. And long-time readers are familiar with my own positive relationship with work. I’m also leery of saying too much critical about this issue, because it’s a facet of the identity question that I broached two summers ago and which generated my first experience with trolling, but I’ll try and hint, without saying that Armitage is not virtuous, that just like vice, virtue is also a performance — it’s just one that some of us, presumably Richard Armitage among them, can live with more easily. I’m also not entirely convinced by depictions of Armitage as a “real artist” when they rely on comparisons to people who seek the public eye primarily for celebrity. Presumably most good to great actors put a lot of work into their performances — all acting is a team effort, and there’s not much room in an expensive production, where every minute of filming has to be apportioned carefully, for regularly clowning around. Finally, I want to ask the obvious question here about the possibility of false consequence — does he retreat to the rear of the stage because he is virtuous, or do we read him as virtuous because he retreats to the rear of the stage?\nRichard Armitage, in his role in the powhiri to start off filming of The Hobbit, moves his left hand in a gesture frequently seen among singers, sometimes used to facilitate breathing and flow in nervous situations. Screencap from The Hobbit preproduction vlog #1. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\n“Stage-Frightened Armitage”\nThis trope would suggest that even if Armitage is not personally shy, fan-averse, or press- or publicity-averse, he may still experience stage fright or some sort of nervousness or performance anxiety when he appears on a live stage. This reading relies on his own statements in the press about wanting to perform as a teenager, but not wanting to be watched, about being worried that anyone who saw him would think he wasn’t very good (I’m thinking this statement was in an old Sunday Times article that’s now behind a pay wall?). I would argue that it is potentially also a consequence of statements he’s made about loving a rush while skiing, seeking loss of control even as he fears it, and the exhilaration of appearances on stage, insofar as all of these statements involve a component of relationship to one’s fears or exploitation of anxiety in particular kinds of situations. And we occasionally see behaviors or tics that may point at nervousness, such as the rocking back and forth on his legs in Wellington last weekend. I don’t want to apply that this state of affairs is either / or: most performers realize that a certain amount of adrenaline in the system affects a performance, and that the key to a good performance is putting oneself in the position to get the right amount of it. If we discard this reading, it tends to be on the grounds of implausibility; just as some people believe that a shy performer is a contradiction in terms, they may conclude that stage fright alone would not condition this kind of consistent behavior. As a final though, perhaps the acceptance of such a trope is contingent on the belief that Armitage is somehow being damaged by his own activities. This is the next trope.\nIan Macalwain (Richard Armitage) after being assassinated by his own team in Ultimate Force 2.6. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\n“Armitage as victim”\nSo, as noted above, my reactions to the re-appearance of this trope in the discussions on Richard Armitage Confessions, as discussed by Pinup, was really the reason for this post. (So why did it take me 3,000 words to get here? I’m just trying to give equal time to the entire theme.)\n“Armitage as victim” is prevalent enough as a feeling among some fans that its manifestations started to intrigue me some time ago, and I even created a category for it (see category cloud at right). It’s a really powerful sentiment at times, and I think the trope may gain power in his particular case because it so effectively combines a number of the ideas above, so that he can alternatively — depending on the reading — be victimized by almost anyone to whom he stands in professional relationship. The press (too much coverage of Armitage as male totty); his fans (we’re so crazy we make him want to avoid us — keyword — panties); script writers on the projects he works on (he starts off in a reasonably scripted series and then everything goes haywire, forestalling any criticisms we might find to make about his performances); actresses with insufficient charisma (so that if a screen love affair doesn’t strike our heart strings, we blame it on his co-star); his own good nature / virtue (he’s so modest that he steps on his own feet — a neat example being his response to the question in his red carpet interview at the Captain America premiere, that what he wanted people to know about the film concerned Chris Evans — but see “virtuous Armitage,” above) or, in, the specific case that prompted this post, his management or the management of other actors (his management misses opportunities for him; the management of other actors pushes those individuals to the front and doesn’t give Armitage the “credit” he deserves). Another reason we may like this trope is that it serves well the needs of fan-on-fan behavior policing (“if only you behave according to my standards, Mr. Armitage will be more forthcoming in his relationship to fans”), which involves an active-aggressive stance against other fans and a passive-aggressive one with regard to Armitage himself. In a situation where Armitage is supposed to have the control to give or withhold information or contact, fans disciplining each other becomes a (futile) way to attempt to exert influence over Mr. Armitage. It also takes the blame both off the policer and away from Armitage — it would not be the case that he would want to retreat from fans unless fans were being impossible, i.e., we were victimizing him.\n[At left: The gently or not-so-gently bemused “why are you staring at me?” look: Richard Armitage on the red carpet for the Varekai Gala, January 5, 2010, London, England. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]\nThe frequency of complaints about Armitage’s victimization at the hands of poor management is clear, although I’ve never felt like he suffered for work or exposure. I tend to read such complaints as reflecting unease over the fact that his rise to prominence after North & South was not immediate in the way that some fans felt he deserved — so that espousals of this trope serve as a function of particularly intense faith in Armitage’s merits. But on the whole, I don’t think that eight years to the sort of prominence he has now is an unduly long time, and indications are that he doesn’t either, given statements that he feels like he’s on a roller coaster already. That he may occasionally be or have been professionally naive is supported by his own statements about the development of his capacity to understand what was happening in his career when he was struggling early on, particularly his concession that he has perhaps been a late bloomer and that he still feels younger than he is. (We could probably create a sub-division of this trope and call it “boyish Armitage,” but this post is already getting too long.) What’s interesting to me about “Armitage as victim” is that it is not heavily supported by press reports — except in its permutation as victimization by fans (and we all know that the press loves to make fun of us already and never eager to point an accusatory finger at itself, always justifying any of its own excesses in terms of people’s desires or rights to know).\nAt the same time, however, the response to this point about victimization is obvious. Armitage has worked in “show business” since he was seventeen, he has some idea of how the industry works, what the consequences of his decisions might be, and what he might have to do to get what he wants. A seventeen-year-old who takes a job in Budapest to get an Equity card is no shrinking violet personality. If he’s dissatisfied with his publicity profile or the roles he’s gotten, he’s forty years old and adult enough to fire whoever’s in charge of these things and engage someone else to work on his behalf! (Though I would concede that these decisions are complex. If I think about the people I’ve employed to work for me in the past, it’s always been a balancing act as one person does multiple tasks at which he may be more or less effective. So maybe he’s overly loyal to a management that stuck with him through some thin years — see “virtuous Armitage” above.) Mr. Armitage has also displayed evidence in the past that he has the capacity to change his behavior when he’s not getting what he wants, as regards the decision to go to his audition for Sparkhouse in character.\n[At right: naive Armitage? A Cats-era photo. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]\nSo it’s hard for me to imagine that this trope bears much on actual circumstances now, if it ever did. It seems to me just as likely that — if indeed he has been a victim — he could have been the victim of fate, something over which no one can express any control, though I would be hard put to apply the adjective “unlucky” to Armitage, and so, it would seem, would he be. So the final sense in which I tend to read this trope as powerful lies in the realm of what it does for how we evaluate his career and how those evaluations relate to our choices. If Armitage didn’t get as much career energy from North & South as he should have, this reading goes, that’s not because of anything he did, but because of poor choices that were made outside of his control. Maybe good roles were being saved for actors with better-connected management. If roles were not immediately forthcoming, that scarcity did not stem from anything innate to Armitage. And finally — and I think this is really key for understanding this trope — if Armitage is the victim of poor management, then we are not crazy for cultivating an intense love of an actor who may not end up being the premiere actor of his generation. Thus “Armitage as victim” excuses not only any potential failures by Armitage — it also excuses us of any failures of taste for setting our fan bets on Armitage as opposed to any one of a group of talented actors who are poised at potentially joining the Hollywood A-list.\n[At left: Authoritative Armitage? Richard Armitage at the NYC premiere of Captain America: The First Avenger, July 2011. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com]\nHowever, despite the strength of the case against “Armitage as victim,” I need to concede that for various reasons I am heavily invested in the notion of Armitage as adult as opposed to as victim. If I fall regularly into the “virtuous Armitage” trope, I admit that one of the things I admire most about him is that I’ve never read him blame anyone but himself (or fate) in any evaluative statement he’s made about his career. Men who take personal responsibility are hot. And I need badly, right now, to believe in the possibility of adult men. Additionally, insofar as I sympathize with the problem of too much work and limited energy, as well as the pressures of being someone for someone both professionally and personally, I resonate deeply with his statements about not wanting to appear as Richard Armitage on a reality show. He’s an actor, which involves pretending to be someone else for audiences — not being Richard Armitage for audiences, which is probably somewhat more difficult. In a situation where he does an incredibly physically and emotionally demanding job, as with the role he has right now, I conclude that he’s mostly focused on what he’s doing on a day-to-day basis. He probably focuses the limited time and energy he has available at present for future planning on auditions and role offers rather than doing interviews. And this prioritization, too, is a sign of adult decisionmaking and professional acumen that I admire.\nMarching to the beat of his own drummer? Richard Armitage on the night before the Old Vic gala, London, England. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com\n“Autotelic Armitage”\nSo, in the absence of other knowledge, the surface reading of his allegedly publicity-light behavior that I prefer — whether it’s accurate or not, no one knows, see earlier caveats — is one that’s consonant with my own reading of his personality. This is the final trope to be discussed. I read Mr. Armitage as a strongly autotelic personality. (I am one, too, which underlines my point about how these tropes are all about us and only superficially about Richard Armitage.) Autotelic people are innerly-directed and focused primarily on their own, individual, independent definitions of quality, success, and reward. The reward for doing The Hobbit for him, I suspect, is going be having done The Hobbit, even more than the other career steps it might facilitate. This is the sense in which I understand his statement that he’d be satisfied if this were the last piece of work he’d ever do (a remark that I suspect is a potentially less accurate approximation of the intensity of his feelings about actually continuing to work, which he seems eager to do no matter what the work).\nSigns of this attitude — that fulfilling the demands his inner life makes on him is the justification for his work — can be found throughout his work. His statements that the roots of his acting lie in his reading and in the imaginative world of a solitary child would substantiate this viewpoint, as would his move from a relatively successful career in the corps of musical theatre to drama school and into journeyman years in the background of Royal Shakespeare Company productions. His insistence that audience attraction to him is really about Mr. Thornton, for example, is usually read by interviewers as modesty (or as a way to embarrass fans, who are read as misunderstanding the actual relationship of actor to role), but the wording is interesting: “It’s a bit embarrassing because you don’t plan for that when you prepare for the part. I didn’t realise there would be an emotional reaction, or whatever that reaction is — a physical reaction? I value it, but at the same time, it’s only a character.” We could also understand this to mean — the reaction of the audience is secondary to my assumption of the character; I determine for myself what the successful creation of a character involves, and so ecstatic fan reaction is embarrassing not (only) because it means unsought adoration, but because it’s beside the point. And his point that working front of house in a period where he wasn’t getting roles also tends to go in this direction — he’s not looking at a performance primarily in terms of its effect (even if that is what others are looking at it for) but in terms of the character he becomes when he does it. (A similar divide can frequently be made, incidentally, between orchestra musicians who enjoy listening to orchestras, and those who primarily enjoy playing in them. I was the latter.) Getting to have the experience of rush as the endpoint of the process of working to come someone else, I would argue, is what’s at stake for him here — and why he thinks he may think about Thorin Oakenshield long after he’s done playing the role.\nIt’s hard to live with autotelic personalities. They want what they want and their motivations are thus not always legible to others because they occasionally read as irrational. So the objections to this viewpoint are manifested in questions like: “How could you not want the level of success we think you deserve?” or “how can you not see that doing the kind of publicity we demand is essential to you getting future roles of the kind you want?” or even “how could you be satisfied with roles that are below your caliber of artistry?” What’s confusing, on this view, is simply that being autotelic can look an awful lot like being ambitious — and a strong, openly displayed ambitious streak would interfere with the “virtuous Armitage” trope, if it were present. But critics of the autotelic trope must ask: Doesn’t wanting to do well in terms of one’s own goals require an important measure of ambition, and doesn’t ambition require certain sorts of compromises (publicity!) to fuel a career?\nThe answer is, of course, yes — but it also requires standards, and in Armitage’s case we might easily conclude, based on the roles he’s played, that these standards are inner (delivering a good performance) as opposed to outer (independent definitions of the value of art). But to demonstrate this point about being autotelic, we might consider that an appropriate subtitle for episode 2 of North & South could be “Mr. Thornton’s autotelic personality.” On this view, Mr. Armitage knows what he wants, works hard to get it, and does what he thinks he needs to get it — but the “what” is determined solely by him and not by anyone else, even if can use the help of others (management, fans, studio publicity machines) on his way there. If Armitage is giving himself credit himself for what he does, then it’s hard for me to share the worries on Richard Armitage Confessions about Armitage being crowded out by other actors and or not getting something he deserves from his work The Hobbit. I’m a firm subscriber to the “enough is as good as a feast” philosophy, and accept that my enough is probably different from his. If what Richard Armitage determines is the goal of his work is fulfilled — and I suspect that this is going to be the execution of the role to the best of his ability, as opposed to the achievement of the next role — then he’s going to use publicity mainly to that end, and not either as an end in itself or a means to an end that is not his.\nAnd finally we get to the question of what the autotelic trope may do for those who embrace it. I would argue that, as it appears in dialectic with the “victim” trope, it serves a similar function. That is, if Armitage’s career does not ever reach the heights that an independent standard of high art might wish for it, this disappointment can be attributed to his personal standards. The autotelic Armitage trope says: he was always better than all that publicity.\nOK. There would be a lot more to be said about this theme, including a lengthy discussion of why I personally am so invested in defending his right to make his decisions and skip publicity if that were his desire, but I’m at about 6,300 words. So I’ll leave that stuff for later posts, sometime. For now: Which tropes are you invested in, and why? What does the picture of Armitage tell you about your own preoccupations?\nAnd thanks, as always, perhaps tonight more than ever, for reading.\nPosted in acting, Armitage as mirror, Armitage as victim, Armitage on Armitage, Armitage's body, Armitageworld dogmas, attempts at bravery, Captain America, career, Cats, collateral attractions, dance, fan art, fans, fantasy, fear, flow, forgiveness, gratitude, gravitas, Heinz Kruger, humiliation, humility, Ian Macalwain, if I could interview Mr. Armitage, interiority, John Standring, joy, loss, Lucas North, me, morality / ethics / norms, Mr. Thornton, musical theatre, North & South, objectification, order / disorder, overwork, Peter Jackson, polls, reality, redemption, Richard Armitage, silliness, Sparkhouse, Spooks, the Armitage morass, the circus, the competition, the energy, the eyes, the face, The Hobbit, the hype, the real Armitage, theatre theatre, thinking / feeling, Thorin Oakenshield, Ultimate Force, why Armitage?, Why me?, work\n70 Responses to “Armitage stands in the back, or: Tropes Armitage fans live by”\nGreat post,Servetus! Thanks!:)\nMy heart would want to see him as a victim but reason suggests a different scenario;)….in any case he is a decent guy…for sure!:)\nJoanna said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 7:51 am | Reply\nI tend to believe that, too, Joanna.\nI chose autotelic, but (and you may think this very generic) that he may be a combination of all, with varying degrees of each. My gut says that he became an actor because he wanted to be an actor, not a celebrity or be famous. And being an actor (especially a more well known one) requires doing publicity, and so does it. But like you said, I don’t know what goes on in his head.\ngreenie said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:19 am | Reply\nI missed this first time round. Yeah, they’re not mutually exclusive.\nServetus!\nAnother scrumptiously prepared and deliciously executed post that I can’t wait to savor and consume at my leisure later! Thank you so much for sharing your natural talents and training in case presentation (with supporting evidence) with the rest of us!!\nNote: I’ve only scrolled through the post to alert myself that I have something to look forward to later – but I noticed the poll at the end with the enticing question of, “Which tropes are you invested in, and why?” That’s my kind of blog poll (!) – as you already know.\nOf the choices listed, I most recognize myself in “Furtive Armitage” – as I suppose everything about me is furtive as soon as I leave my door in the mornings (much more so in London as I can’t just get into my own car to preserve a protective enclosure of ‘UK Expat space’).\nI don’t know that I am invested in Armitage being so (and please note, I haven’t read through the defense of each position) but I can simply observe that this is a dominant trait I hold within myself. 🙂\nUK Expat said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:43 am | Reply\nI had to mull over the post for a few hours before I felt confident enough to post the dribble I did. It’s a very thought provoking topic.\nSnicker's Mom said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 6:49 pm | Reply\nno running yourself down, Snicker’s.\nYou probably guessed why I included that — because it also gets to the identity problem (is he somewhere being someone different than who we think he is?).\nAs far as investment goes — there are some people who are really invested in certain pictures of his identity; I am somewhat less so but there are definitely things I am invested in that, if they turned out not to be true, I’d have to rethink this. They may just not be the same things that other people are invested in.\nA lot of food for thought and I don’t really know where to start. I think at this point it is impossible to come to any conclusion, so much depends on what happens during the next months (or next two years, until the Hobbit is history), what we learn about him when media interest increases and on the turn his career takes. To date we have no idea how much and which kind of publicity he intends to do, which kind of work he intends to accept and which dark secrets he’s trying to conceal might be revealed.\nJane said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 11:32 am | Reply\nof course, he will also change during that time, which means the discussion can continue infinitely.\nI may add, I don’t buy the “Armitage as a victim” trope. I think he is fully responsible for what happens to him and for how he is perceived. It is his choice whom he employs (and I don’t agree an actor who is with a reputable agency and shares an agent with Kate Winslet should think about getting an new management) but more importantly, it is his choice which roles he accepts and to which projects he sticks for how long and why and what it takes to leave a project.\nMy own personal trope is “Armitage as a TV/movie worker”. Someone who has a strong work ethic, always does his best, even does more than required (I’m always thinking of Higgins and his unpaid overtime, because “work wasn’t finished”). Someone who fulfils his contracts and would never publicly say anything critical about his projects. But also someone for whom having steady and reasonably well-paid work come high on the list and makes him accept and stick to projects he knows are not ideal. At least until something that is much better on many levels comes along. I’m not sure if I fully understand what autotelic means, but it may overlap. He’s following his own goals and own priorities and those goals may not be what some fans (including myself) think what they should be.\nJane said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 12:23 pm | Reply\nI think this somewhat intersects with “virtuous Armitage” (if you think industry is a virtue). On the other hand, the doing more than required also intersects with “autotelic Armitage”.\nI definetely agree with you that his major reward for being in the Hobbit was the time he did spent in NZ, working on the project. HE is done with that soon but the memory will stay with him, and by all accounts working with PJ on that set is a very special experience. For us the rewards we hope to get for out patience is yet to come, but for him it is probably not about the finished movie, the public recognition, the fame, the hopefully favourable reviews, the career chances. And it was similar with previous projects, for him it was about the work experience, that may well have been rewarding, even if the finish product was less than perfect.\nJane said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:37 pm | Reply\nIf “autotelic” covers most of the tropae, my vote is there, excepting victim. This is a person who has been in the business, professionally for more than twenty years. Nothing we read indicates that he is unintelligent. He has had sufficient experience since the initial success of N&S to have a glimmer of the way publicity and fandom work. As in his acting, he learns as he goes. He has been dedicated\nto a demanding profession from at least his early teens. The profession appears to be his lodestar, to which he has, and does, dedicate his entire mental and physical energy. Is he shy? Is he humble? Perhaps.Perhaps he has been finding a public persona with which he is comfortable, and which works with his own personality. (and appeals to fans and to the media machine) Perhaps those tags are simply a bit of the whole. Perhaps he is far more intent on the profession. Acting. Not celeb. We will, of course, interpret according to our own dreams, hopes, needs? and analyse every detail from that perspective.\nfitzg said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 1:14 pm | Reply\na corollary of this, of course, is that he has his own “fantasy” of how his fans should be. 🙂\nAnd, of course, fans come in certain tropes…:)\nbelizec said this on\tJune 29, 2012 at 8:12 am | Reply\nabsolutely. That would be a great post, although it would hit on so many nerves that people wouldn’t speak to me.\nOh this is just so much fun. Would you marry me, my smart and great friend?\nDidion said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 2:35 pm | Reply\nMaybe (Servetus tilts her head, coyly).\nPersonally, I see/read RA as a functional (socially adapted, people-pleasing, work oriented) eccentric (phobic/fearful yet coping, geek with control issues) with a great sense of humour. Oxymoronic creature, that is. No need to remind me, Servetus, from mirror mirror on the wall something similar lurks at me, I suppose.\nWhat you do incessantly remind us in this blog, and I tend to adore it, is that RA of our obsessions is a projection of a certain image (precisely, images – not necessarily congruent) – made up out of various roles he played (enhanced by various interpretations and evaluations of critics and general public) and messages he sends about himself through interviews and public appearances. And then, all that is open to interpretation because it is fragmentary in a high degree, missing crucial parts we need to constitute „round“ human-like character. What we are dealing with is similar to a literary character – we infer a coherent personality out of remarks, signals, suggestions or allusions we get from various „texts“. And, obviously, we do it according to our deep-structure needs and desires…\nEvidently, we do almost the same with real people around us, but there we have immediateness, possibility of direct contact, as well as all the imperfections of communication – living and evolving, but frequently defective and fallible.\nFinally, not to forget: observed entities tend to change their normal, sui generis behaviours – in the worlds of physics as well as in the worlds of show business.\nbelizec said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 3:10 pm | Reply\nyour comment gets at one of my fundamental problems in epistemology. On the one hand I agree that what we get is a text that we have to interpret. It’s not clear why this should be different for a real person we know as opposed to one we don’t, and yet pragmatically speaking it is, which points at there being something “there.” I wonder sometimes if our belief in rationalism is so stringent that when we actually interact with people in the flesh, we create difficulties in order to bolster our convictions that something is “there.”\nSorry about that. Got a little carried away there.\nAnd yes, I agree that it would make sense for Armitage to change his behaviors under observation. Since I do. Maybe I need him to be a functional adult because I need me to be one — so my investment in his essential wholeness is also a personal one, as well as a rational assumption to make. As I said in the comments on Pinup’s blog, if he weren’t a competent moral agent I couldn’t excuse myself writing about him like this.\nTo put simply the core of postkantian & poststructural epistemology, I love to think that I left all hope at knowing something (especially someone) entirely and reliably, let alone objectively, and that I enjoy the game of interpretation that allows irrational (un/subconciense, intuition and imagination) to equal reason. Of course, that is what I love to think, because I also need faith in coming to a meaning or illusion of coherence – of events and phenomena, beings and things. And I don’t think that you’ve got carried away, not in a bad sense of the word.\nIt seems to me that, in fact, I got carried away with analogy of reading real and fictional characters: there must be certain „surplus“in reality.\nre: “surplus” in reality, I agree. Though I don’t know how to describe / define it.\nI was distracted early on in the post by “And I need badly, right now, to believe in the possibility of adult men.” Ahhh, I do as well. I wonder if that specimen of the (emotionally mature) adult male human is so rare that once one is found, it should be separated from the other men and kept safe in a reserve as are done with some endangered animals.\nAnyway, I voted for the autotelic trope. I’ve been reflecting on it for a few hours now and I guess I voted for it because that’s how I pretty much live. I had thought it was the best choice based on what he has said and done, but now I find myself re-analyzing what I know and I disagree. I suspect he likely takes some jobs ‘just for the money’ vs a personal challenge/fulfillment. On the other hand, I guess that could be one of his rewards or desires or just fulfilling a basic human need to have food and shelter. RA is still such an enigma to me. Perhaps Mr. Armitage is playing the publicity game quite well after all. 🙂\nPS- That pic from Ultimate Force always makes me crack up, it is just too hilarious.\nfunctional adult male game reserve: yes, although one wonders about the socialization aspect.\none of the smart things about your comment is raising very directly the possibility that staying out of publicity is also a way to be involved in publicity. I would say he’s no fool.\nThat plot in UF is so ridiculous that it’s appropriate for it to end with that image, no? Speaking of doing things for the money (or the experience).\nRe the point of his real or perceived publicity shyness: I remember very early on, I think it was when he did The Impressionists, he mentioned in a message that he will do “some well chosen publicity, nothing too flashy” and that seems to be his premise till this day. I also remember that a few years ago (during RH) there was a female radio presenter who had a bit of a crush on him, mentioned him frequently and wanted him on her show, but he declined through his agents, saying he wouldn’t do interviews if he hadn’t a new project to promote. It doesn’t surprise me that he sticks to that as well and until Hobbit PR starts, he has no other project to promote. He never did interviews or public appearances just to promote himself, if interviews didn’t coincided with the start of a new series it surely was the finale or the release of the DVD. And he never once attended an event as a mere guest, hoping to be seen and photographed, always as a presenter and ambassador of the show he’s currently in. He once was on the guest list for a film premier and didn’t turn up. He is also on the record as hating red carpet event and being a very happy man if he never had to attend one again.\nBTW: RAonline has the disappeared Times interview you mentioned, it is quite interesting with regards to his shyness: http://richardarmitageonline.com/articles/TheTimes-20081018.html\nThere are various degrees of shyness and I think he is one of those who are perfectly capable to talk to strangers or small groups of strangers when meeting fans or journalists, but may have problems in situations when he is observed, like on a red carped or a stage as himself. I found it fascinating that he said he developed techniques to make himself invisible through body language because he doesn’t like being observed in the street.\nI always love me some more data, esp this data point about not showing up for a film premiere.\nExcellent point about shyness — this is part of what I was trying to do in differentiating avoidance of fans vs press vs stage fright — as I too have the weird situation that there are certain situations that make me shy to the point of having to flee (doctors’ offices, for instance).\nAnd thanks for the link.\nIt was the premier of Sienna Miller’s Factory Girl, must have been 2007. It was the only time his name appeared on such a list but no picture or report to prove he was there. Obviously he probably has a social life we know little about but if he would mix with SM’s crowd I would think we would hear about it more often.\nI’m sure that’s true.\nBTW this is the interview where he talks about his ability to disappear in a crowd when he wants to. He say people that don’t have a lot of confidence and don’t like to be looked at do it.\nlet’s try the link again: http://richardarmitageonline.com/articles/SundayPeople20081026.html\nthis was interesting to reread. I wonder if he pretends he doesn’t have confidence, or if he doesn’t have it and confidence is an act for him, or one of those things he’s only gradually learned.\nI am one of those people who absolutely cannot disappear in a crowd. People don’t forget having seen me. But I don’t think I’m particularly confident.\nI tend to think he falls somewhere between virtuous and autotelic. He’s been a part of the entertainment machine long enough to know what he needs to do in order to meet his own standards and goals, so the idea of him as a victim doesn’t sit well with me. While I may joke about him needing new PR people, I’m sure they know what they are doing.\nI guess my overall picture of him is that he strikes me as the type of person who will be happy as long as he fulfills his own goals If that happens to coincide with what others want for him, that’s just extra.\njasrangoon said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 7:51 pm | Reply\nand you know, if that’s the case, he’s doing really well. A lot of people don’t make it that far in their lives.\nVoted for autotelic! He’s definitely his own person and I really like that about him. And, as Angie-Fedoralady put it once on TAE, I want for Richard what Richard wants for Richard! 🙂 Btw., so THAT’s the Burberry coat (pic.#3)!!! 🙂\nJudit said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:11 pm | Reply\nyes — that is the Burberry coat. Somewhat overexposed. 1300 quid retail.\nBut- it’s a quality piece which will last forever, so it’s good value for money. 🙂\nyeah, he can leave it to his nephew … 🙂\nAnother fascinating post, servetus. Interesting that quite a few people chose “autotelic.” I chose it too. (And I enjoyed learning a new word!)\nI remember that he said, speaking of his former teacher Miss Pat, that he started out in her school being afraid to disappoint her, and by the end he was concerned about disappointing himself. Isn’t that autotelic?\nAlso, seems to me that being in the public eye could be seriously disorienting to one’s value system, and the only way to stay focused would be to become autotelic.\nSaralee said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:13 pm | Reply\nOne of the things a teacher who is teaching a skill usually tries to do is get the student to be able to evaluate and improve his own work, and part of that process is imposing external standards of performance that are then supposed to become sufficiently internalized that the individual can apply them him / herself once the teacher has disappeared. Autotelic means literally “own ends,” so yes, if he took what he learned from his teacher(s) and made it his own, that would be autotelic. It’s what a teacher most wants for a student, and if she had heard that I’m sure she would have cried.\nRe the number of people picking that — it’s a rhetorical dynamic that if the argumentation is successful the reader is going to tend to agree. I should write more about the potential conflict between being autotelic and a people-pleaser. This is a really hard conflict to navigate in my experience.\n“Autotelic” – I’ve learned a new word today! 🙂\nConsidering RA has said that he’d find a river boat holiday dull and would much rather prefer to go skydiving or something, I doubt he’s actually an introvert – would have thought skydiving is something that would be too overwhelming for the introverted nervous system! Perhaps he’s an ambivert – a little bit of both? Either way I reckon he’s a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. Whatever!\nYou’ve given us all plenty of things to think about now, Servetus. You’ll turn us all into philosophers one of these days! ;D\nTraxy said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 9:47 pm | Reply\nI always forget to remind people that I’m using introverted in the MBTI / Jungian sense. It’s not about excitement, it’s about the energy (or drain of same) that you derive from being around other people. Introverts can be risk-friendly or daredevils. 🙂\nYou know, the unexamined life is not worth living.\nI think we have too little evidence to answer the introvert question but introverted (and a little shy) as opposed to terribly shy makes a lot of sense to me (we discussed this at Angie’s blog). He is often described as very focussed on set and at Sir Ian’s event it looks as if he kept to himself, interacted with fans when required but did not interact that much with his cast mates. It may just be what he chooses to do. He seems to be well liked everywhere and the Hobbit cast is supposed to be one big happy family, it seems unlikely that he couldn’t hang out with them if he wanted to. But their dynamics are impossible tell just from this.\nyeah. we’ll never get the whole picture of what happened on that set — which is fine. I wonder sometimes about distracted / dreamy / preoccupied. He’s commented on having been described as aloof and rejected that designation.\nI think you will already guess, what I consider RA to be anyway, so I won’t reveal what I chose in your poll.\nWhat a wonderful article, Servetus! I admire you for your sound analysis of all possibilities. I prepared a tiny article about RA’s late appearance on stage, but now am hesitant to throw in my little nonsense ;o)\ncdoart said this on\tJune 28, 2012 at 10:09 pm | Reply\nI linked it in Legenda 33, for those who are interested. Let’s call it “Clever Armitage.”\nI didn’t vote because I think there’s an intertwining of all the tropes when it comes to RA — except for the victim bit. I don’t seem him as a victim at all. I identify with a lot of what I see/read about RA and that’s how I interpret his persona. Because I would stand in the back of a crowd, I understand why someone else would stand in the back. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m right about my perceptions. Belizec’s comment about him being a functional eccentric was interesting because I’ve wondered about that at times.\nI think he was naïve in the beginning and was overwhelmed by his fans reactions. If he’s the shy and unassuming person I this he is, he probably never imagined that he would have such a large and loyal fan base. It took him awhile to adjust to the reality and he’s learned (or been coached) to interact differently since then.\nsloan said this on\tJune 29, 2012 at 7:59 pm | Reply\nwell, you could vote for all — this poll allowed more than one answer.\nI’m sure he never anticipated having a big group of fans or this particular group of us. Poor man 🙂\nIs there a confusion with victim vs the fact that he brings out that maternal “feeling”? There are times when it’s like …. do I want to make him homemade chicken noodle soup or take him to bed? He does bring out that tendancy in me at least. There is a vulnerability but I wouldn’t say victim. Unless I am missing something…\n@Rob said this on\tJune 30, 2012 at 3:30 am | Reply\nI agree that he tends to bring out the maternal instinct. Even though he’s one of the more virile actors around today, there is still something about him that retains a boyishness. It’s something of an innocence that other actors don’t seem to have…maybe something to do with that late bloomer in him. Or it could just be that I’m older than him and not usually attracted to men younger than me.\nnaivete, so to speak.\nWell, the stuff that was reference on Richard Armitage Confessions was people saying they were worried he was going to get (figuratively) screwed by other actors’ ambitions and/or managements. That’s not so typically a maternal reaction as the one you describe.\nI feel that way about almost all my friends, though, if they’re sick or suffering.\nHaving read this quote today from the scan of the EW article that Jas provided, I’m wondering how it fits in, if at all, with what’s been discussed.\n“It’s nice to be cut off from that- (the intense scrutiny) otherwise you become self-conscious…. I envy that original cast of Lord of the Rings. They didn’t know what they were involved in.”\nTo me it sounds like he has been quite comfortable with the insularity the film production has provided so far, and isn’t looking forward to the hype that is to follow.\nI suppose self-consciousness is the worst thing for an actor. You want to forget who you are and who you are playing.\n[…] to a “D” reading (see caveats about the chain of evidence in print interviews here [second bullet point]), simply because everything we read reflects the impulses of the interviewer to couch information. […]\nStay away from Armitage! Preface and “A” Reading « Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tAugust 8, 2012 at 5:57 am | Reply\n[…] that it also relies on a tropic intervention, albeit a more broadly popular one among fans: “virtuous Armitage.” For various reasons I’ve articulated in different places on blog and won’t […]\nStay away from Armitage! The “B” reading « Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tAugust 8, 2012 at 6:08 am | Reply\n[…] someone said recently, the incessant topic around which this blog turns with regard to Richard Armitage is the evaluation o…. We don’t know him personally, we don’t spend time with him, we have snippets of […]\nRichard III won’t make me squee. Right? « Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tAugust 24, 2012 at 2:41 am | Reply\n[…] part IV of this series and in the “Armitage barbatus” series and in the “tropes” post, all of which I still want to pursue and complete. But I realized recently that this […]\nMy Richard Armitage: An interpretation. Preface « Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tNovember 17, 2012 at 5:53 am | Reply\nFabulous analysis! I found this from your RA biography link. For me, RA standing in the back would be “other”. I just keep thinking of how they would line us up for choir performances in school–by height–mixing males and females, and vocal parts to create a stereo kind of sound.\nSo as the tall guy, I’m guessing that RA might have been asked to stand in the back a lot for shots in school and such. And maybe he is unconsciously continuing that early training by standing in the back of Hobbit promo shots. Ha!\nGratiana Lovelace said this on\tNovember 17, 2012 at 9:21 pm | Reply\nThanks. I don’t disagree (I was also “tall” and constantly in the back row, though I’m not that tall), but there’s also the question of his own take on the habit / convention of tall people in the back that he’s clearly participating in here. I think he is *also* someone who likes to stand in the back.\n[…] a judgment of someone’s intelligence based on the kind of evidence accessibly to us — interviews that are like a game of telephone most of the time — I’d have to meet him to evaluate that. But I emphatically agree with the rest of that […]\nArmitage leads with the feelings, or: How thick is Richard? A beginning. « Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tDecember 5, 2012 at 2:40 am | Reply\n[…] shy Armitage head duck. A feature of the “modest Armitage” and the “bashful Armitage” tropes, […]\nArmitage flens? or, how I love a guy who can cry | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tMarch 23, 2013 at 1:28 am | Reply\n[…] my view of tropes in understanding and explaining Richard Armitage, see here. I simply insert the term below without […]\n[…] and provided evidence for it, the legitimacy of my own introversion falls into jeopardy. We embrace patterns of Armitage behaviors based on our impressions and our identities — indeed, the reason why we’re fans is that […]\nme + milk and cheese + Richard Armitage + fandom identity battles, part 2 | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tNovember 13, 2013 at 4:06 am | Reply\n[…] a fundamentally important piece of our perception of Armitage for most fans; that is, the “virtuous Armitage” trope that is so popular among fans. There was someone else there, too, the guy who made […]\nFor documentation purposes, or: If Alexander Pope were part of the Armitage Army, he could rewrite The Rape of the Lock | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tDecember 18, 2013 at 3:42 am | Reply\n[…] coming up with headcanon, something a lot of us do, the headcanon(s) we build about Armitage (via tropes) fascinate me. Who is Richard Armitage for me, for you? One of the most obscure parts of […]\nA current Richard Armitage puzzle I’m pondering | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tJanuary 14, 2014 at 2:51 am | Reply\n[…] Before July 2012, many fewer candid photos of Richard Armitage with fans circulated for general consumption on the web than afterwards because determining when and where he could be met wasn’t easy. The location of the Robin Hood set was known, and a few images of Armitage with fans visiting the set surfaced during that period, although I’ve been told that fans at the time debated vociferously whether it was acceptable to plan to try to meet him in this way. Fan meetings and pictures with Armitage continued to remain an isolated pleasure in proportion to the number of people who might have liked to have them. If I understand correctly, one of the first mass opportunities to see Armitage at work or meet him was the taping of the studio portions of Vicar of Dibley late in 2006, but with the exception those with tickets, most fans who came did not succeed in doing so. A bevy of staffers collected items brought with hopes of obtaining his signature in garbage bags to pass on to him. After that, fans in London sometimes found out where Spooks was filming, or stumbled across it accidentally, and obtained photos; a fan or two who had a friend who worked on set smuggled her in. Armitage indicated at least once (while filming at Wandsworth for Spooks 9) that if he knew fans had been waiting a long time in hope, he would go out to meet them. The most likely opportunities to meet Armitage and get the treasured photo were probably the BAFTA red carpets at which Armitage appeared in 2007, 2009, and 2010, where he chatted with fans in the waiting areas and signed books, drawings, pictures and other items and leaned into pictures. Other possibilities were offered by scheduled media interviews, with fans awaiting at arrival and departure points outside of studios to catch a glimpse and hopefully an autograph or photo. A few other chances followed — such as the Old Vic 24 Hour Plays in 2010, where one could purchase a ticket to an after party for cast and patrons of the event — and the Captain America premieres in Los Angeles and New York in July, 2011, where he showed himself as very friendly to fans whether encountered on the red carpet or off it. Though Armitage never showed any sign of reluctance or anger in regard to these meetings or other more spontaneous ones that made it into Armitageworld, some fans insisted as late as the summer of 2012 that Armitage wanted to avoid such encounters, a trope that I called “I want to be left alone Armitage.” […]\nme + Richard Armitage fan selfies: musings on self, presence, and the proximity quest, a beginningion | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tJanuary 21, 2014 at 6:49 am | Reply\n[…] Armitage in light of statements in the spaces between statements he made — is, in fact, how the Richard Armitage tropes developed. Hence the angst and frustration and arguments that often appear right after a new […]\n[…] a few years ago, I came up with a name for the action of praising Armitage for being a good guy: the trope of “virtuous Armitage.” It’s never been my favorite trope for describing him, mostly because even the kindest […]\nWhy I have always disliked the Gospel of Friendship according to Richard Armitage | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tDecember 18, 2014 at 2:37 am | Reply\n[…] conversion experiences. We’ve got a theology and rules about behavior, and we’ve got traditions about the Armitage. We see in him some traditional virtues. We’ve got relics. We’ve gone on […]\nme + the richard armitage religion | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tMay 20, 2015 at 4:45 am | Reply\n[…] Now — Armitage has periodically referenced what he sees as his struggles with his career or dealing with his career himself. I typically accepted what British fans said about these statements — that they reflected a culturally typical modesty or self-deprecation. Some of them have been honest or disarming, as when he told greendragon that auditioning was awful and he’d had to play a mental game with himself to get through it. Sometimes that seemed to fit well, as when he stated that when he had to drive his car to the Spooks set, he’d get there early so as not to seem to be bragging. At other times, it didn’t fit well. I’m thinking of the times in 2010/11 when he was quoted as saying that he was trying to get through his career with the least amount of talent possible, something UK fans at the time told me was extreme, even taken as self-deprecation. Or the uncut version of the interview with David Stephenson, which includes remarks about him taking roles that Rupert Penry-Jones didn’t want, to the point that the interview ends up reassuring him slightly. Or the rather sardonic remarks at the end of 2016, when asked perhaps one too many questions about possible roles, stating he was there if JK Rowling wanted to call. I don’t deny that we fans invest these things with meanings — but that’s always the case. No trope works universally, even if things like “standing in back” seem obvious. […]\nQ: When will Richard Armitage’s fandom reject his victimhood narrative? A: When Richard Armitage stops feeding it to us | Me + Richard Armitage said this on\tDecember 15, 2018 at 4:32 am | Reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1230314"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6826369166374207,"wiki_prob":0.6826369166374207,"text":"Visita strava.com\nMejores resultados\nDisculpa, pero esta entrada está disponible sólo en Inglés Estadounidense y Francés. For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in this site default language. You may click one of the links to switch the site language to another available language.\nUnited in Passion: French Cycling Clubs - Part 1\nTexto de: Foucauld Duchange\nFotos de: Jochen Hoops\nA day on the road with the cyclists of Association Sportive (A.S.) Meudon and the Rallye du Toboggan Meudonnais\nWhile Great Britain has had a cycling boom – thanks to a lucky combination of two Tour de France Grand Départs; national success on the track and, through Team Sky, on the road; and an infatuation with fixed-wheel bikes and luxury merino jerseys – France has been doing things in its own way.\nIn the land of the Gauls, you only have to walk into a café in Lycra for one of the locals to pull you over and tell you a story about legendary cyclist Richard Virenque, or an uncle of theirs who once climbed Ventoux. But if you tell your friends that cycling is your passion, more often than not they look at you as some kind of old-fashioned nerd.\nIn France, cycling is no longer a way out of poverty for the ‘convicts of the road’, but neither is it yet ‘the new golf’ of the upper-middle classes. Cycling may be growing, but as a sport it remains the prerogative of cycling clubs, clubs in which everyone is loyal to their jersey – a jersey that is ideally as colorful and as peppered with logos as possible!\nThe Federations\nAt the origin of all clubs is a natural desire: to gather together around a shared passion. Thus, as cycling as a sport was spluttering into being, the first cyclists were uniting in various gentlemen’s societies. The Union Vélocipédique de France (French Cyclists’ Union) was founded in 1881.\nThe world of cycling clubs in France is at once simple – since it stems from a social and organisational need that’s basically inherent in any sporting practice – and complex, because it is split into four federations.\nThe Fédération Française de Cyclisme (FFC) trains and organises the racing programme of French champions and future champions – and we’ll come back to this in a separate blog.\nThe Fédération Français de Cyclotourisme (FFCT – for ‘cyclotourists’ or touring cyclists) works to improve conditions for cyclists the length and breadth France. It is the FFCT that, through the voluntary work undertaken by its clubs, runs randonnées – non-competitive organised rides – that encompass everything from your local fun-run to the prestigious 1,200-kilometre (750-mile) Paris-Brest-Paris.\nIn parallel, two multi-sport federations also issue cycling licences: the Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail (FSGT – originally a workers’ movement) and L’Union Française des Œuvres Laïques d’Éducation Physique (UFOLEP – originally part of a mass-education movement) let enthusiasts compete in a sporty yet friendly way. Their races differ from the FFC’s in that there are no prizes and these races are generally less expensive to organise.\nHow clubs work\nMeudon cycling club, known as L'ASM Cyclo, is based in an inner suburb of Paris, just a stone’s throw from the upper Chevreuse valley. It’s the cycling arm of the municipal sporting association, known as ASM, that is over 80 years old. It's a classic FFCT clubs.\nWith a healthy hundred or so members, ASM is perfectly sized: able to host interesting events but not overwhelmed by sheer volume of members and admin. The average age of its members is 50. The youngest is 19 and the oldest, 81. It must also be noted that only five members are women.\nWithin the ASM, the ‘cyclos’ (FFCT) and the ‘coursiers’ (racers of the FSGT and UFOLEP), mix freely. Cyclos look after the marshaling at the annual ASM race, and the coursiers pitch in on the signposting and scoring at the club’s yearly non-competitive ‘rallyes’ (something resembling a sportive event).\nAnnual fees are €40, and members benefit from club discounts on kit, as well as partnerships with several bike dealers. There are Sunday rides and training sessions, and the management also organizes a programme that includes weekend activities and week-long getaways. The local town hall puts money in the club's pot in exchange for the help of club members in organizing events.\nThe club run\nEvery Sunday, ASM members meet at 8 A.M. on the edge of the Meudon Forest. The club has around 20 routes, which it cycles through in either one direction or the other.\nThe cyclists divide into three groups, and Group 3 leads out at its habitual pace of 23 km/h (14 mph). We were meant to accompany Group 2, around 50 cyclists rolling at an average of 25 km/h (15.5 mph), but this week most of the regulars are away at the rallye of neighbouring club, Boulogne-Billancourt. So instead we are to join Group 1, made up of around 20 fast cyclos and coursiers who’ve reached the end of their season.\nAs we get going on the ride – 90 km (56 miles), with a saw-tooth profile – we get to know Christian. He joined the club when trying to get fit again after being hit by a car. Riding with the group helps him push himself, but it also keeps him accountable to getting out of bed in the morning – a motivating factor for a fair number of the members.\nAfter the Côte de la Vacheresse hill, Gille-Antoine tells us about his journey to becoming a member. He’d been looking for people to ride with after getting into cycling while travelling, and Christian had invited him along. Ever since, he makes the trip from Paris every Sunday, and takes pleasure riding fast and without encumbrances. It’s very pleasant riding with a group in which everybody knows each other and knows how to ride together. The strongest wait at the top of hills, but the peloton is pretty uniform. As for the older members, they design an alternative route, away from the steepest hills, that doesn’t take them away from the convivial atmosphere for too long.\nCoursiers can be spotted thanks to their deep-section rims. Vincent raced for the club when he was a teenager. Ranked among the best in the region, he quickly became disenchanted when he joined the seniors: the era was not ‘clean’, and the prospect of prize money tempted a few of the local donkeys to use certain ‘products’ to turn themselves into thoroughbreds. Vincent hung up his bike for 20 years, but with the passing of time his desire to ride returned. In the Île-de-France region around Paris there are few pursuits that rival cycling when it comes to getting out of the city and into nature.\nWe take advantage of a puncture stop to chat to other coursiers, a group of them who will start training again at the start of November and will remain together until racing starts. Meudon is the perfect training ground. Situated next to a ridge it's easy to concoct a weeknight route that takes in thirty or so climbs.\nRoland is known to be the only one to “descend in the 11”, and he drags us to the edge of our speed limits. This year, he raced 32 times. He encourages us to give it a try: “Go take a beating in a cat-3 race, you’ll see if it appeals or not. And it’ll give you some pace when you’re doing sportives.”\nAfter a final few bumps, the peloton slowly dissipates. A post-ride drink is not customary, but with a new clubhouse you never know, that might change.\nDécouvrez cette activité\nThe “Meudonnais Toboggan”\nThe Toboggan Meudonnais is the ASM’s annual \"rallye\". Now on its 38th edition, the perfectly-signposted ride is one of the best known in the Île-de-France. While the route selection – a bit of a ‘Best of’ the Chevreuse valley – and its place on the calendar contribute to this, it’s mainly because of the oysters served at the feed stations that the Toboggan is famous.\nNo less than 70 volunteers are needed to make the rallye a success. Thankfully, even the least active club members answer the call to signpost the route at more than 100 intersections, manage the pre-dawn sign-on, shuck the oysters, or sort through the thousands of entries and pick out the participants who deserve special mention – the youngest rider or the most experienced, or the best-represented club, for example.\nAt the Toboggan, as at most rallyes, there are several routes on offer – here 45, 70 and 90 kilometres (28, 43 and 56 miles) – which makes this non-competitive event accessible to as many people as possible. There are small climbers and big hitters, the highly trained and the barely trained, beginners with all the gear and no idea and past masters in tatty old kit.\nThe oysters surprise more than one participant, and the vegetarians console themselves with Camembert. The jerseys on show reveal the presence of clubs of all types, and from all over the region. There is the Amicale Cyclo de Savigny-sur-Orge, the Entente Sportive de Nanterre, the Rapha Cycling Club, the Sporting de Levallois and even expatriates from the Paris Cycling Group.\nThe ASM and Strava\nASM’s Strava club was created five years ago by Baptiste Amiet, the current president, at a time when only four riders (all racers) were on Strava. Thanks to virtual club challenges, despite the real-world club’s average age, there are now more than 70 members.\nThe Strava Club is one step in larger modernisation work: ASM’s website is old, its forum deserted, links broken, and the latest results and reports are no longer put online. Today, the club essentially runs on email, but with 100 members and the different sections, the to-and-fro easily becomes unmanageable. In Baptiste’s view changing this, in order to centralise information, improve participation and attract new faces – is essential. Strava Clubs’ new functionalities should help with this, and at no cost to the club.\nDescarga Strava gratis.\nRuns a creative studio, ride a few roads and write on the XXIe century in Paris on laconjuration.com\nPublicaciones relacionadas:\nConversación:\nÚnete a Strava gratis:\nRegistrarse con el correo electrónico","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line848789"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5112122297286987,"wiki_prob":0.5112122297286987,"text":"How We Got From There to Here\nJanuary 10, 2016 January 10, 2016 ~ lmickens\nIn 1848, a wave of democratic revolutions swept across more than fifty nations in Europe and parts of Latin America. Ideas such as nationalism, socialism, and liberalism, as well as growing labor militancy meant that the status quo of royal absolutism was no longer tenable for many Europeans who were restless for social and political change. To make a long story short, the revolutions failed for the most part, leading to the re-entrenchment of reactionary politics across Europe. However, the desire for a definitive end to feudalism and the establishment of liberal democratic nation-states did not end with the defeat of the revolutions of 1848, although it would be almost a century before this dream was realized for most of Western Europe. During this interim period, the Continent experienced numerous uprisings and skirmishes, two world wars, a detour into fascism, the Holocaust, and the largest refugee crisis in human history. The nations of Eastern Europe that had fallen behind the Iron Curtain would have to wait longer for their liberal democratic moment, although it is still very much up for debate whether the post-Soviet period has yielded real liberal democracy for the former Warsaw pact countries.\nWhenever the political problems of the Middle East and/or Islamic world are mentioned, I find it odd that the West’s own tortuous path to liberal democracy is largely glossed over, as if one day, all of Western Europe woke up to find constitutional monarchies and well-run social democracies had replaced the feudal system, with no political agitation or social change required. MLK famously asserted, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” and this is true regardless of whether the oppressed are black Southerners in the twentieth century or peasants in eighteenth century France. As the failed revolutions of 1848 show, “progress” is never a given, and more often than not, a society can advance in certain aspects, while going backwards in others. It is up to the oppressed to keep agitating, even when the forces of reaction seem to be in an unassailable position.\nAs I wrote my previous post on Peter Hitchens’ yearning for the “good old days” of the Blitz, I realized that both he and the late Christopher Hitchens both make the mistake of assuming that history is more or less over for the West, to borrow a phrase from Francis Fukuyama. For Peter, the “real England” as embodied by traditional rural life began to decline during the Industrial Revolution, and will probably disappear for good during this century. While England and the West may continue into the future, it will not be the kind of world that Peter is willing to recognize as valid. For Christopher, I get the impression that he thought that the West had reached the maximum level of progress possible, and needed to export these values through the barrel of a gun to recalcitrant Islamists intent on threatening the West. However, like many liberal whites with an inflated view of their own enlightenment, Christopher took offense when he was reminded of his own blind spots, particularly around women, and refused to admit that he could be wrong about anything. If Peter thinks that most Westerners must have been like Thomas Cramner, Christopher seems to have thought that most were like Voltaire. I don’t believe in the “Great Man” view of history, but in terms of Western intellectual history, progress was very much done by a handful of eccentrics, while the bulk of the population engaged in folk magic. The establishment of free and mandatory public education is what helped improve the minds of the European masses, and the bio-medical revolution made going to “cunning men” and other folk magicians less appealing.\nIt took one hundred years for the countries of Western Europe to establish functioning liberal democracies after the failed revolutions of 1948, with the notable exception of Spain and Portugal, which remained under fascist control under the 1970s. Given the West’s own difficult political evolution, it may take the Middle East one hundred years to shake off Islamism. While Islamism, whether of the ISIS, Wahhabi, Hizbollah, or Houthi variety, may seem to be the only game in town, there are some brave dissenters against religious orthodoxy in the region. “Arabs Without God: Atheism and freedom of belief in the Middle East” by Brian Whitaker provides a fascinating look at atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers in a region where belief is taken for granted. There is no way of knowing exactly how many nonbelievers there are in the region for obvious reasons, but Whitaker quotes a fascinating Gallup poll from 2012 that indicates that 19 percent of Saudis proclaimed themselves “not religious” and 5 percent described themselves as “atheist.” Given that Saudi Arabia is a country that punishes deviation from religious orthodoxy with death, these numbers are nothing short of astonishing. Perhaps these individuals could be the Voltaires, Spinozas, or Diderots of the Middle East.\nThe history of the world is still being written, with Fukuyama’s post-Cold War predictions about the end being near having been thoroughly discredited. I don’t expect the economic and governance systems that will be employed one hundred years into the future to be similar to what we have today, whether in the West or anywhere else. Hopefully, some kind of linear progress will have been made, but the revolutions of 1848 show that going backwards is just as likely an outcome as going forwards.\n< Previous Keep Calm and Carry On\nNext > Who Are the Good Samaritans?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1372385"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8829298615455627,"wiki_prob":0.8829298615455627,"text":"Tebbit v Mowlam\nIn the red corner we have Mo Mowlam and in the blue corner Norman Tebbit.\nThese two political heavyweights are going toe to toe on the North East stage.\nBut in the battle for the audiences former Ulster Secretary Mo is outselling ex-Tory Norman two to one.\nShe holds court at Alnwick Playhouse, on October 5, followed by Mr Tebbit on October 22.\nBilled as Two Points of View - An Audience With, the evenings will give the public a chance to hear from both former ministers on their politics and question them on current issues.\nSteve Cowton, Playhouse manager, said: \"Mo Mowlam is outselling Norman Tebbit by about two to one now but I'm sure that is just because she is first - I don't want to be accused of political bias.\"\nTickets from Alnwick Playhouse on (01665) 510 785 for #9 (#8 concession) or #15 for both. Shows start at 7.30pm.\nMo Mowlam\nOnce described as a national treasure, Mo Mowlam regularly topped the polls as the UK's most popular political figure.\nA key member of Tony Blair's Cabinet and Ulster Secretary at a crucially important time in its history. She was replaced by Peter Mandelson in 1999 and became the Cabinet enforcer but called it a day in 2001.\nThis year the former Newcastle University lecturer took on an unlikely new job - as a sex expert on lads' magazine Zoo.\nShe is used to causing controversy - she called on the British and US governments to open talks with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.\nHer straight-talking remarks have included saying that she was \"no great fan of the Royals\" and admitting trying pot.\nOf Blair she says: \"He's screwed up badly over the war as well as other things which he hasn't delivered. But give me another person who would be as good or charismatic a leader as him. I can't think of one.\"\nKnown as the Chingford Skinhead, Norman Beresford Tebbit was a political polecat.\nNow 73, the former MP for Chingford was a member of Margaret Thatcher's inner sanctum.\nOriginally a journalist on the Financial Times, he entered politics in 1970 and was a close ally of the Iron lady, serving as her Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry and President of the Board of Trade in the 80s.\nIn the Brighton hotel bombing he was injured and his wife, Margaret, was permanently disabled.\nHe is an extreme Eurosceptic and was quoted as saying: \"Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.\"\nNorman Tebbit decided not to stand in the 1992 General Election. Instead, he was granted a peerage and entered the House of Lords.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1273205"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6655924320220947,"wiki_prob":0.6655924320220947,"text":"Artwork by Sandbox Studio, Chicago\nBy Caitlyn Buongiorno\nIn 1916, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which established the modern view of gravity as a warping of the fabric of spacetime. The theory predicted that objects that interact with gravity could disturb that fabric, sending ripples across it.\nAny object that interacts with gravity can create gravitational waves. But only the most catastrophic cosmic events make gravitational waves powerful enough for us to detect. Now that observatories have begun to record gravitational waves on a regular basis, scientists are discussing how dark matter—only known so far to interact with other matter only through gravity—might create gravitational waves strong enough to be found.\nThe spacetime blanket\nIn the universe, space and time are invariably linked as four-dimensional spacetime. For simplicity, you can think of spacetime as a blanket suspended above the ground. Jupiter might be a single Cheerio on top of that blanket. The sun could be a tennis ball. R136a1—the most massive known star—might be a 40-pound medicine ball.\nEach of these objects weighs down the blanket where it sits: the heavier the object, the bigger the dip in the blanket. Like objects of different weights on a blanket, objects of different masses have different effects on the fabric of spacetime. A dip in spacetime is gravitational field.\nThe gravitational field of one object can affect another object. The other object might fall into the first object’s gravitational field and orbit around it, like the moon around Earth, or Earth around the sun.\nAlternatively, two bodies with gravitational fields might spiral toward each other, getting closer and closer until they collide. As this happens, they create ripples in spacetime—gravitational waves.\nOn September 14, 2015, scientists used the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, to make the first direct observation of gravitational waves, part of the buildup to the crash between two massive black holes.\nSince that first detection, the LIGO collaboration—together with the collaboration that runs a partner gravitational-wave observatory called Virgo—has detected gravitational waves from at least 10 more mergers of black holes and, in 2017, the first merger between two neutron stars.\nDark matter is believed to be five times as prevalent as visible matter. Its gravitational effects are seen throughout the universe. Scientists think they have yet to definitively see gravitational waves caused by dark matter, but they can think of numerous ways this might happen.\nPrimordial black holes\nScientists have seen the gravitational effects of dark matter, so they know it must be there—or at least, something must be going on to cause those effects. But so far, they’ve never directly detected a dark matter particle, so they’re not sure exactly what dark matter is like.\nOne idea is that some of the dark matter could actually be primordial black holes.\nImagine the universe as an infinitely large petri dish. In this scenario, the Big Bang is the point where matter-bacteria begins to grow. That point quickly expands, moving outward to encompass more and more of the petri dish. If that growth is slightly uneven, certain areas will become more densely inhabited by matter than others.\nThese pockets of dense matter—mostly photons at this point in the universe—might have collapsed under their own gravity and formed early black holes.\n“I think it’s an interesting theory, as interesting as a new kind of particle,” says Yacine Ali-Haimoud, an assistant professor of physics at New York University. “If primordial black holes do exist, it would have profound implications on the conditions in the very early universe.”\nBy using gravitational waves to learn about the properties of black holes, LIGO might be able to prove or constrain this dark matter theory.\nUnlike normal black holes, primordial black holes don’t have a minimum mass threshold they need to reach in order to form. If LIGO were to see a black hole less massive than the sun, for example, it might be a primordial black hole.\nEven if primordial black holes do exist, it’s doubtful that they account for all of the dark matter in the universe. Still, finding proof of primordial black holes would expand our fundamental understanding of dark matter and how the universe began.\nNeutron star rattles\nDark matter seems to interact with normal matter only through gravity, but, based on the way known particles interact, theorists think it’s possible that dark matter might also interact with itself.\nIf that is the case, dark matter particles might bind together to form dark objects that are as compact as a neutron star.\nWe know that stars drastically “weigh down” the fabric of spacetime around them. If the universe were populated with compact dark objects, there would be a chance that at least some of them would end up trapped inside of ordinary matter stars.\nA normal star and a dark object would interact only through gravity, allowing the two to co-exist without much of a fuss. But any disruption to the star—for example, a supernova explosion—could create a rattle-like disturbance between the resulting neutron star and the trapped dark object. If such an event occurred in our galaxy, it would create detectable gravitational waves\n“We understand neutron stars quite well,” says Sanjay Reddy, University of Washington physics professor and senior fellow with the Institute for Nuclear Theory. “If something ‘odd’ happens with gravitational waves, we would know there was potentially something new going on that might involve dark matter.”\nThe likelihood that any exist in our solar system is limited. Chuck Horowitz, Maria Alessandra Papa and Reddy recently analyzed LIGO’s data and found no indication of compact dark objects of a specific mass range within Earth, Jupiter or the sun.\nFurther gravitational-wave studies could place further constraints on compact dark objects. “Constraints are important,” says Ann Nelson, a physics professor at the University of Washington. “They allow us to improve existing theories and even formulate new ones.”\nAxion stars\nOne light dark matter candidate is the axion, named by physicist Frank Wilczek after a brand of detergent, in reference to its ability to tidy up a problem in the theory of quantum chromodynamics.\nScientists think it could be possible for axions to bind together into axion stars, similar to neutron stars but made up of extremely compact axion matter.\n“If axions exist, there are scenarios where they can cluster together and form stellar objects, like ordinary matter,” says Tim Dietrich, a LIGO-Virgo member and physicist. “We don’t know if axion stars exist, and we won’t know for sure until we find constraints for our models.”\nIf an axion star merged with a neutron star, scientists might not be able to tell the difference between the two with their current instruments. Instead, scientists would need to rely on electromagnetic signals accompanying the gravitational wave to identify the anomaly.\nIt’s also possible that axions could bunch around a binary black hole or neutron star system. If those stars then merged, the changes in the axion “cloud” would be visible in the gravitational wave signal. A third possibility is that axions could be created by the merger, an action that would be reflected in the signal.\nThis month, the LIGO-Virgo collaborations began their third observing run and, with new upgrades, expect to detect a merger event every week.\nGravitational-wave detectors have already proven their worth in confirming Einstein’s century-old prediction. But there is still plenty that studying gravitational waves can teach us. “Gravitational waves are like a completely new sense for science,” Ali-Haimoud says. “A new sense means new ways to look at all the big questions in physics.”\nA radio for dark matter\nInstead of searching for dark matter particles, a new device will search for dark matter waves.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line724486"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6749535799026489,"wiki_prob":0.6749535799026489,"text":"Chin up, road warriors\nby Vault Consulting Editors | April 30, 2008\nToday's New York Times discusses how airports are now concerned with making passengers' experiences more palatable. This is a welcome effort, considering the ever-increasing wave of delays, cancellations and other disruptions in flight schedules. It's especially good news for consultants who find themselves constantly on the go (and also for aviation consultants, who have a big job ahead of them in helping to appease aggravated travelers).\nAs some consolation, airports have been adding amenities like spas, fitness centers and walk-in medical clinics - these are great features if you're intent on spending a great deal of time in an airport. But what people really want to do is get out of the airport as fast as possible, so airports are also (finally) starting to address the issue of inefficiencies in the check-in and security process. In its new American Airlines terminal, Kennedy Airport added two additional luggage scanners and integrated them into a baggage-handling system so passengers no longer have to carry their bags to the scanner. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International is working to improve its \"people mover\" rail system; over the next three years, the airport hopes to have the system running 15 seconds faster than it runs now (every 105 seconds).\nBut before you get excited about all of these improvements, William R. DeCota, director of aviation for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said most problems passengers encounter at airports won't be permanently fixed until airspace issues are resolved. Until then, plan on a workout, a quick massage and taking a stroll around the in-house art exhibit before your flight actually takes off.\nVault's 2020 Rankings of the Best Consulting Firms to Work For in Europe!\nVault's 2020 Rankings of the Best Consulting Firms to Work for in Asia-Pacific!\nThe 5 Best Consulting Firms for Benefits!\nVault's 2020 Rankings of the Best Consulting Firms to Work For Are Here!\nFiled Under: Consulting","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line244302"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8363767862319946,"wiki_prob":0.8363767862319946,"text":"Obama picks cybersecurity coordinator\nHoward Schmidt tapped as cybersecurity chief\nBy Ben Bain\nThe Obama adminstration announced today that Howard Schmidt is the president's choice to be his cybersecurity coordinator.\nSince President Barack Obama announced the creation of the position in May, speculation has been rampant over whom the president would tap for the role. In the interim, some senior lawmakers and industry groups have expressed concern over the delay and urged the president to make the appointment quickly. Meanwhile, some observers have questioned whether the official will have enough power.\n\"Howard will have regular access to the president and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff,\" John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said in a message posted today on the White House's blog. \"He will also work closely with his economic team to ensure that our cybersecurity efforts keep the nation secure and prosperous.\"\nThe blog posting also includes a video message from Schmidt.\nSchmidt has experience in senior computer security positions in the public and private sectors, a qualification that the trade association TechAmerica has said the coordinator should have.\nIn the past, Schmidt served as a top cybersecurity adviser in the Bush White House and worked with federal and local law enforcement and the Defense Department. Schmidt has also served as chief information security officer at eBay, chief security officer Microsoft, and most recently as president and CEO of the Information Security Forum, a nonprofit consortium of 300 corporations and public-sector groups.\nThe appointment of a cybersecurity coordinator is a cornerstone the approach Obama laid out in a speech May 29 about securing the country’s digital infrastructure. Obama said that the coordinator will lead a new White House cybersecurity office that will:\nOrchestrate and integrate all cybersecurity policies for the government.\nWork closely with the Office of Management and Budget.\nCoordinate response in the event of major cyber incident or attack.\nBen Bain is a reporter for Federal Computer Week.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line941837"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8473015427589417,"wiki_prob":0.8473015427589417,"text":"North Carolina's popular 'Wizard of Oz' theme park opening this summer for tours\nBy Lindsay Clein, FOX 46 Charlotte\nBEECH MOUNTAIN, N.C. (FOX 46 CHARLOTTE) - Dorthy Gale's dream of going 'somewhere over the rainbow,' has become a reality and you can find that place 'way up high' in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.\nTickets are now on sale to experience the Land of Oz, a piece of North Carolina history dating back to the 1970s. The Wizard of Oz themed amusement park drops visitors right in the center of Oz.\nDorthy's house is decorated with antique furniture from the early 1900s. The experience takes patrons through the Gale's home, down the basement and through a tornado.\n\"It's an exact replica of the house we walked through, on a 15 degree tilt, everything is the same,\" said the park's artistic director, Sean Barrett.\n[TICKET DETAILS]\nOut the other side, visitors come face-to-face with the yellow brick road, the path to Oz.\n\"The second they hit the yellow brick road, it's a sensory overload because you don't expect that reaction from stepping on a yellow brick road,\" Barrett said. \"I've seen grown men tear up as they're walking down. You don't expect to see it, so it's pretty cool.\"\nThe park opened in June 1970 and was fully operational for about a decade. A fire destroyed two of the emerald city buildings in 1975, but new management were able to get the park up and running. The Wizard of Oz themed amusement park shut down in 1980, but not for long.\nIn 1991, the theme park reopened to the public and event tickets have sold out almost every year.\nThis year, the Wizard of Oz film celebrates its 80th anniversary, so the park is doubling its openings. The Land of Oz opens Thursdays and Fridays in June and then again on July 5.\nRELATED: \"Land of Oz\" theme park reopening for tours\nWhether you're skipping down the road in ruby slippers or a pair of sneakers, you won't feel like you're in Carolina anymore.\n\"Where it is located it makes it seem it's out of this world to begin with and you're on the highest point on east coast below Vernon and Oz is that highest point.\"\nThe park opens up again for \"Autumn at Oz\", which is the park's biggest event.\nSo if you're in search of a brain, a heart, or maybe a little courage, look no further than the Land of Oz, where you just might find you had all those things all along. For more information and how you can purchase tickets, please click here.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line195575"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6635909676551819,"wiki_prob":0.6635909676551819,"text":"Universities in the U.S. dominated the overall ranking of the top 1,000 schools, followed by China and the U.K.\nEarning a degree abroad can be a smart move for students who want to boost their career prospects. Studying in another country enables students to learn about other languages and cultures, which can, in turn, improve their employability in certain fields, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.\nInternational students made up 5 percent of bachelor's students, 12 percent of master's students and 27 percent of doctoral students within the OECD's 35 member countries in 2014, the report found. Member countries include popular student destinations, such as Australia, the U.S., and the United Kingdom.\nFor prospective students interested in pursuing a degree outside their home country, U.S. News released the third edition of its annual Best Global Universities rankings today to allow comparisons of universities around the world.\nThe 2017 overall ranking features the top 1,000 universities, an increase from the 750 included in the previous edition. These universities are located in 65 countries, up from 57 last year.\nThe Best Global Universities rankings – based on data and metrics provided by Clarivate Analytics InCites – were calculated using factors that focus on a university's academic research performance and reputation. This is a different methodology than those used for the U.S. News Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools rankings.\nHarvard University, the reigning No. 1 school, held on to the top spot. The Ivy League institution was followed by another Cambridge, Massachusetts, school, the No. 2-ranked Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University, which moved up a spot to take No. 3.\nThere was the additional movement among the top 20 schools. Princeton University jumped up five spots to take the No. 8 position and the University of California—San Diego moved from No. 19 to No. 15 in the 2017 edition. Meanwhile, the University of Toronto dropped five spots to No. 21.\nOne new school broke into the top 20. The University of California—San Francisco – a health science-focused university that only offers graduate degrees – took No. 16, jumping seven spots from the last edition of the rankings. There are now a total of six California-based schools among the top 20 institutions.\nThe U.S. boasted the greatest number of schools in the 2017 overall ranking. More than a fifth of the top 1,000 schools in the world - 210 - are located in the U.S. China and the U.K. have the next highest numbers of schools in the overall ranking, with 87 and 68, respectively.\nIn addition to the overall ranking, U.S News has again produced regional and country-specific rankings, as well as subject-focused rankings.\nThe regional rankings were determined by schools' performance in the overall ranking. The top-ranked schools in the five regions identified by U.S. News are the University of Cape Town in Africa, the University of Tokyo in Asia, the University of Melbourne in Australia/New Zealand, the University of Oxford in Europe and the Universidad de São Paulo in Latin America. These are the same universities that topped each of the regional rankings in the last edition.\nU.S. News expanded the number of country-specific rankings this year from 32 to 38, with new lists for the Best Global Universities in Chile, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Poland, Russia, and Thailand.\nThe subject rankings, which use a separate methodology from the overall ranking, show how schools stack up against each other in key academic subject areas, such as engineering, computer science, and economics and business. These rankings are not of academic majors, departments or schools within universities like a business or medical school. The subject ranking methodology takes into account subject-specific research and reputation measures.\nInternational bachelor's and master's students tend to pursue degrees in the social sciences and humanities, while international doctoral students are more concentrated in science, engineering or agriculture fields in OECD countries, according to a 2016 OECD report on the internationalization of graduate-level studies.\nIn the 2017 edition of the U.S. News subject rankings, between 200 to 400 schools are featured in each field. There are 52 universities from various countries ranked in 20 or more of the 22 Best Global Universities subject rankings, meaning they have research strengths in a broad array of fields.\nU.S. schools came out on top in 19 of the 22 subject areas. The universities that ranked highest in the remaining fields were Tsinghua University in China, for engineering; Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands, for agricultural sciences; and Oxford in the U.K., for arts and humanities.\nJanuary 31, 2019Congratulations. You have completed all the courses in the University and graduated smoothly. So it's time to show off your diploma. Whether at home or in the office, the diploma placed in the custom ...view\nAugust 27, 2018Doctor's DegreeThe doctor's degree is the highest degree awarded by American universities. In many fields, including natural science, social science and humanities, recipients of this degree, regardle...view\nJanuary 31, 2019visible wall and acrylic wall hanging pictures show The visual wall is the most popular concept of contemporary large wall art. These modern, wholesale document frames become outstanding among the wal...view\nJanuary 31, 2019When you get the diploma that you have been expecting for a long time, it’s unnecessary to put it in a place randomly. As you know, the place you put your diploma may have some problems such as being...view","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line643720"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.747583270072937,"wiki_prob":0.252416729927063,"text":"Just days after our arrival at Swan Lake, our 12 year old grandson, Bryce arrived from Washington state to spend two weeks with us. For him, the first stop of interest was somewhere to ride a roller coaster and so we visited Worlds of Fun, in north Kansas City. While there, Bryce road five major roller coasters as well as many other rides. Even grandma rode several rides with him and he did get grandpa to ride the largest wooden roller coaster which is the fifth largest wood roller coaster in the world. We had a great day and I am sure that it will be long remembered.\nAfter a few days we also took him back to the KC area to spend a day at Science City as he is very much interested in that as well. Science City is one of the attractions now located in the old rail road depot that once served eight major rail lines and all of that part of the country. Today, there are no trains at all in the area, but it has become a major tourist attraction. Science City contains many different science based attractions and many of them are hands-on with activities to perform and things to ride or do. It also contains a planetarium and a science theater.\nBoth of these trips were enjoyed by all and are especially recommended for those who travel with children. Even we older kids managed to enjoy both, although I don't know that I would take the trip to Science City if I had no children along to enjoy it as there isn't that much for lone adults. The planetarium would be good and the science theater.\nAfter two weeks with us, it was off to the KC airport and back home for Bryce to prepare for the coming school year. For grandparents, it was back to our more staid routines and to more sedate attractions. Next on our list of things which must be seen while in this area was Watkins Mill State Park. It is located near Lawson, Mo and is the grounds and mill of an early settler in the area. What makes this mill particularly interesting is the fact that all of the original equipment from the factory is still in place there and most would operate if there was someone to work the mill. It was powered by a steam engine and the engine would need major work to restore, but most other machines seem to be in working order. The house and grounds are also part of the park and it also still has the church and the school buildings which the Watkins family funded and donated the land for. The property was in the hands of descendants of Mr. Waltus Watkins for three generations and even once sold the mill was never stripped or salvaged. When discovered by purchasers at an auction in the 70's that the mill was still intact, they approached the owners of Allis Chalmers Tractor company, who the purchasers were employed by, and the factory was preserved and in time donated to the state.Today, the house has been restored and many of the furnshings have been returned.\nThe house and mill are not open except by tour but the fees are very reasonable at $2.50 each for seniors. The tours are lead by volunteer docents and they are well informed and very good at what they do. We were also able to visit with two of the park employees, one of whom was working in the mill in period clothing. This park is well off the beaten path but it is beautiful as well as interesting. The grounds are today heavily timbered, even though they were once mostly farm fields and there is a nice campground as well as several picnic areas and ample parking.\nFor those who are so inclined, there is a small gift shop and a fair sized museum. The park is about 1/2 hour drive from I-35 and not far north of Kansas City. Each tour takes about an hour or just a little bit more and they time they to make if very easy to move from one tour to the other. It is about a five minute walk between the two buildings. I think that anyone who takes the time will find this to be a very worthwhile stop.\nOur next outing was to visit the boyhood homes of two of America's favorite sons who grew up in this part of Missouri. The first stop was in the small town of Laclede to spend some time at the home of John J (Black Jack) Pershing. General Pershing was the son of a local shopkeeper, turned farmer when times got tough. As a boy, Jack Pershing learned work hard but did not want to stay on the farm.\nOne of the more interesting things that we learned was how he got the nickname, Black Jack. Turns out that it had nothing to do with cards, but rather the fact that he made a name for himself while leading all black troops, both in the US and later in support of Theodore Roosevelt at the battle of San Jaun Hill. Newspapers picked up on what jealous older officers who he had bypassed in route to promotion called him, but even then it was not acceptable to publish his real nickname, Nigger Jack!\nFrom there we traveled to the east about 30 miles to visit the place where Walt Disney grew up and to see the barn where he used to come to dream, as well as to visit the town which \"Main Street\" in Disneyland was modeled after. it was not difficult to see the connection. As a young boy, Walt Disney's family moved from Chicago to the town of Marceline, MO and he very quickly adopted the community as his home, which it continued to be for the rest of his life. Even today, the community has a festival in his honor, which began while Walt himself could still attend. He never forgot his roots and always told friends that there was no better place on earth for a boy to grow up.\nWe try and visit some new area each week and our next stop was the Amish/Mennonite/German Baptist community of Jamesport. The area does have some variation in living practice but most of the religious community are of the \"Old Order\" beliefs and live in that way. No area is completely segregated today and even Jamesport now has a United Methodist Church, although a very small one. Like all strictly religious, conservative communities, this is a very peaceful, friendly, and safe community. Unless there are outsiders in town, the most serious crime that takes place is usually related to proper parking of horse teams, versus automobiles. The horse and buggy is more common in the area than cars.\nThe Old Order Amish are the most strict in not participating in modern inventions, with no use of electricity in their homes, businesses or barns and all farming is done with horses. As far as I could tell, none of them own even a car or truck of any kind. Others of the community do use electric power in their barns but not in their homes, while some others will have tractors and modern equipment for farming, but use the horse and buggy only when attending church. The diversity makes for some very interesting contrasts in the community. All of them seem to get along very well and they also do business with each other.\nMany of the local farmers, especially those not using tractors, have turned to growing produce and we saw a great deal of activity related to that business. Most of the businesses of the most conservative folks were not in town as all of them seem to much prefer to live on the farms.The most conservative of the residents do not even use electrical power in their stores. Stores have ceiling fans and other things which are powered by air-motors and the compressors for the air operate with power from a diesel engine. Even the refrigerated display cases are cooled by diesel power. For lights, these businesses have gas flames.\nThis community was a fascinating place to visit and we would highly recommend that you take time to visit.\nOne thing that any visitor to the Kansas City area should take time to see is the museum of the Steamboat Arabia.The steamboat was in business of transporting cargo and passengers up the Missouri River to supply the new towns and stores which sold supplies to the settlers of the west. Shortly after leaving Kansas City with a full load of cargo, she hit a snag and sunk very quickly, in 1856. After 132 years, she was located in a field buried in dirt and more than 1/2 mile from the modern river channel.\nShe went to the bottom in only a few minutes and so nothing was removed from her cargo, but she was in shallow enough water that she sat on the bottom with the upper deck above water and so not one passenger or crew member was lost. By morning the following day the rushing water had scoured the mud from under the bottom to a point that nothing showed above the water. When she was recovered, it was discovered that part of what happened also was that the upper decks and pilot house were washed off of the boat and carried down river.\nWhen she was found by armature treasure treasure hunters in 1988, she still had nearly all of her cargo and it had been sealed in and buried with no oxygen and so nearly everything was still intact and recoverable. As a result the museum has the largest collection of goods from that time in history of any place in the world.The major part of the displays are from the cargo of the steamboat.\nAll told, this is a museum that can easily occupy two to four hours, depending upon one's interest in early Americana.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line836486"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6093258261680603,"wiki_prob":0.3906741738319397,"text":"Back to Media Resources\nEnergy Recovery To Replace Isobarix Technology in Milestone Retrofit Opportunity in Middle East\nSAN LEANDRO, Calif.—November 29, 2016 — Energy Recovery, Inc. (NASDAQ:ERII), the leader in pressure energy technology for industrial fluid flows, today announced that the company has been awarded another brownfield retrofit opportunity to install its industry leading PXTM Pressure ExchangerTM technology. The retrofit, located in the Middle East, marks the first time the Company will retrofit a plant using technology produced by Isobarix, which intended but failed to replicate the proprietary Pressure Exchanger solution. It is expected to ship in the 4th quarter of 2016.\nThe plant selected Energy Recovery to supply its Q-Series PX devices to replace the Isobarix technology, which has caused unacceptable levels of noise and vibration, as well as high maintenance costs. Energy Recovery’s PX devices will allow the plant to lower costs and enhance performance around noise, vibration, and safety.\nOffering an industry-best return on investment, and designed to run with the highest efficiency and availability in the desalination industry, Energy Recovery will continue to seek out opportunities to retrofit small, medium and large-scale facilities around the globe.\nEnergy Recovery’s President and CEO Joel Gay stated, “This plant retrofit is a particularly seminal moment in the Company’s history and furthers our position of technology leadership within the global desalination market. A core tenant of our strategy in this segment is to target plants with inferior technology, demonstrate the superiority of our offerings, upgrade the plant and add to the portfolio of customers who are Pressure Exchanger loyalists. Isobarix’s technology operates under similar fluid physics principles as our flagship Pressure Exchanger but with decreased efficiency, reliability and performance. That we were able to unseat copycat and indeed inferior technology solidifies Energy Recovery’s pole position in the ongoing technology race within not only the global desalination market, but all core markets in which we arbitrage pressure energy and preserve pumping assets. In the past, we have believed that at least one Isobarix product infringes on certain of our intellectual property and this retrofit provides us with a further opportunity to investigate our belief and potentially discover other potential infringements. We will continue to aggressively execute against our long-term strategy with an increasing focus on protecting our intellectual property from those who would seek to otherwise usurp it.”\nEnergy Recovery (NASDAQ:ERII) recycles and converts wasted pressure energy into a usable asset and preserves pumps that are subject to hostile processing environments. With award winning technology, Energy Recovery simplifies complex industrial systems while improving productivity, profitability, and efficiency within the oil & gas, chemical processing, and water industries. Energy Recovery products save clients more than $1.7 billion (USD) annually. Headquartered in the Bay Area, Energy Recovery has offices in Houston, Ireland, Shanghai, and Dubai. Learn more at www.energyrecovery.com.\nCertain matters discussed in this press release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including expectations regarding the amount and timing of the revenues associated with the referenced awards and the shipments of the devices, reductions in power consumption from the technology, expectations about future growth in the desalination industry, Energy Recovery’s market share, and Energy Recovery’s ability to deliver products containing its technologies, including in the relevant regions and for major products. These forward-looking statements are based on information currently available to us and on management’s beliefs, assumptions, estimates, or projections and are not guarantees of future events or results. Potential risks and uncertainties include our ability to achieve the milestones under the licensing agreement with a subsidiary of Schlumberger Limited and the risks discussed under “Risk Factors” in our Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on March 3, 2016 as well as other reports filed by us with the SEC from time to time. Because such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, our actual results may differ materially from the predictions in these forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.\nBrian Uhlmer\nbuhlmer@energyrecovery.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line311507"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6273266673088074,"wiki_prob":0.3726733326911926,"text":"History of St. Ann Parish\nThe sense of erecting a shrine to St. Ann in New Orleans originated with Fr. Hattais who preached Lenten sermons at St. Ann Parish in 1902. On August 13th of that year, a Confraternity of St. Ann of New Orleans was established. At that time, the shrine was on St. Philip Street but with the increasing number of devotees a new and larger site was secured in 1920 on Ursuline Avenue and North Johnson Street. A grand basilica in honor of St. Ann never materialized. St. Ann Parish in New Orleans was eventually closed and the church was turned over to St. Peter Claver Parish. The new shrine of St. Ann was relocated to Metairie. St. Ann Church & Shrine in Metairie was originally designated as St. Ambrose Parish, but in March 1973 by decree of Archbishop Philip M. Hannan, the name of the Parish was changed from St. Ambrose to St. Ann. The decree added that the Parish would also be designated as the National Shrine to St. Ann, thus the name St. Ann Church & Shrine.\nThe grotto-like structure in the center of the shrine behind the sanctuary includes the holy stairs whereby people ascend the steps on their knees while praying the Stations of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross are magnificently depicted in the stained glass window when you reach the top of the stairs. The window facing the north depicts St. Joachim and St. Ann. The main window depicts the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These windows are a memorial to the Louisiana Oyster Industry, the fishermen and their families, who generously donated to the cost and installation of the stained glass windows. Upon reaching the top of the stairs you will stand face-to-face with a large wood-carved crucifix and also a statue of St. Ann, mother of the Mother of God. St. Ann and St. Joachim's feast day is celebrated by the Church on July 26th and is celebrated here at St. Ann Church & Shrine with a Novena. A guest priest celebrates Mass daily and preaches, hears confessions, and leads the people in the annual St. Ann Novena July 18th - July 26th. We also have a 3-day Lenten Mission.\nThe tradition of honoring St. Ann can be traced back to 1584. St. Ann [also known as Anne, Anna, from the Hebrew Channah, meaning \"favor\" or \"grace\"] of David's house and line, was the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary and grandmother to Jesus Christ according to Christian and Islamic tradition. In the Middle East, veneration of St. Ann can be traced back to the fourth century. At the encouragement of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Carmelites and with the help of Pope Urban VI, and later with Pope Gregory XIII, a feast day honoring St. Ann became part of the universal calendar of the Church. Her feast day is shared with her husband, St. Joachim on July 26th.\nAs mother of the Mother of God and grandmother to Jesus Christ, St. Ann became the patron of married women, and for childless couples a special aid in obtaining children. Story has it that Joachim and Ann were without children until an angel appeared to them and told that they would conceive a child. They brought Mary up to be a worthy mother - the Mother of God.\nSt. Ann, you gave birth to Mary,\nwhose divine Son brought forth salvation to the world\nby conquering death and restoring hope and life to all people.\nHelp us, we pray, to love as Jesus loved.\nAll are welcome to pray the Stations of the Cross on the Calvary steps in our National Shrine dedicated to St. Ann. Pray, light a candle, seek the intercession of the Mother of the Mother of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.\nSt. Ann Parish Boundaries\nSt. Ann Stained Glass 32 Photos\n90th Anniversary of St. Ann Shrine 16 Photos","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line955891"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6554089188575745,"wiki_prob":0.6554089188575745,"text":"Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region\nDeputy Marshals\nTreasurer of the Wielkopolska Region\nSecretary of the Wielkopolska Region\nThe tasks of the Board of the region\nstart >> Deputy Marshals\nWOJCIECH JANKOWIAK\nBorn in 1956. An alumnus of the Adam Mickiewicz University Faculty of Law and Administration in Poznań and of a post-graduate program of the Warsaw School of Economics.\nIn the years 1989–1990 Deputy Mayor of Poznań. Between 1990 and 1993 Deputy Head of the District Office in Poznań.\nIn the years 1993–1996 Director of the Department for the Reform of Public Administration at the Prime Minister's Office in Warsaw. From 1996 to 1998 Deputy Voivod of Poznań. A Member of the Board of the Wielkopolska Region during the first term of office and then between 2001 and 2003 the First Deputy Voivod of Wielkopolska.\nTied with the Self-Government of the Wielkopolska Region since its establishment. Between 2003 and 2006 Director of the Department for Regional Development of the Marshal Office of the Wielkopolska Region, in charge of advancing a comprehensive policy of socio-economic development of Wielkopolska. He then co-created the Strategy for the Development of the Wielkopolska Region, the system of EU funds absorption and the Wielkopolska Regional Operational Program for the years 2007–2014.\nIn the 2006 self-government elections elected to the Assembly of the Wielkopolska Region from the list of the Polish People's Party and appointed Deputy Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region. Ever since, he has successfully performed the function of Deputy Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region, re-elected in 2010 and 2014 to the Regional Assembly.\nAs Deputy Marshal, he is in charge of expanding the regional transportation infrastructure and of processes related to enterprise support and employment enhancing, e.g. through monitoring the situation on the labour market and attracting foreign investors. As Deputy Marshal he supervises the following departments of the Marshal Office of the Wielkopolska Region: Department of Transport, Department of Infrastructure, Department for the Implementation of the European Social Fund, the Chancellery of the Regional Assembly and Investor Supervision Office. He is also responsible for the operation of the Wielkopolska Region for Spatial Planning and the Wielkopolska Region Labour Office in Poznań.\nInternationally, on behalf of the Union of Regions of the Republic of Poland, Deputy Marshal Wojciech Jankowiak represents our region in the Chamber of Regions, being the Chairman of the Polish Delegation to the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CLRAE) in Strasbourg. He is moreover a member of the Peri-Urban Regions Platform Europe PURPLE, and since 2014 a Member of the Board – Vice Chairman of the Platform.\nApart from his experience in public administration he has ample expertise in the economy. Former Vice President of the Board of Poznań-Ławica Airport Spółka z o. o. and for many years a member of the Company's Supervisory Board. For two terms a member of the Supervisory Board of Polish Television in Warsaw. Former member of the Curators Council of the re-established Zakłady Kórnickie Foundation.\nIn the Polish People's Party he is a member of the General Council, Deputy Chairman of the Regional Board and President of the Poznań City Board. A founding member and incumbent President of the General Board of the Stanisław Mikołajczyk Society.\nAs of 2013 President of the Board of the Adam Mickiewicz University Alumni Association.\nThe President of the Republic of Poland conferred on him the Knight's Cross of the Order of Poland's Restitution.\nKRZYSZTOF GRABOWSKI\nBorn on 9 September, 1973 in Kalisz. Graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (faculty self-governmental and European administration). He also graduated from the prestigious 18th School for Leaders of the Civil Society, established and managed by Oxford's Professor Zbigniew Pełczyński. Krzysztof Grabowski completed, among others, the course for teaching credentials and for the candidates to Supervisory Boards.\nIn 1994 - 2010 he held the position of the Ceków-Kolonia Commune Councillor. His social involvement resulted, among others, in delivery of multiple investments: construction of the 'Orli Staw' Municipal Waste Treatment Plant handling waste from several dozens of Wielkopolska and Łódzkie Region communes. Sewage treatment plant and sewerage system were constructed on his initiative; the entire commune gained the water-pipe network, new commune and poviat roads. In addition the Kalisz-Turek regional road was renovated. Partnership agreement with the German Amtsberg commune in the area of education, culture and sport was concluded.\nBefore taking the position of the Member of the Regional Parliament of the 4th term , he worked as the spokesman of the Higher Vocational State School of President Stanisław Wojciechowski in Kalisz and the assistant of the Member of European Parliament, Andrzej Grzyb.\nKrzysztof Grabowski has many years of experience as radio and TV broadcaster in Kalisz, including for RMF FM and 'Teleexpress'. He cooperated with the regional newspapers and magazines. Five-time nominee of the National Labour Inspectorate in Ostrów Wielkopolski and honored by the Chief Labour Inspector with the medal 'For merits to the labour protection'.\nPresident of the Board of the Commune of the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL) in Ceków - Kolonia, Vice-President of the Poviat Board of the Polish Peasants' Party in Kalisz and Vice-President of the Regional Board of the Polish Peasants' Party in Wielkopolska. Vice-President of the Board of the Regional Division of the Voluntary Fire Brigade Association of the Republic of Poland since April 2012.\nIn the local self-government elections in 2010, elected for the Member of the Regional Parliament of the Wielkopolska Region from the list of the Polish Peasants' Party and appointed the Member of the Board of Region. In the local self-government elections in 2014 received 22 967 votes and was re-elected the Member of the Regional Parliament of the Wielkopolska Region. On 1 December, 2014 elected the Deputy Marshal of the Wielkopolska Region.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1107278"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8971601724624634,"wiki_prob":0.8971601724624634,"text":"People Contact us\nExcellence in plant and microbial science\nResearch & Impact Careers & Study News & Events Working with Industry International About us People Contact us\nFirst report in decades of a forgotten crop pathogen\nScientists, breeders, farmers and conservation groups must continue to work in close collaboration to prepare for the potential re-emergence of a forgotten crop pathogen, a new study advises today.\nWork between groups has already started following the discovery of a single wheat plant infected with stem rust – the first confirmed case of the plant disease in the UK in over 60 years. Stem rust of wheat and barley has throughout history been associated with crop failure and famine, and has recently re-emerged in western Europe.\nFollowing the discovery of a single infected wheat plant in Suffolk in 2013, Dr Diane Saunders and Dr Brande Wulff from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, led a global team of collaborators to carry out genetic tests that compared this strain to the dominant global populations of the pathogen.\nTheir results showed that the UK strain belongs to the Digalu race of the fungus, which was responsible for a devastating outbreak of stem rust in Ethiopia in 2013, and smaller outbreaks in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany in the same year.\nFurther investigations carried out by Dr Jane Thomas at NIAB in Cambridge, UK, found that over 80% of UK wheat varieties tested are susceptible to the UK strain of this pathogen. This indicates that if the strain became established in the UK, a large proportion of UK wheat could be at risk.\nThe research team warns that UK and European wheat and barley crops could be under threat from a perfect storm of conditions favourable to stem rust resurgence.\nDr Daniel Bebber at Exeter University, UK, showed that changes in climatic conditions over the past 25 years suggest increasingly conducive conditions for fungal pathogen growth and infection.\nIn addition to the lack of resistance in European wheat varieties, in recent years the alternate host of the pathogen, Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), has also been increasing in popularity. This hedgerow shrub plays a key role in the life cycle of several rust pathogens including wheat stem rust.\nThe Barberry shrub was largely removed across England up until the early part of the 20th century, as farmers noticed that cereal crops grown adjacent to Barberry bushes were at greater risk of stem rust. However, over the last twenty years or so Barberry shrubs have been planted in efforts to conserve the Barberry Carpet moth, an endangered species. Much of this planting is focussed on the relatively few areas where the moth is found, although other plantings have occurred elsewhere.\nThe next steps in this process, says Dr Saunders, is a larger study to map and sample Barberry across the UK working alongside conservation groups. “Replanting Barberry in woodlands, gardens and areas away from arable land would ensure we provide vital habitat for the endangered Barberry Carpet moth, whilst limiting its potential impact on enhancing rust pathogen diversity.”\nThe study “Potential for re-emergence of wheat stem rust in the United Kingdom” published today in Communications Biology urges: “the re-initiation of resistance breeding and a review of the mass plantation of common barberry to preclude re-planting near arable land and thereby limit the ability of the pathogen to rapidly overcome any introduced resistance and/or climatic constraints to safeguard European cereals from a large-scale re-emergence of wheat stem rust.”\nMark Parsons of Butterfly Conservation said “We are very concerned about the potential risk from the possible re-establishment of stem rust in this country and the impact it could have on agriculture and the environment. The Barberry Carpet moth is an endangered species restricted to just a handful of sites in this country, it being reliant on Common Barberry for survival. We are, therefore, pleased to be working closely with the John Innes Centre both to minimize the potential risk from cereal rust, but also to enhance the populations of the Barberry Carpet, and therefore increase its chances of survival in this country.”\nThe project was funded by an Industrial Partnership Award (BB/M025519/1) from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), a European Research Council Starting Grant awarded to Dr Diane Saunders (no. 715638), an institute development grant from the Earlham Institute, H2020 project EMPHASIS (no. 634179) awarded to NIAB, by the BBSRC Institute Strategic Programmes BB/J004553/1 and BB/P012574/1, the John Innes Foundation, and an African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship.\nBarberry bush in close proximity to barley field – Credit Clare Lewis John Innes Centre\nStem rust infected plant\nMultiple rust aecia on barberry\nStem rust lesions on wheat – Paul Fenwick, Limagrain UK Ltd\nAssociated Scientists\nDr Diane Saunders\nDr Brande Wulff\nNIAB\nExeter University\nPotential for re-emergence of wheat stem rust in the United Kingdom (2018) Communications Biology\nWhere does human intelligence come from?\nWhere does human intelligence come from and what advantage did it give to our ancestors? Professor Enrico Coen, provides a new theory\nProfessor Anne Osbourn elected as Fellow of the Royal Society\nProfessor Anne Osbourn has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in honour of her exceptional contribution to science\nTwo scientists named in global list of highly cited researchers\nTwo researchers at the John Innes Centre have been named in the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2019 List\nJohn Innes Centre © 2020\nCareers & Study\nThe John Innes Centre, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7UH, UK","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1122262"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5037906169891357,"wiki_prob":0.5037906169891357,"text":"Entries / Dolgorukov Family\nDolgorukov Family\nCategories / Capital/Personalia\nDOLGORUKOV (Dolgoruky), princely family, the Rurik Dinasty, important in the 15th century. Yakov Fedorovich Dolgorukov (1639-1720, St. Petersburg) was a statesman, associate of Peter the Great's, boyar (1697), General Plenipotential War Commissar (1711), and senator (1712). In 1717, he was appointed President of the Revision Collegium (which started functioning in 1719). He participated in the investigation of Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich (1718). He was famous for his justice and integrity, often presented the most hard-hitting facts to Peter the Great in person, and liked the saying: \"The truth is the best servant of the Tsar\". He was buried at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery (grave not preserved). Sergey Nikolaevich Dolgorukov (1770-1829) was an Infantry General (1816) and Commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress (1799-1801). Vasily Vasilievich Dolgorukov (1787, St. Petersburg - 1858) was an Ober-Stalmeister, Caretaker of the Court Horse Barn Bureau (1832-42), and leader of the St. Petersburg Province Nobility (1833-42). Vasily Andreevich Dolgorukov (1804-1868, St. Petersburg) was a statesman, General of Cavalry (1856), Adjutant General (1845), Chief-Chamberlain (1866), Deputy Minister of War (1848-53), Minister of War (1853-56, had directed the Ministry since 1852), member of the State Assembly (from 1853), Chief of Gendarmes and Chief of the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery (1856-66), and retired after D.V. Karakozov's assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander II. He was buried at the Lazarevskoe Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Ekaterina Mikhailovna Dolgorukova (married Gracious Princess Yuryevskaya) (1849-1922), a Court favourite, the morganatic wife of Emperor Alexander II (from 1880), mostly lived abroad after his murder by members of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will). She owned 46 Angliiskaya Embankment / 47 Galernaya Street, and a palace at 3 Gagarinskaya Street, where she organized Alexander II's Memorial Cabinet.\nReferences: Долгоруков П. В. Сказания о роде князей Долгоруковых. [2-е] изд., испр. и доп. СПб., 1842; Власьев Г. А. Потомство Рюрика: Материалы для составления родословий. СПб., 1907. Т. 1, ч. 3; Мельцин М. О. Государственная служба князей Долгоруковых в конце XVIII - начале XX века: некоторые аспекты // Проблемы социального и гуманитарного знания: Сб. науч. работ. СПб., 2000. Вып. 2. С. 115-170.\nM. O. Meltsin.\nAlexander II, Emperor\nAlexey Petrovich, Tsesarevitch\nDolgorukov Sergey Nikolaevich, Prince\nDolgorukov Vasily Andreevich, Prince\nDolgorukov Vasily Vasilievich, Duke\nDolgorukov Yakov Fedorovich, Duke\nDolgorukova Ekaterina Mikhailovna, Duchess\nKarakozov Dmitry Vladimirovich\nPeter I, Emperor\nthe Dolgorukovs\nAngliiskaya Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city, house 46\nGagarinskaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 3\nGalernaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 47\nSt. Peter and Paul fortress\nLazarevskaya Burial Vault","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line545928"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7760102152824402,"wiki_prob":0.7760102152824402,"text":"Authorities investigate hit-and-run crash that killed one person on I-35 in Moore 24 MIN Closings: There are currently 41 active closings or delays <% if ( weatherAlerts > 0 ) { %> Severe Weather: <% var weatherAlertsMessage = \"There \" + ( weatherAlerts > 1 ? \"are\" : \"is\" ) + \" currently \" + weatherAlerts + \" active weather \" + ( weatherAlerts > 1 ? \"alerts\" : \"alert\" ); %> <% if ( weatherAlerts > 1 ) { %>\nAbortion videos prompt calls for donations in Oklahoma\nUpdated: 12:33 PM CDT Jul 25, 2015\nRecently released videos that show a Planned Parenthood official discussing the distribution of fetal body parts are being used by anti-abortion advocates in Oklahoma to seek political contributions and bolster support for legislation to further restrict abortion.Randy Brogdon, the newly elected chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, sent an email on Thursday soliciting donations to \"help us to end abortion in Oklahoma.\" He also urged the governor to call a special session to outlaw abortion altogether and shut down Planned Parenthood, which operates four health clinics in the state.\"It is time for Republicans to stand for the principles we claim to have and stop the killing of the unborn,\" Brogdon wrote. \"The majorities of Oklahomans will support this bold action, but it will take someone to lead the fight.\"The videos show Planned Parenthood officials meeting with people posing as buyers of fetal tissue. Federal law prohibits the commercial sale of fetal tissue, but allows not-for-profit donation of tissue if the women who underwent abortions give their consent. Planned Parenthood contends that the payments pertain to reimbursement for the costs of procuring the tissue - which is legal.\"The real agenda of these groups is to ban abortion and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood,\" said Suzanna de Baca, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which operates a clinic in Tulsa. \"These insidious videos are just one more example of how low they will stoop.\"Gov. Mary Fallin didn't indicate any plans to call a special session, but referred to the videos as \"sickening.\" She also suggested an outright ban on abortion wouldn't be likely.\"Clearly, I don't want Planned Parenthood to perform any abortions in Oklahoma, regardless of how those abortions are paid for,\" Fallin said in a statement. \"However, as any pro-life activist will tell you, the biggest hurdle to protecting life in this country is the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v Wade, which blocked states from passing total bans on abortion.\"Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. James Lankford, a Baptist minister and fierce abortion opponent, has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood unless the organization stops performing abortions.\"The recent videos uncovering Planned Parenthood's inhumane abortion practices have hit a nerve with many Americans,\" Lankford said, adding that the organization receives more than $500 million each year.Most of the services Planned Parenthood provides are not abortion-related, such as birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and vasectomies for men, de Baca said.\"In addition, we are the preeminent provider of health and sexual health education programs that help lower the risk of sexually-transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies,\" de Baca said.Oklahoma legislators routinely pass some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, although many have been overturned by the courts as unconstitutional.A bill passed last year that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was temporarily blocked by the state Supreme Court while a district judge mulls evidence in that case. The plaintiff in that case, Dr. Larry Burns of Norman, who performs nearly half of the abortions in the state, maintains he will have to close his practice if the law goes into effect.\nOKLAHOMA CITY (AP) —\nRecently released videos that show a Planned Parenthood official discussing the distribution of fetal body parts are being used by anti-abortion advocates in Oklahoma to seek political contributions and bolster support for legislation to further restrict abortion.\nRandy Brogdon, the newly elected chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, sent an email on Thursday soliciting donations to \"help us to end abortion in Oklahoma.\" He also urged the governor to call a special session to outlaw abortion altogether and shut down Planned Parenthood, which operates four health clinics in the state.\n\"It is time for Republicans to stand for the principles we claim to have and stop the killing of the unborn,\" Brogdon wrote. \"The majorities of Oklahomans will support this bold action, but it will take someone to lead the fight.\"\nThe videos show Planned Parenthood officials meeting with people posing as buyers of fetal tissue. Federal law prohibits the commercial sale of fetal tissue, but allows not-for-profit donation of tissue if the women who underwent abortions give their consent. Planned Parenthood contends that the payments pertain to reimbursement for the costs of procuring the tissue - which is legal.\n\"The real agenda of these groups is to ban abortion and cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood,\" said Suzanna de Baca, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which operates a clinic in Tulsa. \"These insidious videos are just one more example of how low they will stoop.\"\nGov. Mary Fallin didn't indicate any plans to call a special session, but referred to the videos as \"sickening.\" She also suggested an outright ban on abortion wouldn't be likely.\n\"Clearly, I don't want Planned Parenthood to perform any abortions in Oklahoma, regardless of how those abortions are paid for,\" Fallin said in a statement. \"However, as any pro-life activist will tell you, the biggest hurdle to protecting life in this country is the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v Wade, which blocked states from passing total bans on abortion.\"\nMeanwhile, U.S. Sen. James Lankford, a Baptist minister and fierce abortion opponent, has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would end all federal funding for Planned Parenthood unless the organization stops performing abortions.\n\"The recent videos uncovering Planned Parenthood's inhumane abortion practices have hit a nerve with many Americans,\" Lankford said, adding that the organization receives more than $500 million each year.\nMost of the services Planned Parenthood provides are not abortion-related, such as birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and vasectomies for men, de Baca said.\n\"In addition, we are the preeminent provider of health and sexual health education programs that help lower the risk of sexually-transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies,\" de Baca said.\nOklahoma legislators routinely pass some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, although many have been overturned by the courts as unconstitutional.\nA bill passed last year that would require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was temporarily blocked by the state Supreme Court while a district judge mulls evidence in that case. The plaintiff in that case, Dr. Larry Burns of Norman, who performs nearly half of the abortions in the state, maintains he will have to close his practice if the law goes into effect.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line673219"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9208824038505554,"wiki_prob":0.9208824038505554,"text":"WORLD OF ADVENTURE “ADVENTURE IS STILL EXTRAORDINARY. TO FIND IT, TRAVEL PREFERABLY OFF THE BEATEN TRACK, AND AWAY FROM THE PREDICTABLE” TIM SLESSOR, FIRST OVERLAND EXPEDITION MEMBER In September 1955, just over eight years after the launch of the first ever Land Rover, two Series I vehicles left Hyde Park Corner in London heading towards the Kent coast. It was the start of the now legendary 32,300-mile Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition, a veritable first that would change vehiclebased expeditions forever. Their destination was the port of Singapore in Malaya, the trade hub of south-east Asia and the farthest point from London on the Eurasian land mass. Six undergraduates from the two renowned British universities, fired up by the fact that no land-based expedition had ever made it beyond Calcutta, had started making their plans 12 months previously over a cup of coffee in a student residence hall. Former journalist and BBC documentary film maker 86-year-old Tim Slessor was one of them. An original member of the Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition and author of the best-selling book First Overland, he is an intense but immediately likeable man. His bright eyes and sprightly gait tell the tale of an individual who has spent a lifetime pushing boundaries. He is an original adventurer. The first of the 330,000 words he wrote in his expedition diary from the trip paraphrased legendary mountain climber and conqueror of Mount Everest Sir Edmund Hillary, “The main object of our Far Eastern Project is a jolly good adventure.” Intrigued by how an 86-year-old journalist defines adventure today, there is also the more fundamental question of whether there are any real adventures left? “We had Above: Series I Land Rover vehicles SNX 891 ’Oxford‘ and SNX 761 ‘Cambridge’ during the Far Eastern Expedition in 1955 Right: Tim Slessor back at the wheel of SNX 891 at Eastnor Castle after its recovery from St Helena and recent sympathetic renovation by Land Rover enthusiast Adam Bennett more opportunities than young people now,” Slessor says. “Today most of the possible first-time adventures have been done.” Some things do not change, however. “Adventure is still extraordinary, it is best done with friends and there has to be an element of risk. To find it, travel preferably off the beaten track, and away from the predictable.” THE ULTIMATE TEST The vehicles were fundamental to the project, a fact Land Rover immediately recognized along with the chance to generate some very useful public relations. As Slessor recalls, “We thought the Land Rover people were joking when they said you have an opportunity to test the vehicles to destruction.” A year earlier in 1954, undergraduates had ‘overlanded’ to Cape Town and back in two Land Rover vehicles. The lesson was obvious. “A tough four-wheel drive vehicle with lowratio gears was essential. We concluded that the Land Rover was the only car suitable. We needed two and they cost 0 each, but we had 0 between us.” The team needed financial support, and an aim of conducting irrigation fieldwork provided justification that the sponsors (of which there were 83, including Land Rover and the BBC) required. Expedition cameraman Antony Barrington-Brown (known as BB) spoke to a young (now Sir) David Attenborough, who had just joined the BBC but would later become the defining figure of the BBC’s world-renowned Natural History Unit. BB persuaded Attenborough to support the team with a camera and film, packing him on his PHOTOGRAPHY: ANTONY BARRINGTON-BROWN (4) 30\nRIGHT XXXXXX 31\nPage 32 and 33: WORLD OF ADVENTURE 01 02 03 “EXPE\nSPECIAL VEHICLES European models sh","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line743735"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8333295583724976,"wiki_prob":0.8333295583724976,"text":"HANNIE CAULDER (1971) blu-ray review\ntags: Blu-ray, Burt Kennedy, Christopher Lee, David J. Fowlie, Diana Dors, Ernest Borgnine, film, Hannie Caulder, Jack Elam, Olive Films, Paco de Lucía, Raquel Welch, review, Robert Culp, Stephen Boyd, Strother Martin\nwritten by: David Haft and Burt Kennedy (both as Z.X. Jones)\nproduced by: Patrick Curtis and Tony Tenser\ndirected by: Burt Kennedy\nrated: unrated\nU.S. release date: May 24, 1972\nDVD/Blu-ray release date: November, 15, 2016\nA couple of months back, Olive Films introduced a new series of DVD/Blu-ray released entitled “Olive Signature”, which, as they’ve announced, will feature “highlighted cult favorites, time-honored classics, and under-appreciated gems” that will include clean audio and video transfers, new cover art with new Special Features (something rare to Olive). You can say it’s their answer to Criterion releases. They started out with two classic westerns, “High Noon” and “Johnny Guitar” and now comes another western, “Hannie Caulder”, something of a cult classic from 1971. The movie is the kind that is appreciated long after its original U.S. release and has been discussed and examined by certain film scholars and aficionados (not to mention Quentin Tarantino) and definitely had an impact on many movies that came after it.\nI’m coming at this movie for the first time. I’ve known about it, of course, but based on its marketing, it came across as some kind of exploitation film, possibly sexploitation considering where its star, Raquel Welch, was in her career at the time and how she was perceived. She delivers a good performance here, despite how she is shot and how her character is written, and is surrounded by a very talented group of dependable supporting actors. “Hannie Caulder” isn’t a typical western, it pays more homage to Spaghetti Westerns than it dos American Westerns, and is also very much a revenge film – or rather, a subgenre called the rape-revenge films, which became acknowledged in the 70s and 80s, but are still made today, just look at Paul Verhoeven’s latest “Elle”.\nSet in Mexico, the movie opens on the bumbling and despicable Clemens brothers – Emmett (Ernest Borgnine), Frank (Jack Elam), and Rufus (Strother Martin) – riding into a run-down town with the intent of robbing a bank during siesta. They botch up the job and wind up brutally killing everyone inside and engage in a shoot-out with startled federales outside. As they escape, they stop off at a farm in a lone valley just north of the border with the intent of stealing fresh horses (the equivalent of the criminal ditching a recognizable car), but before they can do so they are approached by the owner, Jim Caulder, who basically asks them to move along. He’s answered with a fatal close-range shotgun to the gut and in no time the filthy trio are viciously raping the farmer’s wife, Hannie Caulder (Welch), setting her home on fire and leaving her for dead.\nStill reeling from her ordeal and traumatized, she greets a horsebacked stranger with a Winchester, like a wounded animal ready to lash out. All he wants is to use her well for some water for himself and his horses and then to be on his way. She’s undeterred and cautious, but once she is effortlessly unarmed, Hannie learns the bespeckled and bearded man is a bounty hunter named Thomas Luther Price (Robert Culp) and sees the gunslinger as someone who can teach her how to shoot a gun and kill. He declines her request to repeatedly, but is eventually won over by her tenacity, but mostly by her motives. He’s been around enough evil men to add up what has happened to Hannie.\nAs the two begin a mentorship, they work their way to Mexico, where an English friend of Price’s and former Confederate gunsmith (a bearded Christopher Lee, in his only western role) resides along the Gulf shore with his Mexican wife (whom we never see) and their gaggle of children. Price asks Bailey to craft a customized gun for Hannie, while he trains her both physically and mentally in the art of gun-slinging – all of requires standard montage, which goes from Hannie doing some forearm workouts to Bailey literally piecing together her firearm (one can assume this process takes weeks, since a gun can’t be made from scratch in a matter of days). Price knows the cost of an individual’s first-kill and warns Hannie, “Win or lose, you’ll lose. You’ll not be the same person.” Hannie hopes she’s not, but Price nevertheless continues to ask her to walk away from this vendetta, knowing full-well what it can lead to.\n“Hannie Caulder” is a British western filmed mostly in southern Spain (mostly Almeria and Andalucia) with a predominately American cast, produced by Tigon British Film Productions, a company known almost exclusively for their extremely low-budget exploitation horror films, up until this movie. It was released in Europe in 1971 and eventually made its way to the U.S. in May of 1972, but it was filmed in 1970.\n“Hannie Caulder” is not a full-on feminist tale since the titular character is never really given the opportunity to exact revenge on her own. As she pursues her rapists, you can hear the helpful assistance of her mentor (like the way Obi-Wan Kenobi assisted Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star in “Star Wars”), reminding her what to do and there’s also the physical assistance from a Man in Black-type character, listed as The Preacher (played by an uncredited Stephen Boyd, who had starred with Welch in 1967’s “Fantastic Voyage”), which communicates to viewers that, although this is the first western revolving around a female gunslinger, the screenwriter/filmmaker never intended for Hannie Caulder to be capable of dispensing justice on her own. That’s too bad, but I suppose it’s kind of expected for the time of its release. Audiences weren’t used to having a man-hater on-screen, regardless of our misogynist world (both on and off-screen) even if she is a victim of sexual assault and maybe that’s why we spend just about as much time following the Clemens brothers as we do watching Hannie on her path.\nThe movie was helmed by veteran western director Burt Kennedy, who had previously directed John Wayne and Kirk Douglas in 1967’s “The War Wagon” and James Garner in 1969’s “Support Your Local Sheriff!”. In his 2006 memoir Ernie and Me, actor Ernest Borgnine stated he considered Kennedy “one of the best directors of the genre”, yet this is somewhat of a departure from the light-hearted westerns he had directed – except for the fact that the endlessly bickering Clemens brothers add a Three Stooges-level comedy to the feature. That may strike some as odd. Here we follow a woman who’s been sexual assaulted and discarded, which is a tale with a lot of weight to it and then we have these three derelict brothers who have very little value on life and yet they supply the comic relief of the movie. It’s almost like two movies spliced into one and I found myself liking both stories primarily due to the actors involved.\nWelch has never been an actress with a wide range and while she’s usually managed to take on strong roles, they have usually relied heavily on her status as a sex symbol. What do you remember from “One Million Years, B.C.” outside of that fur bikini? Or how about that patriotic ensemble she wore in “Myra Breckenridge”? It’s all to titillate and tantalize. She obviously knew that’s how she was being sold to audiences and used that to her advantage. Early on in this movie, she’s wearing short-shorts under a poncho, so all we see are her long naked legs. Then, once Price gives her money to buy new britches, she winds up having to bathe with them on in order to shrink them and, of course, this gives Kennedy’s cinematographer Edward Scaife (“The Dirty Dozen”) an opportunity to linger on her bareback and hind side. As if we need a reminder why Welch was cast.\nBut, the most uncomfortable use of objectification can be found during the rape scene. Although Welch is trying to fight the Clemens brothers off, the camera fixates on her hair that’s draped across the pillow on her bed while audible moans and screams can be heard. At no point does she seem disheveled – in fact, most of the time the focus is on the greasy and delighted faces of her rapists and then the camera sits outside her home as the assault continues. It’s still potent and unsettling, but it’s also mostly focused on the men.\nIn “Hannie Caulder” we’re not really given the chance to know much about Welch’s character – as soon as we meet her, she’s attacked and then next thing we know she hooks up with Culp’s bounty hunter in order to see her goal through. Surprisingly, it’s Culp who calmly and quietly walks away with the movie. He’s really great here and a welcome juxtaposition to the normal western characters we see in the genre. It’s clear he’s a skilled bounty hunter, but he also has a way of accurately sizing someone up during his first encounter. He was able to surmise that Hannie is “a terrible liar” and has the knowledge and experience to tell her that it’s not enough to be physically prepared to shoot to kill, but it’s important to understand how to judge body language and human nature.\nCulp’s Price develops a genuine interest in Hannie’s welfare, not necessarily because he has a romantic interest in her, but just simply because he cares, which is why he tries to persuade her out of pursuing the Clemens brothers. Tarantino, who must’ve based Christoph Waltz’s character from “Django Unchained” on Culp’s role, had this to say about his performance, “He is so magnificent in that movie. I actually think there’s a bit of similarity between Sonny Chiba and Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill” and Raquel Welch and Robert Culp in “Hannie Caulder”.” I can see that. Culp’s co-star, Borgnine had this to say about the actor in his book, “The actor who really shines, though, is Bob Culp. This guy is one of the great national treasures,” he continues, “He’s convincing in everything because, like Gary Cooper, he’s on the great listening actors if all time. I wish I had half of what he’s got.” Watching this movie definitely made me want to bone up on more Culp.\nIt’s also a real treat to see Christopher Lee pop up in a role that’s usually something he’s not recognized for. His Bailey is a man living life on his own terms, where clientele seek him out along the Gulf shore (which is some of the most beautiful scenes in the movie) and it’s both bizarre and cool to see him working alongside Culp and Welch. Pay close attention to the guitarist on Bailey’s veranda, who is none other than Spanish guitarist, Paco de Lucía, in an uncredited appearance. There’s also a brief appearance by 50s British blonde bombshell Diana Dors, who appears as a bordello madam, which makes sense with this being a British production.\nKennedy wound up re-writing much of screenwriter David Haft’s (known for his TV work on “Steve Canyon”) screenplay, both of them writing under the pseudonym Z.X. Jones and while it’s unclear what he was altering, I’d wager it was to give the Clemens brothers more screen time. I suppose it’s easier to spend time with murderous inept criminals than it is a heroine who’s been repeatedly raped and dead-set on revenge. Nevertheless, “Hannie Caulder” remains an odd and unique, well-made western that should be seen primarily for its performances, especially Robert Culp’s.\nIt’s quite noticeable how odd the marketing of this movie is. The poster that accompanied the movie’s release pictured the beautiful Welch sitting front and center in a nice dress with her legs spread open, with Elam, Borgnine and Martin – her three rapists – standing around her as if a sibling portrait was being taken. It’s not indicative of the movie or what transpires in it, but it is another objectifying aspect of the movie. It’s one of many marketing decisions that rely heavily on sexual allure and familiar faces to promote “Hannie Caulder”, without indicating what the audience can expect. Anyone male-gazing at a half-naked promo pic of Welch will be sorely disappointed with what they’ll find in the movie.\na tantalizing photo used to promote “Hannie Caulder”, which had very little to do with the movie.\nOlive Films previously released a DVD/Blu-ray release back in 2010 with no Special Features. With this being an Olive Signature release, there are some noteworthy Special Features here, which had me wishing Olive would do that with more of their releases.\nThere are two featurettes in the Special Features section – one is called “Exploitation or Redemption?” and finds American film scholar Ben Sher discussing the movie’s place and impact (if any) in the rape-revenge subgenre. The other is “Win or Lose: Tigon Pictures and the Making of “Hannie Caulder” with British film historian Sir Christopher Frayling. Both are good features, but Frayling’s is a bit more interesting as it touches on producers Patrick Curtis (who was married to Welch at the time and was instrumental in promoting her career, producing a number of movies she starred in) and Tony Tenser (who founded Tigon British Film Productions, which also produced Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and “Cul-de-Sac”) and their, at times, contentious working relationship with Kennedy. Frayling also details which movies had previously used the town set “Hannie Caulder” used and mentioned how popular Spain was for European filmmakers to shoot westerns.\nDirector Alex Cox (“Sid and Nancy” and “Repo Man”) provides audio commentary here and is quite thorough knowledgeable of the film’s history, as well as the locations and themes used in the movie, but there are several times where he’s essentially rolling his eyes at the movie. It seems both odd and new for a commentary, since one would think whoever is asked to do a commentary for a movie was either involved in making the movie or in the very least, is a fan of the movie. It’s a good commentary, but more informative than it is lively and engaging.\nRATING: ***\n← DOCTOR STRANGE (2016) review\n14 MINUTES FROM EARTH (2016) review →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line14238"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5289403796195984,"wiki_prob":0.5289403796195984,"text":"Spider Bites and Bee Stings: Symptoms and Treatments\nBy Elizabeth Palermo - Staff Writer 2017-06-03T01:49:00Z\nHoneybees are in decline in Europe and North America.\n(Image: © PDPhoto.org)\nFor anyone who spends time outdoors, bites and stings are almost inevitable. Mosquitos, ticks, ants, spiders, bees, wasps — all of these tiny creatures use their mouths or stingers to defend themselves or, in some cases, to grab a meal. But luckily for humans, bites and stings from insects and spiders are usually just uncomfortable, not medically significant.\nHowever, some people are allergic to the venom of certain insects or spiders and can have severe, even life-threatening reactions to bites or stings. Additionally, certain insects and arachnids — like mosquitos and ticks — can transmit disease or cause infection through their bites.\nIn some cases, bites or stings can be painful. For example, bites from fire ants and stings from hornets, bees or wasps will likely get the attention of the victim. But some bites and stings are subtler, like those from mosquitoes, mites, fleas or ticks, which don't typically hurt. However, in some cases these painless bites can cause infection or disease, which may lead to more severe symptoms, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).\nUltimately, symptoms will depend on what kind of critter bit or stung you and how your immune system reacts to the venom (or other substances) released during the bite or sting, according to the NIH.\nMost insect bites or stings generate only minor skin symptoms such as itching, pain or swelling around the site, as well as burning or tingling. Delayed effects, which can appear within hours or days of a sting or bite, include painful joints, swollen glands, hives or fever, according to the Mayo Clinic.\nIn the case of ticks, symptoms can be more severe if the bite results in an infection or the transmission of a disease, such as Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever. According to the NIH, symptoms of such tick bites include:\nApnea and/or difficulty breathing\nSevere pain at bite site\nSwelling at bite site\nUncoordinated movement\nWhile the bites of most spiders are not medically significant to humans and cause only mild, local skin reactions, more severe reactions can also occur. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), spider bite symptoms may include:\nRaised welt with a pinpoint-sized dot in the center\nPain, itching or rash\nMuscle pain or cramps\nProfuse sweating\nChills and fever\nAllergic reactions\nIn addition to the symptoms listed above, those who are allergic to particular insects or spiders may also experience a localized reaction when stung or bitten. Such a reaction may include swelling of the entire joint where the bite or sting occurred, according to Dr. Susan Schuval, chief of the pediatric allergy and immunology department at Stony Brook Children's Hospital in New York. In extreme cases, those allergic to certain insects or spiders can experience anaphylaxis — a severe, whole-body reaction to the chemical toxins present in an insect or spider's venom — Schuval told Live Science.\nAnaphylaxis is a life-threatening reaction that requires emergency care, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Call 911 if reaction signs include:\nDifficulty breathing or shortness of breath\nFacial or mouth swelling\nAbdominal pain or nausea\nPale, moist skin that may appear blue\nConfusion or disorientation\nWeakness or dizziness\nFast, weak pulse\nTypes of insects and spiders that bite\nMany common insects bite without provocation — or because they're hungry — including mosquitoes, fleas, mites, flies, bedbugs, fire ants or ticks. Others, such as wasps, bees and hornets, sting when they feel threatened.\nMost spiders are not aggressive and will only bite a human if they are surprised or threatened. Such bites usually result in nothing more than a red spot and some itching or swelling, according to Rick Vetter, a retired research associate of entomology at the University of California, Riverside.\n\"Spiders have venom which is evolved for paralyzing prey; it's made for reducing activity or overcoming the neurophysiology of an insect. That's one reason why spider bites have very little effect on humans,\" Vetter told Live Science.\nIn fact, many spiders have fangs that are too small to pierce human skin. Only a few spiders in the United States have venom toxic enough — and fangs large enough — to cause a medically significant bite in humans. These include the brown recluse and black widow, whose bites can be dangerous to humans and even fatal in some cases.\nBrown recluse spiders are usually found in Midwestern and Southern states, according to the CDC, and are also called violin spiders because of the characteristic violin- or fiddle-shaped marking on their heads. These spiders have six equal-sized eyes (in contrast to the typical eight) and are about an inch long.\nSymptoms of a brown recluse spider bite include:\nDeep blue or purple area around the bite, surrounded by white and red outer rings\nBurning, itching, pain or redness that may develop within hours or days\nUlcer or blister that turns black\nBlack widow spiders are usually found in southern and western parts of the United States, though they live throughout North America. Small, black and button-shaped with a characteristic red hourglass marking on the abdomen, black widows release a toxin that can damage the central nervous system.\nAccording to the University of Maryland Medical Center, symptoms of a black widow spider bite include:\nDouble fang marks at the site\nImmediate pain, swelling, burning and redness\nHeadache and dizziness\nRash and itching\nCramping and rigidity in the chest, stomach, back and shoulders\nAnxiety and restlessness\nEyelid swelling\nWeakness or paralysis, particularly in the legs\nExcess saliva or eye tearing\nMost bites and stings require only minimal treatment. If a stinger is present, remove it by scraping a credit card or other straight-edged item across the stinger, according to the NIH. Use a pair of tweezers to remove a tick. If at all possible, you should try to safely recover the insect or spider that bit you, or at least try to identify it, according to Vetter. This will help healthcare professionals determine the best treatment option should you need medical attention.\nAll insect bites and stings should be washed with soap and water for several minutes. According to the Mayo Clinic, other treatments can include:\nApplying ice to reduce pain and swelling and absorption of the venom for 15 – 20 minutes every one to two hours\nApplying calamine lotion, hydrocortisone cream, or topical benzocaine for itching and swelling\nTaking antihistamines containing diphenhydramine (found in the brand names Benadryl or Tylenol Severe Allergy) or chlorpheniramine maleate (in Chlor-Trimeton and Actifed).\nWiping the bite or sting area with alcohol or a cool damp cloth with water from a nearby river or spring while hiking or camping\nIn some cases, a large local reaction can affect the entire joint of the limb that was stung or bitten. In these cases, a doctor may prescribe histamine, as well as oral steroids, according to Schuval. Those with a systemic, or whole body, reaction to the venom of certain insects may undergo venom immunotherapy treatment, in which the patient receives a series of shots containing the venom of the insect (or insects) to which they are allergic. This treatment can reduce a person's risk of having a systemic reaction to insect venom from 60 percent to less than 10 percent, according to Schuval.\nAntivenins are available to treat bites from many of the world's most venomous spiders. Suspected spider bites should receive prompt medical attention if they result in severe symptoms. If the wound from a suspected bite becomes inflamed or infected, you should also see a physician, as this may be indicative of a skin infection or other condition not caused by a spider or insect, according to Vetter.\nFor those who are aware of allergies to certain types of bites and stings, it would be advisable to carry an epinephrine. Matthew Lau, chief of the Department of Allergy and Immunology at Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, said a single-dose epinephrine injector should be used if symptoms such as trouble breathing, lightheadedness or hives occurs, and to take a second dose if one is available and symptoms don't improve within 10 to 15 minutes. Allergy shots could also be beneficial to those looking to reduce their allergic sensitivity of future bites and stings.\nJames Baker, an emergency medicine specialist from Kaiser Permanente Baldwin Park, provided a few home remedies for spider bites, including making a baking soda paste (diluted 1:3 with water), applying table salt to a wet washcloth and applying to the bite area, applying activated charcoal diluted with water, or applying a starchy potato that has been grated or shredded directly on the bite wound. These home remedies have been tested and have appeared to be effective at drawing out toxins and providing antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties.\nPain relievers such as ibuprofen can help reduce the pain and potentially slow full allergic response (anaphylaxis) in order to buy some time while waiting for a 911 response, according to Joshua Kugler, chair of the Emergency Services Department at South Nassau Communities Hospital.\nPreventing insect bites\nThose who are allergic to the venom of certain insects, like bees, should practice what Schuval called \"bee avoidance measures.\" These include avoiding the nests of insects, not wearing perfume outdoors and leaving your yellow shirts in your closet, she said.\nBecause mosquitos and ticks in many parts of the world can carry diseases or cause infection, it's recommended that people spending a significant amount of time outdoors protect themselves against these insects. To limit your exposure to mosquito and tick bites, wear clothing that covers your arms and legs. If you are in an area where these insects are prevalent, use a bug spray containing 5 to 7 percent DEET, a chemical compound known to keep certain insects at bay, according to Jonathan Day, a professor of medical entomology at the University of Florida.\nIf you're concerned about using DEET on yourself or young children, products containing essential oils — known as botanicals — can also be used, Day told Live Science. However, DEET is still effective when sprayed on clothing instead of directly on the skin and should be used if you are spending a significant amount of time in active mosquito and tick habitats, he added.\nThose who live in areas known for poisonous spiders should always be vigilant and avoid disturbing them, according to Baker. Preventive measures include carefully removing cobwebs and spider webs from dark places, such as garage corners, wood and rock piles, tires, old furniture and piles of old clothes and newspapers. Regularly cleaning living areas and keeping doors and windows closed helps prevent spiders from coming inside to areas that are easily accessible by children and pets. Spiders are also drawn to their food supply areas: where other insects live. Using insecticides or essential oils to kill or prevent insects in these areas can deter spiders from inhabiting there. Insecticides that contain active ingredients such as pyrethrin and allethrin can deter or kill spiders, but the spiders often will need to come into direct contact with the chemicals. Candles and electrical appliances designed to keep insects away may also help with spiders as these tools drive away the insects spiders prey upon. However, these tools, as well as DEET, do not work directly on spiders.\nBaker said the best way to prevent spider bites is to avoid spiders, as they typically only bite when they feel threatened. He recommended that spiders be brushed off and not crushed if they do get on skin. Actual spider bites are rare and often attributed to other bug bites or skin infections.\nAdditional reporting by Rachel Ross, Live Science Contributor.\nCDC: Venomous Spiders — types of spiders and how to protect yourself from getting bitten.\nNIH: Tick bites — what to look for and how to remove a tick.\nMayo Clinic: First aid for insect bites and stings\nMassive Trove of Artifacts Shipped to Ripley's Believe It or Not!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1395192"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8154779672622681,"wiki_prob":0.8154779672622681,"text":"Ultimate Mazda RX-7 Guide – Everything You Need To Know\nJoin us as we look at the history of one of the greatest cars to ever leave the land of the rising sun. We’ve provided everything that you need to about the mighty Mazda RX-7.\nHere, you can click on a particular section within this article, otherwise, scroll down as we look at every aspect of the Mazda RX-7.\nMazda RX-7 History\nHow does the RX-7 FD’s 13B-REW Rotary Work?\nWhat does the future hold for the RX-7?\nMazda RX-7 Pros &s\nRX-7’s In Drifting\nOther RX-7’s In Motorsport\nThe Mazda RX-7 is undoubtedly one of the first cars that pop up in conversation when enthusiasts speak about 90s legends.\nHowever, this automotive classic has been impressing since Mazda launched its first-ever rotary powered RX to the market in 1978.\nNow that it’s firmly sealed its position at the forefront of Mazda history (sorry, Miata owners), we’re keen to take you back to its humble beginnings as pay testament to this unique piece of JDM history.\nOften regarded as one of the greatest cars ever produced, the RX-7 features stunning, timeless looks and an insanely brave and unique powerplant. Combine this already-incredible package with a perfect lightweight chassis which epitomizes its finesse – how can you not fall in love?!\nIt’s the sheer number of boxes that the RX-7 ticks which have deservedly made it one of the most iconic cars in the history books. That’s before we even get talking about its ridiculous Wankel engine and its crazy redline capabilities!\nIt’s a perfect combination makes it a petrolhead’s dream. Mazda delivered affordability, exceptional handling characteristics, and impressive power into the automotive equivalent of a bikini-clad supermodel to the masses.\nLittle is known about its true history, but Mazda was, in fact, on the brink of bankruptcy at the time, when they made a make-or-break decision by placing the rotary engine into the first-ever RX-7 in 1978.\nWith the roadsters of the 50s and 60s struggling to remain current in the new era, its main competition in the Datsun 240z suddenly became less challenging, with the far less sought after 280ZX being launched to the market.\nAs the RX-7 began picking up traction good export sales, it appeared that the gamble had paid off, as Mazda managed to keep their head above water.\nAs the FC and FD models then went on to hit the market, from 1985 (FC) until 2002 (FD), it gained it an exceptional following from JDM and sports-car lovers alike.\nFollowing this success, they eventually went on to build over 810,000 RX-7’s between these years, spanning across three generations.\nWith the infamous FD being sold in the US for just three years, the final generation is now, quite rightly, one of the most sought-after JDM cars on the used market.\nWe’re going to look back over the history and exactly what this front engine-rear drive classic has offered to the world since it first launched onto the market from the late 70s, through to the present day.\nRX-7 History\nWhen you think of a Mazda sports car, there’s a chance that the affordable Miata also comes to mind, due to its huge popularity and affordability. However, the RX-7 was initially launched 20 years earlier and was an entirely different animal, which utilized a greatly improved version of the revolutionary rotary engine originally created by the German engineer, Felix Wankel.\nMazda’s rotary engine was so successful that it later led them to become the only Japanese car manufacturer to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with their four-rotor placed in one of the highest-regarded cars of all time, the 787B.\nCheck out this video to see the full evolution of the Mazda RX-7.\nWith the FD up against some of Japan’s finest ever-produced sports cars of the 90s, it was quite possibly the most refined out of the bunch. You could roll one out of the showroom and often, it was capable of laughing off its competition.\nIt didn’t need to use pistons, cylinders or camshaft, instead, it utilized spinning ‘Doritos’ and a pair of punchy turbochargers, yet they were placed into a perfectly-refined and beautifully crafted intense package.\nBut before we go more in-depth with the FD, let’s take a look back over where it all started for the RX-7.\nFirst generation – Mazda Savanna RX-7 (SA22C/FB)\nLittle is known about the humble beginnings of the RX-7. It was a gloriously flawed masterpiece which has never really ever received the recognition it deserves. Chances are, you’ve never even seen one in the flesh and metal. We certainly haven’t.\nOriginally launched in March 1978, the RX-7 replaced the Savanna RX-3. This first-ever model was created by Hiroshima-born Matasaburo Maeda. Matasaburo’s son Ikuo would also later go on to design the rotary-powered Mazda RX-8.\nAs the brand-new RX-7 hit the market, it provided an exceptionally lightweight and nimble chassis which weighed in at just 1,024kg. With its rotary engine installed behind the front axle, it provided the car with a low center of gravity and excellent weight distribution for a simple, raw driving experience.\nDue to the unique characteristics of the rotary engine, this allowed the Savanna’s 1.1L displacement to remain below their 1.5L tax bracket threshold, which made the RX-7 far more affordable compared to its larger-engine rivals.\nFor the Series 3 (1984-85) Mazda introduced the GSL-SE specifically to the North American market, which featured the fuel injected 1.3L 13B RE-EGI engine for the first time. This was capable of producing 135 hp and 133 ft/lb torque compared the 100hp found in the 12A and also featured a clutch-type LSD and rear disc brakes.\nGiven the impressive power for its time, combined with a live rear axle and curb weight of under 1,100kg, this was the lightest RX-7 to ever be released and it’s easy to see why owners were beginning to see its potential.\nSavanna RX-7 Turbo\nFor a short period, Mazda sold their first turbocharged rotary engine from the Luce/Cosmo, which featured a fuel injected and non-intercooled 12A turbo engine. This was made available for the top-end Series 3 for a short period of time in 1983. Despite the new-found power upgrades taking it to 163 hp, Mazda soon pulled it from the market to make way for its superior newborn brother.\nSecond generation – RX-7 FC\nWith the release of the Series 4 FC in 1985, this was where things really started getting interesting for the RX-7. As well as some drastic body changes, it was the engine which really got potential owners talking.\nWith the basic model 13B-VDEI producing 146 hp, it was the ‘Turbo II’ optional model, which was Mazda’s first turbocharged 13B effort that caught the enthusiasts attention, and it produced a whopping 182 hp.\nDespite the power increase, the displacement was kept at 1.3L, which meant that delighted Japanese owners were still able to reap the benefits of the cheaper tax bracket allowance.\nMazda confessed to taking design inspirations from the Porsche 924 due to its popularity in the American market, where they had sold the majority of the first-generation models, in an attempt to rival the more expensive competitor.\nDespite the SA22/FB being the raw sports car of the two, with the FC heading in the direction of the sport-tourers, it did manage to provide better handling with its independent rear suspension.\nHowever, it gained around 363 kg over the first generation in the process, but that didn’t stop the press singing its praises. It went on to earn Motor Trend’s ‘Import Car of the Year’ in 1986 and the Turbo II featuring on Car and Driver’s 10 Best list for the second time in 1987.\nRX-7 FC Special Editions\nConvertible FC (Vert)\n1988 also saw Mazda announce a convertible variant of their FC, which was only available in a naturally aspirated version for the US market, whilst the rest of the world did receive a turbocharged equivalent.\n10th Anniversary RX-7\nAfter an extremely successful 10 years, Mazda launched an anniversary edition which was limited to just 1,500 models, based on the Turbo II. This featured Crystal White monochromatic paint and some small body changes, which included 16-inch 7-spoke alloy wheels.\nIt also included a sought-after black-leather interior and a leather-wrapped MOMO steering wheel. There was nothing drastically different, but there’s no doubt that these will become increasingly collectible.\nGTUs\nTo celebrate the RX-7’s IMSA domination, Mazda released this lightweight race-orientated special edition for just one year. This was a stripped-down equivalent which came with manual windows and optional air conditioning and sunroof to keep the weight down.\nThis shared many of the upgraded components with the Turbo RX-7 such as brakes and a 4.300 LSD and would be the fastest naturally aspirated FC to leave the showroom due to its weight saving.\nAround 1,200 GTU’s were eventually built between 1989-90, making them one of the rarer RX-7 models.\nInfini (ɛ̃fini)\nMazda’s luxury brand, Infini, sold another special edition which was limited to just 600 units per year and was the most sought after. With many of the others featuring small changes, the upgrades on the Infini were more substantial.\nThis included upgraded suspension, increased power, an improved ECU, aluminium wheels and bonnet, different glass and all-around weight saving.\nThere was no question that the Infini was the ultimate car for FC enthusiasts, and it set the early benchmark for the ultimate RX-7. Due to only ever being sold on the Japanese Domestic Market in small numbers, you’ll need to go down the import route if you’re considering taking the opportunity to get your hands on one.\nIn its first year of sales in 1986, there were 86,000 FC’s sold in the US alone. 272,027 were eventually sold across the world before they ceased production on the Series 5 in 1992.\nAs we all know, the 90s were one of the most significant eras in Japanese automotive history. As the highest regarded manufacturers released some incredible new cars, Mazda was certainly ready to join in the fun as they prepared to unveil their hidden treasure…\nThird Generation – RX-7 FD\nThe FC had undoubtedly done a great job of providing a solid platform for continuing to focus enthusiasts’ attention on the RX-7, but it wasn’t until the release of the FD which took it back to its raw driving feel that Mazda managed to switch up the game entirely.\nMany justifying rejoiced at Mazda’s decision to stick with the rotary engine which made them so unique in the first place, keeping with the original small-lightweight block, yet it was better than ever.\nMazda gifted the FD with the first-ever mass-produced sequential twin-turbocharged engine to be exported from Japan. This meant that the FD was immediately capable of achieving 252hp when initially announced in 1992, before eventually going on to set an impressive 276hp in standard form by the time production ceased in 2002.\nWith the first turbo providing 10psi (0.7 bar) of boost, it began boosting at just 1,800rpm before the second turbo would then give it a kick it up the butt with another 10psi from 4,500rpm right the way through to its impressive 8,000rpm redline.\nDesigned by Yoichi Sato, it wasn’t just the engine which got the attention, it was simply one of the stunning cars ever to be launched, not just in the 90s, but to the present day. Where the FC was compact and boxy, the FD had a smooth, sleek, curvaceous look and was certainly a head-turner!\nWith a curb weight of under 1,300kg and a low center of gravity, it was undoubtedly one of the best sports cars on the market and was easily capable of competing with some of the finest cars of the 90s.\nWith its release in Japan, the FD managed to cause big dramas when it came to dimension regulations. Due to its increased width, Japanese owners were forced to pay annual taxes on their FD’s. This made the FD less affordable for the everyday driver, which is one of the main reasons why the Eunos Roadster had so much appeal.\nFor many, ownership was worth every cent, and to the present day, it’s one of the most sought-after lightweight, front engine rear-wheel-drive JDM legends that quite rightly reserves its spot in most car enthusiasts dream garages.\nAlthough the FD was sold in the US for just three years, sales continued worldwide, and almost 70,000 were eventually sold.\nMazda’s engineers aimed to bring back the original hardcore race-orientated RX-7 philosophy with the FD after the FC failed to meet the expectations of the original, and they did so in incredible fashion.\nIt’s undoubtedly one of the best cars that will ever leave Japan and has earned a huge following worldwide, making it a serious collectors’ item for the future.\nLet’s take a look at the wide range of different models and limited editions which were released over the FD’s life span.\nSeries 6 (1992-95)\nThe Series 6 was the first FD’s to be produced from its launch in 1992/93 and were exported across the world. This included several variants – the base model Type S, the well-known, lightweight sports model Type R, Type RZ, Type RB, A-spec and the Touring X.\nIt was clear that Mazda had done a great job with the Series 6 when there wasn’t much that needed revising for the Series 7. With some minor updates including a simplified vacuum routing manifold and a 16-bit ECU which combined provided around 10 hp extra to the engine.\nHowever, this extra power was only earned on the manual cars due to it being provided beyond 7,000rpm, which was the redline for automatic transmission cars.\nSome minor design updates were also carried out, such as a new rear spoiler and rear lights. The Type RZ model was provided with larger brake rotors and 17” BBS wheels.\nThis Series was only sold in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK and were only ever produced with a right-hand-drive setup from the factory.\nThis was the last ever series of the Mazda RX-7 FD and was sold exclusively for the Japanese market. On certain models, they provided more efficient turbochargers along with improved intercooler and radiator cooling by redesigning the front fascia with larger openings.\nInternal upgrades included the seats, steering wheel, and instrument cluster, which were all changed.\nA new rear spoiler was fitted, which even allowed for adjustability on certain models, and upgraded ABS allowed for improved braking ability.\nThere were three power levels available, just 251 hp for the automatic variant, right the way through to 261 hp for the Type RB and 276hp on the top-end models.\nPower levels were able to be increased by using a less restrictive muffler and improved turbochargers. The 276hp and 333Nm of torque that the Series 8 was capable of producing ensured that it hit the maximum power limit set by Japanese regulators at the time.\nType RS\nThe Type RS was the start of the high-end line of FD’s and came equipped from the factory with impressive Bilstein suspension and 17-inch wheels, alongside a weight reduction to 1,280kg. This was equipped with the less restrictive muffler and improved turbos, which also included abradable compressor seals.\nCapable of achieving the highest ever power output of 276hp at 6,500rpm and 232 lb/ft of torque at 5,000rpm, which hit the legal Japanese limits set at the time.\nThe Type RS also had a brake upgrade which increased the front and rear rotors to 314mm.\nIt also included a 4.30 ratio diff, which provided substantially improved acceleration and a gearbox with improved gearing to reduce cruising RPM and provide increased engine efficiency.\nType RZ\nThis included all of the Type RS upgrades but then went on to shave even more weight, weighing in at 1,270kg. This model is identified by its gun-metal BBS wheels and red interior. ABS was improved by braking differently on each wheel, which allowed for improved turning under braking, which made the car far safer for less experienced users.\nSpirit R\nThe Spirit R is the ultimate RX-7 ever launched, and just 1,500 were ever produced. This included all of the above upgrades alongside some further exclusive additions such as cross-drilled brake rotors.\nMazda’s press release stated that “The Type-A Spirit R model is the ultimate RX-7, boasting the most outstanding driving performance in its history.”\nRX-7 SP\nThis was a lesser-known model which was provided to the Australian market in 1995. This was produced to achieve homologation in the Australian GT Production Car Series and Eastern Creek 12 Hour production car races. With an initial run of just 25 made, an additional 10 were later built to fulfill demand.\nThe SP produced 274 hp and 263 ft/lb torque and featured a carbon fiber nose cone, rear spoiler, vented hood, and even the fuel tank was made of carbon fiber, with a 120L upgrade compared to the 76L found in the stock equivalent.\nAlongside that, it featured a 4.3:1 rear diff, 17” wheels and upgraded brake rotors and calipers.\nWhen it came to performance, the intercooler was three times more efficient and the exhaust and ECU were upgraded.\nWith additional weight-saving such as Recaro racing seats, the final weight of the car was just 1,218 kg compared to the original 1,250 kg.\nThis made for an epic road-legal race car and was capable of impressive even against the likes of the Porsche 911 RS CS.\nIt later went on to win the Eastern Creek 12 Hour race 4 years in a row, and even a podium finish at the Targa Tasmania tarmac rally.\nBathurst R\nYou’re probably getting the point that Mazda loves special editions by now!\nThis edition was released in Japan in 2001 to commemorate the RX-7 SP. This version was based on the Type R and just 500 were built. This had adjustable dampers, several carbon fiber interior parts, re-styled fog-lights, and a different handbrake.\nThe 13B has stood the test of time and is certainly one of the most incredible engines ever built. As it reinvented itself over the years, it eventually evolved into the much-loved 13B-REW, which was released in the FD in 1992. This immediately changed the game.\nGone were the valves, pistons and connecting rods of your everyday engine, and in its place was a spinning twin-turbocharged Dorito of destiny.\nOriginally designed by Felix Wankel back in 1951, this incredible feat of engineering has been given very little opportunity in the modern-day automotive world, but Mazda is determined to use it to its full potential.\nYou really do need to understand how a rotary works to appreciate just how truly amazing, yet simple it really is.\nAs you’ve probably guessed, explaining exactly how a rotary works is far easier in video than text, and Engineering Explained come to the rescue to explain everything you could possibly need to know about the RX-7 rotary.\nSo, you now hopefully understand that in a piston engine, the cylinder does four different jobs by handling the intake, compression, combustion and exhaust gases. Where the rotary is different is that it divides these into their own specific areas.\nThink of it as a 4-cylinder engine, where each cylinder has its own specific task, with the piston continually moving between each cylinder. This is done within two spinning ‘Doritos’ (rotors) as opposed to the typical pistons and rod setup.\nRotary engines are capable of producing more power when compared to a relative piston-based engine due to combustion occurring twice as frequently. It’s incredibly smooth, and it’s also capable of spinning at far higher revolutions than a camshaft and valve setup.\nThis allows for a lightweight and extremely compact engine which is also capable of withstanding huge power to make for the ultimate package.\nMazda went on to continue using the rotary engine in their RX-8, and later featured in 2012 during Mazda2 testing, using the rotary technology as a range extender when combined with an electric setup.\nSince then, patent drawings have also surfaced which prove that Mazda is still determined to continue with it, but little is known about their intentions. All we do know is that there is a small, hard-working team working at Mazda to ensure that they do their best to keep the rotary dream alive.\nAs we look to the future, let’s take a look at the RX-7 rumors which have been floating around – could this mark the perfect return for the rotary?\nSince you’re here, we’re guessing that, like us, you love all things rotary! If so, you’ll definitely want to check out our very own Rotorhead Heaven article, as Mad Mike throws it down alongside a 787B!\nWe’re hearing that we’ve not yet witnessed the end of the “RX” chapter just yet, and it seems that Mazda are more determined than ever to keep the dream alive. With the revival of the NSX and the Supra, could the RX-7 be coming next?\nWith what were once rumors of a 2017 re-release to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Cosmo Sport, we can now clearly confirm that it never happened!\nHowever, during the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show, the RX VISION was confirmed to feature a new-generation rotary under the hood, but it’s still yet to see the light of day.\nIt seems that the main issues which are likely slowing progress are creating a reliable, fuel-efficient Wankel engine to meet with today’s strict emissions regulations.\nOne thing we do know is that Mazda was caught testing a 1.6L, two-rotor, twin turbocharged 400 horsepower rotary in an RX-8 in 2017, which is enough to leave us feeling optimistic about the future!\nIf it does happen, expect it to be a little different to the rotary engines that we know and love, most likely with some kind of electronic wizardry added into the mix!\nIn the meantime, there are some strong rumors that there are some BIG announcements coming from Mazda in January 2020 for their 100th anniversary. Could it be the RX-9, or a new rotary? Either way, we’ll keep our fingers crossed!\nMazda RX-7 Pros & Cons\nIts smooth, high-revving rotary engine, capable of big power\nInsanely well-balanced lightweight chassis\nIdeal 50/50 weight distribution\nIts stunning, timeless body design\nNo pistons? No problem! (Famous last words!)\n13B engines swap into 12A RX-7’s with little effort\nPotentially abused engines\nReliability issues with tuned/badly maintained engines\nRotary servicing costs\nThe potential difficulty with sourcing parts\nRebuilding 12A engines can already be challenging due to discontinued parts\nThere’s no question that it’s becoming one of the most desirable cars on the used market, but finding a well-maintained version is going to become increasingly difficult.\nIf you’ve got the budget for your dream RX-7, we’d highly recommend saving some extra money to carry out a rebuild to ensure you have the best base for the long-term.\nThere’s no real question that Mad Mike has become the most well-known face of RX-7’s in drifting, mainly thanks to ‘Madbul’. With several ridiculous cars over the years, he’s stayed loyal to representing the Mazda brand whilst shredding tires around the world.\nEnjoy this video as Madbul shreds it’s way up the Crown Range in New Zealand!\nAlongside Mad Mike’s success, let’s also take a moment to appreciate some of the other insane builds which have surfaced over the years.\nHert certainly needs no introduction, and his Twerkstallion has certainly set the Hoonigan YouTube channel alight in recent times!\nHe may have competed and won most of his Championships in his 2JZ S14 but let’s not forget about James Deane’s awesome FD! (Yes, that’s an SR20, sorry, not sorry!)\nThis is quite possibly our favorite FC ever from Item-B, you’ve just GOT to take a moment to appreciate this build in this awesome video from the guys over at MACHETE!\nRX-7’s In Motorsport\nAs you probably guessed, the RX-7 hasn’t impressed in drifting alone. Let’s take a look at which other forms of motorsport it’s famed for.\nThe U.S\nWith its first entry in 1979, the RX-7 took both 1st and 2nd place at the 24 Hours of Daytona and claimed the GTU series Championship. It then went on to win the Championship for seven years in a row, and then went on to take the GTO championship for 10 years in a row from 1982.\nIt later went on to win more IMSA races than any other car in history.\nLe Mans & Spa 24hr Events\nDespite it not being hugely successful, Mazda made several attempts at competing in the Le Mans, with 14th being their highest finishing position. However, they then went on to tackle Spa 24 Hours, with their Savanna RX-7 winning the event in 1981.\nHaving had great success in Europe and America, Australia was their next effort. It had a huge amount of success, winning the 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship and a handful of Bathurst 1000 podiums. It then also went on to take the win in the 1983 Australian Endurance Championships.\nMazda decided to retire from Australia when the Group A regulations came into force, as they would be required to build 5,000 units plus 500 evolution models.\nIt may come as a surprise, but the RX-7 even entered the World Rally Championship to compete in the RAC Rally in Wales, where it went on to take a respectable 11th place against some of the worlds best.\nLittle is known about their Group B history, mainly because it sadly never happened. However, check out their car which was built for the 40th Anniversary, which never made the crazy world of Group B.\nAt Drifted, we’re becoming increasingly disappointed with the automated repetitiveness of the soulless present-day auto industry.\nAfter a long-awaited re-release for the Supra which ended in a BMW-based disappointment, it makes us appreciate the finest cars of the 90s even more than ever, and the RX-7 truly earns its spot on the podium.\nEven in bone-stock form, as Mazda intended, there’s no question that the RX-7 is one of the most unique and iconic sports cars ever produced. It challenged the ordinary, and it well and truly stunned anyone that doubted its capabilities.\nIt’s certainly not the cheapest or most convenient car on the planet to maintain, but we have no doubt that it’ll be worth the time, money and effort that it consumes!\nIts looks, suspension, and chassis truly define perfection, and the rotary really is an incredibly unique invention which makes them even more desirable in their own way.\nIf you can get your hands on any RX-7, from a Savanna to an FD, do so! Just be careful that it’s not a complete heap, otherwise, it could end up costing you big bucks to restore it to the condition it deserves.\nThere’s been no better time to own one and they’ll undoubtedly continue to rise in value. What’s better than having an investment which can also put a huge grin on your face and take you back to your childhood?!\nWill we ever get a worthy heir to the Mazda throne? We’ll keep our hopes up for a worthy successor and hope that Mazda once again pulls the impossible out the bag with another incredible rotary engine!\nAdditional RX-7 Related Content\nThere’s certainly no shortage of epic RX-7 content out there, and quite rightly so! We’ve chosen some of our favorite YouTube picks here:\nJoin TheSmokingTire as they take a 400hp FD out or a spin!\nWe’re not entirely sure on our feelings on this controversial build, but we certainly want to drive it!\nTurbo? Check. 4-rotor? Check! You’ll want to prepare yourself for an eargasm, as this absolutely insane RX-7 hits the dyno!\nSeven minutes of pure rotary goodness!\nI dunno about you, but for me, I never get bored with fresh Hert FC content!\nThink a 100HP N/A won’t be enough for drifting? Think again. Hoonigan took a trip to the UK and this humble FC stood out a mile!\nWheelsAge\norion (Flickr)\nZen Garage\nCarMag\nLast updated: 9th June 2019 – Added new photos and corrected spelling mistakes.\nTags: FC3S, fd3s, rx7\nUltimate Mazda RX8 Exhaust Guide\nRX8 Tuning\nUltimate Mazda RX8 Coilover Guide\nUltimate Mazda Miata Exhaust Guide\n« What Happens If You Hit A Person On The Road?\nBoosting Your Car’s Performance »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line619774"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6884864568710327,"wiki_prob":0.3115135431289673,"text":"STUDYDADDY\nHomework Answers\nTop Tutors\nStudyDaddy Accounting\nAnswered You can buy a ready-made answer or pick a professional tutor to order an original one.\nIn examination of the nose, the clinician observes gray, pale mucous membranes with clear, serous discharge. This is most likely indicative of:Allergic rhinitis Your patient complains of a feeling o\nIn examination of the nose, the clinician observes gray, pale mucous membranes with clear, serous discharge. This is most likely indicative of:Allergic rhinitis Your patient complains of a feeling of heaviness in the lower legs daily. You note varicosities, edema, and dusky color of both ankles and feet. Which of the following is the most likely cause for these symptoms?Venous insufficiency Which of the following is the most important question to ask during cardiovascular health history? Sudden death of a family member Rheumatic heart disease is a complication that can arise from which type of infection? Group A beta hemolytic streptococcus A cough is described as chronic if it has been present for:8 weeks or more A key symptom of ischemic heart disease is chest pain. However, angina equivalents may include exertional dyspnea. Angina ...\nRated Solutions\n155 orders completed\nTutor has posted answer for $40.00. See answer's preview\n** *********** ** the nose the clinician observes **** **** ****** ********* with ***** ****** discharge **** ** **** ****** ********** *********** rhinitis Your patient ********* ** a ******* ** ********* in the ***** **** ***** *** note ************ ***** and dusky ***** ** **** ****** *** **** Which ** *** ********* ** *** **** ****** ***** for ***** *************** ******************** ** *** ********* ** *** **** important question to *** during ************** health history?Sudden ***** of a ****** ***************** ***** ******* ** * complication **** *** ***** from ***** type ** *************** * **** hemolytic **************** ***** ** described ** ******* if ** *** **** ******* ***** weeks ** ******* *** symptom of ******** ***** ******* ** ***** **** However ****** *********** may include exertional dyspnea ****** *********** *** ********* ********* ***** * only A ***** with ** ******** ******** disorder ************* the ******** ** *** ** *** 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** ***** of *** ******************** ** options: a)Sinus pain increased ******** permeability *** *************************** ******** permeability *** vasodilatation A *********** **** ********* of ******** ******* ** bowel ****** extreme fatigue *** ************* ****** **** At times ** ** constipated *** ***** ***** he has ******** ** diarrhea *** physical *********** is ************ ** ** important *** *** ********* ** ********* *** ********** of:ColonoscopyWhen all *** **** is ******** ****** ****** limits **** is *** **** ********* ******* ***** to order *********** **** availability *** ********************* ************* common ************ finding ** ******** *** ***** ****** ********* ***** ************ reports **** **** *********** ********* ***** ************ ******** air-fluid ****** ** *** ***** **** ** * ********** ******* ***** in:Bowel Obstruction The **** ****** ********* ******** *** ****************** pneumonia **************** pneumoniae What **** ** used to ******* the ********* ** *************** ** abdomen **** ********* to *********** 76-year-old ******* **** * ******** year smoking ******* ******** **** ********** ** ******* cough ******* ******* ********** *** ****** **** **** *** **** 2 months The ******** exam reveals ********* ****** ****** *** ******** ** percussion over the left ***** **** field The ***** X-ray ************ shift ** *** *********** and ******* ** the **** These are ******* ***** ******* ************ ** years *** ******** to *** ****** complaining ** ******** ***** pain ******* ************ *************** *** shortness ** ****** The **** comes and **** and is *** ********** with ******** or ******** **** does not exacerbate ** ******* *** pain The pain is ******* ******* ***** *** **** ****** **** ** ********* ******* *** ****** *** cardiac disease and ********* a **** at *** 65 The *** ******** **** *** ***** a ************ ***** at *** *** *** ************** **** *** *** ***** that **** is * ******** sign 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8/10 ****** activity ********* **** ***** * few ****** *** ************ ********** ** ******** *** ******** ** rest *** occasional ****** **** ** ************ radiating ** **** ******** ********** affects quality ** life ** ******** activity **** is ***** ****** *** not go **** ***** ** ******* ******* ** ****** ***** ** *** ******* ****** ***** sounds S1 *** S2 ** murmurs ***** ** the ********* differential ********* ***** be **** *************** artery ******* **** ****** ************* following ********* ** ********** * ******** ******* **** determining whether * patient with asthma *** ** safely ********* and treated ** ************** greater **** ** ******************** ********** ******* ***** ****** ******** **** ** epicanthal ***** ********** palpebral fissures ****** ********** palmar ****** *** a low ***** bridge ***** are ******** ** ************* ******** ******* ** ******* ********** *********** ********** male ********* ** **** clinic **** *** with ******** This could ** *** to:Alpha-1 ************** ******* *** been treated *** ******** for 5 ***** ***** of *** following **** provide ********** ** the ***** ** *********** ****** *** funduscopic *********** *** **** ******** ********** *********** ********** ** *** ********* *********** are commonly ********** **** the **** ****** ** cough?ACE *************** ************ ********** **** *** would ****** ** *** *** ********* ** a ******* **** ****** of Chronic ******* ********* ** ********** <12 **** *** ****** *** ****** ****** missingThe ***** **** in *** ******* assessment ** * ******* is ********* *********** **************** *********** assessing the **** ***** ** the ********* ** considered a ****** ******* ******* when ********** with *** *************** ******* corneal defect During physical *********** ** * ******* *** **** ********* ** ********** ** *** ***** **** fields **** ** ********** ****** ****** ************** test ** *** clinical ******** for *** assessment ** ****** stenosis?Echocardiography Which of *** ********* would be ********** * ****** ******* that requires **** ************* ** * ******* ********************* ********** in ****** member ** *** 35 When counseling clients ********* *** *** of ************* drugs such ** ******* ************** *** ********** *** ***** practitioner ******* patients to:Do *** *** for ******** infectious diarrhea Which of *** ********* ******* studies should ** ********** ** * ********* malignancy is ****************** ********** **** ***** *********** ******* ********* of **** and ************ ** *** right foot **** worsens **** ******** and ** ******** ** **** ** physical *********** *** **** pallor of *** ***** foot ********* ****** ** 4 ******* ** *** ***** **** ** dorsalis ***** pulse in *** right **** *** ** ***** in left **** Which ** *** following ** * ****** ***** ** *** ***** *** symptoms?Arterial **************************** changes ** *** ***** ******* the ********* ************** ** **** ****************** anterior-posterior ************* ** the ********* ******** ***** ******** a **** *** another ********* ** ******* with ****** ***** **************** ********** ***** *** ** ***** ***** ** therapy Your ******* *** **** returned **** * 6-month ********** trip to Southeast **** He ******* *********** ***** hemoptysis and ** unintentional ****** **** of ** ****** over *** last month These ******** ****** prompt *** clinician ** ************************* ********** p system involves enzymes **** are ******************* or ******* by ***************** abilities *** **** ******** *********** assessment ** ******************* *** ** a ******* ****** ** *** above Which ** *** ********* ** not a ************ ****** to *** development of *********** in ***** **************** ******* ******** ********* *********** ******* ******** ** *** ********* ********** ***** sustaining ******** ********* injuries ***** a motorcycle ******** **** examination *** **** ********* *** ** *********** ******* ** ******* asymmetric ***** expansion *** ** ****** ****** **** the **** ***** lobe ** is most ********* to suspect:PneumothoraxYou **** a ******* complaining ** ******* and **** ** **** **** ***** ** *** ***** ******* ***** *** **** ****** *** vertigo *** question *** length ** time the ********* ***** She ***** *** ******* ***** ** **** *** ** *********** ** ******** *** ******* **** *** ******* ***** of *** ********* ************************ *********** *********** ****** ******** ** *** ********* department **** ********** **** and weakness She admits ** having **** ***** stools *** *** last *** **** *** ******* a **** history ** **** *** ** ************** She self-medicates ***** with ********* ******** and aspirin *** ***** **** ** ******** examination *** *** *********** *********** and ****** ***** ****** ***** **** ** positive A likely ******** ** the *********** ******* ********** ulcer The ***** impact ** the physiological changes that ***** **** ***** ****** ** the ********** ****************** hallmark ** *** is:Impaired ******* ** *** **** stores Which symptom ** **** characteristic of *********** ***** pain?Pain ***** ** occur with ******** stretching ** palpation A 23-year-old ******* *** *** *** ************** ***** ********* is ****** to have ***** ** *** ************************ assessment ** *********** ********* *** clinician ***** ********** ********* ** *** chest One **** expands ******* **** *** ***** **** could ** *** ****************** ******** **** **** ** evaluate the gall bladder ************* *********** * * *********** ***** **** * ** pack **** history ******** ** **** primary **** ******** *** ********** ** * ********** ***** ***** **** ********* ****** production worse ** the ******* ********* **** the **** ***** ****** *** ***** you **** have the **** ***** **** ***** year” ***** ** *** following ******* ***** *** ******** ******** ** **** ******** ******** ****************** 80 ******************** allergies b)Acute bronchitis c)Bronchial ***************** ************************ ** ** points) Your *********** female patient ********* of feeling palpitations ** occasion *** clinician ****** ********* **** ************ *** ***** a **** of: Question ** options: a)Anemia b)Anxiety c)Hyperthyroidism d)All ** *** ******************* 82 ** ********** *********** ******* **** history of alcohol ***** ***** ** **** ****** ******* ** ‘throwing ** ******** On ******** *********** *** **** ******* *** caput ****** A ****** cause *** *** *********** ************* ** ****************** ulcer ********************** *********************** varices d)PancreatitisSave Question 83 (2 ********** *********** ***** female ******** complaining ** ********** ***** upper ******** **** She reports **** she *** *** *** *** ***** ********* ********* Which of *** following ********** studies ***** ** **** ********** ** ***** cholecystitis? Question ** options: C-reactive ******* ***** ** * ********* ***** **** ***** ** 11000 Direct ***** ********* level ** 03 ************ ******* ***** ** *** ***************** 84 ** *********** * patient ********** **** ********* ********** ** ************** abdominal **** ******* ******** ***** ** the abdomen? Question ** options: a)Left ***** quadrant b)Right ***** quadrant c)Left ***** ***************** ***** quadrantSave Question ** ** ************** ** the following ********** is **** ********** *************** **************** ** ********************** ** *** **** *** *** associated with ********* ********* *** ** *** * **** ********* side ****** *************** *********** and ************ calcium channel ******** are ********** **** ** increased **** ** ************** ********* and ***************** anti-arrhythmics **** * *** toxic/therapeutic ratio *** some are *********** toxic d)Anti-arrhythmic therapy ****** be ********* ** *** hospital *** all ********************** ** (2 *********** autosomal ********* (AR) disorders *********** need: Question ** **************** *** ******* gene ** *** *** *********** ** ******* the *************** *** ******* **** to ******* *** ************** ******* ***** to ******* *** ************** ******* ***** to ****** ********************** 87 ** points) Which ** *** ********* ******** ********* ***** ** ******* ** ************** resource ***** ** ************ ******** ** ******* *** ********** of * ********* ** ****** ********** ******** and/or ******************* 87 options: a)Clinical ******** ********************* ******** **************** ********************* recommendationSave Question ** ** ***************** in the ******* human immunodeficiency virus ***** infection ******* *** ** the ********* ***************** ** **************** ************************* ****************************** ** ** *********** 86-year-old ******* *** ***** a hearing *** ********* of **** ******* ** *** affected *** ** ******** ** ******** ******* *** *********** **** ********* ** ***** *** ************* ** ******************** neuroma b)Cerumen impaction c)Otitis media d)Ménière’s ********************* ** ** points) A patient complains of ***** fatigue and *********** ** ******** *********** there ** ********** ******** *************** Which ** *** following diagnostic ***** should ** considered? Question ** **************** ************* ************** ************** of the aboveSave Question ** ** ************** ** the following symptoms ** common **** ***** ****** **************** ** ******************* ******** membrane b)Bright ***** ****** ** ******** ********************* tympanic ******** *************** of *** aboveSave Question ** ** points) A *********** **** ******** with ******** ** *** sclera ******* *** ********* ******** ** *** **** *** symptoms ***** ************** throughout *** **** *** ** *** associated ***** nasal ********* Which ** *** following ** most likely ******* ** the *********************** ***** middle-aged ****** ******** with * month of ************* ********** ***** ******* fever ** **** ******* ********** ******* hoarseness **** ****** *** differential **************** pneumonia b)Peptic ulcer *************************** *********************** (Epstein-Barr)Save Question ** ** ************* ******** a group ** ***** ****** ********* prevention ** **************** ****** ******* ******** the ***** ************ **** ******* which ** *** ********* *********************** ** ***************** *** head ** the *** **** ******* ** ***** and **** *********** when ******** ** heartburn begins b)Raise *** **** ** *** *** ** ****** *** **** *** ****** pump ********* ********** ** bedtime c)Sit ** *** ** **** after ****** *** medication *** ******** fluid *************** **** ************ raise **** of *** on blocks *** **** * ****** **** ********* ****** * ****************** ** ** points) Jenny ** * ** year old graduate ******* **** ******** ** *** ****** today **** ********** ** fever ********** ***** **** *** *********** fatigue *** *** **** two days *** ****** any ***** ** sputum ********** *** states **** **** *** ***** ********* *** **** **** *** chest **** **** **** to ease *** Upon *********** the ******* presents looking **** ill She ** ******* forward and ****** that **** ** *** **** comfortable ******** *** *** Temp ** *** BP= ****** Heart **** ** ******* *** ******* **** ************ * ******** rub is ******* *** lung ****** *** ***** **** ***** ********** ******** your initial ********* ***** ************* ** options: a)Mitral ***** ******************** Pain **** ****************************************** ********************* ** ** ********** *********** ******* with ****************** pneumonia ******** with ****** ********** cough *********** ** **** ***** *** *********** 18 ** ***** *** ***** *** ***** **** ******** ***** ** mg/dl ** *** * history ** **** ******** *** *** ****** ****** ** ********* from *** last visit ***** ******** indicate that *** ****************** hospitalization for ********************* * **** **** ** ********** *************** best evidence ****** ***** to consider in * **** ********** ********** patient ****************** ** ************* ******* ************ *********** ************* ARB ******* channel ******* **************** ******** ******** ACE and ******** clopidogrel nitrates Your ******* complains ** ***** abdominal **** ******** extreme ******* ************* weight **** of ** pounds ** last 3 ***** *** you **** * ******** ********* ** ******* ****** examination ********** ***** **** iron deficiency ****** The clinician needs to consider:Colon ********** ***** patient reports burning **** ***** ingestion of **** ***** *** ***** ***** What assessment would ****** *** ***** ************ ** making * ********* of ******************* ** * ***** ************ ********** ************ ******************* **** **** ** not ************ with ***************** auscultation ** *** chest **** **** ******* a **** grating sound at the ***** anterolateral lung ****** at **** inspiration *** ***** ********** This finding is ********** with:Pneumonia *********\nClick here to download attached files: South-University-NSG5003-midterm-exam (1).docx\nBuy this answer\nor Buy custom answer\nQ: Write 2 page essay on the topic Should adults be charged in situations where teenagers are drinking or have been drinking in their presence.Download file to see previous pages... 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{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7403709292411804,"wiki_prob":0.2596290707588196,"text":"Robert Kiyosaki Blog\nFinancial Education Portal inspired by Robert Kiyosaki\nRobert Kiyosaki Books\nRich Dad Advisors Books\nRich Dad Games\nHome» Articles by: Richer Daddy\nThe Single Biggest Reason Most Investors LOSE Money\nPosted By Richer Daddy on November, 2013\nIt’s almost never openly admitted in public, but the reality is that few if any investors actually beat the market in the long-term. The reason for this is that most of the investment strategies employed by investors (professional or amateur) simply do not make money. I know this runs counter to the claims of the entire financial services industry. But it is factually correct. In 2012, the S&P 500 roared up 16% including dividends. During that period, less than 40% of fund managers beat the market. Most investors could have simply invested in an index fund, paid less in fees, and done better. If you spread out performance over the last two years (2011 and 2012) the results are even worsen with only 10% of funds beating the market. If we stretch back even further, the results are even more dismal. For the ten years ended 1Q 2013, a mere 0.4% of mutual funds have beaten the market. 0.4%, as in less than half of one percent of funds. These are investment “professionals,” folks whose jobs depend on producing gains, who cannot beat the market for any significant period. The reason this fact is not better known is because the mutual fund industry usually closes its losing funds or merges them with other, better performing funds. As a result, the mutual fund industry in general experiences a tremendous survivor bias. But the cold hard fact what I told you earlier: less than half of one percent of fund managers outperform the market over a ten-year period. So how does one beat the market? Cigar Butts and Moats. “Cigar butts” was a term used by the father of value investing, Benjamin Graham, to describe investing in companies that trade at significant discounts to their underlying values. Graham likened these companies to old, used cigar butts that had been discarded, but which had just one more puff left in them. Like discarded cigar butts, these investments were essentially “free”: investors had discarded them based on the perception that they had no value. However, many of these cigar butts do in fact have on last puff in them. And for a shrewd investor like Benjamin Graham, that last puff was the profit potential obtained by acquiring these companies at prices below their intrinsic value (below the value of the companies assets plus cash, minus its liabilities). Graham used a lot of diversification, investing in hundreds of “cigar butts” to produce average annual gains of 20%, far outpacing the S&P 500’s 12.2% per year over the same time period. So when I say that you can amass a fortune by investing in Cigar...\nFiat Money Quantity hits new record\nQE3 is running at $ 85bn, and directly increases FMQ by double that amount, or $ 170bn, indicating that other factors contributed $ 57bn to the FMQ total. This suggests that the current rate of QE was insufficient to provide the liquidity required in money markets consistent with current interest rates, at least for the month of September. However, bond yields are still high, despite the deferral of tapering, as shown in the second chart, which is of the US Treasury 10-year note yield. Since 30th October the Treasury 10-year note yield has increased from 2.5% to 2.75%. During that time it has been more widely acknowledged that tapering has been deferred for the foreseeable future. This being the case, the rise in yield indicates that underlying tightness in bond markets has returned after a brief pause, despite the Fed’s bond purchases and the liquidity this provides. Therefore, QE3 may need to be supplemented by other measures if interest rates and bond yields are to be maintained at current levels. Note: the methodology and construction of FMQ was published by GoldMoney. Fiat Money Quantity hits new...\nIndia’s Demand to Buy Silver Doubles on Gold Ban, Price Drop\nAnti-gold rules force consumers to buy silver instead, imports double from 2012… DEMAND to buy silver amongst Indian households has pushed the country’s imports of the precious metal to twice last year’s level and may set a record in 2013, according to industry experts. Between January and September, silver imports to India totaled more than 4,000 tonnes, already beating full-year 2012 says the Thomson Reuters GFMS consultancy. The world’s largest end-consumer of silver bullion as well as gold, India’s current record demand to buy silver came at just over 5,000 tonnes in 2008. That figure equals some 16% of total global demand, put around 30,000 tonnes per year. India’s demand to buy gold, also the world leader, has been nearer 25%. But after July and August this year saw silver imports of 1,000 tonnes as gold imports fell to zero, “India could import 6,000 tonnes of silver this year,” reckons a special report from Japanese trading house Mitsui, “almost 1,000 tonnes more than the record imports seen in 2008.” “There has been a massive improvement in silver imports,” agrees Bombay Bullion Association director Harmesh Arora, speaking to Reuters today, “and we will continue to see more. “Investors are taking advantage of lower prices,” says Arora, “and the lack of restrictions on silver imports as of now.” Noting the surge in demand to buy silver as prices fell steeply in 2011 from near all-time highs, “The response of Indian consumers to price weakness in silver can be spectacular,” says Mitsui strategist David Jollie. Even though silver cannot directly replace gold in many areas of India’s cultural and religious culture, he adds, “The massive price decline for silver in April 2013 encouraged further buying.” Looking at the Indian government’s aggressive anti-gold measures, “I don’t think we will see any policy changes in silver,” says Rajesh Khosla, managing director with refiner MMTC PAMP – part-owned by the government. “There is less gold available, so rural people will gradually move to silver. It will be a more of a default option than a conscious choice,” he believes. India’s Demand to Buy Silver Doubles on Gold Ban, Price...\nThe adverse effects of monetary stimulation\nBy Alasdair Macleod There are two indisputable economic facts to bear in mind. The first is that GDP is simply a money-total of economic transactions, and a central bank fosters an increase in GDP by making available more money and therefore bank credit to inflate this number. This is not the same as genuine economic progress, which is what consumers desire and entrepreneurs provide in an unfettered market with reliable money. The second fact is that newly issued money is not absorbed into an economy evenly: it has to be handed to someone first, like a bank or government department, who in turn passes it on to someone else through their dealings and so on, step by step until it is finally dispersed. As new money enters the economy, it naturally drives up the prices of goods bought with it. This means that someone seeking to buy a similar product without the benefit of new money finds it is more expensive, or put more correctly the purchasing power of his wages and savings has fallen relative to that product. Therefore, the new money benefits those that first obtain it at the expense of everyone else. Obviously, if large amounts of new money are being mobilised by a central bank, as is the case today, the transfer of wealth from those who receive the money later to those who get it early will be correspondingly greater. Now let’s look at today’s monetary environment in the United States. The wealth-transfer effect is not being adequately recorded, because official inflation statistics do not capture the real increase in consumer prices. The difference between official figures and a truer estimate of US inflation is illustrated by John Williams of Shadowstats.com, who estimates it to be 7% higher than the official rate at roughly 9%, using the government’s computation methodology prior to 1980. Simplistically and assuming no wage inflation, this approximates to the current rate of wealth transfer from the majority of people to those that first receive the new money from the central bank. The Fed is busy financing most of the Government’s borrowing. The newly-issued money in Government’s hands is distributed widely, and maintains prices of most basic goods and services at a higher level than they would otherwise be. However, in providing this funding, the Fed creates excess reserves on its own balance sheet, and it is this money we are considering.The reserves on the Fed’s balance sheet are actually deposits, the assets of commercial banks and other domestic and foreign depository institutions that use the Fed as a bank, in the same way the rest of us have bank deposits...\nSimon Black – This one chart shows you who’s really in control\nNovember 7, 2013 Bangkok, Thailand Check out this chart below. It’s a graph of total US tax revenue as a percentage of the money supply, since 1900. For example, in 1928, at the peak of the Roaring 20s, US money supply (M2) was $ 46.4 billion. That same year, the US government took in $ 3.9 billion in tax revenue. So in 1928, tax revenue was 8.4% of the money supply. In contrast, at the height of World War II in 1944, US tax revenue had increased to $ 42.4 billion. But money supply had also grown substantially, to $ 106.8 billion. So in 1944, tax revenue was 39.74% of money supply. You can see from this chart that over the last 113 years, tax revenue as a percentage of the nation’s money supply has swung wildly, from as little as 3.65% to over 40%. But something interesting happened in the 1970s. 1971 was a bifurcation point, and this model went from chaotic to stable. Since 1971, in fact, US tax revenue as a percentage of money supply has been almost a constant, steady 20%. You can see this graphically below as we zoom in on the period from 1971 through 2013– the trend line is very flat. What does this mean? Remember– 1971 was the year that Richard Nixon severed the dollar’s convertibility to gold once and for all. And in doing so, he handed unchecked, unrestrained, total control of the money supply to the Federal Reserve. That’s what makes this data so interesting. Prior to 1971, there was ZERO correlation between US tax revenue and money supply. Yet almost immediately after they handed the last bit of monetary control to the Federal Reserve, suddenly a very tight correlation emerged. Furthermore, since 1971, marginal tax rates and tax brackets have been all over the board. In the 70s, for example, the highest marginal tax was a whopping 70%. In the 80s it dropped to 28%. And yet, the entire time, total US tax revenue has remained very tightly correlated to the money supply. The conclusion is simple: People think they’re living in some kind of democratic republic. But the politicians they elect have zero control. It doesn’t matter who you elect, what the politicians do, or how high/low they set tax rates. They could tax the rich. They could destroy the middle class. It doesn’t matter. The fiscal revenues in the Land of the Free rest exclusively in the hands of a tiny banking elite. Everything else is just an illusion to conceal the truth… and make people think that they’re in control. This one chart shows you...\nHow to Legally “Opt Out” of Federal Income Taxes\nIf you’re a retiree… or if you’re simply looking to earn safe interest on your money… you have two enemies: 1. Federal income tax rates that can take a 20%-30% bite out of your earnings. In some cases, that number is as high as 40%. 2. Interest rates that are near record lows. Right now, you’re lucky if you can make even 1% on your bank savings… And that’s before taxes. Fortunately, you can fix this situation quickly. You just need to know how to legally “opt out” of federal income taxes on your savings… and where to find much higher (but still safe) rates of income… Let me show you what I mean… Right now, the highest-yielding one-year Certificate of Deposits (CDs) pay about 1%. Most banks offer a little less… But for this example, we’ll use the banks offering the highest yields. The federal government will tax the income you collect from CDs just like ordinary income. For most folks, this means they must pay Uncle Sam 25%-28% of any interest earned. For high earners, the tax rate is 39.6%. Keep these figures in mind… We’ll come back to them in a moment. But first, you need to know you have the option of placing your money into another safe investment. This investment pays 6.5%… and the interest is free from federal taxes. If you live in a state with zero income tax (like Florida or Texas), you pay no tax at all. So… a saver has the option of parking his money in the bank… We’ll call that “option A” – or in this investment… “option B.” Here’s how the numbers stack up after you factor in taxes: Option A Option B Initial capital $ 10,000 $ 10,000 Annual yield 1% 6.5% Interest income after one year $ 100 $ 650 After federal income tax (28%) $ 72 $ 650 As you can see, it’s no contest. By owning this safe, alternative investment, you can earn nine times more interest on your savings. For a $ 10,000 investment, that’s an extra $ 573 after just one year. If you’re in a higher income bracket and put in a larger chunk of savings, the numbers get ridiculous. For example, on a $ 100,000 chunk of savings, you’ll earn nearly $ 6,000 more a year with this tax-free strategy versus a high-yield CD. And you can start earning this income RIGHT NOW. It will take you just five minutes. All you need is a regular brokerage account. And all you need to do is buy one of my recommended “muni bond” funds. As regular readers know, municipal bonds are...\nThe United States: A Third World Economy in 20 Years\nPosted By Richer Daddy on October, 2013\nAccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), September brought 148,000 new jobs, enough to keep up with population growth but not reduce the unemployment rate. Moreover, John Williams (shadowstats.com) says that one-third of these jobs, or 50,000 per month on average, are phantom jobs produced by the birth-death model that during difficult economic times overestimates the number of new jobs from business startups and underestimates job losses from business failures. The BLS reports that 22,000 of September’s jobs were new hires by state governments, which seems odd in view of the ongoing state budgetary difficulties. In the private sector, wholesale and retail trade produced 36,900 new jobs, which seems odd in light of the absence of growth in real median family income and real retail sales. Transportation and warehousing produced 23,400 new jobs, concentrated in transit and ground passenger transportation. This also seems odd unless the price of gasoline and pinched budgets are forcing people onto public transportation. Professional and business services accounted for 32,000 jobs of which 63% are temporary help jobs. So here you have the job picture that the presstitutes, hyping “the jobs gain,” don’t tell you. The scary part of the September job report is that the usual standby, the category of waitresses and bartenders, which has accounted for a large part of every reported jobs gain since I began reporting the monthly statistics, shows job loss. Seven thousand one hundred waitresses and bartenders lost their jobs in September. If this figure is not a fluke, it is bad news. It signals that fewer Americans can afford to eat and drink out. The unemployment rate that is reported is the rate that does not count as unemployed discouraged workers who are unable to find jobs and cease to look. This favored rate, the darling of the regime in power, the presstitutes, and Wall Street, also is not adjusted for the category of “involuntary part-time workers,” those whose hours have been cut back or because they are unable to find a full-time job. Obamacare, as is widely reported, is causing employers to shift their work forces from full time to part time in order to avoid costs associated with Obamacare. The BLS places the number of involuntary part-time workers at 7,900,000. The announced 7.2% unemployment rate is a meaningless number. The rate can decline for no other reason than people unable to find jobs drop out of the work force. You are not counted in the work force if you are discouraged about finding a job and no longer look for a job. The phenomena of discouraged workers shows up in the measure of the...\n12 Reasons Why Gold Price Will Rebound and Make New Highs in 2014\nInvestor sentiment towards precious metals is at the lowest level in over a decade. Many analysts believe the bull market is over and are calling for sub-$ 1,000 gold in 2014. Even diehard gold bugs are losing faith, as the correction has been longer and more severe than most had anticipated. So, is it time to throw in the towel? Is the bull market in precious metals really over? In order to answer this question, I thought it would be constructive to re-visit the fundamental drivers of the gold price and determine if anything changed over the past two years to weaken the bullish case. My conclusion is that nearly all of the fundamental factors that have been driving the gold price higher in the past decade have only strengthened in the past two years. Now that the correction has most likely run its course, I expect gold to rebound into the close of the year and bounce sharply higher in 2014. Here are the 12 reasons why… #1 – Rapidly Growing Debt Just one day after President Barack Obama signed into law a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown and avoid default, the US debt surged a record $ 328 billion, the first day the government was able to borrow money. The U.S. national debt has increased by more than a trillion dollars in the past 12 months. This pushed the total debt above $ 17 trillion for the first time in history. As the debt increases and GDP growth slows, the debt-to-GDP ratio will continue to rise at an accelerating pace. This is simple math and it dictates an ongoing slide in the purchasing power of the dollar and rise in the purchasing power of real assets and particularly monetary metals such as gold and silver. The following charts show the steepening rise in total public debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio of the United States. Many economists view a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100% as the point of no return. It is a slippery slope that is certain to push higher at an accelerated rate in the coming years. Note that alternate calculations of the total debt including unfunded liabilities and off-balance sheet items, puts the number somewhere closer to $ 100 trillion or more than 5 times the official figure. This equates to a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 500%, not the 100% charted below. Takeaway: The total level of debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio have both increased substantially in the past two years. This is bullish for gold, as precious metals have a positive correlation to total debt levels. #2 – Inept Government and Partisan Bickering...\nGold, Silver and the Debt Ceiling\nCommodities / Gold and Silver 2013 To paraphrase William Shakespeare, “the debt ceiling drama is a tale told by idiots, full of sound and political fury, signifying nothing.” We now have a reprieve for three months – the 11th hour deal, complete with payoffs and the usual corruption, will keep the world safe for more ineptitude, deficit spending, administrative hypocrisy and the guarantee of a sequel. All is well! Celebration! Champagne! Cut to a prime-time commercial promoting big government and Obamacare… And back in the real world where people work and support their families, life goes on, few noticed the lack of government “services,” and in three months we will be blessed with another episode of our “Congressional Reality Show.” Gold, Silver, and National Debt Examine the following graph. It is a graph of smoothed* annual gold and silver prices and the official U.S. national debt since 1971 when the dollar lost all gold backing and was “temporarily” allowed to float against all other unbacked debt based currencies. All values start at 1.0 in 1971. The legend does not show which line represents gold, silver, or the national debt. Why? Because it hardly matters! Government spends too much money to perform a few essential services and to buy votes, wars, and welfare, and thereby increases its debt almost every year, while gold and silver prices, on average, match the increases in accumulated national debt. Our 435 representatives, 100 senators, and the administration listened to their corporate backers and chose to increase the debt ceiling, continue spending as usual, not “rock the boat,” and carry on with the serious business of politics and payoffs for another three months. It is safe to say that, on average, gold and silver will continue rising, along with the national debt, as they all have for the past 42 years. Further, like the national debt, both gold and silver (and probably most consumer prices) will increase substantially from here, until some traumatic “reset” occurs. What sort of reset? A “black swan” event that is unpredictable, by definition. Middle East war escalation. Derivative melt-down. A dollar collapse when foreigners say “enough” to the dollar debasement policies pursued by the Fed and the US government. A collapse of the Euro or Yen for any number of reasons. A banker admits that most of the official gold supposedly held in New York, London, and Fort Knox is gone and has been sold to China, India, and Russia. You name the false flag operation. My guess: Gold and silver prices will rise gradually for a while, and then quite rapidly after one of the above “financial icebergs” smashes...\nChina and gold\nXinhua, China’s official press agency on Sunday ran an op-ed article which kicked off as follows: “As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.” China does have a broad strategy to prepare for this event. She is encouraging the creation of an international market in her own currency through the twin centres of Hong Kong and London, side-lining New York, and she is actively promoting through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) non-dollar trade settlement across the whole of Asia. She has also been covertly building her gold reserves while overtly encouraging her citizens to accumulate gold as well. There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing herself for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world’s reserve currency. Central to insuring herself and her citizens against this outcome is gold. China has invested heavily in domestic mine production and is now the largest producer at an estimated 440 tonnes annually, and she is also looking to buy up gold mines elsewhere. Little or none of the domestically mined gold is seen in the market, so it is a reasonable assumption the Government is quietly accumulating all her own production without it becoming publicly available. Recorded demand for gold from China’s private sector has escalated to the point where their demand now accounts for significantly more than the rest of the world’s mine production. The Shanghai Gold Exchange is the mainland monopoly for physical delivery, and Hong Kong acts as a separate interacting hub. Between them in the first eight months of 2013 they have delivered 1,730 tonnes into private hands, or an annualised rate of 2,600 tonnes. The world ex-China mines an estimated 2,260 tonnes, leaving a supply deficit for not only the rest of gold-hungry South-east Asia and India, but the rest of the world as well. It is this fact that gives meat to the suspicion that Western central bank monetary gold is being supplied keep the price down, because ETF sales and diminishing supplies of non-Asian scrap have been wholly insufficient to satisfy this surge in demand. So why is the Chinese Government so keen on gold? The answer most likely involves geo-politics. And here it is worth noting that through the SCO, China and Russia with the support of most of the countries in between them are building an economic bloc with a common...\nPage 3 of 45« First«...234...1020...»Last »\nSearch Richer Daddy\nThink & Grow Rich Free E-Book\nKim Kiyosaki\nMichael Maloney\nCashflow 101\nreal-estate Rich Dad investing Business marketing Financial News Robert Kiyosaki rich gold Investments Gold and Silver Videos interview Education MLM Network Marketing United States money sales Gold and Silver Rich Dad education Cashflow 202 Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki investment kiyosaki USD Cashflow 101 learn-earn business general-finance video Michael Maloney financial-literacy silver Rich Dad Poor Dad financial Rippln\nDesigned by FRENZY Solutions | Powered by Robert Kiyosaki Blog","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line964128"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7958437204360962,"wiki_prob":0.7958437204360962,"text":"ComedyDB\nTour DatesLive\nAKA: Dan Whitney\nBlue Meter: Tame\nLike this comedian?\nLog-In or Register to mark it!\nW: 1586 | L: 2397\nNext Tour Date\nFriday | March 20\nMar 20 Fri\nLarry The Cable Guy: Remain Seated Tour\nWild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino\nSee all tour dates for Larry the Cable Guy\n2017 We've Been Thinking\n2012 Them Idiots Whirled Tour\n2010 The Best Of Larry The Cable Guy\n2009 Tailgate Party\n2007 Christmas Time in Larryland\n2007 Morning Constitutions\n2006 Blue Collar Comedy Tour: One for the Road\n2005 The Right to Bare Arms\n2004 A Very Larry Christmas\n2004 Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again\n2001 Lord, I Apologize\n2000 Blue Collar Comedy Tour Live\nSpecials (and other video)\n2016 Jeff Foxworthy & Larry the Cable Guy: We’ve Been Thinking…\n2012 Them Idiots! Whirled Tour\n2009 Larry the Cable Guy: Tailgate Party\n2003 Larry The Cable Guy: Git-R-Done\n2003 Blue Collar Comedy Tour\nBooks (by and about)\n2006 Git-R-Done\n[BEST]Larry the Cable Guy Git R Done Best Stand Up - Stand up…\nLarry the Cable Guy in Pittsburgh - Stand up Comedy\nMore Larry the Cable Guy Video\nWith his signature catchphrase, “Git-R-Done”, Larry the Cable Guy is selling out theatres and arenas across the United States.\nLarry most recently taped “Larry the Cable Guy’s Star Studded Christmas Extravaganza,” which will air on CMT, November 21, 2008. The show includes special guests Tony Orlando, Fred Willard, Victoria Jackson, Charlie Callas, Joey Fatone, musical guest Montgomery Gentry and many more.\nLarry also co-starred with Ivana Milicevic, Yaphet Kotto, Peter Stormare, Joe Mantegna, Jenny McCarthy and Eric Roberts in Witless Protection. In this feature film, Larry stars as a small town sheriff who witnesses what he believes is a kidnapping, and rushes to rescue the beautiful victim, played by Ivana Milicevic (Casino Royale). The film is currently available on DVD.\nPrior to Witless Protection, Larry starred in the film Delta Farce which was released by Lionsgate on May 11, 2007. The movie also starred Bill Engvall and DJ Qualls and is currently available on DVD. His first feature Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector was released by Lionsgate on March 24, 2006. The comedy starred Joe Pantoliano, Joanna Cassidy, and Tony Hale. The DVD was released by Paramount Home Video on August 8, 2006 and sold more than 1 million copies in the first week of release.\nLarry is the voice of Mater in the Golden Globe winning animated feature film Cars from Disney/Pixar. Cars was released on June 9, 2006 and opened at # 1 at the box office, and grossed over 200 million dollars domestically.\nLarry was part of the highly successful concert Blue Collar Comedy Tour, which grossed more than 15 million dollars. The ensemble cast of comedians included Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Engvall. The tour’s success led to Blue Collar Comedy Tour, The Movie, which premiered on Comedy Central in November of 2003 and at the time, was the highest rated movie in the channel’s history. The DVD has sold more than 4 million units. The sequel Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again, has sold more than 3 million units and is the 3rd most watched telecast in Comedy Central’s history. In March of 2006, the Blue Collar boys reunited to shoot Blue Collar Comedy Tour, One For The Road in Washington, DC at the Warner Theater. The movie had its world premiere on Comedy Central, June 4, 2006, again receiving some of the highest ratings. The soundtrack was nominated for a 2006 Grammy award. His last special was on VH1. Larry The Cable Guy’s Christmas Spectacular is a throwback to the old school Christmas variety shows and is currently available on DVD. The special stars Tony Orlando, Lisa Lampanelli, Jeffrey Ross, Vicki Lawrence, George Wallace, Flavor Flav and many more surprise guest.\nHis first comedy album release Lord, I Apologize has reached gold status, selling more than 500,000 copies. The CD was # 1 on the Billboard Comedy Charts for fifteen weeks in a row. Larry‘s DVD special Git-R-Done, has sold more than 1 million copies and has been certified platinum. The special aired on Comedy Central and gave the network their second biggest Sunday night ratings in the channel’s history. Larry also starred in Blue Collar TV, a sketch comedy series for The WB network which premiered on July 29, 2004. 5.4 million people watched the show and it was the second most watched show on television in that time period.\nLarry’s comedy CD Morning Constitutions was released on April 3, 2007 and debuted at # 1 on the Billboard Comedy Charts. The DVD was released in June of 2007 and the special aired on Comedy Central, June 3, 2007. His previous release, The Right To Bare Arms (Jack Records/Warner Bros. Records) debuted at # 1 on the Sounds can Comedy Chart, # 1 on the Country Chart, and # 7 on the Top 200 Chart. This marked the first time in the history of Soundscan that a comedy album has charted at # 1 on the Country Chart. It has been certified gold (500,000 units) by the RIAA. The Right To Bare Arms also received a Grammy nomination. His first Christmas CD, “A Very Larry Christmas” has also been certified gold (500,000 units). Larry has won Billboard’s 2005 Comedy Artist of the year and Comedy Album of the year. He is a bestselling author and his book Git-R-Done, (October 25, 2005) debuted at # 26 on the New York Times bestseller list.\nLarry also received the 2006 Billboard Top Comedy Tour Award.\nIn 2009, Larry released “Tailgate Party.” The special claims to be the largest comedy show ever recorded, with over 50,000 in attendance for the event. “Tailgate Party” was shot at a suitably large venue for such a show - Lincoln, Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium. The show was part of Lincoln’s two-day “Uncle Sam Jam” that occurs around Independence Day.\nLinks: Official Site Facebook Twitter Instagram","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line967640"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5370456576347351,"wiki_prob":0.5370456576347351,"text":"Will the wingnuts make this a three-way race?\nThe threat has been there for months, simmering under the surface--religious conservatives aren't satisfied with the frontrunners on the Republican side, but see Hillary Clinton as Satan's lesbian lover, and so are torn. Rudy Giuliani has lots of socially liberal baggage (though if you think he wouldn't sell out abortion and gay rights for the support of the wingnuts, you're delusional), and Mitt Romney is, well, a Mormon. Fred Thompson isn't quite as conservative as he was first billed, and Mike Huckabee can't get anyone to give him any money, and without money, you're not a candidate.\nThird party, anyone?\nNEWSWEEK: So we wanted to ask you, first of all, about the third-party idea and whether it's serious. A number of people are suggesting it's just a threat.\nRichard Land: My intuition [is that] this is not a bluff. If Giuliani is the nominee there will be a third party. There are things that Giuliani could do to help mitigate the damage. But I have been in too many discussions over the last 15 years where evangelical leaders have said, \"The one thing we will never allow to happen is for the Republican Party to take us for granted the way the Democratic Party too often takes the African-American community for granted.\"\nThis is not a bluff.\nHe might be serious. I hope he is, for purely selfish reasons. After all, he's at least honest enough to admit that if it happens, his candidate won't win.\n[NEWSWEEK]: So what you are saying, as a bottom line, is that you would be prepared to help Hillary [Clinton] get elected if Giuliani were in the race?\n[Richard Land]:Well, I personally wouldn't be saying that … It's just [that] I'm not willing or able to violate my moral conscience. It would be like asking an African-American to choose between Strom Thurmond and George Wallace or asking Abe Lincoln to vote for a pro-slavery candidate. I personally can't do it. I am not going to criticize those who choose the lesser-of-two-evils option. [But] I can't do it, and my guess is somewhere between 25 percent and a third of our people won't do it.\nLet's set aside for the moment the disgusting rhetoric that compares Hillary Clinton to a couple of racist segregationists, and look at the numbers. He acknowledges that no more than a third of his people, that is, social conservative evangelicals, would refuse to vote for Rudy Giuliani if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee. Those aren't winning numbers--they're spoiler numbers. And if Land has an inflated sense of the number of people who listen to him, they're Nader numbers, or worse.\nI suppose an overconfident person would say, it really doesn't matter--the Democratic party nominee is probably going to romp in 2008, barring some extraordinary event in the meantime, so a third party would mean the difference between a 6 point victory and an 8 point victory, and if this election does become more of a referendum on which party gets to lead than on which personality inhabits the White House, that's probably the case. Most Republican strategists are basically ceding 2 to 6 Senate seats and a handful of House races already. So why even talk about further dividing the already weakened conservative vote?\nI think part of it has to do with the idea among socially conservative evangelicals that big losses are purifying acts. In his book American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips, while discussing the rise of the Southern Baptist Convention after the Civil War writes:\nBecause of its theological weight, Scripture could not be abandoned when the Confederacy experienced disheartening reverses, as with the death of Stonewall Jackson in 1863 or Lee's defeat at Gettysburg. Searching again, southerners opened their Bibles to different passages. In the words of James McPherson, \"Like Job, many southerners concluded that God was testing their faith as a preparation for reformation and deliverance; as a southern woman put it, 'The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth.'\"\nBesides, God's chosen people had been led into captivity before--by the Egyptians and the Babylonians---only to eventually triumph. In Still Fighting the Civil War, David Goldfield concluded that \"southerners not only accepted adversity; they wore it as a hair shirt of faith...As white evangelicals restored southern pride and dignity, they convinced themselves that the war has been part of a grand design, as one minister noted in 1866: 'God is working out larger ends that those which concern us as a people.'\"\nFor this small group of people, a massive loss for not only their candidate, but the party candidate they deemed unacceptable has a twofold benefit. First, they're able to feel pure about their personal decision, and second, they can look at the coming experience under the winner--the evil one, if you will--as a chance to prove their faithfulness under fire.\nIf that rhetoric sounds familiar, that's because it is. There's precious little difference between that logic and the Nader's arguments in 2000, that we have to allow the country to be destroyed by conservatives before people will believe that it needs rebuilding. I think he's been proven right--conservatism has indeed done considerable damage to the country--but I'd rather he hadn't been so instrumental in proving the case, because the last 7 years have come at considerable cost to a lot of innocent people along the way.\nSo will Land and Dobson make good on their threat to run a third party candidate if Giuliani is the party nominee? My gut tells me no, if only because they have a personal stake involved. If they go third party and the election is even remotely close, they'll be pariahs in the party, and never trusted again, and they know that. Why take that risk? You only do it if you're a true believer in the power of purifying pain. I'm cynical about the depths to which fundamentalist believers actually believe their own mouthings, though perhaps I shouldn't be, given my background. Gary Bauer started the process at the recent Values Voters convention by playing the \"Even Rudy is better than Hillary\" card, though he was alone in doing it. I don't blame Dobson and Land for holding out--why concede before the nomination process is done?--but the cynic in me says that they'll say exactly the same thing in 2008, once the nominee is selected, and it's not Mike Huckabee.\nLabels: Kevin Phillips, Richard Land, third party candidacies","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1034490"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5833755135536194,"wiki_prob":0.5833755135536194,"text":"738 F. 2d 1043 - United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit\n738 F2d 1043 United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit\n39 Fed.R.Serv.2d 939\nUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,\n1982 SANGER 24' SPECTRA BOAT, SERIAL # SANSP69ZM82,\nR5-83-0015, VALUE APPROXIMATELY $28,000.00, AND\nATTACHED TRAILER, NEVADA LICENSE #\nT61942, Defendant-Appellant,\nManuel Baker and Betty Jean Fowler, Claimants/Appellants.\n1980 LINCOLN CONTINENTAL, MAROON IN COLOR WITH VINYL TOP,\nNEVADA LICENSE # TBZ817, ID # OY89G608148,\nDefendant-Appellant,\n1982 EXCALIBUR, VIN # 1XAPF4317CM827758, Defendant-Appellant,\nNos. 83-1810 to 83-1812.\nNinth Circuit.\nArgued and Submitted Oct. 11, 1983.\nDecided July 25, 1984.\nWilliam C. Turner, Asst. U.S. Atty., Las Vegas, Nev., for plaintiff-appellee.\nJohn J. Momot, Las Vegas, Nev., for defendants-appellants.\nAppeal from the United States District Court for the District of Nevada.\nBefore WALLACE, SCHROEDER and FERGUSON, Circuit Judges.\nFERGUSON, Circuit Judge:\nThe claimants' motions for rehearing in these three cases are granted. The memorandum disposition filed on December 23, 1983 is vacated. Pursuant to that disposition this panel sua sponte determined that it lacked jurisdiction over the appeal. The panel was in error. We now determine that this court does have jurisdiction and that the district court committed reversible error in dismissing the claims as it did.\nOn February 17, 1983 the United States filed complaints for forfeiture against (1) a 1982 Sanger 24-foot Spectra boat, (2) a 1980 Lincoln Continental, and (3) a 1982 Excalibur. The forfeitures were sought pursuant to 21 U.S.C. Secs. 841(a)(1) and 881(a)(6), which subject the proceeds of narcotics purchases or sales to seizure and forfeiture by the Drug Enforcement Administration.\nClaimants of the property, Manuel Baker and Betty Jean Fowler, answered the complaints for forfeiture on March 3, 1983. The claimants declined to make any statements regarding ownership interests in the property on the grounds that such statements might tend to incriminate them with respect to criminal charges presently pending against them and to a pending Internal Revenue Service criminal investigation. In their verified claims filed concurrently with their answer to the complaint, the claimants similarly declined, on fifth amendment grounds, to make any statement regarding ownership interests in the seized property.\nOn March 18, 1983, the government moved to strike the answers and the claims on the ground that the claimants had no standing because they did not assert any ownership interest in the properties. On the same day, without allowing the claimants to respond to the government's motion to strike and without notice of its action, the district court granted the motion and struck the answers and claims. The court entered an order on March 18, 1983 that the properties be forfeited to the United States. The claimants filed notices of appeal that same day.\nHowever, on March 23, 1983, the claimants filed notices \"for rehearing and stay of execution, condemnation and forfeiture.\" On April 6, 1983, after the government filed a response, the court dismissed the claimants' motion. The court also ordered that its previous order granting judgment in favor of the government be stayed pending disposition of the claimants' appeal. The court ordered the United States Marshal to maintain care, custody and control of the property pending disposition of the appeal and not to release the property to any agency of the government without an order of the court.\nThe claimants did not appeal from that order.\nWhen this panel heard the appeal, the government did not contend that an effective notice of appeal had not been filed. However this panel held sua sponte that the motion filed after the notices of appeal was a motion under Fed.R.Civ.P. 59(e) to alter or amend the judgment, although not treated as such. Pursuant to Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4), when a party makes a Rule 59 motion, a notice of appeal filed before the disposition of such motion shall have no effect and therefore this court lacked jurisdiction to act. Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 103 S.Ct. 400, 74 L.Ed.2d 225 (1982). Unlike a Rule 59(e) motion, a Rule 60 motion does not affect the validity of a previously filed notice of appeal. See Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4); Fed.R.Civ.P. 60; Miller v. Transamerican Press, Inc., 709 F.2d 524, 527 (9th Cir.1983).\nWe now hold that we erred in finding that the claimants' motion was filed pursuant to Rule 59. The claimants' petitions for rehearing and the government's response thereto convince us that the motion should have been considered as a motion made pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 60, Relief from Judgment or Order. The district court, when it denied the motion, apparently treated it as a Rule 60 motion by assuming that the notice of appeal was still valid and by ordering the United States Marshal to maintain custody of the property until the appeal was decided.1 Moreover, the government, by raising no challenge to our jurisdiction, demonstrated its belief that the motion was a Rule 60 motion and that this court had jurisdiction over the appeal.\nThe moving party's label for its motion is not controlling. Rather, the court will construe it, however styled, to be the type proper for relief requested. Miller, 709 F.2d at 527. The claimants argue that their postjudgment motion is properly characterized as a Rule 60 motion because it challenged the validity of the judgment on the ground that the court failed to provide notice. Prior to entering judgment, the court struck the answers and claims without notice, without permitting the claimants to reply to the government's motions, and without allowing them an opportunity to amend their complaint. Rule 60(b) provides that a court may relieve a party from a final judgment when \"(4) the judgment is void: ... or (6) [for] any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment.\" We must therefore determine whether the district court, in striking the answers and claims without permitting the claimants to reply to the government's motion, committed an act upon which a Rule 60(b) motion can be based. The district court in granting the government's motion to strike the answers and claims acted contrary to Rule 16(c) of the Rules of Practice of the United States Court for the District of Nevada, which provides as follows:\nResponsive Memorandum\nAn opposing party, unless otherwise ordered by the court, shall have fifteen days after service of the moving party's points and authorities within which to serve and file a memorandum of points and authorities in opposition to the motion.\nRule 16(c) allows for exemptions as \"ordered by the court.\" However we find no reason in the record for the court's failure to follow its own rule.\nAlthough failure to follow a local rule may not rise to the level of a due process violation, nonetheless when the effect is conclusively to dispose of a claim, failure to provide notice is a serious procedural irregularity which in this case justifies relief from the judgment under Rule 60(b). See e.g., Dredge Corp. v. Penny, 338 F.2d 456, 462 & n. 14 (9th Cir.1964). In Dredge Corp. this court held that a district court committed reversible error when it followed a local rule that allowed the court to preclude a party from requesting oral argument on a motion for summary judgment or to deny such a request by a party opposing the motion. The motion to strike and the forfeiture order in this case were as dispositive of the appellants' claim as the summary judgment was in Dredge Corp. Likewise, in the context of entry of a default judgment, this court has stated that the failure to provide required notice is \"a serious procedural irregularity that usually justifies setting aside a default judgment.\" Wilson v. Moore & Assoc., Inc., 564 F.2d 366, 369 (9th Cir.1977). We hold that dismissing the claim without notice and without allowing the claimants an opportunity to amend constitutes extraordinary circumstances entitling the claimants to relief from judgment.\nWe now examine whether allowing amendment of the claim would have been a futile act. The district court issued its order to strike the answers and claims and declare the properties forfeited solely because the claimants failed to allege ownership of the property and therefore lacked standing.\nThe court was in error if the basis for its ruling was that only the owner of property may be a claimant. In United States v. Fifteen Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($15,500) in U.S. Currency, 558 F.2d 1359, 1360 (9th Cir.1977) we held that \"[a] 'claimant' is one who claims to own the article or merchandise or to have an interest therein.\" In United States v. Jacobsen, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 1652, 80 L.Ed.2d 85 (1984), the Court stated that under the fourth amendment a seizure of property occurs \"when there is some meaningful interference with an individual's possessory interest in that property.\" Id. at 1656. It is not necessary therefore that a claimant under the forfeiture statute allege ownership. A lesser property interest such as possession creates standing. The claimants should be permitted to amend their answers and claims to allege the specific property interest they have in the properties.\nThe remaining contentions of the claimants are answered in the companion case of Baker v. United States, 722 F.2d 517 (9th Cir.1983). The fifth amendment does not prevent us from demanding that the claimants allege a specific property interest in the forfeited property.\nREVERSED AND REMANDED.\nWALLACE, Circuit Judge, dissenting:\nThe question before us is a close one--but it is close primarily because of the failure of claimants to identify before the district court the grounds of their request for relief. Of course one could argue, properly I suggest, that it would have been better for the district court to follow its own local rules. Nevertheless, the issue before us is one of jurisdiction and I cannot agree with the majority that the motions for rehearing made at trial may be construed properly as motions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4) or (6). Therefore, I dissent.\nThe United States sought forfeiture of two cars and a boat linked to narcotics activity. The provisions of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 881(b) and (d) require application of the Supplemental Rules for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims (Supplemental Rules) and the procedures for enforcement of customs claims, see, e.g., 19 U.S.C. Secs. 1608, 1615, to such forfeitures. See also Fed.R.Civ.P. 81, notes of advisory committee on 1966 amendments (\"Statutory proceedings to forfeit property for violation of the laws of the United States ... will be governed by the ... supplemental rules.). In turn, the Supplemental Rules make the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure applicable. See Supp.R. for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims A.\nAlthough this creates an unduly complex procedural framework, certain things are immediately clear. First, forfeitures under the narcotics laws are civil proceedings. See, e.g., United States v. One 1970 Pontiac GTO, 2-Door Hardtop, 529 F.2d 65, 66 (9th Cir.1976) (Pontiac GTO ); see generally Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U.S. 663, 680-90, 94 S.Ct. 2080, 2090-95, 40 L.Ed.2d 452 (1974). Second, these forfeitures proceed in rem and any person seeking to participate in the forfeiture action must first file a claim stating an interest in the property. See, e.g., 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1608; Supp.R. for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims C(6). Third, once a person alleges an interest entitling him to participate in the proceedings as a claimant, he bears the burden of proof despite his role, by way of an answer to the complaint of forfeiture, as the responsive pleader. See 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1615; Supp.R. for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims C(6); see also, e.g., Pontiac GTO, 529 F.2d at 66 (upholding constitutionality of the allocation of the burden of proof).\nIn this case, the United States filed complaints on February 8 and 17, 1983, and issued notices of the proposed forfeitures on February 10 and 22. The claimants filed claims in each case within twenty days, compare 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1608 (twenty days) with Supp.R. for Certain Admiralty and Maritime Claims C(6) (ten days), but did not allege any interest in the property subject to forfeiture. They also failed to allege any interest in the property in their answers to the complaints for forfeiture. More than twenty-three days after the notices of proposed forfeiture, the United States moved to strike the claims and answers. The district court granted the motions without notice to the claimants, and then entered judgments of forfeiture against the property.\nThe claimants filed notices of appeal the same day the district court entered judgments. Our task would have been simple had counsel for the claimants filed motions specifically arguing for relief pursuant to rule 60(b). The motions, however, were for \"Rehearing and Stay of Execution, Condemnation and Forfeiture.\" In these motions, the claimants did not rely on any civil practice, rule, or statute. Instead, in the section titled \"Jurisdiction,\" they argued \"[t]he District Court has plenary power within the time allotted for the taking of an appeal to modify its judgment for error of fact or law or to revoke it altogether. United States v. Jones, 608 F.2d 386, 390 (9th Cir.1979).\" They did not request permission to amend their claims or answers--relief the majority now allows. They requested that the district court \"rescind its order ... reinstate movants' answer and verified claim, and ... allow movants to be heard in opposition to the Government's motion to strike.\" The district court denied the motions for rehearing, and the claimants purported to proceed with their appeals. They did not include the denial of their motions as grounds for appeal. Thus, that question is not properly before us.\nBecause the forfeitures were civil actions, the claimants seriously erred by relying on United States v. Jones, 608 F.2d 386 (9th Cir.1979) (Jones ), a criminal case. I disagree with the majority's argument that the government treated the claimant's motions for rehearing as motions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Instead, the government, also citing nothing but Jones, treated them as criminal motions. There is no basis, therefore, for the majority to argue that the government thought they were rule 60(b) motions and for that reason, we had jurisdiction. Nor does the record bear out the majority's argument that the district court treated the claimant's motions for rehearing as motions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). Instead, the district court's actions fit the pattern of the only rationale presented it for handling the motions, the criminal motion rationale of Jones.\nSo the district court and the parties labored under the false assumption that the motions for rehearing sounded in criminal procedure. In addition, the procedural posture and legal arguments of the claimant's motions for rehearing weigh against interpreting them as motions under rule 60(b). The majority correctly observes, however, that we will construe a merely mislabeled motion as \"the type proper for relief requested.\" Miller v. Transamerican Press, Inc., 709 F.2d 524, 527 (9th Cir.1983) (Miller ). But the relief they requested does not seem particularly aimed at or limited to relief under rule 60(b). In their petition for rehearing before us, the claimants argue they intended to use rule 60(b)(4) or (6) to set aside default judgments entered against them. Yet nowhere in their motions for rehearing before the district court did they argue the judgments of forfeiture were void, see, e.g., Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(4), or that extraordinary circumstances favoring relief existed, see Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(6); see also Ackermann v. United States, 340 U.S. 193, 199, 71 S.Ct. 209, 212, 95 L.Ed. 207 (1950). Instead, the claimants simply reargued the patently frivolous fifth amendment point first raised in their claims and answers, cf. Baker v. United States, 722 F.2d 517, 518-19 (9th Cir.1983) (rejecting same claim by these claimants), and asked the district court to hear them defend those claims and answers against the government's motions to strike. This sounds at least as much like a request for new trial or alteration or amendment of the judgment under rule 59 as a request for relief from judgment under rule 60. See Miller, 709 F.2d at 527 (rule 59(e) covers a \"substantive change of mind by the court.\"). In a somewhat similar situation, see Stephenson v. Calpine Conifers II, Ltd., 652 F.2d 808, 811-12 (9th Cir.1981), we interpreted a confusingly labeled motion for relief as a motion under rule 59(e), not rule 60(b). See also Sidney-Vinstein v. A.H. Robins Co., 697 F.2d 880, 885 (9th Cir.1983) (\"motion for reconsideration\" a motion under rule 59(e)); Walker v. Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association, 268 F.2d 16, 19 n. 1, 20 (9th Cir.) (\"motion to correct memorandum and order of dismissal\" a motion under rule 59(e)), cert. denied, 361 U.S. 903, 80 S.Ct. 211, 4 L.Ed.2d 158 (1959). Because the claimants did not allege they suffered under void judgments or extraordinary circumstances, it seems their request for relief invoked rule 59 more than rule 60.\nSome question exists whether the claimants even could have moved under rule 60(b) in these cases. To the extent they sought relief from judgment rather than a new hearing or amendment of judgment, it can be argued that the mechanism of 19 U.S.C. Sec. 1618 for administrative relief from forfeitures largely takes the place of rule 60(b). See United States v. Andrade, 181 F.2d 42, 46 (9th Cir.1950). Because the district court had retained control of the property after judgment, section 1618 did not absolutely bar any further action, but a question arises whether its place in the forfeiture scheme appears to discourage the normal use of rule 60(b) relief. The district court in United States v. One 1941 Chrysler Sedan Automobile Motor No. C28-17313, 46 F.Supp. 897, 898 (E.D.Ky.1942), stated: \"It seems quite apparent from the wording of this rule [60(b) ] that it was not designed to apply to proceedings 'in rem' for by its terms it affords relief only to 'a party' from a judgment taken against 'him.' \" In part for this reason, it has been said that \"Rule 60(b) is generally held to be inapplicable to forfeiture proceedings.\" United States v. One 1970 Buick Electra 225, 57 F.R.D. 185, 188 (N.D.Ohio 1972).\nThe reasons above persuade me that we should interpret the claimants' motions for rehearing as motions under rule 59. Because a \"notice of appeal filed before disposition of [such] motions shall have no effect,\" Fed.R.App.P. 4(a)(4); see Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 103 S.Ct. 400, 403, 74 L.Ed.2d 225 (1982), we lack jurisdiction of the claimants' appeals.\nBecause I conclude we are without jurisdiction, I would not pass on the merits, though I am tempted to discuss that a reversal may only be grounded upon the merits--not on the denial of claimants' motions from which they did not appeal. Because the claimants never attempted to amend their claims or answers and they are patently frivolous on their face, see Baker v. United States, 722 F.2d at 518-19, I am tempted to but choose not to raise the question of harmless error latent in the claimants' failure to allege any interest, not just ownership, in the cars and boat. I conclude that the claimants' motions for rehearing before the district court invoked rule 59, leaving them without valid notices of appeal to this court. Because they did not file new notices of appeal after the denial of their motions, we lack jurisdiction. I would dismiss the appeals.\nA question remains whether the district court had jurisdiction to rule on the Rule 60 motion after a notice of appeal had been filed. Compare Miller, 709 F.2d at 527 (court affirmed district court's denial of Rule 60(b) motion filed after the notice of appeal without questioning district court's jurisdiction to hear that motion) with Killeen v. Travelers Ins. Co., 721 F.2d 87, 90 n. 7 (3rd Cir.1983) (notice of appeal divested the district court of jurisdiction, and therefore the district court could not properly decide the Rule 60(b) motion). We do not need to decide this question, however. If the district court had jurisdiction, it abused its discretion in denying the motion; if it lacked jurisdiction, its decision is without effect. We reverse the underlying judgment on the basis of the property interest issue raised on appeal","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1137091"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5690939426422119,"wiki_prob":0.5690939426422119,"text":"The Batey Libertad Learning Center\nThe University Scholarship Program\nExperiential and Service-Learning Program\nOur Story and Our Name\nThe Libertad Journal\nPico Duarte\nIn early 2015, Yspaniola asked a group of prominent Dominicans with experience in business, academia, education, human rights, and the media to serve on an advisory committee to support the organization. The committee meets every eight months to review Yspaniola’s programs and goals, and to advise the organization about outreach and strategy in the Dominican Republic. Along with regular meetings, Yspaniola's Executive Director consistently communicates with individual members of the committee, who provide valuable support related to their fields of expertise. Thank you to our advisory committee members for their dedication to our work!\nKarina Chez\nKarina Chez is both the CEO and a partner at Kaya Energy in Santo Domingo. Currently, she is working on vocational solar energy training programs in Africa. Karina is the founder of TheChessGroup, a digital marketing firm based in Dubai and New York, and the Managing Partner of MGK, which invests in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Dominican Republic. Karina has worked on Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) technology in the Middle East and North America, and with the United Nations on sustainable development initiatives.\nYolanda León is a professor and researcher at the Santo Domingo Institute of Technology and the President of the Jaragua Group, a Dominican NGO that works to preserve biodiversity on the island of Hispaniola. Over the last decade, Yolanda has researched and worked in a variety of different fields related to the environment and rural development in the Dominican Republic.\nPaola Pelletier\nPaola Pelletier Quiñones is an attorney and professor of law. She specializes in human rights, strategic and impactful litigation, and the Inter-American justice system, particularly in relation to vulnerable populations. After receiving a grant through the Fulbright program, she completed her Masters at American University’s Washington College of Law.\nCelso Manuel Pérez\nSince January 2005, Celso Manuel Pérez has been the CFO and a member of the Board of Directors at Grupo Ramos. Previously, he served as a board member with several organizations such as Asociación de Industrias de la República Dominicana, Cámara Oficial de Comercio de España en República Dominicana, Organización Nacional de Empresas Comerciales, Confederación Patronal de la República Dominicana, and Junior Achievement Dominicana; he is also a member of the Board of Trustees at Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo.\nJuan Miguel Pérez\nJuan Miguel Pérez is a sociologist born and raised in the Dominican Republic. Educated at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) and at Columbia University, he was trained as social scientist at both the École Normale Supérieure and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France. Former member of the National Council of Education of the Dominican Republic, he was National Director of Secondary Education of DR (2012-2014). He is professor of sociology and philosophy at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.\nFausto Rosario\nFausto Rosario is a journalist and the director of the digital newspaper, Acento, which is specifically concerned with transparency in relation to Dominican education, politics, and economics. He was also the Founder and Director (2004-2011) of El Dario Clave Digital and the weekly publication CLAVE. He has worked with various national media outlets, including: El Siglo, Hoy, El Caribe, Rumbo, and Teleantillas. He has served as the President of Asociación Dominicana Pro Bienestar de la Familia (PROFAMILIA) and as Vice President of the Consejo Regional de la Federación Internacional de Planificación de la Familia (OPPF).\nHanglet Tejeda\nHanglet Tejeda is the Executive Director of CEFASA, a dominican Jesuit organization based out of Santiago, Dominican Republic that advocates for workers’ and migrants’ rights. In addition to his current nonprofit work, he has worked with the World Bank, the Organization of Ibero-American States, European Union, and the Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM), developing and training youth and community leaders to strengthen institutions and organizations in Santiago, La Vega, Puerto Plata and Moca.\nMarianella Belliard\nMarianella Belliard is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish at PUCMM in Santo Domingo.\nCopyright © Yspaniola 2018","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1451155"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8543967008590698,"wiki_prob":0.8543967008590698,"text":"Convention on Gender Violence Draws Backlash in Bulgaria\nJanuary 5, 2018 by Cup&Cross\nFiled under Featured, Missions, News\nMoves to ratify the so-called Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe are encountering strong opposition both from parties in the Bulgarian government and the opposition.\nMembers of the Bulgarian government and of the main opposition Socialist Party have joined forces to oppose the government’s decision to pass the so-called Istanbul Convention on gender-based violence to parliament for ratification.\nThe cabinet approved a national program for prevention of domestic violence on Wednesday, and, as a part of it, advised MPs to ratify the Council of Europe’s convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, which was adopted in Istanbul in 2011. Following the government session, however, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of social and economic policies, Valeri Simeonov, from the nationalist United Patriots, told the media that eight of the 21 ministers had voted against the document.\n“Not only the United Patriots [who have four ministers] but eight ministers voted against,” he said. The names of the ministers who opposed the convention will be revealed on Friday, when the minutes of the cabinet meeting are published. The plan to pass the Convention, which Bulgaria signed in April 2016, for ratification in parliament, drew sharp criticism especially from one of the parties from the United Patriots Coalition, VMRO.\nOn December 28, the party, led by the Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister, Krasimir Karakachanov, published a statement which claimed that, through the convention, “international lobbies are pushing Bulgaria to legalize the ‘third gender’.\nThe party declared itself firmly against the document, which it accused of “introducing school programs for studying homosexuality and transvestism and creating opportunities for enforcing same-sex marriages”. Over 30 civil and religious organizations had sent an open letter to Karakachanov, urging him not to allow ratification of the convention. As a result, he said, he had given a negative opinion of what he called the “scandalous text”. What has most upset nationalists is mention of the term “gender” as a social construct as opposed to the biological “sex” in the text of the document, although the explanatory report to the convention notes: “The term ‘gender’ … is not intended as a replacement for the terms ‘women’ and ‘men.’”\nTags: backlash, Bulgaria, convention, draws, gender, violence","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line618459"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8059723973274231,"wiki_prob":0.8059723973274231,"text":"David Dobrik Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED - WIRED\nVideos: 2,988\nSubscriber: 5,770,000\nViews: 1,741,325,104\nWIRED is where tomorrow is realized.\nVideo Related David Dobrik Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED - WIRED\nDavid Dobrik Goes Undercover on Reddit, YouTube and Twitter | GQ\nOn this episode of Actually Me, David Dobrik goes undercover on the Internet and responds to real comments from Reddit, YouTube, Twitter and more. How does one do a David Dobrik smile? Why can't he leave the country without getting deported? Watch David on Nickelodeon's newest show, America's Most Musical Family, every Friday at 7pm/6pm. Follow David: https://instagram.com/daviddobrik and check out his latest videos here. Check out David's account here: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/actuallydaviddobrik YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsW3wqok3w7KNNTsGg9gOwQ?view_as=subscriber Twitter: https://twitter.com/actuallydavidd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actualydaviddobrik/ Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/David-Dobrik-27 Still haven’t subscribed to GQ on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/2iij5wt ABOUT GQ For more than 50 years, GQ has been the premier men’s magazine, providing definitive coverage of style, culture,...\nJohn Krasinski Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n'A Quiet Place' director and star John Krasinski takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about himself. Does John Krasinski play basketball? Is he married to Jenna Fischer? Can John Krasinski sing? Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here you can find your favorite WIRED shows and new episodes of our latest hit series Masterminds. ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture. John Krasinski...\n(REAL)ATIONSHIPS! PART 2! w/ David Dobrik | Lizzza\nAre we the whole package?! You have to ship it. Thumbs up for realistic relationship goals! Subscribe to David below! Check out Part 1 ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIGze7b8ylo&list=PL5MGfQbdoiHORDI8kw6VoAJnKwLnEGrPB&index=1 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW DAVID!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XMh244R7pw Twitter: @DavidDobrik Instagram: @DavidDobrik Snapchat: @DavidDobrik ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Keep up with this little brown girl! INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/lizakoshy TWITTER: http://twitter.com/lizakoshy SNAPCHAT: @lizakoshysnaps MUSICAL.LY: @lizzza ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• WATCH MY OTHER VIDS! DRIVING WITH LIZZZA!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IavL... DRIVING WITH LIZZZA PART 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA9R5... EVERYWHERE WITH LIZZZA!:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5wf8... ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! www.youtube.com/lizakoshy ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Thank you, boyfriends/girlfriends! Love, Liza\n$500 vs $16 Steak Dinner: Pro Chef & Home Cook Swap Ingredients | Epicurious\nExpert chef Frank and home cook Lorenzo are swapping their recipes and ingredients, just for your viewing pleasure. We gave Lorenzo $500 worth of ingredients and Frank's notebook to make the best steak dinner he could (with a quick assist from food scientist Rose!) On the other side, Frank received $16 worth of goods and tried to improvise his way up to gourmet. Who achieved the most impressive results under these mixed up circumstances? Want to follow Chef Frank on Instagram? Find him at @protocooks Still haven’t subscribed to Epicurious on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/epiyoutubesub ABOUT EPICURIOUS Browse thousands of recipes and videos from Bon...\nGET MONEY!! DOLLAR STORE WITH LIZZZA | Lizzza\nDon't ask me why I have so many dollars... Give this video a thumbs up because I used up a lot of gas! P.S. I love and drool over dollar stores and Target, no hate. Please follow my other social medias below! ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­••••••••••• Keep up with this little brown girl! INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/lizakoshy TWITTER: http://twitter.com/lizakoshy SNAPCHAT: @lizakoshysnaps MUSICAL.LY: @lizzza ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­••••••••••• WATCH MY OTHER VIDS! First Youtube EVER!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1zt7F70zEg Driving with Lizzza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IavLKa3dy0 Recess with Lizzza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqwWa09_2bs ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­••••••••••• PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! www.youtube.com/lizakoshy ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­••••••••••• Thank you, sweet kumquats. Love, Liza\nMillie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard & Noah Schnapp Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nStranger Things stars Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and Noah Schnapp answer the internet's most searched questions about themselves and Stranger Things. Does Millie Bobby Brown dance? What's Finn Wolfhard's band called? Is Noah Schnapp perfect? Is Stranger Things 3 the last season?? The cast answers all these questions and more! Stranger Things season 3 is streaming now on Netflix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ugel7XFkms Stranger Things season 3 is streaming now on Netflix Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here you can find your favorite WIRED shows...\nDavid Dobrik Shows Us the Last Thing on His Phone | Glamour\nDavid Dobrik shows us the last things on his phone. Which emoji does he love the most? What is the last voicemail someone left him? What was the last thing he googled? Still haven’t subscribed to Glamour on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/2gYlQqe David Dobrik Shows Us the Last Thing on His Phone | Glamour\n73 Questions With Zac Efron | Vogue\nZac Efron, star of the upcoming film \"The Greatest Showman,\" invites Vogue in and answers 73 Questions. Zac tells us about his 1964 Mustang, his best celebrity impressions, and that time he swam with a wild tiger shark. Presented by Google Still haven’t subscribed to Vogue on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/vogueyoutubesub ABOUT VOGUE Vogue is the authority on fashion news, culture trends, beauty coverage, videos, celebrity style, and fashion week updates. 73 Questions With Zac Efron | Vogue Created by: Joe Sabia Music Credits: Portgual. The Man - \"Feel It Still\" / Atlantic Temper Trap - \"Sweet Disposition\" / Glassnote\nTASTING FOREIGN FOODS!!!\nZane and I taste food from our foreign motherlands! I'm uploading this on the toilet right now... Make sure to subscribe to Zane here!! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiIFLzjBUX5WpkVqVDVWMTQ ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Twitter/IG: @zanehijazi ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Music Creds: Indian instrumental music remix 2016 | Dj Vladof ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Keep up with this little brown girl! INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/lizakoshy TWITTER: http://twitter.com/lizakoshy SNAPCHAT: @lizakoshysnaps MUSICAL.LY: @lizzza ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• WATCH MY OTHER VIDS! TARGET WITH LIZZZA PART 2!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weGc3... WORLD'S BEST BEAUTY HACKS!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w38IG... MEET JET!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-u9o... ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! www.youtube.com/lizakoshy www.youtube.com/lizakoshytoo ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Thank you, lil sick nasties! Love, Liza\nLin-Manuel Miranda Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n\"Mary Poppins Returns\" star Lin-Manuel Miranda takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about himself. Which Hamilton song is Lin-Manuel Miranda's favorite? Is Lin-Manuel knighted? When did he cut his hair? \"Mary Poppins Returns\" in theaters December 19 Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here you can find your favorite WIRED shows and new episodes of our latest hit series Masterminds. ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of...\nLele Pons Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nLele Pons takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about herself. What is Lele Pons's real name? Who is Lele Pons's best friend? Does Lele speak Spanish? Is she Camila Cabello's sister? Lele answers all these questions and much more! Check out Lele Pon's new music with Favian Lovo and Lyanno: \"Los Puti\": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD5j-45w1MI Check out Lele on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi9cDo6239RAzPpBZO9y5SA Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: https://wrd.cm/DailyYT Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here...\nDove Cameron Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nDove Cameron takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about herself. Who does Dove Cameron look like? What's she like in real life? Is she a twin? Dove answers all these questions and more! Dove Cameron stars in Disney Channel's Descendants 3, available now on Disney Channel and on https://disneynow.com/ Her new singles \"Bloodshot\" and \"Waste\" are now streaming on all platforms: https://dovecameron.lnk.to/BloodshotWaste Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: https://wrd.cm/DailyYT Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire...\nDavid Dobrik Tells Us About His First Times\nDavid Dobrik stops by to talk about his firsts, from his earliest memory of the Vlog Squad, to the first prank he ever pulled, all the way to his very first (and extremely snotty) kiss. Credits: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bfmp/videos/78674 GET MORE BUZZFEED: https://www.buzzfeed.com https://www.buzzfeed.com/videos https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedvideo https://www.youtube.com/asis https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedmultiplayer https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedviolet https://www.youtube.com/perolike https://www.youtube.com/ladylike SUBSCRIBE TO BUZZFEED NEWSLETTERS: https://www.buzzfeed.com/newsletters BuzzFeed Celeb Celebs + puppies, kittens, thirst tweets, and more = so much yes. MUSIC SFX Provided By AudioBlocks (https://www.audioblocks.com) Just Us And The Stars_NoVoxNoSynthLd Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. It Feels Good_NoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Sparks_NoVoxNoSynthLd Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. You Woke Me Up_NoVoxNoSynthLd Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Better Than The First Time_NoVox60Sec Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Heavy Handed_Full Licensed...\nLiza Koshy Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nLiza Koshy takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about herself. Did Liza Koshy get tattoos? Is Liza Koshy vegan? How does Liza do her eyebrows? Everything you ever wanted to know about Liza Koshy is answered right here! Maybe! You can catch Liza now in all eight episodes of her new original scripted comedy 'Liza On Demand' on YouTube Premium and as the host of 'Double Dare' on Nickelodeon! #autocomplete #liza #lizakoshy Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future...\nAn Astrologer Guesses Strangers' Zodiac Sign (Ray) | Lineup | Cut\nSponsor this series: http://www.cut.com/sponsorship Fear Pong is now a game! Get it here: http://www.fearponggame.com SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/CutSubscribe Watch More Lineup: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJic7bfGlo3qJcIXUJteaUm_3-3tgQSXw About Lineup: A who’s who of awkward assumptions and judgments. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us! Official Site: https://www.cut.com/ Facebook: http://cut.com/facebook Twitter: https://twitter.com/Cut Instagram: http://cut.com/instagram Snapchat: @watchcut Cut Swag: http://cut.com/shop About Cut: Small questions have powerful effects when they go viral. Cut spreads stories for fun, for serious, and for real– bringing the internet together one awkward moment at a time. Produced, directed, and edited by https://cut.com Want to work with us? http://cut.com/hiring Want to be in a video? http://cut.com/casting Want to sponsor a video? http://cut.com/sponsorships For licensing inquiries: http://cut.com/licensing More...\nGOOGLING MY BOYFRIEND'S NET WORTH!!\nMy dinner is PAID FOR. Stalking my boyfriend, but in front of his face this time! Now I finally know who I'm dating. Thanks for watching babes! See more #ad and #david down below! ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• LOOK JUST AS CUTE IN BEATSX HERE: http://beats.is/2iaeCQ7 ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• STALK AND HAVE WEIRD DREAMS ABOUT DAVID HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAO-Q... SUBSCRIBE TO HER OTHER CHANNEL: https://youtu.be/BnaK6KFuH6U Tweet him! Stalk him! But not too much he has a boyfriend: @DavidDobrik BUY HIS SWEATER HERE: https://fanjoy.co/collections/clickbait-merch ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Music Creds: Jou Beats & Skrillex (Don't copyright me, big fan big fan.) ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Keep up with this little brown girl! INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/lizakoshy TWITTER: http://twitter.com/lizakoshy SNAPCHAT: @lizakoshysnaps MUSICAL.LY: @lizzza ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• WATCH MY OTHER VIDS! TARGET WITH LIZZZA PART 2!:...\nRiverdale's KJ Apa Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nRiverdale star KJ Apa takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about himself. Why doesn't KJ Apa have an accent in Riverdale? Is KJ Apa perfect? Is he related to Camila Mendes? How does he cover his tattoos? What's his real name? Is he friends with Cole Sprouse? KJ answers all these questions and much, much more! Watch KJ Apa in Riverdale on the CW! Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: https://wrd.cm/DailyYT Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV,...\nDavid Dobrik Plays With Puppies While Answering Fan Questions\nYouTube star David Dobrik plays with pups while answering your questions about how he makes his videos, the Vlog Squad, Kylie Jenner, and more. To learn more about these insanely adorable puppies, head over to The Vanderpump Dogs Foundation! https://www.vanderpumpdogs.org/ Credits: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bfmp/videos/78672 GET MORE BUZZFEED: https://www.buzzfeed.com https://www.buzzfeed.com/videos https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedvideo https://www.youtube.com/asis https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedmultiplayer https://www.youtube.com/buzzfeedviolet https://www.youtube.com/perolike https://www.youtube.com/ladylike SUBSCRIBE TO BUZZFEED NEWSLETTERS: https://www.buzzfeed.com/newsletters BuzzFeed Celeb Celebs + puppies, kittens, thirst tweets, and more = so much yes. MUSIC Self Sabotage_FullNoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Sleepless Nights_FullNoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Save A Seat_FullNoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. Pause For Breath_FullNoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. More Than Motion_FullNoVox Licensed via Warner Chappell Production Music Inc. EXTERNAL CREDITS Jack Dytrych\nKen Jeong Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n\"Crazy Rich Asians\" star Ken Jeong takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about himself. Is Ken Jeong a real doctor? What was Ken Jeong's first movie? Does Ken Jeong speak Spanish? #autocomplete #kenjeong #crazyrichasians Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture. Ken Jeong Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n73 Questions With Liza Koshy | Vogue\nYouTube star Liza Koshy invites Vogue into her strangely familiar apartment and answers 73 Questions. Liza shows off her shrine to her alter egos Jet Packinski and Helga, and shares her tips for becoming one of the YouTube elite. Check out Liza as Jet Packinski in the 73 Questions parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYrp5eTbwQg Check out Liza as Helga in the 73 questions parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03IUgOd4GH4&t=1s Still haven’t subscribed to Vogue on YouTube? ►► http://bit.ly/vogueyoutubesub ABOUT VOGUE Vogue is the authority on fashion news, culture trends, beauty coverage, videos, celebrity style, and fashion week updates. 73 Questions With Liza Koshy | Vogue Created By: Joe Sabia\nThe Try Guys Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nKeith, Ned, Zach, and Eugene of The Try Guys take the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answer the internet's most searched questions about The Try Guys and themselves. Are The Try Guys still at BuzzFeed? Are they all really friends? Do they all live in LA? Are they independent? The Try Guys answer all these questions and more! The Try Guys host the Streamy Awards on Monday, Oct 22nd. Check out The Try Guys YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpi8TJfiA4lKGkaXs__YdBA Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here...\nChris Evans Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n'Gifted' star Chris Evans takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the Internet's most searched questions about himself. 'Gifted' co-star Mckenna Grace joins Chris, and together they find out that the Internet is obsessed with Chris Evans' driving skills. Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture. Chris Evans Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\nDaniel Radcliffe Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n'Miracle Workers' star Daniel Radcliffe takes the WIRED Autocomplete Interview and answers the internet's most searched questions about himself. Does Daniel Radcliffe have tattoos? Which Harry Potter movie is his favorite? Where did Daniel meet his girlfriend? Is Daniel on social media? Daniel Radcliffe answers all these questions and more! Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here you can find your favorite WIRED shows and new episodes of our latest hit series Masterminds. ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking...\nPAINTING WITH ONLY FEET CHALLENGE!!\nIf you have a foot fetish, this is for you. We paint each other, using only toes! So is this a thumbnail? Or a toenail? AHHHHH lol. Thanks for watching babes! Stalk Zane and Heath and check out our collabs below! ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• SUBSCRIBE TO THESE PRETTY LADIES! OUR COLLABS BELOW!! Zane Hijazi (@zanehijazi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urRHRNr7HOU Heath Hussar (@heathhussar): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veK7RCQvxWI ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Music Creds: Jou Beats ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Keep up with this little brown girl! INSTAGRAM: http://instagram.com/lizakoshy TWITTER: http://twitter.com/lizakoshy SNAPCHAT: @lizakoshysnaps MUSICAL.LY: @lizzza ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• WATCH MY OTHER VIDEOS! TARGET WITH LIZZZA PART 2!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weGc3... WORLD'S BEST BEAUTY HACKS!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w38IG... MEET JET!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-u9o... ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! www.youtube.com/lizakoshy www.youtube.com/lizakoshytoo ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••­­­••••••••••• Thank you, lil toestitoes! Love, Liza\n'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Cast Answer the Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED\n\"Ant-Man and the Wasp\" stars Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas and Hannah John-Kamen answer the internet's most searched questions about themselves and Ant-Man. \"Ant-Man and the Wasp\" hits theaters July 6th. #autocomplete #antman Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on YouTube? ►► http://wrd.cm/15fP7B7 Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV. Here you can find your favorite WIRED shows and new episodes of our latest hit series Masterminds. ABOUT WIRED WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture. 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Cast Answer...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line555552"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.893297016620636,"wiki_prob":0.893297016620636,"text":"Group that escorts migrant caravans draws more scrutiny\nOriginally published December 23, 2018 at 9:13 am Updated December 24, 2018 at 6:24 am\nJULIE WATSON\nTIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Thousands of Central Americans journeying toward the United States were 2,500 miles from their destination in October when they reached a moment of decision: Should they press on toward the U.S. border? Or should they stop and put down roots in Mexico, where the government offered to let them stay?\nPueblo Sin Fronteras, a group of activists escorting the caravan, warned the migrants that the offer might be too good to be true and called a voice vote on whether to continue.\n“Let’s keep going!” the crowd yelled amid applause.\nAnd they kept going. Thousands are now in Tijuana on the U.S. border, where they are likely to be camped for months or longer with no easy way to get into the United States, creating what is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis in this overwhelmed city.\nMany blame Pueblo Sin Fronteras, or People Without Borders, made up of about 40 U.S. and Mexican activists.\nCritics, including former allies and some of the migrants themselves, say Pueblo Sin Fronteras downplayed the dangers of such treks, especially for families and small children, and misled the participants about how long they would have to wait on the Mexican side to apply for asylum.\nAdelaida Gonzalez, 37, of Guatemala City, who joined the caravan with her 15-year-old son and neighbor, said that now that she is in Tijuana, she wishes she had accepted Mexico’s offer to stay and work in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.\n“We were never told along the way that it would be this hard,” said Gonzalez, after seeing the border wall topped with razor wire and the long waiting list for asylum seekers.\nA Pueblo Sin Fronteras leader, Irineo Mujica, emphatically rejected the criticism.\n“Our commitment first and foremost was protecting the lives of migrants and giving them as much information as possible,” Mujica said. “To blame the people who are helping is crazy.”\nPueblo Sin Fronteras founder Roberto Corona said in the organization’s defense that attorneys along the way told the migrants they could be held in U.S. detention centers for months and possibly separated from their children. In the end, he said, the migrants — many of whom are fleeing poverty and violence in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — made their own decision.\n“They know the wall is very big, and they will not be very welcome in the U.S. by many people,” Corona said, “but still they have hope of coming here, that at least their rights will be more protected, and they will be able to make a living.”\nThis is the fourth and biggest caravan of Central American asylum seekers that Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped reach Tijuana, a trek that angered President Donald Trump and prompted him to send troops to the border. When the caravan crossed into Mexico, it numbered 7,000; about 5,500 made it to Tijuana.\nPueblo Sin Fronteras maintains it simply accompanies the migrants to protect their rights. But the organization clearly plays an essential role: It helped charter the route, arrange bus transportation and negotiate with Mexican officials to provide protection. It also raised more than $46,000 online for emergency housing and food.\nAs the caravan crossed Mexico, the organization held nightly assemblies to decide the next day’s destination. It alerted towns to prepare for migrants who camped in their squares.\nFor the Central Americans, there was a feeling of safety in numbers. For decades, migrants crossing Mexico have been robbed, kidnapped and killed by gangs and corrupt officials.\nBut traveling with the caravan was not without risks. One migrant was killed when he fell off a truck. Another was run over and killed on a highway. Two were stabbed and strangled after leaving a Tijuana shelter. Others have been attacked with rocks by local residents angry over the mass arrival.\nLast month, a march by the migrants in Tijuana to demand the United States accelerate its asylum process degenerated into violence. Demonstrators threw rocks at U.S. border agents and tore down fencing, letting dozens rush through. U.S. authorities fired tear gas into Mexico, sending crowds that included children running and screaming.\n“There is no reason to make these inhumane journeys,” Alejandro Solalinde, a Mexican priest recognized for his work with migrants, said of the caravans.\nSergio Tamai, whose organization operates migrant shelters in the Tijuana area, said he called Mujica to express concerns about the Tijuana march beforehand — “and we all saw what happened — a disaster.”\nMigrants say they are grateful for all Pueblo Sin Fronteras has done, but they were not prepared for the long wait in Tijuana. Some 3,000 people were already in line to ask for asylum before the caravan arrived, and U.S. authorities are processing only about 100 claims per day at the crossing, resulting in overflowing shelters in Tijuana.\nAnd the wait just got longer: The Trump administration announced Thursday that asylum seekers at the border will now be forced to wait in Mexico while their cases slowly wind their way through the clogged U.S. immigration courts. Previously, migrants were allowed into the U.S. while their claims were processed.\nEsmeralda Siu, a Tijuana shelter manager, said many caravan members knew nothing about the difficulty in getting asylum.\n“They come in desperation and so they hear what they want to hear,” she said. As for their escorts, “it seems like they are putting the migrants at great risk.”\nCorona, Pueblo Sin Fronteras’ founder, said that the caravans served their purpose but that he doesn’t foresee the organization accompanying any more of them.\n“We need to find out how can we reach the hearts and minds of the American people and Mexican people and mostly the policymakers who can come up with a permanent solution,” he said.\nAssociated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City and researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.\nThe Seattle Times does not append comment threads to stories from wire services such as the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post or Bloomberg News. Rather, we focus on discussions related to local stories by our own staff. You can read more about our community policies here.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1433326"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5150730013847351,"wiki_prob":0.4849269986152649,"text":"← North Korea – a beacon of hope for the down-trodden masses of the wide world\n“Confess your crimes against the people of North Korea or you will not be allowed to leave the country tomorrow” →\nApr 18, 2012 · 1:14 pm\nNorth Korea – Phallic monuments, war lies, famine and an interview with MI5\nAn amazing erection in Pyongyang: the Tower\n(A version of this blog was also published on the Indian news website We Speak News.)\nSurprisingly today, our older male guide admitted that North Korea had a famine in the 1990s. It was, he said, caused by “no rain” and, in the period 1994-1999, “only 200,000” people died, not the 3 million he said was claimed by the Americans.\nI think Apartheid in South Africa was doomed when they let television into the country. People could see what life was like outside the country.\nWidespread tourism in North Korea brings much the same threat.\nBeing a North Korean must be like being a sheep or a goat. You are born into a place where people look after you and you learn to trust them and believe they care about your welfare. Then, one day, they may slit your throat and eat you with vegetables.\nNorth Korea is an enclosed world of brown countryside and white-and-red towns. Or white-and-off-red towns. Brown earth. Off-white buildings. Red banners and slogans.\nThe Great Leader Kim Il-sung’s Juche Idea of self-reliance – much touted when I was here in 1986 – seems to have been superceded by the Songun philosophy of “military first” – which “prioritises the Korean People’s Army in the affairs of state and allocates national resources to the army first”. Interestingly, this first seriously appeared in 1995, the year after Kim Il-sung’s death, when his son the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il took over the country.\nI wonder what sucking-up to the military Kim Jong-Il’s son the new Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un will have to do.\nAll towns seem to have at least one tall thin monument in a central position with slogans carved around or on it – the ultimate being the Tower of the Juche Idea in the country’s capital Pyongyang with eternal sculptured flame atop. It all seems a bit like worshipping a stone phallus erected in the middle of ancient communities with dwellings huddled round it.\nNorth Korea is very big on icons.\nWe were taken to the national film studios today. The late Dear Leader Kim Jong-il was much bitten by the would-be-Hollywood bug. We were proudly told that he had visited the film studios more than 590 times. We were told the studios made 20 films each year. So that would be almost two per month with lots of overlapping.\nBut the studio buildings and the widespread backlot streets were deserted. The ladies and gents toilets were closed and had to be found and specially opened. The gents was flooded. Someone told me there appeared to be an old woman sleeping in the ladies toilet.\nThe man in charge of the film studios said that the Great Leader Kim Il-sung himself had given advice on the positioning of the studios. He had said they should be outside the city.\nGood advice, I believe.\nThe school year here starts on April 1st, which seems a very appropriate date given some of the facts learned in school. We were taken to an ‘ordinary’ school today.\nIn reality, of course, foreign visitors are never taken to ‘ordinary’ schools.\nThe school we were taken to – the June the 9th Middle School Number One School – was closed. This is the fourth day of a two-day public holiday. the extra two days, we were told, are “because in the previous two days the people had to celebrate”.\nThe science schoolroom had a small, cheap microscope on each desk. There was one room devoted to lessons about the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. And one room devoted to lessons about the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il. “The children have one lesson each week on them,” we were told proudly.\nSome children had been dragged in to perform for us. As with all performances in North Korea, they were perfect in every way, though with a slightly unsettling emphasis on accordion-playing.\nI was very impressed by one small picture among many others stuck on a wall. It was of the small children undergoing military training – crawling under barbed wire and the rest.\nThen we were taken to the War Museum where we had explained to us why the Korean War started. Basically, as I understood the story, the US made lots of money during the Second World War by selling its armaments. When the War finished, the US went into a big economic Depression and decided to start the Korean War to stop the Depression.\nLast time I was here, in 1986, the line was that the Korean War started when the running dog South Korean lackeys of the US imperialists wantonly attacked North Korea, but the valiant North Koreans pluckily fought back, drove the Americans back to the sea and the Yanks begged for a peace treaty.\nThis fails somewhat to explain why the border between the two Koreas remains in the middle of the peninsula and, as told in 1986, the Chinese Army was not involved in any way. Presumably North Korean grandfathers who remember US/UN troops surging northwards through their village and then remember Chinese troops surging southwards through their village see the value of keeping schtum.\nToday, I asked if many Chinese visitors came to the War Museum and if they saw the same rooms as us. “There are four Chinese rooms in the museum,” I was told, “but we do not have time to see them today.”\nI do not really care. The more important factor to me is that, although there is some talk of the US conning the UN into being involved in the Korean War, it is the Americans who are 100% blamed (or credited) with the war. We see their downed aircraft, captured vehicles and photos of their POWs. Britain is never mentioned because it seems important to keep the focus of North Korea’s xenophobic hatred on the Americans alone.\nThat’s fine by me. It gives me a quieter life as a Brit.\nIn the evening, as a special treat, we are taken to Pyongyang’s main theatre for a special mega-performance by a cast of 2,000 in honour of Kim Il-sung’s 100th birthday. Broadway and Andrew Lloyd-Webber eat your heart out. A stupendous production of professional perfection. It is later put on YouTube:\nBut, really, you had to be there to appreciate the scale of it.\nAt a restaurant meal, one of our group tells me his story about being interviewed for a job in MI5. He passed the tests where you are given lots of disparate information from different sources about a fake situation and have to compile a risk assessment situation report. He got through to the interview stage and failed. He says he thought it was because he was around 22 years old at the time and “they like more fully-formed people… all the others were older, maybe in their early 30s.”\nI wonder how uni-directional the microphones are in the restaurant. I feel reassured that the North Koreans have better people to bug in this celebratory period.\nWhen I get back to the hotel – our final night is unexpectedly in the 5-star Yanggakdo Hotel – the television, very bizarrely, has the BBC World TV channel on it. What are the authorities thinking of? North Korean workers in the hotel can see this. I think of South Africa and Apartheid.\nThe BBC is saying there has been a Los Angeles Times report with photos of US soldiers posing with the severed limbs and other body parts of suicide bombers… and North Korea has said it will no longer allow UN nuclear inspectors into the country because the US has withdrawn food aid to North Korea in response to the launch of their rocket last week.\nMost of it utterly unknown by the people of North Korea.\n… CONTINUED HERE …\nFiled under North Korea, Politics, PR\nTagged as American, apartheid, Army, China, famine, film, forces, idea, juche, Kim il-sung, Kim Jong-Il, Kim Jong-un, MI5, monument, movie, museum, North Korea, phallic, Pyongyang, school, Security Service, Songon, studio, tower, US, war\nOne response to “North Korea – Phallic monuments, war lies, famine and an interview with MI5”\nfuckyou\nanti north korea propaganda\nLeave a Reply to fuckyou Cancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line615757"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.610170304775238,"wiki_prob":0.38982969522476196,"text":"May 2006 Articles and Features\nGrads Urged to Eschew Mundane Living\nEncouraged to avoid mundane living, 258 Oklahoma Baptist University graduates were honored during the university's 92nd commencement exercises Saturday morning in OBU's Raley Chapel. \"Life the 'un-mundane' life,\" was the challenge from Dr.…\nLong-time Employee Cap Gardner Dies May 1\nCap Gardner, a retired physical plant administrator whose OBU career spanned nearly five decades, died May 1 in Oklahoma City. He was 86. Gardner joined the OBU staff on Oct. 1, 1947, after serving seven years in the U.S. Air Force. He was…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line919930"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5571804046630859,"wiki_prob":0.44281959533691406,"text":"The Olympic National Park is open all day, every day, throughout the year, the roads, campgrounds and facilities at Olympic National Park, however, are not!\nAs with planning any trip, especially to a National Park, it’s best to check out the state of Olympic National Park before you leave home, it’s always wise to expect the unexpected. Emergency situations happen with very little warning and cause flooding, wild land fires, blow-down etc, which means that some areas of the park may have to be closed down temporarily. You can check out recorded road information at any time by calling (360) 565-3131.\nLet’s take a look at the operating hours and seasons for many of the facilities at Olympic National Park. Bear in mind that these are not exact dates, just kind of “ball park” so if you’re planning a visit close to the date then don’t forget to check it out before you leave home.\nMore current news and information on the Olympic National Park Facebook page.\nOlympic National Park Visitor Centers & Ranger Stations\nMany of the Ranger Stations at Olympic National Park don’t really have set opening hours, the hours vary, so you just need to check the bulletin boards for Deer Park Ranger Station, Eagle Ranger Station, Elwha Ranger Station, Mora Ranger Station, Ozette Ranger Station and Staircase Ranger Station.\nStorm King Ranger Station at Olympic National Park is open every day from the middle of June through to the middle of September.\nQuinault Rain Forest Ranger Station is open from the middle of June through to the middle of September, but only Thursday through Monday.\nKalaloch Ranger Info Station is open from the middle of June through to the end of September, and from mid May to mid June it’s open Thursday through Monday too.\nHurricane Ridge Visitor Center is open daily from mid June through to mid September, it’s also staffed daily during the winter season (mid December through end March) and on weekends only in the springtime, April through to mid June.\nHoh Rain Forest Visitor Center is open daily from beginning of May through to end September, weekends only from the beginning of October through mid April (except Christmas day) and Friday through Tuesdays between mid April and the beginning of May.\nOlympic National Park Visitor Center is open year round except for Christmas day and Thanksgiving.\nWilderness Information Center (which is found within the Olympic National Park Visitor Center) is open year round too.\nOlympic National Park Campground Opening Hours\nThere are loads of different campgrounds at Olympic National Park, and all are on a first come, first served basis except one at Kalaloch, so that seems like a very good place to start. Remember that these “middle of” and “end of” are very vague so if you’re planning a visit around the middle or end of that month, check it out before you leave home.\nKalaloch Campground – is open all year round and it is possible (and very wise) to make a reservation, particularly in the summer time.\nAltair Campground – opens from the end of May until early in September.\nDeer Park Campground – opens from the end of May until the middle of October, snow permitting.\nElwha Campground – is open all year round, however, there is no water from the end of October through to the end of April.\nFairholme Campground – opens from the beginning of April until the end of October.\nGraves Creek Campground – is open all year, but again doesn’t have water facilities between the end of October and the end of March.\nHeart o’ the Hills Campground – is open all year, but if there’s any snow is only accessible by walking.\nHoh Campground – opens year round.\nMora Campground – is also open year round.\nNorth Fork Campground – is open all year, but is primitive, even by National Park standards – no potable water and pit toilets.\nOzette Campground – opens for the whole year, but is another Olympic National Park campground which does not have water between the end of October and the end of March.\nQueets Campground – is another like North Fork, open all year but primitive.\nSol Duc Campground – opens all year although there’s a high possibility of the road being closed in the winter time due to snow. There is no water available from the end of October until the end of March.\nStaircase Campground – is open all year, but is without water from end of October until end of April.\nSouth Beach Campground – is open from mid to end of May, until beginning to mid of September.\nSo there you have it, if you fancy camping in Olympic National Park you know when and where to go!\nMany of the roads at Olympic National Park are open all year round – weather permitting. You know what I’m gonna’ say next don’t you, yep, CHECK IT OUT BEFORE YOU GO.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line847900"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5477243661880493,"wiki_prob":0.5477243661880493,"text":"Photo: China Modern Torture Methods (3)- Sexual Abuse\n« Top 10 posts last week, Dec. 25 ~ 31, 2006\nChina: Chief Editor Of Bai Xing Magazine Dismissed »\nChina 2006 Year In Review\nPosted by Author on January 1, 2007\nBy John Kusumi, China Support Network–\nFrom a China Support Network perspective, what happened this year? 2006 was “Tuidang, Year 2.”\nTuidang refers to a campaign, ever more insistent, urging all Chinese to quit from the Chinese Communist Party and related organs; and more broadly, for China on the whole to leave behind the CCP. In 2005, “Tuidang, Year 1,” 7 million people quit the Communist Party. In 2006, 10 million people quit the CCP, for a total of 17 million resignation statements — all posted at the Tuidang web site.\nThe tires have been slashed on China’s Communist Party, and it is increasingly unpopular. Those ten million resignations represent excellent news and “the air going out of the tires.” Yet, a few more events happened this year, allowing us to claim 10 million and change. The type of change that we would really like to see is China’s transition to a democratic, post-communist regime; throughout this year, however, the CCP regime remained stubbornly in place, continuing its Maoist ways of persecution, crimes against humanity, corruption, and propaganda.\nIn the United States, bought off politicians continued to be bought off; and sold out news media spin doctors continued to be sold out.\nCNN’s Anderson Cooper became “half a hero” with his reporting about Organ Tourism; only half a hero, because he managed to render that report and not breathe one word about Falun Gong persecution. He went half way towards breaking our story. (One and a half cheers for Anderson Cooper!) The number of confirmed deaths in the Falun Gong persecution now stands at 2,989, soon to surpass CSN’s estimate of 3,001 dead in the Tiananmen crackdown.\nThe confirmed deaths will be smaller than the number of actual deaths, due to the difficulty of getting reports from within a tyranny that likes to hide its crimes and corruption — and which holds the levers of state media inside China.\nOur big story which broke this year (yet, not on U.S. national TV) dates back to March 9, 2006. That is when the Epoch Times first article appeared, with word of a concentration camp at a medical facility in the Sujiatun district of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China. The concentration camp was said to hold Falun Gong practitioners, who were kept as a living organ bank for profitable transplant surgery, which would be performed at the medical facility. Call it organ theft. Call it people farming. Call it organ harvesting. And, call it a genocidal crime against humanity. This practice means that transplants are clearly involuntary, coming from prisoners of conscience who should never be imprisoned in the first place. Falun Gong practitioners do not raise their hands and volunteer to be executed — we should remember that this is genocidal persecution in the first place. The transplants may occur from people who are still alive as their organs are removed; after surgery, bodies are cremated to remove the evidence.\nThis means that when CNN’s Anderson Cooper, as noted above, reported about Organ Tourism without the matter of Falun Gong practitioners, he didn’t report the darker, sinister, more ugly, sickening “other side of the coin.”\nOn March 9, the same day I first heard about it, I blogged: “Even though this news is huge and as large as it gets (China vaults into a class with Nazi Germany, and there may be Olympic boycotts if not loss of the Olympics all together), I anticipate the story will grow larger in the sense of a news story. The rising clatter must rise still further, and consequences may ensue for China’s relations with the rest of the world. Suffice it to say, it’s big.” Now, over nine months later, I continue to stand by my initial assessment.\nIn addition to the allegations about Sujiatun, more word came about organ harvesting as a widespread practice, undertaken at many other facilities.\nThe news of this medical abuse and flagrant human rights abuse is what drove Wenyi Wang to become the loud protester, from the press gallery, on the South Lawn of the White House — in the April 20 welcoming ceremony for PRC President Hu Jintao. Hers was “the shout heard round the world,” a high profile occasion due to the world stage and presence of international media. In addition to being an Epoch Times reporter, Wenyi was already familiar to me as a vigorous rights campaigner, and organizer of prior activism. What I did not know on April 19 was her background as a medical doctor. That background added credibility and gravity to her charges about the regime’s practice, and with the newfound attention, Wenyi became a widely traveled, and much interviewed, speaker in behalf of the cause. While U.S. national TV did very little about following up (I saw CNN’s Wolf Blitzer seem to scold her like a headmaster), Wenyi was able to make a tour of various ADIs (U.S. cities), and thereby reach a very wide audience through affiliate and local media. (Heck, I’ve spent about 25 years “going around” the nationals of the news media. I know how it’s done, and I sympathize with Wenyi Wang.)\nGetting the word out is within the scope of the mission at the China Support Network. This year, Wenyi Wang was not the only one doing the “end around” of U.S. national TV.\nI am naming David Kilgour and David Matas to be the China Suport Network’s “Men of the Year.” Why so? Kilgour and Matas stepped up to the plate, independently investigated, and released their “Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China.” Their findings served as independent confirmation: the allegations are true. They conclude “that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.”\nDavid Kilgour is a former Member of Parliament in Canada, and was Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific region. David Matas is an international human rights attorney. With their political and legal backgrounds, they would know better than to be casual or inexact with public statements. While they knew the stakes in international relations, and while they knew the enormity of the charges against Communist China, they nonetheless undertook to inform the world of their findings. Their tour, to 26 countries, was another way to “end around” the ersatz journalists of U.S. national TV.\nThey get to be Men of the Year here — first for taking on the case; second for integrity and courage in standing by their findings; and third for raising awareness, breaking an information blockade, and putting to shame U.S. national TV.\nCan we gauge the results of their media efforts? Yes, by asking, “How is their clip sheet doing?” From May 9 to December 20 of this year, their web site shows 194 clips in the English language. 129 news outlets were represented, of which 31 ran more than one article. That means that the story has caught the attention to be “followed,” and actively followed up, at 31 outlets. The Epoch Times is clearly the most active, and we can say that it is the newspaper of record in the China-rights community. The other 30 outlets are–\nAustralian Broadcasting Corporation (8), The Calgary Herald (6), The Globe and Mail (4), National Post (4), Ottawa Citizen (4), Sydney Morning Herald (4), CBC News (3), China Post (3), NZ Scoop (3), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (3), The Christian Science Monitor (3), The Ottawa Citizen (3), The Toronto Sun (3), Abbotsford News (2), AFP (2), Asia News (2), Canadian Christianity (2), Chronicle Herald (2), CounterPunch (2), Cowichan Valley News Leader (2), CTV (2), Free Market News (2), Langley Times (2), South China Morning Post (2), Taipei Times (2), The Halifax Daily News (2), The Leader-Post (2), The Vancouver Sun (2), Times Colonist (2), Victoria News (2).\nThe single-mention outlets are a wide variety, including the Times of India, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, the Chicago Tribune, the Irish Medical Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Times.\nWho is missing from this list? United States opinion leaders are missing — the Associated Press, UPI, New York Times, and Washington Post. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CNN. There is no sign of these news outlets in the list. Should we write them off as anti-Falun Gong media? Or as closer to Jiang Zemin than to freedom and democracy? Well, suffice it to say that REAL journalists know about our story, and that ersatz journalists continue to live in denial. I truly thank David Kilgour and David Matas, as well as Wenyi Wang, for their work in 2006 to “end around” the minority of journalists who are sticks in the mud. Everyone else knows about China’s crimes against humanity; the last to know will be Brian Williams (NBC News anchorman) and Jacques Rogge (IOC President, who cannot be happy as this story tarnishes the Olympics).\nThe year includes its share of outrages — sentences meted out to rights lawyers and campaigners by China’s [in]”justice” system.\nNotably, lawyer Gao Zhisheng was arrested on August 15 and released on December 22. He has the relative leniency of house arrest, because Beijing has begun its pre-Olympics charm offensive. There will continue to be efforts to rescue him in 2007, and some chance that Gao will exit from China and reach exile.\nTo well review 2006, it is important to note that EU / European Parliament Vice President, Edward Scott-McMillan, also stepped up this year and made a fact-finding trip into China. He is alarmed by the human rights conditions of China, and he is joining a chorus of voices against the Beijing Olympics, slated to be held there in 2008. It used to be that U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) seemed to be alone as a politician who also campaigned in our cause. This year, she is joined by David Kilgour (Canadian) and Edward McMillan-Scott (British). And this year, Nancy Pelosi herself gained new stature, as the incoming Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.\nThis year end review is showing us that by several measures — resignations from the CCP; politician attention; and, media attention — that our cause is making headway or accelerating. It is arriving at critical mass just prior to the Olympics, which in itself is certain to whip up activists.\nAlso this year, Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, and Google came under fire for assisting the police state in China, with technology that ends up in “the great firewall of China” — internet censorship that also enables the authorities’ internet crackdown.\n2006 had one more high note and one more sour note. The high note is that a music video, “Remember Tiananmen Square” appeared, from the rock band NoManZero. The sour note is that the U.S. Congress passed another “PNTR for dictators” bill, this time for Communist Vietnam. The Vietnam trade deal had to be passed, late at night on the last day of the session, by the 109th Congress, because there would be no market for it in the 110th Congress. The new Democratic Congress features “rising protectionist sentiment,” where PNTR becomes an impossibly hard sell.\nThat trade deal means bad things for America, but that is a topic for another column. As it stands, our cause had a good year 2006, and we look forward to an even better 2007. 2007 will feature the 18th anniversary of Tiananmen Square’s massacre. –That is exactly one generation later. I hope we will use this year’s anniversary to remember the event (for older folks) and to introduce the event (for younger folks). There is a rising new generation, that needs the introduction that explains how our China rights cause became urgent — and globally known — in the first place.\nThis 18th anniversary will be a time for educating people, in advance of the Beijing Olympics that are slated for August, 2008. To all of the campaigners in this cause, I offer kudos, congratulations, and solidarity. Some very good work was done this year, and more is to follow, as ever! Thank yous, and Happy New Year, to one and all who carry on the work of freeing China! :-)\n– China Support Network (CSN)– Begun as the American response group in 1989, CSN represents Americans who are “on the side” of the students in Tiananmen Square – standing for democratic reform, human rights, and freedom in China. For dissident news; to support a stronger China policy; or get more information, see http://www.chinasupport.net\n– John Kusumi, The first Generation X politician and Ronald Reagan’s youngest political opponent, John Kusumi was the 18-year-old running for U.S. President in 1984. (Independent / Practical Idealist) He later formed the China Support Network (CSN) when his age-group peers were massacred at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the site of a student-led pro-democracy uprising in 1989. He remains Director emeritus of CSN, an accomplished speaker, and widely published on matters of the Chinese democracy movement, where leading Chinese dissidents call upon him as an ally. See http://Kusumi.com\nThis entry was posted on January 1, 2007 at 5:16 pm\tand is filed under all Hot Topic, Asia, Canada, China, Communist Party, Company, Crime against humanity, David Kilgour, David Matas, Falun Gong, Gao Zhisheng, Google, Human Rights, Internet, Law, Lawyer, Media, Microsoft, News, Newspaper, Opinion, Organ harvesting, Party withdrawal, People, Politics, Religion, Religious, Report, search engine, Social, TV / film, website, World, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.\n3 Responses to “China 2006 Year In Review”\nBred said\nInteresting post. thanks!\nJana Shearer said\nYes its been an good year for exposing the crimes of the Ccp. But next year is an auspcious year for not only the Chinese but for the rest of the world when i hope that the CCP will come crashing down as more chinese citizens learn the truth about the true evil nature of the Chinese commuist regime and turn their backs on it by resigning. Lets hope the west will support the peaceful change over to a freer and democratic China.\nRichard Bluestein’s Weblog » Blog Archive » China Sucks and Anderson Cooper does a half-assed job. said\n[…] source: China 2006 Year In Review « Status of Chinese People […]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line126016"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8741069436073303,"wiki_prob":0.8741069436073303,"text":"Giant Marine Reptiles Swam Like Penguins\nLooks like a dinosaur, swims like a bird\nBy Mary Beth Griggs\nLiu et al. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004605\nPenguins can't fly, but they are master swimmers, cutting through the water with ease.\nBut they aren't the first animals to develop their sleek swimming technique. It turns out that plesiosaurs, marine reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs (so between 200 million and 66 million years ago), used a similar method to get around in their watery environs.\nIn a study published in PLOS Computational Biology, researchers created a computer model of how the huge reptile moved. Plesiosaurs grew to be between 8 and 46 feet long, and all had four flippers. The researchers were surprised to find that the most efficient way of moving such a large body through the water was for the plesiosaur to use just its front two flippers, just like a penguin uses its wings.\n\"Plesiosaur swimming has remained a mystery for almost 200 years, so it was exciting to see the plesiosaur come alive on the computer screen,\" Adam Smith, a paleontologist who worked on the paper said in a statement.\nSee their computer models in the animation below:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1009420"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6438353657722473,"wiki_prob":0.6438353657722473,"text":"Insightful Analysis and Commentary for U.S. and Global Equity Investors\nCompanies That Control the World’s Food\nAugust 15, 2014 by 247alex\nThe agriculture and food production industry employed more than one billion people as of last year, or a third of the global workforce. While the industry is substantial, a relatively small number of companies wield an enormous amount of influence.\nIn its 2013 report, “Behind the Brands,” Oxfam International focused on 10 of the world’s biggest and most influential food and beverage companies. These corporations are so powerful that their policies can have a major impact on the diets and working conditions of people worldwide, as well as on the environment. Based on the report, these are the 10 companies that control the world’s food.\nClick here to see the companies that control the world’s food.\nIn an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Chris Jochnick, director of the private sector department at Oxfam America, discussed the impact that these 10 companies have on the world. “If you look at the massive global food system, it’s hard to get your head around. Just a handful of companies can dictate food choices, supplier terms and consumer variety,” Jochnick said.\nThese 10 companies are among the largest in the world by a number of measures. All of them had revenues in the tens of billions of dollars in 2013. Five of these companies had at least $50 billion in assets, while four had more than $6 billion in profits last year. Additionally, these 10 companies directly employed more than 1.5 million people combined — and contracted with far more.\nNestle is the largest of these 10 companies. Converted into dollars, Nestle had more than $100 billion in sales and more than $11 billion in profits in 2013. The Switzerland food giant alone employed roughly 333,000 people.\nMany of these companies and their brands are extremely well known. One reason is that they often spend huge sums on advertising. Nine of these 10 companies were among the 100 largest media spenders in the world in 2012. Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), the world’s sixth largest advertiser, spent more than $3 billion in 2012 on advertising. Unilever’s media expenditure, at $7.4 billion, was the second-highest worldwide.\nWith such scale, many of these companies’ policies — including advertising, food ingredients, environmental impact, and labor practices — have an significant impact on millions of lives. Often, these companies have been reluctant to address issues related to their environmental impact and the quality of life of workers in their supply chain. According to Jochnick, many of these companies are “unaware of the social and environmental impact that they are creating or facilitating.”\nHowever, not all the companies are reluctant to address these problems. None of the 10 companies was better-rated by Oxfam than Nestle, which was closely followed by Unilever. Still, even these companies had problems, according to Oxfam’s 2013 report. In 2011, Nestle discovered cases of children working in its cocoa supply chain, as well as instances of forced labor. A supplier of palm oil for Unilever was accused of illegal deforestation and forcible land grabs.\nA strong public profile, as well as consumer awareness, may lead these companies to address issues of concern. “A company that is good and trusted ought to be a company that is aware of, and taking steps to avoid, serious human rights or social or environmental problems that it is part of,” Jochnick said.\nSome companies have taken steps towards becoming better corporate citizens. General Mills and Kellogg, which have been among the 10 companies Oxfam studied, have implemented new policies to address important issues such as climate change. Both companies recently committed to disclosing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years.\nBased on Oxfam International’s 2013 report, “Behind the Brands: Food justice and the ‘Big 10’ food and beverage companies,” 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 companies that control the world’s food. We also added information on each company’s revenue, net profit, total assets, and employee count from their most recent annual report. Data were translated from foreign currencies based on the exchange rate on the final date of each company’s reporting period. Information on companies’ brands come from corporate websites and Oxfam. Data on 2012 advertising expenditures are from Advertising Age’s report, “Global Marketers 2013,” and are estimates. Estimates for Mars Incorporated, which is privately held, are from Forbes’ report “America’s Largest Private Companies 2013.”\nThese are the companies that control the world’s food.\nAssociated British Foods plc\n> Revenue: $21.1 billion\n> Advertising spending: N/A\n> Profits: $837 million\n> Employees: 112,652\nAssociated British Foods is a U.K. food manufacturer that has built out a global presence largely through acquisitions. Associated British Foods operates sugar factories, sells food ingredients to wholesale and industry customers, and manufactures consumer products such as Mazola corn oil and Twinings tea. According to Oxfam, the company received low marks for its practices in water use, having failed to conduct impact assessments, while also failing to adopt strong practices in managing its water supply chain.\n> Advertising spending: $3.0 billion\n> Profits: $8.6 billion\nCoca-Cola is among the most valuable brands in the world. In total, Coca-Cola and its bottlers sold sold 28.2 billion cases worth of drinks, of which 47% were “trademark Coca-Cola.” In total, sales for The Coca-Cola Company were nearly $47 billion in its latest fiscal year. Overall, The Coca-Cola Company scores well for a number of practices, including addressing inequality for women working in production and supporting female empowerment for workers in its supply chain. The company is also well-rated for its land-management practices.\nALSO READ: Cars Most Likely to be Dumped\nGroupe Danone S.A.\nFrance’s Groupe Danone has a truly global presence. Its largest market, by sales, is Russia, followed by France, the U.S., China, and Indonesia. According to the company, Danone is the world’s largest seller of fresh dairy products, which accounted for 11.8 billion euros in revenue, or over half of the company’s total sales in 2013. Danone is also among the world’s largest sellers of early life nutrition products and bottled waters. Danone received high scores for its policies in a number of major issues, including transparency and managing water resources. However, the company also received low scores in other policies, including its handling of land and farming issues. Danone received the lowest score of any company from Oxfam for its policies regarding women’s issues in agricultural production.\nGeneral Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS)\n> Employees: 43,000\nGeneral Mills owns a number of America’s best-known brands, including Betty Crocker, Green Giant, and Pillsbury. No company received a lower rating from Oxfam for its overall approach to major policy issues. General Mills had the lowest scores in awareness and policies regarding climate change. Recently, however, General Mills announced new initiatives designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its supply chain. As part of the announcement, General Mills also pledged to implement specific emissions targets, to review supplier practices, and to name its largest suppliers of palm oil and sugar in order to improve transparency.\nALSO READ: America’s Fastest-Growing Retailers\nKellogg Company (NYSE: K)\nAmong the top food companies, Kellogg is the smallest by revenue. Still, as of 2013, the company had nearly $15 billion in sales, a similar amount in total assets, and more than 30,000 employees. Kellogg also owns a large number of very well-known brands, including Kellogg’s cereal, Keebler, and Pringles, which it acquired in 2012 for $2.7 billion. According to Kellogg, it is the world’s leading cereal company and the second-largest maker of cookies. In all, Kellogg makes 1,600 different foods, which it sells in more than 180 different countries. Kellogg received a lower overall rating from Oxfam for its practices than all but two of the other 10 companies. However, in a recent release, Oxfam praised Kellogg for its pledge to cut greenhouse emissions in its supply chain.\nMars, Incorporated\n> Profits: N/A\nMars is the the only one of the world’s 10 largest food companies that is privately owned. Mars owns several well-known chocolate brands, such as M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers and Twix. Mars also owns a range of food brands such as Uncle Ben’s rice, as well as chewing gum and candy-maker Wrigley. Among the big 10 global food companies, Mars received the lowest policy ratings for water and land issues. In both cases, Oxfam penalized the company for its lack of knowledge of its environmental impact, as well as for its supplier policies.\nMondelez International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDLZ)\nIn 2012, Kraft Foods split into two separate companies, Kraft Foods Group and Mondelez. While Kraft Foods Group took North American grocery brands, Mondelez took its snacks and candies brands, which include Cadbury, Nabisco, Oreo, and Trident, among many others. The company had over $35 billion in revenue and more than $72 billion in assets as of last year. It also employed 100,000 workers worldwide. According to Oxfam, Mondelez received low marks for its transparency, as well as for its handling of issues related to climate change and workers.\nALSO READ: America’s Best Companies to Work For\nNestle S.A.\n> Revenue: $103.5 billion\n> Profits: $11.2 billion\nBy many measures, Nestle is the largest of the 10 food companies, with more than 92 billion Swiss francs in revenue last year — net profit and total asset figures that dwarf other food companies — and roughly 333,000 employees. Nestle is also the top-rated company by Oxfam for its approach to major policy issues. It received the highest scores for addressing transparency, water use, and climate change of any major food company. In its 2013 report, Oxfam highlighted Nestle’s efforts in addressing labor abuses the company discovered in its cocoa supply chain in the Ivory Coast.\nPepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP)\nIn addition to owning famous soda brands such as Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Gatorade, PepsiCo also controls food brands such as Tostitos, Doritos, and Quaker. PepsiCo also employed nearly a quarter of a million people worldwide at the end of 2013. Pepsi was among the world’s biggest advertisers. Advertising Age estimates that PepsiCo’s worldwide media spending totalled $2.5 billion in 2012. According to three groups that measure brand value — Interbrand, BrandZ, and CoreBrand — Pepsi is one of the world’s most valuable brands in any industry. While PepsiCo received a lower score on policy issues than three other companies reviewed by Oxfam, it has developed a reputation for company responsibility in at least one area. CEO Indra Nooyi has pushed for healthier products in her time at the helm of the company.\nALSO READ: 10 Cities Running Out of Water\nUnilever products are hardly limited to food and drinks. The U.K.- and Netherlands-based group also makes personal care and home care products. Still, its foods and refreshments businesses accounted for almost 23 billion euros of the company’s nearly 50 billion euros in revenue last year. Brands owned by Unilever include Lipton tea, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, to name only a few. Unilever generally scores fairly well for its efforts in addressing policy issues. Oxfam rated it above all other companies for its worker and farming policies. Only Nestle received a higher overall rating for its handling of the issues highlighted by Oxfam.\nTags: General Mills, Inc. (NYSE:GIS), Kellogg Company (NYSE:K), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), Mondelez International (NASDAQ:MDLZ), PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP)\nPosted in Special Report | Comments Off on Companies That Control the World’s Food\n24/7 Wall St. is proudly powered by WordPress\nhttps://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/08/15/companies-that-control-the-worlds-food/ printed on January 17, 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line947516"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6750919222831726,"wiki_prob":0.3249080777168274,"text":"EduBloggerCon Model: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe?\nI heard about this while listening to the audio version of a new book, Mavericks at Work. Around the \"fringe\" of a traditional drama festival, all kinds of informal performances started to take place, which are now collectively called \"The Fringe.\" It has become a huge event, even dwarfing the original festival.\nLike an \"unconference,\" and unlike the formal festival it surrounds, nobody decides who can or can't participate--anyone who wants to can find a venue and advertise, trying to draw a crowd. There is an coordinating/advertising organization for \"The Fringe,\" but they are very clear about the fact that will do nothing to determine who performs.\nLast year's Fringe encompassed 28,014 performances of 1867 different shows in 261 venues, with ticket sales of 1.5 million. Very famous actors and actresses participate, as well as complete unknowns.\nNot trying to think to grandly about EduBloggerCon, but what an idea: an ed tech conference that is run by the participants. Wouldn't that be an interesting twist on the traditional...\nNote to Stephen Downes (smile): you might really find this book interesting. Not only does it draw some great links between the Free and Open Source Software movements and good business practices, it showcases many companies that are doing good things by being purpose-driven (not profit-driven) commercial enterprises.\nLike the quote from Tom Peters on the cover, I'm \"devouring\" it.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line553917"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6460617184638977,"wiki_prob":0.6460617184638977,"text":"Pioneers in Building Information and Communication Technologies Companies: DeClout\nDeClout is a global builder of next-generation Information and Communications Technologies companies who invests in, incubates, and scales companies to become global or regional market leaders. The Group is exceptional in building companies for harvests and has generated good investment returns. Headquartered in Singapore, DeClout has a vast network across the Asia Pacific, America, Europe, and Africa.\nThe Group’s portfolio companies comprise of Procurri, Beaqon, vCargo Cloud, and Corous360. Through DeClout Investments, DeClout’s incubation, and fund-raising facilitation arm, the Group seeks to continuously identify synergies between new ventures and its existing businesses to drive growth.\nThe Group has built an exceptional track record of identifying disruptive trends and reinventing business models to differentiate its value proposition. To date, it has successfully incubated enterprises that are aggregators, enablers or eco-system builders that disrupt the marketplace.From market seeding to the transformation of existing businesses to creating new growth platforms, it actively stewards the growth of its portfolio companies through their various stages of development.\nTeamwork:No individual effort can be greater than the holistic contribution of a strong and closely knitted team. DeClout encourages a culture of team spirit which allows ordinary people to do extraordinary things.\nInnovation:Innovation is the company’s lifeblood. It believes in doing different things and doing things differently. Its ability to innovate existing solutions as well as create new ones for customershas been key drivers of its success.\nExcellence:DeClout demands excellence in everything it does. It maintains the highest levels of service that customers expect of the company, and always give its best, no matter how trying the circumstances or challenging the tasks is.\nResilience:DeClout adapts quickly to the ever-changing global environment, and change the way it does things where necessary, to stay as a market leader.\nBusiness Breakthrough\nIT Infrastructure Sales & Services:The company’s IT Infrastructure services segment offers innovative solutions in the telecommunication, security, network infrastructure,and hardware lifecycle services sectors, enabling the Group to capitalize on the convergence of data, voice,and applications in the infocommunications and technology industry.\nVertical Domain Clouds:DeClout’s Vertical Doman Clouds (VDCs) segment creates domain-focused ecosystems that redefine communications and interactions between stakeholders. Leveraging and aggregating on the resources and capabilities from its IT Infrastructure segment, DeClout creates ecosystems that add value and supports the seamless exchange of data, information, and ideas among multiple ecosystem players.\nDeClout Investments: DeClout Investments, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DeClout, was incorporated in 2016 as a two-tier platform comprising incubation and fund-raising facilitation for startups and growing enterprises. The incubation tier focuses on leveraging the Group’s business network, domain expertise, as well as industry knowledge and know-how to create a next-generation business accelerator which can add value to the startups. The fund-raising facilitation tier works on initiatives with government bodies and like-minded partners to allow greater access to financing and investments for the enterprises.\nThrough DeClout Investments, the group seeks to identify complementary opportunities that are synergistic to the Group, bolting on new competencies and leveraging on the market trends.Supported by the SPRING Singapore Startup SG Accelerator scheme, DeClout Investment has launched a new incubator arm to mentor early-stage startups and help them in product development, proof-of-concept, commercialization,and fundraising.\nMeet the Leader\nVesmond Wong, Chairman,and Group Chief Executive Officer: Mr.Vesmond Wong has been the Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer of DeClout Limited since 2011. Mr. Wong is responsible for the strategic planning, overall management, and business development of the Group.\nAs a serial entrepreneur, Mr. Wong has founded and managed a few technology companies over the span of his 20-year career and is well-known for his ability to spot industry trends ahead of disruption, and his ability to monetize ventures for successful exits. His successes include taking Procurri Corporation Limited to an IPO on the SGX-ST Mainboard in July 2016, and the sale of Acclivis Technologies and Solutions Pte. Ltd. to CITIC Telecom Group in the same year.\nIn the venture capital space, Mr. Wong is a member of the Investment Committee of DeClout Ventures Pte Ltd where he selects disruptive companies that are synergistic to DeClout’s business for mentorship and co-investment under the National Research Foundation’s Early Stage Venture Fund III Scheme.\nPrior to DeClout, Mr. Wong founded Cavu Corp Pte. Ltd. in 2000, a leading IT infrastructure service provider which offered a full range of enterprise solutions. In 1995, Mr. Wong was also responsible for establishing the business of Vanda Systems (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of a Hong Kong-listed company. He was instrumental in setting up the company as the Southeast Asia regional headquarters where he was the Country General Manager since its inception till early 2000.\n“We invest in, incubate, and scale companies to be market leaders in their industries.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1199735"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6128098368644714,"wiki_prob":0.6128098368644714,"text":"Xiezhu Raises $37 Million for Smart Hotel Tech: Travel Startup Funding This Week\nEurope / Hotels and Accommodations / United Kingdom\nLondon calling: DUKES LONDON concierge offers top 10 tips for visiting London\nby Melanie Nayer on Apr 13, 2011\nSo, you weren’t invited to the Royal Wedding. While you won’t get to sit next to the Beckhams or drink tea with the Windsors for the big event, you can still experience the best of London (without worrying about your face appearing in Page Six’s ‘what were they thinking?’ layout of wedding fashion gone wrong).\nIan Steiger, Head Concierge of the historic DUKES LONDON in St. James’s and the Concierge of the Year 2010, is offering tips for London travelers who want to see the best of the city, without all the chaos but with a little royal flair. Here’s what he suggests:\n1. Buckingham Palace isn’t the only Royal residence in town. Visit Clarence House, the official residence of Princes Charles, William and Harry, which offers public and private tours from August 6th through September 4th.\n2. The best place to catch a glimpse of William departing Clarence House for the Royal Wedding will be the steps of the Duke of York “Son of George III” statue on Carlton House Terrace. Show up early, says Steiger: “Royal watchers will begin queuing two or three days ahead.”\n3. While St. James’s Palace isn’t open to the public, it’s a great spot to see the comings and goings of Royal Family members. The palace was the Royals’ official residence from 1699 until 1837.4. Even the Royal Family goes out on the town. Among great dining spots they’ve been known to frequent: Annabel’s, a private club that is a favorite of the Prince of Wales; Wiltons, a famous fish restaurant founded in St. James in 1742; and Le Gavroche, Michel Roux Jr.’s Michelin Two-Star French restaurant in Mayfair.\n5. For those without an invite to the Royal Wedding, DUKES LONDON will host a special Royal Wedding Champagne Afternoon Tea on April 29. The wedding will be shown on the big screen in the Regal Marlborough Suite, while Champagne, tea, finger sandwiches and assorted cakes and pastries will be served (price is approximately $55).\n6. Glimpse Prince William’s maternal side at Spencer House, the ancestral home of the family of Diana, Princess of Wales.\n7. Spring and summer bloom with possibilities in London. Prime among annual events that the Royal Family never misses is the Royal Ascot Races from June 14-18 and the Chelsea Flower Show, May 24-28.\n8. Art lovers will be enthralled by the Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition of contemporary works, scheduled this year from June 7-August 15. Meanwhile, the lesser-known Courtauld Gallery is among the finest small museums in the world, with a collection stretching from the Renaissance to the 20th century.\n9. Visit historic buildings, including Marlborough House, built with red bricks from Holland in 1711; Burlington House, begun in 1660 and remodeled twice since; and St. James’s Church, which was fashioned by Christopher Wren for his friend Henry Jermyn from 1674-86 and restored with a garden of remembrance following bombing damage from the London Blitz.\n10. Can’t get enough of the Royals? Tour Buckingham Palace, one of the few working royal palaces in the world, from July 23-October 3; or head for Windsor Castle, the largest and oldest occupied castle in the world with 900 years of British history to go around. It’s open daily from 9:45am-4:15pm.\nTags: london, london hotels, London Travel, LondonHotels, LondonTravel, royal wedding, RoyalWedding\nThe Story Behind London’s Sold-Out Literary Pub Tour\nBurberry Raincoats And Other Cool Things You Can Borrow From Your Hotel\nPhoto Of The Day: Big Ben In Traffic\nHow Can Airbnb Guests Live Like Locals if Hosts Are, Well, Corporations?\nThe Savoy’s Carpenter Hammers Away to Make the Storied Hotel Instagrammable","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1142738"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9797002077102661,"wiki_prob":0.9797002077102661,"text":"Chinese Fund Backed By Hunter Biden Invested In Tech To Surveil Muslims\nAuthored by Lee Fang via The Intercept,\nOn Wednesday, Human Rights Watch released a troubling report about a phone application made by the Chinese government. The app provides law enforcement with easy, daily access to data detailing the religious activity, blood type, and even the amount of electricity used by ethnic minority Muslims living in the western province of Xinjiang.\nThe app relies heavily on facial recognition software supplied by Face++, a division of the Chinese startup Megvii, a relationship that sparked questions in the press for Megvii investors. One of the most prominent of these investors is Alibaba Group Holding, which was co-founded by Jack Ma, the wealthiest Chinese billionaire and an icon for the country’s image of entrepreneurship.\nThe flurry of media reports this week about Face++, Ma, and the role of the private sector in building China’s increasingly sprawling surveillance state, however, left out another prominent investor in the company: Hunter Biden.\nThe son of the former Vice President Joe Biden has spent much of the last decade building overseas investments and business deals, arrangements that could complicate his father’s bid for the presidency by posing an array of potential conflicts of interest.\nHunter Biden’s investment company in China, known as Bohai Harvest RST, has pooled money, largely from state-owned venture capital, to buy or invest in a range of industries in the U.S. and China. Bohai Harvest has put money into an automotive firm, mining companies, and technology ventures, such as Didi Chuxing Technology, one of the largest ride-hailing companies in the world after Uber. (Hunter Biden, Bohai Harvest, and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)\nIn 2017, Bohai Harvest bought into Face++, part of a $460 million haul in the company’s Series C investment round. Bohai Harvest’s website features Face++ in its portfolio of investments.\nBOHAI HARVEST OPERATES and works with a number of funds to make its various investments, a tangled business structure that has brought Hunter Biden into close proximity to influential Chinese government and business figures, according to a review of Chinese business filings by The Intercept.\nBohai Harvest relies heavily on an international subsidiary of the state-owned Bank of China to finance its investments, referring to itself as an “investment platform under BOC” on its website. The investment fund has also partnered with a subsidiary of HNA Group, a controversial conglomerate that has snapped up investments in a wide range of businesses across the world.\nAs The Intercept has previously reported, the HNA Group has made unusually extensive efforts to cultivate U.S. officials. The company floated an offer to buy out the hedge fund owned by former White House official Anthony Scaramucci; retained the legal services of Gary Locke, the former U.S. ambassador to China, shortly before his confirmation; and provided financing to a private-equity firm backed by Jeb Bush. HNA Group, notably, also courted Bill Clinton, touting meetings with the former president at philanthropy events hosted by the company.\nThe Bank of China, one of the largest banks in the country, has also made overtures to U.S. political elites. Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, the company added Angela Chao, the sister of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and sister-in-law of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to its board of directors.\nALONG WITH A number of politically connected Americans, Hunter Biden’s investment vehicle in China came as a result of a series of deals struck over the last 10 years.\nIn 2008, in the closing days of that year’s presidential campaign, Hunter Biden deregistered as a lobbyist from Oldaker, Biden and Belair, a Washington, D.C., firm he co-founded alongside William Oldaker, a longtime fundraiser and legal adviser to Joe Biden.\nThe following year, Hunter Biden - along with former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson Christopher Heinz; Kerry-Heinz family friend Devon Archer; and former Oldaker partner Eric Schwerin - founded several companies using the name Rosemont Seneca.\nIn 2014, the partners began setting up operations in China. The “RS” in Bohai Harvest RST stands for Rosemont Seneca, and the “T” stands for Thornton Group. The latter group is an international consulting firm based in Massachusetts that was founded by James Bulger, the son of the longtime Kerry ally and former Massachusetts state Senate President William Bulger.\nThe company, according to the Wall Street Journal, planned to raise $1.5 billion, taking advantage of Shanghai’s free enterprise zone to convert yuan to dollars to be invested in foreign companies. Business registration filings in China list Hunter Biden, Schwerin, and James Bulger as key officials at Bohai Harvest.\nLast year, author Peter Schweizer criticized the timing of Bohai Harvest’s launch, claiming that the exclusive deal coincided with negotiations between then-Vice President Joe Biden and the Chinese government.\nOn Wednesday, the New York Times raised similar concerns with the involvement of Hunter Biden in Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, which added the vice president’s son to the company board in 2014. Rosemont Seneca financial filings, made public through a separate fraud investigation into Archer, revealed that the energy company paid Hunter Biden as much as $50,000 per month at a time when the U.S. was closely involved in Ukraine’s response to Russian aggression in the region.\nFor his part, Joe Biden has long served as a friendly voice for U.S.-China relations, even before his son’s investment ventures. The elder Biden helped lead Democratic support to passing permanent national trade relations with China.\nIn 2000 remarks in support of the vote, Biden argued that he did not “see the collapse of the American manufacturing economy” as a danger from opening up further trade with China, claiming that an economy “about the size of the Netherlands” could not become “our major economic competitor.” Opening China to further trade, Biden predicted, would create “a path toward ever greater political and economic freedom” for the country’s citizens.\nJoin The Intercept's Newsletter... Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you...I’m in","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1290997"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5407940745353699,"wiki_prob":0.4592059254646301,"text":"Florida Bar President-Elect Michelle Suskauer joins Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A.\nNationally recognized criminal defense attorney Michelle Rosenkranz Suskauer joined Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A. as a partner on January 1st. Michelle is the President-elect of The Florida Bar and brings deep criminal justice experience to the firm and expands both the capacity and practice areas of DKR’s Palm Beach County office.\nMichelle began her career as an assistant public defender in West Palm Beach in 1991, and since has been practicing throughout the state of Florida and nationally. She has handled thousands of criminal cases, including those involving domestic violence, narcotics, sexual and violent offenses, DUI, and white-collar crimes. Michelle has an AV rating by Martindale-Hubbell, denoting “the height of professional excellence” and the “highest skill and integrity.” She will be sworn in as president at the Florida Bar’s annual convention in Orlando on June 15.\nSuskauer is a frequent media contributor, serving as a regular legal analyst for the Palm Beach NBC and FOX television affiliates. She also has been featured on Anderson Cooper 360, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, and Nancy Grace. Michelle earned her law degree at American University and is married to Scott Suskauer, a family division circuit court judge in Palm Beach County. They have two daughters.\nDKR Nationally Recognized Law Firm\nDimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A. specializes in securities litigation and arbitration, commercial litigation, and catastrophic personal injury cases. The firm is nationally prominent in representing individual and institutional investors who have lost money due to investment fraud or stockbroker negligence. DKR also offers extensive expertise in commercial disputes and is skilled in class-action and receivership litigation. The firm, which has been recognized as a “Top Law Firm” by the South Florida Legal Guide every year since 2006, maintains offices in Miami and West Palm Beach, FL, with satellite offices in Los Angeles, CA, New York, NY, and Bloomfield Hills, MI.\n“We are thrilled to welcome a lawyer with Michelle’s impressive talents and unmatched cachet as our partner,” said Scott Dimond, one of the firm’s founders. “She is smart and aggressive, and she shares DKR’s commitment to the very highest quality of practice.”\nContact Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A.\nWith offices in Los Angeles, New York, West Palm Beach, Detroit, and Miami, our attorneys represent clients nationwide and can help you with your case. Contact Dimond Kaplan & Rothstein, P.A. to schedule an appointment or consultation to review your rights and options.\n'Attorney-Broker' Ponzi Suit Belongs In State Court\nRead our Los Angeles Securities Blog\nNews, updates and info on the Los Angeles Securities Industry\nSpeak to an\nExperienced Attorney\nBroker and Securities Employment Disputes","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line845632"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6663703918457031,"wiki_prob":0.6663703918457031,"text":"Port Elliot Bowling Club Gallery click here for WEBSITE HOME\nFilter Search for words\nSearch for all terms\nSearch for any term\nSearch for an author\nKind of date\n-- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 ------------ January February March April May June July August September October November December\nSearch options Search in albums - Season Opening Sept 11 2011\nSearch in sub-albums","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line637846"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5900557041168213,"wiki_prob":0.5900557041168213,"text":"Individual Lost U.S. Citizenship; Subsequently Citizenship Retroactively Restored\nREVENUE RULE 92-109\n1992-2 C.B. 3, 1992-52 I.R.B. 5.\nRevenue Ruling\n26 CFR 1.1-1: Income tax on individuals.\n(See Also Sections 871, 877, 2501, 2511, 6012, 6019, 6159, 6501, 7122, 7701, 7805; 1.871-1, 1.6012-1, 25.2501-1, 301.7805-1.)\nIndividual lost U.S. citizenship; subsequently citizenship retroactively restored. Guidance is provided to several categories of individuals who have failed to file past years' federal income and gift tax returns, including individuals who lost their U.S. citizenship and subsequently had (or have) that citizenship retroactively restored.\nIssue 1.\nWhether, and to what extent, United States citizens who lost their United States citizenship and subsequently had that citizenship retroactively restored. are liable for federal income and gift taxes as United States citizens.\nWhether, and to what extent, former United States citizens who are eligible to have their United States citizenship retroactively restored (but have not applied to do so) are liable for federal income and gift taxes as United States citizens.\nWhether, and to what extent, United States citizens who performed certain expatriating acts but did not lose their United States citizenship are liable for federal income and gift taxes as United States citizens.\nWhether, and to what extent, United States citizens residing outside the United States who did not perform expatriating acts and did not lose their United States citizenship are liable for federal income and gift taxes as United States citizens.\nSituation 1.\nA is a United States citizen. On June 17, 1981, A performed an expatriating act, as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 349, 8 U.S.C. section 1481 (1976 & Supp. III 1977-1980) (amended 1981, 1986, and 1988). A's expatriating act did not have for one of its principal purposes the avoidance of federal income, estate, or gift taxes.\nA's expatriating act was reported to the United States Department of State (\"Department of State\"). Following review, the Department of State determined that A had lost her United States citizenship, and, on November 16, 1981, approved a certificate of loss of nationality for A. In 1989 A applied to have her loss of United States citizenship administratively reviewed. The Department of State reviewed A's loss of United States citizenship, and determined that A did not intend to relinquish her United States citizenship when she performed her expatriating act. As a result in 1990 the Department of State vacated A's certificate of loss of nationality, and retroactively restored her United States citizenship.\nA filed federal income and gift tax returns for 1981, the year she lost her United States citizenship. A has not filed federal income or gift tax returns for 1982 through 1989, the period after the year she lost her United States citizenship and before the year it was retroactively restored. A computes her taxable income on the basis of a calendar year taxable year.\nB is a former United States citizen. On May 24, 1974, B performed an expatriating act, as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 349, 8 U.S.C. section 1481 (1976 & Supp. II 1977-1979) (amended 1981, 1986, and 1988). B's expatriating act did not have for one of its principal purposes the avoidance of federal income, estate, or gift taxes.\nB's expatriating act was reported to the Department of State. Following review, the Department of State determined that B had lost his United States citizenship, and, on October 19, 1979, approved a certificate of loss of nationality for B. B has not applied to have his loss of United States citizenship administratively reviewed.\nB filed federal income and gift tax returns for 1979, the year he lost his United States citizenship. B has not filed federal income or gift tax returns since the 1979 returns. B computes his taxable income on the basis of a calendar year taxable year.\nC is a United States citizen. On August 25, 1980, C performed an expatriating act, as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 349, 8 U.S.C. section 1481 (1976 & Supp. III 1977-1980) (amended 1981, 1986, and 1988). C's expatriating act did not have for one of its principal purposes tho avoidance of federal income, estate, or gift taxes.\nC's expatriating act was not reported to the Department of State. As a result, the Department of State did not review C's citizenship status, did not determine that she had lost her United States citizenship, and did not approve a certificate of loss of nationality for C. C did not intend to relinquish her United States citizenship when she performed her expatriating act. As a result, if the Department of State had determined that C lost her United States citizenship, C would now be eligible to have her citizenship retroactively restored.\nC filed federal income and gift tax returns for 1982, the year she performed the expatriating act. C has not filed federal income or gift tax returns since the 1982 returns. C computes her taxable income on the basis of a calendar year taxable year.\nD is a United States citizen who resides outside the United States. D has never performed an expatriating act, as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act, section 349, 8 U.S.C. section 1481 (1988), and therefore the Department of State has never approved a certificate of loss of nationality for D. D has not filed federal income or gift tax returns during the period of his foreign residence.\nSection 1 of the Internal Revenue Code imposes a tax on the taxable income of every individual. Section 441(a) of the Code provides that taxable income shall be computed on the basis of a taxpayer's taxable year. In general, individuals compute their taxable income on the basis of a calendar year taxable year.\nSections 1.1-1(b) and 1.871-1(a) of the Income Tax Regulations provide that citizens of the United States, wherever resident, and resident alien individuals are taxable on income received from sources within and without the United States. Section 2(d) of the Code provides that in the case of a nonresident alien individual, the tax imposed by section 1 shall apply only as provided by section 871 or 877.\nSection 1.1-1(c) of the income tax regulations provides that every person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen. For rules governing the loss of citizenship, section 1.1-1(c) refers to sections 349 to 357, inclusive, of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. sections 1481-1489 (1976) (sections 1482 and 1484- 1487 repealed 1978) (section 1481 amended 1978, 1981, 1986, and 1988; section 1483 amended 1981, 1986, and 1988; section 1489 amended 1988).\nSection 7701(b)(1)(A) of the Code provides that, for purposes of the Code (other than the estate and gift taxes), an alien individual shall be treated as a resident of the United States with respect to any calendar year if (and only if) the individual: (i) is a lawful permanent resident of the United States at any time during that year; (ii) meets the substantial presence test provided in section 7701(b)(3); or (iii) makes the election provided in section 7701(b)(4). Section 7701(b)(1)(B) provides that an individual is a nonresident alien if that individual is neither a citizen of the United States nor a resident of the United States within the meaning of section 7701(b)(1)(A).\nSection 871 of the Code imposes a tax on certain income received by a nonresident alien individual. Section 877 imposes an alternative tax on certain income received by a nonresident alien individual who after-March 8, 1965, and within the 10-year period immediately preceding the close of the taxable year lost United States citizenship, unless the loss of citizenship did not have for one of its principal purposes the avoidance of federal income, estate, or gift taxes, or resulted from the application of section 301(b), 350, or 355 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, 8 U.S.C. section 1401(b), 1482, or 1487 (1976) (repealed 1978). Section 877 is effective for taxable years beginning after December 31, 1966.\nSection 2501 of the Code imposes a tax for each calendar year on the transfer of property by gift during the calendar year by any individual. For gifts made after December 31, 1970, and before January 1, 1982, the tax imposed by section 2501 is applicable for each calendar quarter. Section 2511 provides that in the case of a nonresident not a citizen of the United States the gift tax imposed by section 2501 shall apply to a transfer only if the property is situated within the United States.\nSection 25.2501-1(b) of the Gift Tax Regulations provides that, for purposes of the gift tax, an individual is a United States resident if the individual's domicile is in the United States at the time of the gift. All other individuals are nonresidents of the United States for purposes of the gift tax.\nSection 2501(a)(2) of the Code provides that, except as provided in section 2501(a)(3), the gift tax imposed by section 2501 shall not apply to the transfer of intangible property by a nonresident not a citizen of the United States. Section 2501(a)(3) provides that the gift tax imposed by section 2501 shall apply to the transfer of intangible property by a nonresident not a citizen of the United States in the case of a donor who after March 8, 1965, and within the 10-year period ending with the date of transfer lost United States citizenship, unless the loss of citizenship did not have for one of its principal purposes the avoidance of federal income, estate or gift taxes, or resulted from the application of section 301(b), 350, or 355 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, 8 U.S.C. section 1401(b), 1482, or 1487 (1976) (repealed 1978). Sections 2501(a)(2) and 2501(a)(3) are effective for transfers occurring on or after January 1, 1967.\nSection 6012(a)(1) of the Code provides, with certain exceptions, that every individual who has gross income for the taxable year which equals or exceeds the exemption amount (as defined in section 151(d)) shall file a federal income tax return. Section 1.6012-1(b)(2)(ii)(b) and (c) of the income tax regulations provides that an individual who abandons United States citizenship or residence during the taxable year, and is not a citizen or resident of the United States on the last day of the taxable year, must file a Form 1040NR federal income tax return for that year (if the individual is otherwise required to make a return for the taxable year). This return must include a separate schedule that shows the income tax computation for that part of the taxable year when the individual was a citizen or resident of the United States. Section 6019 provides, with certain exceptions, that any individual who makes a transfer by gift in any calendar year shall file a federal gift tax return. For gifts made after December 31, 1970, and before January 1, 1982, the filing requirement imposed by section 6019 is applicable for each calendar quarter.\nSection 6501(c)(3) of the Code provides that in the case of a failure to file a federal tax return, the tax may be assessed, or a proceeding in court for the collection of that tax may be begun without assessment, at any time. Internal Revenue Service Policy Statement P-5-133, IRM 1218 PS P-5-133 (Nov. 24, 1980), states that taxpayers failing to file tax returns due will be requested to prepare and file all due returns except in instances where there is an indication that the taxpayer's failure to file the required return or returns was willful or if there is any other indication of fraud. If indications of willfulness or fraud exist, special procedures for handling those returns are followed. If indications of willfulness or fraud do not exist, the extent to which compliance for prior years will be enforced is determined by reference to several factors, including any special circumstances existing in the case of a particular taxpayer or class of taxpayers. Normally, application of these factors will result in enforcement of delinquency procedures for not more than six years.\nSection 6159(a) of the Code authorizes the Internal Revenue Service to enter into written agreements with a taxpayer under which the taxpayer may satisfy a tax liability in installment payments. An installment agreement is considered when the Service determines that installment payments will facilitate collection of a tax liability.\nSection 7122(a) of the Code authorizes the Internal Revenue Service to compromise any civil case arising under the internal revenue laws before the case is referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution or defense. Internal Revenue Service Policy Statement P-5-100, IRM 1218 PS P-5-100 (Jan. 30, 1992), states that the Service will accept an offer in compromise when it is unlikely that the tax liability can be collected in full and the amount offered reasonably reflects collection potential.\nInternal Revenue Service District Directors administer the internal revenue laws and related statutes as they relate to persons residing within their districts. The Assistant Commissioner (International) administers the internal revenue laws and related statutes as they relate to United States citizens residing abroad and nonresident aliens deriving income from sources within the United States.\nSection 349(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. section 1481(a) (1988), provides that United States citizens shall lose their citizenship if they voluntarily perform certain acts with the intention of relinquishing United States citizenship. Section 358 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. section 1501 (1988), and section 50.41 of Title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations, 22 C.F.R. s 50.41 (1991), provide that a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States shall prepare a certificate of loss of nationality whenever that officer has reason to believe that a United States citizen has lost United States citizenship. If the Department of State approves a certificate of loss of nationality, thereby determining that the individual lost United States citizenship, a copy of the certificate is issued to the affected individual. If a certificate of loss of nationality is not approved by the Department of State for an individual under section 358 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, that individual is not considered to have lost United States citizenship. When a certificate of loss of nationality is approved, the loss of United States citizenship is considered retroactively effective to the date of the expatriating act.\nPrior to November 14, 1986, the Immigration and Nationality Act did not expressly state the requirement that an expatriating act be performed with the intention of relinquishing United States citizenship. See Immigration and Nationality Act, section 349, 8 U.S.C. section 1481 (1982) (amended 1986 and 1988). On November 14, 1986, the Immigration and Nationality Act was amended to expressly state this requirement. immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1986, pub. L. No. 99-653, section 18(a), 100 Stat. 3655, 3658 (1986). This amendment was made applicable to actions taken before, on, or after November 14, 1986. Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99- 653, section 23(g), as added by the Immigration Technical Corrections Act of 1988,, Pub. L. No. 100-525, section 8(r), 102 Stat. 2609, 2619 (1988).\nIn accordance with this amendment, individuals who were determined by the Department of State to have previously lost United States citizenship may apply to the Department of State to have their citizenship status administratively reviewed. Pursuant to this review, the Department of State may determine that individuals did not intend to relinquish their United States citizenship when they performed expatriating acts. In these cases, the Department of State will vacate the individuals' certificates of loss of nationality, and retroactively restore their United States citizenship. Individuals who have their United States citizenship retroactively restored are considered to have been United States citizens since birth or naturalization, and are taxable as United States citizens since birth or naturalization.\nANALYSIS AND HOLDINGS\nThe following analysis and holdings relate to the federal tax treatment of the individuals described in this revenue ruling. This revenue ruling does not affect an individual's right to petition the Department of State for administrative review of that individual's citizenship status at any time.\nIndividuals who lost their United States citizenship and had (or have) it retroactively restored before January 1, 1993, will not be held liable for federal income taxes as United States citizens between the date they lost their United States citizenship and the beginning of the taxable year when their citizenship was (or is) restored, and will not be held liable for federal gift taxes between the date they lost their United States citizenship and January 1 of the calendar year when their citizenship was (or is) restored.\nAs a result, A is not liable for federal income or gift taxes as a United States citizen between June 17, 1981, the date she lost her United States citizenship, and December 31, 1989, the end of the year preceding the year in which her United States citizenship was retroactively restored. A is liable for federal income and gift taxes as a United States citizen for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 1990, the year in which her United States citizenship was retroactively restored.\nB is not taxable as a United States citizen, and has not been taxable as a United States citizen since May 24, 1979, the date he lost his United States citizenship. B is considered an alien individual under the Code, either a nonresident alien under section 7701(b)(1)(B) or a resident alien under section 7701(b)(1)(A). If B qualifies as a nonresident alien, he is taxable under section 871. Alternatively, if B is considered a resident alien, he is taxable under section 1.\nFor purposes of the gift tax, B's United States residency status is determined under section 25.2501-1(b) of the gift tax regulations. If B is considered a nonresident under section 25.2501-1(b), he is taxable under section 2511. If B is considered a resident under section 25.2501-1(b), he is taxable under section 2501.\nB may apply to the Department of State to have his certificate of loss of nationality administratively reviewed. If B applied for this review, and if his certificate of loss of nationality is vacated, B's United States citizenship will be retroactively restored.\nIndividuals who lost their United States citizenship and have it retroactively restored after December 31, 1992, will not be held liable for federal income taxes as United States citizens between the date they lost their United States citizenship and the beginning of their first taxable year beginning after December 31, 1992, and will not be held liable for federal gift taxes between the date they lost their United States citizenship and January 1, 1993.\nAs a result, if B has his United States citizenship retroactively restored after December 31, 1992, B will not be liable for federal income or gift taxes as a United States citizen between May 24, 1979, and December 31, 1992. B will be liable for federal income and gift taxes as a United States citizen for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 1993.\nC is, and always has been since birth or naturalization, a United States citizen taxable under sections 1 and 2501 of the Code. The Department of State never determined that C lost her United States citizenship, and never approved a certificate of loss of nationality for C. As a result, C never lost her United States citizenship. Therefore, C is not eligible for the relief granted in situations 1 and 2 of this revenue ruling.\nPursuant to policy statement P-5-133, the Internal Revenue Service has designated for special Consideration individuals who did not file federal income and gift tax returns as United States citizens because they had a reasonable, good faith belief that they had lost their United States citizenship. These individuals performed expatriating acts (as defined in the Immigration and Nationality Act as in effect at the time the acts were committed) but were not determined by the Department of State to have lost United States citizenship, and certificates of loss of nationality were not approved on their behalf. As a result, these individuals did not lose their United States citizenship. Furthermore, these individuals did not intend to relinquish their United States citizenship when they performed these acts. Under current law the acts these individuals performed are no longer considered expatriating, absent proof of intent to relinquish United States citizenship. As a result, if the Department of State had determined that these individuals lost their United States citizenship, these individuals would now be eligible to have their citizenship retroactively restored.\nPursuant to policy statement P-5-133, the Assistant Commissioner (International) and District Directors may grant relief similar to the relief granted in situations 1 and 2 of this revenue ruling. Among the circumstances that will be considered by the Assistant Commissioner (International) and District Directors when evaluating requests for relief from the individuals described in this situation 3 is whether they acted in a manner consistent with a good faith belief that they had lost United States citizenship by, among other things, not affirmatively exercising any rights of United States citizenship in the period when they did not file federal tax returns as United States citizens.\nAs a result, pursuant to policy statement P-5-133, C may apply to the Assistant Commissioner (International) or to the appropriate District Director for relief based on the particular circumstances of her case, and may be eligible for special consideration. Following review, the Assistant Commissioner (International) or the appropriate District Director may grant C relief similar to the relief granted in situations 1 and 2 of this revenue ruling. Decisions made by the Assistant Commissioner (International) and District Directors are not determinations of citizenship, and any relief granted by the Assistant Commissioner (International) or by a District Director only relates to federal taxes.\nD is, and always has been since birth or naturalization, a United States citizen, taxable under sections 1 and 2501 of the Code. D is not eligible for any relief from federal income or gift taxes based on this revenue ruling.\nIf extenuating circumstances prevented D from filing federal income and gift tax returns during the period of his foreign residence, D may apply to the Assistant Commissioner (International) and attempt to show that the extenuating circumstances justify relief under policy statement P-5-133. However, D is not eligible for any special consideration based on this revenue ruling. D may also attempt to show that he is eligible to settle his tax liabilities pursuant to an installment agreement or an offer in compromise. See sections 6159(a) and 7122(a) of the Code, and policy statement P-5-100. See also Internal Revenue Service News Releases IR-92-114 (Dec. 7, 1992) and IR-92-94 (Sep. 30, 1992) (concerning the Internal Revenue Service initiative to bring nonfiling taxpayers back into the federal tax system).\nPROSPECTIVE APPLICATION\nThe relief granted by this revenue ruling to individuals who lost their United States citizenship and subsequently had (or have) it retroactively restored is based on the authority contained in section 7805(b) of the Code.\nDRAFTING INFORMATION\nThe principal author of this revenue ruling is Irwin Halpern of the Office of Associate Chief Counsel (International). For further information regarding this revenue ruling, contact Mr. Halpern on (202) 622-3850 (not a toll-free call).\nRev. Rul. 92-109, 1992-2 C.B. 3, 1992-52 I.R.B. 5.\nLast Updated Thursday, June 25 2009 @ 03:26 PM PDT|27,289 Hits","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1069166"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5003089904785156,"wiki_prob":0.4996910095214844,"text":"Previews & Talks\nLunchtime Perspective Tours\nWed 8 Mar - Wed 5 Apr 2017 Gallery 1Gallery 2\nExperts in the fields of engineering and contemporary arts practice will bring their unique perspective to sculpture & hydraulics.\nTours are FREE and will last approximately 20 minutes. Limited places, book to secure a place.\nTours will appear below as they are confirmed.\n15 FEB Dr Elies Dekoninck\nDr. Elies Dekoninck trained as an Industrial Designer and worked as a design consultant in industry before joining the University of Bath as a lecturer in 2004. She teaches Product Design and Development to Mechanical Engineering students and is programme leader for the MEng in Advanced Design and Innovation. Her research interests are design methods, creativity and innovation. In her lunchtime tour she will relate Sculpture & Hydraulics to conventional engineering work by discussing the spectrum of design and making approaches from those instigated by: tasks, needs and requirements; through to those instigated from opportunities or the imagination.\n22 FEB Professor Andrew Plummer, Director of the Centre for Power Transmission and Motion Control\nProfessor Plummer received his PhD from Bath in 1991, for research into adaptive control of hydraulic systems. He has worked for Rediffusion Simulation on flight simulator motion control systems, as a lecturer at the University of Leeds, and as R&D manager for Instron, where he helped to develop high performance electrohydraulic test systems, including crash-testing catapults, Formula One racing car test rigs, earthquake simulation tables. Professor Plummer returned to Bath in 2006. During his lunchtime tour, he will try to fathom out what James Capper’s sculptures do, and why they do it.\n1 MAR Jamie Eastman, Director of Arts\nJamie Eastman has an accomplished career in arts and culture most especially in contemporary art, performance and music. As Director of Arts he is responsible for the University’s creative arts programme engaging students, staff and local communities in the visual and performing arts. He joined Bath from Lancaster Arts, where he led Lancaster University’s arts and culture vision and secured major grant and funding relationships. Prior to this, he was Curator of Performance at Arnolfini, Centre for Contemporary Arts, in Bristol and Head of Live Performance at the ICA, London. He began his career as a music industry professional.\n8 MAR Roger Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Bath Spa University\nRoger Clarke (b.1966) lives and works across London and Bath. Engaging across a variety of media including sculpture, installation, film and sound, Roger Clarke investigates on the (im)possibilities for bodies to simultaneously experience a set of scope. He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University and his work has been exhibited in many exhibitions throughout the UK, Europe and beyond. www.rogerclarke.net\n15 MAR Jens Roesner, Technical Manager for the Centre for Power Transmission and Motion Control\nJens Roesner coordinates and manages the Centre’s short courses for industry, works on industrial consultancy and assists in research projects in the field of fluid power and motion control. His work on hydraulic systems focuses on experiments and physical modelling. James Capper has been working with Jens Roesner and student Declan Jonckers to prototype a new work, MONITOR. The focus on robotic control was suggested by Roesner when Capper visited the Department in 2016. This will be the first time Capper has used a computer interface in his sculpture.\nFREE – BOOK TO SECURE A PLACE\nIt’s important that art around us today reports and records our environment and philosophy for future generations. what I want to see more of is innovation, answers, gateways and development","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1267386"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9940382242202759,"wiki_prob":0.9940382242202759,"text":"Physio and Sport Science\nTribe and schools\nTeam Bath TV\nNews Archive, Month: February 2010\nAmy thrilled to carry Union Flag at closing ceremony\nUniversity of Bath-based Olympic champion Amy Williams will carry the Union Flag for Team GB at Sunday’s Vancouver 2010 closing ceremony. The British Olympic Association today announced its decision to choose Amy to carry the flag, following her gold medal winning performance in the skeleton on 19th February. Amy became Team GB’s first individual Olympic Winter Games gold medallist for 30 years and the first woman individual gold medallist for 58 years. She said: “What...\nPaula 11th in Olympic bobsleigh\nUniversity of Bath-based bobsleigh athlete Paula Walker secured a impressive 11th place finish on her Olympic debut in Vancouver. Paula, who drove the GBR 2 sled along with brakeman Kelly Thomas, finished 11th after the four runs making up the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games competition. Paula, who is 23, said: “This is our first Olympic Winter Games and we’re absolutely over the moon that we’ve come so far. Eleventh is higher than our world...\nAdam elected to IOC Athletes’ Commission\nUniversity of Bath based skeleton athlete Adam Pengilly has been elected to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes. Pengilly received the most votes (615) from the total number of ballots accepted (1,902), which represents 75.3 per cent of the Olympic athletes at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Pengilly will serve for a term of eight years and become an IOC member during that period. The role of the IOC Athletes' Commission is to ensure...\nAmy Williams wins stunning Olympic gold\nUniversity of Bath-based skeleton slider Amy Williams today (Friday) became Team GB’s first individual Olympic Winter Games gold medallist for 30 years and the first woman individual gold medallist for 58 years. The 27-year-old won the women’s skeleton title at Vancouver 2010 Olympic by an emphatic 0.56 seconds. Williams said she was delighted with her gold medal. \"It's absolutely brilliant. It's out of this world. Never in a million years did I think I'd come...\nTeam GB’s Amy Leads at Skeleton Halfway Mark\nTeam GB’s Amy Williams goes into the second and final day of the skeleton competition at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games with a 0.30 second lead. The 27-year-old from Bath was in scintillating form on the opening day of skeleton competition at the Whistler Sliding Centre, setting a track record on her first run and clocking the second fastest time on the second. She goes into the final two runs tomorrow (Friday) 0.30 seconds...\nZoe finishes eighth at Olympic Winter Games\nTeam GB's Zoe Gillings missed out on the medals at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, finishing eighth overall. Snowboarder Zoe, who does some of her land-based training at the University of Bath, battled her way through to the semi-finals of the competition at Cypress Mountain. But a third place finish in her semi put her into the small final, rather than the big final, where the medals are contested. An injury she sustained to...\nBuccs men stretch lead to 12 points\nTeam Bath Buccaneers men’s firsts stretched their lead at the top of England Hockey League Conference West to 12 points with an impressive 4-2 win at Old Georgians. Old Georgians played a high, aggressive press, which could have created a problem for Team Bath. But this strategy also left gaps in the home side’s defences which allowed Buccs to create opportunities by playing the ball into these gaps. Buccs struck quickly in a short spell...\nBuccs battle back to salvage a point\nTeam Bath Buccaneers men’s firsts overturned a three-goal deficit with 15 minutes of Sunday’s game against Fareham remaining to salvage a point in a 3-3 draw. Buccs continue to top England Hockey League Conference West, but their lead is now reduced by a point to 10 points with seven games remaining. Buccs and Fareham went into the first game after the Christmas break in first and second place respectively in Conference West. Fareham were two...\nBuccs resume campaign with top of table clash\nThe University of Bath Sports Training Village hosts a top of the table clash between Team Bath Buccaneers and Fareham on Sunday (7th February) when England Hockey League Men’s Conference West resumes following the traditional Christmas and New Year break. Buccs go into the contest at the top of Conference West with nine wins from 10 games. They are 11 points clear of second place Fareham, who have five wins to their name. Sunday’s contest...\nRyan Scott\nSport/Event > Athletics, 100m & 200m Date and Place of Birth > 1987, Bristol Coached by > Malcolm Arnold Date Arrived at Team Bath > 2003 Course of Study > Foundation Degree in Sports Performance at the University of Bath Clubs > Yate AC and Newham & Essex Beagles Occupation > Student Biography > Teenage sprinter who has trained at the University of Bath for three years under Malcolm Arnold’s guidance and alongside Jason Gardener, the...\nFitness classes and workshops\nKids’ coaching, camps & activities\nTrain at our £30million Sports Training Village\nAthlete & coach biographies\nInjury prevention & treatment\nTeam Bath Netball website\nTeam Bath Rugby website\n© 2020 University of Bath","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line857795"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5713453888893127,"wiki_prob":0.42865461111068726,"text":"Apple Tree Yard Inspiring Thousands to Have a Steamy Affair\nThe debut of Apple Tree Yard has inspired thousands to have an affair, new research has revealed\nllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people, has seen a 42% week-on-week increase in the amount of people signing up to the site after the show’s debut\nThe effects of the TV show were immediate, as the site’s busiest point on the weekend of 21st/22nd was directly after the first episode concluded at 10:00pm on Sunday 22nd\nMany signed up with usernames inspired by the show and its actors/characters, such as ‘A Costley Affair’ and ‘Adam’s Apple’\n82% of users who visited the site on the day of the show’s debut were new users, compared to just 55% on the previous Sunday\nThere are certain pieces of entertainment that transcend television and inspire us in real life. One such show, Apple Tree Yard, has done just that, with many flocking to have an affair as a result.\nIllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people and the leading authority on infidelity, has seen a 42% week-on-week increase in the amount of people signing up to the site – an increase that it attributes to the debut of Apple Tree Yard.\nIn fact, the effects of the TV show were immediate, as 10:00pm on Sunday 22nd, right after the first episode finished airing, was the site’s busiest point on the weekend, with 13% more visitors than at any other point during that weekend.\nNew members were clearly motivated by the show, with many adopting usernames inspired by its characters and actors; the most notable were ‘A Costley Affair’, ‘Adam’s Apple’ and ‘Sussanahversary’, to the slightly more audacious ‘Mark’s Boner’.\nAnd of everyone who visited the site on Sunday 22nd, 82% were new users, compared to 55% to the previous Sunday. There was a similar pattern this Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th, with 70% of all visitors being new users, compared to 38% in the same two days last week.\nThe site’s spokesperson, Christian Grant, expands on the significant impact the BBC drama has had:\n“We’ve always been inspired and empowered by television and film. Documentaries like Planet Earth move us to protect the environment, while fiction inspires us to emulate the James Bond’s of the world.\n“Apple Tree Yard is no different, mobilising thousands of men and women across the country to do something about the loveless and sexless marriage that they’ve found themselves trapped in; seeing a raunchy affair take place on-screen has clearly reminded them of the spark that, for one reason or another, is sorely missing from their mundane relationship, and now they’re doing whatever they can to recapture it.”\nPosted on January 26, 2017 February 6, 2017 by clairepage1Posted in Press ReleasesTagged affair, apple tree yard, cheating, infidelity, relationships. Leave a comment\nSleeping with a sex doll DOES count as cheating, new research reveals\n59% of married people think that sleeping with a sex doll IS cheating\nThey think this because they feel that their partner is denying them their love in favour of an inanimate object\nThe 41% who think sleeping with a love doll isn’t adulterous said that they didn’t see any tangible difference between the doll or the use of sex toys and watching adult films\n80% said that the doll alone wouldn’t stop them from wanting to have an affair\nThe results come from IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people, who surveyed over 800 over their members\nWith the technological advancement of love dolls in recent years, and with their popularity growing and growing, it begs the question, can sleeping with one be considered a form of cheating in the modern day?\nIllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people and the leading authority on infidelity, sought to find the answer, surveying over 800 of their members, with over half (59%) saying, well, yes: having sex with a love doll IS cheating.\nBut why? While there is obviously no emotional relationship with the love doll, those who think it an adulterous act stated that making love was more than just a physical endeavour; it’s an expression of love, meaning that their partner sleeping with anyone (or anything) would be seen as denying that love to them to instead spend time satisfying themselves with an inanimate object, and nobody wants to feel second best to a piece of plastic.\nThe 41% who felt that sleeping with a love doll was fair game said that they didn’t see any tangible difference between the doll or the use of sex toys and adult films.\nMembers were also surveyed on whether sleeping with the doll would make them less likely to want to cheat on their partner. The answer was a resounding no, with as many as 80% claiming that a doll alone wouldn’t be enough to dissuade them from having an affair; 5% said yes while 15% were “unsure”.\n“What’s apparent is that the majority are worried of feeling inferior to an inanimate object,” said the site’s spokesperson, Christian Grant.\n“With that said, sex toys aren’t exactly new, so one could argue that there’s little difference between their partner using one of those or cuddling with an incredibly expensive bit of plastic.”\nPosted on January 20, 2017 by clairepage1Posted in Press ReleasesTagged affairs, cheating, infidelity, love, relationships, sex doll. 1 Comment\nA woman’s intuition: over three quarters of women can tell when their husband is cheating on them\n• 79% of women and 49% of men correctly suspected their partner of cheating\n• Women were better at catching their partner, and they were twice as likely to call out them for cheating, too\n• 5% of women admitted to hiring a private investigator to track their husband, but just 2% of men did the same\n• 85% of women and 82% of men denied their affair when they were confronted by their partner\n• The research comes from IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people, who spoke to the husbands and wives that caught their partner cheating\nIf you’ve got a niggling doubt that your partner might be unfaithful, you’re probably right. That’s according to IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people and the leading authority on infidelity.\nThey spoke to the husbands and wives who caught their significant other cheating, finding that a rather alarmingly high number of women (79%) had previously suspected their partner of cheating before they eventually caught them.\nThe number of men who suspected their wife of cheating, however, was significantly less (49%), leaving the majority totally oblivious to their wife’s indiscretions.\nWomen were also twice as likely to call out their husband when they suspected them of cheating, doing so an average of four times compared to just twice for men.\nAnd to prove that hell really hath no fury like a woman scorned, women were also more than twice as likely to hire a detective or private investigator to track their husband when they suspected him of cheating, with 5% of women admitting to doing so; a mere 2% of men did the same.\nWhere men and women had some sort of parity was in deniability, with 85% of women and 82% of men denying their affair whenever they were confronted by their significant other.\nSpokesperson for IllicitEncounters.com, Christian Grant, adds:\n“Maybe it’s a woman’s intuition, or maybe blokes are doing a terrible job of covering their tracks, but it’s safe to say that if you have a suspicion that your partner is cheating, however slight, it’s worth trusting your gut on this one… if you’re a woman, anyway.\n“Men on the other hand aren’t getting any help from their gut whatsoever. They’re either completely oblivious that their wife is cheating on them, or they’re more fearful of incorrectly accusing their wife when she may be totally innocent.\nKimberley – 32 – Hampshire\n“I remember first being concerned when my husband became less and less interested in sex for no apparent reason. It didn’t happen instantly, like he was eager to have sex one day but couldn’t care less the next, but it was definitely noticeable.\n“But I gave him the benefit of the doubt – he’s my husband, and I know I’d feel uncomfortable if someone had accused me of cheating, so I tried to forget about it.\n“Then gradually, I started to get other hints that made it really difficult not to be cynical. He started spending more and more time at work (for no apparent reason, he hadn’t received a promotion or anything like that) as well as with ‘friends’.\n“It got to the point where I’d started to feel so neglected in favour of, as it turns out, this other woman he was seeing, that I decided to question him about it. To my dismay, he denied everything, and when I questioned him a second time, he denied it again, but more aggressively this time. He’d wilted by the third time I’d called him out and that was that.”\nCheryl – 42 – Coventry\n“My husband and I were always perfectly happy… at least so I thought! We both work decent jobs, we spent time together, our kids are perfectly happy and so on.\n“I wouldn’t have had much reason to suspect he was cheating on me – like I said, I thought all was well – and in fact the way I found out was all rather cliché.\n“We live in a small town near Coventry, so it’s not uncommon to bump into someone you know, and that’s what happened. A family friend noticed my husband out with another woman.\n“Obviously I was shocked when she told me, but my first thoughts were that it could have been a colleague, client, a friend I simply don’t know about etc.\n“With that said, I couldn’t help but be a little suspicious, so I went through his internet history (it seemed like an obvious place to start) and it confirmed my suspicions.\n“It took me some time to stomach and process everything, but I called him out on it a few days later, providing his search history as proof that I knew. We had a pretty open and honest chat about everything – I took it surprisingly well – and we’ve started seeking marriage counselling as a result.”\nPosted on January 12, 2017 by clairepage1Posted in Press ReleasesTagged adultery, cheating, dating, infidelity, marriage, relationships, sex, women. 3 Comments\nWelcome to Blue Wednesday, the Single BIGGEST Day of the Year for Affairs\nThe first Wednesday back after the festive break is the biggest day of the year for affairs\nDubbed Blue Wednesday, 4th January sees more couples looking for an affair than any other day of the year, as spending time with their partner over Christmas highlighted the cracks in their relationship\nThis is also the busiest week of the year for affairs, with IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading dating website for married people, forecasting a 35% year-on-year rise in registrations\n70% of over 400 people surveyed said that being cooped up with their significant other over the festive period left them feeling suffocated and desperate for change.\nMany unhappy wives and husbands have committed to making splitting up from their partner their top New Year’s resolution\n2017 may have only just begun, but divorce lawyers across the country are braced for their busiest day of the year, as Wednesday 4th January is officially the biggest day of the year for affairs.\nDubbed Blue Wednesday, the 4th January sees more couples race to extramarital dating websites in search of an affair than any other day of the year, after an overdose of Christmas, the New Year, and most importantly, each other, hammered home the final nail in their marriage’s coffin.\nThis comes in what is set to be the busiest week of the year for affairs, with a forecasted 35% year-on-year rise in registrations for the UK’s leading dating website for married people and the leading authority on infidelity, IllicitEncounters.com.\nIn a survey of over 400 people who signed up to the site this year so far, 70% claimed that being cooped up with their significant other over the Christmas period left them feeling suffocated, irritable and desperate for change.\nThat, mixed in with the dreaded trifecta of heading back to work, dark days, and the miserable weather, has left husbands and wives across the country less likely to put up with the flaws in their relationship, instead relishing the opportunity to truly ring in the new year in style; with a saucy and salacious affair.\nAnd there’s no better time to do it either, as many unhappy wives and husbands make their top New Year’s resolution to split and move on from their troubled relationship.\nChristian Grant, the site’s spokesperson, explains why Wednesday 4th, and indeed January, is proving to be incredibly popular for affair-seekers.\n“For all that Christmas does to bring families together, it inadvertently tears them apart. The festive period is the only time of the year that couples are forced to be together. And it’s that word – forced – that’s key, as the time spent together over the festive period only heightens difficulties in their relationship that had been previously subdued simply by virtue of the fact that couples spend enough time apart during the week – due to work amongst other things – to just about keep it all glued together.\nThis is supported by the fact that over a third (33%) of respondents said that the festive period made them realise that they had married the wrong person, while 65% said that their partner had changed significantly from the person they were when they first married them.\nGrant adds:\n“Christmas isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. We’re all severely poorer, a little bit fatter, and more likely to be at our wits’ end with our partner than any other time of the year.\n“We also get caught up in the ‘new year, new me’ mentality – we’re arguably more motivated to make a change to our lives at the start of the year than any other point during it, so what you see is a large amount of people joining purely on impulse without much thought; it’s a ‘now or never’ mentality.”\nPosted on January 3, 2017 by clairepage1Posted in Press ReleasesTagged affairs, blue wednesday, cheating, infidelity, january, relationships, sex. Leave a comment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line732877"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7082401514053345,"wiki_prob":0.2917598485946655,"text":"Book Review: Murder In Jerusalem by Batya Gur\nBatya Gur (January 1947 – May 2005), the author of Murder In Jerusalem, was an Israeli writer with the specialty in detective fiction, obviously set in Israel. She was born in Tel Aviv in 1947 to parents who survived the Holocaust. She earned a master’s degree in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before writing her first detective novel at the age of 39, she taught literature in high school. Gur was also a literary critic for Haaretz newspaper. She died of cancer at the age of 57.\nIn Murder in Jerusalem , a woman’s body is discovered in the wardrobe warehouses of Israel Television, and Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon embarks on a tangled and bloody trail of detection through the corridors and studios of Israel’s official television station, and through the fears, loves, and contradictions of the people who work there.\nIt is important to note that this is not a fast-paced book and Batya develops the plot and characters very patiently through the storyline. People who like psychological mysteries will enjoy this novel as the author talks a great deal about psychoanalysis related elements in the book.\nHowever, people who enjoy page-turning thrillers might not enjoy this book as much. Gur provides a lot of background information, on the local scene and also regarding Freudian psychology, which wouldn’t have been all necessary.\nOn the positive side: This author shows she can write well, the storyline slowly draws the reader to the conclusion. Batya gives away the culprit before the end of the book and the puzzle then becomes the way Michael Ohayon is going to catch the murderer.\nOur Rating: 3.0\nexotic localepolice procedural\nWith the firm belief that \"behind extraordinary mystery books or pieces of art, there are extraordinary people\", we search the globe to bring you the most captivating work from both established authors and creatives as well as emerging talents.\nBooksDaily\n16 Best Crime, Mystery, And Thriller Books Of January 2020\nFunny Mystery With Sassy New Heroine: A Bad Day For Sunshine By Darynda Jones\nGothic Suspense Novel: The Boatman’s Daughter By Andy Davidson\nEnjoyable Historical Mystery: Treachery By S.J. Parris\nPrevious Dexter on iPhone: A Respectable Mystery Game\nNext Military Thriller Book Review: Mr. Kill By Martin Limon\nOverview of Awake TV Series: A Supernatural Story Of Double Reality","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line626491"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9894198179244995,"wiki_prob":0.9894198179244995,"text":"Verlieben, verloren, vergessen, verzeih'n\n40 Jahre - 40 Hits 1990\nDer Himmel brennt\nWeiß' der Geier (Radio Version)\nWo sind denn all die Helden\nGenau jetzt! 2018\nMeine Lieblingslieder 1998\nAbout Wolfgang Petry\nA German pop singer and tunesmith who enjoyed his greatest success in the '90s, Wolfgang Petry is widely considered to be one of the greatest modern exponents of the style known as schlager, sweet and accessible pop songs with an emphasis on romantic lyrics. Petry was born on September 22, 1951 in Cologne-Raderthal, Germany. When he was just 16, Petry became the head of his household after the death of his father, and had to look after his five-year-old brother. Petry studied engineering and worked in a machine shop, but while he had one eye on practical matters, he was also interested in music, and during downtime from his studies, he formed a band called Screamers (not to be confused with the Los Angeles synth-punk combo), and they toured when his schedule permitted. In 1975, producers Tony Hendrik and Karin Hartmann saw Petry performing at a small club and were impressed enough to sign him to a record deal. Petry's first album, Ein Freund - Ein Mann, appeared in 1976, and it spawned a hit single, \"Sommer in der Stadt.\" It was the first of a string of 11 hit singles Petry would release between 1976 and 1983, most drawn from his first four studio albums.\nWhile he continued to record and tour, the second half of the '80s was a fallow period for Petry, with no charting singles. However, Petry reconnected with his audience while attracting new fans with the 1992 album Verlieben, Verloren, Vergessen, Verzeih'n, with which he turned up his mix of schlager-style pop and vintage rock & roll. Verlieben, Verloren, Vergessen, Verzeih'n cracked the German album charts, and scored a Top 30 hit single with the title track. The 1996 greatest-hits album Alles gave Petry his first number one album, and it also earned him a platinum disc with sales eventually topping two million copies. After the success of Alles boosted Petry's reputation, his next studio album, 1997's Nie Genug, hit number two on the German album charts and also went platinum, while 1998's Einfach Geil! and 2000's Konkret both went all the way to number one. By this time, Petry had become a massively popular live act in Europe, and he assembled a touring band featuring members of the group the Public -- guitarists Bernd Kühl and Rolf Pröpper, bassist Axel Kowollik, keyboardist Rainer Jäger, and drummer Richard Schuster. Petry also became a ten-time winner of the Golden Tuning Fork, an award presented by the German music industry for both artistry and commercial success. In 2006, Petry was celebrating 30 years as a recording artist and career sales of over ten million units when he made the surprise announcement that he was retiring. However, like many entertainers, Petry could stay away from his audience for only so long, and in 2015 he released a comeback album, Brandneu, which wasted little time rising to number one on the German album charts. Wolfgang's son Achim Petry is also a successful musician, performing in a style reminiscent of his father. ~ Mark Deming","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line31447"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9072411060333252,"wiki_prob":0.9072411060333252,"text":"Weld court briefs, 11/19/03\nMan admits to sexual contact with girl\nA Weld District Court judge sentenced a Fort Collins man to two years probation for having sexual contact with a girl.\nJed Staples, 20, pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual conduct, a misdemeanor. In a deal with the Weld District Attorney’s Office, Staples agreed to probation, with the length left up to a judge.\nStaples was charged with sexual assault of a child after a 13-year-old told police she met Staples at a school festival, according to a police affidavit. Two days later, Staples and his friend picked up the girl and her friend at the school. They drove to Pheasant Run Park, where the men gave the girls beer. The girl’s friend told police Staples forced himself on her, kissed her and fondled her. She said she resisted and told him no. Staples told police he kissed the girl and it was mutual.\nWoman pleads guilty, gets 3 years for fight\nA Evans woman pleaded guilty to vehicular eluding and menacing, both felonies, and agreed to spend three years in prison.\nTonie Marceleno, 21, was arrested in December after a 16-year-old girl told police Marceleno stabbed her during an argument about their boyfriends. Police believe Marceleno ran to a home in the 400 block of 35th Avenue and asked a resident for a ride.\nThe man drove her to the 900 block of 30th Avenue, and when he got out of his van, she jumped in the driver’s seat and took off. Marceleno got into a traffic accident in the 900 block of 30th Avenue but kept driving. An officer saw her on 8th Avenue and tried to stop her. As she kept driving, she swerved and struck two parked cars.\nShe crashed the van at 8th Avenue and U.S. 34 Bypass.\nIn June, she was charged with assault after she shoved a deputy. When he said she was being placed in lock down, she hit him in the chest and kicked his knee.\nIn the deal with prosecutors, Marceleno agreed to the three-year sentence. The maximum for each crime is three years.\nMan to be sentenced for child abuse\nA 22-year-old man pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and felony child abuse and could spend 6-24 months in prison.\nScott Drovdal was arrested after his girlfriend took her 1-year-old daughter to McKee Medical Center for an injured foot, which the mother said was because the child’s 4-year-old brother dropped her. The child also had a slap mark on her face.\nThe mother told police her boyfriend was baby-sitting and accidentally slapped the child when she turned her head as he tried to pop her for being fussy, according to the arrest affidavit.\nLater, Drovdal told police the same information. He admitted that he got frustrated when she was fussy and twisted the child’s foot. He said he was afraid to take her to the hospital because of the slap mark.\nIn the deal with prosecutors, Drovdal agreed to serve probation for the felony charge, which could have carried a two-eight year sentence. The sentence for the misdemeanor charge is up to the court.\nHe will return for sentencing in January.\nMan pleads guilty to assaulting girl\nA Greeley man pleaded guilty to contributing to the delinquency of a minor and agreed to community-based treatment.\nEnrique Quintero-Barragen, 22, was arrested in July and charged with sexual assault of a child. A 14-year-old girl told police she went to his home to talk and he invited her to sit in his car, according to an arrest affidavit. In the car, he kissed her and assaulted her. He said it was consensual and that she told him she was 16.\nHe will be sentenced in January.\nMan wanted for animal fighting\nAuthorities are looking for a Fort Lupton man who is charged with animal fighting.\nPolice suspect Gabriel Martinez, 40, altered roosters for entertainment. In August, Weld County’s animal control officer went to Martinez’s home to investigate a complaint of dogs running loose. Martinez was not home, but the officer noticed 20-30 wooden cages, chickens and roosters. The birds looked like they had been altered for fighting.\nWith a warrant, the officer searched the property and found 13 roosters suspected of being used for fighting and illegal steroids.\nGreeley man charged with sexual assault\nPolice arrested Santus Roberto Mendoza, 21, of Greeley on suspicion of having an intimate relationship with a 13-year-old. He was charged with sexual assault of a child.\nPolice went to his Greeley home on a domestic disturbance call Oct. 1. When they arrived, they found Mendoza and the girl fighting, according to an arrest affidavit. He told police his girlfriend scratched him and chased him with a knife because she was jealous that two girls were visiting him.\nThe girl told police she had been dating Mendoza for eight months. Both were arrested for assault. His bond was set at $7,500 but on Oct. 22 he failed to appear in court.\nA warrant was issued for his arrest and bond was raised to $15,000.\nStabbing suspect faces more charges\nA man already charged with attempted murder now faces second-degree assault and third-degree charge for a jailhouse fight and for assaulting a deputy.\nEric Madera, 22, is being held at the Weld County Jail on suspicion of stabbing another man at the End of the Trail Bar in Hudson last year.\nOn Aug. 4, 2002, police went to the bar to investigate the stabbing of Steve Wilson. Police believe a fight broke out between the two men and Madera stabbed Wilson in the parking lot afterward.\nThe most recent charges stem from an incident at the jail. According to an affidavit, an officer saw Madera chasing another inmate. After Madera hit the inmate, he hit the officer trying to break up the fight, according to the report.\nHe is scheduled to appear in court next month.\n– Staff reports","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1559317"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6160667538642883,"wiki_prob":0.6160667538642883,"text":"Passage at Arms by Glen Cook\nAugust 3, 2015 at 12:13 am | Posted in 4 stars | 1 Comment\nTags: Glen Cook\nAs I write this, Glen Cook’s Wikipedia article consists of two paragraphs about his life and one paragraph about the Black Company series. That’s not really a surprise given how influential it’s been, but as best as I can count he’s written an astounding thirty-eight other novels. In the cruel reality of the book business, most novels are lost in obscurity the moment they are published, but while this fate is usually amply justified by their quality, there are surely a few babies in all that bathwater. One such was Glen Cook’s standalone space opera novel, The Dragon Never Sleeps, which is just short of a masterpiece. Having so enjoyed the one Cook standalone I had read, it seemed reasonable to move on to his best-known standalone novel, Passage at Arms, published in 1985 and usually characterized as Das Boot in space.\nIf that sounds appealing, then rest assured, Passage at Arms delivers amply on that promise. The novel is set on board a Climber, a spaceship that “climbs” into another dimension. The farther it goes, the less space it takes up in our normal three dimensions. By climbing far enough, a nine hundred ton spaceship can occupy the volume of a molecule in normal space. This means that it is impossible to detect, but it also means that if an explosion happens even vaguely nearby, it gets jostled by the shock wave. If an explosion happens close enough, the ship can be destroyed. Add in the fact that during the climb, conditions on the ship deteriorate due to heat buildup, forcing the ship to eventually “surface”, and it becomes clear that Cook is using some invented physics to get something that looks very similar to submarine warfare. Instead of going underwater, the Climber goes into another dimension, instead of being menaced by depth charges, it is jostled by missiles, and so on.\nThe obvious question is, if one is to read a book about submarine warfare, why not read a book about the thing itself instead of something like Passage at Arms that puts its submarines in spaceship costumes like it’s Halloween? Although readers of this blog aren’t likely to be sympathetic with that sort of complaint, it’s not a question that should be lightly dismissed, for it’s the basis of a common critique of science fiction and fantasy as a whole. Admittedly it’s an argument somewhat out of fashion at the moment as mainstream literature goes through a phase of borrowing genre concepts, but Passage at Arms makes for an interesting test case.\nFirst, it should be stated that unlike some space opera based on past precedents, Passage at Arms isn’t an exercise in nostalgia. Glen Cook served in the US Navy (though not on submarines) and one constant across his fantasy and science fiction is his down-to-earth depiction of military life. There’s no glory or glamor to working on a Climber, just hard work, deprivation, boredom, and terror.\nSecond, Cook is after more than just a recreation of submarine warfare. He’s particularly interested in how men (and the Climber crew of Passage at Arms are all men, though we are told some Climbers are crewed entirely by women) cope with the intense stresses of warfare. A Climber crewman must serve on ten missions, then they are allowed to retire from fighting. Missions rarely last more than a month, so it’s not all that much calendar time, but the downtime between missions can be many months, waiting that takes its own toll. Everyone is acutely aware that Climbers are so often destroyed, whether by enemy action or through mechanical failure, that the few are fortunate enough to survive ten missions. Death is likely, then, but it’s not completely certain, so the men focus on their day to day activities, comfort themselves with superstitions, and cloak the gravity of the situation in euphemisms, such as calling the enemy “the gentlemen of the other firm”.\nTo better draw a psychological portrait of the Climber crew, Cook uses a narrator who wants to draw that portrait himself. The first person, present tense narrator is a space navy man but one who served on battleships, not Climbers. After leaving the navy, he became a journalist, and now he has requested the opportunity to embed with a Climber crew so he can capture what it’s like. He knows the Commander from the old days, but time has changed them both. The narrator hopes to hold himself apart from the Climber’s crew and just be an observer, but as the mission drags on and the situation deteriorates, he is forced to become more and more of a participant.\nThe psychological response of men to combat stress is the very core of the novel, but the results are strangely uneven. Cook is absolutely brilliant at the big picture. The mood of the men, the difficulty of their experience, and the diversity of their coping mechanisms are all wonderfully realized. I certainly have no experience with such things, but for me the novel was utterly persuasive. Yet as individuals, the characters never quite come alive. Cook elects to keep the two most important characters, the narrator and the Commander, as ciphers for much of the novel, and the supporting cast are little more than a series of names, differentiated but in ways that are hard to keep straight. The result is a narrative that is gripping and even fascinating, but not nearly as powerful as it might have been had there been just a bit more clarity and a little less artifice.\nSo far it might seem like I’m dodging the question I said was fundamental, for all this could have been done in mundane historical fiction. But there’s one more element that I’ve purposefully left out until this point: the war itself. I left it out because Cook largely leaves it out of the novel. Although it’s a standalone story, Passage at Arms is set in the same world as Cook’s earlier Starfishers trilogy, so it’s possible such details are explained there. I don’t know, not having read them, but from online summaries it seems they don’t involve the Ulant war at all. Certainly there are none of the accomodations that are usually made for readers who likely (given the mediocre commercial performance of the earlier trilogy) aren’t familiar with the setting. All we get are the absolute essentials: humanity, it seems, is at war with an alien race called the Ulant.\nWho are the Ulant? Why are they fighting humanity? What will happen if humanity loses? These questions aren’t really answered, beyond the narrator’s aside that they are “guys pretty much like us, only a little taller and blue, with mothlike antennae instead of ears and noses.” To the men fighting it, the war just is. Their lives are lived in present tense, just like the narration. They don’t want to think about the the past, full as it is of things lost, or the future, where they will likely die before their time.\nThis is where the use of science fiction becomes apparent. For most readers today, it is nearly impossible to think of World War II as anything other than a morality play. There’s Good Guys and Bad Guys. Even if the Good Guys aren’t always as good as we’d wish and the Bad Guys weren’t all as bad as their leaders, in the end it’s most people’s first (and sometimes only) example of a just war, a war where a soldier might give his life and have it really mean something. But in this respect World War II is by far the exception, not the rule. By setting his story amid a war between humans and aliens, Cook is able to tell a story in the simplest of terms. Us vs. Them. We are humans and so can readily identify with the characters, but are they the Good Guys? Is it a just war? We don’t know, and Cook’s point is that to the men on the Climber, it doesn’t matter. They didn’t start the war and they can’t end it either. All they can do is try to survive, and that means doing their job and somehow being lucky enough to live through ten missions.\nIts opaque characterization means Passage at Arms isn’t a complete success, but it’s one of the best and most psychologically realistic novels of space combat I’ve ever read. Its focus is too narrow for it to be universally recommended as a must-read for any genre fan, but it’s well worth the time of anyone interested in the psychology of combat.\nI have gotten kick back from Glen Cook fans from comparing “Passage at Arms” to “Das Boot” but the comparison is obvious from tactics to characters. The opening scenes of both novels set in a loud bar taken over by the military then the slow march to the ship must be considered a compliment to Lother-Gunther Bucheim’s artistry and talent. While “Passage” is combat SF at its finest, the description of technology on the Climber is excellent science fiction. The characters are meant to be arch-types, the Commander must remain inscrutable, distracted by social interactions, coming alive during combat. Neither novel describes normal human relations but rather the Boat and Climber become the world for the duration.\nComment by Norm Stein— March 14, 2019 #","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1014332"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6482531428337097,"wiki_prob":0.3517468571662903,"text":"Home » Research » Other Charity Reviews » Relief International\nThe following write-up should be viewed in this context: it explains why we determined that we wouldn't be prioritizing the organization in question as a potential top charity. This write-up should not be taken as a \"negative rating\" of the charity. Rather, it is our attempt to be as clear as possible about the process by which we came to our top recommendations.\nA note on this page's publication date\nThe last time we examined Relief International was in March 2010. In our latest open-ended review of charities, we determined that it was unlikely to meet our criteria based on our past examination of it, so we did not revisit it.\nWe invite all charities that feel they meet our criteria to apply for consideration.\nThe content we created in March 2010 appears below. This content is likely to be no longer fully accurate, both with respect to what it says about Relief International and with respect to what it implies about our own views and positions. With that said, we do feel that the takeaways from this examination are sufficient not to prioritize re-opening our investigation of this organization at this time.\nRelief International implements a diverse set of activities related to international aid and development.1\nDetails of our evaluations\nWe have considered Relief International at 2 times: we reviewed Relief International's website in mid-2009, and Relief International applied to us for a grant in late-2007. Details on each follow below.\n2009 website review\n2007 grant application\nIn mid-2009, we reviewed the Relief International's website as part of a process to identify top international aid organizations. (How did we identify charities for review?) We reviewed Relief International's website to determine whether it met either of the following two criteria, which we believe indicate whether a charity is likely to eventually be able to meet our full criteria for a recommendation: (Why do we rely on information found on a charity's website?)\nDoes the charity publish high-quality monitoring and evaluation reports on its website? A charity meets this criterion if it freely publishes - on its website - substantial evidence regarding impact that (a) discusses how the impacts of projects or programs were evaluated, including what information was collected and how it was collected; (b) discusses the actual impact of the evaluated projects. (Why is monitoring and evaluation so important?) We seek enough evidence to be confident that a charity changed lives for the better - not simply that it carried out its activities as intended. Different programs aim for different sorts of life change, and must be assessed on different terms. We do not hold to a single universal rule for determining what \"impact\" we're looking for; rather, what we look for varies by program type. (For more, see, What constitutes impact?)\nDoes the charity stand out for program selection? A charity meets this criterion if it focuses primarily on (or publishes enough financial information to make it clear that 75% of its recent funding is devoted to) what we consider \"priority programs.\" These programs have particularly strong evidence bases, enough to lower the burden of proof on a charity running them. (Why do we look for charities implementing proven programs?) Such programs include administering vaccinations, distributing insecticide-treated nets, and treating tuberculosis, among many others. (For more, see our full list of priority programs.)\nRelief International did not meet either of these criteria.\nRelief International applied for our funding and recommendation for saving lives or reducing poverty in Africa, but did not advance past our Round 1 screen, which aimed at finding charities with strong self-documentation. For more information, see our overview page for this grant.\nSpecifics of why Relief International did not advance\nWe used the following principles in conducting our Round 1 screen for this cause:\nLook for strong documentation that lives have been changed for the better. One of the challenges of this cause is that it involves trying to help people who are far away and from very different cultures than our own; the fact that a charity's described activities seem to make logical sense isn't enough, by itself, to convince us that positive change has occurred.\nLook for a sense of how many lives have been changed (and how they've been changed) by an organization's activities. A sense of how many lives are changed \"per dollar\" is essential to decide between logical but different approaches, so we focused on the applicants that seemed most likely to be able to provide this sense.\nAim for a complete or near-complete understanding of applicants' activities. Our Round 1 application asked applicants to feature a single program, but we also took the size and scope of the organization into account: a large, comprehensive organization needs extremely strong documentation in order to give any sense of its activities and effects, whereas an organization with a simpler and more cohesive model might be evaluated with less documentation.\nRelief International was among the charities that did not provide this type of evidence and instead submitted evidence that gave descriptions of their activities relying on one or more of the following: anecdotes, newspaper articles, survey data (types of evidence that we are skeptical about, as we have written on our blog), and evidence of the size of the problems they were attacking - but did not give us information that gave us high confidence that their programs were creating positive life change, or information that we felt could begin to get at their cost-effectiveness in changing lives. It's possible that Relief International has the information we want, and didn't send it due to misinterpretations of our application, time constraints, or other reasons. But due to time constraints of our own, we opted to focus on the applicants who seemed most promising.\nAs part of that application process, Relief International submitted the following documents:\nRelief International, \"Programs.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1469231"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5056926012039185,"wiki_prob":0.5056926012039185,"text":"Remain Campaigns Coordinated Spending\nRemain lawyer Jolyon Maugham called the validity of the referendum into question over the various Leave campaigns allegedly coordinating their spending. As he wrote in the Guardian, Maugham was so concerned about Vote Leave paying for services from other campaigns that he launched a Judicial Review into what he called “illegal spending”. Maugham will surely be equally outraged to learn that the same thing happened on the Remain campaign…\nGuido has found:\nThe In Campaign Ltd paid for £52,062.23 worth of campaign materials for the Liberal Democrats between 15 April 2016 and 8 June 2016.\nThe In Campaign Ltd paid for materials worth £22,829 for Labour on 15 April 2016\nLabour paid for £7,265.65 worth of materials for the The In Campaign Ltd on 26 May 2016.\nEmma Duncan (who set up Wake Up And Vote) donated £24,000 to DDB UK Ltd on 11 July 2016.\nWe are Europe donated £10,000 to DDB UK Ltd on 29 June 2016.\nVirgin Management Limited donated £15,000 to We Are Europe on 15 June 2016.\nMaugham accused Vote Leave of breaking the law and said parliament could decide to overturn Brexit as a result. He wrote: “It’s not just about Brexit. The reason we have spending limits is because we want to live in a democracy”. Now it’s clear the Remain campaign was doing the same thing, will he call for an investigation into them too?\nGuido’s investigation over the last few days has revealed the Remain campaign coordinated not only their spending but their messaging, campaign plans, data, materials and donations, with the effect of causing them to overspend by more than double the legal limit. Stay tuned…\nmdi-tag-outline Britain Stronger In Europe Cash Electoral Commission\nmdi-timer December 29th 2017 @ 4:10 pm mdi-share-variant mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-email mdi-printer","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line808931"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8310864567756653,"wiki_prob":0.8310864567756653,"text":"Planning for incapacity in blended families is essential\nDana and Jerry have been married for 25 years. Both have children by previous marriages. Jerry’s three children never forgave him for divorcing their mother and have never accepted Dana. Consequently, Jerry and the children rarely see each other.\nJerry has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and is currently in middle stage of the disease with serious memory problems. Dana recently acquired home health services to assist with Jerry’s care.\nJerry’s children are in their fifties and scattered across the country. Concerned could take action against her, particularly if there are conflicts over Jerry’s care and his property, Dana has not yet informed of his condition.\nDana Should Seek Legal Counsel to Protect Herself\nDana should seek legal counsel to understand her options. The options available will depend, in part, upon the steps Jerry and Dana have taken before he developed Alzheimer’s. If Jerry has signed a Statutory Durable Power of Attorney (POA) and a Medical Power of Attorney giving Dana the power to manage his financial affairs and make medical decisions for him, Dana should take over and do so.\nAlthough Jerry’s children might challenge the validity of these documents on the grounds that he was not competent or unduly influenced by Dana when he gave the power, the expense of such a challenge may be a deterrent in Dana’s favor. Also, if Jerry had an attorney prepare the POA and he signed it when there was no question of his competency and Dana was not being present when the documents were prepared or signed, she would be in a good position to prevail against a challenge by the children on these grounds.\nIf Jerry has lucid moments in which he retains the capacity to contract, Jerry could give Dana the power to handle his legal affairs and make medical decisions on his behalf even now.\nIf Jerry has a valid will naming Dana as executrix and leaving her property, she should safeguard that will. If Jerry does not have a valid will, Dana should discuss with counsel, her rights in accordance with the laws of descent and distribution. The lawyer can explain the property that Dana will receive. Jerry’s children will inherit the rest.\nAdditional Steps Could Have Been Taken Prior to Jerry’s Diagnosis\nIn the instance of blended families such as theirs, an irrevocable trust can be an effective tool to protect both the spouse and the children by a previous marriage.\nIn blended families - particularly if there is animosity toward the non-parent spouse - each spouse should designate through a Declaration of Guardian in the form provided under Texas Estates Code § 1104.201, the person(s) that they do and do not want to be named guardian of the person and guardian of the estate if the need for a guardianship arises.\nIf one or more of the children applies to be appointed guardian for Jerry, Dana can join the suit and request to be named guardian instead. In accordance with Texas Estates Code §1104.102, Dana is the preferred guardian if more than one person is eligible.\nSandra W. Reed is an attorney with Katten & Benson, an Elder Law firm in Fort Worth. She lives and practices in beautiful Somervell County, near Chalk Mountain.\nLabels: Alzheimer's, blended family, Medical Power of Attorney, POA, Texas\nWoman who stole from elderly goes to prison\nColiene Moore\nWith documented losses well into the six figures, Illinois State Police continue to investigate a theft case that already has resulted in a prison sentence.\nColiene Moore, 69, was hit with a restitution order exceeding $636,000 when Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge John Belz sentenced her last month to four years for stealing from her elderly aunt. Ruth Lanier, now deceased, was 85 when Moore stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her during a three-month period that ended in February of 2012.\nAuthorities say that Moore also stole nearly $82,000 from her mother, Mary Catherine Dormire, who was in her 90s when her daughter, her mother’s caretaker, raided bank accounts. Dormire is now deceased.\n“Make no mistake, this is a callous, cold, calculating elder abuse crime spree,” Belz said when he sentenced Moore on Aug. 15. “Money was taken in astronomical, almost unbelievable amounts from people who didn’t deserve it.”\nAuthorities are still trying to determine whether there are additional culprits, as well as the extent of losses from a thief who stole both from relatives and from coworkers at the Illinois State Department of Transportation, where Moore worked as a secretary for nearly 40 years.\n“It is still under investigation,” says Sangamon County state’s attorney John Milhiser. “And additional charges are possible.”\nMoore convinced friends from work to loan her money – in one case, a former coworker gave her $287,000, according to police files -- and was slow to pay it back. In another instance, Moore convinced a coworker to loan her $48,000. She eventually made good on some debts to IDOT colleagues, according to police files and court records, but with stolen money. When victims asked for their money, Moore would typically tell them that she was expecting a sizable inheritance and would pay up when the money arrived.\n“It is apparent that she continually seems to await the death of a relative and an opportunity to inherit their money in order to pay off prior thefts that she has committed,” assistant state’s attorney John Morse told the judge in arguing for a prison term.\nIn arguing for leniency, Dan Fultz, Moore’s lawyer, told the judge that “the problem may fix itself.”\n“Nobody is ever going to trust Ms. Moore with their money again, as they shouldn’t,” Fultz told the court.\nIf nothing else, Moore was brazen. She gave the state’s attorney’s office a $473,500 check for restitution to cover losses in the Lanier case even before charges were filed in 2013. The check was signed by Moore’s mother, who suffered from mental disabilities to the point that she couldn’t handle her affairs, according to court files.\n“The state’s attorney called and said ‘Carol, you won’t believe it – are you sitting down?’” recalls Carol Shepard, executor of Lanier’s estate, of a call she got from the Sangamon County state’s attorney’s office when the check was delivered in January of 2013. Shepard says that she advised the state’s attorney’s office to verify that funds actually were in a trust account that was in the name of Moore’s mother. Sure enough, the check bounced. “The state’s attorney called back and said, ‘Carol, you were right again: There’s no money there,’” Shepard said.\nThe check bounced nine months after police obtained bank records and confronted Moore. But charges weren’t filed until the spring of 2013, one year after police, interrogated Moore. Why weren’t charges filed earlier?\n“There were ongoing negotiations as to restitution,” answers Milhiser. The state’s attorney adds that Moore lost power of attorney, which allowed her to raid bank accounts, when losses came to light, long before charges were filed.\nOver the objection of Moore’s lawyer, a guardian in the spring of 2013 was appointed to protect Moore’s mother, who continued living with her daughter, described as her primary caregiver in court documents. Dormire, Moore’s mother, continued living with her daughter even after prosecutors in 2014 charged Moore with stealing from Dormire. Charges involving Moore’s mother ultimately were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea in the Lanier case.\nMoore spent plenty of money on herself, paying off at least $20,000 in credit card debt and a $16,000 note on a Nissan titled in her mother’s name but that she drove. Checks went to merchants ranging from Walmart to the Fifth Street Flower Shop to Victoria’s Secret. Tens of thousands of dollars also were spent for the benefit of friends and relatives from pilfered accounts belonging to Moore’s aunt and mother, according to court and police files. A hairdresser got a check for $2,500. Moore’s son, Brian, received checks totaling nearly $16,000, and Moore also paid $11,700 in rent for the duplex where her son lived. Meanwhile, a nursing home where her aunt stayed after breaking a hip went unpaid and ultimately sued Lanier and Moore to collect more than $20,000.\n“This is an elder abuse ATM,” Judge Belz decreed as he sent Moore to prison.\nShortly after obtaining power of attorney from her aunt, who told police that she didn’t realize that she had given her niece access to bank accounts, Moore in 2011 wrote a check for $19,000 to help Mark and Christine Kolaz buy a 2007 Mercedes Benz sedan, making the check out to the dealership. Kolaz, a lobbyist who was once chief of staff for Central Management Services, insists that he knew nothing about the deal, even though his name appears as a purchaser on the sales invoice and delivery sheet from Friendly Chevrolet.\n“I’m not really familiar with that situation,” Kolaz said.\nMark and Christine Kolaz were divorced in 2002 but continued living in the same house. The dealership delivery sheet shows they had the same address and same home phone number in 2011. Mark Kolaz declined to discuss whether he still lives with his ex-wife, who in 2007 was accused by her father’s beer distributorship of embezzling $1.3 million after Christine Kolaz filed for bankruptcy, according to bankruptcy court files and stories published by the Associated Press. The U.S. attorney’s office investigated the alleged embezzlement, according to the Associated Press, but filed no charges.\nFultz, Moore’s attorney, told the judge that relatives “clearly had to understand that she wasn’t able to afford the things that she was providing, based on an Illinois Department of Transportation secretarial salary.” The judge found it odd that people who benefited from Moore’s thievery accepted large amounts of money from a woman who earned less than $54,000 a year.\n“This is not stealing from the rich and giving to the poor,” Belz said as he pronounced sentence. “You know, I have to question some of these other people, if they didn’t know what was going on, that were the recipients of this.”\nFultz told the court that Moore’s son and daughter, Kimberly Krum, declined to testify on their mother’s behalf at the sentencing hearing after being told that they could be cross-examined to determine whether they knew that their moher was a thief and whether they benefited from her crimes.\nJoby Crum, Kimberly Crum’s husband, said that neither his wife nor anyone else in the family knew about any thefts until last month, when Moore was taken into custody four years after charges were filed. He told Illinois Times that he has been appointed to speak for relatives.\n“This completely blindsided the family,” said Joby Crum, who is the boys basketball coach at Springfield High School. “I would consider us to be fairly intelligent people, and we had no idea what was going on. … We don’t want anyone hurt any further than what has happened, and our fear is that might have happened.”\nMoore’s husband filed for divorce on Sept. 13, telling the court that he had no idea that his wife was in legal trouble or had stolen money until she was arrested at Memorial Medical Center in August, two days after going to the hospital with complaints of a blood clot instead of going to court, where she was due to be sentenced. The no-show prompted Judge Belz to issue an arrest warrant. In his divorce petition, Jeffrey Moore says he believes that his wife might have a gambling problem.\nThe first sign of trouble came on Nov. 8, 2011, when a Sangamon County sheriff’s detective was summoned to St. Johns Hospital to speak with Don Lerch, a former IDOT employee who was dying from lung cancer.\nLerch told the detective that Moore, whom he knew from work, had asked to borrow money in 2007 to help a relative who was in a squeeze. Don’t worry, Moore told Lerch: My aunt is about to die and I’ll repay you from my inheritance.\nIt started out with $6,500, and loans kept coming until Lerch had given Moore $287,000 over a two-year period, according to police reports. Lerch continually asked for repayment, but never got it. Eventually, Moore told Lerch that her aunt had died, but had given all her money to Moore’s mother. Moore told Lerch that her mother was nearly dead and that she’d repay him once she got her inheritance.\nShortly after Lerch spoke with police, Moore obtained power of attorney from Lanier, which gave her access to her aunt’s bank accounts. Using her aunt’s funds, Moore obtained a $246,000 cashier’s check to pay Lerch, who died two weeks before the check was written. Nonetheless, the check cleared, according to police files. It’s not clear how, nor is it clear whether the money ended up in Lerch’s estate.\nPolice next encountered Moore in March 2012, when Senior Services of Central Illinois reported that Moore had been draining her aunt’s bank accounts since obtaining power of attorney three months earlier. Lanier told police that she was “shocked and very upset” that her niece had been taking money. After being confronted by a sheriff’s detective who asked about questionable withdrawals from Lanier’s accounts, Moore said that she’d been good to her aunt.\n“I want you to know, and I’ll put this on the record: There has been no one that has been any better to Ruth than my family and myself,” Moore told the detective. “I have done everything for the last 40 years plus, never ask for anything, OK? I have cared for her, I have taken her to doctor appointments. … I’m not making any excuses for myself, but I did everything I could for her. I don’t know what she’s saying, but I know what she said to me. (It) sounds terrible, but I have been good to her.”\nMoore, however, wasn’t an exemplary caregiver for her mother, according to court files. In moving to appoint a guardian for Dormire after thefts from Lanier came to light, Kevin McDermott, Sangamon County public guardian, told the court that Moore’s mother, who was born in 1919, was found alone in her Moore’s home a half-dozen times between August of 2012 and February of 2013 by Senior Services of Central Illinois. Over the objection of Moore’s lawyer, the court appointed McDermott as Dormire’s temporary guardian. But Dormire kept living with her daughter, even after Moore was charged with stealing from her mother.\nMcDermott says the only other option was a nursing home, and there had never been an allegation of physical or emotional abuse.\n“That being the case, she’s probably just as well off with her daughter, staying with her,” McDermott said.\nLabels: Illinois, sentenced, stealing from elderly relative\nBoynton area couple take plea deal in elderly exploitation case\nCindy Heller\nWEST PALM BEACH - A suburban Boynton Beach couple has been placed on probation, barred from working with the elderly and ordered to pay $33,000 in restitution after being accused of stealing money from an 87-year-old woman who was suffering from severe dementia.\nFranklin David Squires, 59, and Cindy Heller, 60, both pleaded guilty in their best interest Monday to charges of exploitation of an elderly person and money laundering in connection with money missing from bank accounts of their neighbor, 87-year-old Belle Winters.\nTheir best-interest pleas, which means they didn’t admit guilt, came as a jury was being selected to weigh the evidence against them. Palm Beach County Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes withheld adjudication before placing them both on probation for four years.\nHoward Gale, who had travelled from Connecticut to testify against the couple in connection with his mother’s missing money, said he was disappointed they weren’t punished more severely. Winters died in 2015 shortly after Heller and Squires were charged.\n“If it was up to me, I would have sent them to prison,” Gale said. “When you take advantage of an old person or a kid … you lose your right to live in society.”\nBut attorney Guy Fronstin, who represented Heller, said the couple didn’t steal money from Winters. The money was to reimburse Heller and Squires, who often dug into their own pockets to pay for Winters’ doctors visits, household expenses and utility bills. They even bought Winters a new refrigerator, he said.\nA doctor told Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies that Winters suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was incapable of making decisions. But Fronstin said a bank official who quizzed Winters before she gave large sums of money to Heller and Squires was going to testify that the elderly woman knew exactly what she was doing. Winters wanted to repay the couple, he said.\nAs his mother’s health declined, Gale said he hired Heller, then Squires, who lived next door, to care for her. In January 2015, he discovered her bank accounts had been cleared out. Palm Beach County sheriff’s detectives said they traced the money to accounts held by Squires and Heller.\nWhile Kastrenakes ordered both to make monthly payments to Winters’ estate, Gale said he doesn’t expect to ever recoup all of it. Fronstin agreed. Both Heller and Squires are disabled, he said.\nGale said his experience should serve as a warning to others whose elderly parents are unable to take care of themselves. “Put all of the assets in your name and don’t trust anybody,” he said.\nLabels: exploitation of an elderly, Florida, plea deal\nTonight on T. S. Radio with Marti Oakley: Yolanda Bell: Medical kidnap..Anastasia’s condition worsens\n5:00 pm PST … 6:00 pm MST … 7:00 pm..... CST … 8:00 pm EST\nSep 26, 2017 —It has been 219 days since my sister Anastasia Adams was abducted by Inova Fairfax Hospital and their designated guardians; 219 of her looking to me to help and save her from the injuries that have been inflicted upon her whether through alleged direct intent, inattention, or neglect; 219 days of wanting to be home sleeping in her own bed and my wanting her home where she will be safe and protected. I miss her smile, her mischievous side, and her laugh…yes she does laugh or at least she did prior before all of this and I pray she will again.\nI had a rather interesting meeting today. There were a few red flags but only time will tell if it will bear fruit or if the items discussed will just be pencil whipped and tossed under the rug.\nI saw Anastasia today, Thanks be to God. She is pale, more pale than she was last week. It appears she will be receiving another blood transfusion. If you recall she had to receive 2 pints of blood when she was hospitalized on September 6, 2017. Here it is barely 3 weeks later and she needs another one yet to my knowledge still no testing has been done to determine the source of the bleeding. Instead as I posted before the guardians would like to place her in hospice and increase her pain medication which we all know is code for…\nThe medical kidnapping is now turning to Hospice….palliative care….meaning “futility of care”.\nLISTEN LIVE or listen to the archive later\nLabels: Hospice, Hospital, Marti Oakley, Radio, T. S. Radio, Virginia\nHow to Make Probate Pay: The Ugly World of Human Predators\nby Marti Oakley\nThe redistribution of wealth so often wailed about by the wealthy, whereby they believe if they have to pay taxes in direct proportion to income like every other taxpayer is forced to do, it is somehow because “some people just want a hand-out”, is a true diversion from the actual redistribution of wealth that occurs everyday in probate courts across the country.\nThe only thing of real value ever possessed by any country is its people. Through successive administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, our country has been robbed of its economic dominance, its ability to produce the best, the most and the most valuable commodities on the globe. The only thing left to buy, sell and trade of any value are the people themselves. And we the people have been commodified…turned into the last market for fast money to facilitate the greed of the few.\nWhile the battle rages in the public as to whom is hellbent on destroying the traditional American family, the truth is, only the government has the power to do this. It is the government through policy, program creation, and bribery (funding) that families are ripped apart. Block grants to states facilitate the unconstitutional tribunal systems for which there is little to no oversight. This is intentional.\nWhat is overwhelming most normal people is the vast number of sociopathic predators who make a parasitic living off assuming the identity of a living human being, then presenting themselves as that person and availing themselves of the benefits of someone elses life work. In legal circles they are called professional guardians. To the rest of the sane world they are predators; parasites on society at large.\nQuoted from “The Dark Side..A law treatise on Judging” by Caroline Douglas J.D.\nPage 307 para 4,5,6 (Continue Reading)\nLabels: Editorial, Marti Oakley, New York\nJury pool shrinks for attempted murder trial of former Sarasota deputy\nSARASOTA — The pool of around 140 potential jurors who were interviewed Monday in the trial of a former Sarasota County Sheriff’s deputy charged with attempted murder, was reduced to around 65 who will return Tuesday for a final round of questions.\nJury selection was the beginning of the trial for Frank Bybee, 46, who is facing 18 felonies, including attempted murder, exploitation of the elderly, burglary, theft and kidnapping. He faces a life sentence if he is convicted of the first-degree felony charge for attempted murder.\nHis trial was postponed for 20 days after his attorney withdrew and a former Manatee County judge, John Lakin, joined the defense team causing a conflict of interest with 12th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Thomas Krug. Lakin is currently under investigation by the Florida Bar for actions taken while he was on the bench.\nKrug recused himself from the case and Chief Judge Charles E. Williams asked the Florida Supreme Court to appoint a judge from outside of Sarasota County. Judge Donald H. Mason of Charlotte County was assigned to the case that was original scheduled to begin Sept. 5.\nAssistant State Attorneys Karen Fraivillig and Art Jackman, and defense attorneys John Lakin and Ronald Kurpiers, must now choose 12 jurors and two alternates to sit on the jury.\nThe trial will likely begin Wednesday and is expected to last for two weeks.\nProspective jurors were questioned in two different sessions Monday, with attorneys deciding after each session whether hardships and established opinions produced by jurors were enough to strike them from the roster.\nMany jurors raised their hands when asked if they had read or watched coverage of the Bybee case. Some said they already had preconceived notions of guilt and could not be impartial.\nAmong the reasons jurors gave for being unable to render a fair verdict were being caretakers themselves for disabled relatives, “personal feelings,” and one said a family member was convicted of murder and died in his jail cell. The statements came after jurors were informed that the case could take up to two weeks. Some expressed worries over financial hardships.\n“I just could not do it,” said the female juror whose family member died in jail.\nAnother female juror said she decided she could not be fair after hearing the charges in the case, which involves an elderly woman.\nA male juror said he is retired and takes care of his mother.\n“I bathe her, toileted her, and fed her,” the male juror said. “You don’t want me on that trial.”\nA juror in the afternoon session said she lost a lot of work during Hurricane Irma and is responsible for watching her grandchild.\nThe hurricane hardship excuse was the most common reasoning for many jurors, besides vacations, seeking to be exempt from the trial. Judge Donald H. Mason of Charlotte County said that nearly every juror present will suffer a financial inconvenience. He said it jury duty was part of living in America.\nThe attorneys released most of the jurors who cited hardships.\nSeveral jurors felt they could be fair, but made the judge aware of possible issues that could arise during the trial.\n“I wanted to let you know that my husband is a police officer,” a female juror said.\nTwo additional jurors just wanted the court to know they worked with the elderly, but felt “presumption of innocence” was not a problem.\nJudge Mason and Fraivillig told the panel to be blunt with their answers.\nFraivillig asked the potential jurists if they would participate in the selection process. When they did not reply, she asked again, sparking a “yes” response.\n“The most important thing for you to do is be candid with us,” Fraivillig said. “We are looking for jurors that have no preconceived notions or biases. We need you to be a blank slate.”\nTwo jurors said they had family members in law enforcement — one said they could be fair, the other said they might be tempted to side with a law enforcement officer.\nA female juror said her uncle is a sheriff’s deputy being called as a witness. She said even if he was a plumber, she would trust her relative’s opinion.\nLong after the potential jurors were asked if they had conflicts, two men said that they might have issues with “the system.”\n“I have had dealings with State Attorney and sometimes I see how things go,” a male juror said. “Sometimes I agree and sometimes I don’t agree — because I am exposed to it, I’m probably not the best person.”\nBoth sides agreed to strike one female juror who told the court, “If I’m not getting paid, I will have an attitude.”\nA male juror in the afternoon session asked whether he could make a fair judgement based on the charges he heard in the case said, “No, I can’t. I personally feel this guy is a low life.”\nAnother female juror says she works at the Sheriff’s Office and has been subjected to “negative opinions” about Bybee.\nA male juror who said he was had to attend a paramedics test to become a firefighter was also excused. He received soft applause from the crowd when Judge Mason released him.\nBybee, an 18-year employee of the Sheriff’s Office, was arrested Jan. 23 after a 79-year-old woman called the Sheriff’s Office for help on Oct. 21.\nBybee, a patrol deputy, was sent to the call and took the woman to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where the former deputy prayed with her before he left, according to an investigation.\nAbout two months later, the woman reported that Bybee had inserted himself into her personal life and had become too controlling. She asked the Sheriff’s Office for help in severing the relationship with the deputy.\nBybee was placed on administrative leave Jan. 9 and three days later, according to court documents, he went back to elderly woman’s home and attempted to kill her.\nThe Sheriff’s Office terminated his employment on Jan. 31 after enough information was discovered through an internal affairs investigation to sustain allegations of conduct unbecoming and conformance with laws, on top of criminal charges.\nBybee has been in custody at the Sarasota County Jail on a $380,120 bail.\nJury selection is expected to last until at least Tuesday.\nLabels: attempted murder, burglary, exploitation of elderly, Florida, former deputy, Kidnapping, theft\nCaregiver sentenced for stealing from elderly woman\nBerlicia Chambers\nTALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – A former caregiver will serve jail time and probation after pleading no contest to stealing thousands of dollars from an elderly woman with dementia.\nTallahassee police arrested 46-year-old Berlicia Chambers in May on elderly exploitation charges.\nCourt documents allege Chambers stole at least $14,800 over a four year span from a woman who she was hired to care for. Investigators say the 78-year-old victim had memory problems and showed signs of dementia.\nArrest records say Chambers used an ATM card to withdraw cash from the victim’s account, and used the victim’s credit card to pay for personal expenses, including her satellite TV and cell phone.\nChambers was sentenced to 120 days in jail, with 88 days credit for time already served. She was also ordered to serve 6 years of probation and pay restitution of $12,980.\nLabels: caregiver sentenced, Florida, stealing from elderly woman\nJPMorgan Ordered to Pay More Than $4 Billion to Widow and Family\nJPMorgan Chase & Co. was ordered by a Dallas jury to pay more than $4 billion in damages for mishandling the estate of a former American Airlines executive, but the verdict will probably be knocked down on appeal.\nJo Hopper and two stepchildren won the probate court verdict over claims that JPMorgan mismanaged the administration of the estate of Max Hopper, who was described as an airline technology innovator in a statement issued by the family’s law firm.\nLarge punitive damages verdicts like the one in the Hopper case are often scaled back because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled they can’t be disproportionate to actual damages. In this case, the jury awarded less than $5 million in actual damages.\nThe bank said it acted in a professional manner and in good faith on Hopper’s estate and is “highly confident” the jury verdict won’t stand under Texas law.\n“Clearly the award far exceeds any possible interpretation of Texas tort reform statutes,” Andrew Gray, a spokesman for the bank, said in an emailed statement. “There has been no judgment entered by the court based on this verdict.”\nMax Hopper, who pioneered a reservation system for the airline, died in 2010 with assets of more than $19 million but without a will and testament, according to the statement. JPMorgan was hired as an administrator to divvy up the assets among family members.\nPutters, Wine\n“Instead of independently and impartially collecting and dividing the estate’s assets, the bank took years to release basic interests in art, home furnishings, jewelry, and notably, Mr. Hopper’s collection of 6,700 golf putters and 900 bottles of wine,” the family’s lawyers said in the statement. “Some of the interests in the assets were not released for more than five years.”\n\"The nation’s largest bank horribly mistreated me and this verdict provides protection to others from being mistreated by banks that think they’re too powerful to be held accountable,\" Jo Hopper said in the statement.\nThe court’s verdict form shows jurors awarded $8 billion in punitive damages against the bank. Alan Loewinsohn, attorney for Jo Hopper, said in an interview there may be duplication of some of the damage findings. As a result, he said, the punitive damage award could end up being “somewhere between $4 billion and $8 billion.”\nLoewinsohn said he asked the jury to take into account the bank’s worth and asked them for $2 billion in punitive damages. “I believe they used that figure for the other parties in the case as well,” he said.\nThe jury found that the bank committed fraud, breached its fiduciary duty and broke a fee agreement, according to court papers.\nAt the lower end of that range, the jury’s award would erase almost two-thirds of the $6.6 billion profit that JPMorgan generated globally during the second quarter.\nAnd it would rank high among the largest sanctions ever levied against the bank -- somewhere between the $2.6 billion it agreed to pay in 2014 for allegedly failing to stop Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and a $13 billion settlement it reached with government authorities in 2013 for its handling of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis.\nThe verdict form shows jurors were advised to consider factors including “the net worth of JPMorgan.” Indeed, the bank has a stock market value of about $330 billion.\nLabels: court order, damages awarded, mishandling estate, Texas\n“The elders have the right to be heard and respected.”\nMe Ann Soden\nInstead of going through the courts to address issues of financial exploitation or abuse towards the elderly, Me Ann Soden offers mediation to simplify the process and make the elders a quality of life and the respect of their rights.\nThe lawyer and mediator licensed montreal is a pioneer in the area of elder Law. It opened in 2007, a legal clinic, a mobile pro bono (free services). She was passing through the area in mid-September, to represent an elderly person.\nthere are so much injustice to the elderly, this is terrible inhumanity in the face of them. For me it is a privilege and an honor to help them. They are grateful for\n“It serves the whole of the province and meeting with seniors in a familiar environment in order to make them more comfortable. It also allows us to check if the people around, often family, control or manipulate our client, stresses Me Soden.\n“The elders do not know their rights and families. They do not abuse it, not always intentionally, but in some cases they give themselves the right to take the money, because they take care of the person,” laments the lawyer.\nRights violated\nFor Me Ann Soden, the cases of injustice and abuse against seniors are many. “The basis, the seniors have the right to be involved in the decisions, of having their wishes honored and to get respect, she said.\n“The legal representatives think that as soon as a mandate in case of incapacity is certified, they can take all the decisions without regard to the wishes of their mother or their father. This is not the case, says Me Soden.\n“The problem is that they choose depending on their values and decisions will often go against what it wants to the person. It is insulting to the latter.”\nSimplified process\nThe legal clinic founded by Me Ann Soden, is designed to streamline the process in cases of abuse and allows you to avoid prosecution of fraud against the legal representatives, among others.\n“The person may have memory loss, but is very capable of understanding that his nephew has neglected to pay for their accommodation. It assists in there, arrangements are made simple with something like a pre-authorized payment and revokes the power of attorney to the nephew, quotes the lawyer as an example.\n“It involves the elder in all decisions. We made an assessment of the degree of skill, but also of the legal representative to determine whether he has a heart to help the elder, if he is honest or is a good manager, ” she adds.\n“If there has been financial exploitation, are discussed in the presence of a banker, an accountant and a social worker. If the elder has money, we will hire someone to take care of its finances. Otherwise, it puts in place measures of protection. We are trying to recover the money, either directly or on the inheritance on the death of the customer,” mentions Me Soden.\nLabels: Canada, Elder Law, Financial Exploitation, Mediation, Pro Bono\nPolice looking for woman accused of stealing from elderly man\nLanique Elaine Pettus\nA woman accused of stealing nearly $10,000 from an elderly man by falsifying his signature on checks and using his debit card to make rent and car payments is being sought by authorities, according to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office and court documents.\nLanique Elaine Pettus, 32, is wanted on one count of exploitation of an older person, 16 counts of forgery and six counts of fraudulent use of credit card; all felonies, according to a criminal complaint filed in a Henderson courthouse.\nThe 80-year-old man was victimized through “deception intimidation or undue influence” last year from Feb. 1 to March 31, according to the complaint.\nThe fraudulent checks were written for amounts ranging from $150 to $780, and the debit card was used for payments in the range of $268 to $888, totaling about $9,500, according to the complaint.\nProsecutors today released photos of Pettus allegedly cashing the fraudulent checks at valley banks.\nIt wasn’t immediately clear when the case was filed.\nAnyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555 or crimestoppersofnv.com\nLabels: accused of exploitation of older person, deception, intimidation, Nevada, Undue Influence\nLawyer heads to trial for $400G theft from clients\nGregory G. Stagliano\nMEDIA COURTHOUSE >> A Delaware County personal injury attorney waived arraignment Wednesday on charges that he stole more than $400,000 in settlement funds that were supposed to go to his clients.\nGregory G. Stagliano, 61, of the 500 block of Chaumont Drive in Radnor, is charged with theft by unlawful taking, theft of services, theft by deception, and receiving stolen property, all felonies of the third degree, in allegedly pocketing money that was supposed to go to nine different victims he represented in personal injury cases. Stagliano is additionally charged with unauthorized practice of law.\nDistrict Attorney Jack Whelan said when announcing the charges in May that investigators led by county Detective Michele Deery began looking at Stagliano in July 2016, based on a tip from the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.\nInvestigators found a similar pattern of theft in each of the nine cases, with Stagliano allegedly depositing funds meant for clients into his own Santander Interest on Lawyers Trust Account for personal use.\nIn one case, Stagliano received $65,000 that was supposed to go to the victim in a car accident, according to a release from the District Attorney’s office. But prosecutors claim Stagliano paid the victim only $7,500, then warned her to stop contacting him seeking the balance.\n“I wish you to cease your continued harassing communications in this regard and if you do not, we will go about it in a different way,” he allegedly told that victim.\nAn investigation by the Disciplinary Board revealed that Stagliano still owed that victim $40,000. Deery looked into the bank records and found just $133.77 remained in the account, according to the release.\n“As prosecutors, we find the violation of his sworn fiduciary responsibly especially disturbing and Mr. Stagliano used this position in order to fund his own lavish lifestyle and pay his own personal debts with his clients’ money,” said Whelan. “Individuals should be able to trust their attorneys and abusing that trust is both unethical and in this case criminal. Today’s arrest of Mr. Stagliano should send a clear message that no one is above the law.”\nA pretrial conference date was not immediately available. Anyone who believes they also have been victimized by Stagliano is urged to contact Deery at 610-891-8745.\nLabels: attorney charged, Pennsylvania, receiving stolen property, settlement funds, theft by deception, theft by unlawful taking, theft from clients, theft of services\nParamedic accused of taking selfies with incapacitated patients gets 6 months in jail\nChristopher Wimmer\nThat'll teach him.\nA Florida paramedic accused of taking selfies with incapacitated patients and sending them to a co-worker in a \"selfie war\" has been sentenced to jail time, according to the Panama City News Herald.\nChristopher Wimmer has been sentenced to six months in jail and three years or probation, the outlet reported.\nHe'll also have to perform 100 hours of community service and pay court fees.\nOkaloosa County Circuit Judge William Stone barred Wimmer, 35, from working as a paramedic while completing his sentence, the News Herald reported.\nHe's said to have told the judge he \"deeply regretted\" what he had done.\n\"When I see ambulances drive by every single time in Boston, it reminds me of the mistakes that I've made and how it affected everyone else that was involved,\" he said.\n\"To all the patients and their families, I want you to know how sorry I am for the things that I did and the crimes I committed.\"\nThe embattled paramedic reportedly pleaded no contest to seven felony counts of interception and disclosure of oral communications.\nKayla Dubois and Wimmer took compromising photos of patients inside ambulances without their knowledge or consent.(Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office)\nHe also pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of battery, which he was charged with after it came to light that he held open the eyelids of a sedated woman while posing for a photo.\nOne patient, Pamela Burman, told the paper she felt justice had not been served.\n\"For him not to get more jail time than he did is adding insult to injury,\" she said. \"We were devalued as human beings … and he felt that he could laugh at us.\"\nWimmer and a female paramedic, Kayla Dubois, were investigated and charged in 2016 amid allegations that the pair were locked in an ongoing \"selfie war,\" according to the News Herald.\nThe duo were believed to have photos of patients that were in their care inside ambulances on their cell phones.\nAn investigation revealed that 41 patients were photographed and/or recorded without their knowledge or consent.\nDubois was sentenced to two years of probation last month.\nWimmer reported to jail on Sept. 22 to start his sentence.\nLabels: Florida, paramedic accused, selfies of incapacitated patients, sentenced\nGBI makes arrest in disabled, elderly exploitation case\nWALB.com, South Georgia News, Weather, Sports\nALBANY, GA (WALB) - Agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made an arrest in a multi-county investigation of the exploitation of disabled or elderly adults.\nMichelle Oliver, 39, was arrested Tuesday at her home in Forsyth after investigators with several agencies searched a personal care facility in Albany.\nOliver has been transported to the Dougherty County Jail and will have her first court appearance Thursday morning.\nAccording to officials, the investigation began in July when neighbors told police that residents renting from Oliver were begging for food.\nDuring the search at the homes at South Jackson Street and Flintside Drive, seven disabled or elderly adults were found. They were treated by EMS and Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and relocated to licensed facilities.\nThe apartments were condemned by Albany Code Enforcement because of the living conditions.\nWhen officials searched Oliver's home in Forsyth and a residence connected to Oliver in Macon, seven additional elderly or disabled adults were found. They were all relocated.\nOliver is facing charges for exploitation and intimidation of disabled adults, elder persons, and residents (felony); neglect of a disabled adult, elder person, and resident (felony); and for operating an unlicensed personal care home (misdemeanor).\nThe investigation is still active and more charges against Oliver are expected. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call the GBI office in Sylvester at 229-777-2080.\nLabels: elderly exploitation case, financial exploitation of disabled person., Georgia, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, unlicensed personal care facility\nAmbitious guardian changes proposed\nA special commission on Friday unveiled a slate of ambitious proposals to strengthen oversight of the state’s ailing guardian and conservator system, which oversees finances and other major decisions for many of New Mexico’s most vulnerable citizens.\nThe Supreme Court-appointed commission’s recommendations include hiring special court employees to hear grievances and requiring more accountability from the professionals appointed to make decisions for incapacitated people.\nOther recommendations include requiring mediation or “facilitated family meetings” between feuding relatives in contested cases and creating an “adult protected person” oversight board to regulate professional guardians and conservators, who must be certified and bonded.\nThe initial set of proposals, due to the Supreme Court by Oct. 1, focus on ways to improve the professionalism of corporate guardians and conservators who handle a protected person’s finances by requiring bonding to protect an incapacitated person’s assets.\nThe state’s courts are responsible for appointing guardians and conservators for incapacitated individuals who can’t handle their own affairs. Often family members are appointed, but if there is no family or if family members are feuding, courts would appoint third-party professional guardians.\nDozens of families have come forward since a Journal series highlighted the problem, detailing concerns and potential deficiencies in the system, sparking the decision to make changes.\nThe commission also proposed requiring certification of all corporate guardians and conservators, presumably by a national guardianship agency, but backed off the idea of requiring a state license that an oversight board could revoke for malfeasance or misconduct.\nChaired by retired state District Judge Wendy York, the group was tasked in April with providing the Supreme Court with concrete ways to improve the system that, in an attempt to protect the incapacitated person, operates out of the public eye. All hearings are held in closed courtrooms, with few participants and with nearly all court records sealed.\nTypically, the only oversight of such cases has been the guardian’s or conservator’s filing of a several-page annual report to the judge each year, but the commission is recommending enhanced reporting to include bank and financial statements. Such filings would continue to be sealed.\nFamily members who have in the past been stymied by a lack of access to the courts to air complaints about a loved one’s treatment or a guardian or conservator’s conduct could file grievances with an independent court commissioner who would investigate and, if warranted, report to the judge in the case.\nUnder the recommendations, judges in appointing a guardian or conservator also would have to make specific findings of fact if they deviate from an incapacitated person’s advance directive, trust, will or estate plan.\n“I feel like we’ve made some headway,” said Emily Darnell Nuñez, the sole layperson appointed to the commission. “We haven’t solved all the problems, but we have made a good first step.”\nLast year, the Journal series “Who Guards the Guardians?” prominently featured the protracted guardianship/conservator case of Nuñez’s mother, Blair Darnell.\nSecrecy issue\nThe thorny issue of secrecy and sequestration of such cases wasn’t addressed in the initial set of proposals but is scheduled to be discussed by the commission later this year, along with other possible recommendations for changes in state law.\nA final commission report is expected by Jan. 1, ahead of a 30-day legislative session, and could include funding proposals for reforms if approved by the Supreme Court and endorsed by Gov. Susana Martinez.\nOver the past decade, there have been prior attempts at reform involving commissions appointed by the Legislature.\nBut state Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said this marks the first time the state Supreme Court has taken the lead.\n“The court, in bringing this to the forefront, has to do something. We (state legislators) have to do something; we can’t let this fester any longer,” said Ortiz y Pino, a commission member and longtime advocate for reform.\nThe 16 commission members include judges, attorneys, a psychologist, two appointees from Martinez’s administration and current and former legislators.\nAlthough mostly disgruntled family members testified at monthly commission meetings, the commission’s work gathered momentum after July’s federal criminal indictment of top executives of a longtime Albuquerque-based corporate guardianship/conservatorship firm, Ayudando Guardians, for alleged embezzlement of millions in client funds.\nWeeks earlier, state financial regulators announced they had found evidence of siphoning of $4 million of client trust funds at Desert State Life Management, which originally handled special trusts and guardianships for special needs clients and still retained some court-appointed conservator cases.\nJust this week, State Auditor Tim Keller alerted state officials to an initial audit finding that New Mexico’s Office of Guardianship, which provides guardianship services to about 900 indigent clients through private contracts with guardianship firms, had lax internal controls, failed to investigate complaints about contractors and performed required annual compliance reviews on only two of 21 state-funded guardianship companies last year.\nOrtiz y Pino said the recent revelations about guardianship companies “have reinstated the belief that this is a big mess.”\n“The question will be: Is the state willing to spend the money to bring about these changes?”\nLabels: guardian oversight, New Mexico, proposals, special commission\nProtect nursing home residents, not bad facilities\nWhen they get together in Tallahassee on Friday, the members of Florida’s nursing-home industry can either circle the wagons or lay the groundwork to take a deep, honest look at how best to confront one of the worst tragedies the industry has seen.\nThe Florida Health Care Association has called a “summit” to address emergency preparedness. This comes after eight, then nine and, as of Thursday, 10 elderly residents in a Hollywood Hills nursing home were left to suffer and die because they were in an stiflingly hot facility that lost electricity as Hurricane Irma blew through.\nThe industry is rattled by Gov. Rick Scott’s emergency rule requiring that all nursing homes and assisted living facilities have a generator and fuel to keep buildings cool for four days after losing power.\nIt’s the right call now, and the right call back in 2006, when a similar proposal died in the Legislature. The industry helped throw it under the bus. And look what happened.\nThe Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills had a generator, but not to power air conditioning, which made it useless as the residents were overcome. It also had a hospital across the street. But nursing-home residents were never evacuated there, not until after the first deaths among them.\nNursing home officials, inexplicably, blame Scott for their troubles, whom they called for help as the situation got worse. The governor had given his cell-phone number to a group of nursing home owners during a pre-hurricane strategy session.\nBut in a state report, Scott put the blame where it squarely belongs: “This facility is failing to take responsibility for the fact that they delayed calling 911 and made the decision to not evacuate their patients to one of the largest hospitals in Florida, which is directly across the street.\n“The more we learn about this, the more concerning this tragedy is.”\nBut zoom out from this one particular tragedy, and Floridians will find that, big picture, the Scott administration as well as industry muscle continue to give cover to nursing homes that shouldn’t be in business.\nTime and again, the Legislature and the governor have failed to insist that nursing homes and ALFs are responsible actors in caring for sick and vulnerable Floridians. The failed generator legislation is but one example. Pushback against stringent state monitoring is another.\nThe Herald now reports that nursing home inspection results are heavily censored, blacking out unpleasant findings such as “bruises,” “substance,” and “accidentally.” This means that families looking for a safe facility for an elderly loved one can’t get a full accounting; and troubled families who suspect all is not well in a nursing home are left with more questions than answers — and little recourse.\nThis is wrong, especially when the state tries to hide behind the federal government’s skirts, alleging that its rules mandate keeping sensitive information from the public. The truth is, the Herald reports, the state must submit inspection reports to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which are available for public scrutiny — uncensored.\nThe people of this state deserve better than this. The discussion at Friday’s summit can’t stop at generators. Industry leaders must far more discussion about meeting the needs of such vulnerable residents. Why wait for another tragedy?\nLabels: Editorial, emergency rule, Florida, Florida Health Care Association, Nursing Homes\nSon pleads guilty to his role in exploiting mother's estate for $340,000\nMONTEVIDEO, Minn. — Michael Scott Christie, 63, of Lame Deer, Montana, pleaded guilty Monday in Chippewa County District Court to two felony charges of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult for his role in taking $340,000 from the estate of his mother.\nA pre-sentence investigation was ordered and sentencing scheduled for Oct. 31.\nChristie's wife, Martina Annette Christie, 61, faces 12 felony charges for alleged financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. She made her first court appearance earlier this month.\nThe charges allege that the couple exploited $340,000 from the estate of Michael Christie's mother.\nThey allegedly used more than $40,000 of her financial resources for their own lifestyles. Court documents also allege that Michael Christie transferred two parcels of Chippewa County farmland worth a combined $300,000 to Martina Christie for consideration of less than $500.\nMichael Christie's mother died in February 2015.\nPrior to that, the Clarkfield woman was evicted from the Clarkfield Care Center for non-payment in late 2014 and accumulated over $72,000 in expenses.\nThe criminal complaint says Michael and Martina Christie paid the Care Center only $200 during that period, while they spent over $6,000 on clothing for themselves and wrote themselves $6,000 worth of checks.\nLabels: financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult, Minnesota, pleads guilty\nTonight on T. S. Radio with Marti Oakley: Abolishing the Probate System & Family Courts\nThis evening we have three guests:\nLuanne Fleming & Robin Astin F.A.C.E.U.S. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1150521624978726/\nBrian Kinter: Judicial Accountability Movement (JAM)https://www.facebook.com/groups/jam2016/\nWe will be discussing the demand to end the probate system in all its forms, including family courts, guardianship/conservator ship, and returning to a system of law where our rights are preserved and protected.\nBECOMING A “WARD OF THE STATE” SHOULD NOT BE USED TO DEPRIVE YOU OF YOUR OWN IDENTITY AND CAUSE YOU TO CEASE BEING RECOGNIZED AS A LIVING, BREATHING HUMAN BEING IN SOME FICTIONALLY CREATED SYSTEM OF STATUTES AND CODES.\nNO ONE SHOULD BE SUBJECTED TO COURT SANCTIONED IDENTITY THEFT AND BE ROBBED OF THEIR NATURAL RIGHTS & LIBERTIES, THEIR ESTATE, OR THEIR CHILDREN AND BANKRUPTED BY THIS CORRUPT SYSTEM.\nWe can no longer allow these unconstitutional administrative tribunals to destroy families and steal the lives of their victims.\nWe can no longer allow the judiciary to turn a blind eye to the destruction of families and individuals, including children taking place every day across the country. All for profit.\nPLEASE JOIN BRIAN, LUANNE, ROBIN & MY SELF FOR THIS VERY IMPORTANT SHOW!\nLabels: FACE.US, Marti Oakley, T. S. Radio\nWho guards the guardians? State auditor says agency fails to oversee firms\nState Auditor Tim Keller’s office on Thursday issued an “emergency risk” advisory for the state Office of Guardianship based on an initial review that showed the agency has failed to properly oversee more than 20 private companies that are paid by the state to provide guardian services for vulnerable, indigent New Mexicans.\nThe Guardianship Office, which has about 900 clients, is responsible for monitoring and enforcing state contracts with private firms appointed by the courts to make the legal and other decisions for people deemed incapacitated through disability.\nKeller’s office launched an audit of contract guardianship firms at the request of state District Judge Shannon Bacon of Albuquerque after one of the Office of Guardianship’s contractors, Ayudando Guardians, and two company executives were indicted in July on federal charges related to the alleged embezzlement of up to $4 million in client funds.\n“The OSA’s (Office of State Auditor) initial fact-finding revealed a widespread failure of the Office of Guardianship to oversee contract guardians,” Keller said in a letter Thursday to officials with the state Developmental Disabilities Planning Council, which oversees the Guardianship Office.\n“In short, although the courts and our citizens rely on the Office of Guardianship to protect against fraud and abuse by contract guardians, the Office has few systems in place or resources to discharge that duty,” the letter said.\nFor example, the office monitored only two of 21 guardianship contracts last fiscal year, the letter said. The office didn’t address complaints about contract guardians and didn’t have formal approved policies for contract guardians for the last fiscal year.\nRequired periodic reporting by contract guardians was irregular, and the office failed to follow up with those companies that hadn’t reported.\n“Without these basic systems in place, the Office could not have been monitoring the accuracy of billing or identifying early signs of the types of fraud and abuse that led to the Ayudando indictments,” the letter said.\nSince the indictment, the U.S. Marshals Service has closed the Albuquerque-based Ayudando Guardians. Ayudando was paid more than $650,000 a year under its state contract but also had private-pay clients and disbursed federal veterans’ and Social Security benefits to other clients.\nThe letter said that the Developmental Disabilities Planning Council “suggests that a severe lack of resources and capabilities are contributing to the problems at the Office of Guardianship. Monitoring efforts have been hampered by a lack of adequate staffing, expertise and travel budget.”\nJohn Block III, executive director of the disabilities council, didn’t return a Journal request for an interview Thursday.\nBut in August, Block told the Journal the Office of Guardianship had two compliance officers to monitor the cases of about 900 clients. To be eligible, clients cannot earn more than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.\nAn estimated 100 people were on a waiting list for guardianship services, Block said.\nWith a $6.4 million annual budget, Block told the Journal, “We do the best we can to stretch the funding as much as we can.”\nAside from the Guardianship Office, the only other oversight of the 900 state guardianship clients is through the courts, which require a confidential annual report from each guardian.\nThe state’s guardian and conservator system has been under study by a state Supreme Court commission that is set to unveil its initial recommendations for reform at a meeting today.\nDuring a May commission meeting, then-Ayudando Chief Financial Officer Sharon Moore testified that her agency is subject to regular audits by the Office of Guardianship.\nBut Block later told the Journal the audits aren’t financial, but are technical reviews to ensure proper documentation of client information.\nMoore and Ayudando President Susan Harris are accused of siphoning client funds to finance a lavish lifestyle for themselves and their families. They have pleaded not guilty.\nKeller’s letter to Block, which was forwarded to the state Attorney General, legislative leaders and the state Department of Finance and Administration, was obtained by the Journal.\nThe letter recommended that the Guardianship Office “immediately be subject to more thorough oversight and management. This may necessitate bringing in staff on loan from other agencies or a contracted firm to assist with the Office of Guardianship’s day-to-day work and to address the backlog of unresolved complaints and irregular reporting.”\nIt may also require additional funding on an emergency basis or through a budget transfer, Keller wrote.\nHe also recommended that, in advance of the legislative session that starts in January, the Legislature and Gov. Susana Martinez consider “possible enhancement, revision or restructuring” of the office and its responsibilities, including evaluating whether the planning council is the appropriate agency to oversee the Guardianship Office. Up until 2003, the Guardianship Office was overseen by the Attorney General’s Office.\nLabels: Audit, emergency risk advisory, failure to oversee, New Mexico, The Guardianship Office, Who Guards the Guardians?\nKatrina Nursing Home Owners Acquitted\nSalvador and Mabel Mangano\nThe owners of a nursing home where 35 patients died after Hurricane Katrina were acquitted Friday of negligent homicide and cruelty charges for not evacuating the facility as the storm approached.\nThe jury took about four hours to acquit Sal and Mabel Mangano, the husband-and-wife owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish, just outside of New Orleans.\n\"I can't tell you how good this feels, how good those people are,\" Mabel Mangano said outside the courthouse in St. Francisville, the town about 112 northwest of New Orleans where the trial was moved. \"This has been a very rough road.\"\nThey had faced 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty to the elderly or infirm after the patients drowned — some in their beds — when the monster hurricane swept through the area in 2005.\nJudge Jerome Winsberg asked the defendants to stand when the verdicts were read. When Mabel Mangano did so, she buried her face in her husband's shoulder.\nAfterward, the Manganos sat back down and hugged each other. Their daughter, Tammy White, sobbed quietly.\n\"I'm very gratified that the two-year ordeal they've been through is finally over,\" defense attorney John Reed said.\nThe victims' family and friends — all wearing black, some with buttons with a picture of the person who died at St. Rita's — sat stoically. None cried.\nAssistant Attorney General Burton Guidry read a statement from his boss, Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti: \"I feel for the victims of this tragedy, and my heart goes out to them. I hope they will be able to put this behind them.\"\nYolanda Hubert's 72-year-old mother, Zerelda Delatte, died when the home flooded; her aunt, Gilda Raklen, 90, survived. Hubert said she traveled from Texas to attend the trial.\n\"The jury may not have found them guilty, but our savior says they are. When they face our maker, they'll have to answer then,\" she said. \"They still have never said they were sorry. They haven't said 'I'm sorry I let your mother drown like a rat.' They're guilty as hell,\" she said.\nThe prosecution maintained that the Manganos should have heeded warnings and evacuated before the massive storm roared ashore. Failing to do so led directly to the patients' death and suffering, prosecutor Paul Knight had argued.\nThe defense argued that the Manganos had safely sheltered in their brick facility for 20 years, and that if the levees had not broken, the home would have been safe.\nThe trial lasted three weeks. The prosecution put on 40 witnesses, including Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who testified that she left the decision on mandatory evacuations to local officials. St. Bernard Parish never called a mandatory evacuation.\nThe defense featured five people and took just three days. Neither defendant testified.\nThe defense was prohibited from using testimony or documents showing that the majority of nursing homes in the path of the storm\n36 of 57 — did not evacuate, or that there were deaths at other homes, including 22 at a New Orleans nursing home.\nThe prosecution, however, did show that three other nursing homes in St. Bernard evacuated.\nMore than 30 lawsuits have been filed against the Manganos by patients injured at the nursing home and the families of people who died there.\nThe couple were the only people in Louisiana to face criminal charges stemming directly from Hurricane Katrina, and jurors said that played a key role in their decision.\n\"We talked about that,\" said juror Kim Maxwell, 46. \"There were a lot of mistakes made, and it should have been a lot of people answering for it. So why just these two people?\"\nSaid juror Michael Cavalier, 39: \"The state was responsible for the safety of nursing home residents. They didn't do what they should have. They didn't make the decisions they should have. So when the Manganos made their decision, why should they try to crucify them for it? That isn't right.\"\nDane Ciolino, a professor at Loyola University's College of Law in New Orleans, said the verdict was not surprising, \"given the state was trying to characterize as gross negligence something that tens of thousands of others in south Louisiana did.\"\n\"To say what they did was grossly different than what others did, it really raised the question of, 'Why were the Manganos singled out?\"' he said.\nThe only other criminal charges connected to Katrina deaths are against six former or current New Orleans police officers who face murder or attempted murder counts from a shooting after the storm. But the case is not tied to flooding or a direct impact of Katrina.\nAt one time, Foti's office said investigations into scores of patient deaths at nursing homes and hospitals during and after Katrina were likely to lead to more arrests. Six hospitals and 13 nursing homes in Louisiana were investigated. At least 140 patients died in the storm and its aftermath.\nNo fewer than 34 people died at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after the hurricane, but three women arrested by the attorney general's office will not stand trial. A grand jury refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou. Charges against nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were dropped.\nTwenty-two people died at Lafon Nursing Home, run by nuns of the Holy Family order in eastern New Orleans. Residents were moved to the second floor as flooding began, but the home lost electricity. Rescuers did not arrive at Lafon until days later amid a heat wave that had gripped the city.\nFoti investigated the deaths at Memorial Medical Center, St. Rita's and LaFon. The results of the LaFon investigation were turned over to the New Orleans district attorney a year ago, but no action has been taken. A spokesman for Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said the case remains under investigation.\nLabels: Katrina, Louisiana, negligent homicide, nursing home owners acquitted\nGuardianship reform advocates turn up the heat with town hall, protest\nPalm Beach Circuit Judge Martin Colin announced he would not run for re-election\nDespite legislative and policy strides, advocates for guardianship reform says little has changed in the courtroom: Incapacitated seniors and their families are still being taken advantage of by lawyers and court-appointed professionals while judges turn a blind eye.\nSo in an effort to bring further attention to the issue, an advocacy group that brought about some of those changes plans a town hall on Tuesday in West Palm Beach, followed by a protest in St. Petersburg on Thursday.\n“It’s an attitudinal shift we are looking for in the judges,” said Sam Sugar, co-founder of American Against Abusive Probate Guardianship, who organized all three events. “Somehow these judges shifted position — from implementing laws designed to help vulnerable people and their families to a position of exploiting them instead.”\nIn Palm Beach County, the chief judge last year handed down reforms after The Palm Beach Post reported on conflict of interest, favoritism and complaints concerning former Circuit Judge Martin Colin and his wife, Elizabeth “Betsy” Savitt, who works as a professional guardian.\nAnd Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga has a task force looking into the issue.\nOn Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Sugar will give a lecture to inform seniors and families about how to protect themselves from unethical guardians and their attorneys, followed by a town hall. On Thursday, he will lead a protest march in St. Petersburg that culminates at a meeting of the Pinellas Guardianship Association.\n“We are going to have a very raucous crowd because a lot of victims are coming,” Sugar said of the town hall in West Palm Beach.\n“This is directed toward the general public to educate, to talk about the risks families face simply by the virtue of their address in Palm Beach County and how the probate courts operate,” he said.\nThen on Thursday in St. Petersburg, the group will march to the Yacht Club where professional guardians are meeting to put pressure on the association to rid itself of what the group believes are bad actors depleting the life savings of incapacitated seniors.\n“We want to demand that Pinellas Guardianship Association start protecting people,” he said.\nGuardianship town hall\nWhere: Embassy Suites, 1601 Belvedere Road, West Palm Beach\nWhen: Tuesday 5 p.m. lecture, 6:15 panel\nWho: Sam Sugar and panel, including state Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Delray Beach; attorney Greg Coleman, past president of the Florida Bar; and Anthony Palmieri, deputy inspector general and chief guardianship investigator for Palm Beach County's Clerk & Comptroller. The Palm Beach Post’s John Pacenti will also be on the panel to speak about work on The Post’s series, Guardianships: A Broken Trust.\nLabels: AAAPG, Florida, Guardianships: A Broken Trust, Protest\nLargest Assisted Living Chain In U.S. Sued For Poor Care Of Elderly\nTwenty residents of an assisted living complex in Palm Springs, Calif., missed their medications in a single day because no medical technician was on duty. A woman in a Paso Robles home for seniors pushed her emergency call button after falling in her room and waited 22 hours on the floor with broken bones until staff members responded.\nA class-action lawsuit filed last month in a federal district court in Northern California details those incidents and other similar ones, which allegedly occurred in facilities owned by Brookdale Senior Living, the nation’s largest assisted living provider.\nThe complaint alleges that inadequate staffing, poor worker training and rising fees are part of a “callous and profit-driven approach” that has had “devastating” consequences for Californians living in Brookdale assisted living homes. Residents, it claims, “are left without assistance for hours after falling, they are given the wrong medications, they are denied clean clothing, showers, and nutritious food, and they are left in their own waste for long periods of time.”\nRelatives of the seniors involved in the lawsuit declined to comment. The California Assisted Living Association, an industry group, also declined to comment.\nBrookdale spokeswoman Heather Hunter said in an email that the lawsuit is “without merit” and the company will defend itself “vigorously.”\nTennessee-based Brookdale, which operates 1,121 facilities serving about 100,000 patients in 47 states, has encountered similar complaints elsewhere in the country. A class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., alleges that the company does not adequately staff its assisted living facilities and is not providing the care it promises residents.\nThe plaintiff in that lawsuit, Gloria Runton, claimed the Brookdale home where she lives had assured her she would get personal care services based on an assessment of her individual needs, but that as those needs grew over time, the level of her care did not increase. At the same time, Brookdale nearly tripled her fees, she alleges.\nThe California lawsuit, believed to be the first class-action claim against an assisted living company under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), was filed on behalf of four people currently residing in assisted living homes that Brookdale operates in the state. If the judge certifies the case as a class-action suit, the outcome could affect all residents of Brookdale assisted living facilities in California.\nThe lawsuit cites not only the federal disabilities law but also several California statutes, including ones that protect against unfair business practices and financial abuse of elders.\nBecause the goal is to win the case, good lawyers often file a number of claims, said Stephen Rosenbaum, a lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school and a directing attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, which is not involved in the lawsuit. “Whether the ADA is the strongest claim is unclear from a strategic standpoint,” he said.\nRosenbaum said case law has not established exactly how the federal disability law applies to assisted living facilities. It is “ironic” that the attorneys in this case are using the disability law to sue Brookdale, given that the company by definition serves people with some kind of disability, he said.\nThe California lawsuit alleges that some of Brookdale’s facilities don’t meet federal and state accessibility standards. Some of their bathrooms can’t accommodate wheelchairs, and the company doesn’t have an evacuation or emergency plan for disabled residents, the suit claims. Of the four plaintiffs named in the complaint, three require wheelchairs.\nIf the case is certified as a class-action lawsuit under the ADA, that would be “big news,” said William Goren, a Decatur, Ga.-based attorney and consultant who helps clients comply with the law. That’s because of the nature of the law itself, he said.\nThe ADA is designed to address the disabled as individuals whose disabilities can be accommodated in different ways, Goren said. But a class-action lawsuit requires the “class” of plaintiffs to show that they’ve been injured in the same way.\n“It’s very, very unusual that you could go in and get a class-action certified under the ADA,” Goren said. “It can happen, but not often.”\nIn California, Brookdale Senior Living runs 89 homes and serves up to 5,000 patients, offering various combinations of independent living, assisted living and skilled nursing.\nIn 2014, the company acquired another large assisted living provider, Emeritus, which expanded its presence in California. But the $2.8 billion deal left publicly traded Brookdale with significant staff turnover, declining occupancy and a shaky stock price. A Chinese real estate conglomerate’s recent bid to buy the company reportedly has stalled, creating more uncertainty for Brookdale and the people living in its senior homes.\nResidents of Brookdale’s assisted living facilities don’t require the kind of specialized medical care provided in skilled nursing facilities, but they may need help bathing, using the toilet, taking medications, eating or walking. Some residents need walkers or wheelchairs, while others have mild cognitive impairments or dementia. Seniors who require less care and can cook their own meals often choose independent living homes, which Brookdale also operates.\nLike many assisted living companies, Brookdale typically charges monthly room and board fees, plus separate charges for additional care, such as help with medications. Its average monthly rate for assisted living, including rent, food and some personal care services, is about $4,000, according to the company’s website.\nBoth the California and Florida lawsuits claim that to keep its occupancy levels up, Brookdale accepted assisted living residents who might have required higher levels of care, then failed to provide enough staff to meet their needs.\nThe consequences of leaving residents unsupervised can be severe. In one case, a wheelchair-bound resident of the Brookdale assisted living facility in Elk Grove, Calif., rolled herself out an open door and fell off a curb, breaking her neck, according to an investigation by the California Department of Social Services, which regulates assisted living facilities. The April 2 incident merited a civil penalty, still to be determined, according to the agency’s investigator. That episode was not mentioned in the lawsuit.\nTony Chicotel, a staff attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, which is not involved in the suit, said inadequate staffing is a problem at many assisted living facilities.\nAssisted living salespeople tell seniors they can meet all their current and future needs, Chicotel said. “But … the facility will only staff based on revenue they’re getting … at least at the big facilities.” The bottom line, he said, is that residents “don’t get the care they need.”\nLabels: assisted living facility, California, class action lawsuit, poor care\nLegislature to consider bill to allow removal of mentally incapacitated elected officials\nGary Ott\nSALT LAKE CITY — A bill that would allow the removal of mentally incapacitated elected officials and address troubling situations such as what happened with former Salt Lake County Recorder Gary Ott will have a new chance to become law next year.\nBut it's quite different from proposed legislation that failed to pass in the Utah Legislature earlier this year. And it would only apply to six counties — that is, if they choose to adopt it.\nThe bill has not yet been publicly filed, but its sponsor, Sen. Daniel Thatcher, R-West Valley City, described it as setting the \"highest bar possible\" to remove an elected official with a permanent mental incapacity in order to gather as much support possible from those who fear it could be used as a political weapon.\nThough situations like what happened with Ott — whose health became the subject of more than a year and a half of public questioning and controversy following a Deseret News investigation — are rare, Thatcher said the issue is too important to ignore.\nThatcher has said he once knew Ott as a mentor as a friend, before his health began declining.\n\"Sometimes doing nothing is the best possible thing you can do,\" he said. \"This is not one of those cases.\"\nThatcher urged lawmakers to support the bill so it could be considered by the House and Senate in January, giving it the highest possible chance of passing so counties have a way to address such situations.\nSalt Lake County leaders were able to work with Ott's family to craft the recorder's resignation effective Aug. 1, which was approved by a judge. But that came after more than a year of grappling with how to address the situation, while Ott continued to collect about $190,000 in taxpayer-paid salary and benefits.\n\"At the end of the day, this is what I care about,\" Thatcher said. \"I care that (Ott's) condition was hidden from the public. I care that Salt Lake County came to us and specifically said, 'Please give us a tool to address this in the future and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.' This is the best option I could come up with.\"\nThe Legislature's Political Subdivisions Interim Committee voted Wednesday to pass a draft of Thatcher's bill so it can be considered during the 2018 Legislature.\nThe bill alters a previous proposal from Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake City, that would have implemented a three-tiered process to remove an elected official — requiring a voter petition, a unanimous vote from the applicable governing body, and a court proceeding where a judge could order a medical evaluation of the public officer in question.\nThatcher's bill would not include a voter petition — which lawmakers previously feared could be used to attack a person's political career — but would require a unanimous vote of the elected body (excluding the elected official in question) and would only be applicable to counties that have at least five elected officials on their council or commission.\n\"A unanimous vote is much more compelling than a unanimous vote of two,\" Thatcher said, noting that many counties in Utah have only three commissioners.\nThat would leave only six counties — Salt Lake, Summit, Grand, Cache, Morgan and Wasatch — where the new law would apply, but only if those counties choose to adopt the measure, he said.\nA unanimous vote would then only refer the question of the elected official's removal to a judge, who would then decide whether to order a competency evaluation. That competency evaluation would be carried out by a medical professional who would then report one of only three findings to protect the individual's privacy: \"competent, competent with reasonable accommodations, or not competent,\" Thatcher said.\nHe also noted that if the judge orders a competency evaluation, the county would be required to pay for it. If the judge doesn't order a competency evaluation, the county would then pay the elected official's legal fees.\nThe court could also rule whether the council \"acted in bad faith\" when voting to refer the matter to court, Thatcher said.\n\"So the county has an incentive not to use it unless for reasons as obvious and as egregious as in Salt Lake County (with Ott),\" he said.\nIf the competency review finds the person incompetent, the legislative body could then vote whether to remove the person from office.\n\"I know it's complicated,\" Thatcher said, \"but we've tried to keep it as simple as possible while still making sure there is absolutely no window through which this process can be abused.\"\nThough Thatcher urged the interim committee for unanimous support, Rep. Karen Kwan, D-Murray, voted against it — not because she didn't support it, she said, but so it's not rushed through.\n\"We still have questions in the air about this,\" Kwan said, echoing a concern raised by Rep. Craig Hall, R-West Valley City, about whether an incompetence ruling from a judge might impact an elected official's political future if he or she eventually recovers from the condition.\n\"Is this like the death penalty for this person's political career?\" Hall questioned.\nThatcher said lawmakers could consider \"a million hypotheticals, but at the end of the day, my concern isn't a hypothetical.\"\n\"Well, we write statutes off of hypotheticals all the time,\" Hall said.\n\"Actually, I wrote this for a friend,\" Thatcher rebuked.\nBecause the vote on the bill wasn't unanimous, it will first be considered in a Senate committee during the 2018 legislative session. That panel will then decide whether to send the bill to the full Senate for further debate.\nLabels: bill, Legislation, removal of mentally incapacitated elected officials, Utah\nPlanning for incapacity in blended families is ess...\nBoynton area couple take plea deal in elderly expl...\nTonight on T. S. Radio with Marti Oakley: Yolanda...\nHow to Make Probate Pay: The Ugly World of Human P...\nJury pool shrinks for attempted murder trial of fo...\nCaregiver sentenced for stealing from elderly woma...\nJPMorgan Ordered to Pay More Than $4 Billion to Wi...\n“The elders have the right to be heard and respect...\nPolice looking for woman accused of stealing from ...\nLawyer heads to trial for $400G theft from clients...\nParamedic accused of taking selfies with incapacit...\nGBI makes arrest in disabled, elderly exploitation...\nProtect nursing home residents, not bad facilities...\nSon pleads guilty to his role in exploiting mother...\nTonight on T. S. Radio with Marti Oakley: Abolish...\nWho guards the guardians? State auditor says agenc...\nGuardianship reform advocates turn up the heat wit...\nLargest Assisted Living Chain In U.S. Sued For Poo...\nLegislature to consider bill to allow removal of m...\nUK: Judge Rules Doctors Can Starve Disabled Patie...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line976689"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6996281147003174,"wiki_prob":0.6996281147003174,"text":"Royal Visit 2016-Junior Team Tours the West Coast\nAs published in the Victoria Standard: October 11, 2016.\nThe September 2016 royal tour of British Columbia may temporarily boost Canadian monarchism but a recent Forum poll indicates that support for the house of Windsor is waning. Increasingly, public veneration of royal personalities resembles celebrity wordship; not unlike that bestowed upon movie stars and reality show presidential candidates.\nAs Canadians bask in the reflected grace of the recently-departed royals; I’m compelled to examine our puzzling relationship with this controversial dynasty. Of course, clever language has always helped create mythologies that discourages dissent and fosters deference and obedience to both legitimate and illegitimate authority.\nAside from the official line that the English queen is Canada’s head of state; I fail to see any legitimate reasons to hold royalty in such high esteem nor do I feel personal loyalty to her or anyone arbitrarily presented as my leader. While the queen has little direct power in Canada, her continued presence subtly dignifies our often-ruthless political process with ancient notions like “the crown” and a host of crests and coats of arms.\nAs well, public approval of royalty by elected officials and senior bureaucrats lends credibility to the institution and creates an official barrier to dissent. Underlying it all is an unspoken assumption that the endurance of royalty somehow justifies its highly-subsidized presence.\nThe world is replete with people who are smarter, kinder, tougher, prettier and far nobler than British royalty. Nevertheless, the queen’s family still enjoys pompous descriptors like highness and majesty based mainly on coincidental birth into a family of great wealth and privilege; surrounding by sycophants eager to protect the highly-profitable royal illusion. From time to time; notable individuals are offered a knighthood or membership in some exclusive clique to perpetuate the notion of noble elitism.\nStrict social protocols are another device employed to enhance the royal mystique and solidify the gulf between monarch and “commoner”; a term overdue for deletion. While minor transgressions against the monarch were formerly punished with extreme brutality; today’s trespassers against royal dignity are subject merely to social scorn and catch-all legal sanctions like trespass or public nuisance. The sight of the queen reminds me that she descends from a line that long defended its capricious power to torture and kill as they pleased.\nWhile the duke and duchess of Cambridge confined themselves to Canada’s West coast, the financial burden will be evenly distributed from sea to sea. We are often told that the monarchy is “good value for the money spent” and that eliminating its role in Canadian governance would be “very difficult and might involve changing the constitution” to install a symbolic Canadian-born head of state. However, further empowering a symbolic figure like the governor general to perform all the duties of the monarchy would be very economical. The only way to truly test the subjective value for money claim is to try an alternative. Finally, while changing the constitution was difficult, so was Confederation and World War Two; but we managed those graver situations quite effectively.\nAs a person of Highland ancestry I’ve always been slightly amused to see members of the royal family clad in kilts since they never wear traditional Scottish garb but rather a tartan of their own invention. The Balmoral Tartan is a particularly glaring example of cultural appropriation in that the tartan was created for the royal family’s exclusive use and is protected from commoners by trademark and good taste. Imagine a regular person attempting to attach a patent to one of these fancy hats favored by the queen.\nQueen Victoria purchased Balmoral Castle and estate in 1852 with her personal wealth. Not surprisingly, royal “purchases” are a fairly modern phenomenon since the possession of massive military power made the historical acquisition of royal possessions a mere matter of declaration backed by naked or threatened force. In a recent display of diminishing influence, the Queen has been reduced to offering her official blessing to Canadian institutions like Cape Breton’s Gaelic College, whose board refused the dubious honor.\nBritish citizens may share the royal family’s habit of acquiring Scottish titles like baron or baronet if they are willing to pay thousands and accept the notion of adding only a noble suffix to their name. Only royals, whose titles came gratis, may use a prefix to denote their status. Conrad Black’s lost citizenship case illustrates the headaches of the noble life if one abandons their homeland for a foreign title.\nAccording to the Ottawa Citizen, “While the costs of the upcoming Canadian tour won’t be revealed until after the eight-day trip, past royal visits have yielded hefty price tags. Will and Kate’s 2011 tour cost $1.2 million, a two-day visit by Princess Ann last year cost $128,000, and the Queen’s 2010 nine-day tour came in at $2.79 million…” I’ve never heard a public word of thanks from the Queen regarding the expense of these neocolonial expeditions. Undoubtedly, the royals could afford to finance the privilege of presenting themselves as unique and superior beings. Perhaps the Monarchist League could ease the public burden by volunteering to finance Charles and Camilla’s upcoming vacation to Canada.\nAt a time of ostensible austerity; Harper’s government spent $ 8.1 million public dollars to finance the pomp and ceremony of the queen’s Royal Diamond Jubilee. The original budget was $7.5 million. According to the National Post, “…there were the automatic recipients, not all of whom are held in the highest esteem by Canadians simply by virtue of their positions: Every MP; every Senator; every ambassador, high commissioner and consul general; and the chair of the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians, just to name a few…” A total of 60,000 medals were created and, “…there was the politics. Rideau Hall didn’t just hand every Canadian MP and Senator in the country his own medal, but 30 each (50 to each minister), and a total of 6,000 to the provincial premiers, to dole out as they saw fit.” This bonanza was concurrent with the cynical closing of Veterans Affairs offices across the nation. Heritage minister James Moore stated in the Globe and Mail that, “Canadians should feel honoured to be able to celebrate the “Diamond Jubilee” of a reigning Queen, or the 60th anniversary of the monarch ascending the throne.” I’m not alone in resisting emotive political attempts to define my priorities.\nFortunately, the royal family is mainly subsidized by the taxpayers of Great Britain. For example, returning to the Globe and Mail: “The Queen’s accounts show a 6.7% increase in funding last year to £37.9m, of which she spent £35.7m, setting the rest aside in a reserve account…Royal travel costs rose to £5.1m, up 21% on 2013-4…” Of course, royal protection costs in the UK and during foreign travel are excluded from these totals on convenient basis of national security. Staying home is always an option.\nOf course, Canadians are free to line the roads to smile and wave as the royal carriage glides but ultimately; they are cheering foreign strangers vastly removed from their own daily lives. Nevertheless, the cult yet lives. As monarchist David Warren once said of Queen Elizabeth II, “I shouldn’t have to adore her personally. That she is my Queen is enough.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line121700"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6504404544830322,"wiki_prob":0.6504404544830322,"text":"Home » Scholarship and Determination Lead to Success\nScholarship and Determination Lead to Success\nSchool of Education scholarship student, Ka Baw Say\nKa Baw Say immigrated to the United States with his older brother and sister when he was 19 years old. The Thomas and Theresa Sullivan Scholarship he received in 2018 enabled him to improve his education and his life.\n“We wanted a good future,” says Say of him and his siblings. “Our parents did not come with us. They were worried, but they didn’t want to stop us. They wanted us to have a good life.”\nSay is a member of the Karen immigrant community. Because of political unrest and civil war in his home country of Myanmar, he and his family were constantly moving. At age 7, Say entered a Karen refugee camp in Thailand. He says the next ten years were a struggle.\n“Living in the refugee camp was like animals living in their stables,” Say says. “We did not have an identity. Lives do not really mean anything there.”\nHe felt different when he came to the United States and Kansas City. Within the first few weeks of being in the U.S., Say learned he had many opportunities and could pursue a career if he was willing to work hard.\n“It was a moment when I felt so empowered and so great about myself,” Say says. “All these images came into my mind, my fears were minimized and the same feeling of wanting to become a teacher that I had when I was little came back.”\nSay spent his first three years in Kansas City getting oriented, working and teaching himself English. He did not go to classes or use a tutor, but instead relied on the Internet. He learned quickly and earned his high school equivalency certificate.\nWhen he felt he was ready he began to look for the best fit for college, he chose UMKC in part because of the diversity.\n“I’m not afraid to express myself here. I needed to be in a place where I could be what I want to be,” he says.\nA student in the School of Education, he secured teaching certificates in five subject areas and during his student teaching, discovered a lot about his strengths and weaknesses. He feels that experience will help him do a good job as an educator.\nReceiving the Thomas and Teresa Sullivan Scholarship last year meant more than just financial support.\n“In my family, I am the first generation to attend college,” Say says. “I feel so courageous. Receiving a scholarship is not just getting help to pay off some of my class expenses, but a lot more. It makes me realize that there is someone who does care about me, who does care about my future, who does care about my story and does care about my success. It is amazing to own this feeling and to be filled with what we call spiritual nutrition.”\nTeresa Sullivan, Ph.D., who established the scholarship with her late husband in 2004, was also the first person in her family to go to college. A former teacher, she attended Queens College in New York City. She worked and went to school to pay her expenses, just as Say does. Sullivan encourages students to work hard and persevere.\n“The need for college graduates is high,” Sullivan says. “Some people say they can’t afford to go to college. I say you can’t afford to not go to college. There are many scholarships available. Apply!”\nWhile Say is still humble about his accomplishments, he recognizes that he has learned so much on his journey.\n“Be determined,” he advises. “Life is not simple and easy. Put yourself out there, challenge yourself and get to know your environment.”\nBeyond the work, he has gained insight into what will drive his life’s success. He would like to share his story — perhaps by writing a book — so other people know that they can accomplish the same things.\n“When you can be who you are, that’s when you’re perfect. Be a simple human. Simple, but perfect.”\nTags: Scholarships, School of Education\n« Five Questions with Lisa Baronio, Chief Advancement Officer, UMKC and President UMKC Foundation\nPartners in Progress »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line89871"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7610461711883545,"wiki_prob":0.7610461711883545,"text":"ANDREW OPILA is an editor, photographer & videographer. In those rare moments when he's not holding a camera, he guides active vacations for Backroads. With a B.A. in Broadcasting & Entrepreneurial Leadership from Gonzaga University, he is most at home telling stories in hard to reach, foreign places. It's safe to say he is comfortable with the uncomfortable.\nHe has filmed all over the world and enjoys each step in the digital storytelling process from the conception of a client's idea, to the polished delivery of a work of art. For Andrew, it's not just about making a beautiful image, it's about telling an authentic story. Good storytelling is about capturing the human experience and sharing it in a way people can see & understand. It's about connecting people to ideas that will inspire, challenge & educate. Andrew does all this because it's his way of sharing his time, treasures & talents with the world, in an effort to make our planet and the people in it, better than he found it.\nFollow our story on Instagram: @aopila","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1120059"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7789304852485657,"wiki_prob":0.7789304852485657,"text":"The University of Chicago Library > Special Collections Research Center > Finding Aids > Guide to the Mrs. Patrick Campbell Letters 1905-1938\nGuide to the Mrs. Patrick Campbell Letters 1905-1938\nSeries I:\tCorrespondence\nSeries II:\tPhotographs\nSeries III:\tMiscellaneous Material\nCampbell, Mrs. Patrick. Letters\n0.5 linear feet (1 box)\nMrs. Campbell was an actress and her collection contains primarily correspondence but also includes photographs, newspaper clippings, playbills, and broadsides. Most of the letters are addressed to Mrs. Frank (Harriett) Carolan, later Mrs. Arthur Schermerhorn.\nWhen quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Campbell, Mrs. Patrick. Letters,\nBeatrice Stella Campbell (1865-1940), known professionally as Mrs. Patrick Campbell, was a renowned English actress, famous for her portrayal of characters at once passionate and intelligent. The daughter of Jon Tanner, an English businessman in India, and Maria Romanini, an Italian countess, she began her professional stage career in 1888. Her first great success was as Paula in \"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray\" by Arthur Pinero. Among her famous Shakespearian roles were Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia. She also starred as Mélisande in Maeterlinck's \"Pélleas and Mélisande,\" and in the title roles in Ibsen's dedda Gabler,\" Hofmannsthal's \"Elektra,\" and Yeat's \"Deirdre.\" In 1914 she created the role of Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's \"Pygmalion,\" and she maintained a warm friendship with the playwright. After World War I, she played few new roles, mainly recreating her former starring parts on tour in the United States and England. During the 1930's she also played minor roles in several American films. She died in 1940 in Pau, France.\nThe overwhelming majority of the letters of Mrs. Campbell in this collection are addressed to Mrs. Frank (Harriett) Carolan, later Mrs. Arthur Schermerhorn. In her autobiography, My Life and Some Letters (1922), Mrs. Campbell writes of Mrs. Carolan as \"one of my dearest friends.\" Their friendship was long-standing and Mrs. Campbell often called on Mrs. Carolan for financial aid.\nThe letters fall mainly into two groups, one series between 1905 and 1918, and a second between 1927 and 1938. All of the letters are chatty and informal. The first series, however, deals mainly with her theatrical career. Of some interest are Mrs. Campbell's frequent pungent remarks about American audiences during her tours. Many famous people are briefly mentioned, such as George Bernard Shaw, Charles Laughton, and Katherine Cornell. Mrs. Campbell writes of the opening nights of many of her plays, of accidents, which befell her, such as when she broke her knee-cap in Philadelphia in 1905, and when her hair caught on fire during a performance. A carbon copy of a letter from her son is included in the papers. He was a British officer in World War I and fought at Gallipoli. His long letter movingly recreates the battle conditions existing on that front. He was later killed in France.\nThe second series, material after 1927, reveals clearly the decline in Mrs. Campbell's fortunes, her inability to find work, and her constant money difficulties. The collection includes several letters from Hollywood, where she had gone to find work, but had little success.\nThe collection also includes correspondence of Mrs. Campbell with others. There are also several letters to Mrs. Carolan from her daughter Stella, her son Alan (\"Beo\"), and her second husband, George Cornwallis-West. The collection also includes 14 photographs, 8 of Mrs. Campbell, and some playbills, broadsides, and clippings.\nCampbell, Patrick, Mrs., 1865-1940\nCarolan, Harriet Pullman, 1869-1956\nBSC to Mrs. Cowles\nStella Campbell to Harriett Carolan\nBSC to Harriett Carolan\nBSC to Frank Carolan\nAlan (Beo) Campbell to Harriett Carolan\nBSC to Harriett Cardan\nGeorge Cornwallis-West to Harriett Carolan\nT.W.W. Forest to BSC (Mrs. G. Cornwallis-West)\nEnclosure: Alan (Beo) Campbell to BSC (carbon)\nHarriett Carolan to BSC (copy night letter)\nG. Cornwallis-West to Harriett Carolan\nG Cornwallis-West to Harriett Carolan\nBSC to Harriett Schermerhorn\n(plus 2 clippings, 2 advertisements)\nHelen Arthur to Harriett Schermerhorn\nEnclosures: Cornelia Lunt to BSC (carbon)\nNina Englehart to BSC \"\nPhoto of golden eagle feeding its young\nBSC to Mrs. Tower\nItinerary of tour\nStella Campbell to Harriett Schermerhorn\nElizabeth Carmichael to H. Schermerhorn\nKendall Mussey to BSC\nEnclosures: Draft of speech for BSC\nStatement to press of Mussey\nKatharine Cornell to BSC (telegram)\nStella Campbell to H. Schermerhorn\nEnclosures: clipping of review of play\nI. Van Meter to BSC\nBills for dresses\nBSC to an unknown person\nNotation on envelope of seats for play\nBeatrice Stella Campbell in costume\nSnapshots of BSC\nStella Campbell in presentation gown, 1906\nStella Campbell in snapshot\nStella Campbell in costume\nGeorge Cornwallis-West in portrait, 1915\nMoonbeam, BSC's dog, in 1930's\nPlaybills and broadsides\nNewspaper clippings (reviews of plays and recitals; articles on her life and activities; obituary.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line59408"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6501835584640503,"wiki_prob":0.6501835584640503,"text":"Flanders: a society built on recycling\n1 November 2011, source edie newsroom\nWith its popular recycling parks, fashionable reuse shops and tiny landfill rates for household waste, Flanders in Belgium looks like an unqualified waste management success story. David Gilliver investigates\nFlanders is a great model that other nations should aspire to\nFlanders does not have any natural resources, so it is in its ecological and economic interests to be a recycling society, says Jan Verheyen of the region's waste management policy-making body, OVAM. And a recycling society they certainly are, with the landfill rate for household waste standing at just 1%.\nWaste management in Belgium is a regional issue, and effective cooperation between individual local authorities - whose responsibility it is to collect household waste - and the Flemish level has been a key factor in the region's success, says Verheyen.\nFlanders' drive towards achieving its impressive results began in the early 1980s, when landfill rates for household waste stood at around 50%. The first priority was to boost incineration capacity and shut down illegal and environmentally-unsound landfills, and OVAM still makes sure that landfill is as expensive, and banned for as many items, as possible.\nHousehold collections for paper and cardboard, glass, packaging waste and garden waste were introduced in stages from the early 1990s, and although residents are charged for some of these, perhaps surprisingly there has never been any real resistance.\nThis is because OVAM encourages local authorities to introduce \"differentiated systems\" of payment, says Verheyen, which means that collections for non-recyclable residual household waste are the most expensive for residents, while garden waste is less expensive, although people still have to pay. Hazardous waste, household packaging waste and waste from electronic appliances is collected free. \"Basically, the better you recycle, the less you pay,\" he says.\nAnother important factor is that there are \"take-back\" obligations for industry on some items, he stresses. \"It's the producer's responsibility to take back my old television set, for example, and for that I pay a small recycling fee when I buy a new TV.\"\nLocal authorities also have a degree of autonomy to adapt the Flemish rules to local needs. Rural and urban areas can set different charges and collection frequencies for green waste, for instance, although waste tariffs will usually be the same in neighbouring areas to avoid \"waste tourism\".\nAs well as door-to-door collections there are large subterranean containers for paper, bottles and food waste, which allow trucks to pick up the equivalent weight of 120 waste sacks in a single collection.\nLocal authorities have established popular recycling parks where people can bring things such as garden waste, electrical appliances, oil or tyres. Another success has been the large network of subsidised local \"reuse\" shops, which accept anything from furniture and clothes to electrical goods and toys, and arrange free collection for larger items. Similar initiatives have never proved popular in the UK, so what is the secret?\n\"They're organised on an inter-municipal level and they have to be economically viable, so there isn't a reuse shop in every village or town,\" he says. \"There's always been a strong link with social employment, which has been one factor of their success, and in recent years there's also been a level of hype. It's become trendy to use stuff from the shops, and we've seen their popularity grow year after year.\"\nThe whole thing looks impressive to British eyes, and a crucial element is effective, and sustained, communication and information campaigns. \"You can't just run a campaign once or twice, and then nothing - it's very important to continue those efforts, and very important to involve local authorities. They can adapt your campaigns to a local level.\"\nThese days, industrial waste is more of a priority than household waste, he says. While around 72% of household waste is recycled and 27% incinerated, rates of recycling and reuse for industrial waste stand at around 63%.\n\"But the total amount of industrial waste is much higher, so our main priority is to stimulate Flemish industries and companies to improve their eco-efficiency - to introduce eco-design in their products and processes and to apply cradle-to-cradle principles.\"\nFriends of the Earth resource use campaigner, Julian Kirby, believes that people in the UK are just as keen to recycle, compost and reuse as the Belgians. But, with political differences even within the same parties on issues such as weekly bin collections, compounded by the localism agenda and other competing ideologies, does the political will exist to achieve something similar here?\n\"England's waste policy is incoherent and piecemeal, and lacking in overall ambition and clarity of direction, so at the national government level I think it's fair to say that there isn't the political will, yet, to achieve anything remotely approaching the ambition of Flanders,\" he says.\n\"That said, there is considerable appetite across all sections of the economy for much more ambition on waste, and I've also heard directly from many local councillors that they're hungry for a national government lead on pushing waste policy forward. So the political will is there - everywhere but at the national government level.\"\nDavid Gilliver is a freelance journalist\n| Food waste | Reuse | Food & drink | Food waste | glass | hazardous waste | incineration | packaging | Reuse | Food & drink | Food waste | glass | hazardous waste | incineration | packaging | Reuse","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1313625"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9260437488555908,"wiki_prob":0.9260437488555908,"text":"HRW – Human Rights Watch\nDR Congo: Opposition Under Assault\n(Kinshasa) – Government security forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo used live ammunition and teargas to disperse largely peaceful political opposition rallies during candidate registration in early August 2018.\nAuthorities also restricted the movement of opposition leaders, arrested dozens of opposition supporters, and prevented one presidential aspirant, Moïse Katumbi, from entering the country to file his candidacy for the presidential election scheduled for later this year.\n“Congolese authorities have firmly clamped down on the political opposition in an apparent attempt to control the electoral process,” said Ida Sawyer, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Elections can’t be credible when an opposition leader is banned from participating and opposition supporters risk death, injury, or arrest just for going out on the streets to peacefully support their leaders.”\nThe findings are based on personal and phone interviews in August with more than 45 victims and witnesses of violations, medical workers, activists, and Congolese political party members and leaders in Kinshasa, Goma, and Brussels, Belgium.\nThe Congolese government should end the excessive use of force against opposition supporters, release arbitrarily detained opposition party members and activists, and investigate serious violations and appropriately hold those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities should allow all Congolese to fully and freely participate in the electoral process, including by permitting Katumbi to enter the country and register as a candidate.\nConcerned governments and regional bodies should press President Joseph Kabila and other senior officials to end the repression of the opposition and to ensure that the electoral process is free, fair, and inclusive. The governments and regional bodies should expand targeted sanctions if grave human rights violations continue.\nOn August 1, security forces fired teargas and live ammunition to disperse tens of thousands of supporters who had gathered to welcome the opposition leader and former Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba in the capital, Kinshasa, wounding at least two people. Bemba returned to Congo to register as a presidential candidate after an International Criminal Court (ICC) appeals chamber overturned his war crimes and crimes against humanity convictions on June 8. Soon after Bemba arrived in Kinshasa, security forces blocked him from going to his residence in Kinshasa’s Gombe neighborhood. The authorities claimed his home was in a “presidential zone” that was off limits.\nOn August 2, the mayor of Lubumbashi, in southeastern Congo, issued a written statement that Katumbi would not be authorized to land at the Lubumbashi airport by private plane, as he had requested. Katumbi, who has been living in exile for the past two years due to a series of politically motivated judicial procedures, traveled instead to Zambia and attempted to enter Congo by road at the Kasumbalesa border crossing on August 3. Congolese authorities warned Katumbi that they would immediately arrest him upon his arrival in Congo. But when Katumbi reached the border, officials instead shut down the border and denied him entry.\nSecurity forces fired live ammunition and teargas to disperse the thousands of supporters who came to welcome Katumbi on the Congolese side of the border on August 3, killing at least one person and wounding one other. Dozens of supporters were arrested. Security forces also deployed massively across parts of Lubumbashi and erected roadblocks on major roads, where they systematically searched vehicles.\nPolice also stopped members of parliament and other officials from Katumbi’s political coalition as they drove toward Lubumbashi’s airport, where they were expecting Katumbi to land. “As we tried to pass, a police officer pointed his gun at us and threatened to shoot us if we dared to continue,” one official told Human Rights Watch. “He said he was executing orders from his superiors,” the official said. When the delegation later tried to travel to Kasumbalesa to meet Katumbi there, police stopped them at a roadblock just outside of town and forced them to turn around.\nIn the eastern city of Goma, police prevented Katumbi’s coalition members from holding a peaceful protest on August 3. Protests continued in Lubumbashi and Kasumbalesa over the following days, as authorities continued to refuse to let Katumbi enter the country. On August 6, security forces shot dead a 10-year-old boy and wounded at least four people during protests in Lubumbashi.\nPolice again used teargas to disperse peaceful supporters of another opposition leader, Félix Tshisekedi, when he filed his candidacy for president at the national electoral commission, CENI, in Kinshasa on August 7.\nDespite campaigning by top ruling party officials for the president to make a bid for an unconstitutional third term – and in the face of increasing national, regional, and international pressure to step down – Kabila did not submit his candidacy. He instead chose Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, current permanent secretary of the ruling party and former vice prime minister and interior minister, as the candidate for his electoral platform. In May 2017, the European Union sanctioned Ramazani for his involvement in “planning, directing, or committing acts that constitute serious human rights violations” in Congo.\nIn total, 25 people filed their candidacies for the presidential election during the registration period between July 25 to August 8. Katumbi submitted two complaints to the Conseil d’Etat, the country’s highest court, on August 8, contesting the migration department’s refusal to let him enter the country and calling on the electoral commission to permit him to register to vote and submit his candidacy. The court has not yet issued a decision.\nThe electoral commission published its preliminary list of candidates on August 24, disqualifying six presidential candidates, including Bemba and three former prime ministers, for reasons that many civil society activists and opposition political leaders denounced as arbitrary and politically motivated. Candidates can appeal to the country’s Constitutional Court. The final list of candidates will be published on September 19.\n“Kabila not filing as a candidate is a crucial first step, but a credible electoral process is still a long way off,” Sawyer said. “Persistent pressure from Congo’s regional and international partners is needed for the country to avoid more repression and bloodshed and have a truly democratic transition.”\nThe Quest for New Elections\nOver the past three years, Congolese government and ruling party officials and government security forces have used repression, violence, and corruption to extend their hold on power. President Joseph Kabila remains in office beyond the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit in December 2016.\nSecurity forces have killed nearly 300 people during largely peaceful political protests since 2015, including by recruiting former fighters from the abusive M23 armed group to take part in the crackdown. Security services have arrested hundreds of political opposition supporters and pro-democracy and human rights activists. The intelligence services mistreated many of them and held them in illegal detention for weeks or months, without charge or access to their families or lawyers. Others were put on trial on trumped-up charges.\nA Catholic Church-mediated power-sharing agreement signed on December 31, 2016, and known as the “New Year’s Eve agreement,” called for elections by the end of 2017 and for “confidence building measures” to ease tensions and open political space. Congo’s ruling coalition has largely flouted these commitments, as repression continues, and many political prisoners and activists remain in detention. In November 2017, the electoral commission published an electoral calendar setting December 23, 2018, as the date for presidential, legislative, and provincial elections.\nKatumbi’s case was one of the “emblematic cases” highlighted in the New Year’s Eve agreement’s confidence-building measures. Congo’s conference of Catholic bishops and many others have denounced the irregularities in the judicial proceedings against Katumbi, including political pressure on judges to rule against Katumbi. One judge who refused to hand down a ruling against Katumbi was shot and almost killed by unidentified armed men. In June 2017, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that Katumbi should be allowed to return to Congo and fully participate in the electoral process.\nJustice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba announced on August 16, 2018, that Congo had issued an international arrest warrant for Katumbi.\nIn a statement on August 9, the African Union Commission’s chairman, Moussa Faki, appealed “to all actors concerned to work together, in good faith, to hold peaceful, transparent and truly inclusive elections, in particular by guaranteeing the right of all citizens who wish to compete.”\nOn August 13, the UN Security Council “reiterated that effective, swift and sincere implementation of the [2016 New Year’s Eve] Agreement, including the Agreement’s confidence building measures as well as respect for fundamental rights, and the electorate timeline are essential for peaceful and credible elections on 23 December, a democratic transition of power, and the peace and stability of the DRC.”\nIn an interview with Radio France Internationale (RFI) on August 14, 2018, the Angolan foreign minister, Manuel Domingos Augusto, said that Kabila’s decision not to run was “a big step,” but that more needs to happen “for the electoral process to succeed and achieve the objectives that have been set by the Congolese.” He emphasized the need for full respect of the New Year’s Eve agreement, including the confidence building measures, and for the elections to be inclusive.\nAt a recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Windhoek, Namibia, the Namibian president and new SADC chairman, Hage Geingob, said in an interview with RFI that the crisis in Congo could lead to more refugees fleeing to neighboring countries if it is not resolved. “That’s why, as a sub-regional organization, we intervene to say: colleagues in the region, we have rules about elections,” he said. “They need to be inclusive, they need to be transparent, and the opposition leaders need to have a say.”\nCongolese human rights and pro-democracy groups created an online platform on August 14 with detailed information on the electoral process and 10 conditions they identified as necessary for the elections to be free, fair, transparent, and inclusive.\nThey called for the government to immediately release political prisoners, allow the free return of those living in exile, allow arbitrarily closed media outlets to reopen, ensure independence of the judiciary, and allow freedom for all Congolese to protest peacefully. They also said the electoral commission should reject the use of controversial voting machines thought to pose a danger of vote tampering, clean up the voter roll, and provide transparency in its activities and financing.\nCrackdown on Katumbi Supporters\nWhen Katumbi supporters gathered at the Kasumbalesa border crossing on August 3, security forces killed at least one person and shot and wounded another. Human Rights Watch received credible reports that security forces had killed two other people in Kasumbalesa that day. On August 6, police and soldiers deployed across Lubumbashi, the provincial capital about 90 kilometers from Kasumbalesa. They fired teargas and live ammunition to disperse protesters in several neighborhoods, killing a child and wounding four others. Some of the protesters reportedly set stalls and cars on fire and pillaged shops.\nThe brother of Olivier Tchamala Kambaji, a 19-year-old student and phone airtime vendor, described his brother’s killing in Kasumbalesa on August 3:\nOlivier went out at around 5 p.m. to stock up on units to resell. There had been gunshots earlier when Moïse Katumbi was blocked from entering Kasumbalesa, but we thought things had calmed down by then. Olivier went toward his distributor’s house, and when he got to the railroad tracks, before getting to the main road, he heard shots. He immediately started to run in the opposite direction, but unfortunately a bullet hit him in the lower part of his back as he was running. He fell to the ground. Just next to him, another young man fell down. He had been hit in his shoulder.\nOlivier’s friend then called me to tell me what happened, and he said he was taking them to the hospital. But on their way, a police jeep stopped them and took Olivier and the other man who was hit. The police said they would take them to the hospital, but we learned later that they instead drove around with them until the next day, when they were taken to a hospital in Lubumbashi. I got word that he was there, so I drove to Lubumbashi. The people at the hospital told me Olivier was already dead when he arrived. So I can’t tell you now whether he died right away or if he died while with the police and could have been saved. It’s revolting!\nA 19-year-old man who sold cigarettes said that security forces shot and wounded him in Kasumbalesa on August 3:\nOn my way home [from work], I saw a lot of trouble near the railroad. People were burning tires and throwing stones. I hurried past them. But then the police started firing teargas and live bullets at the crowd. Then I felt something hit me, and I fell down immediately. I did not even see the bullet coming. I was in a lot of pain. The bullet had entered my upper thigh and came out through my back. I was taken to the hospital where the doctors operated on me. They say I need a second operation, but I don’t have the money to pay for it. I am in a lot of pain, and I am waiting for God’s help.\nA 32-year-old mason said that his 10-year-old son, Gédéon Ntumba Kalala, was killed by a stray bullet in Lubumbashi on August 6:\nOn Monday [August 6], I stayed at our home in the Katuba Kananga neighborhood because of the trouble in the city. My second son, Gédéon, was playing with his friends in front of our house. The protests weren’t on our road, but when the shots began, people began fleeing through our neighborhood. It was between 11 a.m. and noon. There were a lot of gunshots, and I didn’t have time to hide or tell the kids to take cover. Gédéon’s back was to the road, and then all of a sudden, I saw him fall over. I ran over to him and saw that he had been hit by a bullet in his lower back, close to his spine. I took Gédéon in my arms and screamed for somebody to come help me. My son bled and suffered. He breathed heavily and was already unconscious.\nGédéon was quickly taken to the hospital, but he could not be saved, his father said.\nA 34-year-old vendor of second-hand clothes in Lubumbashi said she was shot on August 6:\nIn the morning, we heard noise coming from the road. There were lots of shots fired. I learned that there were demonstrations to demand the return of Moïse Katumbi. I didn’t dare leave my house that day and go out to sell clothes. Then around 11 a.m., I was outside doing laundry when I heard a noise and felt that something had hit me in my pelvis. It was a little hot, but it didn’t hurt right away. Then I looked down and saw blood. I started to scream and cry. My mother quickly took my dress off and we saw that a bullet had hit me. My brother immediately left to get a taxi to bring me to the hospital. A doctor eventually operated on me and extracted the bullet.\nI think I was lucky that day, but the police must not shoot live rounds at people during a demonstration. Protestors can die and even others who have nothing to do with it, like me, can be hit by stray bullets.\nOn August 3, Congolese police and migration officials held up for questioning a Congolese correspondent with Radio France Internationale, Baudouin Kamanda Wa Kamanda, as well as two parliament members and two university professors, after they returned to Congo from Zambia. The officials drove them to the provincial capital, Lubumbashi, under the pretext of ensuring their protection and handed them over to the migration agency director in Lubumbashi. The group was released shortly after.\nPolice stopped a Congolese journalist with Canal Congo Télévision on the road as he was traveling to Kasumbalesa to cover Katumbi’s return. He said:\nWe were about 20 kilometers from the town [of Kasumbalesa] when three police jeeps came and told all drivers to return to Lubumbashi. There was a long line of vehicles at a standstill because of a roadblock further ahead. We turned back, and I started filming the long line of vehicles. About 30 kilometers away from Kasumbalesa, ANR [national intelligence] agents and police officers came up to me, grabbed me, and snatched my phone and my camera. They started checking the images I had filmed, and they later told me that I had compromised state security.\nThe journalist said that the ANR agents held him for about four hours in a house about 20 meters from the road, near a police office. They erased the images he filmed and released him after returning US$150 of the $200 they had taken from him, he said.\nDozens of Katumbi supporters were also arrested at the border with Zambia on August 3 and 4. At least 64 of them, all men, were taken before a judge on August 10 and accused of various charges, including “rebellion,” “inciting civil disobedience,” “intentional destruction of goods or property,” and “aggravated theft.” They were again taken before a judge on August 22 and remain in detention in Kasapa, Lubumbashi’s central prison.\nRights Violations Against Bemba and His Supporters\nWhen Bemba returned to Congo on August 1 after 11 years abroad, police restricted him and his supporters’ movements. The secretary-general of Bemba’s Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) political party, Eve Bazaiba, said that authorities made last-minute changes to their agreed-upon itinerary the day before Bemba’s arrival:\nTwo weeks before Bemba arrived, we had already agreed with the city authorities on the itinerary that he would take with his supporters after leaving the airport. But to our surprise, [police] General [Sylvano] Kasongo informed us the day before Bemba arrived that only two protocol officers would be able to welcome him on the tarmac, and only 10 people could wait for him in the [airport] VIP lounge. Upon leaving the airport, his motorcade was not to drive at less than 40 kilometers per hour, stop, or slow down. If he dared to stop, the police would use teargas or any other tool at its disposal to disperse his supporters, Kasongo told us.\nWhen Bemba arrived, security forces used excessive force, firing teargas and live ammunition to disperse the tens of thousands of supporters who had peacefully gathered to welcome him. At least two people were shot, according to MLC party officials and hospital records seen by Human Rights Watch. In the commotion as people fled, several people fell and were hurt or were trampled.\nA Congolese journalist covering Bemba’s return said:\nWhen Jean-Pierre Bemba’s motorcade left Ndjili airport, a large crowd of supporters followed. Not far from the airport, police began firing [tear]gas at the crowd and live bullets into the air to prevent the supporters from accompanying the motorcade. The crowd was in complete disarray and people fled in all directions. Some of them jumped over the airport fence to take refuge. Once inside the compound, Republican Guard soldiers fired into the air to chase them away. The supporters had to jump over the fence again and several of them hurt themselves. It’s clear that the police didn’t want Bemba to be accompanied by a big crowd of his supporters.\nAn MLC activist was wounded as police dispersed the activists accompanying Bemba’s motorcade:\nSeveral people accompanied Bemba’s motorcade as he left the airport. I was one of them. When we crossed the airport’s entrance onto the main road, the crowd outside began demanding that Bemba walk with them. That’s when the police started shooting at us with [tear]gas and bullets in the air. I then climbed over the airport fence to find shelter, but I fell on my head and injured myself. Afterward, the other police officers who were inside the airport perimeter started shooting in the air to chase us away. I was forced to jump over the wall again despite my head injury. First-aid workers from the Red Cross eventually came to my rescue and drove me to the hospital.\nLater in the day, after Bemba greeted his supporters at his party’s provincial headquarters and left to go to the central Gombe commune, an activist said that the police dispersed Bemba’s supporters with teargas as his motorcade approached:\nAs we sat on the ground waiting for Bemba’s motorcade to arrive, riot police and regular police jeeps were parked on the side of the road. A message began to circulate that Bemba’s motorcade was leaving his party’s [provincial] headquarters, and the supporters began to mobilize to welcome him. The police then deployed the riot trucks on the road to prevent the crowd from moving forward. As Bemba’s convoy approached, the police started firing teargas. It was a total mess. I saw people running in all directions. Some fell to the ground and were trampled on.\nLater that day, police also prevented Bemba from staying in his family residence on Pumbu Avenue in Gombe commune, where most government and UN offices and embassies are located. Bazaiba said she had been informed of that change by Kinshasa’s provincial police commissioner the day before Bemba’s arrival:\nGeneral Kasongo told me that it was inconceivable that Senator Bemba dared to reside within 100 meters of the PPRD [ruling] party headquarters and within less than one kilometer from the president’s residence. He said these were orders received from the hierarchy. Bemba had to instead spend his entire visit at an office in the “GB” commercial complex owned by his family.\nKasongo told journalists on August 1: “I received instructions that I must enforce. Bemba can go stay at the Memling [a well-known hotel in Kinshasa] or elsewhere, but not in Pumbu.”\nAfter Bemba filed his candidacy at the electoral commission on August 2, security forces again fired teargas to disperse his supporters.\nOn August 24, the electoral commission rejected Bemba’s candidacy on the grounds that he had been convicted for witness tampering in a separate ICC case. Congolese law prohibits those found guilty of corruption from running for president. MLC officials have contended that witness tampering does not amount to corruption, and on August 27, Bemba’s lawyers appealed to the Constitutional Court to overturn the decision.\nKinshasa: Sicherheitskräfte setzten Anfang August 2018 Schusswaffen und Tränengas ein, um großteils friedliche Demonstrationen der Opposition aufzulösen; mindestens 2 Tote und mehrere Verletzte; Dutzende Festnahmen\nhttps://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/28/dr-congo-opposition-under-assault","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line257219"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6595988273620605,"wiki_prob":0.34040117263793945,"text":"Home » Forums » Game Design » Game Design Workshop » Axis Mundi Introduction and Playthrough Video - Feedback Wanted\nAxis Mundi Introduction and Playthrough Video - Feedback Wanted\n37 replies [Last post]\nquestccg\nBHH and Wil Wheaton\nHello Peter,\nYou can watch the game being played by Wil Wheaton and friends at Geek & Sundry:\nhttps://geekandsundry.com/shows/tabletop/page/6/\nThere are I believe some interviews too... BHH is on that page and you can click on the correct video to watch the game being played.\nYour game is VERY \"different\". But it reminds me of BHH because of the \"Traitor\" mechanic where \"something\" happens and then the game is out-of-whack and players are scrambling to defeat the \"Traitor\" while trying to ensure that they don't die in the process.\nSo it's got a 2-Phase system much like Axis Mundi (AM). AM is players race to the middle and one (1) player emerges as an Angel or Demon. And then the play style changes. Well BHH does the exact thing. Except ONE (1) of the players is a Traitor and has lured the others to be sacrificed.\nAnyhow no worries about the \"ideas\". Just wanted to share some insights into how to make the game LESS \"abstract\" and more defined. I don't expect you to change the entire game. Just pointed out some things to consider.\nHmm... Strange?!?!\nIt looks like the videos from Geek and Sundry are not working... It's too bad because watching Wil and his friend PLAY the game was really interesting to see and watch. It may be a little longer than a Tom Vasal Dice Tower review... But then again you've made an almost 4 hour long video about your game. It might be reasonable to expect you to watch a 45 - 60 minute playthru video from Wil & co.\nI'm very disappointed that the link did not work. Because the video was FUN to watch and (spoiler alert) Wil turns out to be the Traitor who goes on a mad rampage 3/4 the way into the game...!\nYou can maybe find other playthru videos ... not sure. But one thing for certain the TableTop review would have been the best example to see HOW the game was played and also how I draw some comparison in terms of the overall gameplay.\nMy apologies for giving you a broken link... I don't know where else you may find a more (or at par) video with sufficient playing to get a REAL feel for the game.\nSincerest apologies.\npeterthull\nBHH and AM end idea\nI found the BHH Geek & Sundry video on YouTube at the following addresses:\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MINNKyE4fjs (pt. 1) & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbQwxQIhbw (pt. 2)\nYeah, definitely a different vibe (and gameplay) than I was going for, but interesting (and fun!) design.\nInstead of your Angel/Demon vs. Opponents endgame idea, what do you think of the following idea I came up with: the game gradually tips the scales in the Angel/Demon’s favor using a leveling mechanic. The first Angel/Demon has the powers as they are right now. The second Angel/Demon gets a six-card hand limit instead of the normal five. The third Angel/Demon gets the same, plus a Scrounge (retrieving a card of their choice from the discard pile). The fourth gets a seven-card hand limit and a Scrounge. The fifth gets the same seven-card limit and 2 Scrounges, while the sixth automatically wins the game.\nA shorter version might be better: the second Angel/Demon gets a 6 card hand limit and a Scrounge, the third gets a 7 card hand limit and 2 Scrounges, and the fourth automatically wins.\nFinding a solution versus FUN...\nNot sure I understand your Angel/Demon ideas... One thing is to find a solution to \"finishing the game\" and then there is allowing the players to have \"FUN\" playing the game.\nRight now, from what I have seen is that IF you become an Angel/Demon only YOU can WIN the game. If you are killed, the cycle/race starts anew. THIS is BAD! It will make the game longer and result in players giving up (at some point in time). Don't you think over 3.5 hours is TOO LONG for a game?\nThe game should be 60 to 90 minutes (on the average).\nIt's not just a problem that your VIDEO was LONG. The GAME is TOO LONG. That's why I referred you to BHH, because players take their time exploring the House BEFORE the \"Traitor\" (Climax) is revealed. And then it's either the Traitor wins or the other players win (by surviving).\nYou do have a TIME/LENGTH of play issue. However I don't think you understand, I referred you to BHH because that game has SOLVED the length of time issue. At first I had my own reservation of BHH... But after watching the AM video, I am positive that BHH does well be \"quickly\" resolving the game either way: #1. The traitor defeats the other players #2. The players defeat the traitor.\nHowever it happens rather quickly as opposed to the \"exploration\" of the house (which is generally longer and consumes most of the game time).\nYou need to FIND ways to \"simplify\" the game, it's length ... and all the while preserving or \"enhancing\" replayability. Just because your intro says that a bird comes down to do your bidding, doesn't mean you can't change the story to fit a more diversified crew of familiars.\nAnyhow I do want to wish you good luck with your game. But I still think you don't realize that the duration of the game is much too long. And what is paramount is that EVEN YOU didn't finish your own playthru video...\nI made a new video, a game \"trailer\". It's 3 minutes long, and can be found at the same link: https://www.betterliferesources.com/axismundi/\nI tried to have it answer all the questions that a sales video would, as mentioned previously by ceethreepio. But I guess I wouldn't consider it a typical sales video, as I have nothing to sell. Its CTA is just to get the right people interested enough keep scrolling.\nI know that it was advised to keep a video like this between 30-60 seconds. I think I heard somewhere that the shorter the copy is, the harder it is to write, and I just haven't figured out how to reach that level of brevity yet.\nP.S. Thanks questccg for the feedback and well wishes.\nWatched 50% of the video...\nYou need some kind of \"co-opetive\" style of gameplay IMHO. What this means is that in order to ascend the volcano to the top, players must co-operate but at the same time \"compete\" against their fellow opponents.\nHere's the way I see it (and you can critique all you like — if you find just one nugget of wisdom useful, my job will be done):\n1. The original (3:50 Video) first phase of the game was making your way to the Axis Mundi. This was like a RACE, since players start at different locations. During this phase what was observed was that players seem to be separately distant enough to not \"enter into melee combat\"...\nSo it's a RACE to the top and ...\n2. Next comes the second phase which is the opponents are trying to STOP the player who won the race from escaping the island. This was all about fighting and melee combat, defeating the \"demon/angel\" was paramount... And so the opponents would co-operate to defeat the \"demon/angel\". If the \"demon/angel\" dies, the process restarts anew...\nAnd then it's a RACE to the top AGAIN ...\nClearly you need to work on simplifying the game. Ideally you would want only ONE (1) Phase. And in this one (1) phase IDEALLY you would want to BLEND all the different actions together.\nSo it could be a RACE to the Axis Mundi ... And the first player who reaches it WINS. That sounds logical.\nYou need to \"extend\" the race phase to include more actions and interaction between the players. You CANNOT simply make it a RACE to the top and ... well ... that's it.\nYou need to change it so that it is EVEN MORE \"Puzzle-ish\". How... Like I said co-opetive style of play. Instead of bonuses in the crates, you should need to put \"special artifacts\" that each player requires to make it to the top of the volcano.\nFor example: the Golden Statuette.\nInstead of all kinds of PERK cards for your crates, you choose four (4) cards, which are the \"artifacts\" and YOU must collect three (3) out of four (4) of them and then race to the Axis Mundi. These are all secret... But the \"artifacts\" ON THE BOARD are REVEALED. So there is HIDDEN information AND PERFECT information.\nBut as a player MOVES to get an ARTIFACT, he can be attacked (Melee) to stop him from returning the artifact that he needs to HIS WAREHOUSE.\nThe DEAL about the Puzzle-ish style of play is when there is contention for one artifact required by 2 players. Then it becomes a RACE to GET IT and to RETURN IT to a warehouse...\nSo THIS style of gameplay would encourage players to co-operate like make TRADE deals (playing nicely) or dirty stealing (by immobilizing a player with his/her familiar) and then returning that \"artifact\" to his/her warehouse.\nDo you understand how DIFFERENT this style of play is???\nBut there is something to be said about this style... It's more about travelling the board and avoiding the enemy while getting the artifacts YOU need to make it into the Axis Mundi...\nThink about it...\nThis style of play BLENDS the two (2) phases into ONE! No longer it's about racing to the top and back trying to survive... It's about co-opetive play where you race up and back several times to get the RIGHT artifacts for your warehouse.\nOnce you have the three (3) of four necessary artifacts in your warehouse, you are crowned the victorious player and leave the island with your booty!\nI know ... it's so very different. But I've tried to streamline the game a bit and blend the phase together so players can compete and collaborate too.\nOf course feel free to \"dig out\" any nugget from this and see what could be appropriate for YOUR game. I'm not telling you HOW to design your game, I'm just offering up an \"alternative\" VISION as to how you put everything TOGETHER and land up with a 60 to 90 minute game time.\nBest of luck(!?) with your game @Peter. Hope some of this you find interesting and helps your with ideas about how to \"streamline\" the game into something more playable.\nquestccg, thanks for sharing\nquestccg, thanks for sharing your idea. I took a while to think about it before responding.\nI appreciate the thought you put into your “redesign”, for lack of a better word.\nThe game, as I have designed it, and what I was going for, is a mid to heavy weight, multi-stage competitive race focused on tactics, with 3 primary mechanics: grid movement, hand management, and action selection. The reason I choose this style of game is personal preference, but also for thematic reasons – to pay homage to S’s plot and theme on a straight-forward and symbolic level.\nThe ideas you are proposing, as I understand them, would make it into a cooperative pick-up and deliver game with set collection and negotiation as the primary mechanisms. Those seem like two entirely different games to me. Perhaps yours would be the better game – I can’t say. What I can say is that I am exhausted, and I’m not sure that I could re-build this game from the ground up, even if I wanted to.\nI am not convinced that the multi-stages of the race are “bad”. I think the game’s transition from being cooperative to competitive makes the co-op phase fraught with tension, because you can never commit to being fully cooperative with an opponent that would actually benefit from stabbing you in the back if they could get away with it, so it leads to opportunities for betrayal. In addition, it adds to the game’s tactics: not only do you need to think about defeating the Angel/Demon, but also not getting caught with your pants down when you do.\nI am also not convinced that the game is too long. You asked, “Don’t you think 3.5 hours is too long for a game?” For most board games, yes. But some games can be so epic as to warrant long playtimes (see Twilight Imperium). As for Axis Mundi, I am adjusting the rules to make the game end after 3 Angel/Demon cycles. Maybe that will be a good length. I haven’t playtested it yet, but I think with that adjustment it will be at most a 3-hour game, assuming no analysis paralysis. I estimate that if a game was played quickly, or with a victory in the first cycle, a game could be finished in under an hour. Keep in mind, the playthrough video was 3 and a half hours long because it explained all the rules and tactics in detail. Obviously, a regular game moves much faster.\nI am not saying you are wrong in your analysis, I would just like more people’s opinions to give me more data points.\nYou stated…“[You didn’t] even...finish your own playthrough” I ended the playthrough because it was getting really long and because I figured I had already put enough work into it. If I had continued, it would have demonstrated the endgame, which has new tactics for both the Angel/Demon and their opponents. It becomes a game of cat and mouse around Cave, Power, and Warehouse Hexes. The board’s layout is designed for this and I think it makes for a dramatic ending.\nAgain, thank you. Your thoughts are appreciated and your ideas are very interesting. It’s very helpful to me to get a fresh take on my project.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line350766"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7527804374694824,"wiki_prob":0.7527804374694824,"text":"Books from Finland - A literary journal of writing from and about Finland.\nVesa Oja\nFindians, Finglish, Finntowns\n16 May 2013 | Extracts, Non-fiction\nWorkers, miners, loggers, idealists, communists, utopians: early last century numerous Finns left for North America to find their fortune, settling down in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario. Some 800,000 of their descendants now live around the continent, but the old Finntowns have disappeared, and Finglish is fading away – that amusing language cocktail: äpylipai, apple pie.\nThe 375th anniversary of the arrival of the first Finnish and Swedish settlers, in Delaware, was celebrated on 11 May. Photographer Vesa Oja has met hundreds of American Finns over eight years; the photos and stories are from his new book, Finglish. Finns in North America\nDrinking with the workmen: The Työmies Bar. Superior, Wisconsin, USA (2007)\nThe Työmies Bar is located in the former printing house of the Finnish leftist newspaper, Työmies (‘The workman’). The owners, however, don’t know what this Finnish word means, or how to pronounce it.\nThe Työmies Society, which published the newspaper of the same name, Työmies, was founded in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1903 as a socialist organ. It moved to Hancock, Michigan the following year.\nPartly as a result of the hostile climate prevailing in Hancock, partly because of the failure of the copper strike of 1913–1914, the newspaper was moved to Superior, Wisconsin in 1914. In 1950 Työmies, by then a Communist newspaper, was merged with another Communist organ, Eteenpäin (‘Forwards’), in Yonkers, New York, to create Työmies-Eteenpäin. It continued to be published from Superior, Wisconsin into 1995.\nFinnish American Reporter, which began as an insert to Työmies-Eteenpäin in 1986, was intentionally created as an English-language newspaper for all Finns without political or religious affiliation – so it is a separate paper from Työmies-Eteenpäin. In 2000, the Finnish American Reporter and all its assets were signed over by the Työmies Society to Suomi College (Finlandia University), which used to be the Työmies Society’s bitter enemy.\nFormer glory: Quincy Mine, Hancock, Michigan, USA (2005). Photo: Vesa Oja\nLocated on the Keweenaw Peninsula, Hancock was a center for the Copper Country Finns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Keweenaw was known among the Finns as Kuparisaari (Copper Island) and there were many mining towns and logging sites there. A great number of Finns worked in the mines throughout the heyday of the mining industry. In the early days, the Finns called Hancock ‘Amerikan Lappi’ (The Lapland of America).\nDating from 1896, Suomi College (present-day Finlandia University) was founded and led by Finnish clergymen to give local young people a chance for higher education and a better life. One of the core missions of Suomi College was to train Lutheran clergymen. English was also taught there. Pastor Rudolf Kemppainen playfully called Suomi College ‘the Finnish shoe factory’, because it produced so many pairs (married couples).\nThe Finnish American Heritage Center & Historical Archive at Finlandia University is the present-day hub of local Finnish American activities, as well as one of the larger repositories of Finnish American archival materials and art. The monthly Finnish American Reporter is published in Hancock.\nStill swimming: Finn Camp, Wixom, Michigan, USA (2010). Photo: Vesa Oja\nBetween Loon Lake and Sun Lake there is a narrow, boggy isthmus where the Finns of the 14th Street Hall in Detroit established the Detroit Finnish Co-operative Summer Camp Association and its resort site.\nAt first, in the 1920s, families spent the summer here in tents while the men went to work in the city. The area was gradually developed, with a sauna and pier first, followed by a diving tower. The swimming site is warmly remembered – regardless of political affiliation. A dance hall and a sports ground were later built volunteers.\nThe athletics field was built on boggy ground, which had to be filled with wrecked cars. Golf, baseball and football were played; the Voima athletics club is still active. There were several outdoor dance floors, because the venues had to be changed according to the mosquito situation. There were weekly dances and theatrical performances in the hall. The tents were replaced by small cabins, which finally numbered over a hundred.\nUtopia deserted: Sointula, British Columbia, Canada (2006). Photo: Vesa Oja\nMatti Kurikka was a charismatic Finnish Labour leader whom the local Finnish miners invited to lead an association on Malcolm Island, northeast of Vancouver island, at the beginning of the 20th century. At first, 150 people settled there, braving severe conditions to create a new future as a utopian community named Sointula. The settlers, who called themselves the People of Kaleva, and elected as their leader Matti Kurikka, who instilled faith in their opportunities, even though the land was almost untillable.\nWithin a few years, the extremely difficult conditions, a fire that destroyed the colony’s dormitory and bad luck with finances undermined Kurikka’s position as leader. His ideas on gender equality spread outside the community and were thought to advocate the sharing of wives. Finally, unsuccessful bridge-building ventures on the mainland wrecked trust in Kurikka’s leadership, and he was forced to leave the island.\nAfter Kurikka and his supporters left the island following the utopian experiment, new livelihoods began to evolve in Sointula from fishing, boat building and logging. There are still some 200 descendants of the Finns on the island, of whom approximately 40 speak Finnish. In the late 1960s, young Americans avoiding the war in Vietnam moved to the island, which became an interesting mixture of the descendants of Finnish utopian socialists and American hippies.\nA Findian: Aliina Charging Hawk, Duluth, Minnesota, USA (2011). Photo: Vesa Oja\nAliina studies chemistry and pharmacy at the University of Duluth. She misses, however, the Deer River and the nearby Leech Lake Indian Reservation, where her 13- and 3-year-old children are waiting for her. She feels lost in the city in other ways, too.\nShe worked for eight years in a casino, but went on to study, because she wants to become a pharmacist. She also wants to help the people of the reservation.\nAliina is a Findian; her father is Sioux-Lakota and her mother is of Finnish ancestry.\nFinn Creek: Raymond Bentley, New York Mills, Minnesota, USA (2011). Photo: Vesa Oja\nRaymond Bentley’s grandmother’s place, the old Tapio farm, is now the Finn Creek Open Air Museum. His mother was born there, the daughter of Siffert from Jurva, and Wilhelmiina, from Ii in Northern Finland. They were granted the homestead in 1900.\nRaymond Bentley’s parents were Norman and Tekla Bentley. The father’s family was originally named Penttilä. One of Raymond’s nephews recently changed his name back to Penttilä.\nRaymond (85) spent his whole working life as a first mate of an iron freighter on the Great Lakes. He would sail seven days a week from Marquette to Cleveland and Buffalo; his only longer holidays at home were at Christmas time. Now in retirement, he volunteers at the Finn Creek Museum.\nHomeward bound: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada (2011). Photo: Vesa Oja\nSontiainen is an amusing, intriguing and tragic story of homesickness. The unfortunate Tom Sukanen had lost his family. Studying the map [in the 1940s], he noticed he could return to Finland by ship from the middle of Canada. The vessel would first have to be dragged 17 miles to a river leading to the Arctic Ocean and from there back home to Finland. The boat was fitted out for Sukanen and his horse.\nSukanen never managed to get the vessel to the river. He now lies buried next to his boat, Sontiainen (Finnish for ‘dung beetle’)\nFinglish. Finns in North America. Pohjois-Amerikan suomalaisia\nThe stories behind the photos: Päivi Oja\nHelsinki: Musta Taide / Aalto ARTS Books, 2013. 239 p., ill.\nGraphic design: Jorma Hinkka, Graafiset Neliöt Oy\nEnglish translation: Jüri Kokkonen\nThe exhibition Finglish is open until 28 July at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki.\nTags: cultural history, history, photography\nMia Halonen\n22 May 2013 on 11:53 am\nThank you, this is so interesting! Many present day Finns don’t know anything about the rich history of Finnish Americans.\nAl Holmes\n23 May 2013 on 4:41 pm\nI am a descendent one of those Finns who migrated to North America in the early 1900’s. My grandfather, Lauri Halonen, came to Northern Ontario to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He moved to a small town on the north shore of Lake Superior, Schreiber. He and my grandmother Maria (Sirkka) had several children, who in turn had several children and so on. The Halonen family in Canada and the US is now a large and dispersed group with its own website, http://www.halonenfamily.org. Visit us.\ngloria walden\n23 June 2013 on 6:13 pm\nI would like to know how to purchase a copy of the book Finglish by Vesa Oja.\nSoila Lehtonen\ntry the Academic Bookstore in Helsinki:\nhttps://akateeminen.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/en/akateeminencom-akasales\nAnna-Liisa Raatikainen\n1 February 2016 on 4:53 am\nI find these stories interesting. Wish I would know where to find more information about us Finns in Canada and USA. One thing I must admit is that I have not, intentionally, learned Finglish, although know it quite well – “Kyllä meellä on kolomen petiruuma houssi, yks niistä upsteella. Ja kahen auton kraatsi. Karpitsit pittää viijä highwain varteen.” Someone gave me a book in Finglish and I find it fascinating to read.\nI came to Canada in 1968 so I am a very new Finn abroad, and was fortunate, through internet, find relatives from my father’s side in Montana, Minnesota and Michigan. I am a Canadian Finn!\nTrackbacks/Pingbacks:\nFindians, Finglish, Finntowns | Delaware Online\n17 May 2013 on 9:42 am\n[…] Delaware Online Headlines […]\nThe Editors: Positive fools (This 'n' that)\nThe Editors: American Girl goes America (In the news)\nThe Editors: More light! Mehr Licht! (In the news)\nVesa Oja (born 1953) is a photojournalist who lives in Helsinki. His previous book, Toinen Eurooppa (‘The other Europe’), consisting of photos taken during the Bosnian war, was published in 1999.\n© Writers and translators. Anyone wishing to make use of material published on this website should apply to the Editors.\nBooks from Finland, PO Box 259, FI-00171 Helsinki, Finland","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1092205"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9414277076721191,"wiki_prob":0.9414277076721191,"text":"Business News and World News\nAsia Pacific News\nFor Prince Harry, No Special Treatment in Canada\nJanuary 14, 2020 by Our Review Site\nOTTAWA — Queen Elizabeth II may have blessed plans by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, to become part-time residents of Canada, but the monarch’s status as the country’s formal head of state doesn’t mean the couple can expect any special treatment on many fronts.\nWhen it comes to immigration, taxation and even what they call themselves, Harry and Meghan will be no different from any other newcomers to Canada.\nBut one area where they could receive unique consideration is their personal security.\nThe couple, known formally as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have offered little detail about their plans, including where they intend to live in Canada, how much of their time they will spend in the country and how they plan to become independent of funds set aside by Britain for its royals.\nBut when they do make their move, the duke and duchess won’t get a V.I.P. pass through immigration.\n“There are no provisions in the Citizenship Act that confer Canadian citizenship status to members of the royal family,” Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, a government department, said in a statement. “In order to become legal permanent residents of Canada, they would need to apply through our normal immigration processes.”\nThe statement added, “However, members of the royal family are not required to seek authorization to come to and stay in Canada as visitors.”\nExperts in Canadian immigration law suggested that to avoid a number of complexities, the couple would be just visiting rather than calling Canada home.\nFor example, many of the ways to get permanent residency in Canada require applicants to have specialized skills or high levels of education. Prince Harry trained as a military officer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, but he does not have a university degree, which lawyers said would be a major stumbling block for him.\n“I doubt very much they would apply for permanent residency,” said Sergio R. Karas, an immigration lawyer in Toronto. “That would not be a good option for them.”\nAs visitors, the couple can remain in Canada for up to six months without any sort of special visa. The catch, however, is they wouldn’t be able to work in the country, where coins and $20 bills bear likenesses of the queen, if that is indeed part of their financial freedom plan.\nHelen Park, an immigration lawyer with the Dentons law firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, said that while they couldn’t seek employment, they could manage businesses based outside Canada while there as visitors.\nIf they decide to seek residency with the right to work in the country, there are several possible channels they could explore of varying difficulty and plausibility.\nThe easiest, but perhaps least likely, avenue would be for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration minister to grant them residency on “compassionate grounds.”\n“But is Harry going to say, ‘My grandmother is chasing me out of England’?” Mr. Karas said.\nThe government, Ms. Park said, could also declare them to be people of significant economic social or cultural benefit to Canada — a measure commonly used for prominent scientists, artists or literary figures.\nEither form of queue cutting might prompt a political backlash.\nWhile Canada is generally welcoming to immigrants, the process is expensive and time-consuming for many of them. As a result, many recent immigrants might resent any jumping in line by the royal couple.\nAlso, a large percentage of new Canadians include people from places like India, where the British monarchy is still strongly associated with colonial repression by some people.\nThe duchess of Sussex’s past life in Canada could, in theory, also provide the couple a way into Canada as residents.\nAn American, she lived in Toronto for several years while filming the American television legal drama “Suits,” when she was known as Meghan Markle. While her immigration status during that time is not public information, Canada has a special visa provision for actors working on foreign film and television productions in the country.\nMs. Park said some of her actor clients had used their time in the country to obtain residency. If — and Ms. Park noted that it’s a big if — Meghan took that step, she could then sponsor Harry for residency.\nRegardless of their immigration status, the couple may face tax issues in Canada. Heather L. Evans, the executive director of the Canadian Tax Foundation, a research group, said there was no hard and fast rule for determining who is a resident for tax purposes. Instead, she said, “individual facts and circumstances are important, especially in cases of dual residents.”\nCourts, she said, have found that in some cases, people who spend less than half of the year in Canada are still residents for taxation purposes.\nEven murkier is the status of the duke and duchess’s royal titles if they make Canada home. In 1919, Canada’s Parliament put an end to citizens and residents being able to accept noble titles from Britain with a resolution that was affirmed twice more, as recently as 1988.\nConrad M. Black, the former press baron, had to give up his Canadian citizenship to become Baron Black of Crossharbour. There is, however, no precedent for how the resolution, which some argue is of limited legal force, would apply to a member of the royal family moving to Canada.\nWhile royal visits to Canada, with the notable exception of appearances by Prince Charles, draw large and enthusiastic crowds, the idea of members of the British royal family moving into the country has already met some resistance. On Tuesday, The Globe and Mail, a Toronto-based newspaper that historically has been supportive of the monarchy, published a lengthy editorial urging the government to tell the couple they can’t move to Canada.\n“You are welcome to visit, but so long as you are senior royals, Canada cannot allow you to come to stay,” the newspaper said. “A royal living in this country does not accord with the longstanding nature of the relationship between Canada and Britain, and Canada and the Crown.”\nIn a country where there is sometimes grousing about the cost of security for the prime minister, the question of who will pay to protect Harry, Meghan and their son, Archie, has been widely raised. On Monday, Mr. Trudeau said that was one of many questions that remain to be resolved.\n“We are obviously supportive of their reflections but have responsibilities in that as well,” he said, referring to security. “We’re not entirely sure what the final decisions will be.”\nCurrently, Canada covers the cost of the security provided to the couple by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police because Harry and Meghan’s official status in Britain makes them “internationally protected persons” under Canadian law. Kent Roach, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, said that after withdrawing from official life, Meghan and Harry would lose that status.\nBut citing news media estimates that their annual security cost will be about 2 million Canadian dollars, or about $1.5 million, Mr. Roach anticipates that the government-funded guard will remain.\n“Strict legal definitions will in the end not matter that much in this matter, especially if the cost of protection is, as reported, less than $2 million,” he said. “Canada has received that much worth in good press already.”\nCopright © 2020 www.ourreviewsite.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line708488"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7638304233551025,"wiki_prob":0.7638304233551025,"text":"THE BATTLE OF VITTORIO VENETO, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1918\n© IWM (Q 26704)\nUse this image under non-commercial licence.\nThe media for this item are free to reuse for non-commercial purposes under the IWM Non Commercial Licence and can be downloaded or embedded with the code we offer here. By downloading or embedding any media, you agree to the terms and conditions of the IWM Non Commercial Licence, including your use of the attribution statement specified by IWM. For this item, that is: © IWM (Q 26704)\nPurchase & License\n<a href=\"https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205268114\" target=\"_blank\"> <img src=\"https://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/286/627/mid_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=Photographs\" alt=\"THE BATTLE OF VITTORIO VENETO, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1918\"> </a> <span> THE BATTLE OF VITTORIO VENETO, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1918 <a href=\"https://www.iwm.org.uk/corporate/privacy-copyright\">© IWM (Q 26704)</a> </span>\n[url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205268114][img]https://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/286/627/mid_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=Photographs[/img][/url] [url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205268114]THE BATTLE OF VITTORIO VENETO, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1918. © IWM (Q 26704)[/url] [url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/corporate/privacy-copyright]IWM Non Commercial License[/url]\nMen of the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders (20th Brigade, 7th Division) escorting Austro-Hungarian prisoners across a pontoon bridge over the river Piave, near Salettuol, November 1918.\nFirst World War (production), First World War (content)\nBrooks, Ernest (Lieutenant) (Photographer)\nQ 26704\nMINISTRY OF INFORMATION FIRST WORLD WAR OFFICIAL COLLECTION\nBritish Army, Gordon Highlanders\nBritish Army, Gordon Highlanders, 2nd Battalion\nAustro-Hungarian Army\nItalian Front 1915-1918, First World War\nBattle of Vittorio Veneto 1918, Italian Front 1915-1918, First World War\nSalettuol, Maserada sul Piave, Treviso, Veneto, Italy\nAssociated keywords\nAssociated themes\nBritish Army 1914-1918\nAustro-Hungarian Army 1914-1918\n© IWM (E(AUS) 2078)\nHow did people share their cultures and traditions during the First World War?\nFirst World War Recruitment Posters","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line583917"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6918346881866455,"wiki_prob":0.6918346881866455,"text":"33 Good Story Prompts\nHome » Creative Writing » Story Prompts to Inspire Middle School Writers\nMany students begin making up their own stories when they are young and full of imagination. But as kids grow up, their creativity is sometimes stifled—and not encouraged as it should be.\nFortunately, journaling is a powerful way to keep kids thinking, dreaming, and creating even as they age. Encouraging your students to write creatively in their journals (rather than simply recording their daily activities) is an even more wonderful way to incite their imaginations.\nIn these 33 good story prompts for middle school students, your class will receive fresh ideas and characters to develop and explore. Each prompt can easily be turned into a brief short story or expanded on in a longer work of fiction. With topics ranging from a family’s first day with their brand new dog to the amazing things and people an old innkeeper has seen over the years, your students can practice their writing while also thinking deeply about other people and their lived experiences.\nUse these brand new story prompts with your middle school students to spark their imaginations!\n33 Good Story Prompts to Inspire Creativity in Your Middle School Students\nWrite a story about a scientist who discovers a new planet.\nWrite a story about an abandoned playground—and the kids who want to save it.\nWrite a story about an alternate world where tweens and teens are in charge and make all the rules.\nWrite a story about a snowstorm that shuts down the whole town.\nWrite a story about an old innkeeper who has seen all sorts of guests over the years.\nWrite a story about a young boy whose bad habit ends up saving the day.\nWrite a story about a family’s first day with their newly adopted dog.\nWrite a story about a mountain-climber who has just made the ultimate climb.\nWrite a story about a bridge that leads to nowhere.\nWrite a story about a group of kids who get stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel.\nWrite a story about a special garden where people always go to think.\nWrite a story about a group of competitive horseback riders.\nWrite a story about a young student who makes it big in the world of professional video games.\nWrite a story about a group of young soldiers.\nWrite a story about a family that receives a large, anonymous check in the mail one day.\nWrite a story about your grandmother as a young girl.\nWrite a story about a group of friends that stumbles upon a time capsule buried in one of their backyards.\nWrite a story about an athlete who gets caught fixing a game.\nWrite a story about a young teen who loses her cell phone—and goes on a series of adventures to get it back before her parents find out.\nWrite a story about a doctor with a patient that no one can diagnose.\nWrite a story about a pirate ship that ends up in a very unexpected location.\nWrite a story that serves as a sequel to a popular children’s fairytale.\nWrite a story about a young astronaut’s first trip to space.\nWrite a story about a tree that is 1,000 years old.\nWrite a story about two best friends who are having a big fight.\nWrite a story about a troll who enters and wins a beauty pageant with the help of some friends.\nWrite a story about a class field trip to the White House.\nWrite a story about a truly unforgettable birthday party.\nWrite a story about a young girl who takes up an unusual hobby: archery.\nWrite a story about an actor who has just been nominated for a prestigious award.\nWrite a story about a family who travels to the ocean every year.\nWrite a story about two friends who reconnect after many years apart.\nWrite a story about a young boy who is getting ready to begin high school early at the age of 12.\nIf you enjoyed these Good Story Prompts,\nShort Story Prompts\nCreative Story Ideas for Middle Schoolers\n33 Fictional Story Ideas\n30 Short Story Ideas with a Twist\n30 Narrative Writing Prompts for Second Grade","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1263544"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7208657264709473,"wiki_prob":0.27913427352905273,"text":"The UN Plans To Implement Universal Biometric Identification For All Of Humanity\nEnd Times and Current Events > Forum > General Category > End Times > The Mark > The UN Plans To Implement Universal Biometric Identification For All Of Humanity\nAuthor Topic: The UN Plans To Implement Universal Biometric Identification For All Of Humanity (Read 385 times)\nThe UN Plans To Implement Universal Biometric Identification For All Of Humanity By 2030\nDid you know that the United Nations intends to have biometric identification cards in the hands of every single man, woman and child on the entire planet by the year 2030? And did you know that a central database in Geneva, Switzerland will be collecting data from many of these cards? Previously, I have written about the 17 new “Global Goals” that the UN launched at the end of September. Even after writing several articles about these new Global Goals, I still don’t think that most of my readers really grasp how insidious they actually are. This new agenda truly is a template for a “New World Order”, and if you dig into the sub-points for these new Global Goals you find some very alarming things.\nFor example, Goal 16.9 sets the following target…\n“By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration”\nThe United Nations is already working hard toward the implementation of this goal – particularly among refugee populations. The UN has partnered with Accenture to implement a biometric identification system that reports information “back to a central database in Geneva”. The following is an excerpt from an article that was posted on findbiometrics.com…\nThe United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is moving forward with its plans to use biometric technology to identify and track refugees, and has selected a vendor for the project. Accenture, an international technology services provider, has won out in the competitive tendering process and will oversee the implementation of the technology in a three-year contract.\nThe UNHCR will use Accenture’s Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) for the endeavor. BIMS can be used to collect facial, iris, and fingerprint biometric data, and will also be used to provide many refugees with their only form of official documentation. The system will work in conjunction with Accenture’s Unique Identity Service Platform (UISP) to send this information back to a central database in Geneva, allowing UNHCR offices all over the world to effectively coordinate with the central UNHCR authority in tracking refugees.\nI don’t know about you, but that sure does sound creepy to me.\nAnd these new biometric identification cards will not just be for refugees. According to a different FindBiometrics report, authorities hope this technology will enable them to achieve the UN’s goal of having this kind of identification in the hands of every man, woman and child on the planet by the year 2030…\nA report synopsis notes that about 1.8 billion adults around the world currently lack any kind of official documentation. That can exclude those individuals from access to essential services, and can also cause serious difficulties when it comes to trans-border identification.\nThat problem is one that Accenture has been tackling in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been issuing Accenture-developed biometric identity cards to populations of displaced persons in refugee camps in Thailand, South Sudan, and elsewhere. The ID cards are important for helping to ensure that refugees can have access to services, and for keeping track of refugee populations.\nMoreover, the nature of the deployments has required an economically feasible solution, and has demonstrated that reliable, biometric ID cards can affordably be used on a large scale. It offers hope for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of getting legal ID into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030 with its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative.\nThe Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative was originally launched by the World Bank, and they are proud to be working side by side with the UN to get “legal identity” into the hands of all. The following comes from the official website of the World Bank…\nProviding legal identity for all (including birth registration) by 2030 is a target shared by the international community as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (target 16.9). The World Bank Group (WBG) has launched the Identification for Development (ID4D) cross-practice initiative, with the participation of seven GP/CCSAs sharing the same vision and strategic objectives, to help our client countries achieve this goal and with the vision of making everyone count: ensure a unique legal identity and enable digital ID-based services to all.\nOf course all of this is being framed as a “humanitarian” venture right now, but will it always stay that way?\nAt some point will a universal biometric ID be required for everyone, including you and your family?\nAnd what would happen if you refused to take it?\nI could definitely foresee a day when not having “legal identification” would disqualify you from holding a job, getting a new bank account, applying for a credit card, qualifying for a mortgage, receiving any form of government payments, etc. etc.\nAt that point, anyone that refused to take a “universal ID” would become an outcast from society.\nWhat the elite want to do is to make sure that everyone is “in the system”. And it is a system that they control and that they manipulate for their own purposes. That is one of the reasons why they are slowly but surely discouraging the use of cash all over the world.\nIn Sweden, this movement has already become so advanced that they are now pulling ATMs out of even the most rural locations…\nThe Swedish government abetted by its fractional-reserve banking system is moving relentlessly toward a completely cashless economy. Swedish banks have begun removing ATMs even in remote rural areas, and according to Credit Suisse the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is “If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong.” Since 2009 the average annual value of notes and coins in circulation in Sweden has fallen more than 20 percent from over 100 billion to 80 billion kronor. What is driving this movement to destroy cash is the desire to unleash the Swedish central bank to drive the interest rate down even further into negative territory. Currently, it stands at -0.35 percent, but the banks have not passed this along to their depositors, because depositors would simply withdraw their cash rather than leave it in banks and watch its amount shrink inexorably toward zero. However, if cash were abolished and bank deposits were the only form of money, well then there would be no limit on negative interest rate policy as banks would be able to pass these negative interest rates onto their depositors without adverse consequences. With everyone’s wages, salaries, dividends etc, paid by direct deposit into his bank account, the only way to escape negative interest rates would be to spend, spend, spend. This, of course, is precisely what the Keynesian economists advising governments and running central banks are aiming at….a pro-cash resistance movement is beginning to coalesce and the head of a security industry lobbying group relates, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.”\nIf you aren’t using cash, that means that all of your economic activity is going through the banks where it can be watched, tracked, monitored and regulated.\nEvery time the elite propose something for our “good”, it somehow always results in them having more power and more control.\nI hope that people will wake up and see what is happening. Major moves toward a one world system are taking place right in front of our eyes, and yet I hear very, very few people talking about any of this.\nhttp://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-un-plans-to-implement-universal-biometric-identification-for-all-of-humanity-by-2030","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1185140"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8018347024917603,"wiki_prob":0.8018347024917603,"text":"What Does Facebook Know About You Really?\nOver the last couple of years, Facebook has come under intense scrutiny over how much data it collects on its users, and how it re-purposes that information, primarily for advertising. But what, really, does Facebook actually know about you, and how can such info be used to, potentially, influence your thinking and consideration? Is that even possible?\nThis a core issue at the center of the current Facebook data debate - while more and more reports emerge which demonstrate the depth of information Facebook can collect, the next stage is less clear, there's less context for users to understand the potential impacts of such. So what if Facebook logs data on the Pages you visit, that likely just means you'll see more relevant ads, right? So what if Facebook tracks your usage habits to show you more content you'll like?\nIn a general sense, for the common person, this doesn't mean anything, which is why Facebook usage hasn't appeared to change in any significant way despite such reports.\nBut it's that context that people really need - users need to have a greater understanding of the processes at play, and how Facebook's systems are able to do more than just show you ads for products you might want to buy. On further inspection, they can actually shape your opinions, without you even knowing it.\nAnd that is critically important to note.\nLearning You\nAs has been well documented, Facebook uses a vast array of tools to track your interests, habits and preferences - both on Facebook's platforms and off them.\nOn the platforms themselves (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger), Facebook logs every action you take, every post you like, every Page and profile you visit. Those insights are also combined with your profile data, your location info - every single thing you enter or do on Facebook's apps contributes a little more to your personal profile, building out a broader data log of who you are, what you like, etc.\nAnd that profile can be very accurate - the most highly-cited research report on this was conducted by experts from The University of Cambridge and Stanford University back in 2015, in which they examined the Facebook profiles of more than 86,000 participants, and then matched their on-platform data against their psychological profiles, which those users had submitted through a 'personality test' app.\nTheir key finding? Your Facebook activity data alone could indicate your psychological make-up more accurately than your friends, your family - better even than your partner, given enough info.\nAs you can see in this chart, the accuracy of the model's predictions increases based on how many things a person has 'liked' on Facebook, giving the system more information to measure. That study was conducted around five years ago, so you can only imagine the same model would be even more accurate today.\nThe implications of this are significant - as highlighted by Cambridge Analytica, which utilized a very similar process in its data-gathering efforts, once you have a measure of people's leanings, you can also use that against them.\nFormer Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie explained:\n\"We would know what kinds of messaging [users] would be susceptible to, including the framing of it, the topics, the content, the tone, whether it's scary or not, that kind of thing. So, what you would be susceptible to, and where you're going to consume that. And then how many times do we need to touch you with that in order to change how you think about something.'\nThis is information warfare at the highest level - and when you also consider that around two-thirds of American adults (68%) now get at least some of their daily news content from social media, with Facebook being the prime social media news source by a big margin, that's a big concern.\nIt's not just the ads you see, but the information you're shown - and while Facebook is now working to address this in various ways, you can see how the additional context of what such insights can be used for is significant.\nAnd it's not just on Facebook itself that's a concern.\nAdvanced Tracking\nFacebook also tracks people when they're not on Facebook, and those who've never even signed up. And worth noting, Facebook's not alone in this, Google, for example, tracks similar data, but Facebook's insights have seen more misuse, and the pure size and usage of its platforms make it a more viable candidate for such actions.\nIn terms of tracking people off Facebook, researchers Frederike Kaltheuner and Christopher Weatherhead recently outlined the various ways in which Google and Facebook track Android users through the use of pixels which are designed to help advertisers gather data on app usage.\nAdvertisers may use these data tracking tools in their systems in order to track who's using their apps, and that data is taken in and stored, even if those people are not active users of either Google's or Facebook's tools.\n\"...the vast majority of apps share data the second they're opened, and the data that's being transmitted indicates what kinds of apps you use, when you use them, combined with a unique ad ID. And knowing what kinds of apps somebody uses, and when, can give quite a detailed picture of someone's life.\"\nKaltheuner provided an example using just four highly downloaded apps - 'Qibla Connect', which is a Muslim prayer app, 'Period Tracker Clue' which tracks menstruation cycles, job search app 'Indeed', and the kids app 'Talking Tom' (each of these apps has been downloaded at least 10 million times).\n\"That looks like a person who is likely Muslim, likely female, likely looking for a job and who likely has a child.\"\nSo even if you're not an active user of these specific platforms, they know a lot about you.\nAnother recent study further underlines this capacity - a combined academic team from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide has found that even if you're not a user of a social media platform, it's possible to create a 95% accurate profile of you, based on your friends' accounts.\n\"[The research team] found it was able to predict the content of a person's tweets using data collected from just eight of their contacts, and to do so as accurately as if they were looking at that person's own Twitter feed.\"\nFrom this, the team could accurately predict a person's political leanings, favorite products, religious beliefs - all without these users ever even participating in social media themselves. And this is without the advanced psychological profiling used by the groups noted earlier in this post.\nNot only is social media data collection concerning, it's also seemingly inescapable. And it'll likely continue to be used for ill-purpose for some time yet.\nThis needs to be a key issue of focus in the connected age, a core debate that has to be had. It may not seem immediately harmful, it may not change much in your day-to-day life. But the understanding that your perception of the world - especially in a political sense - could be largely manipulated is surely of relevant concern.\nAnd that element is largely beyond debate - while there's no way of knowing exactly what impact the work of Cambridge Analytica had on the eventual outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election, previous research, conducted by Facebook itself, has shown that on-platform efforts can influence election outcomes.\nAccording to a Facebook study published in 2010, a single election-day Facebook message resulted in around 340,000 extra voters turning out to take part in the US Congressional elections that year. The experiment used two different types of News Feed prompts - one included a link to information about local polling places and a counter showing the total Facebook users who'd voted. The other showed the same, but with the addition of images of a users' personal connections who'd participated.\nPeople who saw the second message were increasingly likely to vote themselves, resulting in a big increase in voter turnout. The scale of the test was limited, with only a small portion of Facebook users seeing the prompt. But it shows, according to Facebook's own research, that the platform can influence political outcomes.\nIt may not feel significant, what you like on Facebook, what you share. The content that you see and comment on within your feed. But it actually is. That's why Facebook has sought to focus on showing you more content from friends and family, because that content is, theoretically, less manipulative than the material shared on potentially biased political Pages and the like.\nBecause now, given the coverage of the recent political events, every bad actor knows that Facebook can be utilized for such purpose, and all of them are considering how they can do the same.\nWill that make you use Facebook less? Probably not. Again, the stats show that Facebook usage has remained stable amid the various reports, people are either unconcerned, or Facebook is simply too ingrained in their interactive process to give up.\nBut even if you think that you're aware, that your political beliefs are solid, that your understanding of certain issues is correct, just take a moment to question the logic behind what you see. Research a little, dig a bit deeper. Use Facebook's new tools, like its Page info data option, which shows where Pages are being managed from, the Page's history and the ads it's running.\nControlling how our data is used, and misused, may now be beyond our control, but we can all ensure that misinformation is further limited by questioning what we see, and reporting what's not right.\nAnd given the stakes, such efforts may be crucial to maintaining democracy as we know it.\nFiled Under: Social Marketing","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1163154"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6481456756591797,"wiki_prob":0.3518543243408203,"text":"Commodity HQ\nDividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector\nPosted on September 14, 2011 by Jared Cummans\nAs the years have progressed, commodity exposure has evolved from a binary factor, either you have it or you don’t, to a necessary component of every portfolio. But as markets have been continually beaten down as of late, for many investors, finding the right commodity allocation has been something of a difficult task. A number of investors have stopped looking for growth, and taken cover in value funds that pay out annual yields in a time when no returns are guaranteed [see also The Guide To The Biggest Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector].\nDividend payments are a crucial element to investing, as they not only provide inflation hedges and steady income, but they also point to a company that is healthy. Typically only a strong company is able to pay out cold hard cash to its investors, where as a non-dividend company has an easier time cooking its books to make everything appear business as usual. Below, we outline companies with strong dividend payouts in a number of major commodity sectors, giving value investors a great way to add not only commodity exposure, but another income stream to your portfolio as well [for more commodity new subscribe to our free newsletter].\nAs far as this sector is concerned, Deere & Company (DE) is one of the top dogs. Branded “John Deere”, the company is the leading agricultural machinery manufacturer on the globe. DE makes everything from tractors and ATVs, to combine harvesters and balers. The firm has a market cap of $30.62 billion and trades about 5.8 million shares on a daily basis. While DE is not directly tied to any specific commodity, its products help cultivate and produce a wide variety of mainstay agricultural crops like corn and wheat, meaning that the health of the agriculture sector and underlying commodities alike will have a major impact on profits. DE pays out an annual dividend yield of 2.2% [see also Invest Like Jim Rogers With These Three Agriculture Stocks].\nWhen it comes to aluminum, Alumina Limited (AWC) offers one of the best value plays. The company was formed in 2003 in a spin-off from Western Mining Company and is one of the largest companies on the Australian Securities Exchange. AWC’s business comes solely from a 40% stake in a joint venture with Alcoa which yields the extraction of bauxite, alumina, and aluminum smelting. The company controls roughly 17% of the global alumina market, making it a major player when it comes to this ultra-popular industrial metal. AWC pays out a healthy dividend of 3.6%, giving it an edge over Alcoa’s significantly smaller dividend.\nCoal has long been a major source of energy for the world and while it may not be the cleanest burning fossil fuel, it will certainly remain an important energy source for many years to come. One of the most valuable coal miners comes from Yanzhou Coal Mining Company (YZC). The company is headquartered in the People’s Republic of China and is the only coal mining stock to be listed on all three of the Hong Kong, Shanghai, and New York Stock exchanges. YZC as a stock is popular among traders with a nice daily volume of 275,000 and a market cap eclipsing the $12.8 billion mark. Its dividend yield of 3% will make for a nice coal allocation to your portfolio while adding a steady stream of income [see also Commodity Investing: Physical vs. Futures].\nAs far dividend players in the copper sector go, few match the promise of Southern Copper Corporation (SCCO). The company is one of the largest publicly traded copper miners and is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. The majority of the company’s operations take place in Peru and Mexico given that over 75% of the corporation is owned the the Mexican miner Grupo Mexico. Along with copper, SCCO is a major producer of molybdenum, zinc, silver, and gold. SCCO is one of the highest-paying dividend companies on this list, coming in with an annual yield of 8%.\nGold has been an extremely popular commodity recently as its price has skyrocketed over the past few years. Now that the Swiss franc is officially pegged to the euro, many feel that this is the last safe-haven investment available. While there are a number of massive gold miners, Newmont Mining Corporation is one of the better value options. Newmont is based in Denver, Colorado, and is among the world’s largest gold producers. Active mines for the company lie all over the world in places like Indonesia, Australia, Ghana, and the US. As of the end of 2010, the company produced 5.4 million ounces of gold annually while boasting proven reserves nearing 94 million. While its dividend yield of 1.8% isn’t anything extreme, when compared to the rest of its sector, NEM makes for one of the best dividend plays [see also Three Reasons Why Gold Is Overvalued].\nPlum Creek Timber (PCL) is an investor favorite for gaining access to this sector as it is one of the largest public lumber firms in the country. PCL is the largest private landowner in the U.S., the majority of which, is timberland, giving a strong outlook for this big-time player in the lumber space. The stock has a current market cap of $5.7 billion and trades relatively actively, with over 1.5 million shares exchanging hands on a daily basis. Technically, PCL is a REIT, a move it made for tax and accounting advantages, though its business is derived from selling and producing various wood products. PCL pays out a dividend yield of 4.7%, something of a rarity for lumber firms.\nMLPs\nMaster Limited Partnerships have long been known for their high yields as the offer exposure to the infrastructure of natural gas and crude oil industries. One of the better-paying companies comes from Enbridge Energy (EEP). The company majority owned by Enbridge, which operates some of the longest crude oil and liquids pipelines in the U.S. and Canada, is responsible for delivering more than two million barrles of crude oil each day, making it a very important pipeline. The company pays out a healthy yield of 7.5% but should be given a closer look, as a number of MLPs sporting high yields are designed to terminate after a certain period of time [see also [see also Top Seven Strangest Commodity Futures].\nThough a number of specific metals have their own respective sectors, when it comes to general metals mining, few companies have the clout that BHP Billiton (BHP) has amassed. The company has a massive market cap of $207 billion, making it one of the largest companies in the world. BHP is responsible for mining a vast amount of metals including copper, gold, lead, zinc, iron ore, manganese, coal, aluminum, and others. The company has headquarters in both London and Australia while paying out a dividend yield of 2.9%, creating a good large cap value play for risk-averse investors.\nCrude oil is one of the most prolific commodities as it has a major impact on a number of other commodities all around the world. As such, investments in this sector are incredibly popular, and a number of major oil companies offer competitive yields. British Petroleum (BP), however, offers one of the most enticing yields in the space, with an annual dividend yield of 4.7%. BP was under major scrutiny last year after the Deepwater Horizon spill caused massive damage in the Gulf of Mexico. While its stock price has yet to recover, the company was able to reinstate dividends to add value back to its large cap structure [see also Major Countries Burn Up Crude Reserves: Big Oil In Trouble?].\nSteel is one of the most important industrial metals as its strength provides as a base for a number of important structures in skyscrapers, automobiles, and much more. One of the world’s largest steel makers comes from Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (SID). The company is based in Rio De Janeiro and is one of the biggest steel manufacturers in Brazil. The company accounts for nearly half of all steel products sold in the emerging market and also has significant operations in tin. The company also sets itself apart from the competition by being one of just a handful of companies to own its own iron ore source, a major component of steel production. SID pays out a dividend yield of 7.1% for those value investors who do not mind the emerging market exposure [see also Powerhouse Producers: Cocoa, Platinum, Rare Earth Metals].\n[For more Commodity stories sign up for our free CHQ Newsletter.]\nDisclosure: Jared is long BP.\nThis entry was posted in Academic Research, Agriculture, Aluminum, Copper, Exclusive, Gold, Industrial Metals, Steel, WTI and tagged Aluminum, AWC, BHP, BP, Copper, DE, EEP, Gold, Lumber, PCL, SCCO, SID, Steel, WTI, YZC. Bookmark the permalink.\nCommodity HQ is not an investment advisor, and any content published by Commodity HQ does not constitute individual investment advice. The opinions offered herein are not personalized recommendations to buy, sell or hold securities or investment assets. Read the full disclaimer here.\n20 Responses to “Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector”\nFive Most-Traded Commodity Contracts Of August | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] August was a tumultuous months for markets across the board. The first ever downgrade of U.S. debts was handed out by S&P while the Fed announced it would be freezing rates for nearly two years. Markets reacted poorly to the headlines through out the month, swaying back forth by as much as 5%. Volume went through the roof as traders made a play to profit on volatile markets, while others pulled their assets and headed for higher ground and safer asset classes [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nCrude Oil Crushed: Buy or Sell? | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] To call the last few months volatile would be an understatement; markets have been violently swinging back and forth, taking investors on a wild ride. While major indexes have experienced significant headwinds, other asset classes, like gold, have generally performed well. But when it comes to crude oil, a number of investors may be frustrated with the past two months, as the fossil fuel has taken something of a nosedive [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nBullseyeMicrocaps.com » Crude Oil Crushed: Whether To Buy Or Sell says:\n50 Ways To Invest In Gold | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] Mutual funds have long been one of the most popular ways to gain exposure to a number of assets. They are something of dinosaurs when it comes to investing, as a number of funds have long successful track records that other securities simply cannot compete with. The mutual fund space has tens of thousands of options and a number of those offer exposure to gold. Perhaps the biggest draw to this sector is the high dividend yields that a number of mutual funds tend to offer. Investors should note that most of these products require minimum investments in order to discourage less-serious, and ultra-small investors [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]: [...]\n25 Ways To Invest In Silver - Gold Silver Oil says:\n[...] can offer a number of advantages over other options. A fair amount of these companies offer strong dividend options and high liquidity for traders of all [...]\n25 Ways To Invest In Silver | GoldSilverBoom says:\n[...] these companies place forward passionate dividend options and high liquidity for traders of all [...]\nWhy The Wall Street Journal Got Commodities All Wrong | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] When it comes to bullion, you would be hard pressed to convince someone that the last ten years has been a terrible time to hold something like gold or silver. In 2000, and ounce of gold went for less than $500/oz. but is now trading for over $1,600/oz. Tripling your money in 10 years certainly isn’t an everyday feat and the power of these physical products and commodities should not be overlooked [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nBullseyeMicrocaps.com » 3 Commodities Dividend Lovers Should Consider says:\n[...] Over the years, value investing has emerged as one of the favorite strategies for a number of individuals and advisors. A steady stream of income that dividends provide can help protect a portfolio from market dips as well as adding an inflation hedge. The methodology has become so popular that some investors swear by it and are uneasy about making allocations to anything that lacks an important dividend yield. Many feel that value principles conflict with the commodity space; when someone thinks of commodity investing, they typically think of active trading of futures contracts or exchange traded products. But there are a number of securities that may be overlooked [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nNora C says:\nExcellent article for a new bee investor in Commodities. Thanks a million!\nExploring Crude Oil Investment Options | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] Investing the equity side of the equation isn’t a pure play on crude oil, but it can make for a number of interesting opportunities that other investment vehicles simply don’t offer. Equities that focus on this commodity will most often consist of exploration, pipeline, or refining companies which can offer a number of advantages over other options. A fair amount of these companies offer strong dividend options and high liquidity for traders of all kinds [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]: [...]\nWhite-Hot Dividend Commodities For The Coming Year | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] Commodity investing has been extremely popular in recent years as investors have discovered the benefits that these investments can offer for an individual portfolio. Exposure to commodities offers benefits like low correlation, inflation hedges, and also heavy exposure to some of the world’s fastest growing markets. But there is still something of a disconnect between income investors and commodities, as these investments are typically seen as growth plays or simply left for active traders. But those who overlook commodity stocks with even mediocre yields could be missing out [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nBullseyeMicrocaps.com » 12 High-Yielding Commodities For 2012 says:\nTop Reasons Most Investors Fail When Investing In Commodities | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] With real estate markets in the gutter, treasury yields at all-time lows, and equity markets plagued with instability, it’s no wonder that commodity investing has been surging in recent years. Many investors have hopped on board with the various benefits that these investments offer, including inflation protection, equity hedges, and diversification benefits to overall portfolios. Commodity are very powerful, yet often misunderstood tools. While the statistics vary, “as many as 90-95% of investors trading commodities lose money” says Matthew Bradbard of MB Wealth. That staggering figure has prompted significant backlash against commodities as of late, as investors have grown tired of these tumultuous investments [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\n25 Ways To Invest In Silver « WealthMans says:\n[...] Silver bullion is perhaps the safest and most hassle-free way to maintain silver exposure. The biggest issue when holding physical bullion comes from purchasing the metal itself, which can run up costs exponentially depending on the amount that someone wishes to purchase. Silver bullion allows an investor to know exactly where their money went, what it is worth, and immediate access to the metal should they ever need it. Silver also runs at a much cheaper cost than gold, allowing investors of all shapes and sizes to maintain exposure to bullion [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]: [...]\nThe Most Important Guidelines For Commodity Investing | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] The issues of tracking error and expenses aren’t the only place where the choice of structure matters; the difference between a commodity ETF and a commodity ETN can translate into sizable discrepancies in tax obligations. Most commodity ETPs that actually hold futures contracts–meaning the non-ETN segment of the universe–are structured as partnerships for tax purposes. That means that these securities are taxed at a blended rate between short-term and long-term capital gains (the 60/40 split results in an effective rate of about 23%). Moreover, these securities incur a tax liability annually regardless of whether shares were sold. And they require advisors to fill out a K-1, which can be an administrative headache to some [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nEduled2002 says:\nAny information on water ETF”s(PHO, etc.)\nCotton Futures Suffer In Choppy Markets | Commodity HQ says:\n[...] The final month of the quarter saw a fair amount of volatility as far as commodities are concerned. With a number of global factors combining, performances were spread across the board. Cotton, in particular, had a strong March, as futures prices gained as much as 3.8% over the four week period. But as April and Q2 have begun, cotton has been struck with selling pressures. April’s losses have yielded to roughly 4%, erasing nearly all of the gains that copper futures had enjoyed in the previous month [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nBullseyeMicrocaps.com » Commodity Trading Trends: Cotton Futures Dragging says:\nCommodities With Juicy Yields For Value Investors | Commodity HQ says:\nHighlighting Seven Unique Dividend ETFs | ETF Database says:\n[...] What Makes PID Unique: This ETF offers access to the popular “dividend achievers” strategy with an international twist. In order to be included in the underlying index, stocks must have increased their dividends for at least five consecutive years (a period that includes the downturn in 2008). The result is a portfolio of the most consistent international dividend payers, including both developed and emerging market constituents [see also Dividend Special: Top Companies In Every Major Commodity Sector]. [...]\nLeave a Reply to BullseyeMicrocaps.com » 3 Commodities Dividend Lovers Should Consider\n← Three Reasons Why Gold Is Overvalued\nFive Most-Traded Commodity Contracts Of August →\nSign up for free today:\nAbout Commodity HQ\nAbout Us & Meet Our Team\nAdvertise on Commodity HQ\nCopyright © 2011–2020 Commodity HQ","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1514926"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7058491706848145,"wiki_prob":0.29415082931518555,"text":"View Correction\nJAMA. 1949;140(15):1224-1226. doi:10.1001/jama.1949.02900500032015\nMarkle Scholars in Medical Science Nominations\nDr. Wells Heads Department.— Dr. Benjamin B. Wells, director of cancer research at the M. D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research, Houston, Texas, assumed his duties July 1 as head of the department of internal medicine at the University of Arkansas School of Medicine, Little Rock. Dr. Wells, a graduate of Baylor University College of Medicine, Houston, 1935, served on the faculty of the University of Arkansas from 1946 to 1948 as professor of medicine and also as dean the last year.\nSt. John's Hospital Fall Clinic.— St. John's Hospital, Santa Monica, will present its first Annual Fall Clinic September 12-14. The program includes symposiums on hyperthyroidism, the genitourinary system and jaundice; seminars in obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics and hematology; a clinical pathologic conference, and peripheral-vascular clinic. Out of state guest speakers include Drs. Percy J. Carroll, Harry H. McCarthy and Louis D. McGuire, Omaha, Neb.; Malcolm B.\nMedical News. JAMA. 1949;140(15):1224–1226. doi:10.1001/jama.1949.02900500032015","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1390548"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6993827223777771,"wiki_prob":0.3006172776222229,"text":"Drill, baby, drill?\nBy archives - September 24, 2010\nFracking. For something so obviously pun-worthy, it’s a pretty serious issue. Hydraulic fracturing, a means of collecting otherwise inaccessible natural gas, is extremely controversial. It’s as potentially lucrative as it is environmentally risky. And it could be coming to our campus’ backyard.\nThe Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of a $1.9 million study (scheduled for a 2012 release) showing the effects of fracking on the water table and ecosystem at large. The EPA even made a stop in Binghamton last week to get public input on its study.\nWhy should the EPA be worried? For starters, even a brief description of hydrofracturing is well, worrying. According to Tuesday’s issue of Pipe Dream, the process of fracking ‘involves injecting a pressurized mixture of water and specialized chemicals into underground layers of rock and forcing out natural gas that is encased within the shale.’\nShooting up to five million gallons of water per well mixed with chemicals (85 different ones, actually, are used in Pennsylvania) as deep into the ground as 8,000 feet below the surface to collect fossil fuels?\nYeah, in layman’s terms, it’s terrifying. We don’t like the idea of ammonia persulfate, formaldehyde or polyethoxylated alkanol (2) in the Susquehanna River, let alone our drinking water.\nProponents, though, avow that the risk for environmental contamination is negligible and the economic upshot is immense.\nThe Southern Tier is sitting on the largest natural gas reserve in the United States, embedded in a layer of shale. The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia up to the Catskills, holds 50 times the gas that is used by the East Coast annually. It’s huge. Through fracking, this reserve would produce cheap American-made energy ‘ and create jobs in places that really need them (like Broome County, for instance).\nThe back-and-forth between the pros and cons in the fracking debate is essentially a shouting match of superlatives.\n‘We’re all gonna be rich,’ one side shouts.\n‘We’re all gonna die,’ reminds the other.\nWe tend to support a skeptical approach to the issue.\nWe’re skeptical of eco-crazies, who would willingly sacrifice economic opportunity on merely the principle that drilling for natural gas is evil.\nWe’re even more skeptical of energy tycoons, who deny even the slightest risk in their conceivably toxic business in the pursuit of another dollar.\nWe’re even skeptical of the EPA, who have spent more than enough time in bed with those same tycoons. The agency’s 2004 study into fracking was shaky at best, and downright corrupt at worst, and 2012’s may not be better. The $1.9 million the EPA is spending seems somewhat skimpy for a nationwide, imperative investigation. And according to The New York Times, this study’s investigative panel is filled out with the same oil company officials that scuttled the first effort.\nDespite this, the only thing to do is wait ‘ at least for the EPA’s 2012 study’s release date. We can not, in good conscience, and in a post-BP world, support fracking in the Binghamton area before the EPA has had another say on the issue. We can only pray for transparency. We also support, hand in hand with environmental investigation, a thorough economic forecast on how individuals who live in the area, especially on the land where the fracking will take place, will benefit from this natural gas production. Energy conglomerates can’t be the only people to make money on this.\nSo, we wait. We’ll support safe drilling, if it’s proven to be so.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line293078"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6627898216247559,"wiki_prob":0.6627898216247559,"text":"Posts Tagged Ray Whinstone\n“Noah” movie, a hotchpotch of hidden messages?\nPosted by simon peter sutherland in Science and evolution, The Bible, The influence of film on April 11, 2014\nWalking into the theatre to watch the new ‘Noah’ film was one of those moments where one does not know what to expect.\nFilm makers always have an agenda. Even if the agenda is art, fame, money, or personal inner release concerning some issue or topic that is bursting them open at the seams, there is always a reason for making a film.\nBut the director and maker of this film is a new atheist. Which begs the question; why would a new atheist desire to make a movie about Noah?\nI have seen a lot of ‘Biblical Epics’ over the years, some good some not good. But most of them, if not all have been set in the ‘Biblical eras’. Such did not appear to be the case with the ‘Noah’ movie. It was filmed in Southern Iceland with no attempt to make it look Babylonian or Turkish.\nWhat struck me on the opening scenes was the films ‘Apocalyptic’ appearance. The cloths appeared more futuristic and the landscape not at all like the Biblical Sacred Geography of the Bible lands.\nIt soon became quite clear to me that this film was not about the Bible at all. It was not even about the Biblical story of the flood. Something else was going on.\nSome scenes were not too bad, but then I noticed when Tony Hopkins appeared on screen he repeatedly mentioned the drinking of “tea”. Anthony Hopkins was of course playing a representation of ‘Methuselah’ but he was not at all like a Biblical Prophet but rather resembled some kind of witch doctor or spiritualist.\nWhy, I asked, would ‘Methuselah’ mention Noah as ‘drinking tea with an old man’ when there is no evidence that people drank tea in the areas inhabited by Noah. Tea drinking likely began in China yet the script made a clear point of repeating the habit. Why? A conclusion I made was that the reference to drinking tea was a covert method of disconnecting the story to the Biblical eras and giving it a more recent or futuristic setting.\nWhat struck me about the film was that it appeared apocalyptic rather than historical and really, the topic itself was about ‘depopulation’. The popular notion which many of those who presently embrace the theory of ‘Global warming’ that ‘Man has corrupted this world and must be destroyed’. The focus was not upon the Biblical claim that God was correcting the corrupted seed which the serpent had sown. No, the focus was upon ‘saving the animals’ and getting back to ‘Eden’ without man. The animals were the innocent. Man must be destroyed even to the point of a savage and unBiblical representation of Noah as one who became like a madman, wholly intent upon killing the new born child of ‘Shem’s wife’.\nThe covert yet apparent topic of ‘depopulation’ became quite apparent within the film, the seeds of which the theory of overpopulation can be traced to a Darwinian origin. Darwins acceptance of Thomas Robert Malthus’ principle of population of which his proof was concerning population expansion in America. The film quite clearly represented ‘Darwinian Theory’ in a scene where ‘Noah’ was in the ark after the floods came and he told the story of Creation which in this case was little more than a basic representation of the big bang. The scenes quite swiftly progressed to show a mass of water and sea creatures, one of which crawls out of the water and onto dry land, soon to be transformed into a reptile, then a beast, then a monkey and then ‘Adam and Eve’. The scene was little more than a representation of the often misinformed view of ‘Theistic evolution’.\nWhat could have been rather good was the resurrected inclusion of Tubul Cain, an obscure Biblical character as mentioned in Genesis 4: 22. The Mosaic narrative says that Tubal-Cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron”.\nThe Jewish historian Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews 1. 2. 2 affirms this and wrote “Tubal…exceeded all men in strength, and was very expert and famous in martial performances”. He also states that he “first of all invented the art of making brass”.\nConcerning the historical references to the ancient use of Iron, written history itself disagrees with modern scientific claims concerning the dating of the iron age and even though the character of Noah was not represented Biblically in the film, outside of the English accent and appearance, Tubel-Cain appears quite accurate?\nIt cannot be merely argued that the film made Biblical mistakes, but more choices of either interpretation or the so-called ‘artistic license’. Such licences were extreme. Such was the case concerning the violence of Noah and his family when the flood waters came and the great springs of the deep burst forth (Genesis 7: 11) and people tried to get on the ark. Noah and his sons were depicted as killing them. This is a distinct misrepresentation. But the claim that people attempted to get on the ark can be traced historically to the Talmud, where the Babylonian version claims “the people came to the ark and clung to it, and cried to Noah for help, but he answered them: “For a hundred and twenty years I entreated ye to follow my words; alas, tis now too late” (The Talmud. Translated by Polano. Part first. Page 25. London)\nThus, it seems that in some ways the writers did some research into the ark, the written texts and so forth, yet they seemed to mingle these things with other ideas. Such things as the representation of the ‘fallen angels’ I thought was pathetic. The Deist representation of God, always named “The creator” is inconsistent with the Noahic story.\nTowards the end of the film when the ark had landed, it seems that the film-maker depicted the vessel as broken in two. This, is likely to be based upon the eyewitness claim of George Hagopian who claimed that when he was a boy he was taken to view Noah’s ark on Ararat around the years between 1900-1905. He stated that he saw the ark and went onto it and it was split in two. This, among a good number of reliable historical eye witness accounts that range from Josephus to Marco Polo, give us many indications and evidences concerning the historical whereabouts of the ark. Evidences it seems, the film-maker is aware of?\nThus, in our modern age where some people consider the Bible unreliable, those who believe that Noah’s ark and Biblical Creation are historical facts are sometimes labelled as ‘fanatics’ or ‘uneducated’ or ‘morons’. These claims are untrue. The word ‘uneducated’ should be replaced in many cases with ‘unpersuaded’. For, such claims are often based upon disinformation and misinformation.\nMajor facts which divide those two groups are matters of faith and facts on both sides. The Darwinian’s and uniformitarians, who must deny the historical reality of Noah’s flood in order for their ‘uniformitarian assumption’ to work, must, if they are sold out to their atheistic world-view play the event down. The event of the flood would disprove their ‘unformitarian assumption’ that the present is the key to the past. For, the implications of a worldwide flood, would be that it had affects concerning the mutations of the earth and the earth’s crust. If there was a worldwide flood, then the fact that 71% of the earth’s surface is water, must be played down by new atheist scientists as being unrelated to a worldwide flood, but the product of highly speculative theories. Thus, when their body of scientists are set up and declare their finds as ‘fact’ then those sheep who follow them are in fact, little more than scientific faith-heads who put their trust in interpretations of science and ignore the historical texts. Or merely label them as unscientific myths for deluded religious morons.\nThe facts remain that the story of a worldwide flood is highly documented throughout history, geology and archaeology and whether or not a person believes those claims I have made there, is really a matter of faith in objective argument.\nThe question is; who are you going to put your trust in? Science or scientists? Arguments or Truth? Written proofs or the claims made about them? Darwin or God? Because, as Bob Dylan rightly put it, “You’ve gotta serves somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’ve got to serve somebody”.\nThe God of the Bible will not take second place. For the Truth, as the great hymn writer put it “demands my soul, my life, my all”\nIn conclusion; the Noah film was not at all Biblical but a mere hotchpotch of deism and fantasy. Shame because it could have been good. What was good though is the way the film was depicted, which dissolves somewhat the children’s story like representation in other films, cartoons and books and atheist fiction and mockery. However, I thought they spoiled the film and muddled it up. But I don’t think it was intended to be Biblically based, but merely a film which used popular and central characters and events to further something else. A subliminal message of which I think relates to a predicted and futuristic mass genocide of depopulation? Where men seek justification to “annihilate” man and save the earth because according to them, man is destroying it. A wretched notion on their part, which I think should be consistently opposed.\nThe god of the Noah film is not the God of the Bible. He is the ideal god that the new atheists would prefer, if indeed, in their minds there were such a being, he is a deist god, and one whom, the new atheists in their wishful thinking, would rather exist, than the Biblical Creator. Science views itself as a type of god, the creator of life and this universe and it is science that will seek to give or take away life. The institution of modern science is not a friend of the earth or of people, it is merely gaining peoples confidence as a friend in the present, only to turn and rise up against them in the future. A new army is rising and a new era; science has been hijacked and will be used against us by militants and the one institution which they have presented as the peoples enemy, will be the one institution that will save us and concerning those wretch notions that some people have concerning depopulation, from the likes of Jacques Cousteau, John P. Holdren, Ted Turner, Bill Maher and many more, I think they are disgusting, for there is enough room in this world for all of us.\nA Darren Aronofsky film, Anthony Hopkins, arkaeology, depopulation, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connolly, Methuselah, Noah is a 2014 American epic biblically-inspired fantasy film, Noah movie trailer, Ray Whinstone, Russel Crowe as Noah, Russell Crowe, Russell Crowe stars as Noah, Russell Crowe stars as Noah in the film, Subliminal messages in the Noah film, The Noah Movie Is Disgusting and Evil Ken Ham, Thomas Robert Malthus","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line277595"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5812923908233643,"wiki_prob":0.41870760917663574,"text":"(ESV: Through The Bible)\nEzekiel 40 (Listen)\nVision of the New Temple\n40:1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on that very day, the hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me to the city. [1] In visions of God he brought me to the land of Israel, and set me down on a very high mountain, on which was a structure like a city to the south. When he brought me there, behold, there was a man whose appearance was like bronze, with a linen cord and a measuring reed in his hand. And he was standing in the gateway. And the man said to me, “Son of man, look with your eyes, and hear with your ears, and set your heart upon all that I shall show you, for you were brought here in order that I might show it to you. Declare all that you see to the house of Israel.”\nThe East Gate to the Outer Court\nAnd behold, there was a wall all around the outside of the temple area, and the length of the measuring reed in the man's hand was six long cubits, each being a cubit and a handbreadth [2] in length. So he measured the thickness of the wall, one reed; and the height, one reed. Then he went into the gateway facing east, going up its steps, and measured the threshold of the gate, one reed deep. [3] And the side rooms, one reed long and one reed broad; and the space between the side rooms, five cubits; and the threshold of the gate by the vestibule of the gate at the inner end, one reed. Then he measured the vestibule of the gateway, on the inside, one reed. Then he measured the vestibule of the gateway, eight cubits; and its jambs, two cubits; and the vestibule of the gate was at the inner end. And there were three side rooms on either side of the east gate. The three were of the same size, and the jambs on either side were of the same size. Then he measured the width of the opening of the gateway, ten cubits; and the length of the gateway, thirteen cubits. There was a barrier before the side rooms, one cubit on either side. And the side rooms were six cubits on either side. Then he measured the gate from the ceiling of the one side room to the ceiling of the other, a breadth of twenty-five cubits; the openings faced each other. He measured also the vestibule, twenty cubits. And around the vestibule of the gateway was the court. [4] From the front of the gate at the entrance to the front of the inner vestibule of the gate was fifty cubits. And the gateway had windows all around, narrowing inwards toward the side rooms and toward their jambs, and likewise the vestibule had windows all around inside, and on the jambs were palm trees.\nThe Outer Court\nThen he brought me into the outer court. And behold, there were chambers and a pavement, all around the court. Thirty chambers faced the pavement. And the pavement ran along the side of the gates, corresponding to the length of the gates. This was the lower pavement. Then he measured the distance from the inner front of the lower gate to the outer front of the inner court, [5] a hundred cubits on the east side and on the north side. [6]\nThe North Gate\nAs for the gate that faced toward the north, belonging to the outer court, he measured its length and its breadth. Its side rooms, three on either side, and its jambs and its vestibule were of the same size as those of the first gate. Its length was fifty cubits, and its breadth twenty-five cubits. And its windows, its vestibule, and its palm trees were of the same size as those of the gate that faced toward the east. And by seven steps people would go up to it, and find its vestibule before them. And opposite the gate on the north, as on the east, was a gate to the inner court. And he measured from gate to gate, a hundred cubits.\nThe South Gate\nAnd he led me toward the south, and behold, there was a gate on the south. And he measured its jambs and its vestibule; they had the same size as the others. Both it and its vestibule had windows all around, like the windows of the others. Its length was fifty cubits, and its breadth twenty-five cubits. And there were seven steps leading up to it, and its vestibule was before them, and it had palm trees on its jambs, one on either side. And there was a gate on the south of the inner court. And he measured from gate to gate toward the south, a hundred cubits.\nThe Inner Court\nThen he brought me to the inner court through the south gate, and he measured the south gate. It was of the same size as the others. Its side rooms, its jambs, and its vestibule were of the same size as the others, and both it and its vestibule had windows all around. Its length was fifty cubits, and its breadth twenty-five cubits. And there were vestibules all around, twenty-five cubits long and five cubits broad. Its vestibule faced the outer court, and palm trees were on its jambs, and its stairway had eight steps.\nThen he brought me to the inner court on the east side, and he measured the gate. It was of the same size as the others. Its side rooms, its jambs, and its vestibule were of the same size as the others, and both it and its vestibule had windows all around. Its length was fifty cubits, and its breadth twenty-five cubits. Its vestibule faced the outer court, and it had palm trees on its jambs, on either side, and its stairway had eight steps.\nThen he brought me to the north gate, and he measured it. It had the same size as the others. Its side rooms, its jambs, and its vestibule were of the same size as the others, [7] and it had windows all around. Its length was fifty cubits, and its breadth twenty-five cubits. Its vestibule [8] faced the outer court, and it had palm trees on its jambs, on either side, and its stairway had eight steps.\nThere was a chamber with its door in the vestibule of the gate, [9] where the burnt offering was to be washed. And in the vestibule of the gate were two tables on either side, on which the burnt offering and the sin offering and the guilt offering were to be slaughtered. And off to the side, on the outside as one goes up to the entrance of the north gate, were two tables; and off to the other side of the vestibule of the gate were two tables. Four tables were on either side of the gate, eight tables, on which to slaughter. And there were four tables of hewn stone for the burnt offering, a cubit and a half long, and a cubit and a half broad, and one cubit high, on which the instruments were to be laid with which the burnt offerings and the sacrifices were slaughtered. And hooks, [10] a handbreadth long, were fastened all around within. And on the tables the flesh of the offering was to be laid.\nChambers for the Priests\nOn the outside of the inner gateway there were two chambers [11] in the inner court, one [12] at the side of the north gate facing south, the other at the side of the south [13] gate facing north. And he said to me, This chamber that faces south is for the priests who have charge of the temple, and the chamber that faces north is for the priests who have charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, who alone [14] among the sons of Levi may come near to the Lord to minister to him. And he measured the court, a hundred cubits long and a hundred cubits broad, a square. And the altar was in front of the temple.\nThe Vestibule of the Temple\nThen he brought me to the vestibule of the temple and measured the jambs of the vestibule, five cubits on either side. And the breadth of the gate was fourteen cubits, and the sidewalls of the gate [15] were three cubits on either side. The length of the vestibule was twenty cubits, and the breadth twelve [16] cubits, and people would go up to it by ten steps. [17] And there were pillars beside the jambs, one on either side.\n1 Peter 5 (Listen)\nShepherd the Flock of God\n5:1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, [18] not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; [19] not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”\nHumble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.\nBy Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it. She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son. Greet one another with the kiss of love.\nPeace to all of you who are in Christ.\n[1] 40:1 Hebrew brought me there\n[2] 40:5 A cubit was about 18 inches or 45 centimeters; a handbreadth was about 3 inches or 7.5 centimeters\n[3] 40:6 Hebrew deep, and one threshold, one reed deep\n[4] 40:14 Text uncertain; Hebrew And he made the jambs sixty cubits, and to the jamb of the court was the gateway all around\n[5] 40:19 Hebrew distance from before the low gate before the inner court to the outside\n[6] 40:19 Or cubits. So far the eastern gate; now to the northern gate.\n[7] 40:36 One manuscript (compare verses 29 and 33); most manuscripts lack were of the same size as the others\n[8] 40:37 Septuagint, Vulgate (compare verses 26, 31, 34); Hebrew jambs\n[9] 40:38 Hebrew at the jambs, the gates\n[10] 40:43 Or shelves\n[11] 40:44 Septuagint; Hebrew were chambers for singers\n[12] 40:44 Hebrew lacks one\n[13] 40:44 Septuagint; Hebrew east\n[14] 40:46 Hebrew lacks alone\n[15] 40:48 Septuagint; Hebrew lacks was fourteen cubits, and the sidewalls of the gate\n[16] 40:49 Septuagint; Hebrew eleven\n[17] 40:49 Septuagint; Hebrew and by steps that would go up to it\n[18] 5:2 Some manuscripts omit exercising oversight\n[19] 5:2 Some manuscripts omit as God would have you\nDaily Bible Reading ... Full List and Index >>>\nFinding Hope and Comfort In Times of Trouble >>>\nGod's Promise >>>\nWhat Happens Next? Heaven or Hell ... >>>\nProphecies of the Messiah >>>\nProphecies of Messiah's Return >>>\nProphecies of the Coming 'Rapture' >>>\nProphecies of the Coming Apocalypse and Armageddon >>>\nA Remarkable Mathematical Prophecy ... Messiah Revealed >>>\nAnother Remarkable Mathematical Prophecy ... Israel Back As A Nation >>\nMore Prophecies >>>\n<<< Back To Alpha News Daily News Page","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line117807"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7035992741584778,"wiki_prob":0.7035992741584778,"text":"Explore the work we're doing across our 4 areas of expertise, including comparative and evolutionary psychology, forensic psychology, health and wellbeing\nPsychology is the scientific study of the mind, of conscious and unconscious phenomena, and the way humans and other species think, feel and behave.\nOur fundamental and applied research reflects the broad scope of psychological study, exploring topics from child development of social skills to eye witness testimony, from the evolution of primate facial expressions to the factors affecting drug use.\nOur researchers are addressing important issues in society, whether helping law enforcement agencies prosecute, developing methods to improve wellbeing and quality of life, supporting animal conservation and welfare initiatives, or unpacking the basics of psychological functioning.\nOur research contributes to the University's Health and Wellbeing research theme, which seeks to improve society through enhancing health and wellbeing, and the University’s Security and Risk theme, which seeks to address the challenges of maintaining the security of individuals, organisations and societies in an interconnected world.\nEqually, our work in behavioural ecology, animal welfare and environmental conservation addresses key issues surrounding the University’s Sustainability and the Environment theme – while our research into the building blocks of social interaction, group processes and the evolution of human and animal societies ties into the Democratic Citizenship theme, by providing insights into contemporary culture, and the changes and challenges faced by people around the world.\nOur Psychology research areas of expertise\nComparative and evolutionary psychology\nIn the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, we're exploring evolutionary processes and the comparison of humans with other animals, in order to study the origins of behaviour.\nIn the International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology, we're looking at the intersection between psychology and the law, to help law enforcement agencies develop methods to gather information about criminal activity.\nQuality of life, health and wellbeing\nWe're translating ideas in psychology into practical solutions to develop tools to improve lifestyles and wellbeing.\nSituated action and communication\nIn the Centre for Situated Action and Communication, we're studying psychological phenomena in relation to the context and situation in which it emerges.\nTake part in our research studies\nWe're always looking for volunteers to join our research study programmes.\nIf you're an adult interested in registering for a research study, please fill in this form.\nIf you'd like to register a child for a research study, please fill in this form.\nInterested in a PhD in Psychology?\nBrowse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Psychology postgraduate research degrees page.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1416298"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7434372901916504,"wiki_prob":0.2565627098083496,"text":"Sessions Testifies Before House Judiciary Committee — And Disappoints Democrats\nRUSH: Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee. It had its moments of high comedy when Sheila Jackson Lee got her turn to start asking questions. This is the representative from Houston who took over the seat for the esteemed Mickey Leland when he was killed in an accident in Ethiopia. He was on a mission there to feed the poor, and he died there, plane crash or some such thing. I forget the specific details, but she took over his seat.\nShe is the member of Congress who, on a visit to NASA, was looking at the Mars Rover — they had the video turned on — the Mars Rover was sending pictures back from Mars. Sheila Jackson Lee asked NASA administrators if they were gonna have it go over to where the astronauts had planted the flag.\nOf course, the NASA administrators had to deal with that with much diplomacy, because of course we’d never been to Mars and as far as we know there’s not an American flag there. We do know that if there was an American flag there, Colin Kaepernick would take a knee, even on Mars. It’s on the moon. And the NASA administrators had to very diplomatically remind her, “No, no. You’re getting our moon and the planet of Mars confused.”\n“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.” So she didn’t have much time when she got to her turn to ask questions, and she really didn’t want any answers. I mean, it’s just these rat-tat-tat, one allegation, one accusation after another. And Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio, had a very pointed question to Sessions about why he has not appointed a special counsel on the Clintons.\nRUSH: Okay, the Jeff Sessions hearings today before the House Intelligence Committee. Now, I have to tell you something. I watched some of this during the breaks, and I’m gonna be really up front with you: It was embarrassing. It was embarrassing to have these various members (and most of the ones that I’m talking about are Democrats) who apparently had no problem whatsoever illustrating their complete ignorance of the U.S. Constitution. For example, one Democrat was asking Sessions if he would have the guts to prosecute Trump for expressing an interest in any investigation.\n“Because, you know, that’s unconstitutional, Mr. Attorney General. That is a violation. The president cannot do that!”\nIt is not. The president runs the Justice Department! The president is entitled to know anything going on! It may not be politically correct, but he can. He can ask for any bit of information he wants and be given it. But here you had a Democrat claiming that Sessions didn’t have the guts to prosecute Trump in such a circumstance. Just sheer illiteracy of the United States Constitution — and that doesn’t even talk about Sheila Jackson Lee. I mean, it’s embarrassing. You know, we talk about what kids in school today are learning and what they think.\nMy friends, some of these elected members of our Congress are so ignorant of the founding documents of this country that it is scary. They just make it up, whatever they think is or is not constitutional — and with Trump, most everything is unconstitutional that these doing. And then they badger. They badger Sessions in a way that most judges would not even permit it, because they ask him questions that he can’t answer. If he answers one way, they accuse him of lying and hiding information.\nIf he doesn’t answer, they accuse him of stonewalling and not knowing or hiding something. And then most of their questions had innuendo that he’s lying about the Russians and that he did collude and that he knows Trump colluded, but he doesn’t have the guts to say so. It was a spectacle. It is ignorance. It’s stupidity on parade! We have a little bit of it. We’ll start here. This is the question from John Conyers. Conyers had a list of questions. He could barely read them, and he tried to get Sessions.\n“These are all ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I just want to know, yes or no: Did you beat your wife before you left for the hearing today? When you talked to the Russians about colluding, did Hillary Clinton’s name come up positive or not?” Stupid questions like that. Sessions said (impression), “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me, Congressman,” and Conyers would get frustrated and accusing him of stalling. But here is one of Conyers’ questions: “Are you recused from investigations that involve Secretary Clinton?”\nSESSIONS: I cannot answer that yes or no because — under the policies of the Department of Justice — to announce recusal in any investigation would reveal the existence of that investigation, and the top ethics officials have advised me I should not do so.\nRUSH: Oh, that didn’t sit well with the Democrats! “All we want know is you recused yourself from Hillary! Have you recused yourself from anything to do with lawbreaking? Have you recused yourself from anything that might have to do with anything Trump did in a gambling casino?” They’ve been asking all these asinine questions, and it’s all been one giant trick, attempted trick. Jerry Nadler, Democrat, New York: “Did Mr. Papadopoulos mention his outreach to the Russian government during that meeting?”\nSESSIONS: He made some comment to that effect, as I remember, after having —\nNADLER: Answer yes or no. I don’t have time!\nSESSIONS: All right.\nNADLER: There are reports that you “shut George down,” unquote, when he proposed that meeting with Putin. Is this correct? Yes or no.\nSESSIONS: Yes. I pushed back. I will just say it that way, because it was —\nNADLER: Yes. Your answer is yes. So you are obviously concerned by Mr. Papadopoulos’ connections and his possibly arranging a meeting with Putin. Now, again, yes or no: Did anyone else at that meeting — including then candidate Trump — react in any way to what Mr. Papadopoulos had presented?\nSESSIONS: I don’t recall.\nRUSH: Now, there’s a technique here the Democrats obviously have settled upon. Every question: “Yes or no! Yes or no!” Conyers did it. You just heard this guy, Jerrold Nadler, do it. Sheila Jackson Lee tried it. “Yes or no! Just yes or no! I don’t have any time. Republicans aren’t giving me enough time. This is a rigged hearing. We don’t have time here on the Democrat side! We don’t have time. You don’t speak fast enough pick up lie. Just yes or no!” And that’s what he was up against all day here.\nThe next question, Sheila Jackson Lee: “These young women have accused this individual, Roy Moore, who’s running for a federal office, of child sexual activity. Do you believe these women?”\nSESSIONS: I am — have no reason to doubt these young women.\nJACKSON LEE: And with that in mind, if you believe these young women, do you believe Judge Moore should be seated in the Senate if he wins, and would you introduce investigations by the DOJ regarding his actions?\nSESSIONS: We will evaluate every case as to whether or not it should be investigated. This kind of case would normally be a state case.\nRUSH: And we have time for one more. This is Sheila Jackson Lee asking Sessions about his previous testimony in the Senate on Trump campaign contacts with the Russians during the campaign.\nJACKSON LEE: Do you want to admit under oath that you did not tell the truth or misrepresented or do you want to correct your testimony right now?\nSESSIONS: You’re referring to my testimony at confirmation?\nJACKSON LEE: Before the Senate Intelligence Committee. My time is short and I have two more questions, please.\nSESSIONS: Well, I’m not able to respond because I don’t think I understand what you were saying.\nJACKSON LEE: I’m asking your Intelligence Committee testimony, do you want to change it where you indicated you had no knowledge of involvement of the Trump individuals involved in conversations regarding the Trump campaign, Russians. And Mr. Miller, uh, gave, uh, supported, uh, Mr. Trump’s, um, press conference where he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’ll be able to find the 30,000 emails.” Do you want to change your testimony that was where you said “I have no knowledge of any such conversation by anyone connected to the Trump campaign regarding Russians involved in the campaign”? That was, uh, a testimony on June 13.\nSESSIONS: I’m not able to understand —\nJACKSON LEE: All right, let me move forward.\nRUSH: That’s a comedy. The woman’s a joke. There’s no way anybody could answer this. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. The staff writes the questions for her and she rehearses it and makes sure she speaks loudly so it sounds like she’s projecting with confidence. This is a joke.\nAnd here we’re back to, I’ll never forget, this is one of the things I’m jealous that Trump did this. This is the kind of thing that we do on this program. “Hey, Russians, if you’re out there, maybe you can find the 30,000 Hillary emails and give ’em to the CIA or something. We’re looking real hard. We can’t find the 30,000 emails.” It was a laugh riot.\nInstead, the Democrats in the media accuse Trump of inviting the Russians to hack Hillary’s server. And Sheila Jackson Lee is all over this still, and she’s trying to get Sessions to admit that that was improper contact with the Russians and that Trump was encouraging them. And, by the way, Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller. She didn’t know what Stephen Miller did. The staff put his name in the question, just put his name in there because they think it’s negative.\nIt’s a joke. These people are insults to everybody’s intelligence and they are insults to the Constitution. But they’re duly elected by their idiot voters. And so we have to put up with them being in there. But man is it embarrassing.\nRUSH: Look. This is not a court of law. These Democrats cannot direct any witness how to answer. A prosecutor can, a defense attorney can, judge can, but these guys, they can’t control what Sessions says. And that’s not the point. They don’t even want him to answer.\nAll they’re doing is making speeches under the guise of questions. They’re creating sound bites for their own reelection or they’re creating sound bites for the news. They’re doing anything they can to blaspheme, impugn Sessions or what have you. They’re not interested in his answers to anything. The questions are designed to make him look guilty no matter what he says. “Yes or no, yes or no.” They can’t control how he answers. And, you know, the chairman could point that out now and then.\nRushLimbaugh.com: True Crime: The Intel Community vs. Trump - 11.13.17\nWashington Post: Sessions Considering Second Special Counsel to Investigate Republican Concerns, Letter Shows\nThe Hill: Sessions: DOJ Investigating 27 Classified Leaks","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line338002"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6067129969596863,"wiki_prob":0.6067129969596863,"text":"NYPD Warns Drivers: Slow Down And Beware Of Speed Cameras In School Zones\nFiled Under:Back-to-school, Local TV, New York, NYPD, Speed Cameras, Vision Zero\nNEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The NYPD is warning drivers to slow down in school zones – or it will cost you.\nThe reminder comes as students in the city head back to school tomorrow.\nThe mayor’s office says the number of speed cameras in school zones has increased to 360, with more being installed each month to reach 750 citywide by June 2020.\n“With schools reopening, we’re doubling down on our effort to protect the most vulnerable among us: our kids,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “With more officers patrolling around schools and hundreds of new speed cameras coming on line in the months ahead, reckless drivers will hear one thing loud and clear: slow down or pay the price.”\nAdditionally, the hours of enforcement have doubled well beyond the school day — from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays year-round.\n“If you don’t yield to the right-of-way to the pedestrians or the bicyclists out there, you will have problems,” NYPD Transportation Chief Thomas Chan said Wednesday.\nIf caught driving 10 miles an hour over the posted speed limit, get ready to pay a $50 fine.\nWeb Extra: NYPD, DOT On More Speed Cameras In School Zones\nThe brand new speed camera at the corner of Third Avenue and 99th Street in Bay Ridge was a welcome addition for administrators at students at Fontbonne Hall Academy as they prepare to start the school year.\n“It’s definitely nice knowing that there’s cameras, so that people will be more aware of what they’re doing and where they’re driving,” senior Isabella Chirico said.\nGov. Andrew Cuomo signed the expansion into law on Mother’s Day, and State Sen. Andrew Gournades was one of the bill’s sponsors.\n“We have to engage in a massive culture change to get everyone to slow the heck down,” he said Wednesday. “This is not just about keeping kids safe when they’re in algebra and biology class. This is about keeping kids and people safe when they’re coming to schools for whatever the reason.”\nThe cost to drivers can never compare to heartbroken families, like mother Amy Cohen, whose son was killed in 2013.\n“There is blood on our streets followed by a river of tears. It’s time we acted,” she said. “We’re grateful for this step forward, but we know we have more to do.”\nNearly 200,000 tickets were issued in July alone. According to the DOT, 80% of drivers who get their first ticket don’t get another one.\nThe money raised from the program will go toward studying its effectiveness and implementing other safety initiatives.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line521864"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.514370322227478,"wiki_prob":0.485629677772522,"text":"Det medisinske fakultet\nInstitutt for allmenn- og samfunnsmedisin ( -2009)\nInternasjonal helse\nAcceptability of Voluntary Counselling and Testing for HIV among Pregnant Women in Western Health Division, the Gambia\nJammeh, Abdou\nAbdouxJammeh.pdf (471.1Kb)\nInternasjonal helse [134]\nRationale of the Study: The Gambia is a developing country and the majority of the population are women. They need adequate support, information and knowledge to protect themselves from acquiring HIV, and for those already infected from transmitting it to their infants either during pregnancy, delivery or breastfeeding.\nThe Gambia has a low prevalence of HIV, but despite that the number infected increased yearly among women of childbearing age and among children. The rates of mother-to-child transmission for HIV-1 and HIV-2 were estimated at 25% and 4% respectively in a cohort study of antenatal mothers between 1993 and 1995. In a follow-up study in 2002, 34% of the mothers identified in 1993 to 1995 had died; 69% of HIV-1 infected children also died.\nIn light of this, the Department of State for Health has decided to integrate Voluntary Counselling and Testing in certain antenatal clinics with free antiretroviral drugs, and for women, the need to know their status is paramount. Many studies on HIV/AIDS have been conducted in the Gambia, but none have specifically investigated factors that influence acceptability of VCT among pregnant women. Little is also known about what women know about HIV/AIDS and their perception of risk.\nObjectives: The main objective of this study was to explore and describe factors that influence acceptability of voluntary HIV counselling and testing among pregnant women in Western Health Division of the Gambia.\nMaterials and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among pregnant women in western health division of the Gambia. A quantitative methodology with the aid of a structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. The study design was facility-based and, pregnant women were invited to participate when they came to the antenatal clinics included in the study. Midwives were instructed to invite women of all ages, educational levels, parity and occupation in a convenience-based sample. A total of 246 pregnant women were approached and asked to participate in the interview, out of whom 229 actually participated; (a participation rate of 93%)\nResults: The majority of pregnant women (65%) and (51%) had high knowledge on the modes of HIV transmission and on MTCT of HIV respectively. There was a significant difference in level of knowledge on HIV spread between educational groups. Women with formal education seemed to be more knowledgeable than those with no formal education (x2 = 6.09, df = 1, p = 0.01). Nearly half of the women had low knowledge on specific areas of MTCT such as the transmission of the virus through pregnancy, delivery and breastfeeding. The majority of pregnant women (61%) also had low knowledge on the three basic prevention messages (ABC) of HIV. Some misconceptions relating HIV transmission were also reported in the study and the majority of the pregnant women (55%) perceived themselves as not susceptible to HIV /AIDS.\nNearly all the women, (98%) were aware of the existence of the PMTCT programme. The majority (92%) had gone through the pre-test counselling, but 82% have actually done an HIV test of which 72% had taken the decision independently. Return rates were also found to be very high (91%). The need to know ones serostatus; and if HIV positive, be offered ARVs to protect the child and to prolong own life were factors that motivated or influenced women to accept HIV testing. The majority of the respondents (97%) would like to notify their partners about an HIV seropositve result and two third preferred to seek VCT together as a couple. Neighbours and other community members would never be informed of an HIV positive result and 80% of the respondents would not discuss their HIV serostatus openly if they were positive.\nConclusion: The findings from this study showed that women easily accepted VCT and return rates were equally high. There is an indication that women’s acceptance of HIV test seemed to depend on their view that going through the VCT process and the provision of and access to antiretroviral drugs provide benefit for both the child and themselves. We therefore believed that improving the accessibility and affordability of ARVs to HIV positive individuals, and encouraging couple counselling could significantly increase the up take of the VCT services in the Gambia.\nKey words: Couple Counselling, HIV Testing, PMTCT Programme, Level of knowledge, Informed Consent, Pregnancy.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line979026"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5198639035224915,"wiki_prob":0.48013609647750854,"text":"Disclosure and Deceit: Secrecy as the Manipulation of History, not its Concealment\nby Dr. T. P. Wilkinson\nThe declassification of official secrets is often seen as either a challenge or a prerequisite for obtaining accurate data on the history of political and economic events. Yet at the same time high government intelligence officials have said that their policy is one of ‘plausible deniability’. Official US government policy for example is never to acknowledge or deny the presence of nuclear weapons anywhere its forces are deployed, especially its naval forces. The British have their ‘Official Secrets’ Act. When the Wikileaks site was launched in 2007 and attained notoriety for publication of infamous actions by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, this platform was heralded and condemned for its disclosures and exposures.\nJulian Assange is quoted as saying that when he receives documents classified under the UK Official Secrets Act he responds in accordance with the letter of the law – since it is forbidden to withhold or destroy, his only option is to publish. The question remains for historians, investigators, and educated citizens: what is the real value of disclosures or declassification? Given the practice of plausible deniability, does disclosure or declassification constitute proof, and if so by what criteria? Both facts and non-facts can be concealed or disclosed.\nInformation is not self-defining Ultimately there remain two questions: does the secret document (now public) really constitute the ‘secret’? What is the ‘secret’ for which we use the document to actually refer? Is secrecy the difference between the known and unknown, or the known and untold?\nSome benefit can be found by borrowing theological concepts. We can distinguish between a mystery revealed and a supernatural truth which, by its very nature, lies above the finite intelligence. But a secret is something unknowable either by accident or on account of accessibility. I believe that the popularised form of disclosure embodied in Wikileaks should force us to distinguish between those beliefs we have about the nature of official action and the conduct of people working within those institutions and the data produced. Wikileaks is clearly a platform for publishing data but much of the response to these documents is more based on mystery than on secrecy. That is to say that the disclosures are treated as revelation in the religious sense – and not as discovery in the sense of scientia – knowledge. Why is this so? Wikileaks is described as a continuation of the ethical and social responsibility of journalism as an instrument to educate and inform the public – based on the principle that an informed public is essential to a democracy and self-governance. By collecting, collating and disclosing documents ‘leaked’ to it, Wikileaks also attacks what Assange calls the invisible government, the people and institutions who rule by concealing their activities from the people – and brings to light their wrongdoing.\nThere are two traditions involved here that partially overlap. In the US the prime examples are the ‘muckraking journalism’ originating in the so-called Progressive Era, spanning from 1890s to 1920s, and more recently the publication of the Pentagon Papers through Daniel Ellsberg. While liberals treat both of these examples favourably, their histories, however, are far more ambivalent than sentimentally presented. To understand this ambivalence, itself a sort of plausible deniability, it is necessary to sketch the history of journalism in the US – the emergence of an unnamed but essential political actor – and some of the goals of US foreign policy since the end of the 19th century. This very brief sketch offers what I call the preponderance of facticity – as opposed to an unimpeachable explanation for the overt and covert actions of the US.\nFirst of all it is necessary to acknowledge that in 1886 the US Supreme Court endowed the modern business corporation with all the properties of citizenship in the US – a ruling reiterated with more vehemence this year by another Supreme Court decision. As of 1886, business corporations in the US had more civil rights than freed slaves or women. By the end of the First World War, the business corporation had eclipsed the natural person as a political actor in the US. By 1924 US immigration law and the actions of the FBI had succeeded in damming the flow of European radicalism and suppressing domestic challenges to corporate supremacy. Thus by the time Franklin Roosevelt was elected, the US had been fully constituted as a corporatist state. US government policy was thereafter made mainly by and for business corporations and their representatives. Second, professional journalism emerged from the conflict between partisan media tied to social movements and those tied to business. The first journalism school was founded in 1908 at the University of Missouri with money from newspaper baron Joseph Pulitzer. As in all other emerging professions at that time, it was claimed that uniform training within an academic curriculum would produce writers who were neutral, objective, and dispassionate – that is to say somehow scientific in their writing.\nA professional journalist would not allow his or her writing to be corrupted by bribery or political allegiances. These professional journalists would work for commercial enterprises but be trained to produce value-free texts for publication.. The US has always refused to call itself an empire or to acknowledge that its expansion from the very beginning was imperial. The dogma of manifest destiny sought to resolve this contradiction by stipulating that domestic conquest was not imperial. Control of the Western hemisphere has always been defined as national security, not of asserting US domination. Likewise, it is impossible to understand the actions of the US government in Asia since 1910 without acknowledging that the US is an empire and recognising its imperial interests in the Asia–Pacific region. It is also impossible to understand the period called the Cold War without knowing that the US invaded the Soviet Union in 1918 with 13,000 troops along with some 40,000 British troops and thousands of troops recruited by the ‘West’ to support the Tsarist armies and fascist Siberian Republic. It is essential to bear these over-arching contextual points in mind when considering the value of classified US documents and their disclosure, whether by Wikileaks or Bob Woodward. It is essential to bear these points in mind because the value or the ambivalence of ‘leaks’ or declassification depends entirely on whether the data is viewed as ‘revelation’ or as mere scientific data to be interpreted.\nRevelation and heresy For the most part the disclosures by Wikileaks have been and continue to be treated as ‘revelation’ and the disclosure itself as heresy. This is particularly the case in the batches of State Department cables containing diplomatic jargon and liturgy. The ‘revelation’ comprises the emotional response to scripture generated by members of the US foreign service and the confirmation this scripture appears to give to opinions held about the US – whether justified or not. Just as reading books and even the bible was a capital offence for those without ecclesiastical license in the high Middle Ages, the response of the US government is comprehensible. It is bound to assert that Wikileaks is criminal activity and to compel punishment. Yet there is another reason why the US government reaction is so intense. As argued above, the primary political actor in the US polity is the business corporation. In Europe and North America at least it is understood: (1) that the ultimate values for state action are those which serve the interests of private property; and (2) that the business corporation is the representative form of private property.\nThis in turn means that information rights are in fact property rights manifest as patents, copyrights, and trade or industrial secrets. Since the state is the guardian of the corporation, it argues that the disclosure of government documents should only be allowed where the government itself has surrendered some of its privacy rights. This is quite different from the arguments for feudal diplomatic privilege, even though business corporations have superseded princely states. The argument for state secrecy now is that the democratic state constituted by business corporations is obliged to protect the rights and privileges of those citizens as embodied in their private property rights – rights deemed to be even more absolute than those historically attributed to natural persons, if for no other reason than that corporations enjoy limited liability and immortality, unlike natural persons. When the US government says it is necessary for other states to treat Assange as an outlaw and Wikileaks as a criminal activity, it is appealing on one hand to the global corporate citizenry and on the other, asserting its role – not unlike the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages – as the sole arbiter of those rights and privileges subsumed by Democracy in the world. Many of those who lack a religious commitment to the American way of life have still recognised the appeal to privacy and ultimately to private property which are now deemed the highest values in the world – so that trade, the commerce in private property, takes precedence over every other human activity and supersedes even human rights, not to mention civil rights.\nEllsberg In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which began their publication. This leak was treated as a landmark, although it would take several years before the US withdrew its forces from Vietnam and many more before hostilities were formally ended. What then was the significance of the ‘leak’? The documents generally point to the failures of the military, omitting the role of the CIA almost entirely. Today it is still largely unknown that Ellsberg was working with the CIA in counter-insurgency programs in Vietnam. Did the Pentagon Papers thus serve the interests of plausible deniability – a disclosure of secrets designed not to reveal truth, but to conceal a larger truth by revealing smaller ones? On the other hand, the collection of essays, Dirty Work, edited by Philip Agee and Lou Wolf, showed how the identity of CIA officers could be deciphered from their official biographies, especially as published in the Foreign Service List and other government registers. This type of disclosure allows the competent researcher to recognise ‘real’ Foreign Service officers as opposed to CIA officers operating under diplomatic cover. Agee and his colleague Lou Wolf maintained that disclosure of CIA activities was not a matter of lifting secrets but of recognising the context in which disparate information has to be viewed to allow its interpretation.\nTo put it trivially: in order to find something you have to know the thing for which you are searching. In order to be meaningful, disclosures of intelligence information must explain that intelligence information seeks to deceive the US public. For example, the CIA and those in the multi-agency task forces under its control produced an enormous amount of reports and documentation to show what was being done to fulfil the official US policy objectives in Vietnam. One of these programs was called Rural Development. This CIA program was run ostensibly by the USAID and the State Department to support the economic and social development of the countryside. This policy was articulated in Washington to fit with the dominant ‘development’ paradigm – to package the US policy as aid and not military occupation. And yet, as Douglas Valentine shows in his book The Phoenix Program, Rural Development was a cover for counterinsurgency from the beginning. The Phoenix Program only became known in the US after 1971, and then only superficially. The information released to the US Congress and reported in the major media outlets lacked sufficient context to allow interpretation. There was so little context that the same people who worked in the Phoenix program in Vietnam as 20-year-olds have been able to continue careers operating the same kinds of programmes in other countries with almost no scrutiny.\nTwo people come to mind: John Negroponte, who is alleged to have provided support to death squads in Honduras during the US war against Nicaragua and later served as ambassador to occupied Iraq, began his foreign service career in Vietnam with one of the agencies instrumental in Phoenix. The other person died recently: Richard Holbrooke began his career with USAID in Vietnam, went on to advise the Indonesian dictatorship, went to manage the ‘diplomatic’ part of the US war in Yugoslavia and finally served as a kind of pro-consul for Central Asia with responsibility for the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. As the secret weapon in US imperial policy, the counterinsurgency or rural development or ‘surge’ policies of the US government never include an examination of the professionals who managed them. It used to be said among some critics that one could follow General Vernon Walters’ travel itinerary and predict military coups. But that was not something ‘leaked’ and it did not appear in the mainstream media analysis.\nThe illusion of objective neutrality So if much of what we see ‘leaked’ is gossip in the service of plausible deniability, what separates the important gossip from the trivial? I suggest it is a return to consciously interested, humanistic values in historical research. We have to abandon the idea that the perfect form of knowledge is embodied in the privilege of corporate ownership of ideas, and domination of the state. We also have to abandon the illusion of objective neutrality inherited from Positivism and Progressivism, with its exclusionary professionalism. Until such time as human beings can be restored to the centre of social, political and economic history we have to recognise the full consequences of the enfranchisement of the business corporation and the subordination of the individual to role of a mere consumer. If we take the business corporation, an irresponsible and immortal entity, endowed with absolute property rights and absolved of any liability for its actions or those of its officers and agents, as the subject of history it has become, then we have to disclose more than diplomatic cables. We have to analyse its actions just as historians have tried to understand the behaviour of princes and dynasties in the past. This is too rarely done and when often only in a superficial way. I would like to provide an example, a sketch if you will, of one such historical analysis, taking the business corporation and not the natural person as the focus of action.\nIn 1945, George Orwell referred to the threat of nuclear war between the West and the Soviet Union as a ‘cold war’. He made no reference to the 1918 invasion of the Soviet Union by British troops. In 1947, US Secretary of State Bernard Baruch gave a speech in South Carolina saying ‘Let us not be deceived: we are today in the midst of a cold war’. The speech had been written by a rich newspaperman named Herbert Swope. In 1947, George Kennan published his containment essay, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, in Foreign Affairs under the name ‘X’. In it he describes a supposed innate expansionist tendency of the Soviet Union – also no mention of the US invasion or the devastation of WWII, which virtually destroyed the Soviet Union’s manpower and industrial base. In April 1950, NSC 68 is published – classified top secret until 1975 – outlining the necessity for the US to massively rearm to assert and maintain its role as the world’s superpower. At the end of summer 1950, war breaks out in Korea. President Truman declared an emergency and gets UN Security Council approval for a war that lasts three years, killing at least 3 million Koreans – most of whom die as a result of US Air Force saturation bombing of Korea north of the 38th parallel. Truman proclaims that US intervention will be used to prevent the expansion of the Soviet Union or as Ronald Reagan put it then – Russian aggression. After being utterly routed by the army of North Korea, the US bombs its way to the Yalu only to be thrown back to the 38th parallel by China. In 1954, the US organises the overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala and begins its aid and covert intervention in Vietnam beginning a war that only ends in 1976. Meanwhile Britain suppresses the Malaysian independence movement. Between 1960 and 1968, nationalist governments have been overthrown in Indonesia, Congo, Ghana, Brazil. Cuba is the great surprise amidst the literally hundreds of nationalist, anti-colonial movements and governments suppressed by the US.\nWilliam Blum has catalogued the enormous number of overt and covert interventions by the US in his book Killing Hope. The amazing thing about much of what Blum compiled is that it was not ‘secret’. It was simply not reported or misreported. Blum makes clear – what should be obvious – that the Soviet Union was not a party to a single war or coup from 1945 to 1989 and that the US government knew this. Much of this early action took place when John Foster Dulles was US Secretary of State and his brother was head of the CIA. The Dulles brothers were intimately connected to corporations they represented in their capacity as ‘white shoe’ lawyers in New York. In fact the founder of the OSS, the CIA’s predecessor, William Donovan, was also a corporate lawyer both before and after his service in the OSS. In other words the people who have commanded these foreign policy instruments have almost without exception been the direct representatives of major US business corporations. In each case the public pretext has been the threat of communism or Soviet expansion. Yet the only consistent quality all of these actions had was the suppression of governments that restricted the activities of US or UK corporations. Of course, communism has long been merely a term for any opposition to the unrestricted rights of business corporations.\nOne could say people like Donovan or Dulles were seconded to government office. However, the direct financial benefit that someone like Dulles obtained when he succeeded in deposing Arbenz in Guatemala came from his shareholding in United Fruit, the instigator and financial backer of the CIA co-ordinated coup. Perhaps the more accurate interpretation of this secret activity is that the business corporation, which previously employed law firms and Pinkertons, had shifted the burden of implementing corporate foreign policy to the taxpayer and the state. Now the interest of the US in Latin America has been well researched and documented. But the persistence of the Vietnam War and the silence about the Korean War have only been matched by the virtual absence of debate about the overthrow of Sukarno and the Philippine insurgency. The Philippines became a footnote in the controversy about US torture methods in Iraq and elsewhere as it was shown that the ‘water cure’ was applied rigorously by American troops when suppressing the Philippine independence movement at the beginning of the 20th century.\nLack of context not knowledge The study of each of these Asian countries – and one can add the so-called Golden Triangle; and I would argue Afghanistan now – has been clouded not by lack of evidence or documentation but by lack of context. If the supposed threat posed by communism, especially Soviet communism is taken at face value – as also reiterated in innumerable official documents both originally public and originally confidential – then the US actions in Asia seem like mere religious fanaticism. The government officials and military and those who work with them are so indoctrinated that they will do anything to oppose communism in whatever form. Thus even respected scholars of these wars will focus on the delusions or information deficits or ideological blinders of the actors. This leads to a confused and incoherent perception of US relations in Asia and the Pacific. The virtual absence of any coherent criticism of the Afghanistan War, let alone the so-called War on Terror, is symptomatic not of inadequate information, leaked or otherwise. It is a result of failure to establish the context necessary for evaluating the data available. It should not surprise anyone that ‘counter-terror’ practices by US Forces are ‘discovered’ in Afghanistan or Iraq, if the professional careers of the theatre and field commanders (in and out of uniform) are seriously examined.\nVirtually all those responsible for fighting the war in Central Asia come from Special Operations/CIA backgrounds. That is what they have been trained to do. If we shift our attention for a moment to the economic basis of this region, it has been said that the war against drugs is also being fought there. However, this is counterfactual. Since the 1840s the region from Afghanistan to Indochina has been part of what was originally the British opium industry. China tried to suppress the opium trade twice leading to war with Britain – wars China lost. The bulk of the Hong Kong banking sector developed out of the British opium trade protected by the British army and Royal Navy. Throughout World War II and especially the Vietnam War the opium trade expanded to become an important economic sector in Southern Asia – under the protection of the secret services of the US, primarily the CIA. Respected scholars have documented this history to the present day. However it does not appear to play any role in interpreting the policies of the US government whether publicly or confidentially documented. Is it because, as a senior UN official reported last year, major parts of the global financial sector – headquartered in New York and London – were saved by billions in drug money in 2008? Does the fact that Japan exploited both Korea and Vietnam to provide cheap food for its industrial labour force have any bearing on the US decision to invade those countries when its official Asia policy was to rebuild Japan as an Asian platform for US corporations – before China became re-accessible (deemed lost to the Communists in 1948)? Did the importance of Korean tungsten for the US steel industry contribute to the willingness of people like Preston Goodfellow, a CIA officer in Korea, to introduce a right-wing Korean to rule as a dictator of the US occupied zone? Is there continuity between Admiral Dewey’s refusal to recognise the Philippine Republic after Spain’s defeat – because the 1898 treaty with Spain ceded the archipelago to the US – and the refusal of General Hodge to recognise the Korean People’s Republic in Seoul when he led the occupation of Korea in 1945? As John Pilger suggests, were the million people massacred by Suharto with US and UK support a small price to pay for controlling the richest archipelago in the Pacific? Was the Pol Pot regime not itself a creation of the US war against Vietnam – by other means?\nIs it an accident that while the US was firmly anchored in Subic Bay, armed and funded Jakarta, occupied Japan and half of Korea, that the US was prepared to bomb the Vietnamese nationalists ‘into the Stone Age’? It only makes sense if the US is understood as an empire and its corporate interests are taken seriously when researching the history of the US attempts to create and hold an Asian empire. The resistance to this perception can be explained and it is not because of an impenetrable veil of secrecy. It is not because of the accidentally or inaccessibly unknown. Rather it is because US policy and practice in the world remains a ‘mystery’, a supernatural truth, one that of its very nature lies above the finite intelligence. The quasi-divine status of the universal democracy for which the USA is supposed to stand is an obstacle of faith.\nEngineering consent In the twentieth century two conflicting tendencies can be identified. The first was the emergence of mass democratic movements. The second was the emergence of the international business corporation. When the Great War ended in 1918, the struggle between these two forces crystallised in the mass audience or consumer on one hand and the mass production and communication on the other. As Edward Bernays put it: ‘This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age too there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas.’ In his book, Propaganda, he wrote ‘The conscious and intelligent manipulation of organised habits and opinions of the masses…’ was necessary in a democracy, calling that ‘invisible government’.\nLike his contemporary Walter Lippmann, a journalist, he believed that democracy was a technique for ‘engineering the consent’ of the masses to those policies and practices adopted by the country’s elite – the rulers of its great business corporations. By the 1980s the state throughout the West – and after 1989 in the former Soviet bloc – was being defined only by ‘business criteria’, e.g. efficiency, profitability, cost minimization, shareholder value, consumer satisfaction, etc. Political and social criteria such as participatory rights or income equity or equality, provision of basic needs such as education, work, housing, nutrition, healthcare on a universal basis had been transformed from citizenship to consumerism. The individual lost status in return for means tested access to the ‘market’. In order for the state to function like a business it had to adopt both the organisational and ethical forms of the business corporation – a non-democratic system, usually dictatorial, at best operating as an expert system. As an extension of the property-holding entities upon which it was to be remodelled, the state converted its power into secretive, jealous, and rigid hierarchies driven by the highest ethical value of the corporation – profit.\nJournalists and ‘corporate stenographers’ While historical research should not be merely deductive, it is dependent on documents. The veracity of those documents depends among other things on authenticity, judgements as to the status, knowledge or competence of the author, the preponderance of reported data corresponding to data reported elsewhere or in other media. A public document is tested against a private or confidential document – hence the great interest in memoirs, diaries and private correspondence. There is an assumption that the private document is more sincere or even reliable than public documents. This is merely axiomatic since there is no way to determine from a document itself whether its author lied, distorted or concealed in his private correspondence, too. Discrepancies can be explained in part by accepting that every author is a limited informant or interpreter. The assumptions about the integrity of the author shape the historical evaluation. In contemporary history – especially since the emergence of industrial-scale communications – the journalist has become the model and nexus of data collection, author, analyst, and investigator. Here the journalist is most like a scholar. The journalist is also a vicarious observer.\nThe journalist is supposed to share precisely those attributes of the people to whom or about whom he reports. This has given us the plethora of reality TV, talk shows, embedded reporters, and the revolving door between media journalists and corporate/state press officers. In the latter the journalist straddles the chasm between salesman and consumer. This is the role that the Creel Committee and the public relations industry learned to exploit. The journalist George Creel called his memoir of the Committee on Public Information he chaired – formed by Woodrow Wilson to sell US entry into World War I – How We Advertised America. The campaign was successful in gaining mass support for a policy designed to assure that Britain and France would be able to repay the billions borrowed from J. P. Morgan & Co. to finance their war against Germany and seize the Mesopotamian oilfields from the Ottoman Empire. Industrial communications techniques were applied to sell the political product of the dominant financial and industrial corporations of the day. The professional journalist, freed from any social movement or popular ideology, had already become a mercenary for corporate mass media.\nThe profession eased access to secure employment and to the rich and powerful. The journalists’ job was to produce ideas for mass distribution – either for the state or for the business corporation. Supporting private enterprise was at the very least a recognition that one’s job depended on the media owner. Editorial independence meant writers and editors could write whatever they pleased as long as it sold and did not challenge the economic or political foundation of the media enterprise itself. In sum the notion of the independent, truth-finding, investigative journalist is naïve at best. We must be careful to distinguish between journalists and what John Pilger has called ‘corporate stenographers’. This does not mean that no journalists supply us with useful information or provide us access to meaningful data. It means that journalism, as institution, as praxis, is flawed – because it too is subordinated to the business corporation and its immoral imperatives. Wikileaks takes as its frame of reference the journalism as it emerged in the Positivist – Progressive Era – a profession ripe with contradictions, as I have attempted to illustrate.\nWere Wikileaks to fulfil that Positivist–Progressive model, it would still risk overwhelming us with the apparently objective and unbiased data – facts deemed to stand for themselves. Without a historical framework – and I believe such a framework must also be humanist – the mass of data produced or collated by such a platform as Wikileaks may sate but not nourish us. We have to be responsible for our interpretation. We can only be responsible however when we are aware of the foundations and framework for the data we analyse. The deliberate choice of framework forces us to be conscious of our own values and commitments. This stands in contrast to a hypothetically neutral, objective, or non-partisan foundation that risks decaying into opportunism – and a flood of deceit from which no mountain of disclosure can save us.\nFiled under World Tagged with accurate data, CIA, cold war, Communism, copyrights, corporate supremacy, covert operations, disclosing documents, economic events, engineering consent, feudal diplomatic privilege, george orwell, governance, historical events, ideological blinders, industrial secrets, lies, multi-agency task forces, objective neutrality, official secrets, Official Secrets Act, Pentagon Papers, plausible deniability, political events, Progressive Era, Rural Development, secrecy, secret, special operations, The Phoenux Program, Torture, USAID, vietnam, wikileaks","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line168539"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7145359516143799,"wiki_prob":0.2854640483856201,"text":"American Lutheran Church\nCity of Armour\nCity of Lennox\nCity of Wagner\nDakota Senior Meals, Gregory SD\nKingsbury Emergency Management\nLifeScape\nMcCook County Offices\nMinnehaha County Administration\nTodd County School District\nToshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.v\nElectric Bike Demo In Rapid City Friday\nby: Al Van Zee\nPosted: Jul 11, 2018 / 06:26 PM CDT / Updated: Jul 11, 2018 / 06:26 PM CDT\nRapid City recently approved electric bicycles for use on the city’s streets and bike paths. And Rapid City e-bike dealers are planning a demonstration for people who want to find out what e-bikes are all about.\nE-bikes work essentially the same way as regular bicycles. But they add a little more muscle when it’s needed. That comes from a motor next to the peddles and a battery attached to the frame.\nThe electric motor doesn’t run all the time. You have to keep peddling in order for it to provide power. It’s sort of like power steering on a car. It doesn’t do all the work, but it does enough to make the experience pleasant.\n“You have to peddle. Just like a regular bike. You have to peddle all the time if you want the motor to assist you. There is no throttle. So, if you’re peddling, the bike helps you peddle,” said Josh Dailey, with Acme Bicycles in Rapid City.\n“It’s kind of nice. You get the assist on the bike when you’re going up the hills. It helps you out. It gets more people out riding,” said cyclist Mark Thompson of Rapid City.\nAnd that’s the point of all this, according to Dailey and Thompson: To get more people out bicycling. To give that effort an additional boost, the bicycle dealers in Rapid City are giving people a chance to look over their new e-bikes and take one for a ride on Friday. The e-bike demonstrators will be on display at Founders Park next to the Big Fish on Omaha starting at about 3 p.m. in the afternoon.\nThe dealers say they are expecting questions like: how fast can they go?\n“Most of them are governed at about 20 mph. So, if you’re peddling faster than that, you can go faster than that. But the motor will shut off at 20 mph,” said Dailey.\nAnother question that will probably come up: how far can they go?\n“If you’re riding off-road trails, most of them will do 25 to 35 miles. If you’re riding the bike path or on the road, uh, up to 60,” said Dailey.\nHe said the battery will be fully charged if plugged in overnight.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1387280"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7249841094017029,"wiki_prob":0.7249841094017029,"text":"Home > Cases > Tadić\nThe Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić\nCourt International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Appeals Chamber, The Netherlands\nCase number IT-94-1-A\nDecision title Judgment in Appeal\nDecision date 15 July 1999\nDuško Tadić\nKeywords additional conviction, crimes against humanity, discriminatory intent, Effective control, Geneva Convention, Grave breaches, overall control, personal motives, Prijedor\nJudgment in Appeal: the Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić\nAfter the takeover of Prijedor (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the attack launched against the town of Kozarac (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1992, the non-Serb civilians were detained in several prison facilities, where they were beaten, sexually assaulted, tortured, killed and otherwise mistreated. Duško Tadić was the President of the Local Board of the Serb Democratic Party in Kozarac (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Trial Chamber II found Duško Tadić guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes and, in a separate sentencing judgment, sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment.\nThe Appeals Chamber denied Duško Tadić’s appeal on all grounds. It did allow, however, the Prosecution’s appeal, reversing the judgment of Trial Chamber II and entering convictions for war crimes and crimes against humanity.\nThe Appeals Chamber also held that an act carried out for the purely personal motives of the perpetrator can constitute a crime against humanity. Furthermore, Trial Chamber II erred in finding that all crimes against humanity require discriminatory intent.\nThe issue of sentencing was referred to a Trial Chamber.\nThe amended indictment was filed on 14 December 1995. The trial commenced on 7 May 1996, and Trial Chamber II rendered its Opinion and Judgment on 7 May 1997, finding Tadić guilty of violations of the laws or customs of war and crimes against humanity.\nThereafter, Trial Chamber II rendered its Sentencing Judgment on 14 July 1997, sentencing Tadić to 20 years of imprisonment.\nThe parties appealed against the Opinion and Judgment of 7 May 1997, and Tadić further filed an appeal against the Sentencing Judgment of 14 July 1997.\nOn 11 November 1999, Trial Chamber II bis rendered its sentencing judgment on the additional counts, imposing a sentence of 25 years of imprisonment.\nOn 25 November 1999, Tadić filed a notice of appeal against the Sentencing Judgment of 11 November 1999. Pursuant to his request, the Appeals Chamber ordered that the appeal be joined with the Appeal against the Sentencing Judgment of 14 July 1997.\nThe Appeals Chamber rendered its judgment on 26 January 2000; it upheld the convictions for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but found that the trial Chamber had erred in the sentencing. Hence, the prison sentence was reduced to twenty years.\nOn 31 October 2000, Duško Tadić was transferred to Germany to serve his sentence (see ICTY, 'Duško Tadić Transferred to Germany to Serve Prison Sentence', ICTY Press Release, 31 October 2000).\nOn 18 June 2001, Duško Tadić filed a request for a review of his complete case, in light of the decision on contempt of the Tribunal. The Appeals Chamber dismissed the request on 30 July 2002. On 17 July 2008, Duško Tadić was granted early release.\nDuring the Tadić procedure, contempt hearings were initiated against Milan Vujin, lead counsel for the Defence of Duško Tadić. On 31 January 2000, the Appeals Chamber found Vujin in contempt of the Tribunal and fined him. A subsequent appeal was dismissed by the Appeals Chamber on 27 February 2001 (see ICTY, 'Milan Vujin, former Counsel for Dusko Tadic, Found in Contempt of the Tribunal, and Fined 15,000 Dutch Guilders', ICTY Press Release, 31 January 2000).\nOn 30 April 1992, the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) took over control in the town of Prijedor (Bosnia and Herzegovina). On 24 May 1992, the nearby town of Kozarac (Bosnia and Herzegovina) was attacked, resulting in the killing of some 800 civilians, and the removal of non-Serbs from the town. During the attack on Kozarac, non-Serb civilians were beaten, robbed and murdered by the Serb forces. After the takeover of Prijedor and the surrounding areas, the Serb forces detained non-Serb civilians in three major prison camps: the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje camps (all near Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Those who were detained were subjected to beatings, sexual assaults, torture, executions, and psychological abuse. Furthermore, the detainees were held in unhygienic conditions in overcrowded rooms (para. 53 et seq. of the judgment rendered by Trial Chamber II on 7 May 1997).\nDuško Tadić was the President of the Local Board of the Serb Democratic Party in Kozarac (Bosnia and Herzegovina).\nDid Trial Chamber II err in its findings with respect to the convictions of Duško Tadić?\nCan the Appeals Chamber uphold any of the grounds of the Appellants?\nArticles 2, 5, 20, 21, 25 of the ICTY Statute;\nRule 115 of the ICTY Rules of Procedure and Evidence.\nThe Appeals Chamber denied Tadić’s appeal on all grounds.\nIn its first ground of appeal, the Prosecution argued that Trial Chamber II “erred by relying exclusively upon the “effective control” test derived from the Case concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States) in order to determine the applicability of the grave breach provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention” (para. 73). The Appeals Chamber found that “[t]he “effective control” test propounded by the International Court of Justice as an exclusive and all-embracing test is at variance with international judicial and State practice: such practice has envisaged State responsibility in circumstances where a lower degree of control than that demanded by the Nicaragua test was exercised” (para. 124) introducing a different test of overall control with respect to military or paramilitary groups. Exercising overall control means “not only [the] equipping and financing [of] the group, but also [the] coordinating or helping in the general planning of its military activity.” (para. 131) The Appeals Chamber concluded that “the armed forces of the Republika Srpska were to be regarded as acting under the overall control of and on behalf of the [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]. Hence, even after 19 May 1992 the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina between the Bosnian Serbs and the central authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina must be classified as an international armed conflict” (para. 162). The Appeals Chamber reversed Tadić’s acquittal and found him guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. (para. 171)\nThe Appeals Chamber also held that “[t]he Trial Chamber erred in holding that it could not, on the evidence before it, be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Appellant had any part in the killing of the five men” (para. 233), finding Tadić guilty of additional war crimes and crimes against humanity (paras. 235-237).\nThe Appeals Chamber further found that “the requirement that an act must not have been carried out for the purely personal motives of the perpetrator does not form part of the prerequisites necessary for conduct to fall within the definition of a crime against humanity under Article 5 of the Tribunal’s Statute” (para. 272).\nThe Appeals Chamber also held that “the Trial Chamber erred in finding that all crimes against humanity require a discriminatory intent.” (para. 305)\nThe issue of sentencing was referred to a Trial Chamber (p. 144).\nA. Cassese, ‘The Nicaragua and Tadić Tests Revisited in Light of the ICJ Judgment on Genocide in Bosnia’, European Journal of International Law, 2007, Vol. 18(4), pp. 649-668;\nM. Sassòli & L.M. Olson, ‘The Judgment of the ICTY Appeals Chamber on the Merits in the Tadic Case’, International Review of the Red Cross, 30 September 2000, No. 839.\nUN Security Council, 25 May 1993 (UNSC Res. 808), Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY Statute);\nUN ICTY, 11 February 1994 (last amended on 20 October 2011), Rules of Procedure and Evidence.\nICTY, Trial Chamber IIbis, The Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, Case No. IT-94-1-Tbis-R117, Sentencing Judgment, 11 November 1999;\nICTY, Appeals Chamber, The Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, Case No. IT-94-1-A and IT-94-1-Abis, Judgment in Sentencing Appeals, 26 January 2000.\nThe Hague Justice Portal, 'Tadić, Duško', Academic Research, Courts and Tribunals;\nIWPR, 'Tadic Case: The Appeals Chamber Judgement', Institute for War & Peace Reporting, 18 July 1999;\nICTY, 'Tadic Case: The Judgement Of The Appeals Chamber', ICTY Press Release, 15 July 1999.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line479124"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5428636074066162,"wiki_prob":0.5428636074066162,"text":"PROUD SALOPIAN UNVEILS SECOND SHREWSBURY CALENDAR FOR HOMETOWN (2nd October 2015)\nA local photographer with a passion for his hometown of Shrewsbury, is pleased to announce the launch of a second Shrewsbury calendar.\nA local photographer with a passion for his hometown of Shrewsbury, is pleased to announce the launch of a second Shrewsbury calendar. Adam Telford, of APT Photography unveils the second calendar for 2016, following the success of the 2015 edition.\nAs a photographer, Adam is committed to showcasing the wonderful town of Shrewsbury, which has something for everybody. From hoards of heritage and history, to lots of culture and creativity - Shrewsbury possesses it all and that’s what Adam aims to reflect in both his photography and throughout the calendar itself.\nResidents and those who simply have a fondness for Shrewsbury as a town, are encouraged to peruse the calendar and see where each month takes them. Will it be a summer’s day on the river upon Sabrina by the Quarry, or an intriguing view of a town landmark lit up at night, which you may never have noticed before.\nThe calendar provides a unique viewpoint of Shrewsbury, with a stunning array of twelve images specially selected from Adam’s extensive portfolio. Photos include many hidden aspects of the town, which is an element that Adam takes particular pride in. An abstract view of the Shrewsbury Abbey for example, as well as Port Hill foot bridge at night.\nSpeaking of the 2016 calendar, Adam says “The calendar makes a perfect gift as we start to enter the Festive season. It’s priced at £10 for collection from Shrewsbury, or £12 for UK delivery.” Adam’s wife Amy added “Initial sales of the second calendar have been really promising and it’s lovely to see people supporting Adam’s latest venture.\nFind out more information and reserve a copy, by visiting the Shrewsbury Calendar Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ShrewsburyCalendar","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1128963"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7219190001487732,"wiki_prob":0.2780809998512268,"text":"9th January 2020 8th January 2020 Over 40 and a Mum to OneBook Reviews, Reviews\ndisclosure: we were sent the item mentioned in exchange for an honest review\nI do enjoy reading stories based in the past and I knew within the first chapter of reading The Surplus Girls by Polly Heron, that this was just my kind of novel. Published through Corvus last week, this is the first book in a series of three novels telling the story of three different Surplus Girls during the early 1920s.\nIn The Surplus Girls, it’s 1922 and we meet Belinda Layton, she lives in Manchester and her fiancee Ben was killed in the First World War. Like so many young women at that point in time, her dreams of marriage and happy family life have been left in tatters. She’ll need to make her own way going forward and we watch as she discovers more about herself and strives to improve herself.\nShe’s been living with Ben’s mother and grandmother for a number of years and has spent the last four years in deep mourning, dressed in black from head to toe. Belinda realises as she approaches her 21st birthday that as much as she loves Ben, she’s ready for a little colour in her life but is scared of the reaction from his family.\nBen’s Mum got her a job working in the mill but Belinda is desperate to get out and a chance meeting with an old teacher inspires her to widen her horizons. Her family are struggling to make ends meet, her father has led them into a downward spiral of poverty and they rely on Belinda to supplement the wages coming into the home. When she has the opportunity to start a secretarial class everyone is against the idea. Ben’s family aren’t ready for her to move forward with her life, and her own family are worried that if she leaves the mill, she’ll earn less in an office as she’ll start on the bottom rung of the ladder. They want and need her money.\nBut Belinda is desperate for more from life, and knows that she needs to give herself every opportunity that she can. As part of her studies, she’s given the chance to volunteer in a local book shop with Mr Tyrrell sorting out orders for him and typing up stock lists for him. She enjoys the work and when Mr Tyrrell dies suddenly she’s drawn to his nephew Richard Carson, who believes he is the heir to the estate.\nCarson awakens feelings in Belinda that have been long buried and she wonders if perhaps she can find love again.\nWith plenty of twists and turns, and supporting characters, the story of The Surplus Girls builds and I was compelled to keep turning the pages to see what life had in store for Belinda, her family and the two old spinster sisters who run the secretarial school.\nI shall certainly be looking out for the next book in the series when it’s published. I’ve included my Amazon Affiliate link below (I do earn from qualifying purchases) in case you’d like to read The Surplus Girls too.\nTagged adult fiction, Corvus, Polly Heron, The Surplus Girls\nKitten update: Paddington at 10 months old","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line380734"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6394972205162048,"wiki_prob":0.6394972205162048,"text":"Senators remain gripped by partisanship as Trumps impeachment…\nUncategorizedJanuary 17, 2020\nU.S. senators settled into their political foxholes on Thursday upon the kickoff of President Donald Trump's historic impeachment trial, saying they would take their duties as jurors seriously while also declaring that the upcoming proceedings…\nStorm with heavy snow, strong winds slams Midwest…\nThe storm continues to march east with weather alerts issued across the country. January 17, 2020, 1:28 PM 4 min read A major storm continues to march east this morning with alerts issued across the…\nActing ICE director to speak in NYC amid…\nThe visit comes amid a heated dispute between city and federal officials. January 17, 2020, 10:18 AM 7 min read The acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expected to speak out against…\nFormer Marine arrested in murder of 16-year-old Josephine…\nCodi Slayton, 19, was arrested for the murder of 16-year-old Josephine Jimenez. January 17, 2020, 12:45 PM 4 min read A former Marine has been arrested for the murder of a teenage girl whose body…\nFive habits that could add 10 years to…\nWhile they can’t see everything, they can see how long they are likely to remain free of three common chronic diseases: diabetes type 2, cancer and cardiovascular disease, which includes stroke and heart issues. These…\nStart Here: New evidence fuels calls for witnesses…\nIt's Friday, Jan. 17, 2019. Let's start here. 1. Trump on trial The Senate has set the stage for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump after Chief Justice John Roberts administered an oath of…\nFires are not the travel industrys biggest carbon…\n\"There's no doubt it's a tricky time to be in tourism and no-one has the answers to the many questions that keep arising,\" says Melbourne-based James Thornton, the chief executive officer of Intrepid Group, an…\nLarge swathes of eastern Victoria, eastern NSW and eastern Queensland are expected to get at least 20mm in the next week, and some isolated falls will deliver 100mm. Mr Jones expected these heavy falls in…\nMelbourne suddenly joined the club of choking cities and – good grief! – the world’s worst air quality threatened the tennis. Cabinet ministers, who might not have directly experienced the knock-on effects of the fires,…\nSecret of my success? Think of Macquarie, and…\nSimilarly, the views espoused by entrepreneurs such as Jack Ma and Elon Musk only serve to perpetuate the myth that long hours lead to increases in productivity and profitability. There is no credible evidence to…\nWoman sentenced to 25 years in prison for…\nInvestigators say Lana Clayton claimed her husband's death was natural. January 17, 2020, 4:30 AM 6 min read A South Carolina judge has sentenced a woman to 25 years in prison after she admitted to…\nUS service members injured in Iran bombing despite…\nEleven military members were transported for treatment. January 17, 2020, 4:24 AM 4 min read U.S. officials confirmed late Thursday that some American troops were injured in Iran's missile attacks on American service members in…\nEquities deliver big time for super investors in…\nThe top-performing growth classified fund over the year was UniSuper Balanced, which returned 18.4 per cent, while the worst recorded return in the growth category still topped double digits at 10.5 per cent. The average…\nFive habits that could add ten years to…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1415181"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6731283068656921,"wiki_prob":0.32687169313430786,"text":"Standing up to the National Front, as French nationals and also as Christians\nIn the recent regional elections in France, the ballot results revealed an unprecedented surge of support for the National Front (FN) party. France therefore joins the growing ranks of other European countries which over the past few years have also experienced the rise of the far right. Jérôme Vignon, President of Semaines Sociales de France, comments.\nNever before have so many French Catholics voted for the party of Marine Le Pen, as seen in the first round of the regional elections held on 6 December 2015. According to an opinion poll, 32% participants describing themselves as “Catholics” had voted for the FN, well above the average of the French electorate (28.4%).\nCivic conscience\nIt is not only Christians who are seized with dread at the seemingly inexorable rise of the National Front (FN) with every successive electoral ballot. For many French people, who are now probably clinging more tightly to the values of the Republic than ever, this deep-seated malaise is tantamount to a national conscience.\nAn historical memory persists in France of all those dramatic times when the French people had succumbed to the temptations of violence and when, due to manipulation, their feelings of frustration and resentment had finally boiled over in civil war. Without going back as far as the wars of religion, we know that in our country the idea of “living together” is fragile. Only with the passing of many years has our Republic managed to convert its struggles based on class hatred, anti-Semitism and contempt for those of different skin pigmentation into political wars of words. However much you condemn this political thinking and the parties that embrace it, you still cannot stop them from being the repositories of this memory that we call “civic conscience”, the conscience of the Republic, the conscience that builds a nation.\nHatred of “the others”\nStill, we cannot believe for a moment that the National Front’s leaders have deviated in any way from their tradition of hating others. These “others”, whether they be foreigners, illegal immigrants “spreading like a virulent disease” in society, or immigrants entitled to State medical assistance, are people the FN feel should be denounced in order “to wipe out all contagion from immigration”.\nQuite apart from the inconsistencies that can be found in the National Front manifesto, there are two ideas that are disturbing and need to be firmly challenged in the political arena, since they are fundamental to the National Front strategy: the call to get around official bodies and the tendency to denounce scapegoats instead of spending any time examining the causes of our present difficulties.\nThese threats are extremely serious for the future of our country, arising at the very moment when now more than ever we need to pull our forces together. They have prompted two movements, Christianisme social and Semaines sociales de France, to work together on researching the causes of injustice and to take up a clear stand against the National Front. No part of this is intrinsically incompatible with religious faith.\nRenewing politics\nThese dangers and obvious threats are showing up in the domain of politics. They provide additional clues that political activity itself should – at least in France – be both restored and renewed, as was also emphasised during a recent meeting in Paris organised by the French Bishops’ Conference. Here it is possible to see a way of being Christian, a way of responding “as a Christian” according to the ever-useful distinction made by Jacques Maritain.\nRather than endlessly (and wrongly) putting the blame on the general mediocrity of the body of politicians, we should remain faithful to the spirit of these Christians – obeying the laws but surpassing them in our daily lives – to quote the famous Epistle to Diognetus. That means that we have to examine our consciences on the extent to which we might be responsible for the fact that so many French people are convinced they are neither recognised nor represented in the political debate in its current form.\nRenewal also means standing up as a stakeholder of an educational system where advancement is effectively blocked, particularly for young people from migrant backgrounds, and refraining from casting the blame for this solely on the national Department of Education. It means admitting that entrepreneurs and social partners in general could offer a labour market that is more inclusive.\nWe should also become more exacting and more proactive in the statement of any European political project while accepting that the disappointments that it has engendered have resulted from our actions, not just from those of some technocrats in Brussels. To sum up, renewal means engaging in politics in a way to ensure that politicians will not confine themselves to denouncing what is evil but will also plan for and work towards what is good.\nJérôme Vignon\nPresident of Semaines sociales de France\nThis article was published in the December issue of Europeinfos (http://www.europe-infos.eu/standing-up-to-the-national-front-as-french-nationals-and-also-as-christians)\nSemaines sociales de France (SSF) is one of France’s oldest organisations commenting on community life. The goal of the Semaines sociales – which defines itself as “a secular institution for research and training” - is to spread awareness of Christian thinking on social issues and to contribute to the social debate.\nSSF is a member of the IXE Group (http://www.theeuropeexperience.eu/ixe/en/home)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1309007"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5920832753181458,"wiki_prob":0.5920832753181458,"text":"“Everyone should have access to great arts education”\nMusicians Emma Gerstein and Max Raimi speak on Chicago Symphony Orchestra strike\nBy our reporters\nStriking Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) musicians Emma Gerstein, Max Raimi, Karen Basrak and Rong-Yan Tang gave a free, well-attended public performance on April 20. The remarkable strike concert took place before a packed house at the Flatts and Sharpe music store in the Rogers Park neighborhood.\nCSO musicians perform\nThe longest ever strike by CSO musicians has reached a critical juncture with the intervention of outgoing Chicago Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel. While he has remained silent on the strike up to this point, Emanuel has a record of defending the interests of the corporate and financial elite as mayor. The CSO board and management, which is demanding a ruthless overhaul of the musicians’ pensions by imposing a 401(k) style plan, also has close political and financial ties to Emanuel.\nOn Friday evening Emanuel announced that he had worked out a deal with the musicians and the board. Whatever the nature of the deal, which has not been made public, musicians and workers should be extremely wary. Sam Zell—husband of the chair of the CSO board, Helen Zell—donated over $300,000 to Emanuel in previous election cycles. Robert Kohl, another member of the board and also a member of Emanuel’s election campaign team, has donated over $28,000 to the mayor.\nMusicians should be prepared to reject any concessions deal brokered by the mayor and fight to expand their struggle by appealing to the broadest sections of workers to break the isolation being imposed by the trade unions, which have not lifted a finger in their support.\nCSO musicians Emma Gerstein and Max Raimi speak. Video produced by Michael Walters.\nWorld Socialist Web Site writer Jeff Lusanne spoke to flutist Emma Gerstein and violist Max Raimi about the broader issues in the strike last week.\nJeff Lusanne: Tell us about your strike and what the issues are?\nEmma Gerstein: The strike began six weeks ago, almost seven weeks ago. The main issues are wages and retirement benefits. The CSO has had a pension benefit for the past 50 years and they are trying to change that to something more like a 401(k).\nMax Raimi: We were playing under our old contract since the season began in mid-September. They decided that there’s some people left in the world that have a pension and that’s not the way they feel the world should be.\nMax Raimi smiles after performance [photo: Kristina Betinis]\nThat’s my take on it, because they’re not saving all that much money with the defined-contribution stuff they want to do. I think it’s ideological. The other issue: we’ve always been one of the preeminent orchestras in the world because we always had this great contract. People would come from other orchestras all over the country and the world. The last couple of negotiations our contract started slipping behind other orchestras, now it's significantly behind, for example, Los Angeles and San Francisco. A lot of those orchestras still have well-funded pensions.\nI try to imagine being on that stage and going ‘Well, we played OK. Boston would have played a little better. San Francisco would have played a little better.’ It’s inconceivable! But that’s our management’s attitude. No, we can’t provide them with what our counterparts do, but that’s ok, we’re fine with being second rate.\nJL: Why is the attack on pensions and salaries important to fight?\nEG: There are a few other orchestras with higher wages than us and a defined-benefit pension plan. To remain competitive with those orchestras we have to keep that. Otherwise, the CSO, which used to be a destination orchestra, will become a stepping stone to a better job.\nEmma Gerstein (right) [photo: Benjamin Mateus]\nMax Raimi: Their side is a black box. They seem monolithic. It’s possible they are not. I imagine there are people on their side that see what is going on and are not real happy about it. If not, then we’re screwed. If they are really that nihilistic that they don’t care if they destroy the orchestra or not, then we have no leverage.\nJL: How did you react to the “last, best and final” offer by management?\nEG: I trust our negotiating committee. They are doing an amazing job. They all recommended against voting on it. They find it insulting. I have to put my faith in them and they are looking out for all of us and our best interests.\nMR: We do know it’s not acceptable. It’s interesting because I’m fully vested. They can’t take my pension away. Looking at it from a totally self-interested point, I’m nuts! I should just take their offer because there’s no way I’m going to make this money I’ve lost.\nI think for a lot of the trustees, money is their lodestar. You see how they conduct business. They are willing to hurt people and destroy families, so they can have $3 billion instead of $2 billion. I mean, I don’t understand it. It’s like reading about some Aztec human sacrifice thing. How can people do that?\nBut there’s people on their side that are that way. It’s incomprehensible to them that (veterans) say, ‘Yes, it’s good for us but it’s not good for our colleagues and people who aren’t in the orchestra yet and it’s not what we envision the CSO to be.’ Even though it’s not in our best financial interest [to be on strike], you’ve got to have something in your life more important than your net worth.\nJL: What did you think about the piece by Lawrence Johnson in the Chicago Classical Review attacking the CSO musicians?\nEG: It made me really upset that someone I considered a lover of music really doesn’t seem to love the musicians. I found that upsetting. The fact that he kept comparing what we do to the business world ... Well, we are not in the business world. We are a not-for-profit. I don’t really feel like you can compare our retirement benefits to someone who works at a bank. It’s just a very different job. The interview process is very different.\nFor us, we are spending thousands of dollars every time we take an audition. I for one took close to thirty auditions before I won my CSO job. I don’t want to think about how much money I spent just to win my job. This is supposed to be the end-all-be-all of jobs for me. I intend to be here for 35 years and I would like to retire with dignity.\nJL: When did you join the CSO and what made you want to join?\nEG: I joined more than two years ago in 2017. I grew up in Chicago in Hyde Park. I moved all around. The orchestra job I had prior to this was in Auckland, New Zealand. It was really great, but there was an opening in the CSO. My predecessor had been in the orchestra for, I think, 40 years. These openings don’t happen very often. You have to wait for someone to retire, maybe change careers or, in the worst-case scenario, maybe even die for the job to open up. There was an opening and I went for it. And it was one the best days of my life when I won that job.\nMR: I was a freelancer in New York and I realized guys 10-15 years older than me weren’t doing any better than I was and a secure life was impossible. I realized that if I wanted to have a secure dignified middle-class life, the institutions that were providing that were the major orchestras.\nSo, I looked around and Chicago sounded great. I took a shot in the dark. I won the audition and Georg Solti [director of the CSO from 1969 – 1991] hired me and until recently I thought I had it made.\nJL: What was it like playing under Solti?\nHe was a force of nature. He was this kinetic force. It was kind of rock ‘n’ roll. The rhythm was driving and relentless. In a way it was easy because you just went. With Daniel Barenboim [CSO music director from 1991 – 2004], it was more the rhythms of speech and more flexible … It was a lot of adrenalin.\nJL: How long have you been playing?\nEG: Since I was 8. I’m 32 now. It’s like another limb for me at this point.\nJL: What is some of your favorite music that you have played?\nEG: One of my favorite composers would have to be Mahler. I love the lushness and the big sound he gets from the whole orchestra. I love being surrounded by the big sound of the orchestra. I have always liked being immersed in that sound rather than playing a solo. Playing in this section—I’m second flute—it really suits me. Any of the Mahler symphonies are my favorites. Also Debussy and Ravel—the French impressionists—are really fun to play as well.\nMR: I love Sibelius, Mahler. It depends who’s conducting. If you have a Nordic guy who understands Sibelius, that’s really cool. Or an old Viennese guy who has this pipeline into Schubert and Mahler. I guess, I have no favorites. There are a few composers I don’t particularly like, but a whole lot I love.\nJL: Why is such music important to you?\nEG: It’s a connection with history and the past. It’s great art that we get to experience now. It’s like going to see a Shakespeare play or going to see a really beautiful painting at a museum. There’s something about it we really connect with, which is why it has stood the test of all these hundreds of years. It’s something people can connect with even if they don’t have a musical education. They can feel something you can’t express in words.\nJL: There’s a huge cultural value to music. Yet there’s the claim that there isn’t money for arts and culture. Do you have any thoughts on that?\nEG: Yes, a great example is the fire at Notre Dame. People came to the aid of that situation with billions of dollars. I’m not saying the CSO is a more or less worthy cause. I do think the Notre Dame is an important cultural landmark. When people care about something, they will open up their checkbooks.\nJL: I do think in general a large amount of the population cares a lot. But in the case of Notre Dame too, there was the sudden influx of hundreds of millions of dollars. There’s the role of the aristocratic principle more and more in funding culture. What do you think?\nEG: I had a job in New Zealand where most of the funding came from the government. The job wasn’t as prestigious as the CSO. We didn’t really record or tour. But there was still this feeling that the government has got us, there’s always going to be funding. Obviously in America, there’s a different set-up. We rely heavily on philanthropy, and we’re extremely grateful to the people who give. Historically, the board was made up of people who really love music and that’s why they give money. I’ve heard in recent years it’s turned more corporate and there’s less of a connection with the individuals on the board and the music. Now they do it because it looks good among their friends.\nJL: That’s an interesting point. Obviously, there’s always the risk of censorship or the feelings of the donors involved in terms of what they will fund. Knowing that culture relies on education and youth being exposed to it, did you follow the teachers’ strikes in the last year?\nEG: A little bit. Definitely, the one in Los Angeles. Both of my parents worked for Chicago Public Schools. They were teachers and administrators both. They’re both retired now and they have pensions—which they’re extremely grateful for. I’ve seen how these labor disputes have affected my parents directly and also how coming out of better contracts made their lives better. I have a personal connection with teachers.\nJL: Los Angeles is certainly one of those places. Denver, Chicago, previously, West Virginia. There’s a real fight against the cutbacks against education and arts education. I recently discovered that CPS outsourced arts education to Ingenuity, a third-party source, who find random groups to teach a program for a session, and that’s it.\nEG: That’s not enough. It’s a real shame. Part of the problem is all of these charter schools too. A lot of super-rich people will give money to charter schools, but not to the public schools. Poorer neighborhoods don’t get their funding. It’s not fair. Everyone should have access to education and great arts education.\nJL: In terms of these more frequent fights by teachers and workers to fight back, do you see any connection between these struggles and yours?\nEG: If there’s a teachers’ strike, I plan to be on their picket lines to show my support. We’re fighting for similar things. Pushing back against the super-wealthy and we’ve had enough.\nJL: Do you see—this is a little bit of a more complicated question—but we have also the rise of far-right-wing and nationalist movements. Do you see any role in music in combating nationalism, inequality and oppression?\nEG: Certain composers who are long dead wrote about these things, Mahler being one of them. Beethoven definitely—kind of just sticking it to the man. The music still resonates today because it speaks to those issues. I don’t think we’re directly necessarily doing anything, but still continuing to play music is putting good energy out in the world. We have people in the orchestra from lots of different countries and lots of different backgrounds. It’s also been neat to meet people on the picket lines from Japan, Mexico and across the world to come to Chicago for one reason, you know?\nJL: Does the cultural work of the orchestra resonate in the context of the growth of right-wing movements?\nMR: We were naive as artists. We’re in this bubble. Surely, we thought, they won’t hurt us. But, yes, there’s evil in the land. I don’t know how else to put it. And it was naïve to think that it wasn’t going to hit us. The other thing I’ll say is, people know they are getting screwed and the politicians incite rage. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. It didn’t turn out to be a great solution, but it was people saying screw you.\nThere is this feeling [among a social layer] that wealth is its own justification. I don’t know many of the trustees. I met Helen Zell and, well, enough said. I do think there is a feeling that ‘I have wealth and power and I can bend the world to my will.’ It really started with Reagan, this idea that paying taxes is punishment. ‘We don’t want to pay you any more than I have to and I can have a perfectly good orchestra for less money. And I’ve got better things to do with my money than spend it on my community.’\nMusicians, workers and supporters interested in learning more about the fight to defend art and culture and the CSO musicians strike are encouraged to contact us and receive our email newsletter.\nVideo: 70 years after the Chinese Revolution—How the struggle for socialism was betrayed\nVideo: SEP presidential candidate Pani Wijesiriwardena addresses nationally-televised meeting in Sri Lanka\nVideo: Striking GM workers in Flint, Michigan discuss key issues in their fight\nStriking GM workers speak from the pickets\nVideo: Watch the Sydney Free Assange rally\nRetiring Chicago Police Chief Superintendent fired after video shows police body-slamming a mentally ill man\nChicago Teachers Unions pushes through austerity contract, paving way for school closures\nSchool closures threatened as Chicago teachers vote on widely-hated tentative agreement\nUnion-backed Chicago Sun-Times attacks Chicago teachers\nAs contract vote approaches, DSA defends sellout by Chicago Teachers Union\nIn Defense of Artistic Freedom\nModern-day philistinism and reaction: the New York Times considers “canceling” French painter Paul Gauguin\nPetition against UK “drill” music ban defends freedom of speech\nSan Francisco School Board votes to destroy left-wing murals they claim are “racist” and “white supremacist”\nSan Francisco residents voice opposition to censorship of George Washington High School murals","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line925745"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7649871706962585,"wiki_prob":0.7649871706962585,"text":"Midnight City\nDo It, Try It\nDSVII\nKnife + Heart (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)\nM83 began in the southern French town of Antibes around the turn of the millennium as a duo, Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau. Equally indebted to the 4AD/My Bloody Valentine school of blissed-out, psychedelicized noise and to the chilled atmospheric sides of Paris and Berlin's electronic scenes, M83's self-titled debut and its 2003 follow-up, Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts, captured the tragedy and ascension of the post-9/11 moment. Befitting a group named after a universe, it was not small music, it did not back down from feelings and it could rock a dance floor without mocking rockers or dancers. Fromageau exited ahead of '05's Before the Dawn Heals Us, yet as titles like \"Teen Angst\" and \"Don't Save Us from the Flames\" may imply, M83 retained the sound and fury of a sonic battleground, youthful vigor and knowing hopelessness exploding and receding. A limited-edition EP of ambient sculptures called Digital Shades [Vol. 1] saw Gonzalez achieve an ambient calm. And when he re-entered the breach, '08's Saturdays = Youth found him embracing an '80s song form, an almost-pop band forming from the big bang of an electronic freak-out.\nWorking For A Nuclear Free City","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line336480"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5209048390388489,"wiki_prob":0.4790951609611511,"text":"Hbs.edu\nSTUART C. GILSON\nSteven R. Fenster Professor of Business Administration Graduate School of Business Administration Harvard Business School Boston, MA 02163 Office: (617)\nPh.D University of Rochester (1988) M.Sc. University of Rochester (1985) M.A. University of British Columbia (1981) B.A.\nProfessor, Harvard Business School, 1999 – present. Faculty Chair, Finance Unit, Harvard Business School, 2003 – 2005. Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1995 – 1999. Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1991 – 1995. Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, 1988 – 1991. Instructor, Graduate School of Management, University of Rochester, 1984 – 1998. Economist, The Bank of Canada, Ottawa, 1981– 1983\nMBA and undergraduate teaching: Corporate finance, valuation, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, investment banking, financial statement analysis Executive teaching: Valuation, financial analysis, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions,\nAssociate Editor, Financial Management (1994-2011), Journal of Corporate Finance Co-Chair, Academic Advisory Council, Turnaround Management Association Advisory Board, Bankruptcy, Reorganization, and Creditors’ Rights Abstracts Co-Chair, Supervisory Academic Committee, Journal of Restructuring Finance\nSELECTED CONSULTING ENGAGEMENTS\nHas provided executive training and education on business and securities valuation, corporate finance, financial analysis, and corporate restructuring for a variety of companies and organizations. Has served as an expert witness and economic consultant in litigation involving companies that are financially distressed, undergoing corporate restructuring, or in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Issues addressed have included business and asset valuation, credit and solvency analysis, fraudulent conveyance, substantive consolidation, and the benefits and costs of Chapter 11. Member of the Advisory Board, Goldbidge Capital Partners LLC, 2012 – present Member of the Advisory Board , Schultze Asset Management LLC, 2001 – 2004. Member of the Advisory Board, Bid4Assets.com, 2000 – 2004. Advised the U.S. Department of Labor on a matter involving a failed investment by a pension plan fiduciary in a distressed company, 1995 – 1996. Provided advice and analysis to a member of Unsecured Creditors Committee in the Chapter 11 reorganization of Caldor Stores, 1996 – 1997. Provided advice to a proactive private equity investment fund in the attempted acquisition of a financially troubled company, 2001 – 2002. Has provided expert advice to the governments of Hungary and Bolivia on national bankruptcy law reforms, 1992 and 2002.\nTESTIFYING EXPERIENCE\nWorld Access, Inc. et al. v. R2 Investments, LDC (2002) USGen New England, Inc. v. Bear Swamp Generating Trust No. 1 LLC, et al. (2004) Bradley D. Sharp, Trustee of the CFS Liquidating Trust, on behalf of Commercial Financial Services, Inc. and CF/SPC NGU, Inc. v. Chase Manhattan Bank USA, N.A. at al. (2005) SPJST et al. v. JPMorgan Chase Bank (2005) Gerald K. Smith, Litigation Trustee of the Farmland Dairies LLC Litigation Trust v. Bank of America Corp. et al. (2007); G. Peter Pappas, Plan Administrator of the plan of Liquidation of Parmalat-USA Corp. v. Bank of America Corp. et al. (2007)\nDistinguished Paper Award, Academy of Management Meetings, Business Policy and Strategy Division,\n2012 (for “Do Analysts Add Value When They Most Can? Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs,” with\nEmilie Feldman and Belen Villalonga).\nAppointed Business Law Advisor to the American Bankruptcy Association (ABA) Business Bankruptcy\nCommittee, 2008–2010.\nTop Ten Outstanding Bankruptcy Academics, Turnarounds and Workouts magazine.\nNominated for Smith-Breeden prize, American Finance Association, 1998.\nJohn M. Olin Visiting Professor Fellowship, University of Virginia Law School, 1997.\nGraham and Dodd Award, Association for Investment Management and Research, 1995.\nOutstanding Paper in Financial Management, Financial Management Association, 1991.\nA. BOOKS\nCreating Value Through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups (Second\nEdition). John-Wiley & Sons, 2010.\nB. JOURNAL ARTICLES\n“Coming Through in a Crisis: How Chapter 11 and the Debt Restructuring Industry Are Helping to\nRevive the U.S. Economy,” Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, vol. 24, Fall 2012, pp. 23-35.\n“Do Analysts Add Value When They Most Can? Evidence from Corporate Spinoffs” (with Emilie\nFeldman and Belen Villalonga), Strategic Management Journal (forthcoming, 2013)\n\"The Social Cost of Fraud and Bankruptcy\" (with Joseph Bower), Harvard Business Review, vol. 81, 2003\n(December), pp. 20-22.\n“Analyst Specialization and Conglomerate Stock Breakups” (with Paul Healy, Christopher Noe, and\nKrishna Palepu), Journal of Accounting Research, vol. 39, no. 3 (December) 2001, 565-582.\n“Analysts and Information Gaps: Lessons From the UAL Buyout,” Financial Analysts Journal, vol. 56, no. 6\n(November/December), 2000, 82-110.\n“Valuation of Bankrupt Firms” (with Edith Hotchkiss and Richard Ruback), Review of Financial Studies,\nvol. 13, 2000, 43-74. (Abridged version reprinted in: The Journal of Corporate Renewal, vol. 13, no. 7 (July),\n2000.)\n\"Transactions Costs and Capital Structure Choice: Evidence from Financially Distressed Firms,\" Journal of\nFinance, vol. 52, 1997, pp. 161-196. (Abstracted in: Contemporary Finance Digest, vol. 1 (Autumn), 1997,\npp. 31-32.)\n\"Perceptions and the Politics of Finance: Junk Bonds and the Regulatory Seizure of First Capital Life\"\n(with Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo), Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 41, 1996, pp. 475-511.\n“Investing in Distressed Situations: A Market Survey,” Financial Analysts Journal, November/December,\n1995, pp. 8-27. (Reprinted in: Security Analysts Journal, The Security Analysts Association of Japan, 1996\n(Japanese translation). Theodore Barnhill, Jr., et al, eds., High Yield Bonds: Market Structure, Investment\nAnalysis, and Financing Applications (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999).)\n\"Creditor Control in Financially Distressed Firms: The Empirical Evidence\" (with Michael R. Vetsuypens), Washington University Law Quarterly, vol. 72, 1994, pp. 1005-1025. (Reprinted in: Corporate Practice Commentator, vol. 37, 1995, pp. 339-361. Charles Tabb, ed., A Bankruptcy Law Anthology (Chicago: Anderson Publishing Co.) forthcoming.) \"Some Methodological Issues in Cross-Country Comparisons of Commercial Bankruptcy Law,\" in: Jacob S. Ziegel, ed., International and Comparative Corporate Insolvency Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). \"The Collapse of First Executive Corporation: Junk Bonds, Adverse Publicity, and the 'Run on the Bank' Phenomenon\" (with Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo), Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 36, 1994, pp. 287-336. \"Creating Pay for Performance in Financially Troubled Companies\" (with Michael R. Vetsuypens), Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, vol. 6, Winter 1994, pp. 81-92. \"CEO Compensation in Financially Distressed Firms: An Empirical Analysis” (with Michael R. Vetsuypens), Journal of Finance, vol. 43, 1993, pp. 425-458. (Reprinted in: Kevin Hallock and Kevin Murphy, eds., The Economics of Executive Compensation (United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing. Ltd., 1999). Abstracted in: Financial Management Collection, vol. 7 (Winter), 1992, 21. Financial Management Collection, vol. 9 (Fall), 1994, p. 4.) \"Managing Default: Some Evidence on How Firms Choose Between Workouts and Chapter 11,\" Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, vol. 4, Summer 1991, pp. 62-70. (Reprinted in: Donald Chew, ed., The New Corporate Finance: Where Theory Meets Practice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). Jess Lederman and Michael Sullivan, eds., The New High Yield Bond Market (Chicago: Probus Publishing, 1993). Jagdeep Bhandari, ed., Corporate Bankruptcy: Economic and Legal Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Theodore Barnhill, Jr., et al eds., High Yield Bonds: Market Structure, Investment Analysis, and Financing Applications (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999).) \"Troubled Debt Restructurings: An Empirical Study of Private Reorganization of Firms in Default” (with Kose John and Larry H.P. Lang), Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 26, 1990, pp. 315-353. (Reprinted in: Edward I. Altman, ed., Bankruptcy & Distressed Restructurings: Analytical Issues and Investment Opportunities (New York: Business One Irwin, 1992). Clifford W. Smith and Christopher James, eds., Studies in Financial Institutions: Commercial Banks (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993).) \"Bankruptcy, Boards, Banks, and Blockholders: Evidence on Changes in Corporate Ownership and Control when Firms Default,\" Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 26, 1990, pp. 355-387. (Reprinted in: Edward I. Altman, ed., Bankruptcy & Distressed Restructurings: Analytical Issues and Investment Opportunities (New York: Business One Irwin, 1992). Michael J. Brennan, ed., Empirical Corporate Finance (Glos: Edward Elgar, 2000). \"Management Turnover and Financial Distress,\" Journal of Financial Economics, vol. 25, 1989, pp. 241-262. (Reprinted in: Edward I. Altman, ed., Bankruptcy & Distressed Restructurings: Analytical Issues and Investment Opportunities (New York: Business One Irwin, 1992). Charles Tabb, ed., A Bankruptcy Law Anthology (Chicago: Anderson Publishing Co.) forthcoming.)\nC. WORKING PAPERS\n\"Private Versus Public Debt: Evidence From Firms That Replace Bank Loans With Junk Bonds\" (with Jerold Warner).\nD. CASE STUDIES AND TEACHING MATERIALS\nW. R. Grace & Co.: Dealing with Asbestos Torts, Harvard Business School Case, 9-213-046.\nGeneral Growth Properties and Pershing Square Capital Management (with Arthur Segel, Thomas\nLanger, Zubin Malkani, and John Mascari), Harvard Business School Case, 9-212-109.\nNovartis Lucentis: Innovative Pricing Models, Harvard Business School Case, N1-212-013.\nNovartis and Alcon, Harvard Business School Case, N1-212-059.\nCountrywide plc, Harvard Business School Case, 9-211-026.\nHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, Harvard Business School Case, 9-211-027.\nLyondell Chemical Company, Harvard Business School Case, 9-210-001.\nDelphi Corp. and the Credit Derivatives Market (A) (with Victoria Ivashina), Harvard Business School\nCase, N2-210-002.\nNote on the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA), Harvard\nBusiness School Case, N9-209-133.\nKmart and ESL Investments (A), Harvard Business School Case, 9-209-044.\nKmart and ESL Investments (B): the Sears Merger, Harvard Business School Case, 9-209-045.\nGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. (A) (with Vincent Dessain), Harvard Business School Case, N9-209-062.\nGroupe Eurotunnel S.A. (B): Restructuring Under the Procedure de Sauvegarde (with Vincent Dessain),\nHarvard Business School Case, N9-209-113.\nCustomer Planning at Novartis Pharmaceuticals (with Paul Healy and Natalie Kindred), Harvard\nNCH Germany (A): Strong Medicine (with Carin-Isabel Knoop), Harvard Business School Case, N1-209-\nNCH Germany (B): A Christmas Surprise (with Carin-Isabel Knoop), Harvard Business School Case, N1-\nNCH Germany (C): Postscript (with Carin-Isabel Knoop), Harvard Business School Case, N1-209-116.\nRestructuring at Delphi Corporation (A), Harvard Business School Case, 9-208-069.\nAdelphia Communications Corp.’s Bankruptcy (with Belen Villalonga), Harvard Business School Case, 9-\nAdelphia Communications Corp.’s Bankruptcy (with Belen Villalonga), Harvard Business School\nTeaching Note, 5-209-020.\nActigall: Managing the Divestment of Mature Drugs, Harvard Business School Case, N1-207-115.\nBinomial Option Pricing Model Tutorial (with Nabil El-Hage), Harvard Business School online tutorial,\n9-206-711.\nDiovan – The First Novartis Mega-Brand, Harvard Business School Case, N1-203-108.\nStarlix – Take it or Leave it, Harvard Business School Case, N1-203-109.\nArch Wireless, Inc., Harvard Business School Case, 9-203-073.\nThe Finova Group, Inc. (A), Harvard Business School Case, 9-202-095.\nThe Finova Group, Inc. (B), Harvard Business School Case, 9-202-096.\nE.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company: The Conoco Split-Off (A), Harvard Business School Case, 9-202-\nE.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company: The Conoco Split-Off (B), Harvard Business School Case, 9-202-\nE.I. DuPont de Nemours & Company: The Conoco Split-Off (C), Harvard Business School Case, 9-202-\nBuenos Aires Embotelladora S.A. (BAESA), Harvard Business School Case, 9-201-132. Seagate Technology Buyout (with Gregor Andrade and Todd Pulvino), Harvard Business School Case, 9-201-063. Seagate Technology Buyout (with Gregor Andrade and Todd Pulvino), Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-201-063. Valuing Companies in Corporate Restructurings, Harvard Business School Technical Note, 9-201-073. The Loewen Group Inc., Harvard Business School Case, 9-201-062. Alphatec Electronics Pcl, Harvard Business School Case, 9-200-004. Flagstar Companies, Inc., Harvard Business School Case, 9-299-038. FAG Kugelfischer - A German Restructuring, Harvard Business School Case, 9-298-046. FAG Kugelfischer - A German Restructuring, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-128. Chase Manhattan Corporation: The Making of America’s Largest Bank, Harvard Business School Case, 9-298-016. Chase Manhattan Corporation: The Making of America’s Largest Bank, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-127. Transportation Displays Incorporated (C), (with Joel T. Schwartz, Steven M. Silver, and David I. Stemerman [all MBA’95] ), Harvard Business School Case, 9-296-035. USX Corporation, Harvard Business School Case, 9-296-050. USX Corporation, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-085. Scott Paper Company, Harvard Business School Case, 9-296-048. Scott Paper Company, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-088. First Capital Holdings Corp. (with Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo), Harvard Business School Case, 9-296-032. First Capital Holdings Corp., Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-296-095. UAL Corporation, Harvard Business School Case, 9-295-130. UAL Corporation, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-126. Donald Salter Communications, Harvard Business School Case, 9-295-114. Donald Salter Communications, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-089. Navistar International, Harvard Business School Case, 9-295-030.\nNavistar International, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-298-086.\nFirst Executive Corporation (with Harry DeAngelo and Linda DeAngelo), Harvard Business School Case,\nFirst Executive Corporation, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-294-136.\nNational Convenience Stores Incorporated (with Steven Fenster), Harvard Business School Case, 9-294-\nNational Convenience Stores Incorporated (with Steven Fenster), Harvard Business School Teaching\nNote, 5-294-135.\nHumana Inc.—Managing in a Changing Industry, Harvard Business School Case, 9-294-062.\nHumana Inc.—Managing in a Changing Industry, Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-294-130.)\nThe Adjusted Present Value Method for Capital Assets (with Steven Fenster) Harvard Business School\nTechnical Note, 9-294-047.\nContinental Airlines—1992 (Abridged) Harvard Business School Case, 9-294-058. Continental Airlines—1992 (Abridged) Harvard Business School Teaching Note, 5-294-127.\n“Distressed Debt Investing” (moderator), Private Equity Conference 2011, Harvard Business School, “Valuing Companies in Chapter 11,” Law and Society Program (sponsored by The Federal Judicial Center), Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA (April 2009) “Valuation Games in Restructurings and Insolvencies,” PricewaterhouseCoopers: Putting a Price on “Distressed Debt Securities and Portfolios: Keys & Techniques to Accurate Valuation,” The 8th Annual Conference on Valuation of Hard-to-Value Securities and Portfolios, New York, NY (June 2008) “Experts Behaving Badly: Tricks of the Trade,” Valcon – Hedge Funds, Distressed Debt, Risk and Restructurings (co-sponsored by University of Texas School of Law and The Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors), Las Vegas, NV (February 2007) “Valuing Distressed Companies-Strategies to Enhance Investor Return,” Distressed Debt – The 2007 “Distressed Debt Securities and Portfolios: Keys & Techniques to Accurate Valuation,” The 7th Annual Conference on Valuation of Hard-to-Value Securities and Portfolios, New York, NY (November 2007) Hedge Funds, Creditor Control, and Restructuring, Columbia Law School, New York, NY (October 2006) “Valuation of Bankrupt Firms: Methods, Strategies & Tactics,” Law and Society Program, Harvard Law “Strategy and Tactics in Valuing Distressed Firms,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’06, New York, “Valuation Workshop: Mirant,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’05, New York, NY (December 2005) “Valuation and Feasibility: How to Spot the Tricks of the Trade” National Conference of Bankruptcy “The Restructuring of Alphatec Electronics and Implications for Corporate Restructuring in Southeast Asia,” World Bank Conference on Corporate Restructuring: International Best Practices, Washington DC (March 2004) “Business Insolvency and Managerial Behavior: An International Comparison Study,” Presentation at the American College of Bankruptcy, Washington DC (March 2004)“Opportunities in Distressed Investing,” Presentation to Wellspring Capital Partners Annual Investors Conference, New York (May 2004) “Business Insolvency and Managerial Behavior: An International Comparison Study,” Presentation to Turnaround Management Association Advanced Education Workshop, University of Toronto, Toronto (June 2004)“Valuation of Distressed Companies in Chapter 11,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’04, New York, NY (December 2004) “Strategy and Tactics For Valuing Companies in Chapter 11: Lessons From Some Recent Cases,” Turnaround Management Association Advanced Education Workshop, Chicago, IL (June 2003) “Valuation Issues in Bankruptcy,” Presentation at Chicago Bar Association Bankruptcy & Reorganization Committee Advanced Bankruptcy Seminar, Chicago, IL (June 2003) “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of US Airways,” Conference on Distressed Investing Workshop on Valuation Methods, presented to Wachovia Corporation Special Situations Group, “Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring: Latest Research Findings,” American Bankruptcy Institute 20th Annual Spring Meeting, Washington, D.C. (April 2002) “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of Arch Wireless Group, Inc.,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’02, New York, NY (December 2002) Annual Management Retreat, Glass & Associates, Scottsdale, AZ (March 2001) Turnaround Management Association Advanced Education Workshop, New York University, New “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of FINOVA Group, Inc.,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’01, New York, NY (December 2001) American Finance Association Annual Meetings, Boston, MA (January, 2000) Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (April, 2000) “Valuation Strategies in Chapter 11: Lessons From the Flagstar Reorganization,” Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, WG&M Bankruptcy Seminar Series, New York, NY (April 2000) “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of Loewen Group, Inc.,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’00, New York, NY (November 2000) HBS-Journal of Financial Economics Conference on Field Based Research, Harvard Business School, Boston, “Uses and Abuses of Valuation in Chapter 11,” Dinner Presentation to Toronto-Area Bankruptcy Attorneys, Charles River Associates, Toronto, Ontario (September 1999) “Teaching Corporate Restructuring,” Financial Management Association Annual Meetings, Orlando, FL “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of Flagstar Companies, Inc.,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’98, New York, NY (November 1999) “The Gathering Storm: Trends in Distressed High-Yield,” First Annual High-Yield Summit Conference, American Finance Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, IL (January 1998) Harvard Business School, Organizations and Markets Area, O&M Coffee (February 1998) “Workshop on Valuation of Bankrupt Companies,” Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, WG&M Bankruptcy Seminar Series, New York, NY (April 1998) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, DC (April 1998) New York University, Stern School of Business, Finance Department, New York, NY (April 1998) Harvard University, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA (April 1998) “Strategies and Techniques for Valuing Companies in Bankrputcy,” Presentation to Commercial Law & Bankruptcy Section of the Bar Association of San Francisco, CA (June 1998) “Trying a Valuation Case,” American Bar Association Business Bankruptcy Committee Program, National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, Dallas, TX (October 1998) Financial Management Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, IL (October 1998) University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (November 1998) “Workshop on Bankruptcy Valuation: Case Study of Flagstar Companies, Inc.,” Conference on Distressed Investing ’98, New York, NY (November 1998) Ninth Annual Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting, New York University, New York, NY New York Federal Reserve Bank, New York, NY (April 1997) University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Business, Finance Department, Madison, WI (May 1997) University of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Business Administration, Finance Department, Austin, University of Virginia, School of Law and Graduate School of Business Administration (joint seminar), Columbia University, Graduate School of Business, New York, NY (October 1997) “Uses and Abuses of Valuation in Chapter 11,” Dinner Presentation to Boston-Area Bankruptcy Attorneys, Charles River Associates, Boston, MA (November 1997) National Bureau of Economic Research, Finance Brown Bag Lunch, Cambridge, MA (November 1997) Harvard Business School, Finance Area, Brown Bag Lunch (November 1997) Charles River Associates, Boston, MA (November 1997) “Workshop on Valuation of Companies in Chapter 11,” Conference on Distressed Debt, Strategic Research Institute, New York, NY (December 1997) American Finance Association Annual Meetings, San Francisco, CA (January 1996) University of Maryland, Annual Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting, College Park, MD Harvard Business School, Financial Decisions and Control Workshop (July 1996) University of Rochester, William E. Simon Graduate School of Business, Finance Department, Rochester, “Transactions Costs and Capital Structure Choice: Evidence From Financially Distressed Firms,” National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, San Diego, CA (October 1996) Harvard Business School, Finance Area, Seminar Series (October 1996) Financial Management Association Annual Meetings (October 1996) National Bureau of Economic Research, Corporate Finance Workshop, Cambridge, MA (November 1996) Michigan State University, Graduate School of Business Administration, Finance Department, East Harvard Business School, Finance Area, Brown Bag Lunch (March 1995) University of Pittsburgh, Katz Graduate School of Business, Department of Finance, Pittsburgh, PA (May Federal Reserve Board, Washington D.C. (November 1995) Association of Managerial Economists Annual Meetings, Boston, MA (January 1994) Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, Department of Finance, Nashville, TN Boston College, W.E. Carroll School of Management, Department of Finance, Chestnut Hill, MA Washington University, School of Law, Interdisciplinary Conference on Bankruptcy and Insolvency “Out of the Ashes: Identifying Value in Troubled Companies,” The Berkeley Program in Finance, University of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Business Administration, Finance Department, Austin, Western Finance Association Annual Meetings, Sante Fe, NM (June 1994) Dartmouth College, Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Finance Department, Hanover, NH University of Florida, College of Business Administration, Department of Finance, Insurance and Real Association of Managerial Economists Annual Meeting, Anaheim, CA (January 1993) Harvard Business School, Finance Area, Brown Bag Lunch (January 1993) Ohio State University, College of Business, Department of Finance, Columbus, OH (March 1993) National Bureau of Economic Research, Corporate Finance Workshop, Cambridge, MA (March 1993) Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, College of Business, Department of Finance, Insurance, and Business Law, Blacksburg, VA (May 1993) University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Conference on International and Comparative Commercial Insolvency Law, Faculty of Law, (June 1993) Jönköping International Business School Foundation, The Law and Economics of Financial Distress and Bankruptcy, Jönköping, Sweden (August 1993) University of Southern California, School of Business Administration, Department of Finance and Business Economics, Los Angeles, CA (September 1993) Northern Finance Association Annual Meetings, Halifax, NS (September 1993) Yale University, School of Law, New Haven CT (October 1993) Rutgers University, Graduate School of Management, Department of Finance and Economics, Newark, University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School, Finance Department, Philadelphia, PA (November University of Michigan, School of Business Administration, Department of Finance, Ann Arbor, MI The American Finance Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans, LA (January 1992) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Department of Finance, Cambridge, University of Rochester, William E. Simon Graduate School of Business, Finance Department, Rochester, Western Finance Association Meetings, San Francisco, CA (June 1992) University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School, Department of Finance, Chapel Hill, NC Georgetown University, School of Business Administration, Finance Department, Washington, D.C. The Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, DC (March 1991) New York University, Stern School of Business, Conference on Corporate Bankruptcy and Restructurings, New York, NY (March 1991) Boston College, W.E. Carroll School of Management, Department of Finance, Chestnut Hill, MA (April Texas A&M University, College of Business Administration, Department of Finance, College Station, TX National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA (August 1991) The Financial Management Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, IL (October 1991) New York University, Stern School of Business, Finance Department, New York, NY (October 1991) University of Southern California, School of Business Administration, Department of Finance and Business Economics, Los Angeles, CA (November 1991) University of Oregon, Lundquist College of Business, Department of Finance, Eugene, OR (March 1990) Harvard Business School, Conference on Structure and Governance of Enterprise (March 1990) The Western Finance Association Annual Meetings, Santa Barbara, CA (June 1990) The Financial Management Association Annual Meetings, Orlando, FL (October 1990) Association of Managerial Economists Annual Meetings, Washington, DC (December 1989) The Western Finance Association Annual Meetings, Seattle, WA (June 1989) The Financial Management Association Annual Meetings, Boston, MA (October 1989) Southern Methodist University, Cox School of Business, Department of Finance, Insurance, and Real Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Management, Department of Finance, Nashville, TN Southern Methodist University, Cox School of Business, Department of Finance, Insurance, and Real University of Texas at Austin, Graduate School of Business Administration, Finance Department, Austin, The University of California at Davis, Graduate School of Management, Finance Department, Davis, CA University of Southern California, School of Business Administration, Department of Finance and Business Economics, Los Angeles, CA (February 1988) Tulane University, Freeman School of Business, Finance Group, New Orleans, LA (February 1988) The University of Utah, Eccles School of Business, Department of Finance, Salt Lake City, UT (March The American Finance Association Annual Meetings, New York, NY (December 1988)\nSource: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Profile%20Files/Gilson_curriculum%20vita_%20010414_df86511a-0281-4e0b-8405-dd11c2655fd0.pdf\n0105880sy01a-13 (online syllabus course 1).indd\nAt-Home Professions Healthcare Document Specialist Syllabus Course One Welcome to Course One of your Healthcare Document Specialist program! I will be your guide as you prepare for your new career as a healthcare document specialist. If you have any questions or want to discuss general topics, feel free to contact me through the course. (Click on participant; then, click on my name to\nInformazioni Generali Premessa Dal 1974, data dell’invasione turca, l’isola di Cipro è formalmente divisa in due comunità, quella greca, che è la più numerosa, e quella turca. L’unico Stato internazionalmente riconosciuto è la Repubblica Cipriota formata dalla comunità greca, poiché la Repubblica Turca di Cipro del Nord è riconosciuta solo dal Governo turco. La presente sche","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line374174"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6186287999153137,"wiki_prob":0.6186287999153137,"text":"Home » Barry Callebaut Opens New Chocolate Factory in Brazil\nBarry Callebaut Opens New Chocolate Factory in Brazil\nLast month, Barry Callebaut AG, the world’s leading manufacturer of cocoa and chocolate products, officially opened its first chocolate factory in South America.\nChairman Andreas Jacobs and CEO Jurgen Steinemann (right) at the inauguration of the new Barry Callebaut factory in Extrema MG, Brazil, on May 27. (Photopress/AP Photo/Nelson Antoine)\nLast month, Barry Callebaut AG, the world’s leading manufacturer of cocoa and chocolate products, officially opened its new chocolate factory in Extrema, Minas Gerais, near São Paulo, Brazil - the company’s first chocolate factory in South America. According to Barry Callebaut, the factory marks another cornerstone in its strategy to “selectively expand its geographic presence to emerging markets that offer above-average growth opportunities.”\nThe $15-milion chocolate factory in Extrema has been designed to meet the highest quality and food safety standards. The plant has an initial production capacity of 20,000 tons, which can easily be doubled based on demand. In addition, 70 new jobs were created as a result of the investment.\nThe new factory will make high-quality dark, milk and white chocolate as well as compound for artisanal and industrial customers, but no end-consumer products. Capacity utilization at the plant is expected to rise rapidly. Eighty percent of the factory’s production targets toward the rapidly growing food service market, which includes restaurants, fast-food restaurants, bakeries, pastries, in-store bakeries, caterers, hotels, chocolatiers, and hospital and school canteens.\nFor the distribution of food service products manufactured in Extrema, Barry Callebaut signed an exclusive distribution agreement in 2009 with Bunge, a leading agribusiness company. Every day, Bunge serves about 25,000 points of sale in Brazil.\n“Brazil is the fifth-largest country in the world, with a population of more than 190 million, and the country has returned much faster to its earlier growth dynamic than most other economies after the recent economic turmoil,” Barry Callebaut CEO Juergen Steinemann said at the grand opening.\n“In addition, the Brazilian government as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are expecting a GDP growth of up to 6% for 2010,” he continued. “Against this background and based on growth forecasts for the Latin American chocolate market of more than 3% in volume terms [Source: Euromonitor International] annually over the next three years, we see a tremendous market potential - not only in Brazil, but in the entire region. Seventy-five percent of the Brazilian GDP is generated within a radius of 500 kilometers from Extrema. With our existing cocoa factory in Ilhéus, Bahia, and now our new chocolate factory in Extrema, we are close to our local customers and well-positioned to achieve our goal to also become the No. 1 chocolate supplier to Brazil’s fast-growing food service industry.”\nBarry Callebaut has been present in Brazil with a cocoa factory in Ilhéus, Bahia, since 1999, and employs more than 300 people in the country. Today, the company operates nine cocoa and chocolate factories across the Americas.\nBarry Callebaut opens new chocolate factory in Mexico\nBarry Callebaut opens new chocolate factory near São Paulo\nBarry Callebaut opens first chocolate factory in Indonesia\nBarry Callebaut opens second factory in Mexico\nKettle Awards 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1303956"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6740663647651672,"wiki_prob":0.32593363523483276,"text":"Uncanny X-Men #3 The Arrival\nPosted on November 28, 2018 by MAJK • 0 Comments\nPrior to Uncanny X-Men #3, our heroes were fighting on multiple fronts.\nJean and her team were trying to tame the dinosaurs running amok in Montana. X-23 had been eaten by a T-Rex and then ripped her way out in true Wolverine fashion.\nStorm took her team to Kansas, where they encountered millions of Multiple Man (trying saying that ten times fast) clones. Okay, it wasn’t exactly millions but definitely thousands and exponentially more than they expected. Storm and her team were in the process of being overwhelmed.\nMeanwhile back at the mansion, a mysterious visitor has waded through the piles of protesters to stand at the door facing our new recruits.\nWarning: If you have not read Uncanny X-Men #3 There May Be Spoilers Below\n‘Uncanny X-Men #3’ Cover Art\nWritten by Ed Brisson, Matthew Rosenberg, Kelly Thompson\nArt by Yildiray Cinar\nCover by Leinil Francis Yu\nDinosaurs Down\nUncanny X-Men #3 is the third offering of this 10-part series. While this launch of this limited series started out facing harsh criticism from some for the chaotic story style, the multiple threads are starting to more clearly weave one tale. It’s still not easily understood why some of these events are happening but a complex story-line isn’t a bad thing – especially given this is the Uncanny X-Men.\nIf you also keep in mind that the events of Extermination & the upcoming Exterminated – it starts to look like Marvel is re-organizing its vast expanse of X-men and possibly moving toward a more cohesive Universe. That would explain why this relaunch is a short series rather than an ongoing. Hopefully, this is setting up for a new on-going Uncanny X-men series but whether this is the case or not; Uncanny X-Men #3 marks the point where we begin getting a few answers. The story is beginning to make more sense even for those who are new to the comic. Little by little, the pieces are falling into place. Unfortunately, it looks like our heroes are still confused.\nJean and her team managed to get the dinosaurs under control and rejoin Storm’s team, where she is surprised by the horde of Jamie Madrox clones. In the process of subduing the chaos, they discover Jamie Madrox in the most unlikely of places. It turns out my prediction about Legion was right. The big question is why. Jamie’s got a few answers and more than a few bumps and bruises.\nOur X-kids ignored their instincts in favor of compassion and let Legion into the house. It doesn’t take them long to see that was a mistake. Legion is fixated on saving the world and his patience is running low. Fortunately, Beast is on his way back to the mansion, and he’s not the only one. Jean, Storm, and the rest of the X-Men are in flight back with their injured teammates when Beast appraises them of trouble at the mansion.\nKeep in mind that Legion isn’t necessarily a bad guy, or rather he doesn’t really see himself as a bad guy. He informs Jean that he is responsible for the vision she had in Uncanny X-Men #1. His continued insistence that he’s trying to protect them leads jean to demand to know what exactly he is protecting them from.\nEnter the Four Horsemen. But these are not the Horseman we’ve seen before. The Four Horsemen traditionally serve Apocalypse after enduring a torturous conversion during which he augments their powers and/or outfits them with specially designed weapons and equipment using his advanced technology. That’s not the case, as these Horsemen look more like they’ve just stepped from the pages of a Christian Bible. We know also where Apocalypse is (Uncanny X-Men #1) and he didn’t look like he was in the condition to do much of anything.\nAll of these mutants are well known to fans and only one of them has ever been a Horsemen.\nUncanny X-Men #3 ends on a hell of a cliffhanger and there’s so much I want to say but really – you just need to read Uncanny X-Men #3.\nOn the whole, I’m quite happy with this series, especially considering that there are three writers’ voices telling the tale. It’s very impressive that you can’t tell when one writer transitions to the next, even in the first issue. Uncanny X-Men #3 has no particular narration that stands out which allows each of character to have very distinct voices.\nThe story is complex but the character interaction is solid. Their many moments humanize our heroes. Iceman and Jean discussing Laura’s MVP moment, Bobby’s excitement about the Dinosaur mission, the frustration of the recruit causing a bit of bickering, the recruits needing to be acknowledged by the veteran X-Men, and my personal favorite – Jean and Storm having coffee.\nAs for the plot, yes, it’s a bit convoluted with some familiar elements (anti-mutant politicians are a staple but given that we still have obviously racist politicians IRL…) but the complexity of the plot is intriguing. As of Uncanny X-Men #3 the pieces we have are\nA mysterious Master of the Four Horsemen\nSomeone powerful enough to take down Apocalypse\nLegion obsessed with saving the world\nKitty Pryde captured\nBishop received a warning about an unspecified cataclysmic event\nBeast retrieving a mystery container from the lab\nSomeone with the ability to grant ordinary humans mutant powers\nHow could you not be interested in where this story is going?\nThen there’s the art. I mentioned that I was stoked to see Cinar’s work on this issue. It was everything I expected. The full page of Storm and her team fighting the clones in Russell Springs, Kansas is amazing. I can’t decide if that or the first panel of Uncanny X-Men #3 (the one of Jean’s team in Montana) is my favorite. Cinar does a great job with faces too – Legion goes from benign genial dude to full throttle crazy-eyes. My favorite expression has to be the Horseman (no spoiler) talking with Jean. You’d recognize who he is even if they hadn’t named him. It’s the religious fervency of his expression in the second to the last panel of this comic really got me.\nBest Line:\nBishop: “And your sign, sir.”\nActually, It’s not the line – it’s the look and the line. It’s really the whole 4-panel spread at the bottom of the second page. The way Bishop reaches out to help a person who sees him as an enemy. He bridges the hate with the common courtesy that he knows he’d never receive from this guy. It’s the way he calmly returns the guy’s sign painted with the slogan “God Hates Muties” and the disapproval firmly expressed in his face while he remains on a level of polite, calm civility that this bigot will never reach. There’s so much that makes Bishop one of my favorite characters; this single moment illustrates much of it.\nPredictions: None I will say. I’m sitting here just waiting eagerly for the next issue. Uncanny X-Men #3 ended on a note I refuse to spoil because it’s a jaw drop.\nNext Issue: December 5, 2018\nLiked it? Take a second to support MAJK on Patreon!\nTags: X-Men\nM.J. Kaufmann is a 20-year veteran of the IT field, with a Master of Science in Information Security. She's also an anime junkie, an avid gamer, and a writer. She has dragons & a lightsaber.\n← ‘Geekasaurus’ November 28th, 2018 – Bad Parenting Tips: Episode 3\n‘The Amazing Spider-Man #10’ There’s An App For That →\n$ Make this donation Once Daily Weekly Monthly Yearly","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line719695"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.81660395860672,"wiki_prob":0.81660395860672,"text":"Clinical Solutions - Press Info - Press Releases\nElsevier’s ClinicalKey Announces 2012 Editorial Advisory Board\nAtlanta, GA, June 12, 2012– Elsevier, a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today the members of its editorial advisory board for ClinicalKey, the next generation clinical insight engine that launched in April 2012. The board is composed of 12 doctors who represent a multitude of medical specialties.\n“In assembling this editorial advisory board, we wanted it to reflect ClinicalKey’s broad reach across many medical specialties while also having clinicians with deep experience within each specialty area,” said Jim Donohue, Managing Director, Global Clinical Reference, Elsevier. “These physician leaders offer decades of experience in research and patient care, and they understand what clinicians are looking for when seeking clinical answers.”\nDavid Goldmann, M.D., the Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s First Consult, is the board chair.\nThe advisory board members are the following:\n1. David Goldmann, M.D., FACP, Board Chair (Internal Medicine), Vice President, Editor in Chief, First Consult, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia.\n2. Michael H. Crawford, M.D. (Cardiovascular Disease),Chief of Clinical Cardiology, UCSF Medical Center, San Francisco.\n3. Joseph Ming Wah Li, M.D. (Hospital Medicine), Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Chief, Section of Hospital Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.\n4. Jay S. Duker, M.D. (Ophthalmology), Professor and Chairman, Department of Ophthalmology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston.\n5. Hugh C. Hemmings Jr., M.D., PhD (Anesthesiology and Pharmacology), Professor and Vice Chair of Anesthesiology and Professor of Pharmacology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York.\n6. Frank H. Miller, M.D. (Radiology),Professor of Radiology, Chief of Body Imaging and GI Imaging, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago.\n7. Thomas Moore, M.D. (Obstetrics & Gynecology/Reproductive Medicine), Professor and Chairman, Department of Reproductive Medicine, UCSD School of Medicine, San Diego.\n8. M. Blair Marshall, M.D. (Thoracic Surgery), Chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.\n9. Bonita Stanton, M.D. (Pediatrics),Schotanus Professor and Chair, Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit.\n10. Denne Thomas-Patterson, M.D. (Family Medicine),Crozer Keystone Health System, Philadelphia.\n11. Stephen R. Thompson, M.D., MEd, FRCSC (Orthopedic Surgery/Sports Medicine),Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic, University of Western Ontario, Canada.\n12. Todd W. Thomsen, M.D., Harvard University (Emergency Medicine), Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.\n13. Leonard S. Lilly, M.D. (Cardiovascular Disease),Chief of Brigham and Women’s/Faulkner Cardiology, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston.\nClinicalKey draws upon answers from the largest collection of clinical resources, covering every medical and surgical specialty. ClinicalKey's content includes more than 800 textbooks and 500 top medical journals, providing the most current clinically relevant evidence-based answers, as well as expert commentary, MEDLINE abstracts and select third-party journals.\nMore detail about individual and institutional subscription packages is at Info.ClinicalKey.com.\nTom Reller\nVice President, Global Corporate Relations\nT.Reller@Elsevier.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line665327"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.878416121006012,"wiki_prob":0.878416121006012,"text":"Professor Jim Murray Elected SEB Vice-President\nThe Society for Experimental Biology is delighted to announce that Professor Jim Murray (Cardiff University, UK) has been elected to the role of SEB Vice-President.\nDr Tommy Norin Elected SEB Early Career Trustee\nThe Society for Experimental Biology (SEB) is delighted to announce that Dr Tommy Norin (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark) has been elected as the Society’s new Early Career Researcher (ECR) Trustee.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1426348"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8134327530860901,"wiki_prob":0.8134327530860901,"text":"Biko & the South African Student Organisation\nThis evening the University of KwaZulu-Natal will host their annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture, to commemorate the 41st anniversary of Steve Biko’s death.\nThe crowd at Steve Biko’s funeral\nOn the 18th August 1977, Biko and his associate, Peter Jones, were stopped at a routine road block near Grahamstown. When the police recognised the men, they were arrested under the Terrorism Act which gave the police the power to detain suspects indefinitely without a trial or court appearance. Less than a month later, on the 12th September 1977, Steve Biko died from a massive brain haemorrhage, the result of prolonged torture at the hands of the police. The explanation given at the time by the Minister of Justice and Police, Jimmy Kruger, was that Biko had died whilst on a hunger strike.\nSteve Biko was instrumental in the formation of the South African Student Organisation (SASO), which was headquartered at 86 Beatrice Street in Durban (now Charlotte Maxeke Street). SASO, which was a break away organisation of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was heavily influenced by the University Christian Movement (UCM) which focused on Black Theology. Black Theology or ‘Liberation Theology’ preached racial equality and emphasised the fact that blackness and inferiority were not a punishment, nor a condition created by God.\nSASO newsletter, 1972\nBut Biko, who was studying medicine at the then University of Natal, was not content with the UCM. He and his fellow learners observed that while the majority of the UCM members were black, the leadership structure was mostly made up of whites, seemingly contradicting the primary message of Black Theology. Subsequently in 1968, during a UCM meeting, it was decided that there was a need to form an exclusively black student organisation, and a conference was organised which saw the birth of SASO. The following year, in July 1969, SASO held its inaugural national conference, during which Steve Biko was elected as its first president.\nThe decision to break away from NUSAS was also motivated by the emergence of Black Consciousness, a philosophy borne out of Black Theology, and founded by Biko. Black Consciousness rejected the idea that white people could play a role in the liberation of black people. Biko and his colleagues felt that the black population needed to learn to speak for itself.\nInitially SASO adopted a conciliatory tone towards NUSAS, deeply concerned that breaking away from NUSAS would alienate it from those black students who were committed to working with the student organisation. But as time passed Biko and his colleagues became more militant in the expressing of their views. As SASO grew in both confidence and numbers, the apartheid government began to view the organisation and its members as a serious threat, and in 1973 the Minister of Justice issued banning orders to eight SASO leaders, including Steve Biko.\nIn 1974, SASO was listed as an ‘affected’ organisation under the Affected Organisation Act, denying it any foreign funding, and on the 19th October 1977, just a month after the death of Steve Biko, SASO and its associated Black Consciousness organisations were banned.\nWhile it seems that there were no attempts to move the party underground, the ideologies and political objectives of SASO were adopted by successive organisations such as the South African National Students’ Congress, and the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO). Today AZAPO supporters marched to Pretoria Central Prison (now named the Kgosi Mampuru Correctional facility), the site of Steve Biko’s untimely death.\nMembers of AZAPO view the 12th September as a public holiday, underlying the importance of the contribution that Biko made to the country’s fight for freedom:\nBiko’s contribution to the liberation struggle remains unmatched. He championed mental freedom, but more importantly dealt with fear, which enabled hundreds of thousands of young people to confront the brutal apartheid system with nothing but sheer courage. Issue 28 of Azapo Voice\nImages courtesy of readinglist.click, www.saha.org.za, 77to15.wordpress.com and azapo.org.za\nTags: Azapo, Black Consciousness Movement, liberation heritage route, National Union of South African Students, South African Student Organisation, Steve Biko\n← Otelo Burning\nUdaba Olungaziwa nge SS Mendi →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line509757"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7557550072669983,"wiki_prob":0.7557550072669983,"text":"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/the-stop-race-police-traffic.html\nMagazineThe Race Issue\nFor Black Motorists, a Never-Ending Fear of Being Stopped\nMinorities are pulled over by police at higher rates than whites. Many see a troubling message: You don't belong.\nThe Constant Fear of Driving While Black\nLaw-abiding black and Hispanic drivers are often left frightened and humiliated after being stopped by police, who too often see them as criminals. Listen as individuals across the country share their stories.\nBy Michael A. Fletcher\nPhotographs by Wayne Lawrence\nThis story is part of The Race Issue, a special issue of National Geographic that explores how race defines, separates, and unites us. Tell us your story with #IDefineMe.\nThe Undefeated—an ESPN website that explores the intersection of race, culture, and sports—teamed up with National Geographic to ask people of color across the U.S. what it’s like to be racially profiled during a traffic stop, and the ripple effect such incidents can have on families and communities. This report also will appear on TheUndefeated.com.\nBlack motorists are pulled over by police at rates exceeding those for whites. It’s a flash point in the national debate over race, as many minorities see a troubling message: You don’t belong here.\nAn idyllic afternoon of Little League baseball followed by pizza and Italian ice turned harrowing when two police officers in Bridgeport, Connecticut, stopped Woodrow Vereen, Jr., for driving through a yellow light.\nA music minister at his church, Vereen struggled to maintain eye contact with his young sons as one of the officers instructed Vereen, who is black, to get out of the car and lean over the trunk, and then patted him down. Vereen could see tears welling in the eyes of his seven- and three-year-old sons as they peered through the rear window. He cringed as folks at a nearby bus stop watched one of the officers look through his car.\nHe never consented to the 2015 search, which turned up nothing illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut sued on behalf of Vereen, alleging that police searched him without probable cause. Last year, two years after the incident, he received a settlement from the city. His tickets—for running a light and not carrying proof of insurance—were dismissed.\nThis story helps launch a series about racial, ethnic, and religious groups and their changing roles in 21st-century life. The series runs through 2018 and will include coverage of Muslims, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.\nYet the stop lives with him.\nTraffic stops—the most common interaction between police and the public—have become a focal point in the debate about race, law enforcement, and equality in America. A disproportionate share of the estimated 20 million police traffic stops in the United States each year involve black drivers, even though they are no more likely to break traffic laws than whites. Black and Hispanic motorists are more likely than whites to be searched by police, although they are no more likely to be carrying contraband.\nAcross the country, law-abiding black and Hispanic drivers are left frightened and humiliated by the inordinate attention they receive from police, who too often see them as criminals. Such treatment leaves minorities feeling violated, angry, and wary of police and their motives.\nActivists have taken to the streets to protest police shootings of unarmed black people. Athletes, including National Football League players, have knelt or raised clenched fists during the singing of the national anthem at sports events to try to shine a light on lingering inequality.\nVereen had always told his children that the police were real-life superheroes. Now that story had to change. “Everything I told them seems to be untrue,” said Vereen, 34. “Why is this superhero trying to hurt my dad? Why is this superhero doing this to us? He is supposed to be on our side.”\nThe first time my now 28-year-old son was stopped by police, he was a high school student in Baltimore, Maryland. He was headed to a barber shop when he was startled by flashing lights and the sight of two police cars pulling up behind him. The stop lasted just a few minutes and resulted in no ticket. It seems the cops just wanted to check him out. My son’s fear morphed into indignation when an officer returned his license, saying, “A lot of vehicles like yours are stolen.” He was driving a Honda Civic, one of the most popular cars on the road.\nShaken by cases in which seemingly routine traffic stops turn deadly, many black parents rehearse with their children what to do if they are pulled over: Lower your car window so officers have a clear line of sight, turn on the interior lights, keep your hands visible, have your license and registration accessible, and for God’s sake, let the officer know you are reaching for them so he doesn’t shoot you.\nDrivers of all races worry about running afoul of the rules of the road. But blacks and Hispanics, in particular, also worry about being stopped if they are driving a nice car in a modest or upscale community, a raggedy car in a mostly white one, or any kind of car in a high-crime area. It affects everyone, from ministers and professional athletes to lawyers and the super-rich.\n“It’s been more times than I care to remember,” said Robert F. Smith, 55, a private equity titan and philanthropist, when asked how often he thinks he has been racially profiled. Smith, with a net worth of more than three billion dollars, is listed by Forbes as the nation’s wealthiest African American. Yet he still dreads being pulled over.\n“A very familiar feeling comes each time I’m stopped,” he said. “And that’s the same feeling I got the first time I was stopped, when I was 17 years old.”\nRosie Villegas-Smith, a Mexican-born U.S. citizen who has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, for 28 years, has been stopped a couple of times by Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies, who are notorious for using allegations of minor traffic violations to check the immigration status of Hispanic drivers.\nIn 2011 federal investigators found that the department pulled over Hispanic drivers up to nine times more often than other motorists. The stops were part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants ordered by Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff from 1993 to 2016.\nCourts ruled the stops illegal, but Arpaio pressed ahead and was found guilty of criminal contempt in July 2017. President Donald Trump—who has stoked racial tensions by bashing immigrants, protesting athletes, and others—pardoned Arpaio the following month. Arpaio recently announced plans to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate.\nThe statistics on traffic stops elsewhere are spotty—neither uniformly available nor comprehensive—but they show the same pattern of blacks and Hispanics being stopped and searched more frequently than others. The disparity spans the nation, affecting drivers in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Men are more at risk than women, and for black men, being disproportionately singled out is virtually a universal experience.\nA 2017 study in Connecticut, one of the few states that collect and analyze comprehensive traffic-stop data, found that police disproportionately pull over black and Hispanic drivers during daylight hours, when officers can more easily see who is behind the wheel. Many police departments have policies and training to prevent racial profiling, but those rules can get lost in day-to-day police work.\n“One reason minorities are stopped disproportionately is because police see violations where they are,” said Louis Dekmar, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, who runs the police department in LaGrange, Georgia. “Crime is often significantly higher in minority neighborhoods than elsewhere. And that is where we allocate our resources. That is the paradox.”\nToo often, officers treat minorities driving in mostly white areas as suspect, Dekmar said. “It’s wrong, and there is no excuse for that,” he said.\nRobert L. Wilkins was a public defender in 1992, when he and several family members were stopped by a Maryland state trooper while returning to Washington, D.C., from his grandfather’s funeral in Chicago. The trooper accused them of speeding, then asked to search their rented Cadillac. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what’s your problem?” the trooper said when they objected to the search on principle.\nThe trooper made them wait for a drug-sniffing dog. As Wilkins and his family stood on the side of the highway, a German shepherd sniffed “seemingly every square inch of the car’s exterior,” Wilkins recalls. Before long, there were five or six police cars around them. At one point, Wilkins, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, noticed a white couple and their two children staring as they rode by. He imagined that they thought the worst: “They’re putting two and two together and getting five,” he said. “They see black people and they’re thinking, ‘These are bad people.’ ”\nWilkins filed a class-action suit alleging an illegal search and racial profiling, and the state of Maryland settled, largely because of an unearthed police document that had warned troopers to be on the lookout for black men in rental cars, who were suspected of ferrying crack cocaine. The settlement required state police to keep statistics on the race and ethnicity of drivers who were stopped. A second suit forced police to revamp their complaint system. Those changes brought some improvement, and racial disparities in traffic stops in Maryland were cut in half.\nWhat lingers, though, is the indignity and anger that drivers feel over being singled out. “There’s a power that they want to exert, that you have to experience. And what do you do about it?” Smith said. “There’s an embedded terror in our community, and that’s just wrong.”\nIn 19 of 24 states, black Americans are more likely to be stopped than whites.\nTraffic stops for white and black Americans per 100 driving-age people, 2015 (where data is available)\nAfter they are pulled over, black Americans are more likely to be searched in all but one state, even though they are no more likely to be carrying illegal substances.\nSearches for white and black Americans per 100 people stopped, 2015 (where data is available)\nBlack Americans are more likely than whites to be ticketed after a stop in all but two states.\nTickets for white and black Americans per 100 people stopped, 2015 (where data is available)\nBlack Americans are more likely than whites to be arrested after a stop in all 13 states.\nArrests for white and black Americans per 100 people stopped, 2015 (where data is available)\nSOURCE: Stanford University Open Policing Project\nNOTE: Cook, which includes Chicago, was the only county in Illinois that provided data, but it represents 68 percent of the state’s black population. Graphic data are limited to highway traffic stops, which may include out-of-state drivers, and do not reflect stops on other roadways.\nMichael Fletcher, a senior writer at the Undefeated, previously was a reporter at the Washington Post covering education and race relations. He is co-author of the 2007 book Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Wayne Lawrence is a widely published documentary photographer whose stated focus is “communities otherwise overlooked by mainstream media.” His work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions including the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Lawrence also shot the photos for this month’s story on intermarriage.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1478982"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5754309296607971,"wiki_prob":0.4245690703392029,"text":"BNSF Transcon: Kansas City to Cajon (Part Two: Clovis to Belen)\nHighway 47 Southeast of Belen\nIn this series, we are following BNSF's Transcon from Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri, to the mouth of Cajon Canyon in San Bernardino County, California. Part One covered the line from Union Station through the Llano Estacado in the Texas Panhandle. Part Two runs from Clovis, New Mexico, on the eastern border of the state, to Belen, hard on the banks of the Rio Grande. As in Part One, the photographs are numbered to correspond to their numeric locations on the inserted maps.\nNew Mexico is perhaps the most fascinating state in the Union. It contains the oldest state capital (Santa Fe) and the oldest Pueblo cultures in North America -- Zuni, Laguna and Jemez are just three of many. New Mexico is pock-marked with hundreds of volcanoes (many extinct, though not all), the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, mile upon mile of ancient lava fields and a huge escarpment upon which the first atomic bomb (fission) was created (at Los Alamos).\nI have previously posted five separate articles on railroads in New Mexico:\nhttps://www.waltersrail.com/2015/11/pecos-river-bridge-fort-sumner-new.html;\nhttps://www.waltersrail.com/2015/12/loma-alta-lucy-and-new-mexico-high.html;\nhttps://www.waltersrail.com/2016/01/abo-canyon-then-and-snow.html;\nhttps://www.waltersrail.com/2016/07/bnsf-west-of-belen-mp-278-to-319.html;\nhttps://www.waltersrail.com/2018/04/bnsf-highway-47-to-mountainair.html.\nThese are heavily detailed and contain many more images than you will find in this post. Here we are surveying the Transcon across the eastern half of New Mexico; thus, a certain level of detail must be sacrificed.\nBut none of the high points are missed. In addition, you may find some locations that you were previously unaware of. I hope you find the journey enjoyable.\nAs the Transcon winds west, it comes to the small town of Clovis, which despite its size contains a major railroad yard -- for Clovis is where the BNSF line to Texas and ultimately Houston ties into the railroad's western highway to the Pacific. Clovis sits on the edge of Llano Estacado (see Part One for a description of this unique geographic formation) and is little different than other towns of the region -- flat, dry, dusty and friendly. Average annual rainfall is about 18.5 inches, much of which falls in downpours that run off into the surrounding streams that are otherwise dry throughout the year. In this country, water is as precious as eyesight.\nPhotograph #1: Westbound stacks have just left the yard in Clovis. Behind them, a late afternoon thunderstorm is racing eastward, away from the setting sun. In about fifteen miles, the train will leave the Llano Estacado and begin a long, slow descent into the valley of the Pecos River.\nPhotograph #2. Eastbound stacks are climbing the grade out of the Pecos River valley toward the Llano Estacado.\nPhotograph #3: A westbound manifest approaches the US Highway 60 overpass east of Fort Sumner, New Mexico.\nPhotograph #4: An eastbound bare-table is racing across the valley of the Pecos River.\nThe Pecos River's source is on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 45 miles northeast (as the crow flies) from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Several authorities credit Pecos Falls as the source, but if you follow the river on satellite photographs (such as Google Maps) you will note that the river appears to originate at a natural pond about two and one-half miles north of the falls. The Google Map coordinates of the pond are: 35.973808, -105.558968.\nUpstream from where the Transcon crosses, the Pecos is twice dammed to create reservoirs: Santa Rosa Lake and Fort Sumner Lake, both of which significantly decrease the river's flow downstream. In dry months when the dams are closed (most of the year), the Pecos is barely a trickle where it is crossed by the Transcon.\nPhotograph #5: BNSF's Transcon crosses the Pecos River at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This image was taken from the abandoned portion of US Highway 60, which was rerouted upon completion of a new highway bridge. One can park on the abandoned black-top without fear of the passing traffic, 65 yards or so away, and photograph trains all morning during winter (when the sun is behind the photographer).\nPhotograph #6: Pushers on eastbound stacks are crossing the Pecos River, which at this location on this particular day was about ten yards wide and perhaps two inches deep. This image was taken in January, and I am not athletic enough to broad jump 30 feet (with or without camera equipment), so I had to walk through the water in my Gortex-lined boots, which kept my feet dry but not warm.\nPhotograph 7: Pushers on the Pecos River bridge at sunset.\nFrom the east, the Transcon's decent into the valley of the Pecos River is gradual. To the west, however, the hills rise abruptly out of Fort Sumner, requiring the railroad to meet the grade by running southwest, much as a sailboat tacks sideways into the wind. The grade is steep, but not overpowering. About five miles after crossing the river, the tracks turn sharply northwest, tacking again up the grade, which is surmounted in another couple of miles. The Transcon in this region is isolated, but can be reached with a high-clearance vehicle. Four-wheel drive is recommended.\nPhotograph 8: Eastbound stacks on the grade toward Fort Sumner.\nPhotograph 9: A westbound is making the big turn on the hill southwest of Fort Sumner.\nPhotograph 10: Eastbound autos are racing downgrade, beginning the turn southeast toward the Pecos River and Fort Sumner. In the background is the top of the grade out of the river valley.\nLoma Alta to Vaughn\nOnce the Transcon ascends west out of the valley of the Pecos River, trains cross the high country of east central New Mexico. The land here is not flat, and its breadth is awe-inspiring. Remnants of ancient volcanoes are scattered here and there like bread crumbs, and the nearest tree is far to the east. The tallest plant for a hundred miles is the Tree Cholla, a cactus which in this country rarely grows over three feet.\nBecause of severe slopes, the tracks wind significantly south of US Highway 60, the main route through this portion of the world, before re-joining the highway for a short distance at Yeso. Then the tracks swing hard to the south again, splitting in an area unapproachable by any road. The original single-track line climbed a steep westbound grade here, so when the line was double-tracked in the 1990's, the new track took a circuitous route up the hill to lessen the grade. The new alignment is clearly visible on maps and satellite photographs, but for years I despaired of ever taking images of the split tracks because of their inaccessibility.\nOn one trip in the summer with Bear the Mighty Dog, on a whim I decided to drive my Jeep off the main highway onto what looked like a goat trail. All the dirt roads in the area were gated, but this one was open, so in I drove. In about a mile, I saw the beginning of a hill in the distance. As I drove closer, the hill grew, and I soon recognized that I was viewing a small mesa running due east and west about a hundred yards, probably no more than 30 yards or so wide from north to south, and perhaps a hundred feet taller than the surrounding plains. To my amazement, another trail led up the side of the hill, and I was prepared to take it, when a pick-up came along in the opposite direction, carrying three ranch hands. We stopped and chatted for a moment. Their faces were the color of the red soil in that country and about as worn as the old tires on my Jeep. I asked if I could drive to the top of the mesa to take photographs of the railroad. They told me that the name of the mesa was Loma Alta, and that I was welcome to drive to the top and stay as long as I wished, provided I did not disturb the cattle.\nThe drive to the top was exhilarating, because the trail disappeared about half-way up, and the remainder of the ride was over dirt, rocks, cacti and God knows what else. We bounced left, right, up, down, backwards, forwards, and Mighty Dog looked at me as though I'd lost my mind, which I believe I had. Somehow or other we reached the top, mostly because of blind luck and Jeep engineering, and there we stayed for the remainder of the afternoon. I have to say that Loma Alta has turned out to be one of my all-time favorite railfan spots. I think it might be yours, too, if you can make it to the top.\nPhotograph 11: This image was taken from the base of Loma Alta. Westbound stacks are crossing the high semi-arid plains of eastern New Mexico. In the foreground are the ubiquitous Tree Cholla cacti that grow here like weeds.\nPhotograph 12: Late in the day, a lonely BNSF manifest is seen on the high semi-arid plains. At this time of day, when the wind is down, you can hear the trains as far away as you can see them. In this case, the tracks are first visible about 12 miles away on the horizon, and the train is the size of a worm.\nPhotograph 13: Three trains are visible in this image. The nearest train is westbound. The train in the middle is eastbound. The far train, a manifest, is also westbound and is running on the newer, more circuitous track that takes a shallower grade up the hill. In this country, the only thing blocking your line of sight is the curvature of the earth.\nThis aerial image shows Loma Alta in relation to the original grade and the new alignment. Also shown are the enormous distances involved in Photograph 13. As you can see, the far train in that image is about six miles from the photographer!\nPhotograph 14: Pushers on eastbound stacks are racing across the highlands of New Mexico. In the background is Loma Alta, about 12 miles away!\nIf you are not interested in railroads, then Vaughn, New Mexico, is not much of a place. Today, it looks like a post-apocalyptic ruin, as though a nuclear war might have been fought nearby. At one time, however, before the construction of I-40, Vaughn, the crossroads of three major western highways, sported motels, restaurants and gas stations. Today, with most of the truck traffic on the interstate to the north, there is not much left in town. The motels, restaurants and gas stations are almost all closed, standing silently along the highways, derelict sentinels of a long ago prosperity. The only things in town that give away Vaughn's position as a major railroad destination are the Oak Tree Inn and Penny's Diner, where Union Pacific crews eat and sleep after dismounting and before mounting trains between Kansas City and El Paso. Vaughn is also the location where BNSF's Transcon crosses the UP on a grade separation. Thus, we have a major railroad junction as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get and still be on the face of the globe.\nI have eaten several meals at Penny's Diner and am fascinated by the picture on the wall of the boys' and girls' basketball teams. Students must come in from miles around. There can't possibly be enough people in Vaughn to supply high school basketball. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is more here than meets the eye. In any event, if you like to gaze at night at stars minus light pollution, Vaughn is your place.\nPhotograph 15: Pushers on westbound stacks are approaching Vaughn, New Mexico. The Union Pacific line to El Paso, Texas, which crosses the Transcon at Vaughn, runs near the base of the mesa in the background.\nPhotograph 16: Closer to Vaughan, trailers race east to Chicago.\nPhotograph 17: The original AT&SF line across what is now the Union Pacific was a single track flyover. In the summer of 2017, when this image was taken, BNSF was constructing a second, grade-separated track to ease what had become a significant bottleneck on the Transcon. Here, a westbound manifest is passing a road grader leveling the dirt on what will become the second track.\nPhotograph 18: In the winter of 2017, the new second track is completed and is supporting westbound stacks. The original single-track flyover is visible in the background.\nPhotograph 19: UP meets BNSF on the original Vaughn flyover.\nPhotograph 20: An empty eastbound coal train approaches the Vaughn flyover from the west.\nEncino to Willard\nWest of Vaughn, the geography and geology become quite interesting. The Transcon runs on a relatively flat grade until turning downhill and ducking under US Highway 60, dropping about 150 feet in the process. To the north and west are the Pedernal Hills, which have always looked to me like the remnants of ancient volcanoes. The following source, however, indicates that the hills are likely \"a remnant of the ancestral 'Rocky Mountains' and are seen today as gently rolling hills of eroded Precambrian rocks.\"\nhttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rod_Holcombe/publication/266012323_PRECAMBRIAN_ROCKS_OF_A_PORTION_OF_THE_PEDERNAL_HIGHLANDS_TORRANCE_COUNTY_NEW_MEXICO/links/56da202808aee73df6cf6a82/PRECAMBRIAN-ROCKS-OF-A-PORTION-OF-THE-PEDERNAL-HIGHLANDS-TORRANCE-COUNTY-NEW-MEXICO.pdf\nLater in the text, though, the authors propose the hypothesis that portions of the Pedernal Hills \"probably represent part of a submarine volcanic field\" active long before the formation of the ancestral Rockies. So maybe my intuition is not totally mistaken. In any event, I can find no map of New Mexico volcanoes that includes the Pedernal Hills.\nAs we move west, annual precipitations lessens. In Encino, average rainfall is about 13.5 inches per year, which means this country is just above arid or desert status. (Ten inches or less of rain per year means you are living in a desert.). The one constant I notice about life in this part of the world is dust. When the wind blows, which is most of the time, the air is thick with it and can quickly contaminate camera gear. In this country, I always cover my camera and the top of my tripod with a towel while waiting for a train.\nPhotograph 21: A westbound grainer has crossed the Vaughn flyover and is headed west toward Encino, New Mexico. Soon the tracks will turn downgrade and drop about 150 feet as they duck under US Highway 60, from which this image was taken. The winter grass has turned bright yellow and the January sun hangs low in the southern sky.\nPhotograph 22: Westbound stacks are gliding downgrade, preparing to pass underneath US Highway 60.\nPhotograph 23: In this image, the photographer is standing at the top of the hill in the image immediately above, looking west toward the Pedernal Hills. A bit of snow remains from an overnight dusting as the train struggles into the grade.\nPhotograph 24: Two stack trains meet at the US Highway 60 overpass. Photographer is looking east, as in photograph 22.\nPhotograph 25: Trains meeting just east of Encino, New Mexico, with Manzano Mountains in background. These mountains overlook the valley of the Rio Grande River, and the Transcon passes through them in Abo Canyon.\nWest of Encino, the Transcon turns hard to the southwest and passes the ghost town of Lucy, which once contained a school and two churches. When the climate dried during the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, literally everyone moved away. The only things left today are a few isolated ranch houses.\nBeautiful golden grass covers the valley now, obscuring for the most part ancient lava. I have searched high and low but can find nothing about this particular location, probably because New Mexico is covered with far more dramatic lava flows, including the one at El Malpais National Monument, which occurred about 3,000 years ago. The lava at Lucy is barely noticeable and barely raises an eyebrow in this country.\nPhotograph 26: An empty coal train meets westbound stacks (pulled by NS power) across the ancient lava field at Lucy, New Mexico, with the Pedernal Hills in the background.\nPhotograph 27: Eastbound stacks at Lucy.\nWest of Lucy, the Transcon enters the Estancia Basin, which today contains the salt flats and remnants of two lakes that filled and then evaporated over several thousand years. The basin initially formed when the Sandia, Manzano, Manzanita and Los Pinos Mountains were uplifted during formation of the Rio Grande rift about 15-20 million years ago. During the last ice age (between 12,000 and 24,000 years ago) a large lake filled the basin, about 40 miles long and 23 miles wide. Today, it would cover the towns from Estacia to Willard with about 100 feet of water. At the end of the last ice age, the lake dried up. Then as the climate grew wetter, the lake filled again, and this newer reservoir has been dubbed Lake Willard by geologists. Over time, since the newer lake had no drainage to any river, the water became heavily saline. When the second lake also dried up, left behind were a residue of salt, sodium sulfates and magnesium sulfates. The following aerial photograph shows the salt flats, which US Highway 60 and the Transcon cross at Silo.\nPhotograph 28: BNSF 5160 East is climbing through the salt flats east of Willard, New Mexico.\nPhotograph 29: An eastbound Z-train at Silo after a light snow.\nPhotograph 30: Westbound stacks have come down off the salt flats and are approaching Willard, New Mexico, from the east.\nPhotograph 31: BNSF 7527 East has just left Willard. The photographer is looking west toward the Manzano Mountains.\nFollowing is the Wikipedia entry for Willard, New Mexico, as of December 31, 2018: \"Willard is a village in Torrance County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 240 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Albuquerque Metropolitan Statistical Area. The village is not experiencing the same extreme growth that towns farther north in the state are. A wind farm has recently been constructed upon the mesa just south of the town. It provides power for about 25,000 homes in Arizona.\"\nIt is not my intent to overly analyze an entry from Wikipedia, but several things from this quote are interesting. First, including Willard in the Albuquerque MSA is amusing, to me at least, because the two towns are separated by a mountain range, visible in the image immediately above.\nSecond, to say that Willard is not experiencing \"extreme growth\" is somewhat misleading. Willard is not experiencing any growth at all. A drive through town on US Highway 60 will convince you that what is left of the tiny settlement could blow away at any moment.\nFinally, although I am not an electrical engineer, I do understand that generating stations, whether coal-fired or wind-driven, feed electricity into the grid and are generally not dedicated to a specific location. So I wonder, perhaps pointlessly, why a wind farm in Willard would send dedicated power to Arizona? Doesn't Albuquerque need the electricity?\nPhotograph 32: This image, taken in the center of town, gives some idea that Willard is not experiencing \"explosive growth.\"\nPhotograph 33: In railroad circles, Willard is probably best known for the huge curve just west of town. Above, stacks and trailers are negotiating the change of direction on a hot day in July.\nPhotograph 34: A westbound manifest has just come off the big curve at Willard. In the distance stand the Pedernal Hills -- above the motive power.\nMountainair to Scholle\nAt the village of Mountainair, westbounds turn downgrade and begin the long descent through Abo Pass into the valley of the Rio Grande. This is the only easy passage from the high country of eastern New Mexico through the central mountains. The original AT&SF line to Albuquerque surmounted both Raton and Glorietta Passes, each with grades of three percent that proved operational nightmares, so eventually the Santa Fe constructed the Belen Cut-off to circumvent those grades, passing far south of Albuquerque, crossing the Rio Grande at the hamlet of Belen (Spanish for Bethlehem).\nToday, Belen contains a major BNSF yard. All eastbound and westbound trains stop for crew changes and inspections of motive power and rolling stock. To reach this town, the Transcon winds through wide and relatively unchallenging Abo Pass surrounded by desert cacti and mesas, eventually approaching a narrow crevice in the mountains -- Abo Canyon. This section of our Transcon survey covers the line from Mountainair to Scholle, the eastern mouth of the canyon where (before the widening project in the early 21st century) double-track turned to single track for a narrow passage through canyon walls\nPhotograph 35: An eastbound mineral train is climbing the grade to Mountainair.\nPhotograph 36: A loaded coal train passes a manifest at Abo, New Mexico, which was once a small station and settlement on the Belen Cut-off.\nPhotograph 37: An eastbound manifest climbs the grade at Abo, New Mexico.\nPhotograph 38: Westbound grain at Chilton's Crossing.\nPhotograph 39: Eastbound empty coal at Chilton's Crossing.\nPhotograph 40: Westbound autos are gliding downgrade through Abo Pass.\nPhotograph 41: In one of my favorite locations in the pass, which I've heard called Abo Curve, a westbound stack train is headed toward the narrow confines of Abo Canyon. This was before the canyon was widened and double-tracked in the early 21st century. The exposed sandstone, schist and clay show the enormous climatic changes undergone in this region in the past 300 million years.\nPhotograph 42: Eastbound trailers struggle into the grade as they approach Abo Curve.\nPhotograph 43: Westbound stacks have entered the single track at Scholle, with a late afternoon thunderstorm in the background. This image was taken before BNSF widened Abo Canyon and installed a second track.\nPhotograph 44: An eastbound manifest is leaving Abo Canyon after a heavy January snow. The train is on the original narrow track through the sandstone and limestone. The near track was added by BNSF when the canyon was widened.\nAlmost since the beginning of the AT&SF and Burlington Northern merger, Abo Canyon has been heavily monitored for trespassers. I have thus never obtained an image of BNSF power in the canyon. Shortly before the merger, however, in 1995, when Santa Fe was still running shiny new warbonnets, I made a trip west and obtained my last photographs in the canyon, some of which I present here as penance for my failure to obtain BNSF images. The images are arranged from east to west through the canyon.\nPhotograph 45: A westbound merchandise freight is entering Abo Canyon from the east. In the background is the US Highway 60 overpass. The second track through the canyon was constructed to the right of the track in this image and cut a huge swath through the surrounding sandstone and limestone. If I were to hike today from the overpass to the location where this image was taken, I would be immediately accosted by BNSF personnel, who would not be friendly.\nPhotograph 46: Eastbound stacks and trailers are preparing to exit the canyon near the location where the previous image was taken.\nPhotograph 47: A westbound intermodal is photographed from the same location as immediately above, only looking in the opposite direction.\nPhotograph 48: Eastbound trailers are emerging from the cut visible in the rear of Photograph 46.\nPhotograph 49: The camera is looking into the cut at the rear of Photograph 48. When this image was taken (1995), the Santa Fe freely allowed railfans into the canyon for photography. All you had to do was show up at the Belen office and sign a release. Then you could drive all over the place. If you look closely in this photograph, you will see a white vehicle parked to the right of the last unit. The photographers were two young men in Bermuda shorts who spent the entire day racing back and forth through the canyon like disturbed gerbils. I stayed above in the hills and enjoyed the show.\nPhotograph 50: One day in the canyon, I stumbled across a group of what I believe were bighorn sheep. My identification my be wrong, because I am not a zoologist, but this image shows a portion of the herd, which was led by the male in the center of the picture with his back turned. I think they smelled me before they saw me, but eventually they recognized danger and began moving lower in the canyon. When they neared the Santa Fe tracks, the male climbed up and looked in both directions, checking for trains. They he went back and led the females, other males and adolescents across, one-by-one, until everyone was safe. Then he crossed, and they disappeared into the mountain cedars. No one believes this, but it is absolutely true.\nPhotograph 51: Westbound stacks cross the last bridge on the west side of the canyon.\nPhotograph 52: Westbound stacks are exiting Abo Canyon at Sais, with the Los Pinos Mountains in the background.\nMap 10\nAfter the Transcon exits Abo Canyon on the west, the tracks run downgrade across the remarkably wide valley of the Rio Grande River. The land slopes steeply from the waters' edge to the base of the Mazano Mountains, and trains crossing this arid country look like black threads on white cloth. At the bottom of the valley sits Belen, New Mexico, a division point and major yard.\nPhotograph 53: A westbound coming out of Abo Canyon meets an eastbound climbing the grade out of the valley of the Rio Grande River, with the Manzano Mountains watching silently in the background.\nPhotograph 54: Two BNSF freights meet on the upslope of the Rio Grande Valley. The horizon accurately shows how the land tilts upward toward the Manzano Mountains, giving some idea of the tectonic forces at work.\nPhotograph 55: Eastbound stacks are climbing toward Abo Canyon beneath the Monzano Mountains. This image was taken in December, when the sun is low in the southern sky.\nPhotograph 56: Eastbound stacks are climbing toward Abo Canyon beneath the Los Pinos Mountains. This image was taken in mid-June, when the June sun rises north of due east.\nPhotograph 57: Eastbound stacks are climbing the grade out of Belen, New Mexico, toward Abo Canyon at sunset.\nPhotograph 58: Belen, New Mexico in 1995.\nThus ends Part Two of the journey across the BNSF Transcon from Kansas City to Cajon Pass.\nPosted by Paul Walters at 11:31 AM","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1308460"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9536017179489136,"wiki_prob":0.9536017179489136,"text":"For Kurds in Kirkuk, Iraq election proves more divisive than ever\nMurat Sofuoglu\nIraqi Turkmens\nUnderstanding Iraqi elections\nThe watchmen of Kirkuk\nIraq's Kurdish regional leader Barzani defends Turkey's Syria operation\nIs Saudi Arabia going downhill under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman?\nRukban camp: A graveyard of children\nOttoman Palestine records present obstacle for Israeli land grab policies\nAnalysis: What keeps Putin in power?\nAnalysis: Egypt’s record on human rights and the media speaks for itself\n'There have been many disasters in this country, but this one is different'\nSocial media is a bridge for Palestinians with no freedom of movement\nWhile the economy and corruption seem to be the dominating discourse in the run-up to the Iraqi elections, the Kurds in Kirkuk are not only entangled in infighting but also at odds with Baghdad. Political uncertainty looms over the city's prospects.\nIraqi Prime Minister Haidar al Abadi, speaks to his supporters during an election campaign in Kirkuk, on April 28, 2018. In Kirkuk, Arabs and Turkmens will increase their political representation against Kurds, political analysts say. (Ako Rasheed / Reuters)\nJalal Talabani, one of the most prominent Kurdish leaders in Iraq, always wanted to describe Kirkuk, Iraq’s oil-rich multilingual and multiethnic city, as the Jerusalem of the Kurds. Talabani was also the founding leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a major Kurdish party in Iraq.\nTalabani, who was the first Iraqi president of Kurdish origin, passed away several days after the Kurdish independence referendum was held on September 25, last year. Most Iraqi Kurds supported the referendum, but it collapsed as central government forces took over Kirkuk, a long disputed city between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Baghdad government.\nKRG forces claimed the city using the Daesh attacks as a pretext in 2014.\nThe PUK’s Kurdish peshmergas, who just like their leader, revere the city, reportedly struck a deal with the Iraqi military through Iranian political operators led by Iran’s powerful General Qasem Soleimani. They left the city without any serious resistance against the marching central government forces.\nMasoud Barzani, the KRG’s former president and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), another powerful Kurdish party in Iraq, called the PUK withdrawal a betrayal, reflecting some of the tensions between the Kurdish factions.\nNow, on the eve of Iraqi parliamentary elections, Kurdish factionalism may also cost Kurds their majority in Kirkuk, considered a mini-Iraq due to its distinct mix of Turkmen, Arab and Kurdish populations.\nAn Iraqi security member dips his finger in ink after casting his vote at a polling station, two days before polls open to the public in a parliamentary election in Kirkuk on May 10, 2018. (Ako Rasheed / Reuters)\nThe city has seen many changes throughout its history. During the Ottoman period, the Turkmen political presence was more powerful than any other ethnic group in the city. But under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s policies, the city’s ethnic balance changed considerably, at the expense of Turkmens. With the KRG’s takeover of the city, Kurdish migration to Kirkuk increased, making the Kurdish population the largest in the city.\nAlthough this should be reflected in the election, the reality may be different. In Kirkuk, there are 13 seats to contest. Of the 13 seats, one is always reserved for the Christian minority. Consequently, in the last parliamentary elections, eight seats were claimed by Kurds and four were evenly divided between the Turkmens and the Arabs. There are more than 900,000 registered voters and nearly 300 candidates in the city, representing more than 30 different parties.\nBarzani’s KDP boycotts elections in Kirkuk and other disputed areas, which the party believes were unlawfully occupied by the Baghdad government after the unsuccessful referendum bid. But Baghdad believes the city had been illegally occupied by KRG forces.\nNonetheless, the KDP decision to boycott the elections will have a lasting effect on Kurdish votes in the crucial city, which has also been known for its oil-rich fields, located in the middle of the country.\n“On October 16, Kirkuk fell. The KDP boycotts elections and the party leadership has advised its base to vote for either the Kurdistan Socialist Party, an ally of the KDP, or the Islamic Union Party in Kirkuk,” said Mehmet Bulovali, who served in 2010 as the head advisor to Tariq al Hashimi, a former vice president of Iraq.\nSome of the KDP votes will also go to the PUK and the National List, which includes the Coalition for Justice and Democracy, a new party established by Barham Salih, the former deputy leader of the PUK and other Kurdish parties like Komal and the Gorran movement, Bulovali observed.\nWhile the city is widely considered a loss to the Kurdish community in these elections, there is still debate on how exactly the loss will play out.\n“One Kurdish seat could go to either Turkmens or Arabs. But because of the constitutional requirement, three seats out of 12 seats have been reserved for women. As a result, Kurds might lose another seat because of the women quota,” said Bulovali, who is a Kurdish native from Kirkuk.\n“At the end, Kurdish and Arab-Turkmen seats could even be split as 6-3-3,” Bulovali told TRT World. If Bulovali is right, Kurds would lose their majority in Kirkuk.\nBut Avni Lutfioglu, a Turkmen political analyst and a former adviser to Iraqi Turkmen Front leadership, thinks differently. “At most, Kurds will lose one seat and defend their majority in Kirkuk,” Lutfioglu told TRT World.\nIraqi women walk past a campaign poster of candidates ahead of the parliamentary elections, in Najaf, on April 14, 2018. After the elections, the country’s parliament will be even more divisive than its current shape, analysts assess. (Alaa Al-Marjani / Reuters)\nIraqi elections: A political deadlock?\nAfter the US-trained Iraqi army and its Shia allies backed by the US air force defeated Daesh last year, Iraq appeared to be a more united state than ever under the new prime minister Haider al Abadi. But the parliamentary elections do not seem to reflect this newfound unity.\n“The biggest political group can just win 30 seats. That’s all. If at least four or five or 10 different groups join for a coalition, then, they can establish a government,” Bulovali observed.\nShias, Sunnis and Kurds – who are the three major populations and make up a majority of the country’s social fabric – are more politically divided than ever.\nAlthough both Abadi and his predecessor, Nouri al Maliki, two Shia Arab politicians who served in the governing State of Law coalition as members of the Dawa Party, will contest these elections under new separate alliances they established.\nHadi al Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organisation, which is a powerful Iran-linked Shia militia alliance, will also contest the elections under a separate alliance, the Fatah Alliance. He was previously part of Abadi’s governing coalition, but decided to withdraw from it last December.\nHadi al Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organisation, attends an election campaign rally, along with his Fatah Alliance supporters, in Kirkuk on May 2, 2018. Amiri is leading one of the major Shia alliances in Iraq. (Ako Rasheed / Reuters)\nMuqtada al Sadr, a powerful Shia cleric, who is heavily criticising the Abadi government, has established a political alliance with the country’s communists.\n“Amiri, Abadi and Sadr are leading the most powerful alliances. Abadi seems to be more powerful than others. He can even receive votes from Sunnis,” said Lutfioglu, a Sunni Turkmen activist.\nOn the Sunni side, the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is closely tied to Iraq’s Muslim Brotherhood, has established an alliance with Iyad Allawi, one of the strongest Shia leaders, who is leading the secular Wataniya Party.\nKurds seem to be more divided than ever, especially since their referendum bid hit the wall last year. Talabani’s death and the fall of Kirkuk exacerbated tensions, within Kurdish political groups. Even the Gorran movement – a splinter group from the PUK – is losing some support after their charismatic leader, Nawshirwan Mustafa, unexpectedly died last year.\n“Let’s have their elections and then, we can say that they have done their elections as democracy requires,” said Bulovali, referring to the mindset of US power brokers. “The US will ultimately design the formation of the governing coalition according to its own vision because it knows there will be no big political block at the parliament.”\nHe exemplifies his point with the 2010 parliamentary election, when Allawi’s alliance got most of the seats. “Constitutionally, Allawi should form the government. But [the] US pushed the button and Maliki established the government,” Bulovali recalled. Maliki also resigned from the prime ministry under US pressure, leaving his place to the current Prime Minister Abadi.\nIranian influence is also very powerful in Iraq, but Bulovali thinks it will decrease because the country is now facing enormous pressure from the US and Israel. In the past, the US and Iran have worked together to form governments in Iraq, Bulovali pointed out, however, this may prove difficult in these current circumstances, with only the US proving to have a continued, lasting influence.\nLutfioglu agrees with him. “American intervention will determine the formation of the Baghdad government after the elections.”\nWho are the main players in the Libyan conflict?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line540086"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7062236666679382,"wiki_prob":0.7062236666679382,"text":"About CDE\nConsulting experts\nCDE Associates\nCurrent Donors\nConnect with CDE\nGrowth and Jobs\nThe Role of Business\nDeveloping Countries Democracy\nOther National Priorities\nPolicy is being produced in a statistical vacuum\nBy Ann Bernstein|2019-02-26T10:50:40+00:00September 13th, 1995|Op-ed|\nSouth Africans are loose in the way they use statistics and factual information. It is a dangerous habit.\nFor example, in 1988 on behalf of the Urban Foundation, we estimated that 7-million people lived in informal circumstances. This was a very rough ballpark figure. Yet, to this day, that figure is still quoted by most politicians, officials and the media as the country’s squatter population. No one has thought to question whether the population might have grown in the past seven years! Another example is the ever-changing figure for the population of Soweto. No one knows for sure, and this seems to give anyone who cares license to invent whatever number suits their purpose.\nIn 1989 the Urban Foundation provided the country’s most comprehensive assessment of national demographic and income trends available at that time. The key message of this work was twofold: the failure of apartheid in urban and rural SA and the importance of focusing on the country’s growing cities as the centres of national economic growth and development.\nThe Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) has just completed a major new study of the country’s demographic and income trends, based on a second and updated edition of the foundation’s earlier demographic and income distribution models. The 1995 study is the only integrated and comprehensive analysis of recent population and income trends.\nThis means that if you say the population of Cape Town is growing by about 10 000 people a month, for this claim to have credibility you need also to explain where these people are coming from (eg the Ciskei) and more importantly demonstrate that studies there show a diminution of that rural population. Statistics that neglect this are unreliable.\nSome important findings and conclusions emerge from the study. A new SA geography is emerging in terms of which urban and rural areas can be thought about in more rational terms. The CDE work classifies the population into those who live in metropolitan areas (places of more than 500 000 people of which there are eight in the country); cities/large towns (60 000-500 000 people in 45 places); small towns (1 000-50 000 citizens in 278 different towns); and rural areas.\nAlthough it is useful to impose this rational classification on SA’s apartheid landscape, it is important not to ignore the anomalies of our racial legacy. Botshabelo, about 50km outside Bloemfontein, is one example of this. It is not part of the Bloemfontein urban area and has been excluded from their local government structures. It would be misleading to call it a town, as it is an apartheid creation where people were dumped in the middle of the veldt. There is no real economic base and virtually no community facilities. Initially it was officially classified ‘non-urban’; the 1991 census now regards it as urban. Neither classification would seem to reflect its status accurately. Similar difficulties exist in other areas. What about the densely settled parts of what used to be KwaNdebele from which many residents commute to work in different parts of Gauteng?\nOne thing is certain: many people, and probably the majority classified as rural, have no connection at all with agricultural production. We need to know about these densely settled ‘apartheid-created’ communities. The next census needs to use a classification which will make their situation more visible. Above all we need to ensure that ‘apartheid’s hidden urbanites’ are not ignored in the policies and programmes of the government.\nAll our figures come with an important warning attached. There are large and important areas of ignorance and uncertainty concerning SA demographics. There are no reliable statistics (and do not believe anyone who claims there are) concerning the scale of illegal immigration; and the pattern and rate of internal migration. In addition, the base of all our models is the 1991 census. Although this census was better in some respects than earlier surveys, insufficient resources were devoted to capturing new and complex dynamics of an expanded population. However, to reject the census altogether is to plunge the country and decision makers into the realm of pure speculation and with all the faults the census data is better than nothing. At minimum, the CDE models will need to be tested as new data becomes available.\nThe analysis shows that population projections for the country as a whole are lower than those made before 1992. Earlier estimates for 2010 were 59,7-million. Our new estimate is 53,4-million. One of the reasons for the lower projection is that black fertility has dropped more rapidly than was expected – an equivalent decline in fertility in a shorter period than it took whites. The notion that black people have more permanent ‘cultural’ predisposition towards large families is patently wrong.\nIn line with this will be 5-million fewer people in the metropolitan areas by 2000 than previously forecast. Nonetheless the greatest share of the country’s population increase is still expected to occur in the metropolitan areas, and the study forecasts there will be 7-million people in metropolitan areas in 15 years time. This will have enormous consequences for how we plan, and govern our cities.\nThe new study shows that previous work seriously underestimated the population growth and potential of SA’s intermediate cities and large towns. Population growth rates between 1981 and 1991 for this category were almost twice that of the metropolitan areas. This is an area of opportunity for the country. This finding also dispels the notion that ‘everyone is coming to the PWV (Gauteng) region.\nWith respect to income data, CDE finds that between 1985 and 1995 average per capita income rose for all population groups except whites, who suffered a small decline. This translates into a gradual and widely spread improvement in black living standards despite the drop in real per capita income for the country as a whole. The proportion of households in poverty dropped between 1985 and 1990 but rose slightly between 1990 and 1995 because of very poor performance between 1989 and 1993. It is clear that economic growth is the key ingredient (necessary but not sufficient) in tackling national poverty.\nThe pattern of poverty is much the same today as it was in 1983 – 94% of all poor households were black and 64% lived in small towns or remote rural areas. However, this does not mean urban poverty should be ignored. There is substantial, potentially explosive, urban poverty.\nOn the basis of its work, CDE would make the following recommendations to the government.\nFirst, it should recognise and publicly acknowledge the problem of SA’s inadequate demographic and income statistics.\nSecond, it should formulate a strategy to redress this situation where no one knows for sure the scale and nature of the challenges we face.\nThird, when in doubt about development needs, do not rely on existing macro-demographic and official statistics, but conduct new studies.\nFourth, revise the system of designing and undertaking censuses in SA. This should not be done by central government alone. Partnerships are required with other levels of government, with the private sector and with communities.\nFinally, establish a computer based information system accessible to all citizens and tiers of government.\nNational statistics should not be influenced by political ideology (their interpretation might be but that is a different matter) and this means that the independence and analytic rigour of the national information and data collection system has to be assured.\nAnn Bernstein, Business Day\nThe role of politics in development\nRunning out of Road: South Africa’s public finances and what is to be done\nVIEWPOINTS | What to do about Eskom\nNext steps towards land reform\nThe cost of servicing our debt is eating our future\nNow is the time for CR’s endgame! Statement by CDE on South Africa’s growth and fiscal crisis\nCentre For Development And Enterprise\nFax: +27 (0)11 482-5089\nEmail: info@cde.org.za\nSubscribe to CDE\nCopyright 2019 Centre for Development and Enterprise | All Rights Reserved | Webmaster","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line20489"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7029314637184143,"wiki_prob":0.2970685362815857,"text":"Scientific Biblical Studies\nSeminar On The ‘True Text’ On-line Lessons\nReturn To Lesson Nine\nAdvance To Lesson Seventy-Five\nWhat Is A Heartbeat Engine And How Do You Build One?\nSEMINAR ON THE “TRUE TEXT”\nLESSON 58 – THE PROBABILITY/CERTAINTY MATRIX PRINCIPLE\nAKA “WE AIN’T IN KANSAS ANYMORE, DOROTHY.............AND DOROTHY II”\nCopyright June 19, 2005 10:02 PM CST\nUpdated June 22, 2005 9:22 PM CST\nCopyright June 22, 2005 9:22 PM CST\nWe have jumped ahead to lesson 58 because of criticisms that we have been receiving via email. It is time to silence this particular batch of critics. We call this particular batch of critics “The Number Crunchers” or “TNCs” for short.\nThe Probability/Certainty Matrix Principle states:\nThere is a causal relationship between probability and certainty. This relationship is a mechanism built into the human psyche by the Creator. Experience has taught us that we can use the psychomechanistic events associated with this mechanism, which we have named the “psi mechanism,” to extrapolate “future moves”…as in a chess game. An illustration is in order:\nA good chess player, according to one expert, sees a minimum of ten moves ahead…a great chess player sees 50 moves ahead…and a master chess player sees 200 moves ahead.\nOur point is that your ability to anticipate future consequences is directly proportional to the intensity and duration of your involvement in the intellectual processes associated with the forecasting of those consequences.\nNow, what does this have to do with confirming the ancient, biblical text? Science is not simply a matter of information. It is also a matter of prediction. (Forgive me but I have to interject a note on a totally unrelated topic and that is that the theory of evolution HAS NEVER PREDICTED ANYTHING!) Now, prediction extends the boundary of information. It extends the boundary of information into the Unknown.\nNo 100% confirmation of the biblical text is possible unless you can cross over into the realm of the Unknown. We have capitalized the word “Unknown” so that you will understand that we are not talking about the “normal unknown.” We are talking about the “scientific unknown.” The scientific unknown, the Unknown, unlike the normal unknown, has restrictions placed upon it.\nIn order to gain the benefit of the knowledge in the realm of the Unknown, via predictions (more specifically, predictive science or forecast science, which is totally based in statistics and the new science of textual calculus established by us) we must have a big enough “knowledge base.” Now, this knowledge base is far more than what statisticians call “a statistically valid sample.” It is a multiply cross-referenced matrix of data. THIS DATA IS ALL NUMERICAL. The reason that it is all numerical is that 100% certainty is only possible in the world of numbers. Verbal logic can get you 99.9999999999% of the way to the truth. This, of course, is well beyond the percentile necessary for “reasonable certainty.” This means that NO ONE ACTUALLY NEEDS OUR RESEARCH IN ORDER TO BE CERTAIN OF THE TRUTH. MORE SPECIFICALLY, NO ONE NEEDS OUR RESEARCH IN ORDER TO BE REASONABLY CERTAIN OF THE TRUTH.\nThe logical question, then, is why bother to achieve 100% certainty. 100% certainty is necessary for those who either REFUSE OR ARE UNABLE to believe the truth once they have been provided with reasonable certainty. Those who are unable fall into a special category. These are people that God has appointed special tasks in the administration of the world.\nNow, we can talk about numerical logic as opposed to verbal logic.\nWE WILL NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE REVEAL ONE OF THE GREAT SECRETS OF OUR RESEARCH:\nFirst, we will give you an example/illustration to ease you into the truth:\nUp until about ten years ago medical science believed that the computer-generated, computer screen configurations (patterns) representing the beating of defective, human hearts was totally random. They kept collecting data on these (seemingly) random configurations and, lo and behold, after several years, their analytical program DETECTED A PATTERN. Now, don’t miss the following:\nThe pattern was so complex that it would have taken two million people working seven million years to figure it out. However, the analytic program being used was able to accomplish in one second what it would have taken one person a year to accomplish. The end result is that the analytic program was able to perform seven million years of work by two million people in a week.\nNow, what application does this have to the confirmation of the ancient, biblical texts. Very simply THERE ARE “NONRANDOM PATTERNS” IN THE ANCIENT, BIBLICAL TEXTS. Now, this is something totally new. This has nothing to do with any “Bible Code” discoveries that have been in the news in the last couple of years or so.\nHere for the first time revealed anywhere are the “Heartbeat Engines” of the ancient, biblical text. The term “Heartbeat Engines” comes, in part, from the analogy of the human heart study that we referred to above. HERE ARE THE FIRST THREE “HEARTBEAT ENGINES” OF THE ANCIENT GREEK NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS:\nAlpha – Destiny\nBeta – Centron\nGamma – Logos\nThere are, in all, 777 Heartbeat Engines. 90% of what we need to accomplish can be accomplished using the AD, BC, and GL engines above.\nThe most important discovery made through the application of these first three engines is that it is 99.9999999999% probable that the Alexandrian manuscripts have been edited from their original form. Of course, are goal was 100% probability; so we didn’t stop there. Applying most of over one hundred other HX (HX = Heartbeat Engine) engines we were able to establish the 100% probability that the Alexandrian manuscripts were edited from their original form. Note that “100% probability” is “textual calculus” language for “documented certainty.” Documented certainty is “more certainty than you need to be certain.” It is “more certainty than ‘reasonable certainty.’”\nWe have provided enough information on this web page to refute all of the arguments and so-called proofs presented by the TNCs referred to above. For a detailed discussion of Heartbeat Engines read What Is A Heartbeat Engine And How Do You Build One?\nFollowing are the conventions used in the Greek text we are using in our seminar. See Lesson Six for a sample of the use of the variant tags.\nWe are using a compilation of the Greek New Testament that has variants identified and tagged for reference to source of transmission and schools of emphasis.\nFor ease of reference, the verse numbering scheme has been made to conform closely to that found in most standard English versions of the New Testament, following the Authorized (King James) Version of 1611. Where considerate verse numbering differences occur, they are added to the text in brackets.\nBreathings, Accents, And Diacritical Markings\nAll breathings, accents, capitalization, punctuation, and diacritical markings have been omitted. These are primarily a product of modern editorship and are lacking in ancient manuscripts.\nBook Titles And Colophons\nBook titles do not appear. The Greek closing colophons to the epistles that appear in the English of the Authorized Version have been placed in brackets [] wherever they occur in the Stephens 1550 edition (only).\nVariant Tagging Method\nThe following tags have been applied to those words peculiar to one stream of transmission or scholarly group that emphasizes a particular variant word. Those words with no tag do not differ in the various printings of the Greek.\nT = Stephens 1550 Textus Receptus.\nThe text used is George Ricker Berry's edition of \"The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament.\" This text is virtually identical to Erasmus 1516, Beza 1598, and the actual Textus Receptus: Elzevir 1633. Berry states, \"In the main they are one and the same; and [any] of them may be referred to as the Textus Receptus.\" (Berry, p. ii)\nThese early printed Greek New Testaments closely parallel the text of the English King James Authorized Version of 1611, since that version was based closely upon Beza 1598, which differed little from its \"Textus Receptus\" predecessors. These Textus Receptus editions follow the Byzantine Majority manuscripts, which was predominant during the period of manual copying of Greek New Testament manuscripts.\nS = Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus\nThe text used is \"h Kainh Diaqhkh: The New Testament. The Greek Text underlying the English Authorized Version of 1611\" (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1977). This is an unchanged reprint of Scrivener's \"The New Testament in the Original Greek according to the Text followed in the Authorized Version\" (Cambridge: University Press, 1894, 1902).\nScrivener attempted to reconstruct the Greek text underlying the English 1611 KJV for comparison to the 1881 English Revised Version. In those places where the KJV followed the Latin Vulgate (John 10:16), Scrivener inserted the Greek reading, as opposed to back-translating the Latin to Greek--which would have produced a Greek word with no Greek manuscript evidence. Scrivener's work follows the Byzantine Majority texts, and in many places matches the modern Alexandrian-based editions.\nB = Byzantine Majority\nThe text is that identified by Freiherr Von Soden, \"Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer altesten erreichbaren Textgestalt\" (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1911) and Herman C. Hoskier, \"Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse\" (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1929). This technique of Byzantine identification and weighting was utilized by Hodges and Farsted in \"The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text\" (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982; 1985). It was subsequently utilized by Robinson and Pierpont, resulting in 99.75 percent agreement between the two texts.\nThe Byzantine Majority text is closely identified with the Textus Receptus editions, and well it should with greater than 98% agreement. As Maurice Robinson pointed out in his edition of the Byzantine Majority: \"George Ricker Berry correctly noted that 'in the main they are one and the same; and [any] of them may be referred to as the Textus Receptus' (George Ricker Berry, ed., The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Greek New Testament [New York: Hinds & Noble, 1897], p. ii).\nA = Alexandrian\n(Some of the comments that follow will be confusing to anyone learned in the “Alexandrian dispute.” We will clear up this confusion at a later stage in the “text building” process.) The differences are those identified by the United Bible Society, 3rd edition, and utilized by modern translations such as the NIV and the NASB. While these variants come from manuscripts with less textual evidence than the Byzantine Majority, many of the differences are exactly the same as those identified by the Byzantine Majority and Scrivener. The percentage of variants is quite small and occurs mainly in word placement and spelling. Many of the variations identified are omitted or bracketed words, which is not surprising due to a significantly smaller base of text from this stream of transmission.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line378689"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9956924915313721,"wiki_prob":0.9956924915313721,"text":"Taxpayers Paid $1,091 For City Officials to See Michelle Obama\nMayor, mayor pro-tem in Forest Hill resign amid spending scandal\nBy Scott Gordon\t• Published at 8:51 pm on January 16, 2019\nThe mayor and mayor pro-tem of Forest Hill resigned on Wednesday after it was revealed the city paid more than $1,000 for them to attend an event with former First Lady Michelle Obama.\nMayor Lyndia Thomas and Mayor Pro-Tem Beckie Duncan Hayes quit immediately before fellow council members had scheduled a vote to oust the two.\n\"They were ripping us off,” said Leslie Jasperson, a longtime citizen of Forest Hill who decided to check up on how city officials spend tax money.\nThrough open record requests, she uncovered a check for $1091.92.\nThat's how much the town of 13,000 paid Thomas and Duncan Hayes to buy tickets for a “conversation” with the former first lady in Dallas last month.\nTo Jasperson, it seemed like a misuse of public money.\nFellow council members agreed and planned a vote to oust the pair.\nBut immediately before that meeting, they resigned -- even as they defended billing the city for the Obama event.\n\"We don't get paid a salary. But we do -- we are entitled to be reimbursed for our expenses,” Thomas said.\nThey claimed going to see a former first lady is a perfectly legitimate city expense. They also said they reimbursed the city the money – not because they did anything wrong but because of “the fuss.”\n\"We have a public relations fund,” Duncan Hayes said. “In our public relations fund, we can go to -- it doesn't specify what we can do and where we can go. But it's set aside for us to go and learn.\"\nThe former mayor said it’s a learning experience.\n\"When you're out there, you're more or less, building relationships, connecting with people, trying to find out things or whatever,” she said.\nJasperson doesn't buy it.\n“It's not PR,” she said. “What are they going to learn from Michelle Obama that they are going to bring back the city? I mean really.”\nTo add another twist, the mayor and mayor pro tem who just resigned are still running for election in May. If they had been ousted, they wouldn't have been allowed on the ballot.\n\"I'm expecting to win,” Duncan Hayes said.\nAnd for now, deputy mayor pro tem Clara Faulkner is acting mayor.\n“I am astonished,” Faulkner said. \"The city is moving forward. We will continue to move forward. We can only go up.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1269608"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7469325661659241,"wiki_prob":0.7469325661659241,"text":"New Ukraine\nEng Укр Рус\n23 June 2017 usnews.com\nPower to Ukraine's People\nArticle for «U.S. News & World Report»\nAs West Germany rebuilt itself in the wake of World War II's mass devastation, framers of the new order paid careful attention to the lessons learned from the Weimar Republic to the defeat of Adolf Hitler's regime. The results were a careful balance of powers in the new constitution, and the so-called Basic Law, which essentially ensured that the regions of Germany had as much say in the country's governance as the capital, first in Bonn and now in Berlin. Eventual reunification depended on first getting the pieces in order – or at least one of them. The rest came later.\nWhile the situations are not entirely analogous, Ukraine today is a divided country as a conflict continues in the East. The costs of this fighting have been steep, with tens of thousand killed, millions displaced and billions in lost property and industrial capacity – not to mention territory. But it has not been a total war in the respect that the political elite in Kiev has adapted to the realities of this conflict. It is not a secret that Ukraine has certain political forces which benefit from war. Some politicians from the ruling coalition are openly calling for cutting off Donbas and completely disenfranchising our citizens who live there.\nRecently, new laws passed by the ruling coalition introduced quotas for use of the Russian language on TV, blocked Russian social media networks in Ukraine and, in so doing, disenfranchised a significant percentage of Ukrainian citizens from enjoying the same basic rights of communication and expression enjoyed by people around the world – including in many authoritarian regimes. An Orwellian Ministry of Information regularly threatens media that does not conform with the state's official narratives, and opposition television stations have been attacked by allegedly unofficial militias that enjoy close relations with the parties that make up today's governing coalition. One of these television channels, Inter, was fire-bombed and raided last September, and while this occurred in broad daylight, there have been no convictions. After all, the purpose of intimidating the media is to instill fear in the opposition.\nAnd high-level corruption – ostensibly the cause of the 2014 Euromaidan revolution – has not abated, but as a whopping 80 percent of Ukrainians believe, has actually blossomed over the past three years.\nAll of these obstacles to a free and prosperous country are sustained in one form or another by the specter of war. So while fighting in the East consists today of skirmishes rather than offensives, it may be premature to begin building a lasting and durable peace. But it is not too early to begin laying the framework for the kind of peace that the citizens of Ukraine, if not the \"coalition of war,\" demand.\nGermany's post-war experience is applicable to this framework, and to key elements which made up the 2015 Minsk II agreement between Moscow and Kiev. These include devolving more authority from Kiev to the regions and constitutional amendments that would create a stronger balance of powers in the country by transferring the major bulk of power to local and regional governments. The current Kiev government does not want to pass these changes, officially because they demand the withdrawal of heavy weapons from Donbas first, but in actuality because such changes would undermine the corporatist regime they built and strengthened in the name of war.\nA new constitution can and must become a way out of today's crisis. For the structural reforms that would facilitate peace to become a source of growth for Ukraine, the people in all of Ukraine's regions must be given more say over their own government. That means direct election of governors rather than their appointment by the president. It also means reducing the size of the national legislature, or Verkovna Rada, and giving back to the people's body more of the authorities Ukraine's powerful presidency has usurped in recent years. The political processes in our country need to be reformed if we are to make a dent in the ever-deepening corruption.\nThe constitutional and broad legislative changes that we need to achieve these outcomes can only happen as a result of a process of national reconciliation and dialogue, and the reintegration of Donbas. Those who desire an end to war and a truly unified country – and it is almost 80 percent of Ukrainians – support this, and those who do not have fallen into the trap of what one wise man called man's greatest stupidity: forgetting what he was trying to do in the first place.\nWhile the cold stalemate in Ukraine's three-year conflict may seem to have adopted an unhealthy sense of normalcy, the time for movement towards peace may be at hand. Recently, a senior Russian official recognized for the first time the need for direct talks between Moscow and Washington on the Ukrainian question. And America's new president, under fire by opposition in his own country for allegations of being too close to Russia, may have a surprise or two in store when it comes to being a potential peacemaker. As U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested in recent testimony, it may well be time to start thinking outside the Minsk box when it comes to solutions for Ukraine.\nBut in Ukraine, our changes must come from within, and the best way to make changes stick is to enact constitutional reform. Reforms should address the imbalances that exist in our political structures for peace and unity to become the kind of sine qua non to which the late Zbigniew Brzezinski referred in his final tweet last month. These changes can become a path towards peace in Ukraine and give new energy to Ukraine's development. The once divided and later reunified Germany sets a powerful example. Now we must find the internal resolve to ensure for our children the kind of united Ukraine they truly deserve.\nhttps://www.usnews.com/opinion/world-report/articles/2017-06-22/ukraine-needs-a-new-constitution-that-gets-power-out-of-kiev\nFollow @serhiylovochkin\nTopically:\nTweets by serhiylovochkin\nSubscribe to events:","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line154984"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6757833957672119,"wiki_prob":0.3242166042327881,"text":"14 Tue Dec 2010\nSt. John of the Cross, based on Zephaniah 3:1-2,9-13, Matthew 21:28-32\nZephaniah 3:1-2,9-13\nAh, soiled, defiled, oppressing city! It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction. It has not trusted in the Lord; it has not drawn near to its God. At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering. On that day you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord— the remnant of Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.\nJesus asked: “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”\nBy: Mr. Norm Laurendeau, O.P. calling in from Brunswick, Maine, USA\nNorm Laurendeau was a lay Dominican and a semi-retired professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University who died in May 2012. He published and conducted research in the areas of energy and environment, with a focus of the use of lasers to monitor pollutants. He was a fully professed lay Dominican since May, 2006. While moderating the St. Mary Magdalene pro-chapter in West Lafayette, IN, he was instrumental in developing a lay preaching mission within chapter meetings and at communion services. He was also heavily involved in the science-theology dialogue, and explored the relationship between science and mysticism. In 2010, he chaired a conference on Energy and Religion for the Institute for Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS). Most importantly, he was married to Marlene Carlos Laurendeau, who is a social worker and spiritual director. They lived in Brunswick, ME, near where Norm grew up. They wintered in Berkeley, CA, near where Marlene grew up.\n« Advent light in a world of darkness\t» Learning that it is all for God’s sake","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line575839"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5237293839454651,"wiki_prob":0.5237293839454651,"text":"Home / Resources / SupplyLink\nMechanical Contractor Sees Benefits of LEAN Practices\nA visit to Tweet-Garot Mechanical’s fabrication shop can wear you out. Trailing after Chris Warren as he enthusiastically scurries from one example of Lean practices to the next, you’re thankful for each stop because it gives you a chance to catch your breath.\nChris is the Director of Risk Management and Lean Continuous Improvement for Tweet-Garot and he is obviously proud of what his company has done to reduce waste since beginning its implementation of Lean practices.\nGreen Bay, Wisconsin-based Tweet-Garot is a leader in the fields of process piping, sheet metal and plate fabrication, industrial ventilation, HVAC and plumbing. The mechanical contracting firm performs this work in the commercial, industrial, and institutional marketplace using approximately 350 mechanical engineers, plumbers, steamfitters, boilermakers, sheet metal workers and service technicians supported by 60 administrative employees. About 85% of its job sites are in Wisconsin with the rest in 16 other states.\nAnother LEAN Success Story\nPure Castings: Molten Metal in the Heart of Texas\nSee how Grainger helped another customer cut costs.\nTweet-Garot is one of a growing number of mechanical contractors in the United States that is implementing Lean practices. Until recently, Lean Manufacturing practices were typically embraced by manufacturers but not by the construction industry. In simplest terms, Lean Manufacturing is a systematic way to add value for your customers and reduce waste.\nTweet-Garot Goes Lean\nTweet-Garot began thinking about what it would take to identify and reduce waste throughout its organization. Chris, at that time the company’s Safety Director, was charged with leading the Continuous Improvement and Lean initiative. At the start of the investigative process, Chris says, [they] learned [they] were already doing a lot of stuff that could be considered Lean practices. “We were already a very good, clean, organized company. But like the book Good to Great says, good is the enemy of great. We weren’t really improving. If we would have been struggling, Lean would have been easier to implement.”\nTweet-Garot was about 1-1/2 years into its Lean journey when they started a part of the process known as Value Stream Mapping. “The key take-aways from the Value Stream Mapping were the elimination of duplicate purchase orders, and implementation of better inventory management of consumables through Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI).\nFollowing that first step on the Lean path, the next step was a cleaning and organizing effort known as 6 Sigma (Safety, Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain). “Take this welding station as an example,” says Chris. “The idea came from an employee who said, ‘Every time I go to get a welder it takes me a certain amount of time to set it up.’ And by the time he gets it set up, the power cord plug may be broken because it was allowed to hit the floor, so then there’s down time. And if the plug is cracked, he has to make a decision. Does he plug it into 440 or not? So we were forcing an employee to make a safety decision that he shouldn’t be forced to make.”\nBefore This familiar site illustrates the cluttered environment that made it difficult to find needed equipment.\nAfter Tweet-Garot learned the importance of keeping like equipment in one spot for all employees to use, like these welders.\nLooking at before-and-after photos of the welding stations, the difference is striking. Where there used to be clutter there are now company-standard and labeled storage places for wire, whips, the power cord, and even the bottle cap. “Through our tracking, we found that it costs us 90 cents per minute for our employees to walk around to find a tool, a part or material they need. Instead of walking around, we want them to be productive and involved in changing the state of a fabricated piece,” says Chris. “Instead of having them spend 10 minutes setting up a welder, now they can spend two minutes because that welder is in good shape when they get to it. That leaves them with more productive time and it also makes the workplace safer.”\nChris said his company spent about $3,000 changing and labeling the hooks and other storage areas of 49 of its shop welders, and he estimates ROI in about 14 months. “That doesn’t include non-tangible benefits such as eliminating frustration,” he adds. Tweet-Garot took what it learned from that welder 6S experience and applied it to a 6S project on the hoist fitting racks in the fabrication shop.\n“Owners” (employees responsible for managing the rack) are identified by magnetic signs on each rack. These employees also educate their co-workers on the importance of putting things back where they belong. “Now we have a supermarket approach,” says Chris. “Every time you walk up to the rack, you know where to find something and [you can] instantly see whether or not it’s there. If you spend a minute putting it back, you save the next person 10 minutes who otherwise would have to go hunt for it.”\nLean Practice Comes to Construction\n“There is a marked increase in contractors implementing Lean practices over the past two years, as well as other service industries, including healthcare and government,” according to Dennis. “They see it as a means to gain competitive advantage of more loyal customers and reduce costs by eliminating waste.”\nThe New Horizons Foundation, an initiative founded by SMACNA and leading sheet metal contractors, recently funded research on Lean practices in construction. The research included a survey of HVAC and sheet metal contractors. 58% of them said they were familiar with Lean. Of those who were familiar with Lean, about half (48%) said they have implemented some form of Lean in their companies. “Some mechanical contractors are implementing Lean because their customers – general contractors and owners – are now requiring it,” says Dennis.\n“Mechanical contractors are part of the supply chain working with a general contractor, so we have lots of in-between customers in addition to the owners,” says Chris. “Some of them have asked us to have Six Sigma tools in place that we could demonstrate to them, so we are educating ourselves to their level of Lean systems.\nTweet-Garot’s Lean experience was an important factor in winning a multi-million dollar contract for a hospital construction project in Wisconsin’s Door County. “It was a requirement that the contractors, subcontractors and all management players have Lean experience,” says Chris. “Without that experience, we would not have qualified to submit a bid. And it came down to only two mechanical contractors that qualified. We view the future and we want to be involved in those types of projects. Even though that’s a smaller market, we want to be invited to the table because of our reputation.”\nSources: Tweet-Garot Mechanical","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1333015"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.889621913433075,"wiki_prob":0.889621913433075,"text":"John Maclean\nSource: Glasgow Caledonian University: Gallacher Memorial Library\nJohn Maclean's matriculation record, 1903\nRevolutionary Socialist\nBorn 24 August 1879, Pollokshaws, Scotland.\nDied 30 November 1923.\nA revolutionary socialist and leading member of the Red Clydeside movement.\nConnection to the University of Glasgow: Alumnus\nDiscover more Socialist; teacher on the University of Glasgow Story website\nThe following achievement is associated with John Maclean:\nLeading the Red Clydeside movement\nA revolutionary socialist of international standing, John Maclean was an honorary president of the first Congress of Soviets and appointed by Lenin as Bolshevik consul for Scotland.\nJohn Maclean (1879-1923)was a Glasgow graduate who became a revolutionary socialist, a teacher, and the most famous of the Red Clydesiders. A bitter opponent of capitalism and imperialism, he dedicated his life to Marxist revolution and the cause of the working classes.\nHe was born in 1879 in Pollokshaws. Although his father died young his mother was determined that John would have an education. He trained as a teacher through the Free Church and studied part-time at the University of Glasgow from 1898 to 1904. He included Education and Political Economy in his Arts curriculum and graduated MA in 1904. He taught at Lorne Street School, but spent most of his free time running classes in Marxist Economics and History for trade unionists, workers and activists. When he was convicted under DORA in 1915 the Govan School Board sacked him and he devoted himself wholly to activism. James Maxton was a fellow student at Glasgow and shared platforms and causes.\nHe was sent to prison three times during the war for offences under the Defence of the Realm Act and sedition. His political work continued after the war and he was imprisoned again twice in 1921, after outdoor meetings advocating action. His Scottish Workers' Republican Party contested Glasgow by-elections in 1923 but failed to achieve mass support. Prison life, hunger strikes and force feeding took its toll and he died on 30 November 1923, aged forty-four. He remains a hero in the history of the left, celebrated in song, poetry and plays.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1211400"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6586185097694397,"wiki_prob":0.3413814902305603,"text":"« See all of Famouss' Songs\nPlayDOPETALK\nby Famouss\nthe title says it all.. DOPETALK.. Famouss displays excellent word play on this one..\nUploaded: January 3, 2010\nDuration: 3m 5s\nComments for DOPETALK\nWilliam Hung had his 15 minutes , why not put these guys on BJs stage..lonely at the top ???\nby tom garrow on April 23, 2010 at 12:40 PM EDT\n1st time today, not the last as Ourstage doesn't remove any material that has been flagged offensive.\nby Aguitar on April 22, 2010 at 12:50 PM EDT\nok I'm gonna leave messages at each band and see how many times the same one comes up where I have to vote and see how many of the top 10 bands actually show up and compare. Also note the time a single band has come up in the rotation.\nby Aguitar on April 21, 2010 at 7:59 AM EDT\nhorrible, sounds like all the other crap out there. Wrong comp my friend\nby Chris Rossetti on April 19, 2010 at 11:49 PM EDT\nBad Bad BAD. How about teaching \"you don't need to cuss to be cool\"? Be a positive influence. You can tell a story without being trashy and crude. The world is hard because of people like you who keep acting like life HAS to be tough\nDay two round\nby Charley Payton on April 18, 2010 at 11:15 PM EDT\nThumbs down, just like your pants.\nby Dee Dee Wilk Hedges on April 18, 2010 at 6:08 PM EDT\nRAP SUCKS\nby heranatomy on April 16, 2010 at 3:18 AM EDT\nby Lenore Ramos Long on April 15, 2010 at 11:51 PM EDT\nWOW!!! you know how to curse and swear... your just perfect for a Bon Jovi audience.\nby Aguitar on April 15, 2010 at 6:25 PM EDT\nFamouss","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line494934"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.564815878868103,"wiki_prob":0.564815878868103,"text":"PARENTS' NIGHT OUT\nFRI. 12/20, 5-8PM @ THE LITTLE GYM OF BELLEVUE\nGAMES. GYMNASTICS. FREE PLAY. FOOD.\nPlease TEXT 206.747.1769 to save your spot.\nBRENDA'S BAGS\n© 2013 Empowering Dignity in Girls Everywhere\nALIMO OLYMPIA JOYCE\nOlympia was born into extreme hardship. As a child, she lost her mother to AIDS, was abused by her step Mother, and was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Rebel Army as a sex slave. The LRA used to force these children to kill, often even their own family in the most unthinkably horrific ways. When Olympia refused to kill an elderly man, the soldiers decided to kill her instead, but miraculously she was able to get away and survived with only a bullet shot wound. When she escaped, she learned she was now an orphan as her Father and Grandmother had also both been killed. She went to stay with the only remaining family she had; her brother and his wife, but when her brother died in a motorcycle accident, his wife decided she did not want to take care of Olympia anymore, and one night, took everything they owned and left Joyce all alone. It was shortly after in which we found each other. Olympia has a heart of gold, and continues to become a confident young woman who feels worthy of life. Because of what she has survived, it is Olympia’s dream to help others. She has just begun University and hopes to become a social worker.\nEDGE believes in the ripple effect of empowering women, and that the way to create sustainable change is through development. EDGE is constantly evolving by those we work with. These are their courageous stories.\nLIMPE OKEMA GRACE\nGrace was born in the bush after her parents were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. She was given a fire arm and trained to be a child soldier by the time she was 7 years old. “Food was got through attacking (Internally Displaced Peoples) camps and villages. Sometimes we could take 3 days without eating. Life was unbearable because there was no hospitals or clinics and I was in poor health. We could sleep on grasses, no house. Many people were killed in front of us as children, including my Dad was also killed when I was seeing. They could even cut people into pieces. Girls were forced to “marry” big men. There are many things terrible which was done…” After being forced to watch the killing of her Father, Limpe’s mother “went mad” and being around her made Limpe once again fear for her life. Because of the trauma she experienced, Limpe even thought those who rescued her were going to kill her. She was taken to a primary school for orphan survivors of the war. Because of lack of resources, most children who attend primary school are not able to reach secondary school, and this is when most of the girls are forced to marry. When I met Limpe, she was selling distilled alcohol and charcoal. She has recently enrolled in University, and is looking forward to studying Social Sciences so that she can work with “Community, Children and Mothers.”\nAKII SARAH\nSarah was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army and remained in captivity for 3 years. After escaping, she lost her Mother and Father shortly after to AIDS. When we first sent Sarah back to school, someone in her village tried to poison her out of jealousy. She struggled in school and suffered from terrible PTSD; a concept not acknowledged in this cultured. When she had an episode related to her PTSD, the school, thinking she was “possessed by the Devil”, sent her back to the village without any of our knowledge. She was there for only 2 weeks, and was raped and fell pregnant. During that time, Sarah took a break from school, and we helped her open her own kiosk so that she could support her and her son. One night, the kiosk was robbed and she once again lost everything. When EDGE collaborated with a program called “Healing and Rebuilding our Communities” to host Trauma Healing workshops, Sarah was profoundly impacted. After so many years of pain and suffering, Sarah is finally coming into her confidence. Her son is now 4 years old, they are both back in school, and she has dreams of becoming a Nurse.\nATIMANGO RUTH BRENDA\nBrenda's Father was killed by the Rebels when she was 5 years old. Treated violently by her late husband’s family, because she was now a widow, and because most village women aren’t given the opportunities to gain the tools necessary to be independent, Brenda’s Mother went to stay with her Parents, along with Brenda and her two siblings. One night, the Rebels came into their home, demanding Brenda’s Grandmother kill her Grandfather, and sent her to fetch an axe. When she escaped, the Rebels burned down their home with her Grandfather inside. Brenda, her Mother and her siblings were only spared because they were sleeping outside. “After the death of my Grandfather, things became harder and the conditions worsen. There was no any other options for my Mom than getting married to another man.” Brenda was not allowed to join her Mother’s new life, and when her Mother found out that her new husband was HIV positive, she had already contracted there and died shortly after. Brenda attended a Government Primary School for war-affected children, but when she could not afford Secondary School, began to spend her days digging in the field and collecting firewood; the cyclical life of women in the villages. “[It was then] I was connected to ‘Auntie Jenna’ and it was exciting to me to meet other girls. That's what gave me hope. She promised to help us studies with all the love we deserve.” After Brenda graduated from Secondary School, she decided to attend a Certificate Level school for Industrial Art and Design and recently graduated. EDGE is now collaborating with Brenda to create own business of making and selling stunningly unique, handcrafted bags. She looks forward to opening a factory this year, and plans to train other women to become independent and self-sufficient as well. “My life was hard. But now, I am looking forward to having a great future.”\nAPIYO SCOVIA TRACY\n“The world we are living in is full of sorrows and suffering, especially when you don't have both parents.” Scovia's Mother left when she was only 2 weeks old, and only returned after her Father was abducted and killed by the Rebel Army, but died shortly after to AIDS. “Now after the death of my Mother, I had sleepless nights and dreams was pains, suffering in my life and future. I never received nor had parental love and care. Even eating, drinking, dressing was a miracle in my day.” Scovia didn’t even have money for soap, and dug in the fields to try and survive. Given the opportunity to go to Primary School, she even repeated Primary 7 to “avoid early marriage.” “What I couldn't dream or expect in my life was to get in school, or an angel to come take me in school.” When Scovia graduated Secondary School, she decided to attend an Industrial Arts and Design Program with Brenda, and recently graduated. Recently, she discovered she was pregnant. Though she is a long-term relationship and is now in her 20s, she has experienced ostracizing backlash because she is not married. This has been an extreme source of stress for her, as she has been very sick this year. Scovia loves to sew, and EDGE will be helping her create a training center to teach other women how to sew too, so that both she and them can continue to find and maintain their independence.h the killing of her Father, Limpe’s mother “went mad” and being around her made Limpe once again fear for her life. Because of the trauma she experienced, Limpe even thought those who rescued her were going to kill her. She was taken to a primary school for orphan survivors of the war. Because of lack of resources, most children who attend primary school are not able to reach secondary school, and this is when most of the girls are forced to marry. When I met Limpe, she was selling distilled alcohol and charcoal. She has recently enrolled in University, and is looking forward to studying Social Sciences so that she can work with “Community, Children and Mothers.”\nMAMA AJOK AND OYELLA\nWhen I met Ajok, she was carting jugs of water back and forth for mile as miles, all day long, earning the equivalent of 25 cents a day. One night, she told me, her husband left to find work in Sudan and never returned, leaving her to fend for herself and her young daughter, Oyella. Ajok was abducted by the Lords’s Resistance Army as a child, and is living with HIV/AIDS. EDGE pays for her daughter’s Primary School and is helping Ajok open her own kiosk.\nCONCY GRATY\nI met Graty when she was cleaning the office I worked in whole living in Uganda. Supporting 9 children, she was only earning the equivalent of $25.00 a month. Graty was born in 1974, and was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army at the age of 6. She remained in the bush with the Rebels for one year, before being “assigned as an army house wife.” Graty was married off by the age of 14, and had 4 children, before her husband brought in a second wife who abused them. Together with her 4 children, she bravely left her husband, and took in 5 other orphans, though she only earned the equivalent of just over $20 a month. Graty has HIV. When asked what business she would like to start, she said she would like to sell charcoal. This has increased her monthly wages and sense of stability drastically. Soon, Brenda, another recipient of EDGE who has learned the craft through her schooling will begin teach Graty how to hand-make beautiful bags, adding to her income-generating potential, financial independence, and therefore, quality of life and empowerment.\nABER JENNIFER\nAber lost both of her parents to the LRA Rebels when she was only 9 years old, forcing her to drop out of school to take care of her 2 brothers. In her early twenties, she had a child as a single mother. When we met, she was working 10-12 hour days, washing clothes with a baby strapped to her back, for the equivalent of $27 a month. Last year, Aber lost both of her brothers and her only son in a motorcycle accident. Devastated, she is and now taking care of her brother’s child, and has decided to go back to school. As a 29 year old in Uganda, this is very brave.\nACHIRO MELISA PROSSY\nMelisa was unlike most young Ugandan women you meet. While the others found it hard at first to look me in the eye, Melissa liked to sign and perform for me. She had big dreams of becoming a star, and walked through life with a contagious spirit and a vinrant step.\n“I was born in December 1995. Well I Become An Orphan In This way. My Dad Was Being Kill By LRA Kony group, and I did not see him cause I was still in my Mum’s womb. My dad was being cut in to pieces that what they told me after me growing up. For three years, my life was very hard in village because of the War. My Mum ran with to the bush when the LRA had started to fight. I remember many girls taken as there wife and rape. In some school in our village, Teachers were cut into pieces and cooked by them and were force to be eaten by pupils at school. Hmmmmm Pliz Unty Can I stop Here? (Because of the nature of their trauma, and since trauma is not really acknowledged culturally, it took many years for Melisa and others to begin to tell their stories, and sometimes it was too much.\nTwo years ago, we lost our Melisa; suddenly, from undetermined causes.\nHer sudden and young passing highlights the inequities many in the world face, as so many lack access to proper health care. Melisa had been sick quite a lot this year, and like the other girls, had been in and out of the hospital, suffering from tuberculosis, pneumonia and multiple bouts of malaria. The week she died, she had been hospitalized because her body was in pain, but was discharged when the tests showed nothing concrete.\nMelissa was finishing her last year of high school and was developing a program to teach sex education and health in the villages during her school holidays.\nThis dear loss only solidifies the importance of the work we do to give girls and women and equal chance at life. Where human rights are lost, so are lives.\nShortly before her passing, in response to talking about all who have supported her, she said: \"Send My Greeting To Everyone At Ur Home... tel Them I Lov Them All.\"\nSo thank you... Thank you for helping to show her that her life, and her time on this earth mattered. I know she would want us to continue the fight in her honor.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1089515"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5526445508003235,"wiki_prob":0.4473554491996765,"text":"Vol. 40, No. 3 (2019)\nVol. 40, No 1 (2019)\nVol.38, No. 2 (2017)\nVol. 35 (2014-2015)\nVol. 35, No.1 (2014)\nVol. 34, Nos. 3-4 (2014)\nVol. 31, No. 4 (2010-2011)\nSubscribe/Order\nNER Award Winners\nAward for Emerging Writers\nReaders and Interns\n40th Anniversary: From the Vault\nJim Schley on Janey McCafferty\nNER 6.4 (1984)\nFormer Managing Editor and Co-Editor Jim Schley introduces “While Mother Was Gone with 571” by Janey McCafferty from NER 6.4 (1984).\nIn the autumn of 1979, I’d graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in Creative Writing and Literature and a minor in Native American Studies. I made a list of jobs I would love to have, and working for a literary magazine was on top. I looked around the area where I was living, the Upper Valley region of central New Hampshire and Vermont, and realized that New England Review was right there, just north along the Connecticut River in Lyme, New Hampshire.\nI’d taken courses from co-founder Jay Parini, but knew Sydney Lea only through mutual friends; yet this was well enough to write him a letter and ask if I could talk to him about helping with the journal.\nFrom the start, Syd had vowed to read every submission that arrived, with characteristic passion. He was determined that the new journal would be completely receptive to the strongest writing that arrived, whatever its source. By the time I contacted him, there were hundreds of packets piling in every month, which was overwhelming. He asked if I’d be willing to review manuscripts with him for a modest rate, $5 an hour at first.\nI started in January of 1980, and from the beginning this was an old-fashioned apprenticeship, as I learned in a bottom-to-top way the craft of editing, which has been my livelihood for most of the ensuing four decades.\nSyd encouraged me to take the time I needed to carefully read and think about each piece, to the degree that I thought warranted, then send him with written comments on anything I believed should be given another look. I played this role for two years, even after moving from New Hampshire to western Massachusetts; once a month or so, I’d come north to meet with Syd and Managing Editor Robin Barone and pick up another large box of envelopes and mailers.\nIn 1982, when Robin decided to enroll in law school, they asked me if I’d be interested in becoming Managing Editor. Within a few months I’d moved to Lyme to take on the whole panoply of tasks involved in running a small but lively and growing nonprofit organization and producing a quarterly publication, as the sole person in the office. I did everything from bookkeeping and bill-paying and keeping minutes for meetings to preparing typed manuscripts for the designer and typesetter, distributing printer’s proofs to authors (always through the US mail), coordinating with the printer and mailing-list service, and continuing to read and correspond with aspiring and accepted authors, and tracking down artwork for the covers.\nI learned so much. In those days, typeset copy came back from composition in long strips with waxed backing, which needed to be cut with an X-Acto knife and affixed to the blue-gridded templates created by designer Kate Emlen, who would review, adjust for positioning and typographical nuances, and approve my layout “dummies.” There were three desks and a work table in our office, and I would move from station to station for different duties. After two years, following my editing of the special issue Writers in the Nuclear Age (later reissued as a book Writing in a Nuclear Age), Syd asked me to become his Co-editor on the masthead, and first Mary Moore then Maura High served as part-time Managing Editors; Maura later became Co-editor.\nMy New England Review work was demanding and constant, but during those years I completed an MFA in the low-residency program at Warren Wilson College, and also worked intensively with the Vermont-based experimental troupe, Bread and Puppet Theater. For several summers I made a satellite office for New England Review in an old school bus at Bread and Puppet’s northern Vermont farm, where we produced the annual Domestic Resurrection Circus that attracted upwards of thirty thousand people for a climactic weekend of performances. By this time the journal had an affiliation with the Bread Loaf conference (and the ungainly moniker, NER/BLQ, which led my friends to jest that I really worked for the rockabilly band NRBQ). In 1986, as plans were being made to move the office to the Middlebury campus, I was invited to tour internationally with Bread and Puppet and decided not to accompany the journal to its new home, though Syd had built my position into the transfer agreement he’d created. I was worn out from reading thousands of manuscripts and wanted to see if I could focus on my own efforts as an artist.\nAsked by New England Review’s present editor Carolyn Kuebler to choose a piece from my time as editor with special significance, I knew right away which one I’d name.\nIn 1983 we received in the mail a story called “While Mother Was Gone with 571” by Janey McCafferty, a writer none of us knew.\nLooking back over the Summer 1984 issue, in which we placed McCafferty’s story first in the sequence, I’m enchanted to see the poetry, fiction, and literary prose published that season. Probably most journal editors feel that for each individual issue they are concocting a buffet, with contrasting and complementary elements, anticipating that varied readers will love different pieces, but aiming to bring together a tantalizing combination. That issue included extraordinary Vietnam poems by Yusef Komunyaaka, and poems by the now-deceased (but I hope not forgotten) William Dickey and Jim Simmerman. We featured a gorgeous and precise essay about Elizabeth Bishop by Michael Ryan, a strangely majestic story by Sharon Doubiago, and translations from the Marathi of Mangesh Padgaonkar, the Nicaraguan Spanish of Rosario Murillo, the Quebecois French of Anne Hébert, and the Cuban Spanish of Antonio Benítez-Rojo—and much more, each piece long considered, then chosen and placed. That issue’s cover has a mesmerizing picture of an indigenous Cuna woman in Panama with an albino “Moonchild,” taken by photographer Ted Degener.\nThere are many works of that I’m grateful and proud to have been part of bringing to the wider world, but the decision to publish Janey McCafferty’s story has made the biggest difference in my own life.\nReaders will see that “While Mother Was Gone with 571” is taut, brisk, and hilarious. With a narration that’s audible and bright, in a voice as distinctive as Huck Finn’s or one of Grace Paley’s park ladies but with a teenager’s sass, the story blends shrewdly noticed details of time and locale with smacking dialogue and then climaxes with a rueful discovery. What commences as family slapstick in only a few pages darkens and chars, then concludes with a chill that’s hard to deflect.\nAfter publishing McCafferty’s story, we decided to submit it for a Pushcart Prize, and for the nomination form I needed her date of birth. I wrote to the address we had, and heard back from her mother, since by then she was living elsewhere. The birthdate was within days of my own, and that November I sent her a birthday card out of the blue.\nThus began what has been an almost twenty-five-year pen-pal friendship. We’ve written well over a hundred letters to each other, for certain stretches more than a letter a week (there were times when we wrote every day): hundreds of sheets of notebook paper, and innumerable stamps. Sometimes we spoke by phone, but far more frequently we wrote letters. During these years we confided our work joys and woes, our romances and marriages, the births of our children, and the aging of our parents. One time when I was laid off from a job and felt sideswiped, barely able to speak, part of what got me through the rupture was writing Janey an eighteen-page letter.\nBut for the longest time, we’d never met—not till the 2008 AWP Conference in New York City, when we made our first in-person rendezvous, with long walks through the streets and bouts of laughter.\nI can scarcely imagine being a writer without a friend who’s a writer, and this particular writer-friendship is especially complete. The serendipity of its beginnings is like any chance encounter: miraculous.\nIn my book of poems As When, In Season, there is a series in an invented form, nine portraits of women who have been my teachers in various ways, partly based on the imagery of the mythological Greek muses. As a child, I’d understood the muses to be not just inspirers of male artists, but virtuosos in their own right, in varied domains. For my evocation of Janey McCafferty and our epistolary friendship, I chose Thalia, muse of Comedy. Here’s the poem I wrote, “For Thalia.”\n“While Mother was Gone with 571” by Janey McCafferty\nBUY the BACK ISSUE (6.4)\nJim Schley served as Assistant Editor, Managing Editor, then Co-Editor of New England Review from 1980 to 1986. In addition to his role at New England Review, Jim Schley has been a performer and tour organizer for several theater ensembles; managing editor and editor-in-chief for the book publisher Chelsea Green; executive director of The Frost Place museum and poetry center; and since 2008, managing editor of Tupelo Press. He has edited nearly two hundred books in varied genres and fields, and is author of the poetry chapbook One Another (Chapiteau, 1999) and a full-length collection of poems, As When, In Season (Marick, 2008). He lives on a land cooperative in Strafford, Vermont.\nFiled Under: 40th Anniversary: From the Vault, NER Classics, News & Notes Tagged With: Janey McCafferty, Jim Schley\nWilliam Lychack on William Maxwell\nNER 16.4 (1994)\nFormer Associate Editor William Lychack recalls receiving and publishing “A Brace of Fairy Tales” and “Two Light-Hearted Fables” by William Maxwell, from NER 16.4 (1994).\nI’d written a fan letter to William Maxwell before I ever dreamed of editing at New England Review, but that job gave me permission to write to all the writers I loved. I remember asking Mr. Maxwell to please send anything to us—that nothing else would make me happy—and one day Toni Best had a manila envelope addressed to my attention from East 86th Street, New York, New York.\nI didn’t even open it. I didn’t even take off my coat. I thanked her and ran to the old chapel across the street to be alone with whatever was inside. (How fitting to be in the quiet of a church, the moment still sacred all these years later to me.) I held my breath, made sure my hands were clean, and handled those typescript pages like they were the most precious documents on earth, such were my feelings toward this writer and his work.\nInside the envelope were the four fables you see here. In fact, that entire issue was, to my mind, truly inspired. William Maxwell, Marianne Boruch, Andrea Barrett, Miller Williams, Alice Mattison, Eileen Pollack, Terry Tempest Williams, Kate Barnes, Phillip Baruth, Sally Ball, Kate Barnes . . .\nIn his cover letter, Mr. Maxwell invited me to send him a story sometime, if the spirit moved me. I wrote and sent him a group of fables as a kind of response, and we started a correspondence that lasted the rest of his life. In one letter he wrote, in counsel, “Try to listen to your feelings as you would to the sound in a seashell, and then put them down on paper.” So simple, so difficult, such lasting advice that I have been carrying and aspiring toward ever since.\n“A Brace of Fairy Tales” and “Two Light-Hearted Fables” by William Maxwell\nBUY the BACK ISSUE (16.4)\nPhoto Credit: Marion Ettlinger\nWilliam Lychack served as Associate Editor of NER from 1994 to 1995. He is the author of a novel, The Wasp Eater (2005), and a collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers (2011). His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and on public radio’s This American Life. He currently teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.\nFiled Under: 40th Anniversary: From the Vault, NER Classics, News & Notes Tagged With: William Lychack, William Maxwell\nJodee Stanley on Michael Russell\nFormer Managing Editor Jodee Stanley introduces “Smoke on the Water” by Michael Russell, from NER 21.2 (2000).\nMy discovery of Michael Russell’s story “Smoke on the Water” has become an inspirational anecdote I like to share with my student editors at that point in the reading period when they are feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of submissions. The majority of their slush reading is digital, of course, which is not how it was back at the turn of the twenty-first century. Try to imagine it, I tell them: I’m surrounded literal piles of paper, each manuscript packed neatly in a manila envelope so I have to slide the whole thing out and set aside the cover letter in order to get to the first page. Now imagine I have been doing this for an entire afternoon, trying to catch up on my own backlog of reading, just like the backlog you’re facing now in your Submittable account. I’ve read forty-five, fifty stories, maybe more. My eyes are exhausted. My head’s exhausted, and not a single one of these stories has stood out to me—not one has given me the “ping” in the nerves that tells me there’s something special here. I have one final, nondescript manila envelope staring at me—it’s the last one in the pile I promised myself I’d complete by the end of the day. And I’m thinking, can I do it? Should I do it? Maybe I’ve lost it, maybe I’ve worn myself out so much I wouldn’t even recognize quality writing now anyway.\nThis is the fear: that at some point your eyes are just running across the words, truly unable to distinguish good from bad.\nBut I’m a little bit type A—I like order, I need closure. So I sigh, and tell myself it doesn’t matter, because what are the odds of finding anything at this point? And I pull out the story, and read the first paragraph, fully prepared for disappointment.\nThere is a certain kind of writing—confident but not pretentious, authentic but not sloppy—that quietly grabs you and tugs you into its tale so effortlessly that you don’t even know it’s happening. “Smoke on the Water” is a gentle perfect storm of humor, empathy, and quiet desperation. I was three pages in to it before I realized that I was reading with a fully immersed pleasure—I had forgotten momentarily that I was at work in an uncomfortable desk chair, surrounded by discarded envelopes. I knew immediately that we would publish this story, and that it would forever be one of my favorites.\nI have strong, fond memories of several of the wonderful stories we published during my days at NER, but this is the only crystalline memory I have of that breathtaking moment of discovery. But that one moment, that ping, is all it takes to remind myself that this is why we do it—this is the true joy of being an editor.\n“Smoke on the Water” by Michael Russell\nJodee Stanley served as Managing Editor of New England Review from 1997 through 2003. She is currently Director of the Creative Writing Program and Editor of Ninth Letter at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her fiction, essays, and book reviews have appeared in journals including Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Crab Orchard Review, Hobart, Cincinnati Review, and others. Her essay on literary publishing, which originally appeared in the Mississippi Review, was reprinted in the anthology Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine (2013), and her fiction has received special mention in the Pushcart Prize and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies and named to the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Stories.\nFiled Under: 40th Anniversary: From the Vault, NER Classics, News & Notes Tagged With: Jodee Stanley, Michael Russell\nLexa de Courval on Carl Phillips\nFormer Office Manager Lexa de Courval considers the persistent questions and mysteries found in “Beautiful Dreamer,” an essay by Carl Phillips, from NER 35.2 (2014).\n“Beautiful Dreamer” demands your attention in the very first paragraph. I admire how Carl Phillips chooses here to write about what is difficult and also very real, and in doing so he creates images we will respond to differently—we might feel uncomfortable, or charmed, perhaps even angry. Regardless, I find myself contemplating the Blue King, and mesmerized by the beauty of his descriptions.\nOf the many treasured pieces we published during my years at NER, I am still drawn to this work because I feel that it is courageous, and it came to me at a time when I was questioning the world around me on a deeper level. Our lives are filled with experiences that require us to rely on our instincts while sorting through truth and myth. Recently I have reflected on what it means to be human today, and how social media has created another layer to living behind a mask. We are not always how we envision ourselves, and at times are warriors within our own lives trying to heal and find our inner beauty. Asking probing questions and taking risks can be like being on a battlefield, particularly with the unsettling challenges in our current world.\nFor decades I have adored poetry, spending hours rereading intriguing lines to ask myself: Have I missed the point? How do I know this isn’t my selfish interpretation of something I need to happen in this work? Phillips comforts me in this as he writes about his own poem “Beautiful Dreamer,” and in response to poetry.\nFor months after having written the poem, I in fact found it difficult to know with any certainty, if not the poem’s meaning, then at least the meaning to which the poem might be gesturing. Many poets write toward a chosen subject, but I’ve always been the kind who writes from a supposedly clear space into a space of surprise, that is, where I find myself surprised—and not so pleasantly surprised, more often than not, surprised instead into a heightened awareness of something troubling.\nWe are often troubled by the page and how real it can be; we know what our hearts feel, yet we sometimes question our innate being. Poetry can take us down a dark alley, but we are compelled to know what we will find there. Is it real or is it a dream? Are we hiding behind a disguise of what we imagine? This essay will challenge you to face your dreams and desires.\nWas it Dante’s Inferno or The Iliad of Homer that first brought forth the expression to eat one’s heart out, which appears here in Stephen Crane’s rather bestial stanza of a creature eating his own heart? Is it power we seek when we punish or are punished—to claim one’s glory and revel in someone else’s doom?\nI enjoyed Phillips’s selections from Shelley and Crane reflecting on power, and on how for some, punishment can often become as addictive as pleasure. “We can never really know another’s heart,” he writes. But if it is our own heart, we are compassionate, and “it’s better to eat of what we know.” He quotes from Crane’s Black Rider series:\n“But I like it\nBecause it is bitter\nAnd because it is my heart.”\nPhillips brilliantly describes how a poem is an “interior dialogue we have with our other selves,” how we “write in response to being human.” “The poem is a form of negotiation with what haunts us,” he writes, “. . . insofar as what haunts us is, in part, who we are.”\nI was the Blue King. I led the dance.\nOne might have chosen to skirt the encounter in the park with which Phillips opens this essay, yet he chose to look it in the eye and be mystified, and to attempt to clarify for himself what he really saw. Phillips challenges us to seek understanding in the world around us and be surprised. He continues with the subject of loss in “Untitled,” a poem by Lorine Niedecker. We feel emotion for the subject that is difficult to put into words—Paul / when the leaves fall. Is there beauty in mourning? We do not want to live our lives alone, but sometimes to be human is to feel very alone as we face death and hardships.\nPhillips invites us into the work of these other writers, and into their stories, as he brings them into his own exquisite writing. Writers are compelled to record these times, and we relive each day through the histories of others as we create our own moving pictures. What is real and what is a dream, history or imagined, heroic or heartbreaking? Phillips encourages us to write, to seek meaning and confront the challenges in our everyday lives.\nHaving worked at NER and Bread Loaf for many years I have been continually inspired by authors like Carl Phillips and by their presence in my own life. I remember seeing John Ashbery, whose passages Phillips describes in his final page, surrounded by young scholars in a crowded room. I remember reading Seamus Heaney from a hefty Norton Anthology in college and then what an honor it was to meet him in person and receive his poem, “Du Bellay in Rome” for NER’s 34.2. I cherish the sound of Julia Alvarez lecturing on little children saving the world through medicine. People and place are life and these surroundings make up who we are and how we live.\nPhillips leaves us with provocative questions: Are we living, dreaming, or haunted by the moment? What is beauty and how do we make peace with our own inner demons? Admittedly, I cannot know Shelley’s “Ozymandias” or the Blue King of “Beautiful Dreamer,” though I can come to know them through Phillips. While pondering these alluring pages ahead, I hope you will keep dreaming and be enchanted. And, are we not most beautiful while we sleep?\n“Beautiful Dreamer” by Carl Phillips\nLexa de Courval was Editorial Assistant and then Office Manager at New England Review from 2009 to 2016. She is currently the Academic Coordinator at the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College. She previously worked in local museum education programs at both Shelburne Museum and Henry Sheldon Museum, and for the Bread Loaf School of English.\nFiled Under: 40th Anniversary: From the Vault, NER Classics, News & Notes Tagged With: Carl Phillips, Lexa de Courval\nCover photograph by Xan Padrón.\nCONFLUENCES\nLeath Tonino\nBeach Reading\nMind, text, wilderness—I’ve long been fascinated by their interactions. Specifically, I’ve been fascinated by what happens when we lug books into nature, when we situate our reading within a context of more-than-human energies, when we rest the butt on a barnacled rock or driftwood bench and fill the brain to brimming: sentences, crying birds, definitions, slanting light.\nner via email\nStories, poems, essays, and web features delivered to your Inbox.\nClick here to sign up for quarterly updates.\ncategories Select Category 40th Anniversary: From the Vault Audio Behind the Byline Confluences Events Fiction NER Authors’ Books NER Classics NER Community NER Digital NER Out Loud NER Recommends NER VT Reading Series News & Notes Nonfiction Podcast Poetry Secret Americas Translations\nAbout NER\nNER Out Loud\nEmerging Writers Award\nSupport NER","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line96284"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5251346826553345,"wiki_prob":0.4748653173446655,"text":"Benjamin Franta\nBenjamin Franta, a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, where his research focuses on climate politics and the manipulation of science.\nGlobal Warming’s Paper Trail\nCHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images\nSep 12, 2018 Benjamin Franta points to evidence showing that the energy industry knowingly contributed to global warming.\nExposing Climate Change Obstruction\nPacific Press/Getty Images\nJul 25, 2017 Benjamin Franta exposes the fossil fuel industry’s well-funded infrastructure of pseudo-science.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1009436"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8985269665718079,"wiki_prob":0.8985269665718079,"text":"For Burger Lounge, Product and Preparation Should Only Make It Look Easy\nBy Mariel Concepcion\nAlejandro Campos, a cook at a Burger Lounge location in downtown flips burgers in preparation for the day. Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle.\nBURGER LOUNGE\nCEO: J. Dean Loring\nRevenue: $39M in 2017 (approximately 15 percent increase projected in 2018)\nHeadquarters: Little Italy\nCompany description: A fast-casual restaurant chain that specializes in grass-fed beef hamburgers.\nThe acronym is K.I.S.S. Or, “keep it simple, stupid.” But, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. Just ask Burger Lounge’s President and CEO J. Dean Loring.\nThe Burger Lounge concept may appear rather uncomplicated — a 10-item menu that includes grass-fed burgers, fresh-made French fries and onion rings, shakes and salads that are made with locally-sourced ingredients and organic products. But Loring, who founded the company in 2007 with then-partner Mike Gilligan (who still has ownership), says it is this seemingly uncomplicated model that has made the business challenging.\nThis is so because using whole food ingredients is a lot more complicated than using pre-portioned or frozen products, he says, making it even more difficult when that exact method has to be replicated across a number of restaurants.\nBurger Lounge has 25 locations, 24 of which are in California, including nine San Diego. There are eight Burger Lounges in Los Angeles, four in the Bay Area, two in Orange County, one in Inland Empire and at Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.\n‘We Love Simple’\n“It is simple and we love simple,” Loring said, “but, making it right every time while utilizing whole food ingredients is our constant challenge.”\nDespite its difficulties, this “simple” approach has been the bread and patty of Burger Lounge’s success. The company, which started with one location in La Jolla in 2007 and uses the tagline “the original grass-fed burger,” has since grown to 25 company-owned properties, 24 of which are in California, nine of those being in San Diego; there are eight Burger Lounges in Los Angeles, four in the Bay Area, two in Orange County, one in Inland Empire and one at Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. In 2017, the company’s revenue was $39 million, according to Loring, and is projected to grow by 15 percent in 2018 and by another 15 percent in 2019.\n“The concept is to create a hamburger guests feel good about eating — a hamburger that is simple and crave-able but utilizes healthier ingredients like fresh, domestic, grass-fed beef and California-made cheeses made from organic, grass-fed milk,” said Loring about the Burger Lounge vision. He says the company also wants to provide vegetarians with a “proprietary” vegetarian hamburger along with clean salads and fresh side items. It’s just a 10-item menu, he says, but it is generally executed at a high-level.\nLoring says Burger Lounge favorites are the “Lounge” burger, which has organic American cheese, onions, shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles and 1000 island dressing; and the “Classic,” which features organic American cheese, Organic ketchup, mustard, pickles and chopped onions. “The hamburger is a food art form,” said Loring. “It juxtaposes flavors, textures and temperatures. It’s visual and it is sensual.”\nDel Mar Opening to Be Burger Lounge’s 10th Location\nRestaurant Expansion Heats Up as Economy Warms Up\nGrowing Revenue Feeds Urban Plates’ Appetite for Expansion\nMarket for Better Burgers Sizzles in San Diego\nUrban Plates Expanding as Revenue Reaches Nearly $54 Million\nAll Agree on One Thing, Jack Needs to Make More Money\nPosh Venue to Feature Anthology Of Good Food, Live Music\nBurger Wars Move Upmarket, Premium Patties a Hit With Consumers","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line891772"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9457728266716003,"wiki_prob":0.9457728266716003,"text":"Steven Price (writer)\nSteve Price\nSteven Price (composer)\nSteve Price (rugby league)\nSteven Price (born Colwood, British Columbia) is a Canadian poet and novelist.\nHe graduated from the University of Victoria with a BFA in 2000, and from the University of Virginia with an MFA, in poetry.\nHe teaches poetry and fiction at the University of Victoria. He lives with his partner, novelist Esi Edugyan, in Victoria, British Columbia.\n2007 Gerald Lampert Award\n2013 ReLit Award for poetry\n\"Images\", Canadian Literature #179: Literature & War (Winter 2003)\nThe Anatomy of Keys (Brick Books, 2006) ISBN 9781894078511\nOmens in the Year of the Ox (Brick Books, 2012) ISBN 9781926829760\nInto That Darkness (2011)\n\"The Architecture of Persona: Steven Price Writes Houdini\", Open Loop Press\nThis page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia -\thttps://wn.com/Steven_Price_(writer)\nStephen, Steven or Steve Price may refer to:\nStephen Price (died 1562), MP for Radnorshire 1555\nStephen Price (born 1572), MP for Radnor 1601\nStephen L. Price (1960–1995), American visual effects supervisor\nSteve Price (rugby league) (born 1974), Australian rugby league footballer\nSteve Price (coach) (born 1977), Australian rugby league coach\nSteve Price (broadcaster) (born 1955), Australian radio journalist\nSteve Price (musician), American percussionist for the band Pablo Cruise\nStephen Price (aviator) (born 1893), English flying ace during World War I\nSteven Price (writer), Canadian poet and novelist\nStephen Price (cricketer) (born 1979), English cricketer\nSteven Price, a character in the 2011 film Abduction\nSteven Price (composer), British composer, best known for scoring Gravity (2013)\nThis page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia -\thttps://wn.com/Steve_Price\nSteven Price (born 22 April 1977) is a British film composer, best known for scoring Fury and Gravity, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.\nPrice's passion for music began early: a guitarist from the age of five, he went on to achieve a First Class degree in Music from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Following graduation, he went to work in the London studio of Gang of Four guitarist/producer Andy Gill, for whom he would program, contribute string arrangements, and play on albums alongside artists such as Michael Hutchence and Bono.\nPrice went on to work as a programmer, arranger, and performer with film music composer Trevor Jones. He provided additional music for projects such as Roger Donaldson's Thirteen Days; Stephen Norrington's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Frank Coraci's Around the World in 80 Days; the television series Dinotopia; and Tamra Davis' Crossroads, on which he was also the featured guitar soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra.\nThis page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia -\thttps://wn.com/Steven_Price_(composer)\nSteven John Price, MNZM (born 12 March 1974 in Dalby, Queensland), is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer of the 1990s and 2000s. An Australian international representative, he retired as Queensland's most-capped State of Origin forward. Price captained Sydney club, the Bulldogs (with whom he won the 1995 and 2004 premierships) as well as Auckland club, the Warriors.\nPrice grew up in Toowoomba, where he attended Harristown State High School. Price was spotted playing rugby league for the Newtown Lions club in Toowoomba and was signed to the New South Wales Rugby League Premiership club, Sydney's Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.\nDuring the 1994 NSWRL season Price made his first grade debut for the Bulldogs at Belmore Sports Ground on 3 July against the Balmain Tigers. It was a great rookie year for Price as his side finished the regular season as minor premiers on top of the ladder and eventually going on to reach the 1994 Grand Final which they lost to Mal Meninga's Canberra Raiders. The disappointment of losing the Grand Final did not last long for Price, as the following year in the 1995 season the Bulldogs reached their second consecutive Grand Final to come up against the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles. Price was named on the starting line-up and as a headgear-wearing second-rower scored the first try of the game which the Bulldogs eventually won 17–4, giving Price his first taste of premiership victory. The experience of finals football so early in his career was a positive for Price as he established a reputation as an effective front rower/prop and second rower with a high work rate.\nThis page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia -\thttps://wn.com/Steve_Price_(rugby_league)\ncomicbookprices.org\nheavymetalprices.com\nblockchainprice.org\npriceblockchain.com\nlandpricesonline.com\nsilverpricecompare.com\nnewyorkpropertyprices.com\ncomicbooksprices.org\nrealpropertyprices.com\nimafreelancewriter.com\nftseshareprices.com\nstevensilk.com\nwritersbenevolentfund.net\ndirectedbystevenspielberg.com\nsilvergoldspotprice.com\nleontyneprice.org\nthermalcoalprice.com\nwhatisthepriceofsilver.com\ngoldandsilverspotprice.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1045109"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5893767476081848,"wiki_prob":0.5893767476081848,"text":"Honoring Chief Willard Ackley\nBorn on December 25, 1889, in a traditional Ojibwe wigwam along the shores of what was once known as Dry Lake (now called Bishop Lake), Chief Willard Ackley is said to have been one of the last born into the old ways of the Sokaogon.\n“The thing about Chief Ackley is, he wasn’t voted in as Tribal Chairman,” said Fred Ackley, Jr., Chief Ackley’s nephew, in 2015. “He was chosen by the people the old way – he came to us down through heaven, through the sky, and was put here as an Ogema (Chief).”\nChief Ackley is well known across Wisconsin and beyond. He worked tirelessly to help the people. “He spent much of his life fighting to establish the Mole Lake reservation. He saw what was happening to Indian people here. He saw how his people were forced to move off their land,” Fred said.\nThe Treaty of 1854, also known as the Treaty of LaPointe, established various reservations of the Ojibwe. Although this was to include the Mole Lake and St. Croix Bands, both were left without a land base, which placed people of each Tribe in peril. Oral history tells of corrupt government land and military agents using firewater and a language barrier to deny the claims of both Tribes.\nDespite the seemingly insurmountable task, Chief Ackley continued his quest for repatriation for his people, and in 1939 the Sokaogon of Mole Lake were finally granted 1,680 acres of reservation land.\nIt is said that Chief Ackley was an expert in many Ojibwe customs, including the use of traditional plant medicines, hunting and fishing, and the creation of birch bark crafts. He taught many in the ways of the natural laws. He was also an ambassador of goodwill and advocated for the advancement of Indian people into the 20th century. To this day, his legacy lives on in our community.\n“He was a true leader of the people. He represented the Great Spirit, and everything that’s good about Indian people,” Fred shared. “He taught myself and many others what it means to be a good person – to be a good human being. Through him our Tribe has survived.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line156305"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5671040415763855,"wiki_prob":0.4328959584236145,"text":"Parents or carers are a child's first and most enduring teachers and the home environment provides a range of informal learning opportunities and experiences that contribute to a child's learning and development.\nLimited data is available on whether all WA children aged 0 to 5 years are provided with quality informal learning opportunities.\nReading books, singing songs, playing games and doing arts and crafts are all important play activities that parents can do with their children to support their cognitive, emotional and physical development. Providing children with a variety of enriching experiences outside the home is another important component of a stimulating learning environment.\nEnsuring the best learning outcomes for WA children involves families and educators working together to support early engagement in learning.\nMost WA families regularly engage in reading and learning-related activities in their home and community. The most common informal learning activity is reading books and telling stories.\nIn 2017, most parents (94.9%) engaged in reading activities with their children aged three years and older in the previous week, but fewer parents read to, or with, children younger than three years of age (79.6%).\nProportion of children with parental involvement in reading activities in prior week, in per cent, WA, 2011, 2014 and 2017\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014 and 2017, cat no. 4402.0 and Australian Bureau of Statistics custom report, June 2011\nSince 2011, daily reading to 0 to two year-old WA children has decreased (60.5% to 56.5%) and the proportion of children with parents who did not read from a book or tell a story in the last week increased (19.5% to 21.4%).\nProportion of children aged 0-2 years with parental involvement by number of days last week parent(s) read from a book or told a story, in per cent, WA, 2011 and 2017\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0 and Australian Bureau of Statistics custom report, June 2011\nMeasure: Informal learning\n#05-informal\nResearch shows that providing a safe, nurturing and stimulating home learning environment during the first three years of life is associated with better cognitive and social outcomes for children as they grow.1,2\nThe extent to which parents are engaged in their child’s informal learning can be measured by their participation in cognitively-stimulating learning activities and by providing learning materials in the home.\nThis measure uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Childhood Education and Care survey which captures data for 0 to two year-olds and three to eight year-olds.\nProportion of children aged 0 to 2 years with parental involvement in informal learning last week, in per cent, by type of activity, WA and Australia, 2011, 2014 and 2017\nRead from a book or told a story\nWatch TV, videos or DVDs\nAssisted with drawing, writing or other creative activities\nPlayed music, sang songs, danced or did other musical activities\nAttended a playgroup\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014 and 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian Tables 19 Parental involvement in informal learning and Australian Bureau of Statistics custom report, June 2011.\nTold stories, read or listened to the child read\nUsed computers or the internet\nWatched TV, videos or DVDs\nAssisted with homework or other educational activities\nPlayed sport, outdoor games or other physical activities\nInvolved in music, art or other creative activity\nIn 2017, a large majority of WA parents participated in some form of informal learning activity with their children aged 0 to eight years in the week prior to participating in the survey.\nThe most common informal learning activity was reading books and telling stories in the home. Parents read or told stories to almost 80 per cent of children aged 0 to two years and read, told stories or listened to the reading of 94.9 per cent of three to eight year-olds.\nThe proportion of WA children with parents engaged in reading activities is marginally lower than in 2014 (and 2011) across both age groups. This reduction contrasts with the result across the rest of Australia, where reading activities for 0 to two year-olds increased and three to eight year-olds remained relatively static from 2014 to 2017.\nProportion of children with parental involvement in children's reading activities by age group, in per cent, WA and Australia, 2011, 2014 and 2017\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014 and 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian Tables 19 and 20 Parental involvement in informal learning and Australian Bureau of Statistics custom report, June 2011.\nAmong 0 to two year-olds, other common informal learning activities with parents in 2017 included musical activities (78.5%) and watching TV or DVDs (68.2%). Parents of children aged three to eight commonly engaged in sport or outdoor games (85.6%) and assisted with homework or other educational activities (84.3%).\nCompared nationally, the proportions and types of activities were largely similar in 2017. Some of the differences evident are that WA parents of 0 to two year-olds were somewhat less likely to engage in physical activities (64.7% compared to 68.2%) or to attend a playgroup with their child (20.3% compared to 21.8%). WA parents of three to eight year-olds were more likely to engage in music, art or other creative activities (70.7% compared to 66.5% nationally) and less likely to use computers or the internet (50.5% compared to 55.4%).\nBetween 2011 and 2017, there has been an increase in the proportion of WA parents using computers or the internet with children aged three to eight years. Over the same period, there has been a commensurate decrease in the proportion of parents watching TV or DVDs with their children aged three to eight years. This perhaps reflects a shift in the technology, rather than any change in the underlying activity.\nWhile the screen times discussed in this survey are related to learning activities, Australian 24-hour movement guidelines for the early years recommend no screen time for children two years old and younger, and no more than one hour per day for children from three to five years-old. For children from three to five years-old, the recommendation is that all of their screen time is educational.3 The recommendation increases to no more than two hours per day for five to 12 year-olds.4\nLongitudinal data shows that 44 per cent of Australian children aged four to five years are spending more than the recommended two hours a day on screen-based activities.5 The same research suggests that older children who enjoy doing physical activities will spend less time in front of screens.6 This highlights the importance of engaging young children in fun physical activities to provide the foundation for a more active childhood. For more information on WA children’s health refer to the Physical health indicator.\nActivities by family type and labour force status\nChildren from families experiencing socio-economic disadvantage, those with mothers who speak a language other than English at home and those who live in disadvantaged neighbourhoods can have fewer learning opportunities in the home.7 Further, research shows that family income and parental employment can impact a parent’s ability to provide a rich home learning environment for their young children.8,9\nIn 2017, parents of 0 to two year-olds where one or no parent was employed were less likely to engage in all informal learning activities with their children than parents in couple families where both parents are employed.\nProportion of children aged 0 to 2 years with parental involvement in informal learning, by labour force status of parents, in per cent, WA, 2014 and 2017\nCouple -\nboth parents employed\none or no parent employed\n*One-parent families\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014 and 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian Table 19 Parental involvement in informal learning.\n* Employment data is not provided for one-parent families in the WA data.\nReading and telling stories to 0 to two year-old children in WA families where one or no parent is employed, has fallen significantly from 80.8 per cent in 2014 to 66.7 per cent in 2017; as has their engagement in musical activities which fell from 86.6 per cent in 2014 to 65.1 per cent in 2017.10\nSignificantly, in 2017 one-parent families were most likely to engage in reading and musical activities. In 2017, 94.2 per cent of one-parent families of 0 to two year-olds engaged in reading activities and 96.2 per cent engaged in musical activities. However, they were much less likely to engage in physical activities (35.6%) and to assist with drawing and other creative activities (40.4%).\nProportion of children with parental involvement in reading activities by age group and family type, in per cent, WA, 2014 and 2017\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014 and 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australia Tables 19 and 20 Parental involvement in informal learning.\nProportion of children with parental involvement in physical activities by age group and family type, in per cent, WA, 2014 and 2017\nThe graphs above highlight that activities in the home vary significantly by family type when children are 0 to two years old and become more consistent across family types once children are in the three to eight year-old category. This is in part because five to eight year-old children are in school and their activities are more uniform due to homework and other sports activities.\nThere is a strong association between reading to children and positive developmental outcomes.11 Parents’ reading and storytelling to children promotes the development of the brain, cognitive skills and children’s reading skills.12,13 Families play an important role in promoting a child’s literacy development and helping them build a strong foundation for future learning in school.14\nDaily reading to two and three year-olds is also strongly associated with higher reading performance and numeracy outcomes in Year 3.15 ABS data shows that in WA in 2017, 56.5 per cent of 0 to two year-olds were read to on a daily basis. This is slightly lower than the 57.2 per cent of all Australian children aged 0 to two years who were being read to on a daily basis.\nProportion of children aged 0 to 2 years with parental involvement by number of days last week parent(s) read from a book or told a story, in per cent, WA and Australia 2011 and 2017\nDid not read from a\nbook or tell a story\nSource: Compiled from Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Australian, Table 19 Parental involvement in informal learning and ABS custom request for 2014 and 2018 WA data.\nFor children in the three to eight year-old age group, 46.8 per cent were being read to or told a story by their parents seven days a week in 2017. This is marginally lower than the national average (47.8%) and represents a significant decrease from the WA results for 2011 and 2014 (52.0% and 55.0%).\nProportion of children aged 3 to 8 years with parental involvement by number of days last week parent(s) read from a book or told a story, in per cent, WA and Australia 2011, 2014 and 2017\nSource: Compiled from Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian, Table 20 Parental involvement in informal learning and ABS custom request for 2014 data.\nOlder children are less likely to be read to or told a story every day of the week if both parents are employed (46.5%) compared to families in which one or no parent is employed (52.1%).\nProportion of children aged 3 to 8 years with parental involvement by number of days last week parent(s) read from a book or told a story by family type and employment, in per cent, WA, 2017\nCouple family\nTotal couple families\nOne-parent families\nTotal children\nDid not read from a book or tell a story\nSource: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian, Table 20 Parental involvement in informal learning.\nAs well as providing educational interactions and activities, parents provide a stimulating home learning environment by making learning materials such as books, available at home.16 The number of books in a family’s home is positively related to a child’s reading ability.17 Research has found that the greater the number of books the greater the benefit, however as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact.18\nIn 2017, around 80 per cent of WA children aged three to eight years had more than 25 children’s books in their home. At the same time, 8.4 per cent of children aged 0 to two years had less than 10 children’s books in the home.19\nProportion of children 0 to 8 years by the number of children’s books in the home, by age group, in per cent, WA and Australia, 2017\n10 to less than 25\n25 to less than 100\n100 to less than 200\nSource: Compiled from Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian, Tables 19 and 20 Parental involvement in informal learning and custom request for additional data on informal learning of children aged 0-2 years (unpublished).\n*Estimate has a relative standard error of 25 per cent to 50 per cent and should be used with caution.\nSince 2011, there has been a significant decrease in the number of children with more than 100 books in the home. There has been a corresponding increase in the proportion of WA children with more than 10 and less than 100 children’s books in the home.\nProportion of children 0 to 8 years by the number of children’s books in the home, by age group, in per cent, WA, 2011 and 2017\nSource: Compiled from Australian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, cat no. 4402.0, Western Australian, Table 20 Parental involvement in informal learning (aged 3-8 years) and custom request for additional data on informal learning of children aged 0 – 2 years (unpublished).\n*Estimate has a high relative standard error and therefore has been suppressed.\nTo date, research and data has focused on the number of books in the home, yet there are other mechanisms for children to engage in reading activities. In particular, books can be borrowed from the library and/or electronic books can be accessed. No data is available on the number of children’s books borrowed from WA libraries or the number of books accessed through tablets or other electronic media. Research on the benefits or weaknesses of electronic books on children’s outcomes is still in its infancy.20\nThe Better Beginnings program is a WA-based family literacy program run by the State Library of WA which supplies families with reading packs. In 2016-17, 95 per cent of WA families with a newborn baby received a Better Beginnings reading pack which supports parents to read to their children from birth.21 Furthermore, since the program started, more than 30,000 reading packs have been distributed to families in approximately 100 remote communities across WA.22\nThe ABS Childhood Education and Care data is not available disaggregated by Aboriginal status. Data on early learning in the home among Aboriginal families across Australia is available through the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) conducted through the Department of Social Services.\nLSIC data reports that in 2012, 34.9 per cent of surveyed Aboriginal children aged four to eight years had more than 50 children’s books in the home and 13.1 per cent had five or fewer. 84.2 per cent of Aboriginal children aged four to five years had been read a book by someone in the last week.23\nOverall, the LSIC researchers determined that levels of parental involvement were found to be higher in parents with higher education levels, partnered parents, parents who were receiving an income from wages and salaries, and families living in urban areas.24 These findings mirror the impact of family disadvantage for the population more broadly and highlight that the high percentage of Aboriginal children who have lower academic outcomes is directly related to the higher proportion of Aboriginal families that are economically vulnerable and disadvantaged.25\nThe LSIC data cannot be directly compared with other data for this measure and WA data would differ from the national average due to the different demographic characteristics of Aboriginal children living in WA; that is, a greater proportion living in remote and very remote communities.\nRodriguez ET et al 2009, The formative role of home literacy experiences across the first three years of life in children from low-income families, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol 30 No 6.\nKernan M 2012, Parental Involvement in Early Learning: a review of research, policy and good practice, Bernard Van Leer Foundation and International Child Development Initiatives, p. 19.\nDepartment of Health, Australia’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines – Frequently Asked Questions, Commonwealth of Australia.\nDepartment of Health, Australia's Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines, Commonwealth of Australia.\nYu M and Baxter J 2016, The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children 2015 Report, Chapter 5: Australian children’s screen time and participation in extracurricular activities, Australian Institute of Family Studies, p. 102.\nIbid, p. 119-120.\nYu M and Daraganova G 2015, The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children 2014 Report, Chapter 4: Children’s early home learning environment and learning outcomes in the early years of school, Australian Institute of Family Studies, p. 77.\nWarren D and Edwards B 2017, Contexts of Disadvantage, Occasional Paper No. 53, Australian Institute of Family Studies, p. xi.\nAustralian Bureau of Statistics, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2017, Cat No 4402.0, Table 19 Parental involvement in informal learning and Childhood Education and Care, Australia, June 2014, Cat No 4402.0, Table 19 Parental involvement in informal learning.\nVictorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research 2014, Reading to young children: A head-start in life.\nHutton JS et al 2015, Home Reading Environment and Brain Activation in Preschool Children Listening to Stories, American Academy of Paediatrics, Vol 136, No 3.\nKalb G and van Ours JC 2012, Reading to young children: a head-start in life, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, p. 24.\nYu M and Daraganova G 2015, The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children 2014 Report, Chapter 4: Children’s early home learning environment and learning outcomes in the early years of school, Australian Institute of Family Studies, p.78.\nBradley R and Caldwell B 1995, Caregiving and the regulation of child growth and development: Describing proximal aspects of the caregiving systems, Developmental Review, Vol 15, No 1.\nEvans M et al 2014, Scholarly culture and academic performance in 42 nations, Social Forces, Vol 92 No 4, pp. 1573–1605.\nUniversity of Nevada, Reno 2010, Books in home as important as parents' education in determining children's education level, ScienceDaily, 21 May 2010 (website).\nAustralian Bureau of Statistics 2018, Childhood Education and Care, Australia, Cat No. 4402.0, Western Australian and Australian, Table 20 Parental involvement in informal learning for years 2017 and 2014.\nReich SM et al 2016, Tablet-Based eBooks for Young Children: What Does the Research Say? Journal Of Developmental And Behavioral Pediatrics, Vol 37 No 7, pp. 585–591.\nState Library of Western Australia 2017, Annual Report 2016-2017 of the Library Board of Western Australia, 65th Annual Report of the Board, Government of Western Australia.\nBetter Beginnings, Better Beginnings for remote Aboriginal communities (website), viewed 16 October, 2018.\nNational Centre for Longitudinal Data 2016, Parents involvement in education of Indigenous children, Research summary No. 5/2016, from Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children—Wave 5, Department of Social Services.\nDepartment of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2018, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework 2014 Report, 2.09 Index of disadvantage, (website).\nInfants and young children who have been exposed to abuse and neglect are at a high risk of adverse outcomes over their lifetimes and quality informal learning opportunities are critical to their future wellbeing.\nIn 2017, there were 1,191 WA children in care aged between 0 and four years, more than half of whom (56.8%) were Aboriginal.1\nNo data exists that examines the participation of carers of WA children in care aged between 0 and five years in informal learning activities.\nThe Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) is a longitudinal study on out-of-home care (OOHC) in NSW examining the developmental wellbeing of children and young people aged 0 to 17 years.2 The study collects data on how often caregivers engage in learning and play activities with children, as well as activities that children participate in outside of the home, such as playgroup and library activities.\nPreliminary findings in this NSW study show that 88 per cent of carers of children aged nine to 35 months played with toys or games indoors at least six days in the past week. This was the most frequently cited activity. Yet only 48.8 per cent of carers read to children aged nine to 35 months from a book at least six days a week. This increased to 53 per cent of carers reading to children aged three to five years. A significant proportion (26.6%) of carers of children aged nine to 35 months either did not read to their child in the last week (prior to the survey) or only on one to two days. This decreased to 19.3 per cent for carers of children aged three to five years.3\nFor WA children in care, there is no data that examines the quality and frequency of their participation in informal learning opportunities with their carers.\nMore information is required on informal learning opportunities for children in care in WA.\nDepartment of Child Protection and Family Support 2017, Annual Report 2016-17, WA Government p. 43.\nAustralian Institute of Family Studies et al 2015, Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study: Outcomes of children and young people in Out-of-Home care in NSW Wave 1 baseline statistical report, NSW Department of Family and Community Services.\nStimulating home environments and relationships are vital for nurturing the growth, learning and development of children. In the case of children with disability, parents and carers may also need to respond to the specific developmental needs of their child, seeking guidance or intervention from allied health professionals and obtaining support or respite as required.\nThe Australian Bureau of Statistics Disability, Ageing and Carers data collection reports that approximately 5,100 WA children (3.0%) aged 0 to four years have a reported disability.1,2\nNo data exists on the participation of children with disability in informal learning with their parent or carer.\nParents have an important role to play in their child’s developmental and educational outcomes but the extent and form of their engagement is strongly influenced by a family's social class, the mother’s education level and psychosocial health as well as single parent status and family ethnicity.1,2 Research shows that families experiencing disadvantage are less able to provide a cognitively stimulating home environment or to receive informal support from family and friends compared to more highly educated and working parents.3,4\nParents and caregivers who engage regularly in home learning can contribute significantly to their child’s learning and development.5,6 Longitudinal research indicates a direct causal effect from reading to young children and future schooling outcomes regardless of parental income, education level or cultural background.7 By reading frequently to their young children and investing in cognitively stimulating activities, parents have a decisive role to play in the developmental and educational outcomes of their children.\nParents and families require support, education and resources to help them create an enriching home learning environment for their young children.8,9 Mothers’ groups and play-groups,10 parenting classes and quality early education and care programs are all part of an effective approach to supporting parents to enhance children’s learning and development in the early years.\nImproving the early home environment for children in vulnerable families can help overcome the effects of disadvantage on a child’s developmental outcomes.11\nIntervention programs, such as visiting parenting support programs and programmed educational home activities, can improve parents’ ability to engage in behaviours that support their children’s early learning.12 An example of this is the Better Beginnings Family Literacy Program, a state-wide family literacy program that aims to support the literacy development of children throughout WA by providing parents with the tools and resources required to build language and literacy skills from birth.\nAt the same time, early childhood programs and services provided in welcoming and integrated settings, such as children and family centres, can be an effective way to provide parents with easier access to services and support.13\nThis indicator relies on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Childhood Education and Care Survey, which is only conducted every three years. The survey data is also not able to be disaggregated by region in WA or by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parents and children.\nAdditional information is required on children’s screen time activities, in particular more data on educational versus non-educational screen time.\nWarren D and Edwards B 2017, Contexts of Disadvantage, Occasional Paper No. 53, Australian Institute of Family Studies.\nKernan M 2012, Parental Involvement in Early Learning: a review of research, policy and good practice, Bernard Van Leer Foundation and International Child Development Initiatives.\nHeckman J 2006, Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children, Science Vol 312 No 5782.\nKernan M 2012, Parental Involvement in Early Learning: a review of research, policy and good practice, Bernard Van Leer Foundation and International Child Development Initiatives, p. 7.\nPascoe S and Brennan D 2017, Lifting our game: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools through Early Childhood Interventions, VIC Government.\nInouk E et al 2017, The Role of Home Literacy Environment, Mentalizing, Expressive Verbal Ability, and Print Exposure in Third and Fourth Graders’ Reading Comprehension, Scientific Studies of Reading, Vol 21 No 3.\nKalb G and van Ours JC 2012, Reading to young children: a head-start in life, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.\nKiernan KE and Mensah FK 2011, Poverty, family resources and children's early educational attainment: The mediating role of parenting, British Educational Research Journal, Vol 37 No 2, pp. 317-336.\nFor more information on the benefits of playgroups, see Gregory T et al 2016, It takes a village to raise a child: The influence and impact of playgroups across Australia, Telethon Kids Institute.\nOECD 2012, Encouraging Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Research Brief: Parental and Community Engagement Matters, OECD.\nMoore T 2008, Evaluation of Victorian children’s centres: Literature review, Centre for Community Child Health, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.\nFor more information on informal learning refer to the following resources:\nDepartment of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 2009, Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, Council of Australian Governments.\nYu M and Daraganova G 2015, The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children 2014 Report, Chapter 4: Children’s early home learning environment and learning outcomes in the early years of school, Australian Institute of Family Studies.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line485810"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7318665385246277,"wiki_prob":0.7318665385246277,"text":"Coca Cola Amatil New Zealand to build manufacturing facility at Auckland Airports Business Park\nCoca-Cola Amatil New Zealand to build manufacturing facility at Auckland Airport's Business Park\nCoca–Cola Amatil New Zealand (CCANZ), the company that makes and sells Coca–Cola drinks and other leading beverages in New Zealand, is establishing a manufacturing operation at The Landing Business Park at Auckland Airport\nThe move will see Auckland Airport develop a purpose-built, high-tech, 12,000sqm warehouse to accommodate an addition to CCANZ’s manufacturing footprint.\nChris Litchfield, Managing Director of CCANZ, says the company is excited to partner with Auckland Airport on the development of this new facility.\n“Auckland Airport has the ability to deliver a product which meets our specific requirements. We need to consolidate a number of operations into one, meaning that we require a location that ticks all the boxes in terms of connectivity, security and accessible amenities,” says Mr Litchfield.\n“We also value the investment that Auckland Airport has outlaid to develop the area into a world-class business park. CCANZ is committed to producing the best quality beverages and this new facility at Auckland Airport will enable us to continue to achieve this and complements our existing manufacturing operations.”\nMark Thomson, Auckland Airport’s general manager property, says, “The move by CCANZ to Auckland Airport highlights the quality of our real estate products and our ability to tailor solutions to unique customer requirements.”\n“We are focused on creating a business environment that caters to a wide range of users. Our extensive land-holdings allow Auckland Airport to tailor bespoke solutions, not only for traditional logistics activities but also for technology users and selected manufacturers, such as CCANZ,” continues Mr Thomson.\n“What remains constant in all of our developments is our emphasis on creating quality buildings within a comprehensively planned and world-class environment, as well as providing outstanding amenity for our customers and their staff.”\n“CCANZ is one of the largest bottlers of non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages in the Asia-Pacific with a portfolio that consists of several leading household brands. We are thrilled that CCANZ has entrusted Auckland Airport as its property partner,” finishes Mr Thomson.\nAbout The Landing Business Park at Auckland Airport\nNew Zealand’s leading industrial business park offers a world of limitless opportunity. World-class facilities and infrastructure set amongst expansive landscaped open spaces define The Landing – here you can design and build facilities that are uniquely you.\nAbout Coca-Cola Amatil New Zealand\nCoca-Cola Amatil New Zealand (CCANZ) is a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturer which employs more than one-thousand people located at several manufacturing locations across the country. It produces, markets and sells a number of its own beverage brands, such as L&P and Pump, and is the authorised manufacturer and distributor of The Coca-Cola Company’s products in New Zealand. It has responsibility for a variety of beverage brands ranging from soft drinks to water, sports and energy drinks, juices, fruit products, coffee and premium beers.\nIt is part of the ASX-listed Coca-Cola Amatil Group, which is one of the top five Coca-Cola bottlers in the world, and also has operations in Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.\nKate Thompson – Auckland Airport\nAndrew Hewett – Coca-Cola Amatil","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1345602"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6726086139678955,"wiki_prob":0.3273913860321045,"text":"Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough / Lexicon 40\nLexicon 40 (masks)\nInlaid acrylic, framed, 8\" x 10\"\nEach image is an edition of five.\nMary Elizabeth Yarbrough a multi-disciplinary visual artist with a background in sculpture, music and furniture making as well as exhibit development at The Exploratorium. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she received her MFA in Furniture Design from California College of the Arts in 2002. Her works explore language, cliche, pop culture, iconography, repetition, and design through a variety of media, including acrylic, tape, wood, metal, sound, and performance. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally including New Langton Arts, The Lab and Luggage Store in SF, Deitch Projects in NY, New Image Art in LA, Kunsthall Fridericianum in Germany, and The Hara Museum in Tokyo. She is the recipient of Arteles residency in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, and two San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grants. Mary Elizabeth lives and works in San Francisco, CA.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1451642"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7684853672981262,"wiki_prob":0.7684853672981262,"text":"Supporters & Endorsers\nAbout Us & Event Schedule\nYou are here: Home / Supporter & Endorsers / NY State Senator Adriano Espaillat ( Democratic candidate for New York’s 1...\nNY State Senator Adriano Espaillat ( Democratic candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District)\nAugust 7, 2015 /in Supporter & Endorsers /by Dr. Dennie Beach\nNew York State Senator Adriano Espaillat is the Democratic candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District in the 2016 general election. He is currently the Ranking Member of the Senate Housing, Construction, and Community Development Committee, and Chair of the Senate Puerto Rican/Latino Caucus; he is also a member of the Environmental Conservation, Economic Development, Codes, Insurance, and Judiciary committees. Prior to becoming a state senator, he served in the New York State Assembly, and was the first Dominican-American elected to a state legislature when he first won his seat in 1996. In 2002, Espaillat was elected chair of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, and helped to reunite the group after years of division.\nThroughout his tenure as a public servant, Espaillat has been a vocal advocate for protecting tenants, improving schools, and making serious, smart investments in economic development, job creation, and environmental protection. As state senator, he currently represents the neighborhoods of Marble Hill, Inwood, Washington Heights, Hamilton Heights, West Harlem, the Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen, Clinton, and Chelsea.\nSenator Espaillat has sponsored and helped to pass landmark laws encouraging the construction and preservation of affordable housing, developing free legal services for tenants, giving 35,000 low-income day care workers access to healthcare and the ability to join the UFT, providing workers’ compensation for 40,000 livery cab drivers, and improving hospital translation services. Espaillat has also worked to protect landmarks, taking legal action to protect the Palisades when the LG Tower threatened to permanently mar its natural beauty. After the July 1999 blackout in Upper Manhattan caused financial damage to restaurants, bodegas, and other small businesses, Espaillat helped to secure an agreement from Con Edison to invest an additional $100 million in Upper Manhattan’s electrical infrastructure at no cost to ratepayers—and when customers were billed for expenses related to an Indian Point Energy Center shutdown, Espaillat fought back and got their money refunded.\nAs congressman, Senator Espaillat will bring new energy to Washington and will be a steadfast champion for working- and middle-class New Yorkers. He will fight for a fair living wage, immediate and effective investments in affordable housing, meaningful criminal justice reform, infrastructure improvements, expanded youth programs, and better educational opportunities. Prior to entering public service, Adriano served as the Manhattan Court Services Coordinator for the NYC Criminal Justice Agency, a non-profit organization that provides indigent legal services and works to reduce unnecessary pretrial detention and post-sentence incarceration costs. He later worked as Director of the Washington Heights Victims Services Community Office, an organization offering counseling and other services to families of victims of homicides and other crimes, and as the Director of Project Right Start, a national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to combat substance abuse by educating the parents of pre-school children.\nhttp://africanunionexpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/African-Union-Expo-Logo-2018-300x156.png 0 0 Dr. Dennie Beach http://africanunionexpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/African-Union-Expo-Logo-2018-300x156.png Dr. Dennie Beach2015-08-07 23:17:592016-10-08 17:35:27NY State Senator Adriano Espaillat ( Democratic candidate for New York’s 13th Congressional District)\nTech Merchant Profile: update yourself on YuserTrade & digital currency (the Future of Money)\nTech Merchant Profile: Visit Sophanic @ the AU Expo 2017 on 11/14/2017\nFinancial Merchant profile: See Valentine Ayanru, DPM* Financial Specialist @ the AU Expo 2017 on 11/14/2017\nDesign Merchant Profile: Visit Absolutely Fabulous By June @ the AU Expo 2017 on 11/14/2017\nStylist Merchant Profile: Visit BARCUTS @ the AU Expo 2017 on 11/14/2017\nAU Expo 2017\nSupporter & Endorsers\nVendors & Merchants\nOur Team & Expo Event Schedule\nThe GoAfrica Sites\nGoAfrica Network\nGoAfrica News\nGoAfrica Health\n© Copyright - African Union Expo - Enfold WordPress Theme by Kriesi\nNYS Assemblywoman Latoya Joyner – Assembly District 77 NYC Council Member, Inez Dickens District 9","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line389216"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5060833096504211,"wiki_prob":0.5060833096504211,"text":"Real-Life Robinson Crusoe Has Been Living on Exotic Island for 40 Years\nBy Sumitra on May 1st, 2012 Category: News\nBrendon Grimshaw is the world’s real-life Robinson Crusoe, and Rene Lafortune, his man Friday. The only difference is that Grimshaw actually purchased the island instead of being stranded there. The Yorkshireman purchased Moyenne, a half-mile-wide island in the Seychelles for £8,000 ($13,000) in the early 1960s. As a successful newspaper editor in those times, he was restless and seeking adventure, itching to start a new life of his own. Nine years after the purchase, he moved in to the island full-time, making it his permanent home. The 86-year-old is now credited for bringing out and restoring the beauty of the exotic island, encouraging birds and tortoises to make it their home too. He did have a lot of time to do it, as he has been living there for 40 years.\nWhen Grimshaw first arrived at Moyenne, it had been abandoned for 50 years. The scrub was so dense and overgrown that even coconuts couldn’t fall to the ground. It was then that he was joined by an assistant, a Seychellois named Rene Lafortune, and together they worked tirelessly towards restoring the island to its former glory. The duo ended up planting over 16,000 trees by hand. 700 of these are mahogany trees that are about 60-70 ft tall. The other trees include palms, mango and paw-paw. They also built 4.8 km of nature paths. The giant tortoise, which was almost driven to extinction due to excessive hunting, has found a new home at Moyenne, thanks to the work of Grimshaw. He is now the caretaker of 120 giant tortoises. He also managed to attract about 2,000 birds to the island, starting with a meager 10 that he purchased from a neighboring island. At first they promptly flew back, but then they started to stay longer. Lafortune died in 2007, and since then Grimshaw has been the only permanent resident of Moyenne. He lives there in a small one-story wooden house that clings to the hillside and is furnished with African souvenirs. Outside his house is a sign that says, “Please respect the tortoises. They are probably older than you.”\nThis photo of L’Habitation Hotel is courtesy of TripAdvisor\nGrimshaw’s story was beautifully captured in his 1996 autobiography, “A Grain of Sand”. A documentary film with the same name was made, depicting life on the remote island. “The island gradually taught you what to do. It knows itself what it wants to do,” he says. Joel Morgan, Seychelles’ Minister of Home Affairs has hailed Grimshaw as a “modern Robinson Crusoe.” His work today is so well recognized that Moyenne Island was elevated to the status of a National Park in 2008. However, he insists that he wasn’t really doing any of this to convert the island into a National Park. “No, no, no! We were doing it to make it habitable for me,” he insists. Living all alone on an island, with only tortoises and dogs for company, one might wonder if he doesn’t get lonely. His answer is simple, he says he was lonely only “once in my life – when I was living in a bedsit in London. I was miserable then, but never here.”\nPhoto: A Grain of Sand the Film\nDoesn’t this story make you want to just pack your bags and move to a deserted island living the craziness of the big city behind you forever? I wonder if I can get a broadband Internet connection on one of these islands… Anyway, this is definitely one of the most impressive we’ve covered in a while.\nvia National Post\nPosted in News Tags: A Grain of Sand, Brendon Grisham, Moyenne, News, people, Seychelles\nMan Requests “Trial by Combat” to Settle Legal Dispute with Ex-Wife\n7-Year-Old “Preschool Picasso” Takes Art World by Storm\nRussia's Big Stone River - A Little Known Natural Wonder\nWoman Allegedly Laces Husband's Beer with Laxatives to Make Him Quit Drinking\nJapan's Craziest Soft Drinks Company Comes Up with the Weirdest Flavors\nWoman Allegedly Uses Poorly Photoshopped Picture of Flat Tire as Excuse for Being Late for Work","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1352271"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6154730916023254,"wiki_prob":0.38452690839767456,"text":"Baking Accs. & Cake Decorating\nStainless Steel Biscuit Pastry Cookie Cutter Cake Decor Baking Mold Mould Tools\nChristmas Cookie Cutter Stainless Steel Cut Candy Biscuit Mold Cooking Tools\nTools Cutter Santa Claus Christmas Cookie Mold Biscuit Mould Cookie Cutter\nlbbacoffee (3018 )\nDetails about Tools Stainless Steel Candy Cookie Mold Biscuit Mould Cookie Cutter Christmas\nTools Stainless Steel Candy Cookie Mold Biscuit Mould Cookie Cutter Christmas\n-Select- A B C D E F G H I J K L M N P Q R\n10 available / 0 sold\nOriginal priceC $1.07\nC $0.05 (5% off)\nDiscounted price C $1.02\nTheme: Christmas\nBrand: Unbranded Shape: Christmas Style\nType: Cookie Tools Features: Stocked, Eco-Friendly\nColour: Silver Material: Stainless Steel\nLabel: EB0Z21PQV02\nExcludes: Bermuda, Greenland, Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Namibia, Niger, Reunion, Saint Helena, Senegal, Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bangladesh, China, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Russian Federation, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Iceland, Jersey, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, El Salvador, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands (U.S.), Cambodia, Indonesia, Macau, Taiwan, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay\nChange country: -Select- Afghanistan Algeria Andorra Argentina Australia Austria Bahrain Belgium Bhutan Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Canada Costa Rica Croatia, Republic of Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt Finland France Germany Ghana Greece Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Japan Jordan Korea, South Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Lebanon Liberia Liechtenstein Luxembourg Malawi Malaysia Mali Moldova Monaco Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Paraguay Philippines Poland Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Rwanda Saudi Arabia Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Tajikistan Thailand Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uzbekistan Vatican City State Venezuela Vietnam\nChristmas Metal Cookie Cutters,\nChristmas Plastic Cookie Cutters,\nCookie Cutters,\nOreo Cookies & Biscuits,\nhallmark cookie cutters,\nChristmas Cookie Cutters,\nBatman Cookie Cutter,\nvalentine cookie cutters,\nDinosaurs Plastic Cookie Cutters,\nEaster Plastic Cookie Cutters","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line510622"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.688268780708313,"wiki_prob":0.311731219291687,"text":"World Invocations 08: How You Can Help Change the WorldHow You Can Help Change the World\nEBOOK: How You Can Help Change the World\nHAVE YOU experienced situations or seen them in the media and had a deep inner longing to change them? Do you have the feeling that you are on this planet in order to make a positive difference? Do you sense you are here to help bring peace and eradicate war or other atrocities?\nThis is the first in a series of books that will give you the tools to fulfill your inner desire to change the world. Once you understand the real cause of world events, you will see that you have the ability to make a decisive difference. If enough people learn how to use the tools given in these books, major world problems can be overcome in the foreseeable future. You will learn:\nThe energetic cause behind all world events\nWhy invoking spiritual light can change everything\nHow to invoke spiritual energy right at home\nHow to know and fulfill your life’s plan\nHow to change the dynamic behind world events\nHow we humans have authority but not power\nHow to work with spiritual beings who have power\nHow to support people who work for change\nNOTE: This book is written as an introduction to the teachings of the the ascended masters and how you can use the spiritual tools they have given in order to make a decisive contribution to changing conditions on this planet. It is mostly new text but contains excerpts from previous dictations and three chapters from Healing Mother Earth. It also contains four new invocations that will not be published elsewhere, one for clearing each of the four octaves. I think even those familiar with ascended master teachings will find a useful and inspiring overview of the planetary dynamics.\nYou can also buy recordings of the four invocations. See below.\nYou may also be interested in this/these product(s)\nWorld Invocations 08: How You Can Help Change the World\nHow You Can Help Change the World","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1301157"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6417456865310669,"wiki_prob":0.6417456865310669,"text":"B2B startups share their secrets for acquiring enterprise customers\nConference Coverage, Conversion, Growth Hacking, Latest B2B News, Marketing, Sales, Top News July 28, 2017July 28, 2017 Shane Schick\nFor half a year, Michael Litt woke up to the same thing every morning: a series of wild goose chases to find his next enterprise customer.\nThe founder of Vidyard, the Waterloo Ont.-based provider of video marketing tools, would have spent the previous day pouring through a list of 85,000 companies which had been identified as having some kind of video hosted on their site. This had been culled from an original list of 1.8 million firms. Litt tried to find 100 companies every day that might be interested in his startup’s offerings. He would sent that list of 100 to Odesk, a freelance martketplace operating out of Manila, to find the best contacts at each firm. The names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses would be compiled as he slept.\n“The conversion rate was miserably low,” Litt recalled in a session at Techweek Toronto on Thursday, estimating he and his team contacted about 25,000 prospects in a six-month period. “We got about 200 customers paying maybe five dollars a month.”\nNeedless to say, Litt and Vidyard have learned a lot since then, but customer acquisition in B2B remains incredibly challenging, especially for new market entrants. A good example is Sampler, a company that uses targeted campaigns and peer recommendations to boost the results of companies offering samples to customers.\n“We’re going into these large enterprises and saying ‘Hey, the way you’re doing things is completely wrong,'” said Marie Chevrier, Sampler’s CEO. “There is quite a bit of education in the (sales) process. We can’t just walk in and assume we’ll get the sale.”\nOne of Sampler’s secrets, Chevrier said, was to enter as many public hackathons or innovation events hosted by large organizations. Sampler has entered six and won prizes in five, she said, but the biggest reward has been getting a faster route through traditionally slow procurement processes.\n“It means that in some cases, you get to do a pitch to do 30 brands at once. It’s all about finding things that they need that they don’t have time to develop,” she said. “Sometimes innovation programs are just for PR, but that’s okay too, because you’ll still find customers.”\nInfluitive, which provides products and services to help turn a company’s customers into brand advocates, makes sure that educating customers has a guaranteed payoff. Mark Organ, the firm’s founder and CEO, said his team has prospects sign what they call an “upfront contract,” which stipulates the prospect will agree to buy something after having the technology and strategy behind Influitive’s offerings explained to them.\n“Believe it or not, prospects really like that,” he said. “They don’t want to waste their time going through an endless buying process.”\nListening And Pricing\nOn the other hand, B2B startups need to demonstrate a strong ability to listen as well as to pitch, said Ali Pourdard, Co-Founder and CEO of Vancouver-based Progressa. Poudard’s firm works with consumers to help them get a second chance at credit, but that often involves working with enterprises and their collections departments. That’s a “negative space,” he said, which calls for a delicate and thoughtful approach.\n“We used to go in guns blazing and tell them we have data and ways to reduce their costs,” he said. What Progressa learned, though, is that some enterprises — particularly telecom providers — are more focused on improving their net promoter scores and customer perceptions. “Now we’re focused on how to make their customer’s lives good and how their NPS is going to improve. We walk in a lot more . . . well, we’re confident but we don’t act like we know more than they do.”\nBesides a generic “we don’t need this product,” the other big objection in B2B purchasing is price. Litt said Vidyard tackled that in part by removing pricing from its web site. That’s because competitors often pop up and, as he said, “try to price you to zero.” Instead, he said he and his team think of pricing as a constant work in progress.\n“When you do talk to customers , you have to own that conversation,” he said. “I would almost kind of waffle on pricing and be confident about everything else. Nine times out of 10, you’re probably pricing it too low.”\nTechweek Toronto wraps up today.\ncontracts, enterprise, Influitive, Progressa, prospects, Sampler, selling, Techweek Toronto, vidyard\nWhy Your Firm Needs a Better B2B Marketing Planning Process\nInside the Mind Of… Ken Klein","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line111374"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6270289421081543,"wiki_prob":0.3729710578918457,"text":"STARR STREET\nTime for a trip into the underground and our interview with Director John Waters. He just wrapped up a retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.\nIt’s a far cry from the underground where he got his start shocking and horrifying movie goers with his patented home movie style films.\nActually, most of them were homemade with a low budget and a cast of friends including his old friend Divine perhaps the most famous drag queen to ever grace the silver screen.\nSurely, you’d recognize her in Pink Flamingos where she ate a dog turd, a moment that many consider the most repulsive moment in cinematic history and a moment that is tied to every John Waters interview, feature, and documentary ever made – and he’s okay with that.\nIf a turd buffet isn’t your style, he’s also the guy behind Hairspray, a slightly more family friendly film. If by family friendly film you mean 1960’s era Baltimore race relations.\nYep, John Waters’ movies certainly get your attention. I got 15 minutes with the Pope of Trash where he discussed his films, where he wants to be buried, and he answers the most important question that no one ever asks - is John Waters single?\nJesse Regis: It’s kind of crazy out there. You had some people that couldn’t even get in and you were nice enough to go say hello to them.\nJohn Waters: Oh, they were so great. The first person got here at 1 o’clock in the afternoon to wait to get in and they couldn’t, well maybe the first person did get in, because a few people got in, but it’s great, especially for these movies. I was just watching it projected in 16mm on the screen for the first time in maybe 25 years, easy and I have flashbacks of when I used to be in all the theaters with my projector that I’d bring and sit up in the balcony and show three reels and have to stop the reel, in between, change the reel, rewind. Oh, it gave me all the paranoia. Is it going to break down? But, if it breaks down tonight I don’t have to fix it. That’s the glamor of Lincoln Center! No, it’s thrilling to see and it’s very weird to watch those movies because a lot of people are no longer with us, but some are. And I was just thinking , “Oh My God, I thought this up?” and it was right in the middle of the hippie years, and this is Multiple Maniacs, it’s hardly a peace and love movie it’s, I guess, a punk movie before there was punk rock. I didn’t know there was punk either. It was just our bad attitude.\nJR: We’re at Lincoln Center right now, which is “The Establishment.” It’s a really far cry from the underground and from the midnight movies - you so badly wanted to be a part of the New York underground – was it supposed to happen like this?\nJW: Maybe it was. It was the best thing that could have happened, certainly, because if it had just started and ended in the underground I wouldn’t have had the forty years later from that. For me, it is the ultimate irony in a way because Hag in a Black Leather Jacket only played one other time once in a beatnik coffee house , and the second time it played was fifty years later here at Lincoln Center – that’s kind of funny. Maybe it means if you stick around long enough…[Laughs] No, it was a great honor for me without any irony or anything because, yes, it’s Lincoln Center but the audiences are great. They’re all young, too. They tell me there’s all these young people at Lincoln Center – a younger audience than often is here.\nJR: A lot of what drove your movies back when you were just starting was the status quo – all the crap and conformity of the 50’s and the 60’s, and that’s really why you wanted to start shocking people, right?\nJW: Well, I wanted to surprise people and make them laugh. I understand why you say shock because in Multiple Maniacs Divine eats a raw cow’s heart, which was training wheels for eating a turd. I was trying to make you laugh at the same time. These were movies made to shock hippies, the early ones. The audience was totally hippies and they loved being shocked and it was an odd thing to see because they were “hippily-incorrect.” Certainly, there was no such thing as “politically correct.” I actually believe I am politically correct today. Multiple Maniacs is most definitely not politically correct. But, looking at it was making fun of liberal rules and I’m a bleeding heart liberal. I’m a Democrat, I’m a total liberal. But, I make fun of the rules. I make fun of gay rules because it seems now that gay people have more rules than my parents did. It’s getting like, “Wait a minute here…”\nJR: What gay rule do you hate the most?\nJW: That we have to be good all the time. That gay people have to be good and perfect. I have trouble with that. It’s the same thing I’m still doing in a way – testing rules and trying to surprise myself. And by shock, I try to make people laugh and I think today if I just tried to shock I wouldn’t still be doing it. After Pink Flamingos and after the scene where Divine ate the dog turd at the end – Johnny Knoxville today would do that I think he’s the closest. I love Johnny. But, if I kept trying to top that I don’t think I would have kept going. I think it would have been over.\nJR: You just mentioned Pink Flamingos. What does it mean to you, what does it say about that movie that people are still talking about it in nearly every interview that you do?\nJW: And still seeing it! Young people, you know, I do my spoken word show at colleges all the time - these kids weren’t born , their parents weren’t born when I made it. It’s great, it means that something worked right. It didn’t get mellower, it doesn’t look like old hat today. It has weird stuff. They sell babies that lesbian couples have which is not shocking anymore now. Lesbians, as I’ve said have more babies than Catholics. But still, they didn’t kidnap them and impregnate them in a pit.\nJR: The concept of your book Carsick fascinates me. I love meeting strangers – a lot of my show is meeting people on Craigslist and hanging out. You have a perverse sense of wanting to make strangers laugh. It’s very odd.\nJW: Well, you should hitchhike then. Hitchhiking is a thing that people don’t do anymore. When I hitchhiked across the country for Carsick I only saw one other hitchhiker the whole way. There weren’t any, I never even saw one. I think it’s something that people have nostalgia for. Young people they know about it, and they’d like to do it, but they don’t do it. My age we did it, certainly when they were young. When I was in High School it wasn’t even bad to hitchhike from your parent’s viewpoint. I mean, in private school or Catholic school everybody hitchhiked home from school. It was a normal thing. Today, if you see a hitchhiker you immediately think they’re a serial killer or a hooker. If they thought I was a hooker I didn’t get any offers. Well, one trucker did say that if I did have to sleep in the woods he could make up a bunk for me.\nJR: Okay! And…\nJW: Well, no, I got a ride.\nJR: Okay!\nJW: So I didn’t have to take him up. I would’ve! I got a hitchhiker. Someone picked me up. I was in a rest area and it was getting to be dark, I was in the middle of Kansas, and there were no cars there was nobody so I was saying to this trucker – he had to wait because he was getting his new orders on where to go – and I said, “I guess I’ll just have to sleep in the woods,” and he said, “I’ll make up a bunk for you if you don’t get a ride.” I thought, “Well, I would have slept there. I don’t know what would’ve happened. It would have been good for the book, and maybe bad for real life [laughs].\nJR: Or, it’s time for a sequel. Why not? Get back out there.\nJW: Well, no, I don’t have to hitchhike again. I did it. I think that it would be very anti-climactic to hitchhike again, unless if I’m stuck somewhere I know I can do it. I know I can get somewhere if I have to.\nJR: You told Rolling Stone recently that the independent movie world that you know is over, it’s done with.\nJW: It is for now. Yeah, it is completely over. And the things that killed it, I think, you can read a book called Sleepless in Hollywood by Lynda Obst or Ted Hope’s book [Hope for Film]. Basically, when DVD ended that was the safety net that everybody made money on, then everybody stopped buying them. And foreign deals that you got for free and you make them. That’s over with now. They’re not interested in witty comedies. And even if mine aren’t – even bad witty comedies they’re not after. They’re after hundred million dollar tent pole movies, or an independent movie like when I started that somebody who is twenty years old makes. It’s a great time for young filmmakers because they are looking for the film that you make on your cell phone camera. They’re just not looking for five million dollar independent movies, which my last movies were.\nJR: You worked with a lot of the same folks throughout all of your films. What does it bring to your films that you are so familiar with the cast? You mentioned Johnny Knoxville, he works with the same folks all the time. It must bring something special [to the table].\nJW: I think it’s like a theater group or a repertoire group. My audience that is my age have grown old with all of the people. I was just looking at Mink and Mary Vivian Pierce in Multiple Maniacs and that was forth-something years ago and they’re still in my movies. I think my audience likes that when they see the movies. They’ve grown old with Mink Stole. Even if you’re young if you watch the movies.\nJR: Your eyes light up when you talk about the people you’ve worked with in the past. You must be very fond of them.\nJW: Well, I’m fond because I’m glad I’ve had friends for fifty years, a lot of people don’t. It’s really better. They last longer than family, than boyfriends and girlfriends, anything. There’s ups and downs. You have fights, you have everything if you’ve known someone for that long, but I think that’s why we all bought burial plots in the same graveyard where we’re all going to be buried and we call it Disgraceland – that’s where Divine is. All of our parent’s we thought they’d be uptight about it, but they understood. They said, “We think that’s great.” Most people never get buried with their friends.\nJR: I never even considered something like that.\nJW: [Laughs] It’s a great idea!\nJR: Because most people get buried with their spouses…\nJW: Or their families. But, my brothers and sisters were married and in different places – they’re all not in the same place – I mean my parents are. But, I went to my parent’s graveyard where they were and they tried to rip me off. They showed me these vaults. They thought I was going to spend all this money. I just felt like they saw a sucker coming, that I was going to build Valentino’s vault, or something to myself. So, then, I had been in the graveyard in Towson, where I grew up, where Divine was buried and I just liked it. It was small and they handled the funeral very well there and everything so I bought a plot, then Pat did, then Mink, we’re all going to be buried there.\nJR: I never thought about being buried with your friends.\nJW: Well try it! It’s a good idea. Then all your friends can come one stop grieving.\nJR: You’d save on toll fare and gas.\nJW: Yeah!\nJR: Read that you are not necessarily for marriage.\nJW: I’m for everyone’s right to be married, my God. I mean my parent’s had a beautiful marriage.\nJR: For gay marriage….\nJW: For any marriage. It’s all the same to me. I personally don’t want to get married, but I fought, I campaigned with Governor O’Malley in Maryland to make gay marriage legal and then we won. Why anyone would be scared of two people falling in love is amazing to me. It’s hard to find anybody to fall in love with. I think if I fell in love with this table I should be able to marry it. I would choose not to, but the table would be faithful.\nJR: Is John Waters single?\nJW: Yes, but I have someone I see all the time. Yeah, but I’m not getting married. I have three ex’s, I’m friends with all of them.\nJR: Nobody has asked you that in all of this.\nJW: Oh, no, they never ask it. Still, no one knows my personal life because every boyfriend I’ve ever had has not been a public figure, and they don’t want to be. I like someone that has a completely different life. All my boyfriends are completely different from me. They have a different life, different careers. They’re not impressed by this, which I like. One of them said, “Oh, I’m not that interested in seeing those movies,” but that’s like saying, “I love you.” [Laughs] Because the last thing I want is a groupie.\nJR: So, being John Waters doesn’t make it difficult?\nJW: They know about it and they think it’s funny, and they like it, yeah. But, it’s not the main thing.\nJR: That’s fascinating for me. What’s left to accomplish? You’ve done so many things.\nJW: I’ve never wrote a novel. I’d like to do that. Even though all my films are fiction, so I’ve thought up fiction, I’ve just never did it in that sense. That’s about the only thing. I can’t sing or I would have had an album. I had two records out – The John Waters Christmas and A Date with John Waters, but that was a compilation. If I could sing, I would.\nJR: Was it with the Muppets? That wasn’t with The Muppets was it?\nJW: No, I didn’t do the Muppets. I was a puppeteer when I was very young though. That was my first career when I was 12 years-old with children’s birthday parties. Maybe I’ll do that again. After I retire I can do children’s birthday parties at ninety. Show up and do fucked-up kid’s birthday parties.\nJR: What would be your shtick? Dress up as a clown?\nJW: You don’t see the puppeteer, you’re hidden. I had hand puppets not marionettes. So, I guess I’d do maybe the Salò in puppets. Or, some hideous movie reenactment done with puppets for mature children.\nJR: For people who don’t know, for people who have never seen a John Waters film, what are they missing?\nJW: I don’t know, they’re missing anything, that’s up to them. I think that I did create a genre of my own which was exploitation films for art theaters. Each one of my movies is a parody of a genre of movies. I would say see Female Trouble, and Serial Mom, and then Hairspray, then you would probably understand everything that I’ve been about from the beginning.\nJR: And here you are after all these years at Lincoln Center.\nJW: At Lincoln Center. With my Pope of Trash crown firmly in place and my cloak checked in the coat department.\nOriginally aired September 2014 on BBOX Radio from Brooklyn, NY.\nInterview edited for length and clarity. All rights reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1250006"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7534303665161133,"wiki_prob":0.7534303665161133,"text":"3Solar\nEurope’s new highest 3S gondola lift incorporates a green design\nThe new 3S gondola lift up to the Klein Matterhorn above Zermatt, Switzerland, has some nice green credentials. Operating daily since November 1st this year, it has taken three years to build, during 100-day summer construction weather windows at around 3,800m above sea level\nThe new lift, which will run alongside the existing cable car, has won attention for multiple new features including some cabins with glass floors and others encrusted with Swarovski crystals. However it’s the lift’s eco-friendly design that’s generating a buzz in the environmental industry. This is because the south and west walls of the lift’s valley station are covered not in crystals, but in a total of 485 modules solar panels covering a surface area of 877m².\nThe solar station from the outside, as pictured below:\nThis solar power system at the new 3S cableway’s valley station can produce up to 135.8 kWp and will generate 157,000 kWh of energy a year – equivalent to the annual power usage of around 35 households. As opposed to conventional energy, this will reduce CO² emissions by up to 23.4 tonnes each year.\n“The PV modules had to be carefully selected to account for the alpine weather conditions at almost 3,000m above sea level, which also required the installation of a number of steel supports to combat the high winds. The energy-generating modules are slightly thicker than the conventional types in order to withstand the effects of the weather, such as ice formation and hail,”\nStefan Aufdenblatten, CEO of Elektrizitätswerk Zermatt AG (EWZ) explained, adding,\n“The Valley Station for the new lift is perfectly suited to a photovoltaics system with both location and available surfaces ideal for the installation.”\nInterspersed between the modules are 57 glass windows which serve as natural lighting for the building’s interior. These have been positioned in such a way that they allow light to fall not only on the boarding area, but also in vital areas for inspection and maintenance of the cableway. The result is a station flooded with sunlight and little need for artificial light sources.\nThough compared to international efforts the move seems revolutionary, the new solar generation area on the lift station is actually the third at the resort: Since April 2000, the south facade of the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise restaurant has supported 108 solar modules with a power rating of 23,650 kWp, generating 35,000 kWh a year. The high-yield photovoltaic system won Zermatt’s lift company the Swiss and European Solar Prizes in 2010.\nZermatt has also been operating another photovoltaics system at the MEX station on Trockener Steg since 2010. Here, 99 solar panels yield 21,780 kWp of power and generate 20,000 kWh annually.\nPreviousChalets Stand Against Plastic\nNextThe Olympic Problem","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line491279"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8657739758491516,"wiki_prob":0.8657739758491516,"text":"It is rare for schools to have such a long history of founding as Kuressaare Sea School. It has been known for about half a century. Already in 1840, the Maritime School opened in Kuressaare in the St Petersburg authorities.\nFollowing the issuance of the Russian Maritime Schools Act of 1867, the Governor General of the Baltics Albedinski has submitted to the Ministry of Finance a plan for the establishment of a Kuressaare Maritime School, which was not approved.\nIn 1880, the Russian Shipping Shipping Promotion Society was informed that the Saaremaa people would like to establish a very maritime school. 1887 Pilguse municipality has made a respective application.\nHowever, in the 1880s, many Seamen did not go to Saaremaa to study in the maritime schools in the continent in Heinast and Paldiski.\nSo, in the 1880s, only 4 young people went to study at the Paldiski Sea School in Kuressaare. In the same decade, the parish has gone to Hainas and 6 Paldiski Maritime Schools; Jämaja Parish has gone to Paldiski; Kaarma 2 to Paldiski; I am from Black Island from Käsmu Sea School and from Pöidl to Paldiski. A total of 16 seamen in 10 years.\nIt is possible that some students also studied in Riga or elsewhere. In the 1880s, in Hiiumaa, more than 26 seamen went to study in Estonian maritime schools. And yet, when the Kuressaare Maritime School was opened, Saaremaa was sufficiently educated. This shows that the need for such an institution actually existed.\nIn 1888, the curator of the Tartu Study Area Curator Kapustin submitted to the Ministry of Public Education a proposal to close the Maritime School of Užava in Kurama and to provide its national maintenance amounts (900 rubles per year) to the planned Kuressaare Maritime School. So it was known. But we do not know whether this was Kapustin's own idea or suggested to him such an opportunity. In this regard, at one time, sometimes it was talked about the transfer of the Užava school to Kuressaare. This point has been pointed out in 1985. also Ants Pärna, without being disappointed. Because of St. Petersburg, it might have seemed that it was merely the transfer of a maritime school from one point in Livonia to another.\nHowever, from our point of view, it was open in the 1870s and 1890s. Užava Sea School was closed in the history of maritime history of the Latvian nation, Kuressaare Sea School opened 100 years ago in the history of Estonian maritime history. These are two different educational institutions.\nThe establishment of the Kuressaare Maritime School was facilitated by the fact that there were affluent urban residents who sacrificed their treasures for school, such as Emilie and Ludvig Grosswald and others. And also, Mayor Julius Rehsche was an agar supporter of the establishment of a maritime school.\n1860-1880. The network of maritime schools established in the coastal provinces of the Baltic Sea in the years was uneven. On the Latvian coast from Heinäs to Liepaja there were 10 sea schools, only Paldiski, Käsmu and Narva schools were located on Estonian beaches. The establishment of a maritime school in Kuressaare significantly contributed to the network of marine schools that was at that time.\nThe Kuressaare Maritime School was opened on Sunday, November 17 (29), November 1891. school blessing. Teaching began on November 17, 18 (30) on Pikk Street with 17 students. Over the course of the winter, students came to the fore. Finally, they received 32 of them. In the spring of 1892, 9 sailors tested them. The invitation was made by Ivan Käsk and Karl Kider from Saaremaa, Nikolai Koževnikov from Kuressaare, Aleksander Kurikjaan and Juhan Rüis from Saaremaa, Toomas Mesbach from Harjumaa and Juhan Pärtel from Hiiumaa, Eduard Melkert from Kuressaare and Priidu Kõmmus from Hiiumaa. The youngest of these men was 20, the oldest 36-year-old.\nThere are two distinct periods in the history of czarist maritime education: 1867-1902, when the maritime schools worked under the relatively noble Maritime Schools Act of 1867; since 1902, when maritime education was more strictly subjected to bureaucratic control, centralization and russeting pressure on the central power. The Kuressaare Maritime School was founded at the time when the Maritime Schools Act of 1867 was still in force, but an intensive regional russification policy was already in place. Therefore, Kuressaare Maritime School was appointed on Nov. 5. In 1890, the Russian language of instruction approved in the statutes.\nAccording to the statutes, the goal of the school was to provide knowledge to the extent of the rider trainer's exam program. So he had to become a junior high school in I grade. However, as we have seen, at the first year of school, the school graduated two men with a call of a rider. In the spring of 1893, the four cephalopods, 8 outboard riders and 12 coast runners stopped at the school. This shows that the school went far beyond the level of education to formally awarded it to grade I and began to work as a third grade school. This was made possible by the fact that among the students there were mariners with a large seagoing experience. The tsarist government did not raise the level of the school and the state support, however, repeatedly.\nLeadership and teachers also played a part in their successful work. The first teacher (chairman) was Johan Prinz (1846-1923), a well-known outsider, who graduated from the Ventspils Maritime School after the school was opened. She taught primarily maritime subjects. For many years, Vassili Konstantinov from Kuressaare, who was later in the same office in Courland, was a teacher (auxiliary teacher) of Russian and general subjects. The mayor also belonged to the school board Rehsche.\nThe examination committee came together in Kuressaare every spring. For many years, its chairman was Colonel Glinsky, whose attitude was also part of the successful work of the school.\nAs stated, the Russian language was set as the language of instruction in the statutes. The fulfillment of this requirement by letter would have been very difficult in the 1890s and would have seriously damaged the purpose for which the school was founded. How did you actually act? There are conflicting data in the documents on this. Sometimes it is said that the language of instruction is Russian, sometimes it is added that the Estonian language is used as a language of instruction.\nAccording to Mihkel Komlem, \"learning was mainly born in Estonian, and German, Russian and English were used to get things done\" (\"Our Earth\", 24 August 1929). We can say that until the year 1902 Kuressaare Maritime School also escaped those sailors who knew little Russian or did not know at all.\nIn November 1894, the 2nd Congress of Russian Technical and Vocational Characters sent a questionnaire to 38 chairmen of the Maritime School. The responses were published in the \"Exporters\" of the Russian Shipping Shipbuilding Promotion Company. The answers to this questionnaire are also available at Kuressaare Maritime School 1894/95. a. in winter, as well as the opportunity to compare Kuressaare School with other maritime schools.\nFirst of all, it is announced that the municipality applied for the establishment of the Kuressaare Maritime School; the establishment of the school was also supported by the Russian Shipping Shipbuilding Promotion Society. The city government gives the school 171 rubles a year and chooses the school's board of directors (committee) dealing with economic and administrative issues. The school has 2 teachers: a specialist and general teacher.\nThe most important teaching materials are maps, compasses, chronometers, sextants, mechanical logs, compass deviation instruments, and ship drawings. (Of course, the teaching equipment came to years, so the school's small steam engine is spoken in 1898.) Compared to the answers of the Heinaste, Paldiski and Narva Schools, it seems that Kuressaare (1894) had less teaching aids. However, it was more or less equal to the Käsmu Maritime School.\nAt the entrance to the students' preliminary knowledge, it is said that all 32 students of the Kuressaare Maritime School were able to read and write, many of them had even more background knowledge. The Kuressaare Maritime School definitely dropped off from the Paldiski Maritime School, which had a large number of townspeople with elementary or even partial secondary education. Perhaps the pre-knowledge of the students of the Heinaste Marine School was somewhat better (because they all could have read more than write). However, many Russian nautical schools were literally illiterate. According to the questionnaire, one of the analfabees has also been released this year.\nThere were 8 days a day, 48 lessons per week. Teaching lasted from October 20 to March 20. There was no need for an ad school, because there were still more people to enter, than received. The main obstacle was the lack of space; The school had only 3 rented rooms: a classroom, a teacher's room and a dressing room. Uniforms were not available at that time, but the Kuressaare Maritime School has considered it desirable to introduce it.\nThe question of the teaching method (whether it is strictly mathematical or exemplary) corresponds to the Kuressaare Sea School: a mathematical method. For comparison: the Paldiski Sea School has an exemplary method, Käsmu - is mostly exemplary and in Heinaste both mathematical and exemplary.\nMost of all, the fact that it was still not turned into a school of grade III, although it was applied for since 1892, most of all was hampered by the normal development of the school. It was the result of a lack of money that did not allow for the renting of larger premises. In 1901, the situation went even worse: in the autumn it was moved to a cheaper, and therefore a smaller one. Again many readers of the study had to be denied.\nThe number of students in 1900/01. a. In winter it was 72, decreased by 1901/01. a. in the winter of 42 In the publications published so far, we can not find the annual number of pupils and graduates of Kuressaare Maritime School. However, summary data have been published.\nIn 1986, Saaremaa's \"Kommunismiehitaja\" directed the attention of J. Prinz to the preserved Estonian State Archives in Tallinn, which dates back to 1918 and 1919. Here, among other things, the number of pupils from the Kuressaare Maritime School in the form of a table is based on the winter breakdown of the school until 1915. Here is also information about the professional examinations each year. Number of students from the Maritime School from 1891 to 1904. There were a total of 530 years old. 491 of them were from Saaremaa (including Hiiumaa and the other western Estonian islands), and 39 from other countries.\nStudents were the least of 1894/95. and 1896/97. a. in winter - 25, at most 1900/01. a. in winter - 72. In total, during this period, in the 13 academic year, when it was worked out according to the order established in 1867, a professional examination was issued in 312 cases. The maritime school students completed 41 roadside bikes, 100 riders and 171 rider riders.\nFrom the number of students as a result of the work, the Kuressaare Maritime School dropped off the Heinaste Maritime School. The number of students exceeded the Narva and Paldiski Maritime Schools. In Kuressaare, graduates from the open carrier queue were much more than Käsmu.\nThe Maritime Schools Act of 1867 was, at the end of the 19th century, buried with characters from the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of the Interior for the vestment and civilization. Of course, the need to improve the material aspect of the maritime schools and to improve the teaching was evident. Also, the general level of education of the people has increased over the course of 30 years, which allowed for higher demands on applicants.\nThe changes were necessary. But by the 20th century. Initially, the reform of the sea schools was reflected in the attempts by the tsarist government to subordinate the sea schools to the central authority more vigorously, to make maritime education gradual, thereby preventing lower-level students from accessing upper-secondary schools, limiting the rights of unjustifiably lower categories of ship managers. Even though more money was being given to the schools of the sea, the results of such an injustice and the offensive of a nationalist reputation could not be fruitful.\nIn 1902 and 1903, the Maritime Schools, which worked well in Estonia, were reorganized into lower-level 2nd and 3rd class marine schools, which provided limited rights in comparison with the past. In 1918, J. Prinz wrote: \"On 1 July 1902 the Kuressaare Maritime School was transformed into a 2-class Maritime School (with three preparatory classes).\" According to other sources, the school was reorganized on July 2nd. And the preparation class was called a 3-class preparation school, headed by, as well as the Principal 2-class Maritime School.\nPrinz continued: \"The director of the school and 4 teachers were appointed to the program. Students were given tuition fees as follows: in special classes - from other rituals - 18 rubles per year, from local level 12 rubles per year, in preparatory classes - 10 from other rituals, 6 rbl per year.\nIn the fifth grade, there were an average of 50-70 students per year. The graduation of special classes was given by the rights of the Rifleman. During the school, 73 students completed such a call.\nThe graduation of the preparatory school gave the right to take a long-distance maritime school. A total of 75 students graduated from the preparatory school.\nAs evident from the above, the old seagoing classes achieved better results than the last converted school. This can be explained by the fact that the last school gave only the rights of a short-distance rider, which is why the more ambitious young men preferred to leave the country. \"\nSo Kuressaare started 2-kl. The Maritime School prepares engineers of IV grade, who in 1902 respectively. The law was entitled to be a transit freight trader to assist the captain and long-distance freight trains to help the captain's younger aid. No higher-level maritime schools in Estonia are open. It was unacceptable for some of the national educational needs of those who were then. Therefore, he called for 1902. the reform in the maritime circles of the European Union is an expression of resentment.\nIn the 2-class marine school, the number of students dropped. In the years 1904-1915 it fluctuated from only 11 to 22. The number of graduates also dropped in school. Students now came more distant (i.e. from the mainland) relatively slightly more than in the 1890's. Yet, the Kuressaare Maritime School was now largely an educational institution for islanders.\nThe cessation of organization of professional exams in Kuressaare speaks of deepening bureaucracy and distrust of local figures. To take exams, I had to go to Riga, where it was, of course, in Russian. Reform meant a new assault on mother tongue instruction in schools where it still existed.\nHow was teaching now in the Kuressaare Maritime School?\n1910/11/11. Juhan Piigert, a seafarer who studied at the Sea School Preparation School in winter, was reminded: \"The Estonian language was used in elementary classes, it was not forgotten. The teachers provided explanations in Estonian, but they included Russians, Latvians and others who did not know Estonian. They gave lessons in Russian The students of the Maritime School were those who did not know the Russian language. \"\n\"It is said in the\" Sea Calendar 1912 \":\" Kuressaare 2-year Maritime School will be accepted: who will complete a parish or folk dance school, or take an exam on this, and not less than 12 months old, and not less than 17 years old and sailing ships. those who are 13-17 years old and Russian to read and write and understand the 4 original characters of the planet. \"\nAs J. Piiger reminds us, the concessions of the students of the Russian language were made.\nSchool maintenance is said on 1906/07. a. According to the report, from the Ministry of Trade - 6890 rubles, from the city of 200 rubles, the tuition fee was 832 rubles. and the knight of Saaremaa 200 rbl., thus totaling 8122 rubles. One student spent teaching 174 rubles. At the school there was now a manager and 7 teachers (of which 4 were on the spot). Ants Piip (1906-1912) also worked as a teacher. The increase in the number of teachers meant a certain increase in the level of education and more scholasticism.\nThe new law, which was approved in 1909, no longer made any distinction between sailboats, steamboats and freight and passenger ship managers, but only between drivers of short and long voyages. This meant expanding the rights of lower-level marine schools. It was supposed to be followed by a new reform of the maritime schools, which, however, was not achieved in the tsarist era.\nIn the years of World War I, western Estonian naval schools (Heinaste, Kuressaare and Paldiski) were evacuated. 1915 Sept. 14 In the Daily newspaper, J. Prinz announced that \"Kuressaare Maritime School will not open this activity in the new academic year. Maritime school 2nd grade students will begin teaching Oct. 2 at the premises of the Golopristan Maritime School and the 3rd grade students of the preparatory school in the Herson Distant Maritime School. to take part in other schools. 1. Special class students and those who want to join the Maritime School may choose to go to other schools, but they will be passed too. \"\nAccording to the Tallinna Teataja (Aug. 4, 1916), the Kuressaare Maritime School moved to Golaja Pristan in 1915, while the preparatory class was Herson.\nI do not know if and how many students went to southern Ukraine. However, it increased in 1915/1916. a. In winter, the number of students in the Käsmu Maritime School is leaps and bounds. This is related to the evacuation of the western marine schools in Estonia.\nWhat was taken away from the treasury of the school?\nI quote from Mr Prinz from April 4, 1919, to the Education Department of Saaremaa County Government: \"All the assets of the maritime school have been evacuated to the city of Herson. There are empty cabinets, school desks and pillars here. The archive is completely here.\" According to A. Pärn, 19 items were also preserved in the hands of Prinz and were given to students in 1919. reopened to school.\nThus, the first activity period of nearly a quarter of a year ended in Kuressaare Maritime School. During that time about 350 professional sailors came from this school. Many of them are alive. I would mention only two men, whom Mihkel Kommel saw most notably 62 years ago.\nThese were Johan Pitka, the organizer of the Estonian naval force, who studied at Käsmu, Kuressaare and Paldiski Sea School (Examination of the Expeditionary Pantry in Tallinn in 1895) and Capt. Karl Jõgi, known in the history of polar exploration, under his leadership in 1928. icebreaker \"Krassin\" made a trip to rescue Umberto Nobile expedition.\nVäino Sirk","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1262232"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7852181792259216,"wiki_prob":0.7852181792259216,"text":"5 Classic Movies That Were Made Possible By Insane Schemes\nJim Ciscell ·\nLike it or not, film as an art form is all about money. Even a tiny independent film about a couple of dudes hanging around their apartment can cost more to make than an average waiter makes in a year.\nSo for the aspiring filmmakers who don't happen to have wealthy friends or connections at a studio, securing funding is by far the biggest obstacle between them and the fulfillment of their vision. Sometimes that means getting creative. Horribly, horribly creative.\nRobert Rodriguez Paid for Movies With Medical Experiments\nYou know director Robert Rodriguez from movies like Machete and Sin City, though he also finds time for family fare like the Spy Kids movies. But once upon a time (in the '90s), Rodriguez was an indie film hero for making El Mariachi. It was a microscopic budget film (made for as little as $7,000, reportedly) starring some dudes he knew and using every money-saving trick in the book. Rodriguez became an inspiration to every film student and video store clerk who dreamed of making a movie on their own terms, without having to sell out to The Man.\nBut how far did he have to go to scrape the cash together to make his little action movie? Let's put it this way: It involved letting people perform medical experiments on his body.\n\"Take everything except my artistic integrity. And my penis.\"\nIn his book Rebel Without a Crew, Rodriguez describes his life as a \"human lab rat,\" signing up for several rounds of drug testing and medical studies to generate enough cash to fund his short films and eventually his first full-length feature. It started with a desperate Rodriguez looking through classified ads and seeing he could get a few thousand dollars for participating in a medical experiment and staying in a hospital for about a week. It's one of those things that seems too good to be true if you've never seen a horror movie.\nRest assured, he's already recreated the whole agonizing experience in 4D.\nAnd, yes, there was a reason they didn't mention what the experiment actually entailed until he got there. The company running the experiment, with the delightfully evil-sounding name Pharmaco, was testing a drug to help with the healing of skin and muscle tissue. What they didn't mention in the ad is that to test \"healing\" his skin, they would have to \"wound\" his skin. A few football-shaped chunks out of the backs of his arms and a seven-day hospital stay later, and he found himself $2,000 richer.\nHe would have held the money in his arms but, you know, mangled.\nThis is when Rodriguez figured out that the medical studies that paid the most were high-paying for a reason -- they tended to hurt. Still, money was money, so he came back for more, signing up for studies that promised even longer stays (and presumably more awful side effects).\nTo fund El Mariachi directly, he signed up for a one-month drug trial that paid $3,000 but put him through Draconian scheduling (his days were planned out to the minute, and showing up late to things like meals or his daily blood draws would cost him $25 an occurrence). Even more fun, he was required to poop into clear Tupperware, place it in a fridge alongside the other patients' samples and discuss his poop's consistency with a drug counselor.\nIt only cost $7,000 and a lifetime of human dignity.\nIt would be worth it, in the end. Though the film didn't make much money, the right people noticed it. This enabled Rodriguez to more or less remake it as Desperado, launching the English-speaking careers of Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas in the process. Fifteen years later, Rodriguez is still making movies ... and he still has his medical testing scars to remind him where he came from.\nThe Original Willy Wonka Was Just One Big Product Placement\nMaybe you thought the 2005 Johnny Depp remake of 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a cynical ploy to cash in on a classic. Really, Hollywood, does even this eccentric childhood fantasy have to get sucked into your reboot machine?\nOompa Loompa, do-ba-dee-get out.\nWell, good news, kids. The 1971 original was just one big scheme to sell candy bars.\nThe odd back story began with a Hollywood producer named David Wolper who met with the Quaker Oats Company. They wanted a vehicle to launch a new chocolate bar. A short time later, who would walk in but director Mel Stuart, holding a copy of the Roald Dahl children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Having not read the book, but realizing that the word \"chocolate\" was in the title, Wolper convinced Quaker Oats that they totally needed to get into the movie business, preferably today.\ncitymama\n\"Can't it be Jedidiah Platte's Quiet, Traditional Oat Press?\"\nFaster than you can say \"golden ticket,\" Quaker Oats was on board to fully finance the project, paying for all pre-production, securing the movie rights to the novel and eventually putting up all the money for the multimillion dollar film budget. And best of all, from their perspective, they had a ready-made tie-in just waiting to be sold: the Quaker Oats-branded Wonka Bar. What could possibly go wrong?\nThe movie stayed within budget, was well received and posted a healthy 25 percent profit margin. Everybody wins, right? Well, everyone except for Quaker Oats. According to Wolper, the completed Wonka Bars shipped to some stores, but they faced a \"production problem\" that resulted in a speedy recall; namely, that the bars \"tasted horrible.\" OK, guys, how do you fuck up a chocolate bar?\nIf you can't get whipple-scrumptious into a recipe, then we can't help you.\nIt's true that Wonka-branded candy still exists on store shelves, but the Wonka logo that you see now is by Nestle and not the company that had specifically financed the entire endeavor as a means to sell their ill-begotten candy bar. \"Thanks for making the brand famous, Quaker Oats! We'll take it from here!\"\nThe Animal Farm Movie Was Funded by the CIA\nMost of the American readers in our audience didn't make it through middle school without reading George Orwell's Animal Farm, or at least seeing the animated movie. It's a cautionary tale about totalitarianism, as played out by adorable talking farm animals. The animals overthrow the owners of the farm where they're being raised (in an obvious allegory to the communist revolution), but over time, the animals find out they've traded one set of oppressors for another.\nThe lesson learned, of course, is that beer is awesome. Also, glue.\nDuring the Cold War, this was clearly the kind of story the American government wanted told. So when it came time to adapt it to a feature-length cartoon, the filmmakers found themselves with a surprising backer: the freaking CIA.\nIn the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency decided that the book by the then-recently deceased George Orwell would be ideal propaganda against what they saw as growing pro-Communist sentiment. So clearly that shit needed to get into theaters.\n\"This is the only way to stop the next generation of beatniks.\"\nWorking through intermediaries, the CIA labored behind the scenes to secure the rights to the novel and to get the project made. First, sending a representative to England, they convinced Orwell's widow to sign over the film rights. What did it take for her to do something so, well, Orwellian? They told her they could arrange for her to meet her movie star hero, Clark Gable.\nThis is the handsome cost of capitalism, America.\nThe CIA also made arrangements for the film to be made entirely in Britain, which is vaguely ironic since American taxpayers were funding it. Everything was done in the shadows -- so complete was the hidden nature of their involvement that the people actually making the film never knew that they were working with the CIA. In fact, news of the CIA's involvement was kept under wraps for almost 50 years. Considering that the modern CIA can keep a secret for about three months, this is fairly astonishing.\nWe're still waiting on the news that The Human Centipede Full Sequence is a slam on trickle-down economics.\nThese days you can view the entire thing online for free. Or, you can just repeat the seventh grade.\nEd Wood Got a Church to Fund Plan 9 From Outer Space\nMost readers have probably heard of Ed Wood, either as \"the guy who made Plan 9 From Outer Space\" or as the subject of the 1994 Tim Burton film with Johnny Depp as the title character. A World War II hero who also happened to be a transvestite who loved angora sweaters, Wood created some of the world's worst films, and as a result would be remembered longer than a whole lot of people who made good ones.\nCitizen Kane never had any zombie-on-boob action.\nThe following story was also told in the Tim Burton film, though some of you who saw it probably thought it was too stupid to be anything but an addition by an imaginative screenwriter. The story goes that Wood, having a habit of making everything he touched terrible, found that securing funding for his magnum opus, Grave Robbers From Outer Space, was nearly impossible.\n\"You have got to stop approaching us like this, Ed.\"\nEnter the Baptist Church of Beverly Hills, whose members were interested in producing a series of films about the apostles. Wood convinced them that if they financed a hit science fiction movie first, they could use the proceeds to produce the rest of their films. Which may have been a great idea, if the science fiction movie was not going to turn out to be Plan 9 From Outer Space (renamed from Grave Robbers From Outer Space at the Baptist Church's insistence).\nNo one knows God's plans 1-8, but 9 somehow involves Frisbees and terrible cinematography.\nThere was only one catch: The Baptists mandated that, to secure the funding, Wood and the entire cast had to be baptized into their church. They agreed, and the whole cast and crew -- from Vampira to pro wrestler Tor Johnson to Wood himself -- entered the waters of baptism and came out Baptists. Baptists who now had enough scratch to fund their monster movie.\nAll these satanic creatures have God's blessing.\nIn a twist that surprised absolutely nobody but the church and maybe Wood himself, the film completely tanked and of course did not produce the necessary funds to get the apostle movies made. And, whoever approved the use of church funds for the project was probably fired and ... his baptism revoked? Whatever the rule is there.\nThat'll teach you to Bapts!\nMelvin Van Peebles Suffered for His Art, or At Least His Penis Did\nWhen filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles completed a hit film called Watermelon Man, a comedy about a white man who wakes up black one day, Columbia Pictures offered him a three-movie contract. In response, Van Peebles said, \"Great, how about a porn film about a militant black man standing up to the white establishment?\"\n\"At the end it'll just cut to black with the words 'FUCK HOLLYWOOD' flashing in neon for the next 30 minutes.\"\nNeedless to say, he now had no studio financing. So, Van Peebles took out a personal loan from Bill Cosby for $50,000, who was apparently as big a fan of militant porn as he was Jell-O Pudding Pops. With some starter money, Van Peebles got to work on what would become Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.\nWow look, it stars a dog.\nTo defray costs, Van Peebles approached the project Orson Welles-style -- he produced it, directed it, acted in it, wrote the film's screenplay, scored the entire soundtrack and performed all the stunts. And by performed all the stunts, we don't only mean being thrown off of a truck; we mean personally doing the boning. And by boning, we mean having thoroughly unprotected sex with a woman he never bothered to have medically tested. He also had his 13-year-old son, Mario Van Peebles, film a flashback sex scene with a prostitute, and the scene is so graphic it's difficult to know if the sex is simulated or not.\nIt sure is difficult with all those boxes in the way.\nProbably because the universe has a way of righting these kinds of things, Van Peebles Sr. contracted gonorrhea from the said boning. But because he was a lunatic, he filed a claim with the Director's Guild of America that claimed he was hurt while making his film and required workman's compensation. For the STD he got from having unprotected sex on camera.\nSomehow (probably because it was the '70s), the guild took pity on his plight and actually mailed him a check. Which he used to not do anything silly like treat the gonorrhea, but to buy more film to complete the movie.\n\"Unless the Man pays for my STD, in which case, he's cool.\"\nKnowing that the movie resulted in an STD and the emotional scarring of his son, Van Peebles today is completely ashamed of his actions. And by that we mean he brags about it every chance he gets.\n\"STDs? I've almost got the whole set.\"\nFor more terrifying behind-the-scenes looks, check out 6 Beloved TV Shows (That Traumatized Cast Members For Life) and 12 Classic Movie Moments Made Possible by Abuse and Murder.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1404577"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6272801756858826,"wiki_prob":0.6272801756858826,"text":"Building awareness and credibility by becoming a thought leader\nBy Katie Kuehner-Hebert\nApril 06, 2017, 12:24 p.m. EDT\nAdvisers can expand their practices by becoming “thought leaders” in media outlets.\nWriting these articles in a tone that makes decision-making and financial issues approachable can help advisers differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace, says Joe Anthony, president of financial services at Gregory FCA in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.\n“Think of published articles and media interviews as a way to let your prospective customer sample that advice and see how you might approach an issue of concern in their financial advice,” he says. “Write or speak in a manner that addresses the issue from the potential client’s point of view.”\nUsing a variety of media outlets as a resource can help build awareness and credibility and help answer questions on planning topics, says Claudia Mott, a CFP and the principal of Epona Financial Solutions in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.\n“Most folks have questions about their finances and don’t always know where to turn to get the answers,” she says.\n“A sense of trust can start to be developed when a topic of interest appears in a local newspaper, website or blog that is familiar to them that is written by someone who is geographically close by. Becoming a regular contributor helps develop that sense of reliability and knowledge that many look for when they seek out financial planning services,” Mott says.\nEven if very few people read a thought leader piece in one media outlet, an advisory firm can repost the article on its own Facebook page, as well as on LinkedIn and Twitter, says Andrew Bellak, founder and chief executive of Stakeholders Capital, based in both Amherst, Massachusetts and Santa Monica, California.\nThe advisers at Monument Wealth Management in Alexandria, Virginia have had thought leader pieces published in Financial Planning magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post, says Dean Catino, a CFP and the firm’s co-founder and president.\n“It’s nice to get that recognition, and we would post to our website and push out the articles to our clients in various mediums, including Facebook Twitter and email,” he says.\nMonument Wealth Management also has a weekly blog that goes out to clients, advocates and prospects, capturing weekly financial events, planning and investment advice from the firm’s independent perspective, Catino says.\n“It is relatively short and to the point and written plainly but with flair,” he says.\nThis story is part of a 30-30 series on strategies to boost your practice.\nKatie Kuehner-Hebert\nPractice managementClient relationsClient communicationsMarketing30 Days: Strategies to Boost Your Practice30 Days 30 Ways","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1148733"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6667603254318237,"wiki_prob":0.33323967456817627,"text":"WorldFish and Skretting sign MoU to develop aquaculture in Africa\nWorldFish and Skretting have solidified their growing partnership to address food and nutrition security in Africa through collaborative aquaculture support and innovation.\nAccording to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the world population will reach 9.8 billion by 2050. It is predicted that half of this growth will come from nine countries, five of those in Africa. To contribute to feeding this growing population, aquaculture productivity in Africa must increase at a faster rate than the global average.\nThe partnership will initially focus on two key areas. The first is understanding and analyzing the structure of the aquaculture industry in Africa. Knowing the different stakeholders involved and their impact on the value chain allows for better decision-making and public policy. The second is analyzing and improving farming practices. The partners will work with a panel of fish farmers to develop best management practices, and test new technologies using mobile applications to gather and feed back data to the farmers to enhance performance.\n“We believe that strategic collaborations with the private sector are essential for accelerating the sustainable development of aquaculture in Africa’s developing economies,” says Dr. Gareth Johnstone, Director General, WorldFish. “Our partnership with Skretting will enable the scaling of tried and tested technologies and best practices—one of our core goals—paving the way for fish to boost more nutritious diets, and secure steady incomes and improved livelihoods across the continent. WorldFish and Skretting share a common vision for how science and innovation must underpin this process, and we will work together to roll out affordable solutions that effectively target and reach the millions of people who depend on fish.”\n“Skretting wants to help achieve food security in Africa, a goal that is in line with our mission of ‘Feeding the Future’,” says Rob Kiers, Managing Director Skretting Asia and Africa. “Fish is an important part of the diet in African countries, where 18.4% of animal protein intake comes from fish. We will work with WorldFish to develop the local aquaculture industry in a shared-value approach and collect data to deliver fish farmers the right feed according to their needs.”\nSkretting and WorldFish have been working together for over two years at the WorldFish Aquaculture Research and Training Center in Abbassa, Egypt on tilapia nutrition and raw feed material evaluation, and have also collaborated on Skretting’s Community Development Project in Zambia.\nThe solidification of the partnership will enable both parties to further develop aquaculture, have a greater positive impact on the livelihoods and well-being of small-scale fish farmers and contribute to achieving food and nutrition security in Africa. Initial projects in Egypt and Zambia are due to start in 2019.\nEmpowering small-scale tilapia farmers in Zambia\nSkretting continues its support for aquaculture growth in Africa with the latest community development project underway in Zambia set to improve the livelihoods of tilapia farmers. Forty five farmers are participating in the project of which 44% are women.\nCommunity development in Nigeria\nSince 2015, Skretting has been involved in improving the performance of Nigerian catfish farming.\nIt's not just what we aspire to do, it's what we do.\nSkretting's focus on sustainable aquaculture is committed through our Nuterra programme, which is designed to live up to our responsibilities and ambitions over a period of several years as we work to fulfil our mission of “Feeding the Future”. The objectives are aligned with the long-term goals of our strategy as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1302486"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9542070031166077,"wiki_prob":0.9542070031166077,"text":"The Coxcomb (Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher)\nThis text was copied from Wikipedia on 14 January 2020 at 6:03AM.\nThe Coxcomb is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.\n1 Date and performance\n2 Authorship\n3 After 1642\nDate and performance\nScholars date the play to c. 1608–10, based on contemporary allusions and availability of sources. (It has been argued that one of the play's sources was the \"Curious Impertinent\" episode in Don Quixote, which was published in French translation in 1608, that translation being the playwrights' source. Ben Jonson refers to the play in The Alchemist in 1610.) The Coxcomb was performed at Court early in November 1612 by the Children of the Queen's Revels.\nThe play's text in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 provides a cast list for one production, a list that cites Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, Robert Benfield, and William Barkstead. This combination of personnel matches not the Queen's Revels Children but the Lady Elizabeth's Men. The former company combined with the latter for a time in 1613. The children's troupe later passed out of existence, leaving some of its plays, including The Coxcomb, behind with the Lady Elizabeth's company.\nThe play then passed into the possession of the King's Men, who acted it at Court on 5 March 1622, and on 17 November 1636.[1]\nCyrus Hoy, in his survey of authorship problems in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators, provided this breakdown between the respective shares of Beaumont and Fletcher:[2]\nBeaumont — Act I, scene 4; Act II, 4; Act IV, 1, 3, and 7; Act V;\nFletcher — Act I, scenes 1-3 and 5; Act II, 1 and 3; Act III, 1 and 2; Act IV, 2, 4-6, and 8;\nBeaumont and Fletcher — Act I, scene 6; Act II, 2; Act III, 3.\nCritics have long recognized that the existing text is a revised version of the Beaumont and Fletcher original, likely done for one of the King's Men's revivals. The favorite candidate for the reviser is Philip Massinger, a major participant in Fletcher's canon; but William Rowley has also been considered.[3][4] If the revision was done for the 1636 revival, as some believe, Rowley would be eliminated, since he died a decade earlier.\nAlong with many other plays in Fletcher's canon, The Coxcomb was revived during the Restoration era; it proved popular, and was reprinted in a single-play edition in 1718. The play is one of the relatively few Beaumont/Fletcher works given a performance in later centuries; it was acted by the Elizabethan Stage Society in the Hall of the Inner Temple on 10 February 1898 — a production reviewed by George Bernard Shaw.[5]\n^ E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 223.\n^ Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978; p. 58.\n^ E. H. C. Oliphant, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to Determine Their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others. , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1927; p. 269.\n^ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 224.\n^ George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays, with an Apology, New York, Brentano, 1907; pp. 418-28.\n2 Annotations\n✹\nTerry Foreman on 18 Mar 2012 • Link\nThe Coxcomb a Comedy\nWitten by Mr. Francis Beaumont and Mr. John Fletcher\nText via Google eBook\nhttp://books.google.com/books?id=FbUNAAAAQAAJ&pri…\nTerry Foreman on 25 Jun 2016 • Link\nTHE COXCOMB. A Comedy.\nhttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/35303/35303-h/3530…\nLog in to post an annotation.\nIf you don't have an account, then register here.\nChart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1359985"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8556994199752808,"wiki_prob":0.8556994199752808,"text":"CRIMINAL CODE (TERRORIST ORGANISATION--LASHKAR-E-TAYYIBA) REGULATIONS 2018 (F2018L01085)\nIssued by the authority of the Minister for Home Affairs\nCriminal Code Act 1995\nCriminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulations 2018\nThe purpose of the Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulations 2018 (the Regulations) is to specify Lashkar-e-Tayyiba for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code.[1] Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is currently specified for this purpose by the Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulation 2015, which is repealed by the Regulations. Details of the Regulations are set out in Attachment A.\nSection 5 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations prescribing matters required or permitted by the Act to be prescribed, or necessary or convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act. The Schedule to the Act sets out the Criminal Code.\nParagraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code provides that regulations can specify organisations for the purposes of the definition of 'terrorist organisation'.\nSubsection 102.1(2) of the Criminal Code provides that before the Governor-General makes regulations specifying an organisation for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1), the Minister must be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organisation is directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act or advocates the doing of a terrorist act.\nThe Minister for Home Affairs is satisfied on reasonable grounds that Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act, or advocates the doing of a terrorist act. In coming to this position, the Minister for Home Affairs has taken into consideration an unclassified Statement of Reasons provided by the Director-General of Security, as well as advice from the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS). The Statement of Reasons is at Attachment B.\nEffect of the instrument\nDivision 102 of the Criminal Code sets out the following offences relating to terrorist organisations\n* directing the activities of a terrorist organisation\n* being a member of a terrorist organisation\n* recruiting persons to a terrorist organisation\n* receiving training from, providing training to or participating in training with a terrorist organisation\n* getting funds to, from or for a terrorist organisation\n* providing support to a terrorist organisation, and\n* associating with a terrorist organisation.\nThe Regulations ensure that the offences in Division 102 of the Criminal Code continue to apply to conduct relating to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. Regulations specifying Lashkar-e-Tayyiba as a terrorist organisation have been in effect since 2003.\nThe Regulations are a legislative instrument for the purposes of the Legislation Act 2003.\nThe Regulations commence on the day after it is registered. Subsection 102.1(3) of the Criminal Code provides that regulations for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' cease to have effect on the third anniversary of the day on which they take effect.\nThe unclassified Statement of Reasons was prepared by the National Threat Assessment Centre in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, in consultation with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Home Affairs (Home Affairs). Home Affairs also sought the advice of the AGS to inform the decision of the Minister for Home Affairs.\nSubsection 102.1(2A) of the Criminal Code provides that before the Governor-General makes a regulation specifying an organisation for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code, the Minister must arrange for the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives to be briefed in relation to the proposed regulation. The Minister for Home Affairs wrote to the Leader of the Opposition enclosing the information upon which he was satisfied that Lashkar-e-Tayyiba met the legislative criteria for listing.\nThe Intergovernmental Agreement on Counter-Terrorism Laws (June 2004) (the IGA) requires that the Commonwealth Government consult with the governments of the states and territories prior to making regulations specifying an organisation for the purposes of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code. The IGA provides that if a majority of the states and territories object to the making of such a regulation within a time frame nominated by the Commonwealth, and provide reasons for their objections, the Commonwealth will not make the regulation at that time.\nThe Minister for Home Affairs wrote, on behalf of the Prime Minister, to the Premiers and Chief Ministers of the states and territories. A majority of the states and territories did not object to the making of the Regulations within the time frame nominated by the Minister.\nStatement of Compatibility with Human Rights\nThe Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulations 2018 (the Regulations) specifies Lashkar-e-Tayyiba for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code.\nThe object of the Regulations is to identify Lashkar-e-Tayyiba as a terrorist organisation under Australian law, and put the organisation and members of the public on notice of that fact. Notification is important to help people avoid engaging in activities which might constitute an offence under Division 102 of the Criminal Code in relation to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.\nThe Regulations, which are part of Australia's terrorist organisation listing regime, support the application of the offences in Division 102 of the Criminal Code, the object of which is to protect national security, public safety and the rights and freedoms of persons within and outside of Australia. In particular, the Regulations provide that the offence of associating with a terrorist organisation in section 102.8 of the Criminal Code applies in relation to associating with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.\nTerrorist organisations, including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, present a threat to the security of Australia and often seek to harm Australians and our democratic institutions. The statutory definition of a 'terrorist organisation' requires that these bodies directly or indirectly engage in, prepare, plan, assist in or foster the doing of a terrorist act which includes the causing of serious harm to persons or death and serious damage to property (refer to Attachment B for details).\nHuman rights implications\nThe Regulations promote the following human rights contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):\n* the inherent right to life in Article 6.\nThe Regulations limit the following human rights contained in the ICCPR:\n* the right to freedom of expression in Article 19, and\n* the right to freedom of association in Article 22.\nThe inherent right to life in Article 6\nArticle 6 of the ICCPR provides that countries have a duty to take appropriate steps to protect the right to life and to investigate arbitrary or unlawful killings and punish offenders. The Regulations, and the terrorist organisation listing regime more broadly, ensure that the offence provisions in Division 102 of the Criminal Code apply to certain conduct in relation to listed terrorist organisations. These offence provisions operate to penalise conduct that presents a significant risk to life, both in Australia and overseas, and, in conjunction with the terrorist organisation listing regime, also act as a deterrent to that conduct. Deterring the conduct, and thereby preventing the risk to life, promotes the inherent right to life expressed in Article 6 of the ICCPR.\nThe right to freedom of expression in Article 19\nArticle 19(2) of the ICCPR provides that everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression. However, Article 19(3) provides that freedom of expression may be limited if it is necessary to achieve a legitimate purpose, including for the protection of national security. The Regulations, and the terrorist organisation listing regime more broadly, limit the right to freedom of expression to the extent that persons are prohibited from directing the activities of, recruiting for, providing support to or associating with terrorist organisations, including Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. The restrictions on freedom of expression are justified on the basis that such conduct could jeopardise the security of Australia, the personal safety of its population and its national interests and the restrictions are reasonable, necessary and proportionate to the objective of protecting Australia's national security.\nThe right to freedom of association in Article 22\nArticle 22 of the ICCPR protects the right of all persons to group together voluntarily for a common goal and to form and join an organisation. Article 22(2) provides that this right may be limited for the purpose of national security. The Regulations, and the terrorist organisation listing regime more broadly, limit the right of freedom of association to prevent people engaging with and participating in terrorist organisations, in this instance Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.\nThe offence of associating with a terrorist organisation in section 102.8 of the Criminal Code is limited in its application to an organisation that is a listed terrorist organisation under the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in paragraph 102.1(1)(b) of the Criminal Code. The offence does not apply if the association is with a close family member and relates to a matter of family or domestic concern, or takes place in the course of practicing a religion in a place used for public religious worship, or the association is only for the purpose of providing humanitarian aid or only for the purpose of providing legal advice or legal representation.\nDue to the severity of the danger posed by terrorist organisations, it is reasonable, necessary and proportionate to limit the right of individuals who, by their association with a terrorist organisation, pose a threat to Australians.\nGeneral safeguards and accountability mechanisms\nWhilst the Regulations may limit the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of association with Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Regulations are subject to the safeguards outlined below. The limits on these rights are reasonable, necessary and proportionate, and are in the interests of public safety and national security, after taking into consideration the direct and indirect terrorist activities of the organisation, which threaten human life.\nThe Criminal Code provides safeguards and accountability mechanisms requiring prior consultation and enabling review of the Regulations, including the following:\n* the Commonwealth must consult with the states and territories in accordance with the Intergovernmental Agreement on Counter-Terrorism Laws of 25 June 2004, and the Regulations may only be made if a majority of the states and territories do not object to the Regulations within a reasonable time specified by the Commonwealth\n* under subsection 102.1(2A) of the Criminal Code the Minister must arrange for the Leader of the Opposition to be briefed in relation to the proposed Regulations\n* under subsection 102.1(3) the Criminal Code, the Regulations will cease to have effect on the third anniversary of the day on which it takes effect\n* subsection 102.1(4) of the Criminal Code provides that if the Minister ceases to be satisfied of the criteria necessary for listing an organisation under subsection 102.1(2) of the Criminal Code, the Minister must make a declaration to that effect by written notice published in the Gazette, with the effect of the Minister's declaration that the Regulations listing the organisation cease to have effect and the organisation is de-listed as a terrorist organisation under Division 102 of the Criminal Code\n* subsection 102.1(17) of the Criminal Code provides that an individual or an organisation may make a de-listing application to the Minister\n* the Regulations may be reviewed by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security under section 102.1A of the Criminal Code, and\n* both Houses of Parliament may disallow the Regulations within the applicable disallowance period, which is 15 sitting days after the Regulations are laid before that House, as provided for in subsection 102.1A(4) of the Criminal Code.\nThe Regulations are compatible with human rights because they promote the protection of human rights. To the extent that the terrorist organisation listing regime, of which the Regulations are part, may also limit human rights, those limitations achieve a legitimate purpose and are reasonable, necessary and proportionate.\nDetails of the Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulations 2018\nSection 1 - Name\nThis section would provide that the title of the Regulation is the Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulations 2018.\nSection 2 - Commencement\nThis section would provide for the commencement of each paragraph in the instrument, as set out in the table.\nSubsection (1) would provide that each provision in the instrument specified in column 1 of the table commences in accordance with column 2 of the table, and that any other statement in column 2 has effect according to its terms. Columns 1 and 2 would provide that the Regulations commence the day after the instrument is registered.\nThe note to subsection (1) would clarify that the table only relates to the provisions of this instrument as originally made, and that it will not be amended to deal with any later amendments to the instrument.\nSubsection (2) would provide that information in column 3 of the table is not part of the instrument. It is designed to assist readers, and may be updated or changed in any published version of these Regulations. Column 3 is empty at the time of making the instrument.\nSection 3 - Authority\nThis section would provide that the Regulations are made under the Criminal Code Act 1995.\nSection 4 - Schedules\nThis section would provide each instrument that is specified in a Schedule to the instrument is amended or repealed as set out in the applicable items in the Schedule concerned and that any other item in a Schedule has effect according to its terms. Schedule 1 to the instrument would repeal the whole of the Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulation 2015.\nSection 5 - Terrorist organisation -- Lashkar-e-Tayyiba\nSubsection (1) would provide that for paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code, the organisation known as Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is specified.\nSubsection (2) would provide that Lashkar-e-Tayyiba is also known by the following names:\n(a) � al Mansooreen;\n(b) al Mansoorian;\n(c) Army of Medina;\n(d) Army of the Pure;\n(e) Army of the Pure and Righteous;\n(f) Army of the Righteous;\n(g) Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation;\n(h) Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq;\n(i) Jama'at al-Dawa;\n(j) Jama'at-i-Dawat;\n(k) Jamaati-ud-Dawa;\n(l) Jamaat ud-Daawa;\n(m) Jama'at-ud-Da'awa;\n(n) Jama'at-ud-Da'awah;\n(o) Jamaat-ud-Dawa;\n(p) Jama'at ul-Da'awa;\n(q) Jamaat-ul-Dawa;\n� (r) Jamaat ul-Dawah;\n(s) Jamaiat-ud-Dawa;\n(t) JuD;\n(u) JUD;\n(v) Lashkar-e-Taiba;\n(w) Lashkar-e-Tayyaba;\n(x) Lashkar-e-Toiba;\n(y) Lashkar-i-Tayyaba;\n(z) Lashkar-i-Toiba;\n(za) Lashkar-Tayyiba;\n(zb) LeT;\n(zc) LT;\n(zd) Milli Muslim League;\n(ze) Paasban-e‑Ahle-Hadis;\n(zf) Paasban-e-Kashmir;\n(zg) Paasban-i-Ahle-Hadith;\n(zh) Party of Preachers;\n(zi) Party of the Calling;\n(zj) Pasban-e-Ahle-Hadith;\n(zk) Pasban-e-Kashmir;\n(zl) Soldiers of the Pure;\n(zm) Tehreek;\n(zn) Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal.\nSchedule 1--Repeals\nSchedule 1 would provide that Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulation 2015 is repealed.\nThe Criminal Code (Terrorist Organisation--Lashkar-e-Tayyiba) Regulation 2015 specifies Lashkar-e-Tayyiba as a terrorist organisation for the purposes of paragraph (b) of the definition of 'terrorist organisation' in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code. The proposed clause would ensure there is no duplication where the new Regulations are made before the current Regulation ceases to have effect.\nSTATEMENT OF REASONS FOR LASHKAR-E-TAYYIBA\nAlso known as: al Mansooreen; al Mansoorian; Army of Medina; Army of the Pure; Army of the Pure and Righteous; Army of the Righteous; Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation; Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq; Jama'at al-Dawa; Jama'at-i-Dawat; Jamaati-ud-Dawa; Jamaat ud-Daawa; Jama'at-ud-Da'awa; Jama'at-ud-Da'awah; Jamaat-ud-Dawa; Jama'at ul-Da'awa; Jamaat-ul-Dawa; Jamaat ul-Dawah; Jamaiat-ud-Dawa; JuD; JUD; Lashkar-e-Taiba; Lashkar-e-Tayyaba; Lashkar-e-Toiba; Lashkar-i-Tayyaba; Lashkar-i-Toiba; Lashkar-Tayyiba; LeT; LT; Paasban-e-Ahle-Hadis; Milli Muslim League; Paasban-e-Kashmir; Paasban-i-Ahle-Hadith; Party of the Calling; Party of Preachers; Pasban-e-Ahle-Hadith; Pasban-e-Kashmir; Soldiers of the Pure; and Tehreek-e-Tahafuz Qibla Awal\nThis statement is based on publicly available information about Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT). To the Australian Government's knowledge, this information is accurate, reliable and has been corroborated by classified information.\nBasis for listing a terrorist organisation\nDivision 102 of the Criminal Code provides that for an organisation to be listed as a terrorist organisation, the Minister for Home Affairs must be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organisation:\na) is directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, or assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act; or\nb) advocates the doing of a terrorist act.\nFor the purposes of listing a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code, the doing of a terrorist act includes the doing of a specific terrorist act, the doing of more than one terrorist act and the doing of a terrorist act, even if a terrorist act does not occur.\nBackground to this listing\nThe Australian Government first proscribed LeT as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code on 9 November 2003. LeT was re-listed on 5 June 2005, 7 October 2005, 8 September 2007, 8 September 2009, 18 August 2012 and 11 August 2015.\nTerrorist activity of the organisation\nLeT is a Pakistan-based Sunni Islamic extremist organisation that uses violence in pursuit of its stated objective of uniting Indian administered Kashmir (IaK) with Pakistan under a radical interpretation of Islamic law. LeT's broader objectives include establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the Indian subcontinent. To this end, LeT intends to pursue the 'liberation', not only of Muslim-majority Kashmir, but of all India's Muslim population, even in areas where they do not form a majority. LeT has declared that democracy is antithetical to Islamic law and that LeT's jihad requires it to work toward turning Pakistan itself into an Islamic state.\nLeT was formed circa 1989 as the military wing of the Pakistan-based Islamist fundamentalist movement Markaz al-Dawa wal Irshad (MDI--meaning, the Centre for Religious Learning and Propagation and also known as the Jamaat al-Dawa). Originally formed to wage militant jihad against the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, LeT shifted its focus to the insurgency in IaK in the 1990s, after Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan.\nDespite the Pakistani Government banning LeT in 2002, the group continues to operate in Pakistan under the alias Jamaat ud-Dawa (JuD). Ostensibly created as a charitable organisation by LeT founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed immediately prior to LeT being banned, JuD functions as a front organisation for LeT to mask its activities and to continue to solicit funds. The United Nations Security Council listed JuD as a LeT alias on 10 December 2008. In August 2017 JuD set up a new political party, the Milli Muslim League (MML), headed up by Saifullah Khalid, a long time JuD operative. In December 2017 Hafiz Saeed confirmed that JuD would contest the 2018 general elections under the banner of MML.\nWhile IaK and broader Indian interests remain LeT's primary focus, there is potential for splinter groups to emerge who want to re-focus their activities and more closely align with al-Qa'ida's 'global jihad' against the United States and Israel and their allies. However, LeT's primary objective remains the 'liberation' of Muslims in IaK.\nDirectly or indirectly engaged in preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of terrorist acts\nLeT has directly engaged in, prepared and planned numerous terrorist attacks against Indian security force personnel, government and transport infrastructure and civilians in IaK as well as in India more broadly. These attacks have resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of people. In November 2008, LeT militants carried out coordinated attacks in Mumbai killing more than 170 people, including two Australians. In July 2006, LeT militants in conjunction with Student Islamic Movement of India operatives, detonated a series of bombs on trains in Mumbai killing more than 200 people. LeT militants are also present in Afghanistan and are suspected of supporting the insurgency there.\nRecent attacks which can be reliably attributed to LeT include the following:\nOn 4 December 2017, LeT militants attacked Indian military personnel in Kulgam District, South Kashmir. One Indian soldier was killed in the attack.\nOn 11 October 2017, LeT militants attacked Indian military and police in Bandipora District, North Kashmir. Two Indian Army soldiers were killed in the attack.\nOn 16 January 2017, LeT militants attacked Indian military personnel in Anantnag District in the Kashmir Valley. Only the LeT militants were killed in the attack.\nOn 13 February 2016, LeT militants attacked Indian military personnel in Kupwara District, North Kashmir. Two Indian soldiers were killed in the firefight.\nOn 5 August 2015, two militants attacked an Indian military convoy in Udhampur, Kashmir, killing two Indian soldiers. One of the militants was apprehended and Indian authorities confirmed they were LeT members.\nOn 5 December 2014, six militants wearing army uniforms attacked an Indian Army base in Uri, Kashmir. This was the first incident in a series of coordinated attacks undertaken that day which resulted in the death of eleven security force personnel, eight militants and two civilians--as well as multiple people injured. One of the militants killed during the attacks was identified as a LeT district commander. Media reporting indicated LeT claimed responsibility for the attack against the army base.\nOn 23 May 2014, heavily armed militants attacked the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan. The attack occurred a few days before Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, took office. Afghan and United States officials attributed responsibility for the attack to LeT.\nLeT has the ongoing intent to undertake terrorist attacks--in India and IaK in particular--and seek opportunities for surveillance, attack facilitation and recruitment in the furtherance of future attacks. Recent examples of this include:\nOn 11 April 2017, Indian authorities arrested an LeT militant as he prepared to carry out an attack against Indian military personnel on the National Highway in Kulgam District, South Kashmir.\nOn 7 January 2017, Indian authorities arrested an LeT militant from Handwara, North Kashmir who was planning to carry out attacks against security convoys in the area.\nOn 24 January 2016, Indian authorities disrupted a planned LeT attack timed for Indian Republic Day (26 January) by arresting a group of LeT militants in possession of a cache of arms and ammunition in Bugdam District, Central Kashmir.\nOn 23 November 2015, Indian authorities disrupted a major planned LeT attack by arresting an LeT commander near Bathindi, Jammu District, Kashmir. He had 47,000 Indian Rupees in his possession to create LeT 'sleeper cells' in Jammu and to undertake attack planning against targets including the Jammu Railway Station.\nMarch 2015 Indian intelligence reporting indicated LeT had ten launching camps established in the border area of Jammu and Kashmir ready to infiltrate trained terrorist operatives into India.\nAs of mid-March 2015, LeT was reported to have numerous camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir where operatives were being trained for special operations under the direction of LeT chief of operations, Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi. Indian intelligence agencies further indicated they held evidence of Lakhvi planning for a major terrorist operation in India.\nLeT is known to have trained foreigners to conduct terrorist operations. British citizens trained by LeT include Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001, and Dhiren Barot, who was convicted in 2006 of planning a bombing in London. Investigations indicate one of the British-born suicide bombers responsible for the 7 July 2005 attacks in London, Shehzad Tanweer, may have received training at a LeT camp in Pakistan. LeT is also suspected of providing some funding and logistical support to the disrupted British trans-Atlantic plane bombing plot in August 2006 using JuD as a cover. In 2009, LeT suspected chief of external operations Sajid Mir worked with now-detained United States extremist, David Headley, on an aborted plot to attack a newspaper office in Copenhagen, Denmark. Aside from facilitating training, it is unclear if LeT sanctioned the terrorist activities of any of these foreign-born individuals.\nAdvocating the doing of terrorist acts\nIn December 2017 at a rally in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed called for violent Jihad against the United States and Israel in response to President Trump's decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Saeed opined that 'Pakistan's atomic bomb is the asset of Islam which should be used to free Jerusalem'.\nDuring a television interview in April 2015, LeT Emir, Hafiz Saeed publicly confirmed his backing of violent jihad in Kashmir--with assistance from the Pakistan Government and army--asserting that freedom for Muslims in Kashmir could only be attained through violent jihad.\nDuring a JuD convention in Lahore, Pakistan over 4-5 December 2014, LeT Emir, Hafiz Saeed publicly asserted that Pakistani Mujahideen had a right to enter IaK for the purpose of liberating Kashmiris from Indian oppression. Further, Saeed has called for violent jihad in support of oppressed Muslims everywhere.\nIn August 2013, Indian intelligence agencies issued a warning of possible LeT attacks in Delhi. The alert was in response to calls from LeT Emir, Hafiz Saeed of his intent to spread jihad to all corners of India.\nDetails of the organisation\nHafiz Muhammad Saeed, the current head of JuD, is the founder and Emir of LeT. On 10 December 2008, the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee approved the addition of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed to its consolidated list of individuals and entities subject to assets freeze, travel bans and arms embargo measures. Also in December 2008, the then United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, identified Saeed as responsible for the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai which killed more than 170 people.\nIn April 2012, the United States State Department announced a US$10 million reward for the capture or information leading to the arrest and conviction of Saeed. Saeed has been detained and subsequently released by Pakistani authorities on several occasions and continues to operate freely in Pakistan.\nAs recently as January 2017 Pakistani authorities placed Saeed under house arrest in Lahore, and prevented him from fund raising for JuD. When he was released from detention in November 2017 he promptly announced he intended to contest the 2018 Pakistan general election under the banner of the MML.\nZaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi is LeT's chief of operations. Lakhvi was arrested, along with several other LeT members, on 7 December 2009 for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Lakhvi was able to communicate with LeT members and co-ordinate LeT activities while incarcerated in Central Jail Rawalpindi (commonly known as Adiala Jail). Lakhvi's orders from Adiala Jail included directing LeT fighters to increase violence in the Kashmir Valley. On 10 April 2015, Lakhvi was released from Adiala Jail on bail and is yet to stand trial for his role in the Mumbai attacks.\nLeT's current strength is likely several thousand active members. The majority of LeT's membership comprises jihadists from Pakistan and Afghanistan.\nRecruitment and funding\nLeT receives funding from donors in the Middle East, mainly Saudi Arabia, and through charitable donations collected from sympathisers in Pakistan. Private donations from across South Asia, Gulf nations and Europe also contribute to LeT's finances. In February 2018 Indian authorities arrested seven individuals suspected of channelling LeT funds through Hawala dealerships, and enacted an ordinance amending the Ani-Terrorism Act of 1997 allowing Indian authorities to seal JuD offices and freeze JuD bank accounts. In March 2018 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police and local officials sealed at least ten JuD offices across Peshawar at the behest of the federal government; which instructed the K-P to 'seal all the offices, seminaries as well as charities and dispensaries of ... JuD'.\nLinks to other terrorist organisations\nLeT is known to maintain and foster links with a variety of Islamist extremist groups including the Afghan Taliban, al-Qa'ida, Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami and Jaish-e-Mohammad. LeT receives and provides support to domestic based groups and networks in India most notably the Indian Mujahideen and the Students Islamic Movement of India--as well as militant groups in Kashmir.\nAdditionally, LeT reportedly has been involved in conflicts involving threats to Muslims outside of South Asia including Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo.\nLinks to Australia\nIn 2007, a French court convicted French national Willie Brigitte, for planning terrorist attacks in Australia in 2003 in conjunction with LeT suspected chief of external operations, Sajid Mir. Brigitte's Australian associate, Faheem Khalid Lodhi, was also convicted of planning acts of terrorism by a New South Wales Supreme Court jury in June 2006. In June 2008, Lodhi lost an appeal to the High Court of Australia to have his case overturned.\nThreats to Australian interests\nLeT terrorist attacks in India have impacted Western interests there--including Australian interests--two Australians were killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. While LeT may not specifically target Australian interests, Australian interests may be impacted in LeT attacks directed at others--particularly mass casualty attacks against soft targets such as hotels, transport infrastructure and tourist sites.\nListed by the United Nations or like-minded countries\nThe United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have listed LeT as a terrorist organisation. LeT is listed in the UN Security Council 1267 Committee's consolidated list. This listing has been adopted on the Consolidated List maintained in Australia by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under the Charter of the United Nations Act 1945.\nEngagement in peace or mediation processes\nLeT is not involved in any peace or mediation processes.\nOn the basis of the above information, ASIO assesses that LeT continues to be directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of terrorist acts or advocates the doing of terrorist acts.\nIn the course of pursuing its objectives, LeT is known to have committed or threatened actions that:\na) cause, or could cause, death, serious harm to persons, serious damage to property, endanger life (other than the life of the person taking the action), or create a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public;\nb) are intended to have those effects;\nc) are done with the intention of advancing LeT's political, religious or ideological causes;\nd) are done with the intention of intimidating the government of one or more foreign countries; and\ne) are done with the intention of intimidating the public or sections of the public.\n[1] A 'terrorist organisation' is defined in subsection 102.1(1) of the Criminal Code as:\n(a) an organisation that is directly or indirectly engaged in, preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act; or\n(b) an organisation that is specified by the regulations for the purposes of this paragraph.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line307828"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6498441696166992,"wiki_prob":0.3501558303833008,"text":"The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation\nCarol L. Pilcher, Edwin G. Rajotte\nIPM is, by many accounts, a highly successful program. Some claim that the achievements over the last 40 years have given the program a mark of success. In fact, IPM has been described as “one of the best answers to reducing chemical contamination of the environment and improving the safety of food while maintaining agricultural viability” (Rajotte, 1993, p. 297). Others argue that implementation has been slow and success has been limited. Wearing (1988) stated that IPM has not been successful because some IPM technologies have not been adopted by growers. This limited success has resulted in a weakening of political support and a stagnation of funding for IPM in the USA (Gray, 2001). What defines a successful IPM program? How do we assess the true worth of an IPM program? These questions can be answered by conducting an assessment of IPM programs through program evaluation. However, the starting point of any IPM evaluation is made with three goals in mind; economic, an assessment of the costs and benefits; environmental, impacts on soil, water and non-pest organisms; and social, an assessment of a program's impact on people's health and well-being. A historical review of IPM evaluation, Evaluation has been a component of some pest management programs, starting back in the 1940s. During this time (1940s to 1960s), program evaluations were used to assess the needs of clients and determine the future directions (Allen & Rajotte, 1990).\nConcepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies\nhttps://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\nPilcher, C. L., & Rajotte, E. G. (2008). The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation. In Integrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies (pp. 479-488). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\nPilcher, Carol L. ; Rajotte, Edwin G. / The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation. Integrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2008. pp. 479-488\n@inbook{a325de4b2b6943a8863e74e932bd6c23,\ntitle = \"The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation\",\nabstract = \"IPM is, by many accounts, a highly successful program. Some claim that the achievements over the last 40 years have given the program a mark of success. In fact, IPM has been described as “one of the best answers to reducing chemical contamination of the environment and improving the safety of food while maintaining agricultural viability” (Rajotte, 1993, p. 297). Others argue that implementation has been slow and success has been limited. Wearing (1988) stated that IPM has not been successful because some IPM technologies have not been adopted by growers. This limited success has resulted in a weakening of political support and a stagnation of funding for IPM in the USA (Gray, 2001). What defines a successful IPM program? How do we assess the true worth of an IPM program? These questions can be answered by conducting an assessment of IPM programs through program evaluation. However, the starting point of any IPM evaluation is made with three goals in mind; economic, an assessment of the costs and benefits; environmental, impacts on soil, water and non-pest organisms; and social, an assessment of a program's impact on people's health and well-being. A historical review of IPM evaluation, Evaluation has been a component of some pest management programs, starting back in the 1940s. During this time (1940s to 1960s), program evaluations were used to assess the needs of clients and determine the future directions (Allen & Rajotte, 1990).\",\nauthor = \"Pilcher, {Carol L.} and Rajotte, {Edwin G.}\",\ndoi = \"10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\",\nbooktitle = \"Integrated Pest Management\",\npublisher = \"Cambridge University Press\",\naddress = \"United Kingdom\",\nPilcher, CL & Rajotte, EG 2008, The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation. in Integrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies. Cambridge University Press, pp. 479-488. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\nThe role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation. / Pilcher, Carol L.; Rajotte, Edwin G.\nIntegrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies. Cambridge University Press, 2008. p. 479-488.\nT1 - The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation\nAU - Pilcher, Carol L.\nAU - Rajotte, Edwin G.\nN2 - IPM is, by many accounts, a highly successful program. Some claim that the achievements over the last 40 years have given the program a mark of success. In fact, IPM has been described as “one of the best answers to reducing chemical contamination of the environment and improving the safety of food while maintaining agricultural viability” (Rajotte, 1993, p. 297). Others argue that implementation has been slow and success has been limited. Wearing (1988) stated that IPM has not been successful because some IPM technologies have not been adopted by growers. This limited success has resulted in a weakening of political support and a stagnation of funding for IPM in the USA (Gray, 2001). What defines a successful IPM program? How do we assess the true worth of an IPM program? These questions can be answered by conducting an assessment of IPM programs through program evaluation. However, the starting point of any IPM evaluation is made with three goals in mind; economic, an assessment of the costs and benefits; environmental, impacts on soil, water and non-pest organisms; and social, an assessment of a program's impact on people's health and well-being. A historical review of IPM evaluation, Evaluation has been a component of some pest management programs, starting back in the 1940s. During this time (1940s to 1960s), program evaluations were used to assess the needs of clients and determine the future directions (Allen & Rajotte, 1990).\nAB - IPM is, by many accounts, a highly successful program. Some claim that the achievements over the last 40 years have given the program a mark of success. In fact, IPM has been described as “one of the best answers to reducing chemical contamination of the environment and improving the safety of food while maintaining agricultural viability” (Rajotte, 1993, p. 297). Others argue that implementation has been slow and success has been limited. Wearing (1988) stated that IPM has not been successful because some IPM technologies have not been adopted by growers. This limited success has resulted in a weakening of political support and a stagnation of funding for IPM in the USA (Gray, 2001). What defines a successful IPM program? How do we assess the true worth of an IPM program? These questions can be answered by conducting an assessment of IPM programs through program evaluation. However, the starting point of any IPM evaluation is made with three goals in mind; economic, an assessment of the costs and benefits; environmental, impacts on soil, water and non-pest organisms; and social, an assessment of a program's impact on people's health and well-being. A historical review of IPM evaluation, Evaluation has been a component of some pest management programs, starting back in the 1940s. During this time (1940s to 1960s), program evaluations were used to assess the needs of clients and determine the future directions (Allen & Rajotte, 1990).\nU2 - 10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\nDO - 10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\nBT - Integrated Pest Management\nPB - Cambridge University Press\nPilcher CL, Rajotte EG. The role of assessment and evaluation in IPM implementation. In Integrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies and Case Studies. Cambridge University Press. 2008. p. 479-488 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039\n10.1017/CBO9780511626463.039","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line714172"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9333167672157288,"wiki_prob":0.9333167672157288,"text":"Naji Marshall Jason Carter Paul Scruggs Jeremiah Tilmon Quentin Goodin Xavier Pinson Dru Smith Sports Men's college basketball College basketball Basketball College sports Men's basketball Men's sports\nXavier Big East Missouri SEC\nBy JOE KAY - Nov. 12, 2019 10:49 PM EST\nMissouri's Kobe Brown (24) blocks a shot by Xavier's Zach Freemantle (32) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)\nCINCINNATI (AP) — Xavier had made only two 3-pointers all game, none in the second half. Down by three in the closing seconds, the 21st-ranked Musketeers desperately needed somebody to finally hit from long range.\nNaji Marshall swished one from the top of the key , and Xavier was finally on its way.\nMarshall's clutch 3 tied it in regulation, and he made a pair of free throws in overtime Tuesday night as Xavier overcame poor shooting and rallied for a 63-58 victory over Missouri.\nThe Musketeers (3-0) let a 15-point lead slip away because they couldn't hit an outside shot, going only 3 of 21 from beyond the arc. Marshall's 3-pointer — Xavier's only one in the second half — tied it 51-all with 27.1 seconds left.\nWhen they absolutely had to have a 3, Xavier let its best player shoot away.\n\"I knew it was going in,\" guard Paul Scruggs said. \"That's all I've got to say.\"\nMissouri (2-1) missed a 3 at the end of regulation and never led in overtime, losing to a ranked team for the seventh time in a row. Dru Smith led the Tigers with 22 points, 10 rebounds and four assists.\nScruggs hit a pair of baskets in overtime as Xavier built a seven-point lead and held on. Quentin Goodin made three free throws in the final 20 seconds to close it out.\nMarshall's big shot made it possible. He finished with 17 points, eight rebounds and a team-high three assists.\n\"He's talented, he's skilled, he has size, he made the big shot at the end of regulation,\" Missouri coach Cuonzo Martin said. \"Any time you have a guy with that skill package that you can run your offense through, he's tough to guard.\"\nMissouri had a setback in the opening minutes. Top scorer Jeremiah Tilmon picked up two fouls in the first 2:56 and spent the rest of the half on the bench. He finished with six points.\n\"It was depressing,\" said Xavier Pinson, who had nine points.\nXavier led by as many as 15 in a ragged first half. Missouri went eight minutes between field goals and had 13 turnovers, but Xavier couldn't take full advantage because of its woeful outside shooting. Goodin's steal and dunk capped an 11-2 spurt that gave Xavier its biggest lead, 27-12.\nTilmon had a layup and Smith scored twice off drives to the basket during a 14-point run that gave Missouri a 38-34 lead, its first since the opening minutes. Xavier went more than seven minutes without scoring while the Tigers rallied .\n\"That's what we call a rock fight,\" Xavier coach Travis Steele said. \"I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, it was going to be ugly at times, but I was really proud of our guys for handling the adversity we went through.\"\nMissouri: The Tigers' tough times against ranked teams continue. They haven't beaten a Top 25 team since Feb. 13, 2018, when they defeated No. 21 Texas A&M 62-58.\nXavier: The Musketeers have struggled to hit 3s — an issue last season as well. They are only 13 of 63 on 3-pointers this season.\n\"We had some wide-open looks,\" Steele said. \"We'll take those shots.\"\nPOINTS TOUGH TO COME BY\nLast season, Xavier lost at Missouri 71-56, the Musketeers' second-fewest points of the season. They managed 51 in regulation Tuesday.\nSCRUGGS BACK\nScruggs sat out the previous game with a sprained knee, costing the Musketeers one of their top guards. He started Tuesday, played 40 minutes and scored 12 points.\nCARTER IMPRESSES\nXavier transfer forward Jason Carter played 38 minutes and had 12 points and 11 rebounds.\nMissouri hosts Wofford on Monday and Morehead State two days later as part of the 2019 Hall of Fame Classic.\nXavier hosts Missouri State on Friday, completing a four-game homestand to open the season.\nMore AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top 25","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1027369"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5547540187835693,"wiki_prob":0.44524598121643066,"text":"Donald Potter, of Canisteo\nJuly 28, 2014 cdavis Obituaries 0\nCanisteo, NY – Well known and respected Canisteo businessman, Donald B. Potter, 67, of 20 Elm Street, passed away peacefully on Sunday (April 6, 2014) at his home.\nBorn in Wellsville, October 14, 1946, the son of John and Mildred Herke Potter, he was a graduate of Scio Central School, Class of 1964 where he was a star athlete. He served his country as a member of the United States Air Force during the Viet Nam Era from 1964-1968.\nFrom 1971 until 2009, Don owned and operated the Zenith Sales and Service in Canisteo. He was a member of the Canisteo American Legion Post, a former member of the Hornell Moose Lodge and the Hornell Lodge of Elks. Don coached the Grasshopper league , as well as little league and Babe Ruth League. He had served as fire commissioner for the Canisteo Fire Department, and as sports chairman for the Hornell Moose Lodge sports league. Don enjoyed the outdoors, especially hunting and will be remembered as a good friend to many and a loving relative. His optimistic attitude was helpful to other veterans who were undergoing cancer treatment.\nHe was predeceased by his parents.\nHe is survived by his wife, Jean Broughton Potter to whom he was married on October 4, 1969, his daughter, Kristin (Roger) Leete of Rochester, and his son, Michael (Julie) Potter of Buffalo, his grandchildren, Alex Leete and John Potter, his sisters, Nancy Haberer of Wellsville, and Sheila (Robert) Linnecke of Scio, his brother, Gary (Sheila) Potter of Arcade, as well as several nieces and nephews.\nTo send a remembrance to the family or to light a candle in Don’s memory, please visit www.brownandpowersfuneralhomes.com. The family is being assisted by Gerald R. Brown, Director.\nThe family will be present to receive friends on Saturday from 6 PM until 8PM and on Sunday from Noon until 2:30 PM, at the Brown & Powers Funeral Home, 6 Spruce St., Canisteo. Funeral services will be held on Sunday at 2:30 PM following calling hours with Rev. Robert Morris officiating. Burial will be at Bath National Cemetery.\nFriends may make memorial contributions to: The Canisteo Ambulance Corp, Main Street, Canisteo, NY 14823 or to : The Cancer Services Program of Steuben County (Please specify for travel vouchers) ,411 Canisteo Street, Hornell NY 14843.\nFather Jerry Moynihan\nThomas Caple, of Canisteo","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line487615"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6373542547225952,"wiki_prob":0.6373542547225952,"text":"Bridget Golightly\nBridget Golightly is eighty-nine years old. She won the 100 m, 800 m, triple jump and solo synchronised swimming events in the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. Highlights of her sparkling stage and film career include two Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actress for Little Dorrit and Rocky V, and her much-lauded Titania against Sir John Gielgud's Bottom. Bridget is also a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, renowned poet and international peacekeeper, and represented the United Kingdom in the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest with 'Boom-bang-a-ting-a-ling on a String'. When she's not busy bringing joy to the world, she likes to relax by drinking a nice cup of tea.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1355390"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6801387071609497,"wiki_prob":0.3198612928390503,"text":"Adventists Affirm\nA Publication Affirming Seventh-day Adventist Beliefs\nVolume 24, Number 3 - No Turning Back\nVolume 24, Number 2 - The Church Working Together\nVolume 24, Number 1 - Creation and Evolution\nVolume 23, Number 3 - Unashamed\nVolume 23, Number 2 - Sin and Salvation\nVolume 22, Number 3 - For This Purpose\nVolume 22, Number 2 - The Emerging Church\nVolume 21, Number 3 - Be Ye Transformed\nVolume 21, Number 2 - Late Adventist Preaching\nVolume 21, Number 1 - Early Adventist Preaching\nVolume 20, Number 3 - The Authority of the Bible\nVolume 20, Number 2 - Stewardship\nVolume 20, Number 1 - Leadership\nVolume 19, Number 3 - America in Prophecy\nVolume 18, Number 3 - The Holy Spirit\nVolume 18, Number 2 - Forgiveness\nVolume 18, Number 1 - Discipline\nVolume 17, Number 3 - Issues Youth Face\nVolume 17, Number 2 - Mental Health\nVolume 17, Number 1 - Interpreting Prophecy\nVolume 16, Number 3 - Church and Relevance\nVolume 16, Number 2 -Church & Steadfastness\nVolume 16, Number 1 - Creation\nVolume 15, Number 3 - Second Coming\nVolume 15, Number 2 - Health\nVolume 15, Number 1 - Spirit of Prophecy\nVolume 14, Number 2 - Worship Vs. Performance\nVolume 14, Number 1 - Ethics and Lifestyle\n1. Answers to Questions about Women's Ordination\n2. Does the Bible Support Women's Ordination?\n3. How Money Got Us Into Trouble\n4. Feminism's \"New Light\" on Galatians 3:28\n5. When God Goes Calling\n6. The Bible and the Ministry of Women\n7. Does Paul Really Forbid Women to Speak in Church?\n8. Early Adventist History and the Ministry of Women\n9. Ellen G. White and the Ministry of Women\n10. To Ordain or Not to Ordain?\nThe Nonpareil Book: A Volume Like No Other\nSamuel Koranteng-Pipim\nDirector, Public Campus Ministries\nMichigan Conference of SDA\nWithout this book there would be no sacred music, oratorios, beloved hymns, and Negro spirituals.\nThe composer of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” George Frideric Handel, was not a religious man. Yet, even this world-famous composer was moved and inspired by words from this nonpareil book.\nAfter several years of failure in opera, Handel was plunged into poverty and despair. At the age of sixty he was bitter, depressed, and defeated. When asked to write the music for a sacred oratorio, he glanced through the pages of the manuscript with little enthusiasm for the task. But something happened when his eyes suddenly caught the words, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people . . . For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given . . . He shall lead His flock like a shepherd . . . Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden.”\nThe April 1948 Reader’s Digest reports that as Handel kept reading, the text began to quicken his pulses, warm his heart, and inspire wonderful melodies. The glorious words, “He shall reign forever and ever . . . King of kings, and Lord of lords . . . Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” fired his creative genius.\nGrasping a pen, Handel jotted down in feverish haste the wonderful notes that raced through his mind. For twenty-four days and nights he worked tirelessly, as if transported to another world, paying little attention to the meals that were brought to him and hardly stopping to rest. His faithful servant became greatly worried; he had never known the master to act like this. Indeed, he appeared to be mad—writing, writing, writing, then striding about the room with tears coursing down his cheeks, singing “Hallelujah” at the top of his voice.\nMessiah, the greatest oratorio ever written, was born of an experience induced by the power of a book. Handel said of the occasion, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” No wonder King George II was so moved when the oratorio was first presented in London that he rose spontaneously to his feet at the beginning of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and all of the throng with him! No wonder audiences still rise today every time the “Hallelujah Chorus” is sung.\nA Nameless Book. But what is this book that inspired Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”? What is this book that has power to warm hearts, inspire hope, and transport even non-religious people to behold God in His majesty?\nStrangely, this nonpareil book is also nameless! It is simply called the Book.\nThough many know the book by the title “the Bible,” the word is derived through Latin from the Greek to biblion, which means “the book.” Since the Bible is the supreme book in all the world, it does not need a name; it is enough to simply say, “The Book”—i.e., “The Bible.”\nA Respected Book. Indeed, many of the world’s most renowned people have testified to the value and inestimable importance of the Bible.\nSir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time, once said: “We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever”\nGeorge Washington Carver, the African-American genius of Tuskegee Institute, has been called the world’s greatest biochemist. He is best known for his discovery of hundreds of valuable uses for the peanut and sweet potato. In 1921 Dr. Carver was invited to testify before the United States Senate Ways and Means Committee on the possibilities of the peanut. Though initially given ten minutes to speak, he so captivated the committee that the chairman said, “Go ahead, Brother. Your time is unlimited.” Carver spoke for one hour and forty-five minutes.\nAt the conclusion of his presentation the chairman asked, “Dr. Carver, how did you learn all of these things?”\nCarver replied, “From an old Book.”\n“What book?” the Senator queried.\nThe famed scientist replied, “The Bible.”\n“Does the Bible tell about peanuts?” the surprised Senator inquired.\n“No, Sir,” Dr. Carver replied, “but it tells about the God Who made the peanut. I asked Him to show me what to do with the peanut, and He did.”\nThomas Jefferson also speaks about this Book: “I have said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands. . . . The Bible makes the best people in the world.”\nSimilarly, Daniel Webster, a foremost American statesman, author, lexicographer, and orator testifies: “I believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the will and Word of God.”\nA Timeless Book. Unlike other books that come and go because their ideas no longer fit the thoughts of different ages or meet the needs of human hearts, the Bible is a timeless Book.\nOnetime professor of English at Princeton University, author and diplomat Henry Van Dyke, has accurately remarked:\nBorn in the East and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is a servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is a son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and the wise men ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, and word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wicked and the proud tremble at its warning, but to the wounded and the penitent it has a mother’s voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lit the reading of its well-worn page. It has woven itself into our deepest affections and colored our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing frankincense and myrrh. . .\nNo man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named “of the shadow,” he is not afraid to enter: he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, “Good-by; we shall meet again;” and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who walks through darkness into light.\nTruly, this Book is like no other book.\nA Unique Book. The Bible was written by some 40 different authors on three different continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe), in countries hundreds of miles apart, over a period of about 1,500 years. It deals with matters of universal interest: history, philosophy, science, health, architecture, religion, prophecies, etc. It speaks to the needs of every generation, offers solutions to life’s perplexities, and even reveals the origin and future of our world. It has brought peace to troubled consciences, comfort to the sorrowful, hope to the despairing, courage to the despondent, and the assurance of reunion to the bereaved.\nOriginally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been published in more languages than any other book in history, and yet it has not lost its original emphasis.\nThis unique Book appeals to the young as well as the old, rich as well as poor, simple as well as wise. It advocates the rights of every individual, including the cause of the poor and defenseless, and it demonstrates a mysterious power to transform lives.\nA careful reading of this unique Book reveals that it was written by men from every level of political and social life—from the king upon his throne down to the herdsmen, shepherds, fishermen, and petty politicians.\nOnetime President of the Southern Baptist Convention, W. A. Criswell, has written this about the Bible: “Here are words written by princes, by poets, by philosophers, by fishermen, by statesmen, by prophets, by priests, by publicans, by physicians, by men learned in the wisdom of Egypt, by men educated in the school of Babylon, by men trained at the feet of rabbis like Gamaliel. Men of every grade and class are represented in this miraculous Volume. The circumstances under which the Book was written were sometimes most difficult and always most varying. Parts of it were written in tents, deserts, cities, palaces, and dungeons. Some of it was written in times of imminent danger and other parts in times of ecstatic joy.”\nBut the remarkable thing about the Bible is that, despite the circumstances that gave birth to the 66 different books comprising this Book, the contents of the Bible show a unique harmony. Observes H.L. Hastings: “It contains all kinds of writing; but what a jumble it would be if sixty-six books were written in this way by ordinary men. Suppose, for instance, that we get sixty-six medical books written by thirty or forty different doctors of various schools, . . . bind them all together, and then undertake to doctor a man according to that book! . . . Or suppose you get thirty-five ministers writing books on theology, and then see if you can find any leather strong enough to hold the books together.”\nA Well-preserved Book. But there is more: the Bible has been preserved remarkably during the process of transmission. Despite the fact that it was written on perishable material and was copied and recopied for hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press or computers, the Bible’s two sections—the Old and New Testaments—when compared to all other ancient manuscripts, have displayed an unusual correctness in transmission.\nWith reference to the Old Testament, the section of the Bible written in Hebrew and Aramaic, the remarkable accuracy with which the scribes wrote down the text is due to strict rules that they followed. For example, no word or letter could be written from memory. The words or letters of each section were counted, and if these did not tally with the newly made copies, the new copy was discarded altogether and the task begun again. Who ever counted the letters and syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca?\nOn the other hand, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek—the common language of people in apostolic times. Though there are no original copies of the earliest writings of the apostles, we have the later handwritten copies that have survived. These are called manuscripts—from the Latin words manu scriptum, meaning “written by hand.”\nGenerally speaking, the New Testament manuscripts are much more recent to us than the Old Testament. But unlike the well trained Old Testament copyists who were extremely careful in copying every word of the ancient documents, factors such as the great demand for copies of the New Testament to instruct new believers and the frequent interruptions in the copying process due to hostilities and persecutions led to hasty and sometimes careless copying of the original New Testament manuscripts. Fortunately for us, because of the many New Testament manuscripts that have been preserved, we can always cross-check any section whenever there is any doubt.\nBecause of the unique preservation of the original text of the Bible, Christians can be absolutely certain of its essential accuracy. The late Sir Frederic Kenyon, onetime director of the British Museum and an authority on Bible manuscripts put it this way: “The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”\nAn Enduring Book. Still, of all the books ever produced, the Bible has suffered the most vicious attack. Yet it has survived the persecution of critics and enemies. It is like an anvil that has worn out the hammers of criticism. The hammers of the agnostics, atheists, and higher critics have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If the Book had not been the Book of God, human beings would have destroyed it long ago. Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers, Communists and revolutionaries have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives.\nThe Book has come down to us floating upon a sea of blood—every page stained with the blood of martyrs.\nBernard Ramm, a Christian scientist and theologian once asked rhetorically whether, beside the Bible, there has ever been a book on philosophy, religion, psychology, or any other subject that has been so “chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified . . . with such venom and skepticism? with such thoroughness and erudition? upon every chapter, line, and tenet?” He concluded: “A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read. But somehow the corpse never stays put. . . . Considering the thorough learning of the critics and the ferocity and precision of the attacks, we would expect the Bible to have been permanently entombed in some Christian genizah [a storage room for worn-out Scripture manuscripts]. But such is hardly the case. The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions.”\nJesus said it best almost 2,000 years ago: “Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).\nHow do we account for the remarkable power, universal appeal, unity, and survival of this ancient Book?\nA Revealed Book. Though written by human penmen, the Bible makes a bold claim to its divine origin. The apostle Paul wrote: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). The word “inspiration”\n[theopneustos in the Greek], literally means “God-breathed,” that is to say, all the books of the Bible have a divine origin.\nCharles Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, argued that “the Bible must be the invention of either good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God.” He reasons:\nIt could not be the invention of good men or angels, for they neither would nor could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” when it was their own invention.\nIt could not be the invention of bad men or devils, for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to Hell to all eternity.\nTherefore, I draw this conclusion, that the Bible must be given by divine inspiration.\nIn other words, the Bible is not simply an inspiring book by some good human writers; it is an inspired Book from God.\nAn Inspired Book. Probably the most mysterious thing about the Bible is the manner in which God, the principal Author of the Book, was able to employ fallible human beings as His instruments to write down His message in a trustworthy manner. The unique cooperation between God and the Bible’s human writers is known technically as “inspiration.”\nThe apostle Peter describes it this way: “Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21). The Greek word used here, phero, means “to bear” or “to carry along.” It was a term used by sailors for a sailing ship being carried along by the wind. As Peter was himself a fisherman, his use of this word is significant. It implies that the human writers of the Bible were gently led by the Spirit in communicating the message that God had given them by revelation. Because the Bible is the product of this cooperative effort between the human and the Divine, its message is “sure.” The apostle Peter again asserts:\nFor we did not follow cleverly devised myths [Greek, mythos, a story, whatever its significance, that has no factual basis] when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. . . . And we have the prophetic Word made more sure [Greek, bebaioteron, which has the force of “standing firm on the feet,” “steadfast,” “reliable,” “valid”]. You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:16-19, RSV)\nIn his letter to the Christians of Thessalonica, the apostle Paul summed up: “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).\nIn other words, the fact that the Scriptures are inspired implies that the Bible is truly the Word of God.\nA Trustworthy Book. One unmistakable piece of evidence that the Bible has a divine imprint is the impartial manner in which its human writers recorded biographical accounts of its heroes and heroines.\nNoah, the survivor of the Flood, got drunk and exposed his nakedness; Abraham, the friend of God, lied and doubted God; Lot, the hero of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, got drunk and had an incestuous relationship with his daughters; Miriam, the beautiful singer and prophetess of Israel, had a racial and jealousy problem and was struck with leprosy; Rahab, the woman of faith and the ancestor of Jesus Christ, was a prostitute; David, a man after God’s Own heart, was guilty of adultery and murder; Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, lived the life of a fool; Judas, one of the most influential among the twelve disciples of Christ, was a thief and a traitor; Peter, a leading apostle of Christ, denied his Master with curses and swearing; John, the apostle of love, called for fire to destroy his enemies; and Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, persecuted the followers of Christ.\nIf the biographical accounts in the Scriptures were simply human efforts to enhance the moral standing of some prominent men and women, the writers would have covered up, judiciously omitted, or reconstructed the negative and embarrassing aspects of those lives.\nThis is the way men write history; but when the Lord undertakes to tell His story of a sinful man, He does not select a poor, miserable beggar, and show him up; He does not give even the name of the thief on the cross, nor of the guilty woman to whom He said, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more”; but He takes King David from the throne, and sets him down in sackcloth and ashes, and wrings from his heart the cry, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” And then when he is pardoned, forgiven, cleansed, and made whiter than snow, the pen of inspiration writes down the whole dark, damning record of his crimes, and the king on his throne has not power, nor wealth, nor influence enough to blot the page. . . .\nAnd a book which tells the faults of those who wrote it, and which tells you that “there is none righteous, no, not one,” bears in it the marks of a true book; for we all know that men have faults, and failings, and sins; and among all the men whose lives are recorded in that book, each man has some defect, some blot, except one, and that is “the Man Christ Jesus” (H.L. Hastings, Will the Old Book Stand?\n[Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1923, pp. 17, 18]).\nA Spiritual Book. Robert H. Pierson, onetime president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, wrote: “The Bible is more than a good or true book. . . . Man may write a good book, a true book, even a wonderful book, but man has never produced a volume that compares with the Holy Scriptures. The Bible lives! Through its sacred pages God moves and speaks to human hearts. It is a Book of divine origin destined from the beginning to fill a unique need among the human family. No other volume has successfully challenged it.”\nThis living Book points out to sinners a way of pardon, of peace, and of redemption. It tells us how human beings subject to like passions as we are, may yet be men of mighty faith, having fellowship with God, and prevailing in effectual and fervent prayer. It tells us how we who have sinned against the Most High may be cleansed from bloodguiltiness, washed and made whiter than snow, and find life and peace in Christ the Lord. It tells us how we, redeemed through God’s mercy, may stand stainless as angels in the presence of the eternal King.\nA Neglected Book. Though there are unmistakable evidences of the Book’s power to transform lives, though it remains the world’s bestselling book, and though copies of it can be found in many homes, hotel rooms, and libraries, the surprising thing is that the Bible is the most neglected book!\nThe famous English preacher George Whitefield said, “God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read His writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through.”\nOne of the most acclaimed Christian writers, Ellen G. White, wrote: “If we will let it speak to us, the Bible will teach us what nothing else can teach. But alas! everything else is dwelt upon except the Word of God. Worthless literature, fictitious stories, are greedily devoured, while the Bible, with all its treasures of sacred truth, lies neglected upon our tables. The Sacred Word, if made the rule of life, will refine, elevate, and sanctify. It is the voice of God to man. Will we heed it?” (Messages to Young People, p. 257).\nA Life-changing Book. H. L. Hastings has perceptively observed:\nThere are men who study philosophy, astronomy, geology, geography, and mathematics; but did you ever hear a man say, “I was an outcast, a wretched inebriate, a disgrace to my race, and a nuisance in the world, until I began to study mathematics, and learned the multiplication table, and then turned my attention to geology, got me a little hammer, and knocked off the corners of the rocks and then studied the formation of the earth, and since that time I have been happy as the day is long; I feel like singing all the time; my soul is full of triumph and peace; and health and blessing have come to my desolate home once more”? Did you ever hear a man ascribe his redemption and salvation from intemperance and sin and vice to the multiplication table, or the science of mathematics or geology?\nBut I can bring you, not one man, or two, or ten, but men by the thousand who will tell you, “I was wretched; I was lost; I broke my poor old mother’s heart; I beggared my family; my wife was heart-stricken and dejected; my children fled from the sound of their father’s footsteps; I was ruined, reckless, helpless, homeless, hopeless, until I heard the words of that Book”!\nAnd he will tell you the very word which fastened on his soul. Maybe it was, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest”; perhaps it was, “Behold the Lamb of God Which taketh away the sin of the world”; it may have been, “God so loved the world, that He gave His Only-Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” He can tell you the very word that saved his soul. And since that word entered his heart, he will tell you that hope has dawned upon his vision, that joy has inspired his heart, and that his mouth is filled with grateful song. He will tell you that the blush of health has come back to his poor wife’s faded cheek; that the old hats have vanished from the windows of his desolate home; that his rags have been exchanged for good clothes; that his children run to meet him when he comes; that there is bread on his table, fire on his hearth, and comfort in his dwelling. He will tell you all that, and he will tell you that this Book has wrought the change.\nYes, there is power in the Book, a power that can change your life and your circumstances. Its power rests on the fact that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17).\nA Book Like No Other Book. When was the last time you read the Book? How much time do you spend daily with the Bible? Don’t you think it is about time to begin reading God’s inspired Word“—the Book that is like no other book?\nOn July 28, 1917, Woodrow Wilson wrote these pertinent words:\nThe Bible is the Word of life. I beg that you will read it and find this out for yourselves—read, not little snatches here and there, but long passages that will really be the road to the heart of it. You will find it not only full of real men and women, but also of the things you have wondered about and been troubled about all your life, as men have been always; and the more you read, the more will it become plain to you the things that are worthwhile and what are not, what things make men happy—loyalty, right dealing, speaking the truth, readiness to give everything for what they think their duty, and, most of all, the wish that they may have the approval of the Christ, Who gave everything for them—and the things that are guaranteed to make men unhappy—selfishness, cowardice, greed, and everything that is low and mean.\nWhen you have read the Bible you will know that it is the Word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness, and your own duty.\nThe promise God gave to Joshua can be ours if we heed His counsel: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success” (Joshua 1:8).\nThis promised blessing will bring peace to our troubled consciences, comfort to our broken hearts, light to our perplexed minds, and strength to our discouraged souls.\n10701 W Grand River Ave.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line329846"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6103761196136475,"wiki_prob":0.38962388038635254,"text":"Biotechgate Biotechgate\nCompanies Search for companies\nAction required: Please refresh your browser\nWe have recently implemented some changes that require a hard refresh of your browser: Please hold down the CTRL-key and press the F5 key.\nAfter a successful hard refresh, this message should not appear anymore.\nMore details about this topic are available here »\nXBiotech Commences Tender Offer to Purchase up to $420,000,000 of its Shares\nBy: GlobenewsWire - 14 Jan 2020 Back to overview list\nAUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- XBiotech Inc. (NASDAQ: XBIT) (“XBiotech”) announced today that it commenced a “modified Dutch auction” tender offer to purchase up to $420,000,000 of its common shares, or such lesser number of common shares as are properly tendered and not properly withdrawn, at a price not less than $30.00 nor greater than $33.00 per common share, to the seller in cash, less any applicable withholding taxes and without interest (the “Offer”). The Offer is made upon the terms and subject to the conditions described in the offer to purchase and in the related letter of transmittal. The closing price of XBiotech’s common shares on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on January 13, 2020, the last full trading day before the commencement of the Offer, was $18.62 per share. The Offer is scheduled to expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on February 12, 2020, unless the Offer is extended.\nXBiotech believes that the Offer represents an efficient mechanism to provide XBiotech’s stockholders with the opportunity to tender all or a portion of their stock and thereby receive a return of some or all of their investment in XBiotech if they so elect. The Offer provides stockholders with an opportunity to obtain liquidity with respect to all or a portion of their stock without the potential disruption to XBiotech’s stock price.\nThe Offer is not contingent upon obtaining any financing. However, the Offer is subject to a number of other terms and conditions, which are described in detail in the offer to purchase. Specific instructions and a complete explanation of the terms and conditions of the Offer will be contained in the offer to purchase, the letter of transmittal and the related materials, which will be mailed to stockholders of record shortly after commencement of the Offer.\nNone of XBiotech, the members of its Board of Directors (including the Independent Committee who authorized the Offer), the information agent or the depositary makes any recommendation as to whether any stockholder should participate or refrain from participating in the Offer or as to the price or prices at which stockholders may choose to tender their shares in the Offer.\nD.F. King & Co., Inc. will serve as information agent for the Offer. Stockholders with questions, or who would like to receive additional copies of the Offer documents may call D.F. King at (212) 269-5550 (banks and brokers) or (866) 856-3065 (all others).\nAbout XBiotech\nXBiotech is a fully integrated, global biopharmaceutical company dedicated to pioneering the discovery, development and commercialization of therapeutic antibodies. XBiotech currently is advancing a pipeline of therapies by harnessing naturally occurring antibodies from patients with immunity to certain diseases. Utilizing natural human immunity as a source of new medicines offers the potential to redefine the standards of care for a wide range of diseases. The discovery and manufacturing techniques which enable this were designed by and are exclusive to XBiotech. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, XBiotech also leads the development of innovative, proprietary manufacturing technology to reduce the cost and complexity of biological drug production. For more information, visit www.xbiotech.com.\nAbout True Human™ Therapeutic Antibodies\nXBiotech’s True Human™ antibodies are the only available antibodies derived without modification from humans who possess natural immunity to certain diseases. (Unlike all commercially available antibodies, which are called “Humanized” or “Fully Human,” XBiotech’s True Human™ antibodies are directly sourced from the natural human immune response for specific diseases without modification, and thereby have not been shown to cause immunogenicity.) With discovery and clinical programs across multiple disease areas, XBiotech’s True Human antibodies have the potential to harness the body’s natural immunity to fight disease with unprecedented safety, efficacy, and tolerability.\nThis press release contains forward-looking statements, including declarations regarding management's beliefs and expectations, including with respect to XBiotech’s strategic ambitions, regarding the expected timing of closing of the transaction with Janssen, filings and approvals relating to the transaction, the amount and timing of potential future milestone payments by Janssen, the mechanism of action and potential safety and efficacy of bermekimab, the anticipated timing of clinical studies with bermekimab, the progression and results of such studies, statements regarding the regulatory pathway for bermekimab and the timing of regulatory filings, and statements regarding any capital allocation decisions, including as to potential share repurchases. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as \"may,\" \"will,\" \"should,\" \"would,\" \"could,\" \"expects,\" \"plans,\" \"contemplate,\" \"anticipates,\" \"believes,\" \"estimates,\" \"predicts,\" \"projects,\" \"intend\" or \"continue\" or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are subject to the disclosures set forth in the \"Risk Factors\" section of certain of our SEC filings. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which we operate, may differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Any forward-looking statements that we make in this press release speak only as of the date of this press release. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this press release.\nAshley Otero\naotero@xbiotech.com\nRelated companies: XBiotech Inc.\nCopyright 2020 GlobenewsWire Back to overview list\nFollow @Biotechgate\n© 2020 Venture Valuation\nto the top ↑","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1301081"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.889492392539978,"wiki_prob":0.889492392539978,"text":"博客 Blog\nChina confirms first case of Zika virus\nCharlotte Middlehurst\nFears of pandemic grow as more cases of the virus are confirmed in China and across Europe\n(Image credit: Sanofi Pasteur)\nChina has confirmed its first case of the Zika virus in one of its nationals who had travelled back from Venezuela, said state news site Xinhua on February 9.\nThe 34-year-old man from Ganxian county, Jiangxi province, had recently returned from a trip showing symptoms of fever, headache and dizziness.\nThe virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, has caused alarm after being linked to rise in cases of microcephaly – a congenital condition associated with maldevelopment of the brain – in South America.\nIn response, the World Health Organisation has called for urgency in finding a vaccine and better diagnostics, and warned the world to be alert.\nThe Chinese patient stopped in Hong Kong and Shenzhen before returning to his hometown on February 5.\nChina’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) confirmed that the man’s condition is now stable and that his body temperature has returned to normal. He is now being quarantined and treated in a hospital in Ganxian.\nThe Chinese health commission played down the risk of further outbreaks, saying that the likelihood of the virus spreading due to this imported case is, “extremely low due to low temperature”.\nHong Kong authorities have increased inspections at the airport in response, and reinforced training for boundary control inspectors, the report added.\nThe WHO estimates that up to four million cases of Zika will be recorded in the Americas over the next 12 months. About 80% of those infected do not exhibit symptoms but when they do appear, patients notice fever, a red rash, and conjunctivitis.\nFour cases of the Zika virus have been confirmed in the UK in the last six weeks. Public Health England has told a parliamentary committee all four cases were \"travel associated\" and not transmitted in Britain.\nItaly has confirmed nine cases of the Zika virus in the country, of which four were registered in northern Veneto region, local media reported on Friday.\nSee here for a full report on climate change and the Zika virus on Diálogo Chino.\nAnd here for an article on Zika fears could ruin Rio Olympics.\nCharlotte Middlehurst is a London-based journalist specialising in China, climate change and environmental issues. She has written news and features on China for the Economist, Al Jazeera and The Daily Telegraph. She is the former deputy editor of chinadialogue. Tweets @charmiddle\nClimate change and urbanisation driving dengue fever in south China\nIncreasingly severe outbreaks of the dengue virus in south China and other countries have been linked to the growth of cities and warmer, wetter weather\nDiseases of climate change\nIndian scientists say rising temperatures will make new areas of the Himalayas vulnerable to mosquito-spread diseases. Patralekha Chatterjee reports.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line363259"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7111099362373352,"wiki_prob":0.7111099362373352,"text":"Obama Shouldn’t Lecture Xi About Surveillance\nBy Steven Hill Published November 1, 2013 Uncategorized\nBy Steven Hill, China-US Focus, November 1, 2013\nPresident Barack Obama has been a vocal critic of China’s hacking into U.S. government and corporate computer systems, accusing the Chinese government of Orwellian tactics. But now President Obama is having to defend similar activity by his own government.\nA firestorm is gathering under the Obama presidency over the latest revelation that the National Security Agency has been spying on the telephones of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 34 other world leaders. This is in addition to previous leaks that the U.S. government spies on the phone logs, Internet activity and credit card transactions of virtually every U.S. citizen, of Spanish and French citizens, and that the US has bugged European Union offices as well as the United Nations and world leaders at international conferences of the G-20.\nOf course, the Chinese leadership is no innocent when it comes to electronic surveillance. Beijing also monitors vast amounts of Internet traffic and even shuts down offending web sites if it wants. It tracks personal phone and email accounts as a way to intimidate political dissidents. Certainly Orwellian, but the US is not that far behind, having used electronic surveillance and the muscle of government authority to harass and threaten journalists who are following the proud Western tradition of a free press reporting on government misconduct and malfeasance. West is meeting East, but in the wrong ways.\nAt least Beijing does not try to portray itself as a model of transparency and accountability, as President Obama and US congressional leaders routinely and self-righteously try to do. In the most recent chapter of NSA skulduggery, President Obama has claimed that he was in the dark over spying of those world’s leaders. White House officials say that the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief the president on all of them.\nIs President Xi similarly uninformed about Chinese surveillance? How could it possibly make national security sense that the man in the Oval Office did not have to approve or at least be informed about a decision on bugging the phones of so many of the world’s top leaders?\nAnd if that’s true, it means that even the President of the United States needed leaks from whistleblower Edward Snowden in order to know what his own top spies are doing. That’s alarming, because it also would indicate that the U.S. national surveillance state is out of control.\nBut hold on, this just in – current and former U.S. intelligence officials are saying that, in fact, top-ranked officials in the White House and State Department signed off on the surveillance of phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders. If what they are saying is true, then President Obama is either lying or his top aides did not inform him and they are not stepping forward to take responsibility. It also raises troubling questions about how honest – or informed – President Obama has been in his previous defenses of the surveillance state.\nSo while the chief executive and the nation’s top spies engage in a “he said, she said” spat over who knew what when, the rest of the nation is left puzzling over whether their president is an incompetent bumbler who didn’t know what he should have known, or a bald-faced liar. No matter how one answers that question, it looks really bad for the president. And for U.S. stature on the world’s stage.\nBut the bafflement is bipartisan, since thanks again to the whistleblower Snowden, it was reported in the German publication Der Spiegel that the monitoring of Merkel’s cell phone began back in 2002, when President George W. Bush was chief of U.S. spies. What did he know, and when did he know it?\nCongressional “Dimwit of the Season” award has to go to Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. Previously, she insisted that she and her Intelligence Committee colleagues were informed and knowledgeable about the NSA’s activities. Senator Feinstein has been chief Democratic Party cheerleader of the national security state, but now even she’s alarmed. Recently she stated, “It is abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programs is necessary.…It is clear to me that certain surveillance activities have been in effect for more than a decade and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was not satisfactorily informed.”\nThis is the same clueless Senator who previously condemned Snowden as a traitor, saying, “I don’t look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it’s an act of treason…He violated the law. It’s treason.” And yet if it wasn’t for his “treasonous” acts, the very serious Senator Blindstein would still be clueless.\nThere is little doubt that the national surveillance state is out of control. Previously President Obama, Senator Feinstein and other congressional leaders insisted that that the NSA is subject to stringent congressional oversight and monitoring from the executive branch, but it’s now clear that this isn’t the case at all. Like the good ol’ days during the Reagan administration, when Ollie North and his accomplices ran gun- and drug-running operations to support the Contras in Nicaragua, the off-the-shelf rogues, goons and spooks are back. Regardless of which party has the presidency, they lurk in the White House basement, making vital decisions regarding the nation’s foreign policy and remaining unaccountable to the nation’s elected leaders.\nBut all is not lost. President Obama can partially redeem his tattered reputation by following the fine example of that intrepid charlatan-who-would-be-president, Donald Trump. The boss-in-chief can Trump-et the words “You’re fired!” to whichever of the head spooks that gave these orders.\nDoes anyone believe Obama will do that? I’m not holding my breath. It’s hard to see how Obama comes out of this without a dramatic loss of stature, both in the US as well as abroad. Increasingly, the hero in all of this is looking like that “traitor,” Ed Snowden. President Obama and Senator Feinstein should pin a Presidential Medal of Freedom on Mr. Snowden’s lapel.\nAmerican officials have criticized rightly China’s Orwellian tactics, and urged Beijing to become, well, more like the West. But behind closed doors, the US is becoming more like China. And the US is fast losing all credibility to criticize China for any of its domestic and international surveillance activities. That is a loss for the world’s evolution toward global peace and prosperity.\nSteven Hill (www.Steven-Hill.com) is a political writer and author of “10 Steps to Repair American Democracy” (www.10Steps.net) and “Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age” (www.EuropesPromise.org)\nIrony of the NSA debacle — did Obama need Snowden to tell him that U.S. spies are bugging world’s top leaders?\nGoverning mag: Can Adopting Ranked-Choice Voting Make Politics Civil?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line709262"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8631880879402161,"wiki_prob":0.8631880879402161,"text":"Renovations to ’Gateway to Disney’ Commence\nThu November 24, 2005 - Southeast Edition\nBrian Kern\nKnown to many as the true gateway to Disney, the interchange at Interstate 95 and Interstate 10 in Jacksonville, FL, is undergoing a total makeover.\nThe project, expected to take approximately six years at a cost of $206 million, is a very complex job, according to Mike Goldman, a public information officer of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) in Jacksonville.\n“This is the most congested interchange in the state,” Goldman said. “It’s as long as any project we’ve ever undertaken in Northeast Florida.”\nArcher Western Contractors LTD is spearheading the interchange renovation that started in February. Jon Walker, Archer Western’s project manager moved to Jacksonville from Arizona to direct the job from start to finish.\n“Drainage work is one of our top priorities at the moment,” Walker said. “We’re working on the outside portions of the project — laying a lot of pipe.”\nThe project includes 27,000 linear ft. (8,300 m) of storm drainage pipe culverts. Three hundred drainage structures will be placed, and 73,000 sq. ft. (6,780 sq m) of temporary sheetpile retaining walls will be erected.\nSeventeen bridges and 21 ramps, totaling 25 lane miles will be constructed at the interchange, located within the Jacksonville city limits.\nWalker said one bridge has already been removed and placed off to the side. There will be four steel plate girder bridges and 13 pre-stressed concrete beam bridges. A total of 12 million lbs. (5.4 million kg) of structural steel will be used in the construction of the four steel plate girder bridges.\nThe contractor will use 40,000 cu. yds. (30,600 cu m) of bridge structure concrete and 60,000 cu. yds. (45,900 cu m) of 12.5-in. thick concrete pavement before the job is complete. Throughout the job, 850,000 cu. yds. (650,000 cu m) of embankment will be placed.\nGoldman said in addition to constructing new on- and off-ramps, there will be some environmental issues to deal with.\n“There was a solid waste incinerator in the area many years ago that left some ash deposits to be cleaned up,” Goldman said. “FDOT started cleaning some of the areas in 2002.”\nCleanup work on the incinerator ash could continue throughout the duration of the project as it is encountered.\nA project of this magnitude naturally impacts city and interstate traffic patterns. While attempts will be made to keep the impact at a minimum, periodic closures and detours will occur.\nAccording to a fact sheet provided by Walker, reconstruction of the interchange will take place in 10 phases. Temporary ramps and roadways will be constructed throughout the project to accomplish the multiple phase construction. The Interstates will be closed at night, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., and traffic will be detoured to local roads during certain activities, such as setting beams across the road.\nThe I-95 southbound exit to Stockton Street will be closed after the end of the year and will remain closed for up to three years. A temporary exit ramp will be constructed at Forest Street and will remain in service until permanent access is constructed.\nCollege Street will be permanently closed from Roselle Street to Forest Street. Message boards and permanent electronic signs will be used during detours to encourage night traffic to use I-295.\nThe I-95 on- and off-ramps at McCoy’s Creek Boulevard were permanently closed from day one. I-95 northbound traffic to I-10 westbound can continue to exit at Stockton Street.\nAmong a large list of equipment being used on the interchange project, Archer Western has a fleet of cranes on-site. They are using three Manitowoc crawler cranes: a 3950W 150 ton; an 888 230 ton; and a 4100W 220 ton.\nWalker said the Walsh Group, Archer Western’s parent company, uses its nationwide leveraging capabilities to acquire rental equipment, but local sources are often used for service.\nIt also is using two Grove hydraulic cranes and a rented Link-Belt 248 200 ton crawler crane to round out the fleet.\nThe company purchased a Caterpillar MP30 pulverizer for this job to be used for breaking up the massive amounts of concrete on the project.\nWhen complete, the refurbished interchange will provide access to downtown Jacksonville from Forest Street to Park Street and Riverside Avenue.\nTraffic capacity will be increased, as will various efficiency and safety aspects. Cross-lane weaving movements that drivers face when using the current interchange will be reduced or eliminated. Forest Street also will be widened to accommodate the new on- and off-ramps.\tCEG","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line153535"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8105407357215881,"wiki_prob":0.8105407357215881,"text":"10 Best Thanksgiving Movies\nby Laurie L. Dove\n'Pocahontas'\nIrene Bedard, the voice of Pocahontas in the Disney film of the same name, and chief creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, John Lasseter, take part in a Walt Disney Studios animation presentation. Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney\n\"Pocahontas,\" a 1995 Disney animated film, offers a fictionalized look at Native American Pocahontas and Englishman John Smith as English settlers meet Powhatan Indians in Jamestown. It also makes a nice follow-up to the realities of \"The New World,\" and we especially like suspending disbelief when Pocahontas visits Grandmother Willow, an advice-offering tree spirit. The movie's sure to bring back memories for the teenagers who viewed it as toddlers, and it's perfect for helping a new generation of children wile away a pleasant hour.\nUltimate Guide to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade\n10 Lively Facts About the Day of the Dead\nCelebrate Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line581456"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7422392964363098,"wiki_prob":0.7422392964363098,"text":"More on CALPERS Long-Term Care Litigation\nAs noted in past posts, although UC is not part of CALPERS, UC employees were able to buy CALPERS' long-term care insurance since they were state employees. Many did. Then the premiums were jacked up substantially. Was it bait and switch? Poor administration?\nWhat happened in the CALPERS case is a general problem with long-term care insurance. Participants are making the assumption that maybe two or three or more decades from now, some insurance company is going to treat them fairly when they are incapacitated and unable to fend for themselves. In this case, the hope was that CALPERS, as a nonprofit state entity, would be different from a private, commercial carrier. It didn't work out that way. So, there is litigation. See below for the latest news:\n$1.2 billion CalPERS lawsuit over long-term care gets go-ahead from judge\nJune 28, 2019, State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee, Wes Venteicher\nPublic workers and retirees who sued CalPERS over an 85 percent rate increase to long-term care insurance plans could find out next week whether their lawsuit will move forward.\nThe lawsuit cleared a potential hurdle when a judge tentatively ruled that it shouldn’t be thrown out based on how much time passed before it was filed, and a decision on a second piece of the trial is expected Monday or Tuesday.\nA few people who bought the plans filed a class-action lawsuit after the California Public Employees’ Retirement System notified them it planned to hike premiums in 2015 and 2016. The suit’s class includes up to about 100,000 people who faced the rate hikes. Plaintiffs claim the increases and associated costs amount to about $1.2 billion.\nThe people who filed the lawsuit said the rate hike violated contracts and promises in marketing materials for the plans. CalPERS said it had the authority to raise the rates and needed to do so to sustain the insurance plans.\nA trial started June 10 with hearings in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The trial was divided into three central questions: whether too much time had passed for the policyholders’ claim to be valid, whether CalPERS had contractual authority to raise rates, and whether CalPERS breached its contract with policyholders.\nJudge William Highberger tentatively ruled that the lawsuit shouldn’t be thrown out based on too much time passing, according to transcripts from the trial.\nCalPERS had argued that since it raised rates in 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, the lawsuit should have been filed earlier to comply with the statute of limitations.\nHighberger’s decision on whether CalPERS had contractual authority to raise rates is expected Monday or Tuesday, according to the transcript.\nThe transcript indicates Highberger was more inclined to rule that the claims of 85,000 people who bought “inflation protection” — an option to pay more each month with an assurance that the rates would remain steady — were valid than the other 15,000 class members who didn’t purchase the protection.\nIf Highberger sides with the policyholders Monday, a jury trial would be scheduled this fall, unless the sides reach a settlement agreement.\nSource: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article232052397.html\nLabels: CalPERS, health care\nGrant to the Faculty Center\nHere is a donation from two faculty members:\nSource: http://read.mailer.clubhouseonline-e3.com/csb/Public/show/bkgn-15k2d3--lgsa6-2m0imfp7\nUC Davis is latest institution to adopt a reference check policy\nLast year, the University of Wisconsin System very publicly launched a new policy against \"passing the harasser\" on to unwitting institutions. It said it would disclose substantiated misconduct findings when contacted for employee reference checks. The system also put checks in place to guard against being passed someone else's harassers.\nAround the same time, the University of California, Davis, more quietly established its own pilot policy on faculty reference checks. Experts say this kind of policy is still extremely rare in academe -- but that that will soon change.\nA year into its pilot, Davis officials are ready to talk about it. Provost Philip Kass, who recently testified about the policy during a Congressional hearing on harassment in the sciences, said Wednesday that he and colleagues sought ways to prevent and otherwise address issues of sexual misconduct on campus.\nAnd they started thinking about how it's \"possible for faculty to move between universities without the incoming university knowing about substantiated findings and discipline for any reason at a prior university.\"\nK-12 school districts already are \"well aware\" of this problem, Kass said. But colleges and universities are another story -- even though examples abound of professors disciplined for misconduct moving on to new campuses to harass more students or colleagues. Ultimately, Davis adopted a new reference check program to \"help prevent us from hiring faculty without the ability to evaluate such historic infractions.\" ...\nFull story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/27/uc-davis-latest-institution-adopt-reference-check-policy-stem-faculty-misconduct\nLabels: U of Wisconsin, UC-Davis\nFor now, the Runaway Train on retiree healthcare has been put on a siding\nSometimes it pays to yell, scream, and carry on. We now have word that on Wednesday at Academic Council, UC president Napolitano announced that the decision had been made to replace only Health Net Seniority Plus with a Medicare Advantage plan for 2020 and to make no changes to our two PPO offerings at this time. Faculty representatives were unanimous in saying that the Health Net change was a \"no brainer\" and should actually result in improved access. (We'll see how those under Health Net respond, both to the announcement and to the actual change.) Those emeriti and retirees concerned about losing their two PPOs can rest easy for now, though we do expect very high premium increases for those plans and this issue will be revisited at some point in the future no doubt. There has so far been no public announcement of this and Napolitano did not say who had won the bid.\nWe continue to point to the need for provisions in the eventual final contract for the new Medicare Advantage plan to prevent horror stories and to have mechanisms to address such stories if they nonetheless arise. See our prior posting at:\nhttps://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/unexercised-bargaining-power-and.html\nLabels: health care, Napolitano, uc retirement, UCOP\nWorth Noting on Nine\nWe have noted in various posts that judges in external courts expect due process in Title IX cases at universities. And the more severe the penalty, the more they are likely to expect it. In the past, this expectation has been particularly focused on public universities since, as government entities, they are especially tied to constitutional guarantees. Now there is a court ruling in a Title IX case applying the same expectation to private institutions, as the article from Inside Higher Ed below describes.\nOf course, UC is a public institution. But the case illustrates judicial expectations. If university processes don't seem like the kinds of procedures to which judges are accustomed, they are likely to find fault with those processes.\nConstitutional Due Process in Title IX Cases at Private Institutions?\nIn a ruling that could have national implications for campus sexual assault proceedings, a federal judge has suggested that a private institution in an alleged rape case may not have followed due process standards -- a constitutional concept that generally applies only to public universities.\nThis is a significant development, commentators and legal observers say. This is the first time a judge, in a case involving a private college, directly linked due process to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that bars sex discrimination, including sexual violence, at educational institutions. (Students have also sued when they feel a private institution has violated its own sexual assault policies.)\nThe actual text of Title IX, which is only a sentence, makes no mention of due process.\n\"If applied more broadly, this would represent a fundamental shift in the safeguards that private schools owe to accused students to more closely align with those required of public schools,\" said S. Daniel Carter, president of Safety Advisors for Educational Campuses, which consults with colleges and universities on Title IX...\nFull story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/25/rhodes-college-ruling-opens-door-due-process-private-universities\nOne thing that judges are not used to in their world of due process is having investigation, prosecution, and judge all wrapped up in the same entity. It might be worth considering a separation.\n(Unexercised) Bargaining Power and the Runaway Train on Retiree Healthcare\nBargaining power\nWhen most U.S. employers go out to buy health insurance, they pretty much have to take what is offered from a handful of powerful major carriers. UC, however, is so large that carriers bid for its business. It has bargaining power. Yet, as we have pointed out in past posts, it seems willing to go into the unknown in the quest to privatize its offerings of retiree health care rather than exercise its bargaining power to provide assurances to plan participants.\nUCOP seems willing to accept the idea that $40 million will be saved by switching to a privatized system with no appreciable degradation of the offerings. Somehow, more for less - or, at least, the same for less - is supposedly being offered. When asked how such magic is possible, UCOP representatives say that maybe the carriers will get the extra money from Medicare and pass it along to UC. But, they say, since the system is privatized, UCOP cannot really know where the cost cut comes from. Nonsense! Ask! And say there will be no deal if a credible explanation is not offered, one that can be shared with participants.\nThe privatized Medicare Advantage system shifts the determination of what is \"medically necessary\" from Medicare to the private carriers. So UCOP should insist on a provision in the contract that says that no service which Medicare would approve will be denied. And it should set up a mechanism for complaints and enforcement if there is a deviation from that provision. What should not be said by UCOP is:\n\"High-quality evidence does not currently exist concerning how, if at all, medical necessity decisions differ between traditional Medicare and MA PPOs.\"\nSource: https://files.constantcontact.com/0c822253501/fc0386ad-a1c7-4d7c-a6ee-0523240d4cec.pdf\nBut, of course, that statement above is - so far - the official UCOP response to the issue.\nIt isn't the little frills, plus or minus, that participants are worried about. What they want is to avoid horror stories, such as appear from time to time in the news media about reimbursements being denied because, say, someone sent to an emergency room in an ambulance didn't call for a second opinion. UCOP needs to use its bargaining power to avoid horror stories.\nTo this point, there is little to indicate that UCOP is engaged in true bargaining from strength. And the timetable for the runaway train - i.e., implementation by January 1, 2020 - suggests there is little time left to do so.\n*Past postings on this subject:\nhttps://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/silo-thinking-and-runaway-train-on.html\nhttp://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/yet-more-on-retiree-healthcare-runaway.html\nhttp://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/footnote-on-runaway-retiree-healthcare.html\nhttp://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/timetable-of-runaway-train-on-retiree.html [Includes previous links.]\nLabels: health care, UC, UCOP\nCollege Athletes and the \"Fair Pay to Play\" Act\nFrom Inside Higher Ed: The National Collegiate Athletic Association is fighting a California bill that would let certain athletes to make money off their name, image or likeness, which NCAA officials and other traditionalists argue would undermine the \"amateurism\" of college sports.\nNCAA President Mark Emmert sent a letter last week to the chairs of the two California State Assembly committees that vote on the Fair Pay to Play Act, USA Today first reported. The legislation already passed the State Senate in a 31-5 vote. It would permit athletes to be compensated if the college they attend earns an average of $10 million in media rights revenue a year.\nAt least 23 institutions in the state participate in Division I athletics, including four universities in the high-ranking Pacific-12 Conference.\nThe bill is the latest pressure the NCAA faces to rework its rules on athlete compensation on name, image or likeness. Pundits have accused the association and its member institutions of profiting off players while not sharing the wealth with them. The NCAA has maintained that paying athletes would push the college system too far into professional territory.\nEmmert in his letter insinuated that California institutions both public and private would be barred from participating in NCAA championships...\nBut the bill's passage does seem likely. The Assembly's Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media Committee, one of the panels that Emmert wrote to, approved the legislation today in a 5-1 vote, with 1 member not voting and another absent. It is now due to be reviewed by the Higher Education Committee.\nThough the Legislature is overwhelmingly liberal, the bill seems to have bipartisan support, as indicated by the Senate vote.\nWashington Post sportswriter Sally Jenkins wrote in a blistering column that Emmert was bluffing and \"California should call him out on it.\"\n\"You really think Emmert is going to tell ESPN, CBS and Turner to take a hit in one of their biggest media markets, that the tournaments and bowl championships they paid billions of dollars in rights fees for will have to be played without the heart of the Pac-12?\" Jenkins wrote. \"'Sorry, CBS, but you can't have Stanford, Southern Cal, UCLA or Cal, because their kids might've made some cash from selling T-shirts with their own pictures on them.'\" ...\nThe University of California system is... against the bill. The NCAA did not respond to additional request for comment.\nThe bill also would forbid colleges from discontinuing or reducing athletes' scholarships if they were also earning money from their name, image or likeness. If a player was seeking an agent, or other professional representation, that person would need to be licensed by the state, the bill stipulates...\nFull story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/26/ncaa-may-not-allow-participation-championship-games-if-california-bill-passes\nThe bill, SB 206, is at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB206\nLabels: athletics, legislature, politics, Stanford, UC, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, USC\nThe CRISPR tale goes on\nPatent Office in 1924\nPatent office reopens major CRISPR battle between Broad Institute and Univ. of California\nBy Sharon Begley, June 25, 2019, Stat\nThe U.S. patent office has declared an interference between a dozen key patents awarded to the Broad Institute on the genome-editing technology CRISPR and 10 CRISPR patent applications submitted by the University of California and its partners, according to documents posted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.\nThe declaration of an interference means that the patent office has determined that one or more patent applications describe inventions that are substantially the same as those for which patents have already been issued. In this case, the patents awarded to the Broad, beginning in 2014, describe the use of CRISPR-Cas9 to edit the genomes of eukaryotes — organisms whose genomes are enclosed within a cell nucleus, including all plants and animals — based on the research of Broad biologist Feng Zhang. UC’s patent applications also cover the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes, based on the work of UC Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier.\nUC and the Broad already went through an interference proceeding that went all the way to federal appeals court, with the Broad prevailing.\nThat history made patent experts react almost identically to this latest development. “Here we are again,” said attorney Kevin Noonan of the Chicago law firm McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP, who specializes in biotech patents. “I can only imagine that this will go on, and on, and on.”\nBoth the Doudna and Zhang teams did their research under a system that awarded patents based on who was the first to invent (the current system, in place since 2013, awards patents based on who was the first to file). The interference proceeding will entail motions filed with the patent office, which will likely take a year, and then possibly a hearing. At some point, the patent office will therefore have to determine who was the inventor of CRISPR genome editing in higher organisms — not bacteria, and not DNA floating freely in a test tube.\n“Now we’re having the fight over who invented CRISPR in eukaryotes,” said Eldora Ellison of Sterne Kessler Goldstein & Fox, who represents UC. The declaration of interference, she said, “means that the patent office has recognized that it has a duty to determine who invented this important invention. The fact that the Broad has patents does not resolve that question.”\nThe answer to that question would reverberate well beyond the potentially billion-dollar market for CRISPR therapies. Those are being developed by at least three companies, including Editas Medicine, CRISPR Therapeutics, and Intellia Therapeutics. The outcome could also affect who the science record books, to say nothing of the Nobel Prize committee, recognizes as the inventors of this revolutionary technology.\nIn a statement, the Broad said, “We welcome this action by the [patent office], which has previously ruled that the claims of the Broad patents, issued for methods for eukaryotic genome editing, were properly granted.”\nUnlike the last interference, which UC requested, neither party asked for this one. But that can be done “indirectly,” Noonan said.\n“The interesting thing in terms of the [University of California] strategy is that they seem to have filed a bunch of patent applications intended to provoke an interference,” by describing the use of CRISPR in eukaryotes even though the UC team was not the first to achieve that, Noonan said.\n“If you write the [patent] claim the right way, and the patent examiner is aware that the Broad’s patents [on that invention] exist, it wouldn’t take a genius examiner to say, aha,” he said.\nThe patent office has designated the Broad as the “senior party” in the interference and UC as the “junior party.” That means the Broad, with patents in hand since 2014, is presumed to be the rightful, first inventor. UC therefore has to prove its case to the patent office.\nSource: https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/crispr-patents-interference/\nLabels: UC\nUCLA's Heads-Will-(Likely)-Roll Scandal Continues\nUSAC, GSA call for greater transparency following Heaps investigation\nMarilyn Chavez-Martinez and Sameera Pant, June 24, 2019, Daily Bruin\nUCLA took over a year to notify students of the investigation of a former doctor accused of sexual battery.\nUniversity officials sent a campuswide email June 10 regarding the arrest of James Heaps, a former UCLA Health obstetrician and gynecologist. Undergraduate Student Association Council President Robert Watson said he felt the fact that students were not immediately informed of the Title IX investigation may have put students in danger.\n“Students didn’t know about it until maybe a month ago, which is not only, I think, a threat of safety, but also just doesn’t really show a lot of accountability and transparency behind these accusations,” Watson said.\nIn December 2017, UCLA launched a Title IX investigation after receiving a complaint of inappropriate touching and comments made by Heaps toward patients, said David Olmos, a UCLA Health spokesperson, in an email statement.\nHeaps’ arrest came about a year and a half after UCLA began investigating him.\nHeaps pled not guilty to two counts of sexual battery and one count of sexual exploitation by a physician. The initial investigation led to the discovery of two other complaints against Heaps from 2014 and 2015.\nThe 2015 complaint stemmed from an anonymous Yelp review about 2008 events, Olmos said. The review alleged that Heaps had sexually assaulted the person who posted the comment while they were a UCLA student.\nUCLA Health notified Heaps on April 25, 2018 that his employment would end.\nHeaps has not practiced at the what is now known as the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center since 2010, Olmos said. Prior to that, Heaps was a part-time consulting physician starting in 1983.\nIn May 2018, the Title IX office referred the case to medical staff to assess whether Heaps’ treatment was medically appropriate.\n“The results of that initial investigation were not concluded due to a need for clarification as to the medical appropriateness of Heaps’ practice,” Olmos said.\nThat investigation was concluded some time after his termination, but Olmos did not give a specific date for the end of the investigation.\nHeaps was removed from clinical practice and placed on paid investigative leave June 14, 2018, after an investigation substantiated allegations of billing irregularities and violation of the UCLA Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment policy, Olmos said. The leave was paid, as required under the University’s academic personnel policies, Olmos added.\n“We reported him to the Medical Board of California, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, and law enforcement,” Olmos said. “We also informed Dr. Heaps that his employment was being terminated, after which he announced he was retiring.”\nOlmos said UCLA Health learned of a fourth patient complaint about 2018 events after Heaps was no longer employed.\nSince his arrest, at least 22 women have come forward against Heaps, according to the Los Angeles Times.\nStudent government officials from UCLA and USC, who collectively represent over 93,000 students, released a joint statement calling for more transparency.\n“As we approach a new school year, both institutions have an extraordinary opportunity to rethink health approaches and reshape workplace culture,” the joint statement said. “They also have a necessary obligation to protect the integrity, well-being, and safety of all students; we call for this to be the top priority for all campus departments at USC and UCLA.”\nWatson said Chancellor Gene Block has not addressed the matter with USAC directly. Watson added he would like administrators to communicate more with USAC in regards to matters concerning student safety and well-being, such as the Heaps investigation.\nWatson said he thinks the way UCLA handled communication about this case resembled the way UCLA handled communication regarding former professor Thomas Denove, who was arraigned for charges of sexual assault of minors one month before he retired from UCLA. The university did not notify students of the charges brought against Denove.\n“We just don’t know … whether it’s a professor, whether it’s a health practitioner, until they’ve already been interacting with students, seeing more students after these allegations, we just don’t know about it,” Watson said.\nWatson said he understands there are privacy regulations regarding the communication of personnel matters and investigations. However, he said he thinks students should be informed due to the gravity of the accusations.\n“It seems like for accusations that are as serious as these, that the student body or students that have the potential to interact with these individuals should be made aware that there is some sort of ongoing conduct investigation,” Watson said.\nUnder the Clery Act, universities are required to immediately notify the campus community upon the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees on the campus.\nGraduate Students Association President Zak Fisher said he thinks students should be able to publicly voice their concerns to administrators regarding the Heaps investigation.\n“I understand and respect that there are ongoing legal proceedings that limit our capacities to prudently speak on any individual case, but there is consensus among graduate students that Chancellor Block’s administration lacks fundamental transparency, including and perhaps especially when it comes to very serious issues like sexual assault,” Fisher said.\nThe preliminary hearing for the charges against Heaps will take place Wednesday at the Airport Courthouse.\nSource: http://dailybruin.com/2019/06/24/usac-gsa-call-for-greater-transparency-following-heaps-investigation/\nWe continue to remind blog readers that what the facts are of the specific case of Dr. Heaps will be determined through a judicial process. The administrative scandal involves the official response to the reports of a possible problem.\nLabels: diversity, health care, UCLA\nSilo Thinking and the Runaway Train on Retiree Health Care\nThe current rush to adopt a Medicare Advantage plan, probably by next month, is a perfect illustration of \"silo thinking.\"* Basically, the issue is being driven by cost - although, as we have pointed out - the cost information seems to be provided by a UCOP-hired consultant. The new committee that was hastily set up (after the original retiree health committee was abruptly killed) has no independent means of verifying what it is being told about the proposed privatization.\nYou cannot separate retiree health care from other forms of compensation. In the end, it's all compensation. Focusing on just one form of compensation and calculating supposed cost savings is silo thinking. Retiree health care is a significant benefit for active employees. Apart from legal issues of vesting, it figures into attraction and retention. If it didn't, why was it created in the first place?\nOver the years - certainly at UCLA - there have been efforts at UCLA to encourage long-service, older faculty to retire. Various forms of phased retirement have been offered. Yours truly has participated as a presenter at an annual conference encouraging such faculty to consider their retirement options. The availability of retiree health insurance is important in such decisions. Ignoring the consequences of degrading retiree health care on such behavioral aspects and focusing on cost is silo thinking.\nOf course, the problems that arise from silo thinking occur only if there is a degrading of the retiree health care offerings. The official word has been that everything will be much the same, that it is possible to save $40 million - or whatever the latest estimate is - without a degrading. So it is important to reproduce UCOP's own words from its FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) document:\nQ: Are similar services covered under MA PPO plans as traditional Medicare?\nA: Yes, MA PPO plans are regulated by Medicare and required to cover the same services as traditional Medicare. One difference is that in traditional Medicare, the Medicare program makes decisions about whether a service is ‘medically necessary,’ which is not universally defined. Under an MA PPO plan, the insurer offering the plan makes those decisions. High-quality evidence does not currently exist concerning how, if at all, medical necessity decisions differ between traditional Medicare and MA PPOs. In both traditional Medicare and an MA PPO, patients have the right to appeal any decision that they believe is made in error.\nIf there is no high quality evidence about the impact of shifting the definition of what is medically necessary, wouldn't it be a good idea to gather some? The shift from Medicare decision-making to private insurance carrier decision-making is the key aspect of a Medicare Advantage plan. All the rest is frills, even if ostensible coverage is widened. Isn't it more likely than not that the $40 million comes from this aspect of privatization? Looking at bids and ignoring the impact of privatizing is silo thinking.\nWe'll have more to say about this issue in the future.\nLabels: health care, uc retirement, UCOP\nThe On-Again/Off-Again Hawaiian Telescope Seems to be On (Again)\nIn Hawaii, Construction to Begin on Disputed Telescope Project: Work on the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea, bitterly opposed by Hawaiian activists, could start soon.\nBy Dennis Overbye, June 20, 2019, NY Times\nGov. David Ige of Hawaii announced on Thursday that a “notice to proceed” had been issued for construction of a giant, long-contested telescope on Mauna Kea, the volcano on the Big Island that 13 major telescopes already call home. Construction could start as soon as July.\nSuch an announcement has been anxiously awaited both by astronomers and by Hawaiian cultural activists since last year, when Hawaii’s Supreme Court restored the telescope’s building permit. As part of the deal, five telescopes currently operating on Mauna Kea will be shut down and their sites restored to their original condition.\n“We are all stewards of Mauna Kea,” Governor Ige said. He pledged to respect the rights and cultural traditions of the Hawaiian people, including the freedom to speak out against the telescope.\nHe asked that further debate happen away from the mountain, where steep roads and limited water, oxygen and medical services pose a safety risk. As he spoke, arguments were already breaking out on Twitter and Facebook.\n“This decision of the Hawaiian Supreme Court is the law of the land, and it should be respected,” he said.\nThe announcement was another skirmish, surely not the last, for control of the volcano’s petrified lava slopes and the sky overhead. The Thirty Meter Telescope would be the largest in the Northern Hemisphere. Hawaiian activists have long opposed it, contending that decades of telescope-building on Mauna Kea have polluted the mountain. In 2014, protesters disrupted a groundbreaking ceremony and blocked work vehicles from accessing the mountain.\nMauna Kea is considered “ceded land” held in trust for the Hawaiian people, and some Hawaiians have argued that the spate of telescope construction atop the mountain has interfered with cultural and religious practices.\nThe Thirty Meter Telescope would be built by an international collaboration called the TMT International Observatory. The project, which involves the University of California and the California Institute of Technology as well as Japan, China, India and Canada, is expected to cost $2 billion.\nIn December 2015, the state’s Supreme Court invalidated a previous construction permit, on the grounds that the opponents had been deprived of due process because a state board had granted the permit before the opponents could be heard in a contested case hearing. The court awarded a new permit last year.\nAt the time, astronomers with the project said they would build the telescope in the Canary Islands if denied in Hawaii.\nOn Wednesday night, in a precursor to Thursday’s announcement, state authorities dismantled an assortment of structures that had been constructed on Mauna Kea by protesters.\nThe structures included a pair of shacks called “hales,” one located across from a visitor center halfway up the mountain, where protests had been staged, and another at the base of the mountain that activists were using as a checkpoint.\nAlso dismantled were two small stone monuments, or “ahus” — one on the road leading to the telescope site, the other in the middle of the site, according to a spokesman for the TMT project. They were built only recently, without a permit, and so were deemed by the court to have no historical value.\nBut Kealoha Pisciotta, a leader of the opposition, called the dismantling a “desecration” and “a hostile and racist act,” in an email. “They call these Religious structures illegal structures but our rights are constitutionally protected and the right specifically protected is our right to ‘continue’ our practice,” she wrote.\nSource: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/science/telescope-mauna-kea-hawaii.html\nLabels: CalTech, miscellaneous, UC\nGeffen Measles\nFrom the Bruin: A Westwood playhouse was identified as a possible site for measles exposure in June following two confirmed cases of measles in Los Angeles, according to a press release from the LA County Department of Public Health on Saturday.\nThe Geffen Playhouse theater, owned by UCLA, was potentially exposed to measles June 7 between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Another location named in the press release was the Toscana Restaurant in Brentwood, which was potentially exposed to the disease June 8 between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m...\nThose who visited these locations on the specified dates could be at risk of developing measles for up to 21 days after exposure. LA health officials recommend potentially affected individuals review their immunization records and talk with their health providers if they are pregnant, have a weakened immune system or have not been vaccinated for measles.\nThe cases come three months after UCLA was identified as a site for possible measles exposure, causing 119 students to be initially quarantined while their immunization records were verified...\nFull story at http://dailybruin.com/2019/06/22/la-officials-investigate-possible-measles-exposure-at-geffen-playhouse/\n100-200-300 Parking\nAs you likely will know, the parking system for faculty, staff, and students (including emeriti) at UCLA is changing. Up until June 30, the old system with permits hanging from windshield mirrors continues. Thereafter, for the vast majority, there will be some kind of electronic screening of license plates. The gates to the parking lots and structures have been removed.\nBut there is an exception. For medical appointments in the 100-200-300 medical buildings, many people park in the underground structure beneath those buildings through the circular ramp shown above. In order to get into the B2 parking level for patients, drivers must take a ticket from a machine which opens a gate. That gate will remain in service since the parking level serves mainly non-UCLA patients. To exit, you must pay at a machine with the ticket. The ticket will then open an exit gate.\nHowever, those with UCLA permits in the past were allowed to park free for up to 3 hours in the B2 level. You had to give both your ticket and your permit to an attendant to exercise this privilege. The attendant would then open the gate. This privilege will remain in effect after June 30, but there will be no permit. So how will the system operate starting July 1?\nBasically, we are told by the parking powers-that-be that it will operate much the same as it has in the past. But since you won't have a parking permit, you will have to give your University ID (UID) number to the attendant with your ticket. The attendant will then open the gate.\nIt's not clear whether you need to show something with your UID for this process to work. Yours truly advises having your Bruincard handy - which should look something like the one shown here. Your Bruincard has both your picture and your UID.\nLabels: health care, parking, transportation, UCLA\nThe Sunset of Easy Summer Traffic to UCLA\nIf you think Gloria Swanson had it rough, wait 'til you get to experience traffic on Sunset Boulevard when commuting to UCLA this summer. Normally, summer traffic is light. But Sunset will be a mess this time. And as folks divert to Wilshire Blvd. and other routes, the traffic will be messy there, too:\nLADWP will be adding new circuits to existing underground electric infrastructure that services the Bel Air, Beverly Crest, Westwood, and Holmby Hills communities. A total of 4 new underground circuits will be installed to house approximately 27,000 feet of new cable. These additional circuits will relieve demand off overloaded circuits.\nThe project will take place in two phases:\nPhase I is located on Sunset Blvd and will begin June 18, 2019 and will be completed by summer 2020\nPhase II is expected to begin in 2020 and will include several streets: Bellagio Road, Chalon Road, Bel Air Road, and South Beverly Glen Boulevard. More details about Phase II will be provided at a later date.\nLADWP worked closely with several agencies to develop a traffic mitigation plan. Construction will begin after UCLA is out of session to take advantage of the summer schedule when there will be fewer students and faculty on campus. Working hours have been reduced to avoid heavy commute times. In addition, flaggers will be on-site to assist with traffic flow and changeable message boards will be located in several locations to notify motorists.\nPhase I: Sunset Boulevard - (June 25, 2019 – Summer 2020)\nPhase I construction will take place simultaneously along the following areas on Sunset Boulevard:\nSunset Boulevard between the 405 Freeway and Bellagio Road Crews will begin near the 405 and work east towards Bellagio Road. Construction will progress in roughly 500 feet increments until this portion of work is completed.\nSunset Boulevard between South Beverly Glen Boulevard and Carolwood Drive Crews will be working on this area at the same time as the 405 to Bellagio Road area.\nCrews will be working primarily in the two middle lanes of Sunset Boulevard. During construction, at least one lane will remain open in each direction to maintain both eastbound and westbound traffic flow. Hours may be extended as needed to expedite the project’s completion.\nWeekend prep time begins at 6:00 am but construction will not begin until 8:00 am. At the end of each work day, all lanes will be restored for traffic.\nSource: https://www.ladwpnews.com/media-advisory-ladwp-announces-year-long-power-upgrade-project-on-sunset-blvd-in-greater-bel-air-area/\nWant to vent?\nPower Upgrade Project on Sunset Blvd in Greater Bel Air Area\nCouncilmember Koretz Asks for Public’s Cooperation with Partial Road Closure on Sunset Blvd\nCouncilmember Paul Koretz, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) to host a PRESS CONFERENCE to alert the public that LADWP is initiating a year-long power upgrade project along two areas of Sunset Blvd, east of I-405 in the greater Bel Air area. LADWP, together with its City partners, will announce traffic and public safety mitigations.\nLADWP will be upgrading underground power infrastructure that was installed in the 1930s.\nDue to increased power demands in the Bel Air, Beverly Crest, northern Westwood and Holmby Hills communities, additional power capacity needs to be added.\nConstruction along Sunset Blvd will cause reduced lanes and slowdowns.\nTraffic, public safety, and emergency response plans have been developed and will be deployed throughout the duration of the project.\nMonday, June 24, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.\nFire Station 71, 107 S Beverly Glen Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024\nCouncilmember Paul Koretz, 5th Council District\nRepresentative from LADWP\nNickie Miner, Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council\nDeputy Chief Armando Hogan, West Bureau Commander, LAFD\nCaptain Vic Davalos, LAPD\nLos Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT)\nLos Angeles Department of Public Works, Bureau of Street Services (BSS)\nFour new underground electric circuits will be installed under Sunset Blvd.\nCrews will be working simultaneously in two locations:\nSunset Blvd between I-405 freeway and Bellagio Rd.\nSunset Blvd between S. Beverly Glen Blvd and Carolwood Dr.\nConstruction dates: June 25, 2019 – Summer 2020\nConstruction hours: Monday – Friday 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Saturday 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.\nHours may be extended as needed to expedite the project’s completion\nAffected Communities: Bel Air, Beverly Crest, northern Westwood, Holmby Hills\nProject hotline: (213) 367-6045 or 1(800) DIAL DWP (342-5397)\nEmail: powerprojects@ladwp.com\nWebsite: http://www.ladwp.com/BelAir\nAlison Simard, Office of Councilmember Paul Koretz\n213-473-7005 (o) / 213-505-7467 (c) Alison.Simard@lacity.org\nDeborah Hong, LADWP\n213-367-5204 (o)/ 213-948-9816 (c) Deborah.Hong@ladwp.com\nYet More on the Heads-Will-(Likely)-Roll Scandal\nThis matter is becoming something of an industry. But undoubtedly, the lawsuit - and maybe others - will expand.\nParking Tax?\nBack in the day when parking was free,\na percentage parking tax wouldn't have mattered\nCourt: Calif. cities can collect 25% tax on public university parking fees\nBob Egelko, June 20, 2019, San Francisco Chronicle\nSan Francisco can collect millions of dollars in parking taxes from drivers who use University of California and state university lots in the city, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday in a decision that applies to dozens of cities statewide.\nUniversity officials said the ruling could push up the price of parking on campuses.\nLower courts had ruled that UC San Francisco, UC Hastings College of the Law and San Francisco State University were exempt from the 25% tax because California law prohibits local regulation of state institutions. But the state’s high court said the tax is levied on drivers, not the universities, who face only the “minimal burden” of collecting the additional fees, a cost the city has agreed to pay.\n“The law does not forbid a (local) government from imposing a tax on private third parties who happen to do business with another government,” Justice Leondra Kruger said in the 7-0 ruling. She said charter cities like San Francisco “may require state agencies to assist in the collection and remittance of local taxes.”\nThat applies to local hotel and utility taxes as well as parking taxes, said Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith, San Francisco’s lawyer in the case. Charter cities, which have more powers of self-government than other cities, total 121 in California and about 20 in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.\n“Everybody has to pay their fair share of taxes,” Keith said. He said users of UC and CSU parking lots “enjoy the city services just like people who park at any other garage in the city.”\nThe universities’ exemptions were costing San Francisco more than $4 million a year as of 2014, and that amount has increased because of the expansion of UCSF’s Mission Bay Medical Center, Keith said. The League of California Cities said in a court filing that parking taxes account for nearly 2% of revenue collected by cities in the state, and that the San Francisco case could benefit cities that host any of the 10 UC campuses or 23 CSU campuses.\nThe effect on drivers will be up to the universities, Keith said. If UC charges $10 for a parking place, he said, it could raise the rate to $12.50 to pass the 25% fee along to drivers, or it could absorb the cost by lowering its charge to $8 and leave the driver’s fee at $10.\nUC said it was disappointed by the ruling.\n“We are concerned that it may lead to increased costs for University of California students and employees, as well as patients at our medical centers, some of whom travel hundreds of miles for needed medical care,” the university said in a statement.\nCSU told the court that a parking tax at SF State would make it difficult for the school to keep parking affordable.\nSan Francisco established its parking lot tax in 1970 and increased the rate to 25% in 1980.The city tried to collect the tax from UC San Francisco in 1983, backed off when the university objected, and finally sued in 2014 to require the schools to add the tax to their parking fees.\nIn 2017, the state’s First District Court of Appeal said the parking lots were exempt from local taxes because they were state “governmental activities” that supported the universities’ educational and clinical functions by providing access. The court cited a 1939 state Supreme Court ruling that said local governments cannot regulate state agencies.\nIn Thursday’s ruling, the court agreed that the Constitution prohibits one level of government from taxing another, but said the San Francisco tax was “not imposed on the state universities or their property,” only on drivers.\nKruger noted that a state appellate court in 1976 had upheld Berkeley’s tax on ticket sales at Oakland Raiders games at the UC Berkeley stadium.\n“San Francisco has a legitimate interest in the millions of dollars in contested tax money, and a tax is effective only if it can be collected,” Kruger said.\nThe case is San Francisco vs. UC Regents, S242835.\nSource: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Court-Calif-cities-can-collect-25-tax-on-14026134.php\nNote: A perusal of the web suggests that the City of Los Angeles - in which UCLA resides - has a parking occupancy tax rate of 10%.\nLabels: parking, transportation, UCLA\nListen to the Regents' Governance Committee Meeting of June 17, 2019 (and a note of caution)\nThe Regents' Governance Committee had an off-cycle meeting this past Monday. There were no public comments at the session. The main item was approval of a budget for UCOP. Blog readers will recall that the state auditor several years ago criticized UC and the Regents for maintaining a hidden reserve. The legislature then insisted that there should be a separate budget from UCOP and that the Regents should more closely monitor reserves.\nUC prez Napolitano at the session argued for a return to the prior model, i.e., no separate allocation from the legislature and what amounts to a kind of tax system on the campuses to pay for central services. The newer Regents, however, wanted to learn more about the history and methodology and it was agreed that UCOP would come up with a more detailed history and explanation at the July Regents meeting.\nUCOP seems to make a distinction between official reserves - i.e., accounts labeled as such - and \"balances\" in various fund accounts. The distinction is strained at best and (I predict) won't fly if the state auditor comes back for another look. In effect, if you think of UCOP as a household with a checking account for day-to-day expenses and a savings account for emergencies, you might say there is some distinction between the balance in the checking account and the balance in the savings account. But in fact, a dollar is a dollar. If you need money because of some kind of emergency, it really doesn't matter whether you draw down your checking account or you draw down your savings account. The Regents could be treading on dangerous ground if they try to convince the state auditor or the legislature that there is some practical distinction between dollars in a checking account and dollars in a savings account.\nMoreover, as it happens, the state auditor has issued a report critical of CSU for having hidden reserves - although the magnitude involved is oodles higher than what came out of the UC audit. It would be particularly dangerous, with the legislature focused on the CSU matter, for the Regents to move in the direction that seemed to be proposed at this time.* Let's hope the new Regents continue to ask questions and there is no rubber stamping of the proposal in July.\nYou can hear the discussion at:\nor direct to:\nhttps://archive.org/details/RegentsGovernanceCommittee61719\n*On the CSU affair, see:\nhttps://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/CSU-stashed-away-1-5B-surplus-without-telling-14025568.php\nLabels: audio, CSU, Napolitano, UC Regents\nAdult Supervision from UC Prez - Part 2\nUC prez Napolitano gave an interview to a reporter from California Today (NY Times supplement) concerning her intervention in UC campus admissions procedures. As noted yesterday, she stepped in with new procedures after UCLA and UC-Berkeley were involved in the recent admissions scandal.* See below:\nJill Cowan (NY Times): First, can you tell me more about why the university decided to undertake these changes?\nJanet Napolitano: Just by way of background, the university gets around 220,000 applications every year. And when the Varsity Blues indictment came down, one of the cases alleged involved the soccer coach at U.C.L.A.\nIn looking at that, I asked our chief audit officer to survey and do a process review of where we were, what improvements could be made to our system to bolster our defenses against others who may try to game the system.\nWhat kind of responsibility do you think the University of California or an individual campus has to stop that kind of fraud? Do you think the U.C. has any culpability in the case?\nWell, I’m not sure I would describe it as culpability, but more that were there process improvements that we could make to minimize the risk of another instance arising that was similar to what happened at U.C.L.A. and beyond that particular instance.\nDo you think any of the specific changes would have prevented the case that allegedly involved the U.C.L.A. men’s soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo?\nI think the requirement in the case of special admissions, which would cover athletics, that there be two-step verification of the student’s eligibility and qualifications would have been very helpful.\nThese fixes are mostly process related. I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit about how the U.C. is addressing broader inequalities in education.\nI think one of the reasons that the case struck such a nerve is because it really led to the notion that the products of privilege get special rules and special benefits.\nWe’re a public university and in a way, we’re a public trust. We want to make sure that we are accessible, that we’re affordable, that we’re excellent.\nWe actually have a student body that is socioeconomically diverse. For example, California resident undergraduates from families that make less than $80,000 a year pay no tuition or fees at the university. What that means is that 52 percent of our undergrads graduate with no student loans.\nSo on the one hand, we have policies that mitigate against the undue effect of privilege and on the other hand we have policies that foster accessibility and affordability.\nIs there anything you’d say to students who are applying to the U.C.?\nI would say to students that we hold ourselves to a very high standard, that we are taking proactive steps to strengthen and protect the integrity of the admissions process and that they will be evaluated on their merits.\nSource: https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/CA_14531.html\n*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2019/06/adult-supervision-from-uc-prez.html\nLabels: admissions, Napolitano, UC, UC-Berkeley, UCLA\nYet More on the Retiree Healthcare Runaway Train\nEMERITI ASSOCIATION\n101 UNIVERSITY HALL\nBERKELEY, CA 94720-1550\nDear EVP Nava,\nI am the president of the UC Berkeley Emeriti Association (UCBEA). As a way of saving money, UCOP is contemplating the replacement of Health Net and possibly the two Medicare PPO’s with a Medicare Advantage PPO. The savings are predicated upon two assumptions: Advantage programs can more efficiently “manage” patients; the cost of Medicare supplement policies continue to increase.\nThe former supposition may hold some merit, although there is a dearth of published data to support it. The latter is called into question by recent information from CalPERS stating that the premiums for the existing Medicare PPOs will not increase dramatically, as we had been led to believe. According to CalPERS, the change in Medicare PPO premiums will actually decline by 2.52% between 2019 and 2020. This new information is at variance with the repeatedly voiced claim that UC can save large amounts of money by switching to Medicare Advantage plans that every industry-knowledgeable source known to us predicts will entail a significant diminution of service benefits to retirees.\nI trust the Executive Steering Committee will take into account this new information, which would seem to reject the major argument for replacing the current PPO plans with Medicare Advantage.\nJohn Swartzberg, President UCBEA\nLabels: health care, uc retirement, UC-Berkeley\nAdult Supervision from UC Prez\nAfter college admissions scandal, UC rolls out reforms\nTeresa Watanabe and Matthew Ormseth, 6-20-19, LA Times\nThe University of California on Thursday released a sweeping list of recommendations aimed at better policing of fraud and conflicts of interest in admitting students — a process triggered by the national college admissions scandal.\nThe recommendations, which UC President Janet Napolitano now plans to implement, include stronger verification of claims on students’ applications, reviews of potential links between donors and applicants, and stricter scrutiny of those admitted for special talents, such as athletes and artists.\nNapolitano said she ordered an internal audit to come up with the recommendations as a “proactive step” to protect the integrity of UC, the nation’s leading public research university.\n“We have a responsibility to make sure we're adhering to the highest standards where admissions are concerned,” she said in an interview with The Times. “It seemed, to me, timely and important to direct that we do our own evaluation of our admissions procedures to make sure that we are not only turning very square corners with students and their families, but also that we are bolstering our defenses against anyone who would try to game the admissions system.”\nThe national admissions scandal, which erupted in March, has roiled elite institutions across the nation, prompting pledges of reform amid widespread public anger and disgust.\nNewport Beach college consultant William “Rick” Singer has admitted to masterminding a brazen scheme in which he charged affluent parents huge sums to rig their children’s entrance exams or to outright buy their entrance into top-tier colleges by paying coaches to designate students as recruited athletes. He has pleaded guilty to several felonies.\nSo far, two UC campuses — UCLA and UC Berkeley — have been ensnared in the fallout.\nAt UCLA, according to an indictment charging the men’s soccer coach, Jorge Salcedo, with racketeering, Singer paid Salcedo $200,000 to pass off two children of his clients as recruited soccer players. Nine days after the indictment was unsealed, he resigned from the coaching post he had held for 15 years. He has pleaded not guilty.\nAt UC Berkeley, at least one student was admitted with fraudulent test scores, prosecutors allege. David Sidoo, a Canadian businessman and former professional football player, is accused of paying Singer to fix entrance exams for his two sons. The younger of the two, Jordan Sidoo, attended UC Berkeley. David Sidoo, indicted on charges of fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, has pleaded not guilty.\nThe systemwide internal audit that Napolitano ordered looked at what controls campuses already had in place to guard against fraud, but not how well they have used them. That question will be examined in a second audit to be completed by the end of this year.\nOverall, Napolitano said, UC’s admission system works well in selecting the most qualified applicants. UC policy prohibits consideration of donations or family alumni — known as legacy applicants — in admissions decisions.\nTo qualify for admission, most California freshman applicants must speak English, complete a series of prescribed college-prep classes, have a minimum 3.0 GPA and submit SAT or ACT test scores. Several other factors also are used for evaluation, including special talents and awards, location and life experience.\nLast year, the system’s nine undergraduate campuses attracted about 223,500 applicants and admitted about 136,000 of them. UCLA, the most popular campus, admitted just 15.6% of 137,513 prospective freshmen and transfer applicants for fall 2018.\nUC typically cancels about 100 applications each year because students don’t respond to requests to verify claimed achievements. Campuses also usually revoke fewer than half a dozen admission offers because of admitted falsification, UC officials say.\n“We overall have good standards for admissions,” Napolitano said. “But one case is too many, and we really want to hold ourselves to a zero tolerance standard.”\nShe said the area that needs the most scrutiny is special admissions, where athletes, artists and others receive extra consideration for their talents.\nThe audit recommended stricter controls, many for the admission of recruited athletes who do not receive scholarships. The risk of fraud involving scholarship athletes, the review said, is significantly lower because NCAA rules “make it difficult for coaches to place those who are unqualified on a team roster.”\nThe audit proposes that the person who recommends the admission should verify the talent, and then a supervisor must approve it and send it on for a third-level review.\nOther recommendations include a requirement that all recruited non-scholarship athletes be required to participate in the sport for at least a year — currently only UCLA and UC Berkeley require this — and be monitored for compliance.\nCampuses also would be required to document all contacts between athletics and those at higher risk of inappropriate influence, such as donors or admissions consultants, and review any donation to see if it was made in connection with any non-scholarship recruited athlete. In addition, the audit recommends regular review of the athletic department’s slots to make sure they don’t exceed the number of student athletes needed to fill rosters.\nNapolitano said such safeguards, had they been in place before Singer launched his scams, “certainly would have improved the likelihood we would have uncovered” the UCLA scandal.\nAt UCLA, according to the indictment, Salcedo forwarded test scores and transcripts from Lauren Isackson, the daughter of a Hillsborough developer, to an unnamed “UCLA women’s soccer coach.” Isackson had never played soccer competitively, but her parents gave Singer 2,150 shares of Facebook stock — worth more than $250,000.\nA UCLA committee approved Isackson to be admitted as a soccer recruit in 2016 on the condition that she play for at least one year, according to the indictment. Once she was admitted, Singer allegedly paid Salcedo $100,000, the indictment says.\nNo UCLA employees other than Salcedo have been charged. Bruce and Davina Isackson, the parents of Lauren Isackson, have pleaded guilty to charges of fraud conspiracy and tax evasion, and are cooperating with the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s investigation.\nThe audit also recommended stronger controls in the general admissions process. Currently, each campus verifies an applicant’s academic record by requiring transcripts and standardized test scores from schools. But campus officials do not independently check claims of non-academic achievements, such as awards or content in personal essays; a systemwide review randomly verifies that information on about 1,000 applications annually. The audit recommends checking more of them.\nOther recommendations include stronger checks and balances to prevent conflicts of interest by evaluators who know an applicant or have a vested interest in boosting admissions from particular high schools — say, a teacher or counselor helping UC read applications.\nA single evaluator should not be allowed to both read an application and approve an admission, as sometimes occurs at some campuses, according to the audit. And the reason for approving an admission should be better documented.\nUC also plans to ban communication between development and admissions offices regarding specific applicants, require periodic reviews of donations, and tighten access to IT systems to guard against an unauthorized person changing admissions decisions.\nNapolitano said she planned to immediately implement all the audit’s recommendations and follow up as campuses develop individual action plans this summer to launch in the coming academic year.\n“We share the outrage and concerns over fraudulent activity to try to gain admission at public and private universities across the nation,” she said. “We will stay proactive, transparent and accountable on this very important issue.”\nSource: https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-uc-admissions-college-scandal-internal-audit-reform-fraud-20190620-story.html\nLabels: admissions, Napolitano, UC-Berkeley, UCLA\nUC Davis is latest institution to adopt a referenc...\nFor now, the Runaway Train on retiree healthcare h...\n(Unexercised) Bargaining Power and the Runaway Tra...\nSilo Thinking and the Runaway Train on Retiree Hea...\nThe On-Again/Off-Again Hawaiian Telescope Seems to...\nListen to the Regents' Governance Committee Meetin...\nAdmissions Lawsuit\nMore on the Heads-Will-(Likely)-Roll Scandal\nFootnote on the Runaway Retiree Healthcare Train\nUCLA History: 1948\nTimetable of the Runaway Train on Retiree Health\nNew Art at the Faculty Center\nIt's About to Fly Away\nMore on the Runaway Retiree Health Care Train\nGraduation day is tomorrow...\nUCLA's Heads-Will-(Likely)-Roll Scandal - How the ...\nListen to the Regents' Health Services Committee o...\nThursday-Friday Traffic/Parking Problems\nUCLA's Heads-Will-(Likely)-Roll Scandal: UC Prez N...\nAnother Regents Committee Meeting Coming Up\nUCLA Emeriti Assn. Statement to Regents on Propose...\nDon't know yet - Part 2 (Things we know)\nPlan to Retire? Good luck with that\nFollow up on previous post on rolling heads - Part...\nFollow up on previous post on rolling heads\nThis is the kind of event for which heads have rol...\nCALPERS long-term care insurance trial\nDon't know yet\nAnother Ranking\nRunaway Train on Retiree Health Care - Footnote\nNeither Duffy, nor anything on retiree health, is ...\nIf anyone says UC is not on top, it's patently unt...\nRunaway Train on Retiree Health Care\nState Budget Horse Trading\nFollow up to Bruin Alert at Davis\nRecession or slowdown forecast\nA New UC-Merced Hospital in the Cards?\nAnother CRISPR patent\nThe Requa/Retiree Health Benefits Case Moves Forwa...\nThrowing Oil on Regental Waters\nReverberations from the past at Merced\nA Bruin Alert at Davis\n$100 million gift to expand UCLA’s engineering sch...\nData Loss Lawsuit Settlement\nThe Merry Mailman Brings Us an Exchange of Letters...\nWhat Isn't There (on the Health Services Agenda)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line52319"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7454381585121155,"wiki_prob":0.7454381585121155,"text":"End of an epoch: Semyon Usachev has died at 94. His picture, writing on the Reichstag wall “went Viral”\nHeadline NewsRussiaUkraine\nIrony: his house in Slavyansk was shelled by neonazis in 2014\nBy Tom Winter On Nov 12, 2019\nSemyon Usachev writes 9.5.45 Usachev on Reichstag wall\nKharkov News Agency\nThe veteran of the Second World War who left the famous inscription on the Reichstag wall has passed away\nWorld War II veteran Semyon Usachev, who participated in the capture of Berlin and left the famous inscription on the Reichstag, died in Slavyansk in his 95th year. This was reported by the Ukrainian edition of “Homeland.”\nOn November 11, Semen Usachev passed away in Slavyansk. On May 9, 1945 he left his name and the date on the Reichstag building. The photographer captured this moment, and 40 years after the Great Victory, the picture became one of the most popular military postcards. The famous image of Semyon Usachev is also part of the three-dimensional panorama “Battle for Berlin” in the Victory Museum on Poklonnaya Hill.\nHe began his military career in 1943 in the battles of Taganrog, reached Sevastopol, got surrounded several times along the way, and miraculously survived. He was wounded and continued to fight as a communications artilleryman near Gomel and, reached Berlin as part of the 56th artillery division. Semen Usachev said that his division received news of the surrender of Germany, when he was 60 km north of Berlin. The commander allocated vehicles and allowed the soldiers to go to the Reichstag. The famous photograph depicts a column of the Nazi “lair” with autographs of the victors, and a young soldier writes in chalk his name and date: “9.5.45. Usachev.\nThis picture spread all over the world. In 1985, a postcard with the famous photograph was published in a print run of 1.5 million.\nAs Usachev himself told in an interview for the Rodina newspaper, he had to ask the driver of the American Studebaker to back up to the wall so he could stand on it. He was short and just weighed 43 kg. boots and all.\n“I stood on tiptoe on the edge of the truck and wrote: “9.5.45. Usachev.” This is the first thing that came to mind. Yes, and you can’t sign a lot, the heavy machine gun behind me was very disturbing. And already in the evening, when we were leaving for the division’s location, I saw our red flag above the Reichstag dome. Victory!” said the front-line soldier then.\nSemyon Usachev was born in the village of Staropavlovskaya in the Kirov region of the Stavropol Territory, but after the war, Semyon Usachev went to visit his sister in Slavyansk, met his love there, and stayed in the city.\nHis move to Slavyansk once again put him in the front\nFor 35 years he worked as an electrician, built a house, tended a garden. He leaves two daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.\nAccording to one of the daughters of the famous front-line soldier, Semyon Usachev often went by invitation to Moscow to the main Victory Parade.\nBut the veteran, even in a nightmare, could not imagine that the war would come to Slavyansk. Relatives of Semyon Usachev asked not to discuss the events of 2014 with the front-line soldier: this topic was so painful for him that when the conversation started about this, they had to call an ambulance for the veteran. It is noteworthy that over the bed of Semyon Usachev there are pockmarks of shell fragments. When there was a shelling of his house, the veteran bitterly burst into tears.\nMay 9ReichstagUsachev\nTom Winter1472 posts 0 comments\nContributing editor and volunteer translator Tom Winter, retired Classics professor, monitors the news in 6 languages, and sometimes cannot help writing satire, since that’s what today’s news mostly deserves\nScotland’s leader will do a deal with Labour – but wants IndyRef2 in return\nVictory Day lives forever through Anti-Imperialist Resistance!\nRadicals in Ukraine attack veterans of the Great Patriotic War, threaten worse for…\nNikolai Belyaev, the last of those who stormed the Reichstag, has left us","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line900921"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5290538668632507,"wiki_prob":0.47094613313674927,"text":"Former Honoree Quynh Chau Stone\nQuynh Chau Stone is a mother, educator, entrepreneur and advocate. As the president and founder of The Source of Hope, a 501c3 non-profit organization with more than 4 years of tireless service to Dallas-Ft. Worth underprivileged communities, Quynh Chau tackles the critical issues of how to restore “under-dogs” hope to start all over again. With Quynh Chau’s direction and leadership, The Source of Hope collects, distributes and donates food and groceries to those in need through a network of charitable organizations. The Source of Hope delivered over 1000 meals monthly to the homeless and actively works with partner organizations to serve the most vulnerable in the Dallas – Ft. Worth communities. Her relentless drive has won her the trust and respect of a broad based coalition of community partners that work exclusively with The Source of Hope to provide the necessary food, education and jobs training to those that critically need help and a second chance.\nAs a Vietnamese born American, Quynh Chau experienced extreme trauma and loss in Vietnam which shaped her world view. Her personal journey of overcoming tremendous challenges inspires everyone around her. At the young age of twelve, Quynh Chau bravely escaped Vietnam with her four brothers. After thirteen days at sea, Quynh Chau and her brother were rescued and placed in a refugee camp in Malaysia. With the help of faith organizations and philanthropies working together, Quynh Chau was reunited with her father who had already been sponsored to the United States. Quynh Chau’s unthinkable experience as a child strengthened her faith and cemented her lifelong commitment to truly give back to the Country and people that helped her so much.\nAs an entrepreneur, Quynh Chau is a skin care rain-maker and has been working with Spa Source USA to educate and implement skincare practices for over 20 years. She has helped to set up over 1000+ salons. Quynh Chau received her formal training from international institutes such as the Matis Paris Institute in Paris, France and exclusive aesthetic skin care clinics in New York, Chicago and Dallas. Through her training and certification, Quynh Chau continues to support and promotes new cosmetologists entering the aesthetic profession and require guidance, training and experience in this field. Quynh Chau also manufactures a line of exclusive skincare products sold to boutique skincare clinics internationally. With her experience in the skincare industry, Quynh Chau frequently publishes insights and training content for professionals internationally.\nIn addition to the aesthetic industry, Quynh Chau is a media darling for the Vietnamese – American community. Quynh Chau regularly directs and produces her local television and radio show – The Quynh Chau Show, which covers resources for the community, political views (e.g., why should minority care about voting?), living skills for minorities, health& beauty Insights, and entrepreneurship. The English program is broadcast on air & web (YouTube) and captivated her audience with candid and warm comments and information. The Quynh Chau Show along with The Source of Hope is well respected and receives international attention for her advocacy and support for the homeless and the Asian American community.\nQuynh Chau has won numerous awards each year for her work with the community and includes\n• The 2016 Dallas, Texas Proclamation from Governor Greg Abbott for the Source of Hope’s three years of community services.\n• Quynh Chau Stone is also nominated to be part of an exclusive City of Dallas Board to develop the Asian American Cultural Center of Dallas endorsed by Mayor Mike Rawlins and Deputy Mayor Pro-Tem Monica Alonzo.\n• Over 100+ additional recognitions for her philanthropic work with the city of Garland, Grand Prairie, Mesquite, Dallas and Ft. Worth.\nQuynh Chau Stone is dedicated to the mission of inspiring others and serving those in need with dignity, wisdom and a generous heart. As Quynh Chau often shares with others, “my path has never been easy I get lost and frustrated but I find that if I trust in the Lord, he generally leads me in the right direction with the right people.” And with that, Quynh relies on her faith and generosity of others to grow the community, share her story and to inspire others to “soar above!”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line743869"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5142130255699158,"wiki_prob":0.48578697443008423,"text":"Our GDPR compliant Cookies policy\nWe are committed to safeguarding your privacy when you visit our website. This policy sets out how we will treat your personal information. By using our website and agreeing to this policy, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.\nOur website uses cookies. You consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.\nCookies consist of small files, often including unique identifiers, that are sent by web servers to web browsers, and which may then be sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.\nCookies can be used by web servers to identity and track users as they navigate different pages on a website and to identify users returning to a website.\nCookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies. A persistent cookie consists of a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, which will be stored by the browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). A session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.\nCookies on this website:\nWe use both session cookies and persistent cookies on this website.\nHow we use cookies:\nCookies do not contain any information that personally identifies you, but personal information that we store about you may be linked, by us, to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.\nBy using our website and agreeing to this policy, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with the terms of this policy.\nWe may use the information we obtain from your use of our cookies for the following purposes:\nto recognise your computer when you visit our website;\nto track you as you navigate our website, and to enable the use of the some of the features on our website (such as an e-commerce shop, news pages and commenting system);\nto improve the website’s usability\nto analyse the use of our website\nin the administration of this website\n(to personalise our website for you, including targeting news which may be of particular interest to you.\nWhen you use our website, you may also be sent third party cookies.\nWe use Google Analytics to analyse the use of this website. Google Analytics generates statistical and other information about website use by means of cookies, which are stored on users’ computers. The information generated relating to our website is used to create reports about the use of the website. Google will store this information.\nGoogle’s privacy policy is available at: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.\nMost browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies. For example:\n(1) in Internet Explorer you can refuse all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Internet Options”, “Privacy”, and selecting “Block all cookies” using the sliding selector;\n(2) in Firefox you can block all cookies by clicking “Tools”, “Options”, and un-checking “Accept cookies from sites” in the “Privacy” box.\nBlocking all cookies will, however, have a negative impact upon the usability of many websites. If you block cookies, you will not be able to use some of the features of this website.\nDeleting cookies\nYou can also delete cookies already stored on your computer. The method of doing so will depend upon your web browser. Instructions are available at your browsers website.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line177718"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5359352827072144,"wiki_prob":0.46406471729278564,"text":"Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 70A.djvu/108\n50 Sec. 850. 851. 852. 853. 854.\nArt. 50. Admissibility of records of courts of inquiry. 51. Voting and rulings. 52. Number of votes required. 53. Court to annouoce action. 54. Record of trial.\n§ 836. Art. 36. President may prescribe rules (a) The procedure, including modes of proof, in cases before courtsmartial, courts of inquiry, military commissions, and other military tribunals may be prescribed by the President by regulations which shall, so far as he considers practicable, apply the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts, but which may not be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter. (b) All rules and regulations made under this article shall be uniform insofar as practicable and shall be reported to Congress. § 837. Art. 37. Unlawfully influencing action of court No authority convening a general, special, or summary court-martial, nor any other commanding officer, may censure, reprimand, or admonish the court or any member, law officer, or counsel thereof, with respect to the findings or sentence adjudged by the court, or with respect to any other exercise of its or his functions in the conduct of the proceeding. No person subject to this chapter may attempt to coerce or. by any uiiuuthorized means, influence the action of a court-martial or any other military tribunal or any member thereof, in reacliiug the findings or sentence in any case, or the action of any convening, approving, or reviewing authority with respect to his judicial acts. § 838, Art. 38. Duties of trial counsel and defense counsel (a) The trial counsel of a general or special court-martial shall prosecute in the name of the United States, and shall, under the direction of the court, prepare the record of the proceedings. (b) The accused has the right to be represented in his defense before a general or special court-martial by civilian counsel if provided by him, or by military counsel of his own selection if reasonably available, or by the defense counsel detailed under section 827 of this title (article 27). Should the accused have counsel of his own selection, the defense counsel, and assistant defense counsel, if any, who were detailed, shall, if the accused so desires, act as his associate counsel; otherwise they shall be excused by the president of the court. (c) I n every court-martial proceeding, the defense counsel may, in the event of conviction, forward for attachment to the record of proceedings a brief of such matters as he feels should be considered in behalf of the accused on review, including any objection to the contents of the record which he considers appropriate. (d) An assistant trial counsel of a general court-martial may, under the direction of the trial counsel or when he is qualified to be a trial counsel as required by section 827 of this title (article 27), perform any duty imposed by law, regulation, or the custom of the service upon the trial counsel of the court. An assistant trial counsel of a special court-martial may perform any duty of the trial counsel.\nRetrieved from \"https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:United_States_Statutes_at_Large_Volume_70A.djvu/108&oldid=8708077\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line436262"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6257826089859009,"wiki_prob":0.6257826089859009,"text":"Home >> Blog >> Latest News >> Vikramaditya Motwane on first reaction after Sacred Games was nominated at the International Emmys\nVikramaditya Motwane on first reaction after Sacred Games was nominated at the International Emmys\nWith films like Trapped and Udaan, Vikramaditya Motwane has done enough to prove the fact that he’s stellar storyteller. Recently, he paired up with Anurag Kashyap for the action drama Sacred Games, a Netflix original that received immense love and popularity ever since it went online. Not just that, the web series also went on to secure a nomination at the International Emmys in the category Best Drama.\nWe managed to have a quick chat with the director before he head to the award show in New York. Vikramaditya spoke about the time when he first found out that Lust Stories made it to the Emmys. He said, “I was sleeping and I woke up to a flurry of messages congratulating me. And I was asking myself that what is happening? Later, I saw screenshots and news links and then it hit me. The Emmys is the pinnacle of recognition in the television space so I naturally was very proud. I’m excited to be here and I love the fact that we’re all doing this together. Whether we win or lose, I’m just happy to be here.”\nClick on the video below and watch our conversation with the maestro himself.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line952805"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5460121035575867,"wiki_prob":0.5460121035575867,"text":"Revealed: ‘Factory feedlot’ contribution to Irish beef kill\nNiall Claffey, Claire Mc Cormack\nA total of 315,722 cattle that originated from ‘factory feedlots’ were slaughtered at Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) approved beef exporting plants up to and including the week ending December 16, 2018, AgriLand can reveal.\nThis figure represents just over 18% of the total national beef kill up to and including this date.\nFollowing a detailed analysis of official, newly-identified figures obtained from the Department of Agriculture, this publication has learned that – on average – a total of 6,314 feedlot cattle have been killed each week over the last 12 months.\nThe cattle are sourced from a total of 338 feedlots and they are located throughout the country.\nThese feedlots specifically operate under restrictions in accordance with Ireland’s Bovine TB Eradication Programme for 2017 and 2018; they are what might typically be referred to as ‘restricted feedlots’ (see an explanation of this term at the bottom of this article).\nIt is understood that all such feedlots directly supply factories countrywide.\nThe term ‘factory feedlot’, in this context, could include factory-owned and factory-contracted (but privately-owned) operations.\nUnder the spotlight\nThe business of feedlots has been under the spotlight in recent months, with many farmers and farm bodies questioning the appropriateness and impact of ‘factory feedlots’ on overall supplies and price.\nFor the purpose of the analysis below it must be noted that all figures cited exclude calf slaughterings.\nThe location of these feedlots will be examined in greater detail later in the article.\nAs it stands, 1,743,390 cattle have been slaughtered in Irish beef plants this year.\nHowever, when the number of cattle originating from ‘factory feedlots’ is excluded this figure drops to 1,427,668 head.\nThe feedlot herds consist of cows, heifers and male animals, whereby stock must be either permanently housed, confined exclusively to yards or behind walled or doubled-fenced boundaries. See the pie chart below.\nTotal beef kill in Ireland in 2018 up to and including the week ending December 16\nLet’s have a closer look.\nMonthly breakdown 2018\nIn 2018, according to an analysis of the department’s figures, 22% of the total beef kill came from ‘factory feedlots’ during the months of May and June – a time when Irish cattle supplies generally tighten, somewhat.\nThe months of March and April saw feedlot supplies of 20%, while February feedlot supplies accounted for 19% of the total monthly kill.\nThe 2018 figures also indicate that the average volume of cattle coming from ‘factory feedlots’ amounts to 26,310 head / month.\nSee the table below for a category-by-category monthly breakdown.\nSource: DAFM. Click to enlarge data\nWeekly breakdown 2018\nA heightened emphasis has been placed on bumper kills in recent times; in the last six weeks alone the 40,000 head mark has been breached four times.\nThis coincides with a year of consistently high weekly kills.\nHowever, if the number of slaughtered cattle that originated from ‘factory feedlots’ is eliminated, the overall kill reduces substantially.\nOver the last six weeks the average kill amounted to 39,797 head – however, just less than 7,000 head / week flowed in from the country’s ‘factory feedlots’.\nFurthermore, during the months of May and June almost a quarter of the weekly kill was sourced from feedlot operations.\nThe weekly contribution of ‘factory feedlots’ to the 2018 national beef kill is revealed in detail below.\nTurning to 2017, an analysis of official department figures shows that 21% of the total beef kill originated from ‘factory feedlots’ last December.\nLast May, cattle from feedlots accounted for 20% of the monthly kill – this dropped slightly to 19% last June.\nMeanwhile, a combined volume of 82,825 head was rolled out during the months of March, July and November last year.\nWhere are the ‘factory feedlots’ located?\nAgriLand can also reveal the number and locations of these individual feedlots throughout Ireland over the last 24 months.\nInterestingly, there has been a marked increase in the number of feedlots operating in 2018 when compared to 2017 levels.\nFigures released to AgriLand by the department indicate that there are 338 restricted ‘factory feedlots’ in operation across the Republic of Ireland – up from 283 in 2017 – an increase of 55 or just over 19%.\nThe number of ‘factory feedlots’ in Co. Meath jumped by 13, while the number of feedlots operating in Co. Tipperary increased by 16 amounting to 45.\nCo. Laois recorded an increase of 16; the number of feedlots in Co. Kilkenny amounts to 19 – up from 10 in 2017. In addition, feedlots in Co. Kildare jumped to 41 – up from 34 last year.\nHowever, the number of operations in Co. Cork fell from 41 to 22 in 2018.\nAll other counties recorded relatively small increases or decreases. See the map below for a more detailed county-by-county breakdown.\nCounty-by-county breakdown of the number of restricted feedlot herds under the TB programme for 2017 and 2018\nFrom the above analysis, we can see that almost one fifth of the national beef kill was supplied by ‘factory feedlots’ in 2018.\nA similar picture emerges from the 2017 data, which shows that just over 17% of the total beef kill was sourced from ‘factory feedlots’.\nThis increase from 2017 to 2018 could be somewhat driven by the marked increase in ‘factory feedlots’ dotted across the island – a hike that validates the concerns of many farm body leaders and representatives that have expressed serious concerns on this matter recently.\nMany farmers are of the opinion that ‘factory feedlots’ are detrimental to farm gate prices, as processors have the option to dip into their own pools whenever the need arises.\nThe figures presented here now clearly indicate the volume of cattle that originate from feedlot herds – on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.\nThe questions that now arise are: Are these volumes significant enough to control price/kg? And, can processors manipulate throughput?\nAgriLand has requested more details on Ireland’s ‘factory feedlots’ dating back over the last decade. However, this information was unavailable at the time of publication.\nDepartment statement\nIn a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine outlined the exact definition of a feedlot herd, as far as it is concerned.\nUnder the TB programme a feedlot herd is a restricted herd that comprises a ‘non-breeding’ unit which disposes of all cattle direct for slaughter and fulfils at least one of the following three criteria:\nThe cattle are permanently housed (never on pasture);\nThere are no contiguous holdings/lands with cattle (in other words, they must not have any neighbour contacts – either through cattle being confined exclusively in yards/buildings or, if intending to graze cattle, the land must be secured so there can be no contact with other cattle;\nThe boundaries are walled, double fenced or equivalent so as to prevent any direct contact with cattle on contiguous lands/premises/holdings.\nFurthermore, the department outlined that there must be no evidence of the within-herd spread of TB.\nThus, a feedlot herd is a herd that poses minimal risk of infecting other cattle because of effective isolation from other herds, the statement outlines.\nWith regard to the county-by-county breakdown of the restricted feedlot locations, the department also stated that “the figures are fluid”.\n“Some herds that were restricted feedlots in 2017 may no longer be so in 2018 and vice versa. This is because some herds finish cattle for relatively short time periods prior to slaughter. These herds are non-breeding and do not trade onwards except to slaughter,” the department stated.\nBeef Plan Movement: ‘Biogas is a no-brainer for beef farms’\nBeef Beef Kill Feedlots","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line179319"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7422816157341003,"wiki_prob":0.25771838426589966,"text":"Lean Enterprise Institute Inc. (LEI)\nUnderstanding lean transformation\nMonday, Oct. 19 Location Code\n8:00am-5:00pm Room 208, 2nd floor MW/13\nAnswer five key questions about organizational change\nGather information and insights about lean transformation, and what system and leadership behaviors support this new way of thinking; learn about a lean transformation model and get started on a framework to guide your organization’s transformation; understand the basic elements of organizational change and seek answers to related key questions.\nUnderstand the five basic dimensions of organizational change and address key questions associated with each dimension. These questions include, what is our purpose, and what value to create or what situational problem are we trying to solve? How are we improving the actual work? How are we developing capability? What meaningful system and leadership behaviors are required to support the new way of working? What basic thinking, mindset or assumptions underline this transformation? These questions apply at the macro enterprise level and at the level of individual responsibility. Understand how transformation is driven by basic principles and a framework, while avoiding the hazard of inflexibly prescribing solutions. Gain insights about crucial elements of a lean organization and the lean transformation model (LTM), and then reflect on related issues in your organization. Begin to create a framework to guide your organization’s transformation. Through instruction, small-group discussions and exercises, examine the components of the lean transformation model and learn from examples about how it is applied.\nLean Enterprise Institute Inc. (LEI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, MA. Its mission is to make things better through lean thinking and practice, creating more value and prosperity while consuming the fewest possible resources. Founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, PhD, LEI conducts research, teaches educational workshops, publishes books and ebooks, runs conferences and shares information about lean thinking and practice.\nSpeaker: Josh Howell\nJosh Howell is a senior coach at the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). He supports LEI’s Co-Learning Partners program, develops onsite and public workshops and conducts research about lean business system implementation. He practices “going to see” and asking questions to develop clients’ problem-solving skills. During nine years at Starbucks, Howell was a primary architect and implementer of a lean operating system. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Notre Dame.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line12693"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5695009827613831,"wiki_prob":0.43049901723861694,"text":"​All year Cyprus Travel DMC Group\nAll year Cyprus Travel group make sure offers you perfect Holiday including all tours and guides for North Cyprus, We offer holidays for all destinations including Kyrenia, Famagusta, and Dipkarpaz.\nYou can find the walking holiday programme for North Cyprus with our company, contact us for more details.\nWe can offer you tailor made Walking, Cooking, Cultural and Historical tours, two Center including Kyrenia and Dipkarpaz stay.\nAll year Cyprus Travel Group.\nName Last Name Email Mobile Number\nSubscribe for North Cyprus offers\nNorth Cyprus Cycling Holidays North Cyprus walking holidays North Cyprus Hotels Rent a bicycle in North Cyprus\nFamagusta - Magosa North Cyprus\nFamagusta, one of the most important historical ports in the Mediterranean has been an eyewitness for the history of Levant with its past dating back to 2500 years of time. Today, the historical port acts as the host of the biggest university in North Cyprus, Eastern Mediterranean University. The second largest city of Northern Cyprus, having a local population of 40.000 inhabitants with the students, is believed to have been founded in the fifth century BC. The ancient Greek name of the city “Ammochostos” means “the place concealed in the sands” and it defines the general appearance of the city. Salamis, the most important city of Cyprus and the entire Eastern Mediterranean was set ablaze and destroyed by Arab raiders in mid-7th century AD, the fleeing inhabitants migrated to Famagusta and expanded the city.\nThe second human flood took place in late 13th Century; an influx of Christian refugees fleeing after the downfall of Acre in Palestine during the Crusades, transformed this tiny settlement into one of the richest cities in Christendom. Genoesen had seized the city in 1372 and they have been followed by the Venetians in 1489 and it fell to the Turks in 1571 after a siege of one year. The once so called “City of 365 Churches”, ravaged by severe wars and earthquakes is now only partially inhabited, but it still contains beautiful examples of medieval and gothic architecture.\nSt.Barnabas Monastery\nSt.Barnabas Monastery and Icon Museum, located Eastern of the Island Nearby to Famagusta and iskele, also close to Royal Tombs. The Church now serving as an Icon museum, and Monastery used as an archaeological collection, and Chapel housing the Remains of the Saint Barnabas.\nSt. Barnabas is important name for the orthodox world. He was one of the founders of the Greek Orthodox Church.\nOthello Castle\nLala Mustafa Pasha Cami\nThe Cathedral of St. Nicholas (the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque) where Lusignan kings were crowned kings of Jerusalem. Situated within the walls of the old city, this cathedral displays the finest examples of stonemasonry in the Middle East. The square in which the cathedrals sits bears the traces of the Lusignan, Venetian and Ottoman Periods. In front of the main entrance to the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque is a huge old tree said to be the same age as the cathedral. It is a variety of tropical fig, with the botanical name of “Ficus Sycomorus”, and known as `cumbez` in Turkish. According to botanists, the tree is 715 years old as of 2014.\nOthello Castle is one of the important places in Cyprus, famous with City Walls, this fabulous Castle built by lusignans, in the 14th Century, to protect the city from enemis attacts, Othello Tower restored by veneditans, If you drive to Old town you can park and walk around the castle and city walls, one of the must visited place in Cyprus.\nSalamis Ancient City, Located East of the Island nearby to Famagusta, in iskele Region, Founder of the city was Teucer, son of Telamon, you can visit Salamis Antic theathre, roman bath, water meter, Basilica, Temple of Olympia, Zeus, Water Store. Salamis Antic City Open all year round and every day. we have daily tours, to Famagusta, and Salamis.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1282744"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7627496719360352,"wiki_prob":0.7627496719360352,"text":"REMEMBERING JON.....\nLabels: Hat Squad, League of Themselves, Online TV, Reali-TV, TV timeline, Video Weekend, Who's On TV, Zonks\nA JAMIE LEE COURTESY\nOne thing I enjoy doing with the Tele-Folks Directory of the Toobworld Dynamic is expanding the backstory of TV characters (and in some cases, \"foresee\" what their futures may bring.) It would be preferable to have some \"hard\" evidence to back up the claims, found in other TV shows, but I'm not averse to making theoretical connections to other shows without visual evidence.\nBut at least this time, I have the visuals to make a convincing argument.....\nJamie Lee Curtis has begun a recurring role on 'NCIS' as Dr Samantha Ryan, who works in PsyOps at the Department of Defense. She had been at the Naval War College, probably as an instructor or a psychiatric consultant, at the same time Director Vance had been there.\nThis doesn't mean she attended the Naval War College near Newport, Rhode Island. But she might have been invited to attend in order to gain another master's degree once she was working for the military. But she would have attended college somewhere else in the country for her bachelor's degree in the 1970's.\nAnd I'm going to suggest she did so in Los Angeles, perhaps at the Keck School of Medicine to study psychiatry and behavioral sciences.\nAnd like most college students, she probably took a job on the side to pay her expenses.\nJust for the (relative) freedom in setting up a work schedule that could accommodate her class schedule, Samantha may have taken a job as a waitress.\nAnd if so, then we saw her on the job........\nJamie Lee Curtis has expressed an interest in becoming a regular on 'NCIS'. Along those lines, she might also then play the role of Dr. Samantha Ryan on an episode of 'NCIS: LA'. And if she does that, then she'd be eligible for membership in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, on a Birthday Honors scholarship, of course.\nI'm dedicating this post to my Auntie Ellie, my Godmother, who's a big fan of 'NCIS'. And who let us come over to her cottage to watch 'Columbo' up at the Lake back during its first-run, because they could get NBC in Third Bay. (Back in those pre-cable days, we couldn't get the signal in First Bay.....)\nWhile writing this up, it occurred to me that she's not the only one in her family who's acted with the late Peter Falk. Her Mom, Janet Leigh, was the guest star in the 'Columbo' episode \"Forgotten Lady\", and her Dad, Tony Curtis, worked with Falk in the movie \"The Great Race\".\nLabels: By Any Other Name, Hall of Fame, La Triviata, Life During Prime-Time, Missing Links, O'Bservations, Online TV, Splainin 2 Do, Tele-Folks Directory, Video Weekend\nAS SEEN ON TV: MELISANDRE\nTV LOCATION:\nDragonstone, Westeros, Mondas\nFrom the \"Game Of Thrones Wiki\":\nMelisandre, often called Melisandre of Asshai, is a major character in 'Game of Thrones'. She is played by starring cast member Carice van Houten and débuts in the first episode of the second season. She is an eastern priestess of an eastern religion which is little-known in Westeros. She worships R'hllor the Lord of Light. She is living at the island stronghold of Dragonstone and has become a close advisor of Stannis Baratheon.\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Book 'em, Online TV, Tele-Folks Directory, Video Weekend, Wikipediaphile\nTHE RETURN OF GERVAIS TOONS!\nThe best animated TV show currently on the air returns tonight on HBO!\nAt 9pm, the cartoon version of Ricky Gervais' podcasts, also starring Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington, will mark its third season (I think?)\nHere's a sneak peek at a topic of grave importance.\nI chose that one because it made me think of the Honey Badger...\nHBO, 9 PM. Be there!\nLabels: Alternateevee, As Seen On TV, O'Bservations, Online TV, Sked Alert, Tooniverse\nSHERLOCK HOLMES - \"OVER THERE\"\nThere are a lot of differences between the home dimension of 'Fringe' (which should be Earth Prime-Time, but only the end of the series will determine that for sure) and \"Over There\". And the latest difference would be the discovery that Sherlock Holmes is not known \"Over There\".\nSherlock Holmes in the real world is considered one of the most recognizable literary creations of all time. (I think Bilbo Baggins - or Hobbits in general - would be in the top three as well.) Holmes is a true multiversal - found in BookWorld, the Cineverse, Toobworld and most of its subsets like Skitlandia and the Tooniverse, WorldStage, and the worlds of radio/audio, comics, music, and many other manifestations of the universes of Fictionalia.\nIn Toobworld, Sherlock Holmes was a real man but the general public thinks of him as fictional. Even scientific genius Walter Bishop thought of him as being fictional. (But then he also believed that vampires weren't real, more fool he.)\nThis can be attributed to Dr. Watson and his writing about Holmes' exploits, which were published under the aegis of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the literary agent. Because he substituted fictional names for certain people and locations, may people thought everything about those stories were fictional. In his own way, Dr. Watson served as the precursor to that \"UNREEL\" division which would cover up the existence of James Bond, U.N.C.L.E., and the Time Lord known as the Doctor so that people would consider them to be fictional as well.\nBut \"Over There\", \"Fauxlivia\" never heard of Sherlock Holmes. And at first consideration, this might lead a viewer to think that he never existed. Even if considered as being fictional, one might think that Conan Doyle never got those stories published.\nI believe Sherlock Holmes did exist \"Over There\", but that his exploits went uncelebrated in The Strand. Putting aside the notion that Conan Doyle didn't exist, because that only leads to Zonks, I think it's more likely that Dr. Watson didn't exist.\nI shouldn't say that he didn't exist. Rather, he was taken out of the picture before he ever had the chance to team up with Holmes. Perhaps he was killed rather than wounded in the Afghan campaign. It could be that Stamford never knew Sherlock Holmes, so he couldn't introduce Dr. Watson to him. And without Watson there to chronicle his investigations, Holmes' prowess in deduction would go unnoticed, which is just the way Holmes would have preferred in order to keep the criminal element from learning about him. (He only let Watson write his stories as a favor to his friend for being there as his sounding board. But he never did like the way Watson told those stories, and frequently said so.)\nI just don't know what effect this would have had on those aficionados of the Wold Newton Universe \"Over There\"........\nLabels: Alternateevee, As Seen On TV, Book 'em, La Triviata, Life During Prime-Time, Splainin 2 Do, Tele-Folks Directory, Zonks\nAS SEEN ON TV: SER DAVOS SEAWORTH\nToday's ASOTV showcase may contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk\nSER DAVOS SEAWORTH\nDavos Seaworth is a major character in 'Game of Thrones'. He is played by starring cast member Liam Cunningham and débuts in the second season. It has been confirmed that he is one of the favorite characters of producer and showrunner David Benioff. Ser Davos Seaworth is a landed knight and a former smuggler in the service of Stannis Baratheon.\nSer Davos Seaworth is a landed knight and a former (and reformed) smuggler. His ship used to ply the Narrow Sea, smuggling goods from the Free Cities into the Seven Kingdoms and back again. During Robert's Rebellion, Davos relieved the siege of Storm's End by delivering smuggled onions into the castle, helping Stannis Baratheon's forces survive until the end of the war. For this service, Stannis forgave Davos his smuggling crimes and knighted him. He was disparagingly called 'the Onion Knight' for his services, but he has embraced this title proudly and adopted an onion on the sail of a ship as his sigil.\nStannis also took several fingers from Davos's right hand as punishment for his smuggling crimes. Davos submitted to this punishment willingly, judging it a fair exchange in return for improving his family's future prospects.\nDavos is one of Stannis' most loyal and reliable vassals, but is treated with disdain by some of the other lords of Westeros for his low birth. Davos has several sons, including Matthos, who serves with him on his ship. Davos is left-handed.\nMatthos & Davos Seaworth\nMost of that information has not yet been revealed on the show, unless I'm not watching very carefully. (With the second episode, I was a bit distracted as I was visiting my sister......)\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Book 'em, Game of the Name, Life During Prime-Time, O'Bservations, Tele-Folks Directory, Theories of Relateeveety\nHAT SQUAD: REMEMBERING DICK CLARK\nOver the next few days, I'm sure you'll be seeing plenty of memorial tributes to Dick Clark, who passed away at the age of 82. Many of those will focus on his iconic status as a TV legend, his skill in front of and behind the cameras with 'American Bandstand' as the centerpiece. (But I think his duties ushering in the New Year with ABC's 'New Year's Rockin' Eve' will also be more of a factor than I think it probably should.)\nBlog posts, newspaper and magazine columns.... The best I've seen so far, by the way, was a report by Jack Cafferty on CNN about how instrumental he was in the integration of TV during a tense and troubled time in our nation's history.\nDick Clark also contributed several citizens to Toobworld, mostly during the early part of his rise to national prominence - a couple of guest star shots on 'Burke's Law', a very prominent role in the final episode of 'Perry Mason' (and I think you can figure out what that means), and he is the televersion embodiment of an historical figure - circus impresario James A. Bailey (as seen in 'Branded'.)\nBut as his fame with 'American Bandstand' grew to epic proportions, his presence as a TV personality made it practically impossible for him to be seen as anybody else but Dick Clark, as happened to League of Themselves members Milton Berle, George Burns, and Bob Hope before him.\nSo I'm taking this opportunity to salute his fictional presence in Toobworld, that televersion of Dick Clark portrayed by the original.\n2000 was the second year of the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame, and I declared it to be the \"Year Of The Women\" when it came to inductees. (Lucille Ball and some of her characters were going to take up the first third of the year anyway!) But there were two exceptions - in October we saluted Captain Kangaroo on the 45th anniversary of his TV show, and Dick Clark was feted in December. It seemed apt, with the 'New Year's Rockin' Eve' coming up at the end of the month - and as it was leading into 2001, the TRUE beginning of the new millennium, nobody but Dick Clark would do.\nInductees into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame must have three separate items on their \"resume\" in order to be eligible. More than a decade ago, Dick Clark had more than enough credits to qualify.\nTake a gander at this list of credits in which Dick Clark played himself:\nJust Shoot Me!\nMr. Jealousy\nTangled Up in Blue (TV movie)\nDharma & Greg\nMission: Implausible\nBed, Bath and Beyond\nInvasion of the Buddy Snatcher\nArli$$\nThe Price of Their Toys\n(Seen on TV hosting the New Year's Eve special)\nSabrina, the Teenage Witch\nAnd the Sabrina Goes to...\nA Girl's Gotta Love a Wedding\nHangin' with Mr. Cooper\nThe Drew Carey Show\nDrew's the Other Man\nI, Whoops, There It Is\nA Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story (TV movie)\nThe One with the Monkey\nWill You Marry Me? (TV movie)\nBlossom - A Rockumentary\nThe People Next Door\nThe Return of Bruno (TV movie)\nPolice Squad!\nTestimony of Evil (Dead Men Don't Laugh)\nThe New Car\nStar Quality\nShoot a Crooked Arrow\nThe Jack Benny Program\nDick Clark Show\nThe commercials he did for Havoline Motor Oil, Ballatore, Dairy Queen, Nabisco Shredded Wheat, and Office Depot would also count towards Dick Clark's televersion presence in Toobworld, as would a music video for the Muppets' cover of \"She Drives Me Crazy\".\nDick Clark also had a presence in the Tooniverse:\nTreehouse of Horror X\n(Although that would be set in an alternate Tooniverse....)\nSpace Pilot 3000\nYes, Mikey, Santa Does Shave: Part 1\nThe Pinky and the Brain Reunion Special\nThe Origin of the Fantastic Four: Part 1\nDifferences in animation styles have no bearing in the Tooniverse. The characters in the Tooniverse should see each other as being the same despite having divergent artistic designs*, whereas the Trueniverse audience could differentiate between the varieties of artwork. Allowances have to be made, otherwise a splainin would have to be found as to why Dick Clark looks so \"hulked\" up when he hosted that telethon featuring the Fantastic Four!\n(* There are exceptions, like the housemates in 'Drawn Together'.)\nOn 'Family Guy', Dick Clark was voiced by Joey Slotnick, but he's still part of the Tooniverse, not shunted off to some different dimension.\nOn the other hand, Dick Clark produced a TV show called 'American Dreams', which was centered around 'American Bandstand'. In that, the younger Dick Clark was portrayed by Paul D. Roberts. Since Dick Clark himself already held sway in Toobworld as his own televersion on 'American Bandstand', 'American Dreams' belongs in another TV dimension. (Which is just as well, since it had other Zonks - like Paris Hilton as Barbara Eden backstage at 'I Dream Of Jeannie'. My problem with 'American Dreams' Zonking Jeannie was bad enough, but such a leaden portrayal of the effervescenet Ms. Eden shouldn't be tolerated in Toobworld!)\nAnd although he didn't actually appear in the three sketches, Dick Clark has a presence in Skitlandia, thanks to David Spade playing his appointment secretary on 'Saturday Night Live' (even making Jesus Christ wait in the reception area!)\nMost of Dick Clark's fictionalized appearances as himself stemmed from his connection to the music biz and/or work behind the scenes in TV. For instance, when he interviewed Danny Partridge of 'The Partridge Family'.\nBut sometimes there were those moments which could only happen in Toobworld, and Clark must have been self-assured enough to just run with whatever idea they came up with.\nThere was the time that he showed up with dozens of other people for a wild party with Dharma Liberty Finkelstein Montgomery - which threatened to turn into an orgy. When he realized it was Dharma's husband Greg who met him at the door, Dick Clark eagerly schpritzed his mouth with Binaca - as if in anticipation of letting the good times roll.\nAnd then we found out how Dick Clark was able to stay ahead of the game in the music biz.....\n(That scene also went a long way in splainin how he was able to remain the \"world's oldest teenager\"!)\nMost of the time Clark was to be found in the Toobworld versions of Los Angeles or New York City, and of course his home base of Philadelphia. But every so often he had to travel to other cities not found on the maps of the Trueniverse....\nOne last O'Bservation of Dick Clark's televersion.....\nAs he was best known for charting the trends in the musical tastes of America's youth, it made sense that he should make a cameo in the music video which Drew Carey made for \"What Is Hip?\"\nAlso on that couch were Flip Wilson and HR Pufnstuf, who was voiced by Len Weinrib. Both of them have since passed away, and now Dick Clark has joined them. (Daws Butler provided the voice for Bingo, also on the couch with Pufnstuf, but he died in 1988....)\nDick Clark may be gone now, but at least we know that in the Tooniverse, he will return by the year 2999.....\nAs Red Skelton would often say, Good night and may God bless......\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Blipverts, Hall of Fame, Hat Squad, League of Themselves, Life During Prime-Time, Location Shot, O'Bservations, Online TV, Skitlandia, Tooniverse, TV Classique\n\"DOC MARTIN\" VS. 'DOC MARTIN'\nThe weather hit record highs Monday - on my day off - and yet I stayed inside, mainly to keep an eye on my cat Nucky who had surgery to remove a growth between his withers. (I'm a little worried about him as he's apparently scratched a few of the sutures loose. And before you comment, a cone around his neck would only have rested on the sutures themselves, so he couldn't wear one of those.)\nSo to occupy my time, besides cleaning out a bit of the apartment and going through old pictures to find the worthy ones to scan, I watched a few shows to clean out my DVR. An episode of 'George Gently', \"Portrait Of An Unknown Man\" from the anthology series 'Crisis' (although it was listed on Antenna TV as 'Suspense Theater') with Clint Walker and Robert Duvall, \"None So Blind\" from 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (which truly caught me by surprise), and a couple of episodes of 'Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal' (online for that) which I can use for a future ASOTV Gallery, literary edition.\nI also finally watched the original movie of 'Doc Martin', only to find that although the basics were there that set the stage for the series, so much of it was different that it has to be relegated to an alternate TV dimension.\nOnly Martin Clunes was present from the TV series, and he was the biggest change of all. In the 'Doc Martin' series, he was Dr. Martin Ellingham. But in this TV movie, he was Dr. Martin Bamford. Dr. Bamford came to this Cornwall village (Port Isaac, not Portwenn) after he found out that his wife*, another doctor, had cheated on him with three of his best friends in the medical profession.\n\"Doc Martin\" Bamford was not adverse to blood, was not surly, distant, nor suffering from OCD and maybe even Aspberger's, unlike 'Doc Martin' Ellingham. Overall, he was a good enough character for a one-shot TV movie, but nothing special upon which to hang a TV series. (At least not in this day and age. He might have been just fine back in the more episodic TV of the 1970's.)\nThe change in hairstyles is a give-away as well......\nNone of the Portwenn citizens were to be seen in this TV movie, not even Aunt Joan. Dr. Bamford's motivation for going there was just that he remembered the place from his youth and he liked it there. The only actor I recognized was Paul Brooke as Charley the pub owner, who also appears in the follow-up movie as well as the theatrical film that preceded this.\nYes, there's a theatrical movie called \"Saving Grace\" in which Dr. Martin Bamford is a secondary character; \"Doc Martin\" was a prequel as to how he got to Port Isaac. And \"Doc Martin and The Legend Of The Cloutie\" was a follow-up before the character and premise was revamped for the TV series.\nAs these were just TV movies and not a full-fledged series, I'm thinking the TV Movie Of The Week dimension - Earth Prime-Time/MOTW - would be the best place to house this Doc Martin. The movie of the week world is the one which has a totally different succession of U.S. Presidents, going back to the 1930's with the TV adaptation of \"Of Thee I Sing\" (which was visited by Sweet the Demon!)\nBut because of the connection to the Cineverse via \"Saving Grace\", it could also reside in the \"Borderlands\", which is where the overlap with the movie universe is for films that cannot be fully integrated into the main Toobworld. (Like \"M*A*S*H\" and \"The King And I\")\n\"Doc Martin\" Bamford was a pleasant enough fellow, and after seeing so many seasons of 'Doc Martin' featuring Dr. Ellingham's irritating manner, it was refreshing to see Martin Clunes so light-hearted. But in the end, I'm glad Dr. Ellingham is the citizen of Toobworld and not Dr. Bamford......\n*Her name was Petronella, but I wanted to call her \"Citronella\"......\nLabels: Alternateevee, As Seen On TV, Big Screen TV, By Any Other Name, Life During Prime-Time, Location Shot, Tele-Folks Directory, TV Movies, World Toob\nAS SEEN ON TV: SER JORAH MORMONT\nSER JORAH MORMONT\nPentos, Vaes Dothrak, the Dothraki Sea,\nEssos, Mondas\nSer Jorah Mormont is a major character in 'Game of Thrones'. He is played by starring cast member Iain Glen and débuts in the first episode of the first season. Ser Jorah is an exiled Westerosi lord living amongst the Dothraki, who know him as Jorah the Andal for his Westerosi origins, in Essos. He has sworn fealty to his fellow exile Daenerys Targaryen. He has developed strong and unrequited feelings for her.\nJorah Mormont is a knight from Westeros who has fled from his homeland and is living in exile in the Free Cities. He is the son of Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. He is the former Lord of Bear Island of House Mormont (a vassal of House Stark), losing his status as a lord for disgracing his house by trying to sell poachers into slavery to pay his debts.\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Book 'em, Tele-Folks Directory, Wikipediaphile\nSWEET MISTER RAD\nRobert Wronski, Jr. is a comrade in crossovers. He's a big supporter of the Toobworld Dynamic and a fellow fan of Farmer's Wold Newton Universe. And he is building his own world of crossovers called the TVCU - the Television Crossover Universe, but so much more is involved than just TV shows. (The link for the Television Crossover Universe is to the left, Myspace Invaders!)\nRobert also moderates a shared forum in Facebook called The Crossovers Forum, which is constantly being replenished with great crossovers involving comic books, toys, novels, songs.... And that's where he posted the following suggestion:\nIs Mr. Sweet also perhaps the glee club teacher in 'Community'? Or is there more than one musical demon, accounting for groups that are affected over a longer term period, like in 'Glee' and 'High School Musical'?\nAnd apparently Regionals was invented by this demonic force.\nThe Greendale Glee Club teacher was responsible for the deaths of two different sets of Glee Clubs and had the power to turn the normal world into a musical.\nIn case you're not familiar with Mr. Sweet, he was an inter-dimensional demon (portrayed by Hinton Battle) seen in \"Once More, With Feeling\", the musical episode of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer\".\nHere's a thumbnail sketch of Sweet from the Buffy Wiki:\nSweet was the nickname of a powerful demon whose mere presence could cause the inhabitants of an area he visits [to] burst into song and dance, which would lead to some of the victims to spontaneously combust.\nHe also had certain reality-bending abilities, allowing him to change the color of his suit from red to blue, rip out his still singing mouth without harm, creating a door to the streets in the middle of The Bronze, and changing Dawn's outfit from a blue top and black pants to a tan top and blue skirt. He also had teleportation powers and could sense Willow Rosenberg's raw magical power.\nIn 2005, Sweet was inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame for October, because even though he only appeared in that one 'Buffy' episode, I think it would seem O'Bvious that he was working behind the scenes in several other shows - like 'Cop Rock' and 'Hull High' and perhaps even the British 'Pennies From Heaven'. (If there are Bollywood TV shows in India, I wouldn't put it past Sweet to be operating there as well.)\nDemons have the power to alter their appearance, and as we see in the above description, Sweet the Demon not only could change the color of his suit, but he could rip his mouth out of his face with no harm done. So to be able to transform himself from a humanoid that resembled dancer Hinton Battle to a white-bread suburban Taran Killam look-a-like would have been child's play.\nCory Radisson, the glee club director of Greendale Community College, admitted that he was responsible for the deaths of the former club members on a bus - they probably were all singing and dancing onboard until spontaneous combustion set the bus on fire and over a cliff. And the next glee club ended up in a psychiatric unit.\nPretty demonic behavior if you ask me.....\nAnd as for that name change from Sweet* to Cory Radisson?\nBuffy:\n\"You got a name?\"\n\"I've got a hundred.\"\nThanks for making me see that scene in a new light, Robert!\n* The name of Sweet was never mentioned during the episode. However, there was a screen credit for the \"Sweet Makeup\", so fans called the demon Mr. Sweet. This is one time when an end credit does matter in Toobworld......\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Blogmates, By Any Other Name, Hall of Fame, Life During Prime-Time, Missing Links, O'Bservations, Online TV, Recastaways, Tele-Folks Directory\nAS SEEN ON TV: SANSA STARK\nWinterfell & King's Landing, Westeros, Mondas\nSansa Stark is a major character in 'Game of Thrones'. She is played by starring cast member Sophie Turner and débuts in the first episode of the first season. She is betrothed to King Joffrey Baratheon. She adopted the direwolf Lady but Lady was executed following a dispute between Joffrey and Sansa's sister Arya. She was initially thrilled at her betrothal but has since experienced Joffrey's cruelty and watched the execution of her father Eddard Stark on his orders. She is a captive of House Lannister in King's Landing.\nSansa Stark is the eldest daughter and second child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark. She has three brothers (Robb, Bran and Rickon), a half-brother (Jon Snow) and a younger sister (Arya). She is good at sewing and embroidering. She likes poetry and songs and dreams of being a good Queen like Cersei Lannister. She has the Tully coloring like most of her siblings. She is often seen in contrast with her sister, Arya Stark.\nDISNEY'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF WESEN\nI've always been amused by how we can look at mice as heroes in cartoons, and yet we put out poison and set traps to kill them in real life. And that proved to be an example of life during prime-time in the series 'Grimm'....\nThe Mausehertz (or Mauzhertz) are a wesen species that resembled a rodent-human hybrid in its natural state. Monroe suggested that many of the early cartoonists were Mausehertz who used their talents in animation to sway public opinion to be favorable towards the mouse-folk. That's why we cheer on Jerry, Mighty Mouse, Speedy Gonzalez, Pixie & Dixie.....\nAnd Mickey Mouse.\nSo this probably means that the televersion of Walt Disney was a Mausehertz.\nHere are a couple of pictures of Walt Disney in which he looks somewhat mousey.....\nFor Earth Prime-Time, Walt Disney was in the League of Themselves, portraying his own televersion. The appearances to his credit of course include his hosting duties for 'The Wonderful World Of Color' in which he practiced his serlinguistic skills. There was at least one episode of 'The Jack Benny Show' and I think he may have appeared in the opening episode for 'The Mickey Mouse Club'.\nAs for the portrayal of Disney by Len Cariou in a TV biopic about Annette Funicello, that would be set in an alternate TV dimension, probably the one for the TV movies of the week.\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Hall of Fame, La Triviata, League of Themselves, Life During Prime-Time, Missing Links, Splainin 2 Do, Tele-Folks Directory\nAS SEEN ON TV: THE GREYJOY SIBLINGS\nTHEON AND YARA GREYJOY\nAlfie Allen as Theon\nGemma Whalen as Yara\nTheon - The Iron Islands, Winterfell\nYara - The Iron Islands\nBoth - Westeros, Mondas\nTheon Greyjoy is a major character in 'Game of Thrones'. He is played by starring cast member Alfie Allen and débuts in the first episode of the first season. Theon Greyjoy is the heir of Lord Balon Greyjoy of the Iron Islands. He has been a hostage of House Stark since his father's failed uprising against King Robert Baratheon. Despite his status he is a close friend to Robb Stark.\nTheon is the only surviving son of Lord Balon Greyjoy, the ruler of the Iron Islands. The Iron Islands rose in rebellion against the Iron Throne and were crushed in a war led by King Robert Baratheon and Lord Eddard Stark. The ironborn surrendered and Balon was allowed to remain lord paramount of the isles on the condition that Theon remain a hostage and ward of Eddard Stark. Despite his status as a hostage at Winterfell, Theon has been treated well by the Starks. He and Robb Stark are best friends. Theon is a skilled archer.\nYARA GREYJOY\nYara Greyjoy is a recurring character in 'Game of Thrones'. She is played by guest star Gemma Whelan and debuts in the second episode of the second season. Yara Greyjoy is an ironborn, Theon Greyjoy's elder sister and his only surviving sibling. Yara was raised at the Greyjoy stronghold of Pyke. She is a fierce warrior and commands her own longship.\nYara is Theon Greyjoy's elder sister and his only surviving sibling; his two older brothers were killed during the Greyjoy Rebellion. Whilst Theon has been a ward and hostage of the Starks to guarantee his father's good behaviour, Yara has been raised at the Greyjoy stronghold of Pyke. She is a fierce warrior and commands her own longship, to the disquiet of some of the ironborn who hold that women should not fight or command men in battle.\nWith the introduction of Yara in the second episode of Season Two, we now have another difference between Toobworld and BookWorld:\nIn the books Yara is called Asha Greyjoy, but her name was changed in the TV series; possibly to prevent confusion with Osha.\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Book 'em, By Any Other Name, Game of the Name, Life During Prime-Time, Online TV, Theories of Relateeveety\n\"GRIMM\" FINDINGS: VIEW A LENZ DARKLY\nI came late to 'Grimm'; I've only been watching for the last month or so - whenever \"Three Coins And A Fuchsbau\" first aired. I don't know why I resisted sampling it - the premise (so far) seems perfect for the expansion of Toobworld, with the many species of humanoid creatures known as wesen.\nTo make its mythos fully a part of Toobworld, we should be able to find other TV shows that unofficial examples of the 'Grimm' creatures, in much the same way we look for quantum leapers in other shows (usually to splain away recastaways.)\nThis doesn't mean we have to see these wesen in their native state. Within the episodes of 'Grimm', we don't see them transform unless they are among their own kind, or when they're in the presence of the \"Grimm\", Nick Burkhardt.\nPozz'ble candidates to be wesen-folk in other TV shows don't have to be part of the main cast. They could be recurring characters, or guest stars, or they could even be \"atmosphere people\" in the background (like my friend Ray Amell, whose characters could all be of the Mausehertz species.)\nRAY AMELL & TWO STEWARDESSES FROM 'PAN AM'\n(PROBABLY A MAUSEHERTZ?)\nWith that in mind, I'd like to suggest the first candidate to be a wesen in Toobworld, outside of 'Grimm':\nMRS. LINDA CAVANAUGH\n'LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT'\n\"GUILT\"\nThe episode \"Guilt\" aired on NBC March 29, 2002. Here's the basic plot summary:\nWhen ADA Cabot is faced with a reluctant witness in a child molestation case, she goes above and beyond the normal scope of duty in her search for evidence to convict the serial abuser. But her passion supercedes her compliance with the law as she misrepresents herself to Detectives Benson and Stabler to bring them into an illegal search of the traumatized boy's home -- jeopardizing not only her case, but the careers of all involved. SVU Bureau Chief Elizabeth Donnelly is faced with the frustrating task of bringing Cabot in line to preserve the integrity of the Special Victims Unit.\n(From TVRage and TV.com)\nOne only has to see the passion in Kay Lenz' performance as a grieving mother protecting her son's reputation as he lay in a coma. There is a feline fury in her face reminiscent of a mother lion guarding her cub.\nI wish I could share a video of this scene, or at the very least a frame grab, but I only have this \"captcha\" of Ms. Lenz from a YouTube video about ADA Alex Cabot in that same episode. (The clip cuts away from Mrs. Cavanaugh after only a second to the next scene.)\nSo who do you think could be a wesen from 'Grimm', but found in another TV show?\nMr. French of 'Family Affair' (as a Jägerbär)?\nSimka Gravas of 'Taxi' (as a Seltenvogel)?\nCosmo Kramer of 'Seinfeld' (as a Ziegevolk)?\nI'd like to hear your suggestions!\nLabels: As Seen On TV, By Any Other Name, La Triviata, Life During Prime-Time, Missing Links, Splainin 2 Do, Tele-Folks Directory, Wish-Craft\nAS SEEN ON TV: RENLY BARATHEON\nRENLY BARATHEON\nStorm's End & King's Landing, Westeros, Mondas\nFrom \"Game Of Thrones Wiki\":\nRenly Baratheon is a recurring character in Game of Thrones. He is played by guest star Gethin Anthony and debuts in the third episode of the first season. Renly is a younger son of House Baratheon, who is the Lord of Storm's End and has served on the small council as Master of Laws. Following the death of his oldest brother King Robert Baratheon, Renly claims the Iron Throne for himself, contesting the claims of his nephew Joffrey Baratheon and his older brother Stannis Baratheon.\nFor his personal sigil, Renly has altered the original color scheme of the Baratheon sigil. Instead of the black crowned stag on a yellow field, Renly's banner displays a golden crowned stag a a field of green, a nod to the color scheme of his main supporters, House Tyrell.\nRenly is the son of Steffon Baratheon. Steffon was the Head of House Baratheon and Lord of Storm's End. Renly has two older brothers Robert and Stannis. Steffon died when the boys were young and Robert inherited his titles. Robert led a rebellion against King Aerys II Targaryen, deposing and replacing him as the King on the Iron Throne. He made Renly the Lord of Storm's End following his victory. Renly serves Robert as Master of Laws on the King's small council in King's Landing. He is fourth in line to the throne, behind his nephews Joffrey and Tommen and his older brother Stannis.\nTHE TITANIC IN THE TOOBWORLD TIMELINE\nWithin the world of the Toob, the sinking of the RMS Titanic must be considered a fixed point in Time. It has to happen, despite the best efforts of misguided time travelers, because the deaths of those 1500 people are important to the continuation of the timeline. Certain individuals in History, mostly the non-famous, have been rescued from a pre-ordained death (the family in the 'Doctor Who' episode \"The Fires Of Pompeii\", many characters encountered in 'Quantum Leap'), and the obliteration of their deaths have not had any ramifications on the timeline. But for whatever reason, the continued existence of these poor souls in History would.\nPhineas Bogg:\nThe first thing we have to do is find out how much time we have.\nJeffrey Jones:\nAre you crazy? We've got to stop this ship!\nJeffrey, look...\nOver a thousand people are gonna die.\nWe can stop it. We can make it so it never happened.\nThat's not what's wrong.\nHow can you say that?\nI know it's hard to understand, but sometimes history's cruel.\nThere's, there's wars, disasters, injustices,\nbut some of those things,\nno matter how much you want them not to happen,\nare supposed to happen.\nBut the Titanic...\nIs a terrible tragedy, but it's going to happen.\nIt was in my guidebook; you learned it in school.\nWe can't change that. But we can find out why the Omni's red.\nMaybe somebody's on board that isn't supposed to be.\nMaybe we can save somebody important before it goes down.\nNo! We can save them all!\nNo, we can't.\n('Voyagers!)\nThe Titanic of the main Toobworld is the one that appears in every TV series which features it. The differences in the recastaways of the historical figures is due to their presentation as being the viewpoint of the fictional characters who encounter them. (Even if those fictional characters appear in the shot, we are seeing what they see.)\nThe Titanic as seen in the three TV movies or mini-series - \"Titanic\", \"S.O.S. Titanic\", and the new \"Titanic\" - are each relegated to a different TV dimension, in much the same way as had been done for historical figures like Presidents Kennedy, Washington, and Lincoln.\nBCnU.......\nLabels: As Seen On TV, La Triviata, Life During Prime-Time, O'Bservations, Tele-Folks Directory, Tele-Quotes, TV timeline\nTELE-FOLKS DIRECTORY - PASSENGERS ON THE TITANIC\nThe sinking of the Titanic has been a fascination for the television medium since perhaps the medium began. (Definitely since before I was born - in May of 1955, 'You Are There' visited that fateful day in 1912.)\nAs we are seeing now with the collapse of the World Trade Center, fictional characters took their place among the real people in many different depictions of the Titanic's sinking. Here is a list of just some of them:\n'UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS'\nLady Marjorie Bellamy\nLord Southwold\nMarion Worsely\nMiss Roberts\n(Lady Marjorie's personal maid was the only survivor of the four)\n'DOWNTON ABBEY'\nPatrick Crawley\n(The heir to the family fortune may have survived, but was believed dead)\n'TIME TUNNEL'\nDr. Doug Phillips\nDr. Tony Newman\nAlthea Hall\n(All survived)\n'VOYAGERS!'\nPhineas Bogg\nJeffrey Jones\nOlivia Dunn (another Voyager)\nSuzanne Brandes\nthe \"Mona Lisa\"\nHaggerty and his two henchmen\n(It appears they perished.)\n'CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS'\nHarry Zieff\nCara Leslie\n(Mr. Zieff sacrificed his life to save that of Miss Leslie.)\n'ONE STEP BEYOND'\nEric Farley\nGrace Montgomery\n(Eric perished, but managed to get his fiance Grace into a lifeboat.)\n'NIGHT GALLERY'\n(A 'Lone Survivor' is found in the North Atlantic, three years after the Titanic sank. He is in a lifeboat and dressed in woman's clothing. It becomes clear he is a soul trapped forever to pay for his cowardice. Although not named, this could be the soul of J. Bruce Ismay.....)\n'SUPERNATURAL'\nA new timeline was created when Balthazar changed history by preventing the ship from sinking. Fate then stepped in, killing everyone who should have died on that voyage.\nThe Ninth Incarnation of the Doctor (although his Fourth Incarnation denied it.)\n(The Time Lord survived)\nThe Daniels Family never boarded as they were going to, due to the Doctor.\nThere may be more. What you should do is keep an eye on the blog \"The Flaming Nose\". (Link to the Left, me mateys!) My blogging buddette Lisa has several of these episodes linked in a series of posts so that you can see them for yourself. (But it gives nothing away to reveal that the ship still sinks at the end.)\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Game of the Name, La Triviata, Linkin' Logs, Tele-Folks Directory, TV Movies, TV timeline, Who's On TV\nAS SEEN ON TV BONUS: THE TITANIC\nIt was one hundred years ago exactly this weekend......\nTHE RMS TITANIC\nAS DEPICTED BY:\n\"No Greater Love\"\nAlternate (TBD)\nThe sinking of the RMS Titanic occurred on the night of 14 April through to the morning of 15 April 1912 in the north Atlantic Ocean, four days into her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The largest passenger liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg at 23:40 (ship's time) on Sunday, 14 April 1912. She sank two hours and forty minutes later at 02:20 (05:18 GMT) on Monday, 15 April, causing the deaths of over 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.\nTitanic had received several warnings of sea ice during 14 April but was travelling near her maximum speed when she collided with the iceberg. The ship suffered a glancing blow that buckled her starboard (right) side and opened five of her sixteen compartments to the sea. Titanic had been designed to stay afloat with four flooded compartments but not five, and the crew soon realised that the ship was going to sink. They used rocket flares and radio (\"wireless\") messages to attract help as the passengers were put into lifeboats. However, there were far too few lifeboats available and many were not filled to their capacity due to a poorly managed evacuation.\nThe ship broke up as she sank with over a thousand passengers and crew members still aboard. Almost all those who jumped or fell into the water died from hypothermia within minutes. RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene about an hour and a half after the sinking and had rescued the last of the survivors in the lifeboats by 09:15 on 15 April, little more than 24 hours after Titanic's crew had received their first warnings of drifting ice. The disaster caused widespread public outrage over the lack of lifeboats, lax shipping regulations, and the unequal treatment of the different passenger classes aboard the ship. Enquiries set up in the wake of the disaster recommended sweeping changes to maritime regulations. This led in 1914 to the establishment of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), which still governs maritime safety today.\nThe Titanic is one of the members of the \"Proto-Hall\", the fore-runner to the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame......\nLabels: As Seen On TV, Book 'em, Hall of Fame, Life During Prime-Time, Online TV, Recastaways, TV Movies, Twipped from the Headlines, Wikipediaphile\nAS SEEN ON TV: HODOR","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line142887"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5378788709640503,"wiki_prob":0.5378788709640503,"text":"Term Limits America PAC Endorses Gary Glenn for Michigan Senate\nFairfax, VA—Term Limits America PAC (TLA-PAC) urged Michigan Republican primary voters to support Gary Glenn for U.S. Senate.\nPhilip Blumel, chairman of TLA-PAC called Glenn, “A leading proponent for term limits who will be a strong advocate for citizen run government when he gets to Washington, D.C.”\nGlenn, unlike his opponents in the race, signed the U.S. Term Limits Amendment Pledge which reads, “I pledge that as a member of Congress I will cosponsor and vote for the U.S. Term Limits Amendment of three (3) House terms and two (2) Senate terms and no longer limit.”\nThe U.S. Term Limits Constitutional Amendment has been introduced in both the U.S. Senate by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and the House of Representatives by Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ). This session of Congress marks the first time in nearly twenty years that a serious term limits bill has appeared in both Houses with co-sponsorship.\nBlumel noted, “The dysfunction in Washington, D.C. has never been greater, and people have had enough of politics as usual. Gary Glenn will be a break from the cozy politics of the past that have led our nation astray.”\nAccording to the last nationwide poll on term limits conducted by Public Opinion Dynamics for Fox News in September 2010, the issue enjoys wide bi-partisan support. The poll showed that 78 percent of Americans support congressional term limits, including 74 percent independents and 74 percent of the nation’s Democrats.\nBlumel concluded, “America is in trouble. Career politicians, like Peter Hoekstra, have let the people down. It is time to limit their terms and return control of our nation to people who have actually had to create a job, earn an honest paycheck and pay a mortgage. It is time for a constitutional amendment limiting congressional terms, and the first step in getting one is electing a supporter of the issue in Gary Glenn.”\nThe term limits amendment bills would require a two-thirds majority vote in the House and Senate, and ratification by 38 states in order to become part of the Constitution.\nLabels: Gary Glenn, Term Limits\nBoth Hoekstra and Durant in this race are against term limits. Term limits were a major rally cry at my first TEA Party in 2009 and still are to this day. With an approval rating of 11% you will still see 90% of Congress re-elected because they have been in there for over 20 years and have built up the war chests from lobby money by giving out pork barrel money paid for by our taxes. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be stopped. We do not need anymore career politicians, but servant leaders! Thank you Gary Glenn for standing for Term Limits!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1447180"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6032989025115967,"wiki_prob":0.3967010974884033,"text":"Nick Wilson\nAn Introduction to Sociolinguistics 5th Edition\nIn this best-selling introductory textbook, Janet Holmes and Nick Wilson examine the role of language in a variety of social contexts, considering both how language works and how it can be used to signal and interpret various aspects of social identity. Divided into three sections, this book explains basic sociolinguistic concepts in the light of classic approaches as well as introducing more recent research. This fifth edition has been revised and updated throughout using key concepts and examples to guide the reader through this fascinating area, including: a new chapter on identity that reflects the latest research; a brand new companion website which is fully cross-referenced within this book, and which includes and video and audio materials, interactive activities and links to useful websites; updated and revised examples and exercises which include new material from Tanzania, Wales, Paraguay and Timor-Leste; fully updated further reading and references sections. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics is the essential introductory text for all students of sociolinguistics and a splendid point of reference for students of English language studies, linguistics and applied linguistics.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line845572"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7480213642120361,"wiki_prob":0.25197863578796387,"text":"« The Glorious Gloria Explains It All\nOn Presidents, Apron Strings, and Second Shifts. »\nOctober 16, 2012 by Shannon Kelley\nThe other day, in the midst of a meeting of my paper’s editorial staff, I found myself waving my Feminist card in a manner reminiscent of when I used to referee kids’ soccer games, and had to deploy the whistle-yellow-card combo. (More often than not, the recipients of said cards were not kids at all, but the grown-ups coaching them. But I digress.)\nAnyway, back to the meeting: that week’s cover story was about the local congressional race, which is hotly disputed, and heavily watched, as recent redistricting means the seat is decidedly In Play. The longtime incumbent is a woman, a Democrat, in her 70s. And the race has been a slugfest. Thanks to the flow of cash from corporations — um, I mean people? — special interest groups, the national parties, and the campaigns themselves, one can hardly catch a post-season baseball game (go Giants!) without being subjected to a slimy back and forth of ads. (Is this what it’s like to live in a swing state? My deepest sympathies.) So, long story short: this particular cover story was about this race, and the cover design, in lieu of photographs, used an illustration — two toylike robot bodies throwing punches at each other, with caricatures for heads.\nStay with me: point coming soon.\nWe were discussing the story when an editor, a man I deeply respect and tend to agree with on most issues, said, “I have a problem with the cover. She looks so young! It’s like we’re showing favoritism.”\nIt was at this point, dear reader, that the whistle was deployed. “Would you say that about a man?” I asked — at which point a chorus of rabble-rabbles erupted, ultimately resulting in my never getting around to making my point. (I should add: I enjoy a hearty rabble-rabble session as much as the next editor. In fact, I brought it up precisely because I love a good rabble-rabble. You know, and because I did have a point.) The caricatures made both candidates look cuter, more cartoonlike, and yes, younger, than their real selves (such is the destiny of a caricature), but what bothered me was the implication that to make a woman look younger is to give her an advantage. Not an actress or model, mind you: a politician. (Nor, I suppose it’s worth saying, a woman in a political battle against another woman. Her challenger is a man.) That, for women, what trumps everything is appearance. That age can only be a disadvantage; that to look old is the worst handicap of all. And that, if one wants to help an older woman out, give her the proverbial leg up, the kindest thing one can do is to deploy Photoshop’s airbrush tool.\nNow, I don’t think this editor was actually saying any of those things, but I do think that within his off-the-cuff remark was crystallized the message women are getting, at all times and from every conceivable direction. There is an entire industry devoted to the “fight” against aging. (As though there’s a chance of winning that battle. And when you consider the alternative–um, death–do you really want to?) And that industry is a big one. And it is aimed at women. (For aging men, marketers offer Viagra, and pretty much leave it at that.) And it is insidious. Because, for all the newfound opportunity and the plethora of options women now have open to us when it comes to answering the rather significant question of “What Do You Want To Do With Your Life?” (a bounty which, as we’ve written, is generationally new, leaving us without much in the way of roadmaps or role models), we are left to figure it all out against what amounts to a soundtrack of a ticking clock. (Ask any game show or action movie producer how to create suspense, and the tick-tock is it. In real life, instead of suspense, we get stress. Which, you know, leads to premature aging. But I digress. Again.) As I’ve written before, I believe it all comes together in a most counterintuitive way: our fear of aging is almost worse the younger we are. After all, when we’re told that our value does nothing but go down as our age creeps up, every day that passes is a marker on a road to invisibility. Irrelevance. Tick tock.\nIs it any wonder preventative Botox is a thing?\nA couple of weeks ago, I was hanging out with a friend of mine, who was talking about how she’s taken to pointing out men who are aging badly–“dumpy looking dudes,” I believe were the words she used–to her husband, because it irked her how much pressure women are under to look good and “age well,” and she wanted him to share in the misery. While I wouldn’t say that’s the best strategy I could conceive of, it’s certainly… a strategy. But I’m not sure a redistribution of the pressure to Anti-Age is the best we can do. What is the best we can do? I’m not sure. None of us wants to look old; and I have no doubt we all appreciate a photo–or drawing–of ourselves that makes us look younger than our years. But it’s worth thinking about why. And surely blowing the whistle every once in a while can’t hurt.\nPosted in being judged, culture, feminism, the ticking clock, why women? | Tagged aging, agism, airbrushing, anti-aging industry, botox, feminism, feminist, political campaign season, politics, publishing, so many options, What do you want to do with your life?, youth | Leave a Comment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line904417"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5288187861442566,"wiki_prob":0.5288187861442566,"text":"1 in 10 female high school students smoke cigarettes\nBy Lee Hyo-sik\nOne out of every 10 female high-school students smoke cigarettes habitually, ringing alarm bells at schools and with parents in search of an effective way to discourage young women from picking up the habit.\nAccording to a study by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs (KIHSA), Wednesday, the smoking rate among female high-school students stood at 10.2 percent in 2009, up from 2.4 percent in 1992. The rate of female middle school students rose to 5.1 percent from 2.8 percent over the same period.\nSmokers are defined as those lighting up at least once a month. About 7.4 percent of adult women were found to smoke regularly in 2009, up from 5.1 percent in 1992.\n“I am pretty positive that more young women smoke in reality than the official statistics indicate because many are reluctant to publically admit they are smokers. Also, an even larger proportion of female students now smoke cigarettes than in 2009,” a KIHSA fellow Suh Mee-kyung said.\nSuh said female adolescents are easily influenced by outside factors, stressing that if they are encouraged by teachers, parents, friends and anti-smoking campaigners, they are more likely to quit before reaching adulthood.\n“The government first needs to introduce a monitoring system to understand how and where young female students learn to smoke cigarettes, in order to draw up an effective anti-smoking policy. Additionally, it should be made much tougher than it currently is for them to purchase cigarettes,” the fellow said.\nShe added a nationwide full-fledged anti-smoking campaign should be launched to increase the awareness among adolescents of the cigarette’s negative effects on their health.\nMeanwhile, the study found a strong correlation between female adolescents’ tendency to smoke and parents’ wealth, occupation and education. The lower the socioeconomic background of the parents, the more likely their children will smoke.\nleehs@koreatimes.co.kr More articles by this reporter","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line484860"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.60017991065979,"wiki_prob":0.60017991065979,"text":"Ellen Cheshire\nClose Reading: Trainspotting\nLast year saw the publication of Illuminate Publishing's textbook WJEC Eduqas Film Studies for A Level and AS for which I wrote a number chapters, inlcuding the Film Form section. I included a number of case studies - but this one didn't make the final cut, due to space restrictions.\nBy analysing a scene drawing on all its component elements: cinematography, mise-en-scène, sound, editing and performance you can discover further layers of meaning.\nThis might be of use/interest to those studying A Level film. Buy the text book here.\nTrainspotting 00:16:29 – 00:17:25\nd. Danny Boyle\nThe scene begins with an overhead shot of a busy bar, the camera moves up to a higher level and over the heads of the central characters in once continuous movement, which then zooms to a head and shoulder shot of Begbie (Carlyle). It is filmed from eye-level and is subjective, as though we, the viewer, are drawing in a chair to join them. Begbie placed in the centre of the frame to show that he is the most important character here.\nThe camera movements and editing combine to create constant movement, which mirrors Carlyle’s performance. His face is animated with large movements around this eyes and mouth, he is always moving his body and gesturing. He takes up more physical space than the others, with his right knee bent up and out over Tommy’s (McKidd) leg. The others are listening, no other character speaks in this scene. Their body movements are smaller and their micro expressions will betray many emotions from boredom to irritation to concern. There is also a manipulation of narrative time through the use of a flashback (a two-second shot of Begbie playing snooker).\nThe props are all carefully considered, here the table is littered with empty glasses, indicating that they’ve been drinking for some time. From this we can deduce that they are likely to be drunk, particularly Begbie who is talking loudly and dominating the conversation. The diegetic sound of the chatting of the drinkers that accompanied the overhead establishing shot of the pub, becomes quieter when we move into Begbie’s monologue.\nAs the group are placed close together, we assume they are friends and that the five men are the most important characters as they are all face-on, with the two women cramped at the edge of the frame in the shade, wearing dark colours. They are wearing similar styles of clothing (costumes), sporty casual, and they all seem to smoke, which brings them together socially.\nAs well as what we can see on screen, there are also off screen spaces to consider. Begbie’s story ends with him throwing an empty glass over his shoulder on to the crowd below, although we don’t see it land, we know from earlier that there is height distance from which the glass will cause damage, and people below who are likely to get hurt. This shot is held in freezeframe for four seconds, before cutting to another freezeframe of Tommy’s reaction, which again is held for four seconds. All diegetic sound stops, and the silence is filled with Renton’s (MacGregor) non-diegetic voice-over narration, which reminds us that we are being told this story from one character’s narrative viewpoint, and that Renton remains the central character.\nStudying a scene for all the hidden ‘clues’ left by the filmmakers to add a further level of meaning, offers us a shorthand to what is happening beneath the surface, what has narratively preceded this scene, and what might be to come.\nLeni Riefenstahl - documentary filmmaker or propagandist?\nJane Campion - 25th Anniversary\nEarly Women Filmmakers\n#52FilmsByWomen - 4th Year\nAlice in Wonderland: Adventures into the Uncanny - part 4\nMarvellous Mira Nair\nPerfect Night In\nPR, Marketing & Fundraising\nWriting & Research","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line178537"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5321487784385681,"wiki_prob":0.4678512215614319,"text":"Allison Bowsher - May 19\nThe seat next to Prince William was not left empty for Diana\n‘The seat in front of the Queen is always left empty.’\nUPDATE: Contrary to wide reporting, the empty seat next to Prince William was not in honour of the Princes’ late mother, Diana. Daily Mail reporter Rebecca English cleared things up with the statement, “Btw – I’ve seen some reports about the spare seat by Prince William in the chapel as having being left in memory of Princess Diana. It wasn’t empty for that reason. The seat in front of the Queen is always left empty.”\nSo there you have it. It was lovely while we all believed it.\nEARLIER: Saturday’s wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was truly a joyful celebration. The happy couple spent most of the one-hour ceremony stealing glances at one another and exchanging private smiles and words of love. Even with all the pomp and circumstance, Harry and Meghan’s wedding was full of moments of genuine affection for one another and all those who came to celebrate with them, as well as those they’ve lost. In one of the most touching aspects of the wedding, Harry and Meghan chose to honour the late Princess Diana by leaving a seat open at the front of the church. Oh yeah, we’re definitely crying now.\nEagle eyed wedding viewers may have noticed that the front row included an empty seat next to Prince William. This wasn’t a mistake, but in fact a placeholder for Harry and William’s mother; where she would be sitting if she were still alive today.\nHarry and William were both incredibly close to their mother, a woman who was celebrated for helping to push the British monarchy into the 20th Century. Diana was beloved worldwide for bringing a relatability to the Royal Family through her charitable work and natural charisma and empathy when speaking with the public. She set the standard and it’s a high one.\nWhen thinking of Diana’s untimely death, one of the first images to come to mind is that of Prince Harry and Prince William walking solemnly behind their mother’s casket as it was driven through London.\nSaturday’s image of the boys, now married men, smiling and looking happy is a welcome sight for those who mourned Diana along with the Royal Family. It’s difficult to not be choked up thinking about how excited Diana would be to see both her sons marry for love.\nNot only do the brothers’ smiling faces cause us to shed some happy tears, but seeing Diana’s longtime friend Sir Elton John also in attendance and continuing to support Harry and William makes us feel even more like Diana’s presence was felt on Harry’s big day.\nNot having your parent on your wedding day–or really any day–is incredibly painful, but seeing the empty seat for Diana truly touched us, in all the right ways.\nMissed anything, or just want to relive it all again? Watch the one-hour etalk prime-time special “etalk Presents – Harry & Meghan: Happily Ever After,” recapping the highlights and unforgettable moments of the historic day, airing Saturday, May 19 at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO.\nTags: Meghan Markle prince harry Princess Diana royal wedding trending","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line192038"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6315510869026184,"wiki_prob":0.3684489130973816,"text":"Eliciting Altruism\nDifficulty: Moderate | Frequency: 1x/month\t|\tDuration: Variable\nResearch suggests that humans have a strong propensity for kindness and generosity, and that kindness improves the health and happiness of the giver, not only of the receiver. We’ll often be kind to others even at a cost or risk to ourselves—the definition of altruism. But we don't always act on our altruistic instincts—barriers can get in the way.\nFortunately, studies have also identified ways to overcome these barriers to altruism. Here are three research-based strategies for eliciting altruism from yourself or others.\nHow long this practice takes you will vary depending on which strategy you choose, but make it a goal to follow one of these strategies at least once a month.\nBelow are three different strategies that are effective at encouraging kindness and generosity. You can try them individually or in combination with one another. Click on the link at the end of each strategy for more detailed instructions on how to perform it.\nThere are many different creative ways that you can put these principles into practice. We encourage you to share your experience with them in the Comments & Reviews section below.\nCreate reminders of connectedness. Research suggests that when people are reminded of human connection, they behave more altruistically, even when those reminders of connection are very subtle. Something as simple as a quote evoking shared goals, words like “community,” or a picture conveying warmth or friendships—they can all have an impact. Take a moment to look around your home, office, or classroom and consider how you could add words, images, or objects that communicate connection. For more on this technique, see the Reminders of Connectedness practice.\nPut a human face on a problem. Research shows that humans are more likely to want to help others if they see them as individuals, not just abstract statistics. To motivate people to give their time or resources to a cause, like aiding in disaster relief, present them with a personal story of a single, identifiable victim, ideally accompanied by a photo. This will help them feel a greater sense of personal connection and concern, especially if they are of a similar age to the victim or have other things in common. It is important not to overwhelm others with too many stories or facts—they can have the paradoxical effect of impeding the urge to give. For more on this technique, see the practice about Putting a Human Face on Suffering.\nEncourage identification with “out-group” members. One of the greatest barriers to altruism is that of group difference: We feel much less obligated to help someone if he or she doesn’t seem to be a member of our “in-group”—we may even feel hostile toward members of an “out-group.” But research suggests that who we see as part of our “in-group” can be malleable. That’s why a key to promoting altruism is emphasizing similarities that cut across group boundaries. On the broadest level, this could mean remembering that regardless of our political, cultural, or religious affiliations, we are all human beings and share common human experiences. For more on this technique, see the Shared Identity practice.\nEvidence It That Works\nPavey, L., Greitemeyer, T., & Sparks, P. (2011). Highlighting relatedness promotes prosocial motives and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(7), 905-917.\nPeople who read words associated with human connectedness were more interested in volunteering for a charity and were more likely to donate money to a charity; similarly, people who wrote about a time they felt a close bond with someone else expressed greater intentions to help others in general.\nSmall, D. A., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). Helping the victim or helping a victim: Altruism and identifiability. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26(1), 5–16.\nPeople were more willing to compensate individuals who had lost money when the identities of those individuals were revealed, and they donated more to a charity when they knew that their donation would benefit a specific family that had been selected from a list.\nLevine, M., Prosser, A., Evans, D., & Reicher, S. (2005). Identity and emergency intervention: How social group membership and inclusiveness of group boundaries shape helping behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4), 443-453.\nPeople were more likely to help a fallen jogger when the jogger was a fellow fan of the same soccer team than when the jogger was a fan of a rival team (as indicated by their shirt). But when people were reminded of a shared identity with the fallen rival (being a soccer fan), they were more likely to help that person than they were to help a non-fan.\nAlthough people generally want and try to be altruistic, other concerns—such as feelings of competition or allegiance to an “in-group”—sometimes stand in the way. Reminding people to think about social connectedness, see victims as real people rather than abstract statistics, and feel a sense of common humanity can help them overcome some of the obstacles to altruism and allow feelings of care and compassion to shine through. These techniques can all trigger the caretaking impulses that seem to be part of humans’ evolutionary heritage.\nThis practice is part of Greater Good in Action, a clearinghouse of the best research-tested methods for increasing happiness, resilience, kindness, and connection, created by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley and HopeLab.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1203243"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6074138879776001,"wiki_prob":0.3925861120223999,"text":"Dessert and a Side of Cynicism (New York reflectio...\nThe Door (portion Mishpatim)\nLeap Before You Look (portion Yitro)\nThe Narrative of the Night (Portion Bo)\nDessert and a Side of Cynicism (New York reflections)\nI spent most of this week in New York. I went to accompany Rosa on the first leg of her journey to Jerusalem, where she is now starting a semester of high school on NFTY’s Eisendrath International Exchange (EIE) program. I will be writing more on this in the weeks to come; it’s a fabulous adventure for her, and for me, a taste of life as an empty-nester. But that is a much longer story for another day.\nAfter the big farewell at JFK airport, I spent the rest of my time in New York wandering the city, enjoying its abundant sights and unique vitality, and the company of my cousin Liz, who hosted me. She has a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side and is currently covering the crime beat for the New York Times, so I got to see quite another side of the city through her eyes.\nToday, though, I want to write about two things: dessert and rock opera.\nFirst, dessert.\nFor lunch on Wednesday, I went to a superb sushi place in a hard-to-find basement near the UN building. The meal was terrific, but the most memorable part of the experience began when the server asked if I wanted dessert. I’d spent much of the morning walking—probably three or four miles—in bitterly cold temperatures, so I figured I had earned the right to finish with something rich and sweet.\nThe server mentioned a special, not on the menu, and strongly endorsed it. I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was (it had a long Japanese name), but I decided to give it a try. After such a tasty meal, I thought I couldn’t go wrong with her recommendation.\nWell, as soon she brought my order out, I realized that I had unwittingly entered into a different world, a haute cuisine realm of dessert, that I had recently read about in an Adam Gopnik piece in the food issue of the New Yorker. Gopnik describes new trends in desserts, originating with several young chefs in Spain but now making their way to America (OK, not the Boise part of America, but New York and LA). The gist of his piece: according to these pioneering Spanish chefs, dessert has, for far too long, been limited to butter and chocolate and cream and sugar and eggs—in other words, sweets. Today, finally, edgy and radical pastry chefs are experimenting with different tastes and textures.\nNow it was my turn to experience that experiment because my “special” dessert at Sakagura turned out to be a cup of piquant chili-inflected, sake-flavored sorbet surrounded by mounds of transparent peppery, semi-sweet gelatinous stuff. Last month, when I read about this trend, it struck me as silly. I thought to myself, “This foodie fad will never come to Boise—and I won’t miss it” (unlike many New York culinary tends that I do, indeed, miss). Well, it turns out first hand experience confirms my initial instincts. All in all, I must say, following a gorgeous lunch with a rice-wine and hot pepper flavored sorbet with mucous-like accompaniment does not really seem like such a good idea. I’m glad I got to try it, but let’s face it: there is a reason that, for centuries, people have loved things like cheesecake and torte and chocolate ice cream and cupcakes and crème brulee.\nThe lesson I draw from this: while the courage to take risks is generally a laudable thing, not all change is good. Some things—classic desserts among them—are just fine as they are and need not be tampered with, thank you. I am an unrepentant liberal—in my Judaism and in my politics and even in my food choices (I am a pescetarian who is very thankful for advances in healthy eating—my grandfather’s steady diet of high-fat Ashkenazi Jewish food probably contributed to his dying of a stroke at the age of 69). But there are occasions when the conservatives are right, and the best thing we can do is conserve venerable traditions. I want change that I can believe in—but I also like a nice piece of pie every now and then.\nNow, on to Rock Opera. . .\nLater that same evening, I went to the 7pm show of American Idiot at the St. James Theater. I’m not normally a big Broadway musical fan, but this was something different—a rock opera based on the eponymous smash hit album by the band Green Day. I love that record, and have been a big Green Day fan for many years. Best of all, the band’s guitar player, singer/songwriter, and kohl-eyed charismatic front man, Billie Joe Armstrong is playing lead role in the show this month. He is “St. Jimmy,” a malevolent modern pied piper dispensing drugs and sexual favors—and his rock star verve infuses the show.\nAmerican Idiot is esentially a rock opera in the style of The Who’s Tommy or even the later play, Rent—which is to say, almost all music with very little dialogue. That is fine by me. The plot tells the story of three budding anarchist kids, who are deeply disaffected by the culture of their suburban parents in the aftermath of the election of George W. Bush and 9/11. The narrative is, by all accounts, a bit thin in places, but the show is fantastically staged and explodes with energy.\nMostly, as I watched it and then reflected on it afterwards, it struck me that American Idiot is this generation’s equivalent of Hair. Both are anti-war, coming of age stories filled with sex and drugs and rock and roll. But an abyss stands between these two plays, and that abyss reflects the enormous changes that have occurred in the four decades that have passed between them.\nIn Hair, sex is liberating, and drugs open and expand the mind. In the much bleaker American Idiot, sex leads to teen pregnancy and a kind of dead end life, while drugs bring death and disaster. But the biggest difference lies in the contrasting endings of the shows. Hair is about the power of youth to change the world, and it concludes with an enormous gathering of anti-war protesters singing: “Let the sun shine in. . .” (as a high school student, I dressed up in “hippy clothes” and hung out at the Mall in Washington, DC for the filming of the movie version of that scene). Today, Hair seems—sometimes it is—naïve and simplistic. And yet, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the young protestors really did help stop the war.\nBy contrast, in American Idiot, there is no concerted political action—just anarchy, anger, and cynicism. Kids rage against the system, but they are, ultimately, helpless. Sex and drugs consume them, and the play ends with the heroes—anti-heroes, really—returning home jaded and broken. Hair is an optimistic play about the power of youth, while American Idiot is a deeply pessimistic parade of the wounded, of young people coming to see themselves are powerless in the face of grim conformist forces. Hair, for all of its youthful hubris, is about changing the world; American Idiot, for all of its edginess, is about being crushed by it.\nAnd yet. . .after watching American Idiot, I left the theater feeling exuberant and startlingly alive. Somehow, the force and vitality of the music, with its thrashing chords, booming bass and drums, and exuberant hooks touched me deeper and lingered longer than the despair of the lyrics and the plot. It struck me that in this manner, rock opera is very much like classical opera, in which the plots are similarly tragic—and secondary. In American Idiot, as in Aida or Madame Butterfly, the music is the thing. I don’t like classical opera at all—I find the style of the singing pretentious and, ultimately, highly irritating (much as classical opera fans would loathe the power chords and distortion of American Idiot). But the two art forms have, I think, more in common than one would suppose at first glance.\nAnd in this, they are like prayer. Rabbis spend inordinate amounts of time debating over tiny disparities in the liturgy, pinning great importance on subtle variations of phrasing. Meanwhile, the people in the pews could care less. They mostly don’t understand the Hebrew anyway, and they find the English translation boring. What moves them is the music—and I’m with them. Words speak to the rational brain but music goes deeper; we feel it in our bodies and it moves our souls.\nThe music is the thing.\nFor a great clip from the Broadway show version of American Idiot, see:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkclalr4fU\nThe opening section of our Torah portion, Mishpatim, raises some serious challenges for contemporary readers. Last week, we marked the pivotal moment in our people’s history, as we received the Torah at Mount Sinai. What a let down, then—at least at first glance—to pick up just a few lines later with legislation dealing with the treatment of slaves. True, the bondage described here is not the same as that which we endured in Egypt (or that African-Americans suffered in this country), as much as a kind of indentured servitude in which people find themselves obliged to sell their labor for a fixed time to repay their debts. Even so, the opening of the parashah is not what we expect from Torah, and it can be jarring to modern sensibilities.\nWhat, then, do we make of this section? My own inclination is to recognize and celebrate the fact that, on a literal level, these verses point to a notable case of genuine moral progress—and then to re-read the passage metaphorically in search of meaning for today.\nOur section starts with Exodus 21:15, which deals with the end of the slave’s prescribed period of servitude: If the slave declares, “I love my master, and my wife and children: I do not wish to go free,” his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall then remain his slave for life.\nThis raises an obvious question: why would someone voluntarily choose to remain a slave? Perhaps the prospect of freedom is just too frightening. As miserable as bondage may be, some may choose it over the heavy burden of autonomy, which entails accepting responsibility for one’s own choices. The Israelites of the wilderness generation fall victim to exactly this fear: terrified by their hard-won liberty, they spend forty years whining to Moses about their desire to return to Egypt.\nIn light of this, Rashi’s commentary on the beginning of our parashah is fascinating:\nWhy are those who decide to stay branded in the ear? Because it was the ear that heard God declare at Sinai, “I have brought you out of the house of bondage.”\nTo which a later commentator, K’li Yakar, adds: And why a doorpost? Because a door was opened for him to go free and he refused to go.”\nWho among us has never succumbed to such fear, and thus turned away from a door into great possibilities? All too often, we choose the cage that we know, the prison that has become comfortably familiar, over passing through the portal to unmapped promised lands. Our challenge is to muster the courage to move forward into the unknown. This is terribly difficult, but if we learn from our past and listen, with our ears, for the encouragement of the Holy One, we can enjoy freedom’s fruits.\nLet me conclude with a poem by Adrienne Rich, which can also be found in our siddur, Mishkan Tefilah:\nEither you will\ngo through this door\nor you will not go through.\nIf you go through\nthere is always the risk\nof remembering your name.\nThings look at you doubly\nand you must look back\nand let them happen.\nIf you do not go through\nto live worthily\nto maintain your attitudes\nto hold your position\nto die bravely\nbut much will blind you,\nmuch will evade you,\nat what cost who knows?\nThe door itself\nmakes no promises.\nIt is only a door.\nWhile reading this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, I recalled a recent article by Rush Limbaugh entitled, “The Answer is Conservatism.” The entire piece is, as one would expect, highly critical of President Obama and congressional Democrats, but it was one small detail in his attack on the president’s health care legislation that struck me in light of the parashah. Mr. Limbaugh mocks former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for saying, last March, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” For Rush Limbaugh, this is the height of absurdity.\nBut is it, really? The notion that we can make important decisions without fully understanding their ramifications is deeply rooted in the Torah; indeed, it is at the heart of our tradition. In Yitro, we reach the climactic moment in our people’s history: the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. As Moses prepares the Israelites for that historic event, he asks them if they are read to commit to following God’s teaching. In an exceptional instance of supreme faith, the people respond in unison: “Na’aseh v’nishmah—We will do it and then we will understand it.” As all of the classic commentators note, the doing comes first. We freely take on the obligations of Torah before we can really comprehend what those obligations entail. We sign the contract without reading the fine print. We pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it.\nI suspect that while this modus operandi may, at first, strike us as unusual and even problematic, upon reflection we find that in our own lives, this is how it works with nearly every major decision that we make. Selecting a college, getting married (or not), having (or not having) children, taking (or leaving) a job, moving to a new house or city, choosing to have (or to forego) a major medical procedure—in each of these cases, and in countless others, we make crucial life choices without really grasping their long term consequences. No matter how much we plan, or how much research we do before we act, we simply cannot know what we are really getting ourselves into. Our course at Sinai, Na’aseh v’nishmah—to act, and only afterwards, gradually, come to understand the full implications of our actions—remains the only way to move forward in our personal, professional, and communal lives. In the end, there is no path that does not demand significant leaps of faith.\nOur portion, Yitro, reminds us that most of the time, when we proceed with integrity, our leaps will land us on solid ground. While we may wish that this reminder might relieve us of all of our fear at critical junctions, this is, alas, simply not the case. Sometimes, our challenge is to find a way to make the leap despite the fear. But one thing is certain: the only alternative to that frightful leap is a life of utter paralysis. If we cannot muster the courage to act on faith, we end up failing to act at all. To trust in God, in compassionate community, in family and friends, and in ourselves is the only way to grow.\nI conclude with two modern takes on Na’aseh v’nishmah. First, an excerpt from W. H. Auden’s magnificent poem, “Leap Before You Look”:\nThe sense of danger must not disappear:\nThe way is certainly both short and steep,\nHowever gradual it looks from here;\nLook if you like, but you will have to leap.\nA solitude ten thousand fathoms deep\nSustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;\nAlthough I love you, you will have to leap;\nOur dream of safety has to disappear.\nAnd for an inspiring rock and roll slant from one of my favorite teachers, Bruce Springsteen:\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouWEZPkbznQ\nThis week’s portion, Bo, takes us into the heart of darkness. It opens with the eighth plague—swarms of locusts that darkened the land. Then Egypt is engulfed in a “thick darkness” so palpable that it renders the Egyptians incapable of movement for three days. All of this dark terror builds up to the final plague when, at the stroke of midnight, God strikes down the firstborn in every Egyptian household. At last, as all of Egypt wails in the darkness, Pharaoh “summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, ‘Up, depart from among my people, you and the Israelites with you!’”\nThe darkness of Bo is inseparable from devastation and death. It is, therefore, a source of intense trepidation, not only for the Egyptians, but also for our Israelite ancestors—and for us. When, on the journeys of our lives, we find ourselves cast into dim places, we tend to reach desperately for light. The descent of darkness shatters our illusions of control and reminds us of our own mortality.\nYet Parashat Bo reminds us that darkness is also the incubator of hope, the place where redemption is born. In Egypt, the Jewish people become a nation. We are conceived in the darkness of bondage and delivered in the middle of God’s eternal night of vigil. This ancient poem from the Passover Haggadah recounts our story of miracles fashioned amidst the darkness: Unto God let praise be brought / For the wonders God has wrought / At the solemn hour of midnight.\nIt is natural to fear the dark. Nightfall is frightening. Still, if we, like our forebears, wish to grow from our experiences, we must learn to embrace the liberating power of darkness. In her book, When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd urges us to think of the divine dark that descends upon us all as a womb rather than a tomb. She asks: \"Could it be that seeking real light comes only by dwelling for a time in the dark? How sad when we don’t incubate the new life pressing to birth inside us. How sad when we cut it short, forcing unformed answers and refusing to hold the tensions of pain. Everything incubates in darkness. Whenever new life grows, darkness is crucial to the process. . . . So why have we made God into a rescuer rather than a midwife?\"\nParashat Bo challenges us to imagine God as a midwife, to embrace our night vision. The poet Theodore Roethke writes: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” In their Egyptian midnight, our terrified ancestors caught their first glimpse of freedom. In our own midnights, we, too, begin to see—but only if we find the faith to hold our ground despite our fear, to wait patiently in the shadows rather than running prematurely for the light.\nThe Aramaic term for blindness is sagi nahor—literally, “too much light.” Thus does the sacred language of our Talmud reveal a fundamental truth: in order to grow, we need the darkness no less than the daylight. And our tradition has always recognized that just as our Jewish months begin on the darkest nights, under the new moon, so too can our Jewish souls find sustenance in the shadows—if only we can muster the courage to tarry there.\nThree months after the Exodus described in Parashat Bo, the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai. There, too, they encounter thick darkness, in the form of the “dense cloud” that falls upon the mountain. Torah tells us that this is precisely where God is to be found. Moses bravely enters that divine darkness, twice. He returns bearing the tablets inscribed with God’s black fire.\nOut of the darkness—through the darkness—comes both liberation and law. Without the night and all of its terrors, there can be no Torah. This is the legacy of Parashat Bo.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line366642"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8809781074523926,"wiki_prob":0.8809781074523926,"text":"TOP STORIES / World / Asia\nAttack on body and soul: How do women survive acid attacks?\nFive years ago, Nusrat lost her face, her courage and her old life when her husband spilled acid over her. All that remains is endless pain. But the incident has also led to a newly found freedom.\nNusrat was brutally attacked twice: first by her husband who poured acid on her and then - while she was fleeing the room - by her brother-in-law who poured some more. \"My clothes dropped off my body and my body was burning,\" said the young Pakistani woman who stayed in hospital for five months and whose face bears the scars of the incident to this day. \"My in-laws often show pictures to my children telling them their mother has turned into a monster,\" she said.\nEvery year at least 1500 people become victims of acid attacks worldwide - both women and men - according to aid organizations. But the estimated number of unrecorded cases is probably much higher. In Uganda, for example, 45 percent of the victims are male. The reason for this is often that people are envious of the success, wife or business of others.\nHowever, the fact that women become victims is often linked to relationships or family disputes. \"I married into a large family,\" said Nusrat. \"In turn, my brother was engaged to my sister-in-law.\" But then Nusrat helped her brother get married to the woman he really wanted to marry, instead of her sister-in-law. \"That's why I was attacked.\"\nWhere women are less worthy\nAnn-Christine Woehrl's pictures can be seen in the Munich Museum of Ethnology until January 11, 2015\nThe German photographer Ann-Christine Woehrl has documented stories like Nusrat's. The 39-year old has visited and portrayed both acid attack and burn victims in countries where women are not always regarded as equals such as India, Pakistan, Uganda, Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia, among others. Woehrl's pictures and the stories of the women portrayed are currently being displayed at the Munich Museum for Ethnology.\nBut there is also Neehari's story. After failing to light a match 49 times, she suceeded in her very last attempt, causing a large part of her body to go up in flames. Her husband had mentally and physically abused her. \"He was a sadistic psychopath. One morning he gave me 100 rupees as payment for the night. I was so sad and I couldn't bear it anymore,\" she said.\nAnd then there is the story of Flavia from Uganda. The 25-year old still doesn't know who attacked her five years ago. \"Most people think that it was my ex-boyfriend. But I have no proof. I just want to ask the person: What have I done to you?,\" she said.\nAcid causes skin tissue to melt, often exposing the bones below the flesh, sometimes even dissolving the bone and permanently damaging organs such as nose and ears. Many of the victims become blind. 13 out of 100 patients don't survive an acid attack. And those who survive suffer from never-ending pain as acid continuously disintegrates the cells.\n\"There is a strength concealed behind the women who first seemed to be weakened by and invisible to society,\" said the photographer.\n12 cents for a life\nAs a weapon, acid also has symbolic effect as it disfigures its victims. Moreover, it is easily available: in many countries it can be purchased for just a few cents in local shops. \"In Bangladesh a bottle costs around 12 cents,\" said Astrid Bracht from the human rights organization Terre des Femmes.\nEver since the sale of acid in Bangladesh was restricted by law in 2002, the number of attacks has gone down significantly. However, 26 cases have been reported this year alone, according to the aid organization Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF).\n'No fear in my heart'\nFlavia, who survived an acid attack five years ago, is now enjoying salsa\nWoehrl's exhibition is not as depressing as it may sound. \"There is a strength concealed behind the women who first seemed to be weakened by and invisible to society,\" said the photographer. Many of the victims told Woehrl they felt much stronger, much more themselves. Before they had been treated as a belonging, now they are willing to challenge this view. \"I think they have managed to free themselves from the different attributes imposed on women in these societies. \"It is unbelievable to see how they are making progress.\"\nFlavia, for example, initially isolated herself and stayed home for several years. But then, a friend took her out one evening to dance salsa. \"Initially I was hiding from the others, and just kept observing the situation. But after some time I met new people, who danced with me - and I became really good.\" Today, Flavia hardly has time for a pause because others like to dance with her so much.\nAfter fighting against her body and the stigma, Nusrat is now fighting for her future - with the support of her children who also console her. In the meantime, Nusrat has met other acid attack victims via ASF. \"Some of them were burned so badly that they can't see or move their hands or eat by themselves anymore,\" she said. \"I am so grateful as I am able to eat and see the world. I can take care of myself. The life God has given me is so wonderful.\" Today Nusrat is working in a beauty salon and says she doesn't feel \"any fear in my heart anymore.\"\nThe exhibition \"Un/sichtbar\" (in/visible) at the Munich Museum of Ethnology is open until January 11, 2015. Edition Lammhuber published the book by the same title.\nOpinion: Crimes against women put India in the dock\nIt is hard to imagine worse news coming out of India. In the space of just a few days three young women were raped and murdered under unspeakable circumstances. But speak about them we must, writes DW's Grahame Lucas. (03.06.2014)\nPakistan's acid attack survivors 'Smile Again'\nWith no help from the government, survivors of acid attacks in Pakistan struggle to find new meanings in their lives. A beauty salon in Lahore is treating these women, while also encouraging them to smile again. (02.01.2014)\nFor Indian women the battle's only just begun\nDespite stricter regulation on violence against women, public outrage over sexual crimes is still palpable in India. The stringent laws passed over the year haven't yet proved to be an active deterrent. (18.12.2013)\n'Rejection doesn't mean you scar a woman's face'\nIndia's top court has ruled authorities should regulate the sale of acid, which is often used in attacks on women. But that's not enough, says Suneet Shukla, a campaigner with Stop Acid Attacks. Society needs to change. (01.08.2013)\nMunich Museum for Ethnology\nhttp://www.acidsurvivors.org/\nAcid Survivors Foundation\nAuthor Monika Griebeler / re\nRelated Subjects Women's rights, Human Rights, The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), International Women's Day, Pakistan\nKeywords women, human rights, acid attack, Ann-Christine Woehrl, Indiia, Bangladesch, Pakistan, Uganda, exhibition, photografy\nFeedback: Send us an e-mail. Please include your name and country in your reply.\nPermalink https://p.dw.com/p/1Ckp5\nAmazon's Jeff Bezos faces protest in India over negative Washington Post coverage 17.01.2020\nAlthough Bezos promised $1 billion worth of investment during his visit to India, the Amazon CEO and newspaper owner was criticized by Indian government officials over negative coverage of PM Modi's policies.\nDW News Asia with Biresh Banerjee, 17 January 2020 17.01.2020\nThe great big Indian wedding trims down thanks to a slowing Indian economy. In neighboring Nepal, child marriages remain a growing concern. And we meet the Hong Kong teachers accused of inciting their students to protest.\nJapanese minister wants to set an example by taking paternity leave 17.01.2020\nEnvironment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi is promoting the government's agenda encouraging people to have more children by taking two weeks off — a relatively long time in Japan's workaholic culture.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1160830"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5378957390785217,"wiki_prob":0.46210426092147827,"text":"A Talk by Vikas Swarup, A Diplomat Who Writes\nVikas Swarup was born in Allahabad (India) in a family of lawyers. He attended Allahabad University and studied History, Psychology and Philosophy. He also made his mark as a champion debater, winning National level competitions. After graduating with distinction, he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1986, motivated by an interest in international relations and a desire to explore different cultures.\nIn his diplomatic career, Vikas has been posted to various countries such as Turkey (1987-1990), the United States (1993-1997) Ethiopia (1997-2000), the United Kingdom (2000-2003) and South Africa (2006-2009). He served as Consul General of India in Osaka-Kobe, Japan from 2009 to 2013. Currently, he is posted in New Delhi as Joint Secretary (United Nations – Political).\nVikas’s first novel Q&A was published in 2005 by Doubleday/Random House (UK & Commonwealth), Harper Collins (Canada) and Scribner (US)- it has since been published in 43 languages. It was short listed for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and won South Africa’s Exclusive Books Boeke Prize 2006 as well as the Paris Book Fair’s Reader’s Prize, the Prix Grand Public, in 2007. It was voted the Most Influential Book of 2008 in Taiwan, and winner of the Best Travel Read (Fiction) at the Heathrow Travel Product Award 2009.The film version of Q&A, titled ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, directed by Danny Boyle, took the world by storm, winning more than 70 awards including four Golden Globes, 7 BAFTAs and a staggering 8 Oscars, including Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Vikas has since written two more bestselling novels, Six Suspects (2008) and The Accidental Apprentice (2013) which have been translated into multiple languages and are due to be made into films.\nVikas is the recipient of the US-India Business Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award for “Contributing to the Cultural Ties that Bind” in 2009. He is also the recipient of a degree of Doctor of Literature & Philosophy (honoris causa) from the University of South Africa (UNISA), the largest university in South Africa and one of the largest distance education institutions in the world.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line171302"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6164321899414062,"wiki_prob":0.38356781005859375,"text":"Keeping an Eye on Inflation\nBy Christopher Taylor at 6/22/2009 10:14:00 am\nNeofelis diardi, the \"new\" clouded leopard species (actually first described in 1823, but later sunk into synonymy until recently resurrected) that has become something of a poster child for arguments on the worth of recent vertebrate species splits. Photo from Tet Zoo.\nNormally, there'd be a Taxon of the Week post here on a Monday, but due to various circumstances that won't be happening today. Instead, here's something I've been sitting on for a few days now:\nSangster, G. (in press) Increasing numbers of bird species result from taxonomic progress, not taxonomic inflation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B.\nDespite the widespread (and, I should note, entirely valid) complaints about the decline of taxonomy as a field of research, a person unfamiliar with the dynamics of the field might possibly be forgiven if, on a cursory glance, they saw it as stronger than ever. The number of new taxa, particularly species, being described every day has not appreciably slowed down - indeed, new species are probably debuting faster than ever. In many cases, study of a \"species\" once believed widespread has lead to the recognition of multiple species, each occupying a different part of the originally-recognised taxon's \"range\". This latter pattern is particularly noticeable in studies on vertebrates. Often, the new \"species\" were previously recognised as \"subspecies\" before their promotion. This has led to the accusation that such cases are examples of taxonomic inflation.\nLesser bird of paradise, Paradisaea minor. Birds of paradise have become one of the prime examples of conflict between the Biological and Phylogenetic Species Concepts. Most authors claiming to follow the BSC have recognised about forty species of bird of paradise (and that total is possibly oversplit, considering the high interfertility of the recognised species), but applications of the PSC to the family have suggested more than ninety species. Photo by stboed.\nFor those of you unfamiliar with the term, the term \"taxonomic inflation\" refers to situations where names, but not the content, of taxa change as a result of their elevation in rank. When the term is used, it usually carries the disparaging implication that this is change simply for the sake of change without any underlying gain in information, and hence unnecessary at best and a misleading waste of everyone's time at worst*. Taxonomic inflation has also been cited as a problem with the use of the Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) rather than the Biological Species Concept (BSC) (see here for an earlier post of mine on the subject). Many authors have complained that the rise in recognised species is bad news for conservation, as it increases the number of required conservation targets.\n*Personally, I (and others before me) would argue that taxonomic inflation is an inevitable side-effect of our current use of a rank-based classification. As I complained last week, an unfortunate side-effect of the pinning of our ranking system on certain primary ranks leads to the belief (whether concious or subconcious) that those ranks should be used for the most \"significant\" taxa. Now, imagine that I'm a researcher spending five years working on a particular family of organisms. As a result of my research, I find that my \"family\" of interest renders another \"family\" paraphyletic. Assuming that I prefer a classification recognising all-monophyletic taxa, I have two options - either I can subsume my \"family\" of interest into the other family, or I can divide up the other \"family\" in order to maintain the distinctiveness of my research family. It all depends on my perception of the relative significance of the taxa - and what do you think that might be, considering into what I've been investing the last five years of my life?\nVariation in appearance between different populations of giraffe, Giraffa spp. Usually recognised as a single species, G. camelopardalis, recent authors have suggested giraffes should be divided between a number of species. Image from The Barcode Blog.\nThe new paper by Sangster responds to the claim that the increase in recognised vertebrate species is due solely to the increased popularity of the PSC, and does not reflect any net increase in our taxonomic understanding (invertebrate taxonomy has been less affected by this debate, because invertebrate systematists have, for the most part, been less inclined to recognise \"subspecies\" [with the notable exception of lepidopterists]). According to Sangster, if this claim is true, it leads to four predictions: (1) the increase in recognised species would have not begun until the introduction of the PSC in the early 1980s*; (2) most taxonomic changes would be based on reinterpretations of old data rather than on collection of new data; (3) most taxonomic splits would be based on specifically PSC-related criteria such as diagnosability and reciprocal monophyly to each other and other taxa, as opposed to less specifically PSC-related criteria such as degree of difference (\"too different\" to be the same species, or \"too similar\" to be different species), differences in adaptive zone (e.g. lowland vs montane taxa) or reproductive isolation; and (4) new taxonomic splits would be biased towards members of charismatic groups (in which there may be more of a vested interest in raising their conservation profile). To test these predictions, Sangster surveyed taxonomic proposals affecting taxon rank published in seven major ornithological journals (such as The Auk and Ibis) between 1950 and 2007 - whether proposals recommended a split (subspecies becoming species) or lump (species becoming subspecies), and what were the criteria cited as support for the proposal.\n*The date is inexact because a number of variants on the PSC were proposed by different authors.\nThe results of Sangster's survey showed that the increase in the percentage of taxonomic proposals recommending splits rather than lumps (shown in the graph above from the paper) had been continuous over the time period surveyed, and the rate of increase had not significantly changed in the 1980s (indeed, there had been a slight downturn in the 2000s, though probably not a significant one). 76.4% of taxonomic proposals over the period covered had been supported by new data rather than based on reinterpretation of old data, and proposals for splits were significantly more likely to be based on new data than proposals for lumps (84.6% vs 64.2%). Prior to the introduction of the PSC, 71.7% of proposed splits were based on new data - post-PSC, 93.9% of them were. Only 10.3% of proposed splits overall were based solely on reinterpretation of old data using PSC-related criteria.\nThe most common criterion for a proposal was diagnosability, followed by reproductive isolation. The least commonly used criteria related to reciprocal monophyly. All criteria were more likely to lead to splits than lumps, though \"degree of difference\" had the smallest difference in propensity. Proposals based only on PSC-related criteria were more likely to lead to a split than those based only on non-PSC criteria, with the latter more likely to propose a lump than a split. There was no correlation between the increase of species in a family and the charisma of that family, but there was a correlation between the number of splits and the number of polytypic species (i.e. species divided into subspecies) in that family.\nThe two storm petrel species breeding on the Azores, of which Oceanodroma monteiroi was only described last year in Bolton et al. (2008), from which comes this figure. Though very similar, the two species breed at different times of the year.\nSangster concludes that the accusation that recent increases in species number are based solely on reinterpretation of old data is grossly unfounded. Proposed changes aren't taxonomic \"inflation\", they're taxonomic \"progress\". However, as much as I personally like his conclusion, it must be admitted that Sangster is potentially setting up a strawman here. Taxonomic research does not exist in a vacuum, and an author is not very likely to go about revising the taxonomy of a group unless they are working on that group already. The increase in the proportion of taxonomic changes supported by new data might indeed reflect changes in researcher practice - or it may reflect the journals becoming more discerning about what manuscripts they will accept for publication (still, for the reader it may not really matter whether the increased rigour is being driven by the researcher or the publisher).\nOn the other hand, Sangster brings up the very important point that many of these \"new\" species aren't really new at all. During the early 1900s, vertebrate taxonomy went through a period of significant lumping. Sangster cites the point that while Sharpe recognised 18,939 species of bird in 1909, Mayr & Amadon recognised only 8590 in 1951 - less than half Sharpe's total. The justification for this lumping was often unclear (they were in a time period when a researcher's authority was generally taken for granted, rather than their being required to show their working), and many current taxonomists feel that in many cases the lumping went too far (for a concrete example, see Darren Naish's post from a few years back on babirusas). Many proposed splits are arguably correcting the excesses of the past.\nFinally, on a personal level, I wouldn't particularly care even if the species increase was based on a change in species concept, because as I've explained before (see the first post linked to at the top of this one), I'm a much greater fan of the PSC than of the impractical-to-test, everyone-says-they-follow-it-but-pretty-much-no-one-actually-does mess that is the Biological Species Concept. The conservation and PR argument cited above - that the PSC somehow leads to there being \"too many\" species - completely fails to impress me, because I don't think that scientific investigation should be directly influenced by political concerns. Once you have the information, then you can work out what to do about it, but changing your working information to what you want it to be first is just not on.\nLabels: principles of biodiversity, species recognition\nAh, lumpers and splitters, species concepts, the failure of the Linnaean hierarchy, and taxonomic inflation. All some of my favorite topics. I only really know these in the context of entomology, so I wasn't really aware there was such a problem in vertebrate taxa as well. I figured the smaller overall number of species would make it that much easier.\n~Kai\nLarry Moran 22 June 2009 at 21:59\nIs anyone proposing to split Homo sapiens? Why not?\nSteve D 23 June 2009 at 04:40\nI've always wondered why conservation wasn't at the Genus level. Speciation is so chaotic and mobile that it seems like a futile target.\nChristopher Taylor 23 June 2009 at 07:18\nKai, this sort of argument is actually more of a problem with vertebrate taxonomy, because (a) charismatic vertebrates have been revised to death more than inverts, and (b) as I mentioned in the post, most invert taxonomists haven't bothered with recognising \"subspecies\" in the first place - if it's distinct, it's a species.\nLarry, the last researcher I'm aware of who divided living humans into separate species was Louis Agassiz. The level of gene flow between human populations is probably much greater than between isolated vertebrate populations (at least these days). That said, the major issue at play here is probably a matter of politics as much as science. I think it would be unwise to divide humans into separate \"species\" because people would insist on reading more into that statement than is really there. This is an underlying handicap in any study of human variation, whatever the terminology you might choose to use.\nSteve: certainly as the number of recognised species increases, it becomes increasingly difficult (if not impossible) to conserve them all. There is a great need for a method to prioritise conservation targets (such as the EDGE system).\nAllen Hazen 24 June 2009 at 12:21\nI think the period of \"lumping,\" at least with large mammals, lasted a bit beyond the 1950s. The nature guides of my childhood (1950s) had the American red fox and wapiti as different species (Vulpes fulva and Cervus canadensis) from their Palearctic cousins, but I have noticed that more recent sources lump them with Vulpes vulpes and ... is it C. elaphus?\nOn species concepts and Homo sap: I have seen at least one paper (on some bunch of South-East Asian mammals, I forget which) which explicitly adopted a numerical measure of specieshood: above a certain percentage of nucleotide differences and two populations count as separate species. (Bizarre, it seems to me, if you like either the \"biological\" or the \"phylogenetic\" species concept: it seemed to me to be numerical pheneticism run wild, but it has obvious practical attractions....) And my understanding is that the various human \"races\" are actually LESS different from each other, on this sort of measure, than typically recognized SUBspecies of other mammalian species.\nDartian 24 June 2009 at 19:08\nInterestingly, Sangster actually attempts to define 'charisma'. From the paper:\nTo determine whether the increase in species is biased towards 'charismatic' groups […] avian family taxa were scored for three characteristics: (i) body size, (ii) morphological distinctiveness and (iii) familiarity among non-biologists\nI wish he'd explained his methodology in a bit more detail, though, particularly regarding the scoring of characteristic (iii). E.g., how many non-biologists did he survey and where? (I suppose that 'a familiar bird' means something rather different to a non-biologist in Australia than it does to a non-biologist in the UK, for example.)\nThe 'charisma' survey was by far the weakest part of Sangster's paper, I have to admit. I suspect that the scores for 'familiarity', etc. were probably Sangster's own estimates rather than being based on any actual survey. I would have also liked to see a list of the actual families scored for charisma - for practical reasons, Sangster limited the comparison to speciose families, but more speciose families, of course, also tend to be less charismatic in general.\nIn response to Allen's comment as well, I'd be very interested to know if Sangster's results hold for mammals as well as birds, or whether mammalogists have different biases (or lacks thereof) from ornithologists.\n(Belated) Taxon of the Week: The Bishop's Mitra\nCompletely Frivolous Taxonomy Quiz\nHey, Old Taxo! My Genus is Better than Yours!\nMultifarities Most Horrid (Taxon of the Week: Brac...\nRemarkable Things\nOf Taxonomy and Rabbis\nSaintly Harvestmen (Taxon of the Week: Equitius)\nMore on Drosophila and Sophophora\nFocus on a Fern (Taxon of the Week: Polystichum ve...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1383822"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8112859725952148,"wiki_prob":0.8112859725952148,"text":"Arts Global\nJerusalem Quartet Receives Prized Cello\nAlexander Pavlovsky - 1st violin\nSergei Bresler - 2nd violin\nAmichai Grosz - viola\nKyril Zlotnikov - cello\nThe Jerusalem Quartet, recognised as one of the most dynamic and exciting quartets currently performing, continue to be both regular and popular visitors to major venues throughout the world. This season, they will perform a total of five concerts in London's Wigmore Hall, and will also appear in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Hamburg, Brussels, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Grenoble and Munich. With a growing reputation in North America they have appeared in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Washington. Last summer saw them appearing at the Edinburgh, Rheingau and Passau Festivals and next season they return to the Bath Mozart Festival. The quartet is in residence for Musica Viva Australia between 2006 and 2009; in October 2008 their 12-concert tour will include Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. They also continue as quartet in residence at the new auditorium in Valladolid, Spain.\nThe quartet have an exclusive recording contract with Harmonia Mundi and in spring 2008 their latest recording, Schubert's Death and the Maiden and Quartettsatz in C minor, was released and was quickly featured as Editor's Choice in the July 2008 edition of Gramophone Magazine. Their recording of Dvorak's American Quartet and the Piano Quintet with pianist Stefan Vladar was released in May 2006 and they made a substantial European tour together with Stefan in November 2007 including a nine concert tour of Holland. They have released two Shostakovich recordings (Quartets 1, 4 and 9 released in May 2005 and 6, 8 and 11 released in spring 2007), and a Haydn quartet CD released in spring 2004.\nTheir 2007 Shostakovich release won the chamber category of the BBC Music Magazine Awards for the best recordings of the year in spring 2008. The illustrious jury said of the disc that it was 'challenging, unpredictable Shostakovich which always convinces even when the approach is new. The Jerusalem Quartet's tonal range is daunting too'. Further awards include first prize in the 'most impressive performance by a (small) ensemble' category of the Vereniging van Schouwburgen en Concertgebouwdirecties Dutch Music Prize in November 2007. In 2003 the quartet was a recipient of the first Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and part of the first ever BBC New Generation Artists scheme between 1999 and 2001.\nThe Quartet is very grateful to Daniel Barenboim who generously loans Jacqueline Du Pre's 'Sergio Perresson' cello to Kyril Zlotnikov.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1506953"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5013285279273987,"wiki_prob":0.5013285279273987,"text":"Determine The Gorgeousness Of Egypt\nGreat or cute wallpaper this \"Determine The Gorgeousness Of Egypt\"? I think this was cute wallpaper\nDiscover The Beauty Of Egypt\nEgypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Thereby, Egypt is a transcontinental country, and is considered to be a major power in North Africa, Mediterranean Region, African continent, Nile Basin, Islamic World and the Red Sea. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.\nPlease give u comment about this\"Determine The Gorgeousness Of Egypt\" wallpaper.\nHot Miranda Kerr Bikini Photos by Ralph Magazine\nGreat or cute wallpaper this \"Hot Miranda Kerr Bikini Photos by Ralph Magazine\"? I think this was cute wallpaper\nVictoria’s Secret Angel Miranda Kerr covers the December issue of Ralph magazine.\nPlease give u comment about this\"Hot Miranda Kerr Bikini Photos by Ralph Magazine\" wallpaper.\nThe Ten most modern Women to wrist watch in 2010\nGreat or cute wallpaper this \"The Ten most modern Women to wrist watch in 2010\"? I think this was cute wallpaper\nThe Ten Hottest Women\n1. Ashley Greene is an American film and television actress, best known for playing Alice Cullen in the Twilight film series.\n2. Minka Kelly is an American actress. She stars in the NBC series Friday Night Lights as Lyla Garrity.\n3. Zoë Saldana is an American actress, known for her roles as Anamaria in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Uhura in the 2009 film Star Trek, and Neytiri in the 2009 James Cameron film Avatar.\n4. Amanda Seyfried is an American actress and former child model.\n5. Katy Perry is an American singer-songwriter and musician.\n6. Leighton Meester is an American actress and singer-songwriter, best known for her role as Blair Waldorf in the TV show Gossip Girl.\n7. Dianna Agron is an American actress best known for her role as Quinn Fabray on the popular television series Glee.\n8. Alice Eve is a British actress.\n9. Christina Hendricks is an American actress best known for her starring role as Joan Holloway in the AMC cable television series Mad Men, and as Saffron in Fox's short-lived series Firefly.\n10. Amber Heard is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her role of Greta Matthews on the CW television show, Hidden Palms.\nPlease give u comment about this\"The Ten most modern Women to wrist watch in 2010\" wallpaper.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line892097"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.60383540391922,"wiki_prob":0.60383540391922,"text":"Belmont launches new Social Media Management major\nBelmont is preparing to make history once again as it becomes one of the first colleges to offer a bachelor’s degree in Social Media Management.\nDr. Kevin Trowbridge created the program with the future of media in mind, and as a result, it will include courses such as Social Media Content Development, Public Relations Research, Social Media Measurements and Analytics as well as a Social Media internship.\nAfter coming to Belmont in 2011 to teach a public relations and social media class, Trowbridge became passionate about how social media opens doors to career opportunities.\nThe new major was created after “seeing how social media has changed radically, but also how our students’ interest in social media has evolved,” said Trowbridge.\nWith some students having already “signed the form to change their major,” Trowbridge said, the announcement of the new program has students talking — one of those is sophomore Jamie Bochicchio.\nThe former music business major considered the switch a “no-brainer” after speaking with her adviser about wanting to focus on the digital marketing aspect of her band, Rising Reign.\n“I hope that I can learn more in-depth how to market and really analyze the data that comes from social media,” said Bochicchio. “I just want to be able to know algorithms and get deeper into that.”\nThe major will be part of Belmont’s public relations department and will be in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.\n“A student who is a sophomore now would be able to graduate having taken all of these courses,” said Trowbridge, explaining how the program will begin to be implemented in the fall of 2020.\nAlthough this has been a long time coming for Trowbridge, he’s looking forward to student engagement with the program, he said.\n“It’s been so refreshing, because we spent about a year going through the development process. But now that the students are hearing about it, they are almost, like, reigniting my excitement for it.”\nThis article written by Lydia Fletcher. Photo courtesy of Office of Communications.\nGPS offers resources for students with undeclared majors\nBecoming a music theory major\nDepartment of Media Studies to join Curb College in October\nWomen in Science club supports the next generation of women in STEM","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line935336"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6401210427284241,"wiki_prob":0.6401210427284241,"text":"PAUL'S AFFAIRS\nby W.B. Screws\nThe Pilgrim's Messenger\n\"Have a pattern of sound words which you hear from me, in faith and love\nwhich are in Christ Jesus.\"--11 Timothy 1:13\nPublished Monthly By W. B. SCREWS, Glennville, Georgia\nTwenty-five Cents a Year\nVolume XVI\nNumber 11.\nEntered at the postoffice at Glennville, Ga., as second-class matter.\n\"Now I am intending you to know, brethren, that my affairs have rather come to be for the progress of the evangel,\"\n(Phil. 1:12).\nPaul was a prisoner when he wrote these words. But instead of being in prison, he was permitted to live in a rented house under guard. And this was favorable to the evangel. When he was first apprehended he was accused by the Jews of profaning their temple, but they later employed an attorney who accused him before the Roman authorities of plotting the overthrow the government of Caesar, (Acts 21:28; 24:1-8). The very fact that Rome did not immediately execute him, was notice to the world that Paul's evangel and his stewardship were not against the Roman government. Caesar had examined him and found this to be true. The fact that Paul's life was spared was proof of it. This, becoming known abroad, was favorable to the progress of the evangel.\nHis location in Rome was suitable for the defense of the evangel. If anyone said Paul was a dangerous man, it could be pointed out that Rome's verdict was, that he was not dangerous. All he was doing was teaching the evangel which pointed believers to the celestial kingdom, and pointed all mankind to salvation, justification and conciliation after the eons. This could not, by the most unreasonable stretch of the imagination be construed as any rebellion against, or any effort to meddle with, the governments of earth.\nHe was kept as a prisoner, to partly satisfy the Jews, for every government that contains a foreign element is under necessity to cater to this element. But the fact that even Jewish pressure could not induce Caesar to put the prisoner to death as a rebel, was proof beyond dispute, that the charge grew out of Jewish hatred, and had no basis in fact.\nRome had no disposition to interfere with the free exercise of the privilege of teaching the evangel, even as no government of earth today has any such disposition, except where religious leaders have intimidated the government. Such leaders are guilty of the very thing of which Paul was accused, but Paul was not. Religion is constantly trying to get control of government, local, state and national. The \"church\" has tried it for centuries, and has succeeded in some instances. It has tried it in the United States, and has partly succeeded at times. This is especially true in the case of local government.\nThose who are really Paul's children in the Lord, (that is, in service), and in faith, (I Cor. 4:17; II Tim. 1:2), are not supposed to interfere with civil governments, even as Paul did not. If they follow this course Paul's affairs are carried out by them. And such affairs come to be for the progress of the evangel. Ministers often meet, with some of their leading laymen, and issue orders to the town council, as to what must be done. In these activities they ignore me, with the intention of snubbing me. But their action really amounts to a \"boost.\" They are serving notice to the community that this strange fellow, Screws, does not interfere with the civil authorities. Thus they acknowledge that my affairs and Paul's are identical.\nIt is worthy of note, that in Philippians Paul does not warn the saints against the civil government. He saw no danger from that quarter. But he does warn them against curs, evil workers and the maimcision, (3:2, 3). Figuratively speaking, curs are those \"religionists\" who live on refuse. And the refuse, as Paul explains in the same chapter, consists of fleshly advantages, religion and self-righteousness, (Verses 4-8). In Philippians Paul is not dealing with immorality; he is dealing with service. Therefore when he mentions evil workers he has reference to religious workers - those whose feverish haste to \"take the world for Christ,\" finds no support among those who are engaged in Paul's affairs. The maimcision were the Jews. They are not a menace today, but the others are. Those living on self-righteousness and whose religion consists of works, are the ones from whom we may expect our persecution. So long as we follow Paul's affairs and preach and promote the evangel, letting the civil government alone, the latter will not interfere with us, unless religionists should succeed in getting control of civil affairs. I trust that all believers in Universal Reconciliation will steer clear of any concerted effort to regulate or intimate the civil authorities. Let it be known that we are peacefully promoting the evangel.\nOn what authority does the church teach that Paul was put to death by Rome? On the authority of tradition. Scripture is against such a supposition. When he wrote the Philippian epistle he expected to be released, (2:24). In his second letter to Timothy he said that at his examination no one came along with him, but the Lord stood beside him and he was rescued out of the mouth of the lion. Then he says confidently and happily, \"The Lord will be rescuing me from every evil work, and will be saving me for his celestial kingdom,\" (II Tin. 4:16-18). In the same chapter he speaks of the period of his dissolution as being imminent. \"Period\" doesn't mean a certain foreknown day. \"Imminent\" does not indicate that he knew, as do all who are to be executed, the very day of his death. It all points to a peaceful, natural death. I take no stock in Paul's supposed \"second imprisonment,\" nor in his being \"beheaded,\" or even thrown to the lions, which latter form of execution would have been his fate, if Rome had imposed capital punishment on him.\nUnder the mercy of God, the government of the United States does not persecute. But if certain religious societies could get control, it would become a persecutor. Let us thank God that our civil affairs are such that Paul's affairs can be carried out without governmental hindrance. And while this is the case let us be faithful - not in trying to force the evangel on anyone, but in proclaiming and promoting it, that it may grasp those whom God has chosen for this rare blessing. That those who want to live devoutly in Christ Jesus shall be persecuted, is as true as when Paul wrote it. But the persecution comes from those who live on self-righteousness, and do evil religious works - not from our beloved government. Let saints remember that the Philippian epistle is devoted to service, and that all service has to do with contributing in various ways to the evangel, (Phil. 1:5). Let others attend to the highly important service of promoting the evangel, while Paul's affairs may still be carried on.\nBeing engaged in Paul's affairs, we are supposed to give heed to Phil. 1:10, 11: \" - for you to be testing what things are final, in order that you many be sincere, and not stumbling for the day of Christ, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which is through Jesus Christ, for the glory and laud of God.\" The word which I have rendered \"final,\" has the elements, through-carry, and evidently refers to things in service which remain in the maturity of the ecclesia, as opposed to those things which belong to minority, and which had passed away before Philippians was written. It means humble, dignified service, instead of outward sings and miracles and tongues.\nNo one can be sincere in holding membership in any religious organization where one is required to subscribe to certain beliefs which one does not hold. Sincerity is found in unity of the spirit, where not all pretend to see everything alike in a man-made creed. While there was evidently some kind of an organization at first, after the fashion of the Jewish ecclesia, such a thing was repudiated when the apostle warned saints to \"come out,\" (II Cor. 6: 14-19). When Philippians was written there was every opportunity for fellowship in sincerity. This sincerity insures that in the day of Christ we will not stumble. We will not have built a great house of inflammable material to be destroyed, (I Cor. 3:10-15.\nBut we do not have to wait the day of Christ, to receive blessings. While we serve in Paul's affairs, testing final things - performing service in accord with the last word in service, namely, the Philippian epistle - we may be filled with the fruit of righteousness. It is like working in an orange grove and eating all we want while we work. There are joys to be had now - delights of spirit. That these come in the midst of suffering, and while rendering humble service, makes them the more delightful. We may not have them while we try to be exalted. They are found only in the most abject humility. This fruit is through Jesus Christ, and is for the glory and laud of God. They are not intended to exalt us. They glorify us not. Seeing that we are not worthy of them, our enjoinment leads us to glorify and laud God.\nHIS GRACIOUS DEALING\nIn his Colossian epistle Paul speaks of God dealing graciously with our offenses. In his Roman epistle he says that, being justified, we shall be saved from indignation through Him. There is no doubt that everyone who is justified shall be saved from indignation. But their safety lies in the fact that they are justified, and not in the supposed fact that they never commit an offense against God. Paul classes many sins together, and the fact that he warns us against them shows that it is possible for us to commit them. We have no warrant for singling out one and saying it is worse than others, just because we don't commit that one. The chances are, one saint is about like another in conduct. We all need God's gracious dealing.\n[Return to main indexpage]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line21575"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6951397657394409,"wiki_prob":0.3048602342605591,"text":"By Dr. Liji Thomas, MDReviewed by Afsaneh Khetrapal, BSc\nNeonatal jaundice is a condition in which there is an abnormal elevation in serum bilirubin levels in a newborn infant.\nBilirubin is a yellow pigment, created during the breakdown of senescent red cells in the blood, which is cycled and eventually eliminated through the feces.\nIn some conditions its production is hiked or its elimination is significantly slowed, leading to its accumulation in the blood. This leads to yellow discoloration of the sclera and the skin, especially prominent in the palms and soles, though it also progresses downwards from the face.\nLethargy and failure to thrive may be prominent manifestations.\n4 days old newborn baby laying on parents hands. Baby has neonatal jaundice. Image Credit: Alina R / Shutterstock\nThe immature liver system in neonates makes a slight degree of jaundice an expected phenomenon at this age.\nThe efficient elimination of this pigment which happened via the placenta no longer occurs following birth, leading to a temporary accumulation while the hepatic cells adjust to completely taking over the job.\nAnother cause is the increased breakdown of red cells for a short time following birth, which is termed physiological jaundice. This peaks between 2-4 days and subsides within a couple of weeks.\nBreastfeeding is associated with jaundice, mostly during the first week while lactation is inadequate or not well established.\nAnother form is called breast milk jaundice and is due to significant interaction between certain substances present in breast milk and the liver metabolism of bilirubin. It appears after a week of life and peaks at around the second or third week. It may last for a month or so but bilirubin levels are rarely very high.\nPathological jaundice in the newborn always sets in within 24 hours. It may be caused by prematurity, conditions which predispose to hemolysis, rhesus incompatibility, cephalohematoma as occurs during ventouse extraction in some cases, or other difficult deliveries, neonatal infections and certain inborn enzyme defects.\nHepatic disease, medication, or hypoxia may also contribute or be responsible for this condition.\nJaundice in a newborn should be given due attention. The bilirubin levels in the blood should be measured. If abnormal, various other tests may be required such as Coomb’s test, reticulocyte count, complete blood count, infection markers, and others suggested by the infant’s symptoms. The trend is assessed to detect a rapidly rising bilirubin level early enough to prevent abnormally high levels from damaging the developing infant brain, a disease termed kernicterus.\nIn most cases the condition resolves itself, but in some cases urgent treatment is warranted:\nRapid rise in bilirubin\nThe baby’s age\nSuch babies require to be fed plenty and often, with plenty of fluids, to lower the blood bilirubin and to ensure regular bowel movements which will help eliminate bilirubin.\nIf needed, the baby is placed under phototherapy lights on a regular basis for a couple of days. The most urgent treatment is an exchange transfusion to replace the baby’s blood. Intravenous immunoglobulin is also useful in severe jaundice. These measures help to prevent kernicterus with its associated complications such as cerebral palsy, deafness, and brain damage.\nFrequent and adequate feeding will help reduce the risk of this condition. Rhesus incompatibility should also be ruled out. A review visit is always necessary to rule out this type of jaundice.\nhttps://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001559.htm\nhttps://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/jaundice/index.html\nhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK65113/\nhttps://www.health.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/423837/g_jaundice5-1.pdf\nhttps://www2.health.vic.gov.au/hospitals-and-health-services/patient-care/perinatal-reproductive/neonatal-ehandbook/conditions/jaundice\nDr. Liji Thomas\nDr. Liji Thomas is an OB-GYN, who graduated from the Government Medical College, University of Calicut, Kerala, in 2001. Liji practiced as a full-time consultant in obstetrics/gynecology in a private hospital for a few years following her graduation. She has counseled hundreds of patients facing issues from pregnancy-related problems and infertility, and has been in charge of over 2,000 deliveries, striving always to achieve a normal delivery rather than operative.\nThomas, Liji. (2019, February 26). Jaundice in Newborns. News-Medical. Retrieved on January 17, 2020 from https://www.news-medical.net/health/Jaundice-in-Newborns.aspx.\nThomas, Liji. \"Jaundice in Newborns\". News-Medical. 17 January 2020. <https://www.news-medical.net/health/Jaundice-in-Newborns.aspx>.\nThomas, Liji. \"Jaundice in Newborns\". News-Medical. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Jaundice-in-Newborns.aspx. (accessed January 17, 2020).\nThomas, Liji. 2019. Jaundice in Newborns. News-Medical, viewed 17 January 2020, https://www.news-medical.net/health/Jaundice-in-Newborns.aspx.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1215751"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5867173075675964,"wiki_prob":0.41328269243240356,"text":"Chapter 6. Merit Personnel System.\nSubchapter XXIV-A. Transition Benefits for Displaced Employees.\n§ 1-624.21. Outplacement services for displaced employees in Fiscal Year 1996.\nThe outplacement services provided by the Mayor to employees displaced during Fiscal Year 1996 shall include provisions for the following:\n(1) Counseling services for stress and finance management;\n(2) Access to automated job information services;\n(3) Job fairs;\n(4) Coordination of training and job banks with the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, Business Coalition, and labor organizations;\n(5) Consulting with regional governments concerning job vacancies and job banks;\n(6) Workshops on writing resumes; and\n(7) Access to facsimile and copying machines, computers, typewriters, and telephones where local calls can be made to prospective employers.\n(Mar. 3, 1979, D.C. Law 2-139, § 2421, as added Mar. 5, 1996, D.C. Law 11-98, § 601, 43 DCR 5.)\n1981 Ed., § 1-625A.1.\nLaw 11-78, the \"Budget Support Temporary Act of 1995,\" was introduced in Council and assigned Bill No. 11-421. The Bill was adopted on first and second readings on July 29, 1995, and October 10, 1995, respectively. Signed by the Mayor on October 31, 1995, it was assigned Act No. 11-150 and transmitted to both Houses of Congress for its review. D.C. Law 11-78 became effective on January 26, 1996.\nLaw 11-98, the \"Budget Support Temporary Act of 1995,\" was introduced in Council and assigned Bill No. 11-440, which was referred to the Committee of the Whole. The Bill was adopted on first and second readings on November 7, 1995, and December 5, 1995, respectively. Signed by the Mayor on December 26, 1995, it was assigned Act No. 11-181 and transmitted to both Houses of Congress for its review. D.C. Law 11-98 became effective on March 5, 1996.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1352565"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5416931509971619,"wiki_prob":0.45830684900283813,"text":"Blog Perth’s Best Live Music Venues\nPerth’s Best Live Music Venues\nPerth’s live music scene is thriving. Some big name acts hail from here, from AC/DC to Tame Impala, John Butler and The Waifs, so that’s not surprising. Perth’s music venues span casual hangouts to nightclubs and dedicated jazz venues. Hear anything from promising local acts to international visitors.\nThe Astor Theatre, Mount Lawley\nIn nearly 100 years since it opened as The Lyceum, The Astor Theatre has seen action as a place to see theatre, dancing, orchestra, karate, silent movies and more. These days it’s one of the best live music venues in Perth. Its vintage red velvet chairs and art deco aesthetic make a great backdrop for local, national and international acts.\nJack Rabbit Slims, Northbridge\nFrom fries to alcoholic milkshakes, Jack Rabbit Slim’s takes its cues from 1950’s pulp fiction. Walk through the refrigerator doors into a night club hosting a variety of local and international acts. It’s an eclectic line-up, from rock to hip hop, indie, electronic, R&B and more, and the crowd is varied.\nThe Ellington, Mount Lawley\nOne of Perth’s favourite jazz music venues, The Ellington Jazz Club is a cabaret style venue with a dedicated jazz bent. Musicians from Australia and the world play on a weekly basis. It keeps jazz hours (open until around 3am) on Friday and Saturdays. The setting is opulent and you can enjoy share plates from the bar.\nThe Bird, Northbridge\nRight in the heart of Northbridge, The Bird is that place you can take a chance on. Walk in off the street, pay a small entry fee, and enjoy the pot luck of local and international acts. You might even get a story telling evening, or some performance art. There’s a courtyard at the rear where you can take a breather and enjoy some conversation.\nThe Rosemount Hotel, North Perth\nHaving won several awards as a live music venue, The Rosemount Hotel is a stalwart of the local music scene. A longstanding pub in the heart of North Perth, it’s the go-to for great international touring acts and homegrown talent. There’s often DJ’s or acoustic acts playing the the beer garden, where you can also get a feed.\nMojos Bar, Fremantle\nStill going strong after 30-plus years, Mojos is Fremantle’s longest standing original music venue. It’s a small room with a lot of vibe. See everything from acoustic, reggae, rock and contemporary, from both local and touring acts. Most nights there’s something on: Mondays sees Open Mic Night, if you’re into the raw talent. A pool table and courtyard offers some reprieve from the main stage.\nThe Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle\nA large heritage building surrounded by old trees and lawns, the Fremantle Arts Centre is a creative hub with galleries, studios, a cafe and gift shop. In summer months, there’s free music in the courtyard on Sunday afternoons. Throughout the year, big name acts perform on the South Lawn, one of Perth’s most agreeable outdoor amphitheatres.\nFreo Social, Fremantle\nFremantle’s newest music venue rose out of the ashes of old favourite, The Fly By Night Club, and never looked back. Everything from international touring acts to original local bands make appearances at Freo Social, along with the odd quiz night. There’s something on most evenings in the mid-sized music hall. Food trucks and a hip bar complete the scene.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1220730"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7269526720046997,"wiki_prob":0.7269526720046997,"text":"LBI Media Announces Successful Completion of Reorganization Plan\n– Financial Restructuring Strengthens Balance Sheet and Positions LBI Media for Growth –\nBURBANK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#HispanicMedia–LBI Media, Inc. (with its affiliates, “LBI” or the “Company”) today announced it has successfully completed its court-approved reorganization plan and emerged from the Chapter 11 process today, positioned for long-term growth and success.\nWith support from its creditors, including HPS Investment Partners, LLC on behalf of the investment funds and accounts it manages or advises, who sponsored the plan of reorganization, the Company has eliminated more than $350 million of debt from its balance sheet and made significant recoveries available to its trade and general unsecured creditors.\n“LBI Media has a terrific group of assets with exceptional potential. Completion of LBI’s financial restructuring provides a strong financial foundation and significant flexibility to grow the business,” said Peter Markham, the Company’s newly-appointed Chief Executive Officer. “The ownership team is committed to the long-term success of LBI Media and the continued expansion of its platform targeted to the growing U.S. Hispanic market.”\n“I would like to thank José and Lenard Liberman, pioneers in Hispanic broadcasting, for their vision and leadership during the past 30 years and our talented and committed employees who ensured our operations continued as usual during the restructuring process. We move forward well positioned for the future and with the resources to pursue new opportunities.”\nWeil, Gotshal & Manges LLP served as legal counsel, Guggenheim Securities served as investment banker, and Alvarez & Marsal served as financial advisor in connection with LBI’s financial restructuring, and Wiley Rein LLP served as regulatory counsel to LBI Media.\nCourt documents and additional information are available on the website administered by the Company’s claims and noticing agent, Epiq Corporate Restructuring, at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/LBM or may be obtained by calling the LBI Media Restructuring Hotline at (818) 729-5300. The e-mail address is LBIMedia@epiqglobal.com.\nAbout LBI Media, Inc.\nLBI Media, Inc., is a leading vertically integrated, multi-platform, Spanish-language media company operating across all of the top U.S. Hispanic markets. Producing over 2,500 hours annually of original TV programming at the Empire Burbank Television Studios, the company is one of the largest U.S. producers of Spanish-language TV content. The company’s Estrella TV Network is distributed through owned and operated TV stations, TV network affiliates and related digital media properties. The Estrella TV programming catalog, consisting of over 7,500 hours of original Spanish-language television programming, is one of the largest libraries of content produced in the U.S. for the U.S. Hispanic marketplace. Additionally, LBI Media is one of the most prolific developers and producers of Spanish-language radio talent and programming. The company’s Don Cheto Radio Network features one of the nation’s most popular radio talents and its highly-rated radio programming formats are distributed through owned and operated radio stations, affiliated stations and related digital media properties. To learn more about LBI Media and see company updates, please visit www.lbimedia.com.\nThis release may contain forward-looking statements relating to future financial results, business expectations and business transactions. Statements that are not historical fact are forward-looking statements. Certain of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as “believes,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “projects,” “estimates,” “assumes,” “may,” “should,” “could,” “shall,” “will,” “seeks,” “targets,” “future,” or other similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors, and our actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from future results, performance or achievements expressed in these forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the potential transactions contemplated by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and the Plan, descriptions of management’s strategy, plans, objectives, expectations, or intentions and descriptions of assumptions underlying any of the above matters and other statements that are not historical fact.\nThese forward-looking statements are based on the Company’s current beliefs, intentions and expectations and are not guarantees or indicative of future performance, nor should any conclusions be drawn or assumptions be made as to any potential outcome of any proposed transactions the Company considers. Risks and uncertainties relating to the proposed restructuring include: the success of the Plan and motions filed by the Company, the ability of the Company to successfully execute the transactions contemplated by the Plan without substantial disruption to its business; and the effects of disruption from the proposed restructuring making it more difficult to maintain business, financing and operational relationships, to retain key executives and to maintain various licenses and approvals necessary for the Company to conduct its business.\nThe above factors, risks and uncertainties are difficult to predict, contain uncertainties that may materially affect actual results and may be beyond the Company’s control. New factors, risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all such factors, risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date such statements were made, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in underlying assumptions or otherwise.\nMarco Gonzalez\nLBI Media, Inc.\nmagonzalez@lbimedia.com\nMike Smargiassi\nThe Plunkett Group\nmike@theplunkettgroup.com\nPrevious Republic Airways Continues Investments in Workforce Development With Junior Achievement Partnership\nNext LBI Media Announces Appointment of Peter Markham to Chief Executive Officer","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1143916"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5271820425987244,"wiki_prob":0.5271820425987244,"text":"Paris Hilton Men Men Fragrance\nParis Hilton men; a Paris Hilton cologne for men launched in 2005 promotes power, strength and passion with beautiful fragrance notes of; fig leaf, cucumber, green mango, amber, white sage, cedar-wood, and juniper.\nA fig leaf is a leaf of the fig tree. The term is widely used figuratively associated with the covering up of an act or an object that is embarrassing or distasteful with something of innocuous appearance. The term is a metaphorical reference to the Biblical Book of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover their nudity after eating the fruit from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes paintings and statues had the genitals of their subjects covered by a representation of an actual fig leaf or similar object, either as part of the work or added afterwards for perceived modesty.\nIn Ancient Greek art, male nakedness, including the genitals, was common, although the female vulval area was generally covered in art for public display. This tradition continued in Ancient Roman art until the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, when heroic nudity vanished. During the Middle Ages, only the unfortunate (most often the damned) were usually shown naked, although the depictions were then often rather explicit. Adam and Eve were often shown wearing fig or other leaves, following the Biblical description. This was especially a feature of Northern Renaissance art.\nFrom about 1530, the developing reaction to Renaissance freedoms and excesses that led to the Council of Trent also led to a number of artworks, especially in churches or public places, being altered to reduce the amount of nudity on display. Often, as in the famous case of Michelangelo's The Last Judgement, drapery or extra branches from any nearby bush was used. For free-standing statues this did not work well, and carved or cast fig leaves were sometimes added, such as with the plaster copy of Michelangelo's David displayed in Victorian era London. The Adam and Eve panels on the Ghent Altarpiece, already equipped with fig leaves by Jan van Eyck, were simply replaced with 19th-century panels copying the figures but clothed.\nMany of these alterations have since been reversed, damaging some of the statues.\nParis Hilton Men\nCucumber is a widely cultivated plant in the gourd family Cucurbitaceae. It is a creeping vine that bears cylindrical fruits that are used as culinary vegetables. There are three main varieties of cucumber: slicing, pickling, and burpless. Within these varieties, several different cultivars have emerged. The cucumber is originally from Southern Asia, but now grows on most continents.\nMany different varieties are traded on the global market. The cucumber is a creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils. The plant has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruit. The fruit of the cucumber is roughly cylindrical, elongated with tapered ends, and may be as large as 60 centimeters (24 in) long and 10 centimeters (3.9 in) in diameter.\nHaving an enclosed seed and developing from a flower, botanically speaking, cucumbers are classified as accessory fruits. Much like tomatoes and squash they are often also perceived, prepared and eaten as vegetables. Cucumbers are usually more than 90% water.\nGreen Mango Tree\nMangifera odorata also called Kuwini Mango, Saipan Mango, or Fragrant Mango. It is found in Guam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Kuini or Mangifera odorata is a mango variety that is native to tropical Asia, specifically to West Malaysia. The fruit is light orange in color and juicy sweet when ripe.\nThe tree has a distinct feature, i.e. emits a fragrant resinous smell. The tree flowers throughout the year and the flowers too are strongly scented with its fragrance. The sap on unripe kuini fruits is poisonous Kuini commonly found in East Malaysia's Jungle (Borneo) has spherical, almost round shape, dark green and green when ripe. It has strong odor which can be detected from afar. Ethyl butyrate, also known as ethyl butanoate, or butyric ether, is an ester used in perfumery.\nIt is soluble in propylene glycol, paraffin oil, and kerosene. It has a fruity odor, similar to pineapple. It is commonly used as artificial flavoring resembling orange juice or pineapple in alcoholic beverages, as a solvent in Paris Hilton men cologne/perfumery products, and as a plasticizer for cellulose. Ethyl butyrate is one of the most common chemicals used in fragrances.\nIt can be used in a variety of fragrances: orange (most common), cherry, pineapple, mango, guava, bubblegum, peach, apricot, fig, and plum. In industrial use, it is also one of the cheapest chemicals.\nMan Fragrance\nAmber Stones\nAmber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used as an ingredient in Paris Hilton men perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. \"Amber\" perfumes may be created using combinations of labdanum, benzoin resin, copal (itself a type of tree resin used in incense manufacture), vanilla, Dammara resin and/or synthetic materials.\nLabdanum is produced today mainly for the men's perfume industry. The raw resin is usually extracted by boiling the leaves and twigs. An absolute is also obtained by solvent extraction. An essential oil is produced by steam distillation. The raw gum is a black (sometimes dark brown), fragrant mass containing up to 20% or more of water.\nIt is plastic but not pourable, and becomes brittle with age. The absolute is dark amber-green and very thick at room temperature. The fragrance is more refined than the raw resin. The odor is very rich, complex and tenacious.\nLabdanum is much valued in Paris Hilton men cologne/perfumery because of its resemblance to ambergris, which has been banned from use in many countries because its precursor originates from the sperm whale, which is an endangered species: although the best-quality ambergris is found free-floating or washed up onshore (long exposure to sunlight, air and water removes offensive-smelling components of the fresh substance), and thus raises no ethical objections, a lower-quality version can also be recovered from some fraction of freshly slaughtered whales, and so may encourage poaching of sperm whales. Labdanum is the main ingredient used when making the scent of amber in perfumery. Labdanum's odor is variously described as amber, animalic, sweet, woody, ambergris, dry musk, or leathery.\nWhite Sage Plant\nWhite sage, is an evergreen shrub that is native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, found mainly in the coastal sage scrub habitat of Southern California and Baja California, on the western edges of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. Several tribes used the seed for removing foreign objects from the eye, similar to the way that clary sage seeds were used in Europe. A tea from the roots was used by the Cahuilla women for healing and strength after childbirth. The leaves are also burnt by many native American tribes, with the smoke used in different purification rituals.\nClary sage, is a biennial or short-lived herbaceous perennial. It is native to the northern Mediterranean, along with some areas in north Africa and Central Asia. The plant has a lengthy history as a medicinal herb, and is grown for its essential oil. Clary seeds have a mucilaginous coat, which is why some old herbals recommended placing a seed into the eye of someone with a foreign object in it so that it could adhere to the object and make it easy to remove.\nThis practice is noted by Nicholas Culpeper in his Complete Herbal (1653), who referred to the plant as \"clear-eye\". The distilled essential oil is used in Paris Hilton men perfumes and as a muscatel flavoring for vermouths, wines, and liqueurs. It is also used in aromatherapy for relieving anxiety and fear, menstrual-related problems such as PMS and cramping, and helping with insomnia.\nCedar Wood Tree\nCedar-wood oil, is an essential oil derived from the foliage, and sometimes the wood and roots. It has many uses in medicine, art, industry and Paris Hilton men cologne/ perfumery and while the characteristics of oils derived from various species may themselves vary, all have some degree of bactericidal and pesticidal effects. Cedar-wood oils each have characteristic woody odors which may change somewhat in the course of drying out. The crude oils are often yellowish or even darker in color and some, such as Texas cedar-wood oil are quite viscous and deposit crystals on standing.\nThey find use (sometimes after rectification) in a range of fragrance applications such as soap, cologne for men, household sprays, floor polishes and insecticides.\nJuniper Berries And Paris Hilton Men\nJuniper, is a species in the genus Juniperus, in the family Cupressaceae. It has the largest range of any woody plant, throughout the cool temperate Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic south in mountains to around 30°N latitude in North America, Europe and Asia. A juniper berry is the female seed cone produced by the various species of junipers. It is not a true berry but a cone with unusually fleshy and merged scales, which give it a berry-like appearance.\nThe cones from a handful of species, especially Juniperus communis, are used as a spice, particularly in European cuisine, and also give gin its distinctive flavor. According to one FAO document, juniper berries are the only spice derived from conifers, although tar and inner bark (used as a sweetener in Apache cuisines) from pine trees is sometimes considered a spice as well. An essential oil extracted from juniper berries is used in aromatherapy and Paris Hilton men cologne/perfumery. Juniper berries have long been used as medicine by many cultures. Juniper berries act as a strong urinary tract disinfectant if consumed, and were used by Navajo Indians as an herbal remedy for diabetes.\nWestern American tribes combined the berries of Juniperus communis with Berberis root bark in a herbal tea. Native Americans also used juniper berries as a female contraceptive.\nClick here for perfume news\nParis Hilton Men > Back To The Biography\nCologne Reality > Back to Home Page\nFrederic Boucheron\nLouis Cartier\nTakada Kenzo\nURL Submission\n2012-2014 CologneReality.com © all rights reserved\nResearch Institute For Fragrance Materials\nInternational Fragrance Association\nWEBSITE POWERED BY Solo Build It","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1444292"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6274831295013428,"wiki_prob":0.3725168704986572,"text":"Lafayette to host international gathering of songwriters capped by festival\nHeather Salsman Leisure & Events, Localism\nLafayette to host international gathering of songwriters for week-long creative session capped by festival featuring local, national and international talent\n(LAFAYETTE, LA, March 13, 2018) Get ready to get the inside scoop on the stories behind the stories at the first annual South Louisiana Songwriters Festival and Workshop (SOLO) happening May 22nd to 27th, 2018 in Lafayette, LA. The new event combines a workshop portion that will bring together established and aspiring songwriters in a retreat-style atmosphere for four days of mentoring, creating and collaborating as well as a performance portion in the form of a weekend festival.\nThe new event stems from a collaboration between Lafayette’s CREATE initiative and the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation. The Foundation presents similar annual workshops in the UK but this is the first one to be held in the US. Lafayette was chosen for its rich culture, relaxed nature and abundance of musical talent. This combination produces an atmosphere that inspires creativity.\nAcclaimed songwriter Mary Gauthier (photo) will co-curate the workshop. Her most recent and tenth album entitled Rifles & Rosary Beads features eleven of the songs co-written with and for wounded veterans. Eleven of the nearly four hundred songs that highly accomplished songwriters have co-written as part of the five-year-old SongwritingWith:Soldiers program. A project that has proven to be a calling. “My job as a songwriter is to find that thing a soul needs to say,” Gauthier says. She along with Beth Nielsen Chapman, writer of seven #1 hits including Faith Hill’s mega-hit This Kiss, will guide a group of songwriters through four days of the intimate, intense and immersive creative process that is songwriting. The results of these collaborations will subsequently be presented for audiences during the week in unique shows that will blend interesting artists, new songs and the stories of how they came to be. Aspiring local writers will soon be asked to submit applications for one of two scholarships to the workshop. “We’re thrilled that some of our local young talent will benefit from the wealth of knowledge this collaborative workshop offers.” says Mayor-President Joel Robideaux. A call for applications from aspiring Lafayette songwriters will be announced soon through the festival’s website (solosongwriters.com) and Facebook page.\nThe educational workshop component will be followed by a two-day, 6 stage festival focused on great music and featuring workshop attendees such as honorary ambassador for The Buddy Holly Educational Foundation Kimmie Rhodes, local and visiting songwriters including Jim Lauderdale, Mark Broussard, Dylan LeBlanc, Zachary Richard, Mark Meaux and many more. SOLO will be an event unlike any other in Lafayette. Its Festival-goers will undoubtedly be the first to hear new and unedited material, to witness the dawn of transformative collaborations between creators, be the first audience in the world to give feedback on the songs born from this creative journey happening right here in South Louisiana. Interested songwriters and song-lovers are encouraged to check the website (solosongwriters.com) often to get the latest information on SOLO performers, ticketing information for exclusive workshop shows and the two-day SOLO Festival hosted by the Blue Moon Saloon and Warehouse 535 on Saturday, May 26th and Sunday, May 27th.\nSOLO’s goal is to bring writers together to find inspiration not only from each other, but also from the rich, soulful, and authentic vibe that is South Louisiana. Its purpose is to bring artists, music lovers, and industry professionals together to ignite Lafayette’s creative scene – to make Lafayette known not only for its heritage, but also for its deep pool of musical talent, engineers and studios, all capable of inspiring and creating music that is relevant now and into the future. The event is presented in part by the generous support of the CREATE initiative, the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission, BMG and many public and private sponsors.\nAbout The Buddy Holly Educational Foundation\nThe Buddy Holly Educational Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable corporation founded by Peter Bradley, Senior and Maria Elena Holly to honor the music, life, legacy and dreams of Maria Elena’s late husband Buddy Holly. The mission of the Foundation is to honor Buddy Holly’s tremendous legacy and to fulfill Buddy’s and Maria Elena’s dream of extending musical education, including songwriting, production, arranging, orchestration, and performance education to new generations regardless of creed, ethnicity or income level. In this way, the Foundation wants to empower a new generation to follow in Buddy’s footsteps and remind them of his heritage. For further detailed information on the Foundation please visit: www.tbhef.org.\nCREATE is an initiative of the Mayor-President’s office to build and support our local and authentic culture to further diversify and strengthen the economy in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. Representing Culture, Recreation, Entertainment, Arts, Tourism, Economy, CREATE is a parish-wide, multi-year effort that reinvests in the residents of Lafayette recognizing that a place that people love to live in, is a place tourists love to visit and businesses love to do business in. A partial rededication of the Public Health millage was passed by Lafayette Parish voters to provide $500,000 annually to support the cultural economy through the CREATE initiative. More information is available at www.createlafayette.la.\nSOLO Contact: Mark Falgout\nFor more information, visit: http://www.tbhef.org/\nBHEF Contact: Stephen Easley\nNext article LOOK. SEE. DO.\nPrevious article Cajun Navy Relief Set to Hold First Search and Rescue Games\nJul 2, 2019Localism\nDay in Downtown – Washington","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line517510"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5743779540061951,"wiki_prob":0.42562204599380493,"text":"THE UPSTAGE PODCAST\nAnn Marley\nParliament is split into two different houses- The House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is publically elected and is made up of 650 constituencies from the United Kingdom. Each area has one representative and the citizens of that area choose their representative. Elections take place every five years.\nThe members of Commons (MPs) are split into the “government” and the “opposition.” The government is made up of the majority party and the opposition is made up of those who are not in the majority party.\nThe House of Lords is made of appointed people based on their knowledge and experience. The Lords are referred to for their knowledge. Though they vote, they cannot block financial bills created by the Commons and once a bill has been passed two years in a row in Commons, the Lords cannot stop it from becoming law.\nThe aims of Parliament are to scrutinize and challenge laws, debate legislature, and enable the increase or decrease of tax.\nThe Queen chooses the Prime Minister. He oversees the operation of Civil Service and government agencies, appoints members of the government, and is the principal government figure in the House of Commons.\nOne day each week is for general debate. The Lords do not vote on debate topics. An MP, Lord, or a member of the public can introduce new legislature. This legislature must be passed in both Houses. Controversial bills generally begin in the Commons. The Prime Minister is questioned every Wednesday. The MPs may question the Lords at the beginning of each day.\nCommittees are groups of MPs and Lords that look at a specific policy or legislature.\nBy-elections follow a vacancy in the House of Commons after the death, resignation, bankruptcy, mental illness or criminal offense of a member of parliament\nPrivate Member’s Bills are a public bills introduced by MP or Lord. A minister cannot introduce it and typically little time is spent on these bills and they are rarely passed.\nHome Secretary- responsible for internal affairs of England and Wales and immigration and citizenship for the whole of the United Kingdom.\nVoting Regulations\nAs of 1900, 21 year-old males only:\nOccupiers- Householders or occupants of shops, offices, land, farms, etc. so long as it is valued at £10 a year.\nOwners of freehold estate that is valued at £5 a year.\nLodgers of apartments no less than 3 shillings and 10 pennies per week (roughly 1/5 of a pound.)\nUniversity graduates of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, St, Andrew’s, Glasgow, or Aberdeen.\nAlong with women’s suffrage, they were fighting for adult suffrage, meaning that anyone over a certain age would be able to vote. Some were only advocates for adult male suffrage.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line950182"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6346865296363831,"wiki_prob":0.6346865296363831,"text":"Home » Arts » This Article\nTake an Interactive, Immersive Trip to a Familiar ‘Beachtown’ at San Diego Rep\nPosted by Editor on March 30, 2018 in Arts | 213 Views\nBy Pat Launer\nFact: Some people just do not like interactive theater\nFact: Whether you do or not, you aren’t obligated (or called upon) to participate\nFact: There is no such place as Beachtown, though it’s loosely based on Imperial Beach, a highly diverse waterfront community\nThe world premiere interactive, immersive play, “Beachtown” is based on the play “Beertown,” a prototype created by dog + pony dc, a theater company that specializes in this sort of theatrical immersion. Dog + pony artistic director, Rachel Grossman, made her piece generic, a kind of Anytown, USA, which has facilitated its use around the country. This is the tenth incarnation of the concept; ours is a good deal more tailored and specifically personalized to represent San Diego.\n“Beachtown” is the baby of writer/actor/director Herbert Siguenza, a co-founder of the 30-year-old Chicano comedy trio, Culture Clash. On opening night, he had just been notified that his Andrew W. Mellon Foundation‘s National Playwright Residency, which allows him to be playwright-in-residence at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, will be renewed for another three years — which gives us four more years of his prolific talent and creativity.\nThe setup for his current enterprise, created with Rachel Grossman, is the 100th anniversary of the Beachtown Time Capsule. In the lobby, before the play begins, we read about the history of the town (with some wonderful details, many of them factually representing San Diego), partake of some excellent desserts, and meet the townsfolk (AKA Beachtonians), played by a talented group of local actors, under the direction of Sam Woodhouse.\nThere’s Steve Novak, the surfer-dude mayor (hang-ten, puppyish Jason Heil); Benny Ramos-Leibowitz, the Mexican-Jewish councilperson, a moderate conservative politically (serious and funny Salomon Maya, unequivocally in his character and his element); Susan Suhiro, the intense, no-nonsense, newly single (though that’s really irrelevant to the storyline), bespectacled town archivist (wonderfully inhabited by the beautiful Lee Ann Kim, whom it must’ve taken a lot to look mousey); right-wing reporter Damon Haynes (aggressively amusing Antonio T.J. Johnson, who also gets to do an impressive little Shakespearean turn); the hippieish Donna French (a riff on former local liberal politician Donna Fry, former member of the San Diego City Council), played with apt flower-power finesse by Marci Wuebben; and Rob Ruby, the town musician (William BJ Robinson, effective with his keyboard and vocals).\nEvery ten years, there’s a Beachtonian town council meeting, to open up the time capsule and remove one artifact, replacing it with something that better represents the present moment; or, as the mayor likes to say, “who we are today.”\nThere are seven ephemeral (changeable) artifacts in the wooden chest (functional, though it doesn’t look like a capsule of any kind); the group decides which one will be replaced this year. The audience has to weigh in on that decision, and then, weigh in again to determine — and justify — which of three proffered items should go in instead, and why.\nFor each performance, the three items and their attendant issues will vary, though what this adds to any given performance is unclear. Every performance will be different by definition, because every audience is different.\nAll this discussion engenders some very interesting interaction. The audience on opening night was more than willing to participate — actively, passionately and sometimes humorously.\nBut there are just too many items to discuss and it all takes too long. The town hymn and singalongs (re-worked, with rather lame lyrics, to familiar melodies) should be the first to go, along with the Guest Community Artist. Although it’s a noble idea to add entertainment to the proceedings, it’s unnecessary and unrealistic, and it increases the already-long running time. The night I was there, the performance was by PGK Dance. Attractive and appealing, but not related to the task at hand.\nIn aiming for verisimilitude, Siguenza has overloaded the basic script, which is augmented with a good deal of improvisatory dialogue. It’s also stuffed with all manner of superfluous activities, including the Invocation, Pledge of Allegiance, Oath of Civic Responsibility and Ephemeral Artifact Farewell, none of which adds much to the main objective.\nNow that the piece is on its feet, it’s time to trim the fat. The intent should be to get it down to a fleet, 90-minute one-act. Nearly 2 1/2 hours is just too long to sustain the conceit.\nThat said, despite some silliness in the script, the interactions were lively and inventive. Some participants played along with the history, claiming to have been at the last meeting 10 years ago, or having visited some of the fictitious places named.\nThere has to be a better way to count the votes (hand-raising and one-by-one counts took a really long time). It’s fun to elect an Ombudsperson from the audience, to verify the counts and selections.\nMost important, though, the artifacts represented many real issues of deep concern to San Diegans: immigration, gender equality, gay rights, treatment of veterans and the homeless crisis. This format truly gave people a platform to express their opinions, and to challenge the intentionally partisan viewpoints of the townspeople.\nThe actors were delightful, quick on their feet, and able to provide historical information and supportive evidence for their artifact selection or personal perspective. (By report, they were each given 85 pages of preparatory dramaturgical notes). A lot of the item and issue selection was based on Siguenza’s many interviews with San Diegans, and the historical realities of the region.\nDoes it all work? Yes and no. The simulation of the democratic process is highly effective, and elicited some interesting discussion. As a city, a county and a country, we need civil discourse now more than ever.\nWe all know that real town council meetings can go on for hours, but accuracy and veracity should only go so far. The objective here is certainly commendable. The community is anxious to play their part. But to make the effort really work, brevity should be respected as much as authenticity.\n“Beachtown,” runs through April 15 in the Lyceum Space at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza downtown\nPerformances are Wednesday and Sunday at 7 p.m., Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; matinees are on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. There will be a Tuesday performance on April 10 at 7 p.m.\nNote: There is no Sunday evening performance on the closing day\nTickets ($20-$65) are available at 619-544-1000 or sdrep.org\nRunning time: 2 hrs. 20 min.\nPat Launer is a long-time San Diego arts writer and an Emmy Award-winning theater critic. An archive of her previews and reviews can be found at patlauner.com.\nTake an Interactive, Immersive Trip to a Familiar ‘Beachtown’ at San Diego Rep was last modified: March 31st, 2018 by Editor\nPosted in Arts | Tagged Beachtown, Herbert Siguenza, Imperial Beach, interactive, Pat Launer, play, Rachel Grossman, review, San Diego Rep","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line283527"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5445183515548706,"wiki_prob":0.5445183515548706,"text":"Nettle Press 2007, £3.00\nI’ll come clean straight away—I was a little perturbed by the plethora of capital letters in the first half of this collection. OK, I know it worked for Emily Dickinson, but I tend to think of her as the exception that proves the rule. As it is, all those appearances of Light, Life, Death, suggest that the poet doesn’t entirely trust the reader to cotton on to exactly what’s going on here.\nAnd that’s a shame, because Snelling shows that he’s well capable of building an atmosphere of foreboding and fear without flagging things up so obviously.\n‘Judgement’, for example, uses simple but effective rhymes to sound like the sort of cautionary verse that’s found in the endpapers of some ancient tome, or carved into the stone of a ruin. ‘A Conspiracy Of Silence’, too, works well for the most part, using one or two telling details early on (“The beautifully pressed uniforms/ The manner, so restrained and polite”) to create a tense picture of political repression and the complicit silences that go with it.\nYou’re left wondering why Snelling opts to use strangely inverted word order in some of these pieces (“I who uttermostly sad am/ Last line of far descended Adam”—‘Time Of Ending’), just when he’s got you hooked—I much prefer his tauter, more stripped-down, natural approach.\nThe second half of the booklet consists mainly of humorous verses, and again, Snelling’s at his best when he doesn’t strain for effect. The four laconic lines of ‘The Paranoid’ work well enough, for example, but some of the longer pieces are just a bit too self-consciously wacky, although to be fair, many would also benefit from being heard aloud.\nSnelling’s at his best when he forgets about telling the reader what to think, and lets his humanity and humour do the work instead.\nMatt Merritt\nNote: Nettle Press is a small poetry press set up in 1998. It has published 9 pamphlets including John Snelling, Siren Songs and one book Richard Leigh, Accidents of Birth (and is the distributor for another book). Details of Nettle Press titles can be found on the Amazon website by typing in Nettle Press into the publisher box using the 'Advance Search'.\nOrders can be made by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1510340"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9595217108726501,"wiki_prob":0.9595217108726501,"text":"Boards & Commissions,\nInslee appoints Toshiko Grace Hasegawa executive director of Washington State Commission on Asian and Pacific American Affairs\nGov. Jay Inslee today appointed Toshiko Grace Hasegawa as executive director of the Washington State Commission on Asian and Pacific American Affairs (CAPAA). She replaces Michael Itti, who departed the position earlier this year.\nCAPAA is a state agency with an advisory board of 12 commissioners appointed by the governor. It works in partnership with communities and state leaders to respond to public concerns and bring about positive, long-term solutions to issues that impact Asian Pacific Americans. The Commission focuses on safeguarding civil rights, achieving equity in public education, promoting economic development, and improving health and human services.\nHasegawa currently serves as communications manager for King County’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO), where she manages community engagement and serves as the staff liaison to its community advisory committee. In that role, she engages diverse stakeholders in conversation around social justice issues related to policing. In 2016, she was appointed by Inslee to represent CAPAA upon the Statewide Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing.\n“Toshiko’s work in community and stakeholder engagement, as well as her commitment to immigration and refugee communities, make her a great fit to lead the work of the Commission,” Inslee said. “She has demonstrated her commitment to bringing diverse voices forward and has centered her efforts on equity and social justice.”\nPrior to joining OLEO, Hasegawa worked as legislative aide to King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, where she worked in constituent services and on policy issues relating to immigration, human trafficking and the justice system. She also served as fund development manager for the Japanese American Citizens League, where she was responsible for the financial sustainability of 19 nationally-run programs.\n“Toshiko has the passion and motivation to help lead CAPAA into its next successful phase,” Ty Tufono-Chaussee, commission chair said. “Her deeply rooted community connections will enable CAPAA to grow stronger and remain an important resource to the API community in Washington state.”\nHasegawa holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from Seattle University, where she is currently pursuing her master’s degree.\nHer appointment is effective later this month.\nPhoto of Toshiko Grace Hasegawa.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1108844"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7762764096260071,"wiki_prob":0.7762764096260071,"text":"Home / Explore / Politics & Law\nGentlemen Spies\nThe two young British dandies seemed wildly out of place in the Columbia District of 1845. Seemingly on holiday, they were in fact preparing for war.\nWritten by Stephen R. Bown\n— Posted March 14, 2017\nDr. John McLoughlin, chief factor of Fort Vancouver from 1824 to 1846.\nOregon Historical Society BB004249\nU.S. President James Knox Polk was elected on a campaign to claim all the territory on the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico.\nFort Vancouver, 1845, lithograph by H.J. Warre, from Sketches in North America and the Oregon Territory (1848).\nLibrary and Archives Canada / C-040845\nA large area of the Pacific Northwest was jointly held by Britain and the United States from 1818 to 1846. The Americans called the region Old Oregon, while the British referred to it as the Columbia District. The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 fixed the international boundary at the forty-ninth parallel.\nMichel Rouleau\nChief factor Dr. John McLoughlin looked on in astonishment as two travelling gentlemen from England and their accompanying host of voyageurs arrived in Fort Vancouver on the morning of August 26, 1845. Even in their dusty and worn travelling clothes, it was clear they were men of standing, a cut above the usual desperate settler who came to this far-flung Hudson’s Bay Company outpost. Certainly their arrival was unexpected. Sportsmen of leisure landing at the fort from east of the Continental Divide were highly unusual, given that there was no road and little incentive to make such an arduous overland trek.\nThe two young travellers introduced themselves as Henry James Warre and Mervin Vavasour, British gentleman out from Montreal to enjoy the scenery and customs of the Columbia District—HBC fur-trading territory jointly controlled by the United States and Britain that included much of present-day British Columbia, as well today’s American states of Washington, Oregon, and part of Idaho.\nAfter replacing their tattered clothing with new and expensive tweeds and beaver hats, the pair settled down for nearly a year of touring the region. An astute observer might have found their interests and choice of activities a trifle unusual.\nWarre was frequently in front of his easel painting, while Vavasour had a peculiar fascination with the view from commanding hills, the location and dimensions of structures and buildings, the exact elevation of promontories, and the location of freshwater sources. Fort Vancouver, the largest settlement and the nucleus of British presence for the entire region, was of particular interest to the amiable yet eccentric pair.\n“The Fort,” wrote Warre in his journal, “is badly situated as regards defence—being commanded by a ridge of Ground running the whole length of the Plain & extending along the bank of the River.… It is surrounded by strong pickets 15ft in height 220 yds long by 100 deep at the N. West Angle is a square block house, supporting an octagonal upper story containing several small Guns.” Odd commentary for an aimless civilian pleasure seeker.\nAnyone who troubled to inspect Warre’s full repertoire of sketches and paintings would have observed a pattern of peculiar themes and content. There were no portraits, few scenes of the colourful voyageurs or native peoples, no drawings of strange and exotic plants. But there was an abundance of scenery of a specific sort—outcroppings, river junctions, forts, with elevation plans and assessments of their defensibility in case of conflict—but what conflict?\nBack in 1818, Britain and the United States had agreed to jointly occupy what became known as Old Oregon—all territory north of Spanish California, south of Russian Alaska, and west of the Rocky Mountains. But in reality, Old Oregon, which the British referred to as the Columbia District, remained the sole preserve of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The vast territory, populated mainly by about 80,000 native peoples from various nations, was managed by a series of rude palisade forts loosely strung together along established canoe routes and seasonal mule paths.\nFor the next twenty years or so, little happened to disturb the HBC’s authority in the region. It was in effect ruled by McLoughlin, the HBC’s chief factor at Fort Vancouver, who ran the Columbia District like an old-time robber baron. He was shrewd, cunning, paternalistic, and sometimes ruthless. He held court in the shadowy depths of a great timber hall behind a primitive palisade, and dispensed justice according to the dictates of his own conscience—alternately with vengeful wrath or surprising leniency as the mood was upon him.\nMcLoughlin opened the gates of his fort to all manner of travellers and wanderers—both aboriginal and white, British or American—so long as they didn’t undermine his authority or overtly threaten the fur trade.\nThe character of the region began to change in the 1840s, when an endless stream of baggy, cloth-covered wagons slowly plodded their difficult way west. The people in these wagon trains were American colonists; they were coming to settle on land that until then had been primarily hunting and trapping territory. They travelled along 6,400 kilometres of rutted tracks, trekking across barren, windblown plains, ascending alpine passes, following the shores of raging rivers through red-rock canyons, and bypassing foaming cataracts, before ending, more or less, at Fort Vancouver.\nMcLoughlin had a soft heart when it came to these American colonists, who were arriving at a rate of more than a thousand a year. Destitute, on the verge of starvation, and ill-prepared for the coming winter, the settlers were given credit at the company store. McLoughlin politely directed them south of the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley.\nWhile transforming the wilderness into ranch land was not in the best interests of the fur trade, McLoughlin was not about to drive the Americans off the land or watch them starve. He also realized that a private company could not long remain the only official authority in the region; without help from the British government, holding Old Oregon would be impossible.\nAs settlers continued pouring in, American political interest in the region grew. In 1844, the ardently expansionist President James Knox Polk was elected on the Democratic campaign slogans “Fifty-Forty or Fight”—referring to the latitude of the northern boundary with Alaska, then held by Russia—and the “re-annexation of Texas and reoccupation of Oregon.” These threatening slogans did not bode well for British sovereignty in the territory.\nEnter Warre and Vavasour.\nIn early 1845, General Sir Richard Downes Jackson, commander of all the British forces in North America, selected two young lieutenants for a clandestine military reconnaissance in the Oregon Territory. The first was twenty-six-year-old Warre. A well-travelled officer marked for distinction, Warre was a graduate of the prestigious Sandhurst military academy and aide-de-camp to Jackson, as well as being a talented artist. Warre’s companion, twenty-four-year-old Mervin Vavasour, was a new lieutenant with the Royal Engineers. Their orders called on them to “obtain as accurate a knowledge of (the Oregon Territory) as may be requisite for the future and efficient prosecution of Military operations in it, should such operations become necessary.”\nTheir mission was to scout the region, then take possession of Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River (in present-day Washington State) and any other sites deemed useful in the event of a war. War seemed more possible as the months passed.\nOn May 5, 1845, the two undercover gentlemen joined a Hudson’s Bay Company fur brigade led by veteran trader Peter Skene Ogden as it forged west from Montreal. In early June they reached Fort Garry (in present-day Winnipeg) after a Herculean trek. After a short rest, they acquired horses and set off across the trackless domain of the prairies.\nIn their journals, the two grumbled about the quality of the food, the difficulty of the travel, the unruly behaviour of the voyageurs, and the “savage and dirty Indians.”\nOf their guide Ogden, Warre wrote that he was “a fat jolly good fellow, reminding me of Falstaff, both in appearance and wit.… strongly in favour of all the Indian Customs.” Although he described him as an amusing and entertaining travelling companion, Warre also declared with distate that Ogden had “a very Republican Spirit.”\nThe discriminating gentlemen trotted west, arriving at the snowcapped ridge of the Rocky Mountains. What most would consider awe-inspiring failed, at first, to move Warre, the condescending world traveller: “Had I not seen Switzerland, I should have been much more struck, but I had allowed my imagination too much scope [and] I was on the whole disappointed.”\nOgden led the pair through the mountains and over the Continental Divide through what Warre called “really beautiful” scenery as they occasionally hunted and fished. Eventually they reached the Columbia River near Revelstoke and floated in boats downriver to Fort Vancouver, where they were welcomed by McLoughlin, who, with his stern countenance, shock of long white hair, and six-foot-four height, presented an imposing figure.\nRelieved to be in a spot of modest civilization, Warre and Vavasour bolstered their cover by making extravagant purchases at the company store, including fine beaver hats, tweed pants and coats, hairbrushes, and rose-water perfume. Now looking more like the dandies they were supposed to be, they got to work.\nDuring the next year they huddled around smouldering fires, took shelter inside leaky log huts at HBC forts, stalked along muddy roads in the dreary mist and rain, and sweltered over mountain passes in the dust and heat of high summer.\nEvery place they visited they described as incapable of defence, poorly situated, or with inadequate water supplies. At Cowlitz Farms, a small settlement near Fort Nisqually (on Puget Sound in present-day Washington State), even the Catholic Church, the only defensible structure in the region, “was in want of loopholes” for guns. Warre described Oregon City as tainted by the lawlessness of the citizens, but he noted in his journal that “a small force could overawe the present American population and obtain any quality of cattle to supply the troops in other parts of the country.”\nWarre and Vavasour eventually purchased land surrounding Cape Disappointment from an American settler and drew up detailed plans for its defence.\nThroughout it all, the two lieutenants were impressed with the exotic world around them. They observed Mount Hood “in all its majesty & snowy Grandeur.” Warre was amazed when, from the conical top of Mount St. Helens, “suddenly a long black Column of Smoke & Ashes shot up into the Air, and hung as a Canopy over the dazzling Sky behind it… the first Volcano I have ever seen in action.”\nTheir reports, sent to London via Montreal, were not encouraging.\nThey noted that American citizens were the primary inhabitants of the region (other than the tens of thousands of First Nations peoples who were conveniently overlooked by the eastern imperial powers). The number of Canadian settlers in the territory never amounted to more than a few hundred, mostly employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Warre recognized the future in these demographics and blamed the situation on chief factor McLoughlin, saying he gave too much help to American newcomers.\n“We are convinced,” Warre wrote in his report, “that without their assistance not 30 American families would now have been in the settlement.”\nAngered by the report, McLoughlin wrote a lengthy reply to his superiors, stating that he had no choice but to help the desperate settlers. Otherwise they would have attacked the fort to get what they needed, which would have ruined the company’s interests in the region and possibly precipitated a war.\n“As a Good and faithful Subject it was my Duty to do my Utmost to maintain peace and order Between the British Subjects and American Citizens,” McLoughlin wrote. The company did not buy his arguments and planned to transfer him to another post and cut his salary. McLoughlin resigned in disgust in 1846. He lived out his days in Oregon, where he is known to this day as the “Father of Oregon.”\nWarre’s report was also critical of Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who believed that regular British army troops could be brought to defend the territory via the tortuous fur trade route through the mountains.\nWith their work done in the spring of 1846, Warre and Vavasour departed Fort Vancouver with the eastbound fur brigade. Meanwhile, the political situation in Old Oregon, unbeknownst to the inhabitants, was gathering tension. President Polk had persuaded the U.S. Congress to end the joint-occupancy accord in December of 1845. Declaring the entire region America’s, he made rumblings of war. Meanwhile, Britain sent a warship, HMS America to patrol the Strait of Juan de Fuca.\nWar seemed imminent. But in the end, cooler heads prevailed.\nBritish officials knew that a war over Oregon would not be limited to the distant Pacific, but would likely be fought as an invasion of Canada. They figured it was not worth fighting for a depleted fur preserve that was already occupied by unruly American citizens.\nPolk was not especially eager to antagonize Britain, either. He was already faced with an impending war with Mexico over Texas. The two sides eventually agreed that all of Vancouver Island would remain British and that everywhere else, the forty-ninth parallel would serve as the boundary. The agreement was formalized under the Oregon Boundary Treaty of June 1846.\nHistorians are unsure of the exact influence Warre and Vavasour’s reports and dispatches had on the border settlement—their final report was received in London too late to directly influence the border negotiations. But undoubtedly they contributed to the growing body of information that led negotiators to settle on the border as we now know it.\nWhat their reports did was provide a graphic window, however brief and selective, into a region on the cusp of dramatic political and social change.\nU.S. President James Monroe\nThe belief that the United States was divinely destined to control all of North America arose out of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. President James Monroe told Congress that any foreign intervention in the affairs of the Americas (including South America) would be viewed as an assault on the United States.\nJournalist John L. O’Sullivan expanded the concept in 1845, saying it was the nation’s “manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly Multiplying millions.” Manifest destiny became the rallying cry of American expansionists and was used to justify the expropriation of Indian lands, the war with Mexico between 1846 and 1848, and President James Knox Polk’s claim to what is now British Columbia.\nOverland to Oregon in 1845: Impressions of a journey across North America by H.J. Warre. Public Archives of Canada, Ottawa, 1976.\nFortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America by Barry Gough. Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, B.C., 2007.\nStephen Bown’s latest book is Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600–1900 published by Douglas and McIntyre in 2009. Visit his website at Stephenrbown.net.\nThis article originally appeared in the February-March 2010 issue of The Beaver.\nPeace & Conflict\nRelated to Politics & Law\nInterview with Vancouver Island Province Association\nVancouver Island is bigger, much bigger, than Prince Edward Island. So why shouldn't it be a separate province?\nNine Who Made a Difference\nThese are the nine characters who made a difference in the growth and development of Alberta and Saskatchewan.\nFather of the Underground Railroad\nPodcast interview and photo gallery for the PBS documentary chronicling the life and legacy of William Still, known in his time as the “Father of the Underground Railroad.”\nHistory Spotlight: The Underground Railroad\nWhile Canadians often pride themselves on their historical support of the more progressive anti-slavery Union, British support for the North was never a given.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line830059"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6926151514053345,"wiki_prob":0.3073848485946655,"text":"Sick of Stocks? There Are Alternatives\nby Don Duncan | Oct 26, 2011 | Articles |\nRecent stock market volatility has prompted many investors to look for alternatives to equities as they build a portfolio. Alternative investments — such as real estate investment trusts, commodities, private equity, and hedge funds — may have appeal for certain individuals.\nThe stock market volatility of the past decade has caused many investors to question how much of their portfolios should be allocated to equities. If the equity markets are making you nervous, it’s important to understand that there are alternatives. Many investors are turning to alternative investments, which, when used along with stocks, may increase diversification and potentially lessen volatility.1\nAlternative Investments Defined\nAlternative investments take many forms, including the following:\nReal estate investment trusts (REITs). REITs invest in groups of professionally managed properties such as office buildings, apartments, warehouses, or health care facilities. To qualify as a REIT, a company must invest at least 75% of its total assets in real estate, it must derive at least 75% of gross income from rents or mortgage interest, and it must pay at least 90% of its taxable income in the form of shareholder dividends. REITs trade on major exchanges and can be bought or sold as you would trade a stock.\nCommodities.2 These investments include metals such as gold or silver, oil, and agricultural products. In the case of gold or silver, there are dealers who trade these precious metals. If you take physical possession of gold or silver, you will need to arrange for storage and insurance. Because many investors do not want to make these arrangements, exchange-traded funds have become a popular way to access commodities.\nPrivate equity. Major categories of private equity include venture capital, leveraged buyouts, and mezzanine financing. Investors participate in private markets through collective vehicles such as partnerships that actively manage the investment assets on the investors’ behalf. Successful investing in this area requires the ability to assess complex financial structures, assume outsized risk in pursuit of superior reward, and tolerate extended periods of illiquidity. Private equity firms frequently require investors to make commitments ranging from $5 million to $10 million or more.\nHedge funds.3 The term hedge fund is a catch-all phrase describing funds that follow aggressive investment strategies such as intensive use of derivatives and proprietary computerized trading. Hedge funds typically are engineered to seek a more favorable risk-adjusted return than their investors might obtain from a fund that follows a standard market benchmark. These funds are offered to investors whose portfolios include more than $1 million in financial assets.\nAll investing involves risk, including loss of principal, and alternative investments by themselves can be highly volatile. But when used in combination with stocks or other assets, they may help to smooth out long-term returns and provide an alternative when stock returns are choppy. Be sure to consult with your financial professional before investing.\nSource/Disclaimer:\n1There is no guarantee that a diversified portfolio will enhance overall returns or outperform a nondiversified portfolio. Diversification does not ensure against market risk.\n2Exposure to the commodities market may subject investors to greater volatility as commodity-linked investments may be affected by changes in overall market movements, commodity index volatility, changes in interest rates, or factors affecting a particular industry or commodity.\n3Hedge funds often engage in speculative investment practices that may increase the risk of investment loss. Hedge funds can be highly illiquid; are not required to provide periodic pricing or valuation information to investors; may involve complex tax structures and delays in distributing important tax information; are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as mutual funds; and often charge high fees.\n© 2011 McGraw-Hill Financial Communications. All rights reserved.\nOctober 2011 — This column is provided through the Financial Planning Association, the membership organization for the financial planning community, and is brought to you by D3 Financial Counselors, a local member of FPA.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line86078"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5104220509529114,"wiki_prob":0.4895779490470886,"text":"FACES OF THE DISAPPEARED: Ayotzinapa: A Writer's Chronicle of Injustice (Paperback)\nBy Tryno Maldonado, Chandler Thompson (Translated by)\nAward-winning Mexican author Tryno Maldonado personally immerses himself in the lives of the students of Ayotzinapa Normal School—victims in the still-unexplained kidnapping tragedy that took place in September 2014. In this narrative, he relives the events leading up to and during the horrific incident in which 43 students were brutalized at the hands of police and militarized narco-gang members, then vanished without a trace. With in-depth interviews of family members and friends of the \"disappeared,\" as well as investigative reportage of the events leading up to and during the incident, Maldonado has created a viscerally powerful account of this tragedy that, to date, has yet to be resolved.\nConsidered by critics to be one of the most promising voices in contemporary Mexican literature, Tryno Maldonado was born in 1977 in Zacatecas, México. He has contributed to some of the most important publications in México, and part of his work is included in national and international anthologies. He was named one of the best young Latin American writers by the Colombian magazine Gatopardo in 2006. Faces of the Disappeared is his first book to be translated into English. In the 1960s Chandler Thompson was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia, then a translator from French and Spanish to English for a wire service in Paris. He has been an interpreter for the U.S. State Department and the federal courts. He has covered Mexico as a stringer for The Christian Science Monitor and as a staff reporter for The El Paso Times.\n\"Faces of the Disappeared is more than an important book, it is a book that connects us to our own humanity.\" —Bill Carter, author of Fools Rush In: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption\n\"...leaves a deep piercing wound in every human sensibility...the author threads the individual stories into a tapestry of muted colors and disturbing patterns...this is a book that will realign your perspective...Kudos to translator Chandler Thompson...a heart-wrenching text.\" —Janis Palma, Texas Master Level Court Interpreter\n\"By placing the stories of victims and survivors front and center, this book infuses tenderness, humanity, and heartbreak into our understanding of a unshakable act of injustice that has yet to be accounted for.\" —Francisco Cantu, author of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border\n\"Maldonado vividly conveys the families’ struggle for information from a stonewalling government...his sensitively rendered portraits of the missing, assembled through letters and interviews with their families and friends, can make this a difficult book both to pick up and to put down.\" —Lauren Markham, The New York Review of Books\nPublisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.\nPolitical Science / Human Rights","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line845478"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7840724587440491,"wiki_prob":0.7840724587440491,"text":"Summerland has received conditional approval for $6 million in federal funding to build a one-megawatt solar array to provide power to the community. (File photo)\nSummerland planning solar project to power community\n$Six million grant awarded for integrated solar project\nSteve Kidd\nMar. 9, 2018 10:30 a.m.\nSummerland is taking a big step into the future and making plans to generate a portion of the electricity in the community.\nThe district received conditional approval for up to $6 million in funding from the Federal Gas Tax Fund to support the development of a one-megawatt solar array with two megawatts of battery storage to be located within municipal boundaries.\n“Summerland is incredibly proud to be selected to receive this funding in support of our integrated solar project,” said Mayor Peter Waterman. “Our community has indicated an immense amount of support for our electrical utility to begin generating power locally from renewable sources, and for us to take our energy future into our own hands.\n“The economic opportunities this project will provide to Summerland cannot be understated, and we look forward engaging our residents in the process so their vision for this project can be fully realized.”\nRelated: Municipality considering solar power\nSpeaking at a press conference, Waterman told about Summerland having a long history of being first: the first community in the Okanagan to enjoy electricity and the first to have telephone service, in 1907. Summerland is only one of five municipalities in B.C. to have its own electrical utility.\nThat, he said, has helped Summerland ensure the community’s energy future remains in the control of our residents and is operated strictly for their benefit.\nThere are a number of benefits to adding the solar array and storage to Summerland’s electrical utility systems beyond being a showcase of clean power technology that other communities can look too.\nBy generating solar energy locally, Summerland will strengthen its existing utility resource, enhance the local economy and create jobs, increase energy security while supporting innovation and, ideally, attracting new residents and visitors.\nThe project will form the basis for an integrated, long-term approach to sustainable energy management for the community, which will provide ongoing opportunities for job creation, community involvement, and partnerships with local businesses, schools, and not-for-profit groups.\nThe $6 million from the gas tax fund depends on completing a feasibility study and securing all the funding necessary to complete the project by March 2019. Summerland already received a $100,000 grant from the B.C. Rural Dividend Program for the initial phases of developing and planning the project, along with community consultation.\nThe additional funding would support the engineering, procurement, and construction of the projects, which are estimated to cost $6,980,000 including $1.4 million for upgrades to Summerland’s existing electrical system. The district will contribute the funds required beyond the grant from its electrical utility capital reserve fund.\nMore information about Summerland’s integrated solar project is available online at www.summerland.ca/solar.\n2 dogs die in attacks as deep snow pushes B.C. cougars out of Cariboo forests\nFunds will cover water system upgrade in Scotch Creek","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line514898"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9657424688339233,"wiki_prob":0.9657424688339233,"text":"406 University Avenue, Oxford, MS 38655 | [email protected] | (662) 915-5944\nBrandt Memory House\nEndowment Information\nFinancial and Operational Information\nPlanning a Gift\nOle Miss Women’s Council\nArt History Professor Receives First Hensley Award\nOMWC Dinner, Auction of 'Experiences' to Bolster Student Programming\nSanderson Farms Championship Host Breaks Record with $1.3M Gift\nAnnual Event Raises Support for University Museum\nBest Wishes from Memory House to Your House\nCouple Shares Success With UM Family\nDaughter Establishes Pierce Memorial Scholarship for Mom\nDalrymple History Department Receives Major Gift\nAnne Twitty (left), associate professor of history, greets students during the Department of History’s undergraduate open house outside of Bishop Hall on the Oxford campus.\nA $150,000 gift to the University of Mississippi’s Arch Dalrymple III Department of History has better positioned the department to embrace long-range opportunities, such as supporting faculty with their research and teaching goals.\nThe unrestricted gift, for example, may be used to offset expenses associated with faculty summer writing grants or oral history initiatives, said Noell Wilson, chair of history.\n“These help raise the profile of the department nationally while also serving the state of Mississippi and our surrounding community,” she said. “Gifts of this size, particularly to use at the department’s discretion, are rare but hold truly transformative potential to move forward a department’s research and teaching priorities.”\nThe gift was bequeathed to the university by the late Brig. Gen. John H. Napier III, a 1949 UM history graduate.\n“I think he hoped the History Department could use that money to pursue the appreciation of history and research,” said Cameron Freeman Napier, the donor’s wife, who maintains their home in Ramer, Alabama. “But the main thing is to advance the interests of students in the field of history.\n“People don’t seem to study history that much and there’s a prevalence of presentism — whereby present-day thinking is imposed upon the past, rather than understanding the past and learning from it,” she continued. “Young people think, ‘Oh, what did the past have to do with me?’ Well it has everything to do with them. The main point is that you learn from it.”\nA historian himself, Napier’s book “Lower Pearl River’s Piney Woods: Its Land and People” was published by the university’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture in 1985. He also penned the “Air Force Officers Guide” and a history of his family. Napier and his wife both contributed a number of articles to the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which was developed by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss.\nIn 1989, a previous gift from Napier to the university established a scholarship to help support students from Pearl River County and surrounding counties in Mississippi.\nNapier retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1977 as a lieutenant colonel and worked in intelligence and special operations. He served in Vietnam as an expert in unconventional warfare and in national security at the Pentagon, and completed his career at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. After retirement from active duty, he joined the Alabama State Defense Force in 1991 and retired as a state brigadier general in 1997.\nAs an Ole Miss student, Napier was a Taylor Medalist and was active in Sigma Chi fraternity, Air Force ROTC, and on the student newspaper and yearbook staffs.\n“We are thrilled by the opportunities these monies will provide to expand the range of projects both our faculty and students can embrace,” Wilson said. “I personally find this scale of contribution not only generous but also visionary as the Napier family could imagine the multiple ways in which private giving can change the course of individuals’ lives.”\nGifts can be made to the Brig. Gen. John H. Napier III Dalrymple Department of History Endowment by sending a check to the University of Mississippi Foundation, with the fund’s name noted on the memo line, to 406 University Ave., Oxford, Mississippi 38655 or by giving online at give.olemiss.edu.\nFor information on including UM in estate plans, contact Dan Wiseman, senior director of gift planning, at 662-915-5944 or [email protected].\nBy Bill Dabney\nUM Development\nAthletics Foundation\nUMMC Development\nEndowment Info\nFinancial & Operational Info\nFoundation Services & Forms\nWhistleblower Process\n©2019 The University of Mississippi Foundation Inc.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line222541"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9506916999816895,"wiki_prob":0.9506916999816895,"text":"Festival updates\nLabel updates\nSeptember 3, 2019 September 3, 2019 by L.P.\nThe Body to release «Remixed»\nTwenty years. That’s how long it has been since Lee Buford and Chip King founded The Body, undoubtedly one of the most important bands in extreme music over the course of the last two decades. This was achieved both through their own releases and through a series of collaborative efforts with the likes of Thou, Full of Hell, Uniform, The Haxan Cloak, Krieg, Vampillia, and more. To celebrate this anniversary, the band chose to once again pursue their collaborative streak and release «Remixed», a double LP of remixes made by “longtime friends, artists who The Body have influenced or been influenced by, and artists with whom the band share a mutual respect.” The last track on the record, «Hallow Hollow», was handled by none other than Lingua Ignota and can be heard below, alongside its original version, from 2016’s «No One Deserves Happiness».\nLingua Ignota is not the only artist from their current base of Providence who remixed a track for the record, with frequent collaborator (as drummer and sound engineer) Seth Manchester remixing «Western Dub» (of whose original release we found no record) and Container tackling «Ten Times A Day, Every Day, A Stranger», the enormous ending of last year’s «I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer». The Body’s Lee Buford said with regards to these choices that “I stand by my assertion that Providence and Providence-related music is the best. Seth is too humble for his own good. He’s a true genius and the best person,” adding that “It’s like a vacation recording with him” and that “Ren [Schofield of Container] is a longtime Providence head just like us. We met Kristin [Hayter of Lingua Ignota] when we went back to Providence to record and play a show there. She’s a true legend. We became friends immediately, and have become best friends since then. It’s always great to make music with her.”\nThe remaining seven songs were remixed by Moss of Aura, OAA, Mark Solotroff, Moor Mother, Andrew Nolan, Sow Discord, and Peter Rehberg. Below, find the official statement from the band regarding these collaborators.\nRemixes by Moss of Aura (Future Island’s Gerrit Welmers) and Peter Rehberg (KTL, Pita) stand as a testament to The Body’s reputation as innovators across genres. It comes as no surprise that The Body would include remixes by friends from around the globe whom they’ve toured with like sometimes live The Body member OAA, Whitehorse’s Dave Coen (Sow Discord), and Andrew Nolan (Intensive Care). Buford explains how humbled they were to include tracks reworked by Mark Solotroff (Anatomy of Habit, Bloodyminded), and Moor Mother: “Mark is a legend and has been a longtime friend. He’s a total anomaly because he’s been doing this for decades and still is extremely enthusiastic about music. We’re huge fans of Moor Mother, and she’s making some of the most original music nowadays. She’s like us in that she has all these disparate influences in her music, but she pulls it off so seamlessly.”\n«Remixed» is set for release on October 11 by Thrill Jockey on digital and vinyl formats. Pre-orders can be found here (digital) and here (vinyl).\nYou can follow The Body on Bandcamp and Facebook. Below, further recall their latest collaborative release alongside Uniform, «Everything That Dies Someday Comes Back», released on August 16 through Sacred Bones and available here on cd, digital, and vinyl formats.\nPosted in NewsTagged Andrew Nolan, Container, industrial, Lingua Ignota, Mark Solotroff, Moor Mother, Moss of Aura, OAA, Peter Rehberg, Seth Manchester, Sow Discord, The Body, Thrill Jockey\nPrevious Blut Aus Nord to release «Hallucinogen»\nNext An update on Dead Neanderthals’ «Ghosts»","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line748490"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9774594902992249,"wiki_prob":0.9774594902992249,"text":"March 25, 2010 | General News\nX-TRAIL: LIL WAYNE\nBy Seyi Ogunbameru\nRising out of obscurity to stand in the limelight as an international rap juggernaut, Lil Wayne has come a long way from his humble but harsh Hollygrove beginnings. With the recent incarceration of the New Orleans, Louisiana native, we look at the life and times of the Young Money boss and Cash Money Millionaire.\n1982: Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr is born September 27 to Jacida “Cita” Carter and Dwayne Michael Turner.\n1990: Writes his first rap song\n1993: Meets Bryan “Baby” Williams, rapper and owner of Cash Money Records and starts to record freestyles on Baby's answering machine.\n1994: Plays the Tin Man in his middle school drama club's production of The Wiz\n1995: Accidentally shoots himself with a .44 caliber gun in his chest while mimicking Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle in his bedroom mirror; the bullet misses his heart by two inches and he goes on life support for two weeks.\n>> Signs with Cash Money Records and hooks up with another newcomer, Lil' Doogie “B.G”, to form The B.G.'z. Later, they release their first and only album, True Story.\n1996: Drops out of school\n1997: Joins the Hot Boys alongside rappers Juvenile, B.G. and Turk as the youngest member to release their debut album Get it How You Live.\n>> Officially adopts the name Lil Wayne, dropping the “D” from his first name in order to separate himself from an absent father.\n>> Step-father Reginald “Rabbit” Carter dies.\n1998: Welcomes his first child, Reginae Carter with Antonia “Toya” Johnson, his high school sweetheart.\n>> Distinguishes himself on the Hot Boys' multi-platinum selling Universal debut, Guerilla Warfare\n1999: Releases debut solo album Tha Block is Hot and receives a Source Award nomination for “Best New Artist.\n2000: Releases second album, Lights Out.\n>> The Hot Boys receive a Source Award for “Group of the Year.”\n2001: Gets shot in the chest in Florida after “some groupies” fire two shots through his tour bus window.\n2002: Releases third album 500 Degreez.\n2003: Releases hit mixtape called Da Drought.\n2004: Releases fourth album Tha Carter and two mixtapes, Da Drought 2 and The Prefix.\n>> Marries Johnson.\n>> Features on Destiny's Child's single “Soldier” which earns him prominent nominations like 2005 BET Award-Best Collaboration and 2006 Grammy Award-Best Rap/Sung Collaboration\n2005: Releases fifth album Tha Carter II and two mixtapes, The Suffix and Dedication with DJ Drama.\n>> Enrolls at the University of Houston, majoring in Political Science but later switches to Psychology.\n2006: Releases collaboration album with mentor Baby: Like Father, Like Son and also a mixtape with DJ Drama called Dedication 2, which includes a track entitled “Georgia Bush” addressing the problems surrounding the government's response to Hurricane Katrina in his native New Orleans, Lousiana.\n>> Divorces wife, Antonia “Toya” Carter.\n2007: Releases mixtape, Da Drought 3 and features with several artists including DJ Khaled, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Enrique Iglesias\n>> Selected in an MTV poll as “Hottest MC in the Game,” in The New Yorker magazine as “Rapper of the Year”, GQ magazine as “Workaholic of the Year” and the BET Hip-Hop Award for “MVP of the Year.”\n>> Arrested at a performance at the Beacon Theatre when the New York City Police Department discovers him smoking marijuana near a tour bus.\n>> Arrested again following a performance at Qwest Arena in Boise, Idaho, on felony fugitive charges after Georgia authorities accuse him of possessing a controlled substance.\n2008: Releases sixth album Tha Carter III and wins Grammy for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Solo Performance for “A Milli”, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for his appearance on T.I.'s single “Swagga Like Us” and Best Rap Song for “Lollipop”.\n>> Named “Best Rock Star Alive” by Blender magazine and “Best MC” by Rolling Stone.\n>> Releases tenth mixtape, Dedication 3 with DJ Drama.\n>> Has second child, Dwayne III.\n>> Arrested in Yuma, Arizona when his tour bus is stopped by Border Patrol agents whose K-9 Unit recovers 105 grams (3.7 oz) of marijuana, almost 29 grams (1.0 oz) of cocaine, 41 grams (1.4 oz) of MDMA, and $22,000 (approx. N3.3 million) in cash.\n2009: MTV lists him number two on their list of Hottest MCs in the Game.\n>> Releases collaboration album with his Young Money artists\n>> Has his third child, Lennox Samuel Ari, born to actress Lauren London and fourth child, Neal, with singer Nivea.\n>> Detained at the Falfurrias, Texas border patrol checkpoint after an unknown amount of marijuana was found on two of his tour buses\n2010: Releases seventh album Rebirth.\n>> Re-signs with Cash Money Records and goes to jail to serve a one-year sentence for attempted criminal possession of a weapon\n>> Gets bench warrant when he doesn't show for a final trial management conference. However, the rapper was already in prison, serving a year-long sentence in Rikers on weapons charges.\nAdditional info: WIKIPEDIA, CASHMONEY-RECORDS.COM, STARPULSE.COM","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line686790"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9822854995727539,"wiki_prob":0.9822854995727539,"text":"Brewers get Bandy, deal Maldonado to Angels in catcher swap\nDan Needles\nSports Director\nThe Milwaukee Brewers have acquired Jett Bandy from the Angels, with Martin Maldonado headed back to Los Angeles in an exchange of defensive-minded catchers. The Brewers also sent minor league pitcher Drew Gagnon to Los Angeles in the deal announced on Tuesday. Bandy hit .234 with eight homers and 25 RBIs in 70 games for Los Angeles after being called up from Triple-A Salt Lake on May 20. The 26-year-old Bandy threw out 17 base runners trying to steal, which ranked fourth in the American League and first among major league rookies (37 percent). Maldonado returns to the organization that drafted him in the 27th round in 2004. He hit .202 last season with eight homers and 21 RBIs. In 69 games behind the plate, Maldonado threw out about 35 percent of base-stealers, which was sixth in the majors. The 30-year-old Maldonado made his debut with the Brewers in 2011, serving most of that time as the backup to Jonathan Lucroy until Lucroy was dealt by the rebuilding Brewers last summer to Texas. Maldonado was eligible for arbitration this offseason.\nThe Milwaukee Brewers have acquired Jett Bandy from the Angels, with Martin Maldonado headed back to Los Angeles in an exchange of defensive-minded catchers.\nThe Brewers also sent minor league pitcher Drew Gagnon to Los Angeles in the deal announced on Tuesday.\nBandy hit .234 with eight homers and 25 RBIs in 70 games for Los Angeles after being called up from Triple-A Salt Lake on May 20. The 26-year-old Bandy threw out 17 base runners trying to steal, which ranked fourth in the American League and first among major league rookies (37 percent).\nMaldonado returns to the organization that drafted him in the 27th round in 2004. He hit .202 last season with eight homers and 21 RBIs.\nIn 69 games behind the plate, Maldonado threw out about 35 percent of base-stealers, which was sixth in the majors.\nThe 30-year-old Maldonado made his debut with the Brewers in 2011, serving most of that time as the backup to Jonathan Lucroy until Lucroy was dealt by the rebuilding Brewers last summer to Texas.\nMaldonado was eligible for arbitration this offseason.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1348727"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6083672642707825,"wiki_prob":0.6083672642707825,"text":"Genesys Works Announces Sahaar Rezaie as Bay Area Executive Director\nSan Francisco, CA — Genesys Works, a national workforce development social enterprise, today announced that Sahaar Rezaie will lead the organization’s initiatives, which provide life-changing work opportunities to high school and college students, as the Executive Director of its Bay Area location.\nGenesys Works provides pathways to career success for high school students in underserved communities through skills training, meaningful work experiences, and impactful relationships. As the Bay Area Executive Director, Rezaie will lead regional strategy, development, and operations, while actively collaborating with leaders across the epicenter of our nation’s technology sector in order to build Bay Area’s future workforce.\nRezaie comes to Genesys Works after nearly a decade of leadership experience in workforce development programs and technology in both the private and public sector, most recently as the founding Vice President of YUPRO, West Region where she worked to close the Opportunity Divide and provide placement and career support for young adults from underserved communities.\n“Sahaar’s deep roots in the Bay Area, decade of leadership in workforce development, and personal commitment to serve youth make her uniquely qualified to lead Genesys Works Bay Area,” said David Williams, Genesys Works President & CEO. “We are pleased to welcome her to the Genesys Works family, and confident she will help us scale our impact by serving even more youth in need of guidance and support to attain college and career success.”\nOver the years, Genesys Works Bay Area has provided over 550 students with year-long, paid internships, in partnership with companies such as Salesforce, Accenture, AT&T, and more. The program’s goal is to open the door to new opportunities for Bay Area students, and ensure that students achieve college and career success.\n“The next generation of leaders lies within our youth. It is our responsibility to help them reach their highest potential,” said Rezaie. “I am thrilled to serve my community as the Executive Director of Genesys Works Bay Area. Most importantly, I am proud to join a team so committed to providing pathways to success for individuals who may not otherwise be provided an opportunity to change their life trajectory.”\nThe Genesys Works program includes eight weeks of technical and professional skills training, a paid year-long corporate internship, college and career coaching, and alumni support to and through college. To date, 100 percent of students who participate in Genesys Works have graduated from high school and 94 percent have gone on to enroll in college as the next step on their path toward career success.\nAbout Genesys Works\nGenesys Works provides pathways to career success for high school students in underserved communities through skills training, meaningful work experiences, and impactful relationships. Our program consists of 8 weeks of technical and professional skills training, a paid year-long corporate internship, college and career coaching, and alumni support to and through college. Our goal is to move more students out of poverty and into professional careers, creating a more productive and diverse workforce in the process. Since its founding in 2002, Genesys Works has grown to serve more than 4,000 students annually in Houston, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington’s National Capital Region, and New York City. To learn more, visit genesysworks.org.\nPosted by Genesys Works on 06 Aug 2019\nBay Area,\n< OLDER\nNEWER >","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1178085"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9532049298286438,"wiki_prob":0.9532049298286438,"text":"Harold Drew DSC, RN\nDied 20 Dec 1987 (92)\n28 Jan 1916 A/S.Lt.\n15 Sep 1916 S.Lt.\n15 Mar 1918 Lt.\n15 Mar 1926 Lt.Cdr.\n31 Dec 1931 Cdr.\n30 Jun 1939 Capt.\nRetired: 10 Jul 1948\n12 May 1917 DSC\n1 Jan 1946 CBE\nWarship Commands listed for Harold Drew, RN\nHMS Manchester (15) Capt. Light cruiser 4 Jun 1941 13 Aug 1942\nLight cruiser HMS Manchester (15)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Scapa Flow for Hvalfjord, Iceland together with the destroyers with HMS Inglefield (Capt. P. Todd, DSO, RN) and HMS Icarus (Lt.Cdr. C.D. Maud, DSC and Bar, RN). (1)\n9 Jun 1941 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nFor the daily positions of HMS Manchester during the period from 9 to 18 June 1941 see the map below.\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Hvalfjord, Iceland and after fueling went out on patrol together with HMS Inglefield (Capt. P. Todd, DSO, RN), HMS Icarus (Lt.Cdr. C.D. Maud, DSC and Bar, RN) and HMS Achates (Lt.Cdr. the Viscount Jocelyn, RN). HMS Inglefield and HMS Icarus soon parted company to join HMS Edinburgh (Capt. H.W. Faulkner, RN). HMS Achates was relieved by HMS Active (Lt.Cdr. M.W. Tomkinson, RN) at 0200/14. HMS Achestes then went to Hvalfjord to refuel and later took over from HMS Active again. (1)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and HMS Achates (Lt.Cdr. the Viscount Jocelyn, RN) arrived at Hvalfjord. (1)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Hvalfjord together with the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. I.T. Clark, RN) to relieve HMS Suffolk (Capt. R.M. Ellis, RN) on the Denmark Strait patrol. HMS Eclipse parted company with HMS Manchester around 1900/25. (1)\n23 Jun 1941 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nFor the daily positions of HMS Manchester during the period from 23 June to 3 July 1941 see the map below.\n1 Jul 1941 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) returned to Hvalfjord. (2)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Hvalfjord for Scapa Flow. (2)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Scapa Flow. (2)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN), HMS Aurora (Capt. Sir W.G. Agnew, RN) and HMS Arethusa (Capt. A.C. Chapman, RN) departed Scapa Flow for Greenock. (2)\nFor the daily positions of HMS Mancherster during the period of 9 to 26 July 1941 see the map below.\n10 Jul 1941 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Greenock. (3)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Greenock as part of the escort of convoy WS 9C. (3)\nConvoy WS 9C\nThis convoy was formed at sea and was initially made up of the British merchants/ troop transports Avila Star (14443 GRT, built 1927), City of Pretoria (8049 GRT, built 1937), Deucalion (7516 GRT, built 1930), Durham (10893 GRT, built 1934), Leinster (4302 GRT, built 1937), Melbourne Star (11076 GRT, built 1936), Pasteur (30447 GRT, built 1939), Port Chalmers (8535 GRT, built 1933) and Sydney Star (11095 GRT, built 1936).\nThey were escorted by the battleship HMS Nelson (Capt. T.H. Troubridge, RN) (12-20 July), cruisers HMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) (12-17 July), HMS Arethusa (Capt. A.C. Chapman, RN), (12-17 July), AA cruiser HrMs Jacob van Heemskerck (Cdr. E.J. van Holthe, RNN) (12-15 July), cruiser-minelayer HMS Manxman (Capt. R.K. Dickson, RN), (15-16 July), destroyers HMS Winchelsea (Lt.Cdr. W.A.F. Hawkins, OBE, DSC, RN) (12 July), HMS Vanoc (Lt.Cdr. J.G.W. Deneys, DSO, RN) (12-15 July), HMS Wanderer (Cdr. A.F.St.G. Orpen, RN) (12-15 July), ORP Garland (Lt.Cdr. K.F. Namiesniowski, ORP) (12-15 July), HMS Gurkha (Cdr. C.N. Lentaigne, RN) (12-15 July), HMS Cossack (Capt. E.L. Berthon, DSC and Bar, RN) (12-17 July), HMS Maori (Cdr. R.E. Courage, DSO, DSC and Bar, RN) (12-17 July), HMS Sikh (Cdr. G.H. Stokes, RN) (12-17 July), HMS Lightning (Cdr. R.G. Stewart, RN) (12-17 July), HMAS Nestor (Cdr. A.S. Rosenthal, RAN) (12-17 July), HMS Fearless (Cdr. A.F. Pugsley, RN) (17-20 July), HMS Firedrake (Lt.Cdr. S.H. Norris, DSO, DSC, RN) (18-20 July), HMS Foresight (Cdr. J.S.C. Salter, RN) (17-20 July), HMS Forester (Lt.Cdr. E.B. Tancock, DSC and Bar, RN) (17-20 July), HMS Foxhound (Cdr. G.H. Peters, DSC, RN) (17-20 July), HMS Fury (Lt.Cdr. T.C. Robinson, RN) (17-20 July), escort destroyers HMS Avon Vale (Lt.Cdr. P.A.R. Withers, RN) (18-20 July), HMS Eridge (Lt.Cdr. W.F.N. Gregory-Smith, RN) (18-20 July), HMS Farndale (Cdr. S.H. Carlill, RN) (18-20 July) and sloop HMS Stork (Lt. G.T.S. Gray, DSC, RN) (12-13 July).\nThe merchant ships from the convoy departed either Avonmouth, Liverpool, the Clyde area and Belfast. The convoy was finally formed up at sea early on the 13th in position 55°40'N, 06°55'W.\nThe passage of the convoy was uneventful.\nHMS Gurkha and ORP Garland left the convoy around 0330/15 reaching the limit of their endurance. HrMs Jacob van Heemskerck, HMS Vanoc and HMS Wanderer did the same around 1830/15. Around 2000/15 HMS Manxman joined the convoy, she parted company at 1900/16 and set course for Gibraltar. The merchant Avila Star had meanwhile left the convoy at 1000/16.\nAt 0700/17 the 8th Destroyer Flotilla was to join the convoy coming from Gibraltar but due to thick for no contact was made. At 1000/17 the Pasteur left the convoy for Gibraltar escorted by HMS Manchester, HMS Maori, HMS Lightning and HMAS Nestor. Shortly afterwards the fog lifted and the 8th Destroyer Flottilla was sighted and joined the convoy. At 1200/17 the Leinster also left the convoy for Gibraltar escorted by HMS Arethusa, HMS Cossack and HMS Sikh.\nAt 1800/18 HMS Firedrake joined the convoy coming from Gibraltar.\nAt 0700/18 HMS Avon Vale, HMS Eridge and HMS Farndale joined the Pasteur, HMS Manchester, HMS Lightning and HMAS Nestor. HMS Maori then left that group and joined the group that was made up of the Leinster, HMS Arethusa, HMS Cossack and HMS Sikh. HMS Manchester departed the ‘Pasteur group’ at 1000/19 to join the ‘Leinster group’ which she did at 1500/19.\nThe ‘Pasteur group’ arrived at Gibraltar shortly after noon on the 19th and around 0330/20 the ‘Leinster group’ arrived at Gibraltar. Troops aboard these ships then disembarked.\nAround 0200/20, HMS Edinburgh, HMS Manxman, HMS Lightning, HMAS Nestor, HMS Avon Vale, HMS Eridge and HMS Farndale departed Gibraltar to rendez-vous with the now incoming convoy WS 9C. They joined the convoy shortly before noon, the six F-class destroyers of the 8th Destroyer Flotilla then left to refuel at Gibraltar.\nFor the continuation of the events see the event for 21 July 1941 on Operation Substance. (4)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Gibraltar. (3)\nOperation Substance, convoys to and from Malta\nPassage through the Straits of Gibraltar of the eastbound convoy and sailing from Gibraltar of the remaining ships involved in the operation.\nAround 0130/21 convoy WS 9C passed the Straits of Gibraltar. The convoy at that moment consisted of six merchant ships; City of Pretoria (8049 GRT, built 1937), Deucalion (7516 GRT, built 1930), Durham (10893 GRT, built 1934), Melbourne Star (11076 GRT, built 1936), Port Chalmers (8535 GRT, built 1933) and Sydney Star (11095 GRT, built 1936).\nAt the time they passed through the Straits they were escorted by HMS Nelson (Capt. T.H. Troubridge, RN), HMS Edinburgh (Capt. H.W. Faulkner, RN), HMS Manxman (Capt. R.K. Dickson, RN), HMS Lightning (Cdr. R.G. Stewart, RN), HMAS Nestor (Cdr. A.S. Rosenthal, RAN), HMS Avon Vale (Lt.Cdr. P.A.R. Withers, RN), HMS Eridge (Lt.Cdr. W.F.N. Gregory-Smith, RN) and HMS Farndale (Cdr. S.H. Carlill, RN).\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN), HMS Arethusa (Capt. A.C. Chapman, RN), HMS Cossack (Capt. E.L. Berthon, DSC and Bar, RN), HMS Maori (Cdr. R.E. Courage, DSO, DSC and Bar, RN), HMS Sikh departed Gibraltar around 0200/21 escorting troopship Leinster (4302 GRT, built 1937) which was to join the convoy. However Leinster grounded while leaving Gibraltar and had to left behind. The small fleet tanker RFA Brown Ranger (3417 GRT, built 1941, master D.B.C. Ralph) left Gibraltar around the same time escorted by the destroyer HMS Beverley (Lt.Cdr. J. Grant, RN).\nAbout one hour later, around 0300/21, HMS Renown (Rear-Admiral R.R. McGrigor, RN), HMS Ark Royal (Capt. L.E.H. Maund, RN), HMS Hermione (Capt. G.N. Oliver, RN), HMS Faulknor (Capt. A.F. de Salis, RN), HMS Fearless (Cdr. A.F. Pugsley, RN), HMS Firedrake (Lt.Cdr. S.H. Norris, DSO, DSC, RN), HMS Foresight (Cdr. J.S.C. Salter, RN), HMS Forester (Lt.Cdr. E.B. Tancock, DSC and Bar, RN), HMS Foxhound (Cdr. G.H. Peters, DSC, RN), HMS Fury (Lt.Cdr. T.C. Robinson, RN) and HMS Duncan (Lt.Cdr. A.N. Rowell, RN) departed Gibraltar to give convoy for the convoy during the passage to Malta.\nAt sea the forces were redistributed;\nForce H, the cover force\nHMS Renown (Flying the flag of Vice-Admiral J.F. Sommerville, KCB, DSO, RN), HMS Nelson, HMS Ark Royal, HMS Hermione, HMS Faulknor, HMS Foresight, HMS Forester, HMS Fury, HMS Lightning and HMS Duncan.\nForce X, the close escort for the convoy\nHMS Edinburgh (Flying the flag of Rear-Admiral E.N. Syfret, RN), HMS Manchester, HMS Arethusa, HMS Manxman, HMS Cossack, HMS Maori, HMS Sikh, HMAS Nestor, HMS Fearless, HMS Firedrake, HMS Foxhound, HMS Avon Vale, HMS Eridge and HMS Farndale.\nPlan for the operation\nForce H was to cover the convoy until it reached the narrows between Sicily and Tunisia. Force X was to escort the convoy all the way to Malta. Ships of Force X also had troops for Malta on board that had been taken to Gibraltar by troopship Pasteur. On 23 July 1941, the day the eastbound convoy would reach ‘the narrows’ five empty transports and two tankers would depart Malta for Gibraltar (Convoy MG 1) The seven empty transports were;\nGroup 1 (speed 17 knots)\nHMS Breconshire (9776 GRT, built 1939),\nTalabot (6798 GRT, built 1936),\nThermopylae (6655 GRT, built 1930),\nAmerika (10218 GRT, built 1930),\nSettler (6202 GRT, built 1939),\nTanker Svenor (7616 GRT, built 1931) and\nTanker Hoegh Hood (9351 GRT, built 1936)\nThese were escorted by the destroyer HMS Encounter (Lt.Cdr. E.V.St J. Morgan, RN) which had been repairing and refitting at Malta.\nThrough intelligence it was known that the Italian Navy had five battleships operational (three of them at Taranto) and about ten cruisers divided between Taranto, Palermo and Messina. The Italian Air Force had about 50 torpedo planes and 150 bombers (30 of which were dive bombers) stationed in Sardinia and Sicily, roughly half of each type on both islands.\nThe Royal Air Force was able to be of more help than during the previous convoy trip from Gibraltar to Malta last January. Aircraft from Gibraltar conducted A/S patrols for the fleet during the first two days of the passage to the east. Also patrols were flown between Sardinia and the coast of Africa, while aircraft from Malta conducted reconnaissance between Sardinia and Sicily, besides watching the Italian ports. Malta would also provide fighter escort for Force X and the convoy after Force H would part with them and HMS Ark Royal could no longer provide fighter cover for them.\nDuring the operation eight submarines (HMS Olympus (Lt.Cdr. H.G. Dymott, RN), HMS Unique (Lt. A.F. Collett, RN), HMS Upholder (Lt.Cdr. M.D. Wanklyn, DSO, RN), HMS Upright (Lt. J.S. Wraith, DSC, RN), HMS Urge (Lt. E.P. Tomkinson, RN), HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. R.D. Cayley, DSO, RN), HMS P 32 (Lt. D.A.B. Abdy, RN) and HrMs O 21 (Lt.Cdr. J.F. van Dulm, RNN)) were on patrol to report and attack Italian warships that might be sailed to intercept the convoy.\nThe passage East, 22 July 1941\nOn 22 July the destroyers from Force X oiled from the Brown Ranger two at a time. A task that took about 10 hours. Having completed the oiling of the destroyers the Brown Ranger and her escort returned to Gibraltar. An Italian aircraft had reported Force H in the morning but the convoy and Force X, at that moment about 100 nautical miles to the south-westward, appeared not to have been sighed. At 2317/22 the Italian submarine Diaspro missed HMS Renown with torpedoes. HMAS Nestor sighted the torpedo tracks and was able to warn HMS Renown which was then able to avoid the torpedoes by doing an emergency turn to port.\nThe passage East and attacks by the Italian Air Force, 23 July 1941\nForce H rejoined the convoy around 0800/23 as the British were now approaching the danger area. Shadowing aircraft had already reported the position of the fleet that morning and heavy air attacks soon followed.\nThe first came at 0945 hours, a well times combination of nine high level bombers and six or seven torpedo planes approaching from the north-east. HMS Ark Royal had eleven fighters up, which met the bombers about 20 miles from the fleet. They managed to down two of the nine bombers but unfortunately three Fulmars were shot down by the enemy. The other seven bombers came on working round the head of the screen of destroyers to attack the convoy from the starboard beam at a height of 10000 feet. Their bombs fell harmlessly amongst the leading ships as they altered course to avoid the attack. The torpedo planes however were more successful. They came from ahead out of the sun, flying low, and as the destroyers opened fire they divided into groups of two or three and to attack the convoy on both sides. Two aircraft attacked HMS Fearless, stationed ahead in the screen, dropping their torpedoes at ranges of 1500 and 800 yards from a height of 70 feet. The destroyer avoided the first torpedo, but was hit by the second, set on fire, and completely disabled. Other aircraft went to press on their attacks on the convoy itself. One of them, dropping its torpedo between two merchant vessels hit HMS Manchester as she was turning to regain her station after avoiding two torpedoes fired earlier. She reversed helm once more but to no avail. During the attacks three enemy torpedo bombers were shot down by AA fire from the ships.\nHMS Manchester was badly damaged and could only use one engine out of four. At first she could steam only 8 knots. She was ordered to make for Gibraltar with HMS Avon Vale as escort. That evening, further to the westward, they were attacked again by three enemy torpedo planes but their AA gunfire kept the enemy at a distance. Both ships successfully reached Gibraltar on the 26th.\nAt 1010/23 five more bombers tried to attack the convoy crossing this time from north to south. Fighters from HMS Ark Royal forced them to drop their bombs from great height and mostly outside the screen.\nAt 1645/23 five more torpedo planes led by a seaplane came in from the northward. Three Fulmars caught them about 20 miles away. They managed to shoot down two planes and drove the remainder away.\nSoon afterwards the fleet arrived off the entrance to the Skerki Channel. There HMS Hermione was transferred to Force X to take the place of HMS Manchester. Six destroyers were assigned to Force H and eight to Force X. At 1713 hours Vice-Admiral Sommerville hauled round to the westward. HMS Ark Royal kept her Fulmars up until RAF Beaufighters had arrived from Malta to take over.\nThe convoy was attacked again around 1900/23. Four torpedo planes arrived from the eastward, flying low and and working round from ahead to the starboard side of the convoy. They approached in pairs in line abreast. They kept HMS Sikh (on the starboard bow of the screen) between them and their target until nearly the moment for attack, thereby hampering the AA fire from the other ships. They dropped their torpedoes from long range from a height of 50 feet and nearly hit HMS Hermione, sternmost ship in the starboard column. To avoid the attack each column of the convoy turned 90° outwards and all warships opened barrage fire from all guns that would bear. The barrage however fell short but it caused the Italians to drop their torpedoes early. Also one of the enemy was possibly shot down.\nThis attack scattered the convoy and it took some time to reform. At 1945/23 about seven bombers appeared from ahead at a height of about 14000 feet to attack the convoy from the port side. The convoy altered 40° to port together and the escort opened up a controlled fire with some hesitation as the Italian aircraft looked a lot like Beaufighters. The bombing was extremely accurate. Several bombs fell near HMS Edinburgh which was leading the port column, and a near miss abreast a boiler room disabled HMS Firedrake which had been sweeping ahead of the convoy. She could no longer steam so Rear-Admiral Syfret ordered her back to Gibraltar in tow of HMS Eridge. They had an anxious passage, being shadowed by aircraft continuously during daylight hours, but were not again attacked. On the 25th HMS Firedrake managed to lit one boiler so the tow was slipped. Both destroyers entered Gibraltar harbour on the 27th.\nSoon after leaving the Skerki Channel in the evening of the 23th the convoy hauled up to the north-east towards the coast of Sicily. This was to lessen the danger of mines. The Italians did not shadow the convoy after the attack at 1945 hours and missed this alteration of course which they clearly did not expect. Around 2100 hours, as it was getting dark, enemy aircraft were seen searching along its old line of advance. During the evening the convoy sighted flares several times about 20 miles to the south.\nContinued passage to the east and enemy attacks, 24 July 1941\nBetween 0250 and 0315 hours the convoy was however attacked by the Italian MAS boats MAS 532 and MAS 533. The managed to torpedo and damaged the Sydney Star. HMAS Nestor went alongside and took off almost 500 soldiers. Sydney Star was however able to continue her passage as staggler escorted initially by HMAS Nestor. Admiral Syfret however sent back HMS Hermione. At 1000/24 eight German dive bombers and two high level bombers attacked. Their bombs fell close the escorting ships. HMS Hermione shot down one dive bomber. The three ships arrived at Malta early in the afternoon.\nThe main body of the convoy meanwhile continued on its way unhindered after the attacks of the motor torpedo boats except for an attempt by three torpedo planes around 0700 hours. They dropped their torpedoes at a safe distance when fired on by the destroyers in the screen ahead. According to the orders Rear-Admiral Syfret was to leave the convoy now, if there was no threat from Italian surface forces, and go on to Malta with the cruisers and some of the destroyers. They were to land the passengers and stores, complete with fuel and return to Force H as soon as possible. The remaining destroyers were to accompany the transports to Malta. They too were to join Force H as soon as possible. Rear-Admiral Syfret felt easy about the surface danger as all Italian ships were reported in harbour the day before, but he was anxious about the threat to the convoy from the air. He decided to go ahead with the cruiser but leave all destroyers with the convoy so at 0745/24, HMS Edinburgh, HMS Arethusa and HMS Manxman left the convoy and pressed ahead at high speed to Malta where they arrived at noon the same day. The transports and the destroyers arrived about four hours later. They had been attacked only once by a torpedo plane since the cruisers separated.\nReturn passage of the warships of force X to make rendez-vous with Force H.\nIn the evening HMS Edinburgh, HMS Arethusa, HMS Hermione and HMS Manxman sailed together followed by five destroyers; HMS Cossack, HMS Maori, HMS Sikh, HMAS Nestor, HMS Foxhound, later the same evening. The destroyers overtook the cruisers in the morning of the 25th. The sixth destroyer, HMS Farndale, had to be left at Malta due to defects (condenser problems). All ships made rendez-vous with Force H to the north-west of Galita Island at 0800/25.\nMovements of Force H after it parted from the convoy.\nAfter parting with the convoy in the evening of the 23rd, Vice-Admiral Sommerville had taken force H westward at 18 knots until the afternoon of the 24th going as far west as 03°30’E. He then turned back to meet Admiral Syfret, also sending from HMS Ark Royal six Swordfish aircraft which left her in position 37°42’N, 07°17’E at 1000/25. After their junction Forces H and X made the best of way towards Gibraltar. Fighter patrols of HMS Ark Royal shot down a shadowing aircraft soon after the fleet had shaped course to the westward, losing a Fulmar in doing so. However another aircraft had meanwhile reported the fleet.\nHigh level bombers appeared from the east and torpedo bombers from the north at 1100 hours. HMS Ark Royal at that moment had four fighters in the air and sent up six more. They prevented the bombing attack shooting down three aircraft out of eight at a cost of two Fulmars, while the ships watched the enemy jettison their bombs 15 miles away. The torpedo attack came to nothing too for the enemy gave up the attempt and retired while still several miles from the fleet. Two days later, on the 27th, the fleet reached Gibraltar.\nThe movements of the seven empty ships coming from Malta.\nSix of the transports / tankers left Malta for Gibraltar in the morning of the 23rd, escorted by HMS Encounter. The seventh ship, tanker Svenor grounded while leaving harbour and was held up for some hours. At dusk, when a few miles from Pantelleria, the six ships devided into pairs according to their speed. HMS Encounter initially escorted the middle pair but joined the leading ships in the evening of the 24th when past the Galita Bank.\nItalian aircraft, both high level bombers and torpedo planes, attacked all these ships on the 24th to the southward of Sardinia. They made their first attempt on the second pair of transports and HMS Encounter. Four torpedo planes attacked at 1230/24 and four bombers at 1250/24. No ships were hit though the bombs fell close. Next came the turn for the leading pair, which were attacked further westwards by two bombers that came singly at 1330/24 and 1400/24. The second plane nearly hit HMS Breconshire. Finally when the third pair of ships reached about the same position in the evening they were attacked by torpedo planes and the Hoegh Hood was damaged but she managed to arrive at Gibraltar only a few hours after her consort on the 27th. The last ship, the one that had been delayed at Malta, arrived on the 28th. (5)\nAt 0947 hours (zone -2), HMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN), is damaged by a torpedo fired by an Italian aircraft. The result was that only one engine out of four remained operational and she could only do 8 knots. Later this was increased to 12 knots. Manchester, who had 750 soldiers for Malta onboard, was ordered to return to Gibraltar escorted by HMS Avon Vale (Lt.Cdr. P.A.R. Withers, RN). Around 1800 hours, HMS Manchester was attacked by 3 Italian torpedo bombers but these obtained no more hits. At 0920/24 HMS Manchester and HMS Avon Vale were joined by two more destroyers coming from Gibraltar, HMS Vimy (Lt.Cdr. H.G.D. de Chair, RN) and HMS Vidette (Lt.Cdr. E.N. Walmsley, RN). At 0730/25 HMS Wishart (Cdr. E.T. Cooper, RN) also joined the screen relieving HMS Avon Vale that had left the screen after fueling from HMS Manchester the previous evening. (5)\nThe damaged HMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Gibraltar. (3)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) is docked at Gibraltar. As there is no log available for HMS Manchester of the month of August 1941 the dates of her docking(s) are currently unknown to us. Anyway throughout August 1941 temporary repairs were made at Gibraltar and it was arranged that HMS Manchester would proceed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the U.S.A. for permanent repairs. (3)\nWith temporary repairs completed, HMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN), departed Gibraltar for the Philadelphia Navy Yard, U.S.A. for permanent repairs. She made most of the passage together with HMS Firedrake (Lt.Cdr. S.H. Norris, DSO, DSC, RN) that had also been damaged during the ‘Substance’ convoy operation and that was en-route to the Boston Navy Yard. Both ships were escorted until reaching 25’W at 0620/16 by HMS Heythrop (Lt.Cdr R.S. Stafford, RN). (6)\n13 Sep 1941 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nFor the daily positions of HMS Manchester from 13 to 23 September 1941 see the map below.\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at the Philadelphia Navy Yard for permanent repairs. (6)\n12 Feb 1942 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted trials off Philadelphia. (7)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) is docked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. (7)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) is undocked. (7)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) shifted from the Philadelphia Navy Yard to Delaware Bay. (7)\n1 Mar 1942 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Hampton Roads for Bermuda.\nFor the daily positions of HMS Manchester from 8 to 17 March see the map below.\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Bermuda. (8)\n10 Mar 1942 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Bermuda for Portsmouth, U.K. (8)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Portsmouth. There she was taken in hand for some more outstanding work that could not be undertaken in the U.S.A. which included the fitting of new radar. (8)\n2 May 1942 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Portsmouth for Scapa Flow. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Scapa Flow to work up. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted torpedo firing exercises at Scapa Flow. (9)\n13 May 1942 (position 0.00, 0.00)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted steering and torpedo firing exercises at Scapa Flow. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted exercises off Scapa Flow. She returned to Scapa Flow the next morning. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted exercises off Scapa Flow. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted exercises at Scapa Flow. (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted exercises at Scapa Flow. In the afternoon HMS Manchester serves as target ship for simulated attacks by the Dutch submarine HrMs O 14 (Lt.Cdr. H.A.W. Goossens, RNN). (9)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted exercises off Scapa Flow. Upon completion of these exercises she departed together with the escort destroyer HMS Wilton (Lt. A.P. Northey, DSC, RN) to cover a minelaying force made up of the cruiser minelayer HMS Adventure (Capt. N.V. Grace, RN), the auxiliary minelayers HMS Southern Prince, HMS Agamemnon (Capt. (Retd.) F. Ratsey, RN), HMS Port Quebec (A/Capt. (Retd.) V. Hammersley-Heenan, RN) and HMS Menestheus (Capt.(Retd.) R.H.F. de Salis, DSC and Bar, OBE, RN) and their escorts the destroyers HMS St. Marys (Lt.Cdr. K.H.J.L. Phibbs, RN), HMS Newark (Lt.Cdr. D.F. Townsend, RN) and HMS Saladin (Lt.Cdr. G.V. Legassick, RNR) that were to undertake minelaying operation SN 72. (10)\nFor the daily positions of HMS Manchester during the period of 29 May to 4 June 1942 see the map below.\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and HMS Wilton (Lt. A.P. Northey, DSC, RN) returned to Scapa Flow after covering minelaying operation SN 72. (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) conducted gunnery exercises off Scapa Flow. (12)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN)) and the destroyers HMS Somali (Capt. J.W.M. Eaton, DSO, DSC, RN), HMS Ashanti (Cdr. R.G. Onslow, DSO, RN) and HMS Offa (Lt.Cdr. R.A. Ewing, RN) departed Scapa Flow to rendez-vous with new battleships HMS Anson (Capt. H.R.G. Kinahan, CBE, RN) that is to proceed from Rosyth to Scapa Flow for working up exercises. (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN), HMS Somali (Capt. J.W.M. Eaton, DSO, DSC, RN), HMS Ashanti (Cdr. R.G. Onslow, DSO, RN) and HMS Offa (Lt.Cdr. R.A. Ewing, RN) returned to Scapa Flow escorting HMS Anson (Capt. H.R.G. Kinahan, CBE, RN) after taking over the escort duties from the destroyers Verdun (Lt.Cdr. W.S. Donald, DSC, RN) and HMS Vanity (Lt.Cdr. W.B.R. Morrison, RN). (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Scapa Flow for Greenock where some minor repairs were to be undertaken. (12)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Greenock. (12)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Greenock for Scapa Flow. (12)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) arrived at Scapa Flow. (12)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) departed Scapa Flow together with the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. E. Mack, DSO, DSC, RN) for Seidisfjord. (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. E. Mack, DSO, DSC, RN) arrived at Seidisfjord. (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. E. Mack, DSO, DSC, RN) departed Seidisfjord for operation Gearbox in which they were to land Norwegian troops and stores on Spitzbergen. (11)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. E. Mack, DSO, DSC, RN) arrived at Spitzbergen where they successfully landed Norwegian troops and stores (Operation Gearbox). They then immediately sailed jo join the main cover force for convoys PQ 17 and QP 13. (13)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and the destroyer HMS Eclipse (Lt.Cdr. E. Mack, DSO, DSC, RN) joined the main cover force for convoys PQ 17 and QP 13. (13)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) was detached from the main cover force and ordered to proceed to Scapa Flow. (13)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) returned to Scapa Flow. (13)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and HMS Kenya (Capt. A.S. Russell, RN) departed Scapa Flow for the Clyde. (13)\nHMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and HMS Kenya (Capt. A.S. Russell, RN) arrived at the Clyde from Scapa Flow. (13)\nConvoy WS 21S, Operation Pedestal.\nConvoy WS 21S and the concentration of the escort forces\nConvoy WS 21S departed the Clyde on 2 August 1942. The convoy was made up of the following ships;\nAmerican freighters;\nAlmeria Lykes (7773 GRT, built 1940), Santa Elisa (8379 GRT, built 1941), British freighters;\nBrisbane Star (12791 GRT, built 1937), Clan Ferguson (7347 GRT, built 1938), Deucalion (7516 GRT, built 1930), Dorset (10624 GRT, built 1934), Empire Hope (12688 GRT, built 1941), Glenorchy (8982 GRT, built 1939), Melbourne Star (11076 GRT, built 1936), Port Chalmers (8535 GRT, built 1933), Rochester Castle (7795 GRT, built 1937), Waimarama (12843 GRT, built 1938), Wairangi (12436 GRT, built 1935), and the American tanker;\nOhio (9264 GRT, built 1940).\nThese ships were escorted by light cruisers HMS Nigeria (Capt. S.H. Paton, RN, flying the flag of the Rear-Admiral 10th C.S., Sir H.M. Burrough, CB, DSO, RN), HMS Kenya (Capt. A.S. Russell, RN) and the destroyers HMS Wishart (Cdr. H.G. Scott, RN), HMS Venomous (Cdr. H.W. Falcon-Stewart, RN), HMS Wolverine (Lt.Cdr. P.W. Gretton, OBE, DSC, RN), HMS Malcolm (A/Cdr. A.B. Russell, RN), HMS Amazon (Lt.Cdr.(Emgy) Lord Teynham, RN), HMS Derwent (Cdr. R.H. Wright, DSC, RN) and HMS Zetland (Lt. J.V. Wilkinson, RN).\nA cover force made up of departed Scapa Flow on the same day. This force was made up of the battleships HMS Nelson (Capt. H.B. Jacomb, RN, flying the flag of Vice-Admiral E.N. Syfret, CB, RN) and HMS Rodney (Capt. J.W. Rivett-Carnac, DSC, RN). They were escorted by the destroyers HMS Ashanti (Cdr. R.G. Onslow, DSO, RN), HMS Eskimo (Cdr. E.G. Le Geyt, RN), HMS Somali (Cdr. E.N.V. Currey, DSC, RN), HMS Tartar (Cdr. St.J.R.J. Tyrwhitt, DSC, RN), HMS Pathfinder (Cdr. E.A. Gibbs, DSO and Bar, RN), HMS Penn (Lt.Cdr. J.H. Swain, RN) and HMS Quentin (Lt.Cdr. A.H.P. Noble, DSC, RN). They were to rendez-vous with convoy WS 21S at sea on 3 August. HMS Penn was delayed by a defect and after topping off with fuel at Moville, Northern Ireland overtook the force and joined at sea.\nThe aircraft carrier HMS Victorious (Capt. H.C. Bovell, CBE, RN, flying the flag of Rear Admiral A.L.St.G. Lyster, CB, CVO, DSO, RN) and the light cruiser HMS Sirius (Capt. P.W.B. Brooking, RN) meanwhile had already left Scapa Flow on 31 July 1941 to rendez-vous with the convoy. They were escorted by the destroyers HMS Intrepid (Cdr. C.A.deW. Kitcat, RN), HMS Icarus (Lt.Cdr. C.D. Maud, DSC and Bar, RN), HMS Fury (Lt.Cdr. C.H. Campbell, DSC and Bar, RN) and HMS Foresight (Lt.Cdr. R.A. Fell, RN). These ships were joined at sea on 1 August 1942 by the aircraft carrier HMS Argus (Capt. G.T. Philip, RN), loaded with spare fighter aircraft for the operation, and her two escorts the destroyers HMS Buxton (Lt.Cdr. I.J. Tyson, RD, RNR) and HMS Sardonyx (Lt.Cdr. A.F.C. Gray, RNR). HMS Argus and her two escorting destroyers had departed the Clyde on 31 July. HMS Buxton later split off and proceeded towards Canada and HMS Sardonyx proceeded to Londonderry.\nThe last ships to take part in the operation to depart the U.K. (Clyde around midnight during the night of 4/5 August) were the aircraft carrier HMS Furious (Capt. T.O. Bulteel, RN), loaded with Hurricane fighters for Malta, and her escorts, the light cruiser HMS Manchester (Capt. H. Drew, DSC, RN) and the Polish destroyer ORP Blyscawica (Lt.Cdr. L. Lichodziejewski, ORP). They were joined at sea, around dawn, by HMS Sardonyx coming from Londonderry. The destroyers parted company around midnight during the night of 5/6 August. They arrived at Londonderry on 7 August. HMS Furious and HMS Manchester then joined convoy WS 21S around midnight of the next night but HMS Manchester parted company shortly afterwards to proceed ahead of the convoy and fuel at Gibraltar.\nOn 1 August 1942 the aircraft carrier HMS Indomitable (Capt. T.H. Troubridge, RN), light cruiser HMS Phoebe (Capt. C.P. Frend, RN) and the destroyers HMS Laforey (Capt. R.M.J. Hutton, RN), HMS Lightning (Cdr. H.G. Walters, DSC, RN) and HMS Lookout (Lt.Cdr. A.G. Forman, DSC, RN) departed Freetown to proceed to a rendez-vous position off the Azores.\nOn 5 August 1942, the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle (Capt. L.D. Mackintosh, DSC, RN), light cruiser HMS Charybdis (Capt. G.A.W. Voelcker, RN) and the the destroyers HMS Wrestler (Lt. R.W.B. Lacon, DSC, RN), HMS Westcott (Cdr. I.H. Bockett-Pugh, DSO, RN) and HMS Vansittart (Lt.Cdr. T. Johnston, RN) departed Gibraltar also to the rendez-vous position off the Azores.\nThe convoy conducted maneuvering and AA exercises with the escorts between the Azores and Gibraltar during the period of 6 to 9 August. (Operation Berserk). Also dummy air attacks were carried out by aircraft from the carriers.\nPassage of the Straits of Gibraltar and organization of escort forces.\nThe convoy then passed the Straits of Gibraltar during the night of 9/10 August 1942 in dense fog but despite this the convoy was detected by German and Italian spies and reported.\nAfter passing the Straits of Gibraltar the convoy was organized as follows;\nThe actual convoy was protected a large force of warships until the whole force would split up before entering the Sicilian narrows after which ‘Force X’ under command of Rear-Admiral Sir H.M. Burrough, CB, DSO, RN was to accompany the convoy to the approaches to Malta where they would be met by the Malta Minesweeping Flotilla, which was then to sweep the convoy into the harbour. Force X was made up of the following ships:\nLicht cruisers: HMS Nigeria (flagship), HMS Kenya,, HMS Manchester.\nAA cruiser: HMS Cairo (A/Capt. C.C. Hardy, DSO, RN).\nDestroyers: HMS Ashanti, HMS Fury, HMS Foresight, HMS Icarus, HMS Intrepid, HMS Pathfinder and HMS Penn.\nEscort destroyers: HMS Derwent, HMS Bicester (Lt.Cdr. S.W.F. Bennetts, RN), HMS Bramham (Lt. E.F. Baines, RN), HMS Ledbury (Lt.Cdr. R.P. Hill, RN) and HMS Wilton (Lt. A.P. Northey, RN). Also the rescue tug HMS Jaunty was to be part of this force.\nAfter the escort was to be split up cover was provided by ‘Force Z’ under Vice-Admiral E.N. Syfret, CB, RN. This force was made up of the following ships:\nBattleships: HMS Nelson (flagship) and HMS Rodney.\nAircraft carriers: HMS Victorious, HMS Indomitable and HMS Eagle.\nLight cruisers: HMS Phoebe, HMS Sirius and HMS Charybdis.\nDestroyers: HMS Laforey, HMS Lightning, HMS Lookout, HMS Eskimo, HMS Somali, HMS Tartar, HMS Quentin, HMS Ithuriel (Lt.Cdr. D.H. Maitland-Makgill-Crichton, DSC, RN) HMS Antelope (Lt.Cdr. E.N. Sinclair), HMS Wishart and HMS Vansittart. Escort destroyer: HMS Zetland. Also attached were the aircraft carrier HMS Furious (for Operation Bellows, the launching of Hurricane fighters for Malta. HMS Furious only carried four Albacore aircraft for A/S searches after the Hurricanes had been launched) and the ‘spare’ destroyers HMS Keppel (Cdr. J.E. Broome, RN), HMS Malcolm, HMS Venomous, HMS Vidette (Lt.Cdr. E.N. Walmsley, DSC, RN), HMS Westcott, HMS Wolverine, HMS Wrestler and HMS Amazon. These ‘spare’ destroyers were to take the place of destroyers in the screen ‘Force Z’ if needed, escort HMS Furious during her return passage to Gibraltar after she had completed Operation Bellows and / or strengthen the escort of ‘Force R’.\nThen there was also ‘Force R’, the fuelling force. This force was made up of the following ships:\nCorvettes: HMS Jonquil (Lt.Cdr. R.E.H. Partington, RD, RNR), HMS Spiraea (Lt.Cdr. R.S. Miller, DSC, RNR), HMS Geranium (T/Lt. A. Foxall, RNR) and HMS Coltsfoot (T/Lt. the Hon. W.K. Rous, RNVR).\nRescue tug: HMS Salvonia.\nRFA tankers: RFA Brown Ranger (3417 GRT, built 1941, Master D.B.C. Ralph) and RFA Dingledale (8145 GRT, built 1941, Master R.T. Duthie).\nBefore we give an account of the passage of the main convoy we will now first describe the operations taking place in the Eastern Mediterranean (Operations MG 3 and MG 4), the launching of the Hurricane fighters for Malta by HMS Furious (Operation Bellows) and the return convoy from Malta (Operation Ascendant) as well as on submarine operations / dispositions.\nDiversion in the Eastern Mediterranean.\nAs part of the plan for Operation Pedestal the Mediterranean Fleet had to carry out a diversion in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean. Before we go to the operations in the Western Mediterranean we will first give an account of the events in the Eastern Mediterranean.\nIt was at this time not possible to sent any supplies from Egypt to Malta as all supplies and forces were much needed for the upcoming land battle at El Alamein it was agreed that ‘a dummy convoy’ would be sent towards Malta with the object of preventing the enemy to direct the full weight of their air and naval power towards the Western Mediterranean.\nIn the evening of 10 August 1942 a ‘convoy’ (MG 3) of three merchant ships departed Port Said escorted by three cruisers and ten destroyers. Next morning one more merchant ship departed Haifa escorted by two cruisers and five destroyers. The two forces joined that day (the 11th) and then turned back dispersing during the night. The Italian fleet however did not go to sea to attack ‘the bait’.\nThe forces taking part in this operation were:\nFrom Port Said:\nMerchant vessels City of Edinburgh (8036 GRT, built 1938), City of Lincoln (8039 GRT, built 1938) and City of Pretoria (8049 GRT, built 1937) escorted by the light cruisers HMS Arethusa (Capt. A.C. Chapman, RN), HMS Euryalus (Capt. E.W. Bush, DSO, DSC, RN), the AA cruiser HMS Coventry (Capt. R.J.R. Dendy, RN) and the destroyers HMS Jervis (Capt. A.L. Poland, DSO and Bar, DSC, RN), HMS Kelvin (Cdr. M.S. Townsend, OBE, DSC and Bar, RN), HMS Pakenham (Capt. E.B.K. Stevens, DSO, DSC, RN), HMS Paladin (Cdr. A.F. Pugsley, RN) and the escort destroyers HMS Dulverton(Lt.Cdr. W.N. Petch, OBE, RN), HMS Hurworth (Lt.Cdr. J.T.B. Birch, RN), HMS Eridge (Lt.Cdr. W.F.N. Gregory-Smith, DSC, RN), HMS Hursley (Lt. W.J.P. Church, DSC, RN), HMS Beaufort (Lt.Cdr. S.O’G Roche, RN) and HMS Belvoir (Lt. J.F.D. Bush, DSC and Bar, RN).\nFrom Haifa:\nMerchant vessel Ajax (7797 GRT, built 1931) escorted by the light cruisers HMS Cleopatra (Capt. G. Grantham, DSO, RN, flagship of Rear-Admiral P.L. Vian, KBE, DSO and 2 Bars, RN), HMS Dido (Capt. H.W.U. McCall, RN), the destroyers HMS Sikh (Capt. St.J. A. Micklethwait, DSO and Bar, RN), HMS Zulu (Cdr. R.T. White, DSO and Bar, RN), HMS Javelin (Cdr. H.C. Simms, DSO, RN) and the escort destroyers HMS Tetcott (Lt. H.R. Rycroft, RN) and HMS Croome (Lt.Cdr. R.C. Egan, RN).\nAfter dark on 11 August 1942 the force turned back and the City of Pretoria returned to Port Said escorted by HMS Eridge and HMS Hursley. The City of Edinburgh, escorted by HMS Beaufort and HMS Belvoir proceeded to Haifa. The City of Lincoln escorted by HMS Dulverton and HMS Hurworth proceeded to Beirut and finally the Ajax, escorted by HMS Tetcott and HMS Croome returned to Haifa. HMS Dido had to return to Port Said with hull defects. She was escorted by HMS Pakenham, HMS Paladin and HMS Jervis.\nHMS Cleopatra, HMS Arethusa, HMS Sikh, HMS Zulu, HMS Javelin and HMS Kelvin then proceeded to carry out another diversion (Operation MG 4). They bombarded Rhodos harbour and the Alliotti Flour Mills during the night of 12/13 August but did little damage. On the way back HMS Javelin attacked a submarine contact in position 34°45’N, 31°04’E between 0654 and 0804 hours. She reported that there was no doubt that the submarine was sunk but no Axis submarines were operating in this area so the attack must have been bogus. This force returned to Haifa at 1900/13.\nOperation Bellows.\nDuring operation Bellows, the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, started 37 Spitfire which were to proceed to Malta, when south of the Balearic Islands. The Admiralty had decided to carry out this operation at the same time as Operation Pedestal.\nHMS Furious remained with the convoy until 1200/11. She then launched the Spitfires for Malta in 5 batches between 1230 and 1515 hours. During these flying off operations she acted independently with the destroyers HMS Lookout and HMS Lightning. After having launched the last batch of Spitfires she briefly re-joined to convoy until around 1700 hours when she split off and set course for Gibraltar escorted by the destroyers HMS Malcolm, HMS Wolverine and HMS Wrestler. These were joined shortly afterwards by HMS Keppel and HMS Venomous.\nAround 0100/12, HMS Wolverine, rammed and sank the Italian submarine Dagabur which was trying to attack HMS Furious. Around 0200 hours, HMS Wolverine reported that she was stopped due to the damage she had sustained in the ramming. HMS Malcolm was detached to assist her.\nAt 1530/12, the destroyer HMS Vidette joined the screen. The force then entered Gibraltar Bay around 1930/12. The damaged HMS Wolverine arrived at Gibraltar at 1230/13 followed by HMS Malcolm around 1530/13.\nOperation Ascendant\nOn 10 August 1942 the empty transports Troilus (7648 GRT, built 1921) and Orari (10107 GRT, built 1931) departed Malta after dark for Gibraltar. They were escorted by the destroyer HMS Matchless (Lt.Cdr. J. Mowlam, RN) and the escort destroyer HMS Badsworth (Lt. G.T.S. Gray, DSC, RN). They first proceeded to the south of Lampedusa, then hugged the Tunisian coast as far as Galita Island. Near Cape Bon they encountered the Italian destroyer Lanzerotto Malocello that was laying a minefield. They had a brief gunfight but this was soon ended as both sides were thinking the enemy was Vichy-French. The remained of the passage to Gibraltar was uneventful and the convoy arrived at Gibraltar shortly before noon on 14 August 1942.\nSubmarine operations / dispositions.\nEight submarines took part in the operation; these were HMS Utmost (Lt. A.W. Langridge, RN), HMS P 31 (Lt. J.B.de B. Kershaw, DSO, RN), HMS P 34 (Lt. P.R.H. Harrison, DSC, RN), HMS P 42 (Lt. A.C.G. Mars, RN), HMS P 44 (Lt. T.E. Barlow, RN), HMS P 46 (Lt. J.S. Stevens, DSC, RN), HMS P 211 (Cdr. B. Bryant, DSC, RN), HMS P 222 (Lt.Cdr. A.J. MacKenzie, RN). Two of these were to carry out normal dived patrol to the north of Sicily, one off Palermo, the other off Milazzo which is futher to the east. The other six submarines were given alternative patrol lines south of Pantelleria, one od which they were to take up at dawn on 13 August 1942, according to the movements of enemy surface ships that might threathen the convoy from the westward. When the convoy had passed the patrol line, which it should have done by that time, the submarines were to proceed on the surface parallel to the convoy as a screen and to dive away clear of the convoy at noon. It was expressly intended that they should be seen on the surface and reported by enemy aircraft in order to deter enemy warships from attacking the convoy.\nEnemy warships did go to sea but as soon as it was clear that the enemy ships could not reach the convoy the sunmarines were ordered to dive and retire. These six sumarines had no contact with the enemy. One of the the two submarines off the north coast of Sicily, HMS P 42, managed to torpedo two Italian cruisers near Stromboli on the morning of 13 August 1942.\nNow we return to the main convoy to Malta.\nPassage eastwards after passing the Straits of Gibraltar.\n10 and 11 August 1942.\nAfter passing through the Straits of Gibraltar in the early hours of 10 August 1942, in dense fog, the convoy was first sighted by an Italian passenger aircraft, which sighted the convoy in the afternoon of the same day. German reconnaissance aircraft started shadowing the convoy from dawn on the 11th, and thereafter they or Italian aircraft kept the convoy under continuous observation, despite the effort of the fighters from the carriers to shoot them down or drive them off. At 1315 hours, HMS Eagle, was hit an sunk by torpedoes from the German submarine U-73 which had penetrated the destroyer screen. At that moment there were thirteen destroyers in the screen, the remainder was away from the main convoy, escorting HMS Furious during the flying off operations of the Hurricane fighters for Malta or oiling from and screening ‘Force R’ which was several miles away. Between 1430/10 and and 2030/11 no less then three cruisers and twenty-four destroyers fuelled from the two oilers of ‘Force R’.\nAt the time of the torpedoing of HMS Eagle the convoy was in four columns, zigzagging at 13 knots, with the heavy ships stationed close round it and a destroyer screen ahead. HMS Eagle was on the starboard quarter of the convoy. She was hit on her starboard side by four torpedoes which had dived through the destroyer screen and the convoy columns undetected and then torpedoed and sank the Eagle in position 38°05’N, 03°02’E (Another source gives 03°12’E but this might be a typo). The carrier sank quickly in about 8 minutes, 926 of her crew, including the Commanding Officer, were rescued by the destroyers HMS Laforey and HMS Lookout and the rescue tug HMS Jaunty. At the time of her sinking, HMS Eagle had four aircraft on patrol. These landed on the other carriers. All other aircraft were lost with the ship. The survivors picked up were later transferred to the destroyers HMS Keppel, HMS Malcolm and HMS Venomous that were to escort HMS Furious back to Gibraltar. The tug HMS Jaunty that had been involved in picking up survivors was never able to rejoin the convoy due to her slow speed.\nLate in the afternoon air attacks were expected so Vice-Admiral Syfret ordered the destroyer to form an all-round screen. Indeed the air attacks started around sunset, 2045 hours. The last destroyers had just returned from oiling from ‘Force R’. The enemy aircraft that were attacking were 36 German bombers and torpedo aircraft, Ju 88’s and He 111’s, most of which attacked the convoy but a few attacked ‘Force R’ to the southward. The Junkers arrived first, diving down from 8000 feet to 2000 / 3000 feet to drop their bombs. They claimed to have hit an aircraft carrier and one of the merchant ships. Then the Heinkels attacked, they claimed to have torpedoed a cruiser but during the attacks no ship was hit. The British fighter cover was unable to attack / find the enemy in the failing light. Four enemy aircraft were claimed shot down by the ships AA fire but it appears only two JU 88’s were in fact shot down.\nAt 0915/12 another wave of German aircraft attacked the convoy. Some twenty or more JU 88’s approached the convoy out of the sun ahead. They were intercepted by fighters about 25 miles from the convoy. About a dozen got through to the convoy, making high-level or shallow dive-bombing attacks individually but without any result. Eight German aircraft were claimed to be shot down by the fighters and two more by AA guns from the ships. The fighters meanwhile were also busy dealng with shadowers, three of which are claimed to have been shot down before the morning attack. Around this time destroyers were also busy with numerous submarine contact which were attacked by depth charges.\nAround noon the enemy launched heavy air attacks from the Sardinian airfields. Seventy aircraft approached which were heavily escorted by fighters. They attacked in stages and employed new methods.\nFirst ten Italian torpedo-bombers were each to drop some sort of circling torpedo or mine a few hundred yards ahead of the British force, while eight fighter bombers made dive-bombing and machine-gun attacks. The object at this stage was clearly to dislocate the formation of the force and to draw anti-aircraft fire, making the ships more vulnerable to a torpedo attack which soon followed with over forty aircraft. They attacked in two groups, one on either bow of the convoy. The next stage was a shallow dive-bombing attack by German aircraft, after which two Italian Reggiane 2001 fighters, each with a single heavy armour-piercing bomb were to dive bomb on one of the aircraft carriers, whilst yet another new form of attack was to be employed against the other carrier, but defects in the weapon prevented this attack from taking place.\nThe enemy attack went according to plan besides that the torpedo attack was only made half an our after the ‘mines’ were dropped instead of five minutes. British fighters met the minelaying aircraft, they shot down one of them as they approached. The remaining nine aircraft dropped their ‘mines’ at 1215 hours in the path of the force, which turned to avoid the danger. The mines were heard to explode several minutes later. Only three of the fighter-bombers of this stage of the attack appear to have reached as far the screen, but HMS Lightning had a narrow escape from their bombs.\nThe torpedo-aircraft appeared at 1245 hours. Their number were brought down a bit due to British fighters. The remaining aircraft, estimated at 25 to 30 machines, attacked from the port bow, port beam and starboard quarter. They dropped their torpedoes well outside the screen some 8000 yards from the merchant ships which they had been ordered to attack. The force turned 45° to port and then back to starboard to avoid the attack.\nIn the next stage, around 1318 hours, the German bombing attack, the enemy scored their one success. These aircraft were also intercepted on their way in but about a dozen of about twenty aircraft came through. They crossed the convoy from starboard to port and then dived to 3000 feet. They managed to damage the transport Deucalion which was leading the port wing column. More bombs fell close to several other ships.\nFinally, at 1345 hours, the two Reggiane fighters approached HMS Victorious as if to land on. They looked like Hurricanes and HMS Victorious was at that time engaged in landing her own fighters. They managed to drop their bombs and one hit the flight deck amidships. Fortunately the bomb broke up without exploding. By the time HMS Victorious could open fire both fighters were out of range.\nThe Deucalion could no longer keep up with the convoy and was ordered to follow the inshore route along the Tunisian coast escorted by HMS Bramham. Two bombers found these ships late in the afternoon, but their bombs missed. At 1940 hours, however, near the Cani Rocks, two torpedo aircraft attacked and a torpedo hit the Deucalion. She caught fire and eventually blew up.\nThe convoy passed some 20 miles north of Galita Island and spent the afternoon avoiding enemy submarines which were known to be concentrated in these waters. There were innumerable reports of sightings and Asdic contacts and at least two submarines proved dangerous. At 1616 hours, HMS Pathfinder and HMS Zetland attacked one on the port bow of the convoy and hunted her until the convoy was out of reach. HMS Ithuriel, stationed on the quarter, then attacked, forced the enemy to surface and finally rammed her. She proved to be the Italian submarine Cobalto. Meanwhile HMS Tartar, on the starboard quarter, saw six torpedoes fired at close range at 1640 hours, and the next destroyer in the screen, HMS Lookout sighted a periscope. Together they attacked the submarine, continuing until it was no longer dangerous. There was no evidence this submarine was sunk.\nAt 1750 hours, HMS Ithuriel, which was on her way back to the convoy after sinking the Italian submarine Cobalto was attacked by a few dive-bombers, when still a dozen miles astern of the convoy. At this time the convoy came under attack by aircraft stationed on Sicily. This force numbered nearly 100 aircraft. Ju.87 dive-bombers as well as Ju.88’s and SM-79’s all with a strong escort of fighters. The enemy started attacking at 1835 hours, the bombers attacking from both ahead and astern which last was the direction of the sun. The torpedo aircraft came from ahead to attack on the starboard bow and beam of the convoy.\nThe Italian SM-79’s torpedo bombers dropped their torpedoes from ranges of about 3000 yards outside the destroyer screen, and once again the convoy turned away to avoid them. However the destroyer HMS Foresight was hit by a torpedo and disabled. The bombers chose HMS Indomitable as their main target. She was astern of HMS Rodney at the time on the port quarter of the convoy. Four Ju.88’s and eight Ju.87’s came suddenly out of the sun and dived steeply towards HMS Indomitable from astern. Some of the Ju.87 came down to 1000 feet and the carrier received three hits and her flight deck was put out of action. Her airborne fighters eventually had to land on HMS Victorious. HMS Rodney meanwhile had a narrow escape when a bomber attacked from ahead. One enemy aircraft was claimed to have been shot down by AA fire from the ships while the fighters claimed nine more although there were about twice as much enemy fighters in the air then British.\nHMS Tartar took the damaged HMS Foresight in tow and proceeded westward for Gibraltar. Next day, as they were shadowed by enemy aircraft, and enemy submarines were known to be in the area, it was decided to scuttle the cripple before both ships might be lost. HMS Tartar then torpedoed HMS Foresight a few miles from Galita Island.\nPassage through the narrows, 12-13 August 1942, and the loss off HMS Manchester.\nThese last air attacks took place about 20 nautical miles west of the Skerki Channel and at 1900 hours, when the attacks were clearly over, Vice-Admiral Syfret turned away with ‘Force Z’. It was now up to Rear-Admiral Burrough with ‘Force X’ to take the convoy to Malta.\nAt 2000 hours, when the convoy was changing it’s formation from four to two columns, the convoy was attacked by Italian submarines. The submarine Dessie attacked a freighter with four torpedoes and claimed three hits. The sound of the torpedo hits was however not caused by her attack but by an attack by the Axum which hit three ships, HMS Nigeria, HMS Cairo and the tanker Ohio.\nHMS Nigeria had to turn back to make for Gibraltar escorted by the escort destroyers HMS Derwent, HMS Wilton and HMS Bicester. Rear-Admiral Burrough transferred his flag to the destroyer HMS Ashanti. The stern of HMS Cairo had been blown off and she had to be sunk as she was beyond salvage with both engines also out of action. She was scuttled by HMS Pathfinder. The Ohio meanwhile managed to struggle on.\nAt this time the convoy was still trying to form up the the submarine attacks messed things up and right at thus time the convoy was once more attacked from the air in the growing dusk at 2030 hours. About 20 German aircraft, Ju-88’s made dive bombing and torpedo attacks, hitting the Empire Hope with a bomb and the Clan Ferguson and Brisbane Star with torpedoes. The first of these ships had to be sunk (by HMS Bramham, the second blew up but the last eventually reached Malta. Soon after this attack, at 2111 hours, HMS Kenya was torpedoed by the Italian submarine Alagi. She was able to evade three of the four torpedoes but was hit in the bow by the fouth. She was however able to remain with the convoy.\nThe situation was then as follows. HMS Kenya and HMS Manchester with two merchant ships, and with the minesweeping destroyers HMS Intrepid, HMS Icarus and HMS Fury sweeping ahead, had passed the Skerki Channel and were steering to pass Zembra Island on the way to Cape Bon. HMS Ashanti, with Rear-Admiral Burrough on board was fast overhauling these ships. The other two destroyers HMS Pathfinder, HMS Penn and the escort destroyer HMS Ledbury, were rounding up the remaining nine merchant ships. The escort destroyer HMS Bramham was also catching up after having escorted the single Deucalion until she sank.\nOn learing about the fate of HMS Nigeria and HMS Cairo, Vice-Admiral Syfret detached HMS Charybdis, HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali to reinforce Rear-Admiral Burrough. It would take these ships several hourse to catch up with the convoy.\nThe main body of the convoy passed Cape Bon around midnight. Fourty minutes later enemy Motor Torpedo Boats appeared and started to attack. Their first victim was HMS Manchester which was torpedoed at 0120/13 by the Italian MS 16 or MS 22. She had to be scuttled by her own crew. Many of her ships company landed in Tunisia and were interned by the Vichy-French but about 300 were picked up by destroyers (first by HMS Pathfinder, and later by HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali. These last two destoyers then set off towards Gibraltar.)\nFour and possibly five of the merchant ships were also hit by the Motor Torpedo Boats. These were the Wairangi, Rochester Castle, Almeria Lykes, Santa Elisa and probably the Glenorchy. They were attacked between 0315 and 0430 hours about 15 nautical miles south-east of Kelibia whilst taking a short cut to overhaul the main body of the convoy. Four were lost, only the Rochester Castle survived and she managed to catch up with the main body of the convoy at 0530 hours. The Glenorchy was sunk by the Italian MS 31, the other four, of which the Rochester Castle survived as mentioned earlier, were hit by the German S 30 and S 36 as well as the Italian MAS 554 and MAS 557.\nShortly before 0530 hours HMS Charybdis, HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali had joined the main body of the convoy making the force now two cruisers and seven destroyers with the transports Rochester Castle, Waimarama and Melbourne Star. The damaged tanker Ohio was slowly catching up. With her was the escort destroyer HMS Ledbury. Astern of the main body was the Port Chalmers escorted by the destroyer HMS Penn and the escort destroyer HMS Bramham. The destroyers recued the crew of the Santa Elisa when the passed by the abandoned ship which was afterwards finished off by a German bomber. The Dorset was proceeding without escort and lastly the damaged Brisbane Star was still keeping close to the Tunisian coast independently, intending to steer towards Malta after nightfall.\nAt 0730 hours, Rear-Admiral Burrough, sent back HMS Tartar and HMS Somali to Kelibia to assist HMS Manchester and then go to Gibraltar. When they arrived they found out that the Manchester had been scuttled several hours earlier so they rescued those of her crew that had not reached the shore yet and then made off to Gibraltar as ordered. Besides crew of the Manchester they also picked up survivors from the Almeria Lykes and Wairangi.\nThe next encounter with the enemy was an air attack on the main body of the convoy at 0800 hours by German bombers. About 12 Ju.88’s made a shallow diving attack coming down from 6000 feet to 2000 feet to drop their bombs. Two dived on the Waimarama hitting her several times and she blew up immediately, one of the bombers was even destroyed in the explosion. HMS Ledbury saved some of her crew out of the blazing sea. At 0925 hours, when the Ohio, Port Chalmers and Dorset where with the main body again, a few Ju.87’s escorted by Italian fighters attacked. They dived down to 1500 to 1000 feet. HMS Kenya leading the port column, and the Ohio last ship but one in the starboard column, had narrow escapes. One of the enemy aircraft crashed on board the Ohio just after having released it’s bomb after being damaged by gunfire from the Ohio and HMS Ashanti. Another aircraft was claimed to have been shot down by fighters from Malta that had been patrolling overhead since daybreak.\nArrivals at Malta 13-15 August 1942.\nAt 1050 hours, about 20 bombers, mostly Ju.88’s with a few Ju.87’s, came in to attack. Target was the Ohio and she received four or five near misses and her engines were disabled. At the same time the Rochester Castle in the port column was near-missed and set on fire but she continued with the convoy. The Dorset which was astern of her was hit and stopped. The convoy went on leaving the Dorset behind with the Ohio and two destroyers.\nAt 1125 hours the last air attack on the main body took place. Five Italian SM.79’s attacked with torpedoes and almost hit the Port Chalmers as the torpedo got stuck in the paravane. Further attacks on the main body were held of by fighters from Malta. At 1430 hours, four minesweepers from Malta joined the main body of the convoy, these were HMS Speedy (Lt.Cdr. A.E. Doran, RN, with the group’s commander A/Cdr. H.J.A.S. Jerome, RN on board), HMS Hebe, HMS Rye and HMS Heyte. Also with them were seven Motor Launches; ML 121, ML 126, ML 134, ML 135, ML 168, ML 459 and ML 462. HMS Rye and two of the ML’s were sent towards the damaged Ohio which was ‘vital for Malta’, according to A/Cdr. Jerome.\nAt 1600 hours, Rear-Admiral Burrough, set course to the west with his two cruisers and with five destroyers. The Port Chalmers, Melbourne Star and Rochester Castle arrived in Grand Harbour around 1800 hours with the force of A/Cdr. Jerome. The Rochester Castle was by that time very low in the water, she had just made it into port on time.\nOut were still the Ohio, Dorset and the Brisbane Star. The valuable Ohio had been helpless with HMS Penn and HMS Bramham. When HMS Rye arrived at 1730 hours, HMS Penn took the Ohio in tow. Meanwhile HMS Bramham was sent to the Dorset but soon afterwards German bombers came again and the ships were attacked repeatedly until dark. Both merchantman were hit around 1900 hours and the Dorset sank.\nAt daylight on the 14th HMS Ledbury arrived to help bringing the Ohio to Malta. HMS Speedy also soon arrived on the scene with two ML’s. The rest of his force he had sent to search for the Brisbane Star. At 1045 hours, enemy aircraft made their last attempt, causing the parting of the tow. Fighter from Malta shot down two of the attackers. The tow was passed again and the slow procession went on and in the morning of the 15th the vital tanker finally reached Malta.\nThe Brisbane Star had by then also arrived. She left the Tunisian coast at dusk on the 13th. Aircraft had attacked her unsuccessfully and one of the attackers was shot down by a Beaufighter escort that had been sent from Malta. She arrived at Malta in the afternoon of the 14th.\nItalian surface ships to operate against the convoy ?\nThe convoy had experienced the violence of the enemy in every shape except that of an attack by large surface ships. Yet Italian cruisers and destroyers had been at sea to intercept and attack it. Two light cruiser had left Cagliari in the evening of 11 August 1942 and the heavy cruisers Gorizia and Bolzano from Messina, and a light cruiser from Naples had sailed on the morning of the 12th. That evening reconnaissance aircraft reported one heavy and two light cruisers with eight destroyers about 80 nautical miles to the north of the western tip of Sicily and steering south. It would have been possible for this force to meet the convoy at dawn on the 13th so the shadowing aircraft was therefore ordered in plain language to illuminate and attack. This apparently influenced the Italians as they had limited air cover and they turned back at 0130/13 when near Cape San Vito. At 0140 hours the aircraft reported that it had dropped its bombs but no hits had been obtained. Similar orders were signalled, in plain language, to relief shadowers and to report the position of the enemy force to the benefit of imaginary Liberator bombers in case the Italians would change their minds and turn back. They however held on to the eastward.\nThe submarine HMS P 42 sighted them around 0800/13 off Stromboli and attacked with four torpedoes claiming two hits. She had in fact hit the heavy cruiser Bolzano which was able to proceed northwards and the light cruiser Muzio Attendolo which managed to reach Messina with her bows blown off. The other cruisers went to Naples. Following the attack P 42 was heavily depth charged by the destroyers but managed to escape.\nIn fact the following Italian ships had been at sea; heavy cruisers Gorizia, Trieste, Bolzano, light cruisers Eugenio di Savoia Raimondo Montecuccoli, Muzio Attendolo. They were escorted by eleven destroyers; Ascari, Aviere, Camicia Nera, Corsaro, Fuceliere, Geniere, Legionaro, Vincenzo Gioberti, Alfredo Oriani, Grecale and Maestrale.\nThe return to Gibraltar.\nThe British ships returning to Gibraltar had better fortune. Having left the convoy off Malta in the afternoon of the 13th, they rounded Cape Bon around 0130/14 and from that point until past Zembra Island they successful ran the gauntled of E-boats laying in wait.\nat 0450/14, near the Fratelli Rocks, a submarine fired torpedoes at HMS Ashanti from the surface. She was nearly rammed by HMS Kenya, which was next astern of the ‘flagship’ (Rear-Admiral Burrough was still in HMS Ashanti). The inevitable shadowers arrived soon after daylight to herald their air attacks that began at 0730 hours. They lasted until around 1315 hours. German bombers came in first with three attemps by a few Ju.88’s. This was followed by a more severe attack with about 30 bombers, Ju-88’s and Ju-87’s between 1030 and 1050 hours. An hour later 15 Savoia high-level bombers attacked followed until 1315 hours by torpedo-carrying Savoia’s. Around 20 aircraft attacking single or in pairs. Also aircraft are though to be laying mines ahead. Several ships were near missed, but no further damage was sustained. After these attacks the British were left alone and in the evening they joined ‘Force Z’.\nVice-Admiral Syfret had gone as far west as 01’E where he ordered the damaged carrier HMS Indomitable to proceed to Malta with HMS Rodney and a destroyer screen (which). He then turned back to the east to make rendez-vous with Rear-Admiral Burrough. They arrived at Gibraltar on the 15th.\nA few hours before they arrived the damaged HMS Nigeria and her escort had also entered port, as had HMS Tartar, HMS Eskimo and HMS Somali. On her way back HMS Nigeria had been attacked by torpedo-bombers and a submarine but she had not been hit.\nOut of the fourteen ships that had sailed only five arrived ‘safe’ at Malta. This was not a very high score also given the very heavy escort that had been provided also taken in mind that an aircraft carrier, a light cruiser, an AA cruiser an a destroyer had been lost and two heavy cruiser had been damaged. But the convoy had to meet very heavy air attacks by over 150 bombers and 80 torpedo aircraft, all in the space of two days. Also these aircraft were protected by fighter in much greater strength that the carriers and Malta could provide. And there were also the enemy submarines and E-boats.\nThe spirit in which to operation was carried out appears in Vice-Admiral Syfret’s report: ‘ Tribute has been paid to the personnel of His Majesty’s Ships, both the officers and men will desire to give first place to the conduct, courage, and determination of the masters, officers, and men of the merchant ships. The steadfast manner in which these ships pressed on their way to Malta through all attacks, answering every maneuvering order like a well trained fleet unit, was a most inspiring sight. Many of these fine men and their ships were lost. But the memory of their conduct will remain an inspiration to all who were privileged to sail with them. ‘ (14)\nADM 53/114625 + ADM 199/399\nADM 53/114626\nADM 53/114626 + ADM 53/114204 + ADM 199/1138\nADM 199/427\nADM 199/651 + ADM 234/353\nYou can help improve officers Harold Drew's page","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1309689"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7721320390701294,"wiki_prob":0.7721320390701294,"text":"Social > Hottest, driest year on record led to extreme bushfire season\nHottest, driest year on record led to extreme bushfire season\nThe Annual Climate Statement released today confirms 2019 was the nation’s warmest and driest year on record. It’s the first time since overlapping records began that Australia experienced both its lowest rainfall and highest temperatures in the same year.\nThe national rainfall total was 37 mm, or 11.7 per cent, below the 314.5 mm recorded in the previous driest year in 1902. The national average temperature was nearly 0.2 °C above the previous warmest year in 2013.\nGlobally, 2019 is likely to be the second-warmest year, with global temperatures about 0.8 °C above the 1961–1990 average. It has been the warmest year without the influence of El Niño.\nAcross the year, Australia experienced many extreme events including flooding in Queensland and large hail in New South Wales. However, due to prolonged heat and drought, the year began and ended with fires burning across the Australian landscape.\nThe effect of the long dry\nBushfire activity for the 2018–19 season began in late November 2018, when fires burned along a 600 km stretch of the central Queensland coast. Widespread fires later followed across Victoria and Tasmania throughout the summer.\nPersistent drought and record temperatures were a major driver of the fire activity, and the context for 2019 lies in the past three years of drought.\nThe dry conditions steadily worsened over 2019, resulting in Australia’s driest year on record, with area-average rainfall of just 277.6 mm (the 1961–1990 average is 465.2 mm).\nAlmost the entire continent experienced rainfall in the lowest 10th percentile over the year.\nRecord low rainfall affected the central and southern inland regions of the continent and the northeastern Murray–Darling Basin straddling the NSW and Queensland border. Many weather stations over central parts of Australia received less than 30 mm of rainfall for the year.\nEvery capital city recorded below-average annual rainfall. For the first time, national rainfall was below average in every month.\nRecord heat dominates the nation\n2019 was Australia’s warmest year on record, with the annual mean temperature 1.52 °C above the 1961–1990 average, surpassing the previous record of 1.33 °C above average in 2013.\nJanuary, February, March, April, July, October, November, and December were all amongst the ten warmest on record for Australian mean temperature for their respective months, with January and December exceeding their previous records by 0.98 °C and 1.08°C respectively.\nMaximum temperatures recorded an even larger departure from average of +2.09 °C for the year. This is the first time the nation has seen an anomaly of more than 2 °C, and about half a degree warmer than the previous record in 2013.\nThe year brought the nation’s six hottest days on record peaking at 41.9°C (18 December), the hottest week 40.5 °C (week ending 24 December), hottest month 38.6 °C (December 2019), and hottest season 36.9 °C (summer 2018–19).\nThe highest temperature for the year was 49.9 °C at Nullarbor (a new national December record) on 19 December and the coldest temperature was –12.0 °C at Perisher Valley on 20 June.\nKeith West in southeast South Australia recorded a maximum 49.2 °C on 20 December, while Dover in far southern Tasmania saw 40.1 °C on 2 March, the furthest south such high temperatures have been observed in Australia.\nAccumulating fire danger over 2019\nThe combination of prolonged record heat and drought led to record fire weather over large areas throughout the year, with destructive bushfires affecting all states, and multiple states at once in the final week of the year.\nMany fires were difficult to contain in regions where drought has been severe, such as northern NSW and southeast Queensland, or where below average rainfall has been persistent, such as southeast Australia.\nThe Forest Fire Danger Index, a measure of fire weather severity, accumulated over the month of December was the highest on record for that month, and the highest for any month when averaged over the whole of Australia.\nRecord-high daily index values for December were recorded at the very end of December around Adelaide and the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, East Gippsland in Victoria and the Monaro in NSW. These regions which experienced significant fire activity.\nDon’t forget the floods\nAmidst the dry, 2019 also included significant flooding across Queensland and the eastern Top End.\nHeavy rain fell from January into early February, with damaging floods around Townsville and parts of the western Peninsula and Gulf Country.\nTropical cyclone Trevor brought further heavy rainfall in April in the eastern Northern Territory and Queensland. Floodwaters eventually reached Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre which, amidst severe local rainfall deficiencies in South Australia, experienced its most significant filling since 2010–11.\nThere was a notable absence of rainfall on Australia’s snow fields during winter and spring which meant less snow melt. Snow cover was generous, particularly at higher elevations.\nWhat role did climate change play in 2019?\nThe climate each year reflects random variations in weather, slowly evolving natural climate drivers such as El Niño, and long-term trends through the influence of climate change.\nA strong and long-lived positive Indian Ocean Dipole—another natural climate driver—affected Australia from May until the end of the year, and played a major role in suppressing rainfall and raising temperatures for much of the year.\nSpring brought an unusual breakdown of the southern polar vortex which allowed westerly winds to affect mainland Australia. This reduced rainfall, raising temperature and contributing to the increased fire risk.\nClimate change continues to cause long-term changes to Australia’s climate. Conditions in 2019 were consistent with trends of declining rainfall in parts of the south, worsening fire seasons and rising temperatures.\nSubscribe to receive climate information via email and visit our website to view climate summaries for each State and Territory\nVideo—Annual Climate Statement 2019\n'This crisis has been unfolding for years': 4 photos of Australia from space, before and after the bushfires","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1514443"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6782311797142029,"wiki_prob":0.3217688202857971,"text":"Marvellous Car Collection of one of the Most Power Couple Beyonce and Jay-Z\nBeyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter is a famous American singer and songwriter is married to Shawn Corey Carter, known professionally as Jay-Z who is a renowned American rapper. They are amongst the most powerful couples married since April 4th, 2008. They both have often gifted vehicles to each other. Here are some cars which they own:\n1) Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Convertible I\nIt two-roadster that Jay-Z bought for Beyonce for her 25th birthday. It’s reportedly priced at around one million. It has 6.2liter engine offering a top speed of 114mph and goes from 0-60 in 10.3 seconds.\n2) Series 2 Alfa Romeo Spider\nIt is a two two-seater, four-cylinder, 132-hp, five-speed convertible cars whom this power couple owns.\n3) Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport\nBeyonce gifted Jay-Z Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport worth around USD1.5 to USD2 million on 41st birthday.\n4) Maybach Exelero\nJay-Z is fond of speed and luxury cars so he added up a Maybach Excelero which gives 60 mph within a tamer 4.4 seconds.\n5) Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet\nThis car rides at an average of 97 kph in 4.1 seconds and has a top speed of 306 kph.\n6) Pagani Zonda F\nIt is a mid-engined sports car with a top speed is 344 kph. It is equipped with a Mercedes-Benz AMG 7.3 litre V12 cylinder engine blasting it from 0-60 in an astounding 3.6 seconds and is able to reach a top speed of 214 mph.\n7) Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR\nIt 5.4-litre engine paired with its 5-speed transmission allows for the car to go from 0-60 in only 3.4 seconds, leaving Jay Z’s Zonda F in the dust, and hitting a top speed of 200 mph.\n8) Rolls-Royce Phantom\nIt comes with a 75L V12 engine cranking out 453 hp at 5,350 rpm. It has all the luxury amenities with cool interiors.\n9) Ferrari F430 Spider\nJay-Z has added one more gem to his luxury with Ferrari F430 Spider.\n10) The Carter Family Van\nThe Mercedes Benz Sprinter Limousine is a family van for them which has all the luxury amenities in it. It is priced at $ 1 million.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line355087"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6988455057144165,"wiki_prob":0.3011544942855835,"text":"E.M.R K.B. EDIRISINGHE, W.M K. PERERA, S.P JAYASOORTYA and A BAMUNUARACHCHI\nFish lipids are the main sources of a special type of fatty acids, known as omega 3 type polyunsaturated fatty acids, recognized as an important pharmaceutical drug to prevent a number of coronary heart diseases. Some of the fatty acids are essential fatty acids in all diets. The lipid content and fatty acid profile of 20 very common fish species were analyzed by gas chromatography. The lipid content was found to vary over a wide range (0.5 - 15% on wet basis), but most species contained less than 10%. The most abundant fatty acids in the fish examined were palmitic (C 16:0), oleic (C 18:1), eicosapentaenoic (C 20:5 n-3, EPA) and docosahexaenoic (C 22:6 n-3, DHA). Most small pelagics contained high levels (around 30% of total fatty acids) of omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega 3 PUFA). Among these species, the highest amounts of omega 3 PUFA were present in Yellowstripe scad (Selaroides leptolepis (Suraparawa)), Dorab-wolf herring (Chirocentrus dorab (Katuwalla)), Spotted sardinella (Amblygaster sirm (Hurulla)), Blacktip sardinella (Sardinella melannura (Salaya)), Toothpony (Gassa minita (Mas karalla)), White sardinella (Sardinella albello (Sudaya)) and these levels were 34.4, 33.9, 32.3, 32, 31.3 and 30.4% respectively. The lowest level of omega 3 PUFA, 7.1%, was reported in Silver sillago (Slilago sihama (Kalanda)). In most species studied, the total amount of omega 3 PUFA contributed for around 90% of the total PUFAs. The two most important omega 3 PUFAs, namely EPA and DHA contributed for nearly 85% of the total omega 3 PUFAs.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line269533"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.52236407995224,"wiki_prob":0.52236407995224,"text":"Home » Global » Attacks on Yemen intensify after medical volunteers turned away\nAttacks on Yemen intensify after medical volunteers turned away\nBy Caleb T. Maupin posted on June 1, 2015\nCaleb Maupin aboard the Iran Shahed Rescue Ship.\nThis report is one of several eyewitness accounts provided by International Action Center and FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) youth activist Caleb Maupin, who took part in a humanitarian aid mission to Yemen in May.\nTehran, May 29 — The mission of the Iran Shahed Rescue Ship to Yemen, as previously reported, was unsuccessful. Massive Saudi bombing of the Hodiedah port and 15 hired Sudanese mercenaries with rocket launchers made delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen impossible.\nThe 2,500 tons of medical supplies, food and water were handed over to the U.N. World Food Programme for distribution when Saudi terrorism made it impossible for us to deliver them to the people of Yemen.\nSince our ship docked in Djibouti and my return to Tehran, the Saudi bombing campaign has only increased. The total number of Yemenis now dead is estimated to be well over 4,000. The Saudi bombers, being refueled by the U.S. Air Force and directed by U.S. satellites, are specifically targeting the region of Hodiedah, where we intended to deliver the food and supplies.\nAccording to reports, the port of Hodiedah has been “completely destroyed” after days of relentless bombing. In addition, the Saudi airstrikes have targeted a medical university in Hodiedah. Twelve young Yemenis who were sitting in class, studying to become doctors or nurses, were killed. Scores of others have been wounded.\nHow can the Saudi military and its U.S. allies, or any rational human being, justify slaughtering noncombatant medical students?\nThis horrendous act may have been retaliation against the Red Crescent Society of Yemen because it dared collaborate with the Red Crescent Society of Iran in planning the delivery of humanitarian aid from our ship. This speculation fills me with feelings of extreme grief, sadness and anger.\nRisking their lives to help\nThere are many Red Crescent Society volunteers currently in Yemen. As a wealthy U.S.-backed autocratic kingdom unleashes its forces of destruction on one of the poorest countries on earth, those volunteers are stepping up and doing what must be done. The medical volunteers who are aiding the people in Yemen right now are risking their lives each day to bring aid to those in great danger.\nWhile I was on the Rescue Ship, I had the honor of having many in-depth conversations with Red Crescent Society volunteers. Many of them have spent years working in international operations. They have been all over the world, throughout the Middle East and to Latin America, Asia and Europe, and they have sometimes been in very dangerous situations.\nOne the volunteers told me his life story. He described how his two older brothers died in the Iraq-Iran war during the 1980s. He told of how his mother, after losing her two oldest sons in that horrific war, had psychological trauma for the rest of her life. He told of going to Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion as a Red Crescent Society volunteer. In Iraq, he was captured and spent months held prisoner by an armed faction. He was eventually able to escape in the chaos of the fighting.\nBecause I do not speak Farsi, I was unable to communicate with many of the others on board. If I had, I am sure I would heard many more amazing stories.\nA great honor\nWhen it was announced that our ship was unable to go to Yemen, these volunteers were filled with bitter disappointment. They wanted to go to Hodiedah and help those who needed them. They felt they had a moral responsibility to get to Yemen. They were so let down, unable to do what they had set out to do.\nThese volunteers are from a different country, half a world away from where I was born in Ohio. They have a different religion and a different political perspective than I do. Regardless, I still hold them up in the highest admiration. It was one of the greatest honors to be able to accompany them for two weeks. Especially as someone from the United States, a country which has so much blood on its hands, it means so much that I was trusted and welcomed onboard.\nThe actions of the Red Crescent Society volunteers point toward a side of human nature that the apologists for capitalism and neoliberalism simply do not acknowledge. Within the human spirit, there is a drive to help others or “stand with the oppressed,” as Shia Muslims put it.\nThough it is not rewarded in a global economic setup defined by profits, this kind of solidarity has not been, and will never be, driven from the human psyche.\nBeyond the bombs and cruise missiles, there is hope for a better world.\nRed Crescent Society\nGenerals over the White House","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1116909"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5265262722969055,"wiki_prob":0.4734737277030945,"text":"for the 2010-2018 Terms\nIn 2010-2018, they participated together in 350 signed decisions\nJoined the same opinions 264/350 75.4%\nDifferent opinions, same judgment 5/350 1.4%\nAgreed on judgment 284/350 81.1%\nDisagreed on judgment 66/350 18.9%\nTENET HOSPITALS LIMITED, A TEXAS LIMITED PARTNERSHIP D/B/A PROVIDENCE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, AND MICHAEL D. COMPTON, M.D. v. ELIZABETH RIVERA, AS NEXT FRIEND FOR M.R., No. 13-0096\nHARRIS COUNTY FLOOD CONTROL DISTRICT AND HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS v. EDWARD A. AND NORMA KERR, ET AL., No. 13-0303\nEL PASO FIELD SERVICES, L.P. AND GULFTERRA SOUTH TEXAS, L.P. F/K/A EL PASO SOUTH TEXAS, L.P. v. MASTEC NORTH AMERICA, INC. AND MASTEC, INC., No. 10-0648\nUNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY v. WILLIAM NAMI, No. 14-0901\nSTEVEN PAINTER; TONYA WRIGHT, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF EARL A. WRIGHT, III, DECEASED; VIRGINIA WEAVER, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS NEXT FRIEND OF A.A.C., A MINOR; AND TABITHA R. ROSELLO, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF ALBERT CARILLO, DECEASED v. AMERIMEX DRILLING I, LTD., No. 16-0120\nTHE FINANCE COMMISSION OF TEXAS, THE CREDIT UNION COMMISSION OF TEXAS, AND TEXAS BANKERS ASSOCIATION v. VALERIE NORWOOD, ELISE SHOWS, MARYANN ROBLES-VALDEZ, BOBBY MARTIN, PAMELA COOPER, AND CARLOS RIVAS, No. 10-0121\nOn Rehearing\nDYNEGY INC. v. TERRY W. YATES, INDIVIDUALLY, AND TERRY W. YATES, P.C., No. 11-0541\nPLAINS EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION COMPANY v. TORCH ENERGY ADVISORS INCORPORATED, No. 13-0597\nSEABRIGHT INSURANCE COMPANY v. MAXIMINA LOPEZ, BENEFICIARY OF CANDELARIO LOPEZ, DECEASED, No. 14-0272\nLEE C. RITCHIE, ET AL. v. ANN CALDWELL RUPE, AS TRUSTEE FOR THE DALLAS GORDON RUPE, III 1995 FAMILY TRUST, No. 11-0447\nBROOKSHIRE BROTHERS, LTD. v. JERRY ALDRIDGE, No. 10-0846\nLUBBOCK COUNTY WATER CONTROL AND IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT AND TOMMY FISHER, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE LUBBOCK COUNTY WATER CONTROL AND IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT v. CHURCH & AKIN, L.L.C., No. 12-1039\nIN RE DEEPWATER HORIZON, No. 13-0670\nIN THE INTEREST OF H.S., A MINOR CHILD, No. 16-0715\nMICHAEL MCINTYRE AND LAURA MCINTYRE, INDIVIDUALLY AND ON BEHALF OF THEIR CHILDREN, K.M., L.M., C.M., M.M., AND L.M. v. EL PASO INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, DR. LORENZO GARCIA, AND MARK MENDOZA, No. 14-0732\nIN RE NATIONWIDE INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA, ET AL., No. 15-0328\nAMERICAN K-9 DETECTION SERVICES, LLC AND HILL COUNTRY DOG CENTER, LLC v. LATASHA FREEMAN, No. 15-0932\nNOBLE ENERGY, INC. v. CONOCOPHILLIPS COMPANY, No. 15-0502\nBARBARA BATY v. OLGA FUTRELL, CRNA, AND COMPLETE ANESTHESIA CARE, P.C., No. 16-0164\nCHESAPEAKE EXPLORATION, L.L.C. AND CHESAPEAKE OPERATING, INC. v. MARTHA ROWAN HYDER, INDIVIDUALLY, AND AS INDEPENDENT EXECUTRIX AND TRUSTEE UNDER THE WILL OF ELTON M. HYDER, JR., DECEASED, AND AS TRUSTEE UNDER THE ELTON M. HYDER JR. RESIDUARY TRUST, AND AS TRUSTEE OF THE ELTON M. HYDER JR. MARITAL TRUST; BRENT ROWAN HY, No. 14-0302\nUNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON v. SANDRA WILLIAMS AND STEVE WILLIAMS, No. 13-0338\nIN RE MICHAEL N. BLAIR, No. 11-0441\nROBERT MASTERSON, MARK BROWN, GEORGE BUTLER, CHARLES WESTBROOK, RICHEY OLIVER, CRAIG PORTER, SHARON WEBER, JUNE SMITH, RITA BAKER, STEPHANIE PEDDY, BILLIE RUTH HODGES, DALLAS CHRISTIAN, AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD v. THE DIOCESE OF NORTHWEST TEXAS, THE REV. CELIA ELLERY, DON GRIFFIS, AND MICHAEL RYAN, No. 11-0332\nSTATE OF TEXAS v. ANGELIQUE NAYLOR AND SABINA DALY, No. 11-0114\nHALEY HEBNER AND DARRIN CHARLES SCOTT, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS NEXT FRIENDS OF R.M.S., A MINOR v. NAGAKRISHNA REDDY, M.D., AND NEW BRAUNFELS OB/GYN, P.A., No. 14-0593\nBCCA APPEAL GROUP, INC. v. CITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS, No. 13-0768\nTEXAS DEPARTMENT OF INSURANCE, DIVISION OF WORKERS’ COMPENSATION v. BONNIE JONES AND AMERICAN HOME ASSURANCE COMPANY, No. 15-0025\nJOHN SAMPSON v. THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN, No. 14-0745\nTERESA GAROFOLO v. OCWEN LOAN SERVICING, L.L.C., No. 15-0437\nDEBRA C. GUNN, M.D., OBSTETRICAL AND GYNECOLOGICAL ASSOCIATES, P.A., AND OBSTETRICAL AND GYNECOLOGICAL ASSOCIATES P.L.L.C. v. ANDRE MCCOY, AS PERMANENT GUARDIAN OF SHANNON MILES MCCOY, AN INCAPACITATED PERSON, No. 16-0125\nCENTERPOINT BUILDERS GP, LLC AND CENTERPOINT BUILDERS, LTD. v. TRUSSWAY, LTD., No. 14-0650\nBANKDIRECT CAPITAL FINANCE, LLC, A SUBSIDIARY OF TEXAS CAPITAL BANK, N.A. v. PLASMA FAB, LLC AND RUSSELL MCCANN, No. 15-0635\nKEN PAXTON, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS v. CITY OF DALLAS, No. 15-0073\nWADE BRADY v. LEAANNE KLENTZMAN AND CARTER PUBLICATIONS, INC. D/B/A THE WEST FORT BEND STAR, INC., No. 15-0056\nUSAA TEXAS LLOYDS COMPANY v. GAIL MENCHACA, No. 14-0721\nRON SOMMERS, AS CHAPTER 7 TRUSTEE FOR ALABAMA AND DUNLAVY, LTD., FLAT STONE II, LTD., AND FLAT STONE, LTD., AND AS SUCCESSOR IN INTEREST TO JAY COHEN, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS TRUSTEE OF THE JHC TRUSTS I AND II v. SANDCASTLE HOMES, INC., No. 15-0847\nWAL-MART STORES, INCORPORATED v. DORIS FORTE, O.D., ON BEHALF OF HERSELF AND ALL OTHER SIMILARLY SITUATED PERSONS; BRIDGET LEESANG, O.D.; DAVID WIGGINS, O.D.; AND JOHN BOLDAN, O.D., No. 15-0146\nTHE CITY OF ROUND ROCK, TEXAS AND ROUND ROCK FIRE CHIEF LARRY HODGE v. JAIME RODRIGUEZ AND ROUND ROCK FIRE FIGHTERS ASSOCIATION, No. 10-0666\nTHE CITY OF HOUSTON, TEXAS v. ROGER BATES, MICHAEL L. SPRATT AND DOUGLAS SPRINGER, No. 11-0778\nTHE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF FORT WORTH, ET AL. v. THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, ET AL., No. 11-0265\nGEOFFREY DUGGER v. MARY ANN ARREDONDO, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF JOEL MARTINEZ, DECEASED, No. 11-0549\nCITY OF LORENA, TEXAS v. BMTP HOLDINGS, L.P., No. 11-0554\nTEXAS ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE v. MICHELE NGAKOUE, No. 11-0686\nLIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY v. RICKY ADCOCK, No. 11-0934\nIN RE STEPHANIE LEE, No. 11-0732\nKACHINA PIPELINE COMPANY, INC. v. MICHAEL D. LILLIS, No. 13-0596\nCITY OF SAN ANTONIO v. ROXANA TENORIO, INDIVIDUALLY AND ON BEHALF OF PEDRO TENORIO, DECEASED, No. 16-0356\nBENEDICT G. WENSKE AND ELIZABETH WENSKE v. STEVE EALY AND DEBORAH EALY, No. 16-0353\nJEFFERSON COUNTY, TEXAS v. JEFFERSON COUNTY CONSTABLES ASSOCIATION, No. 16-0498\nFORT WORTH TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY, MCDONALD TRANSIT ASSOCIATES, INC., MCDONALD TRANSIT, INC., AND LESHAWN VAUGHN v. MICHELE RODRIGUEZ AND NEW HAMPSHIRE INSURANCE COMPANY, No. 16-0542\nUNION CARBIDE CORPORATION v. DAISY E. SYNATZSKE AND GRACE ANNETTE WEBB, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS REPRESENTATIVES AND CO-EXECUTRIXES OF THE ESTATE OF JOSEPH EMMITE, SR., JOSEPH EMMITE, JR., DOROTHY A. DAY, VERA J. GIALMALVA AND JAMES R. EMMITE, No. 12-0617\nIN RE FORD MOTOR COMPANY, No. 12-0957\nSUSAN ELAINE BOSTIC, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HEIRS AND ESTATE OF TIMOTHY SHAWN BOSTIC, DECEASED; HELEN DONNAHOE; AND KYLE ANTHONY BOSTIC v. GEORGIA-PACIFIC CORPORATION, No. 10-0775\nTHE BOEING COMPANY AND THE GREATER KELLY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY N/K/A THE PORT AUTHORITY OF SAN ANTONIO v. KEN PAXTON, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS, No. 12-1007\nKING FISHER MARINE SERVICE, L.P. v. JOSE H. TAMEZ, No. 13-0103\nIN RE JOHN DOE A/K/A “TROOPER”, No. 13-0073\nIN THE INTEREST OF K.M.L., A CHILD, No. 12-0728\nGREATER HOUSTON PARTNERSHIP v. KEN PAXTON, TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL; AND JIM JENKINS, No. 13-0745\nCANTEY HANGER, LLP v. PHILIP GREGORY BYRD, LUCY LEASING CO., L.L.C., AND PGB AIR, INC., No. 13-0861\nBARBARA D. COSGROVE, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS THE TRUSTEE OF THE CHARLES AND BARBARA COSGROVE FAMILY REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST v. MICHAEL CADE AND BILLIE CADE, No. 14-0346\nMCGINNES INDUSTRIAL MAINTENANCE CORPORATION v. THE PHOENIX INSURANCE COMPANY AND THE TRAVELERS INDEMNITY COMPANY, No. 14-0465\nGENIE INDUSTRIES, INC. v. RICKY MATAK, BELINDA MATAK AND MISTY SONNIER, AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF WALTER PETE LOGAN MATAK, DECEASED, No. 13-0042\nRSUI INDEMNITY COMPANY v. THE LYND COMPANY, No. 13-0080\nRICHARD T. ARCHER, DAVID B. ARCHER, CAROL ARCHER BUGG, JOHN V. ARCHER, KAREN ARCHER BALL, AND SHERRI ARCHER v. T. MARK ANDERSON AND CHRISTINE ANDERSON, AS CO-EXECUTORS OF THE ESTATE OF TED ANDERSON, No. 16-0256\nPHILADELPHIA INDEMNITY INSURANCE COMPANY, A/S/O MIRSAN, L.P., D/B/A SIENNA RIDGE APARTMENTS v. CARMEN A. WHITE, No. 14-0086\nALICE M. WOOD AND DANIEL L. WOOD v. HSBC BANK USA, N.A. AND OCWEN LOAN SERVICING, L.L.C., No. 14-0714\nPRESTON A. OCHSNER v. VICTORIA V. OCHSNER, No. 14-0638\nJASON R. SEARCY, AS TRUSTEE OF THE EXEMPT ASSETS TRUST v. PAREX RESOURCES, INC., No. 14-0293\nKBMT OPERATING COMPANY, LLC, KBMT LICENSE COMPANY, LLC, BRIAN BURNS, JACKIE SIMIEN AND TRACY KENNICK v. MINDA LAO TOLEDO, No. 14-0456\nMIKE MORATH, COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION v. STERLING CITY INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, HIGHLAND INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, AND BLACKWELL CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, No. 14-0986\nTHE STATE OF TEXAS EX REL. GEORGE DARRELL BEST v. PAUL REED HARPER, No. 16-0647\nAMANDA BRADSHAW v. BARNEY SAMUEL BRADSHAW, No. 16-0328\nETC MARKETING, LTD. v. HARRIS COUNTY APPRAISAL DISTRICT, No. 15-0687\nU.S. SHALE ENERGY II, LLC, RAYMOND B. ROUSH, RUTHIE ROUSH DODGE, AND DAVID E. ROUSH v. LABORDE PROPERTIES, L.P., AND LABORDE MANAGEMENT, LLC, No. 17-0111\nHELIX ENERGY SOLUTIONS GROUP, INC., HELIX WELL OPS, INC., AND HELIX OFFSHORE INTERNATIONAL, INC. v. KELVIN GOLD, No. 16-0075\nUNITED SCAFFOLDING, INC. v. JAMES LEVINE, No. 15-0921\nPETROLEUM SOLUTIONS, INC. v. BILL HEAD D/B/A BILL HEAD ENTERPRISES AND TITEFLEX, INC., No. 11-0425\nAC INTERESTS, L.P., FORMERLY AMERICAN COATINGS, L.P. v. TEXAS COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, No. 16-0260\nALAMO HEIGHTS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT v. CATHERINE CLARK, No. 16-0244\nIN RE NATIONAL LLOYDS INSURANCE COMPANY, WARDLAW CLAIMS SERVICE, INC. AND IDEAL ADJUSTING, INC., No. 15-0591\nIN RE NORTH CYPRESS MEDICAL CENTER OPERATING CO., LTD., No. 16-0851\nMURPHY EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION COMPANY—USA, A DELAWARE CORPORATION v. SHIRLEY ADAMS, CHARLENE BURGESS, WILLIE MAE HERBST JASIK, WILLIAM ALBERT HERBST, HELEN HERBST, AND R. MAY OIL & GAS COMPANY, LTD., No. 16-0505\nWAUSAU UNDERWRITERS INSURANCE COMPANY v. JAMES WEDEL AND MICHELLE WEDEL, No. 17-0462\nPLAINSCAPITAL BANK v. WILLIAM MARTIN, No. 13-0337\nKEVIN T. MORTON v. HUNG NGUYEN AND CAROL S. NGUYEN, No. 12-0539\nHIGHLAND HOMES LTD. v. THE STATE OF TEXAS, No. 12-0604\nRAHUL K. NATH, M.D. v. TEXAS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL AND BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, No. 12-0620\nASHISH PATEL, ANVERALI SATANI, NAZIRA MOMIN, MINAZ CHAMADIA, AND VIJAY LAKSHMI YOGI v. TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF LICENSING AND REGULATION, ET AL., No. 12-0657\nAMERICO LIFE, INC., AMERICO FINANCIAL LIFE AND ANNUITY INSURANCE COMPANY, GREAT SOUTHERN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, THE OHIO STATE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, AND NATIONAL FARMERS UNION LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY v. ROBERT L. MYER AND STRIDER MARKETING GROUP, INC., No. 12-0739\nZACHRY CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION v. PORT OF HOUSTON AUTHORITY OF HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS, No. 12-0772\nGARY WAYNE JASTER v. COMET II CONSTRUCTION, INC., JOE H. SCHNEIDER, LAURA H. SCHNEIDER, AND AUSTIN DESIGN GROUP, No. 12-0804","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line284329"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9029454588890076,"wiki_prob":0.9029454588890076,"text":"Yoko Narahashi’s “Hold My Hand” Pays Tribute to Playwright Masayuki Imai\nEvent Report2016.04.23Yoko Narahashi’s “Hold My Hand” Pays Tribute to Playwright Masayuki Imai\nBack in 1995, Yoko Narahashi directed her first feature “Winds of God” an adaptation of the play by Masayuki Imai. 20 years later, Narahashi announced at the Kyoto International Film Festival, that she was working on a follow-up – just months after Imai died, age 54.\nThe duo had already begun casting when Imai passed, with actress Nanami playing meeting the famous playwright just once, at her audition. Nanami, who studied acting in Los Angeles, joined Narahashi at the Okinawa International Movie Festival along with fellow cast member Sumire.\nThe film tells the story of Makoto, played by Jay Kabira, who suffers from a slight learning disability that causes him to be bullied in school. Makoto meets Sakura, who suffers from a similar affliction, and the two wed. Later in life, Makoto recalls his life with Sakura, when he meets Reiko (Sumire), and the two travel to Ise Shrine in Amanohashidate, Kyoto.\n“It’s not a vague story, it’s very very clear” says Narahashi. “It’s like a modern classic really, it’s been staged and performed all over Japan as a theatre piece and I’m thinking there is another idea to put in there to make it in to an international film if it’s possible.”\nNarahashi expressed her hope that the audience will come away touched by the sentiment of the movie, “being happy with what [they] have, of life itself, of trying to live life fully, as Masayuki did.”\n“The day I had an audition it was my first time to meet Imai Masayuki-san and it was the last time,” said Nanami. “As we acted together I could fee how he feels, we were connected.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line31002"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7448937296867371,"wiki_prob":0.7448937296867371,"text":"(-) 370 - Commerce/Housing Credit (26)\n(-) House Committee on Agriculture (1)\nHouse Committee on Small Business (9)\n(-) House Committee on the Budget (1)\n(-) House Committee on the Judiciary (18)\nSenate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (6)\nS. 3778, Small Business Reauthorization and Improvements Act of 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on August 2, 2006\nH.R. 1956, Business Activity Tax Simplification Act of 2005\nCost Estimate July 11, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as reported by the House Committee on Judiciary on June 28, 2006\nH.R. 4127, Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA)\nCost Estimate July 6, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary on May 26, 2006\nH.R. 5417, Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary on May 25, 2006\nH.R. 4411, Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006\nCost Estimate May 26, 2006\nH.R. 4742, A bill to amend title 35, United States Code, to allow the Director of the Patent and Trademark Office to waive statutory provisions governing patents and trademarks in certain emergencies\nCost Estimate March 27, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary on March 15, 2006\nH.R. 4709, Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act of 2006\nCost Estimate March 9, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary on March 2, 2006\nH.R. 3505, Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2005\nCost Estimate February 16, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as ordered reported by the House Committee on the Judiciary on February 15, 2006\nH.R. 4473, CFTC Reauthorization Act of 2005\nCost Estimate February 3, 2006\nCost estimate for the bill as passed by the House of Representatives on December 14, 2005\nH.R. 4636, Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Conforming Amendments\nEstimate of direct spending and revenues effects for the bill as cleared by the Congress on December 22, 2005","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line199368"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8537561297416687,"wiki_prob":0.8537561297416687,"text":"LA Art Association\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Art_Association:\nThe Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) is a membership-based, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that supports Southern California artists. LAAA’s mission is to provide opportunities, resources, services and exhibition venues for artists living in Southern California, with an emphasis on emerging talent. Founded in 1925, LAAA has launched the art careers of many celebrated artists and has played a central role in the formation of Los Angeles’ arts community.\nNotable LAAA Artists[edit]\nLAAA has approximately 300 artist members. Through LAAA’s exposure to notable curators, gallery directors and collectors, artists have exhibited in prestigious museums, international art fairs and commercial galleries.\nBorn to Azerbaijani parents in Tehran, Iran in 1984, Marjan Vayghan immigrated to the United States in the Spring of 1995, settling with her family in Los Angeles, California. Marjan continues to live alternately between Teheran and Los Angeles. Her practice is informed by this context of movement and flexible citizenship across both geographical and cultural spaces, and the multiple realities these spaces engender. Vayghan’s solo exhibition at Gallery 825 received wide press and publication, including an interview with the Huffington Post.\nMei Xian Qiu has had two solo museum exhibitions in New York City and in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown in Photo LA, Art Platform and at the Ping Pong exhibition during Art Basel and Art Basel Miami. Qiu has been featured in ZOOM Photographic Art Magazine, Fabrik Magazine and Artweek.LA.\nMeeson Pae Yang‘s solo exhibitions and projects have been shown internationally and nationally at Galerie Kashya Hildebrand (Zurich, Switzerland), FuXin Gallery (Shanghai, China), ArtHK (Hong Kong, China), ARCO (Madrid, Spain), Contemporary Istanbul (Istanbul, Turkey), and LAUNCHLA (Los Angeles, CA). Yang is a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation’s California New Visions Award, the Durfee Foundation’s ARC award, the Burkhardt Foundation Award, and the Alpay Award. Yang has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, Art Ltd Magazine, Theme Magazine, the Korea Times, and the Los Angeles Times.\nJ.T. Burke worked for 20 years as a nationally recognized advertising photographer and commercial director. In 2010, he mounted his first public exhibition of personal work that was shown in Barcelona Spain, Bristol UK and Santa Barbara, CA. His unique photo digital collage works have been exhibited in galleries and art fairs in New York city and throughout California.\nYaYa Chou has had solo exhibitions at den contemporary art in West Hollywood, Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana, and Gallery 825. Her work was included in group exhibitions at Museum of Modern Art, NY, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, VA, and several southern California galleries. She is the recipient of the 2011 Fellowship at the Lucas Artists Residency, Montalvo Arts Center, CA, and twice she was awarded the Durfee Foundation Grant (2010 and 2007). Chou has received several honors and awards for her animated films.\nToday, LAAA continues to play a central role in the Los Angeles arts community by providing artist members and the public with exceptional exhibitions and programs, as well as a forum for exchange and education through lectures, workshops and networking opportunities. LAAA serves a broad cross section of artists of all mediums, career levels and socio-economic backgrounds, including those from low income communities. By supporting the emerging talent at the onset of their career path, LAAA hopes to influence all the cultural stakeholder groups in Los Angeles and contribute to the cultural identity of the community. LAAA pledges to provide emerging artists with the experience, education and exposure needed to create and sustain a career in the arts.\nhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Art_Association","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1161506"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6210407614707947,"wiki_prob":0.3789592385292053,"text":"Baton Rouge, LA – August 27, 2014 – Lamar Advertising Company (Nasdaq: LAMR), a leading owner and operator of outdoor advertising and logo sign displays, announces that its board of directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.83 per share payable on September 30, 2014, to stockholders of record of Lamar’s Class A common stock and Class B common stock on September 22, 2014.\nAs previously announced, Lamar expects to elect to be treated as a real estate investment trust (“REIT”) for federal income tax purposes effective January 1, 2014. To qualify for REIT status commencing with its 2014 taxable year, Lamar must distribute to its stockholders by the end of 2014 all of its pre-REIT accumulated earnings and profits, if any. In addition, as a REIT, Lamar will be required to distribute annually to its stockholders an amount equal to at least 90% of its REIT taxable income (determined without regard to the dividends paid deduction and by excluding net capital gain). Our REIT taxable income generally does not include income earned by our taxable REIT subsidiaries, or TRSs, except to the extent the TRSs pay dividends to the REIT. We expect to have net operating loss carry forwards, or NOLs, as of the effective time of our REIT conversion. To the extent we use these NOLs to offset our REIT taxable income, the required distributions to stockholders would be reduced. However, in this case, we may be subject to the alternative minimum tax.\nAs a result of its expected REIT election, Lamar previously provided its expectations for the aggregate amount of its pre-REIT accumulated earnings and profits of approximately $40 million. Currently, Lamar’s board of directors does not expect to make a special distribution to its stockholders on account of its pre-REIT accumulated earnings and profits. We expect that the amounts declared and paid in connection with this dividend and the other regular quarterly dividends we have paid and expect to pay in 2014 will be in an amount sufficient to enable us to distribute our non-REIT accumulated earnings and profits no later than December 31, 2014.\nThe amount, timing and frequency of future distributions will be at the sole discretion of Lamar’s board of directors and will be declared based upon various factors, a number of which may be beyond our control, including our financial condition and operating cash flows, the amount required to maintain REIT status and reduce any income and excise taxes that we otherwise would be required to pay, limitations on distributions in our existing and future debt instruments, our ability to utilize NOLs to offset, in whole or in part, our distribution requirements, limitations on our ability to fund distributions using cash generated through our TRSs and other factors that Lamar’s board of directors may deem relevant. There is no certainty as to the timing or amount of any future distributions.\nThis press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Lamar Advertising Company’s goals, beliefs, expectations, strategies, objectives, plans, future operating results and underlying assumptions, and other statements that are not necessarily based on historical facts. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the current estimate of pre-REIT accumulated earnings and profits, the expectation to elect REIT status, the expected timing and effect of that election and the expected timing and amount of distributions. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. For additional information regarding factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in our forward-looking statements, we refer you to the risk factors included in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2013, as supplemented by any risk factors contained in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. We caution investors not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this document. These statements speak only as of the date of this document, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the statements, except as may be required by law.\nLamar Advertising Company is a leading outdoor advertising company currently operating over 150 outdoor advertising companies in 44 states, Canada and Puerto Rico, logo businesses in 23 states and the province of Ontario, Canada and over 60 transit advertising franchises in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.\nCompany Contact: Buster Kantrow\nLamar Advertising Renews Transit Contract with City of Kingston\nLamar Advertising Company (Nasdaq: LAMR) renewed its transit contract with the City of Kingston for an additional five year term, giving advertisers the opportunity to display messages on the interiors and exteriors of buses in Kingston, ON.\nWi-Fi Enhanced Bus Ads Hit the Streets of Vancouver\nCommuters in Vancouver, BC can now surf the internet while they cruise around the city on public transit buses, thanks to a new campaign from TELUS and Lamar Advertising Company. Lamar launched Vancouver’s first Wi-Fi full wrap advertisement on three public transit buses for the pilot project, which started in August and will run for the next six months.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line69788"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5842085480690002,"wiki_prob":0.5842085480690002,"text":"Written By: Ann Napolitano\nNarrated By: Cassandra Campbell\nPublisher: Viking UK\nBrought to you by Penguin.\n'Astonishing' Marian Keyes\nA luminous, life-affirming novel about a 12-year-old boy who is the sole survivor of a deadly plane crash\nOne summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles. There are 192 passengers aboard: among them a young woman taking a pregnancy test in the airplane toilet; a Wall Street millionaire flirting with the air hostess; an injured soldier returning from Afghanistan; and two beleaguered parents moving across the country with their adolescent sons, bickering over who gets the window seat. When the plane suddenly crashes in a field in Colorado, the younger of these boys, 12-year-old Edward Adler, is the sole survivor.\nDear Edward depicts Edward's life in the crash's aftermath as he struggles to make sense of the meaning of his survival, the strangeness of his sudden fame, and find his place in the world without his family. In his new home with his aunt and uncle, the only solace comes from his friendship with the girl next door, Shay. Together Edward and Shay make a startling discovery: hidden in his uncle's garage are sacks of letters from the relatives of the other passengers, addressed to Edward.\nAs Edward comes of age against the backdrop of sudden tragedy, he must confront some of life's most profound questions: how do we make the most of the time we are given? And what does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?\n'A rich, big-hearted tapestry. Fans of Room and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close will be spellbound by Dear Edward' Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists\n'A profoundly beautiful, page-turning story of mystery, loss, and wonder' Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley and The Good Thief\n'Dear Edward is a masterpiece that should be at the top of everyone's reading list.' J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions\n'I loved Dear Edward so, so much. It made me laugh and weep. Magnificent!' Lily King, author of Euphoria\n© Ann Napolitano 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020\nby Ann Napolitano\nThis title is due for release on January 14, 2020.\nThis title is due for release on January 14, 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line754591"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6367900371551514,"wiki_prob":0.36320996284484863,"text":"Posts tagged \"Good Time\"\n61st BFI London Film Festival\nEvents, Features, Film, Review | by Loose Lips — October 16, 2017\nTags: 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute), 61st BFI London Film Festival, A Fantastic Woman, Abu, Bad Genius, BFI, BFI London Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival 2017, Brawl in Cell Block 99, Breathe, Brigsby Bear, Call Me By Your Name, Downsizing, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Foxtrot, Gemini, Good Manners, Good Time, Ingrid Goes West, Jailbreak, Last Flag Flying, Lean on Pete, LFF, London Film Festival, Loving Vincent, Memoir of a Murderer, Nico 1988, No Stone Unturned, Person to Person, Pickups, Stronger, The Breadwinner, The Cured, The Florida Project, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lovers, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), The Party, The Shape of Water, Thoroughbreds, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Wonderstruck, Wrath of Silence\n61st BFI London Film Festival October 4th-15th, 2017 Various London Venues by Joanna Orland and Richard Hamer The 2017 BFI London Film Festival brought world famous movie stars, European premieres, and cinematic highlights from Cannes, Venice, TIFF and Sundance to the UK capital. Alongside showcasing a handful of the best from other fests, this year’s […]\nBFI London Film Festival: Good Time\nEvents, Features, Film, Review | by Loose Lips — October 4, 2017\nTags: 61st BFI London Film Festival, Barkhad Abdi, Benny Safdie, BFI, BFI London Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival 2017, Buddy Duress, Good Time, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Josh Safdie, LFF, LFF 2017, London Film Festival, Oneohtrix Point Never, Robert Pattinson, Safdie Brothers\nGood Time Directed by Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie Starring Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Buddy Duress and Barkhad Abdi Screening at LFF October 5th, 8th, 2017 Watch on iTunes US by Joanna Orland Robert Pattinson comes of age as an actor in Benny and Josh Safdie’s stylishly raw thriller Good Time. Connie […]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1512521"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6801934838294983,"wiki_prob":0.3198065161705017,"text":"Glennda Fisher\nGlennda M. Fisher, 60, of Uniondale, IN, and having ties to Huntington County, IN, died Thursday, August 1, 2019, at 3:46 p.m. at Visiting Nurse and Hospice in Fort Wayne.\nMrs. Fisher was a 1977 graduate of Homestead High School. She had worked as an insurance biller for several years for Wells Community Hospital, Bluffton Regional and Lutheran Hospital. She was a member of Zanesville United Methodist Church, where she volunteered and helped with Upwards sports.\nShe was born Oct. 22, 1958, in Bluffton to Robert R. and Beverly J. Platt Elzey. Her mother survives in Uniondale. She married Gary Fisher on Dec. 6, 1980, in Markle, and he also survives.\nAdditional survivors include two sons, Stacey (Melissa) Fisher, of Uniondale, and Kyle (Shelby Engle) Fisher, of Bluffton; and five grandchildren, Kaylee Fisher, Madison Fisher, Camden Fisher and Kenley Fisher, all of Uniondale, and Ryker Engle, of Bluffton.\nShe was preceded in death by a daughter, Nicole Fisher.\nCalling is Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2019, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Myers Funeral Home Markle Chapel, 415 N. Lee St., Markle. A funeral service will be held Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2019, at 10 a.m., with one hour of calling prior to the service, at the funeral home. Interment will be at the Uniontown Cemetery in Zanesville.\nMemorials are to Visiting Nurse and Hospice in care of Myers Funeral Home, PO Box 403, Markle, IN 46770.\nThe online guest registry may be signed at www.myersfuneralhomes.com.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line355235"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5043621063232422,"wiki_prob":0.4956378936767578,"text":"How Donald Trump thinks about Iran\nThomas Wright Tuesday, January 7, 2020\nOn October 6, 1980 Donald Trump was interviewed by Rona Barrett, one of America’s most famous gossip columnists, on NBC. It was several weeks before Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the presidential election and near the end of the Iran hostage crisis in which the Iranian regime took 52 American diplomats and citizens prisoner after the embassy was stormed and then held them for 444 days.\nDirector - Center on the United States and Europe\nSenior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy\nTwitter thomaswright08\nIt was a long and meandering interview about Trump’s story to date (he was then 34). About half way though, Barrett asked Trump if he could make America perfect how would he do it. Trump replied that America “should really be a country that gets the respect of other countries.” The exchange continued:\nDonald Trump: ….The Iranian situation is a case in point. That they hold our hostages is just absolutely, and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries. I honestly don’t think they’d do it with other countries.\nRona Barrett: Obviously you’re advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, et cetera, and brought our boys out like Vietnam.\nDonald Trump: I absolutely feel that, yes. I don’t think there’s any question, and there is no question in my mind. I think right now we’d be an oil-rich nation, and I believe that we should have done it, and I’m very disappointed that we didn’t do it, and I don’t think anybody would have held us in abeyance.\nAs historians Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman have observed, this interview is the first known comment by Trump on U.S. foreign policy.\nFast forward to January 4, 2020, a day after the U.S. drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani. Trump tweeted:\n….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!\nOne of the puzzles about Trump’s strike on Soleimani is why he did it and what he will do next. His administration has pursued a very hawkish policy on Iran beginning with the travel ban, tough new sanctions, walking away from the Iran nuclear deal, and ratcheting up pressure in the year that followed. But, in recent months Trump tacked in a different direction. He did not fire back after the September attacks on Saudi oil facilities. He has professed not to care about the Middle East beyond the oil and ISIS. He seems to want to avoid war, particularly in an election year. And, he was desperate for talks with the Iranian leadership, going so far as to try to surprise the Iranians by dialing into a meeting between President Rouhani and President Macron on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.\nThe historical record offers an answer. The Iranian revolution, which led to the hostage crisis and an energy crisis, was one of Trump’s formative experiences in thinking about America’s role in the world. In the years that followed, he became obsessed with the symbolism of respect (and the acquisition of oil). He was furious that allies did not pay fealty to the United States. He was outraged when foreign leaders did not meet the American president at their plane. The only time he became frustrated with Vladimir Putin in office was when he looked as if he was disrespecting Trump’s military strength — such as when Russian planes buzzed America’s ships or when the Russians produced a map showing Mar-a-Lago within range of their nuclear weapons. Trump does not hate Iran per se — his desire for talks is evidence of that — but he does have an obsession with avoiding a humiliation. For Trump, the embassy protests looked like a mash-up of 1979 with Benghazi — the ultimate challenge to his own perception of himself as a strongman.\nIran Reconsidered\nBy Suzanne Maloney\nAll Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power\nBy Thomas Wright\nThere are contradictory reports of the decisionmaking process around the Soleimani strike. Some reports say that the Pentagon added the option as a throw-away to make the other option seem more reasonable. A report in the Washington Post says Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper had been trying to get Trump to sign on for some time. The Post report may be an attempt by Pompeo and Esper to claim credit and defuse charges of incompetence, but in any event, a consistent element of all reports is that Trump did not sign on to the strike until after the Iranian backed protests outside the embassy.\nTrump often lashes out at people after he thinks they criticized him, even if a fight does not serve his interests — think about his attack on the parents of the fallen U.S. soldier Humayun Khan or his cruel comment about Debbie Dingel. He has the same reaction to actions that undermine his own image of America as a strong and unrivaled nation while he is at the helm. He would almost certainly not have responded the same way if Iran had continued to hit U.S. allies or to make strategic gains in Iraq.\nThe killing of Soleimani is a strategic error. It provides short-term gratification upon the demise of a man responsible for the deaths of many Americans, but it damages U.S. interests in the region and beyond. However, many of the downsides mean very little to Trump. He does not care that Iraq might kick U.S. troops out as long as they pay him back for the base. Likewise for Iran abrogating elements of the nuclear deal. He does not mind that this undermines the protest movement in Iraq or in Iran. He cannot envisage the return of ISIS. He couldn’t care less that that the Saudis now feel in imminent danger and want a de-escalation. As for international law and creating a precedent for targeted killings of government officials, forget it.\nIran knows how to bide its time. Don’t expect immediate retaliation for Soleimani.\nSuzanne Maloney\nIran spent years building a cyber arsenal. Will it unleash that arsenal now?\nChris Meserole\nAround the halls: Experts react to the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani\nMadiha Afzal, Ranj Alaaldin, Daniel L. Byman, Ali Fathollah-Nejad, Jeffrey Feltman, Tanvi Madan, Suzanne Maloney, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Bruce Riedel, Shibley Telhami, and Tamara Cofman Wittes\nAnd yet, having killed the second most important person in Iran, Trump now finds himself in a bind. If Iran reacts by attacking Americans, Trump will feel compelled to respond, but that runs the risk of the wider war that he wants to avoid. So he is trying to put the genie back in the bottle by threatening fire and fury if Iran retaliates, just as he is bombastic domestically when in a tight spot. It is unlikely to succeed and, paradoxically, makes all-out war with Iran more likely. In the Barrett interview, Trump spoke about “a sparkle of war” in the Middle East. The phrase is an apt one to sum up Trump’s approach to foreign policy — he likes the sparkle and hopes others will be scared into submission. But bluster does not always work.\nAll-out war between the United States and Iran is unlikely, primarily because it would not serve Iran’s interests. Iran may bide its time, target U.S. allies instead of Americans, or press the United States in other ways (such as by forcing it out of Iraq). If it does directly attack Americans, Trump might try to wriggle off the hook he has hoisted himself upon.\nHowever, it’s easy to imagine how the situation could easily spiral into a war. There is little doubt that Trump is uniquely ill-suited to be a commander-in-chief during war time. He has no attention span, does not process information normally, is particularly prone to bad advice, and is deeply insecure. He has one of the weakest and least experienced national security teams since the United States became a global power. He will be fighting this war without many allies. Even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was careful to distance himself from Trump’s drone strike. Given his demonstrated proclivity for war crimes, if he were to decisively win the war, he would very likely do so in a way that would leave a permanent stain on the nation’s honor.\nTrump’s Iran crisis fits perfectly within his narrative arc. His administration has had three identifiable phases. The first was the age of constraint, as the so-called Axis of Adults shaped and limited Trump’s options. The second was the age of hubris as Trump got rid of anyone who stood up to him so he could act as he wished — this came in two variants, maximum pressure and deal-making. The third is the reckoning as Trump is forced to face the consequences and contradictions of his own actions. There have been inklings of this third phase for some time. It has now well and truly arrived.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line623520"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9307387471199036,"wiki_prob":0.9307387471199036,"text":"Alfred Joseph Casson\nFarmhouse near Tripp Lake\n9 x 11 in\nAlfred Joseph Casson, May 17, 1898 – February 20, 1992 was a member of the Canadian group of painters known as the Group of Seven. He joined the group in 1926 at the invitation of Franklin Carmichael. Casson is best known for his depictions of landscapes, forests and farms of southern Ontario, and for being the youngest member of the Group of Seven.\nAlfred was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1898 to an English Quaker father and a Canadian mother. At age 9 he moved to Guelph and to Hamilton at age 14. He left school early at age 15 to work as an apprentice at a Hamilton lithography company. At the same time, he studied art at Central Technical School. Casson left Hamilton at age 17 and moved to Toronto. The first public exhibition of his work was at the Canadian National Exhibition, in 1917. He was hired by the commercial art firm Rous and Mann.\nAt Rous and Mann, Alfred was influenced and apprenticed by Group of Seven member Franklin Carmichael to sketch and paint on his own. Carmichael introduced Casson to The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, where he met many well-known artists, including other Group of Seven members.\nDuring the 1920s, Casson continued to paint during his spare time alone and with the Group of Seven. Alfred enjoyed watercolour and in 1925 along with Carmichael and F.H. Brigden, founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour.\nAfter Frank Johnston, a Group of Seven member, left the group in 1921, Casson seemed like an appropriate replacement. Later in 1926, he was invited by Carmichael to become a Group of Seven member. Casson joined excitedly. He left Rous and Mann in 1927 and joined Sampson Matthews. He became their art director and later their vice-president.\nIn 1929 Casson married a woman named Margaret. His father died shortly after his marriage, and he had to take care of and support his widowed mother. After the ending of the Group of Seven, he co-founded the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933. Casson developed a painting style with clear colours and background designs. Alfred “retired” in 1957 at age 60 but continued to paint full time. A.J. Casson died in 1992 at age 94 and is buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, along with six other Group of Seven members.\nBiography courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Casson","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1323160"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.53414386510849,"wiki_prob":0.53414386510849,"text":"How to Use One Mouse and Keyboard Across Multiple Computers with Mouse Without Borders\nTaylor Gibb @taybgibb\nJuly 17, 2017, 10:59am EDT\nIf you’ve got multiple computers at your desk, you probably know that it’s a pain to use more than one keyboard and mouse. Here’s how to use a single keyboard and mouse on more than one PC using a tool from Microsoft.\nMost geeks will be familiar with Input Director and Synergy, which do the same thing, but now Microsoft has released an application called Mouse Without Borders, which has some great features—like dragging files from one PC to another.\nUsing Mouse Without Borders\nOnce you’ve downloaded and installed the application, there’s a quick wizard that helps you setup the application for use on your network. On the first PC, you’ll want to click No to do the initial setup.\nThis will generate a security code that you can use on the next PC to connect to the first one.\nOver on the second PC, you will want to enter the code that you generated on the first PC, and the computer name.\nThat’s all there is to it – now you can start using the application.\nIf you’re still puzzled about how it works, here’s a video that explains it in more detail.\nDownload Mouse Without Borders from Microsoft\nTaylor Gibb\nTaylor Gibb is a professional software developer with nearly a decade of experience. He served as Microsoft Regional Director in South Africa for two years and has received multiple Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional) awards. He currently works in R&D at Derivco International.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line694001"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5319016575813293,"wiki_prob":0.46809834241867065,"text":"The Car Show\n> The Car Show on BBC Four at 2009-08-26 01:00:00\nDocumentary exploring how cars have been presented on television over time, from classic magazine shows of the 1960s like Wheelbase to more aspirational programmes like Top Gear.\n> The Car Show on BBC Two at 2009-05-17 19:30:00\nDocumentary exploring how cars have been presented on television over time, from classic magazine shows of the 1960s like Wheelbase, to more aspirational programmes like Top Gear.\nPart of the Joy of Motoring season. Documentary exploring how cars have been presented on British television over the years.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line64152"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7391826510429382,"wiki_prob":0.7391826510429382,"text":"Issue 11\t| Criticism | January 13, 2016\nby Moira Weigel\nI almost killed my mother almost immediately. On the night I was born, in New York Hospital, in the fall of 1984, I tore something inside her that the resident on call did not see. When she complained the next day that the pain was still terrible, the nurses shushed her, saying first time mothers simply had to learn what pain was. When she finally managed to stand up, a wall of blood burst out of her, soaking through her flimsy hospital slippers. They gave her a transfusion right away.\nAnyone who was in New York at the time knows that to be saved by seven bags of strangers’ blood in the fall of 1984 was to start a whole new cycle of worries. The hospitals did not start screening their supply for HIV until January. All around the city, people were dying of the disease it caused. My mother refused to get tested. “What would have been the point?” she asks, when I ask her about it now. In the mid-Eighties a positive result was a death sentence. She was fine after all, but I think it may have been the last time she ever failed to worry about something. I almost killed her with worry all through my childhood and adolescence.\nThe CDC called the communities hit hardest by AIDS the “four Hs”: homosexuals, heroin users, Haitians and hemophiliacs. My parents were white, middle to upper-middle class, observant Catholics and straight as far as I know. We lived in a South Brooklyn neighborhood that was just starting to gentrify. But there, too, people were dying. The gay couple my parents bought our house from. The brother of one of our closest family friends. My mother’s uncle in Flatbush, leaving behind a wife and seven children. The priest at the church we went to every Sunday. Though in his case, we had to pretend we did not recognize the symptoms.\nAs time passed, the panic ebbed. There were antiretroviral drugs that kept you alive if you could afford them. Mayor Giuliani cleaned up the crack and needles by aggressively arresting the poor; rising real-estate prices took care of the rest. But when someone writes the definitive history of my generation of New Yorkers, they will have to account for what it did to us to grow up hearing constantly that sex meant death. The “health” classes that were introduced into public schools, in the wake of the AIDS crisis, institutionalized this view. The curriculum in mine was unusually progressive: our teachers even alluded occasionally to pleasure. But they still taught us to feel terrified of the desires that we were coming into. Desire would kill us, they told us again and again.\nAt home my mother seemed to be afflicted by the same vague terror, subjecting me to much stricter rules than those followed by my friends. She was a Catholic and a worrier, sure. But I always sensed that AIDS raised the stakes of what might otherwise seem like petty transgressions. For instance, my mother made me promise that I would not watch Kids.\nWhen Larry Clark’s film came out in the summer of 1995, I was too young to sneak into a theater. It later became a touchstone among my friends, who all watched a VHS copy together on one of the half-day afternoons when my mother made me come right home. At the time, the press hailed Kids as “raw,” “frank,” “honest” and “gritty”—all adjectives that boasted of its fidelity to the realities of kids just a little older than me. I couldn’t judge for myself since I never got around to seeing it. Watching it now, at thirty, those words still seem apt for describing something important about the film. But that something is not its realism.\nHow kids came to be is a bit of a legend. The director, Larry Clark, had made his reputation in the early 1970s, when he published a book of black-and-white photographs of him and his friends from the suburbs of his hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting up amphetamines and lounging around, often half-dressed or undressed. It earned him a notoriety that he rode to New York. In 1993, a younger new arrival, the aspiring screenwriter Harmony Korine, noticed Clark in Washington Square Park, where he was trying to learn how to skateboard and taking photographs of the skaters and punks who spent their days getting high and practicing tricks around the basin. Clark had recently directed his first music video and he had an idea for a screenplay about teens like these getting AIDS. He asked Korine, who was nineteen at the time, if he thought he could write it. Korine said yes.\nKorine has sometimes claimed that he wrote the Kids script in a single week. Other times he has said three. He and Clark recruited amateur actors they met downtown: Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, Rosario Dawson and Chloë Sevigny, among others like the skating prodigy Harold Hunter. There were some glitches during production. Gus van Sant signed up to produce and then dropped out, though the credits still name him. The lead actress was fired; Sevigny, who had originally been given a bit part, stepped into her larger role after shooting had already started. Miramax bought distribution rights, but parent company Walt Disney balked when the MPAA gave Kids an NC-17 rating; Miramax eventually had to create an independent company to get it shown in theaters.\nIn the style of a documentary, the film loosely follows a group of friends through one day hanging around Manhattan in the sweltering heat of early summer. The focus is on Telly (Fitzpatrick) and Casper (Pierce), two friends who roam around the city looking for girls and booze and weed and prescription drugs. Each is a sociopath in his own way. Telly is a self-professed “virgin surgeon,” obsessed with deflowering and then immediately abandoning as many twelve- and thirteen-year-olds as he can. “It’s like getting fame … if you die, fifty years from now those virgins will remember you,” his friend Casper goads him on. Casper is less successful, sexually, and (perhaps therefore) more prone to violence. At one point, in response to a trivial insult, he takes his skateboard and beats a stranger in Washington Square Park almost to death.\nThe secondary main characters are two girlfriends: Ruby, played by Dawson, and Jennie, played by Sevigny. When Ruby, who is far more sexually experienced, goes to get tested for STDs, Jennie agrees to accompany her, even though she has only ever slept with Telly. Ruby comes away with a clean bill of health; Jennie tests positive for HIV. After failing to reach Telly by payphone, she spends the rest of the day trying to track him down. Meanwhile, he has decided that he wants to deflower his friend’s younger sister, Darcy.\nRuby quickly drops out and for the rest of the film the camera cuts between Telly and Casper on their path and Jennie on hers, chasing them all over the Lower East Side streets where they dissipate their days—from a flophouse run by a teenager, to Telly’s mother’s cramped apartment, to a public pool that the boys and a few other friends climb a fence to break into, to a rave called NASA, where colored lights flash over Jennie’s face. There, Korine himself makes a cameo as a friend who gives her a pill reputed to “make Special K look weak.” It is a plot that would have seemed less plausible even a few years later, as pagers spread; today, in an era of ubiquitous cell phones it could never happen. But in 1995 it was still possible to spend 24 hours off the grid.\nAt a final house party, we see kids hooking up and puking and passing out. Jennie does not get to Telly before he takes Darcy’s virginity; she walks in on him hammering at her while she whimpers, “Telly, stop, that hurts.” Jennie passes out and is raped, horribly, by Casper—pants and panties tugged off; legs hoisted up, askew, like a rag doll’s; ankle socks left on—while other unconscious friends continue sleeping beside them.\nThe final shot, famously, shows the morning after. Casper wakes up and looks groggily over the wreckage of the party. Then he looks straight into the camera, and asks, in an emblem for the entire film:\n“Jesus Christ, what happened?”\nWhat I feel most, watching Kids in 2015, is that it is shallow. I mean this partly as praise. The shallowness is the key to the film’s ability to transport us into the world of its characters, as if participating in their refusal to think of consequences, to look beyond the here and now.\nOn a visual level, the action takes place almost entirely in close-up and medium shots. More often than not, the bodies of the amateur child actors fill the frame. Even in the traveling shots, where the camera follows them swaggering down city streets, it usually remains closely trained on them, so that we see little of what they are walking past. I spent countless afternoons hanging around St. Mark’s Place in the late 1990s, yet I don’t recognize it until afterwards, when I read a list of shooting locations. There are no “postcard” establishing shots to show that the skateboarding scenes take place in Washington Square Park, for instance. The style presumes that whoever is watching is already in the know. The effect is a sense of intimacy; we see the mole on one of Telly’s scrawny shoulders, and enter Ruby and Jennie’s points of view as they scan the brightly colored posters lining the walls of the STD clinic. At the same time, the cinematography captures the characters’ sense of dislocation. They know the map of their world all too well; they are dead bored, yet have no idea where they are going. With them, we get lost.\nKids nails many of the ethnographic details of teen life in New York in the Nineties. I was not prepared for how nostalgic it would make me feel. The busker singing “Danny Boy” in the 77th Street subway station. The baggy pants and baby tees. The soundtrack flip-flopping between screaming rock and calmer hip-hop.\nThe way the characters talk often veers off into self-parody. The boys greet each other with “yo, yo, yo”; they are “just chillin’ and shit”; the skate video they watch after a friend “smokes them out” is “the bomb.” They append an “or some shit” or “and shit” to every statement. The white boys call one another “nigga” endlessly. The girls boast of their sexual expertise and enthusiasm to one another in terms as unconvincingly generic as they are crass. “There’s a difference between ‘having sex,’ ‘making love’ and ‘fucking,’” one announces confidently. Is there, now? my grown-up self wants to tease them. But I talked that way, too, once.\nThe endearments that Telly uses to seduce girls (Girl: “Do you care about me?” Telly: “Of course I do”) and the slurs he uses to disparage them to Casper later (“I fucked that bitch”) are equally clichéd. We see even the littlest kids dropping vulgarities to prove their macho callousness (“How do you like your pussy?” one kid who looks nine or ten asks another). Authentic in their inauthenticity, these exchanges duplicate the sense of immediacy that the cinematography conveys at the level of character. It’s a kind of anti-psychology. The kids don’t know why they do what they do any more than they know where it will take them.\nThe problem is that Kids reproduces the superficiality that makes it so stylistically compelling in its approach to its subject matter. Watching it today, I was hoping for an account of the ways that the fear of AIDS shaped how young people in that time and place learned about desire. Instead the film recasts the virus into the threat lurking in the background of a kind of nightmare fairy tale. The role that HIV plays is to give a sense of momentum to what is basically an observational essay.\nIf the signature of the film’s cinematography is its tight composition, the trope that guides its editing is crosscutting. It is by cutting back and forth between the aimless wanderings of Telly and Casper, and the urgent searching of Jennie, that Kids generates suspense. The ticking time bomb scenario provides the simplest kind of narrative engine: How does she stop him before he gives the disease to someone else?\nDespite the film’s implicit promise to depict the “real story” of kids in the Nineties, the scenario it depicts was highly improbable. By the mid-Nineties, the largest number of new HIV infections in New York occurred in African Americans, followed by gay men. Even if Telly, the straight white middle-class kid played by Fitzpatrick, had HIV, the chance that Jennie would contract it by having unprotected sex with him once is about 2 percent. The likelihood that Darcy would get it from their encounter is similarly tiny.\nIn a 1997 interview, the feminist writer and activist bell hooks criticized Kids for its regressive gender and racial politics, pointing out that two white, misogynistic males drive the action, while the filmmakers evince little interest in the experiences of the Latinos and African Americans who orbit them throughout the day. I agree with bell hooks’s criticisms. And I would add that the film reduces HIV, too, to a gesture. Rather than exploring how it shaped, and unmade, lives, it reduces the disease to one more slick bit of style, something to add suspense where the film might otherwise risk aimlessness and to heighten the aura of transgression. While it manages to capture the sense, instilled in us by our health teachers, that disease and death would be the price of desire, it does little more than that. Instead of examining the myths that loomed over the teen minds of that era, it enlarges them.\nThe sense of exaggeration, of making myths from one’s own daily life, may be the element of Kids that now feels most prescient. I remember the fracas that Kids caused when it came out. In the 1990s, the hysterical atmosphere of the “culture wars” made it easy to take sides, and at the time my knee-jerk reaction was to side with Kids. I was inclined to trust that Clark and Korine, whatever their sins, were fighting on the right side of what Pat Buchanan had called “the war for the soul of America.” I still would defend the filmmakers against Buchanan. But the way those debates were framed strikes me today as almost quaint.\nThe fight over Kids broke down along familiar lines. The liberal champions of the film assumed, and sometimes directly stated, that there was a value to truth-telling, both in itself and as a catalyst for change. Conservatives, on the other hand, insisted that to show the kinds of degeneracy depicted in Kids would hasten a process of degeneration that had begun (so they said) with feminist, sexual and gay liberation. Liberals heralded transgressive representation as a way of undoing repressive taboos that had kept society from honestly confronting its problems; conservatives cited the same representational practices as evidence of decline. Both camps operated on the presupposition that there was such a thing as the public sphere, constituted by the movie theater where real kids would go to see the film and by the journalistic discourse that surrounded it. Moreover, they seemed to believe that a debate about what kinds of discussions were appropriate to have in that sphere could shape its character.\nIn retrospect it is possible to see that the debate overlooked the real transformation that was taking place, both in youth culture and in the culture of images. The public sphere that older and younger Americans, and Americans of different ethnicities, socioeconomic classes and political commitments, had once been presumed to share was fragmenting. In 1990 only 200,000 households in the United States had internet connections; by 1993, that number was five million. So the debate over how Kids would affect “mainstream” American culture took place at precisely the moment when the mainstream was disappearing, leaving no one “soul of America” to defend.\nWatched twenty years later, Kids looks like a harbinger of something—but not cultural progress or decline per se. Rather, what it anticipates is the rise of a youth culture based on provocative self-documentation. The material transformation of media that was fragmenting “mainstream” movies and journalism would soon make it possible for real kids to capture the look of their own lives, or the lives they want to look like they have, in the same glamorized “gritty” style that runs through Kids. It is easy to imagine the sleek and depthless images that Clark and Korine used to dramatize teenage life turning up on high-school students’ cell phones today—from the smoky party shots to the unbearable rape sequence. The film’s real legacy may be as an example of how to immortalize immaturity.\nImage credits: Still from Larry Clark’s Kids; “Hamilton, Harold and Loki on High’s roof” by High (1993); “Raver chicks at NASA” by Mel Stones (1993). All photos courtesy of Mel Stones and High.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1274926"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8959679007530212,"wiki_prob":0.8959679007530212,"text":"Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion\nBy Alan Sepinwall\nPublisher: Abrams Press\nThe Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers, and Slayers who Changed TV Drama Forever\nPublisher: Touchstone / Simon & Schuster\nONE OF NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CRITIC MICHIKO KAKUTANI’S 10 FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’S 12 BEST HOLLYWOOD-RELATED BOOKS OF THE YEAR In The Revolution Was Televised, celebrated TV critic Alan Sepinwall chronicles the remarkable transformation of the small screen over the past fifteen years. Focusing on twelve innovative television dramas that changed the medium and the culture at large forever, including The Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, Sepinwall weaves his trademark incisive criticism with highly entertaining reporting about the real-life characters and conflicts behind the scenes. Drawing on interviews with writers David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and Vince Gilligan, among others, along with the network executives responsible for green-lighting these groundbreaking shows, The Revolution Was Televised is the story of a new golden age in TV, one that’s as rich with drama and thrills as the very shows themselves.\nThe Sopranos Sessions\nOur Price: $15.00 - $26.95\nPre-ordering does not guarantee a signed copy or grant event admission.\nTV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time\nPublisher: Grand Central Publishing\nWhile working at the Newark Star-Ledger, Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall created a popular column debating the merits of then-current television. Eventually they went on to successful careers as critics elsewhere, but the debate raged on and now comes to an epic conclusion in TV (THE BOOK). Alan and Matt have established The Pantheon of top TV shows using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing ranking system by which to order and stack them up against each other. With a mix of lively entries on critically acclaimed and commercially successful classics such as Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Star Trek, The Simpsons and Twin Peaks and illuminating essays on short-lived favorites such as Taxi,Freaks and Geeks, and My So-Called Life, TV (THE BOOK) is sure to spark conversation and debate among readers.TV (THE BOOK) is a must-have for long-time television and film buffs and for young enthusiasts who, fresh off their latest Netflix binge, are looking to expand their knowledge of the medium and wondering what show to start streaming next.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line925618"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8324971199035645,"wiki_prob":0.8324971199035645,"text":"California drought: Morning rain just the…\nNewsEnvironment & Science\nCalifornia drought: Morning rain just the beginning\nWet pedestrians wait to cross Story Road at Alum Rock Avenue in San Jose, Calif. on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2014. A strong weather system arrived in the Bay Area early this morning and is expected to bring more rainfall in the next few days. (Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group)\nBy Rick Hurd | rhurd@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group\nPUBLISHED: February 26, 2014 at 12:35 am | UPDATED: August 12, 2016 at 10:04 am\nOutside a Walnut Creek coffee shop, a 4-year-old girl holding an umbrella jumped as high as she could and landed with both her shoes in a small puddle, spraying a few drops on her mother.\nImpressed with the result, she did it again.\n“Maybe,” a spectator said, “she’s making up for lost time.”\nNature’s attempt to do the same for a parched Bay Area and state resulted in a small amount of rain Wednesday morning, an appetizer for the rain expected later Wednesday night. The main course is expected to arrive Friday, with National Weather Service forecasters saying it will leave at least a couple of inches before departing.\n“We’re still on track to get a decent dumping everywhere,” forecaster Matt Mehle said. “We expect some heavy activity by Wednesday night, and with Friday, we’ll be seeing a considerably stronger system.”\nWeather-related power outages hit Oakland Wednesday night with about 950 customers in the dark, a PG&E spokeswoman said. Crews were working to restore power in two different areas of the city at 10 p.m. but it wasn’t known when the lights would be back on.\nThe heaviest rain early Wednesday was in Pleasanton, with some areas in the north part of the city recording 2.02 inches by 12:15 p.m. But the morning rain was mostly light elsewhere, with the .30 inches falling at Concord’s Buchanan Field Airport leading Contra Costa County’s rainfall total, and the .28 inches that fell in Lexington Hills doing the same in Santa Clara County.\nA total of .33 inches fell in San Francisco, .41 in San Jose and .19 fell in Oakland, according to the forecast service.\nThe weather was expected to create considerably more havoc Wednesday night, and especially on Friday, when a second, heavier storm was expected to arrive. The second storm Wednesday was expected to bring lightning and thunder, and forecaster Austin Cross said lightning activity could be seen by forecasters tracking the storm off the Pacific Coast.\nCross said flooding most likely will affect communities in the Peninsula, and East Palo Alto placed city workers on “storm ready” in anticipation of heavy rainfall. The city is working to avoid flooding along San Francisquito Creek and on Wednesday opened a sandbag station at 2277 University Avenue. City workers are on-call around the clock to deal with problems arising from the series of storms, according to a press release.\nLightning is expected to be heaviest in the Santa Cruz Mountains, as well as in parts of Sonoma County, but Cross said it will be visible in most Bay Area communities at some point during the storms.\nAs much as 2 feet of snow also was expected above 7,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada, Cross said.\nWednesday’s initial storm also forced 100 flights into and out of San Francisco International Airport to be cancelled by noon, airport duty manager Larry Mares said. Those that weren’t cancelled were delayed between 90 minutes and two hours on average, he said.\n“It’s kind of par for the course when we get weather here,” Mares said. “The number probably will go up as the other storms get here.”\nThe airport also instituted a ground delay program that Mares said is typical when storm clouds hang low. The program limits the number of flights that can take off and land at the same time. That program, which took effect at 9 a.m., is expected to last through midnight, Mares said.\nTravelers were advised to check with their airlines on their flight status before coming to the airport.\nThe storms mark the second heavy rain activity in the Bay Area in three weeks, an encouraging sign for the drought-stricken state. From July 1 through Feb. 21, San Francisco has had only 5.85 inches of rain, 35 percent of normal for this time of year. San Jose, with 2.67 inches is at 26 percent of normal, and Oakland (4.58 inches) is at 31 percent.\nStaff writers Erin Ivie and Mark Gomez contributed to this story.\nRick Hurd\nRick Hurd has covered breaking news, crime and public safety since 2011 after spending 16 years covering sports, including the A's and Sharks. He has worked with the Bay Area News Group since 1995.\nFollow Rick Hurd\t@3rdERH\nThis year will emphasize the importance of teamwork in making the internet work for everyone.\nDemocrats want to defeat Trump in 2020, yet they foolishly back yet another weak candidate?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line680911"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9208617210388184,"wiki_prob":0.9208617210388184,"text":"Main Street (Annotated): 100th Anniversary Edition\nBy: Sinclair Lewis\nNarrated by: Kitty Hendrix\nCategories: Classics, American Literature\n5 out of 5 stars 5.0 (2 ratings)\nBy: Pearl S. Buck\nNarrated by: Anthony Heald\nThis Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.\nBy Ryan on 05-08-10\nBy: John Steinbeck\nNarrated by: Dylan Baker\nAt once naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath is perhaps the most American of American classics. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation during the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are forced to travel west to the promised land of California.\nWish I could give it 10 stars!\nBy P. Minor on 07-18-14\nBy: Charles Dickens\nNarrated by: Simon Prebble\nOne of the most revered works in English literature, Great Expectations traces the coming of age of a young orphan, Pip, from a boy of shallow aspirations into a man of maturity. From the chilling opening confrontation with an escaped convict to the grand but eerily disheveled estate of bitter old Miss Havisham, all is not what it seems in Dickens’ dark tale of false illusions and thwarted desire.\nGreat Performance of a classic!\nTravels with Charley in Search of America\nNarrated by: Gary Sinise\nIn September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.\nEnjoyed the Journey\nBy Rebb on 12-15-11\nNarrated by: David Aaron Baker\nIn awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had “[R]esumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American\".\nMemorable characters, great narration, POOR AUDIO\nBy Sam D. on 05-18-16\nBy: Richard Powers\nNarrated by: Suzanne Toren\nThe Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.\nBy Ellen L. on 06-21-18\nBy: James Baldwin\nNarrated by: Jesse L. Martin\nAt once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.\nBrilliant and Sadly Relevant\nBy Steve M on 03-20-16\nBy: Joseph Heller\nNarrated by: Jay O. Sanders\nSet in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22.\nStop randomly adding music\nBy Kenneth S. Clark on 08-31-18\nAfter escaping from the dark and dismal workhouse where he was born, Oliver finds himself on the mean streets of Victorian-era London and is unwittingly recruited into a scabrous gang of scheming urchins. In this band of petty thieves, Oliver encounters the extraordinary and vibrant characters who have captured audiences' imaginations for more than 150 years.\nAmazing narration!\nBy Karen on 12-11-08\nNarrated by: Richard Armitage\nBetween his work on the 2014 Audible Audiobook of the Year, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Novel, and his performance of Classic Love Poems, narrator Richard Armitage ( The Hobbit, Hannibal) has quickly become a listener favorite. Now, in this defining performance of Charles Dickens' classic David Copperfield, Armitage lends his unique voice and interpretation, truly inhabiting each character and bringing real energy to the life of one of Dickens' most famous characters.\nA PERFECT narration of an English classic!\nBy Wayne on 09-03-17\nBy: Herman Melville\nNarrated by: Frank Muller\nLabeled variously a realistic story of whaling, a romance of unusual adventure and eccentric characters, a symbolic allegory, and a drama of heroic conflict, Moby Dick is first and foremost a great story. It has both the humor and poignancy of a simple sea ballad, as well as the depth and universality of a grand odyssey.\nRenewed appreciation\nBy C.B.E. on 09-03-11\nThis 100th Anniversary Edition includes:\nA new Foreword by biographer Richard Lingeman\nA new Afterword to the Audiobook by Dr. Sally Parry.\nPublished on October 23, 1920, Main Street was the first of Sinclair Lewis's great successes. According to biographer Mark Schorer, it \"was the most sensational event in 20th-century American publishing history, from the point of view both of sales and of public response. The printers could not keep up with the orders, and for a while the publishers had to ration out copies to book-sellers.\"\nA biting satire that countered the American myth of wholesome small-town life with a depiction of narrow-minded provincialism, it was to some degree based on Lewis's own experience of growing on Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Set in mid-1910s, it depicts the struggles of Carol Kennicott, a city girl, as she tries to adapt to small town life, having left her librarian job and St. Paul, Minnesota to marry Dr. Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. Dismayed by the town’s drabness and the conforming, petty inhabitants, Carol optimistically sets out to improve the town, only to find her ideas met with distrust and derision, and herself becoming a pariah.\nLewis was in the vanguard of a generation of American writers seeking realism to their work (Ernest Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser...). Lewis’s intimate knowledge of small-town America and subtle characterizations make Main Street a compelling classic still surprisingly relevant today: the religious bigotry, racism, puritanical righteousness, and duplicitous business practices Lewis exposes are with us still. His portrayal of women, especially Carol, is surprisingly sensitive, and his depiction of marriage and the compromises expected of woman offer both insightful social commentary and convincing realism.\nThe Pulitzer Committee recommended Lewis for the Pulitzer for Main Street in 1921, but the Trustees of Colombia University overruled the jury. In 1923, Lewis's \"Babbitt\" was chosen, but again the committee was overruled by the Trustees. He was finally awarded the Pulitzer in 1926 for \"Arrowsmith\", but he turned it down - becoming the first writer to do so. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The committee, wrote: Main Street exemplifies Lewis’ “vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.\"\n©2019 Post Hypnotic Press Inc. (P)2019 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.\nBoundaries After a Pathological Relationship\n30 Covert Emotional Manipulation Tactics: How Manipulators Take Control in Personal Relationships\n10 Principles for Doing Effective Couples Therapy","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1494355"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7244475483894348,"wiki_prob":0.2755524516105652,"text":"Greek Mythology / Myths / Mortals / Tithonus\nTithonus at a Glance\nTithonos\nTithonus was a Trojan prince in Greek mythology, son of King Laomedon of Troy and the water nymph Strymo. Eos, the Titan goddess of dawn, kidnapped Tithonus along with Ganymede, in order to make them her lovers. She then asked Zeus to grant Tithonus immortality, but did not think of asking to grant him eternal youth too. As a result, Tithonus aged and did not die, resulting in his strength wilting away to the point that he could no longer move his arms. All he could do was babble continuously; in the end, he turned into a cicada, hoping that death would come for him as well.\nTithonus and Eos had two sons, Memnon and Emathion. Memnon participated in the Trojan War on the side of the Trojans, but was killed by Achilles. Eos asked Zeus to make her son immortal, which the god did. Emathion, on the other hand, became the king of Aethiopia, and was later killed by Heracles.\nSee Also: Laomedon, Eos, Ganymede, Zeus, Achilles, Heracles\n<a href=\"https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Tithonus/tithonus.html\">Tithonus: GreekMythology.com</a> - Jan 17, 2020\nLink will appear as Tithonus: GreekMythology.com - Jan 17, 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1043384"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5301862955093384,"wiki_prob":0.5301862955093384,"text":"Character: jack\nLilbusdriver\nA little shakey at some times but mostly good.\n1995-06-19 (24 years old)\nunknown last time he saw her is the day teh military came and took her\nChildren went with there mother\nTall skiny\nbunch of junk in his backpack\nThe characters name would be Jack Wattson. His back story is he was a British police officer with a wife and two kids and when the outbreak started he had no idea what he was going to do so he told his family to come with him and just leave and run till they find a better place. But his family refused and told him there's nothing out there and just more of what is going on here. So after trying to convince them his family left him but they said they know a place where it will be safe. But the dad didn't believe that the place would be safe after working with the force he heard rumors about a place called the zone. His family said it would be safe there but he didn't trust it so in the end they left him behind in there house when the military came to pick them up. So he took what ever was left in the house and just ran and walked until he found a place that was better. He stumbled into Chernarus looking for supplies. For the first two years after the outbreak my character he was running and taking everything he could. In the beginning he had a tough time killing the zombies because all he could think about was the people they were before they turned but now after two years he has no problem. He's trying to accomplish a new family and help people build what he think is a new home in this world that is clearly torn to pieces and he trying to put those pieces back together.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line671100"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7217578887939453,"wiki_prob":0.7217578887939453,"text":"Home > Uncategorized\t> In Its First Year the Palestinian Government of National Consensus has Worked Hard in Difficult Conditions @UNSCO_MEPP\nIn Its First Year the Palestinian Government of National Consensus has Worked Hard in Difficult Conditions @UNSCO_MEPP\nOne year after Palestinian President Abbas announced the formation of the Government of National Consensus (GNC), I wish to pay tribute to Prime Minister Hamdallah and all ministers for their steadfast efforts in governing, including in maintaining law and order. Despite the occupation and challenges to national unity, the GNC has been able to overcome many obstacles. These include the four-month withholding of Palestinian tax revenues and the insufficient disbursement of donor contributions which has resulted in a contraction of the Palestinian economy.\nWhile much remains to be done, the GNC is working to address several key areas of reform. I welcome the determination of the Prime Minister to find a solution to the outstanding issue of public sector employees in Gaza. His commitment that no one will be left behind is an important assurance. I encourage all parties to support this effort. Genuine Palestinian reconciliation and unity are critical for improving the situation in Gaza, advancing reconstruction, and for addressing the wider political question of a two-state solution.\nThe United Nations encourages the GNC to strengthen its efforts on taking up its rightful responsibility and addressing the serious political, security, humanitarian and economic challenges in Gaza. A comprehensive reconciliation must include the GNC’s resumption of control over the crossings to Israel and Egypt, and the holding of long overdue elections. While first and foremost it is up to the Palestinian authorities to take the lead, the UN stands ready to support the President, the Government and all factions in their efforts to reunite the West Bank and Gaza, in line with the intra-Palestinian unity agreement of 23 April 2014. Palestine is one and the United Nations will work determinedly to advance unity through its legitimate institutions.\nMountain bikes for men 29 inch\n#Children are not #soldiers @UNSCO_MEPP UN to explore “realistic options” for a return to negotiations","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line131921"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7022005915641785,"wiki_prob":0.7022005915641785,"text":"Ansar al-Sharia and Governance in Southern Yemen\nRobin Simcox\nYemen is one of the most impoverished nations in the Middle East. It has also emerged as the most important front of the U.S.-led war against al-Qaeda (AQ) and its affiliates. Given that the Yemeni state’s inability to provide basic provisions and services is a key driver behind AQ’s growth, these two issues have become inextricably linked.\nA war for territory between the Yemeni government and AQ’s Yemeni franchise, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has escalated since the start of the “Arab Spring” in 2011. Throughout the upheaval, the AQAP made significant territorial gains, especially in the Abyan and Shabwa provinces. In March 2011, al-Qaeda’s insurgent wing Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) took control of the southern town of Ja’ar in Abyan.1 While the town’s fall to AQAP was significant, it was not a complete surprise. AQAP already had a strong base there; Ja’ar supplied the Afghan mujahideen with fighters in the 1980s, and remnants of the Aden Abyan Islamic Army already lived in the city. Two months later, AQAP took control of Zinjibar, Abyan’s capital. Shaqwa, in Shabwa province, was then captured in August 2011. The towns were subsequently declared Islamic “emirates.” Meanwhile, AQAP’s leadership remained entrenched in the mountainous territory of Azzan in Shabwa.\nAAS did not have to win a series of set piece battles with the army to gain control of these towns. As Barbara Bodine, the former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, said: “there was simply “no-one there to stop them.”2 By the time the political crisis developed in Sana’a, state control in southern Yemen had essentially evaporated. Moreover, al-Qaeda’s tactics had evolved. It became evident that they were beginning to provide basic services to the people in the towns they controlled in an effort to harness popular support. Winning this support would, presumably, allow them to recruit in even greater numbers.\nThe Yemeni military only regained control of these towns in June 2012. After the government expelled AAS, the group stated in June 2012 that under their leadership:\nThe Sharia was implemented, security prevailed, people were safe on their properties, honors and blood, the virtue was established and the vice was removed, crime disappeared, and blackmail ended, also the aid reached to the villages of the people and the services reached to many villages and taxes were cancelled and even the fees for services like water, electricity, municipality and others were cancelled.3\nThese are significant claims; and, if AAS take these claims seriously, or even if they are trying to give the perception of such achievements, it is important to understand how much is fact and how much is propaganda. The manner in which AAS governed the areas it controlled over the last year provides insight into how AQ could resolve one of its most challenging dilemmas: how to gain local support for its global agenda. In some ways, AAS’s Abyan and Shabwa policy provides an outline of how the group may have to operate in the coming years to retain its relevance and potency. It also gives clues about how governments may be forced to respond.\nThe AQAP—AAS Nexus\nAQAP’s creation was announced on January 20, 2009 following a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi wings of al-Qaeda. Soon thereafter, the group became especially notorious as it proved to be operationally capable of breaching Western security measures. In several instances, it nearly succeeded in carrying out terrorist plots that would have resulted in mass casualties.\nOn December 25, 2009, AQAP recruit Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted and failed to detonate a bomb concealed in his underwear on a flight headed to Detroit, Michigan. On October 29, 2010, AQAP bombs were discovered in U.S.-bound cargo planes during stopovers in the United Arab Emirates and the UK. In April 2012, the CIA thwarted an AQAP plan to use another underwear bomb on a flight headed to the U.S. after a Saudi agent infiltrated the group. These plots prompted John Brennan, assistant to President Obama on homeland security and counterterrorism, to call AQAP “the most operationally active node of the al-Qaeda network.”4 The perception of AQAP in the West as a group that specializes in spectacular, creative terrorist attacks designed to kill on a mass scale has, however, a limited bearing on how the group is regarded in Yemen. Much of this simply comes down to the work that AAS carries out at a local level.\nOn October 4, 2011, the State Department designated AAS as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as an extension of AQAP. It stated that “AAS is simply AQAP’s effort to rebrand itself, with the aim of manipulating people to join AQAP’s terrorist cause.”5 Those who have seen the group in action in Yemen have said the same.6 Both groups are headed by Nasir al-Wahishi, and both share supporters. Senior AQAP cleric Abu Zubayr Adel al-Abab, has said that “the name Ansar al-Shari’a is what we use to introduce ourselves in areas where we work, to tell people about our work and goals.”7 Mohammed al-Bashar, the Yemeni Embassy’s official spokesman in Washington, D.C., described AAS as “AQAP’s attempt to empower local jihadi-linked actors with ties to AQAP, and rebrand the movement under a global positive banner. After all, who would dare say no to Islamic law?”8\nWithin the organization, however, there are undoubtedly layers of loyalty, support, sympathy and membership. Yemenis concerned with local issues may consider themselves part of AAS but not a global jihadist movement such as al-Qaeda. Ambassador Bodine posits that even if key AQAP leaders were eliminated, AAS would still exist; moreover, even if AAS was eliminated, it may not destroy AQAP. The two groups “feed on each other. They support each other. They certainly are related, but they’re not identical.”9\nHowever, the fact that AAS is a vital component of AQAP’s attempt to harness ground support for its agenda, and the fact AAS can and does promote sharia law without having to explicitly associate with al-Qaeda,10 are in and of themselves signs that the group is increasingly concerned about fighting its propaganda wars in a more effective manner. Therefore, an analysis of AAS’s interest in providing effective governance provides insights regarding AQAP’s priorities and how it may operate in the future.\nA Change in Style\nAl-Qaeda’s previous attempts at taking over, controlling and then governing significant pieces of territory have all been failures. This was most apparent in Iraq, where AQ found it impossible to maintain any level of support. This was not only because of its inability to govern, but because of inter-tribal fighting and high levels of civilian casualties. The growing disaffection of local Muslim populations culminated in the Anbar Awakening of late 2006. An AAS official interviewed in Azzan this year said that the group was keen to avoid the same confrontations that they faced in Iraq, and the biggest threat to his organization was not the U.S., but southern Yemen’s tribes.11\nThe group’s tactics have adapted accordingly. In Yemen, AAS has courted religious and tribal leaders with grievances. Muslim collateral damage has been reduced to focusing on government targets. Jalal Baleedi Al-Murqashi, al-Qaeda’s commander of the Abyan governorate, indicated a fundamental shift in political strategy when he stated that “we are doing our best to ensure that the vulnerable people, whom the military and its mercenaries are using as human shields, are not hurt.”12 Safa al-Ahmad, a film director who visited southern Yemen in 2012, said an AAS representative had told her that the group had “learned their lesson from Iraq,” and were focused on a “hearts and minds” campaign.13 To al-Bashar, it was “like they had read a US Army COIN manual.”14\nAbu Zubayr Adel al-Abab promised that AAS would find “solutions” for the biggest problem facing Ja’ar: a “lack of public services such as sewage and water.”15 Taking this seemingly more conciliatory and “political” approach, AAS provided a host of important material services to needy populations that the central government in Sana’a had been incapable of providing for many years. At the same time, AAS began to introduce an alternative legal system, and, they attempted to implement their own standards on social and criminal behavior on those who lived in the towns they controlled.\nThere is a consensus that AAS provided food, gas, and fresh water to the populations under its control.16 However, the achievement AAS was especially proud of and keen to highlight was its ability to provide electricity. Several sources have corroborated this, including a host of Ja’ar residents interviewed between March and May 201217 and a documentary filmmaker who visited the region.18\nAn AAS propaganda video filmed in March 2012 and distributed through their Madad News Agency media wing shows AAS connecting electricity lines in Ja’ar suburbs and images of electric lights and fans operating correctly. The video goes on to ask several different villagers how many houses in their area are being powered by AAS electricity. The answers range from 50 to 300. All interviewed are fulsome in their praise for AAS. One al-Fateh villager is asked how the group treated the suburb: he responds “Oh, sweet. They were great!” A resident of Hajfoor notes “how many times have we asked for it and demanded it, electricity and water, no one gave us our request . . .God give them goodness, [AAS] didn’t fail us.” A resident in Seehan speaks about approximately 300 houses that now have electricity, stating “Even the children, look at the children, they are happy! We used to wish for this, our grandfathers used to wish for this.” Another interviewed in Saken Waees says that “Ansar Al-Sharia did what the generations before didn’t do.”19\nThese interviews regularly stress that AAS provided these public services for free and performed them quickly. These achievements are then explicitly contrasted with the fact that electricity had not been provided in these periods for, in some instances, decades. In the words of one resident of Ja’ar not featured in the propaganda video, “Ansar al-Sharia have solved many problems for us that the government hadn’t managed to do for 20 years.”20\nBasic provisions, however, are not the limit of AAS’s goals. There is also evidence that they installed sewage pipes,21 provided teachers, ran the police force,22 collected trash, and connected phone lines.23 According to Nadwa al-Dawsari, the director of Partners Yemen, an NGO based in Sana’a, AAS even went so far as to stop the practice of cheating during school exams in Azzan.24 It is also believed that they hijacked Saudi aid drops containing items intended for Yemeni soldiers and distributed it to residents in towns they controlled.25 Other Ja’ar sources have said AAS’s population outreach efforts even involve providing basic healthcare to some, though not all, residents.26 Al-Razi hospital in Abyan, for example, was rumored to have only treated sick and injured members of AAS.27\nNadwa al-Dawsari believes that AAS in South Yemen were “genuinely trying to provide services in the areas that it controlled as a means of establishing support and legitimacy.”28 Safa al-Ahmad, having personally seen the group’s presence in these towns, confirms that “They were really into running [it].”29 AAS is also an ideological organization, however, and their efforts were not restricted solely to providing material aid and services. While referencing AAS’s sharia law courts, al-Dawsari says the group’s role was “not just collecting garbage or helping poor families but also providing justice.”30\nAn AAS judge interviewed in April 2012 stated the new courts system had resolved 42 cases in two weeks, and claimed that “People come to us from parts we don’t control and ask us to solve their problems. The sharia justice system is swift and incorruptible. Most of the cases we solve within the day.”31 Rulings were made almost instantly on backlogged cases left unresolved for over a decade.32 The courts even dealt with murder cases.33 According to al-Dawsari, these courts were “treat[ing] people as equal . . .regardless of their social status or tribal affiliation.”34\nA particular incident in April 2012 supports al-Dawsari’s claim. A member of the Alja’adnah tribe in Abyan murdered a fellow tribe member.35 Tribes have generally tended to prefer their flexible, tribal law over an AAS brand of sharia. Yet as al-Dawsari notes, “such killing incidents risk dragging the whole tribe in revenge killing. The formal justice system is ineffective and the informal system has limitations when it comes to revenge killing issues.” Therefore, AAS offered their services to the community, and locals subsequently turned the murderer to AAS. This suggests that on some level, they trusted their justice system.36\nTo an extent, AQAP has been willing to compromise on the harshness of its brand of sharia in order to gain local support. An unemployed laborer in Ja’ar commented that the group “talked about religion in a friendly way untilpeople felt comfortable with them.” Moreover, the market for khat, the local narcotic, was moved to the outskirts of Ja’ar but not banned.37 An AAS soldier described both cigarettes and khat as “sinful” and “bad for society,” but claimed that they tried to “persuade people to give up their sins . . .[not] force them.”38\nHowever, even if AAS made attempts to moderate its agenda and tactics for political gain, there should be no illusions about the harshness of the group’s implementation of sharia law or the totality of its overall agenda.39 One suspected spy was crucified, while others were publicly executed. In Ja’ar, a local shaykh who objected to AAS targeting Muslims and killing soldiers was imprisoned.40 AAS also flogged those who drank alcohol,41 and banned Arabic music. Anti-American sentiment remains virulent: AAS has installed loudspeakers in public places that denounce America and U.S allies such as Saudi Arabia. Many claim that Jews control the U.S.42\nThe group also reportedly assaulted those who did not attend mosque at the required times.43 This contrasts with AAS claims that their response to those who do not want to pray is to “just take them aside and advise them on the importance of prayer” and, if that does not work, to “lock them somewhere quiet and give them reading material until they realize how wrong they were.”44\nAAS has also chopped off the hands of those accused of stealing. One of their online video shows members revelling in such incidents.45 AAS judges continue to say that such incidents are “not to punish the thief, it is to deter the rest of society.”46 Another member of AAS tried to stress the importance of “context,” saying “If you steal food from the market because you are hungry, we will not cut the hand. But . . .if you steal during prayer time, or ifyou steal more than something like $65, then we cut.”47 This contrasts with stories which have emerged from others living under AAS rule. For example, when the father of a youth whose hand was amputated asked the group why the punishment had taken place, he was told by an AAS fighter “mazaj“ —or, “we were in the mood.”48\nSuch actions are likely to have confirmed to most Yemenis the brutality with which AAS intended to govern. However, one Ja’ar resident said that “al-Qaeda members made us feel safe, they cut off the hands of thieves. This is part of sharia: those who steal should have their hands cut off.”49 Another resident, speaking in September 2012 after the army’s offensive against AAS, claimed that “When al-Qaeda was here, it was good. There were no robberies. People treated each other in a decent way. No one would try to make problems.”50 It is possible that these interviewees were simply AAS sympathizers. However, it is also possible that the punishments were not universally disapproved of.\nIf AAS wanted to use these punishments as a deterrent, then it worked. Shops were left open during times of prayer, and no stealing took place.51 A Ja’ar street vendor said that “People felt secure and safe (under al-Qaeda) . . .People would leave their shops open when they went to pray and when we came back our goods were untouched.”52 This was a respite for tradesmen, who had previously been forced to bribe local criminals in order to allow them to operate their business: a practice which returned as soon as AAS had been forced out of Ja’ar.\nAAS eventually gained enough confidence to invite Western journalists to Ja’ar, albeit in a “highly controlled way.”53 Nonetheless, they were willing to allow Western observers to see their running of the town first hand.54 The material benefits such as greater access to food, electricity and water that AAS brought to parts of Abyan and Shabwa certainly made their policies popular to at least some of the population. However, the key to assessing AAS’s success overall is to study how receptive residents of these towns were to their ideological approach: whether the citizens of Abyan and Shabwa became more sympathetic to AAS while they were in power, and how they reacted to their departure. In this respect, AAS’s experiment in governance was not as successful.\nOn some level, it would not be surprising if some Yemenis in the south were receptive to the AAS message. The majority of the population there remains destitute and marginalized. Alternative governing models such as socialism and Sultanism have been tried and have largely failed in Yemen. The state has a reputation for illegitimacy and corruption from which it has never really recovered. In oil-rich governorates such as Shabwa and Mareb, there is a perception that wealth generated goes to the regime, while basic services in most areas are non-existent.55 For these, among other reasons, Jalal Baleedi Al-Murqashi, al-Qaeda’s commander of the Abyan governorate, claimed in May 2012 that:\nSeveral people in Abyan, Shebwa, Baida’a and Hadramout governorates want us to be there, so that we apply the laws of Islamic Sharia and maintain security. People in those areas love us and now we have become a part of them. They realized that we are honest and fair.56\nAAS certainly won some hearts and minds. After AAS’s rule collapsed, a disappointed Ja’ar resident was quoted as saying that, under AAS, “Everyone was comfortable, the young and old.”57 And yet, overall, it seems the most common reaction to the group’s departure was happiness and relief. A member of the Zinjibar local council said the “horrors” of AAS rule were “unthinkable,” and that she was “incredibly happy” at their departure.58 Another Zinjibar resident stated that it was “great” that AAS had gone.59 One woman interviewed in Abyan also expressed happiness at AAS leaving, saying “We can’t believe this, it’s a dream today! This dream came true today! We didn’t see something like today. It’s a priceless day . . .Thank God for this day that we are living in today!”60 A man from the same region claimed “they are not really Ansar Al-Sharia, they are Ansar of destruction.”61\nA Ja’ar resident speaking out against the group said “Man, if they wanted to jihad and that crap, send them to Israel, not here. We are Muslims, all of us are Muslims. If there is really jihad, let it go to the people who we are truly against and are enemies of Allah. We are not enemies of Allah.”62 Even Ja’ar residents thankful for the services AAS was able to provide still stressed the need to expel them. Two such individuals interviewed said that “We have to get rid of al-Qaeda, and yes, we need help from anyone . . .including America,” and that “[AAS] have brought war. Civilians are dying now because of them.”63\nThe outbreak of war has provided another incentive for Yemenis to reject AAS. There is an awareness that the AAS presence has led and will continue to lead to a greater U.S. drone and Yemeni Air Force presence, more bombing and higher levels of violence. As it becomes increasingly clear that an AAS presence will lead to a forceful Western response, AAS could find it increasingly difficult to muster much support.\nEven some of those who initially welcomed AAS’s presence came to change their opinion. One Ja’ar resident said that:\nIn the beginning when [AAS] came here, they were simple people and weak. We were one of those people who were harmed by the government, because the government stole from us, and we were without work. We aligned with them in the beginning. We found out, thank God, before we did anything with them, we found out that they are liars . . .they love blood, and they are terrorists.64\nThis type of statement, in which the respondent confirmed his initial involvement with the group was out of anger and frustration with the Sana’a government, helps confirm that while AAS is increasing in numbers, this is not always for ideological reasons. As one former recruit who eventually became disillusioned with the group commented: “I thought Ansar al-Sharia would improve our lives.”65\nFurthermore, it is also known that tribal elders have recruited fighters for AAS in return for wells, irrigation systems and food for their tribes.66 Some join to fight what they regard as an illegitimate regime.67 Yet, these localized and short-term gains for the group do not necessarily translate into support for AQ’s global ambitions. Furthermore, it can only ultimately have limited traction in Yemen because, as Ambassador Bodine says, despite its best efforts, “al-Qaeda does not have a constructive program.”68 It has certainly not yet found one that appeals to the majority of Yemenites.\nDespite this, it is important to remember the impoverishment of Yemeni society, and the social conditions working in AAS’s favor. There are still significant pools of disaffected and politically disenfranchised youths for AAS to recruit. It is estimated that 54 percent of the population lives in chronic poverty; unemployment is as high as 40 percent.69 The national average age is just 18.1 years old. Furthermore, 16 to 28 year olds make up two thirds of the local population in Abyan and Shabwa.70 A young, politically disenfranchised, impoverished and unemployed populace will not all gravitate to AAS—yet they are likely to distrust and dislike the government as much as many of their parents. A weak central government unable to command authority or gain popular support is likely to lead to greater opportunity for AAS to pursue its political agenda.\nAftermath of AAS Rule\nIt is encouraging that many Yemeni’s living under impoverished circumstances remain resistant to al-Qaeda’s ideology. Yet, despite AAS’s departure, there are still grave problems facing the towns that they formerly controlled. These problems are undoubtedly linked to the central government’s continued inability to provide basic services and justice.\nFor example, electricity and water shortages in Abyan are once again commonplace.71 Not only does this aggravate many Yemenis, but civilians in these areas do remember that AAS managed to provide such services just months ago. In a June 2012 interview, a Ja’ar resident indifferent to the ideology of AAS commented that “We haven’t had water or electricity since the day before yesterday. We have never had such disruptions under al Qaeda rule.”72 This remains a problem for the government. Their inability to perform basic services enables al-Qaeda to recruit more effectively than any they could do on their own.\nReconnecting basic services is not going to be easy. Towns that AAS formerly controlled suffered tremendously during the war.73 There has been more than $2.5 billion in damage to buildings in Abyan.74 Hundreds of thousands fled the fighting and many of the displaced remain in refugee camps in Aden. Meanwhile, looters have robbed abandoned houses.75\nFurthermore, many residents do not want to return to their hometowns for fear of left behind AAS landmines and IEDs.76 Some of those who have returned have been killed or maimed by these weapons, as have the soldiers trying to de-mine the streets.77 The jubilation of those who have made it back to their hometowns can be short-lived. Al-Bashar described the “destruction” in Zinjibar as “unbelievable . . . I don’t know how they are going to rebuild the city.”78 Yemeni television has also showed the destruction of Zinjibar. A resident interviewed said that:\nThe magnitude of destruction is big. This area is entirely destroyed . . . They put the bombs in the streets so they can destroy and kill the people. You can’t live here . . . we asked the government to go ahead and fix the water Al-Qaeda destroyed and polluted. They need to be fast because we are homeless with no water, or food or electricity.79\nA woman interview in Ja’ar said that:\nLook at all the buildings and houses, all of them are destroyed. They say they all have mines. I am one of those people who were told to go back home because our houses are clear, and they are in good condition. But where do I go back to? Which house? Look at the destruction! I can’t settle down in my life in a place like this. Not like before.80\nAn Abyan citizen interviewed spelled out these problems, saying that:\nAfter the army won, Hamdillah, we hoped life would come back, especially the necessary services: electricity, water, schools. If you passed by in Zinjibar, you’d see the reality. There are no services. We hope that the services come back, so people come back.81\nAt present, this remains unlikely. Given the significant degree to which Yemenis distrust their government, anger among the population will likely remain widespread. For example, an Abyan citizen interviewed in the wake of AAS’s expulsion blamed AAS, former President Saleh and the local government for their situation:\nThey are Ansar Al-Shar (evil), not Ansar Al-Sharia . . ..The infrastructure now needs rebuilding, needs time, needs cooperation of efforts, and all of this is because Ali Abdullah Saleh . . .[He] is the reason behind the destruction of Abyan and our homelessness, and the leaders of our area are the people who caused us to be homeless.82\nThe government’s agriculture department is now surveying the damage in the affected areas. Some electric generators have arrived in Abyan, some water pumps are working in Zinjibar and new electric generators have been installed in Adenin a bid to resolve water supply issues. Deliveries of water are also beginning to increase. Yet al-Bashar acknowledges that this is now a “key moment.” If the government does not rebuild and de-mine affected areas in Abyan and Shabwa, then significant problems lie ahead. He states it plainly himself: “What they are saying in Abyan is (1) landmines are killing me. (2) I need electricity. For (1) you can blame Ansar al-Sharia. For (2), you end up blaming the government.”83\nSana’a has established a fund to help rebuild Abyan; however, it will be impossible to rebuild the areas destroyed in enough time to prevent further humanitarian disaster. In Ambassador Bodine’s view, the entire experience of AAS running southern Yemen towns has just “underscored the need for government services in there,” and the need for them to be capable of appealing to and responding to the basic needs of the local population.84\nAl-Bashar says that ultimately AAS’s provision of basic services amounted to a “few simple projects.” He tends to think that AAS’s propaganda was extremely effective, stating they were “really good in promoting the little things they’ve done.”85 To some extent, it is likely that AAS was overstating what services they were able to provide. There will remain some debate over the effectiveness of their governance.\nThere is no doubt that AAS was more effective than Sana’a had been in a long time at addressing the lack of basic provisions. AAS understood what services were key and exploited them. They proved capable of organizing themselves into an increasingly formidable opponent militarily, but also, politically. Yemen was AQ’s most effective political campaign in the Middle East yet. In exploiting key issues in economically deprived, tribal areas, AAS displayed an ability to govern more effectively than AQ had in the past.\nAt the same time, AAS had many external factors to thank: a pre-existing distrust of central government, security and humanitarian concerns and widespread corruption. Yet despite these factors, support for the group was not widespread in the areas it controlled. Most citizens remained resistant to AQ ideology.\nIt is possible that AAS’s expulsion from the towns it controlled marks the end of their political agenda. Such is evident in that their fighters have dispersed and reverted to more traditional, hit and run style attacks against military targets. However, there is no guarantee that this will last. In September 2012, reports began to emerge of AAS offering a “Telephone for Help” service in which Abyan citizens suffering from “looting and robbery” at the hands of government forces who were taking the province back were encouraged to report their problems to AAS.86\nAs Ambassador Bodine says, “if we accept that AAS/AQ has learned the lesson of its own past, and is [giving] the perception of providing service and parallel government . . .then the Yemeni government needs to respond on that level.”87 Improvements in security will only be effective if the government’s stewardship of the economy and the justice system improves.\nAAS’s strategy in Yemen also illustrates a critical aspect of their method: they only target areas where they already enjoy a certain amount of sympathy and political advantage.Ja’ar was a perfect target. Its historical involvement with the Afghan mujahideen and the Aden Abyan Islamic Army ensured that there were already veteran jihadis living in the area who were familiar with its history, culture, traditions, tribal characteristics and who held influence locally. The fact the population ultimately rejected AAS in these towns shows the limits of al-Qaeda’s ideological appeal. However, AAS is proof that al-Qaeda is attempting to develop and adapt as an organization. With instability in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sinai Peninsula, Syria, Mali and Nigeria, there are a growing number of opportunities for al-Qaeda to apply and improve its political strategy. As in Yemen, its ability to learn from past failures will help shape the group’s success in the future.\n1 Iona Craig, “Resistance battles al-Qaeda-linked fighters in Yemen,\" USA Today, May 25, 2012. The idea of Ansar al-Sharia acting as al-Qaeda’s ‘insurgent wing’ was first referred to by British journalist Iona Craig The idea of Ansar al-Sharia acting as al-Qaeda’s ‘insurgent wing’ was first referred to by British journalist Iona Craig. ↝\n2 Barbara Bodine, former US Ambassador to Yemen, Interview By the Author, May 21, 2012. ↝\n3 ‘Valediction statement of Ansar Al-Sharia to the people of Waqar’, Ansar al-Mujahideen, June 14, 2012. ↝\n4 Larry Shaughnessy, “U.S. official: Al Qaeda in Yemen bigger threat than in Pakistan,\" CNN, December 17,2010. ↝\n5 United States Department of State, “Terrorist Designations of Ansar al-Sharia as an Alias for Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula,\" October 4,2012. ↝\n6 Al-Qaeda in Yemen, directed by Safa al Ahmad (May 29, 2012, Frontline PBS,) Online Transcript, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, a journalist who spent time with AAS in Ja’ar recently, found that the two groups operated as one, and saw ‘how clearly [AAS] referred to themselves as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.’ ↝\n7 ’Online Question and Answer Session with Abu Zubayr Adel al-Abab, Shari`a Official for al-Qa`ida in the Arabian Peninsula’, April 18, 2012, available at http://icsr.info/news/attachments/1306407042ICSR_Abab__Translation.pdf ↝\n8 Mohammed al-Bashar, Yemen Embassy Spokesman, Interview by the Author, Washington, D.C., 3 July 2012. ↝\n9 .Understanding Yemen’s Al Qaeda Threat, directed by Azmat Kahn (May 29th, 2012, Frontline PBS,) Online transcript. ↝\n10 Gregory Johnsen, “Frontline: Al-Qaeda in Yemen,\" The Big Think Blog, entry posted on May 30, 2012.\" ↝\n11 ‘Al-Qaeda in Yemen’, Frontline, May 29, 2012 ↝\n12 Abdulrazaq Al-Jaml, “Interview with Ansar Al-Sharia Leader in Abyan, Jalal Baleedi Al-Murqashi,\" Yemen Times, May 17, 2012. ↝\n13 Marco Werman, “Frontline: Inside Al-Qaeda’s Stronghold in Yemen,\" The World, May 29, 2012. ↝\n14 Mohammed al-Bashar, Interview by the Author, July 3, 2012. ↝\n15 ‘Online Question and Answer Session with Abu Zubayr Adel al-Abab’, April 18, 2012. ↝\n16 Yemeni official, Tribal Dynamics in Yemen: United States Special Operations Command conference, April 2012. ↝\n17 Integrated Regional Information Networks, “Analysis: Battle for Hearts and Minds as Yemen Crisis Deepens,\" May 30, 2012, and Iona Craig, “Toll climbs in Yemen’s fight against al-Qaeda,\" USA Today, May 18, 2012. ↝\n18 Marco Werman, “Frontline: Inside Al-Qaeda’s Stronghold in Yemen,\" The World, May 29 2012. ↝\n19 ‘Madad News Agency presents a new video message from Anṣār al-Sharī’ah in Yemen: “Eyes on the Event #10’, Jihadology, April 22, 2012. ↝\n20 Iona Craig, “Toll climbs in Yemen’s fight against al-Qaeda,\" USA Today, May 18, 2012. ↝\n21 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Al-Qaida's wretched utopia and the battle for hearts and minds,\" Guardian, April 30, 2012. ↝\n22 Dina Temple Raston, “Al-Qaida: Now Vying For Hearts, Minds And Land,\" NPR, July 13, 2012. ↝\n24 Nadwa al-Dawsari, Director of Partners Yemen, Interview by the Author, July 9, 2012. ↝\n25 Mohammed al-Bashar, Interview by the Author, 3 July 2012. ↝\n26 Integrated Regional Information Networks, “Yemen: Behind militia lines in Jaar,\" March 27, 2012. ↝\n27 Ansar Al-Shari’a planted landmines to kill Abyan citizens’, Yemen TV, June 22, 2012. ↝\n28 Nadwa al-Dawsari, Interview by the Author, July 9, 2012. ↝\n30 Interview with Nadwa al-Dawsari, July 9, 2012. ↝\n31 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad ‘Al-Qaida's wretched utopia and the battle for hearts and minds’, Guardian, April 30, 2012. ↝\n32 Marco Werman, “Frontline: Inside Al-Qaeda’s Stronghold in Yemen,\" The World, May 29, 2012 or Integrated Regional Information Networks, “Analysis: Battle for Hearts and Minds as Yemen Crisis Deepens, May 30, 2012. ↝\n33 ‘Ja’ar experience in living under the rule of Ansar Alshari’a’, Al-Jazeera, June 22, 2012, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7b8M-_0ejQ ↝\n35 “As they are confident about the integrity of “Al-Shari’a\" justice system – Al-Ja’adneh tribe in Abyan hands over one ofits members to be tried by “Al-Shari’a\" courts’, Marib Press News, April 4, 2012. ↝\n37 Sudarsan Raghavan, “In Yemen, tribal militias in a fierce battle with al-Qaeda wing,\" Washington Post, September 11, 2012. ↝\n38 Casey L Coombs, “Land of the Black Flag,\" Foreign Policy, March 9, 2012. ↝\n39 For an overview of Ansar al-Sharia human rights abuses in Abyan, see ‘Conflict in Yemen: Abyan’s Darkest Hour’, Amnesty International (December 2012). ↝\n40 Al-Jazeera, 22 June 2012, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7b8M-_0ejQ ↝\n41 Fuad Mused, “Military Plan to Attack Abyan, Returnees Flee Again,\" Yemen Times, March 1, 2012. ↝\n42 Suadarsan Raghavan, “In Yemen, tribal militias in a fierce battle with al-Qaeda wing,\" Washington Post, September 11, 2012. ↝\n43 Integrated Regional Information Networks, “Yemen: Behind militia lines in Jaar\",March 27, 2012. ↝\n45 >. 24 June 2012, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUHpTDLmzMA. ↝\n46 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad “Al-Qaida's wretched utopia and the battle for hearts and minds,\" Guardian, April 30,2012. ↝\n47 Casey L Coombs, “Land of the Black Flag,\" Foreign Policy, 9 March 2012. ↝\n48 ‘Conflict in Yemen: Abyan’s Darkest Hour’, Amnesty International (December 2012). ↝\n49 Khaled Abdallah and Mohammed Mukhashaf “Yemenis say al Qaeda gave town security, at a cost,\" Reuters, June 18, 2012. ↝\n50 Sudarsan Raghavan “In Yemen, tribal militias in a fierce battle with al-Qaeda wing’, Washington Post, September 11, 2012. ↝\n51 \"Al-Qaeda in Yemen,\" Frontline, 29 May 2012. ↝\n53 Marco Werman, “Frontline: Inside Al-Qaeda’s Stronghold in Yemen\" The World, 29 May 2012. ↝\n56 Abdulrazaq Al-Jaml \"Interview with Ansar Al-Sharia Leader in Abyan, Jalal Baleedi Al-Murqashi,\" Yemen Times, May 17, 2012. ↝\n57 ‘Ja’ar experience in living under the rule of Ansar Alshari’a’, Al-Jazeera, June 22, 2012. ↝\n58 Adam Baron, “Yemen’s defense minister visits Zinjibar, Jaar – freed from al Qaida-linked militants’ control,\" McClatchy, June 13, 2012. ↝\n59 Adam Baron, \"A Hollow Victory,\" Foreign Policy, July 2, 2012. ↝\n60 ‘Tears of happiness for Abyan citizens as they defeat Ansar “Evil\"’, Yemen TV, 12 June 2012. ↝\n61 'Abyan after Victory', Suhail TV, June 23, 2012. ↝\n62 ‘Ansar Al-Shari’a planted landmines to kill Abyan citizens’, Yemen TV, June 22, 2012. ↝\n64 ‘Jaar after the withdrawal of Ansar al-Sharia’, Sky News Arabia, June 29 2012. ↝\n65 Sudarsan Raghavan ‘In Yemen, tribal militias in a fierce battle with al-Qaeda wing’, Washington Post, September 11, 2012. ↝\n66 Christopher Swift, “Arc of Convergence: AQAP, Ansar al-Shari’a and the Struggle for Yemen, CTC Sentinel,\" June 21, 2012. ↝\n68 Ambassador Bodine, Interview by the author, May 21, 2012. ↝\n69 John Brennan, “U.S. Policy Toward Yemen,\" Council on Foreign Relations, August 8, 2012. ↝\n70 Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook, \"Yemen.\" ↝\n71 \"Abyan after Victory,\" Suhail TV, June 23, 2012. ↝\n72 Khaled Abdallah and Mohammed Mukhashaf, “Yemenis say al Qaeda gave town security, at a cost,\" Reuters, June 18, 2012. ↝\n73 For example, see 'Abyan after Victory', Suhail TV, 23 June 2012, “Air strike against Ansar Al-Shari’a-Abyan images,\" Yemen TV, June 21, 2012; \"Third report on infrastructure,\" July 7, 2012; \"Al-Qaeda taking control of Yemen,\" 3 June 2012; Khaled Abdallah and Mohammed Mukhashaf, “Yemenis say al Qaeda gave town security, at a cost,\" Reuters, 18 June 2012; Bobby Ghosh, “Where Terrorists Have Tanks: A Ride Through al-Qaeda Country,\" Time, 25 July 2012; or “Thousands flee Abyan due to battles,\" Sky News Arabia, 26 June 2012. ↝\n74 Adam Baron, “Yemen’s defense minister visits Zinjibar, Jaar – freed from al Qaida-linked militants’ control,\" McClatchy, 13 June 2012. ↝\n75 “Suffering of displaced Yemenis in Aden,\" Al-Jazeera, 26 June 2012. ↝\n76 Mohammed al-Bashar, Interview by the Author, 19 July 2012. ↝\n77 Bobby Ghosh, “Where Terrorists Have Tanks: A Ride Through al-Qaeda Country,\" Time, 25 July 2012; or Thousands flee Abyan due to battles’, Sky News Arabia, 26 June 2012; or ‘Suffering of displaced Yemenis in Aden’, Al-Jazeera, 26 June 2012. ↝\n79 “Air strike against Ansar Al-Shari’a – Abyan images,\" Yemen TV, 21 June 2012. ↝\n80 “Ansar Al-Shari’a planted landmines to kill Abyan citizens,\" Yemen TV, 22 June 2012. ↝\n81 ]. “Abyan is a disaster – citizens discuss their demands,\" Yemen TV, 23 June 2012. ↝\n82 \"Abyan after Victory,\" Suhail TV, 23 June 2012. ↝\n84 Ambassador Bodine, Interview by the author, 21 May 2012. ↝\n86 “Al-Qaeda starts helpline in Abyan,\" National Yemen, 10 September 2012. ↝\nTerrorism and National Security Analyst, The Heritage Foundation\nThe Syria Effect: Al-Qaeda Fractures\nCharles Lister\nIn late 2010 and into 2011, as the so-called “Arab Spring” swept across North Africa and the Middle East, a consensus emerged in the West that the unp...\nDeploying Social Media to Empower Iranian Women: An Interview with Masih Alinejad\nLela Gilbert & Masih Alinejad\nMasih Alinejad is recognized by millions of global admirers for inspiring protests against the Iranian regime’s enforced mandatory hijab...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1083970"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5429824590682983,"wiki_prob":0.5429824590682983,"text":"Formula One Management / Sky Sports F1\nLooking at whether F1 teams will benefit as a result of the exclusive Sky UK deal\nMarch 25, 2016 March 26, 2016 David Nelson7 Comments\nThis past Wednesday, it was announced that Sky Sports would be covering Formula 1 exclusively in the United Kingdom from the 2019 season. Their new contract will last from 2019 through to 2024.\nA definitive figure of how much the rights cost has not yet been released, however, it is understood that the rights will cost Sky around £1 billion for the six seasons. Barring some change between now and 2019, Formula 1 will lose a significant portion of viewers in the UK once this new deal kicks in. Sky have splashed out on the rights to prevent BT Sport from grabbing the F1 contract.\nThis post is based on some assumptions, but I wanted to understand (for myself) how much teams may benefit financially between 2018 and 2019 as a result of this contract. I’ve made a few scribbles in Excel, and I thought it made sense to publish them on here for others to see and analyse. I’m not saying “this is correct”, it is merely an indicator of how teams may benefit from the new deal. Readers of this site can judge for themselves whether the financial benefit for teams will offset the loss in viewers.\nAssumption 1 = Sky’s UK F1 contract from 2019 to 2024 is £1 billion.\nI should note that if we find out that their contract is less than £1 billion (let’s say £900 million for sake of argument), it does not invalidate the calculations below. As we will see, the figures at the foot of this article are quite small, meaning that a difference up top will not make a huge difference further down.\nWe have this figure that we need to split over the six years. Normally, we could do a straight ‘divide by six’ to present a figure per year. In broadcasting terms, contracts normally work with an escalator, meaning that they can increase in value by either 5 or 10 percent per year. This means that the cost can be back loaded through the contract as opposed to the majority of it upfront. I would expect the same to happen with Sky’s F1 contract. It is rare for the cost to be frontloaded, especially if broadcasters are in financial turmoil (see: ITV Digital and Setanta historically).\nThe predicted cost of Sky’s Formula 1 television rights within the UK from 2019 to 2024.\nAbove, there are four choices: your flat option along with three escalators. Option three on the escalator I think is a non-starter because it would result in the final year of Sky’s contract breaching the £200 million mark. Instead, I think option two is a more viable approach: the contract would start with £138 million in 2019, increasing to £198 million in 2024. You could flip a coin between option one and two, but even then there is £9 million difference for 2019 when you compare the two options.\nAssumption 2 = Sky will pay Formula One Management (FOM) around £138 million in 2019.\nI wrote a piece in 2014 looking at the rising cost of Formula 1’s television rights. In it, I placed the 2018 season roughly around £60 million. James Allen says that this is now £70 million, because Channel 4’s deal is £24 million per season instead of the £15 million that the BBC were previously paying.\nTo work out how much Formula 1 will benefit in 2019, we need to deduct the 2018 contract value (Channel 4 and Sky) from the 2019 total. The reason we deduct both Channel 4 and Sky is because there will not be a Channel 4 replacement in 2019. As of writing, the deal is Sky exclusive with no room for a second broadcaster to enter the fray. There is a “free-to-air” provision with relation to the British Grand Prix, but as mentioned before, this is where I anticipate Sky Sports Mix coming into play.\nBased on the maths above, the difference between 2018 and 2019 is £68 million. That is the amount of money FOM will get extra as a result of the new deal. Probably the biggest assumption of the whole post is that every single penny of the £68 million will, in some shape, go back to the teams as part of their prize money.\nAssumption 3 = Every penny of Sky’s Formula 1 deal will go back into the sport, and contribute to the financial health of every team.\nThis relies on those running the sport not taking 10 or 20 percent off Sky’s contribution. The £68 million difference can be divided multiple ways. Either, an equal split between the 11 teams, or a split whereby the larger teams get a bigger proportion of funding. The escalators below take an approach, whereby, for example with option one, Ferrari get 85 percent of Mercedes, Williams get 85 percent of Ferrari and so on and so forth.\nBased on the calculations presented in this post, the possible gains that teams could make financially between the 2018 and 2019 Formula One seasons.\nThe calculations in this article show that a team such as Force India or Renault could gain around £6 million between 2018 and 2019 as a result of Sky’s exclusive UK deal. A front running team, such as Mercedes would gain between £8 million and £12 million, whereas the likes of Haas and Manor will gain between £2 million and £4 million between 2018 and 2019. Each team would then gain a further £1 million each year until the end of 2024 as Sky’s escalator kicks in (see the first figure in this post).\nAlternatively, the increase from Formula 1’s UK rights could be split equally for 2019, thereby meaning that every team would gain around £6.2 million of prize money. A third alternative is that the inverse could occur, whereby the smaller teams gain as a result of this deal, with FOM choosing to distribute more money to them than the bigger teams, resulting in a healthier Formula 1 for all concerned.\nLike I said at the top of the post: I’m not saying the above is correct, or will happen. However, hopefully the above helps to show how Formula 1 teams may benefit financially as a result of Sky’s new UK deal with FOM.\nFormula One Management, Sky Sports F1\nScheduling: The 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix\nMotoGP opener drops slightly year-on-year\n7 thoughts on “Looking at whether F1 teams will benefit as a result of the exclusive Sky UK deal”\nI find it hard to believe that Sky have paid anywhere near £1 Billion, they allowed C4 in when they didn’t have to, so presumably that gave them some bargaining power.They have also been cutting back on resource and the F1 Show, which had been awful in the recent studio form, so it seems odd that they would then splash out a billion.\nAccording to Kevin Eason, CVC take £4 out of every £10 of income, so the teams will be lucky if they get anything.\nDavid, have you heard anymore on what the FTA option will be? I read Sky’s Press Release differently to you. Sky Sports Mix will have at least two other live races, so I can’t see how that will be the FTA option.\nThe £1 billion is because BT Sport pushed the price up. When you consider the total cost was previously £70m a year, Sky would have gone a fair bit higher to get exclusively. Add in BT competition and you can see why we are at the position we are currently in. I’d say it is just shy of £1 billion, but until we see exact figures, its difficult to say.\nI haven’t heard anything about the FTA option I’m afraid. Will be interesting if we hear more detail next week in Bahrain.\nLooking at the numbers JA on F1 is quoting. the BBC were paying £39m for their exclusive deal up to the end of 2011, and Sky are currently paying £45m. So to almost quadruple it when it’s a niche sport seems odd, even if it is competing against BT.\nI agree that we will never really know because the details won’t be published, and I take JA on F1’s numbers with a pinch of salt. I say that because when the BBC approached Sky in 2011, it was reported that the BBC would save £150m, and that included extending their coverage to 2018. If you look at JA’s numbers, the BBC didn’t save hardly anything.\nAssumption 3 has me confused. Why wouldn’t a large percentage just end up in CVC’s pockets? Surely, that is exactly what will happen?\nWe already know, from experience, that FOM will take their slice and the rest is divided up amongst the teams based upon the agreements that were made unilaterally after the last Concorde agreement expired.\nThere is no way in hell that the teams are going to see 100% of this £1 billion (or similar) figure.\nI agree completely with you Samantha. You could argue that the figures posted are most generous (hence why I’ve done a step by step post as opposed to jumping to the final figure).\nIt is extremely alarming if the majority of Sky’s cash goes to CVC and not back into the sport as it means the teams will not benefit at all. If you were to say that 50% goes to CVC, then teams at the back of the grid will only gain around ~£1m in 2018 compared with 2019.\nPCK says:\nI struggle to see what’s in it for the mainstream motor car manufacturers Mercedes, Honda and Renault, they don’t really need the Pay TV income, they do need the massive exposure of winning on free-to-air TV. Same argument goes for brands like Red Bull. For them F1 involvement is just a marketing strategy. Why would they blow their marketing budgets on expensive racing cars for a massively reduced TV audience?\nSomewhere on a laptop in Osterley, this Sky deal makes perfect sense. I don’t think it’s in any way a loss leader. Has Formula One coverage been reduced to being an incentive in their subscriber retention strategy?\nGolly says:\nI think you’re dead right – manufacturers and the likes of Red Bull want lots of people watching and following. Exclusive Pay TV deals cut that in a stroke. By having to subscribe, at an ever increasing cost, fans are being asked more and more to finance the obscenely expensive world of F1 and line the pockets of CVC. Traditional sponsors are gradually walking away, leaving TV deals as the main cash stream.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1430647"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8463762402534485,"wiki_prob":0.8463762402534485,"text":"Bonobos founder Andy Dunn to leave Walmart in 2020\nSarah Perez\t@sarahintampa / 1 month\nAndy Dunn, the founder of menswear site Bonobos which sold to Walmart in 2017 for $310 million, is now parting ways with the retail giant. The executive, who joined Walmart as SVP of digital consumer brands at the time of the acquisition, officially announced his departure in a LinkedIn post titled “A Love Letter to Walmart.”\nIn it, Dunn praises the time he spent with the company and the knowledge he gained while working there. Specifically, he references several of Walmart’s bigger initiatives, including its transformation into an omnichannel retail company serving customers online and offline, without distinction.\nThis is an area of Walmart’s business that’s been under pressure as the battle with Amazon heats up. A recent report by Bloomberg, for example, highlighted the internal corporate culture clash underway as Walmart’s e-commerce investments impacted stores and thinned margins.\nDunn also referenced Walmart’s growing grocery business, now helping to fuel its online sales, and the development of new Walmart brands like Allswell.\n“I learned a lot more about retail transformation in the digital age at the world’s biggest company. I watched our strategy evolve as we uncorked our unique advantages on a new omni playing field – and began to identify where we aren’t just catching up, but where we are winning. The momentum with online grocery pickup opened my eyes: our thousands of supercenters are an asset nobody else has, so let’s use them,” wrote Dunn. “In our digital brands group, that led to development of a strategy built on omni, as we married our talent with the power of Walmart distribution to build brands like Allswell. With my departure, that incubator will now be plugged directly into the Walmart mothership,” he said.\nBonobos is one of several online brands that Walmart has now acquired to fill out its virtual shelves, along with Moosejaw ($51 million), ShoeBuy, Jet.com ($3 billion) and Hayneedle, in addition to Bonobos ($310 million) and ModCloth ($75 million). Dunn’s letter noted the more recent deal to buy plus-sized clothing brand ELOQUII ($100 million) — an example of Walmart’s desire to deliver a better life for its core customers.\nWalmart’s acquisition streak has since slowed. It also sold off Modcloth just two years after buying it, to stem the losses from its e-commerce business. Bonobos saw layoffs in 2019, and Walmart’s biggest acquisition, Jet.com, has been folded into the rest of Walmart’s e-commerce operations.\nDunn’s letter also spoke to Walmart’s more controversial decision to fully exit the handgun and handgun ammunition businesses, and ban open-carry in its stores, following the mass shooting in its El Paso store.\n“It’s a testament to what kind of company Walmart is that I entered thinking mostly about what I could offer, and ended up being the one who received so much,” said Dunn. “When it comes to making the world a better place, the world’s largest company is, 57 years later, just getting started. It’s a credit to the remarkable teamwork of 2.4 million of the hardest working people on planet Earth, all working together. As Sam said, the fact that we’re all in this together is the secret. At Walmart, it’s hidden in plain sight,” he concluded.\nVox previously reported on Dunn’s departure, citing a source, ahead of the official announcement.\nDunn’s departure will take place in 2020.\nWalmart shared the news with its team in an internal memo yesterday. An except from this memo said:\n“After more than two years innovating new, incubated brands and bringing on important acquired brands, as an entrepreneur at heart, Andy Dunn has decided now is the right time to take the next steps in his career. During the last two and a half years, Andy’s contributions to the organization have been invaluable. He’s been instrumental in building out and growing Walmart’s proprietary brand portfolio. The DNA of the incubated and acquired brands is now a key part of our strategy, and provides us a brand engine we can plug directly into the enterprise. Andy will remain onboard through January and will work closely with Merchandising and brand leadership to ensure a smooth and successful transition.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line192820"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8469675779342651,"wiki_prob":0.8469675779342651,"text":"IICM O Instituto\nIICM\nMateus DOC\nAna Teresa Tavares-Lehmann\nAna Teresa T. Lehmann is Associate Professor of Economics at the School of Economics, University of Porto, researcher at CEF.UP, University of Porto, and Head of International Business at EGP-U.Porto Business School. She has M.Sc., PhD (both from the University of Reading, UK) and postdoctoral studies (U. Strathclyde) focusing on Internationalization/Foreign Direct Investment. She has also been a Visiting Professor and Visiting Research Fellow at several European and American Universities.\nAna Teresa T. Lehmann has served in several executive and policy-making roles, having been recently (2008-2012) Vice-President of Portugal’s North Regional Development Authority, in charge of strategies to promote internationalization, innovation, cluster policy and international cooperation. She is a former Pro-Vice Chancellor (for Strategic Planning and Enterprise Relations) of the University of Porto. She has served on the boards of various companies and foundations, and has been also an entrepreneur/owner of a consulting firm.\nIn the last 18 years, she has been a consultant to several institutions in Europe, Africa and the Americas such as the OECD, UNCTAD, European Commission, national and regional governments, the Portuguese Investment Agency, among others, in the fields of foreign direct investment, multinational enterprises, competitiveness, public policies, and regional development. She is the past President of the European International Business Academy (2009-2010), and currently a member of its Board and Executive Committee.\nShe has published widely, mainly on the themes of multinational subsidiary strategies and evolution, public policies related to FDI attraction and impact of multinational enterprise activities, either in books – for instance, Multinationals, Clusters and Innovation: Does Public Policy Matter? (Palgrave, 2006), Entrepreneurship in the Global Firm (Emerald, 2012) and in scientific journals such as International Business Review, Regional Studies, Transnational Corporations, International Journal of the Economics of Business, Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Economía Industrial, Managerial Finance, and Journal of Global Business. She is also a regular speaker at top-level conferences and expert meetings in Internationalization and Foreign Direct investment Strategies and Policy, and on Competitiveness, Clusters and Innovation, and serves as editor for international journals on strategy and international business.\nShe has received several awards for scientific merit and for executive career recognition.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line711652"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5053468942642212,"wiki_prob":0.4946531057357788,"text":"Funeral Preparations - Community Mortuary\nWhile there is a lot to think about in planning a service for a loved one, it's good to know that your Funeral Director will take care of all the details involved in bringing your plans to reality. In this section we have practical information about writing an obituary and delivering a eulogy. We've also included tips on funeral etiquette - those essential social graces that make such an occasion bearable. Our FAQ section may have the exact answers you're looking for - but if not, we invite you to call us.\nAn obituary serves as notification that an individual has died and provides service details. But it can be for more than that. Our guidelines will help you in writing a well-crafted obituary.\nWriting and delivering a eulogy is a way of paying tribute to a loved one’s memory. But it can be a challenge to write and to deliver. Our tips can help.\nUnless you’ve been to many funerals, we’re sure you have questions about what you should wear, say, or do while there. We’ve got the experience, and can give you the right information.\nDo you have questions? We’ve listed the most common ones we’ve heard here, and provided honest answers to each. If yours isn’t listed here, we invite you to call us.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1464637"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.794562578201294,"wiki_prob":0.794562578201294,"text":"The truth about that ‘first ever marijuana overdose death’\nSensationalized coverage of a child’s sudden death resulted in massive misinformation about an alleged “fatal marijuana overdose”.\nWritten by Steve Elliott\nPhoto by Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images\nRemember last month when what was supposedly the world’s “first marijuana overdose” took place? Sensationalistic media stories and public panic notwithstanding, it seems that a couple of poison control doctors had their quotes taken out of context. When media outlets started reporting on the “first marijuana overdose” of an 11-month-old as if it had actually taken place, lots of folks didn’t know any better to believe them.\nThe infant in question died in 2015 after he was admitted to a hospital in Colorado. He was unresponsive, with no gag reflex, following a seizure. The baby had been “irritable” and “lethargic” in the days before, and after the seizure eventually went into a cardiac arrest.\nAfter a predictable controversy arose — after all, why would cannabis have waited at least 12,000 years to kill someone? — the doctors involved stepped up to clarify that they never said a child overdosed on marijuana.\nBoth doctors who worked on the case report in question, Thomas M. Nappe, DO, and Christopher O. Hoyte, MD, work at the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.\nAccording to the first two lines of their report, “since marijuana legalization, pediatric exposures to cannabis have increased. To date, pediatric deaths from cannabis exposure have not been reported.”\nCOLORADO SPRINGS, CO. – August 05: Janéa Cox director of the Flowering H.O.P.E. Foundation, with her daughter Haleigh’s, who was diagnosed with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, looks at the plants that make Haleigh’s Hope, a cannabis oil high in cannabidiol, or CBD, that is helping control her seizures. August 05, 2014 Colorado Springs (Photo By Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images)\nNow, to a careful reader, you’d think that would be enough to establish that kids have ever died from weed. But a little bit of ambiguous language a little later in the report is what created the confusion:\n“As of this writing, this is the first pediatric death associated with cannabis exposure.”\nAll the breathless, downright misleading headlines associated with that story appear to have had their genesis in that unfortunate line. But the key word is “associated.” To a medical doctor, that doesn’t mean “caused.” It just means that when the child died, due to myocarditis, mind you, not cannabis, there was marijuana in his system.\nThere’s absolutely no evidence that one had anything at all to do with the other, or, beyond that, that an “overdose” ever occurred.\n“The only thing that we found was marijuana. High concentrations of marijuana in his blood. And that’s the only thing we found (out of the ordinary),” Dr. Hoyte said.\nThe official cause of death was declared to be due to heart muscle damage.\n“We are absolutely not saying that marijuana killed that child,” Dr. Nappe, who is director of medical toxicology at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania’s St. Luke’s University Health Network, told The Washington Post.\nDue to the confusing choice of words in the report, people (and journalists) took things way out of context.\nAccording to Dr. Nappe, he and Dr. Hoyte were simply making observations as they struggled to make sense of the case. He said they were looking into a “possible” connection between cannabis exposure and the child’s death.\nHoyte also addressed the stories in a tweet:\n“News story totally sensationalized. Kid had myocarditis after marijuana exposure. We just said more study is needed. Not that marijuana was the cause of the death. News story totally overblown”\nPhoto by BSIP/UIG/Getty Images\nEven the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, have to admit that marijuana has never caused a fatal overdose. Since both doctors involved in the case say that’s not what happened here, that’s the way it will stay.\nThe doctors’ state reports Vice, that “there exists a plausible relationship” between marijuana and the child’s death that “justifies further research.” But “plausible relationships,” of course, doesn’t even come close to meaning causation.\nDr. William Checkley, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, said that the Colorado doctors need to decisively demonstrate any link between myocarditis and marijuana. It’s possible that the two were unrelated in this case, Checkley said.\n“There has to be more information to show that this link is real,” Dr. Checkley said.\nPaul Armentano, deputy director at NORML, agreed.\nDecember 05, 2017 — Last Updated August 20, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1160195"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8967028260231018,"wiki_prob":0.8967028260231018,"text":"« Dublin Community Television is forced to close.\nDublin’s Oldest Barbers: Doran’s of Castlewood Avenue »\nJewish community during the Revolutionary period (1916-23)\nNovember 7, 2013 by Sam\n[A sequel to this article can be read here]\nIn the early half of the twentieth century, there were roughly 3,700 Jews living in Ireland. This represented about 0.12% of the total population. Though their numbers were minuscule, members of the the Jewish community were disproportionately active in the fight for Irish independence. Melisande Zlotover in his 1966 memoir ‘Zlotover story: A Dublin story with a difference’ assessed the overall situation by writing that Dublin’s Jews “were most sympathetic [to the fight for Independence] and many helped in the cause”.\nThese included:\nMichael Noyk (1884–1966) was born in Lithuanian town of Telšiai and moved to Dublin with his parents at the age of one. An Irish Republican activist and lawyer, he most famously defended republican prisoners during the War of Independence and afterwards. In the 1917 Clare East by-election he was a prominent worker for Eamon de Valera and in the 1918 general election was election agent for Countess Markievicz and Seán T. O’Kelly. He was later involved in renting houses and offices for all the ministries established under the first Dáil. During the War of Independence he regularly met Michael Collins in Devlin’s pub on Parnell Square and helped to run the republican courts. In 1921 he was to the fore in defending many leading members of the IRA, including Gen. Seán Mac Eoin and Capt. Patrick Moran, the latter of which was executed for complicity in the shooting of British intelligence officers.\nWhile Arthur Griffith’s early anti-Semitic comments (c.1904) are frequently recalled, it should be noted that he was an extremely close friend of Noyk’s from 1910 onwards and he remained Griffith’s solicitor until his death in 1922. So close did Griffith’s relationship with Noyk become that his own daughter would act as a flower girl at Noyk’s wedding as Manus O’Riordan reminded us in an excellent 2008 article.\nIn later years, Noyk became a founder-member of the Association of Old Dublin Brigade (IRA) and a member of the Kilmainham Jail Restoration Committee. Keenly interested in sport, he played soccer in his youth for a team based around Adelaide Road and was for many years the solicitor to Shamrock Rovers. He died on 23 October 1966 at Lewisham Hospital in London. A huge crowd, including the then taoiseach, Seán Lemass, attended his funeral and the surviving members of the Dublin Brigade rendered full IRA military honours at his graveside. He is buried in Dolphin’s Barn cemetery.\nNoyk is honoured with portrait. The Irish Times, 06 Apr 1960.\nRobert Emmet Briscoe (1894–1969) was a Jewish Dublin-born republican and businessman who most famously ran guns for the IRA during the War of Independence. Named after revolutionary leader Robert Emmet, his father, a steadfast Parnellite called another son Wolfe Tone Briscoe. Politicised after the Easter Rising, Robert attended meetings of Clan na Gael in the United States, meeting Liam Mellows, who influenced his return to Ireland (August 1917) to join the headquarters staff of Na Fianna Éireann. The clothing factory that Robert Briscoe opened at 9 Aston Quay, and a subsequent second workshop in Coppinger’s Row, both served as headquarters for clandestine Fianna and IRA activities before and during the War of Independence. Unknown to government authorities owing to his lack of prior political involvement, Briscoe engaged in arms-and-ammunition procurement and transport, and gathering of intelligence. Transferred to IRA headquarters staff (February 1920), he was dispatched by Michael Collins to Germany, where, with his knowledge of the language and country, he established and oversaw a network of arms purchase and transport. He maintained a steady flow of matériel after the July 1921 truce, and from 1922 to the anti-treaty IRA, with which he maintained links for some years after the civil war. Returning to Ireland after the 1924 general amnesty, he managed the Dublin operations of Briscoe Importing, a firm already established by two of his brothers.\nDuring the summer of 1926 the IRA raided the offices and homes of moneylenders in both Dublin and Limerick. Manus O’Riordan wrote that:\nThose who were raided were indeed predominantly Jewish, but the IRA explicitly stated that their attack was on moneylending itself, “not on Jewry”.\nHistorian Brian Hanley summed up the situation well when he said that the IRA:\n…were supported in their claims by the prominent Jewish politician in Ireland, Robert Briscoe of de Valera’s Fianna Fáil Party. He argued that he did not see the raids as anti-Semitic, and wished it to be known that he and ‘many other members of the Jewish community’ abhorred moneylending and expressed his admiration for the IRA’s attempts to end ‘this rotten trade’.\nA founding member of Fianna Fáil (1926), he served on its first executive committee, and worked on constructing the party’s national constituency organisation, transporting party workers countrywide in his recently purchased motor car. Defeated in the June 1927 general election and in an August 1927 by-election occasioned by the death of Constance Markievicz, in the September 1927 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann, becoming the first Jewish TD, and commencing an unbroken tenure of thirty-eight years, representing Dublin South (1927–48) and Dublin South-West (1948–65). Twice lord mayor of Dublin (1956–7, 1961–2), he made a spectacularly successful whistle-stop tour of the USA (1957) – the first of several official visits, trade missions, and speaking tours – lauded by Irish- and Jewish-Americans as Dublin’s first Jewish lord mayor.\nJFK meeting with IRA veteran Robert Briscoe, Lord Mayor of Dublin. 26 March 1962. Credit – jfklibrary.org.\nEstella Solomons (1882–1968), who “hailed from one of the longest established Jewish families in Dublin”, was a distinguished artist active with the Rathmines branch of Cumann na mBan (Wynn, 2012, p. 60). One of her first jobs was distributing arms and ammunition which she kept hidden under the vegetable patch at the family home on Waterloo Road. (Wynn, 2012, p.60) When her sister visited from London with her British Army husband,, Estella stole his uniform and passed it onto the IRA. Solomons sheltered IRA fugitives in her studio during the War of Independence, and concealed weapons under the pretence of gardening. Estella’s IRA contact was a milk delivery man, who acted as a perfect cover for moving arms and gathering information. She persuaded him to teach her to shoot, in exchange she painted a portrait of his wife. Taking the anti-Treaty side and sheltering Republicans during the Civil War, her studio was often raided by Free State troops.\nSolomons was elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in July 1925, but it was not until 1966 that Solomons was elected an honorary member. Her work was included in the Academy’s annual members’ exhibition every year for sixty years. As her parents were opposed to her marrying outside her faith, it was not until August 1925, when she was 43 and her husband 46, that she married Seumas O’Sullivan, the editor and founder of the influential literary publication Dublin Magazine.\nEstelle Sollomons, self-portrait, 1926. Credit – mutualart.com.\nGerald Yael Goldberg (1912–2003), Cork-born solicitor, politician and writer, retained vivid childhood memories of the War of Independence and Civil War period, including the burning of central Cork by crown forces (during which his family had to leave their home temporarily). He attended the lyings‐in‐state of Tomàs MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney both of whom he always revered. In later life he commissioned portraits of MacCurtain and MacSwiney for the City Hall while he was Lord Mayor. Goldberg also acquired a long-lasting respect for fellow Corkman Michael Collins after hearing him speak at a public meeting.\nThe Goldbergs moved to Cork after the anti‐Semitic Limerick riots, and subsequent boycott, of 1904, in which Gerald’s father Louis was assaulted. In secondary school, he and his brother got into trouble after they applied to be excused from Armistice Day (as a German pupil was excused) because the British had murdered MacCurtain and MacSwiney. In the 1930s Goldberg established a committee in Cork to help Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution; in later life he spoke bitterly of the refusal of the state to admit such refugees, and recalled how a German Jew who deserted a ship at Cobh was sent back to the concentration camps despite the Cork community’s willingness to assist him. A successful solicitor, he was elected president of the Cork Hebrew Congregation in 1943, and remained the public face of Cork Jewry until his death.\nGoldberg was elected to Cork corporation as an independent alderman for the north‐west ward in 1967 but joined Fianna Fáil in 1970, stating that it was impossible for an isolated councillor to achieve anything on the corporation. In 1977, he was elected lord mayor of Cork, the first Jew to hold this office. During his term he researched the history of the civic regalia, including the mayoral chain (he published a pamphlet on its connection with Terence MacSwiney) and the mace (leading him to make a public appeal for the British Museum to return to Cork several former Cork maces it had acquired over the years). In 1982 he openly considered leaving Ireland after he received death threats and after a fire‐bomb attack on the Cork synagogue, which were linked to hostile relations between Irish peacekeeping forces in South Lebanon and Israeli and Israeli‐backed forces. He retired from Cork corporation in 1985. He died, at the age of 91, in Cork, on 31 December 2003, and received a civic funeral on 4 January 2004 to the Cork Jewish graveyard at Curraghkippane. Cork corporation members wore skullcaps in his honour.\nFrancis Rebecca ‘Fanny’ Goldberg (1893-?) and Molly Goldberg (1896-), sisters of Gerald, were active with Cuman na mBan. Dermot Keogh in his book ‘Jews In Twentieth Century Ireland’ (1998) mentions this fact but unfortunately no further information seems to be available about their activities.\nLeon Spiro, who moved to Dublin from Lithuania at the age of two was manager of the Pearl Printing Company in Drury Street. The IRA newspaper An t-Olgach was printer by Spiro during the early 1920s and he employed Oscar Traynor (Commanding Officer of the Dublin I.R.A.) as a compositor. Natalie Wynn in her essay ‘Jews, Antisemitism and Irish Politics : A Tale of Two Narrative’ (2012) suggests that the paper was indeed printed by Leon Spiro but only after he had been “forcibly detained” in his office. This information was gleaned from a unpublished memoir written by Leon’s daughter Jessie Spiro Bloom.\nCohen brothers\nGeorge White, member of ‘C’ Company 3rd Battalion Dublin Brigade IRA from 1917 and later Quartermaster Active Service Unit from 1921, recalled in his Witness Statement (no. 956) that a Jewish man by the name of Max Cohen lived in a house that was being used an arms dump at 3 Swifts Row beside Ormond Quay in Dublin city centre. Max “knew all about the dump but said nothing about it” to the authorities. His brother Abraham, who ran an antique shop at 20 Ormond Quay, told White and another IRA member that they could use his shop anytime “as a means of escape”.\nM. Cohen & Sons antiques shop. Perhaps the one mentioned in the Witness Statement. Photograph taken by Tom Kennedy. Scanned from ‘A Sense of Ireland’ programme.\nUnidentified Jew who sheltered Dan Breen\nIn the Witness Statement (no. 723) of Dr. Alice Barry, a close friend of many IRA leaders, she mentions that Dan Breen was taken in by a Jewish person while on the run in Fernside, Drumcondra, North Dublin*. In October 1920, Breen, who had badly cut his legs while escaping from the Black and Tans, “wandered round looking for refuge” until he eventually found it in the home of a unnamed Jewish person who also “provided him with dry clothing”. (Unfortunately and somewhat ironically, Breen took a very strong pro-Axis side and had a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in his study until as late as 1948.)\n*Thanks to Politics.ie posters for bringing my attention to the fact that the incident happened in Fernside, Drumcondra not Fernside, Killiney.\nUnidentified Jewish families who supported Sinn Fein and the IRA\nMrs. Sean Beaumont, a member of executive of Cumann na mBan, recalled in her Witness Statement (no. 385) that trained nurses within the organisation set up a bureau at 6 Harcourt Street in October 1918 to help the general public during the flu pandemic. Among those nursed “were many” Jewish families who showed their gratitude by providing financial support for the Republican movement and voting for Sinn Fein candidates in the years ahead.\nThere are several other more general references to the Jewish community in the recently digitised witness statements.\nAfter taking part in the Easter Rising, Captain Sean Kavananagh (WS 1670) mentions that the soldier who told him that were about to be deported to England was a “Dublin Jew” called Lieutenant Barron.\nThomas Pugh of the Irish Volunteers recalled in his Witness Statement (397) that after taking part in the Easter Rising, he was brought to Portobello Barracks where the person in charge of taking personal belongings from the prisoners was:\na Jew whom I knew very well. He was one of the Barrons, the furniture people. I am sure he knew me well, because I saved him once from a beating in the football grounds in Inchicore.\nFurther afield, a Jewish cinema owner in New York apologised to local Irish Republicans after his cinema inadvertently showed a British propaganda film called ‘Whom the gods would destroy’ (1916). Sidney Czira (Secretary of Cumman na mBan, New York) wrote in her Witness Statement (no. 909) that the film portrayed Irish volunteers like they were of “half-ape type”. As a result, a group of Republicans visited the cinema and explained the situation to the Jewish owner. Czira wrote that he was “quite unaware of its significance … apologised … and withdrew it at once”.\nAnother side note is that the badly damaged Hotel Metropole on O’Connell Street was bought after the Rising by Jewish cinema owner Maurice Elliman who turned it into the successful Metropole cinema.\nIn the summer of 1919, a successful raid took place on the Rotunda which was being used at the time as the temporary General Post Office. A number of IRA men were involved in the action in which “very valuable and confidential documents” destined for Dublin Castle were seized. Afterwards, a number of sympathetic postman overheard a colleague say to someone that “I know the fella in charge of this raid”. He was referring to Oscar Traynor who he knew through playing football. The postman in question was described by Traynor (WS 340) as an “English Jew” who lived on the North Circular Road . This “cockney Jew” was visited by a number of IRA men and was told to keep his mouth shut or else. As a result of being threatened, he decided to move back to London.\nThat same year, a group of Tipperary IRA men seized a gun from a Jewish businessman who ran a skin and hide business at the back of Connolly Street in Nenagh. Volunteer Edward John Ryan (WS 1392) was approached by a comrade who was employed in the business. In the raid, both the volunteer (to make not look like an inside job) and his Jewish employer were tied up. No-one was harmed in the robbery.\nIn the statement of Mary Flannery Woods (no. 624) of Cumann na mBan, she mentions that she bought a safe house for Michael Collins on Harcourt Terrace in 1920 that was owned by a Jew called Mr. Cantor. Seamus O’Connor and not Michael Noyk was the solicitor involved. In this house, a special hidden cupboard was built for arms and ammunition.\nDr. Josephine Clarke (no. 699), member of Cumann na mBan, wrote that her and her husband Liam moved into an “unfurnished flat in a Jew’s house in Sydenham Road” in roughly the same period.\nIn July 1920 the IRA shot dead Unionist landowner Frank Brooke, the Chairman of the Dublin South Eastern Railways, inside his office at Westland Row train station. Brooke was a secret member of the British Military Advisory Council and was signaled out specifically by Michael Collin’s Squad. Laurence Nugent (Lieutenant ‘K’ Company, 3rd Battalion Dublin Brigade IRA) remarked in his Witness Statement (no. 907) that they had planned to shoot another director of the Railways but spared him after a Jewish woman ‘Miss Zigmen’ asked the IRA to spare his life. Zigmen, who lived on Upper Baggot Street, was a private cigarette manufacturer and the unnamed director was a customer of hers. (Note: ‘Zigman’ may have been incorrectly transcribed as ‘Zigmen’).\nIn November of that year, Lieutenant Peter Ashmun Ames and Captain George Bennett were shot dead by the IRA in their rooms at 38 Upper Mount Street. Jewish solicitor Michael Noyk (WS 707) took up the defence of two volunteers including Patrick Moran from Roscommon who were arrested in the aftermath. Moran strongly protested his innocence and had a solid alibi since he was at Mass in Blackrock at the time and was seen there by several people including a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Among the witnesses that Noyk called in to help Moran’s case was Joseph Mirrelson, a Jewish Turf Accountant from Dun Laoghaire. He had seen Moran on a tram on the morning of the shooting. Mirrelson knew Moran well as he used to frequent a pub in Dun Laoghaire called Lynch & O’Brien’s pub that Moran used to work in. Despite the evidence laid out that proved Moran and another Volunteer Thomas Whelan were not in the area of the shooting, both were hanged in Mountjoy Jail in March 1921.\nJoe Mirrelson, Turf Accountant, Ranelagh, 1979. I assume the business was taken over by a son or relation of Joseph. Credit – dublincitypubliclibraries.com\nNegative references\nAs this was a time when both ignorant and deep-rooted anti-Semitism was more prevalent, this seeps through in a couple of Witness Statements.\nSeamus MacManus, one of the founders of the National Council (pre Sinn Fein), said that most French newspapers in 1890s “were under the thumb of the Jews financially” in his Witness Statement (no. 283).\nRichard Walsh talked about a pub down by the London docks that was run by a English Jew and his Irish catholic wife. A strong Irish republican, the wife would act as a messenger for the IRA and her herself and her husband allowed the pub to be used for preparing arms packages for shipment. Walsh makes an anti-Semitic off-the-cuff mark in his Witness Statement (no. 136) describing this publican as a “Jew … (that) like all his race was cute and well able to conceal his feelings”.\nNot forgetting the disgusting anti-Semitic remarks from John Devoy (called De Valera “a half-breed Jew”), J. J. O’Kelly, W. J. Brennan-Whitmore and a small number of Irish republicans in this time period.\nIn a February 1944 heated Dail debate about pensions for veterans of the Easter Rising and War of Independence, the toxic, anti-Semitic TD Oliver J. Flanagan proclaimed:\nWe had not got the rancher, the capitalist, the financier or the Jew in the Old I.R.A. We had the plain, poor, honest people.\nFlanagan had obviously overlooked (or decided to forget) the roles that Robert Briscoe, Michael Noyk, Estella Solomon, the Goldbergs and (possibly) Abraham Spiro played in the War of Independence. It is only coming to light now the small but important day-to-day roles that ordinary Jews played by sheltering volunteers like Dan Breen or offering their premises as a means of escape like the Cohen brothers.\nSadly the Jewish community has a whole were targeted in 1923 by two Republican veterans of the War of the Independence who launched their own personal indiscriminate anti-Semitic crusade – shooting four, killing two.\nManchester-born Jewish jeweller and father-of-four Bernard Goldberg (42) was shot dead in the early hours of October 31st 1923 outside his home at 95 St. Stephen’s Green after being questioned by three men. His brother Samuel had a narrow escape. He was hit on the head but managed to run towards Cuffe Street, later discovering three bullet holes in his overcoat.\nTwo weeks later, a Dublin-born Jew Emmanuel ‘Ernest’ Kahn (24) of 36 Lennox Street who worked as a clerk at the Department of Agriculture, was gunned down on Stamer Street in Portobello on the evening of November 14th. His friend David Miller (21), who lived at 25 Victoria Street, was shot in the shoulder but survived.\nFirst hand account of the second murder. The Irish Times, 16 Nov 1923.\nThe principal instigators of these two murders were Free State Army officers – James Patrick Conroy and Fred Laffan – who held an anti-Semitic vendetta after a “lady friend” of Conroy’s was allegedly assaulted by a Jewish dentist. Laffan’s brother Ralph, a taxi driver, was also implicated in the murders. James ‘Jimmy/Jim’ Conroy had a distinguished IRA career and was a member of Michael Collin’s squad.\nThe two Laffan brothers fled to Mexico while Conroy evaded justice (I believe he emigrated to the United States but returned to Ireland in the early 1930s). During a tetchy Dáil debate in February 1934, Sean MacEntee (Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance) accused Fine Gael TDs of knowing who killed Kahn and Goldberg saying “The man who committed these crimes, as I have already stated tonight, is a member of the Blue Shirt organisation at the present moment. He was allowed to go free even though those charged with the administration of the law at that time were well aware of the crimes he had committed”.\nOther Irish Jews became active in Irish left-wing and republican politics in the 1930s most notably Maurice Levitas and Harry Kernoff.\nCommunist ‘Morry’ Levitas who was born 8 Warren Street, Portobello, Dublin fought against Mosley’s Blackshirts during the Battle of Cable Street in London in 1936 and the following year joined the British battalion of the XV (International) Brigade to fight against Franco in Spain. First seeing action in the final days of the unsuccessful defence of Teruel, he was among the troops forced to retreat from Belchite on the second day of the massive fascist Aragon offensive (March 1938). After three weeks of costly engagements and repeated withdrawals, he was in a company (which also included IRA veteran Frank Ryan) that was captured by a Italian fascist unit at Calaceite (March 1938). His excellent entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography describes his following 11 months of hell:\nImprisoned at San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos (April 1938–January 1939), in addition to interrogations, arbitrary beatings, and mock executions, he was subjected to the indignity of pseudo-scientific measurements by visiting German Gestapo agents testing Nazi theories regarding the physiognomy of Jews and ‘social deviants’. Transferred to San Sebastian prison (January–February 1939), he was among sixty-seven republicans released in a prisoner exchange sought by Mussolini. Soon after returning home to London, he visited Dublin to address a public meeting calling for the release of Ryan (27 February).\nHe later served in India and Burma with the Royal Army Medical Corps and then worked as a plumber, teacher and lecturer. In his later years Levitas renewed ties with his native Dublin, attending functions honouring the Irish who served in Sapin, and the unveiling of the statue of James Connolly in Beresford Place in 1996. He died 14 February 2001 in London. His brother Max Levitas, born in Dublin in 1915, was a Communist councillor in London borough of Stepney for seventeen years and continues to be engaged in anti-Fascist activity.\nHarry Kernoff, born in London in 1900, moved to Dublin at the age of 14. After winning the Taylor scholarship in 1923 he became a full-time day student, encouraged by established painters such as Seán Keating and Patrick Tuohy . He showed a particular interest in drawing Dublin, and was one of the few artists at work in the city whose work demonstrated a social conscience and awareness of the plight of the unemployed, as revealed in such paintings as ‘Dublin kitchen’ (1923). Strongly left-wing, he was a member of the Friends of Soviet Russia and his woodcuts were often used in republican and labour newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s. He designed the masthead of the communist weekly the Irish Workers’ Voice, was part of a delegation to visit Leningrad and Moscow (1930) and was involved in anti-fascist campaigns in Dublin. One of his most famous woodcuts is the (below) 1936 one of James Connolly. Thirty-four years previously Connolly had issued an election leaflet written in the Yiddish language to the Jewish voters of Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’. Kernoff lived at 1 Stamer Street, Portobello, in the heart of this area, for the last 40 years of his life. He passed away in 1974.\nHarry Kernoff signed woodcut of James Connolly (1936). Credit – .icollector.com\nReferences: Dictionary of Irish Biography (Noyk/Briscoe/Solomons/Levitas/Kernoff); Bureau of Military Witness Statements; Saorise Feb 2003 (Solomons); Natalie Wynn, ‘Jews, Antisemitism and Irish Politics : A Tale of Two Narrative’ (2012); Dermot Keogh ‘Jews In Twentieth Century Ireland (1998)’.\non November 7, 2013 at 9:33 am | Reply John Gibney\nVery interesting. The politics of many Irish Jews (at least in Dublin) wasn;t automatically republican. Cormac O’Grada dug up a reference to the inaugural meeting of the ‘Judeo-Irish Home Rule Association’ in the Mansion House in Sept 1908, which was viewed with hostility by many Dublin Jews who broke up the meeting with (as the Freeman’s Journal put it), ‘several interruptions and free fight’. Many of the Litvaks who formed the major wave of Jewish immigration in the late 19th c were quite loyalist in their allegiance. Jews in Cork were more nationalistic; and some of those who founded the ‘Judeo-Irish Home Rule Association’ were originally from Cork.\non November 7, 2013 at 10:04 am | Reply Póló\nFull marks Sam. A brilliant and timely post. Lest we forget.\non November 8, 2013 at 2:53 am | Reply AK\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Levitas\nMax is alive and kicking still fighting fascism in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yo7CSSU6Mk\non November 8, 2013 at 8:57 am | Reply dubshotimage\nThats a great piece, Sam. It could have been very easy for the Jewish community to not rock the boat in these revolutionary times and its great to see so many of their community stepping up and joining the struggle for independance.\non November 8, 2013 at 1:24 pm | Reply Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn)\nWorth noting another name, Sarah Medali, a Russian-born Jewish mother of three murdered by the British Forces in December 1920 in a raid that heralded the burning of Cork.city-centre.\non November 8, 2013 at 1:57 pm | Reply Ireland’s Jewish Revolutionaries | An Sionnach Fionn\n[…] blog Come Here To Me has another excellent article on the capital’s recent past, this time an overview of the most prominent members of the city’s Jewish community who fought in or supporte…. Included in the list is Michael Noyk, the leading Sinn Féin lawyer of the period, and Bob Briscoe […]\non November 8, 2013 at 7:07 pm | Reply Ken Mc Cue\nWell done on this article. When I was a kid I delivered newspapers like Moscow News and the Manchester Guardian to members of the Jewish Community in Capel St and North King St. Most of my customers were quite old and radically left wing.\nI learned a lot about socialism and communism from them.\nKen Mc Cue\non November 8, 2013 at 7:09 pm | Reply dubshotimage\nIrish International footballer Louis Boookman played for Belfast Celtic.\nHis real name was Buckhaulter, a Lithuanian Jew, played for Ireland in football and cricket.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bookman\non November 9, 2013 at 8:53 pm | Reply Irish Jews in the Revolutionary Period\non November 11, 2013 at 5:37 pm | Reply David Sankey\nMax Levitas (brother of Maurice) has indeed remained remarkably active – particularly in the struggle against the racist EDL. He has extended a warm hand of friendship to the young majority Muslim population of Whitechapel and Stepney. Here’s a video of him at work http://youtu.be/ba1WyTUWk8c\non November 17, 2013 at 8:44 am | Reply FERGUS O'ROURKE\nI am not sure that the reference to Maurice Elliman is quite correct. My grand-uncle Aubrey V. O’Rourke designed the (then) new Metropole erected beside the GPO circa 1920. Family lore suggests that he and his brothers, including my grandfather, owned the business, though it may have been in conjunction with Mr Elliman and/or others for all I know. There is no doubt that Mr Elliman was a successful businessman in that area of activity: he owned the Gaiety Theatre at one stage, for example.\nAny information throwing light on the above would eb welcome\non November 18, 2013 at 9:28 am | Reply Sam\nThanks for the comment Fergus. Got the following info from Maurice’s entry in the ‘Dictionary of the Irish Biography’:\n“The Easter rising of 1916 devastated Dublin city centre and from its ashes Maurice purchased the site of the Hotel Metropole on Lower O’Connell St. He built the landmark Metropole cinema and restaurant, designed by Aubrey O’Rourke (1921), incorporating one of Ireland’s finest ballrooms. Maurice was managing director and Abe general manager”.\nSo I think we’re both right. 🙂\non November 22, 2013 at 12:36 pm FERGUS O'ROURKE\n🙂 I wasn’t suggesting that you were wrong, Sam ! My wording was clumsy, but I didn’t doubt the accuracy of your original information.\nWhat I was suggesting was that Elliman may either have had commercial partners in the development of the new building or in the operations of the business established in it, or may have disposed of his interest therein wholly or partially to my grand-uncles, possibly with others, at some later stage. I really do not know the truth, but there was some connection which was not limited to Aubrey’s design work.\nAubrey died in 1927, and an older brother Frank in 1935. (Incidentally, their widows were sisters, daughters of a Louth man. I would welcome any information on what happened to them – there were no children of either union.) However, the eldest brother Horace and my grandfather Alphonsus lived until about 1960. By then, The Rank Organisation owned the Metropole, but references in family documents prior to that (as well as oral family tradition) strongly imply an element of proprietorship. This is slightly mysterious, as their source of capital is not obvious.\non November 27, 2013 at 8:26 am FERGUS O'ROURKE\nI omitted the name of the (originally) Louth family into which Aubrey & Frank O’Rourke married: it was that of Charles McGuinness 1855-1900 (I think that he was a bookmaker). Aubrey married Elsie; Frank married Rita. They had a brother Charles, I believe.\non September 8, 2016 at 2:09 am | Reply Lynn Gallagher\nFergus O’Rourke: I imagine that you are familiar with the silver serving piece that was presented to your grand-uncle Aubrey O’Rourke. It is in the silver collection at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History. At least it seems that it must be the same Aubrey O’Rourke as the Metropole is mentioned in the engraving.\non November 19, 2013 at 8:06 am | Reply Jewish links to Irish Republican and Socialist politics (1901-1960s) | Come here to me!\n[…] the publication of our article ‘Jewish community during the Revolutionary period (1916-23)‘, a number of people have left comments, emailed me directly or posted on external sites […]\non October 18, 2014 at 2:55 pm | Reply Donal Carr\nThe Jewish community always were and are a blessing to this country, it is sad and unfortunate that more could not have been done for those seeking refuge during the holocost in Europe. Today is the day Israel needs our support and have given safe passage and saved to 130 Irish Troops on the Golan heights recently.\non December 3, 2014 at 9:14 pm | Reply Rob Prince\ngreat piece …who would have thunk it!!\non September 29, 2015 at 7:14 pm | Reply valincal\nVery interesting article. Thanks for posting. Shalom Ireland is a documentary film about Ireland’s remarkable, yet little known Jewish community. Robert Briscoe is featured in the film. http://www.ShalomIreland.com\non October 19, 2015 at 6:13 am | Reply A few interesting things from inside the Mansion House. | Come here to me!\n[…] becoming the first Jewish Lord Mayor in the history of the city. The Briscoe family were examined in a CHTM article on the Jewish community during the Irish revolutionary […]\non October 29, 2015 at 8:18 pm | Reply michelleclarke2015\nReblogged this on canisgallicus and commented:\nBen Briscoe and Michael Comyn KC Senator Judge engaged in Gold mining in Avoca, Co. Wicklow\nBen Briscoe was a good friend of my grandfather Michael Comyn KC, Senator, Prospector, and later Judge.\nGold in the Wicklow hills led them into a joint venture together. Elaine Byrne has written about their venture in her book about Political corruption in Ireland. I don’t have the details but Ireland was a new Republic and why not search for Gold? In fact, some still are.\non November 15, 2015 at 6:59 pm | Reply Jewish community during the Revolutionary period (1916-23) | canisgallicus\n[…] Source: Jewish community during the Revolutionary period (1916-23) […]\non December 11, 2015 at 10:34 am | Reply Brendano\nA great piece: I was interested to read about the incident in Nenagh, where I grew up. There was an abattoir off Connolly Street (Ball Alley Lane) in the 1970s: possibly where the skin and hide business was located in 1919?\non March 25, 2016 at 1:43 pm | Reply Stacy selsdon\nThank you for sharing you have educated me\non March 31, 2016 at 6:08 pm | Reply Patricia Tolkin Eppel, PhD\nYou can also reference EPPELS FILMS LTD who produced ‘The Great Spectacular Film Of The War in Ireland’. It was recently reformatted. The EPPEL family are members of the Irish Jewish Community.\non April 4, 2016 at 1:28 pm | Reply Richard Barrett\nWhile writing a short book on Irish views of the Dreyfus affair, I found very few references to the political leanings of the Jewish community, other than that they were occasionally mentioned as leaning towards unionism. Belfast had a Jewish unionist mayor around that time.\non April 8, 2016 at 2:40 pm | Reply Louis Elzas\nI personally knew Robert Briscoe and saw him often as he lived at No. 12 Herbert Park, only six houses away from our family. A remarkable individual.\non March 27, 2018 at 9:45 pm | Reply Philosopherforlife\nJust a minor correction: Michael Noyk was born in Lithuania, in the town of Telšiai and his parents brought him to Dublin when he was 1 year old.\non April 2, 2018 at 4:33 pm | Reply Sam\nthanks for correction!\nLeave a Reply to Séamas Ó Sionnaigh (An Sionnach Fionn) Cancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line21710"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6278644800186157,"wiki_prob":0.3721355199813843,"text":"Tom Casciato\nKathleen Hughes\nKarim Hajj\nMattea Mrkusic\nEmeriti & Colleagues\nTwo American Families\nReniqua Allen is a field producer for Okapi Productions as well as a freelance writer and fellow at the public policy think tank Demos. She writes and produces on issues surrounding race, class, social mobility and popular culture, with a particular focus on the black middle class. She was an archival producer on two Sundance nominated films Hot Coffee (HBO) and We’re Not Broke. Prior to that was an associate producer for Bill Moyers on several productions including Moyers & Company, Moyers on America and On Faith & Reason. She has also produced and written for outlets such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, Quartz, Congressional Quarterly, Politico, PBS, MSNBC, and Fox News.\nReniqua has completed coursework for a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University and is working on a dissertation that will explore the “Post-Cosby” representations of the black middle class on television. She has a BA in journalism and an MA in political science from American University.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1337777"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8516296148300171,"wiki_prob":0.8516296148300171,"text":"Archive/Sold Items\nThe Britons - Halt Gentile! And Salute the Jew.\nThe Britons - TSL - J.J. DELL TO MAJOR THEODORE RICH\nThe Britons -In The Tracks of A Crime - H.H.T. Rhodes\nThe Britons The Future Domination - John Readcliffe .\nThe Cause of World Unrest - (SOLD) FIRST USA Edition.\nThe Coming Corporate State - (SOLD) A.R. Thomson & Ezra Pound.\nThe Conspiracy - A Special Investigation. Anti-Semitism Anti-Zionism.\nThe Duke of Bedford. The Economic Dangers of the American Alliance - Two Speeches Made in the House Of Lords 1952\nThe Duke of Bedford. The Conscientious Objector Speech Delivered in the House Of Lords\nThe Evolution of the Money Market. (SOLD) 1385-1915 Ellis T. Powell\nTHE FALLACIES OF DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT by CAPT M.M.MONCRIEFF\nThe Falsehood about the Six Million .S.A. Anglo-Nordic Union, 1960s\nThe Fascist (SOLD) Number 085. June 1936.\nThe Fascist - (SOLD) Number 090. November 1936\nThe Fascist - (SOLD) Number 017 October 1930\nThe Fascist - (SOLD) Number 095 April 1937\nThe Fascist - (SOLD) Number 098. July 1937\nTHE FASCIST GOTHIC RIPPLES -ARNOLD LEESE\nThe First World War 1914-1918 Two Volumes - Colonel Court Repington\n« previous 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 next »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line374619"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5805551409721375,"wiki_prob":0.5805551409721375,"text":"All articles in category Spain\nArticles > World Mission > Europe > Southern Europe > Spain\nAn evangelical church on the tropical coast of Spain\nAlmuñecar is a small cosmopolitan town of around 29,000 people. There are a considerable number of foreign residents who have their second home here or come often for holidays. The town is located in the heart of what is called the ‘Costa Tropical’, between Nerja, in Málaga province, and the province of Almería. There…\nBy Paul Pomeroy\nVisiting central Spain\nStudying for Spanish GCSE two years ago, I travelled out to Spain to stay with a pastor called Jose Luis and his family, who live in a small town called Moral. He is one of three pastors and four churches, part of an organisation called Spanish Gospel Mission (SGM). This is a faithful evangelical…\nMissionary Spotlight – Spain – Features\nCountry of 194,960 sq. miles in south west Europe, bounded by France and Portugal. Mountain ranges include the Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada. Capital:Madrid (4.2 million). Other major cities: Barcelona (2.6 million), Seville (680,000) and Valencia (800,000). Overseas territories include the Balearic and Canary Islands and enclaves in North Africa. There are Catalan and Basque…\nMissionary Spotlight – Spain\nHistory Carthage dominated Spain from the fifth century B.C., then Spain became part of the Roman Empire from 200 B.C.. This ended when it was overrun by the Visigoths. The Moors invaded from North Africa in A.D. 711 and advanced up Spain until they were checked in battle at Tours in 732. Spain was…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line777245"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6790067553520203,"wiki_prob":0.6790067553520203,"text":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History\nOxford Research Encyclopedias African History\nAfrocentrism\nColonial Conquest and Rule\nEarly States and State Formation in Africa\nEast Africa and Indian Ocean\nHistorical Preservation and Cultural Heritage\nHistoriography and Methods\nImage of Africa\nInvention of Tradition\nLanguage and History\nNorth Africa and the Gulf\nNortheastern Africa\nOral Traditions\nSlavery and Slave Trade\nFrom: 201720182019\nTo: 201720182019\nExact year: 201720182019\nAfrican Diaspora (10)\nAfrocentrism (1)\nCentral Africa (12)\nColonial Conquest and Rule (32)\nCultural History (38)\nEarly States and State Formation in Africa (11)\nEast Africa and Indian Ocean (22)\nHistorical Linguistics (7)\nHistorical Preservation and Cultural Heritage (13)\nHistoriography and Methods (67)\nImage of Africa (10)\nIntellectual History (28)\nInvention of Tradition (3)\nLanguage and History (2)\nNorth Africa and the Gulf (9)\nNortheastern Africa (15)\nReligious History (15)\nSlavery and Slave Trade (18)\nWomen’s History (37)\nAfrica in the World: History and Historiography\nEsperanza Brizuela-Garcia\nHistoriography and Methods, Image of Africa\nSince antiquity and through the modern era African societies maintained contacts with peoples in Europe, the Near and Far East, and the Americas. Among other things, African peoples ... More\nSince antiquity and through the modern era African societies maintained contacts with peoples in Europe, the Near and Far East, and the Americas. Among other things, African peoples developed local forms of Christianity and Islam, contributed large amounts of gold to European medieval economies, and exported millions of slaves through the Sahara, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Despite this, by the 19th century historians and philosophers of history thought Africa was a continent without major civilizations, whose peoples passively rested at the margins of history. These ideas persisted into the 20th century when historians undertook the challenge of writing histories that explained how communities around the world were connected to one another. In their early iterations, however, these “world narratives” were little more than histories of the Western world; Africa continued to be largely absent from these stories. After World War II, increasing interest in the history of African societies and a more generalized concern with the study of communities that were both mis- and under-represented by historical scholarship called for a revision of the goals and methods of world historians. Among the most important critiques were those from Afrocentric, African American, and Africanist scholars. Afrocentric writers argued that Africa had in fact developed an important civilization in the form of Egypt and that Egypt was the foundation of the classical world. African American and Africanist writers highlighted the contributions that peoples of African descent had made to the world economy and many cultures around the globe. Africanists also questioned whether world historical narratives, which meaningfully accounted for the richness and complexity of African experiences, could be achieved in the form of a single universal narrative. Instead, historians have suggested and produced new frameworks that could best explain the many ways in which Africa has been part of the world and its history.\nAfrican Biography and Historiography\nHeather Hughes\nHistoriography and Methods, Intellectual History, Invention of Tradition\nBiography in the African context can take many forms, from brief entries in a biographical dictionary or obituary in a newspaper to multivolume studies of single individuals. It can ... More\nBiography in the African context can take many forms, from brief entries in a biographical dictionary or obituary in a newspaper to multivolume studies of single individuals. It can encompass one or many subjects and serves both to celebrate the famous and illuminate obscure lives. Biographies can be instructional as well as inspirational. Sometimes, it is hard to draw a line between biography and autobiography because of the way a work has been compiled. An attempt is made to understand this vast range of forms, with reference to social and political biography. The main focus is on work produced since the 1970s, with examples drawn from all regions of sub-Saharan Africa (although Southern Africa is better represented than others, as is English-medium material). Matters that preoccupy biographers everywhere, such as the relationship between writer and subject and the larger relationship between biography and history, are raised. Biography can be an excellent entry point into the complexities of African history.\nAfrican Diasporas: History and Historiography\nMohammed Bashir Salau\nAfrican Diaspora, Historiography and Methods, Slavery and Slave Trade\nPeople of African descent who migrated from their “homelands” constituted, and still constitute, important forces in many African cultures outside of their “homelands” as well as in many ... More\nPeople of African descent who migrated from their “homelands” constituted, and still constitute, important forces in many African cultures outside of their “homelands” as well as in many other cultures outside of the African continent. Historically, the migration of people of African descent from their “homelands” is mainly linked to the pre-20th century Muslim or Asian trade and the Atlantic trade as well as to the post 1980 globalization of the capitalist system. Even before the post 1980 globalization of the capitalist system deepened the crises in African states and resulted in the migration of skilled and unskilled Africans to places like the United States, Canada, Britain and the Middle East, some scholars had written on people of African descent in several parts of the world. Although the earliest among those who wrote on the subject before the 1980s did not employ the term “African diaspora” in their analysis, an increasing number of scholars who wrote after 1950 have used the term in question in their study of people of African descent in various parts of the world. The relevant literature written after 1950 features disagreement over the meaning of the concept “African diaspora” and point to diverse methodologies that are useful in working on the subject. This particular literature can be divided into three broad categories: works that deal with the Old African diaspora, works that deal with the New African diaspora and works that deal with both the Old and New African diasporas. The historiography shows that works situated in all of these three categories mainly offer competing view over three fundamental questions: why did Africans leave their “homelands” and settle elsewhere? What was the impact of this process on the societies they left? How did Africans who left their “homelands” integrate into their host societies or preserve their unique identities; or, more broadly, what was the impact of their arrival on the host society they entered? Despite the rapid strides that have been made since the 1960s in regard to addressing these questions or in regards to the scholarly study of the African diasporas in general, there is still no firm definition of the term “African diaspora.” Moreover, there are still other gaps in the scholarly knowledge of the subject.\nAfrican Economic History and Historiography\nAlois Mlambo\nAfrica’s economic history went through various stages, beginning with Stone Age hunter-gatherers, through the Iron Age and the development of agriculture, to sedentary communities with ... More\nAfrica’s economic history went through various stages, beginning with Stone Age hunter-gatherers, through the Iron Age and the development of agriculture, to sedentary communities with growing and varied economies, bigger and more sophisticated political states, and growing trade activities. Between the 7th and 19th centuries, several large states emerged in the Sahel and in eastern and southern Africa. Key to their rise and prosperity was a growing population and agriculture as well as expanding trade, either through the trans-Saharan trade to the Mediterranean or across the Indian Ocean to Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Africa’s fortunes dipped with the onset of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which ravaged the continent and led to Africa losing millions of people to the New World. Following the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, Europe partitioned and colonized the continent and presided over varied economic regimes. These were settler colonies, peasant-agricultural colonies, and concession company colonies. Of the three, settler colonies developed most, although at the expense of the African majority. Independence came after the Second World War and Africa entered its postcolonial phase. After a promising start in the decade of the 1960s, African economies went into decline in the 1970s, necessitating governments to borrow from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to revamp their economies. The structural adjustment programs they were required to implement as a condition for the loans proved to be deleterious to African economies. African economic history scholars have generally shied away from the continent’s very early periods, preferring to focus on the period after the 15th century which has more documented history. They have used three analytical approaches: classical economics, dependency theory, and Marxist paradigms. Each of the three approaches has some shortcomings. Recently, the New African Economic History approach is using cliometric techniques to study Africa’s economic past. More economics than conventional economic history, it has attracted some from more history-based scholars as ahistorical.\nAfrican Feminist Thought\nAmina Mama\nIntellectual History, Political History, Women’s History\nAfrican feminist thought refers to the dynamic ideas, reflections, theories and other expressions of intellectual practices by politically radical African women concerned with liberating ... More\nAfrican feminist thought refers to the dynamic ideas, reflections, theories and other expressions of intellectual practices by politically radical African women concerned with liberating Africa by focusing women’s liberation, and as such cannot be easily defined or captured. However, the conditions out of which Africa’s feminist movements form, and the intellectual labor that they carry out in the pursuit of women’s rights and freedoms can be explored and discussed. African feminist thought is the potentially limitless product of movements that are themselves constantly in the making, succeeding in changing the conditions of their formation by their very existence. African feminist political thought can be traced to the world’s women’s movements that formed in the context of transnational liberal and emancipatory political discourses of the late 19th and 20th centuries of European empire. Out of these liberal emancipatory reformist, international labor, communist, socialist revolutionary, and Pan-African Diasporic and African nationalist movements were all formed.\nHowever, following the flag independence of over fifty nation-states, women who joined the anti-colonial freedom movements have had to pursue further struggles in independent nation-states, because Africa’s new states often hesitated or reverted to conservative patriarchal views when it came to extending freedom and equality to African women. It is as citizens of new nations that 20th century African women have formed independent feminist movements that continue to demand freedom, equality and rights, for example, by seeking freedom of movement, political representation, educational and economic equality, and perhaps most commonly of all, freedom from sex and gender-based violence.\nContemporary publications and writings by African feminists are the primary sources consulted here, because of the need to correct the spurious mis-representation of African feminism as “un-African,” a position that hinges on the definition of feminism as exclusively Western. This view is advanced by conservative African men and women who seek the restoration of pre-colonial cultures, as well as in some of the early scholarly literature on the subject.\nAfrican feminism is a radical proposition: it refers to the liberatory political philosophies, theories, writings, research and cultural production, as well as the organizing work of the transnational community of feminists from Africa. These respond to objective conditions of global systemic inequality that have led African women to resume the struggle for freedom and liberation. African feminists in 2019 identify with earlier generations of women freedom fighters but enunciate visions of a future in which the women of Africa will be afforded human rights and freedoms, on a continent liberated from a global neoliberal capitalist system that continues to marginalize the vast majority of the world’s peoples and exploits natural and human resources to a degree that now threatens planetary survival.\nAfrican Iron Production and Iron-Working Technologies: Methods\nLouise Iles\nArchaeology, Historiography and Methods\nIron production was a particularly important precolonial African technology, with iron becoming a central component of socioeconomic life in many societies across the continent. ... More\nIron production was a particularly important precolonial African technology, with iron becoming a central component of socioeconomic life in many societies across the continent. Iron-bearing ores are much more abundant in the earth’s crust than those of copper, and in Africa, iron was recovered from these ores using the bloomery process, until the importation of European iron in the later second millennium eventually undermined local production. Although smelting was most intensively focused in regions where all the necessary components of a smelt were plentiful—iron ore, ceramic, fuel, and water—frequent occurrences of small-scale, local iron production mean that iron slag and associated remains are common finds on archaeological sites across Africa.\nThe archaeological remains found on iron production and iron-working sites can provide detailed information about the past processes that were undertaken at these sites, as well as the people involved with the technologies both as practitioners and consumers. A variety of analytical approaches are commonly used by archaeometallurgists to learn more about past iron technologies, particularly those methods that explore the chemistry and mineralogy of archaeological samples. By interpreting the results of these analyses in conjunction with ethnographic, historical, and experimental data, it is possible to reconstruct the techniques and ingredients that past smelters and smiths employed in their crafts, and address important questions concerning the organization of production, the acquisition of raw materials, innovations and changes in technological approach, and the environmental and social changes that accompanied these technologies.\nAfrican Market Women, Market Queens, and Merchant Queens\nGracia Clark\nEconomic History, West Africa, Women’s History\nIn the open marketplaces found in cities and villages throughout Africa, women traders usually predominate. This gives women considerable weight as economic actors, because these ... More\nIn the open marketplaces found in cities and villages throughout Africa, women traders usually predominate. This gives women considerable weight as economic actors, because these marketplace systems are the primary distributive networks in most parts of Africa. A large proportion of Africa’s consumer goods and foodstuffs move through their intricate chains of intermediaries, which can include market retailers, neighborhood shops, street vendors, wholesalers, and travelers who collect goods from farms, factories, and ports. Although the vast majority of women traders live at or below the poverty line, some have risen to powerful positions that earn them the sobriquet of queen.\nDifferent regions of Africa show distinctive patterns of trading practices and of men and women’s participation in specific trading roles, reflecting specific gendered histories of precolonial trade, colonial interventions, and waves of national policy. These variations arise not from some primordial isolation, but from traders’ varied positioning within longstanding trade relations that have linked Africans since ancient times between regions, across the Sahara Desert and over adjoining oceans. Women’s trading roles are more highly developed in western Africa than in eastern, northern, and southern Africa, where precolonial trading patterns were more radically disrupted by conquest, land appropriation, and apartheid.\nIdeologies and arenas of practice such as Islam, Christianity, modernization, socialism, structural adjustment, and globalization likewise shape the constraints and opportunities facing women traders in any given situation. Because these influences operate around the globe, though not uniformly, they to some extent create parallel or convergent trends in widely separated nations. Deepening economic pressures today push even more women and men into trading to support their families and sustain the hope of prosperity. Market women struggle individually and collectively to keep their communities going under difficult circumstances that make formal economic channels function poorly. Their determined efforts give African economies more resilience as they respond to the challenges of war, political instability, and climate change.\nAfrican Masculinities\nNdubueze L. Mbah\nColonial Conquest and Rule, Cultural History, Historiography and Methods, Slavery and Slave Trade, Social History, Women’s History\nAs a system of identity, African masculinity is much more than a cluster of norms, values, and behavioral patterns expressing explicit and implicit expectations of how men should act and ... More\nAs a system of identity, African masculinity is much more than a cluster of norms, values, and behavioral patterns expressing explicit and implicit expectations of how men should act and represent themselves to others. It also refers to more than how African male bodies, subjectivities, and experiences are constituted in specific historical, cultural, and social contexts. African masculinities, as historical subjects embodying distinctive socially constructed gender and sexual identities, have been both male and female. By occupying a masculine sociopolitical position, embodying masculine social traits, and performing cultural deeds socially construed and symbolized as masculine, African men and women have constituted masculinity. Across various African societies and times, there have been multiple and conflicting notions of masculinities, promoted by local and foreign institutions, and there have been ceaseless contestations and synergies among the various forms of hegemonic, subordinate, and subversive African masculinities. Men and women have frequently brought their own agendas to bear on the political utility of particular notions of masculinity. Through such performances of masculinity, Africans have constantly negotiated the institutional power dynamics of gender relations. So, the question is not whether Africans worked with gender binaries, because they did. As anthropologist John Wood puts it, African indigenous logic of gender becomes evident in the juxtaposition, symbolic reversals, and interrelation of opposites. Rather, one should ask, why and how did African societies generate a fluid gender system in which biological sex did not always correspond to gender, such that anatomically male and female persons could normatively occupy socially constructed masculine and feminine roles and vice versa? And how did African mutually constitutive gender and sexuality constructions shape African societies?\nAfrican Military History and Historiography\nTimothy Parsons\nHistoriography and Methods, Military History, Political History\nAfrican military history is more than just the study of “tribal warfare,” imperial conquest, military coups, and child soldiers. Moving beyond conventional questions of strategy, tactics, ... More\nAfrican military history is more than just the study of “tribal warfare,” imperial conquest, military coups, and child soldiers. Moving beyond conventional questions of strategy, tactics, battles, and technology, historians of precolonial Africa are interested in the role of armies in state formation, the military activities of stateless societies, and armed encounters between Africans and foreign visitors and invaders. Scholars working in the 19th and 20th centuries are similarly focused on the role and influence of African soldiers, military women, and veterans in society. In this sense, African military history is part of a larger effort to recover the lived experiences of ordinary people who were largely missing from colonial archives and documentary records. Similarly, Africanist historians focusing on the national era are engaging older journalistic and social science explanations for military coups, failed states, and wardlordism. The resulting body of literature productively offers new ways to study military institutions and collective violence in Africa.\nAfrican Philosophies of History and Historiography\nToyin Falola and Abikal Borah\nHistoriography and Methods, Image of Africa, Intellectual History\nSince the late 1950s, the field of African historiography has undergone many changes. While discussing African philosophies of history, one must acknowledge shifts within the discipline of ... More\nSince the late 1950s, the field of African historiography has undergone many changes. While discussing African philosophies of history, one must acknowledge shifts within the discipline of history and the Afrocentric vision of historical scholarship as two constitutive processes through which different historiographical trends have come into being. It is difficult to take an essentialist position on African philosophies of history, because Africa has been at the center of various transnational and global processes of historical formation. As a result, the scope and scale of African historiography signals a variety of entanglements. The imperative lies in recognizing such entanglements in the longue durée of Africa’s past, to dislodge the narrowly framed imagination attached to African historiography. Considering the complexity of the terrain, it would be appropriate to view African philosophies of history and historiography from three different vantage points. Firstly, historical scholarship centering on Africa has produced critiques of the post-Enlightenment philosophy of history in Europe and elsewhere. This strand highlights the interventions posed by African historiography that decenter a globalized philosophical tradition. Secondly, the inclusion of African indigenous epistemological formations into historical scholarship has transformed the scope of African historiography. This shows shifts in the methodological approaches of historical scholarship and highlights the question of access to the multiplicity of Africa’s past. Thirdly, Pan-Africanism and Afropolitanism expanded the scope and scale of the African philosophy of history by thinking through the transnational and global connections of Afrocentric thought. In other words, Afrocentric historiography attends to the ideas of globalism and cosmopolitanism within its scope and scale.\nAfrican Religion and Healing in the Atlantic Diaspora\nJohn M. Janzen\nAfrican Diaspora, Medical History, Oral Traditions, Religious History\nReligion and healing are useful scholarly constructs in summarizing, consolidating, and interpreting a myriad of details from the historic African-Atlantic experience. For heuristic ... More\nReligion and healing are useful scholarly constructs in summarizing, consolidating, and interpreting a myriad of details from the historic African-Atlantic experience. For heuristic purposes, religion is understood as the worldviews, rituals, and supernatural beings that represent ultimate reality; healing is the understanding of, and responses to, affliction and misfortune, and the struggle to achieve wholeness. Combining religion and healing in an overview of the African diaspora experience will consider the following: original African worlds in four regional contexts in Western and Western Central Africa (e.g., Senegambia, Upper Guinea, Southern Guinea, Kongo-Angola); the traumatic middle passage refracted in the “broken mirrors” of memory; how this memory is mixed and reinterpreted with the New World experience of slave markets, plantations, maroon settlements, and during post-slavery, post-empire times; scholarly models of continuity and transformation; and modern constructions of religion and healing.\nThe African Rinderpest Panzootic, 1888–1897\nThaddeus Sunseri\nCultural History, Medical History\nBetween 1888 and 1897, rinderpest virus (cattle plague) spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, presumably for the first time, killing over 90 percent of African cattle and countless ... More\nBetween 1888 and 1897, rinderpest virus (cattle plague) spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, presumably for the first time, killing over 90 percent of African cattle and countless wildlife, expedited by European colonial conquest. Beginning in the Eritrean port of Massawa, the virus was transmitted across the Sahel, reaching the Senegal River by 1891. The epizootic spread south out of the Horn of Africa, into the western and eastern Rift valleys, and likely by sea with coastal commerce, infecting East Africa after 1891. Although slowed by the Zambezi River, in 1896 rinderpest reached the regions of modern Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and southern Angola before it burned out or was arrested by breakthroughs in vaccine therapy by 1900. South of the Zambezi, early European methods of stanching rinderpest by destroying all cattle exposed to the virus often elicited protest, resistance, and sometimes rebellion. Rinderpest was eliminated from southern Africa shortly after the turn of the 20th century but became enzootic in other parts of the continent, often in wildlife, until eradicated globally in 2011. In each region of infection, local ecologies, trade patterns, agricultural bases, social structures, and power dynamics shaped the impact of rinderpest. Almost everywhere, rinderpest was preceded by drought and locust plagues, and followed by human diseases, especially smallpox and malnutrition.\nAfricans in World Wars I and II\nJoe Lunn\nEast Africa and Indian Ocean, Military History, Northeastern Africa, West Africa\nWorld Wars I and II were very probably the most destructive conflicts in African history. In terms of the human costs—the numbers of people mobilized, the scale of violence and destruction ... More\nWorld Wars I and II were very probably the most destructive conflicts in African history. In terms of the human costs—the numbers of people mobilized, the scale of violence and destruction experienced--as well as their enduring political and social impact, no other previous conflicts are comparable, particularly over such short periods as four and ten years, respectively. All told, about 4,500,000 African soldiers and military laborers were mobilized during these wars and about 2,000,000 likely died.\nMobilization on this scale among African peasant societies was only sustainable because they were linked to the industrial economies of a handful of West Central European nation states at the core of the global commercial infrastructure, which invariably subordinated African interests to European imperial imperatives. Militarily, these were expressed in two ways: by the use of African soldiers and supporting military laborers to conquer or defend colonies on the continent, or by the export of African combat troops and laborers overseas—in numbers far exceeding comparable decades during the 18th-century peak of the transatlantic slave trade—to Europe and Asia to augment Allied armies there.\nThe destructive consequences of these wars were distributed unevenly across the continent. In some areas of Africa, human losses and physical devastation frequently approximated or surpassed the worst suffering experienced in Europe itself; yet, in other areas of the continent, Africans remained virtually untouched by these wars.\nThese conflicts contributed to an ever-growing assertiveness of African human rights in the face of European claims to racial supremacy that led after 1945 to the restoration of African sovereignty throughout most of the continent. On a personal level, however, most Africans received very little for their wartime sacrifices. Far more often, surviving veterans returned to their homes with an enhanced knowledge of the wider world, perhaps a modicum of newly acquired personal prestige within their respective societies, but little else.\nAfrican Urban History and Historiography\nEric Ross\nHistoriography and Methods, Social History\nThe urban history of Africa is as ancient, varied, and complex as that of other continents, and the study of this history shares many of the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological ... More\nThe urban history of Africa is as ancient, varied, and complex as that of other continents, and the study of this history shares many of the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological challenges of urban history generally. Knowledge of Africa’s historic cities is based on archaeological investigation, analysis of historic documents, linguistics, and ethnographic field methods. The historiography of cities in Africa has debated what constitutes a city, how urbanization can be apprehended in the archaeological record and in documentary sources, why cities emerged, and how historic cities have related to states. The great impact colonization had on African urbanization is a major topic of research, including in the study of postcolonial cities. The “informality” of much contemporary urbanization, both in terms of economic activities and architecture, has been a major topic of research since the 1970s.\nWith few exceptions, prior to the 20th century cities were relatively small, with no more than 20,000–30,000 inhabitants. Religion, trade, and the concentration of power were major factors in the rise of cities across the continent. The largest and most well-studied cities were often the capitals of important states. At times networks of city-states flourished, as in Hausaland, Yorubaland, and along the Swahili coast. The cities of northern Africa shared many morphological characteristics with other cities of the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East, being characterized by a high density of population, masonry architecture, and encircling city walls. South of the Sahara, cities tended to be multinucleated, with low densities of population and built-over surfaces, and they tended to merge with surrounding agricultural landscapes in an urban–rural continuum. Perishable construction materials such as earth, wattle, and thatch were widely used for both domestic and public architecture.\nAfrican Women in Film, the Moving Image, and Screen Culture\nBeti Ellerson\nAfrican Diaspora, Historiography and Methods, Image of Africa, Women’s History\nWhile African women in film have distinct histories and trajectories, at the same time they have common goals and objectives. Hence, “African women in film” is a concept, an idea, with a ... More\nWhile African women in film have distinct histories and trajectories, at the same time they have common goals and objectives. Hence, “African women in film” is a concept, an idea, with a shared story and path. While there has always been the hope of creating national cinemas, even the very notion of African cinema(s) in the plural has been pan-African since its early history. And women have taken part in the formation of an African cinema infrastructure from the beginning. The emergence of an “African women in cinema movement” developed from this larger picture. The boundaries of women’s work extend to the global African diaspora. Language, geography, and colonial legacies add to the complexity of African cinema history. Women have drawn from the richness that this multiplicity offers, contributing on local, national, continental, and global levels as practitioners, activists, cultural producers, and stakeholders.\nAncient Developments in the Middle Senegal Valley and the Inland Niger Delta\nAlioune Dème\nArchaeology, Image of Africa, Political History, West Africa\nThe study of West Africa has contributed to the expansion of comparative arid-lands floodplain prehistory, from both the data collection (cultural and historical) and the theoretical ... More\nThe study of West Africa has contributed to the expansion of comparative arid-lands floodplain prehistory, from both the data collection (cultural and historical) and the theoretical aspects. The neoevolutionary approach that often pictures Africa as a backward continent has been successfully challenged. In the Middle Senegal Valley and in the Inland Niger Delta, research on their societies’ complexity done along these two subcontinent’s floodplains has described new processes (including urbanization) that were not previously featured in the archaeological literature. The two floodplains, because of their ecological diversity, with the richness of their ecological diversity, attracted Saharan populations affected by drought at the end of the second millennium and the first millennium BC. However, after their initiation occupation the two areas took different trajectories in complexity and settlement organization. Large complex settlements have been found at Jenne-jeno and in the Ile a Morphil that illustrate whole new trajectories of civilization. These forms of complexity, found in areas with historically known polities, were not included in the range of possibilities predicted by standard complexity theories regarding civilizational development. Ethnographic and historical data, reveal the existence of societies with a central authority embedded within and balanced by a diffuse, segmented and heterarchical power structure; often as a strategy to resist the individual consolidation of power. These societies exhibit evidence of horizontal differentiation and consensus-based decision making. All these types of organization are characterized by the presence of several sources of power vested in corporate entities, such as lineages, age groups, cults and secret societies.\nAnimals in African History\nSandra Swart\nHistoriography and Methods, Image of Africa, Social History, Southern Africa, Women’s History\nAnimal history in Africa—the multi-species story of the continent’s past—as a separate subdisciplinary “turn” is both recent and tentative, but as an integrated theme within the broader ... More\nAnimal history in Africa—the multi-species story of the continent’s past—as a separate subdisciplinary “turn” is both recent and tentative, but as an integrated theme within the broader historiography it is both pioneering and enduring. Historians of Africa have long engaged with animals as vectors of change in human history and, of course, at the same time, understood that humans were a key agent of change in animal histories too, especially in the long-lived and extensive writing on epizootics, livestock farming, pastoralism, hunting, and conservation. African animal histories should resist the imposition of intellectual paradigms from the Global North.\nAnimating African History: Digital and Visual Trends\nPaula Callus\nCultural History, Image of Africa\nContrary to popular belief, the animated moving image on the African continent has long and diverse histories across many countries. Although it shares both the technology and some of the ... More\nContrary to popular belief, the animated moving image on the African continent has long and diverse histories across many countries. Although it shares both the technology and some of the formal aspects of cinema, its historical development followed a different trajectory to that of indexical film, both in Europe and in Africa. This may be because of animation’s ability to draw upon a range of artistic practice, which means it can take many guises; at times it appears like a cartoon, or sometimes like puppets or sculptures that come to life; at other times it is a metamorphic drawing or painting, or even a photographic montage. In addition, while animation tends to be associated with content specifically intended for a children’s audience, it has in fact been an effective vehicle to conceal sociopolitical critique that would otherwise be considered problematic. Different animators in Africa have used animation to this end, presenting subversive and social-realist content within the unrealistic depictions of fantastical stories, the parodic, comedic or allegorical, or culturally located visual metaphors. African animators have also used animation to safeguard and give permanence to the stories, myths, and legends they grew up with. These legends have occasionally also informed animated superheroes in games such as the Kenyan mobile phone application Africa’s Legends, or the cast of an Afro-futurist setting such as the Nigerian “Afro-anime” production Red Origins. With the onset of digital technology, the landscape of animation in Africa has seen a blossoming of activity from expert and non-expert prod-users. Their work circulates in formal and informal settings, whether visible at a festival, on television and mainstream media, in online social networking spaces or on video streaming sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. The prolific characteristic of animation made for digital spaces has resulted in a paradoxical simultaneous visibility and invisibility. Networks of African artists have benefited from the visibility and distribution that the Internet and smart phone technologies offer; for example, Kenyan multimedia artists Just a Band were quoted as saying that they were discovered online before they were discovered in Nairobi. However, the ephemeral quality of these digital spaces can also be problematic from the archivist’s perspective as digital traces change. For this reason it is increasingly important to capture the traces that African artists leave in this dynamic space as they reflect the zeitgeist.\nAn Introduction to the Lower Niger Bronzes of Southern Nigeria\nPhilip M. Peek\nArchaeology, West Africa\nSouthern Nigeria is rich in copper alloy cast works, such as those of the 9th-century burial goods of Igbo-Ukwu, the busts from 13th-century Ife, and the heads and plaques from the early ... More\nSouthern Nigeria is rich in copper alloy cast works, such as those of the 9th-century burial goods of Igbo-Ukwu, the busts from 13th-century Ife, and the heads and plaques from the early 16th century from Benin City. Much scholarship has been devoted to these centers and yet there are other, perhaps even more historically important, works which have barely been acknowledged. The label “Lower Niger Bronzes” was proposed in the 1960s by William Fagg to account for those few pieces which did not fit with the three well-known centers’ works.\nOn closer examination, these bronzes are far more numerous and of greater antiquity than previously realized. The quality and composition of these works indicate that most were likely cast prior to the European coastal trade in Nigeria which dates from the late 15th century. Leopard skull replicas, humanoid bell heads, small hippos, scepter heads, and masks make up only a portion of the works now under study. Without their original cultural contexts, these artifacts are somewhat mysterious, yet with careful study of their compositions and forms, much is revealed of a period of southern Nigerian history which predates the current arrangement of ethnic groups.\nThe Anlu Rebellion\nJacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué\nMilitary History, Political History, West Africa, Women’s History\nFrom 1958 to 1961, Kom women in western Cameroon cast aside their regular domestic and agricultural duties to engage in a revolt against British administrative interference in ... More\nFrom 1958 to 1961, Kom women in western Cameroon cast aside their regular domestic and agricultural duties to engage in a revolt against British administrative interference in agriculture—normally their domain—and the alleged plan by the ruling political party, the Kamerun National Congress (KNC), to sell Kom land to Nigerian Igbos. In keeping with the practices of anlu, a centuries-old women’s organization generally deployed against people who violated the Kom moral code, women interfered with burial rituals; hurled insults at men in public; demanded the closing of schools, courts, and markets; set up roadblocks; destroyed and burned property; and defied both traditional and British authorities in the Bamenda Grassfields of western Cameroon. Their tactics included stripping naked in front of men. While local men considered the sight of the vagina in public to be a bad portent and thus understood the seriousness of the revolt, flabbergasted British officials had no idea what was to come. By seizing control of resources and demonstrating in public, Kom women disturbed local political power, and protested against British rule in the Southern Cameroons. They were a crucial force in the victory of the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) in 1961, which brought a restoration of political order at the time of independence.\nPRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AFRICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/africanhistory). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line419149"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.500839114189148,"wiki_prob":0.49916088581085205,"text":"Have you heard about Hasbro's TWISTER DANCE? Som of you may have and I want to let you all know that there is a brand-new music video that Britney Spears has created exclusively for her \"Till the World Ends\" TWISTER Remix.\nBritney Spears have teamed up with Hasbro in early February to release TWISTER DANCE. She said, “Dancing has been such an important part of my life since I was a little girl. As soon as I saw the new TWISTER DANCE game, I knew I wanted to be involved. I think kids will love rocking the spots and dancing to the music as much as my boys and I do. It’s a lot of fun!”\nIn the video, Spears shows off her famous dance moves while playing TWISTER DANCE. Besides launching a new music video, she is also inviting fans to be a part of her new fansourced video. By showing how they rock the spots to TWISTER DANCE, fans will have a chance to be a part of Britney's fansourced video, and will also be entered for a chance to win $10,000 (U.S. only)! You must be ages 8-16 to enter contest. Visit RocktheSpots.com for the official rules and to submit a video.\nTWISTER DANCE is now on shelves at mass retailers nationwide for a suggested retail price of $34.99.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line227931"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5355137586593628,"wiki_prob":0.4644862413406372,"text":"by Osvaldo Oyola\nin Aesthetics, Article, Authenticities, Music, Recording, Synthesizers, Technology, Theory/criticism, Voice\nIn Defense of Auto-Tune\nLil Wayne, I Am Still Music Tour, Photo by Matthew Eisman\nI am here today to defend auto-tune. I may be late to the party, but if you watched Lil Wayne’s recent schizophrenic performance on MTV’s VMAs you know that auto-tune isn’t going anywhere. The thoughtful and melodic opening song “How to Love” clashed harshly with the expletive-laden guitar-rocking “John” Weezy followed with. Regardless of how you judge that disjunction, what strikes me about the performance is that auto-tune made Weezy’s range possible. The studio magic transposed onto the live moment dared auto-tune’s many haters to revise their criticisms about the relationship between the live and the recorded. It suggested that this technology actually opens up possibilities, rather than marking a limitation.\nAuto-tune is mostly synonymous with the intentionally mechanized vocal distortion effect of singers like T-Pain, but it has actually been used for clandestine pitch correction in the studio for over 15 years. Cher’s voice on 1998’s “Believe” is probably the earliest well-known use of the device to distort rather than correct, though at the time her producers claimed to have used a vocoder pedal, probably in an attempt to hide what was then a trade secret—the Antares Auto-Tune machine is widely used to correct imperfections in studio singing. The corrective function of auto-tune is more difficult to note than the obvious distortive effect because when used as intended, auto-tuning is an inaudible process. It blends flubbed or off-key notes to the nearest true semi-tone to create the effect of perfect singing every time. The more off-key a singer is, the harder it is to hide the use of the technology. Furthermore, to make melody out of talking or rapping the sound has to be pushed to the point of sounding robotic.\nAntares Auto-Tune 7 Interface\nThe dismissal of auto-tuned acts is usually made in terms of a comparison between the modified recording and what is possible in live performance, like indie folk singer Neko Case’s extended tongue-lashing in Stereogum. Auto-tune makes it so that anyone can sing whether they have talent or not, or so the criticism goes, putting determination of talent before evaluation of the outcome. This simple critique conveniently ignores how recording technology has long shaped our expectations in popular music and for live performance. Do we consider how many takes were required for Patti LaBelle to record “Lady Marmalade” when we listen? Do we speculate on whether spliced tape made up for the effects of a fatiguing day of recording? Chances are that even your favorite and most gifted singer has benefited from some form of technology in recording their work. When someone argues that auto-tune allows anyone to sing, what they are really complaining about is that an illusion of authenticity has been dispelled. My question in response is: So what? Why would it so bad if anyone could be a singer through Auto-tuning technology? What is really so threatening about its use?\nAs Walter Benjamin writes in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” the threat to art presented by mechanical reproduction emerges from the inability for its authenticity to be reproduced—but authenticity is a shibboleth. He explains that what is really threatened is the authority of the original; but how do we determine what is original in a field where the influences of live performance and record artifact are so interwoven? Auto-tune represents just another step forward in undoing the illusion of art’s aura. It is not the quality of art that is endangered by mass access to its creation, but rather the authority of cultural arbiters and the ideological ends they serve.\nAuto-tune supposedly obfuscates one of the indicators of authenticity, imperfections in the work of art. However, recording technology already made error less notable as a sign of authenticity to the point where the near perfection of recorded music becomes the sign of authentic talent and the standard to which live performance is compared. We expect the artist to perform the song as we have heard it in countless replays of the single, ignoring that the corrective technologies of recording shaped the contours of our understanding of the song.\nIn this way, we can think of the audible auto-tune effect is actually re-establishing authenticity by making itself transparent. An auto-tuned song establishes its authority by casting into doubt the ability of any art to be truly authoritative and owning up to that lack. Listen to the auto-tuned hit “Blame It” by Jaime Foxx, featuring T-Pain, and note how their voices are made nearly indistinguishable by the auto-tune effect.\nIt might be the case that anyone is singing that song, but that doesn’t make it less bumping and less catchy—in fact, I’d argue the slippage makes it catchier. The auto-tuned voice is the sound of a democratic voice. There isn’t much precedent for actors becoming successful singers, but “Blame It” provides evidence of the transcendent power of auto-tune allowing anyone to participate in art and culture making. As Benjamin reminds us, “The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator.” The fact that “anyone” can do it increases possibilities and casts all-encompassing dismissal of auto-tune as reactionary and elitist.\nMechanical reproduction may “pry an object from its shell” and destroy its aura and authority–demonstrating the democratic possibilities in art as it is repurposed–but I contend that auto-tune goes one step further. It pries singing free from the tyranny of talent and its proscriptive aesthetics. It undermines the authority of the arbiters of talent and lets anyone potentially take part in public musical vocal expression. Even someone like Antoine Dodson, whose rant on the local news, ended up a catchy internet hit thanks to the Songify project.\nAuto-tune represents a democratic impulse in music. It is another step in the increasing access to cultural production, going beyond special classes of people in social or economic position to determine what is worthy. Sure, not everyone can afford the Antares Auto-Tune machine, but recent history has demonstrated that such technologies become increasingly affordable and more widely available. Rather than cold and soulless, the mechanized voice can give direct access to the pathos of melody when used by those whose natural talent is not for singing. Listen to Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, or (again) Lil Wayne’s “How To Love.” These artists aren’t trying to get one over on their listeners, but just the opposite, they want to evoke an earnestness that they feel can only be expressed through the singing voice. Why would you want to resist a world where anyone could sing their hearts out?\nOsvaldo Oyola is a regular contributor to Sounding Out! He is also an English PhD student at Binghamton University.\nTags: \" \"Jamie Foxx, \"Believe\", \"Blame It, \"How to Love\", \"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction\", 808s and Heartbreak, Antares, Antoine Dodson, Authenticity, Auto-tune, Cher, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Osvaldo Oyola, Songify, T-Pain, Walter Benjamin\nAbout Osvaldo Oyola\n\"I am that I am.\"\nView all posts by Osvaldo Oyola »\n126 responses to “In Defense of Auto-Tune”\nCharles Dexter Ward says : May 30, 2013 at 4:30 pm\nWhat a load of pretentious waffling. Autotune sounds like shytte. End of.\nNoah Masi says : January 3, 2013 at 11:30 am\nI have professional autotune, and it is true that you don’t have to be a perfect singer to make it work. However, it’s gonna be stressful to use if you don’t already deliver an almost perfect performance, otherwise you just sound like a robotic mess. I bought it because I take myself seriously as a vocalist recorder. I mainly use it as a corrective tool to fix a few mistakes, and sometimes use it as a full blown “cher” effect for artistic reasons. Do I think people abuse its purpose? Absolutely. I feel that as long as people don’t lie about how they use it, then it’s ok, meaning if a singer is truly talented, then they should be able to prove that when singing live. If they’re trying to keep autotune a secret because they know they’re not as good as they say, THAT’S where autotune becomes a bad thing. I’m still in the learning stages of autotune, but anything I edit is a performance that is already acceptable in its natural form.\nDoug says : August 24, 2012 at 9:04 am\nI mean no offense when I say this, but imagine a world where anyone could write articles like this. Wouldn’t that be special? If you don’t value your writing as a form of art, then sure! But for those of us who do (I’ve been a musician for 10 plus years), it’s an insult to see/hear what people are calling “music” these days. Auto tune can be used in a beneficial way to help correct slightly off pitch recordings, but using it live is a disgrace. By “tyranny of talent” you must be insinuating that those of us with talent are keeping those of you without talent out of the game or something. Not true at all. You want talent, go WORK at it as the rest of us “tyrants” do. Buying and using auto tune takes no talent, just an instruction manual. It’s not all the industry’s fault, you can blame society as well, for accepting processed garbage as viable art. When the consumer takes a stand and refuses to settle for “digitally altered” art, the people using it will be forced to perform without it, if they want to keep selling records. As for a world where everyone can sing? Keep it, I don’t wanna live in that world. I’ll stick with authentic talent from an elite group of professional, trained performers over a democracy of wanna be’s making androgynous sounds that people with no common sense consider “music.” At least there’s still magic in that. Besides, let’s think about the meaning of the word “professional.” It means an individual who is better at something than most people, whether it be by talent or practice, or both. So, in essence, if you use auto tune in favor of good old fashioned practice, you are, by definition, an amateur. Pro golfers don’t use swing alignment aides while they golf, nor do pro cyclists use training wheels. So if you’re using auto tune, and consider yourself a pro musician, you’d better think again! You’re no different than children dressing up and “pretending” to be doctors. So what’s wrong with a society where people play “pretend” and anyone can do it? Nothing, until my children are hired by my local hospital to treat cancer patients, just because they “look and sound” like doctors. The same idiots who buy this music will be the same idiots who let my “doctor” children treat their illnesses. So what’s so bad about a world where anyone can be anything, anytime they want? Nothing, just perhaps the lack of REALITY.\nhollisss says : October 3, 2014 at 7:45 am\n” You want talent, go WORK at it as the rest of us “tyrants” do” I know this is old. But this comment is just wrong. You were BORN with talent. Yes, you work at improving what you were graciously given… by whatever source you believe in whether it be God or fate or just simple luck/cooincidence.\nHow about it is ACTUALLY those of us born without talent are the ones that have to work harder? We weren’t handed some free gift. We don’t just wake up being able to sing. Picture how sucky that would be.\nHowever !! I do agree auto tune should not be used in live performances for, lack of a better word, pretending you can actually sing. I personally would never do that. I feel guilty enough wearing make up out in public. But then I wasn’t born with the gift of Model beauty.\nSiscoKid says : February 8, 2012 at 1:53 pm\nAuto-tune does not open new possibilities for music, instead it has a reverse effect making all artists that use it have little to no originality, since they all sound the same cause of this program. It also impacts the rest of the scene that don’t use it causing less creative ideas to be thought of because “why bother” feel that auto tune creates. In my eyes, the only good thing auto tune does, is get us to realize how lazy we are becoming, why do something original that will take some time when i can have a program make me think i sound good with little thought or effort!\nandywilli says : September 19, 2011 at 2:48 pm\nGood post, thanks for share.\nsneakygoodsportsblog says : September 18, 2011 at 6:02 pm\nAuto-Tune is fine when used for the purpose of sounding…. autotuney, like it was in 808’s and Heartbreak. Using it to make you sound like you can sing is not okay.\nSneakyGoodSportsGuy\ngaycarboys says : September 18, 2011 at 12:22 pm\nLil wayne, ah yes. where’s the off switch!\nsoundslikenoise says : September 17, 2011 at 4:34 am\nAuto-tune can be used in a very self-aware “post-modern” way and can add to the tonality/texture of very talented musicians. This can be heard in “Impossible Soul” by Sufjan Stevens where his use of it initially sounds incongruous to the rest of the song, but soon the voice becomes yet another electronic instrument within an orchestra of other electronic instruments.\nJotaKa says : September 16, 2011 at 12:52 pm\nReally? Cher? I have to listen to that track again.\nMy problem with autotune is simply the fact that people have been using it as crazy and, what makes matter worse, not assuming it. There are some obvious times that people hide with such affection, and I would enjoy the heck of it if the guy just got out and said: “I used voice modulation”.\nRai says : September 15, 2011 at 8:26 am\nEvery time I hear something with auto-tune, I bang my head against the wall and go, “WHY???”\nThen I bleed for awhile.\nGerald says : September 14, 2011 at 12:05 am\nI can understand that Auto-Tune is a sound that everybody likes right now. My only concern is that it has become an industry standard. It has become a leeway for non-talented singers. Every song you hear nowadays is mostly auto-tuned. Sometimes I ask myself is this the only way for artists to survive in the music industry or is this what people like to listen to nowadays? I just think that Auto-Tune is not for everybody. I think there are so many purely talented singers that don’t need to use it. Now if you want to use it like Roger Troutman used it, then that’s fine and good.\nLivi says : September 13, 2011 at 11:13 pm\nI’d just like to say that when anyone can make music, and anything can be called music, we will lose true music, art, and beauty. I don’t have anything against auto-tune as a way of fine-tuning studio mistakes, but a real singer shouldn’t need it, and let’s face it: we’re not all real singers-that’s why musicians are different than entertainers, as Moby pointed out recently. Auto-tune makes melody out of no melody-how is that perfecting anything? You shouldn’t be able to make a bad singer sound good-that’s why not everybody is meant to be a singer.\nDownwith Autotune says : September 13, 2011 at 7:27 pm\nI like autopilot in my planes.\nIt is safer to many degrees.\nBut my pilot is person who has committed their life to flying a plane. He or she has talent, skill and integrity.\nI am inspired by their dedication to their craft and the care and the precision into which they constantly hone their skills so that without autopilot they can safely take off, fly and land my plane with my fellow passengers.\nTell me: who has more integrity? The pilot who flies with or without?\nThe fact is: neither. They are equal because regardless of autopilot both can fly the plane.\nSinging with autotune in the abusive manner done today is an autopilot plane with a dipshit sitting in the pilot seat whose title is “pilot” but does not know how to fly.\nBetween a real pilot and the dipshit at a party?\nThanks, but I will take the person who has skill, honor, integrity and can apply their experience to their knowlege.\nAll the autopilot pilot can do is talk about how the buttons are pressed.\nWe’re raising a generation of the latter, unfortunately. Skilless, witless automatons who use the labels of talented, caring folks.\nDown with autotune.\nThe irony, of course, I just realized, is how much the rap “community” despises “fronters” and “haters” and anything else that they childishly crow against when the reality is that they are all just that: fronters. Talented in a very small area of the music world, certainly, but real “artists”? No. Just fronters. Hacks, in other verbiage.\nI’m going to put on my Hendrix now and listen to Voodoo Chile. Recorded live. Three takes. The first one to set the recording levels, the second he broke a string. The third is around ten minutes long, mixed in with some of the second recording. Four instruments.\nSt. Cain says : September 13, 2011 at 7:19 pm\nwow pple sure do hate auto tune lol\nmr. oyola says : September 13, 2011 at 8:04 pm\nHisham Soliman says : September 13, 2011 at 6:55 pm\nbetter to flaunt your autotune usage a la lil wayne and t-pain rather than to pretend you can sing good but are really using autotune…\nmadblackscientist says : September 13, 2011 at 6:15 pm\nAuto-tune is horrible and makes bad artist into stars on the radio and tv\nGraceLynneFleming says : September 13, 2011 at 5:22 pm\nnot a fan of auto – tune – but nice post nonetheless – great perspective\n-grace\nmatt blogger says : September 13, 2011 at 4:13 pm\ni hate people who use auto tune though a whole song, use it as a effect not to make you sing better or to make you sound like a dieing robot lol\nDr. HeldenBaer says : September 13, 2011 at 2:53 pm\nAutotune is the attempt to bypass the long and involved means to learn to sing acoustically, as in the Bel Canto method, which gave the Western World its unparalleled beauty of Church Music, Oratorio, Opera, and Art Song. The human voice, trained and tried to match pitch, is what separates the REAL Musicians, from these [c]rap singers, who just wanna make money ‘and have all the chicks for free,’ just like that vulgar song says.\nAuto tune should be banned.. as well as the garbage music that is conjoined to it.\njordnd says : September 13, 2011 at 2:06 pm\nI realize i contradicted myself by implying that (in a way) what will mark out one’s talentlessness will also cease to be valuable for our generation musically. I might have bitten off more than I could chew – the scope in time was a bit vague; but I would also like to add that running parallel to the spirit responsible for the increasing popularity of AutoTune is a strong counterculture of artists who are able to market themselves as ‘the real thing.’ I wonder what people think about the ‘democratic’ and de-individualizing impulses of AutoTune in relation to the fixation on ‘old-school’ forms of presentation e.g. Adele (performing with only a piano, normally), and an increasingly irrelevant Christina Aguilera, both artists whose uniqueness is centered on the aesthetic-nostalgia they evoke and play upon. Not to mention that shows such as ‘The Voice,’ and ‘American Idol’ (which would refute their own similarities) are still somewhat stunningly popular. How do you explain the fact that these two antagonistic spirits are flourishing so strongly simultaneously? The symbol of the ”real thing’s absence.”; the clearly manipulated, shares the stage with the real thing, which becomes increasingly mythicized, exalted, and possibly remote.\n1. I do not buy the assertion that *anyone* can sing. At least, not without some serious limitations: yes, Antoine Dodson can sing with the aid of AutoTune, as can artists such as Ke$ha; but, if what you say about pitchiness requiring clearly-distortive auto-correction is correct, then it follows that we can, to a certain extent, hear the talentlessness of certain artists in their work. There is so much more to singing than just being on the note; Li’l Wayne may be on the note in ‘How to Love,’ but the timbre of his voice is actually somewhat agonizing to the listening ear. He sounds strained and completely out of his element. Wayne is an extreme case; artists like Rihanna and Ke$ha, less extreme. Artists such as these might be considered a bit more ‘on the border’ by most people, but even with artists of minimal (yet not negligible) capability, the issue is more of one sounding better in the studio than one does live. Or at least, to remain more value-neutral, one being incapable of reproducing the studio performance.\nI think what is actually happening is a huge disjunction between the artist as a figment of the radio imagination and the artist as a performer, an image. The core of character creation now takes place in visuals, and consequently, the amount of expressive information absorbed through music qua music is diminished, or at least, less highly valued. In general, I think we are becoming worse listeners. Vocal performances are becoming (in spite of their increasingly cybernetic-production) more technically and rhythmically-centered, and at the same time, a bit less-human. I suspect this is because the amount of information we absorb aurally is decreasing RAPIDLY, in line with our sensitivity to sound as a complex medium of storytelling. Maybe it’s just because mp3s are so crappy, and the iPod generation has grown up with a conception of music as a ready-to-hand filler for technological doo-hickies. After all, we listen to ‘everything.’ Obviously this is rash speculation, but I see the prevalence of auto-tune as the next big step in the erasure of the personal and dangerously relatable (frailty) in pop music.\n2. As for the tyranny of talent, that will never change – it’s just that talent itself will become something even less musical. An artist such as Rihanna, for example, has very little to offer in terms of vocal technique or emotive capability, however she has built a career around image-renovation, capitalizing on watchability – which is perhaps a descendant of that old fiend, ‘charisma.’ Willow Smith is quite the same – I heard MANY unnecessarily violent diatribes against her success – all under the pretext of preserving and enforcing democracy: ‘her parents bought her lessons, bought her a record deal, bought her…um a voice?’ The relationship between financial security and artistic opportunity is well-supported and highly fabled, but the fact remains that regardless of whatever backing she had, Willow was still imminently WATCHABLE. However, I’m sure I read somewhere that tyranny is only possible because of the complicity of the dominated. Pretty sure. If talent is in fact universally held…\njimmydrums says : September 13, 2011 at 1:40 pm\nGreat post on auto tune! We also need to see the big picture of how our technology is opening new avenues of art. Being a pro musician with two music degrees and percussion teacher that has recorded, played live in operas and symphonies and jazz festival settings, I’d like to go compare another medium here. Acting.\nWhy is it that no one is giving pro actors a hard time that they make movies, TV sitcoms or commercials instead of live Broadway theater? They have the perfect look, sound and lighting at the perfect time of day in the perfect location every time. I’ve heard that depending on the cameras used, it can take a 40 hour week to shoot a 40 min sitcom. Why would it bother you if music is run the same way? Live performance is just that. Live. No net. It’s exciting to watch and to perform. If you want to go and enjoy a good show, go see someone that has put in the 10,000 plus hours that it takes to make magic happen in real time. But I love movies and animation too. I enjoy them for what they are. They have no less validity. They are just not live and I don’t expect them to be. I enjoy them just as deeply.\nTechnology is tools. Period. Auto-Tune is a tool just like my torque wrench is in my toolbox. I don’t expect my mechanic to feel the tightness of each bolt on my car. I expect him to use the tool to get the job done right.\nBuy live recordings! Go to shows! Go out and support your musician friends and school concerts instead of flopping your lips with you ear buds on on how this guy/girl has no talent because technology aided this art form. Enjoy it for what it is.\nJJJr\njamiebobamie says : September 13, 2011 at 1:32 pm\nVery interesting perspective. As a musician who’s worked hard to improve my craft, it pisses me off that someone whose only talent is to look good in tight pants can be a success in music.\nI’ve decided I want to be a lawyer. Certainly there’s something I could use that’s like auto-tune? Auto-law? I don’t know anything about the law but I look real good in a suit.\nreflectionseed says : September 13, 2011 at 1:30 pm\nInteresting, valid and outstanding point. However, technology in about every single field has provided tools to anyone, that can mimic uncanny talent and ability. I have a home recording studio. I am a lousy piano performer and do well in the guitar. I’ve been writing chamber music in my workstations in the last decade. I use the piano for my creations. How can I play many of the fancy passages in my music and make them sound like played by an educated performer? Modern technology that allows me to slow down the tempo, play slowly all my notes, quantize them and even insert (or extract) them. I do exactly the same with digital imaging. I can capture all nuances of light without having to set up tons of power draining units to achieve the same results. Does my outcome demerits because that? IMO, not at all. The creative process still is there and thanks to the tools now at reach, I can enjoy my hobbies and profession as if I was a trained artist.\nIf you were talking about opera, I think that not even technology would cut it to find a place among the masses. But commercial and popular music? Well, did you know about that group that with a iPhones played all instruments, recorded them, video recorded and edited and performed one of their sounds in the NY subway? I’d bet, a lot of their outcome was automated.\nTechnology is no more than a new extension to creativity and I am glad is here to stay. If I like the results be it. If I don’t tough. However, you make an excellent point, thank you,\nnightsonvenus says : September 13, 2011 at 1:05 pm\nA very thoughtful and insightful article – you make many good points in this and a good choice to bring Walter Benjamin into the mix. As someone who uses much new technology in making my music, how much technology I choose to use and the ways in which I use it is always a constant concern. As always, it’s a question of balance.\nI think much of the criticism in regard to auto-tuning, and my objections to it sometimes, comes not so much from the actual effect itself but what has become the ubiquity of its application in much of pop music now. True, it does open a lot of possibilities, but usually after producers have moved on to finding new or unusual ways to apply it, i.e., when it is not used so indiscriminately on mainly the vocals as it has been so far. The fact that it may have been a ‘cool new’ effect the first few times you heard it tends to get forgotten in the next several thousand instances of hearing it. Auto-tuning is way overused at this point, too much of a gimmick and one of the reasons for the haters to hate it.\nAlso, your article seems to argue for acceptance of auto-tuning as if it were not already one of the ‘accepted’ sounds in current pop music. The ‘cultural arbiters’ in this case are the ones who are using auto-tuning or sign-off on the use of it for their artists. In one sense, it’s almost expected… if you want to have a hit in the pop genre. So another of my objections to it is that it’s become something of a badge of conformity. When something becomes popular on the radio, becomes a mega-hit, etc., others will imitate and much of popular songwriting becomes formulaic (ignoring the fact that much of it is anyway). When an effect has already been used to the extent auto-tuning has, using it only reinforces the sense that “everything sounds the same”. I listen to a ton of music from different artists and it’s always refreshing now to find someone who isn’t using it, almost radical.\nWhat it really comes down to is the skillful, intelligent use of technology – are you using it in ways that are original and creative and produce something unique that listeners haven’t heard before, or using it in habitual ways that just end up simply serving the “status quo” and the monetary ends of a select few? The tyranny you mention is not one of talent, but of conformity and in the name of the dollar. Aesthetics – as subjective as they are – are always paramount.\nExcept aesthetics aren’t subjective, they are enmeshed in hierarchy of cultural and societal expectations.\nThere is a contradictory thing going on here, because at one level folks object to auto-tune because of its populist impulses, (eg. “If anyone can sing it has no value” or “Pop music is just trash anyway and I enjoy something superior”), but at another level folks object to auto-tune as indicative of a corporate neutralizing of difference, a sort of lowest common denominator determined to maximize popularity and this profit – as Adorno and Horkheimer might say, seen this way auto-tune robs music of any revolutionary and democratic possibility. While I can certainly understand the latter formulation, artistic development is simply not that static or cut and dry – sure the culture industry seeks to absorb and control (or predict and create) every new form of folk expression or subcultural lifestyle – but there is also a pushback -a reallocation of the available resources that suggests there is room to create something outside of that conformist realm. I certainly do not deny that auto-tune is the mostly the tool of corporate conformist popular music, but that doesn’t change the democratic possibility that it represents. To paraphrase the Benjamin I quoted: don’t confuse the “disreputable” medium for the message.\nbigmouthcowboy says : September 13, 2011 at 12:53 pm\nAuto-tune is more often used to “take the rough out” of a vocal track and to most people, is indistiguishable. Most pop, pop-country, main-stream, etc. is recorded with multiple layers of auto-tune on vocals. If you are hatin’ it, you probably should make the switch to classical or some good ol’ Stan Getz…\nKristin says : September 13, 2011 at 12:02 pm\nThe good thing about this post is that as an author, you actually researched and sought out information regarding it. Most people sum their reaction to auto-tune as “Wait, what is that?” or “It’s stupid.” As someone who’s been involved in music since my early elementary days, I clearly reside on the side of “it’s stupid,” but with more thought to back up my point. Not everyone is meant to be a singer or involved in music – we all have different talents, and just because someone gets inspired by an auto-tuned voice recording doesn’t mean he or she has the ability nor should he or she consider pursuing it. We live in a time when singing “is the thing to do right now.” And it appears that those who are financially able and bear the image that America so quickly bows down to get to stand on stage and lip-sync to pre-recorded music that has been altered far from how the the person actually sounds when he or she opens his or her mouth.\nJust because technology has evolved and created a way for people to sound different doesn’t mean that it’s use is beneficial or good. In fact, it’s actually artificial. If you really think about it, what kind of lesson many of today’s popular artists teaching people? Yes, if you dream it, you can do it, but also . . . if you aren’t vocally talented, it’s OK. Just have a lot of money and a good lyricist on hand. The sound mixers can do the rest. Personally, I’m a fan of some of both of their music, but it doesn’t mean I support or am a fan of how they create their music. Your argument borders on the thought of being blissfully ignorant. As long as everyone can sing and be happy, who cares if the end product is fake, false, artificial, unreal? I think I might actually like more popular music today if it sounded good. The truth is, it just doesn’t. It’s what is considered “in” right now, and therefore society dubs it “good.”\nQueen B. says : September 13, 2011 at 11:38 am\nReally good article! And slightly unrelated, but I had no idea that the “How to Love” video is actually really good. Props to the writers. And to Lil Wayne for autotuning, I suppose. 🙂\nQueen B.\nSimon Geezz says : September 13, 2011 at 10:25 am\nGreat article!!!\njulianericain says : September 13, 2011 at 10:18 am\nI have Mixcraft on my computer (a full version crack) and this is really good.\ninvisiblesandwichtm says : September 13, 2011 at 9:54 am\n1. If what you say about Autotune being “here to stay” is true, it’s not because of any musical merit it has or doesn’t have, but solely because the recordings associated with it, and the vocalists who use it are highly profitable.\n2. In a day and age where everything can sound aesthetically perfect, it becomes especially important to have good songwriting skills to go anywhere as a musician. If people become tired of pop music, it’s probably because your average song in the genre is an ultraformulaic verse-chorus piece of garbage manufactured without any thought. Even looking at the Billboard 200 charts from 2005 reveals a lot of acts that came and went because they had no real merits, while bands like Pink Floyd and The Beatles continue to sell steadily over decades because they put thought into their work and had varied output – even “aesthetically perfect” versions of their songs still shine through their arrangements.\nnatasiarose says : September 13, 2011 at 9:48 am\nI like this post a lot. I enjoy auto-tune, especially when it comes to music I want to dance or workout too. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate singers like Adele. Autotune isn’t a replacement for traditional vocals, it’s just an alternative.\nhelpful hints says : September 13, 2011 at 9:46 am\nWithout auto-tune, we wouldn’t have the classics from “Autotune the News”. Look it up on Youtube, possibly the single best ever use of Auto-tune.\nIf someone made an affordable auto-tuner, I would hook it up to my cell phone, and use it anytime I was ordering at the drive-thru.\nmr. oyola says : September 13, 2011 at 12:34 pm\n“Autotune the News” is now “Songify” – check out the link in the post.\nImdad Hussain says : September 13, 2011 at 9:02 am\nGood Stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!\ntweakindie says : September 13, 2011 at 8:55 am\nThis is cool sound! Just like any other voice effect. Creates a special style and fits quite well the kind of music it’s used in. No need to defend it more than any effect. Good article btw.\ncpmondello says : September 13, 2011 at 7:54 am\nregardless of who has used auto-tune, if you dont have singing “talent” then you are not a good singer. Sure anyone can be an artist by warping sounds, thats been going on for decades, but, though I may be wrong, I dont think singers like Stevie Nicks use auto-tune, because they know their limits as their voices age, or change, and just dont sing songs they cant. This brings me to a point that many may take for granted, those people on that singing show, which I don’t watch, but have seen a few videos from, most likely have better “natural” voices than the “famous” people. I used to go to one of the local music colleges to listen to students put on performances and I was stunned at how beautiful 99.9% of them were to my ears, all live, no auto-tune, no microphone, just natural talent, honed in on with practice. These are the people I envy and respect. If I want auto anything, I can just used one of any number of free software programs that can change my voice to sound like anything I want it to. When I was younger, I’d gather three or four recording machines and create make-shift “tracks”. Now you can imagine to my surprise at how many different sounds I could make with lamp shades, bottles, spoons, and my voice. At one point, one of the tapes sped up, no reason that I know of, but it made one of the tracks replay at a “chipmunk” style voice, so I sang along with it onto another tape, leading me to believe how this was a great way to manipulate the voice and sound. Back then, late 1970s, I started to notice music where the artist/singer would use different voices and or machines/tuners to create change in their voice, whether it be Nina Hagen, or Styx or Yoko Ono or Ozzy, all were used not to better their voices but to create a change where you can clearly tell they were not trying to hide any lack of talent. That is the difference I see. I can respect talent, either the “natural” or creating of, but I can’t stand hiding lack of talent behind machinery that makes a voice sound better than it really is.\nPhil says : September 13, 2011 at 7:36 am\nAnother step in the mournful march forward as the human race evolves (or perhaps devolves) toward an android state of being. Everything is optimized. Nothing remains real.\njuliuschoxx says : September 13, 2011 at 6:58 am\nAuto-Tune as we know it now, as an exaggerated effect that creates robotic, warbly voices, is a novelty that will soon pass, but the device will continue to play an important but less visible roll quietly correcting pitches and smoothing over flubbed notes behind the scenes. in short auto tune is here to stay..BTW,,Big up Lil Weezy\nuponatlas says : September 13, 2011 at 2:28 am\nHmm. This puts a whole new perspective on auto-tune and what people have been saying about it… This is awesome, I loved it!\nuponatlas.\ncontemplativemoorings says : September 13, 2011 at 1:37 am\nYes, because auto-tune is EXACTLY the equivalent technologically to doing multiple vocal takes…This post just makes me sad…\nTraveller says : September 13, 2011 at 12:50 am\nYou don’t need ranges impossible to be reached by a human voice, to make good music.\nSound, clarity, emotion…. none of it is there anymore with the newest generation of music. It’s safe to assume that most of the mainstream shit that has been released in the past couple of years can’t even be called music. Unfortunately it is actually and apparently quite convincing and money-making. Producers and marketers have consistently turned music into a big money scam – and auto-tune is a great example. I don’t know what kind of person can even tolerate listening to breathless, single-note keys, but people apparently like to have what they probably like to call “perfect music”. Music is supposed to be a form of art…. a talent… a way of expressing story through song. It doesn’t have to be perfect either.\nI’m not going to be picky and be like the lot of you that say that only REALLY talented and hardworking people should sing (there are TONS of ways one could refute this statement), but I am going to say this: I always believed that music should be free to perform, free to watch, for everyone out there. Music should be something you enjoy, not buy. Until auto-tune, record labels, and all the other things that try to involve music with money disappear, looks like my dreams won’t be fulfilled for the next few years to come.\nUnfortunately the fact that it’s not going anywhere is right. Auto-tuning isn’t even expensive, and ANYONE can do it by downloading any audio editing program to their PC and installing a tune filter plug-in. There’s no sense in making lots of money with something that didn’t cost a lot to create.\nbeginswithm says : September 12, 2011 at 11:39 pm\nI think auto-tune sounds best as a sound effect for people who can sing. Technology isn’t a replacement for talent or ability. Rappers don’t really need fake voices, since they’re not singing. Lil Wayne and other have made their points with auto-tune, so it’s time to move on to the next thing that’ll be overdone.\nfireandair says : September 12, 2011 at 11:27 pm\n“Do we consider how many takes were required for Patti LaBelle to record “Lady Marmalade” when we listen? Do we speculate on whether spliced tape made up for the effects of a fatiguing day of recording?”\nDo we realize that people like Ms. LaBelle and the others at the apex of their abilities are not the sort of people to whine like little babies at the idea of having to stay a little late at the office? Top-tier performers like her are usually the type of people who line up for extra work. You don’t catch them pissing and moaning that they are still at the office, and it’s already 5:09 wah wah wah. Here’s a newsflash for you: top-tier performers do not whine like brats that they have to exercise their chosen profession. They are willing to work long hours, long past what anyone else thinks is reasonable or even sometimes humane. That’s how they get to be as good as they are, because they are not lazy slobs who take the easy way out.\nI tell you what. Why don’t you go present this argument to Ms. LaBelle, and report back what she says. It should be entertaining. I wager she’ll either laugh in your face with that tyrannically accurate voice of hers or rip you several dozen new *ssholes. Or both. And when she’s done, you know what she’ll do next?\nGet back to work.\nLukeR84 says : September 12, 2011 at 11:10 pm\nWhat irks me about Auto-tune is (rappers mostly) performers who have built careers on Auto-tune (T-Pain) instead of actually singing/rapping/using their voice. I like it’s use in some music, but I think it will be pretty embarrassing in about 10 years (see synth in the 80’s) and cool again in about 30 (see current synth-indie bands).\nEvery artist that I have seen use voice effects has built at least a few songs from their natural talents, not their producer’s computer skills. Radiohead, Yeasayer, Vampire Weekend… These guys can sing in the ranges they use voice effects in, and I like their voices. T-Pain, it seems, uses it as a crutch; As a substitute for ability. And I’m noticing it and more “overproduction” in a lot of pop music these days. That kind of scares me. I’ll definitely hand it to Lil’ Wayne, him and a few others use it well. I think it just took a year or so of getting on everybody’s nerves and market oversaturation to finally settle down a little and not be used as a one-trick-pony gimmick.\nNice post! Good defense\nGabe says : September 12, 2011 at 10:58 pm\nHaha I love auto tune. I use it all the time in the studio.\nThomas Stazyk says : September 12, 2011 at 10:31 pm\nAnd to think that people were sued because of the Milli Vanilli lip synch thing. Isn’t autotune eqully artistically dishonest?\nSophia Morgan (griffinspen) says : September 12, 2011 at 10:14 pm\nVery interesting article. I don’t necessarily mind auto-tune; some songs are great and I put the fact aside that the singers aren’t actually singing. However, I do not like that talent for singing is no longer required to become a singer. Anyone can sing now because their voice can be altered electronically. I have had professional vocal training and learned at a young age to distinguish amazing singers, good singers, mediocre singers, and people who should find a different profession in life. Listening to all the artists who release albums that use auto-tune makes me irritated, because they have really no or little talent but are pushed as if they do. So, going back to my first opinion about auto-tune, I guess I DO mind, though I don’t always spend time minding it. Congrats on being Pressed; you’ve made me really think deeply about the music industry and auto-tune now.\nLakia Gordon says : September 12, 2011 at 9:22 pm\nAuto tune doesn’t sound that bad to me. I think it’s actually kind of cool 🙂\nRace Knower says : September 12, 2011 at 9:22 pm\nSounds great. Think they used this in X Factor and lots of folk were turned off. How would you judge vocal talent in American Idol or X Factor though if everyone sounds perfect? I don’t know, but I know music technology can be a boon to musicians who have not fully mastered an instrument; and todays young musicians are lucky to be living in a time when music technology can provide them with infinite possibilities, but theres not much joy if there is no soul in the vocal; and that’s something that is not subject to mechanical action or human will. Its something that comes from the imortal part of man’s Spirit Its great to look forward, but with some music the greatest human voices have been silenced by recordings been deleted in the music industry. Did someone say Sam Cook? If you can listen to an LP called Mr Soul by Sam Cook you’ll know what I mean.\nmr. oyola says : September 13, 2011 at 12:57 am\nYou should read my piece from last year: “Ain’t Got the Same Soul” https://soundstudiesblog.com/2010/11/29/aint-got-the-same-soul/\nbigangry72 says : September 12, 2011 at 9:09 pm\nThe continual digitizing of music via use of auto-tune or sampling is watering down the emotions that have been moving people for years. Other than relating to the latest trend, there is little connection between musician and listener. Which, in my opinion, is why music has continued to steadily decline. There’s little work in using someone else’s music, using a computer to fix your voice, and the quality of the music reflects that. Having recently heard Lady Gaga’s stellar performance on Howard Stern of “The Edge” fully illustrates that when you have actual talent, auto-tune is very unnecessary. It’s not only not necessary, it’s almost an insult to those artists who work very hard to train their voice or play an instrument that others cheat their way through the industry.\nGenres such as rock. blues, and punk touches people, not momentarily, but for a lifetime. Yes, it’s not always pretty, but it’s raw emotive power ensnares people. That art has been sadly lost in a sea of low talent, take the easy road “artists” that have been shoved down the public’s throats. You play crap everyday, call it music for long enough, and people will begin to believe it as such. Auto-tune is just another sign of our collective laziness. It’s the musical equivalent of the Krispy Kreme cheeseburger. Yeah, it seems ok on the surface, but when you’re dying on the crapper of a heart attack, all alone, it just doesn’t seem appealing anymore.\npedro agno says : July 10, 2018 at 10:40 am\nSinead O’Connr – Nothing Compares 2U – just correct the microtones away, and what have you got?\nhowficklemyheart says : September 12, 2011 at 8:44 pm\nGreat point about the good uses of auto tune. But…I still don’t think it should be used to make Disney actors into singers. Really?!? Congrats on being freshly pressed.\nhttp://howficklemyheart.wordpress.com\nbluesilver says : September 12, 2011 at 8:26 pm\nI like autotune used as a method of distortion (I think it’s actually pretty cool that way, in fact), but back in the day before they had all that fancy equipment, you actually had to be able to sing. People didn’t have a machine to correct their terrible singing, they actually had to have a good voice. It just pisses me off that autotune is so overused. It’s like nobody even tries to be a good singer anymore because they know they can just use autotune to fix anything that doesn’t sound absolutely perfect. Case in point? Katy Perry. I hope the people who invented autotune are getting a monthly check from her because without autotune nobody would so much as give her a second glance.\nMr. D says : September 12, 2011 at 8:24 pm\nIf one needs autotune my advise it get a good vocal coach. If that doesn’t work well . . . . .\nmyhaphazardthoughts says : September 12, 2011 at 7:55 pm\nThe only stuff auto tune is good for is parody songs. “Bed Intruder” was perfect for it, but it needs to stay out of all these hit songs. I can’t stand hearing songs on the radio in auto tune.\nchunter says : September 12, 2011 at 7:55 pm\nI seriously respect you for writing this, since I’ve been on the business end of various kinds of electronic-music hate, I consider hating on autotune to be exactly the same. If you don’t know any good music that uses it, listen to better music!\nOf course, I’ve been experimenting with the unholiest of music antichrists, the singing speech synthesizer! If those ever go completely mainstream,… I guess pop music will be nothing but singing cartoons. I welcome this.\ncamcash21 says : September 12, 2011 at 6:59 pm\nAuto tune < Talk Box\nDilbery Gocnes says : September 12, 2011 at 6:51 pm\nPerhaps you should make a blog post defending use of steroids in sports, or using Google when given a final exam in college. Auto-Tune is no more than a pick-me-up and an easy way into the market of fame and the celebrity life. With wide spread use of Auto-Tune, it means nobody has to really try hard anymore, not when they can cheat their way into the industry. That’s what’s wrong with people these days, they don’t care about hard work anymore when they can get everything done the easy way. The quality of music has been sinking to an all time low, and while that is still an opinion, there is still logical reasoning behind it.\nPsychExFutureHeart says : September 12, 2011 at 6:45 pm\nSo what’s your take on bands like Black Moth Super Rainbow?\nBetter still, what do you think of Flaming Lips’ (very digitalized) “The Impulse” as opposed to (singing-heart-out, untreated/ undigital vocals of) songs like “She Don’t Use Jelly”?\nI hate the song “She Don’t Use Jelly” (and find their otherwise live shows are burdened with it) but love all of “The Soft Bulletin” and “Yoshimi” and most of “At War With the Mystics” – couldn’t much get into “Embryonic”\nThe hate for the song has more to do with finding it boring both sonically and lyrically than with any sort of earnestness (or lack thereof). If anything, I find the stuff on “Yoshimi” to be a lot more “authentic” from the point of view of emotional content.\njuno says : September 12, 2011 at 6:36 pm\ni agree with SaraPey…but thanks for share,keep writing.\nblacknectar says : September 12, 2011 at 6:22 pm\nI like the links you made between autotune, democracy, and transparency. Point well taken. I would be one of the people who’d argue that autotune blurs the line between “authentic” and inauthentic work, but I always forget that originality is a myth, and everything is linked and shared. Insightful post.\nSaraPey says : September 12, 2011 at 5:48 pm\nAuto-tuned or not, music should come from the mind and from the heart. I get so upset when people hate on musicians that make beautiful and genius music, but that have different kind of voices (which by the way, make them special and unique). And although I like to hear real, genuine voices, I don’t really care much if a great song by a great musician is auto-tuned. But I do care if a crapy song coming from a crapy artist is auto-tuned because as they start to rise up with those kinds of songs, the truly amazing artists get more underrated. Music should come from real people, not from real computers.\nLeonardo Bandeira says : September 13, 2011 at 10:52 am\nyour comment is Very confuse\nsaltybi11 says : September 12, 2011 at 5:45 pm\nI love digital audio editing and the like… autotune is certainly a great tool. I feel like it is waaay over used these days.\nIt’s use for the “bed intruder” is probably the only full length auto tuned song that I will ever like or appreciate.\nThe auto tune sound is a great effect and can make for some awesome sounds, especially in the electronic music world. As a musician, I think that someone using autotune to sing an entire song is kind of like just giving up! I love to play the guitar, and one thing that holds me back is my inability to sing.\nI guess if I used some sort of autotune for my guitar, I could be the next jimi hendrix [only I would be a big faker… at least in my own eyes].\nYou should check out the other Songify autotuned songs – the Charlie Sheen interview “Winning” song and the “Backin’ Up” song. they are just as good as “Bedroom Intruder”\nsoundsorceress says : September 12, 2011 at 5:29 pm\nMr. Oyola, I find myself having to eat my words from earlier today (*gulp*), because I had to think back to my college years when I took an electronic music course and discovered the wonders of MIDI sequencing. I was able to compose a piece with a piano part that I was nowhere near able to do live; I used the sequencer technology to get all the notes aligned just right.\nAnd you know what, not only did I get an “A” on that project, but the resulting song actually won a contest. So even though I’m all thumbs when it comes to keyboard technique, I was able to use technology to create a piece of music that had an effect on people, which is really the whole point.\nWhich makes me wonder….Did MIDI sequencing get this level of flak that is now heaped upon AutoTune for sucking the human element out of music?\nfireandair says : September 12, 2011 at 6:48 pm\nBeethoven, Brahms, Tchaik, and those types already did that. They couldn’t play every instrument in the orchestra, but they wrote for them. If you think the computer is what allows a composer to do this … well, you think something strange. Super-complex music for very large consorts of instruments has been getting written for pretty much one millennium now. The computer didn’t suddenly make it all happen in the last five years.\nMarius Chamberlin says : September 14, 2011 at 9:23 pm\njeffreykip says : September 12, 2011 at 5:13 pm\nBy far the most creative use of auto-tune I’ve experienced is the collage of Carl Sagan clips from Nova into a song. It’s not only very creative, but a beautiful song. Ok, not for everyone but very cool use of this digital tool and, I think, a fantastic creation. See it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc\nLeonardo Bandeira says : September 12, 2011 at 5:10 pm\n“So what? Why would it so bad if anyone could be a singer through Auto-tuning technology?”\nfirst; becausde it sound awful. second; because it makes fakers superstars when record companies push new “artists” to fame based on image, trends, violence, drug abuse and other stuff unrelated to MUSIC. For 5000 years music has been expression of the soul, anyone who has experienced a real peformer face to face knows tha music can be something magical, thanks to auto-tune and pro-tools the Idols are no longer models of talent, expression and feeling; whoever wants to experience real music has to go back to the caves\nlc says : September 12, 2011 at 5:02 pm\nIf autotune represents a “democratic impulse in music,” then why do only corporate singers use it?\nSte says : September 12, 2011 at 4:42 pm\nI am all for technology in the arts as long as it simply adds to the music in a unique or artistic way. I expect singers at a professional level to be able to sing in a live setting. If they can’t, there is something very wrong with the overuse of auto tune. When it is used to make up for the lack of talent in a talent-based field, or used so abundantly that’s it’s about listening to the technology itself versus the artist, it does lose authenticity. Do I find “Blame It” catchy, sure. Do I own it, nope. Was auto tune used in Cher’s “Believe”? Yes. Can the girl sing in a live setting without, you bet.\ndiembe says : September 12, 2011 at 4:40 pm\nvery well-written post. and/but misguided, imho. i am not swayed a millimeter from my contention that auto-tune is digital satan spawn.\naculturedlad says : September 12, 2011 at 4:33 pm\nI don’t agree with you AT ALL but it’s an interesting post. Auto-tune let’s everyone sound good. Auto-tune gets rid of talent. Auto-tune adds more Cheryl Cole to the mix and less Laura Marling. To tweak one note, I can stomach but the way it’s being forced these days, it’s becoming a joke.\nkirinjirafa says : September 12, 2011 at 4:28 pm\nI don’t like the sound of auto-tune, but this is a well-stated perspective on it, and ditto to mr. oyola “I think it still requires talent to use any kind of technology in novel ways to support and develop musical ideas”\noh wait… duh… you ARE mr. oyola…\nI Made You A Mixtape says : September 12, 2011 at 4:26 pm\nYoua re right about one thing… auto-tune is not going anywhere…however to use it as a sole purpose of a song, to me is like reality TV…cheap.\nThe Hairy Caber says : September 12, 2011 at 4:09 pm\nAuto Tune, the vehicle of choice for producers of talent shows around the world. Without Auto Tune, Simon Cowell wouldn’t have half the subjective talent; he has already amassed. My objection to the use of Auto Tune, is that it demeans the singer; while deluding the audience. The singer, thinking they are great; are in fact poor. It is technology that is making them sound great. The audience, hearing a studio album, turn up at a concert; only to find themselves cheated with breathless off key tunes. Sorry Auto Tune is just a big con, for the likes of Simon Cowell; to make more money of the gullible.\nmoneymakingjus says : September 12, 2011 at 4:07 pm\nThis should be my favorite blog post of the year. Good stuff!!!!\nRasta teacher says : September 12, 2011 at 3:56 pm\nI just don´t really appreciate the sound of auto-tune especially when it comes to reggae, where nothing beet the rough sound of the 70´s roots singers.\nNice article though\nTheRantingRaven says : September 12, 2011 at 3:30 pm\nWe all say perfection isn’t what we stride for because we all know that it don’t exist, but it still amazes me to know that it is where society is heading. I want to hear imperfection, not some cardboard cutout to prance around pretending he is a contender in the big race of global history. I want to hear that the person that i’m listening to actually has some faults, some soul I don’t to hear mechanisms and plastic making love to his voice just to please my ear. Another note: it’s their face that makes their music. It’s when a restaurant states they have something ‘Nation Famous’. It establishes a promise that it must be exceptional, when in fact it is actually self proclaimed. Go look up lyrics of any Top Billboard Artist and read it from the perspective of if you wrote it, it would make you cringe. Looking for time to reevaluate it, and recite it. Who even then knows if they wrote it?\nenjoibeing says : September 12, 2011 at 3:26 pm\nthe only person i like that used auto tune is kanye west. he did a wonderful job on his 808’s and heartbreaks. i felt his emotion when he was singing or lack there of but it was good i thought. nice post!\nchrisfiftyfour says : September 12, 2011 at 3:24 pm\nDigital is not real. Peroid.\nAutotune turns singing into paint-by-numbers.\nI completely agree. It destroys the art in music. If anyone can do it, then why should a person even bother? Why should I admire the Mona Lisa for the skill used in making it if I can make something just a good with no experience and little effort? The way I see it, the equation is simple: auto tune takes out the need for producers to find people who can ACTUALLY sing. So if they aren’t picking based on musical ability, what ARE they picking based on? Marketability. If you can’t sing, but you look good enough and you fit the current definition of “cool”, then produces will just stick you in a booth, mic you up and have you wail away, then later they’ll just clean up the “vocals” and put some instruments in. That’s not music, and it most certainly isn’t talent, not by ANY stretch of the imagination.\nblackceezar says : September 12, 2011 at 3:01 pm\nYour defense still points out the obvious argument for why it’s the worst thing that has come along or as you’ve shown been reintroduced in that ten or so years. The only good auto tune I’ve heard in recent years isn’t even from an artist it’s a sample. The Rza used auto tune brilliantly on “New Day” by Jay=z and Kanye. That’s as far as it goes really.\nWe know Cher isn’t and wasn’t in the 90’s the vocalist she was in the 70’s and I’m a DJ so I have many 12 inch singles with acapella versions of many great artists and yes you hear the tweaking of their vocals. That’s cool in my book but what we have right now today and for the past few years is as you noted with your quote from Neko Case, anyone can go out here now and sing. It’s not being used as a tool to cover up subtle blemishes in singers vocals, it’s now a tool to get over. Even talented singers sound horrible using it. To use it as some tool to blend you vocals in on certain parts of the song is cool, I’ve heard that and thought it enhanced a few songs. To just go out and really do what everyone else is doing and following the crowd is not worth defending. Lil Wayne or Kanye didn’t break new ground at all with what they did using auto tune, anybody who can’t hold a note in a paper bag is doing the same thing they did. That’s the reason people are so against auto tune. Like you said you take two people Jamie Foxx and T-Pain play with auto tune and not be able to tell them apart when their on the same song, where’s the talent in that? Auto tune isn’t going anywhere one can only hope someone finds a revolutionary way to use it and be smart enough not to go overboard with that method\nTodd's Trivial Pursuits says : September 12, 2011 at 2:52 pm\nInteresting out look on the auto-tune. Another tool additional to ones such as quantization that makes a perfect an better life.\nPCC Advantage says : September 12, 2011 at 2:48 pm\nI honestly appreciate all of the information you’ve given and your argument in favour of auto-tune, but I just have to disagree with you. Auto-tune is one of my pet peeves…right up there with people who have no talent but are treated as if they do. 😉\nI think that auto-tune aids no-talent hacks in breaking into the business, and that’s about it. (Ooh…that sounds kinda harsh, but I don’t really know how else to say it). I’m sorry for disagreeing with you so much, but I do think you wrote a fantastic article and applaud you for taking a stance that many people would disagree with.\nJason says : September 12, 2011 at 4:11 pm\nI agree with PCC. As a matter of personal taste, as well — unless it’s used in a way that’s imperceptible — I absolutely hate the computerized, robotic sound of Auto-Tune. It completely turns me off to a song when I hear that. Maybe it’s because I hear the industry’s attempt to desensitize our ears to the falsehood of what Auto-Tune covers up. In other words — if we start to think of it as a performance medium within itself — why would we mind if a few sucky singers make a whole career of it?!\nhxrey says : September 12, 2011 at 2:36 pm\nAll I can say is, Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk,Wendy Carlos in A ClockWork Orange soundtrack, the Cylon Centurions from O.G Battlestar Galactica, And the first Transformers Gen 1 Soundwave, all did it a lot better in Auto-Tune’s Ananlog version the Vocoder!\nChris DS says : September 12, 2011 at 2:12 pm\nSorry but I disagree. I think that you should be able to distinguish talent and wannabe talent without difficulty because on a record some modern singers sound great but live they sound awful even allowing the benefit of the doubt for jumping about whilst singing.\nAutotune could possibly be one of the world’s worst inventions and I wish Cher had ne’er used it!\nGreat stuff here! One thing I wonder, as Benjamin critiques the economic (and therefore cultural) construction of authority/aura/authenticity, how Auto-tune is used by communities of musicians who are not in a position to derive profit from their work? In these communities is Auto-tune more, or less, controversial?\nAlso, I think that there in any discussion of digital musical technology, it is important to sober ourselves to the fact that while technologies like Auto-tune may help to undermine traditional power relationships regarding the authority of pitch and talent, a new power relationship regarding access to (and the understanding of) technology is simultaneously constructed. If anything, I would argue that Auto-tune may often be a reiteration of the bourgeois power structure that Benjamin sought to undermine. Sure, in ten years Auto-tune may be ubiquitous, but then will it still be trendy?\nReally though, great stuff, well put and thoughtful.\nInteresting comment, Aaron! In the old model, talent separated the musical haves and have-nots; in the new model, technology will likely do the same thing. Say hello to your new boss; same as the old boss!\nThis is a good post; so good that I want to be a devil’s advocate:\n“the tyranny of talent”?\nMany of us have worked hard for years and years and spent gobs of money perfecting our practice of singing only to be eclipsed by people with NO talent and DON’T put the work in, just because they have access to a machine.\nAm I a fuddy-dud or a snob for thinking this? Just because someone is cuter/younger/sexier, they get to make more money singing than the rest of us who actually work at it?\nAnd I DO believe that all of us can sing and access music within ourselves. It’s just that the “tyrants of talent” don’t believe it can be taught–that’s what has us resort to things like Auto-Tune.\nReally meant “the tyranny of [how the notion of] talent [is constructed]” – I think it still requires talent to use any kind of technology in novel ways to support and develop musical ideas, whether that be sampling, autotune, guitar feedback, drum machines or any of a variety of things.\nYes, I figured that it had to be clarified. And I’m sure part of what has talent go tyrannical is that it’s so nebulous and subjective, whether you’re applying it to a larynx or a computer.\nHoaiPhai says : September 12, 2011 at 2:33 pm\nAs a consumer, whatever it takes as long as the recorded music holds my interest but I’d feel really cheated paying for a live performance only to have the singer lip-syching on stage. Were I a vocalist with talent, I would feel as soundsorceress does.\nThere have been similar discussions concerning film vs digital photography. Photographers using film often state that it is too easy to manipulate digital images so the craft is diminished. Digital photography can actually help increase a photographer’s knowledge of colour theory and other aspects of the art, but no matter how the photographer manipulates a lousy image it remains lousy (unless you’re using it as part of another work, such as collage). But you’d never see a lousy photographer’s work being manipulated consistently by skilled technicians to make the photog rich and famous.\nThat is the case with auto-tune. Various sound engineers work their magic but marginal vocalists get the beach house and glory. The “artist” is not the one using the technology here, it’s the engineers.\nReally tough call. Great post!\nTyrants of talent know it can be taught … but it takes time. You can go from doofus to god in fifteen minutes with a little AutoTune. Record companies and the kiddies that use this junk don’t have the patience to actually LEARN to sing. They want the money and the fame now, without waiting. Learning to sing takes years.\nThis is a huge part of why I love classical music. I saw an opera in LA a while back — those singers were LIVE. They had to do the whole thing, flawlessly. Blew me away when I realized it. Everything, right then and there, from start to finish. And the musicians in the pit picked up their instruments and played them for THREE HOURS, and got it right. And it’s not just classical. I remember a recording session that I got my hands on once of Steve Perry messing around with a pianist and working on a song, maybe 45 minutes of him just noodling and writing. No AutoTune, no post-processing, no nothing. And that skinny little pain in the @$$ was on the center of the note every single time. If that’s tyranny, then sign me up.\nAutotune is for musicians what steroids are for athletes. It takes music and turns it into the audio equivalent of Velveeta. (And at least when Cher used it, she didn’t pretend she hadn’t.) It’s for people who think it’s unfair that they wouldn’t “get” to make music just because they can’t. I’ll install springs in my shoes and demand to be lauded as the next Michael Jordan. What do you think my odds are?\nthejamminjabber says : September 12, 2011 at 1:36 pm\nIn defense of talentless hacks.\nLaoshi Ma says : September 12, 2011 at 9:03 pm\nMoreso in defense of thinking differently about music. It’s a filter put on the voice — the Cher engineers aren’t lying, just being unclear. They did it for effect, using an automated vocoder as their guitar pedal.\nDave says : April 6, 2012 at 4:01 am\nThinking differently about music. Like thinking hey, maybe talent’s not so important after all.\nMikalee Byerman says : September 12, 2011 at 1:26 pm\nAw, but without auto-tune, there would be no Ke$ha. Right? And a world without Ke$ha would be so much more…\nWait. I think I just contradicted your premise.\nInteresting perspective. Cher’s “Believe,” huh? Don’t think I ever really paid close enough attention!\nIn an earlier draft of this post I actually compared Ke$ha to Rebecca Black, but my own hating (however mitigated it might be by my philosophical stance on autotune) didn’t make the cut. 🙂\nAlways On Shuffle says : September 12, 2011 at 8:20 pm\nActually Ke$ha was a songwriter first, so getting rid of her would also take out Britney and others. Just sayin\nSam Cooke is rolling over in his grave right about now.\nHas music become less authentic due to the advancement in technology? – Colourful Melody - September 8, 2016\nSound Off! // Comment Klatsch #17: Autotune or Nah? | Sounding Out! - May 1, 2014\nA Brief History of Auto-Tune | Sounding Out! - April 21, 2014\nCalling Out To (Anti)Liveness: Recording and the Question of Presence | Sounding Out! - September 9, 2013\nThe Trend Toward Authenticity | The Weekend Muser - July 3, 2013\nReference Page: | ShelbyLester - April 29, 2013\n“Everyone I listen to, fake patois. . .” « Sounding Out! - April 9, 2012\nIn Defense of Common Sense: Auto Tune does not make ART! | Guerillainthemix's Blog - September 15, 2011\nAutotune? So here goes this guy | Guerillainthemix's Blog - September 15, 2011\nIn Defense of Autotune « Arthur: the Art Zine - September 15, 2011\nIn Defense of Auto-Tune (via Sounding Out!) « Copy Paste Create - September 14, 2011\neksisterende teknologier « Ører med Filter - September 13, 2011\nautotune asphyxiation « the Dog Made Breakfast - September 12, 2011\nIn Defense of Auto-Tune | slopestreetcats.com - September 12, 2011","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1361328"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7342552542686462,"wiki_prob":0.26574474573135376,"text":"Tag Archives: sales resistance\nparenting, personal, psychology\nResistance is (Almost) Futile\nMay 19, 2015 andrewlzellcarpets, dirt, door to door sales, filth, persuasion, psychology, sales resistance, vacuum sales Leave a comment\nThe kids and I had just finished lunch when there was a knock on the door. I saw a minivan out the window, and I thought it might be a friend. I opened the door to find a well-dressed man who quickly handed me a spray bottle. “Here’s a gift for you.” Then, “Have you heard of the something something two?” I didn’t understand what he was asking.\n“No,” I said.\n“Perfect!” and he bolted back to the van, grabbed a large box and came running back to the door. Before I realized what was going on, he had come inside. As he slipped off his shoes and bounded up the stairs to the living room, he said that he was going to give me a free demo and that I didn’t have to buy anything. Yeah right, I thought.\nThis was the point where a savvier person would have told him to leave the house immediately and that there was no way he was selling anything. But I didn’t realize my critical window was closing by the second. I was still marveling that a now-stockingfooted stranger had entered my home without bothering to wait for my permission. As someone whose mother used to have to buy his whole box of fund-raising candy bars because he couldn’t face his neighbors’ gentle refusals, I partly admired his moxie, even as I was appalled by it.\nAfter climbing right over the baby-gate at the top of the stairs, he beheld the filthiness of our home. A huge pile of laundry lay strewn about. The couch cushions and pillows were helter skelter, part of a fort or floating rocks in lava or some other grand design the kids had envisioned. He immediately started putting together his vacuum, a Kirby Sentria II (oh! that’s what he had said at first!) and asked me what kind we had. I dragged out our crappy Bissell so he could do his side-by-side demonstrations.\nRight away he tried to establish commonality by asking where I was from and what my hobbies were. I could tell it was fake friendliness, but I answered his questions honestly anyway. When I told him I was from Ohio, he started talking about Columbus because he had been there before. It didn’t matter that I’ve never lived there. He wanted to know if I had ever gone to a football game at The Shoe. I haven’t. He tried another line of questioning by asking about hobbies. I told him I didn’t have a lot of free time with three kids to care for. But I allowed that I do like to read when I get a chance. He jumped on that. Told me that he had loved reading Sherlock Holmes stories and The Hobbit (long before the movies, he added), though he didn’t have a lot of time to read anymore. All I could think was that those seemed like generic books to mention. Sure, I like Sherlock Holmes and Tolkien’s stories too, but doesn’t everyone?\nThe kids were skittish. The 3yo kept hiding behind the curtains, occasionally peeking out and giggling. The 1yo wanted to be held the whole time, and especially when the vacuum was turned on. The salesman didn’t let their anti-social behavior stop him. He said they were cute and great. I was sure he said those things to anybody’s kids, even if they were hideous and kicking him in the shins.\nOnce he had the vacuum all put together, he asked me if I wanted clean floors. I answered that of course I did. What was I going to say, no, I’d like to live in filth and squalor? What kind of weirdo would say that? He proceeded to do a quick demonstration. He used our Bissell on a section of carpet, going over it 50 times. He counted each sweep for effect. I already knew that it wasn’t a very good vacuum. It picks up the visible fuzz and Cheerios, but I’ve never been impressed by its suction. Then he used his Kirby over the same stretch of carpet, but instead of using a canister or bag, he inserted these white discs that would show exactly how much dirt the vacuum was picking up. He stayed down on his hands and knees in order to keep switching out the discs as each quickly accumulated debris. Then he set them to the side until the dining room floor was covered with 30 or 40 paper discs, each displaying a generous pile of crud against its brilliant white background. It was obvious which vacuum was better. But he asked me anyway in order to make me say it out loud.\n[Not the moon. One of the white discs with the rapidly falling price on it]\nAfter he had tried to get me to like him by showing our similarity and asked me some questions so he could later hold me to my answers, his sales patter focused more on the vacuum itself. He proceeded to tell my why my Bissell didn’t work well and why his Kirby was superior in every way. But it wasn’t only my Bissell that was worthless, it was every upright vacuum that could be bought at the store. They were all terrible in the face of the all-mighty Kirby. It was unique among vacuums. I had to admit, I kind of wanted one now. But he still hadn’t told me how much they were. We’d get to that soon enough, but first he had to give me more reasons why I had to have one.\n“What’s the dirtiest part of the house?” he asked next. I thought for a few seconds and had a flashback to when we moved a few years ago. Friends from church helped us with the big items, and when we picked up the bed, the dust bunnies were multitudinous and feral. “Under the bed,” I answered. He acted stunned and said I was right. Said only three people had ever gotten the question right (and I believed him and felt good about myself!). He said the bed is the dirtiest part of the house because of all of the dead skin cells we shed at night. Never mind that I hadn’t actually said the bed itself, he glossed right over that in order to give me credit. He walked down the hallway so he could demonstrate the effectiveness of the Kirby on a bed. I wasn’t about to let him into our bedroom, which was also in disarray. So I showed him to the boys’ room. He vacuumed the toddler bed and sure enough, the Kirby sucked out lots of dirt and dead skin cells from the mattress just as predicted. It was amazing! And gross! And I was pretty sure that I was never going to vacuum any of the mattresses in our house whether we had a Kirby or not!\nThe last part of the demonstration showcased the shampooing feature which involved more accessories and special soap. I didn’t really care. We barely manage to vacuum once in a month of Sundays. We’re never going to shampoo the carpet.\nSo finally it came time for the big reveal: the price. I was, of course, surprised that such a fine machine cost north of 2000 dollars. How did he ever manage to sell one of these things? But then came the discounts that I knew were coming. The first was the trade-in. He offered to take our ineffectual Bissell for an outrageous sum, more than twice what we had paid for it originally. Then he asked if I knew anyone who owned a Kirby. When I said no, he scrambled to find me another discount (only later did I find out from my mom that she had owned a Kirby once upon a time, but gave up on it because it was so heavy to lug around). He finally hit upon the fact that I have family members who have served in the military. Another $200 off! Then he found out that we wouldn’t want to finance the purchase but use cash instead. That garnered a 10% discount on top of the previous discounts. It was down to $1710. What a deal!\nThat’s when he made his first phone call to the “boss.” I use scare quotes because it was obvious that this was the plan all along. In fact, I suspected that this boss was actually the driver of the van, which had conveniently driven away and left him stranded at my house. He asked her how many “friends and family” discounts he had left. After he had his answer, he proceeded to offer me one of his five remaining “friends and family” discounts. He acted like he was doing me a big favor to the tune of $550 more off the price. He was on my side. He wanted me to have clean floors. It would only cost $1160. The price had come down just over 50% from where it started. How could I say no?\nSomehow I said no. Couldn’t do it. We didn’t have that kind of money. That’s when he started to lay on the guilt. He brought up my earlier answers that I wanted a clean floor and that his Kirby was the better machine. How could I not buy his vacuum knowing what I knew now? It wasn’t my fault before, but now I had been enlightened. The Kirby was the only way that I was going to get all that dirt out of the carpet. How could I let my kids play on a dirty carpet? I wouldn’t put clean clothes on a dirty carpet, would I? He kept pressing the issue. I couldn’t look him in the eye when he laid on the guilt about the dirty floors. I felt kind of ashamed about all of the dirt his machine had managed to get out of the carpet.\nHe called his boss/accomplice again. When she asked why I didn’t want the vacuum, he told her, “He doesn’t have a reason,” after he had swatted down everything I had offered in the negative. I tried to explain that we don’t do installment plans (which is mostly true) and we didn’t have the money right now. So he pushed the installment plan anyway. Then I told him that any extra money we had was going into fixing our basement from the flood damage last year (the one exception to the ban on installment plans was getting the basement waterproofed).\nOne last call to the boss yielded a final offer of $1000. How could I still say no? They were being so reasonable and accommodating. I still said no. I couldn’t make financial decisions like this anyway without consulting my wife. But, he said, if your wife knew all the dirt that was in here, wouldn’t she want you to get it all? Wouldn’t she want clean floors for the kids? I mean, guy to guy, women can be pretty particular about a clean house. Boy, I thought, you do not know my wife. She doesn’t care much about a clean house. And she definitely would not want to spend $1000 on a vacuum. In fact, the nagging thought that she might kill me if I did buy it kept me from being tempted to give in just to make it all stop.\nThe whole ordeal took over an hour and a half. He ignored me every time I said the kids were supposed to be taking naps. As he was packing up, which he did very slowly, drawing it out so I had to say no a few more times, I finally put down the 1yo for his nap an hour later than usual. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when the minivan came back to pick up the vacuum and the salesman. I was exhausted.\nOn the plus side, a tiny bit of our carpet was clean.\n[for more on the principles of persuasion ably demonstrated by my persecutor, check out this video by researchers Cialdini and Martin]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line247255"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8648051619529724,"wiki_prob":0.8648051619529724,"text":"The Eversight Board of Directors form the foundation of our success by sharing their diverse knowledge, experience and passion for helping others.\nJarold A. Anderson\nJarold (Jerry) A. Anderson is an advisor and board member for Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network in Illinois, where he served as president and chief executive office for 25 years before retiring in December 2012. Prior to joining Gift of Hope in 1987, Anderson was executive director of administration at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association in Chicago. He has held officer and board positions with numerous local and national organizations in the donation and transplant field, including positions as president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations and officer and board member of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Anderson is also a founding board member and past chairperson of AlloSource, one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit providers of bone and soft tissue allografts, and a member of the American Association of Tissue Banks. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago and completed additional graduate training at the University of Michigan.\nPatty Jo Herndon\nPatty Jo Herndon is the President and CEO of the Michigan Donor Family Council and also serves as the President of the Gift of Life Foundation. She became involved in the organ donation community following the passing of her sister Ellen in 1997. In 2015, her sister Maureen donated her corneas and provided scientists with the resources they need to find new cures and treatments for blinding eye conditions. Herndon retired from the insurance industry in 2012 after a 30-year career. She and her husband reside in Plymouth, Mich., and enjoy spending time with their grandchildren.\nGary Babcock\nGary Babcock has been a Lion for more than 30 years. He has served multiple officer positions, including District Governor, Vice District Governor, Cabinet Treasurer and Zone Chairman, and is Treasurer of the Lions of Michigan Foundation. Babcock is also a trustee and Board Member for the Napoleon United Methodist Church. He was awarded the Lions Clubs International Distinguished Leadership Medal, LCIF Melvin Jones Fellowship, LMSF John S. and Noel Benefactor Awards, LMSF Ken Lautzenheiser Service Award, two International President’s Appreciation Awards and two District Governor’s Appreciation Awards. Babcock has been inducted into the Lions Michigan Hall of Fame. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Ferris State University.\nKatheryne L. Zelenock\nKatheryne (Kathy) L. Zelenock is Chair of the Real Estate Finance Practice Group and a Member in the Dickinson Wright PLLC’s Real Estate Group in Troy, Mich. In her practice, she leads a team that closes commercial and multifamily mortgage loans across the country on behalf of leading national lenders. She is also co-Chair of Dickinson Wright’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and Chair of the Dickinson Wright Women’s Network. Zelenock is a member of the American Bar Association, the Mortgage Bankers’ Association of America, Commercial Real Estate Finance Council, International Council of Shopping Centers and the Oakland County Bar Association. She is an elected member of the American College of Mortgage Attorneys and is recognized as a leader in her field by Best Lawyers in America, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Michigan Super Lawyers and DBusiness magazine. Zelenock received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and her juris doctorate from the University of Notre Dame Law School.\nRashid L. Bashshur, Ph.D.\nImmediate Past Chair\nRashid L. Bashshur, Ph.D., is currently the Senior Advisor for e-Health at the University of Michigan Health system and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Department of Health Management and Policy. He has been a catalyst for the development of telemedicine in the United States and worldwide since the early 1970s. From 1970-72, Bashshur also served at the National Academy of Sciences as a consultant on the use of telecommunications to support rural health programs. Later, he was commissioned by the Indian Health Service and NASA to report on STARPHAC (Space Technology Applied to Rural Papago Health Care); this report was published as “Technology Serves the People” (1981) by the Government Printing Office. Bashshur served as Scientific Program Chair of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Annual Meeting in 1997, and as co-chair in 1998, 1999 and 2000. He was elected President in 2000 and is now President-Emeritus. Bashshur was the senior editor of three reports on telemedicine submitted to the U.S. Congress in 1994, 1995 and 2001. He has published extensively and co-founded the Telemedicine Journal, a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal, and served as Editor-in-Chief from 1995 to 2005, now Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Among his recent publications, Bashshur co-authored “The History of Telemedicine, Evolution, Context and Transformation” in 2009.\nIn January 2000, Bashshur chaired a WHO “International Consultation” in Geneva, to develop a global strategy for telemedicine. In August 2001, he co-chaired the International State of the Art Symposium on Telemedicine/Telehealth, which was co-sponsored by the UMHS and by WHO. In 2004, he chaired the Second International Conference on Future Directions for Telemedicine. The proceedings from both conferences were published in the Telemedicine and e-Health Journal. Bashshur convenes an annual symposium on Telemedicine at the Henry Ford Health System.\nIn May 2015, Bashshur was presented with a special award at the ATA 2015 Annual Meeting, the first ever ATA Medal-Distinguished Service Award, established as one of the ATA’s highest awards. It is presented only on occasion to an individual for the highest level of achievement in the telemedicine and telehealth field.\nAlan Daninhirsch\nAlan Daninhirsch is currently a registered architect in Connecticut where he practiced for more than 30 years. He received a bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute in 1966. From 1966-68, he served as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, commanding a float bridge company for most of his military career. Daninhirsch is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 10361 where he served as Post Commander for three years. He is a Life Member of the International Association of Lions Clubs and has been an active member of the New Britain Lions Club since 1973. He has served as District Governor and State Council Chairman for the Association and has received numerous awards of recognition for his service. Daninhirsch is a graduate of the Lions Advanced Leadership Program and the Faculty Development Institute. He is a Director of the Connecticut Lions Eye Research Foundation, involved in the Lions KidSight pediatric eye screening program and serves as the Director of the Connecticut Eye Bank and Visual Research Foundation.\nDanielle E. D’Arcy\nDanielle E. D’Arcy is a Private Wealth Advisor at Goldman Sachs & Co. in Chicago. She has a long history promoting eye and vision health after volunteering for nearly 20 years with Delta Gamma, a sorority that promotes sight preservation and conservation. Delta Gamma selected D’Arcy for a volunteer Cabinet level position to create and execute strategies for three new collegiate chapters; and she is a former President and Director of Rituals for the Gamma Pi chapter of Delta Gamma Fraternity. She received her bachelor’s degree from Roanoke College.\nMahmoud Ghazzi, M.D., Ph.D.\nMahmoud Ghazzi, M.D., Ph.D. is a biopharmaceutical research and development expert with more than 25 years of experience in drug development and clinical research. He has held senior leadership roles at Daiichi Sankyo, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer, managing development portfolios, therapeutic strategies and global regulatory submissions. Ghazzi holds a doctorate degree in bioengineering and a master of public health degree from the University of Michigan and a medical degree from Damascus University, Syria. He has published many peer-reviewed manuscripts throughout his career and currently serves as an independent biopharmaceutical consultant based in Villanova, Penn.\nJonathan H. Lass, M.D.\nJonathan H. Lass, M.D., is the Charles I. Thomas Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and has served as Program Director for Ophthalmology residency programs at Case Western and University Hospitals from 1993-2013. He remains on staff at University Hospitals Eye Institute, following 20 years of service as Department Chair, and currently serves as Medical Director for both Eversight Ohio and the Case Cornea Image Analysis Reading Center. Lass is on the editorial board of Cornea: The Journal of Cornea and External Disease.\nLass has more than 200 publications in the fields of corneal physiology and immunology, genetics, cornea image analysis and clinical trials of corneal disease. His research has contributed to major advancements in corneal preservation and transplantation, including the NEI-funded Cornea Donor Study, which found that donor age does not affect graft success or cell loss for the majority of donors aged 34-71 transplanted in the United States. He is the study chair of the Cornea Preservation Time Study, a multi-center prospective trial and the largest clinical trial in corneal diseases sponsored by the National Eye Institute, that examined the effect of preservation time of the donor on graft survival and endothelial cell loss following DSEK surgery. Among several other awards, Lass received the Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology in 2004 and the R. Townley Paton Award from the Eye Bank Association of America, its highest award, in 2012. He received the 2017 Castroviejo Award, the Cornea Society’s highest award for recognition of an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of cornea and anterior segment surgery.\nLass serves as Medical Director for Eversight in Ohio and board member for the Cleveland Eye Bank Foundation. He volunteers with the Cleveland Free Clinic where he organized a free eye clinic. Lass is also an avid cellist and member of the World Doctors Orchestra.\nShahzad I. Mian, M.D., is the Terry J. Bergstrom Collegiate Professor for Resident Education in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. He also serves the department as Associate Chair for Education and is a Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the University of Michigan Medical School. Mian’s research focuses on the role of lasers in corneal transplantation, keratoplasty techniques and clinical studies in refractive surgery. He has been director of the residency training program since 2004 and previously served as fellowship director in the department.\nMian is an Eversight Medical Director, an Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) board member, a Cornea Society board member, a member of the Program Director’s Council of the Association of University Professors in Ophthalmology and a member of the Residency Review Committee for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. He earned his medical degree from the Emory University School of Medicine, completed a residency at the Wills Eye Hospital of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is a former fellow in cornea and refractive surgery at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.\nFlorence M. Johnston, M.S.\nPresident Emerita\nFlorence M. Johnston, M.S., served as Chief Executive Officer of Eversight from 1998 to 2004. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from the University of Michigan. Johnston has held a wide variety of leadership positions on boards and committees for donation-related organizations, including the Eye Bank Association of America and Gift of Life Michigan. Her professional experience includes positions at University of Michigan Hospitals, with the World Health Organization and as a member of the faculty of University of Michigan School of Nursing. Johnston volunteers as docent for the University of Michigan Anthropology Museum.\nMarilyn R. Lindenauer, M.P.H.\nMarilyn R. Lindenauer, M.P.H., served as President & CEO of Eversight from 1989 to 1998 when it was known as the Midwest Eye-Bank & Transplantation Center (MEBTC). She received her master’s degree from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Prior to her position with the eye bank, Lindenauer was an associate hospital administrator at the University of Michigan Medical Center. From 1976 to 1982, she was a senior research associate in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and was a co-principal investigator on a $1 million U.S. Department of Justice pilot grant that investigated correctional health care in the prison systems of 10 states. Lindenauer served on several boards and received the Leonard Heise Award in 1999, the highest award presented to a non-physician by the Eye Bank Association of America. She and her husband, Martin Lindenauer, M.D., have four children and 11 grandchildren.\nCarolyn Welsh\nCarolyn Welsh joined NJ Sharing Network in 1999; in her current role as Vice President & Chief Clinical Officer, she develops strategies to enhance organ recovery and placement efforts with New Jersey hospitals and the state’s six transplant centers. She also oversees NJ Sharing Network’s regulatory compliance, family services department, donation resource center, transplant coordinators, organ and tissue recovery specialists, data division and quality assurance. Welsh serves on the Chief Operating Officer (COO) Council of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) and previously served on the Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). Prior to joining NJ Sharing Network, she worked in the Medicare division at UnitedHealthcare. Welsh holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Seton Hall University and is pursuing a master’s degree in organizational leadership, nonprofit management.\nDavid Bosch\n“As a network of community eye banks, we are committed to making a positive impact around the world.”\nDavid Bosch was promoted to President/CEO of Eversight in 2019. In this role, David oversees strategic direction, management and operations across Eversight locations in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut and South Korea working to restore sight and prevent blindness in the United States and abroad. Previously, he served as Eversight President, Eversight Chief Marketing Officer and as the Director of Communications and Government Affairs for Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network overseeing all public relations and marketing activities. An active leader in donation and transplantation for more than 25 years, he serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Eye Banking, the Advisory Board for the Association for Multicultural Affairs in Transplantation, and as an expert panelist for the Department of Health & Human Services, Division of Transplantation. Bosch has extensive experience in grant project development and implementation and has served as Chair of the Advisory Council of Donate Life America and President of the Board, as well as chair of both the Board Communications Committee and the National Advertising Campaign Committee on organ and tissue donation. He is a member of Donate Life Illinois and the Michigan Coalition on Donation, and has served on the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations Task Force on Multicultural Issues and the Crisis Communications Committee. In addition, David is a member of the Positive Organizations Consortium at the University of Michigan and a proud member of the Ann Arbor (Host) Lions Club.\nThe Medical Advisory Committee combines proven leadership and years of experience to provide unsurpassed clinical guidance.\nCommittee Chair\nShahzad I. Mian, M.D., is the Terry J. Bergstrom Collegiate Professor for Resident Education in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. He also serves the department as Associate Chair for Education and is a Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences in the University of Michigan Medical School. His research focuses on the role of lasers in corneal transplantation, keratoplasty techniques and clinical studies in refractive surgery. He has been director of the residency training program since 2004 and previously served as fellowship director in the department.\nLorenzo Cervantes, M.D.\nLorenzo Cervantes, M.D. is a board-certified ophthalmologist and a fellowship-trained specialist in cornea, external disease, cataract and refractive surgery at Connecticut Eye Specialists in Shelton, Conn.\nJonathan H. Lass, M.D., is the Charles I. Thomas Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and has served as Program Director for Ophthalmology residency programs at Case Western and University Hospitals from 1993-2013. Lass remains on staff at University Hospitals Eye Institute, following 20 years of service as Department Chair, and currently serves as Medical Director for both Eversight Ohio and the Case Cornea Image Analysis Reading Center. He is on the editorial board of Cornea: The Journal of Cornea and External Disease.\nLass has more than 200 publications in the fields of corneal physiology and immunology, genetics, cornea image analysis and clinical trials of corneal disease. His research has contributed to major advancements in corneal preservation and transplantation, including the NEI-funded Cornea Donor Study, which found that donor age does not affect graft success or cell loss for the majority of donors aged 34-71 transplanted in the United States. Lass is the study chair of the Cornea Preservation Time Study, a multi-center prospective trial and the largest clinical trial in corneal diseases sponsored by the National Eye Institute, that examined the effect of preservation time of the donor on graft survival and endothelial cell loss following DSEK surgery. Among several other awards, he received the Senior Honor Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology in 2004 and the R. Townley Paton Award from the Eye Bank Association of America, its highest award, in 2012. He received the 2017 Castroviejo Award, the Cornea Society’s highest award for recognition of an individual who has made significant contributions to the field of cornea and anterior segment surgery.\nLass serves as Medical Director for Eversight in Ohio and board member for the Cleveland Eye Bank Foundation. He volunteers with the Cleveland Free Clinic where he organized a free eye clinic. He is also an avid cellist and member of the World Doctors Orchestra.\nRoni M. Shtein, M.D., M.S.\nRoni M. Shtein, M.D., M.S. is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.\nElmer Y. Tu, M.D.\nElmer Tu, M.D. is a Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology and Director of Cornea Service in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Infectious diseases of the cornea form the core of his clinical and research interests. Widely viewed as having special expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of Acanthamoeba and other severe infections of the cornea, Tu and colleague Charlotte Joslin, O.D., Ph.D., were the first to identify and study the statistically significant increase in Acanthamoeba keratitis in the United States. They established an association between a specific contact lens solution and Acanthamoeba outbreak, theorizing that an environmental change related to water supply standards may be responsible for the persistence of its increased incidence. Tu’s area of expertise also includes new and innovative forms of corneal transplantation and treatment of challenging ocular surface disorders. He is on numerous national and international committees and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Cornea Society. He joined the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary faculty in 1999. Tu is board certified in ophthalmology.\nB.S. — University of Miami, elected to Phi Beta Kappa\nM.D. with Honors — University of Miami School of Medicine; elected to Alpha Omega Alpha\nResidency — University of Wisconsin School of Medicine\nClinical Fellowship in Corneal and External Diseases — Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, Miami\nSelected Honors and Awards\nChicago Super Doctors: 2012, 2013\nBest Doctors in America: 1999, 2002-present\nGuide to America’s Top Ophthalmologists: 2002-present\nAmerican Academy of Ophthalmology Achievement Award: 2010\nAmerican Academy of Ophthalmology Secretariat Award: 2009, 2015\nWilliam H. Constad, M.D.\nWilliam H. Constad, M.D., is Clinical Professor at Rutgers Medical School and affiliated with Jersey City Medical Center and St. Barnabas Medical Center, and he has been in private practice with Hudson Eye Physicians and Surgeons since 1985. He served on the editorial board for the Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine for several years, contributing numerous articles and textbook chapters to the ophthalmic literature. Constad specializes in corneal transplantation and external corneal disease, as well as specialty contact lens fitting for keratoconus and scarring, post-transplantation and post-refractive surgery. He serves as Medical Director for Eversight in New Jersey. In 2012, he was honored by Eversight in New Jersey with its “Man of Vision” award and received the Founders’ Award from the Eversight Board in 2014.\nDavid Chu, M.D.\nDavid Chu, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology at the Institute of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School; Director of the Metropolitan Eye Research and Surgery Institute of New York and New Jersey; and Ophthalmologist for the New York Jets.\nM. Soledad Cortina, M.D.\nM. Soledad Cortina, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Director of the Comprehensive Ophthalmology Faculty Practice and General Eye Clinic at Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.\nCatharine J. Crockett, M.D.\nCatharine J. Crockett, M.D. is a board-certified ophthalmologist and a fellowship-trained specialist at Eye Surgical Associates in Champaign, Ill.\nJeffrey Goshe, M.D.\nJeffrey Goshe, M.D. is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology in the Department of Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and Residency Program Director at Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute.\nChristopher Hood, M.D.\nChristopher Hood, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.\nMark A. Lister, M.D.\nMark A. Lister, M.D. is Director of Cornea, External Disease and Ophthalmic Surgery at Metropolitan Hospital; Ocean County Medical Center; Hoboken University Medical Center in Jersey City; Co-director of corneal services at St. George’s University School of Medicine; Director of Cornea Services at Children’s Eye Care Center of New Jersey, at Clara Maass; and Clinical Assistant Professor at New York Medical College and Rutgers University Medical School.\nMarian Macsai, M.D.\nMarian Macsai, M.D. is Chief of Ophthalmology at NorthShore University HealthSystem and Professor of Ophthalmology at University of Chicago.\nAllen S. Roth, M.D., F.A.C.S.\nAllen S. Roth, M.D., F.A.C.S. is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology Department of Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute.\nH. Kaz Soong, M.D.\nH. Kaz Soong, M.D. is a Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.\nAlan Sugar, M.D., F.A.C.S.\nAlan Sugar, M.D., F.A.C.S. is a Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center and Department Vice Chair.\nMaria A. Woodward, M.D.\nMaria A. Woodward, M.D. is an Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center.\nMeet the dynamic team leading the effort to make vision a reality for people in need.\n\"The gift of sight is truly one of the greatest gifts someone can give to another human being.”\nJulie Collins joined Eversight in 2007 after holding positions as Managing Director at Comerica Insurance Services, as well as Director of Training and Development and Director of Accounting Services at Comerica Bank. Her 25 years of accounting, management and financial leadership has guided Eversight through a period of rapid growth in which the operational budget grew from $7 million to $24 million and the employee count grew from 50 to 170. In addition to her financial responsibilities, Collins oversees human resources, risk management, information technology and facilities at Eversight. She received her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in accounting from Eastern Michigan University.\nMichael O’Keefe\n“Eversight is committed to restoring sight and enhancing the lives of as many people as possible.”\nMichael O’Keefe, CEBT, M.B.A., joined the organization in 1994 as a Laboratory Technician. Soon after, he was promoted to Laboratory Manager and then Technical Director of Eversight in Michigan. In 2009, he was named Executive Director of Midwire and built that service line to include 10 nonprofit eye banks and Vision Share. In 2017, he was named Chief Operating Officer with a focus on strengthening organizational compliance, improving operational effectiveness and delivering excellent customer service using principles derived from the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan. O’Keefe received his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, is accredited to facilitate cultural surveys by Human Synergistics International and is a member of the Positive Organizations Consortium at the University of Michigan. He has served on numerous Eye Bank Association of America committees and subcommittees, including a six-year term on the Accreditation Board.\nDiane Hollingsworth\nExecutive Vice President of External Relations\n“We accepted the responsibility to provide the gift of sight 70 years ago, and we will not stop until everyone has the chance to live a life full of sight.”\nDiane Hollingsworth has been with Eversight since 2010 after eight years at the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois where she served as Director of Medical Education. She also spent 20 years in senior sales and marketing management positions at IBM, Siemens & Rockwell. She has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Western Michigan University. Hollingsworth is an active volunteer of the Naperville Noon Lions Club, Chair of the Advisory Council for Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Network and a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives.\nTeresa Clark\nVice President of Philanthropy\n\"It is an honor to work with such committed philanthropic partners in efforts to restore vision and prevent blindness worldwide.\"\nTeresa Clark is a seasoned philanthropy professional with experience in all aspects of development gained through senior roles in the arts, education and healthcare. Her varied background includes more than 15 years of fundraising and nonprofit leadership experience fueled by a personal commitment to do good. Clark is charged with defining, planning and implementing all philanthropic efforts with emphasis on major and annual giving, and foundation relations.\nVice President of Global Development\n“Restoring sight is a catalyst to empowering self-worth and allowing people to contribute in their community in ways many had only dreamed before.”\nCollin Ross, CEBT, has been with Eversight since 1997, leading the organization’s international efforts and building collaborative relationships with overseas partners. He has extensive experience managing Eversight clinical and administrative projects, including facility designs, strategic plans, and new programs and service lines. Ross holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Michigan State University, a master’s degree from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and is a Certified Eye Bank Technician (CEBT).\nMichael Titus\nVice President of Clinical Operations\n“Eversight is focused on delivering high-quality tissue and excellent customer service.”\nMichael Titus, CEBT, joined Eversight in 2017. He is the former Chief Clinical Officer of Saving Sight, an eye bank in Kansas City, Missouri, where he successfully crafted the strategic direction of its clinical program, oversaw lab renovations and improved tissue quality and surgeon satisfaction. Prior to his time at Saving Sight, Titus excelled in various roles with Eversight from 2008 to 2013, including managing the laboratory in Michigan and playing an instrumental role in developing the Eversight DMEK program. He is a Certified Eye Bank Technician (CEBT) and currently serves on the Eye Bank Association of America (EBAA) Research Committee and Accreditation Board.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1085769"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8967112898826599,"wiki_prob":0.8967112898826599,"text":"icon-calendar icon-facebook icon-linkedin icon-search icon-twitter close menu menu2 view speaker pin tel icon-share icon-googleplus icon-mail icon-viber small-calendar\nEuropost Weekly for politics, business and culture\nEU Insights\nMideast and North Africa\nCentral and Eastern Asia\nBattle for Berlaymont is open\nEPP's Manfred Weber was first whose name was waved as possible Juncker's successor\nSve­to­slav Ste­fan­ov\nThe race is open. And the first horse is already on the field. Almost nine months ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections, the battle who will succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission President began.\nThe starting signal for the race came from Germany as several German newspapers reported last week that Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed her fellow conservative Manfred Weber's bid to lead the centre-right's campaign in next year's elections. Currently he heads the European People's Party caucus in the European Parliament. Weber still needs the nod from other member parties in order to get the approval. But once got, he would, no doubt, become a front-runner to succeed Juncker as Commission's head. The EPP's member parties are in government in nine of the bloc's 28 members, and lead in polls across much of Europe.\n“I want to become the EPP’s lead candidate for the 2019 European elections and be the next president of the European Commission,” the 46-year-old tweeted last Tuesday during a meeting with members of his European People’s Party (EPP) in Brussels.\nNothing is sure so far. The process of nominating a lead candidate for the EPP will officially begin next week, with an official announcement set for November. While Merkel has thrown her support behind Weber, other strong candidates wait to jump on the stage at due moment. Former Finnish PM and Finance Minister Alexander Stubb and Commission's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier have also emerged as possible and rather strong candidates. And Germany's Christian Democrats have also floated the country's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier and Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen as potential options.\nSupporting Weber for the Commission's top post is part of a wider game, according to people close to the matter. With putting his name at the front, Merkel makes a step back on the ECB front where another German, Jens Weidmann, has an ambition to succeed Mario Draghi when his mandate expires next year. Taking both posts for Germany is impossible and Merkel has to make a choice. Obviously so far she has concluded that it is more useful for Germany to secure the Commission post than the top ECB job. But this can change in the coming months. The last German to head the Commission was Walter Hallstein in the 1960s.\nBorn in 1972, Manfred Weber can not be pointed at as a veteran in European politics although he has experience more than enough. He has been a MEP from Germany since 2004, and since the last elections in 2014 he has served as EPP leader in the European Parliament. Currently heading the EPP Group, he is the youngest group leader in the current Parliament as well as the youngest-ever group leader of the EPP. Weber is known as a moderate politician and power broker in EU politics.\nWeber is known to be a staunch pro-European. In June 2014, he dismissed demands by then-British PM David Cameron to put the brakes on European integration. According to Weber, “the EU is based on an ever closer union of European peoples. That is set out in the treaties. It is not negotiable for us. We cannot sell the soul of Europe if we grant every national parliament a veto right, Europe would come to a standstill”.\nAt the same time, he is courageous and feels free to express his own thoughts even contradicting the main line. In 2011, when the Eurozone crisis raged, Weber said: “We in the CSU must finally stop always blaming Brussels. The current crisis has primarily been caused by a few national governments, not by Brussels.” In a party that includes some of Germany's most outspoken Eurosceptics and is now under attack from the even more outspoken Alternative fuer Deutschland, such comments require strength.\nWith such abilities, the 46-year-old Bavarian could easily sit at the helm of the EU as it attempts to navigate a world in which a Donald Trump-led United States is seen as an unreliable partner, it faces a stiff challenge from Russian and Chinese rivals, and reinvents itself following Britain's departure from the Union.\nBut at the same time it is a common knowledge that the names thrown first into the flames rarely make it to the end. So far, Weber has declined to comment on his ambitions about the Commission's top post. As a Bavarian himself, he has also secured the support of Bavarian PM Markus Soeder, but this is far from enough. “I really hope the German conservatives make our Manfred Weber the lead candidate for the European election,” Soeder said in Abensberg, Bavaria. If finally Weber gets the nomination, the European People's Party is likely to need the support of liberal parties to install him as the next European Commission head. So the game has just begun.\nShare: Facebook Twitter Email\nNew old ombudsman\nIrish Emily O'Reilly secured second term to further serve European citizens\nIncumbent ombusdman, Irish Emily O'Reilly, was on Wednesday expectedly re-elected on the post for the 2019-2024 parliamentary term. She was backed by 320 MEPs in a secret plenary vote. Former journalist, she has served as the first female Irish Ombudsman for ten years prior to being elected European Ombudsman in 2013.\nItaly's anti-Salvini 'sardines' take protest to Rome\nTens of thousands of people joined a demonstration in central Rome on Saturday organized by a grassroots movement known as “The Sardines”, launched only a month ago to protest against far-right leader Matteo Salvini. The sardines began in the city of Bologna in November when Mattia Santori, 32, and three friends invited people to protest against Salvini’s League, whose popularity is high ahead of an election in the northern Emilia-Romagna region.\nControversial magistrate's sweetest victory ever\nAfter tough battle, Romanian Laura Kovesi has been finally chosen to become the first European Public Prosecutor\nThe first woman to be Romania’s prosecutor general, Laura Codruta Kovesi, was only 33 when appointed in 2006. At that age she was also the youngest Prosecutor General in Romania's history. Seven years later, Kovesi marked another milestone when she was named the head of the Romanian Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) - an institution created to fight high-level corruption in the years when Romania was preparing to join the EU.\nWeber secures EPP nomination\nSlovakia's first female president declares war on political bribery\nJudge me not by my name\nExtravagant Brexit doer\nSpain conservatives pick successor to ex-PM Rajoy\nThis site uses cookies to store your settings that you would make during your visit\nCopyright © 2010-2018. All rights reserved. Site by: Studio X","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1520458"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.618475079536438,"wiki_prob":0.618475079536438,"text":"Please take a minute to read the following information before you subscribe.\nIMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL USERS OF THE BLUECITY SERVICE DURING THE TEST PERIOD\nThis Notice is given to you and forms part of the contract between BlueCity and you for your registration as a Member, and any subsequent use by you of the BlueCity Service during the test period.\nIn order to become a Member, you must accept this notice by ticking the \"I accept\" box below. By ticking this box, you are confirming that you have read and understood this Notice, and that you agree to be bound by its terms.\nAs you are aware, the BlueCity is currently undergoing (with the support of BluePoint London Limited – an electric vehicle charge point operator - under the “Source London” brand), a testing and evaluation phase of the BlueCity Service. You have agreed to participate in this test period and also agree to become a member of the Blue City Scheme both for the test period and after the test period ends, subject to the Terms and Conditions on the BlueCity website.\nThis means that during the test period, the Terms and Conditions on the BlueCity website apply to your use of the BlueCity Service, but with the additional terms set out in this Notice. After expiry of the test period, you will continue to have a contract with BlueCity and be a member of the BlueCity Scheme, under the Terms and Conditions and your Membership Fee will become payable, unless it is waived by BlueCity.\nThis test period starts on the day on which you become a member and finishes on the date on which BlueCity notifies you through the BlueCity website that the test period has ended. Please note that during the test period, Members will have limited on-site assistance before 9am and after 5 pm. The date on which the test period begins is your “Membership Date” for the purposes of the Terms and Conditions, and the date on which the test period ends is your “Activation Date”. You will have a contract with BlueCity in relation to the BlueCity Scheme for minimum of 12 months from the Activation Date. If you wish to terminate this contract after this date, you will need to do so in accordance with the Terms and Conditions.\nParticipating in this test period by using the BlueCity Service within the 14 day period from your Membership Date means that you are making an express request to use the BlueCity Service during the 14 day cooling-off period that consumer laws provide. This in turn will mean that you lose your right (as a consumer) to change your mind and cancel the contract during this period. It doesn’t affect your other rights under the Terms and Conditions and this Notice.\nThis Notice contains several disclaimers regarding the test period, because of its very nature (as being a period for testing and evaluation). You acknowledge and agree that as the BlueCity Service is undergoing testing during this test period:\n· BlueCity is entitled to modify and change the services and the way it provides those services during the test period, in particular as it takes into account feedback from you and others participating in this test period. In any case (even after the test period expires), BlueCity does not give any warranty or guarantee that the BlueCity Service will be error free, or will be available at any particular time under the Terms and Conditions.\n· BlueCity will not be liable to you or anyone else for any loss you or any third party incurs as a result of any failure, unavailability or modification of the service during this test period.\nAlso, during this test period, BlueCity may change the Terms and Conditions by giving notice on the BlueCity website (notwithstanding paragraphs 2.2.2 and 2.2.4 of the Terms and Conditions) to take into account feedback and its experience in providing the services during the test period. Any such changes shall be effective and binding on you from the time at which you next use the BlueCity Service (for example by using a BlueCity Car or making a reservation for the BlueCity Service). The Terms and Conditions that are in force when the test period expires, as may have been amended by BlueCity during the testing period, shall apply to your contract with BlueCity from expiry of the test period (i.e. from your Activation Date). BlueCity’s notice to you of expiry of the test period will contain a link to these updated Terms and Conditions so that you have them to hand.\nYou should print a copy of this Notice and the Terms and Conditions or save them to your computer for future reference.\nYour use of the BlueCity Service is subject to the contract between BlueCity and you, including the Terms and Conditions (and, during the testing period, also including this Notice). Where there is any inconsistency between this Notice and the Terms and Conditions, this Notice will prevail. Nothing in this Notice shall limit or exclude BlueCity's liability for any death or personal injury caused by its negligence, fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation or any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under law.\nBlueCity (UK) Limited, a company incorporated and registered in England and Wales with company registration number 09371958 and whose registered office is at 125 Wood Street, London EC2V 7AN.\nI have read, understood and agree to the above terms","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line253235"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6849400401115417,"wiki_prob":0.6849400401115417,"text":"Cityscape Photography\nCityscape photography in black and white and color by photographer Andrew Prokos. Cityscape photos of New York, Washington DC, Dubai, Rio de Janeiro and other cities in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. Andrew’s cityscape photographs are available as high-definition art prints framed in various styles.\nBlack & White Cityscapes | Panoramic Cityscapes | Dubai | New York City | Rio de Janeiro | Seattle | Toronto | Washington DC\nPanoramic View of Times Square at Night I (B&W)\nAn ultra high-definition panoramic view of Times Square at night in black and white, New York...\nPanoramic Cityscape of Manhattan at Night (B&W)\nA long-exposure black and white cityscape of the buildings of Midtown Manhattan and the Empire State Building...\nPanoramic Skyline of Lower Manhattan and World Trade Center at Night (B&W)\nAn ultra high-definition black and white skyline photo of Lower Manhattan, the Hudson River, and World...\nElevated View of Park Avenue\nA view of Park Avenue NYC from above, with traffic and surrounding skyscrapers....\nPanoramic Skyline of Midtown Manhattan and United Nations (B&W)\nAn ultra high-definition black and white panoramic skyline of East Midtown Manhattan and the United Nations,...\nVertical Cityscape of Manhattan at Night\nAn ultra high-definition vertical cityscape of Manhattan at night in black and white. Large-scale fine art prints of this...\nPanoramic Skyline of New York City and Hudson River\nA black and white panoramic skyline of New York City and the Hudson River, available as...\nPanoramic View of Manhattan and Central Park from Rockefeller Center\nA black and white panoramic photo of Midtown Manhattan skyline and Central Park from Rockefeller Center....\nAerial View of Midtown Manhattan and the Manhattan Bridge\nAn aerial photo of Midtown Manhattan and the Manhattan Bridge in black and white, New York...\nSoho Rooftops Panorama (B&W)\nAn ultra high-definition black and white cityscape of the rooftops of SoHo, New York City as...\nSoho Night Panorama (B&W)\nAn ultra high-definition panoramic photo of the rooftops of Soho New York City at night in...\nManhattan Bridge Streetscape\nAn ultra high-definition black and white photo of the Manhattan Bridge as seen from Downtown Brooklyn,...\nPanoramic Skyline of Midtown Manhattan at Night\nAn ultra-wide skyline photograph of Midtown Manhattan at night in black and white, New York City....","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1520655"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6446213126182556,"wiki_prob":0.6446213126182556,"text":"The Early Architects:\nBeyond Old Tom\nThomas MacWood\nThe Postage Stamp at Troon.\nMost of us are stubborn by nature. Once we get an idea in our head its very difficult to remove it, at least that has been my experience. In contrast to this human nature a good researcher should strive to keep an open mind when approaching their subject, and for the better part of a year my subject has been the golf architecture of the 19thC, unfortunately when I began my mind was hardly open. Just the opposite, I entered with a predisposed and frankly poor opinion of the golf architecture of this period. My view had been formed by the likes of Colt, MacKenzie, and Simpson, who dismissed the era, going so far as to call it the Dark Ages. Because of their harsh treatment I had always thought the nineties were a wasteland, and as a consequence focused my energies on the so-called Golden Age. However ignoring the nineties proved to be difficult. While researching the more acclaimed age I continually came across references to this apparently unrefined period, and as I dug further I found many of the leading figures of the good years were either products of that previous era or influenced by men from that era. It became clear the two periods were linked, and in order to fully understand the Golden Age I had to better understand the earlier period, and so I set out to learn what I could.\nEarly on in the investigation what struck me was the sheer amount of activity, especially in the 1890s. The game’s popularity exploded in these years, and as a result there was great demand for new golf courses. Reports of new courses inundated magazines and newspapers, and as I made note of these courses a group of names surfaced as the primary designers. Some of the names are well known to us today, men like Tom Morris, Tom Dunn and Willie Park-Jr, but there were other names-Charles Gibson, Peter Paxton, B.Hall Blyth, and James McKenna as examples-that were unfamiliar. I concluded that the key to uncovering the truth would be found through these men.\nAnother surprising discovery, in contrast to what the critics implied, not everything created by these early architects was bad. On occasion they produced very good work, and sometimes historically significant work. In fact some of our most acclaimed courses trace their origins back to this period. I am not suggesting Simpson and the others were entirely wrong, it is true this period and these early men produced their share of average to below average designs, but there were notable exceptions.\nThis led to an obvious question – why was there such a disparity? When analyzing the good and bad results a fairly simple formula emerged. In virtually all the examples of good design the golf architect started with good material, usually near the sea. When they were given less than perfect land the results were often disappointing. The early architects had little or no capacity to improve what they were given. But despite these limitations a number of early designers stood out, not only for their good work, but also the influence they had upon those who followed.\nIf I may digress at this point, and explain my motivation for writing this essay. I had planned on writing about this subject at some point but had no immediate plans to do so, in fact I had moved on to another project. This changed when I learned of Melvyn Morrow’s fine essay ‘The Early Golf Designers: The Real Golden Age.’ When I first read the title understandably I was interested in his thoughts and how his conclusions might compare to my own. Based on the title it appeared we shared a similar view-that history had ignored important 19thC contributors. However as I read the essay it became clear his focus was different than my own. MM is justifiably proud of his great, great grandfather’s historic accomplishments, and without question Old Tom is a most deserving subject, but presumably, at least based upon the title, the essay was meant to celebrate the early golf architects not just Old Tom. Unfortunately, once again we find the others virtually ignored, and not only are they ignored, Old Tom’s architectural record is inflated at their expense. It was time to give these men their due.\nCategoryOne – The Amateurs\nI have segregated the architects into two categories – amateur and professional. You will find one or two familiar names among these amateurs but the majority are unknown. Their anonymity is not surprising since the typical amateur was involved in only a handful of courses, if that, and in many cases just a single course. Despite their limited activity it is important we recognize these gentlemen, not only for their outstanding designs, but also for the example they set for the amateurs who followed, men like Fowler, Macdonald, Abercromby, and MacKenzie. While compiling background information on these men a similar profile began to form: good amateur golfers, well educated, successful professionally or inherited wealth, and like so many of their era, multiple interests.\nDr. W. Laidlaw Purves – William Laidlaw Purves was born at Edinburgh in 1842, the son of a physician. Purves was educated at Edinburgh University. In contrast to his father initially he turned to law, but then had a change of heart, and while employed in a lawyer’s office began to study medicine. His parents died during these years and at the age of 19 Purves found himself a ship’s doctor operating off the coast of Australia. After three years in Australia he returned to Europe and continued his medical studies at Universities in Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, Utrecht, and Paris. After his European educational tour he eventually settled in London as a consulting aural surgeon at Guy’s Hospital. Purves had a most successful medical career, becoming ophthalmic and aural surgeon at the Hospital for Diseases of the Nervous System and aural surgeon at the Aural College and Academy for the Blind.\nDr. Laidlaw Purves\nMedicine may have been Purves’s vocation but golf was clearly his passion. He learned the game on the Bruntsfield Links in golf crazed Edinburgh but found a very different situation when he arrived in England. There were but four golf clubs of any note in the entire country – Westward Ho!, Hoylake, Blackheath and Wimbledon. The first two were far from his home in London, and the latter two were nearby but poor substitutes for the real thing. For the next nine years Purves searched Greater London for a perfect site on which to build a golf course. Epping, Epsom, the downs from Reigate to Farnham, Windsor Forest, Bushey, Richmond Park were all prospected. At Epsom he actually marked out a Sunday course in 1875.\nThe coastal areas within reach of London were also surveyed. Purves inspected the Isle of Wight, New Forest, Southampton, Littlehampton, and Bognor. In 1876 Felixstowe was examined, and a golf course laid out. But Felixstowe was not completely satisfactory, in fact none of the sites were satisfactory, that is until he discovered Sandwich in 1877. Finding the perfect site was only half the battle, for the next several years Purves tried to convince his fellow golfers that the property held amazing potential and they should help finance the project. Finally in 1883 he had generated enough interest to make an offer to secure the land, actually he made four offers, unfortunately all failed. At last in 1887 an offer was accepted, a lease secured and a syndicate of 36 formed. Purves proceeded to lay out the course, and St. Georges was born.\nThe course immediately drew universal praise, and not long after became a fixture of the Open and Amateur Championships. Although some of the quirkier aspects of the early course are now gone, like the Maiden and Haides, its bones remain very much as Purves originally made them. One must also give credit to Ramsey Hunter, the club’s first professional, who helped to formalize the layout. Purves’s success at Sandwich led to another opportunity in 1888, when at the request of the proprietors of land on the coast near New Romney, he laid out Littlestone. Purves died in 1918 at Hartwick Cottage, his home and one of the oldest residences in Wimbledon.\nSt. George’s opened to great acclaim, thanks to its wild hazards directly in the line of play such as the Sahara at the old third hole and…\n…and the monster Hades bunker at the old eighth.\nB. Hall Blyth – Born in Edinburgh in 1849 Benjamin Hall Blyth studied at Edinburgh University before joining the family engineering firm in 1867. His father, the senior Benjamin Hall Blyth, founded the firm of Blyth & Cunningham, which eventually became Blyth & Blyth (a prominent firm to this day). Hall Blyth like his father before him became one of the best-known civil engineers in Scotland. As the consulting engineer for the Caledonian, North British and Great North of Scotland Railway Companies he was involved in the design and construction of a large numbers important works, including the North Bridge and the Waverly Station in Edinburgh. He was also responsible for extending the North Berwick rail line to include stations at Aberlady, Luffness and Gullane. Blyth was elected the president of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1914, the first Scot to have such an honor. In addition to his engineering activities he was President of the Scottish Football Union in 1875 and 1876 – BHB had been a prominent rugby football player as a young man.\nB. Hall Blyth\nBenjamin Hall Blyth played his early golf at North Berwick, the family home Kaimend House overlooked the famous Redan hole. As an adult he was a long-time member of the Royal and Ancient Club, Captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers in 1880-81, Captain of the Royal Liverpool Club in 1885, and Captain of Tantallon Golf Club from 1896-98. Despite this impressive resume Hall Blyth was only an average golfer, although he did defeat Willie Campbell in 1880 in one of the more bizarre matches in history, a cross-country affair that began at Point Garry, North Berwick and ended at the High Hole at Gullane. “Campbell opted for the shore line and played over North Berwick, Archerfield and the ground that eventually became Muirfield, before reaching Gullane. Hall Blyth elected to play on an inland route through Dirleton and although longer this was a much simpler course. Hall Blyth won easily over the six mile distance and his opponent came early to grief on the rocks.”\nHall Blyth was a powerful voice within both the R&A and the HCEG. He was one of the primary forces behind the creation of the Amateur Championship. He pushed for the formation of the new Rules of Golf committee in 1897, and not only was one of the original 15 members of that committee, he was appointed its chairman. BHB is also credited with securing the transfer of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers from Musselburgh to Muirfield.\nIn ‘Muirfield and the Honourable Company’ author George Pottinger describes this extraordinary man: “Hall Blyth served continuously on numerous committees concerned with Golf clubs throughout East Lothian and he usually got his way. A tall powerfully built man, he had a loud voice in which he boomed confident opinions and defied challenge. He wore a Dragoon’s moustache and affected something of the air of a marinet. To see him, attired in checks almost as loud as his voice, referee a championship match and hear his resonant ruling was said to be unforgettable.”\nA drawing based on Blyth’s 1891 plan for Muirfield.\nFor many years Old Tom Morris was thought to be the architect of the New Course at St.Andrews however the R&A and Links Trust now recognizes Hall Blyth as its creator in 1895. His formal plan is thought to be the first draft plan to use centerlines to indicate the proper path to the hole. His involvement with the New should not have come as a complete surprise, he had been heavily involved in the new layout at Muirfield in 1891 (along with Old Tom). Early reports mention his name prominently during the design and construction phases of Muirfield. The Honourable Company minutes of April 1914 confirm his important involvement: “On the motion of the Captain it was unanimously agreed to record in the minutes the club’s heartiest appreciation of many services rendered by Mr. B. Hally Blyth in connection with acquisition and preparation of the course at Muirfield,” Remarkably he also designed Muirfield’s clubhouse. In addition to his design work, Hall Blyth was chiefly responsible for the acquisition of Braids Hill for the citizens of Edinburgh. Benjamin Hall Blyth died in 1917 at the family home overlooking the links at North Berwick.\nThe foreign correspondent Henry Leach wrote this amazing tribute in American Golfer:\n“Mr. Hall Blyth was sixty-eight years of age, and a life member of the Royal and Ancient Club. Being an engineer by profession he could not help applying some of his engineering and constructional instincts to golf courses. Probably he was the first real golf course designer. Until he turned his attention to the business, which is now pursued ardently and thoroughly by many persons, golf holes were to a large extent made themselves, as it might be said. Nature, the lie of the land, suggested the places where putting greens should be made, the places for teeing, and the main route to the hole. In course of time it might happen that a number of persons who were agreed upon the point, such as the committee of a club or society that played upon the ground, would dig a hole for a bunker at a spot where it was considered there should be some punishment waiting, but this sort of thing was very sparsely done, for it was considered and generally found that Nature made quite enough trouble for the golfer. It was more or less in this way that most of the famous holes on the old courses came to be made, such as those of St. Andrews, North Berwick and other places, though in latter times bunkers were added according to carefully arranged schemes. But Mr. Hall Blyth considered that fine holes might be made without waiting for the slow evolution from Nature, and he set himself about the design and construction of such holes at St. Andrews itself, North Berwick, Muirfield and Gullane, and on these famous greens there endure testimonies to his fine imagination, great golfing judgment, and skill as a designer.”\nS. Mure Fergusson – Born in Perth, Scotland in 1855 Samuel Mure Fergusson spent his formative years at St. Andrews. Ironically he did not take up golf until comparatively late in life, late that is for a lad in St. Andrews, he was fourteen. His father managed an insurance company in London, and acordingly time was split between north and south. His early golf on the Old Course was played with Tommy Morris, David Strath and Leslie Balfour-Melville. At the age of twenty Mure Fergusson was elected a member of the R&A, and proceeded to win the Autumn Medal in his first competition. In all he won twenty medals, the last one coming thirty-nine years after the first. Fergusson was twice runner-up in the Amateur championship, losing close matches to John Ball and FG Tate respectfully. He was fourth in the 1891 Open Championship at St.Andrews and might well have won had his putting not failed, the strongest part of his game. Not only did Fergusson compete at a high level he was also one the game’s most effective administrators, being a member of numerous committees including the inaugural Rules of Golf Committee of 1897. S. Mure Fergusson was captain of the R&A in 1910.\nS. Mure Fergusson\nMure Fergusson was a successful stock-broker in London and as such played most of his golf in England. In the early eighties he was connected with Felixstowe but when Sandwich opened he migrated to that club. In 1895 he laid out a golf course on the estate of HF Locke-King, the pioneer in aviation and motoring. This was the New Zealand Golf Club at Blyfleet, and it was an unprecedented design being the first golf course carved out of a thickly forested property. Fergusson was New Zealand’s long time secretary, and in that capacity was regularly improving the course. Fergusson went on to design a nine-hole golf course for King Edward at Windsor and Duff House Royal in Scotland with Archie Simpson.\nIn 1906 Mure Fergusson contributed a chapter in Horace Hutchinson’s Golf Greens and Green-keeping-sharing his expertise on making a course out of a pine forest. It began, “To anyone who has been accustomed to play golf on a seaside course the idea of making a links in a pine forest seems, to say the least of it, a curious one. But when one thinks the matter out it is not so peculiar, for most pine forests grow on sand, and for a golf links sand is a sine quo non, at least from my point of view.” Later he describes how to construct a proper bunker, and can not resist taking a shot at golf architect’s favorite punching-bag, “Nothing to my mind, is more abominable on a golf course than the awful zarebas that used to be erected by poor Tom Dunn and others who first laid out inland greens.”\nZarebas? Merriam-Webster says they are improvised stockades native to North Africa, another in a long line of military allusions found in golf architecture’s lexicon. Mure Fergusson died in 1928 at his beloved New Zealand Golf Club.\nH. Mallaby-Deeley – Harry Mallaby Deeley was born in London in 1863. His father William Clarke Deeley was a prosperous oil merchant. Harry was educated at Cambridge, and went on to become one of the most successful and daring real estate dealers at the turn of the century. “When the idea of acquiring any particular property had occurred to him he would follow it up with an interview with the owner, and usually, if the latter had the least intention of disposing of his interest, Mallaby-Deeley would come from the meeting place with a half sheet of notepaper recording the proposed contract.” That is how is he settled the purchase of Covent Garden with the Duke Bedford for the staggering price of just over £1,750,000 ($15,000,000). Similar sums were paid for the purchase of properties at Piccadilly Circus and Founling Estates.\nH. Mallaby-Deeley\nHMD was an avid golfer who played to a scratch at Prince’s Golf Club, Mitcham Common. Mitcham was designed by Tom Dunn in 1892, and was considered nondescript and ordinary. Mallaby-Deeley became the chairman of the club in the late 1890s and proceeded to overhaul the course. When he was done it was considered one of the better inland courses in the Kingdom.\nInfected by the architectural bug Mallaby-Deeley then set his sites on a seaside property where he envisioned a modern links. His dream was to create The super course-a golf course incorporating all the theories of modern golf architecture. It had long been rumored the Earl of Guilford’s estate at Sandwich possessed some of the finest golfing ground in England, and there were several attempts to induce him to sell but he had always declined. In 1904 after a long negotiation HMD was finally able to purchase the 360 acre property.\nMallaby-Deeley then set out to make his dream a reality. Initially he consulted an impressive collection of experts, including Horace Hutchinson, HH Hilton, John Low, Cecil Hutchison and Herbert Fowler, and then proceeded to lay out the course with the assistance of Charles Hutchings and PM Lucas. It opened 1906 and was immediately recognized as a groundbreaking design. Princes was Britain’s version of the National Golf Links three years prior to the NGLA opening for play.\nPrinces was an incredibly well thought-out design for its day featuring big bold hazards.\nPrinces was Mallaby-Deeley’s last known excursion into design, but despite his limited activity Josiah Newman editor of the American magazine Golf in 1914 called Mallaby-Deeley “the finest amateur golf architect in the world.” He died in 1937 at his chateau at Cannes, but not before donating Princes, Mitcham Common to the public.\nJohn Sutherland – John Sutherland was born in 1864 the son of a Dornoch shoemaker. He began playing golf at 14 and was admitted to the club three years later, making scratch at once. Sutherland was appointed secretary in 1883 – a position he held for an amazing 58 years. Sutherland first competed in the Amateur Championship in 1891 at St. Andrews, and was a consistent attendant for the next 20 years. If there had been a prize for distance traveled most years he would have won it.\nNo one knows precisely when golf began at Dornoch, records indicate the game had been played there as far back as 1630. We do know the ‘modern’ game came to Dornoch in the 1870s with a nine-hole golf course. The Dornoch Golf Club was officially founded in 1877. In 1886 Old Tom Morris was engaged to layout a proper golf course, staking out a new nine thus extending the course to 18 holes. Sutherland carried out this work over the next few years. Old Tom deserves credit for getting things started but without question Dornoch was Sutherland’s long term project. Throughout his tenure he continually improved the courses including a major redesign in 1904, which included extending the ladies course to 18 holes.\nIn 1902 Golf Illustrated wrote of Sutherland: “He has given great service in laying out and altering, not only his own green but many of those in the neighbourhood.” Sutherland was invited in 1891 by the newly formed Brora Golf Club to layout a nine-hole golf course. He returned to Brora in 1902 and extended the links to 18 holes. That same year he laid out Skibo a private course for none other than Andrew Carnegie. In addition to Carnegie’s private course Sutherland designed and built private golf courses for the Duke of Portland at Lanfwell, the Duke of Sutherland at Dunrobin and Mr. Eric Chaplin at Stoer.\nSutherland taught the game to future professionals Donald Ross, Alec Morrison and Tom Grant, and this quote from The Scotsman may indicate which pupil he favored, “John Sutherland I know was proud of the Dornoch boys who carried the fame of his native town across the Atlantic.” One wonders what impact he may have had upon Ross the golf architect. As a young man Ross was both an apprentice to a building contractor and one of the best amateur golfers in the region. Members of the club urged him to go to St.Andrews to learn club-making, however his family wanted him to continue in the trade of carpentry. When the club promised to make him their professional, his parents consented and he was off to St. Andrews and Forgan’s golf shop for a brief apprenticeship. From 1893 to 1899 Ross was Dornoch’s first professional and presumably worked closely with Sutherland, who acted as the club’s secretary and greenkeeper (Sutherland was a self-taught expert in agronomy whose advice was sought throughout the UK). It is difficult to say to what extent Sutherland influenced Ross but it appears at the very least he laid his foundation.\nIn addition to his club responsibilities, John Sutherland was the Town Clerk, and beyond his public duties he advised Lord Rothermore and WT Tyser of Gordonbush on financial matters. He was also a successful Estate Agent. Sutherland even found time to write the golf notes for The Daily News, and contributed several articles to Golf Illustrated. Through his writing Sutherland was largely responsible for publicizing this islolated gem, and as a result the course attracted an impressive list of pilgrims including the Newton, Joyce and Roger Wethered, John Low, JH Taylor, Ernest Holderness and others. John Sutherland died suddenly at his home Golf View in 1941.\nA.M. Ross – Alexander Mackenzie Ross was born in Edinburgh in 1850. His father made Venetian blinds for a living. One of the most famous of the old school Scottish golfers AM Ross was raised on the doorstep of the historic Bruntsfield Links. “It is said in St.Andrews that babies are toothed on golf clubs. Though born in Edinburgh, Mr. Ross’s aptitude for the game found almost the same fostering circumstances, for in boyhood he lived on the verge of Bruntsfield Links, and there, before he had reached his teen, he had become something of a prodigy.”\nA.Mackenzie Ross\nHad there been an Amateur Championship in those days it is difficult to believe he would not have been one of the first holders. When the Championship was eventually instituted in 1886 he had little time to devote to the game due to business interests. Ross was the most successful exhibition caterer and refreshment contractor of his day, and held the exclusive contracts for the International Exhibitions of Edinburgh (1886), Manchester (1887), Brussels (1888), and London (1891). He was also the proprietor of the famous Café Royal Hotel in Edinburgh.\nMacKenzie Ross was a member of the Edinburgh Burgess Golfing Society, and for many years was considered almost invincible over Musselburgh links. He was also a frequent medalist at North Berwick, Gullane and Luffness. Ross won over one hundred medals during his golfing career (They are currently on display at the clubhouse of the Burgess Golfing Society at Barnton).\nLater in life Ross was fortunate to have a good deal of leisure time, and this he spent in enjoyment of the game. In addition to playing the game Ross was keenly interested in golf course design. In fact his son, future course designer Phillip Mackenzie Ross, claimed his father was the first to coin the term golf architect. The elder Ross’s first taste of design appears to have come just prior 1890 when he and his friend Colonel Baird discovered Mildenhall and laid out two holes on the property of William Gardner. Eventually a club was formed and in 1891 Tom Dunn was brought in to extend the course. He pegged out 18 holes, however before construction commenced Ross convinced the principals nine holes would be preferable since Dunn’s eighteen was to utilize unsuitable marshy ground. Ross remained closely associated with Worlington and deserves a great deal of credit for what many consider the best inland course built prior to 1900.\nIn a twist of the Worlington situation Mackenzie Ross was involved with another famous nine-hole course when in 1893 he proposed Musselburgh be extended to 18 holes, and went so far as having the ground surveyed. In the end his proposal was rejected. In 1897 Ross was captain of Luffness New when a group of members broke away to form Kilspindie in 1898, and he along with Ben Sayers designed the new course. From 1898 to 1900 Ross was in charge of the committee that oversaw the construction of the second course at Gullane. Willie Park-Jr. had originally laid out the course but a disagreement over his fee resulted in the termination of that relationship. PM Ross claimed his father was involved in the design or redesign of Royal Burgess at Barnton Gate, Murrayfield and New Luffness.\nRoss apparently enjoyed his boyhood home adjacent the Bruntsfield Links for in 1894 he acquired a villa overlooking North Berwick, and in 1904 built the impressive Hill House situated a top Gullane Hill with panoramic views over Luffness, Kilspindie and Gullane Links. A young PM Ross’s first foray into course design occurred at Hill House, when he designed a miniature golf course on land adjacent to the formal garden. AM Ross died in 1915 at Gullane Hill House.\nHorace G. Hutchinson – Born Horatio Gordon Hutchinson in London in 1859, the son of General William Nelson Hutchinson. In 1860 the family relocated to Devon when his father was appointed commanding officer of Government House. It was at North Devon (Westward Ho!) that a very young Hutchinson was introduced to the game by his uncle, Colonel Hutchinson, one of the club’s founders. After studying at Oxford, Hutchinson went to London and began to read for the Bar, but before being ‘called’ he had second thoughts, and spent the next several months traveling through Europe. He did not touch a golf club for an extended period and claimed he had to ‘relearn’ the game on his return. Evidently he relearned well for he won the Amateur Championship the first two years it was held in 1886 and 1887.\nHorace Hutchinson – the grandfather of golf course architecture\nHGH used those championships as a springboard to his writing career, a very successful career that ultimately led to him becoming in essence the voice of the game. Bernard Darwin wrote, “In the early eighties golf was, save in a few places, comparatively little known in England, and Mr. Hutchinson, alike by his fine play and his pleasant writing, did a great deal to increase the popularity of the game. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that at one time golf to the Englishman was represented by two names, those of Mr. Horace Hutchinson and Mr. Arthur Balfour.”\nHutchinson’s first known architectural involvement came in 1888 after his father moved from Devon to Eastbourne in Sussex. A local man requested HGH lay out a course which became Royal Eastbourne. The downland course was known for two attributes: the cavernous ‘Chalk Pit’ and wild greens. Darwin wrote, “To putt at Eastbourne is an art of itself. It is not that the greens are not good, for they are excellent, but the hidden slopes in them are extensive and peculiar.” That same year Hutchinson claimed to have laid out one of the first golf courses in America for the Rockaway Club in 1888. He toured the United States in 1887 and 1888.\nWithout question Hutchinson’s masterpiece was Royal West Norfolk (Brancaster)-collaborating with Holcombe Ingleby in 1892. A prideful Hutchinson remarked, “its distinguishing features are the absence of artificiality and the great variety to be found in the holes.” He would go on to design Isles of Scilly (1904), Harewood Downs (1906) with JH Taylor, and Le Touquet (1904) in France, in conjunction with Taylor and Willie Fernie. He also assisted in the redesign of Ashdown Forest where his friend Jack Rowe was the professional. Hutchinson lived in a cottage adjacent to the course. In addition to these projects he was involved in the formation of several new clubs, including Burnham & Berrow, Nairn, and numerous clubs around London. In all he was a member of a mind-boggling 300 golf clubs, and certainly his expertise in architectural matters would have been a benefit to all.\nBrancaster’s lack of artificiality has helped make it a stand-out course for well over a century.\nAlthough his design accomplishments are impressive unquestionably his greatest contribution came by way of the pen. In the 1890s he was a regular contributor to numerous magazines, most notably Golf magazine, often discussing aspects of design within its pages. An example of his forward thinking is illustrated in this excerpt from 1897, “Raynes Park itself is a pleasant and interesting course in the summer, but its soil is of very clayey nature, and in consequence becomes almost unplayable in the wet weather. But the country about Woking is all of that light, almost sandy soil in which rhododendrons and Scotch firs especially love to grow. This is, of all inland soils, the kind that gives the best golf, and its characteristics are those that the prudent prospector of a golf course in Great Britain, in America, and all the world over will first look for. Provided the soil is light-such at least is our experience over here-all things are possible, no matter what the growth or what sterility appears on the surface of the soil.”\nA chronological look at Hutchinson’s architectural writing begins in 1890 with Golf from the Badminton series-one of the first and most widely read books on the subject. It touched on every aspect of the game including golf course development. That was followed by Famous Golf Links — published in 1891 — the first book profiling the great golf courses of both Great Britain and Europe. It was collection of articles he had written for The Saturday Review. In 1897 Hutchinson joined the staff of the new periodical Country Life as its first golf editor and almost immediately began commenting on new golf courses, emerging golf architects, and architectural theory. That same year he edited the remarkable British Golf Links – the striking photo essay that remains our best documentation of early golf. His next effort was The Book of Golf and Golfers, written in 1899. It included a chapter on “laying-out and up-keep of greens” written by Mssrs. Sutton & Sons, with supplementary remarks by Willie Fernie. In 1906 Hutchinson edited the first book devoted to the science of golf-architecture and maintenance — Golf Greens and Green-Keeping. Among the contributors were HS Colt, WH Fowler, S. Mure Fergusson, James Braid, CK Hutchison, Peter Lees and HH Hilton. Hutchinson was a guiding force not only for the game, but also for these men who would contribute so much to golf architecture.\nHutchinson’s last book relating to architectural matters was his golfing memoirs – Fifty Years of Golf – written in 1913, though not published until after the War. That same year he had very serious operation that almost killed him. He ultimately survived but was physically limited and in considerable discomfort the remainder of his life. Golf was over forever, as was his influence upon the game. The suffering ended in 1932 when he took his life, jumping from the roof of his four-story home at Lennox Gardens, Chelsea. He was 73 years of age.\nOther amateurs – I would be remiss not to briefly touch on these other prominent amateurs golf architects.\nRobert Chambers, Jr. was born at Edinburgh in 1832, and the son of Robert Chambers the famous publisher and author of Vestiges of Creation. He followed his father into the publishing business in 1853 and in 1873 became editor of Chamber’s Journal, which he ran with great success. Chambers was a fine golfer who grew up playing over the Old Course but in later years played mostly at North Berwick where he had a second home. In 1878 he won the inaugural Grand National at St. Andrews, the precursor to the Amateur Championship. Although not as prolific a writer as his father Chambers did manage to write one of the first books relating to golf – A Few Rambling Remarks on Golf. He also co-authored (with his father) the famous poem ‘The Nine Holes of the Links’ of St. Andrews, which appears in Robert Clark’s classic book, Golf: A Royal and Ancient Game. Chambers’ lone architectural accomplishment was laying out the first nine-hole course at Hoylake with George Morris in 1869-no minor accomplishment. Robert Chambers died at his house in Edinburgh in 1888.\nRev. AT Scott was born in 1848 at Cambridge where his father was vicar. A good athlete and avid sportsman, Scott was involved in the historic Oxford-Cambridge cricket match of 1871. In 1886 he became the vicar of St.James, Turnbridge Wells. In 1888 he was a founder of Royal Ashdown Forest, and laid out that famous golf course. Royal Ashdown Forest features a total absence of artificial hazards since the original charter of the Royal Forest prohibited man-made alterations to the land. Scott remained at the club his entire life, and was the Archdeacon of Turnbridge at the time of his death in 1925.\nHenry Hope of Luffness in East Lothian was born in 1839, and educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford. Henry Hope was the landed proprietor of Luffness House and it adjoining 3200-acre shire. Luffness had been in control of his family since the 18thC. In 1865 Hope laid out the first 18-hole golf course between Edinburgh and London. This was the old Luffness, which he built at his own expense with the help of Old Tom Morris. Sir Alexander Kinloch said, “Mr. Hope was very kind to lay out this course for them, but he did not see where the people were going to come from to play it.” They came, and they came in large numbers, and when in 1893 old Luffness moved to another site, Hope laid out Luffness New on his estate. The next year he asked Old Tom Morris to advise on the placement of hazards however the layout remained essentially Hope’s. Henry Hope died in 1913.\nCJ Gilbert was born at New Romney, Kent in 1859. He began his professional life as a solicitor, but later became an electrical engineer and manager of a chemical works. Ironically he was best known as an amateur expert in geology, specializing in the occurrence of sand and gravel deposits. Who better than an expert in sand and gravel to dabble in golf architecture? His only known architectural work was the design of the nine-hole course at Berkhamsted in 1890. The site featured heather, bracken and the ancient Saxon earthworks known as Grim’s Dyke. Like Ashdown Forest there were no man-made bunkers.\nGeorge Combe was born at Belfast in 1862 and educated at Rugby. Combe was the consummate sportsman excelling in cricket, football, billiards and golf. He was also one of the pioneers of motoring in Ulster. Another in a long line of electrical engineers turned golf architect, Combe was a founder of the Irish Golfing Union in 1891, and for many years its Honorary Secretary. His status with the Union led to several design opportunities including the lay out of the first nine at County Sligo in 1895. Without question his greatest design accomplishment was transforming Royal County Down into one of the world’s great golf courses. That transformation began in 1900 and continued for the better part of a decade. Combe died at Lisburn, Northern Ireland in 1938.\nGeorge Combe\nWC Pickeman was born at Montrose in 1868, the son of the administrator of the Royal Lunatic Asylum. As a young man Pickeman was an insurance clerk in Edinburgh – playing his golf over the links at Musselburgh. He moved to Dublin in the early nineties taking a position with the Law Union and Crown Insurance Company, eventually ascended to managing partner. His architectural career began on Christmas Eve 1893, when he and fellow Scot George Ross rowed over to the peninsula of Portmarnock in search of land for a possible golf links. Boating in late December? I suspect Christmas cheer was involved. Whatever the case they found the site perfectly suited, and made a proposal to the landowner Mr. Jameson, the famous distiller, who being a good Scot himself, and an avid golfer, consented. Nine holes were laid out by WCP in 1894, and the full 18 were in play two years later. It should be noted Pickeman wisely sought the advice of Mungo Park (Old Willie’s brother) in this early stage. Pickeman went on to design/redesign an estimated twenty golf courses, including Castle, Skerries and Kilmashogue. He also inspired a group of Dubliners who went on to their own distinguished design careers: Cecil Barcroft, Peter Gannon and AV Macan. WC Pickeman died in 1931 at his home in Dublin.\nHS Colt was born in 1869 at Highgate, London. Colt studied at Cambridge where he captained the golf team. In 1893 he joined a solicitors office in Hastings. As one of the leading amateur golfers in England understandably the Rye Golf Club sought his advise when planning their new links. Ultimately Colt and Douglas Rolland (who Colt knew from Malvern) laid out the golf course. Those two were also involved in the redesign of Hastings-St. Leonard the following year. The inclusion of one of the most successful golf architects in history may seem a bit odd, but one must remember his professional design career would not commence for another twelve years. For that reason Colt is a good example of the amateur architect from the early period.\nAndrew, Cowan-Dewar, Mingay & Thompson – Canada’s Top Golf Courses\nAndrew, Ian – Architectural Evolution of Stanley Thompson\nArble, Sean – Burnham & Berrow Golf Club\nArble, Sean – Burnham & Berrow Golf Club Pg. II\nArble, Sean – Pennard Golf Club\nArble, Sean – Pennard Golf Club Pt. II\nBeaumont, John – Herbert Fowler and The Bradford Golf Club\nBeaumont, John – Reflections from England\nBeaumont, John – Reflections on Ganton\nBeck, Bob & Leefe, Nick – 10th Revision Chronology of Dr. Mackenzie’s Presence 1907-1934\nBehr, Max H. – Art in Golf Architecture\nBlack, Jamie – Enhancing The Experience Of Golf Through Landscape Design And Environmental Psychology\nBloom, Kanon – Royal Lakes Golf & C.C.\nBorght, John Vander – Hannastown Golf Club\nBuie, Chris – A History of Pinehurst No. 4\nBuie, Chris – A History of Southern Pines Golf Club\nBuie, Chris – The Early Days of Pinehurst\nBuie, Chris – The Middle Ages of Pinehurst\nBuie, Chris – The Original Pinehurst No. 3\nCarpenter, Gib – A Cry for the Golf Course\nCarpenter, Gib – A Cry for the Golf Course Pg. II\nChalfant, Mark – The Architecture of William B. Langford\nChapman, Tony – York Country Club\nCirba, Mike – Walter J. Travis “Dropped” at National Golf Links of America Truth or Travesty? (Part One)\nCirba, Mike – Walter J. Travis “Dropped” at National Golf Links of America Truth or Travesty? (Part Two)\nCirba, Mike – Forgotten Foxburg America’s Oldest Golf Club?\nCirba, Mike – Walter J. Travis “Dropped” at National Golf Links of America Truth or Travesty? (Part Three)\nCirba, Mike – Who Was Hugh Wilson?\nCirba, Mike – Who Was Hugh Wilson? – Part II\nClayman, Adam – Pacific Grove\nClayman, Adam – Spyglass Hill Golf Course\nClouser and Flemma, Debate on Maxwell’s Southern Hills vs. Oklahoma City\nClouser, Chris – Perry Maxwell’s Dornick Hills\nClouser, Chris – Southern Hills: Maxwell’s Crown Jewel\nClouser, Chris – The Designer from the Great Plains\nClouser, Chris – The Designer from the Great Plains pg. II\nClouser, Chris – Why Dornick Hills should be Restored\nCohn, Matt – Golf In Australia\nCohn, Matt – Lincoln Park Golf Course in San Francisco\nCohn, Matt – The Golf Courses Around Lake Merced\nCrosby, Bob – Joshua Crane in the Golden Age, Part I\nCrosby, Bob – Joshua Crane in the Golden Age Part II\nDaley, Richard – Wild Horse Golf Club\nDaniels, Bill – Tiger’s Plans for Chicago Course Misses the Mark\nDewar, Ben – Banff: Still one of the World’s Greats\nDorsey, Eric – Brook Hollow Golf Club\nDugger, Michael – Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club\nDuran, Lou & Brauer, Jeff – Ralph Plummer, Golf Course Architect\nFay, Michael – Country Club of Farmington, CT, USA\nFerguson, Mark – St Andrews Beach\nFerguson, Mark – The Short Par Fours of the Sandbelt\nFine, Mark – Lehigh Country Club\nFream, Ron – Around the World in 76 Days\nFream, Ron – Around the World in 76 Days Pg. II\nFream, Ron – What Signature?\nFream, Ronald – Oldest Courses Outside Great Britain & Ireland\nFreeman, Noel- Deal Me In\nFreeman, Noel- Playing Golf at Kawana Hotel GC, Japan\nFreeman, Noel- Triskaidekaphobia\nFriedrich, Carl – Rye Golf Club\nGholz, Anthony – Bendelow and Alison at Port Huron Golf Club (Michigan/USA)\nGiordano, Frank – River Oaks\nGiordano, Frank – The Fun’s Gone Out of Golf\nGlenn, Jeremy – Banff Springs\nGlenn, Jeremy – Computer Assisted Golf Course Design\nGlenn, Jeremy – The Reverse Old Course\nGlenn, Jeremy – The Reverse Old Course pg. II\nGoldman, Jeff – The South Course at Olympia Fields\nGoodale, Rich – Royal Dornoch Golf Club\nGoodale, Rich – The Architectural Evolution of Royal Dornoch Golf Club\nGreenwood, Trey – Coronado Municipal Golf Course and the History of Golf on California’s Coronado Island\nHarris, Kyle – Penn State University Golf\nHealey, Jim – Glen Echo Country Club\nHunt, Matthew – Another Take on a World Top 100 Ranking\nHunter Morrow, Melvyn – Famous Links That Were Not Designed, But Simply ‘Happened’\nIzatt, Bryan – Review of Teeth of the Dog, Casa de Campo\nIzatt, Bryan – Teeth of the Dog, Casa de Campo pg. II\nJackson, Dale – Royal Colwood\nJones, Gordon A. – Panmure Golf Club\nLavin, Terry – Olympia Fields CC (North Course)\nLewis, Cory – DuPont Country Club\nLewis, Jeff – Loch Lomond Golf Club\nLinks & Harris – MacKenzie’s Sharp Park Under Siege\nLinks & Harris – Venturi Urges San Francisco To Save Sharp Park\nLitman, Benjamin S. – Timeless Golf at Quogue Field Club\nLupkes, Todd – Palouse Ridge Golf Club\nMacWood ,Thomas – George Arthur Crump: Portrait of a Legend\nMacWood, Thomas – A Round of Golf Courses: Bernard Darwin – Outward Nine\nMacWood, Thomas – A Round of Golf Courses: Bernard Darwin – Inward Nine\nMacWood, Thomas – Arts and Crafts Golf (Part I)\nMacWood, Thomas – Arts and Crafts Golf (Part II)\nMacWood, Thomas – Arts and Crafts Golf (Part III)\nMacWood, Thomas – Arts and Crafts Golf (Part IV)\nMacWood, Thomas – Arts and Crafts Golf (Part V)\nMacWood, Thomas – Gliding past Fuji – C.H. Alison in Japan\nMacWood, Thomas – Gliding past Fuji – C.H. Alison in Japan pg. II\nMacWood, Thomas – Magazine Architecture\nMacWood, Thomas – Ohio State University Golf Course\nMacWood, Thomas – The Dream Decision\nMacWood, Thomas – The Early Architects: Beyond Old Tom\nMacWood, Thomas – The Early Golf Architects: Beyond Old Tom Pg. II\nMacWood, Thomas – The Early Architects: Beyond Old Tom Pg. III\nMacWood, Thomas – The World’s Finest Courses\nMandell, Richard – The Best Course No One Will Ever Play\nMark, Chad – Kirtland Country Club Green Expansion\nMartin, Scott – Machrihanish Dunes – Environmental Battleground or Golf Course? Or Both?\nMcBride, Bill – Pensacola Country Club\nMcKnight, Peter – Saucon Valley Country Club\nMendik, Kevin – H.C. Leeds, the Papa of American Golf Architecture\nMendik, Kevin – Challenges of Restoring a Classic American Golf Course\nMendik, Kevin – Cultural Landscape Assessment for the Restoration of the Golf Course at Sunnylands Estate\nSunnylands pg. 2\nMingay, Jeff – A Great Hole: the 16th at Cape Breton Highlands\nMingay, Jeff – The Evolution of a Classical Golf Course: Essex G&CC\nMollica, Matthew – A Review of Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links\nMollica, Matthew – Titirangi Golf Club\nMoran, Kelly Blake – A Framework for Considering Changes at Augusta National\nMoriarty, David – The Missing Faces of Merion\nMoriarty, David – The Missing Faces of Merion by Pg. II\nMorris, Jr., Walter S. – Secession Golf Club\nMorrison, Wayne – Rolling Green Golf Club\nMorrow, Melvyn Hunter – The Early Golf Designers: The Real Golden Age\nMorrow, Melvyn Hunter – The Colossus of Golf Course Architects & The First Golden Age of Golf Course Design\nMuldoon, Tony – H.S. Colt of East Hendred\nNaccarato, Thomas – In Praise of The Ralph Miller Library\nNishijima, Masa – Golf Magazine Top 100 1983-2011\nOhlendorf, Greg M. – Flossmoor Country Club\nOxman, Nate – Endearing Ed Oliver Golf Club\nPallotta, Peter – Golf Through the Looking Glass\nPapazian, Gib – A Lesson from a Lady in Scotland\nPapazian, Gib – Preservation of Architecture as Art\nPaul, Tom – A Renaissance Movement in Golf Architecture\nPlumart, Mac – Extreme Golf\nPrystowsky, Michael B. – Evolution of the Westchester Country Club Golf Courses\nRatliff, Gordon – MacKenzie & Woodside CC\nRichards, Paul – Beverly Country Club\nRoss Society – Ross Restoration Guidelines\nRowlinson, Mark – Golf Courses of Cheshire\nRowlinson, Mark – Great Britain NLE’s\nRowlinson, Mark – Leadhills and the Joy of Gutta Percha\nSayer, Dick – Old Head of Kinsale\nSayer, Dick – Pine Valley vs. Pebble Beach\nShackelford, Geoff – A Historian’s Dream Article\nShackelford, Geoff – Art and Golf Design\nShackelford, Geoff – The Ball Problem by Max Behr\nSherman, Gary – Selling a Tree Program at your Club\nSponcia, Joe – Deconstructing Width\nSponcia, Joe – Green Committee Primer\nSponcia, Joe – Homogenizing the Game\nSponcia, Joe – Trees on the Golf Course – A Common Sense Approach\nStewart, David – Kampen Course at Purdue University\nSturges, Ted – Letter to Golf Digest\nSweeney, Mike – Blending Old and New in Renovating a Classic\nSweeney, Mike – Blending Old and New in Renovating a Classic Pg. II\nTaylor, Jeff – Anatomy of a Rebuild\nThomas, David – Sphinx in Your Back Garden by David Thomas\nThomas, Michael M. – A Golfer’s Five-Foot Shelf\nThrelkeld, Mike – Cherokee Country Club\nTopp, Jason – Oak Ridge Country Club\nTufts, Bradford – Tedesco Country Club\nVan Reysen, Matthew – Princes Risborough GC\nVander Borght, John – The Balloon Ball\nVersalles, Laz – Goat Hill Park\nWall, Jordan – Gold Mountain Golf Club\nWard, Alfie – Arbory Brae Golf Course\nWexler, Daniel – The Evolution of Augusta National: What Would The Good Doctor Say?\nWhite III, Dunlop – An Anatomy of a Restoration\nWhite III, Dunlop – Below the Trees\nWhite III, Dunlop – The Shrinking Fairway\nWilliamsen, Tom – Musgrove Mill Golf Club\nYoung, Mike – The Architect as Genius","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line968932"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6724652051925659,"wiki_prob":0.6724652051925659,"text":"SNL #35.21 Mother's Day all-stars with Betty White, Fey, Poehler, Rudolph, Dratch, Gasteyer, Shannon\nToo many of my acquaintances were hyped up about this show before it ever went live, which to me, is always an ominous sign. With a live show such as SNL, you never really know what you're going to get until it happens, no matter how the rehearsals or the table reads go. And from what I had heard earlier in the week, with so many returning regulars guesting this week, my expectation was that we would see essentially a reunion of recurring characters. What would that leave for the actual cast to do, though? And how would 88-year-old Betty White fare as a host, anyhow? Or are we going to be pleased as punch if it was all reunions and putting naughty words in White's mouth? (Foreshadowing) Onto the All-Star RECAP!\nWe open cold with the Lawrence Welk (Fred Armisen) take on Mother's Day, so many tiny bubbles and a tease to the Jugglettes: Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey and Molly Shannon. Not a reference to the Juggalos so far as I know. OK, audience, cool it. Stop applauding just because you see Betty White alive. Here she's mother to the sister act of Janice (Amy Poehler), Peggy (Maya Rudolph), Clara (Ana Gasteyer) and tiny-handed big-foreheaded Judice (Kristen Wiig), who sing with Will Forte. Look. They got all of the old ladies in the open with one of Wiig's crazy characters and gave White as little as possible to do. Don't get me wrong. It's cute and all. But this is a comedy entertainment show. Let's try to keep some perspective on it? Just showing up does not automatically warrant complete fawning. A little bit of fawning is expected, though. See? Perspective.\nWhite makes it to center stage in a quicker time than either of my grandmothers did when they were 88 (especially since one never made it to that age). \"It's great to be here for a number of reasons,\" White said. She reminds us that in the 1950s, they didn't want to go live, either, but they didn't know how to do it otherwise. She thanks Facebook, before mocking it. And let there be old people jokes. White does a nice aside while joking about poking. \"Guess what? Jay-Z is here! If I had a dime for everytime I've said that, I'd have a dime!\" Nicely played. Nicely executed.\nMacGruber! Ready for the movie? Ready or not, MacGruber is working with his Nana (White) now, who keeps embarrassing him in front of Vicki (Wiig). As in past weeks, SNL has put the night's trilogy of MacGruber bits into one clip, which will roll at your convenience:\nAn NPR scene brings back \"Delicious Dish,\" a recurring scene hosted by Gasteyer and Shannon -- and best known for their \"Schweddy Balls\" bit with then-host Alec Baldwin. Tonight they're celebrating dietary fiber. Their guest is Florence Dusty (White), and she is known for her muffin. \"I can't wait to taste your muffin.\" And so on, and so forth. Dusty admits that bakers of her day may have dry, crusty or even yeasty muffins. Just ask her how long it has been since her muffin had a cherry. We dare you. So yes, you'll probably want to see this:\nThe first ad of the night is the Snickers Super Bowl ad with Betty White, and don't forget Abe Vigoda! The second ad is for the MacGruber movie. The third ad is for beer. The fourth ad is for Sex and the City 2, which you need to drink a lot of beer before deciding that's a good idea. The fifth ad is for an iPhone. The seventh ad is for Betty White's new TV Land sitcom.\nContinue reading \"SNL #35.21 Mother's Day all-stars with Betty White, Fey, Poehler, Rudolph, Dratch, Gasteyer, Shannon\" »\nMay 9, 2010 6:44:47 AM | Abby Elliott, Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Bobby Moynihan, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, Jenny Slate, Kenan Thompson, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Nasim Pedrad, Rachel Dratch, Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey, Will Forte\nBetty White's SNL all-star dress rehearsal cuts: Debbie Downer, Bronx Beat, Joyologist, car bomber\nWith so many former cast members of Saturday Night Live returning to help out guest host Betty White, we knew we were in for a lot of reunions with old characters. And we were, but a few didn't make the final cut after last night's SNL dress rehearsal, including Rachel Dratch's \"Debbie Downer,\" a new \"Bronx Beat\" with Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, a \"Joyologist\" session with Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon, and a slightly misguided \"press conference\" for the failed Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad.\nNBC has put these online, but should any of them made it onto the live show? Let's review.\nKristen Wiig's character tried to host a lingerie party with Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, and Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, and a latecomer to the party, Dratch's Debbie Downer.\nNobody lost it in the scene, but this did feature a flashback to when Debbie wasn't such a downer, but her grandma (Betty White) taught her everything she'd know. Oh, there was a dig at BP for the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill.\nIn Bronx Beat with Betty (Poehler) and Jodi (Rudolph), they talk about Betty's second pregnancy, pool noodles, and Mother's Day wishes. And White plays Betty's mother, retired to Florida. White plays the straight woman in this sketch. Andy Samberg also appears as White's yoga instructor and her boyfriend. Cougar alert! So if you hoped to hear White talk more about having sex, well, here is that chance.\nOK. In \"Joyologist,\" Ana Gasteyer brought back her character Gayle Gleason, host of a TV show called \"Pretty Living\" that now only appears in the backs of taxi cabs. And she welcomed back Helen Madden, Molly Shannon's renowned \"joyologist.\" Two old characters in one new sketch. \"I love it, I love it, I love it,\" Shannon's Madden said. What do you think? Do you like her new friend?\nIf they had put these sketches on the air, do you know that most of the current SNL cast could have taken the week off?!? Really.\nAnd this sketch in which Faisal Shahzad (Fred Armisen) holds a press conference to express his displeasure with how the media has mocked his failed attempt to blow up an SUV in Times Square the previous Saturday, with translation from Maya Rudolph's character. It. Well. Hmmm. Doesn't Shahzad speak at least some English, anyhow? Roll it.\nMay 9, 2010 6:03:46 AM | Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Andy Samberg, Fred Armisen, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey\nClassic Christmas clips! SNL with Alec Baldwin, Glengarry Glen-Christmas & Schweddy Balls\nTonight on NBC, Saturday Night Live went primetime with \"A Very Gilly Christmas,\" with Kristen Wiig's Gilly character introducing clip packages and performing in small sketches with Will Forte as her principal foil. Some funny highlights from the vault. But here are two blasts from the past that really take the Christmas cake, courtesy of recurring guest host Alec Baldwin. First, they showed the Christmas spoof of \"Glengarry Glen-Ross,\" with Baldwin showing up to give the elves in Santa's Workshop the business. This is from Season 31, Episode 8 (SNL #31.8), with Fred Armisen, Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers as the elves, and watch for Baldwin to make a flub so great it's almost not a flub at all. Roll the clip!\nThen, toward the very end of the two-hour special, Baldwin himself introduced this clip from Season 24, Episode 9 (SNL #24.9), in which Baldwin played Pete Schweddy, owner of a store called Season's Eatings, and guest on an NPR talk show with Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon. Yes. We're going to be hearing a lot about Pete's Schweddy balls. Roll the clip!\nDec 17, 2009 9:57:05 PM | Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, Rachel Dratch, Saturday Night Live","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1309671"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7962130904197693,"wiki_prob":0.7962130904197693,"text":"Biography – BRAITHWAITE, CHARLES – Volume XIII (1901-1910) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography\nBRAITHWAITE, CHARLES, farmer, agrarian leader, and office holder; b. in 1850 and baptized on 18 February in Foston on the Wolds, England, eldest son of the eight children of William Braithwaite and Mary —; m. first 23 Nov. 1872 Mary Ware; m. secondly 11 Feb. 1885 Louisa Emma Green in Portage la Prairie, Man.; m. thirdly 1886 Georgiana Green, and they had two daughters; d. 9 June 1910 in Chilliwack, B.C.\nCharles Braithwaite, a farmer’s son with little formal education, left England in the early 1870s. He went first to Durham, Ont., before moving to western Canada during the boom of 1881 created by the arrival of the railway. Initially, he and his brother William settled in Portage la Prairie; they then homesteaded in the Qu’Appelle valley in 1882. Charles moved to Winnipeg in 1883, working briefly as a postal clerk there before returning to Portage la Prairie to farm.\nIn 1883 a depression began in western Canada, one which would increase in severity after 1890. Braithwaite soon became aware that western farmers faced economic problems beyond their control. In 1891 he joined the Farmers’ Institute, an educational organization, and he would encourage its members to use the institute to lobby for special freight rates and the erection of a farmer-owned flour-mill. Meanwhile, he had joined one of the five lodges of the Patrons of Industry that had been established in the area of Portage la Prairie in the spring of 1891. In November of that year, at the first provincial convention of Patrons’ organizations, he was elected grand president, a position he would hold until January 1897.\nThe Patrons of Industry was originally an American fraternal organization whose members held discussions on economic and scientific topics. It spread to Ontario in 1887 and the movement, in both the United States and Canada, rapidly became an instrument for organized protest [see George Weston Wrigley]. Farmers in the developing west received low prices for their wheat but faced high interest and freight rates and a high tariff on farm supplies as a result of the National Policy instituted by the Conservative government of Sir John A. Macdonald* in 1879. Their discontent first manifested itself in the Manitoba and North-West Farmers’ Co-operative and Protective Union, established in 1883 [see George Purvis*], and the Patrons were able to build on the foundation laid by that failed institution. The growing appeal of the Patrons in Manitoba was due in large measure to the efforts of Braithwaite. Although barely literate, he was a “spell-binding orator” with incredible energy, who travelled the province widely, pitching the slogan “Manitoba for Manitobans.” He preached that Manitobans needed to “mutually agree as farmers and employees to band ourselves together for self protection and for the purpose of obtaining a portion of the advantages that are now almost exclusively enjoyed by the financial, commercial and manufacturing classes, who by a system of combines and monopolies are exacting from us an undue proportion of the fruits of our toil.”\nInitially, the organization emphasized cooperation, establishing in 1892 the Patrons Commercial Union, an incorporated company which sold agricultural supplies and implements to farmers by mail order at reduced cost and which acted as an agency for the sale of farm produce. The company enjoyed some success in supplying farmers with commodities such as binder twine before poor management destroyed its reputation; its attempts to market the grain of Patrons totally failed because farmers were unwilling to commit the large quantities needed to attract contracts from flour-mills.\nAt the annual provincial convention of the Patrons in Brandon in January 1894 Braithwaite offered his resignation, criticizing the membership for not supporting the organization’s cooperative activities. His leadership was reconfirmed and the membership endorsed a platform supporting his recommendation of political action. Unsuccessful in obtaining redress of farmers’ grievances by lobbying, Braithwaite, originally a Liberal himself, suggested that the Patrons field their own candidates in federal and provincial elections “to protest the prevailing corruption in politics.” His call for farmer candidates to represent farmer constituents alienated many local newspapers which had traditionally supported one of the two major political parties. Thereafter they ignored most of the Patrons’ activities, publishing only unfavourable references, such as accusations that the leaders were lining their pockets. The Patrons had established their own newspaper, the Patrons Reporter and Advocate (later the Patrons Advocate) in Rapid City shortly after their first provincial convention in 1891. The hotheadedness of its editor, the Patrons’ grand secretary, Henry Clay Clay, further strained relations between the Patrons and the provincial press and Clay’s disagreements with Braithwaite over editorial policy were disastrous for the Manitoba Patrons. Its membership had also been upset by the fact that the executive had awarded the publishing contract to Clay without tender and then had raised membership fees to cover the costs of publication, all without consulting them.\nIn 1894 Braithwaite again toured the province, lashing out at high freight rates, calling for the completion of a railway to Hudson Bay, and raging against the high tariff which benefited eastern manufacturers at the expense of the majority of western Canadians. Through his efforts membership was expanded in Manitoba to an estimated 5,000 in 330 lodges by the end of that year. In anticipation of a general election federal candidates were nominated in all but two Manitoba constituencies, and a provincial candidate, John Forsyth, was elected in a by-election in 1894. He would soon disgrace himself, however, by using a railway pass, a privilege of elected office disapproved of by the Patrons, and he would be expelled from the organization in October 1895. Other difficulties emerged. Clay’s editorial policy had destroyed all the goodwill Braithwaite had managed to create by wooing leading local citizens such as Senator Charles Arkoll Boulton*, whose newspaper was one of the few that still supported the Patrons. In early 1895 Clay was removed as editor of the organization’s newspaper. That spring Braithwaite travelled to Toronto to help create a national platform which would appeal to reformers, prohibitionists, and those advocating women’s suffrage.\nIt was the Manitoba school question [see Thomas Greenway] which destroyed the hopes of the Manitoba Patrons in both the provincial and the federal elections of 1896. Many Catholic Patrons were alienated by the organization’s acceptance of the stand taken by the provincial government against denominational schools. Only two of the Patrons’ candidates were elected to the Legislative Assembly in January 1896. Braithwaite had accepted the nomination for the federal riding of Macdonald where, in spite of “bullying to withdraw” and leave the field to a Liberal candidate, he ran on a platform of non-sectarian schools, reform of the electoral system and the civil service, recognition of agriculture as the west’s primary industry, free trade, public ownership of utilities, universal suffrage for men and women, and prohibition. Many of these same planks would reappear in the western platform of the Progressive party in 1919.\nThe Patrons were relying on support from Conservative farmers but the Conservative party under Sir Charles Tupper* revealed a program that met many of the Patrons’ demands. The election of June 1896 left little room for third party candidates as the Liberals under Wilfrid Laurier* swept to power. In Manitoba, however, the Conservatives won four of the seven seats; all the Patrons’ candidates went down to defeat.\nAlthough the battered organization of the Patrons limped on for another year, a disappointed and defeated Charles Braithwaite resigned as grand president and accepted a position as a provincial weed inspector; he would serve from 1897 to 1901. He returned to farming in Portage la Prairie in 1901. Undoubtedly feeling restless in a Manitoba that remained little changed in spite of his efforts, Braithwaite moved his family to the area of Chilliwack, B.C., three years later. In the small community of Camp Slough, he became the first postmaster. He died in nearby Chilliwack at age 60.\nKaren Nicholson\nACC, Diocese of Rupert’s Land Arch. (Winnipeg), DRL-84-83. B.C., Ministry of Health (Victoria), Vital statistics, death certificate. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah), International geneal. index. NA, RG 31, C1, 1871, Durham, Ont.; 1881, 1891, Portage-la-Prairie, Man. UCC, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario Conference Arch. (Winnipeg), Portage la Prairie Methodist Church, RBMB. Patrons Advocate (Rapid City, Man.), 1894–96. Portage la Prairie Weekly Review, 1891–1910. Directory, Man. and N.W.T., 1881–1905. In the shadow of Mt. Cheam: a history of Rosedale, Popkum and Camp River, British Columbia ([Rosedale, B.C.], 1988). B. R. McCutcheon, “The Patrons of Industry in Manitoba, 1890–1898,” Historical essays on the Prairie provinces, ed. Donald Swainson (Toronto and Montreal, 1970), 142–65. Man., Dept. of Agriculture and Immigration, Annual report (Winnipeg), 1897–1901.\nPhilanthropists and Social Reformers\nAgriculture – Farmers\nEurope – United Kingdom – England\nNorth America – Canada – Manitoba\nNorth America – Canada – British Columbia – Mainland\nGREENWAY, THOMAS (Vol. 13)BOULTON, CHARLES ARKOLL (Vol. 12)LAURIER, Sir WILFRID (baptized Henry-Charles-Wilfrid) (Vol. 14)MACDONALD, Sir JOHN ALEXANDER (Vol. 12)PURVIS, GEORGE (Vol. 12)TUPPER, Sir CHARLES (Vol. 14)WRIGLEY, GEORGE WESTON (Vol. 13)OLIVER, FRANK (Francis Robert Bowsfield, Bossfield, or Bousfield) (Vol. 16)\nBOULTON, CHARLES ARKOLL\nGREENWAY, THOMAS\nTUPPER, Sir CHARLES\nLAURIER, Sir WILFRID (baptized Henry-Charles-Wilfrid)\nOLIVER, FRANK (Francis Robert Bowsfield, Bossfield, or Bousfield)\nKaren Nicholson, “BRAITHWAITE, CHARLES,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed January 17, 2020, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/braithwaite_charles_13E.html.\nPermalink: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/braithwaite_charles_13E.html\nAuthor of Article: Karen Nicholson\nTitle of Article: BRAITHWAITE, CHARLES","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line709467"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6502222418785095,"wiki_prob":0.3497777581214905,"text":"Macy’s Consolidating?\nBy Lauren Crighton\t• Published at 10:03 am on November 17, 2008\nNorwalk Police Department\nRight, so remember how we unabashedly passed along a rumor about a major department store potentially folding after we heard about Macy's shocking third-quarter loss this year? ($44 million, compared to earnings of $33 million last year.) Well, now WWD reports even more paralyzing news: The New York institution may be considering merging its four divisions into two. According to the article, Macy's could potentially fold Macy's Central (Atlanta) and Macy's Florida (Miami) into its two bi-coastal locations—Macy's East in New York, and Macy's West in San Francisco. Needless to say, WWD points out that the decision to consolidate would affect hundreds of employees, let alone hordes of shoppers. When asked about the rumor, spokesman Jim Sluzewski told WWD: \"We can’t comment on rumors, but we are fully focused on running the business for holiday.” Especially since Miley Cyrus is headlining the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade ...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line285911"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9862832427024841,"wiki_prob":0.9862832427024841,"text":"R&B, Soul\nWho was/is Jerry Jackson - BCD15481 ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more\nJerry Jackson - BCD15481\nWhen it came to recording techniques at the dawn of the 1960s in New York, bigger was definitely better. Producer s and arrangers crafted lavish orchestral backdrops for singers with huge, powerful voices. Jerry Jackson fit that bill perfectly. He made a series of '60s singles for Top Rank, Kapp, Columbia, and Parkway that might be described as stirring uptown soul, though Jackson isn't fond of such classifications or being compared to other singers.\n\"I'm none of those people. I'm Jerry Jackson. I'm individual. I'm very unique, because God made me that way, you know?\" he says. \"I'm a singer, and I sing from my spirit, from my heart.\"\nToday, Jerry Jackson sings in praise of God. In 1991, he established Jacob J. Jackson Bibleway Ministries in Florida's Tampa Bay region, ministering to many people by providing organically homegrown vegetables to the needy, visiting the elderly in nursing homes, and reaching out to others through prayers and Bible study. \"Now, through my music ministry, I want to leave a legacy which will reveal God's truth and hopefully encourage many listeners and believers to surrender their lives to God,\" he says.\nBorn Jacob Jackson (Jerry is his middle name) in Hartford, Connecticut, he was brought up in a Christian family headed by his preacher father and a mother who loved to sing. \"He was an evangelist, really,\" says Jerry. \"My mother had one of those great voices. And it just traveled throughout our whole family. As a child of nine and ten years old, I used to sing. Mahalia Jackson was one of my favorites and greatest influences, in addition to my mother.\n\"As a kid, we had a quartet,\" he says. \"At nine years old, I was the lead singer in the quartet. My sisters and brothers were older, but they chose to put me as the lead singer. God developed my voice very early. I was on the radio when I was nine years old. It was WTIC in Hartford. They caught me downtown singing on the street, and somebody noticed it. They said, 'Hey, get this kid on the radio!' So I did acappella stuff on the radio as a kid.\"\nJerry Jackson proceeded to pursue other musical activities, including a fan club run by a Mr. Sweep when he was about 12 years old. \"He was out of Meriden, Connecticut. He put on talent shows. I was involved in a lot of talent shows. I always seemed to be very successful in getting the first prize,\" says Jackson. \"I was a young African-American kid, and all the kids I was competing against were Caucasian. And I still got first prize every time. That was kind of telling me that I must have had some special talent.\n\"I was in Providence, Rhode Island, when I was about 16. Paul Filippi of the Celebrity Club was really taking me under his wing, and I studied voice at the conservatory in Rhode Island for a period of time. And he sponsored me there. I was singing with all the bands that were coming in, and Paul Filippi really thought a lot of me, and my singing. He was very encouraging. Paul even took the time to contact me and let me know that Roy Hamilton was appearing there, and he wanted me to come there and have Roy listen to me. I did like Roy Hamilton very, very much. I also greatly admired and respected Nat Cole and Tony Bennett.\n\"I was kind of like a rolling stone, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. Because I knew that I wanted to sing, but I wanted to do so many things,\" says Jerry Jackson, who at one point hitchhiked all the way to Cleveland with a friend. While there, he made his first recording. \"I did a demo over there of 'Lucky Old Sun' and another song I had,\" he says. \"I used that demo when I ultimately went to New York. I remember first I went to Jaguar Records. They were in New York at the time. They were going to move to California. And they were interested in me, but for some reason I didn't get back in touch with them.\n\"Maybe a few months went by, and I just kept going to New York. The second place I went to, Buddy Kaye was sitting in his office. I just knocked on doors. And I knocked on his door, and I talked with him, and we had a conversation. Then he played the demo that I had, and he liked it right away. And he promised me a recording contract within six months if I'd sign a contract with him. So that's how our association really started.\"\nWith offices at 1650 Broadway (across and just up the street from the better-known Brill Building at 1619) in midtown Manhattan, Kaye was well-equipped to manage the promising newcomer. The Tin Pan Alley veteran had written hits for Perry Como and Frank Sinatra, sometimes adapting classical melodies to his lyrics. Kaye landed Jerry Jackson a deal with Top Rank Records, a pop label of British origin that launched a New York-based U.S. arm in 1959.\nUnder the production aegis of former Coral and Dot A&R man Sonny Lester, Jerry Jackson cut four songs for Top Rank at Bell Sound Studios on West 54th Street that comprised his first two singles in 1960. \"The first thing I recorded was a song that I had wrote, 'A Chance To Prove My Love,'\" he says. \"I was a teenager when I wrote that. My sister, she and her husband were having kind of a problem. And I lent my mind to what they were going through, and that's what it came from.\" For Each One There's Someone sat on the flip; Bill Sanford, a former pianist for the Ravens, did the arrangements. Top Rank coupled the other two songs from the session, Meaning Of My Life and Jerry's Everytime You Kiss Me, as his encore.\nAfter that, Kaye and composing partner Phil Springer, who co-wrote Eartha Kitt's slinky Santa Baby and Frankie Laine's Moonlight Gambler prior to hooking up with Kaye, penned Time for Jerry Jackson and escorted him into Regent Sound on West 56th Street on April 3, 1961 to record it, along with their lighthearted charmer Se Habla Espanol.\n\"To me, it was a great record,\" says Jerry of Time. \"It was a great performance. It was a great song. Phil Springer did a fantastic job on the arrangement.\" Springer's adventurous strings cleverly replicate the ticking of a clock on the intro, his arrangement beautifully framing Jackson's vocal. \"Edwin H. Morris Publishing, they put up the money for 'Time' and 'Se Habla Espanol.' And Buddy Kaye gave them the publishing,\" says Jerry Jackson. Kaye found a good home for the promising single: Kapp Records, another pop label launched in 1954 by Dave Kapp.\n\"Every record company that I was connected with, Buddy made the contacts. He was a good person in that area,\" says Jackson. \"I know that when I went to the studio, I wasn't with Kapp Records then. That was brought to Kapp Records. Phil Skaff is the one that dealt with it at Kapp Records, and he was the one that was overly excited about Jerry Jackson. There was really a lot of excitement there.\"\nSurprisingly, Time didn't crack the U.S. hit parade. \"It stayed out for about eight weeks or 10 weeks, and they pulled it. To me, that was like not even giving the thing a chance to even catch on, especially with an unknown artist,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"With 'Time' being the A side and 'Se Habla Espanol' being the B, that should have been a hit.\" Over in England, Craig Douglas' cover, ironically out on Top Rank, crashed the Top Ten that summer.\n\"I never heard his record, and I'm not sounding conceited, but I know what I put into things that I did. And I know my performances. I doubt his performance was like mine was. Because if it was, it would have spilled over into this country, and it would have been on the charts here,\" says Jerry. \"It's a great song, but the performance made the song. Because I didn't sing the song the way the song was written. I improvised so much. The song was written straight. I didn't do it nearly that way.\"\nIt was back to Regent on July 10. Kaye and Springer were again behind the glass and wrote both sides of Jerry's Kapp encore. Springer's violin-enriched arrangement enhances the dramatic I Don't Play Games, and the seductive mid-tempo flip You Might Be There With Him strikes a similar tone. Cut at the same date was half of Jerry Jackson's third Kapp platter, Till The End Of Time, written by Kaye and Ted Mossman. It was an adaptation of a Frederic Chopin polonaise that had been crooner Perry Como's first major hit. \"It was a great song, but I think Perry Como's recording the song added a great deal to the song's success too,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"I mean, he was like the top singer at that time. Certainly it was a very great blessing for Buddy Kaye to get Perry Como to record that song, because it established Buddy Kaye and the writer that co-wrote the song with him.\n\"I learned a lot from Buddy Kaye. I remember one time we were going to have a recording session the next morning. I was living in Connecticut, so I came to New York, and we stayed in a hotel over night. And I remember at night, for some reason, he woke up, and he nudged me to wake up. And he was mentioning to me some things about some changes in a song that he had written.\n\"At another point, he mentioned to me that when you write a song, remember that if it's a success, it's going to be around a long time. And the longer it's been around, the more people are going to dissect it. So make sure when you write it, you put everything there right. That's the reason I believe he woke up that night, and he wanted to correct something that was maybe not so correct in one of the songs that we were going to record the next day. But those kinds of things I never forgot.\"\nOn October 31, when Jerry Jackson entered Fine Recording on West 57th Street, all three songs were supplied by other writers, and a new producer was in charge. Texas-born Bob Johnston hailed from a musical family: his grandmother and mother were successful composers. As Don Johnston, he'd written for rockabilly Mac Curtis before inaugurating a short-lived rock and roll recording career of his own with singles on Mercury, Chic, and Dot.\nSporting one of the lengthiest titles of its era, If I Had Only Known How To Keep Her (She Would Never Have Gone To You) was the handiwork of Clyde Otis–-best known for his hit productions on Brook Benton and Dinah Washington–-and at least officially, Johnston's wife, Joy Byers (her credits include Timi Yuro's '62 hit What's A Matter Baby [Is It Hurting You] with Otis). \"Clyde Otis gave me that song,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"Bob Johnston worked for Clyde Otis. Clyde Otis had brought him in from Texas. Clyde Otis just took him under his wing, because he liked him.\" Johnston later claimed that contractual complications forced him to sometimes write during this period under Byers' name.\nBrooklyn-born Jeff Barry would soon be one of the hottest young songscribes in the Brill Building in partnership with Ellie Greenwich, but he was still collaborating with others when he teamed with Mickey Gentile, later a Motown writer/producer, to create Jerry's You Don't Wanna Hurt Me. The cavorting strings and enticing rhythms distinguishing it and its delightful flip La Dee Dah were by Belford Hendricks. \"He was fantastic. He was an early arranger using strings, and he had imagination. I got to know him very well,\" says Jerry. \"I had a regular relationship with him. It makes a difference. You get to know people that way--not so much the arranger, but the individual.\"\nThe scene shifted to Columbia Recording Studios for Jerry Jackson's next Kapp session on April 16, 1962. Johnston was still in charge as Jerry Jackson revisited two evergreens. Kaye had written They Really Don't Know You with Norman Hawes and Tin Pan Alley legend Jimmy McHugh. Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's Blues In The Night harked back to the soundtrack of a 1941 film of the same name. Jerry's alluring update sported a tasty arrangement by Bob Mersey, who would produce Aretha Franklin at Columbia a month later. \"I didn't pick that. Bob Johnston came up with that idea,\" Jerry Jackson says. \"I didn't really pick a lot of things that I did, and that was a problem.\"\nJackson's next Kapp date on October 11 found him working with another producer. Newark, New Jersey-born Bob Crewe started out as a singer, but his future lay in writing and production. At the moment he brought Jerry Jackson into Bell Sound, Crewe was red-hot thanks to his producing the 4 Seasons' Sherry, then sitting pretty at the top of the hit parade.\n\"We used to practice at his house over on 57th Street, and I remember the cops came there one day because the people were complaining about the loudness, I guess. He gave the cops a couple of records to let them know he was connected with the 4 Seasons, so they left. They were satisfied with that,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"It was in a regular apartment building, but it was a big apartment.\"\nIt's long been erroneously claimed that Frankie Valli and the Seasons back Jerry Jackson on this date, though it's obvious that Crewe utilized a female choir instead. All four tunes were penned by Crewe and Seasons keyboardist Bob Gaudio, who wrote many of the quartet's defining '60s smashes together. Bert Keyes, a session pianist on countless New York dates, was the musical director. Two singles were culled from the date, the first pairing the stunning Wide Awake In A Dream with a dynamic She Lied. The other two atmospheric standouts, Turn Back and Gypsy Eyes, were paired as the followup. Crewe also produced a version of Turn Back by an early discovery, Kevin McQuinn, for the New York-based Diamond imprint at approximately the same time.\nBell Sound was the site for Jerry Jackson's last Kapp date on July 2, 1963. Yet another fresh producer, Allen Stanton, was brought in for the occasion, along with arranger Alan Lorber, then specializing in uptown soul (he worked with Clyde McPhatter, Chuck Jackson, and Jackie Wilson). Oddly, considering their quality, two of Jerry Jackson's three performances that day were relegated to the Kapp vaults. Lor Crane, co-writer of the exhilarating If Teardrops Were Diamonds, would go on to produce Chad & Jeremy at Columbia.\nKapp erred in stockpiling the deeply moving It Hurts Me, another Joy Byers copyright. Co-writer Charles E. Daniels' name may sound familiar; as Charlie Daniels, the rowdy fiddler would achieve country stardom with his '70s anthems The South's Gonna Do It Again and The Devil Went Down To Georgia. Daniels' website confirms that Johnston actually co-wrote It Hurts Me (he'd produced and co-written Daniels' first 45 in 1959). When Elvis waxed a very similar version of It Hurts Me the following January, RCA Victor had the sense to release it. \"I don't understand what happened. Well, he didn't really have a big one on that,\" reasons Jerry Jackson. \"It was a very good song.\"\nThe other title committed to tape that day was a departure. Bob Dylan cut his immortal Blowin' In The Wind in July of '62, though that solo version wouldn't come out until nearly a year later on 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.' The Chad Mitchell Trio actually had the first release on the song in March of '63. Peter, Paul & Mary's version, released that June, turned out to be the hit, peaking at #2 pop. Jerry Jackson tried the song on for size a full year before Sam Cooke cut it at the Copa, Lorber's luxurious arrangement blending beautifully with his gripping vocal.\n\"I don't know how they got it. I only know that when I went in the studio, that the tracks were there,\" says Jackson. \"I did that from my heart. That's why Buddy Kaye always referred to me as Mr. Heart & Soul. I was really singing from my heart. And maybe a lot of people don't understand that. I wasn't singing to commercialize everything I sang. I was singing to share with people the gift that God had given me.\"\nWhen Mercury Records hired Clyde Otis in 1958, the Mississippi native made history as the first black A&R man at a major label. After serving in the Marines during World War II, Otis jumped into New York's music industry, writing The Stroll for the Diamonds. It hit on Mercury in '57. Not long after snaring the Mercury A&R post, Otis signed his friend Benton and produced an incredible run of R&B chart-toppers for the deep-voiced crooner beginning with It's Just A Matter Of Time as well as Brook's pair of '60 duets with Dinah Washington. Hendricks' violin-enriched arrangements were integral there, along with Dinah's Otis-helmed solo smash What A Diff'rence A Day Makes. Clyde moved over to Liberty in 1961 before landing at Columbia, where he'd work with Aretha Franklin in '64.\n\"He certainly didn't come from wealth and riches, or anything like that. It was a hard climb,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"And I respect that.\" Obviously, Clyde knew a great voice when he heard it, and he asked Kaye about Jackson's availability. \"He had been watching, paying attention to me before that,\" says Jackson. Otis would produce both of Jerry's Columbia sessions.\nJamaica's beguiling ska sound was wafting around the globe. Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop was high on the pop charts when Otis tried the new rhythm out on Jerry Jackson at his first Columbia session on May 8, 1964, with Bert Keyes returning as his musical director. \"That was in at the time. That's why he tried that,\" says Jackson. \"It was an experimental thing.\" The experiment was a success, Otis and Keyes cooking up an infectious ska groove to power Jerry Jackson's revivals of Shrimp Boats (A-Comin' - There's Dancin' Tonight) and Always (written by legendary composer Irving Berlin in 1925), the two sides of his Columbia debut. Co-written by orchestra leader Paul Weston, Shrimp Boats had been a '51 pop smash for Jo Stafford.\nHey Sugarfoot, the other number Otis produced on Jerry Jackson at his first Columbia date, was a departure in its own right, the first full-scale up-tempo R&B workout Jackson had cut. Written by lyricist Larry Kusik (co-author of Jerry's La Dee Dah) and Laurence Weiss, its arrangement borrowed the shuffle beat that Marvin Gaye had utilized on a couple of his recent Motown hits. Jackson romps through the number with spirit, and there's even a brief trumpet solo.\n\"The kind of voice I had, I could do anything,\" says Jerry. \"I could do classical, I could do popular, I could do soul, I could do whatever. And I was willing to try anything.\"\nClyde reconvened the troops at Columbia's Studio A on August 3. This time Jackson brought a compositional gem of his own, Are You Glad When We're Apart. \"I wrote that song for Bobby Vee,\" says Jerry. \"Clyde Otis had connections with Liberty Records. And Bobby Vee was with that label then. And I had heard him do 'Stayin' In.' I heard him do that, and I said, 'Hey, wow! \"Are You Glad When We're Apart,\" this might work for Bobby Vee, because the song goes in that same thing that he was doing.\" Vee never got around to cutting it, leaving Jerry Jackson in perfect position to do it himself. He remembers the song selling well in England. On its plug side sat the soul-steeped Tell Her Johnny Said Goodbye, again credited to Joy Byers.\nJerry Jackson's last Columbia release was New Yorker Bobby Stevenson's lovely ballad You're Mine (And I Love You) from the same session. \"I liked that song,\" says Jerry Jackson. Otis would recycle it on Benton in 1965. Gone To Pieces, the fourth title Jackson cut that day (co-writer Jimmy Williams was Benton's collaborator on Clyde McPhatter's smash A Lover's Question), went unreleased. The vocal chorus on Jerry's Otis-helmed sessions included Dee Dee Warwick, soon a solo star but then a busy Big Apple background singer. \"Her group backed me up on several songs while I was with Columbia, because Clyde knew them pretty well,\" says Jerry Jackson.\nJackson did his share of touring. \"A whole lot of it, really,\" he says. \"From Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I went to St. Louis and Chicago and Detroit. I did shows with the Supremes in Windsor, Ontario. I did a lot of record hops, radio stations and stuff like that.\" Along the way, Jackson appeared on TV shows with Dion and Bobby Darin and cut an obscure mid-'60s LP for the British Ember label. \"It was just a flat deal. Buddy Kaye made that deal,\" he says. \"I did songs like 'The Joker.' I did that and some other songs. They didn't have live musicians in the studio. I had the tapes, the master tracks.\"\nThe glory years of Philadelphia's Cameo-Parkway Records, when Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, and Dee Dee Sharp launched dance crazes on a weekly basis, had receded when Jerry Jackson signed with Parkway. \"Buddy Kaye was instrumental in doing that,\" says Jackson. \"I was a writer on the staff, but I was getting a small salary against royalties. They paid my expenses back and forth to Philadelphia from Connecticut.\" His first Parkway single in 1966, pairing the lavishly arranged It's Rough Out There and I'm Gonna Paint A Picture, found him back in the studio with Kaye and Springer.\n\"They wrote both of those songs together. They both were produced by Phil Springer,\" says Jerry Jackson. \"I liked Phil Springer a great deal.\" Jerry's '67 Parkway followup was a rendition of the theme to Otto Preminger's film 'Hurry Sundown.' \"I didn't actually do it in the movie,\" he notes. \"Buddy Kaye and Hugo Montenegro wrote it, and I recorded it.\" Bob Hilliard and Jule Styne's How Do You Speak To An Angel adorned the other side. Parkway issued the 45 under the name of Jaxon Reese. Jaxon was obviously derived from his surname, but Reese?\n\"My mother's stepfather, who really raised her, his name was Reese. I had recorded under Jerry Jackson so much. After (the deejays) pick so many, and the things don't become monsters, it kind of questions their credibility,\" he says. \"But then, when I did come up with a new name, by that time the company was ready to go under.\"\nParkway tried issuing Jerry's violin-enriched revival of Julie London's sultry 1955 hit Cry Me A River under the Reese moniker (the spelling of his first name reverted to Jackson). Little Girl, its flip, was written by label president Al Rosenthal's wife. \"Al Rosenthal and I had a real good relationship,\" says Jackson, who laments that he really didn't feel Cry Me A River and wishes he'd had the chance to tackle Springer's touching My Child's Child instead. \"I really felt 'My Child's Child,'\" he says. \"But maybe that wasn't the time for it.\" The firm folded in '68. \"It wasn't a powerhouse company like Motown, where they had a family situation there,\" he notes. \"The way they operated was quite different. Everything was in-house at Cameo.\"\nOne casualty of Cameo-Parkway's closing was Jackson's planned album of songs by Charles Aznavour. \"I did a whole album of his songs, French songs that they translated into English,\" he says. \"I worked hard on that album. That was really a good album. He had some really good songs, some really different songs. That was really classical popular music. And that was a field that I could really feel relaxed in. I had a promise to be at Carnegie Hall with him.\"\nJerry's secular recording career was at an end. He believes missing out on major stardom was a reflection of divine will. \"God was in the picture, and every time I had this great opportunity, it appears He would step in and not let it happen. But I know why now,\" he says. \"I probably would be dead right now. Because I was out of control. I was very adventurous, very daring. I didn't mess with drugs or anything like that. Thank God for that.\"\nDuring the '70s, Jackson began building a spiritual family singing aggregation. \"At that time my daughters were very, very young,\" he says. \"I started working with them anyway.\" He formed a group, The New Movement Gospel, with daughters Patti Renai and Syndy Marie, performing at churches and other events as well as launching his Nu Day record label in New Haven, Connecticut with the group's spiritual single Wake Me Shake Me (Don't Let Me Sleep Too Late) b/w Bless Your Love Over Me. \"We got a very, very good reception every time we went,\" Jerry says. \"We did a lot of churches, and we got an invitation to come back. We weren't like a wild group. We were a group that really got the people's hearts.\" They appeared on Tampa Bay television—Jerry Jackson has lived in Florida since 1977--and he preached the message of salvation on his own radio show for several years.\nRight now, Jackson is putting the finishing touches on a new CD. \"It's going to be entitled 'My Spiritual Journey'--part one, part two, part three. Because that's what my music is going to be about,\" he says. \"I never stopped writing. When I was writing secular music, I wasn't writing out of the spiritual influence. I was just writing from my head. But now I'm writing from my spirit, and the things have much more meaning.\n\"With God's intervention, I have become a very prolific composer of sacred music,\" he concludes. \"It was a blessing in disguise when I did not achieve that great success in the secular field. It is very sobering when I reflect on many of the highly successful artists of that day who are no longer with us. In some cases, with their great success came many temptations. I witnessed firsthand the wild living and worldly attitudes of some of them, and this may have led to their demise. Yet God has allowed me to live and to keep my voice and gain the ability to minister to others through my music. Over the years, I have come to accept God's will for my life, and I have found great joy and peace in following his plan.\"\nBill Dahl\nSpecial thanks to Jerry and Barbara Jackson.\nWikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_in_the_Night\nInternet Movie Database website: www.imdb.com\nThe Space Age Pop Music Page website: http://www.spaceagepop.com/index.htm\nOfficial Charlie Daniels Band website: http://www.charliedaniels.com/bio_charlie.htm\nNew York Times, January 18, 2008: 'Clyde Otis, 83, Executive and Songwriter, Dies,' by Peter Keepnews\n'Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era,' by Ken Emerson (New York: Viking, 2005)\n'The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia,' by Michael Gray (New York & London: Continuum, 2006)\nMore information about Jerry Jackson - BCD15481 on Wikipedia.org\nJerry Jackson: Shrimp Boats A-Comin' - There's Dancin' Tonight Art-Nr.: BCD15481\nJerry Jackson was an R&B-pop singer in New York in the early 1960s, and his New York ska version of 'Shrimp Boats' has become a cult club favorite in Europe. Elvis fans will be interested in Jerry Jackson's original version of 'It Hurts...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1133681"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7091032862663269,"wiki_prob":0.2908967137336731,"text":"The Straight Shift, #39: Everything You Need to Know About Vehicle Recalls\nIn this episode of \"The Straight Shift\", The Car Chick talks all about recalls. What constitutes a recall on a car? How are recalls issued? How do you know if your car has an open recall? What should you do if there is a recall on your car? She also tells the truth about two of the largest and most expensive recalls in history.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line416247"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8897551894187927,"wiki_prob":0.8897551894187927,"text":"ILMAT IV\n4. International Conference on Ionic Liquid-based Materials\nSantiago de Compostela, October 24th to 27th, 2017\nOrganizing and Scientific Committees\nInvited Speakers & Program\nAbstracts submission & Registration\nConference Venue, Travel & Accommodation\nLynden-Bell Award\nLynden-Bell award is named after the British chemist Ruth Marion Lynden-Bell (7 December 1937), fellow of the Royal Society and emeritus professor of Queen's University Belfast and the University of Cambridge. The prize is the recognition of a working life trajectory in ionic liquids. The nominations were be done by the members of the honor committee.\nWe are pleased to announce that ILMAT's Honor Committee has awarded the 1st Lynden-Bell award to Prof. Alexei Kornyshev in recognition of his outstanding career in the field of ionic systems within condensed matter theoretical chemical physics. The award will be presented personally by Prof. Lynden-Bell to Prof. Kornyshev during the conference in October when he will give an award lecture. Entitled: New Horizons in Ionics: Electrochemical ‘Metamaterials’\nAlexei Kornyshev graduated in 1970 from the Moscow Institute of Engineering Physics with a degree in theoretical nuclear physics. He matured as a scientist at the Frumkin Institute of Electrochemistry (Acad.Sci.) in Moscow, where he did there his PhD (1974) with Prof. R.R.Dogonadze in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics and DSc in Chemistry (1986), having worked there till 1991. In 1992 he was invited to Research Centre Jülich, Germany, where he then worked for 10 years leading a Theory Division in the Institute for Materials and Processes in Energy Systems of Research Centre “Juelich”, Germany, a position combined later with a Professorship of Theoretical Physics at the University of Düsseldorf. In 2002 he joined Imperial College London where he holds a chair of Chemical Physics since then.\nHis interests span widely in theoretical condensed matter chemical physics and its application to electrochemistry, nanoscience, biological physics and energy research, using methods of theoretical physics and computer simulations, and working in close collaboration with experimentalists. An author of >250 original, refereed papers published in physics and chemistry journals, and ≈30 monographic/feature articles and book-chapters, he is known by his works in the theory of solvation; solid-liquid and liquid-liquid electrochemical interfaces (including functionalised and electrovariable interfaces); electron and proton transfer in complex environment (including membranes and complex electrodes) and single\nmolecules; physical theory of fuel cells; interaction, recognition and assembly of biomolecules, DNA biophysics. In the area of the latter he has performed a series of works published together with S.Leikin (NIH) known as Kornyshev and Leikin theory, developed further with his co-workers, D.J.(O’)Lee and A.Wynveen. Room temperature ionic liquids at electrified interfaces and in nanoconfinement and their applications to supercapacitors and electroactuators is an important direction of his current research, where since 2007 he has published a series of seminal papers, with M.V.Fedorov, S. Kondrat, R.Qiao, G.Feng and others. In 2010 together with Prof. M. Urbakh (TAU) and Prof. M.Flatte (Univ. Iowa) he has launched “electrovariable nanoplasmonics”, and continues working on the theory of self-assembled electrochemically controlled nanoplasmonic systems since then, cooperating on experimental front with Prof. J. Edel and Prof. A. Kucernak (Imperial College). Together with Prof.Urbakh (TAU) and Prof. F. Bresme he works on the theory of nanoscale friction with ionic liquid lubricants.\nThrough his research career he has led many international projects with groups in USA, China, Germany, Denmark, Israel, France, Canada, Russia, and Estonia. He was a recipient of 1991 Humboldt Prize in Physical Chemistry/Electrochemistry, 2003 Royal Society Wolfson Award, 2003 Schönbein Silver Medal (“for outstanding contributions to understanding the fundamentals of fuel cells”), 2007 Barker Electrochemistry Medal (“for his pioneering works and outstanding achievements in the application of modern theory of condensed matter to electrochemical systems”), and 2010 Interdisciplinary Prize, Medal and Lectureship of the RSC (“for his many outstanding contributions at the interfaces of chemistry with both physics and with biology”). He is an elected/appointed Fellow of 5 learned societies: IUPAC, Institute of Physics, Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Biology, International Society of Electrochemistry, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science. He is a senior Editorial Panellist of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), and is a Member of Editorial Board of Journal of Physics Condensed Matter (IOP) and Advisory Boards of ChemElectroChem (Wiley) and Current Opinion in Electrochemistry. He is an appointed Advisory Professor of HUST, Wuhan, China, with his research there focussed on novel nanomaterials and scenarios for sustainable energy.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line568384"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5447884202003479,"wiki_prob":0.4552115797996521,"text":"Groups: Data Rescue Events Formats: JSON ZIP\nElectricity Detailed Survey-Level Files\nThe Form EIA-861 and Form EIA-861S (Short Form) data files include information such as peak load, generation, electric purchases, sales, revenues, customer counts and...\ntext/css\napplication/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12\nGPM_3IMERGDF: GPM (IMERG) Final Precipitation L3 1 day 0.1 degree x 0.1 degre...\nSatellite collected precipitation data that feeds into a climate prediction model and cloud classification model. These are provided to both the Climate Prediction Center (CPC)...\nNEPAssist | National Environmental Policy Act | US EPA\nEJSCREEN allows users to access high-resolution environmental and demographic information for locations in the United States, and compare their selected locations to the rest of...\nAlternative Fuels Data Center\nData related to alternative fuels and advanced vehicles. Internet Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/2019*/http://www.afdc.energy.gov/data_download/\nForm EIA-411 Data\nThe EIA 411 report, aka \"Coordinated Bulk Power Supply and Demand Program Report\" collects electric reliability information from the Nation’s power system planners about the...\nSciTech Connect: Your connection to science, technology, and engineering rese...\nSciTech Connect includes technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, patents and patent applications, multimedia, software, and data...\nEIA Open Data\nThe U.S. Energy Information Administration is committed to enhancing the value of its free and open data by making it available through an Application Programming Interface...\nEIA Data Tools & Models\nThe US Energy Information Administration is committed to making its data available through an Application Programming Interface (API) to better serve our customers. APIs allows...\nOpen Data Catalogue\nThe mission of the Energy Department is to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental and nuclear challenges through transformative science...\nEnergy.gov Congressional Testimony\nThe Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs is dedicated to its mission of providing guidance on legislative and policy issues, informing constituencies on energy...\nRenewable & Alternative Fuels\nFind statistics on renewable energy consumption by source type, electric capacity and electricity generation from renewable sources, biomass and alternative fuels. Internet...\nMonthly Energy Review\nA publication of recent and historical energy statistics. This publication includes statistics on total energy production, consumption, and trade; energy prices; overviews of...\nSea Level Rise and Storm Surge Effects on Energy Assets\nThe U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability (OE) undertook this study to assess the potential sea level rise (SLR) and storm...\nQualified Census Tract\nThe Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is a tax incentive intended to increase the availability of low income housing. Section 42 provides an income tax credit to owners of...\nDepartment of Housing and Urban Development GIS Data\nGIS data for the Department of Housing and Urban Development Internet Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://egis-hud.opendata.arcgis.com/\nAmerican Housing Survey\nThe AHS is sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The survey is the most comprehensive national housing...\nGPM_3IMERGM: GPM L3 IMERG Final 1 month 0.1 degree x 0.1 degree precipitation...\nThese are provided to both the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) Morphing-Kalman Filter (CMORPH-KF) Lagrangian time interpolation scheme and the Precipitation Estimation from...\nEarth Images | NASA\nNASA monitors Earth’s vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to...\nCLARREO Presentations\nClimate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO). CLARREO is \"a climate-focused mission that will become a key element of the climate observing system.\" The...\nUnited States Census Bureau\nUS Census data since 1980.\nUnited States Envir... (40)\nNational Oceanic an... (38)\nUnited States Depar... (17)\nNational Aeronautic... (9)\nGeostationary Opera... (1)\nLaboratory for Atmo... (1)\nNC Climate Office (1)\nShow More Organizations\nData Rescue Events (116)\nGOES satellites (6)\nTXT (87)\ntext/x-python (15)\nPNG (11)\ntext/css (6)\napplication/msaccess (2)\n7z (1)\napplication/vnd.ms-... (1)\napplication/x-ruby (1)\napplication/x-sql (1)\napplication/x-trash (1)\nimage/vnd.microsoft... (1)\npdf, jpg, html (1)\npdf, pptx (1)\ntext/x-c++hdr (1)\ntext/x-c++src (1)\ntext/x-chdr (1)\nvideo/mp4 (1)\nvideo/quicktime (1)\nCreative Commons At... (51)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1007263"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.587807834148407,"wiki_prob":0.412192165851593,"text":"Transcript - Sky News Saturday Agenda\nSenator the Hon Mathias Cormann\nMinister for Finance\nPROOF COPY E & OE\nDate: Saturday, 31 May 2014\nBudget 2014, Science Funding, Medical Research Future Fund\nDAVID LIPSON: Good day, welcome to the program, I'm David Lipson. Australia has long punched above its weight in science, you may already know we invented Wi-Fi, polymer bank notes and also developed the world's first effective flu treatment, but it's not necessarily thanks to science being well funded. We spend about half a percent of GDP on science research, the OECD is almost double that 0.8 per cent. South Korea, USA and Denmark of course spend much more and even though the Budget announcement of a Medical Research Future Fund paid for by the GP co-payment is being widely applauded, other areas of science are suffering budget cuts. There are fears that it will have long-lasting consequences, on the program today, we will speak to three of the country's top scientists to hear their concerns about the future of Australian Science, but first to the Finance Minister, Senator Mathias Cormann, who joins us from Perth, thanks for your time today, especially since science is not your portfolio, we don't have a dedicated Science Minister, those responsibilities were of course folded into the Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane's responsibilities', but we do appreciate your time\nMATHIAS CORMANN: Who is doing an outstanding job in that area by the way,\nDAVID LIPSON: So why was funding cut to the CSIRO in this Budget and other programmes as well?\nMATHIAS CORMANN: Well David firstly when you are confronted with $123 billion in deficits over the forward estimates as we were, then clearly the only way you can repair the Budget sustainably is by spending less into the future. Now having said that we are still spending significant amounts of taxpayers' dollars on science and on organisations like the CSIRO. In fact $4.3 billion is invested in science and research over the forward estimates, including $3 billion for the CSIRO, $745 million this year and $3 billion over the forward estimates. The savings that we have achieved, or that we are targeting from the CSIRO are about 3 per cent of their total funding. When you are facing the sort of Budget mess that we have inherited, the only way that you can get that back on track is by asking everyone to make a contribution. If we didn't also ask organisations like the CSIRO to contribute, then others would have to carry a larger part of the burden, like pensioners, lower income earners and the like and that wasn't acceptable to us. We thought that it was important to spread the effort to repair the Budget as fairly and as equitably and as broadly as possible.\nDAVID LIPSON: I do commend the Government for setting up the Medical Research Future Fund, which will be worth some $20 billion once it really gets going in a few years' time, but is it incoherent as your Liberal colleague Dennis Jensen has suggested to be, if you like, ring-fencing one area of medical research, of research, putting a boundary around medical research, funding it well, while cutting other areas of science. Because their needs to be cross-pollination when it comes to research.\nMATHIAS CORMANN: David it is not incoherent at all. Dennis Jensen is a valued colleague of mine and he does understand science, but perhaps he needs to have a closer look at the financing arrangements. What we are doing with the Medical Research Future Fund is directing savings from recurrent spending in Health as well as revenue from the price signal to a capital fund that builds up over time, which incidentally helps us reduce our net debt position and only our earnings, our net earnings from that fund, will be directed into medical research into the future, which will start at about $20million in 2015-16 and build up to about $1 billion in additional funding for medical research into the future year on year. The key here is, we are putting a structure together that makes that doubling of funding for medical research self-sustaining because only the net earnings from the Medical Research Future Fund will be directed into that research. So what it means is that we have a sustainable basis from which to effectively double the level of investment into medical research into the future. The way we are doing it is by saving money, by spending less on a recurrent basis today and by channelling the revenue from the price signal in relation to access to medical services into that fund. That fund then builds up which actually has a positive impact on our balance sheet as it does that and we are only investing the earnings from that fund. It is a very smart way to ensure that increased funding for research is put onto a sustainable footing for the future.\nDAVID LIPSON: In other areas of research, does the Government believe that private investment and philanthropy perhaps needs to step up and support Australian research?\nMATHIAS CORMANN: We do think that there ought to be support for research from all sources, not just from the public sector, but also from the private sector. Obviously if you can attract private sector investment it does have beneficial impacts in terms of improving the discipline and the focus and I guess the commercial potential of research that is conducted. So absolutely we do believe that, but the broader point is really in the sort of Budget situation that we are in, you really have no choice but to take a more realistic view of what is affordable right now. There are a lot of meritorious causes that in an ideal world we would like to be able to pay for, but at the end of the day you can't keep spending money that you haven't got without getting yourself into trouble over time.\nDAVID LIPSON: Okay we will return to science with our panel a little later in the program, but Mathias Cormann just while I have you, a few other questions more generally on the Budget, since we spoke a fortnight ago, are you any more confident that the government will be able to pass through the $21 billion of savings measures that Labor has lined up against? Do you think they will ultimately all pass through?\nMATHIAS CORMANN: Well let's see. I can't obviously predict what the Labor Party will eventually do, as I can't predict what other parties represented in the Senate will do, but what I can note though is that when we last met the Labor Party was still saying they would be opposed, they would not support our Temporary Budget Repair Levy. Now they are supporting our Temporary Budget Repair Levy, because clearly they have accepted and they have realised, on reflection and having listened to our arguments I suspect, that it was the fair and appropriate way to go in the context of the budget mess that we have inherited from Labor.\nDAVID LIPSON: Clive Palmer for example has hardened up his position, he says that he won't even talk to the Government.\nMATHIAS CORMANN: All we can do David is to continue to explain the decisions that we have made, the reasons for those decisions and we are doing that calmly and carefully day in day out. There is no alternative to the Budget that we have delivered. We did face a budget in very bad shape. Even worse, we faced a spending growth trajectory that was completely unsustainable and that would have hurt the economy, hurt jobs over time if we hadn't taken corrective action. We are taking corrective action. We are doing it in the fairest possible way and at the end of the day people in the Senate will have to form their own judgements. But we will be putting the Budget to the Senate in the way that it was delivered.\nDAVID LIPSON: The Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, is in the headlines again today over comments that he said to the non-government education sector, he said; \"It is the Prime Minister's view that the Government has a particular responsibility for non-government schooling, that we don't have for State Government schooling.\" What does that mean?\nMATHIAS CORMANN: Well it is the Prime Minister's view and it is the Government's view that we have an important responsibility for both government and non-government schools. If you look at our track record, we are investing $1.2 billion more in schools over the forward estimates than the previous government did. Because in the dying days of the previous Labor Government, they ripped $1.2 billion out of both government and non-government schools in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, which we have put back in. Without any doubt, we have a significant responsibility for both government and non-government schools, but bearing in mind, government schools in Australia under our system of government are run by State Governments. They are State schools and that is very relevant in this context.\nDAVID LIPSON: So does the Government believe that ultimately State's should take full control, not just running but funding public education?\nMATHIAS CORMANN: State Governments are fully in control of running State schools. What we have already said is that in the context of the Federation White Paper, their ought to be a conversation about making sure that State Governments are truly responsible and accountable for their areas of responsibility. We do think that in our current federal system of government there is too much overlap in responsibilities, which dilutes proper lines of accountability, that there is too much waste and duplication as a result and that there are opportunities to improve our broader governance arrangements, which ultimately would help deliver better outcomes at a lower cost.\nDAVID LIPSON: Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, we will have to leave it there. Thanks for your time.\nMATHIAS CORMANN:Always good to talk to you.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line599231"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8617095351219177,"wiki_prob":0.8617095351219177,"text":"BadBadNotGood collaborate with Little Dragon on new track “Tried”: Stream\nAnother unreleased song from the guest-heavy sessions for 2016's IV\nLittle Dragon and BadBadNotGood, photos by Philip Cosores\nBadBadNotGood brought a lot of guest collaborators into the studio with them while recording their 2016 album IV. Apparently they didn’t get their fill of working with other artists, however, as they’ve steadily been releasing more collabs ever since. Last year saw them finish their “Confessions” trilogy alongside Colin Stetson with “Confessions Pt III”, as well as reunite with Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring for “I Don’t Know”. For the latest team up, they’ve called on Little Dragon for the new track “Tried”.\nThe soulfully smooth composition is a perfect bed for Yukimi Nagano’s honeyed vocals to lay down over. She somehow sounds sweet even as she sings of losing control of her emotions. Take a listen below.\nBBNG recently appeared on Kali Uchis’ debut album, Isolation, and covered Kanye’s “Ghost Town” while Kid Cudi walked at Paris Fashion Week. Little Dragon, meanwhile, has a writing credit on “Normal” from Eminem’s Kamikaze.\nCollaborative Track\nIndie Music Artists\nVampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Rashida Jones welcome first child\nRobyn finally releases “Honey”, the title track to her forthcoming album: Stream","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line966885"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7650700807571411,"wiki_prob":0.7650700807571411,"text":"The Maryland Campaign of September 1862. Volume III\nShepherdstown Ford and the End of the Campaign\nEzra A. Carman\nThe Battle of Shepherdstown and the End of the Campaign is the third and final volume of Ezra Carman's magisterial The Maryland Campaign of September 1862.\nThomas Clemens\n3 maps, 3 images\nShepherdstown Ford and the End of the Campaign is the third and final volume of Ezra Carman’s magisterial The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, superbly edited and annotated by Dr. Tom Clemens.\nThe battle of Antietam was bloody and horrific, but as Carman makes clear, he did not believe it was the decisive battle of the sprawling 1862 campaign. Generals Robert E. Lee and George B. McClellan intended to continue fighting after Sharpsburg, but the battle of Shepherdstown Ford (September 19-20) forced them to abandon their goals and end the campaign. Carman was one of the few who gave this smaller engagement its due importance by detailing the disaster that befell the 118th Pennsylvania Infantry, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill’s success in repulsing the Union advance, and the often overlooked foray of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry to seize the Potomac River ford at Williamsport.\nCarman includes an invaluable statistical study of the casualties in the various battles of the entire Maryland Campaign, and covers President Lincoln’s decision to relieve General McClellan of command on November 7. He also explores the relations between the president and McClellan before and after the Maryland Campaign, which he appended to his original manuscript. His thorough examination of the controversy about McClellan’s role in the aftermath of Second Manassas campaign will surprise some and discomfort others, as might his insightful narrative about McClellan’s reluctance to commit General Franklin’s corps to aid Maj. Gen. John Pope’s army at Manassas. Carman concludes his account with an executive summary of the entire campaign.\nThis magisterial study concludes with Dr. Clemens’ invaluable bibliographical dictionary, a genealogical goldmine of personal information about the soldiers, politicians, and diplomats who had an impact on shaping Carman’s manuscript. While many names will be familiar to readers, others upon whom Carman relied for creating his campaign narrative are as obscure to us today as they were during the war.\nThe Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Vol. III: The Battle of Shepherdstown and the End of the Campaign, concludes the most comprehensive and detailed account of the campaign ever produced. Jammed with firsthand accounts, personal anecdotes, detailed footnotes, maps, and photos, this long-awaited study will be appreciated as Civil War history at its finest.\nEzra Ayres Carman was born in Oak Tree, New Jersey, on February 27, 1834, and educated at Western Military Academy in Kentucky. He fought with New Jersey organizations throughout the Civil War, mustering out as a brevet brigadier general. He was appointed to the Antietam National Cemetery Board of Trustees and later to the Antietam Battlefield Board in 1894. Carman also served on the Chattanooga-Chickamauga Battlefield Commission. He died in 1909 on Christmas day and was buried just below the Custis-Lee mansion in Arlington Cemetery. Thomas G. Clemens earned his doctoral degree at George Mason University, where he studied under Maryland Campaign historian Dr. Joseph L. Harsh. Tom has published a wide variety of magazine articles and book reviews, has appeared in several documentary programs, and is a licensed tour guide at Antietam National Battlefield. An instructor at Hagerstown Community College, he also helped found and is the current president of Save Historic Antietam Foundation, Inc., a preservation group dedicated to saving historic properties.\nThomas G. Clemens earned his doctoral degree at George Mason University, where he studied under Maryland Campaign historian Dr. Joseph L. Harsh. Tom has published a wide variety of magazine articles and book reviews, has appeared in several documentary programs, and is a licensed tour guide at Antietam National Battlefield. A retired professor from Hagerstown Community College, he also helped found and is the current president of Save Historic Antietam Foundation, Inc., a preservation group dedicated to saving historic properties.\n\"Exhaustively researched, and enhanced with extensive appendices including an exhaustive biographical dictionary covering all three volumes, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862 Volume III: Shepherdstown Ford and the End of the Campaign is part of a three-volume series, including \"Volume I: South Mountain\" (9781932714814) and \"Volume II: Antietam\" (9781611211146). The entire set is an in-depth, meticulously researched scholarly analysis, worthy of the highest recommendation for public and college library Civil War collections.\"\n- Midwest Book Review\n“This third installment concludes the publication of Ezra Carman’s manuscript. The Bible of the campaign, with Tom Clemens’ superb annotations and some 1,500 biographical profiles related to Antietam, is indispensable and required reading for every student of the American Civil War.”\n- Ted Alexander, Historian (retired), Antietam National Battlefield, and author of Antietam: The Bloodiest Day\nThe Maryland Campaign of September 1862. Volume III Reviews\nThe National Tribune Civil War Index. 3-Volume Set\nFlames Beyond Gettysburg\nScott L. Mingus\nResisting Sherman\nFrom Texas to Rome\nFred L. Walker\nSickles at Gettysburg\nJames A. Hessler\nThe Carnage was Fearful\nMichael Block\nBattle of Big Bethel\nJ. Michael Cobb, Edward B. Hicks, Wythe Holt\nThe 9th Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, 1861-1865","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line339494"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.700613260269165,"wiki_prob":0.700613260269165,"text":"Whitfield, an agricultural village in the King River valley in north-east Victoria, is 47 km south of Wangaratta and 170 km from Melbourne. The village is immediately west of the flood prone King River and has state forest to its west and east. Agriculture extends along several stream valleys which are tributaries of the King River.\nThe name is probably a contraction of Whitefields, which was a pastoral run taken up by a William Clarke in 1845 (not William ‘Big’ Clarke, Port Phillip's most famous squatter). Although there are several Whitefields and Whitfields in British gazetteers, the most likely origin of the name was seasonal white groundcover flowers at Whitfield.\nThe land along the King River was suitable for growing many types of crops, and tobacco and hops were among the most productive. Schools were opened along the Whitfield part of the valley during the 1880s. A church was opened at Whitfield in 1887 and a narrow gauge railway line from Wangaratta to Whitfield ran from 1899 until 1953. A mechanics' institute and hall were opened in 1902 and within a few years a government tobacco research farm was transferred to Whitfield from Edi. In 1911 the Victorian municipal directory described Whitfield as a favourite tourist resort in the beautiful and fertile King Valley. It had a mechanic’s institute, two churches, sawmills, a cordial factory, a coffee palace and a hotel.\nWhitfield, along with Cheshunt, King Valley and Edi, became one of the four localities in the King Valley area which grew tobacco. Large numbers of Italian, Yugoslav and Spanish farmers or sharefarmers entered the tobacco growing industry during the postwar years. In King Valley, 10 km north of Whitfield, 82% of the farms were owned by Italians in 1978.\nSince the late 1970s tobacco growing has declined. (Total farm areas in Victoria fell from 3436 hectares (1978) to 1240 hectares (1994).) Some land has been taken for wine grape growing. Brown Brothers, Milawa, have expanded their vineyards to King Valley and Whitlands. Tobacco farmers have diversified into chestnuts, hops, berries, timber veneer trees and grazing.\nWhitfield has a district school (33 pupils, 2014), three churches, two general stores, a community health centre, a golf course, a hotel and a caravan park. It is at the junction of roads from Mansfield and the upper reaches of the King River, and attracts campers and tourists. The memorial hall and an avenue of honour are on the main road.\nIts census populations have been:\nWhitfield 1901 97\nWhitfield and environs 2006 281\n2011* 421\n*the census area in 2011 was larger than in 2006\nGraham Jones, Memories of Oxley, Wangaratta, 1995\nJohn E. Thompson, Focus on ... Victoria’s narrow gauge Whitfield line, Belgrave, 2002\n<< Whitehorse City >>\n<< Whittington >>\nCrossing King River, Whitfield, 1907\nWhitfield Uniting Church, 2006\nA field of tobacco, Healesville, 1908\nButtons Falls, Whitfield near Wangaratta","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line862780"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.995978593826294,"wiki_prob":0.995978593826294,"text":"Jay-Z Says “We Are The World” Shouldn’t Have…\nJay-Z’s absence from the “We Are The World” remake did not go unnoticed. So why did the Jiggaman elect not…\nVIDEO: We Are The World 25\nThe long awaited remake of the 1985 charity song “We Are The World” premiered tonight, February 12th, during the opening…\nRappers Get Major Shine On ‘We Are The…\nThe full artist roster for the “We Are The World 25 For Haiti) was unveiled yesterday (February 10) and a…\nCommon Says Leave “We Are The World” Alone…\nJanet To Sing MJ's Part On \"We Are…\nAccording to MTV.com, not only will Pop icon Janet Jackson feature on the soon-to-be-released ‘We Are The World’ remake, she…\nRappers, Singers Start 'We Are The World' Remake\nApproximately 100 celebrity singers descended upon Henson Recording Studios on February 1st in Los Angeles, to record an updated version…\nCelebs Team Up For \"We Are The World\"…\nCelebs like Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Wyclef, Jennifer Hudson, Gladys Knight, Akon, Snoop, Pink, Mya, Brandy, Robin Thicke, Tyrese, Trey…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line858820"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8580893874168396,"wiki_prob":0.8580893874168396,"text":"Article Two of the United States Constitution\nTitle: Article Two of the United States Constitution\nSubject: List of clauses of the United States Constitution, WikiProject U.S. Congress/Cleanup listing, Third Amendment to the United States Constitution, United States Constitution, Unitary executive theory\nCollection: Articles of the United States Constitution, Executive Branch of the United States Government\nArticle Two of the United States Constitution creates the executive branch of the government, consisting of the President, the Vice President, and other executive officers and staffers appointed by the President, including the Cabinet. Pursuant to Article Two, the executive power of the federal government is vested in the President.\nSection 1: President and Vice President 1\nClause 1: Executive Power 1.1\nClause 2: Method of choosing electors 1.2\nClause 3: Electors 1.3\nClause 4: Election day 1.4\nClause 5: Qualifications for office 1.5\nClause 6: Vacancy and disability 1.6\nClause 7: Salary 1.7\nClause 8: Oath or affirmation 1.8\nSection 2: Presidential powers 2\nClause 1: Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons 2.1\nClause 2: Advice and Consent Clause 2.2\nTreaties 2.2.1\nAppointments 2.2.2\nClause 3: Recess appointments 2.3\nSection 3: Presidential responsibilities 3\nClause 1: State of the Union 3.1\nClause 2: Making recommendations to Congress 3.2\nClause 3: Calling Congress into extraordinary session; adjourning Congress 3.3\nClause 4: Receiving foreign representatives 3.4\nClause 5: Caring for the faithful execution of the law 3.5\nClause 6: Officers' commissions 3.6\nSection 4: Impeachment 4\nSection 1: President and Vice President\nClause 1: Executive Power\nObama signing legislation at the Resolute desk\nThe executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows[1]\nClause one is a \"vesting clause,\" similar to other clauses in Articles One and Three, but it vests the power to execute the instructions of Congress, which has the exclusive power to make laws; \"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.\"\nThe head of the Executive Branch is the President of the United States. The President and the Vice President are elected every four years.\nClause 2: Method of choosing electors\nUnder the U.S. Constitution the President and Vice President are chosen by Electors, under a constitutional grant of authority delegated to the legislatures of the several states and the District of Columbia (see Bush v. Gore). The constitution reserves the choice of the precise manner for creating Electors to the will of the state legislatures. It does not define or delimit what process a state legislature may use to create its state college of Electors. In practice, the state legislatures have generally chosen to create Electors through an indirect popular vote, since the 1820s.\nIn an indirect popular vote, it is the names of the electors who are on the ballot to be elected. Typically, their names are aligned under the name of the candidate for President and Vice President, that they, the Elector, have pledged they will support. It is fully understood by the voters and the Electors themselves that they are the representative \"stand-ins\" for the individuals to whom they have pledged to cast their electoral college ballots to be President and Vice President. In some states, in past years, this pledge was informal, and Electors could still legally cast their electoral ballot for whomever they chose. More recently, state legislatures (exercising their constitutional authority to do so) have mandated in law that Electors shall cast their electoral college ballot for the Presidential Candidate to whom they are pledged. The constitutionality of such mandates is uncertain.\nEach state chooses as many Electors as it has Representatives and Senators representing it in Congress. Under the Twenty-third Amendment, the District of Columbia may choose no more electors than the state with the lowest number of electoral votes. No Senators, Representatives or federal officers may become Electors.\nClause 3: Electors\nThe Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse [sic] by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse [sic] the President. But in chusing [sic] the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse [sic] from them by Ballot the Vice President.\n(Note: This procedure was changed by the Twelfth Amendment in 1804.)\nIn modern practice, each state chooses its electors in popular elections. Once chosen, the electors meet in their respective states to cast ballots for the President and Vice President. Originally, each elector cast two votes for President; at least one of the individuals voted for had to be from a state different from the elector's. The individual with the majority of votes became President, and the runner-up became Vice President. In case of a tie, the House of Representatives could choose one of the tied candidates; if no person received a majority, then the House could again choose one of the five with the greatest number of votes. When the House voted, each state delegation cast one vote, and the vote of a majority of states was necessary to choose a President. If second-place candidates were tied, then the Senate broke the tie. A quorum of two-thirds applied in both Houses: at least one member from each of two-thirds of the states in the House of Representatives, and at least two-thirds of the Senators in the Senate. This procedure was followed in 1801 after the electoral vote produced a tie, and nearly resulted in a deadlock in the House.\nThe Twelfth Amendment introduced a number of important changes to the procedure. Now, Electors do not cast two votes for President; rather, they cast one vote for President and another for Vice President. In case no Presidential candidate receives a majority, the House chooses from the top three (not five, as with Vice Presidential candidates). The Amendment also requires the Senate to choose the Vice President from those with the two highest figures if no Vice Presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral votes (rather than only if there's a tie for second for President). It also stipulates that to be the Vice President, a person must be qualified to be the President.\nClause 4: Election day\nCertificate for the vote for Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler for the State of Louisiana\nThe Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.\nCongress sets a national Election Day. Currently, Electors are chosen on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, in the year before the President's term is to expire. The Electors cast their votes on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December of that year. Thereafter, the votes are opened and counted by the Vice President, as President of the Senate, in a joint session of Congress.\nClause 5: Qualifications for office\nBeginning of the clause in the 1787 document\nSection 1 of Article Two of the United States Constitution sets forth the eligibility requirements for serving as president of the United States:\nBy the time of their inauguration, the President and Vice President must be:\nnatural born citizens\nat least thirty-five years old\ninhabitants of the United States for at least fourteen years.\nIn this 1944 poster, Franklin Roosevelt (left) successfully campaigned for a fourth term. He was the only President who served more than two terms.\nEligibility for holding the office of President and Vice-President were modified by subsequent amendments:\nThe Twelfth Amendment (1804) requires the Vice-President must meet all of the qualifications of being a President.\nThe Twenty-second Amendment (1951) prevents a President from being elected more than twice.\nClause 6: Vacancy and disability\n1888 illustration of Vice President Tyler receiving the news of President Harrison's death from Chief Clerk of the State Department Fletcher Webster.\nThe wording of this clause caused much controversy at the time it was first used. When William Henry Harrison died in office, a debate arose over whether the Vice President would become President, or if he would just inherit the powers, thus becoming an Acting President. Harrison's Vice President, John Tyler, believed that he had the right to become President. However, many Senators argued that he only had the right to assume the powers of the presidency long enough to call for a new election. Because the wording of the clause is so vague, it was impossible for either side to prove its point. Tyler ended up taking the Oath of Office and became President, setting a precedent that is followed to this day. Tyler's precedent made it possible for Vice Presidents Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson to ascend to the presidency (Gerald Ford took office after the passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment).\nJohn Tyler's precedent established that if the President's office becomes vacant due to death, resignation or disqualification, the Vice President becomes President. The Congress may provide for a line of succession beyond the Vice President. The Presidential Succession Act establishes the order as: the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President pro tempore of the Senate and then the fifteen Cabinet Secretaries in order of that Department's establishment.\nThe Twenty-fifth Amendment explicitly states that when the Presidency is vacant, then the Vice President becomes President. This provision applied at the time Gerald Ford succeeded to the Presidency. In case of a Vice Presidential vacancy, the Amendment permits the President to appoint, with the approval of both Houses of Congress, a new Vice President. Furthermore, the Amendment provides that the President, or the Vice President and Cabinet, can declare the President unable to discharge his duties, in which case the Vice President becomes Acting President. If the declaration is done by the Vice President and Cabinet, the Amendment permits the President to take control back, unless the Vice President and Cabinet challenge the President and two-thirds of both Houses vote to sustain the findings of the Vice President and Cabinet. If the declaration is done by the President, he may take control back without risk of being overridden by the Congress.\nClause 7: Salary\nThe President's salary, currently $400,000 a year, must remain constant throughout the President's term. The President may not receive other compensation from either the federal or any state government.\nClause 8: Oath or affirmation\nPresident Barack Obama being administered the oath of office by Chief Justice John Roberts for the second time, on January 21, 2009.\nBefore he enters the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—\"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.\"\nAccording to the Joint Congressional Committee on Presidential Inaugurations, [2] though this has been disputed. There are no contemporaneous sources for this fact, and no eyewitness sources to Washington's first inaugural mention the phrase at all—including those that transcribed what he said for his oath.\nAlso, the President-elect's name is typically added after the \"I\", for example, \"I, George Washington, do....\" Normally, the Chief Justice of the United States administers the oath. It is sometimes asserted that the oath bestows upon the President the power to do whatever is necessary to \"preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.\" Andrew Jackson, while vetoing an Act for the renewal of the charter of the national bank, implied that the President could refuse to execute statutes that he felt were unconstitutional. In suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, President Abraham Lincoln claimed that he acted according to the oath. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. Finally, Andrew Johnson's counsel referred to the theory during his impeachment trial. Otherwise, few have seriously asserted that the oath augments the President's powers.\nThe Vice President also has an oath of office, but it is not mandated by the Constitution and is prescribed by statute. Currently, the Vice Presidential oath is the same as that for Members of Congress.\nI do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.[3]\nSection 2: Presidential powers\nIn the landmark decision Nixon v. General Services Administration Justice William Rehnquist, afterwards the Chief Justice, declared in his dissent the need to \"fully describe the preeminent position that the President of the United States occupies with respect to our Republic. Suffice it to say that the President is made the sole repository of the executive powers of the United States, and the powers entrusted to him as well as the duties imposed upon him are awesome indeed.\"\nClause 1: Command of military; Opinions of cabinet secretaries; Pardons\nPresident Franklin Roosevelt as Commander in Chief, with his military subordinates during World War II.\nLeft to right: General Douglas MacArthur, President Franklin Roosevelt, Admiral William D. Leahy, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.\nThe Constitution vests the President with Executive Power. That power reaches its zenith when wielded to protect national security.[4] And federal courts in the United States must pay proper deference to the Executive in assessing the threats that face the nation.[5] The President is the military's commander-in-chief; however Article One gives Congress and not the President the exclusive right to declare war. Nevertheless, the power of the president to initiate hostilities has been subject to question. According to historian Thomas Woods, \"Ever since the Korean War, Article II, Section 2 [...] has been interpreted 'The president has the power to initiate hostilities without consulting Congress' [....]But what the framers actually meant by that clause was that once war has been declared, it was the President’s responsibility as commander-in-chief to direct the war. Alexander Hamilton spoke in such terms when he said that the president, although lacking the power to declare war, would have “the direction of war when authorized or begun.” The president acting alone was authorized only to repel sudden attacks (hence the decision to withhold from him only the power to “declare” war, not to “make” war, which was thought to be a necessary emergency power in case of foreign attack). [6][7] Since World War II, every major military action has been technically a U.S. military operation or a U.N. \"police action\", which are deemed legally legitimate by Congress, and various United Nations Resolutions because of decisions such as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the The Resolution of The Congress Providing Authorization for Use of Force In Iraq.\nThe President may require the \"principal officer\" of any executive department to tender his advice in writing. Thus, implicitly, the Constitution creates a Cabinet that includes the principal officers of the various departments.\nThe President, furthermore, may grant pardon or reprieves, except in cases of impeachment. Originally, as ruled by the Supreme Court in United States v. Wilson (1833), the pardon could be rejected by the convict. In Biddle v. Perovich 274 U.S. 480 (1927), the Supreme Court reversed the doctrine, ruling that \"[a] pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed.\"[8]\nClause 2: Advice and Consent Clause\nThe President exercises the powers in the Advice and Consent Clause with the advice and consent of the Senate.\nThe President may enter the United States into treaties, but they are not effective until ratified by a two-thirds vote in the Senate.[9] In Article II however, the Constitution is not very explicit about the termination of treaties. The first abrogation of a treaty occurred in 1798, when Congress passed a law terminating a 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France.[10] In the nineteenth century, several Presidents terminated treaties after Congress passed resolutions requesting the same.[11] In 1854, however, President Franklin Pierce terminated a treaty with Denmark with the consent of the Senate alone. A Senate committee ruled that it was correct procedure for the President to terminate treaties after being authorized by the Senate alone, and not the entire Congress. President Pierce's successors, however, returned to the former procedure of obtaining authorization from both Houses. Some Presidents have claimed to themselves the exclusive power of terminating treaties. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, terminated a treaty without prior Congressional authorization, but Congress retroactively approved his decision at a later point. The first unambiguous case of a President terminating a treaty without authorization, granted prior to or after the termination, occurred when Jimmy Carter terminated a treaty with the Republic of China.[12] For the first time, judicial determination was sought, but the effort proved futile: the Supreme Court could not find a majority agreeing on any particular principle, and therefore instructed the trial court to dismiss the case.\nThe President may also appoint judges, ambassadors, consuls, ministers and other officers with the advice and consent of the Senate. By law, however, Congress may allow the President, heads of executive departments, or the courts to appoint inferior officials.\nThe Senate has a long-standing practice of permitting motions to reconsider previous decisions. In 1931, the Senate granted advice and consent to the President on the appointment of a member of the Federal Power Commission. The officer in question was sworn in, but the Senate, under the guise of a motion to reconsider, rescinded the advice and consent. In the writ of quo warranto proceedings that followed, the Supreme Court ruled that the Senate was not permitted to rescind advice and consent after the officer had been installed.\nAfter the Senate grants advice and consent, however, the President is under no compulsion to commission the officer. It has not been settled whether the President has the prerogative to withhold a commission after having signed it. This issue played a large part in the famous court case Marbury v. Madison.\nAt times the President has asserted the power to remove individuals from office. Congress has often explicitly limited the President's power to remove; during the Reconstruction Era, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, purportedly preventing Andrew Johnson from removing, without the advice and consent of the Senate, anyone appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. President Johnson ignored the Act, and was later impeached and acquitted. The constitutionality of the Act was not immediately settled. In Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), the Supreme Court held that Congress could not limit the President's power to remove an executive officer (the Postmaster General), but in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935) it upheld Congress's authority to restrict the President's power to remove officers of the Federal Trade Commission, an \"administrative body [that] cannot in any proper sense be characterized as an arm or eye of the executive.\"\nCongress may repeal the legislation that authorizes the appointment of an executive officer. But it \"cannot reserve for itself the power of an officer charged with the execution of the laws except by impeachment.\"[13] Congress has from time to time changed the number of justices in the Supreme Court.\nClause 3: Recess appointments\nPresident John R. Bolton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice looks on.\nDuring recesses of the Senate, the President may appoint officers, but their commissions expire at the conclusion of the Senate's next session.\nSection 3: Presidential responsibilities\nClause 1: State of the Union\n2011 State of the Union Address given by President Barack Obama\nThe President must give the Congress information on the \"State of the Union\" \"from time to time.\" This is called the State of the Union Clause.[14] Originally, Presidents personally delivered annual addresses to Congress. Thomas Jefferson, who felt that the procedure resembled the Speech from the Throne delivered by British monarchs, chose instead to send written messages to Congress for reading by clerks. Jefferson's procedure was followed by future Presidents until Woodrow Wilson reverted to the former procedure of personally addressing Congress, which has continued to this day.[14]\nKesavan and Sidak explain the purpose of the State of the Union clause:\n\"The State of the Union Clause imposes an executive duty on the President. That duty must be discharged periodically. The President's assessment of the State of the Union must be publicized to Congress, and thus to the nation. The publication of the President's assessment conveys information to Congress- information uniquely gleaned from the President's perspective in his various roles as Commander-in-Chief, chief law enforcer, negotiator with foreign powers, and the like-that shall aid the legislature in public deliberation on matters that may justify the enactment of legislation because of their national importance.\"[14]\nClause 2: Making recommendations to Congress\nThe president has the power and duty[14] to recommend, for the consideration of Congress, such measures which the president deems as \"necessary and expedient\". At [15]'\nKesavan and Sidak explain the purpose of the Recommendation clause:\n\"The Recommendation Clause also imposes an executive duty on the President. His recommendations respect the equal dignity of Congress and thus embody the anti-royalty sentiment that ignited the American Revolution and subsequently stripped the trappings of monarchy away from the new chief executive. Through his recommendations to Congress, the President speaks collectively for the People as they petition Government for a redress of grievances, and thus his recommendations embody popular sovereignty. The President tailors his recommendations so that their natural implication is the enactment of new legislation, rather than some other action that Congress might undertake. Finally, the President shall have executive discretion to recommend measures of his choosing.\"[14]\nSidak explained that there is a connection between the Recommendation clause and the Petition Clause of the first amendment: \"Through his performance of the duty to recommend measures to Congress, the President functions as the agent of a diffuse electorate who seek the redress of grievances. To muzzle the President, therefore, is to diminish the effectiveness of this right expressly reserved to the people under the first amendment.\"[15]:2119, note 7 Kesavan and Sidak also cited a Professor Bybee who stated in this context: \"The Recommendation Clause empowers the President to represent the people before Congress, by recommending measures for the reform of government, for the general welfare, or for the redress of grievances. The Right of Petition Clause prevents Congress from abridging the right of the people to petition for a redress of grievances.\"[14]:43\nThe Recommendation clause imposes a duty, but its performance rests solely with the President. Congress possesses no power to compel the President to recommend, as he alone is the \"judge\" of what is \"necessary and expedient.\" Unlike the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, which limits Congress's discretion to carrying out only its delegated powers, the phrase \"necessary and expedient\" implies a wider range of discretion for the President. Because this is a political question, there has been little judicial involvement with the President's actions under the clause as long as Presidents have not tried to extend their legislative powers. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Supreme Court noted that the Recommendations Clause serves as a reminder that the President cannot make law by himself: \"The power to recommend legislation, granted to the President, serves only to emphasize that it is his function to recommend and that it is the function of the Congress to legislate.\"[16] The Court made a similar point in striking down the line-item veto in Clinton v. City of New York (1998).[16] When President William Jefferson Clinton attempted to shield the records of the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform as essential to his functions under the Recommendations Clause, a federal circuit court rejected the argument and noted in Ass'n of American Physicians & Surgeons v. Clinton (1993): \"[T]he Recommendation Clause is less an obligation than a right. The President has the undisputed authority to recommend legislation, but he need not exercise that authority with respect to any particular subject or, for that matter, any subject.\"[16]\nClause 3: Calling Congress into extraordinary session; adjourning Congress\nThe President may call extraordinary sessions of one or both Houses of Congress. If the two Houses cannot agree on a date for adjournment, the President may adjourn both Houses to such a time as befits the circumstances. The last time this power was exercised was in 1948, when President Harry S Truman called a special session of Congress. That was the twenty-seventh time in American history that a president convened such a session.[17]\nClause 4: Receiving foreign representatives\nThe President receives all foreign Ambassadors. This clause of the Constitution has been interpreted to imply that the President can be granted broad power over all matters of foreign policy by Congress.[18]\nClause 5: Caring for the faithful execution of the law\nThe President must \"take care that the laws be faithfully executed.\"[19] This clause in the Constitution imposes a duty on the President to take due care while executing laws and is called the Take Care Clause,[20] also known as the Faithful Execution Clause[21] or Faithfully Executed Clause.[22] This clause is meant to ensure that a law is faithfully executed by the President,[20] even if he disagrees with the purpose of that law.[23] By virtue of his executive power, the President may execute the law and control the law execution of others. Under the Take Care Clause, however, the President must exercise his law-execution power to \"take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.\"[21] Addressing the a tax rebellion, Washington observed, \"it is my duty to see the Laws executed: to permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to [that duty.]\"[21]\nAccording to former United States Assistant Attorney General Walter E. Dellinger III, the Supreme Court and the Attorneys General have long interpreted the Take Care Clause to mean that the President has no inherent constitutional authority to suspend the enforcement of the laws, particularly of statutes.[24] The Take Care Clause demands that the President obey the law, the Supreme Court said in Humphrey's Executor v. United States, and repudiates any notion that he may dispense with the law's execution.[25] In Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997), the Supreme Court explained how the President executes the law: \"The Constitution does not leave to speculation who is to administer the laws enacted by Congress; the President, it says, \"shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,\" Art. II, §3, personally and through officers whom he appoints (save for such inferior officers as Congress may authorize to be appointed by the \"Courts of Law\" or by \"the Heads of Departments\" who with other presidential appointees), Art. II, §2.\"\nThe President may not prevent a member of the executive branch from performing a ministerial duty lawfully imposed upon him by Congress. (See Marbury v. Madison (1803); and Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes (1838)). Nor may the President take an action not authorized either by the Constitution or by a lawful statute. (See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952)). Finally, the President may not refuse to enforce a constitutional law, or \"cancel\" certain appropriations, for that would amount to an extra-constitutional veto or suspension power.[21]\nThe President, while having to enforce the law, also possesses wide discretion in deciding how and even when to enforce laws. He also has a range of interpretive discretion in deciding the meaning of laws he must execute. When an appropriation provides discretion, the President can gauge when and how appropriated moneys can be spent most efficiently.\nSome Presidents have claimed the authority under this clause to impound money appropriated by Congress. President Jefferson, for example, delayed the expenditure of money appropriated for the purchase of gunboats for over a year. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successors sometimes refused outright to expend appropriated money.[21] The Supreme Court, however, has held that impoundments without Congressional authorization are unconstitutional.[26]\nIt has been asserted that the President's responsibility in the \"faithful\" execution of the laws entitles him to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Article One provides that the privilege may not be suspended save during times of rebellion or invasion, but it does not specify who may suspend the privilege. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress may suspend the privilege if it deems it necessary. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the privilege, but, owing to the vehement opposition he faced, obtained congressional authorization for the same. Since then, the privilege of the writ has only been suspended upon the express authorization of Congress.\nIn Mississippi v. Johnson, 71 U.S. 475 (1867), the Supreme Court ruled that the judiciary may not restrain the President in the execution of laws. In that case the Supreme Court refused to entertain a request for an injunction preventing President Andrew Johnson from executing the Reconstruction Acts, which were claimed to be unconstitutional. The Court found that \"[t]he Congress is the legislative department of the government; the President is the executive department. Neither can be restrained in its action by the judicial department; though the acts of both, when performed, are, in proper cases, subject to its cognizance.\"[27] Thus, the courts cannot bar the passage of a law by Congress, though it may strike down such a law as unconstitutional. A similar construction applies to the executive branch.\nClause 6: Officers' commissions\nThe President commissions \"all the Officers of the United States.\" These include officers in both military and foreign service. (Under Article I, Section 8, the States have authority for \"the Appointment of the Officers . . . of the [State] Militia . . ..\")\nThe presidential authority to commission officers had a large impact on the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, where outgoing Federalist President John Adams feverishly signed many commissions to the judiciary on his final day in office, hoping to, as incoming Democratic-Republican President Thomas Jefferson put it, \"[retire] into the judiciary as a stronghold.\" However, in his haste, Adams' Secretary of State neglected to have all the commissions delivered. Incoming President Jefferson was enraged with Adams, and ordered his Secretary of State, James Madison, to refrain from delivering the remaining commissions. William Marbury took the matter to the Supreme Court, where the famous Marbury was decided.\nSection 4: Impeachment\nDepiction of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding.\nThe Constitution also allows for involuntary removal from office. The President, Vice-President, Cabinet Secretaries, and other executive officers, as well as judges, may be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried in the Senate.\nAny official convicted by impeachment is immediately removed from office. The Senate may also choose to bar the removed official from holding any federal office in the future.[28] No other punishments may be inflicted pursuant to the impeachment proceeding, but the convicted party remains liable to trial and punishment in the courts for civil and criminal charges.[29]\n^ The U.S. Constitution With Declaration of Independence, US Government Printing Office\n^ \"Joint Congressional Committee on Presidential Inaugurations\". Retrieved November 10, 2006.\n^ 5 U.S.C. § 3331\n^ Cf: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579,637 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring) (\"When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization from Congress,\" his actions are \"supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of persuasion ... rest[s] heavily upon any who might attack it.\").\n^ Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 797 (2008) (\"[M]ost federal judges [do not] begin the day with briefings that describe new and serious threats to our Nation and its people.\").\n^ Woods, Thomas (July 7, 2005) Presidential War Powers, LewRockwell.com\n^ Woods, Thomas (2013). \"Presidential War Powers: The Constitutional Answer\". Liberty Classrooom. Retrieved September 6, 2013.\n^ Biddle, at 486\n^ John H. Haswell,\n^ Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979)\n^ Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986)\n^ a b c d e f Vasan Kesavan and\n^ a b Sidak, Gregory (August 1989). \"The Recommendation Clause\". Georgetown Law Journal 77 (6): 2079–2135. Retrieved June 29, 2012.\n^ a b c Kesavan, Vasan. \"The Heritage Guide to the Constitution: Recommendations Clause\". The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved October 27, 2012.\n^ U.S. Senate Turnip Day Session (January 5, 2011).\n^ \"Article II, Section 3, U.S. Constitution\". law.cornell.edu. Legal Information Institute. 2012. Retrieved August 7, 2012.\n^ a b \"Take Care Clause Law & Legal Definition\". USLegal.com. Retrieved July 5, 2012.\n^ a b c d e f g Take Care Clause. \"Take Care Clause\". The Heritage Guide to the Constitution.\n^ Prepared by Devotion Garner. Updated by Cheryl Nyberg. \"Popular Names of Constitutional Provisions\". Gallagher Library of the University of Washington School of Law. Retrieved November 23, 2013.\n^ \"Chapter 12-The Presidency Flashcards\". Flashcard Machine. January 16, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2012.\n^ Walter E. Dellinger III (September 7, 1995). \"CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATIONS ON FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTICIPATION IN BINDING ARBITRATION\". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved July 5, 2012.\n^ Kinkopf, Neil (September–October 2005). \"FURIOUS GEORGE - The belligerence of the Bush Administration in pursuing expansive power has a long Republican pedigree\". Legal Affairs - The magazine at the intersection of Law and Life. Retrieved July 5, 2012.\n^ Sai Prakash. \"Take Care Clause\". The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved August 27, 2012.\n^ Johnson, at 500\n^ An example of this is Alcee Hastings who was removed from a federal judgeship, but was not barred from serving in another federal office. He was later elected to, and currently serves in, the House of Representatives.\n^ Cf. Ritter v. United States, 677 F.2d 957 (2d. Cir. 19) 84 Ct. Cl. 293, 300 (Ct. Cl. 1936) (\"While the Senate in one sense acts as a court on the trial of an impeachment, it is essentially a political body and in its actions is influenced by the views of its members on the public welfare.\"); STAFF OF H. COMM. ON THE JUDICIARY, 93D CONG., CONSTITUTIONAL GROUNDS FOR PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT 24 (Comm. Print 1974) (\"The purpose of impeachment is not personal punishment; its function is primarily to maintain constitutional government.\") (citation omitted), reprinted in 3 LEWIS DESCHLER, DESCHLER'S PRECEDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, H.R. DOC. NO. 94‒661 ch. 14, app. at 2269 (1977).\nThe Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation.Kilman, Johnny and George Costello (Eds). (2000).\nMount, Steve. (2003). \"Presidential Pardons.\"\nUse mdy dates from December 2013\nExecutive branch of the United States government\nUlysses S. Grant, American Civil War, Indiana, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States\nArticle Two of the United States Constitution, Law, United States Constitution, Vanderbilt University, Separation of powers","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line923997"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8685792684555054,"wiki_prob":0.8685792684555054,"text":"Gun show opponents want more safeguards at fairgrounds\nAdele Josepho of Solana Beach was one of about 80 people from NeverAgainCA who protested outside the Crossroads of the West gun show at Del Mar in 2018.\n(Howard Lipin)\nBy Phil Diehl\nGun show opponents are asking for increased safety precautions when the Crossroads of the West event returns to the Del Mar Fairgrounds this weekend.\n“Take steps that will give the public confidence that you are protecting us,” said Rose Ann Sharp of NeverAgainCA in a presentation this week to the 22nd District Agricultural Association board of directors.\nThe board that runs the fairgrounds voted in 2018 to suspend the gun shows this year. However, the event was reinstated in September after a judge issued a temporary injunction requested by the show operator B&L Productions. The events are expected to continue through 2020 until a state law passed this year takes effect in 2021 to outlaw the sale of firearms and ammunition at the fairgrounds.\nFairgrounds spokeswoman Annie Pierce said Wednesday that the board did not respond to Sharp’s request, made during public comments at Tuesday’s meeting, and that there were no new developments in the B&L lawsuit against the fairgrounds.\n“We are committed to ensuring that every event at the fairgrounds is safe and secure,” Pierce said.\nCrossroads of the West held the weekend firearms bazaar at Del Mar five times annually for more than 30 years until Jan. 1. The company holds more than 60 gun shows annually in four Western states.\nThe gun show attracts thousands of people each weekend and has been one of the fairgrounds’ most popular events, outside of the annual horse races and the San Diego County Fair.\nCrossroads found itself in the cross-hairs of NeverAgainCA soon after the mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Parkland, Fla., high school on Feb. 14, 2018. Since then, the ever-increasing numbers of shootings have focused attention on the national problem of gun violence and easy access to firearms, and NeverAgainCA has kept up the pressure.\nThe group frequently points to the background of Crossroads owner Bob Templeton and his son Jeff Templeton, who both have past felony firearms convictions. In recent years, the shows have been run by Templeton’s daughter, Tracy Olcott, who has a clean record.\nAlso, San Diego jeweler Leo Hamel, an advisory board member of the San Diego County Gun Owners political action committee, a staunch supporter of the Crossroads shows. Hamel was indicted on federal charges this year after FBI agents found more than 200 firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammunition at his home and jewelry store. Hamel and a Sheriff’s Department lieutenant, along with a former sheriff’s captain and two others were charged with multiple criminal counts stemming from illegal firearms sales from 2013 through this year.\nThe county gun owners group announced Wednesday it will host a rally and news conference at the fairgrounds when the gun show opens on Saturday.\n“Because of the pending litigation in federal court, every gun show at the Del Mar Fairgrounds could potentially be the last gun show at Del Mar,” said Michael Schwartz, executive director of the group. “We’re inviting all Second Amendment advocates to join us ... in support of the gun show.”\nNeverAgainCA also asked the fairgrounds this week to make public a list of all the vendors at the Crossroads show to see if any have been investigated for illegal activities. Sharp said Wednesday that the fairgrounds attorney has agreed to provide the information.\nSharp also requested details of the fairgrounds’ requirements for security employees at the gun shows, registration desk workers, and security for packages entering and leaving the event.\n“Do you have training standards?” Sharp asked. “Do you do background checks?\n“Just like you check the rides at the Del Mar Fair every day for potential risk of injury or death, you need to do the same for your first line of defense at the gun show,” Sharp said.\nThe show features dozens of vendors selling guns, ammunition, hunting gear, tactical gear, knives, targets, jewelry, memorabilia and more.\nLegislation to end gun sales at the county-owned Cow Palace near San Francisco was vetoed last year by Gov. Jerry Brown. However, the venue’s board of directors voted in November to ban the shows in response to requests from the local community.\n“The Cow Palace Board of Directors is taking these mass shootings seriously, and not caving to pressure from the gun lobby,” according to a joint statement released by Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblyman Phil Ting, both D-San Francisco, last month. “We must continue to push for stricter gun laws at the local, state, and national level.”\nGun-safety advocates also are working to end the shows at state fairgrounds in Orange and Ventura counties.\n— Phil Diehl is a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune\nNewsLocal NewsSolana Beach SunCarmel Valley News\nPhil Diehl\nCarmel Valley student artwork featured in city’s 2020 calendar\nThe City of San Diego’s new Water Conservation calendar features the winning artwork of several local Carmel Valley students.This is the 20th year the calendar has been produced by the city’s Public Utilities Department.\nEncinitas residents debate homeless parking proposal\nSafety and security were among the top concerns Encinitas residents expressed to city staff at a Jan. 14 public forum about a proposed parking area for North County residents who are experiencing homelessness and living in their cars.\nMovement inspires acts of kindness in memory of a boy named Blake\n“So shines a good deed in a weary world.”\nAdult sports program begins at PHR Rec Center in March\nSeveral adult sports programs at the new Pacific Highlands Ranch Recreation Center will begin in March.\nJuveniles receive probation, community service for Solana Vista vandalism\nThe San Diego Juvenile Court System has ordered restitution, community service hours and probation for a group of five juveniles who were involved in vandalizing Solana Vista School last summer.\nDel Mar appoints Housing Element Task Force members\nThe Del Mar City Council created a Housing Element Citizens’ Task Force to make recommendations on where to add new housing in the city as part of the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line678804"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.787265419960022,"wiki_prob":0.787265419960022,"text":"The New Left Fascists\nBy Robert Spencer 2012-10-01T18:08\nThe internationally notable Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy last week took a can of spray paint and began spray-painting over an ad in the Times Square subway station that she didn’t like. Eltahawy painted the ad until a supporter of the ad got in between her and it; shortly thereafter, Eltahawy was arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and spent the night in jail. That a prominent journalist would stoop to this crude act of vandalism is noteworthy in itself, but even more striking is the fact that so many on the Left are applauding her for it.\nThe ad read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.” It was created by my colleague Pamela Geller and sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), of which I am associate director. The mainstream media has widely circulated the claim that this ad is somehow referring to and demeaning of all Muslims, even though the words \"Muslim\" and \"Islam\" never appear in it, and it is quite clearly referring to those jihad terrorists who commit acts of savagery against Israeli civilians and then celebrate those acts.\nNonetheless, whether as part of their ongoing efforts to demonize and marginalize all those who speak out against jihad, or out of visceral hatred for Israel, or both, Leftist and putatively “moderate” Muslim writers have enthusiastically praised Eltahawy’s vandalism and called for more ads to be defaced. Cyrus McGoldrick of the New York chapter of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) exulted about Eltahawy’s vandalism: “THIS is GOLD.”\nChristina Abraham, the “civil rights director” of Hamas-linked CAIR’s Chicago chapter, went even farther, tweeting that “what some might call hate ads,” Eltahawy “sees as a blank canvas. everyone should do the same.” Ironically, Abraham describes herself in her Twitter profile as a “human rights enthusiast.”\nLikewise the Islamic supremacist writer Reza Aslan, who enjoys a widespread reputation as a “moderate Muslim” despite being a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, which has recently been established to be a mouthpiece of the Iranian mullahcracy, was enthusiastic about the vandalism and wanted more. “Hey New York!,” he tweeted: “How many racist ads are left unscathed? Get busy.”\nhttps://pjmedia.com/blog/the-new-left-fascists/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1426898"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7358197569847107,"wiki_prob":0.2641802430152893,"text":"a-z, dash, period, spaces only\nSelect a State Nationwide Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming\nPeople Search County Records Kansas Shawnee\nShawnee Kansas\nSearch Shawnee County Public Records & Background Checks\nPublic Records in Shawnee\nType of Record\nShawnee County Court Recorder Offices\nCounty Register of Deeds\nShawnee County 200 SE 7th St, Rm108 Topeka, KS 66603-3932\nRecord Availability\nSeparate indices to search include grantee/grantor, numerical, computer & books (depending on age of document). Records indexed on a public use terminal back to 1988.\nCourier Offices\n200 SE 7th St, Rm 108 Topeka, KS 66603\nin Kansas\nHodgeman\nLabette\nPottawatomie\nWabaunsee\nPrivacy Education\nPeopleSmart is designed to help you find and connect with others. Search by name, email, phone number, and address. PeopleSmart is not a consumer reporting agency as defined by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). To learn more, please see our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Information offered by PeopleSmart is not to be used for assessing or evaluating a person's eligibility for employment, housing, insurance, credit, or for any other purpose covered under the FCRA.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1057061"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9879080653190613,"wiki_prob":0.9879080653190613,"text":"Queen Elizabeth says she supports Harry and Meghan's plan as royal summit ends\nBy Maria Puente and Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY\nThe royal summit over the future roles of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan of Sussex concluded Monday with an endorsement from Queen Elizabeth II herself about what her grandson seeks to do, and a promise that \"final decisions\" will be reached in coming days.\nShortly after 5 p.m. local time, Buckingham Palace released a statement from the queen in which she described the discussions on the future of \"my grandson and his family\" as \"constructive.\"\n\"My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family,\" the statement said. \"Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.\"\nShe said Harry and Meghan made it clear they don't want to rely any longer on public funds in their new lives.\n\"It has therefore been agreed that there will be a period of transition in which the Sussexes will spend time in Canada and the U.K,\" the statement said. \"These are complex matters for my family to resolve, and there is some more work to be done, but I have asked for final decisions to be reached in the coming days.\"\nPrince Harry, his brother Prince William and father Prince Charles arrived for a royal summit at Sandringham to address the crisis set off by Harry and Duchess Meghan's historic announcement last week to step back from their senior royal duties and live part time in North America.\nIt is as yet unclear whether Duchess Meghan joined her husband Harry over the phone for the rare sit-down meeting with his grandmother and senior royal courtiers from all the relevant households.\nThere was no immediate announcement about the specifics of what was discussed or any decisions made. The palace said the queen's statement, sent to USA TODAY via email, would be the only comment of the day.\nBuckingham Palace previously confirmed to USA TODAY that Harry would sit down with his brother , father and grandmother for face-to-face talks to discuss a resolution of the crisis that arose last week after Harry and Meghan announced their plans with little warning.\nMeghan, who is in Canada, was expected to participate via phone but that was not officially confirmed ahead of time.\nThe Duke and Duchess of Sussex's plans have been widely attacked in Britain as unworkable, and amount to a painful split of the royal family.\nThe royal summit took place at Sandringham, the queen's private estate in Norfolk about 100 miles north of London, where she typically stays between late December and early February.\nSave for Meghan, the same group participated in a conference call on Friday, according to the Associated Press, quoting British media reports. Buckingham Palace confirmed that day that Duchess Meghan had returned to Canada to rejoin 8-month-old baby Archie.\nHarry remained in the United Kingdom to deal with the fallout from the Sussex desire to change their royal roles, which has produced a fierce media storm. Overnight Sunday into Monday, reporters, cameras and media trucks appeared outside the gates of Sandringham to await news.\nPrince Charles arrived at Sandringham from Oman late Sunday after attending the official mourning ceremony Sunday for the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who died Friday at 79 after ruling the country for 50 years, as a representative of the queen.\nPrince William traveled from his home at Kensington Palace in London and Harry from his and Meghan's home at Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor Castle estate west of London.\nAhead of the meeting, Harry and William issued a joint statement challenging the accuracy of a story in a London newspaper Monday about a severe breakdown in the relationship between the two brothers.\nTheir statement, sent to USA TODAY in an email from Buckingham Palace, denied a report in the Times of London that Harry and Meghan felt driven away from the royal family due to alleged \"bullying\" by William and his wife, Duchess Kate of Cambridge, who were supposedly unfriendly to Meghan.\n\"Despite clear denials, a false story ran in a U.K. newspaper today speculating about the relationship between The Duke of Sussex and The Duke of Cambridge,\" the statement said. \"For brothers who care so deeply about the issues surrounding mental health, the use of inflammatory language in this way is offensive and potentially harmful.\"\nBy 2 p.m. local time, both princes had arrived separately at the sprawling estate, according to the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard.\nBuckingham Palace said “a range of possibilities” would be discussed at Monday's meeting, the Associated Press reported, but the goal was to agree on next steps to take to resolve the crisis. The unusual royal gathering follows days of talks among royal courtiers and officials from the U.K. and Canada, and any decisions will take time to be implemented, the palace said.\nThe meeting comes less than a week after Harry and Meghan dropped their bombshell announcement on Jan. 8: They want to step back as senior members of the royal family, become \"financially independent,\" spend less time in the U.K., and still continue to \"fully support\" the queen through charity work and royal tours.\nThe couple said they will split their time between the U.K. and North America but did not specify where on the continent they plan to set up shop. Meghan and Archie are currently somewhere in Canada, the country in which she previously lived while filming the television show \"Suits\" and one of the largest of the U.K.'s 53 Commonwealth nations.\nMeghan's mother, Doria Ragland, lives in Los Angeles, sparking speculation that the royal couple could spend time there .\n\"This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity,\" the couple's statement said.\nAbout an hour after the announcement, a statement from the queen's spokesperson suggested Harry and Meghan's attempts to step away wouldn't be quite as simple as they implied.\n\"Discussions with The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage,\" the statement said. \"We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through.\"\nOn Thursday, Britain's national news agency, Press Association, reported that the queen had ordered officials representing her, Prince Charles, Prince William, Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan to meet and find \"workable solutions\" within \"days not weeks.\"\nOn Saturday evening, the palace confirmed that the queen had called a meeting of the princes and their top advisers for Monday.\nMeanwhile, Harry does have at least one royal engagement scheduled this week: He's due to host the Rugby League World Cup 2021 draws at Buckingham Palace on Thursday. Harry has been royal patron of the Rugby Football League since he succeeded the queen in 2016. No plans to alter or cancel the engagement have been announced.\nGreenwood Life ~ P.O. Box 398, Greenwood, AR 72936 ~ Do Not Sell My Personal Information ~ Cookie Policy ~ Do Not Sell My Personal Information ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service ~ Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy\nGreenwood Tornado Anniversary","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line940717"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5889670848846436,"wiki_prob":0.41103291511535645,"text":"JSoM Bulletin » Overview » Centers and Institutes\nThe Center for Electronic and Computer Music was established in 1966 by Iannis Xenakis as a mirror to the Centre for Automated and Mathematical Music in Paris. Created for the purposes of theoretical training, electronic and multimedia composition, and the dissemination of works through public concerts, CECM today houses two studios which employ the most current technologies in digital sound synthesis and sampling, interactive music programming and performance, video, and research-level computing. The curriculum provides an extensive technical training and historical background for composition students with little or no previous technical experience. More advanced students may enroll to use the studio facilities for the production of compositions and multimedia works, as well as for research. More information can be found at http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/.\nEstablished in 1998, the Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature provides a home for such international projects as the Thesaurus musicarum latinarum (TML; an eight-million-word searchable archive of Latin music theory ranging from the time of Augustine through the early seventeenth century); TML’s three sister projects Traités français sur la musique, Saggi musicali italiani, and Texts on Music in English from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras (music treatises in French, Italian and English); and the annotated bibliography on Musical Borrowing and Reworking. Other projects are currently under development. More information can be found at http://www.chmtl.indiana.edu.\nThe Historical Performance Institute is a center for interdisciplinary research, teaching, colloquia, and creative activity directed towards the performance practice of medieval, renaissance, baroque, and classical music. Of international significance, the Institute disseminates original research through a series of books as well as an annual journal published by the Indiana University Press. The HPI produces a series of recordings through Focus Records (IU Music) and maintains the Thomas Binkley Archive of Early Music Sound Recordings and extensive holdings of period instruments. JSoM students are enthusiastically encouraged to take advantage of these resources. More information can be found at http://music.indiana.edu/departments/academic/early-music/index.shtml.\nThe Latin American Music Center fosters the research and performance of Latin American art music and promotes professional and academic exchange between scholars and musicians from the United States and Latin America. In partnership with the Cook Music Library, the LAMC helps manage one of the largest and most complete Latin American music collections in the world, which includes several special collections, rare recordings and scores, and unpublished manuscripts by a number of prominent 20th-century composers. The center’s other activities include concerts, commissions, premiere performances and recordings, courses, visits by distinguished performing artists and lecturers, festivals, and conferences. More information can be found at: http://music.indiana.edu/lamc.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line521527"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9365165829658508,"wiki_prob":0.9365165829658508,"text":"Two Killed as Explosion Collapses Building in Paris Suburb\nPowerful Explosion Rocks Paris Building\nAug. 31, 201400:27\nAug. 31, 2014, 10:25 AM UTC / Updated Aug. 31, 2014, 3:39 PM UTC\nA child and an 80-year-old woman were killed Sunday morning when a four-story building in a Paris suburb collapsed following an explosion, French authorities said. Ten people were pulled from the rubble, including four who were seriously wounded. Rescue teams were still looking for more survivors.\nThe explosion, which took place about 7 a.m. (1 a.m. ET), is believed to have been caused by a gas leak, officials said. \"We should be prudent, because there are investigations ongoing. There is no certainty,\" French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said at the scene. Fire department spokesman Gabriel Plus said, \"We could still find living victims in the hours to come.\" Television images of the building, in the suburb of Rosny-Sous-Bois, showed a facade ripped off completely, exposing the interiors of the apartments inside.\n— Christina Boyle with Reuters","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line990582"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5017063617706299,"wiki_prob":0.5017063617706299,"text":"The UN Climate Summit in NYC Gives Us Reason to Hope\nThose in attendance at the UN Climate Summit in New York City made significant progress towards the goal of a global climate agreement in 2015. At the end of the Summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon summarized the outcome saying \"This was a great day!\"\nThe UN Climate Summit was a success simply by virtue of those who attended. There were an unprecedented number of world leaders in attendance, this included 100 government leaders and more than 800 leaders from business, finance and civil society.\nBefore the summit, Ban asked leaders from government, business, finance and civil society to \"crystallize a global vision for low-carbon economic growth and to advance climate action on five fronts: cutting emissions; mobilizing money and markets; pricing carbon; strengthening resilience; and mobilizing new coalitions.\" The end results suggest that many responded to the UN Secretary General's request.\nOptimism is warranted when we review the list of accomplishments compiled by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the end of the climate change summit. From deforestation to cleaner energy initiatives, we are moving forward. The governmental and private climate and energy commitments are unprecedented.\nThe 2014 climate summit in NYC was different from all the summits that preceded it. This year the goal was clearer, \"to raise political momentum for a meaningful universal climate agreement in Paris in 2015 and to galvanize transformative action in all countries to reduce emissions and build resilience to the adverse impacts of climate change.\"\nWe achieved so much more in 2014 than we did in 2009. Five years ago we were working simply to build momentum towards a global climate deal. This effort proved fruitless as divisions between nations took center stage.\nDespite progress at the 2014 Summit in New York, serious disagreements remain. We can expect resistance from countries beholden to fossil fuels. This includes nations like Canada and Australia. However, now that President Obama is leading through example, future prospects are looking far brighter than they have in the past.\nThis summit gives us reason to hope that we may be able to achieve the ambitious goal of a global climate agreement in 2015.\nAs Ban said, \"Today’s Summit has shown that we can rise to the climate challenge.\"\n© 2014, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.\nOrganizations and Individuals Coalesce for Action on Climate Change\nBusiness Leadership at the UN Climate Summit\nEleven Business Pledges at the UN Climate Summit\nThe We Mean Business: Low Carbon Economics\nCorporations Go 100% Renewable for Climate Week NYC\nUN Climate Summit: Ban Ki-moon Final Summary\nPresident Obama's Address and other Highlights from the U.N. Climate Summit\nClimate Change and SDG's Dominate the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly\nLeonardo DiCaprio's Address at the UN Climate Summit\nThe People's Climate March Sets the Stage for the UN Climate Summit\nIndia Social Good Summit 2014: Climate Activism and Social Media in Innovation\nInvestors Support the UN Climate Summit Objectives\nVideo - Whats Possible: A Short Film to be Presented at the UN Climate Summit\nVideo - Support for the UN Climate Summit","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1415177"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9039868712425232,"wiki_prob":0.9039868712425232,"text":"New Zealand mosque attacks: terrorism or act of violence? - Daily News Egypt\nIn Focus New Zealand mosque attacks: terrorism or act of violence?\nNew Zealand mosque attacks: terrorism or act of violence?\n‘It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack,’ says New Zealand Prime Minister\nFatma Lotfi March 17, 2019 Be the first to comment\nIn one of the deadliest attacks in the history of New Zealand against civilians based on their religion, race, colure, or identity, 49 Muslims have been killed and 48 others were severely wounded when an Australian right-wing extremist opened fire on worshipers in two mosques during the Friday prayer in Christchurch city and livestreamed video of the attack.\nThe attacker, identified as Brenton Tarrant, was apprehended and appeared in court on Saturday over charges of murder. He has been described by New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as having “extremist views.” Three others were taken into custody in connection with the terrorist attack. All are Australians.\nThe terror attack drew huge reactions including anger and condemnation among world leaders who differently termed that attack. For New Zealand, Ardern condemned the mosque shooting saying it was one of New Zealand’s darkest days. “It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack,” Ardern told reporters following the attack.\nAccording to the Small Arms Survey in 2017, residents in New Zealand own an estimated 1.2m firearms. There are no strict measures on ownership of military-style weapons as most firearms can be easily and legally sold on the internet. Meanwhile, Ardern vowed on Friday to consider banning semi-automatic firearms. “Our gun laws will change,” she confirmed.\nAbout 1.1% of New Zealand’s population, almost 4.25 million people, are Muslim, according to the country’s most recent survey. The victims of the two attacks included refugees and migrants who fled the war and violence in their countries, seeking better living conditions and peaceful places. Egyptian, Saudi, and Jordanian nationals were among the casualties. Women and children were also killed or injured.\nTerrorist or shooter?\nMuslims and their supporters around the world criticised a few international media outlets or state leaders and politicians who considered the attack as an “act of violence,” rather than “terrorism”.\nSome argue that far-right terrorism is not less dangerous or widespread than Islamic terrorism, such as the Islamic State. Jewish Russian journalist Leonid Bershidsky wrote in a recent column in Bloomberg that the number of violent incidents committed by the far-right is on the rise. “The Institute for Economics and Peace noted in its 2018 Global Terrorism Index report that the number of such killings increased from three in 2014 to 17 in 2017,” he added.\nOn Twitter, tens of thousands of users used the hashtag “#NewZealandTerroristAttack,” to pay tribute to the victims and criticise media outlets that used “act of violence” to describe the incident instead of “terrorist attack,” and the use of “shooter” rather than “terrorist”.\n“This terrorist killed 49 Muslims, but the world media calls him ‘the shooter’ not ‘the terrorist’ because he is not ‘Muslim!’ A Muslim is the only one who is punished and called a ‘terrorist,’ but others are called mentally unstable. Why?” wrote a Twitter user Kashif Khan.\nAnother tweet by Adam Saleh read: “This guy is not just a ‘shooter’ as what the media is saying. He’s also a Terrorist. Terrorism has no religion.” Meanwhile, Eman Ali wrote: “He [the attacker] is not mentally sick, He’s a terrorist.”\nFurthermore, Abdel Allah asserted, “Don’t call him a shooter, he is a terrorist. Terrorism doesn’t belong to any religion. Keep this in mind.”\nMark Pavelich tweeted: “The first victim of the Terrorist Attack in New Zealand is shown on the video greeting the gunman with ‘Hello Brother.’ Those were his last words. Love in the face of hate.”\nMariam Mostafa tweeted, “White Supremacy and normalisation of Islamophobia are the real monsters threatening humanity right now. Please, don’t feed the beast with your silence and SPEAK UP.”\n“This is terrorism”\nMax Abrahms, a professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the author of Rules for Rebels: The Science of Victory in Militant History, tweeted shortly after the attack: “This is terrorism, Non-state actor. Civilian target and Political goal.”\n“The terrorist who struck in New Zealand claimed to do it to oppose Muslims. Of course, the attack will have the exact opposite political effect. It will increase international sympathy towards Muslims and marginalise their fiercest political opponents,” Abrahms highlighted.\nHe noted that mass shootings in New Zealand are exceedingly rare. “The deadliest in modern history occurred in the small town of Aramoana in 1990 when gunman David Gray shot and killed 13 people following a dispute with a neighbour,” Abrahms articled.\nAbrahms further tweeted that “the terrorist in New Zealand was very public-faced. He recorded the attack and left a manifesto. This will inevitably prompt questions about how much info the media should share to inform without incentivising the violent behaviour.”\nMeanwhile, Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow and the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World, asserted in a tweet: “It’s not quite right to say the Christchurch shooter was ‘crazy, mad, insane,’ and certainly not thoughtless. Similarly, I was opposed to calling ISIS crazy, because that seemed a way to reduce the importance of what was happening, making it harder to confront the threat.”\nMeanwhile, Egyptian writer Khaled Mansour emphasised the significance to describe what happened in New Zealand as a terrorist act, as such a description would open the doors for applying specific police procedures and laws and more restrictions against specific organisations or associations.\nGlobal reactions\nEgypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack on Friday, describing it as “terrorist”. According to the Ministry of Immigration, four Egyptians were killed in the attack. They are Mounir Soliman, Ahmed Gamal El-Din, Ashraf AL-Morsi, and Ashraf Al-Masry.\nGlobally, the US President Donald Trump tweeted that he spoke with the Prime Minister of New Zealand regarding “the horrific events” that have taken place on Friday. “I informed the Prime Minister…that we stand in solidarity with New Zealand, and that any assistance the US can give, we stand by ready to help. We love you New Zealand,” Trump wrote.\nThe German Chancellor Angela Merkel also tweeted: “This is an attack directed against Muslims. It is also an attack on New Zealand’s democracy and an open and tolerant society”.\nOutrage over Facebook\nThe terrorist appeared to use a Twitter account holding the name of Brenton Tarrant to publish a racist 74-page manifesto called “The Great Replacement”, in which he identified himself as a 28-year-old man born in Australia.\nThe attacker also apparently used Facebook’s live stream service to release a shooting video, which he ironically warned he would live stream before the attack. The video, which contained graphic footage, reportedly ran for nearly 17 minutes and showed part of the attack. It is believed to be taken from an action camera worn by the terrorist. Copies of the video continued to appear on Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram over a few hours after the attack.\nIn a statement on Friday, Facebook said it removed the video and the account which published the content. “We’re also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we’re aware,” Facebook stated.\nThe social media platform revealed that New Zealand police alerted them to the video shortly after the live stream commenced. “We quickly removed both the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as the video,” Facebook added.\nDemocratic US Senator Cory Booker, who is running for presidency, criticised Facebook’s slow response to the spread of the graphic content of the video. Booker said at his election campaign event that “tech companies have a responsibility to do the morally right thing.”\nBooker added, “this is a case where you’re giving a platform for hate. That’s unacceptable, it should have never happened, and it should have been taken down a lot more swiftly.”\nTopics: attacks mosque New Zealand terrorism\nFatma Lotfi\nMore in In Focus\nMore in Fatma Lotfi\nAfter initial denial, Iran admits ‘mistakenly’ downing Ukrainian airliner\nEconomy Plus poll forecasts currency appreciation, lower interest rates, price cuts across consumer goods\nQassim Soleimani: the construction worker who spearheaded Iran’s Middle East ‘shadow wars’\nLocal Administration Committee supports local council draft law, suggests amendment\nConcerns arise as ‘foreign mercenaries’ mobilise to Libyan battlefield\nAl-Sisi, Conte in talks on Libya crisis\nLibyan parliament says it would seek Egyptian army support ‘if need be’\nIran admits shooting down Ukrainian plane after initial denials\nAl-Sisi :As long as we are united, no one can hurt us\nLibya’s Haftar seizes strategic city of Sirte\nhttps://cdn2.dailynewsegypt.com/2019/03/17/new-zealand-mosque-attacks-terrorism-or-act-of-violence/\nProsecution detains St. Mark Church’s guard for 4 days over murder charge\nMar-Mina Church attacker to face death penalty\nNew weapons used in Egyptian-Greek-Cypriot joint military exercise ‘Medusa 8’\nAl-Sisi, Merkel discuss updates on Sudan, Libya\nCamp David turns 40\nAl-Sisi, King Abdullah, Abdul-Mahdi agree on economic coordination, fighting terrorism\nFar-right terrorism: gaining momentum around world\nMP Fouad denounces New Zealand attack, Senator Anning’s offensive statement\nEleven Egyptians among those wounded in Mosques’ attack in New Zealand\nOp-ed review: Christchurch attacks, Press Syndicate’s election\nCan women make a living out of football?\nWadi El Nile to set up sorting, packaging station with EGP 20m investments in 2019\nEgypt’s Defence Minister meets New Zealand counterpart over enhancing military cooperation\nReal Madrid win record fourth Club World Cup\nAbu Dhabi witnesses exceptional night in Club World Cup\nEmirates flies 1.1 million passengers to, from Cairo over last 19M","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line218136"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6895174384117126,"wiki_prob":0.31048256158828735,"text":"Centre for Health Leadership & Enterprise (CCHLE)\nPhysician heal thyself: engineering a new national health system\nThe National Health Service turned 70 in 2018 – but, amid the celebrations, its health is faltering. By working closely with local hospitals and GPs, researchers at the University of Cambridge are developing bold new ideas they believe will help…\nForget the TV drama, it’s routine care that leaves our NHS hospitals with constipation\nFor many lucky people who have never been hospitalised, the popular image of hospitals is a glamorous one, as portrayed on hit television shows like Casualty, Grey’s Anatomy and House. by Stefan Scholtes, Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management In…\nA framework for drug development\n'Science is not enough' for ensuring commercial success of new drugs, so a new journal article co-authored by Dr Nektarios (Aris) Oraiopoulos of Cambridge Judge outlines a framework to help pharma companies align better with end-customer priorities. In most industries,…\nSeparating routine and complex healthcare\nSimplifying general hospital services to make them more manageable is a route to solving the current healthcare crisis, say two healthcare experts at Cambridge Judge Business School. Every day seems to bring fresh misery for the NHS - from the…\nWorkload and patient treatment\nWorkload affects both treatment and referral decisions by \"gatekeepers\" to specialist services such as primary care physicians and emergency doctors, says a new study co-authored at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. People with serious ailments naturally desire immediate…\nWhy big data comes with big headaches for the healthcare sector\n\"Big Data\" is a phrase that seems to get many people excited these days. The potential is clearly so enormous that society seems to naturally believe it is the answer to everything. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that people…\nBBC Radio 4: Today programme\nReporter Joe Lynam covers AstraZeneca & Pfizer deal and speaks with Richard Mason, CEO of XO1 Ltd and a fellow in Health Management at Cambridge Judge Business School. Richard discusses what role Cambridge plays in new drugs development. Listen from…\nThe Times: Patients are ‘shunted like parcels’ in the night\nThis Times cover story features Stefan Scholtes, Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management at CJBS, and his research into the safety tipping point at which hospitals begin to fail. Stefan and co-authors investigated bed occupancy levels and death tolls in…\nWhen slacker is safer\nProfessor Stefan Scholtes warns that exceeding the ‘tipping point' can have serious consequences They turn up late. They seem immune to deadlines. They don't mind being carried by the team. Slackers are not usually the most popular people in the…\nPhD student selected for Academy of Management Best Paper Award\nStefano Tasselli, a PhD candidate in Management Studies at Cambridge Judge Business School, has been awarded with the Academy of Management Best Paper Award in the Health Care Management Division. He will receive the award during a ceremony in Orlando,…\nArchives Select Month January 2020 (7) December 2019 (30) November 2019 (41) October 2019 (36) September 2019 (56) August 2019 (38) July 2019 (57) June 2019 (44) May 2019 (45) April 2019 (58) March 2019 (56) February 2019 (46) January 2019 (41) December 2018 (35) November 2018 (55) October 2018 (62) September 2018 (42) August 2018 (39) July 2018 (45) June 2018 (68) May 2018 (51) April 2018 (47) March 2018 (61) February 2018 (55) January 2018 (62) December 2017 (55) November 2017 (75) October 2017 (74) September 2017 (71) August 2017 (56) July 2017 (62) June 2017 (77) May 2017 (83) April 2017 (63) March 2017 (71) February 2017 (59) January 2017 (68) December 2016 (38) November 2016 (83) October 2016 (73) September 2016 (53) August 2016 (56) July 2016 (48) June 2016 (68) May 2016 (64) April 2016 (84) March 2016 (88) February 2016 (82) January 2016 (71) December 2015 (66) November 2015 (92) October 2015 (83) September 2015 (61) August 2015 (51) July 2015 (78) June 2015 (85) May 2015 (61) April 2015 (87) March 2015 (101) February 2015 (97) January 2015 (82) December 2014 (69) November 2014 (99) October 2014 (106) September 2014 (75) August 2014 (53) July 2014 (88) June 2014 (99) May 2014 (127) April 2014 (89) March 2014 (122) February 2014 (83) January 2014 (85) December 2013 (70) November 2013 (109) October 2013 (130) September 2013 (37) August 2013 (58) July 2013 (55) June 2013 (32) May 2013 (34) April 2013 (70) March 2013 (57) February 2013 (54) January 2013 (48) December 2012 (40) November 2012 (86) October 2012 (84) September 2012 (70) August 2012 (85) July 2012 (31) June 2012 (21) May 2012 (24) April 2012 (28) March 2012 (34) February 2012 (40) January 2012 (20) December 2011 (12) November 2011 (9) October 2011 (7) September 2011 (6) August 2011 (2) July 2011 (22) June 2011 (7) May 2011 (9) April 2011 (27) March 2011 (14) February 2011 (1) January 2011 (17) December 2010 (14) November 2010 (10) October 2010 (4) September 2010 (6) August 2010 (15) July 2010 (6) June 2010 (9) May 2010 (4) April 2010 (19) March 2010 (10) February 2010 (9) January 2010 (5) December 2009 (16) November 2009 (8) October 2009 (2) August 2009 (2) July 2009 (21) June 2009 (9) May 2009 (8) April 2009 (4) March 2009 (9) February 2009 (16) January 2009 (1) December 2008 (10) November 2008 (8) October 2008 (3) September 2008 (3) August 2008 (2) July 2008 (5) June 2008 (1) April 2008 (5) February 2008 (1) December 2007 (1) September 2007 (1) August 2007 (1) July 2007 (2) May 2007 (1) April 2007 (1) March 2007 (2) February 2007 (2) December 2006 (1) October 2006 (1) September 2006 (1) July 2006 (3) December 2005 (1) March 2005 (2) December 2004 (2) November 2004 (1) May 2004 (1) January 2004 (1) December 2003 (1) June 2003 (4) January 2003 (2) December 2002 (1) November 2002 (1) September 2002 (1) May 2002 (1) February 2002 (1) January 2002 (1) February 2001 (5) January 2001 (1) September 2000 (1) August 2000 (2)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1422911"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6341382265090942,"wiki_prob":0.6341382265090942,"text":"UTEP WBB’s Slump Continues Against Portland State\nUTEP vs. Portland State on 12/9/18. (Photo by Brandon Cohn)\nThe UTEP Women's basketball team extended their losing streak to seven consecutive games following an 89-61 victory by Portland State at the Don Haskins Center on Sunday afternoon. Playing without their leading scorer Zuzanna Puc in the second half, the Miners struggled throughout the contest to stay with the Vikings, who remain undefeated at 6-0 on the season. UTEP took a 13-11 lead midway through the first quarter thanks to an Alexander 3-pointer, but Portland State would counter by going on a 6-0 run to take the lead and ultimately outscored the Miners 26-17 in the opening quarter.\nThe Vikings then extended their lead to 35-19 with 5:13 remaining in the first half. UTEP got within 11 points of PSU at 41-30 with 37 seconds left in the half, but a trey at the buzzer gave Portland State a commanding 44-30 edge heading into the locker room. The Miners got within 12 of PSU midway through the third quarter at 51-39, but the Vikings scoring frenzy was too much for UTEP to handle as they went on an 11-1 run and subsequently went on for the easy victory in what was their first ever visit to El Paso.\nFor the Miners, Redshirt-junior Ariona Gill posted her first career double-double 17 points, a career-best 12 rebounds, while Jade Rochelle added a career-high 11 points, Ariana Taylor a career-high 10 points, and Jordan Alexander tallied 8 points, as well as 8 boards. The Miners finished at 32.8 percent (20-61) from the floor, including 25.0 percent (3-12) from 3-point range. The Vikings shot 44.2 percent on 34-77 shooting and had a slight edge in rebounding (45-41). Portland State also had a significant advantage in terms of points in the paint (42-28) and fastbreak points (24-21). UTEP shared the ball effectively, recording 15 assists on 20 made field goals.\nFollowing the game Coach Baker mentioned, “Anytime you give up 89 points you’re not going to win many games,” UTEP head coach Kevin Baker said. “I’m really disappointed in our performance. I don’t want to take anything away from Portland State. They’re a really good team and do a lot of really tough things. I just was really disappointed in the product as a whole today. I think we’re a much better basketball team than the way we played today.”\nUTEP is now 2-7 on the season and will be idle for finals week before returning to action at Pacific-12 member Arizona at 6:30 p.m. MT on Dec. 17, a game that you can listen to on 600 ESPN El Paso with Duke Keith.\nFiled Under: 600 ESPN El Paso, kevin baker, Portland State WBB, UTEP WBB, zuzanna puc\nCategories: Basketball, College Basketball, Local / El Paso / Texas, Sports, UTEP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1328472"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7282190918922424,"wiki_prob":0.27178090810775757,"text":"Home › Orson Scott Card: Writer of the Terrible Choice (Studies in Young Adult Literature)\nEdith S Tyson\nOrson Scott Card: Writer of the Terrible Choice (Studies in Young Adult Literature)\nAuthor: Edith S. Tyson\nFrom a precocious childhood, through practice at playwriting in college, early writing, and life-experiences from the mission field in Brazil to unemployment crises back in the USA, Orson Scott Card has become an established writer. He is best known for his novel Ender's Game. But, provocative as this book is, with its supreme ethical dilemma at the climax, and even though it has given birth to two sets of sequels (The Speaker Trilogy and The Shadow Books), it should not be regarded as Card's only great work.\nCard is completing a series set in a fantastic, and alternate, North America: The Tales of Alvin Maker, a saga that shows the struggle of good and evil as you never saw it before. He has daringly done a saga of humanity on a distant planet governed by a supercomputer, rediscovering its home of origin, Earth: The Homecoming Series. And, with Kathryn Kidd, he has begun a trilogy in which humans manufacture their own aliens, by giving animals intelligence: The Mayflower Trilogy. He has reached out into Biblical fiction. He wrote about Moses and the Exodus three decades ago as a musical play, and now has redone it as a novel. Among his most recent books are the Women of Genesis series, at once original yet faithful to the Biblical model. He writes about his own denomination, the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), in the past, the present age, and the future. We discover how a singing voice can be a weapon, or how a young woman can lead a quest. He can be masterful at ghost-story suspense; in time travel, he can show love transcending time, or he can recreate centuries of history. He is best known for novels and novel-series, yet some of his best work is in novellas, novelettes, or short stories.\nThrough it all, there runs The Terrible Choice . If you don't know Orson Scott Card yet, this book will introduce you. If you know just a few of his books, this book will introduce you to aspects of Card that you never suspected.\nA History of Jews in Albania\n3000 Degrees: The True Story Of A Deadly Fire And The Men Who Fought It\nThe Norton Anthology Of Children'S Literature: The Traditions In English (Slipcased Edition)\nThe Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia Of The Ancient World (Internet Linked World History)\nsupport@greenwaybooks.com\nCopyright © 2020, GreenwayBooks. Powered by Shopify","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1489892"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7090898156166077,"wiki_prob":0.29091018438339233,"text":"Home > America architecture: buildings + architects > New Orleans Houses – Brad Pitt, Make It Right Housing\nNew Orleans Houses – Brad Pitt, Make It Right Housing\nPublished by Adrian Welch updated on October 28, 2018\nNew Orleans Houses, Make It Right Building, Architects, United States of America, News\nNew Orleans Homes : Make It Right Designers + Images\nLouisiana Housing Development following Hurricane Katrina – design by Graftlab\nMake It Right House\nFilm about one of the “most sensational architectural projects in the US” – a home that floats in the event of flooding and is hurricane-proof. The TV clip focuses on actor Brad Pitt and his organization Make It Right that rebuilds disaster-stricken communities in New Orleans using the revolutionary construction techniques\nhttp://en.jyskebank.tv/flash/Application.swf?v=0126346519861782-L2 – not working now, link checker 11 June 2016\nMake It Right Housing\nNew Orleans Houses, Lower Ninth Ward\nGraftlab with Brad Pitt\nMavis Yorks; Megan Grant x 2\n150 bright pink solar-powered and water-resistant houses\nFor homeless residents of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.\nBrad Pitt & his wife Angelina Jolie and their four children are residents of New Orleans\nGraft – architecture practice based in Los Angeles\nPink House Images from Graftlab 1 April 2008\n£2.5m\nRicky Ridecos\nFor charity Make It Right – run by Brad Pitt\nOfficially opened by former President Bill Clinton in March 2008\nPreviously Brad had worked with Frank Gehry on projects such as the Hove development, England\nStefan Beese\nInformation from Graftlab Mar 2008:\nMake It Right : Housing In the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans\nimages : Graft\nHurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The slow reaction to the initial emergency and to the ongoing crisis exposed troubling realities about the response capabilities of the American government when the citizens of our most culturally diverse city were in desperate need of help.\nWhen Brad Pitt visited the Lower 9th Ward for the first time after the storm, he was shocked by what he saw: the remnants of people’s lives strewn across the streets and an entire neighborhood torn apart and turned upside down. Pitt was even more disturbed by the lack of a clear plan to address the situation. Many were quietly saying there was no chance the Lower 9th Ward would ever be re-built.\nIn a series of community meetings, residents of the Lower 9th Ward told Pitt about the challenges their community faced, both before and after the storm. The rising cost of energy placed a strain on the low-income households of the neighborhood and residents expressed concern about worsening environmental conditions. Their concerns have been validated by many scientists, who have concluded that climate change is increasing the frequency and strength of hurricanes, resulting in the erosion of wetlands and barrier islands that once protected the coast. The residents of the Lower 9th Ward told Pitt that while their terrible crisis had exposed their vulnerability, Katrina had also created an opportunity: to build something better than what had existed before.\nInspired by the courage and hope of the residents he met, Pitt resolved to do whatever he could to help them rebuild. Just as importantly, he wanted to help recreate and nurture the unique culture and spirit of the 9th Ward, which symbolizes the soul of New Orleans. He understood instinctively that a New Orleans rebuilt without the 9th Ward would never be whole.\nHe began by working with Global Green to sponsor an architecture competition aimed at generating ideas about how to rebuild sustainable. Pitt worked with local community leaders as well as experts from around the world to develop viable ideas for the Lower 9th Ward. That successful project inspired Pitt’s new focus: Make It Right.\nThe Mission of Make It Right is clear: It is to be a catalyst for redevelopment of the Lower Ninth Ward, by building a neighborhood comprised of safe and healthy homes that are inspired by Cradle to Cradle thinking, with an emphasis on a high quality of design, while preserving the spirit of the community’s culture. The mission is to accomplish this quickly, so that the first residents can begin returning to their homes in early 2008.\nNew Orleans Houses : Architects involved with charity Make It Right\nA BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LOWER 9TH WARD\nBy Douglas Brinkley; Author and Historian\nThe 9th Ward of New Orleans is one of the richest cultural communities in the country and was, until Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005, a crossroads of families, music and social interaction in New Orleans. As one community leader aptly described it recently, the 9th ward had an ‘atmosphere of engagement’ that featured time spent with one another in dialog, in celebration of the music, words and history that make the 9th Ward so special. Porches and stoops were important places to catch up with one another and talk about everyday life.\nThe 9th Ward is distinguished in many ways, not least the fact that more residents owned their homes than in any other part of the city. The population is majority African American, and their homes were built on land that was, in the Colonial Louisiana of the 19th century, plantation land and built and paid for in modern times, thanks to an industrious nature and commitment to independence.\nThe force of the water resulting from multiple levee breaks due to Hurricane Katrina did far more than flood thousands of homes-it forced houses and families off their foundations. Houses were smashed or thrown on top of cars or other houses as even the highest areas of the neighborhood were flooded. The 9th Ward sustained the worst flooding after the storm, and thousands of lives were disrupted – lives still in limbo, but not defeated.\nWhat is today referred to as the Lower 9th Ward was so named after the industrial canal was dredged in the 1920’s, cutting through the 9th Ward. The area below the canal became known as the Lower 9th Ward. The creation of the industrial canal resulted in development of land along it, providing steady work for many in the area. When shipping became containerized, the demand for workers declined, which had a negative economic impact for the neighborhood. The Lower 9th Ward includes Jackson Barracks, first built in 1834 and currently being rebuilt after Katrina to once again serve as headquarters for the Louisiana National Guard.\nThe 9th Ward is no stranger to hardship or to hurricanes: the people of the 9th Ward survived Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and they will surely overcome this adversity as well.\nThe activism that has characterized this neighborhood since its inception is alive and well, with several community groups coming together to form a coalition to ensure progress and a return of the 9th Ward’s culture and energy. Their vision – an attainable vision – is a rebuilt community complete with exceptional schools, quality of life and a robust local economy.\nLouisiana Buildings\nCHEROKEE GIVES BACK FOUNDATION\nCherokee is committed to making the world a better place. As an investment firm specializing in the acquisition, remediation and sustainable redevelopment of contaminated real estate, we do this through each real estate project and through our philanthropic outreach program, Cherokee Gives Back.\nCherokee Gives Back reflects our strong commitment to nonprofit initiatives, community involvement and public service. These principles are more than philanthropic efforts—they are fundamental corporate imperatives. Cherokee Gives Back is active around the globe and is committed to implementing long-term sustainable solutions that positively impact issues such as health, education, poverty, orphan care and more. Since inception, Cherokee Gives Back has helped fund $25 million in nonprofit and community-based initiatives in the United States, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Romania, Russia, China, and India.\nAs an investment firm, Cherokee proactively builds partnerships that foster sustainable development and seeks out people and organizations that share its commitments. Sustainability is integral to the site planning, design and building development of our real estate projects. The firm implements solutions that address multiple problems by applying a whole-systems approach centered on upfront planning and teamwork in all phases of the development process. Cherokee works with communities to define and achieve sustainable outcomes, together creating better options for future generations.\nMIR Camelback House, Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans, USA\nMIR Camelback House\nMake It Right, PO Box 58009, New Orleans, LA 70158\nHurricane Katrina Housing design : GRAFT\nLocation:New Orleans, USA\nAmerican Architecture\nAmerican Architect Studios\nHurricane Katrina Housing architects : GRAFT\nBuildings / photos for the New Orleans Architecture page welcome\nNew Orleans Houses\nWebsite: www.makeitrightnola.org\nWebsite: USA\nAugust 26, 2010 in America architecture: buildings + architects. Tags: Housing designs - buildings + architects\nEberly Hospitality Project in Austin, Texas\nCushing Terrell ATX Office in Austin, Texas\nBienville House in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA\n← Venice Biennale British Pavilion 2010 – Exhibition\nCool Tower, Rotterdam Housing, Dutch Apartment Building →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1353899"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7591303586959839,"wiki_prob":0.7591303586959839,"text":"Extending your ‘healthspan’: Brain scientists tap into the secrets of living well longer\nSharon Jayson Kaiser Health News\nAUSTIN, Texas — Retired state employees Vickey Benford, 63, and Joan Caldwell, 61, are Golden Rollers, a group of the over-50 set that gets out on assorted bikes — including trikes for adults they call “three wheels of awesome” — for an hour of trail riding and camaraderie.\n“I love to exercise, and I like to stay fit,” said Caldwell, who tried out a recumbent bike, a low-impact option that can be easier on the back. “It keeps me young.”\nBenford encouraged Caldwell to join the organized rides, which have attracted more than 225 riders at city rec centers and senior activity centers. The cyclists can choose from a small, donated fleet of recumbent bikes, tandem recumbents and tricycles.\n“With seniors, it’s less about transportation and more about access to the outdoors, social engagement and quality of life,” said Christopher Stanton, whose idea for Golden Rollers grew out of the Ghisallo Cycling Initiative, a youth biking nonprofit he founded in 2011.\nBut that’s not all, according to brain scientists. They point to another important benefit: Exercising both body and brain can help people stay healthier longer.\nThe new thinking about aging considers not just how long one lives, but how vibrant one stays later in life.\n“If you’re living, you want to be living well,” said Tim Peterson, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Most people who were interested in life span and were studying genes — which control life span — switched to ‘healthspan.’”\n“Healthspan,” a coinage now gaining traction, refers to the years that a person can expect to live in generally good health — free of chronic illnesses and cognitive decline that can emerge near life’s end. Although there’s only so much a person can do to delay the onset of disease, there’s plenty that scientists are learning to improve your chances of a better healthspan.\nThe work takes on special resonance in light of a new report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that life expectancy in the United States has decreased in recent years. A rise in midlife mortality (ages 25 to 64) has dragged down the overall expectancy.\n“The idea is to make people productive, healthier and happier longer and more capable taking care of themselves,” said Andreana Haley, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is among this breed of researchers working to understand healthspan. “We now live a long time with a lot of chronic diseases, and it’s not fun. It’s costly — in terms of productivity, caregiving responsibilities, cost of health care.”\nHaley, who collaborates with exercise physiologists, nutritionists, behavioral neuroscientists and physicians, said researchers from many other disciplines are also studying healthspan, such as nurses, speech pathologists and pharmacists.\nTheir work is inspired by an aging U.S. population with changing needs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10,000 people a day turn 65, the nation’s fastest-growing population segment.\n“We have a lot of people who will need to be taken care of in the next 50 years,” she said, “and fewer young people to do the care.”\nHaley, with UT’s Aging and Longevity Center, focuses her work on midlife, which she defines as ages 40 to 60, a time when health choices can have a big impact on older years. She’s especially interested in brain health.\nHer team is collaborating with UT’s Human Laser Lab to pilot the use of low-level light therapy to increase brain energy and improve cognitive performance.\nBecause of this close brain-body connection, any degeneration in the brain affects not only cognitive function but also areas that control weight, appetite, personality, mood and blood pressure.\nOnline games and brain-training exercises have become popular as another way to keep the brain sharp.\nHowever, research on brain training reflects mixed results, including a study published last year in the journal Neuropsychologia, which “calls into question the benefit of cognitive training beyond practice effects.”\nStill, aging experts urge people as they age to work to keep mentally active, as well as physically active, to lengthen their healthspan.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line572244"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8485602140426636,"wiki_prob":0.8485602140426636,"text":"The Health of the Republic\nEpidemics, Medicine, and Moralism as Challenges to Democracy\nPublication: Sep 88\nA link between the health of the American republic and the health of its citizens\n\"This book is about the link between equality and the health of the American republic, the health of its citizens as well as of its democratic institutions.\" In a timely and controversial discussion, Dan Beauchamp translates the public health viewpoint into the language of social justice and equality. Arguing that \"public health\" and not \"health care\" ought to be of prime importance, he puts community interests at the center of a theory of equality. He also demonstrates how protecting the public health is often a matter of strengthening civil liberties. Beauchamp confronts current debates on AIDS, equality in health care, restrictions on smoking, abortion, alcoholism, and drug abuse to discuss the role of government in protecting the public’s health.\nDrawing on political philosophy and theories of democracy and equal citizenship, Beauchamp rejects the thesis that the republic’s health depends on choosing between the welfare of the community and the freedom of the individual. Seeing both values as necessary in an egalitarian health policy, he analyzes the dilemma of choosing whether freedom or community ought to dominate in the several spheres of a democratic society that are critical to the public’s health.\n\"(H)e is realistic enough to know that the inmates are too often in charge of our medical asylum. A knotty and illuminating exposition and a way out of our current problems.\"\n\"An original and highly important book.... (It) should be urgent reading for those responsible for America’s health.\"\n—Daniel Callahan, Director, The Hastings Center, and author of Setting Limits\n\"In The Health of the Republic, Beauchamp sets forth the notion of ‘republican equity’ as the basis for providing medical cure and all will find it a thought-provoking challenge.\"\n\"Beauchamp’s volume...represents the forceful expression of a public vision that stands as a challenge to the now dominant forces in American society.\"\n—Medical Humanities Review\n\"This is an important new perspective on a central social controversy. It is also compelling.\"\n—William M. Sullivan, La Salle University, and co-author of Habits of the Heart\n\"A notable statement on health issues by a prominent leader in the campaign to reform American health policies.\"\n—David F. Musto, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine, and author of The American Disease\nDan E. Beauchamp is Professor of Health Policy and Administration in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the author of Beyond Alcoholism: Alcohol and Public Health Policy (Temple) and Health Care Reform and the Battle for the Body Politic (Temple).\nHealth, Society, and Policy edited by Sheryl Ruzek and Irving Kenneth Zola\nNo longer active. Health, Society and Policy, edited by Sheryl Ruzek and Irving Kenneth Zola, takes a critical stance with regard to health policy and medical practice, ranging broadly in subject matter. Backlist titles include books on the legal and professional status of midwifery, the experience and regulation of kidney transplants, the evolution of federal law on architectural access, and a political/ethical argument for making the community responsible for universal access to health care.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line538531"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5171504020690918,"wiki_prob":0.4828495979309082,"text":"Our Holyoke chapter was founded in 2003. Historically a city of working-class immigrants, Holyoke was once the world’s biggest paper manufacturer. Waves of Irish, French-Canadian, Germans, Poles, and Jews arrived and worked alongside each other in the paper mills, organizing together to fight for better working conditions. After World War II, many factory owners moved their operations to the South in search of low wages, weak unions, less taxes, and fewer workers’ rights, and Holyoke’s residents faced crippling unemployment.\nStarting in the 1950s, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos began to migrate to Holyoke. Today, Holyoke is 50% Latino and has the largest percentage Puerto Rican population of any city in the US, outside Puerto Rico itself. We are proud to be a majority Black and Brown city today, rebuilding working-class power as we revitalize Holyoke and make it an epicenter of new green jobs.\nMake Holyoke a city where all of us can thrive.\nContact an Organizer\nJacqueline Velez\njackie@n2nma.org\nJobs Not Jails\nJobs Not Jails is the largest campaign to end mass incarceration in Massachusetts history.\nFair Share Tax\nWith our partners in Raise Up MA, we are launching a campaign to raise $1 billion in state revenue through a constitutional amendment that will restore the commons by requiring millionaires to pay their fair share.\nVoter Empowerment\nVoter empowerment, for us, is not just about getting people out to vote— it is about using our power to transform government into a democracy.\nIn 2014, we closed the last coal plant in the state. Now, with 40,000 tons of toxic ash seeped into our water and our farmlands, we continue the fight to ensure a thorough clean-up of the site and new jobs for Holyoke.\nWon Earned Sick Time\nEarned sick time for all workers in Massachusetts, allowing 1 million more people to take time off when they’re sick or need to care for a family member.\nIncreased the Minimum Wage\nWe increased the state minimum wage in 1999, 2006, and 2014, making Massachusetts’ the highest state minimum wage in the U.S.\nShut Down the Mt. Tom Coal Plant\nShut down the state’s last coal plant, which had contributed for years to Holyoke’s poor air quality and high rates of asthma.\nRestored Dental Benefits\nRestored dental benefits to Mass Health, allowing everyone access to regular cleanings and fillings.\nExpanded Public Transit\nExpanded public transit in gateway cities, increasing the number of buses and trains to get our people to work and to school.\nBanned the Box: CORI Reform\nAn historic civil rights victory that made Massachusetts the 2nd state in the U.S. to prohibit employers from asking about a person’s criminal history on an initial job application.\nClosed Corporate Tax Loopholes\nThe most progressive tax reform in Massachusetts since World War II, eliminating the capital gains loophole as part of a fair tax package worth over $1 billion in new revenue.\nIncreased Voter Engagement by 400%\nSince 1996, we have increased voter engagement by 50% in the lowest-income districts in our cities, and by 400% in neighborhoods with historically low voter turnout.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line245917"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6577247381210327,"wiki_prob":0.6577247381210327,"text":"Practice of women being married down in social status and marriage exchange, practice of wife-givers as higher in status then wife-takers are called to be\nHypo gamy\nHyper gamy\nHydro gamy\nPractice of women being married down in social status and ma\nIn a certain office\n(1/3) of the workers are women,\n(1/2) of\n(1/2) of the women are married and\n(1/3) of the married women havechildren.\n(3/4) of the men are married and\n(2/3) of the married men have children, what part of workers are without children\nIn a certain office, 1/3 of the workers are women, 1/2 of th\nIn a certain office, 1/3 of the workers are women, 1/2 of the women are married and 1/3 of the married women havechildren.\nif 3/4 of the men are married and 2/3 of the married men have children, what part of workers are without children\nAnswer the questions on the basis of the information given b\nAnswer the questions on the basis of the information given below: A,B,C,D,E and F are a group offriends.\nThere are two house wives, one professor , one engineer, one accountant and one lawyer in thegroup.\nThere are only two married couples in thegroup.\nThe lawyer is married to D, who is ahousewife.\nNo women in the group is either an engineer or anaccountant.\nC, the accountant, is married to F, who is aprofessor.\nA is married tohousewife.\nE is not ahousewife.\nWhat is E's profession\nStatements: In case of outstanding candidates, the condition\nStatements: In case of outstanding candidates, the condition of previous experience of social work may be waived by the admission committee for M.A. (Social work).\nSome of the students for M.A. (Social work) will have previous experience of socialwork.\nSome of the students for M.A. (Social work) will not have previous experience of social work\nThe average of women and child workers in a factory was 15%y\nThe average of women and child workers in a factory was 15%yr. The average age of all the 16 children was 8yr and average age of women workers was 22 yrs if ten women workers were married then the number of unmarried women workers were\nIn the early nineteenth century, theories of social evolutio\nIn the early nineteenth century, theories of social evolution were inspired less by Biology than by the conviction of social scientists that there was a growing improvement in socialinstitutions.\nProgress was taken for granted and social scientists attempted to discover its laws andphases.\nWhich one of the following inferences may be drawn with the greatest accuracy from the above passage Social scientists\nWhich one of the following inferences may be drawn with the greatest accuracy from the above passage? Social scientists\nThe average age of a couple and their son was 40 years, the\nThe average age of a couple and their son was 40 years, the son got married and a child was born just two years after theirmarriage.\nWhen child turned to 10 years, then the average age of the family becomes 38years.\nWhat was the age of the daughter in law at the time of marriage\nStatements: Any young man, who makes dowry as a condition fo\nStatements: Any young man, who makes dowry as a condition for marriage, discredits himself and dishonourswomanhood.\nThose who take dowry in marriage should be condemned bysociety.\nThose who do not take dowry in marriage respect womanhood\nSocial Anthropology Quiz","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line216334"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5339539647102356,"wiki_prob":0.5339539647102356,"text":"Printed Pages, Perfect Souls? Ideals and Instructions for the Devout Home in the First Books Printed in Dutch\n‘Moderate Islam’ Made in the United Arab Emirates: Public Diplomacy and the Politics of Containment\nReligion in Coalition: Balancing Moderate and Progressive Politics in the Sydney Alliance\n10.3390/rel11010044\nMcPhillips, K.\nReligion after the Royal Commission: Challenges to Religion–State Relations\nby Kathleen McPhillips\nSchool of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia\nReligions 2020, 11(1), 44; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010044\nReceived: 18 November 2019 / Revised: 18 December 2019 / Accepted: 19 December 2019 / Published: 15 January 2020\n(This article belongs to the Special Issue Religion in Australian Public Life: Resurgence, Insurgence, Cooption?)\nThe findings and recommendations emanating from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017) have advised religious organisations that they need to undertake significant changes to legal, governance and cultural/theological practices. The reason for urgency in enacting these changes is that religious organisations were the least child safe institutions across all Australian organisations, with poor practices of transparency, accountability and responsibility coupled with a tendency to protect the reputation of the institution above the safety of children in their care. In Australia, new state laws have been enacted and are impacting on the internal governance systems of religious organisations, including removing the secrecy of the Catholic confessional, instituting mandatory reporting of child abuse by clerics and criminalising the failure to report child sexual abuse. Religious organisations have moved to adopt many of the recommendations regarding their troubled governance including the professionalisation of religious ministry; adoption of professional standards; and appropriate redress for survivors and changes to religious laws. However, these changes signal significant challenges to current church–state relations, which have been characterised by positioning religious organisations as special institutions that enjoy exemptions from certain human rights legislation, on the basis of protecting religious freedom. This article examines and evaluates the nexus between state and religion in Australian public life as it is emerging in a post-Royal Commission environment, and in particular contested claims around the meaning and value of religious freedom versus the necessity of institutional reform to ensure that religious organisations can demonstrate safety for children and other vulnerable groups. View Full-Text\nKeywords: public inquiry recommendations; institutional child sexual abuse; clergy abuse; church–state relations; freedom of religion public inquiry recommendations; institutional child sexual abuse; clergy abuse; church–state relations; freedom of religion\nMcPhillips, K. Religion after the Royal Commission: Challenges to Religion–State Relations. Religions 2020, 11, 44.\nMcPhillips K. Religion after the Royal Commission: Challenges to Religion–State Relations. Religions. 2020; 11(1):44.\nMcPhillips, Kathleen. 2020. \"Religion after the Royal Commission: Challenges to Religion–State Relations.\" Religions 11, no. 1: 44.\nReligions, EISSN 2077-1444, Published by MDPI AG\nRSS Content Alert Logo copyright Steve Bridenbaugh/UUA","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line176741"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8991614580154419,"wiki_prob":0.8991614580154419,"text":"World Daily News »\nThousands affected by floods in Mexico\n« U.S.: Myanmar Expels U.N. Diplomat | Somali Pirates Hijack Japanese Tanker »\nAuthor Topic: Thousands affected by floods in Mexico (Read 313 times)\nAssoicated Press\nVILLAHERMOSA, Mexico: Military trucks hauled bottled water, food and clothing to Mexico's flooded Gulf coast Friday as rescue workers in helicopters and boats worked furiously to retrieve thousands still stranded on rooftops of their homes.\nWith floodwaters stretching clear across the Gulf coast state of Tabasco and food and drinking water scarce, health officials warned against cholera and other waterborne diseases.\nAn estimated 900,000 people had their homes flooded, damaged or cut off from access. Tabasco Gov. Andres Granier said 300,000 were awaiting rescue Thursday, and police, soldiers and military workers were still trying to reach them.\nSoldiers evacuated the state capital of Villahermosa's historic center Thursday night as the waters of the Grijalva river burst through dikes of sandbags and toppled a retention wall, flooding the city's bus station and open-air market. Much of the city looked like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, with murky water reaching to rooftops.\nSafe refuges were scarce and officials improvised, turning parking garages and any other dry structure into temporary shelters.\nDozens of hospitals and medical centers were flooded. Health officials warned that there could be epidemics of cholera, although none was reported.\nTabasco state floods every year around this time, and many poor, low-lying neighborhoods have grown accustomed to spending half a year with the first floor of their homes under water. But this year has taken even flood-weary residents by surprise, inundating Villahermosa and leaving the city's famous Olmec statues with water up to their enormous stone chins.\n\"The situation is extraordinarily grave: This is one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country,\" President Felipe Calderon said in a televised address Thursday night.\nSeveral Mexican banks established special accounts for donations to flood victims, many of whom lost everything, including their homes.\n\"Nobody can stand around with his arms crossed,\" Calderon said. \"We can't and won't abandon our brothers and sisters in Tabasco.\"\nA week of heavy rains caused area rivers to overflow, leaving at least 70 percent of the state — and 80 percent of the capital — under water. At least one death was reported. Nearly all services, including drinking water and public transportation, were shut down in Villahermosa.\nWeather forecasters predicted more rain in the coming days. The flooding was not related to Tropical Storm Noel, which pounded the Caribbean.\nThe Grijalva River, one of two large waterways ringing Villahermosa, has risen 2 meters (6.5 feet) above its \"critical\" level and gushed into the city's center. Authorities said some of the rivers were continuing to rise.\nIn Villahermosa, dozens of survivors anxious about relatives and friends crowded outside government offices seeking assistance. Others waded despondently through waist-deep water or wandered along highways leading out of the capital.\n\"We lost everything,\" said Manuel Gonzalez, whose house was swallowed by the floodwaters. \"I left without one peso in my pocket and I can't find my siblings.\"\nThe state of Chiapas, which borders Tabasco to the south, also reported severe flooding, with officials there estimating that more than 100,000 people have been affected.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line212861"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8364236950874329,"wiki_prob":0.8364236950874329,"text":"Kidnapped Nigerian archbishop freed\nNigeria police say the country's second-highest ranking Anglican archbishop, seized more than a week ago close to the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, has been released. (AFP/File)\nPORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (AFP) – Nigeria's second-highest ranking Anglican archbishop, seized more than a week ago close to the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, has been released, police said on Sunday.\nState police spokeswoman, Angela Agabe, confirmed to AFP that Archbishop Ignatius Kattey was set free at 20:00 (1900 GMT) on Saturday.\nHowever, there were no details of where and how Kattey regained his freedom.\nHe was kidnapped along with his wife on the evening of September 6.\nThe wife was later abandoned in a bush by the pair's abductors, Agabe said.\nA senior official of the church in the Niger Delta region, Israel Omosioni, told journalists that Kattey looked healthy after his release.\nKattey is the dean of archbishops of the Anglican communion in Nigeria, ranking him second to the primate of the Anglican Church in the country.\nThe cleric is archbishop of the Niger Delta province.\nAgabe said police were not aware of any ransom fee being paid.\nShe also confirmed that Kattey was \"in a stable condition\".\nKidnapping for ransom occurs regularly in the southern oil-producing Niger Delta region, though authorities rarely admit to making payments.\nThe victims are often released unharmed after the payment of a ransom.\nIn the north of the country however, Islamist extremists have killed a number of their hostages.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1431176"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5751932263374329,"wiki_prob":0.42480677366256714,"text":"There Must Be More To Life\nthan having it all\nClicky Links\nThe Stare’s Nest\nWhat’s wrong with poetry?\nPosted on August 31, 2012 by Judi\nIt is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody makes money out of poetry. One excellent, established poet I know tells me she makes £3,000-£4,000 per year from her books and readings. All her other income comes from teaching poetry and judging competitions. Publishers can’t make a profit from poetry books. Sometimes they subsidise their poetry list from their literary fiction; sometimes they themselves are subsidised by the Arts Council. The excellent poet Sean O’Brien helped me understand why this is, when he suggested that the audience for poetry in this country is between 5,000 and 10,000 readers – and most of them also write it. Why is that? What’s wrong with poetry that it should be so unpopular? In this soundbyte generation, something short, pithy and memorable ought to be the art form of the day, but it is so not the case.\nIt’s actually worse than that. I studied life sciences at University, not English Literature, and spent 25 years of my life among scientists, medics, marketeers, accountants, managers. During that time I never heard a single one of them talk about a poem. They went to the theatre, they read literary fiction, they raved about movies, they took in the big art shows at the major galleries, but never ever had anything to do with poetry. I once asked a few friends which contemporary poets they might know of, hoping for names like Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Carol Ann Duffy or even Roger McGough, most of them drew a blank. One or two ventured; “Pam Ayres?”.\nWhen I said that after taking redundancy I was going to study poetry, it closed down the conversation immediately. Nobody ever asked me if they could see my poems; on the other hand if I mentioned my (still half-baked) novel it was all “Can I see it? Am I in it? What’s it about?” One friend of mine, who was an English Literature graduate, offered the view that going to study poetry was “What you do when you are having a nervous breakdown”. I countered that with assuring her that studying poetry was going to save me from having that nervous breakdown.\nSo what has gone wrong? Why is poetry such a minority sport? Is there something wrong with the way poetry is taught in schools that turns people off? Is it about the way it is marketed and sold? Or is it such an acquired taste that it simply does not speak to anyone who hasn’t studied it in depth?\nIs there something wrong with the poetry?\nThis entry was posted in blog post and tagged poetry by Judi. Bookmark the permalink.\n56 thoughts on “What’s wrong with poetry?”\nSteve Moran on September 1, 2012 at 11:03 am said:\nI would start by suggesting that it’s not so much unpopular as unknown. The process of finding good poetry is like mining from very poor ore. The mines used to be productive but now the amount of rubble that has to be processed to find a few grams of poetry is so huge that most have been abandoned. All that’s left is a few merry panhandlers down by the streams that flow from the old workings. There was a site with a catchy name, I think it was poetry dotcom – not sure now, which had, when I looked a long time ago, four million members. If each had uploaded say 10 poems, that would be forty million poems. If you read them at the rate of 100 per day, which quickly might prove fatal, it would take 400,000 days to read them all, i.e. over 1,000 years. Now that I think about it, the fact that there are so few publications is something of a miracle, and a very welcome miracle. That there are so few readers is something of a reflection on the four million and by projection, hundreds of millions of those who write poetry. Then again, I tack again and think that can’t be right, there must be more readers than buy books and magazines. There is so much good poetry online, classics and modern as well, one might almost say that nearly everything is online. Making a living is a problem for all writers, poets, short story writers and novelists alike.\nJudi on September 5, 2012 at 8:25 am said:\nPerhaps somebody should be sifting all that stuff for us. In fact, editors of anthologies are doing some of that. There is some great contemporary poetry out there, I am really just wondering why normal, educated people, who like art galleries, cinema, theatre, and literary fiction, would never pick up a book of poems. The Man Booker Prize gets them all excited, but the Forward Prize or the TS Eliot – what are they? Why is poetry a fringe activity? What turns people off?\nThe Willesden Herald (@willesdenherald) on September 9, 2012 at 2:05 pm said:\nPoetry is a quasi-religious pursuit. It doesn’t sit well with glory and sponsorship. Too much publicity would be like a camera crew and jolly presenter walking backwards into a church and shining a 1000 watt light on a person kneeling in a pew and talking over them. Those who need it will find it.\nJudi on September 9, 2012 at 3:58 pm said:\nSteve, I agree that poetry is profound, but I think that is why people need it, even though most of them don’t know that. I’m not happy with the mystical thought that people are somehow led to it when they need it. I think we have to go out there and evangelise.\nSteve on November 22, 2012 at 6:22 pm said:\nI suppose I see it as a victimless crime, and something like wild ducks, best left alone. But you know what a misery I am.\nWilliam Thirsk-Gaskill on November 22, 2012 at 6:35 pm said:\nII agree.\nI am a writer and performer of poetry. I co-present a programme on community local radio called ‘Themes for Dreamers’ which is largely about poetry. I also happen to be a secularist. I could not live a civilised life without poetry. I have had to officiate at the funerals of 3 lifelong atheists. They were 89, 60 and 84 when they died and all lived jam-packed-full lives. There was no other way to do justice to their memory in 30 minutes than through the use of distilled, concentrated language which included phonic and rhythmic techniques and repetition to produce a more vivid impression on the listener – in other words: poetry.\nWhen I was studying creative writing with the Open University, I was appalled by how many students, including some who harboured definite ambitions to write full-time, said they did not “do” poetry. Writing poetry requires having control of language. If you can’t control language then, in my opinion, you are not qualified to be a writer. Some of the best prose writers I know of (David Peace is an example) do not publish their poetry, but they do write it, and lend some of its techniques to their prose.\nOn a recent reading tour to promote an anthology called ‘A Complicated Way of Being Ignored’ (one definition of poetry) I noticed how poor the material was in the “read-round” (impromptu contributions from the audience after the main reading). The outstanding exception was at the Otley Poets, but at all the other locations, it was dire. The commonest failings were being too pretentious and abstract, or being too puerile and silly. I think it is in everybody’s interest for good poets to be impatient and vocal with bad poets. Poetry should inspire the imagination and move the emotions: it absolutely should not bore or alienate.\nJudi on November 22, 2012 at 8:49 pm said:\nTrue, the “open mic” can be a mess, although I’d like to put in a plug for Ashley Harrold’s Poets’ Cafe in Reading which is pretty good. Funny how a lot of people who never read poetry, think they can write it…\nWilliam Thirsk-Gaskill on November 22, 2012 at 10:09 pm said:\nawaretenacious on January 5, 2016 at 3:14 pm said:\nWhat would you (or anyone) define as “too abstract”? Art is subjective.\nI blame the lack of interest in poetry on anti-intellectualism, which has become ubiquitous in western society, particularly in the United States.\nRachel J Lewis on November 22, 2012 at 6:49 pm said:\nI would say that for me, it’s fear of not understanding – like Opera or Gilbert and Sullivan. I don’t go to the opera because I have a fear that I won’t understand it and will will be the only person sat there wanting the wikipedia synopsis of it.\nMy knowledge of poetry extends to yes, Pam Ayres, John Masefield’s Cargoes – which I had to learn and write from memory for school, and the poems of Robert Frost; which I did for O Level English Lit and loved – even if they are all about death in some way. I have a book of Robert Frost’s poems and I have an anthology that my husband bought me one Christmas, but I don’t know anything about poetry and I don’t know where to start. I’m afraid that I’ll say things such as ‘I like that because I see the picture of the glorious scenery in my head’ only to be stared at and laughed at by intelliegent people and discover it’s actually about early twentieth century Soviet Gulags and that I’ve missed the point entirely.\nI don’t think I’m clever enough to read poetry. It’s in the same class as a broadsheet crossword, that’s ‘above’ me too.\nPam Ayres is not poetry. Before we can make any other progress, we need to explain to people, plainly and calmly, that Pam Ayres is not poetry. Calling Pam Ayres poetry is equivalent to calling a painting by numbers version of the Mona Lisa, “The Mona Lisa”.\nWhat Pam Ayres writes is “verse”, i.e. it rhymes and has rhythm (just the painting by numbers has colours and brush strokes) but it is too narrow and incomplete to call it poetry. In verse, what you say, what words you choose, is often decided by requirements such as a rhyme scheme or verse form. Doing this very rigidly produces a comic effect, which Pam Ayres exploits. Poets do this more subtly, and nearly always try to avoid the comic effect.\nIf you want an example of something well-known and accessible which is out-and-out poetry, the one I would recommend is ‘The Jumblies’, by Edward Lear. That is a nursery-rhyme, but it is also an expertly-written and profound poem. My opinion of it is that it is a poem about risk-taking and teenage angst.\nPoetry does not have to rhyme. John Milton, the author of ‘Paradise Lost’, believed that the tendency in his day for more and more poetry to rhyme was a bad thing, and too limiting.\nI think Pam Ayres’s poetry IS poetry. Whether it is GOOD poetry is another question. But it’s the accessible end of the genre, and from there only a small step to Wendy Cope, John Hegley, Sophie Hannah, Ian McMillan, and from there… further and deeper into poetry. You’ve got to start somewhere, the trick is not to stop there.\nI think Pam Ayres is too liable to send people in the wrong direction. An analogy might be starting to teach people about astronomy by talking about astrology. Edward Lear, Michael Rosen, Spike Milligan, Ian McMillan, Hilaire Belloc, and even T. S. Eliot all wrote/write at least some poetry which any average 8 year old could understand. They knock the spots off Pam Ayres.\nI agree that, given a choice between Pam Ayres and nothing, I would choose Pam Ayres.\n” Pam Ayres is not poetry. Before we can make any other progress, we need to explain to people, plainly and calmly, that Pam Ayres is not poetry.”\nAnd right there you’ve explained to me why I don’t read poetry, because people like you come along and insult what little knowledge I have in engaging with the subject. Perhaps it may have been less insulting to start your reply by ignoring my stupidity and saying, “You liked Pam Ayres, great! Well as she writes verse you might like to try other people who write verse, such as….. Just a thought there…\nRach I would agree. To make a prose analogy: Before you get to James Joyce you have to start with Agatha Christie! Or 50 Shades…\nWell I am delighted to see that we are reading each other clearly and nobody is being hyper-sensitive.\nJudi on November 22, 2012 at 10:06 pm said:\nWilliam, thanks, you have helped to clarify at least one of the issues!\nI’m going to send you a poetry book for Christmas!\nSimon Travers on November 23, 2012 at 11:55 am said:\nFear of not understanding is something that I feel is a problem as well. And I think that it’s not helped by some modern poets. I did English Literature to degree level, but still sometimes feel like I haven’t read enough, don’t get enough.\nBut I love going to the opera, and I’m never scared that I won’t understand it, because even though it’s in another language, at our local theatre, there is a digital screen above the stage with surtitles, and you can buy a programme for £5 which gives you the synopsis and a couple of essays on how the work was made and what it’s all about. From there, it’s easy to follow the gist of what is happening and pick up on a lot of the deeper themes and ideas.\nLikewise, if you ever want to read Shakespeare, get the Cambridge schools edition, on one page you get the full text, on the other you get a running synopsis, a mini glossary of the old words and suggestions for activities to think about the play. You get the full experience of the text, but you’re not on your own.\nI never want poetry to dumb down, but if you’re going to fight for poetry not dumbing down, then you have to make sure that you give everyone possible a leg up so that they can access the poems, and too many poets don’t get close to this. Which is odd, when even TS Eliot provided a notes section to help at the back of The Waste Land.\nJohn Bloomberg-Rissman on November 22, 2012 at 6:55 pm said:\nNothing’s wrong with poetry. These are great and wonderful days for poetry. The only thing that’s wrong is trying to measure everything by bourgeois values. It’s actually great that poetry is among the few things capitalism can’t turn into more capital.\nIs it bourgeois to expect poetry presses to keep on publishing books when they might only sell 200 copies and make a loss? Is it bourgeois to want to introduce a wider audience to poetry, or is it only for a self-appointed elite? If we love poetry so much, shouldn’t we nurture it, or is there a La Boheme tragic beauty ethos going on?\nNo, itis not and, even if it were, I would not care. My colleagues and I go to a lot of trouble to get funding for projects. We can see from audience reactions that are efforts produce a great deal of enjoyment. Any-one, like the previous commenter, who suggests that a thing’s not breaking even is somehow good is talking nonsense.\nSorry for the spelling mistake in the last posting: I was agitated.\nSearching for the Light on November 22, 2012 at 7:01 pm said:\nI think half the problem is that people are put off poetry for life at early age. Even at primary level we ask students to pick apart and discuss poems, they are rarely allowed to read them purely for enjoyment, the way they are encouraged to read other literature.\nAlso a lot modern poetry is too “clever” for ordinary folks, the images are not easily understood and there seems to be a number of modern poets who appear to just be clever for cleverness sake, a case of look how intelligent/literate I am, and writing for the approval of other poets/literary folks.\nI love poetry and both read and write it (though yet to be published). I like poems that speak to me on either an emotional level or tell a good story. I don’t want to be consulting a dictionary for every second word.\nI have a poetry app (can’t remember which one) on my iPod touch and when I have to wait somewhere, e.g. doctors or when a friend is late for coffee, I like to read one or two poems. There is a lot of poetry available online, but for good modern poetry I think you do need to be prepared to buy either magazines or books. I try to buy as much as I can afford.\nThat said, I do also borrow what I can from libraries but find that the is a dearth of poetry books in my local libraries and what there is I usually have to wait for as they will only have one copy of each book between about six libraries. I am not sure if this reflects what people want to read or if people aren’t reading it because it is not available.\nGood point about libraries. It is a bit of a vicious circle.\nfitzjameshorse on November 22, 2012 at 7:36 pm said:\nI think I would have to say that the SEEMINGLY elitist nature turns people off. Or put it another way, it turns me off…..like Ballet, Classical Music, Modern Art…..oops Im not very sophisticated. I think the sheer compulsory nature at school was a turn off……from hosts of golden daffodils when I was about 8 years old.\nPoetry can be a bit emotional I remember the class of 55 boys laughing at me as I was 8 years old and read a poem about a rabbit caught in a snare and when I was about 12 another set of 35 boys laughed at me for blubbing my way thru “The Old Woman of the Roads” (Paraic Colm sp)\nCertainly those compare and contrast essays……”this poem is 16 lines of iambic pentameter” were a killjoy…..although for O Level there were poems I actually “got”…..”An Irish Airman Forsees His Death” (Yeats), “When I Have Fears (JOhn Keats)……and I do “get” the one about Ozymandious (sp) that all things pass and “Dulce et Decorum Est”……and an odd one which began “Today we have naming of parts” (a semi comical war poem.)\nThe thing is maybe that the best poems (in my view) are ones we “get”. It seems like a word puzzle. They set out to be obscure and we are ot actually meant to get it. To over-simplify Prose is about making meanings clear….precise. A total over-simplification but could Treasure island be written as a poem.\nCould we ask 12 year old to explain a poem called Treasure Island. “Well I thought it was about a ship and an island”. “Oh I thought it was a commentary on……feminism”….because when we interpret a poem just about any answer is acceptable.\nBut in prose…only one meaning is clear.\nI suppose Language is about Communication. I just want to shout at poets…..”for Gods sake….tell me what you mean……dont make me read 16 lines of iambic pentameter 25 times before I dare suggest it might be about……whatever.\nI guess I am just not sophisticated enough…and poets (too often) enjoy the high ground of sophistication.\nYou mention Pam Ayres who for many teaching poetry at the better (allegedly) universities ….cheapened the art form. Maybe it was Jealousy…..but “I wish Id looked after me teeth” actually has meaning.\nThe only poetry book I actually own is by Seamus Heaney. Largely because he is “one of us” ..not just Irish but a northern Catholic/nationalist like myself. And probably I “get” him because he “gets” us.\nIf you like Heaney, you’ll probably like Michael Longley, Colette Bryce, Derek Mahon, Sinead Morrisey, maybe Paul Muldoon. All fabulous Irish writers. There is an accessible end of poetry and there is an experimental free verse style that people tell me is good but you can’t approach it as a starting point, you have to get to it gradually. A few years ago I thought TS Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ was far too clever clever and unfathomable. Now I can see it, but I don’t always want to work that hard and Google every other line to understand it. I do prefer poetry to have some clarity. A lot of contemporary poetry is surprisingly accessible.\nI just got this comment from Sarah McEvoy, via Facebook , which I am posting for completeness.\nI *love* poetry. I write it. I even translate it (you give me a sonnet by Petrarch, I’ll give you a sonnet in English – it’s not a real translation if you don’t capture the rhyme and metre as well as the sense of the words).\nBut I do not get free verse, no matter how hard I try. I realise there must be some kind of rules behind it, or it would just be prose, but I don’t understand for the life of me what the rules are. So, because it is too hard for me, I leave it strictly alone.\nWendy Battin says: Poetry requires silence. Where do we find silence now?\nthepeoplespoetry on November 22, 2012 at 9:49 pm said:\nI think that poetry is, unfortunately, regarded as elitist or only for literary people. Like Maths it is something be loved or loathed, you either get it or you don’t and for most people it is something they feel is too difficult to engage with.\nThis is very sad in my view, we start children off with nursery ryhmes and many can recite them before they can read them, yet we somehow manage to switch them off poetry when they get to school.\nThere is a wealth of accessible poetry out there that everyone of whatever ability could enjoy. Maybe it is our job as writers/poets to bring the poetry to the people, to make it fun, engaging and enjoyable.\nThe parallel with mathematics is a very good one. If you cannot understand maths you can still live, but your life is impoverished and full of alienation and perplexity that would otherwise be avoided.\nSally Humphrys on November 22, 2012 at 10:18 pm said:\nI just don’t ‘get’ it, I’m afraid, in the same way that I don’t ‘get’ most of modern art. Sometimes I can look at a modern painting and think, there’s something I like about that bit there: the shape or the colour or the texture. In the same way I will rarely encounter a poem in which a certain line or phrase grabs me – something about the rhythm or the alliteration perhaps. But almost never will I find a poem that enchants me as a whole.\nI think I’m more about pictures than words. Even in terms of art, I need to be able to see what it ‘is’, to have it generate a story for me. Poetry for me is often just splashes of multi-coloured words. It doesn’t ‘mean’ anything to me. I’m more likely to be taken with the lyrics of a song, perhaps because songs are more often situational and directly emotional. I also admire comic poets like Les Barker, who can surprise you with a rhyme that you didn’t see coming.\nI hated studing poetry at school (but then I hated studying English Literature full stop). It strikes me as something you can perhaps learn to enjoy, but it’s easier for me to find beauty in portraiture or sculpture or music (yes, including opera) or even algebra and calculus. I’m just not good with words, and don’t read novels either as a rule.\nI evidently have no soul.\nWhich poems have you tried reading, Sally? Because I know you like Yeats’ “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”. The best poetry is full of what they call “sonics” – beautiful sounds – so if you can get song lyrics, then there are some poems that should come right for you.\nAnother way of saying that, no matter how contradictory it may sound, is that poetry needs the chance to be read out loud. One of the most basic mistakes made by people who are just starting to write poetry is that they don’t read out loud as they are composing and editing.\nAgree. When I’m writing I read my stuff aloud, rather than count the feet, and sometimes I read aloud into my mobile phone’s record thingy and play it back. It’s the best way to feel the rhythm, and to scrub out the tongue-twisters. Do you think if more people heard it read, rather than tried to pick it up off the page, they might engage with poetry more easily?\nWilliam Thirsk-Gaskill on November 23, 2012 at 10:31 am said:\nYes, I do. Poetry is much more convincing when it is recited out loud, and recited well.\nPseu on November 22, 2012 at 10:52 pm said:\nGreat debate!\nI love reading: but my choice of books is quite specific… I prefer certain authors and am not expected to like all authors.\nWhen it comes to poetry I love some of it, but I certainly don’t love all of it… yet it seems all ‘poetry’ is usually lumped together –\nI agree that we ask children too young to dissect and analyse poetry – and in the early stages opening children’s eyes and ears to poetry is the most important thing. I clearly remember TS Eliot’s Railway Cat\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLEEeHj6e_Y\nbeing read in my second year at school… so I was about 6, and so enjoyed the sounds, the rhythms and the story. This was read aloud at story time by one inspired student teacher: she also read lots of AA Milne, story and poems.\nBetween that time and my ‘O’ levels I don’t remember any poetry exposure through school. How sad is that?\nI believe that there should be more programmes such as ‘Poetry Please’ on the radio to help the listening public have a little more exposure to poetry. Maybe a daily poem at the end of the news every day?\nThe more familiar it becomes the more people will develop a liking. A little demystification would go along way.\nJudi on November 27, 2012 at 8:25 am said:\nI always think that a good poetry reading would make wonderful and cheap as chips TV. “Poetry Please” has a couple of problems, as far as I can see – 1) it is requested by a Radio 4 audience, whose average age is 56, and 2) it relies on them asking to hear poems they already know. How do we get the rest of the UK’s demographic to hear poetry that is new to them?\nI read an article by Libby Purves about 10 years ago which commented on some poetry readings that had been shown by the BBC. One of the narrators was Leo McKern, who, she observed, had spurned auto-cue and learnt the poems by heart. She thought it was very engaging television and, like you, she noted that it was very cheap to make in comparison with most other productions.\nPossibly the best living exponent of this kind of thing is Ian McMillan. He recently crossed the boundary between music and poetry with the Ian McMillan Orchestra (which split up a few days ago after some very successful performances). They used to do some poetry, some music, some work that was a combination of the two, and Ian McMillan’s signature extemporisation based on two or three themes from the audience. Ian also mingles with the audience during the interval. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid him. My 12 year-old son, who is definitely of the video game rather than book generation, found it fascinating and easy to interact with. Even the poems in which the vocabularly was too advanced for him to grasp all the meaning, he found the patterns of the words entertaining.\nThere are some very influential people who think poetry should never be read by actors, only by the poets themselves. All I can say is, in that case, some poets should take a few acting classes. I love McMillan’s work, it is hilarious. He was the visiting poet at an Arvon course I went on, and I had the privilege of making a cup of coffee for Ian McMillan.\nSimon Travers on November 24, 2012 at 2:23 am said:\nThe problem is a lot about poetry being lumped together as an all or nothing proposition. Some arts present themselves like this, contemporary art is another form which does the same, but this isn’t really how we access art.\nI don’t like classical music, I like bach, hildegard von bingen, sibelius. I’ve changed my mind about Mozart. Stravinsky and boulez leave me cold.\nI don’t like pop music. I like records on the asthmatic kitty and bella union labels. I like the beatles but not the stones.\nI don’t like movies. I like werner herzog and sylvain chomet. I thought the avengers movie was more fun than this years batman.\nI don’t like novels. I like anne tyler, john lecarre, ali smith. I read 200 pages of martin amis aged 19 and was put off him for life.\nI don’t like poetry. I like wendell berry. I just found out about kay ryan. I like george herbert and ee cummings. Theed a great selection of contemporary poetry in our local library, but most of it leaves me cold.\nNobody likes all poetry. which means that if poetry is presented as an all or nothing proposition, the logical answer has to be nothing, because who can like it all? And who would want to?\nYou are right, Simon, but a lot of people say “I don’t like poetry” as if it were all the same thing. Nobody would say “I don’t like music” or “I don’t like fiction”, would they?\nPerhaps the reason that people lump all poetry together is that one thing poetry lacks is an impulse to be fashionable.\nIn my personal experience of life and other people, music, fiction, film, are easily transported into a conversation of what consistutes a fashionable lifestyle. That conversation operates on a number of levels, what is fashionable within ‘pop’ culture, what has a ‘cult’ following, what is fashionable if you listen to Radio 2… etc.\nPoetry does not seem to exist within that wider cultural vocabulary of fashion. I’m not an expert on the world of poetry and I’m sure writers go in and out of style within the sub-culture, but I don’t think there is a poet that you can read and associate with contemporary fashion and thinking in the same way as Rhianna, Christopher Nolan, 50 shades etc.\nIf ‘poetry’ wanted to get into that conversation, then the simplistic answer is youth. Not just young readers, but a stronger culture of younger, rawer, more fashion conscious poets would need to be promoted and published. Even if that meant they got prioritised over other writers who had greater craft, deeper insight and better philosophy. There are not many media in which popularity and artistic achievement go hand in hand.\nPerhaps a youth writing movement would be able to avoid the pressures of the canon too. Rule number 1 for any budding TS Eliots, don’t write like TS Eliot.\nBut it is not clear that either a) that is possible, or b) that is desirable. Perhaps poetry’s place is outside of fashion, providing a prophetic voice for those who will listen. Perhaps poetry’s place is to maintain purer standards of writing and thought that may trickledown into the cultural arena. But if it is, then that is a choice that needs to be embraced and lived and accepted that most people in western culture will therefore ignore poetry.\nThen poets and readers live with the consolation of Ezekiel in the Bible ‘And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious people—they will know that a prophet has been among them.’\nThere are young poets on the scene. The Foyle Young Poets competition is for school age poets. There is also the Salt Younger Poets anthology available from Salt Publishing. Also the slam and spoken word scene is buzzing. Check out Apples and Snakes, and Kayo Chingonyi and Kate Tempest on You Tube. But I think of poetry as less like pop music and more like literary fiction; Hilary Mantel and Will Self might no longer be spring chickens, but people await their new literary effusions with interest, even excitement.\nI have no thoughts of poetic purity and it being above other forms of writing.\nstackhousejones on December 2, 2012 at 6:26 am said:\nHi again. Had the time to check out apples and snakes last night. Seems good, but at the same time, their promotional stuff had Michael Rosen front and centre. I like Michael Rosen, and my 5 year old adores Little Rabbit Foo Foo and Going on a Bear Hunt, but youth… he once was. =)\nIt’s the joy of poetry that it can be thought of as closer to pop music or literary fiction. Poetry can extend an idea, or go deeper with an idea than pop. But at the same time, pop and alternative music has a lot to teach poets if poets are serious about reaching an audience wider and more diverse than the ‘professional reading’ poetry audience.\nTried Will Self but haven’t read Hilary Mantel. But I would say they fit into that wider cultural discourse of fashion. Will Self has done things like Shooting Stars on TV. Wolf Hall will be on BBC 2 in late 2013.\nWhat I was trying to say with the ‘poetry purity’ point is not that poetry is, or should be, more pure than other literary forms. It’s that if poetry wants to be reaching a wider readership than a ‘professional poetry’ readership, then it can achieve that, by entering a wider social discourse in which the value of ‘being fashionable’ is highly prized.\nHowever, it is unclear that is a good direction for individual poets or poetry as a whole. It will be a choice which authors and publishers will need to make. Because there is lot of fashionable stuff and thinking that needs holding up and saying ‘really?’ Poetry has fulfilled that role in the past. It can do it again. But it needs to be recognised as a choice to be made to reject fashionability.\nAs opposed to “Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis”? I know which I would prefer.\nDaffodil on June 2, 2013 at 2:57 pm said:\nThe reason why poetry is unpopular, is because poetry has been killed by the modernists. Since then, poetry has to be unrhymed, hermetic, not understandable. If you write poetry which rhymes (which is in fact more difficult than writing poetry that doesn’t rhyme) and makes sense, you are critisized by the self-proclaimed “modern” artists who think they are a genius because they write stuff that nobody understands. The truth is, contemporay poetry is as dead as contemporary art. Poets can no longer rhyme, painters can no longer paint, yet still they manage to convince some critics that this is “high art”. In the end, it’s all a great hoax and no sane person really buys it.\n(Sorry for my bad English, I am not a native speaker.)\nJudi on June 5, 2013 at 11:28 am said:\nThanks, Daffodil. I agree with you that I like to see some craft and beauty in a poem, but I don’t agree that it always has to rhyme. When Milton wrote “Paradise Lost” in 1674, he bemoaned the modern tyranny of rhyme, and explained why he, like classical Latin poets, was not going to rhyme his work.\nhttp://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237824\nThe language we use should be beautiful and powerful, but it has not always been the fashion to have end rhymes, and there’s no need to always do it now. In fact it often has an unintended comic effect unless it is very subtle.\nWilliam Thirsk-Gaskill on June 5, 2013 at 12:04 pm said:\nI’m glad you made the point about Milton. I don’t agree that poetry has been killed by modernism. Modernism is not something you can dispense with. We had an industrial revolution. We have had WW1, WW2 and countless others. People have to react to that. One of the easiest ways to write bad poetry is to write rhyming couplets about birds on trees.\nI recommend ‘Afternoons’ by Philip Larkin. You can find it on the internet if you search for it. It doesn’t rhyme. It is about contemporary subject matter. It needs some thinking about, but it is easily understandable and powerful.\nShahaboddin on December 1, 2013 at 12:04 am said:\nI think this is far more complex an issue:\n1). The general society is against intellectualism unless it directly produces money or power and poetry is considered an intellectual pursuit that does neither. Therefore, the society, in general, rejects it.\n2). Poetry is a form of edutainment, meaning it really is supposed to not only educate, but be entertaining as well. In that, poetry is competing with a lot of entertainment that is far more “easy fun”.\n3). Poetry is difficult to understand partly because the educated public is far less educated in the classical way. However, more to the point, poetry’s chief power is in metaphor and not only is metaphor not taught well anymore, but I believe the vast majority of the population is incapable of thinking metaphorically.\nwthirskgaskill on December 3, 2013 at 4:23 pm said:\nEverything you said is true under certain circumstances, but I think you have over-generalised. Not all poetry is difficult to understand. Contemporary poetry certainly does not require a “classical” education (in fact, having a classical education can make contemporary poetry more difficult to understand). Poetry deals – or should deal – with universal themes: birth, death, love, hate, possession, loss, and so forth. People expect to get their commentary on these things for nothing. The best analogy I can think of is that people think of poetry in the same way they think of oxygen: it should be free, and they don’t give a damn how or where or why it is produced, as long as it goes on forever.\nJudi on December 3, 2013 at 4:31 pm said:\nI’d like to know which contemporary poetry people think is hard to understand. There’s such a lot that is very accessible – and relatively little obscure stuff. Anyone starting with Sean O’Brien’s “The Firebox” or any of the Bloodaxe anthologies would probably get on fine.\nIt depends how you define “contemporary”. If it means, simply, “written recently”, then there is any amount of contemporary poetry that nobody understands – not even the person who wrote it. The worst offenders (***generalisation klaxon***) tend to be the vocabulary freaks, who have to get words like “tourmaline” or “opalescent” into every stanza. Poetry, in my opinion, is a form of communication, and communication is mostly about meaning. What something sounds like, while still important, is, in my opinion, secondary to its meaning.\nI think you should name names, William!\nwthirskgaskill on February 12, 2016 at 9:34 am said:\nI won’t say a word until I’ve seen my solicitor.\nLeave a Reply to wthirskgaskill\tCancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line892802"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9296700358390808,"wiki_prob":0.9296700358390808,"text":"Trump pitches, then backtracks, on border tax\nTrump could \"easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone,\" spokesman says.\nTrump pitches, then backtracks, on border tax Trump could \"easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone,\" spokesman says. Check out this story on IndyStar.com: http://usat.ly/2jC9mAQ\nGregory Korte and David Jackson, USA TODAY Published 3:58 p.m. ET Jan. 26, 2017 | Updated 6:33 a.m. ET Jan. 27, 2017\nPresident Trump points to members of the media while sitting at his desk on Air Force One upon his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. on Jan. 26, 2017.(Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP)\nWASHINGTON — President Trump's plan for a wall along the Mexican border could be financed through a 20% border tax on all imports from the United States' third largest trading partner, the White House said Thursday.\n“It clearly provides the funding and does so in a way that the American taxpayer is wholly respected,\" White House press secretary Sean Spicer said. “We are probably the only major country that doesn’t treat imports this way.”\nBut shortly after he announced the proposal in an unscheduled \"gaggle\" with reporters on Air Force One, Spicer clarified to a separate group of reporters in the West Wing that it was just one proposal. \"There are clearly a bunch of ways it can be done,\" he said. \"The point is American taxpayers are not going to fund it.\"\nWhite House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus added that it was part of a \"buffet of options.\"\nThe unexpected proposal and subsequent backtracking underscored just how quickly the Trump White House is churning out policy proposals in a hectic first week in office, with a crowded calendar of meetings, speeches and executive actions.\nThe border tax plan would need congressional approval, and Spicer described it as the beginning of a process that would be part of overall tax reform. The tax proposal would have the benefit of dovetailing two of his signature policies: Curtailing illegal immigration and enacting more protectionist trade regulations.\nBut the proposal could face resistance even among Republicans.\n\"Border security yes, tariffs no,\" Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., wrote on Twitter. \"Simply put, any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho Sad.\"\nThe U.S. trade deficit with Mexico is was $49.2 billion in 2015, according to the U.S. Trade Representative. Though Spicer didn't explain how the tax would work, the principle is similar to a border adjustment tax currently being discussed in Congress, which would heavily tax imports but give a tax credit on exports.\n“Right now our country’s policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous,\" Spicer said.\nSpicer ran through the math by applying 20% to the difference, coming up with nearly $10 billion a year.\nThe United States could \"easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding,” he said.\nActual imports from Mexico totaled $316.4 billion in 2015.\nIn speech to GOP lawmakers, Trump continues to insist Mexico will pay for wall\nTrump proposes 20% border tax on Mexico as its president cancels meeting\nOutraged Mexicans back Peña Nieto's decision to scrap visit with 'bully' Trump\nThe Trump presidency: A new era in Washington\nPresident Trump boards Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Fla., Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, to travel to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Andrew Harnik, AP\nIn this file photo taken on Feb. 16, 2018 President Trump speaks with Dr. Igor Nichiporenko (L) and First Lady Melania Trump while visiting first responders at Broward Health North hospital Pompano Beach, Florida. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nIn this Jan. 30, 2018, file photo, President Trump gestures as he delivers his first State of the Union address in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to a joint session of Congress in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan applaud. Win McNamee, AP\nIn this Jan. 26, 2018, photo, President Trump speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Evan Vucci, AP\nPresident Trump sings the National Anthem at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on January 8, 2018. Trump is attending the College Football Playoff National Championship between the University of Georgia Bulldogs and the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nPresident Trump waves as he departs after addressing the media at Camp David on Jan. 6, 2018 in Thurmont, Maryland. President Trump met with staff, members of his Cabinet and Republican members of Congress to discuss the Republican legislative agenda for 2018. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images) Pool\nPresident Trump returns to the White House following a weekend trip with Republican leadership and members of his cabinet at Camp David, on Jan. 7, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images) Pool, Getty Images\nPresident Trump speaks with reporters as he arrives for a New Year's Eve gala at his Mar-a-Lago resort with first lady Melania Trump and their son Barron, Sunday, Dec. 31, 2017, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Evan Vucci, AP\nPresident Trump and first lady Melania are escorted by Rev. James R. Harlan as they arrive for Christmas Eve service at the Church of Bethesda-by-the Sea, in West Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Carolyn Kaster, AP\nPresident Trump and first lady Melania Trump speak on the phone with children as they track Santa Claus' movements with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve at the president's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Carolyn Kaster, AP\nPresident Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk on the stage during the 95th annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony at the Ellipse in President's Park near the White House in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 30, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nIn this Nov. 30, 2017, photo, President Trump holds first lady Melania Trump's hand as they walk back to the stage during the lighting ceremony for the 2017 National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse near the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP\nU.S. President Donald Trump leaves the White House to visit troops at Walter Reed Bethesda Naval Medical Center Dec. 21, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Trump said he was visiting the injured military service members to wish them a merry Christmas. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images\nPresident Trump holds up a bill after signing it in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C, on Dec. 22, 2017. Trump signed the tax bill, a continuing resolution to fund the government, and a missile defense bill before leaving to spend Christmas in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Michael Reynolds, EPA-EFE\nU.S. President Donald Trump (L) hosts members of the Native American code talkers during an event in the Oval Office of the White House, on Nov. 27, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Trump stated, \"You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas,\" in reference to his nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (Photo by Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images) Pool, Getty Images\nPresident Trump waves after pardoning Thanksgiving turkey Drumstick in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 21, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump and Pence depart Capitol Hill on Nov. 16, 2017, after the president spoke with House Republicans on tax legislation. Susan Walsh, AP\nVietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, President Trump, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull link hands during the opening ceremony of the 31st ASEAN Summit in Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila on Nov. 13, 2017. Noel Celis, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump meets opera performers at the Forbidden City on Nov. 8, 2017, in Beijing, during a five-country trip through Asia. Andrew Harnik, AP\nFirst lady Melania Trump looks on as the president speaks with reporters before departing the White House for a trip to Asia on Nov. 3, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell arrive for the Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 24, 2017. Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images\nTrump answers questions with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Rose Garden after their meeting at the White House on Oct. 16, 2017. Alex Brandon, AP\nPresident Trump walks to the podium to make a statement about the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 2, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump waves after arriving on Air Force One on Sept. 27, 2017, in Indianapolis to deliver a speech on tax reform. Darron Cummings, AP\nTrump speaks during the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 19, 2017. Seth Wenig, AP\n11-year-old Frank \"FX\" Giaccio gets a pat on the back from Trump while mowing the lawn in the Rose Garden of the White House on Sept. 15, 2017. Giaccio wrote a letter to Trump expressing admiration for Trump's business background and offered to mow the White House lawn. Win McNamee, Getty Images\nThe Trumps observe a moment of silence on Sept. 11, 2017, at the White House for the 16th anniversary of 9/11. Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump gestures to onlookers as he walks with first lady Melania Trump to board Marine One on the South Lawn on Sept. 8, 2017, en route to Camp David. Evan Vucci, AP\nPresident Trump boards Air Force One at Ellington Field on Sept. 2, 2017, before departing for Louisiana to continue their tour of areas affected by Hurricane Harvey. Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images\nPresident Trump holds the state flag of Texas outside of the Annaville Fire House after attending a briefing on Hurricane Harvey in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Aug. 29, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nThe Trumps prepare to depart from the White House on Aug. 29, 2017, to head to Texas to observe Hurricane Harvey relief efforts. Alex Wong, Getty Images\nTrump speaks at a rally in Phoenix on Aug. 22, 2017. Roy Dabner, European Pressphoto Agency\nThe Trumps view the solar eclipse from the Truman Balcony of the White House on Aug. 21, 2017. Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump walks out of the elevator to speak to the media in the lobby of Trump Tower on Aug. 15, 2017, in New York. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump pauses while speaking about the violence in Charlottesville, Va., in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on Aug. 14, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump arrives to speak at a rally in Huntington, W.Va., on Aug. 3, 2017. Susan Walsh, AP\nTrump arrives at Andrews Air Force Base after naming John Kelly as his new chief of staff on July 28, 2017. Alex Brandon, AP\nTrump, accompanied by Vice President Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, speaks about health care on July 24, 2017, in the Blue Room of the White House. Alex Brandon, AP\nTrump, flanked by Sens. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Tim Scott, R-S.C., speaks at a luncheon with GOP senators on July 19, 2017, in the State Dinning Room of the White House. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump holds a proclamation for Made in America Day and Made In America Week that he signed during a product showcase in the East Room of the White House on July 17, 2017. Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron and Trump speak as they leave Les Invalides in Paris on July 13, 2017. Ian Langsdon, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump walks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in to make statements in the Rose Garden on June 30, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nPresident Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi embrace while delivering joint statements in the Rose Garden of the White House on June 26, 2017. Mark Wilson, Getty Images\nTrump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House on June 14, 2017, to talk about the shooting in Alexandria, Va., where House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others were shot during a congressional baseball practice. Andrew Harnik, AP\nTrump smiles as he walks with his daughter Ivanka across the South Lawn of the White House on June 13, 2017, before boarding Marine One helicopter for the trip to nearby Andrews Air Force Base. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump waves to the crowd after delivering a speech on June 7, 2017, in Cincinnati. Bill Pugliano, Getty Images\nTrump announces his decision for the United States to pull out of the Paris climate agreement in the Rose Garden at the White House on June 1, 2017. Win McNamee, Getty Images\nTrump joins G7 leaders for a photo at the Ancient Greek Theater of Taormina on May 26, 2017, in Taormina, Italy. Sean Kilpatrick, AP\nPope Francis greets Trump at the Vatican on May 24, 2017. Osservatore Romano/Handout/European Pressphoto Agency\nThe president and first lady step off Air Force One upon arrival at Rome's Fiumicino Airport on May 23, 2017. Filippo Monteforte, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump touches the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City on May 22, 2017. Ronen Zvulun, Pool/European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump speaks during the Arabic Islamic American Summit at the King Abdulaziz Conference Center in Riyadh on May 21, 2017. Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump meets with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on May 10, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nPresident Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan and other congressional Republicans celebrate in the Rose Garden of the White House following the House vote to repeal Obamacare on May 4, 2017. Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump pauses as he speaks at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg, Pa., on April, 29, 2017. Carolyn Kaster, AP\nPresident Trump speaks during the National Rifle Association-ILA Leadership Forum on April 28, 2017, in Atlanta. Mike Stewart, AP\nSecretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke listens while Trump speaks before signing an executive order to review the Antiquities Act at the Department of the Interior on April 26, 2017. Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump prepares to award a Purple Heart to U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Alvaro Barrientos, with first lady Melania Trump, right, and Tammy Barrientos, second from right, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on April 22, 2017, in Bethesda, Md. Alex Brandon, AP\nTrump waves as he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin walk from the White House to the U.S. Treasury Department on April 21, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nNew England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, President Trump, Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Patriots President Jonathan Kraft stand with Patriots players as Trump holds a team helmet at a ceremony honoring the Patriots as Super Bowl champions on the South Lawn at the White House on April 19, 2017. Geoff Burke, USA TODAY Sports\nTrump joins attendees at the Easter Egg Roll to write notes to servicemembers on the South Lawn of the White House on April 17, 2017. Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 10, 2017, at the swearing-in ceremony for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump pumps his fist as he and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Fla., on April 7, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nPresident Trump walks to the podium to speak about the missile strike on Syria on April 6, 2017, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. Alex Brandon, AP\nPresident Trump and Jordan's King Abdullah II hold a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 5, 2017. Andrew Harnik, AP\nPresident Trump, flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Vice President Pence, speaks about the health care overhaul bill on March 24, 2017, in the Oval Office. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump gets in the driver's seat of an 18-wheeler while meeting with truck drivers and trucking CEOs on the South Portico prior to their meeting to discuss health care at the White House on March 23, 2017. Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency\nPresident Trump speaks during a meeting with Congressional Black Caucus members in the Cabinet Room at the White House on March 22, 2017. Chip Somodevilla, Pool/European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump holds a NASA flight jacket presented to him by NASA Astronaut Office Chief Chris Cassidy after signing the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017 in the Oval Office on March 21, 2017. Bill Ingalls, NASA/Getty Images\nTrump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price arrive on Capitol Hill on March 21, 2017, to meet with GOP lawmakers on the Republican health care overhaul. J. Scott Applewhite, AP\nTrump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel walk down the Cross Hall to enter the East Room for a joint press conference at the White House on March 17, 2017. Michael Reynolds, European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump talks with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Capitol Hill on March 16, 2017, during a \"Friends of Ireland\" luncheon. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump speaks to auto workers at the American Center for Mobility on March 15, 2017, in Ypsilanti, Mich. Bill Pugliano, Getty Images\nTrump holds up a note and drawing depicting him that was created by the child of Greg Knox of Ohio during a meeting on health care in the Roosevelt Room on March 13, 2017. MIchael Reynolds, Pool, Getty Images\nTrump gestures as he surprises visitors during the official reopening of public tours at the White House on March 7, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump walks with grandchildren Arabella Kushner and Joseph Kushner, holding a model of Marine One, across the South Lawn of the White House on March 3, 2017, before boarding Marine One helicopter for the short flight to nearby Andrews Air Force Base. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump tours the Combat Direction Center on the pre-commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in Newport News, Va., on March 2, 2017. Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images\nPresident Trump speaks before a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, 2017. Jack Gruber, USA TODAY\nTrump holds up an executive order to bolster historically black colleges and universities after signing it in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, 2017. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump reaches out to shake hands with Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 20, 2017, where Trump announced that McMaster will be the new national security adviser. Susan Walsh, AP\nThe Trumps attend a campaign-style rally on Feb. 18, 2017, in Melbourne, Fla. Chris O'Meara, AP\nPresident Trump walks with his grandchildren Arabella Kushner and Joseph Kushner to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 17, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands during a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 15, 2017. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos attend a meeting with parents and teachers on Feb. 14, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump looks on as Steven Mnuchin is sworn in as Treasury secretary on Feb. 13, 2017. Alex Wong, Getty Images\nTrump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Oval Office on Feb. 13, 2017. Evan Vucci, AP\nTrump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe listen to the translator after they both made statements about North Korea at Mar-a-Lago on Feb. 11, 2017. Susan Walsh, AP\nPresident Trump speaks to Democratic and Republican senators about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch in the Roosevelt Room on Feb. 9, 2017. Pool, Getty Images\nIntel CEO Brian Krzanich speaks during a meeting with Trump on Feb. 8, 2017, where Intel announced an investment of $7 billion to build a factory in Chandler, Ariz., to create advanced semi-conductor chips. Chris Kleponis, Pool/European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump holds up a gift given to him by county sheriffs following a meeting as they pose for photos in the Oval Office on Feb. 7, 2017. Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images\nPresident Trump has lunch with troops during a visit to the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base on Feb. 6, 2017, in Tampa, Fla. Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images\nThe Trumps watch the Super Bowl at a party at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Feb. 5, 2017. Susan Walsh, AP\nThe Trumps arrive for the 60th Annual Red Cross Gala at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on on Feb. 4, 2017. Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images\nWhite House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Vice President Pence look on as Trump speaks briefly to reporters after greeting Harley Davidson executives on the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 2, 2017. Drew Angerer, Getty Images\nTrump shakes hands with Neil Gorsuch, his Supreme Court nominee, in the East Room of the White House on Jan. 31, 2017. Michael Reynolds, European Pressphoto Agency\nPresident Trump speaks on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office on Jan. 28, 2017. Michael Reynolds, European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump shakes hands with Defense Secretary James Mattis during an event at the Pentagon on Jan. 27, 2017. Vice President Pence is at right. Susan Walsh, AP\nTrump greets British Prime Minister Theresa May as she arrives at the White House on Jan. 27, 2017. Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency\nSenate Majority Whip John Cornyn and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell watch as President Trump arrives to speak to House and Senate GOP lawmakers at the annual policy retreat in Philadelphia on Jan. 26, 2017. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Jan. 26, 2017, as he departed to attend a Republican congressional retreat in Philadelphia. Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, gives a thumbs-up on Jan. 25, 2017, at the White House. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nTrump reads from one of the executive orders he signed during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security with Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and other officials in Washington on Jan. 25, 2017. Chip Somodevilla, Pool/European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump displays one of five executive actions he signed in the Oval Office on Jan. 24, 2017. Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump speaks during a reception for House and Senate leaders in the the State Dining Room of the White House on Jan. 23, 2017. Susan Walsh, AP\nTrump signs executive actions in the Oval Office on Jan. 23, 2017. Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump meets with business leaders on Jan. 23, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP\nPresident Trump holds a letter left for him by former president Barack Obama as Vice President Pence looks on before the swearing-in of the White House senior staff on Jan. 22, 2017. Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images\nTrump speaks at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., on Jan. 21, 2017. Andrew Harnik, AP\nThe Trumps and Pences attend the Freedom Ball on Jan. 20, 2017. Kevin Dietsch, Pool/European Pressphoto Agency\nTrump is joined by the congressional leadership and his family as he formally signs his cabinet nominations into law in the President’s Room of the Senate on Jan. 20, 2017. J. Scott Applewhite, Pool Photo-USA TODAY Sports\nTrump and Obama arrive for Trump’'s inauguration luncheon at the Capitol. J. Scott Applewhite, Pool\nThe Trumps and Obamas stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2017. Rob Carr, Getty Images\nTrump delivers his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017, on the west front of the U.S. Capitol Porter Binks, USA TODAY\nRead or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2jC9mAQ","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line40019"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5335232615470886,"wiki_prob":0.5335232615470886,"text":"Pakistan’s Asad Memon set to climb highest mountain in South America\nAgenciesUpdated January 04, 2020\nThe 22-year-old is set to climb highest mountain in South America as part of “Seven Summit Challenge”. — Photo courtesy of Asad Memon's Twitter\nKARACHI: It’s the beginning of an era of young Pakistani athletes making their mark. While 2019 saw the phenomenal rise of Arslan Ash becoming the undisputed Tekken champion of the world, the new decade has started with 22-year-old Asad Ali Memon set to climb highest mountain in South America as part of “Seven Summit Challenge”.\nLocated in the Andes mountain range in Argentina, Aconcagua is the highest mountain peak not only in South America but in the world outside Asia. Asad, an undergraduate student in Karachi, is originally from Larkana. During his high school studies, he became interested in climbing.\n“There was no way of training because we don’t have any such facilities or trainings in Larkana. So, after moving to Karachi, I came to know of a two-week training camp in Islamabad and that was how my journey as a mountain climber began.”\nSince then, Asad hasn’t looked back. Now after climbing mountains across Pakistan, Nepal and Russia, he is set to conquer Aconcagua. This is the second mountain as part of the ‘Seven Summit Challenge’ in which Asad will climb seven of the highest peaks in all seven continents of the world. Earlier in August 2019, the young athlete took on the Mount Elbrus, located in Southern Russia, near the border of Georgia.\nMount Elbrus is the highest mountain in Europe as well as the tenth most prominent peak in the world. In the last few years, Asad has gone through intensive training and climbed seven to twelve times, including an expedition to the base camp at Mount Everest, which is going to be his final adversary in this Seven Summit Challenge.\nAfter four months of intensive preparation, Asad is ready to set off on the dangerous 25-day expedition on January 4, 2020 to Argentina where the nearly 23 thousand feet high Mount Aconcagua awaits him and his group. After that, his next summit is Denali, which is the highest mountain in North America. The young climber was full of passion as he sets off to write his name in the history books. “They say if you come from a place with hot weather, you can’t climb mountains because you can’t survive the cold and the lack of oxygen at high altitudes,” said Asad. “In Larkana, we have temperatures running over 40 degrees, while at the mountain peaks, you have temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees. I wanted to prove it wrong and push myself and my body to do it. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment.”\nHe continued, “Coming from a rural area and making it this far, I would like to inspire my fellows all over Pakistan to follow their passion and go for what they like to do, what gives them the adrenaline rush, be it mountain climbing or any other field. I would wish that I can motivate my people in Sindh and all over Pakistan not just to live their lives working a full-time job or only havee the option to aspire to play cricket, but explore their passions whatever they may be.”\nDiscarded veterans Hafeez, Malik recalled for T20 series against Bangladesh\nCrisDan\nzahid raza\nGood luck Asad...Buck up\nAZAM AKBAR\nWish you to success.\nThird victim of rabies reported at JPMC in Karachi this month","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line228512"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9270501136779785,"wiki_prob":0.9270501136779785,"text":"A Trailblazer of a Mother, Duckworth Wants To Extend Help to Other Moms\nJanet Ybarra 0 February 27, 2019 4:22 pm\nSen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) has broken so many barriers and notched so many firsts in her career: the first Asian-American elected to Congress from Illinois, first woman with a disability to be elected to Congress, the first female double amputee in the Senate, and the first member of Congress born in Thailand.\nSo perhaps it was fitting that last year Duckworth became the first senator to give birth while in office, to a daughter, Maile.\nSoon after little Maile’s birth, Senate rules were changed so as to allow infants under one year of age to be allowed on the Senate floor so as to be breastfed.\nThe day after the rule change, young Maile became the first baby brought onto the Senate floor.\nDuckworth wants to bring that sort of added assistance to all new mothers with a piece of new legislation she is co-sponsoring.\nDuckworth joined Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in introducing the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act, which would help ensure new parents have access to clean and private lactation rooms when visiting federal buildings around the nation.\nDuckworth says that the new bill would build on the success of her FAM Act, which was signed into law last year and ensures all large- and medium-sized airports have lactation rooms for new mothers.\n“Breastfeeding has long-lasting health benefits that protect mothers and children from illnesses, which is why we should continue to build on the progress made by the FAM Act in making it easier for moms and children to find clean and accessible spaces to express breastmilk,” says Duckworth. “I’m pleased to join Senator Daines in introducing this bipartisan legislation requiring these spaces in all public federal buildings.”\nThe Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act would require that federal buildings that are open to the public and contain a public restroom provide a lactation room, other than a bathroom, that is hygienic and is available for use by members of the public who are breastfeeding.\nAccording to the legislation, the lactation room must be shielded from view, be free from intrusion, and contain a chair, a working surface, and–if the building is supplied with electricity–an electrical outlet.\n“Mothers who are breastfeeding should have a private, clean, and safe place to go in federal buildings,” Daines says. “This bill provides this important resource to new moms.”\nTop Foreign Policy Democrat Left Confused as Trump Digs Into Kim Summit\nOPINION: No, Democrats Shouldn’t Let Bernie Get Away With Tax Dodge","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line424003"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9842177033424377,"wiki_prob":0.9842177033424377,"text":"Warner Bros. [US]\nBecome a member to see COMPANYmeter for Warner Bros..\nBecome a member to see contact information for Warner Bros..\n9,137 titles\nProjects in Development (530 titles)\n'Til Beth Do Us Part\nDistributor (Theatrical) (United States) Distributor (Theatrical) (United States) See fewer\nProduction company Production company See fewer\n21st Century Robot\nFilms in Production (32 titles)\nNext Door Neighbor\nDistributor (2018) (Theatrical) (South Korea) Distributor (2018) (Theatrical) (South Korea) See fewer\nUnpregnant\nUntitled Military Thriller\nDistributor (2016) (Theatrical) (World-wide) Distributor (2016) (Theatrical) (World-wide) See fewer\nProduction Unknown\nDistributor (through) (2021) (Theatrical) (Netherlands) Distributor (through) (2021) (Theatrical) (Netherlands) See fewer\nMortal Kombat (2021)\nProduction company, Distributor (2021) (Theatrical) (United States) (as Warner Bros. Pictures) Production company, Distributor (2021) (Theatrical) (United States) (as Warner Bros. Pictures) See fewer\nTelevision in Production (1 title)\nTed Lasso\n(TV Series) - Production company Production company See fewer\nPast Film & Video (8,145 titles)\nThe Yami's First Emperor Movie (2020)\nProduction company (presentation) (as Warner Bros. Pictures), Distributor (A WarnerMedia Company) (2020) (Theatrical) (United States) Production company (presentation) (as Warner Bros. Pictures), Distributor (A WarnerMedia Company) (2020) (Theatrical) (United States) See fewer\nResistance (2020)\nDistributor (2019) (Theatrical) (Germany) Distributor (2019) (Theatrical) (Germany) See fewer\nThe Lego Batman Movie 2 (2022)\nProduction company (presents) (as Warner Bros. Pictures), Distributor (2022) (Theatrical) (United States) Production company (presents) (as Warner Bros. Pictures), Distributor (2022) (Theatrical) (United States) See fewer\nAbikalypse (2019)\nAlita: Battle Angel (2019)\nPast Television (389 titles)\nHebe (2019–2020)\n(TV Mini-series) - Production company Production company See fewer\nSteven Universe: The Movie (2019)\n(TV Movie) - Distributor (2019) (All media) (United States) Distributor (2019) (All media) (United States) See fewer\nFresh Eggs (2019)\nQuem Quer Casar Com o Meu Filho? (2019– )\nAll or Nothing: New Zealand All Blacks (2018– )\nOther (40 titles)\nHacha Mecha! Gremlin Wars (2015)\n(Video Game) - Distributor (2015–2016) (All media) (Japan) Distributor (2015–2016) (All media) (Japan) See fewer\nMan of Steel 'Soldier of Steel' (2013)\n(Video Game) - Production company Production company See fewer\nBastion (2011)\n(Video Game) - Distributor (2011) (All media) (United States) Distributor (2011) (All media) (United States) See fewer\nSesame Street: Cookie's Counting Carnival (2010)\n(Video Game) - Distributor (2010) (All media) (World-wide) Distributor (2010) (All media) (World-wide) See fewer\nSesame Street: Elmo's A-to-Zoo Adventure (2010)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1490117"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5490076541900635,"wiki_prob":0.4509923458099365,"text":"Girls Inc. National\nGirls Inc. National News\nEconomic Literacy Activities\nLeadership and Community Action\nQ&A: Sabrina Pennington and Bryah, 9\nAllies In Action\nMom & Daughter Series\nWayne County Foundation Challenge Match 2018\nGirls Inc. of Wayne County Names New Leadership\n21st Annual 5K\nThe Healthy Sexuality Curriculum\nTalking with Children about Sex\nFAQs by Teens\nTeachers/School Administration\nBryah, 9, and Sabrina Pennington, Vice Chancellor for Student Enrollment and Student Success\nB: Tell me about your position.\nS: My position, I work at Ivy Tech Community College here in Richmond and the title I have is called Vice Chancellor for Student Enrollment and Student Success. So, I work with all the people who help people get ready to get started in college. That’s what I do!\nB: That’d be fun\nS: Yes, it is fun.\nB: Second one, how are you a leader?\nS: How am I a leader? Well, I can say I’m a leader by my position but probably kind of like you. You know how they say you just a natural leader, even now, I was kind of like you. I was kind of like you. Made up my own mind about things, and I always liked to help other people to do the best they can do.\nB: What is the contribution you want to make as a leader?\nS: The contribution? I guess if I were to disappear, it would be really nice if people said that I was always helping people to get where I am. I want people to be able to do what I did, or even more, and it’s real exciting to see that happen.\nB: What difficulties have you encountered being a woman leader?\nS: The most difficult thing about being a woman leader is that sometimes people don’t listen to you, and unfortunately, even now, you have to figure out if there’s something really really important that you would like to see done and nobody will listen because, you know it’s not because you’re stupid or you don’t know, but just because whatever reason they think the woman doesn’t know, you gotta find someone that’ll listen to. Swallow your own pride and let them help you, and if you choose the right person, they help other people realize that women are just as smart and just as strong and just as good as anybody else, and then people will start listening to you. But that’s what’s been the most difficult.\nB: How do you influence others?\nS: How do I influence others? I don’t know, I guess just by being kind and nice to people it’s the best that I can.\nB: What advice would you give to girls who are wanting to develop as leaders?\nS: My advice would be to be yourself, think your own mind, make your own decisions, set goals, and then work real hard to achieve those goals.\nB: Who has been an important leader in your life?\nS: My mother. You would think that I would say “oh my bosses and all” they’ve been great, they’re wonderful. But if it wasn’t for my mother who knew that girls, and I was the only girl, baby girl out of 5 boys, who knew that girls could so whatever they wanted to do and she helped me and with anything I said I wanted to try to do she helped me get that done.\nB: Is it fun to work at Ivy Tech?\nS: Yes! Lots of fun to work at Ivy Tech.\nB: What do you do?\nS: Just get to talk to people and you get to help people who come in, and they’re in one spot in their life and they’re really trying to do something different, to where they can do more for their kids, more for themselves, and it’s really really fun to watch them through that change and to come out on the other end and get better jobs and make more money and be able to do what they wanted to do for their kids. It’s great.\nS: What do you want to do as you get older?\nB: I want to be a leader and help people and that’s it.\nS: You going to go to college?\nB: Mhm!\nS: Great! You working on that now? Getting good grades?\nS: Good, good. It’s been great talking to you!\nB: You too!\nI wasn't born in Richmond and I had a hard time making friends; Girls Inc. enable me to make friends. Girls Inc. has really helped my life and I really enjoyed going there for plenty of reasons. I feel bad because this is my last year and I wish I could continue to come or at least work there. Girls Inc. and their staff mean a lot to me.\nJaMarie\nBold is my word because I do try my hardest, I am outgoing, I love kids and people in general, I get involved with new activities and complete my tasks. It takes being strong and smart to become a bold outspoken young woman and I plan on being the same bold (sort) of person for the rest of my life. Thanks to Girls Inc. I can be.\nMy favorite thing about Girls Inc. was the way (my girls) talked about it at the end of the day, full of stories about what they learned and did.\nThank you to our 2019 Program Sponsors!\nContact Us or Send a Testimonial\n© 2020 Girls Inc. Wayne County.\n1407 S. 8th St., Richmond, IN 47374 | 765.962.2362\nINSPIRING GIRLS TO BE STRONG, SMART, & BOLD","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line572290"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9426830410957336,"wiki_prob":0.9426830410957336,"text":"David Camm jurors ask to examine T-shirt, other exhibits in murder trial\nLEBANON, Ind. Jurors in David Camm’s third murder trial spent about 7 1/2 hours weighing the former state trooper’s f...\nDavid Camm jurors ask to examine T-shirt, other exhibits in murder trial LEBANON, Ind. Jurors in David Camm’s third murder trial spent about 7 1/2 hours weighing the former state trooper’s f... Check out this story on courier-journal.com: http://cjky.it/1gGp366\nThe Courier-Journal Published 11:42 a.m. ET Oct. 23, 2013 | Updated 7:27 p.m. ET Oct. 23, 2013\nA passer-by is reflected along with the Boone County Courthouse in the Merle Norman cosmetic store in downtown Lebanon, Ind. as the jury deliberated in the David Camm trial Wednesday.(Photo: By Matt Stone/The Courier-Journal)Buy Photo\nLEBANON, Ind. Jurors in David Camm’s third murder trial spent about 7 1/2 hours weighing the former state trooper’s fate Wednesday during the first full day of deliberations.\nThe eight women and four men on the jury broke for dinner about 5 p.m. before leaving for the night. They were expected to continue deliberating Thursday morning.\nDuring the afternoon, the panel sent written notes to the judge asking for several exhibits, including the gray T-shirt Camm wore the night of the murders. They also asked for video and audio recordings of Camm’s first interviews with police after the slayings of his wife and two children.\nDuring a brief hearing, Special Judge Jonathan Dartt read the requests, and the parties agreed to allow the jury to move all the exhibits entered into evidence during the eight-week trial into the jury room.\nDartt agreed with the lawyers when they said it wouldn’t be prudent to send the T-shirt into the jury room with a batch of latex gloves. Instead, the parties agreed to have the garment — which has had several peices removed for testing — displayed on a mannequin in the courtroom to allow jurors to inspect the shirt without touching it.\nDartt also denied a juror request to see a timeline that Special Prosecutor Todd Meyer had shown during closing arguments. Defense lawyer Stacy Uliana had objected to providing the poster-sized display because that it had not been entered into evidence.\nDartt said he intended to allow the jury to set its own hours. “They can work as late or as little as they want,” he said, adding that if they decide to meet until late at night “there will come a time when I run them out of the courthouse.”\nCamm is accused of killing his wife, Kim Camm, 35, and their children — Brad, 7, and Jill, 5 — in the garage of their Georgetown home on Sept. 28, 2000. He has maintained that he was playing basketball at a local church at the time his family was slain.\nHe has twice been convicted in his family’s slayings, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. He is being tried this time in Lebanon, 35 miles northwest of Indianapolis, because of extensive media coverage of the case in the Louisville area.\nCharles Boney is serving a 225-year sentence in prison for the slayings. He testified in the trial that he was outside the garage when Camm shot his children. The defense contends that Boney acted alone and has accused investigators of shoddy work in initially charging Camm and keeping the focus on him even after Boney was linked to the crime scene in early 2005.\nTrial boosts Lebanon business\nAs the trial enters its final stage, merchants in Lebanon say they’ve appreciated the boost in business and have become interested in the trial.\n“We’re eager to learn about the trial and what’s going on,” Sara Gallimore, a waitress at Brenda’s Cubbard, said. The restaurant tucked in the rear of Cowan’s Drugs across Ind. 39 from the courthouse has served lunch to the Camm jury two days a week since the trial started “so that’s helped our business out,” she said.\nThe Cubbard’s Butterfinger chocolate sheet cake gained a big following with jurors, Dartt and reporters.\nAnother popular lunch spot, the Fig Tree Café, has seen a steady stream of reporters and photographers each day of the proceedings, owner Bethany Deaton said.\nThe staff learned that when one reporter showed up at lunch, the place would fill up in minutes with people grabbing a quick lunch. “It’s been a little bit of chaos,” she said.\nDeaton also said she’d rather business had remained the way it was — if it meant not having a trial for the murders of a mother and two children.\n“I’d rather not have the business and have them still be alive than have this all happen,” she said.\nReporter Grace Schneider can be reached at 812-949-4040. Reporter Harold J Adams contributed to this story.\nRead or Share this story: http://cjky.it/1gGp366","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line813103"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7053268551826477,"wiki_prob":0.7053268551826477,"text":"Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives\nE. L. Ritman\nPhysiology & Biomedical Engineering\nTwo fast computed tomographic scanners, designed primarily for imaging cardiac structures and function, have been in use since the early 1980s. The technical aspects of both systems have been described previously in detail, and a considerable body of scientific literature now documents the biomedical capabilities of these scanners. This review examines these biomedical capabilities as applied to quantitative analysis of the heart and pulmonary circulations. On the basis of this overview, some speculations about the current strengths and possible further developments of the fast computed tomographic approach in these applications are made.\nMayo Clinic Proceedings\nRitman, E. L. (1990). Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 65(10), 1336-1349.\nFast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives. / Ritman, E. L.\nIn: Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Vol. 65, No. 10, 1990, p. 1336-1349.\nRitman, EL 1990, 'Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives', Mayo Clinic Proceedings, vol. 65, no. 10, pp. 1336-1349.\nRitman EL. Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives. Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 1990;65(10):1336-1349.\nRitman, E. L. / Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives. In: Mayo Clinic Proceedings. 1990 ; Vol. 65, No. 10. pp. 1336-1349.\n@article{9058dc418b594b2592583fad7a9cefb6,\ntitle = \"Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives\",\nabstract = \"Two fast computed tomographic scanners, designed primarily for imaging cardiac structures and function, have been in use since the early 1980s. The technical aspects of both systems have been described previously in detail, and a considerable body of scientific literature now documents the biomedical capabilities of these scanners. This review examines these biomedical capabilities as applied to quantitative analysis of the heart and pulmonary circulations. On the basis of this overview, some speculations about the current strengths and possible further developments of the fast computed tomographic approach in these applications are made.\",\nauthor = \"Ritman, {E. L.}\",\njournal = \"Mayo Clinic Proceedings\",\npublisher = \"Elsevier Science\",\nT1 - Fast computed tomography for quantitative cardiac analysis - State of the art and future perspectives\nAU - Ritman, E. L.\nN2 - Two fast computed tomographic scanners, designed primarily for imaging cardiac structures and function, have been in use since the early 1980s. The technical aspects of both systems have been described previously in detail, and a considerable body of scientific literature now documents the biomedical capabilities of these scanners. This review examines these biomedical capabilities as applied to quantitative analysis of the heart and pulmonary circulations. On the basis of this overview, some speculations about the current strengths and possible further developments of the fast computed tomographic approach in these applications are made.\nAB - Two fast computed tomographic scanners, designed primarily for imaging cardiac structures and function, have been in use since the early 1980s. The technical aspects of both systems have been described previously in detail, and a considerable body of scientific literature now documents the biomedical capabilities of these scanners. This review examines these biomedical capabilities as applied to quantitative analysis of the heart and pulmonary circulations. On the basis of this overview, some speculations about the current strengths and possible further developments of the fast computed tomographic approach in these applications are made.\nJO - Mayo Clinic Proceedings\nJF - Mayo Clinic Proceedings","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line924741"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9445326924324036,"wiki_prob":0.9445326924324036,"text":"Thomas Scott (preacher)\nThomas Scott (Crispijn de Passe (I), 1624)\nThomas Scott (or Scot) (c. 1580 – 1626) was an English preacher, a radical Protestant known for anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic pamphlets.\nHe was born about 1580, and occurs as one of the chaplains to James I in 1616, being then B.D. He was incorporated in that degree at Cambridge in 1620 as a member of Peterhouse, as a graduate of the University of St Andrews. [1]\nThe University of St Andrews is a public university in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. It is the oldest of the four ancient universities of Scotland and, following Oxford and Cambridge universities, the third-oldest university in the United Kingdom and English-speaking world in general. St Andrews was founded in 1413 when the Avignon Antipope Benedict XIII issued a papal bull to a small founding group of Augustinian clergy.\nHe was rector of St. Saviour's, Norwich, and when Count Gondomar arrived in England to settle preliminaries for the Spanish Match, he published in 1620 an anonymous tract against the proposed marriage. It was entitled Vox Populi, and purported to give an account of Gondomar's reception by the council of state upon his return to Madrid in 1618. The ambassador is there made to explain his schemes for bringing England into subjection to Spain, to describe with satisfaction the crowds which went to assist at mass in his chapel in London, and to recount how he had won over the leading courtiers by his bribes. The whole story was a fabrication, but at the time it was widely received as a piece of genuine history, and caused a furore. John Chamberlain on 3 February 1621 informed Sir Dudley Carleton that 'the author of \"Vox Populi\" is discovered to be one Scot, a minister, bewrayed by the printer, who thereby hath saved himself, and got his pardon, though the book were printed beyond sea'. Joseph Mead, writing on 10 February 1621, told Sir Martin Stuteville that 'Scot of Norwich, who is said to be the author of \"Vox Populi,\" they say is now fled, having, as it seems, fore-notice of the pursuivant'. In Vox Regis (1624) Scott gave in biblical language an account of the motives which induced him to write Vox Populi, and the consequences of that publication to himself. Vox Populi was suppressed by royal authority, and Samuel Harsnett, bishop of Norwich, was commanded to institute proceedings against him.\nNorwich is a city in Norfolk, England. Granted historic city status, and situated on the River Wensum in East Anglia, it lies approximately 100 miles (160 km) north-east of London. It is the county town of Norfolk and is considered the capital of East Anglia, with a population of 141,300. From the Middle Ages until the Industrial Revolution, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important.\nJohn Chamberlain (1553–1628) was the author of a series of letters written in England from 1597 to 1626, notable for their historical value and their literary qualities. In the view of historian Wallace Notestein, Chamberlain's letters \"constitute the first considerable body of letters in English history and literature that the modern reader can easily follow\". They are an essential source for scholars who study the period.\nSamuel Harsnett, born Samuel Halsnoth, was an English writer on religion and Archbishop of York from 1629.\nIn 1622, Scott became preacher to the English garrison at Utrecht. There he continued writing pamphlets against the Roman Catholics, many of which were published in England after Scott's departure. He was assassinated by an English soldier named John Lambert on 18 June 1626, as he was coming out of church, accompanied by his brother William Scott and his nephew Thomas Scott. The assassin was tortured, but denied that Catholic priests or Jesuits had motivated him to act. Insane and subject to hallucinations, he was condemned to death and executed, his right hand being first cut off.\nVox Populi was one of two dozen pamphlets he wrote. It has been argued that through Scott the Scottish version of republicanism came to have an important impact in England. [2]\nClassical republicanism, also known as civic republicanism or civic humanism, is a form of republicanism developed in the Renaissance inspired by the governmental forms and writings of classical antiquity, especially such classical writers as Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. Classical republicanism is built around concepts such as civil society, civic virtue and mixed government.\nHe has tentatively been identified with the Thomas Scot or Scott (fl. 1605), poet, who described himself as a gentleman, and who wrote several poetical works. It appears from a letter addressed by Locke to Sir Dudley Carleton on 2 February 1621 that the minister of Norwich, then suspected of being the author of Vox Populi, had, in Somerset's time, been questioned about a 'book of birds'. The poetical writer published the following pieces:\nFloruit, abbreviated fl., Latin for \"he/she flourished\", denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the word may also be used as a noun indicating the time when someone flourished.\n'Four Paradoxes of Arte, of Lawe, of Warre, of Service [a poem]. By T. S.,' London, 1602.\n'Philomythie or Philomythologie, wherein outlandish Birds, Beasts, and Fishes are taught to speak true English,' London, 1610; 2nd edit, 'much inlarged,' London, 1616. Some copies of the second edition are dated 1622; others 1640. One poem is entitled 'Regalis Justitia Jacobi,' in which Scott celebrates the impartial justice of King James in refusing to pardon Robert Crichton, 8th Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, for the deliberate murder of Turner, the celebrated fencer, in 1612.\n'The Second Part of Philomythie or Philomythologie. Containing certaine Tales of True Libertie, False Friendship. Power Vnited. Faction and Ambition,' London, 1616 and 1625.\nVox Dei 1623 [3]\nRobert Crichton, 8th Lord Crichton of Sanquhar, was a Scottish peer executed for the murder of a fencing teacher. He was the son of Edward, Lord Sanquhar. Robert is often styled \"6th Lord Sanquhar.\"\nVox Dei is a political-religious pamphlet by Thomas Scott published in Utrecht in 1623. The pamphlet contains an attack on the Spanish match, and ends by anticipating the triumph of the 1624 parliament.\n↑ \"Thomas Scott (SCT620T)\". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.\n↑ Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (2004), Ch. 5, Thomas Scott: virtue, liberty and the 'mixed Government'\n↑ P. Salzman Literature and Politics in the 1620s: 'Whisper'd Counsells' 1137305983 - 2014 \"Vox Dei recapitulates the history of the preceding few years, stressing the significance of the rejection of the Spanish ... a partisan perspective of course) how England had reached the current situation, while also continuing Scott's dramatic .\"\nThe 1620s decade ran from January 1, 1620, to December 31, 1629.\nYear 1567 (MDLXVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.\nThomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson among the most successful and prolific of the playwrights at work during the Jacobean period. He was among the few to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy, and a prolific writer of masques and pageants.\nDon Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, was a Spanish (Galician) diplomat, the Spanish ambassador to England from 1613 to 1622 and afterwards, as a kind of ambassador emeritus, Spain's leading expert on English affairs until his death.\nSir Samuel Argall was an English adventurer and naval officer.\nRichard Montagu was an English cleric and prelate.\nFrancis Constable was a London bookseller and publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, noted for publishing a number of stage plays of English Renaissance drama.\nSamuel Ward (1577–1640) was an English Puritan minister of Ipswich.\nSir Robert Tracy, 2nd Viscount Tracy was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons of England variously between 1620 and 1640. He fought for the Royalists in the English Civil War.\nThis article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : \"Scott, Thomas (1580?-1626)\". Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.\nNLA-person: 970377\nSNAC: w6n01drx\nWorldCat Identities (via VIAF): 440078","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line934650"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9149489998817444,"wiki_prob":0.9149489998817444,"text":"Brian Alan Lane\nRevision as of 20:02, September 25, 2019 by Archbot (Talk | contribs)\nBrian Alan Lane is the screenwriter, playwright, and novelist who wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation second season episode \"Elementary, Dear Data\". He is also an attorney and tenured college professor, teaching a variety of writing courses.\nBesides TNG, Lane has written for such 1980s television shows as Remington Steele, Moonlighting and Hunter; he was a producer on the latter series, as well. He also co-wrote the story for a 1986 episode of MacGyver entitled \"The Wish Child,\" directed by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock cinematographer Charles Correll and guest-starring Star Trek: The Original Series's George Takei.\nSome of Lane's more recent writing credits include episodes of M.A.N.T.I.S., Matlock, and In the House. He created, wrote for and executive produced a short-lived dramatic series for A&E Television entitled Hollywood Detective, which received a number of nominations from the Cable ACE Awards. Another writer on this series was \"Sins of the Father\" teleplay co-writer W. Reed Moran.\nIn addition to his episodic television writing credits, Lane wrote two science fiction TV movies, 1988's Out of Time (directed and executive produced by Robert Butler and featuring Barbara Tarbuck) and 1991's The Girl from Mars (starring Edward Laurence Albert and Gwynyth Walsh).\nOutside of Hollywood, Lane has written a number of non-fiction crime novels, most dealing with murders and serial killers. Among these is his bestseller, Cat and Mouse: Mind Games with a Serial Killer. He is also the publisher of the literary journal Sweet Fancy Moses and has written numerous short stories. One of those stories, entitled Body of Work, was adapted into a short film which he executive produced. This film became an Official Selection of the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2006.\nFaculty page at California State University, Long Beach\nBrian Alan Lane at the Internet Movie Database\nRetrieved from \"https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Brian_Alan_Lane?oldid=2380192\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line344807"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5570025444030762,"wiki_prob":0.5570025444030762,"text":"Inform 7/Gluxe\nReviewed by Snowblood\nRichard Otter started in 1989 and has at least 19 text adventure games to his name already. That's good going. This guy is a veteran. My only encounter with his work came, funnily enough, in the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition, where he entered Unauthorized Termination, which I reviewed. Let's take a look at what I had to say at the time:\nMurder on the planet of the robots. Initial doubts about the sparse descriptions and lack of detail are swept away by the sheer level of consistency in the game world. Everything is brief, to-the-point, logical, as you would expect on a planet of robots. All the default responses, descriptions and dialogue are cleverly tailored to role-playing the character of an emotionless \"robo-cop\". While its blindingly obvious that your superior is somehow involved in a cover-up from the get-go, and the PC is given a surprising amount of leeway given the supposed massive conspiracy, it doesn't detract from the fun of going through the investigative routine and uncovering the pieces of the puzzle bit-by-bit. The conclusion is a little weak, with some rather odd character actions, but overall its a good romp well worth playing - despite some minor intermittent implementation issues.\nI liked it a lot, with a few caveats. It ended up landing 10th place, and got a Xyzzy Award nomination for Best Setting, so clearly I wasn't the only fan either. 11 years later, Word of the Day just needs to fix some of those criticisms of the 2006 game, while also building on its strong points, to be deemed a big success. Let's take it line by line.\nMurder on the planet of the robots.\nMass-murder on the spaceship of the aliens, this time round. The two games share some storyline elements: both are sci-fi mysteries in which a protagonist stumbles on clues to a grand conspiracy and unravels a devious plot piece-by-piece. While Unauthorized Termination followed a detective procedural path, Word of the Day is more concerned with exploration and survival: the player-character is an 'Outer-Worlder' working on a freight spaceship called \"Word of the Day\" with an 'Inner-Worlder' crew. She wakes up after a sudden explosion to find everybody dead. No, its not the pilot of Red Dwarf. Everybody's not dead, Dave. It's not entirely the \"wander around an empty spaceship finding all the corpses and all the notes\" game the initial phase suggests. Once you've explored as much of the map as possible, picking up memos, newspaper articles, and other assorted paraphernalia that slowly reveal what has been happening, you will discover that there are, in fact, survivors, and the game changes gear when they are encountered. There are conversations to be had, back-stories to be uncovered, and moral choices to be made.\nInitial doubts about the sparse descriptions and lack of detail are swept away by the sheer level of consistency in the game world. Everything is brief, to-the-point, logical.\nI would say that again there is not much brio in the writing. It's as cold and functional as before, but again this appears to be by choice. It's all in service of depicting the personality of the player-character, Kareene Veet.\nAll the default responses, descriptions and dialogue are cleverly tailored to role-playing the character of an emotionless \"robo-cop\".\nAll the default responses, descriptions and dialogue are cleverly tailored to role-playing the character of a heartless, arrogant, stuck-up, conceited, self-obsessed alien lady. Catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, Kareene Veet remarks about how great she looks. Checking her dead colleagues' possessions, she laughs about how they failed to achieve her level in the Bio-Drive engineer exams. She then robs them:\n\"On your home planet stealing another's wealth is considered both illegal and immoral; put simply it is wrong. You have never felt that this applies to the property of the Inner Worlders. You are only living with them until you have amassed enough wealth to go home. Your dislike of the Inner Worlders has allowed you to overlook your double standards.\"\nShe takes any opportunity to demean the Inner-Worlders she has been working with, even when they're dead, mocking their physical appearances, and insulting their intelligence and their professional capabilities. She recalls memories of her time on board, a work environment where she feels she has been suffering discrimination and prejudice. But, hypocritically, she is completely blind to her own prejudices against the Inner-Worlders.\nWhat is great about this player-character portrayal is that it's not the focus of the game at all. It's not about an evil character, in the way that Varicella (1999) is, or a monstrous character, in the way Coloratura (2013) is, this lady is the hero of her own story, she just also happens to be an alien. The many and varied responses to the \"examine\" verb reveal just how alien this woman is: she's physically different, biologically different, thinks differently and has her own weird code of ethics. She's just doing it the best she can. It's not a morality play: she doesn't get her come-uppance at the end (unless you get her killed, which is not a \"true\" ending), Nor is it treated as shocking plot twist: \"ha ha, you were the bad guy all along!\". It's instead just an aspect of her character that the player can choose to inhabit as much or as little as they would like. You don't need to poke and prod at the corners of the world model if you don't want to, the game can be played just fine as a puzzley exploration adventure with a protagonist just trying to get out of a bad situation, but if you choose to go further, you are rewarded with tons of extra content that fills out this universe, and especially fills out the personality of this remarkable player-character.\nI love this character, because I hate this character. In the end, I chose to role-play to an ending that felt appropriate for Kareene Veet (the 'amazing' ending): but I should point out that there are at least six different endings, not including fail states (the game is absolutely stuffed to the gills with content as I mentioned), and so I imagine that it would also be possible to play out a \"redemption arc\" for her too? There is so much more here, I'm looking forward to plunging back in soon. The whole package is an improvement over Unauthorized Termination, some minor technical issues aside, but for me it's the brilliant player-character that really lifts Word of the Day into the stratosphere.\nReviewed by Jack Welch (dhakajack)\nThis is an obsessively detailed parser-based sci-fi story that took me the full two hours to play, albeit not all in one sitting. The richness of the game’s background, character backstories, and the number of rooms and detailed objects in them more than makes up for however many stories I have criticized as under implemented in this IFcomp.\nThe amount of detail is at first overwhelming, but I am sure it is only a fraction of the world that this author has generated. I don’t doubt that in creating this game, the author generated extensive histories of each alien world and extensive character sketches for each character, but had to make some tough choices about how much of this material to hold back on in order to condense the story to two hours of playing time.\n[Some spoilers follow beyond this point]\nThe main character, Kareene Veet, starts the game on the bridge of a starship, disoriented by whatever disaster has just befallen the ship. She is trapped under a dislodged panel and can’t focus on anything else, so the player has an immediate sense of urgency, and instead of examining every object on the bridge and snagging all the knick-knacks within reach, Kareene is forced to focus on freeing herself. After that, surrounded by bodies of other crew members, she can begin to try to piece together what went wrong.\nDuring the first part of the game, the player spends a significant amount of time exploring the ship, which provides the author a chance to gradually fill in background: what is this ship, what was its mission, who are the people on it, what are the larger political and cultural settings, and what current events in the world could influence the story on the ship?\nIt is a ton of exposition, but it is all interwoven into description of objects or mentioned in Kareene’s thoughts. The reader is never confronted with a solid wall of dense text; all the necessary background is broken up into digestible bits. Not all of it ties together immediately, so there is some burden on the reader to file it all away for future reference, but even at a fairly early point the reader can sense that the various threads will eventually come back together.\nNonetheless, at the start, the game world seems to expand exponentially and the reader may be anxious about keeping track of everything. A few minutes of wandering the ship is enough to understand that it is huge and that some sort of map is going to be necessary. A map is not included in the feelies, so I initially presumed I would need to draw one. However, the game’s extensive help system indicates that there is a “map” command. I tried it and got no response — it turns out that just a few turns later, the player comes across an in-game map, and from that point forward, the map command displays the map in the interpreter.\nThere is a lot of running around the ship in this game, and until the map burnt itself into my memory, I found it indispensable to have the map available for reference. The map command is a nice feature, but on my laptop screen I could only see the map for one or two moves before it scrolled away. To make my life easier, I screen captured the map and kept it open in another window for the rest of my sessions. I’d recommend doing that.\nWhat seems like a sprawling canvas becomes manageable over time, and the game does its part by literally gating progress by locking or unlocking sections of the ship. Whenever I had explored all that there was to see and do in one section, I would hear a distant clanking denoting the furtive movements of another survivor. The mechanism is transparent, but works well enough in terms of story.\nIn addition to the game map there are two other classes of items that players need to keep track of: crew members and messages. Until the final part of the game, all of the crew members that Kareene encounters are dead, and their deaths do not look accidental. Every time she runs across a body, we learn not only their name, but what what Kareene remembers about them. As we search the bodies, we find out their role on board their ship, bits of their backstory, and gain insight into their personalities. The game also keeps track of how many crew remain unaccounted throughout the story, as this is one of Kareene’s top priorities.\nOn an television show, twelve crew members would not represent an unusually large cast, but any given episode would only be able to focus on at most a few of them. Over a season, the crew could gel into an ensemble, but we don’t have that luxury in a two hour game. So, I would like to suggest that the game would benefit from some sort of customized tool to keep track of the crew in the same way that the map command helps the player organize the physical space. Since this is a futuristic story, such an aid could be implemented as an in-game object, for example some sort of duty roster listing name, rank, shipboard duties, planet of origin and perhaps an area where Kareene has jotted notes as she learns about each crew member.\nAlong similar lines, Kareene finds a ream of interstellar messages as she searches the ship. As a body, they are a major source of information in the game. Each one is time-stamped, so the player is able to read throgh them and piece together a timeline of events up to the explosion on the bridge.\nI picked up the first few messages in game, read them, and not knowing what to do with them, stuffed them into my carryall. After a half hour, I began to wonder if this was what the author had in mind. My carryall was stuffed full of the things. Once they are in inventory, they are jumbled up with everything else, which makes for a long and disorganized list. Here again, I think the game would have benefitted from some sort of assistive technology to put them in order — for example, if each printout had a QR code that could be scanned into a device that would then sort by date and list them by topic like emails, they would be more manageable.\nThese are fine points, though. The player doesn’t know it, but it really isn’t necessary to track all these details — the story will play out, regardless.\nAs written, I found the game enjoyable and very playable from start to finish without reference to the walkthrough. The author does a great job conveying Kareene’s (not all that likable) personality. She is alone for most of the game, but when we do finally meet other characters, the dialogue flows naturally. The plot is not elaborate, but it is strong because it plays on the background that the player discovers in the course of play. I did enjoy the ending that I reached, maybe not an objectively good outcome for society, but a brilliant success from Kareene’s point of view.\nStory: 7\nVoice: 8\nPlay: 8\nPolish: 9\nTechnical: 7\nJNSQ: 0\nPreliminary Score: 7.8\nReviewed by Marco Innocenti\nI actually woke up this morning, after playing WotD all night yesterday, finally grasping what was going on.\nThis is a well structured, almost puzzle-less sci-fi, with a brilliant PC and an incredibly detailed backstory, which could have aimed, imho, at a much higher outcome.\nThe most intriguing things revolve around racial (and racist) themes, told through the eyes of a special creature whose sole businesses in the universe seem to be procreation and money. And money because of procreation.\nThere are aspects of the subplot which are genius: the mating techniques of different races; how an Outworder sees us (provided the Inner Worlders are us); how racism can dwell in close environments; segregation.\nUnfortunately, the story is presented through an endless array of posts and notes, and via the comments (on dead bodies) by a cold PC, who’s prime feature seems to be the lack of any empathy with anyone except her distant relatives and lovers. All of this sums up to a distinct vibe and a cool backstory that, in the end, fails in finding a route to the final outcome.\nThe atmosphere is strong (I was actually scared by the continuous opening and closing of doors, hinting at another survivor— the ship is full of dead bodies after an initial “incident”) although there is not much to do except reading tons of backstory. And this is first flaw of an otherwise impressive game.\nStyle apart (the text needs some more intense editing, due to the generative process it has to sustain), the fact that the main action you continuously do is reading notes or long flashbacks hinders the gameplay a bit. This sums up to the fact that navigation is hard due to a very symmetrical and squareish map (a map is provided and I would say it is fundamental for your survival).\nBut the main aspect — the thing that, eventually, lowered my experience most — is that, of all the important backstory told, the one which is central to the final twist (and there IS a final twist!) is overlooked enough that I simply forgot to notice. Saying more means spoiler, so I have nothing to add, if not that a much more “central” approach to something inside the ship would have done a better job in causing the final wow-effect.\nFinally, the endgame, too, looks muddled and I failed to actually get what was happening in the ship until I woke up this morning with the proverbial epiphany.\nTo recap: I wish the main story was more “main” and the sub-plots (about race, gender, and the overall backstory) ended up being sub-plots and not the big finger in front of the moon. I wish I could understand more about the plot, something my “4-Good” ending didn’t convey (who was the one opening and closing the doors? I understood this after an 8-hours sleep, never having seen him during play!). I wish I could read less and do more, as a piece of Interactive Fiction should allow.\nThis said, I enjoyed this game a lot, and it frankly had me holding tight to the chair here and there, for some nice, perpetual sense of danger. A calm post-comp reset of the game is all it’s needed to put these few things straight.\nReviewed by Christopher Huang\nDespite the title, this is not a Nord-&-Bert-y wordplay game. \"Word of the Day\" is the name of a ... somewhat junky spacecraft, and we are an \"Outer Worlder\" crewmember. Well, when I say \"junky\" ... it's still an enviable class of spacecraft, such that getting on it at all is an honour; it's just that it's the lowest class on the roster of these super-amazing ships that run on super-efficient bio-derived fuel rods.\nThis is mostly an exploration game. We wake up after an explosion of some sort has knocked us out; we appear to be the only survivor in the command centre--but what about the other crewmembers? Most of the game is spent seeking them out and learning about what happened, and in the process learning their stories. The main decisions to be made and puzzles to be solved come towards the end, and these don't actually feel so much like puzzles as ... natural issues to be resolved.\nTo make things interesting, we're the only Outer Worlder on the crew: everyone else is an Inner Worlder, and much of the exploration is about the relationships between the Inner and Outer Worlds. It would seem that the Inner Worlds are the dominant race: they're the ones running the star command, and our hero's inclusion on this crew is a major source of pride for her. So few Outer Worlders manage so much! Of course, she's very much aware of the racist attitudes against her; but she's also somewhat less conscious of her own racism....\nEven if you don't care for any explorations into racism (and you don't have to read it that way) the worldbuilding that results is pretty engrossing. Neither the Inner Worlders nor the Outer Worlders are human, and it is by comparing the two that we can naturally discuss what each of them are without it sounding like an exposition dump.\nI do suspect that, at some point of the design process, the characters were meant to be Earth humans, though. Most of the names look like variations on human names, and I did catch at least one reference to \"Earth\" in the descriptions.\nSo it's an interesting story, and an interesting exploration of worlds far different from our own. I liked the slow feed of information with respect to the mystery of what happened and the underlying plot. The final denouement sets up for some nice variations in the endings, with multiple ways of achieving whichever ends we want.\nI think this is like a fruit yoghurt parfait, full of fruit chunks and granola. We're all focused on spooning the yoghurt into our mouths, and all the things that make it good are just there for the ride. Add some iced tea to follow ... or do we need the iced tea after all? You decide.\nReview by Lynnea Glasser\nReviewed by Aziraphale\nThis is a well-executed space exploration game. It almost feels like the text version of an environmental storytelling based walking simulator: you explore a dead space craft, trying to figure out what happened to your crew, and doing some puzzle-solving along the way. This is a meaty game with a lot of content, very few errors, and quality craftsmanship, and it’s getting a lot of positive comments in the reviews I’ve read.\nI hate being a dissenting opinion on something a lot of people like. It’s not a fun place to be in! It’s even worse when the reasons you don’t like a game are not what some people would call objective, but based purely in your treacherous, unreliable feelings. So, I am not pleased to report that I did not like this game. I don’t want to belabor the point, as I know a lot of people will like this game. I’ll just talk a little bit about why I did not have a good time playing it.\nThis game made me feel uncomfortable. Not with the premise, which is fine; nor even with the blatant assholeness of the main character, who happily strips her dead crewmates of valuables along the way. I actually enjoyed that quite a bit. What made me uncomfortable were the constant asides, the glimpses of worldbuilding we get. When the main character is examining the corpses of her coworkers, we get a lengthy aside about the shape and function of her genitals; definitely what most people’s minds go to, right? (Not to mention that the picture attached to the game is meant to be a representation of what said genitals look like. Eungh.)\nI’m not a fan of alien racism. I think it’s hard to handle well, especially when you try to pull a “but she’s also racist against them!” like this game does. I didn’t like what we learned about the author’s alien OC race, how our main character’s only motivation is reproduction, how everyone is racist against her but also the entire crew is irresistibly drawn to her because of her sexy alien pheromones and also one of the dudes has an alien fetish and another dude definitely tried to rape her once, which we of course have to flashback to. So much of this game feels like a set-up to a weird alien porno. Did I mention that when this alien species reproduces, the males lose their dicks? Freud would seriously have a field day.\nSo, yeah. I wasn’t a fan of this game because it made me feel uncomfortable playing it, and eventually it made me so uncomfortable I didn’t want to play it any more, and that’s really all there is to it.\nReviewed by Brian Rushton as \"MathBrush\"\nThis game kind of threw me off at first; I used the walkthrough, which seemed super unmotivated, and some large pieces of occasionally-awkward text made me not like it as much.\nBut then lglasser said she loved it on her twitch stream, as did an Italian IFComp judge, so I gave it another shot, walkthrough-free.\nThis time around, I liked it. All reasonable commands seemed to be accepted. The game allowed a great deal of flexible exploration and a money system that worked. Exploration was all that was needed to trigger the story, and the hint system was just strong enough to get me through and just vague enough to make it a challenge.\nIt seemed oddly fixated an alien mating systems, but it was more National Geographic than anything else.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line692838"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9410421252250671,"wiki_prob":0.9410421252250671,"text":"The Village Beacon Record\nThe Port Times Record\nThe Village Times Herald\nThe Times of Middle Country\nThe Times of Smithtown\nThe Times of Huntington-Northport\nArts & Lifestyles\nMedical Compass\nThe Culper Spy Adventure\nThe Abridged Works of Charles Dickens\nPublishing LLC Notices\nHome Tags Posts tagged with \"Village of Port Jefferson\"\nVillage of Port Jefferson\nPJ Village Prepares for New Pickleball Courts\nPort Times Record\nby Kyle Barr - January 10, 2020\nSite plans for the pickleball courts Photo by Kyle Barr\nPort Jefferson village has put out bid requests to add several pickleball courts to a portion of the tennis space at the Port Jefferson Country Club.\nDeputy Mayor Stan Loucks said the game has picked up in popularity, and has been reported as one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S.\nThe Sport and Fitness Industry Association reported that participation in the sport has increased by close to 10 percent over the past three years, with a total of 3.3 million participants in the country, compared to 2.815 million in 2014.\nThe game of pickleball is often compared to an enlarged game of ping pong, or a shortened game of tennis. Instead of rackets, players use large paddles to get a plastic perforated ball across a net. Unlike tennis, serves are underhand. It can be played one-on-one or two-on-two.\nMany people attribute the sport’s popularity to it being relatively simple. It doesn’t require a lot of rapid body movement but requires good hand-eye coordination.\nLoucks, the liaison to the country club, said original plans were to include the pickleball courts to the west of the current tennis courts, but that would have required extra revetments and erosion mitigation along that end of the bluff. The new designs show the three new pickleball courts to the north of the existing tennis courts, about 32 feet from the existing parking lot. Original estimates for the project range from $85,000 to $128,000, a total that combines both the landscaping and the building of the asphalt courts. Excavation started for the courts Jan. 7.\nThe village has struggled in recent years to get permits from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to build new revetments and structures to halt erosion on the bluff near the country club. Loucks said they are losing a few feet of bluff every year, making it precariously close to taking out the tennis courts. Mayor Margot Garant said the DEC is finalizing everything, and they are hoping to get those permits back “soon.”\n“I think it’s a great move — we’re not losing any parking area,” Loucks said.\nThe pro shop for tennis will also cater to pickleball players. The village set the membership rates for pickleball at $400 for a resident, $500 for nonresidents, and each will pay a $50 annual assessment plus a $135 minimums fee. Country club members interested in playing pickleball will be charged an additional rate of $300.\nLoucks said he hopes the sport will be popular. The only other two local pickleball courts are a private space in the Village of Belle Terre and a public court in Centereach.\n“I’m hoping to 50 to 100 members the first season,” he said.\nFinal deadline for new bids is Feb. 6. After that the village will choose a contractor and then more work can begin. Loucks said that while asphalt companies don’t open their doors until April, he expects the project to be done by the beginning of May.\nPJ Resident/Advocate Ahearn Says She’s Ready for 1st District Race\nVillage Beacon Record\nby Kyle Barr - January 9, 2020\nLaura Aheran. Photo from campaign\nLaura Ahearn, longtime crime victims advocate, is ready to take on a new challenge, running for state senate. For 43 years the state District 1 seat has been held by Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), but she said it’s time for change.\n“Many members of the community are grateful for his [LaValle’s] service as I am, but it is time now for a new voice and an advocate like me to fight furiously for our community,” Ahearn said.\nFor 25 years, the attorney said she has worked to keep the community safe from sexual predators. Ahearn also founded the Crime Victims Center “from a room in her home” and over the years established it into a nonprofit organization that has worked with local, state and federal law enforcement.\n“There are some serious flaws in the criminal justice reform that took place Jan. 1 that makes our communities very vulnerable.”\n— Laura Ahearn\nThe center’s educational programs have been shown in numerous school districts, along with local colleges and universities throughout Suffolk County.\n“I want to take my advocacy experiences, my legal skills and use it to help our community, children and families up in Albany,” the executive director said. “I know my experience over the past 20 plus years positions me to take on other issues as well.”\nSome issues Ahearn hopes to tackle is the recent bail reform issues and MS-13’s infiltration into Long Island schools.\n“There are some serious flaws in the criminal justice reform that took place Jan. 1 that makes our communities very vulnerable,” she said. “Bail reform was absolutely needed, because people who couldn’t afford cash bail were incarcerated, that’s not fair. But we haven’t looked at what the implications are for the community and for victims.”\nAhearn said the recent reform needs to be amended to add some discretion for judges who may need to hold certain offenders who may be eligible for automatic release. In addition, she said law enforcement and probation officers need to be given more resources to further monitor offenders of violent crimes.\nOn the MS-13 front, Ahearn stressed we need to make sure we are giving schools the resources and funding they need to ramp up their security to protect students.\nCost of living and keeping young professionals in Suffolk County have been vexing issues for elected officials. Ahearn knows this firsthand.\n“I have two grown children and they can’t afford to live on Long Island — high taxes are driving our kids out off the island,” she said. “We have to ensure that they have fair wages, educational opportunities, safe work environments and affordable housing.”\nThe Port Jefferson resident said in terms of job opportunities she thought Amazon would’ve been a great opportunity for the county and if elected will strive to continue to bring businesses into the district.\nOther issues on the challenger’s radar are the ongoing opioid epidemic, curbing nitrogen pollution in local waterways, marine/wildlife conservation, phone scams targeting the elderly, tick-borne illness, among others.\nAhearn, who graduated from Dowling College, Stony Brook University and Touro Law School, recently had a campaign kick-off event Dec. 10 and said she is looking forward to meeting and learning from movers and shakers in the area. The senate district stretches from eastern end of Suffolk County to the eastern end of Town of Brookhaven.\n“As time moves forward, I’m going to learn a lot from the advocates in the community — I’m not an expert on some issues and I want to learn from those advocates who are those experts. They have to educate me, so I can represent them,” she said.\nThe attorney said the position requires one to work with everyone, something she has done for two decades, helping develop, implement and manage crime prevention programs and assist in drafting a number of state, local and federal laws.\n“I really love what I’ve been doing,” she said. “Voters have a decision to make and I have a demonstrated history of fighting for our community and if that’s what they want — someone who will fight furiously for them — then they should vote for me.”\nPJ Village Gains Grant Funds for Coastal Resiliency Study\nby Kyle Barr - December 20, 2019\n‘Red’ marks the estimated depth where the water table is less than 11 feet. Image from Campani and Schwarting\nA state agency has granted Port Jeff over $80k in funds to help plan for future storms and floods.\nThe New York State Regional Economic Council awarded Port Jefferson village $82,500 Dec. 19 to create a Climate Resilience Plan. This comes in response to hurricanes over the past decade, including Irene and SuperStorm Sandy, as well as other storm surge events. The promised plan will integrate sea-level rise predictions to propose solutions to mitigate flooding and storm surges, along with the impacts of rising tides due to climate change.\nMichael Schwarting presents the study’s findings to village officials back in August. Photo by Kyle Barr\nNicole Christian, Port Jefferson’s grant writer, said the village would have to put conducting the plan out to bid sometime early in the new year, and should cost a total of around $165,000. The $82,500 from New York State was the fully awarded amount requested.\nWith the funds, she said, Port Jefferson will be one of the few North Shore communities whose waterfront revitalization reports will be “on the leading edge” of current technologies and data from storms.\nThe funds go back to June this year, when the village presented its Waterfront Revitalization Plan to the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council, describing its intention to perform immediately needed maintenance of the storm drainage system and provide emergency equipment to deploy in a rain event to protect properties in the village in catastrophic flooding.\nAt its July 15 meeting, the village voted unanimously to apply for grant funds from the state Division of Planning’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, Empire State Development and any other applicable state agencies.\nIn September of last year, Port Jefferson was bowled over with water, with nearly 4 inches of rain collected in a short span of time. Buildings like the Port Jefferson firehouse and the venerable Theatre Three were drowned in 3 to 4 feet of water, causing thousands of dollars in damages in the case of the theater. In July this year, the village was hit with yet another flooding event, and while this year’s was not nearly as severe as 2018, it still left many villagers wondering what could be in the future.\nChristian said when submitting the grant, the village included images of that 2018 flood, giving an example of what could happen in the future if issues are not addressed.\nThe area outside Theatre Three was under 2 feet of water July 22. Photo from Brian Hoerger\nBack in August, architects from the Port Jefferson-based firm Campani and Schwarting displayed a draft report about trouble spots for Port Jeff flooding. Michael Schwarting, one of the architects, pointed out Port Jeff has a lack of permeable surfaces, a significant amount of hardscape, and a water table that lies as close as 11 feet to the surface.\nThe Long Island Explorium is planning to create rain gardens at several points in the village, which may have the added benefit of creating permeable land for water to seep into during heavy rains. The gardens originally had a deadline of the end of this year, but the explorium’s Executive Director Angeline Judex said their grant was given an extension to June 1, 2020.\nIn a release, the village thanked Cara Longworth, chair and director of the LI Regional Economic Development Council and Denise Zani, deputy of the LIREDC, along with other state, county and town officials for continued support.\nSt. Charles Cuts Ribbon on New Maternity Wing\nKatherine Lewin with her newborn son Jonathan at St. Catherine Hospital's new maternity wing. Photo by Kyle Barr\nSt. Charles Hospital’s nearly $4 million new maternity wing has one thing at the top of the mind, privacy.\nSt. Catherines officials cut the ribbon on the new maternity wing. Photo by Kyle Barr\nAt a ribbon cutting for the new renovated 16-room maternal/child pavilion Dec. 19, hospital officials boasted rooms with “hotel-like atmosphere,” that focus on letting families stay together with their newborn in relative quiet.\n“Today the standard in the community is probably for privacy for mothers, because now their husbands stay with them, so you need to have more people in the room,” said Jim O’Connor, the president of St. Charles Hospital.\nO’Connor said the new wing cost around $3.8 million, most of which came from the hospital’s capital budget, and took around 10 months to build. During that time patients were moved to the 3-West wing, in order to avoid the disturbance of construction for the doctors, nurses and patients.\nThe hospital’s foundation and auxiliary contributed about $500,000 to the construction, said Lisa Mulvey, executive director of the hospital’s foundation. Funds were raised through trustees and events such as their annual golf outing and spring luncheons. The end result, she said, was well worth it.\n“It’s beautiful,” Mulvey said. “I couldn’t have pictured something more beautiful.”\nEach room features new beds and more accommodations for person’s significant others with new sofa chairs and larger, walk-in showers. The rooms also include more modern isolettes for newborn children.\nOne of the new rooms at St. Catherine Hospital maternal unit. Photo by Kyle Barr\nDr. Jerry Ninia, the director of obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital, said the new wing’s technology helps in emergencies, but it’s always moreso the staff involved.\n“It goes beyond the nice showers and the nice digs, so to speak,” he said. “It helps the staff, it’s always nice to work in a nice facility.”\nThe wing officially opened about three weeks ago, and patients are already making use of the facilities.\nEd Casper, an architect from Stantec engineering company that worked on the new wing, said just that morning he had become a grandfather, his grandson being born right there in the new wing.\n“Our experience through the night last night was absolutely phenomenal,” he said.\nOne of the first children to be born in the new maternity ward was young Jonathan Lewin, less than a week old. His sparse, brown hair is already as long as thumbtacks. His mother, Katherine Lewin, 31, a nurse from Wading River, said her care there was “excellent, everyone here is great.”\nShe is excited to take her new son home, where she expects her 2 ½ year-old daughter is excited to be a sister.\n“She asked if she could bring him home,” Lewin said.\nHistorians Lead Way in Digitizing Port Jeff History\nDowntown Port Jeff circa 1906. Both original photos by Arthur S. Green. Digitized images from Preservation Long Island.\nTime destroys all things. Photos fade, film degrades, buildings crumble. To stop entropy and the inevitable march of time, local historians, both local and regional, have been working to digitize a number of vintage Port Jefferson films and photos for more people to enjoy.\nThe Port Jefferson Train Station circa 1900. Original photos by Arthur S. Green. Digitized images from Preservation Long Island.\nCold Spring Harbor-based Preservation Long Island purchased a collection of glass slide photographs from renowned late 19th- and early 20th-century photographer Arthur S. Greene, who took photos from all over Brookhaven Town, many of which ended up on postcards and in books promoting Long Island as a tourist destination.\nIt wasn’t until 2018 that Preservation LI curator Lauren Brincat said the historical nonprofit was able to place the very delicate glass slides where people could see them. The Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University supplied Preservation with a grant as part of the school’s Digitizing Local History Sources project, funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The grant brought two LIU students to Preservation’s headquarters to digitize the photographs.\nOnly one problem, there was no guide or template on how one should scan something as fragile as a glass slide. Brincat said the two LIU students had to start from scratch, creating their own guides and frames for photos of different sizes, 4×6, 5×7, etc. The group covered the flatbed with Mylar and used spacers to prevent the scanner from touching the artifacts.\nIt was a “tedious and labor-intensive” job, Brincat said, but the result is worth it. Hundreds of images are now stored online for anybody to peruse.\n“There are great benefits to this,” the curator said. “It prevents having to go back to the original material, which could result in breaking them, emulsion or impact on the negative which are very light sensitive.”\nThe collection of photographs, Brincat said, captures the Island at a different time, especially how it developed from an agricultural, rural setting into its suburban commercial-based future.\n“These pictures show the introduction of electricity and the automobile,” she said. “Many of the streets were dirt roads, which is hard to imagine today.”\nOther people closer to home have also set themselves to the task of digitizing Port Jefferson history, items that have helped both village residents and historians understand their roots.\nChris Ryon, the Port Jefferson Village historian, has been working with Belle Terre historian John Hiz on numerous projects, including getting a number of donated film reels from the Childs family digitized. Ryon said Hiz was instrumental in negotiating that donation to the Port Jeff archive.\n“I just wanted to make sure they were kept in the community,” he said.\nA video of Belle Terre includes reels of pergolas, things that Hiz said he’s only seen in print. Without such items, he said, historians don’t have that tangible way to look back on the locals’ past.\n“It makes things come to life,” he said. “Having access is the most important thing. There’s probably tons of materials stored in people’s attics or basements, but being able to have access is critical.”\nA woman and child burn leaves in a digitized film reel gathered by local historians. Video from Port Jeff Maritime Facebook page\nThe reels depict numerous scenes from 1928 through 1940, including of a woman in a fur coat burning leaves in Belle Terre, of parades, and even of a picnic in Montauk, among others. One reel even shows flooding in Port Jeff reminiscent of recent events from this year and last.\nThe reels were sent to a historical group in Chattanooga, which has digitized the reels at $15 a piece. The Port Jefferson Harbor Education & Arts Conservancy provided funds.\n“It blew my mind once I first saw it,” Ryon said. “Everyone I showed it to had the same reaction — to see it come alive is another level, another dimension.”\nThe PJ historian is still waiting on five more reels to come back, which he expects will be in a few weeks. The videos are all being displayed in the public Facebook group Port Jefferson Maritime, though Ryon said he may look for some video to be posted to the Port Jefferson website.\n“Once it becomes digitized, we can send it all over the world,” Ryon said. “Everyone who wants to can see it.”\nPJS Family Dedicates Time and Trains to Dickens Fest\nTop, William, Charles and Marie Reed at the harbormaster building in Port Jeff. Below, William and other volunteers make sure the trains run smoothly. Photos by Kyle Barr\nWilliam Reed helps set up the trains at the Harbormaster building during the 24th Dickens Festival. Photo by Kyle Barr\nBoy Scouts of Troop 354 helped set up the trains during the 24th annual Charles Dickens Festival. Photo by Kyle Barr\nAs the Dickens Festival filled in the chilly outdoor air with 19th-century charm, the harbormaster building itself piped into the village a different kind of old-time allure, that of locomotives and steam engines. More than 20 miniature trains ran in inexhaustible loops, little jets of steam puffing from their chimneys. Boy Scouts of Troop 354 hovered over the tracks, along with Charles, Marie and William Reed of Port Jefferson Station.\nCharles, the father, owns the trains and knows how to put all the complicated parts and tracks together. William, who makes the words “train enthusiast” seem an understatement, knew each of the models and could do “train talk” with something of a dizzying speed. Ask the youngest Reed, who’s an Eagle Scout with Troop 354, about trains and he’ll tell you about trains in far-off places.\n“Korean railways is the national railway they have there, some of their high-speed trains are French derived, based on the French models like the KCX1 and 2,” he said.\nThe young man dashed around and between the tables, adding liquid to the trains’ stacks and helping his father fix the tracks.\nThe Reed family has been chugging along for the last several weeks setting up the train display, although in earnest the family spent several months beforehand gathering all the materials it needs to have on hand. Setting up the public display has meant several long nights, carting box after box of train collections, laying it out and making sure each is in operating order. The family asks for donations at the door, where on average around $1,400 is raised for Toys for Tots.\n“We don’t need them in the boxes, that’s why we can take them out and share them,” Marie, the mother, said.\nIn previous years, another man used to set up trains during the Dickens Festival. After he moved away, the Reed family stepped in. Marie said that, while he would have a score of volunteers, the Reed family only has themselves and a few people from the Scout troop.\nCharles said that each year since they started, six years ago, they have added more tables. At first, they had six tables with 10 trains. Today they set up 10 tables with 20 trains.\n“It’s crazy, but it comes together eventually,” the father said.\nThe amount of effort the family puts into it was recently acknowledged by Mayor Margot Garant at a Port Jefferson village meeting in November.\n24th Dickens Festival Brings Classic Cheer for All to Hear\nVillage Times Herald\nby Kyle Barr - December 9, 2019\nPort Jefferson hosted its 24th annual Charles Dickens Festival Dec. 6-8. Photo by Kyle Barr\nA silent night Dec. 6 opened up the weekend with Port Jefferson Village’s annual lantern dedications, but as night turned to day, Port Jeff was suddenly filled with characters straight out of a classic 19th century Dickens Classic. For the 24th year in a row, the village was suffused with the sights and sounds of Christmas spirit during the annual Charles Dickens Festival.\nVolunteers acted scenes from A Christmas Carole and other Dickens books, such as a live, local musical version of Oliver Twist. Visitors could visit the Village Center for ice skating, the festival of trees or a live reading of A Christmas Carol. A constant supply of marshmallows were up for grabs to roast over a fire, and businesses all shared Christmas and Dickens themed dinners and specials. Over at Theatre Three, A Christmas Carol was acted out Friday through Sunday, and is going on all the way until Dec. 28.\nPort Jeff Church Declares New Name and Independence\nThe Island Christian Church in Port Jefferson will soon be officially called Harborview Christian Church. Photo by Kyle Barr\nThe Island Christian Church in Port Jefferson will soon be under a new name, Harborview Christian Church.\nThe well-known church at the corner of East Main and Prospect streets hung a banner from its porch declaring its name change. Rev. Pete Jansson said the church is splitting off as a branch of Island Christian, with the other, much larger site in Northport.\n“It’s a step of faith,” the reverend said.\nHe said when the two branches of the church went up, it was said that if the two became too distinct they would have to look into separation. The Northport branch is a much larger campus and congregation, with many more church programs for multiple age groups and other, larger events. The smaller church in Port Jeff, he said, had become distinct in both its activities and number of churchgoers.\nThe church hung the banner off its porch to get residents used to the name before becoming a fully separate church starting the first Sunday of January 2020.\nSplitting off also has some disadvantages, namely the church having to fully pay its own bills, meaning more dependence on the donations of churchgoers instead of having the backing of the larger branch.\n“We’re dependent on paying our own bills,” Jansson said. “But we feel God is moving us in that direction.”\nPort Jeff Declares Best Slice of Residents’ Home-Baked Pies\nby Kyle Barr - November 28, 2019\nJudges taste pies made by local residents, making the decision on both taste and texture. Photo by Kyle Barr\nPJSD student in the aftermath of the pie-eating contest. Photo by Kevin Wood\nPie to die for was served up at the Village Center in Port Jefferson Nov. 23 as the village hosted its first Pie Bake Off and Eating Contest, sponsored in part by Torte Jeff Pie Co. and the Village of Port Jefferson.\nResidents and locals, even one who hailed from across the Sound in Connecticut, sent over two versions of their home-made pumpkin pies to see which would be the cream of the crop. Six judges, including Mayor Margot Garant and trustee Kathianne Snaden, as well as Torte Jeff Pie Co. owner Lisa Harris tried slices of 33 pies, judging them on crust, taste, sliceability and more. By the end, it was general surgeon Dr. Lawrence Kelly of Port Jefferson who won first place. Second place was tied between Tom Capodanno and Beth Whitford. The pies were raffled off for those wanting to take them home, and over $250 was donated to the food pantry at Infant Jesus Church in Port Jeff.\nAfter the judging, both adults and kids from Port Jefferson Elementary School took part in a blueberry pie-eating contest, with Luke Musto winning in the children’s division. In a contest between the village and school, the village barely managed to pull ahead. Finally, Jimmy Purificato won in the public pie-eating contest.\nPort Jeff Looks into Adding Electric Car Chargers\nNick Dattilo, a salesperson for Nesconset-based electrical supplies company Kelly & Hayes, during his presentation to the village board Nov. 18. Photo by Kyle Barr\nPort Jeff village officials are considering installing an electric car charger into an existing parking space toward the west end of the lot off Barnum Avenue.\nNick Dattilo, a salesperson for Nesconset-based electrical supplies company Kelly & Hayes, presented to the village board Nov. 18 about the possibility of installing a Charge Point electric vehicle charging station. Each station comes with two extendable charging ports and can be accessed with either an app or with a device that usually comes with a standard electric vehicle.\nKevin Wood, parking and mobility administrator, said the village is looking to make use of a New York State Energy Research and Development grant, which will provide up to an 80 percent rebate for such projects, from $250,000 up to a max of $500,000. The village would have to put the money upfront to be reimbursed. Mayor Margot Garant said she wanted to make sure the grant was in place before signing any contract for Charge Point.\nWood said the village could benefit, as the demographic of electric car owners is on the rise.\n“As soon as you drive in [to the parking lot] you drive right into these,” Wood said. “I just like the idea that a person could come to Rocketship Park with their kids and charge their car.”\nOfficials said the hope is people with electric vehicles would shop while waiting for their car to charge. Each charge takes from three to five hours for a full charge.\nThe station includes an 18-foot retractable cord that winds up like a vacuum electric cord.\nThough each station comes with two ports, Wood said he would like to see only one port be used with one space as a pilot. He added the village’s parking committee is usually hesitant to give up even a single space.\n“If we saw it being used a lot, we’d open the second one up,” he said. “This town can’t afford to give away spaces.”\nThere are several electric vehicle charging stations in the immediate area. One set is in the parking lot of Heritage Park in Mount Sinai, and another set is provided at Stony Brook University, whose services are not billed for use.\nThe village board would still have to decide upon cost to the driver, with the rate depending on how long a car is being charged. Garant mentioned, depending on cost, the service could be offered free to attract people into downtown Port Jeff.\nThe board plans to reassess the feasibility of the charging station at the next board meeting, Dec. 2.\nWood said his goal is for installation of the charger next to Rocketship Park to take place in the first quarter of 2020.\nOne Life to Give – NEW TRAILER!\nDeLIcious Dining: Elegant Eating\nTBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.\nWe provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.\nContact us: desk@tbrnewspapers.com\nHouse Passes Bill to Aid Long Island’s Water Contamination Cleanup\nFormer SBU Researcher Pleads Guilty to Stealing Cancer Grant Funds","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line488558"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9616544246673584,"wiki_prob":0.9616544246673584,"text":"Majority-black Georgia county rejects plan to close 7 of its 9 polling places\nKira Lerner Political Reporter, Think Progress\nThe election board in majority-black Randolph County, Georgia voted Friday morning to reject a proposal to close seven of its nine polling locations before the November election.\nThe vote comes shortly after the county announced it had fired the elections consultant, Mike Malone, who conceived of the plan. Malone was initially hired to temporarily fill the role of an elections supervisor, but he undertook efforts to close all but two of the county’s polling precincts instead.\nThe racial implications of the plan generated immense backlash. The county is over 61 percent black, and one of the polling locations that would be shuttered serves a precinct where more than 95 percent of voters are African American. Before the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, the closures would most likely have been blocked by the Department of Justice.\nVoting advocates, including representatives from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, attended Friday’s voting, vowing to file a lawsuit if the county approved the plan.\n“This is a victory for African American voters across Georgia who are too often subject to a relentless campaign of voter suppression,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee, said in a statement. “The defeat of this proposal also shows the power of resistance and the impact that we can have by leveraging our voices against injustice.”\nThe county issued a statement crediting the public for pointing out the issues at the root of the plan.\n“The interest and concern shown has been overwhelming, and it is an encouraging reminder that protecting the right to vote remains a fundamental American principle,” the statement said, according to a CNN reporter.\nMalone was attempting to justify the closures using federal disability law, claiming the seven polling places were not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Voting advocates told ThinkProgress it was “diabolical” to use one civil rights law in an attempt to infringe another, the Voting Rights Act.\nVoter suppression efforts in Georgia are not rare. Earlier this year, GOP lawmakers in the state similarly attempted to eliminate Sunday voting in Atlanta, a move that would disproportionately hurt black voters.\nAndrea Young, executive director of the state’s ACLU, told ThinkProgress that closing polls is even more disruptive than other forms of voter suppression, like cutting hours — and that the effects are felt especially hard in rural Georgia, where many voters fought for the passage of the Voting Rights Act during the Civil Rights Era.\n“What we see in Georgia is that every tool in the voter suppression toolkit is in use,” Young said. “I’m not surprised to see a new theory for voter suppression.”\nReposted from Think Progress\nKira Lerner is a Political Reporter for ThinkProgress. She previously worked as a reporter covering litigation and policy for the legal newswire Law360. She has also worked as an investigative journalist with the Chicago Innocence Project where she helped develop evidence that led to the exoneration of a wrongfully convicted man from Illinois prison. A native of the Washington, D.C. area, Kira earned her bachelor's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line689934"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6885940432548523,"wiki_prob":0.3114059567451477,"text":"Alcohol Abuse Content from the guide to life, the universe and everything\nCreated May 31, 2002 | Updated Dec 1, 2009\nThe reasons for alcohol dependency are numerous and for many too complex or painful to detail. What is uniform though is the effect it has on the sufferers and their families and friends. It is a painful trial which can result in loss of earnings, loneliness, and in some cases death.\nIt is because of Researcher experiences, like the one below, that we asked the h2g2 Community to turn its attention to dealing with alcohol abuse. This is the heartfelt, wise and all-round excellent Entry that resulted.\nIt's very difficult to watch someone you care about slowly drinking themselves to death. The screaming DTs, blindness for the last couple of years, steadily failing health, repeated hospitalisations towards the end. Deadly stuff indeed for those who don't find the strength and support to break the addiction.\nUniversity Drinking Culture\nAlcoholism is a problem, however, alcohol abuse is a much wider issue. What concerns a lot of people is the excessive drinking culture which exists with students and other young people when they are at college or university.\nWhen I arrived as an innocent new undergraduate at Durham University, I was completely unprepared for the scale of alcohol abuse. When I went out with my friends at home we only ever had one or two drinks and never had a problem. However, I soon realised that things were different at university.\nIn the freshers' week1 I was introduced to college drinking games, the idea that to go out every night and drink five to ten pints was normal, and a myth that to get drunk was desirable. Anxious to fit in and make friends I went along with all this, for a few weeks, until one night I drank far too much, was thoroughly sick and made a complete fool of myself. After that I didn't drink at all for six months.\nDrinking is a problem, not only at Durham University, but at many educational establishments throughout the world. For one thing, the beer is usually ridiculously cheap. There's often also a macho, male, competitive sports-team culture vibe to many colleges and universities, where binge drinking is a rite of passage.\nSome Good Advice to Students\nDon't let anyone talk you into drinking more than you know you can handle.\nDon't get involved with drinking games.\nDon't pretend that getting drunk is desirable. If you think it is, you have got a problem. Seek help.\nIf someone asks you to get them half, don't buy them a pint.\nIf you ask someone to buy you a half and they buy a pint, just drink half of it.\nMy experience with alcohol was a shock. I know many people think I'm being silly - 'everyone gets drunk once or twice, can't you handle it?' - however, alcohol abuse kills thousands of people each year, far more than any illegal drugs. I was given hours of drugs education at school, but I've never found that a problem. I knew people at university who took drugs, but it was always accepted as something some people did. Some people didn't, but nobody was under pressure to try anything they didn't want to. Unfortunately, that was not the case with alcohol.\nAlthough it might be a shock for new students to go to college and experience a 'drinking schedule' unlike anything they've ever experienced before, there are those that argue that it's all part of the college experience, and not necessarily damaging or harmful. It is a choice, after all.\nWhen was I ever going to get the chance to live this way again? After college, I got a job and assumed more responsibility than I'd ever known. Drinking in college equates to (for most students), hanging out with friends, socialising, trying to meet members of the opposite sex, being a little more comfortable with yourself at a very crucial and transitional stage in your life. I'm not saying that drinking on college campuses is wise, or even right. But, let's face it, I prefer for these students to get their heavy-drinking years out of the way, before they hold down jobs, have families, and are out in the 'real world'. And it sure beats students doing 'e' and coke!\nOK, each of us does have the choice to drink or to abstain, but the thing that comes through here is that there's an enormous amount of pressure on students (newbies, especially) to drink and get drunk, even if their better instinct tells them not to. The mentality that you must drink, found in so many JCRs (Junior Common Rooms), can exert, at worst, a slightly pernicious influence goading folk into mad boozing binges.\nIn my first week at uni, all you got from every direction was 'hey come to this club/pub/ball and get absolutely hammered.' A lot of people went because they thought it was the 'done thing' and wanted to fit in. A lot went out of sheer boredom. What is there to do in fresher's week if you don't go to all these places and get rat-arsed?\nDrinking Culture at Work\nThere is a massive drinking culture in some professions too:\nI used to be a full-time journalist, and it was a case of - 'Right, work done, whose round is it?' after work every night. All too tempting, after a stressful day dealing with deadlines and nagging, idiotic PR people. I enthusiastically participated in said drinking culture, to the detriment of my mental, physical and financial well-being.\nIt wasn't just after work, either. Put it this way: 'Private Eye' magazine called their journalist character 'Lunchtime O'Booze' for good reasons. God, it's a wonder we ever got anything written...\nDrowning Your Sorrows\nYou can't drown your sorrows because sorrow floats.\nHow often do you see this situation portrayed on TV or in films? Someone has just suffered some heavy loss; maybe they've lost their job, their spouse has left them, their kids say they hate them, for whatever reason they are suddenly feeling very depressed. So they walk into a bar or pub, and start drinking heavily. The dialogue is usually cliché-ridden.\nI'll have a whisky. Actually make it a double. No, a triple...\nI've done it from time to time. I've found it to be a useful temporary distraction. It doesn't solve problems, but some problems don't have immediate solutions. They have to be dealt with in the morning. Having a drink is something to do until then. I wouldn't recommend it to a person prone to alcoholism, but I don't seem to be.\nUsually the person drinks spirits, usually whisky, downs the first glass in one and then straightaway asks for another. In film/TV terms it's an easy way for the scriptwriters to show that someone is very depressed and upset - but it's all too common an occurrence in real life, and can lead to serious problems. Getting drunk doesn't solve depression, which doesn't go away, and instead it can make it far worse.\nAs a society we can try to encourage people not to turn to drink when they are depressed, making drinking a social act rather than a solitary one. As individuals we can try and provide people with support and a sympathetic ear when they are depressed or suffer some kind of loss, and let people know that it is okay to turn to these kinds of support networks.\nThis won't solve alcoholism, but it could be a step in the right direction.\nWhat must have been a very painful posting to write (and the h2g2 Community was quick to recognise this and praise the Researcher for her strength and courage) the following tale will help other people to understand some of the dangers associated with alcoholism.\nMy mum was an alcoholic.\nThe thing is they can never see they have a problem then when they can't ignore it any longer they blame everyone around them for that problem. The only thing you can try to do is not get drawn into their mind games, do not accept the blame thinking you are making it easier on them, point out that you are not holding a gun to their heads and forcing them to drink they do that all by themselves. The following is a tale of caution.\nMy mum had had several falls and had done quite a lot of damage to her head. She was so drunk one day she fell down the stair and really bashed her head, she had to go into hospital and a blood clot formed on her brain. She could not be operated on as she had pernicious anaemia which causes the blood not to clot properly so the doctor wanted to wait until the clot had hardened so he could do a much smaller operation where he would just be able to suck the clot out.\nMy Dad got a call from the doctor on the Tuesday morning saying that the pressure had built up to such an extent in mum's head that he had to operate - he was still hoping to do the smaller operation.\nHe went ahead and on Tuesday night and we went to see her. When we got there, the nurse was tickling mum's feet to check for a response, and she was responding to it (before she couldn't feel any thing) so I got really excited. The nurse said she was not out of the woods and not to get our hopes up.\nWhen we went to see her on Wednesday they had her sitting up in bed which was fantastic. But on Thursday we got a phone call asking us to go to the hospital straight away as mum was very sick. When we got there they had taken all the machines off her and she just had a tube draining fluid off her head and a tube up her nose draining off what looked like blood.\nWe asked what was wrong. Alcoholics get varicose veins on the inside of their throats, these had burst, there was nothing the doctors could do - and she basically bled to death. Not a pleasant way to die.\nWe got to the hospital at 8pm; she died at 5am Friday morning.\nThere are no easy answers - just lots of clichés, prejudice and innumerable 'good' and 'plausible' explanations. And the above Researcher is painfully right - it is very difficult for an abuser of alcohol to admit that he or she is one.\nI am presently in treatment for alcohol abuse. And still I do not see myself as an alcoholic, incurable or unwilling to change my habits. It is so difficult to admit that there are factors in life you cannot control. I would ask everyone who knows somebody who drinks too much, to break 'the news' to them. In a proper way of course. Respectfully, but also seriously. Explaining how you feel, what you see, and what you wish for this friend, colleague or family member of yours.\nAn abuser of alcohol is a person whose abuse creates emotional and social problems for the abuser and dependant people, most obviously, the family. WHO's (the World Health Organisation) definition of Alcohol Dependency (paraphrased) involves having three of the following six symptoms:\nAn urge, need or lust for alcohol\nAn increasing usage (tolerance)\nAbstinences (restlessness, unease, fast pulse, sweat)\nYou continue to drink although you know the negative consequences\nA slighter interest in the social world surrounding you - because of alcohol\nLoss of control (to continue to drink although you have made the decision 'not to')\nBut What Can You Say?\nIt's hard to know what to say. People who have any kind of medical condition needing treatment have to accept help, and sometimes they just aren't willing to do this - for whatever reason. Each person has their own reasons, though they may never have put them into words. Fear is probably the most likely reason. For example, someone may be afraid to see a doctor in case they are told they have cancer. Yet if the doctor starts treatment as soon as possible, their chances of recovery are much higher. And where alcohol is involved, shame and embarrassment are difficult barriers to overcome.\nProbably the best way for others to bring up the subject with someone who has a problem is for them to choose a time when the person is in a conversational mood and, hopefully, able to remember. They could perhaps chat about how they themselves felt washed out, ill and depressed after drinking a lot at a social event, and they felt a lot better after 'resting their body' for two days (ie, abstaining from alcohol) plus taking vitamins/minerals (especially B-complex and zinc), sleeping naturally, eating good food, doing some kind of enjoyable activity, mixing with positive company and tackling any difficult issues/problems in a realistic and systematic way.\nIf the person with the problem thinks you're just sharing your own experience of a bad hangover, they'll listen more readily, perhaps open up a bit, and be willing to talk. If you haven't experienced a hangover yourself, tell them you knew someone who used to have terrible hangovers a lot. You can then suggest other things they can do. You can also mention guidelines for their drinking:\n'Resting' for the next two days, and then ensuring they have a rest from alcohol for at least two consecutive days in each and every week\nLimiting their drinking to a maximum of 21 units per week for men and 14 units per week for women\nSpreading their drinking over a number of days, instead of drinking 21 units in one day\nDrinking at a reasonable time (ie, not before midday and preferably not before going to bed)\nDrinking only with or after food\nDrinking socially, but not with people who will encourage drinking\nIf any of these guidelines present difficulties (and they will, if the person has a problem), you can encourage the person to see that alcohol is a central part of their life, that it's an obstacle and a hindrance, and that it controls them and deprives them of freedom, health, and opportunities. Parts of it or all of it will be difficult, but support from others is available in many forms, 24 hours a day and seven days a week, from doctors, medication, counselling, AA groups, other groups. Different people/agencies/methods focus on different aspects of the problem, in different ways and at different times. And all are available, so the person with the difficulty can work out and choose their own path to recovery, and choose their own means of support for each aspect of the problem.\nWhen the person is challenged or made to feel shameful, they can become defensive or secretive, or feel that they are different from others and hopelessly lacking in self-control. It's important to make the person feel they will be able to take control, even in small things and for short periods of time.\nA More Open Attitude is Needed\nIt must be exceedingly hard to give up alcohol when so many people advocate its consumption. People are always going to drink, prohibition not being generally noted for its success.\nWhat is needed, some would argue, is a more open attitude to the fact that alcohol can be addictive, that it's dangerous, can kill and should be respected as such rather than thought of as simply a jolly good laugh.\nThe misuse of alcohol to dangerous levels seems to be part of a view of the world in which a crutch is needed, be it smoking, drugs, whatever. Other than the chemical addictions which can occur from these it is the mental addiction which is causing the problem. the feeling that we need these things to get us through the day. to get us from work to home and from tea to bed. Is life so awful for so many people?\nWell, basically, yes, life can stink. For some people there really seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. But a lot can be solved or at least made easier by altering how we look at the world. Accepting there are some things we can change and some we can't and by learning healthier coping mechanisms. And a lot of our drinking is habit, a sort of unconscious reflex that we no longer really think about.\nQuite a lot of people go for the drinking lifestyle, and then eventually, out of force of habit they choose drinking over everything else on offer. It's not a conscious choice, but one that creeps up on you. You find yourself being able to answer any question with: 'Sod it, let's just go down the pub instead'. It's when 'habitual' becomes 'compulsive' that problems start to crop up. There are so many people who are just 'in the habit' of pickling themselves daily. The best thing to try and do is to find another way to cope. Buy a big dog or go to an evening class instead of the pub. Or learn to talk out your problems rather than drinking through them till they go away. Try and find a different way to cope.\nBeware the Hair of the Dog\nHaving some experience of this subject, I'd like to suggest that the point at which you're really getting in trouble with drinking is when you start regularly succumbing to the 'hair of the dog' syndrome. That is, waking up in the morning with a stinking hangover and then drinking more booze to cure the hangover.\nAnd it works! The 'hair of the dog' is an effective remedy! But then, after your 'medicinal' drink, it's all too easy to fancy another one. Or two. Or six. And then you're well on your way to another hangover... which you might want to fix with another drink. And so it goes on. Beware the hair of the dog...\nMy Experience, Strength and Hope\nWe'll leave the final word of this Entry to a Researcher who knows deeply the struggle that recovery presents, but also knows hope and progress, and who provides us all with a message that things really can change for the better, that we can get well in the end.\nI am a recovering drug addict with a little over six years clean. Alcohol was the drug I used most, the one that got me in the most trouble, and the one that led to my being arrested, which led me to a 12-Step fellowship and a new way of life. I could go on for pages about my story, but I will try to limit myself to addressing the questions asked.\nIt's usually easy for an outsider to recognise if someone has a problem: when she drinks, is it always to excess? Does she black out? Does she put herself in dangerous situations? Does she spend too much money on alcohol? Does she do things in order to get alcohol that she wouldn't do otherwise? Does she break promises or commitments because she's too busy partying or too hung over? When I started asking myself these questions and answering them honestly, I began to believe my life had become unmanageable. I believe that Alcoholics Anonymous UK has a pamphlet of 40 or so questions that if answered a certain way indicate the likelihood of a drinking problem. I'm sure it's available online.\nI don't know if there is a tactful way to broach the subject nor is it something to be taken lightly. Many have tried interventions - close friends and family members with the help of a professional drug counsellor surround the drinker and confront her with examples of her behaviour and its consequences. You can always simply let the person you're concerned for know, with love, that you have seen A, B, and C which leads you to believe there may be a problem and you are afraid for their health and their safety. Negative attacks are never going to work - they will only serve to make the drinker want to isolate further.\nI have found that I need two different kinds of help in my life: I need unconditional understanding and support, but I also need to pay the consequences of my actions. Many loved ones make the mistake of getting the drinker out of trouble or rescuing her by paying her debts or letting her live at home no matter how outrageous her behaviour. It is vital that the problem drinker be made accountable - unfortunately, many of us will not quit until we are in so much pain that we are willing to try something different. If we are always saved from our pain we will never understand exactly how damaging our behaviour is. But we also need - at least I need - a group of people who have been where I've been and understand what it means to be an addict. They understand how my brain works, how I am my own worst critic, and how to teach me to live life one day at a time without drugs.\nThough we as a fellowship try not to distinguish between drugs, alcohol does stand out as one of the only legal, readily available ones. Someone in the grip of addiction is already full of fear and self-loathing - some turn it inwards into depression and some turn it outwards into anger, but it usually all boils down to fear. I still find myself acting like a shrew against my will - I'll revert to being bitter and judgemental simply because I'm afraid I am 'less than', envious of someone's success, or feeling some other emotion I don't feel strong enough to express.\nTry to remember that the drinker is in at least as much pain as she is causing others and that recovery cannot begin for her until she admits that it is necessary. The good news is that the higher power I've found only needed the tiniest little crack in my defensive armour to get through. I'm far from well but I am better than I used to be, and as long as I am clean and breathing there is hope.\nPlease Note: h2g2 is not a definitive medical resource. If you have any health concerns you must always seek advice from your local GP. You can also visit NHS Direct or BBC Health Conditions.\n1The first week of a student's life at college or university where they are introduced to all the clubs and societies on offer, and when heavy drinking is rife.\nNot that bad\nUnits?\nMy experience, strength, and hope\nresearcher missed!\n13 More Conversations | Subscribe | Unsubscribe\nFood & Drink > Alcohol\nHealth & Healing > Medical Conditions, Procedures & Prevention\nTwo Bit Trigger Pumping Moron\nOrmondroyd\nDemon Drawer\nJ'au-æmne\nFrankie Roberto\nBinaryboy\nFABT - new venture A815654 Angel spoiler page\nMammuthus Primigenius\nDax Fortuneswell aka evil auntie Edith\ntartaronne\nPrimord\nFrothblower (formerly Kazak, trying out a new name for size)\nTalix18, KOTOCOTS,EMP,&TSEPF\nAnnoyedduplicate\nPreparing for Your First Day at University\nHow Best to Cope with Bereavement\nDepression Survival - a Personal Account\nAlcoholics Anonymous UK","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1233544"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7147610783576965,"wiki_prob":0.7147610783576965,"text":"Home | About | Archives | Links | Contact\nHarbison House saw the Nut Tree flourish\nJerry Bowen\nResidence once on U.S. 40 now has I-80 view\nI drive by the now-empty parcel that once held Vacaville’s famous Nut Tree several times a week, and when I see the Harbison House I can’t help but wonder what the Allisons and the Harbisons would have to say about what they would see today.\nThey would have an unobstructed view of noisy Interstate 80 with speeding cars and the factory stores on the old orchard land. At one time the road that passed in front of the Allison house was the old Benicia-Sacramento Road, unusable during the winter. Later, in 1906, the view from the new Harbison house looked upon the new Lincoln Highway, later known as U.S. 40.\nWhat we know as the Harbison House today wasn’t the first one built on the ranch. The first house was built in 1855 where the airport is today and a second one close to today’s Harbison House.\nWhen Josiah Allison brought his family overland from Ottumwa, Iowa and settled here just three years after Vacaville was established, it was his second trip to California. He had been here once before, joining the many “gold rushers” who didn’t do particularly well before going back home. At the time the land was covered with a dense growth of horseback-high wild oats brought to the region by earlier Spanish explorers.\nJosiah Allison established one of the early fruit orchards on his 225 acres where he and his wife, Julia Baldwin Allison, raised their seven children including Hester, who was born on the ranch.\nIn 1858, Josiah wrote to his sister, Mrs. Alpha Brown, her husband and daughter Sallie Fox, urging them to move the family to the ranch. They left for California as part of the Rose Wagon Train in March 1858, with Sallie’s stepfather, Alpha Brown, as manager of the group taking the southern route. On Aug. 30, 1858, Mohave Indians attacked the train at the Colorado River. Alpha was killed and Sallie was wounded by an arrow.\nThe wagon train retreated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they stayed until resuming their journey with another group in 1859. During the return trip to Albuquerque and somewhere near today’s Seligman, Arizona, Sally picked up some black walnuts and kept them in her apron. She later planted them in Allison’s orchard, and one grew up to shelter what would later become the Nut Tree Fruit Stand.\nOnce the children were raised, Josiah decided to give up farming, sell the ranch and go into business. He moved to Elmira and opened the Allison Store there. The Allison Store was in the same building as the Elmira Post Office and was located alongside the railroad tracks. Josiah remained there until his death in 1895. After his death, his wife, Hester, returned to the home in Vacaville, where she lived the rest of her life with her daughter Hester. She died in 1903.\nBefore Josiah sold the ranch, his youngest daughter, Hester, married a local nearby rancher, Luther J. Harbison, whose 30-acre ranch was between today’s Coffee Tree (now abandoned) and Leisure Town. When Josiah quit farming, he sold his ranch holdings to Luther and Hester, where they raised four daughters, Edith, Julia, Harriet and Helen.\nAfter the turn of the century, Luther and Hester decided to build a new home and hired prominent local builder George Sharpe, who built many of the Buck Avenue homes, to build the house, which was designed by Hester. This was the house we know today as the Harbison House. It was built in 1906 at a cost of about $6,000.\nHester was an accomplished pianist and held a bachelor’s of science degree. The house was of southern colonial style, with the interior planned for comfortable living in all seasons. With temperatures that often reached 100 to 105 degrees, particular attention was given to plenty of cross ventilation in the upper story for quick cool-off in the evening after a hot summer day.\nOn Edwin I. (Bunny) Power and Helen’s wedding day, his father, Edward C. Power of San Jose, gazed up at the Roman Ionic capitals atop the six columns and quietly remarked, “I made those capitals. I remember shipping them to Vacaville to Mr. Sharpe.” This was not too surprising, as it was well known that he had executed much of the statuary that graced the courts of the Panama-Pacific Exposition.\nIn 1921 Helen Harbison Power set up a fruit stand right next to Highway 40 under the oak tree planted by Sallie Fox. Her efforts were fully supported by her husband, Bunny, who set up the stand, placed fresh flowers at each end and erected a flag and made sure fresh water was available for the travelers who stopped to buy fruit. Little could they know then that their meager beginnings would become a landmark that was known around the world. It became so well known that people who didn’t know where Vacaville was could easily tell you where the Nut Tree was.\nEventually the Harbison home was given to Helen and her husband. They set up a life estate for Helen’s two unmarried sisters, Edith and Julia, who continued to live in the house until their deaths in 1969.\nThe beautiful old house was witness to years of growth of the Nut Tree Restaurant, as many of us knew it. After opening as a fruit stand, a restaurant was established in 1922. Specialty packaged fruits were offered during the 1920s. In the 1930s a new 200-foot awning sheltered the growing buildings. A flower shop was added in the early 1940s and an aviary was built into the dining room during the same decade. With a new kitchen added in 1949, the facility continued to prosper. In 1952, a toy store was established, and the Nut Tree railroad was added. The paved Highway 40 encroached on the old oak tree, and it finally died in the mid 1950s.\nIn 1955, Ed Power Jr. realized a lifelong dream by opening up the Nut Tree Airport, and the train was extended to it in 1956. The 1950s also saw the candy kitchen open and the restaurant remodeled. By 1960 the Nut Tree Plaza and bakery was added, and on Nov. 1, 1962, the Nut Tree had its very own post office.\nIn early 1970, Helen began to restore the Harbison House to its former elegance. Many items that had been so much a part of the house had since been sold or disappeared. Using old photographs of the house’s interior, Helen began to replace many of the bits and pieces that had once been in the home. In a stroke of luck, after sending some pictures of the furniture that had been in the house during her grandfather’s days to an old friend, Helen Fountain Bailey, she received a reply that she had furniture just like it in her home. A deal was made, and Helen was able to purchase the entire contents of Bailey’s home. The furniture was moved into the house in January 1971. By 1973 tours were being given in the stately old house.\nThe Nut Tree Airport was dedicated to Solano County in 1973, and in 1979 the Pumpkin Patch was in full operation. Over the many years of operation, numerous people added to the greatness of this landmark, including Vacaville’s favorite artist, Don Birrell, who was responsible for designing much of the many facilities at the Nut Tree. What a fine legacy he and the Power family was responsible for!\nSadly, by 1996 the Nut Tree was closed, and since then many pending sales have fallen through. Responsibility for the Harbison House was given to the Vacaville Museum. Talk of moving the home was raised and dropped. Many deals and plans for the Nut Tree arose and failed. Then this year, Vacaville’s favorite landmark The Nut Tree Restaurant was torn down.\nOnce again the venerable old home is witness to what lies across the road where the fruit stand once stood. As I write this, today’s paper had a new plan for the property, and in the background is the Harbison House. Let’s hope it can remain as one of Vacaville’s cherished historical structures from our past.\nJerry Bowen and Sabine Goerke-Shrode alternate ''Solano: The Way It Was,'' delving back about 150 years. This archive has been set up to preserve these articles.\nSolano, The Way It Was\nSolano In Retrospect\nJames E. Kern\nEchos Of Solano's Past\nAround Vacaville\nErnest Wichels\nThe way it was: Poor road conditions in Solano\nIt’s been a fun ride, but I’m ready to explore the West\nPoor road conditions brought the citizenry together\nAnnie Lizzie Gill: A pioneer in every sense\nIt was primitive, but settlers celebrated Fourth\nStarting an orchard barely panned out for Gills\nBenicia Tannery was one of the state’s best\nMaking a life in Vallejo wasn’t easy for the Gills","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line1428247"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.553912341594696,"wiki_prob":0.553912341594696,"text":"ROC President statements\nInternational Olympic movement news\nRussian Olympic movement news\nRussian sports Federations news\nEvents with ROC support\nCongratulations and awards\nPyeongChang-2018 news\nBuenos Aires-2018 news\nROC projects\nAbout Buenos Aires 2018\nOlympic Articles\nOlympic Charter\nEOC Articles of Association\nPublic commissions\nROC strategy\nHonourable presidents\nHonourable vice-presidents\nWinter Olympic sports\nRUSADA\nMarcus Kramer: “At the Olympic Games Denis Spitsov surprised me most”\nMarcus Kramer, the coach of the Russian national Cross-Country Skiing team, gave an interview to the ROC Information Service. German expert spoke about his expectations before the Olympic Games, pointed out the results, that surprised him in Pyeongchang, told about the prospects of future work with our team.\n– The season is almost over. There is only one event left, the Championship of Russia, to be held in Syktyvkar from 24 March to 1 April. Will you be there?\n– Of course. The Championships will stat on Saturday with the women’s and men’s sprints. I’ll come the night before. It is very interesting to watch both the athletes from the national team and the nearest reserve. The level of competition will be high. Two years ago I went to the Championship of Russia, held in Tyumen, and last year I was in Khanty-Mansiysk.\n– It was announced that the Sochi 2014 Olympic champion Alexander Legkov, one of the national team leaders Sergey Ustyugov and other skiers who could not take part in the Olympic Games will participate in this competition. Among other things, you will probably want to check their mood, will you?\n– Certainly. Ustyugov, did not go to the Olympic Games, was ill, did not have enough trainings before the subsequent World Cup stages and missed them. I’ll be glad to see him back in line. We’ll talk to the guys about the next season.\n– And perhaps, about the more remote prospect?\n– Sergey Ustyugov is young (April 8, he will turn 26), so he has to prepare for the Olympic Games in Beijing. As for the 34-year-old Legkov, it is clear that he will not be able to perform in four years, but I hope he will find motivation for another season. The World Cup in Austrian Seefeld still lies ahead, after all.\n– You said you wanted to sign a new contract with the Cross Country Ski Federation of Russia? When can this possibly happen?\n– We discussed the issue with the President Elena Vyalbe, the other day in Falun. It remains to agree on some details. The President wants me to continue working with the national team. I, in turn, am very motivated, because I know that Russia has a strong and promising team, which is able to show good results in the nearest future. I hope I can work with it in the following four-year period.\n– Four-year period?! So far, you’ve signed one-year contracts.\n– Now we are talking about an agreement for four years.\n– What does your family, living in Germany, think about it?\n– It always supports me. My daughter is 23. She lives an independent life. My wife knows that my job is connected with frequent business trips. It’s been going on for over 30 years, so nothing new is happening.\n– You have an apartment in Moscow?\n– What are you talking about? My house is in Germany. The training camps and competitions are often held in Western Europe, sometimes relatively close to my home, and then my wife, sometimes, joins me for a few days. Sometimes, though, I have to spend 4-5 weeks away from home, but that is the reverse of the job.\n– In Pyeongchang, Russian skiers won eight awards – three silver and five bronze. Did you expect such a harvest?\n– Of course not! When we went to Korea, I thought that maybe we would win one or two medals, but from the very beginning everything went ok. The young team fought, strived for the maximum result, the skis were well prepared and it seemed that the athletes had wings behind their backs. They felt that they were able to fight against the best and defeat them.\nIn addition, the guys fought for each other, and for those who stayed home. The athletes wanted to show that the Russian ski team is strong, that they succeed without doping.\n– You probably dreamed of one or two medals of after they banned Ustyugov, Legkov, Vylegzhanin, Matveyev, Chekaleva and others. And before that?\n– Initially, I, of course, expected more, at least five medals, as in Sochi (at home games, Russian skiers won one gold, three silver and one bronze). But I thought that for the youth team a much more humble result would be good enough.\n– A year before the Olympic Games, the ROC organized a trip to the World Cup stage, held in Korea, for a group of experts of the Cross Country Ski Federation of Russia, including service staff who had the opportunity to test the snow and study the track. Was that visit useful?\n– It was very useful. Then the World Cup stage in Skiathlon was won by Pyotr Sedov, a member of my group. It is a thinking guy who knows how to capture the peculiarities of the track. He told me in detail about its features, noted what to pay attention to. We also studied the sprint track.\nIn general, our team had a very high-quality preparation for the Olympic Games. And already in the course of preparation the service staff proved to be excellent. I was the only coach, so together with the manager Yury Charkovsky we were engaged in all daily organizational routine from morning till late night. It wasn’t easy.\n– What result in Pyeongchang surprised you most?\n– Bronze won by Denis Spitsov, in 15 km Freestyle. I knew that this young man showed good results at the World Cup. But the Olympic Games is a special case. Anyway, he gave me a big surprise. And then he and Bolshunov gave another pleasant surprise, taking silver in the team sprint. After all we went on risk. It was planned that Alexey Chervotkin will run in pair with Bolshunov. But after an illness he was not 100 percent ready. So I decided to put Spitsov.\nAnother surprise was the women’s relay team. It was important for me that not only men, but also women, perform successfully, because the results of the skiers were still quite humble. And the young girls fought against the strongest. Natalia Nepryaeva from the first stage led the race, as well as Julia Belorukova.\n– Bolshunov, as well as Chervotkin, arrived in Pyeongchang after the illness, and suddenly immediately won the bronze medal in the Sprint. How can you explane that?\n– The coach Yury Borodavko did a very good job. After Bolshunov and Chervotkin were left the hospital, he took them to the training camp in Seefeld, Austria, and watched them as they recovered step by step. Chervotkin arrived in Korea a few days after Bolshunov, and it was the right decision, made by Yuri. He knows what’s best for his skiers.\n– You took a risk not only in determining the composition of the team sprint, but also earlier, when you included Chervotkin into the relay team. Did the risk pay off? After all Alexey did not show the best result on his stage.\n– We, certainly, took the risk, because we did not know his level of preparation precisely. But I think, we did the right thing. Chervotkin was not in the best, but still in a pretty good shape. If Ustyugov and Legkov came to Pyeongchang, we would have had a choice. And in the given circumstances we had not so many opportunities.\n– All country regretted that Bolshunov didn’t manage to win a distance of 50 kilometers. He made a mistake, deciding not to change the skis before the finish?\n– Absolutely. He obviously thought: ‘I can escape while Niskanen is changing the skis’. Bolshunov is a young skier, who had just a few marathons in his career. His mistake is understandable. Next time he won’t make it.\n– Within the last season the gap between our ski team and the national team of Norway has decreased?\n– Undoubtedly. In the Nations Cup standings on the result of the World Cup stages this season Norway is the leader (both men and women). Russia is in the third place in general, but among men it is on the 2nd position. The other day in Falun I talked with the Norwegian coach Thur Arne Hetland, Olympic champion of Salt Lake City 2002. He praised our relay team and said straightly that Russia is now their main competitor.\n© Олимпийский комитет России, 2002—2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line969163"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6186922192573547,"wiki_prob":0.6186922192573547,"text":"In April 1888, Associated Charities of Cincinnati invited a group of civic leaders to meet and discuss the need for a “home for incurables.” Within two and half years, a house was rented on the corner of Saunders and Bigelow Streets, and a nurse was hired at the salary of $14 per month. The opening of the Home for the Incurables was October, 1890.\nAlready needing more room the Home was moved to Walnut Hills in 1893. Community support and gifts increased as admissions to the home became more numerous. Less than 12 years after the home first opened its doors, the cornerstone was laid for a new Home to be built on Pogue Avenue. It would accommodate 40 residents on five acres in Hyde Park. Two more wings were added in later years. During this time the name of the Home became The Beechwood Home.\nThrough the years, the Board of Trustees and the community have been actively involved. Fundraising events such as bazaars, charity balls, carnivals, luncheons, and lawn fetes became popular. The Home’s endowment fund was made possible by these fund-raisers as well as by generous gifts and bequests. In 1968 when it was decided to build a new Home three feet from the existing one, these funds were sufficient to avoid borrowing.\nThe building standing today has been continually updated to provide efficient and comfortable living for our residents. It was designed for additional wings to be built as needed.\nOne hundred and twenty five years has not changed the work this home has done for those who have been given lives of tremendous challenge. Beechwood was found as and continues to be a non-profit organization which extends loving arms to those who need care regardless of race, creed, national origin or economic status. The home enters the next one hundred and twenty five years with the same spirit of selflessness which has provided refuge to its residents over the past century and with the hope that someday the need for such a facility will no longer exist.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line689104"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6540511846542358,"wiki_prob":0.34594881534576416,"text":"Jul 01, 1999 Issue\nDisorders of Puberty\nA more recent article on disorders of puberty is available.\nRICHARD D. BLONDELL, M.D., MICHAEL B. FOSTER, M.D., and KAMLESH C. DAVE, M.B.B.S., University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky\nAm Fam Physician. 1999 Jul 1;60(1):209-218.\nSee related patient information handout on early and delayed puberty, written by the authors of this article.\nNormal Development\nEvaluation of Abnormal Puberty\nPremature and Atypical Puberty\nDelayed Sexual Development\nNormal puberty begins between eight and 14 years of age in girls and between nine and 14 years of age in boys. Pubic hair distribution is used to stage puberty, along with breast size and contour in girls and testicular volume in boys. Some children experience constitutional sexual precocity, but precocity is likely to be pathologic if it occurs in very young children, if there is contrasexual development or if the sequence of normal pubertal milestones is disrupted. Delayed puberty may be constitutional, but pathologic causes should be considered. The etiology of a pubertal disorder can often be determined with the use of a focused medical history, a directed physical examination and appropriate diagnostic tests. Treatment for disorders of puberty is determined by the underlying cause.\nPuberty is a process leading to physical and sexual maturation that involves the development of secondary sexual characteristics as well as growth, changes in body composition and psychosocial maturation.\nTwo processes contribute to the physical manifestations of puberty: adrenarche and gonadarche. Adrenarche normally occurs between six and eight years of age with increased adrenal androgen secretion; its exact biologic role is not well understood. It is accompanied by changes in pilosebaceous units, a transient growth spurt and the appearance of axillary and pubic hair in some children, but no sexual development.1 Gonadarche is initiated by the macroneurons of the hypothalamus that secrete gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) in a critical pulsatile pattern that regulates the release of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) by the anterior pituitary.2 In boys, LH stimulates testosterone production by the Leydig cells and, after spermarche, FSH supports the maturation of spermatozoa. In girls, FSH stimulates estrogen production and follicle formation and, after ovulation, LH stimulates the development of the corpus luteum.\nThe standard clinical system for describing normal pubertal development and its variations is the five-stage system established by Tanner and Marshall (Tables 1 and 2).3–5 Girls begin puberty with breast buds and skeletal growth, followed by the arrival of pubic hair, axillary hair and menarche. Initially, boys have testicular enlargement followed by the appearance of pubic hair, enlargement of the penis and spermarche. Skeletal and muscle growth are late events in male puberty. The age at which pubertal milestones are attained varies among the population studied and is influenced by activity level and nutritional status. Girls with low body fat (e.g., competitive athletes) may have a significant delay in menarche (up to a year or more).6\nPubertal Milestones in Girls\nTanner stage\nBreasts*\nPubic hair*\nPrepubertal, elevation of papilla only\nPrepubertal, villus hair only\nBasal: about 5.0 to 6.0 cm (2.0 to 2.4 in) per year\nAdrenarche Ovarian growth\nBreast bud appears under enlarged areola (11.2 years)\nSparse growth of slightly pigmented hair along the labia (11.9 years)\nAccelerated: about 7.0 to 8.0 cm (2.8 to 3.2 in) per year\nClitoral enlargement Labia pigmentation Uterus enlargement\nBreast tissue grows beyond areola without contour separation (12.4 years)\nHair is coarser, curled and pigmented; spreads across the pubes (12.7 years)\nPeak velocity: about 8.0 cm (3.2 in) per year (12.5 years)\nAxillary hair (13.1 years) Acne (13.2 years)\nProjection of areola and papilla forms a secondary mound (13.1 years)\nAdult-type hair but no spread to medial thigh (13.4 years)\nDeceleration: < 7.0 cm (2.8 in) per year\nMenarche (13.3 years) Regular menses (13.9 years)\nAdult breast contour with projection of papilla only (14.5 years)\nAdult-type hair with spread to medial thigh but not up linea alba (14.6 years)\nCessation at about 16 years\nAdult genitalia\n*—The Tanner stages of puberty in girls are based on breast size and shape and pubic hair distribution. Mean age of milestone attainment is shown in parentheses for the reference population of Marshall and Tanner. Actual age at milestone attainment may vary among individuals and among different study populations.\nInformation from references 3 through 5.\nPhotographs used with permission from Tanner JM. Growth at adolescence. 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962.\nPubertal Milestones in Boys\nGenitalia*\nPrepubertal Testes: < 2.5 cm (1.0 in)\nAdrenarche\nThinning and reddening of scrotum (11.9 years) Testes: 2.5 to 3.2 cm (1.0 to 1.28 in)\nSparse growth of slightly pigmented hair at base of penis (12.3 years)\nDecrease in total body fat\nGrowth of penis, especially length (13.2 years) Testes: 3.3 to 4.0 cm (1.32 to 1.6 in)\nThicker, curlier hair spreads to the mons pubis (13.9 years)\nGynecomastia (13.2 years) Voice break (13.5 years) Muscle mass increase\nGrowth of penis and glands, darkening of scrotum (14.3 years) Testes: 4.1 to 4.5 cm (1.64 to 1.8 in)\nPeak velocity: about 10.0 cm (4.0 in) per year (13.8 years)\nAxillary hair (14.0 years) Voice change (14.1 years) Acne (14.3 years)\nAdult genitalia (15.1 years) Testes: > 4.5 cm (1.8 in)\nAdult-type hair with spread to medial thighs but not up linea alba (15.3 years)\nDeceleration and cessation (about 17 years)\nFacial hair (14.9 years) Muscle mass continues to increase after Stage 5\n* —The Tanner stages of puberty in boys are based on the development of the genitalia and pubic hair distribution. Mean age of milestone attainment is shown in parentheses for the reference population of Marshall and Tanner. Actual age at milestone attainment may vary among individuals and among different study populations.\nThe goal of the initial assessment of children with abnormal puberty is to distinguish children with benign constitutional causes for the abnormality from those with pathologic causes. A focused medical history, a directed physical examination, assessment using a complete growth chart and a radiograph of the left wrist to establish bone age can often help the physician make this distinction.\nThe history should focus on the child's previous growth and development and the precise timing and sequence of the physical milestones and behavior changes of puberty. A history of medical or surgical treatment may provide clues to an underlying pathologic condition. A detailed dietary history should be obtained in underweight children with delayed puberty. The family history may reveal important information about a familial pattern of precocious or delayed puberty, as well as evidence of genetic disease.\nThe physical examination should focus on the neurologic and endocrine systems. Examining the optic fundi, estimating the visual fields and evaluating the sense of smell can be helpful, but examination of the genitalia and determination of the status of the pubertal milestones is essential and should be documented for future reference. Photographs are well suited to this purpose. The detailed growth chart that begins at birth is used to estimate the annual growth rate (centimeters [inches] per year) and to determine if and when a growth spurt has occurred (an abrupt increase in the annual growth rate). A radiograph of the left wrist is used to estimate physiologic age for comparison with the child's chronologic age.\nThe information obtained from this initial assessment is used to classify patients into groups (Figures 1 and 2) for additional assessment and treatment.\nView/Print Figure\nAn approach to the child presenting with premature or atypical puberty. (FSH = follicle-stimulating hormone; LH = luteinizing hormone; TSH = thyroid-stimulating hormone; hCG = human chorionic gonadotropin; GnRH = gonadotropin-releasing hormone; MRI = magnetic resonance imaging; CNS = central nervous system)\nAn approach to the child presenting with delayed puberty. (FSH = follicle-stimulating hormone; LH = luteinizing hormone; GnRH = gonadotropin-releasing hormone; MRI = magnetic resonance imaging; CNS = central nervous system; TB = tuberculosis)\nIf the initial assessment is unremarkable, the patient is likely to have a constitutional, central cause for premature puberty. Sometimes pathologic central causes produce premature puberty with normal sequences of milestones, giving the impression of benign causes, and variations of normal puberty may mimic pathologic puberty. Pathologic causes are likely if sexual development occurs in very young children or if there is contrasexual development (e.g., virilization of girls, feminization of boys). Peripheral causes are always pathologic and tend to produce an atypical puberty with loss of synchronicity of pubertal milestones (e.g., penile enlargement without testicular enlargement, extensive pubic hair, or menarche in the absence of breast buds). Girls have a benign central cause for precocious puberty about 50 to 90 percent of the time, but about one half of all boys with early puberty have a pathologic peripheral cause. Thus, all boys with precocious puberty should undergo detailed investigation, but in girls additional investigation can be based on the clinical impression.7\nFurther diagnostic testing is used to confirm the initial impression of idiopathic precocious puberty, to localize the abnormality of the pathologic cause or to determine which imaging study to obtain. Tests for this purpose include serum levels of FSH and LH, estradiol, testosterone, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroxine (T4) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). A cost comparison is summarized in Table 3. If a central pathologic cause is suspected after hormone measurements are obtained, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain and pituitary gland, a GnRH stimulation test, or both, may be indicated. The GnRH stimulation test is performed by administering 100 μg of GnRH either intravenously or subcutaneously after overnight fasting.8 Serum levels of FSH and LH are measured at baseline just before the injection and at 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes after the injection. Test interpretation is controversial, and the pattern of increases of FSH and LH vary with the stage of puberty, but if the patient has central precocious puberty, the hypothalamic-pituitary axis will have been activated, and a two- to threefold rise in FSH and LH will be observed.\nCost Comparison of Tests Used to Evaluate Patients with Abnormal Puberty\nTest/profile\nCost*\nFSH/LH\nhCG, beta subunit (quantitative)\nThyroid panel (TSH, T4, T3, uptake)\nGnRH\nFSH = follicle-stimulating hormone; LH = luteinizing hormone; TSH = thyroid-stimulating hormone; T4 = thyroxine; T3 = triiodothyronine; hCG = human chorionic gonadotropin; GnRH = gonadotropin-releasing hormone.\n*—Costs are examples from a major national laboratory, rounded to the nearest dollar.\nIf a peripheral cause is suspected from the initial clinical assessment or by the pattern of hormone levels, high-resolution ultrasonographic images of the ovaries or computed tomographic images of the adrenal glands are indicated, depending on the clinical impression. Measurement of serum levels of 17-hydroxyprogesterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is advised, especially in girls with virilization.\nSome children cannot be easily placed in a diagnostic category even after extensive evaluation. When treatment is necessary, it is directed at the underlying cause. Parental and patient anxiety is common when sexual development is abnormal. Such anxiety should be managed with reassurance and a supportive demeanor. Children with premature sexual development are at risk for psychopathology9 and sexual abuse,10 and may benefit from psychotherapy.\nBenign Premature Adrenarche. This is a self-limited condition occurring before six years of age that is characterized by the appearance of pubic and, occasionally, axillary hair, increased sebaceous activity and adult-type body odor but no sexual development. These children have statistically normal growth patterns and chronologically appropriate bone age but may be tall compared with other family members. A modest elevation of serum DHEA to the range found normally in early puberty is characteristic.11 However, other adrenal steroid hormone levels are normal, and sex hormone levels are in the prepubertal range. An adrenocorticotropic (ACTH) stimulation test is used to exclude late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia.12 The GnRH test demonstrates a prepubertal pattern, and imaging studies are normal. No treatment other than reassurance is required.\nBenign Premature Thelarche. This condition can occur in girls as young as 18 months and is characterized by premature limited breast development without progression to a mature breast contour. Other signs of puberty do not occur, and the growth rate is prepubertal, with a bone age appropriate for chronologic age. Levels of gonadotropins and estradiol are normal, and ultrasound images of the ovaries are unremarkable. The condition usually resolves spontaneously and requires no treatment. A biopsy of the breast tissue should not be obtained because it is the anatomic equivalent of a partial mastectomy, and subsequent breast development will be altered.\nBenign Premature Menarche. This is a rare and poorly understood disorder similar to benign premature thelarche and is thought to be due to transient ovarian activity that is self-limited. Some cases may be attributed to exposure to exogenous estrogens of either a medical (such as oral contraceptives) or an agricultural origin.13 Observation and repeated evaluation constitute an appropriate strategy unless another diagnosis is suspected.\nBenign Gynecomastia of Adolescence. This is a nearly universal finding among boys in middle to late puberty.14 The breast tissue is usually asymmetric and often tender. If the history and physical examination, including palpation of the testicles, are unremarkable, reassurance and periodic reevaluation are all that is necessary. Most cases resolve in one to two years.\nFamilial gynecomastia is a fairly common heterogenous disorder transmitted as an X-linked recessive trait or a sex-limited dominant trait causing limited breast development around the time of puberty. It requires no further evaluation in an otherwise normal boy unless associated with hypogonadism.15 Those with severe gynecomastia may require cosmetic surgery.\nPathologic gynecomastia occurs in cases of Klinefelter's syndrome and prolactin-secreting adenomata, and in response to a wide variety of drugs (e.g., marijuana, phenothiazines).\nConstitutional and Idiopathic Precocious Puberty. Children with these conditions have premature but otherwise normal-appearing pubertal development. Girls develop breasts and have an early growth spurt with a radiographic bone age in excess of their chronologic age. This causes them to be taller than their peers, but epiphyseal closure occurs early and they mature into short adults. Boys have testicles that are enlarged symmetrically without masses. These children have pubertal levels of FSH, LH and sex hormones, and a pubertal response to the GnRH stimulation test. Thyroid and adrenal hormone levels are normal, as are diagnostic images of the brain, pituitary gland, adrenals and ovaries.\nThe goal of medical treatment is to return the patient to a prepubertal pattern of growth and development, which is accomplished with the use of one of the GnRH analogs, such as long-acting injectable leuprolide (Lupron) or short-acting intranasal nafarelin (Synarel). These agents desensitize the anterior pituitary gland to the normal pulsatile stimulation of hypothalamic GnRH. Release of FSH and LH by the anterior pituitary may increase initially but, over time (up to three months), release of FSH and LH is suppressed.16 In turn, production of sex hormones declines. Although individual responses vary, therapy offers the greatest advantage for children in whom puberty begins at a very early age, those who demonstrate rapidly accelerating bone age, and those with lower genetic height potential.17\nCentral Nervous System and Pituitary Lesions. These conditions may cause a clinical picture similar to idiopathic precocious puberty but may be associated with neurologic problems (e.g., visual field defects). Newer, high-resolution MRI techniques may be identifying pituitary or central nervous system lesions that were previously undetectable, resulting in a decline in “idiopathic” cases. Treatment varies with the type of lesion involved.\nGonadotropin-Secreting Tumors. These tumors are uncommon but typically secrete the 3 subunit of hCG or, in rare cases, the β subunit. In boys, this produces a clinical syndrome of incomplete precocious puberty. Girls do not demonstrate premature sexual development from hCG alone; FSH priming is required for estradiol production by the ovaries. Tumors that secrete hCG include hepatomas or hepatoblastomas; teratomas or chorioepitheliomas of the gonads, mediastinum, retroperitoneum or pineal gland; and germinomas of the pineal gland.9 FSH-and LH-secreting tumors are rare. The treatment is usually surgical.\nPeripheral Precocious Puberty. This disorder usually produces a clinical picture of incomplete puberty in which some of the milestones of puberty do not appear or fail to achieve the usual synchronicity. Development occurs despite low or prepubertal levels of FSH and LH. Ovarian or adrenal androgens may produce virilization in girls. Clinical investigation may identify the type and source of sex hormone stimulation (Figure 1). Treatment depends on the etiology.\nMcCune-Albright Syndrome. Patients with this disorder present with the classic triad of polyostotic fibrous dysplasia, café au lait spots and precocious puberty.18 It appears to be a heterogeneous syndrome with multiple types of inheritance patterns and may be associated with hyperthyroidism or Cushing's syndrome. Treatment includes medical and orthopedic management.\nExogenous Sex Hormones. Ingestion of sex hormones by prepubertal children causes the development of secondary sexual features in conjunction with suppressed FSH and LH levels. Girls who take estrogens (oral contraceptives) may develop dark-brown breast areolae that are not usually associated with endogenous types of precocious puberty, and those who have not begun natural puberty will lack pubic hair. Boys taking androgens will have prepubertal-sized testicles. In one survey, 7 percent of male high school seniors were found to have used anabolic steroids, most before 16 years of age.19 Metabolites of the exogenous hormones may be recovered from the urine.\nContrasexual Development. Some form of hyperandrogenism, functional or pathologic, must be considered in any girl with premature or excessive pubic hair. The most common causes are nonclassic adrenal hyperplasia, premature or exaggerated adrenarche in peripubertal girls, and polycystic ovaries in older girls. Hirsutism may be idiopathic or familial, but it also may be produced by some oral contraceptives.20 However, when signs of virilization (e.g., clitoromegaly, increased muscle mass) accompany signs of defeminization (e.g., loss of female contours and breast mass), the cause is always pathologic, and ovarian or adrenal tumors, Cushing's syndrome, hyperprolactinemia, acromegaly, exogenous androgens or abnormalities of androgen action or metabolism must be considered.21 In boys, contrasexual development may be caused by rare, estrogen-secreting adrenal tumors.\nA diagnosis should be sought for all children with delayed sexual development, which is usually associated with short stature. In girls, delayed sexual development is defined as lack of any breast development by 14 years of age or when more than five years pass between initial growth of breast tissue and menarche. Girls who develop secondary sexual characteristics but fail to achieve menarche by 16 years of age should be evaluated for primary amenorrhea. In boys, delayed sexual development is defined as no testicular enlargement by 14 years of age or the passing of five years between the initial and complete development of the genitalia. Patients with delayed puberty may be classified into one of three groups (Figure 2), based on the initial clinical assessment: (1) those who appear otherwise normal; (2) those who have the stigma of a chromosomal abnormality; and (3) those who appear to have some type of chronic disease.\nAdditional testing will be determined by the initial clinical assessment and suspected etiology. Routine diagnostic laboratory profiles might yield important information if an ill-defined chronic disease is suspected. If a hormone abnormality is suspected, determination of the serum levels of TSH, T4, FSH, LH and prolactin is usually indicated, and a GnRH stimulation test will be useful. MRI scanning of the brain and pituitary gland is indicated if an abnormality of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis is suspected. Since not every adolescent with chromosomal abnormalities will have the classic clinical features, a chromosome analysis should be considered, especially in short girls with delayed puberty.\nThe differential diagnosis of delayed puberty is extensive, but most children who do not have an underlying chronic disease will be found to have a constitutional delay, some form of hypopituitarism, or gonadal failure associated with a sex chromosome abnormality.\nConstitutional Delay. Puberty can be delayed in otherwise healthy children. Typically these children have a normal length and weight at birth and appear to grow normally for a few years but then fall below the fifth percentile on standard growth curves, at which time growth velocity returns to a normal rate and continues along a low percentile curve. They demonstrate prepubertal levels of FSH, LH and estradiol or testosterone. Since the GnRH stimulation test shows a prepubertal response, it is difficult to distinguish this condition from a pathologic gonadotropin deficiency unless a structural or biochemical abnormality of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis is found. Spontaneous puberty occurs, allowing the child to become a normal adult. Because of this clinical course, treatment is controversial.\nSome authorities recommend continued observation as the only therapy, while others recommend induction of puberty with sex steroids.22 Puberty may also be delayed in children who are elite athletes involved in extensive training, those who have an eating disorder and those who are malnourished.\nHypopituitarism. This condition is caused by a variety of diseases that affect the hypothalamic-pituitary axis.23 Depending on the endocrine functions affected, children may present with growth failure, secondary hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency and diabetes insipidus, as well as delayed puberty. Kallmann's syndrome is associated with anosmia or hyposmia, and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. Treatment is directed at the underlying cause and includes initiation of hormone replacement therapy.\nChromosomal Abnormalities. These abnormalities may be associated with delayed puberty. In girls, the most common is Turner's syndrome (about one case in 3,000 live female births). In these cases, patients may present with only growth failure and pubertal delay, or with the more pathognomonic features of this disorder: inner canthal folds with ptosis, a short webbed neck and a “shield chest” with widely spaced nipples.24 In boys, the most common abnormality is Klinefelter's syndrome (about one case in 700 live male births); patients typically are tall, with a eunuchoid body (i.e., long legs and relatively short arms, a height:arm-span ratio greater than 1.0). The testes are small but firm, and gynecomastia is often present.25 Other syndromes (e.g., Noonan's syndrome) can also be associated with delayed puberty.\nMany physical and biochemical problems associated with disorders of puberty may be successfully treated. Puberty is an arduous process for adolescents when normal, but it is more difficult in children with aberrant puberty. These children benefit from management by a knowledgeable and sensitive clinician. Psychotherapy can play an important role in assisting these patients as they develop physically and emotionally.\nRICHARD D. BLONDELL, M.D., is a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Ky. Dr. Blondell received his medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, N.Y., and completed a residency in family practice at the University of Louisville School of Medicine....\nMICHAEL B. FOSTER, M.D., is an associate professor of pediatrics, director of the Division of Endocrinology in the Department of Pediatrics, and assistant dean for admissions and students at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Memphis, College of Medicine, he completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and a fellowship in pediatric endocrinology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.\nKAMLESH C. DAVE, M.B.B.S., graduated from B.J. Medical College of Gujakat University, Ahmedabad, India, and completed a residency in family practice at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.\nAddress correspondence to Richard D. Blondell, M.D., University of Louisville Department of Family and Community Medicine, Suite 690, 201 Abraham Flexner Way, Louisville, KY 40202. Reprints are not available from the authors.\nThe authors thank Margaret Pentecost, Murphy Shields and Deena Staples for helping in the preparation of the manuscript.\n1. Parker LN. Adrenarche. Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am. 1991;20:71–83....\n2. Foster MB. Aberrant puberty. Obstet Gynecol Clin North Am. 1992;19:59–70.\n3. Tanner JM. Growth at adolescence. 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962.\n4. Marshall WA, Tanner JM. Variations in pattern of pubertal changes in girls. Arch Dis Child. 1969;44:291–303.\n5. Marshall WA, Tanner JM. Variations in the pattern of pubertal changes in boys. Arch Dis Child. 1970;45:13–23.\n6. Warren MP, Shangold MM. Sports gynecology: problems and care of the athletic female. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997:13–25.\n7. Bridges NA, Christopher JA, Hindmarsh PC, Brook CG. Sexual precocity: sex incidence and aetiology. Arch Dis Child. 1994;70:116–8.\n8. Reiter EO, Kaplan SL, Conte FA, Grumbach MM. Responsivity of pituitary gonadotropes to luteinizing hormone-releasing factor in idiopathic precocious puberty, precocious thelarche, precocious adrenarche, and in patients treated with medroxy-progesterone acetate. Pediatr Res. 1975;9:111–6.\n9. Ehrhardt AA, Meyer-Bahlburg HF. Psychosocial aspects of precocious puberty. Horm Res. 1994;41(suppl 2):30–5.\n10. Herman-Giddens ME, Sandler AD, Friedman NE. Sexual precocity in girls. An association with sexual abuse? Am J Dis Child. 1988;142:431–3.\n11. Wheeler MD, Styne DM. Diagnosis and management of precocious puberty. Pediatr Clin North Am. 1990;37:1255–71.\n12. Balducci R, Boscherini B, Mangiantini A, Morellini M, Toscano V. Isolated precocious pubarche: an approach. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1994;79:582–9.\n13. Rosenfield RL. Puberty and its disorders in girls. Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am. 1991;20:15–42.\n14. Braunstein GD. Gynecomastia. N Engl J Med. 1993;328:490–5.\n15. Mahoney CP. Adolescent gynecomastia. Differential diagnosis and management. Pediatr Clin North Am. 1990;37:1389–404.\n16. Wheeler MD. Update on therapy for precocious puberty. Compr Ther. 1994;20:351–5.\n17. Shankar RR, Pescovitz OH. Precocious puberty. Adv Endocrinol Metab. 1995;6:55–89.\n18. Mauras N, Blizzard RM. The McCune-Albright syndrome. Acta Endocrinol Suppl [Copenh]. 1986;279:207–17.\n19. Buckley WE, Yesalis CE 3d, Friedl KE, Anderson WA, Streit AL, Wright JE. Estimated prevalence of anabolic steroid use among male high school seniors. JAMA. 1988;260:3441–5.\n20. Kalve E, Klein JF. Evaluation of women with hirsutism. Am Fam Physician. 1996;54:117–24.\n21. Rosenfield RL. Hyperandrogenism in peripubertal girls. Pediatr Clin North Am. 1990;37:1333–58.\n22. Stanhope R, Albanese A, Shalet S. Delayed puberty [Editorial]. BMJ. 1992;305:790.\n23. Vance ML. Hypopituitarism. N Engl J Med. 1994;330:1651–62 [Published erratum in N Engl J Med. 1994;331:487].\n24. Saenger P. Turner's syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1996;335:1749–54.\n25. Schwartz ID, Root AW. The Klinefelter syndrome of testicular dysgenesis. Endocrinol Metab Clin North Am. 1991;20:153–63.\nContinue reading from July 1, 1999\nPrevious: Prevention of Osteoporosis and Fractures\nNext: Depression in Women: Diagnostic and Treatment Considerations\nHome / Journals / afp / Vol. 60/No. 1(July 1, 1999) / Disorders of Puberty","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line35789"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6207173466682434,"wiki_prob":0.3792826533317566,"text":"moviebloke\nThe Skinny on Now Playing\n2018 Official Tally is 17\nDirectory – # to D\nDirectory E to I\nDirectory J to N\nDirectory O to S\nDirectory T to Z\nOfficial Tally for 2015 is 107\nOfficial Tally for 2016 is 97\nVideo posted on May 29, 2016 September 5, 2016 by moviebloke\n(Ireland/UK/Greece 2015)\n“Now the fact that you will turn into an animal if you fail to fall in love with someone during your stay here is not something that should upset you or get you down. Just think, as an animal you’ll have a second chance to find a companion. But, even then, you must be careful; you need to choose a companion that is a similar type of animal to you. A wolf and a penguin could never live together, nor could a camel and a hippopotamus. That would be absurd.”\nEvery now and then, a film so wonderfully unique comes along that you just don’t know what exactly to make of it until you take some time to digest it (I took all summer to write and post this entry). The Lobster is such a film. It’s not going to appeal to everyone—it’s a dark, subtle, absurd, uncomfortable, irreverent, and totally open-ended satire of the desire to be “in a relationship.” None of this is the stuff of a summer movie, but I loved it precisely because of these qualities. So far, The Lobster is easily my favorite film I’ve seen this year—released in Europe last fall, it crossed the Atlantic just this past spring.\nIn the not-so-distant future in a not-so-distant society, being single is against the law. Regardless of the reason for their singularity (death of a spouse, divorce, being dumped), unattached adults must check into a certain hotel designated for singles and find a suitable match, verified and approved by the hotel manager (Olivia Colman), within 45 days. Everything is regimented with meal times, active learning exercises, forced social events, and a strict prohibition on masturbation (though one form of sex with the housekeeping staff is required). “Guests” can buy additional time by shooting “loners”—rogue outlaw singles who escaped to the woods—on daily hunting excursions that resemble Hunger Games. Those who fail to find someone before their time runs out are transformed into the animal of their choice, selected during their initial processing, and banished to the woods.\nThe Lobster’s protagonist, mild-mannered David (Colin Farrell), finds himself at the hotel, his brother, Bob—now a dog—in tow, after the end of his marriage. He chooses a lobster as his animal because “lobsters live for over one hundred years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats, and stay fertile all their lives.” He also likes the sea.\nWARNING: Potential spoilers ahead!\nThe Lobster is essentially divided into two acts: the first in the hotel and the second in the woods. David connects with fellow guests the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly) and the Limping Man (Ben Wishaw). David notices that the guests there tend seek others like themselves—except for Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), an emotionless femmebot who seeks out no one but has a seemingly infinite amount of time left thanks to her ruthless archery skills. David decides to go for her, which leads him to the woods. There, he meets the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), who is near-sighted like he is. They connect, but the militaristic Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux) forbids all romance—punishable by mutilation. “We dance alone,” she tells David as she hands him an iPod. “That’s why we only play electronic music.”\nWritten by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, the screenplay feels like a Chuck Palahniuk novel. The story is so bizarre and far fetched that it seems silly on paper, but proves incredibly powerful once in motion—in the same way that Being John Malkovich, another film I love that requires the same suspension of disbelief, didn’t sound like much to me before I saw it. Lanthimos has a taste for sadness and the macabre, and he liberally infuses The Lobster with both. He doesn’t take a dim view of relationships, but he notices the dim things people do to have one. The cinematography by Thimios Bakatakis is fabulously drab, with a cool, monotonous, faded color palette that creates a sense of distance and evokes a sense of resignation. Classical music plays throughout to add a kind of Clockwork Orange weirdness to the whole thing.\nDespite the mood here, the story turns out to be oddly beautiful. Farrell gives one of his best performances—he drops all his rakish charm to become a colorless, big-bellied middle-aged schlub I found myself rooting for with each predicament he gets into. The inability of David and the Short Sighted Girl to express their feelings for each other is damn near heartbreaking. The entire cast is outstanding, and not a single character is superfluous. The second act is noticeably slower than the first, and perhaps could have been shorter than it is. Regardless, the momentum continues to build to a brilliantly ironic ending that comes about through David’s nearsightedness.\nThe Lobster doesn’t resolve in the end, which is my favorite thing about it. The viewer is left to decide what happens—and I’ve already discussed different opinions others have about whether David did, or didn’t. It’s the kind of film that lingers on in your memory and forces you think about it even though you’ll never know for sure.\nSide note: the film’s website has a quiz that determines your suitable animal. Mine were an elephant, a horse (which finds pleasure in carrots, music, and oral sex), and a water bear. I chose a horse, of course.\n(ArcLight) A-\nhttp://thelobster-movie.com\nPosted in 2015, A-, British, comedy, dark comedy, Greece, Greek, ireland, irish, May 2016, satire, summer 2016, UK, United Kingdom, weird\tTagged Angeliki Papoulia, Being John Malkovich, Ben Wishaw, Chuck Palahniuk, Clockwork Orange, Colin Farrell, Efthimis Filippou, Hunger Games, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, The Lobster, Thimios Bakatakis, Yorgos Lanthimos\tLeave a comment\nVideo posted on May 29, 2016 July 25, 2016 by moviebloke\nLast year’s Inherent Vice disappointed me; I dug its ’70s Venice Beach vibe, but I found the story choppy and its execution ultimately lackluster—unforgivable for a film with arguably the best all-star cast in years. Little did I know walking into the theater that Shane Black’s The Nice Guys is exactly what I hoped for with Inherent Vice: an unapologetically dippy and fun action retro-comedy with stylish sets, cool clothes, and a rad soundtrack. Shallow? Maybe. But I enjoyed The Nice Guys a lot more; like old MTV, it’s a fluffy guilty pleasure.\nLos Angeles, 1977: Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a detective—the world’s worst, by his own admission—down on his luck. Amid jobs like the senile widow looking for her missing husband—his ashes are in an urn on the mantle—March is hired by the aunt (Lois Smith) of a dead porn actress, Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio); she claims her niece just visited her, and she wants him to find her. After a run-in with thug-for-hire Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) and a trail that leads to a girl named Amelia (Margaret Qualley) and an “experimental” skin flick called How Do You Like My Car, Big Boy, March joins forces with Healy to solve a mystery that brings them right to the heart of the porn and auto industries.\nThe Nice Guys is a treat all around. No one thing carries this film; it’s a successful combination of multiple elements. The story and tone—a mix of the aforementioned Inherent Vice, Lethal Weapon (also by Black), and Boogie Nights with a whiff of Scooby Doo—is surprisingly cohesive, absorbing, and entertaining. Where Lethal Weapon‘s Martin and Roger are buddies, March and Healy are “frienemies:” the former is as drunkenly and sweetly inept as the latter is soberly and brutally efficient. It works; Gosling and Crowe, who looks like John Goodman these days, have a solid chemistry. It’s fun to see them both in something light, and they seem to have a good time here. I never thought of Gosling as a comedic actor, but his timing is great—my favorite scene is Healy busting into the men’s room stall on him. March gets by thanks in large part to his teenaged daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), who serves as a voice of reason even as he corrects her grammar. Matt Bomer makes a brief, creepy, and violent cameo as John Boy, a hitman with a big mole on his face—anyone familiar with The Waltons no doubt will get the reference right away. Kim Basinger is a welcome surprise as a hard, all-business federal agent. The whole thing ends in a crazy choreograped sequence involving a film canister.\nPhilippe Rousselot’s cinematography is snappy, with vivid colors that shine though even during the night scenes. The Nice Guys depicts a sleazy era of Los Angeles in a cheeky, over-the-top way—a time I would have loved to have seen it. This is not a film that takes itself seriously—it seems to revel in its frivolity. Seeing it over Memorial Day weekend was a great way to kick off the summer movie season. Indulge, I say.\n(ArcLight) B-\nhttp://www.theniceguysmovie.com\nPosted in 2016, action, American, B-, comedy, crime, May 2016, mystery, Seventies, summer 2016, USA, violent\tTagged Angourie Rice, Boogie Nights, How Do You Like My Car Big Boy, Inherent Vice, Kim Basinger, Lethal Weapon, Lois Smith, Margaret Qualley, Matt Bomer, MTV, Murielle Telio, Philippe Rousselot, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Scooby Doo, Shane Black, The Nice Guys, The Waltons\tLeave a comment\nVideo posted on May 15, 2016 March 9, 2017 by moviebloke\n(UK/USA 1975)\n“I, Robert Sabetto,\nPledge allegiance\nTo the lips\nOf The Rocky Horror Picture Show\nAnd to the decadence\nFor which it stands\nOne movie, under Richard O’Brien\nWith sensuous daydreams, erotic nightmares, and sins of the flesh for all.”\n—The Rocky Pledge of Allegiance\nThrough high school and into college, a sure bet on a Saturday night was that two films would be playing at midnight: Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Every. Damned. Weekend. In the case of Rocky Horror, it’s no wonder: dressing up, shouting at the screen, throwing shit around the theater, and acting and singing along to the movie is more fun than a burlesque science fiction gothic drag hoedown—essentially what it was. At some point during the ’90s, it stopped. I couldn’t resist catching Rocky Horror again with a group of friends when it played at a theater near me.\nA movie version of Riff-Raff/Richard O’Brien’s stage musical, the story is silly—stupid, even: a newlywed couple, Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), are forced off the road during a rainstorm. I love that Janet reads The Plain Dealer in the car. Anyway, they end up at the castle of mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry)—he’s just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania—who’s about to unveil his newest creation that took him just seven days to make: Rocky (Peter Hinwood), a gorgeous tan man with muscles and tight gold shorts. A strange journey of an evening tinged with sexual tension, motorcycles, and music and dance ensues.\nThe characters and costumes are iconic, and the songs are a campy blast. Watching it this time, I picked up on a sexy overtone that I was kind of surprised to see it retains. Bostwick exudes an adorably dorky charm that I’ve always liked. It’s impossible to picture anyone but Curry as Frank-N-Furter, but Mick Jagger was after the role (http://www.broadway.com/buzz/171159/happy-birthday-dear-rocky-38-freaky-facts-about-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/). Meat Loaf makes for an interesting cast member. And who doesn’t love Magenta (Patricia Quinn)?\nThe Rocky Horror Picture Show bombed when it was originally released, but an astute marketing person recognized its potential in a different format—the rest is history. It’s an okay movie, but what goes along with it makes it a truly unique experience. Audience participation is a concept created here, and nothing else ever will be—or can be—quite the same.\nIn 2005, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Rocky Horror Picture Show “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).\n(Music Box) C+\nhttp://www.rockyhorror.com\nPosted in 1975, American, British, C+, classic, comedy, fantasy, May 2016, musical, play, satire, science fiction, Seventies, sex, thriller, UK, United Kingdom, USA, weird\tTagged Barry Bostwick, Meat Loaf, Mick Jagger, National Film Registry, Patricia Quinn, Peter Hinwood, Pink Floyd, Richard O’Brien, Rocky Horror, Susan Sarandon, The Plain Dealer, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Wall, Tim Curry\tLeave a comment\nVideo posted on May 5, 2016 March 9, 2017 by moviebloke\n“You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?”\nI’ve seen The Breakfast Club too many times to track—so many times, in fact, I can practically recite every line in order. What’s most interesting to me is personal: how volatile my view of this film has been through the years. Seeing it as a teenager in its day, I found it incredibly deep. John Hughes nailed high school social politics better than anyone, and he did it with humor and panache. I was taken aback at how accurately The Breakfast Club depicted my own adolescent perceptions, attitudes, frustrations, fears, and dreams. Seeing it in my 20s and 30s, however, I found it trite—moreso the older I got. Still, I adored its juvenile but sharp and totally quotable lines. Flipping through channels on a recent school night, I noticed that AMC was airing it—in like, five minutes. I hadn’t seen it in awhile, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to find out what impression it would leave on me now.\nThe Breakfast Club is an achievement. More like a play than a movie and decidedly minimalist in plot and execution—five characters in search of an exit—it’s unlike anything else Hughes did. The plot is simple: five high school students (Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, and newcomer Judd Nelson) from different backgrounds—and more importantly, different cliques—are forced to spend a day together in close quarters for a Saturday detention. Alien and hostile toward each other, they ultimately bond over silly and not so silly stuff. Not much happens, really—there’s a hallway run that ends with Bender (Nelson) shooting hoops for a scholarsheeeeeeeeep—but that’s okay; the drama comes from the personalities of the characters and the friction and attraction between them. Unlike the plot, the statement here is anything but simple: Hughes says a boatload about stereotypes, peer pressure, conformity, rules, family, and social mores—and how we all trap others and ourselves underneath them. In a way that sort of presages Douglas Coupland’s Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture, Hughes turns the “American Dream” on its head: all of these characters simultaneously embody and reject the ideal. Whether he’s hopeful for the future or not, he sees that these kids and this generation do not operate like those who came before it.\nWhat makes The Breakfast Club work is its great ensemble cast. Even the shallow treatment of the adults (Paul Gleason as Principal Vernon and John Kapelos as janitor Carl) doesn’t take away from the film. It’s totally believable: after a deep exchange, I can’t help but think that everyone goes back to what they were doing before. Come Monday, maybe Bender dates Claire, maybe Andy dates Allison, and maybe everyone is nice to Brian—but I doubt it. A major theme here is that everyone is full of shit—even the good guys. The Breakfast Club is rooted in its time and culture (i.e., it’s very ’80s and very white middle class American), but it hits something universal. It’s also totally entertaining: it opens with a Bowie quote, has a classic theme song—”Don’t You (Forget about Me)” by Simple Minds—and is jam packed with snarky lines. What’s not to love?\nA word about AMC: like a lot of cable stations, it censors “bad” words. I’m not a fan of that, but obviously it won’t stop me from watching something. That said, AMC could’ve done a better job editing here. The dubbing is horrible; apparently no attempt was made to find replacement words that even remotely match the characters mouths. Ditto for the voiceovers. The censoring often relies not on the word but the context. For example, AMC has an aversion to the word “dick” only when it refers to a penis—not when it refers to a jerk. It doesn’t like “asshole,” but “ass” is okay. It hates all forms of “shit,” replacing it with variations like “it’s the pits,” “eat slaw,” and “hogwash” (for “bullshit”). I recommend sticking with the uncut edition—foul language has a place here and something crucial is lost without it: realness.\nIn 2016, the United States Library of Congress deemed The Breakfast Club “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry (https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/).\n(AMC) A\nPosted in 1985, A, American, comedy, drama, Dramedy, Eighties, May 2016, teenage, USA\tTagged Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, David Bowie, Don't You (Forget about Me), Douglas Coupland, Emilio Estevez, Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture, John Hughes, John Kapelos, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, National Film Registry, Paul Gleason, Simple Minds, The Breakfast Club\t1 Comment\nVideo posted on May 4, 2016 July 25, 2016 by moviebloke\nMidnight Special was hyped quite a bit. The previews were promising, so naturally my expectations were high.\nA take on E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and an apparent tribute to Steven Spielberg, the story is enthralling: a father (Michael Shannon) on the run with his eight-year-old son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), comes to the realization that his son is either the messiah or an alien—and perhaps both. Whatever the deal is, Alton’s best interests clearly are not aligned with those of his father and mother (Kirsten Dunst). What’s in store when Alton gets them to their destination in a few days—if they even make it there?\nMidnight Special has its moments. The acting is good all around; but Adam Driver as Paul Sevier, a federal agent, adds a nice and much needed touch of goofy, earthy warmth to the mix. Screenwriter/director Jeff Nichols maintains a steady pace and builds momentum with a suspenseful intensity that lasts until about two-thirds of the way through, but then it all grinds to a halt. The film ultimately fizzles because it goes on too long to sustain what it starts. It doesn’t help that Lieberher turns up the creepy factor a notch higher than necessary.\nMidnight Special falls short: at heart, it’s a sappy movie about parenting and learning to let go. OK, I guess, but…meh. Not my thing.\n(ArcLight) C\nhttp://www.midnightspecialmovie.com\nPosted in 2016, American, C, drama, May 2016, science fiction, supernatural, suspense, USA\tTagged Adam Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Jaeden Lieberher, Kirsten Dunst, Michael Shannon, Midnight Special, Steven Spielberg\tLeave a comment\nOrdinary People is exactly the kind of film I love: moody and dark with dysfunctional, even unlikeable characters and an unresolved, downright unhappy ending. Throw in a Chicago North Shore setting, two major sitcom stars, and Robert Redford as director and I’m all over it.\nThe plot is pretty simple: the Jarrett family is dealing with the death of Buck (Scott Doebler), the older of two teenaged boys. Younger brother Conrad (Timothy Hutton), who lived in Buck’s shadow and survived him in a boating accident, has just returned from a stint at a mental hospital. He can’t quite get back into the normal swing of things. His parents, Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), are also having a tough time. Conrad sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch)—whose office is somewhere on Sheridan Road—and the two work on getting him through his survivor’s guilt.\nUnlike the plot, the family dynamic is complicated. Difficult. Calvin reaches out to his son and his wife, but he’s painfully awkward. His unsuccessful attempts to find common ground where they can all meet made me wince at times. Beth is in complete denial; absorbed by social events and golfing, she doesn’t seem to notice Conrad. She is incapable of understanding him or helping him heal. It’s causing the family unit to unravel. Maybe it was never strong to begin with.\nOrdinary People is a quiet film that sneaks up you—you don’t see how intense it is until the credits roll. It’s chilling and haunting, something that stays with you. The writing is excellent, and the cast couldn’t be better. The drama here is not so much in what happens, but in how the characters face each other. Hutton won an Oscar for his performance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinary_People), and he evokes a boatload of sympathy. However, he succeeds because of his mother: unlike her television persona, Tyler Moore is stone cold. We get a hint that her facade cracks soon after the final scene, but it’s left to our imagination. She does an amazingly powerful job here.\n(Home via iTunes) A-\nPosted in 1980, A-, American, drama, May 2016, USA\tTagged Donald Sutherland, Judd Hirsch, Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People, Robert Redford, Scott Doebler, Timothy Hutton\tLeave a comment\nURGH! A Music War\nMan of Aran\nThe Leisure Seeker… on Like Crazy [La pazza gioi…\nVertigo – movi… on Vertigo\nThe Brady Bunch Movi… on The Brady Bunch Movie\nCheryl Cooper on The Hitman’s Bodyguard\nWitness – movi… on Blade Runner: The Final C…\nExploitation Film\nindian-american\njapanimation","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0000.json.gz/line277474"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7554585933685303,"wiki_prob":0.7554585933685303,"text":"Man arrested for funding LTTE\n[TamilNet, Sunday, 07 June 1998, 23:59 GMT]\nAn auto-rickshaw driver was arrested by the Counter Subversive Unit (CSU) of the Batticaloa police in Chinna Oorani, 4 km Northwest of Batticaloa, on Thursday around 5:00 a.m, said sources. He was charged with contributing money to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).\nThe sources said further that the driver, Sri, had made a statement to the police on the previous day stating that persons claiming to be LTTE activists were demanding money from him.\nHowever, he told the police that when he had informed the LTTE, they had given him an assurance that they were not responsible. The driver told the Police that the LTTE had attributed it to the work of impostors.\nHe was then arrested on Thursday and charged with funding the LTTE on an earlier occasion the sources added.\nhttp://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=1610","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line968988"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8842235207557678,"wiki_prob":0.8842235207557678,"text":"DC’s Tabard Inn Seeks Landmark Status\nby Nena Perry-Brown\nPhoto of the Tabard Inn, courtesy of landmark application. Click to enlarge.\nThe owner of the Tabard Inn is seeking historic landmark status for the property.\nLocated at 1737-1741 N Street NW (map), the buildings at the three addresses which comprise the 35-room inn were constructed from 1887 to 1900, each designed by a different architect.\nMarie Willoughby Rogers bought the rowhouse at 1739 N Street NW in 1922, and by all indications, the Tabard Inn began formal operations in 1924. Rogers bought the building at 1741 in 1928, followed by the 1737 building in 1936. The application explains the significance of these houses being combined and operated commercially:\n\"In the early twentieth century, the property was located within an area of Dupont Circle that was known as \"the Mayfair of Washington.\" N Street at the time was still home to some of Washington’s most prominent residents. By establishing the Tabard Inn on this important residential street Mrs. Rogers gave the Tabard Inn the prestige needed to attract patronage; however, its presence also served as a bellwether of a change in Dupont Circle’s character from a residential neighborhood to one dominated by institutional and commercial uses.\"\nCurrent owner Fritzi Cohen purchased the Inn with her husband in 1974, making the hotel one of the oldest in the city to be owned and operated by a woman since its inception. The hotel's restaurant reopened in 1977 under the guidance of Margee Wright and Nora Pouillon; Pouillon owned a catering company in DC prior to the Cohen's hiring, and in 1979, she went on to open Restaurant Nora, which gained her worldwide recognition as a pioneer in organic and locally-sourced cuisine.\nThe Historic Preservation Review Board is expected to consider the application next month.\nSee other articles related to: women's history, tabard inn, landmark application, hotels, history, historic preservation review board, historic landmark, dupont circle\nThis article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/an-application-for-historic-designation-of-the-tabard-inn/16318\nMatt McHugh and Heather Davenport\nWashington Fine Properties\nCapital Bank Home Loans","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1487003"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.559939980506897,"wiki_prob":0.559939980506897,"text":"37 Church Street, Weybridge, KT13 8DG\n3,005 sq ft (279 sq m) - LET\nThe property comprises an attractive two storey character office building providing comfort cooled accommodation with a double height reception area to the front. The ground floor area has been partitioned to offer a number of meeting/training rooms with male, female and disabled WCs and tea station. An open staircase leads to the first floor which offers mainly open plan accommodation with a kitchen/staff room. To the front of the property is a gated forecourt providing parking for approximately 5 to 6 cars with further parking for about 8 cars to the side of the building.\nFirst floor - 1,430 sq ft (132.90 sq m)\nGround offices - 1,360 sq ft (126.3 sq m)\nGround reception area - 250 sq ft (20 sq m)\nTotal - 3,005 sq ft (279.2 sq m)\nMale, Female and Disabled WCs\nPerimeter Trunking\nMicro Raised Floor with Power Boxes\nSuspended Ceilings with Recessed LG7 Lighting\nWhole 3,005 sq ft (279 sq m)\nTotal 3,005 sq ft (279 sq m)\nThe property is situated on the B374 Church Street which merges into Weybridge High Street. Weybridge is an affluent town and offers an excellent range of shopping, banking and restaurant facilities. The main line railway station is approximately a 15 minute walk away offering a regular service to London Waterloo (approx 35 minute journey time). Junction 11 of the M25 is within 2 miles of the property offering direct access to Heathrow airport and the national motorway network.\nThe building is available to let on a new full repairing and insuring lease for a term to be agreed.\n£72,500 pa excl.\nWe have been advised the building is elected for VAT.\nWhole 3,005 sq ft\n(279 sq m) £72,500 pa excl. £43,250 (both floors) £20,20,846.50 (14/15) LET\nTotal 3,005 sq ft\n(279 sq m)\nI am enquiring about 37 Church Street, Weybridge, KT13 8DG","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line525963"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9712370038032532,"wiki_prob":0.9712370038032532,"text":"Heat use 22-0 late run to top Hawks, 135-121 in OT\nUS and World Sports\nby: TIM REYNOLDS, Associated Press\nPosted: Dec 10, 2019 / 10:58 PM EST / Updated: Dec 11, 2019 / 12:07 AM EST\nMiami Heat guard Tyler Herro (14) controls the ball as Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young (11) defends during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)\nMIAMI (AP) — Trae Young figured the game was over.\nTurns out, Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat were just getting started — on one of the craziest stat nights in team history.\nDuncan Robinson tied a franchise record with 10 3-pointers, Butler and Bam Adebayo each had triple-doubles and the Heat went on a wild late flurry to beat the Atlanta Hawks 135-121 in overtime on Tuesday night.\nThe Heat were down by six with 59 seconds left in regulation, the moment when Young took a celebratory walk back to the Atlanta bench for a timeout — with Butler hearing him shout, “It’s over.”\nMiami scored the next 22 points, the last six of regulation and then the first 16 of overtime to improve to 18-6 overall and 11-0 at home.\n“I don’t think anybody really thought the Heat were relevant,” Adebayo said. “We’re making people watch us.”\nKendrick Nunn scored a career-high 36 points, one off the Heat rookie single-game record. Robinson scored 34, a career high. Adebayo finished with a career-high 30 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. Butler had 20 points, a career-high 18 rebounds and 10 assists.\nAnd afterward, Butler couldn’t resist a little jab at Young on Instagram — a post that other NBA players like Draymond Green and Klay Thompson quickly noticed.\n“Everybody in this locker room has a confidence that they’re the best player on the floor at any given time,” Butler said. “Man, when you’ve got guys who think like that, nothing’s ever over.”\nIt was the NBA’s widest margin of victory in an overtime game since Oct. 31, 2009, when Philadelphia beat New York 141-127.\nDe’Andre Hunter scored 28 points, and Young added 21 points and nine assists for Atlanta — which fell to 0-3 against the Heat this season.\n“What’s tough is Robinson goes 10 for 14, a career high, two guys with triple-doubles, they played out of their minds a little bit with a couple guys and we still had a six-point lead with under a minute to go,” Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce said. “I feel bad.”\nVince Carter, in the 1,500th regular-season game of his career, scored 12 for the Hawks. Jabari Parker had 16 points and Cam Reddish added 12 for Atlanta.\nThe Hawks used a 13-0 run to take an eight-point lead early in the fourth, before the Heat clawed back and eventually tied the game at 111-111 on a 3-pointer by Robinson with 3:11 left.\nAtlanta scored the next four to reclaim the lead, Butler missed a pair of free throws with 1:18 left and Alex Len had a dunk on the next Hawks possession for a 117-111 lead.\nThe rest was all Heat.\n“Our energy was dead as soon as overtime started,” Young said.\nIn other words, it was over.\nHawks: Atlanta made 13 3-pointers in the first half, tying a team record set on three other occasions. The Hawks had only nine 2-pointers before intermission. … Hunter returned to the starting lineup, and Reddish played off the bench. … Kevin Huerter remains on a minutes restriction of about 25 per night, though that isn’t expected to last much longer. He played 26 in regulation, then didn’t play in overtime.\nHeat: Miami again played without four of its six highest-paid players. Goran Dragic (groin strain), Justise Winslow (back strain), James Johnson (illness) and Dion Waiters (illness) were out. Dragic is working toward a return. Winslow has missed 14 of Miami’s 24 games, Johnson has made only six appearances and Waiters has yet to play.\nFAREWELL, VINCE\nBarring a playoff meeting or trade, this was Carter’s final game in Miami. He appeared in Miami as an opponent 36 times including playoffs, tying Allan Houston for third-most all-time behind Paul Pierce’s 42 and Patrick Ewing’s 37. Carter’s 714 points are fourth-most of any opponent in Miami, behind Pierce’s 867, Ewing’s 754 and Michael Jordan’s 722.\nSTAR WARS NIGHT\nThe Heat threw a “Star Wars”-themed celebration, replete with lightsabers on the court during the pregame delivery of the game ball, Darth Vader patrolling around the arena and radio analyst Ruth Riley Hunter with her hair done like Princess Leia. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra is a fan of the sci-fi saga. “Every summer, the whole family gets together in Hawaii and we end up watching ‘Star Wars,’” Spoelstra said.\nHawks: Visit Chicago on Wednesday.\nHeat: Host the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday.\nMore US and World Sports Stories\nGALLERY: Whitehouse community rallies behind Patrick Mahomes ahead of AFC Championship\nby Christa Wood / Jan 17, 2020\nFour arrested during Washington County, Va. traffic stop","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line577388"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5338588953018188,"wiki_prob":0.46614110469818115,"text":"echosystem / Pixabay\nUS blockage of judges disables World Trade Organization appeals court\nDecember 10, 2019 04:27:14 pm\nAndrew Hursh\nThe US Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Dennis Shea, announced in a speech to that body on Monday that the US would not back a proposal to appoint new judges to the panel. The move has effectively rendered the appellate body unable to function, meaning second-tier trade disputes can no longer be resolved moving forward.\nAccording to the rules of the WTO, three appellate judges are required in order to review panel cases. Decisions of the WTO’s dispute settlement body require consensus, meaning no member present “formally objects to the proposed decision.” There are typically seven judges on the WTO Appeals Court with staggered four-year terms. For over two years, however, the US has been formally objecting to term renewals or new appointments, slowly diminishing the body. The Monday objection finally leaves the court with fewer than three members.\nIn his speech, Shea reiterated the US government’s problems with the appellate body that led it to carry on the blockage strategy. “[T]he United States has been raising serious concerns with the Appellate Body’s disregard for the rules set by WTO Members,” he said, referring to longstanding complications by which the court’s international jurisprudence has often conflicted with protectionist strategies the US pursues. Despite some countervailing successes at the court over the years, the US’ discontent has spanned administrations. Disagreement with the body has been especially strong in the Trump administration in no small part due to the ways it has tried to leverage trade in its clash with China.\nThe Director-General of the WTO, Roberto Azevêdo, spoke to the body on Monday about convening consultations to overcome the impasse. “A well-functioning, impartial and binding dispute settlement system is a core pillar of the WTO system,” he said. “Members will continue to resolve WTO disputes through consultations, panels, and other means envisaged in the WTO agreements such as arbitration or good offices of the DG … but we cannot abandon what must be our priority, namely finding a permanent solution for the Appellate Body.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line810876"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7789825201034546,"wiki_prob":0.7789825201034546,"text":"Register Log In AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums News SAN PEDRO MAN CHARGED WITH MURDER\nSAN PEDRO MAN CHARGED WITH MURDER #400537\nTwenty three year old Harrison Jacobs, a fisherman of San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye was charged with the murder of Francis Alexander Figueroa Cardinez when he appeared today in the Magistrate’s Court. No plea was taken from Jacobs because his offence is indictable. Neither could the court offer him bail because of the nature of the charge. Jacobs was remanded into custody until March 17th. The incident occurred on Sunday morning, November 28th, 2010 in San Pedro Town. Police reports are that Figueroa Cardinez was involved in a fight with two men and one of them fired two shots at him. The police reported that when they responded to the shooting behind the San Juan area they saw Figueroa Cardinez lying on the ground bleeding from the left temple. Figueroa Cardinez died a couple hours later at the San Pedro Polyclinic.\nRe: SAN PEDRO MAN CHARGED WITH MURDER [Re: Marty] #400542\nFisherman Charged For “Pedro” Murder\nA San Pedro fisherman was today charged with murder when he appeared in the #5 Magistrate's court. Twenty three year old Harrison Jacobs is said to have caused the death of Francis Alexander Figueroa by unlawful harm, as a result of a fight which broke out between him the victim and a third man.\nNo plea was taken from Jacobs, and bail was denied due to the nature of the offence. He was remanded into custody until March 17th. The incident occurred on Sunday, November 28, 2010 in the San Juan area of San Pedro Town.\nAccording to reports, Figueroa Cardinez was involved in a fight with two other men and one of them fired two shots at him. The police reported that when they responded to the shooting they saw Figueroa Cardinez lying on the ground with blood coming from the left side of his head. He died hours later at the San Pedro Polyclinic.\nHarrison ‘Bin’ Jacobs charged for Murder\nHarrison Jacobs, 22-year-old San Pedro resident appeared at the Magistrate's court in Belize City on Thursday February 17th, 2011 to answer to charges of murder for the death of 20 year old Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas, in late November of 2010.\nIn the early morning of Sunday, November 28th, three gunshots were heard in that area towards the lagoon off Jew Fish Street. Shortly after, another gunshot was heard.\nOfficial reports were that some time before 5:40am on Sunday, November 28th, police were called to the corner of Seaweed and Sand Piper Streets in the San Juan Area of San Pedro Town. There, Police observed a dark skinned person of Creole descent, leaning in a sitting position on a blue concrete fence with what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to the head. The man who was known to police as Bejon Wade was later identified as 20 year old Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas. Mr. Cardenas is of a Belize City address, but was reportedly working on Ambergris Caye.\nCardenas was allegedly beaten and tortured off an isolated road in the San Juan area after which he escaped and was running for his life when his attackers caught up with him just outside his area of residence. He was shot in the head and left to die.\nWhen police arrived at the scene, Mr. Cardenas was still alive. He reportedly succumbed to his injuries around 7:15am on Sunday, while undergoing treatment at the San Pedro Poly Clinic II. His body was taken to the Belize City morgue where a post mortem examination was conducted and declared that he died from massive brain damage caused by a gunshot wound to the head.\nAt the Magistrates court, Mr. Jacobs was charged for the crime of murder. Due to the nature of the crime, no plea was taken from Jacobs and bail was denied. He was remanded into custody at the Hattieville Prison until March 17th, 2011 when he is scheduled to re-appear in court.\nMurder trial for Harrison ‘Bin’ Jacobs begins\nHarrison \"Bin\" Jacobs, charged with murder for the death of Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas\nInquiry into the case of Harrison Jacobs, 22-year-old San Pedro resident was held on Tuesday, February 14th at the San Pedro Magistrate’s Court. Jacobs appeared with his attorney in front of Magistrate Sharon Flowers where his case was committed to the April 19th session of the Supreme Court for hearing.\nOn Thursday February 17th, 2011, Jacobs aka “Bin” appeared in the Magistrate’s court in Belize City to answer to charges of murder for the death of 20 year old Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas, which occurred on November 28, 2010. In the early morning of Sunday, November 28th, three gunshots were heard in the San Juan area towards the lagoon off Jew Fish Street. Shortly after, a forth gunshot was heard. Official reports were that:\n“Sometime before 5:40AM on Sunday, November 28th, police were called to the corner of Seaweed and Sand Piper Streets in the San Juan area of San Pedro Town. There, Police observed a dark skinned person of Creole descent, leaning in a sitting position on a blue concrete fence with what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to the head. The man who was known to police as Bejon Wade was later identified as 20 year old Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas. Mr. Cardenas is of a Belize City address, but was reportedly working on Ambergris Caye.”\nClick here to read the rest of the article in the San Pedro Sun\nHarrison “Bin” Jacobs walks away from a 2010 murder charge\n25-year-old Harrison “Bin” Jacobs, a San Pedro Town resident, walked free of a murder charge on November 4, 2013 after a main witness was not located. Jacobs had been on remand for the murder of 20 year old Francis Alexander Figuerroa Cardenas, which occurred on November 28, 2010.\nSometime around 5:40AM on the date of the incident, Cardenas was allegedly beaten and tortured in an isolated area in the San Juan neighborhood. He managed to escape and as he was running for his life, his attackers caught up with him on Seaweed Street just outside his area of residence. He was shot in the head and left to die. Neighbors heard the single gunshot blast, and seconds later, they noticed Cardenas in a seated position on the edge of a concrete fence, bleeding from the head. A white cart was seen leaving the area.\nPolice on Ambergris Caye detained Jacobs, citing that on the day of the incident Jacobs had an altercation with the victim which escalated into a fight. According to police, Jacobs was accused of beating Cardenas, who ran away but was later caught and fatally shot to the head. During the investigation, police found a golf cart belonging to Jacobs with blood stains.\nDuring trial, Crown Council Shanice Lovell called ten witnesses to testify against Jacobs. However, on November 4th, during trial, Lovell told Justice Adolph Lucas that their main witness could not be located on the island. Justice Lucas explained that due to the non-appearance of the main witness who was essential in giving key evidence against Jacobs –the case had ended in a nolle prosequi, thus freeing Jacobs of the murder charge.\nWhile Jacobs has been freed from the murder charge, he still has an additional case before the court for wounding and is out on bail. Jacobs was represented in court by Attorney Michael Peyrefitte.\nBrusselSprout\n\"While Jacobs has been freed from the murder charge, he still has an additional case before the court for wounding and is out on bail. \"\nHOW would someone like this get out on bail...jeezus.\nwww.sanpedroscoop.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line273797"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5822750329971313,"wiki_prob":0.5822750329971313,"text":"The Luddite fallacy\n2011 marks the 200th anniversary of the Luddite movement. 2011 is a fitting year to commemorate them as it has also been a year of popular protests with the “indignados” in Madrid, the recent attempts to occupy Wall Street and the St Paul’s protest camp in London Today’s protesters could learn a thing or two from the Luddites; . They certainly knew how to create a lasting brand. Will we be talking about the “Indignants” in 2211? Something about Luddites has captured the public imagination for the last two centuries.\nNed Ludd, the man who gave his name to the movement was a, a sort of Robin Hood-like figure among the protesters. There had been a young apprentice called Ludd or Ludham from Anstey near Leicester. Admonished by a superior for shoddy workmanship, he took his anger out on two frames for knitting hosiery, wrecking them completely. Word got around. After that whenever a machine was destroyed someone would say, “Ludd must have been here.” This is how a mythical leader was born and he became a source of inspiration for the protesters.\nThe Luddites emerged at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The industrial revolution was in full swing. It should be pointed out that they were not opposed to technology per se; many were highly skilled machine operators in the textile industry. What they objected to was the automated looms that could be operated by cheap, unskilled labour, with the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers. On March 11,1811, in Nottingham, a demonstration of textile workers demanding more work and better wages was broken up by the army. That night the disgruntled workers went to a nearby village and smashed up textile machinery. The movement spread rapidly throughout England in 1811 and 1812 with Yorkshire and Lancashire as two hotbeds of revolt. Mills and factory machinery were the typical targets of these handloom weavers. They publicised their actions in circulars mysteriously signed, “King Ludd.”\nFor a short time the Luddites created panic in the British establishment and they even clashed in battles with the British Army. The Luddites would meet at night on the moors surrounding the industrial towns, practising drills and manoeuvres. They were also into cross-dressing. However this seems to have been a way of disguising themselves. They often enjoyed local support, but once the government decided that they posed a serious risk and decided to repress them, their days were numbered. Machine breaking became a capital crime in 1812, legislation which was opposed by Lord Byron, one of the few prominent defenders of the Luddites. In order to suppress the movement mass trials were held resulting in many executions and penal transportations. By around 1816 the Luddites were a spent force.\nThe Luddites had clearly tapped into a common feeling. The nightmare vision of a world in which technology has eliminated human productive labour has been around since the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Automated production lines, computers and industrial robots have only reinforced this feeling. Each generation believes that the latest technology will be the one that eradicates employment. I tend to be very sceptical of economic populism and contrary to these populist beliefs, there is scant evidence to support the claim that technological development is responsible for rising levels of unemployment in the medium to long term. But these bad ideas keep coming back to haunt us. Whenever there is significant long-term unemployment, machines get the blame.\nThese fallacies are regularly trotted out in the media. Earlier this year Jesse Jackson Jr. lamented the dangers of the iPad, wondering what would happen to all the jobs associated with paper:\n“A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine,”\nAnd this summer President Obama was on NBC News trying to explain why companies weren’t hiring:\n“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes. . . .”\nGeorge Bush was rightly criticised for many of the things he said, but I find it shocking that a President who is constantly praised for his stunning intellect could display such wilful economic illiteracy. Actually I’m not shocked at all by politicians spouting this kind of nonsense. Indeed, Obama may well be aware that it is bullshit, but is trying to make an appeal to populism. Either way it’s depressing that this is the man responsible for economic policy in the world’s most powerful economy.\nA dynamic economy will see radical changes. This is what Joseph Schumpeter called this process creative destruction, the transformation that accompanies radical innovation. I did a piece about creative destruction in the financial sector in 2008. It has to be said that there has been precious little of this since the onset of the current economic crisis. Creative destruction has been around since we started inventing tools. The printing press was bad news for those who produced manuscripts. This process has been on steroids since the industrial revolution. Agriculture is a prime example. In 1900, nearly forty of every hundred Americans worked in farming to feed a country of ninety million people. A century later, it takes just two out of every hundred workers. There are many more examples:\nModern office technology has cut the number of secretaries.\nUndergoing LASIK surgery allows consumers to throw their glasses away.\nDigital cameras have forced photo labs to close.\nThere has been massive destruction of employment. There should be no more than five people working in the whole world! But as economist John Kay has pointed out, in the two hundred years since the Luddites first went around wrecking machinery productivity has increased more than fifty-fold. So we don’t have 98% unemployment; we produce fifty times as much.\nWe need to see the interconnectedness of all this; these ongoing processes cannot be understood in isolation. Resources no longer needed to feed the nation have been freed to meet new consumer demands. Over the decades, workers no longer required in agriculture moved to the cities, where they became available to produce other goods and services. Economist Walter Williams has a better grasp of economics than Obama and Jackson Jr.:\nCertain jobs are destroyed by technology. You’re right, but many more are created. Think about it. If 90 percent of Americans still had been farmers in 1900, where in the world would we have gotten workers to produce all those goods that were not even heard of in 1790, such as telephones, steamships and oil wells? We need not go back that far. If there hadn’t been the kind of labour-saving technical innovation we’ve had since the 1950s – in the auto, construction, telephone industries and many others – where in the world would we have gotten workers to produce things that weren’t heard of in the ’50s, such as desktop computers, cell phones, HDTVs, digital cameras, MRI machines, pharmaceuticals and myriad other goods and services?\nCreative destruction actually makes societies wealthier, by putting scarce resources to more productive uses. The savings from higher productivity don’t just go to the evil capitalist owners. They lower costs of doing business. In the short term this may mean higher profits. However, new competition tends to lead to lower prices as firms compete with each other to attract consumers. These consumers benefit from a higher standard of living as they have to work fewer and fewer hours to earn enough money to buy food, shoes or a car. It is technology that brings us a higher standard of living. It isn’t just the rich who get cheaper stuff. And I don’t know about Obama, but I love the convenience of using an ATM whenever I feel like it.\nThe problem is the time lag. While the disruption of the labour market and the destruction of businesses are immediate and very visible, the benefits from creative destruction are in the long term. As a result, societies there will always be a temptation to try and block the process of creative destruction, implementing policies to resist economic change. These attempts will almost always have a deleterious impact on the economy as inefficient producers, who should have gone out of business, hang around at a high cost to consumers or taxpayers. It prevents the shifting of resources to emerging sectors. The tragedy is that by trying to hold back the tide, you do not avoid pain. The ultimate cost of these misguided policies is stagnation, job losses, bankruptcies and a lower standard of living.\nI don’t know what will happen in the future. The Luddites and their intellectual heirs may simply have been premature in their dire predictions. Will job creation match job destruction in perpetuity? With robotics and artificial intelligence set to advance rapidly this century, even many skilled jobs could come under threat. But I believe that jobs are created by what economist Julian Simon called the “ultimate resource” – our natural human resourcefulness and ingenuity. Human wants are insatiable -people always want more of something. This is what will create jobs in the future – jobs that we cannot even conceive of now.\n1 Comment\t| Articles, Economics, Politics & Society, Technology\t| Permalink\nProgress and its discontents\nTo complement this week’s post about The Luddite fallacy I have a couple of extra bits:\nThe first is a letter from Don Boudreaux of Café Hayek to the U.S. Representative for California’s 9th congressional district, the Democrat, Barbara Lee:\nDear Ms. Lee:\nFred Barnes reports in the Weekly Standard that you refuse to use computerized checkout lanes at supermarkets (“Boneheaded Economics,” Oct. 24). As you – who are described on your website as “progressive” – explain, “I refuse to do that. I know that’s a job or two or three that’s gone.”\nOverlooking the fact that you overlook the lower prices on groceries made possible by this labor-saving technology, I’ve some questions for you:\nDo you also avoid using computerized (“automatic”) elevators, riding only in those few that still use manual elevator operators?\nDo you steer clear of newer automobiles equipped with technologies that enable them to go for 100,000 miles before needing a tune-up? I’m sure I can find for you, say, a 1972 Chevy Vega that will oblige you to employ countless mechanics.\nDo you shun tubeless steel-belted radial tires on your car – you know, the kind that go flat far less often than do old-fashioned tires? No telling how many tire-repairing jobs have been destroyed by modern technology-infused tires.\nDo you and your family refuse flu shots in order to increase your chances of requiring the services of nurses and M.D.s – and, if the economy gets lucky and you and yours get seriously ill, also of hospital orderlies and administrators? Someone as aware as you are of the full ramifications of your consumption choices surely takes account of the ill effects that flu shots have on the jobs of health-care providers.\nYou must, indeed, be distressed as you observe the appalling amount of labor-saving technologies in use throughout our economy. It is, alas, a disturbing trend that has been around for quite some time – since, really, the invention of the spear which destroyed the jobs of some hunters.\nThe second is an anecdote from Russell Roberts in an article about technology and jobs:\nThe story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren’t there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman’s response: “Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?”\nLeave a Comment »\t| Economics, Technology\t| Permalink\nIce cream cones, frozen chickens and the meaning of disgust\nDisgust, one of our most basic emotions, is fundamentally a biological adaptation which helps us to keep away from ingesting substances that could make us sick or even kill us – faeces, vomit, phlegm, blood, urine and rotten meat are universally seen as disgusting because they contain harmful toxins. One gram of human faeces can contain 100 million viruses and over a million bacteria. Steven Pinker has called this “intuitive microbiology“. Disgust is apparently unique to humans. I do perhaps have an unhealthy interest in this subject – this summer I took my family to an exhibition, Dirt: the filthy reality of everyday life, at the Wellcome Collection in London. If you feel so inclined, you can see the exhibition here.\nSome of our disgust is hard-wired – when disgust first emerges in young children, at the age of around three, it is a consequence of brain maturation, not early experience or cultural teaching. Disgust can also be learned, because while some things are universally dangerous, others vary according to the environment. A fascinating area is that of food taboos; one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Indeed animal flesh is especially susceptible to environmental pressures. Pork is the classic example. In the climate of the Middle East eating it was dangerous. Thus a religious taboo prohibiting it emerged both among Jews and Arabs. At least they can agree on that! Of course this taboo then takes on a life of its own. With modern refrigeration it is perfectly okay to eat pork anywhere in the world. However the taboo remains.\nIf disgust were limited to gastronomy it would more of a curiosity and it would have less social relevance. But, there has been what is known as an exaption. This is when a trait that evolved because it served one particular function, comes to serve another. They occur in anatomy; Bird feathers are a classic example: initially these may have evolved for temperature regulation, but later were co-opted for flight. And exaptions occur in behaviour. In this case disgust has entered the realm of morality. MRI studies have shown that lying, cheating, and stealing, behaviours that may threaten group cohesion or co-operation, activate areas in the brain associated with disgust. And these days there seems to be a lot of indignation going around.\nWhenever I read about moral disgust two scenarios, involving incest and frozen chickens, often seem to crop up. There is an online survey called Taboo, which asks you to judge a number of controversial moral scenarios including these two:\nSarah and Peter were brother and sister. They were on vacation together away from home. One night they were staying alone in a tent on a beach. They decided it would be fun to have sex. They were both over 21. They had sex and enjoyed it. They knew that for medical reasons Sarah could not get pregnant. They decided not to have sex with each other again, but they never regretted having had sex once. In fact, it remained a positive experience for them throughout their lives. It also remained entirely their secret (until now!).\nA man goes to his local grocery store once a week and buys a frozen chicken. But before cooking and eating the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he cooks it and eats it. He never tells anyone about what he does, never regrets it and never shows any ill effects from behaving this way. He remains an upstanding member of his community.\nBoth scenarios involve no harm to its practitioners and third parties are not hurt. I won’t go into the chicken for now, but the first scenario is a particularly thorny question. The incest taboo is a human universal, which is so powerful it goes beyond blood relations. I am referring to the Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting. This kicks in when two people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years in the lives of either of them become incapable of feeling sexual attraction. This phenomenon, first described by the Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck, has been observed in many places and cultures, such in the Israeli kibbutz system. In kibbutzim children are raised communally in peer groups, based on age, and not biological relation. One study showed that out of the nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only fourteen were between children from the same peer group. And of those fourteen, none had been reared together during the first six years of life.\nHow do we explain these taboos to ourselves? Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the Universityof Virginia, coined the term moral dumbfoundedness to describe our reactions. He found that when presented with these scenarios people give a reason. When that reason is stripped from them, they will find another one. When the new reason is stripped from them, they bring up another one. Only when they run out of reasons will they admit defeat – “I don’t know; I can’t explain it; it’s just wrong.” This is moral dumbfoundedness.\nThere is a school of thought that believes that deep-seated revulsion should be seen as a sign that an activity is intrinsically harmful or bad. One proponent of this view is Leon Kass, who was chairman of President George W. Bush’s commission on bioethics. He argues that while disgust is not an argument, “In some crucial cases, however, it is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond wisdom’s power completely to articulate it.” This is the wisdom of repugnance. This way of thinking has important practical implications: Kass argues that the idea of human cloning is disgusting, and therefore should be banned. Having said that, he also thinks that eating ice cream cones undermines our dignity:\n“Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone… This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behaviour.” What Freud would have made of this quote, I shudder to think. I don’t like psychobabble but this man definitely has some “issues”\nWhile I am in favour of spontaneous order and organic change, I find Kass’s arguments unconvincing. I am especially worried about the danger of false positives. History is littered with examples of groups and individuals being considered disgusting. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum has critiqued disgust-based morality because it can become a justification for persecution of out-groups:\n“Throughout history, certain disgust properties – sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness – have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with Jews, women, homosexuals, untouchables, lower-class people – all of those are imagined as tainted by the dirt of the body“.\nMale homosexuals have been a traditional target and not just in the past. In From Disgust to Humanity, Nussbaum, a prominent professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago, explains that much of the political rhetoric around gay rights is bound up in the language of disgust, with words like vile, revolting, contaminate and defile being the currency. In crude terms, much of the anti-gay argument is bound up in faeces and saliva, germs, contagion and blood. You may think that Nussbaum was exaggerating, but in the United States gay rights can inspire a very visceral response. At a recent state Judiciary Committee meeting the New Hampshire state Representative, the Republican, Nancy Elliott, decided to enlighten us with her views on homosexuality. During a debate on a proposal to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage bill, she described anal sex “taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement.” You can see the video here.\nThe bottom line is that it is impossible to find a correlation between what disgusts us and any moral norms. If only it were that simple! As we have seen reactions of disgust often have their origin in our most atavistic prejudices. The more I look into the origins of morality, the more confused I get. Well that’s enough pontificating for today. I fancy a bite to eat. Kentucky Fried Chicken followed by a Cornetto would seem to fit the bill.\nBy coincidence Jonathon Haidt has a piece about the Wall Street protests at reason.com: The Moral Foundations of Occupy Wall Street.\n1 Comment\t| Articles, Food, Philosophy & The Mind\t| Permalink\nQI: A selection #9\nHere is another selection of trivia that I have picked from the QI column in the Telegraph:\nAnosmia (Greek for “no smell”) can be congenital, or can be caused by a severe blow to the head, a virus or vitamin A deficiency. Viral anosmia (such as that caused by a bad cold) is usually temporary. Smell and memory are intimately linked. Damage to the temporal cortical region of the brain – the site of memory – does not affect the ability to detect smell, but prevents the ability to identify it. Patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease often lose their sense of smell as well as their memory.\nBrown sugar has fewer calories because it contains more water. Refiners of white sugar from the United States wrecked the success of brown sugar sales by creating a smear campaign against the stuff in the late 19th century. They produced photographs of horrible-looking microbes living in brown sugar to put people off. In 1900, a bestselling cookbook picked up on this and said that brown sugar was often infested with “a minute insect”.\nNo one knows why people stopped wearing hats after the Second World War. New hairstyles, the rise of the car, demobilisation – even the new fashion for sunglasses – all took the blame for the sudden abandonment of the hat. At first the hat industry thought hatlessness was a passing fad and newspaper reports of 1948 bemoaned the new “barehead” fashion. People who dared to walk hatless through the hat-making towns of Denton and Stockport risked being abused by local factory workers who saw their livelihoods disappearing.\nIf you or your children have just started a depressing summer job, fear not. Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett’s first job was at his grandfather’s grocery shop; Bill Murray sold chestnuts outside a grocer’s; Orlando Bloom worked at a clay-pigeon shooting range; Beyoncé Knowles swept up in her mother’s hairdressing salon and Mick Jagger sold ice cream. Brad Pitt dressed up as a giant chicken to promote a restaurant.\nThe Aztecs called gold “the excrement of the gods”. It was valued less than feathers, their most valuable currency. Decoratively they much preferred brass, introduced by the Spanish invaders.\nThe French writer Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) liked to eat lunch in the restaurant of the Eiffel Tower because he hated the structure, and it was the only place he could not see it. He really hated it: “A high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant ungainly skeleton upon a base that looks built to carry a colossal monument of Cyclops, but just peters out into a ridiculous thin shape like a factory chimney.”\nIn 1991, to celebrate the bicentenary of Mozart’s death in 1791, Triumph International,Japan’s second-largest lingerie company, made a musical bra with blinking lights which played 20 seconds of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Although their intentions were commendable, the company had made a common error in attributing the piece to Mozart. Although he had composed variations on the tune, the lyrics were written by London-based sisters Jane and Ann Taylor and the melody was originally a French folk tune.\nThe word encyclopaedia literally means a “circle of learning” and was originally used to indicate a well-rounded education. It was not used as a title for books of general knowledge until the 17th century.\nWombats (Vombatus ursinus) have evolved with special anal sphincters that produce cubic faeces or scat. They use them to mark out their territory, leaving them perched on rocks, leaves and logs. Their shape helps stop them from rolling off.\nThe shortest nation in Europe is Malta. The Maltese have an average height of 5ft 4ins (164.9cm) compared with the EU average of 5ft 5½ins (169.6cm). Notable short people include Horace, Joan of Arc, Alexander Pope (4ft 6in), Goya, Lord Byron, Franz Schubert (5ft 1in), Leo Tolstoy, JM Barrie (4ft 11in), Judy Garland (4ft 11in) and Yuri Gagarin (5ft 1in). Someone who wasn’t short was Napoleon, who at 5ft 6½in was taller than the average Englishman at the time.\nThe shortest war in history was the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which took place on August 27 1897 and lasted 38 minutes. When the Sultan of British-administered Zanzibar died, his nephew, Khalid bin Barghash, succeeded him, in direct contravention of the wishes of the British consul, who had suggested another candidate. Undeterred, Khalid climbed into the royal palace through a broken window with 2,000 supporters in tow, raised the Zanzibar flag and proclaimed himself Sultan. The British then issued him with an ultimatum: abdicate or face war. When the deadline expired at 9am the next morning, the British gunships opened fire, bombarding the palace and setting it on fire. Khalid escaped toMombasa, leaving 500 casualties behind him. Only one British sailor was slightly injured.\nThe longest place name in Europe is on Anglesey: Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-gogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch. It was cooked up as a publicity stunt in 1860 when thevillageofLlanfair(which means St Mary’s church) opened the island’s first railway station. Local businessmen came up with the idea of creating the longest station sign in Britain, made up of the existing names of the village, a nearby hamlet and a local whirlpool. The world title, however, goes to Bangkok in Thailand, which in 1782 was given a ceremonial name: Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit.\nNo one is sure where the name España comes from. It might be from the Greek Hesperia, meaning “western land” or the Phoenician, Hispnanihad meaning “land of rabbits”.Spainis certainly rich in rabbits: the first written reference to the art of ferreting rabbits occurs in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, which tells of how, in 6BC, the Emperor Augustus sends ferrets to the Balearic Islands to control a plague of rabbits.\n1 Comment\t| Trivia\t| Permalink\nThe future of the BBC\nThe BBC, the world’s first national broadcasting organisation, began life as a private company, the British Broadcasting Company on 18 October 1922. In those days it was a syndicate of six telecommunications companies, including Marconi and General Electric. Five years later the company was wound up and a royal charter created the British Broadcasting Corporation. Nation shall speak peace unto nation was the celebrated motto. The way radio initially developed was typically British. The fears of its negative impact on information and taste led to a paternalistic, top-down approach. There was no vulgar advertising. And because the press perceived the BBC as a threat, there were no news bulletins before seven in the evening. In 1932 using a system developed by John Logie Baird, the BBC began its television coverage with a limited television service. Since then the BBC has grown massively. By the start of this century it had become the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff.\nThe figure of the director-general has been fundamental in the corporation. There have been 14 of them in the 80 years of the BBC’s existence. The Corporation’s first director was a thirty-three-year-old Scottish Presbyterian, John Reith. A most high-minded man, he had no truck with the idea that the radio should be for mere entertainment. Educating and informing the masses should be its goal; give the public what they needed, not what they wanted. Another famous director general was Hugh Greene, brother of the writer, Graham. He was in charge of the BBC in the swinging sixties and was responsible for modernising an organisation that had fallen behind in the face of the challenge from the newly created commercial channel, ITV. He also had to defend the BBC from attacks by the ‘clean-up TV’ campaigner Mary Whitehouse, whose National Viewers and Listeners Association used to rail against the permissive society. The current DG, Mark Thompson, will be leading the BBC in a new cash-stripped era.\nOn 20 October 2010 Chancellor George Osborne announced that the television licence fee would be frozen at its current level – £145.50 per year per household – until the end of the current charter in 2016. The BBC will also have to take on the full cost of running the BBC World Service, which had been the responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. And just this month further cuts have been announced with the BBC expected to reduce its budget by up to 20% over the next few years. That will still leave it with 3.5 billion a year – hardly chicken. This leaves it second largest budget of any UK broadcaster, trailing British Sky Broadcasting’s £5.9 billion.\nThe BBC has since its creation been attacked and criticised. Their first test came with the general strike of 1926. And of course recently there was the bust-up between the BBC and Blair and Campbell over those dodgy dossiers about Iraq. The Beeb is often accused of political bias. Objectivity is impossible but I think the BBC compares very favourably with public broadcasters around the world.\nThen there are those more light-hearted moments. One of my favourites has to be Guy Goma, a business studies graduate from Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo, who was the victim of mistaken identity. Goma, who was wrongly identified in the press as a taxi driver, was waiting for a job interview at television Centre. He was confused with an IT expert, who also happened to be called Guy; the producer had wanted Guy Kewney, editor of Newswireless.net, to be interviewed about the Apple vs. Apple court case. Instead it was Goma who went on air. He was interviewed for nearly two minutes. “I just thought keep going” said Goma after his ordeal was over. I thought he did rather well.\nHaving grown up with it, I have a soft spot for the Beeb. I Claudius, Yes Minister and Life on Earth were all surely examples of public broadcasting at its very best. Of course they also produce dross. But as they say, 90% of everything is probably crap. However, we can’t go back to the past. The organisation has become rather bloated. Does it really need to do everything that it currently does? The problem is how to focus. I’m not arguing for something on the limited scale of PBS in the United States, but £3.5 billion should be sufficient. The problem is that everyone will have their own idea of what is essential. When the BBC tried to close Radio 6 last year there were howls of protest and the station was reprieved. My criteria would be that the BBC should provide what the market won’t. Maybe the cash constraints will force a bit more creativity. I don’t really see the point of the BBC doing Strictly Come Dancing. I don’t think that anyone could argue that this couldn’t be done by the private sector. Of course the most difficult area in the future will be sports. The problem here is not one of market failure. Murdoch’s Sky would love a crack at the BBC’s sporting jewels. The problem is that access will only be available to paid subscribers. In America a market solution has emerged – the big four sports appear on free-to-air television. If you want to see every match of your team, then you have to pay. This seems to me like an intelligent solution. You get the national exposure and the corresponding advertising revenues that a sport requires and you can also charge those who are willing to pay for a premium service.\nThe BBC faces some challenging decisions over the next few years. It will have to downsize. I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days when there were just two or three channels. I love the variety we can enjoy now. American television is really so much better than it used to be. With satellite, cable and YouTube we are spoilt for choice. We can be our own director-generals. But I am sure that the BBC has enough talent to remain relevant for another eighty years.\n1 Comment\t| Articles, Politics & Society\t| Permalink\nTwimmolation and other new words\nHere is another selection of new words I found on the Wordspy website:\nbutler lie\nA lie used to politely avoid or end an email, instant messaging, or telephone conversation. We use the term “butler lies” to allude to the social buffering function that butlers provided for their employers.\nSearch results, recommendations, and other online data that have been filtered to match your interests, thus preventing you from seeing data outside of those interests.\nintactivist\nAn activist who supports or lobbies for laws that ban infant circumcisions.\nIKEA effect\nIncreased feelings of pride and appreciation for an object because it has been self-made or self-assembled.\njuvenoia\nn. The baseless and exaggerated fear that the Internet and current social trends are having negative effects on children. [Juvenile + paranoia.]\nlast name effect\nThe closer a person’s childhood surname is to the end of the alphabet, the faster that person tends to make purchase decisions.\nThe man who is least likely to take on a dominant role in a social or professional situation.\npaperphilia\nA deep appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of paper; a preference for reading items printed on paper rather than displayed on a screen.\npity friend\nOn a social networking site, a person whose friend request you accept out of pity.\ntwimmolation\nThe destruction of a person’s career or reputation caused by lewd or insensitive Twitter posts. [twitter + immolation.]\nLeave a Comment »\t| Language\t| Permalink\nFive famous psychological experiments #2\nLast year I did a post about five famous psychology experiments. Here is another selection:\nBlind to the unexpected\nIn 1999 cognitive psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris came up with the so-called “invisible gorilla” test. Their volunteers had to watch a one-minute video where two groups of people — half dressed in white, the other half in black — are passing basketballs around. The volunteers were told to count the passes among players dressed in white shirts while ignoring the passes of those in black. During the video, a woman in a gorilla suit walked into the centre of the frame, pounded her chest and then walked off. It would seem to be the most obvious thing in the world. However, about half the people missed it. This effect is known as inattentional blindness. When you are focussing on one activity you can become blind to the unexpected. Last year they repeated the study; they wanted to see if the people who had heard about experiment would notice other unexpected events in a new video. Like the first time those who hadn’t seen it had a 50% success rate. As you would expect, all 23 of the experimentees who knew about the original experiment saw the gorilla but only 17% saw one or both of the new unexpected events – the curtain changing colour and one player on the black team leaving the game. You may find this experiment trivial, but one done by NASA using commercial pilots with thousands of hours of flying experience in a state-of-the art flight simulator is more worrying. During a simulated landing in foggy conditions some of the pilots failed to notice a jet parked on the runway!\nClairvoyant rats and pigeons\nLast week I wrote about the unreliability of expert predictions. There are experiments that show that animals can do better than humans some times. I’m not referring to Paul the Octopus, who was able to correctly predict the winner of each ofGermany’s seven matches in the 2010 World Cup, as well as the result of the final. In this case it was rats and pigeons. The experiment involved researchers flashing two lights, one green and one red, onto a screen. However, the exact sequence was kept random. The rats and pigeons were quick to discover that the optimum strategy was to always go for green, guaranteeing an 80 percent hit rate. Humans, on the other hand, tried to see a pattern where there was none and only achieved 68% success. What’s more they would persist in the erroneous strategy even after they had been told that the flashing lights were random. Another study with Yale students produced similar results; they couldn’t accept 40% error, so they ended up with almost 50%.\nFrightening Little Albert\nBehaviourist John Watson believed, following the principles of classical conditioning, that he could condition a child to fear a stimulus which normally would not be frightening. The subject of the study was a nine–month old baby called Albert. At the beginning of the experiment Little Albert was exposed, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair and burning newspapers among other things. During this phase Little Albert showed no fear toward any of these items. In later trials, Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner made loud sounds behind Albert’s back by striking a long steel pipe with a hammer when the baby touched one of the chosen items. Not surprisingly on these occasions, Little Albert cried and showed fear when he heard the noise. The final stage of the experiment was to present Albert with only the stimuli. He became very upset as the rat appeared in the room. He cried, turned away from the rodent, and tried to move away. Watson had show that emotional responses could be conditioned, or learned. Indeed, Little Albert seemed to generalize his fear to other furry objects so that when Watson sent a non-white rabbit into the room seventeen days after the original experiment, Albert also became distressed. He showed similar reactions when presented with a furry dog, a seal-skin coat, and even when Watson appeared in front of him wearing a Santa Claus mask with a white cotton beard. The story has a sad ending. Albert, whose real name appears to have been Douglas Merritte, was the son of one Arvilla Merritte, then an unmarried woman who was a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home. Nothing is known about the long-term effects of Watson’s experiment on the child. Tragically he died at the age of six on May 10, 1925 and is buried in a cemetery in Maryland.\nMake me straight\nDr. Robert Galbraith Heath, founder and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, did research, partially financed by the CIA and the US military, which involved stimulation of the brains using surgically implanted electrodes. His subjects were institutionalized psychiatric patients, often African Americans. He wanted to use this brain stimulation relieve the symptoms of major psychiatric disorders such as severe depression and schizophrenia. However despite this laudable desire, his methods left a lot to be desired. One of his collaborators was the Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey, who later recalled that they had used African Americans as subjects because “they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals” His most infamous experiment was on Patient B-19, a 24-year-old gay man who wanted Heath to make him straight. Heath implanted electrodes in his head, showed him straight porn movies, and then activated the pleasure centres of the brain via the electrodes. A prostitute was hired to see if his treatment had worked. Did patient B-19 actually become heterosexual? Following discharge from the hospital, he had a sexual relationship with a married woman for almost 10 months. His homosexual activity was reduced during this period, but did not stop completely. I couldn’t find any long-term follow-up information. Heath seemed excited about the prospects for this therapy, but fortunately homosexual conversion therapy with brain surgery and pleasure centre stimulation did not catch on.\nThe monster study\nMost of us are familiar with the film The King’s Speech. At the beginning of the film a therapist has the future king put seven pebbles in his mouth to get him to take his mind off stuttering. This goes back to ancient Greece where the famous orator Demosthenes is said to have used the same treatment. Anyway it didn’t work out; George spat them out and the hapless therapist was promptly sent packing. On the other side of the Atlantic, at more or less the same time, an infamous experiment was taking place. The year was 1939 and the place, Davenport,Iowa. The aim of the experiment was to make kids stutter. The intentions were noble; Dr. Wendell Johnson, a speech pathologist believed that stutterers were not born and the stigma of being labelled a stutterer d actually make them worse, and in some cases caused ‘normal’ children to start stuttering. To prove his point, he ran an experiment which has since become known as the ‘Monster Study’. The 22 youngsters from a veterans’ orphanage who were recruited to participate in the experiment were divided into two groups. The first were labelled ‘normal speakers’ and the second ‘stutterers’. In reality only half of the group labelled stutterers had actually shown signs of stuttering. During the course of the experiment, the normal speakers were given positive encouragement. But what made the study so notorious was what happened to the stutterers’ group. They received negative reinforcement – they were lectured about stuttering and constantly reminded not to repeat words. And the rest of the teachers and staff at the orphanage were told them the whole group were stutterers. Although none of the test subjects actually became stutterers they became very embittered when they discovered in 2001 what had been done to them. The quality of their schoolwork fell off and they would suffer a number of psychological and emotional scars later in their lives. The university issued an apology after the study was made public in news reports. On 17 August 2007, six of the orphan children were awarded $925,000 by the State of Iowa.\nSo there you are. These are some of the things psychologists got up to. One would assume that they don’t do some of the more ethically questionable things that I have described above. They were different times. I could have mentioned Pavlov, who experimented on humans as well as dogs. Watching the videos can be quite painful. The uncomfortable fact is that we did learn a lot from these experiments and others carried out in those years. There were some pretty terrible experiments going on in other fields. One of the most shocking must surely be Tuskegee syphilis study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service on poor, rural black men. They received free health care, but they were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. The aim was to see what would happen if the disease went untreated. I hope in 2050 a future blogger will not have to write about what we were doing in the 21st century.\n1 Comment\t| Articles, Philosophy & The Mind, Science\t| Permalink","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1365206"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6415252685546875,"wiki_prob":0.3584747314453125,"text":"Home Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection Santa Anita Park, Arcadia, looking west\nSanta Anita Park, Arcadia, looking west\nTitle Santa Anita Park, Arcadia, looking west\nLocation/Accession KHAF 462-3; GPC_b25_f2_i17 (Photographic print)\nHistorical Data The 'first' Santa Anita Race Track was built on Elias Jackson (\"Lucky\") Baldwin's immense estate of \"Rancho Santa Anita\" and opened on December 7, 1907, but closed just two years later after horse racing was banned in California due to an anti-gambling bill that became law. In 1933, Hollywood director Hal Roach and San Francisco dentist Dr. Charles Strub formed the Los Angeles Turf Club and raised funds to build a new track. Designed in an Art Deco style by Gordon B. Kaufman, the \"new\" Santa Anita Park was opened on Tuesday, December 25, 1934 with an attendance of 30,077 visitors paying an admission price of.15 cents. This famous racetrack has seen some important events since its grand re-opening: In February 1935, the first Santa Anita Handicap was run; famous racehorse, Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita handicap in 1940; in 1942, racing at Santa Anita was suspended due to the Second World War and from 1942 to 1944, Santa Anita was used as a Japanese American internment center; the racetrack reopened in 1945; a downhill turf course was added in 1953, which added a distinctly European flair; during the 1960s, major renovations included a much-expanded grandstand as well as major seating additions; in 1974, the Westfield Santa Anita Mall was built on the site of the old barns and training track; was host to the 1984 Olympic equestrian events; and in 1997, Santa Anita Park was acquired by Meditrust Corp.; Meditrust then sold the track to Magna Entertainment Corp., which they still own to date. Santa Anita, which has a turf course measuring 9/10 of a mile, also has a one-mile synthetic \"cushion\" main track. The new Cushion Track opened for training on September 4, 2007 and hosted its first live race on September 26, 2007. The 1,100-foot-long grandstand, which is a historic landmark, can accommodate 26,000 guests and is the original facade from the 1930s. The track infield area can accommodate another 50,000 or more guests. The Park also contains 61 barns, which house more than 2,000 horses, and an equine hospital. Santa Anita Race Track is the oldest racetrack in Southern California, and is located at 285 W. Huntington Drive.\nDescription Aerial view of Santa Anita Park and Racetrack, located at 285 W. Huntington Drive in the city of Arcadia; view is looking west. Tree-lined street along the left is Huntington Drive; tree-lined street along the right is Colorado Place; Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford Drives are at middle right; Colorado Blvd. is middle right to upper middle; Baldwin Ave. is horizontally at middle, just past the race track and stables (middle left). Photograph dated January 14, 1958.\nSubject Santa Anita Park (Arcadia, Calif.).\nRacetracks (Horse racing)--California--Arcadia.\nGrandstands--California--Arcadia.\nHorse racing--California--Arcadia.\nDwellings--California--Arcadia.\nStables--California--Arcadia.\nStreets--California--Arcadia.\nArcadia (Calif.)--Aerial views.\nArcadia (Calif.).\nBaldwin, Elias Jackson,1828-1909.\nRoach, Hal,1892-1992.\nKaufmann, Gordon B.\nStrub, Charles.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line445825"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8789360523223877,"wiki_prob":0.8789360523223877,"text":"KBR rides ups and downs of market\nFocus shifts to meet customer needs\nBy Stephanie Kanowitz\nThe past year was a mix of highs and lows for KBR. As one major contract wound down, the company won others. And as its best customer — the U.S. government, especially the military — shifted its focus, KBR also made adjustments, such as reorganizing its government business unit.\nMore 2010 Top 100 Federal Prime Contractors\n2010 Top 100 rankings\nTop 100 companies face an ever-changing market\nEthics rules expected to spur acquisitions\nStand up and embrace a changing market\nContractors find fertile fields abroad\nTop 20 profiles\nTop 100 methodology\nSince 2001, KBR’s Government and Infrastructure (G&I) unit has supported troops in combat zones under the Army’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (Logcap) III contract, funded at $35 billion. But Logcap IV, awarded in 2007, is a multiple-award contract that opens KBR’s monopoly to competition at the same time that the Obama administration plans to reduce contractor spending and shift military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan.\n“Under the Logcap III contract, KBR employees have served more than 1 billion meals, delivered approximately 440 million pounds of mail, produced nearly 23 billion gallons of water, issued more than 8 billion gallons of fuel, hosted more than 170 million patrons at MWR [Morale, Welfare and Recreation] facilities, logged more than 701 million miles transporting supplies and equipment for the military, and laundered 78 million bundles of laundry, all in an effort to support U.S. troops as they carry out important and dangerous missions,” said Linda McKnight, KBR’s senior vice president of sales and marketing.\nMeanwhile, Logcap IV’s multiple-award effect is already being felt. Revenues under Logcap were $4.8 billion in 2009, compared to $5.5 billion in 2008.\nBut the company still saw overall revenues grow from $11.6 billion in 2008 to $12.1 billion in 2009. That success is attributed to continued performance on current contracts; new wins, including a task order to provide logistics support services, transportation assistance and postal services in Iraq under Logcap IV; and internal changes to meet the external demands. In sum, KBR landed at the No. 7 spot on the Top 100 list with $4.5 billion in prime contract revenue.\n“The composition of our contract base will shift to meet the needs of military sustainment activities, which are different from those of major combat operations, and work will be performed under longer-term contracts that are more predictable than typical contingency support efforts,” McKnight said. “We are prepared to be a tough, agile competitor in the new environment, and we are pursuing other adjacent business opportunities with the potential to offset the income effects of the inevitable reduction in Logcap activity.”\nThe contract base is not the only thing that has changed to meet new customer needs. In August 2009, KBR sliced G&I into four distinct segments and 10 market-facing business units. “We are now NAG&D — North American Government and Defense — and part of the Infrastructure, Government and Power business group,” McKnight said. “Our focus is now only on the U.S. federal government, whereas previously it included defense and infrastructure clients in the U.S., [the United Kingdom], Australia and the Middle East.”\nWill Gabrielski, vice president and senior analyst at Broadpoint Gleacher, said KBR is well positioned for future endeavors.\n“With the two Iraq Logcap solicitations now over and KBR’s position within Iraq solidified as the U.S. winds down and demobilizes, the debate about what impact Logcap work will have going forward is mostly complete,” he said. “This provides stability and visibility on the federal side while the company deploys its capital to grow its nonfederal segments and support increasing activity in energy markets with the global recovery under way.”\nStephanie Kanowitz is a freelance writer based in northern Virginia.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line955058"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5471716523170471,"wiki_prob":0.4528283476829529,"text":"Arilou's Mad Ramblings\nArilou Turns Ten\nIt's hard believe, but it was ten years ago on this day that I was promoted to the rank of junior wizard in a little known game called Wyvern. Although the game has twice gone down for long periods of time since that day and I have since retired from it, I have consistently been affiliated with the game, in some capacity or another, for that entire time. I've done and seen a lot along the way, but as I did in my five year anniversary blog, I'd like to use this space to just reflect on my early days with the game.\nIf you go back to the last anniversary blog of mine, you'll see me discuss the development of my first area, Forgotten Oak. I had actually been planning to mark this date by releasing at least the redone village maps for that island of lost souls (fyi - in my plans for the area, the island map would be done away with and also replaced with dozens of individual maps that you would have to traverse much like Amita, only on a larger scale). However, since that's not possible with the game being down and all, let's talk a bit about my second completed area; Amita.\nYou may not know this, but although Amita is the second area I released, it's actually the third that I worked on. My second attempt at an area was a quest for the golem temple that's to the east of the Forgotten Oak village. I spent about two months working on it and got to almost 200 maps before realizing it was absolute garbage and decided to trash the whole thing. Ultimately, it was an important learning experience and while I still had a ways to go at that point, it helped me when it came to future projects like Amita.\nIronically, though, Amita is something I put together in about 26 hours in response to a discussion on the wizard forum about how we needed more low level content. The end result was 37 maps (it has since ballooned to over 250 maps - I kid you not) including six Orc Tower maps that I had previously worked on with the intention of putting directly on the world map (it was to appear on the land mass that later housed Terrim, but I re-purposed it while working on Amita as I realized how well it fit). Believe it or not but that simple tower was actually ahead of its time. I had been noticing how common it was for people to get trapped in multi-map monster areas, as anyone who has played for any amount of time has, and so I decided to create this tower that starts with a non-claimable map and then diverges into five monster maps (east, west, north, up, and down). To illustrate this I combined the maps together in one image:\nIt may not seem like much, but it was something different and I was able to build on it to make it a lot more interesting at a later date. If you go there when the game is up, you will see that each of those side maps now has multiple maps and there are paths leading from one to the other so a player can find their way out by progressing forward if their path backwards is blocked. I never did get a chance to release a redone version of the top or bottom floors, but the kobold basement has become kobold tunnels with lots of little paths in the general shape of a spiderweb. So that same multi-path motif continues into the rest of the tower's maps. It looks a lot better now, (see the below image of the entrance for comparison) but I'm disappointed that I didn't originally take the time to properly measure all the maps so that these side rooms and hallways all fit together like puzzle pieces. This especially became an issue for me after I finally fixed Amita's main maps so that they could come together properly when I made those sign maps for it (it had bothered me for awhile, but working on that map gave me the push I needed to make it happen).\nSpeaking of Amita's central area, obviously it didn't always look as it did now with forest paths and districts having their own maps. Originally it was this big 40x43 map that you can see below (note: not all graphics are the same as the ones players saw when Amita went live and, yes, I know you can see what's behind the hedges, but it's not a trade secret so don't worry about it). I don't know why, but when designing it I felt compelled to start drawing a wall in the upper portion of the map and I suddenly asked myself why there would be a city wall in only one portion of this forested village's map. I had just previously read a book about a city with inner walls that was meant to separate the wealthy from the near rebellious rift-raft and that's when it hit me that this would make a good basis for my own story and Amita's plot took off from there.\nNext thing I knew, I had the gatehouse and the secret tunnel in place. Then I started dropping plot points about how the villagers hate the merchants, how there's hostility between the peasants and the guards, (hence the two taverns) and how people have been using the tunnel to escape the harsh rule of their tyrannical \"king.\" It's interesting because I was trying to get away from Forgotten Oak's dark design with both the area that I scrapped and Amita. Instead, I ended up with was something that appears light and happy on the surface, but is dark and oppressive if you look deeper. I have found that this is a common motif in my work as a paradise itself is just not interesting. There needs be some intertwined madness on, or bubbling just below, the surface. Otherwise, what's the draw for people to want to learn more about the area they're in?\nGetting back to map design, I think we can all agree that Amita has come a long way since it's early days. Although, I actually started seriously updating it toward the end of 2003 as I made an account to further test the area to see if there was anything I could tweak. I was hoping just to get a feel for anything that might be annoying for new players so I noticed, for example, how irritating it was to die in the merchant houses and then have to go all the way down to the hospital to heal and then go all the way back up to continue fighting. So I added fountains to the church. I also noticed how annoying it was to have to go through patches of tree terrain, especially that patch just southeast of the church. So I began to wonder how I could maintain this forest look and, at the same time, make it easier for people to get around the village as it's a low level area and they don't really have to deal with that in Davos or New Verden. Then it hit me, like a ton of brick,s that I should split that one map into a whole bunch of maps, which I very quickly did and then put online without any fanfare. Ironically, it's not easier to get around as there's now a lot more space to traverse and new players often get lost (causing me to eventually put mall style maps of the village all over the place). But, it looks awesome and it's a whole lot more realistic.\nI don't know why wizards had never done this before. Instead, wizards would generally make really big town maps and since large maps were a problem, Legolas would sometimes suggest that people make them smaller by splitting them in two. That's what ended up happening Coran - It was one big map and so Zifa took the top half, copied it into a blank map, deleted the bottom half in the original, and added teleporters between them. Zifa put a lot of detail in that city and so it doesn't look like a big box, but most towns did because that's what they were. The first thing everyone would do when making a town was create a big blank square or rectangle and start filling it in with wild abandon. Part of it may be laziness as it's easier to keep track of, but multiple maps just \"feel\" great in-game. There's such a scope to them that it that makes you feel like you're really exploring a majestic fantasy city or a wooded fantasy village when done properly. And it looks really great when you take all those maps and put them together in one big image. You've probably seen the small version of that for those direction signs in Amita, but one day I'll probably put a larger version up on my website. In the meantime, here's a look at just the slums so that you can compare it with the original version of Amita's main map.\nAll in all, Amita is my favorite area [of the areas that I have created] and my closest to being completed. Not that you can ever really declare an area completed in this type of game as there's always the possibility that new ideas will cause you to add on to existing content. But, it's not too far off from my current vision. I had planned to release some redone maps along with completed guard housing maps, maps for the logging operation that is the reason behind a select few's wealth, a small quest series, some additions to the PK Forest, and I wanted to filter some more mini-quests into existing and planned maps. It may sound like a lot, but I had been expecting that I could get it all done by March 16th, 2013 (ten years to the day that Amita was made public) and jokingly announce that I finally completed an area. Alas, the second great downtime put \"a bit\" of a kink in that. Although, even though I'm now retired, there exists a certain amount of completed unreleased content that I can throw up on the server when the game comes back (assuming, it doesn't go open source or anything). So if you're fan on Amita, you have that to look forward to.\n-That rocky path was actually inspired by my grandparent's property. There was originally a house there that had a stone pathway leading up to it, but it burned down and they rebuilt it further back. However, since they no longer had enough matching stones to reach the front of the house, they moved a few right below the front porch and let the rest of stones be taken over by grass. Anyway, one day I was there playing cards with my siblings and father while my mother was working outside when suddenly, my mother came in to declare that she had uncovered one of these rocks. Having grown up with a love for the idea of digging up the unknown (and thus wanting to be either an archaeologist or paleontologist) I was legitimately excited and went right out to help her dig up the rest while my siblings and father basically responded with a collective \"meh.\"\nWe didn't end up uncovering them in order, (and we never did finish) so as we were doing this there were breaks in the path. I liked that uncompleted image so much that when I went to make Amita I wanted to recreate that, but we didn't have anything resembling those stones. As a result, I just used the stone terrain until, one day, Legolas commented on how he didn't like the look and I concurred, telling him what I had envisioned. The next thing I knew he presented me with those stone road graphics that are remarkably dead on to their real life inspiration, which is a testament how awesome Legolas is. Anyway, I happily went about placing them throughout Amita and made sure to maintain the breaks as the idea is that there once was a completed road here, but it has hasn't been properly maintained and therefore grass and dirt has overtaken parts of it.\n-Amita's similarities to where my grandparents lived [in the latter parts of their lives] doesn't stop with the stone pathway. It was very green and lush with a few evergreen trees on the property and it was surrounded by woods on all sides. If you go down to oneof the meadows, there's a path leading to a creek just like there's a path leading to the creek in Amita (although the one in real life is much, much smaller). The real life creek doesn't end in a pond, but actually neither does the Amita one - Nobody knows this, but in my head the creek actually continues on underground.\n-Wrath of the Fey isn't the only quest I had planned for Amita. I have a write up (and some partially completed maps) for a four part quest series that throws you into the plight of our villagers as a way of exploring more of the area's backstory. Each individual quest has its own name and the series of those quests is called \"Trouble in Paradise\" which is a play on the idea that Amita looks so wonderful of the surface but some really horrible things are going on there.\n-I used to play this Sega Genesis game called \"Light Crusader\" that was about a knight who returned home to find the kingdom he served was going through a hard time. To make a long story short, villagers were disappearing and nobody knew why. Well, you would go around talking to the remaining villagers and all the while this very sad music would be playing that, at least from memory, kind of reminded me of the church music that Wyvern has. So, when I heard that I knew that's that was the music for Amita. When I listen to it, I conjurer images of a guard knocking a peasant into the mud, a mother weeping as her child is taken off to be trained as a soldier, and a family shivering in the cold because their house burned down. Basically, all these really horrible, sad, depressing things. Therefore if you ever wondered why I chose that music for Amita or if you thought that I put no effort into the selection... well, here you are.\n-Amita actually means sister in Latin. The reason I selected this is because I thought that it would be great if Amita was built to be the sister village to New Verden and now it's this closed off enclave that, frankly, is no New Verden at all. But, also an interestingly little bit is that I decided to create a little theme around this and use Latin words for many of the names of npcs throughout the village. I picked words that represented something about them so, for example, Panis means bread. Unfortunately, I didn't realize some people might misconstrue that at the time, but luckily only a select few players have ever brought it up [and one wizard].\n-Since the ogre chieftain map hasn't been available in the orc tower for quite some time, you may not be aware that there's actually a note there from the Oaken Village sorcerer responsible for luring the orc hoards to the island. In the letter he promises that orc tribe a reward if they come to the island and join other tribes in the besieging Oaken Village. So, there's a nice little tie in there.\n-There's a lot of hidden little bits within the village that you're probably unaware of it. I love easter eggs in games and there were actually quite a few in Wyvern's early content that are fun to look for. So, I threw a lot into Amita. Hint: Certain trees might have something carved on them if you look closely.\n-You may not have been around long enough to remember, but there used to be a gateway on New Verden's west wall that led to the path that led to Davos. Obviously, that means that you would arrive in Davos from the east, not the west as you have undoubtedly become so used to it. Well, I had actually designed Amita with the intention that when you got to what is now Davos' entrance, you would come to the path that leads to Amita (this, btw, is also why the creek ends like it does as I couldn't have it continue to the edge of the map and then not re-appear in Davos). However, Rhialto immediately began speaking about finding a place for it on the world map, so I didn't even bother mentioning that and an icon was then created/placed a little bit south of New Verden. However, some time later, Legolas came to me with the idea of putting them all together with the tutorial in the center. So those three villages ended up together after all.\n-Have you have been to the maze east of the orc tower and been frustrated to no end while trying to navigate multiple maps? Well you're not alone. Few have ever completed it since its too complicated for players new to the game and it doesn't reward experienced players enough to encourage them to try it. But, yours truly has been caught in its web even though I designed it - As you may or may not know, the trick to the maze is unlocking items hidden within it in a specific order and, when working on it, I made a little hand drawn map detailing what order players had to go in to aid me when putting it all together.\nWell, when all was said and done, I got this idea that I should test it as a player would to get a feel for how difficult it truly was as wizards hadn't been linking together multiple mazes like this and so I didn't have a solid reference for what I was putting players through. As a result, I didn't use any of my wizard powers to help myself get around and I turned that hand drawn map over. Well, big mistake - I completely forgot the order and was stumbling around for who remembers how long going back and forth through the maze trying to randomly figure out where I had to go to next and I cannot begin to tell you how out of my mind with frustration I was. So, for those few of you who have taken up the challenge, I want to let you know that I feel your pain and am so very sorry.\nThat said, I'm not so sorry that I can say that I would never have put anyone through that again. In fact, I had planned to utilize and expand on the idea of linking together maze maps in future areas. I won't go into that now, but perhaps I'll blog about one of my more evil unseen designs in the future.\nHave a question regarding Amita? Ask me in the comments.\nPosted by Arilou at 11:57 PM 3 comments\nArilou\nI'm just your average, insane wizard that enjoys world domination and feasting on the blood of innocents. I also like long walks on the beach and fluffy bunny rabbits, as well as having intelligent conversation with the voices in my head. All in all, I'd describe myself as a fairly normal fellow.\nReview Wyvern\n10 Year Anniversary Retrospective - Part I\nFebruary 4, 2001. That, my friends, is the day that Wyvern was opened up for public testing. I would like to be posting this in the cabocho...\nIt's hard believe, but it was ten years ago on this day that I was promoted to the rank of junior wizard in a little known game called W...\n10 Year Anniversary Retrospective - Part II\nBy now I'm sure you all know that to people who work on games, \"soon\" really means; \"when we feel like it.\" So, is ...\nA glimpse into the mind of little Arilou\nThe Sp ace A lien Once a spaceship was going to space. It was going to Mars.The astronauts found a dead monster. Then they heard a noise.T...\nLogged Ideas of Wyvern - Act Five\nI'm free! Finally free this most horrid idea of using my blog to showcase player ideas. I can finally get back to plotting all the lovel...\nWyvern Videos Segment 1\nEver find yourself wondering what Wyvern videos there are out there? Well even if you haven't, there are a growing number of them out in...\nFirst Day of Summer Feast - The Screenshots\nAs expected, not many of you took the time to help document the day. Which is totally fine as I didn't want people to have to worry abou...\nThe Future of Content in Wyvern\nFor a number of years now we've been pushing the boundaries of what came before. The graphics have improved, the design of our maps have...\nFirst Day of Summer Feast - The Day After\nIf I do say so myself, the feast was a smashing success. It was a lot of fun all around and I think most everyone would agree. In the next c...\nBattling Monsters\nJust for fun I thought I'd post this little \"screenshot\" of a battle between an adventuring band and the creatures they have ...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1411149"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5695943236351013,"wiki_prob":0.4304056763648987,"text":"the HAES® files: History of the Health At Every Size® Movement, Part I\nby Barbara Altman Bruno, Ph.D., LCSW\nIn response to requests from our readers, the Health At Every Size Blog is honored to reprint Barbara Altman Bruno’s history of the HAES movement. Most of the installments of this history have been previously published in ASDAH member newsletters. This post is Part One in a series that will appear in the coming months.\nThe Health at Every Size (HAES) model exists because of prejudice against extra weight/fatness. This prejudice has occurred quite recently in the history of humans, since a relatively adequate and reliable supply of food has only been available during the past two to three centuries.\nScrutiny of weight only became a growing social issue around the beginning of the 20th century. One of the contributing factors was the development of ready-to-wear clothes, which did not allow for as much individual size variation as had clothing that was hand-tailored. The size constrictions of ready-to-wear helped prompt Lena Bryant, founder of Lane Bryant, to comment that rather than trying to make one’s figure conform to fashion, fashion should conform to the figure.\nAnother factor was the development of reliable, portable and affordable scales, so that for the first time, people could measure their weight in private. Yet a third factor was improved eye care, which led to people scrutinizing!\nOne of the major experiments to validate many of the experiences of weight-loss dieters occurred in the mid-1940s. Ancel Keys wanted to study the effects of starvation on humans(1). Keys wanted to find out the conditions and needs of populations in Europe after liberation. He recruited 36 young men, conscientious objectors, who were tested and found to be physically and psychologically healthy. He housed them in dorms at the University of Minnesota.\nFor the first three months of the study, the men were able to eat freely (about 3,500 calories a day). Their routines required them to walk about three miles per day and do other movement and chores. For the next six months, their rations were cut by half. Their diet consisted of what might be available to eat in European famine areas – mostly root vegetables, cabbage, and wheat – but they were given adequate vitamins, minerals, and protein. Within about two months, they lost half of their total body fat. They became irritable, lethargic, unkempt, uninterested in sex, and obsessed with food. They all lost a quarter of their starting weight.\nOne cut off a fingertip, two suffered severe enough mental breakdowns to excuse them from the full six months of semi-starvation.\nAt the end of this period, the men were given more food but remained miserable and ravenous, even after eating an average of 5,000 calories per day. Not until nine months after recovering their starting weights did their body fat and muscle return. Six of the men ended up with an average of nine and a half pounds more body fat than before entering the experiment.\nKeys’ study, The Biology of Human Starvation, was published in 1950. During that same year the Framingham study began, which would eventually show that life expectancy was lowest for thin men, followed by the lightest and heaviest women. A U-shaped curve, wherein except at the weight extremes, weight makes little difference in life expectancy, has since been found in the Framingham study and many others.\nDuring the 1950s, the Cold War was in full throttle, and one of the fears was that Americans, enjoying postwar prosperity, were becoming “soft on Communism.”\nAlso in full throttle was psychoanalysis. In 1957, psychotherapists Helen and Harold Kaplan concluded, “Almost all conceivable psychological impulses and conflicts have been accused of causing overeating.”(2) A few years later, Albert Stunkard would find no correlation between neurosis and overweight, but an inverse correlation between weight and class.\nThe decade of the 1960s was one of intense possibility, both for good and bad. A charismatic, youthful president vowed to put a person on the moon before the end of the decade, and ultimately succeeded. The Beatles rose to mega stardom. Birth control pills finally gave women control over their reproductive processes and the second wave of feminism began. The Civil Rights Act was passed. President John Kennedy, his brother/attorney general Senator Robert Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., were assassinated. The Stonewall riots began the gay rights movement. The Vietnam War raged, as did the counterculture protests against it.\nAlso, Weight Watchers began and became popular around the United States. British waif-like model Twiggy became the new beauty standard and Thin was In. And the gastric bypass began.\nIn Vermont, Ethan Allen Sims experimented on students and later, prisoners, to test intentional weight gain of 20-30 pounds. One subject required 7,000 calories a day to maintain weight gain. All the subjects doubled their normal daily intake of food and required an extra 2,000 calories a day to maintain their extra weight. Like the subjects of Keys’ weight-loss experiment in the 1940s, Sims’ subjects also got lethargic and apathetic, and rapidly returned to their pre-experiment weights once they stopped overeating.\nAn article called “More People Should Be Fat!” appeared in a major national magazine, The Saturday Evening Post. Its author was Lew Louderback, whose experience as a fat person married to a fat person was augmented by research into fatness. The article said that:\nSexual responsiveness in women is positively and significantly correlated with a general positive attitude toward food and eating.\nAmong survivors of heart attacks, fat people live longer than thin people.\nFat people have a lower risk of tuberculosis.\nFat people have a lower suicide rate.\nThere are “thin fat people” who suffer physically and emotionally from having dieted to below their natural body weight.\nForced changes in weight are not only likely to be temporary, but also to cause physical and emotional damage.\nDieting seems to unleash destructive emotional forces.\nThe five-year cure rate for obesity is virtually zero.\nEating normally, without dieting, allowed Louderback and his wife to relax, feel physically better, and normalize and stabilize their eating and weight.\nIt has now become so “in” to be thin that fat people’s civil rights are repeatedly and openly violated.\nFat people are discriminated against in jobs and in education.\nThe persecution of fat people is not for health reasons, but aesthetics.\nBill Fabrey, a young engineer with a fat wife and a history of preferring larger women, read Louderback’s article and was elated to find that he was not alone. He had been enraged at the mistreatment accorded his wife and other fat people. He contacted Louderback in 1968 and they helped each other: He helped Louderback research his subsequent book, Fat Power, and Louderback supported Fabrey in founding the National Association to Aid Fat Americans (NAAFA) in 1969, a nonprofit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people through public education, research, advocacy, and member support. NAAFA would subsequently change its name by the mid-1980s to the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.\nThe size acceptance movement was born.\n(1) Ancel Keys, The Biology of Human Starvation. University of Minnesota Press, 1950.\n(2) As quoted in Bennett, W, and Gurin, J, The Dieter’s Dilemma. Basic Books, 1982, p. 29.\n© Copyright 2009, Barbara Altman Bruno\nBarbara Altman Bruno, Ph.D., LCSW, is a clinical social worker, size acceptance activist, and HAES pioneer. She has presented at clinical conferences, appeared in television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and demonstrations, and has written many articles, including well-being columns for larger people, guidelines for therapists who treat fat clients, a brief history of HAES, and a book, Worth Your Weight (what you CAN do about a weight problem). She is former co-chair of education for ASDAH and is on NAAFA’s Advisory Board.\nPosted in ASDAH | 6 Comments »\nTags: Ancel Keys, Bill Fabrey, biology of human starvation, fat, fat acceptance, HAES, Health At Every Size, lane bryant, Lew Louderback, NAAFA, national organization to advance fat acceptance, size acceptance","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1468436"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6526545882225037,"wiki_prob":0.6526545882225037,"text":"Five Geography Themes in the United States\nBy Grace Riley ; Updated September 26, 2017\n••• Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images\nPeople can identify locations in absolute or relative terms.\nStudying the whole world -- which is the essence of geography -- is an imposing task that becomes much more approachable when our knowledge of the world is categorized into distinct concepts. In 1984, the National Council for Geographic Education and the Association of American Geographers designed the five themes of geography to facilitate geography education. In subsequent years, National Geography Standards became the basis for curricula, but the five themes remain part of the foundation of geography education.\nLocation: Where Is It?\nThere are two types of location: absolute and relative. Absolute location is precise, fixed and unchangeable, such as longitude and latitude or a street address. An absolute location is independent of the surrounding geography and remains the same even when other geographic qualities change. For example, when Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861, the longitude and latitude of Memphis remained 35 degrees, 15 minutes north latitude and 90 degrees, 4 minutes west longitude. Conversely, a relative location is dependent on the surrounding geography and, in some cases, could change or cease to be true over time. For instance, in 1861, Memphis was located on the banks of the Mississippi River about 120 miles south of the Union-Confederate border. Both of those locations are relative because they are based on Memphis’ distance from other locations. While Memphis’ relative location on the shores of the Mississippi remains true as of 2013, the city’s relative location 120 miles south of the Union-Confederate border ceased to be true in 1865 when the Union and Confederacy rejoined to become one nation again.\nPlace: What Is It Like?\nThough location and place sound similar, they describe completely different attributes. “Location” identifies where something is, while “place” identifies qualities of a location. You can articulate place by describing physical, natural, human or cultural features. For example, Memphis is a humid city on the banks of the Mississippi River, and most of the city’s residents speak English. The city’s position on the banks of the Mississippi River is its location, its high humidity describes its natural place, and the predominance of English among its citizens describes its place in cultural terms.\nHuman/Environment Interaction\nHumans and the environments in which they live constantly impact each other. The glittering skyline of a metropolis or cultivated rows of apple trees in an orchard are examples of humans impacting their environments because they had to change the environment to create those landscapes. The ability of the apple trees to thrive in their location, due to rich soil, or the consequences of a flood filling the streets of the metropolis are examples of how the environment can impact humans. The interaction between humans and their environments can be positive or negative. While pollution is a negative way that humans interact with their environments, picking up trash to remove pollution is a positive way that they affect their surroundings.\nThere are three primary components of movement: origin, path and destination. An immigrant arriving at Ellis Island, a family driving to the Grand Canyon, a rock slide, a river emptying into an ocean and a shipment of goods all are examples of movement. In the context of studying geography, describing movement may be an important quality of the person or thing that moves, or it may be an important quality that connects two locations. For example, if a turn-of-the-century immigrant traveled from Ireland to Ellis Island, the immigrant's act of movement would be critical to understanding his own geographic location. Additionally, his movement also would describe a transatlantic immigration route that links two places: Ireland and Ellis Island.\nA region is a physical area that is united by a specific physical, natural, human or cultural characteristic. A region may include areas that share the same physical feature, such as the states that comprise the East Coast of the United States. Cultural regions are born of a shared cultural trait that most, if not all, of the people in the region possess, such as the U.S. South. The South has semiformal, debated physical boundaries, but it is defined by a specific set of cultural attributes, including a regional dialect and cuisine.\nNational Geographic Education: Frequently Asked Questions\nArkansas Geographic Alliance: Teaching the Five Fundamental Themes of Geography\nHunter College of the City University of New York: The Five Themes of Geography\nNational Geographic: National Geography Standards Index\nGrace Riley has been a writer and photographer since 2005, with work appearing in magazines and newspapers such as the \"Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.\" She has also worked as a school teacher and in public relations and polling analysis for political campaigns. Riley holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in American studies, political science and history, all from the University of Arkansas.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line27188"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9005514979362488,"wiki_prob":0.9005514979362488,"text":"Sessions: Education, enforcement needed in opioid fight\nUpdated: 2:07 PM EST Mar 7, 2017\nRecalling his days as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told thousands of New Hampshire young people Tuesday that it would take education, prevention and a crackdown on drug gangs to turn the tide against the rising rates of addiction in the country. Sessions, who made a surprise appearance at a summit on opioid awareness for middle and high school students in Manchester, New Hampshire, described how \"drug use had surged\" and \"cities were filled with heroin addicts\" during the 1980s. But thanks to prevention and education, he said \"drug use was no longer cool and acceptable. Crime fell and addiction fell.\" \"We can turn the tide against drugs and addiction again in America just like we did previously,\" he said. \"We have proven that education and telling people the truth about drugs and addiction will result in better choices. Drug use will fall. Lives will be saved. Less money will be going into cartels and the drugs gangs, weakening them.\" Sessions said prevention — as emphasized Tuesday — is just as critical today as New Hampshire and other states battle a surge in opioid abuse. Drug overdose deaths resulting from the abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers rose 33 percent in the past five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Hampshire saw a 191 percent spike. \"A lot of people still don't realize how addictive prescription drugs can be,\" Sessions said. \"These drugs are powerful, and opioid addiction can take hold quickly. Too many teens and adults have overdosed, and the road ahead for people fighting addiction is so tough.\" Going forward, Sessions said the federal government will focus on the excessive prescription of pain medications in the country as well as the criminal gangs that bring drugs into the country. \"Criminal enforcement is essential to stopping the transnational organizations which ship drugs into our country in huge amounts and to stop the thugs and gangs who use violence and extortion to move their products,\" he said. Treatment, he said, also is a tool, but often comes too late after addicts have lost their jobs and families. And it often doesn't succeed. \"For many, addiction can be a death sentence. I've seen families spend all their saving and retirement money on treatment programs to try to help their children just to see sometimes those programs fail,\" he said. \"It is so heartbreaking.\"\nMANCHESTER, N.H. —\nRecalling his days as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told thousands of New Hampshire young people Tuesday that it would take education, prevention and a crackdown on drug gangs to turn the tide against the rising rates of addiction in the country.\nSessions, who made a surprise appearance at a summit on opioid awareness for middle and high school students in Manchester, New Hampshire, described how \"drug use had surged\" and \"cities were filled with heroin addicts\" during the 1980s. But thanks to prevention and education, he said \"drug use was no longer cool and acceptable. Crime fell and addiction fell.\"\n\"We can turn the tide against drugs and addiction again in America just like we did previously,\" he said. \"We have proven that education and telling people the truth about drugs and addiction will result in better choices. Drug use will fall. Lives will be saved. Less money will be going into cartels and the drugs gangs, weakening them.\"\nSessions said prevention — as emphasized Tuesday — is just as critical today as New Hampshire and other states battle a surge in opioid abuse. Drug overdose deaths resulting from the abuse of heroin and prescription painkillers rose 33 percent in the past five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New Hampshire saw a 191 percent spike.\n\"A lot of people still don't realize how addictive prescription drugs can be,\" Sessions said. \"These drugs are powerful, and opioid addiction can take hold quickly. Too many teens and adults have overdosed, and the road ahead for people fighting addiction is so tough.\"\nGoing forward, Sessions said the federal government will focus on the excessive prescription of pain medications in the country as well as the criminal gangs that bring drugs into the country.\n\"Criminal enforcement is essential to stopping the transnational organizations which ship drugs into our country in huge amounts and to stop the thugs and gangs who use violence and extortion to move their products,\" he said.\nTreatment, he said, also is a tool, but often comes too late after addicts have lost their jobs and families. And it often doesn't succeed.\n\"For many, addiction can be a death sentence. I've seen families spend all their saving and retirement money on treatment programs to try to help their children just to see sometimes those programs fail,\" he said. \"It is so heartbreaking.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1345198"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6564459800720215,"wiki_prob":0.3435540199279785,"text":"A look at LAT1\nUniversity of Eastern Finland\nProper delivery is pivotal in nearly every part of life, from jokes to packages, but there are few instances where it is more important than in the case of pharmaceutical drugs. Delivering medicines or therapeutics to the right targets, at the right dosage and at the right time, is a key focus in every indication. But some drugs are harder to deliver than others, either because of their targets or their formulations. And of such targets, the brain has to be one of the biggest culprits in complicating drug delivery, thanks to the blood-brain barrier.\nThis barrier protects the central nervous system by serving as a gatekeeper for all substances from the blood into the brain; harmful or unfamiliar substances are blocked while safe substances, such as nutrients and oxygen, pass through. Most drugs fail to successfully pass the blood-brain barrier in high enough levels to have a therapeutic effect, and trying to increase doses enough to get such an effect can come with unwanted side effects.\nThere is one potential opening, however—the blood-brain barrier expresses a number of transporters that serve to ferry safe substances and nutrients from the blood into the brain. And a research team at the University of Eastern Finland recently published results in Scientific Reports detailing a method for harnessing one such transporter.\nThe transporter in question is L-Type Amino Acid Transporter 1 (LAT1), which is highly expressed within the brain. As explained on the University’s website, LAT1 “is essential for the transport of large neutral amino acids such as phenylalanine and leucine from extracellular fluids into the cells. Additionally, it transports amino acid-containing drugs such as gabapentin, L-DOPA and baclofen across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). In normal cell membranes, LAT1 is expressed only in blood-brain and blood-placenta barriers. Much of its appeal as a drug carrier is due to its relative high abundance at the BBB versus other tissues. Besides having an important role in brain delivery, LAT1 is significantly up-regulated in several human cancer types including e.g., glioma.”\nAdjust Professor Kristiina Huttunen of the University of Eastern Finland’s School of Pharmacy leads a group of researchers that have been studying this transporter for years. Their research has shown that LAT1 can be used for brain targeting and the delivery of drugs across the blood-brain barrier, and this most recent work has demonstrated that LAT1 can be used for intrabrain-targeted drug delivery after the blood-brain barrier has been bypassed. According to a University of Eastern Finland press release, this study also proved for the first time that LAT1 is expressed not only on the surface of neurons, but also in supporting cells, astrocytes and microglia.\nThe most interesting aspect of LAT1 is that by temporarily converting some drugs into prodrugs, those prodrugs can use LAT1 to enter cells, thereby enabling greater drug delivery. This was demonstrated with the prodrugs of compounds such as ketoprofen (an anti-inflammatory drug) and ferulic acid (an antioxidant), which saw improved cellular uptake versus the parent drugs.\n“We were also able to identify structural requirements for the prodrugs that could enable targeting between the different brain cell types in future,\" noted first author of the study, PhD student Johanna Huttunen.\nOn the website of the University of Eastern Finland’s Drug Targeting Research Group, which is led by Prof. Huttunen, it was noted that in addition to higher drug accumulation, this approach “is expected to decrease simultaneously unpleasant adverse [e]ffects that rise from unselective drug delivery and distribution of drugs to off-target organs.” Other transporters of interest to the group include “Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptides (OATPs), Monocarboxylate Transporters (MCTs), Organic Cation Transporters (OCTs) and Organic Anion Transporters (OATs),” all of which “are highly and/or selectively expressed on the blood-brain-barrier, and in certain brain cells, such as neurons, astrocytes and microglia or in activated immune cells.”\n“By this approach it is possible to multiply the exposure of target cells to the drugs with therapeutically relevant concentrations and solve one of the main hurdles in CNS-drug development; lack of efficacy has been the greatest single reason (46%) for CNS-drug failure in clinical trials in the past … Moreover, this study shows that by careful prodrug design that takes into account transporter selectivity, brain cell selective drug delivery and targeting between neurons, astrocytes or microglia can be obtained in future, which can lead to improved efficacy and safety of neuroprotective drugs within the brain,” the authors concluded.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line665957"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.682153582572937,"wiki_prob":0.682153582572937,"text":"Acoustic Christmas Concert With John Tesh!\nClick here to get tickets (and VIP tickets) to see John Tesh on Friday, December 6th, at 8:00 pm!\nIf you had a TV in the 80s and 90s, there’s a good chance John Tesh was on it at one time or another: maybe as the host of Entertainment Tonight, or the Olympics, or the Tour de France, or maybe playing in the rain during his widely acclaimed Live at Red Rock concert on PBS.\nBut there’s more to John Tesh than his TV and hosting persona. He’s also an acclaimed musician and performer with six music Emmys, two Grammy nominations, three gold records, seven PBS specials, and eight million records sold.\nOver the past 30+ years, John Tesh’s exciting career has spanned newscasting to sportscasting, composing theme songs to hosting his own radio show – and everything in between.\n“A lot of it is just sort of saying yes and just going. When I was 20 years old, I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a performer my whole life even though I wasn’t comfortable doing it, it was just something that was in me,” Tesh told Christian Wolf during the TOCA Backstage Podcast.\nTOCA Backstage interview with John Tesh.\nFrom Stage Fright to Spotlight\nBut being a star didn’t come easily to Tesh, although he had a talent for music. He was awkward and felt like he didn’t fit in anywhere.\n“I was horribly unpopular…When I was in junior high school, I was 6’6” and I weighed 155, and I had braces, and I smelled like Clearisil because I had acne, so really, the only thing for me to do was to play piano and study trumpet and be a band geek, which ended up being a big blessing for me. I learned what focus, deep work, practice was, and it’s stayed with me,” he said.\nAlthough he had talent and a deep rooted desire to entertain, Tesh battled with crippling stage fright.\n“I tried to muscle my way through it, but that didn’t work…it followed me all the way through college, even though I was playing garage bands all through high school…when I got out of college, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to tour or do anything if I didn’t get rid of it. So I hired a guy who specializes in stage fright, and he worked with me for two years, some basic techniques. Things like practicing failing, making mistakes and how you’re going to get out of it…and the other thing, I still use this technique to this day…when you come to the show and you sit in one of the seats, I will have sat in that seat. I sit in all the seats, I meet everybody in the concert hall, all the stagehands, the people who sell the tickets…so that’s my living room, like you’re coming into my house, so when I walk out on stage, I’m totally comfortable,” Tesh said. “There is life on the other side of stage fright!”\nAn “All In” Mentality\nDespite his stage fright, Tesh still knew in his heart of hearts that he wanted to be a performer. Even when he went off to college to study textile chemistry (his father’s choice, not his), Tesh felt pulled towards the spotlight. His junior year in college he took a radio television class and loved it. It felt right and he knew this was what he wanted to do.\nAfter forging a professor’s signature on a form while trying to switch majors mid-semester, Tesh ended up suspended from the university indefinitely – and thrown out of the house.\nThen he did what any determined 20 year with nothing to lose would do: he made a fake radio demo tape in the hopes of getting hired at the local station.\n“[It’s like] Cortez, when you’ve burned your ships and you only have one choice, you have to go. That spirit of risk is what caused me to say yes, to…going to sports even though I knew nothing about sports, yes to Entertainment Tonight even though they only gave me a 13 week contract, and then yes to starting the radio show. Because what’s the worst that could happen?” Tesh said.\nAnd it worked. The station manager saw Tesh’s work ethic and determination – and gave him a job as a janitor. Since then Tesh has steadily worked his way up the ranks, often leaning into the unknown and taking paths even when he didn’t know where they would lead him.\nThese days Tesh keeps busy hosting his own syndicated radio show/podcast with his wife Connie, and son Gib called Intelligence for Your Life. He’s also in the process of writing his memoir for publisher Harper Collins. And he continues to perform in concerts all around the country, including his upcoming Acoustic Christmas Concert right here in Torrance!\nAcoustic Christmas Concert\nJohn Tesh’s Acoustic Christmas Concert isn’t your average holiday program. Yes, there will be music, and an abundance of holiday cheer, but there will be some interesting, personal touches, too.\n“What you’re going to see on stage is pretty much what you would see if you were to come here for Thanksgiving or Christmas at my house. My son, Gib, will be with us, he plays the ukulele and he’s a comedian. Prima, my daughter, who’s 25, is a ballet and modern dancer, she’ll be dancing with us…so you’ll really see Christmas in my living room on stage. We do some spoken word stuff, something we call an Old School Christmas, so it’s really a baby boomer Christmas,” Tesh said.\nCelebrate the Season!\nJohn Tesh will be performing his Acoustic Christmas Concert at the Armstrong Theatre on Friday, December 6th at 8:00 pm. Come celebrate the season with this extraordinary performer!\nVIP Tickets Available Now\nAlso available are VIP tickets for the ultimate John Tesh concert experience! VIP ticket holders receive:\nOne premium reserved ticket located in the first 5 rows\nVIP early entry into the venue\nExclusive meet & greet with John Tesh\nPersonal photograph with John Tesh\nVIP access to John Tesh’s preshow soundcheck\nCollectible tour program autographed by John Tesh
(exclusive to VIP package only!)\nExclusive John Tesh VIP merchandise item\nOfficial meet & greet laminate\nDon’t miss out on this chance to ring in the holiday season with this one-of-a-kind concert experience!\nGet Tickets to See John Tesh!\nBrother Yusef, a True Blues Original\nGet Into the Groove With Angel Town Combo!\nWhen Stars Collide – Nick and Terry Davies Play the Music of Elton John and Billy Joel\nA Conversation Between Generations – Croce Plays Croce\nThe Hot Licks & “The King of Folk-Swing,” Dan Hicks\nThe Art of Science With Jargie the Science Girl\nzoloft online without prescription","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line558539"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6719498038291931,"wiki_prob":0.3280501961708069,"text":"Y’all need to chill! Seriously!\nMitt Romney is the living embodiment of a President from Hollywood central casting. His all-American good looks and patrician bearing are reassuring to some folk and harkens back to the halcyon days of yesteryear when times were simple and dark people, women and gays knew their proper places. Following the lead of Congressional Republicans in racializing Obama’s policy agenda, Mitt Romney’s strategists, conscious of their diminishing odds of winning this election, elected to frame their horse’s throwback candidacy in a way that intentionally stokes a sense of white racial resentment. President Obama’s every thought, word and deed is construed as a racial attack on God-fearing, taxpaying white Americans. Whites are cast as the victims in this alternate Republican universe and Mitt Romney is the savior they’ve been praying for. It is a lie, like everything the modern Republican Party stands for. It doesn’t matter how confidently Mitt Romney recites his lies. A confident lie is still a lie. Remain calm. There is nothing that transpired yesterday between the contenders to America’s throne that should disturb any Obama partisan.\nLet’s review. In the span of 50 years, we’ve gone from, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” to the eleventh great grandson of the first enslaved African serving as President of the United States. God is speaking through this recent revelation in Obama’s family tree. Can you hear him? I believe in my sanctified soul that Barack Obama’s miraculous rise to the presidency was predestined. The African ancestry traceable through his “white” mother shatters the myth of white supremacy and cleanses the stain of chattel slavery. In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells his prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:10 states, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Every step this brotha has taken in the last thirty years has been ordered by The One Most High.\nEight years ago, Barack Obama was a minor state legislator nobody had ever heard of. He gamely took on the State Comptroller and a Multi-Millionaire Businessman for the chance to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Heavily outspent, he vanquished them both. Plucked from obscurity by John Kerry to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he electrified the nation. Two opponents, including his attractive Republican opponent, self-destructed in sex-scandals. Smears, misinformation and right-wing distortions, many of the same we hear today, were employed by an unhinged Republican to stop his rise. None worked. Four years later he went on to defeat the most formidible political dynasty the Democratic Party has ever produced to claim the Democratic nomination for President. The Clintons questioned his fitness for the Presidency and Bill Clinton dismissed his ambition as a “fairytale” and prompted Teddy Kennedy to endorse Obama after letting rip, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Oh, how the worm has turned. President and Mrs. Clinton both serve at Obama’s pleasure now.\nWe love him because he has always displayed the cool serenity and regal dignity that every child of God should emulate. This is the same president that shamed Donald Trump on Wednesday, punked his ass contemptuously on Saturday, and killed Bin Laden on Sunday. Don’t believe for one minute that an empty suit like Mitt Romney got under our president’s skin last night. Don’t fall for that. Obama set a trap and Romney took the bait. Romney shook his etch-a-sketch so hard that he broke it. This is the same president that allowed Republican extremism and obstructionism to trap them into the untenable position of opposing tax cuts, a grand bargain on deficit reduction and a debt limit extension. To hear some pundits tell it, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he always seems to come out on top.\nRomney still has much to answer for. The specificity of his budget and tax plan that journalists and pundits were critical of earlier in the week sure as hell didn’t materialize last night. What we heard was a lot of nonsensical doubletalk and backpedalling from what he was saying during the primaries. The Obama for America campaign is sure to take a hefty pound of flesh from Romney for his evasions and falsehoods. The ads should pretty much write themselves. All one has to do is stack Romney’s inconsistencies on top of one another and call it a damn day.\nThe corporate media knows that this race was over a long time ago. It doesn’t want to give up the ghost just yet because it invests the empty theatrics and ridiculous posturing of the modern presidential debate with more meaning than the serious policy discussions it was designed to facilitate. The contention that stagecraft means more than statecraft is a serious indictment of our fourth estate and an indication that the systemic corruption beneath the Media’s shiny façade threatens our democracy. We need to continue working, watching and praying for healing and racial reconciliation in our country.\nThere is a hymn that goes, “We’ve come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in His holy word… Just the other day I heard someone say he didn’t believe in God’s word. But I can truly say that God has made a way. And He’s never failed me yet. That’s why we’ve come this far by faith.”\nTags Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Book of Jeremiah, Debates, God, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Jeremiah 1:5, Mitt Romney, Racialization, Republican Party, We've Come This Far By Faith\nI’m Running\nFor the last twenty years I have struggled with a lifelong desire to be a political figure and the realization that American politics is infected with what bell hooks terms “White supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Trying to navigate shark infested political waters in a way that preserves my integrity has been a tough slog. I’ve tried volunteering on campaigns, I’ve even run some for people I thought brought something special to the public arena. I’ve tried writing and blogging. None of it quite fits me even though I had some success.\nI’ve been contacted by national writers from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times. During the 2008 campaign I even saw my blog mentioned on CNN. None of it was enough though. I allowed myself to become disillusioned with politics and watched passively as life passed me by.\nI’ve wasted a lot of time and I’m not getting any younger. Next year when I hit forty I need to fulfill what I’ve always thought was my purpose: running for public office. I ‘ve been obsessed with politics and policy for as long as I can remember and life is too short not to try and make the world a better place. I realize that I am just as fucking flawed as some of the politicians I despise and looking for perfection in this life is a fool’s errand.\nI am a progressive that believes in what the good people of Black Agenda Report call “The Black Consensus.” In sum, what that means is that we do no harm to the political, economic and social viability of the black community and that we do our level best to strengthen black institutions. The last thing we need is a dependant and prostrate black community willing to sell out for the crumbs of imperialism.\nCapitalism, for the most part, operates to the detriment of people of color. Not always, but mostly. It is the obligation of African American pol’s to level the playing field in any way possible. Some of you will complain that this explicit racial consciousness is un-American, but I can assure you that as a dreadlocked skeptical brotha, nobody allows me to forget my race. The knee-jerk apprehension when I enter white spaces is palpable.\nPresident Obama is the main example of this phenomenon. Since the day it was apparent that he would defeat Hillary Clinton, it has been open season. Conservatives have been ringing the bell and sounding a disturbing racial alarm. The sound and fury of conservatives signifies discomfort with everything Obama symbolizes. They refuse to accept his legitimacy as president and displace that into rhetoric questioning his citizenship, patriotism, and religion and they smear him as a socialist, Marxist, and Muslim.\nTheir thinly veiled racism and full throated hatred ain’t fooling nobody, honey. They want to “take their country back” from the unwashed hoards of Negroes, Latinos, Asians, and Gays of all persuasions and turn back the clock to a simpler time when they knew their proper places in the underclass.\nSome of us have gotten sidetracked the last 18 months worrying about these attacks, but it really isn’t about Obama, it’s about us, people. Obama is just the proxy, y’all, conservatives are attacking progressive progress in general and the black community in particular. Obama is a very flawed politician despite his many gifts. I admire him tremendously, but his penchant for defending an unacceptable status quo and softening the edges of America’s harsh imperialism is not really admirable. TripLBee said it best:\nWhen any President, including this one, glamorizes and sanitizes warfare, I will be offended. I found his speech offensive; especially because he knows he was spouting nonsense. Does he really want his daughters buying into his blather about the sanctity of waging war against the poorest country on the face of the Earth? He is sounding like every other emperor. It’s pathetic.\nLastly, I feel compelled to run because l feel an obligation to do something more than bitch and complain on a keyboard. Some folk can effect positive change that way, but I don’t think that is really my gift.\nTags Barack Obama, bell hooks, Black Agenda Report, black consensus, explicit racial consciousness, flawed politicians, harsh imperialism, Marxism, Muslim smear, Running for Office, Socialism, White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy, Xenophobia\nBarack Obama’s Fantasy Island\n“The delusion of power also appears to provide an escape for middle-class Negroes from the world of reality which pierces through the world of make-believe of the black bourgeoisie. The positions of power which they occupy in the Negro world often enable them to act autocratically towards other Negroes, especially when they have the support of the white community. In such cases the delusion of power may provide an escape from their frustrations. It is generally, however, when middle-class Negroes hold positions enabling them to participate in the white community that they seek in the delusion of power an escape from their frustrations.\nAlthough their position may be only a “token” of the integration of the Negro into American life, they will speak and act as if they were part of the power structure of American society. Negro advisors who are called into counsel by whites to give advice about Negroes are especially likely to find an escape from their feelings of inferiority in the delusion of power.”\n-E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie\nI am Skeptical Brotha, your blog host. Welcome to Barack Obama’s Fantasy Island.\nThe passing of actor Ricardo Montalban last month has reminded me of the power of fantasy and delusion. Portraying the fictional Mr. Roark, the owner of a mystical Fantasy Island where people paid munificent sums to live out their fantasies, Montalban became an icon of the seventies and eighties and for me, the personification of an era fixated on the make-believe of Ronald Reagan’s right-wing conservatism. Tall, elegant and regal, Ricardo Montalban possessed a rich baritone and perfect diction. In the late seventies, the Mexican-born actor was the “happy darkie” white America needed to facilitate their fantasies. Today, we have a tall, elegant and regal African American President with a rich baritone and perfect diction to fulfill that function.\nThe historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States has fueled some troubling delusions about the nature of power in this country and the role of African people in running it. It ain’t what some of y’all think it is.\nMontalban said of the iconic series Fantasy Island:\nWhat is appealing is the idea of attaining the unattainable and learning from it. Once you obtain a fantasy it becomes a reality, and that reality is not as exciting as your fantasy. Through the fantasies you learn to appreciate your own realities.\nBlackfolks have been stumblin’ around for the last two months as if we landed on Mr. Roark’s Fantasy Island. Metaphorically speaking, we’ve attained the seemingly unattainable fantasy of electing a Black President. Now, we’re about to enter the stage where the reality of Obama’s election won’t be as exciting as our collective fantasies. It is up to us to use this surreal event to appreciate the racist, imperialist reality of the world we still live in.\nLet me be clear. We ain’t running nothing up in here. We ain’t now and won’t be after the inauguration. Don’t get caught up in the delusion of power that Frazier wrote about or get any wild ideas about the real status of the Negro in American society. The white corporate power structure ain’t relinquished control of a damn thing, shug.\nThe View co-host, Sherri Shepherd, moved me to tears after the election when she retold how she would be able to tell her son that because of Barack Obama, there were no longer any limitations on the aspirations of black men in this country. We could do and be anything we wanted. Sherri tapped into the powerful flood of emotions that flowed as I wept with millions of people watching Barack Obama solemnly claim the Presidency.\nWhat Sherri said was raw—her pain jumped out of the screen. What she said felt real, but after the emotions subsided and I allowed myself the space to critically think and evaluate what I’d seen and heard over the course of the campaign, I knew immediately that it wasn’t true no matter how I longed for it to be. We can be many things, more than ever before, but I am still waiting on whether a Negro can be a progressive president.\nSherri’s claim is synonymous with the historic battle of African people in this country to be freed from the stigma of slavery and subjugation. It is what we’ve always demanded and what we’ve historically been denied. Barack Obama’s “victory” changed nothing in that respect. The battle for equality and economic justice continues.\nThe Price of Admission\nBarack Obama writes in Dreams of My Father about the advice given by a black mentor and father figure:\n“You’re just like the rest of these young cats out here. All you know is that college is the next thing you’re supposed to do. And the people who are old enough to know better, who fought all those years for your right to go to college—they’re just so happy to see you in there that they won’t tell you the truth. The real price of admission.”\n“Leaving your race at the door,” he said. “Leaving your people behind.” “…Understand something, boy. You’re not going to college to get educated. You’re going to get trained.\nThey’ll train you to want what you don’t need. They’ll train you to manipulate words so they don’t mean anything anymore. They’ll train you to forget what it is that you already know. They’ll train you so good, you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh*t. They’ll give you a corner office and invite you to fancy dinners, and tell you you’re a credit to your race. Until you want to actually start running things, and they’ll yank on your chain and let you know that you may be a well-trained, well-paid nigger, but you’re a nigger just the same.”\nBarack Obama understood from the beginning what the price of admission was for the U.S. Senate and the Presidency. He paid in full. What was the price? It was the unconditional acceptance of ruling class demands and an uncritical embrace of neoliberalism and globalization. The price of this bourgeoisie fantasy, if we knew what it really was, would be a price that most blackfolks would be unwilling to pay.\nBarack Obama cannot embody the aspirations of the African Diaspora because he is the president of the United States. As such, he is a tool of the corporate power structure that controls our country and the top spokesman for the ruthless neo-colonialism that oppresses the majority of African people through despotic institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization.\nIt’s time to grow up and wake up, black people. Deep down, we all know damn good and well what the deal is. It is time to snap out of the fantasy.\nAfrica Action, the oldest black-run lobby in D.C. that’s half-way decent in fighting for the rights of the entire African Diaspora succinctly summarizes the real obstacles to black self-determination:\nAfrica‘s massive external debt burden is the single biggest obstacle to the continent’s development and to the fight against HIV/AIDS. The over $200 billion that African countries owe to foreign creditors represents a crippling load that undermines economic and social progress. The All-Africa Conference of Churches has called this debt “a new form of slavery, as vicious as the slave trade”.\nThe albatross of illegitimate debt diverts money directly from spending on health care, education and other important needs. While most people in Africa live on less than $2 per day, African countries are forced to spend almost $14 billion each year servicing old, illegitimate debts to rich country governments and their institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Over the past two decades, African countries have paid out more in debt service to foreign creditors than they have received in development assistance or in new loans.\nMuch of Africa‘s foreign debt is illegitimate in nature, having been incurred by unrepresentative and despotic regimes, mainly during the era of Cold War patronage. Loans were made to corrupt leaders who used the money for their own personal gain, often with the full knowledge and support of lenders. These loans did not benefit Africa‘s people. More generally, many Africans question the notion of an African “debt” to the U.S. and European countries after centuries of exploitation. They ask, “Who really owes whom?”\nYet, despite the social and economic costs of this massive outflow of resources from the world’s poorest region, the wealthy creditors of Africa‘s debts continue to insist these debts be repaid. …The U.S. is the single largest shareholder in the World Bank and IMF, the institutions to which most of Africa‘s debts are owed. As such, it holds major influence over the international response to Africa‘s debt crisis.\nBarack Obama campaigned on doing nothing meaningful to alleviating Africa’s crushing debt. His official position commits him to the IMF/WORLD BANK shell game of exclusionary rules and mealy-mouthed guarantees that continue to bleed the continent dry, leaving it impoverished, and beset with skyrocketing infant mortality rates, declining life expectancy and writhing under the weight of pandemic levels of AIDS, TB, and Malaria.\nMoreover, because of African indebtedness, the IMF/World Bank imposes onerous structural adjustment programs on indebted countries that:\n“…Are designed to reduce consumption in developing countries and to redirect resources to manufacturing exports for the repayment of debt. This has caused overproduction of primary products and a precipitous fall in their prices. It has also led to the devastation of traditional agriculture and to the emergence of hordes of landless farmers in virtually every country in which the World Bank and IMF operate.\nFood security has declined dramatically in all Third World regions, but in Africa in particular. Growing dependence on food imports, which is the lot of sub-Saharan Africa, places these countries in an extremely vulnerable position. They simply do not have the foreign exchange to import enough food, given the fall in export prices and the need to repay debt.\nBasic conditionalities of the IMF-World Bank include drastic cuts in social expenditures, especially in health and education. According to the UN Economic Commission for Africa, expenditures on health in IMF-World Bank programmed countries declined by 50 percent during the 1980s, and spending on education declined by 25 percent. Similar trends are evident in all other Southern regions.\nIMF-World Bank programs come with other requirements. Governments are generally forced to remove subsidies to the poor on basic foodstuffs and services such as rice and maize, water and electricity. Tax systems are made more repressive, and real wage rates are allowed to fall sharply.\n..But the greatest failure of these programs is to be seen in their impact on the people. Using figures provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa, it has been estimated that at least six million children under five years of age have died each year since 1982 in Africa, Asia and Latin America because of the anti-people, even genocidal, focus of IMF World Bank SAPs.\nThe fanatical insistence on a “post-racial” reality is fuc*ing ludicrous. It represents a willful ignorance that cannot be defended when any cursory examination of empirical data on globalization and income inequality is undertaken. The election of Barack Obama changes nothing for the black victims of globalization and neoliberalism. Moreover, it is a disingenuous act of token integration by the power structure. The browning of America inevitably means that some coloredfolks need to front for the power structure to camouflage the predatory nature of American imperialism and give the illusion of inclusion.\nYou could see the change his assumption of power wrought after he solemnly addressed the nation on Election night. His establishment cabinet, the continued no strings attached Wall Street Bailout and his unconscionable, silent complicity in the face of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza. The first Negro has completely nailed his part as America’s stern father figure dispensing status quo medicine. No matter what he does and no matter how many times he betrays the African Diaspora, blackfolks will make excuses for his departures from progressive principle and will highlight the admirable aspects of his character as a devoted husband and father that a desperate black community seems to need to repair the brokenness endured in a country weaned on white supremacy and the deliberate destruction of the black family.\nMary Mitchell, a black columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, is a prime example. In her first appearance on the establishment’s top televised salon, Meet the Press, she said:\nYou have someone who did what he was supposed to do. He got a good education, he married his sweetheart, he’s a father for his children. That’s the kind of image the African-American community needs right now.\nI hate to think that we’re so desperate for the validation of whitefolks and for appropriate black role models that we’d accept anything an establishment Negro President does at the behest of his corporate puppet masters.\nDON’T HATE THE PLAYA; HATE THE GAME\nIt is difficult to muster the energy to demonize or dislike Barack Obama after being inundated by endless streams of positive, empty propaganda spoon fed by a compliant corporate press. However, as blackfolks, we need to stand ready to rebuke the President we claim to love so much when he inevitably falls off the wagon of progressive principle. Our shared African heritage and the uniqueness of this moment in time do not constitute valid reasons to give Obama a pass. Despite the laughable and despicable efforts of the right-wing to portray our President as a “terrorist” and “secret Muslim,” Barack Obama is an establishment politician that sold out a long time ago and that makes him a “safe Negro” in the minds of the imperial power structure.\nWhat I am saying is not meant to turn you against the President, dislike him in any way or fail to honor and celebrate this remarkable achievement. Hate is so counterproductive. What I’m saying today is meant to get you to think critically, evaluate what his Administration does objectively, and demand that Barack actually becomes the progressive president he fooled you into believing he would be. In short, don’t hate the playa; hate the game.\nFrom the Urban Dictionary:\nDo not fault the successful participant in a flawed system; try instead to discern and rebuke that aspect of its organization, which allows or encourages the behavior that has provoked your displeasure.\nOne day in the distant future, the first African American President will pass away after living a long life, just as Ricardo Montalban did, and hopefully, the President be remembered for the progressive, concrete achievements of his era and not for some ridiculous bourgeois fantasy concocted by a crooked corporate power structure to disguise it’s racist imperialism.\nTags Africa Action, Africa's Debt Slavery, African Diaspora, black bourgeoisie, black role models, Bourgeoise Fantasy, Delusion of Power, Dreams of My Father, economic justice, Fantasy Island, Gaza conflict, Globalization, Happy Darkie, HIV/AIDS, IMF, Imperialism, International Monetary Fund, Israeli aggression, Mary Mitchell, Mr. Roark, neocolonialism, poverty and disease, racist imperialism, Ricardo Montalban, Sherri Shepherd, The Price of Admission, The View, white approval, Word Bank, World Trade Organization\nTHE QUICKNESS, a political homage to Jill Scott’s “The Thickness”\nBy Skeptical Brotha\nAin’t this some shit. He got,\nBig ol’ ears,\nBig ol’ eyes,\nBig ol’ lips,\nBig ol’ hands,\nAnd a Big ol’ dick,\nHe so big!\nHe supposedly has an expansive mind\nBut he still looks 14,\nArticulate, clean, supple, and fine,\nHear them,\nall those oohs and ahhs slip as he licks his lips,\nOh, all the women wanna fuck him,\nThey want him to talk about it, (Hope)\nTell it,\nSpread it,\nRelive the conquest,\nHow he beat her stupid ass (Hillary) and how he knocked that shit, (outta her hands)\nBlacks folks don’t stop,\nWon’t stop,\nTo recognize that there’s more,\nMore underneath that quickness,\nThat sweet and round, brown, intellectual bigness,\nBarack likes his Negroes mindless and eager,\nSweet and meager,\nShhhhh!\nDon’t you complain about my shifting positions (Jeremiah Wright, FISA, Affirm Action),\nJust drop that pro-black shit (Reparations),\nAnd help me rise to the presidency with a quickness,\nBlack folks don’t stop (to think),\nWon’t stop (to think),\nLift it, (his campaign)\nLift it,\nLift it baby,\nDrop that pro-black shit again,\nCause I ain’t your tribesmen no more,\nI ain’t your friend,\nCome on y’all just let me get in,\nLet me into all that thickness, (of imperial presidential power)\nThat sweet and round supple bigness,\nNow that he’s won the nomination can’t nobody even try to reach yawl’s minds,\nThe Black Community has been degraded, exploited, NOT celebrated,\nSaturated with self hatred,\nLet me say that again please:\nWe’ve been degraded, exploited, NOT celebrated,\nCause every time we turn on the TV,\nWhat do we see, big ol’ Obama changing positions to please whitefolks who will never fucking vote for him,\nAnd it don’t have nothing to do with what is right for all of America,\nThus, my definition of progressive betrayal,\nJesse hit the nail on the head\nOh, oh, oh Lord,\nOh Lord,\nLet him,\nLet him recognize the magnificent opportunity you’ve created,\nLift him,\nLet all of America be elevated,\nLord, Lord,\nLet her be elevated,\nCause he is so big,\nhe’s so big,\nLet her be elevated.\nTags Barack Obama, Black Politics, Jill Scott, Obama for President, political expediency, Race, The Quickness, The Thickness, White Supremacy\nI voted today and did as I said I would do and voted no preference for the Democratic nomination for President because I am profoundly dismayed and angered by the lack of backbone shown by Barack Obama during the recent attacks upon his faith and the Black Church.\nI struggled mightily. The twenty minutes I stared at my ballot seemed like an eternity. I went back and forth several times. Surrounded by other blackfolks, I became self-conscious. I wrestled with the lie I told the cheerful White Obama canvasser who ambushed me as I left my home. I then struggled with the commitment that I felt strongly enough to tell all of you about and my twenty-five year desire for a black President.\nI teared up a bit and stared at the paper some more. My thoughts drifted to a dear friend’s 25 year-old brother lying comatose in intensive care, the victim of double aneurisms, dangling somewhere between life and death, and I wondered what is so damn wrong with refusing to compromise your core values and living the life God gives you informed by Trinity United Church of Christ’s motto “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”\nIf the Father gives that boy a second chance at life, as I pray he does, I have no doubt that he will live his life to the fullest and without regrets. He comes from a proud Nigerian household and their love and commitment to each other is uniquely powerful. It makes me proud to know his sister and count her as one of my dearest friends. Their pride in their heritage makes them stronger as black people and as a family. It is unfathomable to me why Obama, a son East Africa, is afraid to embrace the power of his black religious heritage and stand on what I know he believes but refuses to confess to White America.\nAnd yes, contrary to his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, there is a White America and a Black America. And they are separate and unequal because we are not one people and never have been.\nI watched Bill Moyers interview with Dr. Wright last night and heard nothing a reasonable person who understands the depth of African American suffering and the shame of our country’s history of slavery, genocide, and Jim Crow could be offended by.\nStill grappling with my decision, I remembered Obama’s Friday presser. Senator Obama continued to distance himself from his Pastor of two decades yesterday by continuing the use of his weasel word mantra of “profound disagreement” over Dr. Wright’s, “objectionable” comments and why he and White America, “took offense.” I marked my ballot, smiled at the sistah who took my name and gave me ballot, and strode confidently back to my car.\nSome people would rather live shackled by a cacophony of patriotic white supremacist lies than live in freedom and truth. Any campaign which genuflects to the head in the sand mentality so prevalent in White America is a campaign based on lies of political expedience and I cannot support that without protest.\nIf you disagree, watch Dr. Wright and Obama for yourself.\nTags 2008, Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Obama for President, political expediency, Politics, Power Games, Race, racism, Religious Bigotry, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line21949"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.652126133441925,"wiki_prob":0.34787386655807495,"text":"Remi Drolet is coached by David Wood.\nRossland’s Drolet receives FACE Program grant\nRemi Drolet has joined one of the most prestigious athletic clubs in Canada.\nMar. 14, 2018 5:44 p.m.\nDrolet, 17, was named this month as one of 55 young Canadian athletes from both summer and winter sports selected by Petro-Canada and the COC to receive Fuelling Athletes and Coaching Excellence (FACE) Program grant.\nThese athletes and their coaches are awarded a $10,000 FACE grant to help them with their journey ($5,000 directly to the athlete and $5,000 to their coach). FACE grants are often used for training, equipment and travel expenses.\nPast recipients include Olympic and Paralympic medallists Patrick Chan, Hayley Wickenheiser, Rosie MacLennan, Mark Tewksbury, Kaitlyn Lawes, Marielle Thompson Mac Marcoux (GOLD, Para-alpine skiing) and Nicholas Gill.\nLast month the Rossland resident, who is in his first year with the senior national team, won the open men’s 11-kilometre race at the Clearwater Challenge hill race in Nelson. He also competed in the 2017 Junior World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, finishing 49th in the men’s 20 k skiathlon.\nDrolet is coached by David Wood.\nDeveloped by Petro-Canada, the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC), and facilitated by their National Sport partners, the FACE Program supports up-and-coming athletes when they need it most: when they are striving to represent Canada at the Olympic or Paralympic Games, but don’t yet qualify for government funding. Recipients are selected based on potential. The funding is courtesy of Petro Canada.\nSince 1988, FACE grants have supported more than 3,000 athletes and coaches by providing more than $11,000,000 in financial support.\nRecent FACE grant recipients participating at the recent 2018 Winter Olympic Games include Kim McRae (Luge), Cendrine Browne (Cross-Country Ski), Mirela Rahneva (Skeleton), Gabrielle Daleman (Figure Skating), Mélodie Daoust (Women’s Hockey) and Chris Spring (Bobsleigh).\nIn addition to providing financial support, FACE athletes and coaches are invited to an annual summit to learn from Olympians and Paralympians and receive advice on media training, public speaking, and personal brand development.\nB.C. woman wins lottery spot in New York City marathon\nPunchless Canucks shut out for third straight game, fall 3-0 to Ducks\nHospital in Trail goes from zero to 100!\nKootenay Boundary Regional Hospital is one of 4 service hospitals operating in Interior Health","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line79773"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5041416883468628,"wiki_prob":0.5041416883468628,"text":"Category Archives: World News\nHome / World News\nOpera Singer Brian Mulligan\nposted on September 24, 2015\tby WCBloggers\tin AI, World News\nMany people have heard of Brian Mulligan. He is an accomplished opera singer who has paved his way to the music business by exhibiting incredible talent. This musician is known in different countries for his unique forte in this industry, and he continues to impress his audience members every day.\nBrian was born in Endicott, New York. When he was only 17, Brian starred in his first musical in high school as a singer. His music teacher during this time set him up to start seeing a vocal trainer, Todd Geer. Mulligan soon fell in love with opera singing. After showcasing his interest in music in high school, he went on to Yale University and Julliard. W. Stephen Smith was his voice instructor during college and continues to be today. Mulligan decided to be a baritone singer in the opera, and his first introduction was in 2003 at the Metropolitan Opera in the show Die Frau ohne Shatten. He was still a student at Julliard at the time, but this outstanding performance quickly launched his prosperous career.\nSoon after this accomplishment, Brian became well known as a baritone opera singer. He started performing at some of the most popular opera houses in America, being applauded and praised in ever act. A few operas that Mulligan sang at were the San Francisco Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Houston Grand Opera, and the New York City Opera. These performances won Brian a lot of career opportunities and fame.\nA few of Brian’s most memorable performances include him playing Richard Nixon in Nixon in China and being the leading star in Hamlet. His opera shows have been acknowledged all over the United States and also in Ireland, where Mulligan was named a top Irish American singer in the Irish America Magazine. Brian has Irish heritage, and has stated that he loves to visit this country and has gotten inspiration from Irish singers since he was a little kid.\nBrian continues to excel in his career. Whether it be a opera or a musical, Mulligan has big plans for his future. He is an exceptionally talented singer and performer, and with his competitive and inspiring attitude Brian will have no problem surpassing every milestone in his profession.\nHow Aspiring Human Rights Activists Can Emulates Yeonmi Park’s Motivating\nposted on September 22, 2015\tby WCBloggers\tin World News\nHuman rights activists have become critical members of the society as they continue to oversee the liberation of oppressed people worldwide. These individuals dedicate their time and resources for the welfare of the greater society. They are selfless and fearless. Activism is a challenging field and any individual who wants to join it need to be highly motivated.\n1) Figure your passion\nJust like any other field, passion is what will drive any activist against all the obstacles that he will go through during his campaigns. One’s passion can be freedom of speech, education, gender equality, and many others. With passion, an aspiring activist will be able to concentrate both his energy and resources at ensuring that real change is achieved in his area of campaign.\n2) Research existing effort\nThere is a high likelihood that there are already some actions in your area of passion. Do adequate research to identify what actions have been taken at the local, national, and world level. It is easier to work with already existing efforts rather than starting a whole new system. With already existing efforts, one can also land paid activist positions. Positions with pay will help an activist to concentrate better on his campaigns as he will not have to worry about how to pay his bills and travel expenses. Doing online searches from one’s web enabled phone or computer is the easiest way to find already existing efforts.\n3) Find how you can contribute to your cause\nThe main aim of activism is to bring change; as an activist, you should ensure this happens. Development of ideas on how the existing problems can be solved is a great way to start. The ideas should be generated in a step by step method. It has been proven that the society accepts small changes faster than massive changes. Deciding whether you want to use radical activism or reformer activism, is also important. Radical activists stage boycotts, protests, and summits to force changes. Reformer activists on the other hand prefer to get into a system and change it from within.\n4) Practice patience\nSocieties tend to be rigid. They always tend to fight human rights activists. A number of activists have been pushing for certain changes for years and no tangible changes have been realized. Impatient activists will usually give up within a few years rather than continuous fighting till a change is achieved. Aspiring activists should always remember that they don’t have to see immediate rewards; the reward by come much later, but as a result of their current efforts.\nYeonmi Park is an example on youtube of highly motivated human rights activists who has continued with her fight for the rights of the oppressed people in North Korea. Despite over two years of campaigns, major world leaders are yet to take an action against the regime. Park is famed for her escape from the brutal North Korean regime through the aid of human traffickers. Yeonmi Park is currently writing a book to help her campaign efforts.\nMotivation is what keeps many established activists going. Aspiring activists should ensure they remain highly motivated to avoid succumbing to the challenges in the field. Working with other like minded individuals will help aspiring activists to remain motivated.\nCeasing the Sale of Confederate Flags\nposted on July 25, 2015\tby WCBloggers\tin World News\n“If there is something controversial to the entire country that a company is selling, then it shouldn’t be sold any longer until there are other options for those who don’t like the product” says Christian Broda. The Confederate flag is one of those items that stores have stopped selling simply because there are so many who are associating it with slavery and racism. That’s not even what the flag is about. It’s a symbol of the freedom of the southern states from the north. Some people don’t see it like that. Just because it’s used in a different way by a small group of people, stores online like Amazon and eBay, are no longer allowing the sale of items with the Confederate flag. That means people won’t be able to post anything that has the flag on it, such as clothing or decals, and it also means that a symbol that has been in the United States for dozens of years can no longer be purchased at those companies. If one flag is removed, then all of the flags that spark any kind of controversy should be removed, but this isn’t happening as Nazi flags and items that relate to other groups aren’t being pulled. This isn’t fair to the people who are proud of their heritage, and it isn’t fair to the companies that simply want to act as a venue for people to purchase the symbols of freedom.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line946512"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5925320982933044,"wiki_prob":0.40746790170669556,"text":"Farm Bureau Calls for Intervention in Sage Grouse Preservation Claiming Federal Overreach\nWed, 29 Jun 2016 14:54:34 CDT\nThe American Farm Bureau Federation and Utah Farm Bureau Federation have asked a federal district court in Utah to overturn a host of illegal land-use restrictions hampering ranchers in the western states. The groups made the request as part of a motion to intervene on the side of the State of Utah in a lawsuit against the federal government. The litigation challenges federal land management plans imposing restrictions on ranching and other human activities in Utah as part of a larger effort to manage federal lands for species protection rather than for “multiple uses” as required by law.\nIn papers filed Tuesday, the Farm Bureau organizations asked the U.S. Court for the District of Utah to find that the federal government broke the law when it drew up rules designed to protect the habitat of the Greater Sage Grouse. Among other things, the complaint alleges that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service ignored numerous congressional mandates designed to ensure transparency and management of federal lands for multiple uses and sustained yields. The suit cites violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.\n“Ranchers have long used federal lands for grazing,” AFBF President Zippy Duvall said. “And all that time, ranchers have been at the forefront of protecting forage and water resources so that wildlife and ranching can thrive together. These plans, however, hang ranchers out to dry in the drought. Western ranchers have faced continued threats to their water rights and reductions in their ability to graze livestock on federal lands. We have to intervene now to preserve our ranches and our way of life.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1541514"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6640585660934448,"wiki_prob":0.3359414339065552,"text":"Home Obituaries Western Wayne News Obituaries Richard E. Runkle\nRichard E. Runkle\nCENTERVILLE, Ind. – Richard E. Runkle, age 93, of Centerville, Indiana, died Friday, January 10, 2020, at Reid Health.\nBorn October 26, 1926, in Logansport, Indiana, to Albert F. and Hilda Annette Opp Runkle, Richard lived in Wayne County, Indiana, most of his life.\nHe attended school at the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home in Knightstown, Indiana.\nRichard served in the U.S. Army during WWII as part of the Pacific and European occupation. He was a carpenter by trade and built several homes in the Wayne County area. Richard formerly co-owned and co-operated Americana Pizza in Centerville for six years, worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad for a year, and was employed at the Crosley factory for a couple of years.\nHe was a member of American Legion Post #287 in Centerville. Richard loved airplanes and had a special interest in WWII airplanes. On April 4, 2015, he was awarded the privilege to participate in the Indy Honor Flight 10 for veterans to Washington, D.C. Richard most recently enjoyed taking flight in a B-17 bomber at the Richmond Municipal Airport.\nSurvivors include his daughters, Kathy (Junior) Tillson of Oxford, Alabama, Sandra (Ed) Spiece of Fishers, Indiana, Jacqueline (Larry) Pugh of Farmland, Indiana, Vickie Graw of Milton, Indiana, Teresa (Ray) Dearing of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, Mary (Curt) Lockwood of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Lisa (James) Gilbert of Cambridge City, Indiana; son, Kelly (April) Runkle of Milton; 15 grandchildren; 18 great-grandchildren; three great-great-grandchildren; sister, Magdalena Bowmer of Winchester, Indiana; stepsister, Betty Jane Huber of Muncie, Indiana; several nieces and nephews, including special nephew, Paul (Betty) Uhlman; cousins; and many friends, including special friends, Marilyn and Randy Coldiron and Barbara and Lawrence McQueen.\nHe was preceded in death by his wife of 51 years, Nancy E. Ryan Runkle, who died November 10, 2002; parents; sister, Betty June Uhlman; and brothers, Albert P. and John Runkle.\nMemorial visitation for Richard E. Runkle will be from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Sunday, January 19, 2020, at Mills Funeral Home, 405 East Main Street, Centerville.\nA private graveside service will be held at the convenience of the family. Burial will be in Crown Hill Cemetery with military honors provided by the Wayne County Honor Guard.\nMemorial contributions may be made to: Indy Honor Flight, P.O. Box 10, Plainfield, IN 46168 or Champaign Aviation Museum, 1652 N. Main Street, Urbana, OH 43078.\nCondolences may be sent to the family via the guest book at www.doanmillsfuneralhome.com.\nPrevious articleAlert: High wind warning until 4 a.m. Sunday\nNext articleRichard Maurice “Shorty” Messer\nAnn Wells Ingram","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line958502"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8215479254722595,"wiki_prob":0.8215479254722595,"text":"Beyond gentrification\nGentrification doesn’t fix inner-city schools\nBy Nikole Hannah-Jones on Feb 27, 2015\nWe know the narrative on white flight: Coasting on federal perks like home loans from the Veterans Administration, G.I. bill grants, and heavy subsidization for highways, white families fled northern industrial cities like gangbusters in the 1960s. Whether this was because of financial incentives, or because they were running from court-sanctioned desegregation, the outcome was abandoned communities with devastated city tax bases.\nThe highest costs of white flight, however, were born by the children left behind in even more segregated, and now almost entirely poor neighborhood schools. Decades of research shows that this resulting racial and economic isolation created toxic, severely under-resourced learning environments for black and brown students, from Detroit to Philadelphia to New York City.\nThat white and middle-class outflow has reversed, though, in recent years in locales across the country, with many residents returning to the cities their parents had left behind. Gentrification has led to much hand-wringing among policy makers, hipsters, and long-time urban residents who whipsaw between fears of displacement and the desire for neighborhood improvements that gentrification promises. It’s not always clear who wins and loses when communities gentrify.\nIt would seem that white residents moving into segregated black and brown neighborhoods can only be positive for local schools, though, right? Those wealthier families’ tax dollars must be, at least, invested in neighborhood schools. And when those families send their children to these schools, it has to improve the school services, which are then shared with their new neighbors, no?\nExcept, they aren’t.\nFor those living outside of these neighborhoods, this might be gentrification’s dirtiest little secret. For those of us who live in gentrifying neighborhoods, it’s not a secret at all.\n“There are many ways to opt out of the neighborhood schools and gentrification has a limited effect on public schools,” said Mincere Keels, a University of Chicago professor who focuses on race and inequality.\n“Many of the policies of urban education are focused around bringing upper-income families back into the public school system based on the assumptions that they will come into these neighborhoods and invest in the neighborhood schools and revitalize both the neighborhoods and schools,” she said. “But families that move into neighborhoods that are low-income often opt out of the neighborhood schools and these higher income families take their individual household resources with them and contribute them to” other schools.\nKeels, along with researchers from Brown and Cornell universities, published a study in 2013 that looked at whether schools in gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods saw benefits, including improved academics and more economic diversity. They did not.\n“These schools remain uninfluenced by gentrifying families,” the study concluded.\nGentrification, it turns out, usually stops at the schoolhouse door.\nThe researchers found that middle class residents who chose to move into low-income, segregated areas either did not have kids, sent their children to private schools, or utilized public schools “choice” policies that allowed students to attend wealthier, whiter schools outside of the neighborhood.\nIn fact, “school choice” is often a hallmark of cities looking to entice white and middle-class residents. City officials strike a Faustian bargain with gentrifying parents that if they agree to buy into lower-income, segregated neighborhoods they need not send their children to the same under-resourced and struggling schools as their neighbors. Instead, Keels said, city officials set up elite, un-zoned public schools — often with strict admissions criteria –that educate the children of gentrified.\n[Editor’s note: Comedian Wyatt Cenac made these same points about his experience living in Brooklyn in an interview with Grist last November.]\nThese practices, rather than improve the educational outcomes for neighborhood children, tend to concentrate “higher status children in select public schools that only replicate larger inequalities” and “can create a paradoxical situation in which new public educational resources and opportunities go to those who are least in need.”\nIt’s a phenomenon born out in proudly progressive cities from Portland, Ore., to New York.\nPortland, considered the whitest major city in the country, has been undergoing some of the swiftest and most extensive gentrification in the country. Within a span of 10 years, nearly every neighborhood in the inner North/Northeast sector of the city where the black community had been forced to live flipped to majority white. Even though its black population has always been tiny — today black residents are about 6 percent of Portland’s population — that part of town housed all black elementary and high schools. Those schools, schools such as Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary and Jefferson High, are almost entirely black and Latino even as the neighborhoods around them have turned white.\nIn New York City, the historic black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the most rapidly gentrifying. Between 2000 and 2010, Bedford-Stuyvesant’s white population shot from 2.4 percent to 15 percent, while the black population dropped from 75 percent to 60 percent. Yet its public schools have been impervious to gentrification. They remain largely poor and segregated.\nBut probably the most distressing aspect of gentrification is that it may not only fail to help neighborhood schools and children — it often hurts them.\nIndividual schools receive funding based on the number of students enrolled in what is called per-pupil funding. When lower-income families are displaced by gentrifiers who either do not have children or do not send their children to the neighborhood schools, enrollment in the local schools drops, as does the school funding. A 2002 study followed this decline in three Chicago neighborhoods, where schools had to layoff teachers and cut programs.\n“Dollars will follow the children whose parents opt out of the neighborhood schools and that means the students who remain get less,” said Keels.\nA 2005 report by Catalyst Chicago found that gentrification in three Chicago neighborhoods led to declining local school enrollment, followed by a drop in funding, which then led those schools to layoff teachers and cut programs.\nFurther, districts funnel inordinate resources into Cadillac programs, such as magnets and other “choice” schools, in order to entice middle-class parents. But school districts have finite resources, so to provide elite opportunities at some schools, other schools — those that have the greatest need — get less.\nWhen gentrifying parents do choose to send their children to neighborhood schools, it often results in a takeover where the school flips to white and middle-class and most of the black, brown, and poor children are pushed out, other researchers found. A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher studied a high-performing black elementary school that began to draw white parents from gentrifying neighborhood in northern California. Within a decade, the school turned from nearly 80 percent black to 20 percent.\nSeveral studies through the years found that because urban districts prize more affluent and white parents, when they choose their neighborhoods schools, districts allow them disproportionate influence over school policy and often bestow academic advantages on their children.\n“Increasing the fraction of middle-income families may increase the school’s aggregate cultural, economic and social capital, but at the student level, within-school inequality may be exacerbated,” the Chicago study found.\nStill, some have argued that even if gentrifiers don’t enroll their own children in neighborhood schools, their living in the neighborhood still brings indirect benefits because those families will invest in the neighborhood schools and other public neighborhood institutions.\nUnfortunately, this is also seldom true. Since schools act as community hubs, when parents opt out, they do not typically put their energy into supporting neighborhood schools where their children to do not attend, Keels said.\nSo what, then, can be done? Keels said instead of funneling resources to elite choice schools, districts should bolster neighborhood schools and market them as heavily as they do other schools. But more importantly, districts need to adopt policies that break up the high concentrations of poverty that plague many schools and disperse disadvantage more evenly across schools.\nAnd this is where gentrifiers can have a positive impact. Instead of simply securing advantages for their own children, they can advocate for and support district efforts to adopt policies that ensure all students are getting the same opportunities.\nNikole Hannah-Jones is an award-winning reporter for ProPublica. Her investigative report “Segregation Now” was nominated for a 2015 National Magazine Award by the American Society of Magazine Editors in the Public Interest category. You can read more about the impacts of continued segregation in America from Hannah-Jones and her colleagues in the Facebook group Segregation Now: A Conversation on Race in America Today. Read more of Hannah-Jones reporting on race at ProPublica here.\nMore In This Series: See All\nUrban planners may have finally found how to get to Sesame Street\nWith \"equitable development,\" planners say they've finally figured out how to make sustainable, healthy neighborhoods accessible to everyone.\nWho says gentrification is a myth?\nRecent reports claim that gentrification is fiction. But it’s a fact of life for those who’ve been displaced by it.\nWhy living in Detroit doesn’t come cheap\nDetroit's housing market may look accessible, but once you do the math imposed by the city's sometimes tough conditions, it's hardly a bargain.\nSee all articles in this series","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1076280"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5225887894630432,"wiki_prob":0.4774112105369568,"text":"GET A SIGN\nTom Macdonald\nfor Orem City Council\nLike Tom On Facebook:\nFISCALLY CONSERVATIVE\nTom's background as a CPA, and as a CFO and CEO in business have helped guide the City of Orem to decrease its debt by 27% over the last four years.\nSTRONG LEADERSHIP\nTom's experience as a leader both in business and non-profit (board member at Timpanogos Regional Hospital, UVU, CEDO, and the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce), has helped him be a leader on the Orem City Council. It's why every single Orem City Councilor is endorsing him for this election, despite their different backgrounds and opinions.\nDEEPLY INVESTED IN OREM\nTom and his wife Kaye have been married for nearly 40 years, and have lived in Orem their whole married lives, except for a brief 3 year stint in Oregon. They raised each of their four children here, and care deeply about what happens to this city.\nWHY I'M RUNNING\nOrem has been my home since 1969. Kaye and I have 4 married children and 13 grandchildren.\nFour years ago, I entered the race to become a city council member as I thought I could help the fiscal strength of Orem and be a voice a reason to the council.\nWe have made significant improvements these last four years, but I think there is more to do.\nA graduate of Orem High and BYU, I am currently an Assistant Dean at the Utah Valley University Business School.\nPrior to coming to UVU, I was a CEO, a CFO, Partner, Board Member, and an International VP in the business world and have a background as a CPA.\nWHY I'M QUALIFIED\nI have a long history of civic service in Orem, am currently a member of the Orem City Council and a Board Member at Timpanogos Regional Hospital.\nI have served on various boards at UVU, The Chamber, and CEDO.\nI am passionate about this city and want to continue to use the skills I gained in business leadership and volunteer service to help Orem improve its fiscal health and the quality of life for its citizens.\n▶ Visit Tom's Facebook Page!\n▶ Get Your Tom4Orem Sign!\n▶ Donate to Tom's Campaign!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1533759"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5241286158561707,"wiki_prob":0.47587138414382935,"text":"Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007)\nChapter: 6 Understanding How Scientific Knowledge Is Constructed\nPDF FREE Download Hardback $69.95 Add to Cart Ebook $54.99 Add to Cart\n« Previous: 5 Generating and Evaluating Scientific Evidence and Explanations\nSuggested Citation:\"6 Understanding How Scientific Knowledge Is Constructed.\" National Research Council. 2007. Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11625.\nUnderstanding How Scientific Knowledge Is Constructed\nMajor Findings in the Chapter:\nThe research base on children’s understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed is limited. Most studies have been conducted in laboratory settings and do not take into account instructional history and children’s opportunity to learn about this aspect of science.\nMost children do not develop a sophisticated understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed.\nMethods of science dominate the school science curriculum, with little emphasis on the role of theory, explanation, or models.\nChildren’s understanding of science appears to be amenable to instruction. However, more research is needed that provides insight into the experiences and conditions that facilitate their understanding of science as a way of knowing.\nScience is not only a body of knowledge, but also a way of knowing. One important underpinning for learning science is students’ understanding of the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the process by which it is developed. Our vision of K-8 science features this understanding as one of the four strands. We have elevated this focus to the status of a strand for several reasons. We view understanding of the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the process by which it is developed as a worthy end in and of itself. In addition, emerging research evidence suggests that students’ grasp of scientific explanations of the natural world and their ability to engage successfully in scientific investigations are advanced when they under-\nstand how scientific knowledge is constructed. In this chapter we address how children come to understand both “how we know” in science and “why we believe” scientific evidence.\nFor more than a century, educators have argued that students should understand how scientific knowledge is constructed (Rudolph, 2005). One rationale that is often invoked, but not empirically tested, is that understanding science makes for a more informed citizenry and supports democratic participation. That is, citizens who understand how scientific knowledge is produced will be careful consumers of scientific claims about public scientific issues (e.g., global warming, ecology, genetically modified foods, alternative medicine) both at the ballot box and in their daily lives.\nA second justification among educators is that understanding the structure and nature of science makes one better at doing and learning science (see review by Sandoval, 2005). That is, if students come to see science as a set of practices that builds models to account for patterns of evidence in the natural world, and that what counts as evidence is contingent on making careful observations and building arguments, then they will have greater success in their efforts to build knowledge. Viewing these processes from a distance—not merely enacting them—enhances students’ ability to practice science. Schauble and colleagues (1995), for example, found that fifth grade students designed better experiments after instruction about the purpose of experimentation.\nWe begin the chapter with an elaboration on science as a way of knowing, sketching the goals of the enterprise, the nature and structure of scientific knowledge, and the process by which it is constructed. This elaboration is intended to provide a sense of the target we have for students’ learning. That is, it represents currently accepted ideas about the nature of scientific knowledge that are important to teach in grades K-8.\nBuilding on this model of science, we first turn to the cognitive research literatures to examine the intellectual resources relevant to this strand that children bring to kindergarten. In an earlier chapter (Chapter 3), we discussed the developmental research on children’s early “theory of mind,” that is, their growing awareness of their own and other’s minds and their understanding of expertise. In this chapter, we first discuss how during the K-8 years, they build on these understandings to develop some initial epistemological ideas about what knowledge is and how it is constructed. Next, we consider how they begin to think about what scientific knowledge is and how it is constructed. In the field of science education, this research is often found under the general heading of students’ understanding of the nature of science. Finally, we consider external influences on students’ understanding of science as a way of knowing, including teacher knowledge, the epistemic model that may underlie the curriculum, and the literature—albeit extremely small—that has been focused on classroom-based interventions in epistemic advancements.\nBefore delving into this research, one major caveat is in order. Almost all of the research investigating children’s thinking relevant to this strand has been conducted in the research laboratory, examining how their thinking develops over time irrespective of instructional history or opportunities to learn. It allows us to point to developmental trends and base-level competencies that can be expected in a given age span in normally developing children. However, inferences from this research base about the upper limits of children’s capability are inappropriate and are likely to yield underestimates. Furthermore, as almost all of this research attends to development and not opportunities to learn, it provides little insight into the kinds of experiences and conditions that facilitate children’s understanding of science and thinking about their own knowledge. A few studies have begun to explore the effects of teaching approaches on the development of epistemological understanding. We offer a limited discussion of this literature here. Later, in Chapters 6 and 9, we discuss in more depth studies that provide insight as to supportive classroom conditions and provide better proxies for what is possible when those conditions exist.\nUNDERLYING MODEL OF THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE\nBefore considering the research that may elucidate the intellectual resources and challenges that learning this strand might pose to children in the K-8 years, we briefly review approaches the field has taken to articulate the underlying model of building scientific knowledge. In this explication, we consider the goals of the enterprise, the nature and structure of scientific knowledge, and how knowledge is developed, with a focus on what is most relevant for student learning. (For a more complete discussion of our view of the nature of science, see Chapter 2.) While we acknowledge there is no simple correspondence with this model of science and the epistemic goals of the curriculum at any particular grade level, consideration of both relevant cognitive research and instructional design is informed by close consideration of the normative model.\nOsborne and colleagues (2003) have proposed taking a consensus view to identify the ideas about science that should be part of the school science curriculum. They conducted a study to examine the opinions of scientists, science educators, individuals involved in promoting the public understanding of science, and philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science. They identified nine themes encapsulating key ideas about the nature of science that were considered to be an essential component of school science curriculum. These included science and certainty, analysis and interpretation of data, scientific method and critical testing, hypothesis and pre-\ndiction, creativity/science and questioning, cooperation and collaboration in the development of scientific knowledge, science and technology, historical development of scientific knowledge, and diversity of scientific thinking.\nSandoval reviewed Osborne and others’ definitions of science epistemology (e.g., Driver et al., 1996; Lederman et al., 2002; McComas and Olson, 1998) and presented a more manageable list of four broad epistemological themes, which we pause to discuss briefly. First, Sandoval asserts that viewing scientific knowledge as constructed is of primary importance that underscores a dialectical relationship between theory and evidence. Students, if they are to understand what science is, must accept that it is something that people do and create. From this flows the implication that science involves creativity and that science is not science because it is “true” but because it is persuasive.\nThe second theme is that scientific methods are diverse: there is no single “method” which generically applies to all scientific inquiries (experiments may be conducted in some fields, but not in others). Rather than relying on one or several rote methods, science depends on ways of evaluating scientific claims (e.g., with respect to systematicity, care, and fit with existing knowledge).\nThird, scientific knowledge comes in different forms, which vary in their explanatory and predictive power (e.g., theories, laws, hypotheses; for more on this, see Chapter 2). This is a theme often overlooked in traditional analyses (including Osborne’s) but one that is central to understanding the constructive nature of science and the interaction of different knowledge forms in inquiry. Fourth, Sandoval asserts that scientific knowledge varies in certainty. Acknowledging variable certainty, Sandoval argues, invites students to engage the ideas critically and to evaluate them using epistemological criteria.\nAnother approach to defining the aspects of understanding the epistemology of science that science curriculum should inhere is to consider the aspects of epistemology that have been linked to enhancing the development of science understanding. Although the literature does not offer a systematic treatment of this notion, there are pockets of evidence that suggest a relationship between aspects of epistemology and students’ understanding and use of scientific knowledge.\nFor example, there is evidence that when students come to view argumentation as a central feature of science, this can have considerable positive effects on their understanding and use of investigative strategies (see, e.g., Sandoval and Reiser, 2004; Toth, Suthers, and Lesgold, 2002). Songer and Linn (1991) have also analyzed the effects of a dynamic versus a static view of science and found that a dynamic view is conducive to knowledge integration. Hammer (1994) has identified a relationship between views of knowledge (in terms of coherence, authoritativeness, and degree to which knowl-\nedge is constructed) and achievement differences in science among undergraduate physics students.\nIn addition, there is also evidence that students’ epistemology of models—an aspect of epistemology that receives little attention in the normative and consensus views of the nature of science—has important implications for a range of conceptual and practical outcomes. Gobert and colleagues have studied the epistemology of models of students in the middle grades, high school, and college, including their understanding of models as representations of causal or explanatory ideas, that there can be multiple models of the same thing, that models do not need to be exactly like the thing modeled, and that models can be revised or changed in light of new data. They have documented correlations between measures of students’ sophistication in the epistemology of models and their ability to draw inferences from texts and transfer causal knowledge to new domains, as well as conceptual development (Gobert and Discenna, 1997; Gobert and Pallant, 2001).\nSimilarly, Schwartz and White (2005) studied seventh grade student learning using a software environment that allowed the students to design, test, and revise models. They examined a battery of pre- and postmeasures of physics content knowledge, inquiry, and knowledge of modeling. They found that students’ pretest modeling knowledge was the only variable that was a significant predictor of success for all three posttest measures, and it was the best predictor of both posttest content and modeling knowledge. While these studies examine but a few slices of epistemology, they suggest that certain features of epistemological understanding can offer students powerful leverage for science learning. These studies also suggest an important way to think about defining what students should learn about epistemology and the nature of science and call attention to an area worthy of future study.\nUNDERSTANDING SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE K-8 YEARS\nIn this section, we separate the research literature into that concerned with the development of children’s understanding of knowledge in general and that more specifically concerned with the development of their understanding of scientific knowledge. Changes across the K-8 grades reflect increasing variability in students’ opportunities to learn about knowledge construction in science and increasing variability in their understanding of science as a way of knowing. Also contributing to the complexity of this picture, multiple literatures with fundamentally different methodological tactics and analytical lenses have contributed contrasting models of the limitations and emerging competences of K-8 students.\nUnderstanding Knowledge Construction\nThere are multiple lines of research, largely disjointed, that are relevant to K-8 students’ understanding of knowledge construction. This research encompasses both a continuation of the developmental research literature and the “epistemic cognition” literature investigating stages in older students’ stances toward knowledge and knowing.\nOne line of research in the developmental literature involves a continuation of the theory of mind frame into the elementary school years. There is evidence that 6-year-olds (in limited contexts) are beginning to develop a view of mind as an “active interpreter.” That is, they become more aware that people actively construct their own understanding of the world and are aware of the role of prior knowledge in seeing. At the same time, the literature suggests, children continue to elaborate on their understanding of mind (and different mental states) throughout elementary school.\nYoung children’s understanding of the constructive nature of knowledge itself has not been studied extensively, but the limited research suggests that upper elementary school students tend to fall short of viewing knowledge as rooted in a theoretical world view. Kuhn and Leadbeater (1988), for example, fictionalized two conflicting historical accounts of the “Livian Wars.” They asked students to interpret the accounts in response to a variety of probe questions that they were asked after reading the two accounts. Students were asked to articulate differences between the accounts, consider reasons for the differences, and discuss whether both accounts could be correct. They were scored in terms of epistemological level, from treating the two pieces as factual accounts that might differ only in specific facts reported, to understanding that they reflect contrasting interpretations, filtered through world views. They found that no sixth graders responded in terms of the higher levels.\nThe work of Perry (1970/1999), consisting of longitudinal studies of Harvard male undergraduates, constitutes an early and influential line of research on stages in understanding knowledge construction. Researchers have made substantial methodological and conceptual advances since Perry’s time (see the discussion of instructional intervention studies in the next section). However, work that continues in the tradition of Perry maintains his general findings that, over the early to late adolescent years, individuals display shifts in their general stance toward knowledge and knowing. Specifically, many young people enter early adolescence embracing an “absolutist” or dualist view of knowledge and truth, one that assumes that there is one right answer to every question and differences of opinion are explainable by misinformation or faulty reasoning. At some point, usually during adolescence, youngsters become aware that others may disagree with them on matters about which they hold strong beliefs.\nAs these young people begin to understand that knowing necessarily involves interpretation and its consequent ambiguities, they may enter an epistemological crisis, characterized by what Chandler, Boyes, and Ball (1990) called “epistemic doubt.” In this state, they struggle with the erosion of their certainty and may lose confidence altogether that it is possible to be certain about anything. The temporary result may be subjective relativism, a stance epitomized in the quintessential adolescent remark, “Whatever.” Subjective relativism is the notion that as all beliefs are subjectively held, it is impossible to verify any of them with certainty, so no one’s beliefs or opinions are better or worse than those of anyone else.\nThis relativism is regarded as an early reaction to the recognition that knowledge is conjectural and uncertain, open to and requiring interpretation. In later adolescence or early adulthood, some individuals may pass through relativism to embrace a contextualist commitment to reasoned judgment, although this move is by no means typical or inevitable. The individual continues to understand that knowledge is neither certain nor complete but comes nevertheless to accept that, with good judgment and careful reason, it is possible over time to achieve successively closer approximations of the truth.\nMuch of this research has been performed with college undergraduates, and the homogeneity of the participants may in part account for the degree of general agreement in the findings about the overall nature of change. However, different models propose different numbers of sublevels along the way. Moreover, there are some disagreements about the extent to which change is regarded as universal or not, the ages at which shifts typically occur, and also the extent to which it is regarded as stage-like and structurally integrated, or composed of a series of relatively independent beliefs about knowledge and learning. Some accounts emphasize change that is primarily linear and hierarchical, whereas others propose that change is merely adaptation to one’s immediate or global environment and thus may not be unidirectional.\nMost of the models appear to assume that epistemology is trait-like, so that it is a relatively stable feature of the individual. However, a few (e.g., Hammer and Elby, 2002; Sandoval, 2005) argue that epistemology is situational, an interaction of the individual’s cognitive and historical resources and environmental features that cue or elicit patterns of those resources.\nAt first glance, some of these ideas appear to be inconsistent with research that suggests that much earlier—indeed, by the time they begin elementary school—children already are well aware that individuals can hold different beliefs about the same objects and events. Beliefs are not simply copies of reality; they are products of the activity of knowing—therefore, they are subject to verification and are potentially disconfirmable by evidence (Perner, 1991). If young elementary schoolchildren understand these\nconcepts, how can adolescents be deemed to hold an “absolutist” position toward knowledge? Chandler, Hallett, and Sokol (2002) suggest that, although young children are aware of representational diversity, this does not mean that they consider it a necessary or legitimate aspect of knowledge. Instead, they are more likely to believe that there is one right answer and that other interpretations are simply wrong or misinformed.\nChandler, Hallett, and Sokol (2002) propose that young children do not understand that diversity of interpretations is “somehow intrinsic to the knowing process;” that is, that interpretation is an unavoidable aspect of all knowledge. Hence, the criteria for knowledge cannot easily be specified, and all knowing is associated with an unavoidable degree of ambiguity.\nUnderstanding the Nature of Science and How It Is Constructed\nMultiple lines of research are relevant to the issue of children’s understanding of the nature of science and how it is constructed. And once again, the relations between the lines of research are complex. Relevant lines of research include the science-specific developmental literature, the epistemic cognition literature focused on understanding of science as a way of knowing, and survey-based data focused on children’s beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge and how it is constructed. Finally, we consider how science curricula, instructional interventions, and teachers’ notions of science may influence children’s understanding of science as a way of knowing.\nIt is straightforward to imagine how holding either absolutist or relativist epistemologies could lead to a distorted view of the nature of science. Indeed, research directed more explicitly at young students’ grasp of the nature of scientific knowledge and practice has produced findings with interesting parallels to the more general developmental literature. For example, Carey and Smith (1993) point out that many students do not understand that science is primarily a theory-building enterprise. They may learn about observation, hypotheses, and experiment from their science textbooks, but they rarely understand that theories underlie these activities and are responsible for both the generation and interpretation of both hypotheses and experiments. The commonsense epistemology that young students typically hold is unreflective; to the extent that they think about it at all, children often think of knowledge as stemming directly from sensory experience, even though they do know that some knowledge is inferred rather than observed (Sodian and Wimmer, 1987), and they are even aware that the same object may be interpreted differently by different observers (Taylor, Cartwright, and Bowden, 1991).\nCarey and Smith (1993) suggest that children may not make clear distinctions between theory, specific hypotheses, and evidence, and they may expect to find simpler and more direct relations between data and conclusions than are warranted. Like the absolutists described in the developmental psychology literature, they tend to regard differences in conclusions or observations as being due to lack of information or misinformation, rather than legitimate differences in perspective or interpretation. There is limited or no awareness that one’s beliefs may be connected into coherent frameworks, and that these frameworks may have an influence on what one observes via the senses. For this reason, Kitchener and King (1981) argue students fail to understand that controversy is a part of science and that authorities are deemed, by definition, to share a common set of true beliefs. We suggest, however, an additional factor that may explain this finding, but that is not considered in this body of research. Children are rarely taught about controversy in science, so why would they come to view scientific knowledge as contested?\nCarey et al. (1989) asked seventh graders a series of questions about the goals and practice of science and about the relationships between scientists’ ideas, experiments, and data. Students’ responses to these interviews were coalesced into three global perspectives about the nature of science, ranging from Level 1, in which scientists were regarded simply as collecting facts about the world, to Level 3, in which scientists were seen as concerned with building ever more powerful and explanatorily adequate theories about the world. A second interview study (Grosslight, Unger, Jay, and Smith, 1991) probed middle school students’ understanding of models and modeling and achieved similar results. Many children regarded models merely as copies of the world, a Level 1 perspective. Level 2 children understood that models involve both the selection and omission of features, but emphasis remained on the models themselves rather than on the scientists’ ideas behind the model. Finally, in Level 3 epistemology, models were regarded as tools developed for the purpose of testing theories.\nAlmost all seventh graders in these studies were at Levels 1 or 2, described by the researchers as “knowledge unproblematic” because from this view, disagreements about the nature of reality are considered due to ignorance or misinformation and knowledge is regarded as relatively straightforward. In contrast, in “knowledge problematic” epistemologies, seldom or never achieved by the students in these studies, knowledge is regarded as being organized into theories about the world that are actively constructed via a process of critical inquiry and that are often successively revised over extended periods of time.\nThe science education research on learners’ and teachers’ views about the nature of science is mixed (McComus and Olson, 1998; Lederman et al., 2002; Lederman, 1999; Osborne et al., 2003). When data are gathered em-\nploying survey instruments that probe learners’ views of science outside any specific context of inquiry, the results indicate that even high school and undergraduate students do not develop accurate views about the theory revision and responsiveness to evidence.\nSimilarly, Driver et al. (1996) interviewed same-age pairs of students at ages 9, 12, and 16 about the purposes of scientific work, their understanding of the nature and status of scientific knowledge, and their understanding of science as a social enterprise. They classified students’ responses about epistemology into three overall levels, with the lowest levels reflecting little acknowledgment of interpretation and successive levels indicating the importance of forms of thinking that do not rely solely on sensory input. The reasoning considered at the lowest level was reasoning grounded in phenomena; at the next, empirical reasoning based on relationships between variables; and finally, the highest level was reasoning that uses imagined models. Like the Carey and Unger studies, Driver et al. (1996) characterized children as moving from perspectives that emphasize unproblematic, sensory-based knowledge in which truth is considered a relatively simple objective to attain, to views in which science is acknowledged to depend on active interpretations of staged events (experiments), mental manipulations, and coherent, connected bodies of knowledge that may include many areas of uncertainty.\nMuch of this research literature suggests that K-8 students have a limited understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed. However, it is not clear to what extent one can attribute such limitations to developmental stage, as opposed to adequacy of instructional opportunity or other experiences. In the words of Carey and Smith (1993, p. 243): “Two questions of urgent importance to educators now arise. First, in what sense are these levels developmental? Second (and distinctly), do these levels provide barriers to grasping a constructivist epistemology if such is made the target of the science education?”\nConsider first the model of science as a way of knowing underlying the science children experience in the science curriculum, their primary source of information about the nature of the discipline. As noted in other chapters, in the upper elementary school years, the process of scientific knowledge construction is typically represented as experiment, with negligible acknowledgment of the role of interpretation or, more generally, the active role of the scientist in the process of knowledge construction. In the early grades, the typical emphasis on description of phenomenology through the basic science process skills of observation, categorization, measurement, etc., also reflects a distorted image of science, far removed from a constructivist epistemology.\nIn the same vein, science aspires to construct conceptual structures, with robust explanatory and predictive power, yet this is seldom either explicit or implicit in the K-8 science curriculum. An analysis of science\ncurriculum by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) indicates that all curricular content is typically represented as of equal importance, with little attention to its interconnections or functionality. According to Roseman, Kesidou, Stern, and Caldwell (1999), authors of the AAAS report, the science texts evaluated by AAAS included many classroom activities that either were irrelevant to learning key science ideas or failed to help students relate their activitiy to science ideas.\nScience curriculum has long been criticized as reflecting an impoverished and misleading model of science as a way of knowing (e.g., Burbules and Linn, 1991; Hewson and Hewson, 1988). Methods of science dominate the school science curriculum, with little emphasis on the role of theory, explanation, or models. More contemporary views of science (Giere, 1991, 1999; Solomon, 2001; Longino, 1990) “as a multidimensional interaction among the models of scientists, empirical observation of the real world, and their predictions” are seldom included (Osborne et al., 2003, p. 715).\nAlthough there are notable exceptions to this pattern, most K-8 curricula would appear to at least exacerbate the epistemological shortcomings with which children enter school. In the words of Reif and Larkin (1991, p. 733): “Science taught in schools is often different from actual science and from everyday life. Students’ learning difficulties are thus increased because scientific goals are distorted and scientific ways of thinking are inadequately taught.”\nAnother factor that needs to be considered in understanding and attribution of children’s shortcomings in this regard is teachers’ understanding of science as a way of knowing (Akerson, Abd-El-Khalick, and Lederman, 2000). The epistemic cognition literature has documented shortcomings in students at all levels of study, including college and beyond. It is not surprising that shortcomings in the understanding of science as a way of knowing have been identified in K-8 teachers.\nA small literature of classroom-based design studies indicates that these limitations may be at least to some degree ameliorable by instruction. Design studies, in which researchers create conditions favorable to students’ learning about the scientific enterprise, show that elementary and middle school students can develop their understanding of how scientific knowledge develops (Carey et al., 1989; Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick, 2002), including a more sophisticated understanding of the nature and purpose of scientific models (Gobert and Pallant, 2001; Schwartz and White, 2005). With appropriate supports for learning strategies of investigation, children can generate meaningful scientific questions and design and conduct productive scientific investigations (e.g., Metz, 2004; Smith et al., 2000).\nFor example, in the small elementary school in which she was the lone science teacher, Gertrude Hennessey was able to systematically focus the lessons on core ideas built cumulatively across grades 1-6. She chose to\nemphasize generating, communicating, and evaluating theories via the intelligibility, plausibility, fruitfulness, and conceptual coherence of the alternatives (see Table 6-1). Research on her sixth grade students’ understanding of the nature of science suggested that they had a much better sense of the constructive, knowledge problematic nature of the enterprise than did sixth graders from a comparable school (Smith et al., 2000).\nIn another example, students showed improved understanding of the process of modeling after they engaged in the task of designing a model that works like a human elbow (Penner et al., 1997). In this study, students in first and second grade in two classrooms participated in a model-building task over three consecutive 1-hour sessions. They began by discussing different types of models they had previously seen or made. They considered the characteristics of those models, and how models are used for understanding phenomena. They were then introduced to the task of designing a model that functions like their elbow. After discussing how their own elbows work, children worked in pairs or triads to design and build models that illustrated the functional aspects of the human elbow. After generating an initial model, each group demonstrated and explained their model to the class followed by discussion of the various models. Students were then given an opportunity to modify their models or start over. In interviews conducted after the session, students improved in their ability to judge the functional rather than perceptual qualities of models compared with nonmodeling peers. They also demonstrated an understanding of the process of modeling in general that was similar to that of children 3 to 4 years older.\nResearchers have also identified important curricular features that support the development of a more sophisticated epistemology. Curricula can facilitate the epistemological development of students when they focus on deep science problems, provide students opportunities to conduct inquiry, and structure explicit discussion of epistemological issues (see, e.g., Bell and Linn, 2000; Davis, 1998; Smith and Wenk, in press). It is also important to note that students’ understanding of epistemology does not grow unproblematically from inquiry experiences. In order to advance their understanding of epistemology, learners engaged in inquiry need explicit cues to reflect on their experiences and observations and consider the epistemological implications (Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick, 2002).\nThe research base related to children’s understanding of knowledge in general and of scientific knowledge specifically is limited. Much of the work on knowledge has been carried out with college-age populations, although some studies in developmental psychology have looked at children’s under\nTABLE 6-1 One Progression of Increasingly Sophisticated Metaconceptual Activities in Grades 1-6\nStudents’ Role\nTeacher’s Role\nExplicitly state their own views about the topic under consideration\nBegin to consider the reasoning used to support their views\nBeing to differentiate what they think from why they think it\nFinds a variety of ways in which students can externally represent their thinking about the topic\nProvides many experiences for students to begin to articulate the reasoning used to support ideas/ beliefs\nBegin to address the necessity of understanding other (usually peer) positions before they can discuss or comment on those positions\nToward the end of the year, begin to recognize inconsistency in the thoughts of others, but not necessarily in their own thinking\nContinues to provide an educational environment in which students can safely express their thoughts, without reproaches from others\nIntroduces concept of consistency of thinking\nModels consistent and inconsistent thinking (students can readily point out when teacher is being inconsistent)\nExplore the idea that thoughts have consequences, and that what one thinks may influence what one chooses to see\nBegin to differentiate understanding what a peer is saying from believing what a peer is saying\nBegin to comment on how their current ideas have changed from past ideas and to consider that current ideas may also need to be revised over time\nFosters metacognitive discourse among learners in order to illuminate students’ internal representations\nProvides lots of examples from their personal work (which is saved from year to year) of student ideas\nStudent’ Role\nBegin to consider the implications and limitations of their personal thinking\nBegin to look for ways of revising their personal thinking\nBegin to evaluate their own/others’ thinking in terms of intelligibility, plausibility, and fruitfulness of ideas\nContinue to articulate criteria for acceptance of ideas (i.e., consistency and generalizability)\nContinue to employ physical representations of their thinking\nBegin to employ analogies and metaphors, discuss their explicit use, and differentiate physical models from conceptual models\nArticulate and defend ideas about “what learning should be like”\nProvides historical examples of very important people changing their views and explanations over time\nBegins to use students’ external representations of their thinking as a way of evaluating their ideas/ beliefs (in terms of intelligibility, plausibility, and fruitfulness) in order to (a) create, when necessary, dissatisfaction in the minds of the learner to facilitate conceptual exchange or (b) look for ways of promoting conceptual capture in the mind of the learner\nSOURCE: Smith et al. (2000).\nstanding of how knowledge is constructed. Many researchers assume that epistemology is trait-like, although some argue that it is situational—an interaction of cognitive and historical resources with environmental features that cue or elicit those resources.\nLooking across the various lines of research, most children in grades K-8 do not further develop the rudimentary knowledge and skills that are so evident during the preschool years. Young children tend to move from one level of understanding to the next slowly, if at all, and by middle school few students reach higher levels of understanding, at which knowledge is viewed as problematic and claims are necessarily subjected to scrutiny for their evidentiary warrants. In large measure, this pervasive pattern probably reflects more about the opportunities to learn that children encounter in their\neducation than a measure of what they could do under different conditions. Evidence from design studies, discussed in this chapter and to which we return in Chapter 9, suggests that, under optimal curricular and instructional conditions, children can develop very sophisticated views of knowledge. Yet the contrast is remarkable between the capabilities of preschool children and modal patterns of development in older children and the lack of sophisticated reasoning about knowledge in early adolescents.\nWe argue that in carefully designed, supportive environments, elementary and middle school children are capable of understanding and working with knowledge in sophisticated ways. Instruction in K-8 science can significantly advance their understanding of the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the process by which it is constructed. Design studies, in which researchers create conditions favorable to students’ learning about the scientific enterprise, suggest that elementary students can develop higher levels of how scientific knowledge develops. With appropriate supports for learning strategies of investigation, children can engage in designing and conducting investigations that enable them to understand science as a way of knowing (Gobert and Pallant, 2001; Klahr and Li, 2005; Metz, 2004; Schwartz and White, 2005; Smith et al., 2000; Toth, Klahr, and Chen, 2000). The core elements of this scientific activity involve articulating hypotheses, laws, or models, designing experiments or empirical investigations that test these ideas, collecting data, and using data as evidence to evaluate and revise them. We will discuss this literature in depth in Chapter 9.\nCurrent science education does not typically offer the kind of educational environments that have been shown to support children’s understanding of scientific knowledge. Rather, there is a tendency to overemphasize methods, often experimental methods, as opposed to presenting science as a process of building theories and models, checking them for internal consistency and coherence, and testing them empirically. This lack of attention to theory, explanation, and models may exacerbate the difficulties children have with understanding how scientific knowledge is constructed. It may, in fact, strengthen their misconceptions, such as the view that scientific knowledge is unproblematic, relatively simple to obtain, and flows easily from direct observation. While curricula may be one source of this problem, teachers’ lack of understanding of science as a way of knowing may also play a role. The role of teachers and teacher knowledge in science education is taken up in greater detail in Chapter 10.\nAkerson, V.L., Abd-El-Khalick, F., and Lederman, N.G. (2000). Influence of a reflective explicit activity-based approach on elementary teachers’ conceptions of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 37(4), 295-317.\nBell, P., and Linn, M.C. (2000). Beliefs about science: How does science instruction contribute? In B.K. Hofer and P.R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.\nBurbules, N.C., and Linn, M.C. (1991). Science education and the philosophy of science: Congruence or contradiction? International Journal of Science Education, 3(3), 227-241.\nCarey, S., Evans, R., Honda, M., Jay, E., and Unger, C. (1989). “An experiment is when you try it and see if it works”: A study of grade 7 students’ understanding of the construction of scientific knowledge. International Journal of Science Education, 11(5), 514-529.\nCarey, S., and Smith, C. (1993). On understanding the nature of scientific knowledge. Educational Psychologist, 28(3), 235-251.\nChandler, M., Boyes, M., and Ball, L. (1990). Relativism and stations of epistemic doubt. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 50, 370-395.\nChandler, M.J., Hallett, D., and Sokol, B.W. (2002). Competing claims about competing knowledge claims. In B.K. Hofer and P.R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 145-168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.\nDavis, E.A. (1998). Scaffolding students’ reflection for science learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.\nDriver, R., Leach, J., Millar, R., and Scott, P. (1996). Young people’s images of science. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.\nGiere, R.N. (1991) Understanding scientific reasoning. New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston.\nGiere, R.N. (1999). Science without laws. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.\nGobert, J., and Discenna, J. (1997). The relationship between students’ epistemologies and model-based reasoning. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED409164). Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Department of Science Studies.\nGobert, J., and Pallant, A. (2001). Making thinking visible: Promoting science learning through modeling and visualizations. Presented at the Gordon Research Conference, Mt. Holyoke College, Hadley, MA, August 5-10.\nGrosslight, L., Unger, C., Jay. E., and Smith, C. (1991). Understanding models and their use in science: Conceptions of middle and high school students and experts. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28, 799-822.\nHammer, D. (1994). Epistemological beliefs in introductory physics. Cognition and Instruction, 12(2), 151-183.\nHammer, D., and Elby, A. (2002). On the form of a personal epistemology. In B.K. Hofer and P.R. Pintrich (Eds.), Personal epistemology: The psychology of beliefs about knowledge and knowing (pp. 169-190). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.\nHewson, P., and Hewson, M.,(1988). On appropiate conception of teaching science: A view from studies of science learning. Science Education, 72(5), 529-540.\nKhishfe, R., and Abd-El-Khalick, F. (2002). Influence of explicit and reflective versus implicit inquiry-oriented instruction on sixth graders’ views of nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 551-578.\nKitchener, K.S., and King, P.M. (1981). Reflective judgment: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of Applied and Developmental Psychology, 2, 89-116.\nKlahr, D., and Li, L. (2005). Cognitive research and elementary science instruction: From the laboratory, to the classroom, and back. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 14(2), 217-238.\nKuhn, D., and Leadbeater, B. (1988). The connection of theory and evidence. The interpretation of divergent evidence. In H. Beilin, D. Kuhn, E. Amsel, and M. O’Loughlin (Eds.), The development of scientific thinking skills. St. Louis, MO: Academic Press.\nLederman, N.G. (1999). Teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and classroom practice: Factors that facilitate or impede the relationship. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36, 916-929.\nLederman, N.G, Abd-el-Khalick, F., Bell, R.L., and Schwartz, R.S. (2002). Views of nature of science questionnaire: Towards valid and meaningful assessment of learners’ conceptions of the nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39(6), 497-521.\nLongino, H. (1990). Science as social knowledge. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.\nMcComas, W.F., and Olson, J.K. (1998). The nature of science in international science education standards documents. In W.F. McComas (Ed.), The nature of science in science education: Rationales and strategies(pp. 41-52). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.\nMetz, K.E. (2004). Children’s understanding of scientific inquiry: Their conceptualization of uncertainty in investigations of their own design. Cognition and Instruction, 22(2), 219-290.\nOsborne, J.F., Collins, S., Ratcliffe, M., Millar, R., and Duschl, R. (2003). What “ideas-about-science” should be taught in school science? A Delphi study of the expert community. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(7), 692-720.\nPenner, D., Giles, N.D., Lehrer, R., and Schauble, L. (1997). Building functional models: Designing an elbow. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34(2), 125-143.\nPerner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.\nPerry, W.G. (1970/1999). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston.\nReif, F., and Larkin, J.H. (1991). Cognition in scientific and everyday domains: Comparison and learning implications. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28(9), 733-760.\nRoseman, J., Kesidou, S., Stern, L., and Caldwell, A. (1999). Heavy books light on learning: AAAS Project 2061 evaluates middle grades science textbooks. Science Books and Films, 35, 243-247.\nRudolph, J.L. (2005). Epistemology for the masses: The origins of the “scientific method” in American schools. History of Education Quarterly, 45(2), 341-376.\nSandoval, W.A. (2005). Understanding students’ practical epistemologies and their influence on learning through inquiry. Science Education, 89, 634-656.\nSandoval, W.A., and Reiser, B.J. (2004). Explanation-driven inquiry: Integrating conceptual and epistemic scaffolds for scientific inquiry. Science Education, 88, 345-372.\nSchauble, L., Glaser, R., Duschl, R., Schulze, S., and John, J. (1995). Students’ understanding of the objectives and procedures of experimentation in the science classroom. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(2), 131-166.\nSchwarz, C., and White, B.Y. (2005). Metamodeling knowledge: Developing students’ understanding of scientific modeling. Cognition and Instruction, 23(2), 165-205.\nSmith, C.L., Maclin, D., Houghton, C., and Hennessey, M.G. (2000). Sixth-grade students’ epistemologies of science: The impact of school science experiences on epistemological development. Cognition and Instruction, 18(3), 285-316.\nSmith, C., and Wenk, L. (in press). Relations among three aspects of first-year college students’ epistemologies of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching.\nSodian, B., and Wimmer, H. (1987). Children’s understanding of inference as a source of knowledge. Child Development, 58, 424-433.\nSolomon, M. (2001). Social empiricism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.\nSonger, N.B., and Linn, M.C. (1991). How do students’ views of the scientific enterprise influence knowledge integration? Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 28(9), 761-784.\nTaylor, M., Cartwright, B., and Bowden, T. (1991). Perspective-taking and theory of mind: Do children predict interpretive diversity as a function of differences in observer’s knowledge? Child Development, 62, 1334-1351.\nToth, E.E., Klahr, D., and Chen, Z. (2000). Bridging research and practice: A cognitively-based classroom intervention for teaching experimentation skills to elementary school children. Cognition and Instruction, 18(4), 423-459.\nToth, E., Suthers, D., and Lesgold, A. (2002). Mapping to know: The effects of evidence maps and reflective assessment on scientific inquiry skills. Science Education, 86(2), 264-286.\nNext: 7 Participation in Scientific Practices and Discourse »\nTaking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 Get This Book\nBuy Hardback | $69.95 Buy Ebook | $54.99\nWhat is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:\nWhen do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects?\nWhat role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science?\nHow can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity?\nWhat are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning?\nHow can teachers be taught to teach science?\nThe book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of science--about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science education--teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.\nFront Matter i–xvi\nExecutive Summary 1–8\nPart I - Introduction: 1 Science Learning Past and Present 9–25\n2 Goals for Science Education 26–50\nPart II - How Children Learn Science: 3 Foundations for Science Learning in Young Children 51–92\n4 Knowledge and Understanding of the Natural World 93–128\n5 Generating and Evaluating Scientific Evidence and Explanations 129–167\n6 Understanding How Scientific Knowledge Is Constructed 168–185\n7 Participation in Scientific Practices and Discourse 186–210\nPart III - Supporting Science Learning: 8 Learning Progressions 211–250\n9 Teaching Science as Practice 251–295\n10 Supporting Science Instruction 296–330\nPart IV - Future Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research: 11 Conclusions and Recommendations 331–356\nAppendix A: Overview of Learning Progressions for Matter and the Atomic-Molecular Theory 357–365\nAppendix B: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff 366–372\nIndex 373–388","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line136543"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7146335244178772,"wiki_prob":0.7146335244178772,"text":"New model could speed up colon cancer research\nIntroducing genetic mutations with CRISPR offers a fast and accurate way to simulate the disease.\nAnne Trafton | MIT News Office\nUsing the gene-editing system known as CRISPR, MIT researchers have shown in mice that they can generate colon tumors that very closely resemble human tumors. This advance should help scientists learn more about how the disease progresses and allow them to test new therapies.\nOnce formed, many of these experimental tumors spread to the liver, just like human colon cancers often do. These metastases are the most common cause of death from colon cancer.\n“That’s been a missing piece in the study of colon cancer. There is really no reliable method for recapitulating the metastatic progression from a primary tumor in the colon to the liver,” says Omer Yilmaz, an MIT assistant professor of biology, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the lead senior author of the study, which appears in the May 1 issue of Nature Biotechnology.\nThe study builds on recent work by Tyler Jacks, the director of the Koch Institute, who has also used CRISPR to generate lung and liver tumors in mice.\n“CRISPR-based technologies have begun to revolutionize many aspects of cancer research, including building mouse models of the disease with greater speed and greater precision. This study is a good example of both,” says Jacks, who is also an author of the Nature Biotechnology paper.\nThe paper’s lead authors are Jatin Roper, a research affiliate at the Koch Institute and a gastroenterologist at Tufts Medical Center, and Tuomas Tammela, a research scientist at the Koch Institute.\nMimicking human tumors\nFor many years, cancer biologists have taken two distinct approaches to modeling cancer. One is to grow immortalized human cancer cells known as cancer cell lines in a lab dish. “We’ve learned a lot by studying these two-dimensional cell lines, but they have limitations,” Yilmaz says. “They don’t really reproduce the complex in vivo environment of a tumor.”\nAnother widely used technique is genetically engineering mice with mutations that predispose them to develop cancer. However, it can take years to breed such mice, especially if they have more than one cancer-linked mutation.\nRecently, researchers have begun using CRISPR to generate cancer models. CRISPR, originally discovered by biologists studying the bacterial immune system, consists of a DNA-cutting enzyme called Cas9 and short RNA guide strands that target specific sequences of the genome, telling Cas9 where to make its cuts. Using this process, scientists can make targeted mutations in the genomes of living animals, either deleting genes or inserting new ones.\nTo induce cancer mutations, the investigators package the genes for Cas9 and the RNA guide strand into viruses called lentiviruses, which are then injected into the target organs of adult mice.\nYilmaz, who studies colon cancer and how it is influenced by genes, diet, and aging, decided to adapt this approach to generate colon tumors in mice. He and members of his lab were already working on a technique for growing miniature tissues known as organoids — three-dimensional growths that, in this case, accurately replicate the structure of the colon.\nIn the new paper, the researchers used CRISPR to introduce cancer-causing mutations into the organoids and then delivered them via colonoscopy to the colon, where they attached to the lining and formed tumors.\n“We were able to transplant these 3-D mini-intestinal tumors into the colon of recipient mice and recapitulate many aspects of human disease,” Yilmaz says.\nMore accurate modeling\nOnce the tumors are established in the mice, the researchers can introduce additional mutations at any time, allowing them to study the influence of each mutation on tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis.\nAlmost 30 years ago, scientists discovered that colon tumors in humans usually acquire cancerous mutations in a particular order, but they haven’t been able to accurately model this in mice until now.\n“In human patients, mutations never occur all at once,” Tammela says. “Mutations are acquired over time as the tumor progresses and becomes more aggressive, more invasive, and more metastatic. Now we can model this in mice.”\nTo demonstrate that ability, the MIT team delivered organoids with a mutated form of the APC gene, which is the cancer-initiating mutation in 80 percent of colon cancer patients. Once the tumors were established, they introduced a mutated form of KRAS, which is commonly found in colon and many other cancers.\nThe scientists also delivered components of the CRISPR system directly into the colon wall to quickly model colon cancer by editing the APC gene. They then added CRISPR components to also edit the gene for P53, which is commonly mutated in colon and other cancers.\n“These new approaches reduce the time frame to develop genetically engineered mice from two years to just a few months, and involve very basic gene engineering with CRISPR,” Roper says. “We used P53 and KRAS to demonstrate the principle that the CRISPR editing approach and the organoid transplantation approach can be used to very quickly model any possible cancer-associated gene.”\nIn this study, the researchers also showed that they could grow tumor cells from patients into organoids that could be transplanted into mice. This could give doctors a way to perform “personalized medicine” in which they test various treatment options against a patient’s own tumor cells.\nFernando Camargo, a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University, says the study represents an important advance in colon cancer research.\n“It allows investigators to have a very flexible model to look at multiple aspects of colorectal cancer, from basic biology of the genes involved in progression and metastasis, to testing potential drugs,” says Camargo, who was not involved in the research.\nYilmaz’ lab is now using these techniques to study how other factors such as metabolism, diet, and aging affect colon cancer development. The researchers are also using this approach to test potential new colon cancer drugs.\nThe research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the V Foundation V Scholar Award, the Sidney Kimmel Scholar Award, the Pew-Stewart Trust Scholar Award, the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund, the American Federation of Aging Research, and the Hope Funds for Cancer Research.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line249040"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5141893029212952,"wiki_prob":0.48581069707870483,"text":"China’s 2014 Corruption Fight Crucial to Economic Reform, Says Premier\nTim Donovan\nSpeaking at an early February meeting of the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang linked China’s ongoing fight against corruption to economic reform, saying that the Chinese government has “too much” influence on the country’s economy, making it “easy for corruption to breed.” The remarks, not published by state media until February 23, also noted that government intervention in microeconomic activities hinders the “decisive” role of the market, a key goal of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP...\nUS, Chinese Officials Set Busy Bilateral Calendar for 2014\nUSCBC Staff\nBilateral engagement between the United States and China has begun to ramp up, with the US-China Business Council (USCBC) taking an active role in discussing key business issues with governments from both nations. USCBC is currently soliciting comments from members on their top priorities for the 2014 Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), whose working groups are set to meet in the coming months. Following the release of its 2014 board of directors’ Statement of Priorities, USCBC...\nShanghai FTZ Administration Releases Organizational Responsibility Chart\nAlthough the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) administration announced its organizational structure soon after the zone launched in September, it has not yet publicly released the responsibilities of its ten departments. The US-China Business Council (USCBC) recently obtained a copy of this chart from the zone’s human resources bureau, and has translated it into English for member companies.\nResponsibilities of the departments include organizing the implementation of...\nNDRC, MIIT to Focus on Sustainable Development and Innovation in 2014\nOwen Haacke and Angela Fan\nTwo key ministries responsible for China’s economic and industrial development have said they would advance policies to promote a more sustainable, innovative, and technologically advanced economy. In their 2014 work plans, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) both pledged to address industrial overcapacity and promote sustainable economic development, while tackling issues that affect many foreign companies...\nWhat China’s Administrative Licensing Reforms Mean for US Companies\nJennifer Xuejiao Yang and Stephanie Henry\nFollowing the first session of the 12th National People’s Congress in March 2013, Premier Li Keqiang announced that reforming China’s administrative approval system is a top priority, and vowed to eliminate or decentralize around 500 items during his administration. Since that time, the State Council has taken a number of steps to promote administrative licensing reform, including a September notice to control new administrative licensing processes, a December catalogue on government...\nNew Leading Group, Shanghai FTZ Announcements Indicate Economic Reform Slowly Advancing\nChinese government agencies have recently taken steps to advance economic reform, from establishing a high-level leading group headed by President Xi Jinping to releasing new plans for financial and administrative licensing changes in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ). While each of these moves may have positive implications for foreign companies doing business in China, they have yet to fulfill the promises made in third plenum reform documents and in statements from key officials about...\nPRC Government & Politics (4) Apply PRC Government & Politics filter\nState Plan & Investment Priorities (3) Apply State Plan & Investment Priorities filter\nCrime, Corruption (1) Apply Crime, Corruption filter\nUS Government & Politics (1) Apply US Government & Politics filter\nBusiness Issues (5) Apply Business Issues filter\n(-) Remove February 2014 filter February 2014","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1056669"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6850062608718872,"wiki_prob":0.6850062608718872,"text":"Veteran Stories\nVeteran Stories:\nWilliam H Cameron\nPictured here is the ship HMCS Kitchener (K 225), upon which Bill Cameron sailed throughout the war, as well as signatures from the ship's crew on arriving in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1945.\nBill Cameron\nBill Cameron and his girlfriend walk along Grandville Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, at the time of his discharge in 1945. They were later married in 1949.\nBill Cameron pictured here on leave with a friend from the ship.\nBill Cameron during wartime.\nBill Cameron and fellow shipmate on board HMCS Kitchener during the war.\nListen to this story\n\"I will never forget the massive ships and planes, etc., in the English Channel and the action taking place at Normandy with landing craft hitting the beaches with soldiers.\"\nD-Day (Normandy Landings)\nBoulogne, France\nConvoys\nThe Landings in Normandy\nHMCS\nHCMS\nThe Canadian Encyclopedia is your authoritative reference of all things Canadian.\nOn approximately January 1944, I was drafted to a ship, a corvette in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, the HMCS Kitchener, K225, which was in refit after duties in the Mediterranean and the Torch Invasion [Operation Torch, British invasion of North Africa]. Most of the crew were new to the ship and because of this refit work done on the ship. After leaving Liverpool, we sailed on a shakedown cruise [testing the ship’s performance] to Bermuda, which was an extremely rough trip as to the weather and so lost many Carley floats [life rafts], etc., during the storms. Another set of repairs had to be carried out. After returning from Bermuda, we were assigned to duties on the North Atlantic as convoy protection against German subs. Corvettes were not a big ship, with a complement of 100 to 125 men. They were designed for anti-submarine offenses because they were very seaworthy and maneuverable. They had two depth charge [anti-submarine weapon] throwers on each side of the ship and cages of depth charges on the quarterdeck, where they would roll off the stern when required. The idea of these depth charges was to drop them on a sub, both on top and side of the submarines, submerged sub, causing a concussion effect on the hull and damaging it in many ways, so it would either sink or resurface. Other armaments they carried was six Oerlikon 20 millimeter guns [anti-aircraft weapon], one on each side of the bridge and two each side of the aft parts of the ship. One four inch gun on the forecastle, one set of Hedgehogs [anti-submarine weapon] also on the forecastle and one, two inch pom-pom [Quick Firing 2 pounder anti-aircraft] guns at mid-ship. Corvettes were used very effectively for north Atlantic convoy protection of 10 to 20 ships. From our duties of escort work, in the Atlantic, we were sent to the United Kingdom and arrived at Scotland in the Clyde River area. From this area, we sailed to Scapa Flow where we were put through very extensive exercises regarding ships, planes, PT [Patrol Torpedo] boats and subs, etc., along with hundreds of other navy ships. Unbeknownst to us, this was exercises to fix ships for the Normandy landings in France. After completing these exercises, we were sent into the English Channel and arrived at Plymouth Harbour approximately 1 June 1944 and tied up alongside the USS Augusta, an American cruiser, which was [General] Omar Bradley’s flagship. At this time, our captain, Lieutenant John Moles, talked to us regarding the invasion plans for June 5th and gave us a document from the supreme commander, [General Dwight] Ike Eisenhower, as to what to expect at this time. We were directed to escort two World War I French battleships to Normandy, filled with cement and to be sunk for breakwater on the beaches. This did not sit very well with our captain or crew, to be going into this kind of battle with these two old ships. So our captain had our duties changed to join in the U.S. navy escort group, protecting troop landing craft and ships at Omaha Beach. D-Day was changed to June 6th, due to weather conditions. On D-Day, we sailed with an American convoy of ships carrying soldiers for landing at Omaha Beach. I will never forget the massive ships and planes, etc., in the English Channel and the action taking place at Normandy with landing craft hitting the beaches with soldiers. Our job at the beachhead was to rescue men in the water or assist anything, or anybody while standing off at Normandy. We were with the second flotilla to land at Omaha Beach. We sailed back to the English Channel and landed at Milford Haven, Wales, where we ran from there to the end of the war. Our job was convoy protection for all ships going to Normandy and Omaha Beach. During our service, there were many ships sailing from Milford Haven. Some were not fortunate to survive the English Channel theatre of war. The corvette, [HMCS] Regina, [HMCS] Trentonian and the [HMCS] Alberni were torpedoed and lost a great many men during this period. I believe our safe return was mostly due to the credit of our captain, Jack Moles, of London, Ontario. We were the first Canadian sailors the town of Milford Haven had ever seen and from the start of operations out of Milford Haven to the end of the war, the town treated us extremely well.\nAboriginal Arts & Stories\nCitizenship Chanllenge\nBrowse Speaker Bios\nAnniversaries & Events\n© 2020 The Memory Project, All Rights Reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line639286"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9846221804618835,"wiki_prob":0.9846221804618835,"text":"13 September 2018 at 8:56pm\nBritish teenager Courtney Hadwin makes it to final of America's Got Talent\nCourtney Hadwin, 14, was overjoyed after the announcement was made on television. Photo: AP\nA 14-year-old British teenager was thrilled to tears after being told she secured a place in America's Got Talent.\nCourtney Hadwin covered Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild, which won her spot in the final.\nThe performance that secured Courtney Hadwin's place in the final\nNews of the singer's achievement overseas has been met with joy from her fellow schoolmates at The Academy at Shotton Hall in County Durham.\nCourtney Hadwin's school friends react to her performance on America's Got Talent\nIn a message on Twitter the excited teenager thanked her fans and teachers for their support.\nShe wrote: \"@howiemandel you have believed in my from right at the beginning can’t thank you enough.\"\nThe young singer was sent straight through to the live semi-finals after stunning judges with a cover of Otis Redding's Hard To Handle.\nShe was judge Howie Mandel’s golden buzzer winner and has won high praise from music mogul Simon Cowell.\nAfter watching the singer's performance he said: “You’re a bundle of excitement and it’s raw and messy.\n\"I saw you at the beginning of the show, shaking like a leaf and then you come out on stage and turn into a maniac.\n“That’s why I absolutely love you.\"\nSinging star died after jumping in front of a train\nGeorge Michael swaps drugs for Coronation Street.\nPrince to perform in Shepherd's Bush tonight","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1162382"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9778458476066589,"wiki_prob":0.9778458476066589,"text":"Brazil’s top court rules to make homophobia a crime\nTransgender rights activist waves a transgender flag as they protest the killings of transgender women this year, at a rally in Washington Square Park in New York, U.S., May 24, 2019. (Reuters/Demetrius Freeman)\nRIO DE JANEIRO — A majority of judges in Brazil’s top court has voted to criminalize homophobia in a move welcomed by campaigners concerned about a rollback in gay rights and the murder of hundreds of LGBT+ people every year.\nSix of 11 of Brazil’s Supreme Court judges late Thursday agreed that acts of homophobia and transphobia should be treated under current anti-discrimination laws until the country’s parliament passed legislation dealing with LGBT+ protection.\nThis would make violence against LGBT+ people a crime and make it illegal to deny access to education or jobs, to refuse service in stores, or to bar LGBT+ people from public buildings.\nThe court will resume voting in the first week of June, and, after the remaining judges vote, the ruling will go into effect.\nFelipe Carvalho, president of the Niteroi Diversity Group, a non-profit that focuses on rights for LGBT+ people, said the vote was a “very significant step”.\n“This won’t end LGBT-phobia, but it opens a number of possibilities for us,” Carvalho told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.\nHomophobia is common in Brazil, a deeply religious country where both the Catholic Church and the popular evangelical Christian movement are frequently critical of gay rights and violence against LGBT+ people is rife.\nThe ruling comes after President Jair Bolsonaro, a self proclaimed “proud homophobe” who took power in January, removed LGBT+ responsibilities from the human rights ministry and declared that Brazil must not become a “gay tourism paradise”.\nThe court’s judges said their ruling addressed a failure by lawmakers to legally protect the LGBT+ community.\nAt least 320 LGBT+ people were killed in Brazil in 2018 and 126 murders have been reported so far this year, according to watchdog group Grupo Gay da Bahia.\nBrazil is also the most dangerous country in the world to be transgender, according to the Trans Murder Monitoring project, with at least 167 people killed in the 12 months to Sept. 2018.\nHuman rights campaigners expected that the Supreme Court ruling would put pressure on lawmakers to finally act.\n“We hope that this leads Congress to pass bills to protect the LGBT population,” said Bruna Benevides, a LGBT+ campaigner who was suspended from the military after coming out as trans.\n“In my case, (the ruling) can lead to courts recognizing my right to be (in the military).”\nA day before the court ruling, the Senate approved a bill that would criminalize homophobia in a first round of voting. The bill will have to go through a second round of voting and then be sent to the lower house of Congress for approval.\nThe speaker for the Senate’s bill, centrist politician Alessandro Vieira, said he would prefer Congress to decide the matter but the court’s ruling was understandable because lawmakers had delayed LGBT+ legislation for so long.\n“When we have a three decade delay (on voting LGBT+ bills), it’s fair that the judiciary acts,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.—Reporting by Fabio Teixeira; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Thomson Reuters Foundation\nIndigenous tribes fear hard year ahead after Amazon fires\nWhy are the Amazon fires sparking a crisis for Brazil and the world?\nQuezon City designated a gender-neutral restroom. Will it end or heat up the debate?\nBrazil says open to aid for Amazon fires, but will decide how it’s used\nG7 offers emergency aid to fight Amazon forest fires\nWarplanes dump water on Amazon as Brazil military begins fighting fires","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line587323"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6885848045349121,"wiki_prob":0.3114151954650879,"text":"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/w/white-tailed-deer.html\nAnimalsPhoto Ark\nAbout the White-Tailed Deer\nWhite-tailed deer, the smallest members of the North American deer family, are found from southern Canada to South America. In the heat of summer they typically inhabit fields and meadows using clumps of broad-leaved and coniferous forests for shade. During the winter they generally keep to forests, preferring coniferous stands that provide shelter from the harsh elements.\nAdult white-tails have reddish-brown coats in summer which fade to a duller grayish-brown in winter. Male deer, called bucks, are easily recognizable in the summer and fall by their prominent set of antlers, which are grown annually and fall off in the winter. Only the bucks grow antlers, which bear a number of tines, or sharp points. During the mating season, also called the rut, bucks fight over territory by using their antlers in sparring matches.\nFemale deer, called does, give birth to one to three young at a time, usually in May or June and after a gestation period of seven months. Young deer, called fawns, wear a reddish-brown coat with white spots that helps them blend in with the forest.\nDiet and Behavior\nWhite-tailed deer are herbivores, leisurely grazing on most available plant foods. Their stomachs allow them to digest a varied diet, including leaves, twigs, fruits and nuts, grass, corn, alfalfa, and even lichens and other fungi. Occasionally venturing out in the daylight hours, white-tailed deer are primarily nocturnal or crepuscular, browsing mainly at dawn and dusk.\nIn the wild, white-tails, particularly the young, are preyed upon by bobcats, mountain lions, and coyotes. They use speed and agility to outrun predators, sprinting up to 30 miles per hour and leaping as high as 10 feet and as far as 30 feet in a single bound.\nAlthough previously depleted by unrestricted hunting in the United States, strict game-management measures have helped restore the white-tailed deer population.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line178433"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6970605850219727,"wiki_prob":0.30293941497802734,"text":"This walk, as do all the described walks, commences at St Andrews church South Stoke. There is parking on The Street outside the church.\nProceed (south) along The Street past the school, Perch and Pike PH and Chapel Close and as the road turns sharply to the left, continue (south) on the Ridgeway Path. After about ¼ miles the path becomes an access road to the houses and then the river comes into view on the right. You will then pass Goring Sailing Club and the Leatherne Bottel PH, which is riverside on the right. Continue south on the path, which now follows the river at a distance, with the Great Western railway on the left. You will soon get a glimpse of Cleeve lock.\nAfter about ¾ miles the path (now a track) joins a road on a hair-pin bend. Tturn left here (east), (the Ridgeway Path continues south on its way to Avebury) and proceed under the railway bridge to the cross roads with the B4009.\nTaking care crossing the B4009, continue straight ahead (east), into Elvendon Road and after about ¾ miles you will reach Battle farm, having past Cleeve Down housing estate and Summerfield Rise on your right. Take the footpath on your left (north), signposted Beech Lane and Woodcote, and follow this for about ½ miles as it hugs the edge of Wroxhills Wood before turning (east) into the woods. Here you can see Bluebells in the spring and are accompanied by the bird songs. You will shortly reach a point where two paths cross, turn left (north) and proceed on this path for about ¼ miles, which brings you to the edge of the wood. As you exit the woods take time to enjoy the panoramic view of the valley, being able to see the edge of the North Downs and the Chilterns and in the distance Wittenham Clumps and Didcot Power Station. Turn left (west) here and follow the track. After a short while (just past a fenced off building) another path joins from the right. Take this path and continue until it meets the single track road, this is the Icknield Way. Cross the road and take the single track road (going west) that is almost directly opposite. Keep on this road for about ¾ miles, passing Grove farm and cottages on your right, until it meets the B4009.\nTurn right (north) onto the B4009 and proceed with care and caution. A few yards past the brow the hill, crossing the B4009 with care, turn left (west) into South Bank and proceed under the railway bridge and at the bottom of South Bank follow the road round into The Street and continue straight ahead until you reach St Andrew’s church on the right.\nThis is the end of the walk.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1006298"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7483499050140381,"wiki_prob":0.7483499050140381,"text":"News / Gallery\nContact / Quote\nC80 Group Acquires YDBC Ltd\nC80 Group has announced the purchase of Yorkshire Dales Building Consultancy Ltd (YDBC).\nYDBC Ltd was seen as the perfect acquisition for C80 Group because of its geographical location and the complimentary services that C80 Solutions currently offers. Both have been operational for over 10 years and have experienced strong organic growth in what is a highly specialised industry.\nMark Heptonstall, Managing Director and founder of the C80 Group was pleased that the deal had been completed before the end of the calendar year, putting the company in a position to relaunch YDBC’s services immediately. Regarding the acquisition, he announced, “C80 Solutions delivers the full range of energy assessment, building compliance, consultancy, and testing services. Over the last 10 years, we have built a team of highly skilled consultants and have carefully laid the foundations for our expansion. This new acquisition will allow us to deliver not just a broader portfolio of services, but also greater value to our clients. Customers will now have the support of our experienced and qualified staff to guide them through both the building compliance and the building regulation process”.\nOperating as a sister company to C80 Solutions, YDBC’s offices in Leyburn will be retained and a new region will be opened straight away from C80 Group’s head office in Horsforth, Leeds. It will continue to serve the existing areas of Yorkshire and the North East, with a staged plan for expansion over the next 5 years. Gerard Marsh will stay on as director and principal surveyor. All current staff will be retained as part of the acquisition.\nAbout C80 Solutions\nFounded in 2009, C80 Solutions is a building compliance and assessment specialist, delivering energy assessment, compliance, consultancy and testing services for the UK residential and commercial sectors. Its clients include some of the nation’s largest housebuilders, contractors, developers, M&E Engineers, architects, and local authorities. The company has three main objectives: to save its clients time, money and make the process of meeting building regulations straightforward and hassle-free. In 2019, the company was the winner of the Energy Efficiency Awards Regional Consultancy of the year. For more information, visit https://www.c80solutions.co.uk/\nLeyburn Office\nEmail: info@ydbcltd.com\nUpsall Grange Gardens Development\nNew YDBC Ltd Agreement Form\n© Copyright 2020 Yorkshire Dales Building Consultancy Ltd\nDesigned By Andy Emmett","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1002008"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.563539445400238,"wiki_prob":0.563539445400238,"text":"Ali Smith: How I Write\n‘ARTFUL’\nThe British writer, whose new book, Artful, is an intoxicating mixture of lecture and ghost story, talks about what makes her cry and the places that inspire her.\nDavid Sandison/eyevine, via Redux\nWhere did you grow up? In Inverness, Scotland, in a small house in a street parallel to the Caledonian Canal.\nYou are a member of the Royal Society of Literature. What does membership entail? Are there robes and fireside chats with goblets of sherry, that sort of thing? No, ha, nothing quite so effete. It's a body of people which organizes exciting events about books and schools of thought in national and international literatures, digs up funding from under unexpected stones, and acts as a focal communal body for people working in or interested in literature—important for people in a job that is by nature solitudinous. There's a perk you'll be interested in, though, if you're interested in goblets of sherry: if you are elected as a fellow, you get to sign the fellow register with a pen which belonged to Byron or Dickens (you get to choose which). If you imagine the range, the versatility in form and tone arcing between those two writers, and apply it now to, then magnify it by, contemporary literatures, interests, demands and needs—that's the RSL. Not a sherry glass in sight.\nWhat is a distinctive habit or affectation of yours? Cultivating privacy in a world now unused to it. And sniffing instead of blowing my nose. My partner gives me quite a hard time about it, but not as hard a time, she says, as I'm giving my nasal tubes.\nWhat is your favorite item of clothing? I really like jackets, and tend to buy them to the detriment of my need of all the other items.\nPlease recommend three books (not your own) to your readers. The three novels I've most recently really loved: The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan, Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck and The Gold Rimmed Spectacles by Giorgio Bassani. The first is a debut, the second is a recent-ish German novel, the third is a 1950s Italian work, and all three are about how history and the novel, when these concepts meet—history at its most brutal and the novel at its most uncompromising—can be transformed by fusion with each other into a legacy of human understanding.\nDo you have a writer friend who helps and inspires you? I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it’s important not to mix the two up.\nWhat is a place that inspires you? Anywhere in the sun, anywhere under the old blue sky. And, more specifically recently, the church of San Clemente in Rome, where Masolino's magnificent fresco of St. Catherine is just the upper layer of a building that goes down for centuries, an experience of time and stratification which echoes everywhere in Rome, and was, I thought, a bit like standing in a place straddling the conscious and the subconscious.\nDescribe your routine when conceiving of a book and its plot, before the writing begins. Do you like to map out your books ahead of time, or just let it flow? It's really a time where articulation and articulacy come under a particular pressure, I mean a pressure very particular to whatever the book that's waiting to be written is. It's a process of allowing yourself not to know, and to lose or shed your customary articulacy, then allowing yourself to see (hear, sense, all the senses) by different means. It's the opposite of public. After that, it's a case of instinct and edit, we need them both.\nYou write short fiction and novels (as well as plays). Does your approach differ from one format to the other? No. They all need the same attention, and the balance between instinct and edit.\nI’ve recently embarked on a project to read a short story a day, and write a response essay to each. Could you name three great short stories that I should read, but which are not on everyone’s hit list? It is exciting to me that you'd work on a project like that, and also that people have “hit lists” of short stories. Chekhov's tiny story, “After the Theatre;” George Mackay Brown's story, “Witch;” Muriel Spark's story, “The House of the Famous Poet.” That covers life, death, and afterlife (I think the short story form is pretty much always concerned with all three).\nWhat is the difference between American and British literature? How about between English and Scottish literature? I could say a lot of words here, like enthusiastic and metaphysical and class system and political and invisible and Presbyterian and experimental courage and Caledonian antisyzygy. If you hold a seminar, tell me, and I'll come and speak at it, if you want.\nConsider yourself invited! I should design a seminar just to have you come speak at it.What I know most is that the difference between us is what makes us interesting and attractive and problematic and exciting and vital to each other. Give me difference over indifference any day.\nDescribe your writing routine, including any unusual rituals associated with the writing process, if you have them. I use pencils. Not very mysterious.\nIs there anything distinctive or unusual about your work space? No, it's just a desk, with the stuff I’m working on all over it. It looks out on to the tops of trees and then sky.\nWhat is guaranteed to make you laugh? Harpo Marx. Gracie Fields. Being tickled.\nWhat is guaranteed to make you cry? I can never tell. It's quite exciting. For instance, the other night I watched a 1920s short film called Regen (Rain), a Dutch film about—yes—rain, a day of rain over Amsterdam, and it was so beautiful, pivoted between its pasts and its futures, and at the same time so like rain will always be, that there was an image of a cloth pegged and blowing on a line in black and white nearly a hundred years ago and I was moved to tears.\nDo you have any superstitions? Yes, I've got them all. If anyone knows of any obscure ones, tell me.\nWhat is something you always carry with you? An extra pair of glasses in case, and in a case.\nIf you could bring back to life one deceased person, who would it be and why? I'd ask them to give Katherine Mansfield some of the years she never got to have.\nWhat is your favorite snack? Fruit in almost all forms. Happy with apples.\nWhat phrase do you over-use? \"That's interesting.\" (But only because things are endlessly interesting.)\nWhat is the story behind the publication of your first book? I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.\nWas there a specific moment when you felt you had “made it” as an author? I hope never to have such a moment.\nWhat do you need to have produced/completed in order to feel that you’ve had a productive writing day? I'm happy to have nothing, so long as I'm sure I've been working.\nTell us something about yourself that is largely unknown and perhaps surprising. I'm quite good on the harmonica, and can get a tune out of most musical instruments, so long as the tune is “Oh Susannah.”\nTell us a funny story related to a book tour or book event.I met an internationally esteemed writer at a literary party being given in her honor. She was wearing a beautiful pink flouncy frilly dress. I complimented her on it. She said, \"Ach, it's my nightgown. I couldn't decide what else to wear.\"\nWhat advice would you give to an aspiring author? When it comes to words like “leap” and “faith,” you need a word like “of.”\nWhat would you like carved onto your tombstone? I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it \"She never actually wanted a tombstone.\"\nWhat is your next project? I hope it's a book. (Leap. Faith. Of.)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1526202"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7836727499961853,"wiki_prob":0.7836727499961853,"text":"Herbert von Karajan (born Salzburg, Austria, 5 April 1908; died Salzburg 16 July 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was probably the best-known conductor in the world during his time. He conducted the greatest orchestras, and made many wonderful recordings. He was the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 35 years.\n2 Marriage, and wartime career\n3 After the war\n4 His fame and personality\nEarly years[change | change source]\nHerbert von Karajan was born in Salzburg. His name at first was Heribert Ritter von Karajan. In 1916, he went to study the piano at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. There he was told he should learn conducting. By 1929, he was conducting at the Festspielhaus, Salzburg and in 1934 he led the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time. He conducted regularly in Ulm and Aachen.\nIn 1937, Karajan first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin State Opera He was very successful when he conducted Tristan und Isolde. In 1938 a Berlin music critic called him Das Wunder Karajan (The Karajan miracle). He started to make recordings. However, one day in June 1939 he was conducting \"Die Meistersinger\" at Bayreuth in front of Hitler and his guests the King and Queen of Yugoslavia when he suddenly could not remember the music (he was conducting without the score). The singers stopped and the curtain came down. Hitler was very angry and said that Karajan would never conduct at Bayreuth again. This event may actually have helped his career after World War II. Many people who had worked for the Nazis and for Hitler were not allowed to work.\nMarriage, and wartime career[change | change source]\nDuring the war, in 1942, Karajan married Anita Gütermann. She was the daughter of a rich man who had a business making sewing machines. His wife was partly Jewish. This caused the Nazi’s to talk about whether Karajan should still be allowed to conduct. By 1944, he was not in favour with the Nazis, but he was still conducting in Berlin. He left Berlin and went to Milan, Italy with his wife in February 1945. Karajan divorced Anita in 1958.\nAlthough he was deposed after the war because of his Nazi connections, he started to conduct again in 1946.\nAfter the war[change | change source]\nKarajan gave his first concert after the war in 1946 in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. He was banned again by the occupying Russians, but started conducting again the next year.\nKarajan gave many concerts with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. He conducted at La Scala in Milan for the 1948-49 season. From 1947, he made many recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Vienna Philharmonic in Vienna.\nIn 1951 and 1952, he conducted again at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus where he changed the seating plan for the orchestra that had been compulsory since Wagner made it in 1876.\nIn 1955, after the death of Wilhelm Furtwängler, he was made artistic director (conductor) for life of the Berlin Philharmonic. From 1957 to 1964 he was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera.\nHe very often conducted the Vienna Philharmonic and gave many concerts at the Salzburg Festival. He continued to work very hard performing, conducting, and recording until his death in 1989. In Karajan's last years he left the Berlin Philharmonic after arguments with them, and concentrated on working again with the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic.\nHis fame and personality[change | change source]\nHerbert von Karajan had very good musicianship and memory. He conducted without a score in front of him, very often with his eyes closed. He is remembered for being very strict (like a dictator) and always insisting on having things the way he wanted. There are many stories about him that show this. He insisted on being paid very high fees. When he was being filmed conducting an orchestra, he wanted the cameras to show him all the time. When he conducted Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera, he made the stand for the conductor higher so that the audience could see him.\nRetrieved from \"https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Herbert_von_Karajan&oldid=6295252\"\nAustrian conductors\nOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany\nPeople from Salzburg\nArticles with broken Wiktionary links\nThis page was last changed on 3 November 2018, at 03:14.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line856001"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8676328659057617,"wiki_prob":0.8676328659057617,"text":"Russian Operative Disappointed Gerrymandering Taking All The Fun Out Of Hacking 2020 U.S. Election\nSEE MORE: Russia\nSMOLENSK, RUSSIA—Lamenting that any interesting challenge in disrupting the vote has been completely removed from his job, Russian operative Pavel Artemyev reportedly expressed disappointment Friday that gerrymandering has taken all the fun out of hacking the 2020 election. “I really thought it would be a huge thrill trying to dismantle the U.S. democratic system, but it looks like all the work has already been done,” said Artemyev, who claimed that any excitement he once had about diminishing Americans’ faith in their democracy quickly disappeared upon the realization that elected U.S. officials had tirelessly toiled to suppress voters with discriminatory and partisan-rigged district maps. “I got into this because I wanted to make a difference, only to hack the Florida rolls and find out most of the African American voters have already been purged. It kind of sucks because there’s no way my work could be as substantive as polling-place closures, malfunctioning equipment, and laws that allow election officials to reject ballots without standards or repercussions. I’m basically getting paid to do nothing.” At press time, Artemyev had settled on creating and spreading false news stories about Sharia Law in the U.S. only to discover dozens of American publications already doing that as well.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line339710"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5231005549430847,"wiki_prob":0.5231005549430847,"text":"Audit of Personnel Security\nVetted Report\nThis report has been reviewed in consideration of the Access to Information Act and Privacy Acts. The asterisks [***] appear where information has been removed; published information is UNCLASSIFIED.\nManagement's response to the audit\n2. Objective, scope, methodology statement of conformance\n2.1 Objective\n2.4 Statement of conformance\n3. Audit findings\n3.1 Program activities since 2011\n3.2 Potential process efficiencies\n5. Recommendations\nAppendix A – Audit objective and criteria\nAppendix B – Screening process overview\nAppendix C – File review detailed results\nDDSM\nDirective on Departmental Security Management\nDepartmental Security Branch\nDepartmental Security Officer\nDepartmental Security Plan\nDepartmental Security Section\nFull-Time Equivalent\nNARMS\nNational Administrative Records Management System\nNHQ\nPolicy on Government Security\nRBAP\nRisk-Based Audit Plan\nRCMP Reliability Status\nRCMP Security Manual\nSenior Executive Committee\nSpecialized Policing Services\nSecurity Screening Standard\nTreasury Board Secretariat\nAs Canada's national police force, the RCMP is responsible for ensuring the integrity of its nearly 30,000 employees, 25,000 contractors and more than 17,000 volunteers in over 700 communities across Canada. This is accomplished by ensuring that these individuals are appropriately security screened prior to their association with the Force, and through periodic security screening updates thereafter.\nIn recent years, the Departmental Security Program has experienced challenges in meeting service level expectations as a result of funding pressures combined with increasing demand as a result of the implementation of Shared Services Canada, the new Parliamentary Protective Service and the National Recruiting Initiative to increase Regular Member recruiting. In an effort to enhance the efficiency of the security screening program and ensure operational requirements are met, DSB has identified and implemented a number of process modifications and is currently investigating others.\nThe 2011 Audit of Personnel Security found that the personnel security screening process within the RCMP was not sufficiently rigorous. It also found that the reporting structure in place at that time coupled with the lack of monitoring and oversight of the process made it difficult to assess whether the overall process was meeting its intended objectives. ***\nThe current audit found that while progress has been made on certain issues such as: enhancing the rigour of the process; defining and communication risk tolerances; and implementing a number of process efficiencies, risks and gaps continue to exist. *** Improvements in these areas are necessary to further facilitate improvements to the effective and efficient delivery of the security screening program.\nThe audit found that there were a number of challenges with respect to the ***. DSB is aware of these challenges and is taking measures to improve the capture of performance information. Notwithstanding the challenges relating to the ***, through our file review and analysis of available program information we were able to identify a number of potential opportunities and mechanisms that could improve the efficiency of the process.\nThe management response included in this report demonstrates the commitment from senior management to address the audit findings and recommendations. A detailed management action plan is currently being developed. Once approved, RCMP Internal Audit will monitor the implementation of the management action plan and undertake a follow-up audit if warranted.\nSpecialized Policing Services (SPS) agrees with the recommendations of the Audit of Personnel Security. *** Maximizing efficiencies and standardizing processes as well as implementing a national framework for oversight and performance measurement are also seen as key components for successful program delivery.\nTo that end, and prior to the completion of the audit, SPS has undertaken significant steps to address program oversight, with particular emphasis on standardizing processes to improve national governance. SPS, however, acknowledges there is still much work to be done. Many of the components identified in the audit are well known and were prioritized in the RCMP Departmental Security Plan (DSP) for 2015-2018, which SPS started implementing along with the information technology (IT) required to support them. Additionally, SPS will continue working with key stakeholders and the Senior Executive Committee to further define program costing and implement a funding model commensurate with organizational priorities, risk tolerance and capacity.\nSPS will carry on taking action on the recommendations over the next two fiscal years, as indicated in the DSP. A detailed management action plan which addresses the report recommendations will be developed for review by the Departmental Audit Committee prior to the next Committee meeting.\nDeputy Commissioner Peter Henschel\nThe security screening process for the RCMP is governed by the requirements prescribed in the Treasury Board Policy on Government Security (PGS), the Directive on Departmental Security Management (DDSM), and as of October 20, 2014 the Treasury Board Standard on Security Screening (the standard) which replaced the Personnel Security Standard which had been in effect since June 9, 1994. The new standard introduced enhanced security screening activities for departments and organizations that are involved in or directly support security and intelligence functions. Appendix B to the standard, Security Screening Model and Criteria, breaks down the standard and enhanced screening activities introducing open source inquires for all enhanced security clearances and polygraph examinations for enhanced Top Secret clearances. The new standard included a 36 month implementation period, meaning departments and organizations do not have to be fully compliant until October 2017. The RCMP has further communicated throughout the force the internal security screening policy and procedures in the RCMP Security Manual (security manual).\nThe standard describes security screening as being at the core of the Policy on Government Security and as a fundamental practice that establishes and maintains a foundation of trust within government, between government and Canadians, and between Canada and other countries.\nThe PGS assigns accountability for the effective implementation and governance of security and identity management within the RCMP to the Commissioner as deputy head. It requires that the Commissioner appoint a departmental security officer (DSO) to be functionally responsible for the management of the departmental security program. Within the RCMP the Director General of the Departmental Security Branch (DSB) holds this appointment.\nThe DDSM's objective is to achieve efficient, effective and accountable management of security within departments. It holds that Departmental security activities must be centrally coordinated and systematically woven into day-to-day operations to ensure that individuals, information, assets and services are safeguarded. The DDSM defines the roles and responsibilities of departmental employees who support deputy heads in the management of departmental security.\nThe RCMP's Personnel Security Program ensures the reliability and security of individuals accessing its information systems, data and physical assets. This is achieved through the RCMP security screening process, which supports the issuance, denial, suspension or revocation of a RCMP Reliability Status (RRS) and, if required by the position, a Secret or Top Secret security clearance.\nThe RCMP's security screening is delivered and supported across Canada by DSB and through four (4) Departmental Security Sections (DSSs) located in Vancouver, Regina, Halifax and Ottawa. The security screening process involves multiple steps such as conducting education and employment verification, credit checks, criminal record checks, interviews and field investigations. When a RRS or security clearance expires, an update is required to extend its validity. An overview of the process is provided in Appendix B.\nIn 2014, DSB reported that the backlog of security clearance updates continued to grow and that time delays associated with obtaining clearances for new hires, secondments and contingent workers (contractors) was creating significant pressures for hiring managers across the RCMP. These time delays: impact operations and partnership development; may result in the lapse of funding related to contracts; could incur penalties to the RCMP for not respecting contracting terms and conditions; and could lead to qualified potential employees accepting employment outside the Force.\nIn a 2015 business case entitled \"Transforming the National Departmental Security Program\", DSB reported that average times to complete a reliability screening varied significantly by Division with the range being 17 to 52 weeks. This is in contrast to DSB's stated desired service standard of 8 to 10 weeks. In the business case, DSB reported that personnel security screening is under significant pressure as a result of increasing volumes due to consolidation of Government of Canada services including information technology (IT) and pay and increased recruitment of RCMP Regular Members from 320 to 960 cadets per year, since 2014; and due to a greater focus on security in response to modern threats.\nIn 2011, RCMP Internal Audit conducted an audit of Personnel Security. The results indicated that the rigour of the personnel security process needed improvement; there was insufficient oversight and monitoring over the screening process; and that Senior Executives' risk tolerances had not been sufficiently communicated or understood.\nIn April 2014, the Commissioner approved an audit of Personnel Security as part of the 2014-17 Risk-Based Audit Plan (RBAP). The RBAP indicated that the engagement was also to include follow-up work to assess the implementation of the Management Action Plan developed in response to the recommendations made in the 2011 Audit of Personnel Security.\n2. Objective, scope, methodology and statement of conformance\nThe objective of this audit engagement was to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes for providing personnel security screening to ensure they are: consistent with the Policy on Government Security and Security Screening Standard; streamlined; and timely.\nThe engagement examined the personnel security screening processes and activities for Regular Members (RM), Civilian Members, Public Servants, and Contractors at Headquarters and at regional Departmental Security Sections (DSSs). The engagement included an independent review of the security screening processes, including the process reviews and process mapping exercises that have been undertaken by the Departmental Security Branch, with a view to identifying opportunities and mechanisms to further improve efficiency without unduly increasing risk to the Force and while ensuring compliance with the Policy on Government Security and the Security Screening Standard.\nThe engagement also included sufficient work to assess and report on the current status of the Management Action Plan associated with the 2011 Personnel Security Audit.\nPlanning for the audit was completed in July 2015. In this phase, the audit team conducted interviews, process walkthroughs and examined relevant policies, directives, procedures and results of previous reviews.\nSources used to develop audit criteria include Treasury Board and RCMP policies. The audit objective and criteria are available in Appendix A.\nThe examination phase, which concluded in March 2016, employed various auditing techniques including: interviews, documentation reviews, analysis, physical observation and file reviews. Site visits were conducted at all four Departmental Security Sections and at the Departmental Security Branch. Upon completion of the examination phase, the audit team held meetings to validate findings with personnel and debriefed senior management of the relevant findings.\nThe audit engagement conforms with the Internal Auditing Standards for the Government of Canada, as supported by the results of the quality assurance and improvement program.\nThe 2011 Audit of Personnel Security found that the personnel security screening process within the RCMP ***. It also found that the reporting structure in place at that time coupled with the lack of monitoring and oversight of the process made it difficult to assess whether the overall process was meeting its intended objectives. ***\nManagement accepted the audit findings and recommendations and committed to conducting a review to improve the rigour of the security screening process. This review was to include consultations to identify an appropriate reporting structure. With respect to risk tolerances, management committed to defining and communicating its risk tolerances through the RCMP's Senior Executive Committee. ***\nAccordingly, we expected that this audit would find that improvements had been made to improve the overall rigour and efficiency of the security screening process. Specifically, we expected that:\nSecurity files would be compliant with both the requirements of the standard and the security manual;\nRisks to the program would be appropriately managed, and management's risk tolerances would be communicated and understood throughout the organization;\nAn appropriate reporting structure would have been identified and implemented;\nFinancial information on the costs of the program would be available and would inform resource allocation decisions;\nPerformance of the program would be measured and monitored; enabling program enhancements where appropriate; and\nThe results of the improved governance framework would enable the streamlining of the program across the organization with identified efficiencies shared and incorporated into program policies and procedures.\nThrough our audit work, which included interviews, documentation reviews, analysis, physical observation and file reviews we found that since the 2011 audit, while a number of process enhancements have been made risks and gaps continue to exist, notably the availability of reliable performance and resource information. In addition, based on our analysis and file review, we also found that additional opportunities exist to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the process.\nThe Policy on Government Security (PGS) and the Standard on Security Screening (the standard) require that: governance structures, mechanisms and resources are in place to ensure effective and efficient management of security at both a departmental and government-wide level; and that security screening services are effective and efficient, and meet the needs of departments and agencies, and of the Government of Canada as a whole.\nThe Departmental Security Program has experienced challenges in meeting service level expectations as a result of funding pressures combined with increasing demand as a result of the implementation of Shared Services Canada, the new Parliamentary Protective Service and the National Recruiting Initiative to increase RM recruiting. DSB reported in a 2015 business case that average times to complete a reliability screening varied significantly by Division with the range being 17 to 52 weeks. As reported by DSB and the four DSSs, the total demand for security clearances has increased from approximately 21,000 in 2013 to 25,121 in 2014. Volume in 2015 was consistent with 2014, with 25,258 clearances being requestedFootnote 1. During this period, resources allocated to the security screening program have reportedly remained consistent with respect to indeterminate full-time equivalents (FTE) - approximately 125 for both 2014 and 2015. However, taking into account the use of overtime, casual, and term employees, total resources allocated to the program have reportedly increased from approximately 172 FTE in 2014 to 189 FTE in 2015 (Figure 1)Footnote 2.\nImprovements have been made to the program since the 2011 audit\nDSB has made progress on certain issues identified by IAER's 2011 Audit of Personnel Security. In addition to enhancing the rigour in the screening process and defining and communicating risk tolerances through RCMP's Senior Executive Committee, DSB has identified and implemented a number of process efficiencies.\nRigour of screening process – compliance to policy requirements\nThe detailed security screening requirements and procedures to be followed within the RCMP align with the requirements of the Policy on Government Security (PGS) and the Standard on Security Screening (the standard) and are contained in the RCMP Security Manual (security manual).\nWe found that DSS personnel at all levels were aware of the requirements of the standard and security manual and many of the tools used locally, such as checklists, were intended to ensure compliance with the standard and security manual.\n*** DSSs, as part of the audit's file review testing, a sample of 243 files for various types of clearances was *** compliant with both the requirements of the standard and the security manual, with all the required procedures having been completed. This represents a significant improvement from the findings of the 2011 audit relating to process compliance.\nAs previously mentioned, the Treasury Board Standard on Security Screening has introduced enhanced security screening requirements regarding the use of open source inquiries and polygraphs, that will become effective in October 2017. ***\nDepartmental Security Plan and Definition and Communication of Risk Tolerances\nThe PGS and DDSM outline the requirement for departments to conduct a continuous assessment of security risks, threats and vulnerabilities and to implement appropriate internal controls to ensure continuous adaptation to the changing needs of the department and the operating environment. The 2011 audit recommended that Senior Executives' risk tolerance levels should be defined and communicated to ensure clear understanding and consistent application throughout the program.\nIn July 2015, the Commissioner approved the RCMP's first 3-year Departmental Security Plan (DSP). The plan describes security governance within the RCMP and also defines the roles and responsibilities for the Commissioner, DSO, and Departmental Security Sections (DSSs) among others. The DSP, which aligns with the requirements in the TB policies, assigns the DSO with the functional authority over the Departmental Security Program. Specifically included as part of the DSO's responsibilities is the implementation of security controls and processes for the systematic management of security risks to the Department and any activities necessary to achieve the objectives and priorities of the DSP.\nWe found that DSB conducted a thorough assessment of security risks facing the RCMP (including risks specific to the security screening program) as part of developing the recent DSP. DSB is using the results of this assessment to guide its priorities for the next three years acknowledging that the risks will continue to evolve.\nAs an additional activity relating to the 2011 recommendation, DSB consulted both externally and internally to identify security risk categories and developed a decision-making tool entitled RCMP Security Risk Categories: Indicators, Mitigating Factors & Tolerances. This tool is intended as a decision making guide for personnel security analysts, investigators, risk managers and adjudicators, to ensure consistent application of risk factors in the issuance and renewal of RCMP Reliability Status and security clearances. The risk indicators, mitigating factors and organizational risk tolerances within the document are the result of extensive research and consultations with national and international partner organizations and analysis of over one thousand clearance files with adverse information.\nAs of April 2016, the guide was still in draft form and was only approved as a tool to be used for RM security clearances. Notwithstanding the fact that judgement will always be a factor in making security clearance decisions, once the guide has been fully approved and disseminated more broadly, DSB expects it to provide a clearer understanding of senior management's risk tolerance and provide sufficient guidance to enable the DSSs to assess risk in a more consistent manner.\nEfficiencies Identified and Implemented by DSB\nIn its assessment of activities that could be risk-managed in an effort to enhance the efficiency of the security screening program, DSB has identified and implemented process modifications relating to: risk-managed appointments, security level reductions, and other process efficiencies.\nThe standard states that in all cases, individuals must be officially granted the required reliability status, secret security clearance, top secret security clearance, site access status or site access clearance before they are assigned duties or assigned to a position, and/or before they are granted access to sensitive information, assets or facilities.\nDSB interim measures to increase process efficiency\nIn June 2014, based on recommendations from DSB, the RCMP's Senior Executive Committee approved a number of interim measures in an effort to alleviate pressures on the security screening process and to address the increased wait times for non-RM security screening requests. The objective of the interim measures was to standardize and streamline screening requirements for specific cases and thereby reduce screening processing time pending the implementation of a longer-term strategy for departmental security. Some of these measures included:\nReducing the number of Top Secret positions;\nRationalizing screening requirements for short-term contractors;\nExpediting reactivations, granting temporary access; and\nExpediting and risk managing secondments;\nPersonnel security managers commented that while the intent of interim measures is to reduce turnaround times, to a large degree, their impact on efficiency cannot be demonstrated as mechanisms were not put in place to track the use of interim measures.\nOpportunities exist to improve the effectiveness of the RCMP's security screening program\nWhile progress has been made since the 2011 audit in enhancing the security screening program, risks and gaps remain relating to functional authority and organization structure, oversight and monitoring and performance measurement practices. Enhancements in these areas are necessary to further facilitate improvements to the effective and efficient delivery of the security screening program.\nFunctional Authority and Organizational Structure\nAs previously mentioned, the RCMP's DSP identifies the implementation of security controls and processes for the systematic management of security risks as part of the DSO's responsibilities. As part of our examination we found that the DSO has encountered obstacles in carrying out these roles and responsibilities as a result of ***.\nOne of the issues raised during the current audit was that, in some cases, the DSO's ability to manage the program has been challenged by the fact that personnel security screening is delivered through four Departmental Security Sections (DSS) located in Vancouver, Regina, Ottawa, and Halifax. While the DSS's report functionally to the DSO for all security related matters, they report administratively, on a day-to-day basis, to local Divisional Management, which also provides the majority of the DSS's funding.\nIn the 2011 audit, this ***.\nThrough our site visit interviews we determined that there is ***: establish program priorities; reallocate resources; implement standards and processes; and establish performance expectations for the DSSs despite the fact that policy assigns functional authority to the DSO.\nWhile some initiatives have been undertaken to address governance issues, as of April 2016, ***. Clearly defining and communicating the DSO's authority to influence resource allocation and set program priorities would enable more effective management of the program.\nFinancial Information and Resource Allocation\nThe current funding model for the personnel security screening program is complex and information regarding the full costs of the program is limited. The program is not centrally funded; rather, DSSs receive the majority of their funding from the Division in which they are located. In some cases, DSSs have obtained additional funding from the Divisions they serve (but are not located in) or from DSB to address national priorities such as screenings for the recruitment of Regular Members. In a 2015 business case, DSB reported that nationally, approximately 14% of FTEs in the security program are funded by incremental or temporary funding. This has created staffing challenges and a reliance on term and/or casual employees. Some DSSs have entered into financial arrangements with client groups to have the client temporarily fund positions within the DSS which are then dedicated to working on security screenings for that client group. Although this may address immediate requirements, it results in ongoing personnel turnover and significant effort to obtain and train temporary employees, who may seek other more permanent positions when opportunities present themselves.\n*** covering the costs of the field investigation portion of the security screening process were observed. ***. Resources allocated to the security screening program have reportedly remained consistent with respect to indeterminate full-time equivalents (FTE) - approximately 125 for both 2014 and 2015. However, taking into account the use of overtime, casual, and term employees, total resources allocated to the program have reportedly increased from approximately 172 FTE in 2014 to 189 FTE in 2015 (Figure 1).\nFigure 1 - FTEs Allocated to Personnel Security Function Nationally 2014 – 2015Footnote 3 (Source: DSB & DSS)\n(bracketed figures take into account indeterminate employees plus the use of overtime, casual, and term employees)\nDSB Unit\nAtlantic Unit\nCentral Unit\nNorthwest Unit\nPacific Unit\n2014 4.25 (23.85) 11.85 (12.56) 37.27 (48.91) 27.45 (36.88) 43.97 (49.79) 124.79 (171.99) ---\n2015 5 (31.83) 10.75 (12.42) 38.91 (41.12) 25.27 (48.58) 45.09 (54.57) 125.02 (188.52) < 1% (9.6%)\n*** along with ad hoc arrangements for securing funds from client groups, reduce the accuracy and completeness of costing information. Without complete and accurate costing information and a secure source of funding, it is difficult for the program to confirm resource requirements or to strategically reallocate funds within the program to address increased demand or new requirements such as the open sources inquiries and polygraph examination introduced in the October 2014 Standard on Security Screening. There is also a risk that opportunities for efficiencies may be lost, as the DSO does not have sufficient information to propose strategic resource reallocation decisions.\nEnhanced, complete information regarding program costs would allow for more informed resource allocation, and would aid in determining long-term funding requirements.\nMonitoring and Performance Measurement\nThe TB PGS requires deputy heads to ensure that periodic reviews are conducted to assess the effectiveness of the security screening program. The DDSM assigns to the DSO the responsibilities of measuring performance on an ongoing basis to ensure that residual risk levels are acceptable. In addition, the standard requires the DSO to monitor compliance with the standard and the effectiveness of security procedures and practices.\n***. In response to the audit findings, management committed to establishing national performance measures and ongoing monitoring of national processing times.\nWe found that at the completion of our examination phase the policy centre had not defined specific performance information requirements and DSSs were not required to capture and report such information. ***.\nDuring our site visits in our examination phase, we attempted to obtain performance information from the individual DSSs; however, we found that DSSs capture performance measures differently and for their own purposes. ***. For example not all DSSs have an intake function which records the receipt of new requests for a clearance which can also conduct an initial review of applications for completeness. Further one DSS divided security screening requests by client groups while another distributed security screening requests to security screening analysts by employee category. ***.\nDepartmental Security management has acknowledged the continuing gap in this area and as a recent enhancement to the program, during the reporting phase of this audit the DSB policy centre defined and communicated performance information requirements to the four DSSs. In addition, the policy centre has commenced developing national performance standards and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) for each component of the departmental security program, including the Departmental Personnel Security Screening program as part of the recently approved DSP.\nAs a longer term solution, we were informed by DSB that the RCMP Chief Information Officer (CIO) has identified MS Dynamics as the platform for all replacement case management systems. The CIO Branch is currently piloting MS Dynamics within the RCMP ***. DSB has considered alternative interim solutions; however, NARMS is the only interim case management system supported by the CIO.\nA robust performance reporting framework would better enable management at DSB and the DSSs to set standards, monitor performance, establish service standards, identify opportunities for efficiencies, and make appropriate resource allocation decisions.\nIn addition to assessing compliance with the PGS and the standard, an element of the audit objective was to identify potential opportunities and mechanisms to further improve process efficiency without unduly increasing risk to the RCMP. In order to enable a meaningful detailed analysis of the process, we had expected to find the processes and practices amongst DSSs to be consistent and that reliable performance measurement data, including files with sufficient detail to allow for the clear identification of both processing times associated with each step in the screening process and bottlenecks as well as backlog information would be available. As mentioned in the previous section, ***. DSB is aware of these challenges and is taking measures to improve the capture of performance information.\nPotential opportunities exist to implement further efficiencies within the security screening process.\nNotwithstanding the challenges relating to the reliability and availability of performance data, through our file review and analysis of available program information we were able to identify a number of potential opportunities and mechanisms that could improve the efficiency of the process.\nSecurity Interview\nThe results of our file reviewFootnote 4 identified on average, Atlantic DSS had quicker processing times for all security clearance types compared with the other three DSS (Appendix C). A key explanation for this as provided by Program staff, was that the field investigations and security interviews in Atlantic are coordinated by the hiring manager prior to sending the file to the DSS, while in the other DSSs the coordination and conduct of field investigations and the security interview are done by security screening program staff as part of the security screening process. With quicker security screening processing times, Atlantic DSS has a reported higher file completion rate per FTE resource compared with the other three DSSs (Figure 2).\nFor the most part, overall processing times for the Central, Northwest, and Pacific DSSs include time for the conduct of the security interview as well as the queue time waiting for the interview as well as the administration of the interview results, which we were informed by Program staff can be significant.\nFigure 2 - Total Security Clearances Completed (Source: DSB & DSS)\nAtlantic DSS\nCentral DSS\nNorthwest DSS\nPacific DSS\n2014 4,110 3,861 5,962 6,497 20,430 ---\n2015 5,126 5,002 6,073 8,196 24,397 19.40%\nThe use of the interview as part of the security screening process plays an important part in assessing and corroborating information provided by an applicant. While important, the use of the interview itself is not a mandatory requirement by the standard. The standard requires that a \"security questionnaire and/or security interview\" be conducted. ***.\nIn light of a relatively low denial rate, in an effort to improve the efficiency of the security screening process, the RCMP could consider a risk based approach with respect to whether conducting a security interview is necessary i.e. when adverse information is identified during other security screening activities. ***.\nRisk Investigations\nAnother area that was identified by Program staff as being an internal queue or bottleneck is risk investigations. In the majority of cases when adverse information is uncovered during security screening activities the file is referred to a DSS's Risk Unit for a risk investigation. A risk investigation can involve additional interviews, further law enforcement records checks, and consideration by DSB for the ultimate adjudication of the clearance request which could result in a denial, suspension, or revocation.\n***. There is an opportunity within this DSS to enhance process efficiency by moving away from the practice of referring all of its RM recruit files to its risk unit.\nEmployment and Character Reference Checks\nElements of the field investigation of the security screening process has been identified by Program staff as an internal bottleneck. Through our interviews with Program staff, we've identified that the method of assessing an applicant's employee and character references is not delivered uniformly across the DSSs. We were informed by Program staff that one DSS conducts employment and character reference interviews in-person; this involves local travel and may involve travel outside the geographical area where the field investigator is located. ***. The practice of conducting employment and character references in-person appears to be overly risk averse in relation to overall denial rate. ***.\nLaw Enforcement Records Checks\nThe RCMP currently checks up to *** data bases as part of its security screening process. Analysts need to input tombstone information into each of the data bases separately for both the employee and in some cases family and associates, resulting in a somewhat labour intensive and time consuming process.\n***. The audit team learned that various proposals have been put forward by DSS employees to reduce the number of data base checks that are conducted for each file, but none have been approved or implemented. DSB is considering the use two database inquiry tools, ***, to increase the timeliness of processing security clearance updates. If these tools are successful in addressing the update backlog, DSB could consider extending the use of these tools for all new and upgrade security clearances. Using a risk-based approach for all security files, DSB could use these two databases inquiry tools and then would only conduct the full spectrum of law enforcement checks if the initial checks through *** identified areas of risk.\nIncreasing the transferability of security clearances from other departments and agencies\nDue to limitations in the information management systems utilized by the program, we were unable to assess the number of security clearance files that related to applicants who already possessed a security clearance obtained through another federal department or agency. However, based on interviews with individuals in the program and other hiring managers within the RCMP, we were informed that the volume of these types of files in the process do not represent an immaterial amount of demand for Program staff. As the reliability and availability of performance data improves, the Program will be in a better position to assess the real demand relating to these types of files.\n***, DSB could consider either a reduced level of assessment or a risk-based approach to accepting security clearances from other government departments and agencies. Special consideration could also be given to those departments agencies that are part of the security portfolio.\nBacklog of Security Files\nThe periodic review of an employee's security status is referred to as a security update. As per the standard the security manual, an update is required every 10 years for RRS and secret security clearances, and every five years for top secret security clearances. Updates are a critical insider threat mitigation measure. DSB defines insider threat as the threat from an individual, or group, who: has special knowledge, or access, to critical information or assets in an organization; and has the intent to cause harm, danger, or stand to gain from their privileged position.\nThe 2011 audit reported that a backlog of security clearance updates existed in most regions. As part of its management action plan, DSB was to consider potential solutions to address these backlogs.\n***. During the reporting phase of this audit, DSB reported that all DSSs continue to have a significant backlog of security updates, with smaller backlogs for new and upgrade files. ***. We were informed by DSB officials that backlog information for new and upgrade files was not available for previous years, thereby limiting our ability to assess whether those backlogs were increasing or decreasing.\nIn addition, as the reliability and availability of performance data relating to backlogs improves, DSB and DSSs will be in a better situation to assess whether a strong business case exits for additional program resources for short term \"surge\" efforts. By eliminating backlogs, resources dedicated to the program would be able to focus on new files, thereby helping to increase the timeliness of processing.\nBy taking appropriate and timely action with respect to security clearance backlogs, the RCMP will reduce its risk of *** and will be better positioned to direct its program resources to new security clearance files.\nOnline Industrial Security Services Portal\nDSB is in the process of replacing the existing paper-based information-gathering process with Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) ***. This application streamlines the form completion process and reduces the need to correct errors or track down missing information. *** has been implemented for Regular Member recruiting, and is being piloted in at the Central DSS for other employee categories.\nOther potential process efficiencies\nIn 2013, following the 2011 internal audit, DSB conducted a business process re-engineering initiative aimed at mapping and measuring the process, and making performance improvements accordingly. The process included onsite consultations with each DSSs where processes were identified, challenges noted, and best practices reported. The benchmarking exercise identified the following bottlenecks:\nRequesting and awaiting missing information from hiring managers and/or applicants;\nRequesting field investigations;\nAwaiting the completion of the field investigation/security interview;\nAwaiting database checks that cannot be conducted by the analyst themselves;\n***;\nAwaiting the outcome of risk investigations resulting from the identification of adverse information; and\nTime spent in internal queues awaiting the availability of security analysts.\nGiven both the lack of detailed performance data for the files sampled during our site visits and the differing practices across the DSSs the audit team was not able to measure and analyze these bottlenecks in any detail. However, through interviews and observation the audit team was able to corroborate that these areas continue to be perceived bottlenecks in the process. As the reliability and availability of performance data improves, the Program will be in a better position to assess the impact of each of these areas on the overall timeliness of the process and any related efficiency enhancement.\nDSB has made progress on certain issues identified by IAER's 2011 Audit of Personnel Security. In addition to enhancing the rigour in the screening process and defining and communicating risk tolerances through RCMP's Senior Executive Committee, DSB has identified and implemented a number of process efficiencies and initiated process enhancing initiatives.\n***. Improvements in these areas are necessary to further facilitate improvements to the effective and efficient delivery of the security screening program.\n***. DSB is aware of these challenges and is taking measures to improve the capture of performance information. Notwithstanding the challenges relating to the ***, through our file review and analysis of available program information we were able to identify a number of potential opportunities and mechanisms that could improve the efficiency of the process.\nThe Deputy Commissioner Specialized Policing Services should work with the Senior Executive Committee and Commanding Officers to further define, document, and communicate the authorities of the DSO within the departmental security program and specifically the personnel security screening program.\nThe Deputy Commissioner Specialized Policing Services should develop a mechanism to capture complete and accurate personnel security screening program costs to enable informed decision-making relating to determining resource requirements and the strategic reallocation of funds within the program.\nThe Deputy Commissioner Specialized Policing Services should develop a performance measurement framework and create a national oversight and monitoring function to ensure the personnel security screening program is meeting its objectives.\nThe Deputy Commissioner Specialized Policing Services in collaboration with other departmental security stakeholders should assess the merits and the feasibility of the potential process efficiencies identified in section 3.2 of this report.\nObjective: The objective of this audit engagement was to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes for providing personnel security screening to ensure they are: consistent with the Policy on Government Security and Security Screening Standard; streamlined; and timely.\nCriteria 1: The governance framework, funding structure, and oversight mechanisms enable the achievement of departmental security screening objectives and intended results.\nCriteria 2: All steps in the security screening process, including the use of appropriate tools, have been reviewed to identify opportunities to improve the efficiency of the process while considering the risks to the organization.\nCriteria 3: Policies and procedures governing the personnel security screening process are aligned with the Policy on Government Security and Security Screening Standard and have been consistently applied across the regions\nCriteria 4: Appropriate and sufficient performance information is available and is used by management to monitor, report on performance, and facilitate decision-making and resource allocation.\nCriteria 5: Service standards have been established and are monitored against client expectations.\nCriteria 6: Risk tolerances, with respect to personnel security screening, have been identified and communicated.\nAppendix B – Screening process overviewFootnote 5\nInternal Audit was unable to corroborate these reported volumes to RCMP information management systems (HRMIS and NARMS) due to data integrity issues within those systems. A separate internal audit concerning the data integrity of HRMIS is being conducted in 2016-17.\nInternal Audit was unable to corroborate these reported figures to RCMP information management systems.\nWe examined 243 files for compliance to the standards. To assess the processing time for a new application, of the 243 files reviewed, only 122 files had sufficient and relevant information available in order to calculate the overall processing time.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line859143"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7224379777908325,"wiki_prob":0.2775620222091675,"text":"LIFESTYLE AND TRAVEL >\nIN THE SPIRIT OF HAMPTONS\nFrom May to September every year, society's elite migrates to a small strip of land on the South Fork of Long Island, the Hamptons, one of the most exclusive and chic spots in the country. From the glamorous parties and unparalleled beaches to the mega-estates and its storied history, the Hamptons are magnetic. This beautifully illustrated updated edition of In the Spirit of the Hamptons by Kelly Killoren Bensimon, including a new foreword by Pamela Fiori, sends the reader on a personal tour of the many hamlets that make up the Hamptons -each with its own charm- from iconic restaurants such as Southampton's Sant'Ambroeus or the renowned Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill or the ultra high-end shopping scene in East Hampton.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line993675"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8254794478416443,"wiki_prob":0.8254794478416443,"text":"Britain’s bid to socially engineer ‘good Muslims’\nby MRN | May 9, 2016 | World | 0 comments\nThe government has used grassroots groups to sell its narrative that British Muslims fall into one of two categories – either ‘good’ or ‘bad’\nIn a report released earlier this week the British government has been revealed to have covertly engineered numerous political campaigns under the pretext that they were led by grassroots organisations. Social media campaigns were created to support government narratives under the guise of grassroots activism.\nIn the report titled “We Are Completely Independent”, advocacy group Cage reveals the covert government funding of such campaigns as a tool to “‘counter narratives”, “to combat the appeal of ‘extremist narratives’ among Britain’s young people”, namely, British Muslims. The campaigns in the report all relate to the war in Syria and come on the back of young British Muslims travelling to the country to deliver aid, to join armed groups or to live in Islamic State group-held territory. You might say there is and has been a pressing need for the government to take action in combating the issues it faces but to do so through such covert means raises alarming questions.\nPropaganda tools\nThe report details numerous campaigns the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) has been secretly funding through its “go-to creative media agency” Breakthrough Media. Breakthrough Media has worked with various community groups and organisations, acting as an independent body. Yet the revelations in this report indicate that Breakthrough is anything but independent. The organisation has received millions of pounds of public money, from RICU – which receives some of its funding from the budget for Prevent – as it acts as an agent for the government, to shape the “debate around the legitimacy of Muslim life in the UK”.\n“The veil of secrecy is there to allow these organisations to present themselves as independent and based within the grassroots of their communities,” says Cage’s report.\nThe secretive transaction which the government says it’s “proud of” should ring alarm bells on all fronts, with the level of its covert nature ferociously explicit. The Guardian reports that Breakthrough Media has gone to “considerable lengths to conceal RICU’s involvement in its work”, alleging “new recruits are expected to sign non-disclosure agreements,” according to an employee.\nCampaigns have been pushed out and created to support the government agenda and narrative, with “grassroots” organisations allegedly running the campaigns. This is hardly a relationship of equal partners, with “final signoff” coming from the government.\nIn its bid to push its narrative the government has used public voices and “trusted” institutions to support its aims, with Breakthrough Media as a single avenue and tool that has now been exposed. Until the government provides a more discerning response than a statement saying it’s “important to build relationships out of the media glare”, we cannot be certain how far the operations extend and how deeply embedded its tentacles are within community groups and organisations.\nOn the list\nMy brush with Breakthrough Media came in February, though pressure on me to be involved in the government-led narrative came earlier.\nThe hashtag #AndMuslim was first used in March by a few mainly Muslim women involved in a grassroots campaign led by the northern-based Muslim Women’s Network, detailing how they are so many other things alongside being a “Muslim”. But a month before its use on social media, it was Breakthrough Media who contacted me regarding the campaign, calling it a “project for the Muslim Women’s Network” and asking if I might be able to join as a “contributor”. They told me I was found via the British Bangladeshi Power & Inspiration 100 List.\n“Our campaign aim is to profile Muslim women role models [who] will show the diversity of Muslim women across the UK and aim to challenge stereotypes,” Breakthrough Media said.\nWhat’s wrong with that? A request without hidden agenda, you would assume as part of a “grassroots” women’s organisation – but this campaign is little different to the ones documented in Cage’s report.\nPrior to this request from Breakthrough, I had faced varying degrees of pressure to launch a campaign utilising social media within my own work, using a hashtag and catchy title with an aim to “tackle the current narrative of extremist Muslims” with “positive reinforcement” with the purpose of halting the flow of young British Muslims leaving for Syria.\nThere must be a call for transparency following these revelations, in order for British Muslims and the wider public to regain trust. We need a transparent supply chain for which all producers are accountable. Integrity, impartiality and independence are key to trusting those relaying information and principles we should hold dear.\nEndorsements which are designed to engineer and influence the hearts and minds of communities should not be taken lightly. It is intolerable that this is being done through such shadowy means and wholly inappropriate that young Muslims here in Britain should be exposed to such propaganda. For the government to engage in such activity it is a blatant abuse of authority and if any institutions or persons have been approached by media companies such as Breakthrough or otherwise they have a duty to come forward and make it known.\nWe should not sleepwalk into a situation where we are no longer conscious of what we are consuming, and we should not have to assume that we have to tread with caution regarding everything that appears before us.\nBy creating these campaigns and projects to show the palatability and acceptance of its preferred “good Muslim” choice, the government has bolstered a narrative that British Muslims fit into one of two categories, being either a “good” or a “bad” Muslim. Not surprisingly, some have likened this murky propaganda to a Cold War-style project of social engineering.\n– Yasmin Khatun Dewan is a London-based freelance journalist working in print, online and broadcast media. She has produced critically acclaimed feature reports and investigative documentaries including AIB international investigation of the year 2014 nominee ‘Slave Industry: A Year on from Rana Plaza’, whilst contributing online articles on varied subject matters included counter-terrorism, CAR, the Middle East and fashion. She was named in the top 100 most influential British Bangladeshis in the UK in 2014 and in 2015 she was shortlisted for British Muslim Media contribution of the year.\nRetrieved from http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/britains-bid-socially-engineer-good-muslims-2009757906#sthash.YrUGObsn.dpuf\nThe aspiration of the Media Review Network is to dispel the myths and stereotypes about Islam and Muslims and to foster bridges of understanding among the diverse people of our country. The Media Review Network believes that Muslim perspectives on issues impacting on South Africans are a prerequisite to a better appreciation of Islam.\nLatest posts by MRN (see all)\nOccupation in Kashmir- A Human Rights Catastrophe - August 14, 2019\nMESSAGE ON THE OCCASION OF EID-UL-ADHA 1440 (12.08.2019) - August 7, 2019\nWear Black in solidarity with Rohingya. - June 10, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1306537"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.526935875415802,"wiki_prob":0.473064124584198,"text":"Hermits As Garden Ornaments\nby Kaushik Patowary Monday, June 24, 2019\nBetween the 17th and the 19th centuries, a certain reproachful and voyeuristic trend emerged among wealthy British landowners. Not content with inanimate garden ornaments such as gnomes and bird baths, these people hired real, living and breathing persons, to live as hermits in make-believe hermitages erected on the lavish grounds of their estates. Most of them were required to make scheduled appearances on the grounds in appropriate clothing whenever the employer was entertaining guests. They were known as “garden hermits” or “ornamental hermits”.\nA garden hermit in Germany in the late 18th century\nGarden hermits were often solicited through newspaper advertisements, where the general terms of the contract were spelled out. The term was often seven years, during which the hermits were required to live austerely in a small cottage or cave built within the estate garden. They were not allowed to wash their hair or cut their nails, stray beyond the boundaries of the estate or talk to the servants. Hermits were provided basic amenities such as food, water, clothes, a bed made out of hay, a Bible and reading glasses. At the end of their term, they received a payment of several hundred pounds, enough to not work again.\nYou might assume that with terms such as these, landowners must have received a lot of applications from vagabonds and the homeless. But the fact is, garden hermits were surprisingly difficult to procure. The life of solitude that they were required to lead and the absolute abandon of personal hygiene were perhaps too much for even those seeking to score free food and lodging.\nThe honorable Charles Hamilton (1704 -86), the youngest son of the Earl of Abercorn, placed an advertisement with similar conditions for his estate at Pains Hall, near Cobham, Surrey. The first ornamental hermit he employed lasted a full three weeks, before he was seen getting drunk at the local pub.\nAside from drifters, advertisement for garden hermits also attracted genuinely interested people seeking a site for meditation, reflection and relaxation. The eccentric British author, Philip Thicknesse, lived as a hermit on his own garden. In his memoirs Thicknesse observed that:\nThe duplicity of Mankind, and satiety of enjoyments all tend to show that even the splendid scenes, which surround the palaces of wealth and greatness, are never thought complete, unless marked by some shady care and the abode of an imaginary anchorite.\nA Hermit's Cell, from William Wright's Grotesque Architecture, London, c1790\nProfessor Gordon Campbell, of the University of Leicester, suggests that Francis of Paola (1416 – 1507) was among the first of the trend, living as a hermit in a cave on his own father's estate. The practice later spread across England and to Ireland and Scotland, and to some extant, to the rest of Europe as well.\nOne of the more famous hermits of the Georgian era was Father Francis, who lived at Hawkstone Park in Shropshire in a hermitage made with stone walls and a heather-thatched roof, and passed wisdom to visitors. The attraction became so popular that the Hill family, who owned the park, built their own pub, The Hawkstone Arms, to cater to all the guests.\nNot all estate owners were so lucky to have a hermit like Father Francis. Many struggled to even find one. When newspaper advertisements seeking hermits went unanswered, some sought out novel solutions such as dummies or automation. When Father Francis died, the Hill family replaced him with an automation that apparently both moved and spoke.\nThe fad of ornamental hermits lasted for about two hundred years reaching its peak in the 18th century, though it lingered into the 19th before finally dying off.\nHermits As Garden Ornaments Reviewed by Kaushik Patowary on Monday, June 24, 2019 Rating: 5\nTags : England Historical Oddities\nHistorical Oddities","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1199586"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9670897126197815,"wiki_prob":0.9670897126197815,"text":"Mr. Benson Bing Chung Tam has served as our independent director since December 2014. Mr. Tam is a chartered accountant. In March 2012, Mr. Tam founded Venturous Group, a global CEO network based in Beijing, and has been serving as its chairman since then. From 2002 to February 2012, Mr. Tam was a partner and head of technology investments at Fidelity Growth Partners Asia (formerly named Fidelity Asia Ventures), where he led a team of five professionals focused on technology investment. Prior to joining Fidelity Growth Partners Asia, Mr. Tam was a partner of Electra Partners Asia from 1998 to 2002, and was the founding director of Hellman & Friedman Asia from 1992 to 1998. Mr. Tam worked in M&A corporate finance at S.G. Warburg from 1989 to 1992. Mr. Tam has been a Chartered Accountant since 1989. Mr. Tam currently also serves as a director of certain privately held companies. Mr. Tam received his master’s degree in computer science from Oxford University in 1986 and his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Imperial College of London University in 1984.\nChair of the Audit Committee\nMember of the Compensation Committee\nMember of the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1349162"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6529240608215332,"wiki_prob":0.3470759391784668,"text":"Read the Sun Sentinel's award-winning journalism\nRecord rain swamps South Florida in waist-deep water\nAmerican Association of Individual Investors, monthly educational meeting, 7 p.m., South County Civic Center, 16700 Jog Road, Delray Beach. Where is the U.S. Economy Today? Are We on the Road to \"Japan\" and a Lost Decade?\" $12 advance, $15 door. Call 954-568-0078.\nArthritis support and education group, 7 p.m., Fair Oaks Pavilion At Delray Medical Center, 5440 Linton Blvd Fair Oaks Pavilion, Delray Beach. Free. Call 561-707-0600.\nAudubon Society of the Everglades, meeting, 2-3 p.m., Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, 1801 N. Ocean Blvd., Boca Raton. Free. Call 561-338-1473.\nBereavement Support Group, 12:30-2 p.m., Temple Anshei Shalom, 7099 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach. Nonsectarian. Free. Call 561-852-3333.\nBingo, under new professional management with a new format, progressive jackpot and more, 7 p.m., Temple Beth Tikvah, 4550 Jog Road, Greenacres. $15. Call 561-965-9913.\nCaregivers support group, 2-3:30 p.m., Center for Group Counseling, 22455 Boca Rio Road, Boca Raton. $5. Call 561-483-5300.\nComputer class, learn how to use e-mail, 6 p.m., Delray Beach Public Library, 100 W. Atlantic Ave. Free. Call 561-266-0194.\nFilm screening and discussion, \"The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,\" presented by George Herring, leading authority, 3:30 p.m., University Theatre, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton. Free. Call 561-297-3820.\nInternational Piano Festival Concert preview, 2 p.m., Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave., West Palm Beach. $5 members, $10 nonmembers. Call 561-832-5196, ext. 1132.\nLecture, Eco-Watch, topic, renewable energy, 7-8:30 p.m., Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, 1801 N. Ocean Blvd., Boca Raton. Ages 14 to adult, reservations recommended, not required. $5. Call 561-391-8110.\nLecture, Orchid Growing Made Easy, 2 p.m., Delray Beach Public Library, 100 W. Atlantic Ave. Presented by the Delray Beach Orchid Society. Free. Call 561-266-0194.\nProgram, computer demo \"Get Published Online!\" and an interactive quiz, \"Secrets of Palm Beach Society,\" 2 p.m., West Boynton Branch library, 9451 Jog Road, Boynton Beach. Free. Call 561-734-5556.\nThe Swing and Jazz Society, presents the Joe Donato Jazz Show, 7:30 p.m., Spanish River Performing Arts Center, 2400 Yamato Road, Boca Raton. $18 members, $26 nonmembers. Call 561-499-9976.\nTour of the Green Cay Wetlands, 3 p.m., Green Cay Wetlands, 12800 Hagen Ranch Road, Boynton Beach. Free. Call 561-966-7000.\nCoalition of Boynton West Residential Associations, meeting, 9:30 a.m., Palm Chase Lakes Clubhouse, 5859 Center Court Drive, Boynton Beach. Topic, local legal issues. Free. Call 561-752-3992.\nGuided Hammock Walk, 10 a.m.-noon, Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, 1801 N. Ocean Blvd., Boca Raton. Free. Call 561-338-1473.\nLecture and book signing, Daniel Ellsberg Speaks: the Pentagon Papers 40 Years Later, Kaye Auditorium, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton. Ellsberg talks and signs his book. $12. Visit fauevents.com or call 800-564-9539.\nMeet the Author, Steve Goldberg will discuss his book \"Find the Upside, Practical Wisdom for Challenging Times,\" 10:30 a.m.-noon, Levis Jewish Community Center, Sandler Center, 21050 95th Ave. S, Boca Raton. $5. Call 561-558-2504 to reserve a spot.\nNature Walk and swamp stroll, guided tour with a naturalist; learn about the swamp ecosystem and animals that inhabit it, 11 a.m., Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge, 10216 Lee Road, Boynton Beach. $5 per vehicle. Call 561-732-3684.\nSeminar: How To Be Certified as an 8(a)SBE/MBE Business, certification requirements and procedures for disadvantaged, minority and women business owners who want to sell to the government, 5:30 p.m., Lantana Branch library, 4020 Lantana Road, Lake Worth. Free. Register, 561-304-4500.\nMail items to Bulletin Board, c/o Cheryl Amico, Sun Sentinel, 333 SW 12th Ave., Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, or e-mail camico@SunSentinel.com\nTelenovela star William Levy cha-chas to Level29 restaurant in Pembroke Pines\nCopyright © 2020, Sun Sentinel\nPentagon Papers Release (2011)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line774753"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9176616668701172,"wiki_prob":0.9176616668701172,"text":"tennis us open\n2020 U.S. Open Betting Odds\nHome > Sports Betting > Tennis Betting > 2020 U.S. Open\n2020 U.S. Open Betting\nThe final Grand Slam event of the tennis season is the U.S. Open. This is the second oldest of the four Grand Slams, as it has been held since 1881, and it is the most prestigious tennis tournament in the United States.\nUnlike the other Grand Slams that have remained in one location throughout their history, the U.S. Open has moved around a few times. From 1881 to 1914, the event took place on the grass courts at a casino in Newport, Rhode Island, before moving to the West Side Tennis Club in New York City. It moved to the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia for a few years before coming back to the Big Apple, and it has been held in NYC since that point.\nCatch all the action at the 2020 U.S. Open from Monday, August 24 through Sunday, September 13. This entire tournament will be broadcast on ESPN networks in the Americas.\n2020 U.S. Open At a Glance\nLocation: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing, New York\nSurface: Hard\nTotal Participants: 128 men and women\nDefending Champions: Rafael Nadal, Bianca Andreescu\nRafael Nadal continues to dominate the French Open like no player has dominated any other tournament in the history of tennis. Nadal has won 12 Grand Slam titles at Roland Garros, and he is the best clay-court player the world has ever seen. Even though he will turn 34 during the tournament, he will almost certainly be the odds-on favorite per the French Open betting odds once this event gets underway.\nIt’s anyone’s guess who the favorite will be on the women’s side since there have been six different winners in six years. Serena Williams, Simona Halep, and Ashleigh Barty are the most likely favorites with recent French Open wins.\nList of U.S. Open Winners (Open Era)\nYEAR MEN'S WINNER WOMEN'S WINNER\n2019 Rafael Nadal Bianca Andreescu\n2018 Novak Djokovic Naomi Osaka\n2017 Rafael Nadal Sloane Stephens\n2016 Stan Wawrinka Angelique Kerber\n2015 Novak Djokovic Flavia Pennetta\n2014 Marin Cilic Serena Williams\n2013 Rafael Nadal Serena Williams\n2012 Andy Murray Serena Williams\n2011 Novak Djokovic Samantha Stosur\n2010 Rafael Nadal Kim Clijsters\n2009 Juan Martin Del Potro Kim Clijsters\n2008 Roger Federer Serena Williams\n2007 Roger Federer Justine Henin\n2006 Roger Federer Maria Sharapova\n2005 Roger Federer Kim Clijsters\n2004 Roger Federer Svetlana Kuznetsova\n2003 Andy Roddick Justine Henin\n2002 Pete Sampras Serena Williams\n2001 Lleyton Hewitt Venus Williams\n2000 Marat Safin Venus Williams\nThe results at the U.S. Open have been all over the place. Dominance isn't the norm here on the hard courts in Flushing the same way that it has been at Wimbledon or the French Open. Hard court tennis wears down players since it’s a surface with no give, making injury and fatigue a much bigger factor. Some players aren’t at full strength coming into this major as it is near the tail end of the tennis season, and that's why the record for the most consecutive wins on the women's side in the Open Era is just four. The only extended run on the men's side of the draw was when Roger Federer won five straight U.S. Opens from 2004 through 2008.\nMost Career Men's U.S. Open Wins (Open Era)\nWINS PLAYER YEARS\n5 Jimmy Connors 1974, 1976, 1978, 1982, 1983\n5 Pete Sampras 1990, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2002\n5 Roger Federer 2004-2008\n4 Rafael Nadal 2010, 2013, 2017, 2019\n4 John McEnroe 1979-1981, 1984\n4 Novak Djokovic 2011, 2015, 2018\n3 Ivan Lendl 1985-1987\nThe official record for total U.S. Open victories is seven, a mark belonging to William Larned, Richard Sears and Bill Tilden. These three men were all winners of this tournament dating back to the late-1800s, early-1900s and through the 1920s though, when it was still in an amateur event.\nAs far as the Open Era is concerned, the record for titles is five. Jimmy Connors was the first to win five, and he was followed by fellow American Pete Sampras. Roger Federer was the first to win five in a row, but he hasn’t won here in 12 years.\nMost Career Women's U.S. Open Wins (Open Era)\n6 Chris Evert 1975-1978, 1980, 1982\n6 Serena Williams 1999, 2002, 2008, 2012-2014\n5 Steffi Graf 1988, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1996\n4 Martina Navratilova 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987\n3* Margaret Court 1969, 1970, 1973\n3** Billie Jean King 1971, 1972, 1974\n3 Kim Clijsters 2005, 2009, 2010\n*Court won the U.S. Open a total of five times, but her championships in 1962 and 1965 were in the amateur era.\n**King won the U.S. Open a total of four times, but her championship in 1967 was in the amateur era.\nEver hear of Molla Bjurstedt Mallory? She's one of the most accomplished Norwegian athletes of all-time with eight U.S. Open titles. She won seven titles in eight years through the 1910s and 1920s, and she added one more title in 1926 before stepping away.\nChris Evert and Serena Williams have the most titles in the Open era with each woman winning here six times. Williams is the only player with wins stretching across three decades though, and she would love to break the tie with Evert. A win for her would make her the first player in the history of tennis to win at least one Grand Slam in four decades.\nLog into BookMaker Sportsbook and get the best Tennis Betting Odds, Tennis Betting Articles and information about this and all other sports betting events!\nLive Lines\nTENNIS - ATP MATCHUPS\nLloyd George Harris\no22-120\nu22+100\no23½-110\nUgo Humbert\nu23½-110","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1057996"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6634957194328308,"wiki_prob":0.3365042805671692,"text":"Horse Racing Betting\nCloe’s Poker Magic\nPublish Your Guest Post – Gambling Blog\nLet’s Get Acquainted\nIrish lottery down on its luck as sales fall\nCloe Gomez // Nov, 16 // No Comments\nSales of various lottery games fell by 8 per cent in 2014 as the National Lottery reported a drop in revenue across most of its products.\nThe latest annual accounts of An Post National Lottery show that turnover fell by €54.3 million to €630.9 million last year, down 7.9 per cent.\nThe results are not as bad as the headline figures suggest, as the 2014 accounts only cover 11 months of trading. A new operator, Premier Lotteries Ireland, took over the licence at the end of last November.\nHowever, the results show that the downward trend in sales of lottery games, which has been evident since the economic downturn in 2008, continued last year.\nThe most significant factor in the company’s falling turnover was a 12.3 per cent drop in sales of its main Lotto games.\nRevenue from Lotto, Lotto Plus and Lotto 5-4-3-2-1 fell by €38.3 million to €272.1 million .\nSales of scratch cards and online instant-win games, the National Lottery’s second-largest revenue stream, also dropped by 2.1 per cent. Sales were down €3.5 million to €164.2 million.\nHowever, sales of Euromillion games — which pool the prize pots from nine national lotteries across Europe — bucked the trend, rising by 1.4 per cent, up €2.2 million to €160.7 million.\nPrizes worth €355.1 million were paid out last year to Irish lottery customers, representing 56.3 per cent of turnover. The lottery paid out €27.6 million less in prizes over its various games in 2014 than the previous year, a 12.4 per cent reduction. Payours for scratchcards and online games fell by 1 per cent.\nIn a report published earlier this week, the public spending watchdog highlighted that the National Lottery had only contributed €178 million instead of an expected €200 million to various government departments in 2014.\nThe Department of Public Expenditure and Reform said that the gap in the funding was mainly due to “technical and timing issues” relating to the transition to the new lottery regime.\nA consortium involving An Post and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, which controls Camelot, the UK lottery group, took over the running of the lottery with a 20-year licence last year.\nThe company spent €405 million to acquire the new licence. Some €200 million of the licence fee revenue will go towards the development of the new National Children’s Hospital on the campus of St James’s Hospital in Dublin.\nThe new operators have been beset by a series of technical glitches, which led to the first ever cancellation of a Lotto draw in February.\nThey were also criticised for raising prices and reducing the chances of winning the Lotto jackpot through changes introduced this month.\nPremier Lotteries Ireland defended the changes, claiming they would result in more winners and bigger jackpots.\nIf you are a professional or amateur poker player or if you are new to this great and full of adrenaline intellectual card game, you’ll find plenty of useful information on my website. And if you want to know a bit more about poker and learn a few new tricks, you should check out my online classes dedicated to poker.\nEnjoy the reading and have fun,\nCloe Gomez\nCloe GomezFollow\nCloe Gomez@inzebullpen·\nThere is nothing better than seeing that your student is being passionate and getting what they want to get.\nYou have to be quite responsible with your studies to really make some progress and to see that you’re getting better.\nTry to browse through some theory, books and articles first if you want to play good and to learn fast.\nEveryone needs a good teacher and you can get to the progress much quicker with a good teacher.\nThere are many things you have to learn to be able to be a good player and you can’t process all the info alone.\nIndia free spins","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line909081"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6318691372871399,"wiki_prob":0.3681308627128601,"text":"SHAHAR MARCUS & NEZAKET EKICI\nKing of Falafel\nOn May 1, 2018 By shahar123 In VIDEO ART\nhttp://shaharmarcus.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/9.%20King%20of%20Falafel.mp4\nThe work \"King of Falafel\" is a continuation of Shahar Marcus’s video works that deal with Israeli cultural symbols, manifested by various food rituals. The current work takes place on the moon and depicts a fictional event – the opening of a new falafel stand. The video begins with a wide-shot of space and continues with Marcus, dressed as an astronaut, landing on the moon. After getting ‘lost in space’ he finally notices a flag and realizes he has reached his final destination. Thereafter, he opens an inflatable falafel stand and puts up his own flag with the inscription: “King of Falafel”. After struggling with the making of the dish, his ultimate success is celebrated with a triumphal ‘selfie’.\nThis humorous piece, shot in the spirit of ‘space adventure’ films, touches a few historical and contemporary socio-political issues. The major theme of the work is the discovery and conquest of a new frontier. This theme plays a major part in the Zionist ethos and the early formation of Israel. It also echoes the history of America and the Western European Colonial past. By depicting an astronaut who is wearing a white suit with blue stripes that resembles the Israeli flag, Marcus reflects on a contemporary ‘Colonialist’ phenomenon in the shape of Israeli tourism. This phenomenon is mainly expressed by the opening of Israeli food venues abroad as a form of cultural compulsion. As opposed to the European Colonial worldview of enforcing their ‘superior’ knowledge upon the local population, in this work, the conquering culture is that of simple street food folklore – the falafel. Ironically, the famous historical rivalry between former USSR and USA over the landing on the moon is thereby defeated by an Israeli pioneer – the first one to set up a food stand in space! By situating this surreal event on the moon – the symbol of future and progress – Marcus emphasizes the never-ending, universal human strive for conquering new and ‘undiscovered’ frontiers.\nHomecoming artist (Dresden)\nPowered by WordPress and Chronus.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line669952"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9042898416519165,"wiki_prob":0.9042898416519165,"text":"------------------------------------------ Today i...\nToday is Tuesday, May 11th.\nThe 132nd day of 2004.\nOne hundred years ago, May 11, 1904, surrealist artist Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain.\nIn 330, Constantinople (formerly Byzantine, now Istanbul) was established as a new capital by Roman Emperor Constantine for the Eastern Roman Empire.\nIn 1752, The first U.S. fire insurance policy was issued in Philadelphia, Pa.\nIn 1792, The Columbia River was discovered and named by US Captain Robert Gray\nIn 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state of the Union.\nIn 1888, Composer/Songwriter Irving Berlin (Israel Isidore Baline) was born in Temun, Russia. He died September 22, 1989 at the age of 101.\nIn 1910, Glacier National Park in Montana was established.\nIn 1912, Actor/Comedian Phil Silvers (Philip Silversmith) was born in Brooklyn NY. He died November 1, 1985 at the age of 73.\nIn 1920, Oxford University permits the admission of women.\nIn 1921, Tel Aviv became the first all Jewish municipality.\nIn 1927, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.\nIn 1928, General Electric opens the first TV-station. WGY-TV (1.5 inch picture/43 lines), in Schenectady NY\nIn 1929,The first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts are aired 3 nights per week in Schenectady NY on WGY-TV.\nIn 1943, During World War II, U.S. forces landed on the Aleutian island of Attu, which was held by the Japanese; the Americans took the island 19 days later.\nIn 1944, Allied forces launched a major offensive against German lines in Italy.\nIn 1945, US marines conquer Awatsha Draw Okinawa.\nIn 1946, The first CARE packages arrived in Europe, at Le Havre, France.\nIn 1947, BF Goodrich manufactures 1st tubeless tire, Akron OH\nIn 1949, Israel was admitted to the United Nations as the world body's 59th member.\nIn 1949, The first Polaroid camera was sold for $89.95 in New York City.\nIn 1949, Siam changed its name to Thailand.\nIn 1950, U.S. President Truman dedicated the Grand Coulee Dam.\nIn 1951, Jay Forrester patents computer core memory.\nIn 1960, Israeli soldiers capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires\nIn 1969, The Monty Python comedy troupe forms\nIn 1969, One of the more infamous and bloody battles of the Vietnam War began with U.S. attempts to seize Dong Ap Bia mountain (Hill 937). After 10 days, American troops conquered the hill, only to abandon it soon after. The heavy casualties to take the mountain inspired the name \"Hamburger Hill.\"\nIn 1972, John Lennon appeared on the \"Dick Cavett\" TV show and said that the FBI had tapped his phone.\nIn 1973, Charges against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the \"Pentagon Papers\" case were dismissed by Judge William M. Byrne, who cited government misconduct.\nIn 1976 ABC aired the last episode of \"Marcus Welby, MD.\"\nIn 1977, The U.S. government outlawed the use of chlorofluorocarbons as spray can propellants.\nIn 1981, Reggae artist Bob Marley, 36, died in a Miami hospital of cancer.\nIn 1983, The final episode of \"Quincy, M.E.\" aired on NBC.\nIn 1985, More than 50 people died when a flash fire swept a jam-packed soccer stadium in Bradford, England.\nIn 1989, The final episode of \"Dynasty\" aired.\nIn 1996, An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.\nIn 1999, CBS announced that it would provide high-definition prime-time programming beginning in September.\nIn 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft delayed Timothy McVeigh's execution from May 16 to June 11 because of FBI mishandling of documents.\nArkansas put to death two convicted murderers; it was the first time a state executed two people on the same day since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to restore the death penalty in 1976.\nStung by an espionage scandal, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said he would halt the Clinton administration's aggressive declassification of Cold War-era nuclear documents.\nIn Beijing, protests outside the U.S. Embassy over NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade eased after state-run television aired U.S. and NATO apologies for the attack.\nThe United States declared Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's Baath Party dead.\nPalestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, heeding an appeal by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, said Palestinian leaders had put aside reservations to parts of the U.S.-developed plan for peace with Israel and were ready to get started on it.\nLithuania became the first ex-Soviet republic to approve entry into the European Union as voters completed a weekend referendum.\nCanada beat Sweden 3-2 in Finland to win its first hockey world championship in six years.\nComedian Mort Sahl is 77.\nReligious leader (Nation of Islam) Louis Farrakhan is 71.\nRock singer Eric Burdon (The Animals; War) is 63.\nActress Shohreh Aghdashloo is 52.\nActress Frances Fisher is 52.\nActor Boyd Gaines is 51.\nCountry musician Mark Herndon (Alabama) is 49.\nActress Martha Quinn is 45.\nActress Natasha Richardson is 41.\nCountry singer-musician Tim Raybon (The Raybon Brothers) is 41.\nActor Coby Bell is 29.\nActor Austin O'Brien is 24.\nActor Jonathan Jackson is 22.\n\"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.\" -\n- Salvador Dali, Spanish artist (1904-1989).\nThere's Not Enough Data on How Women Deal With Endometriosis. These Scientists are Changing That - Phendo is an app that, with the help of citizen scientists, seeks to catalog endometriosis symptoms and increase understanding and visibility of this “invi...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1510909"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5997615456581116,"wiki_prob":0.4002384543418884,"text":"The Definitive Guide: Top 20 Best Hiking and Trekking Tours in Europe\nSo many travelers head to Europe to take in the hustle and bustle of major cities like Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, and London. But if exploring city life isn’t your thing and you prefer to take the more scenic route, you’re still in luck. The European continent is home to some of the most scenic hiking spots in the world, and hiking across Europe isn’t just for advanced outdoorsmen.\nThere are so many European destinations for short hiking trips and long trekking vacations that deciding on one can feel impossible. This definitive guide to the best hiking in Europe can help you to narrow it down and start planning an unforgettable adventure.\nThe full list:\nNorwegian Fjords, Norway\nThe Norwegian Fjords are home to thousands of unique hiking trails and treks for all levels. There is so much natural diversity here, ranging from icy blue glaciers to lush green forests. If you consider yourself an advanced trekker, check out the more challenging spots like Himakana, Trolltunga, Geirangerfjord, Langfossen, or Preikestolen.\nThe Fjords are technically located all over the country, and there are over 1,000 of them. They were created by massive glaciation that sunk below sea level over the past 2.5 million years. One of the most visited fjords, Lysefjord, is 26 miles long and can be easily accessed from the city of Stavanger.\nDistance: Hundreds of treks to choose from\nCountries Spanned: Norway\nNumber of Days: 1-5+ (depending on the route)\nDifficulty: Easy to Challenging\nAccommodation: Campsites, Hostels, B&Bs, Hotels\nBest Local Guide: Fjord Tours\nTour de Monte Rosa, Italy\nOne of the most loved hiking routes of the Swiss Alps is the tour de Monte Rosa. Although this trekking tour takes place in Italy, trekkers get the chance to take in panoramic views of Switzerland’s Matterhorn. This is one of the best hiking adventures in Europe, but it’s not for the faint of heart. This challenging hike takes can take anywhere from 8 to 11 days to complete.\nCountries Spanned: Italy\nNumber of Days: 8-11\nDifficulty: Challenging\nAccommodation: Campsites, Mountain Huts, B&Bs\nBest Local Guide: Alpine Hikers\nKungsleden, Sweden\nOut of all the hiking in Europe, there is no place quite like Kungsleden. The literal translation of Kungsleden is The King’s Trail, which makes complete sense since this trailer is fit for a king. It’s 270 miles long, stretching through northern Sweden and passing through green forests, glaciated valleys, and winding rivers along the way.\nCountries Spanned: Sweden\nNumber of Days: 3-15 (depending on route)\nAccommodation: Campsites, Mountain Huts\nBest Local Guide: KE Adventure Travel\nMount Triglav, Slovenia\nMount Triglav is the highest mountain in Slovenia, reaching an elevation of 9,396 feet. It’s the main attraction of the Triglav National Park, and the good majority of able-bodied Slovenians make a point to climb the mountain peak at some point in their lives. A tour company called Climb Triglav offers all-inclusive trekking tours throughout the year.\nDistance: 9,296 feet (elevation)\nCountries Spanned: Slovenia\nNumber of Days: 2-3\nAccommodation: Campsites, Mountain Huts, Chalets\nBest Local Guide: Climb Triglav\nHaute Route, France & Switzerland\nAt the foothills of Western Europe’s Mont Blanc lies the starting point of Haute Route. Haute Route is often thought of like a cross-country skiing destination, it’s also possible to hike on foot. If you choose to hike the entire thing, plan on spending at least 10 days exploring the 11 mountain passes of Haute Route.\nCountries Spanned: France & Switzerland\nNumber of Days: 10-12\nDifficulty: Moderate to Challenging\nAccommodation: Hotels, Cabins, Mountain Huts\nBest Local Guide: Much Better Adventures\nGran Paradiso National Park, Italy\nThe number of trekking vacations to choose from in Italy's Gran Paradiso National Park is essentially unlimited. The park spans over 70,000 hectares of land with peaks reaching as high as 13,000 feet. If you're fit enough to make it to the top of Mount Gran Paradiso, you'll see views of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and Matterhorn.\nNumber of Days: 2 Days (to ascend Gran Paradiso peak)\nAccommodation: Hotels, Chalets, Cabins, Campsites\nBest Local Guide: Adventure Consultants\nGR20, Corsica & France\nGR20 is another one of the best places for hiking in Europe, running North to South through the Corsican mountains. The terrain is rugged, to say the least, so this is not a spot for someone who has never worn a pair of hiking boots. The 112-mile trail takes 12 full days to hike, but if you’re short on time, you can skip the northern portion of the trail and focus solely on the South.\nCountries Spanned: Corsica & France\nAccommodation: Refuges, Campsites\nBest Local Guide: Corsica Adventure\nWest Highland Way, Scotland & UK\nTo experience Scotland’s most cherished piece of natural beauty, head to West Highland Way. This is one of the best hiking tours Europe has to offer, especially when you visit WHW highlights like Rannoch Moor, Glencoe, and Glen Nevis.\nThe coolest part of this hike is the 18th-century history you'll experience along the way, plus you'll catch a glimpse of the train that was featured in the Harry Potter movies as it made its way to Hogwarts. There are good and bad times to hike WMW, so try to focus your adventure between the dry months of May and October.\nCountries Spanned: Scotland & UK\nNumber of Days: 7\nAccommodation: Campsites, B&Bs, Hostels\nBest Local Guide: Wilderness Scotland\nRetezat Mountains, Romania\nHiking Europe is without-a-doubt the ultimate way to take in the continent, especially when it comes to traveling in Romania. The Romanian Retezat Mountains are a part of the Southern Carpathians range, which is completely untouched terrain. Because this is so far removed from society, Retezat hiking tours in Europe allow travelers to experience nature in its purest form.\nCountries Spanned: Romania\nNumber of Days: 4+ (depending on route)\nAccommodation: Mountain Huts, Guesthouses\nBest Local Guide: Retezat Mountains Tours by Locals\nCanary Islands, Spain\nEven if you’re focusing on beach time for the duration of your trip to the Canary Islands, try to change up the scenery every once in a while. These Spanish islands along the western coast of Africa are the perfect setting for hiking through Europe, especially on the island of La Gomera. There are tons of routes and unique trails to choose from, and some will only take a few hours of your time.\nDistance: N/A\nCountries Spanned: Spain\nNumber of Days: Several Hours to 3+ Days\nAccommodation: Hotels, Hostels, B&Bs, Guesthouses\nBest Local Guide: Santiago Ways\nThe Dolomites, Italy\nTraveling to the Dolomites is one of the most epic hiking trips in Europe for both outdoor lovers and history buffs. Most of the trails here were named after WWI events, and many of them pass by abandoned bunkers used by the soldiers. There are many trailers to choose from, most of them taking no longer than 4 hours, but our all-time fave is Lago di Sorapiss.\nDistance: 8.4 miles (Lago di Sorapiss)\nNumber of Days: 3-5 hours\nAccommodation: None Needed\nBest Local Guide: Ciao Andiamo\nTour du Mont Blanc, Switzerland, Italy, & France\nAs far as Europe hiking tours go, there is none as famous as Tour du Mont Blanc. If long-distance walking is your thing, TMB is for you. Keep in mind that this is for avid hikers who are physically fit - it's not a beginner-level trail. The main tour covers about 105 miles and takes as long as 12 days to complete.\nCountries Spanned: Switzerland, Italy, & France\nAccommodation: Campsites, Hotels\nBest Local Guide: Mont Blanc Treks\nCamino de Santiago Trail, Spain & France\nSome of the most culture-packed hiking trails in Europe can be found in the Pyrenees mountain range of Northern Spain and France, like the Camino de Santiago Trail. This used to be a common route used by Catholic pilgrims, but now, it's a prime spot for travelers embarking on hiking vacations. CST is revered as one of the best long-distance hiking trails in Europe, but feel free to focus on one small section (and not all 500 miles).\nDistance: 500 miles (can be divided into sections)\nCountries Spanned: Spain & France\nAccommodation: Campsites, Hostels, Guesthouses, B&Bs\nBest Local Guide: G Adventures\nRota Vicentina, Portugal\nPortugal is most often thought of as a surfing destination, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited on hiking tours with a trip here. Rota Vicentina is a great option for beginner to intermediate-level hikers who are looking to spice things up. The entire hike is 250 miles long, but most people focus on the Fisherman’s trail, which is just under 50 miles.\nDistance: 50 miles (Fisherman’s Trail)\nCountries Spanned: Portugal\nAccommodation: Camping, Hostels, Guesthouses\nBest Local Guide: Portugal Outside\nLaugavegur Hiking Trail, Iceland\nThis list of the best hiking in Europe wouldn't be complete without at least one destination in Iceland. The landscape of Iceland has been described as idyllic more than once, especially along the Laugavegur Hiking Trail. It's a fairly easy 3 to 5-day hike, and it's the best way to take in the lava fields, ice caves, and colorful mountains of Iceland.\nCountries Spanned: Iceland\nAccommodation: Campsites\nBest Local Guide: Arctic Adventures\nWestweg in Black Forest, Germany\nAre you focusing your hiking vacations in Europe in Germany? Trekking along Westweg is a must. This isn’t just one of the ultimate Europe hiking trips, but it’s also commonly referred to as the birthplace of hiking as a whole. This is a long trail (nearly 200 miles), but if you want to take it in sections we suggest that you focus on the southern parts of Westweg.\nCountries Spanned: Germany\nAccommodation: Campsites, Guesthouses, Hostels\nBest Local Guide: Kleins Wanderreisen Tours\nDingle Way, Ireland\nSome of the best hiking trails in Europe can be found on the continent's westernmost edge in Ireland. That's right - a trip to Ireland can be so much more than sipping on pints of Guinness all day. The best trekking tours here happen along Dingle Way, a 111-mile hike that takes about 10 days to complete from start to finish. This is the ultimate way to take in Ireland's Ring of Kerry.\nCountries Spanned: Ireland\nAccommodation: Campsites, Hostels, B&Bs\nBest Local Guide: Macs Adventure\nCaucasus Mountains, Georgia\nIn terms of adventure, trekking the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia is one of the best hiking vacations in Europe imaginable. This mountain range serves as an intersection between Asia and Europe, and it’s the ideal spot if you want complete peace and quiet. There’s a lot to see here, but the main attraction is the Savan, an ancient stone village in the heart of the mountains.\nCountries Spanned: Georgia\nAccommodation: Campsites, Mountain Huts, Guesthouses\nBest Local Guide: Georgia Adventure\nCinque Terre Mountain Trail, Italy\nEven non-hikers have heard of Cinque Terre in Italy, and if you haven't, it's time to do a quick Google search of Cinque Terre hiking trips Europe. Several hiking trails are connecting the 5 towns that make up the Cinque Terre.\nTrail 1 is an all-time favorite since it connects all 5 of the towns, plus it’s not as crowded as some of the other CT trails. Another major perk of CTMT is that this is Inn to Inn hiking Europe at its finest; there are plenty of charming B&Bs and local guesthouses to stay in along the way, so you won’t have to camp out if that’s not your thing.\nNumber of Days: 2-5 (depending on route)\nAccommodation: Guesthouses, B&Bs, Hotels\nBest Local Guide: Self-Guided Tour Is Best\nHigh Tatras, Slovakia\nThe High Tatras in Slovakia is an easy to medium hike that can be broken up into sections. When you search for long hiking trails Europe, High Tatras is likely to show up. This mountain range is made up of 25 peaks with hundreds of lakes, waterfalls, and valleys. If you prefer a multi-day hike, there are mountain huts to stay in along the way.\nCountries Spanned: Slovakia\nNumber of Days: 1-10+ (depending on route)\nAccommodation: Mountain Huts\nBest Local Guide: Travel Slovakia Hiking Tour\nJanuary 13, 2020 16:44 / Mikael Uusitalo\nTrekking Map: Top 15 Best Hiking & Trekking Tours in the French Alps\nMove aside, Swiss Alps...it’s time to focus the spotlight on the equally-as-impressive French Alps for a while. We’re not diminishing the stunning magnificence of the Alps in Switzerland. But we ar...\nTrekking Map: Top 15 Best Hiking & Trekking Tours in Italy\nMost people focus their time in Italy on three things: gelato, pasta, and pizza. It’s safe to assume that any trip here will leave you feeling full and satisfied - not to mention ten pounds heavier...\nHelvetia: Top 15 Best Hiking and Trekking Tours in Switzerland [Video]\nSome travelers focus on cheese and chocolate during their time in Switzerland, but for others, it’s all about spending time in the great outdoors. Trekking the Swiss Alps is every hiker’s dream; th...\nMay 06, 2019 12:34 / Mikael Uusitalo\nThe 5 most dangerous hiking trails in the world\nWhy do we go hiking? For some, just going out on a walk in the countryside is good exercise, an excellent form of soul searching and a good way to escape the hustle of big city life. But there is s...\nBack to Magazine","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line212413"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5061792135238647,"wiki_prob":0.49382078647613525,"text":"https://www.barrons.com/articles/house-passes-secure-act-retirement-51558629371\nThe House Passed the Biggest Changes to Retirement Plans in a Decade\nBen Walsh\nUpdated May 25, 2019 / Original May 23, 2019\nPhotograph by Harli Marten\nThe House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday that would make significant changes to the laws governing retirement savings accounts.\nThe aim of the legislation, which will now move to the Senate for consideration, is to make it easier for more employers, particularly small businesses, to offer 401(k)s, and to let workers guarantee how much income their retirement savings produce by using annuities.\nThe bill, known as the Secure Act, would let people make contributions to their individual retirement accounts at any age, rather than the current age cap of 70½ years old. It would also raise the age at which required withdrawals for IRAs and 401(k)s kick in, from 70½ years old to 72. It would encourage 401(k) plans to offer annuities by laying out a way for plans to limit their liability if the annuity provider fails to make future payments. And it would let new parents withdraw $5,000 from retirement accounts penalty-free to cover expenses related to their new child.\nThe move would be the biggest change to retirement plans since Congress allowed for automatic enrollment and target-date funds in 2006.\nRead our recent cover story: How Your Kids Can Ruin Your Retirement—and How to Make Sure They Don’t\n“The Secure Act is a bipartisan success, filled with common sense proposals authored by members from both sides of the aisle,” Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.), who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. “The legislation closes loopholes and makes it easier for small business employees, home care workers, and long-term part-time workers to save for retirement.”\nCorrections & Amplifications\nThe Secure Act would eliminate the restriction on contributions to individual retirement accounts starting at age 70½. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated it would also eliminate the age restriction on contributions to 401(k) plans.\nWrite to Ben Walsh at ben.walsh@barrons.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line90685"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6127035617828369,"wiki_prob":0.3872964382171631,"text":"Although NBC Politics Bot was a little rudimentary in terms of its interactions, this particular application of chatbot technology could well become a lot more popular in the coming years – particularly as audiences struggle to keep up with the enormous volume of news content being published every day. The bot also helped NBC determine what content most resonated with users, which the network will use to further tailor and refine its content to users in the future.\nRegardless of which type of classifier is used, the end-result is a response. Like a music box, there can be additional “movements” associated with the machinery. A response can make use of external information (like weather, a sports score, a web lookup, etc.) but this isn’t specific to chatbots, it’s just additional code. A response may reference specific “parts of speech” in the sentence, for example: a proper noun. Also the response (for an intent) can use conditional logic to provide different responses depending on the “state” of the conversation, this can be a random selection (to insert some ‘natural’ feeling).\nUnfortunately the old adage of trash in, trash out came back to bite Microsoft. Tay was soon being fed racist, sexist and genocidal language by the Twitter user-base, leading her to regurgitate these views. Microsoft eventually took Tay down for some re-tooling, but when it returned the AI was significantly weaker, simply repeating itself before being taken offline indefinitely.\nWhen we open our news feed and find out about yet another AI breakthrough—IBM Watson, driverless cars, AlphaGo — the notion of TODA may feel decidedly anti-climatic. The reality is that the current AI is not quite 100% turnkey-ready for TODA. This will soon change due to two key factors: 1) businesses want it, and 2) businesses have abundant data, the fuel that the current state-of-the-art machine learning techniques need to make AI work.\nLack contextual awareness. Not everyone has all of the data that Google has – but chatbots today lack the awareness that we expect them to have. We assume that chatbot technology will know our IP address, browsing history, previous purchases, but that is just not the case today. I would argue that many chatbots even lack basic connection to other data silos to improve their ability to answer questions.\nFor example, say you want to purchase a pair of shoes online from Nordstrom. You would have to browse their site and look around until you find the pair you wanted. Then you would add the pair to your cart to go through the motions of checking out. But in the case Nordstrom had a conversational bot, you would simply tell the bot what you’re looking for and get an instant answer. You would be able to search within an interface that actually learns what you like, even when you can’t coherently articulate it. And in the not-so-distant future, we’ll even have similar experiences when we visit the retail stores.\nAs people research, they want the information they need as quickly as possible and are increasingly turning to voice search as the technology advances. Email inboxes have become more and more cluttered, so buyers have moved to social media to follow the brands they really care about. Ultimately, they now have the control — the ability to opt out, block, and unfollow any brand that betrays their trust.\nThere are multiple chatbot development platforms available if you are looking to develop Facebook Messenger bot. While each has their own pros and cons, Dialogflow is one strong contender. Offering one of the best NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and context management, Dialogflow makes it very easy to create Facebook Messenger bot. In this tutorial, we’ll…\nThis is the big one. We worked with one particular large publisher (can’t name names unfortunately, but hundreds of thousands of users) in two phases. We initially released a test phase that was sort of a “catch all”. Anyone could message a broad keyword to their bot and start a campaign. Although we had a huge number of users come in, engagement was relatively average (87% open rate and 27.05% click-through rate average over the course of the test). Drop off here was fairly high, about 3.14% of users had unsubscribed by the end of the test.\nChatfuel is a platform that lets you build your own Chatbot for Messenger (and Telegram) for free. The only limit is if you pass more than 100,000 conversations per month, but for most businesses that won't be an issue. No understanding of code is required and it has a simple drag-and-drop interface. Think Wix/Squarespace for bots (side note: I have zero affiliation with Chatfuel).\nA bot is software that is designed to automate the kinds of tasks you would usually do on your own, like making a dinner reservation, adding an appointment to your calendar or fetching and displaying information. The increasingly common form of bots, chatbots, simulate conversation. They often live inside messaging apps — or are at least designed to look that way — and it should feel like you’re chatting back and forth as you would with a human.\nSmooch acts as more of a chatbot connector that bridges your business apps, (ex: Slack and ZenDesk) with your everyday messenger apps (ex: Facebook Messenger, WeChat, etc.) It links these two together by sending all of your Messenger chat notifications straight to your business apps, which streamlines your conversations into just one application. In the end, this can result in smoother automated workflows and communications across teams. These same connectors also allow you to create chatbots which will respond to your customer chats…. boom!\nPolly may be a business-focused application, but the chatbot is designed to improve workplace happiness. Using surveys and feedback, managers can keep track of how effectively their teams are working and address problems before they escalate. This doesn’t only mean organizations will run more productively, but that workers will be happier in their jobs.\nIn other words, bots solve the thing we loathed about apps in the first place. You don't have to download something you'll never use again. It's been said most people stick to five apps. Those holy grail spots? They're increasingly being claimed by messaging apps. Today, messaging apps have over 5 billion monthly active users, and for the first time, people are using them more than social networks.\nChatbots such as ELIZA and PARRY were early attempts at creating programs that could at least temporarily fool a real human being into thinking they were having a conversation with another person. PARRY's effectiveness was benchmarked in the early 1970s using a version of a Turing test; testers only made the correct identification of human vs. chatbot at a level consistent with making a random guess.\n“Major shifts on large platforms should be seen as an opportunities for distribution. That said, we need to be careful not to judge the very early prototypes too harshly as the platforms are far from complete. I believe Facebook’s recent launch is the beginning of a new application platform for micro application experiences. The fundamental idea is that customers will interact with just enough UI, whether conversational and/or widgets, to be delighted by a service/brand with immediate access to a rich profile and without the complexities of installing a native app, all fueled by mature advertising products. It’s potentially a massive opportunity.” — Aaron Batalion, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners\nDo the nature of our services and size of our customer base warrant an investment in a more efficient and automated customer service response? How can we offer a more streamlined experience without (necessarily) increasing costly human resources? Amtrak’s website receives over 375,000 daily visitors, and they wanted a solution that provided users with instant access to online self-service.\nNow, with the rise of website chatbots, this trend of two-way conversations can be taken to a whole new level. Conversational marketing can be done across many channels, such as over the phone or via SMS. However, an increasing number of companies are leveraging social media to drive their conversational marketing strategy to distinguish their brand and solidify their brand’s voice and values. When most people refer to conversational marketing, they’re talking about interactions started using chatbots and live chat – that move to personal conversations.\nWe’ve just released a major new report, The CIO’s Guide To Automation, AI, And Robotics. We find that, to stay ahead, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs, and other executives integrating leading-edge technologies into their companies’ operations and business models must turn their attention to automation technologies, including intelligent machines, robotic process automation (RPA) bots, artificial intelligence, and physical […]\nAutomation will be central to the next phase of digital transformation, driving new levels of customer value such as faster delivery of products, higher quality and dependability, deeper personalization, and greater convenience. Last year, Forrester predicted that automation would reach a tipping point — altering the workforce, augmenting employees, and driving new levels of customer value. Since then, […]\nWhat if you’re creating a bot for a major online clothing retailer? For starters, the bot will require a greeting (“How can I help you?”) as well as a process for saying its goodbyes. In between, the bot needs to respond to inputs, which could range from shopping inquiries to questions about shipping rates or return policies, and the bot must possess a script for fielding questions it doesn’t understand.\nIf AI struggles with fourth-grade science question answering, should AI be expected to hold an adult-level, open-ended chit-chat about politics, entertainment, and weather? It is thus encouraging to see that Microsoft’s Satya Nadella did not give up on Tay after its debacle, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is sponsoring an Alexa social chatbot competition. I love this below quote from Jeff:\nAuthentication. Users start by authenticating themselves using whatever mechanism is provided by their channel of communication with the bot. The bot framework supports many communication channels, including Cortana, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Messenger, Kik, and Slack. For a list of channels, see Connect a bot to channels. When you create a bot with Azure Bot Service, the Web Chat channel is automatically configured. This channel allows users to interact with your bot directly in a web page. You can also connect the bot to a custom app by using the Direct Line channel. The user's identity is used to provide role-based access control, as well as to serve personalized content.\nBotsify is another Facebook chatbot platform that helps make it easy to integrate chatbots into the system. Its paid subscription helps you in five easy steps. 1) Log into the botsify.com site, 2) Connect your Facebook account, 3) Setup a webhook, 4) Write up commands for the chatbot you are creating, and 5) Let Botisfy handle the customer service for you. If the paid services are a little too much, they do offer a free service that lets you create as many bots as your lovely imagination can dream up.\nWhen one dialog invokes another, the Bot Builder adds the new dialog to the top of the dialog stack. The dialog that is on top of the stack is in control of the conversation. Every new message sent by the user will be subject to processing by that dialog until it either closes or redirects to another dialog. When a dialog closes, it's removed from the stack, and the previous dialog in the stack assumes control of the conversation.\nConversational bots can help a business’s customers with difficult transactions, plus collect data and give recommendations. For example, a conversational bot integrated to an airline’s website can answer questions regarding flight availability, rebook tickets, fees and suggest add-ons like hotels. Though a conversational bot may not be able to finish the exchanges, it could still be able to gather preliminary data and pass it on to the next available customer care agent. In both cases, the airline will save considerable time in its call center.\nThe plugin aspect to Chatfuel is one of the real bonuses. You can link up to all sorts of different services to add richer content to the conversations that you're having. This includes linking up to Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, as well as being able to request that the user share their location, serve video and audio content, and build out custom attributes that can be used to segment users based on their inputs. This last part is a killer feature.\nDerived from “chat robot”, \"chatbots\" allow for highly engaging, conversational experiences, through voice and text, that can be customized and used on mobile devices, web browsers, and on popular chat platforms such as Facebook Messenger, or Slack. With the advent of deep learning technologies such as text-to-speech, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing, chatbots that simulate human conversation and dialogue can now be found in call center and customer service workflows, DevOps management, and as personal assistants.\nThe main challenge is in teaching a chatbot to understand the language of your customers. In every business, customers express themselves differently and each group of a target audience speaks its own way. The language is influenced by advertising campaigns on the market, the political situation in the country, releases of new services and products from Google, Apple and Pepsi among others. The way people speak depends on their city, mood, weather and moon phase. An important role in the communication of the business with customers may have the release of the film Star Wars, for example. That’s why training a chatbot to understand correctly everything the user types requires a lot of efforts.\nBots are also used to buy up good seats for concerts, particularly by ticket brokers who resell the tickets.[12] Bots are employed against entertainment event-ticketing sites. The bots are used by ticket brokers to unfairly obtain the best seats for themselves while depriving the general public of also having a chance to obtain the good seats. The bot runs through the purchase process and obtains better seats by pulling as many seats back as it can.\nThe bot itself is only part of a larger system that provides it with the latest data and ensures its proper operation. All of these other Azure resources — data orchestration services such as Data Factory, storage services such as Cosmos DB, and so forth — must be deployed. Azure Resource Manager provides a consistent management layer that you can access through the Azure portal, PowerShell, or the Azure CLI. For speed and consistency, it's best to automate your deployment using one of these approaches.\nIn a traditional application, the user interface (UI) is a series of screens. A single app or website can use one or more screens as needed to exchange information with the user. Most applications start with a main screen where users initially land and provide navigation that leads to other screens for various functions like starting a new order, browsing products, or looking for help.\nWhat began as a televised ad campaign eventually became a fully interactive chatbot developed for PG Tips’ parent company, Unilever (which also happens to own an alarming number of the most commonly known household brands) by London-based agency Ubisend, which specializes in developing bespoke chatbot applications for brands. The aim of the bot was to not only raise brand awareness for PG Tips tea, but also to raise funds for Red Nose Day through the 1 Million Laughs campaign.\nMarketing teams are increasingly interested in leveraging branded chatbots, but most struggle to deliver business value. My recently published report, Case Study: Take A Focused And Disciplined Approach To Drive Chatbot Success, shows how OCBC Bank in Singapore is bucking the trend: The bank recently created Emma, a chatbot focused on home loan leads, which […]\nChatbots are often used online and in messaging apps, but are also now included in many operating systems as intelligent virtual assistants, such as Siri for Apple products and Cortana for Windows. Dedicated chatbot appliances are also becoming increasingly common, such as Amazon's Alexa. These chatbots can perform a wide variety of functions based on user commands.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line538427"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7197350859642029,"wiki_prob":0.7197350859642029,"text":"Baseball Charitable Honoree a Different Cut of Philanthropist\nSeptember 13, 2012; Source: New York Daily News\nMets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey may not win the Cy Young Award (which this writer hopes will go to Washington Nationals pitcher Gio Gonzalez), but he just won the 2012 Branch Rickey Award, which honors one baseballer a year for his charitable activities. Branch Rickey, as NPQ Newswire readers know, was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers who signed Jackie Robinson to a minor league contract in 1945 and then brought him up to the big leagues to play for the Dodgers in 1947, breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier.\nThe award, created by the Denver Rotary Club, honors major leaguers for their community service per the Rotary International motto, “Service above self.” Each team nominates one player, coach, or manager for the award each year. Like the charitable giving associated with the teams’ foundations, the typical nominees are contributors to rather standard charities. Past winner include Curt Schilling and San Diego Padre pitcher Trevor Hoffman, who were active with charities fighting specific illnesses, ALS or “Lou Gehrig’s disease” in the case of Schilling and kidney disease in the case of Hoffman. Another theme is disaster relief, with Bobby Valentine, during his time as manager of the Mets, contributing to September 11th causes and Diamondbacks outfielder Luis Gonzalez pitching in on Hurricane Katrina relief.\nThis year’s winner, R.A. Dickey, is a very different sort of baseball player and maintains a very different approach to philanthropy. Dickey won this year’s award for distributing baseball equipment and medical supplies in South America. By climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, he also raised $100,000 to help women in India who have been forced into prostitution in Mumbai, although that charitable activity had his team, the New York Mets, steaming that their star knuckleballer might have gotten injured.\nLike his knuckleball, perfected rather late in his career, R.A. Dickey is cut from a different cloth. Give the Mets and the Denver Rotary some credit for being willing to go with a Branch Rickey award winner who is hardly mainstream as a player, person (read his autobiography, Wherever I May Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, which discusses his life in ways you’ll never see in other sports bios), or humanitarian. Wouldn’t Dickey be a good candidate for the NPQ board of directors?—Rick Cohen\nVideo Game-Linked “Digital Telethons” Emerge as Fundraising Tool\nPublic Catches On to Megadonor Domination over Philanthropy—and Everything Else\nColdplay Seeks to Make Its Tours Carbon Neutral\nBy Marian Conway","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line474500"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7032952308654785,"wiki_prob":0.2967047691345215,"text":"God is not in the Church Bible Study: LTLFM\nOrigin of Christmas-Part 3: Exchanging Gifts\nOrigin of Christmas-Part 3-Exchanging Gifts\nThe origin of Christmas gift giving is actually a relic of an old pagan custom called the winter solstice a holiday that was first celebrated in ancient Rome. People exchanged gifts during the holiday called Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a holiday observed between Dec. 17 to Dec. 23 and later extended to Dec. 25 (depending on which calendar you go by). This holiday was to honor the false god of Saturn, and was renowned and famous for wild parties, gift giving and sacrificing humans on Dec. 25 after subjecting them to cruel tortures and forcing them to do illicit sex acts in the days leading up to their deaths when they were murdered as a sacrifice to the false god of Saturn. The first recorded date of December 25th being celebrated as Christmas was in 336 during the time of Roman Emperor Constantine's reign (the first Christian Roman Emperor). Pope Julius I officially declared that December 25th would be the date that people would celebrate Jesus Christ's birth.\nGifts were Given After People Were Sacrificed At the Temple of Saturn\n\"The holiday Saturnalia was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.The poet Catullus called it \"the best of days\". It was the Roman equivalent to the earlier Greek holiday of Kronia, which was celebrated during the Attic month of Hekatombaion in late midsummer (1).\nOrigin of Christmas\nNo where in the bible is there an example of a birthday for Jesus or for any followers of Christ. However, Gifts were brought to Christ by the Wise men because they knew He was a King, the Son of God and not as a birthday celebration. It was commonplace during this period, for gifts to be brought to newborn kings. Christmas is not mentioned or celebrated in the Holy Bible.\nAccording to the Encyclopedia Britannica Blog, Christmas was not celebrated by original Christians but was celebrated in the 3rd century as the Winter Solstice following a Roman festival called Saturnalia where people exchanged gifts. Christmas was also celebrated as a birthday for a popular false god of light and loyalty called Mithra (2)\nCan Christ Be Glorified Through a Holiday Steeped in Pagan Rituals?\nDavid C. Pack states, \"Why do people think that Christmas is wonderful? It certainly felt wonderful to me. I trusted what my parents told me. I had no reason to doubt them. They were merely teaching me what their parents had taught them. I never questioned the true origin of Christmas!\nEvery aspect of Christmas has pagan origins. There is no way that Christ could be glorified by pagan rituals even though man has attached His Holy name to this pagan holiday-it is still in fact based on pagan rituals.\nMost never reflect on why they believe what they believe or do what they do. We live in a world filled with customs, but few ever seek to understand their origin. We generally accept them without question. Most people basically do what everyone else does—because it is easy and natural!\nLet’s carefully examine the roots of Christmas. Let’s look at why people follow the customs associated with it. Why is it kept on December 25th? Did the early New Testament Church keep it? This booklet is filled with facts from history that, when placed together, paint a complete picture. Let’s avoid all assumptions and only accept what can be proven!\"\n<<< Previous-Origin of Christmas Part 2\nNext-Origin of Christmas Part 4 >>>\nGet The Truth About Christmas-Free Booklet\nGet your free booklet. You can read it online or if you prefer a copy can be mailed to you.\nThe Truth About Christmas-Free Booklet >>>\nOrigin of Christmas Part 4\nBirth of Jesus Christ according to Matthew w/ pop quiz\nChronological dates of Jesus Christ's Birth\nThe Date of Jesus Christ's Birth\nWhat the bible says about birthdays\nPharoah's Birthday Celebration\n​1. Saturnalia. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 5 December 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia\n2. ​\"Search\". 2017. Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed December 5 2017. https://www.britannica.com/search?query=origin%20of%20Christmas.\nPhoto used under Creative Commons from Loren Javier","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1407004"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5680046081542969,"wiki_prob":0.4319953918457031,"text":"Outages & Problems\nSearch Mobile Menu Search Website\nKentucky Power News\nView News Release\nEastern Kentucky businesses partner to Power Up the Pantry\nASHLAND, Ky. – Ten businesses, community colleges and local governments are collaborating to Power Up the Pantry and replenish depleted area food pantries.\nDual daylong events are planned for April 5 in Hazard and in Prestonsburg. Kentucky Power organized the events and partnered with Anthem Medicaid, Appalachian Regional Healthcare, the City of Hazard, the City of Prestonsburg, Big Sandy Community and Technical College, Hazard Community and Technical College, God’s Pantry Food Bank, New Hope Church, and WYMT. Donations in Prestonsburg will go to God’s Pantry, which operates distribution centers in Prestonsburg and London that serve food pantries in eastern Kentucky. Hazard donations will go to New Hope Church Emergency Food Pantry, which also is served by God’s Pantry. The businesses joined forces on the food drive to have the largest community impact.\n“We are coming out of winter when food pantries historically have more requests. In addition, several of our communities have experienced flooding. This combination of need has left many agencies facing critical shortages of food and supplies,” said Cindy Wiseman, Kentucky Power’s managing director of external affairs and customer service. “We are challenging area businesses to spend the next month collecting non-perishable food, baby supplies, including diapers, or money to restock shelves for those in need.”\nOn April 5, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., a collection site will be set up in Hazard at the ARH Medical Mall parking lot on Black Gold Boulevard. A second site will be at Big Sandy Community & Technical College’s parking lot near the Science Center at Bert Combs Drive in Prestonsburg.\n“We encourage businesses to put up collection barrels for employees or customers and then deliver the goods to one of the collection sites on April 5,” Wiseman said. “Monetary donations also are welcome. Checks can be made payable to God’s Pantry Food Bank.”\nOne in six residents in Kentucky struggles with hunger and are unsure where their next meal will come from, according to God’s Pantry Executive Director Michael Halligan.\nGod’s Pantry Food Bank provides nutritious foods and fresh produce to more than 400 food pantries and meal programs in central and eastern Kentucky. Last year, God’s Pantry gathered and distributed nearly 11.2 million pounds of food, enough to create 9.3 million meals for those who are hungry in eastern and southeastern Kentucky alone. The organization’s Prestonsburg warehouse serves Pike, Floyd, Johnson, Lawrence, Magoffin, Letcher and Martin counties. The warehouse stores orders until local agencies can pick them up for distribution and has fresh produce delivered for agencies to access. God’s Pantry also operates a warehouse in London that serves Perry and other southeastern Kentucky counties.\n“Ending hunger does not happen at a food bank,” Halligan said. “It takes communities working together in partnership like this to have an impact. We appreciate the support and focus Power Up the Pantry will generate and look forward to seeing the difference it will make in eastern Kentucky for those in need.”\nKentucky Power, with headquarters in Ashland, provides service to about 166,000 customers in 20 eastern Kentucky counties and is an operating company in the American Electric Power system, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States.\nMore From Kentucky Power\nMobile App Learn more\nThe Power is in Your Hands\nSign Up Now Pay Online for Free with Paperless Billing\nPay Online for Free with Paperless Billing\nUse Online Form Report Outages On Your Mobile Phone\nReport Outages On Your Mobile Phone\nHow We Restore Power Learn more\nVisit AEP.com\nUse of this site constitutes acceptance of the AEP Terms and Conditions. View our Privacy Policy. © 1996-2019 American Electric Power. All Rights Reserved.\nPrivacy Policy for Kentucky Power, a unit of American Electric Power (AEP)\nThis Privacy Policy applies only to KentuckyPower.com and the Kentucky Power customer mobile app (com.aep.customerapp.kentuckypower). Other AEP websites and apps may be governed by their own privacy policies, appropriate to the uses and needs of each. Throughout the site or app, we may provide links to resources and sites that are not part of KentuckyPower.com or the Kentucky Power customer mobile app. This Privacy Policy does not apply to those resources and sites.\nBy using this site or app, you consent to the terms of this Privacy Policy. Whenever you submit information via this site or app, you agree to the collection, use, and disclosure of that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.\nPassively collected information\nDuring your use of this site or app, we may collect anonymous information about your visit here through the use of server logs, cookies, scripts, tracking pixels and other Web traffic tracking systems. This information is aggregated and used to improve user experience through analysis of user activities. This information is never combined with any of the personally identifiable information you may provide in your use of the features of this site or app.\nOn certain forms of this site or app, you may be asked to provide information about yourself or your account with us, either to identify yourself to us or to request a service from us. In each case, we will inform you what information is provided at your option and what information is required to complete the transaction or activity you are engaged in. If you are unwilling to provide this required information, you will be unable to complete the requested transaction.\nThe information you provide to us will be used to respond to requests you may make for services. Some or all of this information may be added to your permanent account record and may be used for research purposes.\nIn addition, we may use elements of this information in the following situations:\nWe may transfer the information to Kentucky Power’s affiliates and subsidiaries, unless such transfer is prohibited by law;\nWe may transfer the information as part of a merger, consolidation, acquisition, divestiture or other corporate restructuring (including bankruptcy);\nWe may make the information available to third parties who are providing the product, service or information that you have requested (but not your password);\nWe may make such information available to third parties who are providing services to Kentucky Power (for example, providing the information to third parties performing computer-related services for Kentucky Power);\nWe may use the information to communicate with you about products and services that may be of interest to you.\nWe may disclose the information if we form a good-faith belief that disclosure of such information is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding any illegal activities or regarding interference with the operation of our site or violation of its terms of use; or\nWe may disclose the information if we believe that disclosure is required by law or regulation or in response to a subpoena or other order of a court or other governmental agency.\nKentucky Power uses Flurry Analytics Service (provided by Yahoo) in order to improve its mobile apps. Flurry’s privacy policy governs the use of this information.\nAlso, Kentucky Power reserves the right to share any aggregated information (i.e., non-personally identifiable information) with any third parties for any reason, unless prohibited by law.\nWe will not sell, rent or otherwise disclose the information we gather about you or your account to any third party, except as outlined in this Privacy Policy.\nKentucky Power takes reasonable steps to protect your personally identifiable information as it is transferred to us, through the use of Web technologies such as the Secure Sockets Layer and others. However, no Internet transmission of information is ever completely secure or error-free. In particular, e-mail sent to or from Kentucky Power may not be secure.\nIf you would like to update your personally identifiable information or if you have questions about this privacy policy, please contact us.\nKentucky Power reserves the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time. If this Privacy Policy changes, the revised policy will be posted to this site. Please review this Privacy Policy before you provide any personally identifiable information through this site. Use of our web site after the posting of a revised privacy policy constitutes your consent to the revised policy.\nThis policy was last revised on December 13, 2017.\nSubscribing to Kentucky Power alerts gives you instant notification for:\nBilling & Payments - avoid late payments and disconnection\nOutage Updates - find out if there's an outage at your address and when power will be back on\nWin an Xbox One with Alerts!\nEnroll in alerts to be eligible to win. Subscribing to I&M alerts gives you instant notification for:\nForgot User ID / Password\nSearch Search Website","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line915453"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7268521785736084,"wiki_prob":0.2731478214263916,"text":"This website uses cookies in order to improve user experience. If you agree or continue browsing, we will assume you agree with this. For more information about the cookies we use or to find out how you can disable cookies, click here.\nWhen you access this link, you are leaving the Deutsche Bank website. The information provided on any websites accessed through this link has been produced by independent providers and Deutsche Bank does not endorse or accept any responsibility for information provided on any such sites. Any opinions or recommendations expressed on such other websites are solely those of the independent providers and are not the opinions or recommendations of Deutsche Bank. The existence of a link from this Deutsche Bank page to any other such websites does not constitute a recommendation or other approval by Deutsche Bank of such websites or any provider thereof. With the following buttons, you accept or reject the above-mentioned information.\nThe page xxxx will be opened when you continue.\nDon't show this message anymore for -\n#PositiveImpact\nProducts & Topics\nGermany Monitor\nIn the \"Germany Monitor\" series we address political and structural issues which have great significance for Germany. These include commentaries on elections and political decisions, as well as technology and industry issues, and macro-economic topics which go beyond the business cycle matters addressed in \"Focus Germany\".\nChina-EU relations: Gearing up for growth\nBanking and financial markets, Economic and european policy, Macroeconomics, Sectors and resources\nAnalyst:\nHannah Levinger, Syetarn Hansakul\nThe recently announced plans for a free trade agreement between China and the EU are momentous. China is the EU’s No. 1 supplier of goods and its third-largest export market. In turn, the EU is China’s largest trading partner. Going by current trends, EU-China annual bilateral trade could grow close to 1.5 times in a decade’s time. Not only goods but also services trade has large potential to grow. Chinese investment into the EU is still in its infancy but is likely to increase and become more broad-based, covering a wider range of industries and countries across Europe. New dynamism is expected from a bilateral investment agreement currently in negotiation and rising interest of Chinese investors in European companies, as shown by our compilation of Chinese M&A deals vis-à-vis the EU and Germany. Plenty of headroom exists for greater use of RMB in bilateral trade and investment relations. A note of caution concerns the risk of trade disputes which is unlikely to be removed in the near term. [more]\nThe changing energy mix in Germany: The drivers are the Energiewende and international trends\nEconomic and european policy, Macroeconomics, Sectors and resources\nJosef Auer, Vasilios Anatolitis\nDue to numerous political incentives, especially relating to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), the renewables share has increased sixfold since 1997 with regard to both primary energy consumption and electricity generation. Germany's first energy policy rethink (or Energiewende 1.0) not only sent costs ballooning but also impacted on electricity prices, the generation mix and emissions trading. And despite the EEG the contribution of wind/solar to primary energy consumption (PEC) was a mere 2%-plus in 2013. Overall, the “green electricity share” could reach roughly 60% by 2035. But how will the remaining 40% be generated – in view of the Energiewende 2.0? Depending on the scenario, the onus is more on natural gas or coal. [more]\nThe future of Germany as an automaking location\nEric Heymann\nThe differences between the German automotive industry and the automotive industry in Germany will continue to expand in the coming years – the construction of production capacities in the growth markets is progressing. Expansion abroad does not have to be to the detriment of Germany as an automaking location. However, a stable or even positive development of Germany as an automotive manufacturing location cannot be taken for granted. We outline three potential scenarios for the development of Germany as an automaking location until 2025. In our most likely scenario domestic car output remains at around its current level until then. At the same time Germany benefits from a gradual recovery in western European car demand. In addition, smaller export markets become more important. [more]\nCrowdfunding: Does crowd euphoria impair risk consciousness?\nBanking and financial markets, Macroeconomics, Sectors and resources\nChristoph Laskawi, Thomas-Frank Dapp\nFrom the standpoint of potential company founders, an inadequate supply of funding is a key issue especially in a start-up's early phases. Therefore, we welcome the efforts of the crowdfunding movement from an economic perspective, particularly with regard to growth. However, there is an urgent need for action aimed at eliminating the existing information asymmetries and conflicts of interest between company founders, funding platforms and investors. [more]\nBig data – the untamed force\nMacroeconomics, Sectors and resources\nThomas-Frank Dapp, Veronika Heine\nBig data is increasingly becoming a factor in production, market competitiveness and, therefore, growth. Cutting-edge analysis technologies are making inroads into all areas of people’s lives and changing their day-to-day existence. Sensors, biometric identification and the general trends towards a convergence of information and communications technologies are driving the big data movement. Data has a commercial value – therefore the risks should not be underestimated. It is now a question of putting in place the necessary regulatory framework to allow these state-of-the-art methods and the technology that underpins them to properly flourish. [more]\nIndustry 4.0: Upgrading of Germany’s industrial capabilities on the horizon\nStefan Heng\nIndustry 4.0 will upgrade Germany as an industrial location by bringing on the fourth industrial revolution. With trade flows becoming increasingly internationally interlinked, the aspects associated with Industry 4.0 of automation, more flexible processes as well as horizontal and vertical integration will become more and more important features of a modern, competitive production structure. Especially for Germany with its particularly favourable basic conditions, Industry 4.0 provides the long-term major opportunity to consolidate the country's leading position in the competitive global marketplace – also relative to the fast-growing emerging markets. [more]\nTight bank lending, lush bond market: New trends in European corporate bond issuance\nBanking and financial markets, Macroeconomics\nOrçun Kaya, Thomas Meyer\nIn our empirical analysis we investigate the substitution between weak bank lending and lush bond markets and we show that rising bank CDS spreads are consistently associated with positive growth in securities underwriting and negative growth in loan syndication. This suggests that banks and clients switch funding instruments in times of financial stress. In this regard, a well-developed bond market is an important element to increase financial resilience as it offers an alternative source of funding for the real economy and an alternative source of revenue to banks. However, we also note a worrying trend towards financial fragmentation during times of stress which limits diversification potential. [more]\nGermany's \"Energiewende\" driving power-to-gas: From an idea to market launch\nEconomic and european policy, Macroeconomics\nThe massive expansion of renewables in the last few years has led to an increase in the volatility of the power supply. As the implementation of the \"Energiewende\" is one of the crucial issues for the new federal government, this also requires innovative solutions that go beyond traditional technical storage facilities in our view. Looking ahead, the energy revolution may hardly succeed without power-to-gas as power-to-gas as a storage medium could offset the continuing strong increases in the volatilities in power supply. The prospects for power-to-gas are favourable. Experts claim the installation of power-to-gas systems with an electricity generation of 1,000 MW by 2022 to establish an initial market. If in the time thereafter – as we expect – the demand for electricity storage media continues to rise as a result of increasing green electricity quantities and fluctuations, power-to-gas is an appropriate answer to the currently still open question as to a sustainable technical solution. [more]\nThe GCC going East: Economic ties with developing Asia on the rise\nKevin Koerner, Oliver Masetti\nSubstantial changes in global economic weights over the past decades, in particular the rise of China and India, combined with major shifts on the energy supply side – the US shale revolution – have increasingly shifted the Gulf countries’ economic focus towards the Asian continent. Asia is now the GCC’s most important trade partner, both in terms of its hydrocarbon exports as well as imports of machinery, manufactured goods and food. The growing trade ties have also been accompanied by intensified bilateral investment relations. The observed shift promises to give the GCC countries better access to rapidly growing Asian retail markets, not only in energy but also other sectors such as telecommunications and Islamic finance. This should help the GCC in its ambition to diversify its economies. Migrant workers from Asia contribute significantly to economic prosperity and development in the Gulf monarchies, although the socio-economic implications stemming from the rapidly growing expatriate communities in the region will pose some challenges. [more]\nWhat’s behind recent trends in Asian corporate bond markets?\nBanking and financial markets, Economic and european policy, Macroeconomics\nHannah Levinger\nCorporate bond markets in Asia have expanded rapidly. Since the global financial crisis, Asian corporates have made increasing use of bond issuance for their funding needs, complementing traditional channels such as bank lending. While the bond markets of Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea are comparatively advanced and liquid, markets in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand are still at an early stage of development. Considerable variation exists in terms of bond issuances' structural characteristics by sector, currency, issuing volume and the use of funds. Fast growth in bond markets has provided an effective source of financing for the corporate sector, but its development is far from complete. [more]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line913357"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7108160853385925,"wiki_prob":0.7108160853385925,"text":"» Financial\nMagnaChip says OLED driver shipments in Q4 2019 were better than expected\nOLED driver IC developer MagnaChip says that it expects revenues in Q4 2019 to reach $198-200 million, up from its earlier estimate of $181-191 million.\nMagnaChip says that its OLED revenue was significantly better than had been expected.\nRead the full story Posted: Jan 16, 2020\nBOE plans a new OLED microdisplay fab in a $470 million investment\nIn March 2017 OLED maker BOE Technology and OLED microdisplay maker OLiGHTEK announced a new $170 million joint-venture to produce OLED microdisplays for the consumer VR and AR markets\nOnce complete, BOE's fab will have the largest capacity in the industry - but this is not enough for BOE. Yesterday it was reported in Chinese media that BOE plans to build a second, larger OLED microdisplay fab in Yunnan. BOE will invest $257 million while a state-owned development group will invest $28 million. BOE will also raise $200 million from external sources. Total investment in the new fab will total $486 million.\nRead the full story Posted: Dec 28, 2019\nIs Samsung delaying its $10.8 billion QD-OLED investment plans?\nIn October 2019 Samsung Display formally announced its decision to invest $10.85 billion in QD-OLED TV R&D and production lines. SDC was supposed to start the plan in 2019, but according to a report from China the Company is delaying its initial investment. Originally mass production was supposed to begin in Q1 2021, but this may happen later if the investment is delayed.\nIt seems as if equipment makers expected to receive orders for production equipment, but that did not happen. The report says that Samsung decided to make personnel changes and transfer in January 2020 and only after these changes will the company finalize its investment plan in the new OLED TV fab.\nMeyer Burger sells its PixDro inkjet printing unit to Suss MicroTec\nMeyer Burger announced that it is selling its PixDro inkjet printing business to Germany-based Suss MicroTec SE. The agreed price is $5 million, and the transaction is expected to be completed by the end of February 2020. Meyer Burger reveals that PixDro currently has annual sales of around $8 million. This transaction continues Meyer burger's strategic focus on its solar (PV) business.\nPixDro develops and manufactures inkjet printing equipment for for the electronics and semiconductor industries. PixDro started out as a startup in Isarel, and was later integrated into the Netherlands-based OTB-Group, which was later renamed Roth & Rau AG, which was then acquired by Meyer Burger. The company continues its journey and will now be part of Suss MicroTec.\neMagin announces two significant orders for OLED microdisplays\nOLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported two significant orders for its OLED microdisplays - both from the defense sector.\nThe first order is a follow-on order for $4.3 million in connection with the U.S. Army’s Enhanced Night Vision Goggle – Binocular (ENVG-B) program - which is expected to result in more orders as this is a multi-year program. The second order if from a major defense contractor (eMagin did not detail further) - and worth $5.6 million.\nGuangzhou's government to support its local display industry with large subsidies\nThe government of the Guangzhou province in China announced that it aims to help its local display industry and have allocated large funds - up to 2 billion RMB (around $285 million USD) in subsidies per company. The goal is to help companies invest in production of emerging display technologies - including OLEDs, Micro-LEDs, QD-LEDs, 3D displays, e-paper displays, graphene enhanced display technologies and more.\nThe subsidies will be given to companies that start trial production, and when mass production begins.\nIchigo Asset Management to invest up to $830 million in Japan Display\nIn August 2017, Japan Display announced a last-resort strategic focus on OLED displays as the Japanese display maker failed to shift to OLED displays in time. JDI found it extremely difficult to secure the needed funds, but it finally raised $430 million from Oasis Management group and one of its customers (likely to be Apple).\nIt is now reported that Ichigo Asset Management will invest up to $830 million in Japan Display.\nThe US DOE awards $1 million to develop silver inks to replace ITO in OLED lighting panels\nThe US Department of Energy (DoE) awarded a $1 million project that aims to replace ITO with a metal-based micro-grid with an aim to improve the performance of OLED lighting panels.\nThis research project is led by Professor Paul Leu from the University of Pittsburgh and Texas-based Electroninks which provides the silver-based inks. Electroninks’ metal inks can cure at low temperatures, be printed into patterns, and has conductivity comparable to bulk metal. Using a new metal patterning technique that prints the metal grid directly on glass or plastic, it is possible to create micro-grids that can outperform ITO at a lower manufacturing cost.\nTaiwan's Chunghwa Picture Tubes filed for bankruptcy\nIn September 2019, CPT (Chunghwa Picture Tubes) filed for bankruptcy - as the company could not repay its debt.\nCPT was established in 1971 in Taiwan and was a CRT and LCD display maker. In 2012 CPT started to develop AMOLED technologies and the company established a small-size experimental line. Later on CPT actually started to produce AMOLEDs in low volume, and also developed flexible OLED technologies.\nRead the full story Posted: Nov 25, 2019\neMagin reports significantly improved Q3 2019 financial results\nOLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q3 2019. Revenues were $7.9 million (up from $6.9 million a year ago) and operating loss was $0.4 million (down from $1.3 million in Q3 2018).\neMagin says that these financial results present a significant improvement, with the second highest quarter revenues in the Company's history. The company demonstrated significant improvement in yield and throughput as production volumes increased over 50% from the second quarter.\nRead the full story | 1 comment | Posted: Nov 10, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1467388"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9411555528640747,"wiki_prob":0.9411555528640747,"text":"Scenic alpine lake above Tahoe being sold to Forest Service\nINCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. (AP) ” A scenic alpine lake and private enclave overlooking Lake Tahoe that once served as a playground for the rich and famous should be in the public’s hands this summer under a compromise announced today.\nThe Incline Lake Corp. will receive a deposit of at least $46 million for 777 acres, including Incline Lake, atop a forested ridge of the Sierra between Lake Tahoe and Reno, the current landowners said.\nA trial will be held in federal court to determine whether additional compensation is justified under what was described as a “friendly condemnation” proceeding, the Reno Gazette-Journal first reported on it’s Web site Wednesday afternoon.\nSen. John Ensign, R-Nev., suggested the compromise. It was arranged after the landowners and U.S. Forest Service failed to agree on value of the property.\n“Today marks another historic milestone in our efforts to preserve the Lake Tahoe Basin,” Ensign said in a statement.\n“The Incline Lake property is truly spectacular, including some of the most breathtaking views in Nevada that will now be protected for all of the public to enjoy. Its an awe-inspiring site, and through this agreement we are ensuring that this oasis will be enjoyed by our grandchildren and generations beyond,” he said.\nThe Incline Lake Corp. originally asked for $75 million but federal appraisals put the value as “tens of millions” less than that, said Glen Williams of Terra Firma Associates, representing the owners.\nThe scenic property should transfer to the U.S. Forest Service sometime in June, although the exact value of the land won’t be determined for perhaps a year, Williams said.\nThe lake will remain closed to the public until next year while all improvements, including buildings, foundations, water tanks and utilities, are removed, landowners said.\n“It’s been a rough haul,” Williams said as of the four years of negotiations leading to the agreement.\nNorm Nash, president of Incline Lake Corp., cited a “tremendous development potential” for the land, which will instead become scenic national forest.\n“As much as I am pleased the property will be preserved for the public, part of me will always see a great development opportunity lost,” Nash said.\nSince 1939, when the property was acquired from George Whittell by Norman Biltz, the “Duke of Nevada,” Incline Lake has generally been off-limits to the public.\nPast visitors included some of Nevada’s most prominent personalities, like philanthropist and dairy king Max Fleischmann, longtime U.S. Sen. Patrick McCarran and Moya Lear, philanthropist and wife to Bill Lear, creator of the Lear jet.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line652164"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5187727212905884,"wiki_prob":0.5187727212905884,"text":"Peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace Boatsetter raises $10M as it looks to grow globally\nDarrell Etherington\t@etherington / 5 months\nObviously, not everyone owns a boat, and boat ownership is far more unique than car ownership — which makes it maybe an ideal category for peer-to-peer marketplace rentals. P2P boat rental startup Boatsetter recognized this opportunity, and is now announcing a $10 million Series A “extension” funding round to help it grow its business, with investment led by WestCap Group and Valor Equity.\nBoatsetter counts itself the top peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace in the U.S., and offers insurance to boat renters, owners and captains alike through a just-announced strategic partnership with Geico. The Miami-based startup estimates the size of the peer-to-peer boat rental market at as much as $50 billion annually, and plans to use its investment to expand its offering, both from a product perspective and expanding its presence in key markets globally.\nTo date, Boatsetter has raised $31 million, including earlier portions of this Series A raised over the past two years. The company focuses on rentals for anywhere from two to more than a dozen passengers, and a range of boat options that can also include qualified captains for larger vessels. It’s a bit like an Airbnb crossed with an Uber, and there are rentals available in vacation hotspots around the world. As part of this new funding, Boatsetter is also adding a new board member — Laurence Tosi, the former CFO of Blackstone and Airbnb, who is also a founder and partner at new investor WestCap.\nThe funding will help the startup invest in bringing in new talent focused on design, engineering and brand building, in addition to product work and market expansion.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1162014"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5709491968154907,"wiki_prob":0.5709491968154907,"text":"Europa Cent. e Orientale\nI Nordici\nMalesia e Singapore\nParola Araba - MENA\nRegione Andina\nAshoka nel mondo\nStaff internazionale\nI nostri leader\nIl Nostro Posto di Lavoro\nScopri Ashoka Italia\nDidattica Changemaker\nModelli di co-creazione\nI nostri programmi\nAshoka Servizi Finanziari Sociali\nAshoka Venture e Fellowship\nGli Ashoka Fellow\nAshoka Scuole Changemaker\nLa mappa dei Changemaker\nDona Tempo e Competenze\nJorge Abraham Soto Moreno\nFellow Ashoka\nCitiVox\nThis description of Jorge Abraham Soto Moreno's work was prepared when Jorge Abraham Soto Moreno was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2012 .\nJorge Soto is engaging citizens, government, and institutions through in an active dialogue about social change and a real-time examination and monitoring of social systems by utilizing innovative online platforms and web-based tools. Through Jorge’s work, governments receive citizen reports, citizens gain power and ownership through a collective voice, and institutions are better able to serve their communities.\nLa nuova idea\nBased on his understanding of technology and his experience working with citizen organizations (COs), Jorge realized the need for platforms enabling citizens, institutions, and governments to interact in real-time to solve social problems. He founded CitiVox to create a network of online platforms that allows communication between political decision-makers, enterprises, COs, and citizens around a variety of topics from local community issues to national social crises. Unlike other organizations that lack the infrastructure to handle a high volume and variety of projects, CitiVox analyzes the content of diverse proposals to create public, actionable reports to send to the appropriate organizations or agencies. For example, during recent elections, Jorge launched a CitiVox platform to collect citizen “reports” of voting fraud, electoral offenses, and violence through a variety of social media from Twitter to text messages. The system aggregated thousands of reports, over two-hundred of which resulted in direct legal action. Using the CitiVox platforms, governments can make better-informed decisions and move toward increased accountability through access to real-time information and collaborative tools for change.\nTo encourage their use, the platforms are easy to use, anonymous, and free. They do not simply diagnose a problem using existing technologies, like other COs do. By analyzing the information submitted through the website or social media channels and preparing a summary report, Jorge conveys this information to officials in a practical form. This information is also made available for the public to access. CitiVox’s comprehensive reports provide decision-makers with actionable information required to solve social problems. Furthermore, Jorge and CitiVox often go beyond these reports and actively engage with citizens and the government in real-time to advocate and arrive at policy changes. Jorge not only seeks to help citizens’ voices be heard but also to empower the government and institutions to solve problems through increased transparency, accountability, participation, and collaboration.\nCitiVox is already collaborating in six countries in Latin America with governments, COs, multilateral organizations, and companies, so these organizations can better understand and serve the public. Within a few months, Jorge plans to launch an open source version of the CitiVox website so that citizens can create social networks or report any type of social problem. The new platform will give politically motivated citizens the tools to organize themselves and advocate for government accountability in solving problems ranging from the simple—pothole repair—to the complex—election monitoring and drug trafficking. In turn, the increased accountability CitiVox generates lends greater legitimacy to the public sector. By reducing the communication gap between governments, institutions, and citizens, CitiVox is boosting citizens’ faith in public institutions.\nIl problema\nLatin America’s institutions, government, and informed citizens lack forums to communicate with one another. Decision-makers are often unable to analyze the information and communication streams available in order to respond effectively. As a result of a long history of authoritarian regimes, citizens are especially hesitant to speak out against problems such as violence and crime because they fear repercussions either from corrupt government officials or members of their communities. This mistrust of authority and government aggravates the lack of communication, meaning that many problems go unreported and unaddressed.\nThe lack of clear communication among institutions, governments, and informed citizens leaves a pervasive, detrimental impact on Latin American society. For example, a dearth of powerful civil demands for government accountability and transparency has led to pervasive corruption and fraudulent elections, perpetuating government abuses. Furthermore, the citizen distrust in institutions due to graft leaves misconduct and crime unreported. In turn, violence and exploitation escalate amid a police force ill-equipped or unwilling to face organized crime. Such is the case in Monterrey, where an alarming number of restaurants have closed due to the increase in violence and rapid exodus of city dwellers seeking safety in less dangerous Mexican states. The crime and lack of public gathering spots leads many citizens to rarely leave their homes other than to go to what jobs remain in the city. Combined, these factors cause a further decline in communication among institutions, government, and citizens.\nGrassroots organizations and emerging COs in Mexico are often formed to meet specific societal needs. Unfortunately, they lack the expertise and technical knowledge required to reach new audiences, recruit more actors, and engage stakeholders in activism and advocacy through media. Barriers to community organization and citizens sense of powerlessness may also lead COs to shy away from engaging with the government or supporting institutions in the joint pursuit of transparency, accountability, and comprehensive solutions.\nNovel technological tools are beginning to offer ways to promote accountability, but their impact is still quite superficial. Several COs attempt to bring citizens and institutions together by offering communication technology services, such as mapping community problems. However, these technologies only offer visual depictions of social problems, rather than provide actionable information and recommendations for policymakers. Furthermore, powerful social media tools including Twitter, enable citizens to communicate with institutions and government officials, but these platforms are primarily one-sided, giving citizens an opportunity to voice concerns or pinpoint problems but leaving decision-makers either overwhelmed by the quantity of information or excluded from engaging in a meaningful dialogue. As a result, citizens expressing their informed opinions often come across as shouting matches rather than collectively voicing their community concerns. Without the communication or collaboration of citizens, institutions and authorities, serious problems like drug trafficking increase daily. Despite numerous advances in the region, without a significant communications transformation, social problems are likely to worsen.\nIn 2009 Jorge launched a series of web-based tools to address issues of civic engagement and the question, “How can citizens use technology to change society?” He designed new technologies to empower citizens to become informed and engaged, to enable government to hear from and respond to its constituencies, and to help institutions to reach new changemakers. Jorge is building a series of real and virtual communities to actively confront and find solutions for social problems.\nJorge began his work with the development of forums that build community by bringing people together around issues. For example, in 2011 Jorge hosted Mexico’s first “hackathon,” bringing together the skills and resources of computer programmers, developers, software engineers, and hackers to help COs solve social problems with technology. In doing so, he not only created alliances between hackers and COs, two groups who would ordinarily not interact with one another, but also facilitated substantive projects to affect change. As a result, one group of hackers created a web application to display which government agencies were denying the most requests for information. Another group created an application programming interface to provide real-time riot monitoring in the state of Oaxaca. In creating these relationships between hackers and COs, he has increased the reach and voice of non-profits and their social causes. Jorge plans another hackathon in the coming months, this one focused on children’s rights.\nJorge’s next endeavor was the creation of an election monitoring tool which collected reports of Mexican electoral offenses, violence, and fraud from Twitter, text messages, and emails. The tool was remarkably successful, receiving some 11,000 reports, 200 of which later faced legal action. This tool would become We Take Care of the Vote, which was soon implemented in Yemen, Benin, and throughout Mexico, allowing Jorge’s organization to provide real-time election tracking and monitoring. Official trained observers as well as citizens were able to report election crimes and concerns via text messages. In Benin, the system received more than 1,000 reports while the Yemen system received 8,000. This kind of civic participation in Yemen, which only enacted universal suffrage in 1990, demonstrated citizens’ understanding that democracy involves not only voting, but also protecting the right to vote from corruption.\nIn response to a 2009 proposed Internet tax increase, Jorge and his team launched another site, Necessary Internet. The site monitored all tweets opposing the tax, then analyzed the information and sent a daily summary of the 120,000 daily postings to each congressional representative. In response, they were invited to participate in a Senate discussion to present their findings. The new tax did not pass. These experiences were formative for Jorge because they helped him realize the power of technology paired with personal engagement.\nFollowing this success, Jorge’s organization realized the importance of converting citizen reports into actionable information while guaranteeing confidentiality and safety. He created Project Tehuan in partnership with the Center of Citizen Integration and a number of national and international governmental agencies, COs, as well as private business associations in the state of Monterrey. Project Tehuan is a mass collaboration technological platform that enables citizen participation in important social issues. Citizens may send the organization Twitter, email, text or web-based reports of anything from potholes, car accidents, and medical emergencies, to information on illegal activity. The agency then facilitates collaboration between citizens and public agencies as well as agencies’ responses by consolidating and publishing citizen reports. Citizens may also receive notifications and alerts according to their preferences to be better informed.\nIn the first six months, some 50,000 community members used Project Tehuan to exchange information, report problems, and communicate directly with the government in real-time. The project has had many successes, including citizens’ working together to find a stolen car only eleven minutes after the theft was first reported. Project Tehuan represents a powerful way to incentivize government and institutions to hear and respond to citizens. It also encourages a community of informed citizens to actively engage their government and support agencies, and has demonstrated how that engagement can be sustained over time. Today, CitiVox has a presence in eight countries through Internet-based programs managing projects such as crime reports, the protection of journalists, legislative transparency, education problems, election monitoring, and the protection of children from violence. Jorge provides his partner COs with training in product use, as well as one-on-one consulting throughout the entirety of the project. To date, CitiVox’s business-to-CO strategies have received 271,000 reports and interact with an average 144,000 citizens each month.\nAfter managing these custom-made programs, Jorge saw that CitiVox faced scalability limitations due to the development work required to build each custom-made platform. He realized that in each of their successes, citizens initiated the conversation on social media before there was ever a software solution. Jorge saw the weaknesses of relying on citizen information from those sources alone: the overwhelming amount of information on sites such as Twitter, the limited amount of attention decision-makers are able to devote to it, and the distraction of irrelevant posts. It was then Jorge then realized he wanted to create a free, consumer-based platform to focus even more on the citizen voice.\nThe free platform, also called CitiVox, aims to create a more organic interaction that galvanizes citizens to come together around topics of interest. While not exclusively focused on social action, the goal of CitiVox is to create a platform for social action as well as sustained interaction. Jorge plans to identify and adopt ten projects each year from CitiVox, citizens, and CO interactions, for the kind of deep engagement and additional support it currently gives to its custom-made programs.\nCitiVox’s new online platform allows users to create and share community action boards, post texts, photos, and videos to start conversations around shared interests or issues. Users can interact with the posts on community boards, which are integrated with social media. Most importantly, rather than controlling user interaction, Jorge wants to ensure his organization, citizens, COs, and the government understand it.\nLa persona\nJorge grew up in Veracruz, the son of two doctors, one very liberal and the other very conservative, who often discussed Mexican politics with him. From a young age, he also witnessed rampant fraud, as several of his friend’s parents openly engaged in corrupt acts. Their actions contributed to a local culture that accepted such behavior as normal.\nJorge was a curious child, often taking apart electronics to learn how technology worked. In college he developed an interest and talent in computer technology, studying electronic systems engineering and later nonprofit administration at Columbia University.\nTwo turning points early in his career marked his decision to dedicate his efforts to social change: (i) widespread and corroborated fraud in the 2006 presidential election, and (ii) the eruption of narco-trafficking-related violence in Monterrey; transforming it from one of the safest cities in Mexico to one of the most troubled and dangerous. In 2010 Jorge was particularly affected by the death of two students at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, one a close friend, who were both killed in the crossfire between the Mexican military and drug cartel members. Dismayed by the violence and frustrated with the lack of local action against it, Jorge moved to Mexico City to find new ways to use his technology skills to affect change. After completing his studies, he was equipped to launch his first technological initiatives to foment communication and civic participation through CitiVox.\nAt only 29, Jorge has already received significant international recognition for his work. Using this momentum, his eyes are set on global expansion and the creation of new platforms to achieve even greater social impact.\nContact Ashoka Italia\nVia Soperga 36 (c/o COSV)\nInviando questo modulo, accetti che i tuoi dati personali saranno trattati al di fuori del SEE come descritto nella Politica sulla Privacy.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line756973"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6187049746513367,"wiki_prob":0.38129502534866333,"text":"Chatting with NASCAR star Matt DiBenedetto\nposted by Casey Carter - Sep 10, 2019\nIf you saw the race at Bristol Motor Speedway a few weeks ago, there is no doubt in my mind that you became a Matt DiBenedetto fan that night- if you weren't a fan of his already. Here was a guy that just found out that he is losing his ride for next year, he was in an underfunded team, and with a handful of laps to go, he was leading the race on the way to his first win. Much to the disgrace of fans everywhere, he ended up finishing second- the most heartbreaking second place finish EVER... heartbreaking to the point where race winner Denny Hamlin actually apologized for winning- but \"Matty D\" won over a bunch of new fans that night.\nHe called yesterday and I was hoping that he would announce that he has a new ride for next year. I even asked him about it! And in typical poker-face race car driver fashion, he had no announcement. But in a great-for-him-bad-for-this-interview turn of events, Matty D announced TODAY that he will take over the famed Wood Brothers 21 car for retiring Paul Menard next year. Yep... I was a day late and a dollar short on our conversation :)\nNonetheless, DiBenedetto is an incredibly likable guy who you love to root for, and I'm am sure that a TON of NASCAR fans are pumped to root for him the rest of this year, next year, and beyond. In fact, I hope to see you at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a few weeks rooting him on. Friday, September 27th is qualifying, Saturday is the Xfinity race followed by a Rock the Roval Party (free if you have a Saturday or Sunday race ticket), and Sunday the 29th is the Bank of America Roval 400 where Matt and the other drivers will take to the 2.28 miles and 17 turns of Charlotte's Roval. Adult tickets start at just $49 for the BofA Roval 400, kids 13 and under get in for just $10 with an adult ticket purchase, and kids are FREE on non-cup event days! Get your tickets here and check out our chat below.\nCredit 360001Chris Graythen/Getty Images: CHARLOTTE, NC - JANUARY 29: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Matt DiBenedetto poses for a portrait during the NASCAR Production Photo Days at Charlotte Convention Center on January 29, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1350066"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.711723804473877,"wiki_prob":0.28827619552612305,"text":"Intermediate+ Word of the Day: puff\npuff (noun, verb) /pʌf/ LISTEN\nCream puffs are delicious.\nA puff is a short blast of air or smoke, as well as the sound made when giving off a puff, and the act of inhaling and exhaling on a cigarette or pipe. It is also a ball of choux pastry (as pictured above) baked and filled with something sweet, often whipped cream and jam. Figuratively, a puff is a flattering review. To puff means ‘to blow with a short blast,’ as wind sometimes does, ‘to give or let out in a puff,’ and ‘to move with a puff.’ To puff is also ‘to become swollen or inflated’ and ‘to make fluffy.’\nA puff of wind blew the papers off the table.\nA single puff of smoke came out of the chimney.\nCan I have a puff on your cigarette?\nWe had coffee and cream puffs.\nWinston was puffing on his cigar.\nThe steam train puffed into the station.\nThe bird puffed up its feathers.\nJim puffed the cushions on the couch.\nWords often used with puff\nout of puff: out of breath, mostly UK. Example: “Karen hadn’t been for a run for a long time and she was out of puff by the time she got to the end of her road.” This expression can also be used figuratively to mean that something is losing momentum. Example: “The project started well, but now it seems to be running out of puff.”\npuff pastry: a type of pastry where much of the butter is incorporated through a long process of folding and rolling, with the pastry frequently being returned to the fridge to chill, so that when it is cooked, it puffs up and becomes crisp, light, and airy.\npowder puff: a pad for applying powder to your skin, especially face powder.\nThe Powerpuff Girls is an American animated TV series that ran from 1998 to 2005 and was rebooted (that means they made a new version and started running it again) in 2016. You can see the theme from the series here:\nPuff the Magic Dragon is a 1963 song by the group Peter, Paul, and Mary. You can see them performing it live in 1965 here:\nJust as a puff is a flattering review, a puff piece in the news or in a newspaper is an article or segment that is upbeat and optimistic, usually about an unimportant “feel-good” subject, like a cat helping a puppy climb up a riverbank. And some of you may remember the word puff from last week, as it’s one of many hairstyles worn with natural kinky hair.\nA puff sleeve is a sleeve that is gathered at the top and the cuff, but full in the middle.\npuffingly (adverb)\nPuff dates back to the late 12th century, when the Middle English verb puffen meant ‘to blow with your mouth.’ Its origin is imitative, meaning that the word comes from the sound the action makes. It is, however, related to the Middle Dutch puffen, and the Low German pof or puf, so some speculate that there may have been a common origin that is now lost, and the word (both the verb and noun forms) may be older than we think. The meaning expanded to ‘pant’ and ‘breathe fast or hard’ in the late 14th century, and has been used to describe swellings and protuberances since the mid-16th century. The transitive figurative meaning (to exalt) also dates back to the mid-16th century, and this sense grew to include ‘praise in self-interest’ in the early 19th century. The noun comes from the verb, when the Middle English puf or puffe originally meant ‘the act of puffing’ or ‘a short blast.’ It has been used as a name for a type of light, airy pastry since the 14th century, and figuratively to mean ‘flattery or praise’ since the mid-18th century.\nLearn more about puff in our forums\nPuff in other languages\nIntermediate+ Word of the Day: whoop\nIntermediate+ Word of the Day: broil\nIntermediate+ Word of the Day: blink","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line601025"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9503687024116516,"wiki_prob":0.9503687024116516,"text":"Dunston, Lincolnshire\nUpdated on Feb 03, 2018\nPopulation 1,005 (2011)\nRegion East Midlands\nSovereign state United Kingdom\nShire county Lincolnshire\nDistrict North Kesteven\nOS grid reference TF063628\nPost town Lincoln\nLocal time Wednesday 4:03 AM\nWeather 8°C, Wind S at 29 km/h, 97% Humidity\nUK parliament constituency Sleaford and North Hykeham\nDunston is a small village in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated approximately 7 miles (11 km) south-east from the city and county town of Lincoln, and close to the B1188 between Nocton to the north and Metheringham to the south.\nMap of Dunston, UK\nTwinned village\nIn Domesday the village is written as \"Dunestune\", meaning 'Dune's farm'.\nThe parish church is dedicated to St Peter, and is a Grade II listed building dating from the 12th century. It was restored by R. H. Carpenter between 1874 and 1876.\nDunston Pillar is 3 miles (5 km) to the west on the A15. It is a Grade II listed tower and former land lighthouse built by Sir Francis Dashwood to guide travellers across Lincoln Heath. In 1810, at the jubilee of George III, the lantern was removed and replaced with a statue of the king, and in the 1843 Journal of the Agricultural Society it was described as the \"only land light-house ever raised\".\nThe Peterborough to Lincoln Line passes through the village, with a station 1 mile (1.6 km) away at Metheringham.\nThe White Horse public house is to the east at Dunston Fen; the Red Lion is on Middle Street.\nTrangé, near Le Mans, France.\nDunston, Lincolnshire Wikipedia\nThangadurai Samuel\nJosé Gerena Polanco\nKim Ho chul","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1279735"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6504383683204651,"wiki_prob":0.6504383683204651,"text":"#DelilahBookClub ... Our August Book | \"Northern Lights\"\nposted by David Savino - Aug 20, 2019\nIt’s almost football season - or so all the football displays in the big box stores tell me… I don’t usually follow the sport on a professional level, but I was right there in the bleachers all those Friday and Saturday nights in Junior High and High School, cheering on my home team!\nBuy link: Northern Lights\nMy August book pick, Northern Lights, is more about that variety of football - the kind so many of us can relate to, and the really positive influence school athletics have on raising strong kids.\nThe author, Cathy Parker, is a life-long sports fan, who married a former professional football player, and went on to bring up four student athletes. She’s experienced both the highs and lows of sporting and knows the challenges that come with committing one’s self to a team - it doesn’t just affect the individual, but the entire family.\nShe’s so very passionate about promoting student athletics that she founded Athletes to Champions, their mission, as shared on their web site is to “Help kids build character, learn discipline and value respect through sports.” But the story of Northern Lights, is about some very specific athletes, so far removed from Parker’s intimate sphere, that it’s rather amazing a connection was ever formed..\nAfter watching a documentary about a high school football team who played on a gravel field (often the cause of injury) in a town called Barrow, Alaska, Parker spearheaded a fundraising campaign to bring the players to Jacksonville, Fla., her home town, so that they could train.\nAfterward, she started campaigning for the creation of a more modern field in Barrow, which is located within the Arctic Circle! Layers of permafrost posed an almost unsurmountable obstacle, and Parker had her work cut out for her!\nHer book talks about the many many logistical nightmares involved in this undertaking, and how she grew in character and faith throughout the process. There is a LOT of distance between Jacksonville, Florida and Barrow, Alaska… this story is about bridging that distance through friendships, alliances, and determination and full of touching moments that make you feel as though you’re a part of the effort.\nAlthough this particular game is over, reading Northern Lights, is much like watching it on replay. Cheer Parker and her supporters on from the sidelines all the way to the final scoring touchdown!\nI love Cathy’s story, and Cathy herself. One more person who followed the whisper in her heart and made a difference in our world.\nPick up your copy of Northern Lights right HERE.\n{\"position1\": {\"catalog_type\": \"station\", \"description\": \"\", \"id\": 4846, \"name\": \"Delilah\", \"station\": {\"call_letters\": \"DEL-PR\", \"countries\": \"US\", \"description\": \"Stories and songs matched perfectly \", \"id\": 4846, \"name\": \"Delilah\"}, \"stations\": [{\"call_letters\": \"DEL-PR\", \"countries\": \"US\", \"description\": \"Stories and songs matched perfectly \", \"id\": 4846, \"name\": \"Delilah\"}], \"type\": \"catalog\"}}\nWant to know more about Delilah? Get their official bio, social pages & articles on iHeartRadio! Read more\nCall 888-6-DELILAH (888-633-5452)\nText JOIN to: 48484 For Help: Text HELP To Cancel: Text STOP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1057811"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6769080758094788,"wiki_prob":0.32309192419052124,"text":"Panini Sticker Albums...Need some help\nI remember as a kid picking up the Panini sticker albums every year for hockey and baseball. I never got into the football ones but was well aware of thier existence as my friends all tried filling those. Of all the years and all the books, I don't remember completing a single one of them 100%.\nFast forward about 20 years and now my 8 year old is hooked as well. He had the last three years of hockey albums and the last two years of football. The nice thing is that we usually get the books as a promotional giveaway from our LCS but the packs of stickers are generally scarce. Sure we can go to Target or Walmart and find countless boxes of Cars, Spongebob, Justin Bieber and Bella Sera pony sticker albums. We even occasionally find the football ones crammed into places on the trading card wall that they normally wouldn't be found. But hockey...almost never.\nKnowing this, I picked up a box of the stickers online for a pretty good price. Panini sells them direct for a buck a pack, which is no savings, but at least gives a source. I found them somewhere...I don't remember where though, for about $35. Not a bad deal considering there are 50 packs in a box and 7 stickers per pack. That should at least give the kid a fairly good start at filling the book with the chance at 350 stickers out of the 385 it takes to complete the book.\nWell, in typical overly optimistic fashion, I once again underestimated the shear amount of duplicates that would be in one full box of these. After all was said and done, he still needs 149 stickers. Considering he would have been 35 short anyway if there were no duplicates, you can imagine how many doubles there were. I lost track after 100. I am guessing when all was said and done, there were about 120-130 doubles (triples, quadruples, quintuples, etc.), not counting the extra team logo you get on every multi-logo sticker. Plus, we even took some of the foil \"shiny\" ones and put them over top the ones that weren't as an \"upgrade\".\nNow I realize you can purchase directly from Panini the missing stickers you need in batches of 40 (which I fully intend to do when all is said and done) but as of today, March 25th, the site does not have the 2011-12 album available (only last year). So I am going to throw this out there to those of you in the blog reading/writing and collecting universe as a request to anyone that is collecting this book. If you have doubles or triples or quadruples, etc. that you would like to help out with, or know someone that might, my son would be more than happy to repay the favor with some of his doubles. I will have his list posted on my Set Needs page and it is also below here. Thanks in advance.\n2011-12 Panini NHL/LNH Sticker Album\n5 6 7 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 26 27 28 30 31 25 26 27 46 47 50 52 54 58 59 62 64 66 68 70 71 73 75 78 79 86 87 90 91 93 97 98 102 104 111 113 117 128 136 137 140 143 145 152 154 157 158 159 161 165 166 167 169 170 177 178 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 195 196 197 199 200 202 204 206 207 209 210 211 212 214 216 218 220 221 223 227 228 233 235 237 238 241 248 257 267 268 277 278 297 298 300 302 304 307 312 314 318 321 323 325 326 327 333 335 339 343 346 347 350 353 354 355 356 357 359 360 361 362 364 365 366 367 369 370 375 376 377 380 382\nLabels: 2011-12 panini nhl sticker album, my sons collection, set needs, trade request\nPens vs. Predators: 3 Stars\nThe Pens played host to the surging Nashville Predators tonight at CES. The Pens once again put up 5 goals in a scoring clinic, winning 5-1. Some sports writers pitted this matchup as a Stanley Cup Final preview. I am not one of those pundits however as I don't think Nashville is coming out of the second round. Don't get me wrong, they are a talented team. Now that they have Radulov back, they have the potential to make life miserable for a lot of other teams. I just don't think their defense or goal tending are strong enough to get them all the way through to the end. Purely opinion and speculation. Feel free to disagree.\nSo tonight, James Neal continued his point scoring workshop by posting another 4 assists. Malkin also scored twice giving him 45 on the year. Cook scored again too giving him 17. 17 goals for Matt Cooke!!! Unbelievable! Here are tonight's 3 Stars...\nPS: With that win, the Penguins clinch a playoff spot. Like there was any doubt that was going to happen.\nWatch this goal. It's disgusting!!\nLabels: chris kunitz, evgeni malkin, game end 3 stars, james neal, pittsburgh penguins\nThis Is Just Unfair...I Love It (Penguins vs. Jets; 3 Stars)\nThese guys combined for 13 individual scoring points tonight in the Pens 8-4 win over the Winnipeg Jets in front of another sell-out crowd at CES in Pittsburgh.\nFor those keeping score, that entails 5 goals and 8 assists. Malkin now has 43 goals and 93 points as well as scoring his 200th goal tonight. Neal now has 35 goals after tonight's hat trick and he added an assist. And last but not least, Sidney Crosby has to have wiped the smirks off the cynics faces as he now has nine points in four games since missing 40 games with his concussion-like symptoms. These are tonight's 3-Stars!!\nWith Fleury in net, Winnipeg doesn't score 4 goals but he had the night off so rookie Brad Thiessen got the call with Brent Johnson still on the shelf with an undisclosed injury.\nI just hope this kind of scoring clinic can continue into the playoffs. Long, into the playoffs.\nLabels: evgeni malkin, game end 3 stars, james neal, pittsburgh penguins, sidney crosby\nBox Break - - 2011-12 In The Game Enforcers (part 2)\nTo continue the saga of my 11/12 ITG Enforcers box, I give to you the final installment of my box break. Part 2 features the real \"hits\" of the box. I previously called all the cards in the box \"hits\" because there were only 12 cards and the entire print run of Enforcers is limited in production. So really, even though they are technically base cards they are still \"hits\" in my book.\nAs mentioned in my previous post, each box of Enforcers contains 2 Game Used cards that could be from a number of insert sets. The sets that ITG came up with for this release include Head-to-Head Combatants, which feature two heavy weight contenders that have squared off at one point or another; Instigator's, which feature those guys that tend to chip a little too much for the liking of the other teams; Tough Franchise Quads, which feature, of course, the same lineups of the Tough Franchise subset but with GU pieces of each player depicted.\nIn my box, I pulled...\nThe first card was a Head-to-Head Combatants card featuring Peter Worrell and Zdeno Chara. This was the second card featuring Worrell that I pulled. This is also probably the 5th or 6th Chara GU card I have now too. The card features two plain black and white swatches but the design of the card is really well done. These two tussled on a number of occasions, both while Zdeno was a Senator (as you see in the picture) and as an Islander. Of anyone that could stand up to Chara, Worrell was it. While Chara generally towers over everyone else in the league, Worrell was only 2 inches shorter and about 10 lbs lighter. You can find a bunch of their fights on Youtube.\nThe second GU was from the Instigator insert set and features Gino Odjick. Again, this is the second card of player in the same box as Odjick was on one of the Tale of the Tape inserts I pulled before. This is a nice large swatch that actually features two colors, although you can barely see the top corner of black peeking through. The Chief was most certainly an Instigator in his day. He played much of his career on the line with Pavel Bure in Vancouver and bounced around the league for a few years thereafter. In his 12 years, he racked up over 2500 penalty minutes in regular season and another 142 in the playoffs. He amassing over 200 in five different years with the Canucks, of which three were over 300.\nAnd now for the autographs. A box of Enforcers yields 5 autographs that come from a checklist of about 80 different tough guys from hockey's storied history. Here is my selection...\nThe first two were of John Wensink and Rich Pilon. Wensink, shown here in a blue sweater (most likely Quebec) played in 403 NHL games from 1973 to 1983 and logged 840 penalty minutes. He is probably remembered best for his fights where he would proceed to antagonize and challenge the entire bench of the opposing team. He played with Terry O'Reilly and Stan Jonathan in Boston and helped make up a pretty feared core group of players. He also sported a pretty sweet afro.\nPilon played 15 years, most of which for the Islanders and amassed over 1700 penalty minutes. As much as I like the looks of this card, seeing Mr. Pilon brings back a bad memory. The year after the two Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh, the Penguins boasted the best record in their history. They faced the Islanders in the now defunct Patrick Division finals. It was game 7 of the series and it all came down to one stupid shot in overtime by David Volek that knocked Pittsburgh out of the playoffs. But that's not what I was referring to.\nPilon is the guy that unintentionally took out Kevin Stevens in the 1st period, knocking him unconscious. Stevens went in for a check but was hit by Pilon's helmet visor which knocked him out. As he collapsed, his face smashed into the ice behind all 6' 3\" 230lbs of his unconscious body. Very briefly, you could see blood pooling around his head on the ice. After that incident, Stevens had to have facial reconstruction surgery that required over 100 incisions and stitches, as well as metal plates being inserted to remold the shape of his face. He came back the next season. That's hockey.\nThe second two autos are of Willi Plett and Gerard Gallant. Plett, here in a Flames sweater, was a late bloomer to hockey. But when he finally got his opportunity in Atlanta, he started off as a scorer, believe it or not. He even won the Calder in 1977. But once he made his way to Minnesota in 1982, the scrapper side of him kicked in and he became a fierce tough guy.\nGerard Gallant, or the Turk as he was known, was a much smaller guy at 5' 10\" but he packed a big punch. He played most famously on the line with Steve Yzerman in Detroit and racked up over 1600 penalty minutes from 1984 to 1995. Just look at that face, ready to rip someone's head off.\nFinally, the last autograph in the box was Garth Butcher. While Butcher wasn't necessarily a big time fighter when compared to the others here, he was still a scraper on occassions. He finished his career with over 2,300 penalty minutes after almost 900 career games. Where he lacked in fighting prowess, he made up for in his ability to goad his opponents into taking stupid penalties. He spent most of his career with Vancouver and was their career PIM leader until Odjick came along.\nButcher was eventually part of that ridiculous trade with St. Louis, along with Danny Quinn, in 1991 for basically all the Blues' second line scoring aside from Adam Oates and Brett Hull. They gave up Cliff Ronning, Robert Dirk, Geoff Courtnall, and Sergio Momesso and were never the same again. The North Stars knocked them out of the playoffs in the second round and then went on to go to the Stanley Cup Finals that year. (although they were destroyed by someone in that playoff...hmmmm, who was it again...oh, yeah...The Pittsburgh Penguins).\nAnd that is it. 12 cards of some of the toughest guys in all of hockey. If you ask me, I think this was a great value at about $5.00 per card. As I had said in my original post, there aren't many autos of the guys featured here available in other products and you don't often get a chance to see these players in public appearances either. As always, the GU pieces are large enough to be meaningful, as ITG constantly strives to achieve. The designs are great and the production quality is second to none. All this...WITHOUT AN NHL LICENSE!!! You hear that Upper Deck? Why can't you do a non-licensed product for other sports without screwing it up? Take notes, people. Geez!!\nEnough about that. I loved this product. I will most certainly pick up more. Especially if it keeps this price tag. Although, I heard a rumor/truth that ITG was officially sold out of this product after about 20 days on the market. Dealers still have it in stock, but for how long, I don't know.\nIf anyone is interested in trading for any of these, I would be more than happy to discuss. Let me know.\nInteresting note about Pilon...he is one of the two defensemen getting smoked by Mario Lemieux on the new statue in front of Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. I posted the video the other day.\nLabels: 2011-12 ITG Enforcers, autographs, Box break, game used jerseys, garth butcher, gerard gallant, gino odjick, john wensink, kevin stevens injury, peter worrell, rich pilon, willi plett, zdeno chara\nI'm just going to get this out of the way quickly...I love this set!! There is a ton of controversy surrounding it because it \"glorifies\" fighting. I say go cry to someone who gives a flying (bleep!@#$). It celebrates the men that sacrificed themselves day in and day out to make an impact for the teams they played for, rarely, if at all, getting the recognition they deserve. Although these aren't the first cards to feature the ice warriors, I applaud Dr. Brian Price and In The Game for making an entire set dedicated to those combatants. With that being said...\nI picked up a box of ITG Enforcers the other day as I was trying to get free shipping on a purchase from DACW but once I started, I figured, might as well get the free gift too. (which coincidentally was 2 boxes of 2010-11 Panini All Goalies which I will review another time). I have wanted to check these out as I have seen many collector's break boxes and pull some nice, rare player autographs and memorabilia. By rare, I don't mean serial numbered or anything like that. I'm talking about players that are next to never included in any card releases in the modern era with GU or Autographs available as a regular inserted pull. Guys like Peter Worrell, Rob Ray, Stu Grimson, Garth Butcher, Jay Miller, Marty McSorley and Chris Nilan to name a few. These are the warriors of hockey, the thugs, the goons, the ENFORCERS.\nOnce a necessary \"evil\" on any roster, the job of the enforcer was to basically act as a body guard to whatever top scoring line, tandem, or individual star a team had. If another player needed to be taught a lesson that their superstar player was off limits, then they dropped the gloves. When the team needed a proverbial motivating kick in the ass, they dropped the gloves. And each and every time, the hockey masses went wild. The days of the enforcer have slowly began to dwindle as players have gotten bigger, stronger, and many stars pull double duty and fight their own battles. Also, with the league cracking down on \"extra curricular's\", the role of the enforcer has been diminished. This is why I was really interested in seeing what In The Game did with a set that features the unsung heroes of the ice.\nA box of Enforcers is designed as a single pack box. While the box is large enough to hold multiple packs (a la ITG Decades 80s or Enshrined) there is one 20 card slider box nestled in the center of the packaging.\nAs you can see by the box itself, there are 12 cards per pack. Within each pack, there will be five autographed cards that feature the 80 different players chosen for the checklist. There are also two game-used memorabilia cards which are broken out of one of the many insert sets, including, Dual Combatants, Quad Tough Franchise, Fight Straps, Instigators, 1/1 Fight Strap Dome Fastener cards, 1/1 Enforcer Nameplates. And finally, there are five \"base\" cards that come from four different subsets including, Tale of the Tape, Tough Franchises in the 90s, Bloody Battles, and Record Holders. For the ambitious, there are 90 base cards (not including the memorabilia or autos).\nSo since the entire box can basically be considered all \"hits\", I'll show all 12 cards. First up we have the \"base\" cards. I pulled...\nTwo of my base cards were Tale Of The Tape cards. The first features Link Gaetz vs. Gino Odjick. The second highlights an old school battle between Dave Schultz and Clark Gillies. The cards show the date and place of the \"altercation\". The backs feature what is basically a head to head breakdown of stats including all the basics like height, weight, age, and number of career penalty minutes. There is also a small blurb about the fight. Link and Gino fought on my birthday which is cool as I haven't noticed a game dated card before that featured that day. In fact, they fought twice in that game. The Hammer and Jethro went at it in their game back in 1975 too. Gillies was a rookie at the time and trying to make it known that he wasn't going to back down from anyone, not even one of the Broad Street Bullies. According to the card, Schultz \"took a serious beating\". Awesome!\nThe next couple \"base\" cards come from the Bloody Battles themed set which features a sketch drawing of a moment captured in time during an on ice fight. These cards are just like the Net Brawlers that ITG put out a couple years ago in their Between The Pipes set. The sketches look awesome and the card design plays real well with the \"bloody\" theme of the subset.\nThe first card I pulled features \"the Legend\" Jon Mirasty against Ryan Hand. This is a minor league battle from 2006 from the NAHL between Mission de Sorel-Tracy and To Design de Saint-Hyacinthe. Both guys went at it for almost a minute and when it ended, Mirasty skated away as the crowd cheered. Doesn't the sketch of Mirasty look like Taz from the WWE? Or does Taz look like Mirasty?\nHere is the video of the fight (excuse the music dubbed over the sound).\nThe other Bloody Battle was a fight between two NHL heavyweights...that being Tony Twist and Bob Probert. This battle, from 1996, saw Twist jump to action after Probert took a shot at Igor Kravchuk against the boards. For the first time, probably ever, Probert didn't even get a punch off. Within a few seconds, they both hit the ice as the officials swooped in to take them both to the box. The card makes reference to the fact that this was the \"fourth, and final, battle\" between the two of them.\nThe fifth \"base\" card that I pulled comes from the Tough Franchise subset. In my box, I got the Florida Panthers. What a lot of newer hockey fans may not remember is that Florida used to be a rough team back when they were in their infancy. The original roster had guys like Brett Severyn, Scott Mellanby and Paul Laus, who is the franchise's all-time penalty minute leader with 1,702. In the 01-02 season, they set a club record of 1,994 PIM of which 354 of them were Peter Worrell. In the last few years, Florida has cleaned up their game and they haven't had a player in the 100 range since 2006.\nIn addition to Laus and Worrell, the card also features Rocky Thompson and the late Wade Belak.\nI'm breaking this into a couple posts since I am a bit long winded when it comes to these. Did I mention that I love this set?!!\n(to be continued....)\nLabels: 2011-12 ITG Enforcers, best box, In The Game rules\nSome PC Pickups By Accident\nSo I've had quite a few opportunities, as most of you already are aware, to purchase larger collections from ex-dealers and collectors that have bailed on the hobby. Most of them have been turned down but occasionally I lose my ability to make rational judgements and pull the trigger. Piles, and piles, and seemingly endless piles of cards, cases, boxes, and albums have been piling up all around the house as I attempt to dissect that last large collection I acquired.\nOf course if another one like this came my way, I would politely decline and walk away. Of course I value my sanity and potentially my health (considering my wife could kill me in my sleep) so the logical answer is no thank you. Of course that's why I failed to listen to those voices in my head and I went with my gut once again.\nThis time, it wasn't a 40 ft. moving truck full of stuff though. It was just one box. One, singular, unitary shoe box (not the kind that stores shoes). One shoe box filled with GU and Autos. A fellow collector was in need of some scratch since, like many of our friends and loved ones, has been out of a job for a while and cards don't pay bills or put food on the table. So, as an act of humanity toward fellow man (and collector), I helped a guy out. Plus...400 GU/Auto cards for well under a buck a piece isn't a bad deal.\nEventually I will start to catalog them all and share them with the masses, but for now, I just wanted to share some PC cards that ended up being in there and I didn't know it. Three in particular...\n2000-01 UD NHL Legends Legendary Game Jersey J-ML\nIt is always nice to be able to pick up a Lemieux GU on the cheap. Usually when you see his stuff at a shop, online, or at a show, it is always priced at 4-5 times what I want to pay for it. This one is quite nice despite the plain black swatch. And a NHL Legends card is fitting today as Lemieux was immortalized in bronze on the concourse area outside Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh today. They held a ceremony around noon and unveiled the statue which features Mario in his patented \"split the defender\" move which he made quite famous. Here is the video in case anyone wanted to see.\n2003-04 Beehive Beige Border Game Used Sticks BE-35\nHonestly, until I opened this box, I was unaware that these even existed. This set eluded me (although I do have some singles here and there) somehow. Probably never seen it because I wasn't actively engaged in teh hobby or in procuring any more Jagr. I was still pretty jaded at that point about him leaving for the Capitals for some beads and small pox infested blankets.\nThe cards look really cool, in my opinion. The GU piece is of a game used stick that was cut down or shaved and die cut into the Beehive logo with the \"Bee Hive\" stamp across it. They aren't serial numbered but considering that I haven't seen these at all, I doubt there are many out there (and if there are, they are probably in collections...just speculating). These were issued in Beige Borders, Red Borders, and Blue Borders.\n2000-01 Private Stock Game Used Gear #89\nI have quite a few of these already but not the Jagr. I've seen this with a black swatch a bunch on Ebay but I have never won the auction. Now I don't need to worry about it anymore. Too bad this wasn't the Patches version numbered out of 388. Those were a much harder pull back in the day and I only remember ever seeing one cross my path. At the time it was $60...way too pricey even then. The card itself isn't very exciting. It's kind of plain and unassuming but nonetheless, it goes well in my PC.\nLabels: buying a collection, game used jerseys, jaromir jagr, lemieux statue at CEC, mario lemieux, PC cards","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line870130"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.543318510055542,"wiki_prob":0.456681489944458,"text":"Member Insurance\nScott Schreuder, Chairman\nHaving attained a Bsc in Sports Science he went on to complete numerous other qualifications including those from the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the National Exercise & Sports Trainers Association and being a Strength and Conditioning coach. He has worked on a regional, national and EXCO level for the two major gym chains in South Africa namely Virgin Active and Planet Fitness. He is an internationally acclaimed Master Trainer and presents at various seminars and workshops around the world including IDEA World Fitness Convention. As well as being the Strength and Conditioning coach for many Regional, National and International sporting teams. Being South Africa’s leading Functional Trainer, Scott is the International Master Trainer for products such as TRX, ViPR, TP Performance and many more. He is South Africa’s only 5-star rated international presenter, as rated by IDEA Fitness Association, the world largest Fitness organization.\nKyrie Levington, Member\nKyrie Hardiman was born in the United Kingdom in 1964. From 1984 she worked as a professional dancer, in London, performing with The Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Dance Unlimited, and other renowned dance companies. She also taught classical ballet and contemporary dance and worked as a choreographer and assistant director for several operas in London, Glasgow and Berkshire. In 2002 she retired from dancing and moved to South Africa. Kyrie was certified as a Pilate’s instructor in 2003 and opened her own studio, PilatesHere, in 2004 where she continues to teach and run Teacher Training Courses. She qualified as Fitness Professional with eta in 2012 and has added personal Training to her teaching skills.\nDeon Scheppel, Member\nNational Product Training Manager, Virgin Active South Africa Born and raised in Durban South Africa, Deon could always be found outdoors developing his love for sport and fitness, which is what prompted him to complete an Honours Degree in Sport Science at Stellenbosch University. After completing his studies, Deon worked for Virgin Active in both South Africa and the UK in various, fitness, management and training roles. While in London he grew his passion for developing others by moving into the field of corporate organisational development in healthcare. This prompted him to return to school to study part-time where he completed various qualifications culminating in his Master’s degree in Human resource development from Westminster University. After 11 years living and working in the UK, the decision was made to move back to SA with his wife and 2 children. At the end of 2014 Deon took up the role of National Product Training Manager for Virgin Active South Africa. When not working on learning and development projects, Deon tries to keep fit swimming, cycling and running long distances in the great outdoors. He also dabbles in photography and videography, enjoying the creative and expressive outlet that these hobbies afford him\nLinda Halliday, Member\nLinda Halliday is Managing Director of the eta. Linda’s is responsible for the development of eta’s curriculum, including programme development for qualifications in sport and fitness. Her work involves management of the eta campuses, their facilities and learning programmes, to ensure that they meet the quality assurance requirements of the quality assurance bodies and the legal requirements of the Department of Higher Education and Training. Linda has more than twenty-years of experience in the fitness industry; having worked for various clubs and run her own studio. She took over the eta in 1994. Linda is currently busy with post graduate course work towards a Master’s degree in Higher Education Studies at the University of Cape Town.\nDesiree Vardhan, Member\nDesiree Vardhan’s vision is to transform sport through sports coaching. Desiree is a qualified biokineticist. Some of her leadership positions include: executive and board member- International Council of Coaching Excellence (ICCE), World Anti-Doping Agency- Education member, Steering Committee member- Physical Education Institute of SA (PEISA), director of sport at the University of Kwazululu Natal and Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. Desiree is the driving force behind the South African Coaching Framework and the recently recognized Professional body for Sports Coaching in SA- CASA. She was influential in establishing 9 sports coaching designations with SAQA. She had also led the Recognition of Prior learning programme for SA sports coaching that commenced in 2014.\nRene Botes , Member\nThe old adage “Knowledge is Power” rings true when one is involved in upskilling the sport and fitness industry. Growth is dependent on knowledge, passion and perseverance. René’s passion is to upskill those who have the internal drive to develop their skills and knowledge to become great sport and fitness professionals.\nRené specialised in Long Term Talent Development with focus on the sports code swimming (MPhil Sport Science). She gained experience in education over the past 16 years lecturing at both public and private tertiary institutes. René is not only a lifelong learner but a lifelong athlete. She participates in formal sport and sits on the board of Central Gauteng Modern Biathlon.\nAs Principal of HFPA and board member of REPSSA René is poised to further her aims in promoting sport and fitness.\nMPhil Sports Science\nBA Hons Sport Science\nBA Health Sciences\nQualified Assessor and Moderator\nCYQ: Certificate in Preparing to Teach in the Life Long Learning Sector (PTTLS)\nMandla Amos Nhleko, Member\nKnown in the fitness arena as Mr Born To Move, for his belief and methods of functional training and that people were born to move and functional not to sit long hours without moving. He is the founder and director of 365 Functional Training that specializes in weight-loss, strength and conditioning training, functional training, sports specific training and strength training. Having attained a certificate in exercise specialist with sports condition, he also believes that improving ones skills and knowledge is important, and he is currently working on completing a qualification in national certificate in sports management. He also completed numerous other qualifications including, diploma in exercise science, certificate in sports massage therapist, and certificate in functional training and certificate in applied sports psychology level 1.\nHe is an ambassador for NPL (Nutritional Performance Labs), and HFPA (Health and Fitness Professionals Academy), where he lectures some of their short courses like BOOTCAMP and HIIT Instructor. He gives his time by taking part in various projects from GODs Children Project, which is a non-profit organization that focuses on making a difference in kids who are less fortunate\nDerek Archer, Member\nDerek started working in the Fitness industry in 1996 and achieved his personal trainer certification in the same year. In 1997, he began studying Human Movement Sciences at the Rand Afrikaans University as well as managing and training at the private gym in the Sandton Towers Hotel. He graduated in 2000 and at the beginning of 2003 moved his personal training business to the gym at the Institute.\nHe also held the position of Fitness trainer at Moroka Swallows Football Club from September 2002 to October 2006.Derek began to present courses at the Institute on a regular basis before assuming the role of senior lecturer on the Personal Fitness trainer course. Being so passionate about health and fitness, and teaching those aspiring to be trainers, Derek took over Fitpro in 2006.\nIn addition to work at Fitpro, Derek is a Technogym master trainer and a Power Plate master trainer. He is also an HKC kettlebell instructor and an Exercise is Medicine accredited Fitness professional. Working with athletes and teams is his primary focus outside of the classroom and he is committed to life- long learning.\nRenato Patini, Member\nRenato having previously competed at a South African level in Sprinting and Long jump an early passion for sport was made. He played Rugby in later years at a High School level, making regional selections, only furthered this passion. Obtaining a National Diploma in Fitness and a Sports Conditioning Certification has helped obtain further knowledge into this field. Being involved in the educational field of training athletes, currently the Chief Assessor and facilitator at Trifocus Fitness Academy helping possible future trainers and athletes obtain a better understanding of applied methods.\nMark Petzer, Director\nMark completed his B Com Accountancy and B Com Accountancy Honours at the Rand Academic University, Johannesburg. He then went on to complete his articles at PriceWaterhouseCoopers where he qualified as a CA (SA). Post articles he joined the Austro Group Limited, listed on the JSE, as financial manager. He went on to become the Financial Director for the Group. He subsequently left Austro to pursue a career in mining with AngloAmerican where he currently holds the position of performance analyst for Thermal Coal.\nCareers & News\nPublic and Members Rights\n© 2020 REPSSA.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1333897"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7135165333747864,"wiki_prob":0.7135165333747864,"text":"» Sir Paul Judge: 1949 – 2017\nWe are sad and sorry to write that Sir Paul Judge passed away peacefully surrounded by his close family earlier this week. Sir Paul, a UKAS Non-Executive Director between 2009 and 2016, made a valuable contribution to UKAS during this time.\nThere will shortly be a family funeral but a more public memorial service in celebration of his life will be arranged at a later date and his family will send out details closer to the time. We will inform colleagues and organisations with whom he worked closely in his full and remarkable life about the details when received.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1409120"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7385151982307434,"wiki_prob":0.2614848017692566,"text":"Dani Alves confident that Brazil will continue streak against Messi and Argentina\nby Guest Post on November 17, 2010\nThe Brazil versus Argentina rivalry has been one that lasted between both sides for many years. Although Brazil is the more confident team between the two as they carry a 5-year unbeaten streak against Argentina, there is no question that today’s match between both sides can easily see that streak coming to a halt.\nWith head-coach Mano Menezes making much (Needed) changes in the Brazilian roster, one player whose name is still on that list is Barcelona defender, Dani Alves. Playing against his teammate and who he feels is “The world’s best player”, Lionel Messi, Alves knows that today’s match against Argentina will be no walk in the park. However, the Brazilian defender is still confident that their streak against their rivals will continue on.\nDani Alves went on to say the following ahead of their friendly:\n“I hope that we can continue with this record. Messi is the best in the world, it is going to be very, very difficult. It is impossible to mark him one on one, there has to be more than one around him. Every day he surprises me, I hope the same doesn’t happen [today],” the Barcelona star commented on his club teammate, before pointing out the other Argentina danger man. I love Pastore. He has only been in the Seleccion a short time and he is in the best form of his career. I also like [Javier] Mascherano, but he is one of the old boys!”\nAlthough it will be a tough battle between both sides, I definitely think that Argentina have a better chance in winning today’s match. With Brazil making some major changes in his roster and Argentina still boosting some of their World Cup starters, Argentina definitely has the on-going chemistry to come out on top tonight.\nWho do you think will win tonight’s match? Will Brazil’s winning streak against Argentina come to an end? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1200126"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.529151201248169,"wiki_prob":0.47084879875183105,"text":"A New Agreement Between The Majority Shareholders Of L’Oreal\nA New Agreement Between The Majority Shareholders Of L’Oreal Group - 03.02.2004\nABSORPTION OF GESPARAL BY L’OREAL\nMrs. BETTENCOURT REMAINS THE LARGEST SHAREHOLDER OF L’OREAL\nClichy, February 3rd, 2004, 11 p.m.\nIn a release distributed today, the Holding Company Gesparal has announced that Mrs. Bettencourt and her family, and Nestlé have decided to further develop the agreement which they had for over 30 years. This release is available on www.loreal.com.\nThe new agreement includes:\n• The merger and absorption of Gesparal by L’Oréal;\n• The elimination of double voting rights;\n• The continuation of the respective positions of the Bettencourt family and Nestlé in L’Oréal capital;\n• A further development of L’Oréal’s corporate governance.\nThe merger of Gesparal and L’Oréal and the elimination of double voting rights that will be submitted to shareholders for their approval at the Shareholders Meeting planned for April 29, 2004 will have no effect either on the financial structure or on the results of L’Oréal, as Gesparal owns only L’Oréal shares and has no debt.\nWhen this transaction is completed, the Bettencourt family and Nestlé will become direct shareholders of L’Oréal with, respectively, 27.5 % and 26.4 % of the capital and, respectively, 28.6% and 27.5 % in voting rights.\nThe Board of Directors of L’Oréal will be asked to create a Committee for Strategy and Implementation made up of 6 members: the CEO of L’Oréal who will chair the Committee, 2 members will be amongst the Board members representing the Bettencourt family, 2 others amongst the members representing Nestlé, and one will be an independent Board member.\nLindsay Owen-Jones, CEO of L’Oréal declared:\n“I am delighted by this agreement which is extremely favourable to the Company, to its employees, to its clients and to all of its shareholders.\nThe clarification of the shareholding structure and the improved Corporate Governance will enhance transparency and simplicity.\nThe renewed stability of the shareholding structure will continue to support our long term strategy for growth and profitability.\nWe appreciate the support and confidence of all of our shareholders”.\nThe Gesparal news release is attached to this document.\nContact at L'ORÉAL\nMrs. Alessandra di MONTEZEMOLO\ntel: +33 1.47.56.46.30\nhttp://www.loreal.com\nGESPARAL Société Anonyme au Capital de 205 766 864 €\nPROPOSED MERGER BETWEEN GESPARAL AND L’OREAL\nParis, February 3rd, 2004, 11 p.m.\nThe two shareholders of Gesparal, Mrs. Liliane Bettencourt and her family, and Nestlé, have agreed to propose the absorption of Gesparal by L’Oréal. The Gesparal Holding Company owns 53.8% of the Capital and 71.7% of voting rights of L’Oréal. The Bettencourt family and Nestlé own respectively, 51% and 49% of Gesparal.\nThe extraordinary development of L’Oréal over the last 30 years during which Gesparal was its majority shareholder enabled it to become the world leader in its field. Today, it is possible and desirable to simplify the capital structure. In addition, the greater transparency and the further development of corporate governance, both of which are provided for in this agreement, will encourage the continuing development of L’Oréal.\nThe main points of the agreement are the following :\n• The absorption of Gesparal by L’Oréal will be proposed at the next Annual Shareholders Meeting, planned for April 29, 2004. After completion, the Bettencourt family will hold 27.5% of L’Oréal’s capital, and Nestlé 26.4%. The merger will have no effect, nor on its financial structure or on its results, as Gesparal's investment portfolio is composed exclusively of L’Oréal’s shares and it has no debt.\n• At the same annual shareholders meeting of L’Oréal, it will also be proposed to eliminate double voting rights.\n• The Bettencourt family and Nestlé have agreed to keep all of their L’Oréal shares for a period of 5 years, beginning with the date of this shareholders meeting. However, should there be a public tender offer for L’Oréal shares by a third party, the Bettencourt family and Nestlé would have the right to tender their shares or to make a counter-offer.\n• The Bettencourt family and Nestlé have agreed not to increase, either directly or indirectly, their respective shareholdings in L’Oréal, during the lifetime of Mrs. Liliane Bettencourt, and in any case during a period of at least 3 years, starting from the date of this shareholders meeting.\n• The Bettencourt family and Nestlé have mutually agreed to mutual rights of pre-emption on their respective shareholdings in L’Oréal for a period of 10 years. The Bettencourt family has the option of substituting a third party, notably L’Oréal.\n• A shareholders meeting will be asked to approve the nomination of three board members designated by the Bettencourt family and three board members designated by Nestlé, as it is currently the case. At the board of directors of L’Oréal, the election of 2 Vice Chairmen, one nominated by the Bettencourt family and one nominated by Nestlé will also be proposed.\n• The Board of Directors of L’Oréal will also be asked to create a Committee for Strategy and Implementation, made up of 6 members, including the CEO of L’Oréal who will be Chairman. 2 members of this committee will be proposed by the Bettencourt family, 2 by Nestlé and 1 independent board member will also be included. It will meet 6 times a year. As in the case of the other Board committees, it will have a role of advice and recommendation, with the Board retaining all of its responsibilities.\n• This agreement is effective upon signature. It takes the place of any other agreement between the Bettencourt family and Nestlé.\nThe agreement will be submitted to the “Autorité des Marchés Financiers” (AMF), the French financial market regulatory authority. The merger provided for in the agreement is conditional upon the finding by the market authorities that there is no requirement for a public offer for L’Oréal shares in light of the planned merger.\nThis agreement will be published in its entirety following the decision of the AMF.\nMrs. Liliane Bettencourt and Mr. Rainer E. Gut, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Nestlé, stated: “Our objective is to continue with our excellent and mutual understanding and our balanced relationship, which, along with the quality and the extraordinary commitment of L’Oréal management and its employees, has contributed for so many years to making the company one of the best in the world.”\nMr. Rainer E. Gut said : “We are convinced that the agreement represents a very solid base for continuing the impressive and very profitable growth of L’Oréal, to which the Bettencourt family and Nestlé have contributed since 1974, by the support through Gesparal.”\nMrs. Liliane Bettencourt and her daughter Mrs. Françoise Bettencourt Meyers stated: “Through this new agreement, we are expressing our loyalty and attachment to the L’Oréal Company, and the confidence that, both of us have in L’Oréal, in its CEO Lindsay Owen-Jones and in all of its employees who are responsible for its long term success.”\nVorige Pressemitteilung Nächste Pressemitteilung","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1278918"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9116662740707397,"wiki_prob":0.9116662740707397,"text":"Kanye West Posts Hilarious 'Nothing' Clip; Plus Beyonce, Backstreet Boys, Wyclef Jean, Lil Wayne, J.K. Rowling, Lindsay Lohan & More, In For The Record\nKnowles takes a tumble at Florida show; Backstreet set release date for LP; Wyclef Jean snatches up Weezy for single.\nMTV News Staff mtvnews 07/25/2007\nDon't believe Kanye West has a sense of humor? He's posted a hilarious new \"Can't Tell Me Nothing\" clip, starring underground comedian Zach Galifianakis and indie-folkie Will Oldham, on his site. According to Billboard.com, the hilarious low-budget clip — which features Galifianakis and Oldham mouthing the words to the song while they hang with cows and gyrate against tractors — was filmed at Galifianakis' farm in North Carolina. Galifianakis also made a memorable appearance in Fiona Apple's \"Not About Love\" video, but he recently told Impose Magazine that it was his clip for Anita Baker's \"You Bring Me Joy\" that won over West. ...\nBeyoncé took a big spill at her concert in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday night, tumbling headfirst down 12 steps at Amway Arena. Video capturing the gaffe is making the rounds on the Web — even though the singer told the crowd not to post the clip on YouTube. \"Beyoncé's fall onstage last night ... was a case of her coat's hem getting caught in her shoes,\" her publicist Yvette Noel-Schure said in a statement issued Wednesday (July 25), \"but Miss Knowles picked herself right up, without missing a beat, showing to all that she is the best.\" ... The Backstreet Boys have pegged October 30 as the release date for their new, yet-untitled album, which will be led by first single \"Inconsolable,\" Billboard.com reports. Don't expect to hear Kevin Richardson on there, though — he left in June 2006 (and wasn't replaced). ...\nWyclef Jean has snatched up Akon, Lil Wayne and newcomer Niia for \"Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill),\" the first single from his forthcoming album Carnival II (Memoirs of an Immigrant). The Columbia release will hit stores in November. ...\nHas \"Deathly Hallows\" left you with a question or two? You might be able to get an answer from the author herself — on Monday, \"Harry Potter\" publisher Bloomsbury will hold a live chat with J.K. Rowling on Bloomsbury.com. In other Potter news, publisher Scholastic says a few hundred of the 12 million copies of \"Deathly Hallows\" are missing pages, The Associated Press reports. The company said defective books can be replaced by bringing them back to point of purchase, but some fans are stowing them away as keepsakes. ...\nLindsay Lohan might have even more problems on her hands — according to TMZ.com, she pulled an illegal U-turn in April in Los Angeles that wound up causing an accident between vehicles driven by her bodyguard Jaz Bennett and another woman, Signe Dupuy. Dupuy says Bennett gave her a fake name and number after the accident and that she's considering filing suit against him and Lohan. A representative for Lohan told TMZ that a letter sent by Dupuy was filed away because it was assumed that it would also be sent to Lohan's lawyers. In yet another legal case involving Lohan, TMZ.com reports that she filed documents in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week pertaining to the October 2005 car crash in which she hit a parked van in Beverly Hills, California. Last month, Raymundo Ortega, the owner of the van, filed a lawsuit claiming Lohan was drunk at the time of the accident. In the documents she filed, Lohan claims the suit is \"nothing more than an attempt to extort money from a celebrity by setting forth false and scurrilous allegations in a complaint.\" She said the police report claims, \"Ms. Lohan had not been drinking. I did not observe any objective signs of either alcohol or drug intoxication and determined that no further investigation regarding intoxication was warranted.\" ...\nIt might not be showtime for Swizz Beatz if police in Camden, New Jersey, get their way. According to AP, authorities are threatening to drop their sponsorship of a peace rally due to the producer's scheduled appearance and his perceived anti-snitching stance on his single \"It's Me Snitches.\" But Swizz released a statement to AP explaining the track, which has no anti-snitching content, was renamed for radio from its original title \"It's Me Bitches.\" \"If I supported violence or the 'Stop Snitching' campaign, I wouldn't have agreed to be a part of the event [in the first place],\" he said in the statement. ...\nDevo can't get any satisfaction these days — thanks to Korn. The New Wavers are lashing out at Jonathan Davis and the gang for allegedly biting the group's \"devolution\" concept in a fake movie trailer posted on EvolutionDevolution.com. \"We denounce this as imposters playing with fire,\" Gerald Casale wrote in a post on Devo.com. He told RollingStone.com that Korn fans have been sending him hate mail since he posted the note on the site. \"We went, 'Wow, this is insane. This is a perfect example of devolution. ... Gee, I'm sorry we thought all this up 30 years ago and have been putting it out there and preaching it ever since.' \" ... A medical examiner was \"hasty\" in calling actress Lana Clarkson's death a homicide, forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz testified for Phil Spector's defense on Wednesday (July 25), AP reports. \"In my opinion, it was most likely a suicide,\" said Spitz, who added that he has seen autopsy reports. Spitz testified that Clarkson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the mouth. ...\nMya and Claudette Ortiz, formerly of City High, headlined the weekly R&B Live showcase at Spotlight Live in Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday night. Music industry bigwigs Steve Stoute, Sylvia Rhone and Jacob \"The Jeweler\" Arabo were in attendance as D-Nice manned the DJ booth. ... Don't worry about calling Bartman — the Simpsons have the United Nations on their side. The World Intellectual Property Organization, a UN agency, ruled Wednesday that the ownership of the domain name TheSimpsonsMovie.com must be turned over to 20th Century Fox after the company complained about the address registered to Keith Malley of Brooklyn, New York. Malley had demanded a $50,000 fee to cede the domain name, but the WIPO found that he \"has no rights or legitimate interests\" to it. ...\nPearl Jam will perform an intimate concert at Chicago's Vic Theatre on August 2 — which will warm the guys up for their headlining set at Lollapalooza three days later. Tickets will go on sale Thursday, but only for members of the band's Ten Club fan organization; tickets won't be made available to the general public. ... Chevelle have rolled out a new set of tour dates for the late summer and early fall. The first show is set for August 25 in Grayslake, Illinois, and the tour is scheduled to run through September 16 in Dayton, Ohio. ...\nIn a recent interview, Disturbed guitarist Dan Donegan discussed the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's next album. \"Musically, [the next LP will be] a lot ballsier,\" he said. Donegan added that there will be \"those signature things that are us, just 'cause stylistically that's the way we perform, and [frontman] David [Draiman], vocally, is always going to sound like him, so ... he's got some big melodic moments, but there's some still aggressive stuff. [We're] trying to get a good blend of the elements of the past three CDs to try to evolve into something fresh and new for us as well.\" The band will hit the studio in the fall and is planning an early 2008 release for the yet-untitled offering. ...\nIndie \"death-rapper\" Necro has bailed from the Sounds of the Underground Tour because \"the tour's demographic was not receiving hip-hop well,\" he said in a statement. \"I was facing hostile, disrespectful crowds and was returning the same energy back tenfold by being more aggressive than them. It was making a lot of people in the tour crew nervous and there was concern someone might get hurt (not me).\" ... The Eagles of Death Metal are starting to write material for the follow-up to 2006's Death by Sexy. According to frontman Jesse \"The Devil\" Hughes, the guys \"hear your cries for boot-skootin', guitar-rock-tootin', sex-rock music, honeybabies,\" and promise a 2008 release for their next set. \"EODM will quench your musical thirsts with a burst of mantastic-fantastic!!! Album #3 will be the greatest EODM release to date.\" ...\nDon't expect to see the cast of \"High School Musical\" lighting up anytime soon — Disney has become the first major Hollywood studio to ban depictions of smoking in its family-oriented films, Reuters reports. In a letter to Representative Edward Markey — whose House committee recently held a hearing on how movie images affect children — Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger said Disney would \"discourage\" smoking in films distributed by its labels Touchstone and Miramax. He added that anti-smoking public-service announcements would appear on DVDs of films that do depict smoking and would encourage theaters to show similar PSAs along with such films. Markey called the move \"groundbreaking.\"\nJa Rule's Sunday arrest in New York on a single felony weapon count was \"another instance of hip-hop targeting,\" according to the rapper's attorney, Stacey Richman. She claims the .40-caliber Taurus pistol police recovered from inside the 2004 Maybach that Ja was riding in when he was arrested belonged to someone else. Ja; his driver, Mohamed Gamal; and his road manager, Dennis Cherry, were charged with criminal possession of a weapon and spent Sunday night in jail. The three were arraigned Monday afternoon, and Ja (born Jeffrey Atkins) was released on $150,000 bond. He's expected back in Manhattan Criminal Court November 7. According to Richman, the car in question was a company vehicle owned by Gamal's Maximum Transportation firm and is used by his clients. \"If you get a car, and something's left in the car, is that yours?\" Richman wondered. \"How you can ascribe that anybody knows what's in a car?\" She also contends that the car was stopped about a block away from the Beacon Theatre and that it had been \"parked outside for two and a half hours, with the police department, and they ran the plates — they could have just handed out a ticket then, but they didn't. They waited for [Ja Rule] to get into the car.\" As for the speeding claims, Richman simply doesn't believe them: \"Why would he speed for one block? What, he's going to speed to the next light on Broadway? Come on.\" The prosecutor's office would not comment on Ja Rule's arrest. ...\nG-Unit's Tony Yayo was in court Tuesday morning (July 24) in connection with charges of harassment and endangering the welfare of a child, the 14-year-old son of Game manager Jimmy \"Henchman\" Rosemond. According to Yayo's lawyer Scott Leemon, the rapper rejected a plea offer that would have him serve nine months in jail, and the case was adjourned until September 6. Leemon said the judge in the case asked for more time to make a decision on whether he will enforce subpoenas issued by Leemon to the public-relations firm for Rosemond's Czar Entertainment record label. Leemon would not discuss what information he is seeking from the PR firm. ...\nR. Kelly is still feeding off his recent Double Up set, but he's already got another treat in store for next month: Ten new episodes in his \"Trapped in the Closet\" series. In his latest go-'round, R. dresses as a preacher in a wig — and even more amusingly, from the sound of it, an old man with a fake belly and beard, Billboard.com reports. A DVD encompassing the 10 eps will hit stores August 21, but you can catch them prior to that on, oddly enough, the Independent Film Channel. ... Lindsay Lohan's wax statue at Madame Tussauds in New York has a new addition: It's now dressed in black and white prison stripes. The museum pulled the same move with Paris Hilton's statue when the heiress went to jail. ...\nRage Against the Machine, Daft Punk, Iggy and the Stooges and Queens of the Stone Age are among the headliners of this year's Vegoose Festival. The third annual installment of the Las Vegas event, to be held October 27-28 at Sam Boyd Stadium, will also feature sets from Muse, Cypress Hill, the Shins, Public Enemy, Ghostface Killah, Pharoahe Monch, Battles, Gogol Bordello and more artists to be announced soon. The Stooges will perform their classic Fun House album in its entirety for the first time ever in the U.S. ...\nDaughtry will hit the road next month for a spate of headlining gigs. Dates are scheduled from August 1 in Columbus, Ohio, through October 20 in Raleigh, North Carolina. ... Mandy Moore will team up with Paula Cole for a co-headlining tour set to kick off August 18 in Portland, Oregon, and expire August 25 in San Diego. Moore's also set to play some of her own headlining gigs, starting August 30 in Fort Worth, Texas. That trek runs through September 9 in Charlotte, North Carolina. ... Tori Amos has mapped out the U.S. leg of her world tour, which will launch October 9 in Albany, New York, and run through December 17 in Los Angeles. ...\nTupac Shakur's estate is trying to stop the late rapper's former label, Death Row Records, from selling his unreleased recordings as part of a bankruptcy settlement. Shakur's mother, Afeni, sought an injunction in federal bankruptcy court Friday, claiming the label was trying to sell Shakur material that belonged to the rapper's estate and should have been turned over to it as part of a 1997 agreement with Death Row. Shakur's lawyer Donald N. David said that during the label's bankruptcy proceedings, \"it was revealed that an album's worth of unreleased Tupac material was being advertised to potential buyers as the jewel in the crown of the Death Row assets.\" ...\nA Los Angeles judge has refused to dismiss Phil Spector's murder charge or reduce it to manslaughter on Tuesday, The Associated Press reports. Prosecutors rested their case Monday, and one of the attorneys said they might not even have to show the music producer pulled the trigger to the gun that killed actress Lana Clarkson in order for Spector to be convicted. \"He had the gun in his home, loaded with his bullets,\" said Alan Jackson, who added that prosecutors only need to show that Spector pointed the gun at Clarkson. \"Whether he pulled the trigger, whether he sneezed or she slapped his hand away or there was an earthquake — it doesn't matter. It's implied malice.\" The defense argued that implied malice wasn't shown and that the prosecution didn't support its second-degree-murder theory, so the charge should be dismissed or reduced. \"It's very clear to me ... that there's more than enough substantial evidence to support a conviction if there was one,\" Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler said, refusing the motion. ...\nStatic-X, Shadows Fall, 3 Inches of Blood and Divine Heresy are planning a U.S. run that will commence in September. Dates and venues have yet to be announced, but we'll keep you posted. ... There's been some turmoil as of late in the world of Hopesfall. According to a statement from the band, it seems the only remaining member is singer Jay Forrest, meaning guitarists Joshua Brigham and Dustin Nadler, drummer Jason Trabue and bassist Mike Tyson have split. No explanation for the departures has been made public. ... Coheed and Cambria's forthcoming album, Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow, will hit stores October 23. ... The Bled's next effort, Silent Treatment, has been set for a September 25 release. The LP will contain 11 tracks, including \"You Should Be Ashamed of Myself,\" \"Platonic Sleepover Massacre\" and \"Breathing Room Barricades.\" ...\nEnglish manager Don Arden, the father of Sharon Osbourne, died Saturday in a Los Angeles nursing home, according to a BBC News report. He was 81. The man born Harry Levy in Manchester, England, but known variously as the \"Al Capone of Pop,\" \"The English Godfather\" and \"Mr. Big\" for his uncompromising business practices was at one time the manager of acts ranging from ELO to the Small Faces and Black Sabbath. Sharon was famously estranged from Arden for nearly 20 years after she wrested control of husband Ozzy Osbourne's solo career and was forced to pay her dad a $1 million court settlement. The two reconciled in 2002. ... In an attempt to smooth the pathway to a proposed merger, satellite-radio competitors XM and Sirius have said that if the $4.7 billion merger is approved, they would offer new a la carte pricing plans that would allow users to pay only for the stations they want. The Washington Post reports that the proposed plans would start at $6.99 for 50 stations, which is almost half of the current price of $12.95 for about 150 stations, and include a $14.99 price for 100 stations and the option to add stations one at a time for 25 cents each.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line925720"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9209882020950317,"wiki_prob":0.9209882020950317,"text":"Validation failed\nWhat is ICC FraudNet Collaboration Our Approach\nMedia Partnerships Organizations Legal Developments\nAsset Tracing & Recovery Complex Commercial Fraud Fraud Investigation Receivership Banking Fraud Criminal Activities Insurance Fraud Commodities Fraud Foreign Corruption Property Fraud\nMembers in the News Publications Conferences TalkFraud\nCollaborating to Get Results\nFraudNet was Founded in 2004 and operates under the auspices of the Commercial Crime Services of the International Chambers of Commerce(ICC)\n-a Paris-based world business organization with offices in 90 countries.\nHostage-taking at sea rises to record levels, says IMB\nMore people were taken hostage at sea in 2010 than in any year on record, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) global piracy report disclosed today. Pirates captured 1,181 seafarers and killed eight. A total of 53 ships were hijacked.\nThe number of pirate attacks against ships has risen every year for the last four years, IMB revealed. Ships reported 445 attacks in 2010, up 10% from 2009. While 188 crew members were taken hostage in 2006, 1,050 were taken in 2009 and 1,181 in 2010.\n“These figures for the number of hostages and vessels taken are the highest we have ever seen,” said Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre, which has monitored piracy worldwide since 1991. “The continued increase in these numbers is alarming.\"\n“As a percentage of global incidents, piracy on the high seas has increased dramatically over armed robbery in territorial waters,” said Mukundan. “On the high seas off Somalia, heavily armed pirates are overpowering ocean-going fishing or merchant vessels to use as a base for further attacks. They capture the crew and force them to sail to within attacking distance of other unsuspecting vessels.”\nAccording to IMB, hijackings off the coast of Somalia accounted for 92% of all ship seizures last year with 49 vessels hijacked and 1,016 crew members taken hostage. A total of 28 vessels and 638 hostages were still being held for ransom by Somali pirates as of 31 December 2010.\nWhile attacks off the coast of Somalia remain high, the number of incidents in the Gulf of Aden more than halved last year, with 53 attacks in 2010 down from 117 in 2009. IMB attributes this reduction to the deterrence work of naval forces from around the world that have been patrolling the area since 2008 and to ships’ application of self-protection measures recommended in Best Management Practices, version 3 (BMP 3), a booklet published last year by the shipping industry and navies.\n“The naval units in the seas off the Horn of Africa should be applauded for preventing a huge number of piracy attacks in the region,” said Mukundan. “The continued presence of international navies is vital in protecting merchant ships along these important trade routes.\"\nBut Somali pirates are travelling further afield. In December 2010, they reached as far south as the Mozambique Channel and as far east as 72° East longitude in the Indian Ocean, an operating range IMB says is unprecedented.\nWhat can be done to stop the surge of piracy on the high seas? Mukundan said the answer lies primarily onshore in South Central Somalia. “There is a desperate need for a stable infrastructure in this area,” he said. “It is vital that governments and the United Nations devote resources to developing workable administrative infrastructures to prevent criminals from exploiting the vacuum left from years of failed local government. All measures taken at sea to limit the activities of the pirates are undermined because of a lack of responsible authority back in Somalia from where the pirates begin their voyages and return with hijacked vessels.”\nElsewhere, violent attacks continued around Nigeria, with incidents concentrated near the port of Lagos. Overall, 13 vessels were boarded, four vessels fired upon and there were two attempted attacks.\nIn Bangladesh, the number of armed robbery incidents rose for the second successive year. Twenty-one vessels were boarded, mainly by attackers armed with knives. Almost all were anchored in the port of Chittagong.\nIndonesia saw its highest levels of armed robbery against ships since 2007. Thirty vessels were boarded, nine attacks were thwarted and one vessel was hijacked. Vessels were underway in 15 of the attacks. The South China Seas recorded 31 incidents, more than double the previous year. Twenty-one vessels were boarded, seven attacks attempted, two vessels were fired upon and one was hijacked. The last quarter of 2010 was quiet, with only one reported incident.\nThe IMB Piracy Reporting Centre is the world’s only manned centre to receive reports of pirate attacks 24 hours a day from across the globe. IMB strongly urges all shipmasters and owners to report all actual, attempted and suspicious piracy and armed robbery incidents to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre. This first step in the response chain is vital in ensuring that adequate resources are allocated by authorities to tackle piracy. Transparent statistics from an independent, non-political, international organization can act as a catalyst to achieve this goal.\nIMB offers the latest piracy reports free of charge. To request a PDF version of the report by email, please visit: http://www.icc-ccs.org/requestreport\nLatest attacks may also be viewed on the IMB Live Piracy Map\nPottengal Mukundan\nDirector, IMB\nEmail: pmukundan@icc-ccs.org\n© 2019 FraudNet | email: fraudnet@icc-ccs.org | Telephone: +44 (0)20 7423 6960 | Fax: +44 (0)20 7160 5249\nHome About us Resources Find a Member Experience News Contact","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line320549"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5265280604362488,"wiki_prob":0.5265280604362488,"text":"BMC Health Services Research\nInvolving end-users in the design of an audit and feedback intervention in the emergency department setting – a mixed methods study\nWelmoed K. van Deen ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4836-98491,2,\nEdward S. Cho3,\nKathryn Pustolski4,\nDennis Wixon4,\nShona Lamb3,\nThomas W. Valente5 &\nMichael Menchine6\nBMC Health Services Research volume 19, Article number: 270 (2019) Cite this article\nLong length of stays (LOS) in emergency departments (ED) negatively affect quality of care. Ordering of inappropriate diagnostic tests contributes to long LOS and reduces quality of care. One strategy to change practice patterns is to use performance feedback dashboards for physicians. While this strategy has proven to be successful in multiple settings, the most effective ways to deliver such interventions remain unknown. Involving end-users in the process is likely important for a successful design and implementation of a performance dashboard within a specific workplace culture. This mixed methods study aimed to develop design requirements for an ED performance dashboard and to understand the role of culture and social networks in the adoption process.\nWe performed 13 semi-structured interviews with attending physicians in different roles within a single public ED in the U.S. to get an in-depth understanding of physicians’ needs and concerns. Principles of human-centered design were used to translate these interviews into design requirements and to iteratively develop a front-end performance feedback dashboard. Pre- and post- surveys were used to evaluate the effect of the dashboard on physicians’ motivation and to measure their perception of the usefulness of the dashboard. Data on the ED culture and underlying social network were collected. Outcomes were compared between physicians involved in the human-centered design process, those with exposure to the design process through the ED social network, and those with limited exposure.\nKey design requirements obtained from the interviews were ease of access, drilldown functionality, customization, and a visual data display including monthly time-trends and blinded peer-comparisons. Identified barriers included concerns about unintended consequences and the veracity of underlying data. The surveys revealed that the ED culture and social network are associated with reported usefulness of the dashboard. Additionally, physicians’ motivation was differentially affected by the dashboard based on their position in the social network.\nThis study demonstrates the feasibility of designing a performance feedback dashboard using a human-centered design approach in the ED setting. Additionally, we show preliminary evidence that the culture and underlying social network are of key importance for successful adoption of a dashboard.\nEmergency Departments (EDs) often face problems related to overcrowding and long waiting times [1] which leads to reduced quality and efficiency, as patients may decompensate or leave before being seen [2]. Long length of stay (LOS) in the ED is associated with higher seven-day mortality rates, more unnecessary hospital admissions [2, 3], and less patient-centered care [4]. Many factors likely contribute to long LOS, including patient volume and acuity, ED space and staffing [1, 2], and the number of diagnostic tests (e.g. lab and imaging tests) ordered [1, 5]. While many of these LOS factors are influenced by circumstances out of physicians’ control, the number of diagnostic tests ordered is directly influenced by the behavior of ED physicians. This is especially important as the number of lab and imaging tests ordered varies substantially across physicians and overutilization is a common quality concern [6,7,8,9], which delays the care delivery process and can cause harm to patients [10].\nA variety of implementation strategies are used to change physicians’ practice patterns, ranging from educational methods to financial incentives and regulations [11]. Audit and feedback, the process of showing physicians performance feedback dashboards that compare their performance to their peers’, is a strategy that generally achieves small to moderate behavioral changes in healthcare settings [12]. Audit and feedback interventions work better when feedback is more intensive, [12] the reported outcomes are actionable [13, 14], and there is trust in the accuracy of the data [13]. Additionally, the perceived importance of the goal is important in achieving behavior change [15]. However, many questions remain about the most effective ways to deliver an audit and feedback intervention [16, 17].\nThe involvement of end-users in the design of the intervention is likely to improve its effectiveness, though this has yet to be formally evaluated in the ED setting [14]. Involvement of end-users mitigates the risk of creating an ineffective system that does not adequately meet users’ needs. This concept has long been understood in the field of human-centered design. Human-centered design is an approach that systematically incorporates end-user feedback throughout the design process [18]. This process helps to ensure that the design is functional, supports the end-user’s goals, and fits the organizational context [19]. Additionally, it ensures ease-of-use and usefulness of the technology, thereby engendering more positive attitudes towards the technology [20].\nThe implementation setting in which an audit and feedback intervention takes place also affects the desired behavior changes [12]. Organizational culture is thought to be a motivational force that shapes practitioners’ behaviors, attitudes, and thought-processes [21]. The underlying social networks, in turn, have been shown to impact culture and beliefs [22, 23]. Social networks also influence human behavior, as illustrated by evidence in the use of contraception [24] or attitudes towards smoking [25, 26]. The social network within the workplace has been shown to influence physician behavior as well [27, 28]. Additionally, the social network is integral to innovation diffusion, which demonstrates the role of interpersonal connections in the adoption of new technology [22, 29].\nHere, we describe the development and exploratory evaluation of a performance feedback dashboard in the ED setting with the goal to reduce LOS. We employ a human-centered design approach to identify the most suitable measures to include on the dashboard and to ensure essential design requirements are met. We hypothesize that the systematic involvement of end-users in the design process will lead to a more appropriate intervention design and superior usability. This would improve physicians’ likelihood of using the performance feedback dashboard and increase their motivation to change practice patterns. Additionally, we hypothesize that both adoption and motivation are affected by the underlying culture and social network of the department.\nThis mixed methods study took place in the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California (LAC+USC) Medical Center ED. LAC+USC is a large public hospital owned and operated by the LAC Department of Health Services and is a major teaching hospital. The University of Southern California (USC) provides most of the attending services at the hospital. The ED is staffed by approximately 60 attending physicians and 70 ED residents. With over 100,000 patient visits per year, this ED is one of the largest in the country and serves predominantly uninsured and underinsured populations. The median LOS in 2016 was approximately 9 h for admitted patients and 6 h for discharged patients, which is well above the LOS observed in other EDs serving un- and underinsured populations [30]. Additionally, there was substantial variation between providers in LOS and utilization metrics; for example, the interquartile range (IQR) of the median LOS per provider was 6–9 h and the IQR of the % patients with a CT scan was 10–30%.\nHuman-centered design approach\nWe employed a human-centered design approach to inform the development of a performance feedback dashboard for attending physicians. The goal of the performance dashboard was to reduce overall LOS by changing attending physicians’ practice patterns. Before developing the initial design, we performed a series of 60-min semi-structured interviews with ED leadership and ED attending physicians. Leadership interviews were performed to understand the strategic goals of the department and how a dashboard with specific performance measures could help attain those goals. Attending physician interviews were conducted to obtain end-user input on the measures to include and the design and functionality of the dashboard as well as to identify barriers to its implementation. The interview guides were developed specifically for this study (Additional file 1).\nIn total, two leadership and six attending physician interviews were performed to inform the initial design. The ED leaders were ED physicians whose primary responsibility was leadership but who also worked as attending physicians in this ED. We used a purposive sampling strategy to ensure a diverse representation of ED physicians. We included both male and female physicians with various levels of experience and different responsibilities (e.g. clinical, educational, academic, and administrative). Physicians employed by both USC and by the LA County Department of Health Services were included because incentive structures are different in the two settings. All participants were required to have worked in this ED for a minimum of 2 years to ensure they had a thorough understanding of the ED workflow. Twelve attending physicians were invited to participate, of which six completed interviews. Interviews were recorded and transcribed before analysis. Interviewees received a $25 gift card for their participation.\nAll transcripts were analyzed for comments related to relevant peer-comparison metrics, desired functionality, and perceived barriers. Based on the interview results, a guide was developed that specified design requirements for the performance dashboard. A team with experience in human-centered design developed (DW and KP) a front-end prototype in Axure RP PRO 8 (Axure Software Solutions, Inc., San Diego, CA). The design-team (DW, KP, ESC, WKvD) met on a bi-weekly basis to review the design and discuss appropriate solutions for design challenges. After the front-end prototype was developed using insights from the initial round of interviews, additional feedback was sought in a second round of 45-min interviews with five attending physicians, during which iterative improvements were made to the design.\nWe conducted pre- and post-surveys (Additional file 2) 6 weeks apart to test whether the performance feedback dashboard (1) increases physicians’ motivation to make faster decisions about the patients’ management and (2) decreases physicians’ likelihood to order tests in a specific scenario; two outcomes that could lead to reductions in ED LOS. Screenshots of the prototype dashboard developed during the human-centered design process were displayed prior to the post-survey. Questions related to the culture and social network in the ED were included in the pre-survey, and feedback on the usability of the dashboard was obtained in the post-survey. Both surveys were hosted in Qualtrics (Provo, UT) and were electronically distributed to the 56 attending physicians that were active in the ED at the time the pre-survey was sent out. The pre-survey was sent out on January 1, 2018, with three reminders in the following month. The post-survey was sent out on March 13, 2018, with two reminders in the following month. Two OpenTable gift cards with $150 value were raffled among participants as an incentive to complete the pre-survey. In the post-survey, a $5 Starbucks gift card was offered to each participant as an incentive.\nThe primary outcome was the effect of the performance feedback dashboard on physicians’ motivation to make a quick disposition decision (i.e. the moment the physician decides whether the patients will be admitted to the hospital or discharged from the ED). To measure motivation, we used a set of measures derived from Self-Determination Theory which posits that perceived value/usefulness, competence, and autonomy support are important factors for motivation [15]. We used the Value/Usefulness and Competence subscales of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory and the six-question version of the Work Climate Questionnaire for Perceived Autonomy Support [31], which have been used and validated in a variety of settings including educational settings, sports psychology, and the workplace environment [32, 33]. All questions were rated on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from “Not at all true” to “Very true”. These questions were included in both the pre- and post-survey.\nTo estimate changes in physicians’ practice patterns, we focused on test-ordering, which is a known predictor of LOS and is directly influenced by physicians’ decisions [1, 5]. To assess physicians’ likelihood of ordering diagnostics tests, we included a vignette adapted from Kool et al. [34] in which the need for imaging is purposefully ambiguous. After reviewing the vignette, physicians were asked whether they would order diagnostic imaging, and if so, what type of diagnostic order. The vignette was included in both the pre- and post-survey.\nTo evaluate the design of the prototype performance dashboard in the post-survey, we assessed the perceived usefulness and ease of use based on the Technology Acceptance Model [20]. The Technology Acceptance Model has been used extensively to evaluate physician acceptance of health technology [35, 36]. Questions such as “I believe that the performance feedback tool is flexible to interact with” were scored on a seven-point Likert-scale ranging from “Disagree strongly” and “Agree strongly”. We also assessed physicians’ perception of the importance of the metrics included in the dashboard and physicians’ perceptions of their ability to affect these measures on the same seven-point Likert-scale. Lastly, we asked physicians a Net Promotor Score question, which is widely used in various industries to understand the quality of the product or service: “How likely are you to recommend this performance feedback tool to your colleagues and peers to visualize and improve their performance as ED physicians?” with an eleven-point response scale ranging from “Not likely at all” to “Extremely likely.” We also asked for suggestions to improve the tool and inquired about additional physician comments.\nTo assess the ED culture, we asked physicians about their perceptions of the social, technical, and environmental aspects of their workplace in the pre-survey. We used the first thirteen questions of the Safety Attitudes and Safety Climate Questionnaire, which has been extensively psychometrically validated [21, 37]. These thirteen questions specifically address the teamwork and safety climate. All questions were scored on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “Disagree strongly” to “Agree strongly”, with an N/A option for each question. To describe the underlying social network, we included the question “Who do you discuss problems with at work?” which returns social network data indicating specifically who communicates with whom in the organization [38]. Understanding this network is important if there are cultural barriers that limit the adoption of an intervention [39]. Up to seven names could be selected from a pre-specified list of ED provider-names, including those in leadership roles. See Additional file 2 for the complete surveys.\nTo assess the importance of end-user involvement in the development process, respondents were categorized as (1) directly involved in the dashboard development (interviewees, co-author MM), (2) not directly involved in the development but ≥30% of their network was involved, or (3) not directly involved and < 30% of their network was involved. The social network question was used to create a model that assessed the level of exposure that each participant had to people who were involved in the development of the dashboard. Exposure was defined as the percentage of nominated people who were involved in the development [23].\nCentrality measures for the social network analysis (in-degree, out-degree, closeness, and betweenness) were calculated using the igraph library [40]. Out-degree is the number of people someone selected in the network question; in-degree is the number of times a person was selected by someone else; closeness measures the average distance someone has to everyone else in the network; and betweenness is a measure of how often each person lies on the shortest paths connecting others [41]. People with high betweenness scores are thought to be key in the early adoption of innovation, people with a high in-degree are ‘popular’ figures in the network that are important for the innovation to spread to the early majority, and people with a high closeness score are thought to be important for an innovation to spread to a large amount of people [41].\nDescriptive statistics were used to describe the sample and survey results. Pre- and post-survey data were compared using a Wilcoxon Ranked Sum test for continuous measures and the McNemar’s Test for categorical variables. The Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to compare change-scores between groups. A Spearman correlation coefficient was used to describe relations between continuous data. Rho correlations coefficients of > 0.7 were considered strong correlations, coefficients between 0.5–0.7 were considered moderate, and coefficients between 0.3 and 0.5 were considered weak. A p-value of < 0.05 was considered significant. Analyses were performed in SAS 9.4 (Cary, NC).\nHuman-centered design approach - interviews\nA total of eight semi-structured interviews were performed to guide the initial design of the performance feedback dashboard between May and August 2017 (Additional file 3: Table S1). Half of the interviewees were male, their median time since starting residency was 12 years (range 9–45), and their median length of employment in the current ED was 8 years (range 2–31). Two of the interviewees had primarily leadership roles, three primarily clinical responsibilities, and three primarily academic responsibilities. Two were employed by the LA County Department of Health and six by USC. The median duration of the interviews was 57 min (range 35–77). Thematic saturation was achieved after seven interviews; no new themes emerged in the eighth interview.\nDashboard content – metrics\nNumerous metrics were discussed in the interviews, including the number of patients, their discharge disposition, and a variety of length of stay, utilization, and outcomes measures (Additional file 3: Table S2). Overall, the time between the moment a physician first sees the patient until the moment a disposition decision is made (i.e. decision to admit a patient to the hospital or discharge from the ED), was perceived to be the most relevant LOS metric. “Provider to decision time. Yeah, I think that’s an important metric, I think that there’s probably some wiggle room in there. In general, I think that’s an important part of our job is to have a disposition decision within whatever time frame we deem to be appropriate.” (Interview 7).\nAdditionally, test utilization, including CT scans, MR scans, and labs, was thought to be of interest, especially if compared to peer utilization. “I think the number of yes [sic], I order 500 CT-scans in a year, and somebody else orders three, would be interesting. It would be interesting to know the false positives and the false [negatives].” (Interview 5). Interviewees also expressed an interest to know the outcomes of their decisions, or what happened to patients after they left the ED: “Bounce backs, maybe? Stuff that’s, like, more subjective, like, you know, your decisions on the patient. [ …] you admit someone to the floor and they die. Should they have gone to the ICU? Or you discharge them and they die. [ …] That’d be nice to know.” (Interview 2).\nDashboard content – comparisons\nInterviewees expressed the importance of comparing their data to others and of including historic trends. “So ideally [the data] would be where you are, where you were the previous month, or the previous time last year. And then where the department is.” (Interview 8). Ideally data would have to be aggregated on a weekly or monthly basis, as a day would not provide useful information because shifts vary day to day, while a year would be too long to remember. “[ …] if you wait too long then it doesn’t make any sense to you because you’re like, ‘That happened in September of last year. I don’t care. I don’t know what happened then.’ If you do it every day, then they’re kind of like, ‘Well, how am I supposed to know what I’m supposed to change?’” (Interview 2). Interviewees wanted to receive their data compared to their peers in a blinded fashion. Some expressed discomfort with others seeing their data: “I’m personally um, scared you know, scared to be compared with others.” (Interview 3). Others didn’t think it would be necessary to share the data openly to achieve change: “We serve as our sort of biggest critics already and that for us to see it is enough to be like a blow to an ego where you can say, ‘Oh wow, I’m that slow compared to my colleagues?’ ” (Interview 7).\nDashboard functionality\nThree key themes emerged in the discussions about desired functionality of the performance feedback dashboard. First, participants emphasized the need for the dashboard to be easily accessible to increase the likelihood that people would actually use the dashboard. “If it’s like one more thing to do, I might not do it. It would have, it would have to be something that was like every time you logged in it popped up or something, or I would not look at it. Yeah. I’m not gonna go seek out that information.” (Interview 4). On the other hand, physicians did want to be able to drill down the data further to know what happened during specific shifts or with specific patients. “Ideally for people that have unscheduled returns, I would like to see why ... I would like their name, their medical record number so I could look them up and also then what happened to them on the return visit.” (Interview 8). Lastly, interviewees expressed that they would like to see a certain level of customization to define metrics of interest for them: “a good dashboard should give you the ability to, um, customize it, customize the view and the parameters that you look at for your, for your position at that time. Um, and you should be able to change that on the fly.” (Interview 1).\nBarriers and unintended consequences\nA variety of concerns were brought up during the interviews. A performance dashboard might increase physician stress levels, dehumanize the patient experience, and potentially negatively affect the quality and safety of care: “Yeah, if I’m seeing four patients an hour and I need to have a dispo [disposition decision] on each of them within an hour and a half or two hours or whatever the ED group tells you is the right metric then probably I’m cutting a lot of corners not having substance of conversations with the patient, not providing great patient care.” (Interview 7). Additional concerns were related to physicians’ responsibility to teach the many residents in the ED, which could be negatively affected. “A lot of times we give the residents a lot of leeway to think things through. And part of that is that we haven’t had to move on a very like super-fast time process. [ …] if you’re having time in the ED as something you’re thinking about more than necessarily clinical accuracy, it’s ... it is gonna change the way we practice with supervision.” (Interview 4).\nData accuracy was a concern as well, given that electronic medical record (EMR) data might not always be accurate. “All of your metrics are only as good as the people putting them in, and that’s always gonna be, you know, um, an issue with accuracy [ …]. ” (Interview 1). Interviewees also expressed the need to correct for the acuity of patients seen and the shift. “Oh, if you work more night shifts you’re gonna see more of them [more challenging cases]. Probably have to control for shift in some way.” (Interview 4). Additionally, concerns were expressed regarding gaming of the system and problems with attribution of patients to the right physician, especially in a teaching hospital with many residents. “When they’re finally put in to a room, they very well may see a different resident and attending at that point. So, there may be three different [physicians involved]. And that’s not even counting change of shift.” (Interview 8).\nHuman centered design – initial design and iterative improvement\nBased on the interviews, we designed an initial version of the performance feedback dashboard between August and November 2017, which was then iteratively improved in two additional design cycles based on additional end-user feedback from five physicians in November and December 2017 (Additional file 3: Table S1). The first major iteration was developed after three additional interviews; the second and last major iteration was developed after another two interviews that revealed only minor required changes (Table 1), after which the design process was finalized.\nTable 1 Design decisions made during human-centered design\nThe design incorporates a monthly summary email that includes a few selected measures to ensure the data is easy to access (Additional file 3: Figure S1). A link would be provided to an interactive performance dashboard with a variety of measures that can be accessed on demand (Additional file 3: Figure S2), to give physicians the opportunity to dive deeper into the data if desired. The interactive dashboard includes three pages: a “Personal” page showing a physician’s individual performance compared to their peers, an “Emergency Department” page showing the performance of the ED overall as a reference, and a “My Favorites” page that displays measures selected by individual physicians (Fig. 1). During the iterative interviews, tabs were added to the pages to allow physicians to drill down by the timing of shift and the area of care within the ED as this reflects the severity of the cases, thereby providing an opportunity to adjust for case-mix. Table 1 gives a complete overview of the design considerations in the human-centered design process and the iterative improvements made.\nTop section of performance feedback dashboard. The top section of the designed prototype performance feedback dashboard. The name Jane Doe is a false name\nThe selection of measures for the dashboard was informed by audit and feedback best practices [12,13,14] and on information obtained during interviews in accordance with a human-centered design approach [18]. We specifically ensured a selection of measures that are actionable to physicians as this is a known requirement for effective audit and feedback interventions [13, 14]. The primary goal of the dashboard was to reduce overall patient LOS. However, to increase actionability of the measure, we focused on the time that can be influenced directly by physicians. In initial versions, this was the time from first physician to the time the physician makes the disposition decision (i.e. decision to admit to hospital, observation, or discharge). After additional interviews, we modified this to the time from when the patient is roomed until the disposition decision is made, as this more accurately represents the period directly influenced by the attending physician.\nTest utilization data, including the percentage of patients with a CT scan, MR scan, ultrasound, and lab test, were included because they affect LOS and are directly controlled by the physician. The number of requested consultations was not included as the data were not readily available in the EMR. Outcome data were included to address concerns about unintended consequences related to the quality of care if the focus was merely on LOS and test utilization. Initially, we included 72-h return rates and number of deaths. However, deaths were excluded from later versions in response to concerns about the reliability of EMR-derived death-data. Hospital LOS after admission was included as a proxy measure of appropriateness of admission, with the assumption that a short LOS might indicate that the patient did not need to be admitted. The total number of patients with the breakdown by timing of shift, area of care, and discharge disposition was included to provide more context about the patient population seen. During iterative rounds of improvements, we added detailed definitions of the measures used and clarified section headers to improve comprehension and trust in the dashboard.\nIt was decided to report data by monthly intervals to minimize the effect of day-to-day random variation, but to also ensure physicians still remember what happened during a given period. Comparison data were provided on the “Emergency Department” page showing summary measures for the entire ED. On initial designs, comparison data was shown on the “Personal” page as a ranking that included blinded peer data to provide physicians with achievable goals for improvement. However, further feedback made it clear that a ranking was not perceived as appropriate because the highest or lowest score does not necessarily indicate the best or the worst performance. Instead, it was decided to show the interquartile range of all physicians.\nIn total, 19 attending physicians (34%) responded to both pre- and post-surveys. Forty-two physicians (75%) responded to the pre-survey which included the clinical vignette and measures for value/interest, perceived competence, autonomy support, teamwork climate, and safety climate. Twenty-one physicians (37.5%) responded to the post-survey which included a mockup of the performance feedback dashboard, the clinical vignette, measures for value/interest, perceived competence, autonomy support, and the perceived usefulness of the dashboard and the perceived ease of use (Additional file 3: Table S3). Of the 19 physicians that responded to both surveys, 5 had been involved in the development of the dashboard, 7 physicians had more than 30% of their direct network involved in the development, 5 physicians had less than 30% of their direct network involved, and 2 did not answer the network question. Physicians with less exposure to those involved in the development process tended to have less experience and physicians who were directly involved in the development tended to have a more central position in the ED social network. Although all groups selected a roughly equal number of people to ask for advice (out-degree), physicians who were involved in the development were selected more frequently by others (in-degree), and had numerically higher betweenness scores. Closeness scores were similar between groups (Table 2).\nTable 2 Characteristics of survey respondents\nWhen comparing pre- and post-survey responses to the clinical vignette, we did not observe any differences in the percentage of physicians who would order imaging after seeing the prototype dashboard (12/19 pre and 14/19 post; p = 0.69). There were also no significant changes in the self-determination theory-based motivation measures; median pre- and post-values for value/usefulness were 4.4 (IQR 4.2–5.2) and 5.0 (IQR 4.0–5.8), respectively (p = 0.21); the perceived competence values were 5.5 (IQR 4.3–6.0) and 5.0 (IQR 4.0–6.3), respectively (p = 0.88); and the autonomy support values were 5.0 (IQR 2.8–5.7) and 4.0 (IQR 3.0–6.0), respectively (p = 0.83). We then assessed changes in sub-groups based on the level of exposure to people involved in the development process as determined by the social network analysis. We found that higher exposure was significantly associated with changes in the perceived value/usefulness of making quick disposition decisions (p = 0.048) after seeing the dashboard. The perceived value/usefulness-score of physicians who were directly involved in the development rose by a median of 0.6 points, while the score of physicians with low exposure (< 30% of network was involved) decreased by a median of 0.4 points. Similarly, physicians’ perceived competence in making quick disposition decisions increased in those physicians who were actively involved, and decreased in those with low exposure (NS, p = 0.059). No differences between groups were observed in change-scores for autonomy support by ED leadership (Fig. 2). No correlation was observed between the physicians’ perception of the culture in the ED and change scores (Table 3).\nThe effects of the performance feedback dashboard on motivation. The effect of the prototype performance feedback dashboard on perceived value/usefulness of making quick disposition decisions, perceived competence in making quick disposition decisions, and perceived autonomy support from emergency department leadership in physicians who were involved in the development (Inv, n = 5), those of which ≥ 30% of their network was involved in the development (≥30%, n = 7, high exposure), and those with < 30% (< 30%, n = 4, low exposure). Horizontal bars represent the group average. Each dot represents a unique observation\nTable 3 Correlation between climate and outcome measures\nWhile the importance of the metrics on the dashboard was generally rated highly (median 6 out of 7, IQR 4–6) and physicians reported they could affect the measures (median 6 out of 7, IQR 5–6), the perceived usefulness of the overall dashboard was only rated a median of 4 out of 7 (IQR 3–4.5). The median ease of use rating was 5 out of 7 (IQR 4.3–5.5) and physicians rated the likelihood they would recommend the dashboard to their peers as 6 out of 10 (IQR 5–7). When looking at specific subgroups, we found that physicians with little exposure to those involved in the development process rated the importance of the metrics significantly lower than others (p = 0.02, Table 4). A trend towards lower scores for perceived usefulness, ease of use, and likelihood to recommend the dashboard was found in these physicians as well (Table 4). Additionally, moderate correlations between the perceived safety climate and positive evaluations of the dashboard were observed. No correlation was observed between perceived teamwork climate and positive evaluations of the dashboard, except for the ability to affect measures (Table 3).\nTable 4 Quantitative assessment of the performance feedback dashboard\nPhysicians’ comments in the survey were analyzed qualitatively. Several physicians commented that the ability to have measures available would be a “step up”, would “provide an incentive”, or would be “interesting”. The visual design of the performance dashboard was described with words such as “clear”, “easy to understand”, “pleasant to look at”, and “user friendly”, though one physician commented it was “big brother controlling”. Other concerns were related to data accuracy, negative consequences on patient care or work culture, and the effect on the teaching environment. Lastly, while benchmarks were visualized on the dashboard using an interquartile range, several physicians commented that a benchmark would be needed in the dashboard for it to be useful, implying that a more intuitive design to display this information needs to be considered.\nThis study described the development of a front-end prototype performance feedback dashboard to deliver feedback to attending physicians about their performance with the goal of reducing patient LOS in the ED. We employed a human-centered design approach to ensure we developed a dashboard that fits the end-users needs. This approach guided the selection of measures, development of functionality, and visualization of data. During the eleven interviews performed as part of the human-centered design process, a variety of barriers were identified that we attempted to address in the design. Additionally, we found preliminary evidence that the social network in which the intervention is developed and implemented is likely to be of key importance to the adoption of the intervention and the achievement of the intended changes in physicians’ practice patterns.\nThe involvement of end-users in the design of the dashboard allowed us to select relevant measures. Particularly, it helped us select measures that were perceived as actionable and under control of the physician. It also helped identify appropriate comparisons and clear visualizations. The multiple interviews before and during development provided insights about the importance of having drilldown functionality, both to increase trust in the data as well as to correct for confounding variables such as patient acuity. While we were able to address a variety of concerns that came up during the design process, other issues were not sufficiently addressed according to post-survey results. Interviewees expressed concerns about the application of a performance-feedback tool in an educational setting, in which they also have the responsibility to teach residents. This is consistent with prior findings that clear goals need to be aligned with audit and feedback interventions [14]. Another recurring barrier was the lack of trust in EMR data. This too is consistent with prior studies, and a variety of strategies are available to improve the accuracy of, and trust in, EMR data for quality improvement purposes [42, 43].\nWe showed preliminary evidence that the ED/workplace culture may be important for the adoption of technology. Physicians who reported higher scores on questions about safety climate based on questions such as “I would feel safe being treated here as a patient” and “The culture in this clinical area makes it easy to learn from the errors of others,” also reported higher scores for acceptability of the dashboard. This suggests that nurturing a culture that supports learning from errors is important for acceptance of performance feedback. Additionally, we showed data that suggests that the involvement of end-users in the design can lead to higher acceptability and increased motivation to change. Not only were those involved in the design more likely to report higher acceptance scores, this effect also appeared to be disseminated through their social network; conversely, physicians with little exposure to those involved in the design of the dashboard reported lower acceptance of the dashboard compared to those who had higher levels of exposure. Similarly, the dashboard had a positive effect on motivation of those involved in the design and a negative effect on those with little exposure. These findings are consistent with other studies showing that social networks have important roles in dissemination of innovation and behavior change [22, 27,28,29]. This implies that it might be important to strategically select the people involved in the design process based on their position in the social network.\nWhile these preliminary findings offer useful insights, the sample size is small and with only 19 of 56 participants responding to both surveys, there is likely a selection bias. Therefore, these results should not be interpreted as a proof of concept, but rather as preliminary evidence that needs to be further explored in future studies. Additionally, physicians who were included in the design process had more experience than those who were not involved and had a more central position in the ED social network. This is likely due to our purposive sample selection strategy along with the selection bias introduced by the participation of only about half of the physicians that were invited. We purposefully excluded physicians with less than 2 years of experience in this ED because we expected those to have less insight regarding the needs and workflows of the ED. Moreover, our study only included attending physicians at a single site, limiting generalizability to other settings and other healthcare providers such as nurse practitioners. Furthermore, while we were able to test the effect of this prototype dashboard on physicians’ motivation to make faster disposition decisions, the prototype did not include real, personalized data which likely decreased the observed impact.\nLastly, we would like to acknowledge that caution should be exercised when attempting to implement a performance dashboard such as the one developed in this study. Both intended and unintended consequences should be monitored closely, for example through the inclusion of balancing measures. This is especially important when appropriateness measures are not readily available for metrics such as test utilization and LOS in the ED; reductions in test ordering may not always be appropriate and reductions in LOS might not always improve quality of care even if they may increase patient satisfaction. While we included 72-h return rates as a balancing measure on the dashboard, several other potential unintended consequences were identified in the interview process, including physician stress levels, dehumanization of the patient experience, effects on teaching, and effects on quality and safety of care.\nIn summary, this small pilot study in a single ED showed the feasibility of designing a performance feedback dashboard using a human-centered design approach over the course of 8 months. Additionally, we showed preliminary evidence suggesting that both the culture and social network can be leveraged to facilitate the adoption and enhance the effect of such an intervention. A social network analysis prior to the initiation of the human-centered design process could help identify the right stakeholders to involve in this process and increase the likelihood of successful implementation. This evidence, along with the observation that data quality and unclear goals are barriers to acceptance, shows that implementation of an audit and feedback intervention cannot happen in a vacuum; this type of intervention requires close collaboration of senior leadership, designers, researchers, IT, and end-users.\nEMR:\nLAC+USC:\nLos Angeles County + University of Southern California\nUSC:\nDerlet RW, Richards JR, Kravitz RL. Frequent overcrowding in US emergency departments. Acad Emerg Med. 2001;8(2):151–5.\nHoot NR, Aronsky D. Systematic review of emergency department crowding: causes, effects, and solutions. Ann Emerg Med. 2008;52(2):126–36 e1.\nMcCarthy ML. Overcrowding in emergency departments and adverse outcomes. BMJ. 2011;342:d2830.\nPham JC, Seth Trueger N, Hilton J, Khare RK, Smith JP, Bernstein SL. Interventions to improve patient-centered care during times of emergency department crowding. Acad Emerg Med. 2011;18(12):1289–94.\nGardner RL, Sarkar U, Maselli JH, Gonzales R. Factors associated with longer ED lengths of stay. Am J Emerg Med. 2007;25(6):643–50.\nStuart PJ, Crooks S, Porton M. An interventional program for diagnostic testing in the emergency department. Med J Aust. 2002;177(3):131–4.\nFlorin TA, French B, Zorc JJ, Alpern ER, Shah SS. Variation in emergency department diagnostic testing and disposition outcomes in pneumonia. Pediatrics. 2013;132(2):237–44.\nIsaacs DM, Marinac J, Sun C. Radiograph use in low back pain: a United States emergency department database analysis. J Emerg Med. 2004;26(1):37–45.\nModahl L, Digumarthy SR, Rhea JT, Conn AK, Saini S, Lee SI. Emergency department abdominal computed tomography for nontraumatic abdominal pain: optimizing utilization. J Am Coll Radiol. 2006;3(11):860–6.\nBlackmore CC, Castro A. Improving the quality of imaging in the emergency department. Acad Emerg Med. 2015;22(12):1385–92.\nGrol R. Implementing guidelines in general practice care. Qual Health Care. 1992;1(3):184–91.\nIvers N, Jamtvedt G, Flottorp S, Young JM, Odgaard-Jensen J, French SD, et al. Audit and feedback: effects on professional practice and healthcare outcomes. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012;6:CD000259.\nBoyce MB, Browne JP, Greenhalgh J. Surgeon’s experiences of receiving peer benchmarked feedback using patient-reported outcome measures: a qualitative study. Implement Sci. 2014;9:84.\nIvers NM, Sales A, Colquhoun H, Michie S, Foy R, Francis JJ, et al. No more ‘business as usual’ with audit and feedback interventions: towards an agenda for a reinvigorated intervention. Implement Sci. 2014;9:14.\nRyan RM, Deci EL. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Am Psychol. 2000;55(1):68–78.\nIvers NM, Grimshaw JM, Jamtvedt G, Flottorp S, O’Brien MA, French SD, et al. Growing literature, stagnant science? Systematic review, meta-regression and cumulative analysis of audit and feedback interventions in health care. J Gen Intern Med. 2014;29(11):1534–41.\nFoy R, Eccles MP, Jamtvedt G, Young J, Grimshaw JM, Baker R. What do we know about how to do audit and feedback? Pitfalls in applying evidence from a systematic review. BMC Health Serv Res. 2005;5:50.\nHartzler AL, Chaudhuri S, Fey BC, Flum DR, Lavallee D. Integrating patient-reported outcomes into spine surgical care through visual dashboards: lessons learned from human-centered design. EGEMS (Wash DC). 2015;3(2):1133.\nSzalma JL. On the application of motivation theory to human factors/ergonomics: motivational design principles for human-technology interaction. Hum Factors. 2014;56(8):1453–71.\nDavis FD. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Q. 1989;13(3):319–40.\nShojania KG, Duncan BW, McDonald K, Wachter R, Markowitz A. Making health care safer: a critical analysis of patient safety practices. Evid Rep Technol Assess (Summ). 2001;43(1):668.\nValente TW. Network models of the diffusion of innovations. New York: Hampton Press, Inc.; 1995.\nValente TW. Social networks and health: models, methods, and applications. New York: Oxford University Press; 2010.\nValente TW, Watkins SC, Jato MN, Van Der Straten A, Tsitsol L-PM. Social network associations with contraceptive use among Cameroonian women in voluntary associations. Soc Sci Med. 1997;45(5):677–87.\nEnnett ST, Bauman KE. Peer group structure and adolescent cigarette smoking: a social network analysis. J Health Soc Behav. 1993;34(3):226–36.\nAlexander C, Piazza M, Mekos D, Valente T. Peers, schools, and adolescent cigarette smoking. J Adolesc Health. 2001;29(1):22–30.\nColeman JS, Katz E, Menzel H. Medical innovation: a diffusion study. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill; 1966.\nGross CP, Cruz-Correa M, Canto MI, McNeil-Solis C, Valente TW, Powe NR. The adoption of ablation therapy for Barrett’s esophagus: a cohort study of gastroenterologists. Am J Gastroenterol. 2002;97(2):279–86.\nValente TW. Models and methods for innovation diffusion. Models and methods in social network analysis; 2005. p. 98–116.\nFee C, Burstin H, Maselli JH, Hsia RY. Association of emergency department length of stay with safety-net status. JAMA. 2012;307(5):476–82.\nBaard PP, Deci EL, Ryan RM. Intrinsic need satisfaction: a motivational basis of performance and well-being in two work settings. J Appl Soc Psychol. 2004;34(10):2045–68.\nDeci EL, Eghrari H, Patrick BC, Leone DR. Facilitating internalization: the self-determination theory perspective. J Pers. 1994;62(1):119–42.\nMcAuley E, Duncan T, Tammen VV. Psychometric properties of the intrinsic motivation inventory in a competitive sport setting: a confirmatory factor analysis. Res Q Exerc Sport. 1989;60(1):48–58.\nKool B, King V, Chelimo C, Dalziel S, Shepherd M, Neutze J, et al. Mild traumatic brain injury in children: management practices in the acute care setting. Emerg Med Australas. 2014;26(4):376–83.\nHu PJ, Chau PY, Sheng ORL, Tam KY. Examining the technology acceptance model using physician acceptance of telemedicine technology. J Manag Inf Syst. 1999;16(2):91–112.\nHolden RJ, Karsh B-T. The technology acceptance model: its past and its future in health care. J Biomed Inform. 2010;43(1):159–72.\nSexton JB, Helmreich RL, Neilands TB, Rowan K, Vella K, Boyden J, et al. The safety attitudes questionnaire: psychometric properties, benchmarking data, and emerging research. BMC Health Serv Res. 2006;6:44.\nSaint-Charles J, Mongeau P. Different relationships for coping with ambiguity and uncertainty in organizations. Soc Networks. 2009;31(1):33–9.\nValente TW, Palinkas LA, Czaja S, Chu KH, Brown CH. Social network analysis for program implementation. PLoS One. 2015;10(6):e0131712.\nCsardi G, Nepusz T. The igraph software package for complex network research. Int J Complex Syst. 2006;1695:1695.\nValente TW. Measures, Centrality. Social networks and health: models, methods, and applications, Chapter 5. New York: Oxford University Press; 2010.\nvan der Bij S, Khan N, Ten Veen P, de Bakker DH, Verheij RA. Improving the quality of EHR recording in primary care: a data quality feedback tool. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2017;24(1):81–7.\nBenin AL, Fenick A, Herrin J, Vitkauskas G, Chen J, Brandt C. How good are the data? Feasible approach to validation of metrics of quality derived from an outpatient electronic health record. Am J Med Qual. 2011;26(6):441–51.\nWe would like to thank Dr. Donna Spruijt-Metz, Dr. Gil Shlamovitz, and Dr. Song-Hee Kim for their thoughtful comments throughout this project. We would also like to thank the ED physicians who participated in the interviews and surveys.\nThis project was supported by the University of Southern California Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science and by the SC CTSI (NIH//NCATS) through Grant UL1TR001855. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. The funding sources had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.\nThe datasets used and/or analyzed in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. As the data contains potentially identifiable elements, we will de-identify the data upon request in accordance with the needs of the requesting party.\nGehr Family Center for Health Systems Science, Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2020 Zonal Ave, IRD 318, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA\nWelmoed K. van Deen\nCedars-Sinai Center for Outcomes Research and Education, Department of Medicine, Division for Health Services Research, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 116 N. Robertson Boulevard, PACT 801, Los Angeles, CA, 90048, USA\nKeck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 1975 Zonal Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA\nEdward S. Cho\n& Shona Lamb\nInteractive Media & Games Division, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, 900 West 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA\nKathryn Pustolski\n& Dennis Wixon\nDepartment of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 2001 N Soto Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90032, USA\nThomas W. Valente\nDepartment of Emergency Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 1200 N State Street, Room 1011, Los Angeles, CA, 90033, USA\nMichael Menchine\nSearch for Welmoed K. van Deen in:\nSearch for Edward S. Cho in:\nSearch for Kathryn Pustolski in:\nSearch for Dennis Wixon in:\nSearch for Shona Lamb in:\nSearch for Thomas W. Valente in:\nSearch for Michael Menchine in:\nWKvD conceived and designed the study, performed the interviews, oversaw data collection and interpretation, and wrote the manuscript. ESC designed the data collection strategy, collected, analyzed, and interpreted survey data, and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. KP analyzed and interpreted interview data, designed the dashboard, and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. DW designed the interview strategy, analyzed and interpreted interview data, and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. SL did the quantitative data analysis and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. TWV designed the social network analysis strategy, analyzed and interpreted the network analysis, and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. MM conceived and designed the study and reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.\nCorrespondence to Welmoed K. van Deen.\nWritten study information sheets were provided to interview participants and verbal consent was obtained. Survey participants were provided with a study information sheet prior to starting the online survey with the option to discontinue. No verbal consent was obtained from survey participants as the survey was administered online. No signed consent forms were required per the Institutional Review Board (IRB) as this was deemed a minimal risk study. All study procedures as well as the consent processes were approved by the University of Southern California Health Sciences IRB under protocol number HS-17-00293.\nParticipants verbally consented the use of non-identifiable quotes in publications and presentations and were provided the opportunity to review and comment on the presented results prior to finalization of the paper.\nMM works in the LAC+USC ED. The authors declare that they have no competing interests.\nInterview Guides. The interview guides used in the human-centered design process. Three interview guides are included; the interview guide used for leadership interviews, the interview guide for attending physician interviews for the first round of interviews, and the interview guide used during the iterative improvement process. (DOCX 32 kb)\nPre- and Post Surveys. The complete pre- and post-surveys used in this study. The surveys were administered online. (DOCX 62 kb)\nSupplemental Tables and Figures. The supplemental tables and figures references throughout the paper. (DOCX 272 kb)\nvan Deen, W.K., Cho, E.S., Pustolski, K. et al. Involving end-users in the design of an audit and feedback intervention in the emergency department setting – a mixed methods study. BMC Health Serv Res 19, 270 (2019) doi:10.1186/s12913-019-4084-3\nPerformance feedback\nAudit and feedback\nQuality, performance, safety and outcomes","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line689542"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6960578560829163,"wiki_prob":0.6960578560829163,"text":"Greg Hughes\nHomeGreg Hughes\nGreg has been drawing for as long as he can remember but he’s been a painter for eleven years. He got his first set of watercolours for his thirteenth birthday and completed his first picture in about fifteen minutes. The earliest experience of art he can remember was making a sculpture at school in New Zealand at age six. A green apple with toothpicks in it called “The Incredible Hulk”. Greg’s painting paints in acrylic, and gouache with pen and ink. He sold his first picture at 19, when he entered a competition with the theme Brisbane’s Environmental Heritage with a painting of the City Botanic Gardens. Greg paints landscapes using photographic references. Sometimes the landscapes are of real places, other times they’re just made up. He has also tried portraiture. Greg’s work is held in private collections in Mexico, Wales, England and Belgium. Greg has also created a a series of “futuristic” scenes and is inspired by the detailed work of fantasy artists such as Chris Moore, Tim White, Jim Burns, Bob Eggleton and Fred Gambino. In late 1998, Greg had an exhibition of “fantasy art” at the Sugar ‘n Spice cafe. Since leaving school he has studied graphic design part-time at Morningside TAFE. He is currently studying Fine Art full-time at the Queensland College of Art and has a passion to work as a graphic designer or illustrator.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line655184"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6202895045280457,"wiki_prob":0.37971049547195435,"text":"You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2012.\nApril 30 : Presbyterian Missionaries Freed\n30 April, 2012 in April 2012 by davidtmyers | No comments\nThis Day in Presbyterian History:\nMisperception of Ministry Hard to Overcome\nPartial information and misperceptions about one’s ministry are hard to overcome, especially when it involves an action which has taken place in the past.\nThink either back to the years of World War Two, or remember in your history this calamitous time in our nation’s history. The Axis powers of Germany and Japan had suddenly captured large areas in foreign lands, or in the case of Japan, delivered devastating blows to the Western world, as in the case of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Many foreigners were caught in what had been friendly territory, but now were enemy countries. These included diplomats and their families, tourists, and missionaries of the cross.\nEnter the Geneva Convention. It specified that treatment of non-combatants would be carried out with kindness and care. Further, plans would be made to extradite such individuals back to their home via neutral nations.\nIn the United States during these War Years, the State Department operated a small number of internment facilities, many of them being resorts and hotels in isolated parts of the country. Some of them were the Homestead Hotel (White Sulphur Springs, Virginia), Greenbriar Hotel (White Sulphur Springs, Virginia), a hotel in Asheville, Virginia, and other Virginia sites in Staunton, Hot Springs, New Market, and Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania.\nThe sole North Carolina retreat and conference center was at Montreat Assembly Inn. This was a Presbyterian retreat center, run by the Presbyterian Church in the United States. From October 29, 1942 to April 30, 1943, it held 133 Japanese and 131 German diplomats and their families.\nIt was an interesting opportunity to witness to these Axis diplomats. Into each of the hotel rooms had been placed New Testaments in both the German language and the Japanese languages. Further, church groups visited at Christmas and handed out presents to all the children. Christmas carols were sung at the retreat center, with many joining in the familiar carols. One simply doesn’t know what seeds of the gospel were being planted by the Holy Spirit during this time.\nWhen the time of exchange came with our diplomats, business people, and missionaries, it soon became clear that their experience in German and Japan held internments was not as plush as their counterparts in American areas.\nAgents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Border Patrol escorted the foreign diplomats and their families to trains which took them to ships from neutral countries. Usually they were marked clearly so enemy submarines would not torpedo them on their way back to their home countries.\nWords to Live By: Consider with gratitude the amazing exchange program in the gospel. Our sins were imputed or laid to the account of Christ, and His righteousness is imputed or laid to our account. We who were enemies of God became His friends. Thank God for this great exchange today.\nThrough the Scriptures: Psalms 58 – 60\nThrough the Standards: The liberties and privileges of adoption\nWCF 12:1\n“All those that are justified, God vouchsafes, in and for His only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have His name put upon them, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by Him as by a Father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption; and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.”\nTags: Geneva Convention, Japan, United States, World War Two\nApril 29 : WSC Q. 26 – Christ’s Office of King\nDo You Know King Jesus?\nWe have looked at the two offices of prophet and priest which Jesus executes. Now we come, in the absence of anything Presbyterian, to Jesus executing the office of king. Number 25 of the Shorter Catechism reminds us that “Christ executes the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.”\nChrist in the past is a king, is One now, and ever will be a king. His kingdom is a spiritual and invisible one. He Himself said in the midst of His arrest to Pilate that “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” (NIV – John 18:36). But it is in existence, and we as His people are kingdom-citizens of it. Paul tells us “he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” (NIV – Colossians 1:13)\nJesus executes this office of kingdom by subduing us to Himself. “Thy people,” the Psalmist reminds us in Psalm 110:3 “shall be willing in the day of thy power.” (KJV) He further rules over us. “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (KJV – 1 Corinthians 6:19, 20) He in addition as king defends us. When God delivered the Psalmist from the hands of his enemies, David broke out in psalm, singing Psalm 18:1, 2 “I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” (NIV) Last, He restrains and conquers all His and our enemies. In a text which has been quoted by His kingdom-citizens in harrowing days of old, to say nothing of the persecuted brothers and sisters all over this world, John the apostle reminds us that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (ESV – 1 John 4:4b)\nWords to Live By: As king, Christ’s mediatorial activity is performed in both directions — upward in intercession, and downward in applying the benefits of redemption and administering the affairs of His church. As king, Christ meets the problem of man’s weakness and dependence, supplying us with power and protection.\nThrough the Standards: The subject, sphere, and ground of adoption\nWLC 74 — “What is adoption?\nA. Adoption is an act of the free grace of God, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, whereby all those that are justified are received into the number of his children, have his name put upon them, the Spirit of his Son given to them, are under his fatherly care and dispensations, admitted to all the liberties and privileges of the sons of God, made heirs of all the promises, and fellow-heirs with Christ in glory.”\nTags: Holy Ghost, Scriptures Psalms, Shorter Catechism, Son Jesus Christ\nApril 28 : What’s In A Name?: PCUSA sues over the name PCofA\n28 April, 2012 in April 2012 by archivist | No comments\nGoliath against David\nTalk about Goliath against David. This was the case on this day April 28, 1937 when the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America went to court against the Presbyterian Church of America. They had been successful in winning the church properties of those ministers who had been suspended from their ranks. They had been successful in evicting them from the manse or parsonage. They had been successful in removing their life insurance policies. Now they wanted their name.\nTheir argument was simple. Plans had been under way for some time for a proposed union of the United Presbyterian Church of North America with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. And one of the names floated for that proposed union was the Presbyterian Church of America.\nThe principal witness for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., was the denomination’s Stated Clerk, Lewis Seymour Mudge. Key to the whole case was the question of similarity of names as the sole basis for the suit against the Presbyterian Church of America. Attempts by the latter group to show the doctrinal reasons for the new church were then met with objection after objection by the attorney for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.\nWitnesses for the P.C. of A. were a “who’s who” of its early leaders. Ministers Paul Woolley, Edwin Rian, and Charles Woodbridge all testified on April 28 and April 29. Professor John Murray tried to bear witness about the doctrinal differences between the two denominations, but was hindered by objections to his presence on the stand. He left, without testifying.\nIt took several months before the decision was handed down. But as the historical devotional for February 9, 1939 showed, the decision was made against the Presbyterian Church of America. Moderator R.B. Kuiper called for an earlier than usual General Assembly in that month of February, 1939, and the new name of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was chosen by the church.\nWhen the union between the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America and the United Presbyterian Church of North America took place in 1958, their new name was the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA). In God’s providence, this gave the opportunity for the southern Presbyterians who left the Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1973 to choose the name, The Presbyterian Church in America, as their new name during their second General Assembly.\nPresbyterian Guardian managing editor Thomas R. Birch remarked at the close of his report in the May 29th, 1937 issue, “And once more . . . Gideon’s band of true Christians, the Presbyterian Church of America, has publicly taken its unflinching stand on the side of historic Presbyterianism and the principles of religious liberty for which the fathers fought and died.” His entire article concerning the injunction can be read online in the May 29, 1937 issue of the Presbyterian Guardian. Yet through further legal appeal, it was not until March 15, 1939 that the denomination officially changed its name to The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Mr. Birch wrote again at that time regarding the name change, “What’s In A Name?”, on page 47 of the March 1939 issue of The Presbyterian Guardian.\nWords to Live By: Jesus promised His followers that they would be brought up before the courts for the sake of their profession as Christianity. This was one such example, and it will not be the last time in the history of the Christian church. Yet God’s Word is sure. Remain steadfast to the faith, and God’s reward will be ultimately yours in Christ.\nThrough the Standards: The nature of those justified who have been adopted\nWSC 34 — “What is adoption?\nA. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God.”\nImage sources : 1. Photograph of Lewis S. Mudge, newsclipping from the Syracuse Herald, 28 May 1936, p. 3, as found in Scrapbook no. 2, p. 110, in the Henry G. Welbon Manuscript Collection.\n2. Cover image of the Minutes of the Fourth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America, meeting in Quarryville, Pa., May 31-June 3, 1938.\n3. Cover image of the Minutes of the Fifth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Meeting at Westminster Theological Seminary, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pa., February 9, 1939…\nAll scans prepared by the staff of the PCA Historical Center.\nApril 27 : WSC Q. 25 – Our High Priest\nChrist executes the office of priest\nWith little of Presbyterian history to interest us on this day of April 27, we turn to one of the three offices which Christ executes for His people. This office is so important to our Christian understanding of our redemption and sanctification. Shorter Catechism number 25 tells us that this priestly office is executed “in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and reconciling us to God, and in making continual intercession for us.”\nThe definition of a priest is one qualified and authorized to act in behalf of man with God. Certainly, Christ was over and over again in the Book of Hebrews identified as such a priest, whether we speak about specific references to Him or typical fulfilments of Him as a priest. Hebrews 6:20 tells us that Jesus has “become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (ESV)\nThe two branches of the priestly work of Christ falls into first, His sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. We need to remember that in this sacrificial work, our Lord was both the priest and the victim, and perfect in each. In comparing the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament, the writer makes the contrast in Hebrews 9:14 by stating “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (ESV)\nThe object, and indeed the effect of this offering, was for the full satisfaction of divine justice. Jesus on the cross endured on our behalf the very punishment our sins deserved. He then reconciled us to God. Paul says it all in Romans 5:9, 10: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled by God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” (ESV) Don’t just read this text without emotion! Rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, as Romans 5:11 charges the reader.\nThe second branch of Christ’s priestly work falls into the intercession which He makes daily for us now. He makes, in our Confessional fathers words, “continual intercession for us.” He appears in His glorified humanity at the right hand of God. He declares His will to be applied to believers on earth. He answers all accusations against us by that unholy trinity of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the solid ground of this intercession is the merit of His perfect obedience and sacrifice during His sinless life and death, burial, and resurrection.\nChristian reader, has it really grabbed you that Jesus is praying for you now and every day? Do you go on your way every day with that comforting truth in your head and heart? You can, because Christ is your personal priest.\nWords to Live By: As priest, His mediatorship is upward from man to God. As the priest, He meets the problems of your guilt, supplying you with righteousness. Live in the light of this wondrous truth of the office Christ executes as a priest.\nThrough the Standards: Proof texts of Justification:\n“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (NAS)\n“being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” (NAS)\n“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” (KJV)\nPhilippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (ESV)\nTags: Justification Romans, Lord Jesus Christ, NAS, Scriptures Psalms\nApril 26 : B.B. Warfield Ordained\n26 April, 2012 in April 2012 by davidtmyers | 2 comments\nHe Being Dead, Yet Speaks\nWe have a few of the characters in this historical devotional guide who are mentioned in more than one date out of the year. Their birth dates, their death dates, and significant dates during their lives are found here. The reason why that is, is that they, while members now of the triumphant church, were well-known members of the militant church on earth. Such a one like that was Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.\nBorn in 1851 in Kentucky from good solid Presbyterian heritage, especially on his mother’s side, Warfield was known and still is known as a great defender of the faith. The books he wrote are still readily available in both hard copy as well as on the web. Yet he had limited experience in the pulpit and pastorate, serving only a few years in that capacity. Further, he was not interested in church politics, either in the presbytery, synod, or general assembly. His place of ministry was always in the classroom in a seminary setting.\nIn that sense, he was, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 4:12, an individual who “equipped the saints.” That word “equip” is used in the gospels accounts to describe the necessary work of the fishermen who later became the apostles of our Lord. It was said that when that divine call came, they were “mending the nets.” In other words, they were getting the nets ready for service. This is what the word “equip” speaks about in Ephesians 4. And that is exactly what Warfield did as a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary with his students. They were equipped as student saints. They were prepared for service in the kingdom of God.\nNo one did a better job in his time there than Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. He took over the Chair of Charles Hodge from the son of Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge. He was therefore a link to the marvelous Hodge dynasty at old Princeton. When he died in 1921, it was said that Old Princeton had passed away. In God’s providence, a mere nine years later Westminster Theological Seminary began, as an effort to preserve and continue something of that tradition of Old Princeton.\nAnd to think all this story was begun officially on April 26, 1879 when Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was ordained to the ministry. It was a recognition of the spiritual gifts which he possessed in knowledge and wisdom, in teaching, and in discernment. His ordination was a recognition by the Church of the hope and anticipation of how those gifts might be used in coming years, for the glory of God.\nWords to Live By: Warfield is in heaven now, but his words live on in the church on earth. It will do you, the reader, much good to spend time in reading his books either in book form or on the web. Those books are not always easy to read, but they are worth the effort, for they still stand ready to equip you for service in Christ’s kingdom.\nThrough the Standards: Only one way of justification\n“The justification of believers under the old testament was, in all these respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the new testament.”\nApril 25 : Rev. Edwin Rian returns to PCUSA\nThis Day in Presbyterian History: The Man Who Looked Back\nI was frozen in place that day behind the front desk of the Christian conference center in New Jersey. The distinguished man had walked up to me to ask whether the Director of the Conference was on site. I replied that he was away at the time. Whereupon the man gave me his business card, and walked out of the hotel that summer afternoon in 1965. Looking down, I read the name of “Edwin Rian, Assistant to the President, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.” I wish that I could say to our readers that this young seminarian had then rushed out of the hotel to ask the writer of the historic book The Presbyterian Conflict to stop and talk. I wish that I could say to our readers that I stopped him and discussed with him as to why he left the infant Orthodox Presbyterian Church after such a valiant stand against the apostasy of the Presbyterian Church, USA. I could have asked him whether he remembered my father, who stood with him in the nineteen thirties for the faith, by faith. But I did none of these things. I was frozen in time.\nBorn in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Edwin Rian came to Princeton Theological Seminary to study Semitics at the prestigious school., as part of the Seminary’s class of 1927. Ordained in 1930 in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, he advanced his scholarship by studying as a Princeton Fellow at the Universities of Berlin and Marburg in Germany. Returning to the States, he saw clearly the issues which led his mentor J. Gresham Machen to organize Westminster Theological Seminary. He took his stand on those same issues, and like Machen and a number of other ministers, was censured by the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. As a founding member of the Presbyterian Church of America (1936), he stayed with that church when the Bible Presbyterians left it in 1938. The former was later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (1938). It was in 1940 that Rian crystallized the issues by writing the important book, “The Presbyterian Conflict.” It still can be found in print or online, and is quoted often by those who seek to understand this period in American Presbyterian history.\nSomething happened to Edwin Rian himself, though, in the latter part of the 1940’s. The fact that he left in 1946 to join the Christian University Association as its General Secretary was not unusual. What was unusual was that on April 25, 1947, he left the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to reenter the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., from which he had been suspended over ten years before.\nVarious reasons had been suggested for this, sea change. One theory was that Rian was disappointed that a Christian University had not been started in Reformed circles. And certainly, the rest of his life and ministry was taken up in educational circles. But that reason doesn’t ring true to this contributor. The reasons, however, were never revealed.\nHe went on to serve in a variety of administrative posts in colleges and universities like Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, Beaver College in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, Jamestown College in Jamestown, North Dakota, Biblical Seminary in New York City, New York, and the American Bible Society in New York City. His last ministry and one in which he came full circle, was the position of Assistant to the President of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. James I. McCord, where he served for 15 years until his retirement. He departed this life in 1995 at age 95 in San Diego, California.\nWords to Live By: Jesus said in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 6:62, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” The commentator writes that there are some whose hearts are in the past. They walk forever looking backwards and thinking wistfully of the good old days. The watchword of the Kingdom servants is always “forward,” never “backward.” Let us be not be content with lukewarm service.\nThrough the Standards: Once justified, always justified\n“God does continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; and, although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of His countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.”\nApril 24 : Birth of J. A. Alexander\nJoseph Addison Alexander was the third son of the Rev. Archibald Alexander and his wife Janetta (Waddel) Alexander. In modern terms, Joseph was home schooled, and he developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, pursuing one subject after another as it caught his attention. Eventually he grew to become another of that esteemed early faculty of the Princeton Theological Seminary.\nHis biographer says of J.A. Alexander that\n“…in the midst of all his laborious and diversified pursuits he saved time for the most heart-searching exercises in his closet. He gave himself up to daily communion with his God. He might neglect everything else, but he could not neglect his private devotions. In point of fact he neglected nothing. He moved as by clockwork. The cultivation of personal piety, in the light of the inspired word, was now with him the main object that he had in life. The next most prominent goal that he set before himself was the interpretation of the original scriptures; for their own sake, and for the benefit of a rising ministry, as well as for the gratification he took in the work. The Bible was to him the most profoundly interesting book in the world. It was in his eyes not merely the only source of true and undefiled religion, but also the very paragon among all remains of human genius. He knew great portions of it by heart….But more than this, the Bible was the chief object of his personal enthusiasm; he was fond of it; he was proud of it; he exulted in it. It occupied his best thoughts by day and by night. It was his meat and drink. It was his delectable reward. There were times when he might say with the Psalmist, “Mine eyes prevent the night watches that I might meditate in thy word, I have rejoiced in the way of thy precepts more than in great riches.” He succeeded perfectly in communicating this delightful zeal to others. His pupils all concur in saying that “he made the Bible glorious” to them.\nWords to Live By: The Bible is the very Word of God—His self-revelation to His people. J.A. Alexander seems to have made Psalm 1 the model and guide for his life. If you have never memorized a portion of Scripture, this Psalm is short and is a great place to start. Setting it to memory, such that you can think on it at various times, will bring real profit.\n1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.\n2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.\n3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.\n4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.\n5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.\n6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.\nAdditional Notes for this day:\nProfessor J.G. Machen, lecturer, author and Bible scholar, delivered two addresses on Christianity at the dedication of the new home of the New York Bible Society in East Forty-eighth Street. [The Continent 53.17 (27 April 1922): 529.]\nThrough the Standards: Act of justification is from the Triune God\n“God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fulness of time, die for their sins, and rise for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit does, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them.”\nApril 23 : Horace Newton Allen\nThe Earliest Protestant Missionary to Korea\nIt wasn’t luck. It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t good fortune. It was plainly providential.\nSent to Korea as a physician, Horace Newton Allen was in Seoul in 1884 when a royal relative of the governing family was stabbed and left badly injured. A German diplomat called for Dr. Allen to treat the young man with Western style medicine practices with the result that the young member of the royal family recovered in three months. Obviously pleased with the results, the royal family was grateful beyond words and ready to do any thing and everything the physician desired. He promptly went about to establish a hospital which sought to train native Koreans in Western style medicine practices. But Allen also sought to open up the vast land to American evangelists and missionaries, for that was what Dr. Allen was himself.\nBorn April 23, 1858 in Delaware, Ohio, Horace Newton Allen studied at Ohio Wesleyan University. Graduating from there, he went on to get his medical credentials from Miami Medical School in Ohio. Sent out first by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to China, he stayed but a year as a result of less than welcome from the Chinese people. So he went to Korea and had the above experience.\nThis wide and effective door occurred when Korea was still anti-Christian in its attitude and actions toward Christians. A little before this, over 10,000 Koreans who had converted to Christianity had been beheaded. But his example as a Christian doctor enabled the opening of the door to Christians evangelists and missionaries from other lands, including the United States, to enter the land and minister there in complete freedom.\nIn fact, so much did he identify with the Korean people, that the United States in 1897 appointed him as a diplomatic minister and consul general to that land. He stayed there in this government position until 1905 when President Teddy Roosevelt recalled him. He returned to the United States and died in 1932.\nThe medical facility which he began was called in Korean, “The House of Extended Grace.” And that is what Dr. Horace Allen brought to Korea as he evangelized the souls of people in that Asian nation and healed the bodies of Korean people.\nWords to Live By: When God opens up a wide and effective door, God’s people need to be ready to enter through it for the work of Christ’s kingdom.\nThrough the Scriptures: Psalm 37 – 39\nThrough the Standards: Justification is free to us, but not to Christ who paid for it\n“Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to His Father’s justice in their behalf. Yet, in as much as He was given by the Father for them; and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead; and both, freely, not for anything in them; their justification is only of free grace; that both the exact justice, and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.”\nTags: Born April, Horace Newton Allen, Korea, United States\nApril 22 : Jonathan Dickinson\nA Man Fit for the Times\nJonathan Dickinson shares a lot of credit in the shaping of the early Presbyterian Church in the American colonies. Born on April 22, 1688 in Hatfield, Massachusetts, he graduated from Yale in 1706. Two years later, he was installed as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where he remained for the next forty years.\nIn 1722, with respect to the issue of creedal subscription, a schism began to develop in the infant Presbyterian church. The question was simple. Should a church officer — elder or deacon — be required to subscribe to everything in the Westminster Standards, or would it be sufficient for that officer to simply subscribe to the more basic truths of historic Christianity, as expressed, for instance, in the Nicene Creed? Dickinson took the latter position and became the chief proponent of it in the infant church. The fact that the same issue was raging in the mother countries among the immigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland only heightened the controversy in the colonies. Eventually, the approaching storm of schism was stopped by the Adopting Act of 1729. Written by Jonathan Dickinson, it solidly placed the church as believing in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only infallible rule of faith and life, while receiving an adoption the Confessional standards of the Westminster Assembly as subordinate standards of the church. Each court of the latter, whether Session, Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly would decide what exceptions to the latter would be allowed, and which exceptions would not be tolerated to the Westminster Standards.\nIn addition to his pastoral leadership in the church courts, the fourth college to be established in the colonies was the College of New Jersey in October of 1742. It began in the manse of the first president, namely, Jonathan Dickinson. The handful of students in what later on become Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University studied books which were a part of Dickinson’s pastoral library, and ate their meals with his family. He would pass on to glory four months after the beginning of this school.\nHis last words were symbolic of his place in the history of the Presbyterian church. He said, “Many years passed between God and my soul, in which I have solemnly dedicated myself to Him, and I trust what I have committed unto Him, He is able to keep until that day.”\nWords to Live By: Is this your testimony? Paul writes in his last letter to the first century church, “. . . for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.” (KJV – 2 Timothy 1:12)\nThrough the Standards: Faith alone justifies, but never stands alone\n“Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love.”\nTags: Adopting Act of 1729, Jonathan Dickinson, New Jersey, WCF, Westminster Standards\nApril 21 : Maryland Toleration Law\nMaryland Toleration Law Opens up Colony for Reformed Preaching\nApril 21 was an important date in 1649 for the Reformed faith in the colony of Maryland. Originally, Maryland was a colony established as a refuge for English Catholics. But as more non-Catholics came into the colony, and indeed it became a Protestant colony, the Maryland Assembly on this date established the Maryland Toleration Law, or as it is sometimes known as The Act Concerning Religion.\nWhat it did was to mandate religious tolerance for trinitarian Christians. That adjective “trinitarian” is important. If a citizen of the colony denied the deity of Jesus Christ, for example, then the punishment was seizure of their land, and even death. Thus Unitarians, or Jews, or atheists were threatened by this law. It was meant more so as a protection for the Roman Catholics as it was for the Protestants, and specifically the Reformed faith.\nIt wouldn’t last long on the books, being repealed in 1654 by Oliver Cromwell’s influence upon the colony, and specifically the Anglican Church. It would be returned to the law books, but then repealed forever in 1692. It is interesting though that a part of it was found in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the rights of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The phrase “the free exercise thereof,” comes from the Maryland Act of Toleration.\nWhat interests us in this Act of Toleration is that it allowed “the father of Presbyterianism” in the colonies, Francis Makemie, the freedom to preach in Maryland. Arriving in the Maryland colony in 1683, he didn’t have to seek permission from the governor of the colony to proclaim the richness of free grace. Further, those of the Reformed faith who were driven out from the Virginia Colony’s control by the Anglicans, could come to Maryland to practice their Reformed faith. Makemie went on to establish several Presbyterian churches in Maryland.\nWords to Live By: This same Francis Makemie didn’t let state laws prohibit him from preaching the gospel. (See January 21 historical devotional) He was willing to go where the Holy Spirit led him to proclaim the unsearchable riches of God’s grace, regardless of the state law. But when the liberty of the state enabled him to go, he didn’t “let the grass grow under his feet” in sharing the good news of Christ, and Him crucified. Let us not let the fear of man’s face hinder us in sharing what Christ has done for us.\nThrough the Standards: Justification, according to the catechisms\nWLC 70 — “What is justification?\nA. Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.”\nWSC 33 — “What is justification?\nA. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”\nTags: English Catholics, Francis Makemie, Maryland Assembly, Oliver Cromwell","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1377865"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6415275931358337,"wiki_prob":0.35847240686416626,"text":"NEW MEXICO: A BLEND OF LANDSCAPE, SPORT AND CULTURE | Land Investor\nLand Investor FeaturesVolume 1\nposted: Thursday, October 01, 2015\nThe land, color and skies of New Mexico, combined with its outdoor recreation opportunities, culture, people, history and arts attract ranchland investors to this most unique mountain state, long known as The Land of Enchantment.\nNew Mexico, the fifth largest state, is long on landscapes that range from vast deserts to open mesas to snowcapped mountain peaks, and low on human population, with just above two million residents. In New Mexico, there are still large, intact legacy ranches in a time where increased populations have led to the fragmentation of larger ranches in more populated regions of the mountain states.\nMuch of Fay Ranches’ work in New Mexico is off-market and under the radar, involving unlisted confidential properties. We have select, large, off-market working cattle and recreational ranches for sale to offer and discuss with genuine legacy buyers. New Mexico is a ‘non-disclosure state,’ meaning terms and parties of real property sales are not of public record.\nSportsmen yearning for a “real hunt” look to New Mexico. Fewer people combined with favorable habitat and wildlife management have led to impressive Boone & Crockett rankings for elk, mule deer and pronghorn entries.\nThe southwest New Mexico mountains, known as “the Gila,” are renowned for populations of some of the largest elk in North America. For the mule deer enthusiast, the focus changes to highlight the Rio Arriba and San Juan counties in northwest New Mexico, near the four corners where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet. Some of the top mule deer taken in North America have been in Rio Arriba County. The habitat here at the base of the Rocky Mountains soars over 14,000 feet and boasts three large river systems.\nFor wingshooters, it is still possible to see large, wild coveys and bag three species of desert quail in one day. Fly-fishermen enjoy the fisheries flowing from the Sangre de Cristos (Blood of Christ) in northern New Mexico, which flanks the east side of the Rio Grande. Much of this region of the state is heavily forested wilderness. The Sangres, which are further south towards Santa Fe, also produce the Pecos River and harbor a unique Pecos strain of Rio Grande trout found only in this stretch.\nSkiers at Angel Fire Resort, Taos Ski Valley and Ski Santa Fe can enjoy some great snow and wintry mountain terrain while the rest of the family is an hour away at a lower elevation in Taos or Santa Fe enjoying outdoor dining in a temperate clime. Only in New Mexico.\nIn addition to the sportsman’s scene, New Mexico is an international draw for its unique history, culture, cuisine and architecture. New Mexico was partially settled similar to other western states, by way of east-to-west migration. In the case of New Mexico, the east-to-west migration was by way of the Santa Fe Trail during the 1820s through the 1850s. It was also settled with migration from the south over 300 years earlier by way of the famous trade route, El Camino Real, originating in what is now Mexico City and Veracruz, Mexico. Many families in the state are direct descendants of these settlers who came from the south over 400 years ago.\nThe result is a completely different and unique cultural mix as seen in the art, cuisine and architecture, which is as much of a part of the Enchantment of New Mexico as the land itself. History buffs can see ancestral Pueblo architecture, Spanish influence, Territorial architecture and southwest revival influences, which provide a glimpse into different periods of New Mexico’s unique history and set the stage for New Mexico’s unique art scene centered in Santa Fe.\nOverall, New Mexico is a gem of culture, history and wide-open spaces, and it is unlike any other region in the country\nPREVIOUS POSTS\tNEXT POSTS\nFarmhouse With a Modern Twist | Paradise Valley | North Fork Builders\nPreferred Partner, Land Investor Volume 5 The homeowners came to their architect with a request for “a farmhouse with a modern twist. Clean and uncluttered, but cozy” . They had recently purchased a ranch on the Yellowstone River and we’re looking for the right team to bring life back to the working cattle ranch. Surrounded by the Crazy, Absaroka and Gallatin mountain ranges, […]\nGood Fences Make Good Neighbors | Land Investor Magazine Volume 4\nposted: Thursday, May 16, 2019\nAn article written by Rick Kusel, published in Volume 4 of the Land Investor Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.” Growing up with my grandparents on […]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1210579"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6533642411231995,"wiki_prob":0.6533642411231995,"text":"Dubai's International Humanitarian City to Triple in Size\nInternational Humanitarian City Dubai\nDUBAI, UAE, Jan. 19, 2017\nDecision made in response to sharp rise in demand for emergency aid\nIHC to expand a further 300,000 square feet of space for aid provisions\n/CNW/ - HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE, and Ruler of Dubai, has commissioned work to triple the size of his International City of Aid (IHC) to streamline and strengthen operations to support aid agencies. Upon completion, the IHC will now stretch for a further 300,000 square feet, totalling 404,000 square feet.\n(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/459342/IHC_1.jpg )\nIntensifying conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria and other trouble spots have led to mass displacement of over 65 million people and a sharp rise in the need for emergency aid in the form of food, shelter, and medicine. Demand for such aid is now at its highest level worldwide since World War II and aid agencies need additional warehousing and logistics support to cope.\nThe expansion has been approved in order to meet the urgent demands of leading UN and NGO agencies trying to cope with this rising demand, most notably the Red Crescent, UNHCR, ICRC, and the World Food Programme. Specifically, the new space will help IHC members better pre-position stocks in the event of new pandemics, natural disasters and more armed conflicts and conduct more training of aid workers.\nFounded in 2003, the International Humanitarian City is already the world's largest humanitarian logistics hub and has nine United Nations agencies as members plus nearly 50 NGOs and businesses working in the aid sector. When it moved to its current location in Dubai Industrial City near Jebel Ali Port and Al Maktoum Airport in 2011 it tripled in size, but demand for more space has continued to climb rapidly.\nThe IHC has played a pivotal role in first responses to crises in places as far away as Haiti and Vanuatu, but is especially critical in moving goods to trouble spots in the MENA region and East Africa.\nSOURCE International Humanitarian City Dubai","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1016840"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9174642562866211,"wiki_prob":0.9174642562866211,"text":"NewsHistory\nnews, history\nThe historic City of Adelaide clipper ship has been moved to a new and permanent berth in the city's Outer Harbour. The ship, which is little more than a hull, is thought to be the oldest remaining of its kind in the world. It is also the only surviving sailing ship to have brought migrants from Europe to Australia. On Friday it made a short trip on a barge from its temporary dock to a new home, after those involved in its recovery and restoration successfully lobbied the state government. The City of Adelaide has strong links to South Australia, having brought thousands of settlers and their supplies to the new colony in the 19th century, each time returning cargo to England, including copper from local mines. It made 23 trips between 1864 and 1887. The clipper's sailing days ended in 1893, but it continued to serve as a training ship and a floating hospital at one stage before it sank in Glasgow dock in 1990. It was later raised and moved to the banks of the River Irvine but was long considered unable to be recovered before an Adelaide group stepped in with a plan to bring it to SA. It made the journey to Adelaide in 2014, fixed to a cargo ship by a steel cradle designed to protect the fragile timbers. Since then, a team of volunteers has worked to clean out and repair the hull, relying on donations, sponsorship, paid guided tours and merchandise sales to fund the ongoing restoration. Australian Associated Press\nhttps://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/d3fc5c36-9585-41df-ad57-0d96a7f64e47.jpg/r0_74_800_526_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg\nNovember 29 2019 - 9:36AM\nHistoric clipper moves to new home\nThe City of Adelaide clipper ship has been moved to a new berth in the city's Outer Harbour.\nThe historic City of Adelaide clipper ship has been moved to a new and permanent berth in the city's Outer Harbour.\nThe ship, which is little more than a hull, is thought to be the oldest remaining of its kind in the world.\nIt is also the only surviving sailing ship to have brought migrants from Europe to Australia.\nOn Friday it made a short trip on a barge from its temporary dock to a new home, after those involved in its recovery and restoration successfully lobbied the state government.\nThe City of Adelaide has strong links to South Australia, having brought thousands of settlers and their supplies to the new colony in the 19th century, each time returning cargo to England, including copper from local mines.\nIt made 23 trips between 1864 and 1887.\nThe clipper's sailing days ended in 1893, but it continued to serve as a training ship and a floating hospital at one stage before it sank in Glasgow dock in 1990.\nIt was later raised and moved to the banks of the River Irvine but was long considered unable to be recovered before an Adelaide group stepped in with a plan to bring it to SA.\nIt made the journey to Adelaide in 2014, fixed to a cargo ship by a steel cradle designed to protect the fragile timbers.\nSince then, a team of volunteers has worked to clean out and repair the hull, relying on donations, sponsorship, paid guided tours and merchandise sales to fund the ongoing restoration.\nSymons family to rebuild merino stud after miraculous escape from Kangaroo Island bushfire\nArmy Reservist shares Kangaroo Island's bushfire loss as relatives perish\nKangaroo Island bushfire - community holds breath for more fire activity on Day 25\nSpot fires flare in Kangaroo Island bushfire, scenes of devastation, advice warning extends east\nSaturday update for Kangaroo Island bushfire - Day 23 of the battle\nOur crews at fire frontline\nThe Flinders News","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line475326"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.978499174118042,"wiki_prob":0.978499174118042,"text":"Victoria's Secret apologizes to customer who says she was racially-profiled\nPosted: 1:09 AM, Dec 09, 2016\nDimitrios Kambouris\n<p>NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 10: Model Kendall Jenner from California walks the runway during the 2015 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at Lexington Avenue Armory on November 10, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Victoria's Secret)</p>\n(CNN) -- Victoria's Secret has apologized to a woman who posted a widely viewed video on Facebook saying she was kicked out of an Alabama store because she is black.\nKimberly Houzah says she and another black woman were told to leave the store by someone she thought was a manager. The lingerie giant said the employee is no longer with the company.\nIn her video, Houzah says the incident started when a third African-American woman was allegedly accused of shoplifting on Wednesday at the store at the Quintard Mall in Oxford. The manager, Houzah says, then told her and a third black woman they needed to leave the store.\nHouzah's video begins after she has been told to leave. In the background you can hear someone saying, \"I just need y'all to go.\"\nIt appears to be an employee who is arguing with the other black shopper. It's not clear from the video if the employee is white or black.\nMost of the 11-minute video is Houzah recording her reaction to the incident.\nShe says she and the other woman didn't go to the store together. \"I don't feel like everybody racist,\" Houzah said \"But I'm just trying to understand why, 'cause we just happened to be three black women in Victoria's Secret ... that we gotta be together.\"\nThe company didn't say whether it fired the employee or she quit.\nVictoria's Secret: Incident should not have happened\n\"We take the experience of our customer at the Quintard Mall very seriously and have reached out to her directly to express our sincere apology,\" Victoria's Secret said on Facebook. \"What happened at our store should not have happened and does not represent who we are or what we stand for. The store associate involved in this matter is no longer employed with the company. Victoria's Secret is adamant that all customers regardless of race be treated with dignity and respect at all times.\"\nCNN reached out to Victoria's Secret for clarification on how the employee separated from the company but didn't get a response.\n\"I never gave her a reason to think that I was stealing,\" Houzah told CNN affiliate WIAT at the mall on Thursday afternoon. She returned to the store with a group of about 50 protesters. \"It's completely unacceptable, because nobody else was asked to leave the store.\"\nA mall security officer appears in the video.\nAccording to WIAT, Quintard Mall said: \"The Quintard Mall security team was following instructions from the Victoria's Secret employee. We take any allegations of discrimination extremely seriously and are committed to ensuring that all of our guests are treated with the utmost respect.\"\nCNN called mall officials and Houzah but didn't get an immediate response from either.\nOxford is about 60 miles east of Birmingham.\nThe-CNN-Wire\n™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line845358"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5440791845321655,"wiki_prob":0.5440791845321655,"text":"New Testament of the Bible\nAbout the New Testament of the Bible\nThe Pauline Letters\nLetters Written in Captivity\nThe Synoptic Gospels and Acts\nThe Gospel of Matthew\nThe Pastoral Letters\nOpen Letters to the Churches\nThe Letter to the Hebrews\nThe Gospel of John\nSummary and Analysis 1 and 2 Corinthians\nPaul wrote at least four different letters to the church at Corinth, three of which are included in the New Testament. In what is now called 1 Corinthians, there is a reference to a former letter in which instruction was given concerning the type of conduct that should not be tolerated in a Christian church. 2 Corinthians is made up of two different letters. Chapters 1–9 are written in a conciliatory tone that indicates that they were composed after Chapters 10–13 were received and accepted by the members of the church. Chapters 10–13 belong to what is often referred to as the \"painful letter,\" in which Paul replies to the many false charges made concerning him and his work. The largest part of Paul's correspondence was with the church at Corinth, for the problems that he encountered in this place were more numerous than he had found in other cities, and if his message could be successful in Corinth, there was good reason to believe that it could have results that would be equally as good in any other place.\nCorinth was an important city in Paul's day. Generally known as a city devoted to pleasure-seeking, it was a center for Greek culture and a busy commercial city with a cosmopolitan atmosphere that brought together people and customs from different parts of the world. Pagan religions with sexual rites and ceremonies existed, and both materialism and immorality were the accepted order of the day. In view of these conditions, no wonder Paul said he began his Corinthian mission with fear. However, his work was successful from the beginning. He was especially anxious to guide new Christian converts with reference to the many perplexing problems that were bound to arise. In other places, the Jewish element, with its legalistic tendencies, created difficulties, but in Corinth, the moral problem caused the greater anxiety. The Corinthian church's membership was composed of people from many different quarters, including those whose training and environment were foreign to the Hebrew standards of morality. Paul was deeply concerned that the Christian church in Corinth should make no compromise with the morality — or immorality — customary in a pagan society.\nThe longest of the letters written to the church at Corinth is known in the New Testament as 1 Corinthians. Containing sixteen chapters dealing with a wide variety of topics, the first topic mentioned is that of divisions within the church. Four distinct factions correspond to the four individuals whose teachings were followed by the respective groups: Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ. Reportedly, the household of Chloe informed Paul that serious quarrels had taken place among these factions. The spirit of independent thinking emphasized so strongly by the Greeks evidently was influencing the Corinthian Christians. Paul's manner of dealing with the problem is noteworthy. He does not insist that all members of the community should think alike on every subject, nor does he advocate that someone with authority should tell others what to believe. What he does insist on is a unity of spirit and purpose that will allow each group to learn from the others.\nOn the subject of immorality within the membership of the church, Paul is very explicit. Any type of immoral conduct must not be tolerated among the believers. If any of their number persist in following the low moral standards of the pagans, they should be excluded from membership. Association with evildoers cannot be avoided so long as church members live in a wicked city, but it need not be permitted within the group that is called Christian. The function of the church is to set a high standard for the society in which it exists, which cannot be done by permitting low standards among their own members: \"Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast — as you really are.\"\nDisputes arising among members of the Christian community should be settled peaceably without going to a civil court: \"The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged?\" Paul refers to a popular Jewish belief that saints are to have a part in the judgment of the world. Certainly the Corinthians are not qualified to have a part in the judgment of the world if they are unable to settle difficulties among themselves.\nSexual morality was a real problem in the church at Corinth. Neither monogamy nor chastity was regarded as obligatory in the pagan society in which many of the church members were reared before becoming Christians. Paul's instruction regarding marriage must be considered in accordance with his belief concerning the imminence of the second coming of Christ, as well as with his desire to have the church at Corinth exemplify a high standard of living. The same can be said about his advice concerning the impropriety of women speaking in church. In the city of Corinth, prostitutes customarily spoke in public, and to protect the reputation of the women in the Christian church, Paul thought it would be wise for them to remain silent. He explains, however, that this is merely his personal opinion; he has received no direct revelation to this effect.\nRegarding the eating of meat that has been obtained from animals sacrificed to idols, everyone should follow the dictates of their own consciences, the only condition being that each person should have respect for the conscience of the person who does not agree with him. One should refrain from needlessly offending another person, even though by doing so it is necessary to curb one's own appetite.\nThe Christian churches customarily commemorated the events associated with Jesus' death and resurrection by partaking of a common meal together. Some of the people at Corinth failed to see the significance of this meal and made it an occasion for feasting. Paul explains that the purpose of this meal is not for the enjoyment of eating and drinking together but rather for a renewed dedication to the spirit made manifest in the life and death of Jesus. In other words, each individual should examine his own heart and life and bring them into harmony with the Spirit of Christ. Any grievances that people have with one another should be set aside in preparation for the eating of the meal together.\nSpiritual gifts among the various members of the church is another topic treated at some length in 1 Corinthians. Using the analogy of the human body, in which each organ has its special function to perform and no one of them can be regarded as more vital than another, the same principle applies within the church, which is the body of Christ. Some members have the gift of prophecy, others that of teaching, and still others that of offering help in carrying forward the work of the church. Those who are apostles or prophets are not to think of themselves as superior to those who exercise other gifts, for all gifts are necessary, and the church would not be complete if any of them were missing. To those who boast that they have the gift of tongues and are therefore in a position to exercise lordship over others, Paul writes that this particular gift, like all of the others, should be evaluated in terms of its usefulness in promoting the Christian way of life. He does not condemn this gift for those who might find it useful, but he says that so far as he is concerned, it is better to speak a few words that will be understood by others than to speak at great length in an unknown tongue that is quite unintelligible to those who might hear it.\nFollowing the discussion of spiritual gifts is Paul's immortal hymn to Christian love, which is one of the great classics of Christian literature. The hymn makes love the foundation for all Christian conduct. What wisdom was for the Greeks, love is for Christians: \"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.\"\nAfter the discourse on love, Paul discusses resurrection. For him, the subject is of primary importance, for he considers resurrection the basis upon which the whole structure of Christianity rests. If Christ is not risen, then our hope is in vain. Christ's resurrection is attested to by a large number of witnesses, of whom Paul counts himself one of the last. The significance of the resurrection, more than a vindication of the Messiahship of Jesus, assures us that what happened in the case of Jesus can and will happen to all those who believe in him. The resurrection of the righteous will be associated with the second coming of Christ: \"For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'\" The letter closes with an appeal for a contribution to help provide for the poor among the Christians in Jerusalem. Paul will stop at Corinth on his way to Jerusalem and take the gift with him.\nThe so-called \"painful letter,\" which is found in Chapters 10–13 of 2 Corinthians, contains Paul's defense of himself and of his work to the charges made against him by his enemies, including the Jewish legalists who said that Paul was an impostor who had not been authorized by the proper authorities to work among the churches. The legalists supported their charge by pointing out that Paul had a \"thorn in [his] flesh,\" some physical defect that, according to ancient Jewish regulations, would have barred a man from the priesthood. They further maintained that Paul supported himself by doing manual labor rather than by accepting support from the members of the church. This labor, in their judgment, was an admission on his part that he was not qualified to be supported in the way that was customary for duly authorized missionaries. The legalists also accused Paul of cowardice on the grounds that he was bold so long as he was writing letters, but he was very mild when present with the legalists in person. Other charges of a similar nature were made in an all-out attempt to discredit the religious work that Paul was doing.\nTo all of these charges, Paul makes a vigorous reply. He shows wherein the charges are false, and he recounts for the people at Corinth the many trials and hardships that he suffered for their sake and for the sake of the gospel. Although he apologizes for seeming to boast of his own attainments, he explains the necessity for doing so. He indicates further that his greatest disappointment lies not in the fact that charges of this sort have been made against him but that the members of the Corinthian church have apparently been persuaded by them.\nThe first nine chapters of what is now called 2 Corinthians are a letter that appears to have been written some time after the \"painful letter\" was received and accepted by the church. This letter contains an expression of gratitude for the change that has taken place among the Corinthian believers. Paul rejoices that they are now on the right track again, and he summarizes for them the essential meaning of the gospel that he first proclaimed to them. Using the language of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, Paul tells them that the Christian gospel is none other than the New Covenant, written \"not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.\" Toward the close of the letter, he again reminds them of the collection to be taken for the poor in Jerusalem.\nAlthough the Corinthian letters were addressed to a single church and were concerned primarily with local problems existing at that time, they are of special interest to readers of the New Testament. One reason for this interest is that the letters were writ- ten at an early date; therefore, they throw considerable light on the character of the Christian movement prior to the writing of any gospel account of Jesus' life. Paul's statements concerning the resurrection of Jesus constitute the earliest preserved record of that event. The same is true of his account of the institution of the Lord's Supper. His remarks concerning the gift of tongues, along with the other gifts of the spirit, help us to understand the way in which these manifestations were viewed by the early church. Finally, the many problems discussed in 1 Corinthians tell us a great deal about the conditions that prevailed at that time.\nPaul's account of the resurrection enables us to see how his view differed from those of the ancient Greeks and also from the view found in certain portions of the Old Testament. The Greeks believed in the doctrine of the soul's immortality. According to this doctrine, souls do not have a beginning or an end. They are eternal realities capable of existing apart from the bodies in which they were incarnated. This view was contrary to the Hebrew conception, which viewed man as a single unit including body, soul, and spirit; the soul was not something that existed apart from the body. After death, all went down to Sheol, a cavern below the earth, but no memory or consciousness of any kind attended this state of existence.\nIn contrast to these views, Paul believed in a genuine resurrection from physical death in which a person's individuality and moral worth would be preserved. But this preservation was not to be a reanimation of the corpse and a continuation of life as it had been before. Flesh and blood, Paul tells us, will not inherit God's kingdom. The body that is raised will not be the natural body but rather a spiritual body. Paul does not tell us what this spiritual body will be like, but he is sure that it will be a body of some kind, for the personality includes body, soul, and spirit, and salvation is not achieved until all three have been transformed together. The Gnostics of Paul's day, who believed that only spirit is good and that all matter is evil, taught that Jesus did not possess a physical body but only appeared to do so. For Paul, this position was untenable: Unless Jesus possessed a body in common with other human beings, his triumph over evil would have no significance for humans. Jesus' resurrection means a triumph of the entire personality over the forces of evil; what it means for Jesus it also means for all those who put their trust in him.\nPrevious 1 and 2 Thessalonians\nNext Romans\n1 Peter was written primarily for the benefit of Christians who were suffering from\nlack of faith\nsevere persecution","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line605580"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5977636575698853,"wiki_prob":0.5977636575698853,"text":"Signs of a recovery?\nWhile industrial output figures are grim, growth across some sectors suggests that the worst may be over.\nAnand Adhikari Print Edition: May 3, 2009\nCould the economic slowdown in India have finally turned a corner? According to a generally-accepted rule of thumb, an economy supposedly revives six to nine months after the stock market in that country bottoms out. This happened on March 9 this year when the Sensex reached 8,160 points—but has since risen by over 30 per cent to 10,800, fuelling hopes that a rebound is around the corner.\nHowever, this sort of “rule of thumb” analysis wilts in the face of solid numbers. And recently released numbers for industrial production are grim enough to put deep frowns on the faces of even the most die-hard optimists. Industrial output fell at its fastest annualised rate in 14 years, shrinking 1.2 per cent in February compared to a robust 9.5 per cent growth for the same period last year. So did manufacturing, which contracted by 1.4 per cent in February.\nStill, despite all the gloom, a few silver linings amid these clouds of economic uncertainty stand out. Yashika Singh, Head of Economic Analysis, Dun & Bradstreet India, believes that the negative growth of 1.2 per cent could, in some part, be attributed to a high base effect, which makes these numbers look worse than they actually are. Also, “there are encouraging growth numbers across sectors such as FMCG, cement, telecom, retail, steel and auto,” says Ajay Srinivasan, Chief Executive, Financial Services, Aditya Birla Group.\nOthers, like V. Vaidyanathan, Executive Director at ICICI Bank, think that “a good part of the liquidity has now seeped into the system and is resurfacing in the form of purchase of goods and services.”\nA glance at growth numbers across core sectors seems to echo these views. The FMCG sector, for instance, has been registering robust growth with most categories growing between 8 and 25 per cent. ICICI Bank has actually seen an upward movement in heavy commercial vehicle sales for the first three months of 2009, from 7,000 units in January, to 15,000 for March. “I consider commercial vehicles as a lightning rod of what’s happening in the economy, and seen in this light, this must be read as good news for the economy,” observes Vaidyanathan.\nSimilarly, ICICI Bank says that the auto industry is also in the midst of a recovery. March 2009 saw 1,59,000 cars being produced— only a 2 per cent growth over the same period last year. While this is not a large number, the bank says that sequential growth across the months reveals a more accurate picture: While average sales for the quarter ending March ’09 were 1,42,000, those for quarter ending December ’08 were 1,00,000— reflecting a sizable 42 per cent increase. “No doubt, fiscal stimulus has played a role, with excise benefits and accelerated depreciation. But confidence, too, could be lifting, or else people wouldn’t buy cars,” reasons Vaidyanathan.\nThis rise in consumption is a good sign, say experts, as it helps companies in drawing down their inventory levels. “The higher levels had earlier resulted in production cuts,” says Sonal Verma, Economist at Nomura Securities. Companies can now have the advantage of building fresh inventory while taking advantage of input costs that are substantially lower than before. This is especially welcome for the beleaguered construction sector, which now has to deal with much cheaper steel and cement.\nSo, if this isn’t a bona fide recovery, is there one lurking in the not-so-distant future? Experts believe that a further easing of monetary policy and rising infrastructure spending will be good catalysts for a rebound. “The pessimism seems to have been overdone in India,” says Srinivasan. Another gauge to judge a recovery by: Capital expenditure spends by corporates which will indicate a buildup of corporate confidence.\nClearly, the Indian economy is far from being out of the woods. However, if these sectoral growth trends are anything to go by, there might just be a glimmer of hope that the worst is behind us.\nNumbers of note\nInstan tip","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line289867"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9262354373931885,"wiki_prob":0.9262354373931885,"text":"World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in movies post-9/11\nFebruary 5, 2018 September 11, 2012 by Michael Sheridan\nThe Twin Towers seen in ‘Chasing Amy’\nFor more than 30 years, the celebrated Twin Towers were iconic to films set in New York City. The buildings were as visually emblematic as Monument Valley’s spires are to westerns.\nThe 110-story structures, completed in the early 1970s, appeared in films before they were even finished. The construction site of what would become the World Trade Center is in 1971’s The French Connection. After they were both completed, the two buildings were in dozens upon dozens of movies. King Kong climbed them in the 1976 remake, and the Man of Steel soared past them in 1981’s Superman II. They stood tall in the background of 1995’s Die Hard with a Vengeance, and are seen frequently in Ed Burns’ 2001 film, Streets of New York.\nThese are merely a few of the movies in which the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center had bit parts.\nIn the immediate wake of their destruction on Sept. 11, 2001, filmmakers shied away from using them. For example, the ending to Men in Black 2 was reshot to have scenes with the Twin Towers instead center on New York City’s famed Chrysler Building. The structures were removed from the Spider-Man 2 trailer and film posters. The Twin Towers were also digitally erased from several shots of Ben Stiller comedy, Zoolander.\nMore than a decade after those tragic events, the World Trade Center towers have appeared in only a handful of films. In most cases, those movies are about the attacks or the aftermath. They are filled with footage of the Towers burning or sinking into themselves. Movies such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Guys and, of course, Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.\nFor this article, I wanted to focus on films which were not about 9/11, or the events surrounding them. In these cases, the Towers were either digitally recreated or featured using archival footage to paint a picture of “old” New York City. The reasons for using them vary, from symbolism about terrorism to establishing the time period in which the movie took place. But in every case the Towers are honored in their former glory, not their final, tragic moments.\nDigitally recreated Twin Towers seen at end of ‘Gangs of New York’\nGangs of New York (2002)\nMartin Scorsese’s love for New York City has driven many of his films. Each picture depicts the Big Apple in different ways and during different times. Gangs of New York explored a relatively unknown period of racial strife and gang warfare in downtown Manhattan.\nThe final scene includes a montage that shows how the lower part of the city grew and developed. The Brooklyn Bridge and skyscrapers slowly fade into existence. It ends with the World Trade Center Towers appearing.\nThe film came out shortly after the events of 9/11. And while other filmmakers were removing images of the buildings, Scorsese opted instead to keep them in.\n“From the first draft of the script, that was the way it ended, with the modern skyline of New York being built. It had to end with that, or the movie shouldn’t have existed,” he is quoted as saying about this decision.\n“We did the paintings and edited that skyline sequence before September 11, and afterwards it was suggested that we should take out the towers, but I felt that was not the right way to go. It’s not my job to revise the New York skyline. The people in the film and the people of New York, good, bad, and indifferent, were part of the creation of that skyline, not the destruction of it. And if the skyline collapses, ultimately, they will build another one.”\n‘Miracle’ features the Twin Towers in its closing moments\nMiracle (2004)\nSet in 1980, the Kurt Russell film centers on a coach who led the U.S. hockey team to an historic gold medal win over the Russians at the Olympics.\nDuring one sequence, the U.S. team plays an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden. This part of the film includes a shot of the Twin Towers lit up at night.\nThe shot, which according to IMDB was the first time digitally recreated Towers were used in a film after 9/11, was reportedly a deliberate decision by the filmmakers to pay respect to friends they lost on the day of the attacks.\nFinal shot of Steven Spielberg’s ‘Munich’ shows Twin Towers\nThe Steven Spielberg film follows a group of Israeli agents who carry out a series of assassinations of those believed to be behind an attack that lead to the deaths of 11 Israelis at the 1972 Olympics.\nIn the movie’s final scene, one agent (Eric Bana) confronts his former boss (Geoffrey Rush) in a park in New York City. The two discuss the killings, and argue over whether or not they actually solved anything.\n“There is no peace at the end of this, you know this,” Bana’s character argues.\nThe two go their separate ways, and the camera pans to reveal the Twin Towers in the background. It is followed by some text:\n“Ultimately nine of the eleven Palestinian men originally targeted for assassination were killed.”\nSpielberg intentionally draws a connection between the events depicted in Munich to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He makes the argument, through the final scene’s dialogue and the visuals and the epilogue, that the violence in the fight against terrorism only breeds more violence. And with that cycle the death count grows as the acts of destruction become bigger and more devastating.\nNew York City’s old skyline is lit up again in ‘Rent’\nThe Tony award-winning musical was translated to the big screen by Chris Columbus. It’s beautiful songs and terrific actors helped turn this Broadway production into a good movie.\nIt’s use of the Twin Towers, shown in a simple night shot of downtown Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn, helps reinforce the time period. Rent takes place over a period of months from 1989 to 1990. The story deals with an array of social issues, none of which connect with terrorism or 9/11.\nThis film in a way helps re-establish the Twin Towers as symbols of New York City, and not just of tragedy and horror. Just a short view of them helps, instantly, to transport the viewer to a different time.\nTwin Towers seen in the background in scene of ‘We Own The Night’\nWe Own The Night (2007)\nLike Rent, this is a movie set in New York City’s past. The police drama spans 1988 and 1989, and centers on the relationship of two brothers (Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg).\nImages of the Twin Towers are used in two key ways. The first was in one of the movie posters used to promote the film. The Towers were featured between Phoenix and Wahlberg in one of several ads. The two buildings also appear in a single scene in the film, once again between the two.\nWe Own The Night uses the Towers not as symbols of terrorism or violence, but as a visual metaphor for Phoenix and Wahlberg. Two strong-willed brothers constantly at odds who in the end stand together in defense of each other.\nAfter 9/11, the Towers chiefly came to represent the attacks. This 2007 film extended the visual use of them beyond this limited view.\nWorld Trade Center seen through airplane window in ‘Definitely, Maybe’\nDefinitely, Maybe (2008)\nThe brief cameo the Twin Towers have in this Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy is fairly straight forward. They are not meant as some deep symbolic moment or statement about terrorism.\nDefinitely, Maybe makes use of several flashbacks to tell its story. In one flashback Reynolds’ character looks out the window of his plane to see Manhattan, and the Towers are visible. It helps tell the audience these events happen in the past.\n‘Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa’ offers up an computer animated view of the Twin Towers\nMadagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)\nThis is the first instance of the Twin Towers being featured in an animated movie post-9/11.\nLike Definitely, Maybe and Rent, the Twin Towers are here simply to provide the viewer with a visual indication that what they are seeing happened in the past.\nIn this case, the shot shows how Alex the Lion ended up at the Central Park Zoo (his crate fell off a boat and he floated to NYC). His wooden box floats past the Statue of Liberty, and in the background is the New York City skyline with the World Trade Center towers in full bloom. This apparently takes place in 1972, based on a newspaper that’s seen in a following scene (the buildings may not exactly be represented accurately, however, since Tower 2 was not completed until 1973).\nDowntown Manhattan seen from Brooklyn during the 1990s in 2008’s ‘The Wackness’\nThe Wackness (2008)\nThis small, independent film by Jonathan Levine is set in the 1990s. He describes it as a “period piece” and a “love story” to his hometown of New York City.\nThe film ends with Ben Kingsley, who plays a shrink, seated on a bench and smoking a joint. It’s not clear where he is, but when the angle cuts to show what he’s looking at, we see he’s gazing at the Twin Towers.\nAccording to Levine, “To me, it is the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. I’m using that image as a note of bittersweet nostalgia. It has to be handled delicately, but at the same time, it’s a very powerful image. I didn’t want to shy away from it.”\nIt’s a lovely shot, one that – according to the film’s star, Josh Peck (of Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh fame and a native New Yorker) – captures the essence of the film.\nThe Wackness is “a story of the loss of innocence,” he says in an interview on Cinema Blend. “When you see that scene with the [Twin] Towers — that day was a real loss of innocence for this city.”\nClaymation version of the Twin Towers in ‘Mary & Max;\nThis film out of Austrlia is unique in that the image of the two buildings are seen in stop-motion animation.\n“There are several reasons why the Twin Towers are still in the film,” says Mary & Max’s writer/director, Adam Elliot. “The first is because the film is set in the ’70s and ’80s… and they were still there.”\nThe use of the Twin Towers was also influenced by two of the film’s investors, Paul and Tom Hardart, who live in New York City, Elliot explains. Before production he asked them how they felt about featuring the Towers.\n“They said, ‘If they were there at the time, then they should be there,’ so we made a very conscious decision to leave them in,” he says, noting that they didn’t go out of their way to make them prominent. But “they had quite a presence on the New York skyline, so you can’t leave them out.”\n‘Notorious’ sets its time period with a shot of the World Trade Center towers\nThe film tells the story of Notorious B.I.G., a mega-watt rap icon who was gunned down in Los Angeles in 1997.\nBrooklyn-born Christopher George Latore Wallace helped define East Coast rap, at the center of which was New York City.\nThere isn’t any special significance to the image of the World Trade Center seen in the motion picture. It merely serves to show the city as it was during that time.\nThe Twin Towers are seen several times in ‘Watchmen’\nSet in the 1980s, this bloated adaptation of the highly celebrated graphic novel takes place in an alternate universe, one in which costumed vigilantes really exist.\nNew York City serves as the backdrop to this dark tale. In several scenes, the Twin Towers are visible in the distance.\nWhile it makes sense for the buildings to appear in the film simply because of the time period and the setting, Zach Snyder likely included them in order to represent something more. The Towers effectively foreshadow a key aspect of the film’s plot. (This will tread upon spoiler territory, just a warning for those who haven’t seen the film or read the book.)\nAt the core of Watchmen is a secret plot to destroy New York City. But it’s a plot with a purpose, one that echoes 9/11.\nWith the Cold War raging and threatening to quickly become a real war, someone schemes to create a kind of terrorist attack that would help unify global enemies against a common foe. A foe that could be a deadly threat to everyone. And the plot works.\nThe 9/11 attacks had a very similar effect.\nFor a period of time, nations all over the world came together in goodwill. Governments who had once been hostile to one another found common ground, forming new bonds of cooperation.\nAs suggested in Watchmen‘s final moments, however, the goal of the villain’s elaborate plot to ease political tensions would eventually unravel. Not unlike what happened after 9/11.\nTwin Towers in ‘Kill the Irishman’\nKill the Irishman (2011)\nThis excellent true story is about an Irish crook named Danny Greene who rose to power, and gained quite a few enemies, in the late 1970s.\nSet in Cleveland, Greene’s problems begin when he pisses off the mafia in New York City over some stolen cash. It is this connection to the Big Apple that allows for the view of the Towers to be used.\nThe view of the buildings is really just a means of establishing the era and location, similar to Rent or Notorious. In fact, the view of the buildings is pretty much the same shot but during the day.\nThe season finale of ‘Fringe”s first season features the surprising reveal of the Twin Towers\nFringe (Season 1 finale, 2009)\nWhile this list is dedicated specifically to movies, I didn’t feel it would be complete without mentioning Fox’ Fringe.\nThis is a science fiction series that deals with mad scientists and crazy medicine. The existence of a parallel universe was one of the central concepts in the show.\nIn that alternate universe, the attacks of 9/11 did not happen. This twist was revealed with great effect at the end of the show’s first season. There was little reaction to this by critics, which always surprised me. But the series, while not about real-world terrorism, has always addressed terrorism in a sci-fi context. So while it could be easy to accuse the producers of using the Towers for mere shock value, depicting a universe in which the terror attacks of Sept. 11 didn’t happen fits the show’s tone.\nFor more films that include images or shots or photos of the Twin Towers, both before and after 9/11, visit World Trade Center in Movies (http://wtcinmovies.tripod.com/2000.html).\nCategories CommentaryTags Michael Sheridan\tPost navigation\nDoes ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ title confirm Gary Mitchell as villain?\n‘Bachelorette’ isn’t brilliant, but it’s funny","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line693201"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5127068161964417,"wiki_prob":0.48729318380355835,"text":"Mexican Kingpin Update\nJoaquin Guzman Loera (El Chapo) has not done well since his escape from Amaloya Prison. He still has a dozen wives and God only knows how many children, and he \"had\" a high overhead with all of his properties and business enterprises. But that's not what drove the man. He wanted to be loved and respected.\nBy the time he was arrested this week, he'd seen his kingdom shrink. The only ally he'd been able to draw into his post-escape empire was the Tijuana Cartel (Arellano-Felix Organization), which has been far more than decimated in recent years and is only a shadow of its former self. Chapo could no longer ride around on American-made helicopters, given to Mexico and the Mexican Army for the purpose of fighting the drug war. Things changed for him.\nI thought that he would retreat to his vast holdings in Canada or elsewhere in South America where he owns large estancias (ranches), but it was more important for him to be Chapo than to live out his life in peace. He hung out and was seen in Guadalajara. When pressure was applied, he moved to the mountains east of Los Mochis in Sinaloa where he has several facilities. Then it ended for him.\nMy sense is that he will be extradited to the US and will live out the remainder of his life at the SuperMax Prison in Aurora, Colorado.\nA number of the other older narco kingpins have remained in the business, but you must understand that most of these people/organizations make as much or more money in 'legitimate' commerce than they do in the drug trade. This became even more the case after the 2008 financial melt-down that struck Mexico every bit as hard as it did the USA. Drug lords, flush with cash, bought businesses that were going under for pennies on the dollar.\nAs I presently understand it, Juan José Esparragoza Moreno (El Azul) plans to move out of the drug business completely and will buy up much of the Mexican national petroleum company, PEMEX, which is transitioning from a publicly owned concern to a private one. There will be fronts and wheels within wheels, but it's a better gig than kingpin from an economic standpoint. El Azul was always smarter than Chapo.\nMost of the kingpins moved their families to San Antonio, Texas, which has experienced significant growth in recent years. San Antonio is a straight shot from Guadalajara, Jalisco. They don't caper in San Antonio, they live there.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line282067"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6095553636550903,"wiki_prob":0.6095553636550903,"text":"8AM | 10AM | 5PM Sundays\nFabulous Women of Wednesday\n« Al-anon\nContemplative Prayer & Wisdom – 6:15-6:45PM »\nNew Contact 8/16/18\nJane Sullivan\njanes21747@optonline.net\nEducation Building-1-Taylor Room (25)\n1864 Post Road, Darien, CT 06820 | P: 203-655-1456 | E: welcome@saintlukesdarien.org\nSaint Luke’s is part of\nWe are an active member of\nREGULAR SERVICE SCHEDULE\nRUN WITH THE SAINTS\nWHO WE ARE & WHAT WE BELIEVE\nOUR CLERGY, STAFF & VESTRY\nTHE SAINT JOHN’S BIBLE\nVOLUNTEER – WORSHIP\nLAY ASSISTANTS SCHEDULE\nUshers Schedule\nPerson-to-Person\nCommunity Supper\nDove Boxes\nPacific House\nANNUAL APPEAL PLEDGE FORM\n1855 CIRCLE PLANNED GIVING\nCopyright © 2018 – 2019, Saint Luke’s Parish, Darien CT 06820\nDonald Thompson\n(Rev. Dr.) Donald Thompson is a retired university professor/administrator who taught theology, ethics and religious studies in higher education in Canada. He holds graduate degrees from Harvard and Mc Gill universities. Throughout his career in higher education he has always maintained active involvement in parish ministry, particularly in education and social responsibility.\nHe and his wife Susan live in Norwalk, where both have been involved in Norwalk Community College. Don has been teaching ethics courses exploring human good, sustainability, awareness and choices in their Lifetime Learners program. He is active in the St. Luke’s seniors thinking group. He assists in the worship life at St. Luke’s when called upon.\nSusan Wyper\nThe Rev. Susan Wyper joined the Saint Luke’s clergy staff as Associate Rector in September, after nine years at St. Matthew’s in Bedford, NY. While serving “across the border,” Susan and her family continued to consider Saint Luke’s their parish home and she is happy to return to the church that raised her family and supported her call to ministry.\nSusan holds degrees from Yale University, Middlebury College and Berkeley Divinity School. She and her husband George have lived in Darien since 1987 and been actively involved in the church and wider community. They have three sons, James, Robby & Silas.\nDawn Stegelmann\nDawn Stegelmann has been an Associate Rector at Saint Luke’s since 2015. Serving in a part-time capacity, Dawn leads small groups throughout the year and supports a variety of outreach initiatives and ministries. She loves pastoral care work in all life stages and participating in the worship cycle of the church year. Dawn also is an adjunct professor at General Theological Seminary in New York City where she teaches creative spiritual practices and supervision courses through the Center for Christian Spirituality. Ordained in 2008, Dawn was the Associate Rector of Trinity, Southport for seven years.\nDawn first moved to Darien and joined Saint Luke’s as a parishioner in 1990 with her young and growing family. She was active in many ministries and served on the Vestry and as a Junior Warden before being called to the priesthood. She received her Master of Divinity from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and a Master in Sacred Theology from General Theological Seminary. Dawn is interested in the crossroads of spirituality, neuroscience and psychology. She has three boys who still consider Saint Luke’s their spiritual home.\nDaniel Lennox\nThe Rev. Daniel Lennox is the Associate Rector for Spiritual Formation. Danny and his wife, Abigail (who sings in the choir), their two children, Grete and Des arrived at Saint Luke’s in June, 2015. Danny oversees the spiritual formation of the parish, including working with children, youth and adults in their faith journey. In addition, Danny assists the rector with pastoral care, worship, preaching, and tasks related to parish-building. He holds degrees from McGill, Yale and Boston University, and he has served Episcopal churches in Alexandria, Bedford and Hoboken.\nDavid Anderson began his ministry at Saint Luke’s, coming here fresh out of seminary in 1989 as Associate Rector. In 1992 he left to lead a church in Pennsylvania and returned to Saint Luke’s eleven years later, in 2003, to become Rector. David’s ministry includes leading the clergy, staff and Vestry in pursuing our vision—Grow personally in faith; Build an accepting community; and Work alongside our neighbors to serve the world. He loves preaching, teaching and writing, helping people to connect with their inner, spiritual lives in a busy, distracting world. He is the author of “Breakfast Epiphanies” (Beacon Press, 2002), writes a regular column for “The Good News,” the newspaper for the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, and is working on a book on faith after midlife. David is married to Pam, a cookbook author and food blogger who offers a lot of hospitality to the Saint Luke’s family. They have two daughters: Maggy, who lives with her husband Andy in Manhattan; and Sharon, who is a student at Yale Divinity School. And two cats.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1126393"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6767673492431641,"wiki_prob":0.6767673492431641,"text":"Rare Colonial South American Allegorical Emerald & Diamond Pendant\nSpanish Colonial or Spain\nheight: 5.2cm, width: 3.5cm, weight: 28g\nUK art market\nThis very fine silver and gold-plated (gilded) pendant features a cupid-like native figure wearing a feather headdress associated with the Aztec or Tupinamba nobility astride an eagle which in turn clutches a heart in its right claw, all set within a floral, leafy array. The native figure clutches a chalice or goblet in his left hand and an arrow in his right. The native figure’s well-formed body has been gilded, providing a wonderful contrast with the silver surrounds.\nThe pendent is set with large emeralds in gilded box settings and small rose-cut diamonds. The back is entirely gilded and also engraved.\nOverall, the pendant is a remarkable allegory for the Americas: the eagle suggests the colonial power of Spain, the native with Inca feathers is self evident, and the heart is likely to represent the Sacred Heart of Christ.\nIt was made either in Spain or in South America, perhaps Brazil, for export to Spain. Certainly, in the eighteenth century, the Spanish aristocracy placed jewellery orders to far-flung manufacturers. Orders were sent to China and the Manila for example, and often this was trans-shipped via the Americas. Isabel Farnese awaited jewels ordered from Manila and China that were lost in a shipwreck 1716, despite the efforts of Philip V’s divers attempting to wreck the wreckage of ships sailing to Spain from Havana (Muller, 2012, p. 155).\nThe use of emeralds represents the huge mineral wealth of Spain’s Latin American colonies. Green gems in jewellery became very fashionable in eighteenth century Spain and its colonies on account of the new availability of emeralds from Columbia.\nThe Cupid figure has ‘native’-type features and wears a feathered crown akin to the feathered crowns worn by chiefs of the Tupinamba people of Brazil. Tupinamba crowns and capes of feathers from the scarlet ibis bird (guara) were first brought back to Europe in the early seventeenth century where they were collected as curiosities, but also incorporated into dress fro masquerades and the like (Reynolds, 2013, p. 277).\nThe spiky, leafy array is of a form associated with 18th century bodice ornaments and related jewellery produced in Spain and its colonies. A contemporary drawing of a such a piece set with emeralds and now in the Archivo del Real Monasterio de Santa Maria in Guadalupe is illustrated in Muller (1012, p. 163).\nThe imagery of a cupid-like native to represent the Americas appeared from the seventeenth century cross Europe. An example set amid the spiky, leafy foliage seen in this pendant appears in the stucco relief completed in 1685 in Bavaria’s Alteglofsheim castle. The figure wears a crown of feathers. (For an illustration, see Pollerob, Sommer-Mathis & Laferl (1992, p. 75). Another such figure can be seen as a cornerpiece of an engraved map produced in Paris in 1694 by Alexis-Hubert Jaillot and illustrated in Stratton-Pruitt (2006, p. 72).\nThe pendant has been fitted with a later gilded loop (but old) at the top to allow it to be suspended. There is a tiny, indistinct assay or control mark to one of the outer branches. One small leafy branch appears to have been lost to the top of the pendant but this is barely noticeable in the overall profusion of the piece. Overall, the pendant is in fine condition. It has a good weight for its size. It is rare, robust and wearable.\nCarr, D., Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2015.\nChadour-Sampson, Beatriz., personal interview in July 2015.\nForsyth, H., The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels, Museum of London, 2013.\nMuller, P.E., Jewels in Spain 1500-1800, The Hispanic Society of America, 2012.\nPollerob, F., A. Sommer-Mathis & C.F. Laferl, Federschmuck und Kaiserkrone: Das Barocke Amerikabild in den Habsburgischen Landern, Eine Ausstellung des Bundesministeriums fur Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1992.\nReynolds, A., In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion, Royal Collection Trust, 2013.\nStratton-Pruitt, S., et al., The Virgin Saints and Angels: South American Paintings 1600-1825 from the Thoma Collection, Skira, 2006.\nThornton, D.,A Rothschild Renaissance: Treasures from the Waddesdon Bequest, The British Museum, 2015.\nWearable Jewellery","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line841583"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6770090460777283,"wiki_prob":0.32299095392227173,"text":"Broken Blade (Colbana Files #3) by J.C. Daniels\nAfter being tortured, marked and raped by Jude the vampire, Kit is suffering from PTSD and feels that she is broken. Her connection with her blade no longer works and Kit can barely deal with the loss. Kit retires to Wolf Haven and starts working at a bar. All her friends want her to hurry up and rejoin life but Kit isn't ready to face her demons. T.J. however will not be denied and so arranges a small job for Kit, not realising that it will lead to Kit taking on one of the oldest magical creatures and possibly her death.\nIn Broken Blade, Daniels widened her world by introducing Pandora/Lilith. We learned that Pandora/Lillith is responsible for creating shifters, vampires, witches and the warrior race the Aneria. I loved the origin story and it helped explain why witches are pacifists and some of the ongoing antagonism between the various supernatural groups. With Pandora/Lilith as an antagonist, the story should have been absolutely epic. I thought that this is where it was going when Pandora/Lillith killed Es, the leader of a coven of witches, only to be sorely disappointed when she was easily defeated by Kit. No way should Pandora/ Lilith have been defeated by a gunshot to the head. Clearly, Daniels didn't know what to do with this character once she added her to the story. It made the ending seem so rushed. It would have been better to draw this out over two books, rather than to have Pandora/Lilith so easily defeated.\nFar too often, when traumatic things happen to urban fantasy protagonists, it's brushed off so that the author can tell another story. Because of the way that Daniels dealt with Kit's traumatic childhood, I believed that this would be different and I was right. No one just gets over being kidnapped and tortured and that really needed to be dealt with. My biggest issue is that Kit was given just four months before she was forced back out into the world. How is that enough time to heal? Her friends claimed to want to help her but to me, it felt very much like Kit and her new quirks were being portrayed as a burden. How is going back to work and burying the trauma the strong thing to do? To me, it just sets up the victim to have yet another massive breakdown because no one is meant to simply power on after something like that. Since Daniels decided to go there, I couldn't help but wonder why it is that she didn't set Kit up with some counselling? Yeah, I know that urban fantasy is supposed to be all about defeating the bad guy but if you are going to have a protagonist with serious mental health issues then it must be respected and written about appropriately.\nKit isn't the only survivor who is not fully respected. T.J., the owner of the bar where Kit works is now a wheelchair user after being paralyzed by her former Alpha. She has made a life for herself running Wolf Haven, taking in the lost and the scared. It is T.J. who ultimately pushes Kit out into the real world, pleading for Kit not to be like her. T.J.'s way of dealing with being viciously assaulted is painted as weakness and that is a problem. If T.J. wasn't tough, she wouldn't have survived.\n\"Yeah, sure. I could be like your bitch of a grandmother. I could have been born human and made a leech instead of born a weak werewolf and then tortured by the sadistic wolf who stole my legs. But he’s not the one who stole my life, Kit. I gave it up. I stay in here…and I hide. I let him ruin me. I’m letting him win…and I know it.”\n“TJ, that’s not—”\n“Don’t,” she warned, and the thread of steel under her voice was enough to silence me. “I stay in there,” she murmured. “I hide. Even though that son of a bitch would never leave his mountain to find me, I stay here. And I hide. You face down everything that scares you, until now. Don’t let him win, Kitty. You didn’t let anything else take you down. Don’t let this ruin you.” (pg 22)\nThe idea that there's only one acceptable way to be after surviving a violent assault is harmful and further policies victims. T.J. it seems is a beta and so Kit simply assumes that she didn't have the ability for vengeance and justice and so decides at the end of the story to go after the twisted Alpha. This was not Kit's decision to make. What I took away from all of this is that survivors cannot be trusted to run their own lives in the wake of an assault or to heal in a way that best suits them. This plot line very much makes self care a sign of weakness.\nI wasn't really impressed when all of the cats refused to make eye contact with Kit after the attack. They made what happened to her all about them and their failure to protect her. It did however make me happy when Kit remained consistent in her demand that people make eye contact rather than look at her feet whenever they are in her presence. Kit however seemed to hold it against Damon for not protecting her which was a problem for me. Yes, Damon did promise that no one would ever hurt her but Kit is an assassin and a warrior and the very idea of needing a man for protection just doesn't make any sense to me.\nAs for Kit's relationship with Damon, I continue to find it a problem. From the very beginning, Damon has been physically abuse, controlling and manipulative. This is what passes for love and it's nothing more than a masquerade for intimate partner violence. Kit hides in Wolf Haven to recover from being kidnapped and assaulted and instead of giving her the space she asks for, Damon actually forces his way into the bar where she works. Just about every time Kit tries to put some distance between them, Damon steps into her personal space. Even though Damon promises Kit that he will wait for her, invading on her time to heal is far from being a good friend let alone partner. If that were not enough, Damon clearly used Kit to find out more about Doyle - the child he adopted who is half Aneria like Kit. We are told repeatedly that Damon loves Kit but all I have seen him do to date is to abuse and manipulate her for his own convenience.\nDespite the fact that Daniels has widened her world in terms of real world marginalised people, there's a lot of erasure going on. Chang, Damon's second has a scant appearance in this book and there are no other people of colour to speak of. We've not had an LGBT character in this series since the first book. If Daniels can write tales about vampires, Pandora/Lilith, witches and shifters, there's absolutely no reason that she couldn't include more diversity.\nI have to admit that I am waffling on Broken Blade. On one hand, I really appreciate the fact that Kit's PTSD was explored but on the other, the very idea that there's some time frame for healing is beyond problematic. When this is coupled with the idea that self care is a reflection of weakness, it makes Broken Blade absolutely toxic.\nI continue to dislike Damon and Kit as a couple. The very idea that his controlling, abusive ways are fine because he is a cat is a problem. I am further troubled by the calm and contentedness Kit experiences in his presence. Sure, abuse is all Kit has every really known but to then have those around her support this relationship makes it appear innocuous instead of dangerous.\nBroken Blade could have been so much more than it was. With Pandora/Lilith as an antagonist, I should have been racing through the pages. In the end, I simply was bitterly disappointed with how easily Pandora/Lilith was dispatched. Yes, Kit has to be the hero because she is the protagonist but her victory needs to feel plausible and thought out, and not simply a race to wrap up a story line. I'm not sure yet where Kit's character is going and I'm not entirely sold on this series because of how trope laden and erased it is.\nPosted by Renee at 3:00 PM\nLabels: 2 fangs, book review, Colbana Files, J.C.Daniels, Lilith, magic, Pandora, shifters, vampires, Werewolves, Witches\nWynonna Earp, Season 1, Episode 11: Landslide\nOrphan Black, Season Four, Episode Nine: The Mitig...\nOutcast, Vol. 1: A Darkness Surrounds Him (Outcast...\nWayward Pines, Season Two, Episode Three: Once Upo...\nThe Awful Misogyny of the House of Night Series\nThe Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales ...\nThe Last Ship, Season Two, Episode Thirteen: A Mor...\nRevisionary (Magic Ex Libris #4) by Jim C Hines\n12 Monkeys, Season Two, Episode Eight: Lullaby\nPenny Dreadful, Season 3, Episode 6: No Beast So F...\nPreacher: Season 1, Episode 2: See\nGame of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 7: The Broken M...\nThe Last Ship, Season Two, Episode Twelve: Cry Hav...\nThe Last Ship, Season Two, Episode Eleven: Valkyri...\nRedeemed (House of Night #12) by P.C. Cast & Krist...\nOutcast, Season 1, Episode 1: A Darkness Surrounds...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line575843"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9569037556648254,"wiki_prob":0.9569037556648254,"text":"SwearingInNewAmericans-7-720×445\nTroy R. Bennett | BDN Gov. Janet Mills (in blue) laughs while posing for pictures at at citizenship ceremony at Portland's King Middle School in January.\nJanet Mills will host a meal for Muslim leaders at the Blaine House\nMichael Shepherd, BDN Staff • May 17, 2019\nGov. Janet Mills will hold a traditional Muslim meal at the Blaine House for the first time in Maine history, according to an organizer.\nMills spokesman Scott Ogden confirmed this week that the governor would be hosting an iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims, for community leaders on Sunday. It follows a Seder at the governor’s mansion for the Jewish holiday of Passover and an Easter egg hunt.\nWhile many of Maine’s Muslims have come here recently, the state has a longer history of Muslim immigration. Maine is the whitest state in the nation, but it is home to a Muslim population of thousands largely centered around Portland and Lewiston. They have primarily come here as refugees or as secondary migrants from other parts of the United States since around the turn of the 21st century.\nThe first group of immigrants came mostly from Albania to work in a Biddeford mill around 1900, according to a 2015 article in the Maine Policy Review by Reza Jalali, a University of Southern Maine administrator. They may have established America’s first mosque, but most were killed in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.\nA Muslim leader said the dinner came together at the urging of community members. Jalali said the first-of-its kind dinner was suggested by Muslim leaders including Portland City Councilor Pious Ali and Fatuma Hussein, who runs the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine in Lewiston. Jalali cited the Mills administration’s desire to “make Maine’s immigrants feel visible and welcome” and said there are other plans to “help immigrants gain a sense of belonging.”\nToday in A-town\nA public hearing on Mills’ planned climate change council will dominate a slow Friday in Augusta. Only three committees are in on Friday, but the planned hearings include one on a bill that would enshrine the governor’s planned Maine Climate Change Council, a group of more than three dozen people that would be tasked with filling in a vague plan to have 80 percent of Maine’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050. Mills has called it “ambitious” but “achievable.”\nThe bill is sponsored by Sen. David Woodsome, R-North Waterboro, and backed by the top-ranking Democrats in the Legislature. It would rely on $250,000 in annual funding proposed in Mills’ recent change package to her two-year budget proposal. Former Gov. Paul LePage’s political group criticized it on Thursday, calling it a gift to “environmental special interests.”\nOther panels will meet to discuss an array of gun bills and a proposal from House Speaker Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, to pass automatic voter registration. See the full schedule here.\n— Maine’s senior senator was the only Republican to oppose a nominee to the federal bench. Citing concerns about anti-abortion statements the nominee has made, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins joined all Senate Democrats and independents in voting against the nomination of Wendy Vitter to a U.S. District Court seat in New Orleans. But Vitter won support from all other Senate Republicans and was confirmed Thursday by a 52-45 vote. It was only the second time that Collins has broken with President Donald Trump on a judicial nominee.\n— A law takes effect later this year ensures that Native American school mascots will be a thing of the past in Maine. On Thursday, Mills signed the billbarring any public school or university from using Native American mascots, names and imagery. When the bill takes effect later this year, Maine will become the first U.S. state with such a ban.\n— A government review of ‘stealth’ destroyers built in Maine found hundreds of problems. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found more than 320 “serious deficiencies” when Bath Iron Works delivered the first-in class USS Zumwalt’s hull, mechanical and electrical systems to the Navy in May 2016. The report flags more than 240 “serious deficiencies in the second “stealth” destroyer after sea trials in 2018. The report places the bulk of the blame on the Navy for changing the mission of the destroyer line after the design and construction processes had begun and for its inability to settle on weaponry and other systems.\n— Maine’s junior senator is wary of overreaction to intelligence reports about heightened Iranian military activity. U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and who serves on the Intelligence Committee, said he is fearful that a “miscalculation” could draw the U.S. into a conflict. “I don’t think there’s faulty intel here necessarily. I think the intel may be accurate,” King told CNN on Thursday. “But the unanswered question again is, are they reacting to our assertions of action in the Middle East or are we reacting to them? That’s an unanswered question for me.”\nHappy birthday, pal\nSaturday would have been Chris Cousins’ 43rd birthday. It’s the latest in a series of difficult and emotional milestones since his death last August.\nAs his wife wrote on Facebook earlier this week, “It seems like just yesterday. It seems like an eternity.”\nThose of us who loved him will mark the occasion in different ways. Saturday is also World Whisky Day, so there’s a harmonic convergence for folks who want to raise a glass in his honor. A better way might be to surprise someone you care about with a gift bottle of whisky. That’s what Chris would do.\nWhisky doesn’t agree with me and I have to umpire five baseball games within 48 hours, so an honorary dram would be a really bad idea. I’ll find another way to honor his memory. I’ll look for an opportunity to summon the courage to show kindness at a moment when it would be easier to walk away. Not being afraid to show kindness was the way he lived his life.\nThen when I’m done with all my games, I’ll have a “shower beer” in his honor. Here is your soundtrack. — Robert Long\nToday’s Daily Brief was written by Michael Shepherd and Robert Long. If you’re reading this on the BDN’s website or were forwarded it, click here to receive Maine’s leading newsletter on state politics via email on weekday mornings. Click here to subscribe to the BDN.\nTo reach us, do not reply directly to this newsletter, but email us directly at mshepherd@bangordailynews.com or rlong@bangordailynews.com.\nThis article originally appeared on www.bangordailynews.com.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line24783"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7434194684028625,"wiki_prob":0.7434194684028625,"text":"Reno Jazz Festival Records\nUniversity of Nevada, Reno. University Archives\nThe Reno Jazz Festival Records consist of marketing flyers, newspaper articles, programs, sound recordings, tee shirts, timeline histories, and a videotape of the 1994 festival. There are sound recordings for 1968-1976, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2012. Miscellaneous items include a 2003 Accentuate the Positive Silver Star Award, with certificates from U. S. Senators John Ensign and Jim Gibbons. The 50th anniversary CD material includes a tribute to long-time festival photographer Pat Glancy. Album notes include information about festival founder Dr. John Carrico, Sr., of the University's Department of Music. Some of the vinyl LP recordings have been digitized and made available for streaming via the Area 33 1/3 Digital Collection.\nUniversity of Nevada, Reno. School of the Arts (Organization)\n2 Linear Feet (5 boxes)\nThe University of Nevada Reno Jazz Festival is the oldest educational festival in the western United States. It was founded in 1962 by Dr. John Carrico, Sr., director of bands at the University. The annual festival offers instructional clinics, performances by international musicians, and competitions for middle school, high school and college performers.\nThe first University of Nevada Alumni Association trophy was awarded in 1966. The festival moved to the Pioneer Center in Reno for the 1968 festival. In 1971, the name was changed to the University of Nevada Jazz Ensemble Festival, and a vocal competition division was added. In 1972, the name was changed to the Reno Jazz Band Festival. The competition became international in 1973, with Canadian participation. From 1976 until 1990, its name was the Reno International Jazz Festival.\nIn 1990, the University's Department of Music resumed co-administration of the festival, along with the Division of Continuing Education (now called Extended Studies). In 1991, the name was changed to the University of Nevada, Reno Jazz Festival. The festival expanded to a 3-night format in 2000 and had over 10,000 attendees for the first time in 2004. It is part of the Jazz Studies Program in the School of the Arts’ Department of Music, which is within the College of Liberal Arts. Over 300,000 students, parents, jazz lovers, and festival staff participated in the festival's first 50 years, 1962-2012.\nArranged in the following series: 1) Marketing and Media Coverage; 2) Programs; 3) Awards; 4) Audiovisual Recordings; 5) 50th Anniversary Files.\nSpecialized viewing and listening equipment is required to access parts of this collection: Record player, VCR.\nTransfer from the School of the Arts on various dates: 2014, 2016\nCarrico, John L.\nJazz -- Nevada\nJazz -- Study and teaching\nMusic -- Instruction and study\nMusic -- Nevada\nMusicians -- Nevada\nReno Jazz Festival\nUniversity of Nevada, Reno. Department of Music (Organization)\nGuide to the Records of the Reno Jazz Festival\nBetty Glass\nPart of the University of Nevada, Reno. University Archives Repository\nReno NV 89557-0322 USA\nReno Jazz Festival Records, AC 0644. University Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Reno. https://archive.library.unr.edu/public/repositories/3/resources/1005 Accessed January 17, 2020.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1231097"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5279708504676819,"wiki_prob":0.4720291495323181,"text":"You are here: Home Other Nautical Genres AOS Naval Non-Fiction General A Social History of the Navy 1793-1815\nA Social History of the Navy 1793-1815\nAOS Naval Non-Fiction - General\nThis finely researched book is a portrait of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars; but it is particularly a portrait of the Navy's people, of the officers and men who formed that formidable fighting force made popular by the novels of C S Forester and Patrick O'Brian. These men were assembled from all classes in society and came from all parts of the British Isles and so the social history of the Navy demonstrates a complete cross-section of contemporary life, and the divisions aboard ship, between quarter deck and lower deck for instance, reflected divisions on land.\nBut parentage and social background form only a small fragment of the story. The author follows their lives from the cardle to the grave and paints a detailed picture of both the expectations and the reality of life at sea. He describes how men came to go to sea and explains the volunteer, the press and the quota; the story of officer-entry is dealt with, along with the whole complex business of shipboard and naval hierarchy. Pay, prize money and other inducements are explained along with insight into the unhappier predicament of half-pay.\nIn the twenty-two years of war the cost in lives was heavy and every sailor was confronted by the persistent and daily dangers of the sea itself, the enemy and disease. If he was lucky enough to survive then an officer retired ashore on half-pay, not rich but proud of his service; a sailor from the lower deck might find a snug berth in one of the naval hospitals. He would have little but then he never expected much. First published in 1960, Lewis' book is a masterful account of how the men of the Nelsonic navy, at sea in 'those far-distant storm-beaten ships', organised their insular social world.\nAuthor: Michael Lewis\nTitle: A Social History of the Navy 1793-1815\nFirst Published by: Allen & Unwin","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line991889"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9113227128982544,"wiki_prob":0.9113227128982544,"text":"What A Wonderful World (by Ricky Riccardi)\nBook Reviews\tby Thomas Cunniffe\nIn the second half of his life, Louis Armstrong created a large collection of privately-recorded open reel tapes. He recorded his own concerts, conversations with friends, autobiographical monologues (including readings of his own letters), and commercially-issued records of himself and others. Armstrong had a pair of tape decks installed in a steamer trunk, and he would bring them and a collection of tapes with him for listening while on the road. When at home, he cataloged the tapes and hand-decorated the boxes with original collages. Although historians and fans knew about Armstrong’s tape collection while the trumpeter was still alive, the contents of the tapes were undisclosed until several years after Armstrong’s death. In his new biography, “What a Wonderful World”, Ricky Riccardi draws on these tapes to present a portrait of Armstrong far removed from his public persona. Starting his narrative in 1947 with the birth of the All-Stars, and closing with the renewed, posthumous interest in Armstrong, Riccardi attempts to offer a revised, detailed look at Armstrong’s twilight years.\nTo the general public, Louis Armstrong was a genial, old-fashioned entertainer who loved to sing and play trumpet for large enthusiastic audiences. Only a modest percentage of those fans realized that years earlier, Armstrong was the primary artistic force in transforming jazz from an ensemble music to a soloist’s art. Armstrong knew the measure of his contributions and was respectful to those who recognized his genius. But the nature of Armstrong’s music led him to be a popular entertainer, and Armstrong was bitter and angry towards those who treated him like a second-class citizen because of his skin color or their own ignorance of his artistic importance. He bristled when a call boy on a movie set referred to his white co-stars with courtesy titles and last names (Mr. Gilbert, Ms. Caron, etc.) but who called Armstrong by a nickname and joked that if “Satchmo” didn’t come out right away, the studio would hire Harry James in his place. Armstrong took his complaint to the film’s producer and refused to appear until the situation was rectified. The producer made things right, but Armstrong’s recorded account (included in Riccardi’s book, complete with graphic language and racial epithets) was kept secret until after Armstrong’s death.\nBecause of his stage persona, Armstrong was labeled an Uncle Tom by the younger generation. Riccardi’s book shows that the accusations were unjust, and that Armstrong was deeply affected by racial issues. He did not march in civil rights protests for fear that a punch to his lips might end his career, and while Armstrong reportedly gave generous financial support to the civil rights cause, his actions were sometimes behind the times. He hired white musicians on a regular basis, and refused to play in his hometown of New Orleans for several years because of a city ordinance that forbad stage performances by mixed-race bands. Yet Armstrong played for segregated audiences into the early sixties, long after mandatory integration clauses were a regular part of black musician’s contracts. Armstrong’s theme song “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South” was written by two black composers, and the trumpeter was outraged at the backlash from his 1951 recording, which included the original lyrics about mammies and darkies. Unfortunately, that scandal may have led Armstrong’s detractors to dismiss the trumpeter’s later actions including his furious tirade on President Eisenhower’s inaction during the Little Rock integration crisis, and his statements in the aftermath of the march on Selma, Alabama.\nArmstrong’s manager, Joe Glaser, was a rough, crude white man with numerous criminal connections. Riccardi’s portrait of him is as fair as possible, since much of the relationship between Glaser and Armstrong was purposefully undocumented. For example, in 1954, Armstrong’s wife Lucille was arrested in Hawaii for possession of marijuana. Louis was a well-known pot smoker, and Riccardi quotes a vehement letter from Armstrong to Glaser where the trumpeter demands that Glaser shield Armstrong and his wife from further marijuana persecutions, or else Armstrong would retire immediately. Riccardi notes that there is no record of Glaser’s response, but recognizes that Armstrong was never busted for marijuana use again. Riccardi reinforces the notion that Glaser knew that Armstrong was his best client and fought rigorously on Armstrong’s behalf. He also places equal blame for Armstrong’s back-breaking schedule of one-nighters between Armstrong and Glaser. Riccardi shows Armstrong as a tough and stubborn bandleader, working long tours and making few changes to the nightly repertoire. Despite the complaints of his musicians and critics, Armstrong entertained in the best (and perhaps only) way he knew how, and he failed to make changes to his act unless he was personally affected. Three of his most talented musicians (Velma Middleton, Billy Kyle and Buster Bailey) died during tours, but it took a pair of heart attacks of his own before Armstrong would reduce his touring schedule.\nFor all of Riccardi’s strengths in documenting Armstrong’s later life, he is significantly weaker when discussing Armstrong’s music. His musical discussions are littered with superlatives, and while some of Armstrong’s recordings have been unduly neglected, it becomes difficult for the reader to discern just which recordings are truly definitive. In discussing Armstrong’s 1947 Boston Symphony Hall concert, Riccardi claims that the version of “Muskrat Ramble” is “arguably the greatest version…ever recorded” without offering any further reasoning or justification. While I agree that Armstrong’s version is very good, I cannot claim to have heard the majority of the 794 other versions listed in Tom Lord’s online discography, and unless Riccardi can claim otherwise, he has no right to include such an extravagant assertion. I’m more troubled by his citation of Armstrong’s “hilarious” added lyrics to “St. Louis Blues” from the W.C. Handy album. The lyrics, where Armstrong says he’ll beat Velma Middleton’s head with part of a picket fence, may have inspired laughter in 1954, but it is very disturbing to modern ears. Regardless of its original intentions, Riccardi should note the cultural disconnect in his discussion.\nExcept for isolated spots of sloppy editing, Riccardi’s text reads very well. Not surprisingly, Dan Morgenstern, who shares Riccardi’s advocacy of all things Armstrong, is quoted frequently in the book, as are several former Armstrong sidemen. While the unrelenting jingoism gets a little tiring, the strength of Riccardi’s research makes “What a Wonderful World” an essential addition to the Armstrong canon.\nWhy Jazz Happened (by Marc Myers)\n100% Proof: The Complete Tubby Hayes Discography (by Simon Spillett & C. Tom Davis)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1248274"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9122040271759033,"wiki_prob":0.9122040271759033,"text":"James C. VanHorne\nFaculty & Research › Faculty › James C. VanHorne\nProfessor Emeritus, Finance\nJamesC.VanHorne\nThe A.P. Giannini Professor of Banking and Finance, Emeritus\nResearch Statement\nProfessor VanHorne has focused his research on issues in corporate finance, valuation, and on the term structure of interest rates. His some 60 articles in finance, economic, and management journals often involve empirical inquiry. He is the author of five books, three of which — \"Financial Management and Policy,\" 12th edition; \"Financial Market Rates and Flows,\" 6th edition; and \"Fundamentals of Financial Management,\" 12th edition, (coauthor) — have been widely used as texts in the U.S.A. and abroad. In addition, he has written 24 cases used in MBA courses in the school..\nJames VanHorne is the A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance, Emeritus, having come to Stanford in 1965. He has taught MBA courses in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructuring, money & capital markets, fixed-income securities, and government and nonprofit debt financing. He was the first recipient of the distinguished teaching award by MBA students, and recipient again in 1997. He is the past president of the American Finance Association and of the Western Finance Association, and has been an active member of the Financial Economists Roundtable. He also has served as Associate Editor of several leading finance journals.\nHe received his BA from DePauw University and MBA and PhD degrees from Northwestern University. In the mid-1970s he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and has served on several Federal and State of California commissions and advisory groups. VanHorne has served on seven corporate boards and four nonprofit boards. His research involves such things as capital budgeting, the effect of inflation, interest rate theory and behavior, corporate finance, and financial innovation.\nDSci (Hon.), DePauw University, 1986\nPhD, Northwestern University, 1964\nMBA, Northwestern University, 1961\nAB, DePauw University, 1957\nAt Stanford University since 1965\nAssociate Dean for Academic Affairs, Stanford GSB, 1976-1980\nDirector, Stanford MBA Program, Stanford GSB, 1970-1973\nAssistant Professor, Michigan State University, 1964-1965\nDeputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, 1975-1976\nCommercial Lending Representative, Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, 1958-1962\nSloan Teaching Excellence Award, Stanford GSB, 1997\nMBA Distinguished Teaching Award, Stanford GSB, 1997\nMBA Distinguished Teaching Award, (first recipient), Stanford GSB, 1982\nDavis Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement, Stanford GSB, 1998.\nFellow of the American Finance Asociation, 2000\nFundamentals of Financial Management (13th edition)\nJames C. VanHorne, John M. Wachowicz Harlow: FT Prentice Hall, 2009.\nFinancial Management and Policy (12th edition)\nJames C. VanHorne Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, January 2001.\nFinancial Market Rates and Flows (6th edition)\nJames C. VanHorne Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001.\nOther Teaching\nFinancial Management Program\nStanford Case Studies\nDougall & Gilligan Global Agency | F247\nJames Van Horne1996\nMarriott Corporation: Bondholders vs. Equityholders | F249\nPender, Wilson & Company | F248\nJ. Van Horne1996\nFazio Pump Corporation | F214\nMorley Industries, Inc. | F250\nNumerous cases and other teaching materials.\nConferences, Talks, and Speaking Engagements\nOver 100 conference presentations and other speeches involving macroeconomics and finance.\nStanford University Affiliations\nStanford GSB\nAcademic Dean, Director of the MBA Program, and numerous standing and ad hoc committees at the GSB.\nGreater Stanford University\nAcademic Senate of Stanford University and several ad hoc committees.\nPast Associate Editor\nJournal of Finance\nJournal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis\nJournal of Fixed Income\nPast Trustee or Director\nGeo Hazards International Foundation\nCalifornia/Nevada United Methodist Foundation\nBailard Fund Group\nImpell Corporation\nKnudsen corporation\nMontgomery Street Income Securities\nSanwa Bank California\nSuntron Corporation\nAmerican Finance Association. 1984.\nWestern Finance Association, 1981\nPast Commissioner, Member\nWorker Compensation Reform Commission, State of California\nInternational Advisory Group, Securities & Exchange Commission\nInvestors Advised to Stay Out of Hedge Fund\nThe Times, December 21, 2005\nSteep Drop in Triple-A Ratings\nSan Francisco Chronicle, April 2, 2002\nInflation Signals Are Mixed: Retail Sales Climb Higher than Expected\nSan Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 2000\nThese Are Your Father's Muni Guys: Industry Shows Its Age\nThe Bond Buyer, July 1, 1999\nwrittenHeeding the Siren Song of Service\nChad Cooper left a fast-track banking career when the struggling Brooklyn Conservatory of Music called his name.\nwrittenJames Van Horne: Shedding Light on Dubious Accounting\nThe Stanford GSB professor says earnings statements have declined in relevance since companies tweak them to make themselves look more profitable.\nwrittenJim VanHorne Teaching the Core Once Again\nLegendary professor emeritus returns to teach core finance course.\nwrittenHonoring a Legend: The James C. Van Horne Professorship\nJames C. Van Horne, the A.P. Giannini Professor of Banking and Finance, Emeritus, is the inspiration for colleagues, friends, and former students to establish an endowed chair in his honor.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1474693"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5834749937057495,"wiki_prob":0.5834749937057495,"text":"The Photographer Who X-Rayed Chernobyl\nHow to make the invisible visible.\nby Winnie Lee December 4, 2019\nAlice Miceli, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, PTT-8 Sign, Highly Contaminated Ground, Belarus, 2008 Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAbandoned City of Pripyat\nThe ghost town left by the worst nuclear disaster of all time is being taken over by nature and urban explorers.\nWhile living in Berlin in 2007, Brazilian artist Alice Miceli took long train rides—18 hours or more—to Belarus, then another leg, by car or train, to Chernobyl. She made this journey more than 20 times. With permission to be in Chernobyl’s Exclusion Zone before tours were available, she photographed the site using a regular camera, but also documented the area—and the legacy of the 1986 nuclear disaster there—in a different, more extraordinary way. Miceli placed radiographic film plates used for chest X-rays—specifically sensitive to radiation—wrapped in layers of industrial plastic on the ground, on windows, on trees. She wanted to make visual records of something invisible to the naked eye, namely the area’s radioactive contamination, particularly the isotope cesium 137. “It is interesting that radiation has shape,” she says. “It has physicality. It operates at a specific frequency that can be recorded, if only we could place ourselves in a position to see it. It became clear to me that, in this case, it would be necessary to create my own tools to make this happen.”\nMiceli created a special pinhole camera and did meticulous tests at the Institute of Radiological Sciences in Rio de Janeiro, but she still didn’t entirely know what to expect when she got into the field. “In terms of the radiographic techniques that I had been developing, I didn’t have any idea about what kind of images I might be able to record once actually outside the lab and in Chernobyl, encountering not a controlled model but the full-scale radiation,” she says.\nMiceli (left) examines a film plate placed on the ground. She also attached them directly to objects (right). Courtesy the artist\nThe resulting images, which are currently on exhibit at Americas Society/Council of the Americas in New York, are unexpected and don’t follow any predictable patterns. Some glow with ghostly lines and swirls, but many of them are mottled darkness (with the dark areas indicating radiation). The visual effect is striking, but its emotional impact is greater. “Chernobyl as it is exists in our planet today concerns all of us,” she says.\nThe artist has continued to be fascinated with natural and social landscapes that, like Chernobyl’s, have been impacted by trauma. Her other work has explored Security Prison 21 in Cambodia and minefields in post-conflict countries.\nMiceli discussed with Atlas Obscura her inspiration and the experiments she conducted for the Chernobyl Project. The exhibition is on view through January 25, 2020.\nAn experiment in a highly contaminated field, held in place by rocks. Courtesy the artist\nWhat inspired you to go to Chernobyl and attempt to document its radioactivity?\nI read a story in a magazine in which a scientist mentions how quiet it is in the Exclusion Zone in Chernobyl, and I realized that the zone could be a powerful place to explore the idea of silence. I looked at hundreds of photojournalistic images of the site and I realized they were all incomplete somehow; they were just photographs of ruins. They are deceitful in the way they leave out the central narrative of the story. They just show a place in decay, but it could be any place in decay. The photographs say nothing about the fact that the landscape has been changed forever at the atomic level. This interested me as a challenge and a question—the conceptual challenge of using the medium of photography to capture what cannot be seen.\nWhat was your first impression of Chernobyl?\nWhen I first went to Belarus, I was already working on the technology for almost a year, but I had never actually been in Chernobyl [in Ukraine]. Being there made me witness the humanitarian crisis that the situation has caused in Belarus over the years. Right after having returned to Rio, where I was then based, I asked myself: How has this first trip altered the project? The central issue is the (in)visibility of radiation. Physical visibility, considering that my images capture the invisible, but also sociopolitical visibility, considering that even though the reactor is across the border, in Ukraine, contamination is at higher levels in Belarus, a country that is even less socially visible than its neighbor.\nHow did you decide where to place the radiographic plates?\nOnce I got there, I began looking for the most contaminated spots, because the emission was strongest and the image was most likely to be exposed more quickly, more clearly. I always carry a light meter when I take photographs, so it felt normal this time around to carry a dosimeter, which measures the level of radiation embedded in organic matter. I spent a lot of time walking around the zone and mapping out areas with signals strong enough to make an exposure, but not so strong that it would be dangerous for me to be there.\nMiceli’s radiation dosimeter. Courtesy the artist\nCan you describe how your radiographs were made?\nTwo technologies were developed. First, there is a pinhole camera, adjusted to capture images only from invisible gamma rays, on to radiographic film. We built a steel box with a lead cover, to attenuate radiation and protect the film. The actual camera went inside the box, and was a much thicker lead cube with a conical, minuscule pinhole. This technique worked well in the extremely controlled and miniature setting of a lab, but not so much in full-scale contaminated nature, as in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.\nThe second technique, the one we experimented with in Chernobyl, was the development of autoradiographs that use all sorts of different contaminated matter within the Exclusion Zone as their source. An autoradiograph, or autoradiogram, is an image imprinted on to radiographic film produced by the gamma rays from radioactive matter. The film is placed next to or in direct contact with contaminated matter, thus producing life-size images of the invisible contamination. That’s what we see in the show.\nWhat was the most challenging aspect of your project?\nIt turned out that each good image needed to be exposed to radiation for quite an extended period of time—at least two months. Some were there for eight months. We marked the landscape and made detailed notes to make sure we’d have a shot at finding the experiments again, but many were lost.\nWhat was the most surprising thing about your experience there?\nThat being in Chernobyl was for me a very peaceful, calming, and focused activity.\nThis interview was edited for length and clarity.\nAlice Miceli, fragment of a field III - 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 - 21.07.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAlice Miceli, fragment of the trunk of a tree II - 7.356 µSv (07.05.09 - 21.07.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAlice Miceli, fragment of a window I - 2.494 µSv (21.01.09 - 07.04.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAlice Miceli, fragment of a field II - 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 - 21.07.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAlice Miceli, fragment of a field V - 9.120 µSv (07.05.09 - 21.07.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nAlice Miceli, fragment of a wooden wall IV - 2.956 µSv (21.01.09 - 07.04.09), backlight, radiographic negative. Courtesy the artist and Galeria Nara Roesler\nChernobyl by Day, Kyiv by Night\nDarmon Richter\nenergynucleardisastersphotographyvisual\nHow One Photographer Captures the Glory of Birds in Flight\nAn otherworldly look at a familiar sight.\nWinnie Lee January 10, 2020\nCapturing the Sculptural Landscapes of California Skateparks\nThe photographer is a skateboarder, but there's not a board in sight.\nWinnie Lee December 16, 2019\nPhotographers Take on the World's Walls, Borders, and Barriers\nAn exhibit documents the obstacles we erect, and how we overcome them.\nWinnie Lee November 26, 2019\nPhotographing the Afterlives and Second Acts of America's Movie Palaces\nMatt Lambros is inspired by abandoned theaters—and their potential for revival.\nWinnie Lee October 21, 2019\nLife in Pripyat Before, And the Morning After, the Chernobyl Disaster\nWhen the scale of a tragedy dawned.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1210366"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5294126868247986,"wiki_prob":0.5294126868247986,"text":"Category Archives: Mythology\nMost of us, having grown up on Saturday morning cartoons, had a pretty simple idea of heroism as kids. The frames by which we understand Star Wars or Batman are some of the first narrative templates we acquire, and as children it seems to pervade the romanticized accounts we have of various historical events; not least the John Wayne “good vs. evil” frames by which we see the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and World War II. Movies such as Abraham Lincoln Vampire (which I haven’t seen, but know enough about the plot to talk about) are a prime example: the first scene in the movie shows Abraham Lincoln as a kid getting into a fight with a slaveowner as an act of protest against the racist forces of his time (in reality, even Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of the most influential abolitionists of all time, had opinions about blacks that would rightfully make her a bigot by today’s standards), and later on his wife is shown as admiring his allegedly anti-racist sentiments (in reality, his wife’s family owned tons of slaves.) But you don’t need me to tell you that those childhood tales in which only the truly and irredeemably evil were killed were mere fantasies; the ugly complexities and horrors of the world quickly come into view when one starts reading more in adolescence, and while the problems initially seem like inexcusable acts that can be resisted with simple, albeit difficult, actions, it becomes more clear as time goes on that the modern world, in its vast complexity and interconnectedness, takes us along for the ride whether we like it or not.\nSuch thoughts led me to wonder about what is and what should be considered ethical in a world that has created a horrifying synergy between violence and complexity. While an analytic approach would leave us fruitlessly looking for axioms and leave us running in circles from the inevitable creep of unexamined assumptions, a lot can be learned by examining the cultural archetypes that shape our unstable consensus about morality: particularly the hero, a figure that stands at the intersection of morality and agency. For our more complex and cynical postmodern age, however, there is another trope that fascinates me: the antihero. While the antihero has arguably existed as long as the hero (I think back to the seemingly ambiguous ethics of Hellenic heroes such as Odysseus), today’s ubiquity of antiheroes in TV, movies, and novels seems to reflect some of our collective confusion while simultaneously paying tribute to more timeless ideas that may have been overlooked in moments of idealism.\nWhere the stereotypical selfless hero serves the Apollonian ideas of order and generativity, contemporary antiheroes are Dionysian destroyers; sometimes selfishly so, other times for a more nuanced version of what we might tentatively call “The Greater Good”. The use of such terms is not just pretentious window dressing either: the labels of “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” refer to the two main archetypes in Friedrich Nietzche’s The Birth of Tragedy, respectively representing creation and destruction. While Nietzche was primarily concerned with aesthetics, his archetypes later found themselves conceptually re-imagined as the essential conflict between creation and destruction known as dialectic and has since shaped many writers such as Hegel, Marx, Schumpeter, Boyd, Derrida, and Taleb among many others. It’s the key concept behind my entry on allostatic economics, and it also underlies one of the most common templates for understanding the heroic archetype: The Hero’s Journey, as elucidated in Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Before getting into that, however, let’s talk about “The Greater Good” (before we continue, here’s some comic relief in case you need it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qRDMHbXaM)\nFeel Locally, Pause Globally\nThe issues of morality that we struggle with have more to do with scale than anything else. While we may occasionally debate about whether to tell someone a “white lie” or tell them the harsh truth, our knowledge of morality on a micro-scale is hardly ever topic for debate. Anyone with half a brain can tell you that if someone is in danger that helping them is the right thing to do, or that it’s not okay to murder someone. The kinds of ethical rules that we follow when dealing with our friends and family and those who are in our immediate vicinity are what make up micro-morality. Micro-morality is instinctive: it’s based on the response we have to what is up close and personal: our horror at seeing abused animals or starving children, or our instinct to run to help our child when they scrape their knee on the playground. Rather than being derived from any kind of logical inference, we choose our responses based on our sentiments.\nOur sentiments do very well for handling the specific, but they are utterly clueless when it comes to the general. While it may seem that we are horrified by the wreckage of a natural disaster far away or the casualties of a major war, this cringing of ours only happens when we are thinking about a specific image or story about the event; one in which we can imagine a specific person that is affected by the tragedy; thus the dreary aphorism that “one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic.” Unfortunately, an individual story can never be an appraisal of the big picture: the world is too complex, and more than just the aggregate of many statistically independent vectors. Nor does utilitarianism fare any better (in fact, it fares much worse when we consider the kinds of utopian delusions it can lead to), as there is no simple numeraire, let alone method of calculation, that can tell us what is categorically best in the big picture. Even if we could, it would likely look horrifyingly callous to our sentiment-based instincts: for every isolationist who sees Obama’s drone strikes as a heartless calculated slaughter, there’s a neoliberal who sees Ron Paul’s fiscal conservatism as an economic nightmare for those whose survival would be threatened by the resulting contraction of the world economy. Even in the cases where one measure could obviously do more good than another, it often contradicts our basic moral instincts: the second set of casualties from the September 11th attacks came from people avoiding flying and driving their cars more often. Cars are literally over 50 times as dangerous (in casualties per million miles traveled) as planes, and tens of thousands of people in the US die in car crashes every year, but we’ll unfailingly feel more terror at the instant one-time taking of 3,000 lives.\nOne might consider that to be a case for moral relativism: but this is something that I strongly disagree with. The tired argument that there is no logically provable system of first principles for “right” and “wrong” runs in direct contradiction to our instinctively defined ideas about how people ought to be treated. Those who say “well just because our genes are fooling us, doesn’t mean it’s true” somehow miss that our subjective experience as humans is fundamentally incorrigible, and that saying that logic trumps our experience is like saying that someone crying out in pain isn’t “actually in pain” because the wrong area of the brain is lighting up. This has always been very tough for me to argue, and I blame it on how we currently use the dichotomy of “subjective” and “objective” to mean “relative” and “absolute”–but that implies that there’s something inherently “relative” about experience and something inherently “absolute” about things that are defined independently of experience. Instead, I’d say that micro-morality is subjective but absolute due to its strict adherence to our emotional state, and macro-morality to be objective but relative due to the fact that it is something that we can reason about, but at the same time is too complex for us to ever find an absolute answer.\nOf course, even if we had a good idea of what counts for “the greater good”, we still have the pesky issue of unintended consequences, which plague nearly every well-intentioned effort in our complex global civilization. If the risk of basing our macro-morality on sentiment requires us to be cold and calculating, then the futility of quantifying what serves the “greater good” requires that we be merely cold; to pause and think twice before we choose our actions. Put more simply: micro-morality is hot, macro-morality is cold. Unsurprisingly, the courageous and selfless heroes we see in stories are almost always hot-blooded: they feel anger, passion, indignation, and determination. Antiheroes (who, yes, I still have yet to define more clearly), by contrast, have cultivated a greater stillness; perhaps with the exception of their more personal hangups, which can serve to motivate them in their goals. This is no easy task: it is inescapably human to see a wound and want to bandage it; but sometimes this very urge can get in our very way when what’s necessary is not creation but destruction. The movie Batman Begins revolves around this idea, but rather than watch two hours of Christian Bale making funny noises (okay, okay, it was actually a good movie), I invite you to watch a ten minute presentation by Slavoj Zizek on the unintended consequences of charity. I don’t fully agree with him, but his argument is framed along the same lines, and acknowledges the unpleasant necessity of creative destruction:\nSmith’s Telos vs. Schumpeter’s Deities\nSeeing destruction as good is inherently counter-intuitive. Although we sometimes speak of “destroying” corruption or poverty or discrimination, these are gentle abstractions. Real destruction always comes with morbidity, and oftentimes with casualties. Our association of good with creation and evil with destruction is in fact a natural extension of our micro-morality, and is embedded deeply enough into our psyche that even Zizek, despite seeing charity as a tragic irony that keeps a failing system from being destroyed, immediately sees George Soros’ acts of economic destruction as a supposedly obvious example of why global capitalism is a morally problematic system (NB: I am not making a debate for or against capitalism, that’s an entirely different subject.)\nWithout such economic destruction, however, resources would be indefinitely tied up in places where they don’t do any good (for more elaboration, see my previous post Phenomenological Opacity, Accounting Identities, and Allostasis). That is not to say, however, that this destruction is not a dirty job. It is tempting here to even say that Soros is doing nothing wrong, that he is merely “allocating resources more efficiently”, but such an idea hearkens back to the flawed concept of utilitarianism by implying that there is something to be maximized, and by extension some final outcome that we get closer to with every improvement in efficiency. The result is not a cyclical view of history, but rather a teleological one; one that has arguably entered our own modern times in the form of our popular faith in the notion of “human progress.”\nAlthough I’m no expert on early liberal philosophy, the philosopher John Gray, in his book Black Mass, has taken note of the teleology inherent in philosophers and economists of the liberal tradition. The popular notion of the “Invisible Hand” of the market originally was actually a reference to God, who he believed to be the guiding force behind the complex coordination of many individual actors. This might just be a pantheistic interpretation of the process of self-organization, but Smith’s devout practice of Christianity suggests that this process was nonetheless directed towards some final end. The presence of a divine benevolence behind these transactions also provides a comfortable means to reconcile our sentiments with the greater order of things, as God is a human face to put on what is otherwise an emergent network of individual heuristics. From this more teleological viewpoint, there is hope of a sound justification, and in the idea that should we choose wisely, or perhaps submit to a higher power, we’ll have done what’s ultimately correct; an idea that I’ll revisit in a bit.\nIn the absence of efficiency, utilitarianism, or any kind of anthropomorphic teleological force, morality takes on a quality of absurdity. With no cosmic plan on which to anchor our macro-morality, we are left to look at Soros’ creative destruction through the micro-moral lens of sentiment. It would almost seem here that he really is doing no good through his acts of destruction, but as my peer Greg Linster put it, without death, there cannot be life. Forest fires burn down trees and spread the nutrients contained in the ashes, genes improve through natural selection, and failed businesses go bankrupt and cede their resources to new ventures. This is the essence of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction”** History, in this view, is cyclical rather than teleological; a fundamentally allostatic process where the flattening out of its cycles are mere death rather than any grand revelation. In this view of things, destruction is necessary, but not in any way that is unambiguously reconcilable with our sentiments. There’s no grand plan that tells us what to destroy, just destruction happening for its own reasons that vary with each case.\nEven then, it is not only human, but also morally imperative that we do not entirely disconnect from our sentiments, as they still serve as the sole reason for our macro-morality; we still ought to cringe when we witness the suffering of individuals. For this reason, the contradictions of macro-morality do not suggest moral relativism so much as they reveal some fundamental absurdity about the world. Where Adam Smith’s invisible hand can be equated with a benevolent God that will eventually liberate us from a petty and convoluted reality, Schumpeter’s blind and ubiquitous creative destruction more closely resembles the rowdy and debauched deities of the classical era. According to the Hero’s Journey, the hero always submits himself to a higher power; the antihero, should they take on their mission, does the same for Schumpeter’s raucous band of supernatural knaves.\nThe Dionysian Journey\nWhile the concepts of dialectic and creative destruction may only have been formalized a short time ago, they’ve been passed down tacitly through myths for countless generations according to Campbell. The central theme of the hero’s journey is rebirth: death symbolizes a fundamental rite of passage. Thousands of years later, the same wisdom applies in the exact same way: in order to grow, your old self needs to be put to the test and broken; you need to die so you can emerge as something stronger. Every adaptation is a kind of death, and those who become too fearful of such death inevitably submit themselves to a slow and painful process of atrophy. The hero undergoes this transformation after he is given the call to action, in which some force has thrown the world out of balance. In order to bring the world back into balance, he must undergo a process of transformation, after which he is able to restore the world as he knew it. The same task is incumbent upon the antihero, but his transformation is a far harsher one that tests the limits of his very humanity. For each antihero, it is different, and they fall into a number of different archetypes.\nThe most straightforward kind of antihero may be the ones that are known as “lawful neutral.” They are not necessarily unethical, but their primary drive is a relatively rigid sense of duty rather than sentiment. James Bond is a textbook example: many of the villains he faces are agents who were previously betrayed by either him or the organization in favor of the mission. In newer incarnations of Bond, he is a much more dark and brooding character who’s learned the hard way that sentiment is a liability, and has stoically resigned himself to serving as an apparatus of order. His duty is simultaneously his remaining connection to humanity–not necessarily teleological, but the priority of saving human lives is a micro-moral one that keeps some semblance of reason. Jack Bauer is another good example of such a character: he is willing to kill, torture, and break the law in order to protect the country from existential threat; but not without a heavy moral toll that exacts itself upon him and culminates in his ritual of atonement with an Imam at the end of the penultimate season. The link to humanity is nonetheless a precarious one: both Bond and Bauer have enemies who were originally on their side who have suffered too much from the violence of their role. Some, like Alec Trevelyan and Tony Almeida, have simply taken too much damage from what they’ve been through (a near-death experience and the loss of a wife and kid respectively.) Others, such as Stephen Saunders from the third season of 24, have lost faith in the system that they support, and decide that something drastic must be done. They, too, are a kind of anti-hero, and one that I consider to be the opposite of the lawful neutral: the fundamentalist.\nWhere the lawful neutral usually plays the role of hero, the fundamentalist more often than not takes up the role of villain. They are almost always seeking a kind of finality; unlike the conventional hero who works to keep the world in a kind of balance, the fundamentalist is looking for dramatic changes, revolution, and in some cases either apocalypse or utopia. For this reason, they are oftentimes the villain of stories, as they cross the line from respecting Schumpeter’s deities to delusionally believing in Smith’s benevolent telos. Saunders, whom I mentioned just a minute ago, is one such arguably delusional fundamentalist. After years of torture in a POW camp in the Balkans, his perspective changes and he finds the system upheld by Bauer and his counter-terrorist friends to be morally abhorrent. His grievances against the United States, although arguably valid (NB: not making an anti-American argument here, just acknowledging that empires commit large scale crimes), are taken to an extreme in his plans to cripple the American empire once and for all by releasing a deadly contagious virus that kills 90% of its victims. A more subtle example can be found in Alan Moore’s graphic novel The Watchmen, in which a former superhero by the name of Ozymandias stops an impending nuclear war by faking an alien invasion that results in the death of hundreds of thousands in the city of New York. His act was very likely necessary for the survival of civilization, and his own words show just how aware he was of the gravity of his actions:\n“What’s significant is that I know. I know I’ve struggled on the backs of murdered innocents to save humanity… But someone had to take the weight of that awful, necessary crime.”\nIt would seem from this moment of alleged self-awareness that he had indeed grown from an idealistic young crime-fighter who believed that violence could be solved like a simple optimization problem, to a man who embraced the worst violence imaginable to prevent an even bigger catastrophe. His utopian hubris, however, is shown in full view as he gloats to his would-be saboteurs about what he has supposedly done for humanity:\n“My new world demands less obvious heroism, making your schoolboy heroics redundant. What have they achieved? Failing to prevent Earth’s salvation is your only triumph, and yet that failure overshadows every past success! By default you usher in an age of illumination so dazzling that humanity will reject the darkness in its heart…”\nThe lawful neutral and the fundamentalist both find manifestations in real life as well. Modern warfare exacts suffering on a horrifying scale, but it most likely continues to be a necessary action even in the best of cases. Two people could spend a lifetime arguing whether Henry Kissinger was a war criminal or a national hero, but for our purposes it suffices to say that he felt obliged to keep peace by maintaining a balance of power between the world’s two superpowers and protect the well being and safety of the American people. The fundamentalist also embraces this ambiguity in real life, though I’m convinced that fundamentalist organizations such as Al-Qaeda are engaging in a much more unambiguously senseless brand of violence that comes from utopian fantasies; a matter that I may revisit in later posts.\nPerhaps most true to the antihero is a third kind, which taking a note from Venkatesh Rao’s essay, The Gervais Principle, I have labeled the sociopath. Rao’s sociopath is not so much a sociopath in layman’s terms as he is someone who has withdrawn from the socially constructed reality of his former companions (who make up two other subgroups, the “losers” and the “clueless”) in order to answer to what he considers a higher ethical code. In this way, he is very similar to my own description of the antihero, but differs in that he gains a more fundamentally nihilist outlook and may find himself completely disconnected from any trace of human sentiment. Having already addressed order and revolution as two different antiheroic moral codes, my own categorization of the sociopath is one that has abandoned much of their morality to seek their own personal gain. Unlike the villain, however, they are usually more sympathetically presented and are ultimately looking for some kind of redemption. Walter White, the main character in the show Breaking Bad is a prime example: originally cooking meth in an attempt to save his family’s finances before he dies of cancer, he slowly slips away from his loved ones and becomes caught in a struggle against his own addiction to the new-found power he feels as he ascends to the status of drug kingpin. In the realm of video games, Sarah Kerrigan, one of several protagonists in the Starcraft franchise undergoes a similar transformation; originally an idealistic freedom fighter with a past history of family deaths, abduction, and experimentation, she is eventually mutated into an alien-human hybrid who quickly becomes known as the scourge of the sector. Consumed with rage at the betrayal that led to the incident, she is seen as a sympathetic character despite this status as arch-villain. When she miraculously regains her humanity, she quickly realizes that it is her inevitable fate to transform back in to the hybrid, and while her actions become more moral, she nonetheless decimates entire worlds in order to get back at those who betrayed her and prepare her army to face a greater power that threatens to the entire sector.\nAn arguable sub-category of the sociopath is the narcissist; although in real life the narcissist is different than the sociopath, they are very similar in my current taxonomy. They are both self-interested, but the quest of the narcissist is more particular: it is a quest for identity. Walter White in fact falls under this, because his quest for power is ultimately one for validation. A more striking example, however, is Don Draper of Mad Men; a man whose only purpose is to build an inhabit his new identity. Prior to faking his own death, he was Dick Whitman. Since then, he will do everything in his power to prevent anybody from finding out his past, even declining to tell his first wife and keeping traces of his old life in a locked cabinet. It is not just this overt scam that he is trying to preserve, however: everything from his marriages, to his affairs, to his quest for power are part of his quest to create a convincing identity to inhabit that is as far away as possible from his old self. As the facade breaks down in various places, he ends the most recent season by making plans to move to California, yet another scheme that gives him the hope of truly “starting over.” The narcissist, interestingly enough, could be seen as a cross between the sociopath and the fundamentalist, since their own quest for identity is its own utopianism; a belief that if only they could play the perfect role, all would be well.\nLike all antiheroic quests, however, it is not one that lends itself to clean endings and revelations. Some antiheroes, like the lawful neutral, are more likely to understand this than others such as the fundamentalist. Like the hero, however, the antihero undergoes change, and so the fundamentalist can always take on a less ruthless goal than utopia while the lawful neutral may one day become disillusioned with the continual injustice he decides to prop up. At the end of The Watchmen, we are left to wonder what choice Ozymandias will make when he asks the godlike being Dr. Manhattan about the true significance of his actions:\nOzymandias: I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all works out in the end.\nDr. Manhattan: “In the end”? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.\n*This is one of the reasons why I continue to see literary analysis as a field that is far from irrelevant, even if it produces a great deal of frivolity in the process.\n**There was some philosopher well before Schumpeter that came up with this idea, but I don’t remember who that is. Whether we like it or not, the concept is popularly attributed to Schumpeter.\nThis entry was posted in Culture, Mythology, Semiotics on July 26, 2013 by alexboland.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1086862"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.631350040435791,"wiki_prob":0.368649959564209,"text":"Caulfield, Missouri\nUpdated on Apr 20, 2018\nCounty Howell\nArea code Area code 417\nState Missouri\nElevation 1,027 ft (313 m)\nGNIS feature ID 715508\nLocal time Monday 6:22 PM\nWeather 19°C, Wind S at 26 km/h, 76% Humidity\nCaulfield missouri tornado\nCaulfield is an unincorporated community in western Howell County, Missouri, United States. It is located on U.S. Highway 160 and Missouri Route 101 about fifteen miles west of West Plains. The Ozark County line lies just to the west of Caulfield.\nMap of Caulfield, MO 65626, USA\nA post office called Caulfield has been in operation since 1929. The community has the name of Missouri governor Henry Stewart Caulfield, who took office in 1929.\nOn March 1, 2007, a tornado hit Caulfield, killing 7-year-old Caulfield resident Elizabeth Croney.\nCaulfield, Missouri Wikipedia\nRunar Bauer\nLew Cirne","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1025277"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6937488913536072,"wiki_prob":0.6937488913536072,"text":"Justia Regulation Tracker Department Of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency Final Flood Elevation Determinations, 73482-73485 [2014-29090]\nFinal Flood Elevation Determinations, 73482-73485 [2014-29090]\nDownload as PDF 73482 Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 238 / Thursday, December 11, 2014 / Rules and Regulations investigation to assess the nature and extent of public health and environmental risks associated with a release of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants. The NPL is of only limited significance as it does not assign liability to any party. Also, placing a site on the NPL does not mean that any remedial or removal action necessarily need be taken. K. Congressional Review Act This action is subject to the CRA, and the EPA will submit a rule report to each House of the Congress and to the Comptroller General of the United States. This action is not a ‘‘major rule’’ as defined by 5 U.S.C. 804(2). Provisions of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) or section 305 of CERCLA may alter the effective date of this regulation. Under 5 U.S.C. 801(b)(1), a rule shall not take effect, or continue in effect, if Congress enacts (and the President signs) a joint resolution of disapproval, described under section 802. Another statutory provision that may affect this rule is CERCLA section 305, which provides for a legislative veto of regulations promulgated under CERCLA. Although INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919,103 S. Ct. 2764 (1983), and Bd. of Regents of the University of Washington v. EPA, 86 F.3d 1214,1222 (D.C. Cir. 1996), cast the validity of the legislative veto into question, the EPA has transmitted a copy of this regulation to the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives. If action by Congress under either the CRA or CERCLA section 305 calls the effective date of this regulation into question, the EPA will publish a document of clarification in the Federal Register. List of Subjects in 40 CFR Part 300 Environmental protection, Air pollution control, Chemicals, Hazardous substances, Hazardous waste, Intergovernmental relations, Natural resources, Oil pollution, Penalties, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements, Superfund, Water pollution control, Water supply. Dated: December 3, 2014. Mathy Stanislaus, Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. 40 CFR part 300 is amended as follows: PART 300—NATIONAL OIL AND HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES POLLUTION CONTINGENCY PLAN 1. The authority citation for part 300 continues to read as follows: ■ Authority: 33 U.S.C. 1321(c)(2); 42 U.S.C. 9601–9657; E.O. 12777, 56 FR 54757, 3 CFR, 1991 Comp., p. 351; E.O. 12580, 52 FR 2923, 3 CFR, 1987 Comp., p. 193. 2. Table 1 of Appendix B to part 300 is amended by adding an entry for ‘‘Colorado Smelter’’ in alphabetical order by state to read as follows: ■ Appendix B to Part 300 National Priorities List TABLE 1—GENERAL SUPERFUND SECTION State Site name * * CO ............................................. * * * Colorado Smelter .......................................................................... * * * City/county * Notes a * * * * Pueblo. * * * * * * * * Notes: = Based on issuance of health advisory by Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (if scored, HRS score need not be greater than or equal to 28.50). aA * * * * adopt or to show evidence of being already in effect in order to qualify or remain qualified for participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). * [FR Doc. 2014–28979 Filed 12–10–14; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6560–50–P DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Federal Emergency Management Agency 44 CFR Part 67 [Docket ID FEMA–2014–0002] Final Flood Elevation Determinations Federal Emergency Management Agency, DHS. ACTION: Final rule. tkelley on DSK3SPTVN1PROD with RULES AGENCY: Base (1-percent-annualchance) Flood Elevations (BFEs) and modified BFEs are made final for the communities listed below. The BFEs and modified BFEs are the basis for the floodplain management measures that each community is required either to SUMMARY: VerDate Sep<11>2014 17:05 Dec 10, 2014 Jkt 235001 The date of issuance of the Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) showing BFEs and modified BFEs for each community. This date may be obtained by contacting the office where the maps are available for inspection as indicated in the table below. ADDRESSES: The final BFEs for each community are available for inspection at the office of the Chief Executive Officer of each community. The respective addresses are listed in the table below. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Luis Rodriguez, Chief, Engineering Management Branch, Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, 500 C Street SW., Washington, DC 20472, (202) 646–4064, or (email) Luis.Rodriguez3@fema.dhs.gov. DATES: PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 4700 Sfmt 4700 The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) makes the final determinations listed below for the modified BFEs for each community listed. These modified elevations have been published in newspapers of local circulation and 90 days have elapsed since that publication. The Deputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation has resolved any appeals resulting from this notification. This final rule is issued in accordance with section 110 of the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973, 42 U.S.C. 4104, and 44 CFR part 67. FEMA has developed criteria for floodplain management in floodprone areas in accordance with 44 CFR part 60. Interested lessees and owners of real property are encouraged to review the proof Flood Insurance Study and FIRM available at the address cited below for each community. The BFEs and modified BFEs are made final in the communities listed SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: E:\\FR\\FM\\11DER1.SGM 11DER1 Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 238 / Thursday, December 11, 2014 / Rules and Regulations below. Elevations at selected locations in each community are shown. National Environmental Policy Act. This final rule is categorically excluded from the requirements of 44 CFR part 10, Environmental Consideration. An environmental impact assessment has not been prepared. Regulatory Flexibility Act. As flood elevation determinations are not within the scope of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. 601–612, a regulatory flexibility analysis is not required. Regulatory Classification. This final rule is not a significant regulatory action under the criteria of section 3(f) of Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993, Regulatory Planning and Review, 58 FR 51735. Executive Order 13132, Federalism. This final rule involves no policies that have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132. Executive Order 12988, Civil Justice Reform. This final rule meets the applicable standards of Executive Order 12988. List of Subjects in 44 CFR Part 67 Administrative practice and procedure, Flood insurance, Reporting and recordkeeping requirements. Dated: October 31, 2014. Roy E. Wright, Deputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency. 73483 PART 67—[AMENDED] 1. The authority citation for part 67 continues to read as follows: ■ Authority: 42 U.S.C. 4001 et seq.; Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978, 3 CFR, 1978 Comp., p. 329; E.O. 12127, 44 FR 19367, 3 CFR, 1979 Comp., p. 376. § 67.11 [Amended] 2. The tables published under the authority of § 67.11 are amended as follows: ■ Accordingly, 44 CFR part 67 is amended as follows: Flooding source(s) Location of referenced elevation *Elevation in feet (NGVD) +Elevation in feet (NAVD) #Depth in feet above ground ∧Elevation in meters (MSL) Modified Communities affected Platte County, Missouri, and Incorporated Areas Docket Nos.: FEMA–B–1178 Approximately 1,110 feet downstream of Main Street ....................... +781 Bee Creek ..................................... Approximately 0.76 mile upstream of Highway 45 ............................. Approximately 0.83 mile downstream of the Bleazard Branch confluence. +804 +863 Bee Creek Tributary ..................... Approximately 0.74 mile upstream of Maple Leaf Road .................... At the Bee Creek confluence .............................................................. +883 +878 Benner Branch .............................. Brills Creek ................................... Approximately 1,325 feet upstream of Interurban Road .................... At the Bear Creek confluence ............................................................ Approximately 75 feet upstream of Highway 45 ................................ At the Benner Branch confluence ....................................................... +889 +783 +803 +791 Brush Creek .................................. tkelley on DSK3SPTVN1PROD with RULES Bear Creek ................................... Approximately 150 feet upstream of Highway 45 .............................. At the downstream side of Northwest 76th Street ............................. +814 +792 Burlington Creek ........................... Approximately 1,500 feet upstream of State Highway 152 ................ At the Missouri River confluence ........................................................ +820 +759 Approximately 850 feet upstream of North Helena Avenue ............... +800 VerDate Sep<11>2014 17:05 Dec 10, 2014 Jkt 235001 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 4700 Sfmt 4700 E:\\FR\\FM\\11DER1.SGM 11DER1 City of Weston, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Dearborn, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Dearborn, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Weston. City of Weston, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Parkville, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Riverside, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. 73484 Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 238 / Thursday, December 11, 2014 / Rules and Regulations *Elevation in feet (NGVD) +Elevation in feet (NAVD) #Depth in feet above ground ∧Elevation in meters (MSL) Modified Flooding source(s) Location of referenced elevation Burlington Creek Tributary 2 ........ Approximately 950 feet upstream of Northwest Platte Drive ............. +764 East Creek .................................... First Creek .................................... Approximately 1,275 feet upstream of Northeast Platte Drive ........... At the Line Creek confluence ............................................................. Approximately 100 feet downstream of Northwest Vivion Road ........ At the Clay County boundary ............................................................. +768 +768 +769 +864 Grove Creek ................................. Approximately 0.82 mile downstream of Northwest 128th Street ...... Approximately 0.74 mile downstream of Platte Avenue ..................... +895 +815 Jumping Branch ............................ Approximately 150 feet upstream of State Highway Z ....................... At the Line Creek confluence ............................................................. +848 +756 Line Creek .................................... Approximately 200 feet upstream of I–635 ........................................ At the Missouri River confluence ........................................................ +819 +756 +772 +877 Missouri River ............................... Approximately 300 feet downstream of I–29 ...................................... Approximately 650 feet downstream of Northwest South Shore Drive. At the downstream side of Northwest South Shore Drive ................. Approximately 850 feet upstream of the Clay County boundary ....... +791 Platte River ................................... Approximately 0.53 mile downstream of the Buchanan County boundary. At the Missouri River confluence ........................................................ Rush Creek ................................... Approximately 0.48 mile upstream of I–29 ......................................... At the Missouri River confluence ........................................................ +782 +760 Second Creek ............................... Approximately 0.56 mile upstream of the Walnut Creek confluence Approximately 750 feet downstream of State Highway 92 ................ +771 +822 Todd Creek ................................... Approximately 3 miles downstream of State Highway 291 ................ Approximately 1,600 feet downstream of Water Treatment Plant Road. +881 +822 Approximately 1,400 feet downstream of Water Treatment Plant Road. +822 Line Creek Tributary 2 .................. tkelley on DSK3SPTVN1PROD with RULES Communities affected VerDate Sep<11>2014 17:05 Dec 10, 2014 Jkt 235001 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 4700 Sfmt 4700 E:\\FR\\FM\\11DER1.SGM +937 +756 +769 11DER1 City of Riverside, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Riverside. Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Edgerton, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Riverside, Village of Houston Lake. City of Northmoor, City of Riverside. City of Lake Waukomis. Village of Iatan, City of Parkville, City of Riverside, City of Weston, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Platte City, City of Tracy, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County, Village of Farley. City of Parkville, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 238 / Thursday, December 11, 2014 / Rules and Regulations *Elevation in feet (NGVD) +Elevation in feet (NAVD) #Depth in feet above ground ∧Elevation in meters (MSL) Modified Flooding source(s) Location of referenced elevation Walnut Creek ................................ At the Rush Creek Confluence ........................................................... +768 Wells Branch ................................ Approximately 1,600 feet upstream of Northwest Eastside Drive ...... At the Bear Creek confluence ............................................................ +876 +781 White Branch ................................ Approximately 150 feet upstream of County Road JJ ....................... At the Rush Creek confluence ............................................................ Approximately 0.67 mile upstream of East 6th Street ........................ Approximately 950 feet upstream of the Todd Creek confluence ...... +830 +760 +855 +856 Approximately 0.46 mile upstream of I–435 ....................................... +945 Wildcat Branch ............................. * National Geodetic Vertical Datum. + North American Vertical Datum. # Depth in feet above ground. ∧ Mean Sea Level, rounded to the nearest 0.1 meter. ADDRESSES: City of Dearborn: Maps are available for inspection City of Edgerton: Maps are available for inspection City of Lake Waukomis: Maps are available for inspection City of Northmoor: Maps are available for inspection City of Parkville: Maps are available for inspection City of Platte City: Maps are available for inspection City of Riverside: Maps are available for inspection City of Tracy: Maps are available for inspection City of Weston: Maps are available for inspection at City Hall, 101 3rd Street, Dearborn, MO 64439. at City Hall, 411 Front Street, Edgerton, MO 64444. at City Hall, 1147 Northwest South Shore Drive, Lake Waukomis, MO 64151. at City Hall, 4907 Northwest Waukomis Drive, Northmoor, MO 64151. at City Hall, 8880 Clark Avenue, Parkville, MO 64152. at City Hall, 400 Main Street, Platte City, MO 64079. at City Hall, 2950 Northwest Vivion Road, Riverside, MO 64150. at City Hall, 208 2nd Street, Tracy, MO 64079. at City Hall, 300 Main Street, Weston, MO 64098. Unincorporated Areas of Platte County: Maps are available for inspection at the Platte County Courthouse, 415 3rd Street, Suite 115, Platte City, MO 64079. Village of Farley: Maps are available for inspection at City Hall, 1116 River Road, Farley, MO 64028. Village of Ferrelview: Maps are available for inspection at City Hall, 205 Northwest Heady Avenue, Ferrelview, MO 64163. Village of Houston Lake: Maps are available for inspection at City Hall, 5417 Northwest Adrian Street, Houston Lake, MO 64151. Village of Iatan: Maps are available for inspection at City Hall, 125 Main Street, Iatan, MO 64098. [FR Doc. 2014–29090 Filed 12–10–14; 8:45 am] tkelley on DSK3SPTVN1PROD with RULES BILLING CODE 9110–12–P VerDate Sep<11>2014 17:05 Dec 10, 2014 Jkt 235001 PO 00000 Frm 00025 Fmt 4700 Sfmt 9990 E:\\FR\\FM\\11DER1.SGM 11DER1 73485 Communities affected City of Parkville, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Weston, Unincorporated Areas of Platte County. City of Parkville. Village of Ferrelview.\n[Docket ID FEMA-2014-0002]\nFinal Flood Elevation Determinations\nAGENCY: Federal Emergency Management Agency, DHS.\nACTION: Final rule.\nSUMMARY: Base (1-percent-annual-chance) Flood Elevations (BFEs) and\nmodified BFEs are made final for the communities listed below. The BFEs\nand modified BFEs are the basis for the floodplain management measures\nthat each community is required either to adopt or to show evidence of\nbeing already in effect in order to qualify or remain qualified for\nparticipation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).\nDATES: The date of issuance of the Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM)\nshowing BFEs and modified BFEs for each community. This date may be\nobtained by contacting the office where the maps are available for\ninspection as indicated in the table below.\nADDRESSES: The final BFEs for each community are available for\ninspection at the office of the Chief Executive Officer of each\ncommunity. The respective addresses are listed in the table below.\nFOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Luis Rodriguez, Chief, Engineering\nManagement Branch, Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration,\nFederal Emergency Management Agency, 500 C Street SW., Washington, DC\n20472, (202) 646-4064, or (email) Luis.Rodriguez3@fema.dhs.gov.\nSUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Federal Emergency Management Agency\n(FEMA) makes the final determinations listed below for the modified\nBFEs for each community listed. These modified elevations have been\npublished in newspapers of local circulation and 90 days have elapsed\nsince that publication. The Deputy Associate Administrator for\nMitigation has resolved any appeals resulting from this notification.\nThis final rule is issued in accordance with section 110 of the\nFlood Disaster Protection Act of 1973, 42 U.S.C. 4104, and 44 CFR part\n67. FEMA has developed criteria for floodplain management in floodprone\nareas in accordance with 44 CFR part 60.\nInterested lessees and owners of real property are encouraged to\nreview the proof Flood Insurance Study and FIRM available at the\naddress cited below for each community.\nThe BFEs and modified BFEs are made final in the communities listed\nbelow. Elevations at selected locations in each community are shown.\nNational Environmental Policy Act. This final rule is categorically\nexcluded from the requirements of 44 CFR part 10, Environmental\nConsideration. An environmental impact assessment has not been\nprepared.\nRegulatory Flexibility Act. As flood elevation determinations are\nnot within the scope of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. 601-\n612, a regulatory flexibility analysis is not required.\nRegulatory Classification. This final rule is not a significant\nregulatory action under the criteria of section 3(f) of Executive Order\n12866 of September 30, 1993, Regulatory Planning and Review, 58 FR\nExecutive Order 13132, Federalism. This final rule involves no\npolicies that have federalism implications under Executive Order 13132.\nExecutive Order 12988, Civil Justice Reform. This final rule meets\nthe applicable standards of Executive Order 12988.\nList of Subjects in 44 CFR Part 67\nAdministrative practice and procedure, Flood insurance, Reporting\nand recordkeeping requirements.\nDated: October 31, 2014.\nRoy E. Wright,\nDeputy Associate Administrator for Mitigation, Department of Homeland\nSecurity, Federal Emergency Management Agency.\nAccordingly, 44 CFR part 67 is amended as follows:\nPART 67--[AMENDED]\n1. The authority citation for part 67 continues to read as follows:\nAuthority:  42 U.S.C. 4001 et seq.; Reorganization Plan No. 3 of\n1978, 3 CFR, 1978 Comp., p. 329; E.O. 12127, 44 FR 19367, 3 CFR,\n1979 Comp., p. 376.\nSec.  67.11  [Amended]\n2. The tables published under the authority of Sec.  67.11 are amended\n*Elevation in\nfeet (NGVD)\n+Elevation in\nfeet  (NAVD)\nFlooding source(s)               Location of referenced       #Depth in feet    Communities  affected\nelevation               above ground\n[caret]Elevation\nin  meters (MSL)\nPlatte County, Missouri, and Incorporated Areas\nDocket Nos.: FEMA-B-1178\nBear Creek...........................  Approximately 1,110 feet                    +781  City of Weston,\ndownstream of Main Street.                        Unincorporated Areas\nof Platte County.\nApproximately 0.76 mile                     +804\nupstream of Highway 45.\nBee Creek............................  Approximately 0.83 mile                     +863  City of Dearborn,\ndownstream of the Bleazard                        Unincorporated Areas\nBranch confluence.                                of Platte County.\nupstream of Maple Leaf Road.\nBee Creek Tributary..................  At the Bee Creek confluence..               +878  City of Dearborn,\nUnincorporated Areas\nApproximately 1,325 feet                    +889\nupstream of Interurban Road.\nBenner Branch........................  At the Bear Creek confluence.               +783  City of Weston.\nApproximately 75 feet                       +803\nBrills Creek.........................  At the Benner Branch                        +791  City of Weston,\nconfluence.                                       Unincorporated Areas\nApproximately 150 feet                      +814\nBrush Creek..........................  At the downstream side of                   +792  City of Parkville,\nNorthwest 76th Street.                            Unincorporated Areas\nupstream of State Highway\nBurlington Creek.....................  At the Missouri River                       +759  City of Riverside,\nupstream of North Helena\nBurlington Creek Tributary 2.........  Approximately 950 feet                      +764  City of Riverside,\nupstream of Northwest Platte                      Unincorporated Areas\nDrive.                                            of Platte County.\nupstream of Northeast Platte\nEast Creek...........................  At the Line Creek confluence.               +768  City of Riverside.\ndownstream of Northwest\nVivion Road.\nFirst Creek..........................  At the Clay County boundary..               +864  Unincorporated Areas of\nPlatte County.\n128th Street.\nGrove Creek..........................  Approximately 0.74 mile                     +815  City of Edgerton,\ndownstream of Platte Avenue.                      Unincorporated Areas\nupstream of State Highway Z.\nJumping Branch.......................  At the Line Creek confluence.               +756  City of Riverside,\nVillage of Houston\nupstream of I-635.\nLine Creek...........................  At the Missouri River                       +756  City of Northmoor, City\nconfluence.                                       of Riverside.\ndownstream of I-29.\nLine Creek Tributary 2...............  Approximately 650 feet                      +877  City of Lake Waukomis.\nSouth Shore Drive.\nAt the downstream side of                   +937\nNorthwest South Shore Drive.\nMissouri River.......................  Approximately 850 feet                      +756  Village of Iatan, City\nupstream of the Clay County                       of Parkville, City of\nboundary.                                         Riverside, City of\nWeston, Unincorporated\nAreas of Platte\ndownstream of the Buchanan\nCounty boundary.\nPlatte River.........................  At the Missouri River                       +769  City of Platte City,\nconfluence.                                       City of Tracy,\nof Platte County,\nVillage of Farley.\nupstream of I-29.\nRush Creek...........................  At the Missouri River                       +760  City of Parkville,\nupstream of the Walnut Creek\nconfluence.\nSecond Creek.........................  Approximately 750 feet                      +822  Unincorporated Areas of\ndownstream of State Highway                       Platte County.\nApproximately 3 miles                       +881\ndownstream of State Highway\nTodd Creek...........................  Approximately 1,600 feet                    +822  Unincorporated Areas of\ndownstream of Water                               Platte County.\nTreatment Plant Road.\ndownstream of Water\nWalnut Creek.........................  At the Rush Creek Confluence.               +768  City of Parkville,\nupstream of Northwest\nEastside Drive.\nWells Branch.........................  At the Bear Creek confluence.               +781  City of Weston,\nupstream of County Road JJ.\nWhite Branch.........................  At the Rush Creek confluence.               +760  City of Parkville.\nupstream of East 6th Street.\nWildcat Branch.......................  Approximately 950 feet                      +856  Village of Ferrelview.\nupstream of the Todd Creek\n* National Geodetic Vertical Datum.\n+ North American Vertical Datum.\n# Depth in feet above ground.\n[caret] Mean Sea Level, rounded to the nearest 0.1 meter.\nCity of Dearborn:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 101 3rd Street, Dearborn, MO 64439.\nCity of Edgerton:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 411 Front Street, Edgerton, MO 64444.\nCity of Lake Waukomis:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 1147 Northwest South Shore Drive, Lake Waukomis, MO 64151.\nCity of Northmoor:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 4907 Northwest Waukomis Drive, Northmoor, MO 64151.\nCity of Parkville:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 8880 Clark Avenue, Parkville, MO 64152.\nCity of Platte City:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 400 Main Street, Platte City, MO 64079.\nCity of Riverside:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 2950 Northwest Vivion Road, Riverside, MO 64150.\nCity of Tracy:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 208 2nd Street, Tracy, MO 64079.\nCity of Weston:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 300 Main Street, Weston, MO 64098.\nUnincorporated Areas of Platte County:\nMaps are available for inspection at the Platte County Courthouse, 415 3rd Street, Suite 115, Platte City, MO\nVillage of Farley:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 1116 River Road, Farley, MO 64028.\nVillage of Ferrelview:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 205 Northwest Heady Avenue, Ferrelview, MO 64163.\nVillage of Houston Lake:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 5417 Northwest Adrian Street, Houston Lake, MO 64151.\nVillage of Iatan:\nMaps are available for inspection at City Hall, 125 Main Street, Iatan, MO 64098.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line663026"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7522535920143127,"wiki_prob":0.7522535920143127,"text":"The Caribbean's Strongest Earthquake\nOn Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, the very day after the meeting of the Vestry, the island was visited by a most terrific and destructive Earthquake. . . .\nEveryone within the Church after the first shock was compelled to escape for their lives. The Tower was rent from the top to the bottom, the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground beneath with a dreadful crash, and the east parapet wall of the Tower thrown upon the roof of the Church. Almost the whole of the north east wall of the north gallery fell out in a mass. The north east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular. . . .\nThus within the space of three minutes, the Church was reduced to a pile of crumbling ruins, the walls that were left standing being rent in every part, the main roof only remaining sound, being supported by the hardwood pillars.\"\n\"On Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, the very day after the meeting of the Vestry, the island was visited by a most terrific and destructive Earthquake. . . .\nEveryone within the Church after the first shock was compelled to escape for their lives. The Tower was rent f\nrom the top to the bottom, the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground beneath with a dreadful crash, and the east parapet wall of the Tower thrown upon the roof of the Church. Almost the whole of the north est wall of the north gallery fell out in a mass. The north east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular. . . .\n-- The Minutes of the Vestry\nCathedral Church of St. John the Divine\nRegarded as the strongest estimated intensity earthquake ever to occur in the Caribbean, this catastrophic magnitude 8.3 earthquake devastated Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe, leaving it in ruins. One third (1500) of its estimated 4000-6000 inhabitants perished. The earthquake also ravaged Marie Galante, Dominica, Montserrat and Antigua.\nThe violent 90 second shock at 10:35am was felt throughout the Antilles. A newspaper in Barbados reported that columns of water 100 feet high and several feet thick were ejected from fissures in the ground at Guadeloupe.\nThe Antigua Weekly Register reported that St. John's as well as the entire island suffered greatly. The sugar crop was lost and there were 12 to 40 fatalities. The sea rose 1.2 meters after the earthquake in St. John's, Antigua, then sank again immediately remaining calm throughout, possibly caused by a large chunk of the rock island Redonda breaking off and falling into the sea. At English Harbour, the wharf made on reclaimed land sank.\nSugar mills were severely damaged at Montserrat, Nevis and St. Kitts. A 1 foot X 1/2 mile long crack appeared in St. Eustatius.\nSevere shocks were felt in Barbuda, St. Bathelemy, St. Martin, Saba and Dominica. Martinique and St. Lucia both experienced moderate shocks while lighter shaking was experienced in Tortola, St. Thomas, St. Vincent, Grenada and Barbados. The earthquake was reported as being felt as far as Trinidad and Guyana in the south and Bermuda and South Carolina in the North.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line123790"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9150842428207397,"wiki_prob":0.9150842428207397,"text":"TIME FOR GRIEVING IS IN OFF-SEASON, BONDS SAYS\nTHE ORLANDO SENTINEL\nBarry Bonds' teammates are leaving him alone, and that's the way the San Francisco Giants left fielder prefers it -- especially now. Bonds is grieving over the death of his father, Bobby Bonds, while trying to concentrate on winning the National League West title and keeping his body healthy for another October playoff run. He's also dealing with the pressure to pass his godfather, Willie Mays, for third place on the career home run list. Bonds had 655 entering Tuesday night's game against the San Diego Padres, five behind Mays. \"I'm feeling better,\" said Bonds, who spent a night in a Phoenix hospital two weeks ago to be treated for exhaustion and an accelerated heartbeat. \"I'm just tired. Talking wastes energy.\" Despite all the distractions, Bonds seems as focused as ever, blocking out his grief when the uniform goes on. \"What other choices do I have?\" he said. \"I'll do that in the off-season.\"\nATHLETICS' GUILLEN WILL TRY TO PLAY WITH PAIN IN HAND\nOakland Athletics OF Jose Guillen is trying to make it through the regular season and possibly the postseason despite a broken hamate bone in his left hand. \"It's too late in the season to give it up,\" Guillen told the San Francisco Chronicle for Tuesday's editions. \"If I can, I'm going to try to swing the bat. Trust me, I don't want to be on the bench watching. I don't want to feel like I let the team down.\" If Guillen were to have the small hooklike bone removed now, his season likely would be over. Last season Anaheim Angels OF Darin Erstad broke the same bone during the World Series and later homered in Game 6 against the San Francisco Giants.\nROYALS PLAN TO KEEP MANAGER, GM AROUND\nThe Royals plan to talk with Manager Tony Pena and General Manager Allard Baird about contract extensions after this season, The Kansas City Star reported. Both are signed through the 2004 season. \"They've earned that, but the timing would be bad to talk about that at this time,\" owner David Glass said from his home in Bentonville, Ark. \"Right now, we want to concentrate all of our energies on making the playoffs.\"\nAOL TIME WARNER TAKES FOR-SALE SIGN OFF BRAVES\nThe Braves, whom AOL Time Warner reportedly has considered selling, may be off the market, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Terry McGuirk, a Turner Broadcasting System executive, said the company is not marketing the Braves amid \"growing satisfaction\" with the team. According to Rutherford Seydel, Ted Turner's son-in-law and one of the new owners of the NBA's Hawks and NHL's Thrashers, \"The Braves are not on the market.\"\nDODGERS' ASHBY TO MISS NEXT YEAR AFTER ELBOW SURGERY\nLos Angeles Dodgers RHP Andy Ashby will have reconstructive elbow surgery and won't return until 2005. He will have surgery during the week after the regular season ends Sept. 28, Manager Jim Tracy said.\nPHILLIES ADVISE ADAMS TO HAVE ARTHROSCOPIC SURGERY\nPhiladelphia Phillies RHP Terry Adams might need season-ending elbow surgery. Team doctor Michael Ciccotti recommended arthroscopic surgery to repair the \"loose bodies\" that were found.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line263458"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9313501119613647,"wiki_prob":0.9313501119613647,"text":"No more survivors on New Zealand island after volcano eruption\nWellington (AFP) – New Zealand police have said no more survivors were expected to be rescued from an island volcano that erupted suddenly on Monday, suggesting as many as two dozen people could have died.\nPolice said some 50 people were visiting White Island when it exploded in the early afternoon — hurling ash and rock high into the air.\nSome 23 people made it off the island, five of whom have since died, the rest were being treated for injuries, including severe burns.\nIt was earlier estimated the number still on the island was in double digits.\nPolice said early Tuesday that despite several aerial reconnaissance flights to try and find those trapped “no signs of life have been seen at any point.”\n“Based on the information we have, we do not believe there are any survivors on the island. Police is working urgently to confirm the exact number of those who have died.”\nAs night fell, deputy commissioner John Tims said volcanic activity made a rescue attempts by land too dangerous.\n“I’ve got to consider the safety of our people and emergency services staff,” he said.\nThe New Zealand military is expected to make a pass of the island at first light in the hope that people may have survived against the odds.\nThe eruption occurred just after 2pm (0100 GMT), thrusting a thick plume of white ash 3.6 kilometres (12,000 feet) into the sky.\nSeconds before, live camera feeds showed a group of more than a half dozen people walking on the crater floor. Then the images went black.\nA “considerable number” of those caught up in the disaster are believed to be Australian, according to officials in Canberra.\nAs many as 30 of those involved are also believed to be cruise passengers on a day trip from the vessel Ovation of the Seas, Kevin O’Sullivan, chief executive officer of industry body the New Zealand Cruise Association told AFP.\nThe ship’s operator Royal Caribbean — who had billed the trip to White Island as “an unforgettable guided tour of New Zealand’s most active volcano” — said “a number of our guests were touring the island” but did not confirm that number.\nThe ship has a capacity of around 4,000 people and set sail from Sydney last week on a 12 day voyage.\n– Scene of terror –\nTourist Michael Schade, made it off the island just in time and was able to capture footage of the devastation.\nHis videos showed groups of startled tourists clustered by the shoreline, waiting to be evacuated as the ground around them smouldered, the sky filled with white debris. An ash-caked helicopter lay damaged nearby.\nVolcanic Air said they had landed a helicopter on the island shortly before the eruption carrying four visitors and one pilot. All were now accounted for.\n“It had landed on the island. What happened after that we don’t know, but we know that all five made it back to Whakatane on one of the tourist boats,” a company spokesman told AFP.\nGuillaume Calmelet, the co-director of Skydive Tauranga, saw the eruption from above as he took a customer on a tandem skydive from a plane 12,000 feet above the Bay of Plenty.\n“As soon as the parachute opened there was this huge cloud that was really different to whatever we’ve seen before,” he told AFP. “I could see it coming out in freefall, so probably about 30 seconds for the whole cloud to form, if that. It was pretty quick.”\nThe country’s National Emergency Management Agency described the eruption as “moderate”, although the plume of ash was clearly visible from the mainland and from satellites flying overhead.\nWhite Island — – also known as Whakaari — is about 50 kilometres (30 miles) offshore in the picturesque Bay of Plenty and is popular with adventurous tourists willing to don hard hats and gas masks.\nIt is New Zealand’s most active volcano cone and about 70 percent of it is underwater, according to government-backed agency GeoNet.\nAround 10,000 people visit the volcano every year. It has erupted frequently over the last half-century, most recently in 2016.\nIn August of that year the New Zealand Defence Force airlifted a 2.4-tonne shipping container onto the island to serve as an emergency shelter in case of an eruption.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line120904"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5777262449264526,"wiki_prob":0.42227375507354736,"text":"Minimal counterexample\nIn mathematics, a minimal counterexample is the smallest example which falsifies a claim, and a proof by minimal counterexample is a method of proof which combines the use of a minimal counterexample with the ideas of proof by induction and proof by contradiction.[1][2][3] More specifically. in trying to prove a proposition P, one first assumes by contradiction that it is false, and that therefore there must be at least one counterexample. With respect to some idea of size (which may need to be chosen carefully), one then concludes that there is such a counterexample C that is minimal. In regard to the argument, C is generally something quite hypothetical (since the truth of P excludes the possibility of C), but it may be possible to argue that if C existed, then it would have some definite properties which, after applying some reasoning similar to that in an inductive proof, would lead to a contradiction, thereby showing that the proposition P is indeed true.[4]\nIf the form of the contradiction is that we can derive a further counterexample D, that is smaller than C in the sense of the working hypothesis of minimality, then this technique is traditionally called proof by infinite descent.[1] In which case, there may be multiple and more complex ways to structure the argument of the proof.\nThe assumption that if there is a counterexample, there is a minimal counterexample, is based on a well-ordering of some kind. The usual ordering on the natural numbers is clearly possible, by the most usual formulation of mathematical induction; but the scope of the method can include well-ordered induction of any kind.\nExamples[edit]\nThe minimal counterexample method has been much used in the classification of finite simple groups. The Feit–Thompson theorem, that finite simple groups that are not cyclic groups have even order, was based on the hypothesis of some, and therefore some minimal, simple group G of odd order. Every proper subgroup of G can be assumed a solvable group, meaning that much theory of such subgroups could be applied.\nEuclid's proof of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is a simple proof which uses a minimal counterexample.[5][6] Another proposition whose proof involves a minimal counterexample is the principle of mathematical induction itself.[7]\n^ a b \"The Definitive Glossary of Higher Mathematical Jargon\". Math Vault. 2019-08-01. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\n^ Chartrand, Gary, Albert D. Polimeni, and Ping Zhang. Mathematical Proofs: A Transition to Advanced Mathematics. Boston: Pearson Education, 2013. Print.\n^ Klipper, Michael (Fall 2012). \"Proof by Minimum Counterexample\" (PDF). alpha.math.uga.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\n^ Lewis, Tom (Fall 2010). \"§20 Smallest Counterexample\" (PDF). math.furman.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\n^ \"The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic | Divisibility & Induction | Underground Mathematics\". undergroundmathematics.org. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\n^ \"The fundamental theorem of arithmetic\". www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\n^ \"The Well-ordering Principle | Brilliant Math & Science Wiki\". brilliant.org. Retrieved 2019-11-28.\nRetrieved from \"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Minimal_counterexample&oldid=928401693\"\nMathematical proofs\nMathematical terminology","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line401859"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8912864923477173,"wiki_prob":0.8912864923477173,"text":"Singapore-based Water Prize Draws 39 Nominations\nThe inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, a prestigious international water prize named after Singapore’s founding father, received 39 nominations from more than 15 countries when nominations closed in December.\nThe prize is the highlight of the Singapore International Water Week, which will be held for the first time in Singapore in June. It honors outstanding contributions toward solving the world's water woes by applying innovative technologies or implementing policies and programs that benefit humanity.\nNominations were only accepted from experts in the water industry.\n“We are extremely pleased with the quality and geographical spread of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize nominations. There are a few very outstanding works amongst them, and the highest number of nominations has been received from the Asia Pacific region,” said Tan Gee Paw, chairman of the nominating committee.\nThe nominations will go through two rounds of rigorous selection and the eventual laureate will be decided by a council of high international standing from the academia, international organizations and multi-national companies. The first Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize Laureate will be announced in March 2008.\nThe prize recipient will receive S$300,000, an award certificate and a gold medallion at this year's Singapore International Water Week, held from June 23-27.\nThe Singapore Millennium Foundation, a philanthropic body supported by Temasek Holdings, is the sole sponsor of the Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize, pledging S$1.5 million over five years.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line107046"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6337080597877502,"wiki_prob":0.36629194021224976,"text":"You are at: Planned Giving > For Advisors > Article of Month\nSECURE Act Promotes IRAs to Testamentary Unitrust Plans\nSECURE Act Encourages Saving for Retirement\nBy a bipartisan vote of 71 to 23 on December 19, 2019, the Senate passed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act. The SECURE Act was part of a larger appropriations bill.\nBoth House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) and Ranking Member Kevin Brady (R-TX) supported the bill. Brady noted, “Our bipartisan legislation makes it easier for main street business to offer retirement plans to their workers by easing administrative burdens, cutting down on unnecessary and often costly paperwork. In this bill, we also offer local businesses the flexibility to tailor retirement plans to best fit the needs of their workers, not to the needs of Washington.”\nThe bill includes many provisions designed to facilitate and enhance savings for retirement. These changes have bipartisan support and are helpful for workers who desire to save for retirement.\nTraditional IRA Contributions – Individuals over age 70½ with earned income may continue to make contributions each year. Previously, only Roth IRAs could be funded after age 70½. All IRAs may now be funded at any age, provided you have earned income. These traditional IRA contributions may enable seniors to grow retirement accounts during their 70’s and 80’s.\nRequired Minimum Distribution (RMD) Age – For individuals who turn 70½ after December 31, 2019, the RMD age of 70½ is increased to age 72. Those who reached age 70½ during 2019 must still start their RMDs under the previous law. The increased age RMD rule will benefit many IRA owners who do not need to withdraw distributions. Because the IRA balances will be larger with one or two years of added growth, RMDs at age 72 and future years will be larger. Many loyal donors may choose to increase their IRA rollover gifts after age 72.\nPart Time Workers – Those individuals who work at least 500 hours per year for three years will be able to participate in qualified retirement plans.\nRetirement Plan Annuities – The rules are generally expanded to permit more qualified retirement plans to offer annuity payout options. Section 204 of the Act generally limits the liability of employers who offer annuity options in their retirement plans. This employer protection is likely to increase the number of annuity options in many larger retirement plans.\nRetirement Benefit Disclosure – Retirement plan administrators are now required to offer an expanded disclosure of future retirement benefits to participants. These disclosures are intended to help employees better understand the benefits of maximizing their contributions to the retirement plans.\nStretch Distribution Reduced – Inherited IRAs for nonspouse beneficiaries will no longer be distributed over life expectancy, but IRA and other qualified plans of decedents must be paid out over a maximum term of ten years. There are exceptions for recipients with disabilities, minors and individuals who are within ten years of the age of the IRA owner.\nIRA Rollover Limit Potentially Reduced – If an individual makes contributions to a traditional IRA after age 70½, the $100,000 per year qualified charitable distribution (QCD) limit is reduced by the amount of IRA contributions after that age. The IRA contribution amount is cumulative and specific calculations will eventually be published in IRS Regulations. QCD gifts in excess of post age 70½ traditional IRA cumulative contributions will be included in income and deductible if the individual itemizes deductions. It is probable that most donors either will not have earned income after age 70½, will have total income over the IRA phaseout limits (and may not fund an IRA) or may choose to make Roth IRA contributions.\nProvisions of the SECURE Act generally take effect on January 1, 2020. While the age for RMDs from IRAs increases to 72, the qualified charitable distribution (QCD) age remains at 70½. IRA owners over age 70½ may transfer up to $100,000 each year to qualified charities. This transfer may fulfill part or all of an RMD.\nDramatic Increase in IRA Transfers to Testamentary Unitrusts\nThe SECURE Act reduces future taxes for IRA owners by increasing the age for required minimum distributions from 70½ to 72. However, to pay for the cost of this tax reduction, the taxes paid by future nonspouse IRA beneficiaries (typically children) will increase.\nMarried couples usually designate the survivor as the beneficiary of their IRA or other qualified plan. The survivor may roll over the plan into his or her IRA. However, when a single person or surviving spouse passes away, the IRA is transferred to one or more nonspouse designated beneficiaries. If there is a charitable beneficiary, that portion of the IRA is normally distributed in full to the nonprofit. However, distributions to children, nephews, nieces and other family members may be made over a term of years.\nFor individuals who passed away in 2019, an IRA beneficiary was able to “stretch” the IRA payout over his or her life expectancy. Assume mother Mary owns a traditional IRA and passed away in 2019 at age 90. She designated daughter Susan (age 60) as her IRA beneficiary and Susan could take distributions over her life expectancy. For a child age 60, the potential distribution period was between age 60 and age 87. By “stretching” the traditional IRA payout, Susan reduced her income tax and benefitted from tax-free growth for many years. Yet, even more tax deferral and growth was possible. A grandchild designated beneficiary may have stretched the tax-free growth and IRA payouts over 60 or 70 years.\nHowever, if Mary passed away in 2020, Susan must take all distributions within ten years. She can wait and take the full payout in the tenth year, but that will greatly increase the tax rate paid on the IRA. Most children will choose to take partial payouts each year for the ten years. With a ten-year payout, the income taxes paid by Susan will be substantially higher than the prior “stretch” plan.\nWhat plan could replace the 2019 “stretch” IRA distribution? Could a plan combine the tax-saving benefits of a \"stretch\" IRA with a term-of-years or life payout to children or other heirs? Could this plan also have the tax-free growth benefit of a stretch IRA?\nWhile it sounds too good to be true, the IRA to testamentary unitrust plan includes all of these benefits. A single person or surviving spouse may create an unfunded lifetime unitrust or testamentary unitrust in a will or living trust. The IRA beneficiary designation is to the trustee of that unitrust. When the IRA owner passes away, the unitrust is funded with the traditional IRA. Because the unitrust is tax-exempt, there is a bypass of the income tax on the traditional IRA and any future growth.\nParents Desire to Protect “Creative Spender” Children\nSome couples have three, four or more children. If one of the children is a “creative spender,” a parent may set up a trust. Without the protection of a trust, this child may take the full IRA payout, send a huge tax payment to the IRS and quickly exhaust the balance in creative and unexpected ways. To protect these children, many parents have created “conduit” trusts to pay only the RMDs to them.\nUnfortunately, the SECURE Act eliminates RMDs for most children (there are exceptions for a disabled or chronically ill child). With some conduit trusts, under the SECURE Act there is no RMD and no payout to the child for ten years. At that time, the full payout is made and the child will face a huge income tax bill.\nJamie Hopkins is a financial expert with Carson Wealth, headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. He explains the conduit IRA trust problem and notes, “That is a complete disaster from a planning perspective. We just subjected most of that IRA money to the highest tax margin possible and locked up access to it.”\nBecause many parents have a “creative” child, but desire to treat all children equally, transferring the IRA to a testamentary unitrust is prudent planning. The unitrust for a term of 20 years or the life of the child benefits the recipient through tax-free growth in the trust and larger total payouts over the trust duration. This unitrust has many excellent tax benefits, especially when compared with the SECURE Act mandatory payout over ten years.\nWhile the testamentary unitrust has better tax benefits than the ten-year mandatory payout, the primary reason most parents select a unitrust is to provide children with a steady payout stream for 20 years or life. The protection benefit will be primary, even though there are excellent tax benefits with a testamentary unitrust funded with an IRA or other qualified retirement plan.\nIRA to a Unitrust for Children\nA unitrust pays 5% or more for a life, lives or a term of 20 years. There are two basic options for transferring an IRA to a unitrust for children or other family members. One option is to transfer the IRA to a term of years trust for the children. The second option is to transfer the IRA to a trust that will pay each child for his or her lifetime.\nWith the increased estate exemptions and the charitable deduction from the unitrust, it is usually possible to create a unitrust in conjunction with a zero estate tax plan. This plan is well suited to both the inheritance and tax reduction goals of most IRA owners.\nTo use this plan, the IRA owner may create a unitrust during life for one life plus a term of years or a unitrust for his or her life and the lives of the children. The designated beneficiary of the IRA is the trustee of the unitrust. When the owner passes away, the unitrust is then funded.\nWhile the unitrust may be a testamentary trust in either a will or a living trust, it is much easier to create the lifetime trust for one life plus a term of years and then change the IRA beneficiary designation to the trustee of that trust. The living unitrust may be unfunded in some states (California and others) or it may require nominal funding but no administration. Check the applicable state law for funding requirements.\nGive It Twice Trust\nA popular option is a \"Give It Twice\" trust. This trust is commonly funded with an IRA or other taxable retirement plan and is used with a zero estate tax plan. In this plan, a substantial portion of the estate of the surviving spouse is transferred outright to children. The IRA is the balance of the estate. It is transferred at death of surviving spouse to a term of years unitrust. Since the unitrust is tax exempt, no income tax is paid when the IRA is distributed to the trust. The full IRA value is invested and pays 5% income to children for a term of 20 years.\nThe 5% income is taxable, but over 20 years approximately equals the initial IRA balance. At the end of the term of years, the trust is distributed to charity. Therefore, this is a \"Give It Twice\" unitrust. It transfers the value once to family over the selected term of years and then distributes the value a second time to charity.\nThe \"Give It Twice\" unitrust not only saves taxes, but also effectively fulfills the family distribution goals. If a family has three or four children, it is very possible that one child is not as financially capable or responsible as the others. Yet, parents desire to transfer assets equally to children in the proper belief that equality is more likely to lead to peace in the family. While the initial distribution of estate principal may indeed result in expenditure by the less responsible children, they have a second opportunity to acquire financial skills by receiving income for a term of years from the trust. Thus, parents are able to treat all children equally and still provide them with additional opportunities to acquire financial management skills.\nAnna Perez Funds a Testamentary Term Unitrust\nSam and Anna Perez raised four children. Sam passed away last year and Anna rolled over Sam's IRA into her own IRA. She now has an estate of $1.6 million. $800,000 is in her IRA and the estate balance is in her home, CDs and mutual funds.\nAnna signs a one-life plus term of 20 years unitrust. She and Sam have always supported a local charity, and Anna would like to benefit her four children and the charity. She changes the beneficiary designation of the IRA to the trustee of the unitrust. When Anna passes away, the $800,000 IRA is transferred to the 5% payout unitrust, saving all of the income tax on the IRA. It is invested for a term of 20 years and pays out over $800,000 to the children during that time. After the 20 years, approximately $1 million will be distributed to Anna's favorite charity.\nEach of the four children will receive $200,000 from the balance of the estate. Over a period of 20 years, each child will also receive $200,000 of income. Anna especially likes the way the plan is balanced. Each child receives principal when she passes away and then income for a term of years. Anna believes that this is a desirable plan for the children and a $1 million future gift from the trust remainder will help her favorite charity.\nMary Smith Has a Creative Child\nMary Smith has three children and an estate of $1.8 million. She has an IRA that has grown to $1 million, and other property valued at $800,000. Mary would like to provide some principal to her children and then income for their lifetimes.\nHowever, one of her three children has a long history of poor money management. Mary wants to treat her three children equally, but believes that this child will benefit from the protection of lifetime income.\nMary creates a four life unfunded 5% unitrust. The trust names her for one life (but there is no funding during her lifetime) and then pays for life to each of her children. The charitable remainder is over 10%, so the trust is a qualified charitable remainder unitrust. She changes the beneficiary of her IRA to: John Jones of Hometown, State, as Trustee of the Mary Smith Unitrust dated July 4, 2020, for the Benefit of Mary Smith and Her Children. When she passes away, the $1 million IRA is distributed to the trustee of the unitrust for the lifetimes of her three children.\nThe children receive the balance of the estate outright, with each child receiving over $250,000 (after costs). Each of the three children then receives one-third of the unitrust income. Over the lives of the children, the $1 million unitrust will pay out over $2 million of income. Each child will receive total income of about $750,000 during his or her lifetime. After all three children have passed away, approximately $1.6 million will be available for charity.\nDocument Options to Transfer IRAs to Unitrusts\nWith the future growth of IRAs and other retirement plans, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of individuals who choose to bequeath IRAs to charity or to testamentary unitrusts. Some of these persons will transfer an IRA to a unitrust for the life of a spouse or to a spouse and then to children. Other parents will transfer an IRA to a unitrust to benefit children for a term of years or for their lifetime.\nWhat are options to create effective documents for a “Give It Twice” unitrust? In order to create a legal transfer of an IRA, 403(b), 401(k) or other retirement plan to a charity or charitable trust, certain legal procedures must be followed.\nIRA Beneficiary Designation\nIRAs and pension plans are transferred through a beneficiary designation. With the fairly rare exception of an IRA transferred to an estate, the IRA is not governed by the will of the IRA owner. Thus, it is very important that the IRA beneficiary designation be completed correctly.\nIRA custodians provide beneficiary designation forms to select a primary and contingent designated beneficiary. In most cases, the IRA owner should enter the selected person as designated beneficiary on the form and should also enter the name of a contingent beneficiary. For many persons with charitable inclinations, it could be desirable to select a charity as the contingent beneficiary. For example, an IRA owner could select a spouse or child as designated beneficiary and a favorite charity as contingent beneficiary. Favorite charity should be designated by legal name, city and state. Depending upon the income and estate tax rules in effect at the time the person passes away, the designated beneficiary may determine that there would be substantial tax savings by \"disclaiming\" and allowing the distribution to be made to the contingent charitable recipient.\nIf an IRA owner decides to benefit a spouse, children or other persons through a testamentary unitrust, he or she must decide how to achieve the desired results. It is not acceptable to merely write a request on the beneficiary form, asking your executor to create a unitrust. The Internal Revenue Service has disallowed charitable estate deductions for such requests, since the unitrust must exist as of date of death of the decedent. Therefore, it is necessary to create an actual trust document, and then to designate the trustee of the trust as the beneficiary of the IRA. For example, a person could create a trust for himself and his spouse and then update on the beneficiary designation section with the following sentence, \"To ABC Bank as trustee of the charitable remainder trust dated July 4, 2020, for the initial benefit of Mr. and Mrs. IRA owner.\"\nThere are three principal ways to draft the unitrust document. The options include a funded charitable remainder unitrust with an addition at the death of the IRA owner, an unfunded unitrust and a revocable trust or will with the required language.\nFunded Unitrust\nOne of the favorable benefits of charitable remainder unitrusts is that an addition can be made during life or at death. In order to do so, there must be a provision in the trust instrument that allows contributions from an estate and requires the contribution to be effective as of the date of death, even though payments may not be made until after full trust funding.\nA married couple could create and fund a two life unitrust during life. If one spouse were to pass away first, that spouse's IRA could be added to the unitrust for the benefit of the survivor. The IRA beneficiary form would merely designate the trustee as recipient under provisions of the charitable remainder unitrust. After payment of the unitrust amounts to the surviving spouse, the remainder is distributed to favorite charities.\nA parent or couple with children could create a trust for one life plus a term of years or two lives plus a term of years. A one or two life plus term trust is permissible if all recipients are named and living when the trust is created and there is a termination provision that requires the trust to terminate if all named beneficiaries pass away prior to the expiration of the term of years. For example, a unitrust for a married couple with three children is in effect a trust for the lesser of the five lives or the period of two lives plus 20 years. Note that if children are named as beneficiaries, the Sec. 2056(b)(8) marital deduction will not apply. With community property or joint tenancy assets, one-half of the remaining income interest is included in each taxable estate. However, if one spouse contributes separate property to the trust, under the consideration-furnished rules, the income interest will be included in his or her estate.\nWith a one or two life plus term of years trust, the parent or couple may receive unitrust income distributions during life. For a married couple, the survivor will receive the required IRA distributions from his or her plan, plus the income payouts from the unitrust. After both parents pass away, the IRA designated beneficiary for the surviving spouse is the trustee of the unitrust. This trustee will then receive the IRA distribution, add the IRA proceeds to the unitrust and make payments to children for the term of years.\nWhen the IRA is transferred to the trust, the IRA is terminated and the trust receives the distribution from the IRA. In most cases, a traditional IRA or other qualified retirement plan represents 100% untaxed ordinary income and the entire IRA distribution will be allocated to ordinary income. Thus, unitrust payouts to children will be ordinary income. However, because the unitrust is tax exempt, the trustee may invest full value of the IRA in order to maximize the new income.\nWith a funded unitrust, an addition may also be made from a profit sharing, retirement or 401(k) account. However, in these cases a spouse must sign a consent form for the beneficiary designation. As a practical matter, since spouses may either live in or move to a community property state, it is good practice for both spouses to sign consents to the plan to create a charitable trust that will later receive IRA or other deferred compensation distributions.\nCreating a funded unitrust will require normal trust administration and accounting services. The trustee must invest and manage the trust corpus, track the four-tier trust accounting, make the correct payments to the income recipients and file the annual IRS Form 5227.\nUnfunded Unitrust\nSome individuals desire to create a plan for transfer of an IRA to a charitable remainder trust, but do not want to fund and administer the trust during life. For the individual who does not wish to operate the trust during life but would prefer that the unitrust is available to receive the distribution from an IRA, an unfunded unitrust may be created.\nUnder the laws of most states, it is permissible to create a trust with nominal or no funding. The IRA owner may sign an unfunded trust and designate the trustee as the IRA beneficiary. In a few states, applicable trust law may require funding of $10 or $20. In those states, the typical practice is to create and sign a trust document and staple a $10 or $20 bill to the trust instrument.\nThis unfunded trust is valid under state law, but does not require administration under federal statutes until it is funded at the death of the IRA owner. Since no investment or activity is required, Treasury has not objected to this practice.\nAn unfunded unitrust may be a two life unitrust or could be a one or two life plus term of years trust. The trust should be created prior to signing the beneficiary designation form and filing it with the IRA custodian. For a surviving spouse, the one life plus term of years unfunded unitrust is frequently selected.\nRevocable Trust or Will\nThe final option for documentation is to include a trust document in a revocable trust or a will. The trust will generally be a one life trust for a surviving spouse, a term of years trust for children or a one life trust for a child. It should be clearly identified within the revocable trust or will as a separate charitable remainder unitrust effective only at the death of the testator. It should have a specific number or article designation.\nAfter the living trust or will document has been created by the testator, it is then possible to designate that testamentary trust as the beneficiary of the IRA. The beneficiary designation could be similar to the following: \"To ABC Bank as trustee of the charitable remainder unitrust for child A, identified as 'Article H' in the Mary Jones Living Trust dated July 4, 2001.\" The designation for a will could use comparable language.\nThe IRA limits on distributions under the SECURE Act greatly reduce the \"stretch\" plans for beneficiaries. The potential conduit trust disaster and the desire of parents to protect “creative spender” children require a positive solution. Transfer of an IRA or retirement plan to a testamentary unitrust combines tax-free growth, maximum income, protection of the trust principal and a future generous gift to charity. For thousands of parents and individuals who desire to protect and help other family members, the retirement plan to testamentary unitrust solution has enormous benefits for family and charity.\nIRS Appraiser Qualifications\nNew Decade Nonprofit Trends\nSubstantiation Requirements for Charitable Contributions, Part V\nSubstantiation Requirements for Charitable Contributions, Part IV","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1064369"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7059792280197144,"wiki_prob":0.29402077198028564,"text":"DRAGONS RACING DOWN THE BAYOU\nThe 7th Annual Bayou Desiard Dragon Boat Festival is May 12 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Bayou Desiard at the corner of Loop Road and Forsythe in Monroe.\nThe opening ceremony is at 11 a.m. The Neville High School Band parades in the boat race teams. This year, the race features 27 teams, 9 of which are made of all youth rowers. The race then takes off at 12 p.m. Each boat has 20 rowers, lead by a drummer in the front of the boat. The drummer helps the rowers to keep a steady rhythm. Attendees can vote for their favorite team in the People's Choice Award Competition under the Children's Coalition tent.\n\"You're in the water for about three minutes, but it's the longest three minutes I've ever rowed,\" says Dr. Lynn Clark, Executive Director of the Children's Coalition. Proceeds from the event go towards the Children's Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating communities where children and families thrive.\nThe morning kicks off with a boot camp from INFIT Gym and a family health care fair featuring free healthcare screening and activities for children. Paddle H2O is giving paddleboard demonstrations at the dock all morning. Blue Sky Yoga is hosting an outdoor yoga class at 10:30 a.m., followed by a zumba class with MisFit1 at 11 a.m. Food trucks and children's activities are available all day.\nMore information about the Dragon Boat Festival is available here.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line270719"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6090215444564819,"wiki_prob":0.39097845554351807,"text":"Population Healthy Podcast\nPreventing Cancer: Thwarting a Disease that Affects 1 in 3 Americans | Population Healthy Podcast | University of Michigan School of Public Health\nPreventing Cancer: Thwarting a Disease that Affects 1 in 3 Americans\nChances are you or someone you love has been affected by cancer. In fact, more than one in three Americans will develop cancer in their lifetime. This is a disease that takes many different forms, has innumerous causes both known and unknown and affects people in a variety of ways.\nIn this episode, we talk to four experts from the University of Michigan School of Public Health to learn about their research on cancer, and what they're doing to try and prevent it.\nListen to \"Population Healthy\" on Spreaker.\nSubscribe and listen to Population Healthy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts!\nBe sure to follow us at @umichsph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, so you can share your perspectives on the issues we discussed, learn more from Michigan Public Health experts, and share episodes of the podcast with your friends on social media.\n00:02 Speaker 1: I'm a cancer molecular epidemiologist and I am very interested in tumors and what a tumor can tell us about why a person got the cancer, what led to the development of the cancer and what that tumor tells us about how we can treat the cancer and whether or not that person is going to survive. And it's interesting because tumors develop over decades. And for most people, it takes decades of exposures and decisions and lifestyle that is associated with how that tumor grows and develops. I like to think of this as like the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. So when I was a kid I loved reading about the pyramids. And what was most interesting to me were the stories where archeologists would go and they'd look at the pyramids. And, they would look at whether or not they were lines in the ground, and they could say, \"They dragged the bricks across here,\" or where the lakes were that were leading up to the pyramids, and maybe they floated the bricks and how did they lift them?\n01:03 S1: And I feel like that's what I do when I look at a tumor. I look at the structure of the tumor and the different genetic changes in it, and the way that it's in your organ and how it sits and how it behaves, and I think, how does that tell us why a person got the cancer, and what exposures led to it. And looking at these worldwide where exposures are dramatically different in low-income countries, in middle, and in high and dramatically different in urban and rural populations I feel like that tumor can tell you so much about this. And to me, it's the most fascinating part of studying cancer.\n01:38 Speaker 2: Chances are you or someone you love has been affected by cancer. In fact, more than one in three Americans will develop cancer in their lifetime. This is a disease that takes many different forms, has innumerous causes both known and unknown and affects people in a variety of ways. Today we're talking to four experts from the University of Michigan School of Public Health to learn about their research on cancer, and what they're doing to try and prevent it.\n02:07 S2: Hello and welcome to \"Population Healthy\" a podcast from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Join us as we dig into important public health topics, stuff that affects the health of all of us, at a population level. From the microscopic to the macro-economic, the social to the environmental, from neighborhoods to cities, states to countries and around the world.\n02:40 S2: We can learn a lot about the pervasiveness of cancer and what may be working to slow it down by learning about the numbers behind the disease. Mousumi Banerjee is a research professor in the Department of Biostatistics, at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a member of the University of Michigan, Rogel Cancer Center.\n03:00 Banerjee: Statistics is I believe crucial in all areas of cancer research. Cancer research spans a wide range of areas including the basic sciences, clinical research, supportive care, population health and statistics provides a framework for doing evidence-based medicine across this entire spectrum starting from diagnosis to treatment decisions, cost-effective health care delivery and outcomes, you name it. It provides a foundation for scientific decision making. In 2019, it is estimated that roughly about 1.7 million cancers will be diagnosed in the United States which is more than 4800 cases per day. A daunting number.\n03:50 Banerjee: Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease for both men and women. So, it's a huge public health problem. Among men, the most common cancers diagnosed are prostate, lung and colorectal and together these three account for almost 42% of all cases in men. Prostate cancer alone, accounting for nearly one in five new cases. So for women, the three most common cancers are breast, lung and colorectal and together these three account for one half of all cases, with breast cancer alone accounting for 30% of the new cases.\n04:37 Banerjee: These cancers also account for the greatest numbers of cancer deaths. These are all very, very depressing statistics but there is good news and the good news is that during the most recent decade of data that's available going from 2006 to 2015, the rate of new cancer diagnosis has decreased by about 2% per year in men and stayed about the same in women. So the death rate has actually declined steadily over the past 25 years. As of 2016, the cancer death rate for men and women combined has fallen almost like 27% from its peak in 1991.\n05:24 Banerjee: According to a recent study by the American Cancer Society, at least four out of 10 newly diagnosed cancers in the US, are potentially avoidable. It's a big number, and this includes 19% that are caused by smoking and 18% that are caused by a combination of things like excess body weight, physical inactivity, excess alcohol consumption and poor nutrition. So, these are all modifiable. Certain cancers that are caused by infectious agents such as the HPV virus, the Hepatitis C virus, the H. Pylori, these could be prevented through for example behavioral changes, vaccination, treatment of the infection and so on.\n06:10 Banerjee: Another example, skin cancers. More than 5 million skin cancer cases that are diagnosed annually, could be prevented by protecting skin from excessive sun exposure and not using indoor tanning devices. Screening can help prevent colorectal and cervical cancers by allowing for the detection and removal of precancerous lesions and screening also has the opportunity to detect some of the cancers early, and we all know that when diagnosed early mortality for cancer, such as breast, colon, rectum, cervix, lung cancer can be improved. And I think in addition, a heightened awareness of changes in certain parts of the body, such as breast, skin, mouth, the eyes, may also result in the early detection of cancer. So together all of these things could potentially help us in some of these prevention efforts.\n07:16 S2: With a disease as varied and complex as cancer, prevention takes many different forms. The goal of researchers is to identify the right prevention at the right time, that can mean many different things, from country to country.\n07:29 Rozek: So my name is Laura Rozek. I am an associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences Nutrition and Global Public Health here at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Most of my work looks at people who have cancer and at risk factors that may have given them the cancer and how those might predict survival from cancer. We can broadly separate cancer prevention into three categories, there's primary prevention, secondary prevention and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention aims to stop the cancer before it even occurs, before there's any indication that there is cancer and this is the cornerstone of public health and the role of public health in cancer prevention. A lot of these strategies are strategies that we do every day here in the United States and worldwide, so vaccination for the Hepatitis virus and HPV viruses is a form of primary prevention because it stops the cancer before it occurs.\n08:24 Rozek: Tobacco laws and tobacco cessation programs, these are helpful in preventing tobacco-related cancers. Secondary prevention is an attempt to diagnose cancer as early as possible in order to have the largest impact on survival. And this is where screening programs come into play. The screening programs we often think of that are most helpful with cancer are cervical cancer screening programs like PAP smears, we also have screening programs for colorectal cancer and for breast cancer. In high-income countries, these are really widespread, so most people have a colonoscopy and right now, breast cancer screening programs are readily available in most high-income countries, but they aren't in lower-income countries. And some of the work we've done have looked at ways that we can make cervical cancer screening more accessible to people by using any kind of self-sampling method to look for HPV, which is the virus that's ideologically associated with cervical cancer.\n09:22 Rozek: There are all sorts of ways we're trying to mobilize colorectal cancer screening programs, so these can be done in the field and we can identify cancer earlier. Now tertiary programs are associated with your survival and health effects after you're diagnosed. With tertiary prevention, we're really concerned with how we can give people the best treatment for their cancer where they're going to have the longest survival and the best quality of life and this is where precision health can benefit us, especially in western countries, again, where we are able to look really significantly into some of these tumor and say, \"This is the best type of therapy for this tumor.\" These, of course, are not readily available throughout the United States or throughout the world, where people who are of low income or people in lower middle income countries are much less likely to have these kinds of therapies available because it's very expensive to treat cancer and we know that.\n10:12 Rozek: And it's also expensive because we need to have the right type of physicians who are available who can have a knowledge base and the ability to treat these cancers. So much of my work is in a global setting and what I've been struck by is that the different countries that we go to have not only different rates of different types of cancers, but the actual cancers are different because for example, when we think of something like breast cancer, a lot of people think that breast cancer is one entity, it's just breast cancer, but there's many different types. There's hormone receptor positive, hormone receptor negative, when you get your breast cancer in life is actually usually indicative of how severe the cancer is going to be. If you have it earlier in life, it's often a more sever cancer. These are cancers we see more often in lower middle income countries.\n11:00 Rozek: Now, how this can inform cancer in Western populations is that, and the United States is a perfect example, we are a mix of many different types of people here. And again, this is something we celebrate every day, but we do know that cancer rates are different based on your ancestry. Now as we have looked across populations and across the African Diaspora, we've noticed that areas of Africa from which African-American women in the United States came, so, Ghana, for example, they are much more likely to have much more aggressive breast cancer subtypes. But when we look at East Africa, for example, Ethiopia, there are actually much less likely to have these aggressive cancer subtypes indicating that there's probably something that is uniquely genetic or something about the biology of these women and these tumors that's just inherently different, and that helps us inform how we can treat these cancers and to look at there to see maybe there's ways that these cancers can inform precision medicine specific to the African-American population.\n12:01 Rozek: We know that one of the cancers that's increasing in the united States is a young onset colorectal cancer, and this increase is actually greatest in African-American men and women. We have tumors from Ethiopia, we have tumors from Ghana and we have tumors from Detroit and so we are looking across the genetic differences in these tumors to see maybe there's something that's just ancestrally similar with these tumors, maybe we can identify navel changes in these tumors, that can tell us, \"There's a better way to treat this, there is a better way to prevent this.\" And because with both breast cancer and with colorectal cancer, we can change the screening guidelines. We can say if you are African-American, you might want a screen at 40 for colorectal cancer. There might be ways that we can change this where the global biology of the tumors can inform this. And again, it's really exciting and it's really exciting research to think about how this can inform precision medicine worldwide.\n13:00 Rozek: So we often I don't think give enough credit for where we're doing a lot of really good public health successes. And one of them is cervical cancer in western countries, where the widespread availability of Pap screening has led to really just incredible decreases in the incidence of cervical cancer. And that, in conjunction now with widespread availability of the HPV vaccine, we can see in front of us, we can see that we can end cervical cancer definitely in Western countries, and likely worldwide. And this is an area of emphasis for the World Health Organization. Now where HPV vaccine is not readily available, so in many lower middle income countries, and definitely in low-income countries, but the knowledge is there. And we've done some work in Ethiopia and in Thailand and we've tested ways that we can make cervical cancer screening more accessible to populations that either may not have PAP screening available or something called VIA, which is another way that they can do a visual test, for cervical cancer or they just might not wanna do it just because of cultural reasons.\n14:04 Rozek: So we've looked at ways that women can self-test because if a woman knows that she's HPV positive she is much more likely to develop cervical cancer, and she can be referred for more screening, and the woman is more likely to do it because we can say to this woman, \"You have a virus that means you can get cancer.\" Because a lot of our studies ask women what is their knowledge-base on cancer? And even in low-income countries, they know. They know, that things are available and we found through our studies that they're willing to get tested. Oftentimes, it is an issue, where they wanna do it in the way where they're comfortable and where their entire family is comfortable with it, and that they're willing to do what it takes to not get cancer.\n14:43 Rozek: Childhood cancer, detection and treatment is another major emphasis area for the World Health Organization. That's because we're realizing that the earlier we treat childhood cancer, and the better we're able to target the therapy, the fewer late life health effects because a lot of childhood cancers can be treated very efficiently, but the quality of life and some of the effects during this very critical window of development can lead to these long-lasting issues in children as they move through decades of life.\n15:13 Rozek: In lower middle income countries children can be diagnosed late for a number of reasons. One of them is just not having the availability of a cancer hospital or a treatment center where they're able to diagnose this. And we do some work in Indonesia with Dharmais Cancer Center where they have a destination program for childhood cancer, but in a country with 17,000 islands where they have significant travel obstacles to get to the hospital, often by the time they know they have cancer, it's actually quite late. Worldwide policies that address cancer and cancer incidents are again the bread and butter of public health, because public health can make population level differences that will affect decades of cancer incidents.\n15:54 Rozek: Of course, the most common example is tobacco where our policies on tobacco taxation, and tobacco laws limiting when and who could buy cigarettes have played a major role in decreasing tobacco use in many countries, not only high-income countries. And I'll point out here Thailand which has historically had some of the strongest tobacco laws in the world, the rates of tobacco smoking in Thailand are well below the rest of Southeast Asia. And they've been progressive and they've been effective.\n16:26 Rozek: And that'll be interesting to see what happens as we're watching more of these policy-based solutions to public health come into play. We're starting to recognize that alcohol may play a stronger role than previously thought in the development of cancer, and the WHO is reacting to this by following up their framework convention on tobacco control with a similar convention on alcohol use worldwide. And these laws again, are pivotal for public health and a variety of diseases. But just pointing out here, that even if we don't see the direct relationship between these laws and cancer, that they actually have a very, very direct relationship because the more healthy a population, the less likely they are to have high rates of cancer and we see that just about everywhere.\n17:15 S2: One of the policies that has been particularly effective in preventing cancer, both in the US and in other countries across the globe is tobacco control. But even with successes in tobacco control lung cancer remains a leading cause of death throughout the world.\n17:31 Meza: Hi, my name is Rafael Meza, I'm associate professor of Epidemiology and Global Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and co-leader of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention of the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Lung cancer is quite common, unfortunately, it's actually the number two cancer in both men and women in the US. Actually more people die of lung cancer in the US than from breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined, and globally is number one, in terms of incidents, as well as mortality. We actually are now seeing important declines in many places, and in many countries, particularly in developed countries like the US or England and others where really, the majority of lung cancers that we see now are due to smoking. As smoking has come down in many places thanks to tobacco control and just thanks to the awareness that smoking is bad for your health, and as a consequence lung cancer which increased a lot in the past century now is coming down. But unfortunately that's not uniform. There are countries and places where for instance smoking is not decreasing, may actually be increasing.\n18:46 Meza: There are other risk factors of lung cancer besides smoking. So for instance, miners who might be exposed to asbestos or arsenic or radon gas tend to have higher rates of lung cancer. Environmental radon gas exposures and residential radon gas exposures is one important risk factor. So for instance, that's why it's important that if you live in an area where there is environmental radon, you would test your house and if there is radon gas present that you would treat it. Second-hand smoke, if you don't smoke but you are next to people who smoke, that will also increase your risk, and it's related but for instance, having chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, so like emphysema or chronic bronchitis is a risk factor for lung cancer.\n19:37 Meza: The lung cancer screening is a relatively new modality of cancer screening. It was actually recommended at the end of 2013 and 2014, not for everybody, but for a subset of current and former smokers, between the ages of 55 and 77, according to CMS or 80 according to the US Preventive Services Task Force. And smokers who have smoked at least, what we call 30 pack years. If someone smokes one pack of cigarettes a day for a year, that's one pack years. So, it's really for for instance smokers who have been smoking for at least 30 years, one pack a day, or any other combinations, and for those former smokers that they haven't quit for more than 15 years.\n20:21 Meza: Slowly, it has been implemented in the US and it's going, but it's certainly not yet at levels of other cancer screenings, such as mammography or colorectal cancer screening, that's one of the ongoing challenges, to disseminate the knowledge that there's this test and if you're a current or former smoker, you might qualify and you might be recommended to do it and, of course, getting people to think about it, if it might be something that would be good for them. Lung cancer screening is able to detect lung cancers earlier, usually, lung cancer presents itself very late, when you have symptoms is when you might have a cancer that's already stage 3 or stage 4. And unfortunately, the prognosis for those cancers is pretty bad. That's where lung cancer screening comes, where maybe through a CT scan, you'll be able to find a nodule and find it at a time when it is still treatable, so, maybe, stage one.\n21:12 Meza: Everyone who has lungs is at risk of lung cancer and, of course, we know that those who smoke are at the highest risk of lung cancer, but even among the whole population, there are groups who might have certain preconditions or predispositions. If you have cases of lung cancer in your family, you would be at highest risk. Unfortunately, African-Americans in the US are a group that seems to be particularly affected by lung cancer and particularly certain types and they have been identified to be at higher risk for instance, than comparable folks from other racial groups, even if they smoke the same level. Lung cancer is a disease that has a lot of stigma. Unfortunately, smokers tend to be pointed at and sometimes consciously or even unconsciously, even blamed for their disease. And I think that has been one of the issues with lung cancer screening.\n22:06 Meza: Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of advocates out there fighting to help people get screened or telling people to get screened. There isn't much of a I guess community who's organizing raises or events so people can learn about it. So, I think we really need a lot of help getting the word out and making sure that smokers, of course, former smokers, and everybody know that if someone gets lung cancer it's not their fault. There's many factors that come into play for people getting a disease like lung cancer. And in the end, it doesn't matter who you are, you should get the help and the resources that you need, and in this particular case, it doesn't matter if you are still smoking or you used to be smoking.\n22:50 Meza: So, for people that have been smoking for a long time, there is nothing better to reduce the risk of lung cancer than to stop smoking. So, even if you've smoked for a long time, when you quit, immediately, you start collecting benefits in reducing your cardiovascular disease, improving your health, and your physical capability, and after a few years, your risk, for instance, for something like lung cancer, is gonna start decreasing. It will not get to the point of being similar that of a never smoker, but it will go down.\n23:29 S2: Smoking is just one common risk factor for cancer, another is obesity, which actually increases your risk for many types of cancers.\n23:38 Colacino: I'm Justin Colacino, I'm an assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences, and also assistant professor of Nutritional Sciences here at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. My lab is interested in studying how diet and environment interact and cause cancer. Obesity is defined by looking at a ratio of an individual's height and weight, using a method we call the body mass index. So the body mass index is calculated as an individual's weight in kilograms, divided by their height in meters squared. And so a body mass index of greater than 25 but less than 30 is considered overweight, a body mass index of greater than 30 is considered obese. Researchers and doctors will also use other methods to calculate obesity, they'll look at things like waist-to-hip ratio or sometimes skin full thickness or total body fat as well. We know about the links between obesity and cancer from various methods, from human population studies, as well as animal studies, so really, we know that obesity is a huge public health problem, first of all.\n24:36 Colacino: The Centers for Disease Control estimates that about 70% of the US population are either overweight or obese, which has lead to a lot of studies linking obesity and cancer. And so, how we do this in a public health setting, is with cohort studies, where we follow a group of people over time, and we look to see who gets cancer, and then we can look back at previous characteristics and compare are the individuals that are more likely to get cancer those who are more obese at baseline, or not? So, we know that obesity is related to increased risk of a number of different cancers, and these are some of the most common cancers, like breast cancer and colon cancer, and it's also related to some of the most aggressive cancers that are hardest to treat like gallbladder cancer and pancreatic cancer.\n25:20 Colacino: What we're trying to figure out is, can obesity itself, cause cancer? Right? And so, a lot of these epidemiological studies and animal studies have pointed to obesity being a risk factor for up to 17 different cancers. And so, researchers are starting to understand how obesity might cause cancer. And there's a number of different ways or hypotheses that researchers think that obesity might increase cancer risk. And so, one of them is through inflammation. Obese individuals, if we look at their blood, they have higher levels of sort of inflammatory factors than lean individuals, and we can also do studies where we look at adipose tissue itself in obese versus lean individuals, and when we look at that adipose tissue from obese individuals, we see infiltration of a lot of different immune cells that kick-off all of these really potent inflammatory factors and what we're learning now is that those inflammatory factors can promote the growth of tumors.\n26:09 Banerjee: So that's one way that obesity might be able to cause cancer, we also know that adipose tissue itself can promote the generation of different hormones like estrogen and we know that estrogen is really important for the development of cancers like breast cancer or endometrial cancer. Adipose tissue is the body's fat tissue and usually it's made up of what we call adipocytes, those are our fat cells and there's also a bunch of other cells in there, there are some immune cells in there, there are some cells like blood vessels in there and all of this comes together to make that fat tissue and that's what we call adipose tissue.\n26:39 Colacino: We know that obesity is also associated with high levels of insulin and a similar growth factor called insulin-like growth factor. These are really important signals that tell cells that they need to grow and they've been linked to an increased risk of cancer at multiple sites. And then fat tissues themselves also produce their own signaling molecules which we call adipokines, one of these common ones is called leptin and we know that increased levels of leptin also lead to increased amounts of cellular proliferation. So there's multiple ways that obesity we think might be mechanistically linked to the development of cancer. So we're learning more about how obesity affects cancer morbidity, it's a little bit more difficult to study then this link between obesity and cancer incidents but what we're starting to see is that indeed obesity is associated with adverse outcomes with respect to cancer mortality for a number of different cancers.\n27:28 Colacino: So, in public health we try to think about intervening on obesity at multiple levels really. So there's the individual levels where we can always make recommendations to individuals, usually through their primary care physician to improve their diet, eat better, exercise more, lose weight so that's the personal responsibility angle. Of course we also know that there's a lot of systemic issues and social issues that promote obesity in different populations so it's really important to make sure that everyone has access to good grocery stores, make sure that everybody has access to parks and sidewalks so that they can move around more and get exercise easily. So we think that there's the individual factors all the way up to the social factors are where we could intervene on a public health level to try to influence this link between obesity and cancer.\n28:13 Colacino: There's some potential interesting intersections between exposure to environmental chemicals and obesity and cancer that I think we're just starting to uncover. There are specific types of chemicals that we call obesogens that exposure to these chemicals seems to promote obesity. And so we've identified some of these in animal studies, we've identified some of these in human population studies but we're still at the very beginning stages of trying to understand whether exposure to these chemicals might influence cancer risk through this obesity pathway.\n28:47 Colacino: So my lab's always been interested in really understanding how environmental factors influence cancer risk and cancer progression. I'm fortunate that I have great collaborators here that are really excited about obesity and the mechanisms that obesity cause cancer. And so one of my graduate students Evan Hill has been working on multiple projects in this area and his interest has really, I think rubbed off on me. It's really been because of my great collaborators and my great students that I also have got excited about this field as well.\n29:24 S2: Thank you for listening to this episode of Population Healthy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. We're glad you decided to join us and hope you learned something that will help you improve your own health or make the world a healthier place. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe or follow this podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Be sure to follow us @umichsph on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook so you can share your perspectives on the issues we discuss, learn more from Michigan public health experts and share episodes of the podcast with your friends on social media. You can also check out the show notes at our website, population-healthy.com for more resources on the topics discussed in this episode. We hope you join us for next week's episode where we'll dig further into public health topics that affect all of us at a population level.\nThe Global Cancer Burden: Avoidable Causes from Lifestyle to Environment\nHPV Exposure and the Increasing Prevalence of Head and Neck Cancer\nUsing Technology and Collaboration to Combat Cancer\nHow Skeptical Epidemiologists Figured Out That Cholesterol Drugs Can Help Prevent Prostate Cancer\nLung Cancer Will Remain Major Health Issue, Despite Falling Rates\nIn This Episode\nMousumi Banerjee\nAnant M. Kshirsagar Collegiate Research Professor of Biostatistics\nDirector of Biostatistics, Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy\nMousumi Banerjee is Research Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Director of Biostatistics at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy (CHOP). She is also a member of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her methodological research focuses on tree-structured regression and ensemble methods, multilevel models, longitudinal analyses, survival analyses, and competing risks; with applications to cancer epidemiology and health services research. Learn more.\nLaura Rozek\nAssociate Professor in Environmental Health Sciences\nAssociate Director, Office of Global Public Health\nAssociate Professor, Nutritional Sciences\nDr. Rozek uses population-level statistical and molecular approaches to address the environmental and epidemiological risk factors for cancer with an emphasis on US minority and global populations. With colleagues at academic institutions in Thailand, she has established bidirectional collaborative projects that address the temporal changes in cancer incidence for the purpose of informing cancer prevention and health policy decisions in the country. She has also developed community-based studies of unique cancer risk factors and predictors of cancer survival in northeast and southern Thailand. Learn more.\nJustin Colacino\nJohn G. Searle Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences\nAssistant Professor, Environmental Health Sciences\nAssistant Professor, Nutritional Sciences\nDr. Justin Colacino is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. His research focuses on understanding environmental and dietary factors in carcinogenesis and cancer prevention. Specifically, the goal of his research is to characterize the environmental susceptibility of normal human stem cell populations, elucidating the etiology of sporadic cancers. Learn more.\nRafael Meza\nAssociate Professor, Epidemiology\nAssociate Professor of Global Public Health\nCo-Leader, Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Program, UM Rogel Cancer Center\nDr. Meza is associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Meza's research interests lie at the interface of epidemiology, biostatistics and biomathematics. In particular, he is interested in cancer risk assessment and the analysis of cancer epidemiology data using mechanistic models of carcinogenesis. Learn more.\nA City of Resilience: Public Health in Detroit\nAging in America: Addressing the Complexities of Longer Lives and an Aging Population\nTaking Back the 'F Word': Depoliticizing Firearms and Focusing on Safety to Protect Children and Teens\nSelect Month 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line447709"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5712511539459229,"wiki_prob":0.5712511539459229,"text":"Norfolk Mills\nWatermill & Windmill\nMain Indexes\nFile Update lists\nMillers' wills\nNorwich Millwrights\nNorwich Windmillers\nAylsham Navigation\nNorth Walsham & Dilham Canal\nWatermill Machinery\nWindmill Machinery\nHarry Apling\nThe site database search engine is below and on the Norfolk Mills page\nLast site update 10th January 2020\nYou can use this search engine to search for all pages within the site that may contain a\nname of your choice:\nThis website contains a considerable amount of historical and genealogical data for in excess of\n1,200 mills along with over 3,000 photographs.\nAll pages should be easily accessible via the links above.\nInformation on Norfolk windmills and watermills.\nAlso photographs for copying (repairing if necessary) and preserving.\nAll photographs would of course be returned immediately\nPlease or telephone 07836 675369\nHarry Apling's wonderful book\nNorfolk Corn Windmills\nalong with around\n1,500 other mill titles and documents\nare available from\nAlan Ticehurst\nAt the time of Domesday, in the 11th century, there were some 580 recorded watermills in Norfolk, but no windmills. The earliest known windmill in Norfolk was recorded at Rackheath in 1268 and the earliest identified windmill site in Norfolk was at Barton_Bendish in 1338, although Thomas Thurne gave a windmill in Waxham to Hickling Priory c.1190.\nBy the early 1800s only 80 or 90 watermills were still functioning but there were still 300 - 400 windmills in the county. By the late 1800s the water and windmilled stone ground flour was fast giving way to roller mill produced flour. The taste of the people was changing and the new technology was capable of producing flour far more efficiently and faster.\nHorning_Mill_Loke_postmill was probably the first postmill and possibly even the first windmill to be fitted with William Cubitt's patent sails c.1807 that were eventually to be used by virtually all Norfolk windmills. Stalham_smockmill is the only other known contender.\nThe first steam mill for auxiliary power was installed at Dickleburgh in 1834.\nIn 1939 Claude Messent recorded that there were only 60 watermills still standing and by 2004 the number had gone down to 52 with only around 20 still containing any remnants of machinery and many have now disappeared completely. Forever.\nStanding watermills and windmills are now a rarity and this website is intended to provide a pictorial and historical record of all the mills I can trace here in Norfolk, England.\nJonathan Neville\nPages are continually being updated and added - so any and all help with information, anecdotes and photographs would be greatly appreciated.\nRemember to hit the refresh button when re-visiting in order to see page changes - otherwise your pc will probably load the old page from its internal cache.\nThis site is recognised by\nSPAB\nThe Society for the Protection\nof Ancient Buildings\nMills Section\n24,696 visits from 66 countries in our first 4 months in 2002!\n33,095 pages viewed in May 2007!\nThis site came onstream on 6th September 2002 and traffic has slowly increased.\nMay 2007 saw 17,622 visitors from 86 countries\nWe welcome viewers from the following countries:\nAlbania, Andorra, Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Ascension Island, Austria, Australia, Azerbaidjan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chad, Chile, China, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Columbia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guam, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Polynesia (French), Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Samoa Islands, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, US Educational, US Government, US Military, USSR (former), Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (USA), Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe\nWe hope you will find something of interest amongst the photos and snippets of information put together.\nWe would also be grateful for any information, history, anecdotes or photographs that could be included as we continue to develop and update the site. All photographs will of course be returned immediately after they are scanned.\nPlease note that all photographs and material on this site are subject to copyright and must not be reproduced without prior permission from the owner. If you are interested in a photo please for copyright details or telephone 07836 675369.\nPlease note that all photographs and material on this site are subject to copyright and must not be reproduced without prior permission from the owner.\nHowever, if you are interested in purchasing a full size digital photo,\nmany are available, subject to copyright.\nDigital copy via email - £10.00\nDigital copy burnt onto CD - £20.00 + postage etc (dependent on destination)\nand don't forget to provide full details of which photo you are interested in!\nMany individuals and organisations have between them, provided a vast amount of assistance and archive information for inclusion on this website. Please take time to visit the credits_page to view some of the information sources.\nDo visit our sister site www.itteringham.com\nAlso Jonathan Neville's African and Norfolk wildlife digital photos at www.digitalwild.co.uk\nCopyright © Jonathan Neville 2014","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line727760"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9145440459251404,"wiki_prob":0.9145440459251404,"text":"7 Bollywood Films Which Portrayed The Spirit Of Boxing\n6 Dec 18 @ 5:16 PM | By Ravi\nSports have played a crucial part in our Bollywood films as quite a few sports movies off-late have done extremely well at the box-office, some turning out to be blockbusters. Cricket no doubt takes the cake when it comes to making a top sports movie whereas boxing comes in a close second followed by wrestling, mixed martial arts and other such activities. There have been many actors who’ve played boxers on screen but for a different cause. Movies based on boxing exclusively have been a handful of which some have been inspired from real life pugilists and some have turned out to be revenge dramas. Here’s a compilation of seven top boxing movies in Bollywood which exclusively portrayed the spirit of boxing on screen with aplomb.\nMukkabaaz (2018)\nMukkabaaz, a film by Anurag Kashyap is no doubt one of his best directorial films. With intense dialogues and showing the discrimination the lower caste still faces in India, Anurag portrayed it all brilliantly. Starring Vineet Kumar Singh, Mukkabaaz did justice in capturing the spirit of boxing in the film. The film was a sleeper hit but was highly praised by the critics.\nSaala Khadoos (2016)\nThe latest boxing flick in the offing which was also released as Irudhi Suttru in Tamil starring Madhavan and Ritika Singh, who is trained by the former to make it as a boxing champion. The film is directed by Sudha Kongura Prasad and releases on January 29, 2016.\nSources: pycker\nSaala Khadoos\nMary Kom (2014)\nOne of the best sports movies ever made. A biopic on Olympic boxing medallist Mary Kom had Priyanka Chopra playing the gutsy Manipuri pugilist and her journey of becoming a world champion. The film directed by Omung Kumar did good business at the box-office.\nMary Kom\nApne (2007)\nDirected by Anil Sharma, this was the first time where real life father and sons - Dharmendra, Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol came together on screen. All played boxers who fight for one another to avenge their defeat in the ring. The film also starred Kiron Kher, Shilpa Shetty and Katrina Kaif who played the female leads. The film emerged a hit at home as well as overseas.\nApne\nAryan: Unbreakable (2006)\nThis action-drama film was written and directed by Abhishek Kapoor which had Sohail Khan in the titular role where he’s got to choose between his boxing career and his family. The film was an above average grosser at the box office which also starred Sneha Ullal, Inder Kumar and Puneet Issar in pivotal roles.\nAryan: Unbreakable\nThis action drama film may as well end up on top of the boxing movie list in terms of release. Directed by Raj N. Sippy, the film starred Mithun Chakraborty, Rati Agnihotri, Sharat Saxena, Danny Denzongpa and Tanuja. Loosely based on Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, the film was a typical masala film where Mithun takes up boxing in order to fulfill his father’s dream.\nMain Intaquam Loonga (1982)\nMain Intaquam Loonga was a remake of superstar Rajkumar’s Kannada hit Thayige Thakka Maga (1976). Dharmendra played the main lead who avenges his father’s death by knocking out Amrish Puri’s men one by one. This average grosser was directed by T. Ramarao.\nMain Intaquam Loonga","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line728365"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6828263998031616,"wiki_prob":0.6828263998031616,"text":"JM Salazar > audio book\nby Mauricio Salazar | May 27, 2018 | Reviews\nLast week I've spent almost 18 hours listening to \"The Lost Symbol\" by Dan Brown. I've read two others books from the same author \"The Da Vinci Code\" and \"Inferno\". The first book was ok, nothing amazing but entertaining. The second book was very good, not for the...\nby Mauricio Salazar | Mar 26, 2018 | Reviews\nThe Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin Narrator Richard Ferrone Duration : 13:48:44 Parts : 11 Link on OverDrive: https://www.overdrive.com/media/92914/the-compleated-autobiography-by-benjamin-franklin The biography of Benjamin Franklin...\nby Mauricio Salazar | Dec 21, 2017 | Reviews\nWorld War II is a complex subject. Last year, I began to read books and listen to audiobooks about this war. Before that, I had just seen some movies about the conflict. I think it is important to understand why some horrible things happened in the world in past and...\nTake Command – Kelly Perdew\nby Mauricio Salazar | Jul 1, 2016 | Reviews\nLast February, I finished to listen to the audio book of Kelly Perdew, the winner of the second series of Donald Trump's reality show, \"The Apprentice\". The book, \"Take Command\", is a kind of guide to inspire business people to hire people that were in the army for...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1485361"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6863338351249695,"wiki_prob":0.3136661648750305,"text":"Federal spending on science and technology remains solid in 2015 Budget\nWashington, D.C., December 15, 2015 – Kelly Phillips Erb, a contributor of Forbes, comments on the federal budget vote. “While the tenor of the debate felt partisan from start to finish, the final vote didn’t have an overwhelmingly partisan flavor. Of the Senators voting yes, 31 were Democrats, 24 were Republicans and 1 was Independent. Of the Senators voting no, 21 were Democrats, 18 were Republicans and 1 was Independent. Of those abstaining, one was a Democrat three were Republicans. The more than 1,600 page bill, considered a compromise on both sides, was a $1.014 trillion budget which will keep the lights on in Congress through September 2015.”\n“The bill increased funding for cyber security for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Fraud control measures related to cyber security also resulted in funding bumps for other agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.”\n“While the Ebola virus is still making headlines, Congress carved out an entire section of the budget for “Ebola response and preparedness.” The National Institute of Health (NIH) not only got a regular budget boost but additional research money to fight Ebola. Also benefiting directly and indirectly from the Ebola scare, along with concerns about other infectious diseases, are the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”\n“Science was overall a big winner in the budget. Not only did medical research see extra funds, so did other sciences. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will all see better numbers in 2015 than last year.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line47216"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7128897309303284,"wiki_prob":0.7128897309303284,"text":"Live Review – Ward Davis, Lucero and Cody Jinks in Albany, GA\nNews Comments Off on Live Review – Ward Davis, Lucero and Cody Jinks in Albany, GA\nBy Joshua Wallace\nAll Photography By Joshua Wallace\nWard Davis\nThis past Thursday on November 7th, 2019 I had the chance to see Cody Jinks live with Lucero and Ward Davis as opening acts. I arrived at the Albany Civic Center shortly after 6pm. That was the time printed on the ticket and on everything on social media, so I assumed it meant doors were at 6pm. Nope, the show started at 6pm and I could hear Ward Davis already going as I got my ticket at Will Call. I walked into the Civic Center as Ward was playing “Old Wore Out Cowboys” from his 15 Years In A Ten Year Town album. This song normally features Jamey Johnson and Willie Nelson on the record, but this time we had an early guest appearance from Cody Jinks who graced the stage for a verse in the song. The crowd was still filling in at this point as like me, I assume most people thought the show started at 7pm.\nWard Davis feat. Cody Jinks\nWard Davis put on a good set this evening with tracks like “Get To Work Whiskey” and his cover of “Big River”. He also got around to “Good and Drunk” which is my favorite track off the Asunder EP he released last year. He rounded out the set on the keys playing tracks like “15 Years In A 10 Year Town”, “I Got You” and a rousing rendition of The Eagles hit “Desperado”.\nLucero was up next and I admit, I’m not the biggest fan of theirs and I was hoping to get a better feel for the band in a live setting, but it didn’t work out that way this evening. Between Ward and Cody, they were kind of the odd band in the sound mixing department and I don’t think that worked in their favor. I did pick up on a few songs they played like “On My Way Downtown” which is my favorite track from the 2012 Women and Work album. Ben Nichols did a stripped down version of what I think was “The War” from the 2005 release Nobody’s Darlings. They also did “Texas & Tennessee” from their 2013 EP of the same name. They also played a newer song called “Hello My Name Is Izzy” which has been released as a single. They finished the set with a track from the 2002 release Tennessee titled “The Last Song”. I hope to be able to catch this band live again soon and catch a full set next time.\nYou could tell this crowd is ready for Cody Jinks by the time he hit the stage. Before we get into Cody’s set, I have to commend whoever was playing music before Cody came on. They mixed classic country hits with songs from current artists like Paul Cauthen, Alex Williams, Whitey Morgan and others who many in this crowd might not have heard of as Albany, GA is a fairly new market for Jinks.\nCody Jinks\nCody Jinks started right away with music from his new records. He kicked the set off with “Same Kind Of Crazy As Me” from The Wanting. This set was heavy on new tunes, but he plays a long enough set list that you still get everything you want. Speaking of the set list, he is doing something interesting with his set lists as of late. He has lines with two songs listed instead of one. It seems like these are parts in the set where he has two songs in the same key lined up and can select either one. This is a very cool way of doing things. It gives the band flexibility to read the room and it potentially gives fans a different experience each night instead of just having the same old set.\nJinks then went on with the title track off the Lifers album and followed that up my personal favorite off that record “Big Last Name”. More new songs followed with “Tell Em What It’s Like” and “The Wanting”. After those tracks we got into “I’m Not The Devil” which had a special appearance from Ward Davis who sang a verse. Albany, GA was also the site of the very first live version of “Where Even Angels Fear To Fly”. I really dig this one live and it is quickly becoming a favorite of mine off The Wanting album.\nCody Jinks feat. Ward Davis\nWe also got another favorite track of mine off The Wanting album with “Which One I Feed”. I was especially looking forward to this one as it was one of my favorite preview tracks leading up to the albums release. More new music soon followed with “Ain’t A Train”. This song is huge for the fiddle solo that hits you hard every time it drops in the song. Well, the live band does not have a fiddle player so Austin “Hot Rod” Tripps grabs a dobro instead. While it’s a good track live, it’s just not the same without that hot fiddle solo. Jinks mentioned that this is one of his most upbeat setlists he’s ever done before going into one of his biggest tear jerker tracks in “David”. It still hits hard in a live setting.\nCody Jinks and The Tone Deaf Hippies\nAnother new track followed with “Wounded Mind”. This isn’t one that I had anticipated hearing live, but it’s a good one. It’s a very good deep cut from The Wanting. Up next we had “Holy Water” from Lifers and “Think Like You Think” from After The Fire. There is a bit of irony singing a song like “Think Like You Think” in front of a drunk and rowdy crowd on a Thursday night, but it’s a damn good song live. “Cast No Stones” was one of the highlights of this night for me. It’s one of my favorite Jinks tracks overall, but this is especially good live as he brings the house lights up for an extended sing-a-long with the crowd. “Must Be The Whiskey” and “Hippies and Cowboys” closed out the regular set. “Must Be The Whiskey” is a huge fan favorite off the album Lifers and it feels like a hit every time I hear it live. Jinks came out for a two song encore which included the acoustic leaning “The Raven and The Dove” and one of his biggest fan favorite songs “Loud and Heavy”.\nThis was my third time seeing Cody Jinks live and his show never disappoints. From seeing him at the Ryman a couple of years ago to this show, he keeps getting better. He’s upped his showmanship a lot recently. He picks out kids in the crowd and gives them guitar picks and acknowledges signs and interacts with the crowd in a meaningful way. A lot of independent artists don’t do this level of crowd interaction but it is a must for bigger stages and crowds. Cody Jinks is riding high and the sky’s the limit. He’s always on tour and I can’t wait till the next time I get to see him live. You can find out if he’s coming to a town near you at this link.\nPosted by GaryHayes at 10:13 am\tTagged with: Alabany Civic Center, Albany GA, Cody Jinks, Joshua Wallace, live review","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line131144"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5278809666633606,"wiki_prob":0.5278809666633606,"text":"Contact/Submissions\nHypnagogue Podcast\nHypnagogue Music Reviews\nFiRES WERE SHOT: Pieces of the White Sun\nJanuary 16, 2014 January 16, 2014 HypnagogueLeave a comment\nAustin-based duo FiRES WERE SHOT run acoustic guitars through effects and looping stations to create a pleasingly hypnotic blend of warm organic sounds and deeply resonant drones on Pieces of the White Sun. John Wilkins and Clay Walton open this 11-track affair with the hum and buzz of gear turning on, and then start strumming, picking and layering. Listening to this release is a little like playing an early Windham Hill album having just enjoyed a bit of your controlled substance of choice. That familiar warm, folksy feel runs through everything, melodic, laid-back and intimate. Take that and lace it with the mind-salving effect of the repeating, near-minimalist loops and the long-held drone structures that run underneath it all, and you’ve got something that can make you simply lose track of time. Close listening is a must, as Wilkins and Walton pay a lot of attention to the use of harmonics and resonance as ways to quietly fill a moment, and also to capture as drone elements. There’s a lot to dig into here. I like the almost clockwork cadence of “Scattered in the River,” and the way the duo chop up the sound as the piece glides to a close. There’s some smooth slide guitar howling gracefully against a fast-picked counter-melody on “In the Heavens Meadow,” and it comes off as sweetly soulful. “McElligot’s Pool” dives deep into the repetition and ups the ante with a gritty, raw edge and edge-of-feedback wails. Again, what really works here is that the honest, folk-music tone, rich in its simplicity, anchors the thing and lets the two explore the building sound. As much good as I have to say about this release, I have to add that FiRES WERE SHOT almost lost me with the abrupt ending of the first track, “Before That Time.” While I’ve come to understand it a little better as an artistic choice after repeat listens, it still doesn’t work for me. And it’s not just that it sounds like someone hit a button too soon and made a rough edit, it’s that–perhaps in my opinion only–the piece deserved to come to a better close. Sometimes you can cut a piece off in mid-statement like this and it’s fine. They do it well on “Long Match,” which is a pretty straightforward song that gets some great texture from what sounds to these ears like augmented/distorted vocals. When this piece hits its drop-out, it throws the listener into a hushed space where the drones continue to wash back and forth, carrying the echo of the melody until it all fades down. It works. In the case of “Before That Time,” though, the sudden stop just amplifies the fact that there was more to be said, and it would have been worth hearing.\nPieces of the White Sun is a great thing to dive into, headphones-first. Wilkins and Walton exhibit complete control over their loops and layers, and play up the acoustic side. It’s got charm, and it’s got that nice experimental edge. Worth discovering.\nAvailable at Bandcamp.\nAaron Static: Redemption\nMingo: Sky Over Sea\nThe Last Few\nSo Long, and Thanks for All the Support\nVisiting Cat, Host\nEyes Cast Down, Souls Adrift, in Disrepair\nVon Geistley, Winter\nRed Sky Lullaby, Very Own Special Day\nLook For Words\nInto The Library\nInto The Library Select Month July 2017 (1) June 2017 (8) May 2017 (8) April 2017 (6) March 2017 (13) February 2017 (12) January 2017 (15) December 2016 (7) November 2016 (8) October 2016 (10) September 2016 (11) August 2016 (7) July 2016 (11) June 2016 (11) May 2016 (5) April 2016 (7) March 2016 (6) February 2016 (3) January 2016 (10) December 2015 (12) November 2015 (15) October 2015 (13) September 2015 (14) August 2015 (11) July 2015 (9) June 2015 (17) May 2015 (12) April 2015 (15) March 2015 (13) February 2015 (17) January 2015 (11) December 2014 (5) November 2014 (6) October 2014 (15) September 2014 (18) August 2014 (8) July 2014 (6) June 2014 (8) May 2014 (9) April 2014 (7) March 2014 (9) February 2014 (6) January 2014 (9) December 2013 (13) November 2013 (13) October 2013 (14) September 2013 (15) August 2013 (16) July 2013 (12) June 2013 (16) May 2013 (14) April 2013 (7) March 2013 (11) February 2013 (14) January 2013 (14) December 2012 (17) November 2012 (12) October 2012 (13) September 2012 (17) August 2012 (12) July 2012 (17) June 2012 (14) May 2012 (16) April 2012 (13) March 2012 (11) February 2012 (6) January 2012 (15) December 2011 (11) November 2011 (12) October 2011 (15) September 2011 (11) August 2011 (13) July 2011 (10) June 2011 (5) May 2011 (12) April 2011 (13) March 2011 (14) February 2011 (10) January 2011 (7) December 2010 (6) November 2010 (12) October 2010 (12) September 2010 (19) August 2010 (8) July 2010 (6)\nIt’s About You\nIf you are an artist who has been reviewed here, YES, you absolutely may use part or all of your review in your promotional efforts. That's what it's here for!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1545885"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6835863590240479,"wiki_prob":0.31641364097595215,"text":"We Are All Roxana Santos\nThanks to all of the pressure and community support, Roxana was finally released on Monday, February 4th. Although Roxana is back home with her children, her fight is far from over.\nAs you may already know, Roxana came to the U.S. more than 13 years ago, fleeing violence in El Salvador and extreme violence in her home. In 2008, Roxana was racially profiled by two deputies from the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland while sitting on a bench eating lunch. The two officers unlawfully detained and transferred her to ICE. In 2013, Roxana won an important victory from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that the Sheriff’s deputies had violated her constitutional rights to be free from unlawful seizure. The case is now in the damages phase in the federal district court for Maryland.\nDespite the fact that Roxana won her case, owns her own home, and has deep ties to the United States, Roxana has been forced to attend regular check-ins with ICE for the past decade stemming from this initial arrest.\nOn Tuesday, January 8th, 2019, Roxana’s worst fear was realized after she was detained during a routine check-in despite the fact she had a court hearing the following Monday regarding her civil rights case.\nThe community responded immediately. CASA and CASA in Action members rallied outside of ICE, and civil rights leaders demanded Roxana’s release. Thousands of supporters like you signed petitions advocating for her. Religious and community leaders joined Roxana’s husband Cesar and their three youngest children to go from office to office in Congress asking the Maryland delegation to get personally involved in her case.\nThanks to all of the pressure and community support, ICE released Roxana on Monday on a $5,000 bond; an amount of money that was raised in under 36 hours.\nAlthough Roxana is back home with her children, the fight is far from over. We need to keep on fighting with Roxana for justice. There are three ways you can get involved:\nDonate to Roxana\nDonate to CASA\nAttend Roxana’s next check-in\nContribute financially: After almost a month in detention, Roxana’s family financial resources are depleted and it’s not clear if Roxana will be able to return to work. Her family needs support to pay for medical bills, groceries, their mortgage payments, and other necessary expenses. If you would like to support her family directly, you can do so through her gofundme page.If you’d like to support CASA’s work in defending Roxana, please click here.\nShow Up: Roxana will have to check in again with ICE. Please click here if you would like to come support her outside of the ICE offices in Baltimore, MD. Sign up with the link above and we will provide more details when a date is scheduled. Help us make sure Roxana is released at her next check-in to the community that loves her.\nThank you for showing up and supporting Roxana.\nGustavo Torres,\nExecutive Director, CASA","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line597729"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6889341473579407,"wiki_prob":0.3110658526420593,"text":"Foresight & Analyses\nEvents & Speeches\nWe believe that future research or foresight is and should be a collective learning exercise in order to succeed. It is important that all related people (with different backgrounds and often conflicting interests) set up the focal research question together, go thought the learning journey together (using different types of analyses and expertise on their way) and finally brainstorming the results and needed actions together.\nThis page illustrates the CV our team’s research, foresight and analytical work experiences and cooperation projects with other researchers and wise statesmen over time. Some of the research projects below were initiated and carried out during the time our team members worked at the Estonian Development Fund. We are willing to assist our partners in their own foresight and research projects; as well we are ready to lead or participate in new and challenging projects across the world. Please write to: info@estcorp.eu.\nThe Future of Work and Skills 2025 / 2015\nAn overview of major trends and their impact on the economy and labor market in the ten-year perspective. The aim of the review is to encourage the social partners to discuss the future trends and factors of work, technology change, new business and management models, to create a context and provide a sense of though for forecasting the work-force and skill needs of different industries, and to be an input for future training needs and HRM policies.\nFour Future Stories for Järva County / 2015\nScenarios are a tool for helping to take a long view in a world of great uncertainty. Moreover, scenario planning allows making future-proof decisions today. The team ESTCORP led the process and development of alternative narratives – four future stories – for Järva County in Estonia. In Foresight projects, the scenario method practiced by ESTCORP is a policy analysis tool that helps describe a possible set of future conditions. At national, regional and local level scenarios can be used to improve planning capacity, to enrich strategic public policy decisions and to guide major capital investments.\nInternational Institutional Accreditation of TUT / 2014\nThe CEO of ESTCORP Dr Ott Pärna was among the authors of An International Institutional Assessment and Accreditation Report of the Tallinn University of Technology (TUT) for the Estonian Higher Education Quality Agency EKKA. The institutional accreditation of TUT was an external evaluation assessing the compliance of the management, administration, academic and research activity, and academic and research environment of the university with the legislation as well as with the purposes and development plans of the university.\nFinancial and Social Sustainability of Estonian Microfinance Market / 2014\nThis research paper analyses the applicability of the rational assumption that supports the position that it is unnecessary to protect people against the consequences of their choices in the Estonian microfinance market. This is done in the light of the perfect market philosophy, inevitable information asymmetry among market players and time-inconsistent preferences of borrowers. The purpose of the article is to find evidence whether the microfinance market in Estonia sufficiently satisfies the basic conditions of a financially and socially sustainable free market.\nModern Concept of Social Innovation University / 2013\nThe ESTCORP team supported the Tallinn University’s Rector’s Office in their strategy work in making the university more socially responsive and entrepreneurial, both in Estonia and internationally. According to the new Development Plan of the University, five focus areas linking the university competences to the societal challenges were the following: educational innovation, digital and media culture, cultural competences, healthy and sustainable lifestyle, society and open governance.\nEstonia – The Business Paradise: Attracting Higher Added Value FDI / 2013\nThe project “Involvement of RD&I intensive and higher added value foreign investments as a part of Estonia’s innovation policy” was carried out for the Government Office of the Republic of Estonia. The research project analyses how foreign investors can leverage the industry, technology and economy upgrading in Estonia. The analysis puts FDI into a modern and interdisciplinary context where highly mobile global knowledge workers are more likely to choose a job because of where an organisation is located rather than because of the organisation itself. Therefore, the question what makes cities and countries great comes into play. Among other analyses, this research includes six country case studies: Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Singapore, Czech Republic and Lithuania. The research was conducted together with Technopolis Group.\nTowards a Systemic Approach to Understanding and Managing Innovation in the Public Sector / 2013\nThis research project is about innovation in the public sector. In a time of economic crisis and continued cost-cutting, public sector innovation is essential for governments in order to maintain service standards and find radical solutions for complex challenges. The research question of the project asks what are the main characteristics and driving forces of the public service innovation system and do they differ across countries? The research has four perspectives through which the public sector innovation process is analysed: managerial, learning, technological, and systems perspective. As data on public sector innovation is quite rare, this research provides a unique combination of theoretical foundations and exploratory cross-country survey on public sector technological innovations in four European countries – the UK, Denmark, Finland and Estonia.\nManagement and Development of State Owned Enterprises / 2012\nAn analytical work on how to better lead, manage and develop Estonian state-owned companies. Among other things, the analysis contained different best practices across the world (i.e. Temasek Holdings in Singapore, Ownership Steering and Solidium in Finland) and provided alternative management structures to be possibly implemented in Estonia. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nExperimental Economic Policy / 2012\nModern economic policy is a joint discovery and development process of public and private sectors, together with academia, which support businesses in finding and utilising new emerging opportunities rather than continuing old pathways and cutting in stone old existing economic structures. Based on the international stock of knowledge and practices, this analysis opens up the emerging topic of experimentation in economic policies, together with smart specialisation and required strategic agility in state affairs. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nMarkets and Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid / 2012\nAcross the world, most businesses focus their activities – products and services – at the top, indeed the smaller part of the income pyramid. This literature review and analysis work focuses on the bottom part of the pyramid and how to tackle it. This part of the global market consists of about 4 billion inhabitants, which is more and more accessible, with the total purchasing power of a “few trillion” US dollars and growing. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nEstonia-India: The Future of (Economic) Relations / 2012\nThe goal of the Estonia-India foresight was to identify means of stimulating business opportunities and mutually valuable economic relations between the two countries, establish a basis for the knowledge about the Indian economy and a contacts network of potential partner institutions/companies to further advance collaborations. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nTalent Foresight / 2012\nThe first phase of the Estonian talent foresight together with the International Talent Forum. The mission of the foresight was to provide knowledge for a topic that spans a range of various policy areas and stakeholders, draw a complex concept from this and initiate a discussion about the pathways to opening up Estonia and making it attractive for (foreign) talents. The world is a battleground for talents where apart from companies, nation states are also competing against each other alongside negative population growth and aging trends. The answer does not lie in one-off education or migration policy fixes or project-based campaigns, but in a jointly developed holistic solution – in a Talent Policy. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nWorld in 2020: Key Trends and Their Impact to Estonia / 2012\nThis research report presents the most significant external changes that could influence Estonia in the following decade. Based on them, conclusions have been drawn as points for consideration in the process of establishing objectives, priorities and activities regarding the use of EU and other resources when making future plans for Estonia, in order to ensure that external opportunities as well as risks are taken into account. This trend analysis is also helpful as a tool for all decision makers and interested parties when planning strategies for various policy areas as well as company business strategies. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nICT in Financial Intermediation Sector / 2012\nIn today’s world, the biggest influence on ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is in their applications in other economic sectors and areas of society. This analysis focuses on different future crossroads of the financial intermediation sector and ICT sector trends. Based on this synthesis, the report draws out alternative development trajectories and makes suggestions to both areas, as well as jointly. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nThe Role of Different Funding Models in Stimulating the Creation of Innovative New Companies in Europe / 2011\nThis international research project lead by Technopolis Group focused on three main questions. Firstly, what are the main financial mechanisms in the US, Europe (EU plus associated countries such as Israel) and other industrialised countries for stimulating new high technology businesses (or ”Yollies”: young leading innovators)? Secondly, what do VC activities in the US, Europe and other selected industrialised or emerging economies look like today? And thirdly, what is the most appropriate mix of financial support for young innovation companies and what mix of financial methods is optimal at the European level?\nEstonian Growth Vision 2018: Goals and Aspirations for the Next Decade / 2011\nThe Estonian Growth Vision 2018 was one of the widest structured national vision building exercises carried out in Europe. It was a year-long process engaging around a thousand leading thinkers in Estonia into a strategic discussion about the future of Estonia that phrased its goal as “Estonia – globally competitive, locally attractive” and described the 8 key vision choices where the work done today will largely determine the future path of the Estonian economy. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nScenarios 2018: Four Alternative Futures for the Estonian Economy / 2011-2012\nThe report contains four possible scenarios of the Estonian economy: Southern Finland, Hanseatic League II, Skype Island and State Returns. The conclusions drawn from the scenarios were the basis for the creation of the Growth Vision 2018. The report is also a good handbook for joint scenario-building work in different areas, consisting also of methodological aspects and respective international knowledge. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nTrend Blog “Fututuba” / 2011-2012\nSuccess in the turbulent world depends on how much we know and understand the inevitable processes taking place in the world. The trend blog “fututuba” (futures room) introduces fresh surveys and stories on future workplaces, sprouting business opportunities, the future of energy sector, green economy, aging, distant markets, urbanisation, novel governance methods, foreign investments, consumption, migration, and more. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nICT in Healthcare Sector / 2011\nIt is estimated that the healthcare sector is becoming the biggest global profit-making area for the information and technologies sector by 2020. Similarly, e-health related costs are estimated to become the third largest cost area in the health sector with about 5 per cent of total costs. This report analyses the opportunities of using ICT in different areas and “layers” of healthcare. It also suggests that, given its high “e-reputation”, Estonia should become the development lab for healthcare innovations. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nICT in Education / 2010\nThe coming decade or two are bringing radical experiments and changes to the nature of education, its provision methods, inter-linkages, etc. One of the cornerstone components of this transformation is information and communication technology and its applications. This report analyses the potential usage of ICT in education, draws a roadmap and provides key-suggestions in preparing for these developments, taking advantages of them and boosting them. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nInternationally Competitive Universities: Internationalisation Trends and Practice / 2010\nThe report explains the basics of internationally competitive universities and alternative ways how this competitiveness can be achieved. The report discusses internationalisation and its part in the creation, development and management of a world-class university. The report is based on a review of recent relevant literature and on the authors’ knowledge (Academic Cooperation Association) of and experience with the themes of higher education internationalisation and excellence in tertiary education. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nForesight on Export of Health and Wellness Services in the Next Decade / 2010\nThe foresight project tested a hypothesis that Estonia has a potential for exporting healthcare services. The final report explains the underlying requirements for the export of healthcare services, discusses the trends driving the growth, analyses the competitive advantages of Estonia and offers strategy choices for using opportunities. The basis for justifying the topic of this study was the fact that commercial presence/outward direct investments and consumption abroad/health tourism comprise two major ways of cross-border provision of healthcare services (respectively 50% and 40% of global healthcare services export turnover). Moreover, more than half of all Europeans would be willing to consume healthcare services abroad according to the survey conducted in the European Union in 2007. But only 4% (c. 17 million adults) have actually experienced cross-border health services within a year. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nFinancial Services Sector in Estonia: Growth and Export Opportunities and Policy Implications / 2009\nThe foresight project (initial report by Oxera Consulting) explored the prospects of Estonia in increasing the export of financial services and concluded that Estonia has the opportunity to increase exports in certain niches of financial services, primarily by offering professional back-office services to international financial companies and providing asset management and private banking services to the Central and Eastern European and the CIS markets. Attention was also given to the public-private cooperation platform concept FinanceEstonia. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nIndustry Engines 2018: Growth and Internationalisation Opportunities of Manufacturing Industry for the Next Decade / 2009\nThe foresight project, which searched the future leading industries, outlined three types of growth opportunities for the current manufacturing companies and provided policy suggestions concerning the activity of the state in supporting the shift of Estonian industry into new growth areas. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nWhite Paper to the Parliament / 2009\nThe White Paper was a vision by Estonian economic experts to the Parliament for the necessary steps to overcome the economic crisis in Estonia and to establish a basis for new growth. A similar timely report was also produced by NESTA in the UK “Attacking the Recession: Setting the Agenda for a New Economy”. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nEst_IT@2018: Estonian ICT Sector in the Future / 2009\nThis was a flagship foresight project of the Estonian ICT sector highlighting the areas of the economy with the greatest IT growth potential and putting forward policy suggestions for what to do to enable Estonia to reap the benefit from ICT as much as possible. The main attention of the final suggestions was put on ICT related human resources, including the internationalisation of higher education, interdisciplinary master’s programs in Technology and Business Administration with emphasis on IT, and roadmaps in the six focus areas identified. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nThe Current Status of Estonian Economic Competitiveness and Future Outlooks of Economy / 2008\nThis report analysed the Estonian economic structure, competitiveness and future outlook, and compared the picture with other more advanced and successful countries. The analysis, written by researchers from the University of Tartu, brought out structural weaknesses of the economy and illustrated four alternative scenarios forward. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nAnnual Reports “Forward!” to the Parliament of the Republic of Estonia / 2008-2011\nThese annual reports focused on different “burning” and “future” topics related to the advancement of the Estonian economy and society. The focus of the 2011 issue was on the opportunities and challenges emerging from the future developments of the world economy; megatrends strengthened in the crises; Estonia’s need for and hesitation related to Asia; a global war for talent and deepening lack of qualified labour in Estonia emphasising the need for holistic talent policy. Also, Estonia’s choices to respond to the rapid global changes with agile governance and experimental economic policy were shown. The work has been done at the time Dr Ott Pärna led the Estonian Development Fund.\nEstablishing the Basis for the Elaboration of the Estonian Design Policy Measures / 2003\nThe report (research by Mollerup Designlab A/B) presented a proposal for an Estonian design policy and its 7-year vision. The underlying hypothesis was that good design is a strong competitive factor as design is marginal to production costs and paramount in terms of market impact. The proposal for an Estonian design policy is based on three research studies. The studies deal with Estonian design supply, Estonian demand for design, and design policies in a number of comparable countries.\nBusiness Incubation in Estonia / 2003\nThe report reviewed the current situation and guidelines for government intervention in Estonia related to business and technology innovation. The report was published by the Innovation & Technology Policy Division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Estonia in Innovation Studies (3).\nInnovation in Estonian Enterprises 1998-2000 / 2002\nThe report presented the results and analysis of the Community Innovation Survey III among Estonian enterprises. The results were published by the Innovation & Technology Policy Division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Estonia in Innovation Studies (2).\nESTCORP All rights reserved. info@estcorp.eu","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1055173"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.883342981338501,"wiki_prob":0.883342981338501,"text":"Poetic Pastries\nArt, Illustration, Design, Poetry\nPaint & Illustration\nHome & Heart\nPondering Pansies\nArt Archives\nArt Page 2\n(Visit Our Studio at Zazzle to Customize Your Family’s Coat of Arms)\nThe first mention of a Van Meteren, (also called Van Meteren or Van Meter or Van Metre) we can trace is in a deed dated September 1253. “Meeteren”, is a village in the Tielerwaard and the village of Meteren is still shown on the current maps of Holland.\nOne of the branches of the family lived in the “Huise Van Meteren” in Geldermalsen.There is but little available concerning the residences of the Van Meterens in Holland; one sketch, however, has been obtained which refers to the “Huise Van Meteren” situate in the Heerlykleid Metere, in Geldermelsen. It was reported to be a stately structure. The home, for many years and generations, of one the branches of the Van Metre family, and subsequently of others. This mansion stood in a beautiful park of magnificent trees, some of which were of great height and dimensions. The house was rebuilt in 1768-9, but it has at last served its day; it was sold in December, 1906, and, has since been torn down.\nCoat-of-Arms: Our family’s coat of arms the Van Meteren is divided into four equal parts. Two quarters diagonal of each other with horizontal stripes of red and yellow. On the yellow stripes we find eight martlets (or swallows), three on the top stripe, two in the middle and three at the bottom stripe. The two other quarters are azure with in the centre a red fleur de lis (the royal emblem of France). The title here, “jr.,” is synonymous with Jonkvrouw, young woman, feminine, and Jonkheer, young man, masculine. “Ridderschap” and “Ridderedd” signifies either Nobility or Knighthood. As both men and women of this line fought valiantly for France and Christendom. The coat of arms of the village Meteren is azure with in the center a golden fleur de lis. The coat of arms of the village Cuijk has horizontal stripes of red and yellow. On the yellow stripes we find eight martlets, three on the top stripe, two in the middle and three at the bottom stripe. The coat of arms of the van Meteren/van Meeteren/Van Metre/Van Matre family is composed out of the coat of arms of the village of Meteren and of the village Cuijk, representing the ties of the two families and villages dated in the 1300-1400’s.\nThe branch of the VanMeteren family with whom we are direct descendants, came to America in 1662, as revealed in the papers of the ship “Vos” (Fox), arriving at New Amsterdam. The Van Meterens were of Holland/Dutch lineage, and a new spelling of the name came upon them as they reached New Amsterdam and subsequently moved into New Jersey, VanMeter is first seen. In the third generation of the family was John VanMeter, who commanded a trading expedition into the wilds of Virginia and four of his sons subsequently settled in the mountain districts of old Virginia (WV).\nThe VanMeters had previously secured their conditional grants by orders of the governor and council, dated June 17, 1730. The John VanMeter grant, located in the VA (WV) valley, enjoined the settlement of ten families. Broadly interpreted, the territory was a vast tract of uncharted wilderness–exceeding 40,000 acres.\nJohn’s son Isaac VanMeter with his wife and four children settled at historic Fort Pleasant in what is now Hardy County, West Virginia, in 1744. Isaac Van Meter, brother of Jacob, was killed and scalped by the Indians near his fort in 1757. One of his sons was Colonel Garret Van Meter who was born in New York in February 1732, and was a boy of twelve when the family located at Fort Pleasant. In 1756 he married Mrs. Ann Markee Sibley, and after the death of his father, inherited Mount Pleasant and a large tract of surrounding land. This land grant was issued by Lord Fairfax, from King George in 1761. (This original land grant document is currently in the Muse’s family’s possession today). He was a colonel of a regiment of militia in General Washington’s army in the Revolution. After the war he and his wife lived at old Fort Pleasant, where they stayed until death.\nOnly two of their sons grew to mature years, Isaac, born in 1757 and Jacob, born May 18, 1764. These brothers married sisters, Bettie and Tabitha Inskeep, whose mother was Hannah McCulock (McCulloch), a daughter of the most famous Indian fighter and scout of his day. Jacob Van Meter, the younger son of Colonel Garrett Van Meter, inherited the Fort Pleasant homestead, where he and his wife, Tabitha, spent their lives. He was colonel of a regiment in the second war with Great Britain in 1812. He became a flour miller in the South Branch Valley and for many years was a partner of Chief Justice Marshall in the breeding of thoroughbred horses.\nUtilizing the land of heritage, family owned for 287 years (as of 2017); the direct descendants of the original VanMeters/VanMetres/VanMeterens/VanMeeterens of today are still residing and working in Hardy County WV. The Muse’s family calls the land Windy Ridge Farm and the cottage home has been named The Painted Nest. The farm houses a state of the art poultry operation, pasture and crop land, as well as acres of undisturbed woodland.\nContact Pinterest LinkedIn Facebook Instagram YouTube Twitter Blogger\nSite crafted with by Poetic Pastries","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line102435"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6586424112319946,"wiki_prob":0.6586424112319946,"text":"VCU criminologist is helping develop a worldwide approach to ethics education\nJay Albanese is among a group of experts from 30 countries developing curriculum on crime and justice-related topics for instructors across the world. (Photo courtesy of L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs)\nBy Pamela Stallsmith\nL. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs\npstallsmith@vcu.edu\nTuesday, Nov. 27, 2018\nA street vendor is selling a counterfeit designer handbag at an amazing price. What’s the harm in buying one and saving hundreds of dollars?\nLots, according to Jay Albanese, Ph.D., a renowned criminologist and professor of criminal justice in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University.\n“The result of you buying the bag is you’re supporting the criminal enterprise that manufactured it, the profits of which go to the further enslavement of workers, intellectual property theft against the legitimate bag maker, and money laundering through other countries,” Albanese said.\n“This relatively inconspicuous act of buying a counterfeit bag has large consequences that in fact are global,” he said. “Citizens often participate in organized crime without knowing what they’re doing. Without better education, people don’t realize that these smaller acts result in larger harms.”\nCitizens often participate in organized crime without knowing what they’re doing.\nEducating people about ethics — what’s right and what’s wrong — lies at the heart of a global project in which Albanese has been actively involved.\nThrough the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Education for Justice initiative, Albanese is among experts from 30 countries, and the only American, developing a global open-access curriculum on crime and justice-related topics for instructors around the world. He was the principal drafter of the course modules on organized crime and served as a reviewer for the course modules on integrity and ethics.\n“Dr. Albanese was selected to participate in this project because of his vast knowledge and expertise on organized crime, as well as his ability to convey such knowledge in a manner that is simple and understandable, even to those professors and students less familiar with this area of study,” said Flavia Romiti, associate crime prevention and criminal justice officer at UNODC.\n“During the coming months, his expertise, as well as his oratory skills, will be sought for the presentation of the material to the academic community around the globe,” Romiti said.\nUltimately, the curriculum will be available for open-access use by instructors and students around the world, and will be available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.\n“The idea is to keep the accessibility as open as possible. All you need is an internet connection,” Albanese said. “We’re trying to raise the level of awareness and the level of seriousness of these issues by not putting up barriers. We hope these will be the most-used source materials in the world once they’re available.”\nWatch the U.N. videos featuring Jay Albanese at\nhttps://www.unodc.org/e4j/en/multimedia/index.html\nThe initiative seeks to prevent crime and promote a culture of lawfulness through education activities designed for all students, from grade school through university. Albanese has appeared in several U.N. videos about the project.\nAlbanese plans to incorporate the modules into his classes at the Wilder School, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses, including organized crime and professional ethics.\nAlbanese is a leading scholar in transnational and organized crime and corruption. He is the author of 20 books, including a leading text in the field, “Professional Ethics in Criminal Justice: Being Ethical When No One is Looking.”\n“Ethics is the most fundamental problem on the planet,” Albanese said. “How do people make decisions that exploit others? Until we have people making decisions that are not in their own self-interest, we will continue to have conflicts, political upheaval, irregular immigration and economic suffering. All the big issues that anybody cares about are ultimately ethical issues.”\nVCU honors seven at faculty convocation","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line914861"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6525394916534424,"wiki_prob":0.3474605083465576,"text":"Brooding Cynyc\nThe long time home of the original Brooding Cynyc © offering unique views, insightful, provocative cultural, political and social commentary, observations and opinions with a focus on issues from current events including, homeland security, terrorism, and law enforcement often from a decidedly New York-centric perspective. Cynical (sometimes caustic), sarcastic humor and satire from the \"Nothing is sacred\" perspective. All opinions are welcome.\nMANHUNT: THE REALITIES\nPA. STATE TROOPER KILLER AND \"JIHADI JOHN\":\nTWO FUGITIVES WORLDS APART\nPRESENT SIMILAR CHALLENGES\nCpl. Bryon Dickson (right) was killed in the September 12 ambush\nTrooper Alex Douglass (left) was wounded and released\nfrom the hospital today.\nTAGS: PENNSYLVANIA STATE TROOPERS AMBUSHED, SUSPECT FUGITIVE,\nERIC FREIN DOMESTIC TERRORIST, JIHADI JOHN. IS BEHEADING AMERICAN HOSTAGES,\nEXTREMIST TERRORISTS, TERRORIST ALL HAVE SIMILAR GOAL - INCITE FEAR,\nTAKE THE GLOVES OFF\nUPDATED Sunday October 19, 2014\n(Friday October 17, 2014 Pennsylvania State Police Barracks, Blooming Grove, PA) This densely wooded, sparsely populated rural corner of Northeast Pennsylvania is where as the 11 o’clock PM shift change on September 12 was underway at the Pennsylvania State Police Barracks here, a lone gunman concealed by the cloak of darkness, ambushed two Pennsylvania State Troopers killing one, critically injuring the other. The gunman slipped back into the heavy hilly, timbered terrain from which he had emerged briefly enough to conduct his cowardly act. State Police Officer Cpl. Bryon Dickson was killed instantly while Trooper Alex Douglass was severely wounded and was transported to a hospital in Scranton.\nWithin 48 hours of the ambush a suspect was identified. Eric Matthew Frein, 31, who had until recently resided with his parents in a small community in Pike County. Their exact address is being withheld from the public for security and privacy purposes. Frein, a self-taught and extremely experienced survivalist, is also an accomplished marksman. His father, a retired US Army Officer said of his son’s shooting skills, “He never misses”. Frein has also been a member of a “military simulation unit”. Friends and associates have said that his particular “unit” assumes the role of Eastern European soldiers. Some who know him have told the Police during interviews that Frein may have adopted the persona of a simulated character as his own. Whatever the case may be, he remains an extremely dangerous fugitive on the run and has evaded capture for 36 days despite the substantial forces brought to bear to apprehend him.\nFriends and relatives of the suspect say that he has long expressed a deep-seated hatred of “The Police” and had spoken on occasion of “acting out” in some way. Some expressed more surprise than others after learning that Eric Frein was the primary – only – suspect. That he is thus far able to elude the dozens of law enforcement agents with their infrared, night vision and heat seeking technology, tracking hounds, helicopter surveillance and as some have reported, drone aircraft, speaks loud and clearly about the challenges of apprehending a man in an environment where he is most comfortable and confident. For some this may appear to represent a lack of skills or some measure of ineptitude among all the State and local police officers. That is not the case. A man determined to not be found can be a cunning, intelligent, adaptable, elusive prey. Trooper Alex Douglass was released from the hospital earlier today while; according to the authorities Frein remains loose. By their estimations they say he is within a five square mile box of rugged forested territory.\nSeveral weeks ago some of the searches happened upon a make-shift campsite Frein had recently used. They found empty cans of tuna fish, some ammunition and a note providing the details of the ambush that could only be known by the perpetrator. Authorities have also stated without any details that Frein is “taunting” the police by leaving written messages in his wake for his pursuers to find. Likely it will only be by sheer luck or by Frein making a mistake that he will be captured anytime soon. Winter is fast approaching the Pocono Valley and obviously Frein prepared well for a protracted manhunt.\nPerhaps the public has misconceptions about certain aspects of law enforcement based on the entertainment provided by dramatic TV crime series, police procedurals, and other forms of media. While forensics science has become increasingly advanced and sophisticated, much of police work is what it always has been. Yes, some of the equipment provides the police with great advantages but all the new science and technology available will never be able to replace “shoe leather detecting”, the nuts and bolts of tracking down leads and contacts, of gathering and analyzing information. In this particular case, the suspect has the upper hand in many ways. Eric Rudolph, the 1996 “Olympics Bomber” who had also bombed several abortion clinics throughout the south east remained a fugitive for five years before his apprehension. He made the mistake of sneaking into a small town during the night in search of food and a local Sheriff’s Deputy nabbed him. It was Rudolph’s mistake that lead to his capture not any police work involved.\n“JIHADI JOHN”\nJihadi John with American journalist James Foley\nshortly before Foley’s gruesome death\nWhile the current Ebola crisis has driven him from the front pages of newspapers and lead stories on the TV news, the Islamic State (IS aka ISIL, ISIS) leader known as Jihadi John is also a highly sought fugitive. For whatever reason the man they are calling by this childish name, either chose or was appointed by others to be the spokesman for IS. He first entered the American conscience as he delivered his threats against America while by his side knelt a captured westerner. Eventually, those videos began to include footage capturing actual beheadings. Even some of the most experienced law enforcement and intelligence agents who viewed these videos were horrified by their brutality. As a means to authenticate whether or not the video clips depicted “real” decapitations required the CIA and FBI to seek other expertise such as Forensic Pathologists and some of the most experienced Homicide Detectives to view the clips and assess them within the area of their expertise. The “full length” videos which, for obvious reasons will never be shown to the public, did confirm that those individuals posed in the kneeling position wearing orange jumpsuits had in fact been beheaded. Due to the appearance of everyone else in these videos – they were all dressed identically as Jihadi John – it remains an open question that the actual decapitator has been Jihadi John himself. Decapitation by knife or sword is a horribly messy undertaking and it has been theorized that Jihadi John makes the video with the victim at his side, the tape stops rolling while another member of IS, indistinguishable from Jihadi John steps in and does the actual beheading. Afterwards Jihadi John continues his harangue with the head of the decapitated hostage placed on their own backs. Obviously this barbarism is intended to shock and repulse Americans and, in that regard, it has been effective. But why mention Jihadi John and Eric Frein in the same discussion? Just to provide a reality check.\nTHE REALITIES OF A MANHUNT\nThe annals of law enforcement are replete with the stories of famous and infamous manhunts; tales of highly sought criminals who lived in “plain sight” without being recognized. But, there are also some remarkable accounts of “high value” fugitives being captured or killed by law enforcement. The most recent of these amazing tales is the one detailing the 10 year efforts to locate Osama bin Laden who was killed by members of Navy Seal Team 6 at his fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. Yes, it took 10 years and the combined efforts of the entire intelligence community, our military and other assets ultimately prevailed.\nDespite that far flung success it is unrealistic to believe as British Prime Minister Cameron and the American President Obama have vowed, to find and capture Jihadi John. Given the difficulties in locating and capturing Eric Frein, a man most likely confined to a tight square of forest, where some of those law enforcement officers involved in the search might themselves hunt and fish illustrates, Jihadi John’s ultimate demise might come by way of a well-timed laser guided missile. Collateral damage will not be an issue just as has not been for many of the other terrorists and their leaders we have killed from afar.\nIn a criminal setting here in America, our constitutional and criminal law dictate what methods may be used to capture a fugitive. Since over 97% of murders in the United States are committed by a person(s) known by the victim(s), the investigation is often just connecting the dots, running down known associates and compelling witnesses and other to cooperate with the police. Those arrested and indicted on a murder or homicide charge are afforded an ironclad bulwark of constitutional and civil rights; that is our way. Where we or rather our government has gone astray is in maintaining the ideal that we can capture and “bring terrorists to justice”. Yes, our principles and system of jurisprudence is nothing if not noble. Even when that nobility has jeopardized our own interests we have not ever resorted to the tactics and methods of our adversaries; we have not, no matter what some on the liberal Left side of the political spectrum think, devolved into a brutal police state, an oppressive military or anything other than what we have stood for since 1776.\nIt was the early autumn of 1998 and President Bill Clinton was in the White House. Just weeks before two American embassies, one in Kenya, the other in Tanzania, had been bombed by al Qaeda. The CIA and NSA had located Osama bin Laden then living in central Afghanistan. The military presented President Clinton with some options to kill the terrorist leader and it was decided that Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from naval ships at sea would be aimed at bin Laden’s encampment. Almost at the last minute satellite imagery revealed the presence of a swing set at the encampment indicating that bin Laden had his extended family with him that included up to 100 children. The missile strike was scrapped and bin Laden lived another day. He would go on to be responsible for the attacks on our soil on September 11, 2001. This account demonstrates one of the most profound differences between those who oppose us and seek to do us harm on a massive scale. The most vicious of those we fight, extremist groups such as IS, al Qaeda and its affiliates and groups practicing the most strict translation of Sharia law, have no qualms in committing gross atrocities, genocide, kidnapping and mass rape even on their fellow Muslims. We in the west have a hard time comprehending these facts of life but, we cannot ignore them any longer.\nIndividuals like Eric Frein and Jihadi John, by their own actions, have forfeited any kind of rights regarding capture and punishment. Frein, a cop killing domestic terrorist and Jihadi John, an Islamic extremist both practice variants of the same trade. For far too long many in the world have taken advantage of our legal restraint, our nobility. We, as a nation have always been gracious, if not magnanimous in victory; never an occupying force although we had ample opportunity to do so. After the bloody World War II the United States rebuilt the nations we had soundly defeated. There is true nobility in that. We treat or captured “enemy combatants” in very humane and decent conditions and manner.\nPerhaps it is time we take off the proverbial gloves and go bare knuckles. Our adversaries only understand force and violence; half assed measures, tempered responses should not cripple our efforts abroad nor should political correctness paralyze law enforcement domestically.\nUPDATE Sunday October 19, 2014: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/pa-police-spot-eric-frein-carrying-rifle-covered-mud-article-1.1979017\nhttp://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/wounded-pennsylvania-state-trooper-released-hospital-search-killer-continues-article-1.1977842\nhttp://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/10/penn_trooper_shooting_suspect_eric_frein_left_letter_detailing_ambush.html\nhttp://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/10/eric_frein_manhunt_possible_si.html\nhttp://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/26547252/suspect-identified-in-deadly-pa-state-trooper-ambush-at-barracks\nhttp://www.wtae.com/news/search-continues-to-state-trooper-shooting-suspect/28148006\nhttp://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POLICE_BARRACKS_SHOOTING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT\nhttp://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/09/30/police-in-hunt-for-pennsylvania-trooper-ambush-suspect-find-pipe-bombs/\nCopyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved\nPosted by Brooding Cynyc at 5:28 AM 1 comment:\nLabels: Beheadings, Domestic Terrorism, Eric Frein Sought, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State Threat, Jihadi John, Pennsylvania State Troopers ambushed\nBlog Action Day 2014: INEQUALITY\nThe Brooding Cynyx are proud to participate for the third\nconsecutive year in the annual\nThis year’s topic is “Inequality” and it seems even more appropriate\na topic given some of the realities of today.\n(Thursday October 16, 2014, NY, NY, USA) Inequalities abound; they have come to define these first 13 years of the 21st century but they have long been with us. The crises of the rampant scarcity of clean water, global hunger, gapping disparities in the quality of life from one country to the next are simply too big to ignore. Our world today is an intricately woven tapestry with each strand of yarn connected to several others and so on.\nIn our world rife with bloodshed, oppression, warfare and a host of other ills, if they could all be summed up in a single word, that word is “inequality”. The world of today is so complexly interconnected in every way that all the inequalities are all well-known, documented, and reported in the media. Inequality comes in many guises and insidious forms just as it comes in grossly obvious manifestations. Inequality between groups is at the root, the very core of so much that ails our world that it is often overlooked, it is the grinding tectonic force often obscured by the dense curtain of geopolitics, international commerce and finance, in a Darwinian conflict that have exceeds that between the “haves and have not’s”.\nIn America talk of inequality these days is a debate about wealth and how it is consolidated in just one percent of the population. Calls for a “distribution of wealth” represents a facet of this truth that is more an enigma than a problem seeking solution. Here, too, we have deep seated racial inequalities that remain a stain on the soul of America despite over 70 years of efforts to eradicate this disparity.\nBut then we cast our eyes outward, beyond the shores of our America and learn what true inequality is; the scale and scope of it is enormous and leaves no corner of the globe unaffected. Some of the most profound inequalities are masked by ethnic and religious animosities some that originated in antiquity. Oppression is a weapon used to reinforce inequality. Whether it is the grotesque oppression of the Palestinians by the Israelis, the genocidal practices of warring factions in Iraq and Syria where small, ancient Christian sects are being threatened with extinction, or the bloody civil wars that have ravaged some of the most remote swathes of Africa, where ever there is oppression there is inequality.\nAs we seek to understand the genesis of some of this venomous hatred, an event arises that, at least for the moment, changes the topic and serves as a stark reminder of not only our interconnectedness and inequality, by also the depths of both.\nFrom some of the deepest, darkest corners of sub-Saharan, western Africa, an ancient nemesis has emerged and emerged with a vengeance. The worst outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD), (formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever) is blazing a trail of horrific death from Guinea, Liberia and through parts of Sierra Leone. The death toll is reportedly approaching 5,000 but due to the remoteness of some of the impacted villages and a public health infrastructure that is for all intents and purposes non-existent, the mortality rate is climbing while any opportunity to employ the tried and true tactics of “locate, isolate, quarantine and treat” has long since passed. The reasons for this are many and varied; some the result of the conditions and circumstances within these countries, others, may be traced back to an initially tepid response by the international health care agencies including the World Health Organization (WHO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and other non-governmental organizations (NGO’s). The corrupt practices in those countries have at times impeded getting donated supplies meant for the outbreak sites have been stolen by tin pot despots and local thugs demanding ransom. In an outbreak of this nature to say time is of the essence is a cruel understatement. Reports of overrun jungle clinics, a scarcity of even the most basic medical supplies and rotting virus-laden corpses in the streets while those able to flee are running in fear from their native towns and villages racing away from a virus they may have already contracted but has yet to show its tell-tale symptoms.\nAs we are finding out viruses do not respect borders; they have no nationalistic loyalty. Their primary function is to replicate within a host and do lethal, fatal damage and move on to the next person. However, the Ebola outbreak serves to underscore some of the most pervasive and disturbing inequalities among people today. Over one billion of our fellow world citizens have no access to clean potable water or hygienic sewer system. Almost as many barely make enough to sustain their families and, as a consequence a billion people are malnourished and susceptible to infections. In some “Third World” “developing” countries upwards of 27% of new born children die within the first four years of life from simple Pneumonia and diarrhea while millions more succumb to relatively benign pathogens that children in the western world easily shrug off. Polio and malaria remain at epidemic proportions in Africa and the Asian subcontinent while they have been virtually vanquished from the United States. The saddest element of many of these inequalities is that there are relatively cost effective fixes available. What is lacking is the political will of the western world. The United Nations proves its profound uselessness when it comes to seriously addressing inequalities as do the former colonial powers who exploited the natural resources and people of many African countries for centuries.\nInequality is the direct result of prejudice; of the “divide and conquer” mindset that becomes a self-perpetuating organism that grows more malignant over time. My religion is the “true” religion; my ethnicity is superior to yours. These thoughts are at the very core of some of the worst inequalities.\nThere is an enigmatic component to inequality in that it appears that by our birth right, by simply being born into the environment that we are determines our fate. How is it in a world with so much wealth that so many people long for clean water and reliable sources of food? If anything these questions have assumed a greater sense of urgency now that our interconnectedness defines our world. We are all truly related, the “six degrees of separation” principal is alive and well. If we have any doubts about this, the current Ebola crisis is stark proof. A man returning from a visit to Monrovia who had contracted the virus during his visit home found himself in a medical emergency within 40 hours of his arrival to his home in Dallas Texas. The “Jet Set” reality of epidemiology cannot be ignored. We can no longer say “well this or that is happening ‘over there’”; that defies today’s reality and logic.\nWhat are the answers? They may not be readily available but they are there and yes, they all require a commitment of money and resources. We, all the western “developed” countries have a responsibility, an obligation, to our fellow global citizens.\nhttp://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/10/ebola-outbreak-killing-70-percent-victims-20141014132345720164.htm\nhttp://www.thestar.com.my/News/World/2014/10/16/Worst-Ebola-outbreak-on-record-tests-global-response/\nhttp://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/\nhttp://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/distribution-map.html\nhttp://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/global-health\nhttp://www.hcs.harvard.edu/hghr/online/forgotten-killers-pneumonia-and-diarrhea-prevalence-in-third-world-countries/\nhttp://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/the-global-malaria-epidemic/\nhttp://www.uptodate.com/contents/epidemiology-prevention-and-control-of-malaria-in-endemic-areas\nhttps://www.dosomething.org/actnow/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-world-hunger\nhttp://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-crisis/\nhttp://thewaterproject.org/water_scarcity\nPosted by Brooding Cynyc at 1:34 PM No comments:\nLabels: Billions without Clean Water, Dire Needs, Philosophical Opinion, Subjective Observation, World Hunger\nFOR OUR FALLEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS\nFIDELIS AD MORTEM\nSOME GAVE ALL; ALL GAVE SOME\nBrooding Cynyx Proudly Support:\nCourtesy, Professionalism, Respect\nNYPD DETECTIVES - NONE BETTER\nThe Greatest Detectives in the World\nThe Smartest of The Finest\nNYPD Intel Bureau\nPREMIER URBAN COUNTER TERRORISM UNIT IN THE WORLD\nEMERGENCY SERVICES UNIT\nESU TRUCK 4 - DA BRONX\nNYPD - FBI JTTF\nOCMENYC\nWhere the Living speak for the Dead\nFDNY 150 YEARS OF SERVICE\nNEW YORK'S BRAVEST\nFDNY EMS\nPAPD NEVER FORGET THIER 37 KIA\nDMORT REGION II\nPlease pay attention to the \"LABELS\" or \"TAGS\"\nEach post is \"labeled\" or \"tagged\". Please note when a post is labeled as political satire, satire, humor or pseudo-humor it is just that. It is not intended to be true, accurate or factual.\nAll of our posts are tagged or labeled.\nPlease read the tags before you read the post itself to minimize the chance that you will read a post you find offensive or not to your liking.\nThank you for reading and supporting The Brooding Cynyx.\nCopyright © 2007 - 2019 The Brooding\nCynyx\nCopyright © 2007 - 2019 Brooding Cynyc\nTHE FEW, THE PROUD, THE MARINES\nOWNER OPERATORS INDEPENDENT DRIVERS ASSOCIATION\nKEEPING AMERICA MOVING\nFrom Theodore Roosevelt - US President, First NYPD Commissioner :\n'It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.'","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1193682"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.629406213760376,"wiki_prob":0.370593786239624,"text":"Paris, Ile De France, France\nImpressiveness /\nTourism Crowd Level\nNot available at this time\nTime/money value\nNot worth it\nTourism level\nNever Safe\nGenerally Safe\n----- Type related ratings: ----\nStressful\nVery chill\nWell protected\nAttraction Overview | Pictures\nThe \"City of light\" is undoubtedly one of the world's most beautiful and fascinating cities - you could spend a lifetime here and not see everything that Paris has to offer. An easy day trip from Paris is to the Palace of Versailles, one of Europe's most spectacular and largest royal homes. Versailles is about a 30 minute train ride from the center of the city.\nKing Louis XIV – the \"Sun King\" - commissioned the palace in 1668 as well as the spacious and beautiful gardens. At one time, almost 2200 men were employed on its construction, which took almost fifty years. The small town of Versailles became the unofficial capital city of the Kingdom of France in 1682, when Louis XIV decided to transfer his court to Versailles. All subsequent French monarchs lived there until the revolution.\nAt the height of its power, the Palace at Versailles was well known for its lavish banquets, parties and entertainment. It's estimated that around 3000 people lived at Versailles, which was perhaps necessary as one of the many duties of the servants was to hold the ermine robe of the king!\nVersailles remained a royal residence until 1789 when a mob marched on the palace and forced the king and queen - Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette - to return to Paris. The turbulent events that followed became known as the French revolution. There were even calls to demolish Versailles - fortunately, this was prevented by then king Louis-Philippe, who turned it into a museum, using much of his own money.\nTo visit Versailles today is to enter a world of splendor and excess - the entire palace is decorated with marble, stone, gold leaf and wood carvings. The first floor of Versailles contained the elegant main bedrooms and other rooms; while the private rooms of the king and queen overlooked the inner courtyard, known as the Marble Courtyard.\nThere are some highlights of Versailles that shouldn't be missed – a good place to start any visit is the six bedroom suites known as the Grands Appartements. As with everything else at Versailles - each bedroom is magnificently decorated and each one is named after a painting on the ceilings.\nThe state rooms were dedicated to Olympian figures and in one of these rooms - the Hercules Salon - you can see the largest and most ornate fireplace in the entire palace, carved from a single slab of marble. The body of Louis XIV was put on display in the Hercules Salon after his death in 1715.\nThe famous Hall of Mirrors recently underwent a huge restoration project in 2006 – the largest cultural sponsorship program ever undertaken in France. The hall, with its 17 great mirrors facing the windows, is probably the best known room in Versailles, and measures an impressive 236 feet from end to end.\nThe Hall of Mirrors was designed by Mansart in 1678 and was originally designed to be used as a conference room. It's also seen more than its fair share of history – this is where the treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919, after the end of World War I. And the German Empire was proclaimed there in 1871.\nThe clock room at Versailles contains a famous astronomical clock, which took 20 years to construct. It's a good opportunity to set your watch – the clock is supposedly designed to accurately keep time until the year 9999! Mozart performed in this room for the royal family on several occasions, while he was only 7 years old.\nThere are two separate smaller buildings in the grounds, known as the Grand and Petit Trianons. The Petit Trianon boasts some ornately decorated woodwork, while in contrast, the Grand Trianon is constructed from lovely pink and white marble. Guests visiting Versailles would often use the buildings as lodging houses.\nMarie Antoinette also supposedly used them as a peaceful retreat from the somewhat hectic palace life. And more recently, other important people have enjoyed the lavishly furnished houses - President Nixon once slept in the Grand Trianon on a state visit to France.\nThe gardens at Versailles, designed by the Royal gardener Andre le Notre are almost as spectacular as the palace and are so large they can be toured by train or horse-drawn carriage. The gardens make a great place for a picnic lunch – and to escape the crowds of visitors. Look for the delightful fountains – a reminder of the more than 1000 fountains that could be found during the palace's heyday.\nOne of the highlights is a mile long Grand Canal - oriented to catch the rays of the setting sun, where King Louis would enjoy gondola rides. And the Royal Stables have been recently renovated and are once again open to the public. The huge stables once were home to 600 of the king's horses – today they are home to 20 beautiful Lusitanian horses from Portugal.\nOne thing that strikes visitors is the total symmetry of the gardens – everything was carefully designed and laid out along a main axis. Trees were carefully pruned for effect and flower beds close to the palace were placed so as to be visible from the upper floors. Completing the overall effect are two ornamental pools surrounded by sculptures representing French rivers.\nFrequent programs of classical music take place in the gardens during the summer. But a spectacle not to be missed is the event called the \"Dreams of the Sun\" which occurs occasionally. These festive presentations feature fireworks and music, as well as 200 actors dressed in period costume. And as a memorable finale to your visit, be sure to linger at Versailles until around dusk when the palace is beautifully floodlit.\nVersailles remains one of the most popular attractions in Europe. During the 18th century, its style influenced many other European homes and palaces. A visit here will transport you back to the days of Louis XIV and give you a unique insight into French history.\nBack to Attractions List\nPalace of Versailles Pictures\nLearn French and other languages\nVisit Langversity's free French course for beginners.\nBeen there / visited..\nLatest Palace of Versailles Articles\n[Submit Article]\nHelp us improve attraction ratings in your own area.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line904179"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6523308157920837,"wiki_prob":0.6523308157920837,"text":"Indian Politicians\nSubmitted by Neuron on Sat, 2009-02-21 00:24\nFreedom-Fighters of India\nRamaswamy Venkataraman(Tamil: ராமசுவாமி வெங்கட்ராமன்) (December 4, 1910 – January 27, 2009) was an Indian lawyer, freedom-fighter and politician who served as an Union minister and as the 8th President of India.\nSubmitted by Neuron on Wed, 2009-02-18 01:27\nMinister for External Affairs of India\nPranab Kumar Mukherjee (born December 11, 1935, West Bengal, India) is the Minister for External Affairs of India in the Manmohan Singh-led Government of India. A prominent leader of the Indian National Congress in the 14th Lok Sabha, he is known to be a competent party apparatchik, \"a prominent Gandhi family loyalist who did not win a popular election until 2004\".\nFinance Ministers of India\nYashwant Sinha (born November 6, 1937, Patna) is an Indian politician and a former finance minister of India (1990-1991 under PM Chandra Shekhar. and March 1998 - July 2002 under PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee) and foreign minister (July 2002 - May 2004) in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet. He is a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party.\nP. Chidambaram\nUnion Minister of Home Affairs of India\nPalaniappan Chidambaram (Tamil: பழனியப்பன் சிதம்பரம்) (born 16th September, 1945) is an Indian politician and present Union Minister of Home Affairs of the Republic of India. He is among the most prominent cabinet ministers of the ruling-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) union government led by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.\nSubmitted by Neuron on Thu, 2009-02-12 02:39\nMember of Lok Sabha\nUnion Cabinet Minister of Commerce and Industry\nShri Kamal Nath (born 18 November 1946) is an Indian politician and the current Union Cabinet Minister of Commerce and Industry. He is a member of the 14th Lok Sabha of India.\nK. R. Narayanan\nPresidents of India\nTenth President of India\nKocheril Raman Narayanan (Malayalam: കോച്ചേരില്‍ രാമന്‍ നാരായണന്‍) (October 27, 1920 — November 9, 2005), also known as K. R. Narayanan, was the tenth President of the Republic of India. He is the first Dalit and the only Malayali to have been President.\nSubmitted by Neuron on Tue, 2009-02-10 23:20\nFirst Vice President of India\nIndian Philosopher\nVice Presidents of India\nSir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, OM (Telugu:సర్వేపల్లి రాధాకృష్ణ, Tamil: சர்வேபள்ளி ராதாகிருஷ்ணன்), (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975), was an Indian philosopher and statesman.\nPhoolan Devi\nSubmitted by Neuron on Mon, 2009-02-09 01:10\nIndian dacoit\nPhoolan Devi (Phūlan Devī) (August 10, 1963 – July 25, 2001), popularly known as \"The Bandit Queen\", was an Indian dacoit, who later turned politician. She created a great furore across India during her period as bandit.\nVishwanath Pratap Singh\n10th Prime Minister of India\nPrime Ministers of India\nVishwanath Pratap Singh (Hindi: विश्वनाथ प्रताप सिंह) (25 June 1931 - 27 November 2008) was the 10th Prime Minister of the Republic of India.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line573818"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5116799473762512,"wiki_prob":0.5116799473762512,"text":"Warning: ltrim() expects parameter 1 to be string, object given in /home/lawren34/public_html/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4292\nJanuary 16, 2020 January 16, 2020 Lawrence Africa, Belt and Road Initiative, China, China Africa Research Initiative, Deborah Brautigam, debt, debt trap, development, economic growth, economic wealth, extractive industries, Infrastructure, SAIS, technol;ogy, US\nCourtesy of Global Research\nIt is as clear as day and night, the difference between China’s approach to Africa and that of the United States. There is no equivalence. Historically, China has viewed African nations as part of the developing sector from which China emerged. This has contributed to China’s distinct attitude to partnering with African nations in promoting economic growth. Over the last two decades especially, the ties between China and Africa have grown stronger, with Africa’s East Coast materializing as an integral part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.\nThe US has not always dismissed the importance of contributing to Africa’s growth. President John Kennedy, following in the footsteps of President Franklin Roosevelt, was a strong opponent of colonial subjugation of Africa. President Kennedy, as US Senator advocated Africa’s liberation movement, and as US President supported President Kwame Nkrumah’s plans to construct the hydro-electric dam and bauxite smelting complex on Ghana’s Volta River. By the end of the 1960s the US had lost its optimism and vision for the world, adopting in its place, a British inspired cynical “geo-political” doctrine.\nGeo-politics divides the world into two categories; winners and losers in a zero sum game. Today’s unfounded attacks against China’s involvement in Africa, alleging that China is deliberately entrapping nations into debt and stealing their natural resources flows from this perverted world view. Chinese President, Xi Jinping promotes a different philosophy; it’s called “win-win.”\nBuilding, Not Extracting\nUnlike British Imperialist Cecil Rhodes, and degenerates like King Leopold II, China is not raping Africa for its resources. Since Royal Dutch Shell discovered oil in southern Nigeria in 1956, the West has focused its investment chiefly in oil and gas-i.e. hydrocarbon extractive industries. China in recent decades has become the leading nation in financing and building infrastructure in Africa. It is well known that investment in extractive industries do not expand the economy nor provide a large amount of jobs. However, it does yield large streams of revenue. China has chosen a different business mode; one more beneficial to the African people.\nAccording to McKinsey consulting company’s publication, Dance of the lions and the dragons, released in June 2017, China in 2015 financed $21 billion worth of infrastructure projects in Africa. That is three times the combined total of France, Japan, Germany, and India. US financing of infrastructure in Africa was too minimal to even mention. Detailed in the same document, China’s export and import trade with Africa is quantified as $188 billion in 2015, compared to the US at $53 billion. Deloitte’s 2017 Africa Construction Trends, further documents China’s role in expanding Africa’s infrastructure. As of June 2017, China was only second to African governments in funding large infrastructure projects, 15.5% and 27.1% respectively. The US was listed at 3%, the UK and France at 2%. When it comes to who actually builds these projects the figures are more shocking; China constructed over one quarter or 28.1% of these projects, the US 3.3%, and the UK 2.3%.\nInfrastructure Is Essential\nInfrastructure is critical for every economy to expand, grow and develop. Africa’s deplorable lack of infrastructure is literally killing its people. There is no more crucial single element of economy that must be addressed for African nations to develop. Infrastructure adds value to the entire economy by augmenting the productive capability of every farmer and worker. More capital intense economies will be affected by technologically advanced infrastructure platforms.\nThe history of humankind demonstrates that progress of civilizations emanates from the realization of scientific discoveries transmitted through more efficacious technologies. Infrastructure reflecting more advanced machinery is a primary means of transferring technology (science) to the economic production process.\nThere is nothing wrong with African nations using their resources for collateral or payment of loans for infrastructure. Wealth is not the monetary value of natural resources extracted from the earth. Economic wealth is understood to be that which contributes to the increase of the power of society to provide the material wellbeing of its citizens and their posterity. Infrastructure performs that function.\nChina’s contribution to building new railroads in Africa, replacing century old British and French antiquated rail lines, and constructing new hydro-electric dams, and ports, is precisely what African nations need to develop. China is providing indispensable assistance; the US and Europe are not. An experienced former US ambassador to Africa told me bluntly; the US stopped investing in infrastructure in Africa in the early 1970s. Sadly, today, the US continues to repeatedly proclaim, “we don’t build infrastructure.”\nDebt-Trap or Claptrap?\nIn her latest paper, A critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap’ diplomacy: the rise of a meme, Deborah Brautigam, China-Africa scholar and Director of the China-Africa Research Initiative-(CARI) at SAIS*, puts a nail in the coffin regarding false accusations of China deliberately entrapping African nations through debt.\nShe writes: “…for over a decade Western politicians and pundits have warned that China is a rogue donor with regard to its finance, is a new colonialist, and a predatory and pernicious lender that snares vulnerable states in a debt trap leveraging its loans in order to have its way with weak victims.”\nBrautigam responds to these allegations by asking: “However, does evidence exist for this kind of debt leverage?” Then she answers: “It [SAIS database] has information on about more than 1000 loans and, so far, in Africa, we have not seen any examples where we would say the Chinese deliberatively entangled another country in debt, and then used that debt to extract unfair or strategic advantages of some kind in Africa, including ‘asset seizures’.” (emphasis added)\nWith the population of 55 African nations projected to reach 2.4 billion in the next three decades, the continent needs trillions of dollars in new infrastructure. Presently, the US is more concerned in countering China in Africa, than developing Africa. Many African leaders are hopeful the US will establish a more robust economic relationship with their nations. As has been the case with previous administrations, the lack of vision, and adherence to “geo-politics” is preventing the US from engaging with Africa in a win-win relationship. This can and should change.\n*Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies\nLawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in the economic development policy of Africa for 30 years. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com\nJanuary 13, 2020 Lawrence Africa, Bonifica, Infrastructure, Italy, Lake Chad, Lake Chad Basin, Lake Chad Basin Commission, Lega Party, Marcello Vichi, Nigeria, President Buhari, Senator Iwobi, Transaqua\nTransaqua is a transformative agro-industrial water project that would refurbish the shrinking Lake Chad to its 1963 size of 25,000 square kilometers. Transaqua envisions transferring water from the super wet Congo Riven Basin to the super dry Lake Chad Basin via a 2,4000 kilometer canal connecting to the Chari River. This would produce an economic renaissance of the entire region, thus affecting many nations, and in truth, the whole African continent.\nThe news reported below on the renewed commitment by the Italian government to fund a feasibility study for Transaqua, an inter-basin water project to reverse the shrinking of Lake chad, is good news for all of Africa. Italy has made available 1.5 million Euros ($1.8 million dollars) for the feasibility study. The Italian government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Lake Chad Basin Commission-(LCBC) regarding this study. It is now up to the LCBC to formulate the contract procedure and award the contract to begin the long overdue analysis of the viability of Transaqua. It is in the interest of all African nation, especially those the Lake Chad Basin to encourage the LCBC to move forward. The failure to act on Transaqua decades ago, when it was first proposed, has been costly; more costly then than the multi-billion dollar price tag of the project itself. The destruction of North-East Nigeria and the tens of thousands of lives lost, could have been prevented if Transaqua had been built. We cannot afford to wait; the LCBC should take appropriate action.\nAccording to E.I.R., the New Budget Law in Italy Provides Funding for Feasibility Study on Transaqua. Following an amendment introduced by Sen.Toni Iwobi of the Lega Party, the Italian government included in its 2021 budget bill, the funding of a feasibility study for the Transaqua water transfer project in Africa. The bill was passed in the Senate on Dec. 16, 2019. Although the allocation of €1.5 million had already been pledged by the Italian government in a 2018 joint memorandum with the Italy and the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), procedures have been blocked under the current pro-malthusian Environment Minister.\nThe amendment, which was endorsed by the head of the Lega in the Senate, Massimiliano Romeo, states: “To implement Art. 6 of the Memorandum signed by the [Italian] Ministry for Environment, Sea and Territory Protection and by the Lake Chad Basin Commission, the feasibility study for the ‘Transaqua Project’ is co-financed with EU1.5 million for the year 2021 through the Fund for Extraordinary Interventions aimed at relaunching dialogue and cooperation with African countries and other countries of primary importance for migratory movements.”\nMaking the commitment to Transaqua a state law in Italy represents a definite qualitative improvement over the simple memorandum of understanding, even if the date of 2021 does not reflect the urgency of the matter.\nSenator Iwobi has proudly publicized the development on his website and Facebook page, including a video in which he shows the location of Lake Chad and why the Transaqua project is so important. Shortly after his election in March 2018, EIR had contacted the senator, who is of Nigerian origin, to brief him on the project, which he immediately endorsed, saying “those who are against this project are against Africa.”\nTransaqua is not merely a water-transfer scheme, but an integrated water, transport, hydroelectric and agro-industrial infrastructure project which, as African scholars have correctly judged, will provide the engine for the recovery of the entire economy of the Central African region. The Schiller Institute and EIR have campaigned internationally for its implementation, together with the Italian engineering company Bonifica which developed it in the 1970s under the leadership of Eng. Marcello Vichi.\nThanks to their efforts, combined with the impact of China’s Belt and Road policy in Africa, the LCBC member countries adopted it at a February 2018 International Conference on Lake Chad in Abuja, Nigeria. Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, enthusiastically supports Transaqua, and is campaigning for a donors’ conference to raise $50 billion to build the infrastructure.\nFor full background on Transaqua read my interview from June 2019, following he successful Abuja conference to Save Lake Chad.\nInterview With Lawrence Freeman: The Tim e is Now For TRANSAQUA-to Save Lake Chad and Transform Africa\nJanuary 8, 2020 January 8, 2020 Lawrence Abiy Ahmed, Adwa, Amhara, common good, common humanity, constitution, economic growth, EPRDF, Ethiopia, Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, ethnicity, Homo Sapiens, Medemer, nationalism, Oromo, Prosperity Party, Sidama, Southern Ethiopian People's Democratic Front, synergy, Tigray\nPrime Minister Abiy Ahmed has embarked on a bold effort to transform the political terrain of Ethiopia while simultaneously launching new economic reforms. The creation of the new Ethiopian Prosperity Party (PP) replaces the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front-(EPRDF), founded in 1988. Dissolving the reigning EPRDF and fashioning a new national party, or what some refer to as a Pan-Ethiopian party, is a courageous and daring move, essential for Ethiopia’s future. This emerging nation of over 105 million people, already a leader in economic development, is now embarking on a challenging path to create de novo a national party.\nThe EPRDF, which had governed Ethiopia since May 1991, was composed of four Regional States, plus the cities of Addis Ababa (the capital), and Dire Dawa. The four regional parties are: the Tigray People’s Liberation Front-(TPLF); the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization-(OPDO) (renamed early this year as Oromo Democratic Party-(ODP); the Amhara National Democratic Movement-(ANDM), (renamed early this year as Amhara Democratic Party-(ADP); and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement-(SEPDM), (a coalition of the 56 ethnic groups).\nThe EPRDF was fashioned to address Ethiopia’s earlier history of dictatorial and monarchical rule. The designers of the governing party believed that acknowledging ethnic identity, which was not recognized for centuries, would solve the tensions of that time. Recent conflicts in Ethiopia have shown this arrangement to be ineffective.\nOf the four parties that comprised the EPRDF, only the TPLF has refused to join the new PP. Already the governing parties representing 5 regions, which were not members of the EPRDF, but were recognized as allies of the EPRDF have joined the PP in preparation for May 2020 elections. They are: 1) Afar National Democratic Party (ANDP); 2) Benishangul-Gumuz Democratic Party (BDP); 3) Somali Democratic Party (SDP); 4) Gambela People’s Democratic Movement (GPDM); and 5) Harari National League (HNL). The PP will be inclusive, intending to represent all communities, inviting Tigrayans, who live in and outside the region to join. The PP program will have Amharic as its working language as per the constitution. However, Afan Oromo, Tigrigna, Somali and Afar will also be the working languages of the new PP.\nPrime Minister Abiy’s founding of the PP on December 1, just six months before Ethiopia’s national elections, is fraught with personal risks for the new Prime Minister. However, this endeavor is bursting with the potential to transform politics and social relations in Ethiopian society. Ethiopia has a splendid history thousands of years old, rich with a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds. The PP is intended to harmonize the diversity of the nation with a national non-ethnic based party.\nChair Persons of the eight parties who also represent eight Regions as governing parties worked under the umbrella of the EPRDF coalition signed a document for the establishment of Prosperity Party. Photo Credit OPM\nNationalism: Not Ethnic Nationalism\nA sovereign nation-state is not a mosaic of diverse groups competing with each other for control of the government or pursuing administration posts to obtain economic and financial rewards. A sovereign nation should have a national identity and a mission orientation for its people; all its people, regardless of ethnic heritage. Contributing to the distinctive identity of Ethiopia was its military defeat of the Italian Empire in the battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896. Consequently, this victory, uniquely allowed Ethiopia to remain free from colonialism. Although this triumph occurred over one century ago, it is part of the psychological composition of the identity of all Ethiopians; whether they are conscious of its effects or not. Ethiopia’s decades’ long determination to develop from a disadvantaged nation to an aspiring lower middle-income nation with nascent light manufacturing industry is another feature of Ethiopia’s national identity.\nProfessed ethnonationalism errs in that it attempts to substitute the demands, often for legitimate needs, of one particular group above the interests of all the citizens. A nation-state cannot survive in a Hobbesian war of all against each other to obtain the most goodies for “my people.” Dare we forget the horrors of the ethnically driven tragic Biafran war in Nigeria from 1967-1970, and how geographic-ethnic distinctions have determined every unhealthy aspect of political and social life in Nigeria today?\nRecriminations from the past are no excuse for actions today. Decisions concerning the best strategy for securing the future of Ethiopia must be based on how that policy will benefit the well-being of all citizens.\nMedemer and Synergy\nIn his acceptance speech for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Prime Minister Abiy spoke of the philosophy of the Medemer.\nHe said: “Medemer, an Amharic word, signifies synergy, convergence, and teamwork for a common destiny. Medemer is a homegrown idea that is reflected in our political, social, and economic life. I’d like to think of ‘Medemer’ as a social compact for Ethiopians to build a just, egalitarian, democratic, and humane society by pulling together our resources for our collective survival and prosperity…At its core, Medemer is a covenant of peace that seeks unity in our common humanity.” One could appropriately, add for the “common good” of humankind.\nOur “common humanity” exists in all of us. We are all born in the image of the Creator. All human beings are universally related by our endowed powers of creative mentation, more commonly known as reason. What distinguishes all human beings from the animal species is our mental power to discover new scientific and cultural principles embedded in our universe. All of us homo sapiens, regardless of where we were born, or any physical characteristics, are substantially more alike than we are different. Therefore, our needs, desires, and aspirations in life are similar. All human beings not only share a common interest to enhance our lives, but we also share a desire for a better future for our posterity. There is no class of superior people, who have more rights than others due to privileges of birth, religion, or skin color. Each of us are placed here on earth to contribute to the common good of our common humanity using our individual talents.\nIf we accept synergy to mean cooperation and collaboration to achieve an enhanced effect, then let us act synergistically to ensure a prosperous Ethiopia that provides for all its citizens.\nThe Constitution and Sidama\nInherent problems of the 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia are evident in the November 2019 referendum conferring autonomy to Sidama. Ethiopia’s constitution stipulates that with this lawful vote, the people of Sidama, the fifth largest ethnic group, will become the tenth ethnic regional state. Eight of the existing nine regional states are governed by the dominant ethnic group of that geographical region. However, the Sidama people reside in Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region–(SNNPR), where many other small ethnic groups (around 56) also exist.\nThe Preamble of Ethiopia’s Constitution properly emphasizes the conception of a united nation with a common purpose and goal for all its people. It deliberates on “advancing our economic and social development,” “common interest….and the emergence of a common outlook,” and “to live as one economic community.” Article 14 resonates with the US Constitution, stating: “Every person has the inviolable right to life the security of person and liberty.” The same principle is echoed in Article 43 of the Constitution: The Right to Development. “The basic aim of development activities shall be to enhance the capacity of citizens for development and to meet their basic needs.”\nThe drawback to the Constitution begins in Article 8:Sovereignty of the People, where sovereign powers are divided up between “Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia.” This is an obvious compromise to ethnicity. In truth; there is only one Ethiopian people and only one Ethiopian nation. The divisions in Ethiopian society are made explicit in Article39: “Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right of secession……the right to a full measure of self-government…” This separation of Ethiopians into multiple groups, outlined in the Constitution, is the seed for the tensions gripping Ethiopia today.\nIn the aftermath of the Sidama referendum, Ethiopia potentially faces a conundrum. Will other ethnic minorities now choose to follow the same path as Sidama in calling for autonomy as delineated in the Constitution? It appears so. In addition to Sidama Zone*, which is now claiming to be the 10th state, there are other Zones in the Southern Region that want to follow the same route to statehood. To quote William Shakespeare, “there’s the rub.” Clearly the Ethiopian Constitution, despite the best intentions, has proven to be unsuccessful in governing this multi-ethnic nation.\nThe Challenging Course Ahead\nThe emergence of a national party such as the PP can commence the process of uniting the nation by moving away from a society where ethnic interests are placed above the welfare of the nation. Ultimately the problematic features of the Ethiopian Constitution will have to be revisited. Not to address this thorny issue will allow instigators to use ethnicity to disrupt what is most necessary for Ethiopia to move forward; a healthy process of dialogue and debate on the future of Ethiopia.\nThis discourse should include a discussion by the Ethiopian people on changing the structure of ethnic-based parties. For example, Ghana’s Constitution stipulates that “Every political party shall have a national character, and membership shall not be based on ethnic, religious, regional or other sectional divisions.” That no political party shall be formed “(a) on ethnic, gender, religion regional, professional or other sectional divisions; or (b) which uses words, slogans or symbols which could arouse ethnic, gender, religious, regional professional or other sectional divisions.”\nThe lack of vibrant Ethiopian nationalism creates a fertile environment for those who want to manipulate misplaced ethnic passions. The danger presents itself during times of social or economic stress, when the population’s frustrations can be channeled along ethnic fault lines, manipulating Ethiopians to act against their true self-interest: progress for the nation of Ethiopia. Opportunistic ringleaders will attempt to misdirect the population against each other via competing ethnicities, instead of uniting society behind a national policy. A policy of economic growth that includes a strategy to generate employment opportunities for the millions of youth preparing to enter the workforce is in the vital interests of all citizens.\nOf course, it will take time for people to shed their desire to control policy making through ethnic-based parties. It is an existential moment for Ethiopia, and a national grounded PP is a needed first step. It should be understood, that a sovereign nation, whose national mission is to promote the general welfare of its people does not require the elimination of historical cultures. On the contrary, the uniqueness and beauty of each ethnic culture can be synergistically woven into an elevated national character that transcends ethnicity.\n*Zone is the middle tire next to the regional state in the governing structure that is also formed under ethnic lines the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR).\nJanuary 5, 2020 January 5, 2020 Lawrence Africa, Belt and Road Initiative, China, David Shinn, Djibouti, Doraleh Port, Ethiopia, Infrastructure, Internet infrastructure, Kenya, prosper-Africa, Railroads, Somalia, US\nIn the article below you can read about China’s strategic investment in making Djibouti’s port a major port in Africa and the Middle East. The West can criticize as much as it likes, but China, not the US and Europe, is building vitally needed infrastructure in Africa. Without infrastructure Africa will not develop and progress. U.S policy known as “Prosper Africa” is cynical joke.\nIn strategic Djibouti, a microcosm of China’s growing foothold in Africa\nBy Max Bearak\nDJIBOUTI — Above ground in this tiny but strategically located country, signs of China’s presence are everywhere.\nChinese entities have financed and built Africa’s biggest port, a railway to Ethiopia and the country’s first overseas naval base here. Under the sea, they are building a cable that will transmit data across a region that spans from Kenya to Yemen. The cable will connect to an Internet hub housing servers mostly run by China’s state-owned telecom companies.\nBeijing’s extensive investments in Djibouti are a microcosm of how China has rapidly gained a strategic foothold across the continent. Western countries, including Africa’s former colonizers, for decades have used hefty aid packages to leverage trade and security deals, but Chinese-financed projects have brought huge infrastructural development in less than a generation.\nThe construction is fueled mostly by lending from China’s state-run banks. Spindles of Chinese-paved roads have unfurled across the continent, along with huge bridges, new airports, dams and power plants as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 152-country Belt and Road Initiative.\nOverall, Chinese companies have invested twice as much money between 2014 and 2018 in African countries as American companies, spending $72.2 billion, according to an analysis by Ernst & Young.\n“The Chinese are thinking far into the long-term in Djibouti and Africa in general,” said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia who was also the State Department’s desk officer for Djibouti as far back as the late 1960s. “Djibouti is one node in an economic chain that stretches across the northern rim of the Indian Ocean, from ports in Cambodia to Sri Lanka to Pakistan. They have a grand, strategic plan. We don’t.”\nIn Djibouti, that strategic plan is all the more evident because of the country’s location at the entrance to the Red Sea, where about 10 percent of oil exports and 20 percent of commercial goods pass through the narrow strait right off Djibouti’s coast on their way to and from the Suez Canal.\nThat location has made it a crucial way-point for undersea cables, which transmit data between continents. China’s investment in Internet infrastructure here comes as the region surrounding Djibouti is just starting to come online, including some places that are entirely reliant on Djibouti as a transit point for data transmission…\n“Yes, our debt to China is 71% of our GDP, but we needed that infrastructure,” Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, Djibouti’s foreign affairs minister, said in a phone interview on the sidelines of a meeting in New York earlier this month, where Djibouti was pushing to gain a non permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.\n“It was quite natural that we raise our partnership with China. Neither Europe nor America were ready to build the infrastructure we needed. We’re projecting our country into the future and looking after the well-being of our people. Even the United States has trillions of dollars in debt to China, you know,” Youssouf said.\nThe most significant investment China has made in Djibouti is Doraleh Port, Africa’s biggest and deepest. As with Internet through the data center, a full 90 percent of landlocked Ethiopia’s imports now transit Djibouti, giving the minuscule country, with a population of less than a million, leverage over its gigantic, 100-million-strong neighbor.\nDecember 28, 2019 Lawrence Africa, China, desalination, development, Egypt, energy, Ethiopia, fresh water, Ghana, isotopes, Nigeria, nuclear energy, Rosatom, Russia, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, SMR, Sudan, technol;ogy, Uganda\nImage credit: IAEA\nIn the next decade, beginning on January 1, 2020, African nations must pursue nuclear energy. This is necessary to provide energy to the continent, which is suffering from a huge deficit in electricity, but nuclear technology has many additional benefits to African economies. This includes creating large amounts of potable water. With nuclear power plants along the Mediterranean and Red Sea, the equivalent of a “second Nile River” from desalination through nuclear powered desalination would transform the nations of the Nile Basin. Constructing Small Modular Nuclear Reactors-SMRs (see below) in every African nation would be a important first step towards ending poverty and industrializing the continent. Let me bluntly state: without abundant, low cost energy, Africa will not develop, and its people will suffer. Energizing Africa is not an option, it is a life and death necessity!\n{Sustainable Times} published a valuable article on December 23, 2019: Can Nuclear Unlock Africa’s Development?\n“Combining renewables with nuclear power, however, makes the task of powering Africa’s growing economies more viable – not to mention the other useful and often overlooked aspects that nuclear can contribute to development. Although South Africa is the only country on the continent currently operating a nuclear power plant, the technology is being increasingly considered by African leaders. For example, works are set to begin on a new 4.8GW plant in El Dabaa Egypt next year, which is being developed by Russia’s Rosatom.\n“Other countries including Ethiopia, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana also have memorandums of understanding with Rosatom that pave the way for nuclear development. South Korea are also looking to invest in the continent’s energy industry, while Chinese nuclear firms have entered into agreements with Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Energy is a key driver for development. In Ghana, for example, nuclear is seen as the obvious way to provide reliable energy for bauxite refineries which would increase jobs and export capacity.\nTechnology beyond electricity\n“But nuclear technology provides more than just energy: many advanced nuclear designs produce high-temperature process heat for uses in desalination plants, chemical production and even district heating systems. These subsidiary features would allow nuclear technology to benefit society beyond the generation of electricity – and potentially accelerating its deployment.\n“Nuclear technologies are already being used in agriculture, for example, where isotopes and radiation techniques are harnessed to combat pests and diseases or to increase livestock and crop production. For instance, farmers in Benin have increased their maize yields by 50 percent, while simultaneously reducing the amount of fertiliser used by 70 percent, thanks to the deployment of nuclear-derived nitrogen-fixation methods – the same techniques that are allowing Maasai farmers in Kenya to double vegetable crop yields with half the irrigation of traditional methods.\n“By contrast, nuclear desalination could use the excess heat from new reactor designs like Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) to produce thermal and electrical energy without emitting greenhouse gases, which then transforms seawater into freshwater. While capital costs for nuclear plants are initially high, fuel costs are low and stable: a doubling in the price of uranium would result in only a five percent increase in the total cost of energy generation. In contrast, an equivalent increase in oil would cause freshwater production costs to surge by 70 percent.”\nRead: Can Nuclear Unlock Africa’s Development?\nProgress for Small Modular Reactors\nby Nancy Spannaus — December 13, 2019\nDecember 13, 2019—There’s some real good news for the U.S. economy today. NuScale, an Oregon company that is developing a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), has passed the next stage of review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.\nCross-section of NuScale small modular reactor (world nuclear news)\nAs this blog has reported before, the mass development of nuclear power is a critical component to bringing the productivity of the U.S. economy out of the doldrums, and thus bringing us into a new era of prosperity. High-speed rail, modernized water systems, the space program, and many other components of an economic recovery program depend upon generating huge amounts of electricity that are way beyond our current capacity. Nuclear represents a leap in productivity that will allow us to get there, as well as a step on the way to the development of thermonuclear fusion.\nNuScale’s design for an SMR has now gone through four phases of review. It still has to go through stages 5 and 6. According to the company’s press release, the Oregon-based company is partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as other companies. It has received support from Congress.\nAs I outlined in a post approximately one year ago, the promise of SMRs lies not only in their safety design, but in the fact that the United States still has the industrial capacity to produce them assembly-line fashion. Over the past 40 years, the heavy industrial capability for producing a standard-sized nuclear reactor (measured in hundreds of megawatts or over 1000) has been dismantled. But a small reactor of 12 to 50 megawatts could be produced in assembly-line fashion, and provide a flexible means of providing power outside major urban areas, including hard-to-reach regions.\nThe United States is not the only country working on SMRs, and some in the industry are seeking to motivate investment in NuScale on the basis of “beating the competition.” Such peaceful competition has a huge positive payoff for the human race, and can only be encouraged. Thus NuScale’s progress with the NRC is most welcome news.\nThe NuScale press release can be read in full here.\nDecember 24, 2019 January 6, 2020 Lawrence ADB, Africa, AFRICOM, Angola, Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, China, Deborah Brautigam, debt trap, Deng Xiaoping, Djibouti, IMF, Infrastructure, John Bolton, Johns Hopkins\n(Courtesy of Quartz Africa)\nDeborah Brautigam, an expert on China-Africa relations, exposes the fraud of China’s debt-trap diplomacy in her report: A Critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ Brautigam, who is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for China-Africa Research Initiative, writes unequivocally that there is no evidence of an intentional effort to trap African nations into owing debt to China. China is not manipulating African nations in an attempt to control their resources. Ironically this is what the Western institutions did to African nations following their independence from colonialism. Whether out of ignorance and/or prejudice, Africans and Westerners have been repeating unfounded propaganda that China is the new colonizer of Africa. It is time to finally end this malicious mantra.\n“The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies curates a database on Chinese lending to Africa (Brautigam & Hwang, 2016). It has information on about more than 1000 loans and, so far, in Africa, we have not seen any examples where we would say the Chinese deliberately entangled another country in debt, and then used that debt to extract unfair or strategic advantages of some kind in Africa, including ‘asset seizures’. Angola, for example, has borrowed a huge amount from China. Of course, many of these loans are backed by Angola’s oil exports, but this is a commercial transaction. China is not getting huge strategic advantage in that relationship. Similarly, others have examined Chinese lending elsewhere in the world – some 3000 cases – and while some projects have been cancelled or renegotiated, none, aside from the single port in Sri Lanka, has been used to support the idea that the Chinese are seizing strategic assets when countries run into trouble with loan repayment (Kratz, Feng, & Wright, 2019).\nThe evidence so far, including the Sri Lankan case, shows that the drumbeat of alarm about Chinese banks’ funding of infrastructure across the BRI and beyond is overblown. In a study we conducted using our data on Chinese lending and African debt distress through 2017, China was a major player in only three low-income African countries that were considered by the IMF to be debt distressed or on the verge of debt distress (Eom, Brautigam, & Benabdallah, 2018). A similar country-by-country analysis that included use of our data shows that the Chinese are, by and large, not the major player in African debt distress (Jubilee Debt Campaign, 2018). Therefore, the role of China in African debt distress was limited when one remembers that there are 54 countries in Africa.”\nRead: A Critical look at Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’\nDecember 22, 2019 January 6, 2020 Lawrence Africa, China, economic growth, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite, Nigeria, nuclear energy, Russia, Rwanda, science, space exploration, technol;ogy, Uganda\nEthiopia’s satellite orbiting the earth. (courtesy of africanexponent.com)\nSpace exploration is an essential driver of economic growth. Mankind’s discovery of new physical principles of the universe leads to the creation of new technologies, which transform economies to higher levels of production of physical wealth. It is science and assimilating new technologies like fission and fusion energy that are the engines of real economic growth; not money or stock values. Exploration of space stimulates the mind and breeds optimism.\n“Ethiopia’s first satellite was sent into space on Friday, a landmark achievement for the ambitious country that also caps a banner year for Africa’s involvement in space.\n“A Chinese Long March 4B rocket hoisted the first Ethiopian Remote Sensing Satellite (ETRSS-1) aloft from the Taiyuan space base in northern China.\n“Scores of Ethiopian and Chinese officials and scientists gathered at the Entoto Observatory and Research Centre outside the capital, Addis Ababa, early Friday to watch a live broadcast.\n“The 70-kilogramme (154-pound) satellite was developed by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology with the help of 21 Ethiopian scientists, according to the specialist website africanews.space…\n“For us as a society, we are valuing this launch as something which lifts our national pride,” Paulos said.\n“You know, this is a very poor country. Many in the younger generation don’t have big hopes of reaching space. But today we are giving this generation hope, helping this generation to think big and have self-esteem.”\nRead: Ethiopia Celebrates Launch of First Satellite\nNuclear Energy is Necessary for Africa’s Growth\nRussia’s Rosatom already is building a $29 billion nuclear plant complex for Egypt, and the company is also helping Nigeria, Uganda, the Republic of Congo, and Rwanda establish nuclear facilities. The El Dabaa Nuclear Power Plant in Egypt will have four VVER-1200 reactors, or water-water energetic reactors, which are Russian-designed Generation III+ reactors. Russia is financing 85% of the project with a loan of about $25 billion to Egypt, and Egypt is paying the remaining 15% over a period of 13 years, wrote Darrell Proctor in Power on Dec. 2.\nAfrica’s only current operating nuclear power plant is the 1.8 GW Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, north of Cape Town, which is owned and operated by Eskom, South Africa’s power utility. The plant recently had its operational period extended for another 20 years from 2024 when it was originally supposed to be decommissioned.\nAfrican nations are trying to increase their power generation capacity on a continent that has long struggled to sustain reliable power. The International Energy Agency recently reported that 57% of Africa’s population still does not have easy access to electricity, and those with access to power deal with frequent power outages.\nAfrican nations desperately need nuclear power for their survival. Without access to plentiful energy, people will die and nations will not develop.\nDecember 17, 2019 January 6, 2020 Lawrence Abiy Ahmed, African, Amharic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Horn of Africa, Medemer, Nobel Peace Prize, peace, synergy, war\nEthiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali receives the the Nobel Peace Price on December 10, 2019. (Courtesy of allthingsethiopia.com)\nIn his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize of 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed discusses the importance of the philosophy of the Medemer in achieving peace in the Horn of Africa. Prime Minister Abiy is applying the philosophy of the Medemer in transforming Ethiopia.\n“This humanity I speak of, is within all of us. We can cultivate and share it with others if we choose to remove our masks of pride and arrogance. When our love for humanity outgrows our appreciation of human vanity then the world will know peace. Ultimately, peace requires an enduring vision. And my vision of peace is rooted in the philosophy of Medemer.\n“Medemer, an Amharic word, signifies synergy, convergence, and teamwork for a common destiny. Medemer is a homegrown idea that is reflected in our political, social, and economic life. I like to think of “Medemer” as a social compact for Ethiopians to build a just, egalitarian, democratic, and humane society by pulling together our resources for our collective survival and prosperity.\n“In practice, Medemer is about using the best of our past to build a new society and a new civic culture that thrives on tolerance, understanding, and civility. At its core, Medemer is a covenant of peace that seeks unity in our common humanity.\n“It pursues peace by practicing the values of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and inclusion.”\nRead: PM Abiy’s Acceptance Speech of the Nobel Peace Prize\nDecember 12, 2019 December 12, 2019 Lawrence America, Belt and Road Initiative, CGTN, China, deep-state, Democrats, establishment, impeachment, Infrastructure, President Trump, Russia, Russia-gate, US, US Constitution\nU.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (1st R) speaks at a news conference to announce articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., December 10, 2019. /Xinhua Photo\nOn the week that the Judiciary Committee is determined to vote for the impeachment of President Donald Trump, CGTN published my analysis on the invalidity of this impeachment process.\nTrump, impeachment, and the future of the U.S.\nLawrence Freeman, December 11, 2019\n“This week the Judiciary Committee concludes the impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States. This committee, controlled by the Democrats, is likely to approve articles of impeachment within the week.\n“It is anticipated that the majority Democratic Party in the House of Representatives will vote for impeachment before the Christmas Holiday break.\n“Therefore, it is quite possible that when the Congress returns to Washington. D.C. in January, the first order of business will be a trial of President Trump in the U.S. Senate. Thus, America, and indeed the world, will begin the new year of 2020 with a dangerous strategic destabilization caused by a weakening of the U.S. Presidency. Regardless of the outcome, this course of events bodes ill for the future of our U.S.\n“For me, a lifelong Democrat, who has been involved in American politics for over half a century, this impeachment process, driven by the leadership of the Democratic Party, is not legitimate. Removing a U.S. President, elected by the American voters is the most serious and extreme measure allowed under the U.S. Constitution.\n“A President should not be removed from office without overwhelming and provable evidence, that she or he is endangering the security and existence of the U.S. No such evidence has been provided. I fear for my country when a partisan majority has the power to remove a President between national elections (as was the case of the impeachment of President Clinton, which I also opposed).”\nClash over foreign policy\n“Once you get past the headlines of Russia-gate, followed by allegations of obstruction of justice, and now, the so-called quid quo pro in Ukraine; examine the real underlying issue of conflict between President Trump and the establishment. He disagrees with Washington’s anti-Russia policy…”\nRead the entire article: Trump. Impeachment, and the Future of the US\nDecember 8, 2019 January 5, 2020 Lawrence African Diaspora, African Union, Arikana Chihombori-Quao, Moussa Faki Mahamat\nFormer Ambassador from the African Union to the US, Arikana Chihombori-Quao with Lawrence Freeman. December 5, 2019\nYou can read in the press release below the rebuttal by Ambassador Arikana Chihombori-Quao to the allegations against her by the African Union.\n“In summary, I took a virtually unknown Mission that had been relegated to a Protocol Office and turned it into a vibrant well-respected Mission, not only in Washington DC but around the world. I accomplished all this with limited staff…and very limited resources. I worked tirelessly, an average of sixteen-eighteen-hour days, seven days a week during my tenure. I attended as many meetings and events as I could promoting Africa and the African Union not only in the United States of America but also in other parts of the Americas. I realized that this is what it took to bring awareness to the people of an entity that was otherwise unknown.”\nRead: Press Release and Rebuttal by HE Ambassador Chihombori Quao","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line754688"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9788715839385986,"wiki_prob":0.9788715839385986,"text":"1/16/13: Iovine: It'll be \"guys who know music and culture\" who create viable music streaming\nBeats chief Iovine says he was pushing Steve Jobs for an Apple streaming service\nPosted by: Paul Maloney\nIssue Date: January 16, 2013 - 12:25pm\nBeats Electronics CEO (and Universal Music exec and record industry legend) Jimmy Iovine thinks that when it comes to creating a music service that fans will embrace, the tech guys don't stand a chance.\n\"I was shocked at how culturally inept most consumer electronics companies are... You can build Facebook, you can build YouTube, you can build Twitter — you can be a tech company and do that,\" he told AllThingsDigital's Peter Kafka at CES. \"Subscription [music] needs a programmer. It needs culture. And tech guys can’t do that. They don’t even know who to hire. They’re utilities.\"\nObviously, Iovine has faith that his company, with \"guys who know music and culture\" like himself, Dr. Dre, and Trent Reznor at the helm, is far more suited to creating the killer streaming music experience.\n\"[Other music subscription] companies, these services, all lack curation... There’s no curation. That’s what we did as a record label, we curated,\" he said. \"We are heavy on curation, and we believe it’s a combination of human and math... Right now, somebody’s giving you 12 million songs, and you give them your credit card, and they tell you 'good luck.' You need to have some kind of help. I’m going to offer you a guide... a trusted voice, and it’s going to be really good.\"\nInterestingly, Iovine says he'd long been trying to push the late Apple founder Steve Jobs towards creating a streaming music subscription service.\n\"He wasn’t keen on it right away. [Beats co-founder] Luke Wood and I spent about three years trying to talk him into it... He didn’t want to pay the record companies enough. He felt that they would come down, eventually... I think in the end Steve was feeling it, but the economics... he wanted to pay the labels [for subscriptions], but [the fees were] not going to be acceptable to them.\"\nAt CES, Iovine and his company named former Yahoo! Music and Topspin CEO Ian Rogers (RAIN coverage here) CEO of Beats' music subscription service, codenamed \"Daisy\" (which will likely be a repurposed MOG, which Beats owns). More on Daisy in RAIN here.\nRead the AllThingsDigital interview with Beats' Iovine here.\n321 Comments | Add a comment\nRhapsody's Irwin says Pandora's, Spotify's \"freemium\" approach won't work\nRhapsody Intl. president Jon Irwin told Inc. magazine he doesn't think Pandora's and Spotify's \"freemium\" model (that's when a basic version of a service is available free, but a subscription is charged for the full-feature version) is the way to go.\nInc. reports Irwin believes Spotify's (and Pandora's) strategy is to \"build a big name and a big user base by giving away the store, then do an IPO and leave the shareholders to figure out if the service can make money.\" He says his company's strategy is in building partnerships with automakers, mobile providers, and consumer electronics manufacturers (which, of course, Spotify and Pandora have done with wider success). Rhapsody did, in fact, launch its app for the Roku set-top device this week (more here).\nSpotify has 5 million paying subscribers, plus 15 million more who use the service free. Pandora says in December it had 67.1 million \"active listeners\" (the vast majority of whom listen free). Rhapsody, which doesn't offer free usage, has 1 million paying customers.\nIrwin reportedly revealed to GigaOm his company's plans to expand into 16 more European countries (see RAIN here) in the coming months (Rhapsody is available in the UK and Germany under the Napster brand name).\nRead more from Inc. here.\nCox creates $250M fund to exclusively back board member's startups\nCox Enterprises, the parent company of Cox Media and Cox Communications, has announced its launch of a $250 million investment fund to back \"directly and exclusively in companies created by\" board member and serial entrepreneur Tripp Rackley.\nAccording to TechCrunch, \"Rackley has a track record in building tech startups that have had successful exits. The most notable ones have been in the enterprise sector, specifically in financial services — nFront, now part of Intuit; and Firethorn, now part of Qualcomm.\"\nExperience, a Rackley startup, is the partnership's first investment. It's a mobile app sporting event or concert attendees can use to upgrade their seats. TechCrunch suggests this may be a clue that the new fund could \"be dedicated to startups that are in some way adjacent to the media business for which Cox is already known.\"\nRead TechCrunch here, and the Cox press release here.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1449118"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5739151835441589,"wiki_prob":0.42608481645584106,"text":"Specialized Psychotherapy Found to Reduce Severity of Delusions in Patients With Schizophrenia\nParticipating in a brief course of individualized metacognitive training—a psychotherapy designed to specifically target delusional beliefs—can reduce the severity of delusions and positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, according to a study published Tuesday in Schizophrenia Bulletin.\nThe study found that patients who received metacognitive training had significant reductions in delusional thinking compared with patients who received cognitive remediation, a program designed to improve cognitive abilities. These improvements were maintained at six months.\nThe findings “suggest that even brief psychotherapy can help to ameliorate the symptoms of psychosis,” Ryan P. Balzan, Ph.D., of Findlers University in Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues wrote.\nPatients aged 18 to 65 with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis and delusional beliefs were recruited for the study. Of the 54 patients included in the trial, 52 were taking antipsychotic medications; these patients continued to receive their medication throughout the study.\nThe patients were randomly assigned to metacognitive training or cognitive remediation. Patients in the metacognitive training group completed four two-hour sessions with a therapist over one month, where they learned techniques for increasing awareness of their own cognitive biases that may contribute to the formation and maintenance of their delusional beliefs (for example, overconfidence and belief inflexibility). Patients in the cognitive remediation group completed four therapist-led, 90-minute to two-hour sessions over the same timeframe, during which they focused on improving working and verbal memory, processing speed, problem-solving, and attention—cognitive domains commonly impaired in patients with schizophrenia.\nThe researchers assessed the patients’ delusions, positive symptoms, performance in several cognitive domains, and clinical insight (awareness of and attitudes toward mental illness) at the start of the trial, following the completion of the four therapy sessions, and six months later. Two patients did not complete the six-month assessment.\nPatients in the metacognitive training group showed significant reductions in delusional and overall positive symptom severity and improved clinical insight relative to patients in the cognitive remediation group. In contrast, compared with those in the metacognitive training group, patients in the cognitive remediation group showed moderate improvement in problem-solving ability but in no other cognitive domains. The authors wrote that this suggests “more CR [cognitive remediation] might be required to be effective in these domains.”\nIn conclusion, the authors wrote, “While larger multisite trials investigating MCT+ [metacognitive training] are warranted, the present study adds to the growing literature that psychological interventions can be effective in people with psychosis.”\nFor related information, see the American Journal of Psychotherapy article “Application of Integrative Metacognitive Psychotherapy for Serious Mental Illness.”\n(Image: iStock/Squaredpixels)\nFollow Psychiatric News on Twitter!\nLabels: cognitive remediation, delusions, metacognitive training, positive symptoms, problem solving, Ryan Balzan, schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Bulletin\nWhat Can Physicians Do to Prevent Firearm Violence?\nPhysicians should routinely ask patients about firearms in their home and whether guns are locked and safely stored, writes James S. Kahn, M.D., a professor of medicine at Stanford University, in an editorial published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The editorial was published alongside a position paper from the American College of Physicians on reducing firearm injuries and deaths in the United States.\n“Firearm-related violent death is an extraordinary problem made even more alarming by the prevalence of guns in the households of persons with dementia and the variation in firearm injuries related to racial disparities,” Kahn writes. “Yet, many physicians have been unengaged or silent during this epidemic. Why? Perhaps we think firearm violence is outside our realm of influence.”\nYet Kahn says physicians routinely ask patients about their unsafe activities, risky exposures, and addictions. “Nicotine abatement programs, alcohol reduction plans, and HIV prevention efforts begin with questions … about a person’s behavior and are successful when physicians provide information to empower patients, motivating them to prevent disease and avoid disability or death. Guns should be no different.”\nKahn recommends the following advice to patients about creating a safe environment when guns are in the home:\nRemove the ammunition from the gun and lock the gun in a secure location.\nLock the ammunition in a separate location from the gun.\nStore the keys in a different area from household keys and keep the keys out of reach of children.\nLock up gun-cleaning supplies.\nNever leave a gun unattended after removing it from a safe storage place.\nKahn urges physicians to begin the conversation simply by asking, “Do you have guns in the home?” If a patient answers “yes,” the physician can follow up with a question such as “How or where do you typically store your guns?”\n“If my patients say their guns are not secured or locked, then we can talk about how they might protect themselves and others from unintentionally finding and firing the guns,” Kahn writes. “We discuss what to teach children to do if they encounter a gun: Stop what they are doing, never touch the gun, leave the area, and tell an adult right away.”\n“It would be so easy to normalize this line of inquiry and add these questions to an electronic medical record along with questions about alcohol consumption, drug use, and sexual practices,” Kahn writes. “And it is not difficult to learn how to talk to patients about guns and how to counsel them about safety. We need to routinely ask, ‘Do you have guns in the home?’”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Talking to Patients About Guns Necessary, But Examine Your Beliefs First.”\n(Image: iStock/DmyTo)\nLabels: Annals of Internal Medicine, firearm violence, gun safety, guns, James S. Kahn, violence\nAugmenting Interpersonal Therapy Early May Speed Improvement in Youth With Depression\nPsychiatrists who treat adolescents with depression with interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT-A) should consider augmenting the treatment if there is no significant response to therapy within four weeks, suggests a small study published in the Journal of American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.\n“Waiting too long to decide whether to change treatment for an insufficient responder could mean prolonged experience of depressive symptoms and associated functional impairments,” wrote Meredith Gunlicks-Stoessel, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota and colleagues. “On the other hand, augmenting treatment too soon might mean adding treatments that could increase risk of side effects or other burdens before giving the initial treatment sufficient time to work.”\nFor the study, Gunlicks-Stoessel and colleagues tracked 40 adolescents aged 12 to 17 with depression receiving 12 IPT-A sessions over a 16-week period. The participants were randomly assigned to receive a clinical evaluation after either four weeks or eight weeks, at which point treatment could be augmented if needed. Adolescents who showed an insufficient response to IPT-A (defined as less than a 20% reduction in depression symptom scores after four weeks or less than 40% reduction in depression symptom scores after eight weeks) were randomly assigned to four additional IPT-A sessions or daily fluoxetine (10 mg to 40 mg).\nThe authors found that the adolescents who received a clinical evaluation after four weeks had lower average depressive symptoms, as measured by the Children’s Depression Rating Scale-Revised, or CDRS-R, after 16 weeks compared with those who received the evaluation at eight weeks.\nAdditional analysis revealed that adolescents who received additional IPT-A sessions or adjunct fluoxetine beginning at week 4 saw statistically similar symptom improvements at week 16, the authors noted. Adolescents who received additional IPT-A sessions after four weeks saw greater symptom improvements compared with those who received the additional sessions after eight weeks. Adolescents who received fluoxetine experienced similar improvements regardless of when they began the augmentation.\n“It may be that the timing of adding fluoxetine is not critical in the way that it appears to be for increasing the dose of IPT-A,” the authors wrote. “At week 4, the adolescent is about to initiate working on the interpersonal problem area and learning new communication and interpersonal problem-solving skills. It may be that meeting twice per week at this time is particularly good timing, as it provides more concentrated skill building and opportunities for engaging in interpersonal experiments in between sessions.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “SSRIs/SNRIs Effective in Children, but Risks, Benefits Vary.”\n(Image: iStock/Nikodash)\nLabels: clinical decision, depression, depression in adolescents, fluoxetine, interpersonal therapy, Meredith Gunlicks-Stoessel, psychotherapy, treatment augmentation\nCardioprotective Treatments After Heart Attack Increase Lifespan of Patients With Schizophrenia\nThe increased risk of mortality in patients with schizophrenia can be reduced with cardioprotective medication, such as antiplatelets, β-blockers, and statins, after a heart attack, suggests a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.\nPrevious studies have found that patients with schizophrenia die 10 to 15 years younger and have worse outcomes from coronary artery disease than those in the general population.\n“Our study suggests that patients with schizophrenia who are treated with cardioprotective treatment after MI [myocardial infarction] have a lower mortality risk compared with patients who are not treated, similar to those treated in the general population,” wrote Pirathiv Kugathasan, M.D., of Aalborg University in Denmark and colleagues. “Cardioprotective medication after myocardial infarction should be carefully managed to improve prognosis.”\nThe researchers studied all adults aged 30 and older who were treated in Denmark public hospitals with first-time myocardial infarction (MI) during a 20-year period, involving 105,018 individuals, including 684 patients with a prior diagnosis of schizophrenia. The researchers followed patients up to 20 years and collected data on prescriptions received and defined five cardioprotective therapeutic drug groups: antiplatelets, vitamin K antagonists, β-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, and statins. The researchers noted use of monotherapy (treatment with one these medication groups), dual therapy (use of two), and triple therapy (use of three or more) as well as the time to all-cause mortality during the follow-up.\nCompared with patients in the general population, patients with schizophrenia were less likely to receive prescriptions for cardioprotective medications after MI. Such patients were nearly nine times more likely to die compared with the general population treated; moreover, even those who received treatment were still nearly twice as likely to die as those treated in the general population.\nThe triple therapy provided the greatest benefit for patients, however, and patients with schizophrenia who received any combination of triple therapy had mortality rates similar to those observed of the general population who received the same treatment.\n“Cardiovascular medications are a mainstay for ensuring health and preventing recurrent cardiovascular events after myocardial infarction,” Benjamin G. Druss, M.D., M.P.H., of Emory University wrote in an accompanying editorial. “The findings of the study by Kugathasan et al suggest that these medications can also play a critical role in reducing mortality among individuals with schizophrenia.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Patients With Serious Mental Illness Need Better Primary Care Integration, Health Advocacy.”\n(Image: iStock/Eraxion)\nLabels: antiplatelets, Benjamin Druss, Denmark, heart attack, JAMA Psychiatry, Pirathiv Kugathasan, schizophrenia, statins, β-blockers\nChildren With Anxiety Disorders Face Higher Risk for Self-Harm, ER Visits, Hospitalization\nChildren with newly diagnosed anxiety disorders were significantly more likely to experience serious medical events requiring treatment in the emergency room (ER) or inpatient hospitalization than children who did not have these disorders, according to a study published in Depression and Anxiety.\n“Within two years following a new anxiety disorder diagnosis, a significant proportion of children have a mental health–related hospitalization, inpatient treated self-harm event, or ER visit, which translates to a sizable number of children, given the prevalence of anxiety disorders,” wrote author Greta A. Bushnell, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues. Some 54 million children worldwide are estimated to have an anxiety disorder, according to the Global Burden of Disease Pediatrics Collaboration.\nFor the study, Bushnell and colleagues identified nearly 200,000 commercially insured children (aged 3 to 17) who were newly diagnosed with anxiety disorder in an office setting and had not received treatment for anxiety. The authors then examined the incidence of mental health–related hospitalization, inpatient treatment for suicide and self-inflicted injury, suicidal ideation, and ER visits in these children over a two-year period. They also examined the incidence of these events in children without an anxiety diagnosis (matched by age, sex, geographical region).\nWithin two years of diagnosis with anxiety, the children were three times more likely to have had a mental health related–hospitalization than children without an anxiety diagnosis (3.2% vs. 0.9%). Nearly one-third of the children with an anxiety diagnosis were treated in the ER (31.9%) versus about one-fifth of the children without an anxiety diagnosis (21.8%). Children with anxiety were also more than three times more likely to have suicidal ideation (1.7% vs. 0.4%) or receive inpatient treatment for self-harm (0.13% vs. 0.03%).\nThe rate of serious events were even higher than expected by researchers, Bushnell told Psychiatric News. “For example, more than 3% of youth aged 14 to 17 years had a mental health–related hospitalization in the year following a new anxiety diagnosis. An important next step would be to examine how we can improve follow-up care and treatment to reduce these events,” she said.\n“The findings can help inform discussions providers have with patients and caregivers when a child is newly diagnosed with anxiety, including discussions on monitoring anxiety symptoms and when to seek additional care to prevent serious events,” Bushnell added. “Our results draw attention to the importance of follow-up care, particularly in older children with psychiatric comorbidities.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Peer Program Helps High Schoolers Handle Depression, Anxiety.”\n(Image: iStock/vitapix)\nLabels: anxiety, children, Depression & Anxiety, emergency room, Greta Bushnell, hospitalization, self-harm, suicidal ideation\nSupport at Home, in Community May Protect Against Emotional Distress, Substance Use in Transgender Youth\nTransgender and gender-diverse youth who feel close with their parents are less likely to experience emotional distress and engage in substance use compared with those reporting less connected relationships with parents, according to a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The study also found that youth who feel safe at school and have stronger relationships with teachers and other adults are less likely to experience depression, suicidality, and engage in substance use.\n“Given that transgender and gender-diverse [TGD] youth report lower levels of connectedness and safety, bolstering an explicitly transgender and gender-diverse−friendly network of caring parents, safe and supportive schools, and connections to adults in the community may support efforts to eliminate disparities in depression, suicidality, and substance use,” Amy L. Glower, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota and colleagues wrote.\nFor the study, Glower and colleagues examined data from the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey—a survey that asks students about school climate, bullying, out-of-school activities, health and nutrition, emotional and mental health, relationships, substance use, and more. As part of the survey, students in the ninth and 11th grades were asked, “What is your biological sex?” (response options: male/female) and whether they “identify as transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, or unsure about their gender identity” (yes/no).\nThe researchers examined associations between eight protective factors (connectedness to parents, adult relatives, friends, adults in the community, and teachers; youth development opportunities; and feeling safe in the community and at school) and depression, suicidality, and substance use (alcohol, binge drinking, marijuana, nicotine) among 2,168 adolescents who identified as transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, or questioning their gender.\nOf the 2,168 included in the analysis, 57.9% met the cutoff score for additional depression screening using the Patient Health Questionnaire-2, 44.9% reported suicidal ideation, and 16.7% reported a suicide attempt; substance use ranged from 11.2% (binge drinking) to 25.9% (any nicotine use). Feeling more connected to parents was related to significantly lower odds of all indicators of emotional distress and substance use relative to those reporting less connected relationships with parents, the authors reported.\n“Given that TGD youth report less connectedness with their parents than their cisgender peers, increasing investment in programs offering support and guidance to parents of TGD youth and linking parents to existing supports (e.g., through health care, schools, religious institutions) may be effective ways to bolster the development of these caring relationships,” the authors concluded.\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Psychiatrists Need to Prepare to Care for Gender-Variant Patients” and the Psychiatric Services article “Affirming Gender Identity of Patients With Serious Mental Illness.”\n(Image: iStock/PeopleImages)\nLabels: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Amy Gower, depression, gender diverse, Patient Health Questionnaire, substance use, suicide, transgender\nHaloperidol, Ziprasidone Found Ineffective in Treating Patients With Delirium in the ICU\nNeither haloperidol nor ziprasidone, medications commonly used to treat psychosis, had any benefit over placebo in treating patients for delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU), according to a study published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine.\n“For more than 40 years, intravenous antipsychotic medications have been used to treat delirium in hospitalized patients,” wrote E.W. Ely, M.D., of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues. “In this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous antipsychotic medications for the treatment of delirium in the ICU, there was no evidence that either haloperidol or ziprasidone led to a shorter duration of delirium and coma.”\nThe study involved patients with acute respiratory failure or shock who developed hypoactive or hyperactive delirium at 16 U.S. medical centers. Of the 566 patients who developed delirium during the trial, 192 were randomly assigned to receive haloperidol (maximum intravenous dose, 20 mg daily), 190 received ziprasidone (maximum intravenous dose, 40 mg daily), and 184 received placebo. Patients were discontinued from drug or placebo after 14 days or at ICU discharge, whichever occurred first.\nDelirium was assessed using the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU (CAM-ICU). The primary endpoint was the number of days alive without delirium or coma during the 14-day intervention period. A secondary endpoint was duration of delirium.\nThe researchers found no significant difference between the treatment groups on the primary endpoint: the median number of days alive without delirium or coma was 7.9 in the haloperidol group, 8.7 in the ziprasidone group, and 8.5 in the placebo group. Neither haloperidol nor ziprasidone led to a shorter duration of delirium compared with placebo.\n“Why did the trial fail to show benefit? It is likely that our concept of delirium is flawed,” suggested Thomas P. Bleck, M.D., of the Department of Neurological Science at Rush Medical College, Chicago, in an accompanying editorial.\n“The neurochemistry of sudden alteration in mentation [mental activity] is complex and involves several neurotransmitters as well as structural, immunologic, and network alterations and possible brain infection that is not clinically evident,” he wrote. “The investigators deserve credit for conducting a difficult trial, but it would have been astounding if there were a single magic bullet for the restitution of normal brain function in ICU patients with delirium.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Point-of-Care EEG Device Could Ease Efforts to Detect Delirium.”\n(Image: iStock/A stockphoto)\nLabels: delirium, haloperidol, New England Journal of Medicine, ziprasidone\nPatients With OUD Who Receive Extended-Release Naltrexone May Be More Likely to Stay in Treatment\nNaltrexone is a proven treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD), but its clinical usefulness, when taken orally, has been limited by poor adherence among patients, according to several studies. A study in AJP in Advance now suggests that patients with OUD may be twice as likely to stay in therapy if they receive monthly injections of extended-release naltrexone (XR-naltrexone) following opioid withdrawal compared with daily oral naltrexone.\n“These study findings have immediate clinical relevance for treatment of opioid use disorder at a time when an opioid epidemic continues unabated in the United States,” wrote Maria Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D., of Columbia University and colleagues. “Given that postdetoxification outpatient treatment without pharmacotherapy yields poor completion rates, high (60%−90%) relapse rates, and heightened risk of overdose and death, XR-naltrexone may be a viable alternative to prevent relapse in patients seeking treatment for opioid use disorder who do not prefer an agonist approach [such as methadone or buprenorphine].”\nSullivan and colleagues enrolled 60 adults aged 18 to 60 who met DSM-IV criteria for opioid dependence in the study. All participants completed an inpatient medication-assisted opioid withdrawal program and were transitioned to naltrexone therapy. Thirty-two patients were randomly assigned to treatment with oral naltrexone (50 mg/day) and 28 were assigned to treatment with XR-naltrexone (380 mg per injection every four weeks) for 24 weeks.\nAll participants were asked to visit the clinic three times per week for the first two weeks and then twice weekly for the remainder of the 24-week study. During each clinic visit, the patients took a urine test, discussed any recent substance use, and received a behavioral therapy session. The goal of the behavioral therapy was to educate, motivate, and support patients through the process of opioid detoxification, naltrexone induction, and successful naltrexone maintenance. Therapy goals were reinforced with a reward system whereby patients could win gift vouchers after achieving goals or milestones.\nAfter six months, 12 of the 28 (43%) patients receiving XR-naltrexone had dropped out of treatment, compared with 23 of 32 (72%) patients in the oral naltrexone group. There were no significant differences in side effects between the two groups, other than a higher rate of insomnia among patients taking oral naltrexone. There were nine serious adverse events, but only one was found to be related to medication: one patient receiving XR-naltrexone developed allergic hives and was removed from the study.\n“These results support the use of XR-naltrexone combined with behavioral therapy as an effective treatment for patients seeking opioid withdrawal and nonagonist treatment for preventing relapse to opioid use disorder,” the researchers concluded.\nTo read more about naltrexone, see the Psychiatric News article “Low-Dose Naltrexone May Mitigate Severity of Opioid Withdrawal During Detox.”\n(Image: iStock/FilippoBacci)\nLabels: extended-release naltrexone, Maria Sullivan, naltrexone, opioid use disorder, opioid withdrawal, OUD\nGiving Patients Choice of PTSD Treatment Yields Significant Benefit, Study Finds\nAdults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) given a choice between sertraline or prolonged exposure therapy opted for prolonged exposure almost two to one; and while both treatments conferred significant benefits, prolonged exposure provided some advantage over sertraline, reports a study published today in AJP in Advance.\nThe study aimed to determine whether giving patients diagnosed with PTSD their choice of treatment would affect patient outcomes, wrote Lori A. Zoellner, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington and colleagues. According to the authors, the study was the first large-scale trial directly comparing the efficacy of sertraline and prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD.\nSome 200 patients with PTSD watched videotaped treatment rationales for both treatments and then indicated a preference for either sertraline or prolonged exposure. They were then randomly assigned to having a choice between treatments or to no choice of treatment. Both groups received up to 10 weeks of acute treatment and up to 24 months of follow-up.\nParticipants showed a strong preference for prolonged exposure therapy over the medication: of 97 participants given a choice of treatment, 63% chose prolonged exposure therapy and 37% chose sertraline. Participants in the prolonged exposure group received 10 weekly, 90- to 120-minute sessions led by a therapist. Responders were offered continued sertraline up to 24 months or up to two prolonged exposure booster sessions during the follow-up period.\nThe primary outcome measure was interviewer-rated PTSD symptoms, as measured by the PSS-I—a 17-item interview that uses DSM-IV symptom criteria and yields a severity rating (range, 0–51) and a diagnosis (yes/no). Additional measures included several standard self-assessments for depression, anxiety, and disability.\nBoth treatment groups showed large gains that were maintained during the 24-month follow-up; however, patients treated with prolonged exposure were significantly more likely to lose their PTSD diagnosis.\nThe authors noted that patients who received their preferred treatment were more likely to complete treatment (73% vs. 49%), and were more likely to lose their PTSD diagnosis, achieve responder status, and have lower self-reported PTSD, depression, and anxiety symptoms.\n“Notably, preference effects were as strong as, if not stronger than, treatment modality effects, which suggests that accommodating patients’ preferences in treating PTSD is as important as, if not more so, than the specific choice of an empirically supported treatment,” the researchers wrote. “Accommodating patient preferences … and developing strategies for enhancing patient buy-in are important next steps in facilitating access, initiation, adherence, and completion of empirically supported treatment for PTSD.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Propranolol Combined With Reactivation Therapy May Reduce PTSD Symptoms.”\n(Image: iStock/shironosov)\nLabels: ajp in advance, exposure therapy, Lori A. Zoellner, patient preference, posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD, sertraline\nSeveral Symptoms May Point to Suboptimal Medication Adherence in Patients With Depression\nDespite the proven efficacy of antidepressants, a significant number of patients with depression fail to take these medications as prescribed, which can increase the risk of depression relapse, hospitalization, and more. A study in Depression & Anxiety now suggests that patients with major depression who have more severe symptoms, suicidal thoughts, and/or report physical pain may be most likely to report not taking their medications as prescribed.\nCarolina Baeza-Velasco, Ph.D., of the University of Paris Descartes and colleagues examined data extracted from hospital admissions at the Department of Emergency Psychiatry and Acute Care of the University Hospital of Montpellier, France, between May 2012 and July 2015. A total of 360 adults aged 18 to 77 who met DSM-IV criteria for a current major depression episode and filled out the Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) questionnaire were included in the study.\nThe MARS questionnaire asks patients to answer yes or no to 10 questions/statements on medication adherence behavior, beliefs/attitudes about taking medication, and side effects of medication. The researchers divided the study participants into two groups according to how they responded to the four MARS questions on medication adherence behavior—the “optimal adherence group” and the “suboptimal adherence group.” Patients in the optimal adherence group responded no to all four questions, including “Do you ever forget to take your medication?” and “When you feel better, do you sometimes stop taking your medication?”. Of the 360 patients included in the study, 107 (29.7%) were found to be optimally adherent to their medication.\nThe researchers next compared the responses of patients in the two groups to questions regarding depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts; history of abuse and/or neglect during childhood; physical pain intensity; and psychiatric history. The number of psychiatric hospitalizations, the score of depression severity, suicidal ideation, reports of negative side effects from medication, and pain were significantly higher in the patients in the suboptimal adherence group compared with those in the optimal adherence group. Patients in the suboptimal adherence group also had less favorable attitudes toward medication and were less likely to be married/living with a partner than patients in the optimal adherence group.\n“These results suggest a vicious circle in which more vulnerable patients are less adherent to medication, which could worsen the clinical picture maintaining, in turn, low adherence,” the researchers concluded.\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Motivational Pharmacotherapy Can Improve Medication Adherence,” by Roberto Lewis-Fernández, M.D., of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.\n(Image: iStock/Minerva Studio)\nLabels: Carolina Baeza-Velasco, depression, Depression & Anxiety, medication adherence, Medication Adherence Rating Scale, pain, suicidal thoughts\nOlder Adults Who Engage in Self-Harm Are Often Not Referred to Mental Health Services, Study Finds\nMost older adults who engage in self-harm are not referred to mental health services, according to the results of a study conducted in the United Kingdom. The findings, which were published in Lancet Psychiatry, suggest these patients are 20 times more likely to die from unnatural causes within a year compared with older adults who do not engage in self-harm.\n“We have identified a group at high risk of premature unnatural death and identified areas of improvement for clinical management of older-aged adults in primary care,” wrote Catherine Morgan, M.D., of the University of Manchester, U.K., and colleagues. “Health care professionals should take the opportunity to consider the risk of self-harm when an older person consults with other health problems, especially when major physical illnesses and psychopathology are both present, to reduce the risk of an escalation in self-harming behaviour and associated mortality. “\nMorgan and colleagues analyzed data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink, which contains anonymous patient records from general practice that routinely capture clinical information pertaining to both primary and secondary care services. They identified 4,124 adults aged 65 years and older with a self-harm episode recorded during calendar years 2001 to 2014. Of these episodes, 3,327 (80.7%) involved ingestion of drugs and 234 (5.7%) involved self-cutting.\nFor their analysis, the researchers focused on the 2,854 adults with at least 12 months of follow-up data. They examined the frequency of psychiatric referrals and prescription of psychotropic medication after self-harm. They compared the self-harm cohort with a group of similarly aged patients who did not engage in self-harm.\nWithin 12 months of their initial self-harm episode, just 335 (11.7%) of 2,854 older adults were referred to mental health services, 1,692 (59.3%) were prescribed an antidepressant, and, of these, 336 (11.8%) received a tricyclic antidepressant, which can be fatal when taken in overdose.\nIn the year after the first self-harm episode, 412 (14.4%) individuals had another self-harm episode, of whom 344 (83.5%) had one repeat episode and 68 (16.5%) had two or more episodes. A total of 908 (37.0%) deaths occurred in the self-harm cohort compared with 12,683 (25.9%) deaths in the comparison cohort, of which 54 (5.9%) were unnatural deaths and 36 (4.0%) were deaths by suicide in the self-harm cohort versus 275 (2.2%) unnatural deaths and 12 (<0.1%) deaths by suicide in the comparison cohort, the authors reported.\n“After self-harm in an older adult, improvement of referral rates [to specialty mental health care] and consideration of possible alternative medication, with particular avoidance of TCAs [tricyclic antidepressants], might reduce the risk of escalating self-harm behavior and associated mortality risk,” the authors wrote.\nFor related information, see the American Journal of Psychiatry article “Suicide Following Deliberate Self-Harm.”\n(Image: iStock/fzant)\nLabels: antidepressants, Catherine Morgan, Lancet Psychiatry, older adults, self-harm, suicide, tricyclic antidepressant\nMethylphenidate May Lead to Improvements in Youth With Disruptive Behavior Disorder, Study Suggests\nMethylphenidate (MPH) may be a potential treatment option for youth with disruptive behavior disorder, suggests a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.\nResearch has shown that youth with disruptive behavior disorder are less likely than others to anticipate the negative consequences of their behaviors, which may contribute to behavioral problems. Studies also show that people with disruptive behavior disorder tend to have lower activity in the amygdala—a brain region known to be involved in emotional learning, including fear response.\nKoen Van Lith, M.D., of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and colleagues tested whether MPH might increase amygdala activity in youth with disruptive behavior disorder, including oppositional defiant and/or conduct disorder. The researchers chose MPH since this medication is known to increase amygdala activity in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.\nVan Lith and colleagues conducted a clinical study of 42 boys aged 14 to 17 who were diagnosed with disruptive behavior disorder. The adolescents completed a fear-learning task (learning to associate a visual stimulus with a mild electric shock) 90 minutes after taking either a single dose of MPH (0.3 mg/kg to 0.4 mg/kg) or placebo. Twenty-one adolescents with no behavioral problems were also included as a comparison group; these participants were given no medication before testing. All the participants underwent functional MRI scanning while performing the fear-learning task to measure amygdala activity.\nThe adolescents with disruptive behavior disorder who took placebo had much lower amygdala activity during the fear-learning task compared with healthy controls. In contrast, the adolescents with disruptive behavior disorder who took MPH had amygdala activity that was similar to the adolescents with no behavioral problems.\n“This is promising for MPH as a possible treatment option in DBD [disruptive behavior disorder],” Van Lith and colleagues wrote. “Because amygdala functioning is important for decision making and moral judgment, MPH might improve clinical outcomes, although future studies should establish whether increased amygdala function after MPH administration indeed improves behavioral outcomes.”\nTo read more about treating disruptive behaviors in youth, see the Psychiatric News article “Experts Search for Meds to Help Youth With DMDD.”\n(Image: iStock/KatarzynaBialasiewicz)\nPosted by Psychiatric News Alert at 10:28 AM\nLabels: amygdala, antisocial behavior, child and adolescent psychiatry, conduct disorder, disruptive behavior, fear conditioning, methylphenidate, oppositional defiant disorder\nCandidates Announced for APA's 2019 Election\nThe APA Nominating Committee, chaired by APA Immediate Past President Anita Everett, M.D., today announced the candidates for the Association's 2019 election.\nJeffrey Geller, M.D., M.P.H.\nPhilip Muskin, M.D., M.A.\nJeffrey Akaka, M.D.\nSandra DeJong, M.D., M.Sc.\nRamaswamy Viswanathan, M.D., D.M.Sc.\nMinority/Underrepresented (M/UR) Trustee\nRahn Bailey, M.D.\nRobert Cabaj, M.D.\nArea 3 Trustee\nKenneth Certa, M.D.\nBarry Herman, M.D.\nRoger Peele, M.D.\nBarbara Weissman, M.D.\nMelinda Young, M.D.\nResident-Fellow Member Trustee-Elect\nLisa Harding, M.D.\nDaniel Hart, M.D.\nMichael Mensah, M.D., M.P.H.\nThe deadline for candidates who wish to run by petition is November 15. All candidates and their supporters are encouraged to review APA's Election Guidelines. For more election information, please visit the Election section on APA's website or email election@psych.org.\nThe slate of candidates who have been nominated is considered public but not official until it is approved by the APA Board of Trustees at its December meeting. APA members may cast their ballots from January 2 to January 31, 2019.\nLabels: Akaka, American Psychiatric Association 2019 election, Bailey, Cabaj, Certa, DeJong, Geller, Harding, Hart, Herman, Mensah, Muskin, Peele, Viswanathan, Weissman, Young\nHeart Valve Surgery May Lead to Postoperative Cognitive Deficits\nPatients who undergo heart valve surgery are at a heightened risk of cognitive decline in the first few months after surgery, suggests a paper published yesterday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Association.\n“Aortic valve surgery, which is performed more commonly in older adults, entails greater risk of early cognitive dysfunction within the first month after surgery than mitral valve surgery, but cognition in both groups appears to converge by six months,” wrote Mark Oldham, M.D., of the University of Rochester Medical Center and colleagues.\nOldham and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 12 clinical studies that had assessed the cognitive scores of adults before and after undergoing heart valve surgery. A total of 12 clinical studies, which included 450 patients who had early cognitive assessments (one week to one month after surgery) and 722 patients with intermediate assessments (two to six months after surgery), were included in the analysis. The researchers identified no studies that explored long-term cognitive changes after heart valve surgery, which they noted is a major research gap.\nThe analysis revealed that patients who underwent heart valve surgery experienced moderate cognitive decline in the first month after surgery that improved slightly by six months out. Patients who underwent mitral valve surgery experienced mild but progressive decline over six months, while those who underwent aortic valve surgery had greater early cognitive dysfunction, followed by partial recovery. The authors noted that patients receiving aortic valve surgery were about 11 years older on average, which could have influenced these outcomes.\n“These findings call for further investigation aimed at refining risk stratification and prevention strategies in this group, in which cognitive vulnerability is widely underrecognized,” Oldham and colleagues concluded.\nTo read more about this topic, see the Psychiatric News article “Escitalopram May Reduce Risk of Heart Problems.”\n(Image: iStock/kupicoo)\nLabels: cognition, cognitive decline, cognitive deficits, geriatric psychiatry, heart surgery, heart valve, Journal of the American Geriatrics Association, Mark Oldham, postoperative\nShared Decision Making With Patients Can Improve Treatment Engagement, Medication Adherence\nProviding patients with a computer-based, shared decision-making tool may promote ongoing treatment engagement and adherence to antipsychotic medication regimens, according to a study in Psychiatric Services in Advance.\nShared decision making is a model of patient-provider communication that requires the active participation of both patient and clinician in information sharing, leading to a treatment decision made and agreed upon by both parties. It combines evidence on treatment options with the values and preferences of patients and their families.\nThis study focused on a specific tool called CommonGround, an offering on the My Collaborative Health Outcomes Information System (MyCHOIS), a web-based platform developed by the New York State Office of Mental Health (NYSOMH). Molly T. Finnerty, M.D., of NYSOMH and colleagues examined the effects of MyCHOIS-CommonGround on treatment engagement, and for patients with schizophrenia, adherence to antipsychotic medication regimens.\nSome 472 Medicaid patients completed shared decision-making reports using MyCHOIS-CommonGround, summarizing their symptoms, functioning, and concerns, with the help of peer staff. Later, during a medication appointment, the clinician and patient reviewed the report and worked together to develop a shared decision. Also studied were 944 similar Medicaid patients who did not use the program. Among participants, schizophrenia was the most prevalent diagnosis (40%), and about one-third of the patients had a comorbid substance use disorder.\nWhile there were no differences between the two groups at baseline, during the follow-up year, the MyCHOIS–CommonGround users had a higher level of ongoing engagement in outpatient mental health service compared with the control group (months with use of a service, 8.54 versus 6.95), the researchers wrote. Furthermore, at the one-year follow-up, there was a significant increase in ongoing treatment engagement for the MyCHOIS–CommonGround users group and a significant decrease in engagement for the control group. Patients with schizophrenia who used MyCHOIS-CommonGround were also found to be significantly more adherent to their antipsychotic regimen during the follow-up year than those in the control group (9% more days with medication).\n“It is important to establish the benefit of shared decision making beyond the ethical considerations upon which it was founded, in part to inform implementation decisions. Implementation of shared decision-making programs, such as CommonGround, can be challenging and requires leadership and staff commitment and upfront and ongoing resources,” Finnerty and colleagues wrote. “Shared decision making is a promising approach to enhancing patient-centered care, improving the use of services, and ultimately improving outcomes of care.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric Services article “Consumer Outcomes After Implementing CommonGround as an Approach to Shared Decision Making.”\n(Image: iStock/ake1150sb)\nLabels: antipsychotics, CommonGround, Molly T. Finnerty, Psychiatric Services in Advance, schizophrenia, shared decision making, substance use disorder, treatment engagement\nMental Health Problems Predict Tobacco Use in Youth\nYouth and young adults with internalizing problems such as depression and anxiety and externalizing problems such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may be more likely to begin using tobacco products than those without these disorders, according to a study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.\n“[T]he need for early and specific tobacco product use screening, as well as screening across the spectrum of mental health problems, as tools to prevent tobacco product use onset is apparent,” wrote Wilson Compton, M.D., M.P.E., deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and colleagues. “Providing incentives to providers to link these two screening mechanisms could increase the overall integration of these services in clinical practice.”\nFor the study, Compton and colleagues relied on data obtained from youth and young adults who were participants in the longitudinal Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. Specifically, the authors analyzed data from 9,067 youth (12 to 17 years) and 1,466 young adults (18 to 24 years) who reported having never used tobacco products at the beginning of the study (Wave 1).\nAt Wave 1, the study participants completed the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs-Short Screener, which assesses internalizing and externalizing problems, and answered questions about drug and alcohol use. At Wave 2 (approximately one year later), the participants were again asked about their use of tobacco products (including cigarettes, electronic nicotine delivery systems, traditional cigars, cigarillos, filtered cigars, pipe, hookah, smokeless tobacco, snus pouches, bidis, kreteks, and dissolvable tobacco) over the past 12 months.\nAfter adjusting for sociodemographics, alcohol or drug use, and externalizing problems, youth and young adults with high severity internalizing problems were found to be 1.5 times more likely to begin use of any tobacco product compared with those with no/low/moderate severity internalizing problems. Youth and young adults with high severity externalizing problems were 1.3 times more likely to begin use of any tobacco product compared with those with no/low/moderate severity externalizing symptoms.\nAdditional analysis revealed that youth and young adults with high severity internalizing problems were about 1.8 times more likely to report new use of multiple tobacco products. The “findings of a dose-response relationship between internalizing problems and onset of exclusive and poly-tobacco use, respectively, suggest that youth and young adults with internalizing problems were not only more likely to begin using tobacco products compared to those without internalizing problems, but were also more likely to begin using with multiple tobacco products,” the authors wrote.\nThey concluded, “This study demonstrates that mental health problems predict the onset of tobacco use among youth and young adults in a nationally representative sample, and across a wide range of tobacco products beyond cigarettes. … In addition to screening for tobacco product use, health care providers should screen for a range of mental health problems as a predictor of tobacco use.”\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “FDA’s ‘Real Cost’ Campaign Cuts Cigarette Smoking by Teens.”\n(Image: iStock/prudkov)\nLabels: externalizing problems, internalizing problems, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, PATH Study, smoking, tobacco use, Wilson Compton, young adults, youth\nWomen’s Psychiatry Expert Discusses Importance of Addressing Patients’ Sexual Harassment\nAsking patients about their history with sexual harassment and abuse should be a routine part of psychiatric care, said APA Past President Nada Stotland, M.D., during her presentation at this year’s IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference. The comments were part of a wide-ranging lecture about important social issues facing women psychiatrists today.\nStotland, who is an expert on reproductive psychiatry and women’s issues, told the audience that psychiatrists can play key roles in helping people deal with and recover from their experiences of sexual harassment and/or sexual abuse. While she noted that identifying a patient’s sexual harassment history is important, she emphasized that such questions must be asked with empathy and sensitivity. If a patient has had such an experience, the psychiatrist’s focus should be on helping the patient deal with her reactions to her experience, such as self-recrimination, shame, guilt, and/or rage. “We need to validate their reactions,” she said.\nStotland recommended that psychiatrists should primarily use psychotherapy during the early stages of therapy and prescribe medications to patients with severe, acute symptoms. Once a good rapport has been reached, medications can be given on a case-by-case basis.\nRisk of sexual harassment is not limited to patients, and Stotland also provided some suggestions for women psychiatrists to help protect themselves.\n“Before accepting any job, get as much information as possible about the power structure of the employer and its sexual harassment history,” she stressed. Stotland added that women should also be aware of what support services are available at the institution or in the surrounding area should any problems arise.\nTo read more about sexual harassment in psychiatry, see the Psychiatric News article “Sexual Harassment Still Occurs in Psychiatry, Says Women’s Caucus Leader” and the Psychiatric Services article “Gold Award: Integrated Psychiatric Treatment for Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence at the Bronx Family Justice Center.”\nLabels: IPS, mental health, Nada Stotland, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, women psychiatrists\nMore African Americans With Schizophrenia Could Receive Clozapine Despite Lower White Blood Cell Counts\nMore African Americans with schizophrenia who are not prescribed the antipsychotic clozapine because of low white blood cell counts could potentially use the drug safely, according to Deanna Kelly, Pharm.D., and Gopal Vyas, D.O.\nKelly is the director of the Treatment Research Program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center (pictured left), and Vyas is a psychiatrist at the Treatment Research Center. They spoke yesterday at APA’s IPS: The Mental Health Services Conference in Chicago.\nClozapine has been shown repeatedly to be the best medication for treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Yet Kelly and Vyas explained that African Americans with schizophrenia are much less likely to receive clozapine and more likely to have the medication discontinued because of neutropenia, or low white blood cell counts. Clozapine is known to increase the risk for agranulocytosis—a condition of extremely low white blood cell counts that can be life threatening—and patients using clozapine are required to undergo periodic blood monitoring. Many African-American patients who never received the drug or were taken off it, however, may have benign ethnic neutropenia (BEN), a condition that occurs in about 25% to 50% of people of African ancestry and up to 38% of people of Middle-Eastern descent.\nKelly and Vyas said that the standards for determining when a patient has neutropenia have largely been drawn from European Caucasian populations.For instance, up until 2015, the Food and Drug Administration required clozapine to be discontinued when neutrophil counts fell below 1500/uL. But individuals with BEN are liable to have naturally occurring neutrophil counts that fall below that standard and are not at greater risk of agranulocytosis.\nIn 2015, the FDA lowered the threshold for interrupting clozapine treatment from an absolute neutrophil count of 1,500/uL to 1,000/uL. New guidelines have been issued for patients believed to have BEN, which are intended to make it easier to prescribe and continue clozapine use for these patients.\n“Clozapine is underutilized due to many reasons, and its use in African-descent patients is very low,” Kelly said. “The underuse most likely is attributed to BEN, but clozapine use in BEN does not increase the risk for agranulocytosis or infection related to using clozapine.”\nFor related information see the Psychiatric News article “New Clozapine Guidelines Likely to Limit Treatment Interruptions.”\n(Image: Mark Moran)\nLabels: African Americans, BEN, benign ethnic neutropenia, clozapine, low blood cell counts.\nAPA Praises Congressional Passage of Opioid Treatment and Prevention Package\nA bipartisan legislative package passed yesterday by Congress takes many important steps toward combating the opioid crisis with a broad range of opioid treatment and prevention programs, said APA in a statement.\n“Opioid use disorder has taken a heavy toll on the health and well-being of Americans,” commented APA President Altha J. Stewart, M.D. “APA is grateful to see bipartisan support for increased access to treatment for substance use disorders [SUD], including expanded access to residential treatment and medication-assisted treatment.”\nAPA was disappointed, however, that the bill failed to include a critical revamp of a federal regulation known as 42 CFR Part 2 to align it with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The changes for which APA had lobbied would have allowed for better care coordination, improved patient safety, and reduced stigma for SUD treatment while still preserving patient confidentiality, Stewart said. These measures are contained in the OPPS Act (HR 6082), which passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this year. “We urge the Senate to hold a separate vote on the OPPS Act to ensure that these reforms become law.”\nAfter passing the Senate 98 to 1, the legislation—The SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (HR 6)—now awaits President Trump’s signature. One year has passed since President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, yet overdose deaths continue to climb, surpassing 72,000 in 2017, according to the latest provisional government estimates. That number represents a nearly 10 percent increase from the previous year.\nHR 6 includes a number of provisions for which APA had lobbied, including the following:\nTelemedicine: eliminates telehealth facility fees and waives geographic requirements for treatment of SUD for Medicare patients; also directs the Attorney General to issue final regulations within one year specifying the limited circumstances in which a special registration to use telemedicine to treat SUD may be issued and the procedure for obtaining a special registration.\nMental health and substance use treatment parity: mandates coverage of mental health and substance use disorder services for the 9.4 million low-income children enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.\nWorkforce investment: creates a new student loan repayment program for SUD treatment providers (up to $250,000 per individual) who agree to serve for six years in underserved areas or areas with higher-than-average overdose rates.\nPain management: supports innovative medical research at the National Institutes of Health to combat the opioid crisis.\nThe legislation also lifts the ban on states from using Medicaid funds to treat SUD patients in larger residential facilities. States will now be able to amend their plans to cover institutional SUD treatment for up to 30 days per patient in a 12-month period.\nThe opioid package does not allot funding for its measures. In a separate measure last week, a FY2019 appropriations package provided $3.8 billion for the opioid crisis, a $206 million increase from 2018 funding levels.\nFor related information, see “APA Praises Congress for Passing Bill That Funds Mental Health and Substance Use Services.”\n(image: iStock/Moussa81)\nLabels: Altha Stewart, confidentiality, HIPAA, HR 6, HR 6082, opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, Support for Patients and Communities Act\nEEG Readings Not Recommended for Predicting Depression-Treatment Response\nQuantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) does not appear to be a reliable tool to predict how a person with major depression will respond to treatment, according to a meta-analysis published today in AJP in Advance.\nQEEG recordings—which are direct measures of the brain’s electrical waves—have been considered promising biomarkers in psychiatry. Taking a QEEG is easier and less expensive than conducting a full brain scan, another tool being used to find biomarkers for depression. But in their analysis, Alik Widge, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota and colleagues indicated that while QEEG is better than random chance, its overall accuracy is not good enough for widespread use.\n“This conclusion is likely not surprising to experts in QEEG, who are familiar with the limitations of this literature,” Widge and colleagues wrote. “It is important, however, for practicing psychiatrists to understand the limitations, given the availability of QEEG as a diagnostic test. At present, marketed approaches do not represent evidence-based care.”\nWidge and colleagues analyzed 76 studies published between January 2000 and November 2017 involving QEEG readings as biomarkers for predicting response to depression treatment. Fifty-seven studies looked at medication response, 14 looked at transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) response, and six looked at other treatments like electrical stimulation.\nOverall, the use of QEEG was about 76 percent accurate at discriminating people who would or would not respond to a given depression treatment. There were no significant differences between the treatment types (medication, TMS, other) or in the specific QEEG biomarker that was used. However, the authors found that this accuracy rating was primarily buoyed by a handful of small studies that produced strong results. The authors also noted that most of the studies analyzed did not validate their biomarker tests on independent samples, which likely means the 76 percent rating is an overestimate.\n“Our results do not imply that QEEG findings are not real; they call into question the robustness and reliability of links between symptom checklists and specific aspects of resting-state brain activity. If future studies can be conducted with an emphasis on rigorous methods and reporting, and with specific attempts to replicate prior results, QEEG still has much potential,” the authors concluded.\nFor related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Will Imaging Guide Future Depression Care?”\n(image: iStock/Rungruedee Malasri)\nLabels: biomarker, brain activity, depression, depression treatment, EEG, electroencephalography, prediction of response, treatment response\nSpecialized Psychotherapy Found to Reduce Severity...\nWhat Can Physicians Do to Prevent Firearm Violence...\nAugmenting Interpersonal Therapy Early May Speed I...\nCardioprotective Treatments After Heart Attack Inc...\nChildren With Anxiety Disorders Face Higher Risk f...\nSupport at Home, in Community May Protect Against ...\nHaloperidol, Ziprasidone Found Ineffective in Trea...\nPatients With OUD Who Receive Extended-Release Nal...\nGiving Patients Choice of PTSD Treatment Yields Si...\nSeveral Symptoms May Point to Suboptimal Medicatio...\nOlder Adults Who Engage in Self-Harm Are Often Not...\nMethylphenidate May Lead to Improvements in Youth ...\nHeart Valve Surgery May Lead to Postoperative Cogn...\nShared Decision Making With Patients Can Improve T...\nMental Health Problems Predict Tobacco Use in Yout...\nWomen’s Psychiatry Expert Discusses Importance of ...\nMore African Americans With Schizophrenia Could Re...\nAPA Praises Congressional Passage of Opioid Treatm...\nEEG Readings Not Recommended for Predicting Depres...\nMachine Learning Can Help Predict Social Outcomes ...\nMedicare Beneficiaries With Mental Illness May Be ...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line522741"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.687298595905304,"wiki_prob":0.687298595905304,"text":"In the preface, dated January 12th 1738-39, to his Diary James comments that while the life story of some of the leading lights of his time, and before, had been recorded in writing, those of less illustrious standing rarely saw fit to pen for posterity accounts of their own lives. This observation was made in his fortieth year, a time traditionally to take stock, and, in current terminology, coinciding perhaps with a mid-life crisis. It may be argued, of course, that in James's time \"mid-life\" was closer to 30, but whatever the underlying reason, James sorely rued the general lack of written family records. He therefore set out to at least remedy this deficiency as regards the people and events of his immediate and extended family and his circle of acquaintances.\nConscious of his modest literary talents, and since he would\n\"not be so exact in methodizing every part as if it were designed for public view...\"\nwe are given to understand that this was to be a very personal account, for immediate family consumption only.\nPrior to the start of the Diary proper, James \"fills us in\" on the background to the family, giving accounts of his and his mother's families, going back a few generations. The actual entries span the years 1718-1760. For the years 1718-1738 James relied on notes he had kept up to that time. From then on he would have maintained the diary as an on-going project. It is interesting to note, despite his exhortation for more people to recognise the value of keeping meticulous records of family affairs, that the frequency of entries drops off considerably after 1738!\nThe final Diary entry is dated 31st December 1760. Our Diarist lived a for a further 13� years, which begs the question as to why such an abrupt ending. It may be that James assiduously continued with his family chronicle, and that the manuscript has been lost (or is awaiting rediscovery!?). The spasmodic nature of the entries in the latter part of his life suggest that he may have lost interest, or had not had the time to maintain his Diary on a more regular basis.\nIt was James's hope that succeeding generations would think fit to preserve his notes, and\n\"...thereto annex an account of such things worthy of note...in the day of your pilgrimage...\"\nso that future generations would have a true account of their predecessors. Nothing has come to light to show that any of the later family members fulfilled his wish.\nWhat the Diary Tells Us\nJames's Diary, by his own admission and intent, concentrates its focus on his own family. In this respect it is a far more intimate account than that of another Fretwell-related Diarist, John Hobson, and from a genealogical perspective, much more useful.\nOn each re-reading of the Diary more is understood about the life and times of James. Notwithstanding the inherent dangers of interpreting attitudes and events from such a distance in time, the following may be confidently posited from James's account.\nGeographic Horizons\nJames's life was circumscribed by a relatively small geographic area. Apart from a short time in London in his youth, and occasional business trips away from \"base\", he did not move far afield. The map on the right shows the principal places cited by James in his Diary. Two distinct enclaves can be identified - representing the respective \"home territory\" of the Fretwells and the Woodhouses. The map on the left, showing the whole of Yorkshire, puts into the span of this territory into perspective.\nWhether from choice, a sense of duty, or economic dependence, the Fretwells and Woodhouses appear to have been a very close-knit bunch, and this is particularly so within James's immediate family. He had a especially strong bond with his beloved mother, but James also took a lively interest in all the family's comings and goings, and was genuinely concerned for their welfare. By far the greatest proportion of the Diary entries refer to the marriages and births, visits to and by, and the deaths and burials of family members.\nJames and his siblings received their earliest education from their mother. James draws a comparison between those, like his mother, for whom this responsibility was undertaken as a labour of love, and others who neglected their teaching duties. Apart from reliance on mothers for educating the children, other family members were asked to assist. Thus we find various Aunts taking on the role of teacher, and for some time James undertook to oversee the education of his 'slow' nephew.\nHaving mastered the basics at home, and 'graduated' from Dame School, James and his brothers continued their schooling away from home - at Kirk Sandall, Stoney Stainton, and Doncaster - which meant that they were boarded out. The next stage was to find appropriate apprenticeships, which were negotiated between the family and the chosen \"Master\". James went to London, while his brother found a place closer to home.\nJames's family was principally involved in the timber trade. The Woodhouses included tradesmen and \"professionals\" among their ranks. However, the range of occupations tended to be limited, with incoming husbands likely to follow the same trade as their fathers-in-law. Regardless of the callings in life, there was a degree of dependence upon relatives for training and apprenticeships as the following table shows.\nRelationship with James\nRichard Fretwell\nGt Grandfather\nJames Fretwell\nTrained as a Carpenter, but chief business was Timber Merchant\nJohn Bower\nHusband of Gt Aunt Elizabeth Fretwell\nJohn Bower jnr\nCousin (removed)\nReuben Woodhouse\nGt Uncle (by marriage)\nApprenticed to Mercer and Grocer of Barnsley.\nSet up for himself as Butter Trader, Linen Draper and Grocer\nBenjamin Fretwell\nGt Uncle\nTanner, apprenticed to Stephen Husband\nHorse Dealer\nWilliam Fretwell\nTimber Merchant\nStephen Husband\nLegal Clerk Apprenticeship with Uncle John Woodhouse;\nTimber Merchant (and ship owner)\nJohn Woodhouse\nAttorney, Sherrifs Court, London\nJohn Fretwell\nTimber Merchant (and Farmer?)\nWilliam Woodhouse\nApprenticed to Upholsterer in London\n? Hill\nApprenticed to a Cheesemonger in London\nApprenticed to a Chandler and Grocer, Doncaster\nThomas Routh\nHusband of Cousin Ann Wasteneys\nLinen Draper and Grocer\nMichael Woodhouse\nThomas Foulston\nHusband of Cousin Elizabeth Fretwell\nGrocer and Chandler\nHusband of Niece Mary Woodhouse\nFundamental to the Fretwells' lives was their faith. Although not specifically stated, from references James makes to Quakers, we can assume that the family were strongly Anglican. Second only to references to family matters are James's frequent entries concerning attendance at church services, and the merits or otherwise of various Ministers. Records are kept of the choice of Bible verses for sermons and funeral services, and occasionally James has taken the trouble to write them out in full. On numerous occasions, when threatened by some actual or potential danger, James's gives thanks to the Lord for deliverance.\nCompetent and prudent management skills were essential qualifications for the ideal wife and mother. To her fell the responsibility of providing an efficiently run and harmonious household. Such was the household maintained by James's mother and doubtless her standards were the yardstick by which he makes comparisons of other women in the Diary.\nJames never married. Did he not find anyone who could measure up to his ideal, as personified by his mother? Speculation, while diverting, must remain just that. There is no hint whatsoever in the Diary to substantiate this theory, or any other reason as to why James remained a bachelor. With no wife to run his household he was reliant, as were single men of his time, upon female members of his family to take care of him. Before her marriage, his sister Mary ran his household. At various times James took lodgings, presumably when there were no 'free' female relatives upon which he could call. But later in life he found lodgings somewhat tiresome and returned to his own house, having agreed to take on his 'unmanageable\" niece as housekeeper.\nFrom his own writing, James comes across as a conscientious, caring, and eminently respectable man. It may being doing him an injustice, but he also comes across as a serious, even dour man, lacking any sense of humour. If he indulged in any light hearted pursuits, he does not mention them, except for one instance of accompanying his brother to the Doncaster fair. His taste might have been for a quieter lifestyle, in which he found fulfilment from his family and the few close friends he mentions in the Diary.\nAs a business man James we would expect James to take an interest in affairs beyond his domestic environment. There are passing references in his Diary to such events as the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752; local elections; the final quashing of the Jacobites and the the victory over the French forces at Quebec. He talks about the enclosures he made on his lands, and his attendances before the Commissioners at Doncaster regarding the enclosure of common lands. We hear also of the re-opening of the markets for horned cattle in 1756 which had been closed for a number of years due to distemper. One of the last entries refers to the death of George II and the the proclamation at Pontefract of George III.\nAccording to James, he was a sickly child, and the state of his health occupied his mind throughout his life. Thus we have accounts of bouts of illness, and the cures sought to remedy them. He makes reference to one of the scourges of the day - small pox - which afflicted members of his own family. We are also reminded that rabies was prevalent at that time from an account of a mad dog which bit him and his sister.\nAs is the case today, travel in the 18th century was fraught with danger. It would be interesting to compare statistics for road fatalities today to those of James's time. There are a number of incidents of people falling from their horses, or being 'run over' by horses, recorded in the Diary. That the number of accidents occurred when the rider was 'under the influence' suggest that the current campaigns against drinking and driving would have been well understood in James's time.\nMortality is a constant theme throughout the Diary. James, in tune with the general philosophy of the day, treats the passing of so many of his family fatalistically. It was God's will and indeed, in many cases death was a blessed relief from the trials of life. Particularly poignant is the dispassionate reporting of so many instances of still births or of babies dying so soon after birth - a stark reminder of the difficulties of pregnancy and child birth in the 18th Century. From the early loss of his brothers, we are also reminded that even if children survived past infancy and adolescence, premature death in early adulthood was a frequent occurrence.\nThis page was last updated on 12 June, 2011","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1104042"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8215368986129761,"wiki_prob":0.8215368986129761,"text":"Home Somaliland Somaliland: Somali aid community faces up to a new reality of recurring...\nSomaliland: Somali aid community faces up to a new reality of recurring drought\nNorthwestern Somaliland and Djibouti were also struck by an unprecedented cyclone last year, bringing a year’s worth of rain in only a few days, which killed animals and flooded crops.\nThis year, rains started late and were insufficient, resulting in drought conditions across Somalia. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimates that 2.2 million people will experience crisis and emergency food insecurity through September.\nIn agropastoral areas, maize and sorghum production is expected to reach only about half of normal levels this year. Meanwhile, funding for food assistance is falling seriously short.\nA key strategy in building resilience in the region is to promote climate-smart agriculture. Since a lack of water is the main problem, aid groups are working with communities to set up basic rainwater harvesting systems that store water in underground tanks or plastic-lined pits, to help keep crops alive during dry periods.\nHARGEISA, Somaliland — If she were to meet someone from her past life, Halima Dahir Mahmoud is not sure they would recognize her. She’s lost weight and is constantly stressed. She was once a nomadic herder who would roam the Ethiopian countryside with her 200 sheep and goats, and 50 camels. Now she lives in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Somaliland’s capital city of Hargeisa.\n“One of the things I miss the most is the fresh air,” she said.\nA few years ago, her animals started dying because of a regional drought. Eventually, there were none left. Her family left Ethiopia and walked 12 hours until they reached the displacement camp where they now live.\n“If you experience drought year after year, you become weak and vulnerable.”\n— Mohamed Abdalle Hussein, director of administration and finance, Somaliland National Disaster Preparedness and Food Reserve Authority\nIn the past, she had more agency over her own life, she said. Her family lived off of their livestock, selling a few when they needed cash. Now they are dependent on aid.\nDrought has burdened the region year after year since 2015, killing off livestock and crops. Globally, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. In the Horn of Africa, scientists have linked climate change to frequent drought conditions.\n“We’ve faced five years of consecutive drought in this country. Livelihoods have collapsed,” said Mohamed Abdalle Hussein, director of administration and finance at the National Disaster Preparedness and Food Reserve Authority in Somaliland — a region that unilaterally declared independence from Somalia in 1991, although this is not internationally recognized.\nIn the past, there was typically a buffer zone of good rainy seasons in between droughts that allowed people to recover and rebuild their assets, Hussein said.\n“Drought is a common disaster we’ve always faced, but the interval has changed. Before, it was a five to seven-year interval between [periods] when we experienced drought. Now that interval has decreased to one to two years,” he said. “If you experience drought year after year, you become weak and vulnerable.”\nWith this new reality, the aid sector and local governments are faced with the need to shift the existing emergency response to a development approach that responds to long-term displacement and increases resilience among communities, with a focus on how to preserve their livelihoods.\nHorn of Africa burdened with crisis after crisis\nDrought, floods, and cyclones — as climate change increases its influence over weather conditions in the region, unpredictable and destructive events are expected to become the new norm.\nAdapting to new conditions\nIn the past decade, the Horn of Africa has been hit by repeated disasters. A famine in southern Somalia in 2011 killed nearly 260,000 people, and another was narrowly averted in 2017.\nAs part of an Irish Aid-funded program, Concern Worldwide is also encouraging farmers to diversify crops. Adding crops with shorter timeframes between planting and harvesting, as well as drought-tolerant crops, can help insulate farmers against climatic shocks, said Abubakar Ismail, agriculture project officer at Concern. Crop rotation also improves soil fertility, which increases yield.\nA demonstration nursery of a lead farmer near Borama, Somaliland. Photo by: Sara Jerving / Devex\nConcern is also teaching techniques such as crop spacing, creating sheltered nurseries, using organic fertilizers and pesticides, proper post-harvest treatment, and constructing soil bunds — embankments constructed from dirt — to conserve the topsoil and surface runoff water. It works with “lead farmers” in communities, helping them to create demonstration plots to showcase the techniques. The hope is that other farmers in the area visit the plots to learn how to change their own practices.\nFarming is seen as a more resilient livelihood option than herding livestock given the region’s new weather patterns: “There are more drought-resistant crops than drought-resistant animals,” Lena Voigt, area coordinator for Concern Worldwide, explained.\nBut because pastoralism is a dominant way of life in many parts of Somalia, there is a lot of capacity-building needed in developing the agriculture sector and convincing people to adopt this type of livelihood, she said.\nNo way back\nYurub Hussein Mohmoud lives in a displacement camp that’s taken on a more permanent look — 350 concrete housing units constructed by UN-Habitat with support from the Japanese government. She’s lived in the camp for four years following the death of all her livestock from drought.\nFor Mohmoud, there is no turning back to her life of agropastoralism. She prefers life in the displacement camp where she has her own shop selling food, shampoo, diapers, cigarettes, and camel’s milk.\nMohmoud is involved in a EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa project aimed at creating long-term solutions for displaced populations. As part of the program, she received a year-long training to develop her business skills, was placed in a women’s savings and loans group, and received a cash injection of $165 to jumpstart her shop.\n“There is a huge difference between the woman standing in the hot sun, digging holes in the ground, and the woman that takes a shower in the morning and comes to her shop,” she said, laughing. “I’m happier where I am now.”\nA displacement camp outside of Hargeisa, Somaliland. Photo by: Sara Jerving / Devex\nBeyond business grants like these, a major part of the humanitarian response in recent years has been the use of cash transfers, often through mobile money, that aim to provide life and livelihood-saving support to vulnerable families across Somalia.\nBut these are humanitarian cash transfers, meaning they are delivered for short periods of time. This can make it difficult for families to invest in the long-term rebuilding of their livelihoods.\nMoving forward, there are hopes these transfers could evolve into a national social safety net program, eventually led by the federal government, which would include providing cash transfers to targeted individuals throughout the year.\n“It would be good to have a safety net — a long-term, predictable safety net in Somalia — that would cover the basic needs of a good proportion of the population on a constant basis,” said Alessandro Bini, director of the Somali Cash Consortium.\nThe expectation is that, if consistent cash transfers are provided throughout the year, there will be less of a need for large emergency responses during droughts or other emergencies.\nConversations are ongoing with both the humanitarian and development donor communities and the Somali government on the scale and scope of a potential program, Bini said. Ongoing challenges include the varying funding mandates of different donors, government capacity, the lack of national identity cards, and financial sustainability.\nThe humanitarian sector has a consistent caseload of between 500,000 and 1 million people in need of aid in Somalia, said Quentin Le Gallo, technical assistant for Regional Drought Coordination for the EU’s humanitarian arm.\n“They need longer-term assistance and solutions,” he said. “The idea is, if we have a safety net, there would be triggers and early warning systems in place so that once the situation starts to deteriorate, then we can act quickly to protect the assets of these people.”\nEditor’s note: The Somali Cash Consortium facilitated Devex’s travel and logistics for this reporting. Devex retains full editorial independence and control of the content.\nSara Jerving\nSara Jerving is Devex’s East Africa Correspondent based in Nairobi. She is a reporter and producer, whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Vice News, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Nation magazine, among others. Sara holds a master’s degree in business and economic reporting from Colum\nPrevious articleSomalia: Jubbaland(GoshaLand) Crises\nNext articleKhat is big business in Ethiopia","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line968973"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.991651177406311,"wiki_prob":0.991651177406311,"text":"Titanic Belfast named Europe's top visitor attraction - ahead of Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum\nFirst Minister Arlene Foster joins celebrations with Titanic Belfast's vice-chairman Conal Harvey (left) and chief executive Tim Husbands as it is named as Europe's leading visitor attraction at the World Travel Awards. Photo: William Cherry / Press Eye\nTITANIC Belfast has beaten off competition from the likes of the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum in Rome and even Buckingham Palace to be named as Europe’s leading visitor attraction at the prestigious World Travel Awards held in Sardinia.\nIt's the first time an attraction in Northern Ireland has won the top prize in the 23-year history of the tourism 'Oscars’.\nTitanic Belfast chief executive Tim Husbands said he was \"absolutely thrilled\" that, after only four years in operation, the attraction - which last month welcome its three-millionth visitor - had gazumped many of Europe’s most iconic landmarks.\n\"This is a true honour,\" he said.\n\"We know what we offer at Titanic Belfast is something our city and country can be proud of and are delighted that this is has been recognised on an international level.\n\"We are looking forward to welcoming the national and international visitors that this award will attract to Belfast and Northern Ireland. We would like to thank everyone who has supported and voted for us.”\nFirst Minister Arlene Foster said: “In just four short years Titanic Belfast has become a global brand which has put Northern Ireland on the map for all the right reasons, and this official confirmation that it is now Europe’s leading tourist attraction is well deserved.\n\"The award is further proof that the investment and imagination that went into this attraction keeps paying dividends for the whole of Northern Ireland.”\nDeputy First Minister Martin McGuinness added: “Titanic Belfast being voted Europe’s leading visitor attraction is a phenomenal achievement. The story of the Titanic is known around the globe and it is only right and proper we have a world class visitor attraction to match.”\nThe accolade comes on the back of a record-breaking August for Titanic Belfast as it experiences significant visitor numbers growth from France, Germany, USA and China.\nSince opening in 2012 the Belfast attraction it has welcomed guests including Queen Elizabeth II, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Titanic director James Cameron, Taoiseach Enda Kenny and major celebrities including Adele and Michael Bublé.\nWorld Tourism Awards\ntim husbands\n05 September, 2016 09:20 Business\n9,000 premises west of the Bann now able to make switch to gas\nIrishnews.com Jobs\nISEQ","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line328765"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6511008143424988,"wiki_prob":0.6511008143424988,"text":"Episode 236: Extreme Makeover\nOctober 7, 2013 May 1967, Ron Sproatambition, bangor, general hospital, mythology, personal space, pretty girl in peril, retconDanny Horn\n“Vicki thinks it might be her imagination. But somehow, she connects the two… and they add up to Willie.”\nMaggie’s disappeared from the hospital! Last week, the nurse thought that Maggie had died, and ran to get the doctor. When they came back into the room a moment later, the window was open and Maggie was gone.\nSo there are a lot of mysteries going on, and we’ll get some answers by the end of the day. But at the moment, the most pressing questions are: Why is there a camera in the hallway, and why does everybody keep touching Sam?\nSam is understandably upset. His daughter wasn’t in great shape when he checked her into the hospital, but at least she was alive and he knew where she was. Now she’s either dead, missing or both, and he’s probably still going to have to pay the deductible.\nHis first impulse is to run outside and yell Maggie’s name a bunch of times, like people usually do on soap operas, but Dr. Woodard grabs him and says, “Leave it to us,” as if the search and rescue mission is part of the hospital’s quality care initiative.\nJoe suggests that Maggie may have wandered back to the cemetery on Eagle Hill. He pats Sam’s arm, and says that he’ll go check it out.\nApparently, Sam won’t listen to anyone unless they’re currently touching him. It’s the new rule.\nAs Sam staggers back into the room, we see that a camera’s been filming them in the hallway. Is the local news team here already?\nObviously, Sam is just shattered; he can’t believe this is happening. Woodard responds by putting his hands on Sam’s shoulders, like they teach you to do in medical school.\nThen Burke rushes in, and we see the camera in the hallway again. They cut to that camera for a shot of Burke and Woodard at the door. When they cut back to Sam, the other camera is still in the shot.\nThis suggests an interesting new way to interpret the show. Maybe Dark Shadows is actually a reality show, and everyone is aware that the cameras are there. That would explain so many things.\nBy the time Joe comes back from the cemetery, Burke is all up on Sam again. They can’t keep their hands off him; they’re insatiable. Three different guys have fondled him in the last ten minutes.\nBurke reminds them that Vicki had a hunch that Willie was responsible for last week’s mysterious phone call, telling them that Maggie was in the graveyard.\nExcept that Vicki never actually said that. Burke’s talking about a conversation that happens in tomorrow’s episode, and it’s the sheriff who suggests that Willie made the call, not Vicki. They’ve been filming episodes out of order lately, and this is the first sign that the characters are starting to experience some wibbly-wobbly time jumps.\nBy the way, look at this amazing shot. The characters are all standing in a line, everybody’s found their light, and they look fantastic. They also did a nice artsy thing at the beginning of the episode, with all three cameras doing close-ups on Sam, Joe and Woodard, and cutting back and forth between them to indicate urgency.\nOf course, then they couldn’t quite get the main camera back in focus for the group shot, so you can see them adjust the focus a second later.\nBut the point is: They tried.\nBy way of comparison, check out this contemporary episode of General Hospital. They start a basic two-shot at 3:00, and they stay on that camera for a full two and a half minutes. The characters walk back and forth across the set, and have six different conversations without cutting to a close-up, like it’s a stage play. They’re finally forced to go to another shot when a character walks through a door where the camera can’t follow.\nMeanwhile, on Dark Shadows, they’re making television.\nLela Swift is the director for all five episodes this week. She’s got a silly vampire script, no money for retakes and a daytime-TV audience with low expectations, but she’s still setting up visually interesting shots. On General Hospital, the director just points the camera at whoever’s talking. Swift shows up and actually does her damn job.\nAnd that’s one reason why YouTube only has one General Hospital episode from 1967, and the entire run of Dark Shadows is available on Netflix, Hulu and DVD. The people who made Dark Shadows actually cared.\nSo let’s go over to the Old House, where Burke and Joe are following a lead. Barnabas says that Willie’s gone to Bangor for the night, and he won’t be back until morning. That might be the least convincing alibi of all time.\nBut Barnabas says “I find this all completely mystifying,” so I guess it’s not possible to go to Bangor and kidnap Maggie in the same night. What was I thinking?\nAs soon as the Hardy Boys drive away, Barnabas calls out, “It’s all right. They’re gone. You’re safe… safe here with me.” And then a hypnotized Maggie walks into the room and takes Barnabas’ hand.\nWHICH IS UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME.\nBarnabas brings Maggie upstairs to Josette Collins’ room, which he and Willie have painstakingly restored. Josette’s portrait is hanging above the fireplace, and there are candles and flowers everywhere. It’s a fantastic set.\n“You see?” Barnabas says. “It’s just as you left it, long, long ago. Nothing has changed. Even we haven’t changed.”\nMaggie sits at the window. Barnabas purrs, “But perhaps you’ve changed. You’re more lovely, my dear Josette, then I remember.”\nThe girl reacts: “Josette?”\nBarnabas assures her, “Yes… From now on, that will be your name. A name of great beauty. In time, you will learn to think like her, act like her. You will become her.”\nAnd there you go. This is the moment that redefines Dark Shadows. It sets us on the road to understanding and eventually embracing this undead monster, and accepting him as the protagonist of the show.\nWe’ve seen Josette’s ghost sporadically over the last six months; her big moment was in December 1966, when she was the spiritus ex machina who stepped in when Vicki was kidnapped. We didn’t hear a lot about Josette’s backstory, except that she lived in the Old House, she was married to Jeremiah Collins, and she’d died in some vaguely tragic way.\nNow the ratings are going up, and the producers need to figure out how to keep Barnabas on the show. This is how they do it — by sticking the vampire straight into the middle of the Collins family’s origin myth.\nRemember that endless soliloquy that Barnabas delivered the other day about the beautiful young woman running away from her lover, and throwing herself off the cliff on Widows’ Hill? That was Josette, and she was running away because Barnabas wanted to turn her into a vampire.\nThis wasn’t their original intention when they introduced Barnabas. In his second episode, Barnabas talked to Josette’s portrait, and strongly implied that she’d died before he was born. They’re coming up with this plot point on the fly, reaching out for whatever they can use to keep the show going for another day.\nThis is an incredible retcon, a moment of pure inspiration, and it’s going to drive the story for the next four years. It’s been a slow start, and it’s going to be slow for a little while longer. But this is where Dark Shadows begins.\nTomorrow: Cold Case.\nMore Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:\nWoodard explains: “The nurse and I walked into Maggie’s room; the room was empty. And that room that the nurse had left open just a crack was wide open.” He means the window was left open.\nJoe comes into the hospital room and reports, “I was all over Eagle. Hill. Cemetery grounds. Nothing.”\nThere’s a loud squeak when Burke and Joe leave Maggie’s hospital room.\nDark Shadows episode guide – 1967\n← Episode 235: The Waiting Room\tEpisode 237: Cold Case →\n8 thoughts on “Episode 236: Extreme Makeover”\nJoanne Georgiades says:\nThe barnabas and josette story was always heartbreakingly bittersweet n made barnabus a sympathetic character\nThere’s a perfectly simple explanation for all the Sam-fondling; they’re just getting a grip on David Ford so they can turn him toward the camera if need be, or pinch him when he’s supposed to start (or stop) talking.\nTom Hartley says:\nSo the way you make a character sympathetic is by having him abduct and brainwash a young girl.\nYeah. The sympathetic part doesn’t really kick in for a while, and there are ways in which it never really happens at all. “Sympathetic” turns out to be a very complicated concept.\nThis is a stunning episode (especially the scenes in Josette’s room). One of the best DS periods for me.\nAnd you’re spot-on again with another observation: Lela Swift does a magnificent job. And hats off to the set designer. Josette’s room is splendid. (Willie and Barnabas sure do FAST renovations and clean-up, though).\nFinally, this new material is just a blessing for Kathryn Leigh Scott. I didn’t know until I viewed the pre-Barnabas episodes starting this past summer, but Maggie was much of anything until now. Now she’s riveting.\nDS had a lot of defining moments, but this one may have been its ultimate. Past, present, future intersect when those two enter Josette’s room for the first time.\nI believe that’s a teleprompter in the hallway, not a camera (you can see the script rolling). Also, Barnabas says Willie will be back the next evening, not the next morning (I know, that’s a tiny, tiny point).\nAdditional bloopers: In Act I, after Dr. Woodard says he doesn’t think Maggie had the strength to walk to Eagle Hill (Joe wants to look for her there), Sam says, “Well, she had the strength not to walk out of this hospital.” Obviously he meant she had the strength TO walk out.\nIn Act IV, as Maggie is sitting at Josette’s vanity and looking into the mirror, there is a shuffling noise on the set, and you can see someone’s reflection moving in the mirror behind Maggie. The camera tries to make a quick shift to the right to block the reflection but is unsuccessful.\nLindy Mumade says:\nSo are we to suspect that Barnabas did the Maggie-to-Josette makeover involving restyling her hair from a simple ponytail to the ringlets pulled back with a ribbon? Or did she stop at a hair salon on the way from the hospital to the Old House?\nWillie has undreamed-of talents. A true Renaissance Man.\nLeave a Reply to William Cancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line733756"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9547333717346191,"wiki_prob":0.9547333717346191,"text":"Military trial inches on for alleged al-Qaida commander\nby Taylor Hall | Jul 24, 2015 | GITMO, National Security\nFlags fly at half-staff at Joint Task Force Guantanamo's Camp Justice, July 22, 2015 (Taylor Hall/Medill)\nNAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — It has been more than 3,000 days since alleged al-Qaida commander Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi was transferred to the U.S. military’s detention facility here.\nAnd new complications this week have further tangled the web of his already Gordian war-court proceedings and will extend his stay at least two more months.\nIn 2013, congressional Democrats estimated the cost of housing one detainee for one year at the prison camp to be $2.7 million, based on Defense Department figures.\nHadi, a native of Mosul, Iraq, faces life in prison, accused of masterminding a series of attacks on American, Canadian, German, British, Estonian and Norwegian forces, including a 2003 attack on a U.S. military convoy at Shkin, Afghanistan, that killed two U.S. soldiers and injured numerous others.\nAfter another one of his attacks on Oct. 25, 2003, killed two more U.S. soldiers, Hadi’s fighters shot at injured coalition soldiers, according to the charges against him.\nHe is also accused of attacking civilians and a medical helicopter attempting to recover casualties from the battlefield; directing fighters to kill all coalition soldiers and take no prisoners; providing a reward to the Taliban for assassinating a civilian United Nations worker; acting on orders from Osama bin Laden; attempting to assassinate then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf; and destroying historic Buddha statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site.\nA pretrial hearing for Hadi that was originally scheduled to begin July 20 and last about a week and a half has been slipped to Sept. 14.\nThis week’s hearings in Guantanamo got off to a rough start when, two hours prior to a scheduled chambers meeting Sunday, lead government prosecutor Army Lt. Col. David Long turned over 10 pages of evidence from jailhouse conversations in 2007 between Hadi and a Sept. 11 defendant also imprisoned at Guantanamo, Mustafa al Hawsawi.\nHadi’s lead defense lawyer, Marine Lt. Col. Thomas Jasper, said these conversations included information that was adverse to his client.\nThe prosecution apparently intended to include information from the conversation between Hadi and Hawsawi to prove Hadi was an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” a label used by the government to determine jurisdiction of war crimes cases, limiting them to the military courts in Guantanamo.\nWhen Hadi’s defense lawyers asked for more time to review the evidence they received Sunday — less than one day before the military hearings were scheduled to begin — the judge, Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, delayed the hearings for two days to give the defense a chance to determine the scope of potential conflict-of-interest issues.\n“It is not the prosecution’s job to do conflicts analysis for counsel,” chief prosecutor Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins said Friday when asked about the reason for the delayed submission of evidence. “We take our discovery obligation very seriously. We are producing it as we find it and prepare it.”\nIn court Wednesday morning, Waits scolded the prosecution for the delay in submitting evidence — waiting less than one day before the military hearings were scheduled to begin.\n“Promptly means promptly,” Waits said. “I didn’t think that was subject to interpretation.”\nJasper, Hadi’s top Pentagon-paid defense lawyer, said two days was not enough time to weed through all the complex conflict-of-interest issues resulting from the new evidence stemming from the chats between Hawsawi and Hadi.\nOne such issue: It turns out the two alleged war criminals have a defense lawyer in common, at least on paper — Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason.\nGleason became Hadi’s first defense attorney after he arrived at Guantánamo in 2007 in an ongoing churn of attorneys through the on-again, off-again war court’s bar.\nAccording to Jasper, Hadi had not properly released Gleason when the Pentagon’s chief defense counsel assigned him to help defend Hawsawi in the 9/11 case. Now the evidence concerning one could be used against the other, which Jasper said posed ethical issues that could complicate future proceedings for the entire defense team.\nHadi spoke to the military judge directly about his concerns. “Attorney Gleason has lots of information concerning me. I don’t know if he’s gong to use this information in the future for me or against me,” he said in Arabic through a translator Wednesday.\nThe process for releasing defense counsel from representation for a military commission client includes formal dismissal by both military judge and detainee client.\nThough Gleason has not represented Hadi in court since being detailed to Hawsawi’s case, the commission now seeks to determine whether he was properly and formally released.\nWaits agreed there was a potential conflict for Gleason in representing both Hawsawi and Hadi and said that issue must be resolved, but ruled an hour into the hearing that proceedings could continue because Hadi’s current lawyers were conflict-free.\nBut Hadi protested, raising new objections.\n“Right now I have a very disturbed relationship with my attorneys,’’ he said of his Pentagon-funded defense team, Jasper and Air Force Maj. Ben Stirk.\n“I don’t want them to represent me at this time,” Hadi added, citing frustrations over the number of attorneys assigned to work with him on his case over the years.\nHadi said he wants the option of using an independent counsel not assigned by the military — a request he has made before — but agreed to first meet with Gleason.\nBoth U.S. military defense and prosecution attorneys have come and gone from Hadi’s case. Army Reserve Col. Chris Callen represented Hadi at his June 2014 arraignment, and was replaced by Jasper in September. Stirk, a deputy defense counsel, has been the only defense lawyer to appear at all five of Hadi’s hearings.\nWednesday’s hearing also marked the debut of Felice Viti of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Utah, a new federal attorney who prosecuted the Elizabeth Smart kidnap and rape case. But Viti never uttered a word amid the flurry of conflict issues raised by the defense.\nAt the end of the hearing Wednesday, Waits put the proceedings on indefinite hold until a meeting between Hadi and Gleason could be arranged.\nThough prosecutor Navy Lt. Col. Vaughn Spencer told the military judge Gleason is an active-duty Marine and could be contacted “as quickly as you direct us,” Guantanamo court officials began to book return flights for Saturday as soon as they realized Gleason, not present in Guantanamo this week, could not be located.\nGleason’s email auto-response says he is out of the office until Aug. 7.\nOn Friday, Martins, the chief prosecutor, said he did not know where Gleason is.\n“I won’t in any way try to say that what we’re doing is setting land-speed records,” Martins said of the effort to locate Gleason and facilitate a meeting with Hadi. “We’re making incremental progress. The judge is going to sort out the facts of representation. And counsel have an obligation to make sure they’re representing the client’s interests.”\nWhen asked about the costs of rescheduling the Hadi hearings, which included more than a dozen witnesses for the scheduled 10-day military commission’s version of a show-cause hearing in Guantanamo, Martins said: “These are really important cases. It’s easy to do comparative cost figures and fail to see how important it is to get national security right and fairness right.”\nPublished in conjunction with","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line878362"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5151062607765198,"wiki_prob":0.4848937392234802,"text":"Mohammad Amir announces retirement from Test cricket\nJuly 26, 2019 admin 0 Comments Mohammad Amir announces retirement from Test cricket, mohammad amir bowling, mohammad amir pics, mohammad amir wickets, mohammad amir wife\nMohammad Amir announces retirement from Test cricket.\nPakistani in form cricketer Mohammad Amir announces retirement from Test cricket.\nLahore, 26 July 2019:\nMohammad Amir today announced his retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect, but reaffirmed his commitment to playing white ball cricket for Pakistan.\nIn a statement, Amir said: “It has been an honour to represent Pakistan in the pinnacle and traditional format of the game. I, however, have decided to move away from the longer version so I can concentrate on white ball cricket.\n“Playing for Pakistan remains my ultimate desire and objective, and I will try my best to be in the best physical shape to contribute in the team’s upcoming challenges, including next year’s ICC T20 World Cup.\n“It has not been an easy decision to make and I have been thinking about this for some time. But with the ICC World Test Championship commencing shortly, and Pakistan boasting some very exciting young fast bowlers, it is appropriate that I call on my time in Test cricket so that the selectors can plan accordingly.\n“I want to thank all my team-mates as well the opponents in red ball cricket. It has been a privilege to play with and against them. I am sure our paths will continue to cross in limited-overs cricket as all of us play and compete with the same vigour and determination.\n“I also want to thank the PCB for providing me the opportunity to don the golden star on my chest. And, I am grateful to my coaches who have groomed me at various stages of my career.”\nalso read : http://Youtuber ukhano has been accused for harassment,sexting & rape attempt by many girls\nPCB Managing Director Wasim Khan said: “Amir has been one of the most exciting and talented left-arm fast bowlers in Test cricket in recent times. He overcame adversity as a young cricketer and came back stronger not only as a cricketer but also as a better human being. His skill, on the field, and his personality will be missed in the dressing room in the longer format.\n“However, we respect his decision and look forward to him continuing to play an integral role in white ball cricket for Pakistan.”\nAmir made his Test debut against Sri Lanka in Galle in July 2009, he featured in 36 Tests, taking 119 wickets at an average of 30.47. His best bowling returns – six for 44 – were against the West Indies in Kingston in April 2017.\n← Judgementall Hai Kya full movie 2019\nKhandaani Shafakhana full movie 2019 →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line977811"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8616273403167725,"wiki_prob":0.8616273403167725,"text":"Mario Götze: The Premier League Is Very Attractive\nBorussia Dortmund Bundesliga News\nBorussia Dortmund’s Mario Götze has labelled the Premier League ‘very attractive’ ahead of the German sides Champions League clash with Tottenham.\nThe German was heavily linked with a move to Liverpool in the past, though he has remained in the Bundesliga with Dortmund after returning to the club following a brief stint with rivals Bayern Munich.\nDortmund currently sit five points clear of Bayern Munich at the top of Bundesliga and travel to Wembley to face Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham on Wednesday, who also potentially see themselves in a title race. Speaking to Goal, Götze revealed his adoration for English football’s top-flight due to the unpredictability of it, saying: “I can only judge from a Bundesliga perspective as I’ve only played in Germany so far. So, in that sense, it’s difficult to make comparisons.”\n“As an outsider, I have to say that the Premier League is a very attractive league. In England, there are five, six, seven big clubs and you can never be sure who will win the title in the end. It’s very exciting.”\nThe 26-year-old also shared his admiration for his next opponent, revealing Tottenham have a ‘great project’: “Tottenham are very strong and have a great project. Pochettino has been around for a long time, they have players of tremendous quality who have been there for a long time too. It’s great to build on projects.”\n“We played against Spurs in the Champions League group stage last year and we lost both games. We know how important the match is for us and how good our opponents are. It will certainly be an interesting clash.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1464688"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5170142650604248,"wiki_prob":0.4829857349395752,"text":"Product placement: advertising participates to film financing\nWritten by Sébastien Lachaussée\n& Vincent Krohn\nProduct placement means the integration of a product or brand into the script of a film, a television series or any audiovisual work, in order to make it recognizable on the screen or quoted by a protagonist. The primary objective is that the product is remembered, consciously or not, by the viewers.\nProduct placement is divided mainly into three categories. First of all, there is the classic placement, which consists in using the brand’s name or product directly into the actor’s lines of the script. Second of all, the product can be subject to an \"evocative\" placement, which involves the use of the product or brand in a recognizable way, but without mentioning or presenting it. Finally, the placement can also be “stealth”. Less aggressive to the viewer, it aims neither to quote the product nor to make it clearly visible so that its identification is not automatic (ex. Costumes in \"The Fifth Element\" for Jean-Paul Gaultier).\nBecause of the need to adapt the commercial market, the French regulator (CSA), through a resolution taken on February 16th 2010, authorized the use of product placement, not only in movies, where it was already allowed, but also on television. However, this practice, which had a progressive historical development (I), is rigorously controlled (II), and has for now not had the expected success with advertisers (III).\nI) A progressive developpment\nThis practice of product placement is not new, since it originated in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, before movies and TV became the main support of this commercial phenomenon, the actors in cabarets acted as advertising spokesmen. But literary and art piece were also a way to promote products. The result is for instance the presence of a bottle of beer, which brand is recognizable in Edouard Monet’s work Un bar aux Folies Bergère (1881-1882). Meanwhile, cinema becomes the subject of product placement with the emergence of silent movies. Consequently, cars of the brand Ford are found in the credits of Mack Sennett’s comedies or even in the title of the cinematographic work \"She wanted a Ford” in 1916. In France, Georges Méliès had shown a well-known brand of champagne on the screen of his film entitled \"Barbe Bleue” (“Bluebeard\", 1901).\nThe 1940s, representing the \"golden age\" of American cinema, will promote the product placement, because the studios understand quickly that working closely with brands could give them access to free accessories and services or even allow them to increase the film's budget. It follows the presence of products placed in films such as \"The Best Years of Our Lives\" (1946) or \"Skylark\" (1941), where the protagonist wears jewellery of a great brand.\nYet experts believe that the real anchorage of this phenomenon lies in 1982. That year, the theatres showed Steven Spielberg’s \"ET\", where the placement of Reese's Pieces candies increased their sales by 65%. Since then, product placement truly became a common practice in the United States that lasts to this day and is constantly growing.\nHowever, there is in terms of product placement a remarkable cleavage between the United States and France. Indeed, while for the year 2007, the investments of product placement in French cinema were up to € 20 million, the film \"Minority Report\" directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, had, by itself, a budget including $ 25 million resulting entirely from product placement. In 2006, had been invested $ 3.458 billion dollars in American cinema and two years later already more than double.\nContrary to France, this practice is also widely used on American television and finds there similar success.\nII) The regulation of product placement in France\nThe success of product placement experienced by the United States can be explained by the complete absence of statutory or legal regulations governing the matter, whether for film or television. In France, the product placement was able to be developed in the cinematographic sector for the same reason, since a legislative framework did not exist. Yet, this technique was used in a much more moderate way. Following a Directive of the European Union (EU) from 1989, the implementing law of 1992 forbade at the the time strictly product placement with the exception of placements in cinematographic works, without defining regulation for the latters. The CSA settled for this tolerance for films, without any regulation, which caused doubts and hesitations among French professionals.\nOn December 11th, 2007, a new European Directive called \"Audiovisual Media Services without frontiers\" (SMA), taken by the European Parliament and the Council, changes the game. Indeed, while reaffirming the prohibition of product placement in television, this Directive establishes exhaustively listed exceptions to this principle. Thus, the members of the EU may now allow product placement in cinematographic works, films and series created for audiovisual media services, sport programs and entertainment. Consequently, after consultations with relevant parties (advertisers, producers, directors, TV channels), a new implementing law was passed concerning the audiovisual communication and the new public television service, on March 5th, 2009. This law puts the CSA in charge of developing the conditions enforceable for product placement in cinematographic works, television films and series and music clips, which are allowed, except when these programs are intended for children. The law is more restrictive than the Directive, since it does not yet allow the product placements in sport programs and entertainment. Although the Directive and the law mention cinematographic works, the purpose is only to give this practice a legal basis. It is the same for the deliberation of the CSA on February 16th, 2010, which merely mentions the cinematographic works, and only regulates product placement on television.\nThe CSA said in its ruling that can’t be placed on television: beverages with more than 1.2 percent of alcohol, tobacco, tobacco products, medicine whether or not subject to medical prescription, firearms and ammunition, except on some television services, and infant formula.\nAlso, the CSA imposes formal requirements, for instance that product placement should not influence the program in order to affect the responsibility and editorial independence of the editor or directly encourage the purchase or the rent of the products, and that programs should not put undue prominence to the product, service or brand concerned. In addition to these conditions, the Council dictates terms on how to inform the viewer of the presence of placed products, especially through the presence of a pictograms on the screen. This symbol must appear for one minute at the beginning of the program, for one minute after each commercial break and at the end of the program for the duration of the end credits. For music-videos, the icon must be present on the screen for the entire running time of the clip. Furthermore, for a period of two months from the date of the first broadcast by the editor of a program with placed products, the icon must appear for five seconds at the beginning of the broadcasted program in a banner along with the following sentence clearly legible \"this program contains product placement\". After the broadcast of this banner, the icon appears in the terms mentioned above. After two months the banner isn’t required anymore.\nOne of the most influential protagonists in this phenomenon is the product placement agency whose job is to identify potential placements after analyzing some scripts and to look for the best suited brands for the works or interested institutions. For the outcome of a product placement, either the advertiser or the producer contacts the agency to bring the parties together in order to negotiate. After a first meeting, the advertiser, producer, director and editor of a television service, (if the placement is done in a program which is co-produced or pre-bought by the editor), start negotiations paired with the consultation of all persons who may be involved: the director of photography, production designer, set decorator, property master, costume designer, wardrobe supervisor, transport coordinator and/or location manager.\nThe contract which implements the product placement incorporates all the agreements and reciprocal obligations, and can link different people depending on whether it’s a cinematographic work or an audiovisual fiction. If the product placement is done in a television program, the main parties of the contract are the advertiser, the producer and the editor of a television service, if the conditions mentioned above are met. However, if this technique is used in a cinematographic work, an agreement between the producer and the advertiser is sufficient. Nevertheless, the director, being author of the work, has a decisional weight in this matter, too, which has to be managed by the producer, whether in the copyright transfer agreement or in the product placement agreement itself. That’s not the case in the United States where the director must submit to the producer’s and the advertiser’s will, without having this “veto”. Furthermore to this product placement contract, has to be signed an agreement between the advertiser and the actors, if the advertiser wishes to use the actors to stage the product.\nThis product placement agency, or the advertiser directly, then proceeds to a monitoring of the placement of the product during the making of the film and to a control of the promotional campaigns. This step is very important since some scripts evolve and sometimes change during shooting. So they make sure that the product is still actually placed. This monitoring goes beyond the film set and may continue in post-production, especially for movies like \"Matrix Reloaded\" (2003) or \"Avatar\" (2009) which have a lot of special effects.\nIII) A practice which has a hard time taking of in France\nProduct placement has been in force for two years in French television and it appears that the overall balance of this practice is mixed. There is first of all a reluctance coming from critics and viewers to the fact that it is no longer possible to bypass advertising and that the viewers are therefore subject, even unconsciously, to the influence of advertising. Product placement on TV takes the same disappointing pace than product placement in cinema. And although in the latter case, the practice has been around much longer, the budget shares in big budget films in France do not exceed 5% (versus 30% in the U.S.). Thus, Dior, Tissot etc. funded 3%, representing € 588,000 of the budget of \"Les Chevaliers du Ciel\" (2005), whereas the brand Apple alone, financed about 16%, that is to say 23.5 million dollars of the film \"Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol\" (2011). The latter has for that matter invested in 2011 nearly 50 million dollars in product placement in American cinema.\nAccording to a study conducted between February 15th and March 15th with 83 advertisers by the Union of Advertisers (UDA) and published in April 2012, it is emphasized that this technique has a great difficulty being integrated in the advertiser’s practices. Thus, only 49% of the respondents had the opportunity to practice at least one product placement since 2010, of which 23% placed in television and 11% dedicated to it a portion of their budget. However, this share doesn’t exceed 1% for 60% of the advertiser’s net communication budget and not 5% for 97% of them. Yet a majority of the advertisers who used product placement seem to be satisfied with this operation, especially regarding the criteria of visibility (73%), image (73%) and reputation (64%). They also consider that this practice has the major advantage of having the ability to position their product (80%) and to provide the products of the image of the program or the actor (64%). They also consider that this practice has the major advantage of having the ability to put their product in action (80%) and to have it benefiting from the program’s or the actor’s image (64%). In addition, these product placements enrich the work by allowing to bring credibility to the story. The film is often a reflection of reality and this world, which is by definition fictional, has through product placement a higher chance to be realistic. Since producers and TV channels require from the screenwriters some realism in their writings, the latters have more flexibility thanks to product placement and are thus no longer compelled to not mention any brand. But this new flexibility open to them may also have the opposite effect to the extent that there is a risk of interference from the advertisers who want to ensure that writers properly place the product.\nThe advertisers also use this technique with temperance, because they do not want to overwhelm the viewers with their placements and cause the opposite effect. Beyond that, the advertisers fear to exceed the boundary somewhat unclear posed by the CSA. Despite the interest for this practice, there are some downsides that are primarily the difficulties to measure the actual efficiency of the placement for advertisers, and the lack of control they have on the actual appearance of their product on the screen, and on the release date. For a significant minority of the French advertisers (40%), product placement is a matter of opportunity, while in the United State the films that do not have any placed products, are rather rare. In the latter case, the absence of placed products is generally due to the historical context of the film (ex. \"Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides\", 2011, \"Cowboys and invaders\", 2011).\nTo make more use of this technique, the advertisers would like the CSA to expand the sector in which product placement is allowed to TV shows and entertainment programs (65%). This request is not irrelevant, given that neighboring countries such as Germany, where product placement is allowed in TV movies, series, sports programming and entertainment since April 10th, 2010, do permit it. And, according to Prof. Dr. Helmut Volpers (FH Köln), who did a study on this topic, product placement in Germany did not cause any impairment on the editorial independence. He considers furthermore that this practice is subject to a coherent regulation and that it’s still far from its potential. Moreover, the risk of too many products appearing on the screen must be qualified, because, although there are legislative and regulatory limits, the advertisers themselves shouldn’t want to place in an excessive amount or in obvious ways. They try to place their products in programs that match their image and reach the targeted group of consumers. The presence of too obvious placed products can backfire.\nProduct placement is a promising advertising mean that will grow in the coming years. It will probably not reach in Europe the level of the United States who have a cinematographic and audiovisual industry, that is decisive worldwide and therefore attracts major advertisers. However, the scope for growth is huge in this area.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line495721"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5881964564323425,"wiki_prob":0.5881964564323425,"text":"Delegation of the European Union to Israel\nhttps://www.instagram.com/euinisrael/\nhttps://twitter.com/EUinIsrael\nhttps://www.facebook.com/Europe.in.Israel\nEEAS homepage > Israel > Search\nVideos, Projects, Press Material\nCountries Afghanistan (73) Albania (68) Algeria (85) Angola (74) Antigua and Barbuda (72) Argentina (73) Armenia (70) Australia (72) Azerbaijan (70) Bahamas (72) Bahrain (82) Bangladesh (72) Barbados (72) Belarus (70) Belize (72) Benin (74) Bermuda (48) Bhutan (72) Bolivia (72) Bosnia and Herzegovina (54) Botswana (75) Brazil (73) Brunei Darussalam (72) Burkina Faso (75) Burundi (74) Cabo Verde (73) Cambodia (72) Cameroon (74) Canada (72) Central African Republic (74) Chile (72) China (72) Colombia (72) Comoros (76) Congo (Brazzaville) (74) Cook Islands (73) Costa Rica (72) Cuba (72) Côte d'Ivoire (74) DR Congo (Kinshasa) (75) Djibouti (76) Dominica (72) Dominican Republic (72) Ecuador (72) Egypt (91) El Salvador (72) Equatorial Guinea (74) Eritrea (74) Eswatini (74) Ethiopia (74) Faroe Islands (10) Fiji (73) Gabon (74) Gambia (74) Georgia (71) Ghana (74) Grenada (72) Guatemala (72) Guinea (74) Guinea-Bissau (74) Guyana (72) Haiti (72) Honduras (72) Hong Kong (72) Iceland (67) India (73) Indonesia (75) Iran (88) Iraq (85) Jamaica (72) Japan (79) Jordan (95) Kazakhstan (69) Kenya (74) Kiribati (73) Kosovo* (68) Kuwait (83) Kyrgyz Republic (69) Lao PDR (72) Lebanon (89) Lesotho (74) Liberia (74) Libya (85) Macao (72) Madagascar (74) Malawi (74) Malaysia (72) Maldives (72) Mali (75) Marshall Islands (73) Mauritania (77) Mauritius (74) Mayotte (74) Mexico (73) Micronesia (73) Moldova (70) Mongolia (72) Montenegro (54) Morocco (86) Mozambique (74) Myanmar (Burma) (72) Namibia (74) Nauru (73) Nepal (72) New Zealand (77) Nicaragua (71) Niger (76) Nigeria (74) Niue (73) Norway (69) Oman (82) Pakistan (73) Palau (73) Palestine (*) - Occupied Palestinian Territory, West Bank and Gaza Strip (171) Panama (72) Papua New Guinea (72) Paraguay (72) Peru (72) Philippines (72) Qatar (82) Republic of North Macedonia (70) Russia (71) Rwanda (73) Saint-Kitts and Nevis (72) Saint-Lucia (72) Samoa (73) Sao Tome and Principe (74) Saudi Arabia (83) Senegal (74) Serbia (68) Seychelles (74) Sierra Leone (73) Singapore (72) Solomon Islands (35) Somalia (74) South Africa (74) South Korea (73) South Sudan (74) Sri Lanka (72) Sudan (76) Suriname (72) Switzerland (66) Syria (92) Taiwan (72) Tajikistan (69) Tanzania (74) Tchad (76) Thailand (72) Timor-Leste (73) Togo (74) Tonga (73) Trinidad and Tobago (71) Tunisia (85) Turkey (76) Turkmenistan (69) Tuvalu (73) Uganda (74) Ukraine (72) United Arab Emirates (83) United Kingdom (2) United States of America (78) Uruguay (72) Uzbekistan (69) Vanuatu (64) Vatican City and the Holy See (53) Venezuela (74) Vietnam (72) Yemen (83) Zambia (74) Zimbabwe (74)\nTopics Common Foreign & Security Policy (CFSP) (3) Conflict Prevention, Peace building and Mediation (8) Counter-Terrorism (5) Countering disinformation (1) Crisis Response (3) Culture (4) Disarmament, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Export Control (3) EU information in Russian (24) Eastern Partnership (1) Economic Relations, Connectivity & Innovation (1) Education (1) European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) (2) Human Rights & Democracy (50) Humanitarian & Emergency Response (8) Middle East Peace Process (33) Multilateral Relations (6) Refugee protection & Migration (9) Sanctions policy (1) The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) (3) Water Diplomacy (1)\nOrganisations African Union (AU) (20) African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) (4) Andean Community (3) Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) (3) Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (18) Central American Integration System (SICA) (3) Common market for eastern and southern Africa (COMESA) (6) Communauté Économique des États de l’Afrique Central (CEEAC) (3) Council of Europe (11) Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) (4) European Economic Area (EEA) (3) Foreign Affairs Council (4) Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (11) Indian Ocean Commission (3) Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) (3) League of Arab States (LAS) (4) Order of Malta (6) Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (4) Organisation for Security&Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) (8) Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) (3) Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (3) South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) (3) Southern African Development Community (SADC) (4) UN Geneva (32) UN New York (36) UNESCO (11) Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) (4) World Trade Organization (WTO) (12)\nSelect... #EU4HumanRights (1) #EuropeDay (1) Child rights (1) EUROPEAN PEACE FACILITY (1) Peace (1) UNRWA (1) World Humanitarian Day (1)\nOp-Eds (13) Apply Op-Eds filter\nCivil Society and Media (10) Apply Civil Society and Media filter\nDemocracy and Human Rights (13) Apply Democracy and Human Rights filter\n(-) Remove Multisector filter Multisector\nEditorial team... EEAS Press Team (179) Press and information team of the Delegation to EGYPT (2) Press and information team of the Delegation to ISRAEL (131) Strategic Communications (35)\nPost date... 2014 (9) 2015 (23) 2016 (55) 2017 (101) 2018 (87) 2019 (70) 2020 (2)\nIsrael: Statement by the Spokesperson on the latest settlement announcements\nLanguages: العربية Français On January 5 and 6, the Israeli authorities approved the construction of almost two thousand housing units in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the retroactive approval of already existing constructions, some of which were built on private\nThe European Union is young, but wise\nIt’s hard to imagine that 100 years have passed – or only 100 years – since the Paris Peace Conference brought together 27 nations to shape the future after World War I to set the terms for peace. This attempt to create an international order that would prevent further wars was not successful, as\nAuthor: Press and information team of the Delegation to ISRAEL - Publication date: 08/01/2020\nPETITION [23 Signatures] Protest against the imprisonment of 500 Palestinian citizens by the Israeli state.\nAssociation France Palestine Solidarité Nimes Mesdames, Messieurs, Chers pétitionnaires, Merci pour votre lettre du 6 octobre 2019. La démocratie et les droits de I'hommes ont des composantes essentielles de la politique étrangère de I'UE et au coeur de son dialogue avec ses\n/file/erasmus-inspires-students-innovate_enErasmus+ inspires students to innovate\nVideo of Erasmus+ inspires students to innovate\nErasmus+ inspires students to innovate\nErasmus+ is giving Israeli students and higher education institutions new opportunities and projects. Sometimes those ventures will also help reduce waste and pollution. Watch Renana's story!\n/file/hrvp-josep-borrell-fontelles-presentation-video_enHR/VP Josep Borrell Fontelles Presentation Video\nVideo of HR/VP Josep Borrell Fontelles Presentation Video\nHR/VP Josep Borrell Fontelles Presentation Video\nJosep Borrell takes office as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission (HR/VP).\nSpeech by Federica Mogherini at the European Parliament plenary debate on the situation in Israel and Palestine, including the settlements\nSpeech by High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini at the European Parliament plenary debate on the situation in Israel and Palestine, including the settlements\nStop violence against women: Statement by the European Commission and the High Representative\nLanguages: 日本語 press Category: Joint Statements Regions: Africa Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cameroon Central African Republic Comoros Congo (Brazzaville) Côte d'Ivoire Djibouti DR Congo (Kinshasa) Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Eswatini Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea\nStatement by High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini on Israeli settlement policy\nRamat Gan 52136\nVisitors' address:\nPaz Tower, 16th floor\n5-7 Shoham Street\n+972 (0)3-6137799\ndelegation-israel@eeas.europa.eu","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line152831"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.539237380027771,"wiki_prob":0.539237380027771,"text":"Mid-South Memories: Feb. 29\nMid-South Memories for Feb. 29\nMid-South Memories: Feb. 29 Mid-South Memories for Feb. 29 Check out this story on commercialappeal.com: https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/local/mid-south-memories/2016/02/28/midsouth-memories-feb-29/90450738/\nThe Commercial Appeal Published 5:00 p.m. CT Feb. 28, 2016\nCharles Nicholas/The Commercial Appeal files Taking top honors on Feb. 28, 1952, as the “most beautiful” in the table-setting contest at the Nineteenth Century Club was the “Spring Luncheon” table entered by the Hope Circle of The King’s Daughters. Displaying the winner’s ribbon is Mrs. W.T. Jeter Jr. (right), who has just received the award for setting the table from Mrs. W.T. Wingo, general chairman of the event. The contest was sponsored by the Patience Circle of The King’s Daughters.(Photo: Charles Nicholas)\n(Editor's note: Today is Leap Day, and there was no Feb. 29 in 1991, 1966, 1941 or 1891, the usual 25-year increments listed in Mid-South Memories.)\n100 years ago: 1916\nTwo months ago, before police began their drive to eliminate the Memphis 'red light district,' there were 1,500 women in the 125 houses recognized by the police and regularly patrolled by officers. The average age of the scarlet women then was 24, most of whom were from the country and who suffered their downfall before reaching the city. Police estimate that now the number has been reduced 40 per cent.\nRead or Share this story: https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/local/mid-south-memories/2016/02/28/midsouth-memories-feb-29/90450738/\nVice President Mike Pence coming to Memphis\nMPD, SCSO to receive $10 million to hire more officers\nThe 901: Shelby County's wheel tax hike is back","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line993791"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7154187560081482,"wiki_prob":0.7154187560081482,"text":"Laredo Petroleum Announces 2013 Capital Budget of $725 Million\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LPI) (the \"Company\"), today announced that its Board of Directors has approved a $725 million capital budget for 2013, excluding acquisitions.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") (NYSE: LPI) today announced that Randy A. Foutch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will present at two upcoming conferences.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. Announces Third-Quarter 2012 Financial and Operating Results\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") today announced third-quarter 2012 financial and operating results.\nLaredo Petroleum to Present at Upcoming Energy Conference\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") (NYSE: LPI) today announced that Jerry R. Schuyler, President and Chief Operating Officer, will present at Bank of America Merrill Lynch's upcoming 2012 Global Energy Conference in Miami, Florida on Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at 8:45 a.m. Eastern Time.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") announces third-quarter 2012 preliminary commodity derivatives and will host a conference call on Friday, Novmeber 9, 2012 at 9:00 a.m. CT (10:00 a.m. ET) to discuss its third-quarter 2012 financial and operating results.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. Announces Closing of Secondary Public Offering and Exercise of Underwriters' Option to Purchase Additional Shares\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\"), announced today the closing of the underwritten secondary public offering of 14,375,000 shares of its common stock by affliates of Warburg Pincus LLC, the selling stockholders, at a price of $20.25 per share, including all 1,875,000 shares of common stock that were subject to the underwriters' option to purchase additional shares.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. Announces Pricing of Secondary Public Offering\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\"), announced today the pricing of the underwritten secondary public offering of 12,500,000 shares of its common stock by affliates of Warburg Pincus LLC, the selling stockholders, at a price of $20.25 per share.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. Announces Launch of Secondary Public Offering\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\"), announced today the commencement of an underwritten secondary public offering of 12,500,000 shares of its common stock by affliates of Warburg Pincus LLC, the selling stockholders.\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. Announces Second-Quarter 2012 Financial and Operating Results\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") today announced second-quarter 2012 financial and operating results.\nLaredo Petroleum Schedules Second-Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call For August 9\nLaredo Petroleum Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LPI) (\"Laredo\" or \"the Company\") will host a conference call on Thursday, August 9, 2012 at 9:00 a.m. CT (10:00 a.m. ET) to discuss its second-quarter 2012 financial and operating results. The Company plans to release earnings the same day before market open.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1234524"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5502970814704895,"wiki_prob":0.4497029185295105,"text":"Steel Journeys\nBy Lynda Meyers\nThis book will launch on Feb 15, 2020. Currently, only those with the link can see it. 🔒\nBook 1: The Road To Patagonia\nTo some people, home might be wherever you lay your helmet, but for Abby Steel, home was wherever she laid her ass. Today it's a Harley. Tomorrow it might be a BMW or a Triumph or a Honda. Home was whatever bike fit the terrain. Home was wide open spaces tucked under an expansive sky.\nHome was the road.\nIt took a lot of miles to work through the hurts of her past, but she's finally built a business she can be proud of. Women from all walks of life come to join in her adventures, for all sorts of reasons. Equal parts badass and life coach, Abby genuinely cares about the women on her tours, and they respect her for it.\nThe Road to Patagonia finds Abby back home in California on a break between trips, when an unexpected visitor threatens to bring all the blocks tumbling down.\nJoin Abby Steel on a series of breathtaking international adventures with Steel Journeys - an all-female motorcycle touring company where she calls all the shots. From huts to hotels, it's never the same adventure twice.\nAbby Steel hadn’t seen the inside of her own apartment in over three years. There hadn’t been any need to come home really, so she just…didn’t. Life on the road kept her busy and building her own business had taken way more time and energy than she’d anticipated.\nShe looked at the compulsively clean apartment and was thankful, once again, that her sister came and dusted the surfaces once a month. It wasn’t as if she’d left it dirty, but time and dust had a way of accumulating in equal and inevitable measure. Lauren had also been nice enough to retrieve her mail from the post office when it no longer fit in her box, getting rid of all the junk mail and opening anything that seemed important. There wasn’t much. Abby had very few bills outside the business, most of which were handled remotely.\nAt this point, she was thankful for familiar surroundings and the chance to recharge. Three years was a long time to be away. It was time to reconnect with her roots and what was left of her family. Riding back from Alaska, many miles had been spent dreaming about long showers and luxurious baths with unlimited hot water. The grime that had built up under her fingernails would need to be soaked and scrubbed, her hair untangled and brushed—things life on the road rarely allowed for.\nIt would be good to see Lauren and her nieces in the flesh, instead of over video chat. She was excited to share stories of her adventures and show off her pictures, but seeing them would have to wait until she had energy for endless questions from curious little girls. She sat down in one of the comfortable side chairs in the living room with a glass of water and a stack of mail, but barely got through half of it before falling asleep.\nWhen she woke up, the sun had dipped below the horizon, shrouding the apartment in a kind of eerie glow that reminded her of sunsets on the Spanish plains just outside Sevilla. She closed her eyes and let the scene linger in her mind, colors bursting across the open sky with the sweltering summer heat billowing up inside her leather jacket. Riding there had been nothing short of magical. A lot of places felt that way.\nIt was the magic that kept her on the road. Each new place had its own set of challenges, its own set of charms. The challenges faded, but the charms remained, decorating her memories and dangling from her heart.\nFor Abby, the constant drifting from place to place created an unusual sort of routine that was comforting in its uncertainty. Lauren thought it was crazy, never knowing where she was going to sleep or what dangers might lurk around the corner, but one person’s danger is another person’s thrill. She and Lauren, they were wired differently, that’s all.\nCalifornia’s Napa Valley had been home for thirty-three years, but she left the small-town of Calistoga with an insatiable need not just to see, but to fully experience all the world had to offer. By that time, she’d already seen most of the US, and a good portion of Canada, but those had all been shorter trips—three weeks at most.\nCulture shock becomes something of a nonissue when you’re constantly changing cultures. Eventually, the life she’d left in California was no longer the ruler by which she measured all of her other experiences. Instead, her old life became just one of many other foreign concepts, all blended together in a beautiful mélange. Living abroad had changed so many of her perspectives that her old worldview seemed distorted by comparison.\nLeaving the confines of the continental United States and choosing to travel the world turned out to be a polarizing decision. Three years later, she felt like a completely different version of herself.\nBeing back in her apartment, surrounded by all the furniture and artwork she’d left behind was its own sort of culture shock. They were her belongings, of course, but all the things she thought she would miss had eventually faded into the background. They’d been replaced by people, places, smells, and tastes of a life too vibrant and varied to be contained within four walls.\nThe life she had built before was there on the walls and in the furniture, blended into the color scheme. They defined a person she wasn’t sure existed anymore. A part of her recognized it, was even comforted by the deep familiarity, but an even bigger part wondered if it was possible to go back in time. Time seemed to have gone on without her.\nMaybe coming home wasn’t a matter of choosing now or then, but rather, allowing the new to inform the old, and the old to make space for the new. If her life was a tree, like the sadhu in India had told her, then she could never hope to become a different tree. The new experiences would instead have to be grafted onto the trunk, eventually growing together into a unique expression of life.\nSteel Journeys was a company she had founded all on her own, most of the seed money coming from her inheritance. Lauren had used her half to build a house in the suburbs and was raising two beautiful daughters. Abby chose to pay off debt, buy a condo, and set off on the adventure of a lifetime. She’d spent the past three years researching the best roads, the best views, and the best options for lodging in dozens of countries, taking copious notes and pictures, giving out business cards, and forming business relationships.\nCataloging it all had been a labor of love, born of passion and drive. Each new place had its own rugged truths waiting to be discovered. She filled several paper journals with notes and sketches, cross-referenced with digital galleries.\nShe couldn’t recall precisely when the idea for the business hit her—it was somewhere between Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City. Like a reformed smoker she suddenly, desperately wanted other women like her to experience the freedom she had seen, felt, heard, smelled, and tasted. That was the dream—to form a women’s motorcycle touring company and take it global.\n“What, the entirety of the United States isn’t enough for you?” Lauren had asked.\nThe answer was simple. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Wanderlust was embedded deep in her DNA—so deep, in fact, that she wasn’t sure where it ended and she began.\nLauren was happy being a soccer mom and living in the suburbs. She was a card-carrying member of the PTA. The only cards Abby carried were a Visa and her gun permit. She didn’t carry her gun internationally, of course, but traveling solo had taught her a thing or two about self-protection. Tucked into remote corners of the globe, far from big cities and police patrols, the rules were different. Street smarts were learned, and she had learned plenty.\nIt was a long time to be away, but for Abby, home was a concept, not a place. To some people, home might be wherever you laid your helmet, but for Abby, home was wherever she laid her ass. Home was her saddle, which for the last three years had been a Harley, and before that a BMW, a Triumph, and a custom café racer she’d rebuilt with her dad. Home was the wind in her face and wide-open spaces tucked under an expansive sky.\nThis homecoming—this apartment—was one more stop along the way. It was the obligatory reset point on a map filled with pushpins. Except, of course, this room was tastefully decorated, with a comfortable bed, down blankets, and the best sheets money could buy. That bed was calling to her, and the rest would have to wait.\nShe woke the next morning with dirt on the sheets and little balls of dirt surrounding her jeans, which were hastily removed and crumpled up in the corner like a one-night stand. Perhaps a shower might have been the better choice before bed, but it was still a hundred times cleaner than most of the places she’d lived recently. Dirt was a part of life, and the only thing it damaged was a person’s sense of expectation. She put it out of her mind and padded toward the bathroom.\nThe requisite extra-long shower, complete with a double scrubbing of her hair, ears, fingernails, and feet took longer than strictly necessary. Lauren was expecting her, but after three years, what was another thirty minutes? When she felt reasonably satisfied with her results, she filled the bathtub with lavender-scented Epsom salts and soaked, with the sun streaming through the glass block window.\nAs she soaked, she listened to pan flutes and meditation music that reminded her of some of the temples and monasteries she’d visited in India. She only spent a few weeks there, barely scratching the surface of just one region, and there was still so much to see and explore. Indian people were very kind to her, and she admired their deep spirituality. It was definitely on her must-return list.\nShe emerged from the bath and pulled a long, clean, white T-shirt and some yoga pants out of the closet. “Well hey there, guys! I haven’t seen you in forever!” She paused for a moment, staring at the sheer volume of clothing neatly arrayed before her and shook her head. After surviving for so long on two perpetually wrinkled shirts and one tank top, it all seemed so extra.\nStill, it felt amazing not to be wearing jeans or leathers, and not sweating into a helmet for a couple of hours was a delicious thought. Most of the time she wore her thick brown hair up or braided to keep it out of her face. She decided to blow it out a little and let the ends curl up naturally with some leave-in conditioner. She’d barely noticed how long it had become. Upon closer inspection, it was desperately in need of a trim, but split ends would have to wait.\nLife’s sense of urgency was something that had mellowed over the miles. Time was slower in other parts of the world. Life was about the experience. Relationships. Good conversations. Being present in the now was something she was still working on, but an area where she’d seen a hell of a lot of improvement.\nIt was satisfying to think that some measure of growth and change and wisdom had come over time. Everything had fallen into place, and she was finally doing exactly what she wanted with her life. When she opened the back door to let in some fresh air, even the birds sounded happy. The way the morning was going, nothing could harsh her mellow.\nExcept maybe her ex-boyfriend showing up at her door.\nWritten by Lynda Meyers\nLynda Meyers\nI believe deeply in the power of story, connection, and authentic relationship. My blog is a mix of life lessons, travel stories and motorcycle adventures built on a foundation of yoga and organic food, poetry and painting with a belief that life should be an intentional endeavor. view profile\nGenre: Women's Fiction\nDiscover more books like Steel Journeys","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1112475"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6201814413070679,"wiki_prob":0.6201814413070679,"text":"Churchgoers Get to Hear Pink Floyd in All Their Fame\nby Pink Floyd\nPink Floyd Reunite to Support Arresting Female Activists in Gaza\nPink Floyd to Reissue “Animals” on vinyl Reissue Campaign\nPink Floyd to Reissue \"Animals\" on vinyl Reissue Campaign\nby Pink Floyd 3 years ago 3 years ago\nIt’s going to be a very expensive autumn for people wanting to listen to Pink Floyd on vinyl. The group have announced that Animals will be released on vinyl on Nov. 18. It’s the first time in more than 20 years that the record will be available in that format, according to a press release.\nAnimals will be the latest installment in Pink Floyd’s vinyl reissue campaign, with The Dark Side of the Moon arriving on Nov. 4 and Wish You Were Here coming next Friday (Oct. 14). Last month, they put out Atom Heart Mother, Meddle and Obscured by Clouds. They began the project in June with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, Ummagumma and More, and followed it up with The Wall and The Division Bell in August. As with the others, Animals has been remastered from the original analog tapes and will be issued on Pink Floyd Records, which is distributed by Sony in the U.S. and Warner Bros. in the U.K. and Europe.\nBut wait, there’s more. On Nov. 11, a week before Animals‘ arrival, they are putting out The Early Years 1965-1972, a massive 27-disc collection that includes many previously unreleased studio recordings and concerts. So far, the group have given us two preview tracks from the set, a live performance of “Grantchester Meadows” from a 1969 BBC session and a remix of “Childhood’s End.”\nReleased in 1977, Animals is a concept record based loosely on George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It reached No. 3 on the Billboard albums chart and has been sold more than 4 million copies in the U.S.\nSource:ultimateclassicrock.com\nPink Floyd 1969, pink floyd Grantchester Meadows, Pink Floyd new video childhood's end, Pink Floyd vinyl reissue campaign\nPosted by Pink Floyd\nVideosfrank zappa, Interstellar Overdrive, pink floyd, Pink Floyd 1969\nWatch Video of The Famed Collaboration Between Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd on October 25, 1969.\nNews, VideosGrantchester Meadows 1970 rare footage, Grantchester Meadows rare video, pink floyd Grantchester Meadows\nWatch Pink Floyd’s Rare 1970 “Grantchester Meadows” Performance\nNews, roger Watersclassic rock, Pink Floyd 2020, Roger waters 2020, Roger Waters instagram, Roger Waters tour dates 2020, Us + Them\nRoger Waters Announces New Project That Excites Pink Floyd’s Fans Extremely\nDavid Gilmour, Newsdavid Gilmour, David Gilmour 2019, david gilmour guitar, electronic guitar, guitar\nDavid Gilmour’s Guitar Wisdom – Get Inside His Experience\nby Pink Floyd 10 months ago 10 months ago\nInterviews, Newsclassic rock, david Gilmour, music, nick mason, pink floyd reunion, Pink Floyd reunite 2019\nPink Floyd Icon Reveals How Feud Could End, Will They Reunite?\nby Pink Floyd 11 months ago 1 month ago\nNews, roger WatersNicolas Maduro, pink floyd, roger waters, Roger Waters 2019, roger waters twitter\nRoger Waters Stands with Nicolas Maduro, Praises Venezuela’s “Real Democracy”\nNewskeep talking, pink floyd, stephen hawking, stephen hawking dead\nPhysicist Hawking Did Pink Floyd A Huge Favor – And It Wasn’t The First Time\nNews, Videosdark side of the moon, Pink Floyd 2018, pink floyd news, pink floyd videos\nPink Floyd Just Released An Astonishing Detail About ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’\nVideosjazz, pink floyd, Stephane Grappelli, violin, wish you were here cover\nQuiz70s album quiz, classic rock, Music quiz, personality quiz, play quiz, start quiz\nQUIZ: How Many Classic Albums From The 70s Do You Know?\nPink Floyd News\nSubscribe to our Pink Floyd mail list and get important news and updates before eveyone.\nPink Floyd References on The Simpsons","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1172504"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7062888145446777,"wiki_prob":0.29371118545532227,"text":"In France, April 1 is referred to and celebrated as poisson d’avril (literally “April fish”). As I understand it, people can play any kind of prank, but the classic joke is to attach a paper fish to a victim’s back without being noticed. (Apparently this is also found in other nations, such as Italy, where the term is pesce d’aprile.) The successful jokester of any prank might declare “poisson d’avril!” as one might declare “April Fools!” in the states. I have seen suggestions on English language sites that the victim is declared a poisson d’avril, but I believe that is incorrect. The joke, not the victim, is the poisson d’avril.\nThere seems to be some consensus that the poisson d’avril tradition in France started following calendar reform in 1564 that moved the start of the year from the end of March to January 1. According to this site, the reforms disrupted “a traditional week-long celebration of spring and rebirth that had lasted until…April 1.” This English-language travel website explains, “in a time without trains, a reliable post system or the internet, news often traveled slow and [folks] in rural France were the last to hear of and accept the new calendar. Those who failed to keep up with the change or who stubbornly clung to the old calendar system and continued to celebrate the New Year during the week that fell between March 25th and April 1st, had jokes played on them. Pranksters would surreptitiously stick paper fish to their backs.” This article has a similar explanation, although it suggests the calendar reform and April fooling were not limited to France.\nThis French site has a somewhat different (and seemingly more authoritative) take. It also focuses on the 1564 calendar reform, but — if I’m understanding the French correctly — explains that, because people were used to end of year gift exchanging at the end of March, folks continued to exchange small gifts at that time, perhaps to cast doubt on or make fun of the calendar switch. Over time, the gifts became pranks.\nThe site also posits an explanation for the fish. It explains that the April gifts were often food. Because April 1 often falls during Lent, during which the consumption of meat is forbidden, fish was a common gift. Thus, a common prank was an offer of a fake fish. The online Encyclopaedia Britannica has a different explanation: “the fooled person is called poisson d’avril (‘April fish’), perhaps in reference to a young fish and hence to one that is easily caught.” A final theory is that the fish is in reference to Pisces (Poissons), the last Zodiac sign of winter, ending in late March (although April 1 is under Aries).\nHere is the French Wikipedia page on the topic. There are many other webpages that address the topic, although those that I viewed simply repeat pieces of the information above.\nUltimately, my main interest is in sharing some of the amusing vintage poisson d’avril postcards I’ve collected, mostly from the period 1900-1910. The cards feature images of fish held by young men and women, reflecting that sweethearts often exchanged the cards. Interestingly, most of these cards have nothing to do with pranks and just use the fish as a general symbol of the date, and in many cards as an actual gift. Somewhat surprisingly, I’ve never seen a vintage postcard referring to the custom of sticking paper fish on a victim’s back.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1020310"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8977016806602478,"wiki_prob":0.8977016806602478,"text":"Celgene CEO lays out firm's game plan\nUpdated Apr 02, 2019; Posted Mar 14, 2008\nBy Judy DeHaven\nCelgene already was riding an impressive growth streak before it spent $2.9 billion to acquire Colorado biotech Pharmion, a deal that closed last week.\nNow comes the hard part for Sol Barer, chief executive of the Summit drugmaker. He's long sought to create the world's leading hematology company, but also wants to preserve the tight-knit culture that helped propel Celgene to the top ranks of U.S. biotechs.\nIn a small step toward that goal, Celgene recently issued company lapel pins to employees, with extra gems embedded in the logo for the longest-serving workers.\nThe company will spend the next 90 days working on the integration of Pharmion, which returns the European rights to the multiple myeloma treatment Thalomid to Celgene. Pharmion's most promising drug in the short term is Vidaza, a treatment for myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS, which helps round out Celgene's blood cancer portfolio, led by the soon-to-be blockbuster drug Revlimid.\nJim Reddoch, an analyst for Friedman Billings Ramsey, calls the combined company a powerhouse and predicts annual sales will jump to $6 billion by 2013, from $1.4 billion last year.\nIn a recent interview in his office -- crammed with photos of family, friends and coworkers -- Barer talked about the changes to come at Celgene:\nQ: Celgene already was expanding its presence abroad. What does adding Pharmion do for you internationally?\nA: We have a sales force all over Europe right now. We have a very good infrastructure that's very leveragable. We're selling Revlimid, and doing very well right now.\nWith the Pharmion integration, we're adding thalidomide, which is approved in first-line multiple myeloma (in Europe). Revlimid is approved in relapsed or previously treated multiple myeloma. We also have a marketing approval for Vidaza, the first therapy that will show a survivability advantage in patients.\nRather than partner, what we do is retain the value for our shareholders by building our own infrastructure -- clinical, regulatory -- around the world. We'll use distributorships in certain countries or certain regions.\nQ: What happens to Pharmion's operations? Will you keep any presence in Colorado?\nA: We're going through the integration planning process. We're looking at as many positions and many levels and all the products. We're very impressed with with a lot of people there, at all levels.\nAs you combine two commercial, public entities, you don't need two CFOs, you don't need two CEOs -- thank god. There's clearly going to be overall consolidation. What we're going to try to do is retain as many of the people that are motivated and excited to stay with Celgene.\nQ: A year ago, you said you might be looking for bigger quarters around Summit because the company was growing and you disliked satellite offices. What are your plans now?\nA: We'll have multiple sites. (Pharmion) has a major clinical site in Kansas City, which we'll keep. We'll probably be adding a building or buildings here on-site.\nWe've gotta live with the fact that there'll be multiple locations with the major company we're becoming. I'm pleased to say the sun never sets on Celgene, to borrow a phrase.\nIt's difficult. We're used to addressing the company all at once, and now that can't happen. If it's 7 o'clock in the morning here, it's 9 at night in Japan but 4 in the morning in California. So when we try to have meetings, we try to move them around.\nQ: You've put down $50 million to develop a bone-loss treatment with Acceleron Pharma, even though the program is the earliest stage of clinical trials. How can you be certain it's worth so much upfront money?\nA: We use our scientific judgment. We judge the quality of the people in terms of executing that. We have a fairly rigorous evaluation, and partly, (we ask) is it a strategic fit.\nBut at the end of the day, you don't know. We don't have to do these deals if we don't want to, but I think it's prudent for us to always look at new science.\nQ: Even before Pharmion, Celgene seemed to be stepping up its licensing and partnership deals. Will that continue?\nA: A lot of these are driven by specific opportunities that often are difficult to predict. There will be a period of time subsequent to the Pharmion acquisition where a lot of integration will go on. While that will not affect the smaller deals, it probably will affect the larger collaborations, which would be a lower priority while we're integrating the new company.\nQ: How has your job changed in the past year?\nA: One of the big challenges is really, as we grow, to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit, the almost family atmosphere that's characterized Celgene through the years. I think that's been important to our success. I view that as one of my greater challenges.\nJeff May can be reached at jmay@starledger.com or (973) 392-4282.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1318666"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8354209065437317,"wiki_prob":0.8354209065437317,"text":"A Michigan man was surprised when he got cancer. He blames Roundup — a weed killer he used for decades\nPosted: 9:59 AM, Jun 04, 2019\nBy: Kim Russell\nIn September 2017, Phil Corsi went to the doctor complaining about pain after eating. He got a diagnosis he never expected.\nDETROIT — In September 2017, Phil Corsi went to the doctor complaining about pain after eating. He got a diagnosis he never expected.\n“I had a large lymphoma that had become cancerous,” Phil said.\nHis days became filled with doctor’s appointments and chemotherapy treatments. Phil had no family history of cancer and had lived a healthy active life. He and his wife, Kim Corsi, say the diagnosis didn’t make sense.\nThen he heard there was an alleged link between Roundup weed killer’s chemical glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Juries, after looking at evidence, had delivered multi-billion dollar verdicts to several cancer victims.\n“There are no warning labels on it and the chemical that has been linked to B-cell lymphoma is still in that product,” Kim said.\nPhil says for decades he used Roundup multiple times a week to kill weeds in his yard — and even in his neighbors’ yards.\n“There should be some kind of warning on this for folks so people aren’t going through the same thing,” Phil said.\n“We wouldn’t use it. If we would have known that, he wouldn’t have bought it,” Kim added.\nIt raises the question: should you be worried?\nFor years, farms have used plants genetically modified to survive Roundup. It allowed farmers to soak their entire fields with the weed killer to get rid of weeds. Now Roundup has been detected in the food we eat. Plus, it is still being sold to control weeds in your yard.\n“You can’t make sense out of science when there are proprietary interests,” said Faye Hansen, an associate professor of biology at Oakland University.\nHansen says she has seen numerous conflicting studies on Roundup. University of Washington researchers found exposure to glyphosate, the chemical in Roundup, raised the risk of non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma by 41 percent. Other researchers found it was not dangerous.\nEmails revealed in one of the lawsuits show the maker of Roundup, Monsanto, which was bought last year by Bayer, may have ghost-written some studies . Hansen says it is worrisome.\n“If I were a landscaper or someone who did lawn care, I would be concerned,” Hansen said.\nShe teaches students how to farm organically at Oakland University. She says on an organic farm they control weeds by planting competing plants, using barriers such as mulch. Or they get rid of weeds the old-fashioned way — by pulling them.\n“Why is organic food so expensive? This is the reason. It is much harder to control weeds,” Hansen said.\n“These jurors heard the facts. And they heard about the World Health Organization identifying this as a carcinogen, as a cancer-causing product, glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup,” said attorney Mark Bernstein,of the Sam Bernstein Law Firm.\nBernstein represents Phil Corsi and hundreds of others who believe they developed cancer after using Roundup. He believes their claims are legitimate and the company needs to be held accountable.\n“Corporations, in this case the manufacturer of Roundup, put profit ahead of people,” Bernstein said. \"I know you need to make a profit, but you can’t make it at the expense of people who trust the product.\"\nThe Corsis say they are lucky because Phil's cancer went into remission a few months ago. But they live with the fear the cancer will come back.\n“When he goes for the scans I pray it is going to be good news,” Kim said.\nThey say they are taking action to protect others.\n“I wouldn’t have wished what I went through on my worst enemy because it was terrible,” Phil added.\nWXYZ reached out to Bayer for comment. Dan Childs, director of U.S. external communications for Bayer, responded with the following statement:\n\"We have great sympathy for Mr. Corsi, but the extensive body of science on glyphosate-based herbicides over four decades supports the conclusion that Roundup does not cause NHL. The research on glyphosate and glyphosate-based herbicides, including more than 800 rigorous studies submitted to EPA, European and other regulators in connection with the registration process, confirms that these products are safe when used as directed. Notably, the largest and most recent epidemiologic study – the 2018 independent National Cancer Institute-supported long-term study that followed over 50,000 pesticide applicators for more than 20 years and was published after the IARC monograph – found no association between glyphosate-based herbicides and cancer. Additionally, EPA’s April 30, 2019, interim registration review decision reaffirmed that ‘glyphosate is not a carcinogen’ and noted that the EPA’s independent cancer assessment is ‘more robust’ and ‘more transparent’ than IARC’s review. Bayer stands behind these products and will vigorously defend them.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1211370"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8359958529472351,"wiki_prob":0.8359958529472351,"text":"© 2019 by Wildfire Productions. All rights reserved.\nReturn to News Items Page!\nJukebox Is Vital To The Soundtrack of the American West\nBy Orin Friesen\nA soundtrack for the history of the American West would have to include the songs the cowboys composed along the trail like “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo (Git Along Little Dogies)” and “The Old Chisholm Trail.” It would also include the songs the cowboy learned as they were growing up. Many of those songs were ones they learned in church. Later songs, which are now classics, such as “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”and “Cool Water,” became popular because they were used in western movies. These songs gained further popularity by being exposed on the radio, by both live performances and recordings. One often-overlooked outlet for cowboy songs is the jukebox. As a child, I remember going into small town café and hearing Gene Autry or the Sons of the Pioneers coming from the “bubbling” Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner.\nLouis Glass invented the jukebox in 1889, only 12 years after Thomas Edison had made the first phonograph. Of course, that first jukebox didn’t look much like the ones we have today, or even the classic ones from the 1940s. The music machine wasn’t even called a jukebox until years later. The name “jukebox” was derived from the name of the dance halls of the early 20th century. They were known as juke joints. The word “juke,” itself was a term used by African Americans to describe dancing.\nThe popularity of the jukebox began to take off in the 1920s, after the 78rpm record and electrical amplification were invented. The ‘30s and ‘40s were great years for the jukebox, and helped increase the popularity of country and western music, especially the honky tonk sound of people like Floyd Tillman, Ted Daffan, Ernest Tubb and, of course, the western swing sounds of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. Jukeboxes were especially popular in clubs and roadhouses because, not only were they cheaper than bands, they were usually more reliable. Plus, they gave you the music of the most popular artists of the time.\nDuring the time the jukebox was becoming popular, country music was also undergoing major changes. The barn dances in the hills, with their fiddles and banjos, were giving\nway to songs about drinking and cheating that were performed in bars. In order to be heard, the musicians started using amplification, string basses, electric guitars, pianos and drums. The added bottom of the bass and drums, plus new styles of rhythm playing, made the music more conducive to dancing, especially for couple dancing, as opposed to group dancing as in the old square dances. The jukebox, with its big, bass sound fit right in with this trend. And it’s never stopped.\nThe jukebox has come a long way in the last 130 years. It went from playing one song on a wax cylinder in 1889, to a dozen 78s in the 1920s, to a hundred or more45s in the 1950s, to 100 CD albums a hundred years after the jukebox was invented. When most of us think about the jukebox, we think of those Wurlitzers, Seeburgs, and Rockolas from the 1940s. But jukeboxes these days have become a part of the digital age. The music is no longer played from a vinyl disc, or even a CD. These days they use computer technology and can store hundreds of songs and take up very little space. Hopefully, the good ones still find room for cowboy songs.\n/// Murphey Western Institute ///\nA Center for the Education, Preservation and Perpetuation\nof the Arts, Culture, History and Legacy of the American West\nSpalding Labs Presents","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line459726"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6360474824905396,"wiki_prob":0.6360474824905396,"text":"A major tourist attraction - an underground Jerusalem tour along the tunnels connecting the western wall prayer area to the north-west corner of the temple mount.\nHome > Sites > Jerusalem > Temple Mount > Western Wall Tunnels\nThe tour of the western wall tunnels is one of the most popular tourist sites in Jerusalem. These underground tunnels connect the western wall prayer area to the north-west side of the temple mount, passing along the side of the temple mount and under the present day houses in the Old City. Along its path are remains from the second temple period, as well as structures from later periods.\nThe experience of walking along the tunnels is like taking a time machine back to the time of the second temple. Don't miss it!\nDuring the second temple period - from the Hasmonean period (2nd C BC) up to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem (70AD) - the area west of the temple mount connected the temple to the the western side of Jerusalem. There were four gates located on this side - two gates at a lower level and two gates on top of bridges. A paved street passed at the foot of the temple mount, and additional structures and installations were located at that street level.\nFollowing the Roman destruction, the debris accumulated along the western side. After two millenniums, new buildings were built on top of these old layers. However, under these structures, some cavities remained buried deep underground.\nSince the 19th C, explorers examined these cavities and tunnels in the search for the second temple remains. Explorers, such as Warren and Wilson, did manage to unearth sections of the tunnels, but they were limited in their research by the Ottoman rulers. Only after the six-day-war (1967), when the area returned to Israeli control, the underground area was thoroughly researched and reconstructed, and some sections are still in the process of archaeological excavations.\nThe tourist site was fully opened in 1996, with 500m long tunnel along the buried north-western wall. The opening of the northern exit sparked deadly Arab riots in the old city for several days.\nThe route of the tunnel tour starts from the entrance on the north side of the western wall prayer area, and ends in Via Dolorosa (near station #1). Since there is a limit in the number of visitors that can join a tour, an appointment should be made well in advance.\nThe plan of the western wall tunnel tour is illustrated below. The highlights of the tour are marked as (a) to (o), ordered according to the direction of the walk along the western wall (from south to north). You can click on any of the links to scroll to the section with more info and photos.\na Secret passage i Dressed bedrock begins\nb Second temple period staircase j Hasmonean cistern\nc Large hall k Ancient guardrail\nd Section of the wall l Second temple period street\ne Warren's gate m Quarry\nf Opposite the foundation stone n Hasmonean water tunnel\ng Medieval cistern o Ancient pool\nh Western wall tunnel\nThe photos are ordered from south to north, as illustrated in the plan.\n(a) Secret passage\nDuring the Roman period, one of the western entrances to the temple mount was over a bridge which is now called the Wilson arch, which is located on the north side of the Western Wall prayer area. It is described by Josephus on several occasions: the description of the attack by Pompey in 63BC (Wars 1 7 2): \"Aristobulus's party was worsted, and retired into the temple, and cut off the communication between the temple and the city, by breaking down the bridge that joined them together\". The bridge was destroyed during Titus's attack in 70AD (Wars 6, 6 2): \"...a bridge that connected the upper city to the temple\". It was later repaired by the Romans in the 2nd or 3rd C after they established a Roman temple on the temple mount.\nThe bridge (aka \"the Great Causeway\") was repaired in the 7th C by the Arab rulers, who connected the west side of the city to the temple mount for easier access to their new Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques. The present day Chain street (Silsila) actually passes on its upper side.\nThe cavity below the street was termed \"the secret passage\" in the middle ages. It stretches along 70m - from the Hagai (Al-Wad) street on the west to the temple mount on the east. This \"secret passage\" serves today as the entrance to the underground tour.\n(b) Second Temple period stairs\nThe area around the \"secret passage\" is still undergoing excavations. The archaeologists revealed second temple period stairs and other ancient findings.\nPerhaps it was part of a staircase that led the pilgrims from the street level, up through the stairs, cross over the street above the \"Wilson's arch\", and into the western entrance of the temple mount. This is similar to the staircase entry (\"Robinson's arch\") on the south side of the western wall.\n(c) Large Hall and Model\nNorth to the Wilson arch and bridge is a large underground cavity called the \"large hall\". Its high ceiling allows a great view of the hidden western wall.\nA model of the second temple is located on the west side of the hall, in front of a set of benches. The tour guide describes the story of the temple mount with the assistance of the model, which uses the electrical controlled mechanism to demonstrate the phases of its construction by Herod.\n(d) Western Wall - section\nOn the eastern side of the great hall are remains of the lower side of the Herodian Western wall. The base stones are incredibly huge - the largest one - seen below - is 14m wide and 4m high, and weighs 600Tons!\nThere is no cement holding the stones together; only their weight and the perfect match between the stones made them hold firmly together, and withstand the enormous pressure of the temple mount over two millenniums.\nThe rectangular holes in the stone were added in the middle ages. Their purpose was to hold the plaster which was applied onto the walls, when this section was transformed into a water reservoir.\n(e) Warren's gate (facing the Holy of Holies)\nThis underground gate, now sealed, is located 40m north of the Wilson arch. The entrance here is located at the bottom of the temple mount ancient walls, at a depth which was the street level during the second temple period.\nThe opening of this gate faces the Holy of Holies structure and the foundation stone, and therefore is considered the holiest gate. It was discovered in 1867 by Charles Warren.\nThe gate is seen in the center of the photo below, which is part of the model in the large hall.\n(f) Opposite the Foundation stone\nThe foundation stone (Hebrew: Even Ha-Shtiya, from the word \"Tashtit\"), also known as \"The Rock\" (Hebrew: Ha-Sela), was the heart of the Holy of Holies. According to Jewish tradition, the rock marks the center point of God's dwelling and the creation of the world. Some traditions and archaeologists locate it in the center of the Dome of the Rock, which is located beyond the wall, although there are other suggested locations around the temple mount.\nThe Jewish women, seen below, come to pray here in the niche of the \"opposite foundation stone\", or in other locations along the wall.\n(g) Medieval Cistern\nAlong the western wall is a medieval period cistern.\n(h) Western Wall tunnel\nDuring the excavations and preparation of the western wall tunnel tour (1980s and 1990s), a modern tunnel was constructed along the base of the wall (several dozens of meters long) at the Roman street level. It supports the old city structures above it, which were built above the Roman street level during the Medieval periods.\nA large number of large stones were found laying around the Roman paved street. They were thrown from the temple above into the street by the Roman soldiers, during the leveling of Jerusalem, after it was captured and burnt. This evidence of destruction was also found in the South-West Wall excavations.\n(i) Dressed Bedrock Begins\nOn the north side of the temple mount, the builders of the temple mount had to cut away the bedrock. The original topography of the Moriah mountain on the north-west corner was higher than the temple mount, and so the engineers had to remove some of the rock in order to expand the temple mount during the Herodian period expansion. The side of the exposed rock was chiseled and dressed to look like the pillars on the south side.\nAnother section of the dressed bedrock is seen below:\n(j) Hasmonean Cistern\nThe western section of a Hasmonean period cistern was located at this section.\n(k) Ancient Guardrail\nA large stone was found that served as a guardrail on the edge of the ancient street. It protected the people from falling into the open trench, which was used to collect rain water from the street.\n(l) Second Temple period street\nA section of a second temple period (Herodian) paved street was found in this section. The Roman street stretched along the western wall, from the north to the south. Only a small section of the street was uncovered.\nA pair of columns, part of the colonnaded street, are seen on the edge of the street. As in the Cardo Maximus street, shops were located along the street along the side of the wall.\n(m) Quarry\nThe section near the Herodian street was part of a stone quarry, which prepared stones for the western wall.\n(n) Hasmonean Water Tunnel\nThe tour traverses the path of a Hasmonean period aqueduct. It supplied water from the north side of the city, filling up the cisterns under the Hasmonean citadel, which was located on the north side of the temple mount.\nThe water channel was cut off during the Herodian period when the temple mount was enlarged to the north.\n(o) Ancient Pool\nAt the northern edge of the tour is an ancient water reservoir called the Struthion Pool. This large reservoir collects the winter rain water from the rooftops in order to supply water during the dry summer season.\nInitially it was an open pool, built by the Hasmoneans, and mentioned by Josephus in his accords of the siege of Jerusalem (Wars 5 11 4 ): \"For there were now four great banks raised, one of which was at the tower Antonia; this was raised by the fifth legion, over against the middle of that pool which was called Struthius\". The meaning of the Latin word is \"sparrow\". The pool was later covered by the Romans in the 2nd C.\nThe Struthion pool is located at the basement of the Notre Dame De Sion (Ecce Homo) monastery. The initial plan of the tunnel tour was to exit through the monastery, but this was not accepted by the order. Alternatively, the exit of the tour was diverted to a modern opening through the pool, located near the first station of Via Dolorosa.\nEtymology (behind the name):\nKodesh Ha-Kodeshim - Hebrew: Holy of Holies, the most Holiest Jewish site - the sanctuary of God.\nKadosh - Hebrew: Holy\nEven Ha-Shtiya - Hebrew: Foundation stone.\nEven - Hebrew: stone.\nShtiya - Hebrew: foundation (this is based on the root word sh-at-at, which the word \"Tashtit\" is derived, meaning: foundation).\nLinks and References:\n* External:\nWestern Wall (including tunnels)\nAmbassador's Visit in the tunnels\nJerusalem, The Western Wall Tunnels excavations 2010-2012; Alexander Onn and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah; Hadashot Arkheologiyot 128 2016\n*Internal:\nWestern Wall - the wailing wall\n* Books:\nMeir Ben-Dov: \"The dig at the temple mount\" (Keter #533340; 1982)\nBibleWalks.com - Ride the Biblical time machine\nSecond temple gates<---previous Jerusalem site--<<< All Sites >>>---next Jerusalem site--> Cardo Maximus\nThis page was last updated on Mar 17, 2017 (Added excavation report)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line885393"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.744137704372406,"wiki_prob":0.255862295627594,"text":"Women Lawyers win Award of Excellence\nThis year’s recipient of the National Sections Council Award of Excellence is the Women Lawyers Forum. The CBA National Section Award of Excellence, presented annually, recognizes the outstanding contribution of a national Section in providing service to members and furthering the objectives of the Association.\nThe Women Lawyers Forum was awarded this prize for 2017-2018 in recognition of its role as a fundamental section within the CBA community. With a mandate to promote and enhance the status of women in the legal profession, the WLF provides a space for meaningful discussion and connection on a national level. Based on its mandate, the WLF has a unique perspective on all aspects of the justice system: from laws and regulations that are drafted and enacted, to the judiciary, and to the practise of law in Canada. Through its continued activity and the cross-Canada growth of the section, the WLF is an active and vocal part of the CBA and the legal profession in the continual pursuit of equity, inclusivity and gender parity.\nPhoto (L-R): Sabrina A. Bandali, Vice Chair of the WLF and Audrey Ramsay, Chair of the CBA Sections Subcommittee.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1181661"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8583194017410278,"wiki_prob":0.8583194017410278,"text":"United States Secretary of the Treasury\n(Redirected from U.S. Secretary of the Treasury)\nAddendum [?]\nThe Secretary of the Treasury is a Cabinet member charged with developing fiscal policy for the United States of America and overseeing the Department of the Treasury. The position was established in 1789, giving it the distinction of being one of the two oldest Cabinet positions.[1] The first and most influential secretary was Alexander Hamilton (1789-1794), who established the new nation's finances on a sound bases, and to provide political support created the world's first voter-based political party, the Federalist Party, using the Treasury's national network of supporters.\nThe Secretary shares with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System the status as the most powerful decision-maker in financial policy.[2]\nIn most countries this position is generally known as the Minister of Finance; Britain calls it the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Secretary is fifth in the line of succession to the Presidency. The current Secretary is Timothy F. Geithner.\nTreasurer of the United States\n↑ DOI history. Department of the Interior. Retrieved on 2007-11-17.\n↑ The \"Treasurer of the United States\" is a separate position, mostly honorific and without power. The Treasurer and Secretary both have their signature on paper currency.\nRetrieved from \"http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=United_States_Secretary_of_the_Treasury&oldid=100675752\"\nBusiness Workgroup\nHistory Workgroup\nHistory Content\nHistory tag\nBusiness tag\nThis page was last modified 21:17, 27 May 2010.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line938740"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8499916195869446,"wiki_prob":0.8499916195869446,"text":"Category Archives: Carlos Santana\nSuperstar Drummer & Songwriter CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA to Release New Summer Single “FUN, PARTY, SPLASH” Feat. CARLOS SANTANA & Produced by NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN\nMarin County, CA – The past few months have been a blur for CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA, who is currently touring and performing with her husband Carlos Santana, is featured as a vocalist, drummer, and songwriter on “Power of Peace,” the new Santana/Isley Brothers collaboration, and has been busy touring with her own band and recording tracks in the studio with the legendary producer NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN. Together through Walden’s Tarpan Records label they will release the new single “FUN, PARTY, SPLASH” featuring Carlos Santana on all digital platforms on August 25, 2017.\nCINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA is a virtuoso drummer whose artistry spans the realms of jazz and rock. As a bandleader and as a musician, Cindy is a sound innovator with a passion for pushing creative boundaries and exploring movement and change. She is as known for the nuances and colors she brings to her beats and fills as she is for the sheer power of her soulful playing. “Some drummers act, some react. Some keep time, others create it. CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA is among the few who can,” writes Mike Zwerin of the International Herald Tribune.\nAmong a handful of the most innovative, original and influential artists of our time, NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN’S stature as an authentic musical renaissance man is a matter of record. Producing hits for Artists as diverse as Aretha Franklin (including the platinum “Freeway of Love”), Steve Winwood, Ray Charles, Sting, Elton John, Whitney Houston, George Michael, Mariah Carey, Barbara Streisand, Lionel Ritchie, Lisa Fischer, Stevie Wonder, Tom Jones, Gladys Knight, and The Temptations, the EMMY and multi-GRAMMY winner (Producer, Album and Song of The Year) has been at the helm of hit music that spans decades.\nCINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA has been creating magnificent musical time and space since the beginning of her career as a busking street performer in New York City in the ’80s through the present day, touring the globe and making albums at the top of her game—including the critically acclaimed Another Lifetime (2010). In addition to collaborating onstage and in-studio with her own group—also known as Another Lifetime—she has toured and recorded with artists including Pharoah Sanders, Cassandra Wilson, Bill Laswell, Joss Stone, Joe Henderson, Al B. Sure, Buckethead, Don Pullen, Hugh Masakela, Buster Williams, and Angela Bofill. Cindy was part of the Tony Williams Lifetime Tribute Band called Spectrum Road with Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid, and John Medeski. From 1992 to 2007 and again in 2014 & 2015 she was the drummer in Lenny Kravitz’s band, performing through multiple world tours and hit albums. In 2010, she was part of the all-star line-up performing “Bitches Brew,” a tribute to Miles Davis’ seminal album staged at the San Francisco Jazz Festival and NYC Winter JazzFest.\nMore recently, Cindy has become the regular touring drummer for Santana. Having met several years earlier at a festival in Europe while she was touring with Kravitz, Cindy first played with Santana in spring 2010, when drummer Dennis Chambers had a previous commitment. “They have a great band vibe. It’s nice to play with people who have grown together, built a sound together, and stayed together,” she says. “When that happens, you can create so many different levels of communication. That’s what they’ve done, and I love reacting with it and being a part of it.”\nElectricity onstage generated chemistry offstage—Carlos proposed to Cindy during a July 2010 concert, and they married in December. Looking ahead, they will collaborate artistically as well, on projects that will no doubt reflect their shared passion for improvisation, and belief in the transcendent nature of music. Cindy was an integral part of the new Santana/Isley Brothers release Power of Peace, featuring the song “I Remember,” which she wrote and sings. “To me,” she says, “music is completely spiritual, it’s the way you connect with your higher self, with the universe. It’s also a way to share light with millions of people. They don’t need to speak your language, have your beliefs, or be in the same place you are. The music speaks, it channels good energy, and makes a difference in people’s lives. Carlos and I are both conscious of doing that.”\nNARADA MICHAEL WALDEN started his storied career as a drummer with John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Narada’s music flows freely from pop, rock and soul, to the rarified realms of jazz, fusion, and world music. With Jeff Beck, Narada wrote and played drums on the seminal album Wired that earned them both their first Gold Album. Walden was an integral part of introducing Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey to millions of fans worldwide, producing and writing their breakthrough hits. Billboard Magazine honored him as one of the Top Ten Producers of all time.\nIn 2016, Cindy connected with her fellow drummer and world-class producer NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN, and together the two have been working on new material ever since. CINDY BLACKMAN SANTANA continues to build a body of work and artistic legacy that make her one of the finest drummers and recording artists of this or any generation.\nTo pre-order the “FUN, PARTY, SPLASH” single on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/fun-party-splash-single/id1269743526?app=itunes or http://smarturl.it/funpartysplash\nFor more information about Cindy Blackman Santana, please visit her social media pages or Website: http://www.cindyblackmansantana.com/\nFor Interview Requests please contact Michael Jensen & Erin Cook / Jensen Communications: MJ@jensencom.com Erin@jensencom.com Phone 626-585-9575\nFor Press and Interview inquiries, please contact Billy James at Glass Onyon PR:\n(828) 350-8158 or glassonyonpr@gmail.com\nFor Digital Marketing, please contact Jerome Forney at Independent Distribution Collective: jerome@independentdistro.com\n6 Comments\t| posted in Carlos Santana, Cindy Blackman Santana, Press Release, Santana","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line996992"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9587687849998474,"wiki_prob":0.9587687849998474,"text":"DSU alum to speak on experiences as Benghazi hero\nFormer Dixie College football player now subject of book, action movie about tragic attack on U.S. compound in Libya\nDSU alum to speak on experiences as Benghazi hero Former Dixie College football player now subject of book, action movie about tragic attack on U.S. compound in Libya Check out this story on thespectrum.com: https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2015/11/06/dsu-alum-speak-experiences-benghazi-hero/75328632/\nKevin Jenkins, kevin@thespectrum.com Published 5:52 p.m. MT Nov. 6, 2015 | Updated 8:32 p.m. MT Nov. 6, 2015\nKris Paronto(Photo: premierespeakers.com)\nDixie State University will build on its Hollywood profile when it rolls out the red carpet for one of its alumni in January – a member of the elite security team that held off terrorists at the U.S. State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya three years ago.\nA group of DSU students will participate in a broadcast of “The TODAY Show” at the Four Corners monument on Monday, but January’s event will feature former Dixie receiver Kris Paronto, who played football in Southern Utah a quarter century ago and now is going to have his story featured on the big screen.\nParonto, who is known by his nickname “Tanto” among colleagues, has gained renown more recently as one of the six American security operator “heroes” who fought to repel the attack on the Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on Sept. 11, 2012.\nParonto’s experiences are recounted in the book “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” and on Friday members of Dixie’s Board of Trustees viewed a trailer for an upcoming movie based on the book, which will be released nationwide 10 days before Paronto’s visit to St. George.\nThe Benghazi incident has been the locus of controversies surrounding presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.\nWhile the movie is widely expected to shy away from the weightier political trappings of the incident, the two most recent movie trailers released this week promise action-heavy depictions of the security team’s courage during a real-life tragedy.\nDirector Michael Bay is best known for the movies \"Armageddon,\" \"Pearl Harbor\" and the \"Transformers\" series.\nDixie State Vice President of Development Brad Last introduced the film clip and said the development office is working on plans for using Paronto’s story as a boost for DSU — possibly through a meet-and-greet with the public before a VIP dinner reception Jan. 25 — while also help Paronto promote his story.\n“We have him for about five hours. … Of course, we want to make a big deal out of the fact that he’s a Dixie alum,” Last said. “He played football here in the (Coach Greg) Croshaw era then went to Mesa (State College) to finish his last two years.”\nLast, who is also a legislator representing eastern Washington County’s District 71, noted that Jan. 25 is the same day he will participate in the opening of the legislative session.\nParonto has toured the nation to talk about the book based on his team’s experiences, including at least one stop in Northern Utah.\nLast December, Utah County’s Daily Herald reported on his visit, noting at the time that the book’s purpose wasn’t only to tell what happened, but “to encourage others to stand up to falsehoods and secrecy perpetuated by the government.”\nThe report states Paronto attended American Fork Middle School during the 1980s while his mother taught in Lehi and his father coached linebackers on Brigham Young University’s football team.\nHis publicist didn’t respond to a request for further information Friday, but Paronto’s website notes that after completing his bachelor’s at Mesa State College, he went on to finish a master’s degree at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and served four years in the Army and four years in the Army National Guard as a special forces ranger.\nParonto then began contracting with Blackwater Security Consulting and continued on missions with them until 2013.\nHe now lives in Nebraska.\nAt Friday’s meeting, DSU’s trustees also:\n* Approved a revised mission statement and core themes for the school’s strategic planning process.\n* Approved plans for five new academic programs, including an associate degree in surgical technology, plans to restructure three others. The plans will next be presented to the state regents for approval.\n* Approved plans to discontinue the automotive technology program. Vice President of Academic Affairs Carole Grady said Dixie State has signed a memorandum of understanding that will transfer the program to Dixie Applied Technology College. One professor will retire and the other will move with the program to DXATC, she said.\n* Noted that the Washington County School District has begun construction on a new facility to replace East Elementary. Sale of the existing elementary to Dixie State will close soon, although transfer of the property won’t take place until the school district moves out next year.\nFollow Kevin Jenkins @SpectrumJenkins. Call him at 435-674-6253.\nOn the Net\nParonto's website: http://www.kristantoparonto.com/\nRead or Share this story: https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2015/11/06/dsu-alum-speak-experiences-benghazi-hero/75328632/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line24583"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7217504978179932,"wiki_prob":0.7217504978179932,"text":"Yatsenyuk: I didn't spark this crisis\nToday, March 25, Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk held a government meeting.\nThe Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk asked the political forces to decide on the further destiny of the Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers as soon as possible, according to Ukrainian Pravda.\n- On the political crisis. I have not sparked this crisis. But I require tackling it as soon as possible. Personalization of the Ukrainian politics discredits Ukraine in the eyes of our citizen and external partners as well, said the Prime Minister.\nYatsenyuk stressed he would accept any solution that \"will stabilize the situation and enable the country to move forward.\"\n- Either collect 226 votes, elect a new Cabinet of Ministers, program and a real coalition to implement it or maintain the current one, said Yatsenyuk.\nToday, March 25, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Vladimir Groisman is to present his program for the position of the Government Head. According to a Ukrainian political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, Groisman as the Prime Minister will be able to overcome one of the major problems and causes of the political crisis in the country - a rift between the Government and the coalition.\nPHOTO: QHA\npolitics Kiev Arseniy Yatsenyuk Prime Minister Cabinet of Ministers meeting crisis political crisis","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1530234"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6055424809455872,"wiki_prob":0.6055424809455872,"text":"Mansfield, is an industrial railroad town in Bristol county. In its earliest days, the town was the unsettled frontier of Taunton, used for hunting, fishing and some livestock grazing. The earliest permanent settlement of Mansfield took place in the 1680s.\nDuring the Colonial era, Mansfield’s economy was based on a mixture of agriculture and ironworking. The first grist mill was established in 1695 and the first iron forge in small industrial base was established with several tack factories, cotton mills, machine foundries and straw hat manufacturers. Local officials made a conscious effort to diversify town business.\nIt appeared that Mansfield’s commercial destiny was decided when the railroads arrived in Mansfield in the 1830s and the town was established as a refueling and freight transfer point. However, later in the 19th century, the town suffered from a decline in rail freight, and local officials were actively engaged in attempting to draw business to town.\nThe Mansfield Board of Trade was formed in 1892 and was instrumental in drawing new industries to set up in town. Among the companies that moved in were jewelry firms which had been settled in Attleboro. Immigrants from Italy, Ireland, England and Canada moved to Mansfield to fill the manufacturing and farming jobs in the town, which was site of experimental gladioli farms.\nThe construction of Routes 24 and 495 and the development of a joint Mansfield/Foxborough industrial park brought new commercial life to the town. Mansfields growing industry and commitment to education and recreation programs makes Mansfield a great place to live!\nclick map to enlarge","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line370979"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7268633246421814,"wiki_prob":0.2731366753578186,"text":"New Members Appointed to VA Advisory Committee on Minority Veterans\nThe Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced the appointment of four new members to the Advisory Committee on Minority Veterans. The committee was chartered on November 2, 1994, and advises the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on the needs of the nation’s 4.7 million minority Veterans on compensation, health care, rehabilitation, outreach and other benefits and programs administered by the VA. The committee assesses the needs of Veterans who are minority group members and recommends program improvements designed to meet their needs. The committee members are appointed to two or three-year terms. Minority Veterans comprise nearly 21 percent of the total Veteran population in the United States and its territories.\nThe new committee members are:\nMelissa Castillo: Navy Veteran of San Antonio, Texas. Served as the Assistant Regional Director for San Antonio Region, Veterans County Service Officer Association of Texas; Assistant Women Veterans Coordinator; Advisor to the US Army Survivor Outreach Services Program; and Advisor to the Alamo Community College District Veterans Affairs Committee. Currently serves as the Assistant Veterans Service Officer at the Bexar County Veterans Service Office in San Antonio, Texas, and is an accredited Veterans Service Officer.\nBenno Cleveland: Army Veteran of Fairbanks, Alaska. Served two tours in Dong Tam, Vietnam where he earned a Purple Heart. He also served as Senior Vice Commander and Department Commander of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. In recognition of his distinguished military service, the Alaska Federation of Natives bestowed him with their “Veteran of the Year” honors in 2014 at their Annual Convention in Anchorage. Mr. Cleveland also founded the Alaska Native Veterans Association and is currently serving as President.\nGinger Miller: Navy Veteran of Accokeek, Maryland, and former homeless disabled Veteran. Ms. Miller became Founder and CEO of two nonprofit organizations that serve Veterans and their families: John 14:2, Inc. and Women Veterans Interactive. She served as Chairwoman of the Prince George’s County Veterans Commission; Commissioner, Maryland Commission for Women; member of the Maryland Veterans Resilience Advisory Council; and a member of the Maryland Caregivers Support Coordinating Council. She is currently a member of Disabled American Veterans.\nXiomara Sosa: Army Veteran of Summerville, South Carolina. Ms. Sosa is the Founder and Principal of XAS Consulting, LLC, an integrative mental healthcare and holistic wellness consulting firm. She served on the Women Veteran Social Justice board of directors; Military Partners and Families Veteran Initiative; the Semper Fidelis Health and Wellness Advisory Board; and a current member of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc.\nThe new members join current members:\nMarvin Trujillo, Jr., Committee Chairman, Marine Corps Veteran\nMany-Bears Grinder, Col. (USA-Ret)\nPatricia Jackson-Kelley, Lt. Col. (USA-Ret)\nLibrado Rivas, Command Sgt. Maj. (USA-Ret)\nTeresita Smith, Sgt. First Class (USA-Ret)\nRebecca Stone, Staff Sgt. (USA-Ret)\nCornell Wilson, Jr., Maj. Gen. (USMC-Ret)\nAnthony Woods, Army Veteran\nSecretary Wilkie’s Statement Regarding House Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Phil Roe’s Retirement Announcement\nBlue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act claims now being determined\nVA News – December 16, 2019\n← VA Plans to Propose Expanded Disability Benefits Eligibility for Veterans Exposed to Contaminated Water at Camp Lejeune\nPhony Navy SEAL of the WEEK: Navy SEAL Father Tom Feeks talks about his Son killed in action with tours to Iraq and Afghanistan →","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1306123"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.74625164270401,"wiki_prob":0.74625164270401,"text":"Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett On Possibly Entering The Rock Hall Of Fame\nWith the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony only days away, the controversy surrounding Pearl Jam and former drummer Dave Abbruzzese getting snubbed from the awards has stood at the forefront of the organization's annual drama. While speaking with Alternative Nation , Foo Fighters guitarist...\nWatch 25 Years Of Pearl Jam In 6 Minutes In '25 Years Of Alive'\nTime flies when you're having fun. In Pearl Jam 's case, they've been having fun non-stop for the last twenty-five years. The band's videographer Kevin Shuss assembled 25 years worth of Pearl Jam shows and condensed them into a six-minute video in honor of their upcoming induction into the Rock N'...\nRock And Roll Hall Of Fame Announces Induction Presenters & Performers For 2017 Ceremony\nWith the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame only a week away (April 7th, 2017), more presenters and performers have been announced to appear at the induction ceremony. It is being reported that Electric Light Orchestra will be inducted into the Hall of Fame by Dhani Harrison , son of late Beatles...\nPearl Jam Invites All Of Their Past Drummers To Hall Of Fame Induction\nLots of people were excited to hear the news that Pearl Jam will be inducted into the 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That is of couse except for former Pearl Jam drummer Dave Abbruzzese , whose name was left out of Pearl Jam members being inducted. He has since been very vocal about his snub on...\nBilly Corgan Fell Into \"Suicidal Depression\" Because Of Nirvana & Pearl Jam's Success\nSmashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan said in a recent interview with Amy Jo Martin of Why Not Now? how difficult it was living in the shadow of Nirvana and Pearl Jam 's success, and falling into a depression helped inspired the hit song \"Today.\" When the Smashing Pumpkins' first record Gish was...\nAndy Samberg Channels Pearl Jam For \"Alive\" Celebrities At Spirit Awards' Non-Memorium Segment\nWe all know about the in-memorium segments during awards shows which pay tribute to industry leaders that have passed away in the last year. At the 2017 Sprit Awards, actor/comedian Andy Samberg turned that concept on its head and paid tribute to individuals in Hollywood that are very much still...\nNeil Young, Jackson Browne, Geddy Lee And Alex Lifeson Of RUSH To Be Presenters In The 2017 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Ceremony\nWith the news that artists like Pearl Jam and Yes were to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, another perk to the ceremony is finding out who they will be inducted by. According to Cleveland.com current inductees Neil Young , Jackson Browne , and Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush will...\nPearl Jam, Alice In Chains Members & Frances Bean Cobain Attend Women's March\nWith an estimated 2.9 million people in the streets, the Women's March is believed to be the largest protest to take place in the United States. Among those in attendance were members of Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains , as well as daughter of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain , Frances Bean Cobain...\nDave Abbruzzese Goes After Former Pearl Jam Bandmates Due To Lack Of Support For Rock Hall Snub\nEvery year it's no surprise that people are going to be upset at who gets nominated and who gets snubbed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Pearl Jam were named as nominees for the Hall of Fame's 2017 class, most people were thrilled. Among those disappointed, none were more upset than former...\nChris Cornell Describes Soundgarden's Early Days & Why Seattle Birthed So Many Bands In The 90's\nIn an interview conducted by Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready , Soundgarden 's Chris Cornell briefly discussed Soundgarden's early days, which were not dissimilar to any other first-time garage band. “I remember the first couple of weeks of me, Kim [ Thayil ], and Hiro [ Yamamoto ] writing songs...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1340878"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7116301655769348,"wiki_prob":0.2883698344230652,"text":"Linking the Researchers, Developing the Innovations\nPublishing with Kambohwell\nInternational Journal of Engineering Works\nInternational Journal of Medical Works\nInternational Journal of Art, Culture, Design and Language Works\nInternational Journal of Business, Economics and Management Works\nInternational Journal of Media Science Works\nInternational Journal of Education Works\nInternational Journal of Law and Peace Works\nHOME About Us Publishing with Kambohwell Committee Board Call for Paper Review Process Open Access Policy and Copyrights Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement Policy for plagiarism Journals - International Journal of Law and Peace Works - International Journal of Education Works - International Journal of Media Science Works - International Journal of Business, Economics and Management Works - International Journal of Art, Culture, Design and Language Works - International Journal of Medical Works - International Journal of Engineering Works Contact\nManuscripts submittal opens till 25 January, 2020. Please submit your papers at editor@kwpublisher.com or editorkwpublisher@gmail.com\nEducational Buildings Defects and Health Impact on Users: A Case of Lagos State Polytechnic, Nigeria\nVolume 2017\n(International Journal of Business, Economics and Management Works)\nVol. 4, Issue 11, PP. 13-19, November 2017\nKeywords: Defects, campus, educational buildings, facilities, Polytechnic\nEducation serves as the bedrock for future socio-economic development of any society. Student’s learning behaviour and effectiveness is affected by functionality of educational buildings. During the lifecycle of buildings its performance is affected by defects, hence, it is paramount to have effective maintenance policies and practices. Thus, in order to retain sustainable educational building, defects diagnosis and management is paramount. The study seeks to identity defects and its associated health issues in Lagos State Polytechnic campuses. The objectives were achieved using questionnaire survey, responses of 200 participants were coded and analysed with SPSS 17. The study reveals that plumbing installations, indoor environment and aesthetic related issues are critical problems that need attention in the institution. Based on the responses, heat, discomfort and body pain were significant health problems experienced by users of facilities. This is an indication of areas the management of the institution has to address in order to achieve its vision.\nThis research work is to acknowledge the support of TEDFUND toward educational research in Nigeria and to the staffs member of Lagos state polytechnic\nA Akinpelu: Lagos state polytechnic. Nigeria\nO.O Oyekanmi: Lagos state polytechnic, Nigeria\nKamaldeen Adedeji: Lagos state polytechnic, Nigeria\nA Akinpelu, O.O Oyekanmi, Kamaldeen Adedeji, Educational Buildings Defects and Health Impact on Users: A Case of Lagos State Polytechnic, Nigeria, International Journal of Business, Economics and Management Works, Vol. 4, Issue 11, PP. 13-19, November 2017.\n[1] Akinsola, O.E., Hussaini, P.O., Oyenuga, S.O., and Fatokun, A.O. Critical Factors Influencing Facility Maintenance Management of Tertiary Institutional Buildings in South West Nigeria. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 3(11), 2012, pp. 489 – 496\n[2] Wordsworth, P. Lee’s Building Maintenance Management, 4th Edition. Oxford. Blackwell Science Ltd. 2001.\n[3] Lair, S. B. A study of the effects school facility conditions have on student achievement. A Doctor of Philosophy dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin. 2003\n[4] Leung, M., & Fung, I. Enhancement of classroom facilities of primary schools and its impact on learning behaviors of students. Facilities, 23(13/14), 2005, pp.585-594.\n[5] Bullock, C. C. The relationship between school buildingconditions and student achievement at the middle school level in the commonwealth of Virginia. A Doctor of Philosophy dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 2007\n[6] Mat, S., Sopian, K., Moktar, M., Hashim, S.H., Abdul R.A., Zain, M.F.M. and Abdullah, G.N. Managing Sustainable Campus in Malaysia – Organizational Approach and Measures, European Journal of Social Science, 8 (2), 2009pp.201- 214.\n[7] Adebayo, O. S. A study of the maintenance management of public buildings in Nigeria. An unpublished PhD thesis submitted to the department of Building ,University of Lagos, Nigeria. 1991\n[8] Zubairu, N. S. Maintenance of government office buildings in Nigeria: A post- occupancy evaluation approach. An unpublished PhD thesis submitted to the department of Building, University of Lagos, Nigeria. 2000\n[9] Adenuga, O. A. Evaluation of maintenance management practice in public hospital buildings in south west, Nigeria. An unpublished PhD thesis submitted to the department of Building, University of Lagos, Nigeria. 2008\n[10] Adewunmi, Y., Omirin, M., Famuyiwa, F., & Farinloye, O. Post-occupancy evaluation of postgraduate hostel facilities. Facilities, 29(3), 2011, pp.149-168.\n[11] Okolie, K. C. Performance evaluation of buildings in educational institutions: A case of universities in South-west Nigeria. A Phd thesis submitted to the department of Construction Management, School of the Built Environment, 2011, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Port Elizabeth South Africa.\n[12] Olanrewaju, A. Quantitative analysis of defects in university buildings: user perspective. Built Environment Project and Asset Management, 2012, 2(2), pp.167-181. doi:10.1108/20441241211280909.\n[13] Obiegbu, M. E. Overview of total performance concept of buildings: Focusing on quality, safety and durability. Paper presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the Nigeria Institute of Building held in Abeokuta 2005, pp. 2-10.\n[14] Thompson, P. The maintenance factor in facilities management. Facilties, 12(6),1994, pp.13-16.\n[15] Lavy, S. Facility management practices in higher education buildings: A case study. Journal of Facilities Management, 6(4), 2008, pp.303-315.\n[16] Marshall, L., Erica, W., Alan, A., & Sanborn, M. D. Identifying and managing adverse environmental health effects: Taking an exposure history. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 166(8),2002, pp.1049-1055\n[17] Tarcan, E., & Varol, E. S. A qualitative study of facilities and their environmental performance. Management of Environmental Quality. An International Journal, 15(2), 2004, pp.154-173.\n[18] Yin, R. K. Case study research: Design and methods. New Bury Park, London: Sage Publications. 1994\n[19] Amarantuga, D., & Baldry, D. Building performance evaluation in higher education properties: Towards a process model. Proceeding of the RICS COBRA Conference ,1999, pp. 45-56. London.\n[20] Turpin-Brooks, S., & Viccars, G. The development of robust methods of post occupancy evaluation. Facilities, 2006, 24(5/6), pp.177-196.\n[21] Proverbs, D., & Gameson, R. Case-study research. In A. Knight, & L. Ruddock, Advanced Research Methods in the Built Environment2008, pp. 99-110. Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.\nKambohwell Publisher\nJournal Submission and Processing Policy\nKambohwell Publisher Enterprises\nHead office: Crown Plaza, Haidian District, Beijing China. Branch office: New Gulgasht Colony, Multan, Pakistan.\nE-mail: info@kwpublisher.com\nCopyright KWP Journals\nSitemap Top\nAll articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.\nDeveloped By Yaser Riaz","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1043175"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7411723136901855,"wiki_prob":0.25882768630981445,"text":"Surprise City Manager Mike Frazier has announced that Chris Boyd will serve as the city’s new Community Development Director.\nBoyd has served as Acting Director of the Community Development (CD) Department since April, stepping in from his role as Assistant CD Director.\nBoyd joined the city’s CD Department in 2008 as the Code Enforcement Manager and was promoted to the position of Assistant CD Director in 2010. In 2014, he served as Acting CD Director for seven months before the hiring of Eric Fitzer, whose position he now replaces permanently.\nBoyd was selected as the permanent CD Director after a very competitive process that included internal and external candidates.\n“Our Community Development Department fulfills a critical mission within the fast-growing City of Surprise, striving to provide the highest level of service related to planning, permitting, and building safety elements,” said City Manager Mike Frazier. “Chris has done an exceptional job in the interim role. He understands the importance of smart growth and exceptional customer service, and I know he will continue to excel as he takes on this permanent role.”\nBoyd holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Justice Studies from Arizona State University and is currently pursuing an MBA at Ottawa University Arizona.\n⇐Previous Spring into the new year with youth sportsNext⇒ Surprise to host Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Celebration & Service","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1100061"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5183334946632385,"wiki_prob":0.5183334946632385,"text":"WolfTrack sets new path\nEly Chamber takes over sponsorship of February sled dog races\nby Tom Coombe\nAn Ely winter event will continue this season with new management.\nThe Ely Chamber of Commerce has taken over sponsorship and coordination of the WolfTrack Classic, a sled dog racing event that has become a staple on the local winter calendar and hearkens back to the days when the community hosted the All-American Sled Dog Races.\nSet for its 12th year, the WTC’s future was in jeopardy as volunteer board members looked to pass the baton to new leadership.\n“No one wanted to see the race end,” said Eva Sebesta, executive director of the Ely Chamber and a one-time WTC board member. “They were having some challenges finding additional board members want what ultimately ended up happening was that the board decided they would like to follow in the footsteps of the Apostle Islands race, which the Bayfield Chamber operates. So there was some precedence.”\nThe Chamber organization, which includes event coordinator Ellen Cashman, one of the original founders of the WTC, provides a fit for the race to move forward.\n“We knew we were successful in doing other events,” said Sebesta. “And sled dog mushing has been such a part of the culture and history up here, with the Ely All-American which was a major force before the Iditarod... This is a good race, but we just couldn’t get hands on the board to help support it, so the Chamber is taking it on.”\nStarted just over a decade ago, the WolfTrack Classic conjures up memories of the days when Ely hosted the All-American races, which started a half-century ago and were arguably the community’s biggest overall event during the 1970s and 1980s.\nWhile the WTC has faced weather challenges during its existence, with mild conditions twice forcing the cancellation of the event, it has persevered and become a draw in its own right.\nParticipation for this year’s event was up 20 percent compared to a 2018.\nThe event has also become more popular with Ely area residents and dog mushing enthusiasts who come from beyond the region to take in the festivities.\n“We’ve gone from maybe 50 spectators at the starting line a few years ago to hundreds the last couple of years,” said Sebesta. “This race has been great. It draws people up. It’s been a two day event so we have people coming from all over the country to support the race and they’re staying in our lodging, eating in our restaurants.”\nThe 2020 event is set for the weekend of Feb. 22-23, with an art show, at the Grand Ely Lodge, musher check-in and mushers’ dinner at Vermilion Community College all part of the opening day festivities.\nThe race kicks off on Sunday, Feb. 23 at the softball complex on Ely’s eastern edge, with both 30 and 50-mile races in the works, the same as in 2019.\n“We’re going to keep it very much the same,” said Sebesta. “The WolfTrack Classic board had been talking about doing some additional races like a kids’ race and a freight race. Right now we want to make sure we are doing a good job with the main race and maybe add those pieces in a couple years.”\nGrand Ely Lodge serves as the “base camp” of sorts on race day, and it’s home to an awards ceremony and dinner following the event.\nVolunteers are still needed to help with various aspects of the event, and those interested in helping may contact the Chamber at (218) 365-6123 or check out the race website at www.wolftrackclassic.com.\n“We do have some volunteer groups that helped in the past and they are going to continue,” said Sebesta. (Others) can come into to the Chamber office or call or sign up on the website. We’re just excited to be doing the race and continuing to support sled dog mushing and racing in our area.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1080666"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6414860486984253,"wiki_prob":0.6414860486984253,"text":"Why Rebrand\nManhattanLife Stories\nOne of the unexpected benefits of ManhattanLife’s 170-year legacy is finding its treasure trove of stories, historical milestones and industry firsts. Not only are they interesting, they also validate the persona of our company. We invite you to learn more about ManhattanLife and the journey that led us to where we are today. And don’t forget to check back to learn more as we discover new stories to share!\n• The Independent\n• America's First Skyscraper\n• Old Reliable\n• ACA Court Win\nA History of Firsts\nLogo Past & Present\nManhattanLife Stories:\nOperating According to Its Mission\nWithin an industry peer group comprised primarily of large, publicly traded companies, ManhattanLife owns a differentiated position as an independent.\nPrivate and closely held by choice, ManhattanLife is free to make decisions that align with its stated values and core mission — helping policyholders, producers and employees with attaining and sustaining health, wealth and security throughout their lives.\nA potential conflict of interest exists within an organization that is beholden to investors and analysts on one hand and policyholders and producers on the other. At best, the required focus on quarterly earnings is a distraction from servicing policies and innovating products. At worst, it could mean prioritizing preserving shareholder value over advocating on behalf of policyholders.\nA History of Independence\nManhattanLife has a storied history of conducting business its own way. Founded in 1850, this independent is one of the industry’s oldest insurance companies, has survived multiple wars, plagues, the Great Depression and the Great Recession, and has done so without compromising its values or determination to “do the right thing.” Even when pressured not to.\nThis was demonstrated early in the Company’s history when the Civil War ended and ManhattanLife sought out the surviving policyholders of the South in order to fulfill their claims. In spite of the federal government’s prevailing opinion that they ignore these claims, ManhattanLife honored the claims because it believed it was morally the right thing to do.\nManhattanLife was “David” to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “Goliath” in 2014 when, advocating for producers’ right to sell and policyholders’ right to buy, it sued and won protected access to fixed indemnity health insurance products. At this level, only a true independent has the autonomy to put their money where their mouth is to fight for the rights of their constituents and the ability to serve them.\nFree to Create and Innovate\nBeing an independent can also be about “independence from” — independence from rigidity of thinking, the status quo and herd mentality. This allows ManhattanLife to focus on what matters most — improving upon its product offering and rewarding its valued relationships with producers. The Company embraces the kind of nimbleness, creativity and generosity of spirit that generally cannot thrive within the bureaucratic confines of the large publicly traded insurance companies, known within the industry as “the Bigs”.\nWith almost 170 years of independently growing its business, today ManhattanLife plays in the space of the market leaders. Yet, as an independent, the Company remains the true alternative offering product breadth and financial strength that can go toe-to-toe with other top carriers. ManhattanLife — all the benefits of the Bigs but better.\nAmerica's First Skyscraper\nTrailblazers by Design\nThe history of New York City’s skyline is almost as rich as the city itself. And at the heart of this history rests the ManhattanLife building — the first skyscraper to be designed and constructed in the United States.\nThe development of the ManhattanLife building began in 1892, when The Company commissioned architecture firm Kimball & Thompson for its design, which would tower 347 feet above Broadway, and 400 feet above the foundation. Such heights had never been reached, so to achieve this, a new type of construction was required – a caisson-type foundation. This design – the first caisson-type foundation used in New York – is commonplace today, but at the time it was considered a revolutionary approach to minimizing the risk of damage to surrounding buildings.\nAt first, the Commissioner of Buildings was resistant to permitting the groundbreaking structure, but eventually consented asking only that the lead architect George Kramer Thompson give his word that it would work.\nA herculean effort, the skyscraper was completed in 12 months and 27 days with no lives lost during its construction. It was reported that enough steel was used in the building to install 100 miles of railroad.\nThe Talk of the Town\nThroughout its development, the ManhattanLife building became a topic of discussion in the newspapers and magazines of the time. Truly innovative, this project captured the interest of New York’s media and citizens, and was called an attempt to “push dem clouds away” as the Insurance Record reported.\nThe Company moved into its cutting-edge headquarters in 1894 and the building quickly became one of New York’s prime sight seeing attractions, much like the Empire State Building or Radio City Music Hall of today. Guides were available to lead visitors through the nation’s first skyscraper, including the structure’s tower occupied by the Government Weather Station.\nA newsworthy moment during the building’s development is tied to the World’s Fair. The Insurance Advocate noted editorially at the time of the fair at the Art Palace that, “ManhattanLife made a good hit when it conceived the idea of exhibiting a model of its elegant new building, now in the course of construction, at the World’s Fair. While taking in the sights of the wonderful exposition, we were convinced of this fact by observing a large number of people admiring that colossal piece of architecture. For The ManhattanLife it is an advertisement par excellence.”\nThe Old Reliable\nFrom Young Resilient to Old Reliable\nIn its eleventh year in business, the ManhattanLife insurance company was thriving despite strenuous circumstances. Its team of field agents had grown to 464, with representation expanding from New York to across the country as far as California and Texas. With assets over $1 million, The Company had persevered through the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1853 and the Panic of 1857 which had resulted in the suspension of New York City banks. However, it would soon face its greatest challenge, and an epic and defining milestone, with the attack on Fort Sumter on March 12, 1861 and the resulting four years of Civil War.\nOperating During War Time\nThe battle between the North and South presented operational challenges to The Company, which a special meeting of the Board was called to address. ManhattanLife’s field force in the North needed to increase to compensate for the loss of business in the South due to the war. There was also the issue of granting permits to policyholders volunteering for Union military or naval service. The Board voted to grant permits at adjusted rates provided they made applications within 10 days of entering service. Policyholders not wishing to pay the extra premium for war risk were allowed to let the policies lapse with the provision they would be reinstated at the end of the war with their demonstration of good health.\nA Moral Versus Legal Interpretation\nOperating during wartime presented philosophical challenges as well. The Company’s Claims Committee had to weigh the question of whether to honor claims based on a moral evaluation rather than a purely legalistic interpretation. Some Board members expressed the opinion that insured policyholders had not taken ordinary precaution in the payment of war premiums without a permit from The Company and therefore were not eligible to make a claim. Upon review, the Directors eventually discerned that the servicemen had acted in good faith and given their lives to their country, leaving their families in financial hardship. The decision was made to honor these claims, a motion proving ManhattanLife’s leadership were men of compassion.\nIntroducing Incontestability\nIn 1863, an incontestability clause was introduced to ManhattanLife’s Applications Committee for consideration. The clause would essentially eliminate potential loopholes and ensure The Company’s accountability to policyholders. The motion was seconded but lost on a vote. A champion for the clause, the Chairman of ManhattanLife’s Claims Committee reintroduced it citing both the advantages and objections to the policy feature as well as its success in the practice of European insurance companies. To date, no American insurance company had ever offered policyholders the protection of incontestability. The key language in the clause read “This policy is incontestable, after five years from its date, for or on account of errors, omission, or misstatements in the application, except as to age.” The motion passed and a copy of the resolution was sent to all policyholders and the clause was included in all future policies.\nPost War Restoration and Restitution\nIn the spring of 1865 following the end of the Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, ManhattanLife set about two major initiatives — reestablishing its Southern agencies and searching out the Southern policyholders and beneficiaries with whom The Company had lost contact during the time of war. Communications and monetary transactions across battle lines were mostly suspended therefore policyholders were unable to pay their premiums. Legally, the policies were considered lapsed. ManhattanLife could either rigidly abide by the terms of its contracts, or, take a liberal rather than legal view and pay the claims minus the amount of unpaid premiums. It chose the latter, and soon word spread throughout the South earning the Company the moniker of “The Old Reliable”. And as ManhattanLife reestablished its presence in Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas, agents found this compassionate approach to claim settlements and policy reinstatement and the earned reputation of reliability were some of The Company’s most valuable assets.\nManhattanLife’s founding Directors unanimously agreed The Company should always operate according to the good faith interpretation of its word — not just the minimum of what was contractually required. Whether making decisions based on what is believed to be morally right or implementing a self-governing clause to protect policyholders — fairness and reliability have consistently been cornerstones of the ManhattanLife brand throughout its 170-year history and today. It is this demonstrated core value that has inspired The Company’s new positioning line — Standing by You. Since 1850.\nACA Court Win\nManhattanlife Saves Fixed Indemnity for Industry and Insured\nManhattanLife played “David” to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “Goliath” in 2014 when the Company sued HHS, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and other members of the Obama administration to protect consumers’ access to fixed indemnity health insurance products.\nPrior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) taking effect, consumers across the country, who were either unable or unwilling to pay for or unable to qualify to purchase major medical coverage, were using indemnity insurance as an effective alternative to help cover a variety of planned and unplanned healthcare expenses.\nOnce ACA was in effect, government regulators began taking active steps to prevent consumers from purchasing fixed indemnity health insurance unless they could prove they already had “minimum essential coverage” and were only using the indemnity insurance to fill gaps left by the major medical policy.\nTaking a Stand on Behalf of Producers and Policyholders\nUpon closer investigation, ManhattanLife concluded that the regulators’ actions were challenging the use of “excepted benefits,” as defined by Section 201 of the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), in lieu of major medical coverage. “Fixed indemnity” is clearly among the forms of insurance listed as excepted benefits in the PHSA. The Company believed this was a misinterpretation and that HHS was depriving Americans from a valuable tool to help them maintain their health, wealth and security.\nSo, under the guidance of CEO David Harris, ManhattanLife stepped forward as the only insurance provider in the country willing to challenge the government’s actions in court.\nJudge Royce C. Lamberth, the senior judge of the District Court for the District of Columbia, agreed with ManhattanLife in September 2015, granting an injunction that prohibited HHS from requiring insurance buyers to have minimum essential coverage in place prior to purchasing fixed indemnity coverage.\nKeeping Fixed Indemnity in Play\nNot at all pleased with the outcome and the precedent it would set, HHS immediately appealed the ruling, with the hope a federal appeals court would reverse the ruling.\nA three-judge panel at the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals ruled unanimously in favor of ManhattanLife, and ultimately for producers and policyholders, affirming the permanent injunction originally granted by the district court judge.\n“At issue is whether HHS colored outside the lines of its authority. The district court held that it did, and we agree.” Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in an opinion for the panel that heard the case. “At no point does the ACA give even the slightest indication the definition of “excepted benefit” was suddenly debatable; rather, the Act doubled down on the PHSA’s existing requirements.”\nThe panel determined, as a result of this, that HHS has no authority under ACA to regulate how consumers use fixed indemnity or other “excepted benefits” products.\n“HHS lacked the authority to demand more of fixed indemnity providers than Congress required.” wrote Brown.\n“Sometimes a situation calls for you to take a stand for what’s fair regardless of what’s in favor,” says ManhattanLife CEO David Harris. “ManhattanLife was in a position to step forward and do what we felt was right based on our commitment to indemnity products being a critical offering for many of our policyholders. I am very pleased that all four judges validated our interpretation of this matter.”\n“ManhattanLife’s storied history is filled with memorable milestones throughout its 170 years — and our future looks just as bright.”\nDan George, President\n© Copyright 2019 ManhattanLife | Site by Axiom","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line852857"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.735701322555542,"wiki_prob":0.735701322555542,"text":"Scientist Seeking Love Falls for Cocaine Scam\nBy McCarton Ackerman 07/24/12\nA distinguished physicist duped into chasing \"Miss Bikini World\" languishes in an Argentine jail.\nSpoiler alert: this does not end well.\nThis is not your typical \"rom-com.\" A US-based British scientist who thought he was heading to Bolivia to meet the woman of his dreams—a renowned \"Czech model\" he met online—now faces a possible 16-year jail sentence after he was allegedly suckered into smuggling two kilograms of cocaine on a flight from Buenos Aires to Peru. Paul Frampton, a professor at North Carolina University, had been chatting online from last November with a woman he believed to be Czech-born glamour model and former Miss Bikini World Denise Milani. But it turns out \"she\" was a male criminal posing as a model. The pair arranged to meet in Bolivia, where Frampton thought he would meet Milani, only to be told by a hotel employee to look after a suitcase belonging to her. After waiting fruitlessly in Bolivia for 10 days, he was told to fly to Buenos Aires and wait three days for a ticket to Brussels, where they would finally meet. It was at this point that Frampton's colleagues convinced him to fly home—but he was busted by airport officials when they found the drugs hidden in the lining of the suitcase. “The day I arrived in Bolivia I found out she wasn’t coming and I should have returned to the US straight away,\" says Frampton. \"But I always see my projects through, as I do with my physics papers. She was my project. Perhaps I should have realized there was something strange going on.” How on earth did the man who makes a living off his mind fall for such a scam? Frampton's ex-wife Anne Marie says he has \"an emotional age of three. The only thing he understands is science.\" Frampton is still locked up in a Buenos Aires jail, but his fellow scientists have written to Cristina Kirchner, the Argentine president, asking her to intervene.\ndrug smugglers\nMcCarton Ackerman\nMcCarton Ackerman is a freelance writer and editor living in Portland, Oregon. He has been a contributor for The Fix since October 2011, writing on a wide range of topics ranging from medical marijuana in Colorado to the world's sexiest drug smugglers. Follow him on Linkedin and Twitter.\nUS, Canada Issue Travel Advisory For China After Controversial Drug Smuggling Case\nIs AA at Fault for the Murder of One of its Members?\nOn September 18, 2014 a three-year long court case involving a woman who died by the hands of a man...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line13067"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5368906259536743,"wiki_prob":0.4631093740463257,"text":"Ran Abramitzky\nAssociate Professor of Economics at Stanford University\nRan Abramitzky is Associate Professor of Economics at Stanford University. His research is in economic history and applied microeconomics, with focus on immigration and income inequality. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.\nHe is the Co-editor of Explorations in Economic History and on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic History. He was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, as well as National Science Foundation grants for research on the causes and consequences of income inequality and on international migration. He holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University.\nContent by this Author\nArticles by ranabramitzky0\nImmigrants and cultural assimilation\nProductivity and migration: New insights from the 19th century","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line215638"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5893149971961975,"wiki_prob":0.4106850028038025,"text":"Data for recent first-authored publications can be found here or are linked directly from the article.\nFor older publications (i.e., pre 2012), please contact me directly to obtain data if the link is not provided in the paper.\nFor recent publications on which I am not first author, please contact the first author or follow the link to data provided in the paper.\nArticles in Professional Magazines\nRenouf, J. S., Mann , M. E., Cook, J., Wright, C., Steffen, W., Nunn, P., Dube, P., Jouzel, J., Lewandowsky, S., Poelina, A., & Richardson, K. (2019, September). Why universities need to declare an ecological and climate emergency. Times Higher Education.\nLewandowsky, S. (2019, August). Disinformation and human cognition. Security and Human Rights Monitor.\nLewandowsky, S., & Winkler, B. (2018, November). Desinformation zum Klimawandel‒und was man dagegen tun kann. [Climate disinformation‒and what can be done against it]. Promet, 101,8-14. (In German).\nGleick, P. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Kelley, C. (2018). Critique of conflict and climate analysis is oversimplified. Nature, 555, 7698 (letter to editor).\nLewandowsky, S., van der Linden, S., & Cook, J. (2018, April 30). Can we inoculate against fake news? CREST Security Review.\nLewandowsky, S., Risbey, J. S., & Oreskes, N. (2017). Are cops on the science beat? Issues in Science and Technology. 34(1).\nvan der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J., Leiserowitz, A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017, December). Inoculating against misinformation. Science, 358, 1141-1142. DOI: 10.1126/science.aar4533\nLewandowsky, S. (2017). Climate models and climate data: Confusion and conflation vs. scientific reality. Transactions of the Manchester Statistical Society 2015-2016, 29-50.\nLewandowsky, S., Mann, M. E., Brown, N. J. L., & Friedman, H. (2017). Public Debate, Scientific Skepticism, and Science Denial. Skeptical Inquirer, 40(1).\nLewandowsky, S. (2015, July). Review of Don’t Even Think About It:Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. Reports of the National Centre for Science Education, 35(4).\nvan der Linden, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2015, 28 April). How to Combat Distrust of Science. Scientific American. (Reprinted in: Return to Reason: The Science of Thought, 2018, Scientific American book).\nLewandowsky, S., & Whitmarsh, L. (2014, March). Mind over matter. Geographical. (Official magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, U.K.).\nLewandowsky, S., Mann, M. E., Bauld, L., Hastings, G., & Loftus, E. F. (2013, November 1). The subterranean war on science. APS Observer, online only.\nAuthored Books:\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). Computational modelling of cognition and behaviour. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.\nLewandowsky, S., & Farrell, S. (2011). Computational Modeling in Cognition: Principles and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.\nRefereed Journal Articles:\nGordon, A., Ecker, U. K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Polarity and attitude effects in the continued-influence paradigm. Journal of Memory and Language, 108, 104028. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2019.104028.\nGordon, A., Quadflieg, S., Brooks, J.C.W., Ecker, U.K.H., Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Keeping track of ‘alternative facts’: The neural correlates of processing misinformation corrections. NeuroImage. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.03.014.\nHerrando-Pérez, S., Bradshaw, C. J., Lewandowsky, S., & Vieites, D. R. (2019). Statistical Language Backs Conservatism in Climate-Change Assessments. BioScience, 69, 209-219. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/biz004.\nKarlsson, L. C., Lewandowsky, S., Antfolk, J., Salo, P., Lindfelt, M., Oksanen, T., Kivimäki, M., & Soveri, A. (2019). The association between vaccination confidence, vaccination behavior, and willingness to recommend vaccines among Finnish healthcare workers. PLOS ONE, 14, e0224330.\nLewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Fay, N., & Gignac, G. E. (2019). Science by social media: Attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus. Memory & cognition, 47, 1445-1456. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-019-00948-y.\nLewandowsky, S., Pilditch, T. D., Madsen, J. K., Oreskes, N., & Risbey, J. S. (2019). Influence and seepage: An evidence-resistant minority can affect public opinion and scientific belief formation. Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.01.011.\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Addressing the Theory Crisis in Psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, DOI: 10.3758/s13423-019-01645-2.\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2019). Simple measurement models for complex working-memory tasks. Psychological Review. DOI: 10.1037/rev0000159.\nSleeth-Keppler, D., Lewandowsky, S., Ballard, T., Myers, T. A., Roser-Renouf, C, & Maibach, E. (2019). Does ‘When’ really feel more certain than ‘If’? Two failures to replicate Ballard and Lewandowsky (2015). Royal Society Open Science, 6, 180475. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.180475.\nSwire-Thompson, B., Ecker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Berinski, A. (2019). They might be a liar but they’re my liar: source evaluation and the prevalence of misinformation. Political Psychology. DOI: 10.1111/pops.12586.\nWiesner, K., Birdi, A., Eliassi-Rad, T., Farrell, H., Garcia, D., Lewandowsky, S., Palacios, P., Ross, R., Sornette, D., & Thébault, K. (2019). Stability of democracies – A complex systems perspective. European Journal of Physics, 40, 014002. DOI: 10.1088/1361-6404/aaeb4d.\nAird, M. J., Ecker, U. K. H., Swire, B., Berinsky, A. J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample. Royal Society Open Science, 5, 180593. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.180593.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Jayawardana, K., & Mladenovic, A. (2018). Refutations of Equivocal Claims: No Evidence for an Ironic Effect of Counterargument Number. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.07.005\nLewandowsky, S., & Whitmarsh, L. (2018) Climate communication for biologists: When a picture can tell a thousand words. PLOS Biology, 16, e2006004.\nLewandowsky, S., Cowtan, K., Risbey, J. S., Mann, M. E., Steinman, B. A., Oreskes, N., & Rahmstorf, S. (2018). The ‘pause’ in global warming in historical context: (II). Comparing models to observations. Environmental Research Letters, 13, 123007. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaf372.\nOberauer, K., Lewandowsky, S., Awh, E., Brown, G. D. A., Conway, A., Cowan, N., Donkin, C., Farrell, S., Hitch, G. J., Hurlstone, M., Ma, W. J., Morey, C. C., Nee, D. E., Schweppe, J., Vergauwe, E., & Ward, G. (2018). Benchmarks provide common ground for model development: Reply to Logie (2018) and Vandierendonck (2018). Psychological Bulletin, 144, 972-977. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000165\nOberauer, K., Lewandowsky, S., Awh, E., Brown, G. D. A., Conway, A., Cowan, N., Donkin, C., Farrell, S., Hitch, G. J., Hurlstone, M., Ma, W. J., Morey, C. C., Nee, D. E., Schweppe, J., Vergauwe, E., & Ward, G. (2018). Benchmarks for Models of Short Term and Working Memory. Psychological Bulletin, 144, 885-958. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000153\nRisbey, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Cowtan, K., Oreskes, N., Rahmstorf, S., Jokimäki, A., & Foster, G. (2018). A fluctuation in surface temperature in historical context: reassessment and retrospective on the evidence. Environmental Research Letters, 13, 123008. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaf342.\nCook, J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker. U. K. H. (2017). Neutralizing Misinformation Through Inoculation: Exposing Misleading Argumentation Techniques Reduces Their Influence. PLOS ONE, 12, e0175799. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175799\nEcker, U. K. H., Hogan, J. L., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Reminders and Repetition of Misinformation: Helping or Hindering Its Retraction? Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 185-192. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.01.014\nGordon, A., Brooks, J. C., Quadflieg, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017) Exploring the Neural Substrates of Misinformation Processing. Neuropsychologia, 106, 216-224. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.10.003\nHarvey, J. A., van den Berg, D., Ellers, J., Kampen, R., Crowther, T. W., Roessingh, P., Verheggen, B., Nuijten, R. J. M., Post, E., Lewandowsky, S., Stirling, I., Balgopal, M., Amstrup, S. C., & Mann, M. E. (2017). Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy. BioScience. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix133.\nLewandowsky, S., Cook, J., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2017). Letting the gorilla emerge from the mist: Getting past post-truth. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 418-424. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.11.002\nLewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and coping with the post-truth era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 353-369. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008.\nLewandowsky, S., Freeman, M. C., & Mann, M. E. (2017). Harnessing the uncertainty monster: Putting quantitative constraints on the intergenerational social discount rate. Global and Planetary Change, 156, 155-166. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.03.007.\nLewandowsky, S., Lloyd, E. A., & Brophy, S. (2017). When THUNCing Trumps thinking: What distant alternative worlds can tell us about the real world. Argumenta, DOI: 10.23811/52.arg2017.lew.llo.bro.\nRisbey, J. S., Grose, M. R., Monselesan, D. P., O’Kane, T. J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Transient response of the global mean warming rate and its spatial variation. Weather and Climate Extremes, 18, 55-64. DOI: 10.1016/j.wace.2017.11.002.\nRisbey, J. S. & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Climate science: The ‘pause’ unpacked. Nature, 545, 37-39. DOI: 10.1038/545037a\nSwire, B., Ecker, U. K. H., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). The Role of Familiarity in Correcting Inaccurate Information. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000422.\nSwire, B., Berinsky, A. J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2017). Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon. Royal Society Open Science, 4, 160802. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160802.\nvan der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J., Leiserowitz, A., Ranney, M., Lewandowsky, S., Arvai, J., & Weber, E. U. (2017). Culture versus cognition is a false dilemma. Nature Climate Change, 7, 457-457. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3323\nCook, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2016). Rational Irrationality: Modeling Climate Change Belief Polarization Using Bayesian Networks. TopiCS in Cognitive Science, 8, 160-179. Data available on OSF here. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12186\nCook, J., Oreskes, N., Doran, P. T., Anderegg, W. R. L., Verheggen, B., Maibach, E. W., Carlton, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Skuce, A. G., Green, S. A., Nuccitelli, D., Jacobs, P., Richardson, M., Winkler, B., Painting, R., Rice, K. (2016). Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. Environmental Research Letters. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002.\nFarrell, S., Oberauer, K., Greaves, M., Pasiecznik, K., Lewandowsky, S., Jarrold, C. (2016). A test of interference versus decay in working memory: Varying distraction within lists in a complex span task. Journal of Memory and Language, 90, 66-87. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.010\nLewandowsky, S. (2016). Future Global Change and Cognition. TopiCS in Cognitive Science, 8, 7-18. DOI: 10.1111/tops.12188.\nLewandowsky, S., & Bishop, D. (2016). Research integrity: Don’t let transparency damage science. Nature, 529, 459-461. DOI: 10.1038/529459a\nLewandowsky, S., Ballard, T., Oberauer, K., & Benestad, R. (2016). A blind expert test of contrarian claims about climate data. Global Environmental Change, 39, 91-97. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.04.013\nLewandowsky, S., Cook, J., & Lloyd, E. (2016). The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism. Synthese, 195, 175-196. DOI 10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6.\nLewandowsky, S., Mann, M. E., Brown, N. J. L., & Friedman, H. (2016). Science and the public: Debate, denial, and skepticism. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4, 537-553. DOI: 10.5964/jspp.v4i2.604\nLewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2016). Motivated rejection of science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 217-222. DOI: 10.1177/0963721416654436\nOberauer, K., Farrell, S., Jarrold, C., & Lewandowsky, S. (2016). What Limits Working Memory Capacity? Psychological Bulletin. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000046.\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2016). Control of information in working memory: Encoding and removal of distractors in the complex-span paradigm cognition. Cognition, 156, 106-128. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.08.007\nBallard, T., & Lewandowsky, S. (2015). When, not if: the inescapability of an uncertain climate future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (A), 373, 20140464. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0464\nBenestad, R., Nuccitelli, D., Lewandowsky, S., Hayhoe, K., Hygen, H., van Dorland, R. & Cook, J. (2015). Learning from mistakes in climate research. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 126, 699-703. DOI: 10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Cheung, C. S. C., & Maybery, M. T. (2015). He did it! She did it! No, she did not! Multiple causal explanations and the continued influence of misinformation. Journal of Memory and Language, 85, 101-115. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2015.09.002\nJacobs, P., Cutting, H., Lewandowsky, S., O’Brien, M., Rice, K., & Verheggen, B. (2015). Clarity of meaning in IPCC press conference. Nature Climate Change, 5, 961-962.\nLewandowsky, S., Ballard, T., & Pancost, R. D. (2015). Uncertainty as knowledge. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (A), 373, 20140462. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0462\nLewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Oberauer, K., Brophy, S., Lloyd, E. A., & Marriott, M. (2015). Recurrent Fury: Conspiratorial Discourse in the Blogosphere Triggered by Research on the Role of Conspiracist Ideation in Climate Denial. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3, 142-178. DOI: 10.5964/jspp.v3i1.443\nLewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2015). The Robust Relationship Between Conspiracism and Denial of (Climate) Science. Psychological Science, 26, 667-670. DOI: 10.1177/0956797614568432\nLewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2015). Rehearsal in serial recall: An unworkable solution to the non-existent problem of decay. Psychological Review, 122, 674-699. DOI: 10.1037/a0039684\nLewandowsky, S., Oreskes, N., Risbey, J. S., Newell, B. R., & Smithson, M. (2015). Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community. Global Environmental Change, 33. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.02.013.\nLewandowsky, S., Risbey, J. S., & Oreskes, N. (2015). The “Pause” in Global Warming: Turning a Routine Fluctuation into a Problem for Science. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00106.1.\nLewandowsky, S., Risbey, J. S., & Oreskes, N. (2015). On the definition and identifiability of the alleged “hiatus” in global warming. Scientific Reports, 5, 16784. DOI: 10.1038/srep16784\nMorey, R. D., Chambers, C. D., Etchells, P. J., Harris, C. R., Hoekstra, R., Lakens, D., Lewandowsky, S., Morey, C. C., Newman, D. P., Schönbrodt, F., Vanpaemel, W., Wagenmakers, E.-J., & Zwaan, R. A. (2015). The peer reviewers’ openness initiative: incentivizing open research practices through peer review. Royal Society Open Science, 2, 15047. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150547\nOberauer, K., Jones, T., & Lewandowsky, S. (2015). The Hebb repetition effect in simple and complex memory span. Memory & Cognition, 43, 852-865. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-015-0512-8.\nRisbey, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Hunter, J. R., & Monselesan, D. P. (2015). Betting strategies on fluctuations in the transient response of greenhouse warming. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (A), 373, 20140463. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2014.0463\nCook, J., Nuccitelli, D., Skuce, A., Jacobs, P., Painting, R., Honeycutt, R., Green, S. A., Lewandowsky, S., Richardson, M., & Way, R. G. (2014). Reply to ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature: a Re-analysis.’ Energy Policy, 73, 706-708. DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2014.06.002\nEcker, U. K. H, Brown, G. D. A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2014). Memory without consolidation: temporal distinctiveness explains retroactive interference. Cognitive Science. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12214.\nEcker, U. K. H, Lewandowsky, S., Chang, E. P., & Pillai, R. (2014). The effects of subtle misinformation in news headlines. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20, 323-335. DOI: 10.1037/xap0000028\nHurlstone, M. J., Lewandowsky, S., Newell, B. R., & Sewell, B. (2014). The effect of framing and normative messages in building support for climate policies. PLOS ONE, 9, e114335. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114335\nLewandowsky, S. (2014). Conspiratory Fascination vs. public interest: The case of ‘Climategate.’ Environmental Research Letters, 9, 111004. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/9/11/111004\nRisbey, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Langlais, C., Monselesan, D. P., O’Kane, T. J., & Oreskes, N. (2014). Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase. Nature Climate Change, 4, 835-840. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2310\nEcker, U. K. H., Oberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2014). Working memory updating involves item-specific removal. Journal of Memory and Language, 74, 1-15. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2014.03.006\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Fenton, O., & Martin, K. (2014). Do people keep believing because they want to? Pre-existing attitudes and the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 42, 292-304. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-013-0358-x\nLewandowsky, S., Risbey, J. S., Smithson, M., Newell, B. R., & Hunter, J. (2014). Scientific uncertainty and climate change: Part I. Uncertainty and unabated emissions. Climatic Change, 124, 21-37. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-014-1082-7\nLewandowsky, S., Risbey, J. S., Smithson, M., & Newell, B. R. (2014). Scientific uncertainty and climate change: Part II. Uncertainty and mitigation. Climatic Change, 124, 39-52. DOI: 10.1007/s10584-014-1083-6\nLittle, D. R., Lewandowsky, S., & Craig, S. (2014). Working memory capacity and fluid abilities: The more difficult the item, the more more is better. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 239. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00239\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2014). Further evidence against decay in working memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 73, 15-30. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.003\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2013). Removal of information from working memory: A specific updating process. Journal of Memory and Language. DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.003\nCraig, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2013). Working memory supports inference learning just like classification learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 1493-1503. DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2013.818703\nFarrell, S., Hurlstone, M. J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2013). Sequential dependencies in recall of sequences: Filling in the blanks. Memory & Cognition, 41, 938-952. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-013-0310-0\nGriffiths, T. L., Lewandowsky, S., & Kalish, M. L. (2013). The effects of cultural transmission are modulated by the amount of information transmitted. Cognitive Science, 37, 953-967. DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12045\nLewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Oberauer, K. (2013). The role of conspiracist ideation and worldviews in predicting rejection of science. PLOS ONE, 8, e75637. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075637\nLewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Freund, A. M., Oberauer, K., & Krueger, J. (2013). Misinformation, disinformation, and violent conflict: From Iraq and the “War on Terror” to future threats to peace. American Psychologist, 68, 487-501. DOI: 10.1037/a0034515 (Opening article to a special issue on psychology of peace and conflict prevention organized by the authors of this article.)\nLewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Oberauer, K., & Marriott, M. (2013). Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation. Frontiers of Psychology, 4 (73). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00073. [This article was retracted by the publisher owing to legal fears on 21 March 2014 and has been republished as Lewandowsky et al., 2015.]\nLewandowsky, S., Gignac, G. E., & Vaughan, S. (2013). The pivotal role of perceived scientific consensus in acceptance of science. Nature Climate Change, 3, 399-404. DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1720\nLewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (2013). NASA faked the moon landing—therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science, 24, 622-633. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457686\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2013). Evidence against decay in verbal working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142, 380-411. DOI: 10.1037/a0029588\nCraig, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2012). Whichever way you choose to categorize, working memory helps you learn. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 439-464. DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2011.608854.\nEcker, U. K. H., & Lewandowsky, S. (2012). Computational constraints in cognitive theories of forgetting. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 1-5. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00400.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2012). Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall. Memory & Cognition. DOI 10.3758/s13421-012-0212-6.\nLewandowsky, S., & Coltheart, M. (2012). Cognition ‘versus’ neuroscience: Competing approaches or complementary levels of explanation? Australian Journal of Psychology, 64, 1-3. (special issue on Neuroscience “versus” Cognitive modeling: Competing approaches or compatible levels of explanation?; S. Lewandowsky & M. Coltheart, Guest Editors.)\nLewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Farrell, S., and Brown, G. D. A. (2012). Models of cognition and constraints from neuroscience: A case study involving consolidation. Australian Journal of Psychology, 64, 37-45. (special issue on Neuroscience “versus” Cognitive modeling: Competing approaches or compatible levels of explanation?; S. Lewandowsky & M. Coltheart, Guest Editors.)\nLewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13, 106-131. DOI: 10.1177/1529100612451018\nLewandowsky, S., Palmeri, T. J., & Waldmann, M. R. (2012). Introduction to the Special Section on Theory and Data in Categorization: Integrating Computational, Behavioral, and Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 803-806. DOI: 10.1037/a0028943\nLewandowsky, S., Yang, L.-X., Newell, B. R., & Kalish, M. L. (2012). Working memory does not dissociate between different perceptual categorization tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 881-904. DOI: 10.1037/a0027298.\nOberauer, K., Lewandowsky, S., Farrell, S., Jarrold, C., & Greaves, M. (2012). Modeling working memory: An interference model of complex span. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19, 779-819. DOI 10.3758/s13423-012-0272-4.\nSewell, D. K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2012). Attention and working memory capacity: Insights from blocking, highlighting, and knowledge restructuring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 444-469. DOI: 10.1037/a0026560.\nCraig, S., Lewandowsky, S., & Little, D. R. (2011). Error Discounting in Probabilistic Category Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 673-687. DOI: 10.1037/a0022473.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Apai, J. (2011). Terrorists brought down the plane!—No, actually it was a technical fault: Processing corrections of emotive information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 283-310. DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2010.497927\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Swire, B., & Chang, D. (2011). Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 570-578. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-011-0065-1\nLewandowsky, S. (2011). Popular consensus: Climate change set to continue. Psychological Science, 22, 460-463. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611402515\nLewandowsky, S. (2011). Working memory capacity and categorization: Individual differences and modeling. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 720-738. DOI: 10.1037/a0022639.\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Modelling working memory: A computational implementation of the Time-Based Resource-Sharing theory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 10-45. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-010-0020-6\nSewell, D. K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Restructuring partitioned knowledge: The role of recoordination in category learning. Cognitive Psychology, 62, 81-122. DOI: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2010.09.003\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Chee, A. E. H. (2010). The components of working memory updating: An experimental decomposition and individual differences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 170-189.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Tang, D. (2010). Explicit warnings reduce but do not eliminate the continued influence of misinformation. Memory & Cognition, 38, 1087-1100.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2010). Computational models as aids to better reasoning in psychology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 329-335.\nLewandowsky, S., Geiger, S. M., Morrell, D. B., & Oberauer, K. (2010). Turning simple span into complex span: Time for decay or interference from distractors? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 958-978.\nLewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., Yang, L.-X., & Ecker, U. K. H. (2010). A working memory test battery for MatLab. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 571-585.\nMorin, C., Brown, G. D. A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2010). Temporal isolation effects in recognition and serial recall. Memory & Cognition, 38, 849-859.\nLewandowsky, S., Brown, G. D. A., & Thomas, J. L. (2009). Traveling economically through memory space: Characterizing output order in memory for serial order. Memory & Cognition, 37, 181-193.\nLewandowsky, S., Griffiths, T. L. & Kalish, M. L. (2009). The Wisdom of Individuals: Exploring People’s Knowledge about Everyday Events using Iterated Learning. Cognitive Science, 33, 969-998.\nLewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2009). No Evidence for Temporal Decay in Working Memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1545-1551.\nLewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Brown, G. D. A. (2009). Response to Altmann: Adaptive forgetting by decay or removal of STM contents? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 280-281.\nLewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Brown, G. D. A. (2009). Response to Barrouillet and Camos: Interference or decay in working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 146-147.\nLewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Brown, G. D. A. (2009). No temporal decay in verbal short-term memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 120-126.\nLittle, D. R., & Lewandowsky, S. (2009). Beyond non-utilization: Irrelevant cues can gate learning in probabilistic categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35, 530-550.\nLittle, D. R. & Lewandowsky, S. (2009). Better Learning With More Error: Probabilistic Feedback Increases Sensitivity to Correlated Cues in Categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1041-1061.\nColreavy, E., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Strategy development and learning differences in supervised and unsupervised categorization. Memory & Cognit ion, 36 , 762-775 .\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Empirical and theoretical limits on lag recency in free recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 1236-1250.\nGeiger, S. M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Temporal isolation does not facilitate forward serial recall—or does it? Memory & Cognition, 36, 957-967.\nGriffiths, T. L., Kalish, M. L., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Theoretical and empirical evidence for the impact of inductive biases on cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Series B), 363, 3503-3514.\nLewandowsky, S., & Farrell, S. (2008). Short-term memory: New data and a model. The psychology of Learning and Motivation, 49, 1-48.\nLewandowsky, S., & Farrell, S. (2008). Phonological similarity in serial recall: Constraints on theories of memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 429–448.\nLewandowsky, S., Geiger, S. M., & Oberauer, K. (2008). Interference-based forgetting in verbal short-term memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 200-222.\nLewandowsky, S. Nimmo, L. M., & Brown, G. D. A. (2008). When temporal isolation benefits memory for serial order. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 415–428.\nLewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2008). The Word Length Effect Provides No Evidence for Decay in Short-Term Memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 875-888.\nOberauer, K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Forgetting in immediate serial recall: Decay, temporal distinctiveness, or interference? Psychological Review, 115, 544-576.\nSmith, K., Kalish, M. L., Griffiths, T. L., & Lewandowsky, S. (2008). Cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Series B), 363, 3469-3476.\nKalish, M. L., Griffiths, T., & Lewandowsky, S. (2007). Iterated learning: Intergenerational knowledge transmission reveals inductive biases. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 288-294.\nBrown, G. D. A., Morin, C., & Lewandowsky, S. (2006). Evidence for time-based models of free recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Rev iew, 13, 717-723.\nLewandowsky, S., & Heit, E. (2006). Some targets for memory models. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 441-446.\nLewandowsky, S., Brown, G. D. A., Wright, T., & Nimmo, L. M. (2006). Timeless memory: Evidence against temporal distinctiveness models of short-term memory for serial order. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 20-38.\nLewandowsky, S., Roberts, L., & Yang, L.-X. (2006). Knowledge partitioning in categorization: Boundary conditions. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1676-1688.\nLittle, D. R., Lewandowsky, S., & Heit, E. (2006). Ad hoc category restructuring. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1398-1413.\nNimmo, L. M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2006). Distinctiveness revisited: Unpredictable temporal isolation does not benefit short-term serial recall of heard or seen events. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1368-1375.\nDuncan, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2005). The time course of response suppression: No evidence for a gradual release from inhibition. Memory, 13, 236-246.\nKalish, M. L., Lewandowsky, S., & Davies, M. (2005). Error-driven knowledge restructuring in categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 846-861.\nLewandowsky, S., & Brown, G. D. A. (2005). Serial recall and presentation schedule: A micro-analysis of local distinctiveness. Memory,13, 283-292.\nLewandowsky, S., Stritzke, W. G. K., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2005). Memory for fact, fiction, and misinformation: The Iraq War 2003. Psychological Science, 16, 190-195.\nNimmo, L. M., & Lewandowsky, S. (2005). From brief gaps to very long pauses: Temporal isolation does not benefit serial recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 999-1004.\nClare, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2004). Verbalizing facial memory: Criterion effects in verbal overshadowing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 739-755.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2004). Modelling transposition latencies: Constraints for theories of serial order memory. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 115-135.\nKalish, M. L., Lewandowsky, S., & Kruschke, J. K. (2004). Population of linear experts: knowledge partitioning and function learning. Psychological Review, 111, 1072-1099.\nLewandowsky, S., Duncan, M., & Brown, G. D. A. (2004). Time does not cause forgetting in short-term serial recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 771-790.\nYang, L.-X., & Lewandowsky, S. (2004). Knowledge partitioning in categorization: constraints on exemplar models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 1045-1064.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2003). Dissimilar items benefit from phonological similarity in serial recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 838-849.\nYang, L.-X., & Lewandowsky, S. (2003). Context-gated knowledge partitioning in categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 663-679.\nDunn, J. D., Lewandowsky, S., & Kirsner, K. (2002). Dynamics of Communication in Emergency Management. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 719-737.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2002). An endogenous distributed model of ordering in serial recall. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , 9, 59-79.\nLewandowsky, S., Kalish, M., & Ngang, S. K. (2002). Simplified learning in complex situations: Knowledge partitioning in function learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 163-193.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2000). A connectionist model of complacency and adaptive recovery under automation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 395-410.\nLewandowsky, S., & Farrell, S. (2000). A redintegration account of the effects of speech rate, lexicality, and word frequency in immediate serial recall. Psychological Research, 63, 163-173.\nLewandowsky, S., Kalish, M., & Griffiths, T. L. (2000). Competing Strategies in Categorization: Expediency and Resistance to Knowledge Restructuring. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1666-1684.\nLewandowsky, S., & Kirsner, K. (2000). Knowledge partitioning: Context-dependent use of expertise. Memory & Cognition, 28, 295-305.\nLewandowsky, S., Mundy, M., & Tan, G. P. A. (2000). The dynamics of trust: Comparing humans to automation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6, 104-123.\nKalish, M., Lewandowsky, S., & Dennis, S. (1999). Remote delivery of cognitive science laboratories: A solution for small disciplines in large countries. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 31, 270-274.\nLewandowsky, S., (1999). Redintegration and response suppression in serial recall: A dynamic network model. International Journal of Psychology¸ 34, 434-446. (special issue on short-term memory)\nLewandowsky, S., & Clark, C. D. (1997). Using the web to facilitate international academic exchange. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 29, 180-181.\nLewandowsky, S., Dunn, J. C., Kirsner, K., & Randell, M. (1997). Expertise in the Management of Bush Fires: Training and Decision Support. The Australian Psychologist, 32, 171-177.\nSmith, W., Randell, M., Lewandowsky, S., Kirsner, K., & Dunn, J. C. (1996). Collaborative research into cognitive technology: The role of shared commitment, problem coherence and domain knowledge. Cognitive Technology, 1, 9-18.\nLi, S.-C., Lewandowsky, S., & DeBrunner, V. E. (1996). Using parameter sensitivity and interdependence to predict model scope and falsifiability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 360-369.\nAlbright, C. A., Truitt, T. R., Barile, A. L., & Vortac, O.U. (1995). Controlling traffic without flight progress strips: Compensation, workload, performance, and opinion. Air Traffic Control Quarterly, 2, 229-248.Edwards, M. B., Fuller, D. K., Vortac, O. U., & Manning, C. A. (1995). The role of flight progress strips in en route air traffic control: A time-series analysis. I nternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 43, 1-13.\nLewandowsky, S. (1995). Base-rate neglect in ALCOVE: A critical reexamination. Psychological Review, 102, 185-191.\nLi, S.-C., & Lewandowsky, S. (1995). Forward and backward recall: Different retrieval processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 837-847.\nVortac, O. U., Edwards, M. B., & Manning, C. A. (1995). Function of external cues in prospective memory. Memory, 3, 201-219.\nLewandowsky, S. (1994). On the relation between catastrophic interference and generalization in connectionist networks. Journal of Biological Systems, 2, 307-333 .\nLewandowsky, S., & Li, S.-C. (1994). Memory for serial order revisited. Psychological Review, 101, 539-543.\nVortac, O. U., Edwards, M. B., & Manning, C. A. (1994). Sequences of actions for individual and teams of air traffic controllers. Human Computer Interaction, 9, 319-343.\nBainbridge, J. V., Lewandowsky, S., & Kirsner, K. (1993). Context effects in repetition priming are sense effects. Memory & Cognition, 21, 619-626.\nLewandowsky, S. (1993). The rewards and hazards of computer simulations. Psychological Science, 4, 236-243.\nLewandowsky, S., Herrmann, D. J., Behrens, J. T., Li, S.-C., Pickle, L., & Jobe, J. B. (1993). Perception of clusters in statistical maps. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7, 533-551.\nLi, S.-C., & Lewandowsky, S. (1993). Intra-list distractors and recall direction: Constraints on models of memory for serial order. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 895-908 .\nVortac, O. U., Edwards, M. B., Fuller, D. K., & Manning C. A. (1993). Automation and cognition in air traffic control: An empirical investigation. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 7, 631-651.\nVortac, O. U., Edwards, M. B., Jones, J. P., Manning, C. A., & Rotter, A. J. (1993). En route air traffic controller’s use of flight progress strips: A graph-theoretic analysis. International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 3, 327-343.\nGronlund, S. D., & Lewandowsky, S. (1992). Making TV commercials as a teaching aid for cognitive psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 158-160.\n(Reprinted in: M. E. Ware & D. E. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of demonstrations and activities in teaching psychology. Volume 2: Physiological-comparative, perception, learning, cognition, and developmental. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.)\nSpence, I., & Lewandowsky, S. (1991). Displaying proportions and percentages. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5, 61-77.\nLewandowsky, S., & Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1989). Memory for serial order. Psychological Review, 96, 25-58.\nLewandowsky, S., & Spence, I. (1989). Discriminating strata in scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 84, 682-688.\nLewandowsky, S., & Spence, I. (1989). The perception of statistical graphs. Sociological Methods and Research, 18, 200-242.\nSpence, I., & Lewandowsky, S. (1989). Robust multidimensional scaling. Psychometrika, 54, 501-513.\nLewandowsky, S., & Hockley, W. E. (1987). Does CHARM need depth?: Similarity and levels of processing effects in cued recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13, 443-455.\nLewandowsky, S. (1986). Priming in recognition memory for categorized lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni­tion, 12, 562-574.\nLewandowsky, S., & Smith, P. W. (1983). The effect of increasing the memorability of category instances on estimates of category size. Memory & Cognition, 11, 347-350.\nRefereed Proceedings:\nLloyd, K., Sanborn, A., Leslie, D., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Why Does Higher Working Memory Capacity Help You Learn? In G. Gunzelman, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.767–772). London, UK: Cognitive Science Society.\nHoareau, V., Portrat, S., Oberauer, K., Lemaire, B., Plancher, G., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Computational and behavioral investigations of the SOB-CS removal mechanism in working memory. In G. Gunzelman, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 532-537). London, UK: Cognitive Science Society.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2013). Removal of information from working memory. In M. Knau, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 400-405). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.\nLittle, D. R., Lewandowsky, S., & Craig, S. (2013). Working memory capacity and fluid abilities: The more difficult the item, the more more is better. In M. Knau, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 918-923). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.\nLittle, D. R., Lewandowsky, S., & Griffiths, T. L. (2012). A Bayesian Model of Raven’s Progressive Matrices. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1918-1923). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.\nEcker, U. K. H., Lewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2009). Components of working memory updating. In N.A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31 st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 347-352). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.\nLewandowsky, S., & Tan, G. P. A. (2000). The dynamics of trust: Comparing humans to machines. In Proceedings of the Fourth Australasian Cognitive Science Conference. Newcastle, NSW, Australia: University of Newcastle.\nDeBrunner, V. E., Li, S.-C., & Lewandowsky, S. (1996). Sensitivity and learning of two digital artificial neural network structures. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Vol. 3 (pp. 445-448). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE.\nLewandowsky, S., & Behrens, J. T. (1996). Visual detection of clusters in statistical maps. In Proceedings of the Statistical Graphics Section of the 1995 Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association (pp. 8-17). Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association.\nAlbright, C. A., & Lewandowsky, S. (1995). Momentum in a complex monitoring task. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology. Columbus: Ohio State University.\nTruitt, T. R., Albright, C. A., Barile, A. B., & Vortac, O. U. (1995). How controllers compensate for the lack of flight progress strips. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Aviation Psychology. Columbus: Ohio State University.\nLewandowsky, S., & Myers, W. E. (1993). Magnitude judgments in 3D bar charts. In R. Steyer, K. F. Wender, & K. F. Widaman (Eds.) Psychometric methodology. Proceedings of the 7th European Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Trier (pp. 266-271). Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag.\nLewandowsky, S., & Newman, D. A. (1993). Chronometric scaling of numbers. In R. Steyer, K. F. Wend­er, & K. F. Widaman (Eds.) Psychometric methodology. Proceedings of the 7th European Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Trier (pp. 272-277). Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag.\nVortac, O. U. (1993). Should Hal open the pod bay doors? An argument for modular automation. In D. J. Garland & J. A. Wise (Eds.), Human factors and advanced aviation technologies. Daytona Beach: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Press.\nLewandowsky, S., & Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1989). A distributed memory model for associative learning. In D. Vickers & P. L. Smith (Eds.), Human information processing: Measures, mechanisms, and models (pp. 381-394). Amsterdam: North Holland.\nMurdock, B. B., Jr., & Lewandowsky, S. (1986). Chaining 100 years later. In F. Klix & H. Hagendorf (Eds.), Human memory and cognitive capabilities (pp. 79-96). Amsterdam: North Holland.\nEdited Books:\nW. G. K. Stritzke, S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, J. Clare, & F. Morgan (Eds.). (2009). Terrorism and torture: An interdisciplinary perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.\nF. T. Durso, R. Nickerson, S. Dumais, S. Lewandowsky, & T. Perfect (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of applied cognition (2nd Ed.) . Chicester: Wiley.\nHockley, W. E., & Lewandowsky, S. (1991). (Eds.). Relating theory and data: Essays on human memory in honor of Bennet B. Murdock. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nLewandowsky, S., Dunn, J. C., & Kirsner, K. (1989). (Eds.). Implicit memory: Theoretical issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nLewandowsky, S. (2019). In whose hands the future? In J. E. Uscinski (Ed.), Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them (pp. 149-177). Oxford: Oxford University Press.\nUscinski, J. E.; Douglas, K. & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Climate Change Conspiracy Theories. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science.\nLewandowsky, S., & Oberauer, K. (2016). Computational modeling in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. In Wagenmakers, E.-J. (Ed.), Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology, Fourth Edition, Volume Five: Methodology . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.\nCook, J., Ecker, U. K. H., & Lewandowsky, S. (2015). Misinformation and its correction. In R. Scott & S. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2015). An introduction to cognitive modeling. In B. U. Forstmann, & E.-J. Wagenmakers (Eds.), An introduction to model-based cognitive neuroscience . New York: Springer.\nEcker, U. K. H., Swire, B., & Lewandowsky, S. (2014). Correcting misinformation—A challenge for education and cognitive science. In D. N. Rapp & J. Braasch (Eds.), Processing Inaccurate Information: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives from Cognitive Science and the Educational Sciences (pp. 13-38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.\nLewandowsky, S. (2013). Rehearsal and memory. In H. Pashler (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the mind (Vol. 17, pp. 642-644). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.\nLittle, D. R., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Multiple-cue probability learning. In N. Seel (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. New York: Springer Verlag.\nBrown, G. D. A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2010). Forgetting in memory models: Arguments against trace decay and consolidation failure. In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Forgetting (pp. 49-75). Hove, UK: Psychology Press.\nLewandowsky, S., & Thomas, J. L. (2009). Expertise: Acquisition, limitations, and control. In F. T. Durso (Ed.), Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics (Volume 5, pp. 140-165). Santa Monica: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.\nLewandowsky, S., & Stritzke, W. G. K., Oberauer, K., & Morales, M. (2009). Misinformation and the ‘War on Terror’: When memory turns fiction into fact. In W. G. K. Stritzke, S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, J. Clare, & F. Morgan (Eds.), Terrorism and torture: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 179-203). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.\nStritzke, W. G. K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2009). The terrorism-torture link: When evil begets evil. In W. G. K. Stritzke, S. Lewandowsky, D. Denemark, J. Clare, & F. Morgan (Eds.), Terrorism and torture: An interdisciplinary perspective (pp. 1-17). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.\nLewandowsky, S., Wright, T., & Brown, G. D. A. (2007). The interpretation of temporal isolation effects. In N. Osaka, R. Logie, & M. D’Esposito (Eds.). The cognitive neuroscience of working memory: Behavioural and neural correlates (pp. 137-152). Oxford: Oxford University Press.\nLewandowsky, S., Little, D. R., Kalish, M. L. (2007). Knowledge and expertise. In F. T. Durso, R. Nickerson, S. Dumais, S. Lewandowsky, & T. Perfect (Eds.). Handbook of applied cognition (2nd Ed.), (pp. 83-109). Chicester: Wiley.\nLewandowsky, S., & Farrell, S. (2002). Computational models of working memory. In L. Nadel, D. Chalmers, P. Culicover, R. Goldstone, & B. French (Eds.), Encyclopedia of cognitive science (pp. 578-583). London: Macmillan.\nLewandowsky, S. (1999). Statistical graphs and maps: Higher level cognitive processes. In M. G. Sirken, D. J. Herrmann, S. Schechter, N. Schwarz, J. M. Tanur, & R. Tourangeau (Eds.), Cognition and survey research (pp. 349-362). New York: Wiley.\nLewandowsky, S., & Behrens, J. T. (1999). Statistical graphs and maps. In F. T. Durso, R. S. Nickerson, R. W. Schvaneveldt, S. T. Dumais, D. S. Lindsay, & M. T. H. Chi (Eds). Handbook of Applied Cognition (pp. 513-549). Chichester, UK: Wiley.\nLewandowsky, S. (1998). Implicit memory: Science, fiction, and a prospectus. In K. Kirsner, C. Speelman, M. Maybery, A. O’Brien-Malone, M. Anderson, & C. MacLeod (Eds.) Implicit and explicit mental processes (pp. 373-391). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nVortac, O.U., Barile, A. L., Albright, C. A., Truitt, T. R., Manning, C. A., & Bain, D. (1996). Automation of flight data in air traffic control. In D. Herrmann, M. Johnson, C. McEvoy, C. Hertzog, & P. Hertel (Eds.), Basic and applied memory: Research on practical aspects (pp. 353-366). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nLewandowsky, S., & Li, S.-C. (1995). Catastrophic interference in neural networks: Causes, solutions, and data. In F. N. Dempster & C. Brainerd (Eds.), Interference and inhibition in cognition (pp. 329-361). San Diego: Academic Press.\nLewandowsky, S., & Bainbridge, J. V. (1994). Implicit memory. In V. S. Ramachandran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (pp. 589-600). San Diego: Academic Press.\nVortac, O. U., & Manning, C. A. (1994). Modular automation: Automating sub-tasks without disrupting task flow. In M. Mouloua & R. Parasuraman (Eds.), Human performance in automated systems: Current research and trends (pp. 325-331). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nGoebel, R. P., & Lewandowsky, S. (1991). Retrieval measures in distributed memory models. In W. E. Hockley & S. Lewandowsky (Eds.), Relating theory and data: Essays on human memory in honor of Bennet B. Murdock (pp. 509-528). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nLewandowsky, S. (1991). Gradual unlearning and catastrophic inter­ference: A comparison of distributed architectures. In W. E. Hockley & S. Lewandowsky (Eds.), Relating theory and data: Essays on human memory in honor of Bennet B. Murdock (pp. 445-476). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nLewandowsky, S., & Hockley, W. E. (1991). Relating theory and data: Towards an integration. In W. E. Hockley & S. Lewandowsky (Eds.), Relating theory and data: Essays on human memory in honor of Bennet B. Murdock (pp. 3-20). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nSpence, I., & Lewandowsky, S. (1990). Graphical perception. In J. Fox & S. Long (Eds.), Modern methods of data analysis (pp. 13- 57). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.\nLewandowsky, S., Kirsner, K., & Bainbridge, J. V. (1989). Context effects in implicit memory: A sense-specific account. In S. Lewandowsky, J. C. Dunn, & K. Kirsner (Eds.), Implicit memory: Theoretical issues (pp. 185-198). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.\nBook Reviews and Commentaries:\nLewandowsky, S., & Stritzke, W. G. K. (2011). Influence scholarship and ethics: Commentary on King (2010). Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 11, 35-38.\nSewell, D. K., Little, D. R., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). Bayesian computation and mechanism: Theoretical pluralism drives scientific emergence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 212-213.\nStritzke, W. G. K., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). ‘‘War’’ versus ‘‘Crime’’ frames in counterterrorism. Review of The consequences of counterterrorism, edited by Martha Crenshaw. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, 4, 66-70\nFarrell, S., & Lewandowsky, S. (2000). The case against distributed representations: Lack of evidence. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 476-477.\nLewandowsky, S., & Maybery, M. (1998). The Critics Rebutted: A Pyrrhic Victory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 210-211.\nRandell, M., & Lewandowsky, S. (1996). Cognition in the wilderness. Review of Cognition in the wild, by Edwin Hutchins. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 456-457.\nLewandowsky, S. (1992). The adaptive character of cognitive science. Review of The adaptive character of thought, by John R. Ander­son. Contemporary Psychology, 37, 633-634.\nLewandowsky, S. (1992). Unified cognitive theory: Having one’s apple pie and eating it. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 15, 449-450.\nLewandowsky, S., & Dunn, J. C. (1987). Review of Multidimensional scaling: History, theory, and applications, by F. W. Young & E. Hamer. Applied Psychological Measurement, 11, 429-432.\nLewandowsky, S., & Dunbar, K. N. (1983). Cognitive psychology: A com­parative review of textbooks. American Journal of Psychology, 96, 391-403.\nPublic Writings (Opinion Pieces and Articles for Popular Media):\nI have written around 50 opinion pieces and articles for the global news media (e.g., The Guardian, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ABC]) and popular scientific outlets (e.g., Scientific American, Australasian Science, Geographical [UK]).\nDownloadable Research Handbooks:\nCook, J., & Lewandowsky, S. (2011). The Debunking Handbook. St. Lucia, Australia: University of Queensland. ISBN 978-0-646-56812-6. (Available in 11 languages, >500,000 downloads).\nCorner, A., Lewandowsky, S., Phillips, M., & Roberts, O. (2015). The Uncertainty Handbook. Bristol: University of Bristol. (Available in 4 languages).\nCook, J., van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Lewandowsky, S. (2018). The Consensus Handbook. George Mason University. DOI:10.13021/G8MM6P.\nTweets by @https://twitter.com/STWorg","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line116255"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5622221231460571,"wiki_prob":0.5622221231460571,"text":"loginBecome a Memberlost password\tIce Stream BlogContact Us\nHomeIce Stream PlaylistNow PlayingJust PlayedWhat's CoolRequestsSmart Phone AppsBlogShop\nSelect category General Ice Stream Technical\nPosted on October 1, 2018 by Ice Stream\nApologies for some downtime over the last 48 hours!\nShoutcast 2 has been migrating to new servers which required changes to our various players.\nWe are pleased to report that all players have now been re-coded and all is well again!\nThe AAC Stream Is Back\nPosted on September 18, 2017 October 22, 2017 by Ice Stream\nBack by popular demand the 128 AAC stream has returned and is free-to-listen and now available on the new SHOUTcast2 system:\nThe Ice Stream AAC Player\nhttp://listen.shoutcast.com/theicestream-aac-\nIt’s Cold Up North!\nPosted on June 11, 2017 by Ice Stream\nWhile the temperatures may be low in Scandinavia, much of the music is so uplifting that you forget about the icicles dripping from your instrument. In particular, you may be unfamiliar with a music genre known as Yoik. It has nothing to do with the exclamation “Yoiks” but refers to a traditional form of song of the Sami people of the Nordic countries and Kola peninsula of Russia. Originally, yoik (sometimes spelled joik) referred to only one of several Sami singing styles, but in English the word now tends to refer to all types of traditional Sami singing. As an art form, each yoik is meant to reflect or evoke a person, animal, or place and the sound is comparable to the traditional chanting of some Native American cultures.\nA composer who is at the forefront of this genre is the Norwegian yoiker Frode Fjellheim who was responsible for the main theme in Disney’s “Frozen”. Frode has subsequently received praise from the Norwegian Sámi President for spreading yoik to new audiences. Similarly, the Norwegian female choir that appeared on the Disney soundtrack have also garnered some notoriety for the same reason and are busy capitalising on this success with the release of a new album called “Northern Lights”.\nThe choir was founded in 1986 and consists of around 30 amateur singers based in Trondheim. Despite being an amateur choir, they have attained an extremely professional international standard winning several international competitions over the last few years. Their cool new album was just begging to have a handful of tracks featured on our Album Playlist which is exactly what we have done!\nDecca Re-Releases A Definitive\nPosted on April 21, 2017 by Ice Stream\nAlways a dangerous statement as “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”, however, this newly packaged set of Beethoven’s complete String Quartet cycle could certainly qualify as a possible definitive for many – it is certainly a favourite for many critics. If you like your Beethoven more sweet and slow (a la Klemperer) the Allegri String Quartet may be more your “cup of tea”. On the other hand, if you prefer to hear Ludwig with rather more sharpness and alacrity (a la Karajan) we think that the Takacs Quartet will be “right up your street”. Here at The Ice Stream we are certainly more than happy to feature selected tracks from this mighty collection on our featured album playlist.\nOriginally released on 3 albums between 2002 and 2005, Decca has now put the whole cycle in one box set. While the CDs will bash your plastic to the tune of £34, this no lightweight collection but possibly a small price to pay for a definitve? Don’t just take our word for it – the three “Rasumovsky” Quartets album originally was a Grammy Award Winner for Best Chamber Music Recording & Gramophone Award Winner when it was first released.\nIt all began in 1975 when four students at the Music Academy in Budapest, Gábor Takács-Nagy (first violin), Károly Schranz (second violin), Gábor Ormai (viola), and András Fejér (cello) formed The Takács Quartet. According to their own story, Takács-Nagy, Ormai and Fejér had been playing trios together for several months when they met Schranz during a pickup soccer game after classes. With the immediate addition of Károly to their group the trio became a quartet.\nThey first received international attention in 1977, winning the First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. After that the quartet won the Gold Medal at the 1979 Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions and First Prizes at the Budapest International String Quartet Competition in 1978 and the Bratislava Competition in 1981. The quartet made its first North American tour in 1982.\nIn 1983, the group decided it would be best for them and their families if they moved to the United States. A colleague offered them a position as quartet-in-residence at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and they accepted the job. This was also the year that Takács-Nagy left the group. While he was the first to go ,he was not the last and now Karoly Schranz and Andras Fejer are the only original members. British violinist Edward Dusinberre has been with the Quartet since 1993 and violist, Geraldine Walther (previously with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra), joined in 2005 – the same year the quartet became associate artists at the South Bank Centre\nThroughout its long journey, the Takacs Quarter has embarked on a successful series of recordings: a cycle of all six Bartók quartets (dedicated to the memory of Ormai, who died in 1995) and this critically acclaimed complete Beethoven quartet cycle, as well as quartets by Smetana and Borodin.\nLive Long And Prosper\nPosted on April 5, 2017 by Ice Stream\nIn our opinion, the abundant growth in the quantity of British Television has not yielded a similar increase in quality drama productions. In all probability we will not see the likes of superb productions many remember from the 70s & 80s again. There have been notable exceptions, of course, such as Downton Abbey which has been an international hit. This shining light amidst the gloom of reality television has brought about a small glimmer of a possible resurgence in high grade television.\nOne of ITV’s grasps at a follow-up to Downton’s successful period piece has been The Halcyon. The show tells the story of a glamorous five star hotel run by aristocracy during the Second World War. There is no doubt that the program makers spent a good deal of time, thought (and money) in putting this 8 part series together. It is, therefore, disappointing that ITV has announced that it has axed the show after just one series despite fans begging for more.\nHere at The Ice Stream we were particularly disappointed by this news as the series music overseen by the accomplished film and televison composer Samuel Sim is superb. In addition to his input numerous guest stars such as Jamie Cullum, Beverley Knight and Tracy Kashi appear on the soundtrack. Renowned Eastenders star Kara Tointon also proved herself to be a budding charismatic singing talent in the mix of quasi classical and traditional jazz music. Fans of the series may prove to be unsuccessful in their campaign to get the series reinstated but they can, at least, relive some of the musical highlights here on The Ice Stream where we have put a selection of tracks from the soundtrack CD released in January this year on our new Album Playlist.\nTinkling Somebody Else’s Ivories\nPosted on February 22, 2017 by Ice Stream\nThe latest addition to our current feature album playlist is a real showstopper! It is a new release from a man who has sold over 50 million albums. Aside from records with many groups such as Yes and The Strawbs, Rick Wakeman has released more than 100 albums as a solo artist alone!\nPiano Portraits came out in January this years and, upon release, reached number 6 on the UK Albums Chart, becoming Rick’s highest charting album in the UK since 1975. Reaching the Top 10 these days is somewhat meaningless compared to the heady days of the 70s, but be in no doubt that this is truly worthy of success!\nThe album was made following the positive reception to Rick’s live radio performance of his piano arrangement of “Life on Mars?” by David Bowie following the singer’s death in January 2016. A subsequent single of the track was released in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support later in the year.\nAfter Wakeman received offers from several music labels to produce an album of piano arrangements, he picked Universal. He has chosen a roster of songs that are his favourites or that he has played on as a session musician and as a member of Yes together with some classical pieces and original material. It is good to have the man back really “on form” and he is going to be promoting this new album on a 10-day tour of the UK between May and July of this year.\nNew Nobex Smarthone Apps\nPosted on February 21, 2017 by John Brocks\nIn our continued quest to upgrade all of our streams to SHOUTcast 2 we have now given our smart phone apps a “makeover” in conjunction with our partners Nobex.\nOur shiny new smart phone apps are now available for iPhone, Android or Blackberry completely FREE by searching for The Ice Stream on the appropriate app store for your phone. These new apps are all now SHOUTcast 2 compatible.\nYou can also find the links on our Web Site by clicking on the Nobex logo on our home page or by selecting the Smart Phone Apps tab.\nThe new Ice Stream smart phone apps future-proofing The Chill!\nNo More Waiting!\nIt seems to have been quite a few weeks since we have had any likely candidates for a new featured contemporary album to go on our playlist. Fortunately, the end of January 2017 saw just the sort of thing we were looking for with the release of Una Healy’s debut solo album “The Waiting Game”. The hit single from it, “Stay My Love” also features guest star, Sam Palladio, the British actor and musician.\nUna is an Irish singer-songwriter and former member of the band, The Saturdays. Born in Tipperary in 1981, she certainly seems to have been blessed with the touch of the blarney stone. However, a career in music is not what she originally envisioned having studied to become a primary school teacher and worked as a medical secretary. It was not until she was 23 that she decided to pursue a career in music.\nAfter a short period of playing and singing in local pubs and clubs in Ireland, she felt that she wanted her newly chosen profession to have a clearer direction and traveled to London in search of opportunity. In 2007 she found just that, suceedding in an audition with foundling band, The Saturdays. The group enjoyed thirteen Top 10 hits and four Top 10 albums. Somehow, during this whirlwind success, Una managed to find time to date Irish International Rugby Union fullback Ben Foden who she eventually married in 2012.\nSince then, the couple have had two children – daughter Aoife Belle (born March 13, 2012) and son Tadhg John (born February 2, 2015). With the maturity that family life brings, Una has now embarked on a solo career in music and can also be seen on TV as one of the judges on “The Voice Of Ireland” show.\nCompilation Of Finery\nPosted on December 14, 2016 December 14, 2016 by John Brocks\nHere at The Ice Stream we don’t often put compilation albums on our featured album playlist – but there are exceptions! Roberto Cacciapaglia’s latest double CD “Best Of” entitled “Atlas” is just so sublime we couldn’t resist adding it – particularly as Roberto is not that well known in many places outside of his native Italy.\nThis brand new album (released on 25th November) is a collection of 28 tracks remastered from this illustrious composer’s prolific output over the past 40 years. There is also a smattering of new tracks which include an outstanding version of “Starman” recorded as a tribute to the memory of David Bowie.\nRoberto Cacciapaglia was born in Milan in 1953 and is an Italian pianist and composer. He graduated in composition from the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi under the direction of Bruno Bettinelli, where he also studied conducting and electronic music. Over the years he has worked at the studio of Phonology of Rai and collaborated with the CNR (National Research Council) in Pisa where he studied computer applications in the field of music.\nHe is also founder of the Educational Music Academy which aims to give a voice to young musical talents and assists them to achieve professional mastery in their works. His teachings have been sought outside of Italy and he has led several seminars and workshops at the Turkish Music State Conservatory.\nRoberto performs his own compositions live and has enjoyed great success with his concerts – particularly at home in Italy as well as in Spain and Russia.\nWhen Is It Classical?\nPosted on October 2, 2016 by John Brocks\nFortunately not a question we have to answer too often here at The Ice Stream as we play all sorts! Born in Brittany in 1970 Yann Tiersen’s musical career is split between studio albums, collaborations and film soundtracks. Whatever you decide, he is an excellent addition to our repertoire and we think he could easily be confused as a classical composer even if he doesn’t consider himself to be one.\nYann says “I’m not a composer and I really don’t have a classical background. My real focus is on touring and studio albums which just happen to often be suitable for film”. His most famous soundtrack for the film “Amélie” was primarily made up from tracks taken from his first three studio albums.\nHis latest album is his ninth and is called “Eusa” and was released in Spetember 2016.\nAdvertise here - special deals for bands, music and gigs.\n© Copyright 2020\tCorporateTerms Of UsePrivacy PolicyCookie PolicyUseful LinksAdvertising\nThe Ice Stream","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line889483"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7308568954467773,"wiki_prob":0.26914310455322266,"text":"The Blackburn Hawks Logo & Blackburn Hawks 25th Anniversary logo’s are protected by the copyright license terms listed below.\nCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License\nHuman readable summary available here.\nBy exercising the Licensed Rights (defined below), You accept and agree to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License (“Public License”). To the extent this Public License may be interpreted as a contract, You are granted the Licensed Rights in consideration of Your acceptance of these terms and conditions, and the Licensor grants You such rights in consideration of benefits the Licensor receives from making the Licensed Material available under these terms and conditions.\nSection 1 – Definitions.\nAdapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image.\nAdapter’s License means the license You apply to Your Copyright and Similar Rights in Your contributions to Adapted Material in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Public License.\nCopyright and Similar Rights means copyright and/or similar rights closely related to copyright including, without limitation, performance, broadcast, sound recording, and Sui Generis Database Rights, without regard to how the rights are labeled or categorized. For purposes of this Public License, the rights specified in Section 2(b)(1)-(2) are not Copyright and Similar Rights.\nEffective Technological Measures means those measures that, in the absence of proper authority, may not be circumvented under laws fulfilling obligations under Article 11 of the WIPO Copyright Treaty adopted on December 20, 1996, and/or similar international agreements.\nExceptions and Limitations means fair use, fair dealing, and/or any other exception or limitation to Copyright and Similar Rights that applies to Your use of the Licensed Material.\nLicensed Material means the artistic or literary work, database, or other material to which the Licensor applied this Public License.\nLicensed Rights means the rights granted to You subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, which are limited to all Copyright and Similar Rights that apply to Your use of the Licensed Material and that the Licensor has authority to license.\nLicensor means the individual(s) or entity(ies) granting rights under this Public License.\nNonCommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation. 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However, if You fail to comply with this Public License, then Your rights under this Public License terminate automatically.\nWhere Your right to use the Licensed Material has terminated under Section 6(a), it reinstates:\nautomatically as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of Your discovery of the violation; or\nupon express reinstatement by the Licensor.\nFor the avoidance of doubt, this Section 6(b) does not affect any right the Licensor may have to seek remedies for Your violations of this Public License.\nFor the avoidance of doubt, the Licensor may also offer the Licensed Material under separate terms or conditions or stop distributing the Licensed Material at any time; however, doing so will not terminate this Public License.\nSections 1, 5, 6, 7, and 8 survive termination of this Public License.\nSection 7 – Other Terms and Conditions.\nThe Licensor shall not be bound by any additional or different terms or conditions communicated by You unless expressly agreed.\nAny arrangements, understandings, or agreements regarding the Licensed Material not stated herein are separate from and independent of the terms and conditions of this Public License.\nSection 8 – Interpretation.\nFor the avoidance of doubt, this Public License does not, and shall not be interpreted to, reduce, limit, restrict, or impose conditions on any use of the Licensed Material that could lawfully be made without permission under this Public License.\nTo the extent possible, if any provision of this Public License is deemed unenforceable, it shall be automatically reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable. If the provision cannot be reformed, it shall be severed from this Public License without affecting the enforceability of the remaining terms and conditions.\nNo term or condition of this Public License will be waived and no failure to comply consented to unless expressly agreed to by the Licensor.\nNothing in this Public License constitutes or may be interpreted as a limitation upon, or waiver of, any privileges and immunities that apply to the Licensor or You, including from the legal processes of any jurisdiction or authority.\nCreative Commons is not a party to its public licenses. Notwithstanding, Creative Commons may elect to apply one of its public licenses to material it publishes and in those instances will be considered the “Licensor.” The text of the Creative Commons public licenses is dedicated to the public domain under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. Except for the limited purpose of indicating that material is shared under a Creative Commons public license or as otherwise permitted by the Creative Commons policies published at creativecommons.org/policies, Creative Commons does not authorize the use of the trademark “Creative Commons” or any other trademark or logo of Creative Commons without its prior written consent including, without limitation, in connection with any unauthorized modifications to any of its public licenses or any other arrangements, understandings, or agreements concerning use of licensed material. For the avoidance of doubt, this paragraph does not form part of the public licenses.\nCreative Commons may be contacted at creativecommons.org.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line150555"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5214531421661377,"wiki_prob":0.4785468578338623,"text":"Hippolyte Petitjean\nHippolyte Petitjean was active/lived in France. Hippolyte Petitjean is known for portrait painting, optical and neo-impressionism.\nBiography from Anderson Galleries, Inc.\nA noted Neo-Impressionist painter, Hippolyte Petitjean was born on September 11, 1854 in Macon. In 1872 he went to Paris to continue his studies entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and also the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel. He exhibited at the Salon beginning in 1880. By far the most significant event in Petitjean's development was meeting Seurat in 1884. Petitjean joined the Neo-Impressionist group in 1886, and in 1887 he showed his first major work in this style. In 1891 he switched from the Salon to exhibit with the Independents. He also exhibited in Brussels in 1893 and 1898, Berlin in 1898, Weimar in 1903, and Wiesbaden in 1921.\nPetitjean remained loyal to Seurat's optical theories along with Signac and Pissaro until after 1894 when he began to combine the pointillist dot with more feathery strokes. After 1910 he returned to a Neo-Impressionist manner in a series of decorative watercolors. These works depicted both landscapes and people with a remarkable shimmering effect created by individual spots of pure color.\nMuseum Collections Include:\nMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris\nAbout Hippolyte Petitjean\nBorn: 1854 - Macon, France\nKnown for: portrait painting, optical and neo-impressionism","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line571032"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.80462247133255,"wiki_prob":0.80462247133255,"text":"Historical version for the period March 9, 2005 to October 31, 2005.\nAmended by: 1997, c. 26, Sched.; 1998, c. 36; 1999, c. 6, s. 67; 2000, c. 26, Sched. I; 2001, c. 9, Sched. I, s. 4; 2002, c. 8, Sched. P, s. 8; 2002, c. 18, Sched. J, s. 5; 2004, c. 8, ss. 46, 47 (2); 2004, c. 17, s. 32; 2005, c. 5, s. 73.\n8. A person who assists in connection with an emergency that has been declared to exist by the Premier of Ontario or the head of a municipal council.\n11. A pupil deemed to be a worker under the Education Act. (“travailleur”) 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 2 (1); 1999, c. 6, s. 67 (2-4); 2002, c. 18, Sched. J, s. 5 (1); 2005, c. 5, s. 73 (2-4).\n71.(1)An authority who summons a person to assist in controlling or extinguishing a fire shall be deemed to be the person’s employer.\n(2)The Crown shall be deemed to be the employer of a person who assists in a search and rescue operation at the request of and under the direction of a member of the Ontario Provincial Police.\n(3)The Crown shall be deemed to be the employer of a person who assists in connection with an emergency declared by the Premier of Ontario to exist.\n(4)The municipality shall be deemed to be the employer of a person who assists in connection with an emergency declared by the head of the municipal council to exist. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 71.\n(8) Repealed: 2000, c. 26, Sched. I, s. 1 (22).\n(10) Repealed: 2000, c. 26, Sched. I, s. 1 (22).\n(3) The review must be performed under the direction of the Auditor General by one or more public accountants who are licensed under the Public Accountancy Act. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 168 (3); 2004, c. 17, s. 32.\nNote: On a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor, subsection (3) is amended by the Statutes of Ontario, 2004, chapter 8, section 46, Table by striking out “Public Accountancy Act” and substituting “Public Accounting Act, 2004”. See: 2004, c. 8, ss. 46, Table; 51 (2).\nNote: On a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor, the French version of subsection (3) is amended by the Statutes of Ontario, 2004, chapter 8, subsection 47 (2) by striking out “comptables publics” and substituting “experts-comptables”. See: 2004, c. 8, ss. 47 (2), 51 (2).\n176.(1)The Office of the Worker Adviser is continued. Its functions are to educate, advise and represent workers who are not members of a trade union and their survivors.\n(2)The Office of the Employer Adviser is continued. Its functions are to educate, advise and represent primarily those employers that have fewer than 100 employees.\n(3)The Minister shall determine the amount of the costs that may be incurred by each office in performing its functions and the Board shall pay them.\n(4)Before January 1, 1999, the Ministry of Labour shall review the functions and operations of each office and shall determine whether there is a continuing need for the office. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 176.\n179.(1)No action or other proceeding for damages may be commenced against any of the following persons for an act or omission done or omitted by the person in good faith in the execution or intended execution of any power or duty under this Act:\n6. Persons who are engaged by the Board to conduct an examination, investigation, inquiry, inspection or test or who are authorized to perform any function.\n(2)Subsection (1) does not relieve the Board of any liability to which the Board would otherwise be subject in respect of a person described in paragraph 1, 4, 5 or 6 of subsection (1).\n(3)Subsection (1) does not, by reason of subsections 5 (2) and (4) of the Proceedings Against the Crown Act, relieve the Crown of liability in respect of a tort committed by a person described in paragraphs 2 and 3 of subsection (1) to which the Crown would otherwise be subject.\n(4)No action or other proceeding may be commenced against a health care practitioner, hospital or health facility for providing information under section 37 or 47 unless he or she or it acts maliciously. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 179.\n6. Health care practitioners providing information under section 37. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 180 (1).\n(2) The Board, the members of the board of directors and the employees of, and persons engaged or authorized by the Board are not required to produce, in a proceeding in which the Board is not a party, any information or material furnished, obtained, made or received in the performance of the Board’s, member’s, employee’s or person’s duties under this Act. The same is true, with necessary modifications, if the Appeals Tribunal, the Office of the Worker Adviser or the Office of the Employer Adviser is not a party to a proceeding. 2000, c. 26, Sched. I, s. 1 (29).\n(3) If the Board is a party to a proceeding, the members of the board of directors and employees of and persons engaged or authorized by the Board may be determined to be compellable witnesses. The same is true, with necessary modifications, if the Appeals Tribunal, the Office of the Worker Adviser or the Office of the Employer Adviser is a party to a proceeding. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, s. 180 (3).","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1220953"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8386345505714417,"wiki_prob":0.8386345505714417,"text":"Tag: Daily News\nNew York City public school kids getting new Muslim, Lunar New Year holidays\nMayor de Blasio said Monday that he’d move forward with closing schools for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, two Muslim holy days, and for Lunar New Year. But he was hesitant regarding Hindu festival Diwali.\nAppearing on WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” on Monday, the mayor said he hadn’t taken a position on whether Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated in India and other South Asian countries, should be a day off from school.\nBut he said he’d move forward with closing schools for Lunar New Year and for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, Muslim holy days.\n“It is complicated in terms of logistics and school calendar and budget. But it’s something I want to get done in a reasonable time frame,” he said.\nNY Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/nyc-public-school-kids-new-holidays-article-1.1601237#ixzz2tY0E5Rjl\nAuthor researcherPosted on 17th February 2014 Categories United StatesTags Daily News, Eid, holidays, New Year, New York, New York City, religious holidays, schools, South Asian, WNYC\nVilks will speak at a Anti-Muslim Conference\nLars Vilks* will speak at a conference in New York on September 11, 2012. The organizer is the anti-Muslim organization SION (Stop Islamization of Nations). Its founder says to have inspired Anders Behring Breivik. A representative of SION was recently in Stockholm to hold his first speech at “the first global meeting against Jihad and radical Islamism.”\nAccording to Anna-Sofia Quensel, a researcher at EXPO (an organization which regularly reports on activities of the far-right extremists), SION has its roots in Denmark going back to 2005. Since then there have been a European and an American branch, but since the beginning of 2012 an international umbrella organization has been formed (SION).\n”The organization is a part of the counter-jihad movement. Its members claim that an intricate Islamizing conspiracy is underway against the West. Among other things, they claim that a holy war is being waged against the West and our ideas,” says Quensel. It is from this milieu that Breivik retrieved much of his opinions. Robert Spencer, who is one of the initiators of SION, has been quoted over 150 times in Breivik’s manifesto, according to Quensel.\nQuensel also points out that from the SION’s point of view, Lars Vilks is an important person. “He is often mentioned because he has been threatened for his drawings and installations. He will speak about freedom of expression and he is used as an example of what can happen and how freedom of expression is threatened.” According to her Lars Vilks is a figurehead for SION, and his presence at the conference will also put focus on Sweden. “He comes as one of those who has received death threats and will be used as such. It sends a signal to the entire movement that Lars Vilks actually shares their views so that becomes a powerful signal to the outside.” Moreover, according to Quensel, there is a great risk that Lars Vilks legitimizes the movement, regardless of his personal motives (to participate).\n”This is anti-Muslim environment and a movement which is active in attempts to prevent an Arabic TV-channel’s broadcasting from the US. In this environment he (Vilks) chooses to speak about freedom of expression. Now, which signals this sends is a matter of interpretation,” says Anna-Sofia Quensel.\nWhen DN (Daily News) contacts Lars Vilks he says that he is attending the conference to speak about his experiences. “This is above all a part of my art project where I include Al Qaida and Al-Shabab. When this organization (SION) contacted me they became a part of my project. They play a large role in the big drama about Islam, Muslims and fundamentalism.”\nWhat does it mean for you that the organizers have expressed anti-Muslim views?\n“They can have any opinion thet want in the name of the freedom of expression.” Cannot see that I play any significance in their situation. I want to have insight of the movement and how they think.”\nEXPO (a racism watchdog organization) is of the opinion that your presence there contributes significantly to the anti-Muslim movement and that they will use this event to advertize (their views). What is your view on that?\n”It is free to have any opinion you like, we should protect that.”\nDo you think that other people can interpret (your presence at the conference) as you legitimizing them (the anti-Muslim movement)?\n“Sure, we have freedom to interpret things differently. I have been exposed to various interpretations, so I’m used to it.”\nAre you not concerned that you might add to the wrong interpretation of your (work), something that you usually mention?\n“No, you have to shoulder that risk when you do art which touches upon suh a delicate issue. I will most likely create more enemies, but I’m used to it. People who do not want any nuances will view things in black and white.”\nYou have received much attention. Do you see all of this as a PR-stunt?\n”No I can’t say i do. I have already received much attention even before,” yas Lars Vilks.\nSigned: Fredrik Lennander\n* Lars Vilks is a Swedish artist. He is best known for his defamatory portrayal (street installation) of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Vilks has characterized his own skill in the actual crafts involved in sculpture as quite limited, and although his artistic ideas can be seen as characteristic for his generation of Swedish conceptual artists, he has remained something of an outsider in the Swedish art scene for most of his career.\nAuthor Euro-IslamPosted on 12th August 2012 Categories Discrimination and Xenophobia, Public Opinion and Islam in the Media, ScandinaviaTags Anti-Muslim, conference, Daily News, event, EXPO, Lars Vilks, organization, PR, racism, watchdog\nTennessee Muslims feel blessed this Ramadan after federal court rules in their favor\nMURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is always a joyful time for believers, but a Tennessee congregation was feeling especially blessed this year as they worshipped Friday.\nOpponents spent two years trying to halt construction of a new mosque for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, but a federal judge ruled this week the congregation has a right to worship there as soon as the building is ready.\n“Ramadan this year reaches us at a very special time for us as a community,” Imam Ossama Bahloul told the congregation at Friday prayers. “We have received the good news about the federal court not standing on our side, but standing on the side of the Constitution\nAlthough there has been an Islamic center in Murfreesboro for 30 years, the new building brought vehement opposition, including a lawsuit, a large rally and even vandalism, arson and a bomb threat.\nOpponents of the mosque, who used the issue to raise wider arguments against the faith of Islam, have not commented to The Associated Press on the federal ruling.\nJoe Brandon Jr., an attorney for mosque opponents, told Murfreesboro newspaper The Daily News Journal that he is exploring options for legal action.\nAuthor Euro-IslamPosted on 26th July 2012 Categories Islamic Practice and JurisprudenceTags building, construction, court, Daily News, Islamic center, Murfreesboro, rally, Ramadan, Tennessee, Tennessee Muslims\nA Swede was a secret agent working for three different countries\nSpying against Sweden is increasing according to the Swedish Intelligence Agency (SÄPO). The Agency also suspects that at least 15 states are doing illegal surveillance in the country. The Daily News has reported that a Swedish man have been a secret informer for Libyan, British and Swedish intelligence services simultaneously. His code name is “Joseph” and he has on the regular basis reported Muslims as suspected terrorists.\nUsually foreign spies target large Swedish firms and sensitive information on Swedish policies/politics. Another focus is given to spying on recent immigrant communities, and usually those who are political activists seeking asylum in Sweden. Regime critics and opposition activists who live in Sweden have regularly been threatened and their movements and activities traced.\nThe information about Joseph’s activities today is uncertain – he lives in a city in Sweden, he has children and officially his financial circumstances are highly limited. Despite that, he is regularly traveling across the world. AS recently as couple of weeks ago, he had visited his former homeland, Libya. This we his second trip since the fall of the regime. Moreover, according from the information from DN he had met with one of the rebel leaders Abdel Hakim Belhaj on his last trip.\nJoseph claims that he is not an informant working for any of the mentioned states. “You are talking to the wrong guy here. Alright. You know nothing what this is all about,” he was reported to have said to a DN’s reporter. Howoever, a fax message from the British intelligence agency MI6 from 2003 is contradicting his claims. The message is a part of a set of documents gathered by Human Rights Watch in Libya in the wake of administrative vacuum followed by the fall of Qaddafi regime.\nThe MI6 document starts with the words, “Greetings from MI6 in London” and it is a four pages long document describing a meeting with “Joseph” in Manchester. It is dated December 11, 2003 with an address of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fax message gives details about Joseph and how he was recruited by MI6. He had names of 11 Muslims from Sweden who he described as possible terrorists and accomplices. He also had a list of names of individual board members in a Muslim association in Sweden. The document further shows that Joseph had contacts with Qaddafi’s intelligence services (ESO) and the Swedish security agency (SÄPO). The document further hints that his first step has been to hand over the list of names to (MI6). The names of people he suspected to be “jihad sympathizers” in Sweden. MI6 in turn sent the list to Libya.\nThe DN had investigated the list and, at least, two individuals from the list more closely. The two persons have been in Joseph’s immediate closeness. Another individual was now deceased Muhammad Moumou (Abu Qaswarah) listed as a terrorist by both the United Nations and the European Union in 2006.\nOne of the most important question Joseph had posed is how is he to handle his contacts with the Swedish SÄPO. Joseph further wanted to inform MI6 about his contacts (with SÄPO), something MI6 was not interested in him doing. The Libyan ESO has, according to the document, been deeply aware of his informant status and work. Joseph had also been firmly instructed not to reveal his cooperation with other agencies to SÄPO. ESO and MI6 agreed that Joseph shall cancel his meetings with Swedes and inform them that he was ill.\n”Joseph” is protected as a source by DN, however the newspaper’s reporters investigated into his real identity and could establish it after some time. He is a 45-year old male who immigrated to Sweden in the end of 1980s from Libya. A few years later be became a citizen. He is registered to reside in a two-room apartment in a well-kept residential building. During some periods he worked as a store assistant. People familiar with Joseph describe him as secretive and suspicious of others. He could disappear without any explanation despite his limited funds on long expensive trips. He has even been convicted of domestic violence for beating up two of his earlier girlfriends. He has also been sentenced for theft and for making threats. Most recently he has been convicted of shoplifting.\nDespite all of these issues he has established himself as a known figure in the Muslim community. “He knows people everywhere, in Stockholm, Malmö, Göteborg,” one of his acquaintances comments.\nSÄPO never comments any individual cases, however, according to their annual rapport for 2011 Libya is one of the countries which has conducted intelligence gathering in Sweden during several years. On several occasions the Swedish authorities have deported Libyan spies. Furthermore, according to SÄPO persons as information sources are tremendously important in intelligence gathering (counterterrorism etc.)\nAccording to Magnus Ranstrorp (researcher at the Swedish Defense College) it is unusual to be an agent for three separate intelligence agencies. “It is unusual since there are so many states involved, that is, that the Libyan regime and the British agency and even the Swedish (SÄPO) seem to have bilateral relationships to him (Joseph).”\nSigned: Mattias Carlsson\nAuthor Euro-IslamPosted on 27th June 2012 Categories Issues in Politics, Scandinavia, Security and CounterterrorismTags Daily News, DN, ESO, intelligence, Libya, limited, names, PO, Sweden\n‘SalamWorld’ to be Facebook for Muslims — but much cleaner\nSalamworld, based in Istanbul, will be launched during Ramadan in July in eight languages. The social network aims to have 50 million users within five years.\nMuslim users who choose to ditch Facebook for the upcoming social network SalamWorld shouldn’t expect to find a Madonna video or discussion of sex anywhere on the site.\nThe company hopes to be a far cleaner version of Facebook, by “filtering out harmful content” and ensuring that its pages “uphold and respect family values,” according to the company’s commercial.\n“The content that is being used on other social networks is not very secure and full of haram,” one of Salamworld’s owners, Abdulvahed Niyazo, told the Hürriyet Daily News. Haram is an Arabic term meaning “forbidden.” “We don’t want our young people to absorb all these ideas that are not familiar to them,” he said.\nBut some believe that young Muslims won’t welcome a social media site containing only halal content, as they will perceive the filtering of content as Web censorship.\nAuthor researcherPosted on 5th March 2012 Categories News by Country, News by Issue, Muslim Advocacy and Organizations, Technology and the Internet, Youth and Pop CultureTags Abdulvahed Niyazo, Daily News, discussion, Facebook, haram, languages, network, social, young Muslims\nCanadian Diplomat’s Grave Moved in Turkey after Muslim Complaints\nThe National Post – December 14, 2010\nThe remains of a Canadian diplomat buried in Turkey were reportedly forcibly removed from a local cemetery after a prominent Muslim family said they weren’t comfortable praying next to a Christian grave. Hans-Joachim Himmelsbach, 65, a retired trade commissioner from Vancouver who was living in Turkey, died about three weeks ago after suffering a blood clot to his brain while he was recovering from a throat operation, his stepfather, Heinz Koletzko, said in an interview.\nMr. Himmelsbach was buried in a Christian ceremony at a local cemetery in Bodrum, a tourist resort community on Turkey’s south Aegean coast. Mr. Himmelsbach’s family obtained permission from the municipality for a priest to perform the ceremony, Mr. Koletzko said, as is required in Turkey for religious groups not officially recognized by the state.\nBut his wife, Ilknur Himmelsbach, a Turkish citizen, told the Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review that Mr. Himmelsbach’s grave was recently moved against her wishes to a remote area of the cemetery at the request of a local Muslim businessman who felt Mr. Himmelsbach was buried too close to the family plot.\nAuthor researcherPosted on 21st December 2010 Categories Islamic Practice and JurisprudenceTags cemetery, Christian, Daily News, family, Heinz Koletzko, Ilknur Himmelsbach, National Post, National Post December, Turkey\nFive years after 7/7 bombings London commemorates its victims\nFive years after the terrorist attacks on the London underground, the papers review what has changed since then in terms of security, anti-terrorism laws and the situation for British Muslims.\nThe Guardian features a comment on the lost narrative of British Muslims, who have been “stigmatised en masse” by some media and government policies. Another Guardian article talks of the flaws of neo-liberal government policies towards terrorism that have only increased the risk of new attacks, which another comment in the same paper supports, claiming that the government’s “Prevent strategy” has not made anyone any wiser and urging the government to learn how to work with “ordinary Muslims”. A commentator of The New Statesman describes how his life, being a commuter and a Muslim living in Britain, changed on 7/7 2005. The London Daily News commemorates the victims and lists the names of those deceased in the attacks, while The Independent talked to those who witnessed the bombings but survived them, and gives an insight into how they cope with the experience today.\nAuthor researcherPosted on 7th July 2010 Categories UncategorizedTags 7/7, attacks, bombings, british muslims, Daily News, Five years after 7/7 bombings, London, London commemorates its victims, names, New Statesman, Prevent, Prevent Strategy, The Independent\nVeteran Vendor Lance Orton Is Times Square Hero\n(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) – “I’m not a celebrity, I’m just an average Joe,” Lance Orton told the New York Daily News Sunday night from his apartment in the Bronx. But this average Joe is being hailed as the savior of Times Square.\nOrton is one of the street vendors who alerted police to the suspicious dark-colored SUV that contained a home-made bomb, reported The New York Times . Orton sells T-shirts near the area in which the car was parked.\nHe and Duane Jackson, a handbag vendor, were the first to notice that something was strange about the car. Jackson told MyFox NY’s ‘Good Day NY’ co-host Greg Kelly : “When the smoke started, I realized there might be more to this than meets the eye.”\nNew York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had dinner on Sunday night in Times Square with Jackson and NYPD Officer Wayne Rhatigan, who was alerted by the vendors and was the first to begin to clear the are around the SUV. Orton, though passed on dinner with the mayor, according to MSNBC.com .\nAccording to Reuters , New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Orton: “Lance Orton saw something and did something about it.”\nOrton said in a TV interview after the incident that he’s been a street vendor for 22 years. Walking with a limp and wearing a Monster energy drink T-shirt, he said of his vending position: “I don’t have too much choice. Nobody’s giving me a job.”\nSurrounded by reporters as he walked to a taxi on Sunday morning, Orton was a bit surly, claiming: “Part of my reason for having this attitude is I’ve given some of you interviews before and you wrote the opposite of what I said in the paper, so that’s my problem with you.”\nWhen asked if he was proud of his actions, he said: “Of course, man. I’m a veteran. What do you think?” As he got into the cab, the Vietnam vet said his advice to the city of New York was: “See something, say something.”\nNow Orton is being mentioned in news articles around the world. His family members are also being sought out.\nMiriam Citron, the mother of Orton’s son, told the New York Times that Orton would regularly alert police if something didn’t look right: “When he was in Vietnam, he said they had to make decisions and judgments from their gut, from their own feelings … His instinct was telling him something’s not right.”\nOrton’s mother, Jean Jarrett, told the Daily News : “I’m sure he saved a lot of lives.”\nAuthor researcherPosted on 7th May 2010 Categories Articles and Essays, Immigration and Integration, Issues in Politics, Muslim Advocacy and OrganizationsTags Daily News, House of Commons, Lance Orton, Mayor Michael, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Muslim MPs, Muslim News, New York, NY, police, Sadiq Khan, Shabana Mahmood, Shahid Malik, SUV, Times Square, Vietnam, Yasmin Qureshi\nGermany to take steps to integrate Turkish community\nPlacing immigrant integration into society at the center of state policy after years of denial and neglect, the German government is finally dedicating time, money, and energy for progress on this still unresolved matter, the Turkish Daily News (TDN) wrote on Monday.\nThe diagnosis of the “disease” by the coalition government led by Germany’s first female chancellor, Angela Merke – a Christian Democrat elected in 2005 – is seen by Turkey as a significant turning point after years of implementing a so-called denial policy. The German government has long ignored the parallel societies arising from differing social, cultural, and religious traditions of the Turkish immigrants that began arriving in the country in the 1960s under the guest worker scheme. Turkey may also be to blame for failing to develop strategies to help its citizens integrate into German society, considering them sources of capital flow back to the country.\nFull text article continues here. (Some news sites may require registration)\nAuthor researcherPosted on 22nd November 2008 Categories News by Country, News by Issue, Immigration and IntegrationTags Christian Democrat, community, Daily News, female, Germany, Integration, policy, TDN, Turkey, Turkish Daily News\nLink between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids Paedophile websites are being used to pass information between terrorists\nA link between terrorism plots and hardcore child pornography is becoming clear after a string of police raids in Britain and across the Continent, an investigation by The Times has discovered. Images of child abuse have been found during Scotland Yard antiterrorism swoops and in big inquiries in Italy and Spain. Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists.\nBritish security services are also aware of the trend and believe that it requires further investigation to improve understanding of terrorists’ methods and mindsets. Concerns within the Metropolitan Police led to a plan to run a pilot research project exploring the nature of the link. One source familiar with the proposal said that this could eventually lead to the training of child welfare experts to identify signs of terrorist involvement as they monitor pornographic sites. Concerns have already been expressed at Cabinet minister level about the risk of vulnerable Muslim youths being exploited by older men. Officers have noted that child sex abuse images have been found during investigations into some of the most advanced suspected plots. However, it is understood that the proposed research project was never implemented because the AntiTerrorism Branch was overwhelmed by the sheer number of cases it was having to deal with. Richard Kerbaj and Dominic Kennedy report.\nSee full-text articles:\nTimes Online\nLondon Daily News\nAuthor researcherPosted on 17th October 2008 Categories News by Country, News by Issue, Security and Counterterrorism, Technology and the InternetTags abuse, Daily News, investigation, Metropolitan Police, networks, online, police, police raids, pornography, raids, Scotland Yard, Spain, Terrorism, terrorists","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1250170"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9344619512557983,"wiki_prob":0.9344619512557983,"text":"Home Features The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Clayborn Temple\nFive Things To Do This Weekend in Memphis: June 16th-18th\nFive Things To Do This Weekend in Memphis: June 23rd-25th\nThe Life, Death, and Rebirth of Clayborn Temple\nThe clarion call of a resurrected Memphis landmark.\nby Chris McCoy\nphotograph courtesy clayborn reborn\nFrank Smith (left) and Rob Thompson survey the renovation work being done at Clayborn Temple in 2017.\nSince its opening in 2004, FedExForum has drawn millions of people to Downtown Memphis. As a goodly portion of those people waited on Linden (now Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue) to park in the Grizzlies garage, they couldn’t help but notice the huge, boarded-up stone church across from the entrance, just south of bustling Beale Street. In a city beset by blight, Clayborn Temple seemed like something of a talisman.\nIt wasn’t always this way, of course. For most of its existence, this historic church — first serving a white congregation, then an African-American one — was a symbol of the community it served. “This was the largest church building south of the Ohio River when it opened in 1892,” explains Rob Thompson, president of Clayborn Reborn, the nonprofit group charged with Clayborn Temple’s restoration as a major community institution.\nWhen the thriving Second Presbyterian Church of Memphis that year completed the $100,000 Romanesque Revival structure on the corner of Hernando and Pontotoc, it became the crown jewel of a downtown district filled with houses of worship. Next door to the temple, where now there are only two rows of trees bordering an empty lot, was a large Episcopal Church. A Methodist church once stood where the Forum’s parking lot is now located. On Sunday mornings, the three blocks north of Linden were crowded with worshippers.\n“People rode their horses, or walked, to church,” explains Thompson. “Memphis was very dense and urban. The city’s eastern boundaries in the 1890s would have been no further than Manassas, if even that far. In the 1870 census, the population between Pontotoc and the Mississippi was 50-50 black and white. People were living together, on top of each other. I think it was interesting to think about how it was back then. A wealthy congregation built an opulent, beautiful place, a block and a half from Beale Street. This church’s organ was waking people up on Beale Street after a hard Saturday night.”\nThat Temple’s organ was the first one in the city powered by electricity, and with at least 5,000 pipes, it remains the city’s largest. For more than five decades, this landmark building was the spiritual and physical home of Second Presbyterian Church. But by the end of the 1940s, the congregation wasn’t what it used to be. As the city expanded eastward, many of its wealthier members bought homes in the newly created suburbs. By then, the automobile had transformed the country, and the city of Memphis along with it — a transformation that proved to be a double-edged sword for Second Presbyterian.\n“A lot of the congregation was lost during World War II, because of gas rationing,” explains Thompson. In 1949, Second Presbyterian recorded only a single baptism. “It was an older congregation,” Thompson says. “There were no young people having babies.”\nDance and musical performances, such as a concert by Kirk Whalum (right) have drawn people to the old church while it is being restored.\nJamie Harmon\nThat year, the Second Presbyterian congregation decided to sell the building on Linden, and move to a new home at Goodlett and Central, which was then the eastern boundary of the expanding city. At the time, postwar suburbanization was in full effect, and the building’s buyers reflected Downtown’s changing demographics. The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church had been founded in Philadelphia in 1816, making it the oldest independent Protestant church denomination in the world founded by African Americans. The AME church paid $100,000 for the building and grounds — the same amount of money in absolute terms it was built for, but the equivalent of $270,000 in 1891 dollars.\nThe AME renamed the building “Clayborn Temple” after its dynamic pastor, Bishop J.M. Clayborn, and once again, it became the home to a large, thriving congregation with deep roots in the community. “[The AME] has had, since its founding, a long tradition of what we would call social activism,” says Thompson. “It was just natural that, once the group moved into this building, they would rename it Clayborn Temple, after the bishop of this district. This was a socially motivated, socially active congregation.”\nClayborn Temple’s location next to Beale Street, the historic economic and social hub of black life in the Mid-South, made it the most prominent African-American church in the city. When the first rumblings of the civil rights movement were heard in the 1950s, the church naturally became a local hub for activism, setting the church on the course to its date with destiny.\nAn artists’ roundtable event in the sanctuary.\nBy the late 1960s, the Jim Crow South was crumbling under the assault of the national civil rights movement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African-Americans unfettered access to the ballot box for the first time since Reconstruction. But the racist power structure was not giving up without a fight. Working conditions for white and black Memphis Sanitation Department workers showed a vast disparity, with black workers not even being allowed to use the showers, and thus having to ride the bus home while stinking of garbage.\nDuring the 1960s, tensions rose in the department until, on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death while seeking shelter from the freezing rain in the back of a garbage truck. Ten days later, more than half of Memphis’ 1,200 African-American sanitation workers walked off the job.\n“It was a truly grassroots deal,” explains Thompson. “That’s what makes it so Memphis to me. … The national union [ASCME] was frustrated. You don’t start a strike in February. You start a strike in July or August, when the garbage is really going to stink. … These guys risked everything for their dignity.”\nClayborn Temple became the rallying point for the strikers, who would gather daily at the Temple and march en mass to the courthouse. “This particular African-American congregation had a white minister from Canada named Malcolm Blackburn,” Thompson says. “He was what today we could call a bi-vocational pastor — he had two jobs. He was a journeyman printer. He had a printing press in the basement. The original signs that the strikers used were printed on that press. They opened up the church and said, ‘You guys are welcome to come here every day and organize.’ Eventually, they had nightly meetings, and the community began showing up, too.”\nBy mid February, the marching strikers were regularly being met with force by the police. On February 24th, after a particularly bloody march, Rev. James Lawson addressed the strikers assembled in Clayborn Temple. “For at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person. You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity.”\nSince then, Lawson’s words, printed on placards by Malcolm Blackburn’s printing press, have reverberated across the world. “There were lots of different signs early on,” says Thompson. “In some of the old photos, you can see that. But ‘I Am A Man’ became the hallmark. When the Arab Spring happened six years ago in Egypt, there were people walking around with ‘I Am A Man’ signs in Cairo. During the protests in Ferguson two years ago, it was ‘I Am A Human Being.’”\nAfter the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became increasingly vocal about the economic plight of not only African Americans, but all poor people. In the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, King and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, saw an opportunity to address the intersection of race and class.\nOn March 28th, King traveled to Memphis to lead the strikers on their daily march to the courthouse. But as the marchers rounded the corner at Linden and Main, someone broke a window at the Goldsmith’s department store, and police attacked the marchers, who retreated back to the Temple. Police surrounded the building and fired tear gas through the stained-glass windows, flooding the sanctuary filled with women and children with caustic gas. As the strikers dispersed throughout the city, running battles broke out. Larry Page, a 16-year-old boy, was killed by a shotgun-wielding policeman. His open casket funeral, attended by thousands, was held at Clayborn Temple.\nKing vowed to return to Memphis and hold a peaceful march. On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, he was gunned down while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Four days later, 42,000 people marched from Clayborn Temple to the court house. On April 18th, Mayor Henry Loeb agreed to the strikers’ demands.\n\"The limestone walls are almost three feet thick,” says Thompson. “This thing is not going anywhere.”\nBut the survival of the building doesn’t necessarily translate to the survival of the congregation. In the wake of the social chaos of the Sanitation Workers Strike, Downtown Memphis hollowed out. White flight intensified, and the black families who could leave also headed for the suburbs. The congregation dwindled in size throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but its commitment to social activism remained intact. In its final incarnation, the church ran a homeless shelter and soup kitchen, which helped ten of thousands of impoverished citizens. Then, in 1999, Clayborn Temple closed its doors for the last time.\n“The fact that it is the way it is, is a metaphor for Memphis in a lot of ways,” says Thompson. “Clayborn Temple is beautiful, it’s rich in history and cultural significance, and it has indelible ties to our community. And yet it was boarded up and forgotten for 18 years.”\nSeveral attempts have been made over the years to resurrect the structure. The city has repeatedly mulled plans to preserve it. The late Judge D’Army Bailey championed the idea of creating a gospel music museum in the space. In 2003-2004, the AME and Second Presbyterian churches worked together on a scheme to create a new congregation in the structure. Each would contribute a pastor, one black and one white, to create a racially integrated, diverse congregation. But the building’s state of disrepair was too great, and the movement floundered. There it would sit until Frank Smith came along.\n\"It was an easy, innocent beginning,” says Smith, owner of Wiseacre Brewery. “It has to do with my church. About a dozen years ago, I began to be disturbed by the fact that I looked around on Sunday mornings, and everybody looked like me. They vote like me, they process world issues like me. I needed some diversity in my life, some perspective.”\nSmith and his family joined the Downtown Church, a congregation dedicated to diversity in both race and class. “For the last three years, we’ve ended up meeting in the train station, which is undergoing redevelopment. So we got kicked out of the train station. There’s no good answer as to where a 350-member congregation goes to worship on Sunday downtown.\n“So instead of buying a piece of dirt and building another church building — Memphis doesn’t need another church building — I said, innocently, one day, ‘I wonder what would happen if we got that old church over by the Forum?’ I knew a little bit about it, not much. When I started digging on it, it took 15 months from the time I first had that thought to convince the AME church to part with it.”\nOne of the reasons urban blight can be such an insoluble problem is that it is, at once, everyone’s problem and yet no one’s problem. Responsibility for abandoned and decaying properties is shared among the owners, the city, and the banks and financial institutions, with none of them having clear incentives to fix the problem.\nNeighborhood Preservation, Inc. (NPI) was founded to bridge those incentive gaps. “NPI gets involved when the government can’t, because they have no programs,” explains NPI attorney Steve Barlow. “The private sector won’t, because there’s no money to be made, but we really believe that somebody in our community must. Somebody must care about these properties and do something about it.”\nNeighborhood Preservation, Inc. stepped in to act as a go-between to facilitate the sale of Clayborn Temple to Smith and the Downtown Church. “We became a part of a community movement, where we said we would be willing to hold title to the property as long as we have an exit strategy,” Smith explains. “So long as we have some partners who are willing to occupy it, to do the work, to get creative about programming it.”\nSmith says the nonprofit structure created by NPI was vital to convincing AME to let go of the historic structure, which they loved but could not afford to maintain. “It was an emotional and painful thing for them to do,” he recollects, “but the Bishop for this district, Bishop Jeffery Leath, in Nashville, had a lot of courage. He spent a lot of relational capital inside his own organization, but finally they allowed us to put it into this nonprofit status.\n“It wouldn’t have worked if we had put it in a for-profit framework. … Steve’s group [NPI] is the perfect partner. They provided a financial structure to sort of park the title. We’re in the process now of forming our own not-for-profit.”\n“This place is way too important for it just to be a church on Sunday. It needs to be alive and breathe with the same kind of energy it did all of its life.”\n— Frank Smith\nAfter years of neglect, the physical state of the building was not good. Much of the original hardwood flooring had rotted away. The giant organ is a long way from being able to make sweet music.\n“We’re trying to raise the money for a study to inventory everything that’s in there, to see if it can be restored,” says Thompson. “There are two major chamber rooms that have been vandalized. But the organ is critical; it’s the voice of the building that hasn’t been heard in at least 20 years.”\nThe restoration is well under way, and once the situation was stabilized enough for the Downtown Church to begin having weekly meetings there, they discovered that many people were eager to hold their events in the hallowed walls. This year’s Juneteenth celebration (Monday, June 19th) will feature a performance by the Prizm Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra.\n“It’s an orchestra that is racially diverse in a way that mirrors the demographics of Memphis,” says Lecolion Washington, executive director of Prizm. “We’re bringing that orchestra to this space on that day to perform a work called Seven Last Words of the Unarmed.”\nThe contemporary classical piece was first performed last year in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Each of its seven movements is a eulogy to victims of police shootings. “It was originally just for a men’s choir and piano,” says Washington. “It’s been adapted and arranged for full orchestra.”\nWashington says Prizm is reaching out to choruses from different churches all over the city. “As we know, the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning. We’re going to make sure we’re pulling from a diverse group of churches, so that the product is as diverse as the stage, as diverse as the music that is happening.”\nAnd that’s just one of the events shaping up as the space slowly comes back to life. On June 15th, the On Location: Memphis Film Festival will begin a 15-week film series focusing on Memphis history, art, and spatial justice. The films will include the critically acclaimed Fruitvale Station, the Memphis music documentary Verge, the groundbreaking Hallelujah by King Vidor, which was the first-ever sound film musical, filmed in Memphis in 1928, and The Invaders, the made-in-Memphis documentary about the black power group who was intimately involved in the sanitation workers’ strike.\nFrank Smith knows the building has a long way to go before it is restored to its former grandeur, but the surge of interest in Clayborn Temple gives him hope for the future.\n“Everybody wants this to happen so badly,” he says. “Once they gave us permission to let people in here, you can feel something. It evokes an emotional, spiritual kind of response out of people.\n“It also exposes vulnerability in a way that is really necessary for our city,” he continues. “You can’t heal until you first become vulnerable. That’s what we’ve decided now. We’re just going to live in this state of incompleteness. That’s like Memphis right now. We haven’t quite figured it out. Let’s use this place in its incompleteness to work it out. This runway up to the 50th anniversary of the King assassination seems like the kind of urgency we need to force relationships.”\nAs Smith surveys the fallen grandeur of the Clayborn Temple sanctuary, emotion creeps into his voice.\n“This is a place to bring together opposing forces that do not naturally come together, but do it in a place of safety,” he says. “This place is way too important for it just to be a church on Sunday. It needs to be alive and breathe with the same kind of energy it did all of its life.\n“What amazing poetry,” he continues. “Both the rich, white, and privileged and the struggling, black, and disadvantaged abandoned the place. Now to come back and be reactivated, redeemed ... it’s sacred. I really feel something exciting in Memphis these days. I feel proud of our city. We could really do something important from here. We could be a model nationally.”\nMemphis magazine, June 2017 Editor's Picks\nChris McCoy is a freelance writer, filmmaker, and musician. He is currently the Film/TV Editor for the Memphis Flyer.\nRead more by Chris McCoy","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line118755"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6458362936973572,"wiki_prob":0.6458362936973572,"text":"Hyundai Motor to Partner with Algeria’s Global Group for Expansion of Worldwide Commercial Vehicle Business\n• New joint venture to boost Hyundai Motor’s production of commercial vehicles in Algeria from 2020\n• Partnership to further cement Hyundai’s commercial vehicle dominance in Algeria\n• Hyundai to build momentum for economic and industrial cooperation between Korea and Algeria\nSEOUL, December 17, 2018 — Hyundai Motor Company and Global Group of Algeria today signed an agreement to jointly produce Hyundai’s commercial vehicles in Algeria as Hyundai continues to expand its foothold in commercial vehicle businesses around the world.\nUnder the agreement, Hyundai and Global Group will establish a new plant in the city of Batna. Algeria to produce its major commercial vehicle models, including the Xcient, Mighty, Solati and County.\nThe new plant is expected to assemble the aforementioned models from 2020 with an initial annual capacity of about 6,500 units. Hyundai will also strengthen its sales and customer services networks through the joint venture.\nThe signing ceremony was held today in Algiers, Algeria’s capital, with attendees including Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, and South Korea's Prime Minister Nak-yon Lee, as the two nations agreed to strengthen economic and industrial cooperation.\n“The joint venture will help Hyundai Motor to better serve Algerian customers with products and services that are specifically developed to meet their needs,” Don Ho Choi, Director and Head of Commercial Vehicle Export Division at Hyundai Motor said. “Through this partnership, Hyundai will build a momentum for further economic and industrial cooperation between Korea and Algeria”\nHyundai has been in collaboration with Global Group since 2016, which has been a crucial factor in expanding its presence in the Algerian commercial vehicle market in a very short period of time. Hyundai has been the top-selling commercial vehicle brand in the country since 2017 and expects to blossom to a total of about 6,000 units this year, claiming nearly half the market.\nThe commercial vehicle market in Algeria has grown rapidly in recent years with the country’s firm economic growth based on stable exports of oil and natural gas. Various developments and construction projects have also helped bolster demands for commercial vehicles.\nMarket experts forecast annual demand for commercial vehicles in Algeria to grow to as much as 22,000 units by 2025, nearly doubling from the 12,000 units produced this year. Last year’s industry demand was approximately 8,000 units and Hyundai accounted for about 46 percent of the market with sales amounting to approximately 3,700 units.\n-Ends -\n(from left) Don Ho Choi, Director and Head of Commercial Vehicle Export Division at Hyundai Motor Company / Hacene Arbaoui, Chairman of Global Group\nAbout Hyundai Motor Company\nEstablished in 1967, Hyundai Motor Company is committed to becoming a lifetime partner in automobiles and beyond with its range of world-class vehicles and mobility services offered available in more than 200 countries. Employing more than 110,000 employees worldwide, Hyundai sold more than 4.5 million vehicles globally. Hyundai Motor continues to enhance its product line-up with vehicles that are helping to build solutions for a more sustainable future, such as NEXO – the world’s first dedicated hydrogen-powered SUV.\nMore information about Hyundai Motor Company and its products can be found at: http://worldwide.hyundai.com or http://globalpr.hyundai.com\nDisclaimer: Hyundai Motor Company believes the information contained herein to be accurate at the time of release. However, the company may upload new or updated information if required and assumes that it is not liable for the accuracy of any information interpreted and used by the reader.\nJin Cha\nGlobal PR Team / Hyundai Motor\nsjcar@hyundai.com\n181217 HMC to Partner with Algeria's Global Group.docxDownload\nHyundai Motor Announces ‘Explore the Possibilities’ Campaign Featuring Hyundai Motorstudio\nPioneering Hyundai child safety innovation recognised with SAFETYBEST 2018 award","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line550406"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8584845662117004,"wiki_prob":0.8584845662117004,"text":"Whence “Arrival of the Fittest”?\nThe phrase “arrival of the fittest” is seen and heard from time to time, often contraposed with the phrase “survival of the fittest” (due to Herbert Spencer, but adopted by Darwin in the fifth and sixth editions of the Origin). Typically it is used in making the claim that natural selection cannot by itself account for evolution because selection must have variation upon which to act. Thus natural selection (it is claimed) explains the survival but not the arrival of the fittest. The rhyme between “arrival” and “survival” is catchy, and it’s not surprising that Google Scholar lists almost six hundred articles containing the phrase “arrival of the fittest,” with eighteen articles containing it in their title. There are also at least three books with the phrase in their title, of which the most recent is Arrival of the Fittest: Solving Evolution’s Greatest Puzzle (2014), by Andreas Wagner.\nIn the text of his book, after inventorying a vast range of variation in the ways in which living things have adapted, Wagner writes, “Selection did not—cannot—create all this variation. A few decades after Darwin, Hugo de Vries expressed it best when he said that ‘natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest’ (emphasis added). And if we do not know what explains its arrival, then we do not understand the very origins of life’s diversity.” De Vries (1848–1935) was a Dutch botanist, a pioneer of genetics, and (along with Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak) one of the rediscoverers of Mendel’s work. Wagner is quoting the conclusion of de Vries’s Species and Varieties: Their Origin by Mutation, based on lectures that he delivered in 1904 at the University of California, Berkeley.\nThe story isn’t quite so simple, though, as Wagner acknowledges in a footnote: “de Vries does not claim to be the original of this statement, but attributes it to Arthur Harris without further reference.” Well, not quite: de Vries precedes the statement with, “Or, to put it in a term chosen lately by Mr. Arthur Harris in a friendly criticism of my views,” which at least hints at the source. Wagner was evidently able to find it, as was I, in a review by J. Arthur Harris, Ph.D.—so not Mr. but Dr. Harris, if we’re going to be picky!—of de Vries’s Die Mutationstheorie: Versuche und Beobachtungen über die Entstehung von Arten im Pflanzenreich (The Mutation Theory: Experiments and Observations on the Origin of Species in the Vegetable Kingdom, 1901–1903), published in the April 1904 issue of The Open Court.\nJames Arthur Harris (1880­–1930) was a botanist who worked at the Carnegie Institution and the University of Minnesota; his colleagues published a volume in his memory (J. Arthur Harris: Botanist and Biometrician) in 1936, although he may be remembered less fondly by those on a diet—Harris coauthored A Biometric Study of Basal Metabolism in Man (1919), which provided equations to estimate daily kilocalorie requirements. But it’s not necessary to dwell further on Harris, because—as Wagner notes—in his review of de Vries’s book, Harris “declares it a quote but does not provide the source.” Actually, Harris didn’t quite go so far as to declare it a verbatim quote. He wrote, “I think I have the quotation not far from correctly stated: ‘Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest.’”\nHarris wasn’t far off. Whether he knew it or not, he was quoting from Jacob Gould Schurman (1854–1942). Born in Canada, Schurman earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of London and his D.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh, after which he taught at Acadia College, Dalhousie College, and Cornell University, where he was a professor of Christian ethics and moral philosophy. He served as Cornell’s president from 1892 to 1920; the university remarks, “Schurman’s administration also saw the transformation of the American university from a teaching institution to a research establishment in which teaching is done.” After retiring from Cornell, he served as the United States minister to China and then ambassador to Germany. His books included The Ethical Import of Darwinism (1887), Belief in God: Its Origin, Nature, and Basis (1890), and Agnosticism and Religion (1896).\nThe object of The Ethical Import of Darwinism, Schurman wrote, “is to distinguish between science and speculation in the application of Darwinism to morals.” In so doing, of course, it was necessary for Schurman to sketch his understanding of evolution and of Darwinism (sensu the primacy of natural selection in evolution). A few pages after doing so, he wrote, “The survival of the fittest, I repeat, does not explain the arrival of the fittest.” He wasn’t literally repeating himself; that’s the first instance of the slogan in the book. But he articulated the same thought in the previous paragraph: “natural selection, or survival of the fittest, can accomplish nothing until it is supplied with material for ‘selection,’ until there has appeared upon the field an antecedent ‘fittest’—a fittest organ, function, habit, instinct, constitution, or entire organism.”\nSchurman liked the phrase enough to repeat it almost verbatim in Agnosticism and Religion: “But pray observe,” he entreated his reader, “that the survival of the fittest does not account for the arrival of the fittest” (emphasis in original). Both versions—the earlier version with “explain” and the later version with “account for”—appear, with due credit to Schurman, in various theological writings around the turn of the nineteenth century, including in volume 2 of A. H. Strong’s influential Systematic Theology (revised edition, 1907), but by the time of the First World War his connection with the phrase seems to have been largely forgotten. Interestingly, though, a short story published in Scribner’s in 1909 features a biologist named Galen Dredge and his book The Arrival of the Fittest. Was it a coincidence, or was Schurman being read by Edith Wharton?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line726375"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7366980314254761,"wiki_prob":0.7366980314254761,"text":"What Did the Southerners Do After the Election of 1860?\nBy John Peterson\n••• Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images\nA Democratic party split over the expansion of slavery helped Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) win the election of 1860. To southerners, his election threatened to abolish slavery, and South Carolina seceded from the Union soon after the election. In the following weeks, six more states seceded, and the Confederate States of America was born with Jefferson Davis as president. The attempt by Lincoln to resupply the garrison at Fort Sumter led to the start of the Civil War in April 1861.\nDemocratic Schism\nIn the 1850s, the idea of popular sovereignty, or letting new states vote on allowing slavery, kept the fragile Democratic party intact. Southern Democrats, however, began to distance themselves from popular sovereignty after they were unable to make Kansas a slave state. The issue of expansion of slavery into new territories in the American West led to a regional schism within the Democratic party, and the party broke into North, South and West factions. The power of the party resided in the South, and without their contingent in a unified party, Lincoln won the 1860 election with only 40 percent of the popular vote.\nSouth Carolina Secedes\nSoutherners viewed the rise of the Republican party as an unacceptable threat to the institution of slavery, and South Carolina called for a secession convention just a few weeks after the 1860 election. Radical South Carolinians led the citizens of their state to believe that slavery would eventually be abolished under a Republican president. The convention met Dec. 17, and South Carolina voted unanimously to secede from the Union on Dec. 20, 1860. This put the federal garrison guarding the important port at Charleston in peril, and the Civil War would begin at Fort Sumter a few months later.\nThe Confederacy\nSoon after the secession of South Carolina, six more states followed suit: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. On Feb. 4, 1861, these states formally aligned and created the Confederate States of America with its first capital in Montgomery, Ala. Upon taking office in March 1861, Lincoln attempted to ease southern concerns and bring the Confederacy back into the Union by agreeing to allow slavery where it currently existed. However, he would not budge on the issue of popular sovereignty into new territories, and the Confederacy refused to rejoin the Union.\nFort Sumter was in a perilous location, guarding the port at Charleston, S.C. Because it was located offshore, it was able to resist early efforts by the Confederacy to take the fort by simply refusing to evacuate. However, it soon faced supply problems and an overwhelming Confederate force onshore. By April 1861, war seemed inevitable, and Fort Sumter had become the focus for the onset of war. When Lincoln authorized an attempt to resupply the besieged federal force within the fort, he gave the Confederacy the excuse needed to fire the first shots of the war on April 12. Soon after, four more states joined the Confederacy: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.\nThe Civil War in Art: The Election of 1860 and Secession\nSmithsonian.com: Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins (page 2)\nTeaching American History in South Carolina Project: \"An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union Between the State of South Carolina and Other States\"\nThe Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College: Election of 1860\nYale Law School the Avalon Project: Confederate States of America -- Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union\nJohn Peterson published his first article in 1992. Having written extensively on North American archaeology and material culture, he has contributed to various archaeological journals and publications. Peterson has a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern New Mexico University and a Master of Arts from the University of Nebraska, both in anthropology, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in history from Columbia College.\nTom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line418975"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6990341544151306,"wiki_prob":0.3009658455848694,"text":"What Would a Stoic Do? Response to Jean-Paul Sartre\nIn 1946 Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre gave a lecture entitled “Existentialism is a Humanism,” in which he presented an argument that neither Christian ethics nor Kantian deontology are very helpful with actual, real-life ethical dilemmas. He sketched one such dilemma for his audience, about a young man who has to decide whether to join the anti-Nazi resistance or stay at home with his frail mother, concluding that the answer to ethical questions always depends on the details of every particular case, and that therefore we need to go the Existentialist route and “trust in our instincts.” The question I wish to explore here is that of what a Stoic would do in the scenario imagined by Sartre.\nHere is an excerpt from the essay to give you the full picture Sartre is presenting, as well as his reasoning for why Existentialism is the answer:\n“As an example by which you may the better understand this state of abandonment, I will refer to the case of a pupil of mine, who sought me out in the following circumstances. His father was quarrelling with his mother and was also inclined to be a “collaborator”; his elder brother had been killed in the German offensive of 1940 and this young man, with a sentiment somewhat primitive but generous, burned to avenge him. His mother was living alone with him, deeply afflicted by the semi-treason of his father and by the death of her eldest son, and her one consolation was in this young man. But he, at this moment, had the choice between going to England to join the Free French Forces or of staying near his mother and helping her to live. He fully realised that this woman lived only for him and that his disappearance – or perhaps his death – would plunge her into despair. He also realised that, concretely and in fact, every action he performed on his mother’s behalf would be sure of effect in the sense of aiding her to live, whereas anything he did in order to go and fight would be an ambiguous action which might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose. For instance, to set out for England he would have to wait indefinitely in a Spanish camp on the way through Spain; or, on arriving in England or in Algiers he might be put into an office to fill up forms. Consequently, he found himself confronted by two very different modes of action; the one concrete, immediate, but directed towards only one individual; and the other an action addressed to an end infinitely greater, a national collectivity, but for that very reason ambiguous – and it might be frustrated on the way. At the same time, he was hesitating between two kinds of morality; on the one side the morality of sympathy, of personal devotion and, on the other side, a morality of wider scope but of more debatable validity. He had to choose between those two. What could help him to choose? Could the Christian doctrine? No. Christian doctrine says: Act with charity, love your neighbour, deny yourself for others, choose the way which is hardest, and so forth. But which is the harder road? To whom does one owe the more brotherly love, the patriot or the mother? Which is the more useful aim, the general one of fighting in and for the whole community, or the precise aim of helping one particular person to live? Who can give an answer to that a priori? No one. Nor is it given in any ethical scripture. The Kantian ethic says, Never regard another as a means, but always as an end. Very well; if I remain with my mother, I shall be regarding her as the end and not as a means: but by the same token I am in danger of treating as means those who are fighting on my behalf; and the converse is also true, that if I go to the aid of the combatants I shall be treating them as the end at the risk of treating my mother as a means. If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts.”\nNow, I actually think that Stoicism is a better model for Secular Humanists (as well as for many religious people, actually) than Existentialism, a topic I explore in this video, and that I have recently discussed with my friend Skye Cleary (who defended the Existentialist position, video to be published soon).\nBefore getting to Stoicism, though, let me complete Sartre’s analysis and add that yet a third major approach to ethics isn’t going to be very useful here either: utilitarianism. While it would seem obvious that from a utilitarian perspective the young man ought to leave his mother and help the greater cause, because of the high degree of uncertainty about what he will actually be able to do, and how effective he will be, it may turn out that overall happiness will be increased (and pain reduced) if he stays with his mother. There just is no way to tell. (Other utilitarian scenarios, in different situations, are much more clear, so this in itself isn’t a critique of the whole utilitarian approach.)\nBack to Stoicism. To begin with, since Stoicism is a type of virtue ethics, it too does not provide universal answers, but needs to weigh the details of individual situations. While many consider this a weakness of virtue ethics when compared to “view from nowhere” systems such as Kantian deontology and Mill-style utilitarianism, I think it is a strength and agree with Sartre that ethics is often, if not nearly always, situational.\nThe second thing to notice is that Stoics recognize that we all play multiple ethical roles during our lives, in this specific case that of a dutiful son and of a concerned citizen. As Epictetus says:\n“Reflect on the other social roles you play. If you are a council member, consider what a council member should do. If you are young, what does being young mean, if you are old, what does age imply, if you are a father, what does fatherhood entail? Each of our titles, when reflected upon, suggests the acts appropriate to it.” (Discourses II, 10.10)\nBut as Larry Becker also points out in his A New Stoicism, we need to arrive at decisions guiding our actions “all things considered,” i.e., taking into account that these different roles will often pull us into different directions, and that we need to chart the best possible course through many competing demands. What shall our guiding light be? Virtue, of course, the very point of a Stoic existence. As Seneca nicely puts it:\n“The reward for all the virtues lies in the virtues themselves. For they are not practised with a view to recompense; the wages of a good deed is to have done it.” (Letters to Lucilius, LXXXI. On Benefits, 19)\nNow, it seems to me that in the scenario posed by Sartre the greater virtue lies in defending liberty from tyranny, even at the cost of causing distress to one’s own mother. I cannot imagine a Cato, for instance, setting aside plans of taking on Julius Caesar on the ground that Cato’s mother will inevitably suffer as a result of the possibility of her son’s death. Or consider whether Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor, could have possibly decided not to go on the Roman frontier to fight the Marcomanni on account of the very real anguish that his decision would cause to his family and friends.\n(There is a caveat here, going back to Sartre’s story: it isn’t exactly clear what the young man’s motivation in joining the Resistance would be. If it is vengeance, as it is stated at one point, then that’s hardly a positive reason, and not likely one that a Stoic would defend; if, instead, he is moved by a sense of justice, then the Stoic account has given here holds true. Virtue ethics puts a premium on the character and intentions of the agent, more than on his specific actions.)\nThis example also shows, I think, where Stoicism most sharply differs from one of its main ancient rivals, Epicureanism. Epicurus very clearly advised his followers to stay away from social and political action and to focus instead on family and friendships, because doing the former will decrease their happiness and especially augment their pain.\nContrast, for instance, Marcus:\n“Human beings exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.” (Meditations, VIII.59)\nWith Epicurus (admittedly, though, cited by Epictetus, Discourses II.20.6):\n“Don’t be deceived, men, or misled or mistaken: there is no natural fellowship of rational beings with each other. Believe me: those who say otherwise are deceiving you and reasoning falsely.”\nThe important thing to realize is that a Stoic would join the Resistance not because of some sort of utilitarian calculus of costs and benefits — since there Sartre is right that any such calculus is next to impossible. Nor is the Kantian “ends not just means” imperative going to be useful here, for precisely the reasons Sartre outlines. The Stoic would, painfully, leave his mother and fight for a broader cause because it is the virtuous thing to do, regardless of outcome.\nIt is virtuous because it exercises the virtue of justice, which guides Epictetus’ discipline of action, and because the Stoics were cosmopolitan, caring for all of humankind.\nIt is to be done regardless of outcome because the outcome is not up to us, only our judgments and actions are, the crucial distinction at the root of Epictetus’ famous dichotomy of control.\nBut the Stoic decision wouldn’t be reached via Sartre’s rather nebulous (and likely unreliable) “instinct,” but rather by reason, the very thing that according to the Stoics distinguishes us from every other species on the planet:\n“Bring the mind to bear upon your problems.” (Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi X.4)\nThis entry was posted in Other philosophies, What Would a Stoic Do? on April 4, 2017 by Massimo.\n← Stoic advice: my parents are elderly and losing their autonomy Seneca to Nero: On Clemency →\n23 thoughts on “What Would a Stoic Do? Response to Jean-Paul Sartre”\nMark Wallace April 4, 2017 at 8:53 am\nThe convenience of that particular example for your analysis is also its trouble: everyone agrees that Nazis are evil, so that war was more clear cut than many other conflicts, where the liberty v. tyranny element is not so clear cut and choosing virtue is complicated somewhat.\nMassimo Post author April 4, 2017 at 8:59 am\nNot sure how the specific example (which I didn’t choose, it was Sartre’s) makes it particularly easy for me. Sartre himself didn’t think that was an easy decision to make. In cases were the tyranny vs liberty contrast is less clear one would need even more practical wisdom to tell the difference, but the basic idea stands.\nPaul Braterman April 4, 2017 at 9:30 am\nIf compassion cannot be derived from the Stoic virtues, that strikes me as a major weakness of Stoicism. If it can, then we have here a conflict between two different ways of manifesting virtue.\nMassimo Post author April 4, 2017 at 10:26 am\nThe Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis is their version of compassion. The Stoics were clear in saying that we should do our best to understand other people’s predicament and not be quick to judge.\nI’m not sure what conflict you refer to. There are four virtues in Stoicism, which are often considered four facets of the same underlying one, wisdom.\nPaul Braterman April 4, 2017 at 11:54 am\nThe conflict is the one facing the young man in the example. His concern for his mother is oikeiosis, the more so perhaps if we remember that oikos means home (yes, I know that such linguistic arguments are weak, but the are still suggestive). Yet he will be exercising other aspects of virtue if he goes off to fight. And he must chose which to practice. I cannot think of any argument that might help him.\nMassimo Post author April 4, 2017 at 1:54 pm\nI gave an argument in the post. Oikeiosis means home, but in the cosmopolitan sense, for the Stoics. The priority is clearly for social over family duty, as far as the Stoics are concerned. As I said, this is one of the things that distinguishes them from the Epicureans, for instance.\nPaul Braterman April 4, 2017 at 3:05 pm\nThanks. This confirms my own feeling that I am not a Stoic, though I hope I can learn from Stoics\nBrxi (@Brxi) April 4, 2017 at 3:51 pm\nMassimo,\nI am either missing your point or I really cannot agree with you on this. Do you want to say that priority is for social over family duty, no matter what? Is your role as son always less important than role as citizen who can try to defend the country, even in the case that your ‘action might vanish like water into sand and serve no purpose’? This would mean that in a situation of war everybody should just leave their families and take up arms, come what may – that certainly doesn’t sound right, for Stoics or anyone else. You should not compare with Cato or Marcus Aurelius here, who had a very important role as commanders and therefore a public duty that was probably more important (i.e. virtuous) then their family duty. But the guy in the Sartre story is just a young man…\nbayonico April 4, 2017 at 4:47 pm\nThe caveat you expose is quite interesting. If the motivation leading to the young’s man will to join the resistance is vengeance, then the Stoic thing to do would be to exert the virtue of temperance and stay taking care of his mother? Can we then say that the Stoic way to take decisions is first to do an introspection about her motivations, and then decide according to the virtues and the dichotomy of control?\nBrxi,\nSorry, I probably wasn’t clear. No, I did not mean to say that social duties always override duties to family and friends. Virtue ethics is situational, so the answer is always going to be “it depends.”\nBut in the specific scenario brought up by Sartre, it seems to me that a mother’s distress is just not enough of a reason (say, as opposed to a clear and distinct danger to her life) for her son to forgo his duties to society.\nTrue, he doesn’t know how effective he will be, but that’s true in general, and that sort of consideration could become too easy an excuse not to get involved.\nAs for Cato and Marcus, those are role models, and even though their specific situation doesn’t apply to most of us, the general principle, I think, does. Indeed, the common excuse for morally lazy people in Republican Rome was “I’m not a Cato,” meaning that not everyone has Cato’s moral rectitude. But is that a reason not to try?\nBayonico,\nI don’t think a Stoic would look at his motivations first, but his motivations would enter into his decision. It’s sort of a combination between utilitarianism (where the motivations don’t count) and deontology (where their are first and foremost).\nviennahavana April 4, 2017 at 7:54 pm\nMassimo, I’m interested in the “social duties override duties to family and friends” — what if the war is an unjust war (ie. Vietnam)? In that case would the duty of a Stoic be to go underground and resist the war effort? Or what if, in reverse, the father had been a resistance fighter and the son wanted to support the State (in this case Nazi party) because he believed it was his social duty to “fight for a broader cause”? My point is this: what seems right (the virtuous, wise choice) might be unclear. It’s often not possible to know the real truth about why people fight wars: for land, money, trade routes, natural resources, etc. Wars are often morally complex situations, with less than clear political and social motives. In that case, if the son doubted what the just social action in supporting/resisting a war effort might be, couldn’t he be making the clearest virtuous choice by staying home to care for family?\nVienna,\nAs I stated before, I’m not arguing that social duties always override duties to friends and family. Virtue ethics is situational. In the case of fighting the Nazi vs the distress to the mother I think the social side outweighs the personal. As I mentioned in a previous comment, had the mother been in direct danger to her life, probably not.\nRight, the Vietnam War was not a just war (and pretty clearly so), and there are in fact precedents of Stoics taking up arms against their country (Cato).\nThe Stoic doesn’t have ready made solutions to these issues, and a good thing it is. As Becker says, decisions need to be made “all things considered,” and the guide to those decisions is our prudence, or practical wisdom.\nBrxi (@Brxi) April 5, 2017 at 12:03 am\nOK, I see now what you wanted to say.\nIt is just that I thought that the point of what Sartre was saying in that excerpt was that there will always be some situations where two or more of our roles ask for different actions to be made and neither clearly outweighs the other (e.g. what if the boy knew the mother would most probably die if he left). Considering the uncertainty of the outcomes of our actions, in these situations “nothing remains but to trust in our instincts.” Surely a Stoic will face these hard choices too. But a Stoic will probably have a better way of accepting the consequences of her choice, whether it turns up to be good or bad.\nsynred April 5, 2017 at 12:41 am\nI’d stike with ma. I wouldn’t over think it.\nI think there is more than that to it. Sartre basically says we should go with our gut feelings. Stoicism isn’t about gut feelings, of course, but about reason, exercising our “ruling faculty.” And it does provide a framework for establishing priorities. So it offers tools to the thinking person for reasoning her way through this sort of difficult situations to arrive at the best decision, all things considered.\nnonscholaesedvitaedoscimus April 5, 2017 at 9:58 am\nHello Massimo,\nAlong the same lines as Paul, I don’t think the choice of the social over the family one is as obvious as you make it seem. For one, it seems like a false dichotomy. My understanding Oikeoisis is that is it the collapsing of distinctions between you and successively larger concentric circle of social relations (family, neighbors, fellow citizens, etc). So if this rough definition is correct, family members are on equal standing with anyone else in terms of my necessity to do justice. and further, i don’t see justice as a utilitarian virtue in the sense that the more people I could do justice to, the better. In this sense, the young man could choose to do justice by his mother (who is obviously psychologically unstable and in need of family support, her son being the only member left) or by the country. It would be the right thing to do to take care of your mother that has taken care of you your whole life and lost everything, and it would also be right to fight against a cause you know to be wrong.\nnonscholaesedvitaedoscimus,\nThat’s a reasonable interpretation, but I don’t think it fits quite as well with overall Stoic philosophy.\nFirst, again, I never said that the social always overrides family duties.\nSecond, right, oikeiosis means “contracting” the circles of concern, meaning that — ideally — the rest of humanity ought to be as important to you as your mother.\nThis sounds like a utilitarian calculus, but if we are talking about the freedom and lives of many vs the distress of one, then the choice seems clear to me, on virtue ethical grounds.\nA common misconception is that virtue ethics is not about consequences. Of course it is, but not in the simplistic fashion a utilitarian would use.\nMore broadly, again, the young man has to make a decision between competing demands, all things considered. In this specific case (but not necessarily others) we have the Nazi threat on one side and his mother’s distress on the other. I think a rational decision would weigh the former more than the latter.\nDavid White April 5, 2017 at 10:30 am\nI read a critique of Socrates (perhaps here somewhere) which criticised him for not taking the escape route he was offered although his family dearly wanted him to do so. According to the critique, he put his pride before his family. Also the familiar Stoics don’t have a great history of family involvement or the judgement of other people in general – Seneca and Nero; Marcus and his son etc. Even Musonius and his insistence on ‘manly beards’ etc discords with me (I have a stubbly beard!)\nResponsibility, particularly for those whose existence I am responsible for, comes higher up the indifference scale (I hate ‘indifference’) than an idealistic notion – at any rate for me. Stoicism is about ‘setting ones own house in order’ first.\nSo, whilst I do not disagree with your analysis, it is a situation which I find challenging.\nYou are right, it is a challenging problem.\nBut I find that critique of Socrates entirely missing the point, which is well spelled out by Plato. Socrates explicitly explains that he has to abide by the laws, even if that particular instance of their application is unjust, because he has benefited from them his entire life.\nIndeed, it is precisely thinking of that example that I wager the Stoics would tend to give precedence to social duties over family ones. Not exclusively, and always depending on circumstances, of course.\nIndeed, as I said in the OP, this is one of the things that separates us from the Epicureans, who would have no doubt whatsoever about staying with the mother.\nI don’t think it is fair of accusing Seneca of bad judgment concerning Nero. He arguably tried to manage an impossible situation. I have an essay concerning this coming out tomorrow.\nAs for Marcus, there too the story is more complicated, as argued by Don Robertson in a recent discussion thread at the Facebook Stoic group.\nI’m with you on Musonius and beards, though!\nShane Sullivan April 5, 2017 at 11:52 am\nI see there’s already a lively discussion going on here, but I’d like to add a little more food for thought: There was plenty of very important resistance work to be done in France during World War II, so it may not have been as simple and binary as “stay home and do nothing” or “move to North Africa to be an ineffectual desk jockey”. On the other hand, I would consider leaving home a much more viable option if there was someone nearby who I knew and trusted to at least keep an eye on my mother.\nSome of this would have depended on circumstance, such as where he lived in France, whether he knew the right people, and when specifically this story took place (all we know for sure is that it took place after the German offensive of 1940), but since all we have to go by is a single and rather unwieldy paragraph, I’m going to go ahead and quote Isaac Asimov: Insufficient Data for Meaningful Answer.\nWalter Braun April 5, 2017 at 12:14 pm\nOh my, this time you got it all wrong, Massimo.\nNo Confucian or Taoists would ever think or argue this way. It is natural to protect one’s family, while it is rather unnatural to think in abstract terms like ‘nation’. Your stance is as abstract as the extremes of Christendom or Kant or these irrational neo-utilitarians (who seem to hate human nature). Perhaps your left-leaning attitude misled you here. Conservatives would be much more sensible by preferring the near to the far, the known to the unknown, the calculable to the incalculable.\nThe strength of virtue ethics is that it deals with concrete situations, not abstracts – you do not owe allegiance to a ‘battle field’.\nThe examples you bring are meagre and misleading: What Cato’s or Aurelius’ duties might be have nothing whatsoever to do with the duties of a common man to his mother.\nThe strength of a real Stoic is that they are concrete in their actions and attitude, not otherworldly. Your conclusion – “The Stoic would, painfully, leave his mother and fight for a broader cause because it is the virtuous thing to do, regardless of outcome” – completely hangs in the air because it would only be true under very specific circumstances (e.g. it is a soldier’s duty to fight, not a civilian’s!).\nIt is most definitely the virtuous thing to support the next of kin instead of nebulous actions (or hot-headed and pointless suicide missions of amateurs). As both Confucius and the Stoics maintained: Social obligations grow in concentric circles, and the starting point is always the natural love one has for the own family; an airy-fairly ‘love’ for the whole humankind comes last (at least in sane minds)…\nWell, obviously, I disagree. What a Confucian or Taoist would do is, of course, entirely irrelevant. This is about Stoicism.\nThe Stoics most definitely incorporated a lot of “abstract” concepts into their philosophy, for instance the idea of cosmopolitanism itself.\nMy “left leaning attitude” would arguably be at odds with my conclusion here, since leftists tend to be skeptical of wars. And it is entirely not the case that conservatives would take the “much more sensible” position to stay at home, since many of the conservatives I know (like the last three conservative administrations in the US) are war mongering.\nYou simply declare that my examples of Cato and Marcus are irrelevant, but it isn’t clear why. Marcus very explicitly says that our duty is to improve the human condition, not just our family’s.\nAnd of course you entirely ignore my argument that the young man would base his decision on the virtue of justice.\nThe Stoics did not think of social obligations as growing circles, but as contracting ones. The difference is relevant: in the metaphor of growing circles family is first, humanity is last. But if you are attempting to contract the circles you are trying to remind yourself that strangers are just as worthy of attention and protection as your family is.\npascojc April 10, 2017 at 11:54 am\njust to note that sartre never hashed out his ethics well – that took simone de beauvoir in ‘ethics of ambiguity’. maximizing freedom for each and every consciousness becomes the north star for choosing one’s projects. she does not say this is easy, as the title suggests.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line582046"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8589773774147034,"wiki_prob":0.8589773774147034,"text":"Ace Hood Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nAce Hood is a very respectable American rapper who originates from Florida and is best known for his hit songs titled “Bugatti” and “Hustle Hard”.\nHe is also known by his other stage name Lil’ Ace.\nHe was born as Antoine McColsier on May 11, 1988, in a town named Port St. Lucie, settled in Florida, in the United States.\nHe has spent all of his childhood in Florida and was a student at Deerfield Beach High School, which is a public high school in Florida.\nHe had big hopes of becoming a major football player but it was in his 10th grade that he got injured heavily and it became obvious to him that he could not become a good player as he intended.\nHe has also realized that he was never going to succeed in becoming a professional player due to that injury because he would be injured more often and severe.\nThat is when he turned to a career in rapping and started working on it, performing in the clubs and on various events.\nHe started collaborating with a local hip hop group named “Dollaz & Dealz” which resulted in they’re collaborative single named “M.O.E.” which was released in 2006.\nHe successfully attended various mic events and showed up in almost every talent show in his town and nearby.\nIn 2006, he was very lucky because he met DJ Khaled in front of a radio station and he stopped to meet him and let him know about his work.\nDJ Khaled was already a very known personality so Ace was very pleased to see that DJ Khaled took his autobiography and his demo tape to listen to and maybe call back.\nDJ Khaled demanded that Ace perform a freestyle of “I’m So Hood” in front of him (which was DJ Khaled’s song and it is one of the most popular ones) in order to see his skills.\nHe liked Ace’s work and contracted him which means that he signed him to his label. Dj Khaled recognized his talent and signed him to his own record label named We The Best Music Group.\nAce Hood became one of the rappers which found their place at Freshmen ’09 list made by a popular hip hop oriented magazine called XXL Magazine.\nIn 2008, he has released his 1st album named “Gutta” which was featured by many known artists such as Rick Ross and T-Pain.\nAce Hood eventually released two mixtapes and they were titled “Ace Won’t Fold” and “All Bets on Ace”.\nHe often guests appeared on DJ Khaled’s songs because of he eas his mentor at first. “Out Here Grindin” was one of the most notable songs on which he appeared.\nAce Hood and DJ Khaled guest appeared on the WUAG Greenshore radio in September 2008 in order to promote his new album “Gutta”. “Gutta” started off really good, coming to no. 6 on the Billboard 200 list.\nHis second album named “Ruthless” came in June 2009 and was released by Def Jam. The guests on this album were Rick Ross, T-Pain, Akon, Birdman any more. The album went to No. 23 on the Billboard 200 chart.\nIn 2011, Ace released his 3rd album named “Blood, Sweat & Tears” and the leading single from the album was titled “Hustle Hard”.\nThis single came to No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and was produced by Lex Luger. One of his other hit singles was “Body 2 Body” with Chris Brown and it entered the Hot 100 on the 65th place.\nAfter the success of this album, he decided to go on a tour and it was named “Hustle Hard Tour”.\nHe guests appeared on DJ Khaled’s new album “We the Best Forever” on three songs.\nIn 2012, Hood got involved in a collaboration with Bow Wow, for his single “We Going Hard”.\nBow Wow was an artist signed to Cash Money Records and soon Hood and We The Best Music Group became a part of Cash Money Records.\nHe made a lot of guest appearances on other tracks from Jadakiss, The Game and Talib Kweli.\nIn 2013 he has released his new mixtape titled “Starvation 2”. Meek Mill and French Montana were featured in this tape.\nIn 2013 Ace releases a lead song for his new album “Trials & Tribulations” titled “Bugatti”. This single was features by Future and Rick Ross. He also released a music video for the same song because the song became a huge hit.\nIt went to No. 3 on the Hot 10p list. This single is still his biggest hit. The remix of this song was released in May 2013 and was featured by DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Wiz Khalifa, 2 Chainz and more.\nHis second single from the album was named “We Outchea” and was released in June. He was very pleased that he made it in collaboration with Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne is also signed to Cash Money label.\nIn 2014 he has released his new mixtape named “Starvation 3” which was produced by Cool & Dre and The Renegades. He also released “Body Bag 3” in August the same year. He was hired by Reebok to act in their commercials.\nHis single “Top of the World” appeared in a video game titled “NBA 2K10”.\nIn 2013 he was featured in a reality TV show called “Mobbed” but he was also banned from having a concert at the Syracuse University due to his bad language.\nThe University considers that he promotes violence in his music, more than other hip hop artists, and they don’t want to give space for that kind of music.\nIn the summer of 2016, he began distancing himself from his mentor, DJ Khaled, stating that he wants to go to another direction with the music.\nHe announced on Twitter his soon separation but didn’t cause much disturbance at DJ Khaled who is known to be a very calm character.\nHe also rose controversy after he tweeted that he was paid $250,000 to be featured on the single made by a Ghanaian rapper named Sarkodie.\nSarkodie first claimed that he was reached out from Ace Hood’s management that Ace wanted to make collaboration so he came to the States to shoot the video for his single “New Guy”.\nAfter finishing the project and after Ace was featured on this song Ace announced that he never reached out for Sarkodie and that it was the other way around: that he was paid to be on the single.\nAce Hood has made his own brand called Hood Nation and is today more involved in working with associations which promote black people.\nHe is highly involved in the “Black Lives Matter” movement.\nIn 2018 he has released his new project “Trust the Process II: Undefeated”.\nHe was in a long relationship with Shanice Tyria Sarratt and had two daughters with her.\nThey were twins named Lyric and Sailor Blu and were born in May 2011 but Lyric died very soon after she was born because of health complications she sustained. He also has a son Antoine Jr., born in 2014.\nHe loves his kids very much and censors his words in front of them. He also shapes the dates of his concerts and tours in such a way that they won’t feel his absence too much or for a longer period of time.\nHe was nominated for BET Hip Hop Awards three times (two times for “Hustle Hard” and once for “Bugatti”) but the didn’t win any.\nHe split with his girlfriend Shanice in 2015 in an ugly manner. She accused him of cheating and he kicked her out of his home.\nWhen she came back to pick her things and belongings they had another fight which finished with police arrival and Shanice’s arrest.\nIn 2015 he started dating Shelah Marie, an actress.\nAs for his personal looks, he is very muscular and strong. He likes tattoos and has a lot of them on his arms.\nHe also has long dreadlocks and he wears sunglasses very often. He wears dreadlocks swept up into a high bun very often.\nHe owns a customized Gold Jeep Wrangler worth $40 000 plus customizing. The inner side of the car is completely covered inexpensive leather.\nHe has a red Range Rover and does not own a Bugatti although sings about one.\nPorsche Panamera is one of his white cars, and the second is the Porsche Camaro.\nHe is a proud owner of a very expensive $60 k Rolex watch which he almost broke in front of the camera.\nHe has an extremely expensive line of sneakers, from very expensive lines of Air Jordan’s to the most expensive Nike shoes.\nHe lives in Miramar in Florida in a big and beautiful home.\nHe is on a pescatarian diet, so he mostly eats fish but he also likes to eat chicken too. He has a healer named Audrey and is focused on changing his path.\nHe is dedicated to saving 60% of his earnings so he doesn’t spend money unnecessarily and keeps it to earn for his kid’s college.\nThat is why his music changed and it is not about flashy cars and clothes and money but about real life issues.\nNot many people know that he worked half-time as a school bus driver and that he took many jobs just to help his mum when he was young..and now he says that he appreciates the experience because it made him who he is today.\nFull name: Antoine McColsier\nDate of birth: May 11, 1988\nBirthplace: Port St. Lucien, Florida, United States\nProfession: rapper\nWeight: 85 kgs\nNet Worth: $5 million\nDane Cook Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nUday Chopra Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nBjorn Borg Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nFran Drescher Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nJennifer Connelly Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nKaynette Williams Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nPaul Wesley Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nMendeecees Harris Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nPrevious Post:Eric Dickerson Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height\nNext Post:Troy Ave Net Worth 2020, Bio, Age, Height","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line873233"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8460659384727478,"wiki_prob":0.8460659384727478,"text":"(-) 106th Congress (1999-2000) (2)\n(-) 050 - National Defense (2)\n(-) House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (2)\nH.R. 4567, Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act of 2000\nCost estimate for the bill as introduced on May 25, 2000\nH.R. 3573, Keep Our Promise to America's Military Retirees Act\nCost estimate for the bill as introduced on February 2, 2000","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line760752"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5483442544937134,"wiki_prob":0.5483442544937134,"text":"Defense Minister Ya'alon Meets With Jordan's King Abdullah II, First Official Encounter in Over a Year\nYa'alon speaks with the king of Jordan at the Munich Security Conference about Middle East developments and possibilities of advancing the peace process.\nBarak Ravid\nSend me email alerts for new articles by Barak Ravid\nJordan's King Abdullah speaks at the Munich Security Conference, February 12, 2016.Reuters\nDefense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has met Jordan’s King Abdullah II at a security conference in Munich. This was the first open meeting between the king and a senior Israeli official in over a year.\nIsrael and Jordan have cause for concern as Assad's troops make gains in Syria\nIsrael and Jordan at impasse over Temple Mount cameras\nWATCH: The King of Jordan on Trump's Muslim ban, Saudi tensions and Putin's Syria strategy\nYa’alon’s bureau stated that the two dealt with bilateral relations between Jordan and Israel, with recent developments in the Middle East and with possibilities for advancing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.\n“One cannot talk about justice in the world without solving the Palestinian question and striving for a state for them,\" said King Abdullah in his speech at the conference. \"If this isn’t resolved, the entire region will slide into a religious conflict and ISIS is exploiting this.”\nThe meeting was the first the king had with an Israeli senior official in the last 15 months. The last time was at a three-way meeting in Amman with Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in November 2014, in which attempts were made to defuse tensions surrounding the Temple Mount.\nMoshe Ya'alon","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line626763"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5329793691635132,"wiki_prob":0.4670206308364868,"text":"The Physics of CDs and DVDs\nEverywhere you look now days, you see or interact with CDs or DVDs; whether it is in the car, at work, or at home for pleasure, you deal with these modern marvels. Whatever the use, CD has become a reliable medium in which to distribute information, in a reliable way. The cost of a CD is very inexpensive, making it a popular choice by companies trying to advertise, or teach you about something. American On Line (AOL) is one example of companies who have chose this reliable source for communication. CD is the abbreviation for compact disk; DVD is the abbreviation for digital video disk or digital versatile disk. The difference between the two is the CD is audio, and the DVD is audio and visual. The objective of this paper is to help you to understand the physics surrounding the CD and DVD. The main focus of this paper is to inform the reader of all the things that take place when you watch a movie on a DVD player, starting with the CD itself. The laser reads the CD and converts it to the final product of what we see and hear.\nMost CDs are made from polycarbonate plastic. This polycarbonate is a tough material that helps to prevent scratching. Scratching of a CD causes the laser, which reads the spiral data, to jump off track, allowing the CD to skip around and to distort whatever you are watching or listening to. According to How Things Work,\nA CD is a fairly simple piece of plastic, about four one-hundredths (4/100) of an inch (1.2 mm) thick. Most of a CD consists of an injection-molded piece of clear polycarbonate plastic. During manufacturing, this plastic is impressed with microscopic bumps arranged as a single, continuous, extremely long spiral track of data. Once the clear piece of polycarbonate is formed, a thin, reflective aluminum layer is sputtered onto the disc, covering the bumps. Then a thin acrylic layer is sprayed over the aluminum to protect it. (Brian 1)\nAfter that, you have a final product called a CD.\nOften, you will hear about bumps on a CD. These bumps are what the laser reads. They are also sometimes referred to as pits. Bumps and pits are the same thing; it just depends on what side of the CD you are looking at.\n\"The Physics of CDs and DVDs.\" 123HelpMe.com. 17 Jan 2020\nEssay on Physics of the Turntable\n- Have you ever wondered how a record player works. Probably not. After all, who still listens to records. Surprisingly enough, turntables are making a come back. With the recent surge of interest in hip hop music, popular attention has been turned towards the turntable, used by DJs to provide beats, loops and scratching for virtually all of today's hip hop groups. The inner workings of the turntable may seem complex at first but after reading this paper it should become clear that, like all things, the record player works on basic principals of physics.... [tags: physics sound music]\nPhysics Of Physics : Quantum Theory Essay examples\n- Quantum theory explains the world of physics that attempts to understand the nature and behavior of matter and energy at a subatomic level (Rouse, Margaret). Its applications can be found in objects used in everyday life, such as lasers, CDs, DVDs, digital cameras, photocopiers, and more. An atom is an object containing positive and negative charged particles with more than 99.9% of its mass, produced from the protons and neutrons, packed into a small nucleus. This nucleus, located in the center of the atom, is orbited by electrons, point particles that are even smaller in size.... [tags: Quantum mechanics, Electron, Photon, Light]\nThe Physics of the Arc Essay\n- ABSTRACT Several researchers have devoted efforts on studying physics of arc and descriptive models are used to explain many arc welding related phenomena. However, due to the subject complexity, doubts still emerge about the mechanisms of some phenomena related to the arc. For instance, the description about electromagnetic interactions with the arc, which governs the arc trajectory and lead to plasma jet and arc blow formation, seems to be yet controversial. Thus, the present study aimed a better understanding of these phenomena.... [tags: Physics ]\nThe Physics of Fishing Essay\n- The Physics of Fishing The use of a boat while fishing and some of the physics applicable to boating will be included in exploring the various ways physics applies to the sport of fishing. Other topics will include the fishing rod, fishing lure, casting, and the fish itself. The boat floats on the water according to Archimedes Principle which states an immersed object is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. The force applied downwards by earth’s gravity coupled with the upward force of buoyancy allows the boat to float.... [tags: Physics ]\nEssay on The Physics of Roller Coaster\n- i: Introduction You apprehensively walk up the iron steps and onto the platform. You’re reluctant to go any further, but your friend eggs you on, saying, “It’s not that fast.” You step into the seat and pull the harness down over you. No, this isn’t the latest, greatest technological frontier. It’s a roller coaster. Since 1804 when the first wheeled roller coaster- called “Les Montagnes Russes”- was constructed in Paris, France, roller coasters have been a staple of adventure and fantasy among children and children-at-heart.... [tags: Physics]\nEssay about The Physics of Roller Coasters\n- A roller coaster is a thrill ride found in amusement and theme parks. Their history dates back to the 16th century. It all started in Russia, with long, steep wooden slides covered in ice. The idea then traveled to France. Since the warmer climate melted the ice, waxed slides were created instead, eventually adding wheels to the system. The first roller coaster in which the train was attached to the track was in France in 1817, the Russess a Belleville. The first attempt at a loop-the loop was also made in France in the 1850s.... [tags: Physics]\nApplications of Physics For Different Industries Essay example\n- INTRODUCTION Physics attempts to describe the fundamental nature of the universe and how it works, always striving for the simplest explanations common to the most diverse behaviour. For example, physics explains why rainbows have colours, what keeps a satellite in orbit, and what atoms and nuclei are made of. The goal of physics is to explain as many things as possible using as few laws as possible, revealing nature's underlying simplicity and beauty. Physics has been applied in many industrial fields, which include the air industry, construction industry, automobile industry, manufacturing industry and many others.... [tags: Physics]\nThe Physics of Car Collisions Essay\n- Basic Concepts Issac Newton was the first to state the concepts that are necessary to understanding the physics of collisions. His three laws are used again and again in all the fields of physics: Newton's 1st Law In the absence of external forces, an object at rest remains at rest and an object in motion remains in motion with a constant velocity. This law can be best observed in space, far from the gravity of a star or planet, where there is no friction or air resistance. If, in the middle of deep space, you give a rock a little push, it will continue with the direction and velocity you gave it forever.... [tags: Physics]\nThe Physics Behind Remote Sensing Essay\n- Remote Sensing is the science of acquiring, processing and interpreting images that record the interaction between the electromagnetic energy and matter (Sabins, 1997). Remote sensing offers extensive applications in almost every area of science from monitoring forest fires to geologic mapping . Although many aspects of remote sensing are complex and difficult to understand the basic theory behind remote sensing is simple physics. There are four major stages of remote sensing. The first stage is the source of energy, usually the sun, which sends energy to a target.... [tags: Physics]\nPhysics of Aristotle Essay examples\n- The great Greek thinker Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in Stagirus, a city in ancient Macedonia in northern Greece. At the age of eighteen Aristotle went to Athens to begin his studies at Plato's Academy. He stayed and studied at the Academy for nineteen years and in that time became both a teacher and an independent researcher. After Plato's death in 347 B.C. Aristotle spent twelve years traveling and living in various places around the Aegean Sea. It was during this time that Aristotle was asked by Philip of Macedon to be a private tutor to his son, Alexander.... [tags: physics aristotle]\nPhysics Dvd Player Audio Disk Spiral Injection Compact Aluminum Laser Thin\nCrew Personalities on the Mission to Mars\nInfluences and Reality\nDefining Myself through Writing\nStyle in Writing\nOn the aluminum side, they appear as pits, but they appear as bumps on the side the laser reads. All of these bumps are little pieces of data from the music or video. Data storage is different on a CD vs. a DVD. CDs require a longer track pitch than a DVD. A DVD requires about half of that of a CD. This allows for a DVD to hold more data. Not only do DVDs have shorter track pitches, they have multi-layer levels that store even more data.\nI Specification\tI CD I DVD 1600 740 Track Pitch nanometers nanometers Minimum Pit Length\n(single-layer DVD) 830 nanometers 400 nanometers Minimum Pit Length (double-layer\nDVD)\t830 nanometers\t440 nanometers\nSingle-sided, single-layer DVDs can store about seven times more data than CDs. A large part of this increase comes from the pits and tracks being smaller on DVDs. To increase the storage capacity even more, a DVD can have up to four layers, two on each side. The laser that reads the disc can actually focus on the second layer through the first layer. (Nice 1)\nThis technology allows DVDs to hold up to 8 hours of data.\nNow that we know a little bit more about how a CD is made and how much information it can hold. It is time to learn about the player. The player is the ting that does all the work. All we have to do is to throw in a CD or a DVD, and sit back and enjoy. CD and DVD players are made up of basically three main things: a drive motor, a laser, and a lens. Each part of the player has an important role. The drive motor’s job is to spin the CD. It can spin the CD anywhere from 200 to 500 RPM’s, depending on which track is being read. The laser’s job in the player is to read the bumps on a CD. The laser reads these bumps and produces what is needed to hear what is on a CD or to see what is on the DVD. Our book says a laser is an acronym for, “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (Kirkpatrick 599).” The lens is part of a tracking system that reads the spiral of data. It keeps the laser on track, so that everything is played in the order in which it is suppose to be played. Once this all comes together, the player works like this:A CD player uses a laser beam to determine the lengths of a series of ridges inside a compact disc. Infrared light from a solid-state laser is sent through several lenses, a polarizing beam splitter, and a special polarizing device called a quarter-wave plate. It's then focused through the clear plastic surface of the compact disc and onto the shiny aluminum layer inside the disc. Some of this light is reflected back through the player's optical system so that it passes through the quarter-wave plate a second time before encountering the polarizing beam splitter. The two trips through the quarter-wave plate switches the light's polarization from horizontal to vertical (or vice versa) so that instead of returning all the way to the laser, the light turns 90° at the polarizing beam splitter and is directed onto an array of photodiodes. These photodiodes measure the amount and spatial distribution of the reflected light. From this reflected light, the CD player can determine whether the laser beam is hitting a ridge or a valley on the disc's aluminum layer. It can also determine how well focused or aligned the laser beam is with the aluminum layer and its ridges. (Bloomfield 3)\nThe information gathered from the bumps are measured and then sent to produce the music. This is where the computer portion of the player comes into play. The computer takes the information gathered from the CD and turns it into what we hear.\nIn closing, I would like to talk about what we have learned. The CD is a magnificent thing that is very much a vital part of our society. We use this great technology everyday. Weither it is watching a movie, playing a video game, or even typing a paper on the computer, we use this technology. A CD can hold a lot of data, and, as technology advances, the boundaries will keep growing and growing.\nBloomfield, Louis A. “Compact Disc Players.” How Things Work. 24 Apr. 2003. <http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/compact_disc_players.html>.\nBrian, Marshall. “Understanding the CD.” How CDs Work. 24 Apr. 2003. <http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd1.htm>.\nKirkpatrick, Larry D., and Gerald F. Wheeler. “Physics, A World View.” Chapter 23, “Lasers.” 2001 by Harcourt College Publishers.\nNice, Karim. “Data Storage: DVD vs. CD.” How DVDs and DVD Players Work. 27 Apr. 2003. <http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dvd3.htm>.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line890440"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.610346257686615,"wiki_prob":0.610346257686615,"text":"ArtLessonsOnline-Website\nDrawing Trees\nLearn to draw various types of trees in graphite\nDrawing trees can be a challenging subject for beginners. Mostly it is due to our preconceptions from childhood about how trees should be drawn. This course will break those preconceptions and show you what to look for and how to draw the shapes, detail and texture of trees.\nWe'll explore the various shapes of different types of trees as well as illustrate how \"not\" to draw them. I'll show you the most common mistakes that people make and how to correct them.\nThen we'll explore different ways to create a range of trunk textures to really give your trees a sense of realism and life.\nAfter this course you'll have the confidence to tackle drawing of any tree and be ready to create your own forest.\nThis course contains 7 lessons with almost 4 hours of tuition.\nPaid Course Coupon Discount\nTree Basics\nDrawing Trees Part 1 (25:32)\nDrawing trees (Branches) (32:59)\nTextures and tree types\nTree shapes (19:42)\nTree trunk texture (37:59)\nSnow Covered Fir Trees (28:04)\neucalyptus tree (43:55)\ncomplex line direction - Fan Palm (28:39)\nMurray Charteris\nAustralian artist Murray Charteris was born in Brisbane, 1972. Predominantly working in acrylic but also with extensive experience in digital art and animation, Murray is best known for his vibrant, illustrative paintings. He has had solo exhibitions in Queensland and administered his own gallery in Hervey Bay between 2007 and 2011. Murray has had gallery representation in Brisbane and Darling Harbour, Sydney.\nMurray Charteris is quickly gaining a reputation for his dynamic, energy filled fine art. His bold colours and powerful compositions come together to produce stunning artwork that is increasingly sought after.\nMurray started painting at a very early age and during his childhood he has been tutored by several artists throughout Brisbane. After studying animation for 3 years at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia, Murray has made a successful career from his animation skills, creating 3D computer animation and special effects for television commercials and programs both in Australia and overseas.\nOn his return to Australia in 1995, Murray started work with Australia’s leading television network Channel Nine, where he quickly gained a reputation for his design. Murray was placed in charge of the Videographics department in Brisbane in 1997 and led a very strong videographics team for nearly 12 years. During this time, Murray has won a Gold World Medal in the New York Festivals and has twice been a finalist in the Australian Effects and Animation Festival.\nMurray’s real passion has always been drawing and painting. In 2007, Murray re-located to Hervey Bay and devoted his time to his art, working as a full-time artist. “Painting is what I really love to do, I love to create new worlds that could only have once existed in my imagination. I like to create a feeling of energy and motion into my art and tell stories through imaginative works”.\nMurray is currently working in his studio in Brisbane.\n© ArtLessonsOnline 2020\nMurray's Gallery","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line954476"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6208086013793945,"wiki_prob":0.37919139862060547,"text":"NATO–Russia Relations: The Return of the Enemy\nWritten on 04/04/2019\nEven after a political rapprochement between Russia and NATO, Moscow saw the Alliance in terms of a hostile institution and expressed marginal interest in promoting greater cooperation within its structures. Endeavors to bring Russia and NATO closer, while deepening their mutual ties, were aimed at boosting the Kremlin’s influence on the Alliance’s activities.\nFor most of the post-Cold War period, Russia did not avoid cooperating with the North Atlantic Alliance, seeking instead to make NATO change its hitherto character from a military bloc to a typically political alliance.\nFor over two decades, NATO had been committed to holding a dialogue with Russia while establishing partnership relations with its authorities. This dramatically changed in 2014 when NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia yet keeping political and military channels of communication open. The Alliance is presently ready to enter a dialogue with Russia, however expanding its containment and deterrence potential.\nOver the past five years, tensions have mounted between Russia and NATO, bringing a risk of the most serious direct armed conflict for the first time in decades. Still, such a scenario is unlikely to materialize in the short run.\nPhoto source: NATO.INT\nAll texts (except images) published by the Warsaw Institute Foundation may be disseminated on condition that their origin is stated.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line508681"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5290799736976624,"wiki_prob":0.47092002630233765,"text":"How Your Ethnic Background Affects Your Health\nYour ethnicity can be key in diagnosing certain diseases\nBy Andrea AtkinsFrom Grandparents.com April 27, 2016\nBy Andrea Atkins\n(This article previously appeared on Grandparents.)\nWatching what you eat, exercising to stay fit and getting enough sleep are all important factors in staying healthy. But there are other factors beyond your control that determine if you’ll get sick, and your ethnic background is a big one.\nWhile ethnicity won’t definitively determine whether you get a disease or illness, there are some conditions that pop up with more frequency among certain ethnic groups.\nWe do know that there are single genes that can cause certain conditions, and we know that people of certain ethnicities carry those genes at a higher rate.\n— Rachel Ratner, genetic counselor with the Westmed Medical Group\nWho’s at Risk?\nIf for example, you are of Ashkenazic Jewish descent, you are more likely to have the BRCA I or BRCA II gene which increases the chance that you’ll develop breast or ovarian cancer in your lifetime. The BRCA gene is present in 1/500 people overall. But in Ashkenazic Jews, the rate is 1/40. If you have the BRCA gene, your risk of developing the disease is 87 percent higher than if you don’t have it.\nSimilarly, people who are African-American have a higher risk of developing sickle cell anemia and cardiovascular disease.\nPeople who are Asian and Hispanic are more likely to develop thalassemia — a disorder in which the blood makes an abnormal amount of hemoglobin.\nAnd Caucasians develop cystic fibrosis at higher rates than other groups.\nOther conditions associated with certain ethnic groups:\nHispanics are more likely to develop diabetes (Native Americans, too.) In fact, Mexican Americans have an 87 percent higher risk and Puerto Ricans a 94 percent higher risk of developing this disease than Caucasians, and Latinos are twice as likely to die from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control.\nAsian-American women develop osteoporosis in greater numbers than other members of the population, and since 90 percent of Asian- Americans are lactose intolerant, many do not get enough bone-protecting calcium.\nAfrican-American men have a gene that makes them more likely to get prostate cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control, while African-American women seem to have a higher risk for aggressive forms of breast cancer. They also die from that disease more frequently than white women.\nSome of these disparities are not related to ethnicity itself but are the result of less vigilant screening among certain populations. Either because of a lack of health care or a fear of the medical system, some people don’t get regular medical checkups.\nStill, there may be genes present in your ethnic group that make you more susceptible to certain diseases. And that’s why it’s important to discuss your background with your physician.\n“We do know that there are single genes that can cause certain conditions, and we know that people of certain ethnicities carry those genes at a higher rate.” says Rachel Ratner, genetic counselor with the Westmed Medical Group in Rye, N.Y.\nCan’t My Doctor Tell By Looking at Me?\nIt may not be obvious to your doctor what you ethnic background is. After all, we live in a melting pot of mixing cultures. But be sure to share details of your heritage with your physician, because knowing your background can be key in diagnosing diseases, avoiding certain medications and assessing the likelihood that you’ll develop serious health issues.\n“Now that we have testing available for genetic syndromes that tend to cluster in ethnic populations, it’s important to know the patient’s background to establish whether a particular person is at risk,” says Dr. Carl Olden, a family physician in Yakima, Wash., and a member of the board of the American Academy of Family Physicians.\nSharing this information with your doctor is not difficult, continues Olden, who views it as a way for patients and doctors to get to know one another better. He suggests using a family photo album as a starting point to talk about your relatives but to also list the diseases and health issues they had. Tuck a list into the back of the book for reference.\nFamily History and Ethnic Background\nYour ethnic background coupled with your family health history provides important clues about your likelihood to develop a particular disease, says Ratner.\n“If you tell me that your mother had breast cancer, your grandmother had ovarian cancer and your aunt has breast cancer, then you may want to consider genetic testing for the gene,” Ratner says.\nIf testing determines you have the gene, you may consider more frequent mammograms or, as some women have done, opting to have your breasts surgically removed to prevent cancer. But you will discuss these options with your doctor and a genetic counselor.\nAs with many medical facts, this type of information is complicated. Just because you belong to an ethnic group with a genetic predisposition to a disease does not mean you are doomed to have a life with that disease. But it does mean that you might want to be screened more regularly or earlier in your life than other people if you and your doctor are concerned.\nGenetic testing is expensive, and not always advised. For example, scientists have identified the gene that causes early onset Alzheimer’s disease, but there is no treatment to prevent it — and it doesn’t seem to be particular to any one population. So knowing that you have it won’t help you combat it—it will probably only worry you.\nMedications Matter\nYour doctor may also be aware that certain ethnic groups should avoid certain medications because they cause side effects in select populations. Carbamazepine, for example, an anticonvulsant drug, is usually not prescribed for people who are Asian because there is a history of severe reactions. Differing doses of Warfarin, an anti-coagulant, must be considered if the patient is African-American, Asian or Caucasian.\n“Some populations may not metabolize medications as well,” says Olden. “We are beginning to understand more and more about genes and how they affect the response to medication. We are looking at how we respond to medications and how our body detoxifies them or makes them ineffective.”\nNot everyone in a particular ethnic group would react badly to a medication, but knowing your ethnic background would signal your doctor to monitor you closely on a particular drug—or to consider an alternative.\nChoices Factor In, Too\n“Every condition is a combination of genes and environment,” says Ratner. “There’s the environment inside your body and the one outside your body. You can see two people who have the same gene mutations but have different outcomes. There’s a lot we still don’t know. But one of the reasons I like genetics is that it’s an effort to say that you can change a family history of illness with information that generations before didn’t have. Maybe they could have changed the outcome if they’d had the information that someone today has.”\nThis article is reprinted with permission. © 2016 Grandparents.com. All Rights Reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line914995"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6759543418884277,"wiki_prob":0.32404565811157227,"text":"Airbnb for cars - why you need to know there's a better way in Australia\nIf you're one of the people who has thought \"I wonder if there's a way to rent my car to earn some extra cash?\", or you're looking to borrow a neighbours car and save on car rental, now there's an \"Airbnb for cars\" here in Australia.\nThere are over 18 million registered vehicles in Australia, and only 17 million people of driving age, so that’s over a 1:1 ratio of cars to people, crazy right?\nNot only that, according to data on how Australians actually use their cars, most cars sit idle over 90% of the time. It’s hard to argue with that when you walk down the street of a weekday and see how many cars are sitting there catching leaves and gathering dust.\nYou need a car for those couple of times when public transport and human powered travel doesn’t always quite work out. But what you don’t need is a car sitting there all the time costing you money in insurance, servicing, registration, and the biggest cost of all, depreciation; just for the couple of times you use it each week.\nHow to join a community of owners and borrowers sharing cars\nNow there’s a reliable way for car owners and borrowers to share the cost of owning a car, just like Airbnb, it’s called Car Next Door. Over 1,800 cars are already on the platform being used by over 100,000 borrowers in Australia, and it’s growing every day!\nCar owners make their cars available for comprehensively insured borrowers when they are not using them, and borrowers pay car owners for the time borrowed and distanced travelled, which is tracked by a small GPS tracker installed in the car.\nIf you have a car, you can find out about renting out your car here. If you don’t have a car and need one to get around, you can apply to join as a borrower and find a car here.\nIf you want to see how it all works, take a look at the below infographic.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line616310"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5055989623069763,"wiki_prob":0.4944010376930237,"text":"One degree of recuperation\nJune 2014 (Vol. 25 Issue 3) in Drugs, Environment, Hyperthermia, Hypothyroidism, Impetigo, Infections\nWhat's your body temperature got to do with food allergy? Everything, says Alan Hunter, and his discovery has won him several awards and a doctorateAlan Hunter was the very picture of health\nWhat's your body temperature got to do with food allergy? Everything, says Alan Hunter, and his discovery has won him several awards and a doctorate\nAlan Hunter was the very picture of health. A young man in his early 20s, he was the British Under-21 Welterweight Judo Champion and a European bronze medallist. Then, almost overnight, he started feeling tired. It was an all-encompassing fatigue that never lifted and made any physical activity difficult, if not impossible. This chronic fatigue was often accompanied by depression, which took all the joy out of his life.\nFor several years Alan lived with the problem. Doctors had been unable to pinpoint any cause; all they could see in front of them was a perfectly fit young man. Then Alan happened to read about food allergies, and the description of possible symptoms seemed to match his own.\nThis was in the 1960s, long before anyone recognized just how prevalent the problem was. From then on, Alan described his problem not as fatigue, but as a food allergy.\nOver the next 20 years, he went on 50 water-only fasts, a month-long diet of eating nothing but grapes and seven months of the Gerson diet, originally intended for cancer patients. But the moment he started eating normally again, the allergy would return. \"Everything I ate made me ill,\" he said.\nHe noticed one strange thing about his allergy. Whenever he had a fever, all of his symptoms disappeared. Over those 20 years, he had three bouts of fever and, each time, he was symptom-free while he had a high temperature, whereas all the allergic reactions returned once the fever subsided.\nThere were a few other things too. For one, it was clear that the problem had to do with the person, not the food. After all, most people can eat a tomato without reacting. And he suspected it was somehow linked to the allergic person's blood flow, which he thought became restricted whenever an allergen was eaten.\nHe went along to the hospital in his home city of Edinburgh and found a vascular surgeon and radiologist prepared to test his theory. He had his blood flow tested before he ate a food to which he was allergic, and again afterwards. As expected, there was a drop in blood flow (hypoperfusion) after eating the allergen. That would explain the vast array of possible reactions to food, which seemed to happen anywhere in the body, Alan surmised.\nBut why was blood flow affected by food? There were three possibilities, Alan thought: something had been added to his body's processes; something had been taken away; or something had been damaged, and he included inflammation in this.\nHe immediately assumed it must be the last possibility, but dismissed it because his body would have repaired any damage, or inflammation, during his months-long fasts, and most of his allergic reactions lasted only an hour or so, which also suggested no long-term damage.\nFor similar reasons, he had to reject the idea that something-such as a nutrient-was missing. How could something go missing during the hour he was suffering an allergic reaction only to come back later?\nAlan was left with the idea that something had been added. Initially he thought that the something might be pharmaceutical drugs or toxins from the environment, but again, why would they be a problem for only an hour after eating, and disappear completely when he had a fever? It had all the hallmarks of a living organism, something that responded to heat and blood circulation-in fact, a parasite. Parasites could even be responsible for the change in blood flow, as they tend to live in arteries and so could become an obstruction.\nHe flew out to a specialist clinic in California, which confirmed several parasitic infestations. And it was easy to see how he got them-in fact, how all of us must have them. They are on the fruit and vegetables we eat, in the milk we drink, on our toothbrushes, on paper we pick up, and so on. Yet, despite that, most people don't get ill or suffer allergic reactions to food.\nSo why had they affected Alan and the many thousands of others with food allergies? Alan did something that most of the many thousands of other sufferers wouldn't: he obtained 50 million nematodes, or parasitic worms, and studied them. He noticed how they reacted when his microscope's illuminator was switched on, but otherwise, his observations weren't telling him anything.\nThen one day he read that amoebas move to the warm side of a microscope slide when they are being studied. \"I had read something that appeared insignificant at first, but suddenly hit me like a sledgehammer. If the parasitic amoebas on the microscope slide responded to temperature change, here was a vital clue to their behaviour: parasites are temperature-sensitive.\"\nThis explained why he became free of symptoms when he had a high temperature, and he also had a chronically low body temperature of around 97 degrees F (the accepted norm is around 98.6 degrees). Looking back, he thinks a boyhood of eating processed foods and 'white stuff' was responsible for his body temperature falling slightly.\nIf he could raise his body temperature to closer to the healthy norm, he might be able produce an environment hostile to parasites. Again, another book came to his aid. This time he read about a woman who was able to reverse her hypothyroidism, which would also lead to a subnormal body temperature, by eating a raw-food diet for a year or so. This made sense: when he himself was on a raw-food diet, he monitored his temperature and noted a slight, but steady, increase over the months.\nAnd a slight increase-even of just one degree-was enough to make all the difference, as Alan discovered.\nAlan has been recognized for his insights and research over the years. He won a best research award at a complementary medicine expo in 2003, and received a special award for research and a doctorate from the Indian Board of Alternative Medicine in Kolkata.\nHe worked as a telegraphist before becoming Scotland's first food-allergy practitioner in 1975, after studying nutritional medicine. He still practises as a therapist today, although along the way he also owned a care home for the elderly.\nToday, Alan remains free from all his allergies and is an ardent raw-food advocate, although he now eats a more balanced diet. \"It can be hard to keep to at the beginning, but it's something you can get used to. The rawer your diet, the quicker are the results,\" he says.\nSymptoms that could mean a food allergy\nThe following symptoms and illnesses have all been associated with food allergies in scientific studies. See if yours are among them.\nHyperactivity/ADD\nVascular disorders\nBurning pain in penis on urination\nIrregular heartbeat (arrhythmia)\nMyalgia (muscle pain)\nPerishing parasites\nThere's no avoiding parasites. One baby cereal alone contains more than 20,000 mites per kilo, while around half of all vegetables have parasite eggs nestling in them.\nNematodes, a human parasite, are pretty abundant too. One spadeful of garden soil will contain around a million of them.\nYour normal temperature\nMedicine considers that the normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C). This was based on the observations of German physicist Dr Carl Wunderlich in the 19th century. But not everyone agrees: in 1992, a US study found that a more normal reading was slightly less, at 98.2 degrees F (36.8 degrees C).\nA reading can also be slightly lower if you place the thermometer under the armpit; the temperature may then be 33 degrees F (0.5 degrees C) lower than the actual body temperature. Temperature can also vary throughout the day and according to your age, with the elderly tending to have lower body temperatures.\nOverall, a normal body temperature can vary from 97 degrees F (36 degrees C) to 99 degrees F (37 degrees C).\nSome don't like it hot\nIt isn't just parasites that wilt in a higher body temperature. Hyperthermia, or heat therapy, has gone in and out of fashion over the years, and raising body temperature has been used to treat a wide range of health conditions.\nIn Japan, FIR (far infrared) saunas have been used to treat chronic heart failure. The heat can improve function of the lining of the blood vessels and their ability to dilate.1 The special saunas have also been used to successfully treat chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS),2 arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), peripheral heart disease, chronic pain and fibromyalgia.\nIt's even been used to treat cancer-one of the more famous patients was former US president Ronald Reagan. Researchers at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Center in New Hampshire have tested the therapy on colon and melanoma cancer cell lines in the laboratory. After exposing cancer cells to a constant heat of 109.4 degrees F (43 degrees C), it either slowed their growth or made them disappear altogether. More interesting still, the heat caused a cascade effect between tumours, such that even those not directly targeted by the nanoparticles and magnetic field used in the tests also died off.\nThis suggests, say the researchers, that hyperthermia might be an effective treatment even in cancers that have spread (metastatic).3\nJ Am Coll Cardiol, 2002; 39: 754-9\nJ Psychosom Res, 2005; 58: 383-7\nNanomed Nanotech Biol Med, 2014; doi: 10.1016/j.nano.2014.02.003\nAnti-cancer diet\nChaos in the heart\nBGC vaccine - can it be a cause of ME?\nThe four month preconception plan\nOtitis media and canker sores\nReading tongues","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line950604"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5445753931999207,"wiki_prob":0.45542460680007935,"text":"Chef Joshua Hebert – Meet the Chef | Cooking With Gas\nby Tina | Mar 20, 2018 | Meet the Chef | 0 comments\nGetting started at the age of only 16 years old in a professional environment, Josh Hebert knew from a very early age that being a chef was the only career he would ever need to consider. Starting in an Italian restaurant, he always knew that what he really wanted to do was work in the kitchen making food that was good enough for fine dining.\nMoving, Learning, and Building\nLiving in Phoenix, he had plenty of avenues in which to use his skills in the kitchen. After Tarbell’s, he went to San Francisco where he worked for Zuni Café and Café Kati, and he spent his free time studying wine. From there, he moved to Japan to help open Café California, which was to be an offshoot of Café Kati. He returned to the US and took on several different high level positions before he decided to open a place of his own. In 2008, he started POSH Restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona.\nA Reminder of Why Gas Is Better\nHebert and his staff had an opportunity to do something incredibly memorable when they were hired to cook for 150 people, including the Japanese Ambassador. The problem was that they were required to cook with appliances that were electric only. Trying to make traditional Japanese dishes is difficult enough, but with electric appliances, they spent the day fighting metaphoric fires as the electric appliances blew fuses and interrupted power.\nHebert understands why people like electric appliances, particularly because they are easy to clean. The problem is that to make the best foods, he needs to be able to adjust and change the temperature quickly, which gas allows him to do. The test kitchens have been perfect for that. With training and giving start ups a place to really get familiar with their food, he has a real love for what he does, especially when given the power and tools he needs, including gas appliances.\nBlue Flame Award Past Winners\nGFEN Technology Spotlight\nEnergy Usage Advice\nTest Kitchens\nYour feedback is valuable\nHow can we make our resources more valuable to you?","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1146339"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6950190663337708,"wiki_prob":0.30498093366622925,"text":"What I Didn’t Realize About Taking Medication For Anxiety And Depression\nby Roshi Connor\nScary Mommy and fizkes/Getty\nTrigger warning: suicide ideation, depression\nI am one of those people who doesn’t like taking medication. If the problem is something I can fix in other ways, I’ll do that first. I typically don’t even take Tylenol or Advil for a headache. Medication is my last resort.\nAnd I hit my last resort two months ago with my anxiety and depression. I made an appointment and went into my doctor’s office. For the first time ever I actually said out loud, “I think about killing myself constantly.” I had to say it. I had to tell someone. Because I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to make myself believe the excuses I had for not doing it. I was afraid that the sadness, hopelessness, emptiness, paralyzing and all-consuming anxiety I felt most of every day would finally consume me. That the just thinking about it would become making a plan to do it. And then that’d be it. I desperately didn’t want that to happen.\nIt was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders because I was telling someone who could actually help me. I was finally doing something to help myself.\nAnd the doctor didn’t make me feel stupid or ungrateful for the beautiful life I know I was given. She didn’t automatically call people to have me admitted to the nearest hospital, or have my kids taken from me. She made direct eye contact with me while I cried and said, “It’s okay. We all need a little help sometimes. You are not crazy for feeling this way.” I needed to hear that, because I was feeling crazy.\nMy life had a lot of good in it, and I couldn’t understand why I had felt this way for so long. As I’m sure you’ve heard before, people who are suicidal don’t actually want to kill themselves; they just want the pain to stop. They just want the depression and anxiety to stop taking over their lives, affecting their families, their children. Affecting every single thing in their lives. That’s how I was feeling.\nLots of people take medication for anxiety and depression. Lots of people have told me before that I should try it.\nI have tried it. Twice before actually. The first time, about six years ago, I took it for about two weeks and it made me feel so much worse mentally than before that I stopped taking it and never went back for my follow up. I was not a medicine taker ever, and I decided it just wasn’t for me. Looking back, maybe all I needed was more time on it.\nThe second time, about three years ago, it made the anxiety disappear completely, very quickly. But it made every other feeling numb. Physically numb, and emotionally numb. At that point, the numbness was worse than the anxiety.\nSo this time I was a little apprehensive to start. I was told it may make me feel “funny” the first few days and it could take up to a month to work. I scheduled a follow up for four weeks and started taking it that day.\nWhat I didn’t know is that I would not feel better in that first week. And that it wouldn’t just make me feel funny, I would actually make me feel worse, at least physically. I would spend the majority of the first five days trying not to cry because I felt so nauseous. My head hurt worse than it ever has. Worse than a hangover from two bottles of white wine. I was told this could be a side effect, but I didn’t think I would feel so bad. I was dizzy and couldn’t focus or even think straight. I would be driving and then think that I shouldn’t be, because I felt almost drunk.\nI would spend most of those days sleeping and apologizing to my husband and my kids for feeling so terrible. I couldn’t eat, so I lost seven pounds in five days. I would consider not taking it anymore, but the desperation to feel better kept me taking it. The desperation for me to actually live and not just breathe kept me taking it. I have never taken a medication so religiously.\nOnce the first week passed, I felt much better. But I was exhausted. More tired than I was when I had newborn babies who wouldn’t sleep more than two hours at a time during the night. I couldn’t make it through the day without taking a nap. And even after the nap, I’d go to bed much earlier than I usually did. Almost six weeks later, and I still felt that way. I was simply exhausted, no matter how much sleep I got, no matter what I fueled my body with. Just plain old exhausted.\nSo naturally, spending most of my time sleeping put me behind in cooking, cleaning, doing work for my job which I do from home, and spending time with my kids and husband. Which actually just made me more stressed than before. I felt defeated, like nothing would ever help me. Like everything would be a give and a take. I’ll take away your anxiety and depression, but I will give you exhaustion and ten times more stress because of said exhaustion. But I knew which one was more important to me.\nWhat I didn’t know is that making the decision to finally help myself would actually be the most difficult thing I would ever do. I think for a lot of people, they think they’ll take this magic pill, and boom — you’ll feel better. You’ll have tons of energy, motivation. The thoughts of killing yourself will subside completely. You won’t have heart-pounding, make-you-dizzy anxiety anymore. This is what I had thought, had hoped, would happen.\nBut the truth is, you may feel worse. Then you’ll feel better. But not fully better. You’ll see little changes. You’ll stop in the aisle at Target and realize you hadn’t been paying attention to those around you as closely as before. Your heart will still pound when you see someone walking around with no shopping cart and their hood up. But you’ll be able to continue your shopping instead of running straight out of there. You’ll be okay taking your kids to a busy event, when before you wouldn’t even mention it to them, knowing your fears would keep you from showing up.\nYou’ll make it to the end of the day and realize you did not once cry in the car because you envisioned a car hitting you, killing you, and then pictured the tears falling down your children’s faces when they learned you were gone.\nAnd you’ll make it through a week and suddenly it will occur to you as you’re cooking dinner, a random moment, that you haven’t had any thoughts of suicide at all. That it’s the first time in a week that you’ve even thought to wonder whether you’ve had suicidal thoughts. A small step – but a big step.\nSo when you go into your follow up appointment and say you don’t think it’s working because you aren’t feeling completely good – you’ll realize how many small changes have started taking effect. And you’ll realize that the anxiety and depression is always going to be there. But that it will lessen. That it is lessening. That the exhaustion won’t last forever. That all those small changes will turn into a big change, and big change just takes time.\nOnce you realize that, you will feel better. Find a doctor who makes you feel heard. Figure out the best methods for you – counseling, medication, exercise – whatever it may be. Then do it, and here’s the important part – STICK TO IT. Even when it’s hard and it feels like it’s not helping. Give it time. Lean on those who care about and support you. Let your people help you through it. I know this is hard to do, but your life is worth it.\nBack to Health & Wellness","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1192218"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6590221524238586,"wiki_prob":0.34097784757614136,"text":"Easter Ducks\nWe make a variety of Easter Ducks. These ducks are fun to place in your yard around Easter. These items include:\nDuck and Eggs Set\nDuck Carrying Egg\nDuck Hatched Out\nDuck Sitting On Egg\nThe Duck and Eggs Set is cut out in our workshop. The three ducks are all hand painted white. The first duck is carrying an Easter egg, the second duck hatched out of the easter egg, and the third one is sitting on top of the Easter egg.\nThe dimensions for the Duck Carrying Egg are approximately 20 inches tall by 13 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 15 inch stake. The dimensions for the Duck Hatched Out are approximately 17 inches tall by 21 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 14 inch stake. The dimensions for the Duck Sitting On Egg are approximately 23 inches tall by 12 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 21 inch stake. The signs have a combined weight of approximately 12 pounds with packaging. For the continental U.S. shipping and handling is included in the listed price. For shipping outside the continental U.S. please contact us through our Contact Us page.\n(Price Includes\nShipping)\nThe Duck Carrying Egg is cut out in our workshop. The duck is hand painted white. The duck is carrying a pink and blue egg.\nThe dimensions for the Duck Carrying Egg are approximately 20 inches tall by 13 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 15 inch stake. The sign weighs approximately 7 pounds with packaging. For the continental U.S. shipping and handling is included in the listed price. For shipping outside the continental U.S. please contact us through our Contact Us page.\nThe Duck Hatched Out is cut out in our workshop. The duck is hand painted white. The duck just hatched out of a purple and yellow egg.\nThe dimensions for the Duck Hatched Out are approximately 17 inches tall by 21 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 14 inch stake. The sign weighs approximately 7 pounds with packaging. For the continental U.S. shipping and handling is included in the listed price. For shipping outside the continental U.S. please contact us through our Contact Us page.\nThe Duck Sitting On Egg sign is cut out in our workshop. The duck is hand painted white. The duck is sitting on a blue, pink, and yellow egg.\nThe dimensions for the Duck Sitting On Egg are approximately 23 inches tall by 12 inches wide by 2 inches deep. The sign has a 21 inch stake. The sign weighs approximately 7 pounds with packaging. For the continental U.S. shipping and handling is included in the listed price. For shipping outside the continental U.S. please contact us through our Contact Us page.\nHome Contact Us FAQ Privacy Policy Easter Crafts Easter Chicks Easter Bunny Easter Eggs","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1296636"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9352908730506897,"wiki_prob":0.9352908730506897,"text":"Richard Anderson: Stanley Kubrick and Paths of Glory\nWorld War I: They called it the Great War--and it was: the dawn of an era of mechanized warfare in which men slaughtered each other with machine guns, tanks, and mustard gas that hung over the trenches in which the warring armies faced each other sometimes from only yards away.\nThe war's progress was measured by the movement of the trenches as the armies pushed each other back and forth over the scarred landscape of Western Europe. They fought in the frozen winter and the muddy spring, and the casualties were in the tens of millions dead and wounded.\nThe nations rained death on each other for four years-- 1914-1918--and then saw a flowering of pacifist literature that was unmatched by any war before or since.\nSiegfried Sassoon, the English poet who had been decorated for bravery, wrote Does It Matter?, a bitter poetic commentary on how those maimed in battle were ignored by polite society. Erich Remarque's novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, chronicled the senseless slaughter from the German perspective.\nThis anti-war theme was echoed in another novel, Paths of Glory, by an English writer named Humphrey Cobb. The book was based on an actual event in which French soldiers mutinied, rather than face certain death when ordered to take a hill by their ambitious commanding officer (who remained safely behind). Several of the soldiers were tried and executed which led to a public outcry.\nThe 1935 novel was read by a precocious youth named Stanley Kubrick, the son of a Bronx doctor. Young Kubrick was interested in books and movies, and he vowed to someday film the Cobb novel.\nAfter working as a photographer, and making several low budget films, Kubrick made The Killing in 1956, a film about a racetrack heist that was released by United Artists, a Hollywood studio that backed independent productions. The film which starred Sterling Hayden established Kubrick as a promising director while still in his twenties.\nKubrick purchased the screen rights to Cobb's novel from the author's widow and set about making his movie. The director turned out a screenplay with Jim Thompson, the pulp novelist who had also worked on The Killing. Calder Willingham was then called in for revisions.\nReleased through United Artists in 1957, Paths of Glory was a solid commercial and artistic success. The movie starred Kirk Douglas as a brave French officer who unsuccessfully defends his men at their court-martial.\nVeteran actor Adolphe Menjou played General Broulard, a philosophical officer who seems to take the injustices of war in stride, and George Macready was the sinister general who ordered his troops to their death. Ralph Meeker played a doomed soldier, and Richard Anderson was Major Saint-Auban, the acerbic prosecutor. Anderson was present in Munich throughout the filming and doubled as dialogue coach.\nKubrick who died in 1999 went on to a long and successful career (Lolita, Dr. Strangelove), though he was dogged by a number of distinguished critics (the late Dwight Macdonald, John Simon) who believed the director had never fulfilled his early promise. In fact, Simon was dissatisfied with the ending of Paths of Glory in which a German waif enchants hardened French soldiers with a song. Simon believed that this all men are brothers motif marred the film's realism.\nHere, in an exclusive interview with American Legends co-founder Martin Pitts, Richard Anderson recalls Stanley Kubrick and the making of Paths of Glory.\nMaj. Saint-Auban\nAL: In his biography of Stanley Kubrick, Vincent LoBrutto writes that Kubrick and his business partner, James Harris, worked on Paths of Glory while moonlighting at MGM. (Vincent LoBrutto, Stanley Kubrick, New York, Da Capo Press ed., 1999)\nRA: That's true. Dore Schary had seen The Killing and put Stanley and his small production unit under contract at Metro. They took the idea of Paths of Glory to Schary, but he said, \"I just finished doing a picture called The Red Badge of Courage, and I am not really interested in a war movie.\" Schary and Louis B. Mayer had fought over the Civil War movie. Mayer hated the idea of an American soldier running from battle as shown in The Red Badge of Courage.\nHow did Kubrick work on Paths of Glory under the studio's nose?\nStanley managed to work at home, not at his office at the studio. He had a little place on Sunset. While trying to get Paths of Glory together, Stanley sat there for weeks: smoking, reading, getting ideas. That was Stanley. He was reading all the time. Kant. The history of ideas, what makes people think. Books. Books.\nAL: How did you get cast in the movie as the military prosecutor?\nRA: Stanley was a great movie goer. He had seen all my films at Metro where I had been under contract. One night around 11:00 p.m., I got a call from Jim Harris, Stanley's business partner. He said Stanley wanted to meet me, and they came over to my apartment and discussed the film. When the call came to go to work, I was ready since I had checked up on Kubrick and liked what I found out.\nKirk Douglas was signed for the lead of Colonel Dax, the French trial lawyer who becomes a front line officer.\nThey sent the script to everybody who turned it down, including Gregory Peck who had a schedule conflict. They gave it to Douglas who was the only one who wanted to make the picture. Douglas took it to United Artists. Max Youngstein said, \"I don't want to make the picture. I don't even like it. We don't have time for a little picture like that. I see twenty or thirty movies like that coming around here a year.\" Finally, Douglas talked Youngstein into it. They gave Kubrick and Harris a $935,000 budget. After Douglas got $350,000, there wasn't much left to make the movie, and that's the miracle of it all.\nThe movie was shot at a studio in Munich, Germany and nearby locations.\nThe French felt the movie reflected badly on their country and wouldn't let the film be shot there. I remember when we were in Germany. It was the dead of winter. Stanley always had this old coat on. We went and inspected a location. He wanted to build that trench you saw in the opening scene. I call Stanley a movie scientist. He was always interested in technology. He had no interest in sentiment. The first thing he said to the German crew was, \"I want a trench and I want it so I can put the cameras in there so we can roll up and down.\" And that's one of the most important things in that movie that people remember...those opening battle scenes...You've got to get that audience in the first three or four minutes...if you don't, you're not going anywhere, especially if it's an action movie, a war movie.\nAL: How would you describe Stanley's technique as a director?\nUnlike Elia Kazan, Stanley Kubrick was really not interested in actors. As soon as we started shooting, I knew immediately what Stanley was interested in: The shot. Always the shot. He worked with George Krause, the German cinematographer, to make sure that everything looked like a newsreel of World War I. Kubrick had studied many photographs of the war in the library. The film was low keyed and had a grainy look to it. That's what Stanley was interested in.\nAL: There were stories that later when Douglas and Kubrick made Spartacus there was friction between them. How did they work together on Paths of Glory?\nThere was an office scene Kirk and I were in together, and I remember Kirk saying to me, \"This guy is terrific.\" Kubrick liked that Douglas was always prepared. He knew his lines. So it started out great. He had great admiration for Stanley.\nWhat did Kubrick think of Douglas's performance?\nDouglas was not a favorite of mine. He was always selling himself. There was this brashness. But his best performance was in this picture because if you notice, he was listening, watching, waiting and when he finally has his big scene where he tells Menjou--\"General, I'm not your boy--\" he was effective because he wasn't pounding away all through the movie. I don't know what Stanley did there, but it was to his credit. One day Kirk's stand-in came over and said: \"Kirk's doing something. He's come down. He's not over the top in this movie.\" And I started to look, and I said, My God that guy is right.\nAL: In some Hollywood circles in the 1950s, Adolphe Menjou (1890-1963) was disliked because he had appeared as a friendly witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities when the committee was investigating communism in Hollywood. Did this matter come up with Kubrick?\nMenjou was very anti-communist. He was against left wingers. He was with the company. Originally, Stanley had wanted Lee J. Cobb, but Cobb didn't want to do another heavy. Stanley liked what Menjou was doing. It was a brilliant piece of casting. Stanley was never involved with politics. Douglas, on the other hand, later disregarded the blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo on Spartacus and giving him screen credit. Kirk and Menjou never spoke to each other.\nAL: Showing the execution of soldiers ran contrary to Hollywood's standard approach to filmmaking.\nMax Youngstein insisted that the three soldiers not die at the end. He said, \"If those guys die, who will go see the movie?\" The studio wanted them reprieved at the last minute. In Munich, Stanley sent Youngstein the final script without making the changes Max wanted. He registered the script to show it had been sent--and held his breath. They prayed Max wouldn't call and say that the deal is off. No one at United Artists read the script. When Max was shown a cut of the picture, he turned to Stanley and said: \"You were right.\"\nOrder insightful biographies of American Legends at the\n| James Dean | Montgomery Clift | Jim Morrison | Jack Webb |\n| Jack Kerouac | Ernest Hemingway |\n| Bookstore | Video Store |\n249 N. Brand Blvd., Suite 406","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line959619"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5791298151016235,"wiki_prob":0.5791298151016235,"text":"Heavy Montreal Festival Announces 2014 Lineup Including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax\nEmily Clark July 16th, 2014 - 7:10 PM\nCanada’s premiere heavy metal and hard rock festival Heavy Montréal announced the August 2014 lineup for the event’s sixth installment. Presented by Molson Canadian, the festival has consistently expanded the variety of bands to appear at Parc Jean-Drapeau, this year featuring heavy metal legends Metallica, punk rockers The Offspring, Canadian rock band Three Days Grace, Celtic punk rock band Dropkick Murphys, thrash metal quartet Slayer and many more.\nMetallica will play Heavy Montréal in their only North American show this summer. The performance will be an all-request show, with a setlist picked by the fans. Metal quintet Lamb of God will make up for canceling their set back at the 2012 festival. After crowd pleasing success last summer, Heavy Mania wrestlers will return this summer as well.\nSince the first Heavy Montréal festival back in 2008, originally called Heavy MTL, Parc Jean-Drapeau has hosted over 200,000 fans to see groups such as Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Slipknot, Megadeth, Marilyn Manson, KISS, Alice Cooper, and many more. With Metallica and Slayer co-headlining and a slew of veterans, cult-favorites, and local bands, this year will surely not disappoint.\nHeavy Montréal 2014 Lineup:\nProtest the Hero\nBat Sabbath\nNekrogoblikon\nBeheading of a King\nNepentes\nHeavy Mania","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line758532"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6533037424087524,"wiki_prob":0.34669625759124756,"text":"Tag Archives: consultation document\nConsultation on the Future of Crofting Legislation\nOn 28 August 2017 the Scottish Government launched its consultation document [PDF] on the future of Crofting Legislation seeking views on both the form of the legislation and the priorities for change within it.\nLaunching the document, Fergus Ewing, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity said:\nCrofting delivers valuable local benefits and a successful crofting sector helps our rural communities to thrive. It is therefore vital the law that governs it is fit for purpose.\nInitial discussions have shown while there is plenty of agreement that the current law needs to change, there are many views on what should replace it.\nI would strongly encourage anyone with an interest in the future of crofting – whether crofters, landowners, those living in a crofting communities or in other parts of Scotland – to take part in this consultation and help us improve future legislation.\nThe Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF) welcomed the Scottish Government’s commitment to continue the process of reforming crofting legislation within this parliamentary session.\nRussell Smith, Chair of the SCF, said:-\nThis is another stage in the long process of crofting law reform and we are pleased that the Scottish Government is taking this forward. Following the 1993 consolidation act there have been several amendments to crofting legislation but this is still unfinished business. The addition of subsequent layers of legislation, and the fact that amendments have introduced further inconsistencies and errors, has rendered current crofting law difficult to access and, in some aspects, unusable.\nThis consultation is seeking views on the most suitable way to proceed with any crofting law reform and how it might be improved. It opens up opportunities to take a fresh look at crofting legislation and its purpose. At this point we may ask what crofting legislation should achieve and how best it can do this.\nIt is widely agreed that the law does need to be reformed further and there are suggested a range of options for taking this forward but neither of the two extremes of merely consolidating with little change or starting all over again with a ‘clean sheet’ are going to achieve a desirable result. So, we are being asked to choose between the workable options of amending and then consolidating the law or ‘restating’ it. The consultation document helpfully explains the difference.\nWhilst exploring ways to make the legislation fit for purpose we must not lose sight of the fact that crofting legislation was formed to protect crofters’ rights, not to serve lawyers, this principle is inviolable. The crofting act is the heart of crofting and has evolved over 130 years, adapting to work for crofting in a changing world. This is another time of change, but the basic principles of protection must not be lost.\nThe SCF will be looking at these options in considerable detail and will be both seeking our members’ views and providing information for them. We encourage all crofters, and others with an interest, to attend the events the Scottish Government will be hosting and to respond to the consultation before it closes.\nScottish Government Officials will be holding a number of public meetings where they will deliver a presentation on the purpose of the consultation, an explanation of the options for changing legislation and an overview on how to respond to the consultation. There will be the opportunity to discuss the options available and to raise questions relating to the consultation.\nThe first such meeting takes place in Lerwick on 13 September with further meetings already scheduled for Oban (19 September), Kirkwall (26 September), Portree (3 October), Fort William (4 October), Glenuig (5 October), Kinlochbervie (10 October), Lairg (11 October) and Gairloch (12 October). More dates and locations will be announced in due course. A full list of the events, which will be updated regularly, may be found on Eventbrite where you may also register your attendance.\nThe consultation can be completed on Citizen Space or in printed form by contacting your local RPID Area Office. Copies of the Consultation Document will also be available at the public meetings or by contacting The Scottish Government, The Crofting Bill Team D Spur, Saughton House, Broomhouse Drive, Edinburgh EH11 3XG.\nThe consultation will last 12 weeks and will close at 00:00 on 20 November 2017. Any questions may also be directed to croftingconsultation@gov.scot\nThis entry was posted in Crofting Reform and tagged Cabinet Secretary for the Rural Economy and Connectivity, Chair of Scottish Crofting Federation, consultation, consultation document, crofting, crofting law, Fergus Ewing, Fergus Ewing MSP, Scottish Crofting Federation, Scottish Government on September 11, 2017 by Brian Inkster.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line488833"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8677209615707397,"wiki_prob":0.8677209615707397,"text":"Varitron\nJim Harris June 2, 2017\nVaritron has evolved in its 26-year history to become a full-service, high-quality printed circuit board assembler.\nOne of Canada’s five largest electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers is expanding its footprint both inside and beyond its home country.\nVaritron recently updated equipment in its 28,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Granby, Quebec, Canada, where it operates high-volume production lines. “We wanted to increase the capacity of that plant to be more competitive in the high-volume market,” Vice President of Operations Francis Mercier says.\nThe company also operates a 64,500-square-foot facility in Montreal which is also home to its corporate headquarters, and a 27,000-square-foot facility in Hudson, N.H.\nBoth facilities specialize in high-mix, low/medium-volume manufacturing. Typically, each facility will produce between 350 to 450 different products with an average quantity of 50 pieces each. Varitron offers manufacturing services on a build-to-order, as well as a build-to-forecast basis.\nThe company acquired the Hudson facility in 2014 to reach out to American customers. “We are convinced that a large portion of our future growth will be in the U.S. marketplace,” Mercier says.\nAll three of Varitron’s facilities are ISO 9001 certified. The Granby site is finalizing ISO 14001 certification. The Hudson facility is on track to achieving ISO 13485 certification for medical device manufacturing by the end of the year. Lastly, Varitron is also planning to obtain AS9100 certification for work in the aerospace industry in 2018.\nProcess Evolution\nVaritron specializes in manufacturing printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) used in sectors including networking, defense, optics, aerospace, transportation, security, telecommunication, automation and medical equipment.\nFounded in 1991 as a job shop offering assembly services to clients, Varitron has evolved to become a value-added provider capable of supporting products throughout their lifecycles. All three of the company’s manufacturing facilities offer design support, prototyping, new product introduction, assembly and production, testing and integration services. “We’ve grown our business by offering highly technical and high-quality engineering solutions,” Mercier says.\nRoughly 95 percent of the PCBAs produced by the company are manufactured using the surface-mount technology method, which involves mounting components directly to the board. The method has largely supplanted through-hole technology, which involves placing components via wire leads into holes on the circuit board and soldering the leads into place.\nOther services include part-over-part assembly of complex components such as those found in machine controllers and CPUs. The company also offers specialized manufacturing services such as overmolding, which involves injecting a resin or other plastic coating over the PCBA circuitry to create a protective encapsulation and nanocoating, where the circuit is coated with a protective nano-fluid. Both techniques allow PCBAs to operate in harsh environments, Mercier says.\nThe company also offers circuitry printing services, and plans to soon offer advanced cooling technology. “Instead of being just a manufacturing shop, we are providing high-end engineering and technology solutions from the design phase forward,” Mercier says.\nIn addition to manufacturing PCBAs, Varitron offers box build, testing and configuration services. These include integrating PCBAs into an enclosure as well as producing full units with cables, switches, fuses, display and packaging, the company notes.\nThe new equipment in the Granby facility includes new surface mount technology equipment as well as optical inspection machines. The company also purchased testing equipment including a robotic probe used to test PCBAs, Mercier says.\nThe company’s use of high-tech testing equipment, as well as its dedication to lean manufacturing and Manufacturing 4.0 principles, allow it to efficiently make high-quality products. This is also supported by a thorough traceability system that allows Varitron to capture information about every single component mounted to a circuit board. This same system allows Varitron to use gate controls for every process, and to scan tooling and consumables to ensure every set-up is correctly conducted.\n“The processes we’ve developed here have allowed us to be flexible and agile in our introduction of new products, and enabled us to deliver those to our customers rapidly,” Mercier says, noting the company has introduced 2.5 new products daily for the past 12 months. “The majority of our customers tell us our products are the highest quality they have had.”\nA Positive Culture\nThe company is teaming with local universities and the Quebec government to further develop the skills of its manufacturing staff. This includes internal training programs focusing on robotics used in surface mount technology as well as quality and other topics.\nVaritron has also established a training program for college students in micro soldering. “We’re working very hard to train and attract new employees,” Mercier says.\nThe company’s internal culture has also helped it retain employees and remain successful. “We are very proud that we have maintained a family-based culture while seeing impressive growth,” Mercier says. “Everybody knows each other here, and is very proud to be a part of Varitron – everyone feels they are a part of something important.”\nCanadaManufacturing\nRite Pack Inc.\nJupiter Aluminum\nAvigilon Corporation\n3DQue Systems Inc.\nAlan Dorich May 21, 2019\nStaff writer April 29, 2019\nKat Zeman April 17, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line964686"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8989099860191345,"wiki_prob":0.8989099860191345,"text":"Welcome New IAAPA Board Members | Jan. 2020\nJim Pattison Jr., ICAE\nSecond Vice Chair\nPresident, Ripley Entertainment, United States\nJim Pattison Jr., ICAE, has been with Ripley Entertainment Inc. since 1990. He has held a variety of senior positions within the company, including vice president, new business; vice president, aquariums; and executive vice president, operations of Ripley attractions worldwide, before he was named president in December 2008. Prior to joining Ripley’s and the Jim Pattison Group, Pattison worked in the finance/banking industry and was part owner of a number of small businesses for more than a dozen years. He has served IAAPA as a member of the IAAPA Board of Directors, several committees, and a task force, as well as a speaker at IAAPA Expo events.\nFernando Aldecoa\nGeneral Manager, PortAventura Entertainment, Spain\nFernando Aldecoa has more than 25 years of experience in the theme park industry. He joined PortAventura at its inception in 1994 and has worked in different positions, mainly in the financial, operations, and commercial departments. Aldecoa has been the general manager of PortAventura World since 2010. He has a master’s in business administration from ESADE in Barcelona and is a graduate of the Program for Management Development at IESE in Barcelona. Aldecoa was previously a member of the IAAPA Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) Education Subcommittee and IAAPA EMEA Advisory Committee.\nCurt Caffey, ICAE\nPresident, Water Parks Division, ProParks Management, United States\nCurt Caffey, ICAE, has served numerous attractions, hospitality, and real estate companies in the last three decades. He is currently president of the water parks division of ProParks Management based in Orlando. Prior to this position, Caffey led efforts for CNL Lifestyle Company and served on the Investment and Leadership Committees for the CNL Financial Group of companies. He recently served on the Orlando K-Life Board and has served as a member of the IAAPA Board of Directors and several IAAPA Committees, including the audit, marketing, and water park committees.\nChloe Hausfeld, ICAL\nDirector, Marketing and Business Development, JRA, United States\nChloe Hausfeld, ICAL, is the director of marketing and business development for JRA in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hausfeld is a chief strategist within JRA and helps coordinate trade show logistics, business travel, and employee enrichment activities. Prior to JRA, Hausfeld received her bachelor’s degree in special education from the University of Cincinnati. Upon entering the industry, Hausfeld became involved in several IAAPA committees and initiatives, including the young professionals subcommittee, service awards committee, manufacturers and suppliers committee, and Give Kids The World golf committee. In 2017, IAAPA named Hausfeld its Young Professional of the Year. Additionally, she has participated in IAAPA U.S. Advocacy Days for four years, lobbying Ohio senators and representatives on the issues faced by the attractions industry.\nXavier Lopez Ancona\nFounder and CEO, KidZania, Mexico\nXavier Lopez Ancona founded KidZania, a family edutainment concept that joins learning with entertainment through role-play, in 1997 after developing an interest in the entertainment industry in Mexico. KidZania was created as a place where kids could engage with values of creativity, independence, responsibility, and solidarity. The first KidZania facility opened in September 1999 in Mexico City’s Centro Santa Fe shopping center, and today, there are 28 KidZania facilities in 21 countries, with 10 more in different development stages. Lopez Ancona has participated as a speaker at IAAPA Expo and serves as a member of the IAAPA Latin America, Caribbean Advisory Committee.\nDarrell Metzger, ICAE\nAdjunct Professor, Singapore Management University, Singapore\nDarrell Metzger, ICAE, has worked four decades in the tourism, leisure, and lifestyle industry. Metzger played an integral role in the startup and operations of global leisure, resort, and destination companies and has held leading positions at Tokyo Disney Resort, Ocean Park Hong Kong, Sentosa Island Resort, and Legoland Malaysia Resort. Metzger has advised and held key executive roles in major global events, including the Los Angeles Summer Olympics and the Expo 86 in Vancouver, Canada. He holds an MBA from California State University, and in 2015, Metzger was appointed adjunct professor at Singapore Management University. He served as IAAPA Chairman of the Board in 2009 and is currently on the IAAPA Advisory Board.\nTed Molter, ICAE\nChief Marketing Officer, San Diego Zoo Global, United States\nTed Molter, ICAE, is the chief marketing officer for San Diego Zoo Global, where he is responsible for public relations, creative services, advertising and design, websites, publications, interpretation, sales, licensing, and partnership marketing activities that support the San Diego Zoo, the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. He joined San Diego Zoo Global in 1998 as associate marketing director and was promoted to director of marketing in 2002. Molter came to San Diego Zoo Global from SeaWorld Ohio, where he worked for 13 years. His involvement with IAAPA has included roles as education committee chair, marketing committee chair, foundation board chair, zoo and aquarium committee chair, and board member.\nTony Sze, ICAE\nGroup Senior Counsellor, Chimelong Group Co. Ltd., China\nTony Sze, ICAE, is group senior counsellor for Chimelong Group Co. Ltd., where he is responsible for the company’s overall investment plans in park business. Since Sze joined Chimelong Group in 2005, he has launched five Chimelong park investment projects: Paradise Amusement Park (Phase I, II, III) and Chimelong Water Park (Phase I, Phase II). His involvement with IAAPA has included serving as chair of the IAAPA Asia Pacific Government Relations Subcommittee and IAAPA Asia Pacific Advisory Committee and a member of the IAAPA Board of Directors, IAAPA Asia Pacific Safety Subcommittee, and IAAPA Hall of Fame and Archives Committee.\nLaura Woodburn Krolczyk, ICAE\nAssistant General Manager, Hersheypark, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts, United States\nLaura Woodburn Krolczyk, ICAE, is assistant general manager, Hersheypark for Hershey Entertainment and Resorts. She began working in the industry in 1988 and has served in various roles at Hersheypark, including the directors of ride operations, entertainment, and guest services and ticketing. In 2017, Hershey Entertainment and Resorts presented Woodburn Krolczyk with the J. Bruce McKinney Legacy of Excellence Award. Woodburn Krolczyk serves as the IAAPA Global Education Committee chair and has previously served as facility operations committee chair. In 2016, Woodburn Krolczyk received the IAAPA Outstanding Service Award, given to members who work to foster the spirit of goodwill, professionalism, and higher levels of performance within the industry regionally, nationally, or internationally.\nExplore the Funworld Archive\nDiscover industry insights delivered by in-depth reporting","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1091993"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7462389469146729,"wiki_prob":0.25376105308532715,"text":"Anthony Bussa\nHunting & Fishing Violations\nDuluth cops seize record amount of fentanyl\nOn behalf of Bussa Law posted in Drug Charges on Tuesday, December 3, 2019.\nOn Nov. 21, Minnesota authorities arrested two men for allegedly distributing fentanyl in the Duluth area. The undercover operation led to the seizure of 80 grams of pure fentanyl powder, which is the largest amount ever confiscated in the state.\nAccording to local media outlets, the defendants, a 29-year-old resident of Duluth and a 35-year-old resident of Chicago, were in possession of enough fentanyl to kill 26,000 people. As a result, they will likely be charged with felony drug crimes in St. Louis County District Court.\nThe chief of the Duluth Police Department said that fentanyl, which is 100 times more powerful than morphine, has caused many overdose deaths in the area. He also said his department is attempting to disrupt the drug's supply and demand chain by targeting dealers and educating the public. Duluth law enforcement officers seized 80 total grams of fentanyl in both 2016 and 2017. In 2018, they seized 122 grams of the drug. However, including the latest bust, officers have confiscated a whopping 191 grams in 2019. The investigation was conducted by members of the Carlton County Sheriff's Office, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the Superior Police Department, the Lake Superior Drug and Violent Crime Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.\nIf convicted, defendants arrested on drug charges, such as drug possession, distribution and trafficking, could face years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. Since the stakes are so high, defendants might benefit by retaining the services of a criminal defense attorney. After reviewing the specifics of the case, a lawyer may be able to poke holes in the prosecution's case, causing the charges to be dismissed. If that isn't possible, legal counsel might recommend negotiating a plea deal that reduces the charges and penalties.\nSource: KBJR 6, \"Undercover Duluth drug bust leads to largest Minnesota fentanyl seizure in 2019,\" Nov. 22, 2019\nTags: Drug Charges\nRelated Posts: Minnesota judge rules drug search unconstitutional, Almost 77,000 THC vaping cartridges seized in Minnesota, Minnesota men face 15-count federal narcotics indictment, Minnesota Supreme Court rules on drug dealer rectum case\nMinnesota DWI charges increased by 4% in 2019\nHarsh fentanyl laws may hurt poor communities\nRacial gaps persist in criminal justice system\nFree Consultations Tell us about your case.\nSelected in 2016\nWhat Should You Do If You Get Stopped By A Cop?\nYou should not be hostile. Simply stop and allow the cop to do the cop’s job. If you are ticketed or arrested, immediately...\nWhat Should You Say If You Get Stopped By A Cop?\nYou have constitutional rights that you can invoke. This means that you do not have to say anything to cops, which is...\nCan A Cop Search Your Person And/Or Your Stuff?\nA cop can search you and/or your car if a cop has probable cause to believe you pose a violent threat to the cop and/or that you...\nWhat Is The Standard To Arrest You?\nA cop must have probable cause to arrest you for a crime. A cop can use the cop’s training and experience as well as his...\nWhat Should You Do If You Get Served With A Search Warrant?\nThe Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution mandates that a cop present...\nIf Arrested, How Long Can You Be Held In Jail?\nNo matter what crime you are charged with, you have 36 hours to have a bail hearing if you are in jail. This time requirement...\nIf Arrested, How Long Do You Have To Wait To Be Formally Charged?\nIf you are in custody, the prosecution has 48 hours from the time of your demand to file...\nAre All Of Your Privacy Rights Protected?\nNo, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution only protects your person, your home, your papers, and your...\nWhat Are The Differences Between The United States And The Minnesota Constitutions?\nAfter You Are Charged, What Does The Process Entail?\nVigorously defending your rights demands a marathon, not a sprint, mentality. Every stone must be overturned.\nLearn More About Your Rights Call For A Free Consultation 218-303-5497\nI had been accused with a crime I didn't commit, 2nd degree assault with a deadly weapon, so I searched the web and look at videos to see if I could find anything related to my case. There are hundreds of lawyers you could pick from, but I assure you Anthony Bussa, is the the right lawyer for you when it comes to any bad situation. These are the results I got from Anthony: First, Anthony will...\n-M.Y., a former client\nTony handled my case for me and he did an outstanding job answering all my questions quickly, with absolute knowledge, and alleviated my concerns. Tony is an experienced attorney and I would recommend him to anyone needing his help. He was able to achieve an outcome for me that was exactly what he told me and was the most beneficial result possible...\n-L.P., a former client\nTony is an amazing attorney. He is th epitome of a true professional. When I brought my case to him I was a nervous wreck. He calmed my fears by providing me with the reassurance that I needed that he would handle my case properly. All while keeping me informed on any and every aspect of where my case could go...\n-Chris, a former client\nTony Bussa handled my case with professionalism and tenacity throughout. He was detail oriented and returned all of my calls and text messages the same day. Tony was able to get my felony charge dropped and kept my job and life in order. He spoke in terms I could understand and laid out our plan of attack early on, keeping me constantly updated. Thanks Tony!\n-John, a former client\nI found myself in a very difficult legal situation and facing multiple felonies I contacted Anthony Bussa , I felt much better about my situation after are first conversation . He is very easy to get in touch with anytime I have questions or concerns about my case ,He is a Attorney that will do everything possible to stand up for his clients rights.\n-Robert, a former client\nAnthony is an upstanding guy, he listened to my side and followed the trail of facts. He listened to what I had to say and followed up with me each and every step of the way. Anthony did countless hours of research through documents and transcripts to pinpoint the facts that would help prove my innocence...\n-A former client\nTony was absolutely awesome throughout my legal process. He took the time to explain in layman's terms what was happening, what to expect; sometimes even multiple times because I was new to the entire process. I hope to never have to go through anything similar to this in the future but if I do, I'll definitely work with Tony again!!!\n-Shevawn, a former client\nRepresented me in a BWI case, and did an excellent job of representing me. Ended up pleading to Careless Boating, meaning i broke a Lake Minnetonka Conservation District ordinance. 2 days Community Service and have to attend a 1 day DWI Class. My driving record is clean and no BWI on my record. YEAH!\n-Gregory, a former client\n© 2020 by Bussa Law. All rights reserved. Disclaimer","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line377929"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5628183484077454,"wiki_prob":0.5628183484077454,"text":"The Val de Saône\nLyon Metropole and the region\nThe Metropole de Lyon\nFrom the plains of the Monts d’Or to a Bocuse restaurant, the Val de Saône is the perfect place for a walk!\nWith its green and undulating landscape, the Val de Saône offers magnificent walks along paths on the peaks of the Monts d’Or and the bucolic banks of the Saône. It also boasts gastronomic restaurants with stunning views.\nTake a walk in a pristine natural setting\nOn a sunny Sunday afternoon or a day off work, get some fresh air on the doorstep of Lyon. Many paths criss-cross the Monts d’Or, the beautifully redeveloped banks of the Saône, and the wooded landscapes to the east of the valley. Looking for inspiration? The Greater Lyon nature trail guide lists the various routes in the local area, such as the geological walk of the Monts d’Or, the Sentier des Cabornes, Sentier de l’Eau and Sentier de la Marinade.\nTaste Lyon’s gastronomy in an exceptional setting\nOther than Paul Bocuse’s legendary Auberge du Pont de Collonges, the Val de Saône has a number of fine gastronomic restaurants. The excellent guinguettes (small restaurants with music and dancing) of Rochetaillée-sur-Saône serve frog's legs on spacious terraces on the banks of the Saône. The trendy bar-restaurant Les Planches in Albigny-sur-Saône also overlooks the river. On its island, in Collonges-au-Mont-d’Or, Le Crusoë can only be accessed by boat.\nDiscover original heritage\nThe Musée de l’Automobile Henri Malartre in Rochetaillée-sur-Saône presents a superb collection of vintage cars and bicycles in an exceptional château.\nBetween the Saône in the East and the Monts d'Or in the West, the village includes several neighborhoods each with their own identity.\nCailloux-sur-Fontaines\nIts typical heritage of the villages of the Val de Saône and its pedestrian routes offer you a relaxing stroll.\nCollonges-au-Mont-d'Or\nTypical village of the Monts d'Or with its golden stones, its banks and the international reputation of the restaurant Paul Bocuse.\nCouzon-au-Mont-d'Or\n10km north of Lyon, between the Saone and the Monts d'Or, this village will charm you with its atmosphere.\nCuris-au-Mont-d'Or\nThis small village of the Monts d'Or, born from its separation with St Germain in 1785, offers an entertaining visit in the heart of an abundant nature.\nFleurieu-sur-Saône\nVillage of Val de Saône, 15 km north of Lyon, on the left bank of the Saone, Fleurieu-sur-Saone is the land of adoption of the Guimet family.\nFontaines-Saint-Martin\nVillage with rural character just 12 km from the center of Lyon, on the heights of the Val de Saône.\nFormer working town, today is a dynamic city where life is good.\nCharming little village near the Dombes.\nMontanay\nRural village with a beautiful balcony overlooking the valley of this majestic river.\nThrough walks on the banks of the Saône, or in the heart of the village with recognized architectural heritage, let yourself be lulled by the charm of a shopping city at the water's edge.\nPoleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or\nA remarkable natural space where the setting sun on the facades of the yellow stone houses of the Monts d'Or will delight any walker.\nLocated along the Saône, between Villefranche and Lyon, this charming little village fits perfectly into the landscape of the Val de Saône.\nRochetaillée-sur-Saône\nVillage of character located just 10 km north of Lyon and whose restaurants, walks, museum and leisure activities will seduce you.\nSaint-Germain-au-Mont-d'Or\nThis village of Monts d'Or, located 20 km north of Lyon sneaks from the banks of the Saone to the summit of the Mont d'Or massif, in the heart of woods and forests.\nSaint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or\nThis beautiful little village in the Monts d'Or, located on the banks of the Saône 15 km north of Lyon, is entirely built of yellow stones extracted on site.\nSathonay-Village\nAlways marked by its strong agricultural character, Sathonay-Village will seduce you with its relaxing nature.\nAre you a tour operator, a travel agent, a coach company or a receptive operator? We are your privileged contact!\nThere is always something happening in Lyon! Our press office reserves you the warmest welcome.\nLooking for a new destination for your next convention, tradeshow or corporate event?\nAre you travelling as part of a group? Would you like a customized programme? Tour with professionals who have expert knowledge of their city and a passion for its history!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line775599"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9536357522010803,"wiki_prob":0.9536357522010803,"text":"TNPA Launches And Hands Over Two New Tugs For KZN Ports\nBy MI News Network | In: Shipping News | Last Updated on August 24, 2017\nTransnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) has celebrated a twin milestone for its KwaZulu-Natal ports as part of its R1.4 billion, nine-tug construction contract. On Thursday, 22 August the new USIBA tug was christened and named ahead of its delivery to the Port of Richards Bay, while the Port of Durban took delivery of its UMBILO tug which had been launched and named in May.\nThe vessels are the sixth and seventh respectively to roll off the production line on time and within budget. All nine tugs are being built by Southern African Shipyards in Durban.\nImage Credits: transnet.net\nThe name USIBA is derived from the isiZulu word for the Black-crowned Night-Heron, but can also refer to a feather. The Port of Richards Bay has a tradition of naming its marine fleet after treasured South African birds, such as the UKHOZI tug (eagle) and the older INDWE (blue crane).\nIn line with maritime tradition the ceremonial duty of christening the vessel was carried out by Lady Sponsor, Judith Nzimande. Nzimande is presently the President of the Zululand Chamber of Commerce and Industry. She also sits on the Executive Committee of Richards Bay Coal Terminal, one of the leading coal export terminals in the world based at TNPA’s top port in terms of cargo volumes, the Port of Richards Bay.\nSpeaking at the event, TNPA General Manager: Strategy, Nico Walters, said the latest milestones followed TNPA and Southern African Shipyards’ joint win of the Partnership Award in the Manufacturing category of the 2017 KZN Top Business Awards, powered by the Elan Property Group.\n“TNPA and Southern African Shipyards clinched the award for this project, which the awards panel recognised as demonstrating our commitment to developing South Africans, and ultimately strengthening the nation through shipbuilding and repair services. The panel deemed this operation exceptional in respect of transparency and timeous delivery,” he said.\nWalters said Southern African Shipyards was playing a proactive role in helping to unlock the potential of the Ocean Economy. He said the Durban-based ship builder had upheld the highest standards of sustainability and socio-economic responsibility throughout the project. He said, “This project is a shining example of the potential for Public Private Partnerships to create jobs and grow the economy,” he said.\nThrough the project TNPA and SAS have created 500 direct and 3500 indirect jobs with a minimum of 60% locally manufactured components. Subcontractors involved on the project include international subcontractors with local operations such as Barloworld Equipment, Siemens and Voith Schneider, as well as local contractors such as Bradgary Marine Shopfitters.\nThe nine tugs are being built for TNPA over three and a half years, as part of a wider fleet replacement programme that also includes new dredging vessels and new marine aviation helicopters. The programme is aimed at improving operational efficiency in the ports. Having new and a powerful tugs in its ports will better enable TNPA’s marine operations to speed up vessel turnaround times.\nUSIBA will be handed over to the Port of Richards Bay in November 2017. The eight tug is due to be delivered in February 2018 and the ninth and final tug in June 2018.\nTNPA’s new fleet of nine tugs are each 31 metres long with a 70 ton bollard pull. They feature the latest global technology such as Voith Schneider propulsion.\nWant To Avoid Accidents And Costly Mistakes On Ships?\nGet Practical Advices In eBooks Written By Experienced Maritime Professionals\n=>eBooks For Deck Department\n=>eBooks For Engine Department\nTags: TNPA tug boat","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1186652"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6287364959716797,"wiki_prob":0.3712635040283203,"text":"Scrapbook ››\nFranklin P. Welling\nFull view (jpeg: 59.75 KB)\nFranklin P. Welling from the collections of the Worthington Historical Society (WHS) may be used for educational purposes as long as it is not altered in any way and proper credit is given: \"Courtesy of the Worthington Historical Society, Worthington, OH.\" Prior written permission of the WHS is required for any other use of Franklin P. Welling. Contact WHS at info@worthingtonhistory.org to request permission.\nLearn more about copyright and access restrictions for use of materials from Worthington Memory.\nFranklin P. Welling is a picture, with genre photograph. Its dimensions are 4.7 in. x 6.7 in.\nIt was created in July 1935.\nWorthington Historical Society is the Contributor.\nFranklin \"Frank\" P. Welling (b. 1885, d. 1977) is pictured here in his office. He was a member of the 1903 graduating class of Worthington High School and was a graduate of Ohio State University's school of Architecture. He served three terms as recording clerk of the Ohio Senate and served as 1st deputy of the Supreme Court of Ohio for 21 years. He was a member of New England Lodge No. 4 F&AM.\nIt covers the topics court officials and employees and freemasons.\nIt covers the city Worthington.\nYou can find the original at Worthington Historical Society.\nThis file was reformatted digital in the format video/jpeg.\nThe Worthington Historical Society identification code is 80-G-1046.\nThe Worthington Memory identification code is whs0868.\nThis metadata record was human prepared by Worthington Libraries on October 19, 2005. It was last updated November 17, 2017.\nNew England Masonic...\nQueen of Bethel 37\nWorthington News Thursday, May 25, 1967\nOfficers Installed in Local Chapter, OES\nWorthington News Thursday, December 31, 1959\nRemember, explore & engage life in Worthington, Ohio","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line815565"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7128719687461853,"wiki_prob":0.7128719687461853,"text":"Womply Opened A Lehi Office In November, Now Has 100+ Utah-Based Employees With Plans To Keep…\n“Womply is expanding a lot of its functional leadership and departments in Utah.”\nWomply was founded in San Francisco in 2011. They also have an office in Portland, Oregon, and after years of measured success, it was decided that another location was needed to help maximize growth. So like any smart, young startup, Womply began examining options. They spoke with other companies who had also expanded throughout the United States, weighing the possibilities before circling in on one particular area: Lehi, Utah.\nWomply met with the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) and structured a deal that would add up to 175 jobs to Silicon Slopes, starting with the opening of a new office in November 2016. It is now March 2017 and over 100 of those jobs have already been filled, with Womply beginning to fill out a leadership team that grows, protects, and simplifies in Utah.\n“Womply has a lot of business traction but also a lot of potential,” said Brad Plothow, Head of Communications at Womply. “Womply is doing a rare thing for Utah — rather than just bringing a sales floor or call center into Utah as a company headquartered in San Francisco, Womply is expanding a lot of its functional leadership and departments in Utah. This is a good thing for Utah, it shows Silicon Valley is taking notice of not just the sales talent, but of the functional talent as well.”\nPlothow — most recently a partner at Method Communications — is part of this newly formed leadership team, joining some other Utah-based talent to round out the squad: Dave Rogers as VP of Sales, Kelly Morris as VP of Marketing, and Scott Sanford as VP of Operations.\nBoosted by a recent $30 million growth equity round from Sageview Capital, Womply has been able to quickly ramp up efforts across all three locations and Utah is seeing a portion of that benefit.\n“Womply ultimately decided to choose Utah for a handful of reasons,” said Plothow. “Industriousness and quality of the workforce….and the cost structure of running a business in Utah is much more advantageous than some of these larger markets that have major infrastructure costs. Obviously, there is a lot of room to grow here.”\nUntil now, Womply has flown mainly under the radar — this has been intentional, content to stay quiet until they were completely confident in what they offered. This article — and more importantly, the newfound emphasis on growth — should tell you that’s about to change.\n“There are a lot of advantages to not telling everybody what you’re doing from a product and strategic standpoint, until you get to a place you’re established — in Womply’s case, good distribution and a solid product,” said Plothow. “To its credit, Womply has been really deliberate about waiting to make sure that both product and distribution issues are really figured out, where the company can start scaling before they tell everybody what they’ve been up to.”\nWomply’s offerings concentrate on the world of small- and medium-sized businesses, providing a technology and data platform that helps to manage their front office functions. This comes from a variety of products, most notably a platform called Insights that helps with many different issues confronting small businesses — finding/identifying your best customers, finding/understanding revenue changes that occur over time, maintaining/improving your online reputation, and tracking your competitors and receiving notifications when they do things like alter hours of operations.\n“It also looks at the way your customers spend money,” said Plothow. “If you want to make a promotion that’s going to resonate, you will have some data visibility into what exactly is working for customers and how they’re spending money with you.”\nSo what’s the next step for Womply? Well, more growth. They will continue to expand in Utah while searching for other ways to improve the company. What happens after that remains to be seen…\n“To this point, the company has focused a lot of its attention on providing this suite of services to small businesses,” said Plothow. “We have a product strategy that includes launching individual products that are more specialized for small businesses, so there’s lots and lots of room to grow on the product side.”\nThe Flippin’ Traffic Movement Is A Success\nUtah State Legislation passes transportation bonding bill that enables I-15 Tech Corridor project to begin in 2018. When I was a Boy Scout, they taught us all sorts of cheers to make us\nNon-Tech Employees Working In Tech: Alex Porpora, WildWorks\nOur ongoing series explores the contributions of non-tech employees working at tech companies. Yesterday I took my daughter to the zoo. While we were there she asked the following questions: Why do seals","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line272266"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5312541127204895,"wiki_prob":0.4687458872795105,"text":"location-pin email telephone\nScot Bertram\nGeneral Manager, WRFH 101.7 FM\nKnorr Radio Studio\n@scotbertram\nThe above personal links are controlled by the individual and are not any form of representation of statement by Hillsdale College. They are provided as a convenience and views expressed on the sites may not reflect the views or opinions of the College.\n\"Being a good broadcaster is so much more than having the requisite technical training. It’s just as important to have knowledge about the world around you.\"\n— Scot Bertram\nAdditional Faculty Information for Scot Bertram\nB.A. in Broadcast Communication and Political Science, North Central College, 2002\nFill-In Host, The Steve Gruber Show (Michigan)\nFill-In Host, The Michael Koolidge Show (Illinois)\nFill-In Host, Watchdog Radio (Bloomington, IL)\nReporter, Illinois Radio Network/Illinois News Network\nAsk my parents about my youth and I suspect they will tell you I was not a normal child. One of my first words was “radio”. I asked for a subscription to USA Today for my eighth birthday. I began following elections closely at the age of ten. I spent hours in the library reading reference books about sports, history, politics, and pop culture through my teenage years. I desperately wanted to be informed and knowledgeable on issues and topics in the world around me.\nI also knew from a very early age I wanted to work in radio. I loved the intimacy of the medium and the connection made between host and listener. I was drawn in by its ability to entertain, inform, and communicate on a mass scale. Radio still is a powerful and vibrant tool, teaching skills that can be useful across a number of professions.\nMy career has taken me from a music-based format at my college station to sports radio in Chicago to news and talk in Rockford. I’ve interviewed rock stars at concert venues, sports legends at the Super Bowl and Spring Training, and powerful political figures and thinkers on the phone and at Radio Rows throughout the country.\nWhat I’ve learned is being a good broadcaster is so much more than having the requisite technical training. It’s just as important to have knowledge about the world around you — to know what has happened in the past and why it matters today. It’s practicing the art of the interview and staying sharp rhetorically. It’s having keen insights on what people are interested in and how to make information and arguments relatable to a wide audience. We focus on all that and more at Hillsdale and WRFH.\nI’m a broadcaster by trade, so I continue to stay active in the industry. I’m a frequent guest host on the Illinois-based “The Michael Koolidge Show” and continue to record interviews and podcasts for my personal website. This gives me real-world and real-time examples to bring into the classroom and keeps me in touch with professional contacts who could benefit our students down the road.\nMy wife and I live in Hillsdale with our two children. I’m originally from the Chicago area and remain a die-hard fan of the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bears. I once participated in a “Slam Dunk” contest on the floor of the old Chicago Stadium during halftime of a Bulls game (I lost).\nRachel's First Days on Campus\nThe Freshman Pledge\nThe Good, The True, and the Beautiful","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1391835"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7425382733345032,"wiki_prob":0.2574617266654968,"text":"Home > ESSO\nEarth System Science Organization(ESSO)\nThe Earth System Science Organization (ESSO) , New Delhi, operates as an executive arm of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) for it policies and programmes. The ESSO provides overall direction for the centres/units and review the implementation of the programs. The ESSO was established in October, 2007 as a virtual organization, bringing all meteorological and ocean development activities under one umbrella, recognizing the importance of strong coupling among various components of the earth viz. atmosphere, oceans, cryo-sphere and geo-sphere. It has four major branches of earth sciences, viz. (i) Ocean Science & Technology (ii) Atmospheric and Climate Science and (iii) Geoscience and Technology and (iv) Polar Science and Cryosphere. The sole purpose of the endeavour was to address holistically various aspects relating to earth processes for understanding the variability of earth system.\nThe ESSO is primarily aimed to develop and improve capability to forecast, weather, climate and hazard related phenomena for social, economic and environmental benefits including addressing aspects relating to climate change science, and climate services. ESSO is also responsible for development of technology towards the exploration and exploitation of marine resources in a sustainable way for the socio-economic benefit of the society by taking into account the global developments in the field of marine environment. One of the mandates of ESSO is also to promote research in polar science of both Antarctic and Arctic Regions to understand the various phenomenon and processes of these regions on global climate and weather, in particularly on the Indian Ocean.\nThe overall vision of the ESSO is to excel in knowledge and technology enterprise for the earth system science realm towards socio-economic benefit of the Indian sub-continent and in the Indian Ocean region. It has three major components :\nProvide scientific and technical support for both academic and applied research in Earth System sciences as a whole comprising the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and the geosphere, with particular reference to the Indian sub-continent and the surrounding oceans as well as the Polar Regions.\nProvide the Nation with the best possible services in forecasting the monsoons and other weather/climate parameters, ocean state including early warnings to natural disasters like storm surge, earthquakes, tsunamis and other phenomena through well integrated programs.\nSupport science and technology development for exploration and exploitation of ocean resources (living and non-living), ensuring their sustainable utilization.\nThese polices/programmes are being pursued through its following centres :\nCentre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology (CMLRE)\nNational Center of Coastal Research (NCCR)\nNational Center for Seismology (NCS)\nNational Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF)\nIndia Meteorological Department (IMD)\nNational Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT)\nNational Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR)\nIndian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM)\nNational Center for Earth Sceince Studies(NCESS)\nUnder the framework of ESSO, a well established mechanism has been put in place to review and monitor the various programs on half-yearly basis, which are generally held in the month of April and October. The primary objective of the review mechanism is to formulate proposals for Annual Plan and apply a mid course corrections, if required.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1208821"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8895974159240723,"wiki_prob":0.8895974159240723,"text":"4 Things To Know About Illinois’ Proposed Trust Act\nWBEZ Staff\nDeportees wait to be transferred at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, IL in March 2008. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)\nRepublican Gov. Bruce Rauner will sign into law a bill that prohibits law enforcement officials from detaining illegal immigrants solely on their immigration status, his office announced this week.\nDuring an interview on WBEZ’s Morning Shift last week, Rauner indicated he supported the measure, known as the Trust Act.\n“It’s supported by law enforcement, it’s supported by the business community, it’s supported by the immigration community,” Rauner told Morning Shift host Tony Sarabia. “I think it seems very reasonable.”\nWBEZ reporter Odette Yousef explains what’s in the bill and what it means for Chicago. Here are four key takeaways.\n1) What’s in the Trust Act\nOdette Yousef: The Trust Act is really very narrow. It deals exclusively with this question of what local and state law enforcement officials should do if they get a written request from immigration enforcement to place what’s called an “immigration hold” — also called an “administrative detainer” — on somebody that had been in their custody.\nSo basically, if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) suspects that somebody who had been in local or state custody is undocumented, they’ll send a written request to that agency and say, “Hold onto this person for up to 48 hours. We want to do a little research and find out if this person is here illegally or not.”\nWhat the Trust Act says is local and state law enforcement officials will not honor those requests. But they may comply if there is an actual criminal warrant that’s issued by a judge to hold someone.\nThis basically clarifies the limits of what local law enforcement will do when it comes to immigration enforcement.\n2) What isn’t in the Trust Act\nYousef: Months ago when we started discussing the Trust Act, there were several different components to it. It was more than 40 pages long.\nI think the two main things that have been stripped out of it are items that concerned what they called “safe zones.” What they were initially pushing for was to have limits on ICE agents conducting raids or enforcement actions in places like schools or hospitals, places that are publicly administered. That was stripped out. I believe it’s in a separate bill they’re trying to work on.\nThe other thing that they stripped out was the U-visa stuff. U-visas are visas that grant temporary legal status to an immigrant who has reported or cooperated extensively with law enforcement in the prosecution of a crime.\nIf somebody wants to apply for a U-visa, they basically have to get a certification from the law enforcement agency saying that they cooperated before they can apply for the U-visa. Immigrant advocates wanted a clerical process to become standardized across the state. I think that there were some concerns that this was perhaps going to place too much of a burden on some local law enforcement agencies.\n3) How the Trust Act differs from Chicago’s sanctuary policies\nYousef: The thing that many of the immigrant activists like about the Trust Act is that it doesn’t have any exceptions in it. So under no circumstances can local law enforcement honor an administrative detainer request.\nIn Chicago, there are certain cases where law enforcement may cooperate with ICE. That is if the detainer request is concerning somebody who has an outstanding criminal warrant or if that individual has been convicted or charged with a felony. Or — and this has been one of the larger sticking points — if that individual is in the Chicago Police Department’s gang database.\nThat gang database has been a really big issue because people say there’s a lack of transparency regarding how somebody gets put into that gang database. They’re not notified if they’re put on it, and then if somebody believes that they were incorrectly put in the gang database, there doesn’t appear to be any sort of recourse to take yourself off the database. So this could have pretty significant repercussions for somebody if they also happen to be undocumented.\n4) How the Trust Act will impact Chicago\nYousef: My understanding from Andy Kang, the legal director for Advancing Justice-Chicago, is that basically the Trust Act will apply to only parts of the state that don’t have their own sanctuary policies. So we’ve got places — like Evanston, Skokie, Cook County — that have their own policies and so, who knows?\nI think that the question is still open. Once the governor signs the Trust Act, will that propel further changes to the city’s sanctuary policy? We just don’t know.\nBut I think that there’s also this interesting tension building where there’s an image that Chicago has, and that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has, on the national stage of fighting for immigrants when there is a significant portion of the immigrant activist community in Chicago that says, “He’s not standing with us at all.”\nThis interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Click the “play” button to hear the entire segment, which was produced by Carrie Shepherd. Web story written by Justin Bull.\n#Bruce Rauner\n#Trust Act\nImmigrant Groups Urge Governor Rauner To Sign TRUST Act\nIllinois Legislators Aim To Restore Immigrants' Faith In Police\nUndocumented And A Victim Of A Violent Crime\nRauner Suggests He’d Support Bill That Protects Undocumented Immigrants","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1015178"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7762195467948914,"wiki_prob":0.7762195467948914,"text":"Monkees book \"Reel to Real\" experiences another publication delay\nIn June 2017, The Monkees Live Almanac reported about a new listing on Amazon for the long-awaited Monkees book by Gary Strobl, Henry Diltz, and Harvey Kubernik. Entitled The Monkees: From Reel to Real, the online retailer advertised a release date of September 18, 2017. When speaking with Omnibus Press (the publisher of Reel to Real) last summer after the book appeared on Amazon, the Live Almanac was able to attain more information, including that the publication date had actually been delayed to 2018.\nUnfortunately, one year later, it can now be reported that The Monkees: From Reel to Real is experiencing another postponement. Today I spoke with Matthew from Omnibus Press, and he was kind enough to take time to update fans about the book. \"October 2019 is the current pub date,\" Matthew relayed to the Live Almanac. \"The book is a mighty tome and we are putting in the work to make sure that this is the best book it can be. Rest assured it will be worth the wait when it arrives. We’re obviously very keen for the fans to know that we’re taking the book seriously and are determined to bring everyone a book about the Monkees that will stand as their definitive story.\"\nThe Monkees Live Almanac will continue to report more information about this project as it becomes available. And a special thanks to Matthew at Omnibus Press for providing the latest updates on the publication of Reel to Real.\n​UPDATE 7/23/2019: The Live Almanac exchanged emails today with the Commercial Director of Omnibus Press who now informs the site that Reel to Real is now expected to be published in late 2020. \"I'm afraid we still don’t have a publication date, but we are getting closer!\"\nOn location filming the '97 TV special\nHere's Ward Sylvester, Monkees collector and confidant Gary Strobl, Davy Jones, and Monkees photographer Michael G. Bush in early 1997 during filming of The Monkees' ABC television special, as photographed by the legendary Henry Diltz.\n(Photo by Henry Diltz)\n\"Reel to Real\" publishing date delayed\nEarlier this week, The Monkees Live Almanac reported about a new listing on Amazon for the long-awaited Monkees book by Gary Strobl, Henry Diltz, and Harvey Kubernik. Entitled The Monkees: From Reel to Real, the online retailer advertised a release date of September 18, 2017. The Live Almanac can now confirm that the book has been delayed to 2018.\nSophie, a representative from Omnibus Press (the publisher of Reel to Real) was highly enthused about the project while also explaining the postponement. \"We're thrilled to be publishing this title,\" she told the Live Almanac. \"The pub date is actually being put back so we can incorporate some new material. It's likely to be delayed until September of next year, though we may publish in the spring. It's going to be a truly beautiful thing, so I hope you'll forgive the new date!\"\nBe sure to stay tuned to The Monkees Live Almanac for further updates.\nUPDATE 6/12/2018: Monkees book \"Reel to Real\" experiences another publication delay\nUPDATE 7/23/2019: The Live Almanac exchanged emails today with the Commercial Director of Omnibus Press who now informs the site that Reel to Real is now expected to be published in late 2020. \"I'm afraid we still don’t have a publication date, but we are getting closer!\"\nAmazon lists \"The Monkees: From Reel to Real\" book for September release\n​Gary Strobl is a lifelong Monkees fan and collector who has been compiling a book on The Monkees since 1983, conducting research and amassing numerous amounts of interviews through the years. Strobl, in collaboration with noted rock and Monkees photographer Henry Diltz, and journalist Harvey Kubernik, announced in May 2013 that a deal had been signed to publish their work. And now, it looks like Gary and company's long-awaited book on The Monkees will become a reality!\nAmazon now shows a listing for The Monkees: From Reel to Real from Omnibus Press, with a release date of September 18, 2017. The online retailer provides the following description for the 496 page hardcover book:\nIn 1965 America launched its assault on The Beatles - a blueprint boy band called The Monkees who against all the odds triumphed with their music, their personalities and their zany half-hour TV shows. The quartet of Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith spent three years in a blazing spotlight before disintegrating into a mess of recriminations and ill-feeling. With contributions from all the major players in the Monkees' saga - including the four Monkees themselves - Reel To Real is an oral history of the group that follows their adventures through to their eventual split. Along the way we learn how they came together, the background to their movie Head! and the financial chaos that loomed with the realization that the only ones who didn't make any money out of The Monkees were The Monkees themselves.\nThank you very much to Dan McKenzine for giving the heads-up to the Live Almanac about the Amazon listing. Stay tuned for more details!\nUPDATE 6/22/2017: ​\"Reel to Real\" publishing date delayed\nIs Gary Strobl's Monkees book ready for publication?\nGary Strobl is a longtime Monkees collector and confidant of the group. Fans will remember his efforts in organizing Monkees conventions and, for a brief time in the '80s, contributing to the short-lived Monkees West fanzine.\nGary has been compiling a book on The Monkees since 1983, conducting research and amassing numerous interviews through the years. Strobl, in collaboration with Henry Diltz and Harvey Kubernik, announced in 2013 that a deal had been signed to publish their work.\nThis evening, Live Almanac reader Brian found the following listing on a Belgium-based website that specializes in illustrated books:\nThe publication date listed above (October 2015) could be an error, or perhaps the book was due to be released last fall and experienced a delay. All things considered, this could be a good sign that the book will finally see the light of day, and just in time for The Monkees' 50th Anniversary. Keep checking back with the Live Almanac for additional updates.\nAn interview with Gary Strobl on the Headquarters radio show\nGary with Davy Jones in 2012\nGary Strobl is a longtime Monkees collector and confidant of the group. Fans will remember his efforts in organizing Monkees conventions and, for a brief time in the '80s, his contributions to the publication Monkees West.\nGary has been compiling a book on The Monkees since 1983, conducting research and amassing numerous amounts of interviews through the years. Strobl, in collaboration with Henry Diltz and Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik, previously announced that a deal had been signed to publish their work.\nIn this June 1988 interview on the Headquarters radio program, Gary speaks with hosts Paris Stachtiaris and John Di Maio about how he became a Monkees fan and reveals intricacies behind the work on his book.\nEarlier in 1988, Gary appeared on The Monkees Hour and shared a portion of an interview that he had conducted with Monkees wardrobe designer Gene Ashman before his death in October 1987. As a bonus, here is the audio of that interview:\nPeter Tork with Gene Ashman\nMore about Gary Strobl\nHenry Diltz talks about Gary Strobl's Monkees book on Facebook\nThis message appeared today on Henry's Facebook page:\nStrobl signs contact to publish Monkees book\nStrobelight Productions Monkees catalog\nI've been digging deep into my Monkees collection lately and turned up this old 1987 catalog from Gary Strobl. Does anyone else remember this?\nGary is a longtime Monkees collector and confidant of the group, and for a brief time during Monkeemania in the '80s he published Monkees West. Gary also sold merchandise, and this particular catalog below offered everything from buttons to posters to pennants, and even Gene Ashman 8-button shirts. Note the front cover and its mention of Gary's book on The Monkees. Perhaps this will finally become a reality soon.\n(Click all images to enlarge)\nMicky to appear on 'Breakfast With The Beatles' on Sunday (12/15 at 9am PST) - UPDATED WITH VIDEO\n'Breakfast With the Beatles' turns 30\nUPDATE #1: Micky's appearance included discussions about the 2013 Monkees tour, the Headquarters and Head albums, The Monkees' confrontation with Don Kirshner at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1967, as well as Micky's recollections about his attendance at a Beatles recording session for \"Good Morning Good Morning,\" which ultimately appeared on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Micky's version of the song was played at this point.) His Beatles song request was \"Oh Darling\" from Abbey Road, a favorite of Micky's and one that is often on the setlist at his solo shows.\nUPDATE #2: Here's video of the event. Check out Gary Strobl in the studio holding a camera and filming Micky's appearance. (The video below does work despite looking like it's empty!)\n'Talking Television' celebrates Monkees 40th Anniversary\nIn 2006, internet radio host Dave White celebrated The Monkees' 40 Anniversary on his Talking Television show. Along with Monkees fan, writer and publisher Bill Groves, they welcomed guests Steve Blauner, former partner of Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider; Monkees expert and collector Gary Strobl; and former New Monkees Marty Ross and Dino Kovas.\nFast forward to 30:40 for the formal start of the Monkees portion of the program (although there are other smaller Monkees bits before that point).\nA big thanks to Bill Groves himself who tracked down the archive of this program, edited it and converted it, as well as Dave White for allowing it to be streamed here on the Live Almanac. A couple of Bill's articles from his Television Chronicles magazine are also available on the site, including a look back at the television show, an interview with Henry Diltz, and a piece on The New Monkees.\nConvention program\nThe 3rd Annual Los Angeles Monkees Convention took place in Universal City, California on July 9 and 10, 1988. Among the guests were longtime Monkees associates, friends, and family members.\nBelow are a few pictures from the event that come from my collection. You'll see Chip Douglas, who produced what are widely regarded as The Monkees' two best albums, Headquarters and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.; Coco Dolenz (Micky's sister) and Janelle Scott (Micky's mother); David Pearl (Peter's stand-in on the TV show and a friend and associate of the group); Julie Newmar (actress and guest star on The Monkees); longtime Monkees collector Gary Strobl and Monkees screenwriter Dave Evans; and finally, famous character actor Vito Scotti, who appeared in an episode of The Monkees and in the band's feature film, Head. (Click all photos to enlarge.)\nCoco Dolenz and Janelle Scott\nDavid Pearl\nGary Strobl and Dave Evans\nThe convention was dedicated to the late Gene Ashman, wardrobe designer on The Monkees television series and the man responsible for creating the 8-button shirts worn by the group.\nStrobl signs contract to publish Monkees book\nGary with Davy Jones in Feb. 2012\nLongtime Monkees collector and expert Gary Strobl has apparently signed a deal to publish his long talked about book on The Monkees. Monkees and rock photographer Henry Diltz is part of the project. Strobl is also discussing the possibility of releasing live film footage from the 1997 UK tour.\nThis message appeared on the Forgotten Hits blog on Sunday:\nHello Kent,\nHow are you? Busy as a bee, I'm sure. Thank you for your amazing Forgotten Hits. I am reaching out to you and your readers to help me find the missing pieces of The Monkees puzzle. Henry Diltz and I along with Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik have recently signed a contract with Omnibus Press to put together a 500-page hardcover, full-color coffee table book on the original phenomenon of The Monkees. I am trying to track down anybody who may have been connected to or experienced the original Monkeemania. I am looking for interviews, original newspaper clippings, photos, radio station surveys, concert tickets, posters, etc. from the time frame of 1962 - 1973. Anybody who contributes to this project will get a proper credit in the book. I want to make this the most definitive book possible on The Monkees. I am sending you the PDF which defines the goal of this book. Our beloved David Jones told me on February 12, 2012, at the Burbank Marriott, \"Gary, it's time to finish your book. I will help you get it done.\" We also talked about editing together the last seven concerts with all four Monkees that I shot in England in March, 1997. I want to fulfill these dreams for both David and me. I could sure use your help. Anyway, drop me a line when you have the chance. Here are a some photos from the last weekend I spent with David. David Keeler took these wonderful photos. I hope you and your family are in good health. Onward and upward!\n(There was no contact information provided in order to submit items to Gary.)\nMonkees West publication (#2, Fall 1987)\nMonkees West was a mini-magazine published by a variety of people including Gary Strobl (longtime Monkees collector) and Gene Ashman (wardrobe designer on The Monkees television series). There were only two issues ever released. Here is the second and final issue from the fall of 1987. It includes an excerpt from Davy's book, They Made a Monkee Out of Me, a great picture of The Monkees and the crew of their television series, an interview with Ashman (including a discussion about the origins of the Monkees 8-button shirts) and a spotlight on the pilot episode.\nThe first issue can be found here. For easier reading, click on each image and then click on it again.\nThe cast and crew of The Monkees television series\n\"Dr. Duck's Super Secret All-Purpose Sauce\" was one of Michael's follow-ups to \"Television Parts.\" The home video release was a montage of sketch comedy with a variety of stars (including Bobcat Goldthwait, Ed Begley, Jr., Jimmy Buffett, Rosanne Cash, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shandling).\nMonkees West publication (#1, Spring 1987)\nMonkees West was a mini-magazine published by a variety of people including Gary Strobl (longtime Monkees collector) and Gene Ashman (wardrobe designer on The Monkees television series). There were only two issues ever released. Here is the first from the spring of 1987. It includes a recap of the 1986 Reunion Tour, an interview with rock photographer Henry Diltz, and a spotlight on the \"Hitting the High Seas\" episode.\nThe second issue can be found here. For easier reading, click on each image and then click on it again.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1480412"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7446057796478271,"wiki_prob":0.7446057796478271,"text":"Grand Theft Auto IV's box art displays several characters, including Niko Bellic, Mikhail Faustin, Little Jacob and Johnny Klebitz.\nRockstar Toronto (PC)\nRockstar Games[1]\nLeslie Benzies\nSimon Lashley\nKeith McLeman[2]\nMichael Hunterg\nPlayStation 3, Xbox 36016 April 2008\nMicrosoft Windows [3]\nSandbox, third-person shooter, action-adventure\nMode(s)\nSingle-player, multiplayer\nGrand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is the 11th Grand Theft Auto game in the series. The game was made by Rockstar North, and was published and released by Rockstar Games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions were released around the world to much hype on April 29th 2008, having received very good reviews from many reviewers.[source?]\nGameplay[change | change source]\nGrand Theft Auto IV has the same basic gameplay from the earlier games in the series. The player can walk, run, swim, climb, jump and use weapons and basic hand-to-hand combat. Players can steal and drive many types of cars, boats, helicopters and motorcycles. Players can explore and choose how they want to play the game. Players can complete missions, but these are not needed to get farther into the game to open content. When the player does a crime and the police see it, they will start to follow the player and try to catch him.\n↑ Tanaka, John (2008-04-22). \"GTAIV Heads to Japan\". IGN. Retrieved 2008-04-25.\n↑ \"Full Cast and Crew for GTA IV\".\n↑ Thang, Jimmy (2008-10-30). \"GTA IV PC Delayed to December\". IGN. Retrieved 2008-10-30.\n↑ Bramwell, Tom (November 10, 2008). \"Grand Theft Auto IV Hands-on\". EuroGamer. Retrieved 2008-11-10.\n↑ \"Grand Theft Auto IV on Steam\". Valve. 2008-11-19. Retrieved 2008-11-21.\n↑ \"Grand Theft Auto IV\". BBFC. 2008-04-01. Retrieved 2008-04-04.\n↑ \"BBFC removes GTA IV info from site\". Eurogamer. 2008-03-31. Retrieved 2008-04-01.\n↑ \"Grand Theft Auto IV Game (Multi Platform)\". 2007-12-13. Retrieved 2008-12-26.\n↑ \"Grand Theft Auto IV - PC Game (PC)\". 2008-11-04. Retrieved 2008-12-26.\n↑ \"Decisions Database Summary - Grand Theft Auto IV\". OFLC (NZ). 2008-02-27. Retrieved 2008-04-15.\n↑ Xbox.com | Official Xbox 360 UK | Grand Theft Auto IV\nRetrieved from \"https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grand_Theft_Auto_IV&oldid=6623934\"\n2008 video games\nPages using infobox video game with unknown parameters\nArticles using Infobox video game using locally defined parameters\nThis page was last changed on 31 July 2019, at 16:11.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line869201"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5002349615097046,"wiki_prob":0.5002349615097046,"text":"Bubbling Up\nHighlights, notable events, and more up-to-date news from the Foundation.\nKaiser Health News Midwest\nPosts by CEO Bob Hughes\nApril 24, 2019 | By: Kristy Klein Davis, Chief Strategy Officer\nPolicy Work as a Tool of Change – Our Health Policy Journey\nKristy Klein Davis, Vice President of Strategy and Learning\nOur mission as a Foundation, to improve the health and well-being of people and communities most in need, is ambitious. Since our founding in 2000, we have known that if we’re truly committed to this, we’ll need to use a variety tools and tactics, take some risk, and have the long-view in mind. Given that, engaging in the policy process is an essential piece of the puzzle for us, as we view our health policy work as a cross-cutting function that enhances all that we do across all issues. This includes policy driven by both state and local government as well as policy adopted by organizations operating in local communities. We added a full Health Policy portfolio to our work in 2003 and have been engaged in a wide range of related efforts ever since.\nAfter a decade and a half of work, we had collected many individual stories of impact, success, and lessons learned within the portfolio. What we had not yet done was write the overarching story of health policy and looked at the interconnectivity of the individual projects and efforts as a comprehensive collection. As a learning organization, we recognized that doing this would trigger new insights and generate big questions that could help shape an even more impactful health policy agenda in the future. In 2018, we engaged Stephen Isaacs of Health Policy Associates to conduct an investigative writing project to craft a big-picture narrative of our health policy work thus far, aimed at giving us a fresh look at the work many of our staff and partners engage in every day.\nWe are pleased to share the report with our partners and others in the field, with hopes that the lessons we have learned may be helpful to others. The report covers a lot of ground. It provides insight on how the Foundation was formed and describes the effort that has gone into establishing a nonpartisan Health Policy portfolio in a partisan political environment. Most importantly, the report lifts up the stories of our partners who are working to further health equity and ensure that everyone in Missouri has a fair and just opportunity to access health care. Each story spans years of hard work and is a testament to the passionate, hardworking organizations and people with whom we work.\nAs expected, the resulting narrative has given us the ability to see our challenges and opportunities in a whole new light. The piece puts the work into the context of the broader environmental trends in state and national politics that shape the possibilities and limitations of our undertakings. Capturing the long view offered a different perspective on individual stories, providing clarity into how change happens over time and how our work interacts with and responds to an environment that has transformed drastically over the course of the last 15 years.\nWe want to acknowledge and thank those partners who were interviewed for candidly sharing their experiences. This report and its findings would not be possible without their perspectives, and we look forward to continuing to work alongside them in the years to come.\nFoundation News, Health Policy\nBack to AllNext Post","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1001000"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6090967655181885,"wiki_prob":0.3909032344818115,"text":"Shah, H.U. and D.R. Lawrence. \"A Study of End User Computing and the Provision of Tool Support to Advance End User Empowerment.\" JOEUC 8.1 (1996): 13-21. Web. 17 Jan. 2020. doi:10.4018/joeuc.1996010102\nShah, H., & Lawrence, D. (1996). A Study of End User Computing and the Provision of Tool Support to Advance End User Empowerment. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC), 8(1), 13-21. doi:10.4018/joeuc.1996010102\nShah, H.U. and D.R. Lawrence. \"A Study of End User Computing and the Provision of Tool Support to Advance End User Empowerment,\" Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC) 8 (1996): 1, accessed (January 17, 2020), doi:10.4018/joeuc.1996010102\nInfoSci-Journal Disciplines Computer Science, Security, and Information Technology\nA Study of End User Computing and the Provision of Tool Support to Advance End User Empowerment\nH.U. Shah (Aston University, UK) and D.R. Lawrence (University of Wolverhampton, UK)\nSource Title: Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC) 8(1)\nCopyright: © 1996 |Pages: 9\nDOI: 10.4018/joeuc.1996010102\nThe increasing importance of end user computing (EUC) and the benefits that it brings to an organization are being recognized. We identify the characteristics of the various types of users involved in EUC. A number of risks are perceived to exist with EUC and we make recommendations for the management and control of EUC. An important area is that of intelligent tool support. We believe that the provision of such tool support would enable the concept of EUC to be further advanced. The characteristics and benefits of this type of tool are outlined. We refer to the required tool as a Computer Aided User Systems Evolution (CAUSE) tool - this emphasizes the intended central role of the business user, and reflects an evolutionary approach to end user systems development. Our research has led us to conclude that there are business users who could realize significant business benefits if they had the use of a CAUSE tool. Such a tool would enable them to independently design and build complex computerized information systems. We provide details of research which is intended to lead to the development of a prototype CAUSE tool. The research includes the study of the sophistication of participants in EUC.\nPurchase this article to continue reading all 9 pages >","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1493555"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9720975756645203,"wiki_prob":0.9720975756645203,"text":"Gulf Today\nMost searched related results\n​ 'A long ride': 50 years ago, a dress rehearsal for the Moon landing\nApollo 10 Commander Tom Stafford pats the nose of a stuffed Snoopy.\nAs Earth grew ever smaller below his spacecraft, Apollo 10 commander Tom Stafford made an unusual request to mission control.\nThe year was 1969, and his vessel was the first to be equipped with a color camera, which was beaming live images to an awestruck global audience.\n\"I was feeling real high,\" recalled Stafford, who is now 88 and the last surviving member of the crew.\n\"I said: 'Think you could call over to London and tell the president of the Flat Earth Society that he's wrong?\nIt was a light moment during a mission of paramount importance: 50 years ago this week, Apollo 10 set off to finalize the preparations for Apollo 11's lunar landing.\nThe mission's objectives included an eight-hour orbit in a lunar module that Stafford flew down to within nine miles (14 kilometers) of the Moon's surface.\nApollo 10 paved the way for Neil Armstrong's \"giant leap for mankind\" two months later -- a historic milestone and a colossal geopolitical win for the United States at the height of the Cold War.\nNarrow escape\nThe US entered the space race well behind the Soviet Union, which put the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into orbit in 1957, and sent up the first human, Yuri Gagarin, four years later.\nTo catch up, the Gemini program was conceived to devise rendezvous and docking techniques for an eventual mission to the Moon.\n\"As a boy I'd read about Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon -- you'd see these spaceships flying together. Nobody had ever done it,\" Stafford said at a Washington event commemorating the anniversary.\nThe Oklahoma native was chosen for the two-man Gemini 6A mission, which could have ended in tragedy had it not been for the quick thinking of Commander Wally Schirra.\nSeconds before lift-off on December 12, 1965, they realized the engines of their Titan II rocket had cut out.\nTom Stafford is being shown a pennant bearing the Peanuts comic book character Snoopy.\nSnoopy to the Moon\nBut perhaps Stafford's finest hour would be the Apollo 10 mission from May 18-26, 1969.\nIt became synonymous with Snoopy and Charlie Brown in the minds of the public, because the three-man crew named their lunar and command modules after the iconic cartoon characters.\n\"NASA developed a relationship with Charles Schulz, who drew Peanuts,\" he explained.\nThe names were said to have caused some consternation among NASA management, which felt they lacked sufficient gravitas -- accordingly, \"Eagle\" and \"Columbia\" were chosen for Apollo 11.\nThe Apollo 10 crew could have been chosen to land on the Moon, but for the fact that NASA had not shaved enough weight off their lander at the time, added Stafford.\nOf course, they couldn't actually see it until they were upon it, because it was eclipsed by the Earth on their trajectory.\n\"Kind of a buggy feeling -- you're going somewhere you couldn't see,\" he said with a laugh.\n'Keep things simple'\nStafford says that he remains struck to this day by the sheer size of the boulders they witnessed in some of the Moon's craters, which he compared to modern-day stadiums like the Superdome in New Orleans.\nOn the return journey, the Apollo 10 crew achieved a speed of Mach 37 (about 25,000 miles per hour) as they entered Earth's atmosphere -- a record which still stands.\nStafford's advice for missions returning to the Moon and heading for Mars are two-fold.\n\"Number one: keep things as simple as possible\" as complexity magnifies the risk, he said.\nSecondly, he suggested involving astronauts with the development from the get-go, as was done with the Gemini and Apollo programs -- \"not somebody saying, 'Here's a spacecraft, go fly it.' It doesn't work that way.\"\nMoon NASA\nNASA picks new teams to study Moon, asteroids\nNASA has selected eight new teams to conduct fundamental and applied research about the Moon, near Earth asteroids, and the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos and their near space environments.\nNASA prepares to send 'first woman and next man' on Moon\nAs the world marked the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, the US space agency said it has doubled down on its next giant leap with the Artemis programme that would take \"the first woman and the next man\" to the lunar surface.\nWomankind's giant leap: who will be the first female moonwalker?\nThe new program has been named Artemis after Apollo's twin-sister in Greek mythology, and the space agency has said that the mission will see the first woman to stride the lunar surface.\nNASA engineers install legs, wheels on Mars 2020 rover\nNASA engineers have recently installed the legs and wheels, known as the mobility suspension on the Mars 2020 rover, according to a latest release of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).\nShare stories with us securely and confidentially\nPakistan through the eyes of an Emirati vlogger\nKhalid Al Ameri, a famous Emirati vlogger, fell in love with Pakistan and its people during his recent trip to the different areas of the country.\nChina's birth rate hits lowest level since 1949\nChina's birth rate dropped last year to its lowest level since the Communist country was founded in 1949, adding to concerns that an ageing society and shrinking workforce will pile pressure on a slowing economy.\nMark Feb.26 on your calendar for yummy treats as Dubai Food Festival returns\nThe much-awaited Dubai Food Festival (DFF) returns for its seventh edition on Feb.26 and will run until March 14.\nRebel indigenous Mexican weaver talks to his threads\nIndigenous weaver and fashion designer Alberto Lopez knew he wanted to be a traditional weaver early on, but there was a problem: the artisans who worked the looms in his village in the lush mountains of southern Mexico were all women.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1472839"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5845767855644226,"wiki_prob":0.4154232144355774,"text":"REWATCHING: BETWEEN A YUK AND A HARD PLACE\nREWATCHING: BETWEEN A YUK AND A HARD PLACE Jun 29, 2010 15:36:59 GMT -5\nPost by diane on Jun 29, 2010 15:36:59 GMT -5\nLast Edit: Jun 29, 2010 18:15:50 GMT -5 by diane\nYou passed....yuk...yuk...\nNo, I didn't......I actually wrote the wrong name for the episode......Yuk, yuk to me!!!!\nI am going to post early.......will be AWOL for a couple of hours, so rather early than late....\nI have really been thinking about questions, and am a little stumped. Now, I could post the ones that usually come to my head when I watch this episode.....(Were the writers smoking crack?.... Does anybody REALLY like this episode?....), but I am trying to keep an open mind.\nSo my admission question is.......Convince me -- what do you like about this episode?\nThere are some script omissions that I will post later tonight.. It amazes me that there are omissions, given the fact that they had to add the bloopers to fill up the time...but I will post them. Most are pretty unmemorable...but I do think you are gonna like one!\nPost by lin212 on Jun 29, 2010 18:33:23 GMT -5\ndiane, I too am having a problem with questions for this one. It is difficult to analyze David and Maddie because they have been invaded by some alien characters. Nothing means anything anymore...the story of D and M is going nowhere, so what's the point? Other than the brief moment in the elevator, the emotion seems flat to me. Sorry I'm not my usual positive self, but give me a break - it's Season 5. Anyway, I noticed that this episode was written by Kerry Ehrin - Kerry Ehrin who wrote so many of our favorites - \"Money Talks\", \"Portrait of Maddie\", \"The Man Who Cried Wife\", \"Blonde on Blonde\", \"To Heiress Human\", \"Father Knows Last\" and \"The Flesh Was Made Word\". I know that we often blame the random Season 5 writers for the the horror of Season 5, so are you surprised that Kerry penned this one? Do you think that someone was pulling her strings and/or editing her work? By the way, it was her last.\nLast Edit: Jun 29, 2010 18:36:19 GMT -5 by lin212\nPost by graycav56 on Jun 29, 2010 18:49:43 GMT -5\nOK, so I do have a question, or at least a discussion starter.\nIt has to do with David's disappearing act from Blue Moon for those two weeks and links to his rage in the elevator.\nWas David's two week hiatus his way of decompressing after the last 6-7 months of emotional torture? It seemed completely different than his supportive stance at the end of the previous episode.\nWas his attack at the speaker an attempt to shield Maddie...or was it to shield HIM from further angst. Recall this is the SECOND baby he lost...even if Maddie tells him that it wasn't his.\nJun 29, 2010 18:21:43 GMT -5 diane said:\nErr, Cybill looked pretty.\nI think the elevator scene was decent, up to the end and the inane singing. I mean, Maddie, as we all know, is not a very religious person, and seeing her belting out spirituals is a bit out of character.\nMy admission question for tonight:\nHow can two people that have shared so much together have nothing to say when trapped in an elevator?\nEven though this one bugs the crap out of me, I do like it. Up until the elevator doors open and they sing, that is. After that it's just plain old YUK!!\nWhy do I like it? Because Maddie and David have one of their most intriguing conversations in the car. David obviously knows Maddie is taking on cases, working harder and longer simply to avoid what has happened to her, them and the baby they lost. They bicker over who is in denial and what is being denied. They are on the verge of opening up to each other...\"baring their souls\"...until Maddie tells David to go first. He pulls over and we (or maybe just me!) are led to believe he is going to lay it all on the line with her only to pick up a hitchhiker instead. Very convenient for David, as he still seems afraid to be the first AGAIN to admit his feelings for Maddie.\nBut...I don't blame him one bit!\nJun 29, 2010 19:12:01 GMT -5 beesnbears said:\nIndeed. This scene could have been so much better had they used it to better effect. The early silence was effective, as was David's violent encounter with the speaker and them finally coming to grips with the loss of the baby. It was the next piece that drives me nuts. Instead of some decent dialogue that could be used to set the conditions for the future, we get a crappy duet and an unspoken agreement to just act like the last year never happened. Arg!\nOK, one more thing I liked. Bert's comment \"What I wouldn't give to be the man who sired you\". So wonderfully creepy and thoughtful in Bert's skewed way.\nRegarding Kerry Ehrin....I think there are some real parts where she totally understands and knows Maddie and David.\nThe opening scene with Maddie waking at 3:30am, doing laundry, diving into work overload, accusing David of not working, etc.. I can see Maddie dealing with her situation in that way.\nDavid tiptoeing around the office, afraid to say much to Maddie, walking out of the office when she starts in on him about work. It's what he does.\nThe denial conversation in the car was one of their best car scenes, imo.\nShe does a pretty good job of painting us a picture of two people who are obviously hurting and need each other. And then she throws in Agnes to have her come right out and say it with \"more holes than one of Bert's socks.\" I think that is one of Ms. DiPesto's best lines!\nI will say that it seems once the elevator doors open it's as if she was influenced (coerced, maybe ) to go a totally different direction. I can't help but feel as though, if she had been allowed, we would have heard a conversation between them that allowed for some sort of reconciliation other than rolling around in a deflated hot air balloon.......\nI so hope diane's script secrets helps to support this wishful thinking of mine!!\nnotuagain\nPost by notuagain on Jun 29, 2010 19:33:10 GMT -5\nI agree Lin212! Season 5 is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's podMaddie and podDavid. Until you watch season 5 you don't realize the extent of Glenn Caron's creative control. I don't think he just wrote the dialogue... (I think the so-called writers of each episode more or less wrote the plot of the episodes--and Caron probably even tinkered with that. ) I believe Glenn's influence on this show can not be overstated. When he left Moonlighting-- the mind, heart, soul, and even libido of the show went with him.\nAbout David's hiatus.\nWell, I never really thought he had really abandoned Maddie and had actually been working on the Anselmo case!! He just wouldn't do it...he couldn't really leave her alone, could he?\nI think he was doing his own denial/avoiding act in his own way....which was to work on a case that kept him out of the office when Maddie was there and in the office after Maddie left. She was so absorbed in her own grief that she didn't know this and David wasn't going to say much to rock the boat.\nJust my opinion....if anything a coping mechanism!\nAbout David attacking the elevator speaker:\nSimply pent up emotion and grief. Another way Ehrin shows how well she knows David. He does like to throw and break things when his heart bubbles over!\nI think it was a way for him to shield Maddie and himself from further grief. We do see a glimpse of Maddie as she seems to recognize \"You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby\"....that song pushed him over....\nLast Edit: Jun 29, 2010 19:44:03 GMT -5 by beesnbears\nJun 29, 2010 18:49:43 GMT -5 graycav56 said:\nTo me, David's hiatus seems completely out of character at this point in their relationship. He has been there for Maddie since they met, so why would he run during this most critical time in her life? He has always put her happiness first at the expense of his own. I don't buy this story line.\nDavid's attack on the speaker seems to be the unleashing of his pain and despair over the loss of the baby. He has been pretending that all is well and this reaction allows us to see how deeply he has been affected by the loss. This is the David that we know.\nJun 29, 2010 19:38:01 GMT -5 lin212 said:\nYeppers. We have seen David's wrath directed against inanimate objects many times...plumbing fixtures, office furniture, the Bimmer...so the offending audio device surely gets what it deserves.\nI just think that for David...this is baby loss number two...and once he saw Maddie was back on her feet he took two weeks off to try to make his own internal peace...a peace he had not yet found, thus the trip to Virginia.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line365271"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.596077561378479,"wiki_prob":0.596077561378479,"text":"P.E.I. health care recruiters heading west as nursing cuts loom in Alberta\nCBC December 4, 2019\nRecruiters from P.E.I. will be heading to Alberta in the new year with hopes of bringing workers back to the Island.\nThe Alberta government has warned unions that thousands of health care positions could be eliminated over the next three years, including hundreds of front-line nursing jobs.\nP.E.I. Health and Wellness Minister James Aylward says P.E.I. recruiters have always included Alberta in their efforts, but there will be a more concentrated effort in the province given the news of possible layoffs.\n\"We're actually in the process right now of scheduling and arranging for some events in various locations in Alberta,\" he said.\nAylward said meet and greets are being set up and it is \"an open invitation\" to any health care professional that may be interested in returning to P.E.I. or moving to the Island.\n\"We know, obviously, that there are many Islanders that travel to Alberta over the years to find employment, whether it is in the health care field or in the oil sector,\" he said.\nAylward said there will likely be stops in Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray.\n150 positions\nSince word of the layoffs first hit, he said, some nurses in Alberta have been asking about what opportunities might exist on P.E.I.\nJohn Panella/Shutterstock\n\"Currently on Prince Edward Island we are probably in a range of about 150 positions that are vacant, whether they are full time, part time, casual,\" Aylward said.\nThere are incentives in place for taking a job on the Island — including a $5,000 signing bonus for experienced nurses, he said.\n\"As an Islander that lived and worked in Alberta for a period of time it was my number one goal to come home, and I am sure that there are lots of Islanders working in Alberta in the medical field that would love to have the opportunity to move home to Prince Edward Island,\" Aylward said.\nMore P.E.I. news\nUnitedHealthcare and Optum Take Action to Support People Affected by Severe Weather in Mississippi\nIs Now An Opportune Moment To Examine NantHealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:NH)?\nIDEXX Launches Rapid Digital Cytology Service to Further Accelerate Delivery of Veterinary Healthcare","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line74747"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8400248885154724,"wiki_prob":0.8400248885154724,"text":"ACS Publications Editors’ Pick for the Most Important Trend in Science for 2017\nThe following is an adapted excerpt from the 2016 report “Top 10 Trends Driving Science,” a look at the social, political, and economic forces affecting researchers.\nIn late 2015, representatives from 185 countries met in Paris to commit to a framework for addressing climate change.The accord was hailed as a historic victory, but even the deal’s biggest supporters say a great deal of work remains. The goals discussed in Paris are modest and the path to achieving them is unclear. It seems unlikely that politicians will save the planet by themselves. Fortunately, they won’t have to.\nChemists have the opportunity to be the driving force in addressing anthropogenic climate change. Conservation and regulation are essential to solving the climate crisis. But they’re not enough in the face of population growth and rising standards of living. Chemistry helped build the modern world with its insatiable appetite for energy and dependence on fossil fuels. But if chemistry once helped contribute to the climate problem, it is now at the heart of our search for a solution.\n“We all know that people’s demand for a high quality of life will continue to increase the global demand for energy,” notes ACS Central Science Editor-in-Chief Carolyn Bertozzi. “We look to chemical reactions to provide energy and in turn to novel energy sources to power chemical reactions.”\nAddressing climate change tops this list of the most important issues in science for three reasons. First, climate change is a truly global problem. Second, developing an effective response to climate change will require contributions from a broad swath of scientific disciplines from around the world. Finally, as politicians, businesses, and consumers alike become more concerned about the issue, climate change is having a major impact on research funding and publishing. “The need to develop alternative energy sources is at a critical point and has economic, societal, and scientific implications,” says Sharon Hammes-Schiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Chemical Reviews.\nClimate change is often discussed as a single problem, but solving it will require a wide variety of solutions. Some areas already get a lot of attention. “Research efforts related to energy conversion and storage, as well as improving the efficiency of devices, will continue to provide a major research thrust,” says Prashant Kamat, Editor-in-Chief of ACS Energy Letters.\n“Research on solar materials and batteries is growing at an impressive clip,” notes George Schatz, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, B, C, and Letters.\nBut to effectively to effectively address climate change, we will also need to create better methods of removing greenhouse gases from our atmosphere and develop more complete understandings of the reactions taking place in our atmosphere and our oceans because of our changing climate.\nThe seriousness of the problem, combined with the breadth of disciplines involved, will have a significant and lasting impact on research funding throughout the world.\n“In the aftermath of the COP21 conference on climate in Paris, world leaders have committed themselves to ‘Mission Innovation,’ in which they develop plans to double scientific research in their countries aimed at mitigating climate change,” explains Harry Atwater, Editor-in-Chief of ACS Photonics. “Each country is charged with developing its own plan and execution pathway. “Meanwhile, Bill Gates and other corporate leaders have founded the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to spur corporate and private investment of more than $1billion in scientific research funding related to sustainability science and technology. This will have profound effects on research directions for chemists and all physical scientists, who will be at the heart of this new initiative.”\nAnd what about fossil fuels? They’ll still have a role to play, but an increased emphasis on renewable energy will mean we can reserve their use for other tasks. “Petroleum is so valuable as a commodity chemical for production of plastics—I cannot believe we are burning it for energy!” says Courtney Aldrich, Editor-in-Chief of ACS Infectious Diseases.\nRead more articles in the Top 10 Trends Driving Science series and download the full report.\nACS Central Science ACS Energy Letters ACS Infectious Diseases Chemical Reviews Educator Researcher Student The Journal of Physical Chemistry A The Journal of Physical Chemistry C The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters\nTop 10 Trends Driving Science\n6 ACS Journal Editors You Need to Follow on Twitter\nACS Publications Announces ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science\nACS Publications Enhances ACS Mobile App\nACS Publications Celebrates Innovation in Materials Science with ShanghaiTech University\nLibby Brennan1 year ago\nJoin ACS Editors in Shanghai for the Latest in Materials Science Innovation\nThe Art Behind the Science: Publishing Tips from ACS Journal Editors\nACS Editors’ Choice: Focus on Journal of Proteome Research\nGet to Know ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science at WCP2018\nACS Editors’ Choice: Graphene Aerogel and More!\nACS Publications: By the Numbers\nACS Publications Editors Discuss How Scientific Publishing Has Changed","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line188691"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5031061768531799,"wiki_prob":0.49689382314682007,"text":"\"Bay Area\" redirects here. For other uses, see Bay Area (disambiguation).\nNot to be confused with the more extensive San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area or the less extensive San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area.\nConurbation in California, United States\nConurbation\nClockwise from top: The Stanford University Oval, San Francisco Chinatown with the Bay Bridge in the background, Napa Valley vineyards, the Circle of Palms Plaza in San Jose, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, Oakland's downtown skyline, and redwood trees in Muir Woods\nLocation of the Bay Area within California.\nThe nine-county Bay Area.\nAdditional counties in the larger fourteen-county CSA.\nPrincipal cities\n• Nine-county\n• CSA\n10,191 sq mi (26,390 km2)\nCopernicus Peak\nLowest elevation\n−13 ft (−4 m)\n7.75 million[4]\n• Nine-county density\n1,113/sq mi (430/km2)\n• CSA density\nUTC−08:00 (Pacific)\nUTC−07:00 (PDT)\n408/669, 415/628, 510/341, 650, 707, 925[6]\nThe San Francisco Bay Area (popularly referred to as the Bay Area or simply the Bay) is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. Although the exact boundaries of the region vary depending on the source, the Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Governments to include the nine counties that border the aforementioned estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma, and San Francisco. Other sources may exclude parts of or even entire counties, or expand the definition to include neighboring counties that do not border the bay such as San Benito, San Joaquin, and Santa Cruz.\nHome to approximately 7.75 million people, Northern California's nine-county Bay Area contains many cities, towns, airports, and associated regional, state, and national parks, connected by a complex multimodal transportation network. The larger combined statistical area of the region, which includes fourteen counties, is the second-largest in California (after the Greater Los Angeles area), the fifth-largest in the United States, and the 41st-largest urban area in the world with 9.67 million people.[7] The Bay Area's population is ethnically diverse: for example, roughly half of the region's residents are Hispanic, Asian, African American, or Pacific Islander, all of whom have a significant presence throughout the region.\nThe earliest archaeological evidence of human settlements in the Bay Area dates back to 8000-10,000 BC (ref. Coyote Hills Shell mound). In 1769, the Bay Area was inhabited by the Ohlone people when a Spanish exploration party led by Gaspar de Portolà entered the Bay – the first documented European visit to the Bay Area. After Mexico established independence from Spain in 1821, the region was briefly controlled by the Mexican government until the United States purchased the territory in 1846 during the Mexican–American War. Soon after, discovery of gold in California attracted a flood of treasure seekers, many using ports in the Bay Area as an entry point. During the early years of California's statehood, state legislative business rotated between three locations in the Bay Area before a permanent state capital was established in Sacramento. A major earthquake leveled the city of San Francisco and environs in 1906, but the region quickly rebuilt in time to host the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. During World War II, the Bay Area played a major role in America's war effort in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, with San Francisco's Fort Mason acting as a primary embarkation point for American forces. In 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed in San Francisco, establishing the United Nations, and in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the U.S.'s war with Japan. Since then, the Bay Area has experienced numerous political, cultural and artistic movements, developing unique local genres in music and art and establishing itself as a hotbed of progressive politics. Economically, the post-war Bay Area saw huge growth in the financial and technology industries, creating a vibrant and diverse economy with a gross domestic product of over $700 billion, and home to the third highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States (as of 2018).[8][9]\nDespite its urban character, the San Francisco Bay is one of California's most ecologically important habitats, providing key ecosystem services such as filtering pollutants and sediments from the rivers, and supporting a number of endangered species. The region is also known for the complexity of its landforms, the result of millions of years of tectonic plate movements. Because the Bay Area is crossed by six major earthquake faults, the region is particularly exposed to hazards presented by large earthquakes. The climate is temperate and generally very mild, and is ideal for outdoor recreational and athletic activities such as hiking. The Bay Area is host to seven professional sports teams and is a cultural center for music, theater, and the arts. It is also host to several institutions of higher education, ranging from primary schools to major research universities. Home to 101 municipalities and nine counties, governance in the Bay Area is multifaceted and involves numerous local and regional actors, each with wide-ranging and overlapping responsibilities.\n1 Boundaries\n1.1 Subregions\n3.1.1 Art\n3.1.2 Music\n3.1.3 Theater\n3.3 Sports and recreation\n4.1 Crime\n5 Economy\n6 Housing\n7.1 Colleges and universities\n7.2 Primary and secondary schools\n8.2 Ecology\n8.2.1 Marine wildlife\n8.2.2 Birds\n8.3 Geology and landforms\n8.4 Hydrography\n9 Government and politics\nBoundaries[edit]\nA map of the locally accepted nine-county definition of the Bay Area. Also displayed are the five subregions of the Bay Area, which are divided along county lines except for the northwestern portion of Santa Clara county.\nThe borders of the San Francisco Bay Area are not officially delineated, and the unique development patterns influenced by the region's topography, as well as unusual commute patterns caused by the presence of three central cities and employment centers located in various suburban locales, has led to considerable disagreement between local and federal definitions of the area.[10] Because of this, professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley Richard Walker claimed that \"no other U.S. city-region is as definitionally challenged [as the Bay Area].\"[10]\nWhen the region began to rapidly develop during and immediately after World War II, local planners settled on a nine-county definition for the Bay Area, consisting of the counties that directly border the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun estuaries: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.[11] Today, this definition is accepted by most local governmental agencies including San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board,[12] Bay Area Air Quality Management District,[13] the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority,[14] the Metropolitan Transportation Commission,[15] and the Association of Bay Area Governments,[16] the latter two of which partner to deliver a Bay Area Census using the nine-county definition.[17]\nVarious U.S. Federal government agencies use definitions that differ from their local counterparts' nine-county definition. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which regulates broadcast, cable, and satellite transmissions, includes nearby Colusa, Lake and Mendocino counties in their \"San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose\" media market, but excludes eastern Solano county.[18] On the other hand, the United States Office of Management and Budget, which designates Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and Combined Statistical Areas (CSA) for populated regions across the country, has five MSAs which include, wholly or partially, areas within the nine-county definition, and one CSA which includes all nine counties plus neighboring San Benito, Santa Cruz and San Joaquin counties.[19]\nSubregions[edit]\nAmong locals, the nine-county Bay Area can be further divided into five sub-regions: the East Bay, North Bay, South Bay, Peninsula, and the city of San Francisco. Although geographically located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, the city of San Francisco is not considered part of the \"Peninsula\" subregion, but as a separate entity.[20][21]\nThe \"East Bay\" is the densest region of the Bay Area outside of San Francisco and includes cities and towns in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, centered around Oakland. As one of the larger subregions, the East Bay includes a variety of enclaves, including the suburban Tri-Valley area and the highly urban western part of the subregion that runs alongside the bay.[22] The \"Peninsula\" subregion includes the cities and towns on the San Francisco Peninsula, excluding the titular city of San Francisco. Its eastern half, which runs alongside the Bay, is highly populated while its less populated western coast traces the coastline of the Pacific Ocean and is known for its open space and hiking trails. Roughly coinciding with the borders of San Mateo county, it also includes the northwestern Santa Clara county cities of Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Los Altos.[23] The \"South Bay\" includes all of the rest of the cities in Santa Clara county, centered around San Jose, the largest city in Northern California.[24] It is roughly synonymous with Silicon Valley due to its high concentration of tech companies, although the industry also has a significant presence in the rest of the Bay Area.[25] The \"North Bay\" includes Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano counties, and is the largest and least populated subregion. The western counties of Marin and Sonoma are encased by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the bay on the east, and are characterized by its mountainous and woody terrain. Sonoma and Napa counties are known internationally for their grape vineyards and wineries, and Solano county to the east, centered around Vallejo, is the fastest growing region in the Bay Area.[26]\nSee also: Timeline of the San Francisco Bay Area\nAn early sketch of the Ohlone people dancing in Mission San Jose. The Ohlone lived in the Bay Area when European colonizers first arrived in the region.\nThe earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the Bay Area dates to around 10,000 B.C. (Coyote Hills Shell Mound) along the shores of the bay, with evidence pointing to even earlier settlement in Point Reyes in Marin County.[27] The Miwokan and Costanoan Ohlone people, who were living in the Bay Area at the time of first European contact, were possibly descended from Siberian tribes who arrived at around 1,000 BC by sailing over the Arctic Ocean and following the salmon migration.[28] The Ohlone lived in about forty or so tribes spread throughout the lands adjacent to the San Francisco Bay and as far south as Point Sur near Monterey Bay.[29]\nThe Bay Area was briefly controlled by Mexico until John Berrien Montgomery captured San Francisco during the Mexican–American War and raised the American flag over Portsmouth Square.\nIn 1575, a Spanish exploration party led by Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho landed in Drakes Bay near Point Reyes and was the first European settler to claim land in the Bay Area. He was soon followed in 1579 by Sir Francis Drake, who also landed in Drakes Bay and claimed the land for England.[29] The San Francisco Bay itself remained undiscovered by Europeans until a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà sailed through the Golden Gate Strait in 1769.[29] Further expeditions by Spanish explorers in the following years include those led by Juan Bautista de Anza who colonized the Presidio, and Gabriel Moraga who started at the Presidio and led expedition parties to San Jose and over the Pacheco Pass, as well as reaching the San Joaquin Valley.[30][29] In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain and the Bay Area became part of the Mexican province of Alta California, a period characterized by ranch life and visiting American trappers.[31] Mexico's control of the territory would be short-lived, however, and in 1846, a party of settlers occupied Sonoma Plaza and proclaimed the independence of the new Republic of California.[31] That same year, the Mexican–American War began, and American captain John Berrien Montgomery sailed the USS Portsmouth into the bay and seized San Francisco, which was then known as Yerba Buena, and raised the American flag for the first time over Portsmouth Square.[32]\nDiscovery of gold near Sutter's Mill transformed the Bay Area, which saw a flood of immigrants seeking wealth and hoping to strike it rich.\nIn 1848, James W. Marshall's discovery of gold in the American River sparked the California Gold Rush, and within half a year, 4,000 men were panning for gold along the river and finding $50,000 per day.[33] The promise of fabulous riches quickly led to a stampede of wealth-seekers descending on Sutter's Mill. The Bay Area's population quickly emptied out as laborers, clerks, waiters, and servants joined the rush to find gold, and California's first newspaper, The Californian, was forced to announce a temporary freeze in new issues due to labor shortages.[33] By the end of 1849, news had spread across the world and newcomers flooded into the Bay Area at a rate of one thousand per week on their way to California's interior,[33] including the first large influx of Chinese immigrants to the U.S.[34] The rush was so great that vessels were abandoned by the hundreds in San Francisco's ports as crews rushed to the gold fields.[35] The unprecedented influx of new arrivals spread the nascent government authorities thin, and the military was unable to prevent desertions. As a result, numerous vigilante groups formed to provide order, but many tasked themselves with forcibly moving or killing local Native Americans, and by the end of the Gold Rush, two thirds of the indigenous population had been killed.[36]\nDuring this same time, a constitutional convention was called to determine California's application for statehood into the United States. After statehood was granted, the capital city moved between three cities in the Bay Area: San Jose (1849–1851), Vallejo (1851–1852), and Benicia (1852–1853) before permanently settling in Sacramento in 1854.[37] As the Gold Rush wound down, wealth generated from the endeavor led to the establishment of Wells Fargo Bank and the Bank of California, and immigrant laborers attracted by the promise of wealth transformed the demographic makeup of the region. Construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad from the Oakland Long Wharf attracted so many laborers from China that by 1870, eight percent of San Francisco's population was of Asian origin.[38] The completion of the railroad connected the Bay Area with the rest of the United States, established a truly national marketplace for the trade of goods, and accelerated the urbanization of the region.[39]\nDamaged buildings in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake\nIn the early morning of April 18, 1906, a large earthquake with an epicenter near the city of San Francisco hit the region.[40] Immediate casualty estimates by the U.S. Army's relief operations were 498 deaths in San Francisco, 64 deaths in Santa Rosa, and 102 in or near San Jose, for a total of about 700. More recent studies estimate the total death count to be over 3,000, with over 28,000 buildings destroyed.[41] Rebuilding efforts began immediately. Amadeo Peter Giannini, owner of the Bank of Italy (now known as the Bank of America), had managed to retrieve the money from his bank's vaults before fires broke out through the city and was the only bank with liquid funds readily available and was instrumental in loaning out funds for rebuilding efforts.[42] Congress immediately approved plans for a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, a plan they had denied a few years earlier, which now provides drinking water for 2.4 million people in the Bay Area. By 1915, the city had been sufficiently rebuilt and advertised itself to the world during the Panama Pacific Exposition that year, although the effects of the quake hastened the loss of the region's dominant status in California to the Los Angeles metropolitan area.[42]\nU.S. President Harry S. Truman addressing the United Nations Conference in San Francisco that established the United Nations.\nDuring the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent economic depression, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed,[43] while the region attempted to spur job growth by simultaneously undertaking two large infrastructure projects: construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which would connect San Francisco with Marin County,[44] and the Bay Bridge, which would connect San Francisco with Oakland and the East Bay.[45] After the United States joined World War II in 1941, the Bay Area became a major domestic military and naval hub, with large shipyards constructed in Sausalito and across the East Bay to build ships for the war effort, and Fort Mason acting the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.[46] After the war, the United Nations was chartered in San Francisco to help prevent the kind of devastation that occurred over the past decade,[47] and in September 1951, Japan officially surrendered to the Allied forces in San Francisco, with the Treaty of San Francisco entering into force a year later.[48] In the years immediately following the war, the Bay Area saw a huge wave of immigration as populations increased across the region. Between 1950 and 1960, San Francisco welcomed over 100,000 new residents, inland suburbs in the East Bay saw their populations double, Daly City's population quadrupled, and Santa Clara's population quintupled.[46]\nMounted policeman observe a protest march against the Vietnam War in San Francisco in 1967.\nBy the early 1960s, the Bay Area and the rest of Northern California became the center of the counterculture movement. Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco were seen as centers of activity,[49] with the hit American pop song San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) further enticing like-minded individuals to join the movement in the Bay Area and leading to the Summer of Love.[50] In the proceeding decades, the Bay Area would cement itself as a hotbed of New Left activism, student activism, opposition to the Vietnam War and other anti-war movements, the black power movement, and the gay rights movement.[49] At the same time, San Jose and the rest of the South Bay began to rapidly develop as it began to transition from a largely agricultural-based economy into the hotbed of the high-tech industry.[51] Fred Terman, the director of a top-secret research project at Harvard University during World War II, joined the faculty at Stanford University in order to reshape the university's engineering department. His students, including David Packard and William Hewlett, would later help usher in the region's high-tech revolution.[46] In 1955, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory opened for business near Stanford, and although the business venture was a financial failure, it was the first semiconductor company in the Bay Area, and the talent that it attracted to the region eventually led to a high-tech cluster of companies later known as Silicon Valley.[52]\nThe NASDAQ Composite index from 1994 to 2005 shows the peak of the dot-com bubble in early 2000, before its collapse.\nThe 2017 Women's March in Oakland. Other political rallies were held on the same day in numerous other locations throughout the Bay Area to spotlight progressive political causes and oppose the Presidency of Donald Trump.\nIn 1989, in the middle of the World Series match between two Bay Area baseball teams, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck and caused widespread infrastructural damage, including the failure of the Bay Bridge, a major link between San Francisco and Oakland.[53] Even so, the Bay Area's technology industry continued to expand and growth in Silicon Valley accelerated that the United States Census confirmed that year that San Jose had overtaken San Francisco in terms of population.[54] The commercialization of the Internet in the middle of the decade rapidly created a speculative bubble in the high-tech economy known as the dot-com bubble. This bubble began collapsing in the early 2000s and the industry continued contracting for the next few years, nearly wiping out the market. Companies like Amazon.com and Google managed to weather the crash however, and following the industry's return to normalcy, their market value increased significantly.[55]\nEven as the growth of the technology sector transformed the region's economy, progressive politics continued to guide the region's political environment. By the turn of the millennium, Non-Hispanic whites, the largest ethnic group in the United States, were only half of the population in the Bay Area as immigration among minority groups accelerated.[56] During this time, the Bay Area was the center of the LGBT rights movement: in 2004, San Francisco began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a first in the United States,[57] and four years later, a majority of voters in the Bay Area rejected California Proposition 8, which sought to constitutionally restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples but ultimately passed statewide.[58] The Bay Area was also the center of contentious protests concerning racial and economic inequality. In 2009, an African American man named Oscar Grant was fatally shot by Bay Area Rapid Transit police officers, precipitating widespread protests across the region and even riots in Oakland,[59] and whose name was symbolically tied to the Occupy Oakland protests two years later that sought to fight against social and economic inequality.[60] Following the Inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2017, the Bay Area became a center of resistance to his administration, beginning with widespread protests in concert with the nationwide Women's March a day later,[61] followed by frequent public feuds between Trump and various Bay Area political, cultural, and business figures over issues of race and immigration, among others.[62][63]\nAs of 2019, property costs had risen enough to make commuting from outside the area, from counties with lower property costs, practicable. By one estimate, as many as 168,000 commuters live in outlying counties, including Stanislaus, Merced, San Joaquin, Yuba, San Benito and Sacramento.[64]\nCulture[edit]\nArts[edit]\nArt[edit]\nPixar, whose animated films have won numerous Academy Awards, is based in Emeryville.\nMain article: Art in the San Francisco Bay Area\nThe Bay Area was a hub of the Abstract Expressionism movement of painting. It is associated with the works of Clyfford Still, who began teaching at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946, leaving a lasting impact on the artistic styles of Bay Area painters up to the present day.[65] A few years later, Abstract Expressionist painter David Park painted Kids on Bikes in 1950, which retained many aspects of abstract expressionism but with original distinguishing features that would later lead to the Bay Area Figurative Movement.[66] While both the Figurative Movement and the Abstract Expressionism movement arose from art schools, Funk art would later rise out of the region's underground and was characterized by informal sharing of technique among groups of friends and art showcases in \"cooperative\" galleries instead of formal museums. Later, the Bay Area art movement would be heavily influenced by the counterculture movement in the 1960s, and art produced during this time reflected the political environment.[67]\nThe Bay Area is presently home to a thriving computer animation industry[68] led by Pixar Animation Studios and Industrial Light & Magic. Pixar, based in Emeryville, produced the first fully computer animated feature film, Toy Story, with software it designed in-house and whose computer animation films have since garnered 26 Academy Awards and critical acclaim.[69] Industrial Light & Magic, which is based in the Presidio in San Francisco, was created in 1975 to help create visual effects for the Star Wars series has since been involved with creating visual effects for over three hundred Hollywood films.[70]\nSee also: List of bands from the San Francisco Bay Area\nThroughout its recent history, the Bay Area has been home to several musical movements that left lasting influences on the genres they affected. San Francisco, in particular, was the center of the counterculture movement in the 1960s, which directly led to the rise of several notable musical acts: The Grateful Dead, which formed in 1965, and Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin; all three would be closely associated with the 1967 Summer of Love.[71] Jimi Hendrix also had strong connections to the movement and the Bay Area, as he lived in Berkeley for a brief time as a child and played in many local venues in that decade.[72][71] By the 1970s, San Francisco had developed a vibrant jazz scene, earning the moniker, \"Harlem of the West\".[73] The Vietnam War was being fought at the time, and Bay Area bands such as Creedence Clearwater Revival of El Cerrito became known for their political and socially-conscious lyrics against the conflict.[74] Carlos Santana rose to fame in the early 1970s with his Santana band and would later be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[75] Two former members of Santana, Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie would later lead the formation of the band Journey.[76]\nDuring the 1980s and early 1990s, the Bay Area became home to one of the largest and most influential thrash metal scenes in the world, with contributions from 3 of the \"Big Four\" of thrash metal, namely Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth, and the emergence of the avant-garde metal with bands such as Giant Squid, Grayceon, and Ludicra.[77] The post-grunge era in the 1990s and featured prominent Bay Area bands Third Eye Blind of San Francisco, Counting Crows of Berkeley, and Smash Mouth of San Jose, and later pop punk rock bands like Green Day.[72] The 1990s also saw the emergence of the influential hyphy movement in hip hop, derived from the Oakland slang for \"hyperactive\", and pioneered by Bay Area rappers Andre \"Mac Dre\" Hicks, Mistah Fab, and E-40.[78] Other notable rappers from the Bay Area include Lil B,[79] Tupac Shakur, and MC Hammer.[80] Today, much of the rap coming out of the Oakland and the East Bay is \"conscious rap\", which concerns itself with social issues and awareness.[80]\nThe Bay Area is also home to hundreds of classical music ensembles, from community choirs to professional orchestras, such as the San Francisco Symphony, California Symphony, Fremont Symphony Orchestra, Oakland Symphony and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.[81]\nTheater[edit]\nThe Berkeley Repertory Theatre is one of the founding members of Theatre Bay Area and is based in a building (pictured above) in downtown Berkeley.\nAccording to the regional theater service organization Theatre Bay Area, the San Francisco Bay Area is the third largest center of activity for theater companies and actors in the United States, after the New York City and Chicago metropolitan areas, with 400 companies spread throughout the region.[82] The organization was founded in 1976 by the Magic Theatre and American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley.[83] The latter two, along with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Palo Alto-based Theatreworks, have since gone on to win one Regional Theatre Tony Award each.[84][85] Several famous actors have arisen from the Bay Area's theatre community, including Daveed Diggs from Hamilton and Darren Criss from Hedwig, A Very Potter Musical, and Glee.[86] Locally, well-regarded actors include James Carpenter, a stage actor who has performed at the ACT, Berkeley Repertory, and San Jose Repertory Theatre among others, Rod Gnapp of the Magic Theatre Company, Sean San Jose, one of the founders of the Campo Santo theater, and Campo Santo member Margo Hall.[87]\nThe Bay Area also has an active youth theater scene. ACT and the Berkeley Repertory both run classes and camps for young actors, as do the Peninsula Youth Theater and Willow Glen Children’s Theatre in the Peninsula and South Bay, Bay Area Children's Theater and Danville Children’s Musical Theater in the East Bay, and Marin Shakespeare in the North Bay, among many others.[88][89]\nMedia[edit]\nMain article: Media in the San Francisco Bay Area\nThe Old Chronicle Building, which housed the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle until 1924\nThe San Francisco Bay Area is the eighth-largest television market[90] and the fourth-largest radio market[91] in the U.S. The Bay Area's oldest radio station, KCBS (AM), began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting.[92] KALW was the Bay Area's first FM radio station, and first radio station to begin commercial broadcasting west of the Mississippi River when it signed on the air in 1941.[93] KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948, was the first television station to air in the Bay Area and Northern California.[94]\nAll major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, including KTVU 2 (FOX), KRON-TV 4 (Local News/MyNetwork), KPIX 5 (CBS), KGO-TV 7 (ABC), KQED-TV 9 (PBS), KNTV 11 (NBC), KBCW 44/45 (CW), KQEH 54 (PBS), and KKPX 65 (Ion). Bloomberg West, a show that focuses on topics pertaining to technology and business, was launched in 2011 from a studio in and continues to broadcast from San Francisco.[95]\nPublic broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[96] Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971.[97]\nThe largest newspapers in the Bay Area are the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, the highest and second-highest most widely circulated newspaper in Northern California.[98] The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the \"voice of San Francisco\". The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.[99][100] Most of the Bay Area's local regions and municipalities also have their own newspapers, such as the East Bay Times and San Mateo Daily Journal. The national newsmagazine Mother Jones is also based in San Francisco.[101] Non-English-language newspapers include several Chinese-language papers such as Sing Tao Daily, the largest in the Bay Area by circulation,[102] and El Mundo, a free Spanish-language weekly distributed by the Mercury News.[103]\nSports and recreation[edit]\nMain article: Sports in the San Francisco Bay Area\nOracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants, is situated along the waterfront and has a view of the San Francisco Bay.\nA paceline of drafting cyclists ascending Mount Hamilton in Santa Clara county\nThe Bay Area is home to seven professional major league sports franchises: The San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) in American football, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB), the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League (NHL), and the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer (MLS).\nIn football, the 49ers play in Levi's Stadium[104] and have won five Super Bowls (XVI,[105] XIX,[106] XXIII,[107] XXIV,[108] XXIX[109]) and lost one (XLVII[110]), while the Raiders play in Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum[111] until their relocation to Las Vegas in 2020[112] and have won three Super Bowls (XI,[113] XV,[114] XVIII,[115] the last (XVIII) being while the team was in Los Angeles), and lost two (II,[116] XXXVII[117])\nIn baseball, the Giants, who play at Oracle Park,[118] have won eight World Series titles, three since relocating to San Francisco (2010, 2012, and 2014) from New York in 1958.[119] The A's, who share the Oakland Coliseum with the Raiders,[111] have won nine World Series titles, four since relocating to Oakland (1972, 1973, 1974, and 1989) from Kansas City in 1968.[119]\nIn basketball, the Warriors play at the Chase Center and have won four NBA Finals (1975, 2015, 2017, and 2018) [120]\nIn hockey, the Sharks play at the SAP Center and have yet to win the Stanley Cup despite making their first Stanley Cup Finals appearance in 2016.\nIn soccer, the Earthquakes play at Avaya Stadium[121] and have won the MLS Cup twice in 2001 and 2003.\nOutside of major league sports, the Bay Area is home to eight minor league teams. In hockey, the San Jose Barracuda play in the American Hockey League (AHL) and are the top affiliate of the San Jose Sharks, sharing the same rink at the SAP Center in San Jose.[122] In baseball, The San Jose Giants in the California League of Minor League Baseball (MiLB) are the Class-A Advanced affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, playing out of the San Jose Municipal Stadium.[123] There are six teams in the Pacific Association of Professional Baseball Clubs (Martinez Clippers, Napa Silverados, San Rafael Pacifics, Sonoma Stompers, Pittsburg Diamonds, and the Vallejo Admirals).[124]\nIn terms of collegiate sports, six Bay Area universities are members of NCAA Division I, the highest level of college sports in the country.[125] All three football-playing schools in the Bay Area are in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the highest level of NCAA college football. The California Golden Bears and Stanford Cardinal compete in the Pac-12 Conference, and the San Jose State Spartans compete in the Mountain West Conference.[126] The Cardinal and Golden Bears are intense rivals, with their football teams competing annually in the Big Game for the Stanford Axe.[127] One of the most famous games in the rivalry occurred in 1982, when the Golden Bears defeated the Cardinal on a last-second return kickoff known as \"The Play\".[128]\nThe Bay Area has an ideal climate for outdoor recreation, such that activities like hiking and cycling are popular among locals.[129][130] There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes just within San Francisco,[131] and the Embarcadero and Marina Green are favored sites for skateboarding. Extensive public tennis facilities are available in Golden Gate Park and Dolores Park, as well as at smaller neighborhood courts throughout the city. San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the U.S.[132] Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District. The St. Francis Yacht Club and Golden Gate Yacht Club are located in the Marina Harbor,[133][134] while the South Beach Yacht Club is located next to Oracle Park.[135] The Bay Area was host to the 2013 America's Cup.\nSan Jose is home to the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. Here, the Vietnamese diaspora celebrate Tết, or New Year's, in San Jose.\n1860 114,074 —\n1870 265,808 133.0%\n1880 422,128 58.8%\n1920 1,182,911 27.8%\n1940 1,734,308 9.9%\nEst. 2018 7,753,023 [136] 8.4%\nNote: Nine-County Population Totals[56]\nMaps of racial distribution according to 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, African, Asian, Hispanic, or Other (yellow)\nSan Francisco and Oakland\nAccording to the 2010 United States Census, the population of the nine-county Bay Area was 7.15 million, with 49.6% male and 50.4% female.[56] Of these, approximately 2.3 million (32%) are foreign born.[137] In 2010 the racial makeup of the nine-county Bay Area was 52.5% White (42.4% were non-Hispanic and 10.1% were Hispanic), 23.3% Asian, 6.7% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 0.7% Native American or Alaska Native, 0.6% Pacific Islander, 5.4% from two or more races and 10.8% from other races.[138] Hispanic or Latino residents of any race formed 23.5% of the population.\nThe Bay Area cities of Vallejo, Suisun City, Oakland, San Leandro, Fairfield, and Richmond are among the most ethnically diverse cities in the United States.[139]\nNon-Hispanic whites form majorities of the population in Marin, Napa, and Sonoma counties.[56] Whites also make up the majority in the eastern regions of the East Bay centered around the Lamorinda and Tri-Valley areas.[56] San Francisco's North Beach district is considered the Little Italy of the city, and was once home to a significant Italian-American community. San Francisco, Marin County[140] and the Lamorinda area[141] all have substantial Jewish communities.\nThe Latino population is spread throughout the Bay Area, but among the nine counties, the greatest number of them live in Santa Clara County, while Contra Costa County sees the highest growth rate.[142] The largest Hispanic or Latino groups were those of Mexican (17.9%), Salvadoran (1.3%), Guatemalan (0.6%), Puerto Rican (0.6%) and Nicaraguans (0.5%) ancestry. Mexican Americans make up the largest share of Hispanic residents in Napa county,[143] while Central Americans make up the largest share in San Francisco, many of whom live in the Mission District which is home to many residents of Salvadoran and Guatemalan descent.[144] The Asian-American population in the Bay Area is one of the largest in the United States. Asian-Americans make up the plurality in two major counties in the Bay Area: Santa Clara County and Alameda County.[145] The largest Asian-American groups were those of Chinese (7.9%), Filipino (5.1%), Indian (3.3%), Vietnamese (2.5%), and Japanese (0.9%) heritage. Daly City has the highest proportion of Asian-American residents (58.4%) anywhere in the country outside of Hawaii.[146] Asian Americans also constitute a majority in Cupertino, Fremont, Milpitas, Union City and significant populations in Dublin, Foster City, Hercules, Millbrae, San Ramon, Saratoga, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. The cities of San Jose and San Francisco had the third and fourth most Asian-American residents in the United States.[147] In San Francisco, Chinese Americans constitute 21.4% of the population and constitute the single largest ethnic group in the city.[148] The Bay Area is home to over 382,950 Filipino Americans, one of the largest communities of Filipino people outside of the Philippines with the largest proportion of Filipino Americans concentrating themselves within American Canyon, Daly City, Fairfield, Hercules, South San Francisco, Union City and Vallejo.[149] Santa Clara county, and increasingly the East Bay, house a significant Indian American community.[150] There are more than 100,000 people of Vietnamese ancestry residing within San Jose city limits, the largest Vietnamese population of any city in the world outside of Vietnam.[151] In addition, there is a sizable community of Korean Americans in Santa Clara county, where San Jose is located.[152] East Bay cities such as Richmond and Oakland, and the North Bay city of Santa Rosa, have plentiful populations of Laotian and Cambodians in certain neighborhoods.[153]\nPacific Islanders such as Samoans and Tongans have the largest presence in East Palo Alto, where they constitute over 7% of the population.[154]\nThe African-American population of San Francisco was formerly substantial, had a thriving jazz scene and was known as \"Harlem of the West.\" While black residents formed one-seventh of the city's population in 1970, today they have mostly moved to parts of the East Bay and North Bay, including Antioch,[73] Fairfield and out of the Bay Area entirely.[155] The South Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa was once home to a primarily black community until the 1980s, when many Latino immigrants settled in the area.[156] Other cities with large numbers of African Americans include Vallejo (28%),[157] Richmond (26%),[158] East Palo Alto (17%)[154] and the CDP of Marin City (38%).[159]\nSince the economy of the Bay Area heavily relies on innovation and high-tech skills, a greater, educated population exists in the region. Roughly 87.4% of Bay Area residents have attained a high school degree or higher,[160] while 46% of adults in the Bay Area have earned a post-secondary degree or higher.[161]\nThe Bay Area is one of the wealthiest regions in the United States, due, primarily, to the economic power engines of San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland. The Bay Area city of Pleasanton has the second-highest household income in the country after New Canaan, Connecticut. However, discretionary income is very comparable with the rest of the country, primarily because the higher cost of living offsets the increased income.[162]\nBy 2014, the Bay Area's wealth gap was considerable: the top ten percent of income-earners took home over eleven times as much as the bottom ten percent,[163] and a Brookings Institution study found the San Francisco metro area, which excludes four Bay Area counties, to be the third most unequal urban area in the country.[164] Among the wealthy, there are forty-seven Bay Area residents made the Forbes magazine's 400 richest Americans list, published in 2007. Thirteen lived in San Francisco proper, placing it seventh among cities in the world. Among the forty-seven were several well-known names such as Steve Jobs, George Lucas, and Charles Schwab. The wealthiest resident was Larry Ellison of Oracle, worth $25 billion.[165] A study by Capgemini indicates that in 2009, 4.5 percent of all households within the San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose metropolitan areas held $1 million in investable assets, placing the region first in the United States, just ahead of the New York City metro region.[166] On the other hand, low income residents in the Bay Area saw their incomes fall by nine percent since 2007, with the bottom ten percent earning just $20,000 on average.[163]\nCounties by population and ethnicity\nAlameda County 1,494,876 46.2% 13.8% 26.2% 12.5% 1.3% 22.2%\nContra Costa County 1,037,817 63.2% 12.5% 14.3% 9.1% 0.5% 23.9%\nMarin County 250,666 79.9% 11.0% 5.6% 3.0% 0.2% 14.0%\nNapa County 135,377 81.3% 8.9% 6.8% 2.0% 0.3% 31.5%\nSan Francisco City and county 870,887 48.5% 11.3% 33.3% 6.1% 0.9% 15.1%\nSan Mateo County 711,622 59.6% 11.1% 24.6% 2.9% 1.8% 24.9%\nSanta Clara County 1,762,754 50.9% 13.8% 31.8% 2.6% 0.4% 26.6%\nSolano County 411,620 52.1% 17.6% 14.4% 14.6% 1.4% 23.6%\nSonoma County 478,551 81.6% 11.3% 4.0% 1.2% 1.5% 24.3%\nCounties by population and income\nAlameda County 1,494,876 $34,937 $70,821 $87,012\nContra Costa County 1,037,817 $38,141 $79,135 $93,437\nMarin County 250,666 $54,605 $89,605 $113,826\nNapa County 135,377 $35,309 $68,641 $79,884\nSan Francisco City and county 870,887 $46,777 $72,947 $87,329\nSan Mateo County 711,622 $45,346 $87,633 $104,370\nSanta Clara County 1,762,754 $40,698 $89,064 $103,255\nSolano County 411,620 $29,367 $69,914 $79,316\nSonoma County 478,551 $33,119 $64,343 $78,227\nCrime[edit]\nStatistics regarding crime rates in the Bay Area generally fall into two categories: violent crime and property crime. Historically, violent crime has been concentrated in a few cities in the East Bay, namely Oakland, Richmond, and Antioch, but also East Palo Alto in the Peninsula, Vallejo in the North Bay, and San Francisco.[167] Nationally, Oakland's murder rate ranked 18th among cities with over 100,000 residents, and third for violent crimes per capita.[168] According to a 2015 Federal Bureau of Investigation report, Oakland was also the source of the most violent crime in the Bay Area, with 16.9 reported incidents per thousand people. Vallejo came in second, at 8.7 incidents per thousand people, while San Pablo, Antioch, and San Francisco rounded out the top five. East Palo Alto, which used to have the Bay Area's highest murder rate, saw violent crime incidents drop 65% between 2013 and 2014, while Oakland saw violent crime incidents drop 15%.[167] Meanwhile, San Jose, which was one of the safest large cities in the United States in the early 2000s, has seen its violent crime rates trend upwards.[169] Cities with the lowest rate of violent crime include the Peninsula cities of Los Altos and Foster City, East Bay cities of San Ramon and Danville, and South Bay cities of Saratoga and Cupertino. In 2015, 45 Bay Area cities counted zero homicides, the largest of which was Daly City.[167]\nIn 2015, Oakland also saw the highest rates of property crime in the Bay Area, at 59.4 incidents per thousand residents, with San Francisco following close behind at 53 incidents per thousand residents. The East Bay cities Pleasant Hill, Berkeley, and San Leandro rounded out the top five. The South Bay city of Saratoga and the North Bay city of Windsor saw the least rates of property crime.[167] Additionally, San Francisco saw the most reports of arson.[168]\nSeveral street gangs operate in the Bay Area, including the Sureños and Norteños in San Francisco's Mission District.[170] African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Crips, have struggled to establish footholds in the city,[171] although gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active.[172] In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left five people dead and eleven wounded. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime.[173] Oakland, which also sees organized gang violence, implemented Operation Ceasefire in 2012 in an effort to reduce the violence.[174]\nEconomy[edit]\nGoogle, a multinational technology company and subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., is headquartered in the Bay Area city of Mountain View.\nThe three principal cities of the Bay Area represent different employment clusters and are dominated by different, but commingled, industries. San Francisco is home to the region's financial and business industry, tourism, and is host to numerous conventions. The East Bay, centered around Oakland, is home to heavy industry, metalworking, oil, and shipping, while Silicon Valley is a major pole of economic activity around the technology industry. Furthermore, the North Bay is a major player in the country's agriculture and wine industry.[10] In all, the Bay Area is home to the second highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies, second only to the New York metropolitan area, with thirty such companies based throughout the region.[175] In 2017, the greater twelve-county statistical area had a GDP of $878 billion, the third-highest among combined statistical areas.[176] In 2016, the smaller nine-county Bay Area had a GDP of $781 billion, which nonetheless would rank it 5th among U.S. states and 18th among countries.[177]\nSeveral major corporations are headquartered in the Bay Area. Among the Fortune 500 companies located in the region include technology companies Google, Facebook, Apple Inc., Hewlett Packard, Intel, Applied Materials, eBay, Cisco Systems, Symantec, Oracle, Netflix, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Salesforce; energy companies Chevron and PG&E; financial service companies Charles Schwab Corporation, Visa Inc., and Wells Fargo; apparel retailers Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., and Ross Stores; aerospace and defense contractor Lockheed Martin; local grocer Safeway; pharmaceutical company McKesson; and biotechnology companies Genentech and Gilead Sciences.[178] The largest manufacturers include Tesla Inc., Lam Research, Bayer, Chevron, and Coca-Cola.[179] Oakland is the site of the fifth-largest container shipping port in the United States and is also a major rail terminus.[180] In research, NASA's Ames Research Center and the federal research facility Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are based in Mountain View and Livermore respectively. In the North Bay, Napa and Sonoma counties are known for their famous wineries, including Fantesca Estate & Winery, Domaine Chandon California, and D'Agostini Winery.[181]\nDespite the San Francisco Bay Area's booming industries contributing to the aforementioned economic growth, there is a significant level of poverty in the region. Rising housing prices and gentrification in the San Francisco Bay Area are often framed as symptomatic of high-income tech workers moving in to previously low-income, underserved neighborhoods.[182] As of June 2014, median rent in San Francisco increased to $2,300, a 21% in one year.[183] In Oakland, median rent increased by one-third between 2011 and 2013. Two notable policy strategies to prevent eviction due to rising rents include rent control and subsidies such as Section 8 and Shelter Plus Care.[183] Moreover, in 2002, then San Francisco Supervisor Gavin Newsom introduced the \"Care Not Cash\" initiative, diverting funds away from cash handouts (which he argued encouraged drug use) to housing. This proved controversial, with some suggesting his rhetoric criminalized poverty, while others supporting the prioritizing of housing as a solution.[184] To this day, the effectiveness of Care Not Cash continues to be debated.\nContrary to historical patterns of low incomes within the inner city, poverty rates in the Bay Area are shifting such that they are increasing more rapidly in suburban areas than in urban areas.[185] It is not yet clear whether the suburbanization of poverty is due to the relocation of poor populations or shifting income levels in the respective regions. However, the mid-2000s housing boom encouraged city dwellers to move into the newly cheap houses in suburbs outside of the city, and these suburban housing developments were then most impacted by the 2008 housing bubble burst. As such, people in poverty experience decreased access to transportation due to underdeveloped public transport infrastructure in suburban areas. Suburban poverty is most prevalent among Hispanics and Blacks, and affects native-born people more significantly than foreign-born.[185][186]\nAs greater proportions of incomes are spent on rent, many impoverished populations in the San Francisco Bay Area also face food insecurity and health setbacks.[187][188]\nHousing[edit]\nThe Bay Area is one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units,[189] has resulted in an extreme housing shortage. For example, from 2012 to 2017, the San Francisco metropolitan area added 400,000 new jobs, but only 60,000 new housing units.[190] As of 2016, the entire Bay Area had 3.6 M jobs, and 2.6 M housing units, for a ratio of 1.4 jobs per housing unit,[191] significantly above the ratio for the US as a whole, which stands at 1.1 jobs per housing unit. (152M jobs, 136M housing units[192][193]) According to a survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, the Bay Area ranks #1 \"in median home value, median monthly costs for homes with a mortgage, and median gross rent.\" [194][195] As of 2017, the average income needed in order to purchase a house in the region was $179,390, while the median price for a house was $895,000 and the average cost of a home in the Bay Area being $440,000 - more than twice the national average, while the average monthly rent is $1,240 - 50 percent more than the national average.[196][197] In 2018, a Bay Area household income of $117,000 was classified as \"low income\" by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.[198]\nWith high costs of living, many Bay Area residents allocate large amounts of their income towards housing. 20 percent of Bay Area homeowners spend more than half their income on housing, while roughly 25 percent of renters in the Bay Area spend more than half of their incomes on rent.[199] Expending an average of more than $28,000 per year on housing in addition to roughly $13,400 on transportation, Bay Area residents spend around $41,420 per year to live in the region. This combined total of housing and transportation signifies 59 percent of the Bay Area's median household income, conveying the extreme costs of living.[199] The high rate of homelessness in the Bay Area can be attributed to the high cost of living.[200] No approximate number of homeless people living in the Bay Area can be determined due to the difficulty of tracking homeless residents.[200] However, according to San Francisco’s Department of Public Health, the number of homeless people in San Francisco alone is 9,975.[201] Additionally, San Francisco was revealed to have the most unsheltered homeless people in the country.[201]\nBecause of the high cost of housing, many workers in the Bay Area live far from their place of employment, contributing to one of the highest percentages of extreme commuters in the United States, or commutes that take over ninety minutes in one direction. For example, about 50,000 people commute from neighboring San Joaquin county into the nine-county Bay Area daily,[202] and more extremely, some workers commute semimonthly by flying.[203]\nColleges and universities[edit]\nSee also: List of colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area\nThe Memorial Glade of Sather Tower in the University of California, Berkeley campus. Berkeley is the highest-ranked public university in the United States, according to US News & World Report.\nThe Bay Area is home to a large number of colleges and universities. The first institution of higher education in the Bay Area, Santa Clara University, was founded by Jesuits in 1851,[204] who also founded the University of San Francisco in 1855.[205] San Jose State University was founded in 1857 and is the oldest public college on the West Coast of the United States.[206] According to the Brookings Institution, 45% of residents of the two-county San Jose metro area have a college degree and 43% of residents in the five-county San Francisco metro area have a college degree, the second and fourth highest ranked metro areas in the country for higher educational attainment.[207]\nRankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report feature several Bay Area universities in prominent spots. Stanford University is the highest ranked university in the Bay Area, and seventh overall in the United States. The University of California, Berkeley is ranked twentieth overall, but for the past nineteen years has been highest-ranked public university in the country. Additionally, San Jose State University and Sonoma State University were respectively ranked sixth and tenth among public colleges in the West Coast.[208]\nThe city of San Francisco is host to two additional University of California schools, neither of which confer undergraduate degrees. The University of California, San Francisco is entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States[209] and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which is the highest-ranked hospital in California.[210] The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.[211] The city is also host to a California State University school, San Francisco State University.[212] Additional campuses of the California State University system in the Bay Area are Cal State East Bay in Hayward and Cal Maritime in Vallejo.\nCalifornia Community Colleges System also operates a number of community colleges in the Bay Area. According to CNNMoney, the Bay Area community college with the highest \"success\" rate is De Anza College in Cupertino, which is also the tenth-highest ranked in the nation. Other relatively well-ranked Bay Area community colleges include Foothill College, City College of San Francisco, West Valley College, Diablo Valley College, and Las Positas College.[213]\nMany scholars have pointed out the overlap of education and the economy within the Bay Area. According to multiple reports, research universities such as Stanford University, University of California - Santa Cruz and University of California - Berkeley, are essential to the culture and economy in the area.[161] These universities also provide countless, public programs for people to learn and enhance skills relevant to the local economies. These opportunities not only provide educational services to the community, but also generates significant amounts of revenue.[161]\nPrimary and secondary schools[edit]\nSee also: List of high schools in California\nPublic primary and secondary education in the Bay Area is provided through school districts organized through three structures: elementary school districts, high school districts, or unified school districts, and are governed by an elected board. In addition, many Bay Area counties and the city of San Francisco operate \"special service schools\" that are geared towards providing education to students with handicaps or special needs.[214] An alternative public educational setting is offered by charter schools, which may be established with a renewable charter of up to five years by third parties. The mechanism for charter schools in the Bay Area is governed by the California Charter Schools Act of 1992.[215]\nAccording to rankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report, the highest-ranked high school in California is the Pacific Collegiate School, located in Santa Cruz and part of the greater Bay Area. Within the traditional nine-county boundaries, the highest ranked high school is KIPP San Jose Collegiate in San Jose. Among the top twenty high schools in California include Lowell High School in San Francisco, Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, the University Preparatory Academy in San Jose, Mission San Jose High School in Fremont, Oakland Charter High School in Oakland, Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, and Saratoga High School in Saratoga.[216]\nClimate[edit]\nSee also: Climate of California\nSkyline Boulevard stretches through the Santa Cruz Mountains, shown here atop Portola Valley, California. During the winter and spring, hills surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area are lush and green.\nThe same location during the summer months. Because rain is rare in the San Francisco Bay Area during this time, the surrounding hills quickly become dry and golden-hued in grassy areas.\nThe Bay Area is located in the relatively rare warm-summer Mediterranean climate zone (Köppen Csb) that is a characteristic of California's coast, with moist mild winters and dry summers.[217] It is largely influenced by the cold California Current, which penetrates the natural mountainous barrier along the coast by traveling through various gaps.[218] In terms of precipitation, this means that the Bay Area has pronounced wet and dry seasons. The wet season, which roughly runs between November and March, is the source of about 82% of annual precipitation in the area. In the South Bay and further inland, while the wet season is cool and mild, the summer dry season is characterized by warm sunny days,[218] while in San Francisco and areas closer to the Golden Gate strait, the dry season is periodically affected by fog.[219]\nDue to the Bay Area's diverse topography, the result of the clashing tectonic plates, the region is home to numerous microclimates that lead to pronounced differences in climate and temperature over short distances.[217][220] Within the city of San Francisco, natural and artificial topographical features direct the movement of wind and fog, resulting in startlingly varied climates between city blocks. Along the Golden Gate Strait, oceanic wind and fog from the Pacific Ocean are able to penetrate the mountain barriers inland into the Bay Area.[220] During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog.[219] The microclimate phenomenon is most pronounced during this time, when fog penetration is at its maximum in areas near the Golden Gate strait,[220] while the South Bay and areas further inland are sunny and dry.[218]\nAlong the San Francisco peninsula, gaps in the Santa Cruz Mountains, one south of San Bruno Mountain and another in Crystal Springs, allow oceanic weather into the interior and causing a cooling effect for cities along the Peninsula and even as far south as San Jose. This weather pattern is also the source for delays at San Francisco International Airport. In Marin county north of the Golden Gate strait, two gaps north of Muir Woods bring cold air across the Marin Headlands, with the cooling affect reaching as far north as Santa Rosa.[220] Further inland, the East Bay receives oceanic weather that travels through the Golden Gate strait, and further diffuses that air through the Berkeley Hills, Niles Canyon and the Hayward Pass into the Livermore Valley and Altamont Pass. Here, the resulting breeze is so strong that it is home to one of the world's largest array of wind turbines. Further north, the Carquinez Strait funnels the ocean weather into the San Joaquin River Delta, causing a cooling effect in Stockton and Sacramento, so that these cities are also cooler than their Central Valley counterparts in the south.[220]\nAverage daily high and low temperatures in °F (°C) for selected locations in the Bay Area,\ncolored and sortable by average monthly temperature\nFairfield[221]\n(13 / 4) 61 / 42\n(26 / 11) 85 / 56\n(13 / 4)\nOakland[222]\nSan Francisco[223]\nSan Jose[224]\nSanta Rosa[225]\nEcology[edit]\nMain article: Ecology of the San Francisco Estuary\nSee also: List of species endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area\nMarine wildlife[edit]\nRiver otter sunning on rocks in the Richmond Marina\nA California golden beaver in Alhambra Creek in Martinez\nThe Bay Area is home to a diverse array of wildlife and, along with the connected San Joaquin River Delta represents one of California's most important ecological habitats.[226] California's Dungeness crab, Pacific halibut, and the California scorpionfish are all significant components of the bay's fisheries.[227] The bay's salt marshes now represent most of California's remaining salt marsh and support a number of endangered species and provide key ecosystem services such as filtering pollutants and sediments from the rivers.[228] Most famously, the bay is a key link in the Pacific Flyway and with millions of shorebirds annually visiting the bay shallows as a refuge, is the most important component of the flyway south of Alaska.[229] Many endangered species of birds are also found here: the California least tern, the California clapper rail, the snowy egret, and the black crowned night heron.[230]\nThere is also a significant diversity of salmonids present in the bay. Steelhead populations in California have dramatically declined due to human and natural causes; in the Bay Area, all naturally spawned anadromous steelhead populations below natural and manmade impassable barriers in California streams from the Russian River to Aptos Creek, and the drainages of San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bays are listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act.[231] The Central California Coast coho salmon population is the most endangered of the many troubled salmon populations on the west coast of the United States, including populations residing in tributaries to the San Francisco Bay.[232] Industrial, mining, and other uses of mercury have resulted in a widespread distribution of that poisonous metal in the bay, with uptake in the bay's phytoplankton and contamination of its sportfish.[233]\nAquatic mammals are also present in the bay. Before 1825, Spanish, French, English, Russians and Americans were drawn to the Bay Area to harvest prodigious quantities of beaver, river otter, marten, fisher, mink, fox, weasel, harbor and fur seals and sea otter. This early fur trade, known as the California Fur Rush, was more than any other single factor, responsible for opening up the West and the San Francisco Bay Area, in particular, to world trade.[234] By 1817 sea otter in the area were practically eliminated.[235] Since then, the California golden beaver has re-established a presence in the Alhambra Creek.[236] The North American river otter which was first reported in Redwood Creek at Muir Beach in 1996,[237] has since been spotted in the North Bay's Corte Madera Creek, the South Bay's Coyote Creek,[238] as well as in 2010 in San Francisco Bay itself at the Richmond Marina. Other mammals include the internationally famous sea lions who began inhabiting San Francisco's Pier 39 after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake[239] and the locally famous Humphrey the Whale, a humpback whale who entered San Francisco Bay twice on errant migrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[240] Bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises have recently returned to the bay, having been absent for many decades. Historically, this was the northern extent of their warm-water species range.[241]\nBirds[edit]\nA family of owls turned out of their homes in Antioch\nIn addition to the many species of marine birds that can be seen in the Bay Area, many other species of birds make the Bay Area their home, making the region a popular destination for birdwatching.[242] Many birds, including many described in the following paragraphs, are listed as endangered species despite once being common in the region, due to human and other impacts.\nWestern burrowing owls were originally listed as a species of special concern by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1979. California's population declined 60% from the 1980s to the early 1990s, and continues to decline at roughly 8% per year.[243] A 1992–93 survey reported little to no breeding burrowing owls in most of the western counties in the Bay Area, leaving only Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano counties as remnants of a once large breeding range.[244] Bald eagles were once common in the Bay Area, but habitat destruction and thinning of eggs from DDT poisoning reduced the California state population to 35 nesting pairs. Bald eagles disappeared from the Bay Area in 1915, and only began returning in recent years.[245] In the 1980s an effort to re-introduce the species to the area began with the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group and the San Francisco Zoo importing birds and eggs from Vancouver Island and northeastern California,[246] and there are now nineteen nesting couples in eight of the Bay Area's nine counties.[245] Other once absent species that have returned to the Bay Area include Swainson’s hawk, white tailed kite, and the osprey.[245]\nIn 1927, zoologist Joseph Grinnell wrote that osprey were only rare visitors to the San Francisco Bay Area, although he noted records of one or two used nests in the broken tops of redwood trees along the Russian River.[247] In 1989, the southern breeding range of the osprey in the Bay Area was Kent Lake, although osprey were noted to be extending their range further south in the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada.[248] In 2014, a Bay Area-wide survey found osprey had extended their breeding range southward with nesting sites as far south as Hunters Point in San Francisco on the west side and Hayward on the east side, while further studies have found nesting sites as far south as the Los Gatos Creek watershed, indicating that the nesting range now includes the entire length of San Francisco Bay.[249] Most nests were built on man-made structures close to areas of human disturbance, likely due to lack of mature trees near the Bay.[250] The wild turkey population was introduced in the 1960s by state game officials, and by 2015 have become a common sight in East Bay communities.[251]\nGeology and landforms[edit]\nSatellite photo of the Bay Area taken in March 2019. The gray areas are signs of urbanization and represent the most populated areas.\nThe Bay Area is well known for the complexity of its landforms that are the result of the forces of plate tectonics acting over of millions of years, since the region is located in the middle of a meeting point between two plates.[252] Nine out of eleven distinct assemblages have been identified in a single county, Alameda.[253] Diverse assemblages adjoin in complex arrangements due to offsets along the many faults (both active and stable) in the area. As a consequence, many types of rock and soil are found in the region. The oldest rocks are metamorphic rocks that are associated with granite in the Salinian Block west of the San Andreas fault. These were formed from sedimentary rocks of sandstone, limestone, and shale in uplifted seabeds.[254] Volcanic deposits also exist in the Bay Area, left behind by the movement of the San Andreas fault, whose movement sliced a subduction plate and allowed magma to briefly flow to the surface.[255]\nA map displaying each of the seven major fault lines in the Bay Area and the probability of an M6.7 or higher earthquake occurring on each fault line between 2003 and 2032\nThe region has considerable vertical relief in its landscapes that are not in the alluvial plains leading to the bay or in inland valleys. The topography, and geologic history, of the Bay Area can largely be attributed to the compressive forces between the Pacific Plate and the North American plate.[256] The three major ridge structures in the Bay Area, part of the Pacific Coast Range, are all roughly parallel to the major faults. The Santa Cruz Mountains along the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Hills in Marin County follow the San Andreas fault, The Berkeley Hills, San Leandro Hills and their southern ridgeline extension through Mission Peak roughly follow the Hayward fault, and the Diablo Range, which includes Mount Diablo and Mount Hamilton and runs along the Calaveras fault.[257]\nIn total, the Bay Area is traversed by seven major fault systems with hundreds of related faults, all of which are stressed by the relative motion between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate or by compressive stresses between these plates. The fault systems include the Hayward Fault Zone, Concord-Green Valley Fault, Calaveras Fault, Clayton-Marsh Creek-Greenville Fault, Rodgers Creek Fault, and the San Gregorio Fault.[258] Significant blind thrust faults (faults with near vertical motion and no surface ruptures) are associated with portions of the Santa Cruz Mountains and the northern reaches of the Diablo Range and Mount Diablo. These \"hidden\" faults, which are not as well known, pose a significant earthquake hazard.[259] Among the more well-understood faults, scientists estimate a 63% probability of a magnitude 6.7 earthquake occurring along either the Hayward, Rogers Creek, or San Andreas fault, with an earthquake more likely to occur in the East Bay.[260] Two of the largest earthquakes in recent history were the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.\nHydrography[edit]\nMain article: Hydrography of the San Francisco Bay Area\nA map of the water features in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the bay and adjacent marshes, ponds, and tributaries\nThe Bay Area is home to a complex network of watersheds, marshes, rivers, creeks, reservoirs, and bays that predominantly drain into the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean. The largest bodies of water in the Bay Area are the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun estuaries. Major rivers of the North Bay include the Napa River, the Petaluma River, the Gualala River, and the Russian River; the former two drain into San Pablo Bay, the latter two into the Pacific Ocean. In the South Bay, the Guadalupe River drains into San Francisco Bay near Alviso.[261] There are also several lakes present in the Bay Area, including man-made lakes like Lake Berryessa[262] and natural albeit heavily modified lakes like Lake Merritt.[263]\nPrior to the introduction of European agricultural methods, the shores of San Francisco Bay consisted mostly of tidal marshes.[264] Today, the bay has been significantly altered heavily re-engineered to accommodate the needs of water delivery, shipping, agriculture, and urban development, with side effects including the loss of wetlands and the introduction of contaminants and invasive species.[265] Approximately 85% of those marshes have been lost or destroyed, but about 50 marshes and marsh fragments remain.[264] Huge tracts of the marshes were originally destroyed by farmers for agricultural purposes, then repurposed to serve as salt evaporation ponds to produce salt for food and other purposes.[266] Today, regulations limit the destruction of tidal marshes, and large portions are currently being rehabilitated to their natural state.[264]\nGovernment and politics[edit]\nMain article: Politics in the San Francisco Bay Area\nThe consolidated city-county government of San Francisco manages its many responsibilities inside the San Francisco City Hall building. In addition to city and county governments, a variety of agencies and districts are also involved in the governance of the Bay Area.\nGovernment in the San Francisco Bay Area consists of multiple actors, including 101 city and nine county governments, a dozen regional agencies, and a large number of single-purpose special districts such as municipal utility districts and transit districts.[267] Incorporated cities are responsible for providing police service, zoning, issuing building permits, and maintaining public streets among other duties.[268] County governments are responsible for elections and voter registration, vital records, property assessment and records, tax collection, public health, agricultural regulations, and building inspections, among other duties.[269][270] Public education is provided by independent school districts, which may be organized as elementary districts, high school districts, unified school districts combining elementary and high school grades, or community college districts, and are managed by an elected school board.[214] A variety of special districts also exist and provide a single purpose, such as delivering public transit in the case of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District,[271] or monitoring air quality levels in the case of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.[13]\nPolitics in the Bay Area is widely regarded as one of the most liberal in California and in the United States.[272][273] Since the late 1960s, the Bay Area has cemented its role as the most liberal region in California politics, giving greater support for the center-left Democratic Party's candidates than any other region of the state, even as California trended towards the Democratic Party over time.[274] According to research by the Public Policy Institute of California, the Bay Area and the North Coast counties of Humboldt and Mendocino were the most consistently and strongly liberal areas in California.[274]\nAccording to the California Secretary of State, the Democratic Party holds a voter registration advantage in every congressional district, State Senate district, State Assembly district, State Board of Equalization district, all nine counties, and all of the 101 incorporated municipalities in the Bay Area. On the other hand, the center-right Republican Party holds a voter registration advantage in only one State Assembly sub-district (the portion of the 4th in Solano County).[275] According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index (CPVI), congressional districts the Bay Area tends to favor Democratic candidates by roughly 40 to 50 percentage points, considerably above the mean for California and the nation overall.[276]\nBay Area counties by population and voter registration\nPopulation[277]\nRegistered voters[278]\nDemocratic[278]\nRepublican[278]\nD–R spread[278]\nIndependent[278]\nGreen[278]\nLibertarian[278]\nPeace and\nFreedom[278]\nElect[278]\nOther[278]\nNo party preference[278]\nAlameda 1,494,876 54.6% 56.4% 14.1% +42.3% 2.0% 1.2% 0.5% 0.4% 0.0% 6.0% 19.5%\nContra Costa 1,037,817 58.5% 50.4% 21.8% +24.8% 2.6% 0.5% 0.6% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 23.7%\nMarin 250,666 61.5% 54.4% 18.2% +36.2% 2.1% 1.4% 0.5% 0.2% 0.0% 0.3% 12.9%\nNapa 135,377 56.2% 46.9% 24.2% +22.7% 3.0% 0.8% 0.8% 0.3% 0.0% 0.5% 23.4%\nSan Francisco 870,887 62.4% 55.6% 8.6% +47.0% 1.8% 1.7% 0.6% 0.3% 0.0% 0.3% 31.1%\nSan Mateo 711,622 50.7% 51.3% 19.4% +31.9% 2.1% 0.7% 0.5% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 25.5%\nSanta Clara 1,762,754 46.5% 45.6% 21.7% +23.9% 2.1% 0.5% 0.6% 0.2% 0.0% 0.2% 29.0%\nSolano 411,620 51.1% 48.6% 25.0% +23.6% 2.8% 0.4% 0.5% 0.4% 0.0% 0.4% 22.0%\nSonoma 478,551 54.7% 51.5% 21.6% +29.9% 2.5% 1.8% 0.7% 0.3% 0.0% 0.3% 21.3%\nIn U.S. Presidential elections since 1960, the nine-county Bay Area voted for Republican candidates only two times, in both cases voting for a Californian: in 1972 for Richard Nixon and again in 1980 for Ronald Reagan. The last county to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate was Napa county in 1988 for George H. W. Bush. Since then, all nine Bay Area counties have voted consistently for the Democratic candidate.[279] Currently, both of California's U.S. Senators are Democrats, and all twelve U.S. congressional districts located wholly or partially in the Bay Area are represented by a Democratic representative. Additionally, every Bay Area member of the California State Senate and the California State Assembly is a registered Democrat.\nThe association between the Bay Area and progressive politics has led to the term \"San Francisco values\" being used by conservative commentators in a pejorative sense to describe the secular progressive culture in the area.[280]\nTransportation[edit]\nMain article: Transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area\nThe Bay Area is served by a variety of rail transit systems, with services provided by ACE, Amtrak, BART, Caltrain, Muni Metro, SMART, and VTA displayed here.\nTransportation in the San Francisco Bay Area is reliant on a complex multimodal infrastructure consisting of roads, bridges, highways, rail, tunnels, airports, ferries, and bike and pedestrian paths. The development, maintenance, and operation of these different modes of transportation are overseen by various agencies, including the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.[281] These and other organizations collectively manage several interstate highways and state routes, two subway networks, two commuter rail agencies, eight trans-bay bridges, transbay ferry service, local bus service,[282] three international airports (San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland),[283] and an extensive network of roads, tunnels, and paths such as the San Francisco Bay Trail.[284]\nThe Bay Area hosts an extensive freeway and highway system that is particularly prone to traffic congestion, with one study by Inrix concluding that the Bay Area's traffic was the fourth worst in the world.[285] There are some city streets in San Francisco where gaps occur in the freeway system, partly the result of the Freeway Revolt, which prevented a freeway-only thoroughfare through San Francisco between the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, the western terminus of Interstate 80, and the southern terminus of the Golden Gate Bridge (U.S. Route 101).[286] Additional damage that occurred in the wake of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake resulted in freeway segments being removed instead of being reinforced or rebuilt, leading to the revitalization of neighborhoods such as San Francisco's Embarcadero and Hayes Valley.[287] The greater Bay Area contains the three principal north-south highways in California: Interstate 5, U.S. Route 101, and California State Route 1. U.S. 101 and State Route 1 directly serve the traditional nine-county region, while Interstate 5 bypasses to the east in San Joaquin County to provide a more direct Los Angeles–Sacramento route. Additional local highways connect the various subregions of the Bay Area together.[288]\nThere are over two dozen public transit agencies in the Bay Area with overlapping service areas that utilize different modes, with designated connection points between the various operators. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a heavy rail/metro system, operates in four counties and connects San Francisco and Oakland via an underwater tube. Other commuter rail systems link San Francisco with the Peninsula and San Jose (Caltrain), San Jose with the Tri-Valley Area and San Joaquin County (ACE), and Sonoma with Marin County (SMART).[282] In addition, Amtrak provides frequent commuter service between San Jose and the East Bay with Sacramento, and long distance service to other parts of the United States.[289] Muni Metro operates a hybrid streetcar/subway system within the city of San Francisco, and VTA operates a light rail system in Santa Clara County. These rail systems are supplemented by numerous bus agencies and transbay ferries such as Golden Gate Ferry and the San Francisco Bay Ferry. 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(February 2004). \"S.F.'s 'Little Saigon' / Stretch of Larkin Street named for Vietnamese Americans\". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved March 6, 2010.\n^ \"Asian American Maps\". Pew Research. June 19, 2012. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Eaton, Joe and Ron Sullivan (May 31, 2014). \"Taste of Laos in Richmond school garden\". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ a b \"East Palo Alto\". Bay Area Census. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Kuruvila, Matthai (March 11, 2011). \"25% drop in African American population in Oakland\". SFGate.\n^ \"South Park, Santa Rosa's vibrant, ever-changing corner\". The Press Democrat. June 14, 2009. Retrieved July 8, 2011.\n^ \"Vallejo\". Bay Area Census. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ \"Richmond\". Bay Area Census. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cdp/MarinCityCDP2010.pdf\n^ Community Facts. (2010, October 5). [United States Census Bureau]. Retrieved from factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml#.\n^ a b c Scott, W. Richard, and Michael W. Krist. Higher Education and Silicon Valley: Connected but Conflicted. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017.\n^ \"Pleasanton tops county in median household income\". Inside Bay Area. August 30, 2006. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved October 15, 2006.\n^ a b Levin, Matt (August 11, 2016). \"California's rich-poor gap: The reality may surprise you\". CalMatters. Retrieved October 9, 2017.\n^ Holmes, Natalie and Alan Berube (January 14, 2016). \"City and metropolitan inequality on the rise, driven by declining incomes\". Brookings Institution. Retrieved October 9, 2017.\n^ DeBare, Ilana (March 6, 2008). \"47 Bay Area billionaires on Forbes list\". The San Francisco Chronicle.\n^ \"Capgemini Announces 2010 U.S. Metro Wealth Index\". Business Wire. August 3, 2010. 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Retrieved December 4, 2017.\nSo how can smaller Seattle make so much more housing happen than San Francisco? Developers active in both cities and officials who have worked in both point to structural differences that outweigh the demographic similarities. In San Francisco, development issues are routinely subject to consideration by neighborhood bodies, approval by the city planning commission and often ratification by its board of supervisors, with opportunities for decisions to be appealed. Seattle’s approval process is much more streamlined...The city’s planning commission is strictly a policy entity. It does not approve or reject projects. The city council weighs in on projects only in rare cases. [In S.F.]...he thinks that the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, makes it too easy for residents to sue projects, effectively holding them up for years or blocking them.\n^ Clark, Patrick (June 23, 2017). \"Why Can't They Build More Homes Where the Jobs Are?\". 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Center for Biological Diversity. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ \"Current California Ocean Recreational Fishing Regulations\". California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ \"From Salt Production to Salt Marsh\". NASA Earth Observatory. February 11, 2016. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Reiter, Matthew E.; et al. (April 2011). \"A Monitoring Plan for Wintering Shorebids in the San Francisco Bay\" (PDF). California Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ \"Threatened and Endangered species\". South Bay Restoration Project. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Central California Coast Steelhead DPS (Report). NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Regional Office. Retrieved February 15, 2010.\n^ Greg Miller (January 2010). \"In Central California, Coho Salmon Are on the Brink\". Science. 327 (5965): 512–3. Bibcode:2010Sci...327..512M. doi:10.1126/science.327.5965.512. PMID 20110475.\n^ Conaway CH; Black FJ; Grieb TM; Roy S; Flegal AR (2008). Mercury in the San Francisco Estuary. Rev Environ Contam Toxicol. Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. 194. pp. 29–54. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-74816-0_2. ISBN 978-0-387-74815-3. PMID 18069645.\n^ Skinner, John E. (1962). An Historical Review of the Fish and Wildlife Resources of the San Francisco Bay Area (The Mammalian Resources). California Department of Fish and Game, Water Projects Branch Report no. 1. Sacramento, California: California Department of Fish and Game. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011.\n^ Suzanne Stewart and Adrian Praetzellis (November 2003). Archeological Research Issues for the Point Reyes National Seashore – Golden Gate National Recreation Area (PDF) (Report). Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University. p. 335. Retrieved January 10, 2010.\n^ Clark, Samantha (August 12, 2016). \"Leave it to beavers: California joins other states in embracing the rodent\". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ \"Get Outside!\". San Francisco Chronicle. April 1966. Archived from the original on June 30, 2009. Retrieved March 6, 2011.\n^ \"Blue Oak Ranch Reserve\". University of California. Archived from the original on May 12, 2011. Retrieved March 6, 2011.\n^ \"Sea Lions and the Sea Lion Story\". Pier 39. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Tokuda, Wendy; Hall, Richard; Wakiyama, Hanako (ill.) (1986). Humphrey the lost whale: a true story. Union City, California: Heian Intl Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-89346-270-3. OCLC 779021889.\n^ Roger, AnnaMarie. \"Dolphins and Porpoises in San Francisco Bay\". Our Sausalito. Retrieved September 21, 2017.\n^ Yagi, Randy (September 5, 2015). \"Best Places For Bird Watching Near Bay Area\". KPIX-5. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Rendon, JIm (November–December 1999). \"Owl Be Damned:Developers plow into the homes of the burrowing owl\". Metro, Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper.\n^ Joe Eaton (January 14, 2010). \"Wild Neighbors: Antioch Owls Face Evicition\". Berkeley Daily Planet. Retrieved January 14, 2010.\n^ a b c Krieger, Lisa M. (April 3, 2017). \"In Bay Area, bald eagles breed and soar once more\". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Lisa M. Krieger (March 23, 2012). \"Eagles reappear in San Mateo County after nearly century absence\". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved March 25, 2012.\n^ Grinnell, J., and Wythe, M. W. (1927). \"Directory to the bird-life of the San Francisco Bay region\". Pacific Coast Avifauna. 18. Retrieved May 22, 2016. CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)\n^ Henny, C. J., and Anthony, R. G. (1989). B. G. Pendleton (ed.). \"Bald Eagle and Osprey, in Proceedings of the Western Raptor Management Symposium and Workshop\". National Wildlife Federation Scientific and Technical Series. 12: 66–82. CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)\n^ William G. Bousman (January 1, 2007). Breeding Bird Atlas of Santa Clara County, California. Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. ISBN 978-0-9796038-0-8.\n^ Anthony J. Brake; Harvey A. Wilson; Robin Leong & Allen M. Fish (September 2014). \"Status of Ospreys Nesting on San Francisco Bay\" (PDF). Western Birds. 45 (3): 190–198. Retrieved May 22, 2016.\n^ Rubio, Tena (November 27, 2015). \"Like It or Not, Wild Turkeys Proliferate in East Bay\". KQED. Retrieved November 27, 2015.\n^ Sloan, Doris (2006). Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region. University of California Press. p. 2.\n^ Preliminary geologic map emphasizing bedrock formations in Alameda County, California: A digital database USGS Publication\n^ Sloan, Doris (October 1, 2001). \"What, and where, are the oldest rocks in the Bay Area?\". Bay Nature Magazine. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Alden, Andrew (April 11, 2011). \"Bay Area Volcanoes\". KQED. Retrieved September 19, 2017.\n^ Anderson, David W; et al. \"San Andreas Fault and Coastal Geology from Half Moon Bay to Fort Funston: Crustal Motion, Climate Change, and Human Activity\" (PDF). United States Geological Survey. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ Fault Activity Map of California (Map). California Geological Survey. 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"The San Andreas and Other Bay Area Faults\". United States Geological Survey. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ Perlman, David (December 25, 2003). \"Bay Area home to thrust faults / Some are hidden from scientists' view\". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"Earthquake Hazards of The Bay Area Today\". United States Geological Survey. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"San Francisco Bay Delta Watershed Map\". ArcGIS. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"Lake Berryessa\". U.S. Department of the Interior. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"About Lake Merritt\". The Lake Merritt Institute. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ a b c \"A Brief History of the San Francisco Bay Tidal Marshes\". Stanford University. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ Kimmerer, W. (2004). \"Open water process of the San Francisco Estuary: from physical forcing to biological responses. \" San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 2(1). pp. 1–13.\n^ Paul, Roger (August 12, 2016). \"Massive new wetlands restoration reshapes San Francisco Bay\". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ Terplan, Egon (February 20, 2013). \"Strengthening the Bay Area's regional governance\" (PDF). SPUR. p. 2. Retrieved September 20, 2017.\n^ \"Codes: Code Search\". leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.\n^ Baldassare, Mark (1998). When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy. Public Policy Institute of California/University of California Press. pp. 67–68. ISBN 978-0-520-21486-6. LCCN 97032806.\n^ Janiskee, Brian P.; Masugi, Ken (2011). Democracy in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State (3rd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-4422-0338-9. LCCN 2011007585.\n^ \"A History of BART: The Concept is Born\". Bay Area Rapid Transit. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ Barabak, Mark Z. (March 31, 2017). \"How Trump supporters survive in blue California: 'You kind of keep your head down'\". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ Fuller, Thomas (July 2, 2017). \"California's Far North Deplores 'Tyranny' of the Urban Majority\". New York Times. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ a b McGhee, Eric and Daniel Krimm (February 2012). \"California's Political Geography\". Public Policy Institute of California. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ \"Report of Registration\" (PDF). California Secretary of State. February 10, 2019. Retrieved March 11, 2019.\n^ \"PVI Map and District List\". The Cook Political Report. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ U.S. Census Bureau. American Community Survey, 2011 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table B02001. American FactFinder. Retrieved October 26, 2013.\n^ a b c d e f g h i j k California Secretary of State. Report of Registration as of February 10, 2017.\n^ \"Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Election Results\". Dave Leip's Atlas. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ Garofoli, Joe (November 3, 2006). \"Three Dirty Words: San Francisco Values\". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved May 21, 2008.\n^ \"California Department of Transportation\". Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ a b c Amin, Ratna and Sara Barz (April 2015). \"Seamless Transit\" (PDF). SPUR. pp. 4–9. Retrieved September 18, 2017.\n^ Reed, Ted (June 12, 2017). \"All Three Bay Area Airports Grow as United Expands Frisco Hub and Oakland Gets Two Spain Flights\". TheStreet. 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Retrieved September 20, 2017.\nWikimedia Commons has media related to San Francisco Bay Area.\nDiscover the Bay Area website run by Discover California\nBay Area Tourism Guide by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce\nCarquinez Strait\nClifton Forebay\nGrizzly Bay\nNapa River\nOakland Estuary\nPetaluma River\nRichardson Bay\nRichmond Inner Harbor\nSacramento River\nSan Leandro Bay\nSan Pablo Bay\nSonoma Creek\nSuisun Bay\nTomales Bay\n100k–250k\n50k–99k\nCherryland\nNorth Fair Oaks\nTamalpais-Homestead Valley\nSacramento (capital)\nCalifornia Sound\nNational Historic Landmarks\nNational Natural Landmarks\nNRHP listings\nCongressional delegations\nState Historic Landmarks\nCalifornia Coast Ranges\nCascade Range\nConejo Valley\nCucamonga Valley\nEast Bay (SF Bay Area)\nEast County (SD)\nEastern California\nGreater San Bernardino\nKlamath Basin\nLos Angeles Basin\nMountain Empire\nNorth Bay (SF)\nNorth Coast (SD)\nOwens Valley\nOxnard Plain\nPeninsular Ranges\nSacramento–San Joaquin River Delta\nSalinas Valley\nSanta Clara Valley\nSanta Clara River Valley\nSouth Bay (LA)\nSouth Bay (SD)\nSouth Bay (SF)\nTransverse Ranges\nMetro regions\nMetropolitan Fresno\nLos Angeles metropolitan area\nSan Bernardino-Riverside metropolitan area\nSan Diego–Tijuana\nSan Jose-San Francisco\nCoordinates: 37°45′N 122°17′W / 37.750°N 122.283°W / 37.750; -122.283\nRetrieved from \"/w/index.php?title=San_Francisco_Bay_Area&oldid=935424938\"\nRegions of California\nGeography of Northern California\nMetropolitan areas of California\nUse American English from February 2019\nAll Deep web articles written in American English\nDeep web articles with BNF identifiers\nDeep web articles with GND identifiers\nDeep web articles with LCCN identifiers\nDeep web articles with NLI identifiers\nDeep web articles with SUDOC identifiers\nDeep web articles with VIAF identifiers\nDeep web articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line987669"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8181074261665344,"wiki_prob":0.8181074261665344,"text":"Edmund Beecher Wilson\nEdmund Beecher Wilson (Geneva, Illinois, 19 October 1856 – 3 March 1939) was a pioneering American zoologist and cell biologist. He wrote one of the most famous textbooks in the history of modern biology, The Cell.[1][2]\nCareer[change | change source]\nWilson graduated from Yale in 1878. He earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1881. He was a lecturer at Williams College in 1883–84 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884–85. He served as professor of biology at Bryn Mawr College from 1885 to 1891.\nHe spent the balance of his career at Columbia University where he was successively adjunct professor of biology (1891–94), professor of invertebrate zoology (1894–1897), and professor of zoology (from 1897).\nWilson is credited as America's first cell biologist. In 1898 he used the similarity in embryos to describe evolutionary relationships. By observing spiral cleavage in molluscs, flatworms and annelids he concluded that the same organs came from the same group of cells and concluded that all these organisms must have a common ancestor.\nHe also discovered the chromosomal XY sex-determination system in 1905—that males have XY and females XX sex chromosomes. Nettie Stevens independently made the same discovery the same year.\nIn 1907, he described, for the first time, the additional or supernumerary chromosomes, now called B-chromosomes.\nProfessor Wilson published many papers on embryology, and served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1913.\nThe American Society for Cell Biology annually awards the E.B. Wilson Medal in his honour.[3]\nSutton and Boveri[change | change source]\n1902–1904: Theodor Boveri (1862–1915), a German biologist, in a series of papers, drew attention to the correspondence between the behaviour of chromosomes and the results obtained by Mendel.[4] He said that chromosomes were \"independent entities which retain their independence even in the resting nucleus... What comes out of the nucleus is what goes into it\".\nIn 1903 Walter Sutton suggested that chromosomes, which segregate in a Mendelian fashion, are hereditary units.[5] Wilson, who was Sutton's teacher, called this the Sutton–Boveri hypothesis.\nWikimedia Commons has media related to Edmund Beecher Wilson.\n↑ Wilson E.B. 1896; 1900; 1925. The cell in development and inheritance. Macmillan. The third edition ran to 1232 pages, and was still in use after WWII.\n↑ Sturtevant A.H. 1965. A history of genetics. Harper & Row, N.Y. p33\n↑ [1] E. B. Wilson award page at ASCB.org\n↑ Boveri T. 1904. Ergebnisse uber die Konstitution der chromatischen Substanz des Zellkerns. Fischer, Jena.\n↑ Ernest W. Crow and James F. Crow (2002). \"100 Years Ago: Walter Sutton and the chromosome theory of heredity\". Genetics 160 (1): 1–4. http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/160/1/1.\nRetrieved from \"https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edmund_Beecher_Wilson&oldid=5798362\"\nAmerican academics\nAmerican geneticists\nAmerican zoologists\nScientists from Illinois\nYale University alumni","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line6708"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6194303035736084,"wiki_prob":0.3805696964263916,"text":"Op-Eds by Tax Law / Does GST ensure unbiased adjudication? | The Hindu Business Line\nDoes GST ensure unbiased adjudication? | The Hindu Business Line\nOp-Eds by Tax Law · April 1, 2019\nAuthor(s): Vidushi Gupta and Vinti Agarwal\nThe integrity and efficiency of any tax system hinges on the credibility of its adjudication mechanism in the eyes of taxpayers. Now that litigation under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) law is in full swing, we analyse some of its provisions and test them against the touchstone of fairness and taxpayer friendliness.\nIntelligence-based enforcement\nThe allocation of administrative and enforcement power under the GST has been a thorny area from the very beginning. The GST Council settled on the implementation of a single interface and distributed administrative jurisdiction between the Centre and States in its ninth meeting. However, it was decided that both the Central and State tax authorities will have the power to conduct intelligence-based enforcement in respect of the entire value chain.\nBased on these decisions, a clarification authorised both the Central and State authorities to initiate intelligence-based enforcement action on the entire taxpayer base, irrespective of their administrative jurisdiction. The clarification also empowered the authority initiating such action to conduct investigation, adjudication, recovery, file appeal, etc., arising out of such action.\nIn several GST Council meetings prior to the ninth one, concerns were expressed that the grant of such parallel powers could cause confusion and harassment of taxpayers. A Committee of Officers was set up to evaluate the issue, which suggested the introduction of measures to prevent abuse of concurrent enforcement powers.\nHowever, none of these apprehensions were discussed in the ninth Council meeting and the clarification was introduced without any guidelines to regulate the simultaneous exercise of powers by the Centre and States. The grant of such wide, unfettered powers complicates the mechanism, and is likely to lead to harassment of taxpayers.\nCertain provisions under the Central GST Act empower the same officer to investigate, and adjudicate matters. Section 61, for instance, empowers a ‘proper officer’ to scrutinise taxpayers’ returns, highlight discrepancies in such returns and seek subsequent explanations. Further, if the ‘proper officer’ is not satisfied with the explanation offered, he is also authorised to issue a show-cause notice and subsequently adjudicate the matter to pass an order. In accordance with the circular issued under this provision, the Superintendent has been assigned the role of a ‘proper officer’.\nEffectively, this provision and the assignment of the role of ‘proper officer’ thereunder, results in taxpayers offering an explanation before the same authority twice — first at the time of scrutiny of returns and again at the time of filing a reply to the show-cause notice.\nMoreover, since the authority passing the order is the same authority who conducted the scrutiny, they are likely to believe their initial findings and fail to adjudicate the matter without prejudice. The allocation of powers under the GST law needs to be rethought to ensure that it does not create a confirmation bias. The current structure is ineffective and fails to inspire public faith in the system.\nAppellate tribunal\nIt is settled position that tribunals created under statutes must maintain independence of the judiciary. When a tribunal takes over the functions of a court of law, persons who are as nearly equal in rank, experience or competence to those of the court should be appointed as members of the tribunal. The number of technical members must thus, not exceed the judicial members.\nUnder the Central GST Act, the national and regional benches of the tribunal are taking over the High Courts’ jurisdiction, and the State and area benches are taking over the District Courts’ jurisdiction. However, all of these bodies have two technical members and only one member acting in judicial capacity.\nFurther, in certain circumstances, tribunals have been permitted to hear matters through a single member bench, or a bench of two members. In such cases there is a chance that only technical members adjudicate on questions of law. The constitution of tribunals under the GST thus violates the doctrine of separation of powers, and compromise the independence of the judiciary. It also breaches the reasonable expectation that matters before tribunals would be adjudicated upon application of legal mind.\nGiven that GST is still in its formative years, its future is heavily dependent on taxpayers’ confidence in the uniform, fair and unbiased functioning of the dispute-settlement mechanism. Strengthening the structure should, therefore, be treated as a priority.\nThe writers are Research Fellows at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.\nOriginally published – https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/does-gst-ensure-unbiased-adjudication/article26694864.ece\nGST, Op-Ed by Vidushi Gupta, The Hindu Business Line, Tribunals\nAbout Vidushi Gupta:\nVidushi is a Research Fellow with the Tax Law vertical. She is interested in facilitating reforms in India’s tax landscape and focuses on issues relating to goods and services tax, income tax and international tax. At Vidhi, she has assisted the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, the Department of Revenue, the Finance Commission, and the Goods and Services Tax Network on a range of projects, including simplification of goods and services tax compliance and increasing adoption of digital payments. Vidushi graduated with a B.A.LL.B.(Hons.) from Dr. RML National Law University in 2014. Prior to joining Vidhi, she was working at PwC as an Assistant Manager in the Tax and Regulatory Services division, where she provided indirect tax advisory, litigation and compliance services various multinational clients.\nAbout Vinti Agarwal:\nVinti is a Research Fellow in Tax Law vertical. At Vidhi, she is involved in a project relating to imposition of cess and surcharge, post the introduction of GST. Additionally, she also undertakes assignments relating to Goods and Service Tax and other tax laws in India. She graduated with B.B.A.LL.B. from National Law University, Odisha in 2018 with a Batch Rank 2 out of 120 students. During her time there she served as a member in the Editorial Board for Indian Journal for Tax Law. She is primarily interested in Tax Law and Regulatory Law, in pursuance of which she has garnered accolades in mooting.\nReforming the Tribunals Framework in India: An Interim Report\nLegislative Changes to Strengthen the GST Regime\nThe State of the Nation’s Tribunals I\nState of the Nation’s Tribunals II\nDon’t incentivise cashless transactions | LiveMint\nNilekani Suggests ‘asynchronous’ Approach To GST\nMore Posts From: Op-Eds by Tax Law\nEye Share : The PV Ramana Reddy Judgment - Power to Arrest Under Special Laws vis-a-vis Code of Criminal Procedure | GSTSUTRA\nIncome Tax Act: Govt needs to clarify ‘significant economic presence’ | Financial Express\nDe-Coding the 5 Lakh Rebate Proposed Under Budget 2019 | The Wire\nBudget an opportunity to reconsider angel tax | Financial Express\nTaxing times: GST could increase banking cost for customers | Financial Express","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line441987"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9113733172416687,"wiki_prob":0.9113733172416687,"text":"Premiere: Straight No Chaser covers 'Homeward Bound' with touching video of home footage\nFor their seventh album \"One Shot,\" a cappella favorites Straight No Chaser celebrate their success with a collection of wide-ranging covers – including one sentimental favorite, the Simon and Garfunkel classic \"Homeward Bound.\"\nFittingly, Straight No Chaser paired the track with a nostalgic video that intercuts clips of the band on the road with footage of sweet moments of the bandmates with their families, a testament to what \"home\" really means for each of them.\nSteve Morgan, one of Straight No Chaser's founding members, told USA TODAY that he first connected with the message of \"Homeward Bound\" when he was an exchange student in Germany in high school, dealing with his homesickness. Now that he's a father who spends months on tour away from his family, the song has taken on a different meaning.\n\"When we were trying to tell the story of us as individuals and a group, I felt it was very important to tell the story of the families we leave at home when we head out on the road,\" he said. \"Randy (Stine) suggested this song to do just that, and I immediately wanted to arrange it.\"\n\"It means so much to be able to include video of our children and wives in this project,\" he said. \"Personally, my kids love being able to be a part of our projects, and it's fun to see them show their cameos to friends and family (and really, anyone who will watch!) with pride. Wherever we go, they are always in our thoughts, so it's wonderful to be able to highlight them with this song.\"\nMore:The not-so-straight path of this Straight No Chaser founder Steve Morgan\n\"One Shot,\" out Nov. 2, includes the group's takes on songs from James Brown, Fleetwood Mac and Ricky Martin, as well as a Boyz II Men and Montell Jordan mashup of “Motownphilly/This Is How We Do It\" and a cover of Percy Sledge's \"When a Man Loves a Woman\" dedicated to the band's significant others.\n\"The album \"One Shot\" is special because it is all about us, so it was a labor of love to put it together,\" Morgan said. \"We were able to go through the history of the group since its inception at Indiana University in 1996 and choose what special moments we wanted to musicalize: the group's humble beginnings, graduating from college, getting regular jobs, meeting our wives, having kids ... all the highlights.\"\nThe band hits the road for their \"One Shot\" tour Oct. 26 in Prior Lake, Minn. Their trek wraps up Jan. 5 in Waimea, Hawaii.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line357268"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7330438494682312,"wiki_prob":0.2669561505317688,"text":"Meet the Real Women\nCecilia Payne-Gaposchkin now considered the founder of modern astronomy discovered that all the stars are made primarily of Hydrogen and Helium.\nValentina Tereshkova broke all stereotypes by training physically for the rigours of space and becoming the first woman to go to space\nMarie Curie discovered radium and radioactivity. She opened the door to a new era of medical knowledge and disease treatments. She also changed the way scientists think about atoms and energy.\nNatalie Batalah played a key role in getting the Kepler mission funded and has been leading it ever since. The Kepler mission found the first habitable planet outside of our solar system\nMargaret Hamilton led the software team at MIT which was responsible for the Apollo moon Landing software. \"It took a woman to send a man to the moon\"\nTessy Thomas is known as the 'Missile Woman' of India. She is the first woman scientist to head a missile project in India.\nMae C Jamison is an Astronaut and physician and currently leads 100 years of starship a project to develop and design a self sufficient star ship designed for extended interstellar journey","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line606078"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9133737087249756,"wiki_prob":0.9133737087249756,"text":"Hill Won't Apply Too Much Pressure\nManager Keith Hill has been reflecting on the week as his side gets set to face AFC Wimbledon at Kingsmeadow on Saturday.\nOn last weekend’s defeat at home to Dagenham and Redbridge, he told Dale Player: “If I had looked at the Dagenham game in its entirety and we hadn’t created chances and we hadn’t dominated possession then I would be worried and I would start considering maybe changing things, but consistently over the course of the season we have been very good at creating opportunities. The game against Dagenham could easily have gone in the same direction as the Plymouth game if we had scored early.\n“Fair play to Wayne Burnett and his team because after the goal it looked as though they were the only team that were likely to score again. We have to be better at certain things that we do because we shouldn’t be losing that type of game. But again we’re talking about young players who are in the educational process of making those mistakes. It’s really important that they learn from those mistakes instead of me being dictatorial and hitting them with a stick, rather than feeding them with a carrot.”\nDale were also in action on Tuesday afternoon as a young side, with the exception of experienced player/coach Brian Barry-Murphy, faced Oldham Athletic in the Manchester Senior Cup. Hill was pleased with what he saw on display at Chapel Road.\n“I enjoyed the game and I enjoyed the way that the players tried to play.\n“Brian Barry-Murphy played at centre-half and he was leading the young players on the pitch. You had Bastien out there, Callum Camps who I thought was excellent, George Porter got 90 minutes under his belt, Joe Raff played, Shaquille [Antoine Clarke] as well, so I was really pleased. I am really, really pleased as we head into the last 18 games of the season and it’s up to myself and it’s up to people like Ian Henderson, Michael Rose and Peter Cavanagh to really, really lead these players in what is a new situation for a lot of them.”\nHe continued: We’ve just got to support the players, myself included, and not put too much pressure on them. We’re a young squad, with the likes of Jamie Allen, the Callum Camps’ and Oliver Lancashire’s of this world, and the likes of Joe Rafferty, Rhys Bennett and Matty Done, who has been playing in an unfamiliar position. We’ve just got to make sure that we encourage them and not expect too much, and we will be successful.”\nThe squad set off for London on Friday morning ahead of the weekend’s Sky Bet League Two fixture against AFC Wimbledon at Kingsmeadow, and Hill is looking forward to the game.\n“I respect any opposition,\" said Hill. \"There’s certain ways that we want to play and we’ll stick to our principles. I can’t and won’t change the group of players that we’ve got. We’ll consistently keep trying to win as many games as we possibly can. Like I pointed out last week, over the 46 games we’ve played since I’ve been back at the club we’ve got 72 points, which would get us into the play-offs. I think that would be some type of success for this Football Club, after having only achieved that three times in the history of the football club, so we’re aiming for at least that, but I do believe that there’s till one place up for grabs in the automatic promotion pack.”\nThe full interview is on Dale Player.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line994129"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5498433113098145,"wiki_prob":0.5498433113098145,"text":"Trump Hints At Troop Pardons: We Teach Them To Fight, Then They’re ‘Treated Very Unfairly’\nWhile President Trump said he hadn’t made any decisions yet on future pardons for military personnel on trial for war crimes, he hinted on Friday which way he might be leaning.\nSpeaking to reporters before leaving for Japan, Trump was at first non-committal before he suggested that troops shouldn’t be punished when “we teach them how to be great fighters.”\n“We’re looking at a lot of different pardons for a lot of different people. Some of these soldiers are people that have fought hard, long. We teach them how to be great fighters and then when they fight sometimes they get really treated very unfairly,” he said. “So, we’re going to take a look at it. I haven’t done anything yet. I haven’t made any decisions. There’s two or three of them right now. It’s a little bit controversial. It’s very possible that I’ll let the trials go on and I’ll make my decision after the trial.”\nThe Daily Beast reported earlier this week that a Fox News host, who has been vocal about his support for several military personnel currently in custody for alleged war crimes, has been privately lobbying Trump to pardon several former members of the military, including Eddie Gallagher, who is accused of murdering an Islamic State prisoner who was getting medical treatment.\nTrump says he hasn't made any decisions on pardons for troops accused of war crimes pic.twitter.com/PzjV5w167U\n— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 24, 2019\nDonald Trumpmilitarypardon","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1408431"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6055828928947449,"wiki_prob":0.6055828928947449,"text":"Sea organ\nSea organ in scaled form—the sound emerges from the holes along the top step\nA sound recording of the sea organ.\nThe Sea organ (Croatian: Morske orgulje) is an architectural sound art object located in Zadar, Croatia and an experimental musical instrument, which plays music by way of sea waves and tubes located underneath a set of large marble steps.\nChaotic reconstruction work was undertaken in an attempt to repair the devastation Zadar suffered in the Second World War. The frantic reconstruction turned much of the sea front into an unbroken, monotonous concrete wall.\nThe device was made by the architect Nikola Bašić as part of the project to redesign the new city coast (Nova riva), and the site was opened to the public on 15 April 2005.[1] The waves interact with the organ in order to create somewhat random but harmonic sounds.\nThe Sea Organ has drawn tourists and locals alike. In addition, white marble steps leading down to the water were built later. Concealed under these steps, which both protect and invite, is a system of polyethylene tubes and a resonating cavity that turns the site into a large musical instrument, played by the chance-based results of the wind and the sea waves.\nIn 2006, the Sea Organ was awarded with the prize ex-aequo of the fourth edition of the European Prize for Urban Public Space.[2]\nWave Organ (in San Francisco, California, USA)\nBlackpool High Tide Organ (in Blackpool, England, UK)\nChillida's Comb of the Wind (in San Sebastián / Donostia, Basque Country, Spain)\nWater organ or Hydraulis\nHydraulophone\n^ Stamac, I: Acoustical and Musical Solution to Wave-driven Sea Organ in Zadar, Proceedings of the 2nd Congress of Alps-Adria Acoustics Association and 1st Congress of Acoustical Society of Croacia, pages 203-206, 2005.\n^ Crevar, Alex (2008-07-06). \"After 2,000 Years, a Croatian Port Town Still Seduces\". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-10-22.\nWikimedia Commons has media related to Sea organ in Zadar.\n\"Sea organ, Zadar, Croatia\", SonicWonders.org (sound and video)\n\"Sea Organ - musical instrument played by the sea\", OddMusic.com.\n\"Sea organ photo pool\", Flickr.com.\nSea organ, prize ex-aequo of the fourth edition of the European Prize for Urban Public Space, PublicSpace.org.\n\"Sea organ music, Zadar, Croatia\", free-stock-music.com (sound)\n\"Sea organ binaural recording music, Zadar, Croatia\", soundcloud.com (sound)\nRetrieved from \"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sea_organ&oldid=927996114\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1325438"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6248006820678711,"wiki_prob":0.3751993179321289,"text":"Fifty Year Friday: Velvet Underground “The Velvet Underground & Nico”; Nico “Chelsea Girl”\nI am having second thoughts about posting these album reviews of music of 1967 — fifty years ago.\nOne: it’s not easy to write reviews about music: to describe music in words is an impossible activity, and at best one ends up describing their reactions to the music, which, really, is self-centered, possibly narcissistic, and either self-indulgent or masochistic (writing music reviews can be very painful as one recognizes that keystrokes being captured by WordPress fall immeasurably short of the sound waves that are captured by audio recording devices.)\nTwo: shouldn’t I be writing about recent album releases? To write reviews about albums already accepted as established classics doesn’t help generate income for the musicians (if they are still alive), encourage them to create more music, or provide the service of bringing previously ignored music or musicians to people’s attention.\nThree: there are others out there writing music reviews that get less visitors than this blog, and yet their reviews are better, more interesting and more informative. When I have visited such blogs, I am shocked to see posts that range from being hours old to months old without a single like or comment. What keeps them going?\nAnd so I take the time to ask myself, am I providing anything of value to my reader or, if not to my reader, is there anything that I get out of this? And I really don’t know at this point if any single one of my reviews has caused someone to listen to music they would otherwise have missed out on. But I do know, once I take the time to reflect on it, that I do get something out all of this: knowing that I need to write something, I am listening to this music differently than I normally would. I am not only listening intently, but with the need to find something I can communicate out to someone else.\nDuring much of my regular music listening, I listen seriously, and I direct my attention directly on the music. I am seated. I am not dancing, driving, cooking, or watching sports with the sound turned down. I am a human receiver, trying to absorb and enjoy as much of the music as possible. When I listen to music I am planning to write about, I am no longer in receiver mode, but in explorer mode. I am looking for places to pitch a tent, clues for sources of water, tracks of game in the vicinity, evidence of past occupants or current inhabitants. I am reaching out, straining my eyes to see the distance, taking notes mentally; I normally don’t do any of these things when I am listening for enjoyment.\nAnd so knowing that I must write about what I am listening to changes the listening experience. If it is a digital source, I might even pause, rewind and replay. I find myself looking for strengths and weaknesses in the music instead of taking it on it’s own terms. It’s like the difference between dating someone for the enjoyment of their company and dating to determine an appropriate life partner.\nAnd there is the selection of material. When I listen for enjoyment, I pick something I am in the mood for, or something I just bought, or something that will provide a unique experience. When I am writing a post about one of the best albums of 1967, the selection process is limited to that year, and I have to find something that is pretty good and that others will enjoy. When listening, I ask myself, is this album good enough to mention as a “Fifty Year Friday” album, and if the answer is no, the album has served it’s purpose as a candidate and either I tolerantly listen to the end, or I stop and put on something else.\nAnd to select an album, I review all potential choices: albums in my collection I have heard dozens of times, both as an dedicated listener and as background to other activities, as well as albums that I purchased, and never played — or played the first track — or continued past the first track but made secondary while reading liner notes, reading a book, or doing something else.\nAnd so we come to this Velvet Underground album. I know this is a good group: a very important group in its place in the history of music. And I was a fan of Lou Reed’s “Transformer” album, at least marginally, having heard it a few times in 1973 and 1974. And so, back in the early 1990’s, when I would buy a few dozen CDs every month, mostly jazz and classical, I saw this in the local mega-bookstore bin, and not having a single Velvet Undergound CD, and knowing this was supposedly a good one, I immediately bought it with a few dozen other CDs. When I got home, this CD had to compete with a previously purchased 18 CD set of Nat King Cole, a Chet Baker CD, the complete Bill Holiday on Verve, a 6 CD T-Bone Walker set, a Captain Beefheart CD and several new classical CDs. Neither the Velvet Underground nor the Captain Beefheart won me over after the first couple of tracks, so I set them aside, meaning to listen to them soon, but never doing so.\nBut now, in 2017, looking for worthwhile albums from 1967, I select this previously neglected CD, and listen to it with full attention. And to my surprise, it is a musical treasure.\nIf Sgt. Pepper’s is the first example of progressive rock, “The Velvet Underground & Nico” is the first example of Art-Rock, at least that I know of. I am not always a fan of so-called Art Rock — it can get on my nerves, but like the genre, free-jazz, when it is done right, it is great — when it is just an excuse for lack of structure, vision, content, it is like so much of the so-called classical “Avant-Garde” (neither classical or particularly innovative) of the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s — a waste of valuable listening time.\nThis album, though, has direction, intensity, texture, form, structure. There is a sense that there is a canvas with dimensions in space and time that is being systematically addressed with points, dabs, strokes, shades, groupings and contrasts.\n“Sunday Morning” is the last song recorded for the album, but it makes sense for it to open the album as it is most accessible and apparently disarmingly innocent of all the songs. The celesta provides a music-box like introduction, to a peaceful, tranquil tune with lyrics that belie the musical serenity:\nAnd I’m falling\nI’ve got a feeling\nI don’t want to know”\nThis is a song that could have gotten substantial airplay. Perhaps it didn’t due to the contrast between the pleasantly serene melody and the disheartening lyrics. Perhaps it didn’t because of Lou Reed’s distinct half-spoken and sometimes imperfect intonation. Or perhaps there were commercial reasons or lack of the necessary behind-the-scenes connections.\nThe musically bucolic first track is contrasted with a rough, repetitive, blues based “Waiting for the Man.” The lyrics are again bleak, portraying a New York City heroin addict, looking to score from his dealer.\nSince music is generally my main focus, let’s get the lyrics out of way. Lou Reed’s writing is direct, brutally honest, and of its time. These are not the clever, playful, roundabout lyrics we find in most of the more socially-relevant music of the time. This is a much more accurate, even painful, representation of reality. Lou Reed connects with life’s realities rather than just observes or comments on life:\n“I’m waiting for my man\nTwenty-six dollars in my hand\nUp to Lexington, one, two, five\nFeel sick and dirty, more dead than alive\n“Hey, white boy, what you doin’ uptown?\nHey, white boy, you chasin’ our women around?\nOh pardon me sir, it’s the furthest from my mind\nI’m just lookin’ for a dear, dear friend of mine\nThe music here is frantic, with hints of barrelhouse piano transformed into a pounding commentary on withdrawal and drug dependency. This is not pleasant music. This is musical drama.\nLou Reed is sometimes flat, and occasionally here or there sharp, but, thankfully, he wavers more like a gymnast maintaining equilibrium on the balance beam, his pitch violations compensated by his confident and appropriate delivery of the text which unfailingly communicates the intrinsic meaning and essence inherent in the words. Not the case with Nico. At the insistence of Andy Warhol, Nico was added to the band to perform lead vocals on a few of the tracks as well as some backing vocals. On the third track of the album, the wistful ballad, “Femme Fatale”, the combination of being out of tune and lack of consistent expression erode her voice’s timbral strengths inviting one to consider how much better the album would have been with Lou Reed replacing her lead vocal assignments.\nIt is with “Venus in Furs” that this album takes off into another musical sphere. Not only is the focus on the substance, with a given mood and direction deftly and often roughly crafted for each track, but we get a range of music styles — some of that immediate time period and some hinting at the near future.\nOne can identify the influences in this album: Bob Dylan, blues, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, free jazz (Lou was a fan of Cecil Taylor), classical avant garde, modernism and experimental music (Cale studied with Humphrey Searle, and after coming to the U.S, had ties to Iannis Xenakis, John Cage and La Monte Young), British Invasion, British Skiffle, Indian and eastern music (note the drone and guitar in “Venus in Furs”), and possibly the New York Hypnotic School. More to the point are the many hints and foreshadowings of future styles of music including minimalism, psychedelic, glam rock, art rock, progressive rock, punk, goth, and grunge. I will take bets on Velvet Underground having influenced Peter Hamill, David Bowie, PJ Harvey and groups like the Residents (at least a little), Explosions in the Sky, Sex Pistols, Joy Division, U2, Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M. and countless others.\nTrack listing[from Wikipedia]\nAll tracks written by Lou Reed except where noted.\n1. “Sunday Morning“ Lou Reed, John Cale 2:54\n2. “I’m Waiting for the Man“ 4:39\n3. “Femme Fatale“ 2:38\n4. “Venus in Furs“ 5:12\n5. “Run Run Run“ 4:22\n6. “All Tomorrow’s Parties“ 6:00\n7. “Heroin“ 7:12\n8. “There She Goes Again“ 2:41\n9. “I’ll Be Your Mirror“ 2:14\n10. “The Black Angel’s Death Song“ Lou Reed, John Cale 3:11\n11. “European Son“ Reed, Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker 7:46\nOn the original album:\nJohn Cale – electric viola (1, 4, 6, 7, 10), piano (1, 2, 3, 6), bass guitar (2, 3, 5, 8–11), backing vocals (8), celesta (1), hissing (10), sound effects (11)\nSterling Morrison – rhythm guitar (2, 5, 7, 8, 9), lead guitar (3, 10, 11), bass guitar (1, 4, 6), backing vocals (3, 5, 8)\nNico – vocals (3, 6, 9), backing vocals (1)\nLou Reed – lead vocals (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11), backing vocals (3), lead guitar (1–5, 7–11), ostrich guitar (4, 6)\nMaureen Tucker – percussion (1, 3, 7–8, 10–11), drums (2, 5), snare drum, (3), tambourine (2, 3, 4, 6, 9), bass drum (4, 6)\nAndy Warhol – producer\nTom Wilson – post-production supervisor, “Sunday Morning” producer\nAmi Hadami (credited as Omi Haden) – T.T.G. Studios engineer\nGary Kellgren – Scepter Studios engineer (uncredited)\nNorman Dolph – Scepter Studios engineer (uncredited)\nJohn Licata – Scepter Studios engineer (uncredited)\nGene Radice – post-production editor, remixer\nDavid Greene – post-production editor, remixer\nFor those that want to hear additional Lou Reed compositions from this time period, they can listen to “Chelsea Girl”, Nico’s solo album recorded in 1966 after “Velvet Underground & Nico”, and released in October 1967. The name of the album is a reference to Andy Warhol‘s 1966 film Chelsea Girls, in which Nico starred and includes a Lou Read composition of that same name. Besides Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison making contributions, we also get two Jackson Browne compositions and his guitar on five of the tracks. Jackson Browne was providing back up for Nico’s small venue performances in 1966, and romantically involved with her until 1968.\nNico’s vocals are slightly better than on the Velvet Underground album, but there are still serious problems with pitch and in providing appropriate emotional delivery of the lyrics. The string arrangements, instrumental backing, and strength of the compositions help alleviate some of Nico’s performance shortcomings.\n“The Fairest of the Seasons” (Jackson Browne, Gregory Copeland) – 4:06\n“These Days” (Jackson Browne) – 3:30\n“Little Sister” (John Cale, Lou Reed) – 4:22\n“Winter Song” (John Cale) – 3:17\n“It Was a Pleasure Then” (Lou Reed, John Cale, Christa Päffgen) – 8:02\n“Chelsea Girls” (Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison) – 7:22\n“I’ll Keep It With Mine” (Bob Dylan) – 3:17 Note: this song was recorded by Dylan in 1965 but remained unreleased on any of his own albums until the 1985 Biograph set.\n“Somewhere There’s a Feather” (Jackson Browne) – 2:16\n“Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” (Lou Reed) – 5:07\n“Eulogy to Lenny Bruce” (Tim Hardin) – 3:45\nChrista “Nico” Päffgen – vocals\nJackson Browne – electric guitar (A1-2, B2-3, B5)\nLou Reed – electric guitar (A3, A5, B1, B4)\nJohn Cale – viola, organ, guitar (A3-5)\nSterling Morrison – electric guitar (B1, B4)\nTom Wilson – producer\nVal Valentin – director of engineering\nGary Kellgren – recording and remix engineer\nLarry Fallon – string and flute arrangements\nPaul Morrissey – photography\nFifty Year Friday, Music, Uncategorized\nThoughtful Thursday: Feeling the Future\nThoughtful Thursday: Observing, Comparison and Evaluating\nComments on: \"Fifty Year Friday: Velvet Underground “The Velvet Underground & Nico”; Nico “Chelsea Girl”\" (21)\nhanspostcard said:\nCould well be the finest debut album in the history of rock music!\nhanspostcard, good point! It’s up there for sure, along with King Crimson’s “In the Court of the Crimson King.”\nBen Naga said:\nI’d go for “Song To A Seagull” personally and was never fond of “In The Court …”. Far too full of itself IMHO.\nYes, big Joni Mitchell fan here! But still love that first Crimson album. Is there anything quite like “In the Court of the Crimson King” or “21st Century Schizoid Man”?\nPerhaps not, but they don’t ring my particular bell. Now between Larks’ Tongues (I assume you know the literary reference:a great trilogy) and Discipline: now there’s a band!!! (ignoring the almost change of membership. 🙂 ) All three sit next neatly to “Tapestry” while anything earlier is long gone, I’m afraid.\nBen — I do not know the literary reference. Please advise. Like the later KC albums also. I got Court of the Crimson King when it first came out, and there really wasn’t any album like it at that time. 🙂\nhttps://www.blackgate.com/2017/04/05/vintage-treasures-zimiamvia-a-trilogy-by-e-r-eddison/\nI don’t recall in which of the four books this is mentioned but if you have the time you could read them and find out. 🙂 I certainly recommend them well worth reading and as you can see Tolkien agrees with me. And presumably Fripp too.\nBen, Thanks! Will put this on my reading list.\nDo you know this? I think it’s the best thing Nico ever recorded.\nhttps://bennaga.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/each-day-is-valentines-day/\nOh, that is interesting! Not at the level of Chet Baker, but distinct. Still troubled by the flat and the sharp notes.\nIt works well enough for me (after many listenings). The bum notes add to the fragility even if there’s not intentional. Give it time and it may grow.. 🙂\nYes, one gets use to the intonation on repeated listenings.\n“It’s not easy to write reviews about music: to describe music is words is an impossible activity”\nAmem to that. It’s a tough job! Great thoughts on writing about music in general.\nThe Velvet Underground and Nico is packed with so many classic songs it’s hard to keep track of them all. Venus in Furs is my favorie. It’s certainly among the best albums ever.\nNico’s Chelsea Girl is a good one. It’s a pleasant little listen.\nthanks! I particularly like “Venus in Furs” because the album then breaks to the realm of true art!\nI do like Chelsea Girl, and would like it more if Nico sang on pitch.\n“Receiver versus Explorer” mode is a neat description. As a long-distance music blogger, I share you questions (weekly) and concur with the conclusion (I have to write).\nFinding/choosing/discovering what to highlight is especially challenging with a so-called classic/iconic/admired album. Between us we have covered two extraordinary debuts this week. VU here and Pink Floyd at Vinyl Connection.\nBut what of the other, the many other albums? Back to those questions of yours…\nVC, Thanks! Planning to cover the Pink Floyd album — may just link to your review (https://vinylconnection.com.au/2017/07/28/hes-getting-rather-old-but-hes-a-good-mouse/) when the time comes.\nAnd yes, what albums to post — listened to a few this morning that didn’t make the cut.\nwillowdot21 said:\nI can’t believe these Albums are really 50 years old … Makes me feel ancient!\nwillowdot21, yes it’s been a fast 50 years. Here’s to 50 more!\nAmen 💜 Amen 💜\nLee Lucas said:\nNo doubt you studied very well regarding all you said in this very well detailed review. I rather liked how you went on about how it’s not easy to review an album and the point of if nobody is reading and commenting is it all a waste of time putting in the time to write about it.\nI must admit myself that I never see writing a review for an album or writing about anything really a waste of time regardless of if anybody is reading or talking back to it with a comment. I think this is down to perhaps two things. The first being that it’s something I enjoy doing, and the second that I never see anything I do as the now thing.\nFor all we know at some point in time in the future, even after we are no longer here. Somebody might just land on the things we write about and get something from reading it.\nRegarding Velvet Underground I have heard of them but never really took any notice of them or Lou Reed for that matter. But I have taken the liberty of locating the album on Youtube and listening to it now.\nI very much think regarding Progressive Rock and the Beatles with the introduction of SGT Peppers being a part of making it. Or even Velvet Underground being a part of it too. I very much beg to differ.\nThe problem here is that people are only looking at the effects they used and even to the point that using a Mellotron somehow people have come to the conclusion that any bloody song with a Melltron in it is Prog Rock :)))))))))))\nNo doubt in mind the Beatles were still making pop and rock music and so was Velvet Underground just by looking how the music is structured. Neither of their songs have the ability to go into another direction. They are all basically written with a verse and chorus structure. Half of the bloody things do not even have a bridge never mind have the ability like to go somewhere else and say something differently than what any other band was doing at the time.\nNo doubt Lou Reed was influenced by Dylan having just heard the whole of this album. But then again just who never was really influenced by somebody else down the line.\nThanks for you articulate thoughts. It’s a good point on longevity of a post. I guess even if only one person reads the post every century, it may get to someone three or four hundred years later who will then listen to the music and get something out of it.\nYou know, its hard to pin down what Progressive Rock is. To your point, it could be about musical form. On the other hand, it could be other factors such as chord progressions, rhythms, time signatures, quality of the music, etc. Is the Who’s Tommy or Pretty Things’ SF Sorrow progressive because they take on the form of an opera? It is hard for me personally to define what progressive is. Beethoven was a progressive. Chopin, Liszt and Wagner were progressives. Brahms was not. Using that thought, then the groups that came in the 1980s and 1990s that mimicked the prog rock style were not progressive. What makes this Velvet Underground album progressive for me is they do things musically I haven’t heard before prior to their recording sessions in 1966, extending the boundaries of rock music. However, I would not label it progressive rock, but art-rock.\nLeave a Reply to Ben Naga Cancel reply","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line818912"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6944596767425537,"wiki_prob":0.3055403232574463,"text":"Top of Notices (80) December 29, 2015 US PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE Print This Notice 1421 CNOG 152\nMail Issues, Office Closures, Postal Emergencies, etc. Referenced Items (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81)\n(80)            United States Postal Service Interruption and\nEmergency in South Florida\nThe United States Postal Service (USPS) has informed the Patent and\nTrademark Office (PTO) that an interruption in its service in South\nFlorida was caused by Hurricane Andrew. Normal postal delivery and\ncollection operations of the USPS were impacted by Hurricane Andrew\nthroughout South Florida to varying degrees from Aug. 23, 1992, through\nSept. 12, 1992. By Sept. 12, 1992, the USPS restored delivery and\ncollection operations to all of South Florida with the exception of\nHomestead.\nThe PTO is designating the interruption in the service of the USPS in\nSouth Florida and the overall destruction caused by Hurricane Andrew as\na postal service interruption and an emergency within the meaning of 35\nU.S.C. 21(a). Any request to accept a paper or fee delayed by the\nHurricane Andrew emergency should be directed to Jeffrey V. Nase,\nDirector, Office of Petitions, (703) 305-9285, PK2-913, for\npatent-related matters and to Lynne G. Beresford, Trademark Legal\nAdministrator, (703) 305-9464, Pk2-910, for trademark-related matters.\nOct. 7, 1992                                              DOUGLAS B. COMER\nActing Assistant Secretary and Acting\nCommissioner of Patents and Trademarks\n[1144 OG 8]","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line535819"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6302179098129272,"wiki_prob":0.6302179098129272,"text":"https://www.seattlepi.com/realestate/article/Fort-Lawton-homes-nearing-closer-to-sale-6429170.php\nFort Lawton homes nearing closer to sale\nPeople can start moving in as early as October\nBy Kirsten O’Brien, SeattlePI\nUpdated 1:18 pm PDT, Thursday, August 6, 2015\nThe outside of a house that will be for sale at Fort Lawton, in Seattle.\nPhoto: Jones Lang LaSalle\nSeattle has no shortage of unique homes, but these century-old historic former military homes are about as unique as they come. The best part? They'll be on the market in just a few short weeks.\nThe homes, which were originally part of former military base Fort Lawton, occupy nine acres in Seattle's Discovery Park. The homes are expected to hit the market near the end of September, and people can begin moving in as early as October, said Gary Blakeslee, a principal at RISE Properties. The private real estate investment fund acquired the portfolio of homes in 2013, and has been restoring them since July of this year.\n\"The toughest part is behind us,\" Blakeslee said, referring to the arduous, bureaucratic process of readying historic homes for public sale. \"We all recognize the responsibility of conserving the living legacy of Fort Lawton, while at the same time creating a distinctive residential community.\"\nA total of 26 homes will be for sale, ranging from modest two-bedroom homes of 1,700-sq. ft. to the General's House, a 6,600-sq. ft. mansion. No price information is available, but interested parties can register to receive more information here. The sale of the properties will be in two phases, said Blakeslee. Half the homes in a development called Montana Circle will be sold first, followed by the remaining homes in an area called Officer's Row. He expects all 13 homes in Montana Circle to be sold by year's end.\nThe company is restoring the homes based on guidelines established by the City of Seattle's Landmarks Preservation Board. The homes were built in the Colonial Revival style of architecture, and maintaining their original integrity is key. Meanwhile, the interiors will undergo extensive remodels to make them contemporary living spaces with plenty of modern amenities and conveniences.\nThe fort itself dates back to 1900, and was established to protect Puget Sound from a naval attack. It was designed to accommodate up to 3,500 men. The city purchased and established the land as a public park 1968, and the structures were added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1978. The fort was officially decommissioned in 2011.\nOwners of these unique properties can also expect to benefit from all that Discovery Park has to offer, including two miles of protected beaches and dramatic sea cliff views. The park is Seattle's largest urban park, spanning 534 acres.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line170902"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6092884540557861,"wiki_prob":0.6092884540557861,"text":"Number 509 June 8, 2012\nThis Week: The Voter Empowerment Act\n\"Quote\" of the Week: \"Today, our freedom to vote is jeopardized\"\nReal Problems with Voting in the U.S.\nNews You Missed: The Voter Empowerment Act\nKill List Logic\nThere are some real problems with voting in the United States, and there are some not-real problems. The not-real problems are voter impersonation and voter fraud. They happen so rarely that we don't need to worry about them. The real problems have to do with people NOT voting. One reason that the U.S. has very low rates of voting by eligible voters is that many people don't bother to vote. That's a problem. Another reason is that there are many obstacles that get in the way when people try to vote. That second reason is what this issue of Nygaard Notes is all about.\nNygaard\nWriting on the website of the research and advocacy group Demos ( http://www.demos.org/ ) last month, staff member Liz Kennedy wrote an excellent piece called \"Protecting the Freedom to Vote: The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012.\" She wrote:\n\"Today, our freedom to vote is jeopardized by both systemic weaknesses and direct attacks aimed at undermining the franchise:\n* Bureaucratic barriers block our freedom to vote with red tape. Our antiquated system puts the burden of registration on each individual, with unnecessarily restrictive registration procedures.\n* Our electoral system threatens the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of voters each cycle through byzantine and non-standardized voter roll purges. When these machinations lead to eligible voters being dropped from the rolls, or challenged, their right to vote can be denied on the basis of bureaucratic error or even malfeasance.\n* Some otherwise eligible American citizens are barred from voting because of past crimes, even if they have completed their sentences and are otherwise restored to society.\n* Voters continue to face underhanded attempts to keep them from the polls through tricks and deceptive practices, such as information being distributed calling on members of certain parties to vote on days after Election Day.\"\nHere are a few facts about voting in the United States.\n1. \"In 2008, more than eight million eligible and interested voters did not or could not vote due to outmoded voting practices, avoidable errors or confusing procedures that vary in all 50 states, county to county and even towns.\" That's according to a report on the website of the advocacy group \"Nonprofit VOTE.\" At least eight presidential elections since World War II have been decided by fewer than eight million votes. Who knows how many state and local races have been affected by these missing votes?\n2. An estimated 51 million Americans who are eligible to vote are not registered. This is more than 24 percent of the voting-eligible population, almost one out of every four. So says the Pew Center on the States, in a February 2012 report called \"Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade.\"\n3. \"The Department of Defense Inspector General has repeatedly noted a persistent failure of the Federal Voting Assistance Program to provide effective assistance to military voters, specifically identifying a lack of voter awareness of existing resources to assist in the process.\" [Nygaard: The quote is from a press release from Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer, May 17, 2012. I also looked at the IG's report of March 22, 2011, and Hoyer appears to be correct in his statement.]\n4. A publication called \"The Voter Empowerment Act: Fast Facts\" tells us that \"In 2009, a majority of polling places still had one or more impediments that could prevent an individual with a disability from even getting to the required accessible voting system. In close to half of polling places, the accessible voting system itself could pose challenges for voters with disabilities to vote privately or independently.\"\nThe above points are not the only points that could be made. A recent report by the Pew Center on the States provides ample evidence that our voter registration systems \"are plagued with errors and inefficiencies that waste taxpayer dollars, undermine voter confidence, and fuel partisan disputes over the integrity of our elections.\"\nThese are real problems, in contrast with the non-problem of \"voter fraud\" that is offered as justification for the unprecedented attack on voting rights that is underway in this country, and about which I have been reporting for the past several months. (See, for example, Nygaard Notes Number 503 http://www.nygaardnotes.org/issues/nn0503.html, which was devoted entirely to this issue.) As Georgia Congressman John Lewis pointed out recently, \"Since the beginning of last year, 176 bills have been introduced in 41 states making it more difficult for people to participate in the democratic process.\"\nWhatever the intent of all of these bills, collectively they will have the effect of disfranchising millions of people throughout the U.S., according to a study by The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. A solution has been proposed, and the next article will tell you about it.\nI've enumerated in recent issues of Nygaard Notes some of the various tactics that Republican strategists have employed in the past couple of years that are having the effect of suppressing voter turnout. These tactics include: Making it harder to register to vote; Making it harder for registered voters to cast their votes; Limiting voting rights for people who have been convicted of crimes, and; Weakening the Voting Rights Act to make it harder for the federal government to address any impediments to voting that are seen to exist in the U.S. All of these efforts are justified by invoking a desire to limit \"voter fraud\" and improve the \"integrity\" of elections. And these efforts seem to have garnered wide support among political leaders at the state level (where most of the efforts have been focused) and also in the media.\nAll of these tactics are intended to address a problem—voter fraud—that is such a tiny problem that there is no need to address it, legislatively or via constitutional amendment. The problems that we do have with voting in this country—as I just spelled out in the previous article—have nothing to do with people voting who should not vote. The real problem we have in this country is that many people who should vote are not voting. And, as noted in the previous article, that is partly due to problems in our voting systems, as well as efforts on the part of some people to prevent people from voting.\nGiven all of these facts, it would seem to be newsworthy that a bill aimed at addressing all of these problems was introduced into the U.S. Congress on May 17th by Congressman John Lewis and 130 co-sponsors. Since this news was completely ignored by the major media in this country, I'll tell you a little bit about it, and also tell you where you can learn more.\nThe bill that was introduced on May 17th is called the Voter Empowerment Act. It's also called, confusingly enough, the \"Voter Registration Modernization Act of 2012.\" By whatever name, it's known in Congress as HR 5799.\nThe VEA in Brief\nHere is a list of some of the things the VEA would do. The facts are gleaned from a variety of sources, but mostly from the lead author of the bill, Rep. John Lewis. It's a long list, but worth reprinting since it gives a hint of the nature and scale of the problem the VEA is intended to address. The VEA would:\n•\tModernize the voter registration system by shifting the administrative burden off of the individual voter and onto the government to register eligible citizens to vote.\n•\tAuthorize an online registration option\n•\tAuthorize same-day registration and permitting voters to update their registration data onsite\n•\tProvide additional tools to alleviate any additional burdens for people with disabilities\n•\tRequire all universities that receive federal funds to offer and encourage voter registration to their students\n•\tSimplify registration and ensure that ballots from all military personnel serving overseas are counted\n•\tAuthorize funds for training poll workers and setting standards for polling place practices\n•\tRequire provisional ballots be available and counted at all polling places\n•\tProhibit voter caging and designating it as a felony\n•\tProtect against deceptive practices and intimidation\n•\tEstablish a national voter hotline to ensure timely reporting and corrective action of voting related issues\n•\tSet standards for voting machines to ensure accurate tabulation and confirmation of voter intent paper copy verification\n•\tReauthorize the Election Assistance Commission to ensure that the highest standards are being met nationwide to guarantee fair elections\n•\tEstablish a national standard for ex-offenders to vote in Federal elections when they are no longer incarcerated.\nEndorsements of the VEA\nOn May 18th, the day after the Voter Empowerment Act was introduced, House Democrat Steny Hoyer put out a press release about \"a diverse group of advocates representing the civil rights, disability and young voter communities [who] have already come out in strong support\" of the VEA. The release included strong statements from leaders of:\nThe American Association of People with Disabilities;\nThe Asian American Justice Center;\nThe Brennan Center for Justice;\nCommon Cause;\nDemos;\nFairVote;\nThe Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law;\nThe Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights;\nThe League of Women Voters;\nNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People;\nThe National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund;\nProject Vote and;\nRock the Vote.\nSources for Information About Enhancing Voter Turnout\nFor those who are interested in knowing more about this important legislation, here are three sources that I found helpful:\n1. The Pew Center on the States, in February 2012 put out a report called \"Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient: Evidence That America's Voter Registration System Needs an Upgrade.\"\n2. A group called \"Nonprofit Vote\" has a little piece on its website called \"Voter Turnout Factors\" that lists \"seven factors frequently cited as very important to voter turnout.\" It's worth reading and thinking about. Find it HERE.\n3. A one-pager, with footnotes, the \"Voter Empowerment Act: Fast Facts\" flyer is a quick read, but full of good stuff.\n4. By far the best thing I've read on the VEA (granted, there aren't all that many things to read), is a 3,000-word article by Liz Kennedy on the Demos website called \"Protecting the Freedom to Vote: The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012.\" It's the source of this week's \"Quote\" of the Week, in fact.\nOn May 29th the New York Times ran a huge front-page article that's caused quite an uproar. Headlined \"Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test Of Obama's Principles and Will,\" the article reported that \"Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret 'nominations' process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.\" After noting that Obama had promised, and failed, to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Times voices the \"suspicion\" that \"Mr. Obama has avoided the complications of detention by deciding, in effect, to take no prisoners alive.\" The President's advisors \"understood that they could not keep adding new names to a kill list,\" but \"What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough.\"\nThe \"kill list\" story was undoubtedly leaked by Obama insiders for campaign purposes. As Glenn Greenwald reported in Salon.com, the revelations in the Times story \"are designed to depict President Obama, in an Election Year, as a super-tough, hands-on, no-nonsense Warrior.\" And perhaps the kill list itself is also about re-election. That is, if any \"combatants\" are captured, then they will have to be detained, maybe at Guantanamo, and the Obama campaign does not want people to think about that. So maybe it's better, in campaign terms, to run a secret program of killing by remote control.\nWhether or not the Times story was the result of a cynical leak, many remarkable things were reported therein, perhaps none more startling than the report that Mr. Obama faced a dilemma when pondering his strategy of remote-control assassination. And that is that such a program would necessarily involve the killing of innocent people, in a variety of countries. What to do? The solution, according to the Times, is that \"Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.\"\nIt's been apparent for some time that such \"Kill List Logic\" has been employed to minimize the reporting of innocent victims of U.S. drones. Has media reporting utilized this peculiar logic when reporting on drone attacks, or have they utilized a more standard logic? Well, let's have a look.\nOn the day before the Times story, May 28, the Associated Press headlined its report \"Pakistan: US missiles kill 5 militants in NW,\" and it began by saying \"American missiles killed five suspected Islamist militants close to the Afghan border. . .\" That is, the missiles killed anybody who happened to be nearby. Using Kill List Logic, these are, by definition, \"suspected militants,\" so that's what was reported.\nThe same story noted that this attack was \"the fourth in less than a week\" in the area. The AP then dutifully reported that one attack killed \"four suspected militants,\" another \"killed 10 alleged militants,\" and yet another killed \"four suspected militants.\" All guilty, if one uses Kill List Logic.\nThe next day (the day after the Times report) the Baltimore Sun reported on the killing in Afghanistan of \"al-Qaida's second in command.\" The report noted that this man \"and an unidentified al-Qaida militant were killed in the airstrike.\" How does anyone know that an \"unidentified\" person is a \"militant\"? It's Kill List Logic: If our airstrike killed him, he must have been a militant!\nAnd the AP on June 2nd reported, \"An American drone fired two missiles at a motorbike in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing two suspected militants. . .\"\nAnd June 3rd: \"An American drone strike in the frontier tribal areas of Pakistan killed 10 suspected militants Sunday. . .\"\nIt goes on and on, but in no case are we offered any evidence about the guilt or innocence of these people. Of course, if there were to be any \"explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent,\" it would be a bit too late. That's why people must be presumed innocent until proven guilty. And there's Obama's \"test\" question: Are people guilty—and sentenceable to death—until proven innocent? Or are people presumed innocent until proven guilty? Obama has offered his answer. And if his handlers are correct in thinking that the leaking of this story will help him gain re-election, then it appears that we've all failed the test.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1220946"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6541904211044312,"wiki_prob":0.34580957889556885,"text":"Hormoz Shariat\nA servant of Christ – called to transform Iran and the Middle East with the gospel.\nAbout Hormoz\nIranAliveMinistries.org\nQasem Soleimani Assassination: Impact on Iranian Christians\nJanuary 10, 2020 January 10, 2020 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\tChristianity in Iran, Iranian government, persecuted church, Qasem Soleimani Assassination, underground church in Iran\nThis entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Understanding the Impact of Soleimani Assassination\nIran’s government has been heading down a troubled path for many years. In this third post, I consider what we may expect spiritually in Iran in the coming months.\nThe Iranian government is between a rock and a hard place. It has too many multifaceted problems and is fighting too many unwinnable wars. Besides their internal problems, now they must respond to Trump’s action and threats. These issues impact how the government will treat Christians and how the people will respond to the gospel message.\nFuneral of Qasem Soleimani, Tehran, Iran on 6 January 2020.\nPhoto: Maryam Kamyab and Mohammad Mohsenifar\nLicensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License\nThe Islamic Regime’s Problems\nBad economy. The economy is bad because of sanctions, poor decisions, and weak economic infrastructures. Iran can solve none of it. A lack of financial resources will continue to pressure the government. They have been reducing subsidies. If they become unable to pay salaries to government employees and especially the revolutionary guards, the whole government will implode. Even if they suddenly want to shore up the economy’s foundation, they cannot because the system is not designed for such corrective action. So the economy is an unsolvable problem for them.\nCorrupt government. Corruption is so rampant that it has become an integral part of how the government governs. The US$150 billion that they received under Obama’s administration sped up corruption in Iran. Many people in power wanted a piece of that pie. Those who want to eradicate corruption cannot do it because the top clergy and their families are the major players in it. So corruption is another unsolvable problem for them.\nOppositional population. The people are against them. They came on the streets to protest the economy, and they faced bullets. As a result, their hatred of the government and even Islam itself has increased. The regime reportedly killed over 1,500 people within the past two months. They have not allowed the families of the dead to gather and mourn, and they arrested those who tried. That means the parents of some of those who were killed are now in jail because they publicly mourned the loss of their son or daughter. The government has lost the people’s heart, and there is no way to gain it back.\nMilitary Threat. Now they have President Trump threatening them with action. It started with the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, but Trump made it very clear that he is ready for more. They have no solution for that. If they do nothing, they look weak. For 40 years, they have lied to the people of Iran, telling them that Iran is a superpower. Now they are in danger of being found out and losing respect and credibility. This threat may give people hope that their government is not as strong as it claims and that it could be toppled. If so, this hope will encourage them to continue their protests and oppositions.\nThe Spiritual Impact\nMore salvations. I predict that in the next six months, we will have an accelerated number of Iranian Muslims who will come to Christ. This expectation is not new. We saw a similar occurrence ten years ago. During the Green Movement in 2009, the government killed, raped, and tortured many people. The government’s brutality unmasked the true face of Islam to many: a heartless religion that devalues human life. Because of what they saw, many people who were undecided about Islam beforehand became sure that Islam is not the way. Thus, they became open to the message of the gospel. Even some fanatic Muslims—people who were sold out to Islam and opposed Christianity just a few months prior—came to Christ. How do we know? Because they contacted us and shared their stories. Likewise, we expect that in the next six months, we will see a surge in salvations among those who used to be devoted Muslims—even among the clergy and government officials!\nFewer persecutions—temporarily. Because the government has too many problems to fight, for the next few months they will not focus on destroying Christianity as they have when they have had the money and time. If their negotiations prove successful, however, and they can bring back a more normal situation to Iran, then they will start a new wave of Christian persecution.\nMore intense persecution. They will arrest fewer people, but they will act harshly toward them—that is, long jail terms and even execution. They will want to make an example out of the few they arrest to put fear in the hearts of other Christians and stop them from evangelizing, fellowshiping with other Christians, or connecting to organizations outside Iran such as Iran Alive. As Christianity grows and the government feels more out of control, it will intensify the persecution.\nGreater opportunity for Christians to be salt and light. As the darkness grows, the light can have more impact because it has the power to destroy the darkness. Light in the midst of the darkness is easily seen and very attractive. So this is the time for Christians to be different. In the midst of the nation’s desperation and hopelessness, Christians can bring the hope of Christ.\nOn our channel, we encourage Christians to behave differently than their culture expects. We ask them not to be afraid, not to lose hope, but to continue in faith, to love others, and to share their faith with others. We tell them that no matter what happens, even if there is a war, God will still be with them and stay faithful to His promises. We tell them, “Continue to show Christ to the people around you in your actions and talk because no matter what, you know that you are the winners. Iran will eventually be a Christian nation according to Jeremiah 49:38.”\nThese are critical times. What happens in Iran will impact the Middle East, and what happens in the Middle East will impact the world. Let’s be awake and alert. Let’s see where God is working and join him.\nLet’s listen to God more than we listen to the news. When we listen to the news, we will be reactionary—reacting to what has happened—that is, reacting to what Satan has done. But when we listen to God, we will be proactive. If we listen to the news more than God, then we will always be a few steps behind Satan because we must first hear what he is doing and then try to stop him. But when we listen to God first, we stay several steps ahead of Satan. God wants us to be proactive and be several steps ahead—not behind—what Satan is doing. God wants us to listen to him more than we listen to the news.\nKnow the will of God and do it. This is the time to act. I have felt a great urgency in my soul the past few months that we should act and act now. With what we see happening in Iran now, I know that feeling of urgency was and is from the Lord. The time is short, and the days are evil. We must be wise and not fools. We must know the will of God and then do it (Eph. 5:15–17). Before us is a historic opportunity to make Iran the first Islamic nation that turns to Christ. We know it will surely happen because He promised it (Jer. 49:38), but we also know that He wants to accomplish His will through us. Let’s join together to do His will and make history in Iran and the Middle East.\nGeneral Soleimani Assassinated—Now What?\nJanuary 9, 2020 January 9, 2020 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\tAyatollah Ali Khamenei, iran nuclear deal and donald trump, Iranian government, Qasem Soleimani Assassination\nThe new year began with an event that will change the future of Iran. In this second post, I consider what we may expect politically in the coming months.\nIran has lost one of its top leaders. General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Army, was more powerful and influential than Iran’s President Rouhani. The people and the Iranian government are on the opposite side of almost every issue, but regarding Soleimani, they both loved and respected him.\nSenior commanders of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s armed forces, including General Qasem Soleimani, met with Ayatollah Khamenei on April 11, 2016. Source: http://english.khameini.ir, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.\nDespite President Trump warning that the United States will quickly strike back, “perhaps in a disproportionate manner,” if Iran strikes any American person or target, Ayatollah Khamenei and Iran’s military leaders vowed to take revenge. They responded Tuesday by firing 22 ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq.\nWhat will the Islamic Republic of Iran do now? What will happen? Will they continue to fight back? If they do, the U.S. may attack and they will lose a lot; if not, they will look weak and full of hot air.\nThere are three possibilities: moving to full-fledged war, responding with a limited conflict, or private negotiation.\nFull-Fledged War?\nIn my opinion, this option is very unlikely because:\nThe Islamic government knows a war with the United States will end its regime. This government is in trouble—big trouble. The economy is bad, and sanctions are making it worse; the nation has risen against the government; the people are turning away from Islam to become secular agnostics or Christians. This regime has no popularity either inside or outside the country.\nIn the past two months, not only have Iranian cities demonstrated against the Iranian government but so have cities in Lebanon and Iraq. The people of Iraq want Iran out of their country. Iraqis are happy about the assassination of Soleimani but do not show it on the streets because of fear. Many were killed a few weeks ago demonstrating against Iran’s intervention in Iraq.\nThe Islamic government does not have many options unless it already has a nuclear bomb. If so, they will detonate one in the center of Iran’s desert to let the world, and especially Trump, know that they cannot be pushed around anymore. If they do have the bomb, they probably will not use it except to threaten, bully, and impose their will in the Middle East and the world.\nIf they have no nuclear bomb, Iran’s options are VERY limited. Trump threatened that he has already identified Iranian targets to hit if Iran acts against U.S. citizens or property. They understand Trump may do it, and even his own congress cannot stop him.\nIran knows that without a bomb, they have practically no protection from a U.S. attack. Therefore, after the assassination, they declared that they will fully pursue making the bomb. A possible shortcut for them is to purchase a bomb from North Korea and detonate it in a desert to pretend that they have successfully built it themselves and that they can build more.\nLimited Conflict?\nAs already seen through Iran’s initial ballistic missile response, this option is likely.\nKhamenei and the Iranian government will want never to appear weak. Honor and shame are controlling values in the Middle East, especially among the leaders. So to show that they are not taken aback by the assassination and that Trump’s threats mean nothing to them, they have to do something even if through other organizations. Tuesday’s ballistic missile attack seems to be just such an action. Khamenei said he had dealt the United States a “slap in the face” while the foreign minister announced that the nation had “concluded proportionate measures” in its retaliation.\nThis attack—perhaps intentionally—had no casualties. It brought honor to the Iranian government, showing its own people and the world that they are not afraid of the U.S. and that they will retaliate. But with no casualties, they felt safe from U.S. payback. It is interesting that the Iranian media is presenting the attack as a point of strength. They are saying, “Nobody since Vietnam has attacked U.S. bases, but we did. And Trump did not have the guts to retaliate.”\nIran’s government must also maintain deniability. Iran may follow up by attacking U.S. embassies around the world, attacking U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf, or killing some American citizens around the world—even in the U.S.—just out of pride to show that they are not defeated. Of course, they will do these things through proxy terrorist organizations whose support is not traceable to Iran. For their own protection, they want to be able to say, “We did not do it; those who support us and hate the U.S. did it on their own.”\nNegotiation?\nThis option is most likely, but it will not be a public negotiation.\nBecause of Trump’s multifaceted strategy, I believe the Islamic Republic of Iran has no choice but to negotiate. They know that if they misbehave, Trump will attack their oil facilities, which will wipe them out completely since their only source of survival income is oil.\nIran cannot support or survive a war. They will not want to enter a war with the United States because they know their army cannot carry on that fight for more than a few days. More importantly, they know their own people will not support that war. The American population wants to avoid war because of its cost—both in money and lives; the Islamic regime wants to avoid a war with the U.S. too, but for them, the motivation is even higher—their survival.\nNegotiation will happen in secret. Iran will be forced to negotiate, but public negotiation would admit weakness. The importance of honor and saving face will prohibit public terms. So after limited terrorist action around the world through their proxy agents, they will start negotiating with the United States secretly without either side mentioning it publicly.\nNegotiation is not the same as appeasement. Critics might say, “But that is what Obama did, negotiating with Iran.” President Obama’s policy invigorated the regime. Obama wanted the treaty more than they wanted it. Obama wanted to evade war more than they wanted to avoid it. Therefore, Obama came to the negotiation table from a very weak position.\nThe Iranian government celebrated after the nuclear deal with Obama was signed because they got so much with little cost. They received US$150 billion in cash, the removal of sanctions, freedom to sell oil in the world market, and permission to have business relationships with Europe and other countries, all for just a promise that they would delay building a bomb until 2025! They used that money to expand their influence in the Middle East, finance terrorism around the world, and yes, build the bomb—but in new, underground facilities hidden in the middle of large cities. They were allowed to buy arms from Russia and build up their military, including developing intercontinental ballistic missiles able to deliver nuclear warheads to Israel, Europe, and soon, to the United States.\nIt seems that Trump has a better understanding of the Islamic-Iranian culture. An appeasement policy never works against a bully. It encourages them to continue that behavior. You must stand firm against bullies. Even the Bible tells us, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Islam’s mandate in the Quran is to rule the world by war and violence with neither compromise nor negotiation. Islamic regimes will never negotiate by choice but only when they have no other way out.\nThe good news is that the Lord is faithful to His promise in Jeremiah 49:38. We know that sooner or later there will be a horrible war in Iran according to Jeremiah 49:34–37. Let’s pray that this war will be delayed so that more Iranian Muslims will have a chance to hear the gospel before being killed.\nIran as a nation has rejected Islam and is open to the gospel. Let’s do our part to share the good news with Muslims and disciple them to become agents of transformation after they get saved. Through our broadcasts and our training school, we are doing just that. Will you join us?\nIn my final post for this series, I write about the impact of these current events on Iranian Christians.\nDid you miss part 1 that explained Qasem Soleimani’s role and popularity in Iran? Find it here.\nWho Was Qasem Soleimani—a Terrorist or a Hero?\nJanuary 7, 2020 January 7, 2020 Hormoz Shariat Battling Terrorism, Current Events\tAyatollah Ali Khamenei, Donald Trump, Iranian government, Qasem Soleimani Assassination\nA lot is happening and will happen in Iran and the Middle East in 2020. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani has started a chain reaction that will change the future of Iran. These changes will probably affect the whole Middle East and even the world.\nThe Iranian government has vowed to take revenge. In response, President Trump has warned that he is ready to take action and destroy 52 already identified sites in Iran if there is any attack on American lives or properties. Many predict a full-fledged war will happen soon.\nGeneral Qasem Soleimani on 1 October 2019.\nSource: khameini.ir. Photo cropped and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.\nWho Was Soleimani?\nWho was Qasem Soleimani? Outside Iran, he was known as a terrorist, but inside, he was a hero. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians mourned in the streets after his death because many people loved and admired him. This is why:\nHe was in charge of the Quds Army, the international arm of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He executed Iran’s policy in the region and internationally. In the region, under Soleimani, Iran became a major force determining the future of countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. We know Iran is the top financier of terrorism around the world. It was Soleimani who was trusted with that budget, and he was effective in using the money to fight wars with proxy armies and produce terrorism through proxy organizations.\nHe was the number two man in Iran. He was a close ally and friend of Ayatollah Khamenei for over 40 years. Khamenei has trusted none of the other IRGC leaders, fearing that if they become powerful and united, they may turn against him. So he has frequently changed the senior leadership of IRGC with one exception: Soleimani. Khamenei trusted him very much.\nHe was a national hero. For years, the media in Iran, controlled by the Islamic government, had depicted and promoted Soleimani as a national hero. Due to that propaganda influence, the people believe the following:\nHe was the hero who protected Iran from an invasion and attack by ISIS. State-controlled media caused the people to believe that without the general, ISIS would have attacked and even taken over Iran.\nHe single-handedly defeated ISIS. The people believe that Trump undeservedly took the credit for Soleimani’s work of defeating ISIS.\nHe made Iran a significant power in the Middle East and the world. Under him, Iran gained a major role in what was happening in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. We must not forget the statements made by Khomeini, Soleimani, and other high-rank Iranian officials for the last 40 years, statements that were drilled into the people’s minds through the media: “Iran under the Islamic Republic has flourished to become a major world power, so much so that even the United States is afraid of it.”\nHe took control of Iraq, which at one time was the archenemy of Iran. That means he not only protected Iran but overtook an enemy country and brought it under the control of the Islamic Republic. Because Iran has a majority Shiite population, he was able to infiltrate and then control the power factions inside Iraq and its government.\nHe is the hero who made Iran so strong that America does not dare attack it. When Iran shot down the multimillion-dollar U.S. drone last June and President Trump gave no answer—nor answered immediately to subsequent similar aggressions—the media’s take has been, “Look how strong we are. We can attack Americans, we can attack the oil ships, we can attack the oil production facilities of Saudi Arabia, we can attack the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and America does not dare to respond because we have superior power.”\nAs a national hero, Soleimani was more popular and loved by people than Khamenei himself. Even though the people’s hatred for their leaders has grown, Soleimani was the only official who had a good name and was loved.\nWhat Was Soleimani’s Future?\nKhamenei had plans for Soleimani’s future. The ayatollah worked hard through the media to deceive people and make Soleimani a hero because he had a long-term plan: make him the next president. Currently, no government-approved candidate for the 2021 election is positioned to bring hope—even false hope—to the hearts of the people and get them to vote. With Khamenei and the Islamic government so unpopular, Soleimani was the solution.\nThe top religious leaders expected that when Soleimani became president, they could deceive and control the people for another eight years, giving them a false hope that Soleimani would curtail the power of the mullahs and make Iran’s governments more secular. A more secular rule would remove the clergy from the government but not from power. Under the guise of democracy, they would continue to rule the people.\nThis deceptive plan was working. Hundreds of thousands of people publicly mourned Soleimani’s death. Few realized that Soleimani was supporting and supported by the corrupt Islamic regime. They did not realize that during the protests in 2009 and 2019, he was the one who brought Syrian soldiers to the streets of Tehran, killing Iranian youth with no mercy, and stifling both movements. Bashar Assad, Syria’s president, sent his soldiers to return a favor to Soleimani’s Quds army, which has been helping Assad for many years by slaughtering the people of Syria who opposed Assad, assuring the survival of his rule.\nBy killing Soleimani, Trump not only stopped an international leader in terrorism but derailed the top clergy’s plans for their regime. It was a great personal blow to Khamenei and his future.\nNevertheless, Khamenei is using Soleimani’s death to his advantage. He pronounced three days of national mourning that hundreds of thousands of people attended. The government organized and spent much money on a huge, prolonged national memorial. They used the love people had for Soleimani and the grief they are feeling for their own purposes:\nTo distract people from their daily misery. People have been protesting for two years. But in the past two months, their lives have been so miserable that their protests have been national and continual. Government forces reportedly have killed over 1,500 people and arrested over 12,000. But the protests still go on. The people have economic woes and are therefore disgusted with the government because of its corruption. Those in power have embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars for themselves and their families. The government has spent billions of dollars to advance their ambitions outside Iran but has not cared about its own people.\nTo once again emphasize that the U.S. is their enemy. For survival, the Iranian government has always needed an outside enemy. For the past 40 years, enmity with the United States has served that purpose. Unlike the government, most of Iran’s people love the U.S. Therefore, the government is using this assassination to convince people that America does not have goodwill towards the people of Iran. So, they say, America must not be trusted but rather hated, and if some love the U.S., they are deceived.\nTo avoid complaints and protests due to war status. Although they have no actual war as yet, now they can ask people to tolerate their miserable lives because “we are fighting the U.S.” The government can sidestep demands with this war excuse.\nThe year 2020 will be one of many unexpected happenings—it has already started that way. But no matter what happens, we as Christians must be alert, seek the truth (and not believe everything we hear in the news), seek God’s wisdom and supernatural understanding of the events and what He is doing through them, ask Him to reveal to us His plans and what He is doing and where He is working. Then we must have the courage to step out by faith to do His will, partnering with Him to transform our lives, our families, and our nations.\nMy next article in this three-part series will address what we may expect next in the chain reaction that follows the assassination.\nThen and Now: The Current Political Climate of Iran\nMarch 27, 2019 March 27, 2019 Hormoz Shariat Current Events, Life in Iran\tIranian government, Nuclear Deal, oppressive regime iran, results of 2018 protests, Satellite TV, Social media\nThis entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Then and Now: 40 Years Rule\nIran is the only country in the world led by Islamic clergy. Forty years ago this past February, Iran’s secular intellectual elites joined with the conservative clergy to overthrow the Western-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.\nSoon after ousting the Shah’s regime, the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic republic. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) implemented Islam and forced its laws in every area: personal life, family and society. The people of Iran have seen theocratic Islam in action firsthand for 40 years.\nWhat do they think now?\nIn this series of blogs, I discuss the current spiritual, political, social, and economic climate in Iran and why I believe Islamic rule in Iran is nearing its end.\nThe Current Political Climate of Iran\nAfter 40 years of theocratic rule, the people have changed their political thinking and behavior.\nBuilding of the Iranian Parliament in Tehran\nCelebration rallies ignored\nNot many people showed up at government-sponsored rallies celebrating the 40th year of the Islamic Revolution a few weeks ago. In previous years, the government successfully forced its employees and their families to form a crowd on the streets. Then the news agencies used coverage of the crowd to proclaim that the government was popular. But this year the celebration was a disaster—even government employees and their families refused to show up.\nBut this year the celebration was a disaster—even government employees and their families refused to show up.\nIran’s media said they were showing live coverage of people marching on streets supporting the government, but for the most part, they were using footage from previous years. It was rainy in the cities in the north, but the supposed live coverage showed a very nice sunny day. Even in Tehran, the media showed “live” rallies on the streets but had to mask the trees because in the previous year at this time, the trees were green (there was an early spring), but this year the winter was longer and the trees still had no leaves. This obvious attempt at deception was all over social media and a matter of laughter and discredit for the government.\nDesire for secular government\nThe majority of Iranians want separation of religion from politics. Iranians admire America and everything American. If they had a choice, and if there was ever a referendum, an overwhelming majority would vote for a secular government—American style.\nSecure communication breakthrough\nThe Green Movement in 2009, an outburst of rallies objecting to voting fraud, was organized using Twitter. So the government shut it down easily after shutting down Twitter because the people had no secure way to communicate with each other. For years, phones and the internet have been filtered and controlled; Facebook has been blocked.\nBut in 2015, free and secure social media apps (such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Viber) became available. Secure social media has revolutionized the spread of information and communication between people once again. The people ignore untrustworthy government-sponsored channels and media; they look for true information only from satellite broadcasts, the internet (using VPN), and through these apps.\nThe people look for true information only from satellite broadcasts, the internet (using VPN), and secure apps.\nRejection of terrorism sponsorship\nIran has become the top financer of terrorism around the world. It is a destabilizing force in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. The people of Iran, however, are bitterly against the IRI’s involvement in those countries saying to their government, “You care more about them and advancing your agenda than you care about your own people. We are suffering financially, and you are spending so much money advancing your agenda around the world.”\nRejection of the nuclear bomb\nDevelopment of nuclear bombs and cruise missiles has always been the top priority of the IRI. They pursue these weapons despite financial difficulties and sanctions because they believe that having them will ensure no threat from outside can topple them. They want the nuclear bomb also to bully other countries with the threat of nuclear attack. The majority of Iranians have a different view about the nuclear bomb: “We as a nation have a right to have it, but our government will abuse it.” They feel it is like giving an irresponsible child a gun.\nRejection of enmity with America\nOne comment I constantly heard from the people of Iran about Obama’s nuclear deal was “Americans are so naive.” After the signing of the deal, there was a celebratory spirit in the Parliament in Iran saying, “We gained a lot without giving up much.” The deal’s intention was not to stop them from developing nuclear bombs but just to slow them down. What made them happy was that they could continue the development of nuclear weapons because the inspection of the nuclear sites had so many constraints, and the inspection of the military sites was not allowed at all.\nThe government takes Trump’s warnings very seriously, however, because they know that he is a man of action. So since mid-January 2019, the IRI has been warning the people of Iran that an attack by the USA is imminent. Of course, they magnify this threat to distract the people from noticing how miserable their lives are and that the government’s policies have failed and have destroyed Iran’s economy.\nBefore the 1979 revolution, Iran was a close ally of the USA and Israel. Now according to the IRI, America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is the “Little Satan.” Both must be destroyed by any means, including the nuclear option. But neither of these concepts are believed or supported by the Iranians. Even with the threat of a USA/Israel attack of Iran, many are welcoming it saying, “Please come and help us get rid of these mullahs.”\nMany are saying, “Please come and help us get rid of these mullahs.\nIranians want political change\nAt the time of the revolution, the people supported Khomeini and thought Islamic rule would bring relief from corruption and the western social values that were invading Iran. But they have witnessed that there is now more corruption, more injustice, more moral decay, more disintegration of the society than in the Shah’s time.\nThroughout much of the past four decades, the people believed that their efforts to make a change through voting in presidential leaders would make a difference in their country’s leadership. In the past year and a half, their eyes have opened to the truth that only a total regime change will make any difference. The regime can no longer deceive its people with a scripted political play of alternating moderate and hard-liner presidents.\nIn conclusion, the Iranians are open and ready not only to a spiritual revival but also to a major political change—from a theocratic dictatorship to a secular democracy.\nNext week: the current social climate of Iran.\nThen and Now: A Look at What Forty Years of Islamic Rule Has Brought to Iran\nMarch 8, 2019 March 8, 2019 Hormoz Shariat Current Events, Life in Iran\tChristianity in Iran, Iranian government, Islamic Revolution\nIran is the only country in the world led by Islamic clergy. Forty years ago this past February, Iran’s secular intellectual elites joined with the conservative clergy to overthrow the Western-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Both the aristocracy and clergy wanted to remove the influence of foreign nations, stabilize an economy suffering from high inflation and overspending on large modernization projects, and regain previous power roles and wealth that government corruption and the Shah’s growing oppression of dissidents had taken away from them.\nSoon after ousting the Shah’s regime, the revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared Iran an Islamic republic. The religious right quickly removed their secular, leftist allies from power, and enforced a return to the conservative religious and social values that the Shah had upended with his modernization program. The general populace—who had seen their country move rapidly from a conservative rural society to a modern urban and industrial one in less than a generation—welcomed the change.\nKashan, Iran: Iranian families suffer increasing inflation, unemployment, and distrust of their corrupt government. Photo: grigvovan\nThe Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) implemented Islam and forced its laws in every area: personal life, family and society. The people of Iran have seen theocratic Islam in action firsthand for 40 years.\nIn a series of blogs over the next few weeks, I will discuss the current spiritual, political, social, and economic climate in Iran and why I believe Islamic rule in Iran is nearing its end.\nThe Current Spiritual Climate of Iran\nAfter 40 years of theocratic rule, the people have changed their spiritual thinking and behavior.\nRejection of Islam\nThe people of Iran have seen Islamic rule in action for 40 years. A growing number have concluded that Islam is not the answer to their problems; it is the source of their problems. They realize that if they want a better future for their country, they need to get rid of Islam and Islamic rule.\nThe rejection of Islam has occurred little by little over many years, not overnight. It is not an emotional reaction to suffering and injustice but rather a thoughtful and deliberate decision. The number of people who want nothing to do with Islam grows daily. We now get reports regularly from our viewers saying such things as, “My uncle who was a devout Muslim and pro-government just one year ago now says Islam is not of God and is interested in Christianity.”\nThe rejection of Islam is so wide and deep that I can boldly say Iran is turning away from Islam and will never go back to it. Indeed, Islam is experiencing the greatest defeat of its history in Iran today.\n“My uncle who was a devout Muslim and pro-government just one year ago now says Islam is not of God and is interested in Christianity.”\n–Report from Iranian viewer\nGrowth of secularism\nAs a result of the rejection of Islam, Iranians have become attracted to secularism both politically and socially. They do not want to be religious. They want to be free, and they think that to live free means to do whatever they desire to do. Many are embracing a life of immorality, drugs, sex, and hedonism—a total reaction to the oppressive dictatorship of Islam. Since Islam was forced on them as the best religion in the world, they say, “If this was the best religion, let’s forget about the rest.” As a result, those who walk away from Islam usually do not want anything to do with any organized religion including Christianity, until we show them that Christianity is not like Islam. This is why so many have come to Christ through our satellite broadcasts.\nGrowth of Christianity\nCurrently, Christianity is more respected and valued in Iran than Islam. This attitude is amazing because Iran is still a Muslim country and almost all were born as Muslims. I just read a quote on Instagram from a Muslim addressing the clergy in Iran: “I’d rather go to hell with Christians than go to heaven with Muslims like you.” The media, and especially satellite broadcasts, have had a major role in dispersing the lies and misconceptions about Christianity such as these: Christians worship three Gods, they are blasphemers, they are drunkards and live immoral lives. According to Operation World Research, Iran has the fastest growing evangelical population in the world with 19.6 percent growth per year.\nPersecution in Iran is a reaction of the government to the growth of Christianity. The government has, to a great extent, destroyed its opposition inside the country. They feel safely in control because they know the people of Iran are reluctant to bear arms and start a violent revolution. The only wildcard out of their control that can threaten their future is the growth of Christianity. They realize they cannot stop this growth, but they are trying to slow it by intimidating Christians so they will neither witness nor gather together. It is a campaign of intimidation and isolation.\nSpiritual freedom of the younger generation\nThe emerging younger generation is free from fear. They have little fear of the government. They are convinced that Islam is not of God, so they are not afraid to deny Islam. Religion is a non-issue for them. They want change but are unwilling to use violence to topple the government. They live a hopeless life not seeing any bright future for themselves. Suicide, drug addiction, and sexual immorality are rampant among the youth in Iran. The good news is that once they come to Christ and find a purpose in their lives, they boldly spread the gospel. Many are not even afraid of arrests and even death. I heard many young Christians say “I am not afraid of death because before Jesus, I was dead; indeed, He gave me life.” Another young man told me, “I am not afraid of them. They are afraid of me and my gospel message.”\nThe role of satellite broadcasts\nSatellite broadcasts have been essential for delivering information to Iranians’ living rooms despite the government’s obsessive control of media and communication within the country. The government regulates and monitors the internet in Iran, so searching online can be very dangerous. But watching the 40 illegal but available satellite channels in the privacy of a home is not dangerous. The people of Iran get the latest news and hear the voices of government opposition 24/7 via satellite.\nIranians watch Church 7 on live satellite broadcast.\nSatellite broadcast has played a great role in evangelizing Muslims and strengthening persecuted Christians as well. There are an estimated 3 million Muslim background believers in Iran (some put a conservative estimate at 1 million and some extrapolate up to 6 million). Most have never been to a church of any kind even once. They are prisoners in their homes when it comes to worship or learning more about Jesus. The number of underground house churches and the count of people attending them are very small compared to the total number of Christians. It is estimated that only 5 percent of Christians in Iran are a part of the underground church. That is why Iran Alive’s global church and its broadcast services are so popular in Iran—it is the only church the people have available and can belong to.\nFreedom from Islam’s spiritual bondage\nSpiritually, a veil has been lifted from the minds of Iranians. Muslims, in general, prohibit independent thought and questioning their faith. I have seen intelligent Muslims with PhDs freeze up when I ask them questions that require them to think independently rather than repeat answers given by an authority. In Iran, however, using reason and questioning Islam has become a norm and even a fad. Unlike Muslims in other countries, an increasing number of Iranian Muslims are looking at Islam objectively and considering other options with an open mind.\nDiminishing hatred toward the Jews\nHatred towards the Jews and Israel is diminishing gradually. First, those who come to Christ learn from the Bible to pray for Israel and that the Lord has special plans for the Jewish nation. They also learn that the Lord wants them to love all nations including the Jews. Such love is expected of true Christians, but what is unexpected is that a growing number of Muslimsare also questioning the government’s mandate to hate the Jews and wipe Israel off the map. There is such distrust toward the government that when the government sets up rallies shouting, “Death to Israel,” they say, “We don’t trust you. Tell us why we should hate Israel. What have they done to us? You are our true enemy not them.”\nIran has been approaching this turn in its spiritual climate for many years, and now, especially in this past year, it is picking up speed.\nNext week: the current political climate of Iran.\nWhy Is Christmas the Season for Persecuting Christians in Iran?\nDecember 14, 2018 December 14, 2018 Hormoz Shariat Current Events, The Persecuted Church\tChristianity in Iran, Christmas in Iran, iran government afraid of growth of Christianity, underground church in Iran\nRecently, and especially in the past two weeks, we have seen massive numbers of Christians arrested in Iran. This surge in persecution has occurred every Christmas for the past few years. Some people have asked me why. To help you understand what is going on in Iran, I will give three reasons:\n1. More Iranian Muslims come to Christ during the Christmas season than any other time.\nMuslim women shop for Christmas items.\nThe Islamic government of Iran knows, just as we do, that more Muslims come to Christ during the Christmas season than any other time of the year. The joyful time of Christmas stands out against the many “mourning holidays” filling the Iranian calendar and so is attractive to Iranian Muslims. Therefore, not only Christians but also many Muslims love the Christmas season and celebrate it. Many Muslims set up a Christmas tree in their homes with decorations and gifts under it, knowing well that it is a Christian celebration.\nOur underground house church network (and many others) do their greatest outreach during the Christmas season. They throw Christmas parties in their homes and invite Muslim friends and family members who gladly accept, knowing they are being invited to a Christian gathering.\nEven as the meaning of Christmas is fading in the US into merely a “holiday season” concept, people of Iran—both Christians and Muslims—celebrate Christmas distinctly as the birthday of Jesus. So, when Muslims are invited by a Christian friend to go to a Christmas party, they know the theme will be a celebration of Jesus’s birthday. Therefore, they are not shocked when the gospel is shared with them in those parties and an invitation is made to trust Jesus as Savior—they expect it, are ready for it, and many times go to the party prepared to make a decision for Christ.\nMuslims accept Christ as their Savior at a Christmas party given by underground house church leaders in Iran.\nWe take advantage of this open season through our satellite broadcast as well. Our programs become more straight-forward evangelistic conversations as we talk about the meaning of Christmas. Every Christmas, we broadcast the Jesusfilm multiple times in various dialects of Iran. We see many Muslims respond to these Christmas broadcasts and come to Christ.\n2. The government is alarmed and reacts out of fear.\nAs the situation in Iran deteriorates financially, socially, and morally, more Muslims are open to the gospel. The underground church in Iran is growing, and the government is alarmed and increasingly feels threatened. Recently, Ayatollah Boroujerdi—director of a high-profile Islamic seminary in Qum, Vatican of Shiite Islam—stated that “accurate reports indicate that the youth are becoming Christians in Qom and attending house churches.”\nBecause of sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran is in a financial crunch. They cannot afford to put much of their limited resources into monitoring and containing the fast-growing number of Christians. Therefore, they turn to a policy of intimidation. That is, they arrest some Christians and publicize it to put fear in the hearts of others, hoping that they will not dare have Christmas parties and will cancel ones already planned.\n“Accurate reports indicate that the youth are becoming Christians in Qom and attending house churches.\n—Ayatollah Boroujerdi\n3. Government branches compete for limited funds through persecution.\nIn Iran, several offices from various branches of government work to make sure the power will stay in the hands of the Mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard. These offices all have a mandate and authority to arrest and destroy all who might threaten the future of the government. This includes Christians. So, because of the current scarcity of finances, they must constantly compete for better funding. They win more resources for their office by showing their effectiveness in stopping Christians. Therefore, they\ntry to arrest as many Christians as possible, and\nthey make a big deal out of the arrests and publicize them in the news.\nTheir motive is not just to intimidate Christians, but also to show their higher-ups they are worthy of funding. As Christmas approaches, I expect that these arrests will continue and intensify. So please pray for Iranian Christians to be safe, wise, and alert. Also pray that they will be bold and not be intimidated by the Islamic government and will continue to evangelize Muslims through Christmas parties. Pray that many Muslims will come to Christ this month both in our underground house churches through personal evangelism and also through our satellite broadcasts as a result of our special evangelistic Christmas programs.\nWhat Should the Worldwide Church Do Now?\nAugust 17, 2018 August 17, 2018 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\t412 School, Christianity in Iran, toppling iran regime, training church leaders in Iran\nThis entry is part 6 of 6 in the series What Is Happening in Iran?\nWhat Is Happening in Iran?\nThis post is part 6 of a six-part series on the current state of Iran and its church. To read the entire series now, click here. If you missed the earlier posts, you can read them here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.\nToo many times in history, the Church has missed open doors for the gospel and arrived too late. Japan wanted the gospel message right after World War II. We missed it. Russia wanted the gospel in the years just before the Soviet Union collapsed. We missed it. Too many times, God has softened hearts through suffering, and the Church has stood on the sidelines and waited until those soft hearts have hardened again more solidly than before.\nLet us not let that mistake happen again! Here are steps we can take to honor what God is doing in Iran:\nKeep busy evangelizing. The harvest is ready, but the workers are few. This is the time of the harvest and we must multiply our efforts. According to my experience, these days evangelizing Iranian Muslims living inside the country is very easy. Many Iranians come to Christ even with a simple message. This opportunity will go away when the government collapses. Then workers will come to the field and find the ground bare.\nFocus on Bible education and discipleship. Iranian believers today have a supernatural hunger. They want to know the Bible. They want to grow in their faith and be useful for God’s Kingdom. This hunger will lessen in intensity after the government collapses.\nTrain Leaders. Training new leaders is the greatest need of the church in Iran today and the most strategic action to prepare for the change of government in Iran. There are many believers in Iran, but they are without shepherds. They are without leaders and elders. We must act now to train leaders. When Iran opens, it will be too late.\nAt Iran Alive, we pray and ask the Lord to give us the “Issachar” anointing, so we know what to do when. We continue to evangelize using the media. We are preaching and teaching the word of God to masses. But we believe the most strategic thing God is asking us to do is to train leaders now. That is why starting the 412 Leadership School tops our agenda and focus.\nWe invite churches, organizations, and individuals to join us in taking advantage of this historic opportunity to build God’s church in Iran. The time is short and this window of opportunity is about to close. We must act fast and decisively. We must remember that whatever happens in Iran—good or bad—will impact the whole Middle East.\nIf you wish to partner with us to train leaders and harvest new believers in Iran, please go to www.iranaliveministries.org and help us fund the launch of the 412 School of leadership.\nTo learn more ways to help, please contact me at hormoz@IranAliveMinistries.org or (469) 982-0000. Or text “Iran” to 74784 for more information.\nHistory is in the making in Iran. As the 40th year of the anniversary of the Islamic revolution approaches, we are seeing the end of this regime. Much is happening in Iran today politically, socially, and spiritually. I believe we will see a major change in Iran soon and it will be in weeks, months, but not years.\nMuch is happening these days in Iran.\nThere is much news daily about Iran. Following the news carefully and being constantly and directly in touch with the people of Iran has given me a perspective that might be helpful to those who want to understand what is going on. So each day this week, I have provided a short commentary on What is happening in Iran. Click on the navigation links below to read the whole series.\nWhat Will Happen to the Church in Iran?\nAugust 16, 2018 August 14, 2018 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\tchristians in Iran, Iranian government, toppling iran regime, training church leaders in Iran, underground church iran\nWhat Is Happening in Iran?—Part 5\nThe gospel and leader-training windows are open widest now —before political and economic changes occur. Photo: Carlos Castilla\nThis post is part 5 of a six-part series on the current state of Iran and its church. To read the entire series now, click here. If you missed earlier posts, you can read them here: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.\nIn Iran, Islam has experienced the greatest defeat in its history. According to Operation World, Iran currently has the fastest growing evangelical population across the globe. Iran’s desperate situation has created a perfect storm for the cause of Christ. Millions have rejected Islam and are open to the message of the gospel. There are now over 3 million believers in Iran.\nWhat will happen when the regime changes in Iran?\nSpiritual hunger will suddenly die down. Iranians will suddenly have another hope besides Christ. Non-believers will be more interested in and focused on bringing a democracy to Iran than considering the claims of Christ.\nIranians will have freedom to assemble and start churches. The underground believers will gather into large communities and start many churches. Many evangelists will visit Iran to conduct stadium-size gatherings. Many denominations will send their workers to start new denominational churches. Many Iranian believers will start their own independent churches as well. We must bear in mind, however, that the 3 million believers in Iran are mostly new believers. Many will be distracted by the political events. Many will be deceived by cults and will join cultish churches. Many will start weak churches because they do not have any biblical training. So the visible church will suddenly grow—but it will be weak.\nOpportunities for expansion of the gospel in Iran will grow, but so will the dangers that can undercut the gospel’s power. The Church at large has a responsibility at this historic time to be wise concerning Iran and to redeem the time that God has given us.\nThere is much news daily about Iran. Following the news carefully and being constantly and directly in touch with the people of Iran has given me a perspective that might be helpful to those who want to understand what is going on. So each day for the next week, I will provide a short commentary on What is happening in Iran.\nNext up: What can the worldwide Church do to support its Persian brothers and sisters?\nWhat Options for Survival Does Iran’s Government Have?\nAugust 15, 2018 August 14, 2018 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\tIranian government, renewed sanctions for iran, results of 2018 protests, toppling iran regime\nIranians continue to protest in Tehran and elsewhere despite arrests.\nThis post is part 4 of a six-part series on the current state of Iran and its church. To read the entire series now, click here. If you missed any earlier posts, you can read them here: part 1, part 2, part 3.\nThe government of Iran (IRI) is going down with or without sanctions. The sanctions will merely speed up the process. The IRI has few options left:\nTry to reform itself. Reforms will not work because the leaders are too corrupt and disjointed to implement a comprehensive reform and the people of Iran will not buy into any plan that the government supports. The IRI has passed its window of opportunity when reform might have worked.\nTry to stifle the protest with violence. This option has a high probability of occurring. The IRI has shown that it has no respect for lives. When cornered and their existence threatened, they might easily turn to violence. Not long ago, a top clergyman said, “If we have to kill 1 million to keep Islam in Iran, we will.”\nSave themselves and let the regime collapse. It is very possible that those in power will abandon their positions and flee the country. Many have already stored their wealth in foreign banks, anticipating the day when they have to flee. The dollar exchange rate tripled recently because those in power were buying billions of dollars to send their wealth abroad. At this point, a military coup is also very possible. If this coup helps dethrone the mullahs and very quickly establishes a secular and democratic government, it could work.\nNegotiate with the US government. I believe negotiation is the number one option for the IRI and they will take it. Of course, they will not do this publicly. They do not want to lose the little respect and credibility they have before their people and the world by admitting defeat. They will ask for negotiations behind closed doors while at the same time bad mouthing the USA and Trump in public and the media.\nThe IRI has already started planning for reform (option 1). But they are finding fast that they are not capable of doing it and the people will not be fooled by it anyway. I believe that, very soon, unannounced secret negotiations between the IRI and the US will start (option 4)—if they have not started already. These negotiations may prolong the IRI’s existence for a time but not indefinitely. Eventually, they will again try violence (option 2) followed by giving up power (option 3).\nNext up: How will a regime change in Iran affect the underground church?\nWhat Is the United States Doing about Iran?\nAugust 14, 2018 August 14, 2018 Hormoz Shariat Current Events\tiran nuclear deal and donald trump, Iranian government, renewed sanctions for iran, toppling iran regime\nWhat Is the United States Doing?\nThis post is part 3 of a six-part series on the current state of Iran and its church. To read the entire series now, click here. If you missed the earlier posts, you can read them here: part 1 and part 2.\nTrump and his administration are following three main plans to push out the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI):\nPressure with sanctions. The US is putting more financial pressure on the already pressured government of Iran through sanctions and an oil embargo. Trump may talk of violence, but he will not enter into a full-fledged war with Iran because all he needs to do is just wait for sanctions to effectively destroy the IRI.\nApproach Iran from a point of strength. Trump’s constant threat to engage in military action puts extra pressure on the IRI. Iran’s government knows its military is no match for the power of the USA and Israel. They know that if a war starts, their people will not support them as they did in the eight-year war against Saddam in the 1980s. Obama negotiated from a point of weakness: he begged Iran not to start a war and bribed it merely to slow down its development of nuclear bombs. But Trump approaches the IRI from a point of strength. Many Iranians living inside Iran are pleased with and support Trump’s approach because they feel Obama threw the IRI a lifeline to survive, but Trump has pulled it back.\nKeep open the possibility of negotiation. Trump says he is open to negotiation but wants Iran to take the first step. Trump is a strong negotiator—as shown in his book The Art of the Deal—and knows the one who first breaks down and asks for a meeting has a weaker position in negotiation.\nThere is much news daily about Iran. Following the news carefully and being constantly and directly in touch with the people of Iran has given me a perspective that might be helpful to those who want to understand what is going on. So each day this week, I will provide a short commentary on What is happening in Iran.\nNext up: Does the IRI have any options for survival?\nDr. Hormoz Shariat\nIRANIANS ARE SEARCHING FOR A SAVIOR:\nLearn the truth about Iran, it's leaders, and how the Gospel of Christ is radically transforming lives there.\n> Get weekly updates from Hormoz\nDonate to Iran Alive Ministries\nHelp Iran Alive minister to the people of Iran and help persecuted Christians in the Middle East, by donating here.\nQasem Soleimani Assassination: Impact on Iranian Christians January 10, 2020\nGeneral Soleimani Assassinated—Now What? January 9, 2020\nWho Was Qasem Soleimani—a Terrorist or a Hero? January 7, 2020\nThen and Now: The Current Political Climate of Iran March 27, 2019\nThen and Now: A Look at What Forty Years of Islamic Rule Has Brought to Iran March 8, 2019\nBattling Terrorism\nLife in Iran\nLives Transformed\n5 Things About Hassan Rouhani's Visit to the U.S. (4)\n5 Things You Didn't Know about Iran (5)\nChallenges and Opportunities for the Iranian Church (3)\nLessons from the Persecuted Church (3)\nThen and Now: 40 Years Rule (2)\nUnderstanding the 2018 Iran Uprising (5)\nUnderstanding the Impact of Soleimani Assassination (3)\nUSA and Iran Partnering in Iraq? (5)\nWhat Is Happening in Iran? (6)\nIran Alive Facebook\nIran Alive Ministries Home Page\nIAM Facebook\nIAM Twitter","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1070726"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6514555215835571,"wiki_prob":0.6514555215835571,"text":"Super Bowl Reaction: The World Celebrates; New England Mourns\nFebruary 6, 2018 , by Andrew Martin, Staff Writer\nc/o nbc.com\nWhat a game! Before yesterday’s Super Bowl, I kept telling myself that it was the Eagles; it was Nick Foles. The only part of the Eagles team that scared me, as a Patriots fan, was their defense. So-called experts predicted that it would be like a Giants-Patriots game where the Patriots offense would be held to around twenty points. In reality, it was quite the opposite. The offensive shootout fostered entertainment that couldn’t be paralleled.\nAs an avid Patriots fan, I don’t remember watching the Patriots offense play this well, especially when making big plays. After Brandin Cooks was sidelined, the Patriots utilized Hogan, Amendola, and Gronkowski as deep threats, which is something that hasn’t been done all year.\nThe game was simply a microcosm of what defined the year: What in the world is a catch? Twice the Eagles scored touchdowns on plays that resembled Kelvin Benjamin and Jesse James’ controversial incomplete calls against the Patriots in the regular season. Even from my biased perspective, I believe that the catches in the Super Bowl were, in fact, catches.\nWhat shocked me the most was how the Patriots lost. Like I mentioned above, I thought it would be a relatively low-scoring game. Instead, the Patriots gave up almost as many second-half points as they surrendered in the first half. That almost never happens against defense coached by Bill Belichick ’75. My nightmares from the Pittsburgh game returned when the Patriots couldn’t get a stop on third down. The Eagles converted well during over 50 percent of their third downs. The Patriots defense looked weak in all sectors. There weren’t any sacks; the blitzes were picked up effectively by the Eagles; the secondary got burned by great route running by Nelson Agholor and company. There’s also the Malcolm Butler case, which I’ll get into later.\nThis was obviously a great win for Philly, but there’s a lot of questions for them going into the offseason. First and foremost, what should they do with Nick Foles? He almost quit football a few years ago, and now he beat Tom Brady and the Pats. He bailed out the defense by putting up 41 points on a Belichick-coached defense. Again, this rarely happens. The 2001 Rams, the Greatest Show on Turf, didn’t even come close to 41 points. With Carson Wentz coming back next year, it’s going to be interesting to see what Philly does with Foles. I’m not being a sore loser here, but it’s obvious that Coach Pederson’s scheme works well with Foles. There’s no doubt that Foles went out there and won the Super Bowl, but he simply was an average quarterback with the Rams and Chiefs. Now he looks elite. I’m not sure what the trade offers will be for him, but I’m sure the Eagles could snatch a fairly good draft pick. As for other top players, I don’t think there’s a chance they move away from Wentz, especially considering how well he played before his knee injury. Philly deserved to win the game, plain and simple. This is going to be a very interesting offseason for them.\nNow here comes the painful part. So-called experts are going to say that we just witnessed the end to the greatest dynasty in the history of sports. From the ESPN article to Malcolm Butler’s bizarre benching, we will have plenty of time to discuss what will happen. The Patriots will draft a quarterback. Brady will be back. I’m just a little concerned about Belichick. In my opinion, he’s the best coach in the history of sports, without a doubt, yet the coaching staff did not put together a good defensive game plan. It’s rare to say that Belichick was out-coached, but Pederson did a fantastic job exploiting the Patriots’ lack of a pass rush, especially on third down. Will Bill be back next year? I can’t see him retiring, but then again, I can’t see the Patriots ever crumpling. They’re my team, and they will always be my team.\nThen there’s Malcolm Butler. Reports said that he had the flu, but for Eric Rowe to be the second corner is not ideal. The Patriots missed Butler out there. His scrappiness is unparalleled. He fights for jump balls like no other corner in the league does. I hope his benching isn’t somehow related to last offseason’s near-trade to the Saints. However, I can’t help but believe that we have seen Butler play his last game in a Patriots uniform. We also missed Edelman and Hightower. Hightower’s the leader on defense, leading big plays. On the bright side, it seems like Stephon Gilmore finally understood how to play Patriots’ defense. He really stepped up over the last two games.\nWhen the game ended on the Hail Mary, I felt like the Eagles didn’t know what to do. Neither did the Patriots. The Eagles were so shocked when they dethroned the Pats that they forgot to celebrate. Hats off to former Patriots LeGarrette Blount and Chris Long. Both these guys are great citizens and deserve this trophy.\nThere’s really nothing left for me to say. Sure, there were some controversial calls, but the Eagles beat the Patriots fairly. Congratulations to all Philadelphians on a well-deserved victory. To be the best, you have to beat the best. You beat the best.\nAndrew Martin can be reached at akmartin@wesleyan.edu.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line28721"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7246729135513306,"wiki_prob":0.27532708644866943,"text":"Pension cut is inevitable\nApril 6, 2017\tLeave a comment\nThe most feasible of the three options to solve the funding shortfall at the Caribbean Netherlands Pension Fund PCN is to lower the payable pension, Dutch Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk informed the First Chamber of the Dutch Parliament on Tuesday.\nThe three options are: having the employers, including the public entities Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba and the schools on the three islands, deposit additional funds in the PCN; increasing the pension premiums, and reducing the pension allowances.\n“There are no more flavours than that,” said Plasterk who noted that the first two options were not feasible as they would entail a very high financial burden for the local governments. He said it was “unavoidable” to lower the pension allowances by 3.5 per cent which the PCN has announced it has little choice than to effectuate this month.\nIn a letter to the Bonaire labour union USIBO dated April 4, in response to the Bonaire petition against the pension reduction, Plasterk referred to the 3.5 per cent cutback as a “dreadful, but unavoidable step.” He stated that the Dutch Government was “very much aware” of the standard of living of vulnerable groups in the Caribbean Netherlands and the difficult financial situation in which they live.\nHowever, the reduction that the PCN has to apply per April 1 was needed in order to structurally restore the pension fund and to create a healthy financial situation. The PCN has already extended the recovery period by two years in 2016, thereby avoiding even greater reductions, stated Plasterk.\nPlasterk urged the labour union to grant him time to find acceptable solutions with the other employers and the PCN. He said that this would take some time due to the complexity of the matter. The Bonaire unions stated that they were not prepared to wait and announced industrial action on Wednesday. The unions asked for a deferral of the pension reduction to October this year.\nDuring the meeting with Plasterk on Tuesday, the Senate’s Permanent Committee for Kingdom Relations KOREL had asked about the status of the PCN and the planned pension payment reduction. Several members expressed their concerns about the effects on the pensioners.\n“The elderly on the islands already have a very tough time to keep their head above water. How are we going to ensure that these elderly can have a decent life,” said Senator Meta Meijer of the Socialist Party (SP). Plasterk repeated that there were few other options than to reduce the pensions and added that he could not say much about the issue as this matter is now before the Courts.\nSenator Martine Baay- Timmerman of the 50Plus party brought up the issue of the “missing” pension premiums, the apparent non-payment of pension premiums by island employers and the omissions in the administration of the Netherlands Antilles Pension Fund APNA in the past. She stated that 50Plus received many emails on this matter from people on the islands.\nThe Dutch Government as employer had deposited some US $2 million to supplement the capital of the PCN, stated Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations BZK Richard van Zwol. However, the public entities and the schools carry their own responsibility in this matter, he added.\nThe BZK Ministry has made expertise available to assist the islands in solving the issue of the missing premiums, said Minister Plasterk. “Unfortunately, not everyone has made use of this offer,” he stated. Van Zwol lamented the approach of the St. Eustatius Government on this matter and said that this bordered on neglecting its tasks.\nThe Daily Herald.\n2nd Restaurant Week Saba\nSelf-defense class for special needs students","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line996034"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8499759435653687,"wiki_prob":0.8499759435653687,"text":"Archive | UK RSS for this section\nOn this day March 18, 1789\nCatherine Murphy was executed at Newgate prison on March 18, 1789, for coining. Her co-defendants, including her husband, were executed at the same time by hanging, but as a woman the law provided that she should be burnt at the stake.\nShe was brought out past the hanging bodies of eight men and made to stand on a foot high 10in square platform in front of the stake. She was secured to the stake with ropes and an iron ring. When she finished her prayers, the hangman piled faggots of straw around the stake and lit them.\nAccording to testimony given by Sir Benjamin Hammett, then Sheriff of London, she was hanged before being burned. In part through his efforts, burning as a method of execution was abolished the next year.\nin Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK\nEleven countries signed a convention establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), currently the world’s largest particle physics laboratory.\nBlue founding members\nThe acronym CERN originally stood, in French, for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), which was a provisional council for setting up the laboratory.\nThe organization was established by the following 11 European governments; Belgium, Denmark, West Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands and United Kingdom.\nToday the organization has twenty European member states, and is currently the workplace of approximately 2,600 full-time employees, as well as some 7,931 scientists and engineers (representing 580 universities and research facilities and 80 nationalities). Read More…\nSir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth when Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures.\nDrake's statue in Plymouth\nThe Queen’s half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown’s income for that entire year. Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth.\nDrake was awarded a knighthood, but not by Queen Elizabeth aboard Golden Hind, as is commonly thought.\nHe was actually knighted by a French nobleman called Monsieur de Marchaumont, on 4 April 1581, and, in September 1581, became the Mayor of Plymouth.\nHe was also a Member of Parliament in 1581, for an unknown constituency, and again in 1584 for Bossiney.\nThe Queen ordered all written accounts of Drake’s voyage to be considered classified information, and its participants sworn to silence on pain of death; her aim was to keep Drake’s activities away from the eyes of rival Spain.\nDrake was a navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, his exploits were legendary, making him a hero to the English but a pirate to the Spaniards , King Philip II was claimed to have offered a reward of 20,000 ducats, about (US$6.5M) by modern standards, for his life.\nHe was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588, subordinate only to Charles Howard and the Queen herself. He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.\n200,000 protestors take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax (Community Charge), introduced by the Conservative government led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.\nBy far the largest occurred in central London on Saturday March 31, 1990, shortly before the poll tax was due to come into force in England and Wales. Many believe the riot – the largest in the city in the 20th century – caused Thatcher’s downfall eight months later.\nThe disorder in London arose from a demonstration which began at 11am. The rioting and looting ended at 3am the next morning. This riot is sometimes called the Battle of Trafalgar, particularly by opponents of poll tax, because much of the rioting took place in Trafalgar Square. Read More…\nOn this day July 5, 1687\nThe Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton was first published, describing his laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.\nThe Principia is a three-volume work, Newton also published two further editions, the second in 1713, and the third in 1726.\nThe Principia contains the statement of Newton’s laws of motion forming the foundation of classical mechanics, as well as his law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler’s laws for the motion of the planets (which were first obtained empirically).\nThe Principia is “justly regarded as one of the most important works in the history of science”.\nIn formulating his physical theories, Newton had developed a field of mathematics now known as calculus. However, the language of calculus as we know it was largely absent from the Principia. Instead, Newton cast the majority of his proofs in geometric form, although with many calculus-like arguments based on limits of vanishing small geometric quantities.\nOn this day June 21, 1948\nThe Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), nicknamed Baby, was the world’s first stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.\nThe machine was not intended to be a practical computer but was instead designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory. Although considered “small and primitive” by the standards of its time, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. Read More…\nCumbria shootings\nYesterday a gunman shot 23 people, killing 12 of them, in the county of Cumbria, North West England, United Kingdom.\nWestern Cumbria\nThe series of attacks began in mid-morning in Frizington and moved to Whitehaven, Egremont, Gosforth and Seascale, sparking a major manhunt by Cumbria Constabulary.\nThe gunman, a local taxi driver, was later found dead in a wooded area, having abandoned his vehicle in the village of Boot.\nTwo weapons that appeared to have been used were recovered. There are 30 different crime scenes being investigated. Police confirmed it was the worst incident of mass shooting in Britain since the Dunblane massacre of 1996.\nThe incident began in the morning of 2 June 2010, when 52-year-old Derrick Bird, shot dead his twin brother, David Bird, in Lamplugh, followed by the family solicitor, Kevin Commons, in and around Frizington. He then moved on toward Whitehaven. Read More…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1359278"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5640819072723389,"wiki_prob":0.43591809272766113,"text":"The second French FREMM Frigate “Normandie” starts sea trials\nOn the 25th October 2013, the French Navy’s Second of Class FREMM Multi-Mission Frigate “Normandie” has started its first sea trials in Lorient.\nThese first sea trials will be carried out for several weeks and will involve industrial teams led by DCNS, the French Navy crew, the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) and the OCCAR FREMM Programme Division.\nThe first sea trials and tests will focus on the propulsion system and ship’s navigation. The FREMM’s high-performance hybrid CODLOG (COmbined Diesel eLectric Or Gas) power package combines a gas turbine for mechanical propulsion at speeds exceeding 27 knots and electric motors for quiet, low-speed propulsion. The sea trials of the combat system will start in early 2014.\nThe delivery of the “Normandie” Frigate is planned in August 2014.\nThe First of Class frigate “Aquitaine” was accepted by OCCAR on 23rd November 2012 and delivered to the French Navy. Five other French FREMM frigates, including the Normandie, are currently being built simultaneously and are at different stages of assembly and construction at the DCNS Lorient shipyard.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line290834"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7792684435844421,"wiki_prob":0.7792684435844421,"text":"Headstones in the News>\nRoy Ruhkala shares passion for Rocklin’s rich legacy\ncalifornia Monument Association\nHeadstones in the News\nThe key keeper of history Roy Ruhkala shares passion for Rocklin’s rich legacy\nAt 96, lifelong resident is still the museum’s best story teller\nBy: Gloria Beverage for the Placer Herald\nRocklin History Museum\nRoy Ruhkala may have started collecting pieces of Rocklin’s history nearly 50 years ago, but he has been gathering memories of the community’s rich history for a lifetime. On the first Sunday of each month, the 96-year-old lifelong resident of Rocklin serves as a docent at the Rocklin History Museum – sharing his memories and answering questions.\nThe museum, based in one of Rocklin’s first homes, is Ruhkala’s pride and joy. It houses a treasure trove of memorabilia, photographs and tools that pay tribute to the industries that drew people to this area: granite quarries, the Transcontinental Railroad and ranches.\nAs a community leader for most of his adult life (10 years on the Rocklin City Council, including four consecutive terms as mayor, and seven terms on the Rocklin School Board as well as service on numerous other agencies), Ruhkala began lobbying in 1989 for the creation of a museum as a way to create a bridge between Rocklin’s past and its future residents.\nHis efforts began long before that, however. Ruhkala began collecting historic photographs in the late 1960s and early 1970s when longtime residents would gather for an annual picnic/reunion at private homes.\n“I talked people into bringing their old photos and would ask if we could keep them. Not many people wanted them back. They wanted a place to put them,” he said.\nOne of the biggest donations he received were hundreds of historic photographs from Ernest and Mayme Willard in 1968. Also a lifelong resident of Rocklin, Ernest Willard was the city’s first employee – starting in 1946 as a maintenance worker and retiring as police chief in 1965.\nEventually, Ruhkala founded the Rocklin Historical Society and was joined by longtime residents, including Gene Johnson, Gay Morgan and Carol and John Peterson, in campaigning for a museum.\nAfter he successfully negotiated the purchase of the Moon residence (at the corner of Rocklin Road and San Francisco Street), Ruhkala enlisted the support of the Rocklin Lions Club members, who worked side by side with Rocklin Historical Society members to paint, repair and refurbish the house and garden.\n“I toiled side by side with Carol Peterson working on the windows at the museum,” recalled Kathie Nippert, current president of the Rocklin Historical Society. “Roy showed us how to install the pulley system for each window.”\nAs work on the building progressed, memorabilia donated by longtime residents or their families began filling the main floor and a smaller detached building on the grounds. His personal collection of granite quarry mining tools and equipment fills the basement, while some of the larger pieces have been placed in the garden.\nOn a recent Sunday, Ruhkala showed two visitors from Holland how the granite mining equipment was used. Engineers Jan Raaijmaker and John Severijns were in town to attend a training program in Folsom. Raaijmaker said they learned about granite mining and the museum online and decided to explore.\n“We didn’t know anything about Rocklin’s granite history. This is a very nice museum,” said Jan Raaijmaker.\nIn addition to celebrating the city’s granite mining history, Ruhkala pointed out to the visitors that other displays pay tribute to the years the Central Pacific roundhouse was based in Rocklin. Before it was moved to Roseville, the roundhouse (located on Rocklin Road and Front Street) housed engines for use by the Transcontinental Railroad on its way over the High Sierra.\nPermanent displays also pay tribute to the legacy of J. Parker Whitney, who developed a 27,000 acre ranch in a triangular section roughly between Lincoln, Roseville, Rocklin and present day northern Lincoln.\nAlso featured are unique collections, including memorabilia from the years the San Francisco 49ers held their summer training camp on the Rocklin campus of Sierra College.\nRuhkala’s passion and enthusiasm for preserving Rocklin’s history is contagious.\n“I am grateful to Roy for taking me under his wing when I joined the Historical Society in 2001. He asked me to be secretary during his term as president and I couldn’t turn him down,” said Nippert. “His hard work and dedication to the society and the museum make him a force to be reckoned with. I thank Roy every time I see him because we wouldn’t have the museum and wonderful exhibits without his planning and forethought.”\nThe tradition of sharing Rocklin’s history started by Ruhkala will continue with this year’s annual Rocklin Homecoming Reunion from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 29 at Finn Hall on Rocklin Road.\n“The purpose is to renew old friendships and to meet and welcome new friends,” said Gay Morgan, who is helping organize this year’s gathering. Photos and memorabilia will be on display.\nOpen to anyone interested in Rocklin’s history, a minimum $10 donation is requested. For more information, call Morgan at 916-624-2355.\nNapa Monument Maker stands the test of time\nNewsletter California Monument Association Vol 1 Oct 2017\nMulherin Monumental Headstone company makes emotional donation","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1306246"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8037608861923218,"wiki_prob":0.8037608861923218,"text":"Located in the sunny south of France, picturesque Avignon was once the seat of power for the Catholic Church. The historic center of Avignon is known… more\nLocated in the sunny south of France, picturesque Avignon was once the seat of power for the Catholic Church. The historic center of Avignon is known for its architectural and cultural significance, both of which largely stem from its brief stint as the seat of the papacy.\nAvignon’s role as residence of the popes was relatively short-lived: the Avignon papacy – or “Babylonian captivity,” as some dubbed it – was controversial within the Church and lasted only from 1309 to 1377, but it left behind a lasting imprint on the city.\nBeginning in 1335, a magnificent palace was constructed to house the popes. Completed in less than 20 years in two phases, the Palais des Papes is the largest Gothic palace in Europe. The palace also holds a collection of intricate frescoes by the Italian master Matteo Giovannetti.\nSeven popes occupied the palace before the papacy moved back to Rome in 1377. But the palace in Avignon remained property of the papacy until the French Revolution, when it was seized by revolutionaries. It was later converted into a military barracks and prison under the Napoleonic administration.\nToday, the property is preserved as a museum and visitors can stroll through its halls and gander at the former private chambers of the pope.\nThe palace is surrounded by other monuments, including the Cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms, which was built in 1150.\nNearby is the Petit Palais. It was once the residence of bishops, and now houses an art museum with an extensive collection of works from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.\nA short stroll from the cathedral is Rocher des Domes, a park with panoramic views of the Rhone.\nAnd adjacent to the complex is the remnants of the St. Benezet Bridge, which once spanned the Rhone. Today only four of the original 22 arches remain, but the construction is solid enough that tourists can still stroll along the span.\nLuckily getting to Avignon is quite easy, and a well-developed tourism infrastructure makes travel simple. The best way to avoid the crowds is to visit in the spring or fall.\nTechnology Category:\nWhy a Giant Machine Is Digging a Tunnel Under D.C.\nBaby Blue Whale Nursing (Exclusive Drone Footage)\nPumpkin Catapult\nAncient Maya Cities Found Hidden in Guatemalan Jungle\nMars Rover's \"Seven Minutes of Terror\"\nNASA Probe to Explore Jupiter\nWatch How Ordinary Objects Can Be Turned Into Robots\nT. Rex in 3-D\nNG Live!: Shah Selbe: Using Tech to Protect the Seas\nMobile Technology and the Art of the Possible\nTracking Illegal Fishing—From Space\nHorses vs. Horsepower: Watch Historic Rides Race Each Other\nWhat It Takes to Film Hummingbirds in Slow Motion\nBeloved Robot Dogs Honored In Funeral Ceremony","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1222379"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6424919366836548,"wiki_prob":0.3575080633163452,"text":"Tony Dogs Destroys The Devils\nJanuary 9, 2020\t| 2019-20 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes\t| 6 Comments\nTony DeAngelo grew up in New Jersey and on Thursday, he had the best game of his career against the Devils. DeAngelo scored a hat trick on seven shots while adding two assists to have the best game of the NHL season by a defenseman. In the preseason, I ranked DeAngelo 32nd at defensemen, way above consensus. Here's what I said: \"Alright, somebody I really like! Now, that’s not to say there’s concern here with DeAngelo. One, he’s still unsigned and I’m not sure if a deal gets done sooner than later. Two, it’s possible that Fox takes his PP time. I think the two play together on PP2 but we’ll have to wait and see. However, if DeAngelo is playing on opening night getting PP2 time, he could get 40 points and 100 PIM. Yes, the shot rate is slightly below average, but it’s extremely difficult to get that out of anyone on the blue line. You won’t need to take him this early, but I’m targeting DeAngelo because he fits so many team builds.\" And that's me quoting me copying what Grey does! Well, I may have overshot the PIM, but I was way under on the points. DeAngelo now has 11+25 in 42 games and he worked his shot rate up to over two per game, a solid number for a defenseman. Hopefully you guys checked out my preseason rankings and you own DeAngelo everywhere because I'm not expecting a drop off given the style the Rangers play. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:\nHope For Hornqvist?\nFor years, Patric Hornqvist has been an easy hold in fantasy, but last season brought some doubt if the 32 year old would get back to that level. Injuries have set back Honrqvist this season, but his first three games back have been strong, namely the last two. On Thursday, Hornqvist scored two goals on eight shots in the 3-2 loss to the Sharks. So why am I excited for Hornqvist? One is the shots. He's pushing three per game which brings plenty of value. Two is the top power play time on a strong unit. Three, and this is the main one, is that Sidney Crosby should be returning within a week or so, and given the injuries Pittsburgh has suffered, it seems likely that Hornqvist ends up playing on his wing. This would do wonders for his value and give him the chance to be a solid hold again. Hornqvist is available in almost two-thirds of leagues right now which makes him an incredible speculation add in all formats. If he can stay healthy and plays with Crosby, we could get borderline top 100 value the rest of the way from Hornqvist. Let's take a look at what else happened on Thursday night:\nGo Go Giroux\nNovember 21, 2019\t| 2019-20 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes\t| 3 Comments\nLife without Couturier hasn't been as good without Claude Giroux. He started the turnaround on Thursday night. Giroux scored two goals and two assists with three shots and two PIM in the 5-3 win over Carolina. That brings Giroux up to 17 points in 22 games, not exactly lighting the world on fire, but the shot rate is the best of his career. 75 shots in 22 games is a huge step forward, and if that continues, we could be looking at a new career high in goals. Yes, he only has 7 to this point, but we could be on the verge of a heater. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:\nMarchand’s Got Five On It\nThe gap between Brad Marchand and the rest of the league right now for fantasy hockey is incredible. Marchand scored five points on Monday, tallying two goals and three assists and a +4 rating. It's nothing new, but the first line in Boston has managed to find a way to get even better. Marchand is crushing every category with 10+18 in 15 games with a +13 rating, 28 PIM and 41 SOG. He's as good of a bet as any to finish as the #1 player in fantasy this season. Honestly, he'd be my pick as long as he avoids a lengthy suspension. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:\nBoeser Buries The Kings\nThe best line in hockey remains in Boston, but the second best at the moment resides in Vancouver. On Wednesday, they were led by Brock Boeser, who had a hat trick and an assist with seven shots and two PIM in the 5-3 win over the Kings. Boeser is now up to 7+7 in 12 games with over three shots per game, +6, and six penalty minutes. He's doing a little bit of everything, and with how well the Canucks are playing, there's no reason he can't finish with 35+40 or better. I'd bet on Boeser being a top 50 player at this point and it should only get better in the years to come. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:\n2019-20 Fantasy Hockey Goaltenders\nSeptember 20, 2019\t| 2019-20 Fantasy Hockey, 2019-20 Fantasy Hockey Rankings\t| 11 Comments\nWe're at the end of individual rankings! Almost 15,000 words later, we've ranked the top 100 forwards and 40 defensemen. Now, we conclude that with my goaltending rankings. I'm going to start by talking about my goaltending strategy for drafts, then split the goalies into tiers. I'm not going to go in-depth on every goalie, just the ones that I feel are worth talking about, mostly because I'm higher or lower on somebody. The reason I don't want to go very in-depth on every goalie is that the variance on goaltending from season to season is massive. In other words, even the best goalies have poor seasons from time to time, and guys will come out of nowhere to have excellent seasons. Did anyone know who Jordan Binnington was a year ago? The public certainly did not. Robin Lehner and Thomas Greiss were afterthoughts for most. Darcy Kuemper was the backup and wasn't drafted outside of deep leagues. Those goalies were the 3rd-6th ranked goalies at the end of the season. This is why I never draft goalies in the first two rounds, and never more than one in the first 7-8 rounds. If you like to have one presumed top end goalie, that's fine, go for it in the 4th-5th rounds if they're still there. Just do not reach, because the range of outcomes in goalies is incredibly wide, while forwards and defensemen are much more certain. Any other questions on this, let me know in the comments section below. Here are my tiers:\n31 in 31 – PLAY GLORIA!\nAugust 23, 2019\t| 2019-20 Fantasy Hockey, Team Previews\t|\nHey guys! Over the next month, I will be taking a look at each team’s players to watch out for going into the 2019-20 fantasy hockey season. This analysis features everything from surefire studs, to sleepers, to streamers, deeper league holds, even to rookie-eligible prospects that may make an appearance at some point this season. Please let me know if you guys enjoy this type of material! Reminder that the stat totals are from last season. Last year my previews went alphabetically, but this year we’re going to go division-by-division, starting with the top team. On our 11th stop on the 31 in 31 tour, we’re headed the city of champions, St. Louis! This team of good old Canadian boys rallied from the basement of the league in January all the way to Lord Stanley’s Cup. There isn’t a ton of turnover going into 2019-2020, but there are some significant question marks on whether guys can repeat their historic performances.\nTavares For Four\nMarch 27, 2019\t| 2018-19 Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Hockey Daily Notes\t|\nFrom an individual standpoint, this season couldn't be going any better for John Tavares. That continued on Monday night as Tavares scored 4 goals in the 7-5 win over Florida. That brings Tavares to 45 goals and 86 points, both career highs. Obviously we know to roll Tavares every time out, but where does he rank going into next season? He's bumped his shot rate back up to an elite level and his plus-minus is by far a career best. Is that sustainable? It might be given how good Toronto is. This, of course, assumes that Marner returns next season. I don't think he'll make my top 10, but it will be very close. At the least, Tavares will be in consideration for the wheel in a 12 team draft come September. Let's take a look at what else happened over the last two nights:\n2019 Playoff Manifesto\nMarch 4, 2019\t| 2018-19 Fantasy Hockey, Playoff Manifesto\t| 8 Comments\nFor those of you doing well in your head to head leagues, this is the most important post of the year. This is my annual playoff manifesto where I break down every team's schedule for the last four weeks of the season. I tell you who are the best teams and players to stream from, who you should look to trade for or away if your deadline hasn't passed, and it allows you to plan ahead with ease. For those who haven't read it in the past, the numbers in the parentheses are how many games the team plays in each of those weeks, with the last number being the last week in the season and preceding accordingly. This is going to be a massive post so let's get right to the 2019 Playoff Manifesto!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line527339"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5253651142120361,"wiki_prob":0.5253651142120361,"text":"Project stepping stone\nPoetry writing activities for fourth grade\nAn analysis of impressionism an art period in painting\nHome homework help wanted Canadas first past the post system\nCanadas first past the post system\nMacdonaldwho later became the first Prime Minister of Canadatalked of \"founding a great British monarchy\", in connection with the British Empire. Macdonald wished their new nation to be called the Kingdom of Canada, to \"fix the monarchical basis of the constitution. They were also wary of antagonizing the United States, which had emerged from its Civil War as a formidable military power with unsettled grievances because British interests had sold ships to the Confederacy despite a blockade, and thus opposed the use of terms such as kingdom or empire to describe the new country.\nHow to Write a Summary of an Article? Each riding chooses one candidate to elect into parliament. In order to win a candidate must obtain the highest number of votes but not necessarily the majority of votes.\nThe 'First Past the Post' Elections System Doesn't Work for Canada | HuffPost Canada\nFPTP voting methods can be used for single and multiple member elections. In a single member election the candidate with the highest number, not necessarily a majority, of votes is elected. Many Canadians are not happy with the current First Past the Post system currently in place for electing parliamentary officials provincially and federally.\nA new electoral system that is more proportional is needed in order to address these problems. There are a few problems that arise out of the FPTP system. One of the most important problems is the tendency for FPTP to favor tactical voting.\nTactical voting happens when voters cast their votes for one of the two candidates that are most likely to win. This is done because it is perceived by the voter that their vote will be wasted if they were to choose to vote for a smaller party, which they would more prefer. This is an understandable feeling by the voter because only votes for the winning candidate actually count Blais, Following the U.\nProportional representation just one alternative to the status quo\nBush because a portion of the electorate 2. The people, who voted for Ralph Nader despite of his staggering inability to win, effectively voted for Bush by depriving Gore of their votes even though they would have preferred Gore. With tactical voting, voters, have to predict in advance who the top two candidates will be.\nThis can distort results significantly.\nOne factor that influences tactical voting is the Media. Substantial power is given to the media. Even voters who distrust the media will know that other voters do believe the media, and therefore that those candidates who receive the most media attention will probably be the most popular and thus most likely to be the top two.\nThe media can also play an important role in persuading voters to use tactical voting. This is exemplified through the use of attack advertisements in television; radio and print media. This happens in the UK. The system may promote votes against as opposed to votes for.\nIn the UK, entire campaigns have been organized with the aim of voting against the Conservative party by voting either Labour or Liberal Democrat. The media holds an important role in informing and influencing the public about political candidates.\nAdvantages and disadvantages of FPTP system\nThis causes the FPTP system to turn into run-off voting, which is a two round voting system where voters elect two forerunners for the constituency and select one to be winner. This can be seen in the example of the Winchester by-election:Canada’s most dangerous place, North Battleford, is fighting for its future The Saskatchewan city dives headlong into the trend of crime prevention through environmental design.\nThe daughters of wealthy Chinese Canadians who star in the reality show the “Ultra Rich Asian Girls of Vancouver\" pursue modeling careers, carry Birkin bags, and sip on Veuve Cliquot. And they. Check out the rest of the gallery Each year, Canadian Business uses a proprietary formula and publicly available data from Statistics Canada and Employment & Social Development Canada to rank the jobs with the highest salaries, strongest job growth, and best long-term hiring momentum in the country.\nBut what does it take to actually score one of . Canadas First Past the Post System Essay In Canada Federal and Provincial First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) elections are based on single member districts or ridings.\nEach riding chooses one candidate to elect into parliament. The first past the post electoral system does more harm than good. Discuss. The article you have been looking for has expired and is not longer available on our system.\nThis is due to newswire licensing terms. A profoundly dishonest and misleading video. First, the money in question is an investment, not a “gift” or a “sacrifice” as Michael Arana asserts.\nCathay recommendation\nHow to write a database program in android\nWrite an equation in point slope form for the perpendicular\nInformation technology business plan presentation\nGrant writing services rfp sample\nFrench worker\nWar poetry comparison\nName of Canada - Wikipedia","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line243766"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7704544067382812,"wiki_prob":0.7704544067382812,"text":"MOVING SOUNDS FESTIVAL | WORKSHOP\nDORIT CHRYSLER: KID COOL THEREMIN SCHOOL\nSUNDAY, SEP 18 2016, 01:30 PM - 02:30 PM\nAs part of this year's Moving Sounds Festival, Kid Cool Theremin School is proud to present its first Manhattan workshop, teaching children the fundamentals of playing the theremin. Instructed by theremin virtuoso Dorit Chrysler, young participants will be involved in a fun and creative approach to exercise hearing, motor skills, rhythm and melodies. They will be given the chance to explore this truly unique instrument that defies conventional playing methods and rules, leading them to find their own voice of expression.\n- The Wall Street Journal wrote about the classes: \"Playing a Theremin is like Tickling Butterflies\".\nwww.kidcoolthereminschool.com\nBorn in Graz and best known for her theremin style, Dorit Chrysler also has a prolific performing career as a vocalist, guitarist and producer. One of the few theremin virtuosos worldwide, she is the founder of the New York Theremin Society and America's first theremin school for children. Following her musicology studies in Vienna, she moved to New York to start a career as a writer, producer and musician. Her solo work ranges from electronic pop music to film soundscapes - most recently for the soundtrack of the HBO documentary \"Going Clear\". She has performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with numerous international artists and produced a wide range of compositions, some of them commissioned by the Venice Biennale and the MoMA Film Department. Recipient of several residencies and grants, she is also the subject of a documentary in the making following her most recent travels to China, Japan, Russia and Brazil.\nwww.doritchrysler.com\nwww.movingsoundsfestival.org\nGenerous support provided by Moog Music","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line850638"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.572822093963623,"wiki_prob":0.572822093963623,"text":"http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/op-ed-fox-news-bill-o-reilly-mocks-berkeley-s-free-medical-marijuana/article/389239\nOp-Ed: Fox News' Bill O'Reilly mocks Berkeley's free medical marijuana\nPosted Jul 11, 2014\tby Brett Wilkins\nDisplaying characteristically staggering (wilfull?) ignorance, Fox News blowhard Bill O'Reilly hosted a panel mocking a California city's compassionate decision to provide free medical marijuana to low and no-income residents.\nBerkeley Mayor Tom Bates and members of the City Council address a May, 2013 rally in support of local medical marijuana dispensary Berkeley Patients Group (BPG).\nBrett Wilkins\nOn Tuesday, the Berkeley City Council unanimously approved a landmark measure requiring the city's medical marijuana dispensaries to give at least two percent of their cannabis to local residents who earn less than $32,000 per year, and families of four who earn no more than $46,000. The median income in the affluent Bay Area city is more than $62,000; for families, more than $102,000.\nBerkeley's move has been praised by just about everyone who can empathize with sick, poor people finally getting access to what is sometimes life-saving medicine they could once ill afford (a gram of medical marijuana costs around $15), in a land without universal health care that lets 45,000 of its own citizens die each year for lack of medical coverage.\nIn other words, this ordinance is a bold, humane step forward, an example that will surely inspire countless other progressive cities and towns around the nation and the world.\nBut for the folks at Fox, Berkeley's compassion was just another opportunity to take some cheap shots at one of the most progressive — and successful — places in America. Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor on Thursday, Fox host Greg Gutfeld, Fox contributor Bernard McGuirk and host Bill O'Reilly entered into a fierce competition to determine who could appear the most ignorant about medical marijuana,\n\"It's discrimination,\" Gutfeld said of the Berkeley law. \"What about drunks? Why can't I get free booze in Berkeley?\"\nLet's see: because you're not a Berkeley resident, your net worth is $2 million and, since you seem so clueless, marijuana is life-saving medicine (in more ways than are immediately obvious) while alcohol is poison that kills 88,000 Americans every year.\n\"You don't give pot to homeless, jobless people,\" added Gutfeld. \"That's not going to get them to go to Kinko's to put their resumé.\"\nAh, but for many people suffering from debilitating ailments for which medical marijuana provides relief — and all that entails — that medicine provides the precious gift of mobility that allows them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.\nBut for O'Reilly and his ilk, it's far easier to mock \"Berzerkeley\" and \"San Francisco values.\"\nGutfeld suggested giving homeless people \"some meth, maybe Adderall\" instead of medical marijuana, and then predicted that \"people who are living on the streets and who are high are inevitably going to get the munchies, and then your pets are going to go missing.\"\n\"This is so insane,\" said O'Reilly — not the idea of homeless people devouring maltipoos, but rather the idea of putting people first by providing for their essential health care needs.\n\"They're forcing the businessman to pay up,\" said Gutfeld of the law's requirement that medical marijuana dispensaries give away at least two percent of their medicine each year.\nBut nobody had to \"force\" Berkeley Patients Group (BPG), arguably the most prominent dispensary in the Bay Area, to donate their medicine. As part of their Helping Hands program, they've been giving the stuff out for free since opening their doors back in 1999.\nThis all proved too much for O'Reilly and company to grasp.\n\"Why would you want to live there?\" O'Reilly asked about Berkeley.\nNo particular reason, I suppose, except that the San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most vibrant, creative, diverse, intelligent, successful and naturally beautiful places on earth. Many of us would never dream of living anywhere else. And frankly, we're glad the likes of Bill O'Reilly shun us. Regressives live in the shadows here, and we're all much better off for that.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line431849"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7694864273071289,"wiki_prob":0.7694864273071289,"text":"Title: Albert W. Hicks\nSubject: List of pirates, 1820s births, American pirates, 1860 deaths, List of people associated with the California Gold Rush\nCollection: 1820S Births, 1860 Crimes, 1860 Deaths, 19Th-Century Executions by the United States, 19Th-Century Executions of American People by Hanging, American Murderers, American Pirates, People Executed by the United States Federal Government by Hanging, People Executed for Piracy, People of the California Gold Rush\nJuly 13, 1860(1860-07-13) (age 39-40)\nCriminal penalty\nDeath by hanging\nConviction(s)\nAlbert W. Hicks (c. 1820 – July 13, 1860), also known as William Johnson, John Hicks and 'Pirate Hicks', was a triple murderer, and the last person executed for piracy in the United States (though the execution of the slaver Nathaniel Gordon in 1862 was under the terms of the Piracy Law of 1820).\nConfession 2\nReferences in Modern Culture 4\nDiscrepancies 5\nIn March 1860, Hicks, a long-time sailor, was drugged and schooner J. R. Mather.\nHicks then took all the money on board (about $500) and abandoned ship in a yawl, landing on Staten Island. When the wrecked A.E. Johnson was brought ashore, with the murder victims' blood still very much in evidence, Hicks’s day of reckoning neared. After being pursued by authorities through several states, he was captured in Providence, Rhode Island and found to be in possession of the watch of Captain Burr, several money bags, and a coat of Watts's containing a daguerreotype belonging to Oliver Watts.\nHicks confessed to the three murders, and also claimed to have killed 97 others in California gold camps, as well as having committed a similar piracy in South America. He gave his reason as \"...the devil took possession of me.\"\n\"The affair occurred,\" said Hicks, \"about half past nine or ten o'clock at night, while Captain Burr and one of the Watts boys were asleep in the cabin. I was steering at the time, and the other Watts was on the lookout at the bow. Suddenly the devil took possession of me, and I determined to murder the captain and crew that very night. Creeping forward softly I stole upon the boy at the bow, and with one blow knocked him senseless. I believe he died in a few minutes after I struck him. The noise attracted the attention of the other Watts, who jumped out of bed, and came up the companion way to see what was the matter. Just at that moment I struck him a heavy blow on the head with the axe and soon he was dead. Then I went down in search of the captain, and upon going into the cabin we immediately came in contact. Captain Burr, who was a strong, able bodied man fought hard with me for several minutes; but at last I brought him down, and he, too, was soon dead. After rifling the captain's money bags, I commenced to throw, the bodies over board. They had been dead about an hour at this time, and sank into the sea the minute I threw them over the rail.\nThe knife marks found on the gunwale of the sloop were not made by me. I had no occasion to make them, as the men had all been dead an hour, and could not have clung to the rail, as was supposed. I should think we were about fifty miles at sea at the time, so that it was improbable that any of the bodies will ever be recovered. While I was on board the sloop the devil was always by my side and sustained me, but while I have been locked up here he has deserted me, and I feel bad.\"[1]\nHe was executed by hanging, on Bedloe's Island, now known as Liberty Island. An estimated ten thousand people viewed the event from boats anchored in New York Bay. His last wish was to see the steamship Great Eastern, the world's largest passenger ship at the time, which was docked in New York.[2] Soon after his burial, grave robbers stole his body. Some thought that he had survived, but his body was actually sold to medical students.\nReferences in Modern Culture\nA ballad was written about him by Henry Sherman Backus, titled Hicks the Pirate in March 1860. P. T. Barnum’s American Museum featured a wax image of Hicks. Barnum also arranged for Hicks to be hanged in a silk pirate costume, which he later charged admission to view.[3]\nHis name became a slang gambling phrase, meaning \"Six on a pair of dice.\"[4]\nHe was portrayed as a wax figure who apparently comes to life and commits a murder, in an episode of The Twilight Zone, The New Exhibit.\nDiscrepancies\nThere are several discrepancies between this account and that found in Herbert Asbury's classic crime history The Gangs of New York - an Informal History of the Underworld (1928, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)\nMost notably, Ashbury gives Hicks's name as \"Albert E. Hicks\" (not \"Albert W. Hicks\") and says that he commonly went by the nickname of \"Hicksey\".\nFurthermore, Ashbury say that the name of the sloop was the \"E.A. Johnson\" (and not the \"A.E. Johnson\").\nHe also says that \"four human fingers and a thumb\" were found on the deck of the sloop. And that in his confession Hicks said that after \"decapitating\" the second Watts brother and driving his axe \"deep into the side of the captain's head\", that he \"went on the deck were he found the Watts boy he had first assaulted struggling to his knees. The gangster [i.e., Hicks] knocked him down and then carried his body to the rail, where he hoisted the lad over the side of the sloop. But young Watts clutched the rail, whereupon Hicks raised his axe and calmly cut off his thumb and fingers, and Watts fell into the sea. Hicks then threw the other bodies overboard...\"\nAnd regarding P.T. Barnum's role, Ashbury writes that \"Among the first [visitors to Hicks while he was held in \"the Tombs\"] was... Barnum, [who] asked for a private conference with the prisoner, which Hicks granted ... Barnum informed the pirate that he wished to obtain a plaster cast of his head and bust for exhibition in [Barnum's] Museum ... and after an entire day of haggling an argement [sic] was reached whereby Hicks agreed to pose in return for $25 in cash and two boxes of five-cent cigars. Early next morning the cast was made, and that afternoon Barnum returned to the Tombs with a new set of clothes, which he traded to Hicks for the one the pirate was then wearing. Later Hicks complained to the Warden that Barnum had cheated him, for the new garments were shoddy and not nearly so good a his old ones.\"\n^ \"The Pirate Hicks.\" \"New York Herald,\" July 14, 1860.\n^ Dugan, James. The Great Iron Ship, 1953 (regularly reprinted) ISBN 0-7509-3447-6 , pp. 70-71\n^ magazine. December 1954. PDFVelda\n^ Monteleone, Vincent (2004). Criminal Slang. New York: Lawbook Exchange.\nFowler, Lorenzo Niles. The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert W. Hicks, The Pirate and Murderer, Executed on Bedloe’s Island, New York Bay. (New York: Robert M. De Witt, Publisher, 1860?) Illustrations from the book\nHicks, Albert W. Story Of My Life\nSteelwater, Eliza (2003). The Hangman's Knot. Boulder: Westview Press.\nEdmund Pearson. Instigation of the Devil, (New York, London: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1930), Chapter XVII: The Hanging of Hicks the Pirate, p. 207-216, 352.\nThorn, John. \"Murder and Mayhem, Tra-La! The Saugerties Bard.\" VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore, Vol. 31, Fall-Winter, 2005.\nVincent, Francis. Vincent's Semi-annual United States Register, 1860\nJuly 14, 1860 edition of the New York Tribune\nPhoto drawing of the scene of the execution\n1860 crimes\nAmerican pirates\n19th-century executions of American people by hanging\nPeople executed for piracy\nPeople executed by the United States federal government by hanging\n19th-century executions by the United States\nPeople of the California Gold Rush\nAmerican murderers\nCalifornia, Gold, California Trail, San Francisco, Mexico\nIceland, Morocco, Sardinia, Miguel de Cervantes, Napoleonic Wars\nList of pirates\nGermany, Venezuela, England, France, Piracy\n1820s, Juh, Absalom Greeley, Albert W. Hicks, Anselme Bellegarrigue\nUnited States, Pirate, Albert W. Hicks, Ben Pease, Bill Johnston (pirate)\nArthur Schopenhauer, 1860, Aaron Dwight Stevens, Abijah Bigelow, Abraham Kirkpatrick Lewis\nList of people associated with the California Gold Rush\nMexico, Mark Twain, United States, Northern California, Grass Valley, California","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line466301"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9475182890892029,"wiki_prob":0.9475182890892029,"text":"RADIO-CHAT\n@thebeast\nFollowers 4015\nFollowing 4072\nUpdates 8503\nBlog Categories all music news Tobias Forge On Taking Ghost's Live Show Into U.S. Arenas, Achieving Mystery In The Social Media Age\nTobias Forge On Taking Ghost's Live Show Into U.S. Arenas, Achieving Mystery In The Social Media Age Sunday November 18 2018, 11:26 AM\nSince forming in 2006, Swedish metal act Ghost has toured opening for metal and rock stalwarts like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Mastodon, Alice in Chains and more, gradually bringing their music to more and more people in America.\nThe group has never had a lack of famous cheerleaders, like Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl who produced the 2013 covers EP If You Have Ghost (and is rumored to have performed in costume, unbeknownst to fans, in the group's backing band as a \"Nameless Ghoul\").\nTheir third album Meliora marked a major leap forward in the United States, giving Ghost its first #1 album, topping the top rock albums chart and leading to slots in front of larger crowds at places like Lollapalooza in 2016.\nBut it's their most recent studio effort Prequelle (June, Loma Vista) which signaled a breakthrough for Ghost in the United States.\nWhile Meliora hit #1 on a rock chart, Prequelle managed to debut at #3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, just underneath Kanye West and Post Malone, in front of Luke Combs and Cardi B, no easy feat in America today for a group holding guitars.\nAs expected, the group's current \"A Pale Tour Named Death\" road trip sees them playing larger venues in America than ever before, making the jump to arenas on some dates (The Forum in Los Angeles this Friday, November 16 and Barclays Center in New York on December 15) for their first time as a headliner.\nIt belies the necessity of a strong live show for any rock act in a changing music industry landscape.\n\"I think that it’s crucial. I think that playing live, if you want to be an artist - that’s what artists do,\" said Ghost frontman Tobias Forge. \"I mean, if you’re a carpenter, you need to build sh-t. For us, if you’re a\nrock band, there’s no way around it. You have to tour. You have to tour a whole lot.\"\nOn a recent November stop at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom (capacity 5,000), Ghost performed from a massive three-tiered stage, amidst the religious imagery fans have come to expect, under an arena-ready light show, that comfortably housed Forge and his seven piece backing band (Ghost's Nameless Ghouls).\n(Left to right) Cardinal Copia and Ghost's Nameless Ghouls, on stage Thursday, November 1, 2018 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago(c) Philamonjaro Studio\nThe key logistically during a tour that jumps from larger mid-size venues to arenas and back, is how to present that show in the larger setting without losing what makes it a virtually unparalleled staging somewhere like Chicago's Aragon.\n\"I think that one of our biggest hurdles right now - not in terms of imagination and planning but just economically and practically - is how to make those arena shows not look like we just put our theatre show into The Forum or Barclays. It needs to look like we look like this every night on the tour,\" observed Forge astutely. \"There’s usually a makeshift stage - a very generic square stage. A PA company has come in and put up a big PA, usually with a lot of speakers and stuff in front of the stage. So you end up in a situation that in a way sort of increases the distance between you and the crowd,\" observed Forge of what bands can often expect if they choose to rely upon the staging provided to them in the typical arena. \"Whereas if you go see Bon Jovi, he will have built a stage that is meant to be in some sort of proximity to the crowd,\" he said, noting the need for hands-on customization prior to Ghost's L.A. and New York shows.\nForge pointed out the need to hire a video team to properly utilize arena video screens or jumbotrons for these larger shows, singling out the need for additional lighting and followspots. It's the type of attention to detail that has defined the group's costumes, staging, messaging and music for over ten years and primes Ghost for success in larger U.S. venues.\n\"I like that,\" said Forge of the challenge involved in properly pulling off Ghost's first American arena concerts. \"This is my job. This is my dream. This is what I have been wanting ever since I was a kid. I sat in front of my TV in our living room. I had a VCR looking at tapes I’d freeze frame and draw the stage. I loved that stuff. It takes a lot of planning and you definitely have to grind your teeth a lot knowing [maybe] it won’t really turn out the way I wanted… but f--k it,\" said Forge of the risk.\nLOUISVILLE, KY - OCTOBER 29: Cardinal Copia and the Nameless Ghouls of the band Ghost performs at The Louisville Palace on October 29, 2018 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images)Getty\nWith each album, Forge has built for Ghost fascinating, character-driven narrative that plays out both on album and on stage, as one of the most interesting, thought-provoking acts in rock and roll.\nEach album sees Forge take on a new persona, moving from the fourth and final incarnation of his Papa Emeritus character to Cardinal Copia on Prequelle.\nAnonymity was at the root of that and thoughtful fans, for the most part, played along with a wink and a nod, agreeing to Forge's no photo policy as band members, for most of the band's existence, went to great lengths to try and hide their identities, regardless of the level of difficulty that involves following the rise of social media.\nIn the past, Forge was wont to give interviews in character and/or in costume in an effort to drive the story forward and keep up that air of anonymity. But a 2017 lawsuit by former band members over royalties changed the identity of Papa Emeritus from occasional online whisper to brisk confirmation virtually overnight.\n\"That was of course... uncomfortable. The last couple of years have, in between spawning a new record that has been successful and tours that have been very pleasant, also been quite grueling,\" noted Forge of dealing with the lawsuit and the forced change it brought (one of the only elements of Ghost over which he was able to exercise no control). \"I had to take into consideration that as much as I wanted the images that people have been fed to be strong enough to sort of survive whatever images would appear of me and however I would be presented, you never know if it changes the perception of the general crowd,\" he said of the potential consequences in being forced to pull back the curtain a bit so to speak.\nSome of the best rock music has been driven by narrative storytelling. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and more used the idea to great effect on the concept albums of the 70s. Prince and David Bowie certainly built the idea of mystery into the characters they portrayed publicly. And general unpredictability has always made for the best rock and roll moments.\nIn the internet age, where the answer to any question about any celebrity is only a click away, it's become kind of a lost art. But Ghost continues to make that mystery a crucial part of everything they do regardless of the challenge involved.\n\"I don’t find it too difficult. With Ghost, I never really foresaw that it was going to take off the way it did. I knew that the songs were good. I knew that it had the ability to turn people’s heads. I knew that we were going to have a crowd. [But] I never thought it would propel into the Grammy world or arenas and all that,\" said Forge. \"So it was easy to make that decision from an aesthetic point of view. Because I want it to be highly theatrical.\"\nForge notes that while his idea of fame has changed over the years, he believes that it’s possible to maintain some sense of anonymity despite the times.\n\"I like the fact that my work in Ghost is famous and people know it and we have our crowd. But I am not as antsy about getting recognized on the street as I might have once been,\" said Forge of his rock ambitions. \"As long as I don’t get an Instagram account and start tweeting all over the place about what I think about this, that or the other, I think I should be able to maintain that level of mystery. There’s definitely a middle way to have both: you can be a celebrity but you can still be kind of mysterious. Look at Nick Cave... I know a lot about him. But he’s still as mysterious to me as ever.\"\nGhost's ability to hone its act and develop an audience organically over the course of twelve years, four studio albums and a series of EPs is also the product of a bygone era.\nAs it's become more difficult to monetize recorded music, acts tend to be discarded fast as major labels go for the quickest, easiest, most profitable hit. Rock acts in particular have suffered, with little time to develop a sound, let alone a unique persona. That fact isn't lost on Forge as Ghost continues to experience some of its greatest North American success.\n\"I am very fortunate that I was signed to a label where I was given an old school treatment where I was signed for several records and given the opportunity to evolve and develop - which, unfortunately, is something that most labels would not allow now. Maybe that changes in the future. I think you also have to have a lot of faith in the future,\" he said. \"I think the dark ages of the entertainment industry were definitely between 2000 and 2010 basically - ten years. As soon as streaming sort of caught up, there’s been sort of an incentive for the big powers to keep investing. There’s definitely a need for entertainment,\" said Forge of changing online consumption methods.\nWith a #1 record under their belt, and a top 5 debut on the pop chart, the key to Ghost's success has been in the way Forge has consistently managed not just to challenge his audience but engage them by making them an integral part of one of music's most unique success stories.\n\"One thing that I hadn’t predicted at all upon Ghost’s inception, was the unbelievable surge of creativity that it spawned amongst our fans. I’d say as much as I am the initiator of this and the creator of most of the narrative, I think that the cult, the lifestyle that seems to be Ghost, is definitely something that has been carried forth and developed by our thousands of fans who are building it. They sort of take it and run with it,\" noted Forge. \"For a brand like ours, if I did not have that fan engagement, I would not be sitting here in Tulsa doing an interview with Forbes.\"\nI am a Chicago-based writer and broadcaster who's tracked the changing music industry since the mid-90s with frequent contributions to WGN Radio and the Daily Herald.\nJim Ryan is a Chicago based writer/broadcaster who's interviewed a Ramone and a Rolling Stone. Follow him on Twitter @RadioJimRyan or visit online at radiojimryan.com. radiojimryan@gmail.com\nVia Forbes\nSEPULTURA Banned In Lebanon Over 'Devil Worship'...\nComments Likes\nSee MARILYN MANSON's NSFW 'SAY10' Video Featuring...\nSHADOW KINGDOM RECORDS is proud to present PALE...\nAMON AMARTH Announces US Tour With Goatwhore\nGRAVES AT SEA Announces US Tour Dates\nVideo Premiere: Frayle – “Let the Darkness In”\nENON CHAPEL: Victorian Era London-inspired black...\nALIGN THE TIDE UNVEILS MUSIC VIDEO FOR LATEST SINGLE...\n© Metal Devastation Radio 2020","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line558441"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6908073425292969,"wiki_prob":0.3091926574707031,"text":"About Dr. Semer\nNadine Semer MD, MPH, FACS\nI am a board certified general surgeon and plastic surgeon practicing in Los Angeles, California who has actively incorporated overseas volunteer medical work into my practice. For almost a decade I had the opportunity to volunteer my skills in rural South Africa (Ammsa.org) for month long missions at an orthopedics hospital where I was the only plastic surgeon for a population of over five million people.\nNow I want to broaden my work and join efforts towards building surgical capacity in low income countries. To this end I have worked with an NGO who trains community workers living along the Thailand/Burma border, emergency trauma skills (ghap.org). Last year, a few months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, I spent a few weeks at a field hospital outside of Port au Prince (http://hhi.harvard.edu/programs-and-research/previous-programs/earthquake-in-haiti). At the behest of a donor organization, I had the opportunity to spend a month in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo- doing an assessment of their obstetric fistula repair capabilities. My hope is to return to the eastern DRC to work at the provincial hospital to help train surgery residents in plastic surgery techniques.\nI also serve as a moderator of the Global Health Delivery Project’s Global Surgery and Anesthesia Community and have recently self-published a children’s book about South Africa.\nMy experiences prompted the writing and publishing of the book Practical Plastic Surgery for Non-surgeons to help explain plastic surgical concepts and procedures to providers with limited surgical expertise. This companion website aims to reach a larger global health audience. I’d like this site to be a collaborative effort between myself and visitors to the site. So please provide me with feedback on topics you’d like to see covered, as well as suggestions on how to improve the site to meet your needs.\nDownload Dr. Semer’s Resume\nContact Dr. Semer\nCase 7 part 4: Complicated lower extremity wound\nCase 7, part 3: Complicated lower extremity wound\nCase 6: reconstruction of the tip of the nose\nSkin grafting and patient hemoglobin level\nNontraditional woundcare: sugar dressings\nDo it yourself wound care: solutions\nLifebox: a pulse oximeter for low income countries\nMore on Burns….\n» The Book\n» Wound Care\nPracticalPlasticSurgery.org\nWebsite Design & Web Hosting by RedHen","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line727530"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5269615054130554,"wiki_prob":0.4730384945869446,"text":"CalEXPLORnia\nHistory and Mystery\nStar Wars in California\nHome/History and Mystery/China Wall: Truckee’s memorial to the Chinese laborers who transformed America\nHistory and MysterySierra Nevada\nChina Wall: Truckee’s memorial to the Chinese laborers who transformed America\nRick Follow on Twitter Send an email May 18, 2016\nLocated at Donner Summit, in Truckee, CA, is a memorial dedicated to the Chinese laborers known as “China Wall.” This historical marker, and 150 year old wall, symbolize the death defying work that the Chinese performed through the harshest of conditions in the Sierras, often losing many of their own during the process. The bravery of these men can’t be summed up into just one article or just one memorial. However, if you are lucky enough to get out to Donner Summit to see this historical work, then you can become a small part of keeping their historical efforts and bravery alive.\nThe Central Pacific Railroad\nBy the mid-1800’s, America was clamoring for a Transcontinental Railroad that would unite the west coast and its riches with the “civilized” east coast. In 1862, this American dream finally became a reality as Congress and President Abraham Lincoln authorized the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) to start laying tracks in California and build eastwards until eventually meeting with the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) somewhere in the “middle” of California and Nebraska where the UPR started building westwards from.\nThe CPRR was financed by “the Big Four”: Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins. The CPRR’s route was planned by Theodore Judah (who was the architect behind this transcontinental railroad idea) and the first rail was laid in Sacramento on Oct 26, 1863. At the rate they were going, and because of the costs, Crocker, who was in charge of construction and the workforce, was urged by his brother E.B. Crocker to hire Chinese laborers due to their hard work, lower wages and the fact that they were getting nowhere with their current workforce.\nCrocker’s older brother E.B. (who was a lawyer, founder of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and later CPRR Director) made the following comments about the Chinese workforce:\n“Without them it would be impossible to go on with the work. I can assure you the Chinese are moving the earth and rock rapidly. They prove nearly equal to white men in the amount of labor they perform, and are far more reliable.”\nChinese Laborers\nIn Feb. 1865, the CPRR experimented by hiring 50 Chinese laborers. When they proved to be hard working and dependable, the CPRR began mass hiring Chinese emigrants and soon had 3,000 of them in the fall, according to CPRR.org. By early 1866, the Chinese workforce grew to over 12,000 laborers, forming arguably the most significant workforce in the history of America. These Chinese laborers worked around the clock, every day, all year long, for roughly 4 years until the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in May, 1869, at Promontory, Utah.\nCeremony at “Wedding of the Rails,” May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah – credit Library of Congress\nAccording to one source, Leland Stanford was quoted as saying the following about the importance of the Chinese laborers:\n“The greater portion of the laborers employed by us are Chinese…. Without them it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great national enterprise, within the time required by the Acts of Congress.”\nThe Chinese were paid at rates of $28 to $35 per month and were tasked with the most dangerous jobs such as drilling, blasting and laying track through deadly terrains like the Sierras. Additionally, their camps were unfavorable, unhealthy and compared to dog-kennels.\nIn the September, 1869 edition of Overland Monthly, Brett Hart made the following comments about the Chinese camps:\n“Here is a “camp;” but, alas! none of the old style of snow white canvas, with its memories of refreshing sleep upon fragrant pine boughs; no, it is a Chinese camp, resembling a collection of dog-kennels, which, in fact, it is—each hut hastily made of “shakes,” about four feet high by six feet broad, and eight feet long.”\nLooking from East to West\nChina Wall\nChina Wall was built between tunnels #7 and #8 to support the railroad tracks by filling in the ravine. The lower wall (larger one) stands at roughly 75 feet high and was built with stones most likely removed by hand from tunnel #7. An up-close inspection of the wall will show that these rocks and the wall itself display an incredible mastership that continues to withstand some of the region’s harshest conditions roughly 150 years later.\nAbove the lower wall, is the upper portion of the wall which supports the embankment leading into tunnel #8.\nTo the west (right) of China Wall was where the old Lincoln Highway passed underneath the train tracks.\nA Newfound Appreciation\nGrowing up in Sacramento, my childhood was filled with history lessons on the railroad and the Gold Rush. As a kid, I visited many of the major museums and historical points of interest that were taught in our grade school classes. As an adult, I’ve explored many of the Gold Rush towns and Railroad towns that sprung up during the 1850’s and 1860’s. I’ve had the amazing experience of seeing a great deal of this region’s history that still remains. And, to further make my upcoming point, I’m also a loyal fan of the hit TV show Hell on Wheels which has done a visually incredible job bringing this historical plight to life.\nWith all of that being said, I never truly realized or fully appreciated the history and efforts of the Chinese laborers until seeing Donner Summit in person. China Wall and the abandoned train tunnels are remarkable symbols of the Chinese craftsmanship that helped to revolutionize America.\nChina Wall was part of an overall Donner Summit adventure that I had planned for the last two years. I was enticed by the abandoned train tunnels and captivated by the history of this region. In addition to China Wall and the train tunnels, is the nearby Donner Summit Bridge (Rainbow Bridge) and Native American petroglyphs.\nI’ve divided up each of these points of interest into individual articles to better showcase their history, important details and photos.\nIt’s not hard to find China Wall, the tunnels and the petroglyphs. They are all located in the same general location, with the bridge a few hundred yards west.\nDirections and Parking to China Wall\nAll of these points of interest are located on Donner Pass Road (DPR), also known as Old Highway 40. There are two points where DPR can be accessed: the first is off I-80 at the Soda Springs exit and the second is off Donner Lake Road by Donner Lake in Truckee. If you head up during the dry, warm months then I suggest getting off at the Soda Springs exit and driving through some of the old, tiny mountain “towns” like Soda Springs, Donner and Norden.\nOnce you pass through Donner and Norden, you will see the Donner Summit Bridge. A few hundred yards east of the bridge (further down DPR) is a small parking area on your right side. The China Wall historical marker (which was erected in 1984) is here and you can clearly see China Wall and the tunnels a few hundred feet above.\nA view of the parking area from up near China Wall\nDepending on the season, the easiest way to get up to China Wall and the tunnels is by scurrying up the side of mountain directly toward the wall. If this seems too difficult, walk west about 100 yards from the parking area and take the little dirt path down toward the petroglyphs. From here, the trail crosses a more manageable and “flatter” terrain up to the train tracks and China Wall. The good thing is, you can always see these points of interest from your starting point at Donner Pass Road. And, unless you are in the winter time, the path up to these points of interest is not too difficult.\nChina Wall is a wonderful monument to the incredible work of the Chinese laborers during the building of the railroad. It’s located in the Sierras where so much history is packed into one little area – Donner Summit. Make this historical marker and wall part of a Donner Summit adventure that should also include the train tunnels, petroglyphs and the bridge. If you feel more adventurous, there are trails to hike beyond the train tracks and this is also a popular place for rock climbing. Don’t forget to soak up the views of Donner Lake from a distance.\nThis article is one installment in a series of articles detailing the historic points of interest at Donner Summit. The following is a list of articles in my Donner Summit Series:\nDonner Summit Train Tunnels: a historical journey through abandoned train tunnels\nDonner Pass Petroglyphs: remnants of the mysterious Martis people\nDonner Summit Bridge: California’s historical Rainbow Bridge\nDonner Lake from Donner Summit\nCalifornia has another historical marker dedicated to the Chinese laborers. The following plaque is located on Highway 174 just outside of Colfax.\nHistorical marker outside of Colfax\nChina Wall CPRR Donner Summit Leland Stanford Old Highway 40 train tunnels transcontinental railroad truckee\nAfter many years of being a full time freelance writer, and a long time resident of this state, I've decided to turn my full attention toward California by exploring all that it has to offer. My goal is to inspire you to get out there and explore this amazing state. Please follow my adventures and news content by visiting Calexplornia daily or clicking on one of my Social Media accounts below.\nConvict Lake: A Stunning Eastern Sierra Lake with an Infamous Past\nA Look at California’s First Thanksgiving Celebrations\nThe Bridgeport Covered Bridge: a National Landmark spanning the South Yuba River\nNevada County’s lost and forgotten town of Cherokee\nPopular Articles on CalExplornia\nThe Church of the Immaculate Conception: Smartsville’s historic catholic church\nCalifornia Newspapers\nCalifornia Records\nUSOUTDOOR.com Sale! Save up to 70% off Outdoor Gear & Apparel","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line37455"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.575734555721283,"wiki_prob":0.42426544427871704,"text":"Lamborghini Veneno\nNotice: Undefined property: stdClass::$expire in _akismet_status() (line 1253 of /home/topexp/web/topexpensivecar.com/public_html/modules/akismet/akismet.module).\nPosted by top expensive car on Wed, 03/20/2013 - 08:39\nAutomobili Lamborghini is presenting an super exclusive car at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. The Lamborghini Veneno's design is systematically focused on best aerodynamics and cornering stability.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno accelerates from 0-100 km/h in just 2.8 seconds and the top speed stands at 355 km/h. The engine is a development of the Aventador's 6.5 L V12 and produces 552 kW / 750 hp. The sports car chassis is produced as a CFRP monocoque.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno takes the aerodynamic skillfulness of a racing prototype to the open-roads. The unique alloy wheels measure 20 inches at the front and 21 inches at the rear. The Lamborghini Veneno is painted in grey metallic-look color.\nOnly three incomparable units of the Lamborghini Veneno will be assembled and sold.\nIn the year of its 50th anniversary Automobili Lamborghini is presenting an extremely exclusive model at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. Only three unique units of the Lamborghini Veneno will be built and sold. Its design is consistently focused on optimum aerodynamics and cornering stability, giving the Veneno the real dynamic experience of a racing prototype, yet it is fully homologated for the road. With a maximum output of 552 kW / 750 hp, the Lamborghini Veneno accelerates from 0-100 km/h in just 2.8 seconds and the top speed for this street-legal racing car stands at 355 km/h. It is priced at three million Euros plus tax - and all three units have already been sold to customers.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno features a twelve-cylinder power unit with a displacement of 6.5 liters, an extremely fast-shifting 7-speed ISR transmission with 5 driving modes and permanent all-wheel drive, as well as a racing chassis with pushrod suspension and horizontal spring/damper units. Above all, however, the Veneno benefits from the very special expertise that Automobili Lamborghini possesses in the development and execution of carbon-fiber materials - the complete chassis is produced as a CFRP monocoque, as is the outer skin of this extreme sports car. The inside, too, features innovative, Lamborghini-patented materials such as Forged Composite and CarbonSkin.\nFully in keeping with the tradition of the brand, the name of the Veneno originates from a legendary fighting bull. Veneno is the name of one of the strongest and most aggressive fighting bulls ever. He is also famous for being one of the fastest bulls in the history of bullfighting. His name became popular in 1914, when he fatally wounded the famous torero José Sánchez Rodríguez during the bullfight in the arena Sanlúcar de Barrameda's, Andalusia, Spain.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno brings the aerodynamic efficiency of a racing prototype to the road. Every detail of its form pursues a clear function - exceptional dynamics, optimum downforce with minimal drag and perfect cooling of the high-performance engine. Yet the Veneno is unmistakably a Lamborghini; it sticks firmly to the consistent design philosophy of all the super sports cars from Sant'Agata Bolognese. That includes the extreme proportions, as well as the powerfully arrow-shaped front end and the interplay between razor-sharp lines and precise surfaces.\nThe entire front end of the Lamborghini Veneno has been laid out for perfect airflow and downforce. The front end works as a large aerodynamic wing. Large channels guide the air to the outlets in the front hood and in front of the windshield, as well as to the front wheels. Characteristic for Lamborghini is the Y shape of the angular headlamps that reach well into the fenders as well as the scissor doors.\nThe division of the fenders from the car body is a reference to the world of sport prototypes and optimizes at the same time the aerodynamic flow. The side line of the Veneno is therefore dominated by enormous sills and the mighty wheel arches front and rear. Here, too, sophisticated aerodynamics ensure perfect airflow to the large openings for engine cooling and intake air.\nJust like the front end, the rear of the Lamborghini Veneno has also been optimized for underbody aerodynamics and high speed cornering stability. The smooth underbody transitions into a substantial diffuser framing the four sizable exhaust pipes divided by a splitter to increase the level of downforce peak. Large openings serve to ventilate the engine bay and manage the airflow to the rear wing, with the only sealed area at the rear being reserved for the license plate. The rear lights, including brake lights, indicator lights and fog lights, pick up the Y theme as well. The engine cover sports six wedge-shaped openings, with the focus here, too, on optimum dissipation of heat from the engine. The engine cover extends into a large central \"shark\" fin, which improves efficiency during braking and rear-end stability, by delivering additional downforce at high yaw angles and thus increasing the high-speed cornering performance.\nThe adjustable rear wing's design is the product of Motorsport experience and extensive aerodynamic simulation to ensure the best performance of rear wing interaction with rear diffuser air flow.\nThe exclusive alloy wheels measure 20 inches at the front and 21 inches at the rear and are equipped with center mountings. Their design is also determined by aerodynamic functionality - a carbon-fiber ring around the wheel rim works like a turbine to deliver additional cooling air to the carbon-ceramic brake discs.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno is painted in an all-new, grey metallic-look color with individual parts gleaming in the black of the visible carbon-fiber structure. The only car to display all three colors of the Italian flag as an accent is the car shown at Geneva, the unit which will remain property of Lamborghini. The three cars sold to customers each feature a single color of the Italian national flag, together a triology in green, white and red accents and thus representing each a unique piece.\nThe Veneno is further proof of Automobili Lamborghini's unique competence in CFRP-based lightweight design. A monocoque made from carbon-fiber reinforced polymer forms the basis of the Veneno. It is largely similar to the Aventador monocoque - as are the aluminum sub-frames front and rear - although its form has been adapted to the new design. All exterior parts are made from CFRP. The Lamborghini Veneno meets all safety and registration requirements worldwide, and naturally also incorporates a full complement of safety systems from airbags through to the adapted ESP handling system.\nCarbon fiber dominates the interior of the Lamborghini Veneno, too. The carbon fiber monocoque becomes visible inside the car in the area of the central tunnel and the sills. The two lightweight bucket seats are made from Lamborghini's patented Forged Composite. The woven carbon-fiber CarbonSkin® is used to clad the entire cockpit, part of the seats and the headliner. This unique material is soaked in a very special kind of resin that stabilizes the fiber structure, while allowing the material to remain supple. Like a hi-tech fabric, this extremely fine-looking carbon-fiber matting fits perfectly to any form, and it reduces weight.\nThe racing personality has been transferred also to the instrument panel. It has been completely redesigned and now, thanks to an aggressive graphics and to the introduction of some additional features like the G-meter, provides all necessary information to the driver for control of the car.\nThe systematic, carbon-fiber, lightweight design of the Lamborghini Veneno is not only visible, it is also evident on the scales: With a dry weight of just 1,450 kilograms (3,190 pounds), the Veneno is even 125 kilos (275 pounds) lighter than the already extremely lean Aventador. The highly beneficial power-to-weight ratio of 1.93 kg/hp (4,25 lbs/hp) guarantees a performance that is nothing short of mind-blowing. Even the stunning acceleration figure of 2,8 seconds cannot adequately describe it. Despite an aerodynamic setup configured for extreme downforce, the Veneno possesses exceptionally low wind resistance which allows it to reach a top speed of 355 km/h (221 mph).\nThe twelve-cylinder with a displacement of 6.5 liters is a thrilling combination of absolute high-revving frenzy and phenomenal pulling power. Its output has been raised to 552 kW / 750 hp, facilitated through enlarged intake paths, optimized thermodynamics, a slightly higher rated rpm and an exhaust system with even lower back pressure. The ISR manual gearbox, permanent all-wheel drive and pushrod suspension have all been specifically adjusted to meet the demands of the Lamborghini Veneno.\nThe Lamborghini Veneno celebrates its first public appearance at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. The vehicle on show is the number 0, the Lamborghini test vehicle. Its future has not been determined yet, but it will allow Lamborghini to continue its activity of testing and innovation, both on the road and on the race track. The trilogy made of three unique vehicles will be produced in the course of the year 2013 and handed over to their future owners.\nLamborghini Veneno Video\nCar Manufacturer:\nCar Name:\nCar Price:\nFormatting options\nAllowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h3> <h4> <h5> <p> <img> <figure> <figcaption>","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line569633"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.574154794216156,"wiki_prob":0.425845205783844,"text":"Dr. John A. Gilbert\nChief Research and Development Officer / Behr Process Corporation\nMonday Oct. 21 at 8:00am in Champagne 3/4.\nPeople, Place, Process and Products: The inner workings of development today.\nWhat are some of the key enablers for doing product development in today’s environment? This presentation is divided into four key topics: people, place, process and products. A successful development program requires that each of these areas receive some attention from your company’s management team. John will highlight some learnings from having spent over 30 years in product development and formulation.\nJohn Gilbert was born and raised in the Cleveland, Ohio area. He attended the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, receiving BA degree in chemistry in 1980. He continued his education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving the Ph. D. degree in 1984. After a one-year postdoctoral assignment at the University of Michigan, John joined BASF Corporation in Southfield, Michigan in 1985. John spent 22 years in the automotive coatings area at BASF, working in various product development roles in electrodeposition coatings, primers, basecoats and clearcoats. From 1990 to 1992, John was assigned to BASF’s European automotive coatings group in Muenster, Germany.\nIn 2007, John joined Behr Process Corporation in Santa Ana, CA. His current position is Chief Research and Development Officer. Under John’s direction, the Behr team released the Premium Plus Ultra Interior and the Marquee Interior, and Marquee Exterior lines. Other recent product releases from his group include several pro contractor paint lines, a stain-blocking ceiling paint, a deck restoration product and an all-acrylic exterior stain line.\nDr. Richard D. Jenkins\nGlobal Group President / Arkema Coating Resins\nTuesday Oct. 22 at 8:30am in Champagne 3/4.\nInnovation in Relationships Between Coatings Companies, Suppliers and Co-Suppliers\nRecent trends in the chemical industry have been towards consolidation, less upstream flexibility, more frequent and unexpected raw material shortages, more constrained carrier capacity, and increased demand volatility. The consequences of such forces on planning and operating a reliable supply chain can no longer be affordably mitigated through an inventory–only approach.\nRather, coping with such pressures has led to innovation in relationships between suppliers, co-suppliers, and downstream customers. Such innovation can take many forms: not only in better product technology and resultant formulations, but also increased intimacy between companies via relationships across multiple functions and hierarchical levels. Operationally this means evolving from a classical buy-sell relationship across a firewall towards collaborative problem-solving by knowledgeable experts in real time in the right operational roles when life does not materialize as anticipated.\nA case study illustrating the improved reliability and mutual value creation of such innovation will be presented.\nDr. Richard D. Jenkins is Global Group President for Arkema Coating Resins.\nArkema Coating Resins is a global business unit of Arkema, and manufactures and markets an extensive line of resins and additives for use in architectural and industrial coatings, powder coatings, traffic paints, coatings for textiles, leather and non-wovens, pressure-sensitive adhesives, and construction products.\nDr. Jenkins has over 30 years of industry experience covering a range of technology, marketing, and business leadership positions both in North America and abroad.\nAn active leader in the coatings industry, Dr. Jenkins serves on the Board of Directors of the American Coatings Association, and is a member of the Tau Beta Pi and the Omega Chi Epsilon engineering societies. He has been awarded 29 patents and published over 70 scientific papers. He received UCC’s Corporate Fellows Technology Award in 1994 and UCC’s Chairman’s Award for Technology Leadership in 1995.\nJenkins earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University in 1990.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1191769"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5022207498550415,"wiki_prob":0.4977792501449585,"text":"CEMB → Forum → Life, The Universe & Everything → Religions and Gods → Qur'anic studies today\nby Altara\nTopic: Qur'anic studies today\n(Read 435878 times)\nPrevious page 1 ... 212 213 214215 216 ... 295 Next page « Previous thread | Next thread »\nAltara\nReply #6390 - March 31, 2019, 08:36 PM\nby saying that /\nwhy is that necessary that they believe the history about the origin of the Quran as given in a determined place and time?\nSimple. If they did not believe to it (the history about the origin of the Quran as given in a determined place and time), they would not have an explication of the existence of the Quran. This belief is therefore mandatory.\nIslam at its core is the Quran. Nothing else.\nAre you not tightly coupling ALL MUSLIMS IN TO ONE MONOLITHIC BLOCK and those who differ what you are saying can not be Muslims and can not live as Muslim\nOf course, as they'd logically realize that the book is a forgery; then, it has no value to be followed. It'd not come from God, nor a \"prophet\", nor nor nor... and: nor. Then what remains of this text to be followed, apart their nostalgia of their childhood when they believed all what was said about it, which made them believed that it was the Increate Word of God given to the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca/Medina/Zem Zem/Kaba?\nMahgraye\nAltara - Do you have a paper in English detailing the arguments for your position that the Arabic script developed from the Syriac and not the Nabatean one? I am aware of Briquel-Chatonnet's paper but I can't translate it into English. And how do you deal with consensus now that the Syriac-hypothesis is false? This consensus is not based on assuming the truth of the tradition but one modern research so it can't simply be dismissed.\nAltara - Do you have a paper in English detailing the arguments for your position that the Arabic script developed from the Syriac and not the Nabatean one?And how do you deal with consensus now that the Syriac-hypothesis is false?\n1/Nope, only what I said here (at length) some months ago.\n2/ You can search my posts all is there.\n3/ I did not \"simply\" dismissed the \"consensus\", read these posts in this thread.\ncurious-lurker\nHello. A few months ago someone linked a Facebook post(?) here by a revisionist scholar summarising the linguistic, historical, contextual etc case against the traditional framework. I would appreciate it if it can be linked again, as I’ve been unable to find it. Thanks\nPerhaps this is what you are looking for:\nDear Lamsiah,\nIt was, as always, very nice to hear your voice this morning. In the meantime, I have had a chance to look at everything again. You mentioned that there was criticism about the map in my article « The Language of the Koran ». As I mentioned, the map originates from a Durch Newspaper article by our friend Eildert Mulder (attached here), which was intended for a GENERAL Audience, this was later translated into French by Père Gallez, thence into English by Anouar Majid, into German by Markus Groß, and into Arabic by yourself. It seems to have taken on a life of its own. The map, was intended to give general geographical information for non-specialists. It was never intended to be used in a scientific context. It is unfortunate that my article upon which the interview and its translations are based, « Von der arabischen Lesekultur zur arabischen Schreibkultur » is not cited in academic works. One must make a distinction between non-specialist and specialised articles. In the long German article (attached here), I go into more detail.\nI used the term Arabia Petraea in a general, descriptive sense. Not as a designation of Roman provincial borders. These borders changed with administrative reforms. Indeed you will see that the ‹ classical › Roman Province named Arabia Petraea, encompasses roughly the modern State of Israel + the Sinai Peninsula, to its North lay Syria (<صور‎, I.e. the hinterland of Tyre; NOT from Assyria!!). Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix were never Roman Provinces, just general descriptors. This is how Arabia Petraea was intended here.\nMy argument is quite simple: a) to the South of Arabia Petraea we find but few Nabataean Inscriptions, excepting graffiti on the incense route and some oases. One must distinguish between formal epigrapy and informal epigraphy (such as graffiti) b) Ancient South Arabic and Ancient North Arabic inscriptions in pre-islamic times, use derivations of the Sabaic script (خط المسند); Ancient North Arabian is attested in Northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Southern Syria — If the Qur’an had been written in الحجاز, we would expect it to have been written in this script. For the inscriptions from this region see Khālid ibn Muḥammad ʿAbbās Askūbī ,ثموديييية من منطقة رم بين ثليثوات وقيعان الصنيع جنوبغرب تيماء Riyadh, 2007/1428 with numerous examples. c) The language (or Semitic dialect) which very closely resembles what became classical Arabic is Safaitic which seems concentrated in Southern Syria, Eastern Jordan and NW Saudi Arabia. Dialect geography makes clear that this was not the language of the Hedjaz.\nWe now have two independent criteria: script and language (or dialect) distribution, both of which point to Syria and Jordan (the Roman provinces of Syria and Arabia Petraea) and not to Arabia Deserta or Felix.\nAnother argument is that if the Qurʾān had emerged in the Hedjaz, the we would find traces of Christianity there. Outside of the Roman Empire there was no heresy (cf. the Nestorians in Asia). But in the Hedjaz, there are no traces of Christianity. Furthermore, the Christological debates, to which the Qur’an bears witness seem to be concentrated in groups which were concentrated in Syria (i.e. the human nature of Jesus, avoiding alcohol as a rejection of the Eucharist [Council of Gangra]; emphasis on Martyrdom (ܣܗܕܐ into Arabic as شهيد‎ etc.). But we would also need to explain all of the allusions to and from Jewish literature (such as the Talmud — if there were Jewish tribes in Arabia in the 7th century, which I very much doubt, then they would hardly have transported the Talmud on their camels —) which also points to Syria/Iraq (Babylonian Talmud). The decisive area is الجزيرة العربية in the old sense of the word.\nHere we can conclude that script, language and theology of the Qur’an, three independent strains of evidence, point to Syria/Iraq/Jordan as the place of origin of the Qur’an.\nThis in turn explains why we find Syro-Aramaic influence (Fehllesungen) in the Qurʾān and why the theological vocabulary of the Qurʾān is largely borrowed from Eastern Aramaic (both Syriac and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, the language of the Babylonian Talmud) are Eastern Aramaic dialects as Luxenberg (Syro-Aramaic Reading) and myself (Aramaisms in the Qurʾān and their significance, in Ibn Warraq ed., Christmas in the Qur’an) have shown (i.e. just as in Western European languages, such as French or German the Christian theological vocabulary is borrowed from Latin, the language of the missionaries whilst in Russian the borrowing is from Greek, the language of the missionaries to the Slavic peoples). This we also find in Ancient Ethiopic (Ge`ez) since Ethiopia was converted to Christianity by Syriac missionaries. Since there is no evidence of either Christianity (see above) or (Syriac) Christian missions to the Hedjaz, a Qurʾān originating in the Hedjaz is even more of an anomaly.\nNow we have four independent witnesses: script, language, theology and vocabulary. All point to the Syro-Mesopotamian region.\nAs we discussed on the telephone, inscriptions must be viewed in the context in which they were written. So, for example, we find Palmyrene (a dialect of Aramaic) text on an inscription for a deceased Germanic lady in Britain: https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/1065\nNow nobody will ever claim that Palmyrene was a widely spoken language in Roman Britain! And Germanic Palmyrene speakers … But when we look closely at the text we see that a Palmyrene Aramaic speaker in the Roman Army married a Germanic woman who died whilst he was stationed in Britain. So the two Latin (!) inscriptions from the Yemen (http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epimap.php…) or Farasan Kabir (http://db.edcs.eu/epigr/epimap.php…) do not indicate that Latin was widely spoken in the Red Sea or Southern Arabia (=Felix).\nThis applies equally to inscriptions written in a (Ancient North) Arabic predecessor to the language of the Qurʾān. The biggest concentration of such in an official context (i.e. formal epigraphy, i.e. written by rulers such as the Namarah inscription (100 km SE of Damascus; https://www.islamic-awareness.org/…/inscriptio…/namarah.html) point to Syria, not the Hedjaz. Inscriptions, i.e. graffiti along the frankincense road through Arabia are manifold, and in various languages from various times. Such cannot be used to draw a map of the linguistic landscape of a given region at a given time.\nThe concentration of inscriptions in a script relevant to the Qurʾān in a closely related earlier form of the language point to Syria, not to the Hedjaz.\nI add maps for your convenience. One could take the map you already have and recue the size of Arabia Petraea and add « Syria » to the North. I hope that this helps. If not, let me know.\nGodbless,\nThank you, Mahgraye\nMy pleasure. You are indeed a lurker, haha. Please participate more in the discussions.\nMarc S\nReply #6397 - April 01, 2019, 12:10 AM\nNothing really new here but a nice summary though there are a lot of open questions.\nhttps://www.academia.edu/12666359/The_Early_Religious_Beliefs_of_the_Arabs_of_Palestine_Seminar_Paper_\nThanks, Marc S. Great paper. A lot of new insights.\nWhat Kerr says is important:\nthree independent strains of evidence, point to Syria/Iraq/Jordan as the place of origin of the Qur’an.\nOf course (yawn...)\nInscriptions, i.e. graffiti along the frankincense road through Arabia are manifold, and in various languages from various times. Such cannot be used to draw a map of the linguistic landscape of a given region at a given time.\nIt is, yet, what desperately search to do a guy like Jallad because he is a Muslim, believing in the history of Ibn Ishaq which explains the origin of the Quranic text in the peninsula. And nowhere else. Because if it is not from the peninsula all is collapsing around him. The believing in Ibn Ishaq is mandatory to be Muslim. There's no escape possible.\nThere is none. He is an ordinary scholar. Bright guy.\nIt isn't. It's a descriptive word. Al-Jallad is a scholar.\nDoesn't mean anything nor does it have anything to do with Al-Jallad. Still a scholar. That is evident. If you have proof to the contrary, provide it, or share with us why he is not a scholar, descriptively, at least.\nScholar of Arabic. That also extends to the study of the Quran, especially its language.\nAnd...? And of course its is relevant to the study of the Quran.\nQuote from: Mahgraye on April 01, 2019, 11:42 AM\nthat was a mistake on my part to write those responses dear Mahgraye .. indeed it is relevant to the study of the THE BOOK Quran\nDo not let silence become your legacy\nI renounced my faith to become a kafir,\nthe beloved betrayed me and turned in to a Muslim\nReply #6407 - April 01, 2019, 03:32 PM\nSmart student! I think archeological evidence is often underrated in the Islamic origin debates.\nMyers or Al-Jallad?\nIt is, yet, what desperately search to do a guy like Jallad because he is a Muslim, believing in the history of Ibn Ishaq which explains the origin of the Quranic text in the peninsula.\nI wouldn't underestimate Jallad. Who says he is a believer in the tradition and if he is a believer in the religious way, that it would lead him astray in the scientific way? I think he has done wonderful work unto now, but he is careful. All I read from his work points to the North. He will connect the dots at some time. Maybe he has, but since I am not amongst his confidentes, I really dont know what he thinks. Do you Altara?\nI was commenting on Myers, he has a student id, so I imagine he is a young guy with a fresh view. (I dont think an established scholar would dare to use Gibson so extensively).\nI wouldnt dare call Jalad a student. He is of course a smart scholar.\nQuote from: mundi on April 01, 2019, 03:41 PM\nI wouldn't underestimate Jallad.\nI do not underestimate him. I just say that one is always victim of an ideology, one way or another, when one does not remember to never have had it. Or to be able to take distance from it. Jallad is not alone in this case. It is the main danger for all scholars (including myself of course...). It is the Gallez's case, Gibson's case, etc. Jallad said he was hoping to find inscription of \"Muhammad\" and that he was sure that he will find them in the peninsula. It was in an interview on the web, I did not keep the stuff.\nWho says he is a believer in the tradition and if he is a believer in the religious way, that it would lead him astray in the scientific way?\nHe says he's a Muslim. A Muslim cannot question Ibn Ishaq as this one gives to him the explication of the existence of the Quranic text from the peninsula. Like a Christian cannot question the resurrection of Jesus. The only difference, is that what Ibn Ishaq recounts is falsifiable and the resurrection of Jesus is not. And this falsifiable stuff from Ibn Ishaq et al. it turns out to be historically non validated.\nI think he has done wonderful work unto now, but he is careful. All I read from his work points to the North. He will connect the dots at some time.\nHe won't. Because, there are no dots. It is worst to believe Ibn Ishaq for a mind than to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. What Ibn Ishaq recounts is falsifiable therefore you can hope connect the dots. The resurrection of Jesus, there are not dots to connect.\nI really dont know what he thinks. Do you Altara?\nOnly what I read on the web, and that I did not keep.\nQuote from: Altara on April 01, 2019, 10:29 PM\n.....He says he's a Muslim...... A Muslim cannot question Ibn Ishaq as this one gives to him the explication of the existence of the Quranic text from the peninsula. Like a Christian cannot question the resurrection of Jesus. The only difference, is that what Ibn Ishaq recounts is falsifiable and the resurrection of Jesus is not. And this falsifiable stuff from Ibn Ishaq et al. it turns out to be historically non validated.\nsorry I disagree with you on that ., in fact I would consider other way around.,\nA Muslim who can not question Ibn Ishaq stories is NOT a Muslim\nHe .. Mr. He ........ being a scholar(((IF HE THINKS HE IS})) it is time for him to move away from his father's ideology and move away from his own bias that was built in to him when he grew up in Kuwait...\nNevo Crossroads to Islam Azaiez's Review (https://www.deepl.com/) yawn...\nPrometheus Books, New York publishing house known for the publication of critical studies\non the genesis of Islam, in particular through Ibn's impulse Warrāq, proposes with Crossroads\nto Islam a non-conformist work based on the work of Israeli archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo.\nWritten by his assistant Judith Koren after the death premature, this book develops a thesis\nradical: the one that the birth of Islam as it was appears in Arab and Islamic sources is not\nthan pure fiction. As part of a process of historical revisionism, the authors put back into\ncauses the existence of Muḥammad and the historical reality of the Arab conquest. According to them, Islam as religion only appeared under the impetus of the late arrival of the first Arab leaders at the end of the the sixth century of the Christian era. The demonstration is organized in three parts. A first chapter is devoted to the situation of the Byzantine Empire within its borders from the 5th to the 6th century. The following section describes the seizure of power and the birth of an Arab State in Following the collapse and withdrawal of the Byzantines from their eastern regions. Finally, a final analysis is dedicated to the birth of the Islamic religion which follows the creation of an Arab state.\nEntitled \"The Background\", Chapter I endeavours to present the political and military strategies that to the decisions of the Byzantine authorities.\nThese companies are demonstrating a willingness to change their relations with the indigenous people of the eastern part of the Empire (currently Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian Territories and Western Syria). Their objective is thus to let these foreign populations to govern themselves. This decision results in two major difficulties: in its disengagement,\nhow to control the wealth produced and the wealth produced that pass through these territories? And how do you do that? conduct a political and administrative withdrawal without create possible areas that could in the future threaten the Byzantine Empire? Faced with these problems three strategies were considered:\n1. Divide these regions into multiple small kingdoms\nwho would be under the supervision of tribal chiefs\nmutually hostile to each other;\n2. Entrust these political entities to a tribal elite\nwho became a client of the Byzantine Empire;\n3. Administratively abandon these regions\nwithout proclaiming it. It is this last option that was\nchosen by the Byzantine authorities.\nBetween the fifteenth and twelfth centuries, faithful to this strategy\nof voluntary disengagement, Byzantium goes on the\nfield :\n1. Replace your regular armies with\nLocal Arabs who defend borders and become\nas well as federated (foederati). Thereafter, their\njurisdiction expands with the levying of a tax\nannual; thus, from the beginning of the century, the populations are\nregularly taxed by Arabs;\n2. Continue its withdrawal from these regions with the\ndismantling of the ghassanid kingdom divided into\nfifteen tribes and with the Persian invasions that reveal\nthe inability of the Byzantines to defend their provinces\ndespite Heraclius' counter-offensive;\n3. Promote the autonomy of political elites\nand local clergy. Byzantium facilitates conflict\nand religious persecutions to disengage from\nthese regions ;\n4. Moving Arab tribes from the periphery\nfrom the Byzantine Eastern kingdoms to the heart of the regions of Šām.\nChapter II, entitled \"The Takeover and the the\nRise of the Arab State\", is based on a reading\ncriticism of internal and external (Islamic) sources\nand non-Islamic) in order to demonstrate that no\nproof of a planned Arab invasion is not\nproven. According to the authors, around 630, in the regions previously indicated at Šām, two coexist types of populations: one sedentary, Christian and Arabic, assimilated to Byzantine culture, and the other, nomadic and semi-nomadic, made up of federated soldiers in Byzantium and monitoring the files. The latter will gradually levy taxes no longer for the Empire but for their own benefit. The period following, until the beginning of the eighth century, did not provides no evidence of Arab invasions. There is no great battle proven in Syriac literature and Greek. It is evidence, according to the authors, that there has been no Arab invasion, the event on oldest related being the war between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya in 657. Another proof is the development of of a currency, first of all of the type Arab-Byzantine, then only Arabic. This evolution marks the consolidation of Arab power first registering in a limited area, from Baysān in Homs, then over a vast region including Muʿāwiya became the leader after the battle of Ṣiffīn, asserting himself then as the first Arab leader. At the end of the In the sixth century, the withdrawal of the Byzantine presence is total. This departure leaves a huge territory struggling with upheavals that result in:\n1. Internal struggles maintained by the vacuum left by the Byzantines. The cities of Syria and the North of Palestine issue their own currency. The elders Arab federated states continue to collect tributes, but this time in their own name. This levy is accompanied by war between tribal leaders;\n2. The consolidation of the power of Muʿāwiya which takes control of the regions around Damascus;\n3. This period ended with the triumph of Muʿāwiya on his opponents at the battle of Ṣiffīn in\n657 and the establishment of its leadership in the region, then Egypt and Iraq. This established pre-eminence of sovereignty Arabic on the Šām region does not imply a break with the Byzantine entity. If Muʿāwiya governs on a tribal-type organization where it would be in a way a feudal lord, there remains none no less than this geographical area trades with Byzantium and is subject to its cultural influence as as evidenced by the Byzantine architecture of the Dome of the Rock.\nThese few considerations lead the authors to say that the new Arab State is in fact a client State\nwho pays tribute to Byzantium despite the reforms of the currency of ʿAbd al Mālik abolishing\nthe Byzantine influence.\nChapter III, entitled \"The Arab Religion\",\ninfers that Islam as a religion succeeds birth\nof an Arab state, but does not precede it. This\nbelief stems from the unusual encounter of three\ninfluences that will come together:\n1. An indeterminate monotheism that rests on\nonly on the belief in a higher God: Allāh. The first mention of a prophet named Muḥammad dates back to 730 under the reign of Hišām ; 2. An abrahamism from Christian sources\n(Sozomenus and Sebéos) inform us that this is of an ismaili monotheism. The disciples of this\nbelief seem to prefer a life at the borders eastern (southwestern Negev, northern Gaza);\n3. A Judeo-Christianity that recognizes Jesus as a prophet and whose message would have been betrayed by Paul and his disciples. The knowledge of this current religious is known by the homilies of the pseudo-Clement in the 15th century. Similarities with Islam are many: prayer towards Jerusalem, negation of the crucifixion, high esteem of the language (original: Hebrew), belief in the corruption of the previous message (Pauline Christianity), emphasis in accordance with the law (circumcision and Sabbath), recognition of the prophets of the Tanakh. These three currents will meet in a political and administrative context framed by three protagonists: a Christian urban elite, a Christian urban elite Arab urban leaders who have embraced this form\nbasic monotheism and an Arab population newly arrived pagan. At the end of the 17th century,\nthe official religion with an Arab national prophet\nis proclaimed. The late appearance of the mention\nof \"Muḥammad\" is explained by the authors as follows\nthe need to compensate for the absence of genealogy\nprestigious on the Arab side. ʿAbd al Mālik would thus have\ndecided to create a national prophet. The authors\njustify their assertion by an analysis of the name\nof \"Muḥammad\". It would be ʿAbd al Mālik that would have\npasses this epithet designating an attribute of the\na messenger with a name for the prophet of Islam.\nAfter 691 and through the Marwanid dynasty, politics\nis to integrate religious formulas who name the prophet of Islam. The State also decides to dissociate itself from the Christian religion.\nThe Dome of the Rock is a privileged witness of this divorce.\nThe work is strongly influenced - without reality critical distance - through a \"hypercritical\" school of thought \"carried by some of the great names in Islamology contemporary such as John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and Fred Donner. The latter have in common a reading that challenges historiography classic of the beginnings of Islam and proposes through\nliterary analyses or external references to Islamic tradition (Syriac and Greek sources)\nto reconstruct the first centuries of the Muslim religion. Like them, Nevo and Koren argue that\nthe cradle of Islam is to be located outside Arabia and question the very existence of Mohammed.\nThe Koran and the religion that will be called Islam are the products of a long history that is born of the influence of exogenous elements: Jewish Christian sects in particular (see John Wansbrough's book, The Sectarian Environment). Although an important annex provides\nreproductions of epigraphic texts from the desert of the Negev, this type of document does not occupy the task of significant place in the authors' demonstration. Indeed, they only speak of epigraphy at pp. 69, 197-200, 273-274. In this case, the considerations of a numismatic nature are much more present.\nThis reduced place of epigraphy is all the more important more embarrassing than it actually underlies the vision that Nevo of the birth of the Islamic religion. That's the one distinction between three types of epigraphic texts in the Neguev - pre-muḥammadiens texts where\ndoes not show the name of Muḥammad but only the divinity Allāh, texts muḥammadiens,\nIslamic texts - which allows him to build his whole speech on the history of the genesis of Islam.\nThis religion is said to have been born of a confused belief of monotheistic nature around a divinity \"Allāh\" that would have evolved. Following a political decision and religious authorities, a figure of the Arab authorities prophetic - Muḥammad - would have been created in the image\nof the Old Testament prophets. Finally, at the following contacts with Jewish-Christian sects,\ninstitutional Islam has emerged. These three phases precisely match the classification\nof the registrations. We then perceive the weakness, even the inanity, of such an approach that does not avoid, between others, three methodological pitfalls:\n1. It extrapolates results that are derived from a limited geographical area (the Negev);\n2. It eliminates Arab and Islamic sources, considering them not very credible, but accepting other sources exogenous substances that could be the subject of the same discredit. Critical analysis is sorely lacking in scientific justification; 3. It neglects the epigraphic discoveries made\nin other geographical areas, in particular in the Arabian Peninsula. We will report to to the work of Saʿd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rašīd, Kitabāt islāmiyya min Makka al-mukarrama, Riyadh 1995. The\nIslamic Awareness website reproduces some pages suggestive of this research http://www.islamicawareness. org/History/Islam/Islam/Inscriptions/). Despite the somewhat outrageous nature of his main thesis, this revisionist approach to question, at new cost, some of the historical facts established too often on a reading servile from Arab and Islamic sources. It allows you to also to draw attention to the need to take into account external sources (Syriacs\nin particular) to try to write the history of the first centuries of Islam. But, we can't follow the\nauthors in their reasoning for the reasons given higher up. In the future, we may wish to\nan exhaustive study of Koranic inscriptions (datable) engraved on the stone throughout the\nNear East. We might end up with a very suggestive mapping of the spread of Islam in the early centuries.\nOn the Hijra calendar:\nI am reading this interesting Hansen article (German astronomer). He claims that the date 9.4.631 (date of introduction of new Arab calendar according to tradition- 10 AH) corresponds with \"new light\" of moon above last showing of pleiades witch normally should be in spring equinox month (was intercalation method) but clearly WRONG (month for spring would start too late). That would be the event setting in motion the new lunar calendar (before arabs had the luni-solar calendar) referred to in 9:36 (the nasi verses) and would also be the situation described in 54:1 (the split moon or month). https://www.academia.edu/34865188/%C3%84ren_und_Astronomie_im_7._Jhd._In_Astronomie_im_Ostseeraum_Astronomy_in_the_Baltic._Nuncius_Hamburgensis_Band_38_Hg._Gudrun_Wolfschmidt._Hamburg_tradition_2018_S._124-129._Digital_version_see_web-link_in_the_print_edition_and_link_here\nFrom the Gadara inscription (bathhouse Greek) and the Egyptian papyrus 22, Hansen calculates that indeed, from 9.4.631, the lunar calendar was used. Showing thus that from very early date the Arabs had their own system. He sees this as proof of (part) veracity of religious tradition. I personally think this deduction goes too far. I think his finding (link pleiades-moon- 9.4.631), shows indeed that a closed group of \"illuminati\" had been active on the Quranic front and had a very specific ideology worked out in the Quran and also outside. The \"illuminati\" were powerful enough to push through this new totally inadequate calendar for ideological crazy reasons.\nAltara, am I starting to sound more like you?\nQuote from: Altara on April 03, 2019, 07:20 AM\n..............a Christian urban elite, a Christian urban elite Arab urban leaders who have embraced this form basic monotheism and an Arab population newly arrived pagan. At the end of the 17th century, the official religion with an Arab national prophet is proclaimed. The late appearance of the mention of \"Muḥammad\" is explained by the authors as follows the need to compensate for the absence of genealogy prestigious on the Arab side. ʿAbd al Mālik would thus have decided to create a national prophet. .........\ni guess that should be................ At the end of the 7th century..................\nhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-02-33.html Colin Wells on that book \"Yehuda D. Nevo, Judith Koren, Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State\"\n....................Radical revisionism can be helpful even when it's unsound, if it induces scholars to reassess their comfortable assumptions about the evidence and arguments of a traditional interpretation. To the same degree as the subject matter itself, this sort of benefit extends to society and posterity beyond the academic world. As with Holocaust revisionism, for example, when the events at issue are of great importance, everyone gains from having the evidence, and arguments emerge strengthened and sharpened. (Or overturned, but then we're talking of woolly, not cogent, revisionism.) In reading Crossroads to Islam, however, I began to suspect that there must be a usefulness threshold somewhere. If so, then surely this book fails to cross it. Crossroads to Islam is so unsound -- so uninformed in its welter of detail, so specious in the contrivance of its arguments, and so tendentious in its barely hidden agenda -- that it's hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously enough to reassess anything, except possibly his or her decision to pick it up in the first place.\nBut then I would likely have thought the same thing of any single work of Holocaust revisionism, so perhaps Crossroads to Islam is worth at least our brief attention. There are some parallels, since like Holocaust deniers the authors don't merely question some aspects of the consensus view, they reject it wholesale. To wit, Crossroads to Islam argues that the rise of Islam as we currently understand it never happened: Muhammad did not exist as a historical person, there were no early Arab conquests, and Islam itself did not begin to take shape until Arab rulers essentially invented it starting in the 690s -- some seven decades after the traditional account has Muhammad unifying Arabia under Islam's banner...............[/quote[\nQuote from: mundi on April 03, 2019, 07:44 AM\nI haven't read this article but I will, thanks Mundi.\nThe real question however is to see if, when you have dates using the \"hijra\" calendar and other calendars, the 2 do tie up with what we expect the hijra dating to be. In other words, does this calendar really start on july 19th, 622 ?\nThat is a topic on my list but I didn't find the time.\nWhat Hansen says is that the dates tie up with 9.4.631. From there on its a lunar calendar. What happens before is not clear.. The tradition itself says that before luni-solar was used or is at best not clear. But this 9.4.631 corresponds with an astronomical phenomenon that we are SURE occured. So no speculation on that. Was this phenomenon important to the arab \"illuminati\"? Hansen thinks it was since according to him it derives from Babylonian calendar and was also important to Jews before they changed.\nAll that Hansen portrays around this astronomical given of 9.4.631 is not accurate imo. He sees links with the tradition where there are none. But having an objective start of the calendar, based on an astronomical phenomenon seems very interesting and important to me.\nIt neglects the epigraphic discoveries made in other geographical areas, in particular in the Arabian Peninsula. We will report to the work of Saʿd b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Rašīd, Kitabāt islāmiyya min Makka al-mukarrama, Riyadh 1995.\nFinally, someone refers to this work and ones similar to it. I mention this particular (I think) some time ago or another along the lines of it documenting the epigraphic findings in the region of Makkah. And yet, assuming these findings are indeed early, it is surprising that Makkah did not exist at the time of the conquests. No one has referred to this work and its findings. An epigraphist recommended me this work and others as well.\nMy understanding is that the hijri calendar is early and consistent with what we know from the later sources.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line253691"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8176067471504211,"wiki_prob":0.8176067471504211,"text":"Cops make horrific discovery near beach\nby Ben Graham\n12th Jul 2019 11:20 AM\nCOPS are using drones to comb a beach for clues in a major operation this morning after officers found a husband and wife, one inside a house and the other on a beach nearby, just north of Newcastle.\nA NSW Police spokesman told news.com.au that at about 6am this morning emergency services were called to a home in Stockton, after concerns were raised for the occupants.\nTwo bodies have been found at Stockton. Picture: Twitter\n\"Once inside, police found the body of a woman aged in her mid-70s. Attempts are being made to recover what is believed to be a body from the surf at Stockton Beach,\" he said.\nPolice have now confirmed the body recovered from the beach is a 76 - year-old man's.\n\"Initial inquiries suggest no third party are being sought,\" NSW Police said in a statement.\n\"Detectives will await the outcome of post mortem examinations to determine the direction of further inquiries.\"\nCrime scenes have been set up at both locations and police will be reviewing the medical histories of the husband and wife.\nCrime scenes have been set up at both locations. AAP Image/Joel Carrett\nIt comes just a day after a catamaran overturned 13 nautical miles off Stockton Beach - killing three elderly people and leaving a 16-year-old girl and her father with hypothermia.\nThe 16-year-old and 50-year-old man were found clinging for their lives when authorities reached the boat on Thursday morning.\nThey were winched from the water and taken to John Hunter Hospital to be treated for hypothermia.\nThe girl's 78-year-old grandmother and grandfather, from Glenhaven in Sydney's north west, did not survive.\nTheir male friend, who was living on the Central Coast, also died.\n- more to come\nWoman's broken bones not enough to jail alleged rapist\nbeach crime dead bodies nsw","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line23687"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5557026267051697,"wiki_prob":0.5557026267051697,"text":"Tag: Hottest new talent\nOh! This is a soul record by Allen Stone!\nJanuary 31, 2013 May 29, 2015 Posted in New releaseTagged 2013, Allen Stone, Blue eyed soul, Debut, Donny Hathaway, Hottest new talent, James Morrison, Jamie Lidell, Jamiroquai, jason tang, Jay K, music, New Release, one of years best, R&B, Robin Ticke, singer song writer, Singer-Songwriter, Soul, Stacie Orrico, Stevie WonderLeave a comment\n2011/2012 was the year James Morrison got his big breakthrough – and he is now having a well-earned break. Therefore it´s time to look and listen to a brand new talent!\nHis name is Allen Stone, and this is going the year he and his music reaches out to the big masses. Allen Stone is one of these white american soul singers – that stick to the classic formula with great success. Through his sound and voice I feel I can draw a line from classic artists like Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and to “new” white soul men like Jay K from Jamiroquai, Jamie Lidell, Robin Ticke and James Morrison.\nPhoto by Jason Tang http://www.jktang.com\nPHOTOS BY JASON TANG http://www.jktang.com\nAllen Stone is a 25-year-old soul singer/song-writer from Washington, US. According to his Wikipedia profile – he has sung almost since he was born, and sung in church at the age of three. Church has been like his second home – and the place he developed his love for music. Soul music was discovered later on, when he became a teenager, and started collecting soul albums from the 60s and 70s. At 15 he discovered Stevie Wonders fantastic “Innervisions”. A classic soul album and a reference to his musical landscape.\nBut he decided to make music his living – after hearing his teenage friend, artists Stacie Orrico – and this is so good that I quote as is the Wikipedia article “She was traveling, singing everywhere, and recording,” Stone says, “She was just a year older than me and I was like, “Man that would be so much fun to do, sing and actually have people listen” (This quote is taken from an Erica Thompson interview with Allen Stone in Rolling Stone magazine October 2012)\nYou can even find Allen Stone on Facebook (This picture is from his FB profile)\nIf you´d like to twitter, you´ll find him at twitter/allen_stone\nIt´s tempting to do another quote, from the Rolling Stone article (link here) about what Allen Stones fans can expect from his second album “Allen Stone”; “Sonically, it’s a soul record” and continues “But it’s the music that I really love making. It’s not my attempt to cover all this soul music, it’s just really to fit in there and play the music that I love” and he ends it like this “People will listen to it and be like; Oh, this is a soul record”.\nAccording to the Rolling Stone interview Allen Stone is working with Raphael Saadiqs backing band and one of the late jazz legend Miles Davis keyboard players. The album is being recorder with producer Lior Goldenberg from L.A who has also worked with big name artist like Macy Gray, Sheryl Crow, and son of late reggae legend Bob Marley, Ziggy Marley!It must be so cool to work with big names like that – and that is only on the second album.\nIt makes me wonder; Whats next for Allen Stone?\nBack in 2009 he self-released his debut “Last To Speak” on his own label StickyStones records. His first album is a really soulful offering – containing 11 soulful singer/songwriter songs performed with mostly acoustic instruments and his fantastic voice – and he´s handling the guitar himself. I feel the album is representative with his self-confessed hippie with soul (link to Wikipedia) image and sound.\nAllen Stones, new and second album – the self titled album “Allen Stone” – is ready for release at the end of february – and is already possible to pre-order in iTunes (which i off course have done). The original release of the album was back in 2011 – but it´s not available on iTunes until now in February. He has already released the “Allen Stone EP” – a mini-album containing 4 tracks.\nYou can hear Allen Stones second and self titled album here on Spotify – when it´s released\nSince the only thing I have heard from Allen Stones upcoming album is his “Allen Stone EP” – I can’t tell too much about how his second album is going to sound, but if the EP is representative for that – it seems like the upcoming album is a bit more produced this time, more groovy – more classic sounding – and without taking off the loose feeling of his debut album.\nThe title of his debut album and last song on the same album is called “Last To Speak”. It´s tempting to use this as the final sentence of this blog post about the talented Allen Stone and answer it with “Ok, so you may be the last to speak – but make sure you’re not this is the last you sing” Because this is only the start of the amazing career of Allen Stone.\nWe need artist like Allen Stone!\nI need artists like Allen Stone!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1529144"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9578725695610046,"wiki_prob":0.9578725695610046,"text":"The first trailer for Lindsay Lohan's new TV show is both mesmerising and troubling.\nLaura Brodnik\nLindsay Lohan is making a comeback. It’s just not via a Disney movie, or a rom-com and no one is wearing pink.\nInstead, the former singer and actress is turning to the world of documentaries, with MTV today announcing that her brand new Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club will premiere on Wednesday, January 9, if you’d like to pop that in your diary for future reference.\nThe only real clue we have about the show so far is the trailer, which provides a sneak peek into Lindsay’s new world, and to be honest it’s both mesmerising and a little bit troubling.\nTake a look at the trailer for Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club.\nVideo by MTV\n“I’ve gone through so much in my past,” says Lindsay Lohan, “People have always given me trouble for going to clubs, so why don’t I just open my own? I want to build an empire here.”\nAccording to MTV, in Lindsay Lohan’s Beach Club viewers will get to see a new side of Lindsay as she calls the shots with her handpicked team of young and ambitious VIP hosts.\nThese hosts will have to do whatever it takes to secure the Lohan name as the definition of vacation luxury. But when the lines between romance, friendship, and work get blurred, the staff will quickly learn they’ll have to prove themselves to their toughest boss yet.\nWhile Lindsay has spoken publicly in the past about her desire to continue building a career, she has also been very candid about her addiction and drug abuse.\n“I’m an addict,” Lindsay said on Oprah’s Next Chapter, the award-winning prime time series featuring Oprah Winfrey. During the series, Lindsay spoke about her commitment to recovery from drug and alcohol abuse – after six visits to rehab, a stint in jail, two drunk driving arrests, and seven car accidents.\nWhile it’s a positive step that Lindsay is embarking on a new career project, the hope is also that she has the right people around to support her through the execution of and press tour for her new show.\nIn the lead-up to the premiere, fans will get an exclusive sneak peek of the series and meet the cast during MTV’s Lindsay Lohan: Welcome to the Beach Club special airing on Wednesday, January 2.\nLindsay Lohan’s Beach Club will premiere on Wednesday, January 9 on MTV.\nlindsay-lohan-2","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1403191"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6210247278213501,"wiki_prob":0.3789752721786499,"text":"World Habitat Award 2011\nWorld Habitat Award study tour Nepal 2012\nL to R: Program supporter Stephen Smythe, Christine Campbell data manager, Adrian Welke R&D manager, Tim Short Housing for Health Manager\nL to R: Dave Ferrall Manager, Stephan Rainow HH director, Kerryn Lawrence team leader, Danilla Rainow team leader\nL to R: Central Australian Affordable Housing Company with WHA trophy, Jeff Standen Manager, Engraving on WHA trophy, Local project team in NSW\nL to R: World Habitat Awards trophy, Local team members on a Housing for Health project, Healthabitat accepts the award in Mexico\nFrom The World Habitat Award\nThe World Habitat Awards were presented on Monday 3rd October at the UN-HABITAT global observance of World Habitat Day in Aguascalientes, Mexico.\nWorld Habitat Day\nThe United Nations has designated the first Monday in October every year as World Habitat Day to reflect on the state of human settlements and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. The theme of this year’s World Habitat Day was ‘Cities and Climate Change'.\nAustralia Winner | 2011\nInitiated in 1985, the Housing for Health programme aims to improve the health of Indigenous people in Australia, by ensuring they have access to safe and well functioning housing and an improved living environment. It uses a survey and fix methodology for testing whether the houses are safe to live in and have functioning electrical and water supply systems. The Nine Healthy Living Practices pioneered through the project are now part of current federal and state government policy and knowledge gained through the Housing for Health projects has been used to develop a national Indigenous housing design code that respects cultural traditions and norms.\nTo improve the health of indigenous people, by ensuring they have access to a safe and well functioning house, and an improved living environment.\nThere is a long history of abuse, mistreatment and misunderstanding of the indigenous people of Australia, not least when it comes to the provision of appropriate housing. Indigenous people live in very poor housing conditions and where the state provides housing, it is not designed with any understanding of the way of life or cultural needs of these communities. The common view is that the indigenous people ‘trash’ the good homes provided for them and do not deserve decent housing provision. The houses are often in disrepair and there are high levels of rent arrears.\nMany indigenous people have low literacy rates as well as a pattern of poor health characterised by high rates of infectious disease and very high rates of diabetes, vascular disease and obesity. Skin infections, respiratory diseases, rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease and ear disease in children also occur at much higher rates than in the non-indigenous population. Life is typically lived in harsh, remote and often chaotic conditions. Housing is usually provided by local or state governments or indigenous community organisations and is of poor quality with little, if any, maintenance or good management.\nHealthabitat works with local indigenous communities to repair existing homes and train local people in basic repair and maintenance skills. It has two main areas of work – the HfH projects and the associated applied research and development projects. The safety and nine Healthy Living Practices were developed in the mid 1980s to describe the functioning hardware needed in a house to allow access to healthy living. These practices include: life threatening safety issues, washing people, washing clothes and bedding, removing waste water safely, improving nutrition with the ability to store, preparing and cooking food and reducing the health impacts of dust. Nominations for inclusion in the programme come from communities themselves, as well as indigenous housing boards and Indigenous Affairs departments. After a feasibility study and if the communities wish to participate, a Survey-Fix week is set aside and a number of local community members are trained to work alongside technical staff to inspect, test and record about 240 items in the houses, and where possible make repairs. The information on each house is entered onto a database and work lists are given to qualified trades people who carry out urgent repairs a day later. Other repairs are completed over the following months and a second Survey-Fix session is carried out to review the work.\nOne hundred and eighty four HfH projects have been carried out all around Australia, with over 7,300 houses improved to date. Seventy-five per cent of all project staff are local indigenous people and the paid work they carry out includes project planning, training of staff, testing and repairing houses, assisting licensed trades people with major repair work, data entry and office work and liaison with householders in their own language about the aims and methods of the programme. Survey groups are trained in a short time to test houses and record the results, using a carefully prescribed methodology. While they are in a house they will also fix minor faults (a dripping tap, a missing stove control knob or basin plug etc.) driven by the philosophy of ‘no survey without service’ and make a report for the skilled tradesmen who make an immediate start on sorting out those things that the groups are not entitled to fix. The effort required to achieve this engagement is rarely understood by government agencies and bureaucrats and successful and appropriate means of working have been developed over the years.\nHealthabitat has also initiated a broad range of applied, practical research projects to improve housing, covering issues such as development of tap ware, hot water systems, waste disposal systems, lighting, kitchen design, prefabricated transportable shower laundry and toilet modules, local indigenous staff training aids and customised database and information systems.\nCovering costs\nBy Australian standards, HfH is a low-cost programme. From 1999 to 2009, projects had an average cost of US$7,500 per house for all works including repair work, management, staff wages, building materials and transport. This is helped by the Healthabitat organisation itself having very low overheads.\nSince 2006, approximately 15 per cent of the national HfH budget has been allocated to research and development projects.\nOver 180 HfH projects have improved more than 7,000 houses with poor function since 1999 and improved the living conditions of over 40,000 indigenous people. This represents one third of the nation’s indigenous housing stock.\nA recent state government health department review of ten years of HfH work showed a 40 per cent reduction in hospital admissions for environmental health related illnesses.\nThe use of data generated by HfH projects over the years now informs the National Indigenous Housing Guide – now nationally accepted as an essential design guide for the construction and refurbishment of indigenous housing.\nThe current National Partnership Agreement for Remote Indigenous Housing being delivered nationally across Australia has incorporated the nine Healthy Living Practices. Ongoing work is being carried out to ensure that implementation of the policy is delivered. Whilst indigenous community housing organisations are happy to take on the ideas, there is a greater struggle to ensure that state landlords do so (with some notable exceptions).\nHfH project data is regularly updated and made available by Healthabitat to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (a Federal Government agency) who package and place the data online for use by registered housing and health researchers.\nInnovative Aspects\nDeveloping the HfH methodology with standard repeatable tests to assess the safety and health function of housing.\nPolicy of immediate repair work that improves houses from the first day of a project and builds community trust.\nContinual monitoring, development and refining of the Healthy Living Practices over 25 years, reinforces the links between health, housing function and the broader living environment.\nAs monitoring health gain on each project can be costly and disruptive, HfH projects use the detailed housing function data collected before repair work commences and similar data after all repair work has been completed.\nCommunity involvement in all aspects of HfH projects such as on the tools, repair work, data work, management of the project, community liaison and training. This has meant significantly better project results, better targeting of resources and the possibility of locally controlled ongoing housing maintenance and management.\nUsing detailed project data, assembled into a national database, to influence national indigenous housing and health policy.\nEncouraging more holistic thinking between government departments so that housing and health are linked.\nHfH work involves bringing existing housing back into better condition for it to serve as decent housing. There is not therefore significant investment in new materials.\nPassive design measures help reduce the internal house temperature by an average of four degrees and thus lessen the use of cooling systems. These measures include shading windows and walls, adding insulation and ceiling venting.\nInstallation of low energy heating and cooling systems helps reduce energy consumption.\nIn one community, water saving techniques, primarily by carefully monitoring and repairing leaks in water pipes and installing water saving appliances where water quality allows, have enabled water consumption to be reduced from 149 to 64 litres per day per household. There is an annual saving of 100 million litres of water and US$67,000 is saved annually in water charges.\nA variety of passive landscaping techniques around the houses and communities help to reduce erosion and environmental damage in the desert areas, where many of these projects are located.\nSchool children work on Healthy Living Practices as school projects providing an increased understanding of energy saving.\nCurrent Federal Government policy direction means that state governments will increasingly take responsibility for the management of indigenous housing and therefore the funding of HfH programmes.\nAt the end of 2011, it is anticipated that the following sources of funding will be available - state governments (75 per cent), NGOs (10 per cent), private sector (5 per cent) and indigenous community funding and in kind contributions (10 per cent).\nThe running costs of the Healthabitat organisation have historically always been very low. From 1991 to 1998, the running costs were met by the three partners when no other funds were available. Since 1998, Healthabitat has only had one part-time member of staff. Funding of all contract staff is on a project-by-project basis and a small percentage of each project’s funds is used as a source of running costs. The same low-cost model will be used in the future.\nOver 75 per cent of the HfH’s staff team is comprised of local indigenous people. They are paid in line with local rates to carry out productive work on their own community houses. Skills gained include project planning, training, electrical and plumbing skills, data entry and office work and liaison with householders, which can be used to gain employment in the mainstream employment sectors.\nSmall businesses are created within the community, dealing with minor plumbing maintenance, water meter reading for local authorities, window insect screen replacement teams, lunch making and catering, landscaping and fencing.\nWhen all elements of a house are fully functioning, there is greater access to decent housing. Increasing house size or numbers, for example, does not guarantee reduced overcrowding in this culture, whereas improving house function, often at a much lower cost, does.\nReduced running costs for lighting and cooling improve affordability.\nHealthabitat requires that at least 70 per cent of all staff are from indigenous groups and include men and women of all ages in the community. For the last ten years, at least 75 per cent of staff come from these groups.\nWith the involvement of the whole community from the early stages of the project onwards, a greater sense of community cooperation has developed, especially in those communities that are at a low point.\nA wide range of skills and experience are obtained by those working on the project. Some of those who have been involved as community trade assistants are accepted by the licensed trades as apprentices, leading to trade qualifications.\nLocal community members gain working experience often for the first time, thus enabling them to be more work ready and able to participate in other government building contracts.\nA supplementary programme called Maintaining Houses for Better Health designed to continue training and to skill local staff in ‘health based’ house management systems is currently being trialled.\nThere is an improved understanding of the indigenous culture and way of life, typically developed on an individual basis between the indigenous and non-indigenous staff members working on the project.\nThe HfH survey sheets used by local team members generate an interest in literacy, which increases work options.\nDisabled access to all parts of the house is provided as part of the standard work on the project.\nLocal people are not just seen as ‘cheap local labour’ or involved just to achieve political participation targets, but rather they are fully involved in all the tasks involved in an HfH project –the thinking and planning as well as the physical work.\nData entry skills acquired by young women raise their status in society and often help them gain permanent posts locally.\nCommonly held myths about indigenous people reinforce existing housing policy orthodoxy and prevent change. Healthabitat has used the evidence collected from HfH projects to disprove some of the common myths.\nFast, politically expedient growth threatens long-term programme sustainability as rapid expansion denies the very factors that have led to success – community involvement through staff training and careful project planning. By sticking to the principles political acrimony has been incurred and slower growth achieved than might have been possible.\nThe hard evidence of HfH data has highlighted the failures of previous government intervention and this has created political disfavour and slowed the work in some states. HfH remains committed to its priorities and methods of working and accepts that it is better to do this than compromise.\nChange is possible and will most typically be achieved by making a small change first, with larger changes to follow.\nMaking some change to people’s living conditions on the first day of every project is important.\nSet clear goals and principles, with a clear priority for action that can be understood by the local community.\nRetaining a strong consistent methodology is important for programme longevity.\nDefining and recording hard data will help to show progress to those you work with and the local community as a whole.\nA broad range of technical skills is essential to improve all aspects of housing.\nEngage local people who will benefit from the project in all its aspects from the outset.\nHfH projects and the programme as a whole have been regularly monitored and evaluated over 25 years, both internally and externally. The continuing emphasis on internal monitoring and evaluation is one of the reasons for the continued programme development and improvement. The most comprehensive external evaluations were an independent review of the programme, 2002 to 2005 and an independent review on the health impacts of ten years of HfH projects in New South Wales, 1998 to 2009.\nBetween 1999 and 2010, HfH projects have been commenced in 184 locations around Australia. These projects have improved over 7,000 houses and improved the living conditions of over 40,000 indigenous people. University courses have been offered to date in three states to students of architecture, planning, nursing, and health science and it is planned to increase these.\nThe National Partnership Agreement for Remote Indigenous Housing currently being rolled out across Australia (US$5.5 billion) by the Federal and all state governments has incorporated the safety and nine Healthy Living Practices in all the national guideline documents. Healthabitat recognises that it will need to continue to work to ensure these guidelines are respected and implemented.\nA large NGO addressing homelessness in the USA is currently trialling an HfH project in an urban public housing district of New York City.\nThe HfH principles have been applied by Healthabitat to a remote village sanitation project for 450 people in Nepal.\nAbout Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF)\nBHSF is an independent research organisation that promotes sustainable development and innovation in housing through collaborative research and knowledge transfer. Established in 1976, BSHF works both in the UK and internationally to identify innovative housing solutions and to foster the exchange of information and good practice. BSHF is committed to promoting housing policy and practice that is people-centred and environmentally responsible. All research carried out has practical relevance and addresses a range of current housing issues worldwide.\nEvents for WHA\nThese events were organised by BSHF in London to share the principles and work of Healthabitat with peers from around the world working in areas involving housing and health.\nHousing for Health Round Table London 2012\nInternational Study Visit, Nepal 2012","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line452485"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6835261583328247,"wiki_prob":0.3164738416671753,"text":"Libertarian's Forum › Libertarian's Forum › Freedom Forum › 100 Years Old to Buy Cigarettes?\nLibertarian's Forum\nLibertarian Forum to discuss politics and free market economics.\n(Moderator: Land of Freedom)\nPages: [1] 2 3 Send Topic Print\n100 Years Old to Buy Cigarettes? (Read 584 times)\nLibertarian Freedom Member\nJoined: Apr 30th, 2014\n100 Years Old to Buy Cigarettes?\nFeb 8th, 2019 at 9:49pm\nhttps://futurism.com/ban-cigarette-sales-hawaii-100-years-old\nWell, plus to Vulcans!\n(Wait a sec... I don't want to smoke... I don't think any Vulcan would.)\nOkay then, plus to those deserving Humans who've taken good enough care of their health to reach-\n(...Facepalm.)\n...Not really getting the point of this.\nThis moral relativism of yours is exactly what lets government take this freedom, then that freedom, until we have lost them all.\n-SnarkySack\nSkyChief\nLocation: California Coast\nJoined: Aug 18th, 2014\nRe: 100 Years Old to Buy Cigarettes?\nReply #1 - Feb 8th, 2019 at 10:24pm\nIts a dumb bill.\nIf the government wants to force people to quit smoking, all they have to do is slap a $20/pack Tax on cigarettes.\nBack in 2017, California voters ganged up on cigarette smokers and hit them with a $2-per-pack excise Tax. The smokers complained and whined but we grossly outnumbered them, hah hah...\nCigarette purchases in California dropped nearly 50% in one year! Sales continue to go down. . . .\nIf they raised the Cigarette Tax in Hawaii to $20/pack, everyone will give up smoking because it will be too expensive!\nProgressives are so good at weaponizing Taxes. I'm surprised they haven't thought to do this in Hawaii.\nGovernments will always devise ways to deprive an honest man of his money or property, and claim that it's legal.\nJoined: Feb 26th, 2014\nReply #2 - Feb 9th, 2019 at 8:20am\nSkyChief wrote on Feb 8th, 2019 at 10:24pm:\nSomewhere near half of the cigarettes purchased in NYC are smuggled in these days to avoid the high taxes on them in NYC.\nThat means lots of money is being funneled into criminal enterprises that are probably a lot worse than smuggling or smoking.\nBesides, it's un-libertarian and immoral to try to change people's behavior by taxation. Not only that, it's an illegal use of the taxing power.\n\"Free hate speech\"\nLocation: Republic of Me\nJoined: Sep 11th, 2017\nJeff wrote on Feb 9th, 2019 at 8:20am:\nAn \"illegal\" use of the taxing power? I certainly believe that it is an immoral use of the taxing power. How can a law that establishes a tax be illegal? It's a law.\nSnarky no more!\nLittle Big Man wrote on Feb 9th, 2019 at 8:57am:\nSales taxes are Indirect taxes and must be uniform to be legal. Not all enacted laws are legal.\nReply #5 - Feb 9th, 2019 at 10:41am\nWhat is the proper response to an illegal tax?\nMy mother's cigarette bill was something like $90/week.\nYou'd be surprised what people will spend on an addiction.\nEverything they have.\nIts a dumb bill...\nRep. Creagan's anti-smoker bill (as proposed) is absurd - he wants to raise the smoking age to 100.\nWhy not raise the smoking age to 150? or 200? See how silly this is?\nWith a heavy excise tax on cigarettes, the smokers get to decide whether they continue to smoke or - - not not the voters or legislators.\nReply #8 - Feb 9th, 2019 at 3:13pm\nLittle Big Man wrote on Feb 9th, 2019 at 10:41am:\nWhat do you think? From what you told me, you think it's to be ready with your gun to shoot the revenuers when they show up to gun you down for not paying.\nThe proper response to an illegal tax should be a lawsuit and a court decision to stop levying the illegal tax that the government abides by.\nJeff wrote on Feb 9th, 2019 at 3:13pm:\nYou mean like these cases:\nUnited States v. Connor[89] (tax evasion conviction under 26 U.S.C. § 7201 affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; taxpayer's argument — that because of the Sixteenth Amendment, wages were not taxable — was rejected by the Court; taxpayer's argument that an income tax on wages is required to be apportioned by population also rejected), at [14];\nParker v. Commissioner[80] (taxpayer's argument — that wages are not taxable — was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit; taxpayer charged double costs for filing a frivolous appeal), at [15];\nPerkins v. Commissioner[117] (26 U.S.C. § 61 ruled by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to be \"in full accordance with Congressional authority under the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution to impose taxes on income without apportionment among the states\"; taxpayer's argument that wages paid for labor are non-taxable was rejected by the Court, and ruled frivolous), at [16];\nSisemore v. United States[118] (United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the federal district court properly dismissed taxpayer's frivolous lawsuit based on taxpayer's tax return position that wages do not represent a taxable gain because wages are a source of income and are received in equal exchange for labor), at [17];\nWhite v. United States[119] (taxpayer's argument that wages are not taxable was ruled frivolous by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; penalty — imposed under 26 U.S.C. § 6702 for filing tax return with frivolous position — was therefore proper);\nGranzow v. Commissioner[120] (taxpayer's argument that wages are not taxable was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and ruled frivolous), at [18];\nUnited States v. Russell[121] (taxpayer's argument—that the federal income is unconstitutional on the theory that the law cannot tax a \"common law right to work\"—was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit), at [19];\nWaters v. Commissioner[122] (taxpayer's argument that income taxation of wages is unconstitutional was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; taxpayer required to pay damages for filing frivolous suit), at [20].\nSend Topic Print\nTwitter LF\nLibertarians Chat Room\nRight to work Foundation\nWikipedia Libertarian\nForum Jump » Board Index » 10 most recent Posts » 10 most recent Topics Libertarian's Forum Freedom Forum «« Information Board\n« Board Index ‹ Board\nLibertarian's Forum Information Rules, Agreement and Privacy Policy\nLibertarian's Forum » Powered by YaBB 2.6.12!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line637164"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6813068985939026,"wiki_prob":0.6813068985939026,"text":"Solo Show \"Aspen Mays: Approaching Infinite Limits\" at the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery\nThe Natalie and James Thompson Art Galleryat San José State University\nproudly presents \"Aspen Mays: Approaching Infinite Limits\"\nA Solo Show Featuring Artwork by Aspen Mays, Curated by Aaron Wilder\nAspen Mays\nThe Face of God (Stargazer), 2013\nArchival Inkjet Print from Found 35mm Film\nOctober 1-November 1, 2019\nIllustrated Lecture\nAspen Mays: Approaching Infinite Limits\nTuesday October 1, 5:00pm-6:00pm\nDepartment of Art and Art History Lecture Hall\nArt Building, Room #133\nOpening Reception: Tuesday October 1, 6:00pm-7:30pm\nOne Washington Square\nSan José, CA 95192\nThe Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery is pleased to present the work of Aspen Mays whose work represents a range of photographic practices including photograms, manipulated archival materials, collage, dyed prints, as well as works employing a camera. Of the methods used in her work Mays has said “Using analog processes is a way to create a human presence that may be counter to rationalist thinking, or objectivity, or a machine. I want to insert the human back into everything; I’m trying to figure out these systems with whatever is at hand.” A solo exhibition of works selected from a range of different projects by Mays will open on October 1, continuing on display through November 1, 2019.\nBorn in Asheville, NC, and raised in Charleston, SC, Aspen Mays currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she teaches at the California College of the Arts (CCA). Mays joined CCA in 2015, and she is an Associate Professor in Graduate Fine Arts and Undergraduate Photography. She received a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2004 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.\nMays’ work often employs methods of exploring memory and the limits of human understanding through tactility, repetition, and intuition. Much of Mays’ time is spent in the darkroom feeling the materials she works with and conducting repetitive experiments, often without using a camera. In some ways, these methods do not align neatly with the ocular truism “seeing is believing.” As a byproduct of relying on touch more than what might be expected in photography, Mays’ process approaches the infinite limits of knowing through memory and repetition. The term “infinite limits” derives from calculus and implies space is a continuum and is not completable. A limit, by definition cannot be infinite. As such, the mathematical practice of approaching, but never reaching, an infinite limit indicates that practice’s own conceptual impossibility, similar to the paradoxes Aspen Mays investigates in her work. “I’ve always been a curious person and I try to channel that as an artist,” says Mays whose artistic practice revolves around the tension between the human desire to find meaning in the unknown and the human incapacity to understand the unknown. As a result, many of her works originate from or are themselves constructions from multiple sources, materials, and techniques, assembled together, aptly, in the dark.\n“Research is often the catalyst for my work,” says Mays whose honors include a Rotary Fellowship in 2006, where Mays studied photography in Cape Town, South Africa while volunteering in a clinic for bead working artisans living with HIV; multiple artist residencies at institutions such as New York’s Penumbra Foundation; and a J. William Fulbright grant 2009-2010 in Chile, where she worked with astronomers who are using the world’s most advanced telescopes to look at the sky. This experience had a profound impact on Mays’ practice as she worked in an abandoned darkroom while interacting with astronomers in the Atacama Desert who approached the telescope as many photographers approach the camera. Reflecting on that experience, Mays has said “That alone was already an isolating experience because the sky feels so immense, so overwhelming that I remember feeling total disbelief that we are able to see anything at all, find anything that we’re looking for.”\nAspen Mays: Approaching Infinite Limits exhibits work from multiple projects created before, during, and after Mays’ experience in Chile that are all components of an overall artistic investigation into the (flawed) human endeavor to understand something as massive and complex as the universe using scientific tools and methods. Works from these projects are placed in direct dialogue with more recent projects grappling with inter-generational change, personal loss, and the problematic relationship between the social expectations of photography to be a factual, historical record and one’s own fragmented, subjective memories. In Tengallon Sunflower, for example, Mays recreates the starburst pattern of a bandana worn by her great-grandmother through a repetitive, laborious process of manipulating photographic paper in the darkroom. Like the Chilean astronomers that endlessly endeavor to understand the universe through a rigorous approach of looking and documenting, Mays repeatedly folded and hole punched the paper in the dark to seek communion with something beyond the frailty of human existence and the obsolescence of memory. Indeed, the meticulous, time-intensive methods Aspen Mays employs, in a way, provide for the viewer an artistic approach to questioning the scientific processes of conducting research through data collection and categorization. In light of science’s inability to answer unanswerable questions, it may very well be the role of art, as seen in Aspen Mays’ work, that humanizes the nature of investigation to make some kind of sense of the world or, at the very least, make us less uncomfortable about remaining in the dark.\nMays work has been exhibited at museums and galleries including Antenna in New Orleans; Casemore Kirkeby in San Francisco; The Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; Dusseldorf Photo Weekend in Germany; Galleri Tom Christoffersen in Copenhagen; Golden Gallery in Chicago and New York City; Higher Pictures in New York City; The Houston Center for Photography; Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco; Light Work in Syracuse, New York; Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography in Moscow; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; Museé des Beaux-Artes in Le Locle, Switzerland; New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe; The New York Center for Book Arts; Paris Photo; and The Pitch Project in Milwaukee.\nHer work has been featured in numerous publications including Aperture, Art in America, Art Forum, Art Papers, the Boston Globe, the Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, KQED Arts, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vogue, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Whitewall Magazine.\nIn conjunction with the opening of this exhibition, Aspen Mays will present an illustrated lecture 5:00pm - 6:00pm in the Department of Art & Art History Lecture Hall (room 133) the evening of October 1, 2019, just prior to the opening reception, 6:00pm-7:30pm in the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery. Both events are free and open to the public.\nWe would like to extend our deepest appreciation to Aspen Mays and Higher Pictures for all their efforts to make this exhibition a success. We would also like to thank San José State University (SJSU) Photography faculty Binh Danh, Robin Lasser, and Valerie Mendoza for their suggestions, support, expertise, and guidance from the earliest stages of this exhibition’s conceptualization to the installation of Aspen Mays’ work and the integration of this exhibition’s themes with multiple learning opportunities for SJSU students.\nCurated by Aaron Wilder","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line319000"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.618320643901825,"wiki_prob":0.618320643901825,"text":"United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region\nThe organization United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region represents an institution, an association, or corporate body that is associated with resources found in UCLA Library.\nThe Resource United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region\nPacific Northwest Region\n34 Items by the Organization United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region\nAlpine Lakes Wilderness, new policies for visitors, 1994 : Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Wenatchee National Forest, USDA Forest Service\nChelan National Forest, Washington, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland\nDeschutes National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, 1923 from U.S.G.S., G.L.O., Forest Service, and other surveys\nDiamond Lake campground : Umpqua National Forest\nDiamond Peak Wilderness, Deschutes and Willamette national forests : 1964\nFremont National Forest, Oregon, Willamette meridian, 1954, (cartographic material)\nMalheur National Forest, Oregon, Forest Service\nMalheur National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at District Office, Portland, Nov., 1929 from U.S.G.S., G.L.O., Forest Service, and other surveys by Victor H. Flack [sic] and Virgil A. Byers\nMount St. Helens and vicinity, Washington-Oregon, produced cooperatively by U.S. Geological Survey, [Pacific Northwest Region] USDA Forest Service, and Washington State Department of Natural Resources\nMount St. Helens and vicinity, produced cooperatively by U.S. Geological Survey, USDA Forest Service, and Washington State Department of Natural Resources\nMt Adams Wilderness : Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington, compiled in the U.S.F.S. Regional Office, Portland\nMt. Baker National Forest, Washington, compiled and scribed at Regional Office, Portland Oregon 1960, (cartographic material)\nMt. Hood National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service\nMt. Hood National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, (cartographic material)\nNew wilderness on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest : Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984\nOchoco National Forest, Oregon, compiled and drafted in Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1956\nOlympic National Forest, Washington., This map was compiled in the USFS Regional Office in Portland, Oregon, 1972\nPacific Crest National Scenic Trail, U.S.D.A. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region\nRogue River National Forest Oregon and California, Willamette, Humboldt, and Mt. Diablo meridians, 1952, compiled at Regional Office, Portland, Oregon\nRogue River National Forest, Oregon and California., Compiled in the regional office, Portland, Oregon in 1958\nSiskiyou National Forest, Oregon and California, United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled and drafted in Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1956\nSiuslaw National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland\nSnoqualmie National Forest, Washington, Willamette Meridian, 1950, (cartographic material)\nSnoqualmie National Forest, Washington, compiled and scribed at Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1958\nThe Rogue River wild and scenic, compiled by the U.S. Forest Service, Portland, Or., 1971 from U.S.F.S. and Bureau of Land Management maps\nThe wild and scenic Snake River : Hells Canyon National Recreation Area\nUmatilla National Forest, Oregon and Washington, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, from U.S.G.S., Bu. of Land Management (formerly G.L.O.), Forest Service, and other surveys, 1939\nUmatilla National Forest, Oregon-Washington, compiled and scribed at Regional Office, Portland Oregon 1957, (cartographic material)\nUmpqua National Forest, Oregon, Willamette Meridian, 1957, (cartographic material)\nWallowa-Whitman National Forest (Wallowa-Minam Division) Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1960\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests (Blue Mtn. Division) Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1960\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests (Wallowa-Minam Division) Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1960\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests, Oregon, compiled and drafted in Regional Office, Portland, Oregon, 1956, (cartographic material)\nWillamette National Forest, Oregon, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service ; compiled at Regional Office, Portland, from U.S.G.S., Bu. of Land Management (formerly G.L.O.) Forest Service, and other surveys, 1934\nContext of United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region\nChelan National Forest, Washington\nDeschutes National Forest, Oregon\nFremont National Forest, Oregon, Willamette meridian, 1954\nMalheur National Forest, Oregon\nMt Adams Wilderness : Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington\nMt. Baker National Forest, Washington\nMt. Hood National Forest, Oregon\nOchoco National Forest, Oregon\nOlympic National Forest, Washington.\nPacific Crest National Scenic Trail\nRogue River National Forest Oregon and California, Willamette, Humboldt, and Mt. Diablo meridians, 1952\nRogue River National Forest, Oregon and California.\nSiskiyou National Forest, Oregon and California\nSiuslaw National Forest, Oregon\nSnoqualmie National Forest, Washington\nSnoqualmie National Forest, Washington, Willamette Meridian, 1950\nThe Rogue River wild and scenic\nUmatilla National Forest, Oregon and Washington\nUmatilla National Forest, Oregon-Washington\nUmpqua National Forest, Oregon, Willamette Meridian, 1957\nWallowa-Whitman National Forest (Wallowa-Minam Division) Oregon\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests (Blue Mtn. Division) Oregon\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests (Wallowa-Minam Division) Oregon\nWallowa-Whitman National Forests, Oregon\nWillamette National Forest, Oregon\nMount St. Helens and vicinity\nMount St. Helens and vicinity, Washington-Oregon\nCartographer of\n<div class=\"citation\" vocab=\"http://schema.org/\"><i class=\"fa fa-external-link-square fa-fw\"></i> Data from <span resource=\"http://link.library.ucla.edu/resource/-VKItilBW1A/\" typeof=\"Organization http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/Organization\"><span property=\"name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label\"><a href=\"http://link.library.ucla.edu/resource/-VKItilBW1A/\">United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region</a></span> - <span property=\"potentialAction\" typeOf=\"OrganizeAction\"><span property=\"agent\" typeof=\"LibrarySystem http://library.link/vocab/LibrarySystem\" resource=\"http://link.library.ucla.edu/\"><span property=\"name http://bibfra.me/vocab/lite/label\"><a property=\"url\" href=\"http://link.library.ucla.edu/\">UCLA Library</a></span></span></span></span></div>\nData Citation of the Organization United States, Forest Service | Pacific Northwest Region\nhttp://link.library.ucla.edu/resource/-VKItilBW1A/\nhttp://library.link/resource/-VKItilBW1A/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line509714"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.761542797088623,"wiki_prob":0.761542797088623,"text":"The Wicker Man - 40th Anniversary Edition\nFour decades after its release in cinemas in 1973, the unique British cult classic The Wicker Man still holds an enduring fascination for audiences all over the world.\nIn this 40th anniversary double play edition, the film is presented as The Final Cut, a version which has never before been restored and never before been seen in UK cinemas.\nApproved by director Robin Hardy, The Final Cut is the finest and most complete version of The Wicker Man. Featuring brand new extras, this 40th anniversary edition is every Wicker Man fan's perfect ending to a much mythicised search for the most complete version of the film. Having left no stone unturned in the search for the original film materials, the ghosts have now been laid to rest, as we can finally and happily confirm, that this is The Final Cut.\nBurnt Offering: The Cult of The Wicker Man documentary written by Mark Kermode\nWorshiping The Wicker Man - Famous fans featurette\nThe Music of The Wicker Man featurette\nInterview with Robin Hardy\nInterview with Christopher Lee & Robin Hardy (1979)\nRestoration comparison\nUK Theatrical Cut\nDirectors Cut (with Audio Commentary)\nMaking of Audio Commentary short film\nEdward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento\nNumber of Discs:\nTheatrical Release Year:\nCustomer reviews are independent and do not represent the views of Zavvi.\n3 disc version is def the way to go\nThe best the film has ever looked and it’s great to have the original theatrical & directors cut included too. Soundtrack completes a great package.\n12/03/18 by Mark\nA must have!!!.\nI Purchased this in the steelbook form which is excellent. & I got my hands on the 3ple disc 3 versions of the film, soundtrack, & Loads of extras. A cult classic, like good wine just gets better over the years. Truthfully the ultimate edition!.\n16/01/17 by This is SPARTA!\nSuperb and uncanny film, one of the horror genre's most unusual. Excellent disc with three (!) cuts of the film, plus extras. Far better than the American edition in that regard.\n13/01/16 by Who Be Dis\nStudioCanal have done it yet again, that is turned out a truly collectable set that will amaze any fan of The Wicker Man. We have the Final Cut, which has a lossless track. The video is truly remarkable for a 40 year old movie, the new inserted scenes are of a slight less quality, but not much. But I find that great, that when those scenes appear I know what they are. We also get the Theatrical and Director's Cut on disc 2. There's a wealth of Special Features in this set. And not forgetting the original Soundtrack CD that StudioCanal has also included in this set. The slipcase is well designed too. I'm shocked that Zavvi have priced it so low.\n26/01/15 by ELB\nThe Wicker Man-40th Anniversary Edition\nThe Wicker Man - 40th Anniversary Edition is a great classic film given a great hi-def release. I would recommend this release.\n08/11/13 by jbtron\nDefinitive edition of a classic film.\n29/10/13 by Jedit\nExcellent -what we've been waiting for\nThis is how Blu-ray restorations of old films should be. Most people interested in this will have already done some reading up but just to reiterate... it's amazing! This is as good as you've ever seen the film (all 3 versions!). The extras are great and the soundtrack is now on my iPod. Just buy it if you love this film. It really is a benchmark of restoration.\n29/10/13 by Sgt. Howie","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line694697"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8781149983406067,"wiki_prob":0.8781149983406067,"text":"Harry Styles’s new song Sign of the Times is David Bowie via Oasis\n“I think it’s hard to not have influences from what you grew up listening to.”\nBy Anna Leszkiewicz\nFollow @@annaleszkie\nOne Direction and classic rock aren’t often put side-by-side, but they probably should be. As Brodie Lancaster notes in this detailed analysis of the influences behind One Direction’s last album, Made in the AM, the band “slowly established a pattern of picking up inspiration from rock history” as their releases developed. Harry Styles, in particular has made his interest in classic rock clear in everything from his dress sense to his gig choices – and now, with the release of his new single, “Sign of the Times”, it’s more obvious than ever.\n“I think it’s hard to not have influences from what you grew up listening [to],” Harry told Nick Grimshaw on Radio 1 this morning, just after the song debuted. “I had a good mix between my mum and my dad, because my dad was into, like, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Queen; while my mum was like, Norah Jones and Savage Garden.”\n“Sign of the Times” continues in that vein. “He delivered a true spacey rock ballad,” declares Billboard, “something that might fit in more with David Bowie’s catalogue or perhaps even an epic Nineties rock jam like Spacehog’s “In the Meantime” than it does with today’s top 40”.\nYes there’s lots of Bowie in there. And if the lyrics seem familiar – it’s because they are. Obviously, there’s that Prince reference, but there’s more, too. Let’s break it down.\nJust stop your crying, it’s a sign of the times\nThose first chords sound a lot like Robbie Williams’s “Angels”, but then we get a whooshy noise straight out of \"Space Oddity\". What an opener. David Bowie’s “Five Years” meets Oasis’s “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”.\nWelcome to the final show\nHope you’re wearing your best clothes\nI’m in yesterday’s t-shirt, if I’m honest, Harry. This has something of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” with its doomsday glamour: “He’s in the best-selling show”.\nYou can’t bribe the door on your way to the sky\nAh, the old “heaven as a nightclub” metaphor. Makes me think of The Stone Roses’s “Breaking Into Heaven” and Alex Turner’s lyric: “It’s like you’re trying to get to heaven in a hurry / And the queue was shorter than you’d thought it would be / And the doorman says, ‘You need to get a wristband’.\"\nYou look pretty good down here\nBut you ain’t really good\nYour looks won’t save you come the end of the world, as we know from Lana Del Rey.\nWe never learn, we been here before\nWhy are we always stuck and running from the bullet?\nThe bullet\nWhy are always stuck and running from your bullet?\nEnter falsetto. Finally, the mix of Foster the People and “Heroes” the public have been waiting for. There’s also a hint of Radiohead’s “Daydreaming”.\nJust stop your crying, it’s a sign of times\nWe gotta get away from here\nJust stop your crying it will be alright\nThey told me that the end is near\nJust stop your crying, have the time of your life\nBreaking through the atmosphere\nAnd things are pretty good from here\nRemember everything will be alright\nWe can meet again somewhere\nSomewhere far away from here\n“It’s fine, it’s only the apocalypse, darling.” Basically. This is the part that sounds the most Bowie – lyrically, \"Watchtower\"’s “There must be some kind of way outta here” with the stretched out diphthong of “aways” on Oasis’s “Don’t Go Away” and “Stand By Me”. There’s a Drop of Jupiter in here somewhere, too.\nWe don’t talk enough\nWe should open up\nBefore it’s all too much\nWill we ever learn?\nWe been here before\nIts just what we know\nLike that “bullet” bridge, there’s an overarching futility here lyrically similar to Bastille’s “Pompeii” and Coldplay’s “We Never Change”.\nIt’s a dense call-back to rock of decades past, and, to the casual observer, it might seem like a huge departure from Styles's earlier work. But, as culture writer Lancaster notes, it won’t seem as much of a leap to dedicated One Direction fans.\nNow listen to a discussion of Harry Styles’ new single on the NS pop culture podcast, SRSLY:\n› Labour should stop indulging its Scottish party and broker a progressive alliance with the SNP\nAnna Leszkiewicz is culture editor of the New Statesman.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1531670"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7612401247024536,"wiki_prob":0.7612401247024536,"text":"Google profits climb\nBy Derek Sooman on April 23, 2006, 15:49\nNo surprises here that Google is doing very well: the company's revenue and net income rose in Q1, largely thanks to increases in the usage of its search engine services and online advertising sales.\nRevenue came in at $2.25 billion, a 79 per cent increase compared with 2005's first quarter. Excluding the commissions Google pays to websites in its ad network, revenue was $1.53 billion, exceeding the $1.44 billion consensus expectation from analysts.\nNet income reached $592.3 million, or $1.95 per share, up from $369.2 million, or $1.29 per share. On a pro forma basis, which excludes certain one-time items, net income was $697 million, or $2.29 per share, exceeding analysts' consensus $1.97 per share.\nCompany executives feel that the success has been due to Google's continued investments in its infrastructure and on technology development. An increase in Google's services has meant that more advertisers are drawn to the growing audience the company is able to provide.\nNBC to launch its Peacock streaming service on July 15 with an ad-supported free version\nTen Call of Duty games make decade's best-sellers list, but GTA V takes top spot\nMicrosoft plans to be carbon negative by 2030, pours 1 billion into tech that sucks carbon out of the atmosphere\nIntel recaptures title of world's largest semiconductor vendor by revenue\nPost a comment Share this article\nA new type of DRAM might pave the way to instant-on PCs","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1066081"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.550233006477356,"wiki_prob":0.550233006477356,"text":"This is the Chevrolet Cruze, the firm's new small family saloon, which will make its first appearance at the Paris motorshow on the 2nd October.\nThe Cruze is the first in a long line of new Chevrolets that will include the Volt electric car, the new Camaro and a small city car based on the Beat concept. The Cruze will be built on Chevrolt's new Delta platform and will take the company in a new design direction with bolder styling cues.\nThe wrap-around headlights and new two-tier grille are key features of the car's design, and likely to continue across future models. Other important design cues include a crisp rising waistline, compact rear and sweeping front-wing lines that help to make this small saloon one of the best looking in its class.\nThe newcomer will rival the VW Jetta, Ford Focus and Honda Civic and at 4.6 metres, it's the longest sedan in its class.\nThe Cruze will go on sale worldwide in 2009. Three engines will be available at launch, producing between 110bhp and 148bhp.\nThe most popular engine choice is likely to be the 2.0 litre common rail turbo-diesel producing 148bhp, but there will also be 1.6 litre and 1.8 litre petrol engines, producing 110bhp and 138bhp.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1257172"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6638806462287903,"wiki_prob":0.3361193537712097,"text":"Class of Your Own announces school curriculum partnership with Bentley Systems\nThe Year in Infrastructure 2019 Conference – Class of Your Own, a UK-headquartered provider of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, math) curriculum and built environment-focused learning programs for secondary school students, has announced a partnership with leading global provider of software solutions for the design, construction, and operations of infrastructure, Bentley Systems. The new, future-focused global curriculum, Design Engineer Construct!® (DEC) for the World’s Infrastructure, has developed over several years through Bentley Institute’s support of Class of Your Own’s DEC programs and provides opportunities for students to gain hands-on knowledge and skills for careers in infrastructure professions.\nDEC is currently accredited and used in schools throughout the United Kingdom. The new program is already expanding into schools in Ireland, Lithuania, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates and offers technology education and project-based, real-world experiences through interaction with industry professionals. The DEC curriculum for students ages 11 to 18 years is offered at intermediate levels to encourage and excite learners and is enhanced by Bentley’s engineering design and 3D modeling technologies including ContextCapture, OpenBuildings, OpenRail, and OpenRoads ConceptStation. The more advanced Future Infrastructure qualification framework, for students ages sixteen and older, including foundation level study at colleges and universities, focuses on rail, highway, port, and hyperloop projects.\nAlison Watson, founder and chief executive of Class of Your Own, said, “Our vision is to inspire and engage young people and their teachers to reach their full potential through world class education. So, we’re very excited to partner with Bentley to offer the new curriculum, which applies industry knowledge and skills gained in the existing DEC program to the most exciting infrastructure projects around the world. Our students are provided with face-to-face support from world-class sector professionals thanks to industry partners who truly understand what DEC can do. Expanding the program outside the UK means we can offer genuine, meaningful opportunities for students and teachers around the world. We’re helping the surveyors, technologists, engineers, architects, and managers of future infrastructure!”\nEarlier in 2019, Bentley Institute and Class of Your Own hosted the first ever Future Infrastructure Challenge: DEC Hyperloop challenge in London. The event included students from four schools in the UK whose assignment was to conceptualize a design of a hyperloop transport system and stations for their own towns, and then to adapt to Singapore. Students from Drummond Community High School from Edinburgh, Scotland won the challenge, and were awarded a complimentary trip from Bentley to attend its Year in Infrastructure Conference, held October 21 through 24 in Singapore.\nDavid Robertson, director of digital advancement research for Bentley Systems, said, “Our partnership with Class of Your Own demonstrates the two organizations’ shared goal of providing students with valuable learning experiences that apply to real-world infrastructure professions and encourage students to pursue those professions. Bentley is very excited to participate in this important learning initiative to advance career opportunities for students around the world.”\nTotal Views: 881 admin Nov 19, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line938985"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9296241402626038,"wiki_prob":0.9296241402626038,"text":"do Chearta\nTreoracha agus Uirlisí\nár gCuid Oibre\nPreaseisiúintí\nDeiseanna Fostaíochta\nHome / Press Releases / Human Rights and Equality Commission Welcomes Clarity Set Out in Significant Right to Fair Trial Case\nHuman Rights and Equality Commission Welcomes Clarity Set Out in Significant Right to Fair Trial Case\nCommission Exercised Amicus Curiae Role in Supreme Court Case Holding EU-Wide Significance on European Arrest Warrants\nThe Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (the ‘Commission’) has welcomed today’s Supreme Court judgment in an internationally significant case relating to the European Arrest Warrants system and the right to a fair trial.\nIn its judgment in Artur Celmer v. Minister for Justice and Equality the Supreme Court held that independence of the judiciary forms part of the essence of the fundamental right to a fair trial. The Court further set out that systemic deficiencies in a particular system, where far reaching, could by themselves amount to a sufficient breach of the essence of the right to a fair trial.\nHowever in Mr. Celmer’s case, while the systemic changes in Poland were viewed as serious and grave, they could not themselves be sufficient to cross the threshold of a real risk of breaching his right to a fair trial.\nIn its ruling the Supreme Court clarified that the recent LM judgment of the Court of the Justice of the EU sets out the relevant tests to be applied in these kinds of extradition cases.\nThe case was appealed directly from the High Court to the Supreme Court due to its significant public importance. It centres on the requested extradition of Mr. Artur Celmer, a Polish national, to Poland under the European Arrest Warrant system, where concerns have been raised by Mr. Celmer over the impact of recent legislative changes in Poland on the independence of the judiciary, the courts and the Public Prosecutor. These changes, according to Mr. Celmer, undermined the possibility of him receiving a fair trial.\nIn November 2018, the High Court (Ms. Justice Donnelly) found that Mr. Celmer’s concerns did not amount to a real risk of a flagrant denial of his right to a fair trial in Poland and, on that basis ordered Mr. Celmer’s surrender on each of three European Arrest Warrants. That decision was suspended however pending this appeal to the Supreme Court and so Mr. Celmer had remained in custody in Ireland.\nIn its role as amicus curiae (friend of the court), the Commission has contributed its expertise on the human rights and equality issues under consideration, particularly the right to a fair trial from an EU law perspective.\nMr. Justice O’Donnell in ruling, stated today; “ …a breach of judicial independence is a breach of the essence of the right to a fair trial.”\nHe went on further to say “Again while the individual features of this case are undoubtedly troubling, I agree with the trial judge that, in light of the evidence, they do not bring the case over the threshold.”\nMr. Justice McKechnie made separate additional observations, setting out that national courts play a crucial role in the operation of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system – “…they are mandated to uphold the integrity of fundamental rights where without any countervailing justification, these are under challenge if not attack.”\nDirector of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Laurence Bond stated:\n“The European Arrest Warrant has become a commonly used mechanism across the EU. The Commission welcomes the clarity set out in today’s Supreme Court’s ruling on the legal test to be applied in the context of extradition proceedings between EU Member States where general and systemic human rights issues arise”\n“We expect that this Irish ruling will be studied across Europe in relation to EU extradition law and practice.”\nENDS/\nBrian Dawson, IHREC Communications Manager,\n01 8589601 / 087 0697095\nbdawson@ihrec.ie\nFollow us on twitter @_IHREC\nThe Commission’s written submissions to the Supreme Court are available at the following link:\nhttps://www.ihrec.ie/documents/celmer-vs-minister-for-justice-and-equality-ihrec-legal-submissions-of-the-amicus-curiae/\nThe amicus curiae function of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission.\nThe Commission’s functions under the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 include that of applying for liberty to appear as an amicus curiae (‘friend of the court’) before the superior courts in proceedings that involve, or are concerned with, the human rights or equality rights of any person.\nSection 10 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act sets out the functions of the Commission and Section 10(2)(e) provides that the IHREC shall have a function:\n“to apply to the High Court or the Supreme Court for liberty to appear before the High Court or the Supreme Court, as the case may be, as amicus curiae in proceedings before that Court that involve or are concerned with the human rights or equality rights of any person and to appear as such an amicus curiae on foot of such liberty being granted (which liberty each of the said courts is hereby empowered to grant in its absolute discretion).”\nThe Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission is an independent public body, appointed by the President and directly accountable to the Oireachtas. The Commission has a statutory remit set out under the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act (2014) to protect and promote human rights and equality in Ireland, and build a culture of respect for human rights, equality and intercultural understanding in the State.\nThe Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission is Ireland’s national human rights institution and is recognised as such by the United Nations. The Commission is also Ireland’s national equality body for the purpose of a range of EU anti-discrimination measures.\n16-22 Sráid na Faiche\nBáile Átha Cliath 7\nCliceáil anseo le haghaidh mapa\nOifigeach Rochtana\nAthúsáid Faisnéise na hEarnála Poibí\nScéim Teanga 2018 – 2021 / Language Scheme 2018 – 2021\nCé muid féin","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1471043"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5077263712882996,"wiki_prob":0.5077263712882996,"text":"Review: It was 50 years ago today — The Beatles U.S. reissues on CD Special\nBy Mindy Peterman Jan 29, 2014 in Entertainment\nFifty years have passed since The Beatles invaded U.S. shores and changed the world. To celebrate, Capitol Records has released versions of the Fab Four's albums which were never before issued on CD.\nHow many times have you repurchased your Beatles albums? If you grew up in the 60s, you might have had the records either given to you by music savvy relatives or bought with your allowance money. Maybe you replaced those in the 70s and 80s with more pristine copies of the vinyl. Later, with the advent of CDs, you probably shelled out more bucks for the collection on compact disc. But those CDs were not the U.S. versions of the albums. They were the British versions, with different track listings. The early to mid-period British Parlophone albums contained 14 tracks to the U.S. Capitol’s 12 (this was Capitol being cautious of losing fidelity due to “groove cramming”).\nSo if you were a purist or just longed for the albums the way you remembered them, you might have been disappointed.\nIn 2004 and 2006, respectively, Capitol attempted to right this wrong by issuing The Capitol Years Volume 1 and Volume 2. These sets contained for the first time on CD, in mono and stereo, eight of the U.S. releases: Meet the Beatles, The Beatles Second Album, Something New, Beatles ’65, The Early Beatles, Beatles VI, Help! The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, and Rubber Soul. Nice try, Capitol, but, again, the purist had reason to be miffed. Missing were A Hard Day’s Night Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, The Beatles Story, Yesterday and Today, Revolver, and Hey Jude.\nNow, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of The Beatles invading America (as well as their subsequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show), Capitol Records (actually, it's Universal Records now) has rectified the situation, releasing The U.S. Albums, a 13-CD box set of the U.S. releases. Each CD contains the album in mono and stereo (except for The Beatles Story and Hey Jude, which are stereo only). The set also contains the original Capitol Records inner sleeves, original album art and Obi strips on each release (one more nice touch is the infamous \"dead babies\" photo placed underneath the ‘trunk’ photo on Yesterday and Today). The collection contains a 64-page booklet with Beatles photos and promotional art of the era, as well as a new essay by American author and television executive Bill Flanagan. The whole shebang is also available on iTunes.\nIf you can’t see yourself repurchasing the collection yet again, never fear. For a limited time, each title will be made available separately, so you’ll be able to economize and buy only the titles that have never been available on CD before. Either way, it's a grand way to celebrate the Fab Four's contribution to art, music and life.\nMore about Beatles, Compact disc, Capitol, box set, reissues\nBeatles Compact disc Capitol box set reissues John lennon Paul mccartney Ringo starr","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line296301"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7227494716644287,"wiki_prob":0.2772505283355713,"text":"THIS DOCUMENT SETS OUT HOW INFORMATION PROVIDED BY USERS OF THIS WEBSITE, www.ilovegospelevents.com, WILL BE PROTECTED AND USED BY LIFE AND SUCCESS MEDIA LTD, THE OWNER AND OPERATOR OF THIS WEBSITE. THIS DOCUMENT TOGETHER WITH THE EVENT PROMOTER TERMS AND CONDITIONS, THE GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS REFERRED TO IN ANY OF THE FORGOING DOCUMENTS SETS OUT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS THAT GOVERN USE OF THIS WEBSITE BY ANY PERSON WHO VISITS OR USES IT.\nOn 25th May 2018, a new data privacy law known as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (or the “GDPR”) becomes effective. The following privacy policy details how we process your personal data.\n1.1 This website is owned and operated by Life and Success Media Ltd trading as www.ilovegospelevents.com (the “Site”), a company registered in England and Wales and whose registered address and registration number is as follows: 71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ; 08469252 (“LSM”). The Site provides box office and social networking services (collectively the “LSM Service”).\n1.2 Any person who visits or uses the Site agrees to be bound to this Privacy Policy (as amended from time to time). This Privacy Policy applies to all “personal data” as defined in the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Data Controller for the purpose of the same legislation shall be LSM.\n1.3 This Privacy Policy only applies to information collected by LSM on the Site.\n1.4 Any transmission of information to the Site is at the risk of the person doing so. Although LSM shall endeavour to protect information provided by users, it cannot guarantee that the information supplied will be protected against unauthorised access.\n1.5 From time to time, LSM may contain links to other websites and services that are not owned or controlled by LSM. In these circumstances, LSM shall not be responsible for the privacy practices of those websites.\n1.6 Any capitalised words used but not defined in this Privacy Policy shall have the same meaning as defined in either the Event Promoter Terms and Conditions or the General Terms and Conditions.\n2.1 In order to use the LSM Service, a person may be required to provide certain information including but not limited to information which may be used to identify that person such as names, telephone numbers, residential/postal addresses and email addresses as well as financial information. This information may be provided to LSM and our Event Promoters using the platform to run an event.\n2.2 In addition to the above, certain information is automatically transferred to the Site when the Site is used or visited. This includes but is not limited to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, cookies and other connection information.\n3.1 All information collected is used to improve and maintain the LSM Service. Some of examples include but are not limited to:\n3.1.1 Using personally identifiable information (Personal Information) in order to prevent abuse of the Site;\n3.1.2 Using financial information (Financial Information) to process orders and detect and prevent fraud;\n3.1.3 Providing users with information regarding updates, promotions and recommendations;\n3.1.4 Using automatic information to maintain and improve the Site and notifying users of any changes to the Site.\n3.2 None of the information on the Site collected is sold to third parties. 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The encryption process takes the characters entered on the Site and converts them into bits of code that are then securely transmitted over the Internet. This is done using 128-bit Secure Socket Layer certificates. As a result, no cardholder information is passed unencrypted. Messages sent to the LSM servers are signed using MD5 hashing to further protect the information.\niLOVEGOSPELEVENTS IS A SUBSIDIARY OF:\nLIFE AND SUCCESS MEDIA\n71-75 Shelton Street, London WC2H 9JQ\nCONTACT DETAILS: Tel: 020 7183 0175\n© 2019 LS MEDIA | All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line783486"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.699070930480957,"wiki_prob":0.30092906951904297,"text":"ABET is the global accreditor of approximately 3,600 technical programs at over 700 colleges and universities in 29 countries. Through the efforts of more than 2,200 experts from industry, academia, and government, we accredit programs in the disciplines of applied science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. Our standards and the quality we guarantee inspire confidence in those who aim to build a better world—one that is safer, more efficient, comfortable and sustainable.\nAnalog Devices designs and manufactures semiconductor products and solutions. We enable students and researchers to interpret the world around us by intelligently bridging the physical and digital with unmatched technologies that sense, measure and connect. Visit http://www.analog.com. To contact us, please call 781-329-4700.\nARM® technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Every day more than 45 million ARM-based chips are shipped by our partners into products that enhance the human experience; connecting people, improving lives and making the impossible possible.\nASCE is the leading publisher of civil engineering information—producing more than 50,000 pages of technical and professional content yearly. The ASCE Library (ascelibrary.org) allows researchers and practitioners a single destination for all digital ASCE content including 35 peer-reviewed journals, 370 conference proceedings, and 330 E-books. Visit http://www.asce.org. To contact us, please call 1-800-548-2723.\nFounded in 1880, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME, conducts one of the world's largest technical publishing operations. Offering print and/or online access to: NEW: Standards for academic institutions. Transaction Journals from 1960 - present. Conference Proceedings from 2000 - present. ASME Press eBooks, selected from 1993 - present. Visit http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/; http://asmestandardscollection.org/Login.aspx. Phone number for organization- Warren Adams, Manager of Third Party Sales (973) 244-2223.\nBegell House, Inc. is an academic STEM publisher and producer of all content in the Begell Digital Portal. The Portal is a comprehensive online multimedia platform with full-text journals, databases, references, eBooks, proceedings, and multimedia products, providing the latest research and information across a broad spectrum of engineering and biomedical sciences.\nCRC Press is a premier global publisher of science, technology, and medical resources. We offer unique, trusted content by expert authors, spreading knowledge and promoting discovery worldwide. We aim to broaden thinking and advance understanding in the sciences, providing researchers, academics, professionals, and students with the tools they need to share ideas and realize their potential. Visit http://www.crcpress.com. To contact us, please call 561-994-0555.\nFor more than 30 years, DASSAULT SYSTEMES has provided the software solutions which helped industry pioneers to engineer the products that make them successful. Using the very same technologies in education, thousands of universities and high schools across the planet keep pushing the boundaries with our help. After 10 years of collaboration with ASEE we feature this year the use of our 3DEXPERIENCE platform in support of project-based learning and to address the educational need of manufacturing renaissance, from additive manufacturing to the industrial internet of things and much more. Visit http://www.crcpress.com. To contact us, please call 561-994-0555.\nEDIBON designs and manufactures sophisticated Technical Teaching Units for Universities, Technical/Vocational Schools, Secondary Education and Industrial Training Centers. Exclusive Advanced SCADA and PID control using Labview. +3000 units in fields ranging: Physics, Electronics, Mechanics, Fluid Mechanics, Aerodynamics, HVAC, Process Control, Chemical Eng., Mechanical Eng., Energy (Smart Grid), Food & Water Tech, Environmental and Biomedical Engineering.\nElsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that help you make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries in science, health, and technology. We provide web-based, digital solutions — among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Evolve, Knovel, Reaxys and ClinicalKey — and publish over 2,500 journals and more than 33,000 book titles.\nThe 47th Annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference is a major international conference focusing on educational innovations and research in engineering and computing education. It is an ideal forum for sharing ideas and learning about developments in engineering education. This year's theme will be ‘Educating Our Future, Honoring Our History.’ The conference will be on October 18-21 in Indianapolis, Indiana.\nHampden Engineering is the world leader in education training devices for Electrical, Chemical, Mechanical, Industrial, Environmental, Agricultural and Engineering Sciences. We offer a complete line of computer-data-logging products using the latest technology encompassing National Instruments®/LabVIEW® as well as MatLab®. Please stop by our booth and pick up our latest literature. Visit www.hampden.com. To contact us, please call 1-800-253-2133.\nBooth: 447, 449\nHysitron, the world leader in nanomechanical test instruments, is pleased to introduce the NanoGuru Nanomechanical Education System. The NanoGuru was specifically developed to provide a vehicle for teaching undergraduate students engineering concepts at the nanoscale. This turnkey, curriculum-supported system allows students to correlate macro/micro level mechanical properties with nanoscale structure.\nICE Publishing, established in 1836, is a leading provider of information for academics, researchers and practitioners worldwide in the fields of civil engineering, construction and materials science. To learn about our journal, eBook and archive collections, please visit us at Stand 1146 or view our integrated content platform at www.icevirtuallibrary.com.\nThe IEEE Xplore® Digital Library is your gateway to trusted research— journals, conferences, standards, ebooks, analytics solutions and educational courses—with over 4 million articles to help you fuel imagination, build from previous research, and inspire new ideas.\nIEEE Xplore opens a world of knowledge from many industries to enable you to improve or discover the next breakthrough. With powerful search tools to help you find only the most relevant research, IEEE Xplore delivers the information your company needs.\nFor more information on how to gain access for your organization, please visit innovate.ieee.org or email ieeexplore@ieee.org.\nKeysight is committed to meaningful collaboration with researchers, educators, and students. In the research lab, our ongoing pursuit of innovation continues to enable new breakthroughs in science and technology. In classrooms and teaching labs, our software and instruments offer students experience with leading-edge tools used in industry. Connect with Keysight and discover new ways to advance in the lab and the classroom. To contact us, please call +1-800-829-4444.\nMATLAB and Simulink are fundamental computational tools used at more than 5,000 educational institutions worldwide. MATLAB is one of the top 10 most popular programming languages and is used for teaching, research, and project-based learning. Add MATLAB and Simulink to the classroom to inspire critical thinking and innovation as well as prepare students for prominent careers in industry, where the tools are the de facto standard for R&D. Learn about campus-wide licensing at www.mathworks.com/matlab-campus.\nMicrochip Technology Inc. is a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions, providing low-risk product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at http://www.microchip.com.\nMinitab® is the leading software for statistics education, used at more than 4,000 colleges and universities worldwide. Its user-friendly design helps students learn statistical concepts. Learning with Minitab also helps prepare students for jobs with thousands of distinguished companies that use Minitab. Get the free trial version at www.minitab.com/academic.\nNI provides comprehensive academic solutions that deliver engaging, real-world learning experiences to prepare students to “do engineering” in the classroom and in professional practice. Visit us in booth #415 to explore the latest teaching and research tools for circuits, measurements, controls, mechatronics, wireless communications, and student design.\nTop-notch teaching. Groundbreaking research. A welcoming, state of-the-art learning environment. Engineering at NC State University is a seamless integration of education and discovery. Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, NC State University’s College of Engineering is a leading research, teaching and outreach engineering and computer science college offering 18 bachelor’s, 21 master’s and 13 doctoral degree programs. Annual enrollment exceeds 10,000 students, with more than 6,000 undergraduates and more than 3,000 graduate students. The College also offers 16 online engineering master’s degrees.\nNCEES is a national nonprofit organization that develops, scores, and administers the FE and PE exams that are used for engineering licensure throughout the United States. As the only nationally normed exam that addresses specific engineering topics, the FE is also a valuable outcomes assessment tool for engineering educators. Visit ncees.org/educators to learn how to use the report to assess your program. To contact us, please call 800-250-3196.\nThe National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 \"to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…\" With an annual budget of $7.2 billion we are the funding source for many STEM fields. To contact us, please call 703-292-7051.\nThe National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Centers of Excellence ensures that our future technical workforce receives the education and tools necessary to excel professionally while meeting the needs of our country’s emerging high-tech industries. NSF-ATE Centers partner with industry for the next American workforce. Please visit www.atecenters.org.\nPASCO technologies transform science education with award-winning, wireless probeware, software, and curriculum for physics, chemistry, biology, earth and environmental sciences, and programing and robotics. Integrating the latest standards-based content with easy-to-use data collection and analysis software, PASCO solutions are cost effective and work on all your devices. Please visit www.pasco.com.\nPitsco is your STEM resource. Every product we engineer, every activity we write, every curriculum we develop, and every solution we design is provided for the purpose of helping students around the world use their hands to engage their minds to learn and succeed – in the classroom and in life! Please visit www.pitsco.com. To contact us, please call 800-358-4983.\nProject Management Institute is the world's leading not-for-profit professional membership association for the project, program and portfolio management profession. Founded in 1969, PMI delivers value for more than 2.9 million professionals working in nearly every country in the world through global advocacy, collaboration, education and research. Please visit www.pmi.org. To contact us, please call 610-356-4600.\nWe are part of the internationally-respected Purdue University system and the fifth-largest public university in the state of Indiana. Our technology programs are among the largest in the country, and have repeatedly earned recognition as “best university for obtaining a technology degree” in Northwest Indiana. Please visit www.pnw.edu/technology. To contact us, please call 219-989-8324 or email at tech@pnw.edu.\nQuanser is a leading developer of experiments and courseware for teaching control systems design, hands-on. Their open-architecture solutions are used worldwide by thousands of universities, colleges, research laboratories and commercial organizations. Coupled with industry-relevant courseware, Quanser’s laboratory equipment captivates bright minds and motivates them to succeed with industry-ready skills. Please visit www.quanser.com. To contact us, please call +1-(905)-940-3575.\nOur touchscreen apps help students improve their freehand sketching and spatial visualization abilities. Students draw objects in various rotations, views, and assemblies. Students receive immediate feedback and incentive for persistence. Now available on iPads, Android, Windows, Chromebooks, and smartphones. Come to our booth to win prizes using your spatial skills. Please visit www.spatialvis.education. To contact us, please call (858)-255-4624.\nFrom affordable, easy-to-use desktop 3D printers, to 3D production systems and digital part services, Stratasys enables students to bring 3D digital design ideas to life. As your partner in education, Stratasys also supports instructors with 3D printing curriculum and offers student scholarships in its annual Extreme Redesign contest. Please visit www.stratasys.com/edu. To contact us, please call 1-800-801-6491.\nEstablished in 1958, TecQuipment designs, develops and manufactures a comprehensive range of products for engineering education. We are a leading provider of technical teaching equipment for universities, colleges, schools and training centres worldwide. Suppling over 400 products spanning international curricula, the range is subdivided into categories supporting key engineering disciplines:\nPlease visit www.tecquipment.com.\nEngineering has been a part of Texas A&M University since its inception in 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. Today, the College of Engineering is the largest college on the Texas A&M campus with more than 350 faculty members and more than 15,000 engineering students in our 14 departments. Our college is consistently ranked among the nation's top public programs. We are also among the top universities in the number of National Merit Scholars, nationally recognized faculty and funded research. Please visit http://engineering.tamu.edu.\nThe Texas Instruments University Program is dedicated to supporting engineering educators, researchers and students worldwide. Since 1982, the program has facilitated the inclusion of TI analog and embedded processing technology in the learning experience for engineering students, including classrooms; teaching and research labs; textbooks; design projects and contests; and course curricula. By doing this, TI aims to bridge the gap between the worlds of business and academia, bringing real world engineering concepts to life for thousands of students every year. Imagine the impact. Visit university.TI.com and change the world with us. Please visit university.TI.com.\nWolfram has been defining the computational future for three decades. As the creators of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language, we are the leader in developing technology and tools that inject sophisticated computation, knowledge, and interactivity into everything. Learn more at www.wolfram.com.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1537835"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6458483338356018,"wiki_prob":0.3541516661643982,"text":"Finding new markets will ease impact of U.S. protectionism\nBy Roslyn Kunin on December 5, 2016 Comments Off on Finding new markets will ease impact of U.S. protectionism\nAs Canada integrates more and more into the global economy, it will matter to us less and less that the United States withdraws\nVANCOUVER, B.C. Dec. 5, 2016/ Troy Media/ – One of the reasons the new president-elect in the United States is generating so much nervousness around the globe is the fear that he is not connected to the realities of how the global economic system works.\nFor example, there is no such thing as a truly American car. Sure, there are cars with traditional U.S. names, but are they American in the sense of having been designed and manufactured in the U.S.?\nTake Buick, a typical U.S. car made by General Motors. The largest concentration of Buicks that I have ever seen has been in the cities of China. These cars may have some U.S. components but could well have parts from almost anywhere else in the world. They probably contain some U.S. design elements or they may have been engineered in whole or in part in India. They were not shipped across the Pacific but put together in China where they have an excellent market. How American are they?\nBack in the 1950s, American cars were made and largely sold in North America. German cars were made in Germany and Japanese cars were being manufactured in Japan. Now any car, regardless of the name on the grille, can be made anywhere out of parts from anywhere and sold anywhere. What is true of cars is increasingly true of just about all manufacturing.\nThe British are discovering this in the Brexit era. Their currency, the pound, has dropped. In the old world, this would have made their exports cheaper in the rest of the world and boosted their trade. In today’s connected world, it has stymied much manufacturing because of dependence on imported components which are now more expensive to buy with the lower pound.\nIn the last century, the U.S. was largely an independent economy, 90 per cent self-sufficient and only 10 per cent involving foreign trade. Now the U.S. is much more tied into the rest of the world. Trump has been advocating serious protectionist measures, like large tariffs on Chinese imports and destroying or drastically changing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Putting up such barriers to trade, far from helping the U.S. economy, is going to hobble it.\nIt is my hope that the realities of governance will intervene. It could be devastating for Canada should NAFTA be eliminated. In Canada, we know we are a trading nation. Roughly 40 per cent of our economy is in the foreign sector of imports and exports and roughly 80 per cent of that trade is with the United States. British Columbia’s trade is somewhat more diverse, but even B.C. relies on the U.S. for half its trade.\nMore to the story: [popup url=”https://www.troymedia.com/2016/11/15/trump-may-best-thing-happen-canada/” height=”1000″ width=”1200″ scrollbars=”1″]Trump’s isolationism may spur Canadians to pull together[/popup] by Robert McGarvey\nUnfortunately, Canada does not have much influence on U.S. policies. Our prime minister has already said that he is amenable to reopening NAFTA, a statement which does not strengthen his bargaining position. But there are measures Canada can take to protect us from being blown over by U.S. protectionism. We can diversify our customer base. No longer should we have almost all our trading eggs in one basket.\nCanada has already made one successful move in this direction with CETA, the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Europe and Canada. Since major, multinational trade agreements involving the U.S. and both Atlantic and Pacific nations are unlikely to proceed, Canada is looking for separate trade agreements with counties like China and Japan. These will expand our markets not only for our resources, but also for high level manufactured goods and services. Demand for these could well grow as the U.S. becomes more difficult to do business with. One such high level service export is international education, which is beginning to see more interest.\nAs any businessperson knows, diversifying your customer base works. No longer is the whole enterprise put at risk should your main client disappear. After many decades with only one major customer, the lumber industry in British Columbia is beginning to diversify.\nSince the great recession, the wood sector in B.C. has been selling about half its product in Asia and other non-U.S. markets. Now, the old softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. is unlikely to be renewed. This hurts, but it is not the lethal blow it would have been in the past. As Canada integrates more and more into the global economy, it will matter to us less and less that the United States withdraws.\nTroy Media columnist Roslyn Kunin is a consulting economist and speaker. Roslyn is included in Troy Media’s Unlimited Access subscription plan.\nLooking for content for your publication or website?\n[popup url=”http://marketplace.troymedia.com/join-us/” height=”1000″ width=”1000″ scrollbars=”1″]Become a Troy Media subscriber[/popup].\nThe views, opinions and positions expressed by all Troy Media columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Troy Media.\n[popup url=”https://www.troymedia.com/submit-your-letter-to-the-editor/” height=”1000″ width=”1000″ scrollbars=”1″]Submit a letter to the editor[/popup]\nTroy Media Marketplace © 2016 – All Rights Reserved\nTrusted editorial content provider to media outlets across Canada\nCanadian economy, CETA, International relations, Protectionism, Trade, USA\nFinding new markets will ease impact of U.S. protectionism added by Roslyn Kunin on December 5, 2016\nView all posts by Roslyn Kunin →\nNAFTA faces a rough road in wake of U.S. election MORGAN: Canadian leaders need to be prepared to defend NAFTA and its economic value whoever wins the U.S....\nFor Canada, ratifying CETA was the easy part CHARLEBOIS: The influx of quality, affordable dairy products will force Canada’s dairy industry to redefine itself within a...\nCanada looks to Europe for a winning trade recipe CHARLEBOIS: In an increasingly protectionist world, finding trade partners for agricultural products is difficult, although the benefit can...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1110728"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7063856720924377,"wiki_prob":0.29361432790756226,"text":"CHAPTER 22. ADJECTIVES USED IN COMPARISONS: PART 1\nAs well as being used to describe persons and things, adjectives which refer to qualities can also be used to compare two or more different persons or things. For instance, in the following sentences, the adjectives used in comparisons are underlined.\ne.g. He is as tall as his brother.\nShe is older than her sister.\nThey are the youngest students in the class.\n1. Positive forms of adjectives preceded and followed by As\nThe unaltered form of an adjective is often referred to as the positive form of the adjective. In the preceding chapter, only the positive form of adjectives was used.\nThe positive forms of adjectives referring to qualities can be used in making certain types of comparisons. For example, in the following sentences, the positive forms of the adjectives proud and intelligent are combined with the word as in order to make comparisons.\ne.g. She is as proud as a peacock.\nThey are as intelligent as I am.\nWhen used in making comparisons, the positive form of an adjective is usually employed as a predicate adjective, preceded and followed by the word as. This construction is summarized below, followed by examples.\nnoun, pronoun or to be positive noun, pronoun or\nother expression + or other + as + form of + as + other expression\nrepresenting 1st linking adjective representing 2nd\nthing being compared verb thing being compared\nSwans are as white as snow.\nTom is as tall as his father.\nThis type of construction can be used to indicate that the things being compared are equal in some respect. For instance, the first example indicates that swans and snow are equally white. The second example indicates that Tom and his father are equally tall.\nThe sentence She is as proud as a peacock gives an example of a traditional English saying which compares a person having a certain quality to an animal which is noted for possessing that quality. In the following sentences, the traditional expressions are underlined.\ne.g. He is as clever as a monkey.\nShe is as wise as an owl.\nMy sister looks as pretty as a princess.\nThe use of this construction with as to compare two different types of thing, such as a person and an animal, results in a type of comparison referred to as a simile.\nSee Exercise 1.\nThe meaning of an expression using as, followed by an adjective, followed by as can be qualified by adverbs such as not, almost, twice, three times, half, one-third and so on. The adverbs in the following sentences are underlined.\ne.g. He is not as hard-working as his brother.\nShe is almost as tall as he is.\nHer sister is twice as old as I am.\nA millimeter is one-tenth as long as a centimeter.\nAs shown below, in such a construction, the adverb is placed before the first occurrence of the word as.\nnoun, pronoun or noun, pronoun or\nother expression to be positive other expression\nrepresenting + or other + adverb + as + form of + as + representing\n1st thing linking adjective 2nd thing\nbeing compared verb being compared\nHe is nearly as clever as his uncle.\nThe trees are not as tall as the house.\na. The positive form combined with a noun\nThe construction as, followed by an adjective, followed by as can also be combined with a noun, as shown in the following examples.\ne.g. Gail is as strong a swimmer as Beth.\nMabel is as clever an administrator as Robin.\nThe girls are as good students as the boys.\nIn the first example, Gail is being compared as a swimmer to Beth. In the second example, Mabel is being compared as an administrator to Robin. In the third example, the girls are being compared as students to the boys.\nAs illustrated in these examples, if the noun following the adjective is a singular countable noun, it must be separated from the adjective by the indefinite article a or an. The position of a or an is indicated in the summary below.\npositive a or\nas + form of + an + noun + as\nHe is as fine a man as his father.\nShe is as good an instructor as her colleague.\nIn the case of plural nouns, no article is required.\ne.g. The boys are as reliable workers as one can find.\nThey are as powerful athletes as their competitors.\nb. The use of ellipsis\nThe construction as followed by an adjective, followed by as, can also be combined with longer phrases and clauses, as illustrated in the following examples.\ne.g. New York is as distant from San Francisco as Boston is from London.\nMusic is as important to Cora as literature is to her brother.\nIn the first example, the distance of New York from San Francisco is being compared to the distance of Boston from London. In the second example, the importance of music to Cora is being compared to the importance of literature to her brother.\nThe preceding examples illustrate the use of ellipsis. The sentences could also be written as follows. The words which would usually be omitted are enclosed in square brackets.\ne.g. New York is as distant from San Francisco as Boston is [distant] from London.\nMusic is as important to Cora as literature is [important] to her brother.\nIn such sentences, the adjective in the second part of the sentence is usually omitted, in order to make the sentence less awkward.\nEllipsis is also commonly used following a noun representing the second thing being compared. For instance, in the following sentences, the final verbs are omitted.\nI am as good a swimmer as her sisters.\nThese sentences could also be written:\ne.g. He is as tall as his brother is.\nI am as good a swimmer as her sisters are.\nIn informal English, the final verb is usually not omitted following a personal pronoun representing the second thing being compared.\ne.g. I am as tall as he is.\nShe is as good a swimmer as I am.\nHowever, in formal English, the final verb following a personal pronoun representing the second thing being compared is sometimes omitted.\ne.g. I am as tall as he.\nShe is as good a swimmer as I.\nc. The use of the subjective case\nAs shown above, when a personal pronoun is used in a comparison to represent the second thing being compared, the subjective case of the pronoun should be used. The reason for this is that the pronoun is the subject of a verb, even when the verb is omitted by means of ellipsis.\nIn informal English, the objective case of such personal pronouns is sometimes used.\ne.g. I am as tall as him.\nShe is as good as swimmer as me.\nHowever, this use of the objective case is considered to be grammatically incorrect.\n2. Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives which use endings\nAs pointed out in the discussion on the possessive forms of nouns, some elements of English grammar are derived from Teutonic languages, such as German, while other elements are derived from Romance languages, particularly French.\nMany English adjectives follow the model of French adjectives. These adjectives are combined with adverbs in order to express different types of comparison. In the following examples, the adjectives careful and excitable are combined with the adverbs more and most.\ne.g. She is more careful than I am.\nHe is the most excitable boy in the class.\nHowever, in general, the shortest and most commonly used English adjectives follow the model of languages such as German. These adjectives use endings in order to express different types of comparison.\ne.g. She is taller than I am.\nHe is the oldest boy in the class.\nThe adjectives which use endings in order to express different types of comparison include most one-syllable adjectives, and two-syllable adjectives ending in y. For example:\nIn the above examples, brave and tall are one-syllable adjectives, while easy and happy are two-syllable adjectives ending in y.\nA few other two-syllable adjectives are also sometimes used with endings. For example:\nIt should be noted that one-syllable past participles used as adjectives are usually not used with endings.\na. Comparative forms of adjectives which use endings\nThe comparative form of an adjective is most often used to compare things which differ in some respect. In the following examples, the comparative forms of adjectives are underlined.\ne.g. Louis is younger than Mark.\nYou are a better actor than he is.\nThe comparative form of adjectives which use endings is formed with the ending er. As illustrated below, the spelling rules which apply when adding the ending er to an adjective are the same as those which apply when adding the ending ed to a verb.\ni. Spelling Rules\nIn most cases, the ending er is simply added to the positive form of the adjective. For example:\nPositive Form Comparative Form\nfast faster\nstrong stronger\ntall taller\nyoung younger\nHowever, when an adjective ends in a silent e, the silent e is dropped before the ending er is added. For example:\nbrave braver\nclose closer\nlate later\nWhen an adjective ends in y preceded by a consonant, the y is changed to i before the ending er is added. For example:\ndry drier\nearly earlier\neasy easier\nWhen an adjective ends in a single consonant other than w, x or y, following a single stressed vowel, the final consonant is doubled before the ending er is added. For example:\nbig bigger\nhot hotter\nsad sadder\nWhen an adjective ends in w, x or y, following a single stressed vowel, the final consonant is not doubled before the ending er is added. For example:\nslow slower\nlax laxer\ngrey greyer\nIt should be kept in mind that when an adjective ends in a single consonant following two vowels, the final consonant is not doubled before the ending er is added. For example:\nloud louder\nneat neater\nsoon sooner\nii. Irregular adjectives\nA few of the adjectives which are used with endings have irregular comparative forms. The comparative forms of the irregular English adjectives are as follows.\nbad worse\nfar farther or further\ngood better\nAs shown above, the adjective far has two comparative forms. The distinction is sometimes made that farther is used to refer to physical distances, while further is used to refer to figurative distances. For example:\nThe farther side of the river is more picturesque than this side.\nNothing could have been further from my mind.\nIt should be noted that the adjectives many and much both have the same comparative form, more.\niii. The comparative form followed by Than\nWhen used in comparisons, the comparative forms of adjectives are usually followed by the word than. For instance, the way in which two things differ in some respect can be expressed by using the comparative form of an adjective as a predicate adjective followed by than.\ne.g. Paul is wiser than Greg.\nThe tree is taller than the house.\nThe first sentence indicates that Paul possesses greater wisdom than Greg. The second sentence indicates that the tree possesses greater height than the house.\nThis type of construction is summarized below, followed by examples.\nnoun, pronoun or to be comparative noun, pronoun or\nother expression + or other + form of + than + other expression\nJill is shorter than Maureen.\nIce feels colder than snow.\nDriving a car is easier than riding a horse.\niv. The comparative form followed by a noun, followed by Than\nThe comparative form of an adjective followed by than can also be combined with a noun.\ne.g. She is a better cook than her sister.\nHe has wiser ideas than they do.\nIt should be noted that in this type of construction, when a singular countable noun is used after the adjective, the comparative form of the adjective follows the indefinite article a or an. This position of a or an is indicated in the summary below.\na or comparative\nverb + an + form of + noun + than\nKate is a braver person than you are.\nSteel is a stronger material than iron.\nHe has a busier schedule than I do.\nIt should be noted that this position of a or an is in contrast to the word order found in the construction with as. For instance, in the following examples, the adjectives are underlined and the indefinite article a is printed in bold type.\ne.g. Kate is as brave a person as Robin.\nKate is a braver person than I am.\nIn the case of nouns which are uncountable or plural, no article is required. In the following examples, the uncountable or plural nouns preceding the word than are underlined.\ne.g. We produce sweeter honey than they do.\nThey are better actors than we are.\nShe has warmer gloves than her friend does.\nThe comparative form of an adjective followed by than can also be combined with longer phrases and clauses, as illustrated in the following examples.\ne.g. The air is fresher in the mountains than in the valleys.\nThe work seems easier once one becomes familiar with it than it does at first.\nv. The use of ellipsis\nIn comparisons using the comparative form of an adjective, the second half of the comparison is often omitted completely, when it is considered obvious what is meant. In each of the following examples, the part of the comparison which might normally be omitted is enclosed in square brackets.\ne.g. Things could get worse [than they are now].\nI do not want to walk much further [than this].\nWould you like more milk [than you already have]?\nvi. The use of the subjective case\nIn comparisons using than, personal pronouns following than should be in the subjective case.\ne.g. I am taller than he is.\nShe is a better student than I am.\nIn formal English, the final verb of such sentences is sometimes omitted.\ne.g. I am taller than he.\nShe is a better student than I.\nIn informal English, the objective case of a personal pronoun is often used after than.\ne.g. I am taller than him.\nShe is a better student than me.\nvii. Progressive comparisons\nAs well as being used in combination with than to compare objects which differ in some respect, the comparative form of an adjective can also be used to describe a characteristic which is becoming progressively more pronounced.\ne.g. The waves are growing rougher and rougher.\nThe sounds became fainter and fainter.\nThe first example indicates that the waves are growing progressively rougher than they were before. The second example indicates that the sounds became progressively fainter than they were before. The meaning expressed in these two examples can also be expressed as follows.\ne.g. The waves are growing increasingly rough.\nThe sounds became increasingly faint.\nIn this type of construction, the comparative form of an adjective is used as a predicate adjective, and is repeated. The two occurrences of the adjective are connected by the word and. This construction is summarized below, followed by examples.\nnoun, pronoun or linking verb, comparative comparative\nother expression + such as + form of + and + form of\nrepresenting thing to grow or adjective adjective\nbeing described to become\nThe noise is becoming louder and louder.\nThe lights grew brighter and brighter.\nIn informal English, the verb to get is often used in this type of construction.\ne.g. The noise is getting louder and louder.\nThe lights got brighter and brighter.\nSee Exercise 10.\nb. Superlative forms of adjectives which use endings\nThe superlative form of an adjective is used to describe something which possesses a characteristic in the greatest degree. In the following examples, the superlative forms of the adjectives are underlined.\ne.g. Louis is the youngest boy in our class.\nShe is the best actress I have ever seen.\nThe superlative form of adjectives which use endings is formed with the ending est. As illustrated in the following table, the spelling rules for adding the ending est to the positive form of an adjective are the same as those which apply when adding the ending er.\nIllustration of Spelling Rules for Adjectives which use Endings\nFinal Letter(s) of Positive Form of Adjective Positive Form Comparative Form Superlative Form\ntwo consonants (other than y) fast faster fastest\ny preceded by a consonant dry drier driest\nsilent e brave braver bravest\none consonant preceded by 2 vowels loud louder loudest\nw, x or y preceded by a vowel new newer newest\none consonant (other than w, x or y), fat fatter fattest\npreceded by a single stressed vowel\nAs can be seen from the following table, the superlative forms of the English irregular adjectives are closely related to the comparative forms of these adjectives.\nEnglish Irregular Adjectives\nPositive Form Comparative Form Superlative Form\nbad worse worst\nfar farther or further farthest or furthest\ngood better best\nlittle less least\nmany more most\nmuch more most\nIt should be noted that the adjective far has two superlative forms, farthest and furthest, corresponding to the two comparative forms farther and further; and also that the adjectives many and much share the same superlative form, most, corresponding to the comparative form more.\niii. The superlative form preceded by The\nThe superlative forms of adjectives are usually preceded by the, and followed by the nouns they modify. For example, in the following sentences, the superlative forms tallest and fastest are preceded by the and followed by the nouns boy and runner.\ne.g. Frank is the tallest boy in the class.\nNancy is the fastest runner on the team.\nThe first example indicates that no other boy in the class is as tall as Frank. The second example indicates that no one else on the team is as fast a runner as Nancy.\nsuperlative\nthe + form of + noun\nThis is the newest building in the city.\nThey are the best students I have met.\nIt should be noted that this use of the is consistent with the previously discussed use of the to refer to things which are considered unique in some way.\nSee Exercises 13 and 14.\nIt should also be noted that the superlative forms of adjectives can be preceded by possessive adjectives, instead of by the definite article the. In the following examples, the possessive adjectives are underlined.\ne.g. My worst suspicions were aroused.\nHe promised to give it his closest attention.\nJack's best friend is a member of the hockey team.\niv. The use of ellipsis\nWhen the superlative forms of adjectives are employed to make comparisons, ellipsis is commonly used in the second part of the comparisons. The following are examples of the use of ellipsis in this type of comparison.\ne.g. She is the best doctor I know.\nThis is the worst thing that could have happened.\nThese two sentences could also be written as follows. The words which would usually be omitted are enclosed in square brackets.\ne.g. She is the best doctor [of all the doctors that] I know.\nThis is the worst thing [of all the things] that could have happened.\nIt should be noted that the noun following the superlative form of an adjective is often omitted, when it is obvious what is meant. This is illustrated in the following examples.\ne.g. That star is the brightest.\nThese cookies are the best.\nThese sentences could also be written as follows. The nouns which would usually be omitted are enclosed in square brackets.\ne.g. That star is the brightest [star].\nThese cookies are the best [cookies].\nv. The comparison of one or more things with a group\nWhen one or more things are compared with a group to which they do not belong, the comparative form of an adjective is normally used.\ne.g. Alan is younger than all the other boys in the class.\nIn this example, Alan is being compared with all the other boys in the class. Thus, he is being compared with a group to which he does not belong, and the comparative form younger is used.\nIn general, the presence of the word other in the second half of a comparison usually indicates that one or more things are being compared with a group to which they do not belong.\nIn contrast, when one or more things are compared with members of a group to which they belong, the superlative form of an adjective is normally used.\ne.g. Alan is the youngest of all the boys in the class.\nIn this example, Alan is being compared with members of the group identified as all the boys in the class. This is a group to which he belongs. Therefore, the superlative form youngest is used.\nThe following examples provide a further illustration of the difference between the two types of comparison.\ne.g. The girls are neater than the boys.\nThe girls are the best students in the school.\nIn the first example, the girls are being compared with the boys, a group to which they do not belong. Therefore, the comparative form neater is used.\nIn the second example, the girls are being compared with members of a group consisting of all the students in the school, a group to which the girls belong. Therefore, the superlative form best is used.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1352271"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8102234601974487,"wiki_prob":0.8102234601974487,"text":"Home » Scene from James Fenimore Cooper's \"The Spy\"\nScene from James Fenimore Cooper's \"The Spy\"\nN0381.1955\nPaintings of early American theatrical productions are extremely rare. This example depicts a scene from a dramatization of Cooper's novel, The Spy, in which Harry Wharton, a loyalist, is unable to deceive Captain Lawton and removes his disguise. The first production took place in the Park Theatre, New York City, on May 1, 1822. Although successful for several years, The Spy was the only play taken from one of Cooper's novels during his lifetime. William Dunlap was uniquely situated as the artist of this painting. A friend of Cooper, he divided his career between the stage and painting on canvas. Most of his artistic production consisted of portraits and miniatures. He became more important historically than artistically. In 1824, he helped bring the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole to public notice and was a founder of the National Academy of Design in 1826. His most lasting work came as a writer. In 1832, he published A History of the American Theatre and two years later, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States-two important sources for American cultural history.\ndepth 2.5 in ; height 28.25 in ; width 33.25 in","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1221232"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8380790948867798,"wiki_prob":0.8380790948867798,"text":"Alongi, Kathleen Program Coordinator\nAmendolare, Nicole Manager, Emergency Medical Services, M.B.A., Rochester Institute of Technology\nAnnesi, Lori Special Collections Librarian (Associate Professor), B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.L.S., SUNY University at Buffalo\nAvalone, Valarie Director, Planning, M.S., SUNY College at Buffalo\nBabcock, Rebecca Specialist (Assistant Professor), B.A., Colgate University, M.S.Ed., St. John Fisher College\nBaker, Sean J. Web Manager, B.A., SUNY College at Geneseo\nBakewicz, Christina Manager II, America’s Promise NY INSPIRE, B. S. Psychology, Nazareth College of Rocheste; M.B.A. Business Administration, University of Phoenix\nBarker, Anne Manager, Child Care Center, B.S., SUNY College at Fredonia, M.S., SUNY College at Fredonia\nBarnet, David Associate Vice President, Curriculum and Program Development, M.A., John Hopkins University, Ph.D., John Hopkins University\nBartkovich, Lori Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.A.,University of Plymouth, M.A., SUNY College at Brockport, M.A., University of Cardiff\nBasinski, Mark Counselor (Associate Professor), B.A., State University of New York at Buffalo; M.S.Ed., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nBates, Michael J. Coordinator, Financial Aid, B.S., SUNY College at Geneseo\nBates, Patrick M. Director of Purchasing, B.S., SUNY College at Oswego, M.S.Ed., SUNY College at Brockport\nBatistta-Provost, Shirley Assistant Director for Clubs and Organizations (Professor), A.S., Monroe Community College; B.A., M.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nBaxter, Elizabeth Coordinator, B.S., The College at Brockport, M.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nBaxter, Kathleen 2+2 Coordinator, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Charter Oak State College\nBeech, Donald Cross-Cultural Counselor, B.A. Wittenberg University; M.A. University of Rochester\nBelyablya, Elina Assistant Director, B. S., Chernigov Technical Institute, M.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nBest, Teri Finance Manager, B.A., American International University; M.B.A., Columbia College\nBilby, Carmella Senior Advisor, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nBlaakman, Etienne Supervisor, Downtown Campus Bookstore, B.A., Nazareth College; Certified Paralegal, St. John Fisher College\nBouyea, Aaron Director, Athletics\nBritton, Tracey Counselor (Associate Professor), B.A., Hobart and Williams Smith College, M.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nBroberg, Scott Director, II, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nBrown-Wallace, Carmelita Project Director, Upward Bound, M.S., SUNY College at Brockport\nBrown Lonis, Kelly Program Director I, B.S., Pennsylvania State University - Park, M.A., George Washington University\nBrunett, Peter Program Coordinator, Law Enforcement, A.A.S. Monroe Community College, M.S., University of Rochester, B.S., State University of New York, College at Buffalo, FBINA\nBrust, David Men's Baseball Coach/ Academic Advisor for Athletes, B.S., Ball State University, M.S., The College at Brockport\nBureau, Suzanne Benefits Coordinator, A.A., Greenfield Community College, B.B.A., American International College\nBurke, Donna C. Counselor (Professor), B.S., State University of New York at Cortland; M.Ed., Teachers College, Columbia University\nBurns, Gerald Men's Basketball Coach/Academic Advisor, B.S., Castleton State College\nBurritt, Bailey Senior Technical Assistant, A.S., Full Sail University\nCalarco, Denise Program Director, Parking Services, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nCantwell, Clint W Specialist, BA, University of Rochester; MS University of Rochester\nCaples, Charles Program Director, Workforce Development, B.A., Johnson State College\nCapuano, Thomas Instructional Design Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.A., Eastern University\nCarroll, Michael Specialist, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology, M.S.I.T., Rochester Institute of Technology\nCarson, Jacqueline Director, R.N., A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S.N., St. John Fisher College\nCaruso, Jennifer Associate Director, Student Accounts, A.S., Finger Lakes Community College, B.S., SUNY College at Fredonia, M.S., St. John Fisher College\nCasalinuovo-Adams, Christine N. Assistant Vice President, Enrollment Mangement, B.S., State University of New York at Oswego; M.S.Ed., State University of New York at Brockport\nCase, Jeremy Multimedia Specialist, B.A., SUNY University at Binghamton, B.S., SUNY Empire State College\nCerame, Michael Athletic Trainer, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Eastern Kentucky University, M.S., Eastern Kentucky University\nChamberlain, Sandra Sr. Technical Assistant,Online Concierge, B.S., University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, M.S., SUNY Buffalo State\nCharlton, James Facilities Specialist, A.A.S., Finger Lakes Community College\nChrzan-Williams, Loretta Director, Student Accounts/Bursar, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.A., SUNY College at Geneseo, M.S.Ed, SUNY College at Brockport\nCianciotto, Maryann Senior Technical Assistant, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nClement, James Associate Director , M.S. Management from Keuka College\nCollins, Kimberley Associate Vice President, Academic Services (Instructor), M.A., Syracuse University\nComella, William Program Coordinator, Advanced Life Support, B.A. University of Rochester, EMT-Paramedic\nConnolly, Marc Manager, Emergency Services Programs, B.S. Rochester Institute of Technology, M.B.A. Northeastern University\nCoon, Amy Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College, BAS, St. John Fisher College\nCormack, Christine Mac Specialist\nCustodio, Antonia Director II, Facilities and Campus Services, Downtown Campus, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College, M.S.L., Roberts Wesleyan College\nDahl, Lisa Program Manager, B.S., Cornell University\nDaniels, April Instructor\nDanzy, Jamia Housing & Residence Life Director , B.A., St. John Fisher College; M.Ed., SUNY Buffalo\nDavis, Debra Director, Marketing and Web, BA, St. John Fisher College; MBA, University of Rochester\nDeMario, Mary Ann M. Specialist, M.S., University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Greensboro\nDery, Bonnie Specialist, A.S., Genesee Community College, B.A., Empire State College, M.A., Empire State College\nDingee, Sally Barton Associate Director, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.S., Syracuse University\nDiSalvo, Chuck Coordinator - Strategic Planning, A.S., Monroe Community College, M.A., Webster University\nDixon, William Director, Doctorate of Education, Liberty University\nDorsey, Marianne Financial Specialist, B.S., Empire State College, M.S., Nazareth College, M.P.A., University of Nebraska\nDubois, Daniel Aquatic Coordinator, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.A., University of Southern Florida, M.S., SUNY College at Buffalo\nDwyer, Debra Assistant Director - Operations, B.A., SUNY College at Cortland, M.P.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nEggleston, Andrew Assistant Director, Student Tech Help Desk, B.S., SUNY College at Fredonia\nEkiert, Lisa Assistant Director, Office of Campus Life, DCC, B.A., SUNY College at Oswego, M.S., University of Rochester\nEkis, Janet Social Media Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College; B.A., SUNY Empire State; M.F.A, Goucher College\nEmerick, Brandon Resident Director\nEvans, Shawanda / D Director, Pre-Collegiate Partnerships, M.Ed. Roberts Wesleyan College\nFingar, Melissa Assistant to the President for Human Resources and Organizational Development, B.S., Ithaca College, M.I.L.R., Cornell University, J. D.SUNY University of Buffalo\nFrance, Jason Program Coordinator I/Lecturer, Fire/Rescue Programs, B.A., Niagara University\nFrater, Joel Executive Dean, Downtown Campus, M.E., Temple University, Ed.D., Temple University\nFreeman, Andrew Director, Academic Services (Professor), A.S., Monroe Community College; B.S., Bowling Green University; M.P.A., Penn State University\nFrontuto, John Digital Production Specialist, A.A.A., Rochester Institute of Technology, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nGalvano, Salvatore Women's Soccer Coach/ Assistant Academic Advisor for Athletes, B.S., The College at Brockport\nGarigen, Tom Assistant Athletic Director/Sports Information Director, A.S., Genesee Community College, B. S. SUNY College at Brockport, M.S., California University of Pennsylvania\nGeer-Mentry, Virginia Executive Director, MCC Association, B.A., SUNY Geneseo, M.B.A., Medaille College\nGerardi, Joseph R. Senior Computer Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College\nGertner, James J. Director, Product Development and Operations, B.A., Saint Bonaventure University\nGhidiu, Katie Director, Library Services, B.A., University of Notre Dame, M.L.I.S., University of Pittsburgh\nGilbert, Andrea Instructional Design Specialist, B.A., Nazareth College of Rochester, M.Ed., San Diego State University\nGlasgow, Shannon Director, Title IX, M. S., St. John Fisher College, L.MHC\nGriffin, Milladge Financial Aid Advisor, B. A., SUNY College at Geneseo, M.A., SUNY College at Brockport, M.P. A., SUNY College at Geneseo\nGrindle, Blaine Associate Vice President, A.A.S., SUNY College of Technology at Alfred, Bachelor of Technology, RIT\nGunther, Susan Program Director, Liberty Partnerships, B.A., SUNY College at Potsdam, M.A., Syracuse University\nGurak, Susan Chief Financial Officer, M.B.A., University of Tampa\nHagreen, Sarah Director, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology, M.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nHall, Kevin Assistant Director - Administration, A.A.S., Niagara County Community College, B.S., Keuka College\nHall, Susan L. Assistant Director, Curriculum and Assessment, MA and PhD from Cornell University\nHammond, Daren Digital Production Specialist, A.A., Art Institute of Pittsburgh\nHarvey-Lee, Peggy Director, Community Engagement, M.S.Ed. SUNY College at Brockport.\nHauschild, Krista Tyner Specialist (Assistant Professor), B.A., Mansfield University of Pennsylvania; M.Ed., University at Buffalo, State University of New York\nHenderson, Eboni Manager, Project Operations, B.S., Organizational Management, Roberts Wesleyan College\nHenneman, Joshua Technical Assistant, Emergency Medical Services Support, A.A.S. Fire Protection Technology, Monroe Community College, NYS EMT\nHewitt, Carly Coordinator\nHolmes, Lloyd Vice President, Student Services, B.Accy.,University of Mississippi, M.Ed., University of Mississippi, Ph.D., University of Mississippi\nHoover, Jamie Web Specialist, B.A., Mary Baldwin College\nHorwath, Edie Specialist I, Financial Aid, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nHoward, Donald Technical Assistant, Engineering Science and Physics, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nHowell, Ambika Program Coordinator, Pathways to Success, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.S.\nHughes, Anne Career Counselor (Professor), B.S., SUNY, College at Brockport, M.S.Ed., SUNY, College at Brockport\nHutton, Pamela Publications Coordinator, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nIslam, Daniel Resident Director\nJachim-Moore, Darrell Associate Vice President, B.S., San Diego State University, M.A. Saint Bernards Institute, C.P.A.\nJacobs, Michael Dean, B.A, SUNY University at Buffalo, M.A., SUNY University at Buffalo, D.Arts St. John's University\nJarkowski, Melissa Director, Financial Aid Operations, A.A.S., SUNY College of Technology at Alfred, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nJohnson, Gary Director, Schools and Integrated Pathways, M.S., SUNY College at Buffalo\nJohnson, Michael Counselor (Professor), B.A., State University of New York at Buffalo; M.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nJohnson, Yolanda Coordinator, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nJones, Clayton W. Assistant to the President, Government and Community Relations, (Assistant Professor), B.A., Florida A & M University; M.S., Florida State University\nJuma, Phil Technical Assistant, DC Learning Resources\nKaminsky, Margaret Dean of STEM and Health, B.S. Lehigh University, M.S. Rochester Institute of Technology\nKennell, Morgan Counselor, MSW; State University of New York at Buffalo\nKeys, Terrance Associate Vice President (Professor), B.A., Hamilton College; M.Ed., University of Massachusetts at Amherst, D.M., University of Maryland University College\nKindle, Cynthia Senior Technical Assistant, Psychology, B.A., SUNY University at Binghamton\nKingston, Andrea\nKing, Robert Senior Specialist, B.S. Penn State University, State College PA, MBA Shippensburg Univeristy, Shippensburg PA, Ph.d. Penn State University, State College PA\nKinslow, Jennifer Specialist, B.A., SUNY College at Fredonia, M.S., SUNY College at Buffalo\nKlein, Denise Coordinator, A.S., Monroe Community College\nKress, Anne M. President, B.S., University of Florida, B.A., University of Florida, M.A., University of Florida, Ph.D., University of Florida\nKulak, John Early Intervention Specialist, Master's, Buffalo State\nKwiatkowski, Darren Textbook Manager, A.S., Genesee Community College\nLatta, Andrew Senior Systems Specialist, B.S., Rochester, Institute of Technology\nLawson, Mathew Assistant Director, Orientation/FYE\nLazio, Pam Career Counselor (Assistant Professor), B.A., University of Akron; M.S.Ed., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nLederhouse, David Network Specialist, B.S., SUNY Institute of Technology, Utica/Rome\nLee , Stephanie Coordinator, A.S., Monroe Community College; B.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport; MSW., State University of New York, University at Buffalo\nLee, Christina H Coordinator, Global Education, M.A., University of Colorado, Boulder\nLillis, Nancy Grants Coordinator, MSW Florida State University 1994\nLinzy, Charlene M. Counselor, B.S., The College at Brockport, M.S. Ed., The College at Brockport\nLiquori, Catherine Resident Director\nLopez, Judith Senior Technical Assistant, L.P.N.\nLowe, Kristin Director, Human Resources, B.A., Providence College, M.A., Boston College, J.D., Albany Law School\nLynch, Marcia Program Director 11, Health Care Programs, Ed.D., Higher Ed: Leadership and Management, Capella University; M.S., Training and Human Performance Improvement, Capella University\nMacDonald, Martha Senior Technical Assistant, Learning Support Systems, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.A., Nazareth College\nMack, Rebecca Transfer Counselor (Professor), B.A., University of Rochester, M.S.W., SUNY University at Buffalo\nMalik, Amanuel Senior Advisor, Student Support Services, B.A., St. John Fisher, M. A., St. Bernard's Institute\nManns, Sheila Specialist\nMarchese, Jr., Joseph Assistant Controller, B.S., SUNY College at Geneseo\nMarini, Sharon L. Assistant Director, Environmental Health & Safety, B.S., Wilkes University\nMartin, Denee Admissions Counselor, B.S., Florida State University, M.A., Rider University\nMatthew, Ivan Counselor (Associate Professor), B.S., State University of New York at Oneonta; M.S.W., State University of New York at Buffalo, L.M.S.W.\nMayo, Michelle Director, Associate Professor, B.S., Seton Hall University; M.S., State University of New York, College at Buffalo, C.P.R.W.\nMcCale, William Counselor, M.S.W., SUNY Albany.\nMcCullough, Michael Reference/Learning Services Librarian (Associate Professor), B.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport; M.L.S., University of Buffalo\nMcKinsey-Mabry, Kimberly Dean, Business & Entrepreneurial Studies; Community Engagement & Development, M.B.A., Metropolitan College of New York, D. Ed., St. John Fisher College\nMcPhee, Jill Senior Technical Assistant, B.S., SUNY University at Binghamton\nMead, Andrew Senior Systems Specialist, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nMendez, Sylvia Assistant Director, B.A., St. John Fisher College\nMerliss, Gena Coordinator, BA in Biological Anthropology, Swarthmore College; MsED of Education, University of Pennsylvania\nMessenger, Ryan Assistant to the Vice President, Student Services, M.F.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nMiller, Douglas Assistant Director (Assistant Professor), B.A., University of Rochester, M.B.A., Simon School @ University of Rochester\nMilligan, Kathleen Senior Technical Assistant, Mathematics, B.S., SUNY University at Albany, M.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nMitchell, Remegia Director of Grants, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.P.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nMoorehead, Joan L. Admissions Counselor (Professor), A.A.S., Monroe Community College; B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology; M.S., Buffalo State College\nMorelli, Jessica Assistant Director (Assistant Professor), B.S., SUNY College at Fredonia, M.S. Ed., St. John Fisher College\nNavarro, Diane Senior Technical Assistant, B.A., St. John Fisher College\nNoblett, Daniel Computer Specialist, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nNoonan, Susan M Technical Assistant, M.S. Keuka College\nO’Connor, Matthew Assistant Vice President, B.S., Cornell University, M.Eng., Cornell University\nO'Keefe, Carly Coordinator, International Services, M. Ed., SUNY Buffalo, B.A. SUNY Geneseo\nOettinger, Philip Assistant Director, Learning Environments, B.S., Robert Wesleyan College\nOldfield, Mary Kay Senior Technical Assistant, Chemistry, A.A.S.,SUNY Alfred College of Technology, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nOldham, Todd Vice President, Economic Development, Workforce and Career Technical Education, A.A., Orange Cost College, B.A., California State University, Los Angeles, M.B.A., Chapman University, Ed.D., Northeastern University\nOliver, Deborah Director II, B.S., Nazareth College of Rochester.\nOriel, Jodi Associate Direction , Masters of Science, Buffalo State College\nOrnt, Patricia Specialist, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nOsterling, Philip Specialist, Graphic/Visual Design, B.A., Hartwick College\nPalmer, Stephen Specialist, A.S., Monroe Community College\nPankratz, Vicki Specialist, AS, Monroe Community College\nParasnis-Samar, Angali\nParker, Jason Director, Learning Support Systems , M. A., Counseling, Missouri Baptist University\nParker, Jean M. Counselor (Associate Professor), Learning Support Systems, B.A., Gordon College; M.S. Ed., State University College at Brockport; LMHC, NCC\nPasto-Ziobro, Dolores Institutional Compliance Officer and Internal Auditor, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology, M.S., University of Rochester\nPastorella, Mark Director of Development\nPatterson, Vilma Assistant Director (Professor), B.A., Ithaca College; M.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nPearce, Dale Program Director, Curriculum Development & Apprenticeships , A.S. Genesee Community College, B.S. The College at Brockport, M.S.Ed. Buffalo State College, M.S.Ed. The College at Brockport\nPearston, Denise Senior Technical Assistant, Biology, B.S., SUNY Empire State College\nPentz, Meryll Admissions Counselor (Associate Professor), B.A.., University of Hartford, M.S.Ed., University of Hartford\nPenwarden, Ann Assistant Director (Professor), B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.L.S., State University of New York at Buffalo\nPerez, Tony Director, Public Safety\nPeters, Janet Senior Technical Assistant, Biology, A.S., Monroe Community College\nPiro, Chris Coordinator - Investigations, A.A.S.\nPreische, Holly Wynn Associate Director (Professor), B.S., SUNY College at Oswego, M.S.Ed., The College at Brockport, N.C.C.\nPresutti, Lyndsey Coordinator, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.B.A., Colorado Technical University\nQuinn, Michael Controller, B.S., SUNY College at Geneseo\nRaimondo, Dan Director of Campus Events and Project Administration, A.A.S., Erie Community College, B.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport, M.S., State University of New York, College at Buffalo, Ph.D., University at Buffalo\nRambish, Madea Dean\nReid, Lincoln Technical Assistant, DCC Biology, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, A.S., Monroe Community College\nRevello, Sara D Coordinator II, Course-Based Learning Assistance, M.A. English Literature, Southern New Hampshire University\nReyes, Marisol Senior Advisor, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S.W., SUNY College at Brockport\nReynolds, Robert Senior Web Specialist, B.S. Ball State Univeristy\nRhodes, Quent Director, Facilities\nRich, Tanya Senior Technical Assistant, A.A., Finger Lakes Community College, A.A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Johnson and Wales University\nRipton, Elizabeth Director, MSc from London School of Economics & Political Science\nRivers, Rosanne Marketing Communications Specialist, B.A., Nazareth College of Rochester\nRizzo, Mary Méndez Coordinator, Dual Enrollment, B.A., SUNY University at Buffalo, M.S.Ed., SUNY College at Brockport\nRobbins, Toni Specialist, B.A., University of Rochester, M.S., SUNY College at Buffalo\nRock-McCrossen, Susan Specialist, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nRodriguez, Ramon Financial Aid Specialist, B.S.,University of Puerto Rico Cayey, M.S.Ed., SUNY College at Brockport\nRooney, Carly Coordinator, B.A., Communication and Rhetoric, Nazareth College\nRuiz, Lauri A. Technical Assistant, Emergency Medical Services Support, A.A.S. Bryant and Stratton\nSadwick, Rick Associate Director (Professor), B.A., Syracuse University, M.P.A., SUNY College at Brockport, M.S., SUNY College at Brockport\nSantiago, Melissa Financial Aid Specialist, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nSantos, Joann L. Project Director, CSTEP & STEP\nScahill, Marjorie Senior Technical Assistant, Law Enforcement, B.A., SUNY College at Geneseo\nSchichler, Teresa Systems and Technologies Manager, M.S. Rochester Institute of Technology\nSchwartz, Mark Financial Aid Counselor (Associate Professor), B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nShanahan, Corinne Counselor (Associate Professor), B.A. State University of New York College at Geneseo; M.S.W. Roberts Wesleyan College\nShaw, Karen Alumni and Annual Giving Coordinator, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nSimmons, Hezekiah Chief Financial Officer and Vice President, Administrative Services, B.S., Johnson C. Smith University, M.B.A., Harvard University\nSimpson, Elliote Assistant Director of Purchasing, A.A.S., Rochester Institute of Technology\nSine-Kinz, Kristin M. Director, B.F.A., Rochester Institute of Technology, M.B.A., Western Governors University\nSlate, Julie K. Assistant Director (Associate Professor), B.S., State University of New York, College at Oswego; M.B.A., Medaille College\nSleight, Travis Energy Manager, B.S., Clarkson University\nSmith, Brenda Director, B.S., Bethune-Cookman College, M.S., SUNY College at Brockport, C.A.S\nSmith, Debbie Technical Coordinator\nSmith, Jaime Operations Coordinator, B.B.A. Medaille College\nSnowden, Joe Manager, Education to Employment , B.S., Business Administration, Marketing, Elmira College; A.S., Business Administration, Corning Community College, SUNY\nSnow, Darwin Senior Technical Assistant, Applied Technologies\nSprague, Courtney Building Manager - DTC, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College, M.S., SUNY Buffalo State\nSpring-Buckley, April Specialist, Financial, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport\nSquires, Richard D. Collection and Electronic Resource Librarian (Associate Professor), A.S., Monroe Community College; B.S., State University of New York, College at Brockport; M.L.S., State University of New York, College at Buffalo\nStewart, Elizabeth Director (Associate Professor), B.A., State University of New York, College at Geneseo; M.A., Slippery Rock University\nStrong, Sheila Executive Assistant to the President, A.S., Monroe Community College, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport, M.P.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nSt. Croix, Jerome Director, B.A., SUNY College at Potsdam, M.S. Ed., SUNY College at Potsdam\nSuter, Charlene Manager College Bookstore, B.B.A., Bellevue University, NE; M.B.A. Bellevue University, NE\nTachco, Rachael Program Director, B.A., Saint Bonaventure University\nThomas, Denise Senior Budget Specialist, B.S., Rochester Institute of Technology, M.P.A., SUNY College at Brockport\nTimmons, Mary Multi-Campus Outreach Librarian (Professor), B.A., SUNY, College at Brockport, M.L.S., SUNY University at Albany\nTorcello, Jody Coordinator, Academic Advisement Systems, A.S. Monroe Community College,\nTroy, John Program Director II, Skilled Trades and Industrial Teclrnology, A.A.S., Criminal Justice, Genesee Community College; B.S., Business Management, Empire State College\nTrudeau, Terry Senior Technical Assistant, Engineering Technologies, A.A.S., Monroe Community College\nUpson, Bradley B. Senior Systems Specialist, B.S., SUNY College at Brockport\nVinci, Taine Associate Director, (Professor), A.S., Monroe Community College; B.S.W., Rochester Institute of Technology; M.S.Ed., State University of New York, College at Brockport\nWade, Andrea Provost and Vice President, Academic Services, A.A.S., Broome Community College, B.S., Catholic University of America, M.S.,University of Notre Dame, Ph.D., University of Notre Dame\nWalton, Nicholas Assistant Director\nWarner, Susan Specialist, B. S., Roberts Wesleyan College\nWatkins, Craig H. Associate Director, Web & Digital Communications, B.A., Ohio University\nWatkins, E. Jamall Assistant Director, (Associate Professor), , M.S. Ed., The College at Brockport\nWheat, Lynda Senior Technical Assistant, A.S., Monroe Community College\nWheeler, Eric Assistant Director, A.S., B.S., M.A., M.P.A.\nWillard, Jeffrey Computer Specialist, B.S., Florida Institute of Technology\nWilson, Alice Associate Director (Professor), B.A., LeMoyne College, M.L.S., Syracuse University\nWilson, Gregory Operations Coordinator, Office of Campus LIve\nWilson, Mary Elizabeth Associate Professor of Psychology, M.S., Virginia Commonwealth University, Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University\nWinslow, Tom Coordinator, BS, Sports Management, St. John Fisher College\nWirley, Eileen Chief Information Officer and Associate Vice President, Technology Services, B.A., University of Notre Dame, M.B.A., University of Rochester\nWolf, Sandra Facilities Specialist, B.A., Cornell University\nWood, Gretchen D. Gretchen D. Wood, CFRE, Chief Advancement Officer and Executive Director, B.A., Syracuse University, M.P.A., SUNY Brockport\nWynn-Preische, Holly Director (Professor), B.S., SUNY College at Oswego, M.S.Ed., SUNY College at Brockport\nYuen-Eng, Hency College Relations Specialist, B.A., University of Hawaii at Manoa\nYule, Rosanna Director, Community Relations, B.A., The College at Brockport, M.S., Syracuse University\nZager, Matthew Assistant Director of Development, B.S., Roberts Wesleyan College","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line408565"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7351639270782471,"wiki_prob":0.26483607292175293,"text":"Archive | May 4, 2017\nStar Wars: The Visual Encyclopedia\nCole Horton\nTricia Barr\nDK Publishing, 2017\nForty years ago when most of the world was dancing to Saturday Night Fever George Lucas created a collection of characters who lived “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”. Star Wars was launched and Hans Solo, Princess Leia, C-3PO, R2D2,, Eowks and Darth Vader became part of our vocabulary and light sabres and X-wings were in everyone’s home!\nFast forward to 2017 and Star Wars has more fans now than then and it holds the Guinness Book of records record for the most successful film merchandising franchise ever. So on this, the 40th Star Wars day, this visual encyclopedia will be greeted with enthusiasm from fans new and old.\nThe publisher describes it best…\n“Covering more than 2500 characters, creatures, planets, vehicles, Droids, weapons, technology and more from the Star Wars universe, this visual tour is the ultimate compendium for the epic saga and beyond.\nWith a full history of the galactic politics, the Jedi Council, and the Empire, Star wars: The Visual Dictionary walks fans through the entire timeline of Star Wars. Galleries of images and information on every page, including lightsabers, languages, clothing and more are showcased with fascinating facts and trivia…Discover the food, architecture, transportation and more from this galaxy far, far away. Each section of the book focuses on different topics to dedicate special attention and detail to every part of the universe, no matter how small. From the planets in the outer rim to Padme’s bridal wear, nothing is missed.\nA celebration of all things Star Wars, this visual museum is the perfect addition to any fan’s bookshelf.”\nGiven that I couldn’t keep the books on the shelves in my primary library two years ago, this would also be a great addition to a library’s shelves too.\nThis entry was posted on May 4, 2017, in Movie Tie-in, Non fiction, Older Readers, Picture Book, Ready Reference, Review, Science Fiction, STEM.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line723680"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6762751340866089,"wiki_prob":0.3237248659133911,"text":"People of Brookline\n⇐ Prev - Large - Next⇒\nMarian Dudley Richards, Brookline High School Class of 1898\n1879 - 1949; 1917: married, 1917, Bispham Homer Emerson; lived at 44 Linden St., later at 247 Fisher Ave.;\nGraduated from the Tuckerman School on Beacon Hill. She became prominent in the Unitarian Universalist movement as a Sunday school teacher, superintendent, public speaker, and social worker. She was also active in support of peace movements and the welfare of Native Americans. She married fellow Unitarian activist B. Homer Emerson in in 1917 and continued to live in Brookline until her death.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1439620"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8750284910202026,"wiki_prob":0.8750284910202026,"text":"How Everything Works\nLou Bloomfield\nLou’s Books\nOld Web Site\nWhy does air speed up as it flows over an airplane wing?\nJanuary 14, 1999 January 14, 1999 Lou Bloomfield airplanes\nWhy does air speed up as it flows over an airplane wing? — MS\nWhen air flows past an airplane wing, it breaks into two airstreams. The one that goes under the wing encounters the wing’s surface, which acts as a ramp and pushes the air downward and forward. The air slows somewhat and its pressure increases. Forces between this lower airstream and the wing’s undersurface provide some of the lift that supports the wing.\nBut the airstream that goes over the wing has a complicated trip. First it encounters the leading edge of the wing and is pushed upward and forward. This air slows somewhat and its pressure increases. So far, this upper airstream isn’t helpful to the plane because it pushes the plane backward. But the airstream then follows the curving upper surface of the wing because of a phenomenon known as the Coanda effect. The Coanda effect is a common behavior in fluids—viscosity and friction keep them flowing along surfaces as long as they don’t have to turn too quickly. (The next time your coffee dribbles down the side of the pitcher when you poured too slowly, blame it on the Coanda effect.)\nBecause of the Coanda effect, the upper airstream now has to bend inward to follow the wing’s upper surface. This inward bending involves an inward acceleration that requires an inward force. That force appears as the result of a pressure imbalance between the ambient pressure far above the wing and a reduced pressure at the top surface of the wing. The Coanda effect is the result (i.e. air follows the wing’s top surface) but air pressure is the means to achieve that result (i.e. a low pressure region must form above the wing in order for the airstream to arc inward and follow the plane’s top surface).\nThe low pressure region above the wing helps to support the plane because it allows air pressure below the wing to be more effective at lifting the wing. But this low pressure also causes the upper airstream to accelerate. With more pressure behind it than in front of it, the airstream accelerates—it’s pushed forward by the pressure imbalance. Of course, the low pressure region doesn’t last forever and the upper airstream has to decelerate as it approaches the wing’s trailing edge—a complicated process that produces a small amount of turbulence on even the most carefully designed wing.\nIn short, the curvature of the upper airstream gives rise to a drop in air pressure above the wing and the drop in air pressure above the wing causes a temporary increase in the speed of the upper airstream as it passes over much of the wing.\nI tried freezing two cups of water, one with salt added and one with sugar added…\nHow is sound picked up on a microphone?\nSearch with Wordpress\nWhy do things float better in salt water than in fresh water?\nWhy do greenhouse gases warm the earth?\nWhy is easier to keep a bicycle upright when it is moving faster?\nHow can an object spin at constant angular velocity when its parts are accelerating?\nWhen you push on a rotating object, when are you doing work?\naudio amplifiers (32)\nballs birdies and frisbees (19)\nbouncing balls (28)\ncentrifuges and roller coasters (23)\nclothing and insulation (12)\ncompact disc players (24)\nearth moon and sun (1)\nelectric power distribution (73)\nelectric power generation (34)\nelectronic air cleaners (12)\nfalling balls (65)\nfluorescent lamps (78)\nincandescent light bulbs (42)\nknives and steel (10)\nmagnetically levitated trains (34)\nmedical imaging and radiation (17)\nmicrowave ovens (128)\nplastics (27)\nrockets (17)\nseesaws (15)\nspring scales (7)\nstatic electricity (3)\ntape recorders (37)\ntelescopes and microscopes (19)\nthe sea and surfing (13)\nthermometers and thermostats (11)\nviolins and pipe organs (19)\nwater distribution (31)\nwater faucets (12)\nwater steam and ice (98)\nwindows and glass (14)\nwood stoves (30)\nwoodstoves (3)\nxerographic copiers (22)\nArchives Select Month March 2016 (1) February 2016 (1) February 2015 (4) January 2015 (18) March 2012 (1) February 2012 (1) April 2011 (1) March 2011 (1) August 2010 (3) July 2010 (4) May 2010 (1) October 2009 (1) April 2009 (3) March 2009 (12) February 2009 (12) December 2008 (2) November 2008 (1) March 2008 (1) February 2007 (2) November 2006 (1) October 2006 (2) September 2006 (1) August 2006 (2) July 2006 (1) June 2006 (10) May 2006 (9) December 2005 (2) June 2005 (1) March 2005 (1) June 2004 (1) March 2004 (1) December 2003 (2) July 2003 (1) June 2003 (1) April 2003 (1) February 2003 (1) August 2002 (1) October 2001 (7) August 2001 (2) June 2001 (11) March 2001 (2) September 2000 (1) August 2000 (1) July 2000 (2) May 2000 (1) April 2000 (1) March 2000 (1) February 2000 (12) January 2000 (3) December 1999 (3) November 1999 (3) October 1999 (3) September 1999 (7) July 1999 (6) May 1999 (2) March 1999 (5) February 1999 (4) January 1999 (14) October 1998 (3) September 1998 (1) August 1998 (1) July 1998 (7) June 1998 (10) March 1998 (6) February 1998 (39) January 1998 (25) November 1997 (10) October 1997 (44) September 1997 (8) August 1997 (36) July 1997 (11) June 1997 (40) May 1997 (25) April 1997 (40) March 1997 (163) February 1997 (108) January 1997 (149) December 1996 (75) November 1996 (54) October 1996 (56) September 1996 (25) January 1970 (5) December 1969 (478)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line682698"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8887326121330261,"wiki_prob":0.8887326121330261,"text":"Live at The Gaslight\nEntry count: 3335\n2020 can be kinda lame...\nCome Join us in 1970\nNews Creedence Clearwater Revival\nJuly 6th, 1965: The early days of Creedence Clearwater Revival\nRead Count: 3335\nThe events we write about at Gaslight Records happened in some form or another 50 years ago to the day. Roll along with us and imagine you are back in 1970.\nSupport Gaslight Records\nThe Golliwogs were an American rock band who would later become Creedence Clearwater Revival. In July 1965, they released the single \"You Can't Be True\", recorded at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, CA. Listen to the single below, featuring a twenty-year-old John Fogerty on lead vocals.\nDecember 23rd, 1969: Watch The Jackson 5 perform single from their debut album on Ed Sullivan\nDiana Ross Presents The Jackson 5 is the latest release from Motown\nDecember 20th, 1969: The Clancy Brothers have released a new album of Christmas songs: Listen\nIrish folk group, The Clancy Brothers have recorded 11 songs to bring a little joy to your Christmas\nDecember 18th, 1969: See photos from The Doors album cover shoot in Los Angeles today\nThe new Doors album is due for release early next year.\nDecember 10th, 1969: Four people died over the weekend at The Altamont Speedway Free Festival\nHere's the story of Altamont in quotes from many of the people involved.\nDecember 5th, 1969: The Rolling Stones have released a new studio album ahead of their free concert tomorrow at Altamont\nAs The Stones finish their run of U.S. concert dates they have released their eighth album, Let It Bleed.\nDecember 4th, 1969: This summer Bob Dylan sat down for an interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine\nRead the transcript below of Dylan and Wenner's interview from June this year\nDecember 3rd, 1969: Emmylou Harris covers Bob Dylan on debut album\nListen to Harris's cover of Dylan's \"I'll Be Your Baby Tonight\" from her album Gliding Bird\nPeter Stone Brown covers Bob Dylan's \"She Belongs To Me\"\nRecorded in Atlantic City at Dylan Fest in 2015\nOctober 4th, 1969: Watch Roy Orbison perform \"Oh, Pretty Woman\" with Johnny Cash last week\nOrbison appeared on The Johnny Cash Show in Nashville\nOctober 1st, 1969: Mixtape October 1969\nIt's the end of Summer 1969, here's what I'm listening to.\nOctober 1st, 1969: Tyrannosaurus Rex released a new single \"Pewter Suitor\" this week - Listen\nThe new single was left off the band's album Unicorn, from earlier this year.\nOctober 1st, 1969: \"I was just about all through as a man\" Johnny Cash talks to Richard Green of NME\nCash gave a brief interview recently while visiting London\nPlease support Gaslight Records.\nHere at Gaslight Records we’re trying shine a light in the dark, to reanimate a bygone era of musical brilliance…of peculiarity and independence.\nAnd we’re trying to maintain that same peculiarity and independence ourselves. That ain’t easy. We believe that Mr Dylan summed it up nicely back in 1964: that ‘Advertising signs they con’ So we’re keeping the Gaslight distraction free.\nBut hey, we’re working hard blowin’ our thumbs out for no dollars a day, so consider this the cap on the road. Any little bit helps...\nWhatever you can contribute - from wherever you are - it helps us get more articles written by more writers, and more ‘Live at the Gaslight’ recorded by more bands.\nBut first and foremost we’re here for you to enjoy…so it’s alright, ma, if you’re only reading.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line394156"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6925469636917114,"wiki_prob":0.6925469636917114,"text":"The Catholic Community of Gloucester & Rockport (CCGR) offers many opportunities for prayer, fellowship, and service for adults of all ages and interests. All are welcome to prayerfully consider joining us in service to God and each other through acts of faith, friendship, and charity in the following organizations.\nAssisi Project\nLast Saturday of the Month\nFounded in 2007, the Assisi Project is an international fellowship of “Franciscans in Spirit” with friends and followers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Africa. We are dedicated to helping adults of all ages to more faithfully live the Gospel of Christ in the spirit of Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi. Approximately six times each year, we gather for Mass, a community meal, and period of faith formation and discussion. Each year, we also sponsor a pilgrimage and other opportunities for prayer and fellowship. For more information, please contact Cliff Garvey at cgarvey@ccgronline.com. Please join us! All are invited! All are welcome!\nLearn More: The Assisi Project\nFollow Us on Twitter: @_AssisiProject\nCCGR Music Ministry\nSaint Augustine once wrote: “To sing is to pray twice.” This is especially true when our Adult Choir sings at Mass or performs at special events during the year (especially our Annual Advent & Christmas Concert). Under the direction of Thomas Misuraca, the Catholic Community of Gloucester & Rockport’s Music Ministry meets for rehearsal on Wednesday evenings at 7:00pm in Saint Ann Church. Each member of our music ministry offers their own personal gifts of time and talent to praise and thank the Lord for his abundant blessings. And all members acknowledge that they belong to a ministry that strives to praise God through prayer, fellowship, and music. For more information about becoming a part of this beautiful and important ministry, please contact Tom Misuraca, Associate Minister for Music, at tmis1@verizon.net. New members are always welcome! Please join us!\nCCGR Youth Choir\nTuesday Afternoons\nThe Catholic Community of Gloucester & Rockport (CCGR) Youth Choir meets for practice and rehearsal every Tuesday afternoon at 5:00pm in Saint Ann Church. The Youth Choir sings every weekend at one of our three churches: Saint Ann Church, Saint Joachim Church, and Our Lady of Good Voyage Church. The Youth Choir welcomes new members (ranging in age from kindergarten through eighth grade). And singing in the choir is a great way to make new friends and participate in the life of our parishes! For more information, please contact Patty Natti at pnatti@comcast.net. Please join us! All are welcome!\nHoly Family Cevicos Mission\nFounded in 2001, the Holy Family Parish Mission offers direct medical, financial, educational, and spiritual support to the poor families of the village of Cevicos in the Dominican Republic. The Holy Family Mission at Cevicos offers its donors and volunteers an opportunity to participate in rewarding service work by answering Christ’s call to love and serve the poor. For more information about the Cevicos Mission, please contact us at info@holyfamilycevicos.com. Please join us! All are welcome!\nLearn More: Holy Family Cevicos Mission\nHoly Family Women’s Guild\nFirst Tuesday of the Month\nEstablished in 2005 with the creation of Holy Family Parish, the Women’s Guild brings together women of all ages in prayer, fellowship, and service to the parish and wider community. Throughout the year, the Holy Family Parish Women’s Guild hosts various fundraising events and social gatherings, including the Palm Sunday Bake Sale, the Strawberry Festival in June, the Harvest Festival in October, and the Christmas Fair in December. The Women’s Guild meets on the first Tuesday of each month at 7:00pm in the Monsignor Sullivan Hall of Saint Ann Church. For more information, please contact Lydia Bertolino at lbertolino4@msn.com. Please join us! All are welcome!\nFirst Sunday of the Month\nThe Holy Name Society of Our Lady of Good Voyage Parish is a service-driven organization of men which was founded to support the parish through volunteering and fundraising. The Holy Name Society meets on the first Sunday evening of each month in Our Lady’s Parish Hall. New members are always welcome! For more information about the Holy Name Society and its good work in our parish, please contact Bill Proposki at william.proposki@verizon.net. Please join us! All are welcome!\nSecond Tuesday of the Month\nThe Knights of Columbus (Council 215) is a fraternal and charitable organization of Catholic men that serves the Catholic Community of Gloucester & Rockport at both Holy Family Parish and Our Lady of Good Voyage Parish. Since 1897, our award-winning council has sponsored many works of charity on Cape Ann, including annual events like our blood drive, food drive, golf tournament, and Coats for Kids; along with ongoing support for the Saint Vincent de Paul Society and Holy Family Women’s Guild. If you have twenty-four hours to volunteer for charity, we can transform that commitment into meaningful results for you, your family, and our communities. The Knights of Columbus meet on the second Tuesday of each month in the Parish Center (located at 74 Pleasant Street in Gloucester) at 7:00pm. For more information, please contact us at info@kofc215.com. Please join us! New members are always welcome!\nLearn More: Knights of Columbus (Council 215)\nWednesdays at 4:00pm\nFounded in Ireland in 1921, the Legion of Mary is an international fellowship of lay men and women who volunteer their time, talent, and prayer under the banner of the Blessed Virgin Mary to practice the “spiritual works of mercy” in our parish communities. Their primary apostolate is to visit and pray with the disabled, homebound, and sick. Our members also serve in many other volunteer ministries in our parishes. Each Wednesday at 4:00pm, the Legion of Mary meets at the Holy Family Parish Center to pray the Rosary, share their faith, and participate in a period of faith formation under the guidance of a spiritual director. For more information, please contact Joan Foster at ajay7@verizon.net or Sue Demetri at sdemetri2000@yahoo.com. Please join us! All are welcome!\nThe Men’s Fellowship meets every Saturday morning at 6:30am in the Parish Center (Saint Ann Church Campus). All are invited to join us for prayer, faith sharing, and mutual support as we work on deepening our faith and personal relationship with Jesus Christ. For more information, please contact Albie Mitchell at albiemitchell@me.com or 978-879-3655. Please join us! All are welcome!\nOur Lady’s Guild\nFirst Monday of the Month\nSince 1944, Our Lady’s Guild has worked to build community among women of all ages in Our Lady of Good Voyage Parish through prayer, good works, social activities, and fundraising events. The Guild meets on the first Monday evening of each month in the Our Lady’s Parish Hall at 6:30pm. New members are always welcome! For more information about Our Lady’s Guild and upcoming events, please contact Linda Galvin at lingalv2010@gmail.com.\nSecond Wednesday of the Month\nFounded in Paris in 1833, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society is an international society of lay men and women who seek to follow Christ and to give witness to His love and compassion through person-to-person service to those in need. Each year, our local chapter of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society serves approximately 1,000 individuals and families each year. Members make personal visits in order to assess need and assistance is provided in many ways: clothing, food, furniture, and funding for utilities and rent. In addition, the Society maintains a non-perishable food pantry at Saint Ann Church and a clothes closet at Saint Ann School (West Parish School). The Society also maintains storage space for donated furniture and necessities. The Saint Vincent de Paul Society meets on the second Wednesday of each month at 4:00pm in Our Lady’s Hall. For more information about becoming a member, please contact Harry Miller at 978-281-2701. For assistance, please contact the Saint Vincent de Paul Hotline at 978-281-8672. New members are always welcome! Please join us!\nEstablished in 2014, the Catholic Community of Gloucester & Rockport is a collaborative of two historic parishes: Holy Family Parish and Our Lady of Good Voyage Parish. Our worship sites include Saint Ann Church in Gloucester, Saint Anthony Chapel in Gloucester, Saint Joachim Church in Rockport, and Our Lady of Good Voyage Church in Gloucester. We are a Roman Catholic faith community united in prayer, fellowship, and service. For more information about becoming a member of one of our parishes, please contact Father Jim at frjim@ccgronline.com. Please join us! All are welcome!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1091108"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.68160080909729,"wiki_prob":0.31839919090270996,"text":"The Average Person Will Watch Over 78,000 Hours Of Television “Programming” Over The Course Of A Lifetime\nTOPICS:ConsciousnessMichael Snydermind controlPropaganda\nIf you want to waste your life, a great way to do that is to spend tens of thousands of hours watching television. Today, it is so difficult to get people to leave their homes and get active in their communities, because most of us are absolutely glued to one screen or another.\nAfter a long day at school or a hard day at work, most of us understandably want to relax, and from a very early age most of us have been trained to turn to the television as our main source of relaxation. But of course there is great danger in allowing anyone to pump thousands upon thousands of hours of “programming” into our minds. More than 90 percent of the “programming” that we consume is controlled by just a handful of exceedingly powerful corporations, and those corporations are owned by the elite of the world. So when you endlessly consume their “programming”, you are willingly being bombarded by news and entertainment that reflects their beliefs, their values and their agendas. They openly admit that they are trying to shape the future of society, and up to this point they have been extremely successful.\nUnfortunately, we live at a time when most people need television or some other insidious addiction to take their minds off of the gnawing emptiness that they feel deep inside of them. As I was doing some research the other day, a comment that someone posted on an Internet message board really struck a chord with me…\nAs a kid life seems so amazing and you can dream of big things and have faith. The older you get it seems the world tries to take away your faith. I have had 8 jobs in my life starting in high school and I’m just sick of this ****. I’m lucky to make 100 a day . I know that’s poverty level. But I manage. But thinking ahead I have to do this every day for the next 30 years . How the hell do you guys and gals cope with reality.\nI’m on empty.\nI want out.\nIn just a few sentences, this individual summed up what millions upon millions of Americans are feeling.\nThe harsh realities of modern society have absolutely sucked the life out of so many people around us, and the vast majority of Americans are barely getting by and are living lives of quiet desperation.\nIf television allows them to forget about their troubles for a while, it is understandable why so many use it as a crutch.\nBut do we have to watch so much of it? One recent survey found that the average adult will watch more than 78,000 hours of television over the course of a lifetime…\nTelevision has become such a common part of all of our lives that most don’t even think about just how much time they spend staring at their TV screen. Of course, all of those hours are undoubtedly adding up, and a recent survey of 2,000 British adults finds that the average TV viewer will watch an astounding 78,705 hours of programming (movies, sports, news, etc) in their lifetime. That’s a whole lot of screen time that may have been better spent on more productive endeavors.\nOn a day-to-day basis, the average adult watches TV for three-and-a-half hours, amounting to 1,248 hours each year.\nI know that some of my readers will point out that this was a British survey, but the truth is that Americans actually watch even more television. The following comes from Wikipedia…\nIn the US, there is an estimated 119.9 million TV households in the TV season 2018/19.\nIn 2017 alone, an average U.S. consumer spent 238 minutes (3h 58min) daily watching TV.\nThose numbers are absolutely staggering. And when you break them down further they become even more alarming. In the first survey that I mentioned above, the researchers actually discovered that the average person “will watch 11,278 different TV series”…\nThe survey, commissioned by LG Electronics, broke down those numbers even further and concluded that the average adult these days will watch 3,639 movies at home, and 31,507 episodes of TV during their lifespan. As far as different programs, the average person will watch 11,278 different TV series as well.\nAre there really 11,278 television series worth watching?\nI would think that you would have to go really deep into the well to watch that many, but apparently that is what many people are doing.\nOf course I am not entirely against television. For example, I think that Poldark is an absolute masterpiece. But everything should be done in moderation.\nThe fact that we are endlessly watching so much television could help to explain why our society has become so “dumbed down”. Yesterday, I discussed a recent study that found that 15-year-old U.S. students are about four grade levels behind 15-year-old Chinese students in math.\nI bet those Chinese students are spending a lot more time studying and a lot less time watching television.\nAt this point, America has truly become an “idiocracy”.\nFor example, have you heard what the hottest new toy for this holiday season is?\nIt is actually a “fart launcher” that allows children to blast foul smelling air at one another. The following comes from the New York Post…\nToy insiders and wincing parents tell The Post that the Buttheads Fart Launcher 3000 — a Nerf gun-like gadget that shoots farts instead of darts — is topping off kids’ wish lists this year.\n“This is my worst nightmare,” mom Angie Wong, the 42-year-old founder of the private Facebook group Brooklyn Moms, tells The Post. She recently caved and got the gas-blasting gizmo for her 5-year-old son, Will, and 7-year-old daughter, Maddie. “I can see that thing [being] used on my face one unsuspecting morning.”\nOf course a “fart launcher” is not the end of the world, but as I document regularly in my articles, there are literally thousands of signs that the fabric of our society is coming apart all around us.\nIf our society continues to degenerate at this rate, there is only one way that our story can end.\nSadly, most people seem to think that everything is going to be just fine, because that is what their televisions are telling them to think.\nMost of us are willingly plugging ourselves into “the matrix” for multiple hours every day, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that most of us see the world the way that the elite want us to see it.\nIf you want to start making positive changes in your life, breaking free of your addictions is one of the most important things that you can do.\nAnd at this point, for many Americans watching television is one of the most insidious addictions of all.\nAbout the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.\nBe the first to comment on \"The Average Person Will Watch Over 78,000 Hours Of Television “Programming” Over The Course Of A Lifetime\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line266774"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.641869843006134,"wiki_prob":0.641869843006134,"text":"By: Sam Harris\nNarrated by: Sam Harris\nA belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.\ngenuinely thought provoking\nBy Angelina Russo on 25-05-2016\nA must read for everyone.\nNot enough people know about determinism but this is one of the best introduction to it\nAn Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth\nBy: Chris Hadfield\nNarrated by: Chris Hadfield\nAn Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth is an inspirational memoir of space exploration and hard-won wisdom, from an astronaut who has spent a lifetime making the impossible a reality. Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4,000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft, and become a YouTube sensation with his performance of David Bowie's ‘Space Oddity' in space.\nA spectacular and humble insight into one continuous lifetime of applied dedication\nMiles better than most BS \"self-improvement\" books\nI've read many books on self-improvement, but they're usually full of the same-old hype and \"go get'em, tiger!\" messages. They're also mostly written by people who make a living out of selling books about self-improvement. This book, however, is different. Chris actually walks through every detail of how he achieved his goals, the process, the people he met, the problems and how he solved them, and how he planned his progression.\nThe book is full of great lessons you don't hear from other authors, and he shares very real and normal personal issues his family overcame.\nMost of all, this book is GENUINE.\nIt is currently my favourite non-fiction of all time.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line96229"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6927021145820618,"wiki_prob":0.30729788541793823,"text":"Speech-Language-Hearing-Sciences\nPSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS\nJulie Hecht\nRaymond Moody\nMr. Raymond Moody – a 4th year doctoral student in Health Psychology and Clinical Science training program (www.cunyhpcs.org) at the CUNY Graduate Center and a graduate student researcher at Hunter College’s Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST; www.chestnyc.org) – has been awarded a two year grant totaling $155,972 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to support his dissertation research.\nGay and bisexual men continue to account for a significant majority of all new HIV infections in the U.S, with condomless anal sex in the absence of PrEP being the most common HIV transmission risk behavior. An HIV syndemic has been identified that consists of several factors (e.g., substance use, sexual compulsivity, depression, partner violence, and trauma from childhood sexual abuse) that have high levels of comorbidity and work synergistically to increase risk. The primary goal of Mr. Moody’s dissertation is to examine three potentially linking mechanisms of syndemic factors: emotion regulation, executive attention, and attentional bias.\nThe grant will include two distinct studies of HIV-negative gay and bisexual men. Study one will examine the mechanisms as part of One Thousand Strong, an ongoing NIDA-funded study of more than 1,000 gay and bisexual men from across the U.S. Study two will involve the recruitment of a New York City based sample of 90 men stratified by substance use and sexual compulsivity and examine these mechanisms using a combination of online and laboratory based methods. The dissertation aims to advance syndemic research and to inform the development of interventions to reduce the burden of HIV among gay and bisexual men.\nMr. Moody’s research team includes Drs. Tyrel Starks and Jon Rendina, all members of the Hunter College Department of Psychology and the Health Psychology and Clinical Science doctoral training program at CUNY. The project will also involve many students and interns from the Hunter College CHEST.\nCHEST’s mission is to conduct research to identify and promote strategies that prevent the spread of HIV and improve the lives of people living with HIV. We have been advocating for and working with the LGBT community since 1996. www.chestnyc.org\nText provided by CHEST\nLEARN MORE ABOUT OUR PSYCHOLOGY PROGRAM","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line195134"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7058205604553223,"wiki_prob":0.7058205604553223,"text":"The 4-month-long tomato trade dispute with Mexico is ending, but at what cost to eaters?\niStock / Leafedge\nHalf of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. grocery stores come from Mexico. Trade-induced higher prices play out on our plates.\nby Marilyn Noble\nAccess Issues Policy Systems\nThe Great Tomato Trade War of 2019 appears to be coming to an end, but the impacts on the $2 billion tomato import business and on tomato-loving shoppers countrywide remain to be seen.\nLast week, the Department of Commerce (DOC) announced that U.S. and Mexican growers have initialed a draft agreement to once again suspend DOC’S investigation into the dumping of Mexican tomatoes on the U.S. market, which was accompanied by a 17.56 percent import duty levied on those tomatoes since May of this year. Here’s our backgrounder on that springtime saga.\nThe investigation, which started in the 1990s but had been on hold as a result of successive 5-year suspension agreements, began again after the Trump administration pulled out of the 2013 Tomato Suspension Agreement (TSA). This came at the behest of Florida politicians and the Florida Tomato Exchange, a trade group of tomato growers who allege that Mexico takes advantage of loopholes in the TSA to unfairly compete in the U.S. marketplace.\nWhile the draft agreement was initially lauded by both sides, some of the stipulations are causing significant concern for distributors along the U.S.-Mexico border.\nIn a major shift, the new draft agreement prohibits anything but the destruction or return to Mexico of tomatoes with defects.\nThe issue at hand is what happens when Mexican tomatoes enter the U.S. Florida growers claim that Mexican growers are shipping low quality tomatoes to markets in the U.S. Under the 2013 TSA, if a buyer received a load of tomatoes and a percentage showed condition defects like spoilage, blemishes, or other quality issues, that buyer could repack the tomatoes and then either destroy, return, or donate the rejects to non-profit food banks, receiving an allowance for the associated costs in the process. Mexican growers say their audits show this hasn’t been a widespread practice, and that significantly less than one percent of their shipments have issues.\nIn a major shift, the new draft agreement prohibits anything but the destruction (under USDA oversight) or return to Mexico of tomatoes with defects, thus increasing food waste, shutting down a source of edible food for the hungry, and doubling the consumption of fuel used in trucking the tomatoes back and forth. According to Jaime Chamberlain of Chamberlain Distributing, a Nogales, Arizona-based importer of Mexican fruits and vegetables, this stipulation is also an egregious restraint of trade. “If you buy a car and one of the dealers says you’ve got a guarantee on the transmission and the other one says you don’t have a guarantee, take it or leave it, you’re not going to buy the one with no guarantee. That’s how we look at it with tomatoes.” While buyers of domestic tomatoes can negotiate return policies for defective product, the new agreement prohibits compensation for rejected Mexican imports.\nThe draft agreement also sets a floor price for all fresh-market Mexican tomatoes—those intended for processing are exempt. A floor price, or reference price in the language of the agreement, has been the case in past trade agreements, but new in this version is a 40 percent premium on organic tomatoes, a cost that will most likely be passed on to consumers. For Wholesum Family Farms, a Fair Trade Certified organic vegetable grower with operations on both sides of the border, the situation is concerning at best. While the company has planned to shift all of its organic beefsteak tomato growing operations from Mexico to Arizona since before the latest dispute began, it still works with its own farms and others in Mexico. “Right now, we’re facing a lot of uncertainty, so we’re just rolling with the punches,” says spokesperson Joanna Jaramillo.\n“The inspection provision is essentially a non-tariff trade barrier whose ripple effects will not only damage the U.S. tomato market, but many other industries that trade with Mexico.”\nAccording to Commerce, quality inspections at the border will increase, and that’s another source of contention. Under the new agreement, all round, Roma, and unpackaged grape tomatoes will be subject to inspection. Tomatoes on the vine, specialty tomatoes, and packaged grape tomatoes are excluded. While Commerce claims that amounts to about 66 percent of all shipments being inspected, The Fresh Produce Association of the Americas (FPAA), a trade organization representing U.S. importers and distributors, estimates the number will be closer to 92 percent. No matter which, the increased inspections will result in diminished tomato quality because of the length of time the perishable product will have to wait for inspection, and will create a bottleneck at the Ports of Entry, not just for tomatoes—about 20 percent of the border’s total import traffic at the Nogales Mariposa Port of Entry—but for other fruits and vegetables and consumer goods, auto parts, and other imported products as well. “The inspection provision is essentially a non-tariff trade barrier whose ripple effects will not only damage the U.S. tomato market, but many other industries that trade with Mexico,” said Lance Jungmeier, FPAA’s president, in a written statement.\nWhy would the Mexican growers enter into an agreement so seemingly detrimental to their interests? Chamberlain says he suspects Commerce pressured them into it with the threat of future duties. “This was a forced concession, not an agreement.” he said. “These concessions are horrible for the industry and will drastically change the landscape of the Ports of Entry.”\nThe public comment period on the agreement is open now, and several organizations declined requests for interviews since they’re in the process of working with their members to prepare formal statements.\nThe stakes are high. According to a 2018 University of Arizona study, at almost $3 billion in GDP and 33,000 U.S. jobs, the imported Mexican tomato business has an impact on the U.S. economy, especially in border states like Texas, Arizona, and California. The draft agreement is due for final adoption and entry into the Federal Register on September 19, but if that fails, the Mexican growers and their U.S. importers could be facing duties of up to 25 percent. And since half of the fresh tomatoes in U.S. grocery stores come from Mexico, eaters could once again be the unwilling beneficiaries of trade-induced higher prices.\nAccess, Issues, Policy, Systemsanti-dumpingMexicotomatotrade war\nMarilyn Noble\nMarilyn Noble has written hundreds of articles about everything from aviation to food and agriculture. She’s also the author of four Southwestern cookbooks. She’s based in Arizona and may be reached via twitter @mariwrites or her website marilynnoble.com.\nIssues Farm Middleman Last mile Shelf Plate Waste Policy Culture Access NewsNews\nPrepare for sticker shock. The U.S.-Mexico Tomato War is on\nSystems Issues Farm Environment PolicyPolicy\nWant to understand the border crisis? Look to American corn policy\nSystems Issues PolicyPolicy\nU.S. food buys offer little relief from trade war\nGet a weekly dish of features, commentary and insight from the food movement’s front lines.\nThanks for reading The New Food Economy. Subscribe to our newsletter to get a weekly dish of features, commentary and insight from the food system’s front lines.\nBecome a subscriber: http://newfoodeconomy.com/subscribe/\nOr find us on social:\nhttps://www.facebook.com/newfoodeconomy/\nhttps://twitter.com/newfoodeconomy\nnewfoodeconomy.org © 2020 New Food Economy. All rights reserved. Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of New Food Economy.\nThe latest food news, from the editors of The New Food Economy\nIn your inbox, twice a week.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line338916"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6707742214202881,"wiki_prob":0.6707742214202881,"text":"Manx shearwater\nThe Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) is a medium-sized shearwater in the seabird family Procellariidae. The scientific name of this species records a name shift: Manx shearwaters were called Manks puffins in the 17th century. Puffin is an Anglo-Norman word (Middle English pophyn) for the cured carcasses of nestling shearwaters. The Atlantic puffin acquired the name much later, possibly because of its similar nesting habits.\nOn Skomer\nRecording from Skomer Island, Wales\nLeast Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]\nOrder: Procellariiformes\nFamily: Procellariidae\nGenus: Puffinus\nP. puffinus\nPuffinus puffinus\n(Brünnich, 1764)\nBreeding colonies\nNon-breeding visitor\n(ranges are approximate)\nProcellaria puffinus Brünnich, 1764\n2.1 Voice\n3 Distribution and habitat\n4 Behaviour\n4.1 Breeding\n4.2 Food and feeding\n4.3 Rafting\n5 Predators and parasites\n7 In culture\nTaxonomyEdit\nThe shearwaters form part of the family Procellariidae, a widespread group containing nearly 100 species of medium to large seabirds. They have long, narrow wings and the characteristic “tube nose”.[2] The large genus Puffinus includes several species formerly considered to be subspecies of the Manx shearwater, including the yelkouan shearwater, Balearic shearwater, Hutton's shearwater, black-vented shearwater, fluttering shearwater,[3] Townsend's shearwater and the Hawaiian shearwater.[4][5] Of these, the Hawaiian and possibly Townsend's shearwaters seem to be most closely related to the Manx shearwater.[4]\nThree extinct species appear to be closely related to the Manx shearwater, the lava shearwater,[6] the dune shearwater and Scarlett's shearwater.[7][8] DNA recovered from the lava shearwater of the Canary Islands suggests that it is the Manx shearwater's sister species despite being significantly smaller.[9]\nThe Manx shearwater was first described by Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich as Procellaria puffinus in 1764.[3][10] The current scientific name Puffinus derives from \"puffin\" and its variants, such as poffin, pophyn, and puffing,[11] which referred to the cured carcass of the fat nestling of the shearwater, a former delicacy.[12] The original usage dates from at least 1337, but from as early as 1678, the term gradually came to be used for another seabird, the Atlantic puffin.[11] The current English name was first recorded in 1835 and refers to the former nesting of this species on the Isle of Man.[13]\nDescriptionEdit\nFlying in Iceland\nThe Manx shearwater is 30–38 cm (12–15 in) with a 76–89 cm (30–35 in) wingspan and weighs 350–575 g (12.3–20.3 oz).[3] It has the typically \"shearing\" flight of the genus, dipping from side to side on stiff wings with few wingbeats, the wingtips almost touching the water. This bird looks like a flying cross, with its wings held at right angles to the body, and it changes from black to white as the black upper parts and white under sides are alternately exposed as it travels low over the sea.\nVoiceEdit\nThis shearwater is mainly silent at sea, even when birds are gathered off the breeding colonies. It calls on its nocturnal visits to the nesting burrows in flight, on the ground, and in the burrows, although moonlight depresses the amount of calling. The vocalisations largely consists of a raucous series of croons, howls, and screams, typically in groups of a few syllables, which become weaker and throatier. The male has some clear ringing and shrieking tones absent from the harsher repertoire of the female, the difference being obvious when a pair duets. Females can recognise the voice of their mates, but not of their young.[3][14] They do not provide postnesting care, and a chick in their burrow is likely their own, so voice identification is not needed.[15]\nVisionEdit\nEach retina of the Manx shearwater has one fovea and an elongated strip of high photoreceptor density. The pecten has many blood vessels and appears to keep the retina supplied with nutrients.[16]\nThe vision of the Manx shearwater has a number of adaptations to its way of life. Like other tube-nosed seabirds, it has a long, narrow area of visual sensitivity containing the fovea across the retina of the eye.[17] This region is characterised by the presence of ganglion cells that are regularly arrayed and larger than those found in the rest of the retina. This feature helps in the detection of items in a small area projecting below and around the bill. It may assist in the detection of prey near the sea surface as a bird flies low over it.[18]\nSince it visits its breeding colony at night, a shearwater has adaptations for nocturnal vision, too. In the shearwater's eyes, the lens does most of the bending of light necessary to produce a focused image on the retina. The cornea, the outer covering of the eye, is relative flat, so of low refractive power. In a diurnal bird like a pigeon, the reverse is true; the cornea is highly curved and is the principal refractive component. The ratio of refraction by the lens to that by the cornea is 1.6 for the shearwater and 0.4 for the pigeon. The shorter focal length of shearwater eyes give them a smaller, but brighter, image than is the case for pigeons. Although the Manx shearwater has adaptations for night vision, the effect is small, and these birds likely also use smell and hearing to locate their nests.[19]\nDistribution and habitatEdit\nThe Manx shearwater is entirely marine, typically flying within 10 m (30 ft) of the sea surface. It nests in burrows on small islands, which it visits only at night.[20] Its nesting colonies are in the north Atlantic Ocean in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, France, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Azores, Canary Islands, and Madeira. The most important colonies, with a total of more than 300,000 pairs, are on islands off Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Three-quarters of the British and Irish birds breed on just three islands; Skomer, Skokholm, and Rùm. Around 7000–9000 pairs breed in Iceland, with at least 15,000 pairs on the Faeroes. Other populations are of at most a few hundred pairs. The northeast of North America has recently been colonised from Newfoundland and Labrador to Massachusetts; although breeding was first recorded in 1973, populations remain small. Records in the northeast Pacific are increasing, and breeding has been suspected in British Columbia and Alaska.[3][21]\nDuring the breeding season birds regularly commute between their colony and offshore feeding grounds that can be up to 1,500 km away.[22] For example, adult Manx shearwaters rearing their chick on the west coast of Ireland have been observed to travel all the way to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to feed when the conditions are right.[22]\nThe breeding colonies are deserted from July to March, when the birds migrate to the South Atlantic, wintering mainly off Brazil and Argentina, with smaller numbers off southwest South Africa.[23] The journey south can be over 10,000 km (6,000 mi),[24] so a 50-year-old bird has probably covered over a million km (600,000 mi) on migration alone. The migration also appears to be quite complex, containing many stopovers and foraging zones throughout the Atlantic Ocean.[25] Ornithologist Chris Mead estimated that a bird ringed in 1957 when aged about 5 years and still breeding on Bardsey Island off Wales in April 2002 had flown over 8 million km (5 million mi) in total during its 50-year life.[26]\nManx shearwaters are able to fly directly back to their burrows when released hundreds of kilometres away, even inland.[27]\nBehaviourEdit\nManx shearwaters are long-lived birds. A Manx shearwater breeding on Copeland Island, Northern Ireland, was as of 2003/04, the oldest known living wild bird in the world: ringed as an adult (at least 5 years old) in July 1953, it was retrapped in July 2003, at least 55 years old.[28]\nThis is a gregarious species, which can be seen in large numbers from boats or headlands, especially on migration in autumn. It is silent at sea, but at night, the breeding colonies are alive with raucous cackling calls.\nBreedingEdit\nEgg, Collection Museum Wiesbaden\nAlthough shearwaters return to the breeding colonies from March onwards, the females often then leave again for 2–3 weeks before egg-laying in early May. Males return to the colonies in which they were hatched, but up to half of females may move elsewhere. The nest is a burrow, often previously excavated by a European rabbit, although shearwaters can dig their own holes. Suitable holes under rocks may also be used. The burrows may be reused in subsequent years.[3]\nThe single white egg averages 61 x 42 mm (2.4 x 1.7 in) and weighs 57 g (2.0 oz) of which 7% is shell.[29]\nFood and feedingEdit\nThe Manx shearwater feeds on small fish (herrings, sprats, and sand eels), crustaceans, cephalopods, and surface offal. The bird catches food off the surface or by pursuit diving, and forages alone or in small flocks. It can be attracted by feeding cetaceans, but rarely follows boats or associates with other shearwater species.[3]\nTube-nosed seabirds can detect food items at a distance of several tens of kilometres using their sense of smell to detect offal and compounds such as dimethyl sulfoxide produced when phytoplankton is consumed by krill. They track across the wind until they find a scent and then follow it upwind to its origin.[30]\nRafting, a common behaviour in shearwaters\nRaftingEdit\nManx shearwaters engage in a behaviour termed \"rafting\", where birds sit, often in large groups of more than 10,000, on the water adjacent to their Skomer Island, breeding colony before and after visiting their chicks. Rafts move closer to the island during the night and further away in the morning which produces a \"halo\" effect - where no birds are found close to the island during daylight. These day-night cycles of rafting distributions are prominent for Manx shearwaters around Skomer Island and might provide a way of waiting for dusk that reduces predation risk.[31]\nPredators and parasitesEdit\nBecause of their lack of mobility on land, Manx shearwaters are vulnerable to attack by large gulls, such as the great black-backed gull,[32] and great skua.[33] Birds of prey such as the peregrine falcon and golden eagle are also recorded as killing adult birds.[34]\nRats and cats are a serious problem where they are present; the large shearwater colony on the Calf of Man was destroyed by rats that arrived from a shipwreck in the late 18th century.[35] European hedgehogs eat the eggs of nesting seabirds where they have been introduced.[33] Red deer have been recorded killing and eating young shearwaters on at least Foula, Skokholm, and Rùm; on the latter island, 4% of the chicks are killed by deer, and sheep have also been involved.[36] The reason for the carnivorous behaviour is thought to be a need for extra calcium.[37]\nManx shearwaters frequently carry feather lice (Mallophaga) most of which are either the feather-eaters in the groups Ischnocera, or Amblycera, which also consume blood. The most common are the ischnocerans Halipeurus diversus and Trabeculus aviator. The nests of breeding birds frequently contain the shearwater flea; Ornithopsylla laetitiae is also commonly present, which shares a common ancestry with North American rabbit fleas.[38] Where their burrows are near those of Atlantic puffins, the tick Ixodes uriae is common.[39] The mite Neotrombicula autumnalis is often present, and has been implicated in spreading puffinosis.[39] Puffinosis is a viral disease of in which young birds get blisters on their feet, conjunctivitis, and problems with movement. The death rate can reach 70% in infected birds.[40][41] Internal parasites include the tapeworm Tetrabothrius cylindricus.[42]\nStatusEdit\nThe European population of the Manx shearwater has been estimated at 350,000–390,000 breeding pairs or 1,050,000–1,700,000 individual birds, and makes up 95% of the world total numbers. Although this species' population now appears to be declining, the decrease is not rapid or large enough to trigger conservation vulnerability criteria. Given its high numbers, this shearwater is therefore classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of least concern.[1]\nIn the north of its range, numbers are stable and the range is expanding, but human activities are affecting populations in the Macaronesian islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. These include birds stranded when dazzled by artificial lighting. As with other shearwaters and petrels, newly fledged Manx shearwaters are susceptible to grounding in built-up areas due to artificial light. The moon cycle and strong onshore winds largely influence grounding events in west Scotland, and visibility conditions to a lesser extent.[43] Around 1000–5000 chicks a year are legally taken for food in the Faroes. Introduced mammals are a problem, although populations can recover when rats and cats are removed from islands. Rabbits may try to occupy burrows, but also dig new tunnels.[3]\nIn cultureEdit\nThe large chicks of the Manx shearwater are very rich in oil from their fish diet and have been eaten since prehistoric times. They are easily extricated from their burrows, and the annual crop from the Calf of Man may have been as high as 10,000 birds per year in the 17th century. The young birds were also eaten in Ireland, Scotland, and the Scottish islands.[44]\nThe eerie, nocturnal cries of nesting shearwaters and petrels has led to associations with the supernatural. The breeding colonies at Trollaval on Rùm and Trøllanes and Trøllhøvdi in the Faroe Islands are believed to have acquired their troll associations from the night-time clamour.[45]\n^ a b BirdLife International (2012). \"Puffinus puffinus\". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN. 2012. Retrieved 26 November 2013. old-form url\n^ Hoyo, Josep del; Elliott, Andrew; Sargatal, Jordi; Christie, David A; de Juana, Eduardo, eds. (2013). \"Procellariidae: Petrels, Shearwaters\". Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. Retrieved 14 December 2014. (subscription required)\n^ a b c d e f g h Hoyo, Josep del; Elliott, Andrew; Sargatal, Jordi; Christie, David A; de Juana, Eduardo, eds. (2013). \"Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus)\". Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. Retrieved 11 October 2014. (subscription required)\n^ a b Austin, Jeremy J; Bretagnolle, Vincent; Pasquet, Eric (2004). \"A global molecular phylogeny of the small Puffinus shearwaters and implications for systematics of the Little-Audubon's Shearwater complex\" (PDF). Auk. 121 (3): 847–864. doi:10.2307/4090321. JSTOR 4090321.\n^ Murphy, Robert Cushman (1952). \"The Manx Shearwater, Puffinus puffinus, as a species of world-wide distribution\" (PDF). American Museum Novitates. 1586: 1–21.\n^ Rando, J C; Alcover, J A (2008). \"Evidence for a second western Palaearctic seabird extinction during the last Millennium: the Lava Shearwater Puffinus olsoni\". Ibis. 150 (1): 188–192. doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.2007.00741.x. hdl:10261/85855.\n^ Rando, Juan Carlos & Alcover, Josep Antoni (2009). \"On the extinction of the Dune Shearwater (Puffinus holeae) from the Canary Islands\". Journal of Ornithology. 151 (2): 365–369. doi:10.1007/s10336-009-0463-6.\n^ Holdaway, R N; Worthy, T H (1994). \"A new fossil species of shearwater Puffinus from the Late Quaternary of the South Island, New Zealand, and notes on the biogeography and evolution of the Puffinus gavia superspecies\". Emu. 94 (3): 201–215. doi:10.1071/mu9940201.\n^ Ramirez, O; Illera, J C; Rando, J C; Gonzalez-Solis, J; Alcover, J A; Lalueza-Fox, C (2010). \"Ancient DNA of the extinct Lava Shearwater (Puffinus olsoni) from the Canary Islands reveals incipient differentiation within the P. puffinus complex\". PLoS ONE. 5 (12): e16072. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016072. PMC 3013140. PMID 21209838.\n^ Brunnich, Morten Thrane (1764). Ornithologia Borealis (in Latin). Hafniae. p. 29.\n^ a b \"Puffin\". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 14 December 2014. (subscription required)\n^ Jobling, James A (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4. p. 323.\n^ \"Manx\". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 14 December 2014. (subscription required)\n^ Snow, David; Perrins, Christopher M., eds. (1998). The Birds of the Western Palearctic concise edition (2 volumes). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-854099-1.\n^ Brooke, Michael (2010). The Manx Shearwater. Poyser Monographs. London. ISBN 978-1408137536. p. 195.\n^ Schematic diagram of retina of right eye, loosely based on Sturkie (1998) p. 6.\n^ Güntürkün, Onur, \"Structure and functions of the eye\" in Sturkie (1998) pp. 1–18.\n^ Hayes, Brian (1991). \"Novel area serving binocular vision in the retinae of procellariiform seabirds\". Brain, Behavior and Evolution. 37 (2): 79–84. doi:10.1159/000114348. PMID 2054586.\n^ Martin, Graham R; Brooke, M de L (1991). \"The eye of a procellariiform seabird, the Manx Shearwater, Puffinus puffinus: Visual fields and optical structure\". Brain, Behavior and Evolution. 37 (2): 65–78. doi:10.1159/000114347. PMID 2054585.\n^ Snow, David; Perrins, Christopher M., eds. (1998). The Birds of the Western Palearctic concise edition (2 volumes). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-854099-1. pp. 51–52.\n^ Goettel, Beth (8 September 2009). \"Manx Shearwaters decide National Wildlife Refuge is perfect place to raise a chick\". U S Fish and Wildlife Service. Retrieved 25 January 2013.\n^ a b Wischnewski, Saskia; Arneill, Gavin E.; Bennison, Ashley W.; Dillane, Eileen; Poupart, Timothée A.; Hinde, Camilla A.; Jessopp, Mark J.; Quinn, John L. (2019-05-01). \"Variation in foraging strategies over a large spatial scale reduces parent–offspring conflict in Manx shearwaters\". Animal Behaviour. 151: 165–176. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.03.014. ISSN 0003-3472.\n^ Onley, Derek; Scofield, Paul (2007). Albatrosses, Petrels and Shearwaters of the World (Helm Field Guides). London: Christopher Helm. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-7136-4332-9. pp. 202–203.\n^ Guilford, T G; Meade, J; Willis, J; Phillips, R A; Boyle, D; Roberts, S; Collett, M; Freeman, R; Perrins, C M (2009). \"Migration and stopover in a small pelagic seabird, the Manx shearwater Puffinus puffinus: insights from machine learning\". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 276 (1660): 1215–1223. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1577. PMC 2660961. PMID 19141421.\n^ Freeman, R.; Dean, B.; Kirk, H.; Leonard, K.; Phillips, R. A.; Perrins, C. M.; Guilford, T. (2013). \"Predictive ethoinformatics reveals the complex migratory behaviour of a pelagic seabird, the Manx Shearwater\". Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 10 (84): 20130279. doi:10.1098/rsif.2013.0279. PMC 3673166. PMID 23635496.\n^ \"Oldest bird clocks 5 million miles\". CNN.com. 18 April 2002. Retrieved 31 March 2013.\n^ Birkhead (2012) pp. 168–172.\n^ Jacquie A. Clark; Robert A. Robinson; Dawn E. Balmer; Sue Y. Adams; Mark P. Collier; Mark J. Grantham; Jeremy R. Blackburn & Bridget M. Griffin (2004). \"Bird ringing in Britain and Ireland in 2003\". Ringing and Migration. 22 (2): 114. doi:10.1080/03078698.2004.9674318.\n^ \"Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus [Brünnich, 1764]\". BirdFacts. British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Retrieved 17 January 2015.\n^ Richards, Cerren; Padget, Oliver; Guilford, Tim; Bates, Amanda E. (2019-10-21). \"Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) rafting behaviour revealed by GPS tracking and behavioural observations\". PeerJ. 7: e7863. doi:10.7717/peerj.7863. ISSN 2167-8359. PMID 31656697.\n^ \"Skomer Island: Manx Shearwater Factsheet\" (PDF). The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales. Retrieved 17 December 2014.\n^ a b Heaney, V; Ratcliffe, N; Brown, A; Robinson, P J; Lock, L (2002). \"The status and distribution of European storm-petrels Hydrobates pelagicus and Manx shearwaters Puffinus puffinus on the isles of Scilly\" (PDF). Atlantic Seabirds. 4 (1): 1–15.\n^ Wormell, P (1965). \"Manx Shearwaters and other sea-birds as prey of Peregrines and Golden Eagles\" (PDF). British Birds. 58 (4): 149.\n^ \"Manx Shearwater Puffinus puffinus\". Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Retrieved 18 December 2014.\n^ Brooke (2010) p. ix.\n^ Furness, R W (1988). \"Predation on ground-nesting seabirds by island populations of red deer Cervus elaphus and sheep Ovis\". Journal of Zoology. 216 (3): 565–573. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.1988.tb02451.x.\n^ Rothschild & Clay (1957) p. 63.\n^ a b Brooke (2010) pp. 16–17.\n^ Harris, M P (1965). \"Puffinosis among Manx Shearwaters on Skokholm\" (PDF). British Birds. 58 (10): 426–434.\n^ Macdonald, J W; McMartin, D A; Walker, K G; Carins, M; Dennis, R H (1967). \"Puffinosis in Fulmars in Orkney and Shetland\" (PDF). British Birds. 60 (9): 356–360.\n^ Rothschild, Miriam; Clay, Theresa (1957). Fleas, Flukes and Cuckoos. A study of bird parasites. New York: Macmillan. p. 197.\n^ Syposz, M.; Gonçalves, F.; Carty, M.; Hoppitt, W.; Manco, F. (2018). \"Factors influencing Manx Shearwater grounding on the west coast of Scotland\" (PDF). Ibis. 160 (4): 846–854. doi:10.1111/ibi.12594.\n^ Cocker, Mark; Mabey, Richard (2005). Birds Britannica. Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-6907-7. pp. 21–24.\n^ Cocker, Mark; Tipling, David (2013). Birds and People. London =: :Jonathan Cape=. ISBN 978-0224081740. pp. 104–106.\nSturkie, P D (1998). Sturkie's Avian Physiology. 5th Edition. Academic Press, San Diego. ISBN 978-0-12-747605-6. OCLC 162128712.\nWikimedia Commons has media related to Puffinus puffinus.\nBTO BirdFacts – Manx shearwater\nfor the Copeland bird ringed in 1953:\nCopeland Bird Observatory\nfor the Bardsey Island bird ringed in 1957:\nBardsey Island Bird Observatory\nWildlife Britain news\nSong of the Manx shearwater – a British Library sound recording.\nFlickr Field Guide Birds of the World Photographs\nVIREO images\nRetrieved from \"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Manx_shearwater&oldid=932549204\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1034831"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.836512565612793,"wiki_prob":0.836512565612793,"text":"Big govt, International, Politics\nMexico Plans “Free Zones” To Stop Illegal Immigration\nNewly inaugurated Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has a plan to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, and it doesn’t include a border wall. Rather, he intends to declare certain areas that are “no man’s land” as economic “free zones.” The goal for these 15-mile wide, 2,000-mile zones is to help reduce the incentive for Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S. The higher price point for goods and services in this zone could also make the trek less feasible for Central American would-be illegal immigrants. It’s an interesting theory. We’ll see how that works out.\nHere’s more from The Daily Wire…\nMexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has unveiled a new plan to curtail illegal immigration to the United States by focusing on creating economic “free zones” along the U.S.-Mexico border.\nLópez Obrador, a leftist, announced the Tax Incentive Decree for the Northern Border Region which will create free zones near the border that are over 15 miles wide and will reportedly encompass approximately 2,000 miles. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the free zones will:\nreduce income taxes from 30 percent to 20 percent\nslash the Value Added Tax for goods coming into the country from 16 percent to 8 percent\nboost the minimum wage 100 percent to 176 pesos ($8.80), and\nmake fuel prices the same as those in the the U.S.\nBig govt, International, Issues, War on Terror\nEnforcing Immigration Laws Decimating MS-13\nLong Island law enforcement is reporting that its war against MS-13 is making meaningful gains thanks in no small part to community policing and support from the federal government. According to a Newsday report, only four homicides tied to MS-13 were reported in 2018 compared with a staggering 14 in the previous calendar year. “Suffolk County has waged war against MS-13, and our comprehensive strategy to eradicate this violent gang from Long Island is working,” reported New York’s Suffolk County Police Department. “This dramatic reduction is a result of great policing, expanded community outreach and leveraging governmental partnerships to bring in additional resources to combat gang violence.” Read more..\nHere’s more from Fox News…\nThe ongoing state and Trump administration crackdown against MS-13 in one of their most infamous strongholds has taken such a toll on the gang that they’ve only been linked to a single murder in the area during 2018.\nPolice in Long Island – a part of New York that has been a hotbed for violent crime at the hands of MS-13 – told Newsday that four homicides recorded there in 2018 appeared to be linked to the gang, down from 14 the year prior. Yet only one of those murders is said to have occurred this year. The other three cases were killings believed to have happened in 2015 and 2017, but they were counted in 2018 totals since the bodies were found within the past 12 months.\n“Suffolk County has waged war against MS-13 and our comprehensive strategy to eradicate this violent gang from Long Island is working,” the Suffolk County Police Department told Fox News in a statement Monday. “This dramatic reduction is a result of great policing, expanded community outreach and leveraging governmental partnerships to bring in additional resources to combat gang violence.”\nOakland Mayor Foils ICE Raid, Insists She “Did the Right Thing”\nRecall when Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gained notoriety early in 2018 for warning illegal immigrants in California about a scheduled ICE raid. In a recent Buzzfeed interview, Schaaf reported that she has “no regrets” over her stunt and blasted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for going “astray.” Due to Schaaf’s revelation, more than 900 illegal immigrants remained “at large in the community” according to follow-up reports from ICE. At the time, Schaaf defended her actions, arguing, “How could I live with myself if it came to be that my sharing this information could have kept a family together?” Read more…\nOakland Mayor Libby Schaaf — who once warned Northern California residents about an impending ICE raid — said she has “no regrets” for her actions and said the federal immigration agency “has gone astray.”\n“I have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I did the right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our values are not aligned with our laws,” Schaff told BuzzFeed in an interview. “That’s hopefully the message that is sent out.”\n“I have no regrets, none. The more time goes by, the more certain I feel that I did the right thing in standing up for our community and pointing out our values are not aligned with our laws.”\n— Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf\nBig govt, International, Issues, Politics\nThe Generosity of Americans\nNine days ago (at this writing), Iraq War veteran and triple amputee Brian Kolfage launched a GoFundMe page to help build the wall on the United States southern border with Mexico. In a week and a half, Kolfage has raised over $17 million (toward his stated goal of $1 billion) with gifts from over 285,000 people.\nThe explosion of support for Kolfage’s grassroots fundraising has gotten a great deal of attention, not all of it positive, needless to say. On my own Facebook and Twitter feeds, I read many snarky posts to the effect of, “Oh, sure — these people can give money for a wall but can’t donate funds to help (veterans/the poor/the disabled/fill in your cause of choice here).”\nThis — like so many pronouncements on the shortcomings of Americans these days — is not just false but a staggering distortion of reality. Perhaps because I teach entrepreneurship, I am well aware of America’s long history of philanthropy. America’s entrepreneurs have always been generous with their wealth — and we have countless universities, civic institutions and medical facilities as proof. Americans as a rule are among the most generous people on Earth, giving to support hundreds and thousands of causes each year — a fact that the esteemed Smithsonian noted when it launched its Philanthropy Initiative in 2015, by which its curators sought “to document, preserve, interpret, and exhibit … the role of philanthropy in American history, as well as the role of Americans in encouraging and using philanthropy throughout the world.”\nAccording to the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes an annual report of charitable giving, Americans gave over $410 billion in 2017, 2.1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. This was a record-breaking amount — the first time that annual charitable giving crossed the $400 billion mark — and substantially in excess of the $389 billion record set in 2016.\nThe report reveals other important data about Americans’ charitable inclinations and debunks popular myths propagated by those whose political machinations depend upon characterizing Americans as “selfish” and “greedy.” For example, individuals — not foundations or even corporations — constitute the largest number of givers, representing 70 percent of all gifts. Individual gifts increased by 5.2 percent in 2017 to an estimated $286.65 billion. That said, corporate giving increased by 8 percent to an estimated $20.77 billion, and $405 million of those funds was earmarked for victims of natural and manmade disasters.\nFurthermore, Americans’ generosity is directed to an extraordinarily broad spectrum of causes. Eight of the nine types of charitable subsectors tracked by the Giving USA Foundation saw substantial increases in 2017: religious charities (up 2.9 percent), education (up 6.2 percent), human services (up 5.1 percent), health organizations (up 7.3 percent), public-society benefit organizations (up 7.8 percent), organizations that promote the arts, humanities and culture (up 8.7 percent), environmental and animal welfare organizations (up 7.2 percent) and foundations (up 15.5 percent).\nExperts quoted by Giving USA cited the booming economy as a primary reason for the increase in giving in 2017 and predicted that the tax cuts that went into effect in 2017 would have a multiplier effect on giving in 2018 as well. Dr. Amir Pasic, the Eugene R. Tempel dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPIU, said, “Some of our most fortunate citizens are using their wealth to make some significant contributions to the common good.” In fact, 91 percent of high net worth individuals gave to charity last year — at an average of over $25,509 per household.\nThis flies in the face of the popular sloganeering that Americans who benefit from tax cuts are greedy and want those less fortunate to suffer. Increased prosperity in the United States results in increased generosity. (It’s worth mentioning here that while corporate pre-tax profits rose by 4.1 percent in 2017, corporate charitable giving rose by nearly double that percentage.)\nBut it is not only wealthy individuals and families who give generously; middle-class and lower-income Americans do as well. Average household giving among middle- and lower-income families was over $2,200 last year — another record. Nor is it a white phenomenon: African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and other minorities have a strong history of philanthropy in this country.\nKeep in mind that the $410 billion figure cited above is for one year. Americans have given over $350 billion a year every year since 2014, over $300 billion a year since 2005 and over $200 billion since 2000, according to Giving USA. In other words, Americans have given over $5 trillion in charitable donations just since the year 2000.\nNor is it simply a matter of money. Last year, 63 million Americans — 25 percent of the adult population — donated their time, talents and energy by volunteering for one or more charitable organizations of their choice. This, too, is a distinctly American tradition going back to the country’s founding (as author Alexis de Tocqueville famously observed in his book “Democracy in America,” published in two volumes between 1835 and 1840).\nIt should therefore be unsurprising that hundreds of thousands of Americans are willing to pony up for something as important as border security — and further, that this priority does not come at the expense of support for people’s many other needs.\n2018 has been a tumultuous year, filled with propaganda and polemic. As the year comes to a close, look at your neighbors and countrymen through a kinder lens; we are much more generous than we give one another credit for.\nTo find out more about Laura Hollis and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.\nBorder Wall GoFundMe Reaches 16M\nNot to be out down in crowdfunding, open borders activists started their very own campaign to aid to abet illegal immigration into the U.S. Transgender Army veteran and human rights activist Charlotte Clymer launched a GoFundMe entitled “Ladders to Get Over Trump’s Wall” which has received about $130,000 in donations so far. However, this is a meager collection compared to the GoFundMe “We The People Will Fund The Wall” launched by Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee and Air Force Veteran, which has brought in a staggering $16 million in just six days. The average donation is just over $60 with about 260,000 individuals making contributions toward the $1 billion goal. Read more…\nYou gotta give it to liberals: They not only oppose building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border to keep foreigners from illegally entering America, they actively want to encourage them to do so.\nA GoFundMe campaign, titled “We The People Will Fund The Wall,” is closing in on $16 million in just six days. Some 259,936 have donated $15,828,419 toward a $1 billion goal, making the average donation just over $60. The page was created by Brian Kolfage, a triple amputee Air Force veteran.\n“It’s time we uphold our laws, and get this wall BUILT! It’s up to Americans to help out and pitch in to get this project rolling,” Kolfage wrote on the page.\nBut now a new page has popped up to compete with the wall page. Charlotte Clymer, a transgender Army veteran and human rights activist from Texas, has launched a page titled “Ladders to Get Over Trump’s Wall.”\nMexico Shutting Its Border…With Guatemala\nNew Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appears to be on a charm offensive with the Trump administration and is now working to secure his nation’s southern border with Guatemala to stop any future caravan stunts from Central Americans. From the Washington Times: Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero says Mexico will end the practice of undocumented or illegal crossings over the Suchiate River, which marks much of the border between the two countries. It is as yet unclear how Mexico will secure its border, whether with manpower or by building its own “wall.” Read more…\nHere’s more from Hot Air…\nThe new Mexican government of incoming president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or “AMLO”) continues to pleasantly surprise me. Not only have we seen increased cooperation with Mexican law enforcement on our own southern border, but he seems to be serious about attacking the illegal immigration problem at its source. The latest announcement coming from Mexico City indicates that they’re seeking to shut off the flow of migrants and caravans by cracking down on their own southern border.\nMexico’s top security official says the government will effectively close off illegal entry at its southern border with Guatemala.\nInterior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero says Mexico will end the practice of undocumented or illegal crossings over the Suchiate River, which marks much of the border between the two countries.\nInternational, Issues, Politics\nMigrants Give Ultimatum: Let Us In Or Give Us 50Gs To Turn Around\nTwo organized groups from the Central American caravan marched on the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana with no less than a demand for reparations for “everything the United States has stolen from Honduras” to the tune of $50,000. They say let them in or give them the cash to take home with them. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, they also demanded a halt in deportations and faster processing. “It may seem like a lot of money to you,” organizer Alfonsa Guerreo Ulloa told the paper, “but it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras. “Another said, “We thought they would let us in, but Trump sent the military instead of social workers. “They “generously” gave the consulate 72 hours to think about it and respond.\nTwo groups of Central American migrants marched to the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana on Tuesday with a list of demands, with one group delivering an ultimatum to the Trump administration: either let them in the U.S. or pay them $50,000 each to go home, a report said.\nAmong other demands were that deportations be halted and that asylum seekers be processed faster and in greater numbers, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.\nThe first group of caravan members, which included about 100 migrants, arrived at the consulate around 11 a.m. Alfonso Guerreo Ulloa, an organizer from Honduras, said the $50,000 figure was chosen as a group.\n“It may seem like a lot of money to you,” Ulloa told the paper. “But it is a small sum compared to everything the United States has stolen from Honduras.”\nInternational, Issues\nBorder Patrol Arrests MS-13 Gang Member of Caravan\nPresident Trump was proven right when in his claim that among the 6,000 “asylum” seekers amassing at our southern border would be MS-13, terrorists, and non-Central Americans. So far U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested a member of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang, who admitted to authorities that he was acting as an opportunist in attempting to enter the United States. Common tactics include posing as an unaccompanied minor. Last week the Department of Homeland Security warned that roughly 500 MS-13 gangbangers were among the Central American caravan. Read more…\n“You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything,” President Trump said in one of his much-criticized statements about the kinds of people included among the thousands of caravan migrants amassing at the U.S. southern border.\nWhile the president has taken heat for describing the migrants as including criminals, the Mexican government has confirmed that to be the case, announcing last week that they are in the process of deporting hundreds of the migrants for criminal behavior at the border near Tijuana. Trump’s reference to MS-13 has also been proved correct, as a recent U.S. border patrol arrest reveals.\n“U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested a member of the infamous Salvadoran MS-13 gang who admitted to authorities that he traveled with a caravan of Central American migrants who were hoping to qualify for asylum in America,” National Review’s Mairead McArdle reports.\nRock-Throwing Migrant Mob Used Women and Children as Human Shields\nU.S. Border Patrol is confirming what we all suspected: that the Central American migrants who threw rocks at our agents shoved women and children to the front to use as human shields and no doubt as photo props convenient to their open borders ambitions. “What we saw over and over yesterday was that the group – the caravan, as we call them – would push women and children to the front, and then begin, basically, rocking our agents,” Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott told CNN. Separately, National Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd told Fox News that “They pushed women and children up front. And then behind those women and children, they started throwing rocks, cement bricks, they started throwing bottles at our Border Patrol agents.” Read more…\nThe U.S. Border Patrol’s top San Diego agent says violent migrants who stormed the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday shoved women and children to the front of the mob to use as human shields.\n“What we saw over and over yesterday was that the group – the caravan, as we call them – would push women and children to the front, and then begin, basically, rocking our agents,” Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott said in a CNN interview.\n“Several agents were actually struck by rocks,” Scott said, noting that three were injured.\nNational Border Patrol Council president Brandon Judd backed up Scott’s assertion, saying male migrants used women and children as shields as they threw rocks at U.S. border agents.\n“They pushed women and children up front. And then behind those women and children, they started throwing rocks, cement bricks, they started throwing bottles at our Border Patrol agents,” Judd said in a Fox News interview.\nBig govt, International, Issues\nTrump Threatens Border Breachers: “We Will Close the Border Permanently”\nPresident Trump is doubling down on his commitment to securing the U.S.-Mexico border, warning that “we will close the Border permanently if need be” after a wave of Central American caravan migrants tried to overwhelm the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, even throwing rocks at U.S. authorities. Trump tweeted: “Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!” President Trump has additionally threatened a government shutdown if Congress does not act to help secure the border that now has some 6,000 Central Americans camping out in Tijuana. Read more…\nAfter chaos at the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday forced U.S. authorities to fire tear gas into a violent crowd of angry migrants seeking to enter the United States, President Trump on Monday warned that “we will close the Border permanently if need be.”\nThe president also said that many of the so-called migrants now gathered at the U.S.-Mexico border are “stone cold criminals” and urged Mexico to send them back to their homes “anyway you want.”\n“Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!” Trump wrote on Twitter.\nMexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1480748"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7771540880203247,"wiki_prob":0.7771540880203247,"text":"Today's Google Doodle Celebrates Charles Perrault — A Writer Every Child Grew Up Reading\nBy Kathleen Wong\nTuesday's Google Doodles depict familiar scenes. One is a horse-drawn carriage in front of a majestical castle, flocked by a princess in a ballgown and a glass slipper. The imagery is straight out of the classic fairytale Cinderella. The other two doodles — Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots — are equally recognizable. The three doodles celebrate the author of that folklore and more to recognize Charles Perrault's 388th birthday.\nPerrault was born on January 12, 1628 in Paris, according to the Telegraph. He began his life as a lawyer on the court for Louis XIV before penning Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Mother Goose, and essentially pioneering the genre of fairytales, the Guardian reported.\n\"The backbone of these fairy tales persist within contemporary novels and movies, making our reading or cinema-going a fundamentally optimistic venture: When we hear 'once upon a time,' we've come to expect — and anxiously await — a 'happily ever after,'\" Google wrote, adding that Perrault created the \"standard\" for the fairytale as we know it.\nMost people attribute the creation of fairytales to the Brothers Grimm, who wrote the long-haired Rapunzel, but Perrault had already written Cinderella many years before, in 1697, the Telegraph reported.\nUsing oral folklore, those classic opening lines and a humble moral, Perrault was able to develop the format of the modern fairytale, many of which would last his lifetime a few times over, according to Google.\nMany of Perrault's stories have been converted into children's movies, and also watered down. His versions were darker and more explicit, the Telegraph reported. For example, his Sleeping Beauty was to warn girls that being curious would lead to sin, the Independent reported.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line290146"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9467549324035645,"wiki_prob":0.9467549324035645,"text":". \"Rita Johnston\". The Canadian Encyclopedia, 07 March 2014, Historica Canada. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rita-johnston. Accessed 17 January 2020.\nRita Johnston (2014). In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rita-johnston\n\"Rita Johnston\". In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published June 27, 2010; Last Edited March 07, 2014. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rita-johnston\n. The Canadian Encyclopedia, s.v. \"Rita Johnston\", Last Edited March 07, 2014, https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rita-johnston\nRita Johnston\nPublished Online June 27, 2010\nRita Margaret Johnston, née Leichert, politician, premier of British Columbia (b at Melville, Sask 22 April 1935).\nJohnston, Rita Margaret\nRita Margaret Johnston, née Leichert, politician, premier of British Columbia (b at Melville, Sask 22 April 1935). Johnson's political career began when she was elected alderman in Surrey, BC, in 1970, a position that she held continuously until 1983, when she was elected to the provincial assembly as a Social Credit member. From 1970 to 1975 she served on the council of Mayor William VANDER ZALM. When Premier William BENNETT retired in 1986 Johnston helped to persuade Vander Zalm to run for the leadership and she worked on his successful campaign. In Aug 1986 she joined Vander Zalm's Cabinet as minister of municipal affairs and transit.\nRe-elected in 1986 she remained loyal to the premier amid almost continuous controversy surrounding him and she moved to one Cabinet position after another as the Cabinet was torn by resignations, scandals and defections. Finally in 1990 Vander Zalm made her deputy premier, and when he resigned on 2 April 1991 she became premier, the province's 29th and the first woman to serve as premier in Canada. On 20 July her leadership was narrowly confirmed at a party convention, but her efforts to dissociate herself from the discredited former premier brought her and her party to defeat at the hands of the NDP on 17 October 1991. She lost her own seat in the process and retired from public office.\nMarc-Adélard Tremblay\nHelen Mussallem\nRaymond Collishaw","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1540537"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6696986556053162,"wiki_prob":0.33030134439468384,"text":"47 Degrees welcomes new team members\nteam• news\nLast year was a period of growth for the 47 Degrees’ family. We brought on a handful of new members, welcomed a couple of future programmers to the world, and opened a new office in London. We’re pleased to say, 2017 is shaping up to be pretty similar. This Month, we welcome three new (and one semi-new) awesome individuals to our team!\nWelcome (back) Peter Neyens\nAs some of you know, we were lucky to have an extremely bright and hardworking intern this fall. Peter Neyens spent three months with us at our Spain office working on a variety of our open source projects, including Scala Exercises.\nWe were so impressed with Peter’s skills and work ethic that we knew we needed to hold onto him. We’re happy to announce he accepted our full-time offer and is now working out of our London office.\nFor more on Peter and why he’s an awesome addition to our team, check out his intern welcome\nFind him here:\nWelcome Ernesto Periñan\nErnesto graduated as a Technical Engineer in Computer Systems and obtained the honor qualification for his final degree project from the Universidad de Cádiz in 2011.\nAfter graduating, he spent four years as a full-stack developer before moving into backend, Dev-Ops, and finally becoming a front-end developer specializing primarily in Python, PHP, AngularJS, ReactJS, Javascript, HTML/SASS/CSS, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Bash, etc.\nHe loves all aspects of software development, but after he attended a training class we hosted in Cadiz, Fast Track to Scala, he fell in love with functional programming. (We LOVE to hear that). He now spends his time working on Scala, Akka, Kafka, and related technologies.\nWhen he’s not programming, Ernesto enjoys traveling around Spain and exploring other countries. He’s one of those active guys that plays every sport under the sun including football, Padel (I had to Google this one), and table tennis and enjoys running, cycling, and training at the gym. Despite his healthy lifestyle, he also enjoys indulging in life’s simple pleasures like good-tasting (bad for you) food and beer.\nWelcome Antonio “Paolo” Mateo\nAntonio, better known as Paolo, studied as a C.F.G.S Senior computer application technician at San Jose School in 2003 in San Fernando. He went on to work at the SDS company in Puerto de Santa María from 2008 to 2013. During that time, he participated in several projects for different organizations such as the Junta de Andalucía, Endesa, and Diputación de Cádiz.\nHe utilizes a variety of programming languages including Java, PL / SQL, Abap IV, and of course Scala. While many people might say that programming is stressful, Paolo finds it relaxes him and allows him to disconnect a little. He’s in his element when he’s able to solve problems and help out his colleagues.\nWhen he’s not programming, Paolo enjoys spending time with his two children and playing music. He’s the singer and guitarist of an awesome rock band called Champagne, check them out, you won’t be sorry! We’re hoping we can add him to our 47’er supergroup (album dropping soon).\nWelcome Juan Valencia Calvellido\nJuan comes to us with a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the Universidad de Cádiz. During his days at University, he studied for a year in Germany. Before joining the 47 team, his trajectory included a mix of private and public infrastructures including Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.\nHis passion for development is focused on human-machine interactions and trying to find the best ways to build and improve the relationship through JavaScript. He’s also a committed Open Source software advocate (so he’ll fit in quite nicely here).\nAs part of his open course contributions, he’s happy to have submitted code to Fedora and EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repositories, a volunteer-based community effort to create a repository of add-on packages that complement the Fedora-based Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and its compatible spinoffs, such as CentOS and Scientific Linux.\nJuan believes frontend development is more exciting than ever with the ultimate web development goal heading towards a modular, standardized, interoperable ecosystem of encapsulated components.\nIn his free time, when he’s not recovering from Js fatigue, you will most likely find Juan reading sci-fi books, listening to punk rock, or more likely at the moment, glued to his Nintendo Switch playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild.\nWe hope you’ll join us in welcoming these new 47’ers! Remember you can always connect with us @47deg.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1308712"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6303861141204834,"wiki_prob":0.3696138858795166,"text":"Reforming Government Bill Introduced\nView this article online at https://www.fedsmith.com/2018/09/17/reforming-government-bill-introduced/ and visit FedSmith.com to sign up for free news updates\nBy\tRalph R. Smith\ton\tSeptember 17, 2018\tin\tAgency News\twith\t0 Comments\nCongressman Jody Hice (R-GA)\nAs outlined in several recent articles published by FedSmith, the White House has a plan to reorganize and restructure the federal government. These published articles have been careful to note that some of the proposals require Congressional approval.\nThe Reforming Government Act of 2018\nThe “Reforming Government Act of 2018” would make it easier to enact the proposals to restructure the federal government as outlined by the White House.\nThe ‘‘Reforming Government Act of 2018’’ (S 3137) was introduced in June by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and James Lankford (R-OK). The bill would create a legal path for making the changes outlined by the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney. The bill introduced by Senator Johnson would make it possible for President Trump to start the process of implementing the government reorganization plan more quickly than would be possible under existing legislation.\nHouse Bill to Complement Reforming Government Act\nA companion bill has now been introduced in the House by Jody Hice (R-GA). Congressman Hice is the Vice Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations.\nCongressman Hice has introduced (H.R. 6787), which is called the Reforming Government Act. Like the Senate bill, this new legislation would provide President Trump with the authority to submit plans to Congress to reorganize the federal government and enables the Legislative Branch to consider those plans expeditiously.\nIn a press release released by the Congressman’s office, Hice is quoted as follows:\nFor decades, the federal government has operated under conditions that would be unacceptable in any other line of work. Bureaucracy is out of control, and efficiency is nearly nonexistent. My bill would unlock a mechanism for the Trump Administration to present plans to restructure our outdated system of federal agencies to Congress. In order to streamline our government and save valuable taxpayer dollars, we must enable a system of good governance focused on results rather than the same burdensome, ineffective approach.\nStatus of the Senate Bill\nSenate Bill 3137 is currently before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. With the companion bill in the House now before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, it is possible there will be movement in Congress to move these bills forward quickly.\nWith mid-term elections looming in November, the primary interest of Congress will be ensuring their re-election. If the bill does not move forward quickly and get passed by Congress, which is unlikely, the ultimate fate of these bills may hinge on mid-term election results.\n© 2020 Ralph R. Smith. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without express written consent from Ralph R. Smith.\nTags: Jody Hice • Reorganization\nRalph Smith has several decades of experience working with federal human resources issues. He has written extensively on a full range of human resources topics in books and newsletters and is a co-founder of two companies and several newsletters on federal human resources. Follow Ralph on Twitter: @RalphSmith47\nCreating Path for Restructuring Federal Government\nAnalyzing and Reorganizing Federal Agencies\nProposal to Revamp OPM, Labor and Education Department\nExecutive Order Aims to Eliminate Unnecessary Federal Agencies\n« 5 Reasons Settlement Agreements Can Be A Good Idea\nFLRA Boston Closure Announcement Coming in November »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1201642"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6857103705406189,"wiki_prob":0.6857103705406189,"text":"1.10.010 Designation and citation of code.\n1.10.020 Definitions and rules of construction.\n1.10.030 Catchlines or headings of sections.\n1.10.040 Parenthetical and reference matter.\n1.10.050 Amendments to code.\n1.10.060 Supplementation of code.\n1.10.070 General penalty – Continuing violations.\n1.10.080 Severability of parts of code.\n1.10.090 Miscellaneous ordinances not affected by code.\n1.10.100 Provisions considered as continuation of existing ordinances.\n1.10.110 Code does not affect prior offenses, rights, etc.\nThe ordinances embraced in the following chapters, articles and sections shall constitute and be designated as “the code of the city of Topeka, Kansas” and may be so cited. (Code 1981 § 1-1. Code 1995 § 1-1.)\nState Law References: Compilation, revision and codification of ordinances, K.S.A. 12-3014 – 12-3016.\nIn the construction of this code and of all ordinances and resolutions passed by the city council, the rules set out in this section shall be observed and the definitions prescribed in this section shall apply, unless such construction would be inconsistent with the manifest intent of the city council.\nAdvisory Board of Health. The words “advisory board of health” shall mean the city-county advisory board of health.\nBond. When a bond is required, an undertaking in writing shall be sufficient.\nCity. The words “the city” or “this city” shall mean the city of Topeka, in the county of Shawnee, in the state of Kansas.\nCity Officers, Departments, Etc. Whenever reference is made to an officer, department, council or other agency, the same shall be construed as if followed by the words “of the city of Topeka, Kansas.”\nCode. The term “code” or “this code” shall mean the code of the city of Topeka.\nComputation of Time. The time within which an act is to be done shall be computed by excluding the first and including the last day; and if the last day is Sunday, that day shall be excluded.\nCounty. The words “the county” mean the county of Shawnee, in the state of Kansas.\nGender. Words importing the masculine gender include the feminine and neuter.\nGoverning Body. The words “governing body” mean the mayor and city council of the city.\nHealth Agency. The words “health agency” shall mean the Topeka-Shawnee County health agency.\nHealth Officer. The words “health officer” shall mean the director of the Topeka-Shawnee County health agency.\nIn the City. The words “in the city” mean and include any territory within the corporate limits of the city of Topeka, Kansas, and the police jurisdiction thereof, and any other territory over which regulatory power has been conferred on the city by general or special act, except as otherwise specified.\nJoint Authority. All words giving a joint authority to three or more persons or officers shall be construed as giving such authority to a majority of such persons or officers.\nK.S.A. The abbreviation “K.S.A.” shall mean the Kansas Statutes Annotated, as amended.\nNumber. Words used in the singular include the plural, and words used in the plural include the singular.\nOath. The word “oath” includes an affirmation in all cases in which, by law, an affirmation may be substituted for an oath, and in such cases the words “swear” and “sworn” are equivalent to the words “affirm” and “affirmed.”\nOr, And. The word “or” may be read as “and,” and the word “and” as “or,” where the sense requires it.\nOwner. The word “owner” applied to a building or land shall include not only the owner of the whole, but any part owner, joint owner, tenant in common or joint tenant of the whole or a part of such building or land.\nParkings. The word “parkings” or “parking” shall mean the area between the roadway and right-of-way line.\nPerson. The word “person” includes a firm, partnership, association of persons, corporation, organization or any other group acting as a unit, as well as an individual.\nPersonal Property. The words “personal property” include every species of property, except real property.\nPreceding, Following. The words “preceding” and “following” mean next before and next after, respectively.\nProperty. The word “property” includes real, personal and mixed property.\nReal Property. The words “real property” include lands, tenements and hereditaments.\nSidewalk. The word “sidewalk” means any portion of a street between the curbline and the adjacent property line intended for the use of pedestrians.\nState. The words “the state” or “this state” mean the state of Kansas.\nStreet. The word “street” means and includes public streets, avenues, boulevards, highways, roads, alleys, lanes, viaducts, bridges and the approaches thereto and all other public thoroughfares in the city.\nTenant, Occupant. The words “tenant” and “occupant,” applied to a building or land, mean any person who occupies the whole or a part of such building or land, whether alone or with others.\nWriting, Written. The words “writing” and “written” include typewriting, printing on paper and any other mode of representing words and letters. (Code 1981 § 1-23. Code 1995 § 1-2.)\nThe catchlines or headings of the sections of this code printed in boldface type are intended as mere words to indicate the contents of the sections and shall not be deemed or taken to be titles of such sections, nor as any part of any section, nor, unless expressly so provided, shall they be so deemed when any section, including its catchline, is amended or reenacted. (Code 1981 § 1-26. Code 1995 § 1-3.)\nThe matter in parentheses at the ends of sections is not a part of the code but is designed to show the source and legislative history, and the text may or may not be changed by this code. Reference matter not in parentheses is for information only and is not a part of the code. (Code 1981 § 1-25. Code 1995 § 1-4.)\n(a) Amendments to any of the provisions of this code shall be made by amending such provisions by specific reference to the section number of this code in the following language: “That section ________ of The Code of the City of Topeka, Kansas, is hereby amended to read as follows: ....” The section, as amended, shall then be set out in full.\n(b) If a new section not then existing in the code is to be added, the following language shall be used: “That The Code of the City of Topeka, Kansas, is hereby amended by adding a section, to be numbered ________, which said section reads as follows: ....” The new section shall then be set out in full.\n(c) A section of this code shall be repealed by the repealing ordinance in language substantially as follows: “That section ________ of The Code of the City of Topeka, Kansas, is hereby repealed.” (Code 1981 § 1-3. Code 1995 § 1-5.)\nState Law References: Amendments to looseleaf codes, K.S.A. 12-3015.\n(a) By contract or by city personnel, supplements to this code shall be prepared and printed whenever authorized or directed by the city council. A supplement to the code shall include all substantive permanent and general parts of ordinances passed by the council or adopted by initiative and referendum during the period covered by the supplement and all changes made thereby in the code. The pages of a supplement shall be so numbered that they will fit properly into the code and will, where necessary, replace pages which have become obsolete or partially obsolete, and the new pages shall be so prepared that, when they have been inserted, the code will be current through the date of adoption of the latest ordinance included in the supplement.\n(b) In preparing a supplement to this code, all portions of the code which have been repealed shall be excluded from the code by the omission thereof from reprinted pages.\n(c) When preparing a supplement to this code, the codifier (meaning the person authorized to prepare the supplement) may make formal, nonsubstantive changes in ordinances and parts of ordinances included in the supplement, insofar as it is necessary to do so to embody them into a unified code. For example, the codifier may:\n(1) Organize the ordinance material into appropriate subdivisions;\n(2) Provide appropriate catchlines, headings and titles for sections and other subdivisions of the code printed in the supplement, and make changes in such catchlines, headings and titles;\n(3) Assign appropriate numbers to sections and other subdivisions to be inserted in the code and, where necessary to accommodate new material, change existing section or other subdivision numbers;\n(4) Change the words “this ordinance” or words of the same meaning to “this title,” “this division,” “this chapter,” “this article,” etc., as the case may be, or to “TMC ________ to ________” (inserting section numbers to indicate the sections of the code which embody the substantive sections of the ordinance incorporated into the code); and\n(5) Make other nonsubstantive changes necessary to preserve the original meaning of ordinance sections inserted into the code; but in no case shall the codifier make any change in the meaning or effect of ordinance material included in the supplement or already embodied in the code. (Code 1981 § 1-4. Code 1995 § 1-6.)\n(a) The doing of any of the acts or things prohibited, made unlawful or a misdemeanor, or the failing to do any of the things commanded to be done, as specified and set forth in this code or in any rules and regulations adopted pursuant to this code, within the jurisdictional limits of the city, shall be deemed an offense against the good order, public peace, morals, health, proper government and welfare of the city.\n(b) Whenever any offense is declared by any provision of this code, absent a specific or unique punishment prescribed, the offender shall be punished in accordance with this section:\n(1) Fine. A fine of not less than $1.00 or more than $499.00; or\n(2) Imprisonment. Imprisonment in the city jail for not more than 179 days; or\n(3) Both Fine and Imprisonment. Both fine and imprisonment not to exceed subsections (b)(1) and (2) of this section.\n(c) Each day any violation of this code continues shall constitute a separate offense.\n(d) Any person convicted of violating any of the duties set forth in subsection (a) of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and punished in accordance with subsection (b) of this section. (Code 1981 § 1-5. Code 1995 § 1-7.)\nCross References: Court costs and fees, TMC 2.110.010.\nIf for any reason any title, chapter, article, section, subsection, sentence, clause or phrase of this code, or the application thereof to any person or circumstances, is declared to be unconstitutional or invalid, such decision shall not affect the validity of any remaining title, chapter, article, section, subsection, sentence, clause or phrase of this code. (Code 1981 § 1-28. Code 1995 § 1-8.)\nNothing in this code or in the ordinance adopting this code shall be deemed to affect the validity of any of the following when not inconsistent with this code:\n(a) Charter ordinances or ordinances published in Appendix A to this code;\n(b) Ordinances relating to the purchase and condemnation or appropriation of property for public use;\n(c) Ordinances providing for the opening, dedicating, widening, vacating or narrowing of streets, avenues, alleys and boulevards;\n(d) Ordinances establishing or changing grades of streets, avenues, alleys and boulevards;\n(e) Ordinances naming or changing the names of streets, avenues and boulevards;\n(f) Ordinances authorizing or directing public improvements to be made;\n(g) Ordinances creating districts for public improvements of whatsoever kind or nature;\n(h) Ordinances levying general taxes;\n(i) Ordinances levying special assessments or taxes;\n(j) Ordinances granting any rights, privileges, easements or franchises therein mentioned to any person;\n(k) Ordinances authorizing the issuance of bonds and other instruments of indebtedness by the city;\n(l) Ordinances authorizing contracts or contractual services;\n(m) Ordinances establishing or changing the limits of the city, or pertaining to consolidations or annexations;\n(n) Ordinances relating to the compensation of officials, officers and employees of the city;\n(o) Ordinances amending the district map showing zoning within the city;\n(p) Any ordinance pertaining to zoning;\nprovided, that the above enumeration of exceptions shall not be held or deemed to be exclusive, it being the purpose and intention to exempt from repeal any and all ordinances not of a general nature and general ordinances specifically excepted by this section. (Code 1981 § 1-2. Code 1995 § 1-9.)\nThe provisions appearing in this code, as far as they are the same as those of the ordinances existing at the time of the adoption of this code, shall be considered as a continuation thereof and not as new enactments. (Code 1981 § 1-24. Code 1995 § 1-10.)\nNothing in this code or in the ordinance adopting this code shall affect any offense or act committed or done, or any penalty or forfeiture incurred, or any contract or right established or accruing, before the effective date of this code. (Code 1981 § 1-27. Code 1995 § 1-11.)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line837482"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7133890390396118,"wiki_prob":0.2866109609603882,"text":"International Education News\nWhat's new, what's good, and what's effective in education around the world\nTag Archives: equity\nLeading Futures: Alternative Perspectives on Education Reform and Policy\nPosted on May 25, 2016 | 2 comments\nSeries Editors Alma Harris and Michelle Jones\nThe global discourse about educational policy and change has narrowed considerably because of a preoccupation with the high performing systems, as defined by large-scale international assessments, and the factors that contribute to their success. Building on Alma Harris and Michelle Jones’ book, Leading Futures: Global Perspectives on Educational Leadership, the Leading Futures series is premised on the contention that more contextual and culturally sensitive accounts of educational change are needed in order to consider broader attributions and explanations of educational performance.\nThe Leading Futures series provides a platform for sharing different views on the process and practice of changing education systems for the better. Its intention is to open up the contemporary debate on school and system performance through critical policy analysis, empirical enquiry and contextualized accounts of system performance.\nThis post by Alma Harris, Michelle Jones, Jan Heijmans and Job Christians is the first in the Leading Futures series.\nThe Dutch Way: Is the Netherlands a best kept educational secret?\nAlma Harris, Michelle Jones, Jan Heijmans and Job Christians.\nUnlike many other education systems, the Netherlands appears to be delivering both educational quality and equity. So why does the Dutch system do so well? To attribute its success to a handful of structural features or to certain strategies is one way to go. However, accurately identifying causal attributions for better system performance is far from straightforward or fool proof. In complex education systems there are often multiple reasons for better outcomes that interact and intersect.\nIn this post, we argue that the Dutch system provides an example of “principled educational performance,” combining a focus on democratic values with an approach to policymaking that relies on both collaboration and autonomy.\nThe Dutch system in context: Educational quality and equity\nThe global interest in the high performing education systems shows no signs of slowing down. The interest in borrowing from the best has placed the international spotlight on a select group of education systems and not others. Earlier this year, the OECD published “Supporting Teacher Professionalism,” drawing upon the 2013 TALIS survey in order to explore teachers’ and principals’ perceived professionalism. Thirty-four countries were scored on three measures: teachers’ professional knowledge, work autonomy, and access to peer networks. Of all the education systems that scored highest on the index of professionalism, seven were in Europe and the Netherlands placed fourth in this group.\nThe Dutch education system is not necessarily on the radar of policy makers in search of better performance but a quick look at the Dutch system makes interesting reading. The evidence shows that Dutch students perform very well in international student assessments and as a country, the Netherlands has remained just outside the PISA top ten, for successive rounds. At the primary level, results from both the 2011 TIMSS and PIRLS assessments indicate an exceptionally good performance for Dutch students aged nine to ten. Among all participating countries, in these international assessments, the Netherlands was only outperformed by seven countries in mathematics and science, and by nine countries in reading.\nTurning next to the all important PISA scores. In 2012, 15-year-olds in the Netherlands achieved results significantly above the OECD average in the 3 areas tested (mathematics, reading and science). Only two other OECD countries achieved significantly higher performance levels in mathematics. In 2011, the Netherlands had the lowest rate of 15-29 year-olds not in employment, education or training across all OECD countries: 7% compared to an OECD average of 16%. While there are some who argue that above average is not good enough, from different vantage points and using different indicators it would appear that Dutch education system is performing well.\nYet, the Dutch seem to be remarkably quiet about their educational successes and accomplishments. Possibly this is because unlike some of their near European neighbours, they are not among the big hitters in PISA. Yet, they have a track record in educational equity that should be the envy of many countries in Europe and beyond. Take for example the fact that the Netherlands has fewer low performers and more high performers than the OECD average. Significantly fewer Dutch 15-years-olds scored below the PISA performance level 2, which is believed to mark the basic competency which enables active participation in a society. The impact of student socioeconomic background on performance in mathematics was less pronounced in the Netherlands than at the OECD average. The Netherlands also has an above average proportion of resilient students i.e. students who manage to overcome difficult socio-economic circumstances and exceed expectations, when compared to students in other countries.\nIt is no accident that the Netherlands is one of the OECD’s most devolved education systems, with schools enjoying a high degree of autonomy. This particular brand of autonomy however is not to be confused with increased privatization of schooling or the erosion of local control of schooling. Rather, this particular brand of localalized empowerment is based upon the principle of freedom of education where public and private schools are on an equal footing and all schools receive public funding, provided that they meet the requirements for schools in their sector. In the Netherlands, all teachers receive high quality teacher training at bachelors and masters level plus there is a great emphasis on teacher autonomy and professionalism. The Education Cooperative, which involves over 200,000 teachers, is run by teachers for teachers with the chief aim of safeguarding the quality of the profession.\nBefore concluding that the Netherlands is some educational utopia where schools and teachers are blissfully free from any interference, think again. The central government sets learning objectives and quality standards that apply to both public and private schools. The Inspectorate of Education monitors school quality and compliance with central rules and regulations. Unlike many other education systems however the Dutch system balances support and pressure in a positive way. While there is a framework of standards, with broadly formulated goals, there are also additional resources and teaching support in schools that need it the most. If schools improve, they are rewarded with more autonomy and freedom to innovate, if they are considered high performing they can apply for Excellent School status.\nOf particular note is the fact that the Dutch education system is not overly encumbered with regulation, prescription and standardisation. There is no national curriculum in the Netherlands, however certain learning objectives are stipulated by the Ministry and are expected to be met at the end of primary and lower secondary education. There is testing in the Netherlands and notably, the system stands out internationally for its high-quality standardised assessments. While the issue of testing remains for some Dutch educators somewhat controversial, on balance, the pressure to compete and perform is not as acute as in many other countries. The norms of the Dutch society are collaborative and this threads its way through the very fabric of schooling. Competition hardly plays a role in Dutch educational culture; students are seldom graded against each other or expected to compete against one another.\nIn terms of equity, the Netherlands is a particularly strong system example. It is the only country participating in PIRLS where all students achieved, at least, the low international benchmark of performance in reading. In addition, 99% of the Dutch students achieved at least the low international benchmark in mathematics and science in TIMSS. Young people in the Netherlands, up to age of 18, must attend school until they attain a basic qualification and there is a strong policy on truancy and absenteeism. The Ministry has signed performance agreements on student dropout with municipalities and schools in 39 regions, which ensures that the most vulnerable young people are supported. In 2006, the government introduced a successful program (Aanval op de uitval) with a regional approach to promote school success and to avoid early school drop outs. A recent OECD report shows that in terms of low-performing students, the Netherlands is far below the OECD average. In the Netherlands, students from low socio-economic backgrounds are 1.72 times more likely to be low performers than their peers with high socio-economic status which is below the OECD average (2.37 times). A higher proportion of Dutch disadvantaged students attend schools with students from better-off backgrounds than the OECD average.\nIn summary, the Netherlands demonstates a strong comitment to collective and equitable development. As Professor Wilma Vollebergh, University of Utrecht and Netherlands Institute for Social Research reports, it has a social culture and Dutch educational policy-making reflects power-sharing and consenses in decision-making. Such strong cultural norms and values are at the heart of educational practice and largely explain the performance of its education system. The national belief in fairness, equity and justice not only drives the education system but also, at a practical level, translates into a collective effort to ensure success for every child in every setting. A recent study of 200,000 students from 42 countries concluded that Dutch students are happy and have high levels of well-being.\nWhat can we take away from the Dutch approach?\nSo what can we take away from the Dutch education system? Essentially, there are three things. First, that the Netherlands does not rely on school competition or market forces to secure better educational performance. Conversely, it relies on strong collaboration between teachers and schools to raise achievement and attainment. Second, it does not exclude students from its education system who are disadvantaged, marginalised or are refugees from another country. Instead, it makes every effort to ensure that young people, from all backgrounds, do not leave school early and that they enter the workforce qualified to participate.Third, the Dutch system shows that it is perfectly possible to combine educational equity and quality. While some may argue that there is more work to be done, compared to many other countries the Dutch education system is undoubtedly moving in the right direction.\nFor those interested in navigating the slopes of quick-fix, high performance, the Netherlands is categorically off-piste. The Dutch way is epitomized by a long history and a proud tradition of building civic society around democratic values that continue to define both an education system and a country. In years to come, when the high-octane remedies for better educational performance have been over-sold to the point where they have lost their lustre and attraction to policy makers, Dutch educators will still be striving, in their quiet but determined way, for educational excellence through equity. With hindsight, it might indeed be the case, that one of our most principled educational performers was there all along.\nNotes on Authors\nDr. Alma Harris is Professor of Educational Leadership and Director of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Malaya.\nDr Michelle Jones is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Malaya\nDr. J. Heijmans is Chair of the Executive Board KPZ (teacher training Center Zwolle) in the Netherlands.\nJob Christians is a former teacher and founder/director of Onderwijs Maak Je Samen (organization for professional development) in the Netherlands.\nPosted in Leading Futures Series\nTagged Dutch, education equity, education quality, equity, Leading Futures Series, Netherlands\nScanning the globe\nPhoto by Dao Ngoc Thach\nSeveral reports over the past month highlight the variety of causes that are blamed for failures to improve educational performance around the world. This short scan of reports focusing on issues like school quality and test-score performance, reveals typical concerns about teacher training and teacher quality, questions about the language of instruction and equality of education, as well as questions about the choices policymakers have made and the “policy churn” that can undermine implementation.\nEarlier this year in Sweden, 11,000 students were left without a school to attend when the private education firm that operated it went bankrupt. According to an article published online by Reuters, additional concerns raised about the quality of education in these schools led the opposition Green Party, a long-term proponent of school choice, to issue a public apology in a Swedish newspaper, with the headline: “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray.”\nIn Vietnam, concerns have been expressed over the quality of care and education children receive in privately operated preschools. Referring to the government policy to privatize education as a failure, thanhniennews.com writes that limits placed on the growth of public preschool facilities has allowed private preschools “of dubious quality to mushroom.” Another article, posted on Vietnam.net, points out the additional problem of inadequate teacher training in provincial and privately operated preschools.\nTest-Score Performance\nIn Malaysia, we see a debate over the cause of the decline of TIMSS scores. The World Bank released a report that found the decline to be caused by the switch in the language of instruction from Bahasa Malaysia to English. However, an article in The Malay Mail online cites the Parent Action Group for Education (PAGE), for pointing out that in 2007 (the year scores declined sharply), the students had yet to receive their instruction in English. Instead, PAGE attributed the decline to the poor quality of teachers and insufficient teaching hours. The Education Ministry announced plans to form a panel to investigate Malaysian students’ decline in performance.\nFinnbay.com reports that Krista Kiuru, Finland‘s Minister of Education and Science, has allocated €22.5 million in state aid to promote equality in education for the period 2014-2015 to regain Finland’s top seat in PISA. “Success of Finnish education in international comparisons must be regained by having educational equality and non-discrimination,” said Kiuru.\nEducational Improvement and “Policy Churn”\nDespite declines in New Zealand students’ test scores, The Otago Daily Times reports that Education Minister Hekia Parata will not do anything differently. Parata attributes the slide to 10 years of a changing education system and not its controversial National Standards assessments, or a lack of school funding. According to Parata, Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD’s Secretary-General, has assured her that the country is already doing “what they recommend should be done when you want a whole of system change.”\nThe Nation has reported that the recent political upheaval in Thailand could mean that the sweeping curriculum-based overhaul of the education system might not come to fruition. The country had planned radical changes, such as decreasing the number of school hours for primary students from 800 to 600 per year, and requiring that students learn outside of the classroom for up to 400 hours per year. In addition, the Pheu Thai party’s controversial, yet “much-touted election policy” called the One Tablet PC Per Child Project, might not be implemented. Other policies at risk of being shelved include changes to the university admission system, promotion of vocational education, and the ongoing effort to improve Thailand’s international educational ranking.\nPosted in Newspaper Articles\nTagged Education policy, equity, instruction, news scan, political unrest, public schools versus private schools, teacher quality\nEquality of access in math and science in Finland, Sweden, and the United State\nIn a recent paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, “Moving on up? A framework for evaluating equality of access in education, with illustrations from Finland, Sweden and the United States,” Jennifer von Reis Saari shared the results of a study of the ways in which schools in Finland, Sweden, and the United States, track students in math and science. In this post, von Reis Saari briefly describes some of the current concerns about inequality in Sweden and Finland, as well as some of the differences she has documented in the way these countries, and the US, approach tracking.\nJennifer von Reis Saari\nThe recent riots in Sweden are drawing attention to how the assumption that Nordic countries, as well as their school systems, are equitable is oversimplified. Finland, for example, is often considered untracked. However, visitors to Finland are sometimes surprised that the country has a system of competitive school choice at the upper-secondary level, after age 16. In fact, despite the Finnish Minister of Education, Krista Kiuru’s resistance to the publishing of league tables of individual school performance, savvy students and parents are well aware of school rankings, and lists of upper-secondary school averages on national exams are published at the end of May each year. In addition, there is an increasing appetite for more differentiation and choice. In neighboring Sweden, comparatively liberal school choice policies and the allowance of for-profit, publicly funded schools, have coincided with increasing social disparities in educational outcomes. In a study of student persistence in mathematics and science, I found that students I surveyed and interviewed in both countries experienced ability grouping and tracking in mathematics and science during both compulsory school, and upper-secondary school. To characterize Finnish or Swedish school systems as equal, or un-stratified, obscures the ways these systems react to, and create, inequalities.\nA closer look at the experiences of students I interviewed in Finland, Sweden, and the United States, however, highlights how critical aspects of these choice and tracking systems, such as the mechanism for allocation (the how, why, and when students choose, or are selected into, particular schools or tracks), the transparency of the system (how clear the different educational choices and their consequences are), and the permeability (the degree of mobility allowed between tracks and schools), can either promote or obstruct the pathways of students who aspire to careers in mathematics and science related fields. In particular, the Finnish education system can be described as more permeable than either Sweden or the United States; the Finnish secondary school students I studied could more freely choose advanced mathematics and science courses and tracks in contrast to their counterparts in Sweden or the United States. They could make these choices even if they were not in advanced mathematics tracks before they reached the secondary level. This seemed to result in a greater retention of passionate, interested students, particularly young men who may have struggled earlier in their school careers.\nFocusing on permeability is important not only from a standpoint of equity, but also in terms of efficiency, for retaining and fostering skilled talent in STEM fields. The lack of permeability of math and science tracks may be a particular concern in the United States, where the high cost of post-secondary education and widening disparities between universities and community colleges, which once served to increase opportunities for mobility, compounds lost opportunities during primary and secondary school. Fostering passion for mathematics and science among students may require structures that respond to increasing commitment and performance by providing clear, built-in pathways for upward mobility.\n“Equity trends in the Swedish school system: A quantitative analysis of variation in student performance and equity from a time perspective”\n“School choice and its effects in Sweden”\n“Middle class children’s choices to avoid local schools”\n“Tracking Effects Depend on Tracking Type: An International Comparison of Students’ Mathematics Self-Concept”\nPosted in About K-12 International Education News, Global Reports/Studies, Newspaper Articles\nTagged education, equity, Finland, Sweden, tracking\nJournal of Educational Change\nJournal of Professional Capital and Community\nHechinger Report\nAERA Educational Change SIG\nCenter on International Education Benchmarking\nPERI Global\nFollow IEN via Email\naccountability Assessment Australia Austria Canada charter schools Chile China class size Colombia curricular reform curriculum Denmark early childhood education education educational access Educational change educational funding educational innovation educational testing Education policy education reform England English language learning Finland gaokao Germany Ghana high-stakes testing India Interview Ireland Israel Japan Korea language education literacy Malaysia merit pay mexico Netherlands news scan New Zealand Norway OECD Ontario PISA professional development public-private partnerships public schools versus private schools Right to Education (RTE) Act school day School Design School funding Scotland second language learning Singapore South Korea student-teacher ratio student protests Sweden teacher education teacher evaluation teacher pay Teacher Protest teacher quality Teachers Teachers Union teacher unions technology testing UK unions vietnam vocational education\nIEN on Facebook\nRounding up the issues of 2019 and the 2010’s (Part 1)\nLEAD THE CHANGE SERIES Q & A with Yi-Hwa Liou\nCoherence and Alignment: Reflecting on Two Decades of Research on Educational Reform\nAround the World in PISA 2018 Headlines\nLEAD THE CHANGE SERIES Q & A with Anna Sfard\nSeason of Giving, Featuring International Education Organizations\nThe Buildup to PISA Results with Highlights from the IOE Blog\nHundrED 2019 Innovation Summit\nA conversation with Yiwen Wang about the Rise of Private Schooling in Guiyang, China\n“Changing Education Systems”: A Conversation with Mel Ainscow, Christopher Chapman, and Mark Hadfield\nLEAD THE CHANGE SERIES Q & A with Dr. Christina L. Dobbs\n(Not) Reforming again and again and again?\nImagination Lab Schools and the Future of Learning: An interview with Chris Bezsylko\nLEAD THE CHANGE SERIES Q & A with Michael K. Barbour\nWelcoming Transfronterizo Students in New Mexico\nScanning the headlines on OECD’s Education at a Glance 2019\nHeadlines Around the World: Back to School 2019 Edition\nLEAD THE CHANGE SERIES Q & A with Sarah L. Woulfin\nInternational Ed News on Break\nAI and education in China","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1474079"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7478933930397034,"wiki_prob":0.25210660696029663,"text":"Sweeney Probate Law\nLocal: 760-989-4820 |Toll Free: 800-575-9610\nProbate Overview\nThe Probate Process\nResponsibilities of Executor\nor Administrator\nOut-of-State Issues\nNegligence And/Or Defective Products Causing Death\nWhy Should You Select Me For Your California Probate\n“ABLE” ACCOUNTS VERSUS SPECIAL NEEDS TRUSTS\nThe federal ABLE Act, was signed into law by President Obama on December 19, 2014, (Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2014 (Pub L 113-295, 128 Stat 4010). The federal ABLE act allows a state to establish and operate a qualified ABLE program under which an IRC §529A savings account, similar to a §529 savings account, may be established by individuals who became disabled before age 26 to receive nondeductible contributions up to the gift tax annual exclusion, although this limitation is applied to all contributors on an aggregate basis.\nAn ABLE Act account is supposed to be designed to secure funding for disability-related expenses on behalf of designated beneficiaries with disabilities that will supplement, but not supplant, benefits provided through private insurance, the applicable state Medicaid program, SSI, the beneficiary's employment, and other sources. Therefore, only certain expenses are allowed to be paid from an ABLE account.\nThese expenses are referred to as \"qualified disability expenses,\" which mean any expense related to the designated beneficiary as a result of living a life with disabilities, including education, housing, transportation, employment training, assistive technology, health care expenses, and financial management. IRC §529A(e)(5).\nUnlike regular a §529 savings accounts, tax-free distributions from the account are not limited to qualified higher education expenses but also can be made for \"qualified disability expenses\" including education, housing, transportation, and other expenses. Under an uncodified provision of the legislation, amounts in excess of $100,000 in an ABLE account are counted as resources of the disabled individual for purposes of eligibility for SSI and traditional needs-based Medi-Cal.\nOn October 11, 2015, Governor Brown signed state legislation that put into effect the federal ABLE) Act of 2014. Californians should aware of the potential advantages of an ABLE account over a special needs trust (SNT) (see below comparison).\nThe salient feature of an ABLE account is that it will allow family members and others to contribute funds that will not be counted as a resource for commonly used means-tested public benefit programs, including Medi-Cal and SSI.\nThe California ABLE Act allows people with disabilities, with an age of onset up to 26 years old, to create the account. Contributions to an ABLE account are not tax deductible and income earned in an ABLE account is not taxed. A person who is not a recipient of SSI and/or SSDI but still meets the age of onset disability requirement may still be eligible to open an ABLE account if he or she meets SSI criteria on significant functional limitations. The person does not need to be under the age of 26 to be eligible for an ABLE account; he or she could be over 26 as long as he or she has documentation of disability that indicates age of onset before the age of 26. See IRC §529A(e)(1). The ABLE Act limits the opportunity to one ABLE account per eligible individual. IRC §529A(b)(1)(B).\nThere are important limitations with regard to an ABLE account (see IRC §529A):\nThe maximum annual contribution limit, from all sources, is the amount of the annual federal gift tax exclusion, which is currently $14,000 (the amount of the annual federal gift tax exclusion in 2018).\nEarnings on the account are not taxable.\nOnly individuals who became disabled prior to age 26 can establish an account.\nAn eligible individual is limited to only one account.\nDistributions are tax-free as long as they are used to pay Qualified Disability Expenses as defined by IRS regulations.\nDistributions are taxed (plus 10 percent penalty) if they are used to pay for non-qualified disability expenses.\nOn the death of the ABLE account beneficiary, any assets remaining in the account must first be used to pay back the State Medicaid agency before going to heirs.\nThe total limit over time that may be made to an ABLE account is subject to the maximum amount allowed in a State's 529 Plan program (in California the limit is $475,000).\nFor individuals with disabilities who are recipients of SSI or Medi-Cal, the ABLE Act sets further limitations:\nThe first $100,000 in an ABLE account is exempted from the SSI and Medi-Cal $2000 individual resource limit.\nIf an ABLE account exceeds $100,000, the beneficiary would be suspended from eligibility for SSI benefits and no longer receive that monthly income. However, the beneficiary would continue to be eligible for Medi-Cal.\nSPECIAL NEEDS TRUST (SNT) VS. ABLE: WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOU?\nThe benefits and disadvantages of the ABLE and the SNT will differ for each person/family, depending on the individual's circumstances.\nThe Special Needs Trust (SNT) - What is it?\nEssentially, the Special Needs Trust (SNT) - which is established by placing funds and other assets under the control of a trustee - is a legal document that is designed solely for the financial protection of an individual with a disability. Until the ABLE Act became law it was the only legal way to save money without sacrificing eligibility for government benefits. It is also important to note that the funds in the special needs trust supplement but do not supplant government benefits. In other words, the special needs trust is designed to provide financial assistance for any care above and beyond what the government provides.\nThere are a number of ways in which the Special Needs Trust can be funded, either during the lifetime of the grantor, or upon their death. The trust allows family members to gift assets and leave inheritances or life insurances to a person with special needs without disqualifying him or her from government benefits.\nThere are three distinct types of Special Needs Trusts: third party/supplemental trusts, first party/pay-back or self-settled/d(4)(A) trusts, or pooled Special Needs Trusts. Most Special Needs Trusts are third party/supplemental special needs trusts, unless the assets were originally in the beneficiaries' name or there are not enough assets to pay the fees to establish the third party special needs trust.\nThe important thing to remember when trying to decide between the ABLE Account and the Special Needs trust is that both of these savings vehicles are intended to work the same way: to give individuals with disabilities the ability to save without losing their means-based assets. The personal financial situation of the individual will determine which option is the most beneficial.\nThe Special Needs Trust Versus the ABLE Account\nTo begin, the SNT is costly and complicated to establish; if designed incorrectly, the SNT can actually render the beneficiary (individual with a disability) ineligible for the benefits.\nIn addition to this, picking the correct SNT form is very important - for example, the pooled SNT (often chosen to minimize the management fees) has a payback provision either to the state for Medicaid expenditures or to the non-profit. The First Party - also known as a Medicaid Pay Back trust - contains a payback provision for state Medicaid only. Only the third party form does not have any pay back provisions.\nAlso, a (d)(4)(A) SNT cannot be established for an individual age 65 and over [see 42 USC §1396p(d)(4)(A)]. Although a pooled Special Needs Trust does not have an age requirement for establishing it [see 42 USC §1396p(d)(4)(C)], transferring assets into it for an individual age 65 and over will trigger an SSI eligibility penalty and may trigger a Medi-Cal eligibility penalty.\nA penalty may likewise be applied for an individual age 65 or over who transfers funds into an ABLE account. Although that individual may have become disabled before age 26, and therefore qualified to establish an ABLE account, transferring assets to the ABLE account will likely result in a penalty if the individual is age 65 or older.\nThe ABLE Account is undoubtedly easier to establish than the SNT; the funds can grow tax free within the account, and it is less costly. Additionally, an individual with special needs can manage this account him/herself.\nOn the negative side, the ABLE Account beneficiary must have had the disability before the age of 26; this eliminates anyone who sustained an injury or became disabled after that age. The contribution limit for the ABLE Account is $14,000 per year in 2018, up to a limit of $100,000. Anything over this limit will disqualify an individual from Social Security Insurance.\nAs well, all ABLE accounts will have a Medicaid payback provision, meaning that if the beneficiary dies, the funds in the ABLE account will be used to pay Medicaid for services rendered during the lifetime of the beneficiary before being released to family members.\nContact Sweeney Probate Law\nLawyer William Sweeney | Lawyer Probate\n27450 Ynez Road\n11801 Pierce Street\n3281 East Guasti Road\n19800 MacArthur Blvd.\n333 City Boulevard West\n© 2020 by Sweeney Probate Law. All rights reserved. Disclaimer | Site Map","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line531980"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.604063868522644,"wiki_prob":0.39593613147735596,"text":"May 10 th 2012 Comments Off on Not All Animals Are Equal\nNot All Animals Are Equal\nIt’s easy and sometimes entertaining to note the negative or bizarre aspects of the major international law publishers but ultimately it is more interesting to identify areas of achievement. Far from the only one, but one such example is the work and evolution of what is now Bloomsbury Professional, based in the UK but increasingly recognisable around the world.\nFor me at least, it’s hard not to admire the business and the people involved in it, though I have to admit to a bias, though not an interest, in its favour. I consider a number of the people in the business to be friends and/or former colleagues and some of them I have selected, employed and promoted in other places, in recognition of their obvious worth. I’m proud to note that I have never seen any intelligent reason to remove any of them from their posts as to do so would clearly have been detrimental to the businesses for which they worked. It is pleasing to see Bloomsbury Professional as the current home for such a collection of talent and commitment.\nBloomsbury Professional is a relatively new law and tax publisher, until recently known as Tottel Publishing. This itself was not so long ago a phoenix from the ashes of a larger body of publishing assets thought at the time to be surplus to requirement at Lexis Nexis UK and sold to forward-looking senior managers who established the new business. Tottel grew and flourished for a few years until it was time for a trade sale, when Bloomsbury Publishing saw the benefits of investing in professional, academic and subscription-based markets.\nOne suspects that the investment decision was not a foregone conclusion as it had not been the first time that Bloomsbury had sought to enter the market. Indeed, Chancery Law Publishing had been set up in 1990 with its financial backing. Chancery Law did not flourish, despite the acknowledged quality of much of its output and in 1992 it was sold to Wiley. Nor did it achieve success there, its assets finally being sold on. No doubt it is a tribute to the Tottel management and staff that Bloomsbury was able to perceive sufficient difference to envisage that the new acquisition would not go the same way as the earlier investment. Nor, I’m sure, would the parent company believe that it had or has any wizard’s wand to wave over its children to guarantee success.\nHardly great wisdom is needed to understand, to some extent at least, why Bloomsbury Professional looks like a great publishing business. After all, it got off to a racing start with some astonishing assets from Lexis Nexis, among them an especially strong tax portfolio which, subsequently evolved, is making a huge competitive impression in the market. In fact, they have recently dislodged CCH as the chosen supplier of one of the key tax books, as a member benefit, to all the members of the UK’s Association of Taxation Technicians. Additionally, there are many distinguished ex-Lexis Nexis titles such as, randomly selected, Mediators on Mediation: leading mediator perspectives on the practice of commercial mediation, edited by Chris Newmark and Anthony Monaghan, Mediator Skills and Techniques: Triangle of Influence by Laurence Boulle and Miryana Nesic, Fransman’s British Nationality Law and Clinical Negligence by Charles Lewis. In truth, the list is extremely long and embraces, additionally, key Irish and Scottish titles. I believe that plans are now afoot to bring to fruition the results of its strategic planning for ebooks.\nAs an observer of Bloomsbury Professional and its competitors, one does not see or need to see genius in operation. Indeed they quite modestly refer to themselves as “a traditional, but cutting-edge publisher of high quality books and information services for lawyers, accountants and business professionals”. Rather, it is easier to identify intelligence, sound judgement, consistency, commitment and commercial attitude as critical features. Every new decision does not have to be explosive in character but instead indicative of an understanding of and empathy with markets, both following and directing market evolution.\nIn fact, of their recently launched online tax law service, www.bloomsburytax.com, I commented in an article, “What makes the new service worth noting is not rocket science technology or really cutting-edge functionality but price and simplicity, combined with an unashamed resemblance to the book idiom in its presentation – a smart move, it might be suggested, in an e-book era”. It was of the service in question that a most distinguished Canadian lawyer commented to me, upon learning about it “this is like an early Christmas present”. For their efforts, they were nominated for the prizes of Ingram Digital Publishing Award and Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year in the Independent Publishers Guild Independent Publishing Awards 2012, with Hart Publishing being similarly and deservedly recognised.\nModesty is refreshing to me in an era of grand boasts usually followed by never admitted failure. This extends to ways of doing business, such as accepting that one cannot do everything well by oneself and sometimes there is a need for partnership and joint ventures to achieve best results. Indeed, very early in its existence, Tottel was happy to partner with CCH UK in electronic content licensing, in order to achieve outcomes that would have been difficult alone. That arrangement has since some to an end. Now, however, in a dynamic arrangement, they partner with another legal publishing entrepreneur, Practical Law Company, to provide content online to PLC customers.\nAnother partnership, this time in relation to UK and International accounting and auditing content, has recently been established with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the PWC arrangement having previously been with CCH UK. No doubt, the desire and ability to make such deals will help establish Bloomsbury Professional more strongly, additionally in the accounting publishing market, as well as in law and tax. To achieve visibility and effectiveness at these levels would, I am certain, be difficult without a particular and open attitude of mind.\nRewards come with effort and it is not surprising that in 2011 Bloomsbury Professional won the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians’ Supplier of the Year Award. It seems that the methodology and good service, perhaps in a sea of mediocrity, pays off. Of course, it’s not for me to know and if I did to discuss here the extent to which this transfers to profits but I like to think that that is the case. What I do see, when I meet my Bloomsbury Professional friends, is a group of ambitious but happy and contented enthusiasts who believe they are winning.\nFor some of the other major information providers, certainly those in the UK and, I would hope, excluding Bloomberg Law/BNA, I think they should watch and learn from the likes of Bloomsbury Professional, PLC and Justis Publishing. There are certainly areas in which they could improve and do better but the younger innovators are taking the prizes and becoming positioned in the number 2 or 3 slots in particular market segments, though perhaps becoming simply candidates for acquisition and emasculation, as one might hope will not be the case in relation to the acquisition in the USA of Law360.\nEqually, to avoid self-delusion, it should not be forgotten that Bloomsbury Professional is itself part of a quoted company and the smaller ones are often inclined to mimic the activities of their larger peers. No personal judgment on the views expressed, of course, but I wonder if their thinking is in line with or at a distance from those of the other end of the professional publishing spectrum, http://tomglocer.com/blogs/sample_weblog/archive/2012/02/04/2852.aspx, balanced against http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/business/business-news/reed-chief-engstroms-3m-package-7562508.html. Other informed commentators, however, hold opinions on such matters, http://practicesource.com/house-of-butter/tom-glocer-educates-us-on-marx-and-adam-smith.\n« Previous: Village People Lead Singer Wins Copyright Victory Next: Employee Terminated for Theft Still Entitled to Bonus »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line508116"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5554011464118958,"wiki_prob":0.44459885358810425,"text":"Nin v. Luzerne County\nKARELIZ NIN, Plaintiff,\nLUZERNE COUNTY and LUZERNE COUNTY CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES, Defendants.\nMARIANI, JUDGE\nI. Introduction and Procedural History\nThe above-captioned action was filed by Plaintiff, Kareliz Nin, asserting a single Section 1983 claim against Defendants Luzerne County and Luzerne County Children and Youth Services (\"LCCYS\") for their alleged involvement in the administration of Plaintiffs deceased child's estate. Pending before the Court is Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs Second Amended Complaint. (Doc. 57).\nNin filed a Writ of Summons in the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County on October 21, 2016, naming Luzerne County and LCCYS as Defendants. (Doc. 1-1). On April 20, 2017, Nin filed her Complaint in state court, alleging a single count of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 violation and naming only LCCYS as a defendant. (Id.) LCCYS removed the action to this Court (Doc. 1) and moved to dismiss pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) (Doc. 3). On August 25, 2017, Nin filed a motion for leave to amend the Complaint to add Luzerne County as a defendant, without adding any new claims or substantive allegations. (Doc. 19). This Court granted Nin's Motion to Amend (Doc. 28) and Defendants filed a second motion to dismiss after the Amended Complaint was filed (Doc. 32). On August 3, 2018, this Court granted Defendants' Motion to Dismiss the Amended Complaint and granted Nin leave to amend her complaint. (Doc. 52). On August 24, 2018, Nin filed a Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 53), and on September 26, 2018, Defendants filed a Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 57). For reasons that follow, Defendants' motion will be granted, without prejudice and with leave to Plaintiff to file a Third Amended Complaint.\nII. Factual Allegations\nPlaintiffs Second Amended Complaint (Doc. 53) alleges the following facts which, for the purposes of resolving Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, the Court takes as true:\nKareliz Nin gave birth to her daughter, Cecilia Nin, on May 21, 2012. (Id. at ¶ 2). On December 28, 2012, after becoming unresponsive, Cecilia was taken by ambulance to the Wilkes-Barre General Hospital. (Id. at ¶ 10). After conducting various diagnostic tests, the Hospital discharged Cecilia back to the care of her mother. (Id. at ¶ 11). About a week later, Cecilia was again unresponsive and taken to Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center. (Id. at ¶ 12.) Based on the results of the diagnostic tests performed during that second visit, LCCYS petitioned the state court for dependency of Cecilia and Plaintiffs other two children, Reina and Faviyan, alleging suspected abuse. (Id. at ¶ 13). The state court granted LCCYS's petition and directed that Plaintiffs children be removed from Plaintiffs care and placed into foster care. (Doc. 53, at ¶ 14). On January 7, 2013, while still an inpatient at Geisinger hospital, Cecilia died. (Id. at ¶ 15). The court then issued an order finding Cecilia as not dependent because she was deceased. (Id. at ¶ 16). According to Cecilia's Autopsy Report, Cecilia died due to blunt force trauma to the head, and separately suffered multiple healing bilateral rib fractures and forearm fractures. (Id. at ¶ 18). The death of Cecilia triggered a criminal investigation by the Luzerne County District Attorney's office, the status of which is still unknown at this time. (Id. at ¶¶ 24, 27).\nNearly two years later, on October 29, 2014, Plaintiff received a \"Representative Notice of Estate Administration Pursuant to Pa. O.C. Rule 5.6\" regarding the Estate of Cecilia Nin (the \"Representative Notice\"), which was prepared and issued by two lawyers (\"Estate Counsel\") and named a third lawyer as administrator of the estate. (Id. at ¶¶ 29-31). Plaintiff alleges that she had no participation in and was never made aware of the administration of her daughter's Estate, and that she cannot access Cecilia's estate files because the files are sealed. (Doc. 53, at ¶¶ 33-37). Plaintiff further alleges that prior to the opening of her daughter's estate, Estate Counsel were not legally privy to the confidential information contained within her and her daughter's CYS files. (Id. at ¶ 39). Thus, any dissemination of that information was \"illegal and unauthorized\" and \"the only way\" the Estate Counsel could have ascertained the information necessary to open the Estate was through CYS's illegal and unauthorized dissemination of information. (Id. at ¶ 41).\nOn August 10, 2015, Cecilia's estate representative filed a medical malpractice suit against various defendants, including Kareliz Nin. (Id. at ¶¶ 42, 43). Plaintiff alleges that \"the sole reason for the Estate Counsel to open the Estate of Cecilia was to file the Complaint\" and that \"the only way Estate counsel could have come across the information necessary to prepare and file the [medical malpractice suit's] Complaint and continue to litigate the lawsuit would have been through illegal and unauthorized information disseminated through representatives of [LCCYS].\" (Id. at ¶¶ 44, 46). Plaintiff further alleges that \"CYS has thrown road blocks at every chance they had through various delays\" (Id. at ¶ 49), and that she has still not regained custody of her other two daughters who remain in foster care (Doc. 53, at ¶ 54).\nThe medical malpractice Complaint includes \"very specific and detailed information,\" with regard to Cecilia's medical information, her treatment during her Emergency Room visits, and the autopsy report. (Id. at ¶¶ 65-67). The information disclosed is \"highly confidential and protected by various County, State and Federal Rules and Regulations.\" (Id. at ¶ 68). Additionally, Nin never gave any of the information to the Estate Counsel or Representative, the information was not publicly accessible, and the only way the information could be accessed would be via Court Order or with Plaintiff's authorization. (Id. at ¶¶ 69-72). As a result, Plaintiff alleges that LCCYS failed to implement any policies or procedures to ensure compliance with Federal and State law, and consequently, by illegally releasing said information, infringed upon Plaintiff's Constitutional right to privacy. (Id. at ¶¶ 78-87, 94).\nPlaintiff alleges that Defendants, \"while acting under color of state law, unlawfully, intentionally, unreasonably, maliciously, with deliberate indifference and/or with reckless indifference to [Plaintiffs] civil rights, violated 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983 and deprived the [Plaintiff] of her rights and privileges guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States and laws...by acting as follows:\"\na. Violating various Child Protective Services laws;\nb. Attempting to cover up, minimize and ignore the illegal activities of their employees, agents, and servants;\nc. Releasing confidential information regarding Kareliz and Cecilia's CYS file to individuals with absolutely no legal standing to have access to said ...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line315401"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.773648738861084,"wiki_prob":0.773648738861084,"text":"New company excites former GE manager\nRubber & Plastics News Correspondent\nLake Erie Rubber's facility in Erie, Pa.\nERIE, Pa.—It was two years ago that Jon Meighan, then an executive and plant manager with General Electric, began having serious thoughts about owning and managing his own business.\nLittle did he know that by August 2017 he would own one that operates in an industry he had no direct experience with.\nRegardless, Meighan is now the owner and president of Lake Erie Rubber & Manufacturing, an Erie-based custom rubber molding and manufacturing company that is more than 20 years old. It's an aspirational move for the Erie-area resident, who combined two former companies—Skully Enterprises and Lake Erie Rubber Works—into one. His enterprise places an emphasis on using lean principles to drive continued improvement in safety, quality, delivery and cost for its customers.\nThat strategic move does make the transition an ideal fit, Meighan says, even though he had no previous experience in the rubber manufacturing industry.\n\"At General Electric I had worked in the supply chain area with a focus on welding. To be honest with you, though, the rubber business was a new one for me,\" Meighan said. \"But I was looking for a business to acquire in (the Erie area) because the cost of doing business is low and there is a long (history) of successful manufacturing and (employee) know-how here.\"\nJon Meighan\nMeighan, a former GE Transportation plant manager, officially took over the business on Aug. 1, 2017, less than a week after the birth of his second child. The decision came as a surprise to friends and colleagues. After all, Meighan invested his life savings at a time when many manufacturing firms in Pennsylvania have struggled.\nSo he researched a number of family-owned businesses in the Erie area that were either for sale or did not have a specific succession plan. A handful were considered as options. The more he looked the more he considered the Skully/Lake Erie Rubber Works combination largely because of the inherent knowledge that the company's 10 employees brought and the strong brand they had built in the industry.\nLake Erie Rubber Works traditionally had been focused in the rail and mining industries, and already had been selling to GE's Transportation business. The company also currently serves the oil and gas and construction industries. With 24,000 square feet of manufacturing space, Meighan realized that the potential and capabilities for further growth were extensive. His own experience in business development, sourcing, international sales and other disciplines gave him a number of ideas for how that growth could be achieved.\n\"I do believe that the marina, agricultural and safety industries look like great opportunities for us,\" Meighan said. \"The business was completely run by professionals who have a level of expertise that I will never have, but combined with my background it was the right fit. I also wanted to own the building myself and the one here is in great condition, so there's no (immediate) investments needed in the facility.\"\nAcquisition discussions began in February 2017 and the final deal was in place by the late summer. Meighan believes that Lake Erie Rubber & Manufacturing can double both its revenue and employees within the first five years—and again five years later. He is confident of success in part because of the trend of more companies understanding the intrinsic costs of setting up operations overseas, particularly in China where costs have risen in recent years.\nCustom rubber components produced by Lake Erie Rubber.\nIn addition to growing the business and increasing profitability, Meighan decided to share the success with his employees. As a result, he's instituted profit-sharing so his manufacturing and back office team members will benefit if Meighan's strategic plan succeeds.\nAll employees from the former companies remained with Meighan after the acquisition.\nThe ability to meet revenue goals will hinge on Lake Erie Rubber's capability to diversify its offerings for other industries. Meighan has developed a plan to help the company get there, and he will handle the business development efforts to start, with the hope that as the company grows he will hire an executive to run sales.\n\"It will be helpful for me to really take on the business development end because it will allow me to do a more effective job at managing the new processes we need to implement,\" he said. \"As we grow, we can hire more experts who can (specialize) in certain skills.\"\nMeighan believes that with efficient practices, strong customer service and the low overhead in the Erie region, his company can compete with other manufacturers around the globe.\n\"Owning a business is something I have always wanted to do since I was younger,\" said Meighan, who grew up in Texas and Wisconsin and attended college at Clarkson University in upstate New York. \"Maybe a few people thought I was crazy. But I have a plan and more control of my own career and my future.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line282696"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9279329776763916,"wiki_prob":0.9279329776763916,"text":"Library Search Results\nYour search found :\n4665 Timeline Entries\nThe Year We Were Famous\nBy Carole Estby Dagg Ages 12 and up Hardcover, 250 pages ISBN 978 0 618 99983 5 $16.99\n\"They Are All Red Out Here\": Socialist Politics in the Pacific Northwest\nBy Jeffrey A. Johnson University of Oklahoma Press, 2008 Hardback, 240 pages Photographs, map, footnotes, bibliography, index ISBN: 978­-0-8061-3967-8 $34.95\nTwice a Pioneer: A Life on the Frontier\nBy F.H. McKay Birchouse Publishing, Norwich, Vermont Paperback 208 pages Illustrations and timeline ISBN-10: 0982467605 ISBN-13: 978-0982467602\nWarship Under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific Northwest\nBy Lorraine McConaghy University of Washington Press, Seattle Hardcover, 344 pages 53 illustrations, 5 maps, notes, bibliography, and index ISBN: 978-0-295-98955-6\nWhen Logging Was Logging: 100 Years of Big Timber in Southwest Washington\nBy Karen Bertroch, Donna Gatens-Klint, Jim LeMonds, and Bryan Penttila The Donning Company Publishers, Virginia Beach, Virginia Hardcover, 176 pages Color and black-and-white photographs, index ISBN 9...\nWomen's Votes, Women's Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington\nBy Shanna StevensonWashington State Historical Society, 2009Paperback, 114 pagesIllustrations, footnotes, bibliography, indexISBN: 978-0-917048-74-6 $24.95\nYankee on Puget Sound: Pioneer Dispatches of Edward Jay Allen, 1852-1855\nBy Karen L. Johnson & Dennis M. Larsen Paperback, 208 pages Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index Washington State University Press, 2013 ISBN 978-0-87422-315-6 $29.95\nBoone, George (b. ca. 1844) and Florence (Ritchie) Boone (b. 1859) of Neptune Beach, Lummi Reservation\nGeorge and Florence (Ritchie) Boone and their family had the original allotment at Neptune Beach on the Lummi Reservation. This history of the family was contributed by Cheryl Metcalf.\nBoone, William E. (1830-1921)\nWilliam E. Boone, Seattle's premiere architect prior to the great fire of 1889, became one of few architects to continue practice after the Panic of 1893. He also designed significant buildings in Tac...\nBoren, Carson Dobbins (1824-1912)\nThe pioneering contributions of Carson Dobbins Boren to the founding of Alki (in future West Seattle) and Seattle began and ended within a short period of six years. Carson Boren was a member of the D...\nBoreson, Stan (1925-2017)\nMusician, recording artist, humorist, and pioneering '50s kiddie-TV show star -- Stan Boreson was Everett's king of Scandinavian humor. He has brought joy to generations in his native Northwest, acros...\nBorst, Jeremiah (1830-1890)\nJeremiah Borst is considered to be the father of the Snoqualmie Valley, located in north central King County. A soft-spoken man with a lisp, he was the first permanent non-Indian settler in the valley...\nBorst, Kate (1855-1938)\nKate Kanim Borst was a Native American woman who was the third wife of Snoqualmie Valley settler Jeremiah Borst. During her lifetime, she witnessed the transformation of the valley from prairies and I...\nBothell -- Thumbnail History\nLoggers founded the King County community that became Bothell in the 1880s. After the trees were cut, Bothell became a farm community on the highway between Seattle and Everett. After World War II, th...\nBothell Library, King County Library System\nResidents of the onetime logging town of Bothell at the northeast end of Lake Washington found ways to circulate books long before they had a permanent library. The Bothell Library traces its roots to...\nBoulevard Park Library, King County Library System\nThe Boulevard Park Library holds bragging rights as the very first library to join the newly formed King County Library System (KCLS) in 1943. Boulevard Park is located in the Highline area south of S...\nBowen, Betty (1918-1977)\nBetty Bowen was assistant director of the Seattle Art Museum, a civic activist on behalf of the arts and historic preservation, and an indefatigable promoter of Seattle artists. Two days before her de...\nBoxing for Combat and Entertainment During and After World War I\nWith the United States engaged in World War I in 1917 and 1918, training in boxing was seen as important both to prepare troops for combat and to boost morale and provide entertainment at stateside mi...\nBoyce, Lucinda Elizabeth Stewart (1836-1916)\nLucinda Stewart Boyce was not only the first Euro-American woman to live permanently on San Juan Island, she also served as a community leader and role model for hundreds of women who braved the primi...\nBracero Program: Crossing the Border to a New Life by History Day Award Winner Cameron Holt\nCameron Holt's paper won the HistoryLink.org Junior Paper award for her 2012 essay submitted in the Washington state History Day competition. Cameron was a student at Housel Middle School in Prosser, ...\nBracken, Robert (1841?-1906)\nRobert \"Bob\" Bracken was the first non-Indian to settle permanently in what soon became Asotin County. He arrived late in 1861 when the area was still part of an Indian reservation. Bracken engaged i...\nBrackett, George (1842-1927)\nGeorge Brackett is customarily regarded as the founder of Edmonds (Snohomish County) as well as an early logger in Bothell. Born and raised in eastern Canada, he logged there and in parts of the Unite...\nBrainerd, Paul (b. 1947)\nPaul Brainerd founded the Aldus software company, which produced the first desktop publishing program, Pagemaker. The product transformed printing and publishing almost as dramatically as had moveable...\nBraman, James d'Orma (Dorm), (1901-1980)\nThis biography of James d'Orma \"Dorm\" Braman, Seattle City Council member beginning in 1954, and Seattle mayor from 1964 to 1969, was written by his son, Jim Braman.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line410337"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.510564923286438,"wiki_prob":0.510564923286438,"text":"In-laws set ablaze woman over domestic dispute in Gujranwala\n10:15 AM, 29 Mar, 2017\nGujranwala (Staff Report): A woman received severe burn injuries after she was allegedly set ablaze by her husband's mother and sister today (Wednesday).\nThe victim's mother-in-law and sister-in-law doused her with petrol before setting her ablaze over a domestic dispute.\nInitially, the woman was shifted to District Hospital Gujranwala in critical condition and was transferred to Lahore for further treatment after receiving first aid at District Hospital Gujranwala\nDoctors said that fifty percent of her body was burnt.\nAccording to Saddar police, the woman who was a resident of Bassivila got married in 2015. The household had frequent domestic disputes.\nPolice said that a case has been registered against the women suspected of being involved in the incident.\nTagged laws set ablaze woman domestic dispute gujranwala\nGames of thrones’ star couple set to marry soon\n09:06 AM, 27 Sep, 2017\nIn-laws ablaze woman for not having children\n04:26 PM, 15 May, 2017\nOrange Line Metro Train: 31 conditions set by SC on project\n04:10 PM, 8 Dec, 2017","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line962196"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6174211502075195,"wiki_prob":0.38257884979248047,"text":"Posted by SJNR on Friday, August 14, 2009\nAfter seven warm-up fixtures (eight if you choose to include the kick-around at Dukinfield Town) it's time for the real stuff to begin.\nForty two plus games where there's something riding on almost every result. Over 63 hours of potentially nerve destroying football in which heroes will rise and fall, joy will battle it out with misery for our emotions and everybody is always the mythical 'one game' away from something - be it a big cup tie, a play-off spot or even administration.\nUnlike the proverbial box of chocolates which actually comes with a sheet detailing what each piece of confectionery is, you really don't know what you're going to get to next in football.\nThe question that's bothering me though is this. Despite all of the above, why do I feel so enormously uninterested about the new season?\nSeriously, this isn't a 'look at me, look at me' Julie Birchill-esque attention seeking claim - I really cannot call up a single ounce of excitement for what may be about to come. To all intents and purposes, it might as well be an unending list of friendly matches stretching out before us for all the enthusiasm I can muster. Nine months of matches for which the only feelings I can generate are similar to those reserved for end of season matches between two sides abandoned in mid-table obscurity - neither of whom I support.\nIf I could represent my feelings with a visual image it would be a shrug.\nRegular readers of the blog (you merry few) will know that my fervour for football has been, let's say, 'damp' over the course of the friendlies. Although to be truthful that is usually the case with me for pre-season games but the encroaching dawn of a new season usually sees the bounce in me return. This time however things are different. No excitement, no nothing.\nIt's weird because even though our final game of last season was a defeat, I left the Manchester Premier Cup Final at Boundary Park on a high. The defeat meant nothing, I was simply proud to be a Mossley supporter. A little over three months later and it's all change.\nIt could be that it's football as a whole I'm falling out of love with. Match of the Day is no longer a must watch and I barely tune in to see live games on the television any more. International matches, Champions League games, FA Cup ties... I can't remember the last time I actually sat down with the intention of watching any of them. May be it's this that's largely affecting the enjoyment I've had watching my home town team for over twenty years.\nWhat I do know for a fact is that the events at Seel Park early this summer are partly to blame for my indifference. I don't really want to re-open what are still relatively fresh wounds but I reached a stage of total ambivalence.\nI know, I'm \"not a true fan\" (and frankly that nonsense is another contributory reason for my apathy) for thinking such a thing but a third consecutive summer comprising of rumour, uncertainty and being made to feel like a mushroom was one off-season too many for me. It dawned on me that there are other more important things in life for me to worry about (money, a job that could soon be an ex-job) than the continuing trials and tribulations of Mossley AFC, and I realised that I'd probably be better off focusing on them instead.\nI'm not diminishing the actions of others here, far from it. Kudos to those who stood up and were counted when the crunch came and rallied to keep the club alive. Being the member of the committee, a steward on match days or someone who puts up the netting isn't for me but I have enormous respect for those who choose to do it.\nWhy have I told you all this? I've no idea really. I was kind of hoping that it would help explain why I haven't been posting ten to the dozen as usual on the forum. Why some of the forthcoming match reports may be a little more downbeat than usual or why there might not be quite so many reports from away games this year - even the neutral ones I normally see when I can't get to see Mossley.\nHowever I think it has been more of a cathartic experience for me than anything else; the chance to get something off my chest that's been bothering me for a while. Who knows? Now my thoughts are out in the open, like love or a demand from HMR&C for unpaid taxes, maybe the excitement of a new season will arrive suddenly and unexpectedly.\nIf it's going to I wish it would hurry up and do so or else the next nine months could feel like nine years.\nNik @ Oops said...\nI think you're on to something with the knock-on effect theory. There comes a point when you wonder why the hell you bother, when those you put your trust in by handing over admission money, beer money, programme money, to run the club continue to let you down. Maybe it's just us being naive? Has football always been like this, and we just never noticed?\nSJNR said...\nI think it always has been like this.\nThat said my problem isn't a question of trust (though it possibly could be if I look deep enough) but more one of tiredness and awareness.\nThere's an Oz analogy in here somewhere too in that I've seen behind the curtain and things are never going to be quite the same again.\nWhether any of that makes any sense though?\nCammell Laird 2 - 1 Mossley\nRemember, Remember The Fourth Of November\nMossley 1 - 4 Colwyn Bay\nA Site Not To Behold\nGarforth Town 0 - 1 Mossley\nEverybody's Entitled To One Of Them\nKidsgrove Athletic 3 - 1 Mossley\nMossley 6 - 3 Springhead\nGlossop North End 0 - 2 Mossley","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line326817"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6458088755607605,"wiki_prob":0.6458088755607605,"text":"Tag Archives: US NCAA Round of 64\nPhilippines, Sports, television, United States\nDespite Airing March Madness, US NCAA Remains Out of BTV’s Equation\nDecember 6, 2016 ralphierce2006-07 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball season, 2007 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Final Four, 2007 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship, 2007 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, 2007 US NCAA March Madness, 2012-13 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball season, 2013 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Final Four, 2013 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship, 2013 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, 2013 US NCAA March Madness, 2013-14 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball season, 2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Final Four, 2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball National Championship, 2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, 2016 US NCAA March Madness, 2016-17 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball season, 2017 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Final Four, 2017 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship, 2017 US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, 2017 US NCAA March Madness, ACC, Atlantic Coast Conference, Basketball in the Philippines, Basketball TV, Big 12, Big 12 Conference, Creighton Bluejays, FIBA, FIBA rules, Fox Sports Asia, Fox Sports Philippines, Kobe Paras, March Madness, March Madness on Basketball TV, March Madness on Solar Sports, National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA Philippines, PAC-12, PAC-12 Conference, Solar Entertainment, Solar Sports, Sports Illustrated Asia, Sports Illustrated Philippines, UAAP, University Athletic Association of the Philippines, US college basketball in the Philippines, US NCAA basketball in the Philippines, US NCAA basketball rules, US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, US NCAA Elite Eight, US NCAA First Four, US NCAA March Madness, US NCAA on Basketball TV, US NCAA on FOX Sports Philippines, US NCAA on Solar Sports, US NCAA on Sports Illustrated Asia, US NCAA Round of 32, US NCAA Round of 64, US NCAA Sweet Sixteen Leave a comment\nCreighton star Kobe Paras may be making waves in the U.S. NCAA, but the league’s lack of popularity in his home country continues to be a problem. (Photo credit: Fox Sports Asia)\nIt is obvious that U.S. college basketball will never get the respect it deserves from Filipino hoop fans.\nSuch is the case for the U.S. NCAA men’s basketball tournament. While top conference tournaments such as the ACC, PAC-12 and the Big 12 air regularly on the FOX Sports family of networks and Sports Illustrated Asia, one network in the Philippines is noticeably absent.\nThe network in question is Solar Entertainment’s Basketball TV, who back in April aired the U.S. NCAA Final Four and Championship games alongside Solar Sports. Unfortunately, the network’s emphasis on the more popular NBA once again put into question their commitment to air next year’s March Madness, let alone the entire U.S. NCAA season.\nThe last time BTV actually aired regular season U.S. NCAA basketball games was back in the 2012-13 season. This was also the last time the network aired March Madness prior to last April.\nThe history between the U.S. NCAA and Basketball TV date back to the fledgling network’s first season in 2006-07. Back then, the network was home to several popular conference tournaments, and they also aired a select number of March Madness games as well.\nUnfortunately, U.S. college basketball failed to make an imprint in the consciousness of Filipino hoop fans. Unlike the UAAP or the Filipino NCAA where its rules are based on FIBA’s template (hence a faster style of play), the U.S. NCAA employs a unique set of rules such as 20-minute halves, 30 or 35-second shot clocks, and one-and-one free throw situations.\nIt also did not help that U.S. college basketball players are essentially obscure names. The fact is, for Filipino hoop fans, they will only gain popularity if they were drafted in the NBA and play well there.\nThat said, BTV’s decision to drop the U.S. NCAA coverage back in the 2013-14 season was the right choice considering its lack of popularity here. While it did manage to air the Final Four in April, it was done out of necessity since no other network was committed enough to air.\nAlthough Creighton’s Kobe Paras is trying to lift the profile of U.S. NCAA basketball in the Philippines, one thing is clear. U.S. NCAA hoops will never become as popular as the NBA here, and that’s a painful fact.\nNCAA March Madness Belatedly Returns to Solar Sports, BTV\nMarch 30, 2016 ralphierce2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Final Four, 2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball National Championship, 2016 US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, 2016 US NCAA March Madness, ABS-CBN Sports, Basketball TV, Fox Sports Philippines, Holy Week 2016, March Madness, March Madness on Basketball TV, March Madness on Solar Sports, North Carolina Tar Heels, Oklahoma Sooners, Solar Entertainment, Solar Sports, Sports5, Syracuse Orange, UAAP, UAAP Season 78, US NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament, US NCAA Elite Eight, US NCAA First Four, US NCAA March Madness, US NCAA on Basketball TV, US NCAA on Solar Sports, US NCAA Round of 32, US NCAA Round of 64, US NCAA Sweet Sixteen, Villanova Wildcats 8 Comments\nThere will be US NCAA March Madness in the Philippines after all.\nThis weekend, Solar Sports and Basketball TV will join forces to cover Sunday’s Final Four and Tuesday’s National Championship of the US NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. Sunday’s games are as follows:\nVillanova vs. Oklahoma (6:00 a.m. live on Solar Sports and Basketball TV)\nSyracuse vs. North Carolina (8:45 a.m. live on Solar Sports and 10:30 a.m. delayed broadcast on Basketball TV)\nThe winners of the above games will face off in Tuesday’s National Championship. It will take place at 8:00 a.m. live on Solar Sports and Basketball TV.\nThis marks the return of the NCAA tournament to the Solar networks for the first time since 2013. Unfortunately, the return of March Madness to Solar was somewhat belated, due to a lack of interest from various networks.\nSports5, the rightsholder of the last two US NCAA March Madness tournaments, decided to back out owing to cost-cutting measures and the yearly observance of Holy Week. Fox Sports Philippines, who covers conference college tournaments, also did not express interest, and neither did ABS-CBN Sports due to its focus on the UAAP.\nWith no other options, Solar Sports decided to step in, but their involvement came way too late. As a result, they missed out covering the preliminaries, from the First Four to the Elite Eight.\nStill, as far as Solar is concerned, it’s better late than never. After all, March Madness is considered a must-watch event, even if a few Filipinos religiously follow the tournament.\nIt remains to be seen whether or not Solar will be willing to cover another year or two of March Madness. But hopefully, once they express interest again, the coverage won’t be just the Final Four and the National Championship, but also the First Four, the rounds of 64 and 32, the Sweet Sixteen and the Elite Eight, for the full March Madness experience.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line756455"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7559426426887512,"wiki_prob":0.7559426426887512,"text":"RMC Student Kathy Urffer Wins Two Awards for Documentary\nCongratulations to AUNE Resource Management and Conservation student Kathy Urffer, who has won two awards for her public-service documentary, “Understanding Brattleboro’s Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade.”\nKathy and the Town of Brattleboro were named co-recipients of the New England Water Environment Association’s (NEWEA) Paul Keough award for excellence in public relations. Additionally, her video won first prize in the category of Issues and Political Process from the Alliance for Community Media Northeast.\nIn 2009, as a practicum student, Kathy worked with the engineering firm chosen by the Town of Brattleboro to coordinate and oversee major upgrades to the town’s wastewater treatment plant. She made the documentary as the chief component of a public outreach initiative to educate residents about the need for the project prior to a town meeting vote on a referendum for a multimillion-dollar bond issue.\nKathy had no previous experience as a filmmaker, but created the video as a volunteer with Brattleboro Community Television (BCTV), a public access station, using its equipment and editing software. The film consists of interviews and footage, as well as clips from a 2002 town video about the history of wastewater in Brattleboro.\n“It isn’t complicated. It’s pretty straightforward,” she said. “I included as much information as possible to make it transparent so everyone could understand the need to upgrade the treatment plant. It’s an expensive project and affects all residents connected to the sewer system.”\nThe documentary was aired often on BCTV, and Kathy regularly provided updates about the project on the Town of Brattleboro’s Web site.\n“By the time we got to the vote, everyone was pretty receptive to it. The bond vote passed. It was very close to unanimous,” she said.\nFor her achievement, Kathy received the ACM award at the 12th annual Alliance for Community Media Northeast Region Fall Film Festival on November 13 in Concord, New Hampshire. In late January 2011, she and Steve Barrett of the Brattleboro Public Works Department will be presented with the Paul Keough Award for excellence in public relations at the NEWEA Annual Conference and Exhibition in Boston.\nKathy, who completed her master’s project on storm water analysis of the Brattleboro Co-op redevelopment site, hopes to graduate from AUNE in November 2010. She plans to focus on water advocacy.\nAUNE congratulates Kathy for her superlative work.\nView Kathy’s documentary here.\nAbout the Paul Keough Award\nThis award was established in 1994 in memory of Paul Keough, in recognition of his leadership and efforts to communicate to the public the need to protect the water environment. Mr. Keough was a reporter for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA, prior to joining the regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency where he started as a public affairs officer and worked his way up to regional administrator. The award is given for excellence in public relations.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line43119"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7215569615364075,"wiki_prob":0.27844303846359253,"text":"Miles of glass panels being installed for The Q Arena Transformation Project\nUpdated Jan 22, 2019; Posted Jan 22, 2019\nMiles of glass panels being installed at The Q Arena Transformation Project\nBy John Pana, cleveland.com\nCleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena is undergoing a $185 million makeover which will make way for, among other things, the 2022 NBA All Star Game.\nIf you haven’t seen the architectural renderings, a new 42,530 square foot addition with an exterior glass facade will wrap around the north and east sides of the building along Huron Road and East 6th Street.\nArk Transportation Ltd. of Middleburg Heights was contracted to receive, warehouse and transport the 1,475 glass panels to the construction site. An Ark representative confirmed that they received nearly 1.3 million pounds of cargo from 33 full ocean containers. Each container has 39,000 pounds, including the glass panels and the wooden crates protecting them.\nWith the glass panels ranging from 8 to 13 feet long, it would be safe to say that the total length of the panels lined up back-to-back would be well over 2 miles long. That would be a glass path stretching from Quicken Loans Arena to Cleveland’s Steelyard Commons south of Tremont.\nA recent update from The Q Transformation Project’s website noted that the project will add 77,000 square feet of glass to the exterior of the arena.\nThe video above includes renderings of how The Q will look when the project is completed.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line308868"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6007133722305298,"wiki_prob":0.3992866277694702,"text":"Esther Bialas\nScenery and Costume Designer\nDesigner Esther Bialas collaborates frequently with director Barrie Kosky.\nHer collaborations as a stage and costume designer with director Barrie Kosky include Strindberg’s A Dream Play (Deutsche Theater Berlin), Strauss’s The Silent Woman (Bavarian State Opera), as well as Ball im Savoy, Seven Songs/The Seven Deadly Sins, West Side Story and The Magic Flute (Komische Oper Berlin).\nShe also has a longstanding collaboration with director Nicolas Stemann, designing costumes for his productions of Hamlet (Schauspiel Hannover), Jelinek’s The Work (Burgtheater, Vienna) and Schiller’s The Robbers (Thalia Theater, Hamburg). Together with director Christiane Pohle, she founded the women’s theater company LaborLavache, presented at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.\nShe has designed stage and costume designs for the Basel Theater, Vienna Burgtheater and the Deutsche Theater Berlin, for opera productions in Lucerne and Basel, as well as for film. Other design credits include The Tales of Hoffmann (Bregenzer Festspiele, directed by Stefan Herheim); Eötvös’s Three Sisters (Vienna State Opera); costumes for La Cenerentola (Oslo Opera, directed by Stefan Herheim); and costumes for La Traviata (Theater Basel, directed by Daniel Kramer).\nEsther Bialas studied costume design in Hamburg. Since 2004 she has taught costume design at the Lerchenfeld University in Hamburg.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line634545"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5085857510566711,"wiki_prob":0.5085857510566711,"text":"WE ARE NPTP\nThe Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) is the main government entity responsible for provision of social safety nets in Lebanon. It provides social services to specific categories of vulnerable groups, primarily through its Social Development Centers (SDCs). The MOSA has placed poverty alleviation as one of its main priorities and established the National Poverty Targeting Program (NPTP) in 2011 as the first poverty-targeted social assistance program for the poorest and most vulnerable Lebanese families. The MOSA has also placed the reform, reinforcement, and capacitation of its social development centers (SDCs) among its priorities to enable them to fulfill their mandated roles, including relief work such as in the case of the Syrian refugee crisis. The SDCs provide social services and promote integrated development at the individual, household and community levels. Finally, the MOSA is committed to the reform of its community development programs through the adoption of an effective and transparent mechanism for the allocation of financial support to communities and community-based organizations.\nThe NPTP is managed by the MOSA and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM). It is the first poverty-targeted social assistance program in Lebanon with the objective to “provide social assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable Lebanese households based on transparent criteria that assess each household’s eligibility to receive assistance, given available public resources”. The NPTP is based on a proxy-means testing (PMT) targeting mechanism and is implemented through approximately 500 social workers and inspectors operating at the level of 115 SDCs. The social workers/inspectors have been trained to implement the targeting method and collect needed household information that is verified and processed using an automated management information system.\nTo date, the NPTP social assistance (the basket of benefits) consists of the following: (i) comprehensive health coverage for beneficiaries in public and private hospitals through the waiver of 10-15 percent copayments for hospitalization; (ii) coverage of chronic disease prescription medications; and (iii) registration fee waivers and free books for students in primary and secondary public schools; (iv) food baskets for eligible households. In 2012, the Council of Ministers allocated US$28 million for the financing of the social assistance, demonstrating its commitment to the NPTP. By May 2014, more than 140,000 households (580,000 individuals) had applied to the program, and approximately 100,000 households (460,000 individuals) were deemed eligible to receive the benefits.\nGoing forward, in response to rising poverty levels in communities hosting refugees and in order to help mitigate tensions between the refugee and Lebanese communities, the GOL plans to enhance the package of social assistance provided through the NPTP by including food assistance via the electronic card food voucher system, currently being implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Lebanon for more than 670,000 Syrian refugees. The food basket benefit previously distributed by the NPTP has been discontinued and replaced with the e-card food voucher. In addition, primary health care services, through the Ministry of Public Health (MOPH), will be included in the package of benefits eligible under the NPTP. The GOL will also expand the coverage of the NPTP to include additional beneficiaries.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line689223"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8894575834274292,"wiki_prob":0.8894575834274292,"text":"Defending champions book place in World Wheelchair Curling Championships final\nDefending champions Russia booked their place in the gold medal match of the World Wheelchair Curling Championships after beating Norway in the play-offs at the Eizentrun Luzern in Lucerne.\nBoth teams had completed the round robin phase of the competition with a record of seven wins and two defeats, although the Russian team began with the advantage of having overcome their rivals 3-1.\nNorway’s quartet of Jostein Stordahl, Ole Fredrik Syversen, Sissel Loechen and Jan-Erik Hansen began the more impressively of the two teams as they opened up a 2-0 lead, by scoring points in the second and third ends.\nHowever, the momentum of the contest shifted considerably after the Russians scored two in the fourth end and were then able to open up a two-point advantage by the sixth.\nDespite beginning the final end at 4-3 behind, the Norwegian team had a chance to secure the win due to having three stones in the house, but Russia’s skip Andrey Smirnov was able to hold his nerve and score a point to win his team the contest 5-3.\n“The game was tough and nervous that's why we are still feeling nervous\n“But it's very good for us that we were able to gather strength, to control and fix our mistakes.\n“Of course, now we will prepare ourselves for tomorrow’s game.\n“The last end brought a lot of tension and the last stone was our last hope, I was concentrating just on this stone and I'm happy that I did my best and we won.”\nNorway will now be forced to win their semi-final clash to join Russia in the gold medal match, with South Korea also vying for the spot.\nNorway will now need to beat South Korea in the semi-finals to keep their hopes alive ©World Curling\nThe South Korean team were able to come from behind to beat Switzerland in the third and fourth place match.\nTheir victory hinged upon the seventh end, where they were able to score three points and they moved into the lead for the first time.\nAlthough Switzerland scored a point to force an extra end, South Korea used the last stone advantage to good effect to score two points and claim a 6-4 win.\nCanada were able to avoid joining Finland in World Wheelchair Curling Championship Division B after they overcame Germany 6-3 in their final group match, which took place earlier in the day.\nIt forced Germany to meet Slovakia in a relegation playoff, with the former cruising to a 7-2 win, which preserved their place in the top level competition.\nFebruary 2016: Russia qualify for knock-out phase at World Wheelchair Curling Championships\nFebruary 2016: Switzerland and Norway seal playoff spots at World Wheelchair Curling Championships\nFebruary 2016: Norway continue 100 per cent record at World Wheelchair Curling Championships to close on semi-final spot\nFebruary 2016: Swiss remain unbeaten at home World Wheelchair Curling Championships\nFebruary 2016: Norway make it three wins from three at World Wheelchair Curling Championships","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1109191"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5282806754112244,"wiki_prob":0.47171932458877563,"text":"Tom Unveils His Plan To Revitalize The Middle Class >\nA New National Public Service Plan\nFrom the founding of our nation, Americans have pledged to lend a hand to the mutual betterment of society and to fully engage in shared civic life. This ethos of service and shared responsibility is the beating heart of our democratic experiment.\nThe ways we serve are many: more than 1 million individuals have served in rural and urban communities across the nation through AmeriCorps since its founding twenty-five years ago; nearly 250,000 have served abroad in the Peace Corps. Today, there are more than 2.4 million servicemen and women serving in our armed forces and reserves. They, alongside 18.2 million military veterans, embody the highest ideals of service to country. We owe our utmost respect and gratitude to these men and women who have served, both here at home and abroad, at war and at peace, in the armed forces and in national service.\nFor the last several years, I have worked hand in hand with young people to mobilize their participation in our democracy. From my conversations with these young Americans, I have learned about their personal aspirations and concerns for our country. They care deeply about the future of our nation, especially during this time of ideological division when trust in our democratic institutions is at a historic low and our political leadership is failing them. Young Americans believe strongly in the promise of America, understand the enormity of the challenges facing our country and our planet, and want to use their energy and intellect to make a difference.\nPresident Kennedy’s resounding call to civic action over 50 years ago still resonates, “And so my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” JFK asked that we put country ahead of self and reminded Americans of all ages that an investment of their time, talent, and optimism can help solve pressing challenges in our country and around the globe. It is time to again renew, as we have done before, our commitment to public service.\nMY COMMITMENT TO SERVICE\nI enthusiastically accept the Serve America Together Presidential Challenge, backed by a coalition of prominent Americans and civil and military service organizations, to make public service a priority of my campaign and my Administration.\nWithin 100 days of my inauguration, I pledge to place public service at the heart of my administration by adopting a “New National Public Service Plan.” This plan will provide more opportunities for Americans, especially young Americans from diverse backgrounds and geographic regions, to unite and take action around a common civic purpose — public service.\n“NEW NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE PLAN”\nAs President, I will execute on the following plan to expand our commitment to national public service and to unleash the collective power of each individual in this nation — regardless of age or background — to give back. In doing so:\nWe will realize the largest peacetime expansion of national public service in the history of our nation by investing $50 billion and expanding supported service opportunities to 1 million positions by 2025.\nWe will work with public and private partners to address challenges in public health, poverty reduction, the opioid crisis, the criminal justice system, education, climate change, aging with dignity, conservation, and other urgent local needs in thousands of communities, urban and rural, in America and abroad.\nWe will reinvigorate the spirit of service that has been a hallmark of our democracy since its founding by providing invaluable educational, career, and social opportunities for service driven people from every zip code, every age, every background, and every legal residency status.\nWe will again honor service as a core American value, the foundation upon which our democracy stands.\nThis challenge will not be easy, but we know it will reap rewards. National service programs have strong bipartisan support.\nService opportunities return nearly $4 to the economy for every $1 invested.\nThey strengthen communities and help meet real, unmet needs.\nAlumni of service programs stay engaged in our democracy:\nThey vote at a higher rate than their peers and remain engaged in public life, no matter where their careers take them.\nIt is time to return power to the American people and rekindle the ethos of public service at scale. Let us build the opportunities — particularly for young people across our nation — that will enable them to give their full selves to this great work.\nWithin my first 100 days in office, I will:\nElevate national public service to a cabinet-level priority by establishing a new National and Community Service Agency\nWith a $50 billion in new Federal investment, I will fortify national service efforts by elevating the work being done by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to a cabinet-level priority and resourcing it to meet national needs.\nCNCS is the federal department that administers most of our national public service programs — for example, AmeriCorps and Senior Corps. The CNCS’ mission is to “improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering”. Through a grantmaking process, CNCS supports AmeriCorps and Senior Corps programs across the country. Other critical public service programs such as the Peace Corps and FEMA Corps are housed and administered in different parts of the federal government. Despite strong bipartisan Congressional support for all these programs, the Trump Administration has repeatedly tried to eliminate them and/or significantly reduce their budgets.\nTo advance national public service as an integral component of the American civic tradition, I will:\nElevate CNCS as a cabinet level agency — the National and Community Service Agency. Headed by the National and Community Service Director, this new Agency will continue to administer its current mix of national public service programs but also actively engage with other federal departments to ensure strong coordination and integration of public service programs across the federal government.\nIncrease the investment in national public service programs by at least $50 billion to implement the various provisions of this New National Public Service Plan, including making grants to public and private sector entities, faith-based and non-profit groups, and philanthropic organizations to develop and implement innovative public service programs in urban and rural communities, Native American communities, and regions with high rates of poverty. I will also increase grant funding available to Peace Corps members to develop special project activities in the communities in which they are serving.\nPass an Updated Serve America Act\nTen years ago, President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. This act reauthorized and expanded the national service programs administered by CNCS which were originally enacted under President Clinton in 1994. It is time to once again update the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. I will:\nPass an updated Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. This legislation would establish the National and Community Service Agency; significantly increase the number of Americans participating in national public service programs; institute new and expand existing public service programs; define performance metrics; and delineate new educational and living allowance benefits.\nGrow National Public Service to 1,000,000 Participants In 5 Years\nThe three main federal public service programs that anchor the national public service landscape are AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Peace Corps. Each of these programs enjoy widespread public and Congressional support as well as deliver strong economic returns per taxpayer dollar invested.\nAmeriCorps — was founded in 1994 as a way for Americans to serve their community. 75,000 members each year work in nonprofits, schools, and faith-based organizations. The activities they undertake run the gamut from working with veterans to find them jobs, to fighting the opioid epidemic and disaster relief. Over 1 million Americans have participated in the AmeriCorps program. \\\nSenior Corps is a voluntary service program for individuals over the age of 55. Seniors can use their work experience to provide volunteer services through three programs: Foster Grandparent Program that pairs up volunteers with children with exceptional needs. The Senior Companion Program helps seniors live independent lives. Volunteers help with simple tasks like grocery shopping, to ease the burden of the person they are assisting. Finally, the RSVP Program is a program that takes advantage of the wide variety of skills volunteers possess. They perform such diverse activities like disaster response, neighborhood watch and youth mentoring.\nPeace Corps — The Peace Corps was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and, since its inception, more than 235,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps, serving in over 140 foreign countries. There are currently about 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers. These volunteers live in the communities and work alongside the people they serve, providing technical assistance on social programs and economic development projects. They mainly work across six sectors: health, the environment, community economic development, agriculture, youth in development and education.\nEvery year thousands of candidates interested in public service are unable to participate and my plan will help ensure that all who want to serve can do so. I will:\nExpand national public service participation to 1,000,000 participants over five years. This includes increases in existing programs such as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps but also creating new programs including my proposed Civilian Climate Corps, supporting the March for our Lives’ Safety Corps, and many other meaningful programs that will tackle the numerous unmet challenges facing communities throughout America.\nRecruit Americans of all ages, religions, genders, racial and ethnic backgrounds, educational strata, and zip codes to participate in this bold expansion of national public service. Focus attention and outreach on recruiting opportunity youth, high school and college students, college graduates including those from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), immigrant communities, advanced degree recipients, Native Americans, and urban and rural Americans.\nEnhance the ability of nonprofits, faith-based organizations, local and state governments, schools, and other public and private service organizations to access talent and resources from national service programs, particularly in underserved communities, to build a pipeline of meaningful, responsive service opportunities where they are most needed.\nCreate a Civilian Climate Corps to Lead on Climate Solutions\nThe people closest to the problems understand the solutions that will work best in their communities. My Justice Centered Climate Plan will lift up local voices and build a Civilian Climate Corps — a combined service, training, and job creation effort — to implement tailored solutions specific to the needs of individual communities. I will:\nEmpower 100,000 community public servants each year to help achieve the ambitious goals of the Justice Centered Climate Plan. Corps members will work with local leaders to develop and implement plans focused on how best to address climate impacts in their communities. One of the central missions of the Corps will be to organize an inclusive and democratic process in communities that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, have suffered the effects of environmental racism, and have historically experienced underinvestment.\nIncrease Program Living Allowances and Greatly Expand Education Benefits\nToday, national public service program participants generally serve 1 to 2 years, receive a modest living allowance, and receive other benefits depending on their specific service program. Additionally, participants are generally able to have their student loans deferred and receive an educational award upon completion of their program service: the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award.\nThe living stipend and benefit structure for national public service participation varies greatly depending on the type of program, years of service, and whether you are a full or part-time participant. My plan will make national public service accessible to all who want to serve and reward participants with increased living allowances and strong educational awards. I will:\nEnhance the living stipend and offer a housing allowance. Providing a living stipend more aligned with the geographic regions in which participants serve as well as relocation and housing allowances will enable more low-income participants to serve.\nCreate the Five to Pay Four Educational Benefit. Under this benefit, for each year of service, up to five years, service members can reduce their student loan debt or earn financial credits to apply to future education, including community college, technical training or apprentice programs, four-year college, or professional and graduate school. Participants serving a total of five years would see all their student loan debt forgiven, roughly equivalent to the tuition cost of a public in-state college or university.\nExempt stipends and educational benefits from taxation. Particularly for low-income populations — and those unable to access financial support from family or networks — paying taxes on a stipend provides an undue financial burden and undermines the opportunity afforded by these awards.\nDesignate National Public Service Ambassadors who have completed a 5-Year Service Commitment. Allowing participants the option of serving longer than currently allowed — up to 5 years — will provide a number of meaningful benefits to both the program and the participant including: better service delivery gained from more experienced participants, greater opportunities for professional growth and upward mobility, and an ability to fully cover the cost of technical or higher education. In addition to the educational benefits delineated above, National Public Service Ambassadors would receive a $10,000 cash award, bonus points in federal hiring processes, increased assistance with job placement and career counseling, and other long-term benefits.\nEstablish the Public Service Gap Year Educational Award. For high school graduates or college students in the midst of their studies, this education benefit would allow them to take a gap year to participate in a public service program. The gap year education award would allow participants to earn $10,000 towards college tuition or a certificate program.\nDevelop Complementary Public Service Programs Within the Federal Government\nAn overarching goal of the newly established National and Community Service Agency will be to develop complementary national public service programs within federal government agencies and more partnerships with non-governmental entities. For example, the FEMA Corps, within the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works alongside FEMA personnel and helps with disaster recovery. These complementary activities do not replace the operational expertise of civil service personnel but help to complement the current service delivery system as well as provide future career opportunity pipeline. They also demonstrate and reinforce the value of the hard work done by public servants in all areas of government everyday and can demonstrate to young people the value and rewards of a public service career. I will:\nIdentify and secure national public service opportunities within government departments to complement their missions with an emphasis placed on finding opportunities that focus on pressing economic and social challenges such as assisting veterans and military families, closing the education achievement gap, fostering science and technology education, protecting our natural resources, expanding access to health care, and developing economic opportunity.\nEmpower career public servants by enhancing civic education that highlights their valuable work\nEmpower agencies that do research to design gateway programs into STEM/STEAM fields for individuals interested in the sciences.\nEveryone Should Be Able to Serve: Establishing Uniform Program Eligibility Requirements\nGenerally, participant eligibility requirements for national public service programs vary depending on the program, especially in regards to citizenship status. Individuals with various immigration statuses are part of the fabric of America and fulfill many of the workforce needs in our economy. Persons holding citizenship or legal residency classifications should be allowed to serve in any domestic national public service program. I will:\nEstablish uniform program eligibility requirements regarding citizenship and legal residency status across all domestic national public service programs. Residents of all legal immigration statuses — U.S. citizen, U.S. national, legal permanent resident, temporary protected status, or deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) status— should have the opportunity to serve through these programs. Immigrant communities provide valuable cultural perspectives and expertise that add to our shared ethos of service and should be included in our domestic national public service programs.\nStrengthen the National Public Service Partnership Network\nThe programs that deliver our national public service programs are a network of public and private sector entities, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations. To achieve the goals outlined in this plan, the scope and breadth of this network must be bolstered with greater resources and entrusted with more operational capabilities.\nDevelop an outreach campaign to expand the number of employers participating in the EONS program and create a more comprehensive database of public service alumni to connect to potential employers.\nBuild a robust peer-to-peer network to connect public service alumni to local volunteer opportunities, strong professional and community networks, as well as stand up a Public Service Reserve that could be called into action if additional trained community members are needed to help respond to an emergency or disaster.\nIncrease grant funding to colleges and universities for students to participate in service-learning and volunteer projects.\nEnlist more higher education institutions to participate in the Segal AmeriCorps Education Award Matching Program.\nProvide additional funding to expand academic research on the economic and social benefits of public service and student volunteerism.\nInitiate outreach and public awareness campaigns to recruit college students to participate in national public service programs, placing a particular emphasis on recruiting schools and service members from HBCUs and MSIs.\nWork with high schools, colleges and universities to provide educational, workforce training, and career advancement opportunities for national public service alumni.\nWork with colleges and universities to increase financial pledges and other in-kind support for service members.\nWork with institutions of higher learning to grant academic credit and other related educational considerations for AmeriCorps and Peace Corps alumni. For example, qualifying graduate school credit for specific types of work experience.\nUphold and Honor America’s Commitment to Those Who Have Served\nMy New National Public Service Plan focuses almost exclusively on non-military service, however, it is critically important to recognize that one of the highest forms of public service is embodied in the men and women in our Armed Forces that are serving with honor and distinction. There are roughly 2.4 million military personnel serving on Active Duty, in the National Guard, or in the Reserve components of the United States military. Additionally, there are approximately 18.2 million military veterans in the United States. These men and women deserve our respect, our gratitude, and the solemn pledge from their Commander in Chief that America will never waver in its commitment to them.\nAt their side stand the million alumni from the AmeriCorps program and the nearly 250,000 alumni of the Peace Corps. As these programs are expanded under my New National Public Service Plan, it is critical that we also acknowledge and respect their service to our nation, be it domestically or abroad.\nIn 2017, the National Commission on National and Public Service was created to review all aspects of public service, both civilian and military. The Commission is reviewing the selective service registration process and looking for ways to increase public service.\nThe Commission released an interim report in 2018 and will release a final report in 2020. I look forward to the Commission’s final report and integrating its findings into this plan’s development. I will:\nHonor the time and talent given by those who have served on the Commission and initiate a public awareness campaign to highlight their work and the work of those who serve.\nIncorporate the recommendations from this report on military and non-military public service into my New National Public Service Plan and its implementation.\nWe must reinvigorate JFK’s call for everyday Americans to do what Washington won’t do: to work collaboratively in service to transform the lives of our fellow Americans and people from around our planet in need.\nI look forward to putting this plan into action as the next President of the United States and strengthening our civic bonds through public service as we repair the damage Trump has wrought on our communities.\nShare your service story with #IAmNationalService.\nRead Tom’s Plan to Recommit to Service.\nMessages from 46866 from Tom Steyer 2020 are recurring. Message & Data Rates May Apply. Text HELP for Info. Text STOP to opt out. 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{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6940155029296875,"wiki_prob":0.6940155029296875,"text":"ABOUT ESOPUS\nALL VOLUNTEER BOARDS & COMMITTEES\nBOARDS/COMMITTEES\nESOPUS COMMUTERS\nWHY WE LOVE ESOPUS\nVISIT ESOPUS\nA FEW OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES\nWHY MOVE TO ESOPUS?\nDISCOVER ESOPUS\nSOJOURNER TRUTH’S BIRTHPLACE\nWelcome to the Town of Esopus\nSeven Business Owners Who Love Esopus, NY\nApril 12, 2018\tby\tAlex\nHave you heard of Esopus? Not the creek; it’s the Hudson Valley town that’s nestled between Kingston, Poughkeepsie and New Paltz, has the most water frontage of any town in the state, is inherently Instagrammable, and is the historic home of people like John Burroughs and Sojourner Truth.\nIf you love the Hudson Valley or the Catskills and want to start a business here, great! Our town has an easy and transparent process for getting started.\nWe recently interviewed seven of our local business owners on why they love Esopus.\nMoresca\nBusiness Owners: Lena Dun-Jones & Jo Dun-Jones (interviewed)\nLocation: 361 Union Center Road, Ulster Park NY\nWhat they do: “We make Renaissance-inspired fancy costuming. We sell mainly at Renaissance Festivals and some fairy festivals. We’re more of a manufacturing business than retail… we do all of the cutting in-house, and then have several local seamstresses that we work with, and then we finish the work with grommeting, beading or lacing.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “This is our 42nd year of business. We started in California at some of the first renaissance faires there in 1976 or 1977. We’ve been operating in Ulster Park since 1980.\nMy mother, Lena had spent some time in NYC in the 70s, and she knew she wanted a big piece of property, and she was just operating out of our house in Ulster Park the 80s. In the early 90s, this apple cooler where we now operate out of came on the market. It has a fest hall with 200 seats, theater lighting and fireplaces. There’s a showroom with all of our merchandise in it, and our sale room which has things that come back from shows. And we manufacture in the basement.”\nWhen to visit: “People come from all over the country for our open houses; we have one in the spring, summer and fall. People can come by appointment if they need to shop, but we don’t encourage it.”\nWhen they’re not working: “I love Scenic Hudson. I do a lot of hiking at Sheaupeneak and Black Creek and all of those areas. The Apple Bin has always been a favorite too. I’m also a big fan of the Port Ewen Library and Wood n’ Wheel.\f”\nEver Growing Family Farm\nBusiness Owners: Dawn Hoyte (interviewed), Nfamara Badjie\nLocation: 115 Union Center Road, Ulster Park, NY\nWhat they do: “My husband is an assistant maintenance supervisor at Woodstock Day School; I am a counselor at Ulster Correctional Facility in Naponoch. We have full-time gigs, but every year, we do small-scale rice farming on our farm.\nThe rice is cultivated by Nfamara along with his cousin Moustapha Diedhou of New Paltz, with help from our sons. Nfamara and Moustapha are master rice farmers and master drummers from the Jola tribe of the Senegambia region of West Africa.\nThis year we have imported equipment from Japan, like a rice mill, a hulling machine, and a machine to polish the brown rice into white rice.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “We were living in Saugerties; I had lived in Rosendale too, and I met Nfamara at a dance class in New Paltz. We were looking for places with land to farm close to New Paltz and Kingston, and we found this house here on Union Center Road, that appeared to have wonderful land in the backyard.\nIt’s kind of wonderful here; there’s a little mountain ridge, there are houses on the road, great views. Two houses over, people have buffalo.\nThe taxes are much lower than Saugerties, and there’s proximity to everything else. I never knew where Ulster Park was despite living in Ulster County for years, and I didn’t realize what a great little place it is and how pretty it is.”\nHow they’ve integrated with the community: “We have had a lot of help and love from the Bruderhof community that lives down the road. They’ve been very supportive in helping us plow, and they come and help and participate. We like the relationship… my husband is a devout Muslim, and they’ve come for his tabaski, the celebration of the end of Ramadan. We’re just finding really common ground in respect for each other and nature, and love and gratitude and commonalities, which is really cool to see.\nThat’s how I feel about Esopus. We just have really nice neighbors; friendly and helpful. There’s a real sense of community here.”\nWhen to visit: “People are always welcome to come visit the farm. We have a number of events a year that we just opened to the community. We also have a few harvest parties every year. We sell all of the rice through word of mouth; some restaurants have inquired, but we don’t produce enough to sell large quantities yet.”\nWhen they’re not working: “I want to go hiking in Esopus, but we have no time. We work, we come home, we go right to the field, we stay until it’s dark. We come inside and cook dinner with our family, and we go to sleep.\nI like the Global Palate restaurant. It was a good experience, and we gave them some rice. We have also participated in Esopus Youth Basketball, and soccer. We love using the park on the river for birthday parties.”\nRed Maple Vineyard\nPhoto credit: @cirophotography\nBusiness owner: Gary Stone\nLocation: 103 Burroughs Drive, West Park, NY\nWhat they do: “Red Maple Vineyard is a vineyard and farm that is rented by clients for weddings. The weddings are really what generate the income for the property to survive and move forward until farm operations are in full swing. The goal is to use the on-site farm to generate and grow items and goods that can be used by our catering company. So if someone is getting married here, the goal is to grow the salad items, side items, vegetable dishes, and all sorts of things for the farm to table station.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus:\n“We have a small catering business and pastry shop down in Rye (Westchester) called Corner Stone Caterers. We’ve been there for 25 years.\nWe’ve been doing weddings for about 20 years, and we realized that having control of the venue makes things significantly easier when you’re catering. We started scouting around, and found what used to be called West Park Winery. It’s a little bit of a hike to get people up here from New York City, but it was absolutely gorgeous. It took us a while to come up with the finances, but we pulled it off. We’re now in our sixth year.\nOur farm is supporting our shop in Rye with eggs. There are also lots of favors; we bottle maple syrup from the farm for the bride and groom. We’re close to producing honey, and this year, we’ll have our first wine. We have four or five different kinds of hot sauces and jams.\n100% of the proceeds of the rental income and produce go directly into the farm. We’re booked for a year in advance, so we’re planning on adding future vineyards, and things like apple cider, increasing the maple syruping. This also might be the year we start a farm stand to feature some of the local products.”\nHow they’ve integrated with the community: “We built a house on the farm and live here full-time. One local collaboration is that our neighbor Patrick owns Great Life Brewing in Kingston. He’s brewing a special batch of beer for the farm that uses maple sap, so we’ll see how that works out. (Note: It worked out spectacularly!)\nOn the farm, we work with Cornell Cooperative Extension a lot to lean on their expertise. We don’t use herbicides and pesticides and are striving toward organic. It’s incredibly labor intensive, it’s a real learning curve, but my daughter Shaleen and her team have done an amazing job.\nWe’ve trained and hired all local staff to work the events. Weddings bring in a lot of peripheral business, and we also have recommended local vendors like florists, bands, djs, transportation, etc.”\nWhen they’re not working: “When we do get out and about, it’s generally to go and eat. We’ve been to the mansions and all that in Hyde Park and Rhinebeck, we travel around a little bit, but I still feel out of the loop in terms of all that’s offered in Esopus. We do walk up to John Burroughs up the road quite a bit.”\nWhen to visit: “We only operate six months out of the year; May through October is our season.”\nWhat’s next: “We average 250-500 people on weekends. There’s so much peripheral business that Esopus and this side of the bridge could be picking up if there were hotels here. Lodging would be absolutely critical.\nThere’s also Star Vodka going in opposite from us. That is going to potentially bring in a lot of people as well. I feel like things are happening. The whole farming community is really interesting here; the breweries, the distilleries. There’s a real underswell happening.”\nWood n’ Wheel\nBusiness Owners: The Sorbello Family, Bud Sorbello (interviewed)\nLocation: 365 Route 9W, Ulster Park, NY\nWhat they do: “We give families more things to do in the region. We’ve owned Wood n’ Wheel for 43 years. We started in 1974, and the it was an immediate hit as a roller rink. We added laser tag in the mid-90s, and then bumper cars, and an arcade in the 200s. We added paintball in 2008, and in 2011, we added an outdoor rock wall and bungee trampolines.\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “My dad actually started it. He had worked in construction, and he was looking to start his own business. It was a big, modern undertaking for back then, and he risked it all really, he had financed everything under the sun to do this. It was daunting for him, I know that. The challenges of getting the approvals and raising the funds was a huge undertaking. But it was an immediate hit, and the crowds were huge.”\nHow they’ve integrated with the community: “My parents actually live nearby, their property adjoins this property. It’s been a challenging business environment. When IBM left in the mid-90s, people with disposable money kind of dwindled, so we’ve gone out of our way to support local folks. We’re trying to bring in people from Dutchess, parts of Orange county, Greene county.\nThe town is very welcoming, and at the planning board, they do everything the right way, and they’re very willing to listen to ideas and move the process forward.”\nWhen they’re not working: “I live in Poughkeepsie, but I know our workers will order takeout from Marios and La Roma all the time.\nThere are a lot of high-end amenities right here; there’s the Walkway that’s bringing people in, the parks on the Hudson River, the recreational trails.”\nWhat’s next: “We’re going to the town planning board for a zipline and ropes course, and a small family-sized water attraction.”\nJenny Lee Fowler\nArtist: Jenny Lee Fowler\nLocation: Esopus\nWhat they do: “I make original art commissions for private and commercial clients around the world– from personal portraits to visual content for national brand advertising and magazines. I focus on traditional and contemporary cut paper techniques.\nI started working professionally as an artist in 2006 or 2007. I am self-trained, and I’ve always made art.\nThere’s a nice regional art community here. I’ve been able to tap into that in some nice ways. A lot of my work is over the Internet. I was didn’t have to be in a busy place, but I still have opportunities to teach, to do commissions and I can still be in the middle of everything. Where I am informs my work; the plants here, the animals here, the experiences, and I’m able to have those natural experiences with my children and my family.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “I grew up in Oregon, and moved to the Hudson Valley to attend Bard in the late 90s. I lived on that side of the river for a number of years. In 2003, when we had a one year old, we were looking for a place that was an easy commute to both Poughkeepsie and Bard, where I was working at the time. We found this little spot, we were really excited to get three acres here. We had a lot of homesteading dreams, we had goats and chickens for a while. The kids had space to spread out and have lots of outdoor adventures.\nA big piece of it that it’s economical here. We were able to get a house here for an amount of money that we could really afford. We really loved the landscape. We had been to some of the Scenic Hudson parks in this area (Jenny’s husband Andy works for Scenic Hudson). We lived in Saugerties for about a year and a half before moving here to Esopus. We really love both sides of the river, but it felt like we could get what we wanted here.\nWhen they’re not working: “We do a lot of hiking, sometimes we go for paddles in the Rondout. We’ll get in at Sleightsburg, or the top of the Rondout below the bridge and paddle down. We would go to Freer Park a lot to play frisbee and fly kites.\nThe kids love to get ice cream at Rainbow. They call it the Frozebow. We get takeout at New China sometimes. The Apple Bin has been one of the kids’ favorites for a long time… they love going there to get egg sandwiches and treats.\nWe swim a lot at Kingston Point, which is also close, about 5 minutes from our house. My daughter likes to fish there.”\nWhat’s next: “I actually do pitch it to my friends; there’s a sense of economy and being close to nature. You can get more for your money here than in many neighboring communities. You’re close to services and cultural activities, like the library. You have access to lots of beautiful places, which isn’t true in every community.”\nPort Ewen Diner\nPhotos by @dang_brooklyn and @andypagana\nBusiness Owners: Lisa (interviewed) and Gary Zwerdling\nLocation: 295 Broadway, Port Ewen, NY\nWhat they do: “I know diners. I worked in several diners growing up. It seemed like for this area, it was a good opportunity. There weren’t too many other options. I wouldn’t buy a diner in Kingston, there were too many. This diner had been successful for 14 years. We bought the diner about four years ago, and we moved to Port Ewen in October to be closer.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “The story is very spiritual. The Lord told me to buy the diner. We didn’t look at any other businesses.\nI was born in Charleston, South Carolina. My father was in the military and was from the Kingston area, so we moved around a lot getting stationed here in there. When I was in high school, we moved to this area and that’s how I ended up here. My husband is retired from the Sheriff’s department after 38 years, and worked out of the Esopus sub-station. My son played Little League in this area. So I know a lot of the community and the people.\nThe cost of living is more affordable here than in New Paltz. Our taxes are cut in half here. We downsized quite a bit, so that’s a factor, but our taxes are lower, everything just seems to be a little lower here. That kind of drew us to this area as well. We had looked at a couple of different areas, including West Hurley, and it just seemed like this was more affordable for us.”\nHow they’ve integrated with the community: “Port Ewen is a nice, close-knit town. It’s all family. We know just about everybody’s name that comes in. We have a lot of repeat customers. We have people that come in twice a day, 7 days a week.\nWe’ve met a lot of new people, a lot of new friends. We have a great staff from the time we opened. The loyalty of the staff is amazing. We have grown the business a tremendous amount since the previous owners had it. This year has been our best year yet so that was pretty amazing. People look forward to coming in on the weekends, I’ll make homemade apple crisp to go along with the special.”\nWhen they’re not working: “We love the Apple Festival. We love the tugboat committee that they have. We really like the museum, we like walking around the town with our dog. We just moved here in October, so we haven’t had a summer yet here. What I like is the convenience, we’re close to a lot of things; we’re close to Kingston and Poughkeepsie for shopping, so on and so forth.”\nWhat’s next: “I believe people are feeling optimistic. I think this is a great place to live. You don’t see a lot of crime, and that’s important. The crime rate is kind of low.”\nGilpatric-Van Vliet Funeral Home\nBusiness Owner: Harry Van Vliet IV\nLocation: 339 Broadway, Ulster Park, NY\nWhat they do: “This funeral home may be one of the oldest in the Kingston area. It was established in 1872 by Jim Gilpatric’s grandfather, John Murphy… it’s probably the longest continuously-run funeral home around. This funeral home was formerly a white house next to St. Mary’s Church in Kingston. A woman named Marie Murphy Gilpatric Cherney became the youngest licensed undertaker in NYS in 1925, and her son was James F. Gilpatric, who took over the funeral home from his grandfather James Murphy in the 1950s. Jim changed the name from the James Murphy Funeral Home to the Gilpatric-Murphy Funeral Home. In 2005, Jim decided to sell the funeral home building, and in 2009, I offered to buy the business from him.”\nHow they ended up in Esopus: “There are a lot of funeral homes in Kingston, so I decided I wanted to move into my hometown of Esopus. My great grandfather (Harry Van Vliet Sr.) settled here, and I can trace my roots back to the 1700s. I figured, what better place? I already owned a building with my wife on 9W, and we live across the street.\nMy previous career was as a deputy sheriff, I served Esopus and the surrounding communities for 30 years, and much of my career was spent patrolling the streets of Esopus. I knew just about everyone in town, and they knew me.”\nHow they’ve integrated with the community: “I keep all my business local the best I can. I used all local contractors; I myself spend a lot of time in the Esopus community. I believe in loyalty to the rest of the business community in town here. It’s really a tight community. I can name five businesses right on Broadway that have lost a loved one, who have called on me to serve their family, and I visit their businesses when I can.\nThis community has a really hometown feeling. Everybody knows each other and you know everyone. It’ll take me 10-15 minutes to leave the Post Office because everyone’s talking to each other. Everyone relies on each other.”\nWhen they’re not working: “I live in Ulster Park; I previously lived in the area intersected by the Hudson River and Rondout Creek called Sleightsburgh, where I was raised. I love the waterways that surround our town, the Hudson and the Rondout. My funeral home has a nautical theme… it’s very important to me that our community funeral home sticks with a local Esopus community theme. We have tugboats on display, almost all of the photos in our funeral home are specific to Esopus.\nOne of my greatest joys is the Hudson River; we used to call the Sleightsburgh slip “the islands.” The other neighbors and I would go out to the islands, and we’d find snapping turtles, deer, turkeys, rabbits, all that stuff. It’s like the hidden gem down there. My funeral home is probably only a stone’s throw away from the Hudson. We constantly have geese along with deer.\nWhat’s next: “We are very proud that we are unique as a funeral home in Esopus, owned, operated and staffed daily by a lifelong Esopus family, committed to serve families of our Esopus community and all the surrounding communities including Kingston, Ulster, Hurley, etc.”\nSite Credits Privacy Policy\n© 2020 Town of Esopus","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line417861"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7540673613548279,"wiki_prob":0.7540673613548279,"text":"How cytoplasm 'feels' to a cell's components\nUnder a microscope, a cell’s cytoplasm can resemble a tiny underwater version of New York’s Times Square: Thousands of proteins swarm through a cytoplasm’s watery environment, coming together and breaking apart like a cytoskeletal flash mob.\nOrganelles such as mitochondria and lysosomes must traverse this crowded, ever-changing cytoplasmic space to deliver materials to various parts of a cell.\nNow engineers at MIT have found that these organelles and other intracellular components may experience the surrounding cytoplasm as very different environments as they travel. For instance, a cell’s nucleus may “feel” the cytoplasm as a fluid, honey-like material, while mitochondria may experience it more like toothpaste.\nThe team, led by Ming Guo, the Brit and Alex d’Arbeloff Career Development Assistant Professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, found that an organelle feels a certain resistance in cytoplasm, depending on that organelle’s size and the speed at which it moves through a cell. In particular, these characteristics determine how easily it can push against a cytoplasm’s surrounding water and move through its ever-changing web of cytoskeletal protein structures.\nCertain organelles may have to work harder to make their way through cytoplasm, and may therefore feel more resistance. The researchers found that the resistance that any major organelle may feel ranges from that of a viscous fluid to an elastic, rubbery solid.\nGuo and his colleagues have drawn up a phase diagram to describe the type of material that a cytoplasm would resemble, from the perspective of an organelle, given the organelle’s size and speed.\n“Our main goal was to provide the most fundamental understanding of living cells as a material,” Guo says. “With this phase diagram, as long as you tell me the size and speed at which an organelle moves, I can tell you what mechanical environment it sees.”\nThe results, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help guide pharmaceutical designs. For instance, with the team’s phase diagram, scientists can tailor a drug’s size to enable it to travel within a cell with a certain amount of ease.\n“A drug with a 100-nanometer diameter will feel a very different resistance than something that is 500 nanometers wide,” Guo says. “This can be a guide to understanding how a drug is delivered and transported inside a cell.”\nThe study’s lead author is Jiliang Hu, a former visiting student at MIT, who will join Guo’s lab as a graduate student this fall. Other co-authors include Yulong Han, a postdoc in Guo’s lab; and Alan Grodzinsky, professor of biological engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, and mechanical engineering at MIT; along with Somaye Jafari and Shengqiang Cai at the University of California at San Diego.\nWhat a drag\nMost scientists who study the transport of materials within a cell have focused on the drivers of that transport — namely, molecular motors, a family of biological agents that actively convert a cell’s energy into mechanical work to move cargo across a cell.\n“But as mechanical engineers, we think the driving force is not the only part of this transport process, but that resistance of the surrounding material is actually equally important,” Guo says. “For example, it’s not just your own energy that determines how you move through a crowd — the mechanical resistance of the crowd itself can also affect your movement.”\nIn the case of living cells, Guo wondered whether the surrounding cytoplasm would have a similar crowding effect on the movement of major organelles such as mitochondria and lysosomes.\nTo test his hypothesis, he and his colleagues carried out experiments on living mammalian cells, into which they injected tiny plastic beads ranging in size from 0.5 to 1.5 microns — a range that covers most major organelles. They then dragged each bead across a cell using optical tweezers, a technique that employs a highly focused laser beam to physically move microscopic objects.\nThe researchers trapped and pulled each bead toward the cell edge at a constant speed and measured the force required to drag the bead a certain distance. They interpreted that force as the mechanical resistance of the surrounding cytoplasm.\nThey then assumed that a cytoplasm’s mechanical resistance stems from two main sources: poroelasticity and viscoelasticity. Poroelasticity originates from how fast cytoplasm can diffuse water out of a region. The group reasoned that the more poroelastic cytoplasm is, the more effort an object such as an organelle needs to make to push water out of its way.\nViscoelasticity, in the context of cytoplasm, is how fast its cytoskeleton, or web of proteins, changes configuration. A cell’s cytoskeleton serves as a sort of scaffold, made from thousands of proteins that are constantly assembling, disassembling, and reassembling. This dynamic network can feel like both an elastic solid and a viscous fluid. The faster a cytoskeleton rearranges itself, the more fluid-like it is. The researchers reasoned that an organelle would feel less resistance while moving through a more fluid-like, frequently changing cytoskeleton.\nIt’s all about perspective\nGuo and his colleagues analyzed their experimental results and found that a bead’s size and speed were related to the type of resistance that it encountered as it was dragged across a cell. In general, the larger the beads, the more they met with poroelastic resistance, as large beads with greater surface area have to push against more water to move themselves through.\nOn the other hand, the faster a bead was dragged, the more it met with a solid-like resistance. As Guo explains it, “the faster you move, the more permanent [cytoskeletal] structures you would see and feel resistance to.”\nThe researchers drew up their phase diagram based on their experimental results. They then looked through the scientific literature for speed and size measurements, made by others, of actual organelles in living cells. They plotted these measurements onto the diagram and found that, given their size and speed, these organelles should experience a range of resistances within cytoplasm.\n“If you ask a nucleus, they would tell you the cytoplasm is like honey, because they are really large and slow, and they don’t feel cytoskeletal structures — they only feel the viscous disassembled protein solution, and have very small resistance,” Guo says. “But mitochondria would say it’s like toothpaste, because they are smaller and faster, and are sometimes blocked by these constantly changing structures. A lysosome, which is even smaller and faster, would tell you the cytoplasm is actually Jell-O, because they are moving so fast, they are constantly bouncing off these structures and meeting with resistance, like rubber. So their views are limited by their own size and speed.”\nGuo hopes scientists will use the group’s phase diagram to characterize other cellular components, to understand how they see their cytoplasmic surroundings.\n“People can use other parameters to find out what section of the phase diagram different organelles should belong to,” Guo says. “This will tell you what kind of distinct material they would feel.”\nPrevious articleHow plants turn off genes they don't need\nNext articleProject Manager – Food For Peace (FFP) at Save the Children Nigeria","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1387964"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7888063788414001,"wiki_prob":0.7888063788414001,"text":"DEWA extends free electric vehicle charging till end of 2021 for non-commercial users\nPhoto: Dubai Media Office\nDubai Media Office\nPublished Monday, November 25, 2019\nAs the current free charging incentive for electric vehicles will expire by the end of this year, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced an extension until the 31st of December 2021. However, this extension only applies to non-commercial users, who register for the EV Green Charger Initiative.\nThe extension allows non-commercial users registered in the EV Green Charger Initiative to charge their vehicles for free at DEWA public charging stations until the 31st of December 2021. This incentive is exclusive to DEWA public charging stations and does not include home charging stations. Commercial registered users such as government, semi-government, and private organisations will be charged the tariff of 29 fils per kilowatt hour, effective from the 1st of January 2020.\n“We support the Smart Dubai initiative, launched by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai the happiest and smartest city in the world; the UAE Vision 2021 which aims to achieve a sustainable environment in terms of air quality, conservation of water resources, increased reliance on clean energy, and green development. DEWA also supports the Dubai Plan 2021, to make Dubai a smart, sustainable and innovative city in managing its resources, improving its quality of life, and consolidating its position as a global model for a green economy. DEWA seeks to increase the number of hybrid and electric vehicles in Dubai, which supports the Dubai Green Mobility Strategy 2030 and the Dubai Carbon Abatement Strategy 2021 to reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.\nAl Tayer pointed out that under the umbrella of the Supreme Council, DEWA is working on implementing the Dubai Green Mobility Initiative to promote the use of electric and hybrid vehicles. The Dubai Supreme Council of Energy launched this initiative as per a directive in 2016 to motivate organisations, under its umbrella, to increase the number of hybrid and electric vehicles, and to contribute to the sustainable development of the Emirate by reducing carbon emissions in ground transport, which is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in Dubai. Therefore, at least 10% of all newly-purchased cars will be electric or hybrid from 2016 to 2020. This supports the Dubai Carbon Abatement Strategy to cut carbon emissions by 16% by 2021.\n“DEWA encourages individuals and the community to use sustainable transportation. Since DEWA launched the EV Green Charger Initiative in 2015 and its associated free charging incentive, there has been a significant increase in the number of electric and hybrid vehicles in Dubai. Due to the positive response, we decided to extend the free charging incentive for the owners of non-commercial electric vehicles until the 31st of December 2021. The huge turnout from the community encourages us to launch further initiatives to secure a more sustainable future for generations to come,” Al Tayer said.\nDEWA has been providing free charging for electric vehicle users registered in the EV Green Charger Initiative from the 1st of September 2017 until the 31st of December 2019, to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles in Dubai.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line696093"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6135776042938232,"wiki_prob":0.38642239570617676,"text":"NAFC Distributes Donation of BOMBAS Socks to Free Clinics\nThe National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics (NAFC) has distributed a donation of 3,000 BOMBAS socks. NAFC distributed the socks to 11 clinics in 10 states who demonstrated the greatest need.\nAmong those clinics receiving socks is the Hawaii HOME Project.\n“Our clinic services the homeless population in Hawaii, and socks are a very valuable commodity. The majority of our patients cannot afford to buy their own socks and foot care is extremely important in this population. We often see poor health outcomes like severe foot and lower leg infections associated with bad foot hygiene. While Hawaii doesn’t have very cold temperatures, one of the weather hazards that our patients have to deal with is heavy rain. Many times they keep on their drenched socks because that’s all they have, and they suffer from the subsequent infections that go along with that. On average we give out 10 pairs of socks every week, so this donated supply is extremely helpful,” said Dr. Jill Omori, Director of the Hawaii HOME Project.\nAlso receiving socks is The Night Ministry in Chicago, a clinic that serves over 400 people experiencing homelessness each year through its Street Medicine program, which finds and treats them on-site. Doctors on the Street Medicine team reported that they often see trench foot and foot fungus, largely due to lack of socks.\nThe donated BOMBAS socks are “engineered to specifically meet the needs of individuals who don’t have the luxury of putting on a clean pair of socks every day.” They have an antimicrobial treatment to ensure they don’t need to be washed as often and reinforced seams to give them greater durability.\n“We’re so grateful for BOMBAS’s incredibly generous donation,” said Nicole Lamoureux, President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAFC. “These socks mean so much to our clinics and their patients. Many people don’t realize what an important role socks play in health and well-being. For patients experiencing homelessness and especially for our diabetic patients, clean, dry socks are so important to staying healthy. This donation will truly make a difference for the medically underserved across America.”\nIn addition to the Hawaii HOME Project in Honolulu, HI and the Night Ministry in Chicago, IL, the following NAFC members also received a donation of socks: By The Way Medical Mission Free Clinic, Lancaster, OH; Coastal Volunteers in Medicine, Forked River, NJ; Free Clinic of Steele County, Owatonna, MN; Hannibal Free Clinic, Hannibal, MO; La Clinica Cristiana, Muscle Shoals, AL; The CarePlace, Douglasville, GA; Samaritan Regional Health Clinic, Cape Girardeau, MO; St. Vincent de Paul Charitable Pharmacy, Dallas, TX; and Tampa Bay Street Medicine, Tampa, FL.\nThe National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics (NAFC) is the only nonprofit 501c(3) organization whose mission is solely focused on the issues and needs of the medically underserved throughout the nation and the more than 1,400 Free and Charitable Clinics that serve them. The NAFC has earned the Platinum Seal of Transparency from GuideStar. Founded in 2001 and headquartered near Washington, D.C., the NAFC is working to ensure that the medically underserved have access to affordable quality health care and strives to be a national voice promoting quality health care for all. For more information about the NAFC, please visit www.nafcclinics.org. Follow the NAFC on Twitter at @NAFClinics and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/NAFCClinics.\nNews Category:\nNAFC News\nNAFC Press Release\nhttp://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/05/31/1861266/0/en/NAFC-Distributes-Donation-of-BOMBAS-Socks-to-Free-Clinics.html","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line595610"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.62447190284729,"wiki_prob":0.37552809715270996,"text":"Blog / 21 Maggio 2014\nBig Oil: The EU’s not for moving\nZorka Milin Tweet Share DONATE\nIn our recent letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we debunk flawed arguments by some oil companies that the US should weaken its transparency standard.[i] The oil companies are urging the SEC to move ahead as soon as possible so as to influence the parallel European law. However, the key elements of the European law are set in stone and there is no leeway for any European country to alter them, regardless of decisions made by the SEC.\nRoyal Dutch Shell plc, Exxon Mobil Corporation and Chevron Corporation are lobbying to weaken the US revenue transparency standard by using entirely erroneous arguments. In their letters to the SEC (linked above) they have suggested that the UK government will be able to change key aspects of the EU law as they implement it in the UK, and take into account decisions made in the US. The clear implication is that the US regulators should therefore not be afraid to issue US regulations that are weaker than EU ones. Global Witness campaigner Colin Tinto has previously described this line of argument as delusional, and our recent letter to the SEC details just how desperate and misguided these efforts are.\nThese arguments rest on a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the legal and political processes in the European Union and the United Kingdom. As the UK government itself made clear, “the UK does not have the discretion to amend the requirements set out in the Directive” and the US process “does not have any legal effect on the European Directive.”\nWhile the UK government is bound by the requirements of the EU directive and has no discretion to amend its terms, the US law leaves the SEC considerably more discretion (as was made clear in a court decision last year). A consistent global standard is in the interest of all stakeholders, and can only be achieved if the US reporting rule is consistent with the EU law. Global Witness therefore urges the SEC to exercise its discretion to align the US reporting rule with the EU requirements for project-level payment reporting without any exemptions.\n[i] See n. 3, p. 2 of our comment submitted to the SEC on 16 May 2014, http://www.sec.gov/comments/df-title-xv/resource-extraction-issuers/resourceextractionissuers-44.pdf\nZorka Milin is a tax lawyer serving as a Yale Law School Peter and Patricia Gruber Fellow in Global Justice, and collaborating with Global Witness on advancing tax and revenue transparency in the extractive sectors.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1129902"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7456791996955872,"wiki_prob":0.25432080030441284,"text":"Cayman Finance News\nAcademic Reports/Research Papers\nBenefits of Cayman\nOperating in Cayman\nCayman News\nEvents Subscription\nJurisdiction Newsletter\nEU’s Expanded Tax Haven Blacklist Could Apply to U.S.\nThe European Union plans to update its year-old blacklist of tax havens to include new criteria and an expanded geographic reach—possibly all the way to the U.S. The bloc has previously threatened that the U.S. could wind up on the blacklist, along with the likes of Guam and Trinidad and Tobago, unless it adopts stricter financial reporting standards and...\nCayman Islands Records Highest Number of Registered Companies Ever\nThe Cayman Islands continues to be a desirable location to do business, with the number of Grand Cayman-registered companies reaching an all-time high. According to recent statistics released by the Cayman Islands General Registry 106,291 companies were active on the registry as of September 30, 2018. This number has grown steadily since the end of 2017. Cayman Finance CEO Jude Scott...\nCayman Finance statement on the ‘Economic Substance Bill’\nThe Cayman Islands Government today released the draft International Tax-Co-operation (Economic Substance) Bill, 2018 “a law to provide for an economic substance test to be satisfied by certain entities; and for incidental and connected purposes” (the “Bill”). The draft Bill is scheduled for debate in the Legislative Assembly later this month, and is expected to be passed to take...\nThe Cayman Islands: An Extender of Value to the UK\nThe Cayman Islands: An Extender of Value to the UK In September 2018, Cayman Finance provided a submission to the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (“UKFAC”) as part of its gathering of evidence relating to the “Future of the UK Overseas Territories Inquiry”. The document contains information about the essential role of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Industry in the...\nCayman Finance Submission To UK Foreign Affairs Commission\nIn September 2018, Cayman Finance provided a submission to the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (“UKFAC”) as part of its gathering of evidence relating to the “Future of the UK Overseas Territories Inquiry”. The Cayman Finance submission document was made public by the UKFAC on 7 November. The document contains compelling information about the essential role of the Cayman...\nSign Up for MediaWatch\nA weekly e-mail alert on a range of industry news and events\nSupport Terms of Use Privacy Policy\nCayman Finance ©2020. All Rights Reserved.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line460644"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6352267265319824,"wiki_prob":0.6352267265319824,"text":"c35.me\nChiragh talay mushtaq ahmad yusufi online dating\nRead Ebooks of Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi on Rekhta Ebook Library. You can search ebooks by poets and ebooks by name in search Box. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. - | Karachi, Pakistan. Most prominent humorist and satirist of Pakistan; author of extraordinary works \"Chiaargh Tale\" and \"Aab-e-Gum\". He received Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz, the. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (), SI, HI (Urdu: مُشتاق احمد يُوسُفی ‎ – Muštāq Ẹḥmad Yoūsufi, 4 September – 20 June ) born in Tonk, Rajasthan, India , was a Pakistani satire and humour writer who wrote in Urdu. Yousufi also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, 4 September , . Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. 2, likes · 6 talking about this. ‎Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is Followers: K.\nUrdu Database: Download and Read Novels Online. Here you can download and read this book online. After you click on the Download or Read Online button, you need to wait for 5 seconds on the next page and then click on the \"SKIPAD\" to get the download link or read online link. Sep 17, · Mustaq yusufi himself reading his nasar. مشتاق احمد يوسفی(Mustaq yusufi) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. About the author: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu: مشتاق احمد يوسفی)(born August 4, ) is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions.\nMushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me, SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions. Aug 15, · Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Israr Ahmad. Sep 17, · Mustaq yusufi himself reading his nasar. مشتاق احمد يوسفی(Mustaq yusufi) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist.\nMushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me, SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions. Aug 15, · Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Israr Ahmad.\nChiragh talay mushtaq ahmad yusufi online dating. Dating?\nUrdu Database: Download and Read Novels Online. Here you can download and read this book online. After you click on the Download or Read Online button, you need to wait for 5 seconds on the next page and then click on the \"SKIPAD\" to get the download link or read online link. Jun 26, · Free download and read online Chiragh Talay #Chiragh_Talay written by Mushtaq Ahmed c35.me uploaded this book category of this book is Tanzo c35.me of Chiragh Talay is PDF and file size of this pdf file is MB and pages. Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent.\nSep 17, · Mustaq yusufi himself reading his nasar. مشتاق احمد يوسفی(Mustaq yusufi) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. May 29, · Pakistan Social Web. Forums > Library > Pakistan Digital Library > Dismiss Notice. Today's Birthdays. Urdu Book Charagh Talay By Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. Discussion in 'Pakistan Digital Library' at c35.me started by sTRanGEr, Oct 29, Tags: mushtaq ahmad yusufi; 5. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (), SI, HI (Urdu: مُشتاق احمد يُوسُفی ‎ – Muštāq Ẹḥmad Yoūsufi, 4 September – 20 June ) born in Tonk, Rajasthan, India , was a Pakistani satire and humour writer who wrote in Urdu. Yousufi also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, 4 September , .\nDating for sex: chiragh talay mushtaq ahmad yusufi online dating\nAbout the author: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu: مشتاق احمد يوسفی)(born August 4, ) is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions. Jun 22, · But one man who had won all our hearts was Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi. An amazing era of the Urdu literature came to an end with his death at an age of 94 years. Born on 4 August, , in the princely state of Tonk in United India to a political secretary of the state, Yusufi migrated to Pakistan in and became a central banker. May 29, · Pakistan Social Web. Forums > Library > Pakistan Digital Library > Dismiss Notice. Today's Birthdays. Urdu Book Charagh Talay By Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. Discussion in 'Pakistan Digital Library' at c35.me started by sTRanGEr, Oct 29, Tags: mushtaq ahmad yusufi; 5.\nMushtaq Ahmad Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Banker by profession, Yousufi has also served as the head of /5. Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. About the author: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu: مشتاق احمد يوسفی)(born August 4, ) is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions.\nRead Ebooks of Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi on Rekhta Ebook Library. You can search ebooks by poets and ebooks by name in search Box. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. - | Karachi, Pakistan. Most prominent humorist and satirist of Pakistan; author of extraordinary works \"Chiaargh Tale\" and \"Aab-e-Gum\". He received Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz, the. Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. Aug 15, · Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Israr Ahmad.\nMushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. Read Ebooks of Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi on Rekhta Ebook Library. You can search ebooks by poets and ebooks by name in search Box. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. - | Karachi, Pakistan. Most prominent humorist and satirist of Pakistan; author of extraordinary works \"Chiaargh Tale\" and \"Aab-e-Gum\". He received Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz, the. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. 2, likes · 6 talking about this. ‎Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is Followers: K.\nChiragh talay mushtaq ahmad yusufi online dating. Dating for one night.\nMushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. Read Ebooks of Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi on Rekhta Ebook Library. You can search ebooks by poets and ebooks by name in search Box. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. - | Karachi, Pakistan. Most prominent humorist and satirist of Pakistan; author of extraordinary works \"Chiaargh Tale\" and \"Aab-e-Gum\". He received Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-i-Imtiaz, the. Jun 22, · But one man who had won all our hearts was Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi. An amazing era of the Urdu literature came to an end with his death at an age of 94 years. Born on 4 August, , in the princely state of Tonk in United India to a political secretary of the state, Yusufi migrated to Pakistan in and became a central banker.\nThe best: chiragh talay mushtaq ahmad yusufi online dating\nAug 15, · Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is an outstanding Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan regarded by many as best Urdu Humorist. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial c35.me: Israr Ahmad. Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi. 2, likes · 6 talking about this. ‎Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi or Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu:مشتاق احمد يوسفی) is Followers: K. Jun 22, · But one man who had won all our hearts was Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi. An amazing era of the Urdu literature came to an end with his death at an age of 94 years. Born on 4 August, , in the princely state of Tonk in United India to a political secretary of the state, Yusufi migrated to Pakistan in and became a central banker.\nMushtaq Ahmed Yusufi is a humorist with unified sensibility. He combines pre-modern, modern and post-modern sensibility in such a way that no other writer can paint the picture of man and society as he has painted it. His objects of humour are man, society and nature. From Charagh Talay to Aab-e-Gum, we have the best humour available in recent. Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Banker by profession, Yousufi has also served as the head of /5. About the author: Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi c35.me (HC), SI, HI (Urdu: مشتاق احمد يوسفی)(born August 4, ) is an Urdu satirical and humor writer from Pakistan. Yousufi has also served as the head of several national and international governmental and financial institutions.\n© c35.me","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line689601"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8411980271339417,"wiki_prob":0.8411980271339417,"text":"Contact SWEETLab™\nThe SWEETLab™\nSWEETSense™\nBroken Pumps & Promises\nWASH Impact Measures\nPSU » The SWEETLab™ » Profiles » James Beebe\nJames Beebe\nDr. James Beebe\nPhD, Stanford University, 1978\nbeebe@gonzaga.edu\n509 768-8312, 971 229-0780\nDr. James Beebe is an applied qualitative social scientist, international development anthropologist, educator, and social activist committed to using the tools of the social sciences to promote justice. He is particularly concerned with developing tools such as Rapid Qualitative Inquiry that can be used for collaboration with local people to identify and address issues. The second edition of his book Rapid Qualitative Inquiry: A Field Guide to Rapid Assessment was published by Rowman and Littlefield in October 2014, and his Peace Corps memoir Those Were the Days: A Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines in the Late ’60 was published by Peace Corps Writers in December 2014. In 2013 he founded and now directs the Center for Rapid Qualitative Inquiry, Global Networks in Portland, Oregon. In 2015 he was appointed a Departmental Affiliate in the Anthropology department of Portland State University.\nHe brings to his work an international reputation for helping define and popularize rapid qualitative research such as Rapid Assessment Process (RAP). His career has combined being a practitioner and a scholar, with experience as a practitioner influencing his scholarship and his scholarship influencing his experience as a practitioner. More than 20 years of his experience has been outside the United States. James’ career has included more than 20 years involvement with international development as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), researcher, consultant, and Foreign Service Officer with the United States Agency for International Development and 20 years in academia including service as a Professor of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Visiting Special Instructor of Public Policy at Kabul University (Afghanistan), Professor of Anthropology at Oregon State University, and Associate Professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. While serving as a PCV James taught at Mountain Province Community College and Columban College in the Philippines. He has delivered invited lectures at numerous universities, including Cornell, Harvard, UCLA, Washington State University-Vancouver, University of Portland, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Colorado State University, University of Florida, University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, University of Botswana, and University of Pretoria.\nWhile a PCV, James started graduate work in anthropology at the University of the Philippines. He completed a Ph.D. in international development education, an M.A. in anthropology, and an M.A. in food research (international agricultural development) at Stanford University. For his doctoral dissertation, he did a year of fieldwork on farmers in a village in the Philippines. He also completed a M.Div. at Meadville Lombard, the Unitarian Universalist seminary affiliated with the University of Chicago.\nJames had long-term assignments with USAID in Sudan, Philippines, Liberia, and South Africa and short-term assignments in eleven other countries. In 2003 he was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in the Philippines at Ateneo de Manila University and in 2015 was a Fulbright Specialist at De La Salle University. He has served on the board of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, and is a fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology.\nAs of 2015 James was using anthropological theory and especially framing theory for the analysis of U.S. foreign assistance policy in South Africa during the transition to majority rule.\nFulbright Press Release\nSelectedWorks Site\nArchitectural Design Studio 2: Shaping a Place for Arts (ARCH 381) Winter 2019 »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1333860"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5689173936843872,"wiki_prob":0.5689173936843872,"text":"Home Insights Federal Circuit Reaffirms Patent Eligibility of Personalized Medicine and Diagnostic Method Claims\nFederal Circuit Reaffirms Patent Eligibility of Personalized Medicine and Diagnostic Method Claims\n17 December 2010 Publication\nAuthors: Courtenay C. Brinckerhoff Antoinette F. Konski\nLegal News Alert: Chemical, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical\nToday, in Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services, No. 2008-1403 (Fed. Cir. 2010), the Federal Circuit affirmed that personalized medicine and medical diagnostic claims are not per se unpatentable for claiming natural phenomena. The Court’s opinion provides guidance on the post-Bilski application of patent-eligibility requirements to claims that define the relationship between a treatment or drug regimen to the presence or absence of a patient-specific clinical marker (in this case, a metabolite of the administered drug).\nThe patent-eligibility of such claims has been in question since the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the grant of certiorari in Laboratory Corp. of American Holdings v. Metabolite Labs., Inc., 548 U.S. 124 (2006). Supreme Court Justice Breyer dissented from the dismissal and wrote a non-binding opinion that “detecting” and “correlating” claims were not patent-eligible. More recently, the Supreme Court decision to vacate and remand the Federal Circuit’s 2009 Prometheus decision in view of its decision in Bilski v. Kappos, 130 S.Ct. 3218 (2010), fueled speculation that the patent-eligibility of such methods might not survive scrutiny under Bilski.\nThe Claims at Issue\nRepresentative claims at issue in Prometheus relate to methods of optimizing the therapeutic efficacy of treatment of an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder that involves (a) administering a drug providing 6-thioguanine to a subject and (b) determining a level of 6-thioguanine in the subject, where the determined level is indicative of a need to increase or decrease dosing. Other claims do not recite the administering step, but still recite a determining step.\nIn its original 2009 decision, the Federal Circuit applied its machine-or-transformation test for patent-eligibility and held that the method claims satisfied § 101 by meeting the “transformation” prong of the test. As noted by the Federal Circuit, the “asserted claims are in effect claims to methods of treatment, which are always transformative when a defined group of drugs is administered to the body to ameliorate the effects of an undesired condition.” With regard to “determining” claims without a treatment step, the Federal Circuit held that methods of determining metabolite levels also are transformative because the levels “cannot be determined by mere inspection.”\nIn Bilski, the Supreme Court held that the machine-or-transformation test is not the “only” way to evaluate compliance with § 101, although it can be a useful clue or tool for analyzing § 101 compliance. On remand, Prometheus argued that its claims should be found to be patent-eligible because the Supreme Court did not invalidate the machine-or-transformation test, while Mayo argued that the claims do not satisfy § 101 because they preempt all practical uses of a natural phenomenon.\nThe Court began its analysis by noting that the Supreme Court has consistently construed § 101 broadly, in accord with congressional intent, as reflected in the “expansive terms” used in the statute. The Court nevertheless acknowledged that § 101 is not unlimited, because Supreme Court precedent provides three specific exceptions to § 101’s broad patent-eligibility principles: “laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.” Still, the Court explained, “an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula to a known structure or process may well be deserving of patent protection.” Against this background, the Federal Circuit characterized the issue on remand as “whether Prometheus’s asserted claims are drawn to a natural phenomenon, the patenting of which would entirely preempt its use … or … only to a particular application of that phenomenon,” which would be patent-eligible.\nThe Court rejected Mayo’s argument that the Supreme Court’s Bilksi decision or its remand of this case required a “wholly different analysis of a different result.” To the contrary, the Court stated that the Supreme Court’s Bilksi decision “did not undermine our preemption analysis” and “did not disavow the machine-or-transformation test.”\nThus, the Federal Circuit again upheld the claims, finding that they “recite a patent-eligible application of naturally occurring correlations between a metabolite levels and efficacy or toxicity, and thus do not wholly preempt all uses of the recited correlations.” The Court reasoned that claims relating to administering specific drugs and measuring specific metabolites do not preempt all uses of natural correlations, but rather utilize them in a series of specific steps relating to particular methods of treatment.\nThe Court pointed out that the purpose of the claims was to treat the human body (which was made clear in the specification and preambles of the asserted claims) and emphasized that the fact that the treatment relies on natural processes of the human body (e.g., conversion of the administered drug into a metabolite) does not disqualify the treatment step from patentability.\nThe Court separately addressed the “determining” claims that do not recite a treatment or administration step. The Court held that the omission of the treatment step does not diminish patentability because the determining step also is transformative because some form of manipulation of the patient sample is required. As the Court noted in its 2009 decision and stated again here, “at the end of the process, the human blood sample is no longer human blood; human tissue is no longer human tissue.”\nConsistent with its 2009 decision, the Court explained that the “wherein” clauses of the claims are not fatal to patent-eligibility, even though they involve “a subsequent mental step.” To the contrary, the Court emphasized that, “when viewed in the proposer context the final step of providing a warning based on the results of the prior steps does not detract from the patentability of Prometheus’s claimed methods as a whole.”\nThe Court concluded by characterizing Prometheus’s invention as “a series of transformative steps that optimizes efficacy and reduces toxicity of a method of treatment for particular diseases using particular drugs.” As such, the claims “pass muster under § 101.”\nNo News Is Good News?\nBy standing by its original decision and analysis, the Federal Circuit returns a level of certainty to the field of personalized medicine and medical diagnostic claims that has been lacking since the Supreme Court vacated and remanded the 2009 Prometheus decision. Now, companies innovating and practicing in these fields know that patent claims are likely to be upheld against § 101 challenges if they satisfy the machine-or-transformation test and can be fairly characterized as being directed to a specific application of a naturally occurring correlation. This certainty may be short-lived, however, if Mayo decides to petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc, or petitions the Supreme Court for certiorari.\nThe full opinion can be accessed here (http://tinyurl.com/3ynnbvb).\nWith the controversial ACLU v. Myriad (BRACA I) case also pending at the Federal Circuit, the Court will have another opportunity to address and decide many important issues surrounding the patent eligibility of diagnostic and personalized medicine methods.\nFoley will be discussing the fate of DNA patenting in the United States during a Web conference (http://tinyurl.com/32n29ez) on January 11, 2011.\nFor up-to-date information and analysis of legal developments impacting intellectual property in the chemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical fields, follow Foley’s PharmaPatents blog at http://www.PharmaPatentsBlog.com.\nLegal News Alert is part of our ongoing commitment to providing up-to-the-minute information about pressing concerns or industry issues affecting our clients and colleagues. If you have any questions about this update or would like to discuss this topic further, please contact your Foley attorney or the following:\nAntoinette Konski\nakonski@foley.com\nCourtenay Brinckerhoff\ncbrinckerhoff@foley.com\nCourtenay C. Brinckerhoff\nAntoinette F. Konski\nLife Sciences Personalized Medicine Stem Cell Technologies\nIntellectual Property Chemical, Biotechnology & Pharmaceutical","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1495306"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9601420164108276,"wiki_prob":0.9601420164108276,"text":"Garry Marshall life and biography\nGarry Marshall biography\nDate of death : -\nBirthplace : New York City, New York, U.S.\nNationality : American\nCredited as : Actor, stand-up comedian, creator of \"Happy Days\"\nGarry Marshall, born November 13, 1934 in New York, New York is an American actor.\n\"Sidelights\"\nFormerly a writer for stand-up comedians and television programs, Garry is best known as the creator of some of the highest-rated situation comedies of the 1970's and 1980's. Intended to be primarily entertaining, not didactic, 's sitcoms uphold all-American values and the premise that the good guy always wins.\n's brainchild \"Happy Days\" is a nostalgic trip back to life in the 1950's. In its early seasons the show focused on Richie Cunningham, a rosy-cheeked teen in middle-class Milwaukee. His biggest problems seemed to be how to get a date, when and if to kiss her, and what to do with his chewing gum when he did. Inevitably Richie (played by Ron Howard), at last in a romantic situation, would lean against a doorbell, awakening the girl's grumbling father, or hook his date's sweater on his cufflink, or let his car slip out of gear and into the lake beneath \"Inspiration Point.\" As Richie grew up in the series his awkwardness with girls eased, and he confronted other conflicts, usually centered around his academic endeavors. But in all situations his innocence prevailed.\nA minor character at the show's inception was Arthur Fonzarelli (actor Henry Winkler). \"The Fonz\" or \"Fonzie,\" as he was called, ultimately became the star of \"Happy Days.\" The show's audience loved the tough, yet tender, high school dropout who made all the other guys squirm with fear and all the girls squeal with delight. Most of all he gave Richie and his friends lessons in being \"cool,\" Fonzie's forte. Fonzie taught them that it's cool to express one's feelings, cool to be loyal to one's friends and oneself. In the meantime he decided it was uncool to be uneducated and returned to night school so he could receive his diploma with Richie and the other boys. \"The humaneness of the Fonz,\" wrote David A. England in English Journal, \"is one of the most unfortunate oversights in many of our students' viewing weeks. . . . Lost amid the music, the sometimes admittedly silly plots, and Fonzie's overt mannerisms, is a positive role model who consistently demonstrates that it is possible to be `cool' and be good.\" John J. O'Connor, writing in the New York Times, described Fonzie as \"a garage mechanic with a tough swagger and the required heart of gold\" whose \"bad boy candor seems to have seduced the hearts and minds of middle-class suburban youth.\" In fact, the character of Fonzie became so much an element of Americana that his leather biker's jacket was enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution.\nIn one episode of \"Happy Days\" Fonzie attempted to broaden Richie's horizons by introducing him to two wise and worldly women, Laverne De Fazio and Shirley Feeney. These girls, bottle-cappers in Shotz Brewery, turned up in 's \"Laverne and Shirley,\" another hit sitcom. Laverne (characterized by 's sister, Penny ) was the feisty and hotblooded, but nevertheless soft-hearted and innocent, roommate of terminally cute and pert Shirley (Cindy Williams). Both had high hopes of finding, if not rich doctors for husbands, at least dates for Saturday night. Often compared to the slapstick characters played by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance in \"I Love Lucy,\" Laverne and Shirley frequently found themselves in precarious situations--as guinea pigs in scientific experiments, swimming in a vat of beer, or wrestling with a robot gone berserk in a toy store, for instance, \"Masterpiece Theatre this is not,\" Richard Corliss remarked in Film Comment. \"It is, however, a small masterpiece of physical comedy--which is all that interests Garry , and which is enough to be grateful for.\"\nAnother of 's productions, \"Mork and Mindy,\" was inspired by a \"Happy Days\" episode in which , at the urging of his ten-year-old daughter, introduced an alien from another planet. Mork from Ork (played by Robin Williams) visited Milwaukee and tried to kidnap Richie. Though unsuccessful in that attempt, Mork did succeed in capturing the hearts of the \"Happy Days\" audience. Set in Denver, the series was based on Mork's cultural assimilation and his discoveries of earth customs. Mork was befriended by Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber), and he moved in with the perky music store clerk. They eventually married and had a son played by Jonathan Winters. (Orkans are born as adults and get younger as years go by.) The show was extremely well received in its first season, primarily due to Williams's fresh ad-libs and zany antics. In a New Leader article, Marvin Kitman deemed \"Mork and Mindy\" \"one of the few shows intelligent people are not ashamed to admit they watch. . . . This is a very original premise.\" The series' success waned, however, in subsequent seasons and was cancelled, although its reruns have since been syndicated.\nHas also had a few misses among his hits, of course, but his achievement cannot be denied. Commenting on one of his less successful shows, \"Who's Watching the Children?,\" a People reporter wrote: \"Maybe parents objected to the question in that show's title, but they have no choice but to live with the answer to whom U.S. kids are watching. It's Garry Marshall.\"\nBorn November 13, 1934, in New York, NY; son of Anthony W. (a television producer) and Marjorie Irene; married; children: three. Education: Received B.S. from Northwestern University.\nTelevision, stage, and motion picture producer, director, and writer. Comedy writer for \"The Jack Paar Show,\" \"The Joey Bishop Show,\" \"The Danny Thomas Show,\" and \"The Dick Van Dyke Show\"; creator, director, and executive producer of television programs, including \"Hey Landlord,\" National Broadcasting Co. (NBC-TV), 1966-67; \"The Odd Couple,\" American Broadcasting Co. (ABC-TV), 1970-75; \"The Little People\" (later named \"The Brian Keith Show\"), NBC-TV, 1972- 74; \"Happy Days,\" ABC-TV, 1974--; \"Laverne and Shirley,\" ABC-TV, 1976-83; \"Blansky's Beauties,\" ABC-TV, 1977; \"Mork and Mindy,\" ABC-TV, beginning in 1978; \"Who's Watching the Kids?,\" NBC-TV, 1978; \"Angie,\" NBC-TV, 1979-80; \"Joannie Loves Chachi,\" ABC-TV, 1982-83. Producer and director of motion pictures, including Young Doctors in Love, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1982; and Valentine's Day, New Line Cinema, 2010.\n* (With Lori ) Wake Me When It's Funny: How to Break Into Show Business and Stay There, Adams (Holbrook, MA), 1995.\nScreenplays:\n* (Written and produced with Jerry Belson) \" How Sweet It Is!,\" National General, 1968.\n* (Written and produced with Belson) \" The Grasshopper,\" National General, 1970.\n* \" Evil Roy Slade\" (made-for-television movie), MCA-TV, 1971.\nStage plays:\n* (With Belson) \" The Roast\" (two-act), first produced on Broadway at Winter Garden Theatre, May 8, 1980.\n* (Adapter) Lawrence Schwab, G. G. De Sylva, and Frank Mandel, Good News (libretto; words and music by Lew Brown, De Sylva, and Ray Henderson), Tams Witmark Music Library, 1978.\nAuthor of scripts for numerous television shows, including all those he produces and directs.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1236551"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9765592813491821,"wiki_prob":0.9765592813491821,"text":"New champ Scott Dixon expected to play key role in IndyCar’s busy offseason\nThe dust had barely settled on Scott Dixon’s third IndyCar Series championship Saturday night when he began discussin...\nNew champ Scott Dixon expected to play key role in IndyCar’s busy offseason The dust had barely settled on Scott Dixon’s third IndyCar Series championship Saturday night when he began discussin... Check out this story on IndyStar.com: http://indy.st/1gD0g2M\ncurt.cavin@indystar.com Published 7:15 p.m. ET Oct. 22, 2013 | Updated 7:15 p.m. ET Oct. 22, 2013\nHelio Castroneves, right, of Brazil, congratulates Scott Dixon, of New Zealand, for winning the IndyCar Series Championship after finishing fifth in the Indy Car race at the Auto Club Speedway, Oct. 19, 2013, in Fontana, Calif. (Photo: Alex Gallardo)\nThe dust had barely settled on Scott Dixon’s third IndyCar Series championship Saturday night when he began discussing improvements.\nNot for his race team; for himself.\nDixon admits he wasn’t ready to be the champion in 2003, when he was only 23 years old, and he did not have to be the focus of the series in 2008, the year of the sport’s unification.\nBut this time, IndyCar needs him to be as much of a winner off the track as he is on it. It needs him to promote the unnoticed qualities of the sport as Izod, GoDaddy and other supporters depart.\nFrom a personal standpoint, Dixon will never be Helio Castroneves, the driver he beat for the season title at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. Dixon, 33, is quiet and deferring, but he has a wit so dry that his perspective is always interesting.\nHe also has the credentials to lead. Among current drivers, no one has more race victories (33); in fact, only six in history do, and Dixon can catch Al Unser Jr. with his next win.\nAmong champions, only four drivers have won more than Dixon, who also has an Indianapolis 500 trophy.\nHe knows it’s time to speak up, and he thinks he can.\n“I think I have evolved as a person in a lot of ways from the 2003 championship,” he said. “Yeah, I do feel I’m up for that task. Is that my strong point? Maybe not. Is that something that Helio or maybe some other driver may be a little bit better at? Maybe.”\nDixon said he is “excited” to capitalize on the opportunities; IndyCar’s offseason should give him plenty to talk about.\nDixon’s team, Ganassi Racing, is switching from Honda to Chevrolet, and his more-famous teammate, Dario Franchitti, is seeking to return from serious injuries suffered in a crash in Houston earlier this month.\nIndyCar unveiled a revamped schedule last week that has five events changing dates, including four changing months. The race at the Milwaukee Mile is moving back two months in the schedule, to Aug. 17, Houston’s doubleheader is coming forward three months, to June 28-29, and the season-ender will be six weeks earlier, on Labor Day weekend at the Fontana track, Aug. 30.\nIndyCar officials are working on a plan to have the season’s first six events, including the inaugural series road course race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on ABC in an effort to build national momentum. The NBC Sports Network likely will air the rest of the season as it prepares for 2015, when it takes on NASCAR programming.\nMark Miles — the CEO of Hulman & Co., which owns IndyCar and IMS — had hoped NASCAR would move to NBC Sports in 2014, a year earlier than scheduled, but that didn’t happen.\nA month ago, IndyCar also didn’t know that Juan Pablo Montoya would be returning to open-wheel racing (he won the CART title in 1999) to drive for Team Penske. It also wasn’t known that Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan would join Dixon and Franchitti at Ganassi to form an all-star cast that includes eight series titles and five Indianapolis 500 victories.\nGanassi’s rivalry with Team Penske will be fierce, but IndyCar has many contenders. Ten drivers and seven teams won races this season.\nLike the Penske and Ganassi teams, Andretti Autosport could be expanding, perhaps with Indianapolis 500 runner-up Carlos Munoz. But that doesn’t mean IndyCar’s car count (24 regulars) will grow as at least one team (Dragon Racing) appears headed for a reduction.\nAt the center of at least two teams is the National Guard sponsorship, which is considered the most lucrative team-level sponsor in IndyCar. Panther Racing has had it since 2008, but there is an expectation that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing may get the bid next year.\nMeanwhile, Hewlett-Packard is following GoDaddy and Izod out, which could be a blow to the race team owned by Sam Schmidt, Davey Hamilton and Ric Peterson if another company, such as Intel, doesn’t increase its support.\nIzod’s multiyear contract was believed to be front-loaded, but that doesn’t make the loss easier to accept. Miles said what hurts the most is the perception created by the departure.\n“We have deals that are done that have escalators for next year — more than one — that more than offset Izod,” he said. “We want to grow, but there’s not an economic (problem).”\nThere are concerns about the Brazilian influence in the sport since the Sao Paulo race is not on the schedule. IndyCar is pursuing an option elsewhere in the country, but there are no guarantees.\nSix-year veteran EJ Viso also has concern for his funding as the Venezuelan government investigates how money it devotes to supporting several international racers is used. Viso has driven for Michael Andretti’s team the past two years.\nLike Franchitti, Justin Wilson will need the next several months to recover from a late-season accident. He broke his pelvis in three places and bruised a rib when Tristan Vautier’s car struck him in the side Saturday night.\nThat’s only part of what to watch for. Modification to the IMS road course is underway, and Miles said he’s finalizing arrangements on a chief marketing officer and a chief sales officer for Hulman Racing, which is the umbrella for IndyCar and IMS.\nMiles will be spending the next several weeks looking to secure a couple of international events for 2015 that could provide teams with $200,000 per car per event.\nIt adds up to a busy offseason for the series and Dixon.\nCall Star reporter Curt Cavin at (317) 444-6409.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line867704"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5591045618057251,"wiki_prob":0.4408954381942749,"text":"Lovely Monsters\nThe Wizard of Oz, Margaret Hamilton & Judy Garland, MGM (1939)\nToday on Museum Bites we’re talking tornadoes with a tour through photographer and storm chaser, Camille Seaman’s The Big Cloud exhibit at the Michigan State University Museum. Thanks to years of watching Dorothy (and her little dog too!), tornadoes have been my go-to nightmare. Seaman’s haunting photographs capture the dark, tornado-rich clouds hovering open-mouthed over vulnerable farmland. Captivated by the fierce beauty of these supercell storms, my fight or flight response was pinging.\nHere there be monsters: Seaman describes supercells storms, as lovely monsters. These nasty beasts can stretch 50 miles across, reach 65,000 feet into the atmosphere, and produce grapefruit-sized hail. And if the booming thunder and driving winds weren’t enough, this swirling brew can also whip up a tornado.\nTornado, Photo by Skeeze, Pixabay\nHigh Plains Drifter: Tornadoes have ravaged every continent (except Antarctica), and every state in the United States. The US is home to 3/4ths of the world’s tornadoes, and the southern Plains States are so frequently plagued by twisters the region has earned the nickname, Tornado Alley. Warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico pushes north and collides over the Plains States with cool air from Canada, and dry air from the Rocky Mountains. This volatile mixture contains the necessary ingredients to create Seaman’s lovely monsters. The United States averages over 1,000 tornadoes per year, and peak season occurs between May and July. Most tornadoes form between 4 pm and 9 pm. But keep in mind, if weather conditions are right, tornadoes can touch down at any time and any place. Click on this Tornado Fact vs Fiction clip created by the Weather Channel to dispel many of our tornado myths. Did you know a highway underpass is an extremely dangerous place to ride out tornado? Seriously, take a few minutes and watch this highly informative clip.\nEnhanced Fujita Scale, Source FEMA\nDrastic times call for drastic measures: Meteorologists rate the severity of tornadoes using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale. Based on wind speed and storm damage, the original Fujita scale was developed by meteorologist and storm researcher, Tetsuya Theodore Fujita. In 2007, it was fine-tuned and upgraded to the Enhanced Fujita scale. According to the National Weather Service, the most devastating EF4 and EF5 tornadoes account for 2% of all tornadoes. Despite this fact, all tornadoes pose a risk and it is crucial that we all take appropriate action when tornadoes are on the horizon.\nTornado Watch vs Warning: Know the Difference!\nWorst of the Worst Facts: Despite Tornado Alley’s reputation, the world’s worst tornado did not occur in the United States. In 1989, a devastating tornado ripped through the Manikganj district of Bangladesh. Approximately, 1,300 people were killed, 12,000 more were injured and 80,000 were left homeless.\nIn 1925, the deadliest tornado in US history tore a path across southern Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana at speeds of 73 mph. Lasting a nail-biting 3.5 hours, this mile-wide monster had wind gusts up to 300 mph. Dubbed the Great Tri-State Tornado, this horrific storm killed 695 people, injured 2,000 more, and left thousands homeless.\nDolley Madison, by Gilbert Stuart (1804)\nThe British Are Coming! The British Are Running! In a strange twist of fate, a tornado touched down on August 25, 1814, interrupting the British siege on Washington, D.C. Two days prior, first lady, Dolley Madison made her famous escape with George Washington’s portrait in hand. The redcoats subsequently torched the White House and ransacked the capital until the tornado chased them out of town.\nThis wraps up our look at tornadoes. Click on Camille Seaman’s website to enjoy a slideshow of her stunning photographs and click on Seaman’s TEDTalk to learn the story behind her storm chasing. Also, if you’d like to geek out on all things tornado, click on this link from the Storm Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Center. Next week we’ll explore the world of magic, until then, have a great week!\nCover photo, Supercell Storm by Skeeze, courtesy of Pixabay.\nCamille Seaman.com\nDepartment of Atmospheric Sciences-University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign\nSmithsonian Magazine\nTED.com\nWorld Meteorological Organization’s World Weather & Climate Extremes Archive\nPlease pass it on:\nPublished by CJ Verb\nCJ Verb writes Museum Bites, a weekly travel blog featuring an eclectic assortment of exhibits, historical sites, and quirky bits of history. She is the author of It’s Just Kindergarten…Isn’t It? and a docent at the Michigan State University Museum. CJ Verb has been a member of Capital City Writers Association since 2014, and on the Executive Board since 2015. She fancies cheesy 1970s sci-fi, road trips, yoga, all things Star Trek and Monty Python…because let’s face it, “strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.” You can find her at https://cjverb.com/.\tView all posts by CJ Verb\nHistory, Museum\n1920s, 1980s, Camille Seaman, Clouds, Dolley Madison, Michigan State University Museum, Museum Bites, National Weather Service, Plains States, Tornado, War of 1812, Weather\nMaking Merry: Reboot\nIn the Land of Cheese: Reboot\nLight Bright\nKerry Lewis on In the Land of Cheese: Re…\nCJ Verb on Big Sky\nCathy VanGrunsven on Big Sky\nStory Coach on Locking Up\nCJ Verb on Knocking on Heaven’s Door","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line232022"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9809291958808899,"wiki_prob":0.9809291958808899,"text":"Brewers' deals, Draft result in star-studded instructs roster\nBy Mike Rosenbaum\nAfter a season spent building towards the future, the Milwaukee Brewers are creating quite the buzz this fall with their strong crop of talent in instructional league.Comprised of 13 of Milwaukee's Top 30 Prospects, including three players ranked in the Top 100, the Brewers' instructional league roster reads more like\nAfter a season spent building towards the future, the Milwaukee Brewers are creating quite the buzz this fall with their strong crop of talent in instructional league.\nComprised of 13 of Milwaukee's Top 30 Prospects, including three players ranked in the Top 100, the Brewers' instructional league roster reads more like an organizational All-Star list, standing out for its impressive blend of both high-end talent and depth.\n\"It's a really deep group here this year, and it made it a challenge for us to put together the roster,\" Brewers farm director Tom Flanagan said. \"There were guys in our system who normally we would want to have down here, but you have to draw the line somewhere just to make sure everyone can get their work in.\"\nBrewers Top 30 Prospects at instructs\nYet many of the Brewers' players participating in camp this fall are new to the organization, with some having come over in one of several Trade Deadline blockbusters, and even more from the organization's 2016 Draft.\n\"We don't have a lot of history with some guys because of the trades we made this year, so we're still trying to figure them out and assess what we have,\" said Flanagan.\nDue to their influx of talent in the past year, the Brewers are placing a greater emphasis on doing more off-the-field work with players this fall. Specifically, there are a lot more classroom sessions this year, especially for position players, during which players and staff form small groups and basically have a Q&A for 45 minutes about a particular topic.\n\"We want to get these new guys into the system and get them educated about why they're here and what we're trying to do,\" Flanagan stated. \"Starting pro ball can be a blur for young players, so our goal is slow things down and let them get acclimated to the Brewers.\"\nBickford impressing new organization\nSelected by San Francisco in the first round (No. 18 overall) of the 2015 Draft, Phil Bickford posted a 2.69 ERA with 105 strikeouts and 27 walks in 93 2/3 innings between Class A Augusta and Class A Advanced San Jose before the Giants sent him and Andrew Susac to Milwaukee on Aug. 1 in exchange for left-handed reliever Will Smith. Named the Brewers' No. 5 prospect upon joining the organization, the 21-year-old righty finished his campaign by offering club officials a glimpse of his future with five impressive starts in the Class A Advanced Florida State League.\n\"There wasn't a lot of season left after he came over at the Deadline,\" Flanagan said about the No. 54 overall prospect. \"But he got right to work and has looked really sharp this fall.\n\"He's been all ears and eyes and just trying to get used to our staff. For him, being down here for instructional league should help him get to know our staff and facilities so he can come in here next year for Spring Training ready to go.\"\nPonce making up for lost time\nExpectations for what was supposed to be Cody Ponce's first full season became tempered when the Brewers' No. 10 prospect began the season on disabled list due to forearm tightness. Although the injury cost the 6-foot-6, 240-pound right-hander the first two months of his season, he would recover in time to make his 2016 debut in early June with Class A Brevard County.\nPonce began his campaign on a positive note, posting a 2.50 ERA over his first nine starts, but his overall consistency and command faded quickly down the stretch, as he went 0-4 with 19 earned runs allowed on 27 hits (14 extra-base hits) in 16 innings spanning his final four regular-season starts.\n\"Cody had a nice stretch of starts during the second half before hitting some speed bumps, but he made some adjustments toward the tail end of the season and he's carried it over into instructional league,\" Flanagan noted.\nThough Ponce technically is in camp to make up some of the innings he missed during the regular season, the Brewers also see it as an opportunity for him to hammer home some things he's been working on.\n\"Refining the direction and the consistency of his delivery is a big thing for Cody, because he struggled with that at times throughout the season,\" Flanagan said.\nBeyond that, Ponce, who boasts two future above-average-or-better offerings in his fastball and cutter, also is making an effort to develop his changeup, a below-average pitch for him.\n\"Cody knows that his changeup is important to his future, so he's started to emphasize the usage of pitch a lot more here as opposed to what he's down in the past,\" Flanagan added.\nCollege bats\nThe Brewers used their first two picks in the 2016 Draft on college hitters, selecting Louisville's Corey Ray in the first round (No. 5 overall) and Lucas Erceg, a Menlo College product, in the second. But while Ray came with all the hype and fanfare, it was Erceg who swung the bat like a first-rounder in his pro debut, batting .327/.376/.518 with 30 extra-base hits and 51 RBIs in 68 games between the Pioneer and Midwest Leagues.\n\"Lucas hit right off the plane after we signed him, and he's kept that up out here,\" Flanagan said.\nAnd though there may be no immediate plans to move Erceg off of third base, it's worth noting that the Brewers have had him working at shortstop this fall in camp.\n\"That he's looked somewhat natural out there already in the early going is a very positive development,\" Flanagan said about his club's No. 16 prospect. \"We'll see where that leads, but we're taking advantage of this time to see what he can do at the position.\"\nAs for Ray, the Brewers' No. 3 prospect (No. 28 overall), had an outstanding junior campaign at Louisville, batting .310/.388/.545 with 15 homers and 44 steals, but his transition to the professional ranks wasn't particularly smooth, as he batted just .247/.307/.385 with five home runs over 57 games with Brevard County. However, some of the 22-year-old's struggles can be attributed to his aggressive placement in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League\n\"We challenged Corey and he handled himself well,\" Flanagan said. \"It was an aggressive placement, but we believe he'll be better off in the long run as a result.\"\nAnd while Ray stood out as an amateur for his high-end combination of power and speed, the Brewers are encouraging him to develop into a more complete and well-rounded player as a professional.\n\"With that power-speed combo, he's definitely an exciting player to watch. But we'd also like to see him work on some of the finer aspects of his game,\" Flanagan said. \"For example, we have him bunting a little bit now in camp, which is something he really didn't do a lot of in college, but with his speed, could make him more impactful player in the long run.\"\nMike Rosenbaum is a reporter for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter at @GoldenSombrero.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line514899"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7476591467857361,"wiki_prob":0.2523408532142639,"text":"TAMK\nVISION | VALUES | PROFILE | MISSION | STRATEGIC IMPERATIVES | STRATEGIC FOCUS AREAS | TAMPERE3\nTAMK – The best professional higher education that Finland offers to the world.\n• A sense of community\n• Respect for the individual and individual differences\n• Sustainable development\n• Appreciation of expertise and entrepreneurship\nTAMK is a multidisciplinary, international university of applied sciences, which focuses on promoting health and wellbeing, business and technology together with learning and creativity.\n“Our strong orientation towards working life ensures the best learning possibilities for our students. Furthermore, we are involved in research, development and innovation which specifically target the development needs of working life.”\nThe assignment of universities of applied science is to offer higher education for professional expert assignments, based on the needs of the working life and its development. In 2017, TAMK responded to this task, defined in legislation, by ensuring the updating of its teaching and using pedagogic methods which support the learning of practical skills.\nOne example could be the InnoEvent, where over 700 students from the Tampere3 universities worked for a week on innovation assignments from companies. In addition to the multidisciplinary team and project work, the students practised sales speeches and networking. The winning teams worked on innovations with a fresh take, some of which could be put directly into practice.\nThe most significant environment to develop our operations has for a few years already been the Tampere3 project. One of its essential objectives is to allow increasingly purposeful and individual competence profiles for students in the form of flexible study paths.\nWe are creating an expedited one-stop service chain to integrate all levels of development for the surrounding society. The aim is to offer those looking for a development partner the opportunity to be supported by the diverse research, development, and innovation competence of the higher education community.\nDuring 2017, the reform of curricula was started. In its first phase, the various education branches analyse particularly the future competences of their fields. This work has been carried out together with the Tampere3 partners and working life advisory boards. The experience of studying and its significance for the success of the studies has been a central theme in the development.\nTAMK’s digital strategy has been carried out since 2014, and its actions have proceeded in all functions. The digital mentor network supporting pedagogic competence, for example, has received good reviews, and it has established a place as a form of staff peer support in planning digital learning and teaching. In 2017, over 10,000 students at TAMK took their exams electronically. Digitalisation was also promoted in student services and education management through introducing mobile applications.\nStrategic imperatives\nEnsuring lifelong learning skills and competences for future needs\n• We are the leading university in Finland creating multi-modal learning environments and flexible learning opportunities.\n• We are developing quality and effectiveness in the learning and studying process (student experience).\n• We are creating new know-how, and new operational models and culture, to be integrated into our increasingly digital operating environment.\n• Our RDI operations are an integral part of teaching and learning.\n• Our curricula anticipate the needs of working life and stimulate continuous development.\n• We are continuously developing the professional skills and competence of our staff.\n• We are extending the reach and improving the effectiveness of our operations as part of the modernization of Tampere’s higher education sector.\nThe internal development theme in 2017, safety, supported both the working capacity of the staff and the wellbeing of the work community. The application of LEAN thinking helped in the development of processes.\nThe development of the staff competence continued systematically through supporting digital mentoring, project and RDI operations and organising various substance competence trainings. The teaching staff who participated in the work periods outside TAMK brought new knowledge to their work teams. Updating the pedagogic competence of vocational teachers throughout their careers was raised to a development programme in TAMK as part of a national project.\nTogether with the universities, we launched the first phase of the Tampere3 curriculum work with an analysis of the new competence requirements of the working life.\nWe recognised shared competence objectives in the studies of TAMK and the universities. These objectives allow proceeding into cooperation in the implementation of the curricula, and possibly even agreeing on a distribution of work between the new university and TAMK.\nTAMK organised several specialisation education programmes subject to a separate fee, such as the Cyber Security education for IT experts. There will be more of this kind of education programmes and paid trainings, which will certify a certain competence, in addition to the ones achieved through master’s or bachelor’s degrees. Education is always an investment in competitiveness by the individual and their employer.\nActively strengthening our financial base\n• We target our services and RDI operations to match customer needs. We are expanding our financial base so that at the end of the strategy period a minimum of 20 % of our funding will come from external sources.\n• We are in great demand as a partner in RDI collaboration.\nResearch, development, and innovation operations are more significant to TAMK’s education units than ever before.\nWe have systematically developed our RDI operations, while the EU’s structural fund period has offered us excellent funding possibilities. These have allowed us to carry out new development projects in various fields of profession. The RDI operations in the education units have been supported with experienced research project experts.\nPaid services have increased rapidly, which is a sign of the improved usability of our competence in working life.\nExtension studies, in particular, have increased significantly. This has partially been affected by a more systematic customer relationship management. TAMK has also been trusted by the authorities to organise the education they have put out for tenders.\nStarting at the beginning of 2018, TAMK received the opportunity to collect donation funds from companies, associations, and private individuals, to be used as a basis for receiving a national counterpart. The fund-raising campaign, with a direct effect on the development of teaching, learning environments, and the RDI operations, will continue throughout 2018.\nIncorporating an international dimension in all our operations\n• We are continuously expanding our education exports, and becoming more deeply involved in our international networks.\n• We shall continue to increase our provision of education in English, develop the internationalization of our education programmes, and raise the international profile of our RDI operations.\n• We promote the on-going development of international competences in all our staff.\nCarefully prepared and targeted marketing work paid off: regardless of preliminary estimates, the introduction of tuition fees did not reduce the number of foreign degree students.\nTAMK reached the predefined monetary target for tuition fees. We also launched new degree programmes in English, including the Master’s Programme in Educational Leadership, which drew extensive interest internationally with its unique content profile.\nThe charged degree education for those coming from outside the EU/EEA, as well as other international extension education, are TAMK’s ways of serving the internationalisation of working life in the Tampere region.\nThese forms of education can introduce new expert potential to the reach of the local employers. Both sectors of paid education increased significantly in 2017.\nStrategic partnerships with the German Hochschule München and the Dutch Hanze University of Applied Sciences continued. A new strategic partnership was launched with The Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. This cooperation will emphasise student and staff exchanges, developing joint degrees, and acquiring shared project funding.\nWe have outstanding expertise in our five chosen focus areas, and collaborate closely with working life in all these fields:\n• Energy-efficient and healthy built environments\n• Developmental expertise in pedagogy\n• New operational models for health care and social\n• Entrepreneurship and innovative business\n• Intelligent machines and smart devices\nEnergy-efficient and healthy built environments\nSimilarly to the past few years, we concentrated on carrying out the large projects started through the Tampere3 cooperation. Research funding has been made increasingly versatile through applying for an increased range of Tekes and EU funding. One example of the Tampere-Hamburg cooperation is the Interreg AREA21 project related to making the energy consumption of a residential building block visible.\nProjects completed in 2017 included the much publicised Urban agriculture – Resource efficient business opportunities which included the use of urea in agriculture, and the Hiilinielu Design Studio which created business operations from new bio products and design. The strategic focus area participated in several international conferences brainstorming projects with foreign cooperation higher education institutes such as Hanze, Munich and Ostfalia, as well as connecting with new partners, e.g. The Hague, Hamburg, Chalmers.\nStudents and professionals in the bioforestry and the creative fields joined forces for the Hiilinielu Design Studio project, which aimed to develop new business operations and jobs around the area of bio products and design. The project was a shared multidisciplinary project by the Tampere and Lahti universities of applied sciences and the Design Forum Finland. It was funded through the EU ESF structural fund.\nProjects in progress within the strategic focus area include the EL-TRAN future electricity system funded by the Academy of Finland, the COMBI project on the energy efficiency of public buildings, and Hierakka in Hiedanranta. Cooperation with the City of Tampere continues in the Vuores and Hiedanranta areas, for example. The City also participates in several energy efficiency projects. Intelligent city solutions are sought through the shared 6AIKA projects by six large cities.\nIn the near future, we will be concentrating on launching the research groups bringing together the strategic focus areas and different fields of education. Of the five research groups within our focus area, the circular economy and resource wisdom group is common to the entire field of technology in TAMK. During 2018, we will participate in the preparation of the EU framework programme together with the international community of universities of applied sciences.\nRead more about all of the projects in the strategic focus area through our project search.\nDevelopmental expertise in pedagogy\nThe project range within this strategic focus area achieved its best result so far. Approximately 50 research and development projects were carried out within the focus area, which is descriptive of the strong pedagogic competence and development intent within TAMK’s vocational teacher education, as well as all of TAMK.\nWe strengthened our cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finnish National Agency for Education, and other education development organisations. We participated in the national teacher education development programme (OPEKE), launched based on a proposal by the teacher education forum appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture.\nWith vocational education increasingly transferred to places of work, the students’ study paths are becoming more individualised, and the work of the teacher is reformed. The Parasta osaamista project (Best competence) supports vocational upper secondary schools in finding new models and developing their operations to meet new challenges. Ten organisers of vocational education and all five higher education institutions in vocational teaching participate in the project.\nCooperation in expert networks and projects reached into Europe, where our visibility as a pedagogic developer increased. We conquered new areas and received funding from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), for example. In the future, the research group work within the focus area is set to expand significantly, as there will be four research themes: Higher education pedagogy, Upper secondary vocational pedagogy, Learning analytics, and Studying experience. We will be increasingly investing in fixed and continuous cooperation with operators in the education and teaching field both nationally and internationally.\nLearn more about all of the projects in the strategic focus area through our project search.\nNew operational models for health care and social services\nThe strategic focus area has strengthened TAMK’s visibility outside of TAMK further, and has activated its RDI activities in the strategic competence and focus areas. We have submitted approximately 20 funding applications, many of which resulted in a positive funding decision.\nThe multidisciplinary research group in this focus area has concentrated on brainstorming and the preparation of funding for RDI key projects and Tampere3 cooperation projects. The RDI funding structure has been successfully made more versatile, and funding is now received from structural funds and Ministries (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Ministry of Education and Culture, AMIF), as well as other national research funds. TAMK has also been a partner in the H2020 application.\nWe have tightened Tampere3 cooperation with the theme Health, where TAMK’s RDI operations have also been promoted. A total of six Tampere3 Health theme seminars were organised in 2017, giving an opportunity for local researchers to network and create shared RDI projects. The focus area is represented in the shared Tampere3 Global Wellbeing research group.\nThe focus area participated in Tampere3 cooperation to apply for participation in the Academy of Finland flagship programme Globally transferable solutions for health care in aging society. The application was an opening and a tangible example of the extensive shared applications of the universities and their preparation. This time the application did not result in funding, but it did offer valuable experience for the future.\nThe reform of the research groups within the strategic focus area increases the number and volume of research groups. In addition to the current core research group, six new groups are being launched to support TAMK’s teachers in the increasingly extensive RDI work and to create multidisciplinary RDI key projects within the focus area.\nEntrepreneurship and innovative business\nOne of our essential objectives for 2017 was developing the joint operations of the Y-kampus concept at all Tampere3 universities, as well as entrepreneurship and innovation operations in general. Another significant objective was carrying out successfully demanding shared research projects, such as VALIT and Deeva. We also prepared new multidisciplinary projects.\nWe have actively formed networks and developed cooperation locally, nationally, as well as internationally with universities and startup communities in Silicon Valley, as well as in Europe. Originally TAMK’s Y-kampus operating model to promote entrepreneurship has been developed further in Tampere3 cooperation, and more emphasis has been placed on the development of service innovations. Applied research teams have also participated actively in the development of local entrepreneurship and entrepreneur competence in the rapidly changing world. Modern sales are a strong part of the teaching, and in 2018, the development of modern sales at companies can also be seen in projects.\nThe growth of the Y-kampus concept, which started at TAMK’s Proakatemia, continues to be positive. The Y-kampus received a significant acknowledgement as the Federation of Finnish Enterprises and the Rector´s Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (Arene) awarded the concept as the best entrepreneurship operation of the universities of applied sciences in 2017.\nInnovative operating models related to entrepreneurship make a strong foundation for the operations of the strategic focus area. Based on team entrepreneurship and team coaching, the pedagogic model of Proakatemia continues to draw both national and international interest, which is proven by the hundreds of visitors in Proakatemia in 2017, as well as the several cooperation requests from both education and projects.\nIn 2018, the networking work will show in new cross-regional and international projects, national and international events, increased innovation operations, and the strengthening of the startup community and development work in the Tampere region. The focus area will particularly invest in the development of growth companies and modern sales. New research groups focusing on multidisciplinary cooperation, the digitalisation of business operations, growing as an entrepreneur, and growth entrepreneurship started their operations in the beginning of 2018.\nIntelligent machines and smart devices\nDuring 2017, we brainstormed and submitted several project applications, and launched and carried out several projects for various funding instruments. Our cooperation networks developed actively. The new multidisciplinary research group in the focus area has participated in thework of expert networks, conferences, and events organised by financiers.\nWe have recognised and developed further the competences supporting the research, development, and innovation operations within the focus area. New technologies, the high quality of carrying out the projects, and encouraging persons outside the research groups to participate in the RDI work have been emphasised. Project operations have been made increasingly visible both within TAMK and outside it, particularly in Tampere3 cooperation.\nIn 2018, we aim to form new research groups to continue the development of the strategic strengths of the focus area, as well as preparing new projects for various funding instruments extensively, particularly acknowledging Business Finland and international funding sources. Our aim is to utilise our multidisciplinary competence and form both national and international networks in order to strengthen TAMK’s visibility and position as a wanted RDI partner.\nSeveral projects have been prepared and carried out as Tampere3 cooperation projects. In 2018, we will concentrate on deepening the Tampere3 project cooperation and developing applied research in cooperation with the other Tampere3 universities.\nThe Drone Expert project creates an extensive and multidisciplinary drone competence centre and regional cooperation network in the Tampere region, to support the local SMEs in their competence needs, networking, brainstorming, and innovation related to drone utilisation, as well as the development of new related services and business operations. The project is funded by the European Social Fund.\nTampere3\nFrom the beginning of 2019, Tampere University of Applied Sciences will join forces with the new Tampere University (combining the University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology). Together these will form a unique multidisciplinary university community in Finland with competitive edges in technology, health and society.\nForming the new Tampere3 community is a challenge, but also an opportunity to strengthen TAMK’s role as a university of applied sciences. Together and through the cooperation of experts in various fields, we can create strong competence centres, combining the working life-based development and education typical to universities of applied sciences with the scientific approach familiar to universities.\nTAMK participates in building the Tampere3 community as an individual university of applied science, with its separate statutory assignments and education profiles. Tampere3 will enable an increasingly close and effective cooperation with the universities in terms of both RDI and education. Together, we will be better able to face the challenges brought by changing society and globalisation.\nThe Tampere3 project is also part of the preparation for the structural development of higher education in Finland in the 2020s. Integrating university and university of applied sciences operations on a practical level, utilising synergies, and sharing strengths will allow making Tampere a leading city of university education, a true alternative to the capital Helsinki, even from a foreign perspective.\nTel. switchboard +358 (3) 245 2111\nFax: +358 (3) 245 2222\nAnnual Review 2017, pocket guide (pdf)\n© Tampere University of Applied Sciences","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1066186"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7700120806694031,"wiki_prob":0.7700120806694031,"text":"Lower Fort Garry\nNearby (154)\nBy kjfitz @ 2010-10-27 10:40:10\n@ 50.112176, -96.932006\nWinnipeg, Canada (CA)\nLower Fort Garry was built in 1830 by the Hudson's Bay Company on the western bank of the Red River, 20 miles (32 km) north of the original Fort Garry, which is now in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Treaty 1 was signed there.\nA devastating flood destroyed Fort Garry in 1826, prompting the company's then governor, George Simpson, to search for a safer location down river. Governor Simpson chose the site of Lower Fort Garry because of its high ground and location below the St. Andrew's Rapids, eliminating the time-consuming portage of the heavy fur packs and York boats. However, the fort never became the administrative centre as it was intended, since most of the population of the area was centred near The Forks and objected to the extra travel required to do business at the new fort. As a result, Upper Fort Garry was rebuilt in stone at The Forks, Winnipeg, Manitoba.\nLinks: en.wikipedia.org\nBuildings > Military - Historic - Forts and Batteries\nManitoba National Historic Sites of Canada by kkeps\nNearby Maps (50 km): 154\nSimilar Maps: Military - Historic - Forts and Batteries","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1024092"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.645431637763977,"wiki_prob":0.645431637763977,"text":"What is the level of competition in Taiwan?\nManny Ramirez’s Last(?) Fight\nAward Winners, Ballparks, Books, CBA, Fantasy/Roto, Free Agents, Games, Hall Of Fame, History, Management, Media, MiLB, MLB Trade Deadline, MLB Waiver Trades, MVP, PEDs, Players, Playoffs, Prospects, Stats, Trade Rumors, World Series\nManny Ramirez will either wind up like Muhammad Ali or George Foreman. With Ali, his final comeback attempt (not counting a last-last, this is definitely the last fight in 1981 in which he lost to journeyman Trevor Berbick) came when he took a ferocious beating from a reluctant, in-his-prime heavyweight champ Larry Holmes. Ali went to great lengths to show what great shape he was in prior to the fight by getting back to the weight he fought at when he defeated Foreman in Zaire. But the fact that he was in shape didn’t matter. Holmes battered him in a perfunctory manner and, by the end, was screaming at the referee to stop the fight before he seriously injured Ali. Ali certainly didn’t need the money nor the increased number of blows to his already damaged brain, but he couldn’t stop himself from seeking the limelight and that one last shot at glory doing the one thing he truly knew how to do better than anyone else.\nWith Foreman, he was ridiculed when he came out of retirement and is still looked at with a jaundiced gaze by saying God told him to do it. He was overweight and old, but the laughter ended when he showed he still had the punching power and savvy to win fights. He put up a great show when losing to Evander Holyfield and eventually knocked out Michael Moorer to regain the title he’d lost twenty years earlier to Ali in 1974.\nWith Ramirez, he is returning after a stint hitting against, in boxing parlance, tomato cans in Taiwan. In Taiwan, they’re professionals and they’re talented, but they’re not on a level with a good Double A team in North America. While there, he was hitting subpar pitching in accumulating a .352 average, .422 OBP, and eight homers in 49 games. Abruptly leaving his Taiwanese team—the EDA Rhinos—Ramirez was rumored to be heading to Japan before deciding he’d like another shot with an MLB team. No one seemed interested until the Rangers decided to take a chance on him. The question is, can he help them?\nRamirez hasn’t played with a major league team since he went 1 for 17 for the Rays in 2011 before walking away and subsequently being caught failing another PED test. Amid much fanfare in an otherwise dreary off-season for the Athletics in the winter of 2011-2012, he was signed to a minor league contract. At that point, the A’s were embarking on another rebuilding project and for half the season, played as poorly as predicted before a sudden hot streak vaulted them into the playoffs. No one knew they could achieve those heights when they signed Ramirez and they needed him to sell a few seats with the mere hint of him being in the big leagues as a sideshow. In a best case scenario, he’d attract a few fans and hit well enough for the A’s to trade him to a contender (because not even Billy Beane thought they’d contend in 2012); worst case, they’d release him. He batted .302 in 63 at bats for Triple A Sacramento with no homers. The A’s released him last June and he went to Taiwan.\nNow he’s back.\nCan the Rangers expect anything from him? Like the decision on the part of the A’s to sign him, this is a test case for team benefit. The Rangers are contenders and need a righty bat. The trade deadline is July 31st and the Rangers are aggressive and active in improving their team. With a month to go before the time comes when they’ll have to make an acquisition along the lines of Mike Morse to boost their righty power, it’s cheaper and zero risk to look at Ramirez and get an answer as to whether he can still hit. Like Ali’s last fight, it could be a “would you stop it already?” moment. Or it could be an out-of-shape former star who shows he can still perform as Foreman did. The odds are it’s the former and even if the evidence is clear that Ramirez needs to hang it up, he probably won’t. Either way, there’s no risk for the Rangers to have a look.\nJuly 4, 2013 Paul Lebowitz Tagged Athletics, Billy Beane, Can Manny help the Rangers?, EDA Rhinos, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Manny Ramirez, Manny Ramirez Taiwan stats, Michael Moorer, Muhammad Ali, Oakland Athletics, Rangers, Rays, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, Trevor Berbick, What is the level of competition in Taiwan?\tLeave a comment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line402137"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8190279603004456,"wiki_prob":0.8190279603004456,"text":"The right whales’ darkest summer\nBy Chris Baraniuk\nIt has been a catastrophic summer for the endangered North Atlantic right whale and the people dedicated to saving them\nThe phone was ringing. Anthony François at the Quebec Marine Mammal Emergency Response Network in Tadoussac picked it up. Someone from a coast guard vessel was on the line. He said he was in the Gulf of St Lawrence – a 226,000 sq km expanse of sea in northeastern Canada – and he had just seen a dead whale floating in the water. It was a big one. A blue whale or a fin whale, maybe. After hanging up, Anthony quickly texted his supervisor, Josiane Caban. She said they would need pictures to confirm what sort of whale it was. The next morning photos arrived and it was immediately clear this wasn’t a blue whale or a fin whale at all. It was a different species, also an endangered one – a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis).\nPhilip Hamilton watches a mother and calf right whale dive in the Bay of Fundy (Credit: Moira Brown/New England Aquarium)\nThat was 6 June, earlier this year. No-one who works with marine mammals in Canada or the US realised it at the time, but that whale would be the first of 16 to die in the course of just five months, 12 in Canadian waters, four in US. A possible 17th fatality was also recently reported. It’s a far larger number of recorded deaths in a single year than in any year since the end of whaling in the early 20th Century. For a species that is now believed to consist of fewer than 500 individuals, it has been a catastrophic summer.\nOne marine biologist told me she was left feeling “numb” by the tally. Another has calculated that the species now faces possible extinction within 25 years.\nThis is the story of what happened to the whales that died this summer, and how we know. But it is also the story of some of the dedicated human beings who worked tirelessly to understand what went wrong, who attempted to save these creatures from further harm and – in one tragic case – even lost their life while doing so.\nWhen Tonya Wimmer heard about the whale sighted on 6 June, she was determined to get it towed to shore so that veterinarians could perform a necropsy (another name for an autopsy) and, hopefully, find out how it died. As director of the Marine Animal Response Society (MARS), a non-governmental organisation based in Halifax, Canada, the death of a right whale was a number one priority event.\nA mother right whale and her calf photographed in 2014 (Credit: Christin Khan, NEFSC/NOAA)\nCanada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) was also involved now. Ideally, a satellite tag would have been attached to the whale’s carcass so that it could be tracked. Thanks to wind and waves, floating bodies of whales can move surprisingly far in a short space of time. But in this case, observers lost sight of the body and bad weather made it difficult to continue searches at one point. The whale never reappeared.\nBut then, a week and a half later, another report was made by snow crab fishermen working in the Gulf of St Lawrence. They had seen a dead whale, a different individual. And the next day, yet another sighting of a dead whale came through – from DFO officers. There were even more reports of lifeless, floating whales on the 21, 22 and 23 June. All of these animals turned out to be separate individuals. Wimmer looked at the reports in disbelief.\nThey had already lost sight of one. There was no way she wanted to lose another.\nA series of conference calls, a barrage of emails and meetings all culminated in a huge effort, mobilised in a matter of days, to tow three of the carcasses to a beach at a place called Norway on the northwestern point of Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St Lawrence. A team of veterinarians and volunteer helpers was assembled. They would soon be crawling over the whale carcasses, taking measurements and gradually slicing pieces of the animal away to try and find out what everyone desperately wanted to know: what was the cause of death?\nÉmilie Couture was part of the necropsy team investigating the whale's death (Credit: Nigel Quinn)\nAmong the vets asked to help by Wimmer and her team were Prof Pierre-Yves Daoust, a wildlife pathologist at the University of Prince Edward Island, and Émilie Couture from Granby Zoo in Quebec. On the morning of 29 June, they and about 20 others arrived on a beach of reddish-brown sand where the necropsy would take place. The sky was clear and the sea a brilliant blue, waves roiling at the shoreline. But as they approached via the green grass behind the beach, it was the thing splayed out in front of them that set the tone: the carcass of a 33-year-old North Atlantic right whale, dragged ashore by a digger with caterpillar tracks. 14 metres long, it had been decomposing for more than ten days. There was no time to lose.\nCouture, like the others assembled for a long three days’ work, was kitted out. Waterproof clothes. Duct tape sticking sleeves to gloves and trouser legs to rain boots. Apart from being messy, dissecting a decomposing whale is also extraordinarily pungent work. No-one knows how to describe the stench. A bit like rancid fat, says Couture. But more than that – it’s a smell that could only belong to something fleshy and rotten.\n“As a pathologist I have a lot of experience with bad smells,” says Daoust. “And I would say a rotten pig has a unique smell, a rotten cow has a unique smell – a rotten whale does too and I cannot describe it.”\nThe beaches where those first three necropsies were performed are popular holiday spots – Couture sometimes noticed visitors walking by, holding their noses.\nTo begin with, examining the animal involved looking at its skin – were any scars or lacerations visible that might offer a clue to trauma? Were fins or bits of flesh missing? Then the team would cut into blubber, carving out huge square pieces with knives. The knives would have to be periodically sharpened, so dense was the tissue. And cutting into it with blunt knives is dangerous, explains Couture. If you have to apply too much pressure, the knife can slip and injure someone.\nOften a necropsy like this can last longer than a day (Credit: Nigel Quinn)\nMeasuring the thickness of the blubber is important, to tell how well-fed the animal was before it died. And then the team can start slicing into the flesh, removing it from the skeleton and identifying internal organs. But even that is a challenge. Because a whale carcass is so well-insulated, heat and pressure build up inside the animal as it decomposes. It literally cooks its own organs, turning the insides to a thick, soupy mass. Sometimes, organs that should be there simply can’t be located. Some are pushed out of the whale’s mouth by the rising pressure and disappear at sea. Whatever is left, the pathologists do their best to document.\nFinally, it is important to remove the animal’s head and examine the cavity inside – a job that also requires help from the digger. Sometimes a few dislocated internal organs are found in the mouth as well.\nBesides all of this hard physical work, the team took many samples to test in the lab for signs of illness, poisoning and genetic markers so that the whales could be identified wherever possible.\nOften, a necropsy like this can last much longer than a day. But the team were attempting to do three, with only one day allocated for each. It was gruesome and exhausting.\nPeople were involved in efforts to save the right whales this summer in all kinds of ways. One person who had already been contacted during efforts to identify the dead animals from coast guard and DFO photographs was Philip Hamilton, at the at the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life. The aquarium is an important centre for right whale studies because it keeps a detailed catalogue of individuals, identified by a unique number and, often, a nickname.\nPhilip Hamilton captains the RV Nereid in the Bay of Fundy during a right whale survey (Credit: Jonathan Cunha/New England Aquarium)\nOn 1 July, Hamilton arrived in the Gulf of St Lawrence on his research ship, a 15 metre yacht called the Shelagh. That was the same day that the veterinarians and volunteers finished their necropsy of the third whale.\nHamilton had already been sent photographs of the animal to identify it visually. He knew which whale it was and genetic testing would later confirm the ID. This was number 3603 in the aquarium’s catalogue: an 11 year-old female called “Starboard”. The nicknames are often inspired by markings or features on the whale’s body. In this case, Starboard was so-called because she was missing half of her right tail fluke.\nThanks to the aquarium catalogue, we know the identities of Starboard’s father and mother. We know that she had three sisters and a total of eight aunts and uncles. Her maternal grandmother, a whale nicknamed Baldy, had given birth to at least nine calves. She was last sighted in 2016 and is believed to still be alive.\nPhilip Hamilton steers the Shelagh towards a right whale in the Gulf of St Lawrence while Megan McOsker photographs another for identification studies (Credit: Hansen Johnson/Canadian Whale Institute)\nBut what had happened to Starboard? A relatively young whale, she had been found by DFO officers on 21 June, floating upside down and wrapped in fishing gear. Entanglement. A few garishly coloured plastic buoys bobbed in the sea by her carcass as a flock of hungry seabirds swarmed around or waddled over her body.\nWhen the pathologists examined her carcass on the shore, they could see clear markings, perhaps made by the ropes that had ensnared her. And her blubber was unusually thin – a sign that she may have starved to death after not being able to eat for weeks or months. “You can imagine from an individual perspective,” says Daoust, “how terrible a death it is.”\nThese details would later be published, but at the time, Hamilton and his team were just getting settled in to Prince Edward Island, ready to help with further photo identification and observation work on live whales in the area. There was also a job to do in terms of protecting the many whales that were still alive.\nArriving in Northport, Hamilton was joined by Joe Howlett, a lobsterman and whale entanglement responder; right whale conservationist Kelsey Howe; naturalist Megan McOsker; Hansen Johnson and Delphine Durette Morin from Dalhousie University; Pam Emery from the DFO; and two student researchers. They pitched up at the Northport Pier Inn, a seaside venue that looks out over Alberton Harbour, off Prince Edward Island. The Gulf of St Lawrence stretches far to the north.\nPhilip Hamilton and Pam Emery recording data on the Shelagh in the Gulf of St Lawrence while the late Joe Howlett helps keep a look out (Credit: Delphine Durette Morin/Canadian Whale Institute)\nThey spent much of their time on the boat, but to do photo ID work and make calls, they needed somewhere with wi-fi. The owners at the Northport Inn didn’t mind the whale scientists camping out in their lounge, working away on their laptops. “They’d even apologize for disturbing us when they had to clean,” remembers Hamilton.\nHe, Howlett and the others would sit there, poring over images of live whales that had been surveyed – it was important to know which individuals were frequenting the Gulf of St Lawrence since it was obviously a dangerous place for them, and also to get a sense of how much of the population might now be there. As the days unfolded, it became clear that huge numbers were indeed present – at least as many as a hundred were identified over the ensuing months.\nAs Hamilton knew from having conducted many surveys himself in the past, the species usually focuses its feeding further south, in the Bay of Fundy. Why were so many whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence? And what was harming them?\nAs Starboard’s necropsy had shown, the presence of fishing gear was clearly a hazard. Over the next few days, Hamilton and his colleagues’ observations from the Shelagh would occasionally be disrupted by news that a live whale nearby had become ensnared. That’s exactly what happened on 9 July. Howlett, a member of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, was extremely experienced in disentangling whales. He had been doing it for years. The moustachioed 59 year-old had often been pictured in a baseball cap and sunglasses, balancing himself at the side of a boat, engaged in the act of freeing one of these gigantic creatures. The following day he and Hamilton were aboard the Shelagh, heading to the location of the whale in difficulty. In order to reach it in time, they later transferred to a faster DFO boat.\nIt would take about an hour to come upon the whale. Hamilton remembers standing in the wheelhouse with the captain while Howlett perched himself right at the bow, ready to get to work. He was getting splashed by spray and, although the captain suggested he take shelter for a little while, Howlett declined, says Hamilton. He loved being at sea.\nAt last, the whale came into view – it was a bad entanglement, a complicated one. Ropes were wrapped around its body about 12 times and one of its flippers seemed to be caught, too. The year before, Howlett had disentangled a whale in the Bay of Fundy in a similar condition – that had taken six hours.\nThe small team circled the whale on their boat, grabbing video footage with a GoPro that they held underwater at the end of a pole. The pictures revealed more detail about the looping of the ropes around the animal. This individual turned out to be catalogue number 4123 – a six year-old male that had last been sighted the previous August.\nHelpfully, it seemed calm and content to remain at the surface. Sometimes right whales are prone to diving when boats come near. But this one gave Howlett a good opportunity to see where one particular rope line was wrapped across its left side, down towards its mouth. Carefully manoeuvring a hooked knife attached to a carbon fibre pole, the lobsterman plucked at the line and soon cut it through. The whale flipped some water into the boat with its tail, but stayed put. Howlett waited and then went in for a second cut but at that point the whale began to sink. Hamilton remembers that he had to pull straight up with the pole, yanking at that rope with the edge of his knife.\n“All I saw was a flick of the tail as the whale went down,” says Hamilton. “The dorsal side of the tail flopped into the bow of the boat.” The bow filled with water, the boat itself swayed with the force of the huge animal’s tail connecting with it. And when the tail slid away, the crew saw what had happened. Howlett had been hit.\n“I got to him within a second or two,” says Hamilton. He performed CPR on his friend for more than an hour. But when they reached the shore, Howlett was pronounced dead. Transport Canada is currently investigating what happened.\nThat very day, Doust, Couture, Wimmer and others were on-site at another necropsy – the fifth of the summer. The news reached them. Many of the people working there knew Howlett, had been involved in whale conservation with him. The shock was palpable. Although Daoust and Couture did not know the whale disentangler well, the fact that others present did was obvious. The two vets noticed volunteers stepping aside from their work, filled with grief, wiping tears from their eyes.\nBack in Northport, Hamilton tried to gather his thoughts on the Shelagh over the ensuing days.\n“It was very comforting to me to be on that boat, sort of seeped in everything Joe because, you know, I have so many memories of him on that boat,” he says. “It was really helpful to see the team that had gone through this.\n“Everybody was deeply impacted by Joe’s death and all the events around it.”\nEver since then, right whale disentanglements have been put on hold by the DFO.\nEleven days later, the body of a right whale was stretched out on a beach on Miscou Island, New Brunswick. Pierre-Yves Daoust and the others looked on as Noel Milliea, an elder from the Elsipogtog First Nation aboriginal tribe, said a prayer. In his hands, Milliea held a bald eagle feather and some burning herbs as he performed the rite. To Daoust the smoke smelled pleasant and sweet – like sage or sweet grass, perhaps.\nIn that moment of pause and silence, as Milliea prayed quietly for the stricken whale, Daoust had a rare chance to stand still and contemplate this animal. This impossibly big animal that was now wrecked and washed up. He thought about what could have happened to it, the power of the moment seeping through him.\nAfter the prayer was over, Milliea explained to the vets and volunteers that, to his people, a dead whale like this is something that brings a message – it says something about what is happening out there, what is happening in the sea. In any case, Daoust knew, the point was that this meant something curiously similar to the elder and to him alike.\nAs the stillness of the blessing passed, the activity of a necropsy started up once again. It was the team’s sixth. Over the ensuing hours, as Couture worked her way deeper and deeper into the animal with her fellow crew, she found yet more sludge inside the carcass. A thick, very dark brown, putty-like gloop. She and the others had seen it before. They had handled it, walked through it in other whale carcasses that summer, kneeled in it as they worked. Whenever she held it in her hands it felt thick and a bit waxy, Couture thought. But it was somehow crumbly, too. To Daoust it seemed reminiscent of raw blood sausage, or black pudding.\nAnd it was a key bit of evidence. To be exact, the same putty had been found during four previous necropsies. This was whale number 2140 in the New England Aquarium catalogue, a 26 year-old male nicknamed “Peanut” – after a peanut-shaped scar on its back. It was a whale that Philip Hamilton had seen many times in the Bay of Fundy. He had always recognised it quickly.\nRight whale (*Eubalaena glacialis*) (Credit: NEFSC/NOAA)\nAs the vets and volunteers peeled away the layers of Peanut’s body, they found that putty in its chest and covering parts of vertebrae. Elsewhere on Peanut were signs of haemorrhaging. The putty, they were all but certain, was blood – cooked by heat and pressure building up in the decomposing carcass. And the team would ultimately conclude that this whale, like the four others with similar features, had been killed by a ship strike.\nOver the next few weeks, more North Atlantic right whale deaths would be reported, bringing the total at the time to 15. Genetic testing eventually confirmed that they were all separate individuals. A final necropsy was performed on 19 September.\nTonya Wimmer at MARS worked closely with Daoust, Couture and others on the 200-page incident report that was later published by the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative, MARS and the DFO on 5 October. It explained the sightings, results of the necropsies and gave detail about shipping and fishing activity in the Gulf of St Lawrence. The report was dedicated to the memory of Joe Howlett.\nAt the press conference, Daoust, Couture, Wimmer and Matthew Hardy from the DFO’s science branch briefed the media on the findings: the whales’ deaths were the result of human activity. Wimmer said the fate of the species was “in our hands”.\nThe following month, whale expert Mark Baumgartner from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts presented a worrying calculation at a conference on North Atlantic right whales. Given the number now believed to be alive, and the proportion of breeding females, he estimated the entire population could disappear in as little as 23 years if a handful of females continue to die each year.\nAnd Moira Brown at the New England Aquarium and the Canadian Whale Institute told me, “Any cautious optimism we had for the recovery of this population between 1990 and 1999… has all been dashed.”\nIt’s not known for sure why right whales apparently moved in such large numbers into the Gulf of St Lawrence this year – it certainly seems to have put them at greater risk of trauma and entanglement. The leading theory is that the food they eat, plankton, was uncommonly sparse in the Bay of Fundy. Indeed, a survey of the plankton there in July found that they were not as fat as would be expected. That might have encouraged the whales to feed elsewhere.\nRight whale sighted during 2014 survey (Credit: Christin Khan, NEFSC/NOAA)\nBut as Wimmer said at the press conference, Canadian law gives special protection to endangered species like North Atlantic right whales.\n“You can’t harm, harass, disturb or kill those animals anywhere they are found – that is not restricted to their critical habitat, it is anywhere,” she told reporters.\n“So the measures very much have to go with the animal – and we have to be adaptive because they change where those areas are.”\nThere are now discussions with the fishing and shipping industries in the Gulf of St Lawrence about how vessel routes might be altered, or fishing gear updated and monitored. Many are keen, of course, to avoid harming the whales and have responded to the conservationists’ calls for dialogue.\nAt least one whale researcher who has watched events unfold this summer is optimistic that the Gulf of St Lawrence can adapt. The fisheries are profitable, sizeable businesses in the area, says Michael Moore at WHOI.\n“The individuals involved will be motivated and capable of investing in appropriate technology to mitigate the problem,” he says, suggesting, for example, the adoption of crab traps that use fewer ropes linked to marker buoys on the surface.\nBut there’s no escaping the fact that this summer was terrible for North Atlantic right whales. And in the middle of it all, the loss of Joe Howlett was shocking and heart-breaking.\nHowlett’s friend Philip Hamilton remains, like so many others in this field, deeply dedicated to monitoring right whales and improving our understanding of them.\nAn adult male right whale feeding alongside white-sided dolphins (Credit: NOAA Fisheries/Allison Henry)\nOn 29 July he was still out on the Shelagh, documenting whales with his team. By then, they were back in the Bay of Fundy. Towards the end of the day, they came across three whales lolling at the water’s surface. They were feeding, which was unusual, thought Hamilton. He knew that right whales more often dive to feed on the bottom. He piloted the boat closer so his crewmates could take clearer pictures. He didn’t have a chance to peer at the whales through his binoculars then, but when he saw the photographs later, he was taken aback.\nOne of them was 4123, the whale that had been disentangled by Joe Howlett on 10 July. There it had been, 19 days later, more or less oblivious to the people sailing around it.\nHamilton stared at the images on his computer. They showed the whale’s head just breaching the placid surface.\n“That was just a powerful feeling. I can’t describe what it was,” he says.\nThe moment confused him, he admits. He says it is rare that he finds it hard to put feelings into words, but that one still gives him pause today. “It was just big,” he says, recollecting. “It felt big.”\nOf all the whales Hamilton observed in the Gulf of St Lawrence that summer, 4123 was the only one he saw again later in the Bay of Fundy. Calmly swimming there, the gentle water rippling round its head.\nFind out where to watch Blue Planet II in your country and how you can help save our oceans.\nFeatured image by Christin Khan, NEFSC/NOAA\nHans Zimmer for Blue Planet II\nHans Zimmer returns to natural history for Blue Planet II.\n10 hours of ocean sounds","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line415865"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5730704069137573,"wiki_prob":0.4269295930862427,"text":"CHROMOSOME SCANNING\nNew scientific developments allow for whole genome sequencing in IVF embryos\nFor many years fertility clinics have been able to detect chromosomal abnormalities through pre-implantation genetic diagnostics (PGD). This genetic screening is used to identify any genetic mutations that have been passed on to in vitro fertilised (IVF) embryos from the parents. However, new breakthrough research is bringing chromosome scanning to a whole new level.\nDetecting de novo mutations in IVF embryo genetic codes\nIn a paper recently publish in Genome Research, scientists from the largest American genetic laboratory specialising in PGD (Reprogenetics) have confirmed that they now have the technology to detect de novo single base mutations in embryos following IVF.\nReprogenetic scientists collaborated with other genetic specialists from the New York University Fertility Centre and China-based Complete Genetics in this pioneering research.\nDe novo mutations are those genetic anomalies that arise spontaneously in the sperm or egg and are not genetically transferred from either parent.\nIt’s these types of mutations that scientists believe are responsible for a large percentage of severe intellectual disabilities, epileptic encephalopathies, autism, and other congenital disorders.\nAnalysing embryo cell biopsies – new research techniques\nThe whole genome sequencing technique developed to determine de novo mutations requires biopsies of the IVF embryos. Using a five-day old embryo at the blastocyst stage, scientists take five to ten cell biopsies to analyse.\nSince this is a very small number, the extracted DNA must be amplified. This involves biochemical technology using a polymerase chain reaction to generate thousands of copies of the DNA sequence.\nThe problem with DNA amplification is that it introduces thousands of errors. These errors can be wrongly interpreted as de novo mutations. However, this new research by Peters and colleagues utilises a new technique called Long Fragment Read (LFR) technology.\nThis technique reduces the error rate by around 100 fold compared with previous studies. LFR enables researchers to allocate DNA fragments to the paternal or maternal genome utilising DNA barcodes.\n“Because each individual carries on average less than 100 de novo mutations, being able to detect and assign parent of origin for these mutations, which are the cause of many diseases, required this extremely low error rate,” explains researchers.\nWhat the researchers found\nIn this study comparing two embryos from the same couple, Peters and colleagues couldn’t find any de nova mutations in one embryo. However, the protein-coding regions of the genome in the other embryo exhibited two mutations in the SLC26A10 and ZNF266 genes.\nThis highlighted potentially damaging de novo mutations, with 82% of all changes detected in the IVF embryos. Never before have scientists been able to identify the vast majority of single base de novo mutations using a PGD test.\nThe researchers admit that “the biggest hurdle now is one of how to analyze the medical impact of detected mutations and make decisions based on those results.” The actual health consequences of defective de novo mutations are unclear and this requires further research and analysis.\nIn conclusion, Peter and colleagues suggest that their research results may pave the way for better detecting potential harmful diseases in IVF babies:\n“Whole-genome sequencing using barcoded DNA could be used in the future as part of the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis process to maximize comprehensiveness in detecting disease-causing mutations and reduce the incidence of genetic diseases.”\nUndoubtedly this is exciting new research into IVF embryo genetic code and it opens avenues for couples undergoing IVF treatment to select the healthiest possible embryo. To some extent this option is already available with the ability to identify chromosomal anomalies genetically acquired from the parents.\nHowever, this new study may take this screening to a whole new level. In the future, parents of IVF babies may choose to only use embryos that have been tested and cleared of de novo mutations, thus reducing the risk of various genetic diseases. Yet, ethically and morally, these new developments open a whole new area of debate.\nIn the meantime we can expect to see more research of this nature, as scientists work to further unravel genetic codes and how they impact human development.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line181442"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8080278038978577,"wiki_prob":0.8080278038978577,"text":"SciFi Weekend: Star Trek News; The Arrowverse; Jessica Jones Showrunner Leaving for Warner; Man In The High Castle Trailer; Veronica Mars; The Affair; Big Bang Theory; Timeless; Foundation Trilogy; Hugo Award Winners\nAugust 26, 2018 — Ron Chusid\nIt is another slow week with only one new science fiction show airing which I’m watching (Killjoys). While fun to watch, I don’t find that a show worth reviewing episode by episode as I do with some genre shows. There was one season finale with The Affair, but I don’t see much point in writing about that here except for one brief comment. I was surprised that such a major character was killed off, but many have speculated that it came down to Ruth Wilson complaining about not receiving equal pay with its male lead. Tonight is the season finale of Sharp Objects, but I will wait until after I see the finale to comment on the show. While no shows to review this week, there have been some items of interest.\nWith limited new news, I’ll start by going back to something interesting we learned about Deep Space Nine. I never did like the ending of the series, and I believe that this is the consensus of Star Trek fans, even if this story claims that the ending was well-received. Regardless, we learned at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention that the ending could have been far worse. From ComicBook.com:\nSpeaking during a panel at Star Trek Las Vegas, Behr revealed that he really wanted the series finale to call back to the popular season six episode “Far Beyond the Stars,” revealing that the entire story of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was actually the dream of science fiction writer Benny Russell.\n“I did pitch to [executive producer] Rick Berman that the final episode would end up with Benny Russell on Stage 17 at Paramount, wandering around the soundstages, realizing that this whole construct, this whole series, that we had done for seven years, was just in Benny’s head,” Behr said (via Trek Movie).\nBut Deep Space Nine is just one television series in the Star Trek franchise, and Behr’s dream ending could have had major implications for the rest of the franchise as well.\n“That is how I wanted to end the series. And Rick said ‘Does this mean The Original Series was in Benny’s head? Does this mean Voyager was in Benny’s head?’ I said ‘Hey man, I don’t care who is dreaming those shows, I only care about Deep Space Nine and yes, Benny Russell is dreaming Deep Space Nine.’ He didn’t go for it,” Behr said.\nIn “Far Beyond the Stars,” series lead Sisko finds himself experiencing the life of Benny Russell, a black science fiction writer in 1950s America. Russell imagines Deep Space Nine as a story he’s trying to sell, but struggles with the racism of the era. In the end, this is revealed as a vision sent to Sisko from the prophets in the wormhole near Deep Space Nine. In reality, it’s a powerful episode about what science fiction is for, what it is capable of, and why who writes it matters.\nStar Trek: Deep Space Nine is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. There’s a documentary planned for release later this year titled What We Left Behind that will feature the cast and creative team that worked on the show looking back on the time they spent, the stories they created, and the legacy of the series.\nI totally agree with Rick Berman on this one. It was fine to have an isolated episode in which things were possibly a dream, or for some series like St. Elsewhere to be a dream, but do not end the series in this manner when Star Trek extends far beyond this series.\nTrekMovie.com has some quotes from Gates McFadden, including answering questions regarding the news of a new Star Trek series staring Patrick Stewart:\nNo, we haven’t [heard anything], and I am sure Patrick will fill us in sometime. I have no idea if we are in it, or if it is just Patrick or what. We will all find out, but it is just so cool, though. It is very exciting. Again, I am always blown away by the fans, who have loved the show and Roddenberry’s vision for so long and through so many different series, and they have all been so wonderful. I am as excited as everybody else.\nTyler Hoechlin will be reprising his role as Superman in the upcoming seasons Arrowverse crossover, and Lois Lane will be introduced (along with Catwoman, as previously announced). From Deadline:\nThe three-night crossover event kicks off with The Flash on at 8 PM Sunday, December 9, followed by Arrow at 8 PM December 10 and capping off with Supergirl on December 11. For this year’s crossover, The Flash and Supergirl will swap time slots. The Flash normally airs on Tuesdays and Supergirl on Sunday. Arrow airs in its regular Monday night slot.\nHoechlin’s Superman will appear in all three episodes. This year’s crossover will also include the first appearance of Batwoman (Ruby Rose).\nThe Flash will return with new episodes on Tuesday, October 9 at 8 PM ET/PT on The CW, followed by Black Lightning (which is not technically part of the Arrowverse) at 9 PM. Supergirl premieres the next week on Sunday, October 14 at 8 PM, followed by Arrow on Monday, October 15 at 8 PM. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will return on Monday, October 22 at 9 PM. The as-yet-untitled crossover event will from Sunday, December 9 through Tuesday, December 11.>\nI09 has a story on the rise of the Dark Night on the upcoming season of Gotham.\nWe might see a big improvement in the DC based television shows while there has been a huge loss for the Marvel shows. Melissa Rosenberg, creator and showrunner for Jessica Jones, is leaving Netflix and moving to Warner Bro Television. From The Hollywood Reporter:\nIn a competitive situation, the Jessica Jones creator and showrunner will depart the Netflix Marvel drama after season three and move to Warner Bros. Television with an overall deal. Sources say the indie studio outbid Netflix for Rosenberg’s services in a deal that ultimately is worth in the eight-figure range. Ultimately, Rosenberg was ready to do something different and was ready to move on to new projects though Netflix is said to have courted her to stay.\nUnder the multiple-year pact, Rosenberg will create and develop new projects for Warner Bros. TV. She is currently focused finishing up the previously announced third season of Netflix’s Marvel drama Jessica Jones. A return date for the Krysten Ritter-led Marvel Television drama from ABC Studios has not yet been determined. A new showrunner would take over for Rosenberg should Netflix renew Jessica Jones for a fourth season. Rosenberg will remain credited as the show’s creator and executive producer.\nAmazon Prime has released the season three trailer for The Man In The High Castle (video above). The synopsis:\nSeason three of the Emmy award-winning The Man in the High Castle finds Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) grappling with her destiny after seeking safety in the Neutral Zone. Realizing that their fates are intertwined, she works with Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) to interpret the mystery of the last remaining films. Meanwhile, as tensions between the Reich and the Empire continue to rise, Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) returns from Berlin and is sent on a diplomatic mission to San Francisco, where he and Juliana reunite and come to a turning point in their relationship. Also in the new season, Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith (Rufus Sewell) finds himself celebrated by Nazi high society, but political forces are closing in as North American Reischsmarschall Lincoln Rockwell and J. Edgar Hoover plot against him. Helen (Chelah Horsdal) takes drastic action to protect her family while they struggle with the aftermath of Thomas’ death, and Smith learns of a shocking and ambitious new Nazi program that has personal and global ramifications\nHulu is planning a reboot of Veronica Mars, with Kristen Bell reprising the title role.\nApple has picked up a ten-episode series based upon Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.\nWe have more news on the Timeless movie planned to wrap up the series. The two-part episode will air in December, with production starting in October. The full cast will be returning. TVLine has more on the planned writers and director.\nThe Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin has won the Hugo Award for best novel. Wonder Woman has won for Best Dramatic Presentation–Long Form and The Good Place: “The Trolley Problem” has won for Best Dramatic Presentation–Short Form. The Verge has a full list of nominees and winners.\nABC is planning a biracial reboot of Bewitched.\nI’m sure everyone who cares knows by now, but I feel I should include the news that The Big Bang Theory will be ending after this season. Fifty million dollars was not enough to entice Jim Parsons to stick around for another two years.\nPosted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Arrow, Batman, Batwoman, Bewitched, Black Lightning, Foundation Series, Gotham, Hugo Awards, Jessica Jones, Jim Parsons, Killjoys, Kristen Bell, Krysten Ritter, Legends of Tomorrow, Patrick Stewart, Science Fiction, Sharp Objects, Star Trek, Supergirl, Superman, The Affair, The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, The Good Place, The Man In The High Castle, Timeless, Veronica Mars, Wonder Woman. No Comments »\nSciFi Weekend: The Big Bang Theory Wedding; Anson Mount on Star Trek Discovery; George Kirk Is Still Dead; The Expanse Cancelled By Syfy And Other Renewal/Cancellation News; 12 Monkeys; Bafta Awards\nThe wedding of Amy and Sheldon occurred on The Big Bang Theory last Thursday. TV Line discussed the episode with Steve Holland:\nTVLINE | You mentioned when we spoke last week that Meemaw’s “cameo” was cut for time. Was there anything else you had to lose?\nUsually our scripts come in at about 40, 45 pages. This one was about 65 pages. [Laughs] We spent the week [of production] paring it back. There were some jokes here and there that we lost, but I think the episode is stronger for it. We knew we weren’t going to skimp on the vows. We knew we weren’t going to skimp on the wedding. Some of those cuts were painful, but anything that wasn’t servicing [the central story] fell by the wayside.\nTVLINE | What was the most painful cut?\nProbably the Meemaw phone call. It was a lovely moment. That was a hard one. But it was 35 seconds in a script that was [already] five or six minutes long.\nTVLINE | How and when did it come up with the idea to have Mark Hamill be the officiant?\nWhen we first started talking about the wedding, it had come up that maybe one of Sheldon’s friends could get him a surprise officiant. And Mark was the first name on the list, so we reached out to him to see if he’d be interested. We didn’t have a script at the time, so [he] really had to take a leap of faith and trusted that we were going to do right by him… He was the nicest human being you could ever imagine.\nTVLINE | Will we see much of Sheldon and Amy’s honeymoon when we pick back up next season?\nI don’t know. We have some overall conceptual thoughts about next season, but we haven’t nailed down any of the specifics. But it’s certainly possible. It’s something we have talked about as an option.\nMore on the wedding last week.\nIn this exclusive, unaired clip from last night’s season finale, the happy couple gets one last gift from #StephenHawking. 💕 #BigBangTheory pic.twitter.com/xgpU7G7Wpw\n— The Big Bang Theory (@bigbangtheory) May 11, 2018\nAnother cut scene with a tribute to Stephen Hawking was released on Twitter. I really think they should have made an expanded episode for the wedding.\nBleedingCool.com has a guide for for those interested in seeing every moment possible of coverage of next week’s wedding of Prince Henry of Wales and Meghan Markle of Suits. Television coverage starts at 4 am on BBC America, with BBC America devoting more time for coverage than the BBC.\nStarTrekMovie.com shows how Anson Mount is turned into Captain Pike for season two of Star Trek:Discovery.\nLast week I quoted Jennifer Morrison refer to George Kirk’s “supposed death” in the 2009 Star Trek movie. She later clarified that she was just joking and wrote on Instagram, “I have no idea what they are planning for the next Star Trek. I’ve never talked to anyone involved with the project. I’m excited to watch and see how it turns out just as much as all the other fans.” So he might have never died, he might have died and is coming back, or there will be some timey wimey stuff going on.\nDen of Geek summarizes what else is known about Star Trek 4.\nWe received a lot of news about television renewals and cancellations this week. From a science fiction perspective, the biggest cancellation is of The Expanse. There is talk of trying to get another network to pick it up but Ars Technica discussed why this might be difficult, as well as why it had problems at Syfy. At least there are the novels to find out what happens next.\nThe one show which so far has been successful in finding a new home was Brooklyn Nine-Nine. After talk of it being picked up by Netflix of Hulu, NBC wound up taking it.\nFox has cancelled The Last Man On Earth, with talk of Hulu possibly picking it up. Otherwise we will never know what is going on with those people who were underground.\nLucifer was cancelled with a huge cliffhanger, causing Fox to once again frustrate genre fans.\nTimeless received a reprieve after being cancelled last season and remains on the bubble. Eric Kripke says it could go either way. NBC has renewed The Blacklist.\nThe other major bubble show is Agents of SHIELD with no word yet from ABC. (Update: SHIELD has been renewed for a thirteen episode season). It came as no surprise that ABC officially cancelled The Inhumans. It was pretty much assumed that it would not be returning.\nThe CW Network has renewed The 100 and iZombie. They also announced new series including reboots of Charmed and Roswell.\nSyfy has released the above trailer for season 4 of 12 Monkeys, which returns June 15. All eleven episodes will be shown over four week. Three episodes will air on each Friday for the first three weeks of the season. The two-part season finale will be on Friday, July 6.\nThe Bafta TV Awards were presented today. Winners include Peakey Blinders for Drama Series and The Handmaid’s Tale for International. The full list of winners can be found here.\nAs regular readings might guess from the scarcity of the usual comments on the week’s shows, I remain seriously behind following last weekend. Hopefully I can get caught up for some of the season finales coming up imminently.\nPosted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: 12 Monkeys, Agents of SHIELD, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, iZombie, Lucifer, Mark Hamill, Peakey Blinders, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Stephen Hawking, The 100, The Big Bang Theory, The Blacklist, The Expanse, The Handmaid's Tale, The Inhumans, The Last Man On Earth, Timeless. No Comments »\nSciFi Weekend: Late and Abbreviated Wedding Edition Including Star Trek News, Renewals for Westworld & The Handmaid’s Tale, And How To Find Out If Thanos Killed You\nMay 7, 2018 — Ron Chusid\nThere have been reports for a while that Star Trek 4 will include Chris Hemsworth reprising his role as the father of Captain Kirk, despite being killed in the first J. J. Abrams Star Trek movie. Jennifer Morrison might have given away how that can happen while at a panel where she was primarily speaking about her role on Once Upon A Time. From ComicBook.com:\nHowever, her moderator was Star Trek: Voyager star Garrett Wang and Wang began by referencing Morrison’s role as Winona Kirk, the mother of James T. Kirk, in the opening scene of 2009’s Star Trek movie.\nWang said, “As an actor, I think it is incredibly difficult to play the role of a mother who just gave birth to James Tiberius Kirk, knowing that your husband is 36 seconds away from death, basically…”\nAnd that’s when Morrison interrupted and corrected Wang’s statement, saying “Supposed death,” and then smiling to add, “Just saying.”\nA reunion between James Kirk and his father is not the only Star Trek related reunion lately. Star Trek: Discovery has begun filming season two, with Jonathan Frakes directing the second episode. He was joined on the set by Star Trek: The Next Generation co-star and eventual on-screen wife, Marina Sirtis.\nTwo excellent genre series are currently showing their second season. Not surprisingly both Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale have also been renewed for a third season.\nThis week is both a late and abbreviated version of SciFi Weekend. This has been posted continuously every week for over ten years and I was not going to entirely skip a week, but it was also complicated this week as I did not have much time to either watch any of the past week’s shows or read very much on line. That does not mean I did not think of genre. I wore the Star Trek cuff links in the picture above for my daughter’s wedding while my nephew, who also officiated the wedding, wore the Yoda cuff links. The groom wore ones with Darth Vader. There was also a Welcome Reception the night before the wedding which occurred on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth…) and this was reflected at the event. Finally, my speech at the wedding included brief references to Tolkien, Wakunda, Star Wars, and I quoted the great Jewish philosopher Leonard Nimoy in wishing that the newlyweds Live Long and Prosper.\nThere is another big wedding to come this week. TV Line spoke with, Steve Holland, the showrunner for The Big Bang Theory about Sheldon and Amy’s upcoming wedding.\nFinally, while I won’t give any specifics or numbers, I don’t think it is a real spoiler to say that there were many deaths in Avengers: Infinity War. There is a web site to tell you whether you lived or died entitled Did Thanos Kill Me?\nPosted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Avengers: Infinity War, Discovery, J.J. Abrams, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Avengers, The Big Bang Theory, The Handmaid's Tale, Westworld. No Comments »\nSciFi Weekend: Star Trek Discovery Season 2; Rebooting Gotham; Steven Moffat on Dracula And Other Doctor Who Related News; Mark Hamill On The Big Bang Theory; The Spy\nApril 22, 2018 — Ron Chusid\nProduction on Star Trek: Discovery season 2 started in Toronto on April 16. TrekMovie.com has an excellent rundown of what is known about the season so far. This includes some new cast members, which indicates that we will see two additional star ships (including The Enterprise as was shown at the end of season one, and Section 31):\nAnson Mount – Captain Christopher Pike of the USS Enterprise, he’ll be in at least the first two episodes of the season.\nAlan Van Sprang – Leland is the head of Section 31, introduced in a bonus scene that was originally attached to the end of the season one finale. Based on what Van Sprang said at WonderCon, he’s expected to recur throughout the season.\nTig Notaro – Chief Engineer Denise Reno of the USS Hiawatha, guest staring in an unknown number of episodes.\nThey also have come comments on the theme of the second season:\nTheme of season two: Science vs Faith\nThe showrunners have said a few times now, on After Trek, and then at WonderCon, that theme of season two is “science versus faith.” Aaron Harberts explains:\nWhat is the role of serendipity versus science? Is there a story about faith to be told? Leaps of faith. We are dealing with space. We are dealing with things that can’t be explained and you have a character like Michael Burnham who believes there is an explanation for everything. And it doesn’t just mean religion. It means patterns in our lives. It means connections you can’t explain.\nHarberts also talked about how the tone of the show will change in season two:\n[Season one] was an interesting season because it was set against the backdrop of war. One of things we are looking forward to in season two is a tone that we can now be in a more exploratory phase and a more diplomatic phase – maybe a bit more of a Trekian chapter\nLast week I, and multiple other sites, repeated a story based upon apparently incorrect information from a Discovery staffer claiming that the differences between the Enterprise in the season one finale and the original show were due to legal reasons. CBS has subsequently issued a statement stating that the changes were done for creative and not legal reasons:\nCBS TV Studios does, in fact, have the right to use the U.S.S. Enterprise ship design from the past TV series, and are not legally required to make changes. The changes in the ship design were creative ones, made to utilize 2018’s VFX technology.\nThe art that was used in the 2019 calendar is ‘concept art,’ which was completed long before the VFX process is completed.\nLast week I also noted that Star Trek: Discovery was nominated for a Peabody Award. While they did not win, other shows which I have previously discussed in SciFi Weekend were among the winners– The Handmaid’s Tale, Better Call Saul, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The full list of winners is available here.\nGotham will be drastically changed after the fourth season finale according to a report at ComicBook.com:\nThe Season 4 finale, which follows the ever-popular Batman: No Man’s Land story from the comics, will alter the entire reality of the series. Everything we know about Gotham will change, and an entirely different Batman prequel series will rise up in its place.\nAccording to executive producer Danny Cannon, “A Dark Knight: No Man’s Land” will change the fabric of Gotham‘s DNA, and serve as a reboot of the show’s story.\nDuring an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com, Cannon mentioned that the finale would bring a “cataclysmic event” to Gotham. Knowing that “No Man’s Land“ was the title of the Season 4 finale, this wasn’t much of a surprise, but we asked him to elaborate.\n“Like I said, the catastrophic event, the cataclysmic event that happens in the last three episodes not only will change Gotham,” Cannon continued, “it not only combines so many characters that you don’t think will cooperate with each other, but it changes the face of Gotham forever, so that season five, it’s almost a reboot and a different show.”\n“Our characters have reached a maturity now, our characters are so well defined and that’s why I think as writers, that’s right about the point when you want to change people’s perception of them,” Cannon clarified. “The [term] ‘reboot’ means, just when you thought you knew people, something else will happen, and just when you thought your Season 5 would be like Season 4, Season 5 is completely different. New characters and old characters that have changed. It’s a complete [departure], and the city has changed too, new characters on a new landscape.”\nSteven Moffat has revealed minimal information about plans for a reinvention of Dracula:\nWhile speaking to Graham Norton on his BBC Radio 2 show, Moffat had a few words to say about his new adaptation. He confirmed that he and Gatiss will tackle the project “in a Sherlock-y way” though there will be one important difference between them: Dracula won’t be brought into the modern day.\n“But not in exactly the same way. We’re not modernizing it or anything, but we are doing a version of Dracula.”\nIn other news related to the Doctor Who/Sherlock universes, Entertainment Weekly reports that David Tennant was considering the staring role on Hannibal:\n“I met [Hannibal executive producer] Bryan Fuller a couple of times, and we talked about it,” says Tennant. “But I think they quite wisely chose Mads Mikkelsen, I think he was a perfect choice for it, and I think he did things with that character that I wouldn’t have managed, so I think the right man got the job.”\nConsidering how well he played the villain on Jessica Jones, I’m sure that Tennant could have also done an excellent job as Hannibal.\nSort of tying in Sherlock with Star Trek news, Benedict Cumberbatch revealed that he spilled secrets about filming Star Trek Into Darkness with Stephen Hawking.\nSeason eleven of The Big Bang Theory will conclude with the wedding of Amy and Sheldon. Guests include Laurie Metcalf as Sheldon’s mother and Courtney Henggeler reprising her role as his twin sister Missy. Jerry O’Connell has been cast as George, Jr. Besides bringing older versions of the cast of Young Sheldon, Wil Wheaton will be present. The most exciting addition to the guest list is Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker). There is no word as to what his role will be on the episode.\nNoah Emmerich of The Americans will continue to be a spy even after his current show is off the air. He will be staring in a limited run series on Netflix entitled, The Spy:\nWritten and directed by Gideon Raff, creator of the Israeli drama Prisoners of Waron which Showtime’s Homeland was based, The Spy tells the story of legendary Israeli spy Eli Cohen (Baron Cohen). Eli Cohen lived in Damascus undercover in the beginning of the ’60s, spying for Israel. He managed to embed himself into Syrian high society and rise through the ranks of their politics until he was uncovered by the Syrian regime, sentenced to death and publicly hanged.\nEmmerich will play Dan Peleg, a charming, rumpled and brilliant Mossad trainer. He is wise, wary and stubborn, and has a tendency to blur the boundaries between the personal and professional. He has conflicted feelings about Eli (Baron Cohen), and is tormented by a mistake he made in the past.\nI’m still hoping for a Stan and Oleg spin-off of The Americans.\nPosted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Batman, Benedict Bumberbatch, Better Call Saul, Bryan Fuller, David Tennant, Dracula, Gotham, Hannibal, Homeland, Jessica Jones, Jim Parsons, Mads Mikkelsen, Mark Gatiss, Mark Hamill, Science Fiction, Sherlock, Star Trek, Star Trek Beyond, Star Trek Discovery, Star Wars, Stephen Hawking, Steven Moffat, The Americans, The Big Bang Theory, The Handmaid's Tale, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Spy, Wil Wheaton, Young Sheldon. No Comments »\nSciFi Weekend: Stephen Hawking, Scientist & Genre Star; The 100; Martin Freeman on Sherlock; Alexis Bledel on A Handmaid’s Tale; Double Renewal For Eric McCormack–Will & Grace & Travelers; The Americans; Nathan Fillian To Reprise Firefly Role; Saturn Award Nominees\nStephen Hawking died last week leading to recognition not only from the scientific community, tributes from many in actors due to his many appearances on genre television. He was the only historical figure to play himself on Star Trek. In the video above from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hawking played cards with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Data in the holodeck. Syfy Wire has several tributes to Hawking from the cast of multiple versions of Star Trek. More at TrekMovie.com.\nSheldon Cooper met Stephen Hawking on The Big Bang Theory in the clip above. TV Line has tributes from the cast of The Big Bang Theory. IO9 has additional television cameos.\nThe 100 ended last season with major changes, and a quick glance of the future. An extended trailer for the the fifth season has been released, showing a new enemy to contend with. The 100 returns on April 24.\nIt has been a huge question as to whether Sherlock would return considering how the careers of both stars have taken off. It does not sound encouraging that Martin Freeman will want to return after he said that it wasn’t fun anymore in a recent interview:\nIn a new interview in The Telegraph, the Black Panther actor was asked if there were any talks about a fifth season of the BBC fan favorite.\n“Not massively,” the Dr. Watson actor said. “Um… I think after series four [it] felt like a pause. I think we felt we’d done it for a bit now. And part of it, speaking for myself is [due to] the reception of it.”\nMartin, the article explained, was referring to 2017’s fourth season which seemed to struggle to continue building on fans’ expectations of previous outings.\n“To be absolutely honest, it [was] kind of impossible,” he explained. “Sherlock became the animal that it became immediately. Whereas even with [the U.K. version of] The Office, it was a slow burn. But Sherlock was frankly notably high quality from the outset. And when you start [that high] it’s pretty hard to maintain that.\n“Being in that show, it is a mini-Beatles thing,” he concluded. “People’s expectations, some of it’s not fun anymore. It’s not a thing to be enjoyed, it’s a thing of: ‘You better f—ing do this, otherwise, you’re a c—.’ That’s not fun anymore.”\nThe Handmaid’s Tale returns to Hulu on April 25. Entertainment Weekly interviewed Alexis Bledel:\nThis season, we get to learn a lot about Emily’s life from Before. Was her backstory something you’d thought about before this episode?\nYes, I loved filming Emily’s flashbacks. [Executive producer] Bruce Miller and I had talked about what her pre-Gilead life might have been like even before I started working on the first season. I think much of her worldview is informed by her previous life as a professor of cellular biology. Life in the Colonies is a last stop. Emily does not have a great deal of hope for a future there; she knows her days are numbered.\nMarisa Tomei costars with you in the second episode. What was that like?\nIt was amazing to work with her; she’s someone whose work I admire. We had these incredibly dark, dramatic moments to play out that she brought so much depth to.\nI keep thinking/wondering what’s worse: life as a Handmaid or living in the Colonies?\nBeing forced to exist in either Gilead or the Colonies threatens to destroy a person’s soul in different ways. Handmaids are forced to follow an extremely limiting set of rules to comply with the mandates of the Gileadean regime, including the horrific monthly ceremony. Anyone in Gilead would be terrified to be sent to the Colonies. Everything from the soil the unwomen turn over to the water they use to wash is toxic in the Colonies, so a person’s health begins to rapidly deteriorate as soon as they get there. They know they will die there, all the while forced to do hard labor without decent food to eat or clean living conditions.\nWe are going to be seeing more of Eric McCormack on television next year. NBC has renewed the Will & Grace revival for a second season, and is extending it to eighteen episodes. Fewer people might be aware that Eric McCormack also stars in an excellent Canadian science fiction series called Travelers. The first two seasons were broadcast on Showcase and later shown on Netflix–although once I discovered this show I wound up downloading episodes rather than waiting for it to be available on Netflix.\nTravelers has been renewed for a third season, and McCormack will be directing the first episode. However, instead of airing first on Showcase, the show will be shown exclusively on Netflix. I wonder if this was a case of Netflix saving the show if Showcase was not going to continue it, or (I suspect more likely) Netflix has business reasons and the power to take it over.\nTravelers is technically a time travel show but the series takes place entirely in the present, with people from the future taking over the consciousness of people at the moments they were to have died. The characters must deal with not only their mission to save the earth , but also must deal with the personal lives of the bodies they take over. I won’t give specifics for those who have not seen it, but the second season ended with major changes for everyone, making fans eager to see a third season.\nThe Americans returns for its sixth and final season on March 28. FX has released the above official trailer.\nEarlier in the week I had this post regarding a social credit system in China which sounds like something out of Black Mirror. It is also reminiscent of Majority Rule, an episode of The Orville.\nStoring the contents of one’s brain provided for a fascinating story on Altered Carbon. A company is claiming that they can store the contents of your brain, but there is a huge catch.\nNathan Fillian is going play himself on an upcoming episode of American Housewife, and will be suiting up as Captain Malcolm Reynolds of Firefly.\nPosted in Science, Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Alexis Bledel, Altered Carbon, Black Mirror, Black Panther, China, Eric McCormack, Firefly, Jim Parsons, Martin Freeman, Nathan Fillion, Science Fiction, Sherlock, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Stephen Hawking, The 100, The Big Bang Theory, The Handmaid's Tale, The Orville, Travelers, Will and Grace. No Comments »\nAll We Hear About Is Trump, But The Resistance Is Winning (So Far)\nFebruary 22, 2017 — Ron Chusid\nIf you feel that all we hear about these days is Donald Trump, you are right. Due to a combination of factors including his breaks with conventional norms and his own use of social media, Donald Trump is dominating the news more than is usual for a newly-elected president. His impact on the media extends beyond the conventional news. Farhad Manjoo even found a way to measure this:\nConsider data from mediaQuant, a firm that measures “earned media,” which is all coverage that isn’t paid advertising. To calculate a dollar value of earned media, it first counts every mention of a particular brand or personality in just about any outlet, from blogs to Twitter to the evening news to The New York Times. Then it estimates how much the mentions would cost if someone were to pay for them as advertising.\nIn January, Mr. Trump broke mediaQuant’s records. In a single month, he received $817 million in coverage, higher than any single person has ever received in the four years that mediaQuant has been analyzing the media, according to Paul Senatori, the company’s chief analytics officer. For much of the past four years, Mr. Obama’s monthly earned media value hovered around $200 million to $500 million. The highest that Hillary Clinton got during the presidential campaign was $430 million, in July.\nIt’s not just that Mr. Trump’s coverage beats anyone else’s. He is now beating pretty much everyone else put together. Mr. Senatori recently added up the coverage value of 1,000 of the world’s best known figures, excluding Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump. The list includes Mrs. Clinton, who in January got $200 million in coverage, Tom Brady ($38 million), Kim Kardashian ($36 million), and Vladimir V. Putin ($30 million), all the way down to the 1,000th most-mentioned celebrity in mediaQuant’s database, the actress Madeleine Stowe ($1,001).\nThe coverage those 1,000 people garnered last month totaled $721 million. In other words, Mr. Trump gets about $100 million more in coverage than the next 1,000 famous people put together. And he is on track to match or beat his January record in February, according to Mr. Senatori’s preliminary figures.\nThis includes Trump dominating conversation beyond the news. He is everywhere on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Reddit. He comes up elsewhere:\nIt wasn’t just news. Mr. Trump’s presence looms over much more. There he is off in the wings of “The Bachelor” and even “The Big Bang Theory,” whose creator, Chuck Lorre, has taken to inserting anti-Trump messages in the closing credits. Want to watch an awards show? Say the Grammys or the Golden Globes? TrumpTrumpTrump. How about sports? Yeah, no. The president’s policies are an animating force in the N.B.A. He was the subtext of the Super Bowl: both the game and the commercials, and maybe even the halftime show.\nIt is impossible to ignore Trump. His impact has been seen in many areas already, but probably the most on immigration. This excites the haters on the right, and is met with appalled criticism from others. The New York Times is not exaggerating in writing, Mr. Trump’s ‘Deportation Force’ Prepares an Assault on American Values.\nProbably the most fearful narrative about Donald Trump is that he is an authoritarian, in Putin’s mold. There has been increased attention paid to George Orwell’s 1984 and other books about authoritarianism. Jonathan Chait has looked at these fears:\nThe prospect that President Trump will degrade or destroy American democracy is the most important question of the new political era. It has received important scholarly attention from two basic sources, which have approached it in importantly different fashions. Scholars of authoritarian regimes (principally Russia) have used their knowledge of authoritarian history to paint a road map by which Trump could Putinize this country. Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen, and other students of Putin’s methods have essentially treated Putinization as the likely future, and worked backward to the present. A second category of knowledge has come from scholars of democracy and authoritarianism, who have compared the strengths and weaknesses of the American system of government both to countries elsewhere that have succumbed to authoritarianism and those that have not. Their approach has, more appropriately, treated Trump’s authoritarian designs as an open question. Trump might launch an assault on the foundations of the republic. On the other hand, he might not.\nWhat are the signs of impending authoritarianism? Trump has rhetorically hyped violence, real or imaginary, committed by enemy groups, while downplaying or ignoring violence or threats from friendlier sources. He said nothing about a white-supremacist terror attack in Canada that killed six people before denouncing a knife attack a few days later by an Islamist radical in France that killed nobody. He quickly directed a government program on countering violent extremism to focus exclusively on Muslim radicalism and stop work halting white-supremacist terrorism. Just as he urged his campaign crowds to rough up protesters, he treated news that pro-Trump bikers would patrol his inauguration not as a threat to create chaos but as a welcome paramilitary force. “That’s like additional security with those guys, and they’re rough,” he gleefully told reporters. Trump’s rhetoric follows a pattern of politicizing violence, simultaneously justifying stringent government action against enemies he has designated while tacitly justifying vigilantism by extremists sympathetic to his cause.\nSince his election, Trump has obsessively fabricated a narrative in which he is the incarnate of the will of the people. According to his own concocted history, he won a historically large Electoral College victory, and would have also won the popular vote if not for millions of illegal votes. He has dismissed protesters against him as paid agents, denied the legitimacy of courts to overrule his actions, and, most recently, called mainstream media “enemies of the people.” This is an especially chilling phrase to hear from an American president. Totalitarian dictators like Stalin and Mao used designation of a political figure or a social class as an “enemy of the people” as a prelude to mass murder.\nFortunately, while Trump has done many undesirable things, the talk of the loss of American democracy remains only talk. Checks and balances on the presidency still work. We are seeing the start of a strong anti-Trump protest movement. While far too many liberals were willing to ignore Hillary Clinton’s extremist positions on American interventionism, with many even defending her positions on Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and ignore her views on restricting civil liberties which are nearly as far right as those of Donald Trump, the left (and others) are already forming a resistance against Trump. Chait notes that, at least for now, the resistance has the upper hand:\nIt is worth noting that, so far, normal political countermobilization seems to be working quite well. “The Resistance,” as anti-Trump activists have come to be known, has already rattled the once-complacent Republican majorities in Congress, which Trump needs to quash investigations of his corruption and opaque ties to Russia. Whatever pressure Trump has tried to apply to the news media has backfired spectacularly. His sneering contempt has inspired a wave of subscriptions that have driven new revenue to national media, which have blanketed the administration with independent coverage. Popular culture outlets, rather than responding to Trump’s election by tempering their mockery, have instead stepped it up, enraging the president.\nThe most plausible (to me) mechanism by which Trump might ensconce himself in power was laid out by Matthew Yglesias three months ago. The scenario Yglesias described would be one in which Trump used the authority of the federal government to compel large firms to give him political support. Companies that opposed him, or who even refused to offer support, might be punished with selectively punitive regulation, while those that played ball might be rewarded with lax enforcement of labor, antitrust, or other regulation.\nSo far there is no evidence such a scenario is playing out. To be sure, Trump is attempting, sporadically, to bully the private sector. But the effort has backfired. Firms whose leaders make favorable statements about the president have seen their stock get hammered. A long list of prominent CEOs has openly criticized Trump. The reason for this is obvious. Trump’s supporters may have disproportionate power in the Electoral College, but his opponents have disproportionate power in the marketplace. Firms cater in their advertising to the young, who overwhelming oppose Trump, rather than to the old, who strongly support him.\nIf Trump has a plan to crush his adversaries, he has not yet revealed it. His authoritarian rage thus far is mostly impotent, the president as angry Fox-News-watching grandfather screaming threats at his television that he never carries out. The danger to the republic may come later, or never. In the first month of Trump’s presidency, the resistance has the upper hand.\nPosted in Blogs & Social Media, Civil Liberties, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, News Media. Tags: Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Donald Trump, Facebook, George Orwell, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Libya, Syria, The Big Bang Theory, Twitter, Vladimir Putin. No Comments »\nSciFi Weekend: Timeless; Legion And Other Wednesday Genre Shows; Doctor Who; Renewal And Returning Show News; A Sci-Fi Explanation For Donald Trump; Oscar First Thoughts\nTimeless started out the season as an entertaining time travel series, even if not the most significant genre show on at present. As it approaches its season (and possibly series) finale, the show has gotten even better as the Rittenhouse backstory progressed, and the series moved on from its initial formula. Screenrant looked at Why Everyone Needs To Be Watching This Time Travel Show.\nTV Line spoke with producers Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan about Timeless:\nTVLINE | How would you preview the finale?\nSHAWN RYAN | I’m proud of the finale. It answers a ton of the questions that we’ve raised. We’ve had a pretty good plan from the beginning of the season. There are things that happen in the finale that we had plotted out in our first couple weeks in the writers’ room back in June. We’ve known for a while that we were going to make 16 episodes this season, so we were able to plan for that and build to this…\nTVLINE | The last episode left off on quite a cliffhanger, with Rufus in very dire straits. How that will play out in the finale?\nERIC KRIPKE | It’s not so much about whether Rufus will live or die, because — spoiler alert! — he lives. He’s one of our main characters and a popular one, and we’re not going to kill him. So as long as there’s a Timeless, Malcolm [Barrett] has a reasonable amount of job security. It’s more about the storyline that it leads to. Rufus is unable to pilot the lifeboat alone because he’s wounded, and so he needs some help, which comes from some unexpected places, and it kind of turns the story into a new direction, and then turns again.\nI think the show’s gotten better and better the more we’ve focused in on and doubled down on the characters. The thing I’m most proud about in the finale is that it’s really a character piece. So many finales, especially the genre shows, are just about people running around and fighting, and ours really digs down to the thematics and the character issues that our people have been facing all year. It’s a uniquely thoughtful and emotional finale, and I’m really proud of it because of that.\nTVLINE | How much did not knowing whether the show was renewed or not impact the finale and how you chose to end it?\nRYAN | It did not have a great impact. We had a story that we wanted to tell from the beginning. We’re moving forward optimistically. We think there will be a Season 2. I’ve been in a situation before on Last Resort, where it was clear as we were making Episodes 10 and 11 that the show wasn’t going to continue, and we chose at that point to write what was essentially a series finale for Episode 13 to give closure. I think there are a lot of reasons for optimism for a Season 2. We’ll find out in two or three months. We’ve always set out to tell this one-season story that then would provide a launching point for a Season 2, but that would answer a lot of things, and I think we did it. We didn’t have any conversations where we were pulling out ratings and trying to do the math. We’re just writers, and we told the best story we could. So we’ll let the chips fall where they may.\nKRIPKE | When you write these things, you plan for success. You just sort of have to, and whatever happens happens. But you write it as if the show’s coming back, because I think doing it any other way, you’re compromising the story you set out to tell.\nLegion remains one of the more intriguing shows of the last couple of years, and is already being compared to recent greats like Mr. Robot and West World. It deals with mental illness and an unreliable narrator as in Mr. Robot. While it might not be a major feature of the show after the premise is established, it handled time jumps far better than West World. While the themes are quite different, it also raises comparisons to Noah Hawley’s recent work on Fargo, in which Hawley adapted another universe in his own way. Uproxx interviewed Noah Hawley:\nWhen you first got the material, what was going in your head in terms of how you wanted this to look?\nWhen I sat down to write it, there was nothing specifically contemporary about it, but I don’t think I assumed it wasn’t a contemporary story. Then, I guess we talked about, since the movies jump from decade to decade, should we be in there somewhere? Then it just seemed to me like the subjectivity of the show gave us this opportunity to create a reality and I don’t know why, I just found myself drawn to these ’60s movies, British ’60s movies; Terence Stamp movies and Quadrophenia. There was a sense of the young punks and these are a band of outsiders and there is that sense of teenage rebellion that exists in this thing. In a modern day sense I think we’re over that and yet there’s something about that period in us that makes something familiar unfamiliar.\nIt started with just thinking like, “Well, let’s embrace the brutalist architecture and let’s not have any cars, because cars date something, so then if you’re in a reality without cars, where are you when you’re outdoors?” We shot on this University of British Columbia campus where there were no cars allowed. Then the hair and the costumes, this idea of the track suits that they’re in and all of that was a process of figuring out what it was and then the music plays into that as well. This idea, as I said to our composer Jeff Russo, that the show should sound like Dark Side of the Moon, so he went out and he bought the patch cord synthesizer they use in the show.\nIt is this mixture of visuals and the sound and music of it that’s trying to create something that’s not about information but that’s about experience.\nYeah. It’s almost a ‘60s vision of what the future would look like.\nRight. Some of the elements seem futuristic and some of them seem dated, but I wanted there to be a certain whimsy to it as well, and a playfulness. I always loved about that genre and genre in general was the pure inventiveness of it and the way like a science fiction story. The example I give is Battlestar Galactica, the remake. It’s the Cylons who have God. It takes God and it takes robots and it creates something completely new. It’s not something that you would do in a drama. It’s something you would only do in a genre and so what are the genre elements that will allow us to take a show that would work as a dramatic story, two people in love, trying to define themselves rather than being defined by society and it turns it into something that I hope every week there’s something that blows your mind a little…\nDavid alone has, in theory, an infinite number of powers. You get a bunch of these other characters with their own abilities that seem to, for the most part, be your own creations, so you can give them the powers to do whatever you want. What was that process like of figuring out, for instance, what Syd can do?\nFor me it was about creating characters and saying, what makes a tragic love story? A tragic love story is about people who want to be together but can’t be together for one reason. If they physically can’t touch then that creates this seemingly unleapable obstacle. Then it became about her having a power where she couldn’t be touched, and obviously I think there are characters in comic book lore who have different versions of, “If you touch me, something happens.” I took the creative license to say, “Well this is my version of that.” The danger with a character with a hundred issues of mythology is you’re always turning around and realizing you can’t do something because someone’s going to get mad or it’s going to conflict with what they know and it’s going to be confusing.\nIt just seemed more and more that I could take David and take this multiple personality disorder that he has in the comic and I could create a sort of metaphorical version of that, which is not to say we won’t ultimately realize that’s what he has, but it’s to say that that’s not what he’s diagnosed with in the show. Then to surround him with characters of my own invention so that I’m not hamstrung about what stories I can tell.\nThere has been a recent TV trend of unreliable narrators. How do you keep the audience from looking at the show as a puzzle to solve?\nYou have to solve the mystery. The narrator has to become reliable. It’s a lot to ask an audience to take a perpetually unsatisfying journey where it’s like you’re never going to know for sure. It’s another thing to say, “We’re going to take a character out of confusion into clarity and an audience out of mystery into clarity.” That’s the goal of it which is to say, there’s a contract and you watch that first hour and you like, “I don’t know. There’s a devil with yellow eyes and there are these other elements that I’m not sure what they mean, but I trust the filmmaker and I know that I’m going to understand it eventually.” You do. It becomes clear by the end of the first year what’s going on.\nBefore this era of peak TV, The 100 might have been the top genre show on of the night. Now it shares the night with Legion, The Magicians, The Expanse, and Arrow. The 100 really deserves more attention than I’ve been paying to it, but TV Line does have some comments on the revelations in Wednesday’s episode.\nSpoiler TV reviewed last week’s episode of The Magicians in the aftermath of Alice’s death.\nPlus information from the producers on Arrow here and here.\nVox has more on The Expanse.\nAlthough they have no inside information, and the decision probably won’t be made for several months, the odds makers seem to like Tilda Swinton as the favorite to replace Peter Capaldi on Doctor Who. Chris Chibnall will be making the actual decision, and says it will be made in the traditional way:\nWe’ll cast the role in the traditional way: write the script, then go and find the best person for that part in that script. You couldn’t go out and cast an abstract idea.”\nHe adds: “The creative possibilities are endless, but I have a very clear sense of what we’re going to do, without even knowing who’s going to play the part.”\nSteven Moffat says that Chibnall did try to convince Peter Capaldi to stay. He also says he does not plan to write further episodes of Doctor Who for a while after he leaves as show runner. He seems to have thrown all his ideas into Doctor Who the last several years, but perhaps he will come up with something new down the road.\nOdds are looking good that The Big Bang Theory will be renewed for two additional seasons.\nFox has renewed Lucifer for a third season.\nI gave up on Once Upon A Time a while back, and from the ratings it looks like many others have too. The producers are talking about wrapping up the current narrative at the end of season six, and possibly rebooting the show in a different direction for a seventh season.\nFox is considering a reboot of Firefly, but only if Joss Whedon is on board. That makes perfect sense. I question if there is any point in rebooting the show, as opposed to leaving it as a brief , but excellent, old series. I really see no point in having someone else do a reboot.\nNetflix has announced that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt returns on May 19.\nOutlander returns in September. The production is moving to South Africa, which might be a stand-in for Jamaica.\nGoliath has been renewed for a second season.\nThe Flash deals in multiple parallel universes, including the one in which Supergirl takes place. Screen Rant explains the most important Earths in the CW multiverse. This got me thinking after hearing Donald Trump’s comments on what appears to be an alternative Sweden…\nIt increasingly looks like the best explanation is that Donald Trump and his top aides have been replaced by their counterparts from an alternate universe in which there have been terrorist attacks in Bowling Green, Atlanta and Sweden. Also, in their universe, Barack Obama really was a Muslim born in Kenya, and scientists never did figure out the connection between human action and climate change. Presumably orange skin and that hair are also commonplace there too.\nI’m still racing to catch as many of the top Academy Award nominees as possible by next Sunday. Looking at the favorites, at this point I enjoyed La La Land and am okay with Emma Stone as Best Actress, but I would not pick it as Best Picture. Based upon what I’ve seen so far I’d go with Arrival, but not expecting a science fiction movie to win, I’d also pick Lion above La La Land. It would be a toss up with Manchester by the Sea, depending upon whether I want a more upbeat or downbeat movie. Casey Afflect is justifiably a strong contender for Best Actor.\nThis could change by next week. My immediate goal is to at try to get in Hidden Figures, Fences, and Moonlight before the awards.\nPosted in Donald Trump, Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Arrival, Arrow, Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who, Donald Trump, Emma Stone, Fargo, Firefly, Goliath, Joss Whedon, La La Land, Legion, Lucifer, Mr Robot, Noah Hawley, Once Upon A Time, Outlander, Peter Capaldi, Science Fiction, Steven Moffat, Supergirl, The 100, The Big Bang Theory, The Expanse, The Flash, The Magicians, Timeless, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Westworld. No Comments »\n« Older posts « Donald Trump Versus Freedom Of The Press\nTrump Continues To Receive Criticism For His Attacks On The News Media »","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1545241"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9326673150062561,"wiki_prob":0.9326673150062561,"text":"SMHS Home\nA biannual publication of the GW School of Medicine & Health Sciences\nHoming in on Health Equity\nEducational Series Sets Faculty Up for Success\nBy Katherine Dvorak\nHealth is commonly considered a fundamental human right. So is freedom from inequities due to differential access to quality care. That’s why health equity has been a key element of the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences’ (SMHS) strategic goals for many years. Now, a five-month series aims to further health equity education among educators and health care providers while also fostering a shared understanding of the issues.\n“We want to set people up for success and give them the tools to facilitate discussions on how we talk about race, power, and privilege in the classroom in a way that has both educators and students feeling safe and feeling included in the discussion,” says Maranda Ward, EdD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical research and leadership at SMHS, the creative mind behind the series.\nThe Department of Clinical Research and Leadership is sponsoring the five-month series, which began in September and will continue through January 2020.\nThe series, Ward says, will help attendees understand the importance of teaching about the social, environmental, and structural factors that threaten health equity; create inclusive policies and practices to address the challenges of health equity; and seek out equitable and sustainable institutional and community partnerships to advance health equity.\nThe idea for the series, Ward says, stemmed from a desire in the health sciences division of SMHS to create recommendations for faculty on addressing health equity in the classroom.\n“It’s not enough to create recommendations for the curriculum if the faculty and staff don’t feel comfortable and confident with these topics,” she says. “We want to make sure faculty are empowered to be proactive in these discussions.”\nWard says the series is open to the GW community and the public, and adds that the series is streamed through WebEx; sessions are archived online.\nTopics addressed include health disparities within and across important U.S. populations; root causes of health disparities in teaching and research; and how to talk about race, power, and privilege in the classroom.\n“We want to make sure faculty are empowered\nto be proactive in these discussions.”\n“I created an external review committee of professionals and they weighed in on priority areas,” Ward says about how the topics were chosen. “We knew that when we’re talking about disparities, we need to talk about key populations to ensure people have the data around disproportionate health outcomes in U.S. populations. We also knew it would be important to show faculty and staff how to facilitate these discussions. You can have all the data you want, but you have to be comfortable talking about these issues.\nSpeakers for the series include Ward; Abby Charles, MPH, senior program manager at the Institute for Public Health Innovation; Karey M. Sutton, PhD, director of the American Association of Medical Colleges Health Equity Research Workforce; and Howard Straker, EdD, MPH, PA-C, director of the PA/MPH program and assistant professor of physician assistant studies at SMHS.\nWard adds that the January session will be longer in order to have more hands-on activities and discussions, ensuring attendees are able to take what they learned and the resources offered and put them into practice.\nThat session will also include “voice equity,” Ward says, through a panel discussion featuring community members who will talk about the work they are conducting related to health equity and projects happening on the ground where they live.\n“Community partnerships are extremely important when it comes to health equity,” she says. “There are a lot of ways to talk about academic community partnerships. You can’t do this alone.”\nHer goal for the series is for SMHS faculty to have a “renewed sense of urgency around understanding why this is important and having the agency and capacity to act, and enact change.”\nFall 2019, Features\nMedicine + Health is a publication of the SMHS Office of Communications & Marketing\nEmail: smhsnews@gwu.edu\n© Copyright 2010- | All Rights Reserved","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line965669"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8464334607124329,"wiki_prob":0.8464334607124329,"text":"Wikipedia Summary\nPortrait of horror fiction writer, Howard P. Lovecraft, 1915The Lovecraft Monument\n(1890-08-20)August 20, 1890\nProvidence, Rhode Island, USA\nMarch 15, 1937(1937-03-15) (aged 46)\nSwan Point Cemetery, Providence, Rhode Island\nLewis Theobald\nHumphrey Littlewit\nWard Phillips\nEdward Softly\nShort-story writer, editor, novelist, poet\nDark, Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, Science fiction, Weird\nLiterary movement\nCosmicism\nSonia Greene (1924–1926)\nNow all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large. To me there is nothing but puerility in a tale in which the human form—and the local human passions and conditions and standards—are depicted as native to other worlds or other universes. To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all. Only the human scenes and characters must have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, (not catch-penny romanticism) but when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.\nH. P. Lovecraft Letter to Farnsworth Wrigth (July 27, 1927), in Selected Letters 1925–1929 (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1968), p.150.\nHoward Phillips Lovecraft was born at 9 a.m. on August 20, 1890, at his family home at 454 (then numbered 194) Angell Street in Providence, Rhode Island.\nHis parents were Winfield Scott Lovecraft, a traveling salesman for Gorham Manufacturing Company, a large silver-plate and sterling company and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft whose eccentric and sheltering behavior likely profoundly contributed to Lovecraft’s shut-in nature in adulthood. When Lovecraft was three his father had a mental break in a hotel room in Chicago of which the cause is not certain but evidence suggests that it was paresis, a form of neurosyphilis. He was brought back to Butler Hospital, where he remained paralyzed and comatose for five years before dying on July 19, 1898. Lovecraft’s early childhood despite showing profound intelligence (reciting poetry at age two, reading at age three, and writing at age six or seven) was marred by frequent sickness and was withdrawn from school after attending for only a year due to illness. He was raised by his mother his, two aunts and his grandfather – businessman and industrialist Whipple Van Buren Phillips.\nAt the encouragement of his grandfather he consumed many classic tales such as Arabian Nights, which he read by the age of five; it was then that he adapted the pseudonym of “Abdul Alhazred, The Mad Arab” who later became the author of the cursed Necronomicon. His interests in the Arabian were discarded in favor of the Greek mythology, gleaned through Bulfinch’s Age of Fable and children's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey.\nThe earliest known work “The Poem of Ulysses” (1897), is a paraphrase of the Odyssey in 88 lines of internally rhyming verse. His grandfather fostered and interest in the weird and gothic, by entertaining Lovecraft with off-the-cuff weird tales in the Gothic mode. Due to his physical and perhaps mental illness Lovecraft spent much of his time alone reading and learning independent of a formal education. By eight he had discovered science, first chemistry, then astronomy.\nHe began to compiling journals that contained scientific articles made by using gelatin and special ink to copy the original namely, The Scientific Gazette (1899–1907) and The Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy (1903–07), which were distributed amongst his friends. When he was finally able to enter high school he developed several long-lasting friendships with boys of his age and made his first appearance in print in 1906, when he wrote a letter on an astronomical matter to The Providence Sunday Journal. He began writing columns for several papers.\nIn 1904 his grandfather died, and mismanagement of his estate left his family in a poor financial situation, and they were forced to move into much smaller accommodations from their lavish and comfortable Victorian home. Losing his home was incredibly hard on the sheltered adolescent Lovecraft and apparently contemplated suicide.\nIn 1908 just before his graduation from high school, he suffered a nervous breakdown that forced him to leave school without graduating and blocked his acceptance to Brown University. Not achieving his goals in education were sources of great shame to Lovecraft in later years, although he was thought to be a formidable autodidact.\nFrom 1908 to 1913 Lovecraft falls disappears from history, mostly pursuing his interests in astronomy and poetry. During this period and due to the cramped and isolated nature of his living circumstance he unhealthily close relationship with his mother, who was still suffering from the trauma of her husband’s illness and death, and who developed a pathological love-hate relationship with her son.\nLovecraft broke his silence in a 1300 word letter in the Argosy mocking the pulp writer Fred Jackson whose love stories were intermingled with the weird tales and science fiction:\nTo such as these are the fictions of Jackson well suited; but these, methinks, are not the average readers of The Argosy. The latter prefer, I am sure, a sprightlier sort of story, where acts of valor are more dwelt upon than affairs of Venus. For mine own part, I have ever preferred the Aeneid of Virgil to the Ars Amatoria of Ovid. Apart from the mere choice of subject, let me venture to describe the Jacksonine type as trivial, effeminate, and, in places, wane. The author remarks the costumes of his heroines with the minute attention of a mantua-maker and describes the furnishings and decorations of their apartments like a housewife or chamber-maids\nHP Lovecraft The Argosy\nReaders and fans of Fred Jackson were incensed and responded in kind:\nIf he would use a few less adjectives and more words which the general public arc familiar with than labyrinthine, laureled, luminary, lucubration, and many others… I get sore at people like H. P. L. I will pay his fifteen cents a month if he will quit reading Argosy. Jackson is great… I am a cow-puncher, and certainly would like to loosen up my .44-six on that man Lovecraft. Yours for luck. Excuse pencil, as ink is scarce at the Bijou Ranch.\nArgosy Reader The Argosy\nLovecraft retaliated with a poem mocking Jackson and his fans:\nWhat vig'rous protests now assail my eyes?\nSee Jackson's satellites in anger rise!\nHis ardent readers, steep'd in tales of love,\nSincere devotion to their leader prove;\nIn brave defense of sickly gallantry,\nThey damn the critic and beleaguer me…\nScrawl on, sweet Jackson, raise the lover's leer;\n'Tis plain you please the fallen public ear.\nAs once, in Charles the Second's vulgar age,\nGross Wycherly and Dryden soil' d the stage,\nSo now again erotic themes prevail,\nHowever loud the sterner souls bewail…\nThe debate continued with Lovecraft responding primarily in mocking heroic couplets. Lovecraft was noticed by Edward F. Daas who was president of the United Amatuer\nEdward F. Daas, President of the United Amateur Press Association (UAPA), a group of mostly amateur writers from around the country who wrote and published pulp magazines. Edward Daas invited Lovecraft to join the UAPA, and Lovecraft did so in early 1914.\nLater Lovecraft became President and Official Editor of the UAPA, and served briefly as President of the rival Nation Amateur Press Association (NAPA). According to a quote by Lovecraft being offered membership to the UAPA may have been the only thing that prevented his disappearance from a public eye:\n\"In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateurdom was first extended to me, I was a close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be ... With the advent of the United I obtained a renewal to live; a renewed sense of existence as other than a superfluous weight; and found a sphere in which I could feel that my efforts were not wholly futile. For the first time I could imagine that my clumsy gropings after art were a little more then faint cries lost in the unlistening world.\"\nIt was in the amateur world that Lovecraft began writing after abandoning fiction writing in 1908. Lovecraft published thirteen issues of his own paper, The Conservative (1915–23), as well as contributing poetry and essays to many other journals. W. Paul Cook and others, noting the promise shown in such early tales as \"The Beast in the Cave \" (1905) and \"The Alchemist\" (1908), urged Lovecraft pen fiction again, which resulted in the writing \"The Tomb\" and \"Dagon\" in quick succession in the summer of 1917.\nThe one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.\nH. P. Lovecraft Supernatural Horror in Literature, November 1925\nJoshi, S. T. (1996). A Subtler Magick: The Writings and Philosophy of H. P. Lovecraft. Borgo Press. pp. 22, 41–42, 76–77, 107–108, 162, 229, 230. ISBN 1-880448-61-0.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line87973"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7455308437347412,"wiki_prob":0.2544691562652588,"text":"According to a study conducted by the BBC, the standard IQ test neglects to take into consideration multiple other aspects of intelligence, rendering it inaccurate and biased.\nThe seven individuals selected for the study.\nPhoto courtesy of BBC.\nThe experiment selected seven individuals, all outstanding in their respective fields of expertise, and put them through a series of ‘intelligence’ tests. Apart from the IQ-type tests, which produced predictable results, creativity was also assessed by using a test developed in the 60s: “Name as many uses as you can for a sock in 10 minutes.”\nThe results saw the creatives, which included dramatist/critic Bonnie Greer, doing comparatively well. For the subsequent test on creativity through visual idea, the dramatist came out on top. And when it came to measuring flexibility and all-round intelligence, she tied with quantum physicist Seth Lloyd.\nSo what exactly sets dramatists like Bonnie ahead of the pack? Well, we know Speech and Drama lessons have their fair share of benefits, but how do they actually improve one’s intelligence?\nDivergent thinking and creativity\nThe ‘alternative uses’ test is a measure of divergent thinking and values one’s ability to tap on their creativity, originality, and practicality. Robert Sternberg, from Tufts University, Boston, maintains that creativity is an essential aspect of one’s IQ. He says, “Creativity was a tool for the high flyers – the Einsteins, the Darwins, the Newtons. But now the world has changed so much that creativity is now a vital part of intelligence for everyone.”\nIn Speech and Drama lessons, students practice divergent thinking in their encounters of the portrayal of life from different viewpoints, and are encouraged to generate and explore the many possible resolutions to the material that is covered, thereby expanding their worldview.\nFluency and expressive ability\nCreative drama also improves a child’s ability to communicate and express themselves. Through regular discussions, writing scripts, and performing, children are able to become more fluent, learn how to communicate effectively, and build up their vocabulary in a welcoming environment.\nFurthermore, through articulation and enunciation practices, they are groomed to craft more eloquent and creative responses, and learn to engage audiences in a natural manner.\nWhen it came to the emotional intelligence portion of the test, the study saw Bonnie doing comparatively well understanding the emotions of others.\nEmotional intelligence can be said to cover five main areas: self-awareness, emotional control, self-motivation, empathy, interpersonal skills. Skills such as these developed in our formative years often provide the foundation for future habits later on in life, and will benefit children not just academically but holistically too.\nDrama is an excellent catalyst for the development of a child’s EQ, or emotional intelligence. Through speech and drama lessons, students become more dialed in to the emotional signals of others, which in turn strengthens their ability to connect better in relationships.\nAll these invaluable skills are within reach with both English and Chinese Speech and Drama courses at your child’s disposal, at Crestar Learning Centre and the Chinese Bridge Language School respectively.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line348254"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8478049635887146,"wiki_prob":0.8478049635887146,"text":"and On-line Now!\nBrian Price is an award-winning screenwriter who has worked with major studios, television networks, and independent film producers from around the world. As an instructor, he has taught screenwriting at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Brooks Institute, among others, and is a proud member of the prestigious UCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television screenwriting faculty.\nSince we first arrived on the planet, we’ve been telling each other stories, whether of that morning’s great saber-toothed tiger hunt or the latest installment of the Star Wars saga. And throughout our history, despite differences of geography or culture, we’ve been telling those stories in essentially the same way.\nBecause there is a RIGHT way to tell a story, one built into our very DNA.\nIn his seminal work Poetics, Aristotle identified the patterns and recurring elements that existed in the successful dramas of his time as he explored precisely why we tell stories, what makes a good one, and how to best tell them.\nIn Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting, Brian Price examines Aristotle’s conclusions in an entertaining and accessible way and then applies those guiding principles to the most modern of storytelling mediums, going from idea to story to structure to outline to final pages and beyond, covering every relevant screenwriting topic along the way.\nThe result is a fresh new approach to the craft of screenwriting—one that’s only been around a scant 2,500 years or so—ideal for students and aspiring screenwriters that want a comprehensive step-by-step guide to writing a successful screenplay the way the pros do it.\n\"The insights in this volume could be provided only by an author like Brian Price, himself an experienced creator of narratives and a respected writing educator. In accessible language he explains why, millennia after his death, for contemporary dramatic writers Aristotle is more relevant than ever. Here is no pie-in-the-sky philosophical preaching but a hands-on guide to buttress storytelling craft for writers both new and experienced.\"\nRICHARD WALTER, Associate Dean\nUCLA School of Theatre, Film, and Television\nBrian's Blog\nFor speaking engagements and media inquiries, please contact Brian:\nbrianpricescreenwriting@gmail.com\n© 2018 by Brian Price created with Wix.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line41316"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9790117740631104,"wiki_prob":0.9790117740631104,"text":"Court Orders City Officials To Find Funds To Keep Schools Open\nBy Susan G. Foster\nAt the urging of the Massachusetts Board of Education and the local teachers' union, a state Superior Court judge has issued an injunction that forces school and town officials find enough money to keep the Lynn Public Schools open for a full 180-day year as required by law.\nThe action came this month after officials of the 12,000-student system outside of Boston warned state education officials that they did not have enough money to meet their payroll through the end of the school year. They asked permission to end3the year early, the first district in Massachusetts to make such a request in three years.\nAs of late last week, however, it was uncertain whether the city's mayor, who also serves as chairman of the Lynn School Committee, would seek a loan enabling the district to resolve temporarily its financial problems.\nTerry Zoulas, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Education, said Lynn officials filed an appeal immediatly after Judge Peter F. Brady issued the injunction on May 17. That appeal, he said was denied. The court's action compels city officials to seek either a short-term loan or an advance on next year's state-aid payment, according to Mr. Zoulas.\n$2.6 Million Needed\nLynn school officials notified the state department of education earlier this month that as of last Friday the district would not be able to meet its payroll obligations and requested permission to close the schools early. District officials said they would need an additional $2.6 million to keep the schools open until June 22, their scheduled closing date.\nThe state board denied the school district's requests and then asked the state attorney general to seek an injunction that would require the 12,000-student system to continue operating.\nIn a separate action, the Lynn Teachers Union also filed suit, charging that the district's attempt to close the schools before meeting the terms of the state's compulsory attendance law would violate the teachers' contract.\nProposition 2 Cited\nLynn school officials contend that the district's financial problems are directly related to the spending limitations placed on the state's cities and towns by the enactment of Proposition 2 in 1980. That law placed restrictions on the amount of revenue that could be raised through property taxes and at the same time stripped local school committees of their authority to levy taxes and establish their own budgets.\nA Shrinking Budget\nIn 1981, former Mayor Kevin White threatened to close the Boston Public Schools for financial reasons, forcing the state to take legal action similar to that in the Lynn case, according to a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Education.\nPrior to the enactment of Proposition 2, the Lynn school district's budget was about $29 million, acel5lcording to George F. Laubner, superintendent of schools. Since then, the school has had to operate on a budget of $24.2 million, he said, and the city council has approved a level-funded budget for the next school year.\n\"The school committee feels that is inadequate to meet the needs of the children in the city,\" said Mr. Laubner.\nState officials have acknowledged the problems facing many school districts because of Proposition 2, but they also noted that the situation in Lynn is the result of a number of factors.\nLocal Politics A Factor\nAccording to Mr. Zoulas, the school district's problems are the result of a conflict between the school committee and the city council over spending, the city's failure to raise local property assessments to 100 percent to raise tax revenue, and generally poor management on both sides.\n\"It's not a case of the state not fulfilling its obligation, but a town not providing adequately for the schools,\" Mr. Zoulas said. \"They have a lot of problems that are not just limited to keeping the schools open,\" he added.\nOf the school district's $24.2 million operating budget, according to state and local school officials, about $19 million comes from the state and only about $5 million is provided through local property taxes.\nIn an interview conducted prior to the court's order, Mayor Antonio Marino charged the school committee with \"deliberately overspending\" its budget and said that he was reluctant to take a $2.6-million loan because it would set \"a bad precedent.\"\n\"I can't borrow money in violation of the law,\" he said. \"I cannot do that in good conscience; every department in the city would overspend and that would circumvent the law.\"\n\"Borrowing doesn't get you out of this mess,\" the mayor added. \"You still have it next year.\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line938166"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9500819444656372,"wiki_prob":0.9500819444656372,"text":"Udall: Dems will need to ‘blow it’ to lose New Mexico in ’20\nby: RUSSELL CONTRERAS Associated Press\nPosted: Oct 8, 2019 / 12:41 PM CDT / Updated: Oct 8, 2019 / 12:41 PM CDT\nU.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, left, pins replacement medals to All Pueblo Council of Governors Chairman Edward Paul Torres during a special ceremony at Isleta Pueblo, N.M., Friday, Oct. 4, 2019. Sen. Udall presented the medals to Torres and former Isleta Tribal councilman Diego Lujan, not seen, both veterans of the Vietnam War, after he found out the men were never presented with their earned military medals. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras)\nISLETA PUEBLO, N.M. (AP) — Democrats would have to “really blow it” to lose New Mexico, the nation’s most Hispanic state, to President Donald Trump in 2020, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said.\nIn an interview with The Associated Press last week, the state’s senior senator said Democrats still have a strong advantaged over Republicans in New Mexico next year’s general election. But he said the GOP is expected to work hard to try to capture the state and that Democrats must not be complacent.\n“When we have a nominee, that nominee will need to have a strong and robust ground game and get-out-the-vote operation in New Mexico,” said Udall, who has not endorsed a Democratic candidate. “The nominee will need to spend time in the state and not take it for granted.”\nLast month, Trump visited Rio Rancho, New Mexico, and vowed to win the state in the presidential election.\n“You all look much better than you did three years ago. … You’re doing better than any other state,” Trump told a cheering crowd, taking credit for the state’s oil boom. “How do I lose New Mexico?”\nTrump lost New Mexico to Democrat Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points in 2016. However, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, as a Libertarian, captured more than 9% of the state’s vote — giving Republicans hope they may be able to flip the traditionally Democratic state in 2020.\nRepublicans have not won New Mexico since 2004, when President George W. Bush prevailed over Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.\nNearly half of New Mexico’s 2.1 million residents identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino — the highest ratio in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.\nFormer Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican who soundly defeated Democrats in two elections, said she believes the president could carry the state in 2020.\nMartinez has urged Republicans to campaign in areas with large populations of Hispanic and Native American moderate voters.\n“It’s very clear to me that the president can win New Mexico but he’s got to go places where Republicans usually don’t go,” Martinez told Fox News days after Trump’s visit to the state.\nFollow Russell Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras\nMore Your Local Election HQ Stories\nby Kaley Green / Jan 16, 2020\nAMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — The United States Mexico Canada (USMCA) trade deal passed in the Senate on Thursday morning.\nThis comes on the heels of Wednesday's hard-fought Phase One trade agreement with China.\nWATCH LIVE: House transfers articles of impeachment to Senate\nWASHINGTON (WFLA) – The U.S. House is set to vote Wednesday to send the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate for a trial.\nThe vote comes after a month-long standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) over the articles. The House voted to impeach President Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December. After the vote, Pelosi said she wouldn’t send the articles to the Senate until McConnell ensured there would be a fair trial.\nMichael Bloomberg announces plans to hire more than 100 Texas organizers by end of the month","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line83532"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7159525752067566,"wiki_prob":0.7159525752067566,"text":"Call for Nominations for CJFE International Press Freedom Awards\nIn dozens of countries around the world, journalists regularly face obstacles in order to get the news out. Whether the threats be judicial, physical or otherwise, these dedicated and principled individuals continue to work tirelessly - often risking their lives - so that the news media remain free. In recognition of their courage and determination, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) bestows two International Press Freedom Awards every year. In 2000, CJFE honoured journalists from Colombia and Iran. The winner of the award will be a journalist/media outlet who/that: * reports on human rights issues or other issues, or from regions or countries, not often covered by other media; * demonstrates a commitment to human rights by reporting without bias, sexism, racism, etc.; * has not won a major press freedom award from another organization; * will benefit from international exposure due to the difficulty/threats caused by their work; * has overcome enormous odds simply to produce the news; * and has taken personal risks or suffered physical reprisals for working as a journalist When making a nomination, please send biographical information on the journalist/media outlet, along with samples of the nominee's work and contact details. Each award consists of a framed plaque and cash prize of CDN$2,000. They will be presented to the winner at a ceremony in Toronto on 8 November 2001. Submissions must reach CJFE by 31 July 2001 For further information or to submit a nomination, please contact David Cozac at CJFE, 489 College Street, Suite 403, Toronto, Ontario M6G 1A5 Canada, tel: +1 416 515 9622, fax: +1 416 515 7879, e-mail: cozac@cjfe.org.\nJournalism Fellowship Gala media releases type-media_releases","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line463242"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5323406457901001,"wiki_prob":0.4676593542098999,"text":"Thread: !!!!!!! PORTUGAL !!!!!!!\njoseelias\nRe: !!!!!!! PORTUGAL !!!!!!!\n“us Celts get a little aggressive at times”\nMan, who doesn’t?… The Portuguese performed probably one of the most violent acts of mankind history in a worldwide scale… Intercontinental slave trade at a massive scale…\nBut that does not mean a nation is bad. Sometimes mistakes are made to learn with them…\nAbout the media I believe that the British (not only them) are hostage of bad information and especially misinformation – although I’m completely republican I think it’s a disgrace what happens around the royal family with all the paparazzi…\nAnd that’s a pity because when people abuse freedom of speech the first step it’s taken to reduce the liberty of the people, as those wishing to control information will have an argument to do it and the support of the majority… But this is a long discussion not very suitable to TE forums too…\nBut again regarding football, I believe you should be supporting Portugal… It’s better to be beaten by a world champion than by a looser team… :-)\nIn Portugal when, we are beaten by someone who became champion, we look at it as fate, as the “fado”. That team was meant to be champion in that moment and nothing could have stopped it so we had bad luck crossing it.\nHerve,\nUnfortunately I could not see the Brazil-France game as the transmission of the world cup is being dominated by the “pay-tv mafia” and only some games are shown on open channel… :-(((\nBut the emotion the few minutes of the penalty kicks has, beats any emotion a game with only one goal can give… ;-)\nFigo, Deco, Ronaldo and Pauleta (is this name familiar to you?…) will teach the Bleus what a football game is all about… But at the end, may the best… Portuguese team win!\nSend a private message to joseelias\nFind all posts by joseelias","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line723477"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.63107830286026,"wiki_prob":0.36892169713974,"text":"'Furo' run extended through July 12\nIn Furo, a pair of dancers performs against the backdrop of a video installation set in a Japanese bathhouse.\nBy JERUSALEM POST STAFF\nBy popular demand, Furo, the dance-video event created by Japanese video artist Tabaimo and choreographer Ohad Naharin, will continue to run at the purpose-built Furo pavilion at the Tel Aviv port through July 12. In Furo, a pair of dancers performs against the backdrop of a video installation set in a Japanese bathhouse. This repeats every 45 minutes with a new pair of dancers each time. What makes this different is that audience members are invited to come and go at will during the performances. The performers are members of Batsheva Dance and Batsheva ensemble. To date, some 10,000 people have seen the show which was supposed to close June 30.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1293899"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.500945508480072,"wiki_prob":0.500945508480072,"text":"HomeTV ShowsThe BacheloretteHannah Brown Searches For Love on The Bachelorette Beginning May 15\nHannah Brown Searches For Love on The Bachelorette Beginning May 15\n03/13/2019 mj santilli The Bachelorette 1\nAt the end of last night’s dramatic season finale of The Bachelor, host Chris Harrison announced that the contestant who would star in the 15th milestone season of The Bachelorette would be Hannah Brown. After the big introduction, Hannah met a few of her suitors and even (awkwardly!) handed out a rose to one of them. The Bachelorette premieres early this year–on Monday May 13.\nCheck out all the details of The Bachelor’s surprise conclusion in our recap.\nThe Bachelor Season 23 Finale Part 2 Recap and Live Blog\nSidenote: Will there or won’t there be an American Idol finale on Monday May 20? A one hour edition of Bachelorette followed by the two hour finale at 9?\nHannah Brown caught the eye of Colton Underwood early on during the 23rd season of The Bachelor, showing him and all of America what Alabama Hannah is made of – a fun country girl who is unapologetically herself.\nAfter meeting Colton’s family in Denver, Hannah was left shocked when he unexpectedly ended their relationship that same evening. Returning home gave Hannah the time to reflect and heal from her breakup, gaining an understanding of her desire to be deeply loved.\nNow, with a newfound sense of self and a little southern charm, she is readier than ever to find her true love, when she stars in the milestone 15th season of The Bachelorette, premiering Monday May 13 (8:00-10:01 p.m. EDT), on the ABC network.\nBorn and raised in Tuscaloosa, Hannah, 24, attended the University of Alabama, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in communications. She went on to become Miss Alabama USA in 2018 and used her platform to help others. Hannah became an advocate for those suffering from depression and anxiety, something she battled with during her teenage years.\nNow working as an interior decorator, Hannah enjoys helping transform people’s houses into homes. Having grown up in a loving home of her own, Hannah looks up to her parents as an example of the kind of love she wants one day. Whether she is running around with her two golden retrievers, taking over the dance floor or belting out country tunes, Hannah enjoys living life to the fullest. All that is missing is someone who will choose her every single day.\nAdditionally, viewers will celebrate 15 seasons of romance with Chris Harrison as he hits the road with Bachelor Nation super fans, revisiting some of the most memorable dates and unforgettable moments from The Bachelorette history, leading to a Bachelorette reunion like no other with special surprises along the way, on Bachelorette Reunion: The Biggest Bachelorette Reunion in Bachelor History Ever! a two-hour special airing MONDAY, MAY 6 (8:00-10:01 p.m. EDT).\nThe Bachelor Season 23 After the Final Rose Results and Live Blog\nBillboard Update – Chart Date 03/16/19","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line484637"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7789681553840637,"wiki_prob":0.7789681553840637,"text":"No Morality, No Government\nI received this in my email and thought it worth sharing in the wake of our Fourth of July service and celebrations.\nFrom recent reporting by Todd Starnes of FOX News:\nSen. Sanders deemed Vought unsuitable for office because he [Vought] believes that salvation is found alone through Jesus Christ. He [Sanders] said someone with that kind of a religious belief system is 'really not someone who this country is supposed to be about.'\nBernie Sanders doesn't have a clue of what he's talking about. Thankfully, other Senators rebutted their colleague from Vermont:\nSen. James Lankford warned that Sander's comments [come] 'dangerously close to crossing a clear constitutional line for how we evaluate qualifications for public service.'\n'The First Amendment is crystal clear that the federal government must protect every American's right to the peaceful and free exercise of religion,\" the Oklahoma Republican said. 'We cannot say we have the free exercise of religion and also require people to practice their faith only in a way that government officials prefer.'\nFrom 1775 to 1797, George Washington served as the chief military and political leader of the new United States of America. Celebrated as the \"Father of his Country,\" Washington stated in his Farewell Address of September 19, 1796:\n\"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity. Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness-these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens.\"\nWashington cautioned that the \"one who labors to subvert a public role for religion and morality cannot call himself a patriot.\" * Bernie Sanders' recent statements certainly fit Washington's warning.\nJohn Adams, our second President, amplified Washington's tenet: \"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.\"\nThe carcinogenic of Secularism - Christianity's chief competitor - thrives in the absence of instruction about America's Godly heritage. Secularism metastasized in America when the U.S. Supreme Court removed prayer and the Bible from public schools in 1962-1963; likely the most spiritually destructive event in the nation's history.**\nLeftist Bernie Sanders advanced a European-style socialistic platform in his campaign for president in 2016. Government-run healthcare, higher taxes, ubiquitous government interference and regulation, open borders, and a cradle-to-the-grave Welfare state: That is Sander's vision.\nAs to America's heritage, he would be well served to peek at the 13 original State Constitutions before he makes a complete idiot of himself.\nPastors and Christian leaders were instrumental in the founding of America:\nPlymouth, Massachusetts, Pilgrims' Pastor Rev. John Robinson\nProvidence, Rhode Island, Rev. Roger Williams\nBarnstable, Massachusetts, Rev. John Lothropp\nExeter, New Hampshire, Rev. John Wheelwright\nBoston, Massachusetts, Rev. John Cotton\nHartford, Connecticut, Rev. Thomas Hooker\nAdd signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States:\nJohn Witherspoon was a Presbyterian pastor.\nHugh Williamson had been a pastor earlier in his career, before becoming a doctor.\nRobert Treat Paine served as a military chaplain.\nLyman Hall was a minister prior to the Revolutionary War.\nFrancis Hopkinson was a church music director and edited a famous American hymnbook.\nRoger Sherman, wrote the doctrinal creed for his denomination in Connecticut.\nBenjamin Rush, pioneered Sunday School in the United States and founded the country's first Bible Society.\nJames Wilson, trained as a clergyman in Scotland, became an attorney who taught students the Biblical basis of civil law.\nAdd more pastors to the first Congress:\nFrederick Muhlenberg was a Lutheran pastor elected the first U.S. Speaker of the House. He was the first signer on the Bill of Rights.\nJohn Peter Muhlenberg was a Lutheran pastor, who became a General, and then U.S. House and Senate member.\nIn 1784, 1785, and 1787, Congress passed the \"Northwest Ordinances\" - drafted by Thomas Jefferson. The purpose of the legislation was to arrange a method by which new states would be admitted to the Union. Three to five states could be carved from the \"Northwest\" territory, which eventually broke into five states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.\nPart of the legislation read, \"No person, demeaning [conducting] himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested [harassed] on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments.\"\nOf particular interest is Article Three of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, \"Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.\"\nA generation later, April 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and political scientist, set sail with Gustave de Beaumont for the United States, to study America. \"From Sing-Sing Prison to the Michigan woods, from New Orleans to the White House, Tocqueville and Beaumont traveled for nine months by steamboat, by stagecoach, on horseback and in canoes.\" ***\nAs a result of de Tocqueville's observation, he published his two-volume work, Democracy in America, in 1835 and 1840. What do you suppose immediately caught the attention of the Frenchman?\n\"Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America, I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.\n\"[Religion in America] must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion - for who can search the human heart? - But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions\".\nSecularists, like Bernie Sanders, don't have a clue as to the Christian history of America. They have usurped the culture and now loom large over Big Business, public education, universities, government, Hollywood, arts and entertainment, and TV executives and media: i.e., the cultural mountains of influence.\nThere is good news in America. Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to head toward the public square. Hold onto to your seat because it's going to be a bumpy ride, for somebody's values are going to reign supreme.\nAmerican Renewal Project\n* Daniel L. Dreisbach, Reading The Bible with the Founding Fathers\n** goo.gl/Wf49bV. Also, consider that the lone dissenter, Justice Potter Stewart, said this in 1963, \"It [the Abington School District v. Schempp ruling] led not to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.\"\nhttp://www.history.com/topics/alexis-de-tocqueville/print","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1266881"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6565365791320801,"wiki_prob":0.6565365791320801,"text":"This is Fungal Disease Awareness Week. Not making this up.\nWhy does the CDC want us to 'Think Fungus'?\nMurat Can Kalem, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York\nAfter last week's excitement over Septembr 19th's \"Talk Like a Pirate\nDay, now this...and for an entire week!\nWhen people think of infectious microbes, they typically think of bacteria and virus. There is, however, another enormous group of organisms that can affect our health: fungi.\nIt is estimated that there are 5.1 million species of fungi on Earth, from the mushrooms that we eat to the microscopic fungi that can infect us.\nMost fungi are found in the environment – soil, trees, air and water – and they are all around us. Only a small subset of the 5.1 million – some 300 species - pose a health threat and are capable of causing serious life-threatening infections. What makes these disease-causing species so special? How do these fungi impact our health?\nThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated the week of Sept. 23-27 as Fungal Disease Awareness Week to boost the public’s understanding of how these microscopic organism can make humans sick. CDC handles between three and five fungal outbreaks per year. This number was between one and two in 1990s. This increase in overall number of outbreaks is alarming.\nHow does fungi infect us?\nFungi are all around us and people are infected when they inhale the microscopic fungi, fungal spores or through direct contact.\nSometimes the exposure to fungi is through contaminated products. That happened in the 2012 outbreak when more than 13,534 people were exposed to methylprednisolone (an anti-inflammatory drug), which was contaminated with a fungus called Exserohilum rostratum that typically infects plants but not humans. In this outbreak, 753 cases of contaminated-product related fungal infections were reported and 61 people died.\nFungal outbreaks caused by understudied species are notably challenging because diagnostic tools and treatment options are insufficient.\nFungi are neglected\nI am a microbiologist and am interested in fungi because fungal infections are becoming more common and are historically neglected.\nI study a fungus species called Cryptococcus neoformans, and aim to unravel its molecular and cellular biology to better understand how it causes infections. It is one of the most devastating HIV/AIDS-related fungus, and especially was at the time of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.\nPeople with weakened immune systems or those affected by conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and organ transplantation are the populations most vulnerable to fungal infections in general.\nThe Cryptococcus infection presents as lung disease with nonspecific flu-like symptoms, such as fever, cough and chest pain. Cryptococcus can travel from the lungs to the brain and can cause Cryptococcal meningitis, and can be lethal if left untreated. Cryptococcus is in the environment and people are often infected by inhaling the fungi and the fungal spores. In fact, majority of the urban population is already infected with Cryptococcus.\nWith the development of therapies to fight HIV, the occurrence of AIDS-related fungal infections has decreased. But Cryptococcus is still a threat for organ transplant recipients and other vulnerable groups, and early diagnosis saves lives. Not to mention there are still 36.9 million people living with HIV worldwide, and cryptococcal meningitis is still one of the leading cause of death among the HIV/AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa.\nThe number of fungal outbreaks are on the rise\nIn 2017, there was an unexpected outbreak of an infection called blastomycosis in the metropolitan area surrounding Albany, New York, caused by the fungus Blastomyces.\nWhile the infection rate was 0.2 cases per 100,000 people in 2016, the infection rate increased to 2.2 cases per 100,000 people in 2017. Blastomyces are present in the environment and thrive in moist soil and in decomposing organic matter. Though mostly asymptomatic, pneumonia is often how blastomycosis manifests. Between 1990-2010 in the U.S. alone 1216 people died of blastomycosis.\nFar away in another region of the country, in the southwestern U.S., another fungal infection coccidioidomycosis - also known as valley fever and caused by the fungus Coccidioides, has been threatening people and it has now spread to Washington state. People can get valley fever when spores are inhaled or when exposed to the contaminated soil.\nBoth blastomycosis and coccidioidomycosis are tricky to diagnose because they manifest with flu-like symptoms that are not specific enough, making it hard to identify the cause and provide effective treatment in a timely manner. If left untreated, fungal infection that emerge as a lung infection may spread to other organs and even to the brain, causing deadly scenarios.\nComplicating matters further is the sudden appearance of patients infected with multi-drug-resistant Candida auris in the U.S. hospitals. In this case fungal infection symptoms may be less noticeable because infection mostly occurs in already hospitalized patients with already existing symptoms.\nThis fungus is a harmful form of yeast that was first seen in a\npatient in 2009, in Japan. Scientists say it can be hard to\nidentify with standard lab tests, and more cases are being\nreported as doctors are looking harder for it.\nShawn Lockhart/CDC via AP\nPatients often present with fever and chills during Candida auris infection of the blood. This fungus was first isolated in Japan and then spread to four other continents. There is supporting evidence that global warming plays a role in the sudden emergence of Candida auris as a threat.\nGlobal warming drives fungal infections\nMost fungi often thrive at 12-30 degrees Celsius (53.6-86 degrees Fahrenheit). During infection, fungi experience a sudden increase in the temperature – around 37 degrees Celsius (approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) – as fungi enter the human body; therefore, only fungi that can survive at body temperature and bypass the immune system can cause infection.\nIt is crucial to understand how fungi must change to survive at elevated temperatures. That’s because only species that can survive at 37 degrees Celsius and above can infect humans.\nMore fungal species are expected to adapt to survive at elevated temperatures as a result of global warming. How this adaptation will impact human health is largely unclear, but the hypothesis is that the geographical distribution of infectious fungi may widen and more fungal species may gain potential to be infectious.\nLoud and clear: ‘Think Fungus’\nFungal infections can be devastating, and they continue to emerge more rapidly than ever. This is in part due to increased number of people with weakened immune systems, environmental changes, and drug resistance issues. Fungal infections are hard to diagnose, which makes them challenging to treat.\nIt is important that we all “Think Fungus” especially when there’s an infection that antibiotics fail to clear. More people should be aware that fungi are a common – and growing – source of infection.\nMurat Can Kalem, Ph.D. Candidate. Graduate Research Assistant, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York\nTopics: Health, Science","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line643201"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7192040681838989,"wiki_prob":0.7192040681838989,"text":"Manuel du puceau\nBréal Jeunesse\nRosny-sous-Bois, 2003\nLa vie secrète des jeunes\nL’Association collection\nCiboulette/Paris, 2007\nJungs bleiben Jungs\n[Regisseur / Co-Drehbuchautor]\nFrankreich, 2009\nMeine Beschneidung\n[Ü: Martin Budde]\nDer Araber von morgen\nMünchen, 2015\n[Ü: Andreas Platthaus]\nwww.riadsattouf.com\nRiad Sattouf [ France ]\nRiad Sattouf was born in 1978 in Paris of a Syrian father and a French mother. During a childhood and youth spent in Algeria, Libya, Syria, and France, he was an enthusiastic reader of comics. He trained as a pilot and also applied to the Gobelins school of visual communication to study animation.\nIn 2003, Sattouf’s first comic was published; »Manuel du puceau« (tr: Handbook for a virgin) very humorously describes adolescence as a time of inner conflict between a continued existence as a big kid and interest in the opposite sex, two things that are almost irreconcilable. His mixture of comic and illustrated story, »Ma Circoncision« (tr: My Circumcision), which was published a year later, was equally marked by autobiographical aspects. A discussion in the Germany daily »Tageszeitung« described the book, a depiction of the ritual from the point of view of a child, as a »story about fear,« as well as a »ferociously formulated criticism« of the widespread practice. The article went on to say that the humor in the work arose from the contrast between the child’s perspective and his brutal surroundings, marked by his father’s corporal punishment and his teacher’s canings. Sattouf’s interest in the troubles of youth and, in general, the process of growing up are also evident in his »La vie secrète des jeunes« (2007, tr: The Secret Life of Young People), a collection of comic strips that appeared in weekly over several years in the French satire magazine »Charlie Hebdo,« for which he drew from snippets of conversation and other scenes between young people overheard on the street, as well as in his first theatrical film, »Les beaux gosses« (2009, Eng: »The French Kissers«), which won the César for best directorial debut. His most recent film, »Jacky au royaume des filles« (2014, Eng: »Jacky in the Kingdom of Women«) is the story of a fictional totalitarian state where men and women live in permanent role reversal, and where the love of a young man for the daughter of the female despot triggers a series of humorous events. His most recent graphic novel to be published in German was volume one of »L’Arabe du futur« (2014, Eng: »The Arab of the Future,« 2015), which tells the story of his childhood in the Mideast and goes up to the year 1984. A review in the German newspaper »Die Welt« compares the book to other autobiographical graphic novels such as Marjane Satrapi’s »Persepolis« series (2000 – 2003, Eng: 2004 – 2005), except Sattouf’s is set not in Iran and Austria, but rather in Libya, Syria, and France. The paper went on to describe how Sattouf flavors his own unusual life story with precise observations about the Arab world, which he interprets as a family comedy.\nSattouf’s book won the 2014/2015 Grand Prix RTL for graphic novels, as well as the prize for best album from the Angoulême International Comics Festival.\nEUNIC Graphic Novel exposition","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line655793"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8235321640968323,"wiki_prob":0.8235321640968323,"text":"09:15 +04, January 3, 2020\nSlavik Galstyan: I want our team to take part in Olympic Games with large squad\nBy Lusine Shahbazyan\nIn 2019, the Greco-Roman style fighter, member of the Armenian national team Slavik Galstyan (63 kg) became a bronze medalist at the World Championships in Kazakhstan.\nIn an interview with a NEWS.am Sport correspondent, Slavik Galstyan summed up the results of the year, talked about further plans, changing the weight category, competition with Karen Aslanyan and Mihran Harutyunyan and about the goals to take part in the Olympic Games.\nThe wrestler noted that he regrets only that he could not become a world champion.\nWhen asked about changing the weight category, Galstyan noted that he had already won a medal in his weight category and decided to strive for higher achievements, to compete for a ticket to the Olympic Games.\nIn the final of the Armenian championship Slavik Galstyan defeated Karen Aslanyan, who after Rio 2016 was the leader in this weight category. Speaking about this, Slavik said that Karen is his friend.\nAsked to speak about Mihran Harutyunyan, Galstyan said that he respects him very much as a fighter, but he had to come and compete in the Armenian championship in order to participate in the fight.\nSlavik noted that he was completely ready to fight for the Olympic ticket, which would be his main goal in 2020.\nArmen Nazaryan is in Armenia where his team is holding a joint training session ...\nArmenia will be represented in France by Rudik Mkrtchyan (55 kg), Gevorg Gharibyan...\nThe club will hold two training sessions in Russia’s Sochi and Cyprus...\nSeveral Armenian football players may move to another clubs...\nEdgar Babayan about Lecce's interest: It would be interesting to play against Mkhitaryan\nMoving to Serie A is an excellent opportunity...\nlast news on \"NEWS.am Sport Exclusive\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line909352"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6328290700912476,"wiki_prob":0.36717092990875244,"text":"Inked Voices: A new way to meet & critique\nNovember 4, 2014 Marianne Knowles Interviews, Writing, Writing - Critiquing & Community, Writing - Tools, Tips & Resources 18 comments\nBrooke McIntyre, founder of InkedVoices\nToday, Writers’ Rumpus is chatting with Brooke McIntyre, founder of Inked Voices, a website and tool that lets writers run cloud-based critique groups. Brooke is a writer, a reader, a business professional, and a mom of two little ones. I first met her online back in the spring, when the beta test for Inked Voices was underway. The site is now launched, and we’ve asked her to share a bit about Inked Voices and its journey so far.\nMarianne Knowles (MK): What is Inked Voices, in a nutshell?\nBrooke McIntyre (BM): Inked Voices is a web service designed for private, usually small, online critique groups. We help people find groups and then run those groups smoothly online. We’ve also just started a monthly lecture series on elements of craft to complement the groups.\nI started working full-time on the site last October, our beta launched in late March 2014 and we went live at the end of June. We’re still improving the site and continuing to introduce new features.\nMK: You said “we.” How many people helped create Inked Voices?\nBM: I’m the only employee, but I’m definitely not on my own. I work with Devartis, a software development company based in Argentina. My former colleague John Simoneau designed the interface through the beta and Elise Grinstead designs my site today. I’m honored to use my sister Barrett Martin’s talents as an artist for our drawings.\nMany others have shaped the site through their feedback, from my critique group members who heard the initial “what would you think if…” to the writers and group organizers who responded to my cold call at the early mockup stage. Inked Voices writers, especially our beta writers, have shaped the site with constant feedback—“we need this,” “it’s broken,” “wouldn’t it be nice if we could…,” and encouragement. The support of people who took a chance on this idea, who could have shrugged past, keeps me going on days where I’m throwing up my hands.\nInked Voices provides private, virtual spaces for writing groups to come together.\nMK: What inspired you to start Inked Voices?\nBM: I was at a transition point in the summer of 2012 and thinking about the next step in my career. I had recently helped to sell the company I was working for to a Fortune 500 business. We were on the cusp of an out of state move as my husband began looking for a post doc. And I was pregnant with #2. While waiting for career epiphany, I decided to take a step toward a dream I’d pushed aside: writing a children’s book. I started an online writing class when my daughter was a few weeks old. I liked it so much that I started a critique group with some women from the class. It was great. Knowing my turn would come up kept me writing. I loved getting feedback and the camaraderie of being in this journey together.\nBut running a group over email was less than ideal. My business brain called it inefficient and ineffective. We were always forgetting whose turn it was and when things were due. Discussions and submissions were scattered across my inbox and folders. It felt disconnected. Although we were a virtual team, we needed a space to come together for organization and continuity. We needed a better mechanism to help us with deadlines. I wondered how many other groups experienced the same problems. And I wondered how many people out there would also want a group like this, because they couldn’t attend one in person because of where they lived or family or work constraints. It seemed like a problem I could help solve. And, surprisingly, it brought in elements I had been passionate about for a long time–education, coaching, small teams, running a business, and writing. So I began sketching. And Inked Voices started.\nMK: In addition to writing, you have a background in business and marketing. How has your professional experience helped you in launching the web site?\nBM: Before Inked Voices, I led branding for a successful company and was part of its management team. With this experience and my MBA, I knew what elements of the business would need to come together. But starting a business is different than working for a company that’s well off the ground. I’ve drawn more on my “soft skills” managing projects and small teams. And my marketing background. I’m experienced in researching, interviewing people and then translating that into the shape of a new product. Although the stakes are higher as an entrepreneur, I’m following those same processes.\nSo for Inked Voices, I started out with a basic idea and sketches and then started talking to writers and writing group organizers. I made changes. Got more feedback. We built the product and tested it. Got feedback again. The iterative process of starting a business is a bit like drafting a manuscript and taking it through revisions.\nBeta writers advised on the site–as well as advising each other on their writing.\nMK: And the beta writers were a bit like the site’s critiquers. How did the site change as a result of the beta test?\nCritique notes appear both inline and as comments. Everything is printable. (Click for larger view.)\nBM: The beta test helped me prioritize the site’s development. We had a basic product we shared with our beta writers and a huge list of planned features. As soon as they started using the site and making comments, the list was added to and reshuffled. This is what happens today too, but it was much more drastic early on.\nWith writers’ feedback, we focused hard on the core of the application—the groups’ private pages and the critique interface. These are the places where people spend most of their time. For example, comments appear inline, are highlighted by reviewer and filterable by the same. And inline comments are printable. That was a big one. I said, “but you can’t do that in Google Docs.” But people pushed for it and I had to agree that, as a writer, it was kind of a big deal. So it happened.\nMK: How are you making Inked Voices visible to potential members?\nBM: I’ve found that Inked Voices is best fit for those who want to make an ongoing commitment to their writing. The Gotham Writers Workshop, which offers great online classes for writers, has mentioned us in its newsletters a few times and that was helpful. We are also sponsoring NaNoWriMo. I’m so impressed by everyone who takes this challenge. We sponsored Camp this summer and I’m looking forward to November! I’m also posting some free resources like this one-page critique guide to build some awareness of who we are. Some of our writers have kindly handed out postcards for the site, too.\nMK: What do writers need in order to use the site?\nBM: A passion for writing. A willingness to exchange and share among a small community of writing peers. A goal to improve your writing. An internet connection and device.\nInked Voices costs $10 per month or $75 per year (comes to $6.25 per month). This includes participation in one or more groups and the monthly lectures on craft. I also extend discounts to existing groups that want to try it.\nSome have asked, why not offer it for free? Full-time software development and professional design are expensive. Ads couldn’t have supported the site and our beta writers didn’t want them. Paying a fee also means that the writer has a stake in the group—just like you’re more likely to attend a class you pay for. That’s also the reason for the discount for the annual version. Groups benefit when individuals make a longer term commitment.\nMK: How do writers join groups?\nBM: Writers search for groups by keyword, e.g. fantasy, picture book, memoir, SCBWI. After looking at the groups that come up in the results and identifying a fit, writers ask for an invitation. If someone doesn’t see a good fit, the writer can create a new group. Because the site is new, I will make that person a free user until their group has 3 or more writers.\nWhen a new person joins, I also reach out personally. I look at the person’s profile and make suggestions for groups or individuals that might be a good fit.\nI’m also doing something called Concierge Service through December for writers who want additional help finding an Inked Voices group. Writers fill out a questionnaire about what they are looking for and I email them when there is a matching group.\nMK: I hesitate to ask, but have you found time for your own writing and critiquing, since starting the site?\nBM: This has been a struggle. I’ve kept up with all of my critiques. But finding time for my own writing has been more difficult since the site went live. I don’t have an 8am-5pm schedule anymore, so I have to be more purposeful about defining time. I’ve gotten some new ideas down this fall including a couple of chapters of a novel. I’m surrounded by WriMo’s on the site and it must be seeping into me. 🙂 Whether I will keep going on said novel is TBD.\nMK: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?\nBM: For people interested in critique groups, whether on Inked Voices or otherwise, we are creating a Writing Groups 101 guide for starting and running critique groups. It will be posted by mid-November.\nThanks for visiting Writers’ Rumpus, Brooke. And thanks for helping to sponsor NaNoWriMo! Best wishes for the success of Inked Voices.\nCheck out Inked Voices:\nTour the site to see how it works\nTwitter: @InkedVoices\nFacebook: Inked Voices\nPrevious Post: Remember: We Writers Are a Lucky Bunch\nNext Post: Why Being a Writer Is Better than Creating Jelly Belly Flavors (A Tale of Gratitude)\nPingback: 30 Ready-Made Writing Resolutions – WRITERS' RUMPUS","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line455486"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6289845108985901,"wiki_prob":0.6289845108985901,"text":"TO FOSTER\nPUBLIC DEBATE, PLURALISM\nAND DEMOCRACY\nTHE PANOS NETWORK\nPANOS FEATURE STORIES\nFACING THE TALIBANS\nBy Rina Saeed Khan\nIn a rundown building in the mountain village of Sijban, girls sit at their desks, hair loosely covered in white or black scarves, staring raptly at their teacher. They say they want to become either doctors or teachers when they grow up.\nThis is the one government primary school for girls in the Swat valley that was spared destruction by the Taliban. Their headteacher, Gul-e-Khandana, is no ordinary teacher: she stood up to the Taliban and managed to save the school where she had taught for more than 20 years.\nShe still shudders as she recalls what happened: “A group of Taliban arrived with Kalashnikovs at the school building just before the school holidays in June 2008. I ran out and told them: ‘You will have to kill me first before you torch my school’. They called me a kaffir [non-believer] and said they would be back.”\nThe Taliban had already destroyed the nearby girls’ middle school so, fearing the worst, Gul-e-Khandana removed the furniture and school records to her home. The girls had already stopped coming to school. But Gul-e-Khandana was determined. She was denounced on the radio, which was controlled by the militants. Her neighbours stopped talking to her and her extended family broke off all ties.\nWhen the military operation began to flush out the Taliban from Swat later that year, Gul-e-Khandana fled, smuggling the school records under her burka. “Everyone thought I was crazy but I thought one day the Taliban will leave and we will re-open the school and the girls will come back. I wanted to keep the certificates and records.”\nWith the army operation completed, Gul-e-Khandana returned to Sijban in July 2009 and went straight to her school. “It was still standing! I was so delighted. I had feared the worst but out of the six classrooms only one room had been destroyed by mortar shells.” With the building more or less intact, she re-opened the school. “Many of the girls were still too terrified to come back to school and I started a committee with the help of the army that went from one household to another to convince the parents to send their daughters back to school.” Today there are 262 pupils enrolled in her school, more than before the Taliban came to Swat.\nOther schools in the area, such as the middle school for girls in Shinkat, a village near the capital of Swat, were not so lucky. The school was completely destroyed by the Taliban in 2009. Salma, 17, recalls the day it was attacked. “It happened around 1 o’clock in the morning. I heard the blast. It made me very sad and I cried.\n”Today, Salma is back at her newly constructed school in Shinkat and says she wants to be a doctor. Her teacher, Shanaz, says that now the Taliban have left the valley, enrolment is increasing. “More girls are coming back and many want to go on to college. There is a change; parents are willing to encourage their daughters. As for the girls, you can see the happiness on their faces, they are so happy to be back in a proper school again. Many lost almost two years of their studies.”\nThe Taliban destroyed more than 400 of the 1,576 schools in Swat. “Seventy percent of them were girls’ schools,” recalls Ensaullah Khan, who serves on the board of the Sarhad rural support programme, an NGO that is helping to rebuild schools. “Then as the conflict with the government intensified they started destroying both boys’ schools as well as girls’ schools. It was a terrible time. How can you build a nation without education?”\nThis is a question many people are asking in Pakistan, after the Annual Status of Education report, published in February this year, revealed that nearly 60% of school-age children can’t read. Girls fare the worst.\nAnother report, by the Pakistan Education Task Force in 2011, showed that Pakistan is second in the global ranking of out-of-school children. One in three rural women have never attended school.\nEducation in Pakistan is chronically underfunded. And the Taliban continues to strike in other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. There are no official figures but estimates suggest more than 800 schools have been destroyed in north-west Pakistan.Maryam Bibi, founder of the NGO Khwendo Kor,\nwhich has been working for girls’ education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province since 1993, is one of several who see the importance of educating girls. “We talk about equality and women’s rights and welfare at the policy level, but what is the strategy, especially for poor girls living in remote areas? We must educate these girls – then you are automatically ensuring that their health improves and that later on they have fewer unplanned pregnancies.”\nHer organisation focuses on remote Valley where girls are the future International development With the Taliban driven out of Swat, girls can once again go to school areas where no schools exist yet. “The villagers themselves have given us space to run these schools for the young girls in the community and we try to involve the mothers as well by offering them short courses to improve their literacy levels. We are only working in remote areas where there are very few schools and opportunities. We try to find an educated girl in the village and then give her training and funding to run the school. So far, we are running around 150 schools on our own, but our funding is decreasing. We want the government to eventually take over these schools.”\nGul-e-Khandana believes that girls are the future for Pakistan. “Above all, girls must be educated,” she says. “When one girl is educated, she educates her entire household. The role of women is very important in our society – it is they who can change our way of life for the better.”\nKhan agrees that schooling is the answer. “With education, we can change our future. We can save the people from falling into the hands of extremists. We can empower them.”\nTHE PANOS\nPUBLIC DEBATE,\nPLURALISM AND\nRADIO FEATURES\nPANOS PROJECTS\nCLIMATE CHANGE MEDIA PARTNERSHIP\nREPORTING TAX RESEARCH IN KENYA\nORAL TESTIMONIES\nPUSHED TO THE EDGE\nDESERT VOICES\nPANOS NETWORK, ℅ INSTITUT PANOS AFRIQUE DE L'OUEST\n6, RUE CALMETTE, BOITE POSTALE 21132, DAKAR-PONTY, SENEGAL.\n© 2020 PANOS NETWORK","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line761488"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6947277784347534,"wiki_prob":0.3052722215652466,"text":"Volume: 54 - Number: 11\nEditorial: Barnabas or Barnacle\nAre ALL the Children In?\nHull, Albert\nPoetry: Are ALL the Children In\nCottrill, Brent\nDefining Moments: Change Points in our Lives\nBeattie, Jim\nHospitality: If Jesus Came To Your House\nWebb, Ken\nGiving: What about Widows?\nRobinson, Paul\nWitnessing: Vital Needs\nDudgeon, Richard\nYesterday, Today, and Forever\nThe Minor Prophets: Zechariah – Hope In The Messiah\nClark, G. Ross\nHeart Problems Nobody Wants – But Every Christian Should Have (3)\nQuotes from John Douglas\nThe Serious Nature Of Lying\nBrandt, David\nQuestion & Answer Forum\nOliver, David\nBroadhead, Philip\nGreat Gospel Texts: Genesis 22:8\nLampkin, Phil\nA challenging and insightful article which should speak to each of us.\nStudents of language know that words can never be defined in isolation from their context. Dictionary meanings supply only the raw material from which a contextual significance can be built. Words have a range of meanings, called the “semantic” range, and have location in a sentence, the syntactical position. Consequently, words can be properly understood only in a setting within surrounding elements.\nAt times, the skillful placing of an otherwise ordinary word can make it shine with new brilliance. Some writers can take a five cent word and mint it into a million dollar one. Everyone has had the experience of picking up a volume written by a wordsmith and becoming captivated with a book that was a real page-turner. It is a pleasure to read anything penned by an artisan who can thread words into the fabric of his story and weave a beautiful tapestry on a blank piece of paper in a way that dazzles the eye of the mind.\nBut not only do words have context and syntax, people do too. Each of us lives in a context of circumstances and in a syntactical arrangement of events that precede and follow certain moments in our lives. Those moments may seem as insignificant as an ordinary word in a sentence. Yet, in a certain setting, our responses to them reveal hidden weaknesses or highlight strengths that might otherwise go undetected. Hence, we are defined in a new way.\nI was reminded of this earlier in the year when I read the incredible story of Aron Ralston, an avid outdoors man and expert climber, who amputated his own arm to save his life. On Saturday, April 26, 2003, he was canyoneering down remote Blue John Canyon in southeastern Utah when he was pinned with a boulder weighing about 800 pounds. Ralston tried ropes, anchors, anything to move the boulder, but it wouldn’t budge.\nWhen he didn’t show up for his job in Aspen, friends called authorities. Sergeant Vetere, a patrol sergeant with the Emery County Sheriff’s Office, got the call Thursday morning, May 1. Terry Mercer, a helicopter pilot with the Utah Highway Patrol, met Vetere and another deputy at Horseshoe Canyon, where Ralston’s truck was parked. They flew for about two hours. As they were about to land, they looked down into the canyon and saw two people waving. They had encountered Ralston covered in blood.\nIn his first meeting with reporters, the 27-year-old Ralston calmly described his desperate attempts to free himself from the boulder and how he eventually did the unthinkable: cutting off his arm to save his life.\nAfter he ran out of water, Ralston said he knew he would have to cut off his arm to save himself. He used the pocketknife he had stuffed into his short’s pocket. He then rappelled down some 60-75 feet to the canyon floor and walked 4 to 5 miles before he saw the tourists from Holland.\nMany questions stirred in me when I read about this incredible event. I wondered, as I am sure many others did, if I could have done the same, what thoughts he struggled with before he finally realized that there were two options: lie there and die or amputate and live.\nThe point is that, while we may not have to make such a drastic choice, each day we are set in the context of our own personal world and circumstances, and these continually reveal hidden motives. Moreover, there are special contextual seasons that give the clearest picture of our fundamental character, times rightly called “defining moments.” More specifically, I am thinking of the periods when weaknesses are uncovered, when our behavior exposes character traits that must be altered or abandoned. The Scriptures are full of such times in the lives of individuals.\nFor example, consider King Saul. He had been chosen to be the leader of the nation of Israel. Yet when he was confronted by Samuel about his disobedience, he admitted, “I have sinned” (1 Samuel 15:24). The need for acceptance and preeminence was a driving force in his life. Instead of resisting this weakness, however, he allowed it to goad him for the rest of his days until that moment of sad lament, when he said, “I have played the fool, and have erred exceedingly” (1 Samuel 26:21). Early in his public life, he had a defining moment which could have been a turning point, but he refused to be redefined and never turned around.\nIn contrast, King David placed himself in a context that revealed a flaw in his life that had never been properly examined and judged before the Lord. For him, the sad experience with Bathsheba was a defining moment. Yet in a spirit of repentance, he allowed God to redefine him through a deep heart-work. He prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). And the Lord answered his prayer.\nMuch of the time we do not recognize our true disposition because our hearts are deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9). But the Lord loves us too much to allow us to delude ourselves indefinitely. Inasmuch as He desires “truth in the inward parts,” He allows us to be brought into settings where we view ourselves in contexts that highlight weaknesses and afford us opportunities to face ourselves honestly and change direction.\nSometimes, however, we refuse to deal with flawed character and continue with pretense and facade, dismissing occasions to humbly acknowledge failure. Some deceptions are masked under an air of spirituality, an eloquent tongue, half-truths told to squirm out of consequences, the minimizing or excusing of bad behavior, or even a legalistic spirit that gives an impression of loyalty to the Lord. There are a thousand ways to spurn change.\nThe tragedy of all this is that ultimately we ourselves suffer the greatest loss. When God has graciously provided us a prospect for change and we resist it, we do so to our own detriment, both for the present and for eternity. King Solomon has left us a solemn warning, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself: but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it” (Proverbs 9:12). The highest wisdom is to take the low place.\nAs I thought further about Aron Ralston, I thought of the words of the Lord Jesus: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off…” (Mark 9:43). While I don’t believe the Lord Jesus intended this be taken so literally as to follow the example of Ralston, nevertheless there are times when we need to become very intense about change. If our conduct is squeezing the life out of us, we need to amputate it through the power of the Holy Spirit!\nWe will have defining moments in our lives. These times might shock us and, perhaps, engender grief and disappointment. Yet if we learn valuable lessons from them, unquestionably these dark seasons will be the antecedents to brighter days in our Christian life. Certain events in our lives are pivotal points and we will tip one way or another. May the Lord give us grace, courage, and strength to use the defining moments to let Him redefine us.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line539891"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5161886811256409,"wiki_prob":0.5161886811256409,"text":"Taliban video shows execution of 15 Pakistani soldiers\nBy JohnThomas Didymus Jan 23, 2012 in Politics\nPeshawar - Taliban militants have released a video showing execution of 15 Pakistani soldiers. A Pakistan Taliban (TTP) group, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the executions.\nAFP reports the executed men were Frontier Corps personnel. Frontier Corps (FC) are paramilitary troops. They were kidnapped last month during a raid on a checkpoint in northwestern town of Tank. Their bodies had been found earlier in the month after they were kidnapped in northwestern Pakistan on December 23.\nThe video, which runs for almost two-and-a-half minutes, was released on Saturday. It begins with a scene showing the soldiers with their hands tied to their backs, and two masked gunmen guarding them.\nThe commander of the Taliban group is shown explaining in anger that they are taking revenge for the killing of 12 Taliban fighters in Khyber tribal district. The commander said: \"Twelve of our comrades were besieged and mercilessly martyred in the Khyber Agency [area]. Our pious women were also targeted. To avenge those comrades, we will kill these men. We warn the government of Pakistan that if the killing of our friends is not halted, this will be the fate of you all.\"\nOne of the Pakistani soldiers who, according to AFP, says his name is Babar Khan, explains that he and the others were captured by Taliban militants at their outpost during the night. He explains: \"The Taliban entered the fort and captured us with our weapons. They tied our hands, put us in a Datsun and took us away.\"\nThen video then shows the captives standing in a row, blindfolded and handcuffed, with their backs turned to their captors. As the leader of the Taliban fighters loads his rifle, his men can be heard chanting: \"We will cross all limits to avenge your blood.\" Reuters reports this refers to fighters killed by Pakistani security.\nThe Taliban commander then raises his rifle and begins shooting the prisoners in the back of their heads, while raising the Islamist war cry:\" Allah-u-Akbar!\" Other soldiers join him in shooting the captives.\nThe men were handcuffed together such that when one was shot the other was pulled in the direction of his fallen companion.\nAfter the prisoners had all fallen to the ground, their killers stand over their bodies and one militant says: \"If the killing of our friends is not stopped, this will be the fate of all infidel armies.\"\nAFP reports that according to Pakistani officials, the executions were carried out in Shawa, a small town near the Afghan border in the North Waziristan tribal region.\nAccording to Reuters, the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) is an umbrella group of Pakistan militants fighting in the country's tribal areas. They are allied with the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda. Their aim is to overthrow the Pakistani government and have been responsible for suicide bombings in Pakistan. The Pakistan army, in-spite of its superior numbers, has been unable to defeat the insurgents. Talks between the two sides have not yielded any positive results.\nMore about Taliban, execution of pakistani soldiers, Pakistan\nTaliban execution of pakista... Pakistan","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line146676"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9764432311058044,"wiki_prob":0.9764432311058044,"text":"Crystal Dunn's Long Road From 2015 Cut to 2019 USWNT World Cup Roster Lock\nCrystal Dunn dealt with all sorts of emotions after being player No. 24 when it came time for Jill Ellis to pick her 23-player roster for the 2015 Women's World Cup, but her four years since have been filled with positive life and career changes, culminating with a trip to France this summer.\nLaken Litman\nCrystal Dunn wanted to watch the 2015 Women's World Cup, but not by herself. She couldn’t watch with other soccer players, because they knew how close she’d been to making the team. She was too far away from family—they were in Long Island, N.Y., and she lived in Washington, D.C. She needed to find someone who loved the game as much as she did and also wouldn’t judge her emotions, which were “up, down, all around.”\nThis was four years ago, after Dunn was the last player cut from Jill Ellis’s Women's World Cup roster. She remembers getting the news and going into full crisis mode, feeling “embarrassment, like I’m useless, like I’m worthless.” She was only 22 and had her whole career ahead of her, but she wasn’t thinking positively.\nIt’s easier for Dunn to reflect now. She’s a completely different person and player than she was in 2015, having developed more confidence and maturity. Everything she’s done the past four years—winning NWSL MVP in 2015, making her first Olympic team in 2016, playing for Chelsea FC in England’s top professional league in 2017, leading the North Carolina Courage to a title in 2018—has put her firmly in the top tier of international players.\nAnd on Thursday, Dunn's road came full circle as she made her first World Cup roster, listed as a defender for the USWNT, a leading contender to win a second consecutive title.\nRobin Alam/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images\nDunn's rebound from disappointment began as she played for the Washington Spirit in 2015, and while looking around for a World Cup viewing partner, she was “intrigued” by the club’s the French athletic trainer, Pierre Soubrier. She thought he was cool and kind and eventually asked if he wanted to hang out and watch the tournament at a bar. Soubrier was hesitant at first given their professional relationship. But he doesn’t deny being interested, so he agreed. The two quickly hit it off and watched almost every game together.\nThey were still getting to know each other, but Soubrier became Dunn’s sounding board. He listened to her vent, gave her advice and tried to get her to see the bright side. He told her to use the adversity as a learning experience and reminded her she was talented. He was also tough and of the mind that “life’s too short, and I don’t have time to waste with negative thoughts and pessimistic attitudes and ideas.” Eventually, Dunn snapped out of her funk.\n“He helped me see that this was the beginning of my chapter,” Dunn says. “I think that’s what really sparked my change in character. It was realizing that soccer is a huge part of our lives, in a way it defines us, but we’re human. We’re not just these athletes that care solely about performance or being part of a roster. It’s important to keep things in perspective and he was that light that brought me into reality.\n“Life goes on and now we’re hanging out, we’re getting to know each other. Who’s to say that would have happened if I were at the World Cup? Things happen for a reason.”\nDunn channeled lingering disappointment into the ensuing NWSL season. She scored 15 goals in 20 matches and was named league MVP. After the season ended, Dunn and Soubrier officially started dating, and last December, they were married in New York. And for the record, despite his French roots, Soubrier is rooting for his wife and the USWNT to win the World Cup, which will be played in France.\n\"Look at where we are now,\" says Soubrier, currently the head athletic trainer for the Portland Thorns. \"That’s really also part of the message and the learning experience. How sad and how frustrated and how pissed off she was at that time, but looking back now at how much good has this one thing done on the professional level and on a personal level. It’s just been great. A blessing.”\nJoe Petro/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images\nDunn was voted the NWSL’s April Player of the Month after scoring four goals in three games for the Courage. She might not be scoring as many goals at the World Cup while playing on the back line, though. With Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, Megan Rapinoe, Christen Press, Carli Lloyd and Mallory Pugh all pushing for time at forward, Dunn has had to define her role elsewhere. She’s versatile and skilled enough to play anywhere—and she literally has. Dunn started at center back for the U.S. youth national team (coached by Ellis) at the 2010 World Cup, led the University of North Carolina to an NCAA championship as an attacking midfielder, won NWSL MVP as a forward, and will play outside back in her first World Cup.\n“Most people on the team have always been a striker or a midfielder, and for me, I’ve always been everything,” Dunn says. “That creates chaos in my mind when one day I’m asked to play forward and am embracing my attacking mentality, and then all of the sudden they’re like, ‘We need an outside back, can you play?’ It’s difficult at times.”\nDunn could say no to playing multiple positions, but she might get less playing time that way. Plus, that’s not her style.\n“Ultimately I just love playing, so if that means I’m moved around but I’m on the field, then I just bite my tongue and am like let’s go,” Dunn says. “I’ll impact the game wherever I am.”\nPlaying for Chelsea added a layer of depth to Dunn’s overall game. She was always fast and could get away with beating defenders over the top and getting in behind, but in England, teams sit in and cut off that option. That’s when she learned to be more technical and tactical, seeing the field better and more creatively and becoming more active without the ball. Since she came back to the U.S., Dunn has started asking for the ball at her feet and taking on opponents one-on-one.\nEverything about preparing for this summer’s World Cup is different. Four years ago, she was younger, treated decisions as life or death, was afraid to make mistakes, and compared herself to teammates. Since then, she’s realized that she’s best when not trying to be perfect.\n“She’s so much more ready for a tournament like this than she was four years ago,” Soubrier says.\nSomeone will always unfortunately experience being the last cut. But at the very least, they have Dunn's perspective to help navigate it.\n“If someone had told me four years ago what the future holds, I would be so well off at that point,” Dunn says. “I felt like my world was coming down crashing. That’s a terrible way of viewing it, because I love this sport. You don’t play for accolades but because you fell in love with it as a young girl. I almost got carried away with what I thought making this team could have done for me rather than focusing on how can I get better and how can I grow from this.\n“I think that’s ultimately what saved me. Knowing that life goes on. It will be hard and there will be a couple months where you feel down and you feel left behind. But then all of the sudden there’s a switch, and you snap into reality, and you realize you belong somewhere, and 'I’m valuable, and I can work on ways to improve and I’m a good player.' That’s what I had to keep telling myself.”\nProjecting the USWNT Women's World Cup roster\nThe U.S. women's national team has 10 matches to go before defending its Women's World Cup title, and in that time Jill Ellis will whittle her player pool down to 23. Here's who's in frame for a ticket to France.\nBy Avi Creditor\nThe USWNT's final pre-WWC roster battles\nThe core of Jill Ellis's Women's World Cup roster appears to be set, but there are still some tickets to France up for grabs entering the final matches before the May send-off series.\nCrystal Dunn and her post-Women's World Cup outlook\nCrystal Dunn joins the podcast to discuss what she’s hoping for in the next USWNT coach, whether that might include a move back into the attack, how her life has changed since winning the World Cup, the women's ICC tournament and how she thinks the NWSL can make its post-World Cup bump sustainable.\nBy Grant Wahl\nJulie Johnston replaces injured Crystal Dunn on USWNT World Cup qualifying roster\nJulie Johnston has replaced injured Crystal Dunn on the United States women's national team roster for the 2014 CONCACAF Women’s Championship.\nBy SI Wire\nCrystal Dunn looking to star in Rio for U.S. women\nAfter missing out on the World Cup roster by the slimmest of margins, Crystal Dunn has more than earned her place on the USWNT's Olympic squad headed to Brazil.\nUSWNT: Crystal Dunn added to victory tour roster\nCrytal Dunn joins the 23 players from the Women's World Cup winning team for the victory tour stops in Detroit and Birmingham.\nLloyd-led USA bests Chile, keeps coasting at WWC\nJill Ellis made seven changes to the USA lineup after a 13-0 win over Thailand, but a similar dominance ensued, with only Chilean goalkeeper Christiane Endler keeping the Americans from a second straight thrashing at the Women's World Cup.\nBy Laken Litman\nRapinoe leads USWNT by France, into WWC semifinals\nThe match lived up to the expectations. An intense, physical battle went the USA's way, with ringmaster Megan Rapinoe conducting the circus she craved with two decisive goals, leading the Americans to the semifinals and dumping the Women's World Cup hosts out of the competition.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line465647"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5133842825889587,"wiki_prob":0.48661571741104126,"text":"TYPES OF MERCHANT SHIPS\nGENERAL DESCRIPTION OF A SHIP\nTask 1. Read and translate the text. Learn the words given after the text.\nWhen giving a general description of a ship one should first mention its main body which is called the hull. The hull is divided into three main parts: the foremost part is called the bow, the rearmost part is called the stern and the part between the bow and the stern is called the midships. The ship's hull is limited by the main deck, the sides and the bottom. It is made up of frames covered with plating.\nInside the hull is divided into a number of watertight compartments by decks and bulkheads. Bulkheads are vertical steel walls passing across the ship and along. Steel decks divide the hull horizontally. The decks which divide cargo spaces are called 'tween decks.\nThe hull contains the engine-room, cargo and other spaces and a number of tanks. In dry cargo ships the cargo space below the main deck is divided into holds, in liquid cargo ships it is divided into tanks. The openings cut in the main deck which give access to holds are called hatches. The hatches are equipped with automatic hatch-covers.\nAt the fore end of the hull are the fore peak tanks and at the after end are the after peak tanks. They are used for fresh water and water ballast. The space between the holds and the bottom of the hull contains double bottom tanks. These are used for ballast water and fuel.\nWhen one faces the bow, the left-hand side is called the port side and the right-hand side is called the starboard side. The part of the hull below water is the ship's underwater body. The distance between the waterline and the main deck is the vessel's freeboard.\nAll the ship's parts above the main deck are known as superstructures which usually include the navigating bridge, the radio room, the crew's quarters, the sick bay, the funnel, the radar mast, etc.\nThe raised part of the deck in the bows is called the forecastle and its after raised part is a poop. On the main deck there are cargo handling facilities (derricks, cranes, cargo winches, Samson posts, etc.), and also the windlass (on the forecastle), the capstan (on the poop) and bitts.\nThere can be different ways of classifying merchant ships. Such ships can be classified according to what they carry. Most are designed to carry cargo, but some still carry passengers.\nOn the one hand, cargo ships may be divided into two basic types: those carrying dry cargo and those carrying liquid cargo. Multi-deck vessels are a traditional type of dry cargo ship. Their holds are divided horizontally by one or two 'tween decks. Dry bulk cargo is carried in bulk carriers.\nExamples of liquid cargo carriers are oil tankers, liquified natural gas (LNG) carriers and chemical carriers.\nOn the oilier hand, cargo ships may be divided into universal ships (general cargo vessels) designed to carry principal different types of cargo and specialized ships designed to carry one type of cargo (e.g., bulk carriers, container ships, timber carriers, reefers, oil tankers, Ro-Ro ships, etc.). Of course, when it is necessary, specialized vessels can carry general cargo, and vice versa, universal ships can carry dry bulk cargo in their holds.\nIn comparison with cargo vessels, passenger ships are few in number and types. Passenger liners are the traditional type of passenger ship, though nowadays they are rather few in number. Cruise ships are another type of passenger vessel. In many cases cruise ships are converted passenger liners. These days' ferries are the most common type of the passenger vessel. Many of them are designed to carry vehicles.\nInnovation durch ethnische Vielfalt. |","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line367663"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8962042331695557,"wiki_prob":0.8962042331695557,"text":"In a world where Serena Williams is head and shoulders above the competition, it’s not a question of which tennis player is going to finish first in the WTA rankings at the end of the year, it’s which player will be second.\nSerena defeats the competition as easily as Jack Hammer outsmarts the desperate Evil Dr. Wüten in the classic online slot game by NetEnt casinos. In fact, this and other slot games you can play on your mobile are both an entertaining way to pass the time, but also give you an insight into how Serena feels when she sends her opponents packing.\n1. Serena Williams\nThis is the third year in a row that Serena is number one on the WTA rankings. She was off to a flying start at the beginning of the season and defeated Sharapova at the Australian Open. This was Sharapova’s 16th consecutive defeat at the hands of the American, and she is surely having nightmares just at the thought of Serena.\nWilliams then went on to announce that she is going to stop the boycott towards the Indian Wells Masters tournament, which has been going on for 14 years before that. She got to the semis there, but had to forfeit the match due to problems with her knee.\nAt the Miami Open she won her eighth title there, and managed to take her winning run to 21 consecutive matches without a loss. The Miami title was followed by the French Open one, and the French Open one was followed by the Wimbledon title. In doing so, Serena completed the ‘Serena Slam,’ meaning that she won all 4 majors in a row. That was the second time she had achieved to do that.\nHowever, she didn’t succeed in winning the ‘Grand Slam’. At the US Open she reached the semi-final and had to face Roberta Vinci, who was a huge underdog before the match. During the match though, Vinci outplayed the American and recorded one of the biggest surprises in 2015.\n2. Simona Halep\nHalep had a great 2014, and this year she has kept the same level of performance. At the Australian Open she managed to reach the quarter-final round where she suffered a surprise defeat by the tenth-seeded Ekaterina Makarova.\nAt the Indian Wells Masters, Halep capitalized on Serena Williams’ injury and withdrawal in the semi-final, and progressed to the final where she defeated Jelena Jankovic 2-1 in the most important match of her career and her highest point of the season.\nHer lowest point of the season however, was her first round elimination at Wimbledon at the hands of Jana Cepelova. She did manage to recover from that defeat though, and reached the semis at the US Open later in the season.\n3. Garbine Muguruza\nThe Spanish, slash, Venezuelan tennis player should no longer be considered as a star in rising. She has already risen and is currently number 3 at the WTA rankings. She’s still only 22 and has the tennis world at her feet.\nThe undoubted highlight of this season for her was her participation in the Wimbledon final. There, she sent several high profile players home early. Kerber, Wozniacki, Bacsinszky and Radwańska were all dispatched with style by the talented youngster on her way to the final and the match-up with Serena Williams. She lost in straight sets, but her road to the final was enough for her to get in the Top 10 for the first time in her career.\n4. Maria Sharapova\nWhat is so remarkable about Sharapova’s season is that even though she missed four months of competitive matches, she still managed to finish 4th at the end of the year. Basically, had she stayed fit until the end of the season she could have claimed 2nd place in the WTA rankings.\nAt the start of the season she reached the final at the Australian Open, where she expectedly lost to Serena. Regardless of the loss though, the year ahead looked promising for the Russian. However, a poor run of form, and several injuries, resulted in a less than impressive year for Sharapova, who is now 5th in the rankings, behind Agnieszka Radwanska.\n5. Agnieszka Radwanska\nThe Pole didn’t start the season impressively and had to part ways with her coach Martina Navratilova. Radwanska’s first title of the season was at the 2015 Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo, and it was won in late September. If there was ever a strong finish to the season, this was it.\nBefore that, she managed to return to the Top 10 in the rankings by reaching the semi-finals at Wimbledon. It was her third appearance in four years. Unfortunately for her though, she was eliminated by the talented Garbine Muguruza in three sets.\nHowever, her biggest achievement of the season and her career in general, was when she defeated Petra Kvitova and won her first WTA Finals title in Singapore. Because of the strong finish to the season, and defying the odds Radwanska finished as number 5 at the rankings last year.\nLabels: agnieszka radwanska, garbine muguruza, maria sharapova, serena williams, simona halep\n2015 Final Rankings - Men","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line523046"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7137886881828308,"wiki_prob":0.2862113118171692,"text":"The CFP® Designation\nAchieving Your Financial Goals\nFrom the Desk of Warren Buffett\nAnnouncement December 2019 - The Secure Act\nIIM Vault Login\n\"The most important investment you can make is in yourself\"\n\"Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.\"\n\"Successful investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time.\"\n\"Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.\"\n\"Rule No. 1 is never lose money. Rule No. 2 is never forget Rule No. 1.\"\n\"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.\"\n\"If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning for 10 minutes.\"\n\"Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.\"\n\"Never invest in a business you cannot understand.\"\n\"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.\"\n\"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.\"\n\"Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.\"\n\"If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.\"\n\"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.\"\nWarren Buffett, the \"Oracle of Omaha\", has spent his career giving timeless advice. Warren Buffett is often cited as one of the most accomplished investors with a propensity for simplifying important ideas into interesting quotes. The above quotes have been taken from Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) annual meetings, periodic shareholder letters and interviews featuring Warren Buffet.\nIntelligent Investment Management, LLP\n150 East 9th Street, Suite 333\ninformation@intelligentim.com\nDisclosure Brochure","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line309825"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9120925068855286,"wiki_prob":0.9120925068855286,"text":"Giuliana Rancic Interview: Life Is ‘Better Than Ever’ After Breast Cancer\nLess than three months after announcing that she was suffering from breast cancer, Giuliana Rancic was back on the red carpet this month at the 2012 Golden Globe Awards, she chatted with celebrities for her E! show \"Fashion Police.\n\"A lot of people have said to me, 'You look better now than before your diagnosis,'\" the reality star revealed in an interview with omg!. \"And I thought maybe it's because I'm so much happier. I think that I dodged a major bullet.\"\nIn fact, after Giuliana, 37, endured a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery to treat her breast cancer, she was back at E!, where she also anchors \"E! News,\" only two weeks later something even she wasn't sure she'd be able to do the night before.\nPhotos: Celebs Are 2 Hot 2 Handle On the Red Carpet: She's even starting a charity, a kind of Make-A-Wish Foundation for adults called Fab-U-Wish, for other women in a similar situation. \"Listen, obviously I'm not curing cancer and I'm not pretending to, but I thought there's really a void when it comes to breast cancer charities,\" she explained. \"[I want to] do things to put smiles on these women's faces while they're going through tough therapy and horrible diagnoses.\nGiuliana Rancic's Breast Cancer and More of 2011's Biggest Celeb Health Stories:\n\"I actually believe that to be a real fashionista you have to be on best dressed lists, of course, but you also have to be on the worst dressed lists, because I think it means you're taking chances,\" said Giuliana, who names Rachel Roy among her favorite designers. \"If you're constantly just kind of middle of the road, making safe choices, you're not a real fashionista.\"\nGwyneth Paltrow Talks Diet, Botox, and Motherhood: Her style obsession carries over into home decor, where Giuliana is promoting the new Glade Expressions line of fragrance mists and oil diffusers in scents such as lavender and juniper berry (which she has at home) and pineapple and mangosteen (which she keeps in her E! office).\nSpeaking of home, Giuliana and her husband of four years, \"The Apprentice\" winner Bill Rancic, have made his hometown of Chicago theirs, at least when they're not in L.A. And as if they didn't have enough going on, within the next month the couple is set to open a restaurant in the Windy City called RPM Italian, a modern eatery with small plates instead of the huge portions guests often get when eating Italian.\n\"As far as the cancer stuff, I don't think we're gonna go very heavy on that. It can tend to get a little depressing, and I really am anything but depressed,\" she said. \"I don't feel like a victim. I don't want to portray that on TV either, you know?\"\nNew episodes of \"Giuliana and Bill\" begin April 2.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line416521"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9509333372116089,"wiki_prob":0.9509333372116089,"text":"Herman Bell has been a U.S. political prisoner for over 36 years. A former Black Panther, he was involved with political community work and subsequently went underground because of relentless FBI and police attacks on the Party. Herman was captured in New Orleans in 1973 and illegally extradited to New York to stand trial with Albert Nuh Washington, Jalil Muntaqim, Francisco Torres and Gabriel Torres on charges of killing two NYC police. Though the jury could not reach a verdict the first time, the NY District Attorney persisted and used many illegal tactics to obtain convictions for Herman, Jalil and Nuh. In 2007, Herman was extradited to San Francisco for prosecution of a 38 year-old unsolved cop-killing case. He was charged along with Jalil Muntaqim and six other former Black Panthers, now known as the San Francisco 8. In July 2009, he pled to reduced charges and received 5 years probation. Herman maintains this was a strategic decision which would help the defense of the others and would allow him to return to New York and continue fighting for freedom. The plea in no way jeopardized the other defendents in the case. His decision paved the way for the dismissal of four of the SF8, once Jalil Muntaqim joined Herman in accepting a plea for probation. Herman was also a founder, along with Carol Dove and Michael Vernon, and core member of the Victory Gardens Project, a collaboration between inner city and rural community groups in the northeastern U.S., in which food, as the organizing tool, was grown and distributed free of charge back into the communities.\nHerman Bell 79-C-0262\nFallsburg, New York","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line872391"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6466174125671387,"wiki_prob":0.6466174125671387,"text":"Category Archives: 1950s\nSeptember 28, 2018 1950s, Fact, People, Telling storiestalkinghistory2013\nChristopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American writer with works that include his 1935-39 ‘The Berlin Stories’ and two semi-autobiographical novellas inspired by his time in the German Weimar Republic. These enhanced his post-war reputation when his ‘I Am a Camera’ was first adapted into a play in 1951 and then a film of the same name in 1955. In 1966 he gave us the stage musical ‘Cabaret’!\nWhat caught me, though, is a comment Christopher made on 28th September 1959 when he wrote: ‘Last night I went to Elsa Lanchester’s. Oh the horror of TV! It is so utterly, utterly inferior, yet just enough to keep you enslaved, entrapped, on the lower levels of consciousness – for a whole lifetime, if necessary. It is a bondage like that of Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott.’\nThe King is Dead – Long live the Queen\nJune 2, 2018 1950s, 20th century, 21st century events, June, King George VI, King of England, Queen Elizabeth IItalkinghistory2013\nI’m sure many millions of people across the world will know – but just in case ….\n65 years ago on Tuesday 2nd June 1953 the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II as sovereign of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon took place on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth ascended the throne at the age of 25, upon the death of her father, King George VI who had passed away on Wednesday 6th February 1952, and was proclaimed Queen by her various privy and executive councils shortly afterwards. The coronation took place more than a year later because of the tradition that holding such a festival is inappropriate during the period of mourning that follows the death of a monarch and also on account of the need to make preparations for the ceremony. During the service, she took and subscribed an oath to, among other things, govern the peoples according to their respective laws and customs, was anointed with holy oil, presented and invested with regalia, and crowned.\nCelebrations took place across the Commonwealth and a commemorative medal was issued. It was the first British coronation to be televised and was the fourth and last British coronation of the 20th century.\nShe was born Miss Mortenson\nJune 1, 2018 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, Filmstalkinghistory2013\nOn 1st June 1926 a little girl was born and, in due time, was named Norma Jeane Mortenson. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and spent most of her childhood in fosters homes and an orphanage. She married at the age of 16 and, in 1944 while working as part of the war effort in a radioplane factory, she was introduced to a photographer from the ‘First Motion Picture Unit’. Photographs were taken and she soon began a successful pin-up modelling career. This work led to a short-livered film contracts with 20th Century Fox in 1946/7 and Columbia Pictures in 1948. After a series of minor film roles she signed a new contract in 1951 with Fox and from there her career blossomed. Oh – by the way – by now she had changed her name.\nShe was now known as Marilyn Monroe!\nI think we might say a little bit more about this lady in the near future!\nThe War was over and Marlene moved on\nFebruary 27, 2018 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 20th century, A story is told, Peopletalkinghistory2013\nAfter the 2nd World War things began to change for so many people. Marlene was one of them! In 1953 she was offered $30,000 per week to appear live at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. The show was short and mainly consisting of a few songs associated with Marlene and her daringly sheer “nude dress” – a heavily beaded evening gown of silk soufflé that gave an illusion of transparency. Surprise Surprise – it attracted a lot of publicity! One of these ‘attractions’ led to her being signed to appear at the Café de Paris in London the following year. She also had her Las Vegas contracts renewed. From that point forward to the mid-1970s she was a highly paid cabaret artist, performing live in large theatres in major cities world-wide.\nMarlene employed Burt Bacharach as her musical arranger starting in the mid-1950s; together, they refined her nightclub act into a more ambitious theatrical one-woman show with an expanded repertoire. Her repertoire included songs from her films as well as popular songs of the day. Bacharach’s arrangements helped to disguise her limited vocal range – she was a contralto – and allowed her to perform her songs to maximum dramatic effect.\nFrancis Wyndham offered a critical appraisal of the phenomenon of ‘Dietrich in Concert’ when he wrote in 1964: “What she does is neither difficult nor diverting, but the fact that she does it at all fills the onlookers with wonder … It takes two to make a conjuring trick: the illusionist’s sleight of hand and the stooge’s desire to be deceived. To these necessary elements (her own technical competence and her audience’s sentimentality) Marlene Dietrich adds a third—the mysterious force of her belief in her own magic. Those who find themselves unable to share this belief tend to blame themselves rather than her.”\nAt this time Burt Bacharach felt he needed to devote his full-time to song writing. Together, they recorded four albums and several singles between 1957 and 1964. However – Marlene had come to rely on him in order to perform and, in a TV interview in 1971 she credited Bert Bacharach with giving her the “inspiration” to perform during those years. She said:-\n‘From that fateful day on, I have worked like a robot, trying to recapture the wonderful woman he helped make out of me. I even succeeded in this effort for years because I always thought of him, always longed for him, always looked for him in the wings, and always fought against self-pity… He had become so indispensable to me that, without him, I no longer took much joy in singing. When he left me, I felt like giving everything up. I had lost my director, my support, my teacher, my maestro.’\nIn November 1972 a version of Marlene’s Broadway show ‘An Evening with Marlene Dietrich’ was filmed in London. It was titled ‘I Wish You Love’ and Marlene as paid $250,000 for her co-operation but she was unhappy with the result. Non-the-less the show must go on and in January 1973 it was broadcast on the BBC in the UK and on CBS in the US.\nContinue reading The War was over and Marlene moved on →\nMaría Elena Santiago & Buddy Holly – music & sadness\nFebruary 7, 2018 1950s, 20th century, accidents, January, Love, Musictalkinghistory2013\nBuddy’s wife was born María Elena Santiago in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her mother died when Maria was 12 years old and, in 1953, her father had sent her to live with her aunt in New York City where she worked as a receptionist for a music publisher – ‘Peermusic’. As a receptionist Maria Elena probably first met Buddy in August 1957 when, as rising stars, he and the Crickets first visited Peer Southern Music in the Brill Building on Broadway to meet their publishing manager Murray Deutch – Maria’s boss.\nIt was a day or so before Thursday 19th June 1958 – the day when Buddy recorded ‘Early in the Morning’ in New York’s Pythian Temple – that Buddy had asked Maria out. She had never been out on a date and told Holly he would have to ask her aunt for permission. Buddy promptly got her aunt’s permission and five hours into their first date, Buddy handed a rose to Maria and asked her to marry him! On August 15, 1958, less than two months later, they were married in Buddy’s hometown of Lubbock, Texas.\nThey settled down there until Buddy broke up with his band, ‘The Crickets’, and moved to New York. It was in October 1958 that Santiago-Holly went on tour with her husband and took on promotional duties. Buddy also formed the Maria Music publishing company with which “Stay Close To Me” was filed. Buddy produced Lou Giordano’s version of the song which was issued on Brunswick records on Tuesday 27th January, 1959.\nBuddy and Santiago had been married for just six months at the time of the crash. Maria Santiago-Holly learned of Buddy’s death from the reports on television. She was a widow and did not attend the funeral – nor has she ever visited the grave site. She told the Avalanche-Journal: “In a way, I blame myself. I was not feeling well when he left. I was two weeks pregnant, and I wanted Buddy to stay with me, but he had scheduled that tour. It was the only time I wasn’t with him. And I blame myself because I know that, if only I had gone along, Buddy never would have gotten into that airplane.”\nMaria Santiago-Holly suffered a miscarriage shortly after due, we are told, to “psychological trauma”\nBuddy Holly’s funeral was held on Friday 7th February 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Holly’s wedding just months earlier. The pall-bearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, Sonny Curtis, and Phil Everly. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend, because of his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party.\nBuddy’s body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery, in the eastern part of the city, with his headstone carrying the correct spelling of his surname – Holley – and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar.\nBuddy had gone – but his work would live on – and on – and on!\nBuddy and ‘Peggy Sue’ leave memories\nFebruary 3, 2018 1950s, accidents, Music, Pop music, Popular music, Popular singerstalkinghistory2013\nIn my younger days – the 1950’s that is – I was one of those thousands, or maybe millions, of British teenagers who latched on to the US ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ performers. Elvis was my number one with Buddy Holly a close second. I can remember hearing – and then getting dad to buy – ‘Peggy Sue’ as Christmas got close in 1957. It reached number 6 in the charts – Harry Belafonte was at number 1 from 22nd November until Jerry Lee Lewis took the number one slot on 10th January1958! Buddy had 3 hits in 1958 – ‘Listen to me’ [2 weeks & peaking at 16]; ‘Rave On’ [14 weeks & peaking at 5] and ‘Early in the Morning’ [4 weeks & peaking at 4]. In January 1959 he had a brief – one week hit – ‘Heartbeat’. While I was enjoying ‘Heartbeat’ – and hoping that Buddy would be over here soon – Buddy was getting on a plane and moving on to another show.\nHe was in ‘The Winter Dance Party’ tour that had begun in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 23rd January 1959. The amount of travel involved created logistical problems. The distance between the venues had not been considered and, adding to the problem, the unheated tour buses broke down twice in the freezing weather. Added to this was Buddy’s drummer, Carl Bunch, had been hospitalized for frostbite to his toes which he had suffered while aboard the bus! As a result Buddy decided to organise other form of transportation so, before their next appearance – planned for 2nd February in Iowa – Buddy chartered a four-seat Beechcraft from Dwyer Flying Service in Mason City with Jennings, Allsup, and himself. His idea was to depart after the Clear Lake Surf Ballroom show and fly to their next venue, in Moorhead, Minnesota via Fargo, North Dakota. This would allow them time to rest and wash their clothes. It also meant that they could avoid a rigorous bus journey.\nIt was just before midnight when the Clear Lake show ended just before midnight. There were some discussions on who was joining Buddy in the flight. Allsup agreed to flip a coin for the seat with Ritchie Valens – he took out a brand new half-dollar and Ritchie called heads. Heads it was. Richie reportedly said “That’s the first time I’ve ever won anything in my life.” Allsup later opened a restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas called ‘Heads Up’. Waylon Jennings also voluntarily gave up his seat – this one to J. P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) who had influenza and complained that the tour bus was too cold and uncomfortable for a man of his size.\nRoger Peterson, the pilot, took off in inclement weather, although he was not certified to fly by instruments only. Shortly after 1:00 am on Tuesday 3rd February 1959, Holly, Valens, Richardson, and Peterson were killed instantly when their plane crashed into a cornfield five miles northwest of the Mason City, Iowa airport shortly after take-off. The bodies of the entertainers were all ejected from the plane on impact while Peterson’s body remained entangled in the wreckage. Buddy Holly had sustained fatal trauma to his head and chest and numerous lacerations and fractures of his arms and legs.\nWe will be attending the funeral in a few days time.\nA lady I wish I had known\nNovember 3, 2017 1950s, Advice, New to metalkinghistory2013\nIn looking through various sources – like notes – and ideas – and luck for posing I often find something that is new to me. That has happened today when I found something by Dawn Powell. She was new to me so I dug a little deeper and discovered that she died in 1965. Going deeper I found her work was very nice and I’ll certainly ‘come back to her again’. The piece I chose is perfect for this – it was published on Wednesday 3rd November 1954 and reads as follows:\n‘Notes for talk – people like different books at different times in their lives. It seems odd that such difficult ponderous writers as Walter Scott, Dumas, Victor Hugo are so often pets of our youth when later in life they seem almost over our heads. It must be that, at 12 or 13, our heads need filling – there are few experiences and knowledge to furnish resistance, so the story has a wide screen. The young reader has no experience of his own to debate the story; he accepts it wholly, is gullible, it blooms in his mind completely. Trollope is certainly a writer for adults.’\nPopular music that helped me through the 1950s\nOctober 23, 2017 1950s, Pop music, Popular music, Popular singers, Radio musictalkinghistory2013\nIt was on Friday 14th November 1952 that the British singles music charts were first published – but I knew nothing about it! It was not until Friday 23rd October 1953 that I really ‘hooked into’ popular music of the day. I kept notes and I played records – and I was told by my parents quite often to ‘turn that noise down’. Sometimes I did as they asked! Below are the records for the first 8 years that I made sure I heard who was holding the number one slot on the Friday nearest that magical first date above\n1953 – Frankie Laine with ‘Hey Joe’ [2 weeks]\n1954 – Don Cornell with ‘Hold My Hand’ [4 weeks]\n1955 – Jimmy Young with ‘The Man from Laramie’ [4 weeks]\n1956 – Frankie Laine again, this time with ‘A Woman in Love’ [4 weeks]\n1957 – Paul Anka with ‘Diana’ [9 weeks starting on 30th August]\n1958 – Connie Francis with ‘Carolina Moon’ with ‘Stupid Cupid’ on the flip side of the double ‘A side’ [6 weeks from 26th September.\n1959 – Bobby Darin with ‘Mack the Knife’ [2 weeks]\n1960 – it’s a new decade and Roy Orbison has ‘Only the Lonely’ at number 1 for 2 weeks\nLet’s just roll forward 40 years to the 23rd October 2000 and we find U2’s version of ‘Beautiful Day’ holding the top spot – for me another special number.\nSo that’s me – do you have musical memories like this? I’d love to know if you have.\nA million becomes 60 million after this story hits the screens.\nOctober 6, 2017 1950s, 1960s, 20th century, Filmstalkinghistory2013\nIt was on this day – Saturday 6th October 1962 – that a film of the book launched the James Bond saga across the world.\n‘Doctor No’ was the sixth novel by author Ian Fleming to feature his British Secret Service agent James Bond. He had written the novel in early 1957 at his home in Jamaica and it was first published in the United Kingdom by Johnathan Cape on Tuesday 31st March 1958. The novel centred on Bond’s investigation into the disappearance in Jamaica of two fellow MI6 operatives.\nSean Connery – agent 007 – had to battle with the mysterious Doctor No – a scientific genius bent on destroying the whole U.S. space program. As the countdown to disaster began James Bond headed for Jamaica. There, surprise surprise, he encountered the beautiful Honey Ryder (played by the beautiful Ursula Andress). Together they have to confront a megalo-maniacal villain in his massive island headquarters.\nCreated on a one million dollar budget, the film box offices returned just short of 60 million dollars!\nThe Festival of Britain comes to its end\nSeptember 30, 2017 1950s, 20th century, Festival, King George VItalkinghistory2013\nTwo or three times my parents had said that we would go to the Festival of Britain – but the promises were never turned into fact. But now the whole thing was closing and I had been deprived of being part of it. However events had been held all over Britain, not just in London and, after all, we had haved one Festival in our village!\nIt was on Sunday 30th September 1951 that the Festival of Britain came to an end. It had been organised to mark the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and, after a special service attended by the King, Queen Elizabeth, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and other senior members of the royal family, King George declared the festival open in a broadcast from the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.\nThe official closing ceremony was planned to also be pronounced by the King but, unfortunately, he was not well enough and the closing speech was given by the Archbishop of Canterbury. He described the Festival as being ‘a real family party’ and ‘the standard by which we shall face the future’. He said that there were many legacies of the Festival – trees planted, and statues and other artworks commissioned. He also said that the Festival had given a better awareness of Britain as a thriving economy with a skilled workforce.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line629721"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7931122779846191,"wiki_prob":0.7931122779846191,"text":"Desktop notifications are on | Turn off\nGet breaking news alerts from The Washington Post\nWhat ‘left’ and ‘right’ really mean\nBy Ezra Klein\nPerhaps my biggest frustration with the U.S. news media (and yes, I am a card-carrying member) is that we permit the two parties to decide what is “left” and what is “right.” The way it works, roughly, is that anything Democrats support becomes “left,” and everything Republicans support becomes “right.” But that makes “left” and “right” descriptions of where the two parties stand at any given moment rather than descriptions of the philosophies, ideologies or ideas that animate, or should animate, political debates.\nThere is a good reason why we do it this way. It isn’t the media’s job to police political ideologies, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to try. But that leaves ordinary voters in a bit of a tough spot.\nThe reality is that most Americans aren’t policy wonks. They don’t sit down with think-tank papers or economic studies and puzzle over whether it’s better to address the free-rider problem in health care through automatic enrollment or the individual mandate. Instead, they outsource those questions to the political actors — both elected and unelected — they trust.\nUnfortunately, those political actors aren’t worthy of their trust. They’re trying to win elections, not points for intellectual consistency. So the voters who trust them get taken for a ride.\nConsider the partywide flips and flops of just the past few years:\n— Supporting a temporary, deficit-financed payroll-tax cut as a stimulus measure in 2009, as Republican Sen. John McCain and every one of his colleagues did, put you on the right. Supporting a temporary, deficit-financed payroll tax-cut in late 2011 put you on the left. Supporting it in early 2012 could have put you on either side.\n— Supporting an individual mandate as a way to solve the health-care system’s free-rider problem between 1991 and 2007 put you on the right. Doing so after 2010 put you on the left.\n— Supporting a system in which total carbon emissions would be capped and permits traded as a way of moving toward clean energy using the power of market pricing could have put you on either the left or right between 2000 and 2008. After 2009, it put you squarely on the left.\n— Caring about short-term deficits between 2001 and 2008 put you on the left. Caring about them between 2008 and 2012 put you on the right.\n— Favoring an expansive view of executive authority between 2001 and 2008 put you on the right. Doing so since 2009 has, in most cases, put you on the left.\n— Supporting large cuts to Medicare in the context of universal health-care reform puts you on the left, as every Democrat who voted for the Affordable Care Act found out during the 2010 election. Supporting large cuts to Medicare in the context of deficit reduction puts you on the right, as Republicans found out in the 1990s, and then again after voting for Representative Paul Ryan’s proposed budget in 2011.\n— Decrying the filibuster and considering drastic changes to the Senate rulebook to curb it between 2001 and 2008 put you on the right, particularly if you were exercised over judicial nominations. Since 2009, decrying the filibuster and considering reforms to curb it has put you on the left.\n— Favoring a negative tax rate for the poorest Americans between 2001 and 2008 could have put you on the right or the left. In recent years, it has put you on the left.\nI don’t particularly mind flip-flops. Consistency is an overrated virtue. But honesty isn’t. In many of these cases, the parties changed policy when it was politically convenient to do so, not when conditions changed and new information came to light.\nThere are exceptions, of course. It’s reasonable to worry about short-term deficits during an economic expansion and consider them necessary during a recession. That’s Economics 101.\nBut nothing happened to explain the change from 2006, when the individual mandate was a Republican policy in good standing, to 2010, when every Senate Republican, including those who still had their names on bills that included individual mandates, agreed it was an unconstitutional assault on liberty. Nothing, that is, but the Democrats’ adopting the policy in their health-care reform bill.\nFlips and flops like these make the labels “left” and “right” meaningless as a descriptor of anything save partisanship over any extended period of time. I could tell you about a politician who supported deficit-financed stimulus policies and cap-and-trade, and I could be describing McCain. Or Newt Gingrich. And I could tell you about another politician who opposed an individual mandate, and who fought deficits, expansive views of executive authority and efforts to reform the filibuster, and be describing Sen. Barack Obama.\nParties — particularly when they’re in the minority — care more about power than policy. Perhaps there’s nothing much to be done about this. And as I said, it isn’t clear that the media, or anyone else, should try. But it puts the lie to the narrative that America is really riven by grand ideological disagreements. America is deeply divided on the question of which party should be in power at any given moment. Much of the polarization over policy is driven by that question, not the other way around.\nBut the voters who trust the parties don’t know that, and they tend to take on faith the idea that their representatives are fighting for some relatively consistent agenda. They’re wrong.\nTry 1 month for $10 $1\nSend me this offer\nBy submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.\nYou’re all set!\nWe sent this offer to john.smith@gmail.com\nLeaf Page Test - Sun Nov 3 01:48:02 EDT 2019\nHad this been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune on your radio dial.\nMost Read Business\nTeslas still go much farther on a single charge than their competitors. But the strategy carries risks.\nLego sets its sights on a growing market: Stressed-out adults\nHappiness gap between whites and nonwhites surged during Trump era, Gallup finds\nTrump’s China tariffs have not caused Americans to pay $1,000 more a year. Here’s why.\nWhite House hold on Ukraine aid violated federal law, congressional watchdog says\nWe sent this offer to\njohn.smith@gmail.com\nInside 'Trump Revealed'\nRead stories based on reporting for “Trump Revealed,” a broad, comprehensive biography of the life of the 45th president.\nReporting archive: Trump’s financial records, depositions and interview transcripts\nSuccess! Check your inbox for details.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line481148"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5472169518470764,"wiki_prob":0.5472169518470764,"text":"ALLEN, THOMAS\nPauline A. Pinckney\nALLEN, THOMAS (1849–1924). Thomas Allen, painter, son of Thomas and Annie G. Allen, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1849. In his second year of business school at Washington University, St. Louis, Allen accompanied his professor, J. W. Paterson, on a sketching expedition to the Rocky Mountains. His notes and sketches from that trip increased his interest in art. In 1871 he went to Paris, then to Düsseldorf, where he studied at the Royal Academy from 1872 to 1876.\nIn the winter of 1878–79 he traveled to San Antonio, Texas, before returning to France. In San Antonio he painted three notable works: The Market Place, San Antonio (exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1882); Mexican Woman Washing at San Pedro Spring, and The Portal of San José Mission. The colors of his romantic scenes are muted, and his subjects are presented with little detail. Allen's work shows an appreciation of the simple and commonplace.\nThe first American showing of Allen's work was at the National Academy of Design in New York. He was made a member of the American Society of Artists, and in 1884 he became an associate member of the National Academy. In 1893 he was a member of the International Board of Judges at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and he was chairman of the jury of paintings at the World's Fair in St. Louis. He was vice president of the Boston Art Club and chairman of the Art Commission of Boston. Before his death in 1924 he became president of the board of trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His paintings are in the collections of the San Antonio Public Library, the Witte Memorial Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. Allen died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on August 25, 1924.\nPauline A. Pinckney, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.\nHandbook of Texas Online, Pauline A. Pinckney, \"ALLEN, THOMAS,\" accessed January 17, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fal29.\nUploaded on June 9, 2010. Modified on September 24, 2018. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1474381"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5654396414756775,"wiki_prob":0.4345603585243225,"text":"Read It, Late September 2016\nWell, the second half of August went fast. And so did most of September. This one has been sitting on my computer, unfinished, for some time. I’ll try to be more regular, although I am now spending my free time packing my books for a move, which is taking up a great deal of time. The library takes up a lot of boxes, and a lot of storage space! On the positive side, I am attempting to bring the database of every book, video, and compact disc my family owns completely up to date.\nOn to the books.\nIn reviewing Authority a short while ago, I wrote:\nI have started reading the third part with low expectations. I haven’t finished it yet. Already, it is more engaging than the second one. But I think my final verdict will likely be that readers should read the first book, which I reviewed highly in May, and stop there.\nAnd in short, this is exactly what happened. I finished Acceptance this morning and found it unsatisfying. Like Authority, it suffers in comparison to the first book, Annihilation. It sets up the sensation that there will be revelations and climaxes. We learn a little more and speculate a little more about what is going on in Area X, and there are some interesting and disturbing scenes and moments, but overall the latter two books in the trilogy both lack the sense of sustained build-up, forward movement, and storytelling that keep me happily turning pages.\nSo I’m going to do what I said I would do, keeping the first volume in my library and giving away the other two, and accept that VanderMeer tried, but somehow wasn’t able to make this work really work as a trilogy; it was a great novel. I think the setting might still be a fertile setting for other stories, but the stories VanderMeer actually managed to tell in Authority and Acceptance just didn’t live up to the uncanny weirdness, beauty, and intensity he achieved in the first volume. Which is a shame, but not exactly a startling revelation, since many, many trilogies follow in those same well-worn tracks.\nThe Stainless Steel Rat Books\nSome time ago I read Harry Harrison’s original novel The Stainless Steel Rat released all the way back in 1961.\nIn the last couple of weeks I picked up an omnibus paperback containing the first three books and so completed The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge and The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World.\nRevenge features a storyline about an alien civilization that has expansionist aspirations, and is invading other planets. Harrison’s world is not deep or complex but it is entertaining and fast-moving. His plot points often seem a little bit clichéd and feel like TV dramas, but I think one could make the case that this is, in part, because his novels have influenced several generations of screenwriters.\nIn Word there is an elaborate time-travel narrative. Time-travel stories were not new in 1972, but some of the tropes weren’t quite as tired. Slippery Jim travels back in time to 1975, and has highly amusing adventures trying to figure out the culture of old Earth.\nI’m currently working on The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You. In this volume, Slippery Jim’s twin sons are full-grown and ready to embark on a dubious adventure with Jim and Angelina.\nLet’s face it; the Stainless Steel Rat stories are not heavy, or deep. At least, the ones I’ve read so far are not, although amid Slippery Jim’s constant boozing, an admirable personal philosophy does emerge, a philosophy about personal freedom, coercion, and the role of the state and the military.\nHarrison is apparently still writing Stainless Steel Rat stories over fifty years later, so maybe the new ones get heavier or deeper. I don’t yet know. But the volumes I’ve read so far are slightly satirical but mostly just amusing adventures in the mold of old-fashioned adventure tales. They do this admirably. Each one consists of about 21 short chapters. There are lots of narrow escapes and cliffhangers. They are, in fact, a nice antidote to some of the much heavier works that I’m reading. Works like…\nThe Book of the Short Sun\nHaving finished the New Sun books in audiobook format, I continued right on to the Short Sun books. In the past I have tried to read this series a couple of times. Each time I got hung up, if I recall correctly, about halfway through In Green’s Jungles.\nI’ve had another chance to tackle this, the challenging third series of Wolfe’s “solar cycle” books, but by listening to the first two parts as audiobooks. The third part, Return to the Whorl, does not seem to be available on YouTube.\nEven with the long hours in the car, available for listening, and large volumes of coffee, to focus my mind, In Green’s Jungles remains a difficult work. The first volume is, for the most part, told as a relatively straightforward story, but out of order, and with some deeply strange elements, some whose significance only becomes clear upon a second or even third reading.\nHorn, a character from the Long Sun books, is the narrator. He tells us about accepting a mission to travel across the planet Blue to claim a seat on a “lander,” a spacecraft, which will return to the Whorl, the generation starship that brought humans to this solar system. His mission is to find Silk, the hero of the Long Sun books. He wants to bring Silk to Blue, because civilization on Blue is suffering from a distinct lack of coherent, moral leadership.\nHorn has several adventures and misadventures, all told in a complex, interleaved retrospect. He meets a young woman who seems to be human, but who has gills, and she seems to have been transformed by a goddess into a literal siren. He is granted a vision of this goddess, who can take the form of a gigantic woman. She seems much like the Undine in the New Sun books.\nTaking the young woman as his companion and lover, Horn violates his marriage. In a disturbing scene, he convinces the young woman, Seawrack, to sing for him. This singing arouses him so much that he brutally rapes her. It seems that both his violent and procreative instincts have been aroused, and he seems to try to hurt her as much as possible in the assault. This is a disturbing and baffling scene. How are we to identify with the narrator afterwards? Was he really unable to control himself because of Seawrack’s magical singing?\nWolfe here is clearly trying to challenge the reader by giving us a narrator who is difficult to empathize with, just as the New Sun books featured a young man who was literally a torturer, and whose job was to execute people by beheading, or perform other acts of punishment; after exile, Severian was appointed the administrator of a horrifying, wretched prison. I’m still disturbed by the way this Horn doesn’t seem to fit with the Horn of the remainder of the trilogy; at the very least, Wolfe is warning the reader that “this isn’t going to be easy.” At worst, it seems almost a George R. R. Martinesque act of sadism.\nHorn meets one of the inhumi, a vampire-like alien being who takes on the appearance of a young boy. His difficult relationship with this inhumi, Krait, is set up in relation to his relationship with Seawrack. The cast of characters is rounded out with a hus, an eight-legged creature a bit like a boar, named Babbie. Babbie is not human, but seems to develop greater intelligence and empathy as he spends time with Horn. So does Krait. Seawrack seems to have been human once, but only constant contact with Horn keeps her so. So in addition to the actual storyline of In Blue’s Jungles, Wolfe has set up some complex philosophical questions about personhood, especially how our conception of someone’s personhood can change. But as soon as you have a feeling that you pretty well understand these issues, Horn casually mentions how all these things happened back before he died. And the issue of just who Horn actually is starts to loom large in the reader’s mind.\nIn the second volume, In Green’s Jungles, we are again learning more of the story out of order. The lander was a trap, and operated by the inhumu, to take humans not to the Whorl but to their planet, Green, to serve as slaves and/or food. Although the title mentions Green, almost none of the story actually takes place on Green, except in recollection of Horn’s earlier sojourn there. Well, sort of. As In Green’s Jungles is opening, Horn, years older than the Horn in the previous book, recounts staying with a man named Inclito. He tells us the story of how he winds up leading Inclito’s troops in an inter-city-state war on Blue. There are other inhumu characters to understand and contend with, some disguised and some not. And then, as Incanto, who is Horn, who may also be in some sense Silk, is left to sleep in the snow with a dying inhumu, he takes a whole contingent of fighting mercenaries to Green, via some kind of astral travel. And then things get so strange and difficult that, I think, this is the point at which I gave up in my previous attempts to complete it, and set the book aside.\nI’ve done better this time, but I have to admit that after finishing In Green’s Jungles in audio form, I immediately had to go back and listen to most of it a second time before I felt like I understood it to my own satisfaction, and I don’t feel like listening to it a third time would be out of the question.\nIn Green’s Jungles is an immensely complex work. It bounces around in time and space such that it really would not be easy to put the chronology of events into a completely rational order. One would have to make a detailed outline and then cut it apart and reorder everything. In fact I get the sense that Wolfe constructed these three books, at least in part, by doing the opposite — tearing a detailed chronology of events to shreds and reassembled it as told by a narrator who is himself deeply damaged and confused, although (I think) not actually deluded or misled as to the true nature of events, as Severian seems often to be.\nI wish I had Return to the Whorl in audio form. That book is also complex. I’d like to be able to listen to it in the car as well. Instead, I’ve been reading the printed version again. I have not gotten very far yet. In Return to the Whorl we finally start to learn what happens in between Horn’s “death” and how he fails — sort of — to complete his mission. Because I am not that far into it, I am not really sure whether In Green’s Jungles represents the peak of narrative confusion and complexity in the trilogy, and things start to become more linear in the third book, or whether Wolfe will be twisting things up even more. I’m betting that he is, at least for a while, going to ratchet the degree of difficulty up even higher.\nI don’t feel like I’m even at a point yet where I can adequately review this trilogy. I’m a good reader. I once audited a seminar class on James Joyce’s Ulysses and I had a lot to say about that book, and felt as though I got a great deal out of it. I still have my notes. I was an English major and studied big and difficult books, classic works of literature like Moby Dick. Wolfe can, when he wants to, really make things hard, formally, by playing with the fundamentals of storytelling, in a way that Joyce didn’t and Melville didn’t.\nThe Book of the New Sun is so fascinating in part because it can be read in a very satisfactory way as a fantasy/adventure novel set in the milieu of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories. It is perfectly respectable to read and enjoy Severian’s adventure as a big travelogue, exploring his world and winding his way to his ascent of the throne. But the story is not quite what it appears. The fantasy world turns out to be a science fiction world. Many things that initially seem magical have a technological explanation. The lacunae and oddities and inconsistencies in Severian’s story reveal that he is not what he seems.\nThe second series, The Book of the Long Sun, seems right off the bat to give us an unreliable narrator — a young priest who has, in the first book’s first scene, a vision, or perhaps a mild stroke. He sets off on a great mission, believing that he has been granted enlightenment by the mysterious God, the Outsider. The story is actually quite straightforward, although through various details we come to understand that this story is connected to the Long Sun books because the gods of the Whorl, the generation starship, are the uploaded children of Pas, who is himself the uploaded Typhon, the two-headed ruler of Urth who Severian meets in both the four-volume novel and the “coda” The Urth of the New Sun. And Silk, it turns out, is not unreliable at all, although he may be divinely inspired, by a real God, not one of the fradulent technologically-enhanced human “gods” of the Whorl.\nThe Book of the Long Sun is not complex in the sense that The Book of the New Sun is complex. The plot is relatively straightforward. The challenge to the reader stems from the way the storytelling across the four volumes is so intense, complex, and focused. Events take place in an extremely compressed time scale. Dialogue is packed with meaning. There are dozens of characters to meet. Small details mentioned in passing become significant later, and there is a lot of detail to absorb.\nThe Book of the Short Sun takes yet another approach to narrative, in that we don’t necessarily have an unreliable narrator, but a scrambled narrative. In reading Severian’s account, at least for a second or third time, Severian’s identity becomes somewhat complex as we realize that his timeline has been manipulated and his whole existence across timelines interfered with. Horn has not, I think, had any such external manipulation done to him. But he has been badly damaged, his identity itself altered, and the narrative that he unspools reflects this chronological confusion; it’s a tangled ball of yarn.\nThe Book of the Short Sun is definitely the more difficult of the three Solar Cycle series. I think that The Book of the New Sun endures because of the way the reader can enjoy it on multiple levels, and it richly rewards re-reading. Too, I’ve started listening to The Book of the Long Sun, which I’ve read twice already. Unlike The Book of the New Sun, the story of Silk does not become more confusing on re-reading, but richer and more beautiful. I am listening with admiration as I see just how brilliantly Wolfe sets up the story from the very first sentence, making the onrushing events that overtake Silk seem inevitable. It’s a bit like an incredibly detailed short story.\nUnlike these other two series, though, The Book of the Short Sun seems to require re-reading in order to understand the most fundamental aspects of the book, such as:\n“Who is telling the story?”\n“What happens in the story?”\n“Who are the other characters in the story?”\n“Which of these characters are people and should be accorded the rights of people?”\nAnd as I have not even completed all three Short Sun books once, I still feel like I’m not quite ready to answer these questions. And I’m not really prepared to advocate for this trilogy like I have advocated for the other two, because I really have come to believe that this trilogy just isn’t written for everyone. It’s really written for a reader who wants at the outset to take on a multi-dimensional chess game with Gene Wolfe. And I’m not entirely sure, yet, whether it’s even for me.\nThere isn’t a lot of analysis out there on the Short Sun books, probably because they are so complex. Even though the trilogy is fifteen years old, I suspect that not very many readers have actually completed it, and of those readers, even fewer came away feeling that they understood it. I did find one interesting and, I think, correct interpretive note in the form of some incomplete notes on the Wolfe Wiki, which today seems to be off-line; I don’t even know who to credit these thoughts to, but they start off like so:\nI believe we can take the old pen case as a metaphor for the old body Horn has brought back from the whorl. “At present it holds two quills, for I have taken the third one out. Two were in it when I found it in the ashes of our shop. The third, with which I am writing, was dropped by Oreb not so long ago.” To push the analogy, the three pens are three spirits: Silk, Pas, and Horn. The third, with which he begins to write this book, will be “dropped” before the end.\nSee http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=TheBookOfTheShortSun.TheOldPenCase (although as it exists in the form of a Wiki, that page may well have changed by the time you go to look at it).\nI’d like to be able to sum up and render some useful final judgement on The Book of the Short Sun, but I simply can’t — at least not yet. Maybe I’ll be able to do so soon. For now, it’s just too big. For the moment let’s just say that if The Book of the New Sun is Wolfe’s Ulysses, I hope that The Book of the Short Sun is not his Finnegan’s Wake.\nNext time I will to include some notes about Robert Borski’s book Solary Labyrinth. This is a book of short essays about The Book of the New Sun and the mysteries in that text, particularly the mysteries surrounding the identities and relationships of some of the characters. I re-read this work while re-reading The Book of the New Sun, to refresh my memory. Borski’s book is interesting, but in some ways, to me at least, not fully convincing. More on that next time!\nCompleted since last time:\nThe Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge by Harry Harrison\nThe Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World by Harry Harrison\nThe Stainless Steel Rat Wants You by Harry Harrison\nOn Blue’s Waters by Gene Wolfe (audiobook)\nIn Green’s Jungles by Gene Wolfe (audiobook)\nSolar Labyrinth by Robert Borski\nHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (bedtime reading for the kids)\nIn progress:\nReturn to the Whorl by Gene Wolfe\nNightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe (audiobook)\nThe Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (bedtime reading)\nA Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett (bedtime reading)\nPosted by Paul R. Potts at 11:56 PM No comments:\nLabels: Read It\nTwo Interesting Games: Little Inferno and Human Resource Machine\nAs a guy who remembers a world before Pac-Man, I admit to having gone through phases in which I played a lot of video games. As a child my family had a game console for a time; not an Atari, but a Sears “Tele-Games Electronic Games Motocross Sports Center IV,” which had Pong-style games out the wazoo, and a deeply dumb motorcycle jump game. Back then you had to use a lot of imagination to translate the low-resolution, barely-animated game representation into something more vivid, but I had fun with it. It wasn’t like there were a lot of great video game alternatives. During the home computer years I was a big fan of Infocom text adventures, completing many of them and dabbling in programming my own text adventures (fortunately all lost). Graphics games were in their infancy by I played them. Graphics games on the TRS–80, in black and white with a resolution of 48 pixels by 128 pixels, were notably crude; remember that bit about having to use a lot of imagination?\nOver the years I mostly was not a big gamer, although I went through some phases when I played a lot of games. In the early nineties, I played Doom. I had a brief infatuation with the PC-based Ultima games and played the hell out of several of them, including the two Ultima Underworld games. A few years later, I was a fan of some Nintendo 64 titles and I’ll never forget conquering the tough boss “Mad Jack,” an evil jack-in-the box, in Donkey Kong 64. I gradually migrated away from first-person shooter games towards racing and puzzle games, enjoying Mario Kart and beating Paper Mario and the sequel, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door as well as The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.\nWhen I moved to Saginaw and was living alone for a while I bought a few games from Steam, including Half-Life 2. It was Half-Life 2, particularly the “We Don’t Go to Ravenholm” episode, that put me off first-person shooter games, probably forever, but I enjoyed (and completed) World of Goo.\nI’m sure I’m glossing over many games that were significant to me over the years, but the point of this introduction is to show that I’ve gravitated more towards puzzle games and physics games. I have never gotten into MMPORGs and modern, realistic first-person shooter games leave me cold. That makes me what hard-core gamers might call a “casual gamer.” I welcome the idea that the term is vaguely insulting — because to me the alternative is “someone who wastes far too much time playing games.” I don’t believe time spent playing games is entirely wasted — for example, I think the second game I’ll discuss below actually can hone some useful skills — but the returns diminish pretty quickly.\nSince purchasing an iPad I never really found iPad games I thought were worth playing; adaptations of other games didn’t always work well on the iPad touch-screen hardware. But recently I was browsing the App Store out of boredom and found two games that I really like.\nThe first is an oddball game called Little Inferno. The setting and plot is bizarrely simple (and simply bizarre). You’ve just received a brick fireplace, called a “Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace,” made by the Tomorrow Corporation (which is the name of the actual company that made the game, by the way). You don’t have anything to burn in it, but you can order things from the company. They include a starter catalog. Everything is delivered right to you. The catalog is a mishmash of weird parody objects: broken toys, expired and discontinued food items, weird junk-shop finds, and the occasional amusingly explosive, infested, or toxic item. It’s first-person, and for most of the game you sit in front of the fireplace and burn stuff up, and order new stuff. Stuff is delivered in just a few seconds, with bigger-ticket items taking tens of seconds or minutes, but the game allows you to spend your bonus points on rush delivery. So you can indulge your impatience, and you quickly find that indulging your impatience makes you even less patient. That’s about it for the basic gameplay.\nThere’s a story arc that starts to emerge; you get mail, and you get weather reports. Apparently your community is suffering from terrible winter storms and they’ve been going on for some time. In fact, you never seem to actually leave your home, or eat or drink anything. To me, it’s a wonderfully weird satire of Amazon Prime. You earn money by burning things in your fireplace, which you can use to buy more things. When you burn “combos,” weird groupings of items with some symbolic or metaphorical relationship, you get bonus points. You can use the bonus points to order more and more things, and they arrive ever-faster. As you level up you get more catalogs, with more and more expensive items in them. The items burn in entertaining, and sometimes horrible, ways. For example, there’s a stuffed cat called Kitty Kitty Poo Poo. When you ignite it, it poops. A lot. It seems to be filled entirely with poop, which burns.\nHowever demented and gross the game’s sense of humor, it was never quite as dark as I expected. For example, one of the required combos is called “Sorority Party.” I thought it involved the “Low Self-Esteem Action Doll” and the chainsaw, but that may be a remnant of watching one too many low-budget horror movies back in the eighties. It actually involves balloons, not chainsaws.\nEventually you level up enough to bring the game to a satisfying and surreal conclusion. I won’t spoil it for you. This game isn’t for everyone but it doesn’t take all that long to complete it, and I had fun.\nI discovered that the same developers have released another game, Human Resource Machine. Human Resource Machine is a bit difficult to describe if you aren’t already familiar with very low-level computer programming. If you’ve ever taken a data structure class, or an algorithms class, or especially an assembly language programming class, it will be familiar. You are an office drone, starting out in the mail room. You work your way through a series of rooms. In each room, your supervisor gives you an assigment involving sorting or filing or rearranging boxes, moving them from an incoming conveyer belt to an outgoing conveyor belt. But you don’t move the boxes yourself in real time; you don’t have direct control of your avatar. You can’t drag him around or make him pick up a box. Instead, you write a program, in a very simple assembly language, to control your avatar. Then you run the program. When you run it your avatar zooms around, executing the instructions. You can make your avatar run the program step-by-step, even stepping backwards, and change the speed.\nThe assembly language you are learning starts out very simply. Initially you have only two commands, one to take an item from the inbox, and one to put the item in the outbox. As the challenges get more difficult you get addition and subtraction, and jump operations, and conditional jump operations, and then load and store operations, and then indexed load and store operations, and then indirect indexed load and store operations. If you make it through the whole game you will have mastered the basics of assembly language programming. The Human Resource Machine instruction set is not a real instruction set architecture, but at their heart, instruction set architectures are very similar. So once you’ve mastered this one, you could presumably learn any real instruction set architecture, just as after I mastered the Z–80 (the microprocessor inside the Radio Shack TRS–80), it was relatively easy to master the 6502 (the microprocessor inside the Apple II). In fact the Human Resource Machine architecture is a bit like that of the 6502. It is a little more irregular than I think it should be. Some instructions leave objects in your hands, and some don’t (your “hands” represent a sort of accumulator, or common register used to do most operations including math operations). But real instruction set architectures all have their quirks.\nIf this game had existed when I was teaching the System Software course I taught at Saginaw Valley State University, and I could have arranged for the students to have access to it, I would have assigned it. It is pretty much the best attempt at “gamification” of programming I’ve ever seen. I especially like the way it teaches a very low-level language. Most programming environments you see online teach Python, or Lua, or JavaScript, or other high-level languages. It’s refreshing to see one that really gets to the bottom of how computer programs do their work.\nMost of the basic problems are simple, but they get progressively harder. You have to invent some techniques to map high-level concepts to low-level instructions. For example, you don’t have an instruction to determine if two numbers are equal. But you have a subtraction instruction, and you can compare a value to zero. So you have to come up with the idea that you can check to see if two numbers are equal by subtracting one from the other. If the result is zero, they were equal. This is just one of many such techniques you have to work out.\nTo get to the end, you have to implement a sorting algorithm in assembly language. This would be a trivial library call in Java but in assembly language it is a fairly challenging program. I chose a maximally-inefficient version of a sorting algorithm known as “bubble sort.” It contains a lot of redundant operations, which made my little avatar go berserk for five minutes when I ran it. Some easy optimizations are possible, but the first challenge is just to get a program working.\nWhen I completed all the required challenges, I started doing the side challenges, a parallel series of graded exercises. You can also try to maximize your points for each challenge. To get the maximum possible points, you must not only solve the problem correctly, but meet two optimization challenges: you must meet or beat a target for the minimum program length, and a target for the fastest execution. In some simple cases one solution will meet both objectives. But in many of them, the size-optimized program looks very different than the speed-optimized program. Perhaps not surprisingly, an enterprising person has set up a Github repository with optimized solutions. See https://github.com/atesgoral/hrm-solutions.\nI’ve been programming computers since 1977 and although I met the requirements to complete the game, I still have not managed to beat all these assembly language optimization challenges. As the game says, some of them are quite difficult. But I did start make my own little implementation of the virtual machine and instruction set, written in C, which runs on an ATtiny 441 microcontroller. If you want to play with it, the code is here: https://github.com/paulrpotts/TinyHRM.\nI had the idea, originally, that you might communicate with the tiny microcontroller running the code via the serial port, uploading the program and letting it run. But I’m not sure I will ever get around to that, since I am getting paid to write other programs, but at least I had some fun with it.\nThe game has cut scenes, and a concluding scene. Again, I won’t spoil it for you, but as a programmer about to celebrate my 49th birthday, I found the concluding scene slightly unnerving. It’s a great game and I highly recommend it, and I am looking forward to more releases from Tomorrow Corporation.\nTwo Interesting Games: Little Inferno and Human Re...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line210861"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5174685120582581,"wiki_prob":0.5174685120582581,"text":"Now that’s what I call history\nI first heard about Big History around a year ago and it really caught my imagination. Big History is a new way of looking at the subject, which attempts to examine history on a large scale across long time frames through a multi-disciplinary approach. The starting point is the origins of the Universe some 13.5 billion years ago. And it continues with the creation of stars, planets, including our own Earth. Finally it charts the evolution of life on Earth and the appearance of humans, which is nearly halfway through the course. In fact really humans should appear much later in the course but it would probably be too much of a blow to our egos.\nI really like the multi-disciplinary approach. It draws on such fields as anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, biology, climatology, cosmology, geology natural history. You may find this too broad but I really enjoy this big sweep. Too often we compartmentalise things and we fail to see the interconnectedness of events. To limit history to the written word is a mistake; Big History makes use of all possible time scales – not just those used in traditional history. The biological, geological and cosmological time frames give us a much deeper understanding our place within the Universe and enable us to see the underlying unity of modern knowledge\nAs an academic discipline Big History began in the late 1980s. One of the pioneers was David Christian, who started an experimental course with help from scientific colleagues. He rather frivolously coined the term Big History but it stuck. Christian now teaches at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. The discipline was helped by some important breakthroughs that enabled scientists to date the origins of the universe. By using Radiometric dating techniques, scientists can construct a coherent and rigorous scientific explanation going right back to the Big Bang.\nIn order to explain Professor Christian uses eight thresholds, events which were real turning points:\nThreshold 1—Origins of Big Bang Cosmology\nThreshold 2—The First Stars and Galaxies\nThreshold 3—Making Chemical Elements\nThreshold 4—The Earth and the Solar System\nThreshold 5—Life\nThreshold 6—What Makes Humans Different?\nThreshold 7—Agriculture\nThreshold 8—The Modern Revolution\nThis gives you a good idea of the vast time scale of the course – events like The French Revolution hardly get a look in. Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything touches on many of the themes in Big History. If you want to a more academic approach into the subject, Professor David Christian has a book called Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. There is a problem with this material – it can overwhelm you. I have big problems getting a handle on quantum mechanics or superstring theory; I was one of those people who hated science at school. But like the aforementioned Bryson I have now developed a keen interest in science. I know it’s not always possible to understand everything but you can still get some appreciation of the forces that brought us here.\n1 Comment\t| Articles, History, Science\t| Permalink\nPut-pocketing and other new words\nHere is a selection of new words I found on the Wordspy website:\nput-pocketing\nPutting an object into a person’s pocket without that person knowing it. Also: putpocketing.\nAn independent film genre characterized by low-budget production values, unknown actors, and a constant stream of low-key, semi-improvised dialogue.\nA person who uses technology, particularly wireless networking, to work without requiring an office or other fixed address.\nYIMBY\nA person who favours a project that would add a dangerous or unpleasant feature to his or her neighbourhood. [Acronym from the phrase yes in my back yard.]\nSPF creep\nThe gradual increase in sun protection factor (SPF) numbers in sunscreens and some cosmetic products. In the US they now have SPF 100. Is this advanced protection…or advanced hype?\nfrequency illusion\nThe tendency to notice instances of a particular phenomenon once one starts to look for it, and to therefore believe erroneously that the phenomenon occurs frequently.\nIllusion, to use the term coined by linguist A\nintexticated\nPreoccupied by reading or sending text messages, particularly while driving a car.\nWikipedia kid\nA student who has poor research skills and lacks the ability to think critically.\ncarrotmob\nAn event where people support an environmentally-friendly store by gathering en masse to purchase the store’s products. Also: carrot mob.\n1 Comment\t| Language\t| Permalink\nSalon.com has a piece, Is the Internet melting our brains?, about moral panics created over new communication technologies. It is an interview with Dennis Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois and author of A Better Pencil. Here is an extract:\nWe hear a thousand objections of this sort throughout history: Thoreau objecting to the telegraph, because even though it speeds things up, people won’t have anything to say to one another. Then we have Samuel Morse, who invents the telegraph, objecting to the telephone because nothing important is ever going to be done over the telephone because there’s no way to preserve or record a phone conversation. There were complaints about typewriters making writing too mechanical, too distant — it disconnects the author from the words. That a pen and pencil connects you more directly with the page. And then with the computer, you have the whole range of “this is going to revolutionize everything” versus “this is going to destroy everything.”\nThe Bottom Line came back on BBC Radio 4 this week. The business discussion programme dealt with managing expectations and why the dreaded business meeting is still very much on the agenda.\nJohn Kay has written this piece: The Reform of Banking Regulation. He sets out his vision for the future.\nThe Onion features this article: Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M.\nJohn Crace’s digested read dealt with the new Dan Brown bestseller The Lost Symbol.\nAbout a year ago I did a post called Some Thoughts on Books. In it I mentioned The Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book. I expressed some scepticism about this kind of device. However I now have availed myself of an electronic reading device – but not the Kindle. I plumped instead for the Sony PRS 505, which cost me £159 at WH Smith I’ve had it for just over a month now and so far I have read nine books and the experience is very satisfactory.\nMy one is silver. It weighs around 260 grams and its size is a very convenient 175mm by 122mm by 8mm. The great thing is that it is compatible with a lot of different formats, which is not typical for the Japanese multinational. The internal memory of 200MB holds around 160 e-books, although this depends on the size of the book and also the format. PDF files can take up a lot of space. For example, a 250-page book on PDF could use up a lot more space than War and Peace. SD and Memory Stick slots can be used to expand the memory but surely 100 books is enough? I prefer to keep the rest of the books on my computer. The e-book comes with a CD featuring 100 classic works – Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde to name but a few authors. It’s incredibly easy to use – its navigation very intuitive. The page turning does take a split second to refresh the page. Some people find this slow but when you are reading a normal book, it also takes a time to turn a page. This page turning is what uses up the battery. You can do some 7,500 turns before you need to recharge the battery, which for me is about two weeks. The recharging can be done with the USB port of the PC. It is compatible with a lot of different formats, which is not typical for the Japanese multinational.\nWhat are the pros and cons? For me the biggest advantage is space. My house is already overflowing with books. I love being able to have my books stored on my computer just like with music. There is so much stuff available for free on the Internet. The reading experience is also excellent; e-ink is nothing to like reading on a computer screen – it’s very easy on the eyes. With the option of three font sizes, it is actually more comfortable for me.\nFor me the con is still the price. In the future I hope there will be a models costing under 100. What I would like is a simple model without too many bells and whistles. The Kindle has a lot of gee-whiz technology; you can order a book and have it on the device in one minute. You don’t even need a computer. This is all great but I feel that the cost of e-books doesn’t reflect the savings in materials and transport. As a person who would always wait for the paperback, $9.99 is a bit steep for a book.\nWhat is the future of these machines. I really don’t know because these gadgets are constantly changing. They say that dedicated devices are on the way out and we will have multipurpose machines are the future. I have noticed that when I show it to people they don’t say I must buy that. I also never see commuters on the underground reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on an e-book . Maybe it is just going to be a niche market. What I don’t know is how I’m going to find time to do my blog with the thousands of books I have to read.\nLeave a Comment »\t| Articles, Books & Reading\t| Permalink\nDan Brown’s 20 worst sentences\nThis week Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol came out and the Telegraph celebrated with a piece about Brown’s 20 worst sentences. The critics do not share the public’s enthusiasm. The article quotes Edinburgh professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum says “Brown’s writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad.” I’m sure the author won’t be too bothered and I have to confess I shall be one of those reading it. Anyway, here is the Telegraph’s top 20 with comments:\n20. Angels and Demons, chapter 1: Although not overly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an ‘erudite’ appeal — wisp of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete. They say the first rule of fiction is “show, don’t tell”. This fails that rule.\n19. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 83: “The Knights Templar were warriors,” Teabing reminded, the sound of his aluminum crutches echoing in this reverberant space. “Remind” is a transitive verb – you need to remind someone of something. You can’t just remind. And if the crutches echo, we know the space is reverberant.\n18. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: He could taste the familiar tang of museum air – an arid, deionized essence that carried a faint hint of carbon – the product of industrial, coal-filter dehumidifiers that ran around the clock to counteract the corrosive carbon dioxide exhaled by visitors. Ah, that familiar tang of deionised essence.\n17. Deception Point, chapter 8: Overhanging her precarious body was a jaundiced face whose skin resembled a sheet of parchment paper punctured by two emotionless eyes. It’s not clear what Brown thinks ‘precarious’ means here.\n16. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: A voice spoke, chillingly close. “Do not move.” On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly. Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils. A silhouette with white hair and pink irises stood chillingly close but 15 feet away. What’s wrong with this picture?\n15. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: As a boy, Langdon had fallen down an abandoned well shaft and almost died treading water in the narrow space for hours before being rescued. Since then, he’d suffered a haunting phobia of enclosed spaces – elevators, subways, squash courts. Other enclosed spaces include toilet cubicles, phone boxes and dog kennels.\n14. Angels and Demons, chapter 100: Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers glorified the four major rivers of the Old World – The Nile, Ganges, Danube, and Rio Plata. The Rio de la Plata. Between Argentina and Paraguay. One of the major rivers of the Old World. Apparently.\nThe Da Vinci Code, chapter 5: Only those with a keen eye would notice his 14-karat gold bishop’s ring with purple amethyst, large diamonds, and hand-tooled mitre-crozier appliqué. A keen eye indeed.\n13 and 12. The Lost Symbol, chapter 1: He was sitting all alone in the enormous cabin of a Falcon 2000EX corporate jet as it bounced its way through turbulence. In the background, the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 17: Yanking his Manurhin MR-93 revolver from his shoulder holster, the captain dashed out of the office. Oh – the Falcon 2000EX with the Pratt & Whitneys? And the Manurhin MR-93? Not the MR-92? You’re sure? Thanks.\n11. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow’s peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters. Do angry oxen carry throw their shoulders back and tuck their chins into their chest? What precisely is a fiery clarity and how does it forecast anything? Once again, it is not clear whether Brown knows what ‘forecast’ means.\n10. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 4: Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow. Did they hit him with the kaleidoscope?\n9. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 32: The vehicle was easily the smallest car Langdon had ever seen. “SmartCar,” she said. “A hundred kilometers to the liter.” Pro tip: when fleeing from the police, take a moment to boast about your getaway vehicle’s fuel efficiency. And get it wrong by a factor of five. SmartCars do about 20km (12 miles) to the litre.\n8. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 3: My French stinks, Langdon thought, but my zodiac iconography is pretty good.\nAnd they say the schools are dumbing down.\n7 and 6. The Da Vinci Code, chapter 33: Pulling back the sleeve of his jacket, he checked his watch – a vintage, collector’s-edition Mickey Mouse wristwatch that had been a gift from his parents on his tenth birthday.\nThe Da Vinci Code, chapter 6: His last correspondence from Vittoria had been in December – a postcard saying she was headed to the Java Sea to continue her research in entanglement physics… something about using satellites to track manta ray migrations. In the words of Professor Pullum: “It has the ring of utter ineptitude. The details have no relevance to what is being narrated.”\n5. Angels and Demons, chapter 4: learning the ropes in the trenches. Learning the ropes (of a naval ship) while in the trenches (with the army in the First World War). It’s a military education, certainly.\n4, 3, and 2. The Da Vinci Code, opening sentence: Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.\nAngels and Demons, opening sentence: Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.\nDeception Point, opening sentences: Death, in this forsaken place, could come in countless forms. Geologist Charles Brophy had endured the savage splendor of this terrain for years, and yet nothing could prepare him for a fate as barbarous and unnatural as the one about to befall him. Professor Pullum: “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence”.\n1. The Da Vinci Code: Title. The Da Vinci Code. Leonardo’s surname was not Da Vinci. He was from Vinci, or of Vinci. As many critics have pointed out, calling it The Da Vinci Code is like saying Mr Of Arabia or asking What Would Of Nazareth Do?\nLeave a Comment »\t| Books & Reading, Language\t| Permalink\nQI: A selection #4\nHere is another selection of trivia that I have picked from the QI column in the Telegraph:\nFrench fries were invented in 17th-century Belgium as a substitute for, rather than accompaniment to, fish. When the rivers froze and fish couldn’t be caught, potatoes were cut into fishy shapes and fried instead. The Dutch call chips Vlaamse frieten (Flemish fries). The first recorded chip shop, Max et Fritz, was established in Antwerp in 1862. The Belgian’s often claim the term “French fry” came from British and US troops exposed to their national delicacy during the First World War, but the expression “French fried potatoes” had been in use in America long before the Great War.\nIn 2005 the British Cheese Board organised a study involving 200 volunteers in an attempt to nail the old wives’ tale that eating cheese before sleep gives you nightmares. The results revealed a different story: more than three quarters of the participants, who ate 20 grams of cheese before going to bed, reported undisturbed sleep, although the majority of them were able to recall their dreams. More surprisingly, the different varieties of cheese seemed to produce different kinds of dream. Cheddar induced a higher proportion of dreams about celebrities; Red Leicester summoned childhood memories; Lancashire generated dreams about work; while Cheshire inspired no dreams at all. The overall conclusion was that cheese was a perfectly safe late-night snack which, because of its high levels of the serotonin-producing amino acid tryptophan, was far more likely to induce sleep and reduce stress.\nClouds are classified according to their height and appearance. The 10 basic categories were first agreed by the Cloud Committee of the International Meteorological Conference in 1896 and published as the International Cloud Atlas. Their classifications were based on the pioneering work of Luke Howard (1772-1864), an English Quaker and pharmacist, who published his Essay on the Modification of Clouds in 1802. In it he gives Latin names to the four main cloud types: cirrus, “curl”; stratus, “layer”; cumulus, “heap”; and nimbus, “rain cloud”. The early theorist of evolution, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) had suggested an earlier system in French but it didn’t catch on – his names included “hazy clouds” (en forme de voile), “massed clouds” (attroupes), “broom-like clouds” (en balayeurs). Before Howard and Lamarck, clouds were simply named after their appearance: white, black, mare’s tail or mackerel. In Iran clouds are good omens. To indicate someone is blessed they say: dayem semakum ghaim, which translates as “your sky is always filled with clouds”.\nThe largest bank note in England is the one hundred million pound note, nicknamed a Titan. It is only used internally at the Bank of England, and there are only 40 in existence.\nThe Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) actually lasted 116 years and didn’t acquire its popular name until 1874. It was a series of skirmishes fought between two French families, one of whom claimed the French throne (Valois), while the other claimed both France and England (Plantagenet). The eventual victory of the Valois came at a high price – France’s population was reduced by two-thirds over the period and England was left isolated from the rest of Europe, speaking English rather than French.\nGiant Sequoia trees are the heaviest living things to have existed on Earth: they can weigh more than 6,000 tons, reach 311 feet in height and 40 feet in diameter. Their bark is up to four feet thick, but the seeds are tiny, weighing 1/3000th of an ounce each, approximately one billionth the weight of the fully grown tree. Also known as Wellingtonia trees, Giant Sequoias are native to California but have been planted worldwide. They are also the fastest growing trees in the world. Paradoxically, forest fires are essential for their survival. Because of their thick bark, sequoias survive fires which completely destroy all other trees, leaving the forest clear of undergrowth, which enables the sequoia’s absurdly tiny seeds to survive. The trees also rely on the heat of the fires to open their tough seed cones and to expose the bare soil. Because of this the US Forest Service now regularly sets fire to their sequoia groves on purpose.\nIceland is a bigger land mass than most of us realise. At 39,000 sq m (101010 sq km) it is the same size as Cuba, 25 per cent bigger than Ireland and 50 per cent bigger than Sri Lanka. Despite this its population is slightly smaller than that of Croydon: 310,000. This means that, per head of population, Icelanders read more books, eat more sugar, keep more shotguns, drive more four-wheel drives, produce more poets and have more Nobel Prize winners (just the one) than any other nation. In 2007, Iceland was ranked the most developed country in the world by the United Nations. In 2003 three Icelandic banks – Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir – began buying foreign assets, building up a joint portfolio of $140 billion (£92 bn). By 2006, the average Icelandic family was three times as wealthy as it had been in 2003, but the prosperity ended abruptly in October 2008, when the three banks failed. Iceland now faces an economy saddled with debts running at 850 per cent of GDP, or £224,000 owed for every man, woman and child in the country. The UK deposited more than £30 bn into Iceland. Educational institutions have been particularly affected –Oxford University alone has lost £50 million.\nThe most plausible biological explanation for kissing is that it allows prospective mates to sample one another’s pheromones and test them for biological compatibility (although experiments have so far been unable to establish if human sex pheromones really exist). It takes a lot of muscular co-ordination to kiss properly – 34 facial muscles and 112 postural muscles are involved.\nThe early uses for chocolate were medicinal and in recent years bold claims have been made for its therapeutic benefits. Chocolate contains serotonin, phenylethylamine (the so-called ”love chemical’’) and endorphins which, it is claimed, can relieve pain, reduce stress and reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Unfortunately, the beneficial chemicals come wrapped in a thick coating of sugar and (often) dairy fat, the negative effects of which more than outweigh the chemical upside. Interestingly, in blind tests where chocolate lovers were given cacao capsules (containing the same balance of chemicals) they didn’t report any of the same psychological benefits they had experienced when allowed to eat a bar of their favourite chocolate. This suggests that the positive effects come from having satisfied a craving; like other sweet and fatty foods, chocolate is habit forming. And yet, so powerful are the pleasure centres in our brain, that sucking on a piece can make your heart beat faster and for longer than a passionate kiss.\nThe astronomical name for our Sun is Sol. Everything about Sol is big: it makes up 99 per cent of the mass of the solar system (all the planets and asteroids added together only account for 1 per cent). It burns 700 million tons of hydrogen a second yet it takes a million years for the energy created in its core to filter out to the surface, which is 3,000 times cooler than the centre (16.7 million C). Every second, Sol produces energy equivalent to 35 million times the annual electricity consumption of North America. Sol is 1.3 million times bigger than Earth and at 93 million miles distance, its rays take just eight minutes and 19 seconds to reach us. Despite these figures, Sol is an average to small star, known as a white dwarf, halfway through its life. Close neighbour Betelgeuse (one of the constellation Orion’s ”shoulders’’) is 700 times bigger and 14,000 times brighter. Sol is only one of 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is itself just one of an estimated 125 million galaxies in the observable universe.\nLeave a Comment »\t| Trivia\t| Permalink\nWe have all heard of Christian funamentalism but this week The New Humanist has a feature about Harun Yahy, a Muslim creationist who wants to demonstrate the superiority of “Koranic science” over “the evolution lie”. Sex, flies and videotape: the secret lives of Harun Yahya.\nNPR has a feature about Google and its digitalisation of all the world’s books. Here is the introduction:\nBefore Gutenberg, books were precious commodities, literacy was equally rare, and the flow of ideas scarcely amounted to a trickle. Movable type made printing easy and cheap. All kinds of books became available to a much wider audience, and the world changed. We may be at such a moment right now. Millions of books are being scanned into digital libraries that should make enormous volumes of material available to anybody. And this time, the agent of change isn’t Gutenberg but Google. How all this will happen is important and the subject of argument among writers’ groups, publishers, libraries and privacy advocates, but that it will happen seems beyond dispute.\nWho Should Control The Virtual Library? This audio comes with a transcript.\nThe Independent has a piece about the French attempt to aprovide an alternative to GDP: Sarkozy’s happiness index is worth taking seriously.\nYou are currently browsing the Molivam42's Weblog blog archives for September, 2009.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line787416"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5498648285865784,"wiki_prob":0.45013517141342163,"text":"Fun Facts + history about the Pasadena Rose Parade (& a special parade ice cream)\nIt’s nearly 2020! And what better way to welcome the New Year than with the crowd-pleasing 131st Tournament of Roses Parade?\nOver one-million people attend the Rose Parade annually. One-million! With One Colorado’s parade-perfect location on Colorado Boulevard in the heart of historic Old Pasadena, we were inspired to dig up little-known facts and historic tidbits about the Pasadena Rose Parade. And there happens to be a lot of parade history right here at One Colorado!\nThe first Rose Parade was held in 1890 on South Wilson Avenue where the Caltech athletic building stands today. At its inception, the parade was a much smaller production consisting of a parade of flowers on horse-drawn chariots and competitions such as races, jousting and tug-of-war. The first-ever Rose Parade Game took place in 1902 with Michigan against Stanford, with Michigan winning 49-0. The game became permanently instated in the parade’s traditions in 1916.\nHallie Woods was selected as the first Rose Queen by her classmates in 1905. “One Tree Hill” star Sophia Bush was the 82nd Rose Queen in 2000. Today, the royal court is selected based on “poise, personality, public speaking ability, scholastic achievement” and leadership skills. For this year’s parade, Camille Kennedy was crowned the 102nd Rose Queen. You can see her during the parade donning a Mikimoto crown featuring over 600 pearls and six carats of diamonds. Learn more about the history of the Rose Queen here.\nThe William Wrigley, Jr. family (yes, as in the chewing gum) donated their Orange Grove Boulevard mansion and gardens to the city of Pasadena in 1959 to use as the official headquarters of the Tournament of Roses parade for the “staff and 935 volunteers who work year-round” organizing the parade and game. Having enjoyed watching the parade from its front yard (the favorite of the six of the estates owned by the Wrigleys), it was only natural to make their home the home to the Rose Parade. (You can tour the three-story mansion at no cost.) On New Year’s Eve, floats line up in front of Wrigley’s mansion where you can view them up-close and personal for free. (This is sort of a local secret, so be choosy about with who you share!)\nThere are actually many historic links to the Rose Parade at One Colorado. At the turn of the century, when the streets had to be widened to accommodate the motorized, large floats that we see today, many buildings on Colorado Boulevard had to remove 15 feet from their fronts to make room for the expansion. The building Sephora calls home was able to maintain its original facade, while the buildings where Vince and J.Crew are located had to reconstruct entirely new fronts. The Vince building was redone in a Spanish Colonial style and J.Crew, originally occupied by Owl Drug Store, was remodeled in the Art Deco tradition (see photo above). You can still see the original front door tile work of Owl Drug Store!\nIf you head towards Fair Oaks between Colorado Boulevard and Union Street, notice the curbs. Made from granite, they were made taller than standard curbs in order to accommodate horse-drawn carriages dropping off the parade’s Grand Marshall and other float riders. If you walk further down Union Street past Smith Alley, you’ll notice a dipped driveway with zig-zag ridges. This was where horse-drawn carriages would be repaired and the ridges kept horses from slipping as they entered.\nSide note: When the original City Hall (built in 1903 where Container Store is today) burned down, it temporarily relocated to the second floor of Patagonia’s building on Fair Oaks and Union. When you visit Patagonia, notice the sealed, historic underground elevator on the sidewalk next to the shop. While the elevator near Patagonia is no longer functioning, there is another one that still runs behind Mi Piace. If you stick around, you’ll hear the elevator bell ring!\nOne Colorado’s long-time security Officer Issac has personally been involved in the Rose Parade for over 40 years! His duty? Driving the floats! Issac was recently honored with an award to celebrate this milestone from the President of the Rose Parade. Issac drew our attention to the thin red line that runs in the street on Colorado (something we hadn’t noticed before), and told us it’s used by the the float drivers so they can keep the floats driving in a straight line. Issac also gave us the inside scoop on the parade’s mantra: “The Show Must Go On!” If a float has technical issues, drivers have about 15 seconds to get it back up and running or risk having the float towed for the remainder of the event.\nThe next time you wander One Colorado spotting these historic spots and their connection to the Rose Parade, make sure to visit Salt & Straw! From December 27th – January 1st, they will be serving up a special flavor n celebration of the Tournament of Roses: Chocolate Rose Petal ice cream!\nHeading to the Rose Parade in 2020? View Annual Spectator Guide.\nView 2020 Visitor Hotline Reference Booklet.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line592431"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9465363621711731,"wiki_prob":0.9465363621711731,"text":"Barrington Pheloung (1954-2019) - composer for film, TV and Theatre\nBarrington Pheloung is an Australian born composer who studied in and moved to the UK. Here he has created music for the concert hall and the theatre (including a number of ballets), done some work for radio and commercials, and a considerable amount for British television including series and one-off programmes. More recently he has composed for film, notably the film \"Hilary and Jackie\" based on the life of the cellist Jaqueline du Pre, and her relationship with her sister Hilary. (Jackie was a leading cellist, had a celebrity marriage to pianist Daniel Barenboim, and died tragically from multiple sclerosis.) Coincidentally, one of the TV movies Pheloung worked on also featured music played on a cello. This was the highly regarded \"Truly, Madly, Deeply\" featuring a duet for Cello and Piano where one of the players is a ghost.\nPheloung can clearly get his inspiration from surprising places, like wordplay for example. The theme for the TV series \"Inspector Morse\" about a police inspector has an accompaniment which is not only a rhythmic morse code figure on a single note but also spells out the letters M.O.R.S.E in morse code. (Another composer who has used morse code in film music is John Williams when ET was \"phoning home\".) Pheloung has created all the music for the morse series, recording his own compositions and classical works used within the programme. Among the wealth of classical music included in the series, you will find Debussy's Arabesque No.1 for piano and Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. The London Metropolitan Orchestra was formed in 1994 from the group of musicians put together to record \"Inspector Morse\" and \"Truly, Madly, Deeply\".\nFor the stage production of \"The Graduate\" starring Jerry Hall, Pheloung contributed additional songs and music to the familiar melodies of Simon and Garfunkel. The show has been a hit in the West End and on Broadway and is touring in various parts of the world. Phelong has also said that he intends to release the music from \"Truly, Madly, Deeply\" at some point. Pheloung's contribution to Video Game music has included several titles in the \"Broken Sword\" series. Sadly the composer died in 2019 at the age of 65.\nFilms by Barrington Pheloung:\nNostradamus (1994) - contains some medieval music\nHilary and Jackie - about the famous cellist Jacqueline du Pre and her sister Hilary, this also features classical music for cello including the Elgar Cello Concerto for which Jackie was famous for her interpretation\nTwin Dragons (Shuang long hui) - with another Jackie, Jackie Chan\nTouching Wild Horses\nShopgirl - with a moving love theme for the opening sequence\nAnd When Did You Last See Your Father?\nBlown Apart\nRed Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983 - the third TV movie of this Series\nIncendiary\nMy Feral Heart\nTV themes by Barrington Pheloung:\nBoon - Pheloung first met Anthony Minghella on the show and the pair went on to collaborate on Truly, Madly, Deeply\nThe Legends of Treasure Island\nDalziel and Pascoe\nThe Politician's Wife\nInspector Morse - with its Morse Code accompaniment\nTruly, Madly, Deeply - with its love-death duet\nRed Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1983 - TV Movie\nLewis - spinoff series from Inspector Morse, and perhaps set to be as long-running as its parent series\nEndeavour - the prequel series with a young Morse\nBarrington Pheloung recommendations:\nThere is sheet music for Pheloung's \"Inspector Morse\" theme, and his music can be found on one or two CDs. Pheloung's own website is at www.pheloung.co.uk and many sources will provide more information about the cellist Jacqueline du Pre. The following recordings give a good representation of Pheloung's best-known music as well as some classical works:\nInspector Morse - volume 3 can be found at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com\nHilary and Jackie - available from Amazon.com","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line970711"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8934752345085144,"wiki_prob":0.8934752345085144,"text":"Facebook Privacy Investigation Leads to Massive App Suspension Initiative\nFacebook Privacy Investigation Leads to Massive App Suspension Initiative by Nicole Lindsey\nNicole Lindsey· September 30, 2019\nAs part of its ongoing privacy investigation into the way third-party app developers use data, Facebook announced in a blog post that it has suspended “tens of thousands” of apps. Such a wide-scale app suspension initiative, of course, is entirely unprecedented. Just 12 months earlier, Facebook said that the app suspension initiative, which was launched in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, had only impacted 400 apps. So what led to this massive app suspension by Facebook over the past year?\nFacebook privacy investigation highlights “tens of thousands” apps\nOne major factor, of course, has to be the intense scrutiny that Facebook is now receiving from regulators, legislators, privacy experts and consumer advocates. In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a $5 billion fine related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. As part of this settlement, Facebook agreed to take much greater oversight over how third-party developers use data on the Facebook platform. Facebook also agreed that its third-party developers would now have to certify annually that they were following Facebook policies and procedures. Add in the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice is mulling over a massive antitrust case against Facebook, as are state attorneys general from around the nation, and you can get a good idea of why Facebook has decided to step up its app suspension program.\nAt one time, Facebook might have been content simply to suspend the most egregious examples of data privacy abuse. Now, however, the app suspension initiative extends to just about any app that refuses to answer questions from Facebook as to how user data is utilized, shared and monetized. That might help to explain why the number of apps suspended now is measured in the “tens of thousands.” As they say, it’s better to be safe than sorry.\nHowever, as Facebook was quick to point out in a blog post by the company’s VP of Product Partnerships, any app suspension as a result of the company’s privacy investigation does not necessarily imply wrongdoing or any sort of privacy violation. And, as Facebook further noted, it’s also the case that the app suspension initiative sometimes involved apps that were not yet “live” on the platform, and were still in beta testing. Finally, Facebook notes that, despite the massive number of apps impacted by the app suspension program, most of the problems can be traced back to about 400 developers. As a rough approximation, then, each of these 400 developers was responsible for creating about 25 apps that got caught up in the app suspension program.\nDetails of the app suspension program\nFacebook says it assembled a team of more than 100 individuals – including software engineers, data scientists, attorneys and privacy experts – in order to root out the “bad actors” in the Facebook developer ecosystem. Given the millions of apps for Facebook, the company first started with the apps with greatest number of users and the apps with the access to the greatest amount of data. From there, the company worked down the list of apps, coming up with various clues, insights and patterns – what Facebook refers to as “signals” – to isolate smaller apps that might not be following Facebook’s revamped developer guidelines.\nIn the course of the ongoing privacy investigation, Facebook came across a few egregious examples of data abuse. In those cases, Facebook banned the apps outright from operating on the Facebook platform. Presumably, these apps would have functioned much along the lines of the infamous personality quiz app used by Cambridge Analytica to gain access to personal data for more than 87 million individuals. And, in the very worst cases, Facebook took legal action against the app developers. In the blog post about the privacy investigation, Facebook specifically called out several bad actors – including Rankwave, a South Korean data analytics company, an app called MyPersonality, two companies (LionMobi and JediMobi) that used Facebook apps to infect user phones with malware that could then be used to scrape personal data, and two developers in Ukraine who were using quiz apps to scrape user data on the social network.\nMore changes still needed for the Facebook ecosystem\nAs Facebook notes in its explanation of the privacy investigation, this is an “ongoing investigation,” and the company is still expanding its efforts to root out, purge, suspend or ban apps that take advantage of Facebook users by collecting large amounts of their personal data. Facebook, for example, is cutting down on the number of APIs available to app developers in the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook is also expanding the overall size of privacy investigation team, in order to make sure that it successfully investigates and enforces all potential privacy violations.\nBut does this go far enough? The fact that “tens of thousands” of apps were targeted for app suspension suggests that the level of rot and corruption in the Facebook developer ecosystem extends very far. At the same time, Facebook hasn’t exactly been open and transparent about all the apps suspected of improper data use. How is it possible that, back in May 2018, only 200 apps were targeted for app suspension? And that, even after the long difficult summer of 2018, when Facebook was looking to contain the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, only 400 apps were targeted for app suspension?\n400 developers are responsible for creating most of the apps impacted by #Facebook app suspension program. #privacy #respectdata Click to Tweet\nClearly, Facebook is trying to put a positive spin on things. Most notably, the blog post announcing the app suspension initiative and the privacy investigation only used the word “privacy” one time. Instead of referring to this as a “data investigation” or a “privacy investigation” – as all the major media outlets did, Facebook preferred to use the term “app developer investigation.” Facebook also did nothing to suggest that users should be alarmed at all by the app suspension program. Just business as usual at Facebook, one is left to think. The $5 billion FTC fine clearly served up as a wakeup call for Silicon Valley. Let’s hope that CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to crack down on data and privacy abuses within the Facebook developer ecosystem.\nFacebookSoftware DevelopmentThird Parties\nNicole Lindsey\nSenior Correspondent at CPO Magazine\nNicole Lindsey is a journalist and writer for more than 10 years, focusing on the intersection of technology, innovation and privacy. She has a background in information technology and has worked with various software companies and tech startups on their public relations and communications initiatives.\nPrevious WeWork Breach of Confidential Business Information Serves as a Good Reminder About the Holes in Public WiFi Security\nNext Cyber Insurance Payouts Are Only Encouraging More Ransomware Attacks","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line871393"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6777254343032837,"wiki_prob":0.6777254343032837,"text":"Reading: Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale\nState of the Art Review\nSynthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale\nJeffrey I. Mechanick ,\nDivision of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY\nAbout Jeffrey I.\nDerek Leroith\nMD, PhD\nDiabetes afflicts 382 million people worldwide, with increasing prevalence rates and adverse effects on health, well-being, and society in general. There are many drivers for the complex presentation of diabetes, including environmental and genetic/epigenetic factors.\nThe aim was to synthesize a core set of recommendations from information from 14 countries that can be used to optimize diabetes care on a global scale.\nInformation from 14 papers in this special issue of Annals of Global Health was reviewed, analyzed, and sorted to synthesize recommendations. PubMed was searched for relevant studies on diabetes and global health.\nKey findings are as follows: (1) Population-based transitions distinguish region-specific diabetes care; (2) biological drivers for diabetes differ among various populations and need to be clarified scientifically; (3) principal resource availability determines quality-of-care metrics; and (4) governmental involvement, independent of economic barriers, improves the contextualization of diabetes care. Core recommendations are as follows: (1) Each nation should assess region-specific epidemiology, the scientific evidence base, and population-based transitions to establish risk-stratified guidelines for diagnosis and therapeutic interventions; (2) each nation should establish a public health imperative to provide tools and funding to successfully implement these guidelines; and (3) each nation should commit to education and research to optimize recommendations for a durable effect.\nSystematic acquisition of information about diabetes care can be analyzed, extrapolated, and then used to provide a core set of actionable recommendations that may be further studied and implemented to improve diabetes care on a global scale.\nKeywords: diabetes, recommendations, global, diabetes care, type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes, public policy\nHow to Cite: Mechanick, J.I. and Leroith, D., 2016. Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale. Annals of Global Health, 81(6), pp.874–883. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nPublished on 22 Apr 2016.\nMechanick, J.I. and Leroith, D., 2016. Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale. Annals of Global Health, 81(6), pp.874–883. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick JI, Leroith D. Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale. Annals of Global Health. 2016;81(6):874–83. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick, J. I., & Leroith, D. (2016). Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale. Annals of Global Health, 81(6), 874–883. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick JI and Leroith D, ‘Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale’ (2016) 81 Annals of Global Health 874 DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick, Jeffrey I., and Derek Leroith. 2016. “Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale”. Annals of Global Health 81 (6): 874–83. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick, Jeffrey I., and Derek Leroith. “Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale”. Annals of Global Health 81, no. 6 (2016): 874–83. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008\nMechanick, J. I.and D. Leroith. “Synthesis: Deriving a Core Set of Recommendations to Optimize Diabetes Care on a Global Scale”. Annals of Global Health, vol. 81, no. 6, 2016, pp. 874–83. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.02.008","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1440833"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.518535315990448,"wiki_prob":0.481464684009552,"text":"Tuesday wrap\nObama: Alinsky 24/7, war-monger fail, transparency fail, hearts Pelosi, hearts Hugo-Ayers-Dohrn, Sotomayor fail.\nMismanagement: ACORN ratted-out, Dems duck @ SEIU, throw the bums out, SEIU attacks GOP, boycott Whole Foods, union goons heart LatAm thugs, Teamsters strike.\nInternational: Hugo advances New Prog agenda.\nACORN rat turns against corrupt bigs ... The attorney general’s office turned up the heat Monday on a national organization at the heart of a voter registration fraud investigation. Christopher Edwards, 33, the former Las Vegas field director for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, pleaded guilty to two gross misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters. As part of a plea agreement, Edwards will testify against the other two defendants in the case — ACORN and its former regional director, Amy Busefink. The anti-poverty organization has local chapters in 100 cities across the country and national offices in New Orleans, New York and Washington. State investigators consider Edwards the mastermind of an illegal incentive program at the local ACORN office that, with the approval of Busefink and national ACORN officials, encouraged the collection of fraudulent voter registration forms during the 2008 campaign season. (lasvegassun.com)\nDems take refuge inside union HQs ... Democrat Tim Bishop found sanctuary from New York town hall protesters at his local SEIU office. Democrat Alan Grayson of Florida followed suit — he’s holding his town hall at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 606 Union Hall at 820 Virginia Drive. Union members will man the microphones. (michellemalkin.com)\n\"There Is Only the Fight\" ... The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children. Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question. Next were the Mormons. Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back. Next, tax-day \"tea party\" attendees were \"tea bagged.\" Then there was a beauty contestant. And a Cambridge cop, too. And now we have town-hall \"mobs.\" Smile ... you've been \"community organized.\" When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama. This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way. The origins of manufactured \"politics of personal destruction\" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based \"progressive\" street agitator titled, \"There Is Only the Fight.\" Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, \"Rules for Radicals.\" In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory. (online.wsj.com)\nObama's Prog War-Mongering Fail ... President Obama urged more than 5,000 veterans gathered here to brace for a daunting and perhaps bloody period ahead in Afghanistan, but told them he believes this war is \"fundamental to the defense of our people.\" \"As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead,\" the president said at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. \"The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight, and we won't defeat it overnight. This will not be quick. This will not be easy.\" (washingtontimes.com)\nTreat politicians the right way ... \"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.\" - P. J. O'Rourke • Here is the antidote to Nationalized Health Care. It's our government and we should be able to do what is best for us. I propose that we throw the whole Congress and Senate out of office. Institute six (6) year term limits retroactively in the house and twelve (12) years in the Senate, and refuse to allow them to become bureaucrats by playing musical chairs ... no skipped second term. Take away their ability to vote themselves raises and retroactively take away their lifetime pensions, tie their raises to the cost of living. (rightsidenews.com)\nObama Transparency Fail ... It should hardly come as a surprise that once in office elected politicians forget about, abandon, or fudge on promises made to get elected. President Barack Obama’s record on transparency and openness, however, is more disappointing than most such instances. During the campaign, candidate Obama promised an unprecedented degree of openness and transparency, in contrast to the notoriously secretive Bush White House. Regarding health care, he said: “We’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so the people can see who is making argument on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” Once in office, however, the administration quietly cut a deal with Big Pharma not to allow Medicare to grind drug companies for lower drug prices, in exchange for a promise to voluntarily reduce prescription prices by some $80 billion over 10 years. The news has trickled out and there’s some question whether the deal will be honored, but it wasn’t exactly shown on C-SPAN, nor was the White House the first to tell us. (cnjonline.com)\nObama-Pelosi Dems lied, health reform died ... To hear it from President Obama, the choice is simple: his plan or the status quo. He is wrong on both counts: he has no plan, and the Republicans do. In fact, Republicans have introduced meaningful health care reform for years. In the 1990s, Republicans tried to change Medicare into a defined-contribution model, more along the lines of the plan that federal employees enjoy. The Republican-controlled Congress passed such legislation in 1995, but President Clinton vetoed it. Seeing the future impacts of Medicare costs, President Clinton set up a bipartisan Medicare Commission headed by John Breaux (D-LA). The Breaux Commission came up with a similar plan in 1999. Democrats killed that too. (americanthinker.com)\nWhy Barack hearts Hugo: Ayers-Dohrn ... So it appears that Ayers' trip to celebrate Chávez's \"Socialism of the 21st Century\" was financed by someone or something other than the taxpayers who pay Ayers' $126,000 annual salary at a public university. Did Chávez pick up the tab? The complete results of several Freedom of Information Act requests to the University of Illinois about Ayers will be discussed at an August 20 conference in Washington, D.C. that I am convening. We are told that Ayers, a political associate of Barack Obama, has abandoned his activities as a communist terrorist, and that he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, another former leader of the Weather Underground, are now \"respectable\" academics. Ayers is formally known as a \"Distinguished Professor\" of Education and \"University Scholar,\" while Dohrn, a one-time booster of mass murderer Charles Manson, teaches law and discusses \"human rights\" issues at Northwestern University. But the Chávez regime that they are aiding and abetting is backed by terrorist Iran and directly implicated in the activities of the communist narco-terrorists in Colombia. Perhaps their continuing influence over Obama helps explain why the President has been so accommodating toward Chávez. (postchronicle.com)\nGitmo for U.S. health care patients? ... Democrats' health care legislation in the House of Representatives includes several provisions that deny patients the ability to challenge access and treatment decisions in federal court. As a result, space is being cleared at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility -- which critics called a \"legal black hole\" -- to accommodate American health care patients. (optoons.blogspot.com)\nAnti-Prog Dem calls for limits on pols' power ... I am a Democrat and I am for healthcare reform. I am also against the legislation as it stands. A 1,000-page bill that only specialists can interpret is absurd. Posting it online, then \"hiding\" pages that require special software to read is being sleazy. Calling citizens who disagree with the legislation vile names shows the arrogance and disdain of the Democratic Party toward the general populace. I want reform. I want term limits and I want them now. Two terms and out. Change the health benefits of all members of Congress to Medicare. We the people no longer trust Congress. You gave billions of our dollars to companies that helped to cause this depression, then allowed them to pass out millions in bonuses. And now we are supposed to trust this legislation? (delmarvanow.com)\nSEIU goons amp up hyper-partisanship ... The battle over health care reform led protesters to the headquarters of the Massachusetts Republican Party today. The group called on the GOP to stop supporting giant insurance companies over working families. Dozens of members of the service employees international union marched outside the Massachusetts Republican Party headquarters calling on the GOP to end its orchestrated campaign to stand in the way of health care reform. Harris Gruman/SEIU: “Republican activists are showing up at town hall meetings and being told 'be as disruptive as possible’.” (necn.com)\nBoycott oppressive Whole Foods ... Here are the newest developments: 1) a demonstration at Whole Foods headquarters in Austin today. A couple dozen sign-carrying demostrators came out to agitate for the cause, bringing the boycott right to corporate headquaters. Some local media coverage will likely result. The other new development concerns the boycott Facebook page which is nearing 10,000 members. (openleft.com)\nU.S. union goons aid LatAm socialist thugs ... Anti-democratic forces working to de-stabilize the new government in Honduras have attracted U.S. labor unions as allies in their cause. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), UNITE HERE, and the United Steelworkers (USW) have lined up behind Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega to express their support for Manuel Zelaya, the former president of Honduras (washingtonexaminer.com)\nP2P Dirt: Shame on union political front-group ... Manhattan DA candidate Richard Aborn's campaign recently paid out $55,000 to the for-profit arm of the Working Families Party -- two months after he got its coveted endorsement, according to campaign-finance records. The news comes as good-government groups called for more scrutiny of Data & Field Services, which was founded two years ago to give the liberal party's preferred candidates the ability to buy its operation's political services. (nypost.com)\nMilitant Teamsters strikers plague Nevada ... Members of Teamsters Local 533 picketed across Northern Nevada on Monday after contract negotiations between Granite Construction Co. and a group of truck drivers broke down last week. Strikers were at Granite’s Nevada headquarters, 1900 Glendale Ave. in Sparks, and various Granite projects, including at Reno-Tahoe International Airport and along Interstate 80 at Floriston, Calif. (rgj.com)\nSotomayor backs murderer ... Justice Sonia Sotomayor is getting into the swing of being a member of the Supreme Court. Sotomayor made what appears to be her first public decision as a justice on Monday, voting unsuccessfully to delay the execution of an Ohio death row inmate. She voted along with the court's liberal bloc — Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — to stop the execution of Jason Getsy, whose execution is Tuesday. Getsy had asked the nation's high court Monday to allow him to challenge Ohio's lethal injection system as cruel and unusual punishment. The court's other five justices voted to deny the stay. Getsy, 33, was sentenced to die for shooting 66-year-old Ann Serafino in 1995 in Hubbard, Ohio, near Youngstown. (washingtonexaminer.com)\nGlobal New Progs dis property rights ... Since last December when the sit-down at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago drew international attention, workers around the world have been employing that same militant tactic. In early August, police forcibly ended job occupations in three different countries. (workers.org)\nChávez advances Lat Am Progressive agenda ... Venezuelans erupted into protest this weekend in response to a new law that seeks to indoctrinate the nation's students in the \"21st Century Socialism\" of Hugo Chávez and eliminate religious instruction from the nation's schools. The law will also reportedly establish censorship of the press, prohibiting communications that \"produce terror in children, incite to hatred, and offend the healthy values of the Venezuelan people and the mental and physical health of the population.\" Students peacefully protesting the new law were met with tear gas and water sprayed by the police, as well as rocks and sticks thrown by Chávez supporters, according to multiple media accounts. A group of reporters from opposition newspapers, also in a protest against the law, were assaulted and injured by pro-Chávez forces, sparking protests and demands for prosecution of the culprits. Chávez denounced the attack and says he is investigating. However, Venezuela's increasingly dictatorial president was unapologetic and defiant in his defense of the new Education Law. \"We have to dismantle the system of capitalist bourgeois education. Now, the law is obligatory, university authorities that do not arise from a legitimate process may not be recognized. Enough with the dictatorship in the universities!\" At the signing of the law on Saturday, Chávez said that it was necessary for \"the profound revolution, the creation of new men and women, the socialist revolution,\" and added that \"true democracy can only exist in socialism.\" (lifesitenews.com)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1403771"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7313132286071777,"wiki_prob":0.26868677139282227,"text":"Isaiah Washington vs T.R. Knight\nFiled By Bil Browning | January 20, 2007 6:19 PM | comments\nTags: coming out of the closet, entertainment news, Grey's Anatomy, homophobic behavior, Isaiah Washington, scandal, T.R. Knight, television\nBy now, you've heard about the dust up on the set of Grey's Anatomy. If not, here's the quick run-down: Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey - two of the television show's main actors - had a fight on the set. During the fight Washington referred to T.R. Knight, another actor on the show, as a \"faggot.\" Minor mayhem ensued. Knight ended up coming out of the closet and life went on.\nThen came the Golden Globes. Speaking to the press, Washington denied that he had ever said the slur with \"No, I did not call T.R. a faggot. Never happened, never happened.\" Since the cast of the show was in attendance (They won an award for Best Drama.), Washington's lie was quickly called, er, to the carpet. Co-star Katherine Heigl was visibly disturbed and spoke to Access Hollywood about the incident. She confirmed that it had gone down as reported and how upset she was that Washington had used \"faggot\" again to try to deny the original incident.\nA couple days later, T.R. Knight turned up on Ellen where he also confirmed that Washington had used the slur. He gave an eloquent and moving interview about coming out and how the slur had made him feel. (You can see the interview after the jump to the main entry.)\nNow a petition is going around the net asking ABC to fire Washington for - wait for it - lying about saying \"faggot\" while saying \"faggot\" again. Maybe I'm missing something here...\nI don't deny that getting called a \"faggot\" is hurtful. It is. But perhaps this brouhaha should have erupted when the incident first happened. It seems to me that Washington's second mistake was lying. I could care less about him saying the F word the second time - he was just referencing his first \"non\"-statement. The second incident isn't what links him to Mel Gibson and Michael Richards' recent outbursts - it was his first one.\nMaybe they should have just fired him the first time when he said in anger - not out of a need to cover his ass.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line32283"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5995212197303772,"wiki_prob":0.4004787802696228,"text":"South Africa Topics\nSouth Africa Government\nBuilding a Capable State – Hellen Zille, Premier of Western Cape\nMarcopolis presents the South Africa Report focused on topics such as investments, doing business, economy and regional integration, featuring interviews with various South African leaders. The sectors under review in this issue are agriculture, hospitality, industry, oil & gas, retail and many more.\nTop Interviews\nHelen Zille, Premier of Western Cape\nInterview with Helen Zille, Premier of Western Cape\nFirst of all, Cape Town as a metropolis has a character which is very different from any other city in Africa. How well positioned is South Africa’s “Mother City” for the rapidly changing global business environment?\nI think very well, and we’re also the best prepared city in Africa for the global business environment. That is because we’ve put an enormous amount of investment into preparing for the knowledge economy of the 21st century. We’ve made absolutely sure to invest in broadband, high-speed universal broadband. We’ve created an ecosystem for the development of technologies, very specifically. We are looking at competitive areas. Not only looking at, but created an environment for them to flourish, especially tourism and agro-processing. We’ve got a very big agricultural sector and all of the institutions, especially the financial institutions and others that are necessary to form the basis of the venture into the interior. As it were, African company is doing business with the rapidly developing market of Africa.\nWhy is it, do you think, that some provinces seem to be performing so much better than others? And of the nine, where would you currently rank the Western Cape?\nThe Western Cape is number one on every single indicator, including economic growth, and including employment. So we do rank number one, and it’s because we’ve put an enormous effort into building a capable state. Very few people appreciate just how important a capable state is in creating a conducive business environment, and we’ve put an enormous effort into doing just that.\nSo to what extent would you attribute the provincial success, then, as a consequence of your strong brand of governance?\nWell, there is a very close link, because in all the analysis that is currently being done about what creates a context for success in a democracy, it’s the combination of a capable state, the rule of law, accountability and an open market system. And those are the factors that we’ve tried to bring together, and have succeeded in bringing together in the Western Cape.\nThe Western Cape is number one on every single indicator, including economic growth, and including employment... and it’s because we’ve put an enormous effort into building a capable state.\nWould you say that a strong presence of public confidence forms, really, the root of long-term stability in investment?\nAbsolutely. Long-term confidence is the heart of an economy. But long-term confidence only exists if people have confidence that the government is capable, that services work, that education functions, that hospitals function, that public transport works, that roads are accessible and available. All of these things are a function of good government. So public confidence is a direct outflow of competent government.\nDo you believe that the Western Cape has a higher degree of business confidence from an international perspective?\nThere is a business index done of business confidence in the various provinces and cities of South Africa. And again, the Western Cape ranks number 1, at least 10 percentage points higher than the rest of the country.\nAnd what are the specific reforms needed, do you think, for the province to meet your intended goals of obviously increasing export, and creating jobs, and attracting higher rates of investment?\nWe have to make it easier to invest, and that requires changes in national government policy. But we’re using every opportunity we can to make those changes locally, and we’ve created a much more conducive environment. For example, by cutting red tape to a minimum. We have an anti-red tape unit that has an 85% success rate. It has done an enormous amount of work with businesses to cut red tape. We are absolutely sure to create an infrastructure environment that works very well. We have incentives for investment in particular locations. And, perhaps, top of the list at the moment is that we offer energy security, which every single company needs in South Africa. Energy security. We have alternative energy sources developed here to ensure that we don’t go into stage 1 load shedding when the rest of the country does. And equally, we have very good institutions for skills development, that make it possible for many businesses to invest in the Western Cape, because we can create the power plan of skills they need to make that investment profitable.\nWhat’s the key framework of the Western Cape Government’s Provincial Strategic Plans? Can you just outline those for us quickly?\nYes. Well, we have an overall goal of becoming the best-run regional government in the world, and we are putting enormous effort into that using all the international metrics that we can, and I’m very confident that we’re on our way. We have various key provincial strategic goals. The first one covers the area of growth and jobs. The second covers the area of education and skills development. The third covers the area of health and safety. The fourth covers the area of the built environment, and the integration of our city, and the infrastructure. And the fifth is the underpinning of the administration that has to be superbly well-run. So all of those together create the Provincial Strategic Plan, and then we also have a number of game changers that we’ve lifted out of that.\nOne is, for example, energy security, and we’ve made major strides in that, and energy is now secure in this city and, by and large, in the province. Secondly, broadband and Internet access and e-learning, very particularly. A huge game changer, which is coming to fruition very well. Thirdly, a better living model for the integration and the densification of large, underdeveloped areas of our city. Fourthly, we have a very important game changer in the afterschool area, where we are ensuring that young people can stay in the afternoon and have creative and functional activities, so they don’t drop out and get into the clutches of gangs, don’t get into drugs, etc. And then very crucially we have a game changer on alcohol abuse, because in that particular context we find that substance abuse is one of the big drags on people’s potential and on our potential to grow. So those are the game changers and specific areas that we’ve pulled out, and that we are working on very hard to change the game, as it were, within the framework of the strategic plan that I’ve just spoken about.\nAnd South Africa’s export-orientated industries, they’ve obviously tended to shift towards the port cities and the coastal industrial belts. In light of this, what is your vision for the role of, for example, the Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone as the basis for the Western Cape heavy industry? How much more momentum is this going to add to that shift?\nWell, the entire West Coast belt, from Cape Town through Atlantis up to Saldanha Bay, is the entire industrial hub that we’re going to be developing, and is, in fact, developing very quickly. So not long ago, Atlantis was effectively a ghost town. Now you can hardly get industrial land there anymore as people understand that this corridor, from Cape Town to Saldanha Bay, with this magnificent deep-water port and the special economic zone and all the incentives that are brought to bear on investment there, what potential that holds.\nThe deepest in the Western Hemisphere.\nYes, it’s an amazingly, natural deep-water port, which opens up that entire hinterland. And so, it’s a great natural opportunity for us, and we’ve put all the infrastructure in to ensure that it works really well.\nThe Project Khulisa, which is the centrepiece of your economic strategy, is tasked with accelerating growth and jobs, and obviously tourism, agri-business, oil and gas exploration, and production of upstream services. Firstly, is it on schedule? And to what extent do you think this program will maintain and increase the overall economic momentum and competency of the Western Cape?\nGood. Super. I’ll tell you a little bit about Khulisa. As long as I don’t have lipstick on my teeth, I’ll tell you about Khulisa. Khulisa is a word in isiXhosa and it means “cause to grow,” to create the context for growth. And we used that specific word because it means what it says. Now we have identified the key areas of great competitive advantage for the Western Cape. One is our incredible environment. We have what I think, and what many other people think, is the most beautiful city and the most beautiful province in the world. And many, many people want to come and see it. We’ve been ranked the number one tourist destination in the world by many, many rating agencies, and newspapers, and other outlets. And so, our tourism is way ahead of schedule. Tourism has been one of the key pillars of our economy, and it’s growing exponentially. But we’ve added other legs to that tourism strategy, particularly with our magnificent conference centre. It’s the world’s favourite long-haul conference centre and destination. It’s a wonderful venue and it’s fully booked up years in advance. So it’s a really extraordinary facility that we have here. So the tourism leg of Khulisa is not only well on schedule, it’s ahead of schedule, and it’s diversifying into all areas of tourism, not just holiday tourism.\nThen the second area is agri-processing. Now we’ve got a terrible drought in South Africa at the moment, but fortunately the Western Cape has not been as badly hit as the rest of the country, which means that our key areas--particularly, for example, deciduous fruit, grapes, wine, various others such as lamb, Karoo lamb, other things like canola oil, the wheat fields on the Swartland and other things--they’ve been doing very well. And what we’re trying to do is beneficiate our agriproducts, and of course the export of beneficiated products is going extraordinarily well, including the beneficiation of waste of the agricultural products. So we’re getting to do a lot with the waste and create a new product base from that. Then more and more we’ve got the big logistics companies in the Western Cape, which means that even for the agriproduce that is produced in the rest of the country, most of it is transported through the Western Cape because of the sophistication of our logistics infrastructure. So, for example, we produce now bananas, but 85% of South Africa’s bananas are exported through the Western Cape. So that’s another very important part of the value add that we do.\nThen the third crucial component is the specialized markets in Africa. One of the big under catered for markets is the halal market, and the Western Cape is known to be very halal friendly. So we have a big halal capacity, a big halal industry, and we’re working with the Malaysians currently to develop a big halal food processing plant around the airport that will service a lot of Africa. It’s an enormous market. Very little of the halal food sold in Africa is actually certified halal, but we have everything that’s needed to certify food being halal. And that is one of the big, for example, niche areas of beneficiation that we’re getting into.\nTo come back specifically to Saldanha, because it’s obviously kind of a core plank of the Khulisa aspect—do you think this project will gain international recognition for the Western Cape as a hyperdynamic investment destination destination?\nI have absolutely no doubt that with good governance, and increasing investor confidence, and Africa being the one hinterland that still has a massive undeveloped, but developing, market, Saldanha is set to take off. It’s beautifully positioned, it has got extraordinary infrastructure, and there are lots of incentives attached to investment in Saldanha. It should have gone a bit quicker if we hadn’t had the plummet of the oil price. So we’ve got these huge gas reserves off the West Coast, but I’ve noticed through my six decades of life that prices of commodities are not statistic. They go up and down. And we’ll be perfectly positioned on the next upturn of, for example, liquefied natural gas and other gas sources, which are rapidly replacing fossil fuels or the traditional oil fossil fuels, that we’ll be extraordinarily well-situated and located to drive that throughout Africa. So I think it’s a little bit of a lull, but I have very little doubt that when that comes on-stream again we’ll be booming. The best investments are at a downturn in the cycle, because that’s when you prepare for the upturn. And when the upturn comes and everybody else is scrambling to get in line with the upturn, you’ve already got the platform for liftoff.\nSouth Africa is known for being highly innovative when it comes to energy, technology, and so forth, to come on to another other couple of issues now. How much emphasis & importance does your administration place on the role of ICT, medical R&D, and other high-tech processes in further broadening the industrial core of the Western Cape, and what are some of the key catalysts for this?\nWe put a very strong emphasis on hi-tech, and indeed, that is precisely what our broadband rollout has been about. We want to enable ICTs, Information and Communication Technologies, as the bedrock of why services work so well in the Western Cape. Now we have a very advanced medical sector. You will remember that not only was the first heart transplant conducted in South Africa, buy many, many Nobel laureates from the Western Cape in medicine have really taken the world by storm with the CAT scan and various other things that were developed here. And equally, we have world-class hospitals for third world diseases, which is a unique position for us. So, for example, at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, which is a world-leading paediatric hospital, we have state-of-the-art technology, but we’re also developing state-of-the-art mechanisms for conditions that you don’t see often in developed countries. So, for example, there was a whole new technique developed to replace a child’s oesophagus, because we have the phenomenon where the children still drink paraffin and the entire oesophagus gets burnt out. And we’ve been able to develop a mechanism to reconstruct the oesophagus, which is unique in the world, as well. And there are many, many other areas that we’re working on, including HIV/AIDS research, which we have a very advanced treatment regime. In fact, it’s the most advanced in the world. So we’ve got…\nIn the Western Cape.\nYes. So we’ve got an extraordinary amount of expertise being brought to bear on the developing challenges, health challenges, of a country such as ours. And the rest of the world and first world countries can benefit from them because many of the challenges we face aren’t confined to Africa, and they’re going to become internationally globalized sooner than most people think.\nAnd you’re on record as saying that it’s been downhill for the ANC since 2004.\nDo you believe the DA can go on to be a party of national government in 2019, and would the ANC even accept defeat at the national level?\nI have no doubt that the DA can be a national government, that’s why I’ve been working on what I’ve been working on for so many years. Because if you can’t have a change of government with the ballot box, democracy can’t succeed, and accountability can’t work. And if you don’t have accountability, you don’t have a capable state. And if you don’t have a capable state, you don’t have a growing economy. So of course I believe the DA can become a national government, and we will become a national government. I can’t predict exactly when, but I do think that it’s been downhill for the ANC since 2004, and I think that will accelerate. And I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if we had the conditions necessary for a coalition government, at the very least, nationally by 2019.\nFinally, it’s been said that in a country devoid of many present-day role models, your only real equals are Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. We’d just like to know what’s driven you as a leader?\nWell, I would not try ever to make that kind of comparison. What’s driven me in my life is the belief that South Africa can be a really successful democracy, and that no other country has ever managed to make a transition to a successful democracy with a growing economy starting off the same base as we did, with the inequality, with the history of oppression, with the plurality of our society, with the cultural contestation in our society, with the complexity of our history. And it has to be possible, because a lot of people depend on us succeeding. Not only in South Africa, but on the continent of Africa as well. I was brought up in a home which valued concepts such as the open society, the rule of law, valued democracy very, very highly, and understood that partition was not an option for South Africa, and that we had to make a government in one country in which everybody could live a life they valued and use their freedoms. And I believe that is possible against all the odds, and that’s what drives me.\nSouth Africa seems to consistently have bad press. We saw the recent skulduggery over the finance ministry. Do you think that Zuma really has crossed the Rubicon now that he can never really recover from?\nI think Jacob Zuma crossed that Rubicon a long time ago, that he won’t be able to recover from. It takes a long time, though, for it to become apparent in the African National Congress because it is essentially an authoritarian organization. So long after a ruler has lost credibility in that organization, people are still paying homage and making obeisance because that’s the culture internally of the ANC. We’re an open-society party in the DA, and so when, as leader, I made a mistake, people wouldn’t hesitate to tell me and challenge me because that was the entire internal culture of the party. In the ANC, long after the leader has lost credibility and support, people are still doing their salaams and bowing and scraping.\nHe seems to posess an iron grip, and given his former role as the head of Inkanda knew where all the bodies were buried. But fundamentally, as outsiders looking at South Africa, we’ve been in your country for several months now, and it seems to us that it’s essentially a one-party state. The only thing really holding the government to account is the Judiciary, even the minutiae of government policy is scrutinized by the Judiciary.\nWell, we have a constitution and a constitutional court. That was the real revolution in South Africa: constitutional court. And no government can pass any law or any regulation if it doesn’t pass constitutional muster. But to make the constitutional court function you need active citizenry. And I believe it’s quite wrong to say that the constitutional court is the only thing holding the government to account. In 1994, we were a 1.7% party. We now touch 25%, which is one out of four voters. We have pulled the ANC close to 50% in several provinces, and I have no doubt that we will pull them under 50% in metropolitan areas. For the very first time, the ANC is frightened of the voters, and that is what you need to make a democracy work. Do you think that if President Zuma wasn’t frightened of the voters in this coming election, he would even be considering paying back any of the money? No, he wouldn’t. It’s because for the first time they see defeat potentially looming in critical metropolitan areas such as Nelson Mandela Metro around Port Elizabeth and Tshwane Metro around Pretoria. That is why they are running scared; they’re going to start losing elections.\nDo you think he will pay any actual attention to this grassroots “Zuma must fall”? Does that resonate with him?\nWell, the only meaningful “Zuma must fall” movement is through the ballot box. So let’s see if that translates adequately into the ballot box. People must understand that protesting in the street and a hashtag on Twitter is no substitute for their vote. And so, we’ll see in the local government election whether people are serious about accountability.\nWho is his most likely successor?\nIn terms of his most likely successor, President Zuma would like his ex-wife to be. My husband always says to me, “Who would want their ex-wife to succeed them?” I don't know, but he clearly would like his ex-wife to succeed him. I suppose keeping it in the family is always helpful. But many people prefer Cyril Ramaphosa, and of course I prefer Mmusi Maimane. So we’ll see.\nJoaquim Chissano Shares his Experience on Working with Nelson Mandela\nThe Western Cape Province Is Number One in South Africa - Commentary of Premier Helen Zille\nwiGroup South Africa: Building A Fintech Empire in Electronic Payments\nForging the Growth of the Oil & Gas Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa – SAOGA\nRelated South Africa Government\nAfrica's Best Prepared City for the Global Business Environment: Cape Town\nMinister of Economic Opportunities of Western Cape: “Our Focus Is Good Governance”\nPublic Confidence Is a Direct Outflow of Competent Government - Says Helen Zille\nAfrica: Mandela and Chissano's Similar Approach in Seeking to Achieve Peace","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line804524"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9755910634994507,"wiki_prob":0.9755910634994507,"text":"1MATCH URL: https://assets.rappler.com/9A1B9ECFAF8A4077AB46DECAA39F0201/img/83C72AB3E4604946B6E420798DD13BCE/afp-chile-pinera-000_1LN6WT-20191023.jpg\nChile's president says police may have violated protocols\nChilean President Sebastian Pinera's statement comes after Amnesty International released a report denouncing a 'deliberate policy' of wounding protesters during the unrest that broke out last month, resulting in 22 deaths\n@afp\nPublished 6:53 PM, November 22, 2019\nUpdated 6:54 PM, November 22, 2019\nSEBASTIAN PINERA. Handout picture released by the Chilean Presidency showing Chilean President Sebastian Pinera speaking to the nation in Santiago, on October 22, 2019. Handout photo by the Chilean Presidency/AFP\nSANTIAGO, Chile – Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Thursday, November 21, that police may have broken protocols in responding to a month of protests, and prosecutors will investigate whether they violated human rights.\nHis comments came after Amnesty International released a report denouncing a \"deliberate policy\" of wounding protesters during the unrest that broke out last month and has so far resulted in 22 deaths.\n\"If those protocols were not met, and I think it is possible that in some cases they were not met, that will be investigated by the prosecutor's office and will be sanctioned by the courts of justice,\" Pinera said in a meeting with foreign media.\nFurious Chileans have been protesting against social and economic inequality, and an entrenched political elite, among other issues.\nThe National Institute of Human Rights has reported about 2,000 injuries, while health organizations claim that more than 280 people have suffered eye damage from shotgun pellets.\nNo police officers have been killed in the demonstrations but the human rights institute said some 1,600 officers have been wounded.\nThe prosecutor's office reported that from October 31, around 1,089 criminal investigations have been opened into allegations of police violence, 24 for alleged instances of torture and 9 for cases of alleged sexual abuse or rape.\nPinera has previously condemned what he said were abuses committed by police, and promised \"there will be no impunity\" for both protesters and security forces.\nChile's police had on Tuesday announced they would suspend the use of birdshot against protesters, following an outcry over the more than 200 demonstrators who have suffered eye injuries.\nThe Amnesty report released Thursday said Chilean security forces are \"carrying out widespread attacks using unnecessary and excessive force with the intention of injuring and punishing protesters.\"\n\"The intention of the Chilean security forces is clear: to injure demonstrators in order to discourage protest, even to the extent of using torture and sexual violence against protesters,\" Amnesty's Americas director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a statement.\nThe report also found 23 instances of human rights violations, which it said were \"not isolated or sporadic incidents, but reveal a consistent pattern of violations throughout the country, indicating the modus operandi of the security forces.\"\nThe Chilean government \"categorically rejects\" the Amnesty report, Chile's human rights under-secretary Lorena Recabarren said in a press conference, while the Chilean police said that it had no \"intention to harm\" protesters.\nChile's military, which was deployed on the streets for the first nine days of the unrest after Pinera declared a state of emergency, also hit back at the Amnesty report.\n\"There was no armed forces policy of directing widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population,\" the army, navy and air force said in a joint statement.\nDemonstrations continued on Thursday, with protesters looting and burning stores in a shopping center in the capital Santiago amid a demonstration against police abuses.\nIn Antofagasta in northern Chile, local television broadcast footage of a driver running down a group of people who were protesting, then fleeing the scene.\nPolice told AFP that the attack injured five people. The driver turned himself in hours later and was placed under arrest.\nLootings and riots were also reported in the port city of Valparaiso and in Concepcion, southern Chile's largest city. – Rappler.com\nFiled under:Chile•Chile Police•Chile protests•Sebastian Pinera","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line816809"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7000504732131958,"wiki_prob":0.7000504732131958,"text":"UCLA makes all the adjustments in blowout win vs Huskers\nUCLA scored a late touchdown in the first half to cut the Nebraska’s halftime lead from 21-3 down to 21-10. After a sluggish start, that touchdown allowed the Bruins to get to halftime with a little less pressure on them. UCLA also made the adjustments. The Bruins outscored the Huskers 28-0 in the third quarter and made it look as easy as that number would indicate. From there, the Bruins were set to score a bit of a statement with a 41-21 win at Nebraska.\nUCLA was dominant after digging an early hole, perhaps a result of flying east to play an early game when the bodies were still on west coast time. As well as UCLA played, Nebraska played just as poorly. Quarterback Brett Hundley got off to a rough start but ended his day completing 16 of 24 passes for 294 yards and three touchdowns. He also added 61 yard on the ground and running back Jordan James led the Bruins with 105 rushing yards and a touchdown. The defense also cranked it up in the second half, limiting Nebraska running back Ameer Abdullah to 98 yards and not allowing a rushing touchdown. Nebraska quarterback Taylor Martinez had a solid first half with three touchdown passes but he and the entire Huskers offense stalled in the second half. Nebraska had to punt four times, lost a fumble and turned the football over on downs in the second half. Nebraska managed to put together just 140 yards of offense in the second half, 69 of which came on the lone promising possession that ended with a lost fumble. UCLA had over 200 yards of offense in the third quarter alone.\nYou can say a lot about UCLA’s ability to dig deep and gut this win after the week the team combined with having to play an early game on the road. But looking at the big picture for the Bruins, this could just be the next building block to emerging as a top threat out of the Pac 12.\nDoes this make UCLA the team to beat in the Pac 12? Not yet, but this is a pretty significant performance that could make them he obvious team to beat in the Pac 12 South. UCLA has played in the Pac 12 Championship Game each of the first two years it has existed and they could very well be on their way to a third trip. UCLA’s schedule is going to be challenging moving forward. Back-to-back games on the road in mid-October at Stanford and Oregon should not be wished on anyone, but UCLA has shown they can go on the road and compete in a big game and they are only improving.\nNebraska will get a chance to regroup a little bit next week with one more home game before hitting the bye week. South Dakota State will visit Lincoln next week, which would normally be penciled down as an automatic win. Unfortunately for Nebraska, South Dakota State entered this weekend ranked sixth in the FCS rankings, so the match-up may not be quite the pushover contest we typically expect when a power program takes on an FCS squad. Given the track record of some of the ranked FCS teams this month, who knows?\nTags: Ameer Abdullah, Brett Hundley, NEB, Taylor Martinez, UCLA","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line356056"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5236080884933472,"wiki_prob":0.5236080884933472,"text":"The Atlantic Hotel, Jersey has been featured in a short film for Barclays latest mortgages campaign in Jersey. In the film, Patrick Burke, owner and managing director of the family owned business, tells the story of the hotel and what makes it tick. The film serves as a window into the world of The Atlantic, where the team is described by Barclays as ‘Masters of their Craft’ and making hospitality an art.\nRecounting the history behind the development of The Atlantic almost 50 years ago by his late father, Henry Burke, Patrick’s pride in continuing Henry’s legacy shines through. He explains how the story of The Atlantic is a story of Jersey; he is a passionate ambassador for his adopted home which he moved to with Henry 60 years ago. The more Patrick travels, the more he realises what a special place the island is, from its spectacular landscapes to its fiercely independent residents.\nPatrick shares his belief that hotels are all about people, from those who own them, to those who work in them, supply them and of course, stay in them. He believes that his principal role as proprietor of the family owned Atlantic Hotel is to create a stage on which some very talented people can express themselves.\nPatrick Burke comments: “Growing up in a hotel family it just seemed natural for me to follow in my father’s footsteps. Having trained in some of the best hotels in the country it was so special to spend time learning about the business from my father when I returned to the island in 1985. Henry’s vision was to create a hotel of international standard on one of the most stunning sites in the Channel Islands. I have now been in charge of the business for over 30 years and what I’ve done if anything over those years is to continue to evolve the property to maintain those standards. The Atlantic is a very special place and I am fortunate indeed to be surrounded by an incredibly talented team who make the hotel what it is. Ahead of the hotel’s 50th anniversary next year, we are thrilled to bits to have been recognised by Barclays as masters of our craft and we thank them for giving us this opportunity to tell our story.”\nThe Atlantic film is live on the Barclays Overseas website and social media channels as well as within the bank’s branch in St Helier.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line663788"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6252730488777161,"wiki_prob":0.6252730488777161,"text":"New Grocery Stores Eyed for 2 Downtown Spaces; Could One Be Whole Foods?\nStephen Babcock\nGrocers are among the many businesspeople who see opportunity in the new development sprouting up around downtown Baltimore. But even as deals in a pair of separate spaces on Fleet St. and N. Charles St. supposedly develop, officials haven’t been willing to put names to these potential grocery suitors.\nEven though Whole Foods has already staked out territory in Harbor East, past talk suggests that the upscale, organic-focused chain could be the as-yet-unnamed grocery store that’s set to occupy a new development at the edge of Fells Point.\nAccording to the Baltimore Guide, officials with The Bozzuto Group said a grocery store would be on the first floor of a new mostly-residential development that’s in the works for the corner of Central Ave. and Eden St. Residents from Fells Point asked if the grocer was a Whole Foods, but officials declined to comment.\nThe new development is moving onto the property as H&S Bakery is moving a distribution facility out (Baking operations will remain in Fells Point). In a 2013 Baltimore Sun article, H&S officials indicated they were planning to build a Whole Foods that was three times the size of the current location on the parking lot adjacent to the distribution center. Along with more space for healthy stuff, there could also be a 280 ft. building inspired by the sails of tall ships. If Whole Foods moves, that will trigger a new round of shuffling for the current Whole Foods space at Fleet and S. Exeter Sts.\nOver on N. Charles St., a space that once housed a Fresh & Green’s also appears poised for redevelopment. According to the Baltimore Business Journal, an unnamed “regional grocery store chain” wants to take over the space at 222 N. Charles St.\nThere’s a central location, plenty of space and lots of potential customers. So what’s the problem? Turns out, the deal is on hold as Fresh & Green’s also wants to pass along the debt owed for the building’s 2007 renovation. Downtown Partnership’s Kirby Fowler tells BBJ he is attempting to negotiate with the building’s landlord. But until a compromise is worked out, it looks like the mystery chain can remain in the shadows.\nStephen Babcock is the editor of Technical.ly Baltimore and an editor-at-large of Baltimore Fishbowl.\nLatest posts by Stephen Babcock (see all)\nStation North has a new spot for food, music, and arcade games - January 10, 2020\nBaltimost: Brittany Young - October 8, 2019\nPublic safety alert app Citizen launches in Baltimore - February 13, 2019","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1329012"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7269694209098816,"wiki_prob":0.7269694209098816,"text":"Avenches inauguration: a milestone in Nespresso success\n08 June 2009 | Paudex, SWITZERLAND – Nestlé Nespresso today inaugurated its new Production and Distribution Centre in Avenches, Switzerland. The state of the art, CHF 300 Million facility brings together key elements of what has driven Nespresso’s success to date – highest quality, innovation and a passion for excellence – and places them at the heart of Nespresso’s future growth.\n“Quality is fundamental to our continued success – our new Production and Distribution Centre brings quality and capacity to support our growth. Avenches provides the physical and technological resources together with leading expertise to manage – and further improve quality, at every step of the value chain, from cherry to cup, said Mr Richard Girardot, CEO of Nespresso.”\n“The new Nespresso Production and Distribution Centre will function as a Coffee Centre of Excellence, by bringing together both the sensory expertise and operational processes at the highest possible level of quality to deliver the Nespresso ultimate coffee experience that consumers the world over enjoy and expect,” he said.\nThe new facility of 400,000 m3 is dedicated to the production and distribution of Nespresso business-to-consumer and business-to-business capsules. The site will generate 340 full-time jobs by the end of this year. This number will increase to up to 600 employees by the end of 2012. Nespresso will export to 50 markets from the Centre.\nAt the Inauguration Ceremony, Mr Girardot, accompanied by Petraea Heynike, Executive Vice President of Nestlé S.A. and Chairman of Nestlé Nespresso, hosted the Swiss Economic Affairs Minister Doris Leuthard and Jean-Claude Mermoud, Minister of Economic Affairs of the Canton de Vaud.\nBuilt and operational in just 18 months, the Production and Distribution Centre in Avenches represents the passion for continuous innovation that are the hallmarks of Nespresso as a company. Incorporating leading technology, modern architectural design and the practical inclusion of sustainability principles such as rainwater collection for utility water and local community heat exchange, the Avenches Production and Distribution Centre illustrates the Nestlé Nespresso corporate philosophy of creating shared value.\nNespresso continues to invest in coffee excellence with the start of its planned extension\nNew Nestlé Nespresso Production Centre in Avenches, Switzerland","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line318710"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9752508401870728,"wiki_prob":0.9752508401870728,"text":"Lindsey Graham draws a Democratic challenger who mocks his ties to Trump\nNational reporter leading The Post's breaking political news team\nMay 29, 2019 at 1:54 PM EDT\nJaime Harrison, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, formally kicked off his campaign Wednesday to topple Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) with a video that highlights his humble roots and Graham’s evolving views on President Trump.\nHarrison, who was the state party’s first black chairman and is a former aide to Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), has been encouraged to run by national party leaders in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1998.\nIn his announcement video, Harrison highlighted his birth to a 16-year-old mother, his upbringing by his grandparents, his education at Yale University and Georgetown Law School and his return to South Carolina.\nBoosted by Pence, Graham plays up his loyalty to Trump as he seeks a fourth term\nThe video also included clips of derogatory comments that Graham made about Trump as they both were pursuing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, including Graham labeling Trump “a kook,” “crazy” and “not fit to be president of the United States.”\n“He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” Graham said in one highlighted clip.\nIn subsequent clips, Graham is shown saying, “No, I don’t think he’s a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot,” and that Trump “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”\n“Here’s a guy who will say anything to stay in office,” Harrison said in the video. “Lindsey Graham can’t lead us any direction because he traded his moral compass for petty political gain.”\nGraham, who is serving his third term, defeated his Democratic challenger in 2014 by more than 16 percentage points. Trump carried the state over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 14 percentage points.\nIn an interview with The Washington Post in March, as he was considering a Senate bid, Harrison said that Graham’s reelection “is not a slam dunk for him” given his emergence as a strong Trump ally.\n“The refrain these days is: What’s happened to Lindsey?” Harrison said. “He’s won in the past with a coalition of country club Republicans, independents and some moderate or conservative Democrats. But he’s lost some of those middle-of-the-road voters.”\nGraham kicked off his reelection campaign in March with a visit from Vice President Pence, who emphasized Graham’s loyalty to Trump.\nFollowing Harrison’s announcement Wednesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sought to downplay his prospects.\n“Harrison is a looney liberal who was hand-picked to run by radical Washington Democrats,” said NRSC spokesman Nathan Brand. “Lindsey Graham is one of the most popular U.S. Senators in the country because South Carolina voters know that he has delivered results and has been a tireless fighter for Palmetto State values.”\nRobert Costa contributed to this report.\nRead more at PowerPost","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line550740"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6614564657211304,"wiki_prob":0.33854353427886963,"text":"LitXpert Group, Inc.\nPROFESSIONAL LEGAL SOLUTIONS\nA PROVIDER OF EXPERT WITNESS RESOURCES -\nFROM INDUSTRY PIONEERS TO CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS.\nMobile Systems Expert\nThe following are expert witnesses for mobile systems matters. Our experts cover the technologies of: wireless networks, wireless security, cellular, UI with deposition and testifying experience.\n#1022 Professor in Computer Science this Expert has litigation experience in over eight cases, has three patents, recipient in over 63 grants and contracts. He has given or been on over 96 invited talks and panels and has written close to 300 publications.\nWireless Networks and Mobile Systems\nInternet Quality of Support\n#1027 Professor in Computer Science has written books and numerous papers covering computer and network security, operating systems, distributed systems, computer networks, and mobile computing.\nNetwork security (IP spoofing, DDoS defense, botnets, worm defense)\nWireless networks and mobile computing\nFile systems and optimistic replication\nDistributed systems security\nOptimistic concurrency control mechanisms for parallel and distributed systems\n#1030 Broad operating experience in senior technical roles at Fairchild, Intel, ESL/TRW, GTE, and three startup companies spanning the semiconductor, printing, and defense industries. Author and owner of 21 issued patents. Semiconductors and Electronic Packaging, Electro-mechanical systems and mobile systems/smart phones and ancillary devices. . He has written expert reports.\nElectro-mechanical systems\nElectronic packaging\nSemiconductors packaging\n#1041 Expert has a broad background includes 802.11 wireless, Linux and Android operating systems for smartphones. His litigation experience includes trial and deposition testimony, expert reports, as well as infringement and invalidity analysis, prior art searches, source code reviews, lab testing, and patent portfolio review. He holds 4 patents and has litigation experience in over 30 cases.\n#1046 Consultant has over thirty years of experience in the field of electrical, RF and telecommunications engineering. He has worked for private organizations and has been a founder of several successful start-up telecommunications companies. Expert holds over 35 US and International Patents in the telecommunications field. He has a great deal of litigation experience along with testifying experience.\nGPS technologies\nPhones: standards, services, and systems\nWired technologies\n#1051 Consultant holds an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. and has over 40 years of wireless telecommunication industry experience. He has invented over 30 patents and applications, lectured at respected institutes and has a great deal of litigation along with testifying experience.\nMobile phones and networks: LTE (4G), WCDMA – UMTS (3G), 3GPP HSDPA – HSUPA, Wimax (4G) LMDS OFDMA based\n3GPP and 3GPP2 protocol stack MAC/RRC/RLC, smartphones, low power design, GUI\nSoftware technologies: Voice applications, Parallel computing, Distributed computing, Mobile applications, C, C++, Matlab, Assembly, Client Server, Remote desktop, Voice streaming, Media streaming\nAlliance: 3GPP HSPA/WLAN, Blue Tooth, BTLE, UWB, 802.16 WiMax\nLBS: 3GPP GPS / 3GPP2 A-GPS, Location Based Services, LBS tracking, GPS database\nComputer architecture: Processor design, DSP, RISC/CISC, Memory, hardware abstraction, Virtualization, Virtual machines\nMobile computing: 3GPP baseband processing, channel coding and modem, application processors, graphics processors, Display and power management\nMusic, Voice and Video coding and encoding, including MP3, MP2, VoIP, 3GPP AMR, 3GPP2 EVRC, WB\n#1057 Consultant is a Professor Emeritus and specializes in the full spectrum of computer and network technologies. He has served as an expert witness on numerous cases where the technology has been applied to general computing platforms including: mainframes, servers, workstations, notebooks, set-top boxes, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, eBook readers, and embedded computers. He has a great deal of testifying experience.\nComputer architecture and systems\nDigital Rights Management (DRM)\nDistributed objects\nDistributed programming\nNetwork applications and protocols\nWeb support and applications\n#1072 Expert has been a fact witness and expert witness in half a dozen high profile patent cases in the mobile technology area that involved Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Motorola, Google, etc.\nHe was one of the initial developers who created one of the world’s first tablet computers in the late ‘80s and worked on the architecture of the ASP.Net. He holds several patents and has litigation and testifying experience.\nPDA designed\n#1073 Expert is a researcher in human‐computer interaction, he creates useful and usable interactive technologies that improve people’s access to and interaction with computers and information, particularly for impaired users or users in impairing situations. He combines computer science, interaction design, and psychology to invent new user interface technologies for desktop, web, mobile, and surface computing platforms. He also formally measures and models human performance with computing systems. Many of his contributions concern input via text entry, pointing, touch, and gesture, often but not exclusively for people with motor or sensory disabilities. He holds many patents and publications. He has expert witness experience.\nTouch Gesture\n#1081 Experience as a patent consulting expert for the Global Positioning System, GIS, Navigation, Telecom, Storage, and Embedded Computing industries. Expert has been deposed for an ITC matter.\nUser Interface design – embedded graphical and menu interfaces for mobile, GPS, robotic and security applications\nGIS mapping software interface and design including Google Maps, Microsoft MapPoint – Bing Maps, Know-Where Systems, ArcView\nGPS, Teleconferencing, Radar and wireless circuit design and signal processing algorithms\nSoftware / algorithm development using C, C++, Java, Python, Perl\nHigh performance computing architectures and switched fabrics\nDatabase development using MySQL and Oracle\nCommunications protocols including TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, NTP, CDMA, GPRS, GSM and CDPD\nTextual and Natural Language processing in Python\nEnterprise network applications development using BSD sockets on Linux/Unix\nAudio and Video CODECs\n8/16/32/64 bit microprocessor circuitry design\n#1082 Consultant holds a E.E. Ph.D. from a top Massachusetts university and is currently a professor teaching in the Electrical and Computer Engineering; Professor of Computer Science.\n#1088 Consultant is a professor who has over 50 years of experience in communications research and development. In the last 20 years, his work has concentrated on new emerging mobile and wireless communications networks. His areas of expertise include communication theory and techniques, systems engineering, communication networks, digital telephony, wireless communications, radio-wave propagation, spread- spectrum, secure communications, and digital signal processing. He holds two U. S. Patents related to reliable digital transmission over wireless channels. He has published numerous journal and conference papers, and co-authored three books, as well as chapters in multi-author handbooks and encyclopedias.\n#1102 Professor in Computer Science who focuses his research on wireless data communications mobile computing as well as software wed applications. This expert has numerous publications as well as books. He has a great deal of litigation experience with testifying experience.\nWireless Data Communications\n#1103 Consultant is a professor with over 20 years of experience in the software industry and has been a contributor to multiple commercially successful consumer and enterprise applications. He is the author of numerous academic publications including a book on web technology. Consultant has a considerable amount of litigation experience and testifying experience.\nCollaborative Filtering (Recommender Systems)\nComputer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)\nInformation Retrieval and Web Search\nInformation Seeking and Web Use\nInformetrics, Analytics and Behavioral Log Analysis\nKnowledge Discovery in Databases / Data Mining\nKnowledge Management Systems\n#1116 Consultant is a professor of Electrical Engineering whose expertise is:\nComputer Networks and Protocols, TCP/IP\nInternet Applications, Web, Client-Server, VoIP, CDNs, and Video/Multimedia Networking\nNetworking Devices and Interfaces, Switches, and Routers\nTelecommunication and Telephone Networks, PSTN and SS7, Internet Media Gateways\nWireless and Mobile Networks\nHe has worked on many litigation matters including ITC matters.\n#1118 Consultant is a professor in Computer Science and Engineering which research interests are Network, Internet, telecommunications, and systems security, with interests in language-based security, voting systems, provenance, secure storage, cell phone operating systems and privacy. Consultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.\n#1123 Consultant is a professor in electrical and computer Engineering He researches on wireless communications, mobility management, fast protocols, optical networks, and optical switching. Consultant is an author of numerous technical papers and holds eighteen patents in the fields of high-speed networking, wireless networks, and optical switching. His interests include: mobile and wireless communication and networks, biologically-inspired networks, and modeling of complex systems. This consultant has a great deal of litigation experience with testifying.\n#1137 Consultant has over 35 years’ experience in electronics design, computer systems, communications systems, hardware, and software. He worked on packet-switching networks, including the ARPAnet and early TCP/IP systems at BBN in the 1970’s, custom Very-Large-Scale Integrated Circuits at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1981, designed the production Xerox single-chip Optical Mouse, assisted Jim Clark (later founder of Silicon Graphics, Inc.) in testing his first Geometry Engine chips, and led the custom chip design efforts for the Apple Macintosh team in 1982 – 1983. He also led Apple’s efforts to support TCP/IP, and ran Apple’s first internet commerce pilot program. He was Director of Technology at Netscape from 1996 – 1997. At Xerox, he also led initial deployment and internal communications efforts related to Ethernet. At Apple and at Netscape he was very active with standards efforts. He studied packet voice in a graduate seminar at MIT, and has also worked on wired and wireless communications systems, including 802.11. He combines a strong understanding of technology with an in-depth approach to business needs.\nConsultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.\n#1164 Consultant is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has over 25 years of experience in embedded systems development as a project/ development manager. His expertise includes: embedded systems, microprocessors, wireless, mobile communications, telecommunications and robotics. He has expert witness experience.\n#1212 Consultant is a professor who has testified in federal court as an expert witness in the fields of computer science, computer engineering and software engineering. His research interests are primarily the many aspects of concurrent processing, with an emphasis on its formalization by means of programming, prototyping and specification formalisms with supporting tools.\n#1457 Consultant is a professor in the department of electrical and computer Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of mobile and wireless networks with a focus on protocol design, performance evaluation, and at-scale field trials. Consultant has expert witness experience along with testifying.\n© 2016 LITXPERT GROUP, INC. | 19925 STEVENS CREEK BOULEVARD, SUITE 100, CUPERTINO CA 95014 | 408-663-6700 | info@litxpert.com\nBuilt with BoldGrid | Powered by WordPress | Support from InMotion Hosting | Special Thanks","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line935121"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8678211569786072,"wiki_prob":0.8678211569786072,"text":"Temporarily out of stock: usually despatched in 10-14 days\nThe History of Oscar®-Winning Women\nStephen Tapert (author) Roxane Gay (Foreword by)\nPublication Date: Nov 2019\nThe list of women who have won the coveted and legendary Academy Award for Best Actress is long and varied. This lavishly illustrated coffee table book offers a vital examination of the first 75 women to have won the Best Actress Oscar over the span of 90 years.\nIngrid Bergman. Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor. Jane Fonda. Meryl Streep. The list of women who have won the coveted and legendary Academy Award for Best Actress is long and varied. Through this illustrious roster we can trace the history of women in Hollywood, from the rise of Mary Pickford in the early 20th century to the #MeToo and Time's Up movements of today, which have galvanized women across the world to speak out for equal pay, respect, power, and opportunity.\nThis lavishly illustrated coffee table book offers a vital examination of the first 75 women to have won the Best Actress Oscar over the span of 90 years. From inaugural recipient Janet Gaynor to Frances McDormand's 2018 acceptance speech that assertively brought women to the forefront, Best Actress: The History of Oscar®-Winning Women serves to promote a new appreciation for the cinematic roles these women won for, as well as the real-life roles many of them played – and still play – in advancing women's rights and equality. Stories range from Bette Davis' groundbreaking battle against the studio system; to the cutting-edge wardrobes of Katharine Hepburn, Diane Keaton and Cher; to the historical significance of Halle Berry's victory; to the awareness raised around sexual violence by the performances of Jodie Foster, Brie Larson, and others.\nShowcasing a dazzling collection of 200 photographs, many of which have never before been seen or published, Best Actress honors the legacies of these revered and extraordinary women while scrutinizing the roadblocks that they continue to overcome.\nReviewed in the New York Times:\n\"Open Tapert's elegant doorstopper of a coffee-table book and you'll find yourself face to face with Frances McDormand looking as if she has a trick up her sleeve. With her unspackled skin and gold ball earrings – the kind you get from the piercing kiosk at the mall – the two-time Oscar winner sets the real-life tone for Best Actress. Tapert, a film studies professor and an eight-year veteran of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is not a purveyor of headshots and puff pieces. He presents stars the way we want to see them: in action. There's Anne Bancroft wearing protective padding backstage while filming 1962's \"The Miracle Worker\"; there's Halle Berry gripping her statuette as she becomes the first – and so far only – black woman to win the best actress Oscar. The accompanying profiles are textured and timeless (Grace Kelly was fighting gender discrimination back in 1955), and Roxane Gay's frank foreword acknowledges the women who are not represented in these pages – and challenges the academy to right that wrong. Immediately.\"\n97 black & white photographs, 103 colour photographs\nIndividual actors & performers Media studies Popular culture Gender studies: women Film guides & reviews Feminism & feminist theory\nStephen Tapert earned his M.A. from the University of Chicago. He worked for eight years at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where, as a museum researcher, he provided foundational work for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. He subsequently curated an exhibition on the Best Actress Oscar winners at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, Italy, and at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, Germany. He currently teaches film studies at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line690431"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9305739998817444,"wiki_prob":0.9305739998817444,"text":"USDA's Censky Touts EPA Waivers Plan\nBiofuel Leaders Point to Positives From Rocky 2019\nThe leader of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association said the industry needs to repair its relationship with the EPA.\nHarvey Survivors Feel Grief, Distress\n1/6/2018 | 12:06 PM CST\nDALLAS (AP) -- Deb Eberhart couldn't sleep and was easily moved to tears as she worked to coordinate repairs to her Houston home in the months after flooding from Hurricane Harvey besieged it with 3-feet of water.\nShe clenched her jaw so hard that it hurt. She couldn't eat.\n\"I thought: 'Well, I'm not handling things as well as I should be,'\" the 69-year-old retired teacher said.\nEberhart realized she needed help that had nothing to do with construction crews and insurance adjustors. So she joined storm survivors seeking help from therapists in the wake of the destructive winds and heavy rains in August that caused more than 80 deaths and an estimated $150 billion in damage in Texas.\nExperts say the emotional distress caused by such an event can take many forms — grief, anxiety, depression, even fear of storms — and progress through several stages over a year or longer. Even months after the storm hit, new patients have been coming to free counseling being offered by private and government-funded programs.\nIn the small coastal town of Port Aransas, which experienced major destruction after Harvey made landfall nearby, psychologist Andrew Reichert said he began noticing a shift about a month ago in what was bringing people in.\n\"It's gone from kind of the immediate stress and shock to more just kind of a chronic stress and long-haul type of thing,\" Reichert said. \"A lot of my work is helping people prioritize and focus on what they can control versus what they can't.\"\nEberhart headed to Austin before the storm hit, even though she thought her Houston home would be fine. She later received photos of the flooding at her house from a neighbor who used a boat. When she returned home, she was heartbroken by what she found: \"Mud and slush, and everything just gone.\"\nShe lived with her son and his roommates in Houston for about three weeks, then she moved into a starkly furnished apartment near her home. The stress increased amid the frustrations of being displaced, remodeling work and the grief from losing irreplaceable items such as furniture that belonged to her mother and childhood photographs.\n\"I think after a while you just have to accept the fact that maybe you're just stuck in a place, and somebody can just get you over the hump and it would be a therapist,\" Eberhart said.\nShe had her first counseling session in November with Judith Andrews, a psychologist who co-chairs the Texas Psychological Association's disaster resource network. Eberhart said talking to Andrews helped her realize she shouldn't be mad at herself for still being upset and that she needed to takes steps to deal with the stress, such as starting to exercise again.\nAndrews, whose organization is offering free counseling sessions, said survivors feel grief over the loss of both property and stability. \"They're grieving about the loss of what was,\" she said.\nThey usually first experience the survival-focused \"heroic phase,\" when people are responding with high intensity, helping others to survive or being rescued, Andrews said. A few weeks later comes the \"honeymoon\" phase, which can last up to six months as people are buoyed by feelings of solidarity and bonding from their shared experience.\nBut anger, resentment and feelings of isolation and abandonment can creep in during the \"disillusionment\" phase, when survivors struggle to rebuild. The \"reconstruction\" phase follows — and can last for years — as victims learn to accept that everything won't be the same.\n\"What happens when people don't process it by talking, then they really don't get rid of it,\" Andrews said. She noted that most people won't need long-term counseling but many \"would certainly benefit by short-term therapy.\"\nThe Texas Education Agency is heading a task force to mobilize the mental health response in schools. One goal is to help teachers understand how to spot children who might benefit from talking to someone, said Andy Keller, a psychologist and president and chief executive officer of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, which is collaborating with the state on task force.\nMegan Davis took her 3-year-old and 6-year-old daughters — who escaped their Houston home by boat with their mother — to sessions with Andrews to make sure the girls were OK.\nDavis said she was encouraged to hear her girls were \"age-appropriately handling the large changes in their lives.\" The 34-year-old attorney said she also was given tools to talk to her daughters and to know how to let them guide the conversation.\n\"I think that oftentimes we focus on the immediate effects of disasters, and that's really a small portion of what's important in terms of looking at mental health, especially with respect to kids,\" said Jeff Temple, a psychologist at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.\nThe Texas Health and Human Services Commission has been working with mental health care providers to offer free counseling across affected areas in Texas until Jan. 24 through a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The state has applied for additional funds to extend the services.\n\"Recovery takes time,\" said commission spokeswoman Kelli Weldon.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line104051"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6602005362510681,"wiki_prob":0.6602005362510681,"text":"Turkey plans to produce five models of its own electric cars\nOnly recently in Turkey there was the first in its history automobile company, and already announced the development of just five electric cars. This was reported by the Turkish portal Anadolu with reference to Minister Faruk Ozlyu.\nFaruk Ozlu is the head of the Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology of Turkey. It was he who said that the plans of Türkiye’nin Otomobili Girişim Grubu Sanayi ve Ticare originally meant the creation of five models of electrified cars. Production facilities are expected to produce 200,000 cars.\nThe minister adds that the electric cars of Turkish production will be designed for the average and high prosperity of citizens, that is, it is class C and B.\nThe price will be lower than foreign cars by 5% minimum. Thus, by 2021 the Turks intend to catch up and even outrun foreign brands not only in quality, but also in price.\nWithin the framework of the project, four thousand vacancies for specialists will open, and in total about 20 thousand employees will provide the work. It is assumed that the production of a domestic electric vehicle will bring the state treasury around 50 billion euros.\nRecall that the Turkish company was created with the direct initiative of the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Perhaps the creation of an electric car the head of state discussed with Elon Musk, during his visit to Ankara.\nCategoryNews\nThe prototype of the BMW 8-Series M850i ​​crashed fatal for a passenger\nThe new Porsche 911 will be presented this fall\nVolkswagen Viloran minivan predicted the future of the global model","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line159023"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9156896471977234,"wiki_prob":0.9156896471977234,"text":"MLUI / News & Views / Articles from 1995 to 2012 / 420 Million: America’s New Population Boom\n420 Million: America’s New Population Boom\nSmart Growth can cut congestion, pollution in emerging ‘supercities’\nA nightime satellite view of the United States shows supercities are already emerging along the East and West Coasts, Florida, and across the Midwest.\nJust like rising energy demand, global warming, and racial distrust, America’s population boom is escaping serious attention from both presidential candidates. This is happening —or rather, not happening — even though the United States is growing more rapidly than it ever has before. By 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 420 million people will live here, 140 million more than in 2000.\nIs the country prepared for adding 50 percent more people in 50 years? Hardly. Just look at how America responded to the 33 million more people that joined us here in the 1990s: We paved millions of acres of open land, suffered from record levels of traffic congestion, overwhelmed sewage plans and polluted countless rivers and lakes with storm water runoff. We also widened the economic and social gulf between the outer suburban “haves” and just about everybody else.\nIf the country continues to spread out as it has, with developed acreage growing seven times faster than the population, roads and parking lots and buildings will cover 157 million acres. That’s about the size of Texas and nearly three times more land than is already developed today. In other words, if we do not change how we grow over the next 46 years, the United States will become an unrecognizable mess.\nThat is why the country must face up to its demographic future and install a new development policy that assures that America doesn’t choke on its growth. Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association in New York and one of the country’s most prominent planners, says the country has a long tradition of developing such national plans.\nThe first such growth plan arrived in 1807, following the Lewis and Clark expedition, when President Jefferson drew up a plan to incorporate the 863,072-square-mile Louisiana Purchase into the rest of the country. In December 1861, President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act to encourage westward settlement, and the Morrill Land Grant College Act, to provide for the development of higher education in “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” In 1906 and 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a series of national park, forest, and game reserve laws that conserved 230 million acres of the country’s most beautiful wild lands. And in 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act that authorized the construction of a 41,000-mile Interstate Highway system.\nIn effect, every half-century or so demographic and economic trends converge so significantly that they force the country to think in novel ways about where it’s heading. That moment has arrived once again.\nEarlier this year, faculty and graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the Census Bureau’s 50-year population projections and separate projections from Woods and Poole Economics, a Washington-based research firm. The group came to some portentous findings: They concluded that, by 2050, 307 million Americans, 71 percent of the population, will live in just 8 “supercity” regions that today have roughly 175 million people. In other words, most of the population increase will come in a handful of urban regions that will bleed across state boundaries like the Boston-to-Washington corridor does today.\nCalifornia will have two supercities — one stretching from San Diego to north of Los Angeles and the southern Central Valley, the other encompassing the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley and reaching inland to Modesto and Sacramento.\nA third supercity will permeate the Pacific Northwest, including Portland, Takoma, and Seattle. A fourth, in Texas, will encompass San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. Almost all of Florida will be a supercity. The South’s supercity will reach from Birmingham through Atlanta to Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham. The Midwest’s will start in Cleveland and include Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The East’s will reach from Richmond all the way up the Atlantic Coast to Portland, Maine.\nImmigration will drive much of the growth, demographers say. The Hispanic population will almost triple, from 35.6 million to 102.6 million, or nearly 25 percent of the population. The Asian population will more than triple, from 10.7 million to 33.4 million, or 8 percent of the population. By contrast, the white population will grow by less than 7 percent, or 15 million people, bringing that group’s total to 210 million, or half the population.\nAs this multi-cultural future unfolds, America will face levels of sprawl, traffic, pollution, and competition for economic and natural resources that it simply has never seen before. As the South’s supercity triples the region’s population, the Bay Area’s population doubles, southern California’s grows by more than half, and the other megalopolises show similar dramatic gains, the need for new infrastructure will be immense. That is why using the same sprawling designs we use today simply will not work and why we must drastically change our patterns of development.\nTake transportation: Highway construction alone will not come close to solving the gridlock that comes with putting 100 million more vehicles on the road. But a national network of high-speed rail lines linking airports to downtowns can ease traffic congestion and make America more mobile and energy efficient, and less polluting. So will a federal transportation policy that encourages building many more regional commuter rail systems, which both relieve traffic jams and foster more compact development around station stops. This will ease competition for open land and make it possible for families to get by with one instead of three or four expensive autos.\nAchieving even these obvious, greatly needed changes in transportation policy seems a daunting challenge in this era of lower taxes and less public investment. But America is waking up to the realization that it simply cannot meet one of its chief challenges — fitting many more people on the land — with more tax and spending cuts. If anything, the country must do the opposite, and quickly, to avoid the much greater congestion, chaos, taxes, and spending that using the current approach will surely engender. Wise investments in planning, housing, transportation, and conservation will help ensure that 2050 America is both globally competitive and a good place to live.\nKeith Schneider is a journalist and deputy director of the Michigan Land Use Institute. Reach him at keith@mlui.org.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line397652"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6200852394104004,"wiki_prob":0.3799147605895996,"text":"South Carolina Jury Should Have Been Instructed Concerning Lack of Presumption of Intoxication for .018% BAC in Train-Car Collision – Stephens v. CSX Transportation, Inc.\nThe right to a jury trial is very important to our civil justice system. That said, jury trials can be complex and lengthy because of all of the procedural safeguards that are in place to make sure that the jury, presumably made up of laymen, considers only admissible evidence and is instructed accurately concerning the law.\nIt is not uncommon for appellate courts to review jury verdicts on appeal and come to the conclusion that the trial judge tainted the jury by an erroneous ruling or instruction. When this happens, the case must be remanded for a new trial, basically starting the process anew.\nFacts of the Case\nIn the case of Stephens v. CSX Transportation, Inc., the plaintiff was the guardian ad litem of a minor child who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a collision between a train and an automobile in which the child was riding. The accident occurred at a passive-grade crossing in the town of Yemassee, South Carolina in Hampton County. There were no lights or gates at the crossing, only a stop sign, a stop line, and a “Railroad Crossing” sign.\nAt the time of the accident, the child was the back seat passenger in her mother’s car. Her mother testified that she stopped at the stop sign and pulled forward to the stop line, but she claimed that she did not see or hear the train until she drove onto the track.\nThe guardian filed suit against the owner of the train, alleging that the train operator had failed to sound the train’s horn at the right time and had neglected to remove trees and vegetation that obstructed the mother’s view of the track. The guardian also named the state department of transportation as a defendant in the suit, averring that it had failed to properly inspect the crossing and had installed the stop sign and stop line in the wrong places.\nThe case was tried to a jury, which found in favor of the defendants. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s order in the defendants’ favor.\nOn Appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court\nOn further appeal, the supreme court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded the case for a new trial. With regard to the guardian’s argument that he should have received a judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), the supreme court found that the court of appeals had correctly ruled that the guardian’s failure to renew his motion for a directed verdict after his offer of rebuttal evidence precluded him from requesting a JNOV.\nThe supreme court agreed with the lower appellate court with regard to certain jury instructions that the lower court had provided, finding that the lower court had committed reversible error in restricting its analysis to jury charges related to the defendants’ alleged breach of the duty of reasonable care. According to the court, there were other instructions that should have been considered. Since these instructions were erroneous and may have tainted the jury’s consideration of the issues, the court found that the guardian was entitled to a new trial.\nSpecifically, the trial court should not have instructed the jury that “it is always train time at a railroad crossing,” nor should it have issued certain confusing instructions concerning the distance at which the mother should have stopped her car prior to crossing the tracks. Furthermore, given the mother’s blood alcohol content of .018%, the court found that the trial court should have instructed the jury not only on the criminal statute involving driving under the influence but also on another statute that would have shown that, given the relatively low level of alcohol in the mother’s blood, there was no presumption that she was impaired at the time of the accident.\nTo Speak to an Experienced South Carolina Injury Lawyer\nBeing involved in a motor vehicle collision or other accident can be one of life’s most stressful events. It helps to know that an experienced, assertive attorney is on your side of the case, fighting for your right to maximum compensation for your injuries. To schedule an appointment with a knowledgeable South Carolina car accident attorney, call the Law Offices of Patrick E. Knie at 864-582-5118 and ask for a free consultation. We accept cases throughout South Carolina and have offices located in Greenville and Spartanburg.\nSubcontractor’s Employee Who Was Killed While Returning to South Carolina After Making a Delivery Was a Statutory Employer of an Upstream Contractor – Collins v. Seko Charlotte\nRosekind promises action on issue involving truck speeds\nPosted in: Car Accidents and Negligence","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line284596"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9637618660926819,"wiki_prob":0.9637618660926819,"text":"By Dominika Sanda on December 18, 2018\nWarragamba plan a 'sad state of affairs'\nA former NSW government official has described the treatment of national parks under a plan to raise the wall of Warragamba Dam as a \"poor\" state of affairs.\nUnder the coalition's proposal, part of the Greater Blue Mountains Area will be flooded, putting at risk more than a dozen threatened species - including a bird on the brink of extinction - and one of the most endangered ecosystems in the country.\nAn ex-Office of Environment and Heritage officer warns the heritage area will be destroyed under the proposal to raise the dam wall 14 metres through what the government insists will be a \"controlled release\" of water.\n\"It will drown the majority of the surviving woodlands area ... which is one of the most intact examples of this ecosystem in southeast Australia,\" the former staffer told AAP.\nThey asked not to be named for fear it could hurt their future employment prospects.\nThe critically endangered White Box-Gum Woodland in the catchment is rare because it's home to predators such as dingoes which live with grazing mammals such as the brush-tailed rock-wallaby in a functioning ecosystem.\n\"For the government to be putting at risk the conservation of such a unique area that sits in a world heritage area, and to be treating national parks so poorly, is a sad state of affairs,\" the ex-officer said.\nAt least 15 threatened species live in the national park including the critically endangered regent honeyeater which was recently found to breed in the area.\nThat discovery is described by ornithologist Martin Schulz as significant because the bird only breeds and feeds in certain habitats.\n\"They (the government) couldn't have found anything more significant than breeding regent honeyeaters in the area,\" he told AAP. \"If that doesn't stop it - nothing will.\"\nThe bushland has a rich Aboriginal history with Gundungurra traditional owners arguing that raising the wall will lead to the destruction of more than 50 recognised indigenous heritage sites.\nOne includes the only known intact cave art of a waratah linked to the Dreamtime, Gundungurra woman Kazan Brown told AAP.\n\"They are our sacred sites, there are handprints on cave walls, there are Dreamtime stories - you flood it and it's like we were never there,\" she said.\nThe Blue Mountains world heritage listing could also be under threat with the group that advises the UNESCO World Heritage Committee cautioning both the federal and NSW governments.\nThe NSW parliament earlier this year passed legislation permitting flooding of the national park which allows the dam wall to be raised.\nBut the ALP national conference on Sunday passed a motion promising that if elected next year a federal Labor government would introduce laws to protect world heritage sites from damming.\nWhile raising the wall will have \"very significant\" benefits in reducing the flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley it's important governments understood the potential impact of the proposal, an Infrastructure NSW spokeswoman told AAP.\nFlora, fauna and indigenous cultural heritage assessments are underway as part of the project's environmental impact statement.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line278533"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9840365648269653,"wiki_prob":0.9840365648269653,"text":"https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bellaire-sports/article/Keyes-reboots-Houston-Hurricanes-tradition-in-4367556.php\nKeyes reboots Houston Hurricanes tradition in growing NPSL\nBy Jeff Jenkins\nPublished 2:57 pm CDT, Tuesday, March 19, 2013\nHouston Hurricanes owner Brendan Keyes welcomes new signing midfielder Rico John Pardo.\nPhoto: Courtesy Houston Hurricanes\nThe Houston Hurricanes are back and, hopefully, the third time will be charmed for the city's newest soccer franchise.\nLong-time area soccer fans probably remember the original Houston Hurricane, which competed in the now-defunct North American Soccer League from 1978 to 1980 before folding, playing its games at the Astrodome.\nOwner Joey Serralta brought back the Houston Hurricanes in the 1990s as a member of the United Soccer League before the team folded.\nThe latest version of the Houston Hurricanes recently conducted tryouts and completed their roster for the upcoming National Premier Soccer League season. These Hurricanes will compete in the NPSL's South Region in the four-team South Central Division.\nBut Houston Hurricanes Football Club President Brendan Keyes wants to see if his squad can draw on the road. The Hurricanes will travel to San Antonio to face the NASL's San Antonio Scorpions in a pre-season game at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 30.\n\"It's a tremendous test for us,\" Keyes said. \"There are currently four soccer leagues in the U.S. and there's plenty of talent in all of them. The Scorpions have beaten a couple of Major League Soccer teams in the past. It just shows that anything can happen on a given day.\"\nKeyes had hoped that the Hurricanes would get the opportunity to play at Toyota Field, the Scorpions' new stadium. However, construction probably will not be completed in time, forcing both teams to battle at Heroes Stadium.\nHurricanes file\nChange of address: The Houston Hurricanes are the city's newest sports franchise. The Hurricanes competed as the Galveston Pirates, winning the National Premier Soccer League's South Central Division as an expansion team last season.\nLuck of the Irish: Brendan Keyes, a native of Dublin, Ireland, has taken over as the Houston Hurricanes Football Club's team president. Keyes is a former professional soccer player who played for the now-defunct Houston Hurricanes of the United Soccer League in the 1990s. He also is a sanctioned professional trainer and operates his own soccer academy.\nOn the road: The Hurricanes will play a preseason scrimmage at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 30, against the North American Soccer League's San Antonio Scorpions in San Antonio.\n\"Hopefully, we can get a few thousand fans to make the trip to San Antonio,\" Keyes said. \"That would help build some excitement for the season.\"\nPreviously known as the Galveston Pirates, the Hurricanes are re-inventing themselves with Keyes at the helm. A native of Dublin, Ireland, Keyes is a former pro soccer player starred for the USL's Houston Hurricanes among his many stops duirng his long playing career. Keyes also is a sanctioned professional trainer and runs his own soccer academy.\nKeyes said the Hurricanes have retained only three players from the Galveston Pirates, which finished 13-2-2 and claimed the NPSL's South Central Division as an expansion team in 2012.\n\"I feel like we've upgraded at every position,\" Keyes said. \"We'll put a strong product on the field.\"\nThe Hurricanes, who are based at Lutheran South Academy (12555 Ryewater Drive), retained Thiago Costa Reis as head coach, but there are plenty of new faces.\nRico Pardo, a former member of the Puerto Rican national team, joined the Hurricanes. Pardo, an attacking midfielder, is the son of former USL Houston Hurricanes coach Richie Pardo.\n\"Rico is only 22 years old, but he's an explosive player with unlimited potential,\" Keyes said.\nIn addition, the Hurricanes made history on both ends of the age spectrum, inking 15-year-old goalkeeper Tyler Garner and 39-year-old defender Adam Randecker. Garner is the youngest player in the NPSL, while Randecker is among the oldest.\n\"I'd say 90 percent of our players are under 23, but we have a couple of veterans,\" said Keyes, who also noted that the teams are amateur and primarily comprised of high school, college and former professional athletes.\nOne of Hurricanes' most popular players is sure to be midfielder R.J. McNair, nephew of former Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair. R.J. McNair, one of the few holdovers from the Galveston outfit, is a team captain.\n\"R.J. is a lightning-fast right winger,\" Keyes said. \"I'm sure the fans will love him.\"\nKeyes promises fans that they will be impressed with the style of play in the NPSL, which is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, the sport's governing body in this country. MSL clubs such as D.C. United, the New York Red Bulls and the Chicago Fire have entered teams in the NPSL.\n\"The NPSL added nine new teams and there are more than 60 in the league this year,\" Keyes said. \"We're probably the fastest-growing sports league in the U.S.\"\nThe Houston Hurricanes will officially kick off the 2013 season against the Liverpool Warriors at 7 p.m. Friday, May 24, at Lutheran South.\nFor more information on the Houston Hurricanes Football Club, including tickets to the upcoming game against the San Antonio Scorpions, visit www.houstonhurricanesfc.com or call 832-748-1001.\nKlein ISD seeks class size waiver\nCounty plans to acquire Raveneaux Country Club\nCypress Area Eats feeds the community soul\nJeff Nations steps down as Dayton football coach\nKaty’s Kolache Factory earns national notice on franchise list\nBeekeeping couple opens unique 'honey-infused winery' in Tomball\nSpring ISD sets 2020-2021 calendar\nGilley's 'Urban Cowboy' reunion tour headed for The Woodlands\nTequila rooms, lavish bars: Inside Houston's priciest homes sold","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line520220"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7871482968330383,"wiki_prob":0.7871482968330383,"text":"Viewpoint: Federal Officials Should Be Accountable for Their Wrongdoing\nAnd judges need to be the ones to make them pay.\nLeah Litman,\nWaste, Fraud & Abuse\nBy Leah Litman\nAmerican government officials enjoy an extraordinary amount of immunity when it comes to liability for wrongdoing. If, for example, a Bureau of Land Management employee trespasses onto private property and harasses the property owner, the officer probably can’t be sued in federal court. Likewise, if a prison official denies a prisoner adequate medical care, he too stands little chance of being held accountable in federal court.\nFederal officials’ special status results not from federal statutes but from common law; it is the nation’s judges who have, over time, made it harder for victims of government wrongdoing to hold the government accountable, rather than easier. Judges have fashioned sweeping doctrines of immunity that insulate federal and state officials from facing any liability. Under these doctrines, victims of government wrongdoing cannot recover damages from government officials unless they can point to some prior case that has found the government conduct unlawful.\nCourts have also made it harder to sue federal officials at all. In a series of cases over the past several decades, the Supreme Court has questioned whether federal courts may allow private citizens to sue rogue federal law-enforcement officers if Congress has not allowed them to. Most recently, the Supreme Court held that a group of Southeast Asian men who were detained in the course of the government’s response to September 11th could not sue the federal officials who kept them incommunicado for an extended period of time, allegedly on the basis of their race and religion, and subjected them to violence and abuse.\nBut it has not always been this way: When the Constitution was drafted and ratified, there was a rich tradition of judicial remedies against government officers who violated the law. That was a part of “the judicial power” that the Constitution gave to the federal courts. At the time of the founding, judges relied on the system of judge-made common law to provide relief to those who were harmed by unlawful government action. Chief Justice John Marshall, the author of Marbury v. Madison and the architect of much of America’s constitutional law, once held that a U.S. Navy officer was liable for damages under judge-made common law when the officer acted pursuant to an unlawful executive order: “The law must take its course,” he wrote, and the officer “must pay such damages as are legally awarded against him.”\nConsider just some of the cases in which federal courts awarded relief against federal officers by relying on judge-made common law. In one case, a U.S. Navy officer wrongfully seized a ship; in another, a federal officer had illegally entered someone’s home in order to collect an unlawful fine. The issues in the cases varied; so did whether the victims relied on state or federal law to sue the officers. But there was little doubt that federal courts had the authority to rely on judge-made law to fashion remedies for victims of government wrongdoing.\nUnder this common-law system of government accountability, government officials, including federal officials, were routinely subject to damages liability in federal court when they violated federal law. Judges’ role in this system was to fashion remedies to enforce the Constitution and other federal laws. The Constitution ensured that the United States was a government of laws, not of men, through this tradition of “suits for damages for abuse of power.” Damages liability kept the government within the bounds of the law. And judges made sure that damages liability remained available.\nThe common-law tradition of government accountability is part of the Constitution’s system of separated powers. “The judicial power” included was the authority to fashion remedies, under judge-made law, for government misconduct. As Justice Joseph Story would say in The Apollon, many years after Chief Justice Marshall, the federal courts “can only look to the questions, whether the laws have been violated; and if they were, justice demands, that the injured party should receive a suitable redress.” The judicial power included the power to remedy government wrongdoing that hurt individuals.\nOther justices over the centuries have agreed. In 1971, Justice John Marshall Harlan explained why the federal courts, in particular, were uniquely suited to remedy constitutional wrongs by executive officers: “It would be at least anomalous to conclude that the federal judiciary is powerless to accord a damages remedy to vindicate social policies which, by virtue in their inclusion in the Constitution, are aimed predominantly at restraining the Government as an instrument of the popular will.”\nHarlan understood that the Constitution’s system of separated powers gave the federal courts an important role to play in righting government wrongs, including relative to other branches of the federal government. The Constitution sought to restrain the impulses of the majority—impulses that are often reflected in the branches that are most subject to majority will, and particularly the presidency. The Constitution therefore gave to the federal courts, the branch of government that is less subject to majority will, the power to restrain the excesses of the majority when those excesses hurt people.\nBut in the past few decades, the Court’s understanding of the judicial power has changed. Instead of recognizing that federal courts have the power to remedy constitutional wrongs committed by rogue executive officers, the Court has come to believe that it is up to Congress or the executive branch to decide whether rogue executive officers will ever be accountable to people they harm. The Court has reasoned that in the absence of a statute authorizing victims to sue the officers who wronged them, the courts lack the power to afford the victims any relief.\nThese more recent decisions fail to appreciate the special role of the courts within the system of separated powers that Harlan, Marshall, and Story recognized are part of the Constitution. The Constitution is an instrument that restrains the popular will and majoritarian impulses. But as an institution, Congress is supposed to represent the popular will, at least relative to the federal courts. It is not up to Congress, and it should not be up to Congress, whether constitutional guarantees are enforceable. That falls to the federal courts.\nThe expansion of officials’ immunity is significant not just because of what it says about America’s constitutional structure, but because of its effect on underlying constitutional rights such as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and, consequently, the people whose lives are shaped by these rights. The Fourth Amendment prevents unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth Amendment prevents government officials from depriving persons of life or liberty without due process of law—or, at least, they are supposed to prevent those things. But if there are no remedies for violations of constitutional rights, then it’s not clear that there are constitutional rights either.\nThis term, the Supreme Court is set to decide another case about federal courts’ authority to right government wrongs. Hernandez v. Mesa involves a Customs and Border Patrol officer who shot and killed a 15-year old Mexican national, Sergio Hernandez. (I am one of the lawyers representing the Hernandez family.) At the time of the shooting, the officer was policing the border at the culvert that separates El Paso, Texas, from Juarez, Mexico, while the 15-year-old boy and his friends were playing a game in which one of them would run up to and touch the United States side of the border fence. After the officer grabbed one of the boys, Hernandez fled and tried to hide under the bridge that spans the border. The CBP officer pointed his weapon, fired, and killed Hernandez.\nThe question the Supreme Court will answer is whether the Hernandez family can sue the officer who shot and killed their son, depriving him of life without due process (in violation of the Fifth Amendment) and using excessive deadly force (in violation of the Fourth Amendment). The answer to that question turns on which conception of the separation of powers—and, thus, judicial power—the Court adopts. (The fact that the child was a Mexican national is one reason the court of appeals held that the Hernandez family could not sue, as if the federal courts’ authority to hold government officers accountable depends on the citizenship of the officer’s victim.) Will the Court recognize that the Constitution’s system of separated powers rests on a system of common-law accountability that allows the federal courts to fashion relief against federal officers who violate the Constitution? Or will the Court instead shrink the judicial power to include only the ability to follow Congress’s commands as to whether the Constitution is enforceable?\nThis story is part of the project “The Battle for the Constitution,” in partnership with the National Constitution Center.\nNEXT STORY: Creating a Critical Mass of Talent and Resources","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line997688"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5942575335502625,"wiki_prob":0.40574246644973755,"text":"Le Tour De France 2016: Stage 1\nMont-Saint-Michel / Utah Beach Sainte-Marie-du-Mont 188KM\nIn the wake of the Grand Départ in Corsica, Yorkshire and Utrecht in the Netherlands in 2015, a spectacular visual sequence will be on the program for the pack’s first kilometres of the 2016 Tour de France, starting from the foot of the Mont-Saint-Michel. The riders will ride along the bay then, after having crossed the Cotentin peninsula from west to east, will head to Utah Beach, one of the Normandy landing beaches on D-day, 6th June 1944, located in the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, passing through towns that have left their mark on history such as Sainte-Mère-Église. This essentially costal route will expose the riders to possibly gusty winds, but the entirely flat profile should definitely be an advantage for the main sprinters’ teams.\nThe Mont-Saint-Michel! Who could have dreamt of a more spectacular Grand Départ to a Tour de France under the sign of esthetics? From there, it'll be a rather smooth start: fl at terrain on all the stage. At the fi nish, the riders will have a meeting with history, arriving at Utah Beach, one of the beaches chosen on the 6th of June 1944 for the D-Day Landing operations. The sprinters should have the fi nal word…\nThe three million tourists visit the Who Mont-Saint-Michel every year Almost always leave With Their souvenir photography. And in terms of pictures, Tony Martin Certainly Has the Most prestigious one, wearing the World Champion's rainbow jersey and flying to victory During The first individual time-trial of the 2013 Tour. The first winner at the foot of the 'Western Marvel' was belgian Johan Museeuw. It was back in 1990.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line235516"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5658884644508362,"wiki_prob":0.4341115355491638,"text":"GE, Hitachi Sign Formation Agreement For Global Nuclear Energy Business Alliance\nWEBWIRE – Saturday, May 19, 2007\nGE (NYSE: GE) and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT / TSE : 6501) have signed a formation agreement to proceed with previously announced plans to create a global alliance of their nuclear businesses. Based on this agreement, GE and Hitachi will form cross-shareholding companies in U.S., Canada and Japan, subject to government approvals.\nThe alliance, when formally completed, will combine GE and Hitachi’s nuclear businesses to create one of the world’s foremost nuclear power plant and services operations. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2007.\nUnder the formation agreement, GE and Hitachi will forge an alliance that will enable both companies, as well as their customers, to benefit from their combined capabilities and resources.\nGE and Hitachi will capitalize on their decades of experience in new plant construction, such as proven modularization and standardization capabilities together with the latest generation reactors including GE’s advanced ESBWR design.\nWith new reactor fleets being built or planned around the world, the transaction will bring together the type of experience, capacity, and capability that is vital to the delivery of new nuclear power plants on time, within budget and at the highest quality levels.\nGE and Hitachi first announced their intent to create a nuclear business alliance in November 2006.\nGE’s nuclear business, which recently marked its 50th anniversary in the industry, develops advanced light water reactors and provides a wide array of technology-based products and services to help owners of both boiling and pressurized water reactors safely operate their facilities with greater efficiency and output.\nHitachi has regarded nuclear power systems to be a core business of the Hitachi Group ever since establishing a nuclear systems group at the Hitachi Works in 1955. Since entering into a technology licensing agreement with GE in 1967, Hitachi has worked with GE in the fields of BWR plant construction and maintenance services for BWR plants in operation.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1279226"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9399134516716003,"wiki_prob":0.9399134516716003,"text":"Multicultural Meanderings\nWorking site on citizenship and multiculturalism issues.\n“Because it’s 2015 …” Implementing Diversity and Inclusion\nMulticulturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote\nMulticulturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote (2016 Census data)\nPolicy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism\n10 Inconvenient Truths: Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias Deck\nPolicy Arrogance or Innocent Bias – One Year Later\nExcerpt: Introduction\nMedia Quotes\nBook Launch Speaking Notes\nReference Charts and Tables\nChart 1: Evolution of Canadian Diversity 1867 – 2017\nChart 2: Situating Immigration, Integration and Citizenship within Broader Context\nChart 3: Ministerial Outreach by Community\nTable 1: Multiculturalism Program Evolution\nTable 2: Citizenship and Multiculturalism Policy Shifts\nTable 3: Contrasting Multiculturalism Priorities — 2004-5 to 2011-11\nTable 4: Contrasting Ministerial Messaging 2003-04 and 2011-12\nTable 5: Ethnic Community Specific Challenges\nTable 6: Religious Group Specific Challenges\nTable 7: Comparison Between Current and Proposed Programming\nTable 8: Language Assessment and Equivalencies\nTable 9: Diversity Paradigms\nTable 10: Multiculturalism/ Interculturalisme Comparison\nTable 11: Radicalization-Related Multiculturalism Projects\nTable 12: Transition to CIC Organizational Structure\nAppendix A: Source Country of Immigrants 2005 – 2012\nAppendix B: Categories of Immigrants 2005 – 2012\nAppendix C: Ministerial Speeches and Statements by Community 2007 – 11\nAppendix D: Lapses in Multiculturalism Program G&Cs\nAppendix E: Key Ministerial Messages in Annual Reports of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act\nAppendix F: Citizenship Operational Statistics and Backlog\nAppendix G: Source Country of New Canadian Citizens\nAppendix H: CIC Datasets Sorted by Program Area\nDeck – 10 Inconvenient Truths\nLiving with Cancer: A Journey\nCanadian Bar Association Presentation 8 May 2015: Citizenship: “Harder to Get and Easier to Lose”\nThe Evolution of Citizenship: Policy, Program and Operations\nThe Evolution of Citizenship: Policy, Program and Operations: Sources\nThe new citizenship act is efficient. Is it fair?\nA relentlessly upbeat take on citizenship: My Review of Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship\nMulticulturalism: Getting the Balance Right\nRole of Media in Integrating Immigrants: Metropolis Panel Discussion\nPolicy Arrogance or Innocent Bias\nResetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism: Optimum Online Vol. 43 Issue 2 June 2013\nExcerpt: Discover Canada Citizenship Guide\nATIP\nATIP Delay Log\nC-6/C-24\nC-6 Committee Meetings\nAlliance of Canadian Terror Victims Presentation – May 5\nB’nai Brith C-24 Brief – April 30\nC-24 Committee Meetings\nCanadian Arab Institute\nCanadian Association of Professional Immigration Consultants\nCanadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL)\nCanadian Council for Refugees\nChristopher Thomson (pre-PR time)\nMetro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic Submission – May 12\nNew Citizenship Act is Efficient. Is it Fair?\nOntario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants – April 30\nParkdale Community Legal Services Brief – May 5\nParkdale Community Legal Services Statements – C-24 – May 5\nPre-PR Time Counts – Brief – May 7\nPre-PR Time Counts – C-24 Statement – May 7\nProfessor Elke Winter, University of Ottawa – Statement – May 7\nProfessor Patti Tamara Lenard, U of Ottawa – Brief – May 7\nUnicef Canada\nElection 2019 and Ethnic Media\nEthnic Media Coverage\nRiding profile links\nTop ridings by group\nInterculturalisme\nICYMI: Far-right targets Austria’s first refugee minister\n2020/01/13 Leave a comment\nOf note:\nLess than a week after Austria’s new conservative-Green coalition took power, it has already become a target for far-right supporters, who have railed against the country’s first minister with a refugee background.\nJustice Minister Alma Zadic, who was born in Bosnia and fled the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s with her family at the age of 10, has faced a wave of social media abuse — and even death threats.\nThe abuse has often appeared under posts from politicians from the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) — a junior coalition partner until May — revealing racist attitudes some say were fostered by the party during its time in office.\n“A criminal Muslim woman becoming justice minister. Sharia (Islamic law) is coming soon,” read one such contribution.\nIn response Zadic, of the Green Party, has received support from across the political spectrum.\nConservative chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who also headed the coalition with the FPOe, vowed on Thursday to “fight online hate — whether from the left, Islamists or the right”.\n“Alma Zadic and all others who are affected by this have my full support!” he tweeted.\n– ‘Anything but pleasant’ –\nZadic grew up in Vienna’s multicultural Favoriten district.\nShe told the Kurier newspaper she did not speak a word of German when she arrived: “The teachers didn’t know what to do with me.\n“My experiences were anything but pleasant for an ambitious young girl.”\nNow, at 35 years old, she has reached the cabinet.\nAustria has taken far longer to reach the milestone of minority representation at this level than many other Western countries.\nAs in neighbouring Germany, Austrian society traditionally saw immigrants as “guest workers”, according to sociologist Kenan Guengoer, who serves on an official expert panel on integration.\nHistorically, they were viewed as “people who are here temporarily and would go back”, Guengoer says.\nBoth “guest workers” and refugees made up the forerunners of today’s population of more than 530,000 who have roots in the former Yugoslavia.\nBut the reception to Zadic hints at other reasons that progress in Austria has taken so long.\n– ‘Overachiever’ –\nAustria’s Bosnian community is considered to be among the best integrated, according to journalist and former teacher Melisa Erkurt — who was herself born in Bosnia’s capital, Sarajevo.\nErkurt describes Zadic as “an overachiever”.\nAfter studying law in Vienna and at Columbia University in New York, Zadic gained experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia before going on to work for an international law firm.\nShe will need all of her skills to navigate a brief where the two coalition partners are expected to clash.\nBut some in the far-right FPOe, which left government after being engulfed in a corruption scandal, were unimpressed by her CV.\nTheir main gripe was a civil case in which Zadic was ordered to pay compensation to a student from a right-wing fraternity who had been photographed making a gesture some interpreted as a Hitler salute.\nZadic shared the image on Twitter with the words: “No tolerance for neo-Nazis, fascists and racists.”\nThe student in question insisted he was simply waving to friends. Zadic is appealing against the decision.\n– Cautionary tale –\nAccording to Erkurt, Zadic could serve as a much-needed role model for young ethnic minority Austrians whom she says have not traditionally been encouraged to aim for positions of power.\n“I work with many young girls and I can say to a 14-year-old girl called Fatima: ‘You really can achieve anything in Austria, it’s not just a cliche,'” says Erkurt.\nBut at the same time, she says Zadic’s treatment could be a cautionary tale.\nZadic has been targeted “despite the fact she speaks perfect German, she has a doctorate, she doesn’t wear a headscarf”.\n“In other words, you can do everything ‘right’ in Austria but still be met with racism,” Erkurt says.\nIndeed, in defending Zadic the Green party felt it necessary to clarify she did not practise any religion.\nKurz also came in for criticism after he mistakenly said she had been convicted of a criminal offence then later tweeted a clarification, adding: “I know and value her and think she is qualified.”\nFlorian Klenk, editor of the left-leaning Falter magazine, accused him of offering a “half-hearted” defence his minister.\nKurz’s fate is “connected to Zadic’s future”, Klenk wrote, adding: “She has become a symbol for this government.”\nSource: Far-right targets Austria’s first refugee minister\nFiled under Multiculturalism Tagged with Alma Zadic, Austria, far right\nAustrian State Plans 10 Commandments for Immigrants, Demands Refugees ‘Show Gratitude’ and Adopt ‘Austrian Values’\nWhile some of the rules are normal (e.g., adhere to laws, learn German), others are less so (e.g., adhere to Austrian values however defined, show gratitude to Austria):\nA state government in Austria is planning to introduce a new set of rules for immigrants to follow upon arrival in the country, which have become known as the “Ten Commandments of Immigration.”\nAccording to Deutsche Welle, the list of demands will be issued to new immigrants—including refugees—as soon as they arrive in Lower Austria, the country’s largest and second most populous state.\nAccording to German newspaper Welt, the project is being headed by Gottfried Waldhäusl, a member of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) and the state minister responsible for asylum policy. The FPÖ, which governs as a junior coalition partner with the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), is well-known for its anti-migration stance.\nThe new rules will require migrants to learn German, adhere to all Austrian laws and adopt “Austrian values” in raising their children. It will also commit new arrivals to resolve conflicts nonviolently, respect religious freedom, prevent unnecessary suffering to animals—an implicit challenge to traditional halal or kosher slaughter—and show gratitude to Austria.\nThe commandments will be combined with integration classes, offered in 15 different languages, for foreigners applying for asylum. All those wishing to stay in Austria will be required to sign an agreement to follow the rules.\nWaldhäusl told Welt the commandments would be issued to refugees alongside official asylum application documents. The minister did not specify when the new policy would come into force, but said it would do so “soon.”\nWaldhäusl is known for his hard stance on immigration, which is in line with his party’s policies. He is the only FPÖ representative in the Lower Austria state government, which is controlled by the ÖVP and led by Johanna Mikl-Leitner.\nLast year, Waldhäusl was criticized after establishing a fenced-off refugee center in the town of Drasenhofen close to the Czech border. The facility was designed to hold young “notorious troublemakers,” who were guarded by security staff and only allowed to leave their accommodation if accompanied by said guards.\nWaldhäusl was also accused of prejudice last year when he proposed forcing Jews to apply for permits to purchase kosher meat. Though he argued that plan made sense “from an animal welfare point of view,” opponents said such a system would require a list of Jewish people to be drawn up, as under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government in the 1930s and 1940s.\nThe FPÖ has regularly been accused of promoting and facilitating anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic ideology, though its leaders have consistently attempted to distance the party from racism and predujice exhibited by some of its members.\nThe party was founded in the 1950s by former Nazi SS soldiers, and rose to prominence in the 2017 parliamentary election, becoming the third biggest party. It has since become a standard-bearer for resurgent right-wing politics in Europe, with hard-line anti-immigration views and demands for tighter border controls.\nSource: Austrian State Plans 10 Commandments for Immigrants, Demands Refugees ‘Show Gratitude’ and Adopt ‘Austrian Values’\nFiled under Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria, values\nIs there an Austrian link to New Zealand mosque attacks?\nMore on the possible Austrian link:\nThe Austrian authorities are investigating possible connections after it emerged that the main suspect in the Christchurch mosque attacks made a donation of €1,500 (£1,293) to the far-right Identitarian Movement in Austria (IBÖ).\nThe suspect visited Austria from 27 November to 4 December last year, according to Austria’s Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, who said that potential links to Austrian extremists were being looked into.\nPolice have searched the house of the charismatic, social media-savvy IBÖ leader, Martin Sellner, who has done much to raise the profile of the Identitarians throughout Europe.\nThe group is hostile to multiculturalism, and claims to defend Europe against migrants, especially Muslims.\nMr Sellner has firmly denied any involvement with the 15 March attacks, which killed 50 people, but admits he received the donation and wrote an email of thanks.\nIn a video posted online, he said: “I am not a member of a terrorist organisation. I have nothing to do with this man, other than that I passively received a donation from him.”\nAustria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has said the group will be dissolved if it is deemed to be a terrorist organisation.\n“There must be no tolerance for dangerous ideologies in our country – no matter if it’s radical Islam or right-wing fanaticism,” he said.\nThe main suspect in the Christchurch mosque attacks, Australian Brenton Tarrant, also seems to have had a preoccupation with Austrian history – something the interior minister said was being investigated.\nAustrian landmark\nThe suspect’s clothes and weapons were covered with writing and symbols.\nOne of the words daubed in white on a gun magazine was “Vienna”.\nThere was also a string of names of historical figures, including that of Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, the military commander of Vienna during the Ottoman siege of 1683.\nStarhemberg and his company of 20,000 men defended the city against the 120,000-strong Ottoman army, which was eventually defeated by the combined forces of Poles, Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire.\nThe Battle of Vienna in 1683 is often cited by historians as the point where the Ottoman advance on Western Europe was stopped; the turning of the tide in the Muslim/Christian struggle for the control of Europe.\nAs such, it is a date celebrated by the far right, including, it seems, the Christchurch suspect, who is a self-confessed anti-Muslim white supremacist.\n‘The Great Replacement’\nThe Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance (DOEW), which researches extreme-right activity, says there are “many rhetorical and ideological overlaps” between groups like the Identitarians and the suspected Christchurch attacker.\n“The title of the attacker’s manifesto, The Great Replacement (which sees immigrants as a threat to “white” Western culture) was a slogan popularised by the Identitarians,” DOEW said on its website.\n“Regardless of the outcome of the investigation,” DOEW says, the Identitarians seem to be sticking to their narrative “for the time being”. It points to an IBÖ statement from last week, which speaks of the “Great Replacement” and calls for “De-Islamification”.\nThe whole affair is uncomfortable not just for the Identitarians, but for Austria’s government as well.\nMr Kurz’s own conservative Austrian People’s Party is in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), making Austria the only country in Western Europe with a far-right presence in government.\nFPÖ leader and Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said on Wednesday that his party had “nothing to do with the Identitarians”.\nHowever, Austrian media published photos of FPÖ politicians with members of the group, and Bernhard Weidinger from DOEW told the BBC that there were many links between FPÖ politicians and members of the IBÖ, who often attended each other’s events.\nIn 2016, before he became interior minister, Herbert Kickl gave a speech to a far-right conference in Linz, called Defenders of Europe. The FPÖ politician addressed his audience, which included Identitarians, as “like-minded people”, according to Austrian media reports.\nThe FPÖ has also long celebrated the Battle of Vienna victory of 1683. In 2010 it even published a comic, set during the siege, featuring Mr Strache as a knight saving Vienna’s cathedral from an Ottoman minaret.\nAnd when Mr Strache and Mr Kurz presented their government programme back in 2017, shortly before the coalition was sworn in, they broke with tradition, and held the event on Vienna’s Kahlenberg mountain, where the Battle of Vienna took place.\nAsked if there was any historical significance to the choice of venue, Mr Kurz said no.\nBut in a video blog, Mr Sellner hailed it as “a good omen”.\nSource: Is there an Austrian link to New Zealand mosque attacks?\nFiled under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with Austria, Christchurch, identitarians\nBritish no more: Why some UK citizens face Brexit dilemma (Austria does not allow dual citizenship)\nYet another consequence of Brexit:\nThe number of UK citizens acquiring the nationality of another EU country has shot up since the 2016 Brexit referendum.\nFor many Britons living in Germany, France or Italy, dual nationality solves questions about freedom of movement to work in the EU, pensions and healthcare.\nBut a handful of EU countries, including Austria, do not generally allow dual citizenship.\nThat makes things complicated for people like British opera singer Stephen Chaundy, who has lived in Vienna with his family for many years, but often works in theatres and opera houses in Germany.\n“Freedom of movement matters to me,” he says.\n“I know from colleagues and friends how difficult third-country [non-EU] nationals can have it, in terms of complications of sorting out visas and work permits… and I have already had the situation where a theatre in one European country has said they’re unwilling to hear me,” he adds.\nBecause of this, Stephen may not be British much longer.\nSurrendering Britishness\n“Depending on what happens, I am seriously considering having to give up being British and asking to become Austrian,” he says.\nBritons who live and work in Austria will be able to continue to do so after Brexit. But there are no guarantees for people like Stephen who rely on freedom of movement.\nJan Hillerman, the secretary of support group UK Citizens in Austria, says feelings about giving up British nationality in order to obtain an Austrian passport are very mixed.\n“Some people have done that. Other people are very hesitant,” she says.\n“Some people think that this might be an easy way out of the whole Brexit dilemma – but in fact it isn’t: it’ll be costly and take a lot of time.”\nJan says there have been attempts to lobby the Austrian government on the issue of dual nationality for British people after Brexit.\n“But I gather that that came to naught and the Austrians have made pretty clear that that’s not on the table,” she says.\nAustria does allow dual citizenship in a few exceptional cases, such as those who survived the Holocaust.\nIn the event of a disorderly Brexit, the Austrian government has said it will allow dual citizenship for around 25,000 Austrians living in Britain – but not for the 11,000 Britons living in Austria.\nWhy Austria has a problem with dual nationality\nIn general, the idea of dual nationality is frowned upon here – not least because of tensions with the Turkish minority in Austria.\nThe far-right Freedom Party – now the junior partner in Austria’s coalition government – has been behind an investigation into whether some Turks in Austria have illegally maintained both Turkish and Austrian nationalities.\nPolitical analyst Thomas Hofer says this colours the whole issue of dual nationality.\n“There was a heated debate… saying that there are a lot of Turkish people (who are) Austrian citizens living here and voting in Turkey, especially for President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan,” he says.\nSince then, dual citizenship has become “a touchy issue”.\n“The government in the last couple of weeks and months did everything to be very harsh and very strict… the government said that it wanted to avoid this kind of double citizenship.”\nA spokesman for the Austrian government, Peter Launsky, acknowledged that Austria had “a more restrictive approach to dual citizenship”.\nBut he said British citizens were welcome in Austria.\n“It is very important to keep stressing that Austria does and will continue to receive British citizens with open arms, irrespective of the outcome of the Brexit process,” he said.\n“Any of the British citizens in Austria are extremely well qualified and make a very active and positive contribution to the Austrian labour market.\n“And we are very appreciative of that fact… everything will be done to ensure as much continuity as possible, irrespective of the question of citizenship.”\nOn stage Stephen Chaundy moves smoothly back and forth between the Viennese and English-speaking repertoire.\nHis latest role was as a Habsburg aristocrat, Count Tassilo – the lead in the classic Viennese operetta Graefin Mariza, at the Theatre Magdeburg in Germany. He is about to go to the Cologne Opera to play Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.\nBut in life it is not so simple.\n“Although I’ve spent over a third of my life in Austria, I am a Londoner, an Englishman, a Brit – but I’m also European and a big, big part of me is, of course, deeply attached to Austria,” he said.\n“If Austria would permit dual nationality I would have taken it in a heartbeat. They are both parts of who I am. They’re both parts of my adult life.\n“They’re both parts of my identity and it feels terribly unjust and unfair to have to be asked to choose.”\nSource: British no more: Why some UK citizens face Brexit dilemma\nFiled under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship Tagged with Austria, BREXIT\nAustria’s Jews wary of far-right charm offensive\nRightfully so:\nDavid Lasar’s family is sadly not unusual among Austria’s Jewish community in having lost several members in the Holocaust. But in one respect Lasar stands out — his membership of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).\nAt its foundation, the FPOe was led by two former members of the Waffen SS, so 66-year-old Lasar’s choice of political home might well be considered surprising.\nLasar says he initially joined in the late 1990s as the FPOe was “the only party close to the people, to employees and workers who had been forgotten by the left, while the centre-right was the party of capitalism and big business”.\nNow as an FPOe MP he says he has an added reason for throwing his lot in with the party.\n“We are fighting tirelessly against anti-Semitism, especially anti-Semitism imported through immigration.\n“We are the only party to be fighting against this, together with our partners in government,” he says, referring to the centre-right People’s Party (OeVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.\nSince entering the coalition government at the end of 2017, the FPOe has made great play of its efforts to foster a rapprochement with the Jewish community, and to establish relations between the party and Israel.\nBut the Jewish community has largely kept its distance in the face of repeated scandals suggesting that anti-Semitic attitudes are still present in the party’s milieu.\nAs for Israel, its government has maintained an official boycott of all FPOe ministers, including Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, who while not an FPOe member herself, was nominated for the post by the party.\n– ‘Political calculation’ –\nBenjamin Hess, co-president of the Austrian Union of Jewish Students insists: “We see no change at all within the FPOe.”\nHess himself confronted Strache in a TV programme last year for having shared an anti-Semitic image on his Facebook page in 2012.\n“It’s easy to say: ‘I’m against anti-Semitism, it’s much harder to distance yourself from it in reality,” Hess says.\nHe and others who are still sceptical of the FPOe point in particular to the party’s deep ties to the “Burschenschaften”, student fraternities known for their strident pan-German nationalism and whose alumni include many high-ranking FPOe politicians.\nStrache, who himself flirted with neo-Nazism in his youth, has tried to clean up the party’s image, insisting that it rejects anti-Semitism and expelling some of its more embarrassing members.\nHe has also made trips to Israel, being welcomed on his last visit in 2016 by junior members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. He also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.\nLasar says he has also been to Israel on behalf of the party to foster better relations with the Israeli right, and boasts that he has made “excellent contacts”.\n“The political calculation is obvious,” says Bernhard Weidinger from the DOeW institute, which researches the Austrian far-right.\nWhen the current government came to power the European Jewish Congress (EJC) warned that “the Freedom Party can not use the Jewish community as a fig leaf and must show tolerance and acceptance towards all communities and minorities,” in an allusion to the FPOe’s anti-Muslim rhetoric.\n– ‘No rapprochement’ –\nThe “imported anti-Semitism” that Lasar speaks of has become a favourite theme of Strache’s too, particularly as since 2015 the country has received some 150,000 refugees and asylum-seekers, many of them from Muslim countries.\nIn February, Strache launched his new think-tank with a podium discussion on “Islamic anti-Semitism”.\nTen days later, a prominent FPOe politician sent a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Vienna, saying that “supposed far-right extremist incidents” linked to FPOe members in recent months were down to “nothing more than agitation by the FPOe’s political opponents”.\nLast year the party’s lead candidate in a regional election, Udo Landbauer, was forced to stand aside after it was revealed that the student fraternity that he belonged to had previously published virulently anti-Semitic songbooks.\nHe has since returned to politics for the party.\nWeidinger points to the fact that the party has taken out adverts in publications that have included anti-Semitic content.\nAnd all this against a backdrop of what Austria’s Forum Against Anti-Semitism says was a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents between 2014 and 2017.\nLasar says that “many Jews” admit to him: “I vote for the FPOe because you are the only ones who are there for us on issues around security and who speak out against radical Islamism.”\nBut Hess says this is still a minority view within the community.\n“You find lots of different opinions among the community in Austria, but one thing unites everyone: no rapprochement with the FPOe.”\nSource: Austria’s Jews wary of far-right charm offensive\nFiled under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria, Austrian Jews, Freedom Party\nDual nationality Turks being stripped of citizenship by far-Right in Austria’s ‘Windrush’ scandal\nMore dispiriting news from Europe and Austria:\nThousands of people could be stripped of their Austrian citizenship in what is being called the country’s version of the Windrush scandal.\nIn a campaign orchestrated by the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ), hundreds of Austrians of Turkish heritage are currently under investigation by the authorities on suspicion of illegally holding dual citizenship – and authorities say they may widen their investigations to thousands more.\nEighty-five have so far been stripped of their citizenship, but human rights campaigners say the case against them rests on suspect evidence.\nMuch as the UK invited the Caribbean immigrants of the Windrush Generation, in the sixties and seventies Austria encouraged Turkish people to move to the country, and many eventually became citizens.\nBut the Freedom Party, which is junior partner in the Austrian coalition government and controls the interior ministry, claims to have obtained a copy of the Turkish electoral register which it says proves thousands of secretly retained their Turkish citizenship as well.\nExcept for rare cases dual citizenship is illegal in Austria, and the authorities are pursuing the cases in court. But lawyers say the evidence is unreliable.\nThe Freedom Party has refused to say where it got its list of Turkish voters — and it has already been proved that some of the names on the list are not Turkish citizens.\nCigdem Schiller, who was born in Austria to immigrant parents, was able to prove that she had legally renounced her Turkish citizenship.\n“We were shocked when we got a letter about this. My wife burst into tears,” Ms Schiller’s husband, Ingo, said. “We went round to sort it out right away. But the official told us the Turkish electoral list was proof she had a Turkish passport.”\nAfter repeated visits to the Turkish consulate, Ms Schiller was able to provide proof she had renounced Turkish citizenship. And she is not the only one: according to Austrian press reports 72 people named on the Freedom Party’s list have proved they are not Turkish citizens.\nThat hasn’t stopped the courts accepting the list as evidence. In one case earlier this year a court upheld the decision to strip one man of citizenship on the basis such a list could only have been drawn up by the Turkish authorities.\nThat has raised fears some people may end up being made stateless. Lawyers say their clients are being forced to prove they are not Turkish citizens, rather than having a case proved against them.\nSome have found themselves left in a Catch-22 situation. Peter Weidisch, a laywer for a man named on the list, told Germany’s Welt newspaper the Turkish consulate had refused to help his client obtain the proof he needed — because he wasn’t a Turkish citizen.\nSource: Dual nationality Turks being stripped of citizenship by far-Right in Austria’s ‘Windrush’ scandal\nFiled under Citizenship, Dual Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria, Turkish\nSecretive Fraternities Are Feeding Anti-Semitism in Austria – The Atlantic\nGood long but disturbing read:\nLike many Austrian fraternities, Germania zu Wiener Neustadt sometimes uses a songbook at its get-togethers. It looks ordinary enough, with its red cover, gold crest, and curling script. The cover is studded with metal nails called “Biernagel” that keep the book slightly elevated so it doesn’t get wet when lying in beer.Unlike most other songbooks, however, it contains lyrics about killing Jews. “Step on the gas,” one line reads. “We’ll manage the seventh million.”\nWhen the Vienna-based newspaper Falter (for which I am a frequent contributor) wrote about the book in January, it promptly derailed the political career of one of the fraternity’s most notable members: Udo Landbauer, who was running as a candidate for Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) in state elections on January 28. One day before the vote, the Austrian president suggested he step down. On February 1, Landbauer resigned from all political positions. He had been a city councillor in Wiener Neustadt and the head of the FPÖ’s district office in that city.\nLandbauer, 31, who was also the deputy chairman of the fraternity for a couple of years, claimed he hadn’t known about such lines: “Not being a gifted singer, I didn’t go through all the pages,” he said in a television interview. The songbook outraged the nation anyway. The prime minister of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), said she wouldn’t work with Landbauer. Bad international press followed, causing embarrassment the FPÖ could ill afford. In the six weeks since it had become the junior partner in a coalition government with the ÖVP at the federal level, it had struggled to appear respectable. The party had gotten negative press just two weeks earlier, when its minister of the interior proposed “concentrating refugees into camps.” The Jewish community of Vienna, where the majority of the country’s 12,000 to 15,000 Jews live, has been boycotting the FPÖ; it refused to participate in the government’s official Holocaust memorial ceremony last month.Heinz-Christian Strache, Austria’s vice chancellor and head of the FPÖ, announced that he would install a committee of historians to examine the party’s ties to anti-Semitic groups. The party revealed last week that former FPÖ parliamentarian Wilhelm Brauneder will head the commission. Brauneder, who during his tenure as the dean of Vienna University’s law faculty in the late 1980s permitted an event organized by a German right-wing extremist, gets to choose the members of the commission, which is set to issue its first report this October. Whether or not the historians will also study the fraternities’ history depends on whether the fraternities, which are private organizations, voluntarily grant them access to their archives.\nThen, this week, the FPÖ suffered another blow. Falter published a new story, this one reporting that the Viennese fraternity Bruna Sudetia also used a songbook containing the same anti-Semitic song. Its head, Herwig Götschober, works on social media for the cabinet of Norbert Hofer, the FPÖ’s minister of infrastructure, and is a district councillor for the FPÖ in Vienna. Götschober reacted by saying that he rejects these lyrics, and added that he had never seen this songbook before. The fraternity is now under investigation, as the circulation of Nazi content is prohibited by Austrian constitutional law; Götschober went on leave from his post.On its homepage, Götschober’s fraternity has a section about its history: World War II is only mentioned when the bombing of its Vienna headquarters in 1944 is described. This silence about the Nazi era has been typical of Austria for much of the 20th century, when the nation saw itself as the first victim of Hitler’s expansionist politics. In 1986, the Nazi past of former UN general secretary and presidential candidate Kurt Waldheim resulted in international pressure. Consequently, then-chancellor Franz Vranitzky acknowledged Austria’s complicity in the war and Nazi crimes in 1993. It took until 2012 for the government to recognize May 8, the anniversary of the capitulation of the Wehrmacht in 1945, as the Day of Liberation. German-nationalistic fraternities still commemorate the dead soldiers on that date. Arguably, scandals like those involving anti-Semitic songbooks keep bubbling up because Austria has yet to grapple with its WWII past as thoroughly as has, say, Germany.\nThe far right in Austria has a long and vocal history of anti-Semitism, but recently it has been trying to shed that image, instead prioritizing anti-Muslim rhetoric. As part of this shift, members of the far right at times claim they want to protect Jews against Muslims. But their relationship with the fraternity system proves they haven’t shed their anti-Semitism either.The chances are extremely slim that a reassessment of the sort Strache announced would eliminate anti-Semitism in the FPÖ. In order for the party to rid itself of anti-Semitism, it needs to cut its ties to the fraternities—a structural problem that is nearly impossible to tackle.\nAustria has many high school and university student associations. What makes these fraternities (“Burschenschaften”) unique is that they’re infused with German nationalism. They originated in German university towns in the first half of the 19th century and stood for a united German nation. During the Nazi era, the fraternities were merged with the Nazi students’ associations. They reemerged after the war. Today, not all members of these fraternities are far-right extremists, anti-Semites, or neo-Nazis; some are right-wing conservatives who adhere to old traditions, like a mask-free fencing ritual that often leaves members with scarred faces.\nMembers swear to secrecy about what happens during their gatherings—which is why the songbooks shocked many. It also means that people don’t know how much other Nazi material is being circulated. In his most recent book, the journalist Hans-Henning Scharsach lists several fraternities that still include former Nazis, such as Rome’s Gestapo chief Herbert Kappler, among their honorary members. Another group organized a carnival party in 2008, photos of which appear to show guests dressed up as Ku Klux Klan members and Orthodox Jews.\nIn total, there are no more than 5,000 members of such fraternities nationwide, yet these members are important because they’re overrepresented in the ranks of the FPÖ. Strache himself is a member of the fraternity Vandalia. (He is also known to have had frequent contact with neo-Nazi groups in his youth, which he described as a “youthful folly” but never said was a mistake.) Among the party’s MPs alone, roughly one-third are members of various fraternities. The fraternities are an important source of highly educated and loyal personnel.\nWhich makes Strache’s announcement somewhat hard to believe: “Fraternities have nothing to do with the FPÖ,” he said the day after the Germania zu Wiener Neustadt songbook was made public.“That was a real slap in the face for the fraternities,” said Nina Horaczek, a journalist with Falter who broke both stories, adding that Strache’s attempt to distance himself from them isn’t a good long-term strategy for him. After all, his brothers backed him when he became the head of the party in 2005. “If fraternities need to leave the party, Strache would be the first to go.”\nAlthough the fraternities are by no means the only source of anti-Semitism in the FPÖ, they are considered a gateway into the party. Severing these ties isn’t just difficult, it’s undesirable for the party—which means that the FPÖ will continue to at least indirectly foster a safe space for anti-Semitic thought.\n“As long as Strache doesn’t say, I was a neo-Nazi in my youth and I apologize for it, any sort of historical examination is worth very little,” said Doron Rabinovici, an author and historian of Austrian Jewry.\nMartin Engelberg, a Jewish MP for the conservative ÖVP, is more optimistic. In a TV debate on the Austrian channel Puls4, he said, “This process won’t happen in just one day,” referring to the plans of his coalition partner, the FPÖ. At a recent MP swearing-in ceremony, the FPÖ’s MPs didn’t show up wearing cornflower pins—the symbol Nazi party members used in Austria before 1938—as they had in previous years. Instead, they wore edelweiss flowers, a rather neutral symbol of Austria. Strache had also given a speech at the fraternities’ annual ball a few days earlier, saying that they had to stand against racism and anti-Semitism. “Those are [positive] signs,” Engelberg said.\nThe FPÖ has also been trying to present itself in recent years not as anti-Semitic, but as decidedly supportive of Jews—a stance that seems politically opportunist. One way they attempt this is by showing support for the Jewish state: Strache and other party officials have been visiting Israel and meeting with far-right membersof the ruling Likud party (official Israeli policy, however, is to boycott the FPÖ). In December, Strache said it would be his wish to move the Austrian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He has also said Israel has the right to build West Bank settlements.Several scholars, a few of whom were featured in a recent Haaretz article, have made the case that some European far-right parties have adopted similar stances:\nCas Mudde, a political science professor at the University of Georgia … highlighted the stance of many radical rightists on the Jews. Jews, says Mudde, are seen to embody a modernity to be defended. Europe’s large Roma minority, on the other hand, are seen as barbarians living on the fringes of modernity, while Muslims are seen as barbarians living inside modernity—the enemy already inside the gates, according to the far right.\nAs a result, the philo-Semitic turn of many far-right parties, in the words of sociologist Rogers Brubaker, comes directly from these parties’ preoccupations with Islam. Writing earlier this year, Brubaker argues that the far right has come to redefine Jews as fellow Europeans and exemplary victims of the threat from Islam.\nAnother far-right European party that has tried this strategy is France’s National Front. Founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made statements offensive to both Jews and Muslims, the party was taken over in 2011 by his daughter Marine Le Pen. She expelled her father from the party and gave it a facelift, publicly embracing Jews while continuing to speak negatively about Muslims. In 2014, she told French Jews, “Not only is the National Front not your enemy, but it is without a doubt the best shield to protect you. It stands at your side for the defense of our freedoms of thought and of religion against the only real enemy, Islamist fundamentalism.”\nAs the historian Ethan B. Katz has written, “The extreme right in France has repeatedly invoked Muslims and Jews in the same breath, at once highlighting both groups as different from the rest of the population and seeking to rally them against one another.”\nThese kinds of tactics may have influenced the FPÖ. “It’s possible that Marine Le Pen played a role in the FPÖ’s move away from anti-Semitism,” said Danny Leder, an Austrian journalist who has been based in France for decades and has covered the right-wing parties of the two countries extensively. “On a European level, the FPÖ was always the National Front’s junior partner.”Leder emphasized that “the threat [against Jews] is real.” In recent years, France has experienced several deadly Islamist terrorist attacks directed at Jews. The Austrian watchdog NGO Forum gegen Antisemitismus reports a steady increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the past few years, and in its 2015 report the increase in Islamist anti-Semitism was significant.\nBoth the National Front and the FPÖ have used these incidents to foment further hatred. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest anti-Muslim sentiment has become more widespread. Le Pen, in 2010, compared Muslim prayers in the streets to the Nazi occupation. And in Austria, “Daham statt Islam” (“Home instead of Islam”) was Strache’s campaign slogan in 2006. Last November, Landbauer called Johanna Mikl-Leitner, his rival in the state elections, “Moslem-Mama Mikl,” and claimed that she was “pushing Islamization in kindergartens” because a syllabus for kindergartens required that children be introduced to holidays from various religions.\nOskar Deutsch, the president of Vienna’s Jewish community, does see Islamist anti-Semitism as a significant threat, but he doesn’t believe the far-right is a true ally in combatting it. “Muslims, Roma and Sinti, and Jews—as minorities, we’re all sitting on the same branch,” he said. “If you’re sawing off one of our seats, we’re all falling.” But some Jewish leaders, like Engelberg in Austria, or the French Jews who voted for Le Pen, have seemed willing to give far-right parties a chance, perhaps encouraged by public displays of philo-Semitism.\nMeanwhile, anti-Muslim sentiment helps to keep the far-right base happy. This base, however, has not abandoned its anti-Semitic strain, and party leaders still at times project anti-Semitic signals. Strache’s 2010 visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, where he wore his fraternity hat when head-covering was required, perhaps illustrates this best.\nStill, the FPÖ keeps framing scandals such as the songbooks as isolated cases, in its attempt to convince people that Jews are no longer the enemy of the party. Fraternities are clearly enmeshed with the FPÖ, which means that—despite all public claims to the contrary—the party will likely keep its ties to anti-Semitism intact.\nSource: Secretive Fraternities Are Feeding Anti-Semitism in Austria\nFiled under Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria, far right, The Atlantic\ni24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants\nWill be interesting to see whether there is much take up by descendants:\nThe newly minted Austrian government will grant citizenship to the descendants of Holocaust victims, Haaretz reported Tuesday.The decision comes in the wake of a diplomatic spat between Israel and Vienna as Austria’s new coalition between the conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party was sworn in on Monday, rekindling an alliance from the early 2000s which prompted unease around Europe.\nThe Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, has a past stained by frequent anti-Semitic incidents and instances of Nazi propaganda, which is why a harsh Israeli response was widely expected\nAccording to a statement released by the Israeli government, “Israel will continue to work with civil servants of the Ministries headed by members of the Freedom Party”, but will also “continue to struggle against Anti-semitism” and “for the commemoration of the Holocaust.”\nSome Israeli media have interpreted the statement as a “boycott” of the Freedom Party Ministers at the political level, since it says that “working relations” will continue with “civil servants”.\nOthers have emphasized that working relations will go on, reading the statement as a weak reaction. The reaction is certainly milder than in 2000, when the Freedom Party first joined a coalition government and Israeli authorities withdrew the Ambassador from Vienna.\nFreedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has traveled to Israel a number of times, and developed ties with representatives of the Israeli right. In one of his last trips, however, late Israeli President Shimon Peres had refused to meet him.\nvia i24NEWS – Austria pledges to grant citizenship to Holocaust victim descendants\nFiled under Antisemitism, Citizenship, Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria\nAustria accepted its Holocaust guilt. So why is its far right on the rise? | Jewish Telegraphic Agency\nGood long read:\nWhen it comes to the Holocaust, Austria has made a lot of progress assuming responsibility.\nIn recent years, Austrian officials have consistently acknowledged their country’s support of Adolf Hitler, an Austria native, and his war of annihilation against Jews. In the early 2000s, the government dropped the claim that the country was mostly a victim of German Nazism, citing “the special responsibility imposed on Austria by its recent history.” Instead, teaching about the Holocaust has become mandatory, with visits to former death camps and teacher training in Israel.\nThe government has paid nearly $1 billion since 2005 in compensation to Holocaust victims, and since 2012, Holocaust memorial projects have popped up at an unprecedented rate. They include the opening of a learning center at the Mauthausen former death camp, a monument for Vienna’s deported Jews and an international exposition, commissioned by the national railway firm, on its own role in murdering some 65,000 Austrian Jews.\nYet in spite of this increased sensitivity, nationalism still has a firm grip on Austrian society: The far-right Freedom Party, which was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi SS officer, is on the rise. In last month’s national elections, the party garnered 26 percent of the vote with a platform that included denouncing “forced multiculturalism, globalization and mass immigration.\nAs a natural ally of the center-right People’s Party, which won the most votes, the Freedom Party is poised to enter Austria’s government for the second time — it was part of the governing coalition in 2000.\nAmid the ascendancy of far-right populism across Europe, its revival in Austria is seen as particularly alarming, as it suggests a failure by society to learn from its recent history. After all, if a country that does nearly everything “right” when it comes to Holocaust education can fail to inoculate itself to the kind of hatred that makes genocide possible, what hope is there for other countries in the region, such as Hungary and Poland, which face rising nationalism amid complicated reckonings with their own Holocaust legacies?\nExperts on Austria say the rise of its xenophobic far right is connected to fears over Muslim immigration, as well as a perceived need to protect the nation’s sovereignty from an increasingly interventionist European Union. But it’s also connected to the Austrian government, which deflected its guilt for decades and failed to purge Nazi supporters from positions of influence.\nUnlike neighboring Germany, Austria did not have an organized, judicial denazification effort in the aftermath of World War II — in fact, no one has been convicted of Nazi war crimes in Austria in more than 35 years.\n“In Germany, and quite a few of the countries that were under Nazi occupation, many people involved in Nazism were convicted or at least not permitted to be civil servants, teachers, police officers, etc.,” said Tina Walzer, a Vienna historian. “But this has never happened in Austria and we are witnessing the results of this crucial difference.”\nThis has entrenched populist ideas in a way that has seemed resistant to increased Holocaust awareness.\n“When you look at the population as a whole, you don’t feel there has really been a change,” said Milli Segal, founder of the newly opened For the Child museum in Vienna honoring the young Holocaust refugees who fled to Britain through an arrangement known as the Kindertransport.\n“Well, there’s change, but in very, very small steps,” she added after a pause. “It makes you feel voiceless.”\nMany in Austria share Segal’s feeling of powerlessness over the Freedom Party’s recent successes. Its strong showing last month follows an even greater electoral feat in last year’s presidential elections in which the party’s candidate, Norbert Hofer, won 49.7 percent in the first round of voting. Hofer lost in the second round to the left-leaning candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, 53 percent to 46 percent.\nThe close election indicates that far-right populism is a “ticking political bomb,” warned Barbara Wesel, a senior Europe correspondent for Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.\nThe Freedom Party, for its part, rejects claims that it plays on Nazi and other racist sympathies. Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache has vowed to kick out members caught engaging in racist rhetoric, and has indeed done so to a former lawmaker who supported online the assertion that “Zionist money-Jews worldwide are the problem.”\nThe Jewish Community in Vienna considers the Freedom Party a racist entity, according to Oskar Deutsch, the community leader, who has called on Chancellor-elect Sebastian Kurz to prevent the Freedom Party from reaching power.\n“It’s a facade,” Deutsch told JTA of Strache’s statements against anti-Semitism and racism. “Despite this talk, they position themselves as the go-to address for people with Nazi sympathies.”\nA case in point: On Nov. 9, when the outgoing chancellor, Christian Kern, spoke in parliament to commemorate the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht — a series of pogroms that the Nazis carried out in Germany and Austria — the Freedom Party’s lawmakers were the only ones who demonstratively did not applaud.\n“These subtle signs are how they signal and excite their supporters,” Segal said. “If the Freedom Party will be part of the government, it will become difficult to commemorate the Holocaust in the same dignified way that we have now in Austria.”\nThe dissonance between Austria’s Holocaust commemoration efforts and the far-right’s popularity can be unsettling.\nOn Oct. 19, for example, a Vienna city official inaugurated a Holocaust memorial installation outside the Herminengasse subway station, near an alley in which the Nazis imprisoned hundreds of Jews during the war. From there they were taken to be deported as non-Jewish locals watched from their balconies. The inauguration ceremonies were held during election season; nearby hung a giant poster of a smiling Strache bearing the slogan “Fairness.”\nDoes the party’s recent success suggest that such commemoration projects are ultimately failing to make a difference politically?\n“You might say so,” Deutsch said. “But the Jewish community will not remain silent.”\nTo Efraim Zuroff, a hunter of Nazis and historian for the Simon Wiesenthal Center who is based in Israel, the success of the far right in Austria reflects how Holocaust commemoration projects in urban areas hardly reach people who live in smaller towns — the Freedom Party base.\n“Holocaust education, which only recently really began developing in Austria, happens there in pockets — in the big cities, in the artists’ scene,” he said. “It has big visibility but isn’t penetrating the way it has in Germany, where the effort was much more robust.”\nZuroff said this has a lot to do with Austria’s failure to prosecute Nazis.\n“Holocaust education efforts in Austria are having limited impact because they are done in two voices,” he said. “There was a belated admission of guilt by politicians. But the judiciary, whose work sends a much stronger message in society, was a total failure.”\nTo some activists against racism, the Freedom Party’s rise is motivation to invest even greater efforts in Holocaust commemoration.\nThe far-right’s success in Austria “only strengthens our resolve,” said Brigitte Prinzgau, an artist who designed the newly inaugurated Aspang Railway Station Memorial, near where 47,035 Austrian Jews were dispatched from Vienna to death camps. “Now educators and artists will make even more monuments confronting fascism and xenophobic populism.”\nvia Austria accepted its Holocaust guilt. So why is its far right on the rise? | Jewish Telegraphic Agency\nFiled under Antisemitism, Holocaust, Multiculturalism Tagged with Austria\nThese are the countries you can ‘buy’ citizenship to – Business Insider\nAnother good overview of the various schemes, and the relative advantages for those shopping for citizenship:\nMost countries offer citizenship (passports) the hard way. But 7 sell them outright, and 3 have “powerful” passports. “Citizenship Planning” is a thing.\nFor people who need a second citizenship and passport to dodge the long arm of their government, there is something called “citizenship planning,” similar to “financial planning.” But when it comes to just outright buying a citizenship and passport without having to languish for years as mere non-citizen resident, the Huddled Masses need not apply. And not any passport will do. In fact, there are only three for sale that are really good.\nWhich are the best passports to get?\nThere are quality standards for everything, especially if it’s costly. The most powerful passports are those that allow visa-free travel to the most countries.\nThere are other considerations, for example those that drive US citizens nuts when they live overseas, due to the US government’s onerous reporting requirements on them and on banks that do business with them, and due to US taxation of their worldwide income no matter where they live. Few other governments treat their citizens that way.\nIn terms of visa-free travel, here are the 25 countries with the most powerful passports, according to a new ranking by Henley & Partners, which is into “citizenship planning.” But among them is only – Austria – one whose citizenship can be bought (more on that in a moment):\nGermany: visa-free travel to 176 countries.\nSweden: 175 countries\nDenmark, Finland, Italy, Spain, and the US: 174 countries.\nAustria, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, UK: 173 countries\nRepublic of Ireland, Japan, New Zealand: 172 countries\nCroatia, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland: 171 countries\nAustralia, South Korea: 170 countries\nIceland: 169 countries.\nAnd how do you get one of those passports?\nIn most countries, the hard way: Legally immigrate and obtain residency, and then fulfill the residency requirements to get citizenship and that second passport, which takes years. Most countries, including the US, have special programs for “investors” to obtain residency, such as a green card, essentially on the spot, but even then it takes years to obtain citizenship and a passport. If it’s possible at all, such as in Germany.\nThen there’s the direct way: Buy a citizenship and the passport that comes along with it. These citizenship-by-investment programs are not for folks on a tight budget. According to Henley & Partners, only seven countries offer this convenient route, only three have powerful passports, and only one is in the top of the heap above.\nPassports from EU countries are the best. If you’re from Russia or China or Iraq and become a citizen of one of the 28 EU countries, you’ll get a country-specific EU passport that allows you to live and do business anywhere in the EU. There are all sorts of offshore benefits. And travel around the world is a breeze.\nBut citizenship in most EU countries is not for sale. You can buy only residency, similar to programs in the US. But there are three exceptions:\nCitizenship is almost impossible to get for normal foreigners already legally in Austria. But the super-rich and famous have a way. The government, through paragraph 10, section 6 of the Citizenship Act, can confer citizenship “because of the services already provided by the foreigner and the extraordinary achievements still to be expected of him in the special interest of the Republic.” This usually involves a big direct investments of unspecified magnitude plus some other “extraordinary” contribution, such as being famous or creating jobs. Few succeed. In some years, none succeed.\nThey’re playing hard to get. But the rewards are huge for the few that succeed, including an impeccable EU passport with visa-free travel to 173 countries.\nIn 2012, as the EU-part of the divided island was veering toward bankruptcy, it offered citizenship through a “fast-track” scheme to dodge the normal residency requirements. But the price tag was €10 million in direct investment. Too expensive for the average oligarch.\nIn 2013, Cyprus became desperate. Its offshore financial industry, the main breadwinner of the economy, had collapsed in a cesspool of corruption. The banks had taken much of the foreign money – particularly Russian money – down with them. Cyprus needed some moolah. It slashed the price of citizenship to €3 million of direct investment. Russians who’d lost at least €3 million in the collapse would also be eligible for citizenship.\nSince then, the price was further slashed, to as low as €2 million. And it’s fast: about three months for citizenship and an EU passport, with visa-free travel to 159 countries. And that €3-million investment can be sold after three years. An adequate house would likely do.\nThe tiny EU member state with 417,000 residents spread over three islands is convenient for foreigners, with English being one of the two official languages. In 2013, during the still rough waters of the euro debt crisis, Parliament passed legislation that put Maltese citizenship up for sale at €650,000. A spouse costs another €25,000; unmarried children between 18 and 25 and dependent parents cost €50,000 each. There are no residency or investment requirements. The money goes into government funds.\nThis citizenship is a product to be marketed. If it sells 100 per year at €650,000 a pop, it would generate annual revenues of €65 million – or 1.75% of total 2016 revenues (€3.7 billion). Given the limits on budget deficits under EU Treaties, everything counts.\nThis Maltese product includes an EU passport with visa-free travel to 166 countries. Folks can stop by, jump through some bureaucratic hoops, pay, get their citizenship and passport, and settle in Germany or wherever. At the time, Simon Busuttil, leader of the opposition Nationalist Party, warned that Malta could end up being compared to shady tax havens in the Caribbean. And that’s our last stop.\nSource: These are the countries you can ‘buy’ citizenship to – Business Insider\nFiled under Citizenship Tagged with Austria, Cyprus, Henley & Partners, investment, Malta\ndiversityvotes.ca\nClick image for book purchase\nHistorica-Dominion Institute\nInstitute for Canadian Citizenship\nUK FCO Consular Forum\nActively Passive\nAssociation for Canadian Studies\nCd Howe Institute\nCentre for Immigration Policy Reform\nConference Board of Canada\nINRS Centre Urbanisation Culture Société\nInstitute for Research on Public Policy\nMaytree Foundation\nNew Canadian Media\nPublic Policy Forum\nGlobal Centre for Pluralism\nInterculturalism Symposium\nLa géographie du Canada et sa diversité culturelle\nNational Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada\nAdmissability\nCAPAR\nCharte des valeurs québécoise\ncitizenship-by-investment\nDiscover Canada\nDual Citizenship\nHistorical Recognition\nTFWP\nAboriginal Antisemitism Birthright Citizenship C-6 C-24 Charte des valeurs québécoise Citizenship citizenship-by-investment Citizenship Act Data Discover Canada Dual Citizenship foreign policy gender Government Hate crimes Historical Recognition Holocaust Immigration Integration Interculturalisme Language Multiculturalism Other Public Policy Racism Radicalization Refugees Religion Revocation\nAndrew Coyne Andrew Griffith appointments asylum seekers Atip Australia bias Bill 21 Birth Tourism Black Canadians BREXIT Canada CBSA Census China Chinese Canadians Chris Selley Conservative Party Denmark diversity Douglas Todd Doug Saunders education Election 2015 Election 2019 elections employment equity ethnic media Europe expatriates extremism fees France Germany hijab housing India ISIS islam Islamophobia Israel laicité language M-103 Media Minister Alexander Minister Kenney Montreal Muslims Niqab Ontario Pew Research PM Harper PM Trudeau police Politics PQ Public service Quebec Saudi Arabia Sheema Khan Statistics Canada Syrian refugees tech temporary foreign workers tfwp The Economist Toronto Trump Trump administration UK USA Vancouver voting women","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line562971"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9809179306030273,"wiki_prob":0.9809179306030273,"text":"Brexit: Irish PM Leo Varadkar says deal 'very difficult' by deadline\nOctober 9, 2019 admin\t0 Comments\nMedia captionIrish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says he wants a deal “but not at any cost”\nIt will be “very difficult” for the UK and the EU to reach a Brexit agreement before the 31 October deadline, Irish leader Leo Varadkar has said.\nHe told Irish broadcaster RTE “big gaps” remained between the two sides.\nAmid claims on Tuesday that talks were close to collapse, he also suggested the language around the discussions had turned toxic “in some quarters”.\nMr Varadkar and Boris Johnson are expected to meet for further Brexit talks later this week.\nThe UK has said the EU needs to “move quickly” to stop it leaving without an agreement at the end of the month.\nTaoiseach Leo Varadkar, who spoke with Mr Johnson by phone for about 45 minutes on Tuesday, said he would strive until the “last moment” to reach a deal with the UK, but “not at any cost” to his country, Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe.\nHe also downplayed the chances of any agreement being struck before the crucial summit of EU leaders on 17 October, during which next steps for Brexit are likely to be decided.\nMedia captionA new Brexit deal is possible but cannot come at any cost, says Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney\n“I think it’s going to be very difficult to secure an agreement by next week, quite frankly,” Mr Varadkar said.\n“Essentially, what the UK has done is repudiated the deal that we negotiated in good faith with prime minister [Theresa] May’s government over two years and have sort of put half of that now back on the table, and are saying that’s a concession. And of course it isn’t really.”\nMr Varadkar added that it was his job to hold the UK to commitments it had made since the 2016 referendum to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland and uphold the Good Friday Agreement.\nThe Irish leader’s comments came after a No 10 source claimed on Tuesday that Germany was now making it “essentially impossible” for the UK to leave the EU with a deal.\nThat assessment followed a “frank” phone call between Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during which they discussed Brexit proposals the UK prime minister put forward last week to the EU.\nAfter the call, a No 10 source said Mrs Merkel had made clear a deal based on the prime minister’s plans was “overwhelmingly unlikely” – though the BBC’s Adam Fleming said there was “scepticism” within the EU that she would have used such language.\nThe No 10 source also suggested Mrs Merkel told her counterpart the only way to break the deadlock was for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and for it to permanently accept EU single market rules on trade in goods.\nThis, the source said, marked a shift in Germany’s approach and made a negotiated deal “essentially impossible”.\nPA Media\nAngela Merkel and Boris Johnson spoke on the phone on Tuesday morning\nIn response, the EU’s top official, European Council President Donald Tusk, accused Mr Johnson of engaging in a “stupid blame game”.\nIn a tweet to the prime minister, he added: “At stake is the future of Europe and the UK, as well as the security and interests of our people.\n“You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke, quo vadis (where are you going)?”\nEuropean Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said that if negotiations fail, “the explanation will be found in the British camp (because) the original sin is found on the islands and not on the continent”.\nSpeaking to the French Les Echos newspaper, he added: “A no-deal Brexit would lead to a collapse of the United Kingdom and a weakening of growth on the continent.”\nIn his interview with RTE, Mr Varadkar was asked whether he was concerned the language around the talks was “getting toxic”.\n“I think it is, from some quarters, but you know I don’t play dirty. You know, I don’t think most EU leaders do either. We’ve been very straight up from when the referendum happened.”\n‘Real catastrophe’\nThe prime minister also hosted European Parliament president David Sassoli in Downing Street on Tuesday, but the MEP left saying “no progress” had been made.\nMr Sassoli later told the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “Angela Merkel’s opinions must be taken seriously. We are all very worried because there are only a few days left.\n“Because we understand that going out without an agreement leads to having a real problem, if not a real catastrophe.”\nMedia captionConfused by Brexit jargon? Reality Check unpacks the basics\nFollowing the meeting, Downing Street said there was “little time” left to negotiate a new legally-binding withdrawal agreement, but Mr Johnson remained committed to doing all he could.\n“We need to move quickly and work together to agree a deal,” a No 10 spokesman said.\n“He [the prime minister] reiterated that if we did not reach an agreement then the UK will leave without a deal on 31 October.”\nThe PM’s pledge comes despite legislation passed by MPs last month, known as the Benn Act, which requires Mr Johnson to write to the EU requesting a further delay if no deal is signed off by Parliament by 19 October – unless MPs agree to a no-deal Brexit.\nWhile negotiations are continuing in Brussels, Mr Sassoli said a deal likely to command the support of MEPs was a “long way off”.\nMeanwhile, 19 Labour MPs have written to the European Commission president Mr Junker calling for a Brexit deal to be made with the government without any further delay.\nCaroline Flint, who represents the leave-supporting constituency of Don Valley, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the “uncertainty of Brexit has gone on too long” and the group did not think it was “impossible” to resolve the Irish border issue.\nTimeline: What’s happening ahead of Brexit deadline?\nTuesday 8 October – The House of Commons was prorogued – suspended – ahead of a Queen’s Speech to begin a new parliamentary session.\nMonday 14 October – The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen’s Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.\nThursday 17 October – Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.\nSaturday 19 October – Date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.\nThursday 31 October – Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.\n← Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay man $8bn over breast growth\nNorthern California braced for mega power cut →\nBrexit: UK may 'clarify' new offer after EU urged 'fundamental changes'\nOctober 5, 2019 admin 0\nTony Blair praises 'courageous' Independent Group MPs\nDavid Cameron: Johnson and Gove behaved 'appallingly'","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line105759"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6132003664970398,"wiki_prob":0.3867996335029602,"text":"Maryland Flouts Regional Tax Competition with Historic Tax Hike\nWilliam Ahern\nDownload Fiscal Fact No. 124\nFiscal Fact No. 124\nGovernor O’Malley has now put the icing on his first term’s biggest cake, a historic tax hike. We see no record of any state having raised all three of its major tax rates in one fell swoop, but Maryland has done just that.\nThe icing is a so-called millionaire’s tax, a 6.25 percent rate on income over $1 million, which on top of the local income tax will bring the rate on most Maryland income over $1 million to about 9.45 percent.1 Effective January 2008, the state also raised the corporate tax rate from 7 to 8.25 percent, the sales tax from 5 to 6 percent, and the cigarette tax from $1 to $2, but this paper focuses on the more complex personal income tax hike.\nWith all the talk about socking it to millionaires, many people have overlooked the middle-income taxpayers — say from $50,000 to $100,000. They are still more heavily taxed in Maryland than in any other state in the region. In fact, there are now only five states in the U.S.—California, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine and Oregon—where a couple with $75,000 in taxable income might be in a higher bracket than an average Maryland couple.2\nThe Maryland rate for middle-income workers is about 7.5 percent (4.75% state plus 2.73% local), well above the rate paid in any neighboring state (see Table 1).\nPersonal Income Tax Rates (State Plus Local) for Middle-Income People* in the Maryland Region, as of January 1, 2008\nDelaware (a)\n* A couple with $75,000 in taxable income.\n(a) No sales tax in Delaware.\nNote: Maryland and Pennsylvania are the only two states in the region with significant local income taxes. Maryland’s local tax rate averages 2.73% (weighted by population), and the majority of the population pays over 3%. Maryland comptroller has county-by-county table: http://individuals.marylandtaxes.com/incometax/localtax.asp.\nSource: State and local tax forms.\nThe 7.5-percent rate in Maryland is an average because local income taxes in Maryland are so high and variable. Maryland is one of only 14 states that permit county-level income taxes and has much higher local tax rates than the other 13. In Montgomery and Howard Counties, the local rate is the highest in the state, 3.2 percent, so middle-income people there pay a 7.95 percent marginal rate. In Prince Georges County the rate is 7.85 percent, and in Baltimore City it’s 7.8 percent. See Tables 2 and 3 for the state-local breakdown.\nMaryland’s State-Level Personal Income Tax as of January 1, 2008\nTax Rates and Brackets\n2% > $0\n$3,200 (a)\n3% > $1,000\n4.75% > $3,000\n5% > $150,000\n5.25% > $300,000\n5.5% > $500,000\n6.25% > $1,000,000\n(a) As of 2008, it declines to $2,400, then $1,800, then $1,200, then $600 as income rises.\nSource: Comptroller of Maryland: http://www.marylandtaxes.com/special_session/incomeTaxAlert.pdf\nFor people unfamiliar with tax bracket tables, a couple filing a Maryland tax return would interpret Table 2 as follows: they must pay a 2% tax on their first $1,000 in taxable income ($20), plus 3% on the next thousand ($30), plus 4% on the next thousand ($40), plus 4.75% on all the rest up to $200,000 ($9,357).\nSo a Montgomery County couple who had exactly $200,000 in taxable income after exemptions and deductions will pay $20 + $30 + $40 + $9,357 = $9,447 (state) + $6,400 (local) = $15,847. In Baltimore City, the total will be a little lower, $15,547. Those rates have been in law for many years.\nThe next four rates are new in 2008: 5% on all income between $200,000 and $350,000 ($7,500); 5.25% on all income between $350,000 and $500,000 ($7,875); 5.5% on all income between $500,000 and $1 million ($27,500); and 6.25% on all income over $1 million. So a Montgomery County couple who had exactly $1 million in taxable income after exemptions and deductions would pay $20 + $30 + $40 + $9,357 + $7,500 + $7,875 + 27,500 = $52,322 (state) + $32,000 (local) = $84,322. In Baltimore, it would be a little lower, $82,822.\nIf a Montgomery couple made more than $1 million, they would owe $84,322 + 9.45% of everything over $1 million; in Baltimore it would be $82,822 + 9.3% of everything over $1 million.\nMaryland Local Personal Income Tax as of January 1, 2008\nQueen Anne’s\nWicomico\nNote: Maryland’s local income tax rate averages 2.73%, weighted by population, and the majority of the population pays over 3%. Maryland comptroller has county-by-county table: http://individuals.marylandtaxes.com/incometax/localtax.asp.\nNote that Maryland’s tax system has an unusually large marriage penalty. Most states set their married tax brackets by doubling the income levels in the singles bracket. But Maryland’s local taxes are identical for singles and couples, and the state-level tax brackets have just a slight adjustment for couples at the $200,000 level.\nThe only failed component in last fall’s tax enactment was an addition by the legislature, extending the sales tax to computer services. That happened to be an industry with no lobbyists in Annapolis, so it was singled out while industries like health clubs, tanning salons and auto repair escaped.3 Now computer industry lobbyists have arrived in force, enough to prompt repeal of the new tax and giving Gov. O’Malley a chance to get this one last very high rate on very high income.\nFrom a purely Maryland perspective, the tax hikes are galling to middle-income people. Gov. O’Malley promised them cuts in property and income taxes to take the sting out of the higher sales tax, but he hardly complained when the legislature dismissed those tax cut ideas. Instead, middle-income people must pay their higher sales taxes and be satisfied with political rhetoric about soaking the rich with higher taxes on personal and corporate income.\nFor people in the $150,000-to-$500,000 range, many of whom consider themselves “middle class” even if their incomes are comparatively high, there’s another stick in the eye to deal with. The rising state-local tax deduction that they will be claiming on federal form 1040 is likely to push them into the federal alternative minimum tax.\nFrom a regional vantage point, it seems that Maryland is dismissing the possible effect of tax competition. The conventional wisdom is that tax rates matter enough to make new and expanding businesses think long and hard before locating or expanding in a high-tax jurisdiction. Surrounded by states that have moderate tax rates, the State of Maryland will probably end up “paying” companies to move in or expand. That is, the state will probably offer incoming or expanding businesses generous tax breaks to make up for the high rates. That’s not uncommon, nor is the angry reaction of resident businesses who resent seeing the state’s economic development office roll out the red tax-exempt carpet for newcomers.\nMaryland had been a state whose taxes were in the moderate-to-high range, compared nationally. Now it has planted itself firmly in the ranks of the highest-tax states. If it weren’t surrounded by states with moderate tax rates, that would be less of a problem. The state will certainly receive more pressure to deliver good public services to justify collecting such a great deal more in taxes. Only time will tell if the state can deliver.\n1. The new 6.25% rate is scheduled to last three years, and local rates may change from year to year. Prince Georges just lowered its rate from 3.2% (same as Montgomery and Howard) to 3.1%. Baltimore City’s is 3.05%.\n2. Oregon levies no sales tax.\n3. For more see http://www.taxfoundation.org/legacy/show/23005.html.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line356513"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8945667147636414,"wiki_prob":0.8945667147636414,"text":"Ian Rankin Returns with New Rebus Novel: Even Dogs in the Wild\nDana Gee More from Dana Gee\nUpdated: November 13, 2015 10:46 AM PST\nAuthor Ian Rankin is back with the new crime fiction novel Even Dogs in the Wild.\nWhen I called crime writer Ian Rankin recently, he was a passenger in a car travelling down a dark and dreary Scottish country road late at night.\nWell, if this was a scene in one of Rankin’s 25 novels, the guy in the car would likely be a detective heading to the scene of a murder.\n“We’re driving through the fog,” said Rankin, who is this week’s guest on the DGP podcast. “Anything can happen.”\nTo listen to the interview, press play below.\nWhile an eerie atmosphere has crime written all over it, Rankin admits his thoughts at the moment are not on future plots, but the promotion of his new book, Even Dogs in the Wild, featuring Rankin’s much-loved Edinburgh detective John Rebus.\nIn this installment, Rebus is now 65 and has been pulled out of retirement once more to consult on the case of the attempted murder of his old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty.\nAt the same time, Rankin’s latest copper, Malcolm Fox, is placed in a special unit that is busy keeping an eye on some visiting gangsters from Glasgow.\nRebus’s former sidekick, Siobhan Clarke, has moved up the ranks to Detective Inspector at Police Scotland HQ, and has a murdered senior prosecutor on the books. Of course, all of these stories come together in classic Rankin order.\nThis new novel is Rankin’s 25th, bringing his output to about one book a year. That may sound daunting but, for Rankin, it’s just what he does — no need to investigate any further.\n“Writers become writers — that’s how they communicate with the world, that’s how they make sense of the world and, to some extent, we really are just children who refuse to grow up. We’re still writing because it’s fun.\n“We’re still playing ‘let’s pretend’ games. We’re playing goodies and baddies. It keeps us young.”\nSpeaking with Rankin, the topics range from his beloved Edinburgh and gentrification, to his favourite watering hole (yes, it’s the Oxford — the same as Rebus), newspapers, music and, of course, dear old Rebus.\nEven Dogs in the Wild is the 20th time Rankin has enlisted the character.\n“I can’t believe it,” Rankin said of the 20-book-milestone. “When I wrote the first book, I was a 24- or 25-year-old student. I thought he was going to be a one-off character and he would be done within one book —in fact, I nearly killed him off at the end of book one. So here we are, half a lifetime later, and I’m still writing about the guy.”\nWhile Rankin obviously has deep feelings for his detective, he admits that, if he was real, Rebus would not be a fan of Rankin.\n“I think he’d think I’m a bit too liberal in my politics,” said Rankin. “He would see me as never having to do a hard day’s work in my life. We’ve got the same taste in music but we’ve not got the same taste in anything else.”\nRankin will be in Vancouver to kick off his book tour on Nov. 16 (St. Andrew’s Wesley Church, 7:30 p.m.). Do go if you haven’t heard Rankin speak. He is very entertaining.\nIn the meantime, check out my interview with him on the DGP.\nPress play below to listen.\nAlso on this week’s DGP, CTV’s Jim Gordon drops in to help me review the new movies Spotlight, Love the Coopers, Heist and The 33.\ndgee@theprovince.com\ntwitter.com/dana_gee\nWhat's On Tonight for\nView Full TV Listings","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line489916"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5769431591033936,"wiki_prob":0.42305684089660645,"text":"PromiseABC13\nTCH and abc13 team up to bring Holiday Cheer to Kids\nBy Ilona Carson\nHOUSTON (KTRK) -- From the cast of carolers, to the young patients and parents, the Christmas spirit fills the air at Texas Children's Hospital. Tasha Williams' son Elijah is recovering from neck surgery.\n\"He loved it. I just surprised him,\" she says.\nHe's been here four months.\n\"My Christmas hope is that he will actually feel Christmas, because he was really down at first,\" Williams explains.\nIt doesn't matter where, the holiday can be felt in a hallway. The lights on the tree are lit in time for the grand entrance of Santa Claus.\nJohn Nickens, Executive VP at Texas Children's Hospital says, \"You know with what is going on with them each and every day in the hospital for them to just get a moment and take a break and just celebrate. It's a lot of fun for us and the employees as well.\"\nOne by one they step up and place their orders with the jolly man in the red hat.\nMom Sonis Smith says, \"It's a long day. We got here at 7:30am and we just got released and came downstairs to watch Santa come through. It's a long day but a good day.\"\nThe work to spread holiday cheer isn't over. Tina Dooley, President of Texas Children's Hospital Auxiliary says, \"This is a very busy time of the year for the hospital, for volunteer services, and for everybody in here. Our goal here is to make the time for our patients a little more tolerable by spreading some of the joy of the season.\"\nSome of the children will be home in time for the holiday. Sherry Briscoe's daughter is one of them. \"She's still here with me, I thank God for that,\" she says.\nSometimes the biggest wish isn't one under the tree.\nKayla Briscoe wants her sister to wish for \"anything she wants for Christmas and hopefully it comes true.\"\nAs part of our partnership with Texas Children's Hospital, we'll bring you stories each week to inform, inspire, and help keep your kids healthy. It's all part of the \"Promise abc-13\" campaign. For every dollar you donate to Texas Children's Hospital, abc-13 will match it up to $100,000.\nhealth & fitnesspromiseabc13\nSPONSORED: Family travels to TX Children's for lifesaving fetal surgery\nTCH Gives Dancer a Second Chance at Her Dream\nMothers give back to patients with pregnancy condition\nSoothing a crying baby helps ease stress","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1334588"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6897568106651306,"wiki_prob":0.6897568106651306,"text":"the aragon\nWhy Book A Chicago Date, 5 Venues Why\nBlog, MUSIC.\nThink of music hubs and London, New York and Los Angeles always come to mind. But when bands announce tours, what’s the one city they never miss? Chicago. Bands choose The Windy City partly because it’s a massive hub for music, but mostly because of the Chicago’s incredible venues. Never been to a music venue in Chicago? Check out the five best music venues below.\n1. The Riviera is a plain classic. Walking through the lit up banner that displays “The Riviera,” concertgoers are transported to the old days with a general admission standing area and a large balcony. Curtains hang from the side of the private boxes and the decorated ceiling stands out in the large room. As the lights go down and the band takes the stage, The Riviera packs a punch in the sound quality and is easily known as one of the best music venues in Chicago.\nThe Riviera’s marquee showcases that night’s lineup and is often a favorite Instagram for most concertgoers.\n2. The Aragon Ballroom is a castle. As you cross the train platform and head down the stairs, “The Aragon” sign stands out against the small street. Walking into the building no one expects a castle. Quite literally, the venue boasts turrets on all four sides and a ceiling painted like the sky. Notable sold out shows include Ellie Goulding, Phoenix, alt-J and even Olly Murs. Although the venue isn’t air conditioned (it was built in 1926), The Aragon Ballroom is a popular destination for some of the biggest artists.\nMolly Tullis, a Chicago Blogger, touches on her favorite Aragon Ballroom experience.\n3. Lincoln Hall is tiny (in a good way). When someone says a music venue is tiny, it is not always a good thing. But in Lincoln Hall’s case, the small enclosed space behind a bar allows fans to be in breathing distance of their favorite bands. Every year during festival season, some of the biggest names in music chose to play their Lollapalooza after parties at Lincoln Hall. Death Cab for Cutie and Fall Out Boy have both played the small venue in celebration of album releases, selling out in seconds. The venue recently sold to Audioleaf and hopes to grow to become more mainstream. “My intention is to provide […] Lincoln Hall with more resources,” Michael Johnston, 31, told the Chicago Tribune. He plans to add live-streaming to the small venue for an added bonus.\nThe Wind and The Wave\nSaints of Valory\nThe intimate space of Lincoln Hall allows anyone to feel like they’re next to the artist.\n4. The Vic Theatre is just plain different. Known for concerts as well as movie screenings and an incredible stage set up, The Vic Theatre is located in the heart of Lincoln Park. But with that location comes restrictions. One of the only music venues in Chicago to have a curfew, The Vic has hosted artists like Fifth Harmony and Bleachers (Jack Antonoff of Fun.) in the past year and continues to surprise its guests with a variety of acts.\nThe Vic Theater lies in one of the most residential areas on Lincoln Park.\n5. UIC Pavilion brings in big talent. For any solid indie fan, arena shows are avoided and often skipped. But when Passion Pit announced a show at UIC Pavilion, tickets sold out instantly. Although it is a university’s college basketball arena, UIC Pavilion boasts a huge lighting set-up and a powerful sound system. The basketball court is used as a general admission area and the total capacity of the arena is 9,500.\nPassion Pit at UIC Pavilion proved to be a light spectacle as well as a music show.\nFind a music venue you loved but its not listed below? Drop a note below in the comments.\nMay 1, 2015 May 1, 2015 addiewhelan Tagged lincoln hall, the aragon, the riviera, the vic theater, uic pavilion\tLeave a comment","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line198038"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.575782060623169,"wiki_prob":0.42421793937683105,"text":"Arts Impact Grant\nInstrumental Music Clubs\nASIAN CLASSICAL MUSIC CLUB\nThe purpose of the Penn State Asian Classical Music Club (ACMC) is to provide a platform for Asian traditional folk instruments players and promote communication between eastern and western culture, especially music culture.\nhttp://sites.psu.edu/acmc/\nProvides a variety of musical experience for its members and musical entertainment for others through concerts and participation at athletic events and parades.\nhttp://www.blueband.psu.edu/\nMUSIC THERAPY CLUB\nThe purpose of the Music Therapy Club is to share the therapeutic and joyful properites of music with the State College Community, especially the eldery, disabled, and youth. The club motto shall be \"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything\"-Plato.\nhttp://psumusictherapy.weebly.com/\n​PENN STATE TAIKO\nThe purpose of Penn State Taiko is to 1) provide a friendly, positive atmosphere for students, faculty, and staff to learn Japanese-style drumming and to 2) use taiko as a tool for community building at The Pennsylvania State University.\nhttps://sites.google.com/site/pennstatetaiko/\n​ROAR! CLUB BRASS ENSEMBLE\nThe purpose of the ROAR! Club Brass Ensemble is to encourage individual growth, discipline, and pride while also instilling the values of teamwork, cooperation, and sportsman- like conduct. The organization will inspire its members to creatively express themselves through their interpretation of the music, while promoting an overall congruency and strive for excellence. The visual performance aspects of this organization will rouse school spirit and ultimately provide positive entertainment for its audience.\nhttps://www.facebook.com/ROARcbe/timeline\nTEAM UKE\nThe purpose of the Penn State Team UKE Organization is to offer a relaxing escape through music. Our focus is on Ukulele but is not limited to that instrument. Members may come to play, learn, or collaborate with others.\nThe purpose of The Penn State Trombone Choir is to: 1. Provide a forum for the trombonists to share together in the development of technique and the understanding of diverse musical styles. 2. Raise awareness of the trombone and its various applications in the musical world. 3. Provide opportunities for members to participate in concerts, recitals, and masterclasses.\nVIOLA SOCIETY\nTo promote, study, and further, the research and performance of the viola its repertoire.​\nAbout | Blog | Calendar | Gallery | Directory | Contact\n© 2016 Penn State Performing Arts Council","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line227480"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5905794501304626,"wiki_prob":0.40942054986953735,"text":"The Nuclear Age\nChaturanga\n~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα\nTag Archives: Mirza Taki Khan Farahani\nWhat Islamic Enlightenment?\n15 Sat Apr 2017\nPosted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review\n≈ Comments Off on What Islamic Enlightenment?\nAbdulaziz, Abdulmecid I, Abdulrahman al-Jabarti, Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali, al Ghazali, al Qa'ida, Christopher de Bellaigue, Egypt, Enlightenment, Europe, ibn Taymiyya, Industrial Revolution, Iran, ISIS, Islam, Jacques Pierre Brissot, Middle East, Mirza Taki Khan Farahani, Muhammad Abduh, Muhammad Ali Pasha, Reformation, Renaissance, Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, Taliban, Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, terrorism, The Islamic Enlightenment, Thirty Years' War, Turkey, Westphalia\nDe Bellaigue, Christopher. The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017. 432 pp.\nThe end of the Cold War did not usher in a thousand years of peace; nor did it see the end of History. Instead, even as the victorious Western alliance was popping champagne, a new menace was taking shape in the Islamic world. Terrorism was certainly not a new phenomenon, but the global reach and sophistication of what emerged in the closing decade of the second millennium was unsurpassed. Samuel Huntington famously – controversially – called it a clash of civilisations. Whether he was right or not, the Age of Terrorism has come to be deeply linked to Islam. It is this perception that Christopher de Bellaigue hopes to dispel. His latest book, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times, is meant to be a riposte against Western historians, politicians, and commentators who repeatedly demand that Islam join the 21st century, that it should “subject itself to the same intellectual and social transformations that the West experienced from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.” To those who clamour for an Islamic Enlightenment, Reformation, and Renaissance, to those insisting that the religion of Muhammad develop a sense of humour, de Bellaigue’s response is that it already has, albeit with a particular cultural touch.\nWesterners have not generally come to the East with open minds and in their inability to see past a European universalism, de Bellaigue contends, have missed the fact that not all Muslims are primitive, regressive terrorists. In fact, the Islamic world has not shown any more hostility towards modernity than Christendom did a couple of centuries earlier. The author dates the clash between European modernity and Islam in 1798 with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army on the shores of Egypt. De Bellaigue astutely observes that Western ideas were initially absorbed with greater success when they were perceived to be universal than later, after World War I, when they were seen as the business end of a hostile ideology.\nIslamic Enlightenment locates the foci of modernisation in Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran, where numerous figures, nationalists, litterateurs, monarchists, as well as the ulema, engaged with Western science, technology, and political science to adapt them to the needs of Islamically-minded societies. However, many of the modernisers were inspired not by the trinkets and gimmicks of European innovation but by the achievements of classical Islamic civilisation. De Bellaigue narrates the tales of modernisers of all shades. Some were intrinsically hostile to Western methods yet awed by them such as Abdulrahman al-Jabarti; others infused the “genius of Islam” in the universal knowledge the West possessed such as Rifa’a al-Tahtawi. Some of the reformers were optimistic of Western intentions in the Muslim world such as Muhammad Abduh, while others felt forced into reforms such as the Ottoman sultans Abdulmecid I and Abdulaziz. There were, of course, a few who saw modernity as a means to power and pursued Western knowledge with a purely secular interest such as Muhammad Ali Pasha. Regardless, the author notes, a liberalising, modernising tendency had emerged strongly in the Middle East.\nThis pushback against Islamophobia is laudable yet eventually flawed in its conception. Fundamentally, Islamic Enlightenment tries to pack into one term what in Europe properly describes at least four zeitgeists – the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. It is difficult to imagine, at least in Europe, an Enlightenment that was not preceded by the Reformation and the Renaissance. It was the rediscovery of the classical world and an emphasis on humanism based on reason that caused the first crack in the totalising edifice of the Christian faith. Renaissance intellectuals did not necessarily reject religion but there was, nonetheless, a subtle shift in the way they approach it. The Reformation continued this trend in two important ways – first, and more obvious, is the theological schism between Catholicism and Protestantism, and second, the savagery and horrendous toll of the Thirty Years’ War – between a third and half of the population of Europe – finally broke the power of the Church in temporal matters after the peace at Westphalia in 1648.\nThese two short yet turbulent epochs paved the way for the Enlightenment. Made receptive to a gradual shift from faith to reason, autocracy to democracy, European society broadly supported the principles of the Enlightenment even if not the pace of some of its most forceful advocates. The Counter-Enlightenment remained a German nationalistic rebellion against French supremacy in the arts rather than a full-blooded critique of the Enlightenment itself. Various aspects of Enlightenment thinking – in the arts, political reform, economic reorganisation, religious reconceptualisation – were realised over the next century and half in step with the Industrial Revolution.\nDe Bellaigue’s brief history of 19th century reform movements in the Middle East – to which he devotes half the book – describes abortive attempts at modernisation that underscores this point further. Middle Eastern – Islamic? – attempts to replicate Europe’s material successes failed precisely because they focused purely on the material aspects of the European experience without adequately contemplating on the socio-cultural reformations that had taken place since the late 14th century that had brought Europe to a place whence the Enlightenment was possible. ‘Enlightenment with an Islamic flavour’ deviates sufficiently from the European experience that it cannot be herded under the same umbrella.\nAs de Bellaigue narrates, most Muslim modernisers were enthralled by Western science and technology but retained their faith in the supremacy of Islam. Even secular, power-hungry rulers and administrators were loathe to go to war against the ulema in the name of Western science or progress for fear that they would destabilise their kingdoms and lose their thrones, or worse, their lives. This was not an altogether unfounded fear, as Mirza Taki Khan Farahani found out in a bathhouse in Kashan.\nReforms with largely material goals in mind can hardly be termed an Enlightenment. If technology were the sole arbiter of progress, some of today’s most visious terrorist groups such as the Taliban, al Qa’ida, and ISIS could be said to be progressive. All the major terrorist groups in the 21st century have access to highly sophisticated weaponry and knowledge of explosives and tactics to challenge most national armies, an equation that Middle Eastern rulers of two centuries ago would have yearned for. The pitfall of such progress is visible – although the armies of Muslim states reduced the technological gap between themselves and their European counterparts over the 19th century, there was a backlash against cooperation with Europe after World War I that returned the socio-political situation almost to where it had been a hundred years earlier.\nIt is also difficult to understand how de Bellaigue considers the fervour of the 19th century as an Enlightenment when many of the most influential actors, be they pashas, clerics, or men of science, continued to cast a sheep’s eye on Islam. Nor was this the Islam of the 10th century Mu’tazilites, a relatively open faith not allergic to external knowledge or inquiry. By the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, it was well past the era of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali or Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya and the closing of the Muslim mind. This Islam, intrinsically regressive as Shiraz Maher argues in his excellent Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea, looked to the era of its prophet and his companions as the most perfect era in human history and was, thus, fundamentally antithetical to reason. This is not to say that such a society cannot change, but there is certainly a big question mark on whether such a society is capable of an Enlightenment.\nFinally, the European Age of Imperialism was not an epoch of liberalism in the Middle East. None of the bold reformers of Egypt, Turkey, or Iran were democrats in the spirit of Jacques Pierre Brissot. In fact, all of de Bellaigue’s examples were despots whose liberal tendencies ended outside the throne room. The question for the author becomes whether it is possible for autocrats to usher in an Enlightenment. Unintentionally, Islamic Enlightenment serves as a warning to Western politicians who believe that they can play midwife to liberal democracy in the Middle East: even when such an endeavour had local support, it was not quite liberal and eventually failed.\nAll said and done, de Bellaigue is not wrong in his larger point. There is a tendency to view Islamic societies as intrinsically defective and prone to violence. This is no more true for them than it is for Christian societies, especially in the past, even the recent past. A little nuance beyond the sterile dichotomies an attention-deficit media churns out is required in reading the politics of the Middle East. However, nuance cannot be an excuse to whitewash all sorts of regressive social customs and political beliefs. No one sane thinks all Muslims are terrorists but there is a gradation of radicalisation in the Muslim world from terrorists to those who, for example, think blasphemy and apostasy should be punishable by death, to a far more tolerant and humanist sample. Although our attention is held mostly by one extreme end of the spectrum, it is only prudent to consider whether problems also lie further along the spectrum. Furthermore, while a more pleasant distant past holds out hope, it is only natural that it is the stormy present that educates our policies and beliefs.\nIt is tragic that those who are convinced of de Bellaigue’s broader message probably do not need his book as much and are already familiar with the research of scholars like Majid Fakhry, Lenn Goodman, Marshall Hodgson, and Ira Lapidus. Those who are not convinced, however, will likely not be persuaded by his book or even read it.\nChirps\nIsrael needs a new Left: bit.ly/2R1x508 | Interesting article; I suspect this would apply to several count… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago\nAustria finds that its neighbours are smarter than it is: bit.ly/3afJiWV | Ugh, Germans of every stripe... 2 hours ago\n👇🏻Several problems, but here are some I am more concerned about twitter.com/BDHerzinger/st… 2 hours ago\nIsrael will miss Sultan Qaboos: bit.ly/30F93LX | As will I 3 hours ago\nWalla?! twitter.com/Hassaniftikhar… 3 hours ago\nFollow @orsoraggiante\nFollow through RSS\nCategories Select Category Audio (1) Book Review (58) Central Asia (3) Europe (23) France (5) Italy (5) United Kingdom (3) Middle East (50) Iran (15) Israel (25) Nuclear (71) Opinion and Response (76) Security (41) Society (55) Recipes (15) Satire (4) Sports (10) Travelogue (11) South Asia (223) India (219) Pakistan (23) Theory & Philosophy (24) Uncategorized (1) United States (33)\nArchives Select Month Apr 2019 (2) Mar 2019 (1) Oct 2018 (1) Sep 2018 (1) Jul 2018 (2) Jun 2018 (3) May 2018 (5) Apr 2018 (1) Mar 2018 (2) Jan 2018 (2) Dec 2017 (7) Nov 2017 (2) Oct 2017 (2) Sep 2017 (1) Aug 2017 (2) Jul 2017 (2) Jun 2017 (11) May 2017 (6) Apr 2017 (6) Mar 2017 (7) Feb 2017 (4) Jan 2017 (6) Dec 2016 (1) Nov 2016 (3) Sep 2016 (8) Jul 2016 (3) Jun 2016 (9) May 2016 (3) Apr 2016 (1) Mar 2016 (5) Feb 2016 (5) Jan 2016 (5) Dec 2015 (10) Nov 2015 (2) Oct 2015 (5) Sep 2015 (4) Aug 2015 (2) Jul 2015 (5) Jun 2015 (6) May 2015 (6) Apr 2015 (9) Mar 2015 (5) Feb 2015 (2) Jan 2015 (5) Dec 2014 (3) Nov 2014 (11) Oct 2014 (6) Sep 2014 (10) Aug 2014 (5) Jul 2014 (5) Jun 2014 (11) May 2014 (4) Apr 2014 (7) Mar 2014 (3) Feb 2014 (3) Jan 2014 (6) Dec 2013 (7) Nov 2013 (3) Oct 2013 (5) Sep 2013 (5) Aug 2013 (12) Jul 2013 (7) Jun 2013 (8) May 2013 (1) Apr 2013 (2) Mar 2013 (4) Feb 2013 (4) Jan 2013 (6) Dec 2012 (12) Nov 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (4) Sep 2012 (3) Aug 2012 (10) Jul 2012 (5) Jun 2012 (3) May 2012 (11) Apr 2012 (11) Mar 2012 (8) Feb 2012 (5) Jan 2012 (1) Dec 2011 (1) Nov 2011 (1) Oct 2011 (1) Sep 2011 (1) Aug 2011 (2) Jul 2011 (2) May 2011 (3) Apr 2011 (1) Mar 2011 (1) Feb 2011 (1) Jan 2011 (1) Dec 2010 (1) Oct 2010 (1) Sep 2010 (1) Aug 2010 (2) Jul 2010 (1) Jun 2010 (1) May 2010 (1) Apr 2010 (1) Mar 2010 (1) Feb 2010 (1) Jan 2010 (1) Dec 2009 (1) Nov 2009 (1) Oct 2009 (2) Sep 2009 (1) Aug 2009 (1) Jul 2009 (1) Jun 2009 (1) May 2009 (1) Apr 2009 (2) Mar 2009 (1)\nPolarised Electorates\nThe Election Season\nDoes Narendra Modi Have A Foreign Policy?\nIndia and the Bomb\nNationalism Restored\nJews and Israel, Nation and State\nThe Asian in Europe\nModern Political Shibboleths\nThe Death of Civilisation\nHope on the Korean Peninsula\nDiminishing the Heathens\nThe Writing on the Minority Wall\nMischief in Gaza\nPolitics of Spite\nThoughts on Nationalism\nNever Again (As Long As It Is Convenient)\nEarning the Dragon’s Respect\nCreating an Indian Lake\nDoes India Have An Israel Policy?\nReclaiming David’s Kingdom\nNot a Mahatma, Just Mohandas\nIndia’s Jerusalem Misstep\nA Rebirth of American Power\nThe Myth of India’s Hindu Nazis\nConsiderate la vostra semenza: fatti non foste a viver come bruti, ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line394215"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5667464137077332,"wiki_prob":0.5667464137077332,"text":"Sep 12, 2019 | By\tFr. Matthew Stehling | Commitment, Discipleship, Living the Journey, Maturity, Wisdom\t|\nIn June of this year, Justice Anthony Kennedy stepped down from the Supreme Court. All of a sudden, abortion and the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision was front page of the news again. Among the flurry of articles being published, I found one detailing a comedian’s support of abortion and the flippant way in which she underlined her support for abortion. During one part of her ‘comedy’ routine, she stated, “Some people say abortion is ‘killing a baby.’ It’s not. It’s stopping a baby from happening.” Some of our own friends and family members may take this position. If they do I ask them to read the suspense novel The Children of Men by P.D. James and watch the film version.\nThe Children of Men by P.D. James was published in 1992 and was made into a major motion picture in 2006, starring Julianne Moore and Clive Owen. I’ll be discussing the plot of the book, which differs considerably from the movie. However, the important themes are present in both.\nThe story takes place in England in the year 2021. Humanity has been stricken by global infertility. For reasons that scientists can’t explain and can’t overcome, no one has been able to conceive a child for over 20 years. The picture painted in the novel is bleak. After the initial shock of the revelation, the world has slipped into complacency. Everything is saturated in an overwhelming depression— no children means no hope for the future. Society drones on, but the lack of children results in drastic changes: schools have closed because there are no more children to fill them, and playgrounds and parks have been removed to avoid reminding people that the end of the human race draws near. Rather than exploding into chaos, society has sunk into apathy. As a result, an increasingly tyrannical government has wormed its way into power.\nTheo Faron, a professor at Oxford University, has drifted along with the rest of the world into this depression. However, an encounter with a woman named Julian forces him to wake up and see what is happening to his world. Julian is a member of a dissident group that calls themselves the Five Fishes. The other members include Rolf (Julian’s husband), Luke (a former Anglican priest), Gascoigne (a young man with military background), and Miriam (a former midwife). The group approaches Theo because he is a cousin of the supreme leader of the country, Xan Lyppiat. They hope Theo can persuade Xan to change some of the tyrannical policies being enacted.\nTheo reluctantly agrees to meet with his cousin, but it does not go well. He returns to Oxford and informs the group of his failure. The Five Fishes begin to act more boldly, distributing pamphlets against the government and disrupting the government-sponsored group suicide ceremonies in the area.\nAfter a brief time away from England Theo returns home to find that Julian, Miriam, Rolf and Luke are on the run from the police. Gascoigne has been captured trying to sabotage a mass suicide. Theo is persuaded to help the group and discovers—to his great shock, considering the worldwide fertility crisis—that Julian is pregnant!\nThe group goes on the run, fearful of how Xan will use the pregnancy to gain even more power. There are lots of close calls, chase scenes, and double-crosses, including the revelation that Rolf is not the actual father of the child, and killings of the members of the group. Finally, Julian, Miriam, and Theo find refuge in the woods as the time for the delivery approaches. In the final confrontation, Xan and Theo face off outside the shelter where Julian and her newborn are hiding. Xan attempts to shoot Theo, but his shot misses its mark as he is distracted by the cry of a newborn child—a sound not heard for over 20 years. Theo returns fire, killing Xan. In the final moments of the book, Julian asks Theo to baptize the baby which he does, pulling from distant memories of the rite he had seen in his youth.\nBoth the book and the film are great stories, full of suspense and drama. They are well told, proving once again the power of literature to speak to the heart by drawing on universal truths. This is the reason we still read Shakespeare or the ancient Greek poets and playwrights: they tap into a universal truth that resonates with all humanity. P.D. James might not be at the level of Shakespeare, but the story line of The Children of Men resonates within us because it reaches deep down to what we all know and can understand: that human life is precious and deserves protection. It may sound cliché, but the novel reminds us that we don’t often realize the value of something until we lose it.\nThe author P.D. James called the book a “Christian fable” in an interview in 2001, but the prose is not overtly Christian or preachy. Theo is not religious himself, even though his name would suggest otherwise (“Theo” is derived from the Greek word Theos, meaning God). Julian’s character is religious but in a sentimental way. The faith gives her comfort, but there seems to be little knowledge of Christ. Luke the priest plays a supporting role but becomes a Christ figure in sacrificing his life to save Julian and her baby from a gang of thugs. Over all, faith is incorporated in a very balanced way and does not seemed forced.\nThe title of the book comes from a quotation of scripture used toward the end of the novel. Theo is saying prayers for Luke, the priest that has been killed. He prays from Psalm 90:3 of the King James Version:\nLord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made: thou art God from everlasting, and world without end. Thou turnest and to destruction; again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men. For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday: being that is past as a watch in the night.\nIn a world seemingly abandoned by God, with the destruction of the human race looming large, the title reflects the redemption offered by God. God offers hope by giving humanity a new start with the child growing in Julian’s womb. The new beginning for humanity found in the son that Julian is carrying can be likened to Christ offering a new beginning for humanity in His Incarnation.\nThe tragedy of the story is that humans used their intellectual and physical powers to stop babies from happening so much so that their bodies followed suit. When Julian conceives against the stark backdrop of a childless landscape, there is no doubt that there is a human child’s life at stake, and her companions risk everything to protect mother and baby. They know that if anything happens to Julian, that if the fetus dies, then a baby dies. And along with the baby, so dies hope for the future.\nIf what the comedian says is true, that abortion is merely stopping a baby from happening rather than killing a baby, this story would not carry the power that it does. The success of the novel and the acclaimed reception of the film adaptation show us how our society knows that the comedian is wrong. In The Children of Men, the power of literature to reveal universal truth is seen in a profound way.\nI highly recommend reading this book or watching the film. They don’t preach; they artfully reveal a universal truth. We now know more about conception and the development of children in the womb than ever before. We can use new technology and scientific knowledge to defend life. Stories like The Children of Men by P.D. James can also help to touch the conscience with the truth of the inherent value of human life, hopefully bringing more and more people to see just how precious human life really is. †\nAbout Fr. Matthew Stehling\nFr. Matthew was born and reared in Fredericksburg, Texas. After finishing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, he joined the Diocese of Tyler as a seminarian and was assigned to St. Joseph’s in Marshall. Father Matthew studied philosophy at the Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio where he earned his Bachelors of Philosophy. He then began his theological studies in Rome at the Universitá della Santa Croce (Holy Cross) where he completed his Bachelors of Sacred Theology. He was ordained a transitional deacon in October of 2012 at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and was ordained a priest on January 25, 2014 in Tyler at the Chapel of Sts. Peter and Paul. He was first assigned as parochial vicar at St. Michael’s Parish in Mt. Pleasant. After serving there for just over a year, he was named Administrator of St. Leo the Great Parish in Centerville and Priest-in-charge of St. Thomas More in Hilltop Lakes. In September of 2017, Father Matthew was named Pastor of Holy Family in Lindale, TX. Father also serves as Chaplain of the Catholic East Texas (the Diocesan magazine).","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line911396"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6374273896217346,"wiki_prob":0.3625726103782654,"text":"> Perception\n> About Series 2\nAbout Series 2\nEric McCormack and Rachael Leigh Cook return as Dr. Daniel Pierce, the professor with paranoid schizophrenia and FBI agent Kate Moretti who is willing to look past his peculiarities.\nIn series two, Dr. Pierce?s personal life is even more complicated than usual. He finds it difficult to walk away from his imaginary friendship with Natalie Vincent, but he must do so in order to embark on a romance with his doctor, Caroline Newsome ? both played by Kelly Rowan (The O.C.).\nSpecial guest star Scott Wolf joins the cast as Donnie, Kate's soon-to-be ex-husband. A charismatic, fast-rising Assistant U.S. Attorney who recently transferred back to Chicago, Donnie seems less concerned with doing what?s right than with doing what?s right for Donnie. While he claims his transfer back to Chicago was completely random, it's clear he has a hidden agenda involving Kate.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line779298"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5180068016052246,"wiki_prob":0.4819931983947754,"text":"Mark D. Boynton\n1001 West Fourth Street, Winston-Salem, NC USA 27101\nmboynton@kilpatricktownsend.com\nMark Boynton focuses his practice on the construction industry, including all aspects of construction and building defect litigation. Mr. Boynton has litigated matters in over twenty states representing owners, contractors, architects, engineers, surveyors, trades, material suppliers, and building product manufacturers. In addition to his work representing clients in adversarial proceedings, Mr. Boynton regularly advises clients regarding contract negotiation, project dispute resolution and project crisis management.\nMr. Boynton has extensive experience in alternative dispute resolution in the construction context and has represented clients in over 500 mediations and structured negotiation proceedings in numerous jurisdictions. As part of his practice, Mr. Boynton regularly speaks at in-house client seminars and continuing education programs on topics of risk management, contract negotiation and drafting, and dispute management.\nOutside of his practice, Mr. Boynton is extremely active in community arts organizations and the North Carolina Bar Association. In addition to having chaired the Litigation Section of the North Carolina Bar Association, Mr. Boynton co-authored the amendments of critical aspects of North Carolina's rules of civil procedure and civil costs statutes, formed the Committee on E-Discovery Rules, and co-chairs the Thorp Committee on Local Rules.\nMr. Boynton was named to Business North Carolina’s \"Legal Elite\" in 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2013. He was listed in The Best Lawyers in America® for Construction Law and Construction Litigation in 2020 and the eight years immediately preceding.\nRecord-Breaking Recognition for Kilpatrick Townsend in The Best Lawyers in America© 2020\n35 Kilpatrick Townsend Attorneys Named to the North Carolina Pro Bono Honor Society\nA \"Quadfecta\" for the Wake Forest Law School\nWFU Law School Declared Best in Nation for Trial Advocacy\nRecord-Breaking Recognition for Kilpatrick Townsend in The Best Lawyers in America® 2019\nKilpatrick Townsend's Mark Boynton Coaches Wake Forest to Historic National Trial Team Championship Win\nWake Forest University School of Law, J.D. (1997)\nUniversity of Virginia, B.A. (1991)\nU.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit\nU.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina\nU.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina\nU.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina\nAmerican Bar Association, Forum on the Construction Industry and Section of Litigation\nArts Council Endowment Fund, Inc., Secretary, Board of Directors\nForsyth County Arts Advocacy Committee, Member\nForsyth County Bar Association, Construction Law Section, Member\nLittle Theatre of Winston-Salem, Past President, Board of Directors\nNorth Carolina Bar Association, Member of Technology Advisory Committee, Member of Public Service Advisory Committee, Co-Chair of Civil Rules Committee, and Past Chair of Litigation Section\nNorth Carolina Theatre Conference, Board of Directors, Member","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line814754"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6074533462524414,"wiki_prob":0.6074533462524414,"text":"Concepts Videos News Motorsports Lifestyle Technology Tires Aftermarket Editorial\nPorsche 911 GT3 R - New Racing Version for International GT Sport\n6:18 PM PST - 11/24/2009 Written By: Porsche Cars North America, Inc.\nPhotography by: Porsche Cars NA\nPorsche 911 GT3 R Rear Source Porsche Cars NA\nStuttgart – November 19 -- Following the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup, Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, is entering yet another racing car in the 2010 motorsport season: The 911 GT3 R will be raced in series based on the international FIA GT3 regulations, succeeding the 911 GT3 Cup S. The main focus in developing this new model was on better drivability and easier handling.\nThe 911 GT3 R is powered by a four-liter six-cylinder boxer engine delivering maximum output of 480 hp (353 kW) transmitted to the rear axle by a sequential six-speed dog gearbox.\nThe starting point in developing the 911 GT3 R weighing just 1,200 kg or 2,646 lb was the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup presented in September for one-make cup racing. Thanks to its increase in engine size by 0.2 liters, the GT3 R offers 30 bhp more than the Cup model. Both cars are based on the extra-wide body of the 911 GT3 RS street-legal sports car.\nAn anti-lock brake system (ABS), traction control and an e-gas with “throttle-blip” function make it much easier to get used to this new GT3 racing car than its predecessor, meaning that the new model is also more appropriate for the ambitious amateur racing driver.\nFlared wheel arches added on to the body both front and rear bear clear testimony to the wider track than on the former model. And like all second-generation versions of the 911, the new 911 GT3 R also comes with striking LED rear light clusters.\nThe Porsche 911 GT3 R will make its world debut on January 14, 2010 at the Birmingham Motor Show. The car is built by Porsche’s Motorsport Department at the Weissach Development Centre and will be delivered to Customer Teams the world over as of spring 2010. The base price of the Porsche 911 GT3 RS is 279,000 Euros plus local sales tax/VAT.\nNOTE: The new Porsche 911 GT3 R does not meet the current specification requirements for the American Le Mans Series Challenge class, IMSA Patron GT3 Challenge by Yokohama, Rolex Grand-Am GT or the SPEED World Challenge GT, and therefore will not be imported to North America.\nAbout Porsche Cars North America, Inc.\nPorsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA), based in Atlanta, Ga., is the exclusive importer of Porsche vehicles for the United States. It is a wholly owned, indirect subsidiary of Dr. Ing.h.c. F. Porsche AG. PCNA employs approximately 180 people who provide Porsche vehicles, parts, service, marketing and training for its 201 dealers. The dealers, in turn, provide Porsche owners with best-in-class service. Throughout its 61-year history, Porsche has developed numerous technologies that have advanced vehicle performance, improved safety and spurred environmental innovations within the automotive industry. The company continues to celebrate its heritage by adding to its long list of motorsports victories dating back to its first 24 Hours of Le Mans class win in 1951. Today, with more than 28,000 victories, Porsche is recognized as the world's most successful brand in sports car racing. PCNA, which imports the iconic 911 series, the highly acclaimed Boxster and Cayman mid-engine sports cars, high-end Cayenne sport utility vehicle and the four-passenger Panamera Gran Turismo, strives to maintain a standard of excellence, commitment and distinction synonymous with its brand.\nFirst test drives with the Porsche LMP1 racing car\nThe new Porsche LMP1 racing car is currently being put through its paces in test drives on international circuits. Following its successful launch in June on the Porsche test track in Weissach, the prototype sports car ...\nPorsche celebrates 50 years of the 911 with limited edition\nPorsche 911 resolves apparent contradictions like no other sports car – such as between tradition and innovation or between exclusivity and high social acceptance, and of course between performance and efficiency...\n2014 Porsche 911 Turbo S\nOn this 40th anniversary Porsche is now presenting the new generation 911 Turbo and Turbo S – the technological and dynamic performance peak of the 911 serie...\nContests / Promotions\nDriving Programs\nAbout Us | Contact Us | Website Feedback | Advertising | Terms of Use RSS Feeds:\nSubscribe in a reader On the Web:\n© 2020 EuroCarNews.com Powered By: Magazine.NET - Online Magazine Software, an iD3 idcubed.com product.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line9711"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9879564642906189,"wiki_prob":0.9879564642906189,"text":"Kate hoax call: Scotland Yard contacts Australian police\nhttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20656911\nMedia captionDeputy commissioner Nick Kaldas, NSW Police: \"We've certainly opened up the lines of communication\"\nScotland Yard has been in touch with Australian police over the death of a nurse from the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for morning sickness.\nJacintha Saldanha, 46, died on Friday, days after she answered a prank phone call from Australian DJs pretending to be the Queen and Prince Charles.\nAn inquest into the apparent suicide is due to be opened this week.\nThe DJs responsible have been taken off air and are receiving counselling.\nSouthern Cross Austereo, owner of 2Day FM, held an emergency board meeting on Sunday, but made no comment afterwards.\nIt has suspended all advertising on the station until Monday, while DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian are on indefinite leave.\nThe pair are said to be in a fragile condition and receiving \"intense counselling\", because of the hostile reaction to their prank.\nMeanwhile, the Duke of Cambridge has cancelled his appearance at the British Military Tournament at Earl's Court in London on Sunday.\nA St James's Palace spokesman said he would spend the day \"privately with the duchess instead\".\nRegarding official contact, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: \"Officers have been in contact with Australian authorities.\"\nBy Phil MercerBBC News, Sydney\nLegal experts say that Australian DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian are unlikely to be prosecuted at home or in the UK over the tragic royal hospital prank because they hadn't shown \"guilty intent.\"\nHowever, the radio pair may well have violated the Surveillance Devices Act in the state of New South Wales. It prohibits the broadcasting of private conversations acquired using a \"listening device\".\nSanctions could also be imposed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. It is investigating whether 2Day FM breached its licence conditions or industry rules. ACMA could strip the station of its right to broadcast, although that is unlikely.\nStation bosses continue to stress that no laws were broken and that the pre-recorded spoof interview had been scrutinised and approved by lawyers before it was aired.\nAny pain the commercial radio network will feel will probably be financial, in the short term at least. Several anxious advertisers have already abandoned 2Day FM in response to a largely hostile reaction from the Australian public.\nIn certain circumstances, including when a death is sudden or unexpected, police report deaths to a coroner and can be involved in investigating the circumstances.\nThe deputy commissioner for New South Wales Police, Nick Kaldas, said: \"They haven't actually asked us to do anything yet, but we've certainly opened up the lines of communication and obviously we're happy to assist in any way we can.\"\nHe added: \"All I can say at the moment is that it's been indicated that the London Metropolitan Police may wish to speak to the people involved in the matter from 2Day FM.\n\"But we haven't been asked to do anything yet, and we certainly have not been asked to interview anyone, or line up any interviews for the Met.\"\nLegal experts say that the DJs are unlikely to be prosecuted in Australia or the UK because they had not shown \"guilty intent,\" reported BBC correspondent Phil Mercer in Sydney.\nStation bosses say no laws were broken and that the pre-recorded spoof interview had been approved by lawyers before it was aired.\nThe company board, including chairman Max Moore-Wilton, met on Sunday, but are not expected to release a statement until Monday.\nThey discussed the strongly worded letter received from the chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, where Catherine was being treated for acute morning sickness last week.\nIn it, Lord Glenarthur said it was \"truly appalling\" that the call, in which Mrs Saldanha transfers the caller to the duchess' nurse believing it to be the Queen, was approved by radio management before broadcast.\nImage caption Jacintha Saldanha was married with two children\nLord Glenarthur also said in his letter: \"The immediate consequence of these premeditated and ill-considered actions was the humiliation of two dedicated and caring nurses who were simply doing their job tending to their patients.\n\"The longer term consequence has been reported around the world and is, frankly, tragic beyond words.\"\nHe urged Mr Moore-Wilton to ensure such an incident was never repeated.\nA bouquet of flowers was left outside the hospital accommodation where Mrs Saldanha was found on Friday. An attached note said: \"We bless your soul.\"\nWhile Mrs Saldanha's husband and two children were being comforted at their home in Bristol, her extended family in her native India were coming to terms with her death.\nHer sister-in-law told AFP news agency from south-west India: \"We were shocked to hear from her husband that Jacintha was no more. He did not tell us that she committed suicide.\"\nShe added: \"Today we are going to the church to pray for her soul and for her children, who are going through a bad time.\"\nRoyal College of Nursing chief executive Peter Carter said the death was \"a tragedy that was avoidable\".\n\"This is the fallout from these hoaxes. We've seen them in the past. Rarely does it have the dramatic effect that it has had on this occasion.\"\nAustralian DJs face backlash over hoax death\nDuchess of Cambridge hoax call nurse found dead\nRoyal pregnancy: Hoax call fools Duchess of Cambridge hospital\n2Day FM\nSouthern Cross Austereo\nUK Sections","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1056125"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5119866132736206,"wiki_prob":0.5119866132736206,"text":"Global warming ended 15 years ago; 'mini-ice age' next...\nEnd Times and Current Events > Forum > General Category > Current Events > Weather/Earthquakes/Global Science Hoax's > Global warming ended 15 years ago; 'mini-ice age' next... > Message #68691\nAuthor Topic: Global warming ended 15 years ago; 'mini-ice age' next... (Read 4903 times)\nRe: Global warming ended 15 years ago; 'mini-ice age' next...\nThe EU Has Just Proven That The Paris Climate Accord Was Never About Climate!! Look What Was Discovered\nPlease share this and expose the truth!\nPresident Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord on Thursday but he also stated the U.S. would be willing to renegotiate the terms of the accord and enter a new agreement.\nHowever, the leaders of Europe made it clear that there would be no renegotiation.\nIf the accord is so dire and the U.S. withdrawing would cause cataclysmic damage to the world then how could they be opposed to renegotiating? Only if the true drive behind the accord isn't really about saving the world.\nIndependentsentinel.com reported: The European Union has rejected Donald Trump’s offer to renegotiate the Paris Treaty, proving it was always about bleeding the U.S. dry and appointing globalists as our governing bodies.\nThe Paris climate agreement is written so as to be an endless drain on the U.S. economy. If they cared about the climate, they’d work with us. It doesn’t help that we have traitors within our own country.\nThe leftists in this country will be not be dissuaded. A corrupt deal has been worked out with U.S. states and major corporations who will betray the President of the United States.\nNew York state and New York city, Pittsburgh, California, Washington, and Silicon Valley, among others have vowed to abide by the treaty that was never legally implemented by Barack Obama. The three states that signed up so far account for 25% of the U.S. GDP.\nIf the Paris treaty signatories can accept some of our states and municipalities, why can’t it be renegotiated? I guess it can be after all.\nThe treaty – which is recognized as a treaty by every other signatory – was never ratified by 2/3rds of the Senate. Former dictator Barack Obama ignored the Senate and simply called it an accord with the help of a complicit U.N.\nThe guardian reported that Angela Merkel, who is destroying her country’s sovereignty, said “nothing will stop us”; France’s Macron said he “respects this decision” but he thinks Trump made a “mistake for the U.S. and the planet”; and Theresa May of Britain is disappointed.\nWhile 195 nations say they support the agreement, not all have signed and most, if not all will not abide by it if history is precedent. Most nations don’t have to do a thing for more than a decade. The U.S. bore the burden and now our own countrymen will betray us to the globalists.\nThe non-binding climate pact called for voluntary compliance which most, probably all nations won’t carry through.\nThe Paris signatories believe Trump will be ousted in 2020 and this is only a bump in the road. They will hold out until then as they wait for the ultimate goal of having the U.S. to transfer the wealth and resources earned and developed by Americans.\nThe Paris agreement included the Green Climate fund which is, as President Trump described, one of the scams that demanded an immediate $100 billion from the U.S. and would increase over time. That is in addition to the billions we already send overseas.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line556502"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9233929514884949,"wiki_prob":0.9233929514884949,"text":"Jake Owen Album Available Now\nJAKE OWEN’S AMERICAN LOVE IS AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE TODAY\nOWEN ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCE IN NYC DURING RELEASE WEEK\nRCA NASHVILLE TO RELEASE A DUET VERSION OF OWEN’S HIT SINGLE\n“AMERICAN COUNTRY LOVE SONG” FEATURING RONNIE DUNN TO COUNTRY RADIO\nNashville, Tenn. – RCA Platinum recording artist Jake Owen is thrilled that his highly-anticipated fifth studio album, American Love, is available everywhere TODAY.\n“This is a great day! I spent a lot of time making sure that this album is full of songs that I think will make people smile and that I want to sing every night,” says Owen. “Unexpectedly, this recurring theme of love kept showing up even though I was experiencing some of the toughest times of my life while making this record. I took that as a sign to never give up on love. Love heals. Music heals. We all need to share some American Love right now in this country. I’m praying for better times for all of us.”\nOwen is looking forward to a busy release week in New York City. On August 1, he will perform his hit single “American Country Love Song” on ABC’s Good Morning America. On August 3, NASH FM 94.7 presents Jake Owen’s Album Release Show, which is a FREE SHOW in Madison Square Park kicking off at 7PM EST. For more information on the event, visit madisonsquarepark.org. Also this week, iHeartMedia presents Jake Owen Album Release Party On AT&T LIVE at the iHeartRadio Theater New York on August 2. The exclusive 60 minute event will feature an intimate Q&A and live performance, hosted by Bobby Bones. The event will broadcast across all iHeartCountry radio stations, stream on iHeartRadio.com/WatchATT and televise on the AUDIENCE Network on DIRECTV Ch 239 and U-verse Ch 1114 (where available) on August 5.\n“American Country Love Song” is currently No. 8 and climbing on Billboard Country Airplay & Country Aircheck’s Mediabase charts and has emerged as this year’s summer anthem.\nIn addition, at 2PM CT on August 1, RCA Nashville is sending a new duet version of “American Country Love Song” to country radio. Owen is being joined by one of his dear friends and musical influences, the tremendous vocalist Ronnie Dunn.\n“When I listen to this track, I can’t help but grin from ear to ear,” reflects Owen. “I was lucky enough to go on tour with Brooks & Dunn early in my career. I would sit out on the lawn of the amphitheaters and listen to their sound check every day. To have Ronnie’s voice on a song with me is a dream come true. I have always been such a fan and when I first heard ‘American Country Love Song,’ it reminded me of the Brooks & Dunn song ‘Only In America.’ I sent the song to Ronnie and asked him if he would sing on it with me. When I received an email back from him saying that he really liked the song and would send the track back to me with his vocal, I was like a kid on Christmas morning waiting with anticipation. And man, did he nail it! I still can’t believe it. I can’t wait to hear what people think about it.”\nAbout Jake Owen:\nJake Owen has had five No. 1 singles to date - the 2X PLATINUM anthem “Barefoot Blue Jean Night,” PLATINUM-certified hits “Beachin’,” “Anywhere with You,” “Alone with You” and “The One That Got Away.” The RCA Nashville recording artist will release his fifth studio album on July 29, 2016, produced by award-winning songwriters/producers Shane McAnally and Ross Copperman plus Owen co-produced three tracks, which marks his first time as a co-producer with Lukas Bracewell. The Vero Beach, FL native is well known for his high-energy performances and laid-back style.\nGarth Brooks & Lee Brice\nDavid Nail Fighter Tour\nGarth Brooks To Play Ryman\nDierks Bentley Black on Vinyl\nKenny Chesney - Pink Duet 7/28\nHillary Scott's New Album 7/29\nLuke Bryan At Gillette Stadium\nDavid Nail Fighter Out Now\nNew Miranda Lambert Song 7/18\nChris Young's New Video\nRascal Flatts Celebrates #1\nJason Aldean Album 9/9\nKenny Chesney New Title\nKenny Chesney New Album 10/28\nChris Lane Debut Album 8/5","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line543740"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7799609899520874,"wiki_prob":0.7799609899520874,"text":"Canadian Event Video Presentation\nVoter Data and the Impact of Privacy Legislation Gaps on Cybersecurity of Elections\nBy Fyscillia on Thursday, December 6, 2018\nIn Canada, there are both legislative gaps and ambiguity around the privacy obligations of political parties with respect to voter data. Despite the highly sensitive nature of political preferences, political parties have been largely exempt from formal obligations to protect personal information. Privacy legislation requires that entities adhere to fair information principles, which require notice and consent and limit the use, storage, and disclosure of personal information. However, Canadian political parties are not covered by the two main privacy statutes. Political parties are explicitly excluded from the Privacy Act, which regulates the public sector, and have been treated as exempt from PIPEDA, which regulates the private sector. Two recent bills by the federal government and Quebec have been proposed to strengthen the political parties’ privacy obligations, but lack clear minimal standards and enforcement mechanisms. This paper analyses the voter data privacy framework and identifies legislative gaps with respect to political parties. It explains how weak privacy law supports the lax marketing of voter data and permits voter data to be transferred to foreign actors. It argues that the privacy gaps raise cybersecurity risks for Canadian elections.\nThe slides of the presentation are also available here.\nDr. Elizabeth F. Judge is Professor of Law and a member of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. She specializes in intersections of law, technology, and policy.\ndata elections","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line392357"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5396338701248169,"wiki_prob":0.5396338701248169,"text":"Dr. Robert Oden, 1922 – May 18, 2008\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in Activism, characters, Community, Skiing /by mickbird\nBob Oden 1922–May 18, 2008\nDr. Bob Oden (that is pronounced O–Dane for non-Scandinavians) is one of the kindest, most beloved physicians in Aspen — a description he shares gladly with his close friend, Harold Whitcomb, aka Dr. Whit. The stories of his generosity and caring would fill many books as he has extended the principles of the Hippocratic oath to every facet of his life.\nMy husband tells me he “got to go to college” because of Dr. Bob. While Aspen stories abound about the good doctor, not many know this one. Bob was serving as chief flight surgeon in the Air Force during the Korean War. He was appalled to discover that his wounded colleagues were not getting proper care and seemed to have been forgotten. He lobbied acquaintance General Curtis LeMay (who was unaware of the veterans’ plight) to assure that proper benefits were allocated by the government. As a result, the G.I. Bill was successfully carried through the U.S. Congress, and many veterans were deservedly rewarded.\nDr. Bob served for many years as a U.S. Ski Team doctor and has been inducted into the national, Colorado, and Aspen ski halls of fame. He holds other honors — too many to list. However, his personal sense of accomplishment comes not with recognition but with the pleasure of watching his handiwork give success to people’s lives.\n– Georgia Hanson\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 03:52:002008-03-11 03:52:00Dr. Robert Oden, 1922 - May 18, 2008\nBridger Gile 1999\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in characters, Community, Family, school /by mickbird\nBridger Gile 1999–present\nHi, my name is Bridger Gile. After being featured in two Warren Miller Films, winning a NASTAR national title and skiing 80 days a year, I am finally attending kindergarten. At first I was worried that school was going to squeeze my ski time, but like any true Aspen local, I think I’ve figured out a way to get in plenty of vertical — half-time kindergarten and the new Deep Temerity lift at Highlands!\nI can’t wait for winter, although summer hasn’t been so bad. I’ve been playing soccer, golf, competing on the swim team, riding my bike, and working on my cliff-hucking (jumping the punchbowl at the Grottos). I even got to go to France to see Lance Armstrong win the Tour. That was exciting!\nWax up those skis and I’ll see you on the hill soon.\n(written by Bridger – 2005 – with a little help!)\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 03:48:002008-03-11 03:48:00Bridger Gile 1999\nBill Heron – 1897 to 1970’s\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in Community, Culture, Family /by mickbird\nBill Herron 1897–circa 1970s\nBill Herron was an Aspen-born, lifelong silver miner who staunchly believed that the mining glory days in his beloved hometown would return.\nAs a newcomer in the early 1950s, I first saw Bill and a few old-timers clustered around the brass spittoon wisely provided by the postmaster, Alton Beck, in the post office (now Amen Wardy’s site). They were peering through the steamy window, watching skiers on Aspen Mountain. They used the P.O. as a warm place to meet and talk. “Look at them crazy snowsliders. You ask me, they got rocks in their heads, messing around like that!”\nThat was Bill Herron addressing his cronies. It was mystifying to them that these strangers were paying money to play in the snow, on the same steep mountainside that all the miners had to climb to get to work during the “good old days.”\nI met Bill at his mother’s home on Main Street (now Herron Apartments). He lived with Cassie, his 85-year-old mother, but his real headquarters was the Red Onion. Since our family’s bed-and-breakfast inn was across the street, I’d visit with Cassie often and hear the latest gossip.\nBill and his pals took comfort in “Beer Gulch,” sharing pitchers and moodily recalling how things used to be before the music people and snowsliders discovered Aspen. Beer was the drink of choice, unless someone stood them to something a bit stronger. It was beer, and Bill’s fondness for it, that was undoubtedly the reason the town marshal took Bill’s driver’s license away: “For his own good and that of the rest of town too.”\nHis ancient Ford was retired among Cassie’s lilac bushes, between the rhubarb patch and the woodshed. “When are you going to get rid of that thing?” she’d ask. Bill would shrug, “Don’t know, maybe when I get my license back.”\nAlmost every night, Bill would carry a hot meal home to his mother. He’d get the cook to wrap up the Onion’s special, and he’d walk clear across town with it, through stormy weather, if need be. It would always be a surprise meal for Cassie, because she never knew when he’d arrive or what he’d bring.\nHis Irish charm and inborn gallantry was a delight. There was always a slight bow, a tip of his hat and a flattering word when we met. He complimented our children and our “lucky husbands.” He was a gentleman.\nBill moved to a boarding house in Glenwood Springs when Cassie died in 1962. We’d see him down at one of the riverside bars, where his portrait hung on the wall and he still held forth with a diminishing group of old-timers. He’d insist on buying us a beer, and we’d try to satisfy his curiosity about Aspen’s goings on.\nWhen we asked about him a few months later, a grizzled old man mournfully shook his head.\n“Old Bill has gone and died — left us for good.”\n– Jony Larrowe\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 02:58:002008-03-11 02:58:00Bill Heron - 1897 to 1970's\nBil Dunaway – 1923\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in characters, Community, Politics, Skiing /by mickbird\nBil Dunaway 1923\nBil Dunaway was a great newspaper publisher and has a huge heart, but what he was known best for around The Aspen Times was his fiscal conservatism. On any given day, he could be found up on the roof dabbing tar on a leak, shoveling the sidewalk, repairing a toilet with baling wire or whacking the furnace into compliance. Often when talking with me at my desk he would, unable to bear the waste, reach out and turn off my electric typewriter.\nOne morning, shortly after I had pointed out that his vinyl office chair was in tatters, we found what appeared to be a crop circle on the carpet of the ad office. Bil had cut out a circle of newsprint, laid it on the floor, placed his chair in the center and spray-painted it, leaving a ring of black sunburst.\nGod love him, he is the least pretentious person in Aspen.\nSu Lum\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 02:50:002008-03-11 02:50:00Bil Dunaway - 1923\nBetty Jane Harbour – circa 1950 arrival\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in characters, Memorable moments, Skiing, Sports /by mickbird\nBetty Jane Harbour\nFrom Port Arthur, Texas, Betty Jane Harbour came to Aspen around 1950 with her husband Jack. She built the houses that bracket the east end of Castle Creek bridge.\nBetty had a smile that could melt boilerplate and a foghorn of a voice. In the ’60s, during a whiteout on Aspen Mountain, Betty left the Sundeck with her ski class of 14. By the time they reached Little Nell, there were 44 terrified skiers following the sound of her voice.\nAfter Jack’s death, Betty traveled the world, hunting big game in Alaska and living in the Maharani palace in Katmandu. She trekked to Everest base camp three times — after losing a kneecap when her Norwegian Dun slipped and fell on her. Though she’d never finished high school, she enrolled at CU in Astrogeophysics just as her daughter Cyndie was finishing her master’s.\nBetty died while she was building her fifth house, in the mountains of northern New Mexico. She’d been living in the first and only completed part of the house — and the most important to her — the observatory tower.\n– Doug Franklin\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 02:46:002008-03-11 02:46:00Betty Jane Harbour - circa 1950 arrival\nBarry Smith\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in Activism, characters, Humor, Politics /by mickbird\nBarry Smith 1966\nFull-time humorist and former audio-visual guy, Barry Smith has, in 15 years of living here, unassumingly become a modern-day embodiment of the “Aspen Idea.” Not content with writing an award-winning weekly column in The Aspen Times, writing and directing award-winning short films, writing and performing award-winning theater (his monologue “Jesus in Montana” won Outstanding Solo show at the 2005 Fringe Festival in New York City), Barry also writes poetry, entertains a vast number of friends with anecdotes and observations, convenes a weekly writers’ salon, and is planning to tour his stage show\n— among other creative projects.\nIf this makes Barry sound like an overachieving Renaissance man\n— wait, it gets worse. He can also be found playing blues guitar, snowboarding, hiking, biking and trying not to topple over while holding complex yoga poses.\nPopular theory may hold that the Aspen Idea is as much a shadow of the past as smooth-running traffic on Main Street, but Barry is proof that the Idea still flows on.\nKatherine Sand\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 02:41:002008-03-11 02:41:00Barry Smith\nAspen State Teachers College\nMarch 11, 2008 /0 Comments/in Activism, characters, Community, Culture, Memorable moments /by mickbird\nDr. Slats Cabbage “The Dr. of Fluid Mechanics” (aka Marc Demmon) 1951–present\nSlats was the manager for the Aspen Mine Company and announced “this will be your headquarters for the new mall construction.” He told me about the Aspen State Teacher’s College and immediately dubbed me the Dean of Destruction. I think the “Cabbage Racing Team” was the spark that made the college a reality. Slats and I walked into City Market and he was carrying a 6-inch bolt in his hands. He walked up to the produce manager and said he wanted a big cabbage.\n“One that will fit on this bolt!”\nIt became the hood ornament for the “Screamin’ Eagle” No. 137 race car.\nASTC was one of the cleverest ideas in America, and Slats and Al together were a formidable, hilarious team to watch. “Who the hell is Slats Cabbage?” Those who don’t know him have really missed something!\n– Big Jim Furniss, ASTC alumnus\nAl Pendorf “Dean Fulton Bagley 1938–present\nWhat can I say? It was the ’70s. I moved into an apartment with Jack the Butcher and a third “mystery roommate.” I lived there for weeks before I ever met this other guy, but we left notes trying to figure each other out.\nFinally, we bumped into each other in the hall and I met Al Pendorf, a man on the go (and it was not just work). As the offseason waned (there really was an offseason then), we looked at each other one fall evening and decided to go into town to check out the “freshman class” of new winter season arrivals. Ah, thought Al, we had a freshman class but no school.\nThat was the start of it all: Aspen State Teacher’s College, a spoof in which “the whole town is the college. Classes are taught everywhere.”\nAl was in the printing business (not to mention a very strange puzzle contest “business”). It was a natural fit to produce a handbook and a school paper called “The Clean Sweep.” Al, known as Dean Fulton Begley, teamed up with Slats Cabbage and Aspen State Teachers College became very real (including T-shirts, a marching band, a football team that always won by default) to all of us “students of the ’70s.”Don’t miss the ASTC alumni reunion at the Elks on Oct. 8. We are still trying to find someone who actually graduated.\n– Maddy Lieb, Class of …\nhttps://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg 0 0 mickbird https://aspenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/logo-2019.jpg mickbird2008-03-11 02:20:002008-03-11 02:20:00Aspen State Teachers College","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line209256"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7923081517219543,"wiki_prob":0.7923081517219543,"text":"Giancarlo Mari, MD, Named Chairman for Obstetrics and Gynecology\nLacey Smith, MD, interim dean of the College of Medicine for UTHSC, has announced the appointment of Giancarlo Mari, MD, as chairman for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, Memphis.\nLacey Smith, MD, interim dean of the College of Medicine for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), has announced the appointment of Giancarlo Mari, MD, as chairman for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, Memphis. The Memphis campus is one of three College of Medicine campuses that are part of the UT Health Science Center.\nDr. Mari joined the UTHSC faculty in 2008 as director of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. He served in various capacities including vice-chair of OB/GYN, director of the Tennessee Institute of Feto-Maternal and Infant Health, director of the High-Risk Obstetrics Center of Excellence at the Regional Medical Center, and interim chair for the Department of OB/GYN since August 2009.\n“Giancarlo has been quite an asset to UTHSC, and I am very pleased that he has become the permanent chairman,” said Interim Dean Smith. “He has made significant contributions to strengthening the Department of OB/GYN. Even while interim, he has expressed a very positive strategy for growth and commitment. We expect results, and he will deliver.”\nThe search committee, ably led by Russell Chesney, MD, professor and chairman of the Department of Pediatrics, evaluated a group of outstanding candidates for the position. Dr. Mari emerged as the leader among a field of distinguished candidates. Dr. Chesney stated, “Dr. Mari will be a formidable leader for the Department of OB/GYN. His vast knowledge and experience will be a major asset to the faculty as well as the resident trainees.”\nDr. Mari was born in Salerno, Italy, where he received his undergraduate, graduate as well as medical training from the University of Naples, Italy, receiving his medical degree in 1982. He completed his residency/internship training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Yale University School of Medicine as well as the Ospedale Maggiore and Universita’ di Napoli, in Parma and Napoli, Italy, respectively. Dr. Mari furthered his medical training by completing a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine with Yale University School of Medicine and two research fellowships completed at Baylor College of Medicine in obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatric cardiology.\nPrior to joining the faculty of UTHSC, he served as professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Wayne State University, where he also served as the director of Diagnostic Endoscopy and Fetal Therapy. Dr. Mari has garnered numerous honors, most recently being named one of the Best Doctors in America® 2011-2012. An internationally renowned speaker, he delivers expert presentations on different topics in maternal fetal medicine. Dr. Mari is not only revered as one of the top maternal-fetal medicine physicians internationally, but he is an accomplished researcher with extensive publications to his credit; many of which he is first author.\n“My goal is to continue to build a stronger team and academic program at UTHSC that will fulfill the core of our mission,” Dr. Mari noted. “My plan is to develop new OB/GYN programs and to strengthen and consolidate our partnership through UT Medical Group with the Regional Medical Center, Baptist, St. Francis and the Methodist systems.”","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line794918"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6658957004547119,"wiki_prob":0.6658957004547119,"text":"Development of an 'Equipment to manage a difficult airway during anaesthesia' professional document using a new evidence-based approach\nScott, D.A.; Merry, A.F.\nAnaesthesia and Intensive Care 38(1): 11-12\nEquipment to manage a difficult airway during anaesthesia. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 39(1): 16-34, 2011\nA response to 'Airway Alerts. How the UK anaesthetists organise, document and communicate difficult airway management', Barron FA et al., Anaesthesia 2003; 58: 73-6. Anaesthesia 58(6): 618-9; Discussion 619, 2003\nManagement of the anticipated difficult airway--a systematic approach: continuing Professional Development. Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia 56(9): 683-701, 2009\nThe reinforced laryngeal mask airway (LMA) as an alternative airway device to manage the difficult airway. Pediatric Dentistry 20(7): 422-424, 1998\nPutting evidence into practice: an evidence-based approach to continuing professional development. Evidence & Policy A Journal of Research Debate and Practice 2(1): 27-45, 2006\nAirway alerts: how UK anaesthetists organise, document and communicate difficult airway managment. Anaesthesia 57(10): 1046-1046, 2002\n'Airway Alerts'. How UK anaesthetists organise, document and communicate difficult airway management. Anaesthesia 58(1): 73-77, 2003\nBronchoscope-guided intubation through a Laryngeal Mask Airway Supreme in a patient with a difficult-to-manage airway. Journal of Anesthesia 23(4): 613-615, 2010\nUsing the laryngeal mask airway to manage the difficult airway. Anesthesiology Clinics of North America 20(4): 863-870, 2002\nUsing the laryngeal mask airway to manage the difficult airway. Anesthesiology Clinics of North America 20(4): 863-70, Vii, 2003\nTraining experts in difficult airway management: Evaluation of a continuous professional development program. Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine 35(2): 115-121, 2017\nHow to diagnose and manage difficult problems of calcium metabolism in sarcoidosis: an evidence-based review. Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine 17(5): 297-302, 2012\nA response to 'Difficult Airway Society guidelines for management of the unanticipated difficult intubation', Henderson JJ, Popat MT, Latto IP and Pearce AC, Anaesthesia 2004; 59: 675-94. Anaesthesia 59(11): 1152, 2004\nDevelopment of a medical equipment support information system based on PDF portable document. Zhongguo Yi Liao Qi Xie Za Zhi 34(4): 273-275, 2012\nAirway management in adult scheduled anaesthesia (difficult airway excepted). Annales Francaises D'anesthesie et de Reanimation 22 Suppl 1: 60s-80s, 2003","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line346492"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6533392667770386,"wiki_prob":0.3466607332229614,"text":"By: lyriquediscorde 18 Aug 2015 18 Aug 2015\nBlogging, Film Listography, Movie quotes, Movie Trailers, Movies, My Top 309 Songs, Being John Malkovich, Bick, Blogging, Boyhood, Comet, Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ex-Machina, Film Listography, Fish Tank, Ghost World, Henry and June, Her, Lists, Lost in Translation, Magnolia, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Me Without You, movie quotes, Movie Trailers, Movies, Mulholland Drive, My Own Private Idaho, My Top 30, Only Lovers Left Alive, Requiem for a Dream, Ruby Sparks, Stranger Than Fiction, Stranger Than Paradise, The Babadook, The Doom Generation, The Sweet Hereafter, The Truman Show, Tonight You're Mine, Until the End of the World, Wild at Heart\nUnique Art House films I’ve seen :: FilmListography\nList unique art house films you’ve seen\ncourtesy of Film Listography : Your Life In (Play)Lists\n1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)\nWritten by Charlie Kaufman, Pierre Bismuth and Michel Gondry\nDirected by Michel Gondry\n“This is it, Joel. It’s going to be gone soon.” ~ Clementine\n2. Lost in Translation (2003)\nWritten and Directed by Sofia Coppola\n“You’ll figure that out. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” ~ Bob\n3. Boyhood (2014)\nWritten and Directed by Richard Linklater\n“Because I don’t have all the answers.” ~ Mom\n4. Henry and June (1990)\nWritten by Anais Nin, Philip Kaufman and Rose Kaufman\nDirected by Philip Kaufman\n“Love? You just want experience. You’re a writer. You make love to whatever you need. You’re just like Henry.” ~ June\n5. Me Without You (2001)\nWritten by Sandra Goldbacher and Laurence Coriat\nDirected by Sandra Goldbacher\n“There’s no me without you!” ~ Marina\n6. Wild at Heart (1990)\nWritten by Barry Gifford and David Lynch\nDirected by David Lynch\n“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.” ~ Lula\n7. Brick (2005)\n“I’ve got knives in my eyes, I’m going home sick.” ~ Brendan\n8. Mulholland Drive (2001)\nWritten and Directed by David Lynch\n“When you see the girl in the picture that was shown to you earlier today, you will say, “this is the girl”. The rest of the cast can stay, that’s up to you. But the choice for that lead girl is NOT up to you. Now… you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me… two more times, if you do bad. Good night.” ~ Cowboy\n9. Fish Tank (2009)\nWritten and Directed by Andrea Arnold\n“You need sortin’ out, you do.” ~ Connor\n10. Donnie Darko (2001)\nWritten and Directed by Richard Kelly\n“Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?” ~ Frank\n11. Magnolia (1999)\nWritten and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson\n“The book says, “We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” ~ Jimmy\n12. Stranger Than Fiction (2006)\nWritten by Zach Helm\nDirected by Marc Forster\n“I brought you some flours.” ~ Harold\n13. Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)\nWritten by Marion Bessay and Jim Jarmusch\n“How can you’ve live for so long and still not get it? This self obsession is a waste of living. It could be spend in surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing. You have been pretty lucky in love though, if I may say so.” ~ Eve\n14. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)\nWritten by Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan\nDirected by Atom Egoyan\n“She loved us both equally then… Just as she hates us both equally now.” ~ Mitchell\n15. Ex Machina (2015)\nWritten and Directed by Alex Garland\n“Isn’t it strange, to create something that hates you?” ~ Ava\n16. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)\nWritten and Directed by Jim Jarmusch\n“You know, it’s funny… you come to someplace new, an’… and everything looks just the same.” ~ Eddie\n17. 9 Songs (2004)\nWritten and Directed by Michael Winterbottom\n“Sometimes you have to have faith in people.” ~ Lisa\n18. Tonight You’re Mine (2011)\nWritten by Thomas Leveritt\nDirected by David Mackenzie\n“Nobody is going to save the planet but you folks, you know that? You cram a hundred thousand people together, no music. What do you get? A riot. You give them music, we all in this together. Music turns a mob into a movement.” ~ The Prophet\n19. My Own Private Idaho (1991)\nWritten by William Shakespeare and Gus Van Sant\nDirected by Gus Van Sant\n“I’m a connoisseur of roads. I’ve been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.” ~ Mike\n20. Until the End of the World (1991)\nWritten by Michael Almereyda, Solveig Dommartin and Wim Wenders\nDirected by Wim Wenders\n“Life ends. But I’ve seen, finally, after these years. This is our story, my darling. What a chase it has been. What a dance.” ~ Edith\n21. Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)\nWritten and Directed by Miranda July\n“We have a whole life to live together you fucker, but it can’t start until you call.” ~ Christine\n22. Being John Malkovich (1999)\nWritten by Charlie Kaufman\nDirected by Spike Jonze\n“You don’t know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer. And all I ask in return is the opportunity to do my work. And they won’t allow it… because I raise issues.” ~ Craig\n23. Requiem for a Dream (2000)\nWritten by Hubert Selby Jr.and Darren Aronofsky\nDirected by Darren Aronofsky\n“Somebody like you can really make things all right for me.” ~ Harry\n24. Her (2013)\nWritten and Directed by Spike Jonze\n“We are only here briefly, and in this moment I want to allow myself joy.” ~ Amy\n25. Comet (2014)\nWritten and Directed by Sam Esmail\n“And whatever universe that is that’s the one where my heart lives in.” ~ Dell\n26. Ruby Sparks (2012)\nWritten by Zoe Kazan\nDirected by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris\n“I’m not writing about you. I wrote you.” ~ Calvin\n27. The Babadook (2014)\nWritten and Directed by Jennifer Kent\n“I’m sick, Sam. I need help. I just spoke with Mrs. Roach. We’re gonna stay there tonight. You want that? I wanna make it up for you, Sam. I want you to meet your dad. It’s beautiful there. You’ll be happy.” ~ Amelia\n28. The Truman Show (1998)\nWritten by Andrew Niccol\nDirected by Peter Weir\n“You never had a camera in my head!” ~ Truman\n29. Ghost World (2001)\nWritten by Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff\nDirected by Terry Zwigoff\n“I can’t relate to 99% of humanity.” ~ Seymour\n30. The Doom Generation (1995)\nWritten and Directed by Gregg Araki\n“Ever feel like reality is more twisted than dreams?” ~ Jordan\nWoodland Hills, Los Angeles, CA, USA\nPosted by:lyriquediscorde\nLos Angeles writer, dreamer and gypsy soul who harbors an obsessive love of music and lyrics, and writes about them with passion and insight, as well as waxing poetic on books, films, tv, travel, and life itself.\nJoseph Arthur :: My Favorite Artists/Bands\nSo I’ll give you some songs and sunshine","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1448017"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.746338963508606,"wiki_prob":0.25366103649139404,"text":"Is city land Turtle Bay wants (hypothetically) worth $7.4 million?\nToday someone e-mailed me an \"impartial analysis\" of the Turtle Bay land deal done by Redding City Attorney Rick...\nIs city land Turtle Bay wants (hypothetically) worth $7.4 million? Today someone e-mailed me an \"impartial analysis\" of the Turtle Bay land deal done by Redding City Attorney Rick... Check out this story on redding.com: http://reddingne.ws/2k7ARC7\nRedding Published 7:14 p.m. PT May 29, 2014\nToday someone e-mailed me an \"impartial analysis\" of the Turtle Bay land deal done by Redding City Attorney Rick Duvernay. The paragraph that caught my eye:\n\"Three independent appraisers calculated the unrestricted fee simple value of the 14.17 acres to be $2,397,500, $7,400,000 and $4,390,000 respectively, and the adjusted “leased-fee value” to be $443,000, $75,000 and $175,000. The City Council approved an agreement to sell the 14.17 acres to McConnell for $600,000.\"\nHere's the whole thing:\nCity Attorney’s Impartial Analysis\nIn 1992, the City leased approximately 60 acres of land to Turtle Bay Exploration Park (Turtle Bay) for construction and operation of a museum complex.. From 1992 to 2010, Turtle Bay developed the museum and the City annually allocated funds for museum operations. In 2010, due to the recession, the City eliminated funding for Turtle Bay operations.\nTurtle Bay desires to privately finance and construct a hotel and restaurant (Hotel Project) within its leasehold to support museum operations and reduce reliance on financial assistance from others, including The McConnell Foundation (McConnell). Lease amendments were requested by Turtle Bay and approved by the City to facilitate financing of the Hotel Project.\nThe City sought a determination from the State Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) whether construction of the Hotel Project would require payment of prevailing wages. Prevailing wages are generally higher wage rates required by law to be paid to construction workers working on publicly funded projects. DIR initially determined the Hotel Project was not publicly funded. DIR subsequently reversed its determination, finding the City’s failure to seek rent from Turtle Bay when the lease was amended amounted to public funding of the Hotel Project.\nAccording to Turtle Bay, the Hotel Project is not economically feasible if prevailing wages must be paid. Proponents of the Referendum contend that Turtle Bay can afford to pay prevailing wages.\nMcConnell offered to purchase the Hotel Project site to address DIR’s decision and eliminate any question regarding public funding or the prevailing wage requirement. The City Council authorized negotiations with McConnell for the sale of 14.17 acres within the leasehold, approximately five acres for the Hotel Project, and another nine acres for future commercial development to further support Turtle Bay operations.\nThe City and McConnell agreed the sale price should be based on the fair market value of the City’s leased-fee interest. This amount represents the current value of property to an owner after taking into consideration rights conveyed to a tenant in a present and binding lease. Proponents of the Referendum contend the property, if sold, should be sold for its unrestricted fee simple value; i.e. the value of the property as commercially developable by the owner without any lease restrictions in place.\nThree independent appraisers calculated the unrestricted fee simple value of the 14.17 acres to be $2,397,500, $7,400,000 and $4,390,000 respectively, and the adjusted “leased-fee value” to be $443,000, $75,000 and $175,000. The City Council approved an agreement to sell the 14.17 acres to McConnell for $600,000.\nA “yes” vote would authorize the sale. The City would receive $600,000 for the property and the City, County and State would receive future tax revenues if the property is developed. The City would relinquish all rights as owner and lessor of the 14.17 acres. McConnell would become the owner and lessor, instead of the City. Turtle Bay would remain the tenant. The City would retain typical land use regulatory control over development and use of the property.\nA “no” vote would terminate the transaction.\nTHE ABOVE STATEMENT IS AN IMPARTIAL ANALYSIS OF REFERENDUM MEASURE__. MEASURE __ IS A REFERENDUM THAT QUALIFEED FOR THE BALLOT BY OBTAINING A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF SIGNATURES TO CHALLENGE A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF REDDING APPROVING THE SALE OF 14.17 ACRES OF LAND TO THE MCCONNELL FOUNDATION. IF YOU DESIRE A COPY OF RESOLUTION No. 2014-025, PLEASE CALL THE CITY CLERK’S OFFICE AT (530) 225-4055 AND A COPY WILL BE MAILED AT NO COST TO YOU.\nRick Duvernay Redding City Attorney\nHere's an e-mailed response from Tom Curato of the REVOLT group:\nThanks for the info Marc.\nMy attorney had already sent this to me and I wasn't going to disseminate the analysis until I verified that the City Attorney had filed this with the City Clerk. I did verify that this afternoon.\nWe've caught a lot of flack over using the number $4.39 million by several people who think we're just spreading false numbers to bolster our argument. One of those being a prominent real estate agent who claims to have a lot of experience with appraisals. He has strongly defended these appraisals in public settings including a recent 'Speak Your Piece' article where once again he tries to discredit the information by addressing where the information came from. He states, 'No one seems to know for sure, other than it was stated by a citizen who testified at a Redding City Council meeting.\n​The first falsehood to that statement about no one knowing for sure could have been alleviated by him simply calling me.​ Not only do we know for sure...but we know exactly where it came from!\nThe second exposure to that statement is the realization that he must not have even read the appraisals or he would have known where the $4.39 million came from. In fact, had he read any of the appraisals he would have known there was a higher value attached to the land (sans lease).\nThis all circles right back to one of the big issues of the land sale, that being there is nothing in the deed restrictions guarantying the lease to stay in effect for 88 years. I will ask again, \"If you're going to discount land worth $4.39 million (oh...wait...$7.4 million!) down to $600,000 based upon an 88 year lease, then shouldn't the lease be required to last 88 years?!\"\nI contend that the discounted value of almost 92% due to the lease is nothing more than a shell game and no matter how pretty of a 'dog and pony' show the Sacramento PR firm puts on, the majority of the public won't buy it!!\nTom Curato\nBusiness Agent / Recruiter\nUA Local 228\nRead or Share this story: http://reddingne.ws/2k7ARC7","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1446987"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5251365900039673,"wiki_prob":0.5251365900039673,"text":"Highlights of the Bill\nThe Bill amends the Companies Act, 2013 in relation to structuring, disclosure and compliance requirements for companies.\nThe Act limits the number of intermediary companies through which investments can be made in a company. Similarly, the Act limits the number of layers of subsidiaries a company can have. The Bill removes these limits.\nThe Act requires an individual who has a beneficial interest in the shares of a company to disclose the same. The Bill also requires a group of persons who exercise beneficial control (above 25%) in a company to disclose such interest.\nUnder the Act, a separate offer letter should be issued to individuals to whom a private offer of shares has been made. The Bill removes the requirement of such offer letter, but retains the provision related to notifying the Registrar of the return of allotment.\nThe Act permits the appointment of members at the level of Joint Secretary to the quasi- judicial tribunal. Under the Bill, a technical member must be at least of the level of an Additional Secretary.\nKey Issues and Analysis\nThe Bill removes the limit on layers of subsidiaries and intermediaries. This is in line with the Companies Law Committee’s (CLC) recommendations which noted that imposing such limits would affect the company’s structuring and ability to raise funds.\nThe Bill permits an Independent Director to have a pecuniary relationship, up to 10% of his total income, with the company. This is in line with the reasoning of the CLC which had stated that minor transactions may not compromise the independence of such Directors.\nCertain recommendations of the CLC have not been included in the Bill. These include issues related to: (i) residence requirements for directors; and (ii) compliance requirements for dormant companies.\nThe Bill amends provisions related to (i) the qualifications of technical members, and (ii) the composition of the Selection Committee of the National Companies Law Tribunal and the National Companies Law Appellate Tribunal. The amendments bring these provisions in line with a 2015 Supreme Court judgment.\nPART A: HIGHLIGHTS OF THE BILL\nThe Companies Act, 2013 regulates the incorporation and functioning of all types of public and private companies. The 2013 Act came into effect on April 1, 2014 and replaced the earlier Companies Act, 1956. However, different sections of the 2013 Act were notified at different times, and some are yet to be notified.\nSince 2014, several companies reported challenges with the implementation of the 2013 Act.[1] They included issues with compliance requirements for public and private companies and inconsistencies with general accounting standards. In 2015, the Act was amended to address certain challenges with respect to the criteria for setting up public and private companies and fraud reporting by auditors.[2] In June 2015, the government set up the Companies Law Committee to examine issues arising out of the implementation of the 2013 Act. The Committee submitted its report in February 2016.1 Also, in 2015, the Supreme Court held certain provisions related to the quasi-judicial tribunals set up under the 2013 Act as invalid.[3]\nIn March 2016, the Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was introduced in Lok Sabha. This Bill is mainly based on the recommendations of the Companies Law Committee.[4] The Bill was then referred to the Standing Committee on Finance for examination.\nThe Bill amends the Companies Act, 2013. Table 1 captures key provisions of the 2013 Act and changes proposed by the 2016 amendments.\nTable 1: Key changes proposed in the 2016 Bill compared with provisions of the 2013 Act:\nCompanies (Amendment) Bill, 2016\nMemorandum of a company [contains details of the company, its objectives, information of shareholders, etc.] (Section 4)\n· Memorandum must specify the objects for which the company is being incorporated, and other related matters.\n· Memorandum may contain general objects which state that the company may engage in any lawful act or activity or business.\n· If the memorandum contains specific objects, it cannot pursue anything outside those objects.\nPrivate placement [offer of securities by a company to a select group of persons, as opposed to a public offer.] (Section 42)\n· Separate offer letter to be given to private individuals. A record of such offers must be filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) in 30 days;\n· After making an allotment of securities, company must file a return of allotment with the RoC.\n· Removes the requirement of issuing a separate offer letter, and recording such offers with the RoC.\n· Retains provision related to filing of return of allotment with the RoC.\nForward dealing [purchasing securities of a company at a price in the future] (Section 194)\nInsider trading [publicly trading stocks with insider information about a company.] (Section 195)\n· Prohibits forward dealing in securities by the Director or key managerial personnel (KMPs).\n· Prohibits insider trading by all persons in a company, including the Director and KMPs\n· Deletes provisions related to prohibition of forward dealing and insider trading.\n[They are regulated under the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015.[5]]\nCap on investments through layers (Section 186)\n· Investments in a company cannot be made through more than two layers of investment companies.\n· Removes the restrictions on number of layers of investment companies.\nCap on layers of subsidiaries\n(Section 2 (87))\n· Permits the central government to impose a cap on the layers of subsidiaries a company can have.\n· Removes the restrictions on number of layers of subsidiaries of a company.\nIndependent directors\n(Section 149 (6))\n· Independent directors to have no monetary (pecuniary) relationship with the company.\n· Allows independent directors to have pecuniary interest up to 10% of their income. The amount may be modified by the central government.\nBeneficial interest [right to obtain benefits of a share when ownership is by the shareholder or by another.] (Section 89)\n· A person who has a beneficial interest in a company’s shares must declare the same;\n· The term ‘beneficial interest’ is not defined.\n· Defines beneficial interest in a share to include, in respect of such shares: (i) the right to exercise all rights, or (ii) to receive dividend.\nSignificant beneficial interest (Section 90)\n· Does not contain provision related to significant beneficial interest.\n· Adds that those who hold beneficial interest of more than 25% of the company’s shares (either alone or with someone) must declare it.\nSubsidiary company\n(Section 2(87))\nAssociate company\n(Section 2(6))\n· Subsidiary company is one in which a parent company holds more than 50% of its shares (includes equity and preferential shareholders).\n· Associate company is one where another company holds at least 20% of its shares (includes equity and preferential shareholders).\n· Replaces the term shares with voting power. Preferential shareholders, who do not have voting power are excluded.\nAcceptance of deposits by companies\n(Section 73 (2) (d), (e))\n· If a company accepts deposits from its members, it must fulfil several conditions related to security and repayment, including:\n· providing deposit insurance;\n· certifying that the company has not committed any default in the repayment of, or on the payment of interest on such deposits.\n· Omits the requirement of providing deposit insurance.\n· Permits companies that have previously defaulted to accept deposits if five years have passed from such default, and the earlier dues have been paid.\nManagerial remuneration\n(Section 197)\n· If managerial remuneration exceeds prescribed limits, approval of the central government and shareholders must be obtained.\n· Omits the requirement of obtaining approval from the central government.\nLoans to directors\n· A company is not allowed to advance any loan to its directors or to any person in whom the director is interested.\n· Allows companies to advance a loan in relation to any person a director is interested in if the company passes a special resolution.\nLiability of auditors and audit firms for fraud\n(Section 147 (5)\n· If it is proved that the partner of an audit firm has participated in fraud in relation to audit of a company, the partner and the firm will be jointly and severally liable for civil and criminal punishment.\n· Adds a proviso that states that in case of criminal punishment, only the partner who has participated in fraud will be liable. The audit firm shall only be liable for payment of fine.\nAnnual General Meeting of companies\n(Section 96 (2))\n· Every annual general meeting (AGM) must be held either at the registered office of the company or at a place where the registered office of the company is situated.\n· Adds a proviso that permits an unlisted company to hold its AGM at any place in India, if members’ consent is obtained in advance.\nQualification of technical members of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) [In addition to persons with 15 years of experience as a Charted Accountant, Cost Accountant or Company Secretary]\n· A member of the Indian Corporate Law or Legal Service for 15 years, and of the same pay scale as a Joint Secretary for three years;\n· Experts: 15 years of experience in law, accountancy, labour, disciplines related to management, industrial finance, etc.\n· Requires such members to hold the rank of Secretary or Additional Secretary.\n· Limits the areas of expertise to industrial finance, management, or reconstruction, investment and accountancy.\nQualification of technical members of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT)\nSelection Committee [for appointing technical members of NCLT and NCLAT] (Section 412)\n· Selection committee to include five members: (i) Chief Justice of India (Chairperson), (ii) Senior Supreme Court or High Court Chief Justice, (iii) Secretaries from the ministries of Corporate Affairs, Finance and Law.\n· Secretary, Ministry of Finance removed as member of the Committee.\n· Chairperson of Selection Committee to have the casting vote, in case of a tie.\nSources: The Companies Act, 2013, The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016; PRS.\nPART B: KEY ISSUES AND ANALYSIS\nRationale behind certain amendments to the 2013 Act\nInvestment through layers of subsidiaries and investment companies\nThe 2013 Act prohibits companies from making investments in other companies through more than two layers of intermediary companies. In addition, the central government may specify a cap on the number of layers of subsidiaries that a holding company can have. These provisions sought to address issues related to i) tracing the source of investments in companies and their ultimate use, and ii) use of multiple levels of subsidiaries to siphon funds.1 The Companies Law Committee (CLC) recommended that such caps must be deleted as they would affect the company’s structuring and ability to raise funds. The CLC noted that certain provisions in the 2013 Act would ensure transparency in the functioning of a company and its subsidiaries. These include provisions that require i) the consolidation of financial statements of a holding company and its subsidiaries, and ii) the disclosure of beneficial ownership of one’s shares in a company.1 By removing the cap on the number of layers of subsidiaries, the 2016 Bill is in line with the CLC’s recommendations.\nAppointment of an Independent Director with transactions up to 10% with the company\nThe 2013 Act does not permit an Independent Director to have a pecuniary relationship with the company, other than his remuneration. The J.J. Irani Committee in 2005 recommended that an Independent Director could have a monetary relationship up to 10% of his remuneration with the company.[6] The CLC reasoned that minor transactions may not compromise the independence of such Directors.1 The 2016 Bill permits an Independent Director to have a monetary relationship, up to 10% of his total income, with the company. This amount may be modified by the central government.\nRecommendations of the Companies Law Committee not adopted\nCertain changes proposed by the CLC in relation to (i) residence requirements for directors; and (ii) compliance requirements for dormant companies have not been included in the Bill. We explain these issues below.\nRequirement of year-long residence in India to be appointed as a director of a company\nUnder the 2013 Act, only a person who is a resident of India is eligible for appointment as a whole -time director of a company. A resident is defined as someone who has stayed in India for a continuous period of 12 months before he is appointed as a director. This may prevent a company from attracting a talented individual residing abroad (even an Indian citizen) back to India as a whole-time director as he will not meet the 12-month continuous residence requirement. The CLC recommended that this residence requirement for a foreign national should be removed. This would enable Indian companies to access a larger pool of global talent, and increase the mobility of professionals across countries.1\nConstitution of an audit committee by dormant companies\nUnder the 2013 Act, any company without transactions for the previous two years may apply to obtain the status of a dormant company. The 2013 Act does not exempt such dormant companies from the requirement to constitute committees such as (i) audit committee, (ii) nomination and remuneration committee, and (iii) stakeholder relationship committee. The CLC suggested that dormant companies may be exempted from constituting an audit committee as they may not have any business activities or employees.1\nSetting up of the NCLT and NCLAT in accordance with the SC judgment\nThe 2013 Act sets up the National Companies Law Tribunal (NCLT) to hear disputes related to the Companies Act, 2013. Appeals from the decisions of the NCLT will be heard by the National Companies Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). In 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the tribunals. However, the Court held certain provisions, in relation to the: i) qualifications of technical members of the NCLT; ii) composition of the Selection Committee for appointment of technical members of the NCLT and NCLAT as invalid. The Bill has modified these provisions to bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s decision.3\n[1]. The Companies Law Committee Report, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, February, 2016, http://www.mca.gov.in/Ministry/pdf/Report_Companies_Law_Committee_01022016.pdf.\n[2]. The Companies (Amendment) Act, 2015, http://www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Company/Companies%20Act,%202015.pdf.\n[3]. Madras Bar Association v. Union of India, [(2015) 8 SCC 583].\n[4]. Statement of Objects and Reasons, The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016.\n[5]. Securities and Exchange Board of India, (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015.\n[6]. Expert Committee on Company Law (J.J. Irani Committee), Ministry for Company Affairs, May 2005, para 11.1.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line380436"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8035874962806702,"wiki_prob":0.8035874962806702,"text":"Affleck the Big Tipper\nOne of Hollywood’s true A-listers, Ben Affleck has starred in, directed, and produced, some of the biggest movies of recent times. From Goodwill Hunting and Argo, to Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Affleck has had a hugely successful movie career, but he’s also known for his charity work and, yes, you’ve guessed it; his gambling!\nIn fact, before starring in the 2013 poker crime thriller Runner Runner, Affleck was frequently seen in top Vegas casinos, and enjoyed some impressive wins. But Affleck was no newbie to poker, having enlisted the services of poker professionals Amir Vahedi and Annie Duke, to tutor him in the early 2000’s – and having already won the 2004 California State Poker Championship, scooping a rather tidy $356,400 in the process.\nBut Affleck’s gaming skills aren’t limited to poker it seems. In 2014 he was playing blackjack at the Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas, so well that he was asked to ‘refrain from playing.’ The casino suspected him of counting cards, which though perfectly legal, is obviously frowned upon by the house!\nIn just two trips to a single casino, Affleck is reported to have won over $1 million playing ’21,’ but this Hollywood megastar is no detached elitist. According to the New York Post, after one sitting when he won $140,000 whilst playing with fellow A-lister Matt Damon, he gave away every single chip as tips to his dealers, waitresses, door boys and other staff.\nIn another incredible win, a year later, Affleck is said to have won an astonishing $800,000, playing three simultaneous $20,000 hands – now that takes some nerve! So, Affleck has certainly earned his place among the top professional players, but it’s good to see he still likes nothing better than hanging out in Beverly Hills cigar bars, playing poker with his buddy’s like Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tobey Maguire – and it seems that he’s nothing if not generous with his winnings.\nNow that’s how to play with style!\nREAD PREVIOUS Histories\nChelsea vs Liverpool: Betting Preview\nPreview and odds for Chelsea vs Liverpool in the Premier League. Liverpool will be looking to extend their winning run in the Premier League while Chelsea will be hoping for their biggest win under boss Frank Lampard.\nManchester United vs Leicester City: Betting Preview\nPreview and odds for Manchester United vs Leicester City in the Premier League. United will be hoping to bring Leicester’s unbeaten run to an end with their first victory since the opening day.\nLeyton Orient vs Swindon Town: Betting Preview\nPreview and odds for Leyton Orient vs Swindon Town in League Two. The O’s will be hoping to build upon their win against Southend United.\nSalford City vs Leyton Orient: Betting Preview\nOn Saturday, Leyton Orient travel north to take on another recently promoted side, Salford City. The O’s will hope to bounce back from their defeat to Crawley Town with an away victory against the club backed by the Class of ’92.\nThe team behind EnergyCasino and EnergyBet bring you the latest gaming, betting and sports news. Insider information, expert commentary and exclusive offers all in one place. Make sure you don’t miss a thing.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line901536"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9196832180023193,"wiki_prob":0.9196832180023193,"text":"Virgin Money Giving celebrates raising millions more for charities with new ‘Changing for the Future’ campaign\nCampaign highlights the benefits of investment in technology which has increased charitable donations to fundraising pages by 34 per cent.\nCampaign runs from Monday 8 October with press and digital advertising.\nVirgin Money Giving, the UK’s largest not-for-profit fundraising platform, has launched a new campaign to highlight the benefits of its new and improved website which is helping fundraisers raise millions more for good causes.\nThe campaign, which starts on Monday 8 October with press advertising, and backed by digital placement ads, looks to raise awareness of its not-for-profit model and highlights the benefits of its investment in technology - which has resulted in the site being completely redesigned and optimised for mobile and tablet.\nThe improvements have resulted in a 34 per cent increase in the amount fundraisers raise through the site, and an average 9 per cent increase in individual donation amounts.\nThe changes also include the launch of a new reporting tool for charities which provides easy access to their fundraising data.\nJo Barnett, Executive Director at Virgin Money Giving said: \"Over the past 18 months, we have re-engineered and enhanced the Virgin Money Giving donation experience to help charities maximise donations. As a not-for-profit business we don’t make a profit from peoples’ generosity. Unlike other fundraising sites, our low fees only cover our operating costs. We don’t charge charities monthly fees and we don’t apply a fee for Gift Aid. This means more money goes to good causes rather than into the pockets of shareholders.\"\nSince its launch in 2009, more than 14,500 charities have registered with Virgin Money Giving and, by the end of June 2018, over £660 million had been donated to charities through the service, resulting in an estimated £20.6 million more donated to charities because of its not-for-profit model.\nIn December Virgin Money Giving will introduce a new feature allowing donors to enhance their donation by paying the platform fee on behalf of the charity to which they are donating.\nVirgin Money Giving has produced a film to support the campaign which can be viewed here.\nPaul Lawler\nVirgin Money Press Office\npress.office@virginmoney.com\nAbout Virgin Money Giving\nVirgin Money Giving is the UK’s largest not-for-profit online fundraising website from Virgin Money and was established in 2009. Virgin Money uses its infrastructure and expertise as a financial services business to ensure that Virgin Money Giving is efficient and secure.\nMore than 14,500 charities have registered with Virgin Money Giving and, by the end June 2018, over £660 million had been donated to charities through the service since its launch in 2009, resulting in an estimated £20.6 million more donated to charities because of its not-for-profit model.\nFundraisers can personalise their fundraising pages, send out email alerts and manage their fundraising events. They can include their own content, photos and links to their page as well as customise messages for their supporters and link their page to social networking sites. Virgin Money Giving provides fundraising ideas and tips, offering help and advice on how to raise more for charity. In addition to supporting individual fundraisers, Virgin Money Giving also supports Appeals, Corporate and In Memory fundraising.\nVirgin Money Giving is the official fundraising partner of events that include the Virgin Money London Marathon, Swim Serpentine, Prudential RideLondon and the Royal Parks Half Marathon.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1416083"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7438139915466309,"wiki_prob":0.7438139915466309,"text":"Reading: People in the News - Deanna Marcum\nPeople in the News - Deanna Marcum\nDan Tonkery\nHow to Cite: Tonkery, Dan. 2012. “People in the News - Deanna Marcum”. Insights 25 (1): 6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nThe last time I sat down with Deanna Marcum at ALA in 2008, she was the very active and highly visible Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress. Running the day-to-day activities of perhaps the greatest and most complex library in the world, with its 53 Divisions and over 2,400 employees, is a massive undertaking. Being responsible for Acquisitions, Cataloging, Public Service and a number of other units is a managerial challenge second to none in the library world. At the end of December 2011, and after nearly ten years at the Library of Congress, Deanna decided to trade in the excitement and political intrigue and to close that chapter of her exciting career.\nMost individuals would be looking forward to returning home to a quieter life, working in their garden, traveling around the world, or just taking time to recharge their batteries, but not Deanna. Deanna left the Library of Congress on a much stronger footing and far better organized than she found it, and has taken on a new responsibility as the managing director of Ithaka S+R, a strategic consulting and research service that focuses on the transformation of scholarship and teaching in an online environment. Ithaka S+R is one of the services from ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization.\nLooking at Deanna's long career in public service, I was not surprised to see her moving to the opportunity at ITHAKA. She has always had a strong work ethic that stems from her growing up as a farm girl on a large family farm in Illinois. Armed with a first-rate education from the University of Illinois and advanced degree from the University of Maryland, she has dedicated her career to education, scholarship and teaching.\n“Deanna is often on the front line moving, leading, or organizing people to tackle the most critical issues in our profession.”\nDeanna is often on the front line moving, leading, or organizing people to tackle the most critical issues in our profession. Whether it is preservation, bibliographic control, scholarly communications or scholarly publishing, one can always find Deanna in the middle of the discussion. Just follow her career path from her work at the Association of Research Libraries, her creative leadership as president of the Council on Library and Information Resources, her deanship at the Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science and her latest project, the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control at the Library of Congress. Deanna is indeed one of the most influential librarians of the 21st century. She continues to be an active leader in many of the transformational issues facing our profession.\nPerhaps one of the most important efforts Deanna will continue to influence is helping to define the Bibliographic Framework Initiative at the Library of Congress. The library community is seeking the development of a new means for capturing and sharing bibliographic data. The replacement of the MARC format is one of those transformational activities that will influence hundreds of companies which provide products and services for libraries as well as thousands of libraries that manage their collections with shared bibliographic data.\nWhile many people may not have heard of ITHAKA, certainly everyone knows of ITHAKA's services, such as JSTOR and Portico. ITHAKA was founded in 2003 with funding from Andrew W Mellon and a few other foundations, and merged with JSTOR in 2009. ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization with over 230 professionals that is dedicated to helping the academic community take full advantage of rapidly advancing information and network technologies. Its services include Ithaka S+R, a strategic consulting and research service, as well as JSTOR (a trusted digital archive and hosting service for over 1,000 academic journals) and Portico (an electronic preservation service for electronic journals, e-books, and digitized historical collections).\n“… a proud moment was receiving the 2011 Melvil Dewey Medal, one of the highest awards given in the library profession.”\nDeanna is no stranger to ITHAKA, having served on the Board of Trustees since 2005. When she decided to retire from the Library of Congress, Kevin Guthrie, president of ITHAKA, saw a golden opportunity to add to his management team an individual with an extraordinary background and major accomplishments. Deanna joins the senior management team which includes Laura Brown, the former president of Oxford University Press, who now has responsibility for JSTOR.\nIn her role as managing director of Ithaka S+R, Deanna will continue to focus on those critical issues that are facing our profession. She will be able to mold the research agenda and continue to look at the sustainability of digital resources, the role of the library, practices and attitudes in scholarly communications, teaching and learning with technology, and scholarly publishing. As the technology changes and transforms the education, library and publishing communities, she will be able to steer the research agenda to meet the needs of the leaders in the academic community.\nThe role of the library at the university in the digital age is of particular interest to Deanna as is providing data to researchers who are looking into the sustainability of digital resources. How to share the data that has already been collected is one of the agenda items on a growing list of activities under review.\nIn the past, Ithaka S+R has produced a number of key reports such as Faculty Survey 2009: Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies or University Publishing in a Digital Age. Under Deanna's leadership we can look forward to a continued supply of important research results.\nWhen I asked Deanna what have been her proudest moments in her career, she told me that her work with the Bibliographic Framework Initiative and her work with the Working Group of the Future of Bibliographic Control were particularly rewarding. Also a proud moment was receiving the 2011 Melvil Dewey Medal, one of the highest awards given in the library profession.\nDeanna Marcum has already had a lifetime of amazing achievements; let's hope that she will find her work at Ithaka S+R rewarding and continue to provide her particular style of leadership and wisdom for years to come.\nTonkery, D., 2012. People in the News - Deanna Marcum. Insights, 25(1), pp.6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery D. People in the News - Deanna Marcum. Insights. 2012;25(1):6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery, D. (2012). People in the News - Deanna Marcum. Insights, 25(1), 6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery D, ‘People in the News - Deanna Marcum’ (2012) 25 Insights 6 DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery, Dan. 2012. “People in the News - Deanna Marcum”. Insights 25 (1): 6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery, Dan. “People in the News - Deanna Marcum”. Insights 25, no. 1 (2012): 6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6\nTonkery, D.. “People in the News - Deanna Marcum”. Insights, vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, pp. 6–7. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.25.1.6","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1131230"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6525507569313049,"wiki_prob":0.34744924306869507,"text":"Collaroy Books\nWelcome to Collaroy Books\nThe Trout Opera\nAuthor(s): Matthew Condon\nThe Trout Operais a stunning epic novel that encompasses twentieth-century Australia.\nOpening with a Christmas pageant on the banks of the Snowy River in 1906 and ending with the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, it is the story of simple rabbiter and farmhand Wilfred Lampe who, at the end of his long life, is unwittingly swept up into an international spectacle. On the way he discovers a great-niece, the wild and troubled young Aurora, whom he never knew existed, and together they take an unlikely road trip that changes their lives.\nWilfred, who has only ever left Dalgety once in almost a hundred years, comes face to face with contemporary Australia, and Aurora, enmeshed in the complex social problems of a modern nation, is taught how to repair her damaged life.\nThis dazzling story - marvellously broad in its telling and superbly crafted - is about the changing nature of the Australian character, finding the source of human decency in a mad world, history, war, romance, murder, bushfires, drugs, the fragile and resilient nature of the environment and the art of fly fishing. It's the story of a man who has experienced the tumultuous reverberations of Australian history while never moving from his birthplace on the Snowy, and it asks, what constitutes a meaningful life?\nAward-winning writer and journalist Matthew Condon is the author of over ten highly acclaimed books. He has written for leading newspapers and journals including Brisbane's Courier-Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Melbourne's Sunday Age. His books have been widely reviewed and praised and have won, and been shortlisted for, numerous awards including the Steele Rudd Award for Short Fiction, the NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, and the Qld Premier's Prize for Fiction.\nImprint : Penguin Books\nAuthor : Matthew Condon\nDelivery times: 2 - 3 days, if in stock; 10 - 15 days for special orders. Orders can be collected in store, or post\nRefunds: no refunds accepted unless stock is damaged during transit. All damaged stock must be returned to the store. No returns will be accepted via post. Proof of purchase required.\nPrivacy policy: Collaory Books will not pass any of your information onto any third party. Your information is used solely for the purpose of online sales, notifications of upcoming events, author signings, and newsletter push. You can opt out of our database at anytime.\n1091 Pittwater Road\nCollaroy, New South Wales, 2097\nEmail: inquiries@collaroybooks.com.au","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line540230"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9541510939598083,"wiki_prob":0.9541510939598083,"text":"News Elizabeth Kuti Orford Ness is full of stories\n'Orford Ness is full of stories' Elizabeth Kuti on playwriting\nFri 4 Aug 17\nWith her play Fishskin Trousers being revived for a four-week run at the Park Theatre in London, Elizabeth Kuti, Director of Theatre Studies and the MA Playwriting at Essex, talks about her inspirations, the process of bringing a play to the stage and how her experience as a professional actor helps the writing process.\nElizabeth Kuti, Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies\nFishskin Trousers was written and first staged in 2013. Three characters on the Orford Ness shingle spit on the Suffolk coast tell their stories. They’re from different times but their tales become increasingly entwined as the play builds to its climax.\nMab is a 12th Century servant in Orford Castle who becomes fascinated by a wild man caught by fishermen and imprisoned in the castle’s keep. Ben is a scientist working on Cold War radar experiments to scan the waters, who hears strange screams from the sea. Mog is a young woman in 2003 facing a heartbreaking personal decision. It’s a play rooted in its location.\n\"Orford Ness has so many contradictory elements to it and has a very spooky atmosphere,\" says Kuti. \"I found the layers of history fascinating.\n\"It's got remnants of nuclear testing that took place there during the Cold War and there are contemporary 20th Century myths about the secret development of weapons.\n\"Alongside that you've got the natural beauty; it's quite stark and quite wild but it's also very beautiful.\n\"And then there's a medieval strand – the well-known legend of the wild man of Orford who was apparently caught in fishermens' nets, taken to the tower in Orford, tortured and then released back into the wild.\n\"It's a place full of stories and interesting connections between those stories. The Cold War story was about fear and suspicion; the fear of what's out there in the water. That set off resonances for me with the medieval story of finding someone in the water and being completely distrustful and fearful of 'the other' that might be lurking out there.\"\nOrford Quay with Orford Ness in the background\n\"spirit-logged, we are, these parts, the water drags 'em in and holds 'em\"\nFishskin Trousers\nAlongside a growing interest in the history of the area, Kuti had been looking at research on feral children. The two strands came together to form a key element of the play’s story.\n\"When I wrote Fishskin Trousers there were a lot of things going on in my mind around the question of feral children and people who have been found 'in the wild' and have no language.\n\"The wild man of Orford – we don’t quite know what that story was about, but if we take it that it was a true event, the questions in my mind were: Who was that man? Why did he have no language? Could it have been a person with a disability, or a person with what we today would call autism?\n\"That was a theme running in my head when I wrote the play because I have a child with autism who was quite a bit younger at that point. Some of what I was trying to explore with the play, through very metaphorical storytelling, was ideas around differences in people and how we relate to people who have no or little language.\n\"As ever with plays you think the play is about one thing over there, and as you write you realise that a lot of your personal life and feelings are going into it and coming out of it and being expressed through it.\"\nBrett Brown as Ben in 'Fishskin Trousers'\nThe play was first presented at the RADA Festival in 2013 and then had a run at London's Finborough Theatre. The Guardian described it as \"entrancing viewing\" and Time Out \"a fascinating and lyrical piece of writing\". It was then performed at the church in Orford Ness and the Sailors’ Reading Room in Southwold. Internationally there have been productions in Canada and - in Greek translation - on Crete.\nThe revival will be staged at the Park Theatre’s studio from 17 October to 11 November with the three actors from the original run returning: Jessica Carroll, Brett Brown and Eva Traynor.\n\"For this revival, we found a producer called George Warren who liked the look of it and the Park was a venue that had been interested and thought it was suitable for their studio. It was a coming together of those elements, along with our desire to get it out, dust it off and give it another go. It's quite a minimal play – just three actors and three chairs, more or less.\"\nEva Traynor as Mog in 'Fishskin Trousers'\n'We' is Kuti and her husband, Robert Price, a theatre director who directed the original performance of Fishskin Trousers and will reprise that role this time.\n\"We’ve worked together on a few projects and, bizarrely perhaps, it seems to work fine! We get on well professionally.\n\"He's very much the director and he makes his choices as director. I know he's got some new ideas for this revival; some new design elements and sound elements that we want to play with, but he'll make the final decisions on those – that's the director's job and I let him get on with it.\"\n\"In a monologue story-telling form you can have ideas and events that would be impossible to stage… It’s very interesting and freeing for you as a writer.\"\nElizabeth Kuti Department of LIterature, Film, and theatre Studies\nIt was Robert who challenged her to write a monologue-based play; a form that gives the writer enormous freedom.\n\"It was a form that we’d been talking about and were both interested in. I'd had this collection of ideas around Orford Ness which I hadn't quite figured out a form for, and so I thought 'That’s an interesting challenge!'\n\"In a monologue story-telling form you can have ideas and events that would be impossible to stage; magical elements that you can have a character bring to life from their words. It's very interesting and freeing for you as a writer.\"\nBefore joining Essex, Kuti worked extensively as a professional actor and playwright in Irish theatre.\n\"I was an actor first. I went in to professional acting as I was finishing my PhD so I've always had this mixture of academic and theatre practitioner roles.\n\"I started out in the Irish theatre because I was doing my PhD at Trinity College Dublin. It was always my dream to be an actor and I managed to become one, which was wonderful. I did that for several years but had always written and been interested in writing.\n\"The benefit of being an actor is that you’ve experienced plays and you’ve got a sense of how theatre works as a material medium and so it was quite naturally in parallel.\n\"I had my very first professional production as a writer in Dublin in 1998, with a director I'd worked with as an actor. In a rehearsal one day I managed to say, 'I've written a script, do you want to have a look?' and that’s how that came about.\"\n\"It’s very helpful to have been an actor on the journey to becoming a playwright.\"\nHer experience as an actor also meant that she understood what an actor brings to the lines beyond the words themselves, through their body language and facial expressions.\n\"You have to not write too much so you leave space for the actors. But even with that experience, with every script you write you do a reading with actors and then realise all the mistakes you've made. You've over-written or under-written, so it's always a learning process.\n\"It's very helpful to have been an actor on the journey to becoming a playwright. Not all do, but a lot do.\"\n'Fishskin Trousers' will run from 17 October to 11 November at the Park Theatre, London.\nPark Theatre - Fishskin Trousers\nElizabeth Kuti - profile\nMA Playwriting\nDepartment of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies\nRoyal accolade for Essex excellence in political science\nThu 31 Jan 13\n“Brilliant and inspirational” professor celebrated at Regius Professorship Lecture\nThu 20 Nov 14\nStudy at Essex","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1041131"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5174363851547241,"wiki_prob":0.4825636148452759,"text":"​One Dead in Crash on 60 Freeway in Walnut\nWALNUT – A Sig Alert in still in effect for the No. 5 lane of the eastbound 60 freeway at South Lemon Avenue Monday.\nThe crash was reported to the CHP at 5:25 a.m. January 13. A blue sedan struck the guardrail and landed on top of the guardrail. No other vehicle was involved in the crash, according to California Highway Patrol traffic logs.\nThe driver died at the scene and is only described as a man.\nA one-hour Sig Alert was issued for the No. 5 lane at 6 a.m. It is still in effect, according to Officer Peter Nicholson of the CHP Traffic Management Center.\nDiamond Bar/Walnut Sheriff's","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1320712"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5173570513725281,"wiki_prob":0.4826429486274719,"text":"Easterseals expanding services to Pahrump residents\nPahrump residents in need of various health-related services, referrals and information now have an ally on their side by way of Easterseals Nevada.\nSelwyn Harris/Pahrump Valley Times Easterseals Nevada Independent Living Specialist Annabella Rivera said the agency is in the midst of expanding services to Pahrump individuals and families. Rivera noted that there are no financial qualifiers for the various programs and services offered by the agency.\nThe Las Vegas-based agency is now reaching out to support local families and individuals in the community, according to Independent Living Specialist Annabella Rivera, who spoke about two of the many services provided by the agency.\n“We basically want to get the word out in Pahrump that we have an Independent Living and Assistive Technology program,” she said. “We help individuals maintain their independence in their home whether it be with some modifications they need, such as trying to get in and out of their house because they have steps, or if their doorways are not wide enough for certain medical devices and equipment.”\nRivera also said that the main goal of the Independent Living program is to prevent individuals from having to leave their community, to go into a care facility.\n“We want to make sure that people with disabilities are able to stay in their homes and independently function in their home,” she said. “We help with assistive technology in the kitchen for the many people who have visual impairments, and we also help with hearing aids.”\nAdditionally, Rivera noted that both programs can benefit individuals and families who don’t have the financial resources to be able to receive the assistive technology.\n“It’s just a matter of simply giving us a call,” she said. “There are no financial qualifiers for these programs. The only qualifier is that you have a disability where the impairment is threatening your independence at your home. We are based in Las Vegas and we are trying to get the word out about having a larger presence in Pahrump. We have serviced Pahrump residents before, but there’s just not enough exposure, so not a lot of people know about us servicing Pahrump.”\nRivera also spoke about the Easterseals Nevada NATE Project, which provides access to those in need of supportive devices and equipment.\nThe acronym stands for Nevada Assistive Technology Empowerment.\n“The NATE Project is a loaning library of devices and durable medical equipment for short-term, long-term, or permanent loans to Nevadans who are disabled,” she said. “It is a resource to those who need a device for any number of reasons. We have donations for things like wheelchairs and durable medical equipment. Many times when those donations come in, we recycle them and put them out to the community for those who need them to improve their quality of life.”\nMoreover, Rivera spoke of additional benefits of the NATE Program.\n“There is the cost savings factor for individuals by offering affordable alternatives, to new devices,” she said. “The project also reduces the amount of usable products that would otherwise end up in landfills. Plus, there is no cost to participate in the NATE Project.”\nAmong the assistive technology devices desired for donations for recycling for the NATE Project are, computers with Windows 7 or higher, tablets, laptops and other electronic peripherals.\nDesired donations for durable medical equipment include manual or power chairs, scooters, walkers and shower chairs.\n“We can always use bath benches, commodes, gait walkers and most other durable medical equipment,” Rivera said. “We accept, sanitize, and repair the donations for redistribution. We are in Las Vegas, but we want to assist as many individuals as we can in the Pahrump area.”\nFor additional information on Easterseals Nevada and its NATE Project program, call 702-677-3560, or 702-677-3566 or log onto www.eastersealsnv.org\nContact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes\nPosted on: Community, News\nTagged: mc-news\nNye County employee faces theft, embezzlement charges\nA longtime employee in the Nye County Juvenile Probation Department is facing at least three theft-related felonies for allegedly stealing more than $100,000 from the department.\nFormer Pahrump Arts Council official arrested\nThe former president of the Pahrump Arts Council was arrested in early January on suspicion of embezzlement. Kristin Swan also was arrested on suspicion of obtaining money under false pretenses and theft, between $640 and $3,500, according to information from the the Nye County Sheriff’s Office.\nNevada redistricting group files amended petition\nBy Bill Dentzer Special to the Pahrump Valley Times\nA group seeking to turn the once-a-decade process of redistricting political lines in Nevada over to a commission rather than the Legislature has refiled a petition with the secretary of state, after a judge ruled the original was misleading.\nAfter roughly a century, bighorn sheep return to Pyramid Lake\nBy Colton Lochhead Special to the Pahrump Valley Times\nNevada state officials and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe worked to reintroduce desert bighorn sheep to the hills above the lake Monday, the first time since the early 1900s that they’ve been seen in the area 50 miles north of Reno.\nRobotics team raising funds for state championship trip\nBy Jeffrey Meehan Pahrump Valley Times\nA Pahrump youth robotics team is working to raise funds for its journey to Northern Nevada for an annual state championship.\nNevada authorities plan Pahrump hiring event\nThe Nevada Department of Public Safety is planning a hiring event in Pahrump, an effort scheduled for Jan. 25.\nSenators call for investigation into Pahrump ICE facility\nTwo U.S. senators representing Nevada are calling for the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to investigate conditions at the Nevada Southern Detention Center, a privately-owned facility in Pahrump that contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as “ICE.”\nPahrump community invited out for All People’s Luncheon\nBy Robin Hebrock Pahrump Valley Times\nMartin Luther King Jr. Day is right around the corner, and coinciding with the nationwide holiday in honor of the life and legacy of the civil rights leader, Pahrump’s Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Foundation will be holding its 17th Annual All People’s Luncheon.\nNevada State Museum plans exhibit, lectures for Black History Month\nNevada State Museum, Las Vegas will be celebrating Black History Month with a new, large-scale photography exhibit and a series of lectures throughout February.\nPahrump Fairgrounds water applications protested\nFor more than a decade and a half, the town of Pahrump has been working toward development of a huge patch of land with the ultimate goal of turning 427 acres of property into a major recreation facility, the Pahrump Fairgrounds.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line37182"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8951505422592163,"wiki_prob":0.8951505422592163,"text":"HomeSpotlightTHE GREATEST PROJECT IN PH\nTHE GREATEST PROJECT IN PH\nSan Miguel’s New Manila International Airport complex in Bulakan town is the largest and greatest enterprise ever in the Philippines to be undertaken by any single company or group of companies in the nation’s history. Designed to be among the world’s best airports and costing P735.6 billion of which P550 billion will be invested in the first four years, NMIA will have four runways, three terminals, eight taxiways, and service 100 million passengers, expandable to 200 million passengers. The project comes with 22 expressways covering north and south, west and east of Luzon, including the $3 billion 10-lane expressway on top of the present 23-km EDSA. The 22 new Metro Manila and Luzon expressways will cost another P3 trillion.\nSeptember 28, 2019 BizNewsAsia Spotlight Comments Off on THE GREATEST PROJECT IN PH\nIt is the largest and greatest enterprise ever in the Philippines to be undertaken by any single company or group of companies in the nation’s history.\nSan Miguel Corp., the country’s largest and most diversified conglomerate, was finally given the go-signal on Sept. 18, 2019 to proceed with the development and construction of its P735.6-billion New Manila International Airport (NMIA) in Bulakan, a quaint 444-year-old fishing and farming town, in historic Bulacan province.\nBulakan used to be the capital of Bulacan and also of nearby Pampanga province. So Ramon Ang’s putting up NMIA in the 444-year-old town (pop. 77,000) will in effect rewrite history, making Bulakan not only the virtual capital of Bulacan and Pampanga provinces but of the entire Central Luzon region, the nation’s richest region.\nBulakan sits cheek-by-jowl to Valenzuela City, the nearest of Metro Manila’s 14 cities and three towns. The town is about 22 kms from Manila, the national capital, with kilometer zero at Rizal Park. From Luneta, the drive is about 9 kms away. So the distance between Bulakan town to NAIA is just 31 kms.\n“NMIA will be the game changer,” declared Ramon Ang, SMC vice chairman, president and chief operating officer, upon the signing of the 62-page 50-year concession agreement midmorning of Wednesday, Sept. 18, at the headquarters of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) in Clark Freeport Zone.\nOn behalf of the national government, Department of Transportation (DOTr) Secretary Arthur Tugade signed the SMC concession agreement. The contract comes with a notice to proceed (NTP) or notice to commence which was given the same day.\nIt seems ironic the contract for Asia’s next most modern airport was signed inside Clark, a former American facility that is being developed by the government itself as a gateway international airport.\nIn addition to Clark, a consortium of seven conglomerates is proposing to upgrade and operate Naia over a 15-year period. The National Economic and Development Authority has yet to approve the project.\nDOTr Secretary Tugade said multiple airports would benefit the public. “Let it be a battle of commercial competitiveness,” he said on Wednesday. “Having multiple airports is something that the world’s biggest economies do. Ideally, there should be a train service linking these airports, which is also being pursued by the government. This complementation strategy was already part of the air transport roadmap from Day One. Rest assured, that’s what we are going to do,” Tugade pointed out.\nSan Miguel AeroCity\nThe project of San Miguel Aerocity, Inc., SMC’s wholly-owned airport subsidiary, does not just involve land development, and the construction and operation of an airport.\nThe long-term strategy includes the construction of no less than 22 expressways over a ten-year period or longer. The scheme is called the NMIA Integrated Multi-Modal Transport Network.\nRSA’s AeroCity and multi-modal transport network are so huge they would make the present NAIA irrelevant. He thinks the 625 hectares of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) should be redeveloped instead into a new business district, which plan will free up P2 trillion worth of prime real estate. NAIA has a rated capacity of 25 million but services 31 million passengers.\nAerocity is aimed to attract 30 million tourists yearly beginning 2025 (from the present 7.1 million), drastically lower the cost of travel within the archipelago (a return ticket from Manila to the Visayas costs $500 because of runway congestion and traffic at NAIA), and contribute up to P1.5 trillion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP or the total output of goods and services).\nSpirit of greatness restored\nTo me, the most important impact is that the Philippines will recapture its sense and spirit of greatness, the imagination and capacity to build grand things for the benefit of many, so that Filipinos during the next decade will proudly march in cadence, with the best of people in this world. Indeed, 500 years ago and until the 20th century, the Philippines was the center of the world and Filipinos were the envy of their neighbors in Asia.\nThe roads planned by San Miguel include a ten-lane 22-km elevated EDSA Expressway atop EDSA to ease traffic on Metro Manila’s main highway and of course deliver passengers to NMIA and back in just 30 minutes, a Bataan-Bulacan Airport Expressway, Bulacan-Tarlac Airport Expressway, a San Jose del Monte to San Jose, Nueva Ecija Expressway, an MRT7 to NMIA Expressway, and various expressways connecting NMIA to Balintawak, Sgt. Rivera, Buendia, Anda Circle in Manila, Lawton (BGC), Tramo (Pasay), Mall of Asia (Pasay), San Pedro and Calamba (Laguna), and Tagaytay (Cavite).\nThe expressways will cover as far north as Laoag (Ilocos Norte) and as far south as Matnog (Sorsogon). They will converge at the food and transport hub in Pandacan, Manila which connects to SLEx Skyway Stage 3. The road network combines with an MRT7 railway, now under construction from North EDSA to San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, and an even longer railway, from Tutuban to Bicol.\nExpressway loop for Luzon\nIn other words, RSA will build an expressway loop from north to south, west and east of Luzon, easily a distance of more than 1,000 kms. and back, by connecting major airports and ports, from Poro Point in La Union to Bataan, Subic in Zambales to Clark in Pampanga and Tarlac, to Port Area Manila, NAIA in Pasay, Batangas port, and Matnog port which is a jump-off point to Visayas cities.\nRSA will be redrawing the road network of Luzon, creating a new government center, new business districts, industrial estates, commercial areas, and residential districts, in the process redistributing population, agriculture, industries, jobs, and economic opportunities.\nMind-boggling cost and scale\nThe cost, scale, scope and supporting road, rail and coastal network of the Philippines’ future gateway airport are so mind-boggling only a man of RSA’s guts and audacity could possibly think of it and dare to pursue it, no matter the problems and the challenges.\nI first learned of the word audacity from the late Ferdinand E. Marcos, once considered the most bemedaled Filipino soldier, the ultimate politician warrior and empire builder (If you believe Imelda,\nthe family once owned the major corporations in the country).\nThe battlecry of warriors\nFM quoted Napoleon on l’audace. The French conqueror’s battlecry was “audacity, more audacity, always audacity” (“de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace”). In battle and in war, one must not hesitate because if one hesitates, one loses the battle, and having lost the battle, one loses the war.\nThe original quote is attributed to French revolutionary George Jacques Danton, “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace” to save the fatherland. Danton was later guillotined. General George S. Patton also subscribed to the strategy of audacity as did President Barack Obama.\nAudacious in size and cost\nRSA’s airport is audacious for its size and cost. Total cost is P735.6 billion. Initial cost is P550 billion. The performance bond alone is P10.98 billion. The debt entailed with the project: P94 billion.\nThe first phase of NMIA will have two independent parallel runways (2.6-km to 3.5-km long) that can handle 80 aircraft movements per hour, two taxiways, and annual capacity of 35 million passengers. It will have three aprons suitable for 180 aircraft gates or stands. The terminal building will have a footprint of 16.5 hectares plus a cargo terminal of 3.5 hectares footprint. First phase will have 3+3-lane access road, expandable to 6+6 or 12 lanes.\nWith NMIA’s first phase is an 8-km toll road from NLEX to Bulakan, Bulacan. The first phase will cost P544.572 billion.\nAt a cost of P76.42 billion, the second phase increases capacity to 60 million (at 92 movements per hour) and is triggered once arrivals hit 21 million annually. The final phase is 100-million passenger capacity with runway rating of 105 movements per hour. The third phase will cost P114.636 billion. Total cost of NMIA after all three phases are done: P735.63 billion.\nWhen fully completed after six years, NMIA will have four runways, eight taxiways, and three passenger terminal buildings, including two for low-cost carriers.\nSan Miguel AeroCity is given six years to complete the airport, Phase I. Ramon Ang promises to do it in four years. The airport proper will sit on 2,500 hectares of area. But with an expressway loop connecting a total of 22 major roads, the right of way (ROW) land coverage will extend to 10,000 hectares.\nRSA is given 18 months to raise financing for Phase I, about P550 billion, 70% debt and 30% equity. He plans for 80/20 debt-equity ratio.\nRSA feels that the Philippines is on the verge of a major tourism boom and attract tourists a third of the size of its population of 107 million.\nSan Miguel will take care of about 200 fishpond workers in Bulakan town displaced by the airport construction. They will be relocated and given support and training, SMC said. The company will also clean nearby rivers, build a flood barrier and spillway to help solve perennial flooding in the area.\nThe cleaning of the Tullahan River alone will cost SMC P1 billion, at no cost to the government.\nSMC has tapped global engineering firms Groupe ADP, Meinhardt Group and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. for the airport’s design.\nFood and transport hub in Pandacan\nMeanwhile, Ang said SMC plans to spend up to P50 billion to convert the old 50-hectare Pandacan oil depot into a bus and food terminal.\nThe project will ease traffic in Metro Manila, create a new business district for the city of Manila, and a new marketing hub that could rival Divisoria with the construction of a bus terminal. SMC owns 25 of the 50 hectares.\n“This project can really help the government and the people. It would help decongest Metro Manila,” said Ang.\nAs a business district, Pandacan will be half the size of the Makati Central Business District.\nThe bus terminal will serve different bus operators plying in and out of Metro Manila. There will also be a food terminal that will accommodate the food companies displaced when a portion of the Marcos-era Food Terminal Inc. in Taguig was shut down to give way to redevelopment.\nThe unsolicited proposal has already been submitted to Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade.\nDubbed an “aerotropolis”, NMIA will have its own seaport, industrial, residential, commercial, and institutional zones. Also included in its design is the development
of a new government center making vital government services more accessible to fast-growing areas in Central Luzon.\nThe airport will be accessible from Metro Manila in less than 30 minutes, via interconnected expressways and rail—including a shoreline expressway that will traverse Manila Bay and head straight to NMIA.\nNMIA will mean many things for the Philippines. It will be a proud showcase of what Filipinos can do. It is a long overdue and much-needed solution to problems rooted in our aging and inefficient airports—where flight delays and congestion are the norm.\nFilipino travelers will have a greater sense of pride when they fly in from other countries. Facilities will be more than adequate, service levels will be consistently high, there will be zero delays caused by air, runway or taxiway congestion.\nAirport congestion is a serious problem that both airlines and passengers have to contend with.\nIn the present NAIA, annual losses of airlines brought about by air traffic congestion are estimated to reach more than P10 billion per year. This will continue to grow if no new airport capacities are built.\nOn the other hand, productivity losses of passengers are estimated to amount to more than P15 billion per year.\nMoving the country’s main gateway out of Metro Manila will also help alleviate the nightmarish traffic situation on major and secondary roads in cities around the present airport—Parañaque, Pasay, Las Piñas, Manila, Makati—and beyond.\nThe NMIA will signal to the world that the Philippines is finally ready to take its place among the ranks of Asia’s rising economies. It will boost tourism, raise our profile as an investment destination, and increase the competitiveness of our industries—including manufacturing and exports. It can even help bring about the development of new, technology-based industries.\nOverall, it is seen to add an estimated P400 billion to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and generate at least one million jobs.\nIn 2018, the Philippines recorded some 7.1 million tourist arrivals. We are well behind our ASEAN neighbors such as Thailand (38.27 million tourists), Malaysia
(33.1 million tourists), Singapore (18.5 million), Indonesia (15.8 million), and Vietnam (15.5 million). If the Philippines can reach 20 million tourists, then that will equate to an estimated 40 million new tourism industry-related jobs.\nThe government’s Build Build Build program promises to fix our country’s infrastructure gaps. Boracay’s successful rehabilitation has made headlines all over the world, sparking renewed interest in our islands. It also serves as a model for our other tourist destinations.\nOnce complete, the NMIA is envisioned to be among the best airports in the region: the game-changer the Philippines has needed all this time.\nMAJOR TAX CHANGES DUE\nGOOD CONDUCT = JAILBREAK","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line925583"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6849420070648193,"wiki_prob":0.6849420070648193,"text":"Our research projects\nStructural evaluation\nWind turbine on dike\nEconomic optimisation\nFlood defence system reliability\nStructural embedment\nUrban design challenges\nVisual representation MFFD landscapes\nEnhancing nature and landscape values\nExploring dilemmas and frames\nPolicy arrangements integration\nEnhancing knowledge transfer and uptake\nIntegral design of MFFD\nMaking sense and managing sensitivities\nRobustness and adaptability\nUncertainty, adaptivity, robustness\nText by Mark Voorendt\nHamburg is a major trade and harbour city in the north of Germany, situated about 110 kilometres from the mouth of the river Elbe. The city was flooded in 1962, after which additional flood protection measures have been carried out. The North Sea flood of 1962 was a natural disaster affecting mainly the coastal regions of Germany and in particular the city of Hamburg in the night from 16 to 17 February 1962. In total, the homes of about 60 000 people were destroyed, and the death toll amounted to 315 in Hamburg. The flood was caused by a low-pressure system approaching the German Bight (Deutsche Bucht), coming from the southern Polar Sea. A storm with a wind force of 9 Beaufort and peak wind speeds of 200 km/h pushed water into the German Bight, leading to a water surge the dikes could not withstand. The water reached a level of NN + 5,70 m, which was 0,46 m higher than the highest water level up to then (registered in 1825). Breaches along the coast and the rivers Elbe and Weser led to widespread flooding of huge areas. Especially dikes that had not been heightened after the storm surge of 1952 were heavily damaged while most sea dikes withstood the surge (Wikipedia, 2012). More than 60 breaches occurred in the dikes with a total length of about 1.5 kilometres. The flooded area amounted 12 500 hectares, about 1/6th of the total area of Hamburg (Landesbetrieb SBG, 2012).\nEmergency plans were implemented later and dikes were shortened and strengthened, leaving some river arms and bays detached from the sea. The design water retaining height was raised up to NN + 6,70 m and many dikes were reinforced, also in horizontal direction with more gentle slopes. In January 1976 a storm surge exceeded the one of 1962, leading to a water level of NN + 6,45 m. The reinforced dikes, however, were sufficiently high and stable to withstand this water, but there was much damage in the less protected harbour area. The erection of a storm surge barrier in the Elbe mouth (near Brokdorf ) was studied, but could not be agreed upon by the various Bundesländer. In the mid 90s, a flood protection construction programme was started to raise the retaining height with about one metre (to NN + 7,30 at St. Pauli, about 2 kmWest of Hamburg).\nThe calculation method was more sophisticated now, taking local hydraulic conditions like wave run-up into account per dike section. This led to varying retaining heights of NN + 7,50mup to NN + 9,25m(Landesbetrieb SBG, 2012).\nHafenCity Hamburg, Germany\nHamburg: stairs in the flood defence (Reesendamm)\nHamburg: multifunctional quay wall under construction (near the Baumwall)\n​In 2000 a start was made with a project of the redevelopment of an old harbour area in between the Speicherstadt and the Elbe. This new area, the HafenCity, is intended for work, living, retail-trade, recreation, gastronomy and culture2. The HafenCity area, however, is located outside the area protected by dikes (see figure 2.28). Proximity to large expanses of water, namely, is what gives the area much of its charm; dikes would have deprived it of the many exciting sight lines down to the water. It appeared also to be troublesome to start constructing the buildings before the 126 hectare area would have been surrounded by dikes (Website HafenCity, 2012). By elevating the buildings on plinths made of mounds, HafenCity is connected with the existing city.\nAll new buildings stand on artificial bases eight meters above sea level - safe for the most extreme flooding. On the sides exposed to wind, such as the southern sides of Strandkai and Überseequartier, the external perimeter lies at NN + 8,03 to NN + 8,60 meters. It is the responsibility of the private developers of buildings to put these artificial compacted bases in place, so their number is growing as the number of buildings increases. This has dispensed with any need for premature financing of flood-protection measures years - or even decades - ahead of the sale and deployment of the sites concerned.\nThe interior of flood-secure plinths provides ample space for underground car garages, which means that almost all stationary traffic can be accommodated. The mounds solution therefore also makes a significant contribution to reducing the volume of private transport in the new part of town. No additional sites for above-ground parking blocks will be needed as a result, which also contributes to the effective use of ground surfaces as a resource. Roads and bridges are also being built above the flood-line at least 7.5meters above sea level.\nHamburg: apartment blocks in the HafenCity (Am Sandtorkai)\nA broad strip up to 15 meters wide along the edges of the restored historic quays is down at the existing 4,00 to 5,50 meter level of the HafenCity area and provides 10,5 kilometers of waterside walks. This considerably adds up to public urban space right next to the water. In the western part of HafenCity many of these squares and promenades are already in constant use. Thus the mounds solution also has the side-effect of allowing a new topography to take shape - which affects the character and quality of the district (Website HafenCity, 2012). The HafenCity can continue to function virtually without restriction even during a flood and despite its ’island’ situation. In cases of high water, a few underground parking garage entrances along Am Sandtorkai and Brooktorkai (directly opposite the Speicherstadt) do have to close their flood gates. This is because, if the roadways passing directly adjacent to the historic warehouses had been retrospectively elevated, the identity and function of the whole Speicherstadt ensemble would have been affected. Planners of the listed Speicherstadt had worked on the assumption that their area could be flooded in cases of extreme high water (Website HafenCity, 2012). Moreover, windows should be able to withstand high water pressures and steel bulkheads have to prevent eventual damage on the glass windows by floating debris. It is not allowed to live on these ground floors, so they are used for car parks, restaurants and offices. The apartment blocks have different access levels in order to cope with varying water levels around the blocks. There are also escape routes on different heights to guarantee a safe evacuation if needed (Stalenberg, 2010).\nThe new multifunctional quay walls along the ’Baumwall’ and ’Vorsetzen’, just West of the Hafencity, contain a parking level, public toilets on street level and three places designated for building constructions. These structures are planned to include a restaurant and a kiosk. Due to securing flood protection during the construction period, demolition and construction of the new flood protection barrier must only take place under cover of temporary flood protection. See figures 2.29 to 2.34 for some examples.\nHamburg: steel bulkheads can be closed to protect the windows of apartment blocks along the Sandtorkai\nHamburg: a cross-section of the apartment blocks along the Sandtorkai (Pols, Kronberger et al., 2007)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line174385"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6616517901420593,"wiki_prob":0.3383482098579407,"text":"Brother's on the Boulevard closing after 43 years\nThe store is having a retirement sale, reducing the price of every item in inventory up to 80%.\nBrother's on the Boulevard closing after 43 years The store is having a retirement sale, reducing the price of every item in inventory up to 80%. Check out this story on theadvertiser.com: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/money/2019/09/18/brothers-boulevard-closing-after-43-years/2362116001/\nWilliam Potter, Lafayette Daily Advertiser Published 9:10 a.m. CT Sept. 18, 2019 | Updated 4:44 p.m. CT Sept. 18, 2019\nBrother's on the Boulevard storefront (Photo: Courtesy of Brother's on the Boulevard)\nBrother's on the Boulevard, the 43-year-old Arnould Boulevard clothier, announced it would be closing on Facebook on Tuesday.\n\"We are forever grateful for the support we have received throughout the years and would like to thank the Acadiana area for their loyalty,\" Edward \"Brother\" Abdalla, VI, posted on Facebook. \"We are retiring from the retail business to focus on the family real estate business, On the Boulevard Shopping Center.”\nRead or Share this story: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/money/2019/09/18/brothers-boulevard-closing-after-43-years/2362116001/\nLafayette Parish likely won't beat sales record\nLSU vs. Clemson game brings big money to NOLA\nBorden Dairy files for bankruptcy\nLafayette, Carencro, Scott, Youngsville near sales record\nWaitr names Charles Grimstad, investment group manager, CEO\n2019 a busy year for Acadiana businesses","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1441396"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9539622664451599,"wiki_prob":0.9539622664451599,"text":"Amazon Studios Orders Thrilling New International Adventure Series \"The Banker's Wife,\" Based on the Best-Selling Novel\nMeredith Stiehm will write all eight episodes, with award-winning director Lesli Linka Glatter directing all eight.\n[via press release from Amazon]\nBEVERLY HILLS, Calif., July 27, 2019 - Amazon Studios announced today that it has ordered an eight-episode season of the exciting new series The Banker's Wife, based on the best-selling novel by Cristina Alger. Meredith Stiehm (Homeland) will write all eight episodes, with award-winning director Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland, Now and Then) directing all eight.\nThe Banker's Wife is a high-stakes international thriller set in the world of global finance, from Geneva to Paris, London and New York, about two women racing for answers when a mysterious plane crash sets them off on parallel pursuits of truth. As they shine a light on hidden offshore accounts meant to be kept in the dark, the pair will become embedded in the crosshairs of danger within a larger conspiracy of money laundering, powerful politicians and a web of terrorists and criminals, thus transforming their lives forever.\n\"As soon as we read The Banker's Wife, we knew this would be a series that our Amazon Prime Video customers will love, a fast-paced, compelling story that pulls you in immediately,\" said Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios. \"We're thrilled to be working with Meredith and Lesli to bring their vision to the screen.\"\nThe Banker's Wife is from Amazon Studios and Federation Entertainment, with executive producer and writer Stiehm, executive producer and director Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland), and executive producers Sherry Marsh of Marsh Entertainment (Emmy-nominated Pose), and Ashley Stern and Pascal Breton (Federation Entertainment). Alger, who also wrote the New York Times bestseller Girls Like Us, is represented by ICM Partners.\n· BANKER'S WIFE, THE (AMAZON)","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line418814"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5401871800422668,"wiki_prob":0.5401871800422668,"text":"November 28, 2018\tJose Gutierrez III\nPiccolo, Cell, Rurouni Kenshin to appear in Jump Force\nFour new challengers have entered the fray in Jump Force. Two come from an already established world while the other two characters are coming from a new world. The already established world introduces Piccolo and Perfect Cell to the fight. And the newly introduced world comes to us from the world of Rurouni Kenshin, also known as Samurai X, which introduces Himura Kenshin and Shishio Makoto.\nThe Rurouni Kenshin world introduces Himura Kenshin, the famous assassin known as Hitokiri Battousai. He is a wandering samurai offering help to those in need as an atonement for all the murders he committed. He uses a sword with a blade that has the cutting edge facing inward, making it nearly incapable of killing. The next fighter introduced is Shishio Makoto, who has taken over as head of the assassin guild that Kenshi left. Makoto plans to bring the Japanese government down after being nearly killed by government officials for knowing all of their secrets.\nThe next two players are Piccolo and Cell from the Dragon Ball Z world. Piccolo, also known as Ma Junior, is a Namekian who is both the child of and a reincarnation of King Piccolo. He vowed to kill Goku for killing his father, but as time progressed, he became part of Goku’s inner circle of friends. The next character introduced is Cell, the greatest creation of Dr. Gero who possessed all the abilities of the greatest fighters to have inhabited or visited Earth. This makes him one of the greatest and deadliest foes to ever be in the Dragon Ball series.\nDoes the new addition get you excited for the game? Let us know via our socials. Jump Force will be released on February 15, 2019.\nTags Dragon Ball ZJump ForceRuroni Kenshin\nJose Gutierrez III\t705 posts\nJose Gutierrez III is an IT tech by day and nerd by night.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line182627"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9579394459724426,"wiki_prob":0.9579394459724426,"text":"El Paso Shooter Bought Ammunition From Russia, Told Investigators He 'Wanted to Shoot as Many Mexicans as Possible': Report\nBy Alexandra Hutzler On 8/28/19 at 10:45 AM EDT\nU.S. Mass shootings Gun Control\nThe shooter who killed 22 people and injured dozens more in El Paso, Texas earlier this month reportedly purchased his assault rifle from Romania and thousands of rounds of ammunition from Russia.\nAccording to a Texas Department of Public Safety report obtained by The Texas Tribune, the 21-year-old suspect told police about the details of the weapons shortly after he was arrested. The gunman surrendered to authorities in his car nearly a mile away from the Walmart where the attack took place. Officials said the shooter had a \"stone-cold look\" when apprehended and expressed no remorse or regret.\nThe shooter later told investigators that he has purchased the AK-47 assault rifle from Romania and had it shipped to a gun dealer near Allen, Texas. The ammunition, he added, was from Russia. El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen had previously said the firearm was bought legally but never elaborated on where or when the shooter obtained it.\nThe shooter also reportedly told investigators about his manifesto, which was posted to the online messaging board 8chan just minutes before the attack. The document was filled with white supremacist ideology and railed against immigration, particularly in the Latino community. The author warned of a \"Hispanic invasion of Texas\" and detailed a plan to separate America based on race.\nThe suspect also told authorities that he \"wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as possible\" during the attack, according to a summary of his police interview included in the public safety report. Thirteen of the victims were U.S. citizens, eight were Mexican citizens and one was German.\nPeople pray and pay their respects at the makeshift memorial for victims of the shooting that left a total of 22 people dead at the Cielo Vista Mall WalMart (background) in El Paso, Texas, on August 6, 2019. The Texas Tribune reported that the shooter purchased his assault rifle from Romania and thousands of rounds of ammunition from Russia. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images\nThe Houston Chronicle recently reported that Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a fundraising mailer to supporters asking them to help him \"defend\" the state from illegal immigrants just one day before the El Paso shooting.\n\"If we're going to DEFEND Texas, we'll need to take matters into our own hands,\" read the letter, which was dated August 2.\n\"Doing nothing will only lead to disaster for Texas, both economically and politically. Securing our border should be the federal government's job, but there is clearly a crisis at our southern border — a crisis Congress refuses to fix,\" Abbott added.\nThis month's mass shootings, which killed 31 people in less than 24 hours, have sparked a nationwide debate over gun legislation and the Second Amendment. But despite public outcry and pressure from Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not called senators back from summer recess for an emergency legislative session on the issue.\nThe Senate majority leader has also not allowed a vote on gun control legislation that was passed by the Democratic-controlled House earlier this year. The bill would require universal background checks for almost all firearm purchases.\nPresident Donald Trump responded to the tragedy in El Paso by condemning hate groups and calling for the death penalty for mass murderers and domestic terrorists. He also seemed to signal support for stronger gun background checks but has since reversed his stance on gun control.\n\"We have very strong background checks right now,\" Trump said last week. \"But we have missing areas, and areas that don't complete the whole circle. And we're looking at different things. And I have to tell you that it is a mental problem. And I've said it a hundred times it's not the gun that pulls the trigger, it's the people.\"\nDuring his visit to El Paso shortly after the shooting, Trump praised the work of first responders and noted how much \"love and respect\" people had for the office of the presidency. It was reported, however, that many victims did not want to meet with the president. Trump also said he was struck by \"all the love\" he had seen on his trip.\nEl Paso Shooter Bought Ammunition From Russia, Told Investigators He 'Wanted to Shoot as Many Mexicans as Possible': Report | U.S.\nEverytown Urges McConnell to Stand Up to Gun Lobby: 'This Isn't Normal'\nRepublican Congressman Likens Gun Control to Banning Cars in CNN Interview\nTexas Governor Asked Supporters to 'Defend Texas' from Illegal Immigration","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line626925"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9045752882957458,"wiki_prob":0.9045752882957458,"text":"Mapping Australia's high-speed rail routes\nHigh-speed rail has been on the agenda for every Australian Government since 1984, but no project has ever made it past the advanced planning stages.\nElliot Gardner maps out some of the potential high-speed rail routes in the country\nvery populated continent is home to some form of high-speed rail network -except for Australia. The introduction of the bullet train in Japan in 1964 captured the world’s attention, and many countries – notably China, Spain, Germany and France – have followed suit with their own takes on the high-speed rail system.\nThe idea of uniting Australia’s eastern seaboard through high-speed rail has been floated since the early 1980s, with every federal government from 1984 to the present day investigating its feasibility. The 2017 federal budget allocated A$20bn over the next ten years to investment in the rail industry, with this figure rising even higher in 2018.\nThe east coast is almost exclusively seen as the preferred location for any potential such projects. Sydney to Melbourne is the world’s second busiest air corridor and using rail to reduce air traffic makes both economic and ecological sense, if the appropriate infrastructure can be set up. But with the sheer size of the undertaking presenting a mammoth engineering challenge, the question remains: what form would a modern Australian high-speed rail network take?\nClick or tap on a location on the map to find out more about its high-speed rail\nConsolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA)\nConsolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA) is a private property development consortium that has announced a A$75bn plan to build three ‘smart cities’ on the east coast of the country – with even more planned - in order to decentralise the Australian population away from large cities to smaller, more sustainable high-tech inland cities. While the project is not purely about high-speed rail, CLARA believes this is the best available method for enacting the plan and transforming Australia.\nThe company has identified a Melbourne to Sydney route via Shepparton and Canberra as the most viable. Elevated tracks would most likely be used in order to minimise the impact on landowners.\nThe plan is a radical one and has thus attracted much criticism. A report from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects stated that it may well be difficult to locate a reliable water source for the new cities and several engineering groups have noted the intense practical challenge of developing a high-speed rail route from scratch. Still, in 2018 the CLARA proposal was one of three invited by the Turnbull Government to develop a detailed business case for funding.\nUltraspeed Hyperloop\nNo discussion of high-speed rail would be complete without mention of some form of Elon Musk’s futuristic Hyperloop proposal and sure enough Australia has also been earmarked as a potential site for an ultra-high-speed Hyperloop-type concept – though chances of it becoming a reality currently look to be slim.\n‘Ultraspeed’ is the name of Australia’s Hyperloop offering, with plans being put forward for a travel network between Sydney and Brisbane via Tamworth and Toowoomba, with a second route proposed between Brisbane and the Gold Coast.\nAs with all Hyperloop travel projects, designs are still very much conceptual. The idea is to suspend train carriages on an air cushion – thereby reducing friction – in a vacuum sealed tunnel. The train would be propelled by magnets, allowing for travel speeds of up to 1,000km/h. If the project comes to pass, travel times between Sydney and Brisbane could be reduced to as little as one hour.\nConcerns have been raised that the inherent curves, ascents and descents of the Australian countryside would subject passengers to significant g-force and that the required tunnelling needed to set up the route would be very expensive, though Ultraspeed has claimed that the project could cost around A$40bn.\nHowever, it is worth noting that the Ultraspeed website currently takes the form of an Indonesian-language discount storefront and there has been no social media presence on official channels since 2017.\nElectric Tilt Train\nOperating on the North Coast railway line in Queensland between Brisbane, Bundaberg and Rockhampton, the Electric Tilt Train service is the name of two high-speed tilting trains that have been in service since late-1998.\nTilting trains counter the centrifugal force experienced by rounding curves at high speeds by tilting the carriage towards the inside of the curve. Construction on Australia’s Electric Tilt Train began in 1993, with engineering company Walkers (now Bundaberd Walkers Engineering) being awarded the contract for\ntwo six-carriage electric trains and Japanese multinational Hitachi providing the tilting equipment.\nWhile technically speaking, the Electric Tilt Train service is a medium-speed rail line, during a trial run prior to opening in 1998, the service reached a speed of 210km/h, just above the internationally accepted minimum of 200km/h to be defined as ‘high-speed’. To this day, the 210km/h test run still stands as Australia’s rail speed record.\nThe two Electric Tilt Train services are still in operation, with the two trains recently refurbished in July 2016 and July 2017.\nA joint venture between Alstom and Leighton Contractors (known as the Speedrail Consortium) proposed a link between Sydney and Canberra in 1993, but after a series of delays over subsidies, it wasn’t until 1997 that the Australian Government expressed formal interest in the Speedrail offering.\nThe government invited expressions of interest in high-speed rail proposals and chose the Speedrail Consortium as the preferred party to proceed with its A$3.5bn project. With the potential to create 15,000 jobs, the company claimed that there would be no net cost to the taxpayer.\nWhile Speedrail submitted a feasibility study in late 1999 claiming that the project met all expectations and requirements, concerns still lingered that significant subsidies and tax concessions would be required to complete the project. The media at the time speculated an additional A$1bn would be needed. By December 2000, the Australian Government had dropped the project.\nInland Rail\nWhile not a high-speed rail project, Inland Rail deserves an honourable mention because of the scale of the project and the impact it will have on the country. The Australian Government in 2017 committed $9.3bn for the delivery of a high-capacity freight route between Melbourne and Brisbane. The route is being divided into 13 smaller projects across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, with potential to connect Melbourne, Brisbane and regional Australia to domestic and international markets and significantly impacting rural communities along the way.\nInland Rail promises to cut the journey time between the two cities down to 24 hours, offering a competitive alternative to air and road travel, reducing emissions by 750,000 tonnes, and - according to the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities - it will boost Australia’s GDP by $16bn, though this figure has been a matter of some dispute. The first train is projected to run by 2025.\nHome | Training Australia's future rail engineers\nC.A.T.E.R - Centre for Advanced Transport Engineering and Research\n4Tel - Digital Railway Specialists\nUES International\nRailway projects across Asia Pacific\nUnique Rail\nDegnan Construction Company Insight\nInland Rail: the controversial talking points\nCampagno Engineering\nPremier Rock Machinery Company Insight\nComplete Asset Management Company Insight\nBest-laid plans: Sydney's light rail fiasco\nEngineering Plastics Company Insight\nLaing O'Rourke Company Insight\nWhat does the future hold for Australia's railway stations?\nHarrybilt Engineering\nWizards of Oz: training Australia's future rail engineers\nDi Mattia Company Insight\nEvent: AusRAIL","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1287783"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5649086236953735,"wiki_prob":0.43509137630462646,"text":"Free Buns At London’s Naked Restaurant\nSunday, May 1st, 2016\nBunyadi Restaurant: https://www.google.com/\nGOOGLE NETHERLANDS: “This spring, Google is introducing the self-driving bicycle in Amsterdam, the world’s premier cycling city. The Dutch cycle more than any other nation in the world, almost 900 kilometres per year per person, amounting to over 15 billion kilometres annually. The self-driving bicycle enables safe navigation through the city for Amsterdam residents, and furthers Google’s ambition to improve urban mobility with technology. Google Netherlands takes enormous pride in the fact that a Dutch team worked on this innovation that will have great impact in their home country.”\nSatanists Offended By Cruz Comparison\nABC NEWS “Prominent Satanists want to be clear: Ted Cruz need not apply.\nAfter former House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday called the current Republican presidential candidate “Lucifer in the flesh,” saying he found it difficult to work with him, staunch Satanists decried the comparison.\n“Having a conservative Christian likened to Lucifer — one who opposes equal rights for same sex couples and promotes the ability to deny services to any with different values — we Satanists see as besmirching the positive, heroic aspects of that character as portrayed by Milton in his epic ‘Paradise Lost,‘” Magus Peter Howard Gilmore, the high priest of The Church of Satan, said in a statement.”\nREAD MORE: http://abcnews.go.com/\nCANADA: America, But Better\nCanada for President: http://www.americabutbetter.com/\nThey’re ALL Fucking Entertaining\n2016 Election memes: https://www.google.com/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line46712"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9499064087867737,"wiki_prob":0.9499064087867737,"text":"Home > Auto > Auto News\nRolls-Royce Ghost series II launched; Priced at `4.5 crore\nThe Hans India\nnull | 9 Nov 2014 12:21 AM GMT\nRolls-Royce has launched the Ghost Series II starting at Rs 4.5 crore (ex-showroom pan India). The car was first seen at the Geneva Motorshow and now...\nRolls-Royce has launched the Ghost Series II starting at Rs 4.5 crore (ex-showroom pan India). The car was first seen at the Geneva Motorshow and now has made its way into India. For Rolls-Royce, India is an extremely important market, not as important or big as China though, but still. The company already has 5 dealerships across India and has plans to expand it further in the years to come.\nThe Ghost Series II gets subtle changes to the exterior and interior and a few additions to the options list. The attention is drawn straight away by the rectangular LED headlamps which replace the round main headlamps. There are also 21-inch alloys along with new paint shades and a new rear bumper.\nThe Series II also gets new seats with reworked electronic adjustments and heating options. The rear seats have been subtly re-angled to augment communication with fellow passengers. The instrument cluster gets marginal changes but there is a new infotainment system with 10-inch multimedia screen with a touchpad controller that makes its way inside the car.\nThere will be occasions when you might want to get behind the wheel of this one and it won't disappoint. At the heart is the same 6.6-litre V12 engine which churns out 563bhp and 780Nm. Mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission, the Ghost Series II will hit a top speed limited to 250km/h and accelerate from 0-100 km/h in 4.7 seconds.\nYou might think that 4.5 crores is a lot of money but Sven Ritter, GM Rolls-Royce Asia Pacific says, \"We are bringing the car to India because there definitely is a demand and we want to fulfill it. People in India love our cars.\"\nRolls-Royce Ghost Series in India","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line58955"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5343605279922485,"wiki_prob":0.46563947200775146,"text":"Amy Fetherolf\nAnusha Rasalingam\nAndrew Eccles\nLindsay Gibbs\nJuan José Vallejo\nHow The Match Was Won/Lost\nSocial Media Studies\nChangeover Chats\nSearching for The Changeover\nThe Backboard\nYou are here: Home / Tennis Book Talk: Tennis Meets Romance in “Game. Set. Match.” by Jennifer Iacopelli\nTennis Book Talk: Tennis Meets Romance in “Game. Set. Match.” by Jennifer Iacopelli\nBy Lindsay on May 8, 2013\nI’ve been wanting to start a regular column here at The Changeover on tennis books and tennis authors pretty much ever since we began the site–I have a bit of a personal interest in the topic– but unfortunately I got busy and also a bit lazy, a terrible combination, and never got it off the ground. But when Jennifer Iacopelli, who I met on Twitter, started tweeting about the release of her new adult (more on that later) novel “Game.Set.Match.” I knew that would be the perfect place to start.\nI was right. (As usual.)\nThe truth is that as much as I love the history and the real-life biographies and the statistics and other serious-face tennis topics, I also enjoy the lighter side of the sport as well. I love the petty rivalries, the romances, the friendships, and the fashion. Though the matches and the training and the traveling are far from glamorous, it’s all still much more exciting and high-stakes than the life I lead. It’s always fun to imagine what goes on off the court between these players that we spend so much time watching.\n“Game. Set. Match.” follows the lives of three different girls in their late teens who all train at the prestigious Outer Banks Tennis Academy in North Carolina. The structure of the novel works because all of the characters are different enough to stand alone, but all living in the same world and working towards the same goal–becoming the best tennis player in the world. The men in their lives are all intriguing (and HOT) as well, but they’re definitely the supporting characters in this book. It’s really about the established star Penny, the spawn-of-tennis-legends Jasmine, and the newcomer Indy trying to grow into women on the court and off.\nBasically it’s 90210 meets the WTA.\nFrom a writing standpoint, I enjoyed the book because it was fast-paced, flowed well, and never tried to pretend to be anything that it wasn’t. It’s cheesy in parts. It’s romantic. It’s overwrought, but grounded in emotions that make sense. It’s smart because it is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Fun.\nFrom a tennis standpoint, I loved it because it was set in the real tennis universe. Though the characters and the Outer Banks Tennis Academy are all figments of Iacopelli’s imagination, they all exist in the tennis world that we know. The book follows the tour from Madrid through the French Open, so the timing of the release is absolutely perfect, and to be honest it was great to read about off-court drama that wasn’t quite as serious as the stuff that’s been going on in the news this week. It helps that Iacopelli is a real tennis fan, and her passion for the sport shines through. She’s one of us. Though she has to talk about tennis in terms that non-fans will understand, there’s plenty of stuff for hardcore fans to appreciate too, and I never felt like she was talking down to us.\nI read the book in an afternoon, got completely sucked into the stories, and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next when it was done. Perfect.\nIacopelli was nice enough to answer a few of the questions I had, and hopefully will show up in the comments to answer any questions you may have! You can purchase the book here.\nI know from our Twitter friendship that you really love tennis. How did you become a fan?\nAnyone who knows me knows I’m a total sports nut, but tennis was my absolute first love. I grew up in Queens during the early nineties AND my name was Jennifer, thus I automatically assumed I was destined to be the next Jennifer Capriati. I took lessons at the National Tennis Center and just totally fell in love with the sport. Obviously, I wasn’t nearly good enough to play professionally and my interest in playing competitively dwindled, but I’ve always remained a huge fan.\nThe book is so specific about the life of an up and coming tennis player. Does your knowledge of that come from firsthand experience, research, or imagination?\nI like to think of it as unintentional research and a lot of imagination. Obviously, I’m a tennis fan so I’ve heard a ton of stories over the years from players about their journey to the pro tour. The little details I had to fill in myself, but luckily there isn’t only one path to follow, so I could be creative with the players’ backgrounds.\nAs a tennis fan myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if you based your characters off of any current players? If not, I’d love to hear who you think your characters’ tour counterpoints are.\nOh! My tennis players all definitely have a little bit of some real life tennis players, both past and present.\nOf my male characters, there’s only one who plays at a professional level, Alex Russell. He is British and a seven-time Grand Slam champion, but has fallen off a bit, focusing more on partying and less on training. I like to think of him as someone under the pressure of Andy Murray, with the talent of Roger Federer and the attitude of Andy Roddick all rolled into one!\nPenny Harrison, on the court, is definitely Steffi Graf, though at the very beginning of her career. She’s got the talent and the drive to be the best ever, though she meets her “Andre” a lot earlier than Steffi did, so let’s hope she doesn’t let that distract her!\nI can’t believe I’m about to do this, but Indy is definitely John Isner. She’s super powerful, though not nearly as tall, but she can be really inconsistent and she doesn’t have the strongest mental game. She’s got a ton of talent, but she has to get out of her own way.\nAnd last, but not least, Jasmine. Actually the inspiration for Jasmine came from a “what if” I asked myself when I was doing some very preliminary character sketches. What if Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf’s kids wanted to play tennis professionally? Her character just grew from there.\nHow fun was it to come up with the names for all those tennis players?\nSome of the players are named for my friends. The rest were me just having some fun on the internet looking up common names in different countries. Some of my favorites are Zinaida “Zina” Lutrova, the women’s No. 1, Pallavi and Anaya Kapur, twins who dominate the women’s doubles circuit, my little nod to the awesome Bryan brothers and Paolo Macchia, who is named for one of my favorite athletes of all time, Paolo Maldini of AC Milan!\nThough these are fictional characters, you set it in the real tennis universe. There’s Madrid, Rome, the French Open, and even mentions of Rio. Was it hard to make the complicated tennis world accessible for a general audience, and did you ever consider just making up your own tennis rules?\nYes it was hard and no I never considered making up my own rules. One of my biggest pet peeves is a sports movie/tv show/book/whatever that portrays the sport in an unrealistic way.\nAt the same time, as you said, I wanted to make sure that the tennis, the complexities of the pro tour and the game itself, was as accessible as possible for people who don’t know the difference between love and deuce.\nI took the “less is more” approach. I explained things only when absolutely necessary and tried to weave little details into the story when I could. Sometimes there was no getting around just explaining how the game works, like the first time I wrote about a tie-break or when I had to let a reader know that clay courts play slower than hard courts or how its easier to improve your ranking if you do really well at a Grand Slam rather than a much small tournament.\nI was lucky in that I had some great early readers, some tennis fans and some not, who gave me a ton of great feedback and helped me strike that balance.\nWe’re tennis nerds and writing nerds over here at The Changeover. We’d love to hear a little bit about your process of writing this book briefly, from conception to writing to book deal to editing.\nI got the idea for GAME. SET. MATCH. in August of 2011. I was actually in the shower with my iPod in its dock on random and the song Penny and Me by Hanson (no judging!) came on. There and then, Penny Harrison popped into my head nearly fully formed. I knew a ridiculous amount of information about her, but the one thing that really stood out was that she was a tennis player. I plotted most of it out and then started writing around the beginning of November. I finished in early 2012, did a bunch of revisions because the first draft was total crap and on March 31st, I was done.\nOf course it’s not nearly that easy. I had a finished manuscript, but I didn’t have any way of getting it published, so the next step was to try and find a literary agent to represent me. And that means going through a process called querying. Querying is when you write a short (no more than one page) email, pitching your book to a literary agent.\nRemember applying to college? Multiply that stress by about a billion and you might come close to what querying is like and I had it pretty easy. I sent out 100 query emails to literary agents who represented books like mine (young adult/crossover women’s fiction, now with its own new fancy label, “new adult”). I started querying on April 1st. Here were my stats:\nTotal Queries Sent: 100\nRejections of Query: 44\nNo Response: 33\nRequests to Review Full or Partial Manuscript: 22\nRejections of the Full or Partial: 14 + 5 who never responded = 19\nOffers of Representation: 3\nI signed with my amazing agent Michelle Wolfson on June 12th, less than a year after starting my manuscript. I was SO lucky that we found each other so fast!\nThen came a process that was even more nerve-wracking than querying. It’s called being “on submission” when your agent submits your work to publishers for consideration. We knew it would be really tough to sell GAME. SET. MATCH. because first, people think girls hate sports (untrue, but whatever) and second, I wrote in a category that didn’t exist yet. My characters are between the ages of 17-23, not “young adult,” but not really the right age for a mainstream adult novel. Thankfully we were able to sign with a publisher that was out ahead of a trend that’s really taken off since called “new adult” which focuses specifically on that age group. The awesome people at Coliloquy signed me to a three book deal in late July 2012.\nI’ve rambled on a lot, but you did ask about editing too, so I’ll be quick! I won’t lie, there was a lot of editing, a ton really, but what never changed was the heart of the story, my three girls all of whom dreamed about becoming the best tennis player in the world!\nIs this your first book? Have you always wanted to be a writer?\nI’ve been writing forever, but this is actually the first book I’ve managed to complete from start to finish. I’ve got bits and bobs of dozens of novels squirreled away for a rainy day though, just waiting for me to come back and finish them one day!\nWhat is next for you and for your characters? Do we get to see them again? Please say yes.\nIn GAME. SET. MATCH. we travel to the French Open and just like in the real world, the next book, which will hopefully be out sometime later this year, will focus on the time leading up to and during Wimbledon! There will be a third book in the series as well and since you’re all tennis fans, I’m sure you can guess what major we’ll be headed to next.\nThanks so much to Jennifer for kicking off our Tennis Book Talk series! If you guys have any other tennis books and tennis authors you want me to read/interview, please let me know!\nLindsay is an author, a filmmaker, a long-winded blogger, and a huge tennis fan.\nAll posts by Lindsay\nPosted in Tennis Book Talk | Tagged Books, Interviews\ntennis watcher May 8, 2013 at 4:55 pm | Permalink\nI can’t wait to read this! It sounds like a really great summer read. How does Iacopelli manage the cultural differences so prevalent in the tennis world? I imagine this is as difficult as the balance she seems to have struck with tennis IQ/knowledge, but when struck the audience for the book is limitless given the international reach tennis now has. Thanks for sharing this.\nParting question, will you be reading and/or reviewing Connors unfortunate memoir? I look forward to seeing more Tennis Book Talk!\nHenk May 8, 2013 at 5:34 pm | Permalink\nPlease tell me this book is filled with tennis-flavoured double entendres.\n“I dropped my balls on your deuce court”\nJennifer Iacopelli May 8, 2013 at 8:02 pm | Permalink\nMy editor wouldn’t let me leave them in! Kidding…kinda… 😉\nKarolina May 8, 2013 at 9:16 pm | Permalink\nLove to see tennis in the art form – definitely under represented. please check out “Broken At Love” – romance tennis web series…and like her I like accurate representations of the sport!! 🙂 enjoy. http://www.brokenatlovetheseries.com\nAlyssa May 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm | Permalink\nI love tennis so this book is really a must read for me! 🙂\nNicole May 11, 2013 at 7:42 pm | Permalink\nThis just went on my Amazon wish list. Thanks for sharing, Lindsay, and thanks for writing what sounds like a great tennis story, Jennifer! (I may be WAY beyond the book’s target market, but it still sounds like great fun.)\nPrevious Entry: The Backboard: Those Lucrative Wildcards, Who Owns the Hawk-Eye Data and More\nNext Entry: Consistency Ratings: The Roller Coaster Known as Jerzy Janowicz\nChangeover Podcast:\nTweets from https://twitter.com/The_Changeover/lists/changeover-staff\nCopyright © 2020 The Changeover.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line908581"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5316455960273743,"wiki_prob":0.46835440397262573,"text":"From the Window Seat\nThe battle for hearts and minds\nBy Arnie Weissmann\nh, the British love Americans. Or they love to hate them.\" I was at lunch with a British tour operator and was asking how well Brits and Yanks are mixing these days on tours that have guests from both countries.\nSince the publication of controversial photos of prisoners detained at Camp X-Ray was followed by President Bush's identification of the \"Axis of Evil,\" there have been a plethora of news stories about negative European reaction to America's recent behavior and announcements.\nIn particular, there's concern that the U.S. may be laying the groundwork for unilateral action against Iraq. The attitude of \"you're either with us or against us\" is sounding increasingly arrogant to foreign ears.\nOur period of self-examination is appearing to be a period of self-absorption, and our patriotic flourishes are sometimes coming across as strident jingoism.\nThe official foreign government responses to U.S. pronouncements are couched in diplomatic turns of phrase, but worrisome to anyone in the travel industry are the interviews with people on the streets of European capitals.\nSympathy for America after Sept. 11 and admiration for the American-led forces' quick success in Afghanistan are being replaced by a sense that the U.S. is not listening to input from its allies.\nIf this attitude gains momentum, the predictable result will be a rise in anti-Americanism displayed by ordinary citizens abroad.\nOf course, a rise in anti-Americanism wouldn't exactly be an incentive for already skittish Americans to begin traveling again.\nOne foreign national who is understanding of the position America finds itself in is writer Salman Rushdie. The author of \"The Satanic Verses\" knows all too well the dangers presented by regimes that practice a narrow and rigid interpretation of Islam.\nHe wrote an article finding fault with the U.S.'s critics in the New York Times earlier this month. He recounts listening \"night after night\" to Londoners' diatribes against Americans, diatribes focused in part on our patriotism, \"emotionality\" and \"self-centeredness.\"\nRushdie concludes that America \"did what had to be done ... and did it well,\" but also suggests that we're at a crossroads of sorts, and \"this is not the time to ignore the rest of the world.\"\nMy British tour operator friend simply joked about any potential culture clash. He said the biggest problem in hosting Americans is making sure there's enough coffee and ice on hand, and in finding accommodations with showers.\nHe talked about how Americans change the atmosphere on a tour for the better: \"They're far more noisy, exuberant and add energy -- the British get caught up and love it.\"\nI think the reality for most Americans traveling abroad lies somewhere between Rushdie's British antagonists and the tour operator's rosy picture of harmony. I don't think travel agents or tour operators need to prepare clients to face anti-Americanism ... yet.\nBut I do hope that our government, while working to protect our national interests, bears in mind that it's in our national interest -- to say nothing of the interest of the travel industry -- to win two wars: the war against terrorism and the battle for the hearts and minds of people on foreign streets.\nWe're making progress on the first front, but we may be in retreat on the second.\nDo-it-yourself flightseeing?\nHarry Sommer's journey\nTravel books to give and get\nhttps://www.travelweekly.com/Arnie-Weissmann/The-battle-for-hearts-and-minds","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1205950"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7563638091087341,"wiki_prob":0.7563638091087341,"text":"Marco Island school targeted by Florida nonprofit that has come under scrutiny\nThe email was sent at 10:20 p.m. to George Andreozzi’s Gmail account on a Saturday in early April.\nMarco Island school targeted by Florida nonprofit that has come under scrutiny The email was sent at 10:20 p.m. to George Andreozzi’s Gmail account on a Saturday in early April. Check out this story on naplesnews.com: http://nplsne.ws/28KGF9n\nNaples Daily News Published 12:26 p.m. ET Dec. 7, 2014\nRyan Mills, (@NDN_RMills)\nThe sender, identified only as “An Onoma,” requested Andreozzi’s last payroll transaction from his job as principal of the Marco Island Charter Academy high school.\nAndreozzi, who has since retired, never responded or even acknowledged the email. A little over a month later, the Deerfield Beach nonprofit Citizens Awareness Foundation sued in Lee County Court alleging the school had violated Florida’s Sunshine law by not turning over the records.\nThe foundation, with a mission to “empower citizens to exercise their right to know,” has drawn scrutiny for filing more than 140 similar lawsuits in at least 27 Florida counties since January. In every case reviewed by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, the suits were filed by an attorney with the O’Boyle Law Firm — a firm that not only shares a building with the foundation, but personnel and money as well.\nThe firm then attempts to collect cash settlements.\nRead or Share this story: http://nplsne.ws/28KGF9n","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1130080"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9313417077064514,"wiki_prob":0.9313417077064514,"text":"'Ad limina' meeting was a 'sharing among shepherds,' Cuban bishop says\nby Junno Arocho Esteves, Catholic News Service\nPope Francis meets with Cuban bishops during their \"ad lumina\" visit to the Vatican May 4. (CNS/L'Osservatore Romano)\nRome — Having a group meeting with Pope Francis was not like attending a lecture, but it was a moment of communion and sharing among friends and shepherds, a Cuban archbishop said.\n\"When people call it an audience, it sounds like we're there only to listen, but this was a sharing among shepherds; a meeting of bishops — the apostles that are in Cuba — and Peter,\" Archbishop Dionisio Garcia Ibanez of Santiago, president of the Cuban bishops' conference, told Catholic News Service May 4.\nFrancis met with the 13 prelates from the Caribbean island-nation earlier that day during the \"ad limina\" visit that bishops are required to make to the Vatican.\nGarcia said the pope listened intently as well as offered advice on the challenges facing the nearly 6 million Catholics in Cuba.\nAlthough the problems \"are common in many churches,\" Garcia said, they \"manifest in Cuba in a unique way.\"\n\"It is a poor church and we need material help. But more than anything, we need missionaries, we need priests, religious men and women. The number of missionaries does not reach the demand of people who come to the church and the evangelization efforts we have,\" he said.\nWhile the government has granted greater religious freedoms to the Catholic Church, Garcia told CNS that the lack of money has made it difficult to \"build new churches in so many places where we have started to preach the faith.\"\nThe church, however, continues to stay strong and is encouraged by the support by the pope, he added.\n\"We know and we feel the appreciation of the Holy See for Cuba and we thanked (Francis) for that. We told him about the situation of our church, which is a very fragile and poor church in many things, but one that is also creative and enthusiastic about evangelizing. He listened to us and gave us advice; it was a conversation among shepherds,\" Garcia told CNS.\nHe also said that Catholics in Cuba are \"very grateful\" for the affection shown to them, particularly throughout the past three pontificates.\nThe closeness of the universal church to the people of Cuba began with St. John Paul II's historic visit in 1998, the first visit of a pope to the country.\n\"Pope John Paul II was an imposing person; imposing not only in how he presented himself but also because of his personal history. He was a man who lived through totalitarianism and who went out to fight for his church,\" the archbishop said.\nAnd, Garcia said, when St. John Paul visited Cuba, \"his old age and physical weakness made him even more lovable because of his frailty and the power of his voice and thought.\"\nPope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012. Recalling the retired pope's \"methodical and studious\" personality, Garcia said that although he had shown signs of frailty, \"he had a very powerful way of thinking.\"\n\"Pope Benedict spent two days in Cuba whereas Pope John Paul II spent five days. Yet in only two days, he conquered the hearts of the people,\" the archbishop said.\nHowever, he continued, Pope Francis stands out since \"out of all three, he was the one that was known before\" he became pope.\nAs archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio headed the drafting committee for the final document of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in 2007 in Aparecida, Brazil.\nThe document's call to renew the church's commitment to mission and discipleship in Latin America, particularly reaching out to those far from the church, resonated in areas where the church was in decline or just beginning to flourish, Garcia said.\nThe Cuban people love Francis' \"Latin American personality\" and his way of \"transmitting the Gospel in a very Latin American style,\" the archbishop said.\nEach of the three popes, \"according to their own personality, according to the historical moment, have left their mark which is to bring us the Gospel,\" Garcia told CNS.\nWorld | 'Ad limina' meeting was a 'sharing among shepherds,' Cuban bishop says\nDoubts about Viganò's accusations aside, Pope Francis needs a better response\nPope's Eco Quotes: The gift of knowledge\nPope Francis: Year four begins\nGerman bishops, Vatican officials to meet May 3 to discuss Communion\nNo deathbed conversion for atheist Stephen Hawking","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1410842"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6582562923431396,"wiki_prob":0.34174370765686035,"text":"With a commitment to world class research, Staffordshire University is also at the forefront of digital innovation.\nWith a history of teaching, research and knowledge transfer dating back to 1901, Staffordshire University (SU) has a long and proven track record in undertaking pioneering research and providing informative, cutting-edge and stimulating training to a variety of audiences. The University remains dedicated to being a truly international centre of learning and to conducting high-impact research with real-world applications.\nSU is also undertaking an ambitious plan to become the UK’s leading digital university. To achieve world-class status, the University has already invested £40 million in new, state-of the art teaching and learning facilities and £12 million in new computing and games facilities. The University has the UK’s top Games Design programme, industry-leading media and motion capture studios, and hosts the Centre of Archaeology which is internationally recognised for its expertise in the investigation of Holocaust sites.\nOświęcim: Destruction of the Cemetery\nOświęcim: Jacob Hennenberg Eyewitness Testimony\nOświęcim: Social Action\nOświęcim: Finding Existing Graves\nPiaski: Social Action","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line703960"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7327826023101807,"wiki_prob":0.7327826023101807,"text":"October 27, 2018 February 2, 2019 The Grey Lantern\nIan Brown announces new album with single First World Problems\nNine years after his last solo release, Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown has announced seventh studio album Ripples to be released on March 1st 2019. To accompany the announcement, Ian has shared the first single from the album First World Problems.\nSelf-producing the album, Ian Brown also wrote the majority of the album tracks. Three of the which were co-written with his sons, who also play a multitude of instruments across Ripples. The new album also features cover versions of Barrington Levy’s Black Roses and Break Down The Walls by Mikey Dread.\nRipples was recorded in Liverpool and enhanced in the Beatles room at Abbey Road Studios, before being mixed by long-term collaborator Steve Fitzmaurice. The record was digitally mastered by Bob Ludwig in New York, while the vinyl was mastered by Chris Bellman in LA.\nIan Brown has retained complete creative control of the project, producing the album, directing a soon to be released video, as well as creating the artwork himself and playing guitar, drums and a host of other instruments throughout the record.\nRipples by Ian Brown is released March 1st 2019 and can be pre-ordered here.\nBreathe and Breathe Easy (The Everness Of Now)\nThe Dream And The Dreamer\nFrom Chaos To Harmony\nIt’s Raining Diamonds\nSoul Satisfaction\nBreak Down The Walls (Warm Up Jam)\nPrevious Charlene Soraia goes outdoors for one voice, one guitar, one take Tragic Youth video.\nNext Nadine Khouri – A New Dawn EP","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line65796"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.710084080696106,"wiki_prob":0.710084080696106,"text":"UW Regents approve 23% increase to president's pay scale, Cross won't accept a raise\nThe new scale puts the UW System President's maximum salary at $734,000. He currently makes $525,000 and does not plan to accept any raises.\nUW Regents approve 23% increase to president's pay scale, Cross won't accept a raise The new scale puts the UW System President's maximum salary at $734,000. He currently makes $525,000 and does not plan to accept any raises. Check out this story on jsonline.com: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2019/04/05/uw-regents-approve-23-raise-presidents-pay-scale/3377221002/\nDevi Shastri, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published 1:25 p.m. CT April 5, 2019 | Updated 1:59 p.m. CT April 5, 2019\nUW System President Ray Cross. (Photo: Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)\nMADISON - The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a 23% increase in the pay scale for the System president, Ray Cross, effective July 1.\nCross has refused to accept salary raises since his hiring in 2014, System spokesman Mark Pitsch said. Cross earns $525,000 annually.\nThe unanimous approval of the president's new pay scale came after a review of the salary ranges for leaders of other university systems, including public university systems in California, Texas, Maryland and North Carolina.\nThe new pay scale ranges from $489,334 to $734,000. That's up from a minimum of $399,000 and a maximum of $598,500.\nDATABASE: University of Wisconsin System coach, professor salaries (2017-18)\nRELATED: Two UW chancellors in hot water denied raises, while others divide $272,174 in pay increases\nRELATED: Gov. Tony Evers’ higher education budget would continue tuition freeze for UW System\nThe board also approved 2% raise for system employees in the Building and Construction Trades Council of South Central Wisconsin.\nLast year, the board approved a plan to raise all UW System employees wages by 3% over each of the next two fiscal years. Gov. Tony Evers proposed a 2% raise per year over the next two years in his budget.\nContact Devi Shastri at 920-996-7207 or DAShastri@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @DeviShastri.\nRead or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2019/04/05/uw-regents-approve-23-raise-presidents-pay-scale/3377221002/","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1493590"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6889897584915161,"wiki_prob":0.3110102415084839,"text":"What Is The Food System?\nFood System Challenges\nHow can we improve the Food System?\nInfluencing Food System Policy\nStudy at Oxford\nProducing sustainable, nutritious food\nThe food system is a complex web of activities involving the production, processing, transport, and consumption. Issues concerning the food system include the governance and economics of food production, its sustainability, the degree to which we waste food, how food production affects the natural environment and the impact of food on individual and population health.\nToday world agriculture is facing major challenges, including how to feed a growing world population, how to reduce rural poverty in the world, and how to manage ecosystem goods and services in light of global environmental change. Traditionally, components of modern production and consumption systems have been assessed or analysed in studies to improve the efficiency of a particular element or activity, based on the assumption that this will also improve the efficiency of the whole system. However, over the last few decades it has become clear that a more holistic framework is needed to address these complex issues. As a result, a food systems approach has been widely adopted to identify, analyse and assess the impact and feedback of the systems different actors, activities and outcomes to help identify intervention points for enhancing food security.\nThe food system therefore includes not only the basic elements of how we get our food from farm to fork, but also all of the processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population. Systems can also exist within systems, for example, farming systems, agricultural ecosystems, economic systems, and social systems and within those are further subsets of water systems, energy systems, financing systems, marketing systems, policy systems, culinary systems, and so on.\nPopulation health is also a key factor in addressing food systems challenges, especially as nutrition-related chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some forms of cancer are major contributors to the global burden of disease.\nIn order to plan sustainable, equitable, and healthy food systems for the future we require integrated and innovative analytical methods and approaches from a range of disciplines, as well as effective intersectoral policy analysis and multi stakeholder engagement.\nThe food system and its drivers. Adapted from Ericksen 2008\nGodfray H.C. et al. 2018. Meat Consumption, Health And The Environment. Science July 2018, Vol. 361, Issue 6399, Eaam5324\nTendall, D.M. et al. 2015. Food System Resilience Defining the Concept. Global Food Security, 6, 17-23\nIngram, J.S.I. et al. 2013. Priority research questions for the UK food system. Food Security, 5: 617-636\nEricksen, P. J. 2008. Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research. Global Environmental Change, 18, 234–245\nPrevious: About the Future of Food Programme Next: What are the challenges facing the food system?\nOxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food\nc/o Oxford Martin School\nOxford, OX1 3BD\nfutureoffood@oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk\n@oxfutureoffood","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line501555"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5659152269363403,"wiki_prob":0.43408477306365967,"text":"© Pollards Estate & Letting Agents. All rights reserved | Designed & Powered by Estate Agent Software | Estate agent websites from Expert Agent | Properties For Sale by Region | Properties to Let by Region | Cookie Policy | Privacy Policy\nScarfskerry\nMin Bedrooms 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10\nScarfskerry One plot £12,000, Two plots £22,000 or ALL Four £40,000\nRequired Mortgage\n4 Plots Available One Plot - £12,000 / Two Plots - £22,000 / ALL Four Plots - £40,000 Plots for sale in the popular coastal hamlet of Scarfskerry. Each plot has planning in principle for a house with garage and access road. The plots are approximately two thirds of an acre in size and all plots are accessed directly off the public road. Mains water and power supplies are nearby and a private drainage system will need to be installed on each plot. The plots are situated on a scenic route. Scarfskerry boasts an attractive harbour and offers coastal walks along virtually the entire length of the shoreline. To the western end there is a quiet beach. Bus services pass through the village and there is a hotel and small shop in the adjacent village of Mey. Crossroads Primary School is just over a mile away.\nNearby is the Castle of Mey which was built between 1566 and 1572 by George, the fourth Earl of Caithness, it became the family home of Sinclair of Mey. In 1789 the elder line of the Mey family became extinct and for a century it was the seat of the local earldom. It was in a state of some decay when the Queen Mother bought it in 1952, shortly after the death of King George Vl. The building was restored and was now the Queen mother's Highland holiday home until her death. The village of Dunnet approx 4 miles away offers local facilities to include, a hotel and the village hall, which accommodates a wide range of community activities such as badminton, playgroup, indoor bowls and aerobics as does the Mey village hall. For outdoor interest, and within easy walking distance, the area offers access to the beautiful Dunnet Sands and SNH (Scottish Natural Heritage) Nature Reserve, Dunnet Forest (now a Trust under the control of the local community), and Brown Trout fishing at St. Johns Loch. There is a bus service to the local schools, to Thurso and to John O’Groats. John O’ Groats is one of the best-known places in Scotland, and is very much a focal point for tourism is approx 9 miles drive away and has two hotels, guest house, campsite, numerous B&B establishments and a number of craft shops and studios. It is an ideal location for the Gills Bay and John O Groats Ferries across the Pentland Firth to Orkney. From Wick and Thurso there are regular bus and rail services to Inverness with connections onwards and from Wick airport there are regular scheduled services to Aberdeen with connections south, London being approximately two hours flying time. Inverness is approximately two hours drive. Details of the planning can be obtain from the Highland Council reference number 11/01662/PIP or downloaded from our website, www.pollardmortgageshop.co.uk\nKW14 8XW\nCounty: Caithness\nRef #: MS00001008\nDesired Viewing Time\nPlease read our privacy notice for information on how we use your details.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1079007"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5728952288627625,"wiki_prob":0.42710477113723755,"text":"African Countries Call For UN Ban On Female Genital Mutilation\nLawmakers from 27 African countries ended a two-day conference in the Senegalese capital of Dakar on Tuesday, where they pushed for a United Nations ban on female genital mutilation, or FGM. Parliamentarians, civil society activists and government representatives called for the adoption of a resolution that explicitly bans FGM as a practice that is contrary to human rights.\nThe Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Female Genital Mutilation aimed to help put together legal mechanisms for the eradication of FGM in Africa.\nMost countries in Africa have signed treaties and conventions on FGM, but they failed to implement or enforce those laws.\nDuring this week's two-day conference, parliamentarians from across the continent discussed and shared common information about international and national legislation regarding FGM, and how to solidify and enforce them.\nAlso present at the conference were lawmakers from the European Union, one of the biggest partners of African countries and groups fighting for the eradication of FGM.\n\"Human rights and women's rights have no boundaries,\" said Emma Bonino, a Vice President of the Italian Senate and former EU Commissioner for Health.\n\"This is a tradition that has been globalised [...] so I think that implies a sense of responsibility, both from north and south. Simply, this is a universal issue.\"\nThe campaign against FGM is still seen in many African societies as an attack by the Western world on African cultural values.\nIt will certainly take a long time, and a tough fight, before the practice is eradicated on the continent.\nAUTHOR: Sheriff Bojang jr\nURL: Click here","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line958033"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.7441325783729553,"wiki_prob":0.2558674216270447,"text":"(1) As part of the conditional use approval process under ORS 215.296 (Standards for approval of certain uses in exclusive farm use zones), for the purpose of verifying the existence, continuity and nature of the business described in ORS 215.213 (Uses permitted in exclusive farm use zones in counties that adopted marginal lands system prior to 1993) (2)(w) or 215.283 (Uses permitted in exclusive farm use zones in nonmarginal lands counties) (2)(y), representatives of the business may apply to the county and submit evidence including, but not limited to, sworn affidavits or other documentary evidence that the business qualifies.\n(2) Alteration, restoration or replacement of a use authorized in ORS 215.213 (Uses permitted in exclusive farm use zones in counties that adopted marginal lands system prior to 1993) (2)(w) or 215.283 (Uses permitted in exclusive farm use zones in nonmarginal lands counties) (2)(y) may be altered, restored or replaced pursuant to ORS 215.130 (Application of ordinances and comprehensive plan) (5), (6) and (9). [2003 c.247 §4]\nNote: 215.297 (Verifying continuity for approval of certain uses in exclusive farm use zones) was enacted into law by the Legislative Assembly but was not added to or made a part of ORS chapter 215 or any series therein by legislative action. See Preface to Oregon Revised Statutes for further explanation.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line994052"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7639604210853577,"wiki_prob":0.7639604210853577,"text":"Japanese reflect as sun sets on country\"s 30-year Heiblack and gold wristbandssei era\nValentine\"s Day Present Concepts For Him - Jewellery Understand Emo. Emo has several meanings. It\"s a musical genre combining hardcore music with sad, emotional lyrics. It\"s an abbreviated way to label a person emotional. It\"s an existence fashion. It\"s a mixture of some or all of these components of design, vogue, culture. It\"s open for debate and often depends on somebody\"s personalized expression. The phrase \"Emo\" loosely describes emotional rock, and most Emo\"s like Indie music. Sweeties Candy Cottage in Huntington is a top seller of the customized bracelets, and organization has been brisk. Its proprietor, Lisa Hodes, told Newsday reporters, \"It\"s unbelievable, I never ever had this considerably site visitors in my 5 years of owning this keep.\" Sweeties Candy Cottage sells Silly Bandz for between $2.50 and $2.99 a pack. Mike Blakely, Manatee High College in Bradenton, Fla. - He is a brief compact runner that ESPN considers a single of the a lot more elusive runners to come out of Florida. Rivals lists his curiosity in Minnesota as medium. He has several delivers from colleges all around the nation, which includes Iowa, Michigan and Purdue. These cheap wristbands can be personalized with the colours that they are and how the message can be observed on the band. Some will have the identify of the enterprise embedded into the silicone itself, others may possibly print to the silicone so that it can be seen simpler. This is the selection of the company and can make a difference in the amount that they are paying for their wristbands. The men\"s bracelets are noticed wristband maker in a great deal of exciting finishes. While gold and silver have been around for a lengthy time, you will see tungsten and titanium bracelets also. Stainless steel jewelry is available at a good deal significantly less than gold and silver and however seems to be classy and stylish on anyone. They are also accessible in leather which are loved by the younger crowd and can be worn with casuals. A dull finish is liked by a whole lot of men who don\"t like their jewellery to shine as well considerably. Another type of wooden soap mold is the slab mold. This is also manufactured from difficult wood, and is shaped a lot more like a flat rectangle with dividers within. The dimension of the interior dividers determines the size of the soap bar. Most slab molds will hold twenty-30 bars of soap at a time. You can also use slab molds with no interior dividers, and later on minimize the bars, or use cookie cutters to create entertaining shapes. Most businesses will do almost any colour you wish and any saying you would like. You will not have a hard time with this element. You want to check out ahead of time if you program on getting a massive volume of text on your wristbands.\nJapanese Prime Minister Abe speaks at a press conference in the city of Ise, Mie Prefecture, central Japan, on Jan 4, 2019. [Photo/IC]\nWith the winding down of Japan\"s Heisei era－the period following the accession of Emperor Akihito in 1989－many Japanese have begun to attempt to define their own, and the country\"s, past 30 years.\nThe curtain will fall on the era when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, the day after his father\"s abdication.\nWhen Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun conducted a survey in the country－asking \"What kind of era is the Heisei?\"－only 5 percent of respondents said it\"s been \"bright\", with 42 percent believing the era was \"tumultuous\" and 29 percent saying it was \"stagnant\".\nDaichi Baba, who was born in the first year of the Heisei, which translates as \"peaceful and fruitful\", said he is a member of what many have called a \"lost generation\".\nThe 30-year-old said that since they grew up in a time when the economy was sluggish, many from his generation are conservative.\n\"Many of my classmates yearn for a job in big companies or work as civil servants, because the \"bubble economy\" cut our parents\" income almost by half. We are all looking for stable jobs, instead of taking any risk,\" Baba said.\nIn the initial years of the Heisei period, Japan\"s economic status was that of the world\"s second-largest economy and Asia\"s only economic power. But this started to fade with the collapse of the \"bubble economy\" in the early 1990s, and the country\"s self-confidence ebbed in the ensuing \"lost decades\"－around 20 years of economic stagnation.\nHuang Dahui, a researcher of East Asian Studies at Renmin University of China, said the Heisei era has marked a dramatic change in Japan\"s regional status.\n\"Japan\"s unchallenged pre-eminence is a thing of the past. Over the past 20 or 30 years, many emerging Asian economies have closed the gap. In this sense, after a century as East Asia\"s unchallenged economic and industrial leader, Japan has become just one of several important regional powers.\"\nHe added that this created a \"feeling of loss\" in the Japanese people and their government during the Heisei era, which tended to make Japanese during this period more conservative.\nIn addition, Japan\"s population has been shrinking in the past 30 years and is aging, and some analysts cite fewer job opportunities for young people in the country\"s economy. The low birth rate will threaten the country\"s future development, analysts said.\nMeanwhile, as globalization sweeps the world, Japanese companies have come to depend more on cheaper, nonpermanent employees, which analysts said has expanded wealth inequality and further fragmented Japanese society.\nThe Heisei period has also been marked by great political instability. Japanese cabinets have been short-lived in the era, with 17 men occupying the prime minister\"s office, from Noboru Takeshita, who was in office when the Heisei era began, to the second incarnation of Shinzo Abe\"s administration, which is currently in power.\nResearcher Huang said it is worth noting that Abe\"s campaign slogan \"restore Japan\" has shown a longing for the \"better\" times of yesteryear in Japanese society. However, he added, it seems Japan is restoring more than the previous glory of economic achievement.\n\"The Japanese government was ambitious and gradually re-emerged as a military power in the Heisei era, as it hopes to get rid of the impact of World War II,\" Huang said.\nOn July 1, 2014, the Japanese government announced a revision of the country\"s defense policy, lifting the ban on the country presuming \"an inherent right to collective self-defense\", he said.\nThe changes extend Japanese security policy well beyond the constraints in place throughout Japan\"s postwar history, he added.\nAnalysts said the country is heading in a dangerous direction and is seeking new defense capabilities that exceed the limits of its pacifist Constitution.\nfitness silicone wristbands\nrubber band bracelets for boys\nbe kind silicone bracelet\nrubber wristbands custom cheap\nfunny rubber bracelets\nPowered by black and gold wristbands.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line471192"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.6347382664680481,"wiki_prob":0.6347382664680481,"text":"United States Senator from New York\nKirsten Elizabeth Rutnik Gillibrand (born December 9, 1966) is an American politician and the junior United States Senator from New York since 2009. She is a member of the Democratic Party and former member of the United States House of Representatives from New York's 20th congressional district.\nAssumed office\nServing with Chuck Schumer\nMember of the U.S. House of Representatives\nfrom New York's 20th district\nJohn E. Sweeney\nKirsten Elizabeth Rutnik\n(1966-12-09) December 9, 1966 (age 53)\nAlbany, New York, U.S.\nJonathan Gillibrand (m. 2001)\nTheodore Gillibrand (b. 2003)\nHenry Gillibrand (b. 2008)\nBrunswick, New York\nDartmouth College (B.A.)\nUniversity of California, Los Angeles School of Law (J.D.)\nSenate Website\nCampaign Website\nIn January 2019, Gillibrand announced her plans to run for President of the United States in the 2020 election.[1] She made a formal announcement on March 17, 2019.[2] She ended her campaign on August 28, 2019.\n1 United States Senator (since 2009)\n2 2020 presidential campaign\nUnited States Senator (since 2009)Edit\nOn December 1, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced Hillary Clinton, the junior U.S. Senator from New York, as Secretary of State. Clinton was confirmed and resigned her senate seat. The announcement began a two-month search process to fill her empty Senate seat.[3] Under New York law, the governor appoints a replacement. A special election would then be held in November 2010 for the remainder of the full term, which ended in January 2013.[4] Governor David Paterson picked Gillibrand on January 23, 2009.[5]\nGillibrand has moved her political positions and ideology toward a liberal, progressive position since her appointment to the Senate.[6][7] Gillibrand was an important part of the successful campaign to repeal \"Don't Ask, Don't Tell\".[8] In March 2011, Gillibrand co-sponsored the PROTECT IP Act, which would restrict access to web sites judged to be infringing copyrights.[9] In 2013, Gillibrand proposed the unsuccessful legislation that would remove sexual assault cases from the military chain of command; the bill was cosponsored by Republican senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.[10]\nIn November 2017, Gillibrand made national news when she said that President Bill Clinton should have resigned from office when his affair with Monica Lewinsky was revealed.[11]\n2020 presidential campaignEdit\nMain article: Kirsten Gillibrand 2020 presidential campaign\nIn January 2019, Gillibrand announced that she is formally exploring a run for President of the United States in the 2020 election while on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.[1] The next day, Gillibrand announced her candidacy for President.[12] She made it official on March 17, 2019. After failing to qualify for the third debate in September, Gillibrand ended her campaign on August 28, 2019.[13]\nGillibrand was born on December 9, 1966 in Albany, New York.[14] She studied at Dartmouth College and the University of California, Los Angeles. Gillibrand has been married to Jonathan Gillibrand since 2001. They have two children.\n↑ 1.0 1.1 O'Reilly, Andrew (January 14, 2019). \"Gillibrand to announce presidential bid during appearance on 'Colbert' show, report says\". Fox News.\n↑ https://twitter.com/SenGillibrand/status/1107235330992812032\n↑ Hernandez, Javier C.; Danny Hakim; Nicholas Confessore (January 23, 2009). \"Paterson Announces Choice of Gillibrand for Senate Seat\". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved January 26, 2011.\n↑ Seiler, Casey; with wire reports (December 2, 2008). \"From Foe to Secretary of State\". Times Union. Albany: Hearst Newspapers. p. A1. Retrieved January 29, 2011.\n↑ Silverleib, Alan (January 23, 2009). \"N.Y. Governor Names Clinton Successor\". Cable New Network (CNN). Archived from the original on November 4, 2010. Retrieved January 29, 2011. Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (help)\n↑ url=http://www.msnbc.com/the-cycle/the-flip-flopping-nature-kirsten-gillibran\n↑ Malone, Clare (December 21, 2017). \"What Is Kirsten Gillibrand Up To?\". Retrieved October 7, 2018.\n↑ \"What 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' did for Kirsten Gillibrand\" Archived March 19, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Capital New York, Steve Kornacki, December 20, 2010\n↑ Bill Summary & Status 112th Congress (2011–2012), \"S.968 Cosponsors\", Bill Summary & Status Archived September 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine\n↑ Samuelsohn, Darren (July 16, 2013). \"Rand Paul, Ted Cruz join Kirsten Gillibrand push on military sexual assault\". Politico. Politico, LLC. Retrieved September 4, 2014.\n↑ Steinhauer, Jennifer (November 16, 2017). \"Bill Clinton Should Have Resigned Over Lewinsky Affair, Kirsten Gillibrand Says\". The New York Times. Retrieved October 1, 2018.\n↑ \"Kirsten Gillibrand announces 2020 presidential bid\". CBS. Retrieved January 16, 2019.\n↑ Will Weissert (August 28, 2019). \"Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand ends once-promising presidential bid\". Associated Press. Retrieved August 28, 2019.\n↑ Tumulty, Karen (January 23, 2009). \"Kirsten Gillibrand\". Time. Time Inc. Retrieved January 27, 2011.\nWikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Kirsten Gillibrand\nWikimedia Commons has media related to Kirsten Gillibrand.\nUnited States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand official U.S. Senate site\nUnited States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand official YouTube channel\nGillibrand for Senate official campaign site\nGillibrand for Senate official YouTube channel\nCampaign contributions made by Kirsten Gillibrand\nRetrieved from \"https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kirsten_Gillibrand&oldid=6649557\"","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line670842"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.7998275756835938,"wiki_prob":0.7998275756835938,"text":"Reviews » DVD Video Reviews » Mr. Vampire (Remastered)\nMr. Vampire (Remastered)\nInternational - Yesasia.com // Unrated // June 22, 2005 // Region 0\nList Price: $15.49 [Buy now and save at Hkflix]\nReview by Carl Davis | posted July 29, 2005 | E-mail the Author\nMr. Vampire (1985) is nothing short of a Hong Kong classic, an Old School action comedy with a generous dose of horror to boot. Produced by the legendary Sammo Hung, it arrived on the scene in time to signal the renewed vigor of the Hong Kong film industry, released the same year as Jackie Chan's Police Story and predating John Woo's A Better Tomorrow which would really kick things into high gear. Director Ricky Lau states in an interview on the disc that stakes were high as the film's budget skyrocketed during production and would need to recoup a lot at the box-office. As it turned out, the film did so well that it spawned so many sequels and imitators (including Mr. Vampire 2), each of varying degrees of quality, which was even impressive by Hong Kong standards.\nTaoist sifu (teacher) Gau (the amazing Lam Ching-Ying) has been asked by the wealthy Yam family to rebury their patriarch, as poor \"feng shui\" is depleting their fortune. Upon unearthing the old fellow, it seems that 20 years spent underground has had no ill effects upon the corpse, except for its razor sharp blue fingernails and its insatiable lust for blood. That's right, the elder Yam has turned into a vampire. Gau realizes this and entrusts his assistants to affix various spells and charms on the casket to prevent the monster from getting loose. As the film demonstrates, the placement of parchment bearing spells, or even symbols drawn in blood, on the creatures' foreheads paralyze them instantly. But Gau's assistants, Choi and Chou, are a couple of bumblers who make a crucial mistake that releases the undead Yam.\nChoi gets himself bitten by the ill tempered ghoul and must then dance on sticky rice to try and draw out the vampirism. Meanwhile his partner-in-crime Choi is seduced by a ghostly vixen and as if that's not bad enough, once dead bodies start turning up a dim-witted constable arrests Gau under suspicion of murder. After an absolutely hilarious and breathtaking fight scene in the jailhouse, Gau's name is cleared and he can get back to saving his assistants and putting the elder Yam to rest… for good. In order to do this, he must first face the female ghost who's bewitched Chou. During their climactic showdown sifu Gau, in true Hong Kong fashion, even has to fight her disembodied head. The finale includes more hopping ghouls, spiritual kung-fu, slapstick comedy and hair-raising predicaments than any ten films combined and still packs one helluva punch even after 20 years.\nIt's amazing how well this film has withstood the test of time. While much of the physical humor and stunts will always be timeless, even the crude wirework and physical effects look good in this age of \"bullet time\" and ever increasing CGI special effects. Lam Ching-Ying's amazing physical presence on screen also plays a big part in the films popularity, although Lam himself felt typecast by the role of Gau, playing similar characters (in no less than eight sequels and knock-offs of Mr. Vampire) in close to 15 films before his untimely death, at the age of 45, from liver cancer in 1997.\nThe DVD:\nPicture: This is the digitally remastered edition and it clearly shows. Fortune Star released both versions of this film and have greatly improved upon every aspect of this edition. The film is presented in a 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The print looks like it could have been struck yesterday, with a clean, clear picture and rich colors. There is a little grain, but that is probably due to the type of film stock used.\nAudio: There are four audio tracks included on this DVD. A Cantonese Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Track, a Cantonese DTS track, a Mandarin Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Track and the original Cantonese 2.0 Stereo track. I listened to the Cantonese 5.1 track and it was phenomenal. The dialogue and sound effects were crisp and the music was very atmospheric and sounded better than ever.\nExtras: Extras include an interview with Director Ricky Lau, a photo gallery and two trailers for the film: the remastered theatrical trailer and a newly edited \"Americanized\" trailer, which is much shorter.\nConclusion: It's about time that this keystone of '80s Hong Kong cinema finally received the DVD treatment it deserved. While it was great to have the film in all it's restored glory, as well as the insightful interview with Ricky Lau, I still wished that Fortune Star could have gotten their hands on some of the other extras I've seen floating around for this release. Specifically I am talking about a video tribute piece to Lam Ching-Ying that Sammo Hung and Chin Siu-ho produced and has been included on other releases of this film. That's just nitpicking though, as this presentation is just the thing to please longtime fans of the film and attract the curious. Highly Recommended.\nFind the lowest price for 'Mr. Vampire (Remastered)'","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line484412"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.5195620059967041,"wiki_prob":0.5195620059967041,"text":"The-Bon-Jovi-Experience\nFri 28 Feb, The Place Telford\nRanked number 14 in Q Magazine’s top 50 bands of all time and inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, Bon Jovi is a household name the world over. With front man and namesake Jon Bon Jovi at the helm since they formed back in 1983, the New Jersey band have sold over 120 million albums worldwide, performing more than 2,600 concerts in over 50 countries for 34 million fans and counting.\nIn tribute to this incredible musical talent, The Bon Jovi Experience was born and since 1994 have become the only band to have performed live on stage with Jon Bon Jovi himself. Lead singer Tony Pearce’s striking resemblance to the original front man creates an unrivalled tribute not to be missed.\nEndorsed by Jon Bon Jovi himself, the official tribute band to Bon Jovi perform all over the world to sell-out crowds. As the world’s leading tribute, The Bon Jovi Experience are often copied but never equalled, performing all the hits you know and love including, “Livin’ On a Prayer”, “Always”, “It’s My Life”, “You Give Love a Bad Name”, and many, many more.\nFri 28 Feb 7:30 PM\nShare The Bon Jovi Experience with Friends...","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line479496"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8360574245452881,"wiki_prob":0.8360574245452881,"text":"Building a Solidarity Economy in Jackson, Mississippi\nMembers of Cooperation Jackson take a break from working in near 100 degree heat.Photo: Courtesy.\nCheree Franco Oct 2, 2019\nThe sun beats down on a mostly unoccupied shopping complex, surrounded by food banks and homeless shelters. On a Saturday afternoon in mid-August, temperatures in Jackson, Mississippi near 38° C. The complex has a Dollar General full of packaged snacks, which is the closest thing to a grocery in this food desert of a neighborhood. Next to it, a large empty space was, until recently, an actual grocery. Jackson Cash & Carry was one of the last black-owned groceries in the United States until its owner couldn’t come up with the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for building repairs. (Historically, Mississippi banks hesitate to loan to black business owners.)\nBut on this day, the recently renamed Ida B. Wells Plaza is more active than usual. A local nonprofit, Cooperation Jackson, purchased the complex, commissioned a mural of Wells — a prominent 19th-century black feminist and journalist — and is hosting a Black August celebration in the parking lot. Black August is a liberation movement, started in California prisons in the 1970s, to commemorate martyrs and imprisoned African-American revolutionaries.\nKids tumble around an inflatable bounce house, while young men cook batches of chicken and burgers on backyard grills. Vendors sell jewelry and artists stir paint, which turns watery in the heat. In a few weeks, an entire wall will be covered in fresh murals.\nInside the cavernous former grocery, which still bears vintage signs denoting “Smoked Meats” and “Bakery,” workers from Freedom Farms sell greens, melons and herbs.\nFreedom Farms is one of the cooperatives formed under the umbrella of Cooperation Jackson. The organization’s ultimate goal is to create a federation of worker-owned cooperatives, in addition to a cooperative incubator, a cooperative financial institution, and an eco-village built on a community land trust. Inspired by the black-collectivism and self-deterministic vision of NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Dubois, the survival programs of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and the Zapatista movement for indigenous rights, Cooperation Jackson’s goal is to form a solidarity economy that values all contributions equally, regardless of race, gender and class.\nCooperation Jackson is only five years old, but the vision behind it is older. The original founders met through another organization focused on Black Liberation, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. They began to strategize to build a community of cooperatives in 2001, while many still lived in disparate parts of the country. Eventually, they chose to launch their participatory democracy project in Jackson, Mississippi. With a population of 165,000, eighty-one percent of which is black, Jackson is the capital city of the blackest and poorest state in the U.S.\nPrior to the Civil War, Mississippi was one of the wealthiest states. That wealth was rooted in agriculture and built on slavery. Over the past century and a half, Mississippi has become famous for its musical, literary, and Civil Rights contributions and infamous for its racist politicians, lynchings and poverty.\n“Jackson is a place that, with our limited energy and resources, we felt we could have an impact,” says a Cooperation Jackson founder, Kali Akuno. “There’s a rich history of struggle that’s already here and a high level of Black autonomous infrastructure.”\nFrom 2008 to 2013, Cooperation Jackson founders began to concentrate in Jackson from throughout the city, state and around the country and purchase land, which they folded into a community land trust. Cooperation Jackson owns about three hectares, although they expect to receive a donation of 12 more soon — land they hope to plant with industrial hemp and bamboo for building materials.\n“The long term plan is to create a series of models that can be used to build deeply affordable housing with locally sourced materials,” says Akuno. “Hemp can be flattened, reinforced, made into bricks.” By mid-2020, they plan to build their first model hemp house, using the 3-D printer in their collectively-owned Center for Community Production. Over the next few years, they want to create an eco-village full of hemp houses, which people can purchase with sweat equity and time-banking. They also plan to build compost toilets, install solar panels, recycle greywater and keep everything as off-grid as possible. The yards of these model homes will be planted with edibles.\nMuch of the land Cooperation Jackson owns is along a once-residential street, now lined with concrete steps that no longer lead to porches. The houses were so far gone that they’ve been demolished. But the co-op owns three livable houses, housing members, and it is currently renovating two more. One of them will be a guest-house to host representatives from other co-ops and volunteer laborers. The other will be a safe house for LGBTQ community members who have nowhere to go.\nJackson has a 29-percent poverty rate. According to Allison Cox, the Deputy Director of Jackson Housing Authority, which oversees public housing for low-income residents, there are hundreds of people waiting for housing vouchers. The department hasn’t been able to move anyone from its waiting list since 2008. The city currently offers vouchers to about 7,000 residents.\nA minimum wage worker logging 40 hours a week earns $290. Median rent in Jackson is $800 a month. This means rent often costs well over half of monthly earnings.\nIn the U.S., one of the most common incentives for affordable housing is tax breaks, offered to for-profit developers. This model sets rent prices based around the area’s median-income, often charging 20 percent of that income. This means “low-income” housing is still out of reach for the poorest families.\nThis model is also short-sighted since affordable housing requirements usually expire 15 years after a tax incentive. When they expire, affordable units usually revert to market rates. The tax incentive model is strongly grounded in capitalism. Developers offer affordable units in up-and-coming markets. The new residents help develop the market, driving up market rates, so that when the requirements expire, the developers make a profit.\nThe community land trust (CLT) model is based on the collective, nonprofit stewardship of the land. Individuals may own structures on the land, but the land itself belongs to the trust. The individual is only allowed to sell these structures pursuant to the terms established by the trust, which keeps the land and structures permanently affordable.\n“The CLT model says property prices shouldn’t go up and down. You shouldn’t get a windfall just because you own property,” says Andy Frame, executive director with Revitalize Mississippi, another organization seeking to establish a community land trust in Jackson. “If people come in and buy property at a tax sale, but don’t live in the community and invest in the property, they’re hurting everybody around them.”\nJason Webb, with Grounded Solutions — a national network of community land trusts — believes that eventually even the most blighted communities will gentrify. “Once it starts happening, you have very few tools to slow it down,” he says.\nCommunity land trusts remove land from the speculative market, often while it’s still affordable. Webb helped Cooperation Jackson develop a business plan. “Conditions in West Jackson, where you have a lot of vacant land and abandoned structures, are perfect for a CLT. Probably nowhere else in the US could you buy that much land, with that small amount of money,” Webb says.\nBut housing is only part of Cooperation Jackson’s mission.\nEventually, Cooperation Jackson wants to establish many worker-owned businesses. They operate a cooperative incubator in the Balagoon Center (named for Kuwasi Balagoon, a queer tenant organizer, anarchist and Black Panther), where they also have administrative offices and monthly member meetings.\nCooperation Jackson already has three worker-owned cooperatives. The Green Team is a lawn care business that composts its clippings. At Freedom Farms, workers grow organic vegetables that are distributed to members and the community and sold at farmers’ markets. The Center for Community Production operates a traditional printing business while working to increase its capacity to print more complex materials for housing, playgrounds and whatever else the cooperative needs. Making things locally is a way for Cooperation Jackson to cut carbon emissions from the transport of goods. The co-op also plans to reopen the grocery store in Ida B. Wells Plaza, to hire its former owner, and to stock the shelves with produce from Freedom Farms.\n“We want to create a movement throughout the state of Mississippi,” says Akuno. “We want people to use our model in other cities to create a whole different type of solidarity and exchange economy, which enables people who are money-poor, but skilled and time-rich, to get their needs met.”\nWhen asked about their greatest success thus far, founder Sacajawea Hall is blunt. “We’re still here,” she says.\nThere have been learning curves. Originally, Cooperation Jackson was trying to work through established channels of government. They selected and campaigned for candidates they thought were committed to a similar view of economic democracy. But this began to seem like an ineffective distraction and at best, a short-term remedy. The co-op collectively decided to distance itself from the city administration, which its members were largely responsible for electing.\nThere have been challenges even among members, in regards to gender dynamics and overt advocacy for the LGBTQ community. “As individuals, we still limit ourselves in a lot of ways,” says Hall. “We have to be actively vigilant around how people’s voices are represented, even nonverbally. We need to do a better job of recognizing that any economic system is centered around women, as people who are providing care work that allows for other work to be done. We could be stronger in having a feminist lens on the work that we’re doing.”\nCooperation Jackson has been more successful at hiring neighborhood men than neighborhood women for co-op jobs, and more men come to member meetings. “There’s nothing that we’re doing in terms of recruitment that brings in men, but men are the majority of people who are on the street, who will ask for work. Women aren’t on the streets in the same way,” Hall says.\nIt’s an imbalance she wants to remedy.\nImani Olugbala, a longtime local activist, is the anchor of Freedom Farms. She has lived in the neighborhood adjoining the co-op for two decades. She raised eight kids and is raising three grandkids there.\nThe farmworkers, most just out of high school, buzz around Olugbala in the closet-sized room that serves as Freedom Farms headquarters. They talk scheduling and turn in “homework” — worksheets and research related to farming. They ask advice on dealing with younger siblings. They treat her as a mentor, and in some cases, a parent.\nA portion of Freedom Farms is being dug up for an aquaponics pond, where waste from fish will become nutrients to feed plants. A practice model — a fish tank and bean sprouts — is set up near Olugbala’s desk. The bean sprouts have been swaying and moving all day.\n“They’re dancing because they’re alive!” a worker named A.B. reports, enthusiastically.\nA former fine arts and music teacher, Olugbala finds symbiosis everywhere.\n“When I was teaching poetry, I was teaching music. Because it’s all about the rhythms. When I was teaching music, I was teaching science. Because it’s about the vibration of the music and how it hits your eardrum. Everything is connected,” she says.\nCooperation Jackson is a long term vision. “We’re going to ultimately have to create our own network of supply and value chain,” says Akuno. “If we exist in a bubble, we won’t survive. It’s a big experiment in democracy. Talk to us in ten years, and see where we’re going.”\nCooperation Jackson is one of twelve inspiring stories of local transformation shortlisted for the 2019 Transformative Cities People’s Choice Award. Transformative Cities is a global search for transformative practices and responses that are tackling global crises at a municipal level. You can still vote for the story that inspires you the most until the 9th of October at transformativecities.org/2019award.\n'Fighting Forward' with Cooperative Power in the Bronx\nSteven Wishnia Oct 2, 2019\nThe Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative’s headquarters are on a side street off Fordham Road, the borough’s main shopping strip.…","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1014110"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.8456159830093384,"wiki_prob":0.8456159830093384,"text":"NewsVideo Games\nCult Classic R.B.I. Baseball to return in Spring 2014\nNicholas Ashman 2014-01-16\nNicholas Ashman · 01/16/2014\nOn the heels of 2K Sports’ announcement that it will be discontinuing its Major League Baseball game franchise, MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) announced this week that it will be reviving the 80’s Namco hit R.B.I. Baseball, a game whose first iteration is famous for being the first video game to feature actual major league baseball players. Though this news was just made public, Major League Baseball fans and sports video game fans alike will not have to wait long to get their hands on this now eagerly anticipated commodity. In its press release announcing the development of this game, MLBAM also revealed that the game’s release will coincide with the start of the 2014 Major League Baseball season, meaning it will be out sometime this spring.\nI’m pretttttttttty sure you can expect an improvement in graphics.\nIn a sports video game world dominated by 2K’s NBA franchise and EA Sports’ FIFA and Madden franchises, this announcement could not come at a better time for baseball lovers and the MLB itself. Though Sony’s MLB: The Show franchise has been well received critically, sales of The Show games have decreased each year since they peaked in 2010. Also, any game that is released only across Sony’s PlayStation platforms naturally will not be as culturally popular as games like FIFA and Madden, which are available to all console users.\nThis new version of the R.B.I. Baseball franchise that has been dormant for the last 19 years (the last game released under that title was R.B.I. ’95) will excite not only college aged kids like myself who have been lacking that high quality baseball game ever since EA Sports cancelled its MVP Baseball franchise, but it will also excite middle aged gamers who perhaps grew up playing classic iterations of the R.B.I. franchise and will now have a new, next-gen version of one of their childhood favorites to introduce to their own children.\nLuckily, MLBAM made the intelligent decision to develop this game for the Xbox 360 and PS3, as well as the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One, a move that should help it usurp The Show’s throne, if you can call steadily decreasing sales for a game released on one console a throne. For all you Game of Thrones lovers out there, just imagine The Show is King Robert and this new R.B.I. game is young Joffrey, poised to snatch that throne and end King Robert’s reign.\nOfficial MLB press release announcing the game\nIn my opinion, the most important piece of information to come out of this news is the fact that the new R.B.I. Baseball game (tentatively titled R.B.I. Baseball 14) will be released not just on consoles, but on smartphones and tablets as well. Walking around a college campus every day, I see firsthand just how many people walk around staring down at their smartphones (Hint: it’s a lot), which is why this is a brilliant decision by MLBAM from a financial standpoint. Many smart phone users are not really gamers, at least not console gamers. However, with mobile games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush having such an insane cultural impact, companies are learning that by releasing their games on smartphones and tablets they can appeal to all demographics.\nThe average consumer may see the $60 price tag for R.B.I Baseball 14 on the Xbox 360 for instance and immediately be turned off by the steep price. However, if they go to the app store on their smartphone or tablet and see the mobile version of that game offered for a fraction of the price, they will be much more inclined to purchase it because they have grown accustomed to playing and enjoying games on their mobile device rather than on a console. All I can say is MLBAM execs are about to be seeing dollar signs.\nClearly, the positive outweighs the negative with the release of this new R.B.I. Baseball game. At the very least this news has people excited about baseball video games for the first time in years. But will the game be a homerun, or is the MLB going to strike out and get sent back to the dugout? We will soon find out.\nTags:2KAngry BirdsbaseballCandy CrushfeaturedFIfaGame of ThronesMaddenMLBNBAps3ps4Xbox 360xbox one\nAMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN “Protect the Coven” Recap\nDEVIL'S DUE: Be Ready To Get Scared By This Devil Baby Prank\nNicholas Ashman\nNicholas Ashman is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Gamer. Film lover. TV fanatic.\nMoviesSDCC\nWhat We Are Excited For At San Diego Comic Con 2016!\nShemoviegeek\nListsMovies\n5 Best Things About the New GHOSTBUSTERS\nMovie ReviewMovies\nCREED Movie Review – A More Than Worthy Successor To ROCKY","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line1165682"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.5265134572982788,"wiki_prob":0.4734865427017212,"text":"Bozzuto Leadership\nToby Bozzuto\nPresident & Chief Executive Officer, The Bozzuto Group\nToby Bozzuto provides strategic and day-to-day leadership for more than 2,500 employees in eleven metropolitan areas. By fostering a strong corporate culture, he guides future growth and encourages the company to create extraordinary experiences for residents, clients, partners and each other. Toby regularly lends his real estate expertise to leading publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Harvard Business Review, as well as media outlets such as CNBC, Marketplace, Bloomberg Media, and Baltimore’s NPR Station WYPR. As a regular guest lecturer at Harvard University, Georgetown University, Cornell University, The University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, Toby strives to share his insight and passion for creating community.\nFor two years in a row, The Washington Post has named The Bozzuto Group as a “Top Workplace,” based solely on employee feedback and submissions. In 2016, Toby, alongside his father Tom Bozzuto, accepted the William Donald Schaefer Industrialist of the Year Award from the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Additionally, he has received many recognitions, such as Developer of the Year by the District of Columbia Building Industry and Maryland Building Industry Association, one of Maryland Daily Record’s “Most Influential Marylanders,” Baltimore Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” and as a Commercial Property Executive Rising Leader. He also proudly joined the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge, committing himself to advance diversity throughout all levels of the workplace.\nAn active member of his community, Toby serves on the Board of Trustees for Colgate University, Kennedy Krieger Institute and the Gilman School. He is also a member of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Policy Advisory Board, National Advisory Board for ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, and the Young Presidents’ Organization. Toby holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Colgate University and a Master of Science in Real Estate Development from New York University.","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line703533"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6154937148094177,"wiki_prob":0.3845062851905823,"text":"16.973(4) (4) Ensure responsiveness to the needs of agencies for delivery of high-quality information technology processing services on an efficient and economical basis, while not unduly affecting the privacy of individuals who are the subjects of the information being processed by the department.\n16.973(5) (5) Utilize all feasible technical means to ensure the security of all information submitted to the department for processing by agencies, local governmental units and entities in the private sector.\n16.973(6) (6) With the advice of the ethics commission, adopt and enforce standards of ethical conduct applicable to its paid consultants which are similar to the standards prescribed in subch. III of ch. 19, except that the department shall not require its paid consultants to file statements of economic interests.\n16.973(7) (7) Prescribe and revise as necessary performance measures to ensure financial controls and accountability, optimal personnel utilization, and customer satisfaction for all information technology functions in the executive branch outside of the University of Wisconsin System and annually, no later than March 31, report to the joint committee on information policy and technology concerning the performance measures utilized by the department and the actual performance of the department and the executive branch agencies measured against the performance measures then in effect.\n16.973(8) (8) Offer the opportunity to local governmental units to voluntarily obtain computer or supercomputer services from the department when those services are provided under s. 16.972 (2) (b) or (c), and to voluntarily participate in any master contract established by the department under s. 16.972 (2) (h) or in the use of any informational system or device provided by the department under s. 16.974 (3).\n16.973(9) (9) In consultation with the department of veterans affairs, administer a program to increase outreach to veterans regarding veterans services and benefits, and to provide training to employees of the department of veterans affairs and county veterans service officers.\n16.973(10) (10) Promulgate:\n16.973(10)(a) (a) A definition of and methodology for identifying large, high-risk information technology projects.\n16.973(10)(b) (b) Standardized, quantifiable project performance measures for evaluating large, high-risk information technology projects.\n16.973(10)(c) (c) Policies and procedures for routine monitoring of large, high-risk information technology projects.\n16.973(10)(d) (d) A formal process for modifying information technology project specifications when necessary to address changes in program requirements.\n16.973(10)(e) (e) Requirements for reporting changes in estimates of cost or completion date to the department and the joint committee on information policy and technology.\n16.973(10)(f) (f) Methods for discontinuing projects or modifying projects that are failing to meet performance measures in such a way to correct the performance problems.\n16.973(10)(g) (g) Policies and procedures for the use of master leases under s. 16.76 (4) to finance new large, high-risk information technology system costs and maintain current large, high-risk information technology systems.\n16.973(10)(h) (h) A standardized progress point in the execution of large, high-risk information technology projects at which time the estimated costs and date of completion of the project is reported to the department and the joint committee on information policy and technology.\n16.973(11)(a) (a) A requirement that each executive branch agency review commercially available information technology products prior to initiating work on a customized information technology development project to determine whether any commercially available product could meet the information technology needs of the agency.\n16.973(11)(b) (b) Procedures and criteria to determine when a commercially available information technology product must be used and when an executive branch agency may consider the modification or creation of a customized information technology product.\n16.973(11)(c) (c) A requirement that each executive branch agency submit for approval by the department and prior to initiating work on a customized information technology product a justification for the modification or creation by the agency of a customized information technology product.\n16.973(12) (12)\n16.973(12)(a)(a) In this subsection, “master lease\" has the meaning given under s. 16.76 (4).\n16.973(12)(b) (b) Annually, no later than October 1, submit to the governor and the members of the joint committee on information policy and technology a report documenting the use by each executive branch agency, other than the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, of master leases to fund information technology projects in the previous fiscal year. The report shall contain all of the following information:\n16.973(12)(b)1. 1. The total amount paid under master leases towards information technology projects in the previous fiscal year.\n16.973(12)(b)2. 2. The master lease payment amounts approved to be applied to information technology projects in future years.\n16.973(12)(b)3. 3. The total amount paid by each executive branch agency on each information technology project for which debt is outstanding, as compared to the total financing amount originally approved for that information technology project.\n16.973(12)(b)4. 4. A summary of repayments made towards any master lease in the previous fiscal year.\n16.973(13)(a)(a) Except as provided in par. (b), include in each contract with a vendor of information technology that involves a large, high-risk information technology project under sub. (10) or that has a projected cost greater than $1,000,000, and require each executive branch agency authorized under s. 16.71 (1m) to enter into a contract for materials, supplies, equipment, or contractual services relating to information technology to include in each contract with a vendor of information technology that involves a large, high-risk information technology project under sub. (10) or that has a projected cost greater than $1,000,000 a stipulation requiring the vendor to submit to the department for approval any order or amendment that would change the scope of the contract and have the effect of increasing the contract price. The stipulation shall authorize the department to review the original contract and the order or amendment to determine all of the following and, if necessary, to negotiate with the vendor regarding any change to the original contract price:\n16.973(13)(a)1. 1. Whether the work proposed in the order or amendment is within the scope of the original contract.\n16.973(13)(a)2. 2. Whether the work proposed in the order or amendment is necessary.\n16.973(13)(b) (b) The department or an executive branch agency may exclude from a contract described in par. (a) the stipulation required under par. (a) if all of the following conditions are satisfied:\n16.973(13)(b)1. 1. Including such a stipulation would negatively impact contract negotiations or significantly reduce the number of bidders on the contract.\n16.973(13)(b)2. 2. If the exclusion is sought by an executive branch agency, that agency submits to the department a plain-language explanation of the reasons the stipulation was excluded and the alternative provisions the executive branch agency will include in the contract to ensure that the contract will be completed on time and within the contract budget.\n16.973(13)(b)3. 3. If the exclusion is sought by the department, the department prepares a plain-language explanation of the reasons the stipulation was excluded and the alternative provisions the department will include in the contract to ensure that the contract will be completed on time and within the contract budget.\n16.973(13)(b)4. 4. The department submits for approval by the joint committee on information policy and technology any explanation and alternative contract provisions required under subd. 2. or 3. If, within 14 working days after the date that the department submits any explanation and alternative contract provisions required under this subdivision, the joint committee on information policy and technology does not contact the department, the explanation and alternative contract provisions shall be deemed approved.\n16.973(14)(a)(a) Require each executive branch agency, other than the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin system, that has entered into an open-ended contract for the development of information technology to submit to the department quarterly reports documenting the amount expended on the information technology development project. In this subsection, “open-ended contract\" means a contract for information technology that includes one or both of the following:\n16.973(14)(a)1. 1. Stipulations that provide that the contract vendor will deliver information technology products or services but that do not specify a maximum payment amount.\n16.973(14)(a)2. 2. Stipulations that provide that the contract vendor shall be paid an hourly wage but that do not set a maximum limit on the number of hours required to complete the information technology project.\n16.973(14)(b) (b) Compile and annually submit to the joint committee on information technology the reports required under par. (a).\n16.973(15) (15) By October 1 of each year, submit to the joint committee on finance and the legislature under s. 13.172 (2) a report on the administration of the information technology and communication services self-funded portal. The report shall include the following information regarding the portal for the immediately preceding fiscal year:\n16.973(15)(a) (a) A financial statement of state revenues and expenditures.\n16.973(15)(b) (b) A list of services available through the portal, identifying services added since the previous reporting period.\n16.973(15)(c) (c) Fees charged for each service available through the portal.\n16.973(15)(d) (d) The activity level of each service available through the portal.\n16.973(15)(e) (e) Any other information the department determines to be appropriate to include.\n16.973(16) (16) No later than March 1 and September 1 of each year, submit to the joint committee on information policy and technology a report that documents for each executive branch agency information technology project with an actual or projected cost greater than $1,000,000 or that the department of administration has identified as a large, high-risk information technology project under sub. (10) (a) all of the following:\n16.973(16)(a) (a) Original and updated project cost projections.\n16.973(16)(b) (b) Original and updated completion dates for the project and any stage of the project.\n16.973(16)(c) (c) An explanation for any variation between the original and updated costs and completion dates under pars. (a) and (b).\n16.973(16)(d) (d) A copy of any contract entered into by the department for the project and not provided in a previous report.\n16.973(16)(e) (e) All sources of funding for the project.\n16.973(16)(f) (f) The amount of any funding provided for the project through a master lease under s. 16.76 (4).\n16.973(16)(g) (g) Information about the status of the project, including any portion of the project that has been completed.\n16.973(16)(h) (h) Any other information about the project, or related information technology projects, requested by the joint committee on information policy and technology.\n16.973 History History: 2001 a. 16 ss. 367 to 369, 1030 to 1030m; 2003 a. 33 ss. 777 to 781; Stats. 2003 s. 16.973; 2007 a. 1, 20; 2015 a. 55, 118; 2015 a. 197 s. 51; 2017 a. 369.\n16.974 16.974 Powers of the department. The department may:\n16.974(1) (1) Establish and collect assessments and charges for all authorized services provided by the department, subject to applicable agreements under subs. (2) and (2m).\n16.974(2) (2) Subject to s. 16.972 (2) (b), enter into and enforce an agreement with any agency, any authority, any unit of the federal government, any local governmental unit, any entity in the private sector, or any tribal school, as defined in s. 115.001 (15m), to provide services authorized to be provided by the department to that agency, authority, unit, entity, or tribal school at a cost specified in the agreement.\n16.974(2m) (2m) Enter into and enforce an agreement with an individual to provide services authorized to be provided by the department to that individual.\n16.974(3) (3) Develop or operate and maintain any system or device facilitating Internet or telephone access to information about programs of agencies, authorities, local governmental units, entities in the private sector, individuals, or any tribal schools, as defined in s. 115.001 (15m), or otherwise permitting the transaction of business by agencies, authorities, local governmental units, entities in the private sector, individuals, or tribal schools by means of electronic communication. The department may assess executive branch agencies, other than the board of regents of the University of Wisconsin System, for the costs of systems or devices relating to information technology or telecommunications that are developed, operated, or maintained under this subsection in accordance with a methodology determined by the department. The department may also charge any agency, authority, local governmental unit, entity in the private sector, or tribal school for such costs as a component of any services provided by the department to that agency, authority, local governmental unit, entity, or tribal school. The department may charge an individual for such costs as a component of any services provided by the department to that individual.\n16.974(4) (4) Provide services authorized under sub. (3) to hospitals, as defined in s. 50.33 (2). Subsection (1) applies to the services provided under this subsection.\n16.974(5) (5) Review and approve, approve with modifications, or disapprove any proposed contract for the purchase of materials, supplies, equipment, or contractual services relating to information technology or telecommunications by an executive branch agency, other than the board of regents of the University of Wisconsin System.\n16.974 History History: 2001 a. 16; 2003 a. 33 ss. 782 to 785c; Stats. 2003 s. 16.974; 2009 a. 302; 2011 a. 32; 2013 a. 20.\n16.975 16.975 Access to information. The department shall withhold from access under s. 19.35 (1) all information submitted to the department by agencies, authorities, units of the federal government, local governmental units, entities in the private sector, or individuals for the purpose of processing. The department may not process such information without the consent of the agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual which submitted the information and may not withhold such information from the agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual or from any other person authorized by the agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual to have access to the information. The agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual submitting the information remains the custodian of the information while it is in the custody of the department and access to such information by that agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual or any other person shall be determined by that agency, authority, unit, entity, or individual and in accordance with law.\n16.975 History History: 1991 a. 39; 1995 a. 27; 2001 a. 16 s. 372; Stats. 2001 s. 22.11; 2003 a. 33 s. 786; Stats. 2003 s. 16.975; 2013 a. 20.\n16.976 16.976 Strategic plans for executive branch agencies.\n16.976(1)(1) As a part of each proposed strategic plan submitted under s. 16.971 (2) (L), the department shall require each executive branch agency to address the business needs of the agency and to identify all proposed information technology development projects that serve those business needs, the priority for undertaking such projects, and the justification for each project, including the anticipated benefits of the project. Each proposed plan shall identify any changes in the functioning of the agency under the plan. In each even-numbered year, the plan shall include identification of any information technology development project that the agency plans to include in its biennial budget request under s. 16.42 (1).\n16.976(2) (2) Each proposed strategic plan shall separately identify the initiatives that the executive branch agency plans to undertake from resources available to the agency at the time that the plan is submitted and initiatives that the agency proposes to undertake that would require additional resources.\n16.976(3) (3) Following receipt of a proposed strategic plan from an executive branch agency, the department shall, before June 1, notify the agency of any concerns that the department may have regarding the plan and provide the agency with its recommendations regarding the proposed plan. The executive branch agency may submit modifications to its proposed plan in response to any recommendations.\n16.976(4) (4) Before June 15, the department shall approve or disapprove the proposed plan in whole or in part.\n16.976(5) (5) No executive branch agency, other than the board of regents of the University of Wisconsin System, may implement a new or revised information technology development project authorized under a strategic plan until the implementation is approved by the department in accordance with procedures prescribed by the department.\n16.976(6) (6) The department shall consult with the joint committee on information policy and technology in providing guidance for planning by executive branch agencies.\n16.976 History History: 2001 a. 16; 2003 a. 33 ss. 787 to 791; Stats. 2003 s. 16.976; 2015 a. 55.\n16.977 16.977 Information technology portfolio management. With the assistance of executive branch agencies, the department shall manage the information technology portfolio of state government in accordance with a management structure that includes all of the following:\n16.977(1) (1) Criteria for selection of information technology assets to be managed.\n16.977(2) (2) Methods for monitoring and controlling information technology development projects and assets.\n16.977(3) (3) Methods to evaluate the progress of information technology development projects and the effectiveness of information technology systems, including performance measurements for the information technology portfolio.\n16.977 History History: 2001 a. 16; 2003 a. 33 ss. 792, 793; Stats. 2003 s. 16.977; 2015 a. 55.\n16.9785 16.9785 Purchases of computers by teachers. The department shall negotiate with private vendors to facilitate the purchase of computers and other educational technology, as defined in s. 24.60 (1r), by public, private, and tribal elementary and secondary school teachers for their private use. The department shall attempt to make available types of computers and other educational technology under this section that will encourage and assist teachers in becoming knowledgeable about the technology and its uses and potential uses in education.\n16.9785 History History: 1995 a. 27, 225; 1997 a. 27; 2001 a. 16, s. 308; Stats. 2001 s. 22.19; 2003 a. 33 s. 796; Stats. 2003 s. 16.9785; 2009 a. 302.\n16.979 16.979 Telecommunications operations and planning.\n16.979(2)(2) Powers and duties. The department shall ensure maximum utility, cost-benefit and operational efficiency of all telecommunications systems and activities of this state, and those which interface with cities, counties, villages, towns, other states and the federal government. The department, with the assistance and cooperation of all other agencies, shall:\n16.979(2)(a) (a) Develop and maintain a statewide long-range telecommunications plan, which will serve as a major element for budget preparation, as guidance for technical implementation and as a means of ensuring the maximum use of shared systems by agencies when this would result in operational or economic improvements or both.\n16.979(2)(b) (b) Develop policy, standards and technical and procedural guidelines to ensure a coordinated and cost-effective approach to telecommunications system acquisition and utilization.\n16.979(2)(c) (c) Maintain a comprehensive inventory of all state-owned or leased telecommunications equipment and services.\n16.979(2)(d) (d) Monitor overall state expenditures for telecommunications systems and prepare an annual financial report on such expenditures.\n16.979(2)(e) (e) Review the operation of all telecommunications systems of this state to ensure technical sufficiency, adequacy and consistency with goals and objectives.\n16.979(2)(f) (f) Perform the functions of agency telecommunications officer for those agencies with no designated focal point for telecommunications planning, coordination, technical review and procurement.\n/statutes/statutes/16 true statutes /statutes/statutes/16/VII/973/13/a/2 Chs. 13-20, General Organization of the State, Except the Judiciary statutes/16.973(13)(a)2. statutes/16.973(13)(a)2. section true","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line458754"}
{"pred_label":"__label__cc","pred_label_prob":0.6901057958602905,"wiki_prob":0.3098942041397095,"text":"Hardister Agrees With Concept Of State School Bond\nPosted by John Hammer | Mar 5, 2019 | News\nState Rep. Jon Hardister agreed that in the proposed state education bond referendum it appeared that Guilford County as the third largest school system in the state “was not getting as much as it should.”\nGuilford County Schools are slated to get $12.6 million of the $1.9 billion proposed state education bond while Wake County Schools, the largest in the state, is supposed to receive $109.6 million.\nHardister who is House majority whip said that he co-sponsored the bill because he agreed with the concept of providing state money through a bond referendum for school maintenance and construction, not necessarily with the funding formula.\nHe said, “I will do the best I can to make sure Guilford County is treated fairly.”\nHardister explained that the bill that was filed was just a “starting point” and would have to go through several House committees, and then a vote on the House floor and he expected it to be amended all along the way.\nOf course, for an education construction bond referendum to appear on the ballot in 2020, it not only has to pass the state House, it also has to pass the state Senate which provides more opportunity for changes.\nIn fact the Senate is currently looking at an entirely different method of funding school construction not with a bond but on a pay-as-you-go basis.\nHardister said, “I’m not a big fan of taking on debt. I’m not opposed to the pay-as-you-go concept. I think that’s something that we should consider going forward.”\nHardister’s main point was that the proposed bond package, put the issue of the state offering some help to the local school districts with construction costs on the table and what was finally passed by the legislature would likely be very different from House Bill 241 that he co-sponsored. He said the important thing at this point was to get the discussion going on the best way for the state to fund school construction.\nHardister said one of the big problems with the pay-as-you-go method is that any future legislature could decide to spend that money elsewhere, but if a bond referendum passed that money could only be used for the stated purpose of the bond in this case school construction.\nThe problem for Guilford County in the proposed bond funding is the formula that was used to determine how much each school system would receive. Hardister said that he wasn’t sure he understood exactly how the formula worked but it appeared one reason Guilford County received so little funding was that the school system, despite being the third largest, was not growing and one of the funding variables was based on growth.\nAnother factor was based on the economic vitality of the county. The formula awarded more money to counties that were deemed to be in economic distress. Although Guilford is a Tier 2 county, unlike Wake and Mecklenburg which are both in the most economically successful Tier 3, according to the bill Guilford was not deemed in such dire economic straits that it deserved more money.\nSo Guilford lost out on the growth money because the school system in the county is not growing and lost out on the economic distress money because the economy while not deemed good by the state, is not deemed bad enough for more money.\nGovernor Roy Cooper has stated that he is in favor of the bond proposal presented in the House.\nPreviousN&R Lawsuit Against Guilford County In Suspended Animation\nNextLillian Williams Paylor","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line648283"}
{"pred_label":"__label__wiki","pred_label_prob":0.9741454124450684,"wiki_prob":0.9741454124450684,"text":"Evidence tampering alleged in police chief firing case\nU.S. Headlines\nby: DON BABWIN, Associated Press\nFILE – In this March 26, 2019, file photo, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson speaks during a news conference in Chicago. When fellow officers discovered Johnson asleep behind the wheel of his running SUV, they did not conduct any sobriety tests and let their boss drive home, a decision that has thrown a spotlight on what happens when one officer confronts another on patrol. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford, File)\nCHICAGO (AP) — A female Chicago police officer who was reportedly seen on video drinking with and kissing the now-fired police superintendent the night he was found asleep behind the wheel of his SUV has been accused of tampering with a cellphone investigators wanted to examine, a police department spokesman said Friday.\nDepartment spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said officials noticed that the phone was damaged when the woman left then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson’s security detail to join the evidence and recovered property unit, three days after the incident.\nAccording to the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the allegations about the phone, a sergeant in the unit that the officer was joining noticed that the SIM card was missing and filed a formal complaint against the officer.\nThe Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, citing sources the papers didn’t identify, said video shows Johnson with a woman who is not his wife the night of Oct. 16 at a popular bar and restaurant in the Chicago Board of Trade Building.\nGuglielmi declined to discuss why the woman was transferred but said turning over phones and other equipment is routine when officers move from one unit to another. He said the phone had been “noticeably damaged and the SIM card was missing or damaged.”\nHe said the inspector general’s office became aware of the problems with the phone when it contacted the police department to ask for it as part of its investigation. He also said that as of Friday, the office has not requested that any member of the department be disciplined.\nGuglielmi said the woman, who is on medical leave for injuries unrelated to the incident, is at the center of the investigation of the incident that prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to fire Johnson on Monday.She said that after reviewing information, including video-recorded evidence, that she concluded Johnson had lied to her when the two discussed the incident. Johnson, in a statement issued the next day, said he did not ‘’intentionally mislead or deceive” anyone.\nJohnson had said after the incident that as he was driving home after having dinner with friends he felt lightheaded and fell asleep after he pulled over. In a statement issued later that day, Guglielmi said that Johnson showed no signs of impairment when they responded to a 911 call about Johnson and allowed him to drive home.\nJohnson, who in 2017 underwent kidney transplant surgery, blamed what had happened on a recent change in his blood pressure medication but a short time later, Lightfoot said that the superintendent had acknowledged to her that he had “couple of drinks with dinner.”\nMore U.S. Headlines Stories\nDES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Authorities in Iowa had to round up more than 1,700 young pigs who were in a semi-trailer that overturned Thursday on a freeway just north of Des Moines.\nThe crash happened about 1:30 p.m. when the truck overturned on a ramp to Interstate 35.\nLocal News / 2 mins ago\nBuffalo man sentenced for using drugs to coerce victims into prostitution","source":"cc/2020-05/en_head_0001.json.gz/line345678"}